NOTE: This is my response to the movie "Avatar"; I offer a very different tale.

THE PLANET REVIVAL: THE BEGINNING

As both suns set, I fled our military base, disappeared into the darkening jungle, never looked back. On an active-conflict planet more than 300 light years from earth, this was a flagrant dereliction of duty punishable by firing squad. Discipline was necessarily severe. Most of our sparsely populated colonies in this galactic quadrant were staffed by untrained, very reluctant, conscripted civilians who were required to perform guard duty, oversee emergency medicine, cook, laundry, torture the natives or fulfill any odious task requested by corporate, government or military reps.

Desertions were frequent.

It was the torturing that forced me to act. I saw a pervasive madness spreading. Yet, I believed that I could find the critical pieces of the puzzle then present alternative solutions to sober minds. But the final answers lay beyond the fortified perimeter of this far-flung human excursion on an alien world.

The few military professionals here on assignment were away on patrol -- collecting souvenirs, brutalizing the locals who lived in the nearby hamlets.

Consequently, it was easy to slip past the nominal lookouts left behind.  Many of the planet’s larger carnivores hunted at night, so I had borrowed a target-practice firearm. Not much stopping power, hopefully the noise might scare away hungry predators. However, in my haste, I had neglected to acquire an extra bottle of oxygen. Already my lungs were beginning to burn as I blundered through the thorny vegetation. The average human could breathe unaided on Revival only a few hours before a painful death. My continued good health relied upon rumors of deep caves where the air was tolerable and the water metallic tasting but drinkable. Food, I wouldn’t worry about for a minute. Humans can survive a long time without food.

Despite the extreme distance from Earth, the Revival aliens were not very different physically from us; sparking explosive debate that perhaps our ancestors in the distant past had colonized the planet using the FTL space pods that we had stumbled upon. But a coalition of corporate expansionists eagerly coveting the planet refused to acknowledge any DNA kinship with the aliens.

The planet offered pristine beaches, lush forests, and lofty mountain vistas; harmful flora or fauna were easily avoided. This was almost Eden. The Revival natives -- inhabiting palm-thatched huts in widely dispersed small communities -- were aloof, condescending and avoided prolonged contact with human explorers. We clandestinely  observed that the inhabitants had an uncanny ability to locate large nests of the interstellar traversing pods deep in forests, underground, and on high altitude plateaus. Revivalists were seen entering and exiting  FTL pods that frequently lifted off the planet; but despite promises of rewards or threats of coercion none of the aliens would reveal the destinations of their travels.

The aliens had no appreciation of money. But they could experience pain. So, we tortured them for information. Detention centers were constructed. Large tracts of forest were lasered. Mountaintops blown apart. Villages crushed. The natives were hardy, difficult to kill; stubbornly refused to cooperate with human traders demanding more and more FTL pods.  Exasperated, fearful, our military commanders confiscated and sent back to earth as many of the FTL pods that they could find.

I hoped my hand-drawn map was accurate. Luckily, the extraterrestrial foliage along my escape route was slightly bio-luminescent and hopefully nontoxic as I heedlessly brushed past under dark skies. There was no alarm yet from the prison camp. We had hundreds of detainees in queue for questioning and registration; but I knew I would be held culprit and hunted down, soon after the next head count at planet dawn.