Ack-Ack Macaque (7 page)

German ninjas were good. They could move through a forest almost soundlessly, cross a field of wet grass without bending a single blade. But however hard they tried, they couldn’t hide their smell. Even if they bathed for a week, he’d still pick up the tang of their soap. Hanging from a branch by his feet and tail, Ack-Ack Macaque lay in wait, a chrome-plated revolver in each hand.

Darkness above, darkness below. Nothing but the sound of his own rasping breath. No smells but those of dark soil and fallen leaves.

He stayed motionless for several minutes, until he was quite sure he was alone. Then he holstered the revolvers and pulled himself up into the forest canopy.

M
OVING THROUGH THE
branches, it took him only a few minutes to reach the edge of the woods. Beyond, the Chateau stood unlit in the moonlight, its windows shuttered and curtains drawn. Guards patrolled in the gravel drive in front of the building, where half a dozen black-painted V2 rockets rested on parked mobile launch trailers, and a tripod fighting machine towered over everything else.

The fighting machines were the latest in a long line of diabolical Nazi inventions. They stood twenty metres in height, balanced on three sturdy legs, and bestrode the countryside like giant insects, belching clouds of diesel smoke and dispensing fire and death from the artillery mounted on their thick, armoured bodies.

Ack-Ack Macaque checked the luminous hands of his wristwatch. If his squad had survived the jump, they’d be lurking in the trees nearby, awaiting his signal. Their mission was simple: destroy as much equipment as possible, and recover codebooks and operating instructions for the rockets.

Ack-Ack Macaque dropped from branch to branch, until his bare feet hit the mossy ground beneath the tree. He pulled his revolvers from their holsters and let out a screech.

In answer, the tree line lit up with small arms fire. The German guards scattered. Some shot back. He heard the
pap pap pap
of their bullets punching through the undergrowth.

“Okay,” he muttered, “let’s get this over with.”

On all fours, he scurried in the direction of the Chateau, running directly beneath the towering tripod. Shots whined past him like angry bees. The grass felt cool beneath his palms.

At the front door, he dropped into a shoulder roll and came up with a grenade in either hand. He tossed both at the nearest V2 trailer and, while they were still in the air, whipped out his revolvers and plugged the four guards nearest to him.

A throwing star hissed past his face. He turned. Black-clad ninjas ran at him. Five or six of them, with blood-red swastikas sewn on their chests. Teeth bared, he started shooting, knowing they’d be on him before he got them all.

But then the ground bucked. A flash. A roaring blast. White heat hit him, and slammed him against the wall of the chateau.

A
CK-
A
CK
M
ACAQUE LAY
in the rubble for what seemed like a very long time. His ears rang. Everything smelled of brick dust and plaster, and scorched monkey hair. From where he lay, he could see that part of the chateau’s façade had collapsed, spilling stone and broken glass onto the gravel driveway. A fire raged on one of the upper floors.

He got to his feet, miraculously unhurt, and brushed dust from his singed fur. Ten metres away, a smoking crater marked the spot where the V2 had detonated on its trailer. The other trailers had been damaged in the blast. Two had tipped over. One was on fire. The tripod fighting machine lay on its side, its body smashed amongst the trees, one insectile leg sticking upward at an awkward angle.

Ack-Ack Macaque looked around for the ninjas who’d been about to attack him. They lay twisted and dead in the wreckage of the chateau’s front wall, their limbs as bent and broken as twigs, their internal organs pulverised by the blast wave from the exploding rocket.

“This isn’t right,” he said. He patted his chest and stomach. Not a scratch on him. No internal pain. He caught sight of something silver: his guns. He picked them up and looked around. Over the noise in his ears, he heard the sounds of fighting in the trees. The battle had moved into the forest.

“Not right at all.” He frowned at the bomb crater. The blast had been enough to demolish the solid stone frontage of the old chateau, but somehow he’d emerged unscathed.

“There’s no way in hell I could have survived that.” The ninjas had been squashed like bugs. How had he escaped? It didn’t seem fair. Why was he always the last one standing? His mind filled with images of burning planes. Over the past few months, he’d seen so many young pilots crash to their deaths; yet here he was again, with hardly a scratch on him.

Fatigue rinsed away the last of his strength. Everything seemed pointless and hollow, and all he wanted was to rest.

He had two bullets left in each revolver. Legs unsteady and ears still ringing from the explosion, he began to walk in the direction of the gunfire. As he did so, he saw a group of German guards emerge from the trees.

“Hey!” he hollered. “Over here!”

They turned towards him and opened fire. He didn’t even try to dodge. He was too tired. He kept walking as their shots peppered the ground around his feet, kicking up mud and gravel. He heard bullets whine past, inches from his face; he felt the wind of their passing, yet nothing hit him. The Germans emptied their weapons, and then lowered them. They didn’t seem to know what to do. Some of them started to reload.

Ack-Ack Macaque’s fists were clenched around the butts of his Colts. His lips were drawn back to show his fangs.

“Is that it?” he demanded. His tail thrashed back and forth. “Is that the best you’ve got?”

The Germans began to back away. Ack-Ack Macaque screeched at them. His heart rattled in his chest. All the exhaustion and fear bubbled up inside him, like water boiling in a pan. He hadn’t slept in such a long, long time.

“Come on! Why won’t you kill me too? Look at me, I’m standing right here!” He was almost upon them now, yet none of them raised a weapon. Even the ones who’d reloaded seemed nonplussed and unsure what to do. He hissed at them. He beat his chest with his forearms, challenging them. Two of them turned and fled. The rest stood there wide-eyed, guns drooping.

He wanted to fling his own shit at them. Rub it in their gormless faces.

“Why’s it always me?” He sprang at the nearest, and they crashed back together, into the grass. The man struggled, but Ack-Ack Macaque shook him by the lapels of his tunic.

“Why won’t you kill me?” he screeched, canines centimetres from the man’s face. “
Why can’t I die
?”

TECHSNARK

BLOGGING WITH ATTITUDE

Everybody Loves The Monkey

Posted:
24/11/2059 – 5:00pm GMT

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With dozens of major new titles released every month, the game world thrives on novelty. How then, given that it’s been a full twelve months since the launch of Céleste’s flagship product
Ack-Ack Macaque
, can the title still be the number one most popular game on the immersive entertainment market? I mean, that’s not how it works, right?

Wrong.

The reasons for
Ack-Ack Macaque
’s phenomenal success are fourfold:

First off, they’ve managed to keep interest high by strictly limiting the number of players allowed in-game at any one time. New players can’t join until old ones are killed off or quit. With only 10,000 places up for grabs, and an estimated world gaming population of around 30 million, this lends the game a certain exclusivity.

Secondly, the whole one-life deal means players see the game as the ultimate test of their abilities. In the world of
Ack-Ack Macaque
, just like in real life, there are no second chances, and the challenge is to survive as long as possible. Players who don’t take the game seriously get wasted early, and they don’t get to come back. Once you’re out of the game, you’re out for good. Those who’ve put a lot of time and effort into developing their characters have a vested interest in keeping them alive.

Thirdly, the whole social media side of the game makes it more than just a shoot-em-up. In between missions, players get to hang out together. They can talk to their friends, trade planes and equipment, and form alliances. There’s even an online dating agency operating entirely within the game’s virtual world.

And lastly, there’s the immersive experience itself, which is still light years ahead of its nearest rivals. The world of
Ack-Ack Macaque
has been so faithfully rendered that it’s sometimes hard to distinguish it from reality. It’s like being transported to another planet. The sun feels warm on your face and the food tastes the way food should. When you touch the other players, they feel solid and human. A punch feels like a punch, a kiss feels like a kiss. And a bullet to the chest feels like a bullet to the chest.

Put these things together, and it’s not hard to see why the game’s become such a monster. For a few hundred bucks, you can buy yourself a whole new life.

And let’s not forget the appeal of the iconic monkey himself. I really have to take my hat off to Céleste for creating such a believable character. Truly a masterpiece of artificial intelligence and CGI animation, he neither acts nor talks like a computer. In fact, you could almost believe he was a real monkey.

A year after he first appeared on our gaming screens, you can now see his face everywhere, from lunch boxes, screensavers and t-shirts to plush toys and action figures. His trademark screech became last year’s highest-selling ringtone, and millions of viewers continue to re-watch his most famous exploits on YouTube. Last Halloween, half the kids in my neighbourhood were dressed as him.

And therein lies the appeal of this game. Simply put, everybody loves the monkey. Long may he continue to fly.

Ack-Ack Macaque is available on SincPad, TuringBox, and Playcube 180. A PC version is also in development.

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CHAPTER SIX

ARMED AND HUMOURLESS

M
EROVECH,
J
ULIE AND
Frank climbed down from the back of the van. They were parked on a service road in an industrial park north of Paris, on the edge of the Céleste Technologies campus. Squalls of rain blew across the sculptured lawns. Merovech lifted the bottom of his ski mask and filled his lungs with wet night air. He could feel the coldness of it in his chest, and it felt good after the suffocating fug of the smoke-filled van. The driver and his companion were already at work on the security fence with an oxyacetylene cutting torch. The blue flame roared. Hot metal hissed when the rain touched it.

Merovech blinked away afterimages. He looked around.

“Is that a camera?” He pointed to a black globe atop a metal pole a few metres along the fence.

Frank flicked a dismissive hand.

“
C’est cassé
.”

“How do you know?”

Frank opened his coat to reveal the butt of an airgun tucked into his belt.

“Because we broke it.”

The cutting torch flicked off, and a circle of security fence fell inward, onto the lawn. The two men with the torch stepped back, allowing Frank to duck through the hole.

“
Allez
!”

Bent double, pendant swinging, Frank ran across the lawn, towards an ornamental hedge. Julie ducked towards the fence, ready to follow, but Merovech caught her arm.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

Behind her ski mask, her pupils were dilated.

“We must.”

She slipped through the fence, and was gone.

Merovech looked back, down the empty road, in the direction of the city. He could leave now. He could walk away, use his phone to summon his bodyguards, and be back in his rooms at the University, warm and safe, within the hour.

But what would happen to Julie?

He knew the Céleste labs well. At his mother’s insistence, he’d endured exhaustive and uncomfortable health checks at the facility each and every month for the past ten years. He’d had gene tweaks to edit out some of his family’s less desirable traits; corneal grafts to improve his eyesight; and a whole barrage of hormones, vitamins and other supplements designed to boost his mental and physical wellbeing. As a result, he knew the layout of the building by heart, and he also knew how tight the security was. Frank and Julie didn’t have a hope. Without him, they couldn’t achieve their objective, and would both likely end up in jail, if they didn’t first attract the lethal ire of the armed and humourless security bots.

Although he couldn’t give a toss about Frank, he didn’t want to see Julie throwing her life away over some obscure philosophical point. They might have only known each other for a few short weeks, but he liked her.

He realised the driver and his mate were looking at him impatiently. The driver jerked a thumb at the hole.