When the omega nugget fell into the chimp enclosure at Brentwood Academy, the chimps all gathered around it and began to poke at it’s shiny coating. Some of the chimps wanted to push it out of the enclosure, better to leave it to the humans. Some of the chimps wanted to put it into the water moat at the south end of the enclosure and drown it. One of the chimps, Bobo; wanted it for himself. So he snatched it up and secreted it with his private stash of fruits and random implements that fell into the Chimps’ cage during the day.
Bobo studied the Nugget at every chance he could, he fingered it’s designs and tried to puzzle out what it was for. It was small, metal and yellow. It had scribbled words all over it; like a human tool, but it wasn’t designed for hands like theirs were. It was just a lump of metal with words on it; but it hummed and pulsed like it was alive when you held it just so.
The other chimps lost interest in it until they go near it; Bobo noticed that when he held it he could read the signs around the cages and understood the Humans when they spoke (more than he could when he wasn’t near the chunk. He even grew to realize that he had put it with his secret food stash so that he wouldn’t forget about it when he wasn’t near it, like the other chimps.
Day by day, Bobo became more and more aware of himself. He began to try to imitate the speech of the humans that visited the Brentwood Academy and make himelf understood. He never let the humans see the Nugget, it was for him alone. He’d gesture at the children and they would whoop and clap when he would gutter “Hey you! Throw me a bit of fruit and I’ll dance for you!”
The guards and keepers started to take an interest in Bobo and so Bobo decided that he would only perform when there were kids around and alone; so that the keepers wouldn’t take him out of the enclosure. He felt sure that when he left the enclosure, it would have to be on his own terms.
The Nugget had been subtly chaning too; it started to look a bit like a rough outline of a brain, with a band around it. Bebo didn’t know that this was a brain though, just that it changed.
The other chimps came to shun Bebo, as he was just “different” now. They would share his food though, but then shy away or openly attack him if there was no food around. Bebo came to realize that if they Keepers saw him being unsocial, they would take him away from the Nugget.
One day, Bebo decided that it was time to leave the enclosure, and using a but of sharp metal he hid himself in the back of the enclosure, away from the eyes of the humans, he shaved himself bald and using some clothes dsiguised himself as a lanky child. Hiding the nugget in his pocket, Bobo leaped from the enclsoure close to closing time and hid amongst a crowd as they left.
The papers were filled with stories of the performing Ape who had been stolen from the Brentwood Academy; but Bebo was never seen at the Academy Again again.