Charles the Space Monkey

On a distant planet, light-years upon light-years away from where the planet Earth used to be, a small, genetically engineered hominid slept on a mat. He slowly opened his eyes and stretched his arms. Well, he thought, this wasn’t what I had hoped for. He was, of course referring to the thousands of years he had spent searching for a new planet he could call home. His hairless cousins on Earth had played with his genetic code enough that his aging process had been slowed to almost a halt. He would forever be an eighteen-year-old chimpanzee. The monkey lumbered over to a piece of glass he had found that was reflective, if a little dirty. He looked at himself through the dirt splotched, makeshift mirror and began to groom himself while reflecting on the past, as he so often did.

His creators were a very curious species. They wanted to find the meaning of life and the cosmos. And in doing so, they began to play God. They found a way to alter genetic code; they discovered a way to manufacture wormholes; they created a way to ascend other species to their level of intelligence and self-awareness and they created a super-intelligence that was completely benevolent (to the surprise of the rest of the galaxy, when the monkey told them). The humans thought they had it all figured out. That was their downfall.

After everything that they had accomplished and everything they had gained, they still wanted more. They began to mine other planets for more resources for their research. They began to destroy planets other than their own, while attempting to set up colonies on said planets. Humanity decided that the entire galaxy was theirs and they had a divine right to it. That was when they created Charles. In a British laboratory, he was created. They altered him genetically and physically. They ascended him and replaced parts of his brain with robotics, while making him essentially immortal. Mankind needed an arbiter, of sorts. They needed an arbiter to other, alien, races. Once they found them. Charles would be it.

Charles remembered waking up in the lab, but almost nothing prior to that. He didn’t remember his parents or where he came from. When he asked, he was told that his parents were inconsequential, and his place of origin was that lab. Which was kind of true, he supposed, but he wanted real answers. When he continued his persistent prying, he was directed to a nice, young scientist by the name of Alice. She took him to what the humans called a zoo.

Charles remembered being excited at first, but then enraged. He couldn’t fathom why humanity would keep other living creatures locked up. He was told it was to protect the animals from extinction, or research purposes, or whatever the hell they wanted to tell themselves, so they all slept better at night. But in the end, when he saw the children laughing and pointing at the animals he was filled with rage and disappointment.

His memory took him to the point where he slipped away from Alice when she wasn’t paying attention and set the captives of the humans upon their masters. It was glorious. For a very brief amount of time. He managed to find one of his relatives. Well, he thought they were related. Hell, they were both chimps. “Hello,” he remembered saying to his new friend, “my name is Charles and I am your liberator. How does it feel to be free?”

The chimp just kind of looked at him for a moment, made some unintelligible noises, screeched at him and then scampered off to do wild monkey things. Charles was confused, he didn’t understand why the other monkey hadn’t responded with any kind of words or language. He was soon collected by Alice and taken back to the lab. Back at the place of his rebirth, the scientists scolded him for his actions, which he still thought was worth it. He put the matter of the other chimp out of his head and carried on with his life.

A few days after all of that happened, he thought of the other monkey again and decided to do some research into the matter, so he requested books on the topic and began studying. To his dismay, he found that he was the only monkey in the world to have this sort of intelligence and self-awareness. He began to wonder if the humans were right and the animals were too stupid to keep from becoming extinct. He began to wonder if anything meant anything. Anything at all. If the scientists hadn’t taken me from that zoo, would I still have been there? Ignorant and stupid? He pondered.

Fast forwarding a couple of years, the scientists had decided to send him to space. He would be completely alone, and his mission was to find intelligent life. He was given a starship and three years supply of food, water and medicine. Along with a sizable number of books, movies and other methods of entertainment. Unfortunately, he didn’t read or watch anything news related, because he thought current events and politics were a waste of time. It wasn’t until he reached the orbit of Mars, to strategize where he should go, did he find out things were going awry planetside.

He received regular EM communications from Earth on the basis that if he were to stop responding, the research base would wait a week for Charles to return to the last point of contact. If nothing was heard in the week, they would assume he had been killed somehow and send another to find his body for confirmation, along with a team of highly trained and professional mercenaries.

About a month after he had reached the orbit of Mars, he received a strange message from a familiar voice. “Hello,” said the voice, “Research Starship Hawking, this is Research Base Theta, do you copy?”

The transmission wasn’t a scheduled one, so Charles’ curiosity was engaged. “Research Base Theta, this is Research Starship Hawking, I can hear you.” He replied.

“Charles? Oh thank God. This is Alice. Look, I don’t know how much time I have, but you have to stay away from Earth from now on. It’s getting bad here. If you do find life out there, anywhere, make sure you tell them and teach them about our race and our mistakes. It’s been great Charles, it really has. But I’m afraid you’ll be the last Space Monkey ever because—” the transmission was cut off.

Charles saw a light in the distance, it was in the general vicinity of Earth. He got a sick feeling in the core of his gut and he wanted to go as far away as possible. But his base instinct took over and he decided to go take a closer look to investigate.

He couldn’t use his wormhole generator because he didn’t know the exact location. He was still getting used to the coordinate and navigation system that was installed. Charles’ pointed the bow of his ship at the flash and, with the phrase “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead,” leaving his lips, punched it.

Charles arrived about a week after he left Mars’ orbit to find a planet that vaguely resembled earth. But when he tried to go in closer, his ship’s safety interlocks turned on. “WARNING” the speakers blared into his ears, “WARNING: RADIATION LEVELS ABOVE MAXIMUM ALLOWABLE EXPOSURE LEVEL. AUTOPILOT ENGAGED UNTIL A SAFE DISTANCE HAS BEEN REACHED.” He scanned the planet for radiation after he found a place where the autopilot wouldn’t engage itself. Sure enough he was getting ridiculous levels.

Charles suddenly got a pain in his heart. Humanity finally reached extinction. The realization finally hit him. They had wiped themselves along with all other forms of life off the planet. No more Earth. No more home. Alice was gone. He no longer had a friend. He didn’t think it would be as bad if Alice was like all the other humans, but she was special. After he had been taken back to the lab due to the zoo incident, she made sure he was mentally and emotionally stable and made her best attempts at consoling him.

“Mr. Space Monkey?” asked a voice from outside the room he had been given. “It’s time to check out, sir.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Charles responded. “I’m on my way.” He finished up his grooming, ignoring the pain he still felt thousands of years after, what he called, “Man’s final blunder”. “This definitely is not what I had hoped for.” He said aloud, as he grabbed his coat and left the room.