Doctor Hélius was the genius chimpanzee director of the Institute for Advanced Biological Study Encephalic research studies, in the Pierre Boulle novel La Planète des singes.
History[]
House of Horrors[]
Hélius performed experimental operations on the brains of human captives. A friend of Cornélius, he agreed to demonstrate some of his findings to the human astronaut Ulysse Mérou.
The chimpanzee proudly demonstrated various experiments conducted in his department. While he assured the Earthman that the human subjects felt no pain in these experiments it did little to lighten the gruesome horrors in the laboratory: Men stripped of their basic senses and artificially crippled, women rendered unable to recognize their own children, and even children subjected to various electrical stimuli.
The young ape was oblivious to Ulysse's disgust and horror at the callous treatment of the men and women in which these experiments were conducted upon. Ulysse's temper finally reached its limit when he witnessed a lovely young girl, that reminded him of his wife, Nova, being subjected in a cruel experiment to test the limits of electrical stimulation. When the apes fixed several electrodes, the girl was subjected to a continuous electrical current which initially caused only her hand to twitch and then gradually the entire left side of her body to convulse violently. Unable to take much more, Ulysse demanded they stop, however Cornelius assured him stating such experiments were necessary and escorted the human to the next room.
Ancient Testimony[]
In one experiment he displayed that a man was able to talk like a gramophone, repeating words and conversations he had heard in captivity. However his second subject, a woman, revealed some of his most profound discoveries in awakening the memory of the species.
These remarkable experiments revealed memories inherited by the human subjects from their distant ancestors, and proved that the humans of the planet Soror had not only been intelligent, but had once been the dominant species of the planet. That was until the apes rose to supplant their human masters and drive them into the wilds, slowly turning them into beasts.
Shortly after the presentation, the chimpanzee had leaked out his findings to the public causing a media panic that the Institute had finally made man able to talk. Hélius's revelation as man being the former masters of Soror may have accelerated the Grand Council of Soror in singling out Ulysse and his family as threats.
Personality & Traits[]
Described by Cornelius as a young genius chimpanzee with a great future. Hélius was prideful of his work in the study of the brain of man, which he believed the results he received were superior or even perfect compared to his scientific counterparts on Earth which used apes.
Helius while appearing to hold the classic simian character of conviction, full of pride and serenity, to work for good and for progress, held a darker side. In spite of a scientist's aspects of “seeing” and “observing” his attention was blind to his alienation of the cruel treatment of men. His detachment of his subjects is seen through his systematic use of pronouns or demonstrative articles. At no time does he show affection or empathy for men under his care. Instead endorses their experimentation, his visible detachment is evident when he is unaffected by the plight of the men, women and children that are mutilated under his care. As Hélius goes on his explanatory tour of his more horrible discoveries it shows only his satisfaction to experiences in contrast with the horror of the situation.