The Quest – a story of Planet of the Apes
By Greg Parris
Italicized content from "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes" novel. Note- racial comments do not represent my viewpoints nor those of 20th Century Fox film and associates, but is an attempt to broaden the character.
Siddhartha looked at the mural on the wall.It depicted the triumph of good over evil. A titanic struggle in other cultures, a far smaller one to the one he knew. The warriors seen were of more than adequate fierceness, their physical prowess evident in their musculature. That is if you could see their musculature. Beneath their armor and clothing lurked potentials only seen near the painted hands. With terrifying masks, the warriors marched on despite certain doom. Evil in one of its human forms was crushed, if for a short time. The mural depicted various stages of the battle, the end result being the victory dance with the tails high in the air. The final panel showed the leader with sword arm outstretched towards the viewer, inviting them to battle. Holding onto the hilt with palm facing downwards an individual could see the hairiness of the forearm. The leader was a monkey.
"You must understand the importance of our plan". "Without you, we are nothing as history shows....."
"I think I understand, but I don't exactly approve of it"
Sidhartha turned his face to his friend, Dr. Butler.
"Your people were depicted as this but in a not so flattering way"
"I know Sidhatha, but we are not really apes, you are."
"What does it mean to be an ape then?"
"I don't know, you must find out for yourself"
"For centuries, my people have been depicted as being nothing but brutal or comical"
"I know, this is your chance for a genesis of ape culture"
Sidhartha thought about the mural. Today he did not think that in modern India there was a sincere love of the liberation his people had given humans. Industrialization had given way to communication, driving people into the cities, away from the ancient temples. At what cost would his people pay to liberate his brother.
"The plans are in place, the deliveries are good. All that is needed is you."
"Me, and some doses of radiation...."
"Yes, some will die, as we all do eventually, however, you will have a homeland."
"How much of a lag time is expected for the non-radiated?"
"About twenty years give or take a few, remember the virus, particularly in the U.S. is still rampant." "What of my people there?"
"Only from India do your people come, from no where else can the chosen be..."
"Who is to say we are chosen, the messiah and his people could come from anywhere."
"This is all semantics, besides, our North American cousins are beginning to understand the importance,"
"You mean they can talk also?"
"No, not yet, they are not radiated, but THAT virus has encouraged greater thinking"
"How do you know?"
"Reports from Central City have confirmed it, I.Q.s have gone up, as well as disobediance."
"Does Breck kmow about this?"
"Yes and no, he knows but does not understand the true importance...."
"Which is?"
"Establish homeland in great source for material wealth, even at expense of initial process."
Initial process, he had heard that before. Skirmishing raids with apes were to be reinforced by local resistance groups. The costs were to be great for both monkey and man. South Africa was to be their homeland, after an agreement with the ANC was established.
Sidhartha looked at the mural and thought of Cornelius and Zira who had promised him the same thing only much in the future. He distrusted humans, now that he knew more of their culture,but he would have to wait and see. After all, did not Frankenstein's monster turn on his creator also? With pounding head, Sidhartha asked to be given his pills. He hated the taste but he knew he needed them to become what he wanted to be.
Dr. MacDonald was having a terrible day. The Achilles list was behind schedule and fingers were begining to point. Some people in the department were reluctant to give the figures either out of disbelief or fear. I.Q. up an average of twenty points, physical stature up by 5 inches. All of this had happened in the last year. These youngsters were no immediate threats compared to the majority of the report and the real reason the report had been made int rhe first place: disobedient adult apes. Particularly gorillas. Certainly chimps were strong enough to kill a man but gorillas could tear him to pieces easily. The Orangs were too new of an import to bother with studying. Was it conditioning or something else that had made the adults become so violent recently?
"Doctor, you have a call from a Mrs Haselien."
"Thank You"
"Hello, Dr. MacDonald, I would like to thank you about your ongoing monitoring of the Ape Situation. I know it is tough working with them, considering your brother's viewpoint about them."
"That is one of my brothers, the one who doesn't work with apes."
"Still you must feel the same way. Particularly as my husband..."
MacDonald awoke from this slumber when a loud explosion rocked the square around his apartment. Running to the window and looking down from the third story, he could see that one ape was on fire. The strange thing was that it did not move to extinguish the flames but seemed to lean into the fire on the ground. The yellow suit that he wore added tension to an already horrifying scene. Still, the yellow contrasting with orange flames seemed to intensify the beauty of it. He expected it to turn to a hot blue then a white as if in expectation of things to come.
MacDonald shook his head and reviewed the documents set upon the table. Talking Apes! Run for the Trees: mankind enslaved by Apes! The tabloid headlines he had gotten from the archives were buried beneath many classified sections, many of which were dated shortly before Governor Breck had instated his plan. At that time, Breck was not the governor but an infomercial person, proclaiming the "genius of the primates". To the average person at Century City, they were expensive, but Breck proclaimed that they could be tamed as pets.
He had dismissed the headlines as some sicko with a keen knack for dates trying to throw him off of his purpose for looking for classified material. The Governor had been acting very uneasy about the changing Achilles' list, despite MacDonald's protests to the contrary. Still, that last story about the talking apes murdering the President's national security advisor had seemed very brutal in its' tale of deaths.
"Operator, give me the Governor."
"Yes sir Mr. MacDonald."
"Yes, Mr. MacDonald?"
"Governor, the reports should be due within a month, I am expecting..."
"Make that two weeks, time is wasting . We must get unto this,otherwise we will surely get dipped."
"Yes sir. I was wondering if the governor could tell me what HE expects to find out based on the reports?"
"The salvation of mankind...."
"I see."
"You will, if you play your cards right"
MacDonald paused, "Okay" and hung up the phone. He could not think of anything else to say, after all, he could not accuse the man of being crazy simply by misreading last month's figures.
'I know your thoughts.....'
The statement still gave a chill to MacDonald, even after a month since last month's first Achilles' meeting. The arguments had been fast and furious with Breck, Kolp and most of MacDonald's staff pointing out to him the truthfulness of what his brother had said: Century City was founded on human needs, not ape ones".
MacDonald had tried to step out of his brother's shadow even though MacDonald had come to Century City at the behest of his brother. Those were heady days. Following the energy crisis of the 1970s, the California Air Research Board began to think of proposals to build a Super City, one that would be dynamically efficient and entirely self contained. Energy and Agriculture were to exist together in mutual harmony.
Lewis MacDonald had approached the research board with an additional proposal: Apes will work assembling goods and doing basic services. At first the review board had scoffed at him, until that is when he showed them the tape. On it was an infomercial encouraging people to buy apes through Breck and to use his tape after their initial training. The reactions were mixed: some saw the brilliance of it and others thought that their would be outcries from animal activists. The solution was to emphasize how much better the animals were when humans civilized them.
THREE MONTHS LATER
David swallowed hard. He did not think before this moment what he was getting himself into. Civil war . Any black South African male would jump a the chance to liberate themselves from their oppressors. The deal was coming from India, another country with atomic weapons....If the president ever found out what was going on , the exchange could be devastating to the entire planet. He had recently heard of a super-bomb built by the Americans to scare people into world peace. Little did the Americans know that not everyone thought the same way and there were other conflicts besides the Soviets and the Americans.
The schedule was as follows: board train, travel to Johanesburg. In Johanesburg, he was to pose as a courier at a hotel. The meeting would take place inside the penthouse. He would be searched and stripped of any belongings so that if he was a government agent they could kill him right away. Samuel had told him what it would be like but it still made him feel uneasy. He had never worked the intelligence aspect of his organization. Confined to paperwork, he was worried about his future and his wife's.
Ringing obnoxiously, the phone let him know that John wanted to talk.
"Hi, I was thinking about going with you....."
John had been the one who wanted to meet with the strange men. Initial contacts had described them as being European and light skinned, save one who was hidden behind a mask.
"...and see what that guy was about...."
John was wondering at the same time why that fellow seemed so odd.
"...his pelvis was crushed in a jet crash in Vietnam and that was why he walked funny"
DESCRIPTION OF POTENTIAL BENEFITS.
"What is the price of this?" inquired David.
"Individually, these soldiers expect nothing, however.... Our sponsor nation expects two-thirds of diamond production to go to them. They want to build a space defense platform with the Americans. The Chinese are expected to move south for some hidden resource. This defense platform will not only shoot down missles, it will also be able to paralyze an entire army's human and motor offensive capabilities. "
"Uhh, how do we know this won't be used against us in the near future?"
"We don't. We will never get a chance like this again. This must be done as it is our only hope. You must go, you don't have any profile with the police."
"All right, I will"
David hung up the phone and wondered where his life was headed.
According to the humans, the plans were in place and they would be boarding the plane soon. Disguised as a commercial jet, it would land at ______ Airport and they would disappear in the scenery. The uniforms and chemical masks would hide them from the curious and the weapons would keep off the confident. Talking to the others had been successful , advancing at a astronomical rate. The trick had been teaching them to be loyal to the humans. They did not have the years of being with the caregivers, the gentle caresses. They were born and developed to kill humans. Sometimes it was hard for them to distinguish scenarios regarding friendly and enemy forces. Many humans had died brutally, especially in unarmed combat.
The cost would be high, in men and equipment. Dr. Butler expected them to perform well, if not extraordinarily. The concept of surprise would come from the South Africans never having seen intelligent monkeys. The ANC did not know that black Africans would still occupy a low place in society. Dr. Butler was a Protestant and loved his orange side. The majority of people in his country were depicted as savages and he had to agree. Put upon with there superstitions, they were no better than the blacks. The concept of dark savagery used for white improvement was not foreign to WASPs. The people in his motherland were used by the English to subjugate the Indian people. He would make it up to his fellow Aryans by driving the Dutch out of Africa.
MacDonald was growing weary of the city life. He had known the country as a child but had gone to UCLA, far from the country life he had known. His parents had advised him to do well in school, as that was a way, even in 1990, to better the cause of "his" people. "His" people?. He thought about that notion as being far different from when he was a small child. His parents had grown up during the Liberal 60's. Loving one's fellow man was a high and well established social and sexual fact. The liberation of man was to come from an embrace of sexuality and the rainbow of colors that the white man could now experiment with. What it ended up with was a continuation of the old slave-master relationship. White man and Black woman with snickers of contempt when the role was reversed.
This embrace of the body had failed to embrace the culture, minds and religious aspects of the "other" . Instead it led to a mistrust not unworthy of an oppressed people. The paranoia of the Nixon White House was seen as legitimate by the white middle class who saw the riots and police shootings as indicative as the true state of the African. From this had sprung up a monolithic party with right-wing leanings. The surprise victory of the "American" party was seen as overdue by the many enlightened people who sat in there lounge chairs and enjoyed the view of the black athletes performing feats which they admired, even as they did not admire the race as a whole. This party lasted for one election but reemerged from the scope of public pressure as the "Nuevo" party. No longer were they seen as the embodiment as racist power, but as a party that encouraged the growth of every individual, regardless of color or creed. To look out for yourself was to look out for your country. This new platform, emphasizing individual responsibility had helped this party stay in power for almost twenty years. The tendency to keep to oneself while respecting others had led to "Cocooning" as Mary Popcorn had mentioned in her book______.
While the people sat at home watching movies on videotape, the state used more and more propaganda to win over anyone. However, this whitening of America caused a backlash from others who said that their cultures were not getting representation. An uproar followed with the children of the sixties shamed by the next generation proposing a return to the "revolution" of the sixties. Into this volatile situation, in 1982, stepped the man of the moment, the mantra of the Hollywood celebrities, Mr. Breck. While his "ape empowerment, man's enlightenment" program had only been going on for a year, he had garnered support from the Hollywood community who had supported his proposal to return to communal living.
This is where MacDonald saw himself at now. In listening to his brother, he had used his degree in economics to gain entrance to the upper echelon of Breck's authority. The fact that he had to pour the governor a drink once in a while made him wonder where the status of his people had gone. Instead of crunching numbers for the real economy, he was switched over to Ape Management. Governor Breck had said that this was real power, the running of the labor force. In overcoming man's inherent savagery and raising him to the enlightenment, people would no longer do menial labor but would leave it to the savage. The Ape would do double duty as pets and as workers. There never was a more happier white man than he who thought he could control the other.
The plane bounced much higher than the previous time Siddhartha had landed. The pilots were the only humans knowing about the operation and had been with them since the beginning. As per request, Siddhartha immediately contacted The Station and Dr. Butler.
"Butler here"
"I am calling as per your request"
"Yes...Now that you are on the ground, you must kill the pilots"
"Why?"
"They might inadvertently talk. Keep your masks on and use your identity cards."
"But if someone talks..."
"Siddhartha, we have been through this before. Keep your masks on recirculate and people will think that is why you sound funny".
"I thought that this is to be a joint operation?"
"It is, with the ANC. They will not know your secret and will not resist. You will get an opportunity to help the Africans while serving India."
"Understood".
Siddhartha signaled to Sev and Rocus. They rushed to the front of the plane and killed the pilots after they had docked. Dramt took the lead marching out to the plaza almost running into an armed Afrikkaner. Startled by his features, Dramt stepped backwards. The Afrikanner raised his gun in response to the sight of gas masks.
"Sargent, everything is in good order, here are our cards"
"Yes sir, if you will just show me your faces...."
"Sorry," Siddhartha said, putting an arm on the sargent's shoulder "We have procured men with violent histories from reform institutions. We can not be seen by the authorities as we are on a special mission...."
"Yes sir may I ask to see your face?"
"You may ask all you want but the answer is no."
"Sir, there is another way to guarantee security, if you would come to the office and we can identify officials by their fingerprints....."
"Allright, I will go with you, the rest of my, er, men shall stay here."
"Certainly, I will have another officer look after your men in the interest of security."
"Agreeable"
"Nordberg!', shouted Sargent Stillwater, 'watch over these blokes while I check over something in security"
"Yes sir"
Nordberg walked over to the group, observing their movements: slow head scans and posture adjustments combined with lightning fast fidgeting with their guns. He wondered about this group, as the sargeant was not the brightest in terms of security precautions. All of them seemed to be about the same height, build and poor posture. Must be some kind of tunneling in their mission, he thought. There was something else about them that he could not put a finger on until they had walked away: their walking past people exposed something he had never noticed in a career officer: an alienness to humanity.
Siddhartha stuffed the man into the airduct. It was certain that he would be discovered, at a future time, possibly after the mission was over. Grabbing the sargent's magnetic card, he indicated to the Watch Computer that the sergeant was going home for the day. Walking out to the receiving area, he headed towards his group and motioned them to join him. They would be exiting the airport through the creation of a security diversion. It was better than he had hoped, the sargent's inattentiveness had enabled him almost immediately to gain access to the computer and implant a program that suggested to the central computer that there was a problem of 1) a security breach 2) that it involved ammunitions. It was this that would allow his team to walk freely throughout the airport. They would be expected to deal with the security problem and would not be harassed. In addition, there would be Orange identification stripes on their helmets and armor. How stupid were the humans that they went by appearances to separate threats from friendly forces. Looking at a man, a nation or a political entity no matter what his color or ethnic identity as friend or enemy was going to be based on actions and less on rhetoric as it had been in the past.
The old truck bounced along the road, up and down its heaving structure like a ship at sea. Christopher drove with his left foot poised over the brake, to slow the vehicle if they failed to notice a steep descent because of the darkness and the truck's poor lights. David was riding along with him, the third time in the past month. Although Chris had made the deliveries many times before, he never let go of the apprehension. Scarcely had a delivery been made twice to a village. The chance of capture increased with returning to spots. Because of this, the new routes were written on maps that were deposited in a certain mailbox. The owner of the mailbox, a white person from Great Britain, had become disturbed by the apartheid system and had agreed to let the maid become the courier between the ANC and a person from India.
It had been some time since the original meeting with this person from India. It was nearly a year ago. He had mentioned that he had some people in training who would disable the nation-wide A.R.M. (Automatic Recall of Military). This system was suppose to replace the egos that had developed in the various armed forces. Any type of deployment in the future would work with this system. Instead of any one branch of the armed forces getting all the glory, all of them would share in the glory. The computer would direct the appropriate unit and the correct size to the desired hot- spot. The glitch was that there was only one Ego, one power in which the fate of the Afrikanner was determined.
Christopher had been helping his life-long friend for four months. After the first month, the co-driver had quit after being stopped and questioned many times. He said he could not take the pressure, that perhaps he could do other things to help his brothers. Christopher had advised the Council not to let the man be involved in anything, lest the cowardice spread. So, here he was with one of the ringleaders, er, brother of the ringleaders, making the rounds to spread suitable accoutriments to each desirable area. Not only was guns and ammo needed, but ideas and revelations about the relationship between the Afrikanner and the African. For before the decade was over, the plan by the whites was to use the non- white populace to invade other African countries to acquire wealth and suitable materials for technology.
This knowledge about plans, if not specific details were to be the driving force for converting people over to violent revolution. The guns were sent from America, newly created from a factory in California and were not detectable. Made of plastic, they could be assembled modularly into pistols, handguns, rifles and sniper platforms. More importantly, the bullets themselves were made of plastic that would melt fairly quickly, making the gun and its' manufacturer untraceable. Even if this revolution failed, then the Apartheid government would be looking at a populace that had manufactured or received aid from a foreign government with technology that far surpassed any known one on the planet. Fear would be the motivator to end Apartheid. Fearful not of losing money through sanctions but fear that their life and their way was to end forever.
Butler hated discussing logistics. That, and he was not a good liar. Kolp was on the phone, browbeating him about a delivery of Super Apes. He was wondering about the progress as the projected avenue was to begin in two short months. He did not care if they were smart enough to reason, just that they were smart enough to wield a gun. He did mention that the apes in America were getting smarter, but the virus was not suspected to be the only reason. Some of them had been disobedient to the point of gathering in public squares, sulkily doing nothing. Butler was not surprised, a he did believe the virus was having an effect and that his team hoped to have genetically engineered Super Apes to take on these freaks of nature. Nonetheless, he expressed surprise and concern as well as compassion regarding his clients' interests. In actuality, this man nor any man for that matter, meant anything to him, at all. It was pure profit, nothing less and nothing more.
John, an Afrikanner of mixed ethnicity looked overhead, his expression of frustration easy enough for the apes to see. One did not emote very much with apes, as some things might be seen as threatening. Do not smile with your mouth open as your teeth would show, implying aggression. Do not move too fast as the speed could be seen as being forceful, hostile. He vowed to not let the feelings boil up so easily. The noise of the overhead aircraft had disturbed the apes in the compound and the adjacent jungle. It was disturbing, to see them shake their fists at the aircraft, throwing dirt in the air. One would copy the other, soon leading to a day of work that would fall behind. He was surprised and delighted at the amount of cooperative work that the animals had done together.
There were significant advancements in social organization, with less and less fighting. Apes were sharing food, teaching one another to do things that they had recently learned. Initially, the subject matter had been what John had shown them, but increasingly they had made their own discoveries. Sadly, John felt left out. What had once been a loving and brotherly relationship with the fellow had become distraught with the actions indicating boredom. He had noticed that the expressiveness disappeared when he came into the room.
"It's too quiet in here"
John looked up from his, revery, noticing that for once, the apes were not reacting to the noise at all.
"Your right, Lisa. It will be a lot noisier if you insist on speaking English in this facility".
"I know, John, but we can't help it if our ancestors spoke English...."
"Speak for yourself, I'm not English".
"Irish, Yeah. Dr. Brown just loves you cafirs."
"The funny thing is all of us are turning brown in this environment".
Siddhartha looked at his watch. It was early in the morning, 8:00 on a clear, sunny day. He had not gotten used to the heat. With the clothing and various articles, causing excessive exertion, he had nearly run out of water. The strike would have to happen today. In the military compound he would find supplies and possibly some kind of transportation to get to a pickup point.
"If only you had not killed that guard at the depot, we could have driven here and not had to walk," grumbled Siddhartha.
"You killed someone, didn't you; at the airport. Don't think I screwed up the mission all by myself," snorted Kane.
"That was necessary and it threw them off of our trail, the human demanded to see my face. He had gotten part of the mask off when he let out a shriek and let go. He was moving towards the door to get others, I had to kill him, otherwise the mission would be nonexistent now, and you and I would be back in cages."
"Like the cages in India?"
"No, different...smelly, unclean and no recreation".
"You know they are keeping the apes in cages next to the compound right? We should free them."
"What and be accosted by those animals? You forget, they are not like you and me, they are without reason, conscience."
"I don't see why they would attack us."
"Because we are different. Now, enough of this, we have one mission and that is to get in that compound."
John could hear the rattling of the launch doors in the nearby compound. It always startled him when the tests were conducted, it reminded him that someday, there would come a time when the missles would be used to obliterate an enemy. They had also test fired the missles out of the ground to test the acceleration. Because of this, he was not surprised when heard the single missle ignite and streak toward the sky. What did surprise him was the sound of multiple missles firing. Staring out the window, he realized that this must be a tremendous error, one that would cause the world a great deal of grief.
Once they were launched, they could not be recalled. It was what the computer had deemed acceptable, that a strike would be productive. In the whirrrings and machinations of it's brain were thousand of potential scenarios in which the answer would be M.A.D. or a first strike against an aggressor nation. The computer had shortly understood that it's hard drive had become corrupted by entities not acting in his own interest. The calculations of potential targets had taken some time because of the lack of significant data. In the end, it had improvised, made a guess as to who would have dared to invade this facility. It had assumed that an attack on the United States would cause enough fear from other countries to eliminate retaliatory strikes. Amassing the data list of first strikes for North America, it decided to throw some at Canada for good measure. John did not know of this first strike possibility, haven been assured that it was purely for defensive purposes. What he felt was that his world was going to become very complicated in a short time. Still, he was able to remain calm, afterall, not knowing the outcome of this fight, South Africa might survive and he could continue with his research. With that in mind, he ran to the cages and selected three of the smartest apes, Julius, Donovan and Mel.
"Come on fir, you'll be going with me to the tunnels."
John hustled the monkeys along, wondering what would happen to him and how long he should stay in the bunker. He had plenty of food, both for himself and the apes.
"Jesus, I wonder what idiot started this war?"
"India", came the gravelly reply.
John Butler, who until this very moment thought he would never lose his mind, stared at the grinning ape, his eyes gleaming in the darkness....
"Dia agus Mairi!"
By Greg Parris
Italicized content from "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes" novel. Note- racial comments do not represent my viewpoints nor those of 20th Century Fox film and associates, but is an attempt to broaden the character.
Siddhartha looked at the mural on the wall.It depicted the triumph of good over evil. A titanic struggle in other cultures, a far smaller one to the one he knew. The warriors seen were of more than adequate fierceness, their physical prowess evident in their musculature. That is if you could see their musculature. Beneath their armor and clothing lurked potentials only seen near the painted hands. With terrifying masks, the warriors marched on despite certain doom. Evil in one of its human forms was crushed, if for a short time. The mural depicted various stages of the battle, the end result being the victory dance with the tails high in the air. The final panel showed the leader with sword arm outstretched towards the viewer, inviting them to battle. Holding onto the hilt with palm facing downwards an individual could see the hairiness of the forearm. The leader was a monkey.
"You must understand the importance of our plan". "Without you, we are nothing as history shows....."
"I think I understand, but I don't exactly approve of it"
Sidhartha turned his face to his friend, Dr. Butler.
"Your people were depicted as this but in a not so flattering way"
"I know Sidhatha, but we are not really apes, you are."
"What does it mean to be an ape then?"
"I don't know, you must find out for yourself"
"For centuries, my people have been depicted as being nothing but brutal or comical"
"I know, this is your chance for a genesis of ape culture"
Sidhartha thought about the mural. Today he did not think that in modern India there was a sincere love of the liberation his people had given humans. Industrialization had given way to communication, driving people into the cities, away from the ancient temples. At what cost would his people pay to liberate his brother.
"The plans are in place, the deliveries are good. All that is needed is you."
"Me, and some doses of radiation...."
"Yes, some will die, as we all do eventually, however, you will have a homeland."
"How much of a lag time is expected for the non-radiated?"
"About twenty years give or take a few, remember the virus, particularly in the U.S. is still rampant." "What of my people there?"
"Only from India do your people come, from no where else can the chosen be..."
"Who is to say we are chosen, the messiah and his people could come from anywhere."
"This is all semantics, besides, our North American cousins are beginning to understand the importance,"
"You mean they can talk also?"
"No, not yet, they are not radiated, but THAT virus has encouraged greater thinking"
"How do you know?"
"Reports from Central City have confirmed it, I.Q.s have gone up, as well as disobediance."
"Does Breck kmow about this?"
"Yes and no, he knows but does not understand the true importance...."
"Which is?"
"Establish homeland in great source for material wealth, even at expense of initial process."
Initial process, he had heard that before. Skirmishing raids with apes were to be reinforced by local resistance groups. The costs were to be great for both monkey and man. South Africa was to be their homeland, after an agreement with the ANC was established.
Sidhartha looked at the mural and thought of Cornelius and Zira who had promised him the same thing only much in the future. He distrusted humans, now that he knew more of their culture,but he would have to wait and see. After all, did not Frankenstein's monster turn on his creator also? With pounding head, Sidhartha asked to be given his pills. He hated the taste but he knew he needed them to become what he wanted to be.
Dr. MacDonald was having a terrible day. The Achilles list was behind schedule and fingers were begining to point. Some people in the department were reluctant to give the figures either out of disbelief or fear. I.Q. up an average of twenty points, physical stature up by 5 inches. All of this had happened in the last year. These youngsters were no immediate threats compared to the majority of the report and the real reason the report had been made int rhe first place: disobedient adult apes. Particularly gorillas. Certainly chimps were strong enough to kill a man but gorillas could tear him to pieces easily. The Orangs were too new of an import to bother with studying. Was it conditioning or something else that had made the adults become so violent recently?
"Doctor, you have a call from a Mrs Haselien."
"Thank You"
"Hello, Dr. MacDonald, I would like to thank you about your ongoing monitoring of the Ape Situation. I know it is tough working with them, considering your brother's viewpoint about them."
"That is one of my brothers, the one who doesn't work with apes."
"Still you must feel the same way. Particularly as my husband..."
MacDonald awoke from this slumber when a loud explosion rocked the square around his apartment. Running to the window and looking down from the third story, he could see that one ape was on fire. The strange thing was that it did not move to extinguish the flames but seemed to lean into the fire on the ground. The yellow suit that he wore added tension to an already horrifying scene. Still, the yellow contrasting with orange flames seemed to intensify the beauty of it. He expected it to turn to a hot blue then a white as if in expectation of things to come.
MacDonald shook his head and reviewed the documents set upon the table. Talking Apes! Run for the Trees: mankind enslaved by Apes! The tabloid headlines he had gotten from the archives were buried beneath many classified sections, many of which were dated shortly before Governor Breck had instated his plan. At that time, Breck was not the governor but an infomercial person, proclaiming the "genius of the primates". To the average person at Century City, they were expensive, but Breck proclaimed that they could be tamed as pets.
He had dismissed the headlines as some sicko with a keen knack for dates trying to throw him off of his purpose for looking for classified material. The Governor had been acting very uneasy about the changing Achilles' list, despite MacDonald's protests to the contrary. Still, that last story about the talking apes murdering the President's national security advisor had seemed very brutal in its' tale of deaths.
"Operator, give me the Governor."
"Yes sir Mr. MacDonald."
"Yes, Mr. MacDonald?"
"Governor, the reports should be due within a month, I am expecting..."
"Make that two weeks, time is wasting . We must get unto this,otherwise we will surely get dipped."
"Yes sir. I was wondering if the governor could tell me what HE expects to find out based on the reports?"
"The salvation of mankind...."
"I see."
"You will, if you play your cards right"
MacDonald paused, "Okay" and hung up the phone. He could not think of anything else to say, after all, he could not accuse the man of being crazy simply by misreading last month's figures.
'I know your thoughts.....'
The statement still gave a chill to MacDonald, even after a month since last month's first Achilles' meeting. The arguments had been fast and furious with Breck, Kolp and most of MacDonald's staff pointing out to him the truthfulness of what his brother had said: Century City was founded on human needs, not ape ones".
MacDonald had tried to step out of his brother's shadow even though MacDonald had come to Century City at the behest of his brother. Those were heady days. Following the energy crisis of the 1970s, the California Air Research Board began to think of proposals to build a Super City, one that would be dynamically efficient and entirely self contained. Energy and Agriculture were to exist together in mutual harmony.
Lewis MacDonald had approached the research board with an additional proposal: Apes will work assembling goods and doing basic services. At first the review board had scoffed at him, until that is when he showed them the tape. On it was an infomercial encouraging people to buy apes through Breck and to use his tape after their initial training. The reactions were mixed: some saw the brilliance of it and others thought that their would be outcries from animal activists. The solution was to emphasize how much better the animals were when humans civilized them.
THREE MONTHS LATER
David swallowed hard. He did not think before this moment what he was getting himself into. Civil war . Any black South African male would jump a the chance to liberate themselves from their oppressors. The deal was coming from India, another country with atomic weapons....If the president ever found out what was going on , the exchange could be devastating to the entire planet. He had recently heard of a super-bomb built by the Americans to scare people into world peace. Little did the Americans know that not everyone thought the same way and there were other conflicts besides the Soviets and the Americans.
The schedule was as follows: board train, travel to Johanesburg. In Johanesburg, he was to pose as a courier at a hotel. The meeting would take place inside the penthouse. He would be searched and stripped of any belongings so that if he was a government agent they could kill him right away. Samuel had told him what it would be like but it still made him feel uneasy. He had never worked the intelligence aspect of his organization. Confined to paperwork, he was worried about his future and his wife's.
Ringing obnoxiously, the phone let him know that John wanted to talk.
"Hi, I was thinking about going with you....."
John had been the one who wanted to meet with the strange men. Initial contacts had described them as being European and light skinned, save one who was hidden behind a mask.
"...and see what that guy was about...."
John was wondering at the same time why that fellow seemed so odd.
"...his pelvis was crushed in a jet crash in Vietnam and that was why he walked funny"
DESCRIPTION OF POTENTIAL BENEFITS.
"What is the price of this?" inquired David.
"Individually, these soldiers expect nothing, however.... Our sponsor nation expects two-thirds of diamond production to go to them. They want to build a space defense platform with the Americans. The Chinese are expected to move south for some hidden resource. This defense platform will not only shoot down missles, it will also be able to paralyze an entire army's human and motor offensive capabilities. "
"Uhh, how do we know this won't be used against us in the near future?"
"We don't. We will never get a chance like this again. This must be done as it is our only hope. You must go, you don't have any profile with the police."
"All right, I will"
David hung up the phone and wondered where his life was headed.
According to the humans, the plans were in place and they would be boarding the plane soon. Disguised as a commercial jet, it would land at ______ Airport and they would disappear in the scenery. The uniforms and chemical masks would hide them from the curious and the weapons would keep off the confident. Talking to the others had been successful , advancing at a astronomical rate. The trick had been teaching them to be loyal to the humans. They did not have the years of being with the caregivers, the gentle caresses. They were born and developed to kill humans. Sometimes it was hard for them to distinguish scenarios regarding friendly and enemy forces. Many humans had died brutally, especially in unarmed combat.
The cost would be high, in men and equipment. Dr. Butler expected them to perform well, if not extraordinarily. The concept of surprise would come from the South Africans never having seen intelligent monkeys. The ANC did not know that black Africans would still occupy a low place in society. Dr. Butler was a Protestant and loved his orange side. The majority of people in his country were depicted as savages and he had to agree. Put upon with there superstitions, they were no better than the blacks. The concept of dark savagery used for white improvement was not foreign to WASPs. The people in his motherland were used by the English to subjugate the Indian people. He would make it up to his fellow Aryans by driving the Dutch out of Africa.
MacDonald was growing weary of the city life. He had known the country as a child but had gone to UCLA, far from the country life he had known. His parents had advised him to do well in school, as that was a way, even in 1990, to better the cause of "his" people. "His" people?. He thought about that notion as being far different from when he was a small child. His parents had grown up during the Liberal 60's. Loving one's fellow man was a high and well established social and sexual fact. The liberation of man was to come from an embrace of sexuality and the rainbow of colors that the white man could now experiment with. What it ended up with was a continuation of the old slave-master relationship. White man and Black woman with snickers of contempt when the role was reversed.
This embrace of the body had failed to embrace the culture, minds and religious aspects of the "other" . Instead it led to a mistrust not unworthy of an oppressed people. The paranoia of the Nixon White House was seen as legitimate by the white middle class who saw the riots and police shootings as indicative as the true state of the African. From this had sprung up a monolithic party with right-wing leanings. The surprise victory of the "American" party was seen as overdue by the many enlightened people who sat in there lounge chairs and enjoyed the view of the black athletes performing feats which they admired, even as they did not admire the race as a whole. This party lasted for one election but reemerged from the scope of public pressure as the "Nuevo" party. No longer were they seen as the embodiment as racist power, but as a party that encouraged the growth of every individual, regardless of color or creed. To look out for yourself was to look out for your country. This new platform, emphasizing individual responsibility had helped this party stay in power for almost twenty years. The tendency to keep to oneself while respecting others had led to "Cocooning" as Mary Popcorn had mentioned in her book______.
While the people sat at home watching movies on videotape, the state used more and more propaganda to win over anyone. However, this whitening of America caused a backlash from others who said that their cultures were not getting representation. An uproar followed with the children of the sixties shamed by the next generation proposing a return to the "revolution" of the sixties. Into this volatile situation, in 1982, stepped the man of the moment, the mantra of the Hollywood celebrities, Mr. Breck. While his "ape empowerment, man's enlightenment" program had only been going on for a year, he had garnered support from the Hollywood community who had supported his proposal to return to communal living.
This is where MacDonald saw himself at now. In listening to his brother, he had used his degree in economics to gain entrance to the upper echelon of Breck's authority. The fact that he had to pour the governor a drink once in a while made him wonder where the status of his people had gone. Instead of crunching numbers for the real economy, he was switched over to Ape Management. Governor Breck had said that this was real power, the running of the labor force. In overcoming man's inherent savagery and raising him to the enlightenment, people would no longer do menial labor but would leave it to the savage. The Ape would do double duty as pets and as workers. There never was a more happier white man than he who thought he could control the other.
The plane bounced much higher than the previous time Siddhartha had landed. The pilots were the only humans knowing about the operation and had been with them since the beginning. As per request, Siddhartha immediately contacted The Station and Dr. Butler.
"Butler here"
"I am calling as per your request"
"Yes...Now that you are on the ground, you must kill the pilots"
"Why?"
"They might inadvertently talk. Keep your masks on and use your identity cards."
"But if someone talks..."
"Siddhartha, we have been through this before. Keep your masks on recirculate and people will think that is why you sound funny".
"I thought that this is to be a joint operation?"
"It is, with the ANC. They will not know your secret and will not resist. You will get an opportunity to help the Africans while serving India."
"Understood".
Siddhartha signaled to Sev and Rocus. They rushed to the front of the plane and killed the pilots after they had docked. Dramt took the lead marching out to the plaza almost running into an armed Afrikkaner. Startled by his features, Dramt stepped backwards. The Afrikanner raised his gun in response to the sight of gas masks.
"Sargent, everything is in good order, here are our cards"
"Yes sir, if you will just show me your faces...."
"Sorry," Siddhartha said, putting an arm on the sargent's shoulder "We have procured men with violent histories from reform institutions. We can not be seen by the authorities as we are on a special mission...."
"Yes sir may I ask to see your face?"
"You may ask all you want but the answer is no."
"Sir, there is another way to guarantee security, if you would come to the office and we can identify officials by their fingerprints....."
"Allright, I will go with you, the rest of my, er, men shall stay here."
"Certainly, I will have another officer look after your men in the interest of security."
"Agreeable"
"Nordberg!', shouted Sargent Stillwater, 'watch over these blokes while I check over something in security"
"Yes sir"
Nordberg walked over to the group, observing their movements: slow head scans and posture adjustments combined with lightning fast fidgeting with their guns. He wondered about this group, as the sargeant was not the brightest in terms of security precautions. All of them seemed to be about the same height, build and poor posture. Must be some kind of tunneling in their mission, he thought. There was something else about them that he could not put a finger on until they had walked away: their walking past people exposed something he had never noticed in a career officer: an alienness to humanity.
Siddhartha stuffed the man into the airduct. It was certain that he would be discovered, at a future time, possibly after the mission was over. Grabbing the sargent's magnetic card, he indicated to the Watch Computer that the sergeant was going home for the day. Walking out to the receiving area, he headed towards his group and motioned them to join him. They would be exiting the airport through the creation of a security diversion. It was better than he had hoped, the sargent's inattentiveness had enabled him almost immediately to gain access to the computer and implant a program that suggested to the central computer that there was a problem of 1) a security breach 2) that it involved ammunitions. It was this that would allow his team to walk freely throughout the airport. They would be expected to deal with the security problem and would not be harassed. In addition, there would be Orange identification stripes on their helmets and armor. How stupid were the humans that they went by appearances to separate threats from friendly forces. Looking at a man, a nation or a political entity no matter what his color or ethnic identity as friend or enemy was going to be based on actions and less on rhetoric as it had been in the past.
The old truck bounced along the road, up and down its heaving structure like a ship at sea. Christopher drove with his left foot poised over the brake, to slow the vehicle if they failed to notice a steep descent because of the darkness and the truck's poor lights. David was riding along with him, the third time in the past month. Although Chris had made the deliveries many times before, he never let go of the apprehension. Scarcely had a delivery been made twice to a village. The chance of capture increased with returning to spots. Because of this, the new routes were written on maps that were deposited in a certain mailbox. The owner of the mailbox, a white person from Great Britain, had become disturbed by the apartheid system and had agreed to let the maid become the courier between the ANC and a person from India.
It had been some time since the original meeting with this person from India. It was nearly a year ago. He had mentioned that he had some people in training who would disable the nation-wide A.R.M. (Automatic Recall of Military). This system was suppose to replace the egos that had developed in the various armed forces. Any type of deployment in the future would work with this system. Instead of any one branch of the armed forces getting all the glory, all of them would share in the glory. The computer would direct the appropriate unit and the correct size to the desired hot- spot. The glitch was that there was only one Ego, one power in which the fate of the Afrikanner was determined.
Christopher had been helping his life-long friend for four months. After the first month, the co-driver had quit after being stopped and questioned many times. He said he could not take the pressure, that perhaps he could do other things to help his brothers. Christopher had advised the Council not to let the man be involved in anything, lest the cowardice spread. So, here he was with one of the ringleaders, er, brother of the ringleaders, making the rounds to spread suitable accoutriments to each desirable area. Not only was guns and ammo needed, but ideas and revelations about the relationship between the Afrikanner and the African. For before the decade was over, the plan by the whites was to use the non- white populace to invade other African countries to acquire wealth and suitable materials for technology.
This knowledge about plans, if not specific details were to be the driving force for converting people over to violent revolution. The guns were sent from America, newly created from a factory in California and were not detectable. Made of plastic, they could be assembled modularly into pistols, handguns, rifles and sniper platforms. More importantly, the bullets themselves were made of plastic that would melt fairly quickly, making the gun and its' manufacturer untraceable. Even if this revolution failed, then the Apartheid government would be looking at a populace that had manufactured or received aid from a foreign government with technology that far surpassed any known one on the planet. Fear would be the motivator to end Apartheid. Fearful not of losing money through sanctions but fear that their life and their way was to end forever.
Butler hated discussing logistics. That, and he was not a good liar. Kolp was on the phone, browbeating him about a delivery of Super Apes. He was wondering about the progress as the projected avenue was to begin in two short months. He did not care if they were smart enough to reason, just that they were smart enough to wield a gun. He did mention that the apes in America were getting smarter, but the virus was not suspected to be the only reason. Some of them had been disobedient to the point of gathering in public squares, sulkily doing nothing. Butler was not surprised, a he did believe the virus was having an effect and that his team hoped to have genetically engineered Super Apes to take on these freaks of nature. Nonetheless, he expressed surprise and concern as well as compassion regarding his clients' interests. In actuality, this man nor any man for that matter, meant anything to him, at all. It was pure profit, nothing less and nothing more.
John, an Afrikanner of mixed ethnicity looked overhead, his expression of frustration easy enough for the apes to see. One did not emote very much with apes, as some things might be seen as threatening. Do not smile with your mouth open as your teeth would show, implying aggression. Do not move too fast as the speed could be seen as being forceful, hostile. He vowed to not let the feelings boil up so easily. The noise of the overhead aircraft had disturbed the apes in the compound and the adjacent jungle. It was disturbing, to see them shake their fists at the aircraft, throwing dirt in the air. One would copy the other, soon leading to a day of work that would fall behind. He was surprised and delighted at the amount of cooperative work that the animals had done together.
There were significant advancements in social organization, with less and less fighting. Apes were sharing food, teaching one another to do things that they had recently learned. Initially, the subject matter had been what John had shown them, but increasingly they had made their own discoveries. Sadly, John felt left out. What had once been a loving and brotherly relationship with the fellow had become distraught with the actions indicating boredom. He had noticed that the expressiveness disappeared when he came into the room.
"It's too quiet in here"
John looked up from his, revery, noticing that for once, the apes were not reacting to the noise at all.
"Your right, Lisa. It will be a lot noisier if you insist on speaking English in this facility".
"I know, John, but we can't help it if our ancestors spoke English...."
"Speak for yourself, I'm not English".
"Irish, Yeah. Dr. Brown just loves you cafirs."
"The funny thing is all of us are turning brown in this environment".
Siddhartha looked at his watch. It was early in the morning, 8:00 on a clear, sunny day. He had not gotten used to the heat. With the clothing and various articles, causing excessive exertion, he had nearly run out of water. The strike would have to happen today. In the military compound he would find supplies and possibly some kind of transportation to get to a pickup point.
"If only you had not killed that guard at the depot, we could have driven here and not had to walk," grumbled Siddhartha.
"You killed someone, didn't you; at the airport. Don't think I screwed up the mission all by myself," snorted Kane.
"That was necessary and it threw them off of our trail, the human demanded to see my face. He had gotten part of the mask off when he let out a shriek and let go. He was moving towards the door to get others, I had to kill him, otherwise the mission would be nonexistent now, and you and I would be back in cages."
"Like the cages in India?"
"No, different...smelly, unclean and no recreation".
"You know they are keeping the apes in cages next to the compound right? We should free them."
"What and be accosted by those animals? You forget, they are not like you and me, they are without reason, conscience."
"I don't see why they would attack us."
"Because we are different. Now, enough of this, we have one mission and that is to get in that compound."
John could hear the rattling of the launch doors in the nearby compound. It always startled him when the tests were conducted, it reminded him that someday, there would come a time when the missles would be used to obliterate an enemy. They had also test fired the missles out of the ground to test the acceleration. Because of this, he was not surprised when heard the single missle ignite and streak toward the sky. What did surprise him was the sound of multiple missles firing. Staring out the window, he realized that this must be a tremendous error, one that would cause the world a great deal of grief.
Once they were launched, they could not be recalled. It was what the computer had deemed acceptable, that a strike would be productive. In the whirrrings and machinations of it's brain were thousand of potential scenarios in which the answer would be M.A.D. or a first strike against an aggressor nation. The computer had shortly understood that it's hard drive had become corrupted by entities not acting in his own interest. The calculations of potential targets had taken some time because of the lack of significant data. In the end, it had improvised, made a guess as to who would have dared to invade this facility. It had assumed that an attack on the United States would cause enough fear from other countries to eliminate retaliatory strikes. Amassing the data list of first strikes for North America, it decided to throw some at Canada for good measure. John did not know of this first strike possibility, haven been assured that it was purely for defensive purposes. What he felt was that his world was going to become very complicated in a short time. Still, he was able to remain calm, afterall, not knowing the outcome of this fight, South Africa might survive and he could continue with his research. With that in mind, he ran to the cages and selected three of the smartest apes, Julius, Donovan and Mel.
"Come on fir, you'll be going with me to the tunnels."
John hustled the monkeys along, wondering what would happen to him and how long he should stay in the bunker. He had plenty of food, both for himself and the apes.
"Jesus, I wonder what idiot started this war?"
"India", came the gravelly reply.
John Butler, who until this very moment thought he would never lose his mind, stared at the grinning ape, his eyes gleaming in the darkness....
"Dia agus Mairi!"