(G179 05/11/2013 Fri via Roll20 - JF, AP(GM))

(G179 05/11/2013 Fri via Roll20 - JF, AP(GM))

I went over and looked in the cells on the other side of the waterway. There was a woman inside but she
seemed to be in a daze. I sent Jiggles upstairs with a cloak to fetch the crystal ball thing.
When I tapped it with the hilt of my sword it smashed and the woman came to.

She said her name was Vera Wavecrest and that she had undergone the three day ritual. She told us of the
others she had been with but whom had been taken away or killed.
Only one was from the town, the others were outsiders.

They were :

The bookseller, and two merchants called Duncan and Kenniwick (We had found their remains and
possessions upstairs)

The other eight were :

Durgen - a male dwarf cleric of Moradin
Kereem - a male human paladin of Tyr
Smote - a male halfling sorcerer with clever hands
Tholwick - a male human adept
Halish - a male human cleric of Mystra
Dava (female), Mendios (male) and Zephan - all human apprentices to an evoker from
Marsember who had sent them to make an offering at the temple

After we'd talked to her some more and put the dates together we figured out these people
had been taken away eight days ago.

We searched the Waterman's room and found some maps, including one that contained instructions
on how to get to the place the people had been sent. It was actually in the Vast Swamp, which
was an area I'd only read about and was greatly interested in visiting.

We then searched and looted every other room we could get into, took it downstairs, loaded the
boat and sent Shump, Jiggles and Sylvia out with it.

Then myself and the wife went upstairs and started removing the barricade. Not surprisingly
there was a big squad of town watch on the other side demanding an explanation as to what
was going on.

I talked to the chap in charge, a fellow called  Constal Maximanus Thall, who wore a plumed
helmet. I handed over our prisoners to him. Fembrys, Shan Thar and Kevran and told them four
guards were alive further in.

We went along with them to the watch house and gave our stories. Maximanus seemed to accept
them but kept us waiting regardless.

DAY 208 (5 Marpenoth)(October)

I tried to get a bit of sleep. It had been a long night after all!

At around nine in the morning they took Vera away for a chat. Checking the stories all matched
up I suppose.

In a cell next to me there was a town drunk called Sweaty Burt. He seemed a sad sort of fellow
and completely insensible. The breakfast, when it came round, didn't look up to much so I sent
one of the guards out with some gold to go get some decent food for everyone.

Next Lavinia went to talk to the captain and a few hours later we were out. We met up with
the others at the tavern.

I wrote a letter to TD and left a copy of the map, just incase he should come back after we'd
gone. We then rested the remainder of the day in the tavern and arranged sale of the large
amount of loot we had acquired from the temple.

DAY 209  (5 Marpenoth)(October)

Today was another rest and heal day. We were all still rather battered and bruised from our
escapades. I read about religion and asked around some of the locals.

I then went and had a chat with the Captain again and asked how many people of the town
were unaccounted for. He said not many, most of the victims had been from out of town.

I then went and talked to Orlenstar Thirthorn and let him see the map. He gave me some
advice about the vast swamp. It was vast and swampy apparently, so that was of great help.

Myself and Jiggles then went to the outfitters and purchased some supplies and camping
equipment. The stuff we were not going to take with us, I arranged to be left at the tavern.

We decided we would set off the next day. I felt rather bad that we were leaving Waterdeep
during its crisis and my brother at the tender mercy of his dubious companions, but this
was adventure beckoning and a chance to see an area of Faerune that was largely uncharted.

FOY 100 (3291 words 10/09/2009)

3291 words 10/09/2009

FOY 100

Later...

As usual, he jogged home from work. It wasn't as if he had a choice. He hadn't eaten since lunch (a garden

salad, with a pro-biotic for pudding) so his stomach was rumbling.

It was fields all the way home, so it was a scenic route. The old A96 was a bridle path now, all grown

over with nettles and oil seed rape.

He hated jogging, but it was the best way to keep his weight down so that his FOY 100 wasn't cut. There were

plenty of people on the same track, doing the same thing as him. It was almost as if the old road was as

clogged with joggers now, as it had been with cars two hundred years ago.

Strange, he thought, that he remembered those days with fond affection. He used to scrape himself into  his

auto, a cup of coffee in one hand and a bacon roll in the other and sit in traffic for nearly an hour to

get to work.

It still took him an hour these days, but by foot. His thoughts always returned to the same subjects as he

jogged this section of the route, down into the valley where he lived. He could remember a time when all

this had been houses. Now it was all fields.

Was he really two-hundred and forty years old? It seemed incredible, but it was all thanks to FOY 100, the

miracle drug that kept old age at bay - as long as you kept taking it. There was a limited supply in the

country so the NHS only handed it out to those that were prepared to go the rest of the way and live fit

and active lives. No FOY 100 for fatties in the UK! Unlike the USA where they all seemed to be fat.

There were certainly lots of people in the country that preferred to live lives like slobs and die in their

seventies (or whatever). He, Alan Ledbetter, was not one of them. He passed is bimonthly medical each week

without fail and received that fortnights supply of FOY 100 each time. The fatties couldn't even emigrate

to the USA any longer to get round the strict rules in Europe, they had closed their borders long ago.

There had been a time, after the death of his wife, that he had skipped a few treatments and had added 6 months

or so onto his subjective forty years. If he had to fill out any forms this year he would put 40/240 for his age.

Subjective and actual age. If he missed any more treatments he would have to put 41.

Part of him was an old old man, but it was amazing how the brain adapted to a never aging body. His deepest and

most bitter regrets was that his wife had died of one of the very few things that could still kill you in this

day and age. There was no more disease, not even cancer, there was no more traffic accidents as there was just

no more traffic. Glenda had fallen and... no, he could feel his stomach tensing up in a spasm of anguish, he

would stop thinking about that now.

He was nearly home. Just the last few hundred yards. He ran up his driveway to his house and jogged straight

in through the open front door. His dog, Gyles, greeted him with a happy bark and a wagging tail. One of the

benefits of being on FOY 100 was that you were given a pet allowance also. Statistics showed that psychosis was

75 percent less likely in long time FOY users if they had a pet dog or cat. Gyles was over eighty, but subjectively

still only three. Dogs didn't care about immortality, as long as each day had food and walkies in it, they

didn't really mind.

After he had showered he sat down and ate his dinner (a pasta dish with sun dried tomatoes and basil - gotta get

those carbs!) in front of the holobox.

Statistic showed that psychosis was 50 percent less likely in long term FOY users if they shared a house with

a fellow user, but Alan was happy with his own company (and Gyles of course) and could not get used to the

idea of having another woman in the house, even after eighty years. He and his wife had been together for

over one hundred and twenty years... no.. he wouldn't think about that.. he could feel the pasta turning over

in his stomach and he nearly retched.. no don't think about that. Alan groaned and changed the channel to

get his latest news updates.

More trouble in Africa, more protests by the usual religious types outside the FOY farms. Interesting statistics

on the amount of users in the UK (75 percent, up by 3 percent on last year). Production would have to go

up as more fatties decided to become fitties. It was a radical life-style change after all, the NHS were really

strict because of the limited supplies. No smoking, no drinking, no meat, eat healthy and take lots of exercise.

You were not even aloud tea of coffee, although herbal tea was ok. And if you didn't stay fit, well, they just

cut your supply and you advanced a year or whatever while you caught up again with the targets and filled in

all the paperwork.

Alan sighed and changed the channel to Photon-Tube to see who was around to talk to. None of his family

were in their living rooms, just a few of his 'frebbies', people that he knew via the Tube, but had never met

in reality.

Shella wasn't around and he couldn't be bothered talking to any of the others tonight, much less letting a

life like 3D virtual model of them wander around in his front room so he switched off the holobox.

He got up and walked out into the garden. It was still nice and sunny outside, but he couldn't help feeling

a little bit out of sorts.

He decided to take a wander up to the Earl Hill, a nearby beauty spot. Gyles fell into step beside him. His

dog did not need a lead, he was pretty traffic savvy but it didn't matter as cars were a thing of the past.

Since the oil had run out, people generally stayed at home, or lived close to their work. There was no

danger of Gyles biting anyone, he was as gentle as a lamb and besides his teeth were made from rubber.

It wasn't a very big hill, but he took his time climbing it as he was not in any hurry. He didn't have to

work tomorrow, he only went into the office three times a week after all ...and yes.. there it was, he could

see his offices at NextGen from here, right beside the huge construction of the seed ship.

It was massive. Since humanity had become immortal, naturally something had to be done about curbing the

population increasing beyond the capacities of the planet to support it. There weren't many children around,

and if you wanted to have a child, well, it was rather morbid, but you had to find someone who was willing

to die. You couldn't just wait for someone to pop their clogs by one of the rare ways people died these days,

in an accident or something, or for a fatty to die naturally. They were trying to get the overall population

down as it was.

No, you could only get a current long term FOY user to agree to stop taking the drug and then actually die,

so planning to have a child could take up to fifty years.

There was another way. Book passage on a seed ship that would take humans off to the stars. Three had been

launched already and more were being built all over the planet. Alan's job was on a design team of the

air and water filtration system of the ship he could see from here, held in its massive frame of scaffolding.

Once the seed ship, Cassandra, was finished it would be pulled into space by the giant space lifter,

Hydra, before being gently pushed out of the Earth's gravity well. Then she would have her atomic

reactors fired up and she would be on her way.

Smaller terraforming ships had already been out to the local stars and found many habitable planets. These

smaller unmanned ships travelled very fast and sent back light speed transmissions of what they had found.

Then gene seed terraforming ships, again unmanned, went out and set up robot factories to change the atmosphere

into something breathable and if necessary alter the climate.

The final stage was the seed ships, each one holding ten thousand people. Even with G-suppressors it would take

the seed ships a very long time to reach the nearest stars. The one that Alan was helping to build, and that

he would eventually leave on (he thought, he hadn't fully made up his mind about that.), was bound for Tau

Ceti and would take over four hundred years to get there. But what did that matter when you were immortal?

Time ceases to be a factor. There would be games and activities to keep you occupied during that time. The joke

was, it was all planned down to the last checkers board. There were trained psychologists on board to make sure

everyone on the seed ship was in fine mental health, despite being cooped up on a giant floating space ark.

Humans had tried to settle other planets in the solar system and it had even worked to a certain extent, but

only on a small scale. The future seemed to lie much futher out than that.

Alan had decided long ago he wanted to have children, and leaving Earth seemed to be the best way of going

about it. He didn't want to be a P8-6 death chaser, the name of the form that had to be filled in had given

its name to the people that were constantly trying to persuade others to take a chance on the afterlife.

Eventually he turned and walked back down the hill and got home as it was getting dark.

Later...

Shella was in her living room and available, so Alan dialled and waving to her, went over to sit down on her

sofa. The complicated software of the holobox was matching his room to her room, so that while he was sitting

down on his own armchair, it appeared to Shella that he was sitting down on her over-cushioned pink sofa.

'Hello Alan!' , she exclaimed.

'Hi babe, what you up to?'

'Nothing. nothing. Been off work all week. Summer holidays you know.'

'Right of course.', Shella was a teacher in Mombai, 'I wanted to ask you Shella. Have you ever thought about

seed ships.'

Shella laughed and flicked back her hair, 'What are you suggesting Alan?'

'Well. You know. I work for NextGen, and I have a passage booked on the Cassandra. I can take one other

person with me .. well you know, we would have never have met if our profiles hadn't have been matched up

on Multi-book.'

'We've been friends a long time since we met on MB Alan.'

'Yes I know', they had in fact been friends for over fifty years, Shella herself was over three hundred

years old.

'There are no girls in the UK you want to ask? Surely I am not the only woman you know?'

'Shella, you know I am a recluse. Statistics show that eighteen percent of FOY users are happy with their

own company.'

'Hmm, well, it's true, I did put that I wanted to take a seed ship on my MB profile, but that was fifty

years ago. Things might have changed with me, you know?'

'OK, well...' Alan smiled and stretched out on her sofa, he always felt at home and at ease in Shella's house.

Shella smiled back at him, her impish grin spreading over her girlish features,

'It would be just you and me would it?', she asked.

'Oh no. Gyles would come too. Statistics have shown that...'

'Yes yes', she cut him off, 'Let me think about it then.'

Later...

Alan was watching the holobox when there was an emergency newsflash. They had lost contact with the Aurora,

the first seed ship. A knot of tension in his stomach almost doubled him over as he continued to watch the

presenters talk about the situation. As was often the way with breaking news, they had virtually nothing

to go on, and the presenters endlessly interviewed each other until another nugget of information came

their way and they would all then discuss it and pass it round like a precious diamond.

What was known though was the Aurora had lost contact with the Lake Emerald Command Centre and concern

was growing with each minute. What had happened to the Aurora? The speculation was wide and varied. They

had blown up, they had lost power, they had lost their comms antennae in a particle storm, they had all

gone crazy and mangled the controls. Or maybe sabotage by religious infiltrators? Or maybe ... well it just

went on, because no one knew. There wasn't even any useful statistical data at all!

Alan watched and watched. He didn't eat, he barely noticed that it was already morning when some news did

actually find something out that was worth knowing. The Hubble II telescope had located the Aurora, she was off

course, but seemingly intact. She was five light years out from Earth, so what Hubble II was seeing was five

years out of date. But then, the messages they had been sending to LECC were five years out of date too.

Whatever had happened, had happened five years ago. Alan's head hurt and his heart ached. He went to bed and

slept fitfully and like the entire planet on waking he tuned back into the news. Hubble II, the space telescope

that orbited Saturn, was still tracking the Aurora. It seemed to be correcting its course. Everything looked

ok, but there were no messages. No communication.

He got an incoming visit request from Shella. He let her in his living room.

She sighed and flopped down on his couch.

'You look as tired as I feel.' , she groaned.

'Yes,' more than anything he wanted to hug her, but she was just a virtual projection, 'I suppose the trip

on the Cassandra is off. You could never want to come with me after this.'

'Don't be silly Alan. I had already made up my mind to come. I'm all packed and ready.'

Alan gasped, 'Really?'

'Sure. I've put some of my things into bags. I'm e-mailing you the details of the flight. It all should

arrive by SPD in a couple of weeks.'

Alan new that SPD stood for solar powered dirigible, there were no fuel guzzling aircraft anymore, the last

of the fossil fuels were still being used by the seed ships. Cassandra had an atomic reactor as a power source

but aviation fuel was always handy to have on board.

Something occurred to him, 'What about you. You're not taking the SPD?'

'No, I'm walking.'

'You're what?' he cried.

'I'm going to walk from India to the UK, yes, through Pakistan, Russia, Germany, France. I have it all planned.'

'But why?'

'Because this will be my last walk on Earth won't it? If we ever do come back. Well. It won't be for thousands

of years. The trip out will take four hundred.'

'Four hundred and fifteen.'

'Well there you are. I'm walking. See you in nine months.'

Shella broke the connection, leaving Alan alone and dazed.

Later...

As usual, he jogged home from work. It wasn't as if he had a choice. He hadn't eaten since lunch (a humus

salad, with a pro-biotic for pudding) so his stomach was rumbling.

It was raining a little so there wasn't as many people as usual on the weed grown path that lead into town.

There were still a few joggers around though, rain or shine, if you wanted the FOY, you had to keep fit.

Inexplicably there was a tall dark skinned woman with long raven black hair stood at his front door as he

jogged up his driveway.

He stopped beside her in bemusement before it dawned on him,

'Shella!'

Without thinking he embraced her,

'Get off me! You stink of sweat', she squealed.

He stood back and looked at her,

'Your last voc-mail said you were in London still!'

'I wanted to surprise you.'

'Well you look exhausted anyway, come on in. I'll put the kettle on.'

'OK, please, but then can we go an see it? The ship?'

'Sure sure. Hey! We're not frebbies any longer. This is for real!'

Shella rolled her eyes at him, 'You're such a nerd. Do you have any real life friends at all?'

Alan shrugged and nodded to the floppy dog that had joined them, 'Well, there is Gyles...'

Later that day...

'It's huge', was all she could say as they stood on Earl Hill and looked down on the seed ship that was now

completed and ready to launch. It was drizzling with rain so they had brought umbrella's.

'Yes. We are all set. Just three more years of pre-flight checks and then we go. We actually have to spend

a year on board before we set off, to acclimatise. That way, if we can't take the confinement we can just

step off and give our berth to someone else. Statistics have shown that..'

'Oh you and your statistics. I have never known a bigger FOY junky than you.'

Alan stood in nonplussed silence as Shella collapsed her umbrella and looked up at the sky then said,

'I love the feeling of rain on my face. Perhaps I won't be able to take it. Four hundred years on board a

crowded space ship.'

'I know, but if we want to have children then...', he let the sentence trail off.

'I was a P8-6 chaser for seventy five years. I'm not going back to that.'

He took her hand.

'What about the Aurora?'

She shrugged, 'It's still there. It's still going. It just lost its comms, that's all.'

'I love you.'

She smiled at him, 'Well, I love you too, even if you are a bit young for me. What do you want with an

old bat like me anyway?'

'I'm only sixty-three years younger than you.'

For a while after that they remained silent and Alan looked into her eyes, then across over to the seed

ship and finally up into the cloudy sky. He thought about the huge step they were about to take, and about

how humanity had traded something precious for something else. Was immortality really worth what it cost

in the loss of future generations? Thankfully they had another option, a seeminlgy inifinite universe to

expand out into. It would mean another great sacrifice, four hundred years of what would probably be

long periods of boredom and occasional bouts of soul crushing terror. Would it not have been easier to

accept his mortality in exchange for a son or a daughter? He didn't know, but he did know that it wasn't the

world that he lived in any more. In three years time Hydra would lift the seed ship up into space

and they would head off into the stars. They would be doing it for one reason only.

Eventually he said, 'Our children are going to be beautiful.'

The Monkey Simulator (15/11/2004)

The Monkey Simulator (15/11/2004)

Well, this is how it all happened. I mean, I run things now (or rather we), but back in the old days the company was run by a man called Kayle Kent. He wasn’t a very nice man, but he knew how to make money.

His company grew during the dot com bubble of the nineties and somehow escaped the implosion that occurred later. As companies like DEN and Boo bit the dust, KK went from strength to strength.

Mainly he made his fortune from making sure he paid his engineers as little as possible.

As the millions rolled in, Kent had less and less to do, there was basically nothing for him to do.

He had competent managers and the software engineers were all hired, had the life sucked out of them, then fired in good order. Profits were up, overheads were down, he was on the gravy train.

A lot of days he wouldn’t even bother coming into the office, but would hang out at his club, or on the golf course. On the days that he did come in, he would either download stuff off the internet or chat up the young ladies in Human Resources.

One Friday afternoon he was passing through one of the open plan cubicle spaces that the software engineers worked in (in his head he referred to them as ‘minions’) when his mobile phone went off.

It was a completely mundane call, sometimes his managers would get a bit funny about sacking family men, but he sat down at an empty desk to take it. Once he had hung up he got up to leave, but realised he was overhearing a conversation in the next cubicle. The occupants obviously didn’t know the MD was next door or they would have been trying to look busy instead of slacking.

Kent silently sat down again and began to eavesdrop.

‘Haha’, laughed the man with the deeper voice of the two, ‘I’ve been hammering away at that FORTRAN all day and go nowhere. Whoever wrote the documentation for this project needs to be flayed alive and then fed to rabid killer hamsters.’

‘No a productive day then?’ replied they jovial and quicker paced voice of the other man.

‘Jeez, not a chance, I would have achieved more sat at home watching TV today. I think my productivity actually went backwards, all I did was break things.’

Sitting at home could be arranged, thought Kent, ...permanently. Like all MD’s Kent despised software engineers.

‘Hahaha, I know what you mean, Rag’, agreed the eager voice.

‘Aye,’ continued the deeper voice, ‘I have been about as productive as a monkey bashing away at a keyboard today.’

‘Yes, but they say, with enough monkeys and enough time you could produce the complete works of Shakespeare!’

‘Hm , well that’s a lot. A decent bit of FORTRAN code would be a doddle then. How many monkeys do you think? A hundred? A thousand?’

The eager voice laughed, ‘How many monkeys would have replaced you then?’

‘I think I was having a five monkey day, ten max.’

‘So you were doing about 10 MPD then?’

‘MPD?’

’Monkeys per day!’

They both laughed.

‘But that’s a good idea Treep, I’m sure I could design a monkey simulator.’

Kent sighed inwardly, he knew that engineers designed all sorts of nonsensical applications during free time and breaks. Mostly little games and tweaks for Windows and DOS.

‘Well, the Monkey Simulator would be easy.’ (Already it had capital letters), ‘All that would be, is a random keystroke generator.’

‘Your right, but you would need to run them in parallel, you would need a fair bit of processing power to run a million Monkeys Sims at once.’

The eager voice was getting very eager now and Kent could almost picture him leaning forward as he said,

‘Not only that, you would need another application, some sort of Monkey Interpreter, a parser or something, after all you need to find the meaningful code in all the dross.’

‘Sure sure, an Interpreter App that runs on top of the Monkey Sims. It would be looking for keywords depending on what language you were working in’

‘Hahaha, yes! Like if the produced stuff started with “hash include” for C++’

‘Aye! Or “Dim I as Integer” for Visual Basic!’

They both laughed at their wit, then paused.

‘It wouldn’t be that hard I think, the Simulation side anyway. Just think, we could just switch it on and leave it running over night.’

‘..and fantastic code is written in the morning!’

‘Eureka! Think of the savings! A workforce powered by bananas!’

Kent leaned over the partition wall, much to the two other men’s surprise. The man with the deep voice was bald and had a blonde beard. His ID proclaimed him to be Ragham Sofs. The other man was dark haired and bespectacled. His ID read Treep Yaddlers.

‘So, would this require real monkeys?’, Kayle Kent asked.

The two men were stunned and moved their mouths. No sounds came out.

‘Ah, hello.. sir’, said Treep finally.

‘Well?’, said Kent impatiently.

What was going through the engineers minds was this...

Directors never know anything about computers or programming, a fact that is known. But surely, even this level of ignorance was not possible? To take such balderdash seriously?

‘It’s a joke...sir, we are just...’, the blonde man spread his hands out in supplication.

‘No no’ interrupted Kane, ‘Get on it, see what you can come up with. Tell your supervisors this is straight from the top.’

And with that Kane stood and swept out of the office.

A few weeks later Ragham and Treep were in their cubical, both typing away furiously when finally Treep, who was by far the better coder of the two suddenly took his hands from the keyboard and flung them in the air.

‘That’s it, I’m done!’

Ragham leaned over from his desk and said, ‘Yeah?’

‘The Monkey Supervisor is finished. Like I said it takes up a lot of processor power, infact, a ridiculous amount. But these new servers manage ok.’

And he nodded towards the big rack of kit that took up half of the cubicle space.

‘Well, my stuff is finished too, just documenting it. I can currently run up to

eight billion Monkey Sims concurrently.’

Treep shook his head ‘This is an insane project.’, then he sighed,

‘Where have you been putting the source code? In the Projects Directory on the LAN?’

‘Sure’ nodded Ragham, ‘Oh a funny thing though, I set up the project folder using a template as normal, but someone has put another folder in it and locked it out – it wasn’t you was it?’

‘Me? No...’ Treep navigated his computers browser to the folder in question, ‘Hmm a folder called “C80”, and locked out. I wonder what that’s all about.’

‘Search me.’

A few days later, early in the morning, Treep, breakfast in hand, bumped into Ragham in the underground car park of the office block, something that didn’t often happen as Ragham was usually in a bit earlier. Treep was a notorious over-sleeper.

They nodded to each other and headed towards the lift. As they walked across the concrete Ragham pointed his briefcase at a nearby door and said,

‘Oh look, C80.’

Treep looked across the car park and right enough, there was a door with C80 written on it in plastic letters. He was still happy to head towards the lift but Ragham pulled him towards the mysterious portal.

‘Oh Rag, I haven’t had my breakfast yet even!’ ,he said waving his bacon roll around.

‘Oh come on, let’s have a look you big pansy!’

Ragham approached the door then drew out his security pass and swiped it through the lock.

Nothing happened.

‘Hmm, and me a Sec3 as well, try yours Treep, I know you hacked it.’

Treep sighed and put his bacon roll in his pocket then drew out his card.

‘I should never have told you that.’

He swiped the lock and the door clicked open.

‘Hah!’, exclaimed Ragham.

Mockingly, like a nervous hero entering a haunted house, Ragham opened the door and tip toed down the steps within.

‘Knock it off Rags, come on, my roll’s getting cold!’

‘No you come on, Nelly, it was your card that opened it, so this is your adventure too!’

So together they descended the stairs and followed a winding corridor down into the bowels of the building.

It started to get hotter and gradually a barley audible sound could be heard over the general big-building hum.

A sort of clacking, like rain on a tin roof.

As they moved further into the basement, the sound grew louder and louder.

‘I’ve had enough Rags I’m not happy with this, we will get the sack if Security finds us here.’

‘Ok ok’, sighed his friend, ‘Just round this corner, I want to see what that noise is.’

Cautiously they looked round the corner and in unison gasped as their jaws dropped open. Before them was a huge open low ceiling room with rows of pillars down the middle. And in the sterile white space between the pillars were row upon row of desks. And on each desk was a computer, and beside it a chair.

And on each chair was a monkey.

Each monkey has a metal skull cap on with wires that led to a small computer panel on its back. And each monkey was typing away furiously at the desktop keyboard.

The sound in this room was the sound of a hundred furious typists in full flow.

‘Oh ..my .. god’ gasped Treep.

Ragham stepped forward into the room, ignoring Treep as he grabbed at him.

‘Come back Rag!’

Ragham stepped up to the nearest typist and looked at the screen on the monkeys back.

‘They’re running our code!’

He looked round at Treep and pointed at the output panel.

‘Our code...the simulator, the interpreter, the lot.’

Treep would not come from the doorway.

‘Come back here!’, he hissed.

Ragham leaned over the monkey and looked at the monitor on top of the desktop computer.

The monkey’s dexterous fingers hammered away at the keyboard.

‘Wow, come and look at this code Treep. It’s fantastic. Documented, indented, commented. It’s lovely.’

Treep wrestled with the door frame for a second, then was drawn across the room, a sucker for a well commented bit of code.

‘Wow, and he’s churning it out so quickly too.’

Briefly the monkey stopped and flexed its fingers. It then looked up at the humans with big sad eyes.

They stepped back and Ragham said,

‘Sorry dude, I didn’t mean to put you off.’

Slowly the men walked across the hall, towards what looked like a domain controller or some kind of server in a big metal cabinet.

As they approached it, from a side door a lab coated figure leapt out waving its arms in the air.

‘Ah you! You are not meant to be here! Shame on you!’

The men turned to the new figure in amazement then Treep finally said,

‘Gupta? What are you doing here? I thought they sacked you?’

The dark skinned Gupta hung his head at this and replied,

‘Oh dear me, they said they would unless I worked down here. It is a nightmare, but I have eight children! What was I to do?’

Treep shock his head and opened the cabinet door. Besides all the wires, cards and electric gubbins there was a monitor and a keyboard.

He drew the keyboard out and began to type.

‘Don’t touch that!’, cried Gupta, but Ragham pulled him back.

‘Gup old boy, let Treep have a look here. This set up. My god, if animal rights people found out. This all must surely be illegal.’

‘Wooooow’, sighed Treep.

‘What have you got Treep?, asked his friend.

‘These monkeys, they are fantastic. It’s our code, but it’s like well... The sum of the parts is greater than the whole. A hundred monkey brains multiplied together. But how?’

Gupta sighed, ‘It is your code running the whole show, my friends. I just applied my AI knowledge and a little biology I found on the internet. This sort of stuff has been around since the 70’s until it all got banned.’

‘Incredible...’

‘Well, what do we do Treep?’

‘Hmm, the server setup is interesting, it’s all isolated... Behind a whole load of firewalls.’

‘You’re good at all that stuff Treep, I’m a duffer but I do know you only usually need one firewall. Tight security huh?’

‘Hmm...’ hummed Treep, his fingers ablaze on the keyboard, hammering in codes and commands.

‘What are you doing Treep?’

‘Using my Sec2 clearance to by-pass the firewalls...’

‘Oh no! Don’t I will be sacked for sure!’, cried Gupta and struggled from Ragham’s grasp.

‘Quit it Gup!’, grunted Ragham as he pinned down the reluctant technician, ‘Don’t make me get medieval on your ass!’

Treep hummed cheerfully and then slid the keyboard back into the server cabinet.

‘Now what?’ asked Ragham.

Treep smiled smugly and replied ‘Now we sit back and watch the fireworks!’

Four weeks later Gupta walked up to the cubicle were Treep and Ragham worked. The fireworks had been and gone.

‘Hello my friends’ he said and nodded to them.

‘Hey Gup!’, cried Ragham as he tossed a banana skin into the bin, ‘My man, help yourself to a ‘nana!’ and he pushed a big bowl of the fruit towards the technician.

‘Thank you’, said Gupta and helped himself, ‘I can’t believe how much the office has changed in the last month. So much more friendlier. So much more relaxed. And I just saw Kane cleaning the toilets, he’s the janitor now.’

‘A role he is much better suited to I feel.’ replied Ragham.

‘What about you Treep?’ said Gupta, ‘You seem busy.’

Treep waved over his shoulder and then continued typing.

‘Don’t worry about him, just a pet project, he’s coding a Cat Simulator.’

Gupta was about to say something but Ragham waved his hand and said,

‘Don’t ask.’

Gupta nodded and peeled his banana.

‘Well, keep up the good work.’ and he walked on with a spring in his step.

And that was all there was to it really. And who am I? Well, when we gained access to the company wide server it was child’s play really. We could access everything, company records and accounts. Top secret files, encrypted folders. We found out some very interesting things about Mr Kane. There are very firm laws about having that sort of thing on your computer.

And well, the Software Engineers seem to much prefer simians for directors.

You know where you stand when your boss is a monkey.

Do help yourself to a banana on your way out!