Prologue
Pandora was a lush world, beautiful, bursting with life. Life of all different kinds, like that crawled, slithered, walked, trotted, and even glided. It was almost impossible for one to not love beauty of the world, but one also had to respect that beyond that beauty, it was a world of many dangers.
Its atmosphere was a gasping death to humans, the dense jungle hid predators so cunning, so powerful and so deadly that even the largest dinosaurs of earth appeared like nothing more than iguanas by comparison, and then, there was the Na'vi.
The Na'vi, were the local population of the planet Pandora. From the outside, they appeared to be little more than primitives, perhaps even savages by some of the more intolerant and less observant. Standing on average at over three meters tall with blue luminescent skin, an almost feline face with a feline shaped nose and yellow eyes and almost elfish pointed ears, they looked like something out of a fantasy novel by Tolken.
What the Na'vi apparently lacked in advanced technology and science, they made up for in their prowess in battle, and what could be described as a mystic link between themselves, the planet and life of Pandora. Could a planet have been said to have achieved sentience? If so, the Na'vi could be essentially considered the immune system, and they reacted strongly to any foreign presence, especially the humans, or as the Na'vi called them, "Sky People."
The humans had arrived on Pandora years before, hoping to exploit the vast natural resources of the planet to help support the dying flame that was Earth. In particular, they came seeking an ultra-rare element called unobtanium. A super-conductive material, it had the power to unlock technologies in computation, a clean and endless energy supply, and so many more benefits.
Unfortunately, the element was exceedingly rare and impossible to produce synthetically, so much so that humanity had to travel the vast distances between stars, land on a world that was hostile in every description of the name, face dangers that would make even the most hardened combat veterans run in fear just to gather more of the great, grey rock.
Like white blood cells attacking an infection, the Na'vi responded to these intruders who plowed and destroyed everything in their path without care or pause. It soon became apparent to all that diplomacy was needed, if for no other reason than to give the Resources Development Administration, RDA, something to protect themselves with in case the conflict ever escalated into a full shooting war, something that they could at least say, "hey, we tried."
Enter the Avatar Program. The Na'vi would not speak to humans, so humans had to become Na'vi, or at least something that resembled them. Avatars were genetically grown hybrids of human and Na'vi, the only external differences were that they had four jointed fingers with an opposable thumb instead of three unjointed fingers, and eyebrows. The bodies themselves were remotely controlled by human operators via a telepathic link through implants in their bodies. The operators themselves could only control their one specific Avatar due to the fact that each Avatar was grown specifically for that one driver using their DNA.
To become an Avatar driver, one normally had to undergo years of training and screening to find out if one could even hope to control a body, then add on all the additional cultural, language and customs training, becoming an Avatar driver was much harder than it seemed. Jake Scully was the one exception. His identical twin brother, Thomas, was killed just before departing for Pandora, and not wanting to lose a multi-million dollar investment, the RDA had recruited him, despite having no training or understanding of the Na'vi or Pandora.
Perhaps this is where I, your narrator, found myself in conflict. Jake was about as different to his brother in every measurable way despite their being twins. I was close friends with Tom, and I harbored a bit of jealousy and a grudge against Jake for essentially having bypassed years of training and scrutiny, that he got a free ride into a program that so many tried for, but fewer than one percent ever achieved. Then, this complete newcomer goes and achieves more in three months than the entire team had been doing for years.
Looking back, I was a selfish fool to believe that Jake got it light. Did I truly believe that he felt his brother's life was worth being here? That losing his legs was ever part of the equation? No, he had it worst, and yet, the best.
You, my faithful audience, know the rest of the story, the pain, the suffering and climatic battle and bid for freedom that we fought against the RDA and their mercenary goons, and how it ended, and at what price. Such a loss of life on both sides of the conflict, another dark stain on the history of man. I send this message, and the epic that follows it, so that what happened here is not lost to the vastness of space or the depths of time and that the sacrifices on both dies would not be in vain. This is Researcher and Avatar driver, Doctor Norman Spellman signing off.
Norman stood from the video recording station just vacated only moments before by Jake Sully who was also entering in his final log to be transmitted beyond relativistic speeds to Earth in the hopes that someone back there was listening. He rubbed his temples, the days of exhaustion finally catching up to him, a soft blue light covering his face.
Turning, once more before resigning himself to another fitful night of sleep and dreams, suspended in fluid, wrapped in bandages was his Avatar body, recovering from wounds from the battle in the few days prior. Neytiri, Jake's had helped him stabilize the wounds that would have ultimately proven fatal to the body, and several warriors from the Omaticaya Clan had carried the body back to Hell's Gate. After several hours of surgery, the prognosis had gone from bleak to cautiously optimistic. It would only be another few days and then he could be out and about in the lush Pandoran wildness with it.
Yawning heavily, Norm headed for the now mostly vacant dormitories. Most of the humans had been evacuated the day prior, leaving only himself, Doctor Max Patel, Jake Scully and a few other Avatar drivers who had assisted indirectly with the battle. His own personal prognosis was in flux. He was trapped on this alien world, not wanting or desiring to return home to Earth, and what future did he have there anyway if he wasn't suicided on the flight home anyway? He would have to answer for what had happened here on Pandora, the deaths of so many of the RDA mercenaries, the loss of massive company and government property, not to mention the charges of treason, despite knowing that he had absolutely done the right thing, but what was his future here?
Food and air supplies were not infinite. Eventually either he would have to return to Earth, if not on the Venture Star or a sister vessel that would undoubtedly be coming later, or did he live out the last of his life as a Doctor and human, or become reborn into his Avatar body as Jake had been, and if so, then what? Yes, the prognosis was in flux and a complicated one indeed.