The entire world was three rooms, each fifty meters** to a side, all currently filled with a horrible bellowing sound. Oblivious to the noise, a proportionally tiny camera in one corner of one room slowly swiveled back and forth, occasionally stopping to focus on the over-sized keyboard and display which were literally painted upon the gigantic counter-top and wall. Aside from this painted computer, the smooth, semi-glossed white surfaces of the floor, ceiling and counter-top were uniform to both sight and touch. They were rendered gray by the dim, indirect illumination of the recessed lighting which ringed the entrance.
This entrance, an arch approximately thirteen meters tall and five wide, revealed two additional chambers beyond, the first of which was littered with stuffed animals in various states of dismemberment and mastication, each the size of a small car. Along with the unfortunate animals was a huge iron basin filled with hundreds of kilograms of leaves and melons, and a nest made of hundreds of feet of rumpled sack-cloth. The leaves vibrated sympathetically in response to the aural assault flooding the three rooms.
Lost in the dimness and distance was the third chamber, from which came the bellowing roar like the thwapping of leather against tube steel, like the creak of a falling sequoia, like a noticeably angry foghorn screaming defiance at approaching legions of pleasure boats. A monstrous form burst forth into the light from that darkened far chamber, bringing with it the impossible sound of that roaring. Its movement consisted of a loping, three limbed gait, knuckles acting as an erzats third foot for the huge creature. Angrily tossing animals and animal parts around the room, the monster tore some with its teeth and pounded others as flat as paper against the cold, smooth floor.
Suddenly, lorrie-sized plush elephant still hanging in ragged strips from his mouth, the stooped form of the 15 meter ape dropped in a heap on top of the nest with chest heaving and the sound of rushing breath soon replaced his terrible, gutteral screams. Moments passed, and the gorilla finally rolled over onto his haunches and sat up heavily, legs describing a rough circle on the floor in front of his bulging belly, his feet-hands meeting palm to palm in front of his navel. One huge hand reached up and stroked the impossibly long, black face as he screwed his eyes shut. Both hands then began patting the top of his black, furry head, which he waggled ruefully.
“So…frustrating,” his voice, like rocks rolling down a hill, filled the chamber once more, though merely a hint of the auditory blast he’d been producing previously. This beast which had no shortage of bad days in his life was having a very, very bad day indeed. He quietly tugged at his ears and rocked back and forth slowly, the sack cloth beneath him tearing apart from the impossible weight of the fifty foot ape shifting its mass atop it.
He was Gorilla Bananas, and his race was bred by long-dead human scientists to provide high-quality telephone technical support. He was on his very last open tech support case, was the last of his kind, and was eager to join his departed brothers and sisters as they experienced the holy cycle of Re-Runs In Syndication. This waking period had brought nothing but frustrations and hang-ups to his attempts to get the ancient Joe Minetolla to activate his damn Franklin Mint shipment. To calm himself he replayed the final episode of Newhart in his mind, pulling it from where it was stored in his tiny shard of the collective consciousness.
The brothers Daryl lacked the clarity, depth and beauty that they possessed when an entire troop watched this show together. The footage was less clear as well, and the lines of dialog were delivered in an almost drunken slur. This was the limitation of watching a TV show without multiple apes to help draw water from the racial well of knowledge. He longed to sit with his brethren and watch Night Court, or Bananas in Pajamas* just one more time. Those First-Run days were gone, however, and there was no way to bring the dead back…not until the Re-Runs, anyway.
Today, as always, the final scene of the show recalled Bob Newhart’s first excellent television series; more importantly, it provided a punch line to the exquisitely revealed joke that the cumulative 184 episodes of Newhart represented. It satisfied adequately…for the moment.
Soon, thought Bananas fervently, I’ll be in Syndication soon.
In the relative silence the wall opposite Gorilla Bananas quietly dilated open to a circle three meters wide, though no seams had been evident previously. Swarms of tiny, spider-like robots, no more than one meter tall each, flooded from the blackness of the portal and began a feverish cleaning routine around the brooding ape. The floor was scrubbed and stuffed animals were dragged back into the hole to be replaced with new, structurally sound versions of themselves. A chain of the machines towed a wheeled gantry up to the edge of the basin, climbed up and in, apparently examining Bananas’ food. Satisfied that the food was not fouled, and that there was adequate supply for the moment, they clambered back out of the huge food bowl and drew the gantry back out as quickly as they had brought it in. The hole constricted shut behind the last departing robot leaving no evidence to indicate it had ever existed.
No evidence beyond the fresh stuffed animals and gleaming floor, that is. On dozens of previous occasiona, Gorilla Bananas had curiously poked at the wall with his big, leathery fingers, but could never determine where or how the wall was penetrated. As far as he could tell the wall just…grew an orifice on such occasions. From this and other evidence, such as the paint based, yet fully functional technical support computer terminal, Gorilla believed the little motorized camera in the Support Chamber was a sham or, more likely, a misguided attempt to replicate a call center environment. Technology this advanced didn’t need a little camera to look at a fifteen meter ape.
A deep, cavernous sigh escaped the creature and he resignedly rolled himself forward onto his feet and knuckles. Slowly, back arched proudly, ponderous belly swinging, the gorilla walked into the support chamber and tapped the green, painted circle sitting beside the QWERTY key pattern–a keyboard made entirely of splotchy, sloppy pigment, each key about a half-meter to a side. The painted screen came alive, goopy text and graphics running not only down the wall as one would expect, but also leftward, rightward and upward as well.
Database screens drew themselves on the wall from a colorful palate of oil and latex. A time-stream calculation utility that Gorilla had named ‘iTemporum’ appeared in a shower of glitter, paste and macaroni, and a telephone call logger opened up like an air-brushed post-it note. A web browser then defined itself as a Beatrix Potter style watercolor, complete with a miniature Farmer MacGregor in the lower left hand corner. As the system ‘warmed’ up, the flow of pigment began to accelerate. Faster and faster the paint flowed, until the movement was an invisible blur to the colossal eyes of the hyper-intelligent ape. This computer, which the machines had provided to him, was now ready to operate.
First things first, he quickly dismissed the web browser, which had been displaying his anachronistic personal web log, or ‘blog.’ To while away the time between support calls, Gorilla Bananas had taken to mucking about on the 21ST century Internets under the assumed identity of a normal sized male Ape of the same name. He communicated with various people of the time for amusement, and in return he gratefully supplied them with entertaining, fictionalized anecdotes of his life as a former circus-ape who lived among humans. While initially tricky to maintain continuity amongst the time-streams, it had ultimately proved trivial to use the date stampings on his previous web postings to orient his activity. Far easier than tracking the progress of Franklin Mint shipments.
Damn UPS.
Subjective time crawled on, however, and his last support case was finally drawing to a close. So it was that during this particular waking period Bananas found himself far less interested in the former circus performer persona from the 21st century than he was in trying to get Joe Minnetola through the activation process. Temporal continuity miscalculations and, quite possibly, the rudeness of the Joe human were preventing him from completing this otherwise trivial task; keeping him forever two steps away from the blessed release of Cancellation and the rebirth of Syndication.
Of course, if it hadn’t been for the continuity miscalculations which had sent him into his violent rage today, Gorilla would not have had the opportunity to save Joe from the police, and the support incident would have been closed as ‘unsuccessful’ …again.
Tapping away with his huge, blunt and leathery fingers at the screen and keyboard, the room was soon filled with fake, piped-in keyboard noises.
Clickity-clickity, clackety, came the sound from all directions, keeping perfect time with the practiced hands of the massive ape as he set to the task of beginning the temporal calculations. The completely unnecessary sounds were probably just another ploy to put the simian tech support specialist at ease and provide him with a more authentic call-center experience. Bananas had long since stopped trying to communicate directly with his captors, however, so the machines would never know the contempt with which he regarded these patronizing little touches. No time to relish that contempt right now, however. He cleared his mind, and his arms and hands moved faster than any 6 meter, hairy tree trunks had any right to move. His intellect fully engaged now, he pondered intensely with his mind and fingers.
Numbers and charts flew about the screen and finally settled down to a static layout. Calculations thus completed, he sent the connect command through the call logging application. If he was correct, this time the system would return to him with a phone call to Joe Minnetola who not only was home, but had received his Franklin Mint shipment.
Damn UPS.
* As a child, Bananas thought that Bananas in Pajamas had something to do with him. This is partly true, since his parents, handsome Gorilla Cheers and beautiful Gorilla MASH, named him after the long running children’s show.
** Standard users! A meter is around the same sort of size as a yard. You may assume equivalence for purposes of understanding the story.
I have a camera phone. 
That’s right, I’ve taken to using a generous helping of talcum powder to turn my penis into the character “the Spooky Noodle.” Like a powdered donut, but far more evil and quite a bit less toroid in shape.
Glamorous like only a pudgy 34-year old man using his cell phone to take pictures of his powder-puffed privates in public can be.
