The night at Hell's Gate Base was a hymn to steel and will.
The hydraulic hammering of the giant mining machines echoed from the pit three kilometers away at a steady rhythm of once every four seconds, traveling through the alloy framework to every inch of the floor, like a mechanical heart pumping lifeblood through the entire base. When the floating armored vehicle convoy rotated shifts, the hum of their anti-gravity engines converged into a brief sonic boom inside the corridors. The whir of auto-turrets' servo motors, the roar of air-purification systems, and the ceaseless data streams from hundreds of screens and terminals—all wove a dense acoustic iron curtain that never let nerves fully relax.
Li Wei stood before the observation window of the Level-2 Bio-Lab, his forehead pressed against the cold composite glass. Outside, Pandora's twin moons spilled eerie violet-blue light over the alien jungle. Glowing flora and floating mountains breathed quietly in the night, two worlds torn apart from the unending industrial roar inside the base.
It reminded him of Earth. The Earth he had left behind—its sky forever a filtered grayish-yellow, natural landscapes existing only beneath carefully maintained domes, the entire planet an overloaded, gasping derelict ship. The noise here was aggressive, greedy; Earth's silence was exhausted, desperate.
His gaze drifted back inside, fixing on the reinforced glass isolation dish at the center of the workbench. Inside the dish, a seed from the Tree of Souls hovered gently in a zero-gravity field, radiating a steady, soft blue glow, like a living star from the abyss.
Three days. Seventy-two full hours. This sample, retrieved at great risk by his Avatar from the edge of the "Neural Active Zone," had exhausted every analytical method he could access.
Cold data lined the screens:
Composition: Polysaccharide matrix, lipid vesicles with extreme energy density, trace room-temperature superconducting crystals, complex biofluorescent protein arrays.
Structure: Partially aerodynamic, but calculations showed a 37% unexplained discrepancy between the lift required for natural flotation and observed values.
Activity: In an ex-vivo environment, energy readings pulsed rhythmically, unrelated to any known energy fluctuations in the base or even Pandora's daylight cycle. It seemed to carry its own clock.
Neural Simulation Response: Showed non-random, repeatable attenuation or enhancement patterns to energy fields of specific frequencies (including near-range bioelectric fields), as if… listening, or responding.
"I recognize every component," Li Wei whispered into the silent lab, his voice hoarse. "But put together, they don't make a machine. They make a… mystery."
His fingertip slid across the cold console. Scientific training told him: when all known frameworks could not contain the subject, either the framework was wrong, or he stood at the edge of a new continent. Dr. Grace had tried to "connect" from outside, to communicate using human interfaces. But Li Wei's genetic instinct screamed: perhaps the answer was not outside, but inside. The ultimate dialogue of life might require a more thorough "integration."
A thought—evaluated, suppressed, and resurfaced repeatedly over three days—now coiled around his reason like vines: self-experimentation. Direct ingestion.
The risk list unfolded automatically in his mind: unknown toxins, fatal allergies, genetic contamination, unpredictable neural or metabolic disorders, the worst case—death. Each consequence could terminate the project, force his repatriation, even land him in a military court.
But another list weighed heavier: what if the seed was some kind of "key" or "data packet" of Pandora's life? What if its secret lay in activation and interaction through a living organism?
"Observers are forever behind glass," he recalled the words of a radical pioneer in life sciences, who had been permanently discredited for unauthorized human gene-fusion experiments. "To understand the language of life, sometimes you must let it become your native tongue."
Fanatical? Yes. Reckless? Undoubtedly. But which hand pushing the boundaries of science had not been stained with the risk of the unknown?
He checked the time: 02:47 a.m. The low point of base medical station rotations, when the automatic diagnostic modules of the vital-sign monitoring system ran on low priority. The backdoor program he had preset to handle "non-standard calibration data" waited quietly in the background.
The decision landed in silence.
Li Wei moved with the precision of a surgical robot. He closed the armored shutters over the lab's transparent windows, blocking outside view. He accessed his highest personal clearance, overriding the real-time reporting function of the specimen tracking system. Then he walked to the prepared medical station.
The station was ready: a full set of wireless vital-sign monitoring patches (heart rate, blood pressure, brain waves, blood oxygen, neural electrical signals); an auto-injector preloaded with broad-spectrum anti-allergy agents, potent metabolic support, and emergency cardiopulmonary resuscitation medication; an airway maintenance device within reach; a rapid blood analyzer warmed up. Every piece of equipment glowed with a standby cold light, like a congregation of silent metal priests waiting to witness a birth or a death.
He took off his coat, revealing pale but sturdy arms and chest, and applied the monitoring patches one by one. The cold touch sent a shiver through his skin. On the screen, the lines representing "Li Wei (Human Form)" began to fluctuate: heart rate 72, blood pressure 118/75, brain waves dominated by alert beta waves, slightly tense.
He took a deep breath and returned to the main workbench, his finger hovering over the command to open the isolation dish.
One final check. He looked at the hovering, glowing seed. It was not a weapon, not a poison—at least, all compositional analysis said so. But what was it? An olive branch extended by Pandora, or a sugar-coated trap? The Holy Grail of knowledge, or the key to opening Pandora's Box?
No answer. The answer would only come after swallowing.
"Either I discover the next layer of truth," he spoke to the air, and to the desperate curiosity in his bones, "or I become a stepping stone on this path."
Command executed.
The containment field vanished. The seed landed lightly in his pre-gloved palm. It felt weightless, only a warm, faintly pulsing energy seeping through the glove.
He removed the glove. The moment his skin touched it, a clear, indescribable sense of "freshness" spread from his fingertips—not a scent, but a signal acting directly on his spirit: peaceful, yet unfathomable.
No more hesitation. Hesitation only fed fear.
Li Wei lifted the seed to his mouth. The second before it touched his lips, time seemed to stretch. He smelled the pure scent of a forest after rain, mixing damp soil and unknown blossoms. He saw his own reflection in the seed's blue glow, eyes unfamiliar in their resolve.
Will I die? The thought finally exploded unobstructed, stabbing cold. He was only twenty-five. His parents had died in Earth's cataclysms. No partner, no children—only a head full of formulas, data, and unfinished projects. If he died here, in an unauthorized experiment that might be called madness or treason, what would his life mean? A footnote to a mad scientist? A scandal covered up by the RDA?
But if I don't try… another voice struck back louder. If he didn't try, he might forever be a blind man watching a miracle through glass. The network Grace had vaguely sensed, Eywa worshipped devoutly by the Na'vi, the faint connection to all living things Celia had once shown… all mysteries might lie behind the door this key could open.
His greed for truth, his longing to understand the world that had lit up Celia's eyes, overwhelmed his fear of ending.
He opened his mouth and took the seed inside.
No need to chew. It dissolved almost the instant it touched saliva, like high-grade energy gel. A cool, vivid fluid slid down his throat—tasteless, only a pure, high-density essence of life. It was gone.
Li Wei immediately sat back at the medical station, fingers gripping the edge until his knuckles whitened. His eyes locked onto the monitor.
One second. Two seconds. Ten seconds.
Heart rate: 75… 78… 82… rising steadily, but within stress limits.
Blood pressure: 120/78… 125/82… normal fluctuation.
Brain waves: enhanced beta waves, matching anxious anticipation.
Blood oxygen: 99%, stable.
No abnormalities yet.
Thirty seconds. One minute.
A gentle warmth spread from his abdomen, like a perfectly heated drink, expanding slowly. No pain, no cramping. Only a strange sense of "fullness," as if an empty "slot" inside his body had been gently, perfectly fitted with a compatible component.
Two minutes. Three minutes.
The lines on the screen still danced within normal ranges. The expected agony, shock, neural chaos… none of it came. Li Wei's tensed muscles relaxed slightly, a breath of absurdity and disappointment almost escaping. Could this miraculous creation be nothing more than a special "supplement" to humans? All the floating, pulsing, responding—just clever physical tricks?
He was about to turn off some alerts when the anomaly struck.
No sound.
But a presence blazed to life at the edge of his consciousness.
It was as if he had worn a thick, soundproof, lightproof helmet his entire life—and now, a tiny hole had been quietly opened in it. Not sound, not sight, not smell. A new mode of perception, acting directly on the foundation of his cognition.
He "felt" beneath his feet—not the alloy floor, but deep through it, tens and hundreds of meters into Pandora's soil—where countless roots and mycelial networks slowly exchanged massive information flows, whispering like a planet-scale neural network.
He "perceived" the glowing flora outside the window, which he had only "seen" before, now rippling with weak emotional waves of "tranquility" and "curiosity" (if they could be called emotions).
Farther away, at the location of the Tree of Souls, a massive, warm, tidal consciousness pulsed like a star, growing clearer… and it seemed to cast a gentle, inquiring "gaze" toward this new, faint "light" that had appeared.
This was no external stimulus! This was perception surging from within him!
Li Wei shot to his feet, knocking over the chair with a crash. He staggered to the neural synapse imager, trembling but precise, and initiated a rapid deep scan of himself.
The screen lit up, constructing a real-time dynamic model of his brain and central nervous system.
The golden, complex human neural map was familiar to him.
But now, between that golden network, extremely fine, pale-blue bio-luminescent filament structures grew, branched, and spread at an astonishing speed. They were not invading, not parasitizing—but an elegantly terrifying symbiosis. They precisely sought the gaps and nodes of his neurons, gently attached, fused, and built entirely new connections beyond anatomical textbooks. Especially in the regions of his brain processing subconscious, intuition, and spatial relations, these fluorescent networks grew dense, as if constructing a brand-new signal-receiving and processing center.
The imager's simulation program ran automatically. A red warning box popped up 0.3 seconds later, covering the entire screen:
[Unknown biological neural network deep integration detected.]
[Integration level: Secondary Fusion (Structural Symbiosis).]
[Simulated forced separation result: 89.7% interruption rate of major neural pathways. Conclusion: Infeasible. Separation equals permanent central function loss and life termination.]
The words were cold, the verdict absolute.
Irreversible. Indivisible.
"Ah…" A muffled gasp escaped his throat. Li Wei released his grip on the console, finding his nails split and bleeding from the pressure—but he felt nothing.
Fear did not come first. What swept over him was a tsunami of awe, followed by the ecstasy of scientific revelation that almost split his skull.
He had not swallowed a seed.
It was an interface.
A protocol.
A symbiotic contract, unrefusable, offered by Eywa—the planetary-scale living intelligence!
It had chosen him. Not because he could drive an Avatar, but because he was "Li Wei," a mad, devout life scientist who dared to seek truth in the most essential way: consumption, fusion.
His body was no longer a purely human vessel.
It had become an unprecedented living intersection, running two completely different life systems in parallel.
Outside the base, the mining hammers continued their beat—the stubborn heartbeat of an old world trying to dismember the new. Inside him, a silent, profound, infinitely possible perceptual universe had just uttered its first cry.
Li Wei's legs gave way. He slid down the cold bulkhead to the floor. He looked up at the lab's pale lights, stinging his eyes—but what he "saw" was a vaster scene:
the noise of steel, and the new hum inside him resonating with the planet's pulse, clashing violently on the battlefield of his mind.
One side: decomposition and control.
The other: resonance and symbiosis.
He had become the battlefield itself.
Awe flooded him like Pandora's deepest ocean, cold and heavy. But at the bottom of that abyssal awe, something brighter and hotter ignited—the tremor of a pilgrim finally glimpsing the gates of a temple, mixed with fear and supreme joy.
He knew: the Li Wei who was "purely human" had died three minutes ago, melted away with the seed.
And something new had just been born.
It was still fragile, still confused.
But its eyes now saw two worlds at once.