NO REGRETS
"I leave the 20th century with no regrets. But one more thing - if anybody's listening, that is. Nothing scientific. It's purely personal. But seen from out here everything seems different. Time bends. Space is boundless. It squashes a man's ego. I feel… lonely."
In the cell, Taylor had plenty of time to think. Somewhere, Zira and Cornelius were working to free him, to try and prove his story to the skeptical Dr. Zaius. Lying beside him, sleeping as she and the other mute humans of this world usually did at this time of day, Nova couldn't know what he was thinking.
"Were you what we used to be?" Taylor mused quietly to himself, so Julius the guard couldn't hear. He didn't know why he said those words; they just came to him at that moment.
Taylor looked up at the ceiling. Somewhere out there was Earth-a world he'd cynically told whoever was listening back home that he'd had no regrets about leaving. Humanity had alternately repelled and bored him-and yet, now Taylor desperately wished for someone of his own species, with its intellect, to talk to. Out there, he'd said he felt lonely. Here, he really was. Back home he was a misanthrope-here he was a freak of nature.
Nova stirred from her sleep as a different guard came down the hall. The other humans eagerly reached out for the small bits of fruits and vegetable scraps that the guard handed them with a mixture of amusement and contempt. "Here you go…filthy creatures," the guard muttered to himself as Taylor mimicked their behavior he way Zira had taught him to. So this is what humans have become here, Taylor though as he shared his scraps with Nova.
"Maybe you're lucky, you know that?" he told her while she ate, apparently oblivious to what he was saying. "You know, back home I would have given a girl like you the brush off. We wouldn't have had anything to say to each other. Here…I wonder what you could have become, if you'd evolved the way we had. Would you be better, worse, or maybe just the same?" By now Nova had stopped eating and was regarding him with the childlike curiosity that had endeared him to her. "I'll tell you one thing-if we ever do get out of this, I'm going to find someplace where humans talk. I went looking for something better than man…not knowing that maybe Man was as good as it got. And now…I'm lonely."
The other humans ignored him as they went back to sleeping in their cages. Only Nova stayed awake by his side, perhaps needing company even more than he did.
"Something better than man," Taylor repeated to himself. "God help me, I was wrong. And now…I miss Mankind."
-For Charlton Heston, 1923-2008
THE END
