Electric Monkey

We bought an electric monkey, experimenting rather recklessly with funds carefully gathered since grandfather’s time for the purchase of a steam monkey.
“Who shall I say this is for?”  The voice of the monkey clerk sounded like an old owl. Slow and monotone, as he took a long look at us through his spectacles.
“The Khalso family, naturally.”  My brother bobbed his head as he spoke.  He stood next to me, at the shiny glass counter in the small monkey shop.  The walls pressed close to us, filled with shelves stocked with accessories, extras and disposable batteries the size of my head.
“This is for you, then?”  The clerk’s eyes narrowed as he gazed over his tiny glasses at my brother.
My brother stepped back from the counter.  He held up a hand in protest and furrowed his eyebrows.  His skill with that gesture grew each time he gave it, while I remained somewhat inept.  “Of course not, man.  I am purchasing this for Jad, here, and his parents.”  With his raised hand, my brother slapped me across the back.  Pulsating with heat, his hand lingered there, outside my coat that dulled the blow to a mild sting.
The clerk sighed.  “Isn’t he your brother?”  The man behind the counter tapped his foot, causing his shadow to quiver.
“Yes,” my brother said, his voice dry and forced.  “You see, I’m moving to Lhasa next week.”  He brought his hand up and rested his cheek upon it.  My back chilled where his hand had been.  “New job, you see.  Had a bit of money and wanted to give my family something.”
The clerk stared at my brother for a long moment, before resuming his lazy gaze through his spectacles.  His shadow stopped quivering.  “Very good, sir.  That will be 6,000 c-dollars, please.”
My brother flopped his hand onto the glass counter.  It thunked loudly in the room, despite the whirrs from the display monkeys.  The clerk, looking again over his glasses at us, pulled out a large, square scanner and placed it over my brother’s palm.  “Still using a chip?  They aren’t very secure.”
“Lhasa exchange is setting me up with a bioaccount.”  His round eyes flinched as the clerk pushed the button on the scanner.  A small black prick was left on my brother’s hand when the clerk pulled back the chip scanner and put it under the counter.
As my brother slid his hand from the glass, the clerk announced, “The transaction is approved.  You may pick up your new electric monkey at the service entrance.”
Outside, it was snowing again.  I pulled my jacket hood over my head, the faux-fur tickling my ears.  “May you stay long in this job,” my brother said.
The clerk smiled widely.  “ Thank you.  I hope you lose yours.”
“If only I were so lucky.”  Then we walked out into the biting cold.
Zhangmu was a city high in the Tibetan mountains, clouds almost low enough to touch.  Snow fell in little, white puffs as we stepped into the street.  Grey slush puddles were everywhere, exploding as the occasional auto drove through them.
As we walked to the next entrance, my brother cast a sidelong glance at me.  “You could have helped me in there.”
“I’m not good at talking to people.  You know that.”  I sighed out a large, foggy breath.  “Like that compliment at the end?  I would have never thought of it.”
“Well, learn,” he said, as if he were helping.  “You give compliments and you get more back.”  He stopped.  His gaze turned upward, searching the grey sky.  “What I wouldn’t give to suffer through losing a job at Lhasa exchange.  Can you think of the status?”
“Rail?”  My voice rose quietly, almost snatched by the wind.
Blinking and turning his face toward me again, my brother lifted his eyebrows.  His eyes and mouth softened.  “What is it little guy?”  I saw the words on his breath, more than I heard them.
Forcing a lump down my throat, I asked, “Why do we have to lie?”
Rail looked up and down the empty street.  Leaning in close, his blue eye flitted back and forth.  His voice hushed and warmed my cheek as he said, “Don’t talk like that so loud.  You want people to think bad of us?”  I heard him breath deep through his nose.  “It’s just the way it is.  You don’t have to think about it.  Just get better.”  He pecked me on the cheek and said, vigor in his voice, “C’mon, monkey man.  Let’s go get you a toy.
I shuffled away and drew my hood tighter about my reddening face.  My brother ran on, turning back as he reached the wide service entrance.  “Hurry up,” he called into the wind.  “Don’t be such a lazy Susan.”
I rolled my eyes at him, then bounded the short distance through grey, slushy piles of wet snow.  He was already inside when I got to the door, flinching as a tall, well-muscled man scanned Rail’s hand with the same kind of bulky scanner the clerk had used.  The service man’s hand dwarfed the scanner, capable of crushing it if he’d really wanted.
“Alright, there it is,” said the burly man as I entered the open workshop.  The smells of oil, grease and metal assaulted me.  The workshop bristled with conveyor belts, leading between one large mechanical apparatus to the next.  I recognized most of the repair machines.  Great hisses of steam and compressed air filled my ears, punctuated by the echo of my own footsteps.
The service man pointed a stubby finger toward the back of the room.  Emerging from the depths of who knows where, was the monkey we had just purchased.  My monkey.  My electric monkey.
The monkey’s bright, yellow frame glistened in the meager workshop lighting.  Great, white eyes peered out from the molded, simian face.  Mere pinpoints of black stared out, vacant, in the center of each eye.  The legs stood haunched, bringing the height of the monkey down to my own.  Large arms hung close to each side, ending in delicate hands.  An individual hand comprised of sixty-three separate parts, all hidden by the only metal plating on the entire mechanical creature.
As I came closer, the service man bellowed, his tone haughty and dipping at us, “Electric, huh?  I’d have gone with the steam model, myself.”
“They’re too expensive,” my brother said, looking at the monkey with considerably less interest than was showing on my face.
“Initially, yeah.”  The brutish man picked a wrench out from his apron and tapped it idly against his jaw.  “You have to consider that electric monkeys run down faster than the steam ones, so you have to charge them more often.”
“Canola costs more.”  Both the service man and my brother looked at me, blinking.
The large man tilted his head on his thick neck.  “That’s a point.”  He scratched his chin with the wrench.  “Lhasa’s making progress in a new refining process, though.  They’re going to bypass the canola oil step and go right from canola plant to biogas.”
Rail glanced at the service man, then turned and glared at me.  “Cheaper canola gas?”  Rail tapped his foot and the tapping echoed through the workshop.
I spread my hands.  “I didn’t know.”  But I did.  I had read all about Lhasa Exchange and their new, cheaper fuel.
For a second, he searched me.  My face, my stance, even my invisible breath, my brother took it all in.  “No, of course.  You couldn’t have known.”  Rail turned back to the service man.
The burly man stood, his face fixed, saying, “Monkey sales are final.”