4.
Although Floy, the simian who invented the 0 1 binary code
used in computers all over the planet in the 10.000 Hour Monkey Typing Pool was
technically in police custody he suddenly found himself in the unique position
of being the only Macaque Crested monkey to have diplomatic immunity; the
Ecuadorian government refused to allow him to be removed from its Embassy. The
disappearance of Julian Assange and the appearance of Floy in his absence sent
the nation into yet another bout of introspection and conjecture.
It was a while before Lady Gaga, the international singer
was even remotely linked to the Wikileaks founder absconding the territory from
his place of asylum a few yards from Harrods in Knightbridge. In the interim
period many witnesses came forward to say they had seen the men who had executed
the kidnapping of Assange ; Some came forward to say they heard the abductors speaking
German though they themselves did not speak German. Others swore blind they
spoke Greek and a ransom demand to pay off the Greek National Debt was posited.
Bulgarians and Romanians were also placed at the scene which fed the already
isolationist consensus that whoever they were, continental Europe
was at fault. A Palestinian academic recognized the Hebrew language in their
gruff commands to a struggling Mr Assange. A Russian millionaire
claimed the gang were Russian and used Polonium. Emotive and flagrantly xenophobic words became
the order of the day. After the owner of a local newsagency declared he may
have seen 'Middle-Eastern types' in the vicinity the words ‘Storm’ and ‘Al Queda’
were unduly linked to the word ‘Embassy’ and as front page headlines appeared
in the red-top tabloids a noxious alchemy somehow transmuted a formerly
vilified Assange into hero again, the word ‘kidnap’ having crept, first into
the periphery of the nation’s sight, then by dint of general and customary
apathy, into the dead-centre of its slumbering awareness. Suddenly others came
forward, taxi drivers, neighbours, shoppers, and the inevitable opinionated old
bag-lady. “ I see everything that goes on ‘round here”, she said, a veritable
fortress of coats, scarves, zimmer frames and shopping trolleys protecting her
from the world’s scorn.
A recently homeless middle-class family had been rooting
through the dustbins in an alleyway immediately behind the famous department
store’s Food Hall in search of foie gras and jars of out-dated lobster bisque.
“Yes, they were dark men, three of them”. Declared Mrs Evans as she held a Harrods
bag in full view of the camera, her radar for respectability still partially
intact. This single interview with the down-and-out yet well-spoken Evans
family secured coverage in the broadsheets. “From what I saw, I can safely say
that Mr Assange seemed reluctant to leave with his captors. “ Mr Evans, a former
careers advisor, told the press. “Are you saying Mr Assange was forced at gun
point?” Someone asked pressing a recording device forward. “That might have
been the case, but I am not…” As though the wind had changed direction, those
who traded in smoke without fire, as suddenly, lost interest; AL QUEDA LEADS
JULIAN ASSANGE FROM EMBASSY AT GUNPOINT hit evening rush-hour newsstands across
Britain
A murderous chronology of hostage-takings, beheadings and
heinous acts against western civilisation presented itself to the weary
commuter adding to the general and generalized fear of the ‘other’ gleefully fostered
by the Daily Mail and the Telegraph; many phoned home to warn their spouses
once again to stay within the besieged boundaries of the garden fence. Scaffolders,
working on a nearby building detecting an opportunity for their five minutes of
fame came forward to swear unanimously they had seen the driver of the white
get-away van. However, their story was refuted by a Nigerian Traffic Warden, a
Mr Ade Anuolua who testified that no such vehicle would have left unticketed on
his beat. “If I had encountered these people, I would have held them in negotiations
and pointless discussions”. A white South African intervened to declare,
boorishly that he was taking over the whole crisis single-handedly.
Floy now made appearances at the balcony window in place of
its former guest and tourists threw exclusive chocolates and organic bananas
bought from Harrods and Harvey Nichols into his out-stretched arms while the
nation cringed. Had this ape been left as a token insult, for that is how it
felt. A negotiator was sent to the window, ducking an assortment of luxury
foodstuffs to plea-bargain with Floy, to no avail. A female Macaque Crested
monkey was found in Harrods’ Exotic Pets Department and in a role reversal of
Romeo and Juliette, stood bewildered before the balcony; it was hoped she would
somehow translate the preference of life in the basement of a department store
over that of a Latin American embassy. Instead she merely grunted at Floy,
gathered what she could of the fallen chocolates and organic bananas and
indicated to her keeper that she would now like to return to her cage.
Meanwhile, Floy had, with his feet, surreptitiously and deftly removed the
bunch of keys dangling from the keeper’s belt and on her departure gave his new
female Macaque Crested friend, who he found exceedingly pretty, a knowing grunt
in return.
Messers Pilger, Lynch, Moore, and Miss Kahn now found that
the bail money of three hundred and forty thousand pounds collectively stumped
up for bail was, in the blink of a mischievous Supreme Court Judge’s eye, now
transferred to the conditions of Floy’s house arrest, the reflected glory of
which did not have the same shine as that of the internet revolutionary Julian
Assange. In the mendacious scramble to recoup the money there followed among
the contributors a great deal of mud-slinging and there was no part of the
absent man’s ego that was not retrospectively torn to shreds. Furthermore, in an
act of one-upmanship over the Supreme Court Judge’s decision they declared that
the bail money, three hundred and forty thousand pounds was now being offered up
as a reward for Mr Assange’s capture, dead or alive. In the days and weeks that
followed the announcement, anyone looking even remotely like the Wikileaks
founder had a very hard time of it indeed.
A government Think-Tank convened an emergency meeting at the
revelation that Assange had indeed fled voluntarily concealed in one of Lady
Gaga’s most extravagant costumes to date; how could an apology for the
veritable rivers of crud written in the national press, online and spewed forth
in the media 24/7 about the, generally gentle and hospitable Arabic speaking
races be avoided? It was to Inspector Salamander
Buckle’s absolute amazement that a mug-shot of the Algerian who had met his end
in and been discovered by him up the chimney with the Ecuadorian Ambassador was
published with two fresh bullet holes where bullet holes should not have been;
his swarthy death-mask exonerating Lady Gaga in one yawn of national soporific
collusion. Some years later, Salamander Buckle’s illustrious career would end
somewhat less illustriously in a field some yards away from the suicide note,
incorporated into a thrushes’ nest, of an equally isolated former weapons
inspector.
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