Pet King

The onlookers saw this monkey holding a toy keyboard and thought that it was the same type of act as the first monkey holding the toy erhu and playing “Two Springs Reflecting the Moon.” It would be nothing more than random hits on the keyboard. It would be somewhat like typing. Momentarily, they lost interest in the act. They would rather watch monkeys perform somersaults. Many requested to see monkeys perform that or climb the poles.

The man smiled. “Please, everyone, do you think that I, an old man, am deliberately fooling you? Let me tell you, it is real typing. If you don’t believe me, in a moment’s time, please look very carefully!”

With that, the woman took a tablet from the trunk of the car and started a word processing app. The couple used the tablet to watch movies every night by stealing other people’s Wi-Fi.

Someone dismissively said, “What typing? It’s merely randomly hitting the tablet. It is you that is saying that it is typing!”

“Oh! Of course not! Young one, it is all up to you now. Don’t embarrass your brothers! Otherwise, be careful! I will hit you!” The man pointed at the new monkey and threatened it while stroking his beard.

“Zzz…”

The new monkey was not accustomed to being tied with an iron chain on its neck. It felt that even breathing was not smooth. It always held the toy keyboard in one hand and pulled at the chain with its other hand. However, its strength was no match for a human’s. Regardless of how hard it resisted, it was still forcefully pulled to the center of the space.

When they had picked up this monkey, the couple had noticed that it held the toy keyboard like a baby. No matter where it went, it didn’t let go of it. From time to time, it turned on the key cap with its finger and typed furiously away. It was as if it could derive happiness from tapping on the keyboard.

The wife, who had been to high school, observed inadvertently that the letters it hit did not seem to be at random. Instead, it observed the rules of Hanyu pinyin. Although it was just a toy keyboard, it had a Bluetooth function and could be connected to a tablet.

She tried to connect the keyboard to the tablet and switched the input method to Hanyu pinyin. She was surprised to find that within the meaningless strings of sentences that it typed, there was an occasional sentence with a certain deeper meaning.

They’d studied it through the night to make sure that this was not accidental. As long as it typed long enough, for example, for more than ten minutes, there would definitely be a sentence that made sense. Sometimes, it took less than ten minutes.

The couple forcefully took the keyboard from the new monkey and brought out the other monkeys to test them. The other monkeys did not know how to use the keyboard. They only slammed on it in a silly manner or put it in their mouths.

The two of them thought that this monkey might not be ordinary. Perhaps this monkey had run out of a lab.

The woman was somewhat worried about whether it would have any germs and advocated for sending it away. If the laboratory found them, they could claim that they’d detained the monkey without authorization, and they may see a lawsuit coming their way.

The man thought somewhat differently. He’d picked this monkey up of his own accord, so why couldn’t he keep it? He intended to take it to perform in his show. Even if the lab found it, they would have to spend money to get it back.

Because of its unknown origins, they were much nicer to this new monkey. Apart from strictly preventing it from escaping, they did not really use the whip to strike it. In addition, its food was better than that of the other four monkeys.

The other four monkeys did not take well to this new monkey joining them. Why was it treated preferentially and got to eat better than them? Therefore, whenever the couple was not paying attention, the other four monkeys always looked for opportunities to bully the newcomer. They pushed it, screamed at it, and grabbed its food from it.

The new monkey didn’t compete with them. It merely held on to the toy keyboard and hid at the farthest distance allowed by the chain length.

Today, the couple were taking it out for its official performance for the first time, and the man hoped to rely on it to make a good impression.

“Come, young one. Sit down and type for everyone.” The man took out a small table and a small bench, indicating that the new monkey was to sit on the bench.

Being stared at by a hundred hot eyes, the new monkey was scared, and with a heavy iron chain around its neck, it almost couldn’t walk. It sat on the small bench in horror and kept scanning the crowd.

“Come on. Don’t look around. Look here, look here.”

The man patted the table and guided its gaze to the tablet, and the cursor flashed at the beginning of the open blank document.

He gestured to the keyboard and indicated to it to start typing.

The crowd was basically skeptical. It was not so much like watching a monkey type words, but more like watching a magic show by the popular magician Liu Qian during spring festival shows and trying to figure out the crux of the magic.

“Type! Did you hear me?”

The man saw that the new monkey was always looking at the faces in the crowd. He decided to raise his short whip. Although he did not whip it, the monkey had seen him do so with the other monkeys—killing a monkey and letting the other monkeys see was much more effective than killing a chicken and showing the monkey.

“ZZZ!”

The new monkey was so scared that he quickly put the keyboard on the table and used a single claw to tap on the keyboard, making a gesture to indicate that it was preparing for typing—not to mention that its pose looked quite decent. It was at least much better than the monkey who had played the erhu.

Tap!

Tap! Tap!

The new monkey’s finger landed on the key cap, and the corresponding text appeared in the tablet’s document.

“Hey, is it really typing?”

“Is there someone else typing? Is this monkey just pretending?”

The onlookers saw that this was something new and started discussing it.

The person closest to the monkey stretched his neck and observed it carefully. He found that the monkey did not seem to be pretending. Wherever its thumb landed, the corresponding letter appears in the document. For example, when it pressed “W,” the input method would prompt the Chinese character that meant “I.” It continued typing out a string of letters, and the tablet input method displayed the corresponding Chinese character prompt.

If it was pretending, and there was someone behind the scenes, typing with another Bluetooth keyboard, it would be impossible to fully synchronize the entire typing performance.

Others had also come closer to see if it was true that this monkey was indeed typing. Although the words typed did not make much sense when strung together as a sentence and therefore has no inherent meaning, it was undeniable that it was typing.

“Hey, how did you train this monkey? Very impressive!”

“Wow! This monkey really looks as if it is typing hard, but its posture is slightly awkward…”

“WeChat collection: five yuan.”

“WeChat collection: ten yuan.”

Ten minutes passed. Although some people gave money, this obviously did not meet the expectations of the couple.

When they had tried it last night, it could create one meaningful sentence within ten minutes, but today there were no signs of that at all.

As for the reason… They found that the new monkey had been pulling the iron chain with one hand and typing with one hand. It had not been chained during the test last night, which obviously would seriously affect its typing efficiency.

The two looked at each other and agreed to take the iron chain off. Anyway, there were two big dogs guarding it. There were also a ton of people forming a three-layer human barrier. It would be impossible for it to run away.