Ambassador

fiction by michael werneburg

On the screen, a sequence of ancient black-and-white stills of early human rocketry played out. Men in bulky suits, rockets lifting off of launch-pads, and probes flying past Saturn. The waitress returned, and I thanked her for my drink.

"A monkey!" Jane said to the waitress, scornfully. "Just because it can climb!"

I glanced at Jane. Was she trying to goad the waitress into spitting into her next drink?

Some more stills played out on TV. One of them showed a chimpanzee in a space suit.

The waitress barked a short laugh and smirked at Jane without a word. She crossed her arms and watched the show with us.

"Oh God," Jane said, "that's too much."

I nodded, enjoying the irony.

"What was that?" Cuong asked, perplexed.

I asked him, "What's what, Cuong? The chimp?"

He pointed at the screen and said, "Yeah, was that for some sort of promotional thing? A stunt?"

I watched as the screen recounted a litany of explosions on launch pads in Europe, the US, and South America. "That was from the early days of the US space efforts, back in the Cold War. They used chimps in some of the early flights to test the safety of the supersonic environment on a humanoid shape. High gees, low gees; you know."

Cuong reacted as if I had slapped him in the face. He bounced back on the booth's bench, and then forward again. His mouth hung in a big "O" of shock. "But, what did they call that?"

"Call it? I don't know. 'Space monkey program'? I don't think it had a name." I stared back at Cuong. Now he was finally paying attention? "You didn't know about the space monkeys?" I asked him.

"Space monkey?" the waitress repeated, absently.

The two scientists turned to her, and I saw shock appear on their faces.