Planet of the Apes
Mar. 17th, 2008 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
veiledndarknessTitle: In Thade We Trust – Chapter 7
Author: veiledndarkness
Warning: The usual disclaimer, not my property, just playing with the characters. Takes place shortly after the end of Planet of the Apes (2001).
Summary: In the darkest parts of the human mind lies the ability to be needlessly cruel and inhuman, a baser nature that separates us from the animals.
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xx
Leo awoke after what seemed like hours, puzzled and disoriented. He lifted his head from the pillow, blinking owlishly in the darkness of his room. He licked his dry lips and sat up, his skin prickling all over. Silence greeted him. Leo breathed out softly, his heart beating rapidly. He looked around the room, a crack of light visible under the frame of his doorway.
He crept off his bed, the mattress squeaking. Leo made his way to the door and pressed his ear to the frame, straining to hear any noise. Muted voices carried down the hallway, quiet murmurs that he could hardly hear. Leo frowned, his hand straying to the slot where the door handle should have been. He sighed when he felt the metal slot, another reminder that he wasn't home or even on his station.
Leo tugged the metal slot, a growl escaping him as he did so. The voices stopped, dead silence filling the air. Leo dropped his hand from the slot, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. He backed away from the door, his palms sweating when he heard muffled footsteps echoing down the hallway. Leo crawled into his bed and yanked the covers up, feigning sleep just as the door swooshed open.
Leo held still, exhaling deeply and slowly. "He sleeps like an infant, all curled up."
"Well really Ari, did you think that he would hang upside down?" Dr. Naira scoffed softly.
"Hush," Ari chided him. "You'll wake him."
Leo bit the inside of his cheek, his eyes firmly shut. "The similarities are remarkable," she whispered. "How different are we in the long run?"
"Not as much as you would imagine," Dr. Naira said. "Come along now, leave him be."
Ari brushed her long fingers over Leo's forehead, the touch gentle. "Ari, come now!"
She sighed and backed away from the bed, following Dr. Naira. The door swooshed closed, leaving Leo in the silent and dark room. Leo sighed as well and tugged the blanket tighter around himself.
xx
In the morning, Leo was awakened by Dr. Naira. He followed him out of the room, rubbing at the sleep in his eyes with the heels of his hands. Dr. Naira pointed to a simple wooden table that rested against the far wall of the main room. "Sit there," he said.
Leo woofed under his breath and sat down on the chair, yawning widely. He rested his head in his arms on the table, one eye watching Dr. Naira open and close cupboards in the kitchen area. He was asleep again when Dr. Naira walked over, placing a tray on the table, his knuckles rapping on the wooden tabletop. "Leo...Boy, wake up already!" he said.
"Huh? Oh...Shit, sorry," Leo said sheepishly. He yawned, covering his mouth as he did so.
"Did you not sleep enough?" Dr. Naira asked as he lifted the lid off the bowl on one tray.
Leo shook his head. "You guys run me ragged every day," he said tiredly. "I need to rest. Even the chimps on the stations got days off," he grumbled.
Dr. Naira paused, his hand hovering over the spoon. "Chimps..." he echoed.
"Yeah, I told you, that's how I got in this...whatever the hell you want to call it," Leo said. "I worked with the chimps on space flights, I was going after mine, Pericles, and he got caught in the electrical storm."
"Leo...Surely you know how...very unlikely that comes across," Dr. Naira said. He poured a spoonful of sugar over the contents of the bowl and placed it on the tray in front of Leo.
"You don't...why would I lie?" Leo protested quickly, his forehead furrowed in tired frustration. "What good would that do me?"
"It's not that I think you're lying, Leo," Dr. Naira said. He sat down on his chair. "It's more that the world you described to me, your circumstances as to how you arrived here, it's very odd."
"Odd," Leo said, his eyes gleaming with anger. "Y'know what's odd? Landing on some backwards fuckin' planet! Being treated like a slave by monkeys! Having to fight a war between humans and apes! That's fucking odd, ok?!"
"Calm down this instant or I'll have you medicated," Dr. Naira warned sharply.
"Do you have any idea what was goin' through my head when I woke up strapped to a surgical table, cut open like a lab rat?" Leo said, his shoulders slumping.
"I imagine you were terrified," Dr. Naira said. "This is precisely why I had you brought to my rooms. I did what I could; the very least you could do is show some gratitude."
"Oh, thank you ever so much, Master," Leo snarled half heartedly.
"Leo, this is my final warning," Dr. Naira said sternly, his eyes flashing. "Settle down or I will have you restrained."
His words had the desired effect. Leo stiffened at the very mention of restraints, his eyes wide. "I...I'm sorry," he said through clenched teeth.
Dr. Naira nodded and pushed a spoon close to him. "Your anger is understandable," he said. "Eat; you'll need your strength."
"Is that why you always look so fascinated by my emotions?" Leo muttered. He grabbed the spoon and ate the porridge-like food, the pieces of fruit in it amusing him somewhat, a far away memory of eating the porridge that his grandmother made on cold winter mornings hitting him then.
"Your face is very expressive," Dr. Naira said. "Your emotions bleed through and it's just one more thing I'm studying about you."
Leo ate slowly, his anger fading. "What are the other humans like?" he asked. "I mean...the ones you guys found."
"They're much less advanced than you," Dr. Naira said. "Most can't speak, although they do verbalize somewhat, sounds in their throats and interestingly enough, complex hand gestures. The hand gestures are similar to sign language, only different somehow. We've yet to completely crack what the codes mean."
"Like cavemen?" Leo said, scooping a red berry up with his spoon. He glanced at Naira, blinking. "What?"
Dr. Naira hurriedly crossed the room and grabbed a notepad from a chest of drawers that filled one wall. "What did you say just now?" he asked, clicking his pen.
"What? Y'mean 'cavemen'?" Leo said with a confused frown on his face.
"Yes, that word, what are you saying by that word?" Dr. Naira asked.
Leo put his spoon down. "Caveman...it's, well its kinda what they called prehistoric humans," he said, groping for the right words. "Haven't you heard of evolution?"
"I imagine that your world believed in human evolution?" Dr. Naira asked.
"Mhm," Leo nodded. "See, the theory was that man evolved from great apes over millions of years, from apes to hominids, eventually to humans like me."
Dr. Naira stared at him, his dark eyes wide. "You...your kind believes that?"
"Of course," Leo said. "I mean, there are always the religious guys who say its all bullshit, that there's no way that mankind evolved from monkeys, but c'mon, when you got the fossils an' bones to back it up, how can you deny it?"
"Leo, forgive me, but that is the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard," Dr. Naira said.
Leo rolled his eyes. "Whatever," he said. "It's the truth."
"How can you even say that? That humans and apes are one in the same? That's..." Dr. Naira trailed off, shaking his head.
"We're not exactly the same. You said so yourself last night to Ari that we're a lot alike, so why's it such a shock to you?" Leo said heatedly. "Did you know we're so close to bein' the same? Ninety-eight percent close!"
"You were awake?" Dr. Naira interrupted irritably.
"Yeah," Leo said. "Don't change the subject! The difference between humans an' great apes is only one pair less of chromosomes. So you tell me why that makes human evolution impossible."
Dr. Naira tapped his pen to his notepad thoughtfully. "This is why humans are so fascinating to study," he said. "The similarities are there. We haven't been able to show how or why the split occurred, but there have been rumblings in the science world for the last hundred years or so about the possibility of ape evolution being misunderstood."
"Right," Leo said. "Even human scientists weren't sure how it happened, they know that it did happen and there's proof that it did happen. Whatever the hell happened here, I don't know, it's like it changed, like you guys got smarter and humans reversed."
"Thade only knows," Dr. Naira murmured. Leo looked at him, his lip curled in a sneer.
"Thade's your God, huh?" he said. "Figures..."
"God...what's that got to do with Thade?" Dr. Naira asked blankly.
"Oh for the love of..." Leo sighed. "Look, you guys praise him, right? You got monuments for the sadistic bastard, so he's revered and feared?"
"Bite your tongue, Leo," Dr. Naira glared at him.
"Yeah, well you didn't know him when I knew him!" Leo snapped. He paused. "I...I mean...Sorry," he said. "When you treat someone like that where I'm from, it means they're like a God, a higher being, it's a spiritual thing."
"I see," Dr. Naira said. Leo stirred his spoon through his breakfast. "How do you know the word 'caveman'?" he asked.
"A group of humans were found twenty years ago near the outskirts of Washington, high up near the mountains, not far from Virginia," Dr. Naira said as he wrote quick notes. "They were living in a section of the cave that was formed by the mountain. They couldn't speak, not in any language or sounds that we could discern, but they were nicknamed 'cavemen' for their living environment."
"Were they the kind that made cave paintings, did the whole animal skin look, stones and spears for weapons?" Leo asked.
Dr. Naira paused again, looking at him. "How did you...yes, all those things."
"We called them 'Cro-Magnons'," Leo said. "They were the closest descendents to modern humans."
"Modern, you mean as in behaving more like you?" Dr. Naira asked.
Leo shrugged. "In a way, yeah," he said. "I'm from 2029. Things are different then they were at the turn of the century."
Dr. Naira looked amused. "Leo, it is 2029," he said.
"Yeah, well with what little I saw when I landed, I thought I made it back home," Leo muttered. "It all looks the same! Until the gorilla cops went at me."
"So, Pericles was your chimp?" Dr. Naira asked after a moment of silence between them.
Leo nodded. "He was one of the chimps that were gene-spliced and enhanced with more human-like chromosomes," he said. "We used them to pilot space pods for areas that humans hadn't been able to travel to."
"Why didn't you tell me these specifics when I asked you before?" Dr. Naira asked.
"I didn't think you'd believe me," Leo said simply. "Even now, I don't think your believin' half of what I'm telling you."
"I want to believe you, Leo, but you need to understand how what you tell me contradicts with Earth's history," Dr. Naira said.
"What is your history?' Leo asked. "Show me how I'm wrong? I'm not an idiot, y'know."
"I have no doubt of your intelligence," Dr. Naira said. "Clearly you have intelligence if you were flying a space pod, although your landing left something to be desired. It was quite the clean-up on the monument."
Leo glared at him, his cheeks burning with embarrassment. "Oh, shut up," he mumbled. "Let's see you crash land with style after you go through what I went through. I happen to be an astronaut, y' gotta have some brains to do that."
"Clearly," Dr. Naira said with some amusement in his eyes. He ate a few spoonfuls of his own porridge, deep in thought. "So, in theory, if humans evolved from apes, then why have we not become human over time as well?"
Leo sighed. "Look, I really don't know, ok? Even the scientists couldn't explain it completely. As far as I understood it in history class, over time more and more of the hominids began standing up. I'm guessin' they realized that they could do a lot more if they started walkin' around. Evolution's like that, survival of the fittest," he said, waving one hand in annoyance.
"Suppose it was more that we shared a common ancestor," Dr. Naira mused, his food forgotten again as he pieced the information together. "If we shared common DNA at one time, then it would explain how some evolved and some didn't. Humans, they resemble chimps more than apes..." he trailed off, his arm rubbing over his head as he wrote rapidly on his notepad.
Leo smiled slowly. "They estimated that humans branched off from the common ancestor that we had somewhere between five and seven million years ago on Earth," he said. "Huh, and Professor Bowen said I'd never pass history. Shows how much he knows."
Dr. Naira snorted and shook his head. "Teachers, they think they know it all," he said distractedly.
Leo gripped his spoon again and continued eating, pushing all thoughts of the day ahead out of his mind.
xx
Author: veiledndarkness
Warning: The usual disclaimer, not my property, just playing with the characters. Takes place shortly after the end of Planet of the Apes (2001).
Summary: In the darkest parts of the human mind lies the ability to be needlessly cruel and inhuman, a baser nature that separates us from the animals.
1
2
3
4
5
6
xx
Leo awoke after what seemed like hours, puzzled and disoriented. He lifted his head from the pillow, blinking owlishly in the darkness of his room. He licked his dry lips and sat up, his skin prickling all over. Silence greeted him. Leo breathed out softly, his heart beating rapidly. He looked around the room, a crack of light visible under the frame of his doorway.
He crept off his bed, the mattress squeaking. Leo made his way to the door and pressed his ear to the frame, straining to hear any noise. Muted voices carried down the hallway, quiet murmurs that he could hardly hear. Leo frowned, his hand straying to the slot where the door handle should have been. He sighed when he felt the metal slot, another reminder that he wasn't home or even on his station.
Leo tugged the metal slot, a growl escaping him as he did so. The voices stopped, dead silence filling the air. Leo dropped his hand from the slot, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. He backed away from the door, his palms sweating when he heard muffled footsteps echoing down the hallway. Leo crawled into his bed and yanked the covers up, feigning sleep just as the door swooshed open.
Leo held still, exhaling deeply and slowly. "He sleeps like an infant, all curled up."
"Well really Ari, did you think that he would hang upside down?" Dr. Naira scoffed softly.
"Hush," Ari chided him. "You'll wake him."
Leo bit the inside of his cheek, his eyes firmly shut. "The similarities are remarkable," she whispered. "How different are we in the long run?"
"Not as much as you would imagine," Dr. Naira said. "Come along now, leave him be."
Ari brushed her long fingers over Leo's forehead, the touch gentle. "Ari, come now!"
She sighed and backed away from the bed, following Dr. Naira. The door swooshed closed, leaving Leo in the silent and dark room. Leo sighed as well and tugged the blanket tighter around himself.
xx
In the morning, Leo was awakened by Dr. Naira. He followed him out of the room, rubbing at the sleep in his eyes with the heels of his hands. Dr. Naira pointed to a simple wooden table that rested against the far wall of the main room. "Sit there," he said.
Leo woofed under his breath and sat down on the chair, yawning widely. He rested his head in his arms on the table, one eye watching Dr. Naira open and close cupboards in the kitchen area. He was asleep again when Dr. Naira walked over, placing a tray on the table, his knuckles rapping on the wooden tabletop. "Leo...Boy, wake up already!" he said.
"Huh? Oh...Shit, sorry," Leo said sheepishly. He yawned, covering his mouth as he did so.
"Did you not sleep enough?" Dr. Naira asked as he lifted the lid off the bowl on one tray.
Leo shook his head. "You guys run me ragged every day," he said tiredly. "I need to rest. Even the chimps on the stations got days off," he grumbled.
Dr. Naira paused, his hand hovering over the spoon. "Chimps..." he echoed.
"Yeah, I told you, that's how I got in this...whatever the hell you want to call it," Leo said. "I worked with the chimps on space flights, I was going after mine, Pericles, and he got caught in the electrical storm."
"Leo...Surely you know how...very unlikely that comes across," Dr. Naira said. He poured a spoonful of sugar over the contents of the bowl and placed it on the tray in front of Leo.
"You don't...why would I lie?" Leo protested quickly, his forehead furrowed in tired frustration. "What good would that do me?"
"It's not that I think you're lying, Leo," Dr. Naira said. He sat down on his chair. "It's more that the world you described to me, your circumstances as to how you arrived here, it's very odd."
"Odd," Leo said, his eyes gleaming with anger. "Y'know what's odd? Landing on some backwards fuckin' planet! Being treated like a slave by monkeys! Having to fight a war between humans and apes! That's fucking odd, ok?!"
"Calm down this instant or I'll have you medicated," Dr. Naira warned sharply.
"Do you have any idea what was goin' through my head when I woke up strapped to a surgical table, cut open like a lab rat?" Leo said, his shoulders slumping.
"I imagine you were terrified," Dr. Naira said. "This is precisely why I had you brought to my rooms. I did what I could; the very least you could do is show some gratitude."
"Oh, thank you ever so much, Master," Leo snarled half heartedly.
"Leo, this is my final warning," Dr. Naira said sternly, his eyes flashing. "Settle down or I will have you restrained."
His words had the desired effect. Leo stiffened at the very mention of restraints, his eyes wide. "I...I'm sorry," he said through clenched teeth.
Dr. Naira nodded and pushed a spoon close to him. "Your anger is understandable," he said. "Eat; you'll need your strength."
"Is that why you always look so fascinated by my emotions?" Leo muttered. He grabbed the spoon and ate the porridge-like food, the pieces of fruit in it amusing him somewhat, a far away memory of eating the porridge that his grandmother made on cold winter mornings hitting him then.
"Your face is very expressive," Dr. Naira said. "Your emotions bleed through and it's just one more thing I'm studying about you."
Leo ate slowly, his anger fading. "What are the other humans like?" he asked. "I mean...the ones you guys found."
"They're much less advanced than you," Dr. Naira said. "Most can't speak, although they do verbalize somewhat, sounds in their throats and interestingly enough, complex hand gestures. The hand gestures are similar to sign language, only different somehow. We've yet to completely crack what the codes mean."
"Like cavemen?" Leo said, scooping a red berry up with his spoon. He glanced at Naira, blinking. "What?"
Dr. Naira hurriedly crossed the room and grabbed a notepad from a chest of drawers that filled one wall. "What did you say just now?" he asked, clicking his pen.
"What? Y'mean 'cavemen'?" Leo said with a confused frown on his face.
"Yes, that word, what are you saying by that word?" Dr. Naira asked.
Leo put his spoon down. "Caveman...it's, well its kinda what they called prehistoric humans," he said, groping for the right words. "Haven't you heard of evolution?"
"I imagine that your world believed in human evolution?" Dr. Naira asked.
"Mhm," Leo nodded. "See, the theory was that man evolved from great apes over millions of years, from apes to hominids, eventually to humans like me."
Dr. Naira stared at him, his dark eyes wide. "You...your kind believes that?"
"Of course," Leo said. "I mean, there are always the religious guys who say its all bullshit, that there's no way that mankind evolved from monkeys, but c'mon, when you got the fossils an' bones to back it up, how can you deny it?"
"Leo, forgive me, but that is the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard," Dr. Naira said.
Leo rolled his eyes. "Whatever," he said. "It's the truth."
"How can you even say that? That humans and apes are one in the same? That's..." Dr. Naira trailed off, shaking his head.
"We're not exactly the same. You said so yourself last night to Ari that we're a lot alike, so why's it such a shock to you?" Leo said heatedly. "Did you know we're so close to bein' the same? Ninety-eight percent close!"
"You were awake?" Dr. Naira interrupted irritably.
"Yeah," Leo said. "Don't change the subject! The difference between humans an' great apes is only one pair less of chromosomes. So you tell me why that makes human evolution impossible."
Dr. Naira tapped his pen to his notepad thoughtfully. "This is why humans are so fascinating to study," he said. "The similarities are there. We haven't been able to show how or why the split occurred, but there have been rumblings in the science world for the last hundred years or so about the possibility of ape evolution being misunderstood."
"Right," Leo said. "Even human scientists weren't sure how it happened, they know that it did happen and there's proof that it did happen. Whatever the hell happened here, I don't know, it's like it changed, like you guys got smarter and humans reversed."
"Thade only knows," Dr. Naira murmured. Leo looked at him, his lip curled in a sneer.
"Thade's your God, huh?" he said. "Figures..."
"God...what's that got to do with Thade?" Dr. Naira asked blankly.
"Oh for the love of..." Leo sighed. "Look, you guys praise him, right? You got monuments for the sadistic bastard, so he's revered and feared?"
"Bite your tongue, Leo," Dr. Naira glared at him.
"Yeah, well you didn't know him when I knew him!" Leo snapped. He paused. "I...I mean...Sorry," he said. "When you treat someone like that where I'm from, it means they're like a God, a higher being, it's a spiritual thing."
"I see," Dr. Naira said. Leo stirred his spoon through his breakfast. "How do you know the word 'caveman'?" he asked.
"A group of humans were found twenty years ago near the outskirts of Washington, high up near the mountains, not far from Virginia," Dr. Naira said as he wrote quick notes. "They were living in a section of the cave that was formed by the mountain. They couldn't speak, not in any language or sounds that we could discern, but they were nicknamed 'cavemen' for their living environment."
"Were they the kind that made cave paintings, did the whole animal skin look, stones and spears for weapons?" Leo asked.
Dr. Naira paused again, looking at him. "How did you...yes, all those things."
"We called them 'Cro-Magnons'," Leo said. "They were the closest descendents to modern humans."
"Modern, you mean as in behaving more like you?" Dr. Naira asked.
Leo shrugged. "In a way, yeah," he said. "I'm from 2029. Things are different then they were at the turn of the century."
Dr. Naira looked amused. "Leo, it is 2029," he said.
"Yeah, well with what little I saw when I landed, I thought I made it back home," Leo muttered. "It all looks the same! Until the gorilla cops went at me."
"So, Pericles was your chimp?" Dr. Naira asked after a moment of silence between them.
Leo nodded. "He was one of the chimps that were gene-spliced and enhanced with more human-like chromosomes," he said. "We used them to pilot space pods for areas that humans hadn't been able to travel to."
"Why didn't you tell me these specifics when I asked you before?" Dr. Naira asked.
"I didn't think you'd believe me," Leo said simply. "Even now, I don't think your believin' half of what I'm telling you."
"I want to believe you, Leo, but you need to understand how what you tell me contradicts with Earth's history," Dr. Naira said.
"What is your history?' Leo asked. "Show me how I'm wrong? I'm not an idiot, y'know."
"I have no doubt of your intelligence," Dr. Naira said. "Clearly you have intelligence if you were flying a space pod, although your landing left something to be desired. It was quite the clean-up on the monument."
Leo glared at him, his cheeks burning with embarrassment. "Oh, shut up," he mumbled. "Let's see you crash land with style after you go through what I went through. I happen to be an astronaut, y' gotta have some brains to do that."
"Clearly," Dr. Naira said with some amusement in his eyes. He ate a few spoonfuls of his own porridge, deep in thought. "So, in theory, if humans evolved from apes, then why have we not become human over time as well?"
Leo sighed. "Look, I really don't know, ok? Even the scientists couldn't explain it completely. As far as I understood it in history class, over time more and more of the hominids began standing up. I'm guessin' they realized that they could do a lot more if they started walkin' around. Evolution's like that, survival of the fittest," he said, waving one hand in annoyance.
"Suppose it was more that we shared a common ancestor," Dr. Naira mused, his food forgotten again as he pieced the information together. "If we shared common DNA at one time, then it would explain how some evolved and some didn't. Humans, they resemble chimps more than apes..." he trailed off, his arm rubbing over his head as he wrote rapidly on his notepad.
Leo smiled slowly. "They estimated that humans branched off from the common ancestor that we had somewhere between five and seven million years ago on Earth," he said. "Huh, and Professor Bowen said I'd never pass history. Shows how much he knows."
Dr. Naira snorted and shook his head. "Teachers, they think they know it all," he said distractedly.
Leo gripped his spoon again and continued eating, pushing all thoughts of the day ahead out of his mind.
xx
