The Case of the Shakespearean Super-Chimp

SOLVED: The Case of the The Case of the Shakespearean Super-Chimp

by Andrew May

First published in Folio (British Mensa) issue 138, December 2009 (Children's special)

Friday 2.30 pm. Parks Road.

It's not often that I've been able to solve a case all on my own, without the help of Pierce Stormson. In fact, it only ever happened once. It started as I was walking back to the Bodleian Library after lunch.

I was just passing a doorway marked "SILENCE: EXAMINATION IN PROGRESS" when I heard a piercing scream. It seemed to come from one of the science buildings across the road. I rushed over to see what the fuss was about.

I entered the building and found myself in some sort of laboratory. There was only one person there -- a young blonde woman in a lab coat and glasses. She took one look at me and screamed again.

"A damsel in distress!" I said. "Don't worry -- you're in safe hands now. I'm a member of SOLVED. That's the Secret Oxford League of Extracurricular Detectives, you know. My name's Melvin Root -- I'm Professor Stormson's right-hand man. Now, what made you scream like that?"

"You rushed in here like a madman," she pouted. "It was enough to make anyone scream."

"No, I mean before that."

"Oh, I had a bit of a shock, that's all. It's Bonzo, our experimental Chimpanzee. I think he's evolving."

I looked in the direction she was pointing and saw a young chimp sitting in a brightly coloured play area on the far side of the laboratory. He was gazing at a computer screen and eating a banana.

"He looks normal to me," I observed. "What happened, exactly?"

"Professor Boyd left me in charge of the experiment while he went out. I'm his research student -- my name's Melissa. Everything was going fine, until suddenly Bonzo... um... well, he started typing out Shakespeare's Hamlet."

I nodded in understanding. "A monkey typing Shakespeare, eh? Well, they always said it would happen sooner or later. It's lucky you called me in -- this is right up my street. The Case of the Shakespearean Super-Chimp!"

I went over to the play area and looked at the computer screen. Line after line appeared on it as I watched.

...Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres...

I turned my attention to the ape, who was licking out the remains of his banana. "Well I never! There are more things in heaven and earth, eh Bonzo?"

Bonzo gave me a scornful look and handed me the empty banana skin.

I gave the banana skin to Melissa. "You're mistaken," I told her. "The monkey isn't typing anything. He's just looking at the screen and the words are appearing."

"Ah, but that's the experiment, you see," she said. "He's wired up to the machine."

Now she pointed it out, I saw that Bonzo was wearing a fancy-looking metal band on his head with various protuberances around it.

"Look," Melissa went on. She picked up a fresh banana and handed it to the chimp. As he took it, an image of the banana appeared on the screen.

"Bonzo thinks of something, and it appears on the screen. That's the experiment, you see. But he was thinking of Shakespeare's Hamlet. That really isn't normal in an ape. He must be evolving."

"Maybe there's another explanation," I said. "How does this gizmo work, exactly?"

"It's very clever," she replied. "But you'd have to ask Professor Boyd for the details. It was his invention. It translates Bonzo's thoughts into radio waves and transmits them to the computer."

"Fancy electronics, eh?" I nodded thoughtfully. "This deserves further investigation. Hold on a moment while I call a colleague of mine -- she works up the road in Electrical Engineering."

I took out my mobile and found the person I wanted in the contact list. Sanyo Fujitsu -- another specialist member of the SOLVED network. Sanyo was to electrons what Miss Bateman was to bytes -- in other words, a guru. She was the electronics wizard who had saved half of Oxford from devastation in the notorious Case of the Rampaging Robot.

Sanyo arrived a few minutes later -- a petite Japanese girl in blue overalls and baseball cap. "What's up, Doc?" she asked, dumping her toolkit and other equipment on the floor.

I explained the situation to her. "What do you make of it?" I asked.

Sanyo made a quick inspection of Bonzo's headgear and the computer set-up. "Hmm... a very neat design. Does exactly what it says on the tin. The monkey thinks something and it appears on the screen. Couldn't have done better myself."

"But Hamlet, for heaven's sake!" I slapped my forehead in exasperation. "Bananas I can believe. Lady chimps I could believe. But Shakespeare -- there must be some other explanation! Could there be another radio signal coming from somewhere?"

"Crosstalk, you mean?" Sanyo scratched her head thoughtfully. " I suppose it's possible. It would have to be the same frequency, of course. Easy enough to find out."

She took out a signal meter and adjusted it carefully. Then she scanned it around the room.

"You're right, she said. "There is another signal, although it's very faint."

"Can you tell where it's coming from?"

Sanyo waved the meter around some more. "Over there," she announced.

Melissa looked in the direction she was pointing. "That's a broom cupboard," she said. "You mean Hamlet is coming from the broom cupboard?"

"Well, from that direction, anyway," Sanyo said doubtfully. "Perhaps a bit further away."

I suddenly remembered the sign I had seen earlier. "There was a notice in the street outside --something about 'Examination in Progress'..."

"Yes, over the road." Melissa pointed in the direction of the broom cupboard. "The Department of English -- they're holding their final examinations today. "

**********

Friday 8.30 pm. Holywell Street.

"... It turned out one of the students was better at electronics than he was at Shakespeare." I was recounting the whole thing to Stormson that evening. "He'd rigged up a really clever device for himself. Pretty much the reverse of the Bonzo set-up, in fact. A transmitter in his rucksack was beaming the text of Hamlet directly into his brain, via a false crown in his lower left molar. But we caught him, thanks to Bonzo."

"Well, I have to confess I'm disappointed at the denouement," Stormson sighed. "I was hoping an enterprising chimpanzee had finally taken it on himself to write the works of Shakespeare. But I suppose we shall just have to keep on waiting."

"Yes," I said. "But at least there's one mystery out of the way... The Case of the Shakespearean Super-Chimp. SOLVED."

THE END

SOME INTERESTING FACTS

1. In mathematics, there is something called the Infinite Monkey Theorem. This states that a monkey hitting keys at random will eventually type out the complete works of William Shakespeare... but only after millions and millions of years. Hence if people want to say that something is almost impossible, they say it's "as likely as a monkey typing Shakespeare".

2. Shakespeare's most famous play, Hamlet, was written around the year 1600. One of the characters in the play is a ghost -- the ghost of Hamlet's father, who is murdered before the play starts. But the play isn't a horror story or science fiction... it's just that in those days, everyone really believed in ghosts!

3. The experimental chimp in this story is called Bonzo, and his owner is Professor Boyd. Another experimental chimp called Bonzo, also owned by a man named Professor Boyd, appeared in the 1951 comedy film Bedtime for Bonzo. In the movie, Professor Boyd was played by Ronald Reagan, who went on to became President of the United States!