| abstract | - Onboard the Oberon space station, an astronaut named Leo Davidson worked closely with chimpanzees and orangutans who were trained to serve as 'guinea-pigs' for particularly dangerous exploration missions in space. His favourite chimpanzee was Pericles. Pericles learned from training simulators and was rewarded with treats when he achieved his objectives. Leo was summoned to the command deck of the space station where a new situation had emerged; a giant electromagnetic storm. The storm sent all of the radio and television broadcasts of Earth out toward the Oberon. The Oberon's commander decided to send out a chimp - Pericles - to see if conditions were safe to send out human pilots to explore the storm. Image:Reentry.jpg When the chimp was lost, the commander wrote-off the chimp and prepared to forget the storm. Astronaut Leo however had other ideas and snuck aboard another escape pod and traveled in pursuit of his chimp trainee into space. Leo lost contact with his space station and was pushed forward in time to a strange new world. Crashing in a jungle, his crew-mates onboard the Oberon searched for him in vain. Shortly after crashing Leo looked around to see rustling among the brush. Humans emerged, fleeing in terror. After a short contemplation Leo took off with them and ran. Out of the distance, apes emerged. With gorillas on horseback and chimpanzees running on all fours, the apes chased after humanity - the inferior race they had mastered and now hunt. After the lot was rounded up they were tossed into cages and hauled back to the Ape City, where they were sold off as slaves. In the city, Leo met Limbo, an orangutan who traded humans for money. He earned profit on volume selling, as his human specimens smelled like humans and weren't considered luxury items to apes. To apes, humans weren't good for much other than to be used as pets or simple house servants. In Limbo's building, a human rights advocate named Ari was off to her usual trouble-making mischief. Ari believed humans could be taught things and deserved to be treated more as equals to apes. To Limbo, a businessman whose trade was humans, such thinking was ludicrous. When Ari got close to Leo's cage, Leo pulled her close and threatened her life with a hot branding iron. Limbo worried that he may have to put down Leo. Leo then whispered to Ari that he needed help. Ari rewarded the human that held her captive by agreeing to buy him and a female he was attracted to. Leo and the female - Daena became house servants in the house of Ari's father. During an event to entertain dinner guests General Thade, the leader of Ape military forces, opened up Leo's mouth and inquired mockingly if there was a soul in there. Ari left the dinner table and General Thade chased after her, then left, angry that she had no affection for him at all. Leo then picked the lock on his cage and escaped with a group of other humans. Ari spotted them escaping and accompanied them with her protector Krull. Ari found Leo different and was eager to help him because she found him fascinating. Image:Apehorse.jpg General Thade convinced Ari's father that Ari was kidnapped by the humans. General Thade used this situation to gain absolute power as dictator of Ape City. Thade than marched ape armies to the Forbidden Zone where Leo, Ari, and many humans had gathered. In the Forbidden Zone, Leo discovered the Oberon, his crashed space station. According to the computer's logs and the aging of the ship, it had been there for thousands of years. Leo deduced that he was pushed forward in time, while the Oberon searching after him was not. Consequently it crashed on the planet thousands of years before Leo did. The Oberon's log revealed that the apes onboard organised a mutiny and took control of the vessel after it crashed. The survivors of the struggle left the ship and their descendants were the apes and humans on the planet that Leo witnessed. When ape forces charged humans encamped near the ancient station, Leo ignited the fuel inside the ship which knocked back the first wave of ape warriors. General Thade was not impressed and ordered everyone else to the front, and rode forward himself. As the apes appeared beyond doubt to have won, a vessel descended from the sky. It was Pericles, the original chimp astronaut that Leo went out into space searching for. Apparently Pericles got pushed forward in time just like Leo and only now found his way to the planet that Leo had crashed on. When Pericles landed, the apes interpreted his arrival as the return of Semos, the first chimpanzee, who was their god. They bowed, and hostilities between humans and apes ceased. General Thade chased Pericles into the Oberon and Leo followed. Thade got trapped in the control room, unable to escape. Image:Eighthlanding.jpg Leo then went to Pericles' space pod, which was undamaged, and used it to travel back through time. Leo crashed on what appeared to be Earth, in Washington DC. He looked up to see the Lincoln Memorial was now a monument in honor of General Thade. A swarm of ape police officers and reporters descended on Leo, who wondered just what had happened to his world.
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