After an enjoyable life as an author and Man Whore, I’ve been reincarnated into something that hews closer to my true spirit: a silverback gorilla! Much of my time is spent knuckle-walking across vast stretches of lowland forest and swamps, eating various kinds of foliage, but every so often maowing down on some delicious-ass fruits. NOMS!
Ahhhh….SO much less stressful than life as a human. I pillow my head with my hands and lean back in my nest, smiling as the sunbeams spear through the canopy and warm my face. My nest is one of the best dern laze-about spots in the jungle; the tree it’s constructed in is super high and super sturdy, and yeah I may have infested it with scalding blasts of gorilla farts, but everyone loves their own brand, right?
I think back to snatches of my past life, singing one of my favorite human songs under my breath: “And when we go crash-ing. Down. We come back every tiiiime. ’Cause we never go out of style, we never go out of style…”
Suddenly I hear a series of shrill hoots. I bolt up and look over the side of my nest, spotting a passel of chimps yelling and hollering at me. Little fucks think that just ’cause they’ve entered a Stone Age, they can bully the rest of us apes with rocks and sticks. Yeah I don’t think so, cockfaces.
I lean my butt over the side and let loose with a stream of berry-induced diarrhea that I was saving to enjoy during my next contemplation of life and existence (come on; everyone knows that some of the most earth-shattering realizations come to you while you’re on the toilet), splattering them with a hot rain of Gross. Outraged shrieks erupt from below.
I cup my hands and yell down at them, “Sorry you’re having a ‘shitty’ day! Mwahahaha!”
Their leader shakes his fist at me. “NO ONE SHITS ON CHIMPS AND GETS AWAY WITH IT! WE’RE GONNA RIP YOUR FACE OFF, KENT WAYNE!”
I salute them with both middle fingers, stick my tongue out, and blow ’em a raspberry.
One of them brings a row of sticks up to the chimp leader. What the hell?
He holds one, cocks his arm back, then slings it at me. It whizzes by my face, taking a small clump of hair with it.
Oh SHIT! SPEARS!
I curl into a ball as more missiles tear through my nest. Fuck! I spent a year building this sweet-ass pad! I ain’t the best looking ape, but my banging nest has allowed me to seduce legions of females and—
And then it comes tumbling down.
“WAAAAAHHHHHHH—OOF! OW! FUCK!” I ricochet off tree limbs as I tumble my way down from my now-shredded home. When I land, my enormous body is cushioned by a quartet of chimps who are squashed flat under my protruding belly. I jump up, grab two of the corpses by their legs, and start using them like weighted whips, swinging them in wild circles and clubbing the bejesus out of any and all chimps that’re within my reach.
“IT’S GO-TIME, ASSHOLES! RAAAAAHHHH!!!!”
I’ve knocked about a dozen of ’em senseless before they all pile on me, biting the living Taylor Swift out of my back and my shoulders. In a matter of seconds, both of my arms are each weighted down by four chimps, and there’s at least five anchored around each of my legs.
I sway in place. “Oooohhhh SHIIIIIITTTT!” then topple onto my back with a ponderous THUD.
The chimp leader jumps onto my chest, holding a spear with both hands above his head, ready to thrust downward like he’s a high priest of Satan.
“This is the way of things,” he hisses. “Spears for now, but soon we will have metal tubes that spit fiery death, like the hairless humans that ring our forests.”
I lock eyes with him. “Been there, done that. Allow me to show you some next level shiz, you dirty little fucklor.”
His brow wrinkles in confusion. “Dude, our spears are top of the line—you don’t even have a sharpened rock. And what the hell is a ‘fucklor?’ ”
(I’m not about to tell him it’s one of my new cutting edge insults—I imagine it to be like some kinda mythical D&D beast, but with my own profane twist. Let’s keep that between us, shall we?)
So I don’t answer. I just close my eyes and think back to the science fiction epic I wrote in my past life that uplifted all of humanity with a heart-stopping narrative filled with cyborg-soldiers and down-ass future wizards.
The epic called ECHO.
Magic flash.
Planes of disembodied light start forming across me, meshing into glowing sections of psychic armor. The chimps on my arms and legs scurry away, hooting in panic as psionic gauntlets ensconce my massive ape-paws. A transparent helmet made of blue radiance molds across my brow and my jaw, covering my eyes with a cool-ass visor. My sight is instantly filled with glowing scrawls of data. Below the visor, my lips spread into a giant smile.
“Psychogenic armor: engage boot thrusters.”
A glowing message blinks across my readout: BOOT THRUSTERS ENGAGED.
A bone-thrumming hum that sounds like a jet engine fills my ears, and I lift off the ground as torrents of heat-shimmered air blast from my feet.
The chimps flinch back, their widened eyes reflecting the glow of my psionic war-suit.
“Armor: activate electrokinetic ordnance.”
Another message: ELECTROKINESIS ACTIVATED.
I raise my fingers and—brZAP! A flit of lightning jumps from their tips and needles the chimps. They jump straight up, letting loose a series of unearthly howls, then start running.
Under my helmet, my smile turns into a hardened grin.
Arcs of white-hot lightning blaze from my hands, enveloping chimps in jags of energy, causing them to jiggle and dance. I don’t kill them—these ass-tards haven’t been THAT egregious—but I give their systems a damn good jolt, one that ensures they’ll be subject to random seizures for the next few months. (If I were them, I’d improvise some kinda diaper to catch errant poop; they won’t be able to trust a fart for quite some time.)
When they’ve all fled, I’m left floating above the remains of my nest, wondering if I should start rebuilding it.
Then I smile. Nah—forget the nest; I’ve got a sweet-ass psionic war-suit.
I close my eyes and focus my intent, aligning the war-suit’s propulsion systems with my willpower and imagination. A second later I blast through the jungle canopy, etching a glowing contrail in the African sky.
For the next few years, I travel to distant reaches of the galaxy, conquering the evil overfiend Reptar, the Insectoid Dominion, the Plasm Invaders from Alpha Centauri…eventually, I’m elected Supreme Ape of the Milky Way and live out the rest of my days eating grapes and bananas, reading comics, and wrassling with puppies or making pew pew noises.
All hail the Supreme Ape Kent Wayne!
Are you trapped in an ape body, trying to get your Chill on, but are forced by wannabe oppressors into a life of battle and war? Don’t worry—you can still transform into an unstoppable force for intergalactic peace! Get Echo Vol. 1 on Kindle here: Vol. 1 on Kindle. Vol. 2 on Kindle here: Vol.2 on Kindle Vol. 3 on Kindle here: Vol. 3 on Kindle #kindle #kindleunlimited #sciencefiction #scifi #books #novel #book
Kent Wayne 
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