For my friend, Ashleigh
My name is Danielle Sully although everyone calls me Danny. I am the youngest in my family with my twin brothers, Jake and Tommy, being a few years older than me. We were close growing up even though we had our personality differences.
Tommy and I were the 'science nerds' as Jake called us. We were always geeking out over a latest scientific breakthrough, like when a group of biologists in China where able to clone a litter of tiger cubs back into existence after having been extinct for over a century. We'd even stay up late at night to watch TV shows about the faraway world of Pandora; an organically rich moon that orbited a gas planet, Polyphemus, in the Alpha Centauri star system.
I loved learning about Pandora. Tommy and I both dreamed of going there one day. The wild alien plants and animals that lived there fascinated me. But what I loved most was the abundant color of green I saw. I never thought that so much color could exist in one place because the world I grew up in was colorless and dying.
Pandora was similar to Earth before it became overpopulated and polluted. Humanity had completely ravaged and depleted Earth of its natural bounty, unable to support its 20 billion inhabitants. So humans turned to Pandora for its resources; its abundance of minerals and organic compounds were able to make the continuation of life on Earth possible with energy and medicines.
One of the main reasons I wanted to go to Pandora was to study medicine. I studied hard and excelled in school, graduating at an early age with a PhD in biomedicine. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to save lives. My determination and perseverance to become a doctor was because of my mother, who we had lost to lung cancer when I was nine years old.
My mother was a single parent. Our father had abandoned her when I was a baby, leaving her to raise three children by herself. What I admired most about her was that she always had a carefree laugh and a joyful smile even while she worked tirelessly to ensure we had a roof over our heads. She was a history teacher and was always telling us stories about Earth's past, especially about music and books.
My brothers and I were devastated when she died. It was hard growing up without parents but we promised one another that we would be there for each other no matter what.
After I gained an early admission into college, Jake enlisted in the Marine Corps and shipped out overseas while Tommy received acceptance into the avatar program at the Resources Development Administration. I worked my butt off so I could join Tommy at the RDA, hoping to get a spot in the avatar program so that I could go with him to Pandora.
The RDA's avatar program, after a few years of training, enabled a select group of scientists to freely explore and study the perilous environment of Pandora without endangering their lives. Most of the preparation involved learning to drive remotely controlled bodies called avatars, created from a combination of human DNA and the DNA of the indigenous Pandorean people, The Na'vi.
I hoped I would get the opportunity to meet the Na'vi; the idea of meeting an alien race was thrilling. They were vastly different from us humans - being super tall, feline-like, and having blue striped skin. They were also a paleolithic people who lived in harmony with nature which I thought was pretty cool.
My dream to join the program finally came true following my graduation. After doing several tests and evaluations the RDA granted my admission. I'll never forget the day when Tommy came home with my acceptance letter with a big smile and said "Guess who's going to Pandora?" I had never been so ecstatic!
A year and a half later into my avatar training, Tommy and I received news that Jake had been badly injured in the war taking place in South America and was now paraplegic. We brought him home to help him adapt to his new life in a wheelchair. Jake was awfully stubborn about it though, rejecting our help and insisting that he could take care of himself and didn't need to be babysat.
The one setback about going to Pandora was leaving Jake behind. In our last months of our avatar training Jake's behavior had gone downhill. I knew he was angry about his condition and that the life he had built for himself had come crashing down. When he came back home he spent most of his time at bars drinking and starting fights, sometimes having to be bailed out of jail by Tommy.
I could see the rift forming between my brothers when Tommy argued with Jake about getting his act together before he and I shipped out. It scared me to see my family beginning to break apart after we had been so close. I wanted to find a way to bring my family back together again before we left, even wishing for a way we could bring Jake with us to Pandora.
My wish later came true in a rather unfortunate and unexpected way...