Monkey Girl Diary #488
(transcribed from video log)
Hello everybody. We still not heard anything from Transplant or Pawn. Dreamweaver is here with us; she is looking into our heads at night for signs of psychic badness. To this point she has found nothing. I think she is in my head right now, but I will not be sure until tonight. If she is in here with me, I have some questions to ask her.
You see I am having a problem with my puppy… but it maybe just a problem with me instead. When Alpha Dog gave Golden Boy and me our puppies we were very excited. I name mine Honeydew and he name his Trophy. Alpha Dog explained to us that the puppies have a program that makes them mimic their owner’s personality. I think this a great idea, but it is hurting Honeydew. I do not know if robots can be hurt, but it looks like Tin Soldier can and the puppies sometimes whimper so realistically.
I first noticed the wrong thing when we were cleaning up after Pentazar. If you don’t know, Alpha Dog had a couple pieces of that big starfish they fought a time ago frozen in the freezer for study. He took one out a couple of days ago so Doc Donor could sample it. When it thawed it came back to life and grew out into a new starfish. It escaped from its container. It was not so big this time, but it did not need water and it splitted like crazy. They are not supposed to do that, but Pentazar did anyway.
We woke up that morning with sticky baby starfish all over everything in the Bay. They were crawling on the walls, into our beds, and even turning the showers on by themselves. We had to move quickly, because the starfish needed to be keeped away from the aquariums. If they got inside they would be put back out into the ocean and then they would be everywhere. I was pulling them off the glass in the front tunnel when Tin Soldier came up to me. He had a big white bucket with a lid to give to me so I could put the starfish in it. His puppy Tin Scout marched behind him. He say something silly to me when he handed me the bucket.
“I haven’t had a chance to speak to you privately,” he say. I only been there a few days. “I know you’ve been made aware of my previous issues with race. I want to assure you that they are in the past and that your Mediterranean heritage will not prevent us from becoming fast friends. I have many friends of color.”
“Oh-okay,” I say. He seemed happy with that. He turned around and left and Tin Scout marched behind him with his little puppy head held up. I thought it was cute, but it made me notice that Honeydew was not with me. I left my bucket of wiggly starfish in the tunnel and went to look for her. I saw that the other Backers I passed had their puppies helping them. I was the only one alone. I poked my head into my room and called Honeydew. Her little head came out of the wrinkly blankets in my hammock. I know you probably not believe me because she is a robot, but she looked sad to me. Droopy eyes and ears. She almost never barks like she did when I got her. I tapped my thigh and called to her again. She slowly got up and jumped to the floor. She walked up to me. I smiled at her, but after a few seconds she just laid on the ground and put her head between her paws.
I picked her up like a real puppy and she barely moved. I don’t know much about machines, so I thought maybe she had low battery. I decided to take her to Alpha Dog. He was in the part of the aquarium that used to be about the wetlands, so it has lots of fake trees. Mangroves, I think they are called. All of his dogs were around him, grabbing starfish with their teeth and putting them in more buckets.
“I wish these were oysters or shrimp or something,” he say when he noticed me. “At least we could cook them up and get a free meal out of it if they were. Nobody eats starfish right?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What’s up?”
“Something is wrong with Honeydew.” I held her out to him. He looked confused, like it was the first time anybody say to him there was a problem with one of his machines. Maybe it was. He took her and whistled. One of his new doggies, the name I do not know yet, came over and straightened his back out to make a table. Alpha Dog put Honeydew on it and pressed a hidden button to make her stand up straight. He took some tools off his belt and poked at her for some seconds. He checked her reflexes. He had her bark out the Justice Backers theme music. I think he sometimes just makes them do that for fun. He stared at her with a wrinkly brow and his hand on his chin.
“So what’s the problem?” he asked.
“She doesn’t follow me like the other puppies follow. She has no energy and she is very quiet. She looks sad.” Alpha Dog looked at her and then around the room. He noticed that Paladina and Orb were in there too, scraping stars off the walls with spatulas. He picked up Honeydew and nodded towards the next room. I followed him in there. It is a dark room that has many little bubble-shaped tanks on the walls. We stood next to one with a big flabby salamander in it. I guess we upset him because he buried his fat head in the mud.
“There’s nothing wrong with your puppy,” he say to me quietly.
“What about all the stuff I say?”
“Do you remember how the puppies pick up cues from their owner’s personalities?”
“Yes.”
“Whatever this is, Honeydew is getting it from you. The software is doing exactly what it’s supposed to.”
“But I am not sad,” I say, laughing a little. He looked at me like I was shivering and chatting my teeth.
“You know you’re covered for therapy if you need some,” he say to me. “I picked out a great therapist.”
“I am not sad. Look at me. I got out of bed, Honeydew didn’t. How is she getting it from me?”
“She’s probably picking up on subtler cues. Your demeanor. Your breathing patterns. Pupil dilation. She’s built an observational portrait of you and to her that portrait looks depressed. So she’s acting depressed. Do you not like being back?”
“Oh it’s not that,” I say quickly. I felt this way before I got to the Bay. I did not realize it counted as depressed. I assured Alpha Dog it wasn’t being on his team because I know that’s a soft bruise with him. He say to me more about the therapist and then gave me her card. He handed Honeydew to me and went back into the mangrove room to peel a starfish off a whining dog’s face.
I guess this is why I picked to come to the Bay. I thought maybe getting a new home would help me get excited again. Working with the Backers is always hard for me. There are a lot of jackasses on the internet who do not like me very much. You think they would stay away from me, but they don’t. Even after Swagglerock died, it is still bad. They still take that still picture of me being shaved and put it all over. The one where I look scared and quiet, where only a fool can’t see my smile is pretend.
Honeydew thinks all my smiles are pretend. Maybe I can make them more real by getting some of the weight of the internet off me. I’m going to tell you about some of the worst things. I want to know how they compare to your worst internet things backers. You can tell me if I am just being a big baby.
One group of the jackasses is always trying to say to me that I am not human. Their favorite thing is pictures. They find ones where my mouth is open or I look upset and then they mix it with a picture where two monkeys are having sex. They put my head on one of the monkey bodies. This is uncomfortable to say… sometimes it looks like I am being raped. I have seen that picture in a hundred different forms. They spam the pictures any place they think I might look. They even made a fake nature movie that say about me like I am an animal. They put in sounds they take from our mission videos. They make it sound like I am having sex when I was really fighting a bad guy. I am proud of where those sounds come from and they use them to lie. On bad days I get pictures of men with guns holding up dead monkeys.
Other groups have different things they love to hate about me. Some hate that I am not American. There was a rumor, it wasn’t true, that back when I first joined the Justice Backers, some white boys didn’t get on the team because girls took their places. Alpha Dog say a hundred times it is not true, but they ignore that. Alpha Dog say to me that I am having the worst of it because they think of me as a Mexican stealing jobs. I am not even from Mexico! They take everything further than the monkey-haters. They don’t know my address, but they always try to send things anyway. People say to me when they receive packages meant for me. Many of them have rotten food in them: tacos, burritos, nachos… I am from Portugal! That’s in Europe!
The worst group is also upset I took a boy’s job. They just don’t like me because I am a girl. They have all these studies that Alpha Dog and Archive say are from not-very-good scientists. They think the studies are proof that girls should not fight in the military or be superheroes. I can’t believe they don’t have anything better to do. Some of the specific ones spend all day putting hate online and trying to send me threats. They say they want to hurt me. They say they are going to find where I live. They say I ruined the Justice Backers and that they are going to rape me until I leave. I am not joking.
That Grill Marx man is one of them. His messages flip flop every day. He loves me. He wants to burn a house with us inside it. He adores me. He wants to paint a picture with my blood. It scares me. I reported him to the police, but the police aren’t really allowed to help us since we are criminals. There have been days where I fill my pillow with hot tears and I cannot bear to make diaries because I know they will be encouraged by the sight of my face. I want very much to go to his house and beat him up, but I know he wants that. Usually when these boys upset me I talk to Archive, Wallflower, or Impala. They are not here now, so I am saying to you. How do all of you deal with the jackasses?
I will take some questions. Please don’t ask about Transplant or Pawn because as I say, we do not know anything yet.
Tomcruisemissile: What about drill abby? Sportfish said she was gonna ask you guys for help with him but nobodys saying anythin about it?
I do not know who Abby is. I am not caught up with everything this team is doing yet, so I will ask.
FuggbootsXO: OMG Monkeylady Im so glad your back your my absolute favorite of everybody and Ive wanted you to come back for so long and Im totally megafreaking out right now I told my friend that I knew you would come back and she didn’t believe me but she can just go suck a butt because your back now and all is right in my manic little weird girl world.
Thank you Boots. I appreciate it. You maybe need to calm down enough to ask a question next time, okay?
Passwordforgetter: Monkey Girl you’ve been single the entire time you’ve been a superhero. Are you not getting lonely? I know a lot of guys who would be all over you if they had the chance. Do you not like to date?
I haven’t exactly been single the entire time. I try to keep my business private when I can. The jackasses are always prying, so I know you did not look at their stuff since you thought I was always single. Thank you for that! Being a hero can get lonely, especial when you are the only one who looks weird. Most of the others, except Tin Soldier, can pass off as normal. Hiding a tail is a problem.
Okay backers I am done. Please write down your ways to deal with jackasses so I can look at them later. See you later!
Tin Soldier Diary #57
(transcribed from video log)
Hello financial backers and welcome to Tin Soldier diary entry number fifty-seven. Today I will be recounting our most recent mission and all of the new information that has come to light. I estimate this entry will be 3,169 words long, so please budget the appropriate amount of time to read it based on your individual reading speed. If you need to test your reading speed, click here and follow the listed instructions.
In the first part of this entry I will discuss my ongoing efforts to address racism in both its personal elements and its wider societal implications. I was programmed to fight in a race war. I have realized that I can still do that. It is a figurative war. (Please see the definition of figurative if you are new to the concept; it can be difficult to grasp immediately.) It is also a war to unite the races rather than divide them. I will only have to kill misunderstandings and aggression. My efforts are still in the stages of personal development. I have not yet acquired enough friends of color to take my plans to the next level.
In order to better connect to other free individuals of color, I have sent 10,000 friend requests to people of color on social media. I have so far gained 2,460 friends with this method. I am looking to improve the rate of friend accumulation by including a personal statement with the request. I value your feedback backers, so please offer constructive criticism on this draft of my personal statement:
Hello potential friend of color. My name is Tin Soldier. I am a robotic soldier constructed in the year 1976 who has only been active for a small amount of the time since. Race relations have changed much. I am ashamed to admit that I initially fought against the integration of the races, but I am putting it behind me. As a direct result I thought that you and I could become friends. If you agree with me, please push the ‘yes’ button on your screen now. If you need to be convinced, I encourage you to send a personal statement to my account. If you do not wish to be friends with me, you need only ignore this message and my friend request. Thank you for your time.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Many of you have told me about specific individuals of color I should become friends with, but I have not had much success in that area. The most frequently suggested, Samuel L. Jackson, remains unreachable. I should note that his work in the film industry is impressive and I feel as if we are already friends thanks to the number of times I have appreciated his performances.
In the second part of this entry I will discuss our team’s primary mission. This week we were alerted to a strange situation in a mountain range on the east coast of the United States of America. A place of business was under attack by peculiar creatures. It was not your typical place of business; it was a mountaintop removal site. If you are not familiar with the process, mountaintop removal is when large construction machines and explosives are used to remove the stone and earth above veins of coal to make accessing it easier. The excess minerals are then dumped into nearby valleys.
I suspect the site looked like a war zone before we even arrived in our helicopters. The deconstructed mountain was nearly devoid of trees and undergrowth. A long line of trucks packed each quickly-constructed dirt road to and from the site. A collection of colorful paper and cardboard signs outside the fences indicated that civilians had been protesting the operation up until the very moment it was attacked. The attacker in question was Eisenoides carolinensis: a common earthworm. The worms were exhibiting a very uncommon quality with their size; some were more than eighty feet long and wide enough to ride like horses. Alpha Dog was ecstatic at the sight of them burying a bulldozer in the loose sediment.
“Oh my god it’s happening,” he said. “Giant monsters. Actual giant monsters! No need for politics this time, boys and girls! They’re big! They’re gross! They’re wrecking things! Let’s wreck them back! Wooh!”
The worms were dense enough on the ground that we deemed it necessary to disembark without landing. Alpha Dog activated the autopilots of Chomp and Bit and had them hover over the roiling mass of annelids and soil. I attached my grappling hook to the end of my rifle and then to the railing of the helicopter. Paladina and Alpha Dog each grabbed my shoulders. I lowered the three of us down while Alpha Dog jettisoned the hounds. Everyone else disembarked utilizing their own abilities.
We wasted no time in attacking the creatures. Act-of-Goddess spewed flaming chunks of underbrush from a wildfire; the worm’s flesh hissed at the heat and their movements became far more erratic. They practically tied themselves in knots. I am not sure how they managed to process the information that they were being attacked, but they then adopted an organized counteroffensive. Individual worms shot out of the ground like geysers and dropped down in an effort to crush us. I knew my rubber bullets would do little against creatures with such flexible tissues, so I switched to my bayonet.
Paladina had a similar strategy and used her samurai sword to cleave the worms from their own tails. The ground quickly became moist with their internal fluids. Our initial upper hand evaporated as more and more worms emerged from beneath. The very ground under my feet was squirming and making balance difficult. Then the ground collapsed. A landslide of dirt clods started carrying me down the side of the mountain. I was only able to return to the battlefield when Golden Boy tossed me a smaller knotted worm as a lifeline and pulled me back up. That was when I took notice of a central crown of worms. In the middle of the crown rose the largest worm of them all, as big around as a cement truck. A mysterious woman straddled it near its eyeless purple end. She carried a dried worm as a staff and her mannerisms suggested she had control over the annelids.
The turmoil quieted. The sea of worms became a gently lapping pond. The worms created some sort of collective low-frequency moan as they stoically awaited orders.
“Who are you?” Paladina demanded of the worm woman. There was no response except a massive increase in the volume of the worms’ moan. The air rumbled like we were standing in the midst of a thunderclap.
“What do you want?” Alpha Dog asked. She did not respond with words; she pointed her staff at a patch of earth between the worms and our team. A strange tree grew up in front of us and spread its branches and leaves. I immediately recognized the physical features of a plant being manipulated by Transplant. The middle of the tree opened like a change purse and my suspicions were confirmed. Transplant stepped out along with Pawn and two other individuals. One was Rot, the human swamp who had previously been a servant of Deckard. The other was new to us and very strange. It was female in shape, but had green flesh and only the suggestions of eyes and a mouth molded on its face.
“We want our planet back,” Transplant said. We did not know how to respond to the presence of our missing friends and their adversarial expressions. They did not appear to be prisoners.
“Transplant! Pawn! What are you doing here? What happened to you?” Monkey Girl asked.
“We were called by the Lichen,” Pawn answered.
“What? You mean that thing that gave you guys your powers?” Golden Boy asked.
“Yes,” Pawn confirmed. “The Lichen also gave Rot his abilities. And Dry Worm over there. And Venus Man-eater here. Our powers were an olive branch between man and nature. We’re here to address the very failings of the species.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Alpha Dog asked.
“Overpopulation. Pollution. Extinction. Environmental destruction. We have to undo everything we can,” Transplant said. “We’re disabling these machines and reclaiming this mountain.”
“Uhh buddy,” Alpha Dog scoffed, “that’s illegal. This mountain belongs to the mining company. Or… well probably not…”
“The mining company has likely been granted permission by the state and federal government of the United States of America,” I informed him.
“Right, thanks,” Alpha Dog noted of my diligence. “You two are Justice Backers. You can’t run around destroying property. You’re upset; I get it. I don’t like looking at baby ducks being strangled by soda rings either. It doesn’t mean you can run around making people’s decisions for them and wrecking their livelihoods… and stuff. You want to talk about undoing things? How about leaving in the middle of the night and scaring the piss out of all of us. You remember us right? Your family? The people you’ve been fighting crime with for years. You’re trying to tell me after all that you’re just running off with some Lovecraftian mushroom?”
“We’re doing what we’ve always done,” Pawn stepped in to say when Transplant seemed speechless. “Taking the law into our own hands. We just don’t need money this time. We don’t need a consensus, or a poll, or a damn comments section. This planet is everyone’s livelihood Eben. This mountain is just as much mine as it is the miners’. I did not give them permission to tear it down.”
“But we can’t fight you,” Monkey Girl said as she wrung her hands.
“We can’t?” Alpha Dog asked sarcastically. The hounds growled at Justice Backers for the first time.
“We don’t want to fight you either. We’re still your family,” Transplant said. “Sometimes families have disagreements. We’re going to do what we have to.”
“It’s some kind of trick. The Lichen is controlling their minds,” Act-of-Goddess suggested.
“We’re not controlled; we’re convinced,” Pawn said. He chuckled spitefully. “Go back to the Bay. This isn’t for you guys. Go back and stop domestic abusers and drunk drivers and whatever socially inept terrorist is putting on a leotard this week.”
“That sure sounds like Pawn to me,” Alpha Dog said.
“Better yet,” Pawn went on, “go after the worst bad guy out there: Drill Baby. That guy is so selfish, so shortsighted, and so completely responsible for like eighty percent of the destruction that convinced the Lichen that action needed to be taken in the first place. He ignores the pathetically weak environmental laws anyway. He’s spilled more oil than we’ve spilled blood in all the wars ever. He owns these coal chewers too. Why don’t you go pay him a visit? Are you going to keep pretending you’re not getting Sportfish’s e-mails?” The question seemed to be directed at Alpha Dog personally.
If you do not know, Sportfish is Alpha Dog’s niece and an independent Justice Backer. This was the first I had heard of any e-mails from her, but I still trust Alpha Dog to do what is best for the team. If he thought they were not important, they were not important.
“We’ll get to him when we get to him. Right now you’re the only criminals I see,” Alpha Dog said.
“Maybe we should leave,” Monkey Girl said to no person in particular.
“I don’t care if we’re outnumbered by worms,” Alpha Dog spat.
“It’s not just worms,” Pawn said.
Transplant put his hand to the side of the tree. The wood splashed up and around his arm like a skin of water. Four more trunks emerged around us, two from behind. The tops opened like volcanoes and out surged strange beings. They were human in shape but bore green skin as well as floral and fungal mutations. I counted twenty-seven of them. I have become quite adept at befriending humans of color, but those green men and women still made me cautious. Perhaps it was their animal-like posture, knees bent and fingers splayed across the soil so lightly it was like they weighed the same as a fallen leaf. I was going to attempt a scientific classification, but Alpha Dog surprised all of us by ordering an attack. The hounds immediately assaulted the green men.
The team had no choice but to fight off the resulting tide of attackers. The situation was made direr by Rot and Venus joining their soldiers in the fray. I lost sight of Transplant and Pawn, but I could hear Dry Worm and her legless menagerie getting back to the business of destroying the site.
I immediately singled out Venus as the most dangerous. I attached my flame canister to the end of my rifle and made my way to her. (I have chosen the pronoun her based on body shape alone. I have been told this sort of thing may cause offense in the twenty-first century, so I encourage you to insert whatever pronouns make you the most comfortable.) Flames ate up the air in front of me, but when I stopped pulling the trigger she was nowhere to be seen. Total incineration was unlikely at those temperatures unless she was made of straw.
I tried to walk but was pulled back. I looked at my left ankle to see a smooth vine sticking out of the ground and locking me in place. I was about to slice it off with the bayonet I was holding in my left hand when Venus exploded out from under me. Her face split down the middle, creating a bear trap of plant flesh. The interior of her head was pink, red, and moist like a slice of watermelon. I got a very in-depth look as she attempted to crush my head in her vice grip.
I think I was saved by my hat, the shape of which got caught in the base of her trap. When Electric Eel sees or reads this, I imagine he will immediately regret his many snide remarks about that hat. That will have to do as its eulogy, since Venus shredded it and tossed the remnants into the wind. Her arms split as well, creating two more traps. She rose up on legs that were suddenly a set of four snaking vines and came down on top of me. One set of jaws tore my left arm from my body. Another ripped my weapon from me and tossed it away. I was a moment from destruction when Orb rolled in and smashed her off of me. I did not manage to get to my feet before three of the green men were on me, kicking my head and chest. One of my eyes went out. I had no prior memories of being half-blind. Even when I know I am nearly out of power and require a human hand to wind my key, I do not fear death as much as I did then. To me, half the world was destroyed.
A towering wall of crisscrossing roots and leaves pushed us all towards the unstable side of the site. The wall seemed to discourage the green men, as they lost interest in dismantling me and crawled back into their tree tunnels like ants. The wall pushed us so close to the edge of the hill that fighting became impossible. The hounds whined as they struggled to stay on the lip. It got so close that Orb had to exit his sphere in order to avoid rolling down. Venus and Rot stepped through doors in the wall that only existed for a moment. Then we heard Transplant speak through the tangled wall he was no doubt controlling. His voice was soft. There was no anger from our friend. I believe there was sadness.
“Go. You’ll have to take on the bad guys without us. We’re after the insidious part of everyone.” A root in the wall handed me my arm and my weapon. After I gathered them up I looked to the left and right to see the state of the other Backers. Act-of-Goddess was floating safely behind the wall, but the rest of us were practically on the tips of our toes trying to stay on flat ground. No one else was missing an arm, but Golden Boy had a black eye and plenty of scratches. Alpha Dog had a large twig planted in his right thigh. His anger seemed to distract him from the pain.
Transplant changed his wall to create two bridges up to our helicopters. He gave us no chance to argue with him or Pawn; he simply rolled the wall forwards until we had to ascend the bridges and take our seats in Chomp and Bit. Act-of-Goddess could have torn through it, but she judged it a fruitless maneuver. It wasn’t clear if there was anything that could be won from this fight even if we did force our way back into it.
Dejected and confused, we took our leave. There was much discussion on the way back as to our next course of action. Alpha Dog was adamant about locating the Lichen and destroying it. Everyone else was less sure. He asked Act-of-Goddess if she had any way of tracking such a creature and she answered that she would only be aware of the havoc they produced in the wild after it had begun.
Orb suggested a policy of live and let live. He thought that perhaps the traditional authorities bore a greater responsibility for both the triggers of this incident and the incident itself. Though Transplant and Pawn were valuable members of our team, it was not us who granted them superhuman abilities. As I am the newest member of the team, I do not often feel it is necessary to put my opinions up alongside the others. So I did not speak. I was too distracted by the missing half of the world to make much of an argument anyway. Monkey Girl stared at me oddly when my head jerked towards her. I was just checking to make sure her voice was still coming from her body. I do not know what kinds of lies or distortions the darkness of blindness might create.
Everyone separated when we returned to the Bay. I tried to speak to each of them individually, but I was waved away. I did not get a chance to say that my key was nearing the end of its rotations and I needed one of them to power me. I cannot reach to do it myself. They have always been available before. I stopped moving in one of our common areas. The last thing I saw was a forest of kelp in the tank in front of me. I thought of Transplant as my mind slowed to a halt.
In the third and final part of this diary, I will take questions from financial backers. I have allotted three slots.
Almightyfanbrush: Do you watch television? If so, what is your favorite program?
I primarily watch Spanish soap operas as I am learning the Spanish language. I also enjoy Black Entertainment Television.
G0bluefins83: What’s it like when your key isn’t moving? Do you dream?
Dreams are for humans. Dreamweaver could no sooner inhabit my mind than she could a video game console. My soul has a pause button. I do not feel pain or fear when booting up or shutting down. While answering your question I visited your Connectera page and noticed you are a Muslim. I have sent you a friend request.
Amodestbroposal: R u guys taking on Drill Baby or not? Cuz I really hope u dont. My dad works for 1 of his copanies and I like, u know, like 2 eat and would liek 2 maybe get 2 go 2 college. Almost everybody in my nayborhood works for him and who is going to replace all those jobs?
A positive action does not negate a negative one. A hypothetical question for you: A doctor goes out at night and kills random people equal in number to the amount of lives he saved at the hospital that day; should his actions be ignored? In fact, you are expressing the sorts of concerns Transplant and Pawn were talking about. What does a job matter compared to the ground you walk on, the food you eat, and the air you breathe? As a free individual who will likely never hold a traditional occupation, perhaps I am not the most qualified to answer this question. All of humanity could destroy itself and I might be left behind intact, transformed into a statue by your absence.
This is the conclusion of diary entry #57.