"I'm going to die out here.
I'm going to die out here, and God knows how long it'll be before they find my body, or is it bodies? Ugh. Negative thinking. Gotta stop that. Pandora loooooves it when you give. It just makes you easier to chew."
Dr. Tabar paused. He had been making video logs of his current situation for months, but this was the first time that the subject of death had really come up. Sure, he had plenty of food which he had managed to gather from the plains around him, but it wasn't food that worried him; it was the whole 'filters failing and slowly choking to death on delightful party mix of Ammonia, Carbon Dioxide, and Hydrogen Cyanide' that gave him the willies.
"The way I see it," he went on, "I have about three options:
One: I can stay in here, wait for the filters to fail, and die in here.
Two: I can get in my avatar, wait for the filters to fail, and die out there.
Three: I can put on an exopack, go outside, pick a fight with the largest animal I meet, and die in several pieces."
Nervous laughter. In the back of his mind, he still held out that the RDA had a very good reason for not checking up on him for ages, and their explanation for any lack of new supplies or maintenance would be entirely rational, but this was also the back part of his mind that still believed that the Tooth Fairy was real and that Elvis was somehow still alive. If they were going to come, they already would have. He slumped back in his swivel chair, and slowly started to rub his temples while he continued his log.
"I...I don't know what to do. It's January for crissakes, and this linkup station is nowhere near close enough to Hell's Gate to even get my avatar there. I could get there normally, with the re-breather, but I might as well just put a big sign on my back that says 'SNACK!'. I could ask for the Na'vi to help me out, but anything short of dragging the damn station with a direhorse fleet would just end up making things worse. So. It's a little past noon, and even though suffocation is a real threat, I do estimate that I have at least another month of clean air before I have to start using the exopacks inside. Going out to collect some more samples, be back when I'll be back."
He leaned forward and shut off the webcam, noting the date: January 20, 2155. He had been in his box for nine months, and the only thing keeping him sane at this point was his large video library, and he'd watched everyone on there at least three times. In between sleep and fighting boredom, he'd venture out every few days to collect samples from the local fauna to study the phenomenon of iridescence on Pandora. For the most part, he avoided the Na'vi, for the clans of the area in which his outpost was located had a particular disdain for uniltìrantokx, dreamwalker bodies. Most of the time they just yelled at him, except the one occasion where a young hunter "accidentally" shot an arrow into a tree, a few millimeters from his head.
Pushing back on his chair, he used his momentum to roll all the way back to his link chamber. From his link chamber, he could see into the second part of the station, where his avatar laid on a slab, empty and ready to go. He always found it funny that the RDA was willing to make exact (bigger) copies of his normal clothes for field studies, especially considering how stingy there with, well, everything else. He opened the link chamber, and reached over to type the password, murmuring it aloud as he pressed each key. "B-I-G-B-L-U-E-M-A-N."
"Man, I need to change that." he said as he typed in the transfer sequence, and the machine began to hum. A pop-up appeared on the screen, indicating that consciousness transfer would begin in two minutes, giving him more than enough time to lay down on the plastic bed, and have the door close down on him. Now surrounded by the blue lights of the inner link chamber, he had to endure the wait as he counted down the seconds in his mind. It was the worst part, and he never could get the timing just right.
"One Mississippi, two Mississippi" he started, "three Mississippi, four Mississippi, Five Mississippi, Six MissiIII-"
Suddenly cut off, he once again found himself traveling, or rather, hurdling through a ultra-colorful tunnel of light, like a roller coaster on drugs made of rainbows. His entire being was being thrown all of ten feet to another body, but it never failed to feel like a few light years. The hurdling seemed to slow now, and the colors became subdued, tame. The familiar roaring was more of a whisper now, and sensation creeped back into his extremities. Once he had total feeling, he slowly rose up from the padded slab, and he went through the normal check-list.
Arms functional? Check.
Legs? Good to go.
Ears? Still pointy.
Tail? Watch the door this time around. That hurt like all hell.
Jumping off the slab, he started to gather his gear from his side of the station, including his RDA-issued survival backpack, and the ever-stylish light-brown jacket with dozens of pockets on it. Oversized, of course, and topped off with your standard long khakis and hiking boots. "All I need is a pithe helmet." he snarked to nobody in particular, noting his somewhat sterotypical explorer outfit in the mirror. "Right," he said, "I better get going, still need some Warbonnet samples. After that, who knows?"
Pressing the airlock button, the steel doors to the research station slowly hissed open, and he stepped outside into the crisp, toxic air.