Chimpanzee by Darin Bradley Page B

from the highway on your way into the mountains, where it seems small. Before, you could pay $40 to tour the inside. Learn the domestic secrets of the magnate who built it during the Gilded Age. When Civil War Reconstruction made white men rich. When they hired the men we’d freed.
    For $20 less, you could drive your car around the grounds, but you couldn’t get out. There used to be hundreds of acres of vineyards. There used to be guest houses and small hotels, done in the same style. You could visit during Christmas as a special event.
    Now, it is a club. People play golf upon the old vine beds. They swim and get massages and wave at the armed security guards on their ways in and out.
    The bus driver takes us off the highway, along the exit where the state’s brown road signs used to identify the mansion as a cultural destination. The rockslide is still fifty miles west, along the highway.
    We look at each other, at our wardens. No one says anything as the mansion’s security guards wave us through the front gate. We park behind a service building, where there is also a catering truck.
    You don’t get the same wardens every time. Like the crews, they rotate, along with the driver.
    The wardens stand. I can see our driver out of my window when he exits the cab. A man in a suit greets him—hands him an envelope—and the driver pulls money out of it. He starts counting.
    â€œAnyone here want to file a complaint?” one of the wardens says.
    We look away, hoping like students that they won’t call on us.
    â€œThe alternative is to break rocks in the hills,” the other warden says.
    â€œYou’ll be given rubber shoes to wear in the kitchen. Don’t touch them without permission. We see you bend over, that’s another day on your record.”
    The driver is satisfied. He signals the wardens.
    â€œNow, when we call your name, say ‘here.’” He pulls a small notepad out of his pocket. The other one is holding the worker manifest that Rosie brought him before we left.
    â€œCade?”
    â€œHere.”
    Now they know. Whom to go after, if this gets out.
    I wait while they take attendance.

    Because I am the only one in the bar, because it is 12:15 in the afternoon—because I ordered hard liquor, the bartender is letting me chimp for free. Again. She’s good. A professional. Asks no questions. Which is why I had to ask her myself, for the goggles. I only have so much money for the afternoon, and drinks are important. Dimitri and Sireen are both at work. It’s Thursday, after all. She won’t be home until after dinner, which is to say, after our usual dinnertime, because she has a department meeting. Dinner is now whenever she gets home, not when we get hungry. Spaghetti tonight, which I’m good at.
    This is important. The meeting is important. Her department has to figure out what to do with its vacant position.
    I’m not taking any chances this time. I’m already in the booth—I will not look at that carpet again while wearing these goggles. Apparently, sims have settings. Difficulty levels, which Dimitri didn’t tell me about. It also has networking capability. This bar offers access for free.
    I’m curious. I enable the network and set the difficulty level to its lowest. There is a tiny adjustment wheel on one of the earpieces. I need to see compulsion again. Obsession. I’m not interested in hallucinations or perversion. The menu offers thousands of available simulations.
    I sit still, quietly disturbed, and drink.

    What I’m seeing are feet. That is to say, the images appearing in my mind’s eye are feet. Mental seeing and vision are not connected, and there is no such thing as the mind’s eye.
    But whatever.
    The sim keeps stimulating disconnected images, none of which I care to see. Particularly annoying are the feet, which is why I think I keep seeing them. I’m looking down at them, as if they