1. The monkey.
- Do you think a creature called uakari monkey really exists? – Maud asked Emma one evening.
- Monkeys can have all kinds of strange names. Why? What’s impossible about it? – Emma answered.
- It looks strange to me, you know – Maud said. I came across it in one of the books on primates I like to look at. Nothing’s impossible, but it looks like a dummy. And it’s got an extremely pink face, which, they say, gets redder when it’s angry. It’s a rare monkey, nothing much is known about it, but they do know that its tail is very short – just about fifteen centimetres or so.
- Where does it live?
- Along Amazon river in rainforests. You know, I Googled it, and, apparently, it’s a real thing. Only they are all different, every each one uakari you catch. They recently caught one in NZ and it was all black with no pink face – a different kind of uakari. It was Humboldt who first described them, if I’m not mistaken.
- So what? – Emma said. – What a crazy idea! What makes you think there are no uakaris? How can you say it?
- I’ll tell you what – Maud said. – It’s all tied up with how it’s started, some time ago. By the way, did Humboldt travel along Amazon river? Or was it not him who first found uakaris? Did I see it on another site? Or maybe, this one, at a different time. I’m never sure. Anyway, I’ll tell you how it started.
2. Manganese hockey Molvanian association.
- Do you remember how you first learned about the internet security? – Maud asked again, solemnly.
- No – Emma said. – I know it’s an important thing, but I can’t tell what it is. I’m hopeless with all things technical. But why? Do you remember?
- As a matter of fact, I do. – Maud said. – It happened suddenly, in a flash, and perhaps I’ve been thinking about it too much since then. It all started when I came across a paper on Molvanian language, written by somebody who belonged, as it turned out, to Manganese hockey Molvanian association.
- Gosh, this sounds like a difficult name for an association. What do they do?
- Well, a number of things, as you can see from their name – Maud answered. –. They draw mangas and play hockey. Actually, the most important thing about them is that they speak the Molvanian language, so it’s the Molvanian version of hockey they play. But it’s only because they are interested in Molvanian that I stumbled upon their manganese nest.
- What’s manganese? – Emma asked.
- I’m not sure – Maud said. – I think it means that they draw mangas – these Japanese-like cartoons and comic strips. It’s a pretty popular stuff there at the moment – whole novels – they call them graphic – get illustrated with mangas.
- Yeah – Emma said, looking troubled. – But why Molvanian? Are they Molvanian themselves or do they teach Molvanian?
- These two things often intersect – Maud said. – I mean, a lot of people who teach Molvanian are Molvanian, which may not be a good thing altogether. But they didn’t intersect in this case – I mean, all members of the Manganese hockey Molvanian association were manganese, not Molvanian, at least according to their names.
- How do you know their names? – Emma asked.
- I looked them up on a website. – Maud said.- Perhaps it’s no reason to worry. Manganese must have their own nature laws.
- What about hockey? – Emma said. – Where do they play it? What kind of hockey is it, anyway? Ice hockey or grass hockey?
- Well, I don’t know. – Maud said. – The only thing I know is that they play hockey – but where and how… Somebody must know, but it doesn’t happen to be me… Oh, no – it did say on the website that they play it in Hokkaido – that’s where I’d place them to play it if it was up to me.
- They sound like a very interesting bunch – Emma said. – Did you ever actually contact any of them? –
- No – Maud said. – But I still may.
3. The Sati incident.
- It wasn’t the only time when I came across somebody, whose map of interests, so to speak, seemed surreal to me. – Maud said.
- Why surreal? – Emma didn’t look much interested, but remembered it was her turn to speak.
- Surreal like a Magritte’s painting. My favourite is that one with a pipe, remember? There is a man and a pipe in it, and a phrase written in French: ce n’est pas le pipe. I always wonder why did he write it? Did he just want to avert all suspicion, maybe? If it’s not his pipe altogether, whose can it be? I’d like it to be Shelock Holmes’.
- Are you sure this is surreal? – Emma said, pensively. – Anyway, whose map of interests was surreal? – she reminded Maud. It looked like Maud could go on about Magritte at length, fully satisfied.
- Ah, this. – Maud took a breath. - Yes. It happened some time ago. I had to edit a paper on sati, for a web journal.
- What’s sati? – asked Emma.
- It’s an old Indian custom, apparently. Actually, the one and only thing I know about it is that there used to be some Indian women who burned themselves when their husbands died.
- When was it? – asked Emma.
- Oh, I don’t know. A few centuries ago, I guess. It’s been forbidden by law for about two hundred years now. I think it’s something not unlike European duel – strange as it seems – a death to uphold honour and love. Sati seems quite exotic and sinister, but it may be no worse than duels. Anyway, there I was, living my relatively normal and relatively western life, when suddenly – bang! – a paper on sati or, rather, sati on paper turned out of the blue.
- You know, I’ve seen sati in a movie once, when I was little. – Emma said. – It was one of those films – lots of lovely music and brightly coloured beautiful fabrics – and nothing much happening – until the main character’s husband died. He died and she starts getting ready to be burned, like his other wives.
- Something’s wrong here. – Maud noticed. – Why did his other wives get burned? Did he die before? Aren’t they supposed to be burned only when he dies?
- I don’t know – Emma said. – But one thing I remember well from this is how the woman dipped her hand in some red powder – crushed chilli flakes, I guess, it was, perhaps, mixed with ochre, and pressed it against a white wall of some temple where her man had to be buried. I became so scared and decided to leave earlier, but when I got up from my seat to leave, somebody shot her.
- Shot her? Why? – Maud asked.
- To save her from burning herself. – Emma answered.
- Gosh – said Maud. – This is seriously scary. You don’t feel it was you they shot, when you got up from you seat, do you? Anyway, it’s a pity people writing on sati for web publications don’t have a custom of dipping their hands in chilli mixed with ochre and leaving a print on a white sheet of paper.
- Why? – Emma said. – Why do you want them to do it? Do you think it’ll make a fingerprint? I think not, because the chilli will dust off.
- I’ m just joking, of course, - Maud said. I’m saying it, because when I got the sati paper, I started doubting everything. The author’s name seemed strange to me, and her interest in sati strange, too, and I even suspected the novel she wrote about, where sati was described, didn’t exist. It was about sati in a nineteenth century novel, you know – it’s obviously safer this way, because who could have seen this thing for real, anyway? I am not sure she’d seen this film you told me about, but she must have felt it.
- Felt it? How? What was the novel?
- A Missionary by Sydney Owen. I’ve never heard of Owen before, which I suspect, is a bit of a shame, but it turned out it was a real person. Only her real name was Lady Morgan.
- How a Morgan can be a lady? Is the next thing I am going to hear is that she committed sati?
- Anybody can be a lady – Maud said. – In fact, any woman must be a lady. I am not sure about men. It’s certainly true, although I don’t know what it means.
- Enough. – Emma sighed. - It’s too sad. I don’t want to be a lady. How do you know she was real?
- Shelley wrote something about her and her novel in his letters, and since he was real, she was, too. I looked it up.
- Can’t a real person mention somebody who is not? – Emma asked. – Or, on the other hand, you may not be real, but it doesn’t impend you from saying things about real things.
- Whatever – Maud answered. – She was real according to all applicable criteria, this is what I mean. So in the end everybody thought if Lady Morgan could do it, why not the sati paper’s author? And it got published. But as you say, even if she dipped her hand in crushed chilli and left an imprint on the page, it wouldn’t much help us to find her.
- We don’t need to find her – Emma said. – Let’s try and find uakari monkeys instead. If there are some, of course. How can we do it?
- I think we should organize an expedition on Amazon and find uakaris. We will see what they are like in their natural habitat. – Maud came up with a proposal fairly quickly.
- Let’s take somebody with us. – Emma said. It can be scary if it’s only the two of us facing uakaris in the middle of Amazon jungle. We can invite some people from Manganese hockey Molvanian association, if they’d want to come. We can even do some behavioural research. How long, do you think, it takes to teach uakaris to play hockey? Can they learn to play better than people?
4. Looking for uakaris.
When Maud, Emma and four members of Manganese hockey Molvanian association started their search for Amazon uakaris, they decided to take a straightforward approach first.
- Let’s just walk down the stream along the shore – Emma said. – If there are any uakaris here, we are bound to find them.
Maud was walking first in her cotton overalls with a big red nylon backpack. As a person who came across the first mention of uakaris in scientific literature and on the net, she was recognized as the one most likely to recognize an uakari when she sees one. There was no path and the river shore they walked on was uneven and swampy. Within fifteen minutes all twelve of their feet were wet; Maud stumbled and fell down now and then, and tried to lower down the high grass with her foot to see what’s under, before she put her foot down. Those who followed her in the path she was making in the middle of the grass covering the swampy Amazon soil, felt it was easier for every next person to step on the same slippery bump, surrounded by dark water. Once in a while, however, a branch bent by another person, as they moved forward, would spring right into your face.
- No – Emma said, after it happened to her. – This is not the way to find them. We can walk like this for ages and only get more tired. Who said uakaris like to live near the river? What if they are out there in the middle of the jungle? Can they be waiting for us right at this moment and wondering why we are not coming?
- Yes – said Niko, one of the manganese hockey players. – One needs to be creative. Let’s try a different approach. Let’s set a trap.
- What kind of trap? – Maud asked. – Do you mean, just dig a hole that they can fall in? We can’t even lure them with food because we don’t know what they eat.
- No – Niko said. – I mean another kind of trap. We put up a computer with a clip of moving uakari in the forest and see if it can attract some real uakaris. Some new computers make it possible to get rid of the screen. We can take the actual forest as a background for the clip. So the clip uakari will appear completely realistic.
- Great – Emma said..- But how should we know which uakari is which, if another one comes from the forest?
- Let’s first find one. – Niko said. We’ll see what to do, if it happens.
5. An uakari trap.
They did what they said. Niko opened her laptop and clicked on some buttons and soon a rosy-faced medium-sized monkey with a short tail (why is it so short? – Emma thought. - But I definitely like it.) was walking around.
- How far away from your laptop can it go? – Maud asked.
- I’m not sure – said Niko. – Perhaps, not that far, at first, but it’s self-supporting and self-instructing. It will be looking for food and will learn to go further.
- For food, a computer clip? – asked Biriko, another manganese girl. – How can it be?
- It’s a special kind of clip – explained Niko.
A day has gone, and then another. E-cret – this was the new uakari monkey’s name – has become furrier and seemed even bigger. He was running and jumping around, happy of all the attention he received, and made grunting sounds. But no other uakari has ever come to see it.
- If another one comes, what are we going to do? – Emma asked again. – We must be able to tell which one is the real uakari we are looking for.
- The real one will be able to go through the simulated one. They are made of different matter. A simulation is not a solid hard matter. – Niko was positive about that.
The day has finally come when they could see another uakari in the small forest clearing where Ecret spent most of his time. The other uakari, the one who has just come, was smaller and there was something soft in the way it was moving.
- This one must be a female. – whispered Maud. – Let’s see what they are up to.
However, the two uakaris must have felt they were surveyed and, being wild Amazon creatures unused to it, sat quietly. A few minutes later the newcomer uakari lifted her arm and stretched it. Suddenly, Emma screamed.
- Look – she shouted. – It goes through the other one’s scull. And her hand comes out of nowhere on the other side of it, like a flower on a tree.
- From where I stand it looks like Ecret has two ears on the same side of his head – observed Biriko. – His own real ear, and this new uakari’s hand.
- But look, you were right, Niko – said Maud. – The real uakari’s body just goes through the simulated one’s as if it was air. You really know what you are doing, it means.
- Ye- ah – Niko sounded happy, but hesitant. OK, let’s leave them alone for a while, and see how it will develop. I wonder if we have to choose somebody to observe them during the day, or will it be better to get rid of the observer effect altogether?
6. How it all developed.
When the expedition party returned home in the afternoon of the next day, a sight they saw was not quite what they thought they’d see. There were no cuddling and hugging uakaris they expected, but, instead, body parts and accessories of both flying in the air and grossing each other’s trajectory in random order. Hands, legs, arms and feet, as well as bunches of uakaris’ dark brown fur and acorn necklaces they made were everywhere, hanging in the air above the clearing where the uakari pair used to be.
- What is it?! What do we do now? – cried Maud. – I don’t like it this way.
- Let’s just wait a couple of minutes. – Niko said, calmly. – They’ll assemble themselves again. It will all fall into place, I promise.
And so it did.