The Alpha system shuttle I was on dropped off me, my avatar, and Murray Rothschild, my avatar technician, at the base satellite orbiting Pandora. There were five people there, all that remained of the once-thriving human presence on Pandora. From the reports, there had been about a thousand people there before this disaster. The first settlers came ten years earlier, and they had come to stay, they had even set up a school to teach the natives English. Those civilians are highly pissed that “the company” has bollixed up things this way, and many want to come back.
So, my job was to find out what to salvage from this situation, if anything.
I called a meeting of the now-seven of us after I got there and got settled in a bit.
They were all young cubs brought in straight from Earth by RDA, not people I’d worked with before, so a round of introductions was in order.
“I’m Andrew Stranger,” I told them, “I’ve done a few things both back on Earth and out in this sector. On Earth I founded Stranger and Stranger with my brother. The most notable thing we did was turn around Megalithics and get it up to a billion in sales.” I saw two of these young people frown. In their eyes I was now a “suit” -- not surprising -- I continued, “He decided to stay, and I decided to move on, out to here. Fifteen years ago, I was supervisor of the Johnson Methane Lake district in Titan Colony. These days I’m a trouble shooter. The governor called me in to see if there’s any lemonade to be made from this huge lemon we’ve been handed.”
That was my say. I nodded to the man on my right. He hadn’t frowned at my introduction. Instead, he looked relieved.
“I’m Jason Langham. I’m a surveyor. I was up here working on the surveying systems when the base got hit. As you can imagine, surveying a place with floating mountains has driven the software systems nuts. Every time there’s an update downloaded from Earth, I have to check that it doesn’t send the systems into a tizzy.
“We up here knew that there was trouble brewing, but this result is off-the-charts.” He sighed. He looked to his right.
“I’m Larry Devine. I work with the remote imaging and remote sensing.”
“I’m Mary Worthington. I’m an administrative assistant.”
“I’m Kim Parker. I do clinical work.”
“I’m Joe Washington. I’m a database manager.”
I turned to my technician, who was a little startled when I did since he knew I knew him -- we’d been training together for a many weeks. But, these people didn’t know him.
“Hi, I’m Murray Rothschild. I’m the avatar technician.”
“OK, folks,” I said, “Let’s talk about why we are here. It’s pretty simple to say: We are here to decide if we should cut bait on this world and end this sordid affair by calling in a space tug to haul this lab out, or whether we should let humans make another try.
“That choice is not ours to make. But we can provide good information to those who will make the choice. And we can make recommendations. We all will,” I look at each and every one of them to emphasize the point, “and people will listen. One of those people is the territorial governor, who asked me to come here. Another group will be the investors in that now-shell-of-a-corporation that got you folks out here, and there will be others who are interested, too. We are here to give them good facts and recommendations, so they can make a good choice.
“Is that clear?”
Mary was looking a little puzzled, “We will make recommendations? I thought that was your job?”
“It’s my job, and yours. That kind of thinking is why just the seven of us are out here today. Someone, I won’t mention names, was not listening. No, this is not some big city on Earth; everyone who is out here counts. What you say will be important, too.
“So that’s what we’re here for. And the question I pose to you now is, ‘What more do you need to make a convincing recommendation?’ If you’re going to recommend cut bait, what more do you need to strengthen your case? If you’re going to recommend stay, what more do you need? If you haven’t decided yet, what do you need?
“The important constraint is that our time is limited. The governor would like to hear from me, and you, in sixty days.”
Jason was getting a bright look on his face and he jumped in. “Andrew, may I call you Andrew?” I nodded, “Those floating mountains! No one has taken any time to seriously research them! Why are they floating? This could be a whole new force in physics! It could be a better propulsion system. It could be... almost anything! Selfridge could never see beyond the Unobtainium, and Augustine was focused in on the plant connections. No one had time for the mountains!”
“OK, what do you need? What can you find out in sixty days?”
Jason frowned a bit, “Can I get back to you on that?” he laughed, “No one has taken me seriously before on this.”
“Take all the time you need... as long as I have a proposal in twenty four hours.” I grinned, and he did too.
“Others?”
Larry said, “There have been some interesting developments below since the disaster. One is that Jake Sully’s avatar has been spotted. It’s moving around, flying on one of the bigger, more colorful, flying creatures. And it’s acting like ‘a wheel’ in the tribal communities down there.”
“Sully’s avatar? Didn’t he die in this attack?”
“We sure thought he did. But, then again, there were strange things happening in that scientist group just before the attack.”
“What sort of strange things?”
“The word that got up here was there was some kind of mutiny. Selfridge actually had the scientists tossed in the brig. Then, they escaped with the help of some disgruntled security people after that attack on the village tree. They commandeered one the choppers, and, I’ve been told, Quaritch was actually out in the hanger without a mask, blasting away at the chopper as it departed... really spooky stuff!”
“...That is,” I said, “Nothing about that made it into the reports I read.”
“I think Selfridge hushed it up... didn’t figure it would help his case any. He wants this to be about crazy natives, not crazy people.”
“Good thinking on his part. He may be a weasel, but he’s not a dumb one.”
“OK, so we have floating mountains and a Sully avatar mystery. What else?”
Kim spoke up quietly, “There’s no disease among the natives.
“I came here to be an ecologist, but got commandeered into being a clinic nurse. Augustine really wanted a clinic to help those native kids we were schooling, and Selfridge saw no advantage to studying jungle stuff -- mostly because it would have been another expense. That world really is dangerous! I would have needed a lot of protection to do any serious research.
“So I got shuffled to the clinic. There I was ready to gin up some vaccines, but I never needed any. The kids came in with all kinds of cuts and bruises from rough-and-tumble play, and animal and plant attacks, but they never got infections, or caught colds of any sort.”
I looked at her seriously, “You reported this to Selfridge?”
“It was in my reports, but it didn’t have any bearing on getting Unobtainium, so he paid no attention.”
“Talk about a one track mind.” I sighed. Kim nodded.
“OK, you have your mystery to work on. Let me know what you need.”
“Anyone else?”
Mary spoke up again. “I said I was an administrative assistant. ...I was ...to Dr. Augustine. I was up here trying to gin up some kind of simulator for all that plant connectivity she found, when the blow-up happened. She told me to stay up here and take the first ship out. I would have done that, but the first ship out was the one with Selfridge and the rest of the colonists. I decided it was more prudent to be on some other ship. I’m part of the science group. Oh, and two others are alive and well living at the base -- contrary to what Selfridge is telling people, the Na’vi didn’t kick everyone out.
“I would like to keep working on Augustine’s connection hypothesis. That’s still a mystery to be explored.”
Jason gave a short laugh, “Her planet brain idea?”
Mary retorted, “Jason, brains started as part of the movement system in animals. They began as a coordinating link between perception organs and muscles. The reasoning we humans do is a bunch of sweet, sweet dessert piled on top of that basic function. Think of a tadpole -- it needs some kind of coordination link between its eyes and nose and its tail muscles. That’s the basic brain activity.
“This planet connectivity is something different -- it’s not about movement. What it’s good for and what it does is still a mystery, and that’s one I’d like to present on.”
I was impressed; Jason was impressed. “Sounds like you have your project.” I said.
She nodded, “I’ll let you know what I need.”
Joe finally spoke up, “With your permission, sir, there’s still a lot of mystery in Unobtainium. Selfridge wanted to mine it simply because it sold back on Earth for a 20 million a kilo -- he didn’t know why, and he didn’t care. There’s still a lot we don’t know about it. We don’t know a lot about what it does, and we don’t know a lot about where it is. That tree could have been shitting it, for all we know.”
“You’ve got a good point.” I said.
“OK. We’ve all got projects, let’s do some research. My project is to get some ground time -- either in some remote probe or in an avatar. I want to find out where we stand with the natives.”
Murray said, “You’ll need a ground base to run the avatar. The bandwidth is so intensive that you need to be close.”
Larry said, “There were some relay stations for the Avatar signals. I don’t know if those are still in place, or not.”
“OK. Let’s start with a remote. Mary, can you find out from your scientist friends still at the base how we stand vis-à-vis the natives? Do we have a chance of doing some peace talks? That’s your top priority. Let’s see if we can get my avatar launched down there, somewhere.”
I looked around. “Everyone have something to keep them busy?”
They all nodded, and they looked alert. I liked what I saw.
“Remember: We have sixty days, and I want all of us making significant contributions to what we report back. The fate of this world depends on it.”
The meeting broke up, and people hurried off purposefully. It was a good start.