I own neither Star Trek nor Avatar.
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Temporal Cold War: Power.
She supposed it should have been inevitable, really; despite what everyone in the Federation, and in so many realities liked to believe, humanity was not the saintly race they liked to see themselves as. Even in the Federation timelines, there were many humans who cared only for themselves, or there were others that through aside their precious Federation moral codes in the name of a greater good.
But as she dipped into different timelines with her equipment, Noys Lambent watched one timeline coalesce in front of her that made her smile in surprise, and as she watched the events play out she wondered how much she could play with.
In this reality, humans on Earth had not fought a Third World War. In the 21st century, there were so many problems playing out from pollution, crime, and energy. With the inevitable conflicts surrounding the different versions of Earth, there was no surprise in her mind when she saw that there wasn't any solution. But there was a lot of scientific progress, and while a lot of it was primitive in her eyes, Noys was pleased when she saw Earth had developed some primitive intra-system space travel technology.
They had developed fusion rocket technology that allowed them to travel reasonably fast below the speed of light, and while it wasn't impulse or warp drive, Noys was still impressed that had advanced that far. With the rocket's development humanity had a good and efficient drive for exploring and colonising the solar system.
That was vital; with Earth becoming so overcrowded the demand on the planet's resources made it incredibly difficult for them to solve so many of the problems they had. They hoped if they colonised the solar system and discovered more about the mineral wealth, they could solve the energy crisis and perhaps find something out there that would solve more problems that were currently pressing them down and keeping their resources tied up.
And it worked, but to a degree; they found some basic life forms on Europa and they discovered many mineral resources that helped mitigate some of the loss of the resources on Earth and the colonisation of the moon and Mars and several other asteroids in the solar system relieved the pressure the population in the 21st century were placing on the planet, but they found two ways of generating power, through the helium gases in the gas giants many scientists discovered could create a more efficient and powerful fusion power technology, far better than what they had found on Earth which had led to better reactors and cleaner energy supplies, and the fusion drive engine, and the mineral they called Unobtanium which provided clean energy that was 78% more efficient than many other forms of power while they worked on the gases found within a gas giant, but those resources were a long way off.
It was decided that Unobtanium would become the power source of the future until the gases, which promised greater power efficiency, were ready. But the supplies of Unobtanium in Earth's solar system were finite. The miners found that deposits in the solar system were scarce. With the deposits running dry and the gas experiments going slower than they had wanted, there was only one logical and obvious solution; they needed to find unobtanium somewhere else.
Thanks to the revolution of space technology, a drive capable of travelling close to the speed of light were tested and built, and the ship left the solar system on a mission to discover the mineral they needed. After they left a number of other ships were constructed shortly afterwards. Thanks to the drives which spewed neutrons out into space which exploded like gas particles and the matter-antimatter engines, they reached the moon Pandora, a world inhabited by a primitive race known as the Na'Vi who had a rich culture and history but had the misfortune of living on a planet honeycombed with unobtanium, in only 5 years, while the crew itself was kept in cryosleep. While it sounded impressive, to Noys it was very primitive.
It wasn't warp drive. It wasn't Underspace. It wasn't a subspace catapult. It was barely impressive, but they had discovered a world rich in a source of unobtanium.
For a good few years after Pandora was discovered, a military mining colony was built on Pandora while the mining operations gouged holes in the planet's surface for the unobtanium which was then shipped off to Earth. The world, while M Class, didn't have a breathable atmosphere for humans, so they had to go a different route. The result was the Avatar program. Noys blinked in surprise as she read the file, on how the group cloned Na'Vi subjects and implemented the minds of humans into them in the hopes of developing a way of communicating and interacting with the Na'Vi. Only for the Na'Vi to reject them, still, it was an interesting twist.
Noys was interested in Jake Sully, a Marine who was paralysed following a combat accident and made a deal with General Quartrich who would see to it he got the use of his legs back if he took part in the Avatar program. But she was fascinated by how Sully turned native, and she realised this man would have loved it in the Federation.
As she watched the whole mission unfold, Noys winced at the lengths the human attack group went to in order to deal with the Na'Vi who were in the way of their project to turn Pandora into a strip mine. Not only did they use spies to win the trust of the Na'Vi, they also had no compunction about bombing what was sacred to the Na'Vi. Noys might be a time traveller, but she didn't like the way the people in this universe were stripping the Na'Vi of everything and then wiping them out.
But what was sad to Noys was how, when she turned her attention to Earth, research into the fusion gas project was extremely slow. Thanks to the richer unobtanium supplies on Pandora, the demand for a fully functional fusion reactor that used the gases had dried up. But it was there. Noys checked the Temporal Observatory for the fusion process. She laughed. It would be so pathetically easy for her to help them. She grabbed some antique paper and a pen and she started writing out a list of formulae on it. She also entered the formulas into her wrist computer.
When she was finished, Noys checked the observatory for an intern or someone who wasn't well regarded enough to do the job, and she chuckled when she saw them. With that, she opened up a portal and stepped through, blinking for a moment as her senses became accustomed to the new environment. She smirked when she saw the scientist, a young woman.
When she noticed her uninvited guest, the young girl swung around in shock. "Who are you?" She demanded.
Noys passed her the piece of paper, surreptitiously transmitting the formulas into the computer. "Just a samaritan. Take a look at that."
The young scientist did. She opened the paper up and Noys watched in pleasure as she realised what she was looking at. "Don't bother telling anyone about this, just build a generator that uses the formula. Don't involve anybody else. They have spent a long time abusing you. I think you have greater potential."
While she was speaking, Noys gently pressed a small chip to the young woman's skull after stepping close to her so she could stand by her side, giving her time to plant the chip. They made it very easy to hypnotise someone and render them susceptible to suggestion.
The woman nodded, having no idea that she had just had her brain manipulated.
"Good luck and I was never here," the time traveller said.
The young woman nodded again, and Noys reopened the portal and stepped through.
