I don't put in Author's Notes often, but I just wanted to give a big "thank you!" to everyone who has reviewed so far. Every one means a lot to me! Also, eat your veggies.

Or I will find you.

Jay Reynolds slid his plate down the cafeteria line, eying the contents behind the sneeze guard. There wasn't much to choose from; you'd have fruits grown from the garden outside, maybe hexapede burgers if one of the guards got a lucky shot.

Hell's Gate had been operating more or less on its own for the last twenty years, and only three ISVs had arrived since the turn of the century. It's vast metal expanse dominated the jungle around it, its gray skyscrapers serving as landmarks that could be seen for miles around.

Jay was born on Pandora, the result of two lonely security guards who realized that they weren't going home. In fact, he was the first person born on Pandora, as the PMC borrowed the strict "no fraternization" policy from its predecessor, the RDA. That kind of fell apart when Hell's Gate got the message that half of Earth was basically kaput.

Life in the colony wasn't so bad, though. It was boring as sin, and most of his time was spent repairing things around the base that had broken down, but hey, it was home. The natives didn't bother them either, as they'd salvaged all the mining equipment and broken it down years ago. The avatars still interacted with the natives to keep them happy.

Jay settled on the last slab of hexapede meat and the end of the line and plopped it onto his plate, pulling his tray away from the line and finding a seat to eat at.

The only available seats nearby was near the window. Jay shrugged, and walked over, taking his seat next to the glass outlook. As he sat down, he could faintly hear the low whirr of a couple of Samsons, a few that the base didn't break down for parts or brought by the ISVs. Jay brought up the burger to his face, ready to dig in.

"Hey, Junior. How's it going?" said a voice behind him. Jay turned around, still holding his meal. It was Phil, second human born on Pandora, by three days.

"Oh, hey." replied Jay, turning back and taking a bit out of his burger. He could see why the natives hunted the deer-like animal, shit was delcious.

Phil took the seat next to him, sliding his tray next to his.

"You heard about one of ISVs coming hear pretty soon, huh?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, they apparently have something really important on board." Jay remembered the last two times the starships would arrive; the whole base would gather outside to see one of the shuttles land, carrying refugees from the dying Earth. Military surplus equipment would follow, which was usually shoved in one of the warehouses or put through the stereolithography plant.

An alarm rang out through the base, the emergency lights bathing the entire cafeteria in red as the members of Hell's Gate started fumbling for their emergency rebreathers, thinking there was a atmospheric breach. After a few seconds, a voice echoed over the intercom while the klaxons still whined.

"Attention everyone! There is not a containment breach!" it explained, and the emergency lights cut off a few moments later.

"Sorry guys; a Sturmbeest hit one against one of the walls and dented it a bit."

A wave of annoyed groans and sighs washed over the cafeteria as the colonists resumed eating their lunch.

Phil shook his head. "Friggin' hate those things."

Jay chuckled. "Well, you gotta understand. The Sturmbeest is a profoundly stupid animal. Even the Na'vi think so. Why you think they use 'em as cattle?"

Phil picked up the purple fruit he had on his plate, taking a huge chunk out of it in one crunch. "Well," he said, mouth full, "I mean, at least a Hammerhead knows when to stop, and the banshees stopped poking their noses around here years ago."

He was right; for some strange reason, the wildlife had stopped attacking Hell's Gate en masse some time ago. One of the science team speculated that Eywa, a sort of hive mind for the entire planet, deemed Hell's Gate like a benign tumor, leaving the humans alone if they left the rest of the forest alone.

"You know what I hate? Thanators. Those things are evil." said Jay, pointing his finger to the table to emphasis evil.

"Yeah they are." said one of the Hell's Gate members sitting opposite to them, one of the guards sent from the last ISV.

Phil grinned. "I love how the natives treat it. 'Oh, to avoid viperwolves, you do this. If you want to avoid a Leo, you do this. Oh, a Thanator's after you? Nope, you're pretty screwed.' It's hilarious."

"Attention Extrasolar Colony 01."

Everyone in the cafeteria whipped their heads around towards the intercom. Nobody ever called Hell's Gate by its official name anymore, not since...

"This is Captain Reeves of the ISV Columbia. We are currently...an estimated three days until we reach orbit around Pandora."

The intercom went deathly silent, and so did the cafeteria. It took a few moments for the starship's hail to sink in as the humans begin excitedly talking amongst themselves. The voice that had apologized for the false alarm crackled over the PA system.

"That was the ISV Captain. They're a little early, people, I know. Everyone knows what to do!" and with that, everyone, Jay included, scrambled to prepare for the arrival of the starship.

At that moment, millions of miles away, Captain Reeves stared at the computer screen which counted down their time until arrival. One of the crew members floated up next to the captain, his brow furrowed.

"Don't you think we should have told them about the, uh, package?" he said, and tapped on one of the control panels to get a readout of the star they were approaching.

"It's classified."

"Until three days from now." the crew member replied, chuckling. He typed in a few words on a nearby keyboard and the readouts for their classified cargo came up, with a holographic display of an avatar. "Let's hope the natives are willing to donate a few DNA samples."

"He's been in there since yesterday." Phil said, staring at the science lab from the cafeteria interior. The ISV, as they had said, had arrived three days after their announcement and sent two shuttles down, carrying new personnel and equipment.

The captain of the ISV also went down with one of the shuttles, and demanded he speak with the avatar team. They sent out a signal to any of the avatars living in the general area, and within a few hours a few banshees appeared over the base, landing near the runway. After several of the avatars showed up, they all went inside the science lab, the captain leading the way.

"Bad news, maybe?" suggested Jay. He knew growing up that Earth was his homeworld, albeit one that wasn't a very pleasant place to live, and had been ravaged by a extremely contagious disease a few decades ago. Maybe there was another outbreak?

"Whatever it is, he's sure taking his sweet time."

Jay nodded, and Phil cocked an eyebrow.

"Don't you find it weird, though." he said, turning to Jay, "that they didn't bring any avatar drivers with them? I mean, last time they had ten with them."

"Maybe they ran out of money to make 'em?" Jay replied, returning to his lunch.

Phil didn't say anything, and returned to staring at the science lab. They'd tried asking old administrator of the base, Vince, if he knew anything, and he just shrugged and told them the science team never told him anything the first place; why would they start now?

"Guys!" cried a voice from the entrance of the cafeteria. It was one of the security team, and he was panting heavily.

He took a few steps forward, gasping for air as he took off his exopack. "Guys...the shuttles landed again. You're gonna want to see this!" he said, and then slipped his exopack back on and ran out of the cafeteria.

"I got nothing better to do." Phil muttered as he stood up from the table and made his way toward the exit, Jay following.

The shuttles were sitting in the massive runway of Hell's Gate, ramps deployed. What the crew from the ISV were unloading proved very interesting for the crowd gathered outside.

They were pushing off empty avatar tanks, by the dozen. Jay had seen pictures of them before, from an old book about the RDA and the AVTR program. Following that tanks were large containers with the biohazard symbol slapped on the side, pushed off by a few of the AMP suit pilots that had come with the ISV.

"Well, that just raises more questions." said Phil, arms crossed. He waved at one of the AMP suit pilots, trying to get her attention. "Hey! What's all this stuff for?"

The pilot ignored him, concentrating on her task of gently pushing off the glass tanks onto the tarmac.

"It's for us." said a voice behind them. The crowd turned to see one of the avatars, Dr. Mike, walking from the direction of the science lab, smiling. He stopped just short of the crowd, looking down on the humans. "It's for all of us."

Several 'huh?'s and 'what?'s made there way throughout the crowd.

"Avatars cost a lot of money to make," he continued, "used to cost almost half a billion. Some guys back figured out a way to cut that cost by a factor of 100."

"Cheap avatars?" Jay said, tilting his head.

"Mhm. Those tanks? They'll be for growing the avatars on-base. It'll take a while, but the plan is to have at least half the base equipped with avatars for base-building in ten years."

"Why? We're doing just fine!"

Dr. Mike leaned towards the humans. "Colonists. There's a huge colonization drive back on Earth. Most of them are moving to Mars or Venus, but there's a few headed here."

Jake frowned. "How much is 'a few'?"

The avatar's ears went back and he broke out a nervous smile. "About ten thousand?"

There were problems with the new, cheaper avatars.

Problem #1: Due to the growth accelerates used, the avatars would fail to develop properly four times out of five. That was the reason they had brought so many tanks.

Problem #2: Apparently, these avatars weren't quite as...sophisticated. When a driver linked up to the new avatars, their human brain would ossify, that is, turn to bone tissue. The transfer was permanent.

Obviously, this didn't sit well with many of the Hell's Gate personnel who rather liked being human. So, they settled who'd go first in the most reasonable way possible.

They played the lottery.

They all wrote their names down on a piece of paper and placed it into a box, and several names would be taken out to determine who'd have their avatars grown and used first. Jay's name was the first taken out, and he defaulted into the most spectacular facepalm he could muster.

"I'm going to look like a goddamn blue cat." he groaned.

"You're sure taking this well." said one of grunts from behind the glass wall to the medical room. A few of Jay's friends were allowed inside the AVTR compound, as a sort-of sending off. As Jay had "volunteered" to undergo the process, he couldn't help but feel like some otherwordly force wanted him to be miserable.

"You know what? I don't care anymore." he replied as one of the science team hooked up and attached a long metal cord to his head, and then another. And another. Pretty soon, it looked like an octopus was sitting in his air, trying to eat his skull.

He looked over to see them doing the same with his avatar, which was laying in the adjacent medical room. It had taken only three years to grow it, and three years pass by quickly when you know you're technically going to die. One of the AVTR team came over the intercom.

"Is the avatar hooked up? Let's see, node three and four look good...yeah. I think we're ready. You ready, Jay?"

"As I'll ever be."

"Right. Starting transfer in three. Two. One."

Jay had always heard about the transfer of the human mind to an avatar's, and what it was like. It was usually described a bright tunnel of colors, beautiful and thrilling. All Jay got was a horrible, painful shock that ran through nervous system and an explosion to white.

He woke up to see an elderly avatar shining a light into his eyes, surrounded by several human which were jotting down notes as he regained consciousness. Even though he was half-delirious, he could make out the words 'Dr. Neely' on the name tag of the avatar.

"Welcome to The Club." said Dr. Neely, smiling.