“Well,” said the commissioner, “let’s see. I guess thirty, thirty-five feet. Give or take.”
The mayor nearly slid off the edge of the bed. “Thirty-five-feet?”
“Give or take, sir.”
“Murphy, are you aware of something called prohibition?”
“I’m sober as a judge, sir,” said Commissioner Murphy.
“Frankly, Murphy, that’s a pretty poor example to hide behind.”
“I haven’t touched a drop, your honor. Not in years.”
“We both know that’s not entirely true.”
“Your honor, I—”
“And yet you insist there is a thirty-five-foot ape tearing up the theater district?”
“Yes, sir. There has been considerable damage already to several buildings, a theater, and the elevated train.”
“By a gorilla?”
“It is a very large one, sir.”
“I see. A giant gorilla tearing up Times Square. Thank you for calling me. I sit up late every night hoping for calls like this.”
“I . . . ”
“It’s why I ran for office, just waiting for the day when giant monkeys attack the city. Now I know my hour has come.”
“Sir,” said Murphy, “this is a genuine crisis. There is a giant ape and something needs to be done.”
“And . . . just what exactly do you expect me to do about it, Murphy? I’m a politician, not a zookeeper.”
“I really don’t know, sir. But you are the Mayor—”
“My job description didn’t say anything about giant rampaging apes.”
“Mine neither, sir.”
“You’d better call the governor, Murphy. He’s trying to get re-elected. I’m not.”
-3-
Observation Deck of the RCA Building
30 Rockefeller Plaza
December 2, 1933—12:41 a.m.
“You can see him from here, your honor,” said the commissioner of police.
The mayor gaped. “You mean he’s way up there!”
“Yessir.”
“Would you like to tell me, Commissioner Murphy, how in the flaming hell he got up there?”
“He, um . . . climbed, sir.”
“Climbed?”
“Yes, sir.”
“To the top of the Empire State Building?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, come on . . . ”
“Well, sir,” said Murphy, “there he is. I doubt he took the elevator . . . ”
“Watch yourself now, Murphy.”
“Sorry, sir.”
They stood looking up at the large, dark, hairy figure clinging to the top of the world’s tallest building. Spotlights painted it with pale silver light.
“And, um,” said Mayor O’Brien, “why would a giant ape go up there anyway?”
“I . . . actually don’t know the answer to that, sir.”
There were a lot of people on the street. The windows of every building around the skyscraper were lit and tiny figures were silhouetted against the glow. Thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers were watching this. And on the ground the flash of camera bulbs was as constant as fireworks on the Fourth of July.
“Well, Murphy, what are you going to do now?”
The police commissioner flinched as if dreading that question. “Well, sir, per your suggestion I called the governor.”
“And . . . ?” There was no great love between the mayor and the governor.
“And, he authorized the use of airplanes from Roosevelt Field.”
“Airplanes?”
“Yes, sir. There they are. Can you hear them?”
“What, let’s stay on topic. The governor ordered airplanes to do what, exactly?”
“To shoot the ape off a skyscraper, sir.”
“Shoot?”
“Yes, sir.”
The mayor closed his eyes and bent forward to quietly bang his head on the guard rail. He said something in Gaelic that Murphy, whose Irish language skills were rusty, was pretty sure involved the governor and livestock, and was not something one would say in church.
“Is there a problem with that plan, sir?” asked Murphy.
“I should have stayed in bed, Murphy.”
“Don’t fret, Mr. Mayor, those pilots are aces. They’ll get him for sure.”
Above them the sky was torn apart by the roar of engines and the rattle of machine gun fire.
-4-
Observation Deck of the RCA Building
30 Rockefeller Plaza
December 2, 1933—12:49 a.m.
“He looks about done-in, sir,” said Murphy.
“Wouldn’t you be?” said the mayor. He wondered if he looked as green and sick as he felt. “They must have put ten thousand rounds into him.”
Murphy was grinning. “Oh, at least, sir.”
“Though . . . tell me something, Murphy,” said the mayor slowly.
“Yes, sir?”
“Surely a fair amount of those rounds had to have missed. I mean, with the planes circling, high winds, and that big ape swinging at them. Some of the shots had to have missed, am I right?”
“I expect so, sir.”
“Maybe quite a lot of them?”
“Maybe, but I’m sure they hit him enough times—”
“Don’t get ahead of me, son. If they fired all those shots, and some of them missed . . . tell me, Murphy—where’d the other bullets go?”
“Sir?”
“The ones that missed. Where’d they go?”
“Ummm . . . .”
“That’s not the reassuring answer I was looking for, Murphy.”
“Well, I . . . ”
“Nor was that.”
“I . . . guess . . . they hit something, sir.”
“That would be my guess, too. Big city, isn’t it, Murphy?”
“Yes . . . ”
“Lots of people.”
“Sure”
“I’ll bet everyone in this city is either at a window watching this thing happening, or standing down there in the street looking up.”
“Yes.”
“Makes you think, doesn’t it?”
“Sir?”
“All those people standing at the windows in all those buildings surrounding that one. With all those bullets—the ones that missed—having to go somewhere.”
“Oh dear,” said the commissioner.
“Oh dear is right.”
The planes gunned their engines and circled back for another round. The night sky seemed to pop with fire as if strings of firecrackers were exploding up there. The dying roar of the mortally wounded gorilla bounced like thunder from the walls of the surrounding buildings.
“And, Murphy?”
“Sir?” croaked the commissioner, who now looked ever more green and sickly than the mayor felt.
“Have you thought about what’s going to happen when that ape falls?”
“Falls, sir?”
“I believe that the planes are attempting to shoot him down. Note the emphasis on ‘down’, Murphy. I use the word with precision.”
“I . . . uh . . . .”
“Well, maybe I’ll get lucky and he’ll fall on the lawyer from the meat-packers union.”
-5-
Headline of the New York Times (morning edition):
GIANT APE RAMPAGES!
Headline of the New York Times (afternoon edition):
APE KILLS THIRTY!
ARMY PLANES KILL NINETY-SEVEN
FALLING APE KILLS FORTY-THREE
Headline of the New York Times (evening edition):
MAYOR FIRES POLICE COMMISSIONER OVER APE ANTICS
-6-
Office of New York Mayor John P. O’Brien
December 3, 9:38 a.m.
“Gentlemen. Gentlemen! Please, one at a time!” roared the mayor. He had to repeat it and then finally slam his fist down on the table before they all jumped and fell silent. “Okay,” he said into the uneasy quiet, “that’s better. This meeting will proce
ed with some decorum, and I want to get this settled sooner rather than later. I have the lawyers from the meatpacking union outside for another round of mudslinging. They think I can produce fresh supplies of sirloin and hamburger out of thin air and I need time to figure out exactly how to tell them where to go and what they can do when they get there. So, I’d like to clear this matter off my slate by noon, or they’ll be in here yelling louder than you lot. And they’re union boys, so you know they can yell.” He cleared his throat. “Now, Mr. Delpino, we’ll hear from you first.”
A thin, lugubrious fellow who smelled faintly of rotten eggs stood. “It’s simply this way, your honor,” he said in a nasal Bronx voice, “I don’t think it’s the problem of the Department of Sanitation to remove a giant ape carcass.”
“Someone has to do it, Mr. Delpino.”
“I respect that, sir, but that someone is not my department. Let someone else do it. My people are flat out not going to do it, that’s for sure. We have enough problems with the nine-hundred pounds of ‘droppings’ our late friend left in Times Square. I mean, have you ever smelled giant ape droppings, Mr. Mayor?”
“No, can’t say I have.”
“I have. I’m what you might call an expert in all of the varieties of excremental leavings, and I have smelled everything up to, and including, rat poop, fifty breeds of dog poop, cat poop and even alligator poop.”
“Alligator poop, Mr. Delpino? In New York?”
“Have you been down in the sewers, Mr. Mayor?”
“I have not, I’m happy to say.”
“We have alligators in the sewers,” said Delpino. “Well-known fact. My point is that I have smelled poop in all of its varieties but I have never before smelled giant gorilla poop. And it isn’t good, Mr. Mayor. No sir, it is not good at all. It is causing distress to some of my most hardened and experienced poop management engineers.”
“And you say that with a straight face,” murmured the mayor, but Delpino ignored the comment.
“Our job is to haul those nine hundred pounds of gorilla droppings away, Mr. Mayor. That’s what we’re here for, and that’s how we will serve this city. But . . . we won’t haul away the body.”
The mayor cocked an eyebrow. It was a trademark move. “May I remind you, sir, that you are an appointed official?”
“May I remind you, sir, that we’re also a union, and the union reps are jerking my strings over this? Go ahead and fire me. It would be a relief, I can tell you, but you still wouldn’t have a sanitation department working to scrape gorilla tartare off the streets. Just not going to happen.” With that he sat back and laced his fingers together over his stomach and affected a look of immoveable stoicism.
“Very well, Mr. Delpino,” sighed the mayor, “we’ll come back to you. Mr. Sanders?”
“Sir?” replied a short, fat man with Ben Franklin glasses and a complexion like an old, sweaty tomato.
“What about your organization?” asked the mayor.
Mr. Sanders had one of those smiles that looked like a wince. As if every action he took, every word he spoke troubled him and made his hemorrhoids throb. “Sir,” he said in a reedy voice, “the American Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is outraged by this whole affair. The treatment of this poor animal is reprehensible to say the least, and displays the poorest regard for life in general.”
“Does it, Mr. Sanders?”
“It certainly does, Mr. Mayor.”
The mayor sighed. “While I applaud your viewpoints, Mr. Sanders, we are not discussing a living animal, are we? Surely your society had some provision for disposing of animal remains?”
“Yes, we do,” said Sanders carefully, “but for standard animal carcass disposal we use a furnace that could accommodate anything up to a very large dog, say a Saint Bernard. We once cremated a mountain lion that, regrettably, died at the Central Park Zoo. But . . . Mr. Mayor, we are in no way equipped to handle the cremation of an animal roughly the size of the Hindenburg.”
“Are you saying you won’t?”
“I’m saying that we can’t. He won’t fit in the vans and he won’t fit in the crematory.”
“Well . . . couldn’t you, uh, cut him up some.”
Mr. Sanders looked truly appalled. “’Cut him up some’? Surely, you’re joking, sir.”
“Am I smiling?” asked the mayor.
“Do you understand how difficult that would be?”
“Perhaps you could use buzz-saws?”
“You’re missing the point, Mr. Mayor. Our people aren’t hardened as much as you’d think. I have drivers who nearly throw up when they have to scrape a dead poodle up on West 57th—how do I get them to chainsaw twenty-five tons of gorilla?”
“You could ask them.”
“With respect, your honor, but that’s just as absurd as asking the meatpacker’s union to do it. If we’re going to be ridiculous why don’t you have them slice him up and sell him as top round? Didn’t you say you were meeting with them anyway?” Sanders paused. “Sir? Your Honor . . . ?”
“Hmmm . . . ?” murmured the mayor distractedly.
“Sir,” said Sanders, “are you unwell?”
“As a matter of fact, I feel better than I have all day.”
“Oh?”
“Oh yes.” A laugh bubbled from the mayor’s chest and everyone glanced queerly him.
Mr. Sanders licked his lips. “Did I say something amusing, sir?”
“Amusing? No . . . not exactly.”
“Then may I ask why you are smiling like that, sir? This is a rather serious matter, sir.”
“Yes, it is,” said the mayor. And he chuckled again.
“Mr. Mayor . . . ?” asked his deputy, but his words trailed off.
The mayor sat up straight and glanced at the closed door. Through the frosted glass he could see men pacing up and down, their bodies hunched with agitation. His next meeting. It made him chuckle again.
“These are hard times,” he said, addressing his comment to no one in particular. Everyone in the room studied him. They were all confused. “Hard times. Can’t buy a drink when we really need one. Can’t even buy a hot dog because no one has meat to see. Keeps going the way it’s going and more people are going to be put out of work.”
“I agree, sir,” said the deputy mayor, “which is why the meatpackers union are waiting. But we have to deal with one matter at a time.”
“Do we?” asked the mayor, smiling.
The deputy mayor frowned. “What do you mean, sir?”
“Weren’t you listening? Mr. Sanders came right out and said it.”
“Did I?” asked Sanders, confused. “What did I say?”
But from the look on the deputy mayor’s face, it was clear he got it. All the color drained from his cheeks and he stared at his books with a look of complete and utter horror.
“Desperate times,” said the mayor, as if in response to an actual question from his aide. “Desperate times, desperate measures.”
“Sir . . . you can’t actually . . . I mean, you wouldn’t ever really consider . . . ”
The mayor reached over and patted his hand. “Look at it as killing two birds with one stone.”
“But . . . but . . . but . . . ”
“I think we should let the gentlemen from the meatpackers union come in,” said the mayor happily. He looked around. “Don’t you?”
ARTICLES OF TELEFORCE
MICHAEL BAILEY
From a classified transcription of a conversation held in the Situation Room beneath the West Wing of the White House [also known as the John F. Kennedy Conference Room], retrieved from the hacker group Anonymous, dated September 11th, 2011:
[name redacted]—“We need to bring down a commercial plane.”
[name redacted]—“How many civilian lives?”
[name redacted]—“Does it matter? With what’s happened—”
[name redacted]—“All lives matter, [salutation & name redacted]. How many civilian lives?”
[name redacted]—“The events that transpired early this morning in New York with the towers have—”
[name redacted]—“How many civilian lives?”
A long pause . . .
In a letter addressed to Milutin Tesla from the head of Gymnasium Karlovac in Croatia, postmarked April 13th, 1870 [translated to English by E. Glenn Tharpe of the Nikola Tesla Museum archive in Belgrade]:
To the parents of Nikola:
Following a recent lecture and demonstration of ‘mysterious phenomena’ by a certain professor of physics at our institution, your son has taken an interest in what our faculty has reported as ‘unhealthy interests and unsafe personal studies.’
I am sure you are also aware of your son’s progress with his treatment of malaria, to which he [unable to translate] shortly upon his arrival in Karlovac, and for which we have granted permission to bring home school books to self-study when he is unable to attend because of his bedriddenness. Despite this malady, Nikola is an apt pupil and has excelled to the top of his class in a matter of months. However . . .
In our efforts to continue providing safety to our students, we have interviewed your son in private regarding these matters of unsafe personal studies and ‘experiments,’ to which he has stated nothing more than his interest “to know more of this wonderful force.” It should also be stated that his workspace is constantly littered with ‘tools’ and ‘components’ used for these unknown and unsafe experiments, and we are currently investigating the danger of having such items in his possession and around other students—as well as their proper ownership.
Furthermore . . .
Found written on a torn strip of notepaper underneath a loose stone during a remodel of Gymnasium Karlovac sometime in early 2010 [German translator unknown]:
The world is full of many wonderful marvels, some of which mankind may never fully understand, but death will not have me until I have at least pried opened Pandora’s Box.
From a medical diagnosis in Smijan sometime in 1873, after which Milutin Tesla is noted as promising to send his son—near death and requiring nine months of bedside care—to “the best engineering school available” upon his full recovery:
Cholera.
In a letter addressed to Milutin Tesla from the head of Gymnasium Karlovac, postmarked March 30th, 1873 [translated to English by E. Glenn Tharpe of the Nikola Tesla Museum archive in Belgrade]:
Fantastic Tales of Terror Page 26