Nicholas ("Nick") Dixon was the psychologist at the Augustine Research Station, and his wife Jenny the physician. They were known for their ability in their sciences – and for their turbulent marriage. Nick was an inveterate philanderer and Jenny often made her dismay about his habit known to him – and to everyone else at the station… Face slaps, loud quarrels and ugly gazes often took place in full public view. Sounds of screams and fighting was not unheard of through the walls to their apartment in the evenings, none of them hesitated with talking bad about the other for any ear willing to listen. But – they kept their differences strictly within their family, bad words from the rest of the staff was rejected out of hands.
Jenny was after one more public scandal asked why he behaved like he did. "For more than one reason I think. Firstly it is his career, I think he has unconsciously sought out a study where he could learn how to manipulate people he meet. He has gained a very sharp feeling for female primal desires and he knows how to play on them like a concert violinist. He is acutely aware of that many women are feeling satisfaction with the attention from a connaisseur of female look, he gives them what they want, the feeling that they are still attractive, young and fresh, yes even sexy... I grew up in a big family, with charming sisters and dashing brothers, I could so to say sit and view the game of Mars and Venus from both sides. And still he charmed me totally to my knees that time ten years ago at Earth.
Secondly and more fundamentally, I don't think he is really looking for love affairs, just conquests for the sake of his ego aggrandizement. You see, he was the runt of his litter, with four much older big sisters… At this station, with a very limited range of females to play on, his hunting instinct is striking the walls again and again. As a human casanova at Pandora he is a wild animal of prey in a cage, a caged animal of prey will mostly not bite hands that don't feed them. And that is probably part of the reason that women flock around him, big and scary animals catch lots of eyes at a zoo…"
That evening, however, he was sitting together with Bobbie at the pharmacy. Jenny had had an emergency call, a na'vi man had come down with a mysterious skin rash the healers had now idea about how to deal with. Bobbie had been target of his attention many times before, but still she melted completely down for his words and his glances. Suddenly she found her arms hanging on his back and she discovered his arms around her, and she felt her lips yearning for that oh so forbidden but my goodnes how alluring taste of his lips…
"Hello you two!" The voice of Norm at its shrillest pitch cut through the romantic situation like a cleaver. They both rose hurriedly up, red like tomatoes in their faces. "You stay with me now Nick! I'll have a word with you later, Bobbie."
Once Bobbie had left Norm gave Nick a gaze that could have cut through tempered steel. "You must not imagine that we at the station leadership are not aware of the game you're playing, Nick. You have been told before, in ever less ambiguous terms, to put your brakes on but still you carry on. And this you keep doing even if you are perfectly well aware of that your behaviour risks tearing rifts in the solidarity of the staff here, rifts that RDA will happily tug at if given half a chance – we know that they will very probably try to put their feet back on Pandora sooner or later. Since you still can't let it be I have begun thinking that there is something involuntary about it – that it isn't a bad manner but an involuntary behaviour… In any case, we will somehow have to put a stop to it, preferrably effective at once."
Nick tried a meek self defence: "But the station is brimming with willing seductresses…"
Norm interrupted him rudely. "That doesn't matter a thing. I'll put it bluntly to you now. Do you intend to remain at Pandora after the last scheduled ISV departure in five years? Then do know and realize how few secrets there are when queues are connected – you of course know this after your study psychological huh? 'Interconnectibility of mind-to-mind contact of na'vi people through nerve interlinking.' And should you still try, then do realize that na'vi punishment for marital unfaithfulness is prompt, remorseless and brutally strict. So tell me now, do you imagine a blue-skinned future for you? For if you do, you should either make your relationship with Jenny ended well before you go to the Tree of Souls, or learn to stay really faithful to her. If you can't or won't decide one of those options we will make your decision on your behalf and that will be a ticket back to Earth. One more pass like this more and that decision is likely no matter. Believe me, it is!"
Nick became pale almost like a dead man. "But… I…"
Norm slammed his hand on the table. "Enough chit-chatting between us two, you have now been given your very last warning. You should go and have a talk with your Jenny, she may like to have a word or two with us in the leadership and it will be a topic of discussion among us too. In any case you two, and most of all you Nick, have been given something to think about. Do think now!"
Nick sat alone left in the common room, feeling very mortified. He didn't sleep much that night and he had trouble concentrating on his work the day after too. When at last Jenny came back in the afternoon, she instantly saw at his demeanour that he had been given a brutal shock. "Now tell me what has taken place, my dear husband? Have you finally succeeded in big-bellying one of the girls? Or what else?"
The gusty, redeyed and downcast Nick answered: "No but almost just as bad. Norm has threatened me with banishing me back to Earth if I don't either quit flirting or divorce you. He said, in no ambiguous terms, that I am with my behaviour a threat to the solidarity at the station and they have decided to deal with this threat."
Jenny gave him a gleeful look. "Oh my oh my, I have got me allies! Seriously speaking, until now I have always stuck by you but I am getting so very tired of it now and this seems to be my golden opportunity to make you the huge question. So I ask you now, answer me candidly – I will give you time to ponder your reply. Which of the alternatives do you go for? Or are your hunter's instincts simply so out of control that the choice will be taken FOR you not BY you?"
Nick was used to hear screams and face slaps from her but not a cold, measured front, toeing precisely the line of Norm, and her new manner frightened him. "Returning to Earth is absolutely not what I want, I simply forget anything and everything when those pink glances strike me."
Jenny kept adding blocks to the concrete wall she was building in front of him. "What you're saying is in other words that we should take a walk to Angie in the flight control and make her put you on the passenger list at the first ISV. Then do realize that I am NOT going to follow you back there, I feel perfectly good here at Pandora… minus all follies you're comitting."
Nick was getting desperate in his voice: "I don't want to react like I do but I do. How will it be possible for me to resist temptations? I am not interested in returning back to Earth either and, believe me or not, I have no intentions to divorce you either." At the end he sounded almost like begging her for pity.
But Jenny rejected his begging resolutely. "The world is full of people who have no alternative but to resist temptations. It dawns to me that you may need a rude shock, even heavier than the one Norm gave you yesterday. I'll go over to Trudy and have a girlie chat with her about what to do about it."
Nick panted in exhaustion when he put his period mark: "Yes do so, please. Norm said that he wants a talk with you too."
The day after there was a couple of hours with no patients scheduled so Jenny walked to the hangar and knocked at the door to the workshop. Nobody there, so she walked on to the command central, and there she found all three of them. She put her eyes on Trudy and opened her mouth, but Trudy interrupted her. "We can of course have a girls-only chat about this problem, afterwards, but I think this problem is so serious that we need to be informed all of us. So, what did Nick say when you came home?"
Jenny gave her answer: "He has very evidently been given a very heavy shock, but I am not convinced that he won't fall back to old, bad habits once the shock is wearing off. He needs a more fundamental experience still, I think. As for now, his small conquering raids at the battlefield of romance from time to time are what is putting colour in his life."
Max put in an idea: "Should we may be ask Jake for help? He can with a demand to be believed explain what the Omatikaya do with the chronically unfaithful."
Norm nodded thoughtfully. "It is at least worth a try."
Max and Trudy saw Norm take the radio telephone, call up Jake and then getting patched through. They could hear a soft spoken conversation, Jake sounded like discussing with Neytiri and Mo'at in next turn and talked with him again. Suddenly a hunch seemed to strike Norm in his head and a big glee showed up in his face. He told Jake – Max and Trudy could hear Jake's uproarious laughter right through the radio phone.
Once Norm had disconnected he gave them a raw sketch of his plan, and they sent an evil glance in the direction of Nick's office at the office wing of the building complex. The plan was refined in details and then they put Hal and Todd at work with readying the equipment they would need to put on this treatment they now were making ready for. Norm, Max and Trudy busied themselves with making the program for it ready.
Nick were at the New Hometree the day after, he had one of his regular patients to visit, a na'vi teenager girl who had lost all her family during the fall of Old Hometree and the Great Battle, she was by now was living with an uncle and aunt. She was of course consoled by her relations, by Mo'at and others but Nick was earning an increasing reputation for his ability with disturbed minds and was often invited to the New Hometree. Coming home to the station he saw that something was going on over at the edge of the forest, but he was so tired that he didn't care to go over to have a look.
So the day after that he was sitting and reading a scientific report just arrived from Earth when all of a sudden a black sack was drawn down over his head, immediately after his hands were put in handcuffs and then he was brought to standing. He had a distinct feeling that there were three or four men and a woman among his kidnappers – he could smell a ladies' perfume, but not seeing anything nor hearing much either he didn't say much himself either, once he tried to protest but no heed was given to what he said.
He felt directed through the corridors at the station and he sensed that an exo-pack mask was put outside the black sack and tightened in the neck. "Exo-pack, they are going to take me outside!" he thought to himself. Quite correctly, he soon heard an inner door closing behind him and then the hiss from the airlock. Then the outer door opened and he was taken out through it. He felt the burning sun in his neck as he was taken along.
Suddenly he was taken through a new door and he heard this outer door slam shut behind him, and then the hiss from an airlock again. When the inner door opened he was taken through and then brought to a halt. He heard the inner door being closed behind him, felt the exo-pack being taken off and the handcuffs loosened, and then at last the black sack was pulled off. He couldn't see anything though, the room was pitch black dark and then he heard another door slam shut.
But then suddenly the wall to his left was illuminated. He saw a computer animated but quite lifelike video presenting images from an evening in the streets through a grey, dilapidated and drab industrial area under a smoky sky, obviously at Earth. He saw large gangs running yelling through the streets, clubs and knives in hand. Then sirenes sounded and riot policemen came running, armed with cudgels, teargas discargers and shields. A voice sounded through a bullhorn: "This mob will now dissolve! Put them down!" Teargas stench rankled in Nick's nose. A pure bloodbath ensued, stones were thrown and shots were fired, screans in pain and anger sounded, and three or four protesters were lying left on the street afterwards.
The image moved indoors and settled at a couple in worn down garment, sitting at a kitchen room and sharing a meagre meal. Now it smelled of burned food. "No work today either?" said the wife. "Not much work available for psychologists any more, if you don't know someone. A radio voice in the background stated: "We are expecting acid rain of power 6 tomorrow, so those with garden patches should take their opportunity to water them now while they can." The man said: "There is a rumour going that there may be some corned beef available at the store tomorrow so I'll probably be late home. I should try to get some new air filters for the ventilator and some air masks for venturing outside when we have to. Methinks that I should at least try to acquire some."
The left wall darkened off and the right wall now lightened. A tall tree under a clear sky was in the centre of the image, zooming in to show a blueskinned man coming home with some hunting game slung over his shoulders. The kids were screaming with joy and his mate assaulted him with hugs and kisses. A light-hearted voice was heard: "Don't squeeze him too hard, the sad girl needs to talk with him still!" And the hunter gave a little chuckle. A smell of fresh flowers wafted through the air in the room. The image shifted and showed an old woman telling her grand-children a fairy tale: "… but then he saw her for what she really was, his only chance for a decent life… and he understood that his choice was really very simple, if inconvenient to take…" Now it was the smell of freshly roasting meat that filled the air.
Now the right image dimmed and the wall right in front of him brightened up. To the left he saw a picture of the misery-stricken, violent-prone and polluted Earth, to the left a picture of a scenic, idyllic and natural Pandora. The images drew distant and he saw the two images like through two doors. By the side of the Earthly door lots of young and charming women flocked, some of them elegantly others scantily dressed, and some of them gave him alluring glances or enticing winks. By the Pandoran door there stood only one, Jenny, dressed in bland and worn denim trousers. A booming voice sounded: "Which door will you go towards, human being? The enticing door to misery or the bland door to a healthy, natural life? You can't go through both of them. The choice is yours to take."
Seeing again scenes he knew well from his childhood, a life he had struggled very hard to rise up from, made a very heavy impression on Nick. The other image was of such a world he had always been dreaming about living in, a world where it didn't take being a billionaire to be able to go out into the forest with a fishing rod over his neck, where he could use his ability to help people not feeling good by themselves without first considering their paying ability. He took a step to the right.
The low-toned, booming voice then called out: "Nicholas Pelham Dixon, you have now made a choice, the right one that will lead you to a sound and healthy life! But do realize that your choice today entails consequences!"
Suddenly he saw at the left wall a busty girl with precisely enough garment to not be immodest, winking seductively at him and exclaiming: "I'm all yours for tonight!" The image shifted focus and showed in the background some hoodlums sitting at a table with a banner reading "RDA", one of them saying with a rasping, sinister voice: "Now let's see if the dimwit is taking the bait!"
To the right Jenny stood in a worn denim trouser and looked exhausted. "I need you now, could you bring me the first aid kit and take care of him over there, I need some downtime." The image changed focus and showed a couple of na'vi, the one saying to the other: "Good that Nick is so able with first aid, and nobody can beat him with calming down the anxious!"
Then all of a sudden they were standing right in front of him, side by side, the seductive "femme fatale" and the weary Jenny. The booming voice asked him: "Are you ready to stick to your choice, however many seductive young women you may meet? All of them may or may not be working for RDA to con you into their net. Even if life with your wife may seem grey, bland and unchallenging to you?" "I do! I do!"
The seductive, scantily dressed seductress was seemingly advancing towards him, with eyes hungrily devouring him. The voice now said: "So what will you do if you come across a tempting female, whether human or na'vi, trying to entice you away from your rightful wife?" "I walk away from that one. And I tell Jenny." "And who else will you tell?" "I also tell the leaders of the station or the clan."
Suddenly the small room became illuminated and all the staff came in to congratulate him with his choice. Nick himself looked simply to his bone exhausted.
A couple of weeks later Jenny came to the three. "I don't precisely know what you did to him that day but it must have been very powerful. He isn't even giving glances at girls anymore but he has become a nuisance in a very new way now. Now he simply need to tell me how Angie smiled to him but how he held to his cool, how Ella may have winked to him without making him sit down with her, and how Kim Chae laughed of his stupid joke without giving him a beating heart."
Max said: "He is just trying to drive home that he has changed fundamentally, to reassure you that he isn't going to fall back to his old habits ever again. It will pass. Feel happy that we have managed to make a strong impression on him."
When she had walked out, Max and Trudy turned at Norm and Max asked. "This was your work, Norm. How did you get idea to this?"
Norm answered: "I am not a personal believer but I am still arising from a catholic background. As a young student in society science I once read a little in an interesting book, 'Spiritual Exercises' by Saint Ignatius Loyola, the founder of Societas Jesu, the Jesuit order. As a non-believer I regard parts of the book as a handbook in brainwashing. That book was my main inspiration when I arranged that little show for Nick. I need to thank Jake for those photos of na'vi I needed for the na'vi animations."
Todd and Hal were also highly satisfied upon hearing that the small building they had erected for the occasion had done its trick.
Jenny really got to experience that Nick had changed his behaviour permanently. There were no more romantic escapades. Later, during the days just at the start of the 2nd Human – Na'vi War Nick (now in his new and all-blue body) was contacted by a very amorous "mata hari avatar" working for RDA. In their database he was noted as a notorious womanizer so they expected him to become a first class information source for espionage. Nick toed the line of the spy – and led her straight into the arms of some tough warriors taking well care of her.