Jay Lake and the Last Temple of the Monkey King

“
Jay Lake and the Last Temple of the Monkey King
” copyright © 2014 by 
Ken Schole

Art copyright © 2014 by wesley allsbrook

Publish Date: Fri Jun 6 2014 9:00am

From Beth Meacham, Senior Editor at Tor Books, on the acquisition of this short story:

Several days before Jay Lake’s death on June 1st, I was talking to Ken about his unfinished novel, science fiction, the universe and related subjects. He said he’d just run across the third of the stories about Jay that he’d written for Jay’s birthday parties. He wondered if I wanted to read it. I said “sure!” It was funny and loving and contained much of the essence of Jay.

And then three days later, Jay died, just five days before his 50th birthday. No party this year. I asked Ken what he thought about having Tor.com publish the birthday story, which has never before seen print. Somehow, it seems like a good idea. Jay would walk an extra ten miles uphill to get a good laugh, and there’s no reason not to honor that in his passing. Here’s Ken’s own description of how the story emerged into existence:

“I wrote ‘The Last Temple of the Monkey King’ for Jay’s birthday in 2007. I’d written two previous stories, ‘Jay Lake and the Inscrutable Alien Story Device’ and ‘Jay Lake and the Mole Men of Mars’ in the years prior. With this one, I did a Tuckerization contest for best title. I think Jay was the judge and I recall that Scott Roberts, one of my Writers of the Future cohorts, won and was written into the story as a hired assassin. I also wrote myself (Trailer Boy) and Frank Wu into the story with lots of inside jokes. Jay and I had met because of his review of my story “Edward Bear and the Very Long Walk” and my orange bicycle story was one of his favorite bar con tales. This was in that last year before Jay’s cancer showed up and so many of my family members started dying in a mad rush. Lamentation was written and had just been submitted to Tor. It was a golden time in our friendship. And as I had in previous years, I delivered the story to Jay—and read it—at JayCon, where it was received with much laughter by a crowd of celebrants. Jay was larger than life and full of good humor in everything that he did. He lived honestly in madcap pursuit of what he loved with eye for adventure (or misadventure as the case may be) and helping others along. I think it’s fitting that this tale of derring-do—Jay Lake, action hero—be published on his birthday. I wrote it to make him laugh. Of course, I cry now when I read it. But I also smile because my friendship with Jay was really like no other. It had a sense of play to it that often reduced us to snorting and laughing—along with whoever happened to be around—or writing like fiends from the spark of our imaginations when they got into the same room. There will only ever be one Jay Lake. Happy Birthday, Pal.”

 
“Jay Lake and the Last Temple of the Monkey King”

The tin can vibrated against the brick basement wall and Jay Lake reached for his pruning shears by habit before stopping himself. He’d cut the string two hundred thirty seven times and he’d recycled two hundred thirty seven tin cans before he’d finally given up. The Administration could call. They could use their cowboy ninjas to install their shiny new cans in the dead of night.

“But I don’t have to answer,” he told the cat that slept on his keyboard.

The can vibrated again and Jay sighed before grabbing it and raising it to his ear.

The sound of heavy breathing far away, wrapped in tin.

“Mr. President,” he said in a careful, measured voice, “this is ridiculous.”

He heard stifled giggles behind a hand held over the can and then a voice. “I told you, Waylon. The kid picks up every time.” Then more heavy breathing.

Jay thought carefully about his words. “Mr. President, once more I feel the need to remind you that sexual harassment is — ”

A new voice filled the can. A soft voice full of menace. “Ah,” the new voice said, “the inestimable Mr. Lake.”

Jay blinked. “Mr. President?”

The voice chuckled. “I’m afraid the President of the United States has been . . . disconnected.”

Jay’s eyes narrowed. “And how exactly did you manage that?”

Again, the chuckle. “I am a man of many talents.” The chuckle became a giggle.

“Well,” Jay said, “thank you for your assistance in that matter.”

He let the tin can fall and opened his laptop. He did his writing on the Inscrutable Alien Story Device but, unfortunately, its gray-skinned owners had not bothered to build connectivity into it. Yawning, he opened his Instant Messenger.

The tin can vibrated again and he ignored it. It stopped. It started again. Jay stretched out his fingers, entirely unaware of the deeply buried Pavlovian Trigger that had been planted in him during his childhood in Africa. He wrestled his own will and forced his hand to the pruning shears.

A message from UrRchNemesys popped up. ANSWER THE CAN, MR. LAKE.

Jay’s fingers flew across the keys. WHOISTHIS?

The letters appeared slowly now. T-H-E-W-O-O-D-S-A-R-E-L-O-V-E-L-Y-D-A-R-K-A-N-D-D-E-E-P.

Jay’s will evaporated and, suddenly, answering the can was the most important thing he could ever do with his life. His hand flew up and grabbed the cold tin, his fingers moving faster than a fat boy at a rib buffet. When he spoke into the can, his voice sounded far away and tinny. “But I have promises to keep.”

The unmistakable giggle filled his head. “Yes, you do, Mr. Lake. Listen carefully.”

Jay leaned over the desk. “What do you want?”

“I want,” the voice said, “the Last Temple of the Monkey King. Tell me where it is.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Do you value the life of every last man, woman and child on this planet?”

Jay nodded. “I do.”

“Do you want them to have healthy self-esteem and a respect for the boundaries of others?”

Jay thought about this for a moment, then shrugged. “Certainly.”

“Then,” the voice said, “you’d better figure it out.”

It took seventeen hours, fifty three minutes and fourteen seconds to do the research. That meant twelve hundred and thirteen emails, eight hundred six LiveJournal posts, and six promised, last-minute short stories (three of which later made various and sundry award ballots in a classic homage to style under pressure).

In the end, the location of the Last Temple of the Monkey King cost Jay Lake a MoMo recipe he’d stolen from an Indonesian massage therapist and fourteen full color illustrations of a certain Disney character of Very Little Brain in compromising positions while frolicking with his friends in the forest.

Sighing, he packed his laptop, his Inscrutable Alien Story Device and two changes of underwear into his battered leather satchel.

Then, scooping up the keys to his GENREMOBILE, Jay Lake whistled his attack cats awake and walked into the waning day.

Fifteen minutes later, when he stopped to fill the tank of his covertible, Jay noticed the pale, thin man who pumped his gas. He was a writer. He noticed character. This one had no hair. From the top of his head to the backs of his hands, the gas attendant was fishbelly white and completely hairless, right down to the eyelashes and nostrils. Jay stuck up a conversation. “Do you like goats?”

The man said nothing and Jay continued his observation, noticing the slightest hesitation as he studied the gas nozzle before continuing. Then he noticed the way he stood with his legs just slightly too far apart. Small talk, he realized, was the secret to good character study. He smiled. “Ever been to the moon with a talking dog?”

Still silent, Jay continued noticing and kept right on noticing until he failed utterly to notice the tracking device the bald man placed just under the rear bumper while pretending to trip and stumble.

“Careful there,” Jay Lake said.

And he was back on the road again, pushing north for Mount Rainier and the Last Temple of the Monkey King.

The warm night wind tossed back Jay’s hair as he flew his little red sports car up I-5. The freeway, devoid of cars and lights during that long stretch between Vader and Centralia, stretched out gray and grim before him. The faintest buzzing tickled his ears and he swatted at it before realizing it came from somewhere above and behind him. He craned his neck and saw nothing, craned it again and saw—

Before he could react, the naked man landed on top of him, a sharpened spoon in his fist. “Taste the steel death of my kansai-bujido, Lion Lover,” the bald man said as his battery powered hanglider sailed on without him to crash into a highway overpass.

“I don’t think so,” Jay said, struggling to keep both the man’s spoon and his nudity at bay. He hit the brakes with both feet and threw the car into a skid that carried him to the shoulder of the road with one hand while slapping at the intruder with his other.

The man fell back over the seat and Jay drove an elbow into his side as he worked the buckle on his seat belt and spilled onto the ground. “What the hell is your problem?” he shouted.

The man laughed and leaped from the car to face him, waving his spoon. “Jay Lake must die,” he snarled.

Striking a Clown Fu pose he’d invented last year at Carlos and Juan’s Exquisite Science Fiction Con-o-Rama Resort and Nude Tunnel Tours during a drinking contest with David Levine and Hal Duncan, Jay touched the tip of his nose with his thumb. “Wagga wagga wagga,” he said, in his most menacing tone.

Then, taking advantage of a man who stood with his feet too far apart, he planted his shoe into the offered target, leaped back into his car and sped into the night.

A drunken clown with a chainsaw pointed Jay towards Mundy Loss road on the outskirts of Bradley, Washington. Twenty miles from the base of Mount Rainier, the town was alive with square-dancing, log-rolling and tree-topping at the annual Bradley Loggers Circus. The logging chicks with their heavy boots, full breasts and red suspenders caught his eye but when he saw the dwarves in their checkered shirts and straw hats, he floored it and headed out of town to find the road he’d missed. The sun rose behind him, pink and melodramatic.

He followed Mundy Loss past houses and into the deep forests of the Cascade foothills. When he saw the orange and black mailbox, he took a hard right onto a winding gravel road.

Finally, when the evergreens threatened to scratch the paint from his car, Jay stopped and turned off the engine. Not far ahead, a rooster crowed and he heard the twang of a banjo being tuned.

Grabbing up his satchel, he wrestled his way over the door of his car to land in a bed of ferns wedged between two pines. He extricated himself and found his way back to the road, sure-footed in the sandals and tie-dye socks the aliens had sent him for his last birthday. He moved in silence, breathing just the way the Yogi had taught him. “You must be the wind,” the ancient Yogi had told him. It was the last time Jay ever fell for the age-old
pull my finger
routine.

Still, now, those powers served him well as he crept up to the edge of a junk-littered clearing. In the early morning light, he saw a rusting double-wide in a sea of car parts, old refrigerators and stacked tires. Leaning against the trailer’s wooden skirting was an orange and black bicycle and sitting on one of four decks of varying construction was a giant of a man picking on a tiny banjo. The song struck Jay as familiar and he finally placed it—
The Sound of Silence
, only played faster, more upbeat, with a bluegrass twang to the notes. Jay watched from the shadow of the evergreens that ringed the yard and as the large man started singing, chickens and ducks toddled out into to peck for their breakfast.

Jay waited until the song was finished and walked into the clearing, willing nonchalance into his approach. “Hey there,” he called out.

The large man’s head came up. He smiled behind his tangled, red beard. “My oh my,” he said. “If’n it ain’t the Little Lord Jesus His Ownself come to make his visitation upon me on a Tuesday morning.” Before Jay could correct him, the man dropped his banjo and leaped from the deck, falling to his knees. “Lord,” he cried out, clutching at Jay’s ankles, “be merciful unto thy humble servant.”