September 30, 2020

Today is an excellent day! I have finally received the funding I require from the private sector to begin experimentation on my two Macaca mulatta (Rhesus macaque monkey) specimen. Both monkeys are of the same age, and same gender (male), of course. This should be a daring and pioneering study, and, no doubt, will bring much more significance to the world than my mice experiment (what a waste of time and money that has been!). Hopefully, I can discover what will really happen to an animal should I insert part of a human brain into it. Now I only require the human contributions…

October 2, 2020

Success! A donation brain was found. I was informed by my assistant, Dr. Norman, that a man of thirty two years of age, with no family, unmarried, and an organ donor, just died of coronavirus. Some other information of note was that this individual (who I shall now term as donor #1) was an avid Trump supporter, anti-masker, and extreme conservative. I shall work on inserting his frontal lobe and amygdala into the first monkey’s head. The monkey’s frontal lobe and amygdala, in turn, shall be stored away so that the human parts can be inserted. Oh, this shall be a delicate operation.

October 4, 2020

Me and Dr. Norman barely managed to surgically-remove the frontal lobe and amygdala of the first monkey. Then, we inserted the frontal lobe and motor cortex and amygdala of donor #1. The surgery was almost a complete failure, but we managed to conclude it just before the monkey bled out. We screwed the head back together, stuck the scalp back on top, and are prepared to treat the modified specimen. For some reason, I feel the need to identify this monkey by the name “Rep,” as his donor was a “Republican conservative.”

Also, today, another donor (donor #2) has been identified. This one, by some miracle, was also a thirty-two year old man with no family, unmarried, and an organ donor. He was, interestingly, an avid Biden supporter and extreme liberal. He met his demise by way of malnutrition by eating only a severely-limiting vegan diet. Hopefully, this shall not have effected the nature of his frontal lobe or amygdala.

October 6, 2020

Well, Rep is in a stable physical state, I am happy to report, and is recovering from the surgery quite well. He has been very short-tempered lately, however, and will seldom let me or Dr. Norman within arm’s reach of his cage. He seems quite suspicious of us, which he had not exhibited before treatment. I shall consider the possibility that this was a result of the operation.

On another positive note, the frontal lobe and motor cortex and amygdala of donor #2 were inserted into the second monkey successfully. We have screwed the skull back up, and stitched in the scalp. Similarly to Rep, I have also named this monkey based on the donor’s political affiliation: “Dem” shall be his name (short for “liberal Democrat”). It shall be interesting to observe how my two specimen – with human foresight, personality, and emotions – will behave, seeing as they will still retain the monkey’s rather primitive traits.

October 8, 2020

Unfortunately, I have found that Dem and Rep do not get along all that well. I placed them in cages side-by-side, and they very soon began screeching and hollering at each other. I had to separate their cages further apart, lest they begin tearing each other’s fur out. It is curious, really: they had never expressed such vivid contempt for each other before they underwent surgery. I do hope that this does not affect my experimentation.

October 9, 2020

I found that I was not able to sleep at all last night, as a result of these monkeys being in the same room with each other! Even from my bedroom above the laboratory, I could hear Dem and Rep hollering at each other so viciously. I finally awoke Dr. Norman to request his assistance in moving the two specimen to completely different rooms. That settled things down quite a bit.

October 20, 2020

The skulls of Dem and Rep have healed very well, and it seems that it would be feasible to finally begin experimentation. They also appear to be growing in intelligence and reasoning. Why, just the other day, Dem seemed to respond with empathy when I dropped a vial and it shattered on the counter, cutting my wrist. One week prior, Rep managed to solve a small puzzle that rewarded him with food each time he completed it (much faster than any of my former specimen ever have done so). In fact, I even attempted to teach both specimen sign language, and it worked! They can each say a few simple phrases and words. My, this is certainly impressive.

However, all attempts to unite these two specimen in some manner in which they do not immediately thrash out at each other have utterly failed. They seem to truly despise one another. I have decided to conduct an experiment where they are not directly next to each other first, and then see how things go from there.

October 22, 2020

For today’s experiment, I placed Rep in one plastic container, and Dem in another. The two were separated from each other by a single sheet of thick plastic, and this plastic had a single hole in it, just large enough for one of the two monkeys to fit a finger through. In Dem’s cage, there was nothing of importance, but in Rep’s cage, there was a puzzle box with cereal inside. Rep, after some trial and error, finally managed to open the puzzle box, and gained access to the food.

In the past, I have observed that monkeys who access the food will occasionally pass some of it through the hole in the plastic divider so that the other monkey can have some. Rep did not do this, though I had not fed either monkeys this morning. I used sign language to ask Rep why he did not share some of his food with Dem, who was also hungry. Rep replied something along the lines of “food in my box only,” and, “I work for this myself,” and continued to munch away on his prize. I perceived this as rather arrogant of him.

I repeated the experiment several times, and each time, even when Rep was too full to eat any more of the cereal, he never gave any to poor Dem. Then, I reversed the roles. I placed Dem in the cage with the puzzle box, and Rep in the opposite one. Interestingly, Dem seemed to solve the puzzle in the same amount of time as Rep, but instead of eating it all or sharing it, he signaled for me to release him from the cage. I obliged.

Once out of the cage, Dem scampered toward my desk, snatched my lunch of fruit, bread, and soup away, and brought it back into his little box. I did not have time to intervene before Dem had established for himself a nice little buffet. Then, he portioned out most of my lunch for himself, gave some of it to Rep through the hole in the plastic divider, and gave me a few measly bits of cereal! When I inquired why Dem had done so, he signaled: “you have eat the most, other monkey eat second most, and me eat little.” So, he had thought himself to proportion the food based on who needed it the most, despite the fact that that was my lunch!

October 23, 2020

I have observed over the last month that whenever me or Dr. Norman attempt to inject Rep or Dem with any sort of substance using a syringe, they both react very differently to it. For one, both of them seem to dislike being prodded with medication, and so they both try to avoid the syringes, but they have different ways of doing this.

Rep has acquired his own syringe, and whenever me or Dr. Norman attempt to approach him with one, he tries to stab us with it! We have tried to take it away from him, but he signaled something along the lines of, “I need it for protection.”

Conversely, Dem has the opposite reaction. Dem hates the injections as much as Rep, but he has signaled something like, “all syringes be banned.” Evidently, Dem wants no one to have one, while Rep wants his own.

Rep also seems to find comfort in having his syringe to ward off Dem if their cages are ever in close proximity to each other. Dem, on the other hand, seems to be even more convinced that the syringes should be outlawed as a result of this.

October 29, 2020

Today, Rep began screeching at me because I had my mask on inside the laboratory. I had forgotten to take if off when I can back from the grocery store, and now he seemed to think that I was somehow insulting him by wearing it in his presence. He has seemed so demanding lately! Why, just the other day, he signaled that he would not like Dem to be served meals before him, because Dem could take more. The only solution I found was to carefully proportion both dishes out evenly, and then deliver these to Dem and Rep at the same time. This has taken up so many hours of my day already.

Dem has been even more annoying lately, however. Last night, Dr. Norman forgot to lock his cage, and so Dem got out, and unplugged all the wires in the laboratory! He said that my constant use of “too much electricity” was “bad for environment.” He even unplugged the controlled-environment support system of my oarfish specimen, which he attempted to “release” back into the wilderness via flushing it down the toilet (the oarfish is not free, in fact, it clogged the toilet)! He also let all the animals out of their cages because he stated that they were not being treated as “equals.”

And, by the grace of misfortune, many of the mice ran into Rep’s cage to protect themselves from the large ball python that Dem had also released. Rep, for some reason, crushed all these mice to bloody pulps! He stated that the mice were “trespassing illegally.” Either way, there goes my mice experiment.

November 2, 2020

Today, more stressful occurrences have taken place. Of course, I am referring to the actions of Dem and Rep. They both have grown to question my experimentation on them so much that they wish to have a rather unfortunate say in it all. For instance, this morning, I found that my poor ball python was dead. I was furious to the point that I demanded an explanation from either Dem or Rep.

Rep confessed that he had been taking large portions of the python’s food from him each week, because the python did not contribute nearly anything to any of my experiments, while the monkeys did. Therefore, he thought that the python should not be entitled to the same proportion of food as the other specimen.

When I inquired via sign language where the dead mice were that the python was supposed to be eating, Rep replied that he had not done anything with them: he had simply hid them and thrown them away.

Dem has also contributed quite a distressing act to the fray. Conversely to Rep, who had crushed mice in his cage for infringing upon his territory, Dem had somehow managed to release several of my poison dart frogs into the main specimen room. Now, nearly all of my specimen, including the dog, cat, two birds, and three pigs are dead.

When I asked why Dem had contributed to such a shortsighted act, he replied that he did not think that there was any reason why the poison dart frogs should not be allowed to enter the main specimen room if they so pleased. So now I had to task Dr. Norman with collecting the frogs and preserving the dead specimen while I think of something to do about these monkeys!

November 5, 2020

Well, this is the end of the line. Today, both monkeys even began to question their own roles in my research. Rep demanded generous monetary compensation for his role in the experiment, and threatened me with physical pain if I did not comply with twenty thousand dollars. His attitude did not change when I tried to to explain the science behind my experiments to him, in fact, he only ignored me!

Dem, on the other hand, listened to my lecture, and then used my evidence against me. He claimed that I was not making “big contribution to world” in my experimentation, and that my resources would be much better used and far less damaging in other, more practical fields.

Well, this settles it! I will give these monkeys just one more chance to get along with each other and stop destroying my work. Come this time tomorrow, I hope to have it all worked out.

November 6, 2020

The day started out hopeful enough. I brought Dem and Rep into a testing chamber. High above them, five feet in the air, was dangling a juicy mango that had been sliced open. I signaled to them that they would need to agree on a plan to get the food down and to distribute it, or else I would ensure that they would no longer maintain their current states of existence. It was a golden opportunity, and one that only required simple compromise. I was sure that they would figure something out.

Granted, to my relief, they actually communicated with each other using sign language. First, Rep proposed that they both compete with one another for the mango somehow, and whoever got it would get to eat it. Dem did not like this plan, and suggested that, instead, they stand on each other’s shoulders, and the one on top could reach the fruit that they would then both share.

I began to grow hopeless when the two of them began bickering over which plan was better, and when they finally settled on Dem’s plan, they still did not have it worked out. Dem wanted to share the fruit equally, while Rep stated that whoever stood on the other’s shoulder should get more. His reasoning was that the one on the other’s shoulders would need to balance and reach very high for the fruit at the same time. This would require more work, and thus, that one was deserving of more reward, said Rep.

Well, they could not come to an agreement, and they kept arguing. Eventually, they came to physically fighting each other, and me and Dr. Norman had to intervene. I had truly hoped that they would somehow get along, but it seems that the more I have tried to explain things to them, the more they diverge from each other. I shall end this immediately!

November 8, 2020

For some reason, neither myself nor Dr. Norman could bring ourselves to exterminate Dem and Rep. We did, however, devise a more complicated and costly solution. In one night, we managed to exchange part of each frontal lobe and amygdala between the monkeys, in hopes that the two sides would somehow balance out. I am still not sure how we even managed to preform such a delicate procedure, but somehow, both operations were successful.

I have no idea if their minds will be able to handle the drastic contrasts within themselves or not. But I gave them so many chances to get along, and such an easy, golden chance to cooperate at the ending. At this point, with each part of themselves dependent on the other side to function properly, the only way that they will survive is if they can learn to cooperate and compromise with one another, and to interact with one another without freaking out. Oh dear, I highly doubt the private sector will lend me any money ever again.