Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff
white room (i)
IT’S A ROOM AN UNINSPIRED PLAY-wright might conjure while staring at a blank page: White walls. White ceiling. White floor. Not featureless, but close enough to raise suspicion that its few contents are all crucial to the upcoming drama.
A woman sits in one of two chairs drawn up to a rectangular white table. Her hands are cuffed in front of her; she is dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit whose bright hue seems dull in the whiteness. A photograph of a smiling politician hangs on the wall above the table. Occasionally the woman glances up at the photo, or at the door that is the room’s only exit, but mostly she stares at her hands, and waits.
The door opens. A man in a white coat steps in, bringing more props: a file folder and a handheld tape recorder.
“Hello,” he says. “Jane Charlotte?”
“Present,” she says.
“I’m Dr. Vale.” He shuts the door and comes over to the table. “I’m here to interview you, if that’s all right.” When she shrugs, he asks: “Do you know where you are?”
“Unless they moved the room…” Then: “Las Vegas, Clark County Detention Center. The nut wing.”
“And do you know why you’re here?”
“I’m in jail because I killed someone I wasn’t supposed to,” she says, matter-of-factly. “As for why I’m in this room, with you, I guess that has something to do with what I told the detectives who arrested me.”
“Yes.” He gestures at the empty chair. “May I sit down?”
Another shrug. He sits. Holding the tape recorder to his lips, he recites: “June 5th, 2002, approximately nine forty-five a.m. This is Dr. Richard Vale, speaking with subject Jane Charlotte, of…What’s your current home address?”
“I’m kind of between homes right now.”
“…of no fixed address.” He sets the tape recorder, still running, on the table, and opens the folder. “So…You told the arresting detectives that you work for a secret crime-fighting organization called Bad Monkeys.”
“No,” she says.
“No?”
“We don’t fight crime, we fight evil. There’s a difference. And Bad Monkeys is the name of my division. The organization as a whole doesn’t have a name, at least not that I ever heard. It’s just ‘the organization.’”
“And what does ‘Bad Monkeys’ mean?”
“It’s a nickname,” she says. “All the divisions have them. The official names are too long and complicated to use on anything but letterhead, so people come up with shorthand versions. Like the administrative branch, officially they’re ‘The Department for Optimal Utilization of Resources and Personnel,’ but everyone just calls them Cost-Benefits. And the intel-gathering group, that’s ‘The Department of Ubiquitous Intermittent Surveillance,’ but in conversation they’re just Panopticon. And then there’s my division, ‘The Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons…’”
“Irredeemable persons.” The doctor smiles. “Bad monkeys.”
“Right.”
“Shouldn’t it be Bad Apes, though?” When she doesn’t respond, he starts to explain: “Human beings are more closely related to great apes than—”
“You’re channeling Phil,” she says.
“Who?”
“My little brother. Philip. He’s a nitpicker, too.” She shrugs. “Yeah, I suppose technically, it should be apes instead of monkeys. And technically”—she lifts her arms and gives her bracelets a shake—“these should be called wristcuffs. But they’re not.”
“So in your job with Bad Monkeys,” the doctor asks, “what is it you do? Punish evil people?”
“No. Usually we just kill them.”
“Killing’s not a punishment?”
“It is if you do it to pay someone back. But the organization’s not about that. We’re just trying to make the world a better place.”
“By killing evil men.”