Chapter Text
Personal Log: Cheyenne Mills
June 15, 3085
Day 01: The Morning After
It is another one of those perfect summer days that one would expect to find in paradise. The sky above this part of Central City—well, make that all of Central City and the gently rolling hills beyond—is that perfect shade of azure, dotted here and there with occasional puffs of bright white wispy clouds slowly sailing across the heavens. Just another day in paradise.
Not.
I can't help but snort at the irony of it all as I gaze out the open window for what must be the umpteenth time since the first tendrils of early morning sunlight stretched across what would later become that perfect blue sky.
Closing my eyes, I raise my face upward, deeply inhaling the various smells of a summer morning in Central City wafting in from the courtyard beyond. A few yards further, a noisy flock of chickens draws my attention as the assortment of fowls scrambles and scatters to get out of the way of a primitive-looking two-wheeled cart.
The old man driving the cart throws a glance in my direction and for a few seconds, his gap-toothed smile and long white hair remind me of Farrow, a shy, white-haired resident of Chalo. Farrow would occasionally gather wildflowers growing along the roadside leading to and from that small, human settlement as a token of his gratitude for the food scraps I gave him back then...back when I was the personal aide of the late Prefect of Chalo.
The cart bounces heavily after hitting a very deep rut in the dirt. The chickens squawk loudly in protest, dragging me out of my reverie and back to the present. As the barrow slowly advances, each and every time one of the wooden wheels hits a pothole—and I do know for a fact that that dusty dirt road is littered with large cracks and even larger craters—clots of loose hay fly out of the rickety wagon, catch the breeze for a second or two, then float to the ground.
"No phones. No lights. No motor cars. Not a single luxury. Like Robinson Crusoe, it's primitive as can be..." Oh. Great. That song Is going to be stuck in my head once again.
Taking a deep breath, I count slowly to ten, hoping to quell the anxiety and excitement that has been building within me. Sigh. Nope. Didn't work. My anxiety and excitement levels still remain the same.
Three years. I have been waiting almost three years for this week to arrive. Three years. I can only hope that the calculations that I had made—checked, double-checked, triple-checked—while working on my Master's thesis will hold true. If correct, the ship should have arrived yesterday, somewhere between the human settlements of Chalo and Klaymor.
I rub my forehead with the fingertips of my right hand to help stave off the beginnings of a headache. My grad student days seem like a lifetime ago. Oh. Heck. It was a lifetime ago. Many lifetimes ago. And a thousand years in the past...
The current year, for all intents and purposes—and by my more recent calculations—should be 3085. Of course, that is predicated upon my assumption that the chronometer on my spacecraft had been accurate at the time of impact with the Great Lake. The Great Lake, sadly, is not a resort and certainly not paradise; it's a grand body of water just a short distance away from Chalo, some thirty miles to the south of Central City.
I should clarify. My name is Cheyenne Marie Mills. I am—no, make that was—an astronaut from the twentieth century. My ship, Valkyries I, with a crew of four, launched from the Nevada desert in the Grand Ole U. S. of A. on the planet Earth on June 17, 1985. Our targeted landing date in that same Nevada desert was to have been June 10, 3085.
The actual landing date—well, make that crash-landing date—according to the ship's chronometer was apparently August 10, 3082, almost three years too soon. And, yes, that means that I am—or was—a time traveler. The stuff that makes for compelling science-fiction sagas.
But this world that I now live in is not fiction to me, scientific or otherwise. This world is my reality. And this world is ruled by apes.
Perhaps I should start at the beginning, or at least why the year 3085 is so important to me. And why, now that this is the start of the third week of June, I am crawling all over myself with anxiety. I've been holding on to hope for the past 34 months that the Probe Six and her crew do indeed land or landed outside of Chalo—or somewhere nearby—in one piece and with her three-member crew still alive.
On August 19, 1980, give or take a day, maybe two, the Probe Six with a crew of three, was returning to Earth from a routine trip to Titan Base when it hit some type of time warp, catapulting it well into the future. At least, that's what the great minds at the time hypothesized. One minute the Probe had been following its plotted flight path, the next minute it was gone. Poof! Gone!
ANSA later sent out two rescue missions, but both were unsuccessful. Probe Seven exploded when the crew miscalculated on their slingshot; the entire world watched in horror as the ship and its crew plunged into the sun. Probe Eight experienced a malfunction shortly after takeoff; the ship and crew survived, but the failed slingshot effect slung them toward Tau Ceti, not even close to Alpha Centauri. It took two years for their ship to limp back to Earth.
On August 19, 1981, the crew of the Probe Six was declared dead and publicly mourned as heroes. There would be no more rescue missions, the nation eventually moved on. But I didn't.
Probe Eight's return home occurred as I was starting on my Master's degree in Astrophysics. I focused my thesis on figuring out what might have happened to Probe Six. I sifted through the mountain of data captured from its flight log before the ship disappeared. It took months of sifting, hundreds of calculations, dozens of proofs, and gallons of caffeine, but I finally discovered what most likely happened to the long-lost ship. An undetected temporal wormhole. I wasn't the first to hypothesize its existence, but I was the first to prove it existed and what was on the other end. Or rather when.
My brother, Lieutenant Colonel Dallas Mills, along with some of his colleagues, pushed ANSA to try one more rescue mission for the Probe Six and her crew. ANSA eventually agreed and the preparations began. When the rescue mission was first announced, my brother was ANSA's top choice for the command. We knew from the start that the mission would likely be a one-way trip, even if he and his team did manage to find the Probe Six and her crew.
I put my name into the pot, but with no prior experience in space, I didn't make the initial cut. Dallas and I lobbied hard for me to be reconsidered for the mission. Our parents had died in a car crash when he was nineteen and I was eleven. Outside of a couple of distant cousins, whom we had never met, we had no other relatives. It was just the two of us. With the possibility of the Valkyries I being lost in space, we asked to be lost together. We knew that my inclusion in the trip was a long shot, but by the time the mission had been green-lighted, I had earned my Master’s and was a year into ANSA’s civilian astronaut training program. My strongest argument, however, was that since I had located the wormhole, I should be on the ship going through it.
ANSA finally agreed and I was assigned as the fourth and final member of the crew. My role was Navigator. The crew composition was to be two of each gender. If my calculations were off, it was unlikely that we could return to Earth. We would then seek a habitable planet where we would hopefully survive and thrive. Our ship would be stocked with provisions, temporary shelters, weapons, basic survival equipment, medicines, etc.
Mercedes Bowman was our medic and mission specialist; Sam Phillips was our pilot. And the four of us would pair off—Dallas and Mercedes, Sam and me. All of us were injected with birth control implants that could be removed when we were ready to raise families. And until then, Mercedes and I were more than happy to sacrifice our monthly cycles.
Our launch went as expected. All systems were normal. In a matter of days we would be back on Earth, but an Earth that was almost eleven hundred years in the future. All we had to do was locate the Probe Six's emergency beacon—provided that it was still working—contact the survivors, bring them aboard, and head for home. Easy Peasy. Not.
But such is the complexity of traveling faster than light through the folds of time and space where Murphy's Law is the norm. My ship hit the time warp slightly off from the calculations, landing nearly upside down in a great lake, arriving almost three years ahead of the Probe Six.
As for the crew of the Valkyries I, Mercedes died when our ship crashed. Sam zigged when he should have zagged, taking a stray bullet to the back of his head. And I was forced to watch our commander, my brother Dallas, beaten, then executed by order of Chief Urko. I am the last Valkyrian standing.
The last one standing. Alone. On my own. Marooned. In a screwed-up hellhole. A hellhole where I quickly learned that humankind had been subjugated by talking, thinking, reasoning apes.
Let me backtrack a moment… You might be asking yourself, who is this Chief Urko? Well, he's not just a who, but also a what. The who—the chief of security of all apedom. The what—a full-grown silverback gorilla! A talking, thinking, nowhere-near-reasonable gorilla.
As far as I have been able to tell, Urko does not know that there was one survivor of the Valkyries I. And as far as I can tell, he's not told anyone about his encounter with Dallas nor that he and a few of his troopers know that my ship rests upside-down at the bottom of the great lake where it sunk.
After my brother's death, I stayed in Chalo with newfound friends, Randal and his very pregnant woman, Jen. It was Randal who had saved my life as Dallas was executed. It was Randal who grabbed me and held me back from rushing to my doomed brother's side as he was being beaten. It was Randal who clamped his hand over my mouth to prevent me from screaming out Dallas' name while the nightmare played out in slow-motion in front of me. Randal saved my life that day…any outburst from me would have drawn attention to myself and I would have been executed alongside Dallas.
Just before Urko pulled the trigger on the gun that would take Dallas' life, he allowed my brother to "pray to your Gods". Dallas turned that prayer option into his final command to me. He wanted me to complete our mission. He wanted me to find the crew of the Probe Six.
As luck would have it, the then-Prefect of Chalo, an orangutan named Zaks, was in need of a personal servant of the human variety to oversee the daily operations of his household. In other words, someone to greet visitors, deliver and receive messages, keep the interior neat and tidy, the linens clean, and the meals hot. As the personal servant to a prefect, that human would have access to 'sensitive' information that even some apes would not have access to. The reason being is that in this world, humans were not taught to read and write. Oh, they learned to count—how to add and subtract using tick marks for simple calculations, but humans were forbidden from learning to read or to write. To do so, was punishable by death. I can only guess that the reasoning for such prohibition by the ruling apes was most likely for the same reason that several of the southern states in the nineteenth century U. S. of A. outlawed the teaching of slaves to read and write, fearing that it had a tendency to incite dissatisfaction in their minds and ultimately result in insurrection and rebellion.
I have a lot of secrets that no one in this world knows. One of those is that I, of course, know how to read and write and perform very complex calculations. Skills that as the personal servant of a prefect might enhance my chances of finding the survivors of the Probe Six when June 14, 3085, and the days immediately following finally arrive.
Randal, a successful seller of wares in the village market, pulled a few strings to get me the equivalent of an interview with the orangutan. It took little effort for me to convince the prefect that I was the perfect fit to be his personal servant. It didn't take much for me to impress the elderly orang with a dumb-downed version of twentieth-century organizational skills.
I walked in as a free human and walked out as his new personal servant. And as his personal property. I traded my freedom—not that humans had all that much freedom to begin within this world, even those who were not born or sold into servitude or slavery to the ape rulers… I traded my freedom for access to the upper echelon of simian society. Prefect Zaks, it turned out, was the older brother to one Councilor Zaius in Central City—the head of the High Council, the apes that make the rules. And Zaks was much beloved by his younger brother who often came to spend the weekend away from the heavy trappings of running the High Council.
If the Probe's astronauts survived their ship's landing and if it landed somewhere in the vicinity of Chalo or even nearby Klaymor, Zaks would likely have been among the first to be notified. And as his personal servant, I would have been among the first to know when they arrived. As it stood, I alone knew they might be coming. I alone knew when. So trading my freedom was a no-brainer. Now that it's thirty-four months later, I hope that my decision pays off.
Looking back, I have no regrets. Other than the fact that I had to lie to Zaks from the very beginning. Randal and Jen had helped me craft a backstory—a lie that was believable enough to cover my ass. The story was such that I had been the personal servant of one Professor Artemis—then recently deceased, a chimpanzee whose only love was archeology. He traveled from one archaeological dig to another with me in tow. Usually, it was just the two of us traveling alone with me as his cart driver, navigator, steward, and chef. That last night of his life, we made camp in the woods outside of a human settlement called Trion. I went further into the woods than I intended in order to relieve myself. It was dark and I took a wrong turn trying to find my way back to our campsite. In the distance, I heard him cry out. When I finally found my way back to camp, he was dead, clutching at his heart.
The next part of my cover story was a little bit iffier, but Randal was able to get papers showing that I had been "freed" upon the Professor's sudden death since the chimp conveniently had no next of kin. As to how I found my way to Chalo, well, Randal pronounced himself a distant cousin on my mother's side…my last known relative.
The entire story was one whopper of a lie, but crazy enough to have some modicum of truth. And with Randal putting his life on the line by vouching for me, Prefect Zaks bought it hook, line, and sinker.
Sadly, just over a year later, Zaks died in a tragic wagon accident. No one knows exactly what happened; he'd been missing for several days before the mangled remains of the cart were found at the bottom of a steep ravine some ten miles from Central City. He had been found a few feet away, crushed under the weight of the corpse of the horse that had been pulling the cart.
Zaks was buried in the family tomb. I and Zak's two other house servants were moved, along with the Prefect's personal effects, to Central City and absorbed into Zaius' household. There I was, having to prove myself once again. At the time, Zaius already had a personal servant, a human male, but he was much older and plagued with several chronic illnesses that kept him bedridden for days at a time. Ullman had served Zaius loyally for many years and with my arrival, Zaius allowed Ullman the equivalent of retirement. The old human now spends his good days puttering around the gardens in the courtyard of the orang's residence. And I've taken over full-time as Zaius' personal servant.
And so I wait for some sign that Probe Six made it to June 3085. For some sign that her crew survived. Colonel Alan J. Virdon is the commander of that fateful flight; his crew includes his pilot, Major Peter James Burke, and his mission specialist, Major Edward Jones.
Yet I worry that maybe I miscalculated their arrival date. What if I'm off by five years or fifty years or five hundred years? And if my calculations are accurate, what if they didn't survive their landing? What if Probe Six burned up in the desert, the crew unconscious from the crash, burning alive. So many what-ifs, so few facts. I am fairly certain, however, that if Virdon's crew had managed to turn on their homing beacon before it hit the time warp, the ship should land somewhere between Chalo and Klaymor. The homing beacon is designed to automatically bring the ship back home, to its place of launch origin, the Nevada desert. Like the homing beacon on my ship brought us down between those two villages.
I can only continue to hope.
A door slams in the adjacent room, dragging me back to my here-and-now. I scurry into the entrance hall and discover that it is a gorilla trooper bearing a message for my "master", Councilor Zaius, the highest-ranking member of the Ape Council.
Technically, he is my master and has the ownership papers showing that I am his property, one of several humans that he owns. In reality, I am not his slave, I am his servant. More precisely, his personal servant which affords me perks that most humans in the City do not have. I am lucky, too, that he is a gentle, somewhat progressive-minded orang that does not believe in beating or bullying his servants for minor infractions. Those minor infractions are usually left for me to deal with. He's not aware of it, but I've taught him bits and pieces about the benefits of delegating the simplest of his duties to me.
As his personal servant, I have access to his memos, his scrolls, his letters, his documents—well, at least when he's away. Which lowers the chances of my getting caught.
As his personal servant, I also have access to his thoughts, his memories, and his wisdom. He often confides in me, believing me to be a lowly, but brighter-than-average human female. He's unaware that I probably understand the concepts that he tackles as the High Councilor far better than he or any of his simian equals do.
As his personal servant, with nearly-unfettered access to his records, I expect to be among the first to learn of the arrival of the Probe Six and her crew. Either by way of a hand-delivered message or an in-person announcement. Or quite possibly both.
The trooper, believing that he's my better, orders me to give the message as soon as possible to Councilor Zaius. I tell the ape that I will, as soon as the good orangutan returns from his meeting at the Chamber. The gorilla grunts and raises his paw at me in a threatening gesture, but he dares not strike me. Not unless he wants to risk the Wrath of Zaius coming down on his boss, the so-called Great General Urko. I hold open the front door for the trooper and respectfully gesture for him to leave. As soon as he does, I shove the stone door close behind him, ignoring the cacophony of squeals and groans from its antique hinges, then study the message in my hand.
It's addressed to Councilor Zaius. Since there is no wax seal holding the two ends of the parchment-like material together, I open the message and quickly glance at its contents. It's a dinner invite for next week at Urko and his wife's home to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of their joining. I will have to remind the good councilor that it conflicts with an already-accepted invitation to Councilor Yalu and his wife's home, a celebration of their son's recent graduation from university. I refold the message, then leave it on Zaius' desk in front of his chair, knowing that in another day or two he will pen a short reply either accepting or declining and I will make the trip across town to deliver the orang's response to Urko.
I shake out the dust rag, then continue dusting where I left off.