Fic - memory
Title: Memory
Continuity: G1 cartoon
Rating: PG-13
Content Advice: first person POV
Characters: Vortex, nameless background OCs
Notes: This is a companion piece to Online, and was written for the Vivid Memory challenge at tf_ic_prompts (which is why it's in the first person)
First times are always the most vivid.
When something is new, it's clearer, brighter. Each subsequent repetition of the action blurs into the next, the data is so similar it becomes hard to differentiate one from the other without a focused search of your long-term storage.
As such, the only events that become truly memorable have the element of novelty about them. And the events which have the greatest element of novelty tend to be the very earliest.
So, the first thing I remember? The click and whirr of machinery, the clatter of footsteps, the constant low shush of hydraulic fluid.
Hearing came before sight. Like when your systems boot from recharge. It's the same for squishies, so Swindle says, giving them an advantage against predators. Could be something the Quintessons took from organic life and replicated when they created us. Makes sense. When our predecessors broke from the Quintessons, they must have retained those protocols, increasing their numbers with the same basic code.
And so, my first impressions of my surroundings were through sound. Then touch - a flat moving surface beneath my feet; smooth planes of dense metal at my chest and the tops of my arms. After that came sight - the recognition of colour, distance, surface - then scent, then the awakening of other sensors, the acknowledgement of a kaleidoscope of busy signals thrumming through the air. With no way to decode them, they were meaningless, but they were also wonderful. Everything was wonderful.
Programming came before thought. It was all instinct in those first few joors. A breem or so on the conveyor, waiting for everything to integrate, then out of the factory and into the yard.
An Omega Guardian stood by the gate, so immense and heavy and still. There was a transport drone - also big, its tailgate down so we could march on board; and we knew how to march, in formation, every step the same. There was a huddle of engineers, all talking among themselves; small mechs, with sleek frames and bright paintjobs.
To me, they looked like targets.
And then there was us. Four hundred, all the same, and yet not the same. Subtle differences in energy signature, in stance, in the vibration of our engines, the brightness of our optics beneath identical visors.
None of us talked as we left the factory. Not that we didn't know how. We just didn't know that we could.
We didn't talk on the transport either. We just stood there, side by side in lines that stretched from wall to wall. We weren't waiting; with no experience to draw upon, we could have no expectations. We were merely dormant. But only superficially. There was plenty going on inside - a world of input ready to be analysed, synthesised, consigned to memory. We were busy building the first layers of our long term storage, our first experiences.
Straight off the assembly line and into standard augmentation. That's how it worked back then.
Not basic training, because the skills of aerial and hand-to-hand combat were written into our code, as intuitive as the activation of our cooling systems or the re-calibration of our optics in bright light. We were ready for war the very moment we came online.
No, it was all about experience, translating code into motion, taking our intrinsic knowledge and applying it in a world full of distractions. Making mistakes and learning from them, testing the limits of our agility and strength and speed - limits that were always somehow fractionally different for each of us, regardless that we were all built the same. Not making us good - we were already good. Making us better.
Standard augmentation happened at a base not far from the factory. A few of the engineers travelled with us, bright points of blue and purple in a landscape of crimson-lit grey.
We heard them talking, quietly, amongst themselves. Excitable little things, spindly fragile hands and long sensors cresting their heads. I wanted to hold them and squeeze, just to see what would happen.
I didn't. As with talking, I didn't know, then, that it was within the realm of possibility.
We learnt things from the engineers. We learnt that we weren't usual. That we were as close to custom as Cybertron got. That, compared with other military moulds - tetra jets and the sentinel drones - there were very few of us.
Not that this meant a great deal. We had no frame of reference, no way to set our emergent ideas about our own identity within a wider context. Sure, we knew what tetra jets were, just like I knew what an Omega Guardian was before I stepped out of the factory and saw one, but knowing what something is and experiencing it are two very different things.
Those first few joors are still crisp, still accessible. The memories are so easy to retrieve, unlike what came after - the blur of combat, the never-ending cycle of damage, repairs, damage.
They haven't decayed. Not like memory usually does, when you're stuck in a drawer in the Detention Centre unable to make your own backups, no way to transfer your own data. But these, they're still fresh.
I have Shockwave to thank for that.
He used to perform regular maintenance checks, rooting around in my databanks to make sure nothing had become corrupted, patching the bits that had. It was...
Yeah, it was just something he did.
I never did find out what those little engineers felt like to hold. Whether they really were as fragile as they looked.
Such a shame.
Continuity: G1 cartoon
Rating: PG-13
Content Advice: first person POV
Characters: Vortex, nameless background OCs
Notes: This is a companion piece to Online, and was written for the Vivid Memory challenge at tf_ic_prompts (which is why it's in the first person)
First times are always the most vivid.
When something is new, it's clearer, brighter. Each subsequent repetition of the action blurs into the next, the data is so similar it becomes hard to differentiate one from the other without a focused search of your long-term storage.
As such, the only events that become truly memorable have the element of novelty about them. And the events which have the greatest element of novelty tend to be the very earliest.
So, the first thing I remember? The click and whirr of machinery, the clatter of footsteps, the constant low shush of hydraulic fluid.
Hearing came before sight. Like when your systems boot from recharge. It's the same for squishies, so Swindle says, giving them an advantage against predators. Could be something the Quintessons took from organic life and replicated when they created us. Makes sense. When our predecessors broke from the Quintessons, they must have retained those protocols, increasing their numbers with the same basic code.
And so, my first impressions of my surroundings were through sound. Then touch - a flat moving surface beneath my feet; smooth planes of dense metal at my chest and the tops of my arms. After that came sight - the recognition of colour, distance, surface - then scent, then the awakening of other sensors, the acknowledgement of a kaleidoscope of busy signals thrumming through the air. With no way to decode them, they were meaningless, but they were also wonderful. Everything was wonderful.
Programming came before thought. It was all instinct in those first few joors. A breem or so on the conveyor, waiting for everything to integrate, then out of the factory and into the yard.
An Omega Guardian stood by the gate, so immense and heavy and still. There was a transport drone - also big, its tailgate down so we could march on board; and we knew how to march, in formation, every step the same. There was a huddle of engineers, all talking among themselves; small mechs, with sleek frames and bright paintjobs.
To me, they looked like targets.
And then there was us. Four hundred, all the same, and yet not the same. Subtle differences in energy signature, in stance, in the vibration of our engines, the brightness of our optics beneath identical visors.
None of us talked as we left the factory. Not that we didn't know how. We just didn't know that we could.
We didn't talk on the transport either. We just stood there, side by side in lines that stretched from wall to wall. We weren't waiting; with no experience to draw upon, we could have no expectations. We were merely dormant. But only superficially. There was plenty going on inside - a world of input ready to be analysed, synthesised, consigned to memory. We were busy building the first layers of our long term storage, our first experiences.
Straight off the assembly line and into standard augmentation. That's how it worked back then.
Not basic training, because the skills of aerial and hand-to-hand combat were written into our code, as intuitive as the activation of our cooling systems or the re-calibration of our optics in bright light. We were ready for war the very moment we came online.
No, it was all about experience, translating code into motion, taking our intrinsic knowledge and applying it in a world full of distractions. Making mistakes and learning from them, testing the limits of our agility and strength and speed - limits that were always somehow fractionally different for each of us, regardless that we were all built the same. Not making us good - we were already good. Making us better.
Standard augmentation happened at a base not far from the factory. A few of the engineers travelled with us, bright points of blue and purple in a landscape of crimson-lit grey.
We heard them talking, quietly, amongst themselves. Excitable little things, spindly fragile hands and long sensors cresting their heads. I wanted to hold them and squeeze, just to see what would happen.
I didn't. As with talking, I didn't know, then, that it was within the realm of possibility.
We learnt things from the engineers. We learnt that we weren't usual. That we were as close to custom as Cybertron got. That, compared with other military moulds - tetra jets and the sentinel drones - there were very few of us.
Not that this meant a great deal. We had no frame of reference, no way to set our emergent ideas about our own identity within a wider context. Sure, we knew what tetra jets were, just like I knew what an Omega Guardian was before I stepped out of the factory and saw one, but knowing what something is and experiencing it are two very different things.
Those first few joors are still crisp, still accessible. The memories are so easy to retrieve, unlike what came after - the blur of combat, the never-ending cycle of damage, repairs, damage.
They haven't decayed. Not like memory usually does, when you're stuck in a drawer in the Detention Centre unable to make your own backups, no way to transfer your own data. But these, they're still fresh.
I have Shockwave to thank for that.
He used to perform regular maintenance checks, rooting around in my databanks to make sure nothing had become corrupted, patching the bits that had. It was...
Yeah, it was just something he did.
I never did find out what those little engineers felt like to hold. Whether they really were as fragile as they looked.
Such a shame.