scientists began to
A couple years ago, this process suddenly became obvious when a violent episode occurred in the labs. No one has explained to me exactly what happened. People killed one another in a bizarre, savage confrontation. The experimental animals either escaped or were purposefully released by people who felt a strange kinship with them.
Among those animals were rhesus monkeys whose intelligence had been substantially enhanced. Although I’d thought intelligence was related to brain size and to the number of folds in the surface of the brain, these rhesuses didn’t have enlarged craniums; except for a few telltale characteristics, they resembled ordinary members of their species.
The monkeys have been on the run ever since. They are hiding from the federal and military authorities who are quietly trying to eradicate them and all other evidence of what happened at Wyvern before the public learns that its elected officials have ensured the end of the world as we know it. Other than those involved in the conspiracy, only a handful of us know anything about these events, and if we attempt to go public, even though we possess no hard proof, they will kill us as righteously as they would waste the rhesuses.
They killed my mom. They claim that she was despondent over the way in which her work was misused, that she committed suicide by driving her car at high speed into a bridge abutment just south of town. But my mother was not a quitter. And she would never have abandoned me to face alone the nightmare world that may be coming. I believe she intended to go public, spill the truth to the media, in hope of building a consensus for a crash research program, bigger than what’s buried under Wyvern, bigger than the Manhattan Project, commandeering the best genetic scientists in the world. So they pushed her through the big door and slammed it behind her. This is what I believe. I have no proof. She was my mom, however; and about some of these issues, I’ll believe what I want, what I must.
Meanwhile, the contagion is spreading faster than the monkeys, and it’s unlikely that the damage can be undone or even contained. Infected Wyvern personnel relocated all over the country, carrying the retrovirus with them, before anyone knew there was a problem, before a quarantine could have been effectively imposed. Genetic mutation will probably occur in all species. Perhaps the only thing in doubt is whether this will be a slow process that requires decades or centuries to unfold — or whether the terror will rapidly escalate. Thus far, the effects have been, with rare exception, subtle and not widespread, but this may be the calm before the holocaust. Those responsible are, I believe, frantically seeking a remedy, but they are also expending a lot of energy in an effort to conceal the source of the oncoming catastrophe, so no one will know who’s to blame.
No one at the top of the government wants to face the public’s wrath. They’re not afraid of being booted out of office. Far worse than job loss might await them if the truth gets out. They might be tried for crimes against humanity. They probably justify the ongoing cover-up as necessary to avoid panic in the streets, civil disorder, and perhaps even an international quarantine of the entire North American continent, but what really concerns them is the possibility that they will be torn to pieces by angry mobs.
Perhaps a few of the creatures now milling in the street outside the bungalow were among the twelve who had escaped from the labs on that historic and macabre night of violence. Most were descendants of the escapees, bred in freedom but as intelligent as their parents.
Ordinary monkeys are chatterboxes, but I heard no sound from these thirty. They roiled together with what seemed to be increasing agitation, arms flailing, tails lashing, but if they raised their voices, the gabble wasn’t audible either through the window glass or through the open front door, only a few feet away.
They were plotting something worse than monkeyshines.
Although the rhesuses are not as smart as human beings, the advantage we have isn’t great enough to make me feel comfortable about playing a high-stakes game of poker with any three of them. Unless I could first get them drunk.
These precocious primates aren’t the primary threat born in the laboratories at Wyvern. That honor must go, of course, to the gene-swapping retrovirus that might remake every living thing. But as villains go, the monkeys constitute a damn fine backup team.
To fully appreciate the long-term threat of these redesigned rhesuses, consider that rats are dreadful pests even though they are a tiny fraction as intelligent as we are. Scientists estimate that rodents destroy twenty percent of the food supply worldwide, in spite of the fact that we are relatively effective at exterminating colonies of them and keeping their numbers manageable. Imagine what might happen if rats were even half as smart as we are, and were able to compete on fairer footing than they now enjoy. We’d be engaged in a desperate war with them to prevent massive starvation.
Watching the monkeys in the street, I wondered if I was seeing our adversaries in some future Armageddon.
Aside from their high level of intelligence, they have another quality that makes them more formidable enemies than any rodents could be. Though rats operate entirely on instinct and have insufficient brain power to take anything personally, these monkeys hate us with a black, bitter passion.
I believe they are hostile toward humanity because we created them but did a half-assed job. We robbed them of their simple animal innocence, in which they were content. We raised their intelligence until they became aware of the wider world and of their true place in it, but we didn’t give them enough intelligence to make it possible for them to improve their lot. We made them just smart enough to be dissatisfied with the life of a monkey; we gave them the capacity to dream but didn’t give them the means to fulfill their dreams. They have been evicted from their niche in the animal kingdom and cannot find a new place to fit in. Cut loose from the fabric of creation, they are unraveling, wandering, lost, full of a yearning that can never be mended.
I don’t blame them for hating us. If I were one of them, I’d hate us, too.
My sympathy wouldn’t save me, however, if I walked out of the bungalow and into the street, tenderly grasped a monkey paw in each of my hands, declared my outrage at the arrogance of the human species, and sang a rousing rendition of “Yes, We Have No Bananas.”
In minutes, I would be reduced to kibble.
My mother’s work led to the creation of this troop, which they appear to understand: They have stalked me in the past. She is dead, so they can’t take vengeance on her for the anguished, outcast lives they lead. Because I’m her only child, the monkeys nurture a special animosity toward me. Perhaps they should. Perhaps their hatred of every Snow is justified. Of all people, I have no right to debate the merit of their grievance, though this doesn’t mean I feel obliged to pay a price for what, with the best of motivations, my mother did.
Remaining safely unkibbled at the bungalow window, I heard what seemed to be the single reverberant toll of a large bell, followed by a clatter. I watched as the churning troop parted around an object I couldn’t see. A scraping of iron on stone followed, and several individuals conspired to raise the weighty thing onto its side.
Busy monkeys prevented me from immediately getting a clear view of the item, although it appeared to be round. They began to roll it in a circle, from curb to curb and back again, some watching while others scampered beside the object, keeping it balanced on edge. In the burnishing moonlight, it initially resembled a coin so enormous that it must have fallen out of the giant’s pocket from the top of Jack’s beanstalk. Then I realized it was a manhole cover they had pried from the pavement.
Suddenly they were chattering and shrieking as though they were a group of exuberant children who had made a toy out of an old tire. In my experience, such playfulness was completely out of character for them. Of my previous encounters with the troop, only one had been face-to-face, and throughout that confrontation, they had acted less like children than like a pack of homicidal skinheads wired on PCP-and-cocaine cocktails.
They quickly tired of rolling the manhole cover. Then three individuals worked together to spin it, as if in fact it were a coin, and with considerable coordinated effort they eventually set it in a blur of motion.
The troop fell silent again. They gathered in a wide circle around the whirling disc, giving it space to move but watching it with great interest.
Periodically, the three who had spun the cover darted to it, one by one, judiciously applying enough force to keep it balanced and in steady motion. Their timing revealed at least a rudimentary understanding of the laws of physics and a mechanical skill that belied their ordinary appearance.
The tightly rotating disc sang roughly, its iron edge grinding against the concrete pavement. This low metallic song had become the sole sound in the night: nearly a one-note drone, oscillating only faintly over a half- tone range.
