Konsk: The Great Takeover of the Place.

41. Flying monkey, tropical murder.

"Not what I was expecting," said Jodi, staring into the jungle of vegetation.

The trees reached upwards to the light, branches gardens in themselves, densely packed with bromeliads and draped with damp mosses and lichens, hanging vines and creepers. Birds busily foraged for insects and seed amongst the trunks, tousled the deep leaf litter, perched, calling in a myriad voices to one another, darted and swooped through the open spaces like multi coloured jewels flashing through the shafts of sunlight.

"Big greenhouse," said Trueman, already beginning to sweat in the humid air, looking about him in wonder.

High above, barely visible through the luscious green of the tree canopy, transparent roof shutters sealed in the stadium. Mounted along the edges, highly reflective sheets tracked the sun, directing additional light into the vast enclosure. Rather than precisely ordered seating, the tiered galleries, stands and balconies were overflowing with an apparently chaotic masses of vegetation; huge ferns cloaked the concrete, lianas clambered up the stems of flood lights, spilled downward from the heights, wove their way through the sprawling limbs of trees.

"Certainly not a stadium now," Trueman continued, looking around with a sense of awe.

"I don't think it was ever meant to be," Jodi replied. "A lot of these species are food plants.,Those giants look like araucaria, big cones with edible nuts and Tanoak with fog drip below them. The acorns are good to eat." She worked her way downwards from the misty canopy, "There's a banana, that's a mango, a loquat."

She paused, admiring. Trueman was remembering Dawn's maze garden, back at the Little Big Farm, the apparent chaos of plants, stacking up against the south facing wall of the farmhouse, like a solar collector. What a fool he'd been to ignore her work, to see it as just an untidy mess.

"Citrus in the lower canopy," Jodi went on, pointing, "Avocado, down into pomegranate in that clearing, coffee," she laughed, "There's a stand of sugar cane!"

Trueman chipped in, "I seem to remember some ideas about closed system environments; they were going to set up an experimental site, a biosphere or something and shut people in it, to see if it was sustainable; this looks like it could be something similar, only on a different scale altogether!"

"I think you might be right, INCO," Jodi agreed, "Not a stadium, was never intended to be one. this has been meticulously designed and built for someone who wanted to survive a nuclear war or a global heat death, in comfort; and not alone either, there's enough food here to feed a small colony. It is a bio-sphere, a lifeboat."

An object struck Trueman lightly on the shoulder and his new body reacted automatically, raising a protective arm, dropping to a crouch, half turning and looking upward.

It was the monkey, some metres above, still observing him quizzically before hefting and then hurling another pecan nut at him. The creature’s aim was good but before it could strike his eye Jodi plucked it casually from the air, cracked the shell and popped the contents in her mouth. She chewed appreciatively and made a gesture as of thanks to the little beast.

“Flying monkey,” she remarked and as if in response it leapt from its high perch, spreading its limbs to open and stretch its wings of skin. It glided rapidly above them, landing vertically on another trunk which it speedily ascended, gaining a high, fern-filled crotch where a large limb branched off. It turned to stare back at them. When Jodi took a pace towards it, the flying monkey made another soaring leap.

“As good a guide as any,” remarked Jodi and began to follow.

The stadium floor was soft and giving, covered with a deep layer of organic debris, patrolled by a range of insects including a foraging column of ants.

"Sweet potato," Jodi brushed the leaves as they passed, "Perennial peanut, climbers too, creeping cucumber, grapes!"

She laughed again, at the riotous exuberance of it all.

"How do you know all these species?" Trueman was driven to enquire.

"Some of our training is overseas," she replied, "We knew this climate was coming our way, Good to be at least a little way ahead. We learned a lot from indigenous folk in other lands. Look, this is a well thought out system, the spacing between the forest giants, the careful selection of layers, openings to let light through to the floor for other species."

She was right; Trueman had expected to find the way impenetrable, blocked by fallen boughs and nets of creepers but Jodi seemed to pick an easy path, each bend revealing yet more wonders.

Some trees had toppled, were bursting with fungi, broad brackets extending like shelves, massed mushrooms in clustered clumps like miniature fairy cities of towers and minarets.

"Sign of a maturing system," she remarked appreciatively, "The dead wood, so important. Look at those Shiitake and Blue Oyster, even Lion's mane!"

Trueman ducked beneath bunches of grapes, bean and pea pods, figs, plums and were those carob beans? Jodi spotted yams, bread fruits, mulberry.

At times Trueman lost sight of the flying monkey but Jodi kept moving. He noticed that she had opened the neck of her suit to release more heat and did likewise. Sweat trickled down his face and dripped from his nose and chin, ran down his neck.

Without warning, a large ball of feathers erupted, squawking, from the undergrowth to one side of him. Trueman jumped and couldn't repress a yelp of surprise. Jodi stopped and turned with, one eyebrow raised. The squawk played back in Trueman's mind and he recognised it.

"A chicken!" He blurted out, "A hen."

The hen ruffled her feathers, clucked and resumed her scratching. The commonplace nature of the familiar fowl seemed somehow incongruous in this tropical paradise but what had Dawn told him?

"A forest bird, originally," he said sheepishly, "Thus very at home here."

"So, you're not completely ignorant, then," Jodi remarked before turning away and calling back over her shoulder, "Watch out for goats!"

Trueman nearly reacted, managed to control it, just muttered quietly, "I hate goats."

After walking for some time, Jodi stopped and projected a plan view of the stadium onto a large fan shaped leaf.

“I reckon we’ve crossed where the outer tracks were supposed to be,” she explained as Trueman came closer to look, pointing with a finger at the concentric flattened ovals. “Then there’s the main arena.” This was largely featureless on the plan.

“So where are we going?” Trueman asked dubiously.

“Well,” she pondered, “Monkey seems to be aiming for this complex, towards the edge of the arena.”

Trueman could not resist a disbelieving guffaw.

“Surely you’re not going to put your hope in a flying monkey?” he rasped.

“Why not?” Jodi shrugged. “Less chance of ego getting in the way.”

She set off, leaving Trueman musing on the possibilities of synchronicity. Before she passed from his sight between the trunks, he too shrugged and began to follow. After considering his own circumstances only briefly he had rapidly come to the conclusion that the fact that he himself had travelled through space and time after reading a lunatics book was just as unlikely as the possibility that a flying monkey would lead them to their goal through an unknown tropical rain forest in an apparently carefully designed, closed ecosystem. He was right.

How long has this been here, he wondered? He remembered Dawn telling him of the speed of growth in the tropics, about how the biomass was in the plants rather than the soils, how decay was rapid and continuous, promoting the rapid recycling of nutrients. He wished, once again, that he'd taken more notice of her. Could then these massive trees be only a decade or so old?

The complex appeared suddenly, visible only as a raised jumble of plants, surmounted by several sturdy trees, reminiscent to Trueman of some ancient, low ziggurat, engulfed by vegetation.

The flying monkey ran daintily along a limb to the leaf canopy, plucked several small fruits and flung them at Trueman with remarkable and consistent accuracy. He swept one aside with a sweep of his hand, caught a second, much to his own surprise, but while attempting to identify it, was struck stingingly on his nose by a third. He actually cursed spontaneously.

“Well done,” Jodi said with approval, “If a little mild.”

The flying monkey, apparently satisfied, began to eat fruit.

They circled the complex, able to discern gantries and platforms only vaguely through the undergrowth. From the inner side, facing into what had been an enormous, open arena, a faint humming could be heard and a vibration felt. Beneath a hanging tangle of vines and roots, Trueman could make out a large viewing window, smeared with decaying organic material, the corners webbed by spiders. To the side of this, a ramp, deep in leaf litter, led up to a barely visible doorway.

Jodi clambered over a fallen trunk to reach it and examined it in more detail.

“This stuff's been cut, “she said, pointing to the severed stumps of roots and branches. “And more than once, too. The last time, quite recently.”

She cleared some fallen debris and Trueman joined her.

It was indeed a door, again having the appearance of an airlock with a pad at shoulder height. Trueman stepped forward and waved at it. There was a faint click and the hiss of air as the internal pressure equalised with that outside. He realised that he was trembling slightly, a dull pressure in his sinuses.

Jodi held him back, placing her right hand on his arm, inserting her weapon first into the widening gap as the door swung inward. Leaf mould pattered onto a ceramic tiled floor. Seated at a low console, facing what had been the window overlooking the broad vista of the main arena, was the body of a large man. They could tell immediately that he was dead.

Jodi scanned the control room and then they both entered. Trueman took a deep breath, noting the absence of any smell of putrefaction. Mentally steeling himself, he moved closer to examine the body visually.

It was completely rigid, as though frozen in the moment of death, every muscle and tendon taut, bulging against the strained skin. The face was more grossly contorted, particularly where the tissues had torn, the head tipped backward into the heavily padded chair, the wide and staring eyes looking up as though toward some awful vision descending through the ceiling.

He had cracked the floor tiles with his death kicks. The left hand was held over some sort of touch pad, fused to it by strands of melted flesh and plastics. The body wore an apparently simple set of grey overalls. There were no markings or distinguishing features save for a single integer over the heart, the number 5.

Somewhat shakily Trueman detached his attention from the corpse and considered the console. A screen was still operating, a green field with occasional blocks of colour scattering randomly across it. There were various peripherals scattered over the work surface, some still boxed, unused.

He glanced across at Jodi. She prodded a small device with her foot. Looking down he realised that the floor was littered with the remnants of meal packs, wine cartoons and what seemed like hundreds of cigarette stubs, as though the man had tossed them over his shoulder to smoulder and go out on the floor behind.

The small device appeared to be an automated vacuum cleaner that had extinguished and collected the first few score of butts before getting stuck in a loop, the little machine silently describing a tight circle as though in frustration. As Jodi gave it a kick, it whistled tunefully and returned to its preprogrammed labours, busily sucking up the stubs and scattered ash.

What would it make of the body? Trueman found himself wondering, drawing close to its left side and studying the strained face. It looked somehow familiar.

“Estimated time of death?” he asked, almost just to break the silence with words.

“Maybe forty eight hours,” she shrugged, “roughly.”

“That’s after the attempt to bring the sub-continent back on line, right?”

“Right.”

She moved opposite to him, also examining the face. She looked up at Trueman, then down to the corpse. Back to Trueman. The corpse. Trueman. Corpse.

“What?” he queried, impatiently.

“Looks like you, mate,” she stated flatly.

He started and peered closer but couldn’t quite tell. I’m not familiar enough with the new body’s facial features, he admitted to himself, obviously haven’t looked in enough mirrors. Come to that, haven’t seen many mirrors at all. Besides, the corpse’s face was considerably distorted. He reached out impulsively and touched it, running a finger down the jaw line, stopping as he reached the implant.

“I’ll take your word for it,” he mumbled.

Jodi turned slightly away from him and began to speak rapidly and softly.

“Mother hen here." A pause. "I can only just make you out. We’ve found an operative. Extinguished. Looks like a clone of our friendly INCO. Number five. Anything with you?" Another pause, "Stay put then. If it gets any worse, follow us in. Yes, we’re about to reconnect.”

She turned back to Trueman.

“OK mate. Time to do your stuff,” she ordered.

Thanks for reading. A bit longer than my normal episodes. Pictures are from the Public Domain or courtesy of Chris Evans, permaculture designer and OBE! Ta Chris. As always, comments welcome. Hwyl! Chris.