The moment the loud, crunching snap echoed through the dense, humid canopy, Kibo froze entirely. 🦍

He didn’t move a single muscle in his massive, six-hundred-pound frame.

His pitch-black eyes dilated to the size of polished river stones, staring straight ahead into the thick emerald foliage.

Right behind him, sitting lazily among the tangled mangrove roots, was his lifelong brother, Bako.

Bako slowly tilted his heavy, silver-streaked head to the side, his dark brow furrowed in absolute suspicion. 🤨

For three long years, they had ruled this quiet, mist-shrouded corner of the mountain forest without a single unwanted disturbance.

They knew every buzzing insect that zapped through the morning air.

They knew the exact weight of every falling fig hitting the damp forest floor.

They knew the subtle, silent glide of a hunting panther versus the gentle rustle of a passing rain shower.

But this sound was entirely different.

It was not a natural sound of the wild jungle at all.

It was a sharp, metallic, high-pitched ping followed instantly by a blinding flash of white light right between the thick leaves. 📸

Kibo’s heavy heart hammered against his ribs like a heavy wooden war drum.

He felt a cold prickle of anxiety ripple beneath his thick black coat of fur.

He blinked once, then twice, trying desperately to process the impossible object resting on a bed of damp moss just ten feet in front of his giant knuckles.

It was a small, sleek rectangular slab made of smooth glass and polished silver metal.

And on the front of that glass slab, a glowing image was moving all by itself in full color.

Bako leaned forward from the shadowy background, resting his heavy chin against his massive arm, silently judging Kibo’s sudden state of total paralysis.

“Do not move a single hair,” Kibo whispered in a low, throat-rumbling grunt that barely disturbed the humid air.

“What in the world is it?” Bako grunted back, his dark eyes narrowing into razor-thin slits as he peered over Kibo’s broad, muscular shoulder.

“Is it something we can eat?” Bako added, sniffing the moist air cautiously.

“It is glowing with blue light, Bako. Food does not glow like a captured piece of the sun.”

“Maybe it is a very angry, shiny beetle,” Bako suggested, resting his massive black fist onto the soft earth.

“Beetles do not have tiny, tiny creatures trapped inside them singing high-pitched songs!” Kibo snapped under his breath, his eyes darting frantically.

Indeed, from the microscopic speaker of the dropped smartphone, a loud pop song was playing at maximum volume.

The screen flickered with vibrant neon blues, electric pinks, and bright purples, illuminating Kibo’s frozen, wide-eyed face in the dim afternoon forest.

To make matters infinitely more complicated, the device belonged to a terrified human tourist currently crouching fifty feet up in a giant bamboo cluster.

The tourist had dropped his expensive flagship smartphone while frantically trying to take a panoramic photograph of the majestic gorilla brothers.

Now, the abandoned phone was stuck in an endless viral loop video.

Kibo stared down at the glowing screen as if it were an ancient sea monster rising from the deepest ocean trench.

He could see tiny figures jumping up and down on the smooth, flat glass surface.

He felt his brow furrow with intense, overwhelming, unprecedented confusion.

“If you punch it with your fist, will it stop making noise?” Bako asked, leaning his head further to the left with an unbothered, deeply skeptical glare.

“I am not touching the glowing sun-rock,” Kibo declared, his jaw set completely stiff. “What if it steals my soul and traps me inside the glass?”

“You are six hundred pounds of solid muscle and bone, Kibo,” Bako scoffed softly. “Are you truly afraid of a tiny glass rock?”

“I am not afraid!” Kibo hissed back defensively. “I am simply exercising extreme tactical caution for our troop.”

Bako let out a deep, chest-vibrating huff that sounded suspiciously like a suppressed gorilla laugh.

He adjusted his lounging posture, settling comfortably into the background leaves while keeping his watchful gaze locked straight onto Kibo’s back.

He was enjoying this far too much.

He wanted to see what his brave, heroic leader brother would do next.

But in the blink of an eye, everything changed!

Kibo’s heavy, leathery index finger slammed directly down onto the bright green answer icon on the smooth glass screen. 📲

Instantly, the loud, chaotic buzzing sound cut off into total, deafening silence across the entire forest clearing.

For a terrifying, heart-stopping second, nothing happened at all.

The wind remained still, and the leaves hung motionless in the humid air.

Then, a loud, shrill, immensely panicked human voice erupted straight out of the tiny speaker at the bottom of the device.

“Hello?! Marcus?! Is that you?! Why on earth aren’t you answering your phone?!” the high-pitched voice shrieked into the calm jungle.

It was Marcus’s mother, calling all the way from a small, quiet suburban town three thousand miles away to check if her son was enjoying his guided jungle safari trip.

Kibo flinched so hard his entire shoulder dropped, nearly knocking himself backward into the thick, muddy bushes.

Bako threw both of his massive, muscular arms straight over his head, sinking down into the deep green fern leaves behind him with a low, desperate whimper of regret. 🙈

“Marcus! Answer me right now! I know you can hear me typing on your laptop earlier!” the distant voice continued to yell, echoing crisply through the peaceful woods.

Kibo gathered every ounce of courage remaining in his body and slowly leaned his snout within two inches of the glass screen.

He stared with absolute intensity directly into the tiny front camera lens near the top edge.

He opened his wide mouth and let out a hesitant, confused, tentative rumble from the very bottom of his massive chest.

“Hooo-ough?” Kibo grunted softly, his breath misting up the lower half of the glowing display.

On the other end of the line, three thousand miles away in a sunny kitchen, Marcus’s mother stopped talking mid-sentence.

“Marcus?” she asked slowly, her strict tone turning from annoyed to profoundly, deeply confused. “Why are you making heavy breathing noises? Did you catch a terrible cold on the airplane?”

Kibo slowly turned his head to look back over his broad, black-furred shoulder at Bako.

Bako slowly peeked out from behind his massive forearm, his dark eyes wide with pure, unadulterated curiosity.

“It speaks human language,” Bako whispered in a shaky grunt, his lower lip trembling slightly. “It is demanding answers from us!”

“Speak back to it!” Kibo urged, gesturing emphatically with a quick nod of his heavy head.

“I do not know how to say ‘please go away’ in human language!” Bako hissed back frantically, squeezing his six-hundred-pound frame deeper into the protective foliage.

Kibo turned back toward the glowing screen, fully determined to defend his ancestral forest territory from this invisible, screaming creature trapped inside the silver rock.