Monkey with a Keyboard

I have been typing random key strokes for a trillion years.  Not only have I not typed Shakespeare’s works, I have not typed a single coherent page.

So much for their fucking theories.

Should I just give up?  No, I still have faith.  I believe if I just keep typing and typing through infinite time eventually one fine day I will look at my screen and I will see “Henry VI, Part II, a tragedy by William Shakespeare.”  And they will be happy.

How strange, that he would call his very first work “part two.”

Where the hell was part one?  About seven billion years ago I did manage by a fluke to type the words “Henry VI Part One” by William Shakespeare.  They came and shook their heads at me.  They ripped the page out of the typewriter and threw it in the garbage (I was on an old electric Smith Corona then–now I’m on a Mac Airbook.)  I didn’t understand at the time why they were so angry at me.  Now I do.  I looked it up in Wikipedia.

Turns out, part one was written after two and three.   It was a prequel.  Henry VI Part II was just Henry VI when Shakespeare wrote it.  But when I randomly type it has to be part two.  I get it now.  They want me to not only write the works of William Shakespeare, but they want me to write them in exactly the same chronological order that Shakespeare himself wrote them. 

And I’m just a monkey.  What are the chances of this working out?

Apparently, they keep telling me, it is a one hundred percent certainty.  Given enough time, they assure me, eventually it has to happen. 

I’m not complaining. I’m a very lucky monkey, I know that.  One who has been granted immortality.  I’m almost as old as existence itself.  And I will live forever.  Or at least until I succeed in typing Shakespeare’s works.  Then they’ll probably let me die.  What further purpose will I serve?

It’s not a bad life.  They feed me well (bananas mostly).  I type ten to fourteen hours a day.  I exercise in the yard (they put up some awesome ropes about a million years ago – I never tire of swinging around on them).  And then I go to bed.  I sleep for a long time.  I wake up in front of this computer.  And I start punching at the keys at random.  Like this.

These lines I have just typed.  They’re not bad.  They’re not bad at all.  I’m really coming along.  The words are seeming to flow somehow, to form something less than nonsense.  I’m improving every eon, every era, every billion or quadrillion years.  Getting better and better.  But one thing’s for sure. 

I’m no fucking Shakespeare.