Guss's Story

The dray of 10 xamoyoadapiformes marched off into the high grass, led by their largest and oldest member Apada, and followed by their nine-foot-tall companion Belle who had taken to all fours and assumed a form more similar to that of their own, albeit with some slight differences. Whereas all of the other xamoyoadapises were quite small, averaging 3.5 to 4.5 feet long from snout to tail, Belle had shrunk only minorly to match and was still considerably longer than all of them by comparison. The scurry of squirrel-like primates were also more brownish red in color, having yellowish white bellies whereas Belle appeared to retain her natural greyish, black and white color with a banded tail resembling that of a ring-tailed cat squirrel or Bassariscus astutus, yet still very different from her original form.

The xamoyoadapiforms were also mostly naked, although some were partially clothed or wearing bits of armor and war paint, carrying very small crudely fashioned Bone Age weapons, whereas Belle was completely natural and unclothed, wearing nothing but her furry coat while carrying no weapons or luggage at all as she followed the rest of the dray to a small clearing in the jungle, where the rest of the tribe waited for her to catch up. Once in the clearing, Belle would notice another stranger who was standing beside a small fallen seed pod, looking at the rest of the gathering as they huddled around the coconut sized pod, chirping and barking amongst themselves. A fight broke out as the much larger, fatter rodential primate got into a domestic dispute with Apada, forcing him to back down and give up his role as the band's tribal leader within a matter of seconds as the fatter competitor chased him up a tree before approaching the dray. This very chubby squirrel-like comical character was Fat Guss, another member of their tribe who was just a little bit rounder and cheekier than the others. Fat Guss was Apada's cousin, one of the slower, lazier, more gluttonous bullies of the family who was still nevertheless very cute.

As the xamoyoadapiforms gathered around Fat Guss, and Apada slowly came back down from the tree to join their circle, they began whispering to themselves about the newcomer, Belle, making up all sorts of fanciful tales and stories about her with extremely intense performances and hand gestures as if putting on a show or play. Almost nothing any of them claimed was true at all as they began bickering and arguing again, slapping at each other and name calling before Fat Guss raised his seed staff and rattled it, causing everyone to simmer down. Fat Guss looked over at Belle and examined her for a moment while scratching his chin before coming to a definite conclusion about her. To him and his posse, it was obvious that Belle had been sent down from the twinkling dot-like thingies in the sky to protect their family and save the king. To the xamoyoadapises, Belle was their goddess and savior. But of course she was, it only makes sense. After all, what else could she be? She certainly wasn't a crocodile. Xamoyoadapises had one heck of an imagination -- but then again, it served them quite well in many if not most cases when surviving in the claws.

"All hail the great goddess and mother of all adapas! The prophecy has come true, just as I, the acorn shaman have foretold. The king is saved!" Fat Guss shouted, shaking his seed staff and causing it to rattle, taking full credit for Belle's arrival as if he had some magical gift for spiritual communication with the stars. The other small primates bounced around and cheered, dancing in circles around the king, who was still obscured from Belle's view behind the fallen seed pod. As they began cheering, two of the xamoyoadapiforms approached Belle and grabbed her by the arms, inviting her into their midst as they tried to tug her towards the circle so that she could get a better look and meet their king. But upon closer inspection, this was not at all what it had seemed like. As the scurry of squirrel-like lemurian primates bowed their heads and cleared a path for Belle, the colony's king became visible to her, and immediately the problem became quite apparent.

The king was not dead. The king was not poisoned, sick or ill. The king was not injured or in any serious danger at the moment. No, the problem was actually much, much simpler and way less complex than that. In fact, the king wasn't even a king at all. The "King" was a term used to describe a rather silly and comical, yet very common issue in their non-complicated gardening society. Instead, what the scurry of primates had gathered around was a group of other young squirrely primates whose furry tails had become stuck and knotted together. They had been chipping away at the giant seed pod until it fell to the ground, but in the process of this endeavor, some of their tails were covered in tree sap and caused the small group to become stuck together in a sort of knot that none of them could undo. The other adapises had tried to help, but they just weren't strong enough or clever enough to figure it out. They were all hoping that this newfound goddess with the opposable thumbs might be able to use her magical powers to undo this wicked curse and save the king before some other dangerous predator stumbled upon their location. To the adapas, this was Belle's destiny.

It had also become more clear now what Adapa was doing and his major role in all of this, for even though the other adapises had given up the hunt to capture Treda, still Adapa had not moved or deviated from his location, continuing to stare at her while flicking his tail around. Adapa wasn't engaging in some bizarre ritual or staring contest. He was distracting the Xamoyoan turtle in order to protect his king, which was only 150 feet away from the great home tree, hidden in the tall grass not far from their location. The heroic clever little rascal was trying to protect his family, as he suddenly began barking and chirping at Treda again, trying to get a reaction.

"Tchs tchs tchs chs cts chts ktchs!!!"

Treda did not respond to Adapa's chirping, but something else did. As the anomalous Belle took a moment to reflect on her past before working her magic and patiently using her intelligence to undo the knotted tails, a strange phenomenon took place. The other 11 adapises had gathered around her, forming a sort of protective circle around the goddess and their king. But they weren't looking around. Instead, they seemed to be focused on Belle and the five or six young adapises whose tails had become tangled and glued together. They were watching closely, observing what Belle was doing and occasionally glancing silently at one another before continuing to observe.



Apada and Fat Guss watched and listened. There was mostly only the sound of silence, with the breeze and the noise of the jungle causing the leaves and long saw-like grass to rattle and sway. There was a low rumbling, and Fat Guss looked down and rubbed his large round belly. Was he hungry again already? Fat Guss had just eaten a whole basket of mulberries before everyone showed up. He looked up at the demonstration again, watching Belle reverse engineer one of the Xamoyoadapiformes' most complex knots. The adapises had mastered the art of knot tying, but were now getting schooled in how to untie them. Some of the squirrel-like primates seemed to be lost in gaze at their own weapons and simple primitive costumes, which their inner-tree civilization had grown their entire culture and perception around for at least 200 years, if not longer. They were beginning to look at the knots they used to fashion such gear and question their own designs, seeing and retaining what Belle was teaching them.

They were learning and remembering what they see...

Fat Guss could feel the low rumbling again and looked down, rubbing his hand across his belly. He started to look up at the top of his seed staff, uninterested in the knotwork so much as the seeds themselves, trying to determine if he was still hungry. But then something strange began to happen. The rumbling got stronger, deeper and louder. "Guss, stop farting." Apada whispered, nudging Fat Guss with his elbow while his focus was fixed on Belle's craft. Fat Guss turned slowly and looked at him with a fixed, blankly awkward expression as the lower rumbling sound continued, the vibrations getting more intense. Fat Guss looked perplexed and speechless, staring at him. "Guss, wha-" Apada was about to elbow him again as he turned to look at Fat Guss, who was staring at him with a stupid look on his face. The rumbling was getting stronger, and by now Apada was beginning to feel the vibration also. Fat Guss began to shake nervously, his seed staff beginning to rattle slightly as Apada's eyes suddenly widened.

His ears perked up, and Apada turned around and gazed up at the giant banyan-like tree that was 150 feet away, looking at Adapa from a distance, who had been distracting the Xamoyan turtle by chirping and barking. Apada whistled through his buckteeth, catching Adapa's attention before chirping at him to stop barking. Adapa listened quietly, still looking at Treda cautiously while flicking his tail in spontaneous rapid gestures. But as the jungle began to move and he started to hear breaking branches and foliage, Adapa's ears twitched and his tail froze. There was a creaking and creeping, methodical high-pitched sound that sounded almost unnatural and mechanical. "Tchs... goddess? Chts tskcs, can we go faster?" Apada asked, seizing Fat Guss's wrist to make him stop shaking the seed staff. The slow, methodical creaking and buzzing of machinery became louder as it drew closer.

Suddenly all of the adapises in the small clearing were focused on the tall grass, close to but not exactly on the same paths they had come from. The grass to the tiny rodent-like lemurian lorisideia seemed like giant walls made of enormous green shoots and saw-like ferns, taller than themselves. But what was walking through the shrouded claws, partially rusted and covered in vines, was even taller than the grass. Fat Guss wasn't starving, and he didn't have gas at the moment. The rumbling sound was being caused by something larger and more dangerous trudging through the jungle, maybe even more dangerous than Treda who was already a massive predator. Adapa saw it first from his flattened perched gaze 10 feet above the turtle in the tall tree, and remained frozen, trying to figure out what it was that he could tell was nearing his position. Adapa couldn't smell anything different in the air which might suggest another lifeform was nearby, and found it difficult to see its full figure even as the unsuspected intruder approached within 10 feet of Treda, stopping abruptly.

It was an Automation Unit Killdrone...

AUK-53 as this more modern unit was called, the anthropomorphic cybernetic machine was carrying a high-energy rifle, wearing strange gear while making unusual noises. None of these things were familiar to anything else in all of their experience in the shrouded claws, and immediately Adapa was terrified, darting around to the back of the tree while climbing up higher and peeking around from the other side to focus solely on AUK-53, now staring directly at him without moving, starting the same process of his ritualistic staring contest all over again. "Gr-Greetingszzzz" the drone soldier or resistant fighter said as it stumbled upon them and detected their presence.

AUK-53 switched through its internal camera-sensitive cyber vision, detecting very little if any difference in the signatures at first before spotting the nest and the king on infrared, but on thermal setting he detected several heat signatures, perhaps more than he had bargained for when he entered the shrouded claws or the whale's belly. There was life hidden everywhere, camouflaged in plain sight, some smaller than the adapises, and some even larger than the turtle. Some had feet and some had wings, but almost none of them were bipedal, apart from the mostly arboreal giant great apes like Xamatopithecus or the small semi-bipedal primates like Xamoyoadapis, in this case, the small sentient and sapient loris-like rodential primates that were living inside the enormous banyan-like tree which towered even most of the other large giant trees which formed the jungle's dark canopy.

As he switched to infrared, the mammals and warm-blooded animals became invisible to AUK-53, but some of the exotic flowers and plant life became more vibrant and noticable, as did Treda's skeleton and Adapa's nest. As he switched his lenses and turned his spectrum back to the thermal setting, AUK-53's eye-like cameras started to detect the Xamoyoadapises quite clearly again through their colorful change in heat signatures, but their nests became invisible. Luckily for the adapises, their nests were in the core of the great tree, where it was very cold and damp, lacking any sunlight and too thick to detect with heat sensors. Adapa himself, however, stood out like a sore thumb, a bright contrast to the color of the tree he was poking his head out from behind to stare silently at AUK-53 with unblinking eyes, his tail beginning to dance and flick wildly side to side like a flimsy snake or tree branch, twitching with very rigid, sudden flickerings without rhythm or consistency, distracting any predators from his head or body as the other adapises 150 feet away from them started to scatter and hide, including Fat Guss who was the first to run for cover, stumbling and running into the brush without looking back.

But Apada and a couple of the more courageous xamoyoadipses stayed behind, waiting for Belle to finish her magic. Apada gripped his spear tightly with both hands and stood guard, determined to protect the king and goddess from whatever dangers might occur. Apada turned and looked up in the distance at the great giant home tree, but he didn't see Adapa this time. Adapa had finally changed positions and moved to a different spot, which caused Apada to breathe more heavily as he tried not to panic, turning to look at Belle. "No likey this feeling." Apada said quietly, looking down at the king. Meanwhile, Adapa stared at AUK-53 as it spoke. He thought he could understand what it was saying, but it sounded different, unnatural. Adapa didn't say or do anything, just stared at AUK-53 silently, trying to determine what to make of it as the drone soldier's form and shape became more visible to his more naturally, slower adjusting eyes which were unfamiliar with the drone.