Once upon a time, on a planet almost exactly like our own, a boy was born who could see and touch monkeys. The people of that planet became tremendously excited because none of them had seen or touched a monkey for a very long time. This was because after the Great Wars of the Planet of the Monkeys (which was the next planet over), in which an incredible number of monkeys had been destroyed for daring to rise up and supplant their hairless human masters, there were hardly any monkeys left at all.

Eventually, after a couple of atomic wars, people began to regret this fact very much because monkeys were so cute and people used to like to give pennies to little organ-grinder monkeys who, in their little suits and caps, were just precious. Also, people who were paralyzed like Christopher Reeve used to like to force monkeys to feed them oatmeal and turn on their television sets and put cigarettes in their mouths and light them with little monkey-sized cigarette lighters. Monkeys could do these things because they were very clever and had fingers.

So the boy, whose name was Adric, was born. And immediately he began to see and touch monkeys. And the people begged the boy''s Mother and Father, whose names were not important, to let them film the boy seeing and touching monkeys with their digital video recorders, and so they did. And people made videos and sold them to other people and soon everyone could watch the boy seeing and touching monkeys, and some of the people had heart attacks and died because they became so excited watching the boy and the monkeys that their hearts exploded.

And the monkeys became very excited too because they knew that the little boy Adric loved them very much. And all the monkeys came to him to be seen and touched and some of them tried to light cigarettes for him with little monkey-sized cigarette lighters. And the monkeys wouldn''t let themselves be seen or touched by anyone else but Adric, because they loved him so much.

And as Adric grew in size and wisdom, the monkeys began to beg him to construct monkey-sized spaceships for them so that they could return to the Planet of the Monkeys, and this Adric did. And so the monkeys returned and rose up against their hairless human masters again and destroyed huge numbers of them, and then Adric was ashamed and returned to his own planet, vowing never again to see or touch monkeys, or to have a monkey light his cigarette for him with a little monkey-sized cigarette lighter. And eventually, after many, many years, a monkey was born on the Planet of the Monkeys who could see and touch monkeys, but this was not really that unusual.