Short Story: Spacemonkeyz Vs. Gorillaz - Laika Come Home

I packed a suitcase with a few essential belongings and headed outside to the waiting cab. It was early that Saturday morning and I still had a hard time believing my good fortune. I'd been selected to pilot the first orbiting music studio in human history, a joint venture between Virgin Galactic and Apple Computers.

A few months before this, the head of the project contacted me through my website to let me know I'd made the short list to head the LEO (Low Earth Orbit) Remix division. It seems that my essays on astropolyrhythmics had made some waves with management. Soon I was confirmed for training and tendered my resignation to my then employer, Beat Science Ltd. I spent three months in a training facility in California, getting my body into shape for long term low gee and learning from the Duboligists at the newly founded Institute for Low Gravity Recomposition.

So the day had finally come and I stood there staring out into the horizon when the cab driver hit the horn and gave me a nasty look. I had spent my entire professional career studying astropolyrhythmics and the time had come to put it into practice. When we arrived at the guard shack in front of the launch site the entire facility was in a state of complete panic and disarray. I found the rest of my team near the crew prep area and was quickly filled in by Ian, my Chief Beat Engineer for the mission.

It seemed that the monkeys that were used to test our module had broken out of their holding pens about half an hour before then and were putting the ship into preflight checks. The monkeys had shut ground control out of the systems and the capsule was designed to be completely secure, guarded against industrial espionage. The rocket lifted off that morning packed full of a $150 million in experimental studio equipment and three stoned out test monkeys.

The world watched and listened in wonder as over the course of one year, the Spacemonkeyz released one of the greatest dub concepts ever given form track by track back to the planet on pirate radio. People ask me if I'm upset by this turn of events and in interviews I always say the same thing. Those monkeys have fulfilled my greatest dream, to remix an album in orbit and elevate the science of astropolyrhythmics to legitimacy.

They're still up their and last week I sent them new source material from Thievery Corporation, Scientist and King Tubby.

Good for: Traveling without moving. Founding a colony on Mars based entirely on slick beats and reverb.

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