That Holiday Feeling

Even on Pandora, you could still get popcorn.

Not that often mind you. Popcorn came from corn. Corn wasn't grown here. Lots of other stuff was grown here, ranging from potatoes, to sanagia, to even hybrids between Terran and Pandoran foodstuffs. Then there were meat products – ninety percent of them were synthetic. Only ten percent was real, and that was shipped over from Earth. And of that ten percent, about three percent found its way into the bellies of grunts like Trudy Chacon. The remaining seven was reserved for the big boys. No doubt Quaritch ate steak – certainly he was big enough. But Selfridge? Little weasel was as skinny as ever. Trudy didn't think of golf as being a physically demanding sport, but what would she know? When you grew up in one of Earth's megacities, golf wasn't a luxury you had access to.

Which, she wouldn't have minded of course. She could live without golf. She could live without steak. She could even live without potatoes. But here, on this day (December 24th, 2153), in this place (Hell's Gate, Pandora, Polyphemus, Alpha Centauri system), there was one thing she couldn't live without right now.

"What do you mean you've got no popcorn left?!"

Popcorn.

"Mean what the sign says luv." The guard nodded towards the dispenser. "Read the sign."

NO POPCORN LEFT

She wanted popcorn.

"This is a travesty y'know," Trudy said.

She needed popcorn.

"An absolute travesty."

The desk jockey shrugged.

"I mean, we're working our arses off here, the least Earth could do is send us some bloody popcorn for Christmas Eve."

"Well, I'll be sure to pass that on to Mister Selfirdge," said the guard. "And I'm sure he'll pass that on to home. Why, he'll even use our quantum entanglement array to carry out real-time communication with home."

Trudy frowned. "Don't need to be a smartarse," she murmured.

"And then, on the next ISV, they'll stuff it full of popcorn. So much popcorn that all the base will be fed. So much that we'll even have enough for the natives and they'll find they love popcorn, and find they can't live without popcorn, and all the tensions between us will be solved."

Trudy doubted that would happen.

"And that'll only take five years for that ISV to arrive," the guard said. "But in the meantime, read the bloody sign and just accept that we have no bloody popcorn."

Trudy opened her mouth to say something.

"And we don't have any Jaffas either."

Trudy closed it. Jackass.

"I mean, we do have-"

"Forget it," Trudy said. "I'll just head in."

"Sure," said the guard. He drew out his data pad and began playing some kind of card game on it. "You do that."

With a sign, Trudy walked into the cine-room. Past the schedule over what films would be playing over the next month, and past the big sign saying what movie would be playing tonight. To no surprise at all, she found the place packed – miners, SecOps, administrators, even a few of the eggheads. Apparently those who did science could still enjoy science fiction.

And they had popcorn, because of course they did. Bastards. So not only did she have to find a seat, but she had to endure the sight and smells of popcorn in the knowledge that it would never be hers. Because like this planet, fate was a bitch.

"Hey, Chacon."

And Wainfleet was a bastard. Nevertheless, she forced a smile and looked over at the twat.

"Saved a seat for you." He patted the seat that was between him and Fike, content in the knowledge that no sane person on this base would ever sit between them.

"Nah, I'm good."

"Come on," Wainfleet called out. He waved his box of popcorn at her. "Got popcorn for you."

"Got lots of stuff for you," Fike added.

Trudy, even as she smiled, nevertheless clenched her fist. She didn't want to take this. She shouldn't have to take it. She shouldn't be risking her arse in her bird running constant recon in addition to cargo and science runs because the people before her had fucked up so royally. She shouldn't have to come here and see people like Wainfleet smirk at her – arseholes that had been all too happy to mess up whatever peace could have existed between the RDA and na'vi, before launching them into war with the Tipani, and now this cold war that existed. And she should have been able to get some bloody popcorn and-

"Trudy."

She swivelled her head round to the source of the voice.

"Saved you a seat."

She doubted that he'd done any such thing, but she quickly headed over to the centre of row H, ignoring the catcalls of Tweedledee Dumb and Tweedledee Dumber. Squeezing past two miners, one administrator, and one egghead who was going over a research paper (and who was very angry that Trudy trod on her toe), she took a seat next to Ryder.

"Thanks," she said.

He nodded and offered her his box. "Want some-"

Trudy grabbed a handful and shoved it in. "Thanks," she said, even as it was still in her mouth.

"Um, sure." Ryder said. "No problem."

A lie, and Trudy got the hint. No more popcorn. Well, maybe some more popcorn when the movie started playing and Ryder was too enraptured in the pretty pretty lights. Because that's why people watched movies like this? Star Wars? Episode 50 to be exact.

"How you holding up?" Ryder asked.

"Me? Oh, fine. You?"

The sergeant shrugged. "Fine. Least as fine as can be expected."

"Y'know, there's a saying about low expectations somewhere."

"Low expectations, low disappointment?"

It wasn't the saying, but Trudy shrugged and conceded the point. She knew Ryder. And after the Tipani, after his Avatar, after Falco, after Kendra…she wouldn't push that point or any other. After all, not only had he "saved" her a seat, but…

"Want some more?"

She took more of the popcorn. However damaged "Able" Ryder might be, apparently he had enough human in him to get that she really, really, really wanted some damn popcorn.

Oh God this is good. It took all her willpower not to take a third helping, so instead, she cast her mind to potential conversations. Because while the cineroom was mercifully free from ads, it wasn't free from waiting for it to fill up. And since there were a few seats left, and since everyone wanted to see Episode 50, the techies wanted to make the most of this showing.

"So…" Trudy began. Ryder looked at her. "You…like sci-fi much?"

Ryder shrugged. "I guess."

"So you like Star Wars."

"Star Wars isn't sci-fi. It's space fantasy."

"But it's got starships and lasers and-"

"And it's got no relation to the present day, and it uses tropes that are far more in keeping with the fantasy genre. Just because the technology is more advanced than what we have in the present day, that doesn't make it sci-fi."

Trudy decided to concede the point. There was no arguing with nerds. She figured that for a film series that had started in the 1970s, and was still going on well into the 2150s, it would be fair to call it sci-fi because so far humanity had failed to catch up with the technology in it, but hey, what did she know? Only that the plots were being recycled, that Episode XXXV had been the first to be shot on Mars, and that desert planets were far more common than forest or jungle planets now, because there was so much more desert on Earth. Also that Episode XXVII had been pretty weird, but no-one liked to talk about XXVII, any more than they liked to talk about Episode XLII. Also, Disney had finally dropped the Roman numerals and gone with Hindu-Arabic ones, because no-one wanted to say "Episode "Ell."

She reached more popcorn.

"No," said Ryder, swatting her hand away.

"Geez," Trudy said. "Just asking."

"You didn't ask."

"Ah, good point." She looked at Ryder. "So…you think it's fair?" she asked.

"Is what fair?"

"Like, Earth gets Star Wars four years ahead of us. We've got to wait four years for a lightspeed transmission to get here."

"That's how all our movies work."

"Yeah, but we could use the quantum array and-"

"No," Ryder said.

"Oh. Okay. But I mean, they come out every other year on Earth now, and it's practically a rite of passage, and-"

"Film's starting."

"Oh."

Ryder was right – the lights were dimming. Sure enough blue text would be telling her about what happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Considering how many films were in the series now, not to mention how far ahead they were in the timeline, Trudy was surprised it was still "a long time ago" rather than "not too long ago," but hey, what did she know? She was just the proverbial stormtrooper shooting proverbial ewoks. Or at least soon would be.

There was a reason why people watched Star Wars here, she reflected. It was the same reason they did on Earth. Two to three hours of escapism before facing up to just how bad the real world actually was. Maybe that was why the na'vi didn't watch these films. Because maybe they couldn't afford escapism when "sky people" were coming here all the time, tearing a giant hole in the ground in the process. Or maybe…

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

Or maybe it was time for more popcorn. She reached out her hand-

"No," Ryder whispered, slapping her hand.

Or maybe not. Maybe she should just try to enjoy "Episode Ell," and wait for whatever MCU film was beamed to them in 2154.

Like, they'd still be here for that, right?

A/N

Idea for this came when it was all but stated that Disney effectively plans to rotate between Star Wars and Avatar films in the December period over the next half decade or so. So...drabbled this up. Because reasons.