The Balance of Life
Part One - Discovery
Chapter 2 - Part 1--- Marooned
Author's Note:
Instead of posting one whole chapter each week I am going to post two half chapters twice each week. This should give you readers quicker access to the story as it unfolds. Plus it may increase readership.
Additional information has been placed in the introduction. New Events and Characters.
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"Norm's coming out." Karen called out as she monitored the controls beside the pod containing his human body.
Karen Ripley was thirty-three years old and one hundred percent female. Her freckled face was framed in a short cap of auburn hair that just reached past her ears. Emerald green eyes peered out beneath thin eyebrows and long lashes. Unless she was hip deep in a problem her eyes were normally alight with life and good humor. She stood five-eight in bare feet, her body softly curved. Under the curves were muscles that she kept well-toned with regular, daily trips to the gym. Some nights her workouts were of an entirely different sort. Karen believed that life could be very short and should be lived fully each and every day.
"Back with us mere mortals," Karen said to Norm after she lifted the lid to his pod. Searching his face she was unable to judge what he was feeling. That meant the news could be either good or bad.
"Where is everyone?" Norm asked as he sat up and reflexively rolled his head and shoulders. Max was the only other person in the lab. Throwing Norm an off-hand wave he walked out.
"Most are in the cafeteria playing cards. Roger whipped up a late night snack. Strawberry shortcake, I think."
Karen ran though the pod's shutdown routine, her mind on auto-pilot. Verifying that everything in the lab was as it should be she headed towards the door. "Come on, let's go see if it tastes as good as it sounds," she added, grabbing Norm by the hand and pulling him out of the lab.
Everyone but Gary Albright, their system's specialist, was gathered at the long table just outside the main door to the kitchen. For a room that was designed to feed two-hundred people at a sitting, the current inhabitants looked almost lost. Every head turned in their direction as Norm and Karen entered the room.
Without a word Norm walked over to the pass-through serving counter and helped himself to a large bowl of strawberry shortcake. Karen did likewise but with an admittedly smaller portion. Norm was relieved beyond words that Jake had successfully managed to transfer his consciousness…spirit…whatever a person chose to call it, into his avatar body. He would want to do the same someday. That he knew without the slightest doubt in his mind. The problem that had been nagging at him like an aching tooth was that if the other avatar drivers did the same then the eight remaining humans would be too small a group to survive, or at least keep their sanity. At least that was what the MacKinnon study hypnotized. A minimum of thirteen individuals were needed to form an autonomous subgroup, completely isolated from the main body. At fourteen members they should be able to function well enough to survive. The dynamics were better for an odd numbered group, which it would be if he and he alone went over to the Na'vi. Since most anything could happen before the next ISV arrived from Earth there wasn't any sense in dwelling on optimal group dynamics. Either they would survive, or they wouldn't.
After his shortcake was finished Norm brought his thoughts back to Jake as he prepared to address the group. Might as well see this as good news, lord knew they had had enough bad news to last for a lifetime.
"Jake survived the transition," Norm said to the faces intently watching him. "Luckiest bastard that ever landed on this moon," he added good-naturedly.
"Did he have any problems? How does he look, sound?" Ron Campbell asked. Ron was first, last and always fretting over the condition of what he saw as his charges. Not that his charges always appreciated it. Even though Ron could be a 'pain in the ass' he was well liked and a valuable resource when it came to avatar/Na'vi physiology. Ron's sandy brown hair was pulled into a ponytail that made his face seem narrower that it was. His deep blue eyes were direct, always accessing.
"He looks damn good, considering," Norm replied. "He had a little motor trouble at first, but he quickly overcame his shakiness. With Mo'at's help I buried his human remains next to where Grace's bodies are buried. It's a shame she couldn't have been there to witness his rebirth. She would have been in seventh-heaven. Of course she would have insisted on capturing the whole event in holo-vid."
"Did he seem different?" Kyle Logan, one of the male avatar drivers asked. "Was his personality the same?"
"No, he was just Jake. It looks as though his personality came through intact. Although I can't be sure as we didn't spend much time together after the transfer."
"How did Neytiri hold up?" asked Judy McNeal, a female avatar driver and Kyle's constant bunk mate. It was a standing joke that Kyle and Judy spent more time in the sack, either as human or avatar, than they did out of it.
"It was rough for her in the beginning, but she came through just fine. Nothing throws Neytiri off her stride for long."
All eyes turned to the door as Gary Albright strode into the room. Gary's presence would be hard to miss in any normal human setting. At six-six and two-ten he was about as fine a specimen of human male that you would ever come across. His eternal boyish grin made him look ten years younger than the forty years of living he had under his belt. He had thick dark brown hair and eyes to match. Several days of unshaved stubble showed on his face but didn't detract one whit from his overall good looks.
"Hey, Roger! Shortcake's all gone," Gary called out when he reached the serving counter and found it empty.
"Saved you a bowl," Roger Polanski shoved his considerable bulk through the kitchen door to hand Gary one of the two oversized bowls he was carrying. "Kitchen's closed for the night," Roger added, addressing the others. "Make sure you rinse out your bowls. I ain't your mama." Without further comment he settled himself at the table next to where the others were seated.
"The alarm and surveillance systems are up and operational," Gary said to the group at large. "I think I have the patches correctly installed so that the alarms won't trip every time some critter flies over the compound. Anything that touches ground inside the perimeter will trigger it."
"Good, maybe I'll be able to get eight straight," Susan Blyth sighed, her eyes heavy from lack of sound sleep. "I haven't gotten a decent night's sleep since the others left for Earth." Up until the destruction of Hometree Susan wouldn't have been caught dead looking as disheveled as she did just this minute. Her long blond hair was either combed out or twisted into an elaborate braid when she was on duty working in the avatar med-lab. In the lab she was all business, but after hours she could be counted on to join in on most group activities.
"What time is it?" Zoe Fischer, their resident girl Friday and records keeper asked.
"It dark time," James 'Rocky' Rockwell responded sarcastically. "Who cares what hour it is? It's either light out or dark out. Night or day are the only two times Pandora knows."
Rocky was a habitual complainer, but he was a good pilot. The only one in the group that could fly the two remaining operational Samson VTOL's. Even though he was always complaining about something on Pandora, he had refused to leave on the Valkyrie shuttle. The fact that he had been in the infirmary when the attacks had taken place, plus his known disputes with Quaritch had convinced Jake that he should be allowed to stay on Pandora. Besides, he was the only person with flight experience that the others in the group trusted.
"It seems a lot longer than two days since the Venture Star left orbit," Susan stated wistfully as she turned to stare at the shuttered windows.
"Are the transmitters still functioning?" Norm asked Gary when the room fell into prolonged silence.
"Yes, both the SOL and Superluminal units are operating normally. Of course the signal from the SOL won't reach Earth for four and a half years. At least it will beat the Venture Star by a year and a half. Selfridge will have a hell of a time trying to explain the video of Hometree being destroyed and the other video logs taken from avatar recordings. It's probably going to save our collective ass's, and cook Selfridge's having those video logs from all the time you drivers spent in your avatars."
"Turned out to be usefully for a lot more than just documenting the science," Max added. "Thankfully they were stored in the lab computers and not in the main operational data banks. I'm sure Selfridge or Quaritch would have wiped them if they had taken the time to know that they existed in the first place."
"How much of the message we're sending via the Superluminal unit has Earth received?" Abby Foster, the other female avatar driver asked.
"Not much, but enough to get their attention," Gary answered. "As I explained before, we can send twelve characters of information per day in real-time back to Earth. By today's technology standards, Superluminal is slower than smoke-signals. Watching grass grow is more rewarding. The only thing going for it is that it can reach across light-years almost instantaneously. As you may or may not remember, the message we decided to send was; 'HUMNS EVCTD-STP SND ISV-WLL RFUL IN RT-NO OTH-VID SOL IN RT-S/NAVI'. As this message is sixty-six characters long it will take six days for Earth to receive all of it. RDA should have the first two parts by now. I expect we will receive some sort of reply by end of day tomorrow."
"Will the ISV's already in route be able to receive what we are sending to Earth?" Abby asked, a frown creasing her pixyish face. Her jet black, waist length hair was in sharp contrast to her light green eyes. She was very slim, the smallest of the avatar drivers.
"Yes they will. Plus they will be able to receive RDA's reply," Gary replied. "Superluminal has but one channel. Anyone with a receiver, and a lot of patience, can receive any signal transmitted. Normally the RDA uses encrypted messages for that reason. If anyone else on earth is listening to our transmissions, they will have a pretty good idea of what has been going on here. Plus it will alert them to listen for the SOL video."
"Yeah, 'shit-outa-luck', or at least let's hope that's what it will mean for the RDA," Kyle added jokingly, referring to the Speed of Light commutations transmission unit.
"As long as it isn't us who are 'SOL'," Judy amended.
"Back to the next ISV due to arrive," Abby interrupted. "By the time they arrive we will have been able to transmit over four thousand characters. More than enough to spell out exactly what happened here, right?"
"Yes it will," Gary answered. "Remember, they will start receiving our SOL video in about six months. By the time they arrive they will have seen everything we are sending back to Earth. Unless they think we fabricated the video and it is just some elaborate hoax, they should be receptive to talking instead of just demanding. Since we have the fuel they need for their anti-matter engines to make the return trip home we should be in a pretty good bargaining position."
"And so begins the game of 'cat and mouse'," Rocky added in the silence following Gary's last statement. "The only question is; who's the cat and who's the mouse?"
"You got that right," Karen added.
"How's our power and consumables looking?" John Claymore, one of the male avatar drivers asked.
"Both are looking very good," Gary answered, looking suddenly more optimistic. The geo-thermal unit that provides power should easily last another century with normal maintenance. A full complement of spare parts is stored in the supply warehouse. The RDA made sure all essential systems had the necessary spare parts. Remember, we are only using less than five percent of what is normally used in full operation. The unobtanium refinery and mining operations used more than half of the power the geo-thermal units generated. As for other essential consumables we have far more than we will use."
"Physical necessities are not going to be our problem, are they?" Karen asked.
"No. As I see it, our biggest problem is going to be developing some sort of daily routine that will keep us sane," Max answered soberly.
"There will be many things that need to be done, but that doesn't give us a purpose," Max continued. "We are also going to need some form of structure. I have been giving this some thought over the past couple of days. I would like to propose that we select a 'supervisor' to make command decisions. This person would hold the position for three months and then we would select someone else for the next three months. There are bound to be disputes and we need some way of handling them, short of pistols at ten paces. We don't have to decide tonight. Just think about it."
"I hadn't thought about it, but you're right," Norm said, gazing at the others to see how Max's suggestion was being taken. Everyone appeared to taking it seriously. He didn't see any outright disagreement on anyone's face. "If no one objects, we can discuss it tomorrow. Right now I need some sack time. It's been a long day."
When no one objected to his suggestion, Norm rose from the table to carry his dirty dish to the kitchen. No one deliberately pissed off Roger, as he kept them all well fed. While he was washing the dish, Karen came up behind him with her own, which she simply handed to him.
"Do you want to sleep alone?" she asked after he set both bowls in the drying rack.
"No, not really," Norm answered, holding out his hand.
"That's fortunate, as I don't either," Karen replied taking Norm's hand in hers. "Your place, or mine?" she added teasingly.
"Ladies choice."
"Yours."
As Norm and Karen left the cafeteria conversation seemed to be drawing to a close for the day. In pairs or individually the others began making their way to where they intended to sleep for the night.
Max and Ron hung back waiting for all of the others to leave. Sitting across from each other, playing double deck solitaire they continued to play until they had the room to themselves. Each was deep in thought about what they had discovered earlier that day. Each had a completely different perspective on just what this discovery was going to mean.
"We are going to have to tell the others," Ron said after the room was empty and the game over. "We can't just pretend we didn't find the damn thing."
"Yes, I know," Max replied. "The bigger question is what do we do with it…about it."
"We can't ignore it. That would be just wrong, completely unethical," Ron added. "It is a living being after all."
"Is it? I'm not sure what defines the term 'being' anymore," Max said, his eyes seemingly focused elsewhere. "There is no question that it is alive. We can see that from the monitors," he added bringing his attention back to Ron.
"We have to bring it out of stasis," Ron began. "Once it's conscious we can decide what to do next."
"I guess I should have expected something like this," Max replied, seeming to shake off his gloomy attitude. "The RDA has suspected for several years that the avatar program was not going to get them what they wanted. Namely a cheap indigenous workforce. Selfridge mentioned to me once that the cost of sending humans to Pandora was growing increasingly expensive."
"He did?" Ron asked. "I thought he never talked company business with the science department."
"Yeah, that's true. But one night he and I were alone in the cafeteria and he had been drinking steadily for a while. For some reason he just started rambling on and on about company business. Maybe he was pissed about something. Maybe this place was finally getting to him. After four years this place would get on anyone's nerves. I don't know why, really. Anyway, he kept on about the company's shrinking profits and that some new strategy was being worked on back on Earth."
"So you think this being is part of the RDA's new strategy?" Ron asked. "In a way I guess it makes sense. Cloning humans has to be cheaper than cloning avatars and shipping them and their driver all the way to Pandora. Plus, all of our equipment was engineered for the human form factor. It must have taken some time to clone a human that could breathe Pandora's air directly. The fact that the clone only has to be shipped one way would offset some of the costs of creating it in the first place. Couple that with a life time of work and it makes economic sense. Of course it violates every human rights law ever written."
"If the artifact isn't classified as human, then the laws wouldn't apply," Max replied. "I know, I know, that's really bending the facts to suit their own purposes," Max added as Ron opened his mouth to protest.
"The bottom line for us is that we have this living clone in a gestation pod and we have to decide what to do with it," Max finished.
"Well we can't just turn it off, kill it," Ron began, his voice climbing as it did when his ethics were being challenged. "We have no real choice. We have to awaken it. Once we get a sense of its intelligence level then we can decide how to proceed."
"At least the RDA sent along all the engineering designs and training programs that were intended to be used. I suppose we will just have to wait and see where this all leads to," Max added thoughtfully.
"On that note, I'm going to turn in," Ron said as he stood up and stretched. "See you in the morning."
"Right, in the morning," Max replied as he continued to sit and think long into the night.
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Gary Albright returned to the master control center, unready to call it a night. He had a great deal on his mind. In a very real sense Gary felt responsible for the safety and wellbeing of everyone who had chosen to stay on Pandora. He knew he didn't have any real authority, but the weight of responsibility had settled on his broad shoulders without as much as a whisper. Failure of any of the systems that he was responsible for could mean the end of existence for the pitifully small group of humans remaining at Hell's Gate. From a human's point of view the station was aptly named. Stepping into Hell would be more comfortable than stepping outside the compound's walls. But for all of its dangers the world of Pandora spoke to humankind on some basic level. Gary supposed it had something to do with our ancient ancestral genes.
Glancing at the communications console, Gary stared at the message being slowly recorded from the Venture Star's SL transmitter. It had not changed since last night, still only showing 'ATCKD BY NV'. It didn't surprise Gary that no additional text had been sent today. Not when you considered the fact that the Venture Star would have still been close enough to Pandora to receive the SOL video being transmitted within minutes of sending. Gary had setup the video to be broadcasted on an endless loop after he had edited the video to about four hours' worth of data that covered all of the basic events. Selfridge and the rest of his RDA administration that had been booted off planet were probably trying to figure out what to do about the video stream. How to spin it to their advantage. Good luck with that he thought, sarcastically!
Figuring that Selfridge would wait and see how the SL transmissions played out between Pandora and Earth before committing, Gary directed his attention to a more immediate and possibly lethal problem. The forest was steadily reclaiming the cleared area around the perimeter of the compound. The rate at which the forest was advancing meant that within a month the forest would be tight against the perimeter walls. On Earth one hundred meter high walls would have kept out almost everything. On Pandora where trees regularly grew to that height and higher the walls weren't going to stop the local flora or fauna from invading the compound. One way or the other, Pandora was going to erase all evidence of human presence unless they kept pushing back.
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"Sleeping?" Karen asked, her head resting comfortably on Norm's chest, her body nestled snugly against his. She had been listening to the steadily slowing beat of his heart for the past few minutes. Basking in the warm afterglow of lovemaking she had been reluctant to break the mood by speaking. But as usual the outside world pushed its way back into her thoughts.
"No, just thinking," Norma replied lazily.
"About what?"
"How good you are for me…and to me," he replied, shifting onto his side so that they were face to face.
"That's right, I am. And don't you forget it either," Karen answered trying to sound firm but not quite managing to keep the humor from her voice.
"If I do, I'm sure you will remind me."
"Of course I will."
"Karen, I…"
"Norm, don't say too much," Karen interrupted, pressing her fingertips to his lips before Norm could continue with whatever he was having difficulty putting into words. "It's easy to say things now when we are both still feeling so much. Things we might not say otherwise."
"Why did you stay?" Norm asked, deciding to change the subject as he really didn't know how to put into words what he was beginning to feel for her. The conflict between wanting to spend more time in his avatar and more time with her were starting to wear on his conscience. "If you don't mind my asking. It is a little personnel," Norm added.
"Well it doesn't get more personal than this," Karen answered just before covering his lips with her own. As the kiss spun out she felt his hand gently caress her breast, his touch setting off small flames of desire deep in her belly.
Drawing back she looked into his eyes. Eyes that were kind and understanding, that seemed to say that she was the only woman in the world for him. If she wasn't careful to guard her heart she would fall in love with him. Of that much she was certain.
"I stayed because there was absolutely nothing on Earth to return to." Karen's voice was flat, almost hard but Norm didn't miss the sorrow in her eyes. "My parents were gone, I had no family. Little prospect but working and living in metal boxes for the rest of my life. Never seeing anything green, except on video. In short, just one pathetic life among billions of other pathetic lives. When the chance to train for Pandora came along I snatched it up. No way would I go back."
"You're either incredibly brave or monumentally stupid," Norm answered, smiling warmly as he traced the shape of her face with his fingers.
"Probably some of both. Either way, my lot is cast with Pandora and the rest of our motley human crew. If nothing else it should be fun to see how things turn out."
"So says the woman that keeps all of our pods in working order," Norm replied, brushing her lips with a light kiss.
"How early do you need to go back to the Omaticaya?"
"Not too early, I just need to go sometime during the day."
"Good, that means we don't have to get up early," Karen replied as she pushed Norm onto his back and crawled on top of him.