Space Monkey

Space Monkey, alias Chester, was an experimental test monkey chosen to 'pilot' one of the first experimental faster-than-life drives to test whether the stresses involved would be too much for a human being. However, his crude vessel was detected in mid-flight by a passing alien vessel and their sensor scan destabilized Chester's delicate engine and caused a cascade failure.

Chester was teleported to safety within the alien craft just as his own vessel tore itself apart. Chester was badly injured, and his alien rescuers blamed themselves for his apparent loss of intelligence. After years of effort, they devised the 'Evolite Serum' designed to 'supercharge' his remaining brain matter, vastly increasing his intelligence and reaction speed.

As a result, Space Monkey was born.

To show their regret over the destruction of his craft, the aliens had their massive ship construct a new small Sentient Saucer for him to return in. However, in their grief, they forgot to remove the new ship's limited manufacturing capacity or purge its memory banks of the formula for the special serum and some 'defensive weaponry'. As a result, Chester returned home with the capacity to manufacture the "tools of liberation with which to lead his monkey brethren in a revolt against their human oppressors".

The revolt failed spectacularly, and the Space Monkey was quickly apprehended.

However, by that time, the Evolite Serum had been used on dozens of other monkeys and the Sentient Saucer was able to find a number of new monkey figureheads to continue the campaign, only to have each of their schemes fail in turn due to a lack of the necessary ruthlessness and the superior numbers of the humans.

Numerous samples of the Evolite Serum have since fallen into human hands and attempts to replicate the Serum have met with success.