Ambassador

fiction by michael werneburg

To my surprise, the other two raised a glass and we toasted to what Jane called, "Freedom at last!"

Some footage, now, of the Ambassador on an outing from the facility. The creature surveyed the landing site, then made its way to the craft with that awkward gait. Of course, it scrambled into the cockpit with fluid grace once he'd climbed aboard.

The waitress had arrived with Jane's next drink. "Look at him go," she said, "like a little monkey, I've always said."

"He's not a monkey," Jane said but with less arrogance than previously, "he's wholly alien. Aside from the extra limbs and the aforementioned carnivory, there's the matter of the superb night vision."

I was glad that Jane had dropped the hostility to the waitress, but I still marvelled at her abruptly taking the opposite side of the argument she'd just been having with me. With a smile, I ordered another club soda and turned back to the show.

"A night monkey," Cuong joked. "A night monkey that likes the temperature up, the humidity up, and the air pressure way up."

There was just under half an hour to go before the actual ceremony. Bollen, mercifully, had now gone and I restored the volume. We were being treated to a series of prepared historical clips. A voice-over was guiding us through the clips, which pieced together the history of mankind's own timid space exploration. An exploration that had decidedly slowed over the past few decades as the economy worsened and the wars raged on. Which reminded me of our financial plight: I'd needed this pay-day as much as anyone on the team but had far fewer years left to make up the loss.

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.

"Your food is coming right out," she said.

I thanked her but she stayed to watch as 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?"