Brief Author's Notes: Since I didn't have room in my cheesy little summary for this kind of stuff, I'm going to place my various and sundry warning labels here. Rated T for some obligatory bad language and sex jokes (my maturity level is in the negatives!). Veers off into some non-canon territory due to being OC-centric (an attempt at successfully pulling off a "child on Pandora" story, to be exact). Some OC pairings; Jake and Neytiri; Norm and Trudy; past Grace and Parker (just bear with me).

Notes About This Particular Chapter: Obviously, it is written in present tense, and takes place four years after the beginning of the story - a "how we got here" prologue. The first chapter will take place at the very beginning and so forth; they will all be written in the past tense. Other thing: most characters mentioned here are OCs. All canon characters play large roles in the story, but there are also a lot of OCs, major and minor.

Necessary disclaimer: I do not own Avatar or anything related to the franchise. Likewise, none of the songs/movies/bands/books that are namedropped at various points in the story belong to me. I only own the original characters and story!


Prologue

VIDEO LOG DIARY: #1357
USER: THORNTON, JAY CASH
9/16/2154, 3:21 P.M.

"So, uh, there we have it."

I shift uncomfortably in my swivel chair, pondering what to say next.

"I can't believe it's already been four years since…since, well, you know what I'm talking about by now, don't you? I must have gone over it, like, twenty times over the course of those years."

Jay, you're much too smart for this, I chide myself. Perhaps this was excusable four years ago, when I first found myself on Pandora. I was, after all, only ten years old, and video logs were completely foreign to me. I had no idea what I was even supposed to say back then.

But by now, video logs have become absolutely normal to me, almost like I don't even have a choice whether I have to do one or not. I greet the camera and microphone like old friends; needless to say, they no longer daunt me.

So why am I having so much trouble now?

"Sorry I can't think very well today, whoever's listening to this—and by the way, whoever you are, for the last time, get the hell out of my stuff! Geez, if you're going through my video logs and you're still here, then shouldn't you have taken a hint by now? I can probably count on my fingers how many video logs where I haven't told you to stop watching them! These are supposed to be confidential, dammit!"

At this point, I have to take a break from my diatribe both to catch my breath and to laugh at myself. So far on Pandora, I have done well over a thousand video logs, with (hopefully) many more to come, and now that I think about it, I seriously believe that the vast majority of them have some sort of warning to the effect of "stop going through my stuff or else" inserted somewhere in there. I don't even remember saying half of them. It's interesting how habits develop like that until you get to the point where you don't even realize what you're doing anymore.

"Uh, please disregard my little rant. It's time to get to the point, which is that I absolutely cannot believe that it's been four years since I, uh, 'arrived' here. Four years ago, to the minute, I was walking home with Clark and Jeremy by my side, thinking that it was just another school day. I had homework to do. I had made plans to see my best friend that weekend. Everything was normal. If someone had approached me four years ago and told me, right there and then, that all…all this was going to happen to me in a relatively short time frame, I would have thought they were crazy. Just…just four years ago."

There's a long pause, punctuated only by the hiss of my breath as I think for a moment about my situation.

"Well, to me, it was only four years ago. To everybody else, it was almost a century and a half.

"That truly is astounding. Even from my four-years-ago point of view, I can hardly even remember my old life on Earth. I mean, the details are crystal clear and all, but it seems so…distant, like I'm just recalling a movie or a book—'it's not like it really happened or anything,' to quote an unsung universal movie-watching mantra. Except it did happen. It happened to me not long ago, and I can hardly believe that it did. It's just plain surreal to think that it was, on the grand scale of things, so recent, but also so far away."

The very thought of such profound things as time makes my hair bristle and my skin burst out in goosebumps, but what is really mind-breaking is the realization of just how arbitrary a concept it really is, especially considering my own personal situation.

If the passage of four years is enough to make me think, "Wow, it's hard to remember that even happened," then a hundred and fifty years is far beyond the boundaries of my fourteen-year-old perception, and that is something truly scary. As Sofia always said, "Time doesn't give a damn about you." While I don't normally agree with Sofia's sentiments, she's right about some things, and that is, sadly enough, one of them.

"I don't know what you call that. It might be a time loop, or a rift, or maybe a fold—or, if you want to be 'artsy' about it, a wrinkle. You know, like A Wrinkle in Time…yeah, difficult reference, I know. Time travel in fiction is mind-boggling enough, to say nothing of how screwed up it is in the real world. Right now, it looks like I'm going to be on Pandora for a while, maybe even for the rest of my life, so my goal is to try not to think about my little 'time travel' thing and hope that it didn't screw up the timeline forever."

After thinking about it even for just a mere few minutes, I have to rub my temples and clear my mind. It truly is a confusing concept that only the world's sharpest minds can hope to begin to wrap their head around.

"Who knows? Maybe people are popping in and out of the timeline all the time, and we're just not aware, probably because they have the good sense not to go off and write a damn tome about it."

What was that? Coming from my mouth? I shake my head, amazed and disappointed in myself at the same time. That must have been my fifth "damn" so far, and I barely even noticed it. Pastor Ben would be ashamed of me.

"Geez, Jay, listen to yourself! Swearing like a sailor again. What would Mom think?"

Next to me, my printer emits a series of obnoxious beeps, hungry for more paper. Amazed that my current printing task is taking up so much paper and ink, I replace the cartridge and feed it another fifty pages or so with deft quickness gained from years of practice, hoping that will be enough to finish the job.

"Anyway, if you take things from my point of view, it's the four-year anniversary of the day I woke up from a nap and found myself on Pandora. A lot of stuff has happened since then, and now it's all coming to a hopefully peaceful close. In short, I couldn't see any better time to print off the first draft of my narrative. It's almost done now…"

I lean over to read the currently-printing page, which is very close to the beginning of the memoir. Since I reversed the page order when giving the printer its instructions, the thing should read from beginning to end when I pick it up and put it in my three-inch binder—thankfully, I made sure to use pre-hole-punched paper, so I won't have to worry about that, either.

"Yep, everything's all set. No details to bother with. As soon as it's done, I'm going to put it in this binder here and show it to everybody I know—at least the people I wrote nice things about, that is. I'm sure they'll love it. In fact, I think that I'll go show it to Tristan now. He's going to love it more than anybody!

"Of course, there's still one big problem, and that's the title...

"…by which I mean there is no title."

With a laugh, I reach for the still-hot first page and flash it at the log camera. It sports a huge, emboldened Papyrus-font heading reading, quite simply, "Currently Untitled." Obviously intended to be a placeholder for a real future title, it has become familiar and charmingly unusual, at least to me, after seeing it in big bold letters at the top of my epic narrative document for years.

"This big ol' bastard has rejected nearly every title I've thrown at it. I can't even remember most of them—I type a one-word title on a whim, promptly decide that it has no significant bearing on the story, is to cheesy, or what have you, and then delete it. I think the longest time this has had an official title was, like, one month—Look Through My Eyes, after my favorite song, deleted because I thought it was too obvious.

"This isn't the first time I've had this problem, of course—as someone who loves to record my thoughts and anecdotes in writing, I can say that I have always sucked at giving my works creative titles. They sound too much like something a fourteen-year-old girl would write, and I can't have that, now, can I?"

I sigh and put the title—or no-title—page of the story back on the top of the stack before I have the chance to wrinkle it up.

"On second thought, I kind of like 'Currently Untitled' as it is. It's got some character to it—at least I think it does. Who knows? Maybe it'll stay like that, maybe it won't. Only time will tell. And now, I don't have the time to brood over titles. I have to show this to my friends while it's still hot off the press!

"Well, I'll show it to the people I wrote good things about, anyway. I think that might exclude Sofia—or maybe she'll actually appreciate it. But haven't I screwed with her life enough already? I'm just going to wait until she makes a bit more sense of things, and then I'll show it to her. Then she can look back on it and smile. Or cry. Or relapse. You know what? Maybe I'll just hold off for a while longer."

How many people can I show this to without offending them, now that I'm coming to terms with the effect of all the recent chaos? I trace patterns across the table with my finger, determined not to cry. So many absent friends…and not one of them deserved any of the crap that happened to them.

"And I guess it excludes Jake, too, at least for now. For, um, obvious reasons. I guess I should apologize for being so bitter to him. Puberty will do that to a person, after all, but still…

"Oh! Duh! I'll show it to Tsanten, and all the others! How could I forget them? I'll take it with me today, in fact, right now!"

I stand up from my chair and grab my stack of papers, careful not to dog-ear any of the pages as I slide them over the rings of my open binder. With a smile, I close it and turn to the video log camera.

"So, I have to go. Tsanten and I are going to go baby-sit Ralu and Eana and some of the other kids today, and I might have to get some reinforcements to help.

"This is Jay Cash Thornton, avatar driver and amateur authoress, signing off!"


Closing Notes: I'm so glad I finally got the prologue down pat . It must have taken ten rewrites before I felt comfortable with it! Now, for the record, I had earlier promised myself that I would not stoop to doing a character video log as an introduction, since video logs in general have been done to death as a method of exposition, but here's the rub: it works. That is my reasoning.

Like everybody says, please Read and Review! Any type of feedback (excluding flames, naturally) on any aspect of the story is absolutely welcome!

P. S. ~ I give my most sincere thanks to anyone who even gave the story this much of a chance, since I have spent a lot of effort just plotting it. "Currently Untitled" is the story's real title, and it's explained in the story, but it isn't good for curb appeal - if you've come this far, you're a noble soul. The summary wasn't even that great. So, thanks, and I do hope to hear what you have to say!