It was six days since my rescue from what is now referred to by the U.S. Navy as Island 834-Pacific. I had called it Mogobu. I didn’t miss the tiny island or its overly solicitous inhabitants. I’d had enough, and I was looking forward to some good old-fashioned U.S. fast food and some not-so-old-fashioned fast women. Of course, the monkeys had set up their version of a fast food burger joint on the island. They had even brought in shipments of Kobe beef for the burgers. It just wasn’t the same.
Suffice it to say that even though the ship’s food was mediocre by helper monkey standards and I was being bunked in the sick bay, I was happy to be among human company once again.
The plan was to put in for San Francisco where I could again secure work as a stevedore. I smiled to myself, munching on a piece of crisp bacon, when in walked a grinning Ensign Mellon. I had seen him around the ship a few times. In addition to his other duties, he was my contact for anything that I needed. He was a useful acquaintance, but this morning he was bursting with excitement, and it was just too damn early.
“Well, out with it,” I grumbled with a full mouth.
“As it turns out, we had a couple of stowaways.”
“Dear God!” I already knew what was coming.
Ensign Mellon moved his hand toward the porthole in what was supposed to be a grand, sweeping gesture, but the effect was ruined when the hatch swung open and struck him in the knuckles. I was more irritated than surprised when in walked five monkeys linked at the arms. They had fashioned little sailor outfits and hats to match the crew’s. In the center of the group of five was a very sheepish Cecil, my original companion.
“May I have a word with you, Ensign Mellon? You know, away from the monkeys?” I made a point to fake a smile at the monkeys.
“I thought you would be happy to see your little friends.”
“Oh, yes, yes. This is a real kick in the pants. Maybe we could go see the captain?”
“Umm, sure.” The ensign didn’t know what was going on, but the captain had given instructions that I was to be extended every courtesy.
He led me to the captain’s ready room off of the bridge. Captain Steinwick joined us after a few moments. He was the quintessential military man, stern and to the point.
“I understand you brought some of your little monkeys on board my ship.”
“No, sir. I had no idea.”
“No matter. We discovered their presence a few days ago. They didn’t want us to tell you until they got a little work done. They’ve been an invaluable resource. They have actually implemented ways to improve the ship’s efficiency. In fact, I’ve never seen the weapons drills go so …”
“Captain, what have you been letting these monkeys do?”
“Well, at first they were relegated to menial tasks, but they worked their way up through the chain of command pretty quickly. Like in the past 36 hours.”
“What do you mean they worked their way up? They’re monkeys. You can’t promote them!”
“As it turns out, there’s a loophole in the Navy regulations. Cecil figured it out. He’s now my executive officer.”
“Your XO? I can’t believe this is happening.” At this point, I felt the ship begin to turn. “Are we changing course?”
Steinwick beamed. “We’re going back to Island 834 - I mean Mogobu. Cecil’s idea. The rest of these monkeys are way too valuable to leave behind.”
“You have got to be kidding.” I heard a screech in the distance and recognized it as Cecil’s. I later found out that he was dressing down a first lieutenant. I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Captain, it’s not that these monkeys are bad. They really do try to help, but…”
“Well, then, that settles it.”
I walked out in disgust onto the deck of the Aegis cruiser. I was so lost in thought that I hardly noticed when Cecil walked up and slipped one of his delicious island rum cocktails into my hand. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a pack of smokes and offered me one.
“Um, thanks, I guess. Why the hell didn’t you stay on the island?”
Cecil just held out his palms in a kind of “beats me” gesture. I recognized this as his standard response when he was holding back.
“Whatever, Cecil. I want no part of this. Bad monkey!”
As Cecil slunk off, I turned my attention to the sound of machine gun fire from the stern. A pair of unattended monkeys was practicing with a mounted gun. Whenever the firing stopped, they would do somersaults and hang from the railing. They had, of course, developed sophisticated firearms on Mogobu, but not all of the monkeys were legally allowed to train with them. This was a real treat.
It took us about a week to get back to Mogobu. I did notice a marked improvement in the quality of the food during the return trip. I repeated my protests for the first few days. I reiterated what a bad idea it was to give Cecil and his cohort free reign of the ship. Steinwick listened politely while smoking his cob pipe, but did nothing.
As the week went by, I noticed the five monkeys taking on vital duties on the ship, including medical services.
The captain was eventually declared unfit for duty by a monkey named Chad. Chad had worked his way into a position as the ship physician’s assistant. At first I was suspicious, but this one really wasn’t the monkeys’ fault. The captain had contracted Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease – the human form of mad cow - from eating a black market beef burger several months before my rescue.
That left Cecil as the acting ship captain. Oddly enough, the Navy sent him a Teletype congratulating him on the temporary assignment and confirming his orders to return to Mogobu and get more helper monkeys. That was a stroke of luck for Cecil since that mission was already underway.
I knew I really shouldn’t complain. My status on the ship went from unexpected guest to the reigning monarch. Cecil’s new XO, a monkey he had brought with him by the name of Ricky, vacated his quarters and allowed me to sleep there until we got to the island. Upon arrival, he ordered a crew of monkeys to redecorate the room. They ended up going a step further, knocking down a few bulkheads and installing a Jacuzzi and king-size bed. They also moved my wardrobe from the island into my quarters so I wouldn’t have to keep wearing the same clothes or a stripped-down naval uniform.
When we left, there was a complement of 10,000 monkeys on board. Most of them slept on the deck or in the stowage. The remaining population of Mogobu remained on the island to work on obtaining a Five Diamond resort rating and UN recognition.
The human crew took little time in allowing the ship to be completely run by the monkeys. Many of them were offered discharges and took cushy, overpaid consultant jobs for the monkeys’ corporation, Mogobu Concepts, Ltd. The corporation was a holding company for Mogobu Island Resort, Mogobu Air, Mogobu Petroleum, MG Entertainment, and a number of other interests in various sectors of the economy.
It was kind of impressive the way the monkeys turned the Aegis into a luxury cruise vessel with the few tools and provisions that they had brought from the island, but I was concerned about the readiness of the vessel for military use. Weren’t we at war or something? I couldn’t really remember.
As I watched a pair of monkeys perfectly land one of the ship’s helicopters, I overheard two of the human sailors talking.
“That monkey, Tom, put me on a new diet and workout program. Said he’s going to help me get rid of these love handles.” The sailor grotesquely gripped his side flab.
“Yeah? That’s great. Madge, the little rhesus monkey, tells me that she thinks that Jill and I have a shot at working things out. She’s offered to counsel us when we get back.”
I was not about to stand by and have the misery of Mogobu spread to the civilized world. “Listen, you may think these monkeys are great, but they really aren’t. They make a lot of things worse!”
“Yeah, like what?” The sailor was clearly irritated with my interruption.
“Well, how about the art?” I said, waving my hand over to some amateurish displays that were set up along the ship’s rail.
“Those are ours. Captain Cecil thought it might be good for us to express ourselves through painting.”
“God, really? Are we living in the 70’s?” The two sailors looked crestfallen. “I guess they’re not that bad. What about that music, though? Last night I was listening to some horrible jungle din coming from the deck.”
“Yeah, some of the boys decided to put on a show for our new friends. We didn’t really know what they listened to until Bobo introduced us to his string quartet. They really were a lot more polished than our band. I’m sorry, but we did try.”
I was becoming exasperated. “Forget about the art! Forget about the music! Don’t you feel like people are just better than monkeys?”
At that point, several of the monkeys stopped what they were doing and stared at me. There was a hushed screeching throughout the ship.
“I’m sorry, but monkeys are just such showoffs.” I was cut off by a group of monkeys in Hawaiian shirts with leis around their necks. It was a classic Cecil move. Instead of getting a bunch of jack booted primate thugs to enforce his regime, he organized his Ultra Chic Funky Monkey Squad to deal with troublemakers. To everyone else, I looked like I was being whisked away to some fun activity like limbo or a pig roast, when in reality …
Damn it. It was a luau. So this was life on a monkey-run ship. If you started getting angry, they would shuttle you around the ship to keep you busy so that you couldn’t protest. I sat down and quietly ate from a bowl of poi. Much to my chagrin, it was delicious.
The next morning, I decided that I would try a different approach. I walked to the bridge. Since Cecil considered me his best friend, and regularly boasted about it to the other monkeys, I was able to walk in unchallenged by the Marines posted at the door. I knew the two monkey Marines as Farvel and Beanie, menacing looking monkeys with a sadistic bent. No, not really, but they should have been.
I walked in to see Cecil sipping from a coffee mug and looking with a determined face over a clipboard. He was smoking a cob pipe. He waved me inside with a hairy appendage.
“Um, Cecil. Congratulations on becoming captain.” He interrupted with a grunt. “I’m sorry. Acting captain. Sorry also about the other day."
Cecil ran over and jumped up in my arms. I hated when he did that.
“You’re spilling your coffee. Act like a captain. The other monkeys are watching.” He hopped down and dabbed at the stain with a wet rag.
“Listen, Cecil, I was wondering if I could take a tour of the ship. You know, I’ve never been on a military ship before and I would like to check out some of the off-limits areas. What do you think?”
Cecil picked up a microphone and started screeching unintelligibly into it. Whatever he said resulted in a yeoman monkey named Puffer coming to the bridge to personally escort me through the Aegis.
”Let’s start with the missile arsenal, shall we?” I said in my most amicable voice.
The austere looking monkey quietly led me through a number of hatches and gangways until we reached the missile room. There appeared to be some sort of maintenance going on.
“Let’s say I wanted to blow up the ship with one of these warheads. Can someone show me how to do it? Preferably with about a five-minute time delay so that someone … all of the monkeys could escape.”
Surprisingly, they showed me a dial that looked remarkably like an egg timer. You merely had to wind it to the time and push a button.
“That’s really it?”
Puffer set it a few times and unset it just to show me. It scared the hell out of me.
“Okay, I get it. Quit jackassing around with it, please.”
That would be my ticket. I would wait until we hit the San Francisco Bay and blow the ship. I could ride a Zodiac in and state my case to the government. I would be lauded as a hero for ridding the world of this blight. In the meantime, I just needed to play it cool…real cool.
I attended luaus, concertos, monkey ballets, and anything else that would make me fit in with the other humans. In between, I visited Captain Cecil on the bridge and scanned for any signs of suspicion on his part.
It was on one of these occasions I discovered Cecil and Steinwick perusing a large document. It was handwritten and had notes in the margins.
“Captain Steinwick, you’re okay!”
“Oh, yes, the monkeys found a cure and antidote for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. It is no longer a threat. Also, call me Jim. This ship has only one captain. I’m a civilian now.”
“What? Why?
“Mostly the money. Besides, I’m doing work on this Monkey Rights Amendment.” He waved a hand over the large sheet.
“What? Equal rights for monkeys?”
“No. That would be ludicrous, of course. They’ve proven themselves. We haven’t. Maybe we will in time. In the meantime, they will enjoy enhanced freedoms while ours will be slightly restricted. Cecil was all about equal rights, but the latest polls show that most Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of a monkey-superior amendment like they have in Europe.”
“In Europe? What the hell are you talking about?”
“You really should have flipped on a television when you were on that island.”
With that, Cecil began to screech at Steinwick. He would not tolerate any disrespect towards me. Steinwick then explained to me in very measured tones that Mogobu had a UN delegation. Most of them had obtained citizenship and even ascended to high political posts in many of the advanced countries throughout the world. Steinwick kept looking at Cecil to make sure that he was explaining it right.
I didn’t care if they had just solved the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or ended the African wars. They had to be stopped.
Humans would have to step up and take back their place at the top of the animal kingdom. It would start with Cecil’s cohort. I was too far from shore for my escape plan, so I would just have to martyr myself and the original crew in blasting these 10,000 monkeys straight to hell.
I turned to walk out, trying to brace myself for the first and only blow that I would be able to strike for humanity. Through clenched teeth, I asked, “Is there anything else, Steinwick?”
“Nothing really important. We did take out that stupid self-destruct dial. You were right, Captain. What were we thinking? It always reminded me of an egg timer.”
God damn it! I turned and walked out. I punched Beanie in the stomach for no reason. “Sorry, I thought you were someone else.”
When I went down to the tiki bar that had been erected in the forecastle, I saw former-Ensign Mellon. He took a sip from a nearly full martini and then scowled.
“What’s going on, Mellon.”
“Not much. Do you want the rest of this?”
“Why did you order it if you didn’t want it? “
“It’s just not that good. I like them really dry.”
“Well, next time have one of the monkeys make it.”
“I did. It’s just not that good. Don’t say anything. I’ll drink it.” I glanced over at the bartender monkey, who responded by pointing both fingers at me in his best Isaac impression.
Bingo!
I walked out onto the deck and watched the San Francisco skyline loom larger as the Aegis neared. This was how it would happen, one bad martini at a time.
I shoved a nearby chimpanzee into the water, but he just climbed back up and good-naturedly mussed my hair.God, I hate these monkeys.
As we pulled into the port, I saw a billboard facing outward to advertise a message to the incoming ships. The photo was of a familiar monkey face with one eyebrow cocked. He was wearing the accoutrements of a traditional chef. The caption read, “The Court proudly presents the culinary adventures of Chef Claudius.”
As I drank the vermouth-saturated concoction, I shuddered at how daunting my task would be. Claudius wasn’t even one of Mogobu’s top five chefs.
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