The sign that had once stood on the landing field read Resources Development Administration Extra-Solar Mining Colony One. To the thousand souls that had inhabited the place in its heyday, however, it was better known by a snappy nickname: Hell's Gate.

It was certainly appropriate. The encroaching rainforest and all its attendant dangers were kept at bay only by a massive electrified security fence and the constant vigilance of the security crews that watched the perimeter and maintained the surrounding clear-cut. The massive refinery took the unprocessed ore from the mines and extracted from it the priceless mineral which was the colony's raison d'etre, belching out as it did so vast clouds of black smoke which further polluted the already-toxic atmosphere. It was as close to a vision of Hell as most of those who saw it could imagine.

That had been three years ago. Three years since the local population had risen in revolt against the destruction of their home, and the might of the RDA had been driven off-world. The few dozen scientists and technicians chosen to remain had fallen back upon a small cluster of buildings surrounding the laboratories, largely abandoning the rest of the base to its fate.

The refinery now stood silent, most of its machinery deliberately put beyond use to hinder attempts at recolonization, its only inhabitants the flocks of stingbats that roosted in the once-fuming smokestacks. The jungle had reclaimed the clearcut and was beginning to spread past the abandoned perimeter. The airstrip, once a hive of craft journeying to the mines and to the waiting orbiter, was now visited only by the occasional wandering hexapede risking coming into the open to graze upon the young saplings springing up through the growing cracks in the blacktop.

With the departure of the miners, the purpose of the colony had also changed. Those who remained now sought to fully understand all there was to know about their new home. To truly See the land in the way the Na'vi did, in the hope that somewhere, something might be found that could save their own dying world.

And with the new purpose came a new name. The outpost was no longer a mining colony, no longer a faceless instrument of a vast and corrupt corporation. The new name had been chosen as a tribute to the fallen, as an expression of hope, and not without a certain amount of humour. Although no visitors were expected for many years, the sign on the landing field had been replaced; as much as a declaration of independence as anything else.

It now read, simply: Welcome to Graceland.