.

So here I am...doing science.

- — - — - — - — -

"Grace Augustine is a legend," Norm was saying as Max led them into the link room. "She's the head of the Avatar Program. She wrote the book, I mean literally wrote the book on Pandoran botany."

Max glanced over his shoulder. "Well that's 'cause she likes plants better than people," he said with a smirk.

The link room was circular, with a raised monitoring station in the center. Several computer terminals faced outward from there, overlooking nearly a dozen link beds lining most of the outer wall like spokes on a wheel. The link beds themselves looked somewhat disturbingly like a cross between MRI machines and coffins.

Max led them clockwise around the room to one of the link beds on the far side, where a tall, red-haired woman had apparently just climbed out of the link, and already had a lit cigarette sticking out of her mouth as she put on a lab coat.

"Here she is," Max said, launching into introductions. "Cinderella back from the ball. Grace, I'd like you to meet Norm Spellman and Kate Simmons."

"Norm," Grace said, pocketing a pair of reading glasses and taking the cigarette out of her mouth. "I hear good things about you. How's your Na'vi?"

Norm hesitated, then made a gesture that looked like some kind of formal greeting and said, "'Awvea ultxari ohengeyä, Nawma Sa'nok lrrtok siveiyi."

"Tsun tivam," Grace replied, "Aylì'u ngian nì'it skepek lu."

Norm looked somewhat bashful as he responded, "Zìsìt amrr ftolia ohe, slä zene fko nivume nìtxan."

Kate just blinked at them, having no idea what they'd just said to each other.

"Uh, Grace?" Max cut in before the two of them could get too into their shop talk. "This is Kate Simmons."

Kate extended her hand. "Ma'am."

Grace gave her an inquisitive look that quickly shifted to one of annoyance. "Yeah, yeah. I know who you are, and I don't need you. I need your sister."

Kate let her hand drop back to her lap.

Grace looked back to Max. "Y'know, the PHD who trained for three years for this mission?"

"She's dead," Kate spoke up, letting some bitterness leak into her voice. "I know it's a big inconvenience for everyone."

Grace gave her an even more irritated look before asking, "How much lab training have you had?"

"I dissected a starfish once," Kate offered.

Apparently that was all Grace could take. "You see?" she said, shifting her gaze to Max once again. "You see? I mean, they're just pissing on us without even the courtesy of calling it rain." She turned away from them, heading for the door. "I'm going to Selfridge."

Max started after her. "I don't think that's a good idea—"

"No, man, this is such bullshit!" Grace exclaimed. "I'm gonna kick his corporate butt. He has no business sticking his nose into my department."

"I need to talk to you about something!" Max called as Grace stormed out of the room. "AP business!"

Kate could just make out Grace giving a wave of acknowledgement through the open doorway.

Max turned to Kate, leaning down and not-quite-whispering to her, "Here tomorrow, fifteen hundred. Try and use big words," before he too walked briskly out of the room and back into the bio-lab.

"Use big words". Kate rolled her eyes. Right.

- — - — - — - — -

It was a few minutes before three o'clock in the afternoon the next day when Kate arrived back at the bio-lab. She rolled up to the sliding glass doors just as Norm arrived from the other direction.

"Hey," he greeted her cheerfully. "You ready to do this?"

"You look like a kid on Christmas morning," she said, smiling back at him.

"Well yeah," he responded, practically bouncing with excitement. "I've been waiting the better part of a decade for this."

"The six years in cryo don't count," she joked as they entered the lab together.

Grace was waiting for them. "Both on time. Good." She set down the tablet she'd been working on. "Max filled me in on yesterday's little surprise."

She fixed Kate with a serious look. "He says everything looks good, and he's got the new protocols set up on your link bed, but I feel obligated to ask: Are you sure you want to try this?"

"Yes, absolutely. For the same reason Toni was going to, and...well, what the hell else am I going to do here?"

"Alright. Let's go," she said, and beckoned them toward the link room.

Kate let the two of them go first, taking a brief look around the bio-lab and taking in the flurry of activity before following.

The avatars' gestation tanks had been locked into ports on the back wall, which connected to another, very sterile room beyond it. The docked ends of the tanks had been opened, the fluid drained, and the avatars removed. A pair of technicians in full clean-room gear, including special exopacks, were hosing down the inside of the tanks.

"So, how much link time have you logged?" Grace asked Norm as they entered the large circular room.

"Uh, about five hundred and twenty hours."

"That's good," Grace said. She pointed him to the second link bed on the left. "You're in there." She moved to the third bed and glanced at Kate before stepping up to the bed's control panel to configure it for use. "You're here. How much have you logged?"

"Zip," Kate answered as she rolled around to the open side of the bed. "But I read the manual."

Grace turned to look at her, rolling her eyes. "Tell me you're joking."

Kate didn't bother responding, too busy admiring the machine. "This is cool."

The bed itself was made of some kind of memory foam or gel, with a molded depression in the approximate shape and size of a human body. The side-hinged lid had a similar cutout, and inside that was an independently-hinged lattice-like frame that would lower over the user's torso and around their head. The frame was covered with faintly-glowing sensors that would help the main neural scanner to read the user's brain activity, as well as monitoring their vital signs.

The neural scanner of Norm's bed whirled to life as Kate positioned her wheelchair roughly parallel to her own bed, then hauled herself up onto it.

Grace moved to help her swing her legs up into the bed, but Kate waved her off. "Don't. I've got this." Grabbing one pant leg in each hand, she heaved first one leg up, then the other, positioning them in the bed's body-shaped cutout.

Grace turned back to the control panel. "So you just figured you'd come out here, to the most hostile environment known to man, with no training of any kind, and see how it went?" she asked. "What was going through your head?"

"Maybe I was sick of doctors telling me what I couldn't do," Kate said.

Grace said nothing, merely giving her a mildly disbelieving look.

"Link Three is ready," Max called from the central monitoring station.

Grace put a hand on Kate's shoulder, gently pushing her to lay down. Kate complied. "Keep your arms in, hands in, head down," Grace instructed, lowering the sensor frame over her. Kate couldn't resist lifting her head slightly to get a better look at it, only for Grace to push her back down. "Down."

Grace leaned on the edge of the bed, fixing Kate with a gently mocking stare. "Just relax and let your mind go blank. That shouldn't be hard for you," she said, before stepping back and pressing the button to close the lid.

Kate rolled her eyes. "Kiss the darkest part of my lily-white—" she was cut off as the lid closed over her.

- — - — - — - — -

With the lid closed, the inside of the link bed was lit by the pinpoints of light from the sensor frame and a soft green glow emanating from the gel surface of the bed itself. Kate could hear the muffled whirring of the neural scanner spinning up.

Well, Kate, she thought to herself, one way or the other, this is it.

She wiggled her shoulders to get a bit more comfortable, then did as Grace had said, closing her eyes and trying to empty her mind of thoughts. Normally that was fairly difficult for her unless she was very tired, but something about the soft light and the muffled sounds from outside was remarkably relaxing. In under a minute, she was nearly asleep.