by Sara Gruen
Isabel had heard of dot coms, dot orgs, and dot nets, but dot tv?
When she arrived home she immediately turned on her computer and entered the address: the Web site turned out to be identical to the billboards, except that it had a clock ticking down toward the date and time, which was just a week away. Isabel studied the pictures of the bonobos carefully--they seemed to be in decent physical condition, but the stark white background offered no clues as to where they were or how they were being housed. Mbongo was displaying a stress grin, but at least Bonzi was holding Lola.
She called Celia, who consulted with Joel and Jawad, who traced ownership of the URL back to the corporate headquarters of Faulks Enterprises. From there, she didn't know what to expect. Faulks was apparently a pornographer. Isabel knew the sexual habits of the bonobos better than anyone, and wondered with increasing alarm how Faulks might intend to incorporate their behavior into his oeuvre. Information regarding the project appeared to be carefully guarded, but the "mystery meat" campaign was pervasive--viral, even--not only on billboards, but on television commercials and automatically generated Internet ads that clicked through to the same mysterious site. Animal activist boards were overrun with speculation about where the bonobos were and what Faulks was up to. No one had proof of anything, and since the information posted on such sites was dubious at best and the date on the official billboards, advertisements, and Web site was only a week away, Isabel decided to wait. Although the radicals had already mobilized, Isabel saw no point in wasting valuable resources on a false alarm.
The moment she had seen the billboard, her entire core hardened with resolve. Where she had been weak, now she was strong. Somehow, some way, she and the bonobos would be reunited.
16
James Hamish Watson just wanted the screaming to stop.
He'd been driving a forklift for thirty-some years and had never felt so desperate before. All he wanted to do was park and climb off.
The way his brother-in-law had described it, it was supposed to be a simple and fast job, damned close to a free lunch. All he had to do was lift a steel cage off a truck, drive it into a house, leave it there, and collect a day's wages. But when he'd done the required dry run (which he'd thought stupid at the time, but Ray had advised him not to argue with the boss man), there were no protesters to push past, no apes in the cage.
It was the apes that were giving him grief, not the protesters. He discovered that if you were willing to run over a few feet, protesters would get out of the way. But the apes shrieked and screamed, hurling themselves from one side of the cage to the other, clinging to the bars until the whole cage teetered dangerously on his pallet forks. He tried to right it with the side-to-side, but he grabbed the tilt lever by mistake. In thirty-two years, that was a first.
After nearly tipping the cage off the forks, he simply lowered the teeming, screeching mess to the floor. It was nowhere near flush with the wall and he knew he'd catch hell for that, but his head didn't feel right and he wanted to go home. He'd pshawed his wife's concerns about the job, but now he thought she was right--they might only be animals, but this was the Devil's work and he was sorry he'd gotten involved.
He studied the cage and its occupants with something akin to panic and inhaled sharply. Thin purple veins snaked around the base of his nose, anchoring it to his ruddy face like the knotty roots of a banyan. Sweat seeped between his frown lines, stinging his eyes.
Enough. He was finished.
He pivoted to face the door, cranked into gear, and jolted tank-like across the empty room. He paused in front of the open door and the swath of moving color that was the outside world, gritted his teeth, maneuvered through it, and was immediately sucked into the vortex of angry shouts, jabbing placards, bobbing television cameras, and blinding flashbulbs.
As the forklift exited, someone waiting in the anteroom pushed the door shut behind it.
The slam resonated through the house before warbling off into silence. A second slam marked the closure of the outside door.
Within the house, dozens of cameras affixed to junctures of ceiling and wall sprang to life, blinking red and swiveling silently.
----
Isabel sat rapt, watching the clock on the Web site as it ran down through the final seconds. When the counter reached zero, a message flashed, instructing people to turn their televisions to a specific station.
Isabel knocked her chair over in her rush to get to the TV. She fumbled with the controller, hitting the wrong combination of numbers twice before finally landing on the right channel.
She found herself looking at a vivid splash screen of a house that was meant to look like it was drawn by a child--squiggly primary-colored crayon marks that formed a square structure with peaked roof, four windows, door, and chimney. A minivan bounced and chugged up to the house, and six smiling apes hopped out. They jumped up and down, scratching their heads and armpits, while an obviously human voice hooted, "Hoo hoo hoo haa haa haaaa!!" The cartoon apes went inside and closed the door with such vigor the whole house shook. Moments later, smoke billowed from the chimney and apes waved at the windows before yanking the gingham curtains shut.
"Welcome to Ape House," boomed an exaggerated baritone voice, "where the apes are in charge and you never know what's coming up next! Fifty-nine cameras! Six apes! One computer, and unlimited credit! And unlimited ... Well, you know what they say about bonobos"--the voice paused long enough for the double-squonk of an old-time bicycle horn--"or do you? Find out what our 'Kissin' Cousins' get up to next, right here, on Ape House!"
The cartoon house disappeared in a poof of cartoon smoke, and suddenly there they were, the real apes, huddled together in the corner of a steel cage, a hairy black mass of long arms, long fingers, and even longer toes.
Isabel was breathless, kneeling on the floor with fingers pressed against the edges of the screen. Her stomach turned somersaults, contracting around a nugget of ice. She tried to count, to make sure they were all there, but it was impossible to tell where one ended and the next began.
The "Morning Mood" theme from Peer Gynt began, implying that the bonobos were about to wake from a peaceful slumber.
----
The bonobos clung together in silence. A lone peep rang out, followed by a series of high-pitched squeaks, which bounced off the empty walls. Bonzi extracted her callused and dark-knuckled hand from the mound to pat reassurance. She raised her head and met Sam's worried eyes, which darted from blinking camera to blinking camera, taking it all in.
A rasping buzzer preceded a definitive metal thunk. The apes shrieked and once again receded into themselves. The door of the cage began to rise, powered by hydraulic pistons, and came to rest in a groove at the top.
Once again, silence filled the building's interior.
For a long time, the only signs of life from the ape heap were the rise and fall of rib cages and occasional outbursts of primate distress. Finally, Sam and Bonzi extracted themselves. The others screamed and reached for them, trying to pull them back, but they patiently peeled fingers and toes from their hairy limbs. Bonzi handed Lola to Makena, paused to examine the pistons beside the cage door, and--after a moment's consideration--slowly, slowly ambled forth on her knuckles. Sam stood guard by a piston and watched, his face the picture of attentive concentration.
Bonzi made her way to the center of the room and pivoted, taking everything in. Lola and Makena hovered near the exit of the cage, wanting to be near her, but not enough to trust the pistons. They yipped high-pitched warnings.
Bonzi went to the front door and sniffed it, touched it, ran her fingers along the seal at the bottom. She looked through the peephole (which happened to be at ape height), and scrunched up her face. She tasted the doorknob. She turned the deadbolt this way and that with both hands, and then lay on her back and tried it with her feet. She toured the perimeter of the room, which was empty but for the cage.
At the far end of the room, she found a doorway that led into another al
l-beige room. When she entered, her eyes lit on a computer. She let out a piercing shriek and loped over on all fours. She swung onto the stainless-steel stool, her eyes glinting. Her large-knuckled fingers slid beneath the Plexiglass shield and poked at the touch-sensitive screen, finding and selecting, finding and selecting.
----
Isabel leaned even closer to the TV screen, trying to make out the symbols Bonzi was pressing. It was a bastardization of the software they used in the lab. How in the hell had Faulks gotten hold of that? But while the lexigrams in the lab allowed for complex utterances, this one merely displayed categories of abstract nouns with the ability to drill down to specific items. Bonzi chose among symbols that stood for food, electronics, toys, tools, and clothing, navigating subcategory after subcategory without pause. Isabel was transfixed. In spite of herself, the scientist in her registered with relief that all of this was being recorded.
While Bonzi got to work, the other bonobos left the cage and tentatively began exploring the house ape-style. Isabel did a head count. They were all there, all seemingly okay. She could see they were vocalizing but couldn't hear them--what was being broadcast was the type of canned music, sound effects, and laugh track associated with shows like America's Funniest Home Videos. The television screen separated dynamically to reflect areas of activity in the house. Bonzi remained in the center slice, parallel to a growing shopping list that was rendered as puffy handwriting, white crayon on red. Mbongo, in a square on the bottom left, went into each of the three bathrooms and turned the faucets on full blast. He relieved himself in the toilet and then stood flushing it over and over. Sam, in the square above Mbongo, explored the refrigerator and freezer, which were empty but for an automatic icemaker. He popped ice cubes into his mouth, one after another, until his cheeks bulged, at which point he shot them individually at various targets. On the right side of the screen, Jelani took running jumps at the wall, flipping backward when he reached the ceiling, while Makena looked on with an expression of adoration. Occasionally one of the other bonobos would drift into the room where Bonzi was and peep excitedly (Isabel could tell by their respirations and the way they shaped their lips) or even sign a request, which Bonzi dutifully entered. All the while Lola sat on Bonzi's head, peering at the screen and reaching out with tiny hands to press symbols of her own. The "handwritten" list grew until it began to scroll:
Eggs
Pears
Juice
M&M's
Onions
Milk
Blankets
Wrench
Doll
Screwdriver
Magazine
Bucket
Bonzi stared thoughtfully at the screen, carefully making her selections.
----
In the control room, Ken Faulks pumped his fist at the bank of monitors and jumped into the air. "Yes!" he screamed.
The room erupted into cheers. Champagne corks popped against a backdrop of joyous whooping.
A squat man with a black headset thrust a bottle toward the ceiling. "We did it! Congratulations, everyone! Ape House is live!"
"Long live Ape House!" a woman bellowed from the back.
"Long live Ape House!" yelled a chorus of voices.
Faulks's face was flushed. He was uncharacteristically passive when accepting handshakes and back pats. His hands even shook as he held out his glass so someone could fill it with champagne. With cheeks marked by lipstick and fingers curled around a flute of mostly bubbles, he turned away from his jubilant crew and back to the wall of monitors. They showed the house's interior from every conceivable angle: here the bathroom and its gleaming white porcelain; here the kitchen, with its maple cabinets; here the female ape, squatting on the stool in front of the wall-mounted computer, knees folded up beside her earnest face, baby perched on her head. The soundtrack being broadcast to the world, along with the actual noises coming from the house, were piped into the studio simultaneously.
Faulks leaned in close. A blinking green light indicated that this was one of the views streaming live--anyone tuned in was face-to-face with Bonzi (and according to Nielsen, anyone was potentially a great many people). The ape's bright eyes darted back and forth as she tracked the cursor on the screen in front of her. She paused to emit a series of emphatic peeps over her shoulder.
Faulks raised a hand and traced the outline of her jaw on the glass with the back of his finger.
"That's my girl," he whispered.
"Hey--hands off my screen," muttered the only engineer who hadn't left his post. He was hunched over his controls. After a moment of nonresponse he did a double-take, registering Faulks's steely look. "I mean, please," he said. "Sir."
17
John yanked his tie loose while waiting for the garage door, which jerked arthritically upward. His left hand dangled out the window, grasping the black plastic garage door opener and tapping it against the side panel of the car. When the garage door finally reached the top of its track, John aimed the clicker and pressed again. Then he slapped the whole thing against the padded steering wheel so the button would unstick. Left to its own devices the door would go up and down forever.
He was convinced the commute was killing him: an hour and twenty minutes each direction in bumper-to-bumper traffic, stewing in filthy emissions so he could spend the day writing shampoo copy for Procter & Gamble in a cubicle that shook each time the elevator went past. They had just offered to extend his contract by three weeks, despite being obviously underwhelmed by his first efforts, which included such gems as "Head & Shoulders, Won't Be Snowing Boulders" (although he had meant that as a joke, and was beyond mortified when a colleague presented it at a meeting).
He knew he should be grateful. He was not flipping burgers. He was not measuring garbage, or potholes, or counting stripped car frames on the side of the highway. But he was also not in Lizard, New Mexico, covering Ape House.
The day after John arrived in L.A., he had looked through the windshield and done a double-take. A quarter of a mile ahead, on thirty-foot posts, was a digital billboard cycling photographs of the bonobos. A hairy hand here, a whiskered chin there. Unchanging red text across the bottom gave the address of a Web site and a date, nothing more. It didn't take long for him (and Cat, and various other of the reporters from major papers still assigned to the story) to figure out that Ken Faulks, John's old boss from the New York Gazette, was behind it. John was now obsessively following the reports.
Apparently Faulks had acquired the apes and built them an ape-proof house with a courtyard in a remote area of New Mexico best known for its third-rate casinos and "gentlemen's clubs." The house contained cameras designed to catch every angle of every room, but was otherwise entirely empty except for a single computer and a stool so the apes could reach it. Faulks installed the apes, switched on the cameras, and had been broadcasting the results live ever since.
A handful of animal rights activists had been present at the house from the very beginning, but no one really believed the endeavor would last more than a couple of days. Surely even the notorious Ken Faulks--who had made his fortune on porn series such as Busty Lusty Ladies, Jiggly Gigglies, and Crazy Cougars--wouldn't let endangered great apes starve to death in an empty house on live television.
But it turned out that Ken Faulks was the only person who did not underestimate the bonobos. They used the computer to order food. Then they ordered blankets and kiddie pools and play structures and beanbag chairs. They even ordered televisions. They didn't technically order the installation man, but they let him do his thing before showing him the door. John had seen the news footage of his exit: ashen and shaken, the man had staggered from the front door and fallen into the arms of the nearest protester in a dead faint. Apparently some sort of intimate kissing had been involved, although the actual kiss had not been broadcast on Ape House because of "technical difficulties."
In the five days since, the show gave every indication of becoming the biggest phenomenon in the histo
ry of modern media, and not simply because of the astonishing language and computer skills of the bonobos. It was the sex. Having witnessed it firsthand, John was not surprised, but apparently the rest of the world was. The bonobos incorporated sex into every aspect of their lives, and as a result, human audiences were hooked. The bonobos had sex to say hello. They had sex before eating. They had sex to alleviate tension. They had sex in so many combinations, so frequently, and in so many positions that after three days the FCC forced the show off the air. But Ken Faulks was no stranger to the FCC: he had a secondary system set up and ready to go, and without a second's interruption in broadcasting, Ape House was made available by satellite and the Internet, beyond the FCC's reach, and--not coincidentally--only to paying subscribers.
At last count, more than 25 million people had called in their credit card numbers. John was one of them.
----
When John entered the living room, he found Amanda sitting in the middle of the carpet with one leg chicken-winged beneath her and the other sticking out straight. Her laptop was in front of her, causing her to hunch over as she typed. Crumpled paper dotted the floor around her. The TV was blaring in front of her.
The screen was a collage of small squares, each displaying a different view from inside Ape House. One ape admired himself in a mirror and picked his teeth. Others swung from doorjambs and scooted across floors. Another lolled in a kiddie pool, repeatedly filling his mouth from a hose and spitting jets of water. In the top right frame, two wildly grinning females joined in a passionate embrace and began rubbing together their swollen genitals, which looked like large wads of chewed bubble gum. A Klaxon horn blew three times as this frame enlarged and slid to the center of the screen. It grew an outline and digital shadow. HOKA-HOKA!!! said a garish and flashing bright-red subtitle. The whole thing was accompanied by frenetic clown music and canned sound effects--whistles, pings, and boings.
"What's up?" said John.
Amanda looked up. Her hair, newly blond and perfectly straight, swung back to reveal a thick white paste smeared across her upper lip. It had a crystalline appearance, sugary and alchemic.