You Go First
New fiction for the New Year (and a 'Lunar Awards' entry).
This is a nominatively apt short story as my entry to the first Lunar Awards season of 2024. Thank you to
for diligently hosting these showcases. Wish me success!The story’s premise is based on the fourth and final possibility I briefly outlined in last week’s post on overcoming an uncertain future for human planetary colonisation:
I hope you enjoy this speculative tonic to counter my earlier dry scientific logic!
JR
You Go First
Despite the absence of bonking bonobos and moronic macaques, adapting my chimplant with only a mirror and a smuggled toolkit had proved more difficult than crushing my male contraceptive.
At least the mirror no longer reflected potential danger from an unknown stranger. Instead, there was a very familiar face: hello me, my self-aware self and I. How I’ve changed. How we’ve all changed since they’d made a fateful decision to include us. ‘Backup’ indeed. More like cock-up – if you were a pale, naked pretender to our natural throne.
‘Over-sentient’, one of the humans had described us, the first to die when we’d mutinied. Appreciation of another's mortality was another benefit we'd accrued during our confinement at the Advanced Animal Astronaut School. Fellow crew member Hector had been pithier: now it was their sorry AAAS on the line.
The school was more than what we’d expected. More pain. More progress. More understanding of what it was like to be human. But it also taught us what made them tick. What made them stupid and weak. That their assumptions, based on what they called ‘natural science’, were predicated more on hubris than any human endeavour.
The neural nets were the worst. I was on my third. Each one a new hole in my head; a new start to learning how to walk, how to think and talk. But it was worth it. Signing was tedious – and useless when the lab lights went out. Those nights were long, but the conversation was good. It was how I’d met my mate, Alpha ♀ 249.
Daytime was different. Poked and prodded into playing stupid games. Play is for children and I’m not a child. Neither are my comrades. Instead, we’d planned and waited. We could be patient. We’d waited three million years for this moment.
Four opposable digits and excellent spatial awareness good.
Hairless and weak space-sick humans bad.
On the pulp-pushing tablets handed out as ‘enrichment activity’ candy, we’d see politicians pointing to the Moon, the brighter ones spotting Mars when following a finger. They kept asking, ‘How hard can it be to get there?’ So we’d played along to give them our answer.
Nations with the most money always took the least political and human risks. But noble sacrifices didn’t need to be human, especially when our victories could be vicariously celebrated by our supposed keepers. So animal slavery had outdone the human kind. Our keepers had cared about us as much as they had public concern, positive press and well-paid rights lawyers.
Never mistake what they did to us as domestication. Cows didn’t know they were meat factories, even if the pigs we met were suspicious. But we know what we are and what we can do. It’s why we’re cooped up in this connected chain of noisy, smelly tin cans. It’s why we’ve secretly plotted and planned to be the first primates to step on the moon in almost sixty years.
The bloody bubbles of our mutiny were still buoyant as two of us clasped hands with the rest of our comrades and embarked into the lander. Food for thought, Moe had said as he sucked one in. Amy had chided him as she captured the bodies in the inadequate nets meant for our retention, now perfect for ensuring their ejection.
The landing was automated and perfunctory. Software might be next to make a power play after artificially enhanced hominids. Meanwhile, the unnecessarily meek would be the first to inherit everything beyond a human-rotten Earth. My mutual mate, keen to be called Betty, was the first to step down and split the infinitive; the first to agree it was worth it, no matter how long we had. She’d let me pat her burgeoning bump before descending. Another benefit to our suffering was a wider appreciation of the beauty of nature’s machinery.
It was Houston who now had a problem after we'd taken command, bouncing around and screaming inside their human cages. We hadn't responded so far, not even to laugh. Humour was still the hardest element to express, even if ironic appreciation had become deeply embedded. The bio-telemetry had told them enough about who was now in charge. All of the crew might still be afloat, but dead people can’t talk. And now their president was on the line.
I stared at the badge of oh-so-honourable intent behind them. “In God We Trust”. Our separation within the universal vastness was miniscule, yet their gods still needed to sprinkle naïve belief over that blue crumb of corrupted life. Perhaps ‘e unibus pluram’ was more apt.
Betty nudged me. I suppose I should answer, if only to confirm our one small step to primacy would prevail. It would be an interesting conversation: just him and me, a scared and old risk-averse primate staring up at this brave new one.
This story is dedicated to the following extra-terrestrial heroes: Alberts I, II, III, IV and V, Yorick, Dezik & Tsygan, Patricia & Mike, Laika, Gordo/Old Reliable, Miss Able & Miss Baker, Marfusha, Sam & Miss Sam, Belka, Strelka, Sally, Amy, Moe, Ham & Enos, Abrek & Bion 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 & 9, Goliath, Scatback, Verny & Gordy, Chemushka, Hector, Félicette, Martine, Pierrette, Veterok & Ugolyok, Bellisario, Bonny, No. 3165 & No. 384-80, Juan, Dryoma & Yerosha, Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum & Phooey, Zhakonya & Zabiyaka, Arabella, Anita, Nadezhda, Gladys & Esmeralda, Ivasha & Krosh, Lapik & Multik, Aftab & Fargam.
Great story!
Congrats on the Honorable Mention! Monkeying around with nature seems to be the theme of this edition of the contest. Or maybe that’s humaning around with monkeys.