veiledndarkness | Planet of the Apes

Title: In Thade We Trust – Chapter 11

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

Long after Leo had fallen asleep that night, exhausted from his tests, Naira sat at his desk, pouring over his research. His glasses sat on the table near his side, discarded as he scrutinized each section of the textbook. A muted knock on the door went ignored by him until Ari stepped into the room, another folder tucked under her arm.

“Naira, really, you’re going to end up half blind. Put your glasses on,” she chided him.

He grunted, marking his place in the book. “I have no time, Ari. Please, make this quick.”

She crossed the room to him and placed the folder on the table. “That is what we were missing,” she sat in the chair, tucking her legs up. “Leo was right.”

Naira blinked at her. He opened the faded folder, scanning it quickly. “Calima was never here?!” he sat back in his chair, running a hand over his mouth. “It was never here...Leo, he knew that. That means...”

Ari nodded excitedly, her dark eyes gleaming. “That time travel is possible, that this Earth is his Earth. I found this file folder; it was hidden away under the top secret files. Naira, do you realize what this means?”

“That Thade traveled here as Leo said. That he left his own planet and came here. The Oberon, everything we know comes from this!”

She smirked. “I believe you might owe Leo an apology.”

“I know you’re dying to say you told me so,” Naira read through the file, tracing each word. “Ari, this is simply incredible. Thade did it, he used the Oberon’s training programs, and he traveled in one of the pods that were still attached to the back of the ship. He must have gone through the wormhole that Leo traveled in.”

“Why didn’t they come through at the same time? How could they have landed so far apart?”

Naira continued to read, his lips moving silently.

“Naira…Oh, for Thade’s sake,” she snapped, tapping the folder with one long finger. “Naira, I asked you a question.”

“Sorry,” he offered a sheepish smile. “What was the question?”

“If Leo went through the wormhole first, why did Thade end up on Earth before him?”

Naira set the folder down and rubbed his temples, a weariness in his face that startled Ari to see. “Wormholes, time travel itself is a tricky subject. We, up until this point, had no proof of them. It seems that mere seconds can make differences, what path Leo may have taken, what path Thade traveled on, all of those are factors. He claims that the Oberon landed on the planet before he did, and that Pericles landed after him, when Pericles was sent through the wormhole first.”

“So, it’s a toss up, where he’ll land if he goes through one?” Ari tapped the various papers on the desk. “If he was to go through another, who’s to say that he would land in his own version of Earth?”

“That would be the theory, yes,” Naira nodded. They looked at each other, the silence in the room overwhelming.

“Naira…you must help me,” she whispered. “You must. You see the truth now, you know that Leo’s right. He needs to find a way back.”

Naira looked away from her. “Why do you ask me for things I can’t do?”

“You could, damn you, Naira,” Ari leaned in closer, her eyes wide. “Please…for once, think about Leo, of what you know is the right thing to do. Think of me…of what we had once.”

Naira swallowed once, his throat working over the lump that was rising. “That was a long time ago, things have changed, Ari. What we had…is not what we have now.”

“And that’s both of our faults,” she murmured. “Leo can’t stay here. His spirit is dying, can’t you see that?”

“What would you have me do? I told you before, he can’t be released. The hunters will find him within a day.”

“If we could find where the wormhole opened?”

Naira snorted. “And with what would we use to get him into space? Do you have a flying car that I’m unaware of?”

“What if there was a portal on Earth, one that could do the same essentially as a wormhole?”

“Ari…”

She nodded. “Throwing logic aside, if such a thing as a wormhole can exist, then surely a time portal, a vortex, something has to exist as well.”

“And the Loch Ness monster and the mermaids who lure apes to the seas to drown them,” Naira drummed his fingers on the folder. He sighed. “Ari, that would be so…beyond difficult to arrange. To even begin looking for something like a time portal…”

“Until today, I never would have though that a human could fall from the sky from a wormhole,” she smiled then. “And yet, here is the reason for our entire world, one chimp that changed everything.”

“That chimp tried to kill me,” Leo muttered from the hallway, one hand rubbing at his eyes.

Ari jumped a little in her seat. “Leo…I’m sorry. Did we wake you?”

“Nah,” he cracked his back and walked over to the table. “I don’t sleep too well here. All things considered.”

Naira gestured to the nearby chair. “Have a seat. We’ve discovered something so very important.”

Leo sat on the chair, glancing at the pair of them suspiciously. “What?"

"Ari was able to lift more files from her father. This file," he nodded to the folder. "That alone proves more than you know. Leo, I must apologize for not listening to you sooner."

Leo eyed him, one eyebrow arching up. "Uh huh, and just why is it that suddenly you believe eh, Doc?"

"The file is a document," Naira rushed over to it, his excitement growing. "Plans and references to the original space pod, and mentions of Calima, it all happened; Thade arrived here and liberated our kind."

"Liberate," Leo echoed. He laughed bitterly, the sound fading within seconds. "That's exactly how Thade woulda seen it. That's why his ancestors put his mug on the statue of Abraham fucking Lincoln."

Ari winced. "Leo..."

"Oh, don't give me that 'Leo' shit," he pushed at the folder. "You don't have one clue as to what Thade was really like. You believe whatever his ancestors wrote down. You know what it says on the temple plaque, right? You wanna hear what was supposed to be on it, before Thade changed everything?"

Naira picked up the folder. "We-"

Leo glared at him. "In this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever in this temple."

"Leo, Thade saved all of our kind from, well from..." Ari sputtered, her arms folding across her chest defensively.

"From my kind?" Leo snorted. "Yeah, go on and say it. The Lincoln memorial was there as a tribute to him. He freed the slaves. Now that's a fucking hero."

"Humans had slaves?"

"Yeah, for a long, long time," Leo muttered. "Look, I get what he means to you guys, I understand, honest. But you have to try an' see it from where I came from. He hated humans, he came here, and God only knows how many he killed for his own amusement. This was my world, my Earth, and he destroyed it. Our history, our whole way of living...gone."

Ari cleared her throat; the silence in the room was choking them all. "Leo..."

Naira flipped through more pages, exhaling when he reached another section. The look of weary exhaustion on Leo's face was troubling to him. "They spoke about how he landed. A god from the heavens; it was back several hundred years ago. There's...there's no data before that. Even my textbooks, my history books, nothing is dated much before 1860."

"He probably landed then," Leo sat back in the chair, "And made it up as he went along. Anything he ever needed to know about Earth would have been in the Oberon's logs. We always had a feed of information like that. This...fuck, this is my fault! I never should have left him alive in the Oberon."

Naira shifted uncomfortably where he stood. "We can't possibly know that. Destiny has a way of asserting itself, after all."

"That I was meant to be a lab rat?" Leo stood up, shoving the chair back behind him. "No, no, I'll never accept that. I'm no fucking genius, but even I know that I'm not supposed to go out like this. I refuse to die in the hands of you 'scientists'." And with that, he left the room, striding angrily down the hallway.

"Naira..." Ari's fingers plucked nervously along her shirt. "What else is listed in the file?"

XX

Over several hours of intense study, Naira and Ari compiled all the available information that they had, and once completed, compared the notes with each other. Leo spent the better part of the hours in his room, reading through one of Naira's many books. He glared at the novel, disgusted by the fact that not a single one of his books held any positive references to humans.

"Bastard even changed the history of writing," he muttered under his breath.

Naira entered his room, the door slipping back rapidly. "Leo, Ari and I are going to look at the Thade Memorial. We'll be gone for several hours. Do help yourself to the portioned food in the fridge if you get hungry."

Leo nodded, glancing at him for a moment. "Why go to the memorial?"

"I have a few things I want to look over in person," Naira looked down at the novel in Leo's hands with a nod of approval. "The Grapes of Wrath, a fine choice."

Leo felt his lips curl into a hint of a smile. "Yeah..."

Naira touched his shoulder, noticing the minute flinch that followed. "We'll be back later today. Will you be alright in the meanwhile?"

"I'm not about to try an' escape if I have no clue how to get outta this building in the first place," Leo rolled his eyes and looked back to his book.

"Well, from what you told me of your daring escape from the bamboo cages, I wouldn't put it very far above you to try," Naira drawled. "Behave yourself." He left then, the door swooshing behind him.

XX

Ari wandered up the many stairs to the memorial, her eyes darting back and forth. The scorch marks from Leo's landing were still etched into the stairs, long black smears that marred the otherwise flawlessly clean building. She crossed her arms loosely and followed Naira into the silent space.

"Ari," Naira jerked his head at her. "Stop daydreaming. We can't be gone for too long. And if anyone should see the two of us together..."

"Thade forbid," Ari sniffed and walked past him. She marched over to the statue and gave it a once over look. "It’s strange, isn't it? His stories, they seem so, so unfathomable and yet, I find myself convinced that he speaks only the truth. How can that be?" her voice dropped to a whisper.

Naira pulled a small notebook from his overcoat pocket and flipped through the top pages. "I'm more intrigued by the fact that his story is slowly becoming less of a delusion, and more of a reality," he murmured. He read through the inscription that Leo had quoted. "It's so similar..."

Ari stood near the side of the statue, her eyes on the plaque behind it. "As in the hearts of apes, for whom he saved the planet, the memory of General Thade will be enshrined forever in this temple," she inhaled deeply. "Naira..."

"Hmm?" he flipped the notebook shut and joined her. "What is it?"

On the side of the statue, there were several marks, indentations and scratches. "Is this debris from his pod? Could the sections have scratched like this?" Ari rubbed a finger along one mark, the early morning sunshine lighting up the building.

"No, I don't believe so," Naira frowned. "Leo crashed further down; the odds aren't very high that the debris would have come into this section at that particular angle." He leaned in closer, studying the way each groove seemed to turn. "They almost look like...I don't believe it..."

"What?" Ari demanded.

Naira backed up, watching the sunshine creep over the statue. He flipped the notebook open once more and copied down the pattern he could see, one so light that it hardly seemed noticeable. "A pattern, an outline," he mumbled, sketching faster.

"A pattern of what, though?"

"I'm not certain, but I'd be willing to be it has to do with where and when Thade landed."

XX