To say I was busy over the next week is an understatement. I spent my avatar time learning, and that would have kept me busy full-time if I could let it. But I couldn’t. There was a lot of coordinating and researching to do in my human form as well. There were so many mysteries! And I had to keep in coordination with the other folks researching their mysteries.
On Day 29 I gathered everyone for a progress report: Murray and the two technicians and I were on the ground, the others were still up top.
I opened, “Folks, there is no question in my mind there’s a lot of interesting stuff here. Are we in agreement on that?” There were assuring nods all around, “What we need to do is clearly demonstrate that what is here is interesting enough to devote resources to -- we have to show that it’s more interesting than some of the hundred-and-one other things that are currently being researched in Alpha system. So, this meeting today is to see what progress we are making on that. Let’s hear from Jason first.”
Jason brought up some views of the Floating Mountains as he started, “The more I’ve researched these mountains, the more they defy physics as we know it. They are floating, there is no visible or invisible means of support. But it’s not like they are in some kind of anti-gravity beam, either. If you drop rocks off the side, they fall, and you can see that in those spectacular waterfalls. And even if you stand on top of them, the gravity is planet normal.
“So, there must be some force inside them that’s holding them up. And, they don’t move around much. They do swing and sway a bit in the wind, but there is some restoring force, they always stay in the same spot, and with the same orientation -- they don’t spin around.”
I ask, “Is it controllable? Can we duplicate it?”
Jason shakes his head, “That I don’t know yet. That’s still a mystery.”
I shake my head, “I love it, but it’s not good enough to get people rushing out with checkbooks in hand. OK, what else do we have? Larry?”
“The best I can tell, Sully really is in that avatar body.” I nodded in agreement, “But there’s a hitch there that I’m not sure Sully is aware of: That body has a limited lifespan.”
“...Really, how long?” I say.
“That was first generation, and we’re mixing Pandoran and Earth DNA. It’s hard to say -- could be a year, could be ten, but it’s far from immortal.”
“Hmm... you haven’t told him?”
“No. It never came up in the early training, and now...” He shrugged.
“OK, let’s come back to that after this meeting. It’s damn important, for sure, but not a checkbook-interesting item. What else?”
“Well... the fact that Pandoran and Earth DNA can mix at all. There is not that much magic in the DNA codon system -- it can work in many ways. It’s a fierce coincidence that we can make this match work at all.”
“Umm... good point.”
“As far as... ‘checkbook’ goes, if we can make these avatars faster, cheaper and better, then we have a tourist industry.”
“I like that.” I say.
“But at this stage, they are pretty expensive.”
“I understand that, but it sounds like something you can put some rough dollars and cents around. Work on it.”
Larry nods in approval. I turn to Mary.
“As I think you’ve figured out by now, Eywa is the native’s connection to the Planet Brain. It is there, and it is processing. All the animals have a connector comparable to the one mixed in the hair on your avatar. I suspect that when you get trained enough, Eywa will talk to you in some fashion through that.”
“I agree, and that’s partly why I’m devoting as much time as I do to the training.”
“It will be good when you do. We should get a lot more answers. But, that’s only part of what the planet brain is doing, a small part. Just like consciousness takes up only a small part of the human brain’s processing, this planet brain is doing a whole lot more than just being Eywa.”
She looked at Larry, “It may be doing some of the stabilizing that holds the floating mountains steady.”
She looked at me, “And it may be doing a lot of climate control. It may be a real, high-tech implementation of that old Gaia concept -- the one that holds that life on a planet actively helps to keep the planet’s climate stable.”
“That’s big!” I admitted, “Is it checkbook-compatible?”
“We won’t find out with a one-woman research team!” she laughed.
I laughed, too, “Good point. So concentrate on finding me a tid-bit -- some piece of this that can be exploited.” I exclaimed, “We have so much here! We just need a profitable piece! Kim, what have you got for us?”
“I’m afraid I’ve got more mystery, Andy.
“First off, I’ve had a devil of a time finding any fossil records. This world doesn’t seem to erode in any conventional sense. It looks like it’s weathering, but there aren’t any deep layers of sedimentation, something is recycling the dirt, and fast.
“On the other hand, the life forms don’t seem to be changing much. This is really hard to pin down because there aren’t any fossil records. But, when I look for aging in the DNA record of the species I can check, I don’t see it... very strange! Even stranger, the fact that those flying dinosaurs look like flying dinosaurs doesn’t seem to be a coincidence -- their morphology seems to be very similar.
“And, there’s a related mystery that I noticed earlier. You’ve noted that Main Base was not looted when the humans left, right?”
“I have.”
“The reason is the Na’vi don’t want anything human! We have nothing to offer them! Believe me, we tried. Selfridge really wanted trinkets and beads for bribes, and Augustine really wanted trust builders, but we could find nothing! They didn’t want medicine, or T-shirts with fancy logos, or mirrors, or fire water, or weapons... we had nothing to offer them.”
“...That doesn’t sound human.” I say.
“It sure doesn’t.” affirmed Kim.
“...So much mystery! ...But I have to ask you: How do we get a checkbook involved?”
“That I haven’t figured out yet.” she sighed.
“I’ll be thinking about that one, too. That’s just plain freaky, isn’t it?
“...OK, Joe, what do you have for me?”
“Well, that joke I made about the trees shitting Unobtainium turns out to be true.”
“Really?”
“The hometrees in particular seem to make it. There’s a strong correlation between hometrees and deposits. I suspect that the deposit at Main Base was left over from a dead and recycled home tree -- as Kim pointed out, stuff recycles quickly here.
“There’s more. There is a lot of energy in Unobtainium, a whole lot, but I can’t figure out where it’s coming from. There is some kind of recharging and storage mechanism going on here, but it’s outside the conventional physics of matter. ...could it be dark matter? ...I don’t know.
Jason spoke up, “Could that be powering the floating mountains?”
“That’s a good possibility, simply because they are both mysteries, and both here.”
I think, then say, “Sounds like maybe you two should join forces.” then I say to everyone, “OK, folks. This is so tantalizing! But, like Selfridge, we do have to come up with at least one good -- meaning profitable -- reason to stay here. Concentrate on that for the next thirty days. Any questions?” I look around, “As before, get in touch with me if you need anything to help make your point.”
And the meeting breaks up. The next day I send an interim report to Governor Tyler.