Chapter Text
When I was lying there in the VA hospital, with a big hole blown through the middle of my life, I started having these dreams of flying. I was free.
Sooner or later, though, you always have to wake up.
Alfred opened his eyes when the lights turned green. Behind him was a sea of people waiting to cross, all wearing some sort of facial covering to breathe in the smog-ridden city. Everywhere was so tightly packed, even a local wouldn’t have known what the ground looked like. Alfred could vouch for that. He was always closer to the floor than everyone else was.
He was at the front of the pavement just before the curb. Nobody pushed past him to cross the road first. But then again, shoving a guy in a wheelchair onto oncoming traffic wasn’t exactly a good look. Attaching his hands to the wheels, he rolled himself onto the road to make his way home.
Alfred (V.O)
They can fix a spinal if you’ve got the money. But not on vet benefits. Not in this economy. A VA check and twelve bucks will get you a cup of coffee.
I’m what they call ‘waitlisted.’
His unit wasn’t much, but nobody could kick him out of it. It was his own little prison cell. There was a single-serving kitchen, a tiny bathroom that could barely fit his chair in, and a bedroom that doubled as a living room. Crumbs and wrappers were almost always on the floor, but Alfred reckoned it gave the place a bit more character.
Parking by his dusty gray bed, he lifted himself onto the mattress. He pulled his legs up laboriously, one after the other. After years of inactivity, the muscles in his legs had atrophied so severely, they were barely the size of a pair of arms. As his projector played the news channel, lighting up his dim room with a white glaring screen, he wondered to himself if he was better off getting rid of them.
“The Bengal tiger, extinct for over a century, is making a comeback.”
But like all those who came before him, there was the smallest flicker of hope he could get back up again. Maybe not today, but someday.
“These cloned tiger cubs at the Beijing Zoo are the lastest of a number of species that have been cloned back into existence in the past five years.”
He joined the Marines for the hardship. To be hammered by the anvil of life. Told himself he could any test a man could pass.
He rocked back and forth on his wheelchair to balance a shot of tequila on his forehead. Everyone chimed in on a loud ‘drink’ chant, which sped up in rapid progression. It wasn’t long before he popped it into his mouth and swallowed it one go.
Everyone exploded in cheers and hollers as he slammed the glass down.
“Oh, yeah!” He gasped triumphantly, giving one of his pals a high-five. This bar wasn’t somewhere to take your mom to, but other wheelchair-bound vets also happened to frequent the establishment.
Alfred found himself staring into space as his body worked through the alcohol he just downed. What did catch his attention was an unfolding argument between a man and a woman. The guy was probably around six feet, heavy-weight, and capable of folding his ass without trying. But the girl? She had no chance of standing up against him.
That wouldn’t have been a problem if he didn’t smack her upside her face. People looked away.
He didn’t.
He craned his head to the side as he watched on.
He should’ve turned a blind eye to it. Hell, he was the last person in the world who should be looking for trouble. But Alfred was obedient. There was always a voice in his head that told him what to do, and currently, it was getting him to roll towards the son of a bitch. Once he got close enough, he launched onto him and landed a hard punch square across his face.
All he ever wanted in his sorry-ass life was something worth fighting for.
Almost immediately, he ended up getting his ass beat instead. He was kicked out of the bar not long after, but ‘tossed’ was the more accurate word.
Landing into a murky puddle with a splash, he rolled onto his back to embrace the light drizzle of rain. His wheelchair crashed into the spot next to him. He cringed at the heavy clatter that sounded. If it was broken, he’d have to break into his savings again.
But he’d reached the point of not caring.
“I hope you realize you’ve just lost yourself a customer!” He shouted, still in a craze from the fight. Alfred may have been bruised and bloodied, but his spunk never left. Arms wide and eyes reflecting the expanse of the gray sky, he laughed airily as his body absorbed the shit water of the city.
“Candy-ass bitch.”
He collapsed and let his head fall back.
Just when he thought he’d take a nap on the cold, wet ground, he picked up on two shadows looming over him through his eyelids.
“Can’t a guy get some privacy around here?” Alfred murmured, opening his eyes to see two faces staring down at him. Both men donned clean black suits and ties. If aliens weren’t already common knowledge, he’d wonder if this was his forgettable experience with the Men in Black—their features were unremarkable and blandly threatening.
“Are you Alfred Jones?”
“One and only.”
One of them unfolded their wallet to show their I.D.
“It’s about your brother.”
What was disguised as the darkest moment in his life was an opportunity to find the light again.
The subtle stench of burning flesh and ash lingered in the crematorium. To think his baby brother, his only family left in the world, was about to add to that left a sour flavor in his mouth. But he was too numb to let it deepen into anything else. Life wasn’t fair. And life did what life was best at doing. Taking.
The strong prey on the weak. A guy with a gun ended his journey for the paper in his wallet.
“Jesus, Matt.” He whispered, looking over his still body with a pained expression. “Look at you.”
If one of them was to kick the bucket first, Alfred always bet that it would be his. But here he was, staring at his brother’s pale corpse like some kind of sick joke. And he was the punchline. He couldn’t even get the peace of mind of passing before him as a paraplegic bum with no future.
“Your brother represented a significant investment,” One of them began. “We’d like to talk to you about taking over his contract.” Alfred couldn’t listen to the drone of their voices. They meant business. All he wanted to do was mourn for a day. Watch the cardboard coffin melt into nothing but ash.
But beggars couldn’t be choosers, and he’d been eating scraps for the longest time.
“Since your genome is identical to his, you could step into his shoes,” The other continued, giving a nonchalant shrug. “So to speak.”
“It’ll be a fresh start on a new world.”
“And the pay is good.”
“Very good.”
Alfred (V.O)
Matt was the scientist, not me.
He was the one who wanted to get shot light-years out into space to find the answers. Me—I was just another dumb grunt getting sent someplace I was gonna regret.
All he could remember before going under was his brother’s cardboard coffin being rolled into the furnace. When he finally came to, he was in his personal rendition of a coffin. A metal one that locked him inside icy-blue darkness. Tiny droplets of his own sweat floated over his eyes.
He licked his dry lips as he focused on each individual blob. A heart monitor beeped on faintly. He was still alive, but barely. Alfred thought he had his fair share of nausea. Impending doom. But this? This was something else. Rolling his head back to peer outside a tiny window, he pushed himself out of his chamber like he’d come back to life in a morgue.
Alfred (V.O)
In cyro, you don’t dream at all.
It doesn’t feel like six years.
More like a fifth of a tequila and an ass-kicking.
When he emerged into a larger chamber, still strapped to his bed like a stretcher, he blinked furiously at the sight of med-techs floating around. So this was the famous ‘zero-g’ he’d been hearing about. In this multi-tiered cyro vault, people were emerging from their capsules, one by one.
One of the med-techs floated on top of him.
“Are we there yet?” Alfred croaked out hoarsely.
They patted his shoulder.
“Yeah. We’re there, sunshine.”
He unstrapped himself and pulled his way to his locker. He was flying. And it was easier than being on wheels. While he opened his locker, a loud, instructive voice announced something in prominent echoes in the chamber.
“You’ve been in cyro for five years, nine months, and twenty-two days. You will be hungry. You will be weak. If you feel nauseous, please use the sacks provided for your convenience...”
Alfred swung open the metal door to find exactly that. “... The staff thanks you in advance.”
In front of the interstellar spacecraft he was aboard was a ginormous gas planet, Polyphemus. It boasted mesmerizing swirls and spots like Jupiter, and it also happened to be ringed with dozens of moons. But the largest moon didn’t look like a moon at all. Instead, it looked strangely similar to Earth. It was called the ‘Blue moon’ from the vast, navy oceans and rich greenery that covered the surface.
Alfred (V.O)
Up ahead was Pandora.
You grew up hearing about it, but I never figured I’d be going there.
This wasn’t the ship that landed—there were smaller shuttles to send scores of men and women down onto a second Earth. When he boarded one, he was already getting weird looks from his soon-to-be colleagues. But he was used to it. Why send a cripple on a space voyage that would be so physically demanding?
Alfred could ask the same question.
The shuttle’s thrusters fired away, zooming across the sky. It flew by massive cliffs and towering mesas carpeted in rainforest. Thick scarves of cloud swirled around the tops. It was a pristine landscape untouched by man. And the trees—God, were they some big-ass trees. Redwoods were hard enough to believe in, so Alfred had another thing coming.
The bark wasn’t red, let alone brown, either.
It was all cyan. A shade so bluish-green, one had to wonder if their eyes were deceiving them.
“Exo-packs on! Let’s go! Exo-packs on!” The crew chief bellowed in the aisle. The passengers, all wearing tight T-shirts and cargo pants, scrambled to attach their breathing gear. Alfred glanced around in uncertainty, never having used one of these masks. “Remember, people. You lose that mask, you’re unconscious in twenty seconds, you’re dead in four minutes. Let nobody be dead today!”
He finally managed to attach the facepiece out of pure adrenaline. It was a clear covering meant for filtering out the toxins in the air.
“Looks very bad on my report.”
The pilots in the cockpit spoke with a broadcasting voice into their radio.
“Hell’s Gate tower. This is TAV 1-6 on approach. Crossing outer marker. Mine is in sight.”
The mine in question was no pretty thing.
There were two drill sites that dug deep into the Earth, each the size of a crater. The surrounding ground was still covered with trees and shrubbery, but without the green, it was nothing but dry and dead dirt. A road in the center was raised to support huge dozers the size of apartment complexes.
The shuttle hovered over a compound, blasting out air in a hundred-meter radius. Once it landed, the crew chief cleared their throat to keep barking.
“Harnesses off, get your packs! Put it together. Let’s go, let’s go!” Everybody unbuckled themselves and slipped on their duffel bags. While they lined up in a neat file towards the exit, the chief marched down the aisle. “When that ramp comes down, go directly into the base. Do not stop! Go straight inside, wait for my mark!” The ramp lowered with a hydraulic whine.
Everyone squinted.
The light was blinding after sitting in a dim metal box. Alfred straightened his back and leaned to the side to get a better look. It didn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary—an upsized military base at best. But the human activity here was the last thing to be impressed by. Here on Pandora, gunships weren’t the only things flying around out there.
Alfred (V.O)
There’s no such thing as an ex-marine.
You may be out, but you never lose the attitude.
The company jogged out of the ship. While wearing camo and stoic faces, they beat their strong legs against the ground and made their way to base. Supervising sec-ops troopers showed laid-back smiles upon seeing their arrival.
“Well, well, ladies. Look at all that fresh meat!”
Alfred was still inside the shuttle. He took his sweet time, unfolding his wheelchair to pull himself onto it laboriously. Then, he threw on his duffel bag like a backpack. As he rolled himself down the aisle, the chief turned to him with a shake of the head.
“Let’s go, special case. Do not make me wait for you!” They shouted, earning a wary gaze from said ‘special case’. Alfred figured the name and its derivatives needed a little more getting used to on his end. This thought would ring particularly true as he received a very warm welcome.
“Yo, check this out, man. Meals on wheels.” A trooper caught sight of him and jeered. Another turned back and scoffed, visibly amused.
“Oh, man. That is just wrong.”
He’d seen loads leave this place in a wheelchair. He’d never seen someone show up in one.
Fortunately, Alfred was nowhere near earshot to pick up on those comments. He was much too absorbed with the familiar and alien surroundings. Heavy-duty tanks rolled by, helicopters flew past, and men in huge exoskeleton war machines stomped by.
Back on Earth, these guys were army dogs. Marines. Fighting for freedom. But out here, they’re just hired guns. Taking the money, working for the company.
Alfred slowed to a stop to let a tractor past.
As its monstrous wheels rolled by, he couldn’t help noticing several pikes protruding out of them. Numerous arrows with bright pink, purple, and green feathered tips were sticking to the tires. The Neolithic weapons were jarring amidst the advanced technology they skewered into.
But they were huge, like meter-long javelins.
And that was with half the length impaled into the tires. He wasn’t sure if he should be impressed or frightened.
Must be the natives, Alfred pondered. He didn’t know anything about them, save for their existence, so he was a little intimidated by the idea of stepping onto their turf. They were intelligent beings, and they were out there, beyond the fence. And it didn’t look like they were taking lightly to human company.
“You are not in Kansas anymore...” The foreboding voice began from the balcony. In front of rows and rows of new recruits—hundreds of them—a man turned around, showing their rugged features. A scar resembling claw-marks ran from their scalp to their jaw. He paced down the aisle and stopped, stance wide. “You are on Pandora, ladies and gentlemen. Respect that fact every second of every day.”
Alfred rolled into the cafeteria and watched on.
Nobody could mistake that dignified colonel for another. Colonel Miles Quaritch. Quaritch pointed out the window towards the dark treeline.
“Out beyond that fence, every living thing that crawls, flies, or squats in the mud wants to kill you and eat your eyes for jujubes.”
The room fell deathly silent.
“We have an indigenous population of humanoids called the Na’vi. They’re fond of arrows dipped in a neurotoxin which can stop your heart in one minute.” The solid faces of miners, Cat-machine drivers, engineers, and geologists watched on as they took that in. Alfred was one of those faces. It was surreal to think he had a close encounter with those things.
“And they have bones reinforced with naturally occurring carbon fiber. They are very hard to kill.”
Alfred rolled closer in until he was right in front of the Colonel, who immediately laid eyes on him.
“As head of security, it’s my job to keep you alive.”
He paced back to the balcony like a panther.
“I will not succeed,” Quaritch continued, pausing for effect. As a greenhorn himself, Alfred could feel the anxiety trickling down everybody’s skin. That was if it wasn’t just him. “Not with all of you. If you wish to survive, you need to cultivate a strong mental attitude. You’ve got to obey the rules. Pandora rules.”
People of all kinds meshed together in the metal halls. They connected everything in the compound, from bio labs bustling with science majors to hangars housing the latest planes and amp suits. Everybody had a place to go. Alfred was just rolling down the length of it, hoping for the best.
“Excuse me, excuse me—” He never thought to answer the frantic calls. It was only until someone came up behind him did he look over his shoulder.
The guy was breathless from stumbling under his overflowing duffel bag. He was a lanky fellow, and the button-down he wore was hanging off him like a flag. “—are you Matt’s brother? Alfred, if I remembered correctly. You look just like him!”
Alfred shot him a wary look.
“Sorry,” The stranger held out a hand. He had short, choppy blonde hair framing a roundish face. “Arthur Kirkland. I went through Avatar training with him.”
“Right,” Alfred shook his hand awkwardly. “Nice to meet you, I guess.” He continued rolling down the hall. It didn’t seem like he was eager to keep the conversation going, which was perfectly understandable. So, Arthur never beat around the bush to get straight into what they came here to do.
They entered a lab through a pair of automatic glass doors. When they opened, they let out a soft hiss.
“... Right, here we are,” Arthur smiled curtly at him. “The bio-lab. We’ll be spending a lot of time in here.”
They made their way to where the clone tanks were. How they glowed such a vibrant blue was almost magical—though that word wouldn’t be appropriate in this environment. Inside floated an unconscious alien body. An Avatar. Its skin was a rich cyan blue, and sprouting out its back was a long, lemur-like tail. As Alfred stared at his own, hypnotized, he let this out in an impressed laugh.
“Damn! They got big.”
That thing had to be around ten feet.
“Yeah, they fully mature on the flight out.” Arthur chuckled, just as amazed, if not more. He turned to the supervising scientist briefly—he donned a crisp white lab coat and a pair of rectangular glasses. Paired with that was a clean-cut black hairdo with sharp, cheek-length sidelocks. “Seems like the proprioceptive sims worked pretty well.”
Alfred listened intently, even if he had no idea what those words meant.
“Yeah, they’ve got great muscle tone. It’ll take us a few hours to get them decanted, but you guys can take them out tomorrow,” The scientist beamed, showing a thumbs-up. That had Arthur grinning with a fierce kind of excitement. Hoping to share the buzz with the newcomer, the man in the lab coat pointed to the tank adjacent. “There’s yours.”
While the two introduced themselves to one another, Alfred wordlessly rolled to the other side of the tank. The deep thumping of the Avatar’s heartbeats filled his ears like a lullaby. Its sleeping face turned to him as it floated inside. Like Arthur’s Avatar, his had feline ears and a long feral snout. But its features made for a spitting image of his brother.
“Looks like him,” Alfred whispered, craning his head to the side. His cerulean eyes reflected the icy-blue glow of the tank, illuminated with sheer awe and wonder. To think a bum like him could even fathom such a sacred experience felt like a sin in of itself.
“No,” Arthur leaned down beside. “Looks like you.”
“This is your avatar now, Alfred.”
“And the concept is that every driver is matched to his own avatar, so their nervous systems are in tune. Or something.” Alfred spoke into a stereo cam for his first-ever video log in the compound. “Which is why they offered me this gig, ‘cause I can link with Matt’s avatar, which is insanely expensive.” His brows furrowed together for a moment. Then, he looked off-camera to where Arthur and Kiku were standing as they worked off a holographic screen.
“Hey, is this right?” He asked. “I just say whatever I want into these video logs?”
“Yeah. You have to get into the habit of documenting everything--what you see, what you feel--it’s all part of the science—” Arthur gestured with his hands.
Kiku held up an index finger.
“Good science is good observation.”
“—plus, it’ll keep you sane for the next six years.”
“Phew,” Alfred blew out his cheeks and hung his head. Six years, huh? It was a decent chunk out of anybody’s lifespan, but considering the twelve-year commute here and back, it was relatively short. Giving his nape a rub, he sat up straight again. “Alright, so, here I am, doing science.”
The marine looked around the lab.
“I guess I’m something of a scientist myself, now.”
Doctor Grace Augustine, the head of the Avatar program, was not happy meeting Matt’s replacement for the next six years. Getting out of her unit in the link room, a machine that connected her to her avatar, with a migraine added to this full-blown headache. She could express enthusiasm to Arthur and Kiku as fellow biologists, but she couldn’t welcome a trigger-happy marine into her esteemed band of researchers. And in an Avatar body, no less.
“I don’t need you,” She spoke firmly to Alfred, who could only return the animosity with a glower of his own. “I need your brother. You know, the PhD who trained three years for this mission?”
“Well, he’s dead,” Alfred thinned his lips. His steely look never faltered as he added this bitterly.
“I know it’s a major inconvenience to everyone, but shit happens.”
Grace sighed. She’d been made privy to the news already, but she was in a tight spot. She needed an experienced scientist, not another army dog whose presence infested the compound with the stench of sweat and gunsmoke, and not to mention, the testosterone-induced urge to whip out their guns for everything. There were just as many docile creatures as there were aggressive ones in the Pandoran wilderness.
“How much lab training have you had?”
“I dissected a frog, once.” He shrugged.
“You see? You see? They’re intentionally screwing with us. I’m going to Selfridge.” She stormed out of the link room, much to Kiku’s dismay. He scrambled after her in a frenzy.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea--”
“No man, this is such bullshit!” Grace turned around briefly but kept marching. “I’m gonna kick his corporate butt. He has no business sticking his nose in my department.” Kiku dug his hands through his hair as he walked up to Alfred. Everything was coming along swimmingly.
“Here tomorrow, 0800. Try and use big words.”
Grace made long strides into the intelligence operations center. It was just like any other air traffic control tower, but with mini-golf mats on the ground. A short and narrowly-framed guy in a dress shirt was playing around with a new putter.
“Parker, you know, I used to think it was benign neglect,” She began, turning towards him with a frown. “But now I see that you’re intentionally screwing me.”
“Grace, you know, I enjoy our little talks.” Selfridge held the putter with two hands as he focused on the ball between his feet. He hit it gently. Before the ball could make it inside, the doctor kicked the cup aside and folded her arms.
“Oops,” Grace held her arms behind her back. He stared at her, disgruntled. Her chin-length ginger curls moved along with her head as she spoke heatedly. “I need a researcher. Not some jarhead dropout.”
“Well, actually, I thought we got lucky with him.” The woman shot him a weird look as he sauntered forward to retrieve the ball.
“Lucky?”
“Yeah.”
“How is this in any way lucky?”
“Lucky your guy had a twin brother, and lucky that brother wasn’t some oral hygienist or something. A marine we can use.” Selfridge never spared her a glance as he walked up to an assistant, handing her the ball and putter. “I’m assigning him to your team as security escort.” Grace followed him with a shake of the head, pointing at the floor in frustration for emphasis.
“The last thing I need is another trigger-happy moron out there!”
He approached a holographic map and clicked around with the controls.
“Look, look, you’re supposed to be winning the hearts and minds of the natives. Isn’t that the whole point of your little puppet show?” The man may not have been big, but his eager ruthlessness made up for that lacking department. “If you look like them and you talk like them, they’ll start trusting us. We build them a school, we teach them English, but after what, how many years?”
Selfridge turned to the exasperated doctor with a snappy attitude of his own.
“Relations with the indigenous are only getting worse.”
Grace nodded before adding this, point-blank.
“Yeah, that tends to happen when you use machine guns on them.”
“Right. Come here,” He beckoned her to follow with a curl of his index finger. Marching quickly to his office, he approached a magnetic display with a metallic, shimmering rock floating above it. He picked that up and held it close to his face. “This is why we’re here. Because this little gray rock sells for twenty million a kilo. That’s the only reason. It’s what pays for the whole party.”
You could never speak to someone like Selfridge unless you had ‘million’ or ‘billion’ in your sentences. Maybe if the death toll surged up to those numbers, he could finally wonder what he was doing wrong.
“It’s what pays for your science,” He gestured around furiously. Placing the rock back on the magnetic display, he pulled a chair back to sit down on it. “Comprendo? Now, those savages are threatening our whole operation, we’re on the brink of war, and you’re supposed to be finding a diplomatic solution,”
Grace could only stand in defeated silence.
“So use what you’ve got, and get me some results.”