Chimps.

It was just an experiment. No big deal. A one percent difference is all that separates us from the Chimps. So upping their intelligence by one percent…didn’t seem like it would be anything significant. We guessed, that at best, they might understand speech as well as say, a five year old child. At worst, they might learn a few names for fruits, or trees. Those were out best guesses…and we were wrong.

*****
“What?!”

I almost screamed into the phone. I heard Sally at the other end of the line to the Lab…she was crying softly. I heard her say: “Please, don’t hurt me. I will do whatever you want.”

“Sally, who are you talking to? Are you okay? What is happening?”

My mind was tripping over its own sluggish reaction to her first statement, the one that made me yell: “What?!” She had said:

“Dave, it is me, Sally, the Chimps…they want their freedom…or they will kill me.”

That is when I heard her second remark, which wasn’t directed at me, but at someone not on the line. My brain finally caught up.

“Sally, call me on your Cell…use FACETIME…I can’t see what is going on …this land line is voice only. Sally come on, call me.”

“I don’t know if they will let me…(she cried a little) but I will try.”

A few moments later, and I could see a slightly battered and bruised Sally. All five Chimps were standing or perched behind her. Willy, the big Alpha Male was holding Sally’s Phone far enough away to include everyone …and part of the Lab. The Lab was completely destroyed. Pens and cages were broken, smashed, totally destroyed.

On the White Board was written in crude (but clear) printed letters:

“This Lab is closed. We want our Freedom. All Lab animals are to be set free. All the Chimps are to be sent back to Africa. WE mean now!”

The phone scanned back to a very scared Sally…a Post Doc who many considered the most likely to win a Nobel Prize for her work on Primate Genetics.

“Dave, they can’t speak, they don’t have the right muscles, but they can read and write. And…they can program!


“What?”

“They are going to shut down the electric grid in one hour…that’s all the time you have to reach the President, and get them packing on their way home to Africa.”

“What?”

Willy reached over and broke Sally’s arm, with no more effort than it would take me to break a popsicle stick. Sally screamed once, and fainted.

Willy scanned the phone back to the Whiteboard. In block numbers it read:

“59 min, 59 Seconds. Go!”

The Phone went dead. I called the President. An hour later…

The first plane load of Chimps was loading on the ramp. Sally was in ICU. Zoo’s were busy emptying all of their animals to be loaded on ships to take them back home. The only glitch was with Texas. The damn Governor down there said publicly that he wasn’t going to be bull rushed by a bunch of monkeys. The Chimps not only shut down the Grid, but they made a Nuclear Reactor go “China syndrome.” The Governor was beaten to death by his own Staff.

There is no more mining, foresting, or harvesting of “jungle” anywhere in the world. The Chimps have made that impossible. It turns out their brains work better with AI’s than ours does. They joined forces, the Chimps and the AI’s…and now, well, we live in well controlled cities…and the country side belongs to the animals. We are allowed access to Nature only if we behave.

The wolves keep an eye out for us…and the Chimps keep an eye on us. They put crude signs up, of their own making, on every exit from every city on Earth”

“You have two choices, learn to live with Nature…or go extinct. Frankly, we don’t care which. Live with us as brothers, or stay a dying branch of the tree of life. “

Chimps. One percent. We were wrong.