Hive Monkey Read Free

ricochets.”
    Ack-Ack Macaque grinned, exposing his yellow canines. “Hey, that wasn’t my fault. The clock radio startled me.”
    “And so you blew it to bits?”
    “When I left, they were still picking bits of plastic from the walls and ceiling.”
    Dean leant forward. “The New York Times said that if Nobel Prizes were given out for smoking cigars and wrecking stuff, you’d be top of the list.”
    “I suppose.” Ack-Ack Macaque looked around the lounge. They were alone apart from the barman and a guy in a white suit. “Now, how about you fuck off and leave me in peace?”
    Ignoring him, Dean pulled out an electronic notepad and moved his finger down to the next question on his list.
    “We’re currently approaching an airfield on the outskirts of Bristol,” he read aloud. “This is the first time you’ve returned to the UK since last winter, when you helped overthrow the previous political regime. What have you being doing with yourself since then?”
    Ack-Ack Macaque tapped his knuckles against the bar. “Lying on tropical beaches,” he muttered. “Drinking cocktails, and taking pot shots at jet skis.”
    Dean frowned at him. He wanted a proper interview. “What have you really been doing?”
    Ack-Ack Macaque took a deep breath, and made an effort not to plant a fist in the guy’s stupid face. May as well get this over with, he thought. Then maybe the bastards will leave me alone.
    “Well,” he said, trying to force some enthusiasm into his tone, “I’ve been working as a pilot.”
    “Here on the Tereshkova ?”
    “Yes, here on the Tereshkova . We’ve been all over the North Atlantic. Middle America and the Caribbean; the East Coast of the United States; Newfoundland, and the North Polar Ocean.”
    Dean’s finger tapped the notebook’s screen. “The events of last year thrust you into the limelight. You went from being a cult figure in a computer game to being a real life celebrity. Everybody wanted to interview you. There was even talk of a TV series. Why’d you turn your back on all of that?”
    “I’m not cut out for fame.”
    “You’d rather be a humble pilot?”
    Ack-Ack Macaque caught hold of his tail and began grooming it, picking bits of fluff and lint from the hairs at the end. At a table across the room, the guy in the white suit sipped his coffee and pretended not to listen.
    “For now. While I figure out what I’m going to do with my life.”
    “Any ideas?”
    “None so far.” He stopped cleaning his tail. “Moving from the game world to the real one takes some adjustment, you know.” Learning that he’d been raised to sentience in order to play the central figure in a computer game had been something of a shock, especially when he found himself pulled from the make-believe online world and thrust head-first into a plot to assassinate the King of England. “And it doesn’t help that I’m the only one of my kind.”
    “There were others like you, at the lab?”
    “There was one.” He scowled down at his fingernails, remembering a desperate scuffle on the deck of a flying aircraft carrier, and the obscene feel of his knife cutting into another monkey’s throat. “Look,” he said, “can we talk about something else? It’s Friday night. I should be out drinking and puking.”
    Dean ran his finger down the list. “Okay, just a few more questions. You started life as a normal macaque. Then Céleste Technologies filled your head with gelware processors and upgraded you to self-awareness.”
    “I thought we were supposed to be changing the subject?”
    “I’m getting there, okay? As my readers will know, they had you plugged into an online WWII role-playing game, didn’t they?”
    Ack-Ack felt his lips peel back. As the main character in the game, he’d been practically invincible. But he hadn’t known that, and he hadn’t known it was a game. As far as he’d been concerned, every day had been a fight for survival.
    Since the events of last year, and the