Inside a thick glass dome was a single slate grey chimpanzee. The glass dome was approximately a foot thick and had a one hundred foot diameter. If you were to climb inside of it, you would experience a strange sensation. Most likely, you would notice the lack of human influence. You would think to yourself: This is terribly humid and rancid! And where are the people? I can’t live this way!

And you would be right in observing that no one else was there. The chimpanzee was also right in observing this. The chimpanzee however, saw the humid and rancid place as a perfectly fine area. Also unlike you, Redemptor, as he was called by the trees, had never seen any form of intelligent life. Of course, he had observed the various grubs and flies in his Eden. However they were far from intelligent. Redemptor reassured himself of this often.

Redemptor knew that they were not intelligent because he trapped the insects. It wasn’t just from trapping them that Redemptor knew that they weren’t intelligent- it was because they never tried getting out of his feeble entrapment. He captured them in a square log formation covered with leaves. The insects, be they ants or termites, they simply re-established what they had. Ants made extensive caverns anew and the termites burrowed in the wood. Neither though, expressed a will to explore more.

However, when the chimpanzee put them together, he noticed something different happened. Each species of insect so hated the other that they tried to eat each other. At first, Redemptor wondered what had gone wrong. He was so appalled that the first five or six trials, he tried to intervene. Barriers were built and the space would be enlarged, but nothing seemed to solve the problem. So Redemptor accepted that the insects knew nothing about how to live life. This is how he justified eating them.

Ants and termites were not alone on the list of what Redemptor ate; he enjoyed a long list of life forms. Parts of trees were his favorite. He would extract its fruit, leaves, and bark very carefully. He never intended to hurt them. The trees weren’t intelligent to Redemptor, but he knew that they knew more than him. They never got into fights. In this, Redemptor knew they must be smarter than the insects. Trees also gave Redemptor everything he wanted. His favorite one was named Amicus. Redemptor never took from Amicus; he felt that would be stealing from him. Amicus often spoke to Redemptor

Of course, Redemptor did not make up these names. He learned the names Redemptor and Amicus from Amicus. He spoke through his leaves. Whenever the force came by and rustled his hair, he knew it was time to see Amicus. Its green extensions moved against each other and said many things. Once, it had told Redemptor that he would be a very dumb chimp to leave him. Redemptor agreed with him. Amicus was very valuable; Redemptor once let him know this in a series of experimental shrieks.

Redemptor was surprisingly happy. Of course, this wasn’t particularly shocking to him. But the scientists who watched him and analyzed him for hours upon hours were a bit confused. They had thought that he would display some sort of false need. The scientists had it, even though some of them would deny it. It bit at them all day; they were doing this to prove that their false need was “natural”. So they decided to change up some things. They needed information, and they didn’t understand what they were learning at that point.

The next whatever, Redemptor didn’t know any measurements, when Redemptor was relieved from the dark he saw a difference. A lot of the trees had disappeared. Other chimps had appeared. He’d never seen anything like this before. Redemptor needed Amicus. So he plopped himself in front of the tree and waited for the force on his fur.

There was a need in his stomach, so he searched for insects on the ground. He didn’t move from Amicus though. A few chance termites crawled out from their respective logs, and this kept Redemptor happy for the time being.

For three more whatevers Redemptor waited for Amicus. Almost all the trees were gone now. The other chimps had infested them. The force was seemingly gone. Whereas at one point in time he couldn’t stop his doctrines, Amicus was keeping a tight lock on his extensions now though.

Once, Redemptor had tried to talk to one of the chimps. But the chimpanzee couldn’t understand him. The foreign chimp was on his tenth piece of fruit. He had the false need the scientists talked about.

Eventually the termites stopped coming; so Redemptor no longer ate. Luckily, there was a small pond of water next to Amicus, but that was almost gone. Redemptor worried that all the trees would be gone before Amicus talked. His gray hair became a crimped white.

Redemptor’s carcass was splayed all over the roots of Amicus. Ants stole from him. They took his face and his intestines and his stomach. Deus had not even considered this as a possibility. Deus didn’t even know about death. Amicus did though, and Redemptor’s lifeless body supplied his roots with vital nutrients.

“Project Famulus failed,” the lead scientist stated.

“What does that mean?” an intern inquired.

“Famulus, the chimp, he died.”

“There was that one large tree with all the fruit though! None of the other chimps took it; it was his territory. Why wouldn’t he take anything from that?”

The lead scientist shrugged his shoulders at the intern.