He loved Pandora. He did. He loved it. Loved the endless verdant
jungle,
the exaltation of soaring above the world on the back of an
empathetic wyvern, loved strolling
among the great, elder-riddled
phosphorescent trees. He loved the rapturous, tantic nights with
Neytiri, the days spent in gentle harmony with the Omaticaya clan,
loved
gathering together to sing the ancient songs or to sway together,
hand in hand, feeling the all-embracing
majesty of Eywa flowing
through him. Who would not love these things? He was fulfilled,
embraced,
content.
And yet. And yet. Three years after the last Marines and miners
had
vanished into the starry sky, something still tugged at him.
He was Na'vi now, it's true, not human.
But he was a Na'vi born
of a human, and he had come to realize that something of that
old
life remained rooted inside him, something no mornings spent
running through fields of singing
orchids or swimming through rivers
of sentient water could erase. And lately, secretly, almost
against
his will, he had found himself more and more often returning to the
abandoned
military base at night. He knew why he went back; but
it wasn't until months of visits that he
acknowledged the reason to
himself, that he decided to do it. A switch on the wall instantly brought
the old bay of avatar pods to life; the little chunk of unobtainium in the
reactor
deep below the base would power a facility this size for millennia.
He settled back into the bay,
pulled the cover down, and switched on one
of the old test programs they used to use for fun on
days off at the base:
Home on Earth. In an instant, his human avatar awoke on a couch a small
suburban
home. The keys to the Dodge were on the coffee table. He grabbed
them and walked outside. He climbed
in, gunned the engine, pulled out
of the driveway. He knew that a Zippo lighter and a pack of
Lucky Strikes
would be in the glove compartment; he opened it with one hand. Sure
enough,
there they were. He lit a virtual cigarette, listened to the metallic
ting of the virtual Zippo as it opened. He drove deep into to heart of
the city,
parked in a run-down parking garage, and walked out onto
the crowded, noisy, bustling, anonymous
sidewalk. No one noticed him.
He had a drink in a noisy bar, then stood for some time staring at
a
construction site next door. Then he walked to the corner - not any
corner
in particular, just a corner - and watch them passing by: men,
women, children. He stood in a
doorway and watched them for half
an hour, for an hour; eventually, after weeks of returning,
he would
catch himself watching all night. Each time it ended the same way:
he
awoke in his imersion tank at the abandoned base, his face wet
with tears, alone in the empty
halogen gloom. He would then return
to the forest, the perfect forest, troubled and confused.
He loved Pandora. He did. Whatever it was he was seeking on those nights
at
the base, whatever it was that he was looking for, must be wrong, he
told himself. He would stop.
He had to. He would. He would. He would.
