I'll Be Back

Thade's Story

This is going to be a very long chapter, please enjoy!

Thade pressed his hairy paws against the viewing port of the strange human space contraption. Stars flew by, like diamonds. It was fascinating really, that humans could build machines that would go here, this dark infinity. Not that it changed his view to find out that humans had once been the masters. They had strength, yes, in their creations. Apes were born strong. They were stronger, matured faster, were wiser. These scrawny humans had had to resort to mere trickery to gain a meager victory over him. A "victory" that was only temporary.

Thade was surprised at how simple the device had been to control, it a process of trial and error to push the right buttons. He had devised the plan to break out and use one of them to escape after he had been betrayed by Attar, then by Ari. Again. She had been a last ditch effort, and Thade had crawled under the control desks to make the appearance of giving up. The fools bought it. He would never give up till the human scum was eliminated off the face of all worlds, Ashlar, and the one where his and the spaceman's ancestors had come from. He would start there. Find that world and start a new dynasty. The spaceman had cheated, bended time. Thade could do that too.

As the chimpanzee plotted his revenge, he noticed that the contraption was flying towards a pinkish purple mass, that was spiraling and expanding.

Suddenly another pod came up behind him, and it was going faster than his.

As the pod approached it, a portal opened, a tunnel into blackness. The pod was sucked inside the electro-magnetic storm.

Thade growled, and followed.

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Apes...Man. What really was the difference between them? The obvious answer would be that Apes were beasts and humans were civilized beings. Except that it was all coincidental. Apes were no more defined by their beastliness than humans were defined by their civilization.
That just happened to be the way things were.
For now.

Many things had changed since the three visitors from the future had landed on the California coast. The astronauts—or as some called them, the ape-o-nauts—had not been around for very long. Before it was discovered that the three chimpanzees were intelligent they were brought to the Zoo. One died there, killed by a unintelligent gorilla. The other two expressed their intelligence soon afterward, and became national celebrities. Cornelius and Zira were their names. They claimed to be from Earth's own future, a future where the human race was somewhat subservient to the apes. But on that point they were vague. Not until later would anyone find out exactly why. What made matters more suspicious is that they returned in a spaceship that belonged to a missing astronaut. Colonel George Taylor.

Taylor had been part of the first manned space mission ever sent up by ANSA to explore deep space. They had gone in the Liberty 1, a specialized ship capable of traveling near the speed of light. The mission had not returned, so it happened that another, even smaller manned mission was sent after him, the Liberty 2. Neither ever returned, at least until 1973, when the Liberty 1 crash landed near San Francisco. Also important to note, one more expedition was sent in 1978. It never returned.

A manned spacecraft, Probe Six, was lost in 1980 near Alpha Centauri after encountering radioactive turbulence. Probe Six contained three astronauts, Alan Virdon, Peter Burke, and Jones. It had been assumed by ANSA that Probe Six had met the same fate as the Liberty 1 and Liberty 2.

Initially the two chimpanzees and the good old USA were friends. That lasted for a few months. It had been revealed that the female ape, Zira, was pregnant. Of course that didn't sit well with the government. Two talking Apes from Earth's future were all well an good, but throw in a child and....it would not bode well for humanity. The main enemy of the two ape scientists was the famed professor Otto Hasslein, who pushed the government to make the decision to kill Zira's baby.