SATIRE|FICTION

Avatanic (Titavatar?)

The crossover no one wanted

At the spry young age of 128, Rose was leery of travel. But when rumors began to swirl around the construction of the Titanic II, she could hardly restrain her excitement.

“What could possibly go wrong!?” she said aloud with uncharacteristic enthusiasm for the aging supercentenarian. Her grandson looked toward her with genuine concern.

“It’s just that… after the last Titanic experience I wouldn’t think you’d be so willing to — ”

“Hooey!” Rose quickly retorted. “Now buy the ticket, I’m not sure how these Nintendos work,” she continued, gesturing toward the keyboard of her Mac.

“Grandma, that’s a personal computer.”

“I know that!”

He tried to talk some sense into her but the Titanic survivor’s light humor quickly turned into a grandmotherly rage.

“Just buy the damn ticket!”

And with a transaction that Rose could hardly even begin to understand, she was locked in for the journey of a lifetime.

The morning of the ship’s departure finally arrived. Rose found herself boarding the colossal ship as it floated stationary in the Liverpool dock.

“We don’t have all day!” shouted a man in a suit and tie behind her. He appeared to be voicing the concerns of the fifteen other annoyed patrons behind him.

“I’ll take as long as I damn please! I survived the Titanic, you can survive a little wait!” Rose spat back as she inched her walker along the bridge of the Titanic II. After about three hours and two hundred nautical miles, she made her way to her quarters. But suddenly she heard a knock on her door. Fortunately, she’d only made it inches from the door when the knock arrived.

“Rose, you’ve gotta see this…” spoke a man urgently.

“What is it?” she said with the decrepit voice of a gilded aged woman.

“I think — I think you’re just gonna wanna see this.”

With a hurried pace, it took a mere thirty minutes for him to escort Rose to the deck of the Titanic II.

“Christ… it’s only gotten bigger.”

Guests of the ship stared into a gaping void that sat in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. They ooh’d and ahh’d at the churning portal of energy. The more practical passengers appeared to panic.

“There’s nothing we can do to avoid it…” explained Rose’s escort with sheepish solemnity.

“Oh my…”

At this, three men in official attire stormed out of the Captain’s Quarters and across the main deck.

“What do you mean there’s nothing we can do to avoid it??”

“Sir… we just don’t have the steering power.”

“Then stop the ship!”

“Sir… we don’t have the stopping power.”

“God f***ing damnit. So you’re telling me in a hundred years, we couldn’t get this right?”

“We just didn’t have the time!” spoke the third man now as a look of true desperation spread across his face.

“So you’re telling me… the Titanic II will sink?”

“Sir… technically we don’t know what’s inside the portal. It’s more likely that instead of sinking that the ship would just… explode…” the man gulped. “Or be crushed inward like a soda can,” he mused with an eyebrow that had gone from terrified to speculative.

But without even time to speculate, the gargantuan marine vessel entered the void. And suddenly, the ship went from gliding across a pristine black sea to hurtling violently toward a verdant jungle on an unfamiliar planet.

As the greenery came closer and closer into view, it quickly grew clear that this was an alien world that they had entered. As the city-sized ship crashed into the alien terrain, it sent a shockwave across the soil that leveled entire groves of trees.

If the initial Titanic had been bad, this was decidedly worse.

“I told you the ship wouldn’t sink,” emerged a voice from the massive pile of rubble.

As the man beside him surfaced from a cloud of dust and wiped soot from his eyes, he didn’t appear reassured. From within the rubble, a gentle pinging could be heard. As a beleaguered ship attendant searched the wreckage for survivors, he was shocked to see a metallic door swing suddenly open.

From it emerged the 128 year old now two-time Titanic survivor, walker in hand. She’d used it to open the collapsed metal compartment with a staggering force.

“Titanic isn’t gonna take me down,” she said with the bravado of a Hollywood action hero, blowing on the metal of her walker as though it were a smoking gun. But as she did, a new threat seemed to surface. While the few survivors of the collapsed sea vessel tended to their wounds, a bow and arrow-clad army of blue people in loin cloths had silently surrounded them.

They whistled and ululated angrily as more and more gathered at their side. But the 128 year old widow had witnessed unspeakable horrors in her life and was unperturbed by the sight. She laid her walker down and began to approach the face-painted battalion of blue.

And while the language barrier was a little tricky for the nearly senile super-senior to work around, she quickly began to realize that they weren’t so different after all. As the dust-covered survivors sat huddled around a fire with the Na’vi warriors, they exchanged stories of love and loss.

Whether any of these stories could actually be understood by either opposing party remained unclear, but a bond had been established nonetheless. And from that moment, the tragedy stricken Titanic II heroes knew what they had to do: protect the Na’vi from the foreign enemies trying to steal their resources!

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