--- In PotaDG@yahoogroups.com
, LordTZer0@A... wrote:
>
>
> In a message dated 1/5/2006 8:45:46 P.M. Central Standard Time,
> Haristas@a... writes:
>
> PLANET cannot depend on the existence of its sequels. It's simply
an
> unacceptable artistic paradox.
>
>
> And to say, well when Zira and Cornelius read the secret texts it
said, get in a spaceship and go back in time to have your baby and
he'll take over the world, but lie, and make up some daft shit about
Aldo, I just don't buy it.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
*** That's not what those "SECRET SCROLLS" say, and you're
mischaracterizing what I say about 'em.
Those scrolls say that:
1) God created Beast and Man, so that both might live in friendship
and share dominion over a world at peace.
2) Evil men betrayed God's trust and -- in disobedience to His holy
word -- waged war against himself AND against the Apes, whom they had
reduced to slavery.
3) God, in His wrath, sent the world a Savior.
4) The Savior's parents -- not named in that scroll, just called "the
parent apes" -- had "descended on Earth from Earth's own future".
5) Those "parent apes" were brutally murdered.
6) But their son survived. He grew to adulthood and was raised by a
kind Man who loved all Beasts, and who knew God's will. When he was
but a boy of 10, Caesar saw how all the Dogs and Cats -- Man's pets --
had died from the effects of a devastating Plague. And, eight years
after that Plague, Caesar's foster-father was then murdered by an
evil Man, who enslaved Caesar. He put Caesar to death... and God
resurrected the Savior from Death! And then, with the power of God to
aid him, Caesar destroyed the army of the tyrant. Then Caesar led the
Apes out of the tyrant's city, having been forewarned that God would
harden the hearts of the Human tyrants of the world. Caesar led the
Apes out into the forests, into the green, growing world God had
intended all His chosen creatures to enjoy.
7) Then, 15 years later, Man waged the vilest war in Man's history,
flattening the cities of the world.
8) Out of one such city, the Savior -- named Caesar -- had led his
people... out into a "greener pasture" where he then ruled over the
surviving Apes and those Humans who obeyed the Will of God, and
sought to live under the dominion of a King of Peace.
Here's where I give my run-down on how that "Secret Scroll" told the
story that we see in "BATTLE". You'll notice that it differs from
what REALLY happened, reflecting the notion that this Story had been
told... and retold... and retold... and perhaps rewritten over and
over again, by scribes born centuries after the death of Caesar,
trying to make sense of the oldest version of the story. This Scroll,
in the form Cornelius reads it, dates back to the year 2670 at the
latest, around 600 years after the death of King Caesar.
9) Caesar, at the age of 45, discovers that it is the Will of God
that he attain knowledge of both Death and Life: of Hell and Heaven.
So he goes on an epic voyage into Hell, where he meets the ghosts of
his murdered parents (who had descended from Heaven to speak with him
and to comfort him in that land of the Dead). They tell him that the
world will be destroyed in the year 3950 -- which he knows is 1,932
years in the Future. That "End of the World" will happen because it
is the Will of God. And, just before the End, there will be a war
involving gorillas who -- like the Humans of old -- betrayed God's
trust and waged war against God's chosen people, causing God Himself
to destroy the World, so that His chosen people could dwell in
Eternity, finding peace in Heaven.
10) Caesar learns from the ghosts of his parents that God had sent
them back in Time to just before the Fall of Man, so that their son
could fulfill the Destiny that God intended for him: to be the Savior
of the world, by ruling over Apes and Men at the founding of their
civilization, fully cognizant of the Divine Purpose and fully assured
that God's Plan would culminate in the Reward of the Virtuous, the
peace that can only be found in Heaven.
11) Caesar emerged from Hell, and made his way back to his kingdom.
12) Then an ape -- a gorilla named ALDO -- who hated Caesar, because
Caesar had shown favor to Humans above that of Gorillas -- became
filled with the spirit of Evil, and murdered the Heir of Caesar, a
young boy named Cornelius.
13) In response to this evil act, God let loose his wrath, empowering
the Devil to open the gates of Hell and swarm the land with Ghouls...
the Lost Souls of those Humans who had waged the vilest war in
history, a mere 12 years earlier. To remind the Apes that Man's way
led to War and Death... and Hell. To teach them that Apes must learn
a NEW way, a way that leads to Peace and Life... and Heaven.
14) Caesar, at God's insistence, carried out the Vengeance of the
Almighty... by executing the murderer of the Heir of the Savior. APE
SHALL NEVER KILL APE... and if an Ape should commit murder, it is
God's Will that the murderer should be put to death.
15) After the Justice of God was served, and His wrath placated by
the blood of the murderer, Aldo, King Caesar was able to cleanse his
kingdom... driving back the Evil Spirits who had haunted the land
back to Hell. Restoring the peace God intended for His chosen people.
16) Caesar, before his death, preached to his people -- both Ape and
Man -- that it was the Will of God that they live together in Peace,
and that IF they lived peacefully with each other, God would reward
them with Salvation: a place in Heaven. Their spirits would live
forever, in Eternity.
- - - - - - -
When Cornelius first reads this "Secret Scroll" -- the oldest version
of the Creation Myth and the Caesar Epic -- it is sometime after the
events of "PLANET OF THE APES" and before the end of "BENEATH THE
PLANET OF THE APES".
Nowhere in the scroll does it mention a "spaceship". Nor does it
mention the NAMES of the "parent apes" of King Caesar... apes who had
descended on Earth from Earth's own future, having been sent into the
Past by God Himself in order to fulfill a Divine Plan.
Cornelius, by the time he reads the scroll, knows that the ancient
calendar which was in use when the scroll had been written gives the
current year as 3955 -- which is a date 5 years AFTER the date of the
End of the World, as given in the scroll. "Thirty-Nine Fifty". In the
year 3950, Dr. Zaius had been sweating bullets, scared to death that
Doomsday was about to happen -- because he knows that the SACRED
SCROLLS were written AFTER the older, "Secret Scrolls"... and he
knows that the Lawgiver had been a Revisionist, that he had LIED
about the beginning of the Ape Civilization, RE-WRITING the Creation
Myth and erasing the story of Caesar.
But... when the year 3950 passes by without incident... when no
gorilla-led army has waged a vile war like that of the ancient evil
Humans who had betrayed God's trust... Zaius begins to breathe a sigh
of relief. Perhaps that old scroll -- which virtually NO ape knows
about, save him -- was wrong. Perhaps the Will of God had been
changed -- perhaps God changed His mind, and decided that Apes had
learned to live in Innocence (via Ignorance of the Man-dominated
Past, of Caesar, of Aldo, etc), and that their Innocence deserved to
be rewarded. The Earth need not be destroyed, if the Gorillas do not
learn the ways of Man and seek to wage an ungodly war...
Cornelius, reading that scroll in 3955, is fascinated by the story
told in it... but he doesn't believe it is literally true in any
regard. He doesn't believe in Hell... in the Evil Spirits mentioned
in the Scroll... in the ability of any ape -- even this mythic "King
Caesar" -- to literally descend into Hell and learn about the Future
from the ghosts of his dead parents.
It's nothing but an epic story about a mythic epic hero. The first
Ape king. A story written in a time -- BEFORE the Lawgiver rewrote
Ape History and buried all knowledge of Man's dominant Past -- when
knowledge of Man's pre-Caesar civilization was COMMON. A human
civilization that existed from the BEGINNING of that ancient calendar
(from Year One) all the way to the year 2,006: the year when Man
waged that "vilest war" in Man's History.
Caesar knows -- due to his methods of dating the Past -- that the
artifacts of the more advanced ancient culture which he found in his
Cave date back to that very era. Roughly two thousand years before
his Present.
When he reads that scroll, he learns of the existence of that ancient
calendar, which dates the World from Year 1... the Fall of Man in the
year 2006... and the End of the World in the year 3950... AND the
present year as 3955. The scroll was right (as far as his
archaological studies are concerned) regarding the dating of the
fossil evidence from his Cave -- the Fall of Man. But that scroll is
WRONG about the date of the End of the World. It is 5 years after
that date of Doomsday. It is curious and amusing that he happened to
be alive in the very year when an old unknown scroll had predicted
the world would be destroyed by God. All the more proof, though, that
it was a work of FICTION. Fiction with, perhaps, some elements in it
that MIGHT be historical. MAYBE there was a "historical Caesar" and
a "historical Aldo". It would amuse Cornelius that his own name dates
back to the time when that scroll was written -- that his name was
once the same as the "literary character" of the martyred heir of
King Caesar.
Shortly after Brent leaves their home... shortly after Ursus and
Zaius leave with the Army out of Ape City on their campaign into the
Forbidden Zone... Milo shows up and urges them to pack some
necessities for a quick, urgent trip. They know and respect him --
he's a genius far in advance of his time. He bailed 'em out of jail
after that Tribunal hearing. They owe him a great deal. They trust
him. And he's URGENT... they MUST go with him, travel with him to a
place where--they'll see for themselves!
He leads them to the landing site of the 3rd ANSA shuttle. They get
into the vehicle. They see the words on all the buttons. Words like
PRIMARY POWER and AUXILIARY POWER and PORT THRUST and STBD THRUST and
AFT THRUST... They see the two clocks, one marked EARTH-TIME and the
other marked SHIP-TIME, giving the MONTH - DAY - YEAR... with the
EARTH-TIME clock reading 8-27-3955 and the SHIP-TIME clock reading 9-
11-1973. By this time, Cornelius knows that that ancient calendar
reckoned the year as "3955" -- and that this metallic ship (shaped
like that folded paper Taylor threw across his office) uses the SAME
year-number! The other date -- the SHIP-TIME reading -- gives a
yeardate that is almost 2,000 years earlier, from the very epoch when
Man once ruled the world... a mere 33 years before Man waged
that "vilest war" and destroyed his own civilization.
Cornelius doesn't know that he's about to fly up into Outer Space
with Milo and Zira. He doesn't know he's going to go backwards
through Time, after having seen the world DESTROYED.
They get into the ship. Milo presses a button -- perhaps a button
which initiates a pre-programmed surface-to-orbit flight program.
Strapped into the chairs, wearing the spacesuits that they'd found
abandoned in the ship, the Trio blasts off from the beach, up up up
into the sky. They see the sky darken... they're in Space.
Then they see a bright white BLINDING light. They see, from the
windows of the spaceship, the rim of the Earth MELT. Then the
shockwave hits the ship... it spins around and around, as if caught
in a tornado. They're in a "tornado in the sky".
Milo notices the EARTH-TIME clock clicking BACKWARDS... and he brings
it to the attention of the other two, who notice it but are too
freaked out to realize what it might mean. Milo himself thinks that
the shockwave that hit them "unbalanced the mechanism" in some
fashion. He doesn't know that Time in the Universe outside the ship
is flowing BACKWARDS. Not yet.
After a bit, the "AUTOMATIC RE-ENTRY SEQUENCE" kicks in, and this
ANSA vehicle fires retro-rockets, to slow its descent... but to
Where? They saw the Earth destroyed... they saw it MELT! Are they
falling into a sea of lava?
They splash into the water. Just south of Ventura, California, in the
SE corner of Sector Alpha Charlie. It isn't lava. It's water. How can
that be?
They eventually see, out the windows, the bizarre and frightening
image of a Helicopter flying towards them... around them... What the
hell IS that thing???
Soon after, another helicopter approaches, and two black-garbed
persons jump out of the flying machine into the water. They can see
that these strange beings have human proportions, though they have
strange-looking flippers for feet.
The ship is towed to shore. They, looking out the windows, can see
the frenetic activity on the shore... the HUMANS running to and fro,
wearing strange clothing and head-wear, carrying weapons, riding
along in horseless wagons. They all agree, before they arrive at the
beach, before the port hatch is opened up, that they should remain
SILENT for the time being. It's best not to offend the weapon-
wielding humans who have pulled them onto the beach.
After the strange events of that day, they eventually find themselves
in a cage at the Los Angeles Zoo. Zira and Cornelius are still
freaked out by the strange environment they find themselves in, but
Milo is calmer. He knows where they are. He reminds them of that
bizarre moment during the flight... when the EARTH-TIME clock,
the "date meter", began to click BACKWARDS. They had all seen the
EARTH-TIME clock click backwards from 08-27-3955 until it matched the
date on the other clock: 09-11-1973. A time period of nearly TWO
THOUSAND YEARS. Somehow... and Milo lacks the intellect to know
precisely how... they traveled from Earth's Future (their own
Present) to Earth's Past.
Absurd! And yet... what other explanation is there? The "date meter"
had clicked backwards -- they all saw it. They've encountered a
spellbinding HUMAN culture -- TALKING humans! -- who undoubtedly were
masters of Metallurgy... just like the ones who had to have made
those strange artifacts Cornelius had found in that Cave.
Before they know it, Milo is murdered by a Gorilla in the next cage.
They are alone... just Cornelius and Zira. His pregnant wife Zira.
At some point, then, Cornelius remembers that highly improbable
scroll he had read recently. That strange old mythic tale of King
Caesar, with all its obviously fictional elements.
It spoke of two "parent apes" who had "descended on Earth from
Earth's own future"...
Could it... could it BE, Cornelius wonders? Could it be that there
WAS an ape named "Caesar" who once lived... long before their time? A
historical source for the Myth story? Could that ancient epic hero,
the great King Caesar... could he be growing in Zira's womb at this
very minute???
Cornelius would have to consider the possibility. He would have to
weigh the facts as he knows them, evaluate the old scroll as best he
could, in a scientific fashion. He would have to sift the details of
that ancient story, to see what elements MUST be purely fictional
embellishment and what OTHER elements may indeed be based on an
actual historical figure, who experienced a story that must have been
SIMILAR if not exactly identical to the tale told in that scroll.
According to that scroll, Caesar was born in the Year 1973 of that
ancient calendar, 18 years before his Death, Resurrection, and defeat
of the human Tyrant who had enslaved him and executed him.
According to the scroll's calendar, 10 years after the birth of
Caesar (and the murder of his parents) a Plague would strike the
world, killing all the Dogs and Cats -- in 1983. Three years after
that, Man would begin to add Apes to his list of Pets, in 1986.
TWO YEARS after Man took Apes as household pets, in 1988, Man began
to force them to do chores. Man turned their pet Apes into slaves.
And... THREE YEARS later, in 1991, Caesar's human foster-father was
murdered, and Caesar was enslaved. And executed. And then God
resurrected him from Death itself!
Some 15 years later, in 2006, Man would destroy his own glorious
civilization -- flattening his own cities in the vilest war of Man's
history.
And... 12 years after that, in 2018, Caesar would descend into
Hell... meet the ghosts of his slain parents, who would tell him of
the Future where they had come from... and emerge again into the land
of the Living.
And an evil gorilla named Aldo would murder his Heir, a young
chimpanzee named Cornelius.
Cornelius (Zira's husband), reading this, would perhaps suspect that
Zira's unborn child will indeed become the mythologized King Caesar.
Oh, he might not literally descend into Hell -- just as the ancient
King Gilgamesh probably didn't really experience the adventures that
are recorded in the Epic of Gilgamesh. But... it is possible that
Caesar -- if, indeed, their unborn son is destined to be him -- would
one day beget an heir, a son whom he would name 'Cornelius'.
WHY would he name him Cornelius? Perhaps he named him after his own
father, whose name is never mentioned in that scroll! The
father "parent ape" may have been named 'Cornelius' -- prompting
Caesar to name his own son with that same name. Perhaps there were
later genealogies showing a tendency of famous apes of antiquity
naming their children after their own fathers, with firstborn sons
being named the Heir, inheriting his own Grandfather's name, as a
tradition.
When it comes time for Cornelius and Zira to be interrogated by
Hasslein at Camp Eleven, Cornelius knows -- or believes, anyway --
that it is not only POSSIBLE but PROBABLE that Zira's unborn son is,
indeed, the historical source of the mythic hero King Caesar, from
that 1,300-year-old epic.
Cornelius knows that that old epic gives only 33 years for the
advanced civilization of Man to endure -- the epic told of the Fall
of Man in the year 2006.
Rather than tell Hasslein that in 33 years Man will have destroyed
his own world, and that Ape Civilization will control what is left of
the world thereafter... Cornelius tells Hasslein the main elements of
the story told in that epic --
-- but he does NOT tell him the name of the Ape Savior, nor does he
even tell his story. He tells about the Plague that killed the Dogs
and Cats... how Man replaced his lost pets with Apes...
And how, "two centuries" after having made pets of Apes -- which
Cornelius knows, in reality, the scroll dates as "TWO YEARS" -- Man
began to ENSLAVE the Apes.
Zira -- who had also read the scroll, and who (like Cornelius) also
speculated and then later believed that they were the "parent apes"
of Caesar -- follows Cornelius' lead, and changes the "THREE MORE
YEARS" line of the original scroll -- referring to the period of Ape
Slavery -- to "three more centuries", inflating the figure by a
factor of 100. Turning "years" into "centuries". Telling the truth in
all but the dating of events.
LET them believe they'll be Lords of the Earth for another 500 years!
Let them grow confident that they can commit any evil they wish,
fooled into believing that Time is not their enemy!
Let them forget Cornelius' testimony to the Commission, that Apes --
in their time -- had been speaking English for nearly two thousand
years!
Let them not worry about an IMMINENT overthrow of their civilization,
and a "turning-the-tables" coup by the Apes. Let 'em think it's half
a millennium in the future.
What a surprise they'll get when Apes wage their revolt in a mere 18
years! When their unborn child -- their son, who will one day be
written of as King Caesar, the Savior of the World -- leads the
revolt against the evil reign of mad human tyrants.
The scroll also spoke of an evil gorilla named Aldo... who murdered
the Heir of Caesar.
Who would one day murder his very own grandson. A child ape who
shared his very name.
Cornelius would want to save his unborn son's Heir, his own grandson,
if it were at all possible. According to the scroll, Cornelius and
Zira will soon be brutally murdered -- but their son will survive.
Yet they won't be around to protect them, to teach them, to warn them
about the upcoming events that will shake the globe.
Cornelius tries to plant the seeds of a murder. Cornelius wants Aldo
to be killed BEFORE he can get a chance to become the murderer of
King Caesar's heir. But HOW can he put Aldo in harm's way?
He tells Hasslein that the first Ape to REFUSE to obey Man --
according to that scroll -- was "an ape named Aldo".
By revealing the name of ALDO -- and NOT the name of the true Ape
Savior, CAESAR -- Cornelius hopes that Mankind, somehow, will single
out any and every "Aldo" for persecution. If a human slaveowner names
his slave "Aldo", perhaps Hasslein (or one of his goons) will arrange
for that ape to suffer an 'accident'. Hasslein's goons would kill
Aldo, Cornelius muses, out of a sense of self-preservation -- a PRE-
EMPTIVE STRIKE against a named Enemy whose existence threatens Man's
civilization.
But, IF they can succeed, they will have killed off the ape who was
destined to murder Cornelius' own grandson, Cornelius. Cornelius --
by naming Aldo to Hasslein -- endangered the lives of every ape who
might be named "Aldo" in the near future. In order to save the life
of his son's Heir. According to the scroll, with the death of
Caesar's Heir, the Dynasty of Caesar was cut short.
But if Aldo can be killed by Hasslein's goons BEFORE he gets a chance
to kill Caesar's son, then Cornelius (Senior) just MIGHT be able to
CHANGE THE FUTURE... and permit the possibility of a long Dynasty of
Caesar.
It's worth a shot!
Cornelius rolls the dice, and knows he'll die before he can ever see
if the dice roll is a winning one. Like Virgil's later explanations
of the nature of Time, it is a BLIND CHOICE, this attempt to change
lanes. It is an attempt to manipulate the future.
To paraphrase the prologue of David Gerrold's novelization of "BATTLE
FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES", thus does History (the film-depicted
adventures of Caesar) become Legend, and Legend become Myth (i.e.
the "Secret Scroll" scripture that the nice Lawgiver reads to his
young audience in 2670).
Patrick Michael Tilton
EARTH-TIME 1-06-2006
