Pandora: Genesis

I gratefully acknowledge one of the foremost creative geniuses of our times, James Cameron, for conceiving the lush moon Pandora and the "noble savages," the Na'vi, that inhabit it. This story uses the setting and language he created for his movie, Avatar. I have not received any money for my work based on Avatar. If I could get paid by the hour for these stories, I would retire and spend all my time dancing and writing in comfort.

This story contains all original characters and situations, giving my thoughts on how the moon Pandora became the home of the Na'vi as seen in the movie.

Chapter Seven: Subversives

As the break begins, Loreyu and a male settler walk to the end table.

"I thought I better introduce myself to my future husband!" Loreyu laughs as she stops in front of Toruk. "I'm called Loreyu, and was a history teacher in my previous life. Got my leadership skills by herding teenagers every day. With me is my former pupil, Palulukan." She looks up at the large man beside her. "That is how your new name is pronounced?"

He looks down at her. "I think so. I ran a warehouse, but love to hunt and fish. I'm the outdoors type. Also like to read military history, something I learned from my favorite teacher. Guess that got me here."

"Yes, I'm sorry, I always said to look beyond the standard texts. That is not the best advice, I realize now, but I'll never get to teach a better way now." They look back at Toruk.

"Teaching teenagers is a tough job. I like history and military history, too. This place may be paradise for outdoors types like you, which I'm not. I'm called Toruk, and was a middle manager in a tech firm. Did mostly program management, meaning I directed the building of systems for customers. Just now was the first I heard about being good material for a tsahìk. Never would have guessed it, especially since I'm not very spiritual. I've been wondering what I could do here. Got here late last night, and have not had much time to think about it. Clearly, I'm the smallest man here on a world where size and strength are important. I did help the doctor with these two women. If anyone is hurt or sick or needs to talk to someone other than Sa'nok, send them to me. To my left is Seze, a professor of archeology I knew in my old life and an expert in ancient weapons, which are probably modern weapons on this moon. To my right is the freshly named Pa'liwll, the animal trainer. She is the celebrity here today." They all laugh at this unlikely description of her.

"Well, we're on our way to the food tables for refills. Let's join up after today's meeting and get acquainted."

"We need refills too. Pa'liwll needs more hot broth, on doctor's orders." She simply nods. "I haven't seen the garden yet. Let's meet out there and talk while we walk. Pa'liwll already has a date with Sa'nok, but Seze may join us if you don't mind."

Seze says "I should check in with the doctor first, but I'll catch up with you in the garden after that."

Loreyu says "Yes, ladies, please join us when you can. The garden is not that big, so just look for us. When the last meal is served, we'll come back here to eat." They stand and walk together to the food tables to get their refills.

The settlers take their seats as Sempul says "Rutxe, tivìng mikyun, ma frapo." He pauses as everyone gets situated and quiets down. "Now that introductions have been made, we must discuss the preliminary topics I'm required to cover with you. As you may have already guessed, everything here is recorded, and the videos are reviewed by my superiors, both to improve the process of establishing settlements, and also to evaluate the performance of me and my staffers." He paces while he briefly pauses again to collect his thoughts.

"This morning, you learned your first lesson. Everyone, say it."

Haltingly, some of the settlers say "The problem of any individual in the clan is a problem for the entire clan."

"You did much better this morning. Say it again, together this time."

The group says, more forcefully and more in unison, "The problem of any individual in the clan is a problem for the entire clan."

"That's getting better, but say it like you mean it."

The group practically yells "The problem of any individual in the clan is a problem for the entire clan."

"Good. We'll keep repeating this lesson until everyone gets it right, just like we'll keep checking your groin straps for hunter style. As I explained this morning, you have been ripped from your previous lives and sent out here because you are all convicted subversives. Your old lives are over. You must get over that loss so you can move forward." He pauses to let this idea sink in again.

"Your presence here is a direct result of those ancient historic events from two million standard years ago, the Time of the Great Scientists and the Great Awakening. Of course, your own actions have much more to do with you being here now, because you are convicted subversives. How did that happen?"

He walks down the row of settlers, looking into their eyes. Several keep eye contact, but most that meet his gaze look away. "All of you have been imprisoned for many days, so you have had plenty of time to think about this. But, most civilians don't understand how they get into this mess. So, let's talk about that first. The government has a database with details on everyone born in our civilization for the last two million years. Each person has a scorecard that tracks everything they have ever done. One of those scores is called your subversive score. When that score gets above a certain threshold, you are arrested as a subversive. So what goes into that score?"

Sempul returns to the center of the room and faces the settlers. "The simple answer is the government counts everything it doesn't like. Do you cost the government a lot of time and money? Toruk was a sickly child, and needed much medical care. That counted against his score. Palulukan and Pa'liwll have bad habits of getting drunk on weekends and picking fights, causing the police to get called many times. That counted against their scores. Loreyu spent all of her time in school taking care of her students, and did not take care of the weeds and trash in the yard around her house. Her picky neighbors called code enforcement all the time, and that counted against her score. But, that was not as serious as the fact that many of her students have high subversive scores. Your score goes up if many of your friends or acquaintances have higher than average scores. Get the picture? Notice that none of these are criminal violations, because criminals get handled differently and rarely become subversives. Criminals have been used for settlers, but they cause too many problems. They are not very cooperative, and everyone must be cooperative in the settlement we are making here."

"What really gets you in trouble is saying things that disagree with official government positions. Even if you do not publish dissenting views, just researching them raises your score. How does that work? As you know, each baby born in our civilization gets a cerebral implant. I got to witness placing an implant into a baby during my training, it's really amazing. As soon as you are born and the doctor decides you are medically stable, your head is put into a stereotaxis to keep it steady. A neurologist examines your brain to find the right place for the implant. The military is called, given the coordinates, and the same bubble technology that brought you here is used to place an implant into the middle of your brain. First they bubble in a little hollow ball, about the quarter the size of a brain cell. Compressed gas is bubbled into it to blow it up and push everything out of the way. Then, the tricky part. They bubble out the ball, and immediately bubble the implant into the cavity before it collapses. The implant sends out little nanobots on light fibers to plug into the necessary junctions. It cannot be cut out without killing you. Each implant contains an unique number that is broadcast whenever you must be identified. That way there is no question who you are. You cannot say you are someone else, because your implant always identifies you correctly. If your implant determines it cannot work correctly, it sends out a maintenance signal. You must go to the hospital and have it replaced immediately. If you don't, the police will track you down and see to it that it gets replaced, and that also counts against you, big time."

"In the early days of implants, their only function was identification and authentication. Over time, as computers got much more powerful, and the brain became better understood, implants were made to do more. Your implants process everything you see and hear, and report on things that could be proscribed. For example, Toruk here wrote down a still active account owned by a dead person, its address and password on a sheet of toilet paper while in prison. His implant reported it. He lost that paper in the prison infirmary just before he left. The doctor found it, and read it. The doctor's implant reported it. The doctor had the good sense to destroy it just after he figured out what it was. The investigative system looked into that account, and found many proscribed texts and images, things Toruk collected from other subversives. Needless to say, that account is empty now. If anyone ever logs into that account, it will count against their subversive score. So far, no one has used that account, so it looks like it was his personal stash. In the years I've been accessing the records of subversives, Toruk holds the record as being the youngest to make the subversive watch list, when he was nine years old. Using a stolen account is his worst offense, but he was already convicted and on his way here when it came to light, so no further legal action was taken."

"I was going to give that paper to my lawyer to see if it would help me get out of prison, but I was bubbled away before I could see him again."

"Yes, we'll talk more about this later, but since the Great Awakening, all settlements are made with convicted subversives. All Habitation Directors like myself are on the look-out for subversives with special skills, like all of you. Because of the importance and problems with settling this moon, I have a pretty high priority, and "out-bid" all other requests for you. I had to take all of you as quickly as I could arrange it, or risk losing you to another director with a higher priority. Sorry you didn't get to talk with your lawyer, but it would not have helped your case anyway." Toruk nods in response.

"So, now that we have discussed implants, we have to discuss percoms. As you grew up, your parents gave you personal communications devices, percoms for short. You used these at school to access your texts and other class work. You use them at home and at work, for routine tasks, serious legal matters, paying bills, communicating with others, and sports and entertainment. Ever since the earliest days of networked computers, everything you do is tracked. There are centralized databases that collect all of this tracking data, called logs, and process them. Everything you do on your percom changes your scores. There are government agencies that determine which actions are good and which are bad. These rules get programmed in, and every living person gets their scores updated after the rules get updated. When your subversive score crosses the violation threshold, the closest police station gets a text ordering your arrest. Since all of your transgressions are listed in the text, an investigation and trial are rather useless. You can't claim someone else did it, because your cerebral implant verified it was you using the percom to access or create the proscribed data. A little secret I can give you now is that the implant assumes everything done on a percom is being logged, and so the implant ignores most of what you do on a percom. Every time your percom needs your identity, it queries your implant, and your implant records what you're seeing on your percomm that needs your identity. These cross-logging synchronization points provide the chain of non-repudiation that prove what you are doing at all times on any percom, not just your own."

"So, it's unfortunate that you are here. Your subversive activities resulted in you being here. Over the next few days, you get to choose whether to make the most of your life, and help build a new civilization here, or choose to give up and die. My hope is that all of you decide to move forward. Everyone here needs your skills to survive, so even if you would rather die, you are needed by all your fellow settlers. The skills of each individual is needed by the entire clan. Our civilization says some skills are more important than others. That is no longer true for your clan. Without your skills, everyone else may die. The first settlement here failed because everyone in it died from illness or predators. The second settlement was practically wiped out by predators. Everyone dying has already happened, so that is not an idle threat. You need each other, all day, every day."

Author's Note: The above text was written over a year ago. Wish I published it then, because with the revelations from Edward Snowden, the former NSA system administrator, this story now seems more science fact than science fiction.

My lack of readers discouraged me from working this story any further. I really prefer working with my own characters, but it is clear what you, my audience, wants, and now I'm concentrating on the characters from the film in The End of an Era and Pandora: The Final Solution.

Here is the "raw" text, notes really, left over in my computer to give you a little hint of where this story is heading. Maybe I'll return to this story someday, at which time I'll complete this chapter and expand upon the following. Enjoy!

You know about the time of the Great Scientists. One scientist discovered the concept of space-time. Once that was understood, many groups tried to build a device to bend space-time. Such a device would revolutionize travel, as the speed of light would no longer be a hard limit. Only when another scientist decides that bending our universe takes too much energy to be practical does he try making an empty universe first. That was the key breakthrough. These empty universes are what we call bubbles today. When you bubble from home to work, you leave this universe for a very small and empty universe, and then it dumps you back into this universe at your destination, and does it instantaneously no matter how far you have traveled.

Normally, the biology group would be gone by now. When the Great Awakening led to making settlements throughout the galaxies in our cluster, the decision was made to place different species in each settlement. So, each settler has his or her brain contents copied into a new body for the species slated for a particular world. The technology to do that has existed for millenia. Our biology group has developed a new technology, biological as opposed to electromechanical, to do this transfer. They have also developed many new species designed to live here, breathing the atmosphere and eating the plants and animals, all poisonous to most living creatures from anywhere else.

The palulukan chases him through the forest. By running against trees and bushes, he can slow it down just enough that it cannot catch him. But he sees that such vegetation disappears just ahead. He is approaching a cliff. He sees a thick vine on the ground that drops over the edge. He jumps at the vine and drops down below the edge. The palulukan slows to avoid flying over the edge, but it still smells him and does not give up the chase. He drops down the vine, and sees a large cave in the face of the cliff. The palulukan is swiping at him over the edge. Part of the vine branches into the cave, and he climbs onto that branch to escape the claws and murderous gaze of the palulukan. The cave has an unusual musty odor, caused in part by droppings that cover the floor. He follows the vine far enough into the cave that he must wait for his eyes to adjust to the dark. Looking down, he is shocked to see he is directly over the largest bird-like creature he has ever seen. Even in the dim light, he can see it is red and orange, streaked through with black and purple. A toruk, its head towards the back of the cave. Looking that way, he can see another toruk, facing outwards, sitting on a nest with four small heads just peeking out from under its folded wings. Looking back, he is shocked to see the head of the palulukan peering into the gloom of the cave. He is between the two most dangerous predators known to the Na'vi, and nowhere to escape. When the toruk parents wake, they will go mad with two uninvited creatures so near their young. With no escape route visible, and death almost a certainty, a desperate plan comes to mind. He wraps his tail around the vine and lets himself down, resting the tops of his feet on the top of the vine to hold his weight. Holding his queue in one hand, he straightens out so his head almost touches the neural whip of the toruk. Looking down, he jams the end of his queue into the neural whip. Without touching or waking the toruk, he has made the bond with the beast. He sends the image of the palulukan looking into the cave to the toruk. The toruk twists around in place. The sudden move startles him, and he drops onto the back of the toruk. He grabs hold of the neural whips with both hands. The toruk is aware of the weight on his back, but the sight of the palulukan in the entrance of the cave holding his family enrages him. He sends the message to attack the palulukan, knowing that the toruk really needs no urging, but hopes the supportive command will make the toruk see him as an ally.