Author's Note: I took an awful risk with this one, and I'm not sure how all of you will take it, but this has been a scene floating around in my head ever since I first saw the movie. At least to me, it makes sense, it explains so many details in the movie. I suppose it's time to put it into words. Please, let me know what you think.
10. Original Sin
Earth Year: 2209 AD. 54 Years After Final Contact.
Despite everything, he had never stopped learning, theories and ideas twisting around in his mind like a tornado of thought. Norm's body had lost much over the years, growing soft and weak, losing its edge. Yet his mind remained as it always had, powerful and strong, always inquisitive. Faint glimmerings of truth had been discovered by man long ago, but how little he had known in those days. Eywa saw, though, that much was certain. Even the Na'vi themselves hovered just on the edge of the truth, grasping instinctively what they could not wrap their minds around. It had taken him many years to be certain of this, but no more doubts remained to him.
Eywa was not natural, at least not in the evolutionary sense. Neither was most of the Pandoran ecology, for that matter. Xenobiologists had endlessly debated the subject on old Earth, trying to understand how such a bizarre ecosystem could arise naturally. Yet they had not known about Eywa, they hadn't connected to the world-consciousness for themselves. Well, it was time for answers, Norm had decided, it was time to truly see.
All around him, the Tree of Souls seemed restless, as if it had long awaited this moment and was ready to divulge its secrets at last. Norm reached for his queue, connecting, feeling, understanding. It was different this time though, Eywa knew why he had come...
"I see you." Norm thought. In such a deep connection, his thoughts acquired speed, the words acquired sound.
"And I see you." A voice replied. It was a familiar sound, a comforting warmth that surrounded him in the darkness. "I know why you have come, Norman Spellman."
"I suppose you do. I must understand you." Norm replied. "It is why I exist, to learn, to know."
"I know this, my child." The voice began, light flooding his awareness. "You are ready. You will learn. You will see."
Images bombarded his mind, memories that were not his own, flying by at impossible speed, like an old tape recorder stuck in fast forward. Soon, the ancient memory slowed, voices echoing in his mind, through the bond with Eywa. Norm saw at long last.
Great towers stretched toward the gas giant above, impossibly high, covered in shimmering metal. He recognized the glow of electric light, the glimmerings of ground cars flying by at impossible speed. Aircraft flew overhead, so similar and yet not of any recognizable human design. All around were tall, blue-skinned Na'vi, queue-less, dressed in clothing strange and yet familiar at the same time. Rockets stretched into the bounds of space, reaching for the heavens.
"The People were once as your kind." The voice began. "War came."
That, at least, was familiar. Mushroom clouds extended into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, fallout blowing along the winds, cities aflame with nuclear fire. Somehow Norm knew toxic particulates had fallen across the planet, killing most of the planet's ecosystem. An even more terrible weapon detonated, reaching into the crust of the planet, something so powerful there was nothing he could compare it too. Rock melted and reformed into great chunks of unobtainium, cooling rapidly, floating in half-molten chunks in the magnetic field of the flux. Well that answered one of the more bizarre questions humanity always had. Unobtainium was the residue of some powerful weapon, the remnants of a terrible conflict so far back in Pandoran history, the planet bore no other signs of its occurrence.
"A weapon nearly killed all. Those who remained knew things must change, before the People were lost forever."
Weathered ancient scientists clustered around the nascent tree-form they had created, now recognizable as the Tree of Souls, nurturing it, feeding it with endless data, the records of an entire civilization. Na'vi children played with familiar creatures, precursors to the Pandoran wildlife to come, connecting their newly engineered queues, bonding with the life around them. The adolescents smiled, happily ignorant of the nature of the wrecked world about them even as the scientists turned their backs on them, vanishing into the ash-filled world beyond.
"Competition. Evolution. Grace showed me this, it is how all life must begin. Someday, the competition must end, before it results in the destruction of all. This was a rebirth."
"How long since those days?" Norm asked
"There is no counting that much time."
"The People do not remember?"
"They remember, in their hearts."
"Then who are you?"
"No one. Every one."
"Can Earth be saved?"
"Already, your people split in two. Some have taken to the stars, and there they will stay. Others remain behind, like the People. This is the way of things."
Somehow Norm saw Earth as it would be someday, the great orbital factories assembling into massive space-stations, star-ships reaching for every corner of the universe. Behind, Earth's people tended to the great farms, some turning their backs on the technological world entirely, merging back into the ancient hunter-gatherer way-of-life from which they sprang. The scientist in Norm recognized the strange evolutionary pattern at work, watching as tiny, hidden queues developed on them, too. Eywa communed with the essence of herself growing on Earth, the tiny seeds sent home having sprouted into a tiny network of trees, a nascent incarnation of the life-force.
"This is the way of the People."
Blue-skinned scientists and refugees fled to the safety of a massive metal structure that began to shake as it lifted off. A single, battered Na'vi star-ship, primitive even by Earth standards, vanished into the Pandoran sky. It left the recovering world behind to an uncertain fate, taking the essence of original sin with them. The growing adolescents looked on in awe at the rocket reaching for the heavens, knowing in their hearts that the old ones would never return. They grasped spears and bows, forsaking the technological wreckage around them, merging with the growing forests slowly taking over the landscape.
"Somewhere out there, Na'vi live in space?"
"Nothing is known of them, for they have never returned. Someday it will be the same for your people." Warmth flooded the bond, assuring Norm that he had served both peoples well, that there was no more reason for him to search endlessly for answers he no longer needed. Eywa loved him, she loved all of the life around herself, it was her sole purpose, her one reason for existing. Life wasn't supposed to be easy, and it never was on Pandora, but it was supposed to have purpose, to be a thing enjoyed and not scorned. Unlike humanity, the life-force had no need to dwell in the distant past and neither did her people. They lived for each day, fresh and unspoiled yet challenging and true. Was there a better way to live? Perhaps for some, but they would make their home in the stars. Norm's home was here, in the simple but beautiful world that surrounded him.
"You are one of the People, Norman Spellman. There is no more need to worry about such things."
With that comment echoing in his mind, Eywa disconnected from him, leaving him alone with his thoughts once again. He thought he had known, that he could see, but had understood only the faintest glimmerings of the truth. Life on Pandora was a balance, a carefully maintained existence in harmony with itself, yet created in such a way that no one lost their individuality, their freedom of will, to live and grow as they pleased. No one would claim it to be an easy life, you did have to hunt your own food and sometimes that food hunted you back, all modern conveniences were gone too, but it was still fulfilling in its own way.
The price was a heavy one, a complete break with all high technology, an end to the never-ending quest for scientific knowledge. Yet for him, science had been a means to an end, a journey to bring him here, to this realization. For Norm, joy was the thrill of the hunt, the rush of soaring through the skies, the warmth of the morning sunlight, the love of his mate and his children. If that wasn't what life was about, what else could it be? Eywa had shown him, that he might understand his own life and make peace with his choices. Norm vowed never to question them again. It didn't matter anyway, someday he would rest within Eywa, a part of him remaining always in the world he loved. For a moment he toyed with the idea of telling the others what he had learned, but it was as Eywa had told him. In their hearts, they already knew.