part the deux
First part, with header!
Pastels??!! They were gorgeous, especially en masse like that, but it was fun to tease him. Ixchel Chase remembered the 80’s.
What’s wrong with pastels? They were very popular when I was your age.
Did you have glittery eye makeup and poofy helms too?
…Er…
You did! She cackled, but he kept on with the memories, and she was soon lost in wonder again. Poofy helms in this case meant a lot of flanges and vanes and things, reminding her powerfully of Perceptor in full-on inquisitive mode. Mmm, Perceptor…
The tenor of his recall became more intimate. Logical enough, considering what they’d been doing. What their bodies were still rather lazily doing. Thundercracker had enjoyed the Prime often. First Volant, but then Optimus - delightfully young, so gentle, so different from his predecessor… Borealis ducked away, trying to steer the stream toward more general memories of Great Dances, but so many of those had ended in the Prime’s arms she veered again and again, arguing with herself even as she did so. Would it be so awful? She was being silly! Childish, ridiculous, bigoted…but the very idea, the mere thought still put her off powerfully. It wasn’t revulsion exactly, but a deep-seated, overwhelming feeling of DO NOT WANT that she had had little inclination to try to overcome. And now her stupid human bias was going to imperil herself and every newspark and progenitor.
Thundercracker wasn’t pursuing, though that impulse was in him; to hunt down the reason for her aversion to what was to everyone else a highly desirable activity. It wasn’t polite to press for reasons, not when everyone carried scars from the war, he knew that very well. But what was this about? He couldn’t help being curious. She wasn’t that old. What could Prime have done to her in so short a time? What would Prime have done? Why would this bother her when her own spark was so like Prime’s…? Her spark…
Prime was drawing sparks from the Allspark. Thundercracker knew that. The Graveyard Legion mechs admitted themselves that they were the sparks of the dead, re-embodied. Galvatron had done the same thing. The ravine kids Countermeasure had told them of were new sparks, though; yet also drawn from the Allspark, the kindling Prime had turned from the course Galvatron had intended. But what if there was something else going on, too?
Why would two sparks that weren’t twins be so similar? Why would Borealis feel both like Prime and like Ratchet? How did that make any kind of sense? Unless.
This planet.
This disgusting organic planet.
The humans. They made new people, by combining information and matter from two parents. They mated.
Kup meeting Hot Rod. Drift meeting Afterburner. Those could have been old friends in new bodies. But what if they weren’t? Prowl and Blades. Blades was new. Not just a new body, he was new. Young. A…child… Whose spark felt like Prowl’s. And like Prime’s.
Thundercracker reeled. That’s… Not… Possible…
Uh, Prime?
Little Bird?
I blew it. I’m sorry! I think TC’s figured out sex makes babies. Or he’s about to.
You. TC’s glyph was the plural, warform, meaning “you Autobots”. You’ve…
Skyfire!
Yes, Prime?
Get me up there NOW!
Yes, Prime!
You’ve…been doing…
Borealis glowered at a hot white streak arcing up toward them from the planet. She had reported a security breach, not called for the cavalry. Ten kilometers. Five kilometers. At 500 meters Skyfire transformed, Prime kicking free of his dorsal hull and jetting closer, optics on Thundercracker. Strake, carrying Prowl, arrived a few seconds later, while Thundercracker was still sputtering.
You’ve been doing…sex!
Oh god, Borealis sighed. Well. Yeah. Technically.
It doesn’t resemble the human method, Skyfire said, as though somehow that would help. He chirped TC the basic merge file, sans the Vector protocols.
TC struggled in Borealis’ arms, she let him go and he rounded on Prime. OUR FIRST SPARK-CHILD IN TEN BILLION YEARS AND YOU PUT HUMAN BRAIN ENGRAMS IN IT???
The Ma-
OMGWTFBBQ THIS AGAIN??? Borealis roared. Her hands clenched and unclenched. She wanted to smack TC, but if she hit him as hard as she wanted to she’d dent his helm and that was way kinkier than she wanted to get with someone she’d been snogging two minutes ago.
Skyfire folded his wings back and down, looking distinctly embarrassed.
Oh dear, said Prime.
Glaring lightsabers at pretty much everyone, Borealis transformed around Thundercracker - who made a major production out of not protesting - and arrowed for Mars.
Which…ones are yours? Strake asked Prowl. Prowl turned and hugged him.
Blades, Nightbeat, Afterburner, Strafe, the Pleiades, Tideline and Highwire. Prowl included his partners for each merge, and the dates of kindling and decantation. Blades made Breakaway with Evac, and Spandrel with the rest of the Protectobots. Nightbeat made Crosshairs with Ultra Magnus.
So you’re a grandparent.
Yes. There are some third generation newsparks among the Water Babies.
The Water Babies are all…?
Perceptor’s. Usually with Beachcomber, but one batch was with Seaspray and another with Hoist. Prowl knew Perceptor wanted a batch - or three - with Prime, but Optimus had been uncharacteristically uncooperative, and uncommunicative regarding why not.
Strake pressed his forehelm to Prowl’s. You’re not telling me something. The angle of Prowl’s subharmonics had been evasive. There was something Prowl was hoping Strake wouldn’t ask.
Sparks made in this way are entangled with their parent sparks. Somewhat like twinning, but the effects are in certain ways more pronounced. There is no communication in terms of language, but there is a certain…awareness. Particularly of a spark’s state of…being.
If you were killed, Blades and Nightbeat and the rest would feel it? Targeting the worst possible case.
Yes.
And if any of your progeny were killed you and whomever you made them with would feel it?
Yes. When Evac died, Breakaway nearly extinguished in the growth tank, and Blades - because the effect on Breakaway echoed to him - briefly lost consciousness. Prowl wasn’t certain whether the unease he’d felt in his own spark at that point had been a further echo from Blades or simply his own grief and pain.
Strake gaped at him in horror, shaking him a little, hands rough on Prowl’s shoulders. Prowl! Thirteen hostages for Prowl’s spark. Thirteen! The bonds of love and honor and long friendships among Cybertronians had been weakness enough that Megatron had slowly reprogrammed them to reject them bit by bit. Now Prime had led his people into absolute, physical bonds they couldn’t undo or reprogram their way out of. The Autobots were insane.
We’re all connected, Strake, Prowl said. One way or another. To each other, to Prime, to our children. Links which, yes, cannot be broken. He kissed Strake, soothing with lips and hands and fields. I think it will save us, not destroy us.
Are you forecasting that?
Yes.
Strake rumbled, unsettled. Then huffed and banked his wings. All right.
…
That hadn’t gone as planned, Optimus thought glumly, on the ride back to Nevada. (Skyfire was conspicuously silent.)
Don’t ask us, said Lustral in the Matrix. You’re on your own for this kind of thing.
None of us ever reproduced. Except Volant, Palladium said thoughtfully. Maybe wistfully. Optimus wasn’t certain. Maximal and Zeta were yelling at each other. Rather loudly. And Decorum was trying to intervene, which sometimes helped, but…not when Zeta was involved.
Yes, but I didn’t…stick around to raise him, Volant pointed out.
Optimus aimed a tight-beam down to Earth. Ratchet?
Yes. You did.
…What?
The question you were going to ask me. “Did I just frag off our daughter?” The answer is yes.
I see. A significant fraction of his personality programming involved the desire and ability to ease people who were upset. Not to upset them in the first place or make them more so. He had examined this programming in minute detail over the millennia of the war, dissecting where he had failed with Megatron. He had long ago come to the uncomfortable conclusion that while he had made a number of mistakes regarding his twin, he could not have prevented, or fixed, everything. He wasn’t the only influence. Megatron had his own programming, had made his own decisions. He couldn’t wave his hands and make everything all right again. He couldn’t make his brother well. And that hurt.
Oh stop fretting, Ratchet grumbled. You’ll live.
…
The Noctis Labyrinthus. Where Autobots and Decepticons had united - if briefly - to fight Thunderwing. Down a small side-canyon where an autonomic scan would pick up no traces of frozen energon. Borealis found a spur of rock and pushed Thundercracker up against it, the angle of the stone fitting neatly, comfortably between his wings. The kissing didn’t stop for a long while.
Night fell, though, and the mist around them froze. Borealis curled around Thundercracker, activating her more powerful shields and spinning up her spark to keep them warm.
“You’re not afraid of alphas any more?” His voice was faint in the thin atmosphere, but she had turned up the gain on her audials.
“No. Not alphas in general.”
“Being wary of Starscream in particular is wise. And don’t discount Skywarp. He’s impulsive, rash, but it makes him unpredictable.”
She mimicked a sigh and nibbled on his crest. She supposed talking about Starscream was inevitable, but she wasn’t about to encourage Thundercracker to elaborate. “Prowl’s going to be almighty sexy as an alpha. Skyfire showed me the latest version of their plans.”
“Whaaaat? Gimme!”
“No, no, bad luck to see the bride before the wedding.”
Thundercracker couldn’t even swear properly, all that came out of his vocoder was garbled noise. He flailed out of her embrace but she caught him by an ankle and pulled him back to ground.
“Jets,” she said, grinning like both her progenitors at once, “are ticklish!”
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
A week later.
Thundercracker watched them. Standing with the others on the mesa top, he dug his claws into the stone of the northern edge, optics gleaming. Keenly aware of Strake brushing against his wings on his starboard side. And Prowl, between them; almost three meters shorter, but his fields, his presence in their private cloud, the sheer magnitude of his touch on their hulls vastly larger. Prowl's engine purred, watching the young ones fly. They were all affected, but Thundercracker knew he and Strake felt a particular ache.
They were rushing this, he thought, but maybe being sparked first and building themselves for two years changed things.
The first trine to claim this world’s skies.
Ranger watched them. Not part of this formal arrangement, and yet part. They would make newsparks together; he and each of them, all of them together. Three points describe a plane, but four described the third dimension.
Down at his feet, Annabelle bounced like a teenager. She was a grandmother now. How had that become a thing? Ranger wondered. How fast would human lives go by for him now? How could sixteen years have gone by so quickly? He felt a sudden levinbolt of sympathy for Ironhide. For Mirage and Tracks and Wheeljack. For Hound and Perceptor and Bee and Ratchet. All those who loved fleeting humans. Fleeting humanity.
Annabelle watched them. “My mother the fighter jet,” she murmured, zooming with enhanced lenses. She didn’t have the tracking software, though, so it was quite a trick to follow the exuberant loops and dives of the three-dimensional ballet going on far above.
Ranger grinned, rumbling his engine happily.
My father the truck. It sounded surreal put so baldly.
“Are they even human any more?” Nick had asked late one night. Anna had stroked his cheek fondly.
“Of course they aren’t. They’re Cybertronian. And they love us like Cybertronians do, with all the power and grace of their sparks.” Giving up being human, was it so terrible? But she had grown up with robots, and Nick hadn’t. It wasn’t his fault - and she thought of it as a lack, a poverty, evoking compassion toward those not so privileged. Dani and Nate understood, and the Epps daughters. Dani maybe understood certain things even better than Anna and the others, having taken a robot Companion. Consort. Something like that. And Dani was more than half robot herself. Most of her peripheral nerves replaced by biomimetic wire; metal and nanofactories lacing her bones; heart entirely artificial now, after that valve problem ten years ago. More things installed in her brain than even Anna wanted to know about. Dani so far looked entirely human, though her options for Halloween were vastly expanded. Anna envied that every year.
In a sci-fi movie, Danaela would be the monster. Autobot Dani. The Modern Promethea! To be justly punished for hubris with fire and windmills. And what of Perceptor who aided and abetted? Who had watched Dani’s cells divide since before her birth, who knew more about her personal physiology than any human ever had. Wasn’t Dani sort of his first daughter, as much his child as Mikaela and Sam’s? Did Perceptor’s love for his legion of children since make his love for Dani any less? No. Anna agreed with the Dalai Lama and Prime. Love and compassion were infinite, inexhaustible.
In the sky above, three bright jets danced, following intricate, ancient patterns Serenity had wheedled - very effectively - out of Thundercracker. A dance whose forms had never been seen in Earth’s blue sky, that hadn’t been seen anywhere since before multicellular life had oozed around Earth’s oceans.
Thundercracker watched them, and was happy.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2080 - March
Jury!
Frag. Sorry, Prime, Sinnertwin got around behind me. Gotta say, I prefer being sniped to shredded.
I’m so sorry.
No, no, it’s fine. I’m up for re-enlistment, though. Got anything in the pipe?
Oh Jury… The Germans have a yard full of old aircraft they’d like me to enspark.
Umm…I wasn’t thinking Legion this time, actually. Next time you merge, add me to the queue? You need a custodian for the Theresa memories, yes?
!!!
You’re so cute when you’re floored.
Heh. Hmm. The plan for those engrams is that Mirage and I will merge once he has recovered sufficiently - and I would like very much to get another newspark from him. But if you’d like to harbor them as well?
Sure, why not? Humans are interesting!
As you wish! Thank you, Jury.
…
It was an unseasonably cold night, the desert’s early spring interrupted by wind shrieking down out of the northeast, carrying the taste of snow off the Rockies. Mirage hugged himself and put up his shields. A good night to be down in the Mossary, or one of the bunkhouses, with Hound and whomever else was about and in the mood. Inferno maybe; always in the mood, that one, and a nice big hot chassis to warm oneself by.
Or…
Mirage pressed the flat of his hand against his central seam. Maybe the cold had at last blunted the sharpest edges of his grief. He’d come to love Theresa so much. The shared stories, love of literature, of words and the ways they could be made to dance through another’s mind, even thousands of years later. Laughing over the snotty, whiny, passionate poetry of Catullus, and his striking similarities to Witsledge, who had also died young, long ago during the reign of Lustral Prime and Lord Stormshatter. Enjoying their shared labors in her garden, Mirage taking over more and more as the quicksilver seasons passed and Theresa’s tall, strong body grew frail. She had never remarried.
Optimus?
Mmm?
Optimus made the most wonderful interrogative noises. Mirage laughed softly at himself. Halfway to heated up just from the sound of his Prime’s voice. Now?
Most assuredly! Where would you like? Merges were seldom performed in the growth chamber these days, especially if Prime was one of the participants. He could easily carry a single newspark, or an entire clutch, whatever the needed distance to the waiting tanks.
The Mossary.
On my way!
Mirage sprang down from the mesa top, boulder to buttress, and skated into the hangar. Garnering handclasps and kisses from various mechs as he passed them. Only a handful of night-shift humans were about, and they were more than used to Cybertronian modes of affection.
“Give the big guy an extra flourish for me,” Jazz said, swooping in for a long snog and grope. Mirage pulsed his cloaking field at him, making Jazz shiver and hum.
Hound said nothing, but his optics and fields communicated the branching, flowering tree of his emotions as he drew Mirage into a brief but intense hug.
Down in the Mossary, Optimus had arranged himself on the wide stone ledge on the far side of the pool. Stretched out with his ankles crossed, fingers laced behind his helm. He had quite unnecessarily removed strategic pieces of his armor, stacked neatly against the side wall. Mirage felt the gold tips of his thoracic cables extend from their housings, and the longing to touch zing like charge from his hands up through his spark to his entire body. He swayed through the moss garden, almost dancing, a subtle ripple running up his torso, fields licking forward at and into Prime’s. Stroking himself lightly here and there - understated gestures that would be easily missed if one weren’t watching for them - he smiled at the vivid flare of Prime’s optics.
Optimus extended an arm, giving him a hand up, and Mirage straddled Prime’s waist, loving the way Optimus ran his fingers up and down the backs of his legs as he leaned against that broad red chest and tilted his head up for a kiss. Cables sleeked between them, closing the small remaining distance between them. Mirage opened his armor, touching protoform to protoform.
Mmmmmirrrrr…
A line of bronze gleamed the length of one of the struts in Optimus’ neck, visible only as he tipped his head back. Wire-thin, the bright inlay was inscribed with microscopic glyphs. Mirage traced it with a fingertip, shivering at the strange currents it introduced into their mingled fields. Irrevocable changes. Neither Ratchet nor Perceptor had any idea how long Prime could stave off this particular transformation. Mirage kissed the fine line of encroaching Allspark material, moved along the edge of Prime’s jaw, settled into the kiss as their mouths met.
By his arts, Mirage overloaded his Prime three times before they began the merge. The sight of Optimus strutless and steaming beneath him was pleasing indeed. His armor was polished to a high sheen these days - Elita, Jazz and Prowl had conspired to keep Prime entirely out of combat since the brief capture of Soundwave. And Primus help anyone who tried to thwart those three.
Their cables grew hot as they sank into the deep link, the Mossary now lit by blue-white and bright copper reflecting off the still water of the pond. They spiraled around and around each other, sinking deeper, falling, until with a piercing effort they reached the field of blossoming stars. Mirage made a low, helpless sound, but Prime steadied him, warm and patient, as the possibilities gleamed and beckoned, no two alike, every one some combination of the two of them. Choosing was the hard part; having matter stripped from one’s spark was simple by comparison. In his mind, Mirage drew the oldest glyph for “love” that he knew - he was working on a new one, for the love of ephemerals - and chose the spark-pattern that rested beneath the last stroke. Optimus hummed happily and the lightning struck, blazing scars across their chests as first one, and then, surprise, another spark whirled into being between them.
Had Prime chosen one as well, or…? When Mirage briefly unshuttered his optics, the thin line of Allspark material in Optimus’ neck was still glowing. He smiled and surrendered himself to recharge.
Ratchet…we need two…
Shaking his head but smiling, Ratchet keyed the next tank for prep and fill. He’d been tinkering with the peripherals and now it only took a few minutes for a cold tank to warm up and be ready with protomass and growth colloid for a new spark. Getting more than you intended had become…not unusual. Not that Prime minded keeping the extras cuddled around the edges of his open spark chamber. Ratchet wondered if the new sparks ever jiggled at each other, vying for who got to stay with him longest. He would, in their place. Gotta plug into a body sometime, kid. Tel and Ven said bodies were overrated. Ratchet wasn’t sure how Prowl felt about it. He’d shared Prowl’s first memories, knew that Lance had not wanted to be embodied. Or at least not as a ground vehicle. How might things have been different if Prowl had been given a delta body? Or an omega? Probably, for one thing, he would have been dead by now, given how few deltas had survived. The omegas were all gone.
Spiral’s AI precursor had been curious, had desired the experience of embodiment. But had the part of Prowl that had been Lance reconciled itself to the change? Had it struggled in the grip of the logic-sinks when they took it from the Fission Blade? How cruel had they been to an entity they had wished to honor for bravery and kindness and shrewd understanding? That could have gone hideously wrong, but they had gotten such a spark in Prowl…
The new body they would build for him would be worthy of that spark.
Ratchet steered his processor back to the present as Optimus came through the door, one hand over his chest. Where was his armor? Never mind. “There you go, there you go,” Ratchet cooed, tipping the new sparks into their tanks to nestle into their protomass. One (a lovely periwinkle blue) seemed to poke about in its hollow curiously, the other (aquamarine a touch greener than Wheeljack’s) set to beginning its bodily construction with single-minded purpose, as though it already had a plan and was anxious to get started. They weren’t twins, that was clear enough. Had Prime and Mirage decided to kindle two for some reason; two of the myriad patterns that would have arrayed themselves before them shining at them particularly beguilingly?
It didn’t matter. Optimus had gone back to the Mossary to curl around Mirage; and Mirage’s fields, before fading offline, had been happy.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2080 - September
She found Ratchet up on the mesa top. Ironhide was sprawled out half on his lap and Ratchet had a hand splayed on his abdomen, moving it slowly in circles. Mikaela stopped, and almost turned around to retreat back down the ladder, but then she saw that First Aid was kneeling beside them, watching intently. Not what she was thinking then. Although Aid’s presence didn’t preclude snuggles, something about his demeanor said study and concern, not…snuggliness.
“What…are you doing?” she asked, walking around Ironhide’s huge feet to stand next to Aid. Aid moved a panel on his leg, offering her a higher platform for viewing if she wanted it. She climbed up readily. Even from a better vantage it still looked like Ratchet was just sitting there rubbing Ironhide’s tummy. “He eat a fridge past its expiration date?”
“Ha ha,” grumbled Ironhide.
“Diagnostic belly rub,” Aid explained. As if that was some kind of technical term, instead of something he’d made up right then.
“Diagnostic belly rub.”
“Oh yes. It’s the latest technology.”
Ratchet rolled his optics - a habit he’d picked up from her, though it was like pulling teeth to get him to admit it. “Ironhide is leaking somewhere inside. His self-repair I think would close it eventually, but not as fast as I’d like. Rampage’s needler.” The Autobots of course weren’t the only ones to constantly develop new weaponry. Rampage had a new double row of tiny launch ports running down the back of his beast mode. The needle-like projectiles had an energy component to them - fields which sliced through most shields like a laser through foil. Fortunately, these new field mechanics were only usefully efficient at a very small scale; something larger, like, say, a cannon, would fall victim not only to horrific fuel consumption but wildly erratic quantum fluctuations. That is if you could get the thing to operate at all without blowing itself to smithereens. Someone had commented that now Rampage was like a porcupine, throwing quills, and Wheeljack had whirled whomever it was around, kissed them and then ran off to his tower. Mikaela was looking forward to finding out what he came up with. From a suitably safe distance. Preferably a different state. Maybe a different hemisphere.
So, anyway, First Aid hadn’t been kidding exactly. Ratchet had some of the same kinds of scanners in his hands as Skyfire did. Mikaela could appreciate how finding a series of small leaks, or even one, might be difficult, even for their high tech senses. They were mechanical beings, sure, but you couldn’t just prop open a copy of Popular Mechanics and wave a wrench around and hope to get anywhere. Their metal was biological. And as Lennox had once pointed out, even mechanical devices could be finicky and complex. Some guns - British and German in particular, he’d said - were so finely machined that if you took one apart you had to put it back together just exactly right or the pieces wouldn’t fit. And you couldn’t replace a worn or broken piece from another gun because that wouldn’t fit either. The LHC wasn’t exactly built with Legos. Cybertronian bodies were at least several orders of magnitude more complicated than any rifle.
“If you move your hand a little to the left does his back leg start shaking?”
“I can hear you,” said Ironhide. His optics were off, though. He might be in some pain. Maybe only a little, maybe a lot - or maybe Ratchet had switched his nociceptors off if the data they were sending were muddying the waters as it were.
“No, but his tail wags,” First Aid said.
Ironhide’s arms twitched, as though he was longing to spin out his cannons…but was feeling too lazy to bother. Optimus came up the “ladder” to join them.
“May I have a diagnostic belly rub, too?” He lay down next to Aid, who fluttered his hands for a moment, and then situated himself - without dislodging Mikaela - so that he could reach.
“Okay,” said Mikaela, covering her eyes and miming a flinch. She was good at pretending to be Sam. “Do I need to leave?” Frisky robots! Optimus stretched extravagantly under Aid’s hands, then relaxed just as elaborately, purring like a giant fragging lion. “I’m out,” Mikaela said. Groping Optimus was more than she was prepared to deal with, especially with Ratchet (TMI personified) poised to reveal the most embarrassing things possible about her current physiological state.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2082 - March
“Another flyer,” Rain said faintly, entranced. Not an alpha, though. She was nothing his CPU could identify. Like many of the Water Babies, she was something new.
“My name,” the eagle said, spreading her knife-feathered wings, “is Airazor.” Mirage sang her name into the welcoming canticle, taking her hands tenderly as she folded her wings back. Memory-custodian for Theresa Epps.
“Holy mother of pearl,” Borealis muttered. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Yeah, yeah, call me Jury again, it’s easier,” said the other new person. Not a new spark, though. “Figured we could use another chopper, what with all those retro jets the Legion just got. Hey, Blades, c’mere, sweets.”
“Jury?” Blades hugged her hard, but his fields wobbled.
No, honey, I’m not Evac. You know that. Volant went back to the Matrix.
I guess so. I’m sorry! I’m happy to see you again, too! It was still an odd thought, to him, that Breakaway was thus a Prime kid. Just not an Optimus Prime kid. He didn’t suppose it really mattered. It was just odd.
I know you are, hush. I know you are. “Ahh, Wheeljack, give us a squudge!”
“Good to have you back,” Wheeljack said, snuggling into a space the two copters opened for him between them. It was definitely Jury. He’d always told himself he agreed with Prime that it was best not to try to match spark-signatures of the Legion with those of long-departed friends. There were so many, after all. Not Keel was as far as he generally let himself get. Besides, would Keel ever come back, given the chance? Always complaining he needed a vacation.
“Good to be back,” Jury murmured into Wheeljack’s helm. She suspected she would always come back, as long as he was alive too.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
“My Lord Galvatron.”
“Shockwave. What are you doing to my army?”
“My Lord?”
“I did not create them to be fodder for your experiments. Particularly when those experiments prove so…destructive.”
“Sacrifices must sometimes be made in order to further the pursuit of knowledge, Lord.” Repeatable results were vital. Megatron had understood that.
“I was not referring to the rebuilding - yet again, must I remind you - of your laboratory. I am referring to the loss of one hundred of my Silent Legion.”
“My Lord. The members of your Silent Legion have proven unsuitable for further modification. I ceased using them 8.6 quartexes ago.”
Galvatron stalked a languid circle around him, dipping his helm to snuffle one of Shockwave’s head-fins. Shockwave ignored this. “No,” said Galvatron. “You’ve moved on to using the newer…recruits.” He trailed a fingertip over the angled plates of Shockwave’s chest. “I of course applaud your efforts to cull the weak, but I do rather wonder what exactly it is you’re working on.”
“Rest assured, my Lord, I will inform you immediately when my efforts yield useful results.”
“Of course, Shockwave, of course. In the meantime I would prefer it if you would make an effort to reduce the number of mortalities.”
“I understand, my Lord.”
“I am certain you do.” Galvatron left him.
Shockwave considered. Runabout and Runamok had just arrived from out-system. They were a twinned spark. Perhaps a twinned spark would more easily render up the unity that seemed to be required for a merge.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
“Ratchet?” Ratchet! Maggie shifted to comms as she ran down the spiral stair from her and Glen’s apartment to the hangar and across to the med-bay. Ratchet, there’s something wrong with Chipchip! It wasn’t like the microbot to remain cold and offline in phone mode once she picked him up.
Ratchet met her in the doorway and knelt to take Chipchip. He scanned the microbot silently. When he was done he didn’t say anything, only placed his other hand over the small, still form. Optimus approached from the other side of the hangar and also knelt. Maggie took one look at him and burst into tears.
“His spark faded a few minutes ago, Maggie,” Optimus said. “I’m sorry.”
Maggie took the little body back from Ratchet. Just a phone now? With a dead battery? No. “What are you…? I mean, what should I…?” she wiped reflexively, uselessly at her face. We can’t bury him, can we? There are trace toxic metals? We don’t have to send him to the Laurentian do we?
“No,” said Ratchet. “That was a stopgap measure at best. I might be able to use his components to repair other micros. Or…?” He looked up at Optimus.
“We can ask one of the jets to take him to the sun. It is up to you, Maggie.”
She kept her hands pressed around the little phone, didn’t look up at him. You felt him? That meant Chipchip had had a real spark, had been a real little person. She hadn’t been anthropomorphizing to think of him so.
Yes. His pattern is a small but distinct ember in the Allspark. He is joyful. He retains memory of you with great love and affection.
She sobbed openly. What was she going to do without him? No more midi serenades or unexpectedly orchestral showtunes. No more little friend riding on her shoulder. He hadn’t been a pet; he talked, he knew things, he understood more than what was spoken. He’d spent most of the time sleeping on her pillow these last few years, but whenever he was awake he wanted to know what the newsparks were doing. She leaned against Prime’s foot and cried. He lifted her to his chest and held her there, rubbing her back, letting her cry all over his windshield.
“Ratchet,” she said, finally, holding out the small body. Using his parts to maybe extend the lives of the other minis was the best thing she could think of. Ratchet took him gently, his fingertips lingering on her hand.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2082 - June
Sunlight through the crystal cast a vivid heliotrope splash across Tracks’ cheek spar. He turned it this way and that, watching the light reflecting and refracting. He felt more than heard Mirage’s approach.
“I’m so sorry.” Mirage stopped short of actual physical contact, though his fields were open and concerned. Tracks had stormed out of the embassy in his flight mode, engines howling. Mirage had followed him, on the ground, to the Oregon base. “Is that his…?”
“Yes.” Raoul had been shot half a block from his own home; caught in rival gang crossfire. They hadn’t even bothered to rob his body. “He always was negligent about updating, though. This is from last year.” Tracks closed the memory shard in a fist. Mirage stepped closer, lifting a hand.
“Tracks. Don’t…”
“He never told his family about anything. About us. What he wanted. His life was compartmentalized, and we were just a small compartment. I’m not even certain he wanted his mindstate preserved; or if he was just humoring me.” Which was fair enough, Tracks thought. Raoul had known he would exist for such a miniscule fraction of Tracks’ lifetime. He’d hardly rate a footnote on the bedpost or some such nonsense. It was the quality of the interaction rather than the quantity, Tracks had tried to convince him. Tracks had thought he’d done so. Now he wasn’t sure.
Mirage wrapped his arms around himself. “Could you…perhaps download the memories yourself? To see what he truly wanted?”
“Oh, come here, Mirage,” Tracks said, holding out an arm to him, “before you rattle something loose.” Mirage clamped onto him and they exchanged cables. I might do that, yes. Or Smokey and Jack might be able to read them from the crystal well enough to determine whether it would be all right to load them into a newspark. I don’t know. Sometimes this human memory thing seems like an amazing, fantastic idea, and then suddenly it doesn’t. The legal complications aren’t even… Prowl worked all that out in about half a breem and that’s with half his old Counselor coding still compressed in long-term storage. I just… Mir, I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.
Mirage closed his hand over the hand holding the memory shard. “Don’t do anything rash, then. Give yourself time.” Tracks had been so kind when Theresa had died, Mirage was determined to return the favor. But he didn’t know whether or not Tracks had had organic, ephemeral friends before. Didn’t know how Tracks coped with losses like this. With loss in general. Tracks was such a hardshell, sometimes.
“Mouthy brat,” Tracks grumbled, holding Mirage tight but glaring at the crystal malevolently. “Even dead he’s still giving me a headache.”
“You strutless scraplet,” Mirage laughed, optics cycling wide. “You’re afraid you won’t be able to keep up with a mech with Raoul’s personality!”
“What?! Shut up!”
…
They installed the memories of course. Raoul’s spirit, if not his explicit verbal instructions, demanded nothing less. Tracks reflected that letting Prime “comfort” one into a merge wasn’t the worst way to go about it, especially after the second overload in “preparation”.
Lying sprawled on Prime’s open chest, Tracks hazily watched Ratchet bustle about the tank. “We probably deserve whatever we get out of this,” he muttered.
Ratchet laughed; he’d met Raoul. “You mean you deserve. Your progeny. No turning back now.”
“Peachy.” Tracks shuttered his optics, recharge stealing over him, system by system. He sent a last, shining, singing glyph to Mirage.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2082 - August
Graham strolled into the hangar, trailing grandchildren on holiday in the States. As the kids dispersed, each finding their favorite Embassy Bot (including 10-year-old Estarra, who liked to go into the Security office and watch Prowl and Red at work. They didn’t mind, as she never spoke and carefully stayed out of their way, sitting on the small gantry along one wall, sometimes swinging her feet, sometimes reading off her contacts), Graham climbed up to the mezzanine to sit next to Maggie and Glen. They were all three about the same age, but Graham couldn’t help notice how much younger Maggie especially seemed. Graham hadn’t taken much augmentation, even after Perceptor had fine-tuned a set of nanites for him that didn’t set off an allergic reaction.
Bots and humans passed, waving or calling greetings, as the old friends from NEST days chatted.
And then suddenly the robots went still. It took him a moment to realize, for the human conversations continued another beat or two. Graham was reminded of the time a wild rabbit ventured down the ramp at the Oregon base and all the Bots had frozen, watching. Even Trailbreaker, the big lug. Rhosgobel rabbit. The Bots now were looking at him, optics bright and soft. Prime came out of the war room, measured tread and slow. Graham leaned forward to set the front legs of his chair on the floor.
“What is it?” he whispered, but he cupped a hand over his breast pocket, where his micro, Tiktok slept.
“Anthony, Tiktok’s spark has extinguished,” Prime said softly, touching his own chest. Graham shook his head. No. He took her out, the little gold pocket-watch he’d gotten from his great-uncle and had carried even in combat. She’d become a person by accident, like Chipchip and Icon and Scuffle and the others. His wee chippie. Her ticking had stopped, true, but she was still warm, how could she be extinguished?
Her warmth, he realized, was from him.
“Her pattern has joined with Chipchip’s.”
Graham nodded. “Good, then. Thank you.” It wasn’t like he could talk with her directly. He’d seen vid of the way Prime had to bend himself back, crack himself open to let others access the Allspark within. That kind of exposure would be like sitting around just outside Hiroshima when the bomb went off. Graham traced the chased pattern of leaves and berries, the fancy Victorian swirls of the initials of the watch’s original owner, his great-great-great uncle. He didn’t want to give up the family heirloom, even if the internals were no longer brass and steel gearworks; but would keeping her body be morbid? Or offend the Bots?
I can remove her obviously Cybertronian parts, Ratchet tight-beamed. I could synthesize replica parts if you wanted it to be a functional timepiece again.
Graham nodded, acknowledging, not deciding. Would gutting the Tiktok parts of the watch be like pretending she had never existed? He pressed the little stud on the side to open the cover. He hadn’t done that for years. It had seemed rude.
You need not decide right away, Prime said.
She wasn’t going to…rot, then, was she. Of course not. Metal and a little bit of carbon crystal. He flicked a rad filter over his vision for a second. She wasn’t even radioactive any more. “I think…I think I’d like to keep her. With me. For a while. If it’s all right.”
“Of course,” Prime said, touching his shoulder.
Twenty-five years later, the robot custodian of Graham’s mindstate would have the watch imbedded on the inside of his chest armor.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
What are they doing? Strake banked hard right, making Countermeasure whoop with delight, and came in low, transforming and landing on the road south of Wheeljack’s tower. Perceptor, Rutile and the Constructicons were spreading a glittering something out across the cleared space in front of the tower’s entrance. Thundercracker, carrying Prowl, landed beside Strake.
“We are testing the solar collection net we will use to power the space bridge,” Perceptor explained, smiling up at the young Seeker.
From ten meters away, Perceptor heard as much as felt Prowl lock up.
Perceptor set his section of net carefully on the ground. He approached the tactician slowly, put strong- and fine-arms around Prowl, pressed their chests and temporal spars together. Prowl moved his head slightly, jamming his helm against the tip of Perceptor’s cannon. Prowl had been on the dayside when Cybertron’s sun had been destroyed. His experiences of star deaths had started bad and gotten worse. Perceptor’s optics spun wide and white.
“You’re going to destroy a sun,” Prowl whispered. He’d known this was the plan for years. He knew the designations and locations of all five of the stars scouted by Skyfire and chosen by Perceptor. He had been thrown into flashbacks then, too; and again each time the plan to move Cybertron was discussed. But he was looping badly now, confronted with the mechanism by which they would harvest the energy from the induced novae. Coryx Primaris collapsing, leaving its planets and the civilization there in darkness and cold, over and over. Billions of sapient lives, trillions, maybe quadrillions of living things slain by his knowledge, if not directly by his hand. Prime’s work had attached other memories indelibly to this sequence, forcing Prowl to consider the whole. Though these were not pleasant memories either. Rutile and the other mechs around him whispered for him to share, to help them understand.
It unfolded through the cloud mind. Sentinel cornering him on the bridge, every other optic turned away from the confrontation - except Trochar, whom Prowl had trusted until then, coming up behind and slipping in a medical override that paralyzed all of Prowl’s motor functions. Including all three energon pumps. Prowl could only stand there, locked down, locked in, Sentinel’s words - persuasive, poisonous - in his audials as his CPU slowly began to fade, his body cooling, chameleon mesh nanocells dying first, his spark spinning franticly in his chest. He should have erased the files long before Trochar got past his firewalls. He should have let them kill him, or sabotaged the Rapacious’ engines before they could construct the missile. A few hundred deaths better than billions. He’d been a coward. He’d wanted - then - to live.
Sideswipe and Sunstreaker joined the layered cuddle around Prowl, shouldering between TC and Strake, flanking Countermeasure. “We suck,” the Twins said in unison. “We’d been giving you so much slag, then. We had no idea, didn’t care, what kind of pressure you were trying to function under.”
That… d-does not mitigate… Prowl struggled to transmit around the loop.
“But we sure weren’t helping either,” Sideswipe growled into Prowl’s neck.
I’m so sorry, Raze transmitted from Bosnia. It wasn’t the first time he’d apologized for this, and it wouldn’t be the last. Prowl wasn’t the only one who needed to atone. The Twins hadn’t been on the bridge during that incident, but Impactor had. He’d turned away, like everyone else. Sentinel bullying Prowl had been turning into a normal thing as the battalion’s numbers dropped, and their missions became more desperate, and farther both spatially and philosophically from central Autobot command. No one wanted to interfere with whatever strife the officers had going - the conversation had not been aloud or over open comms. No one else knew what the dispute was about. But how would things have gone differently if Impactor, if anyone at all, had chosen instead to back Prowl up? Prowl was such a cool, collected mech, everyone assumed he had everything under control. No one had scanned, no one had seen that Trochar had been slowly killing him.
Thundercracker tight-beamed Prime. You haven’t put a stop to Sentinel yet why? You didn’t haul him in 500,000 years ago why?
You are correct. I have been gravely remiss, in this as in many other matters. 500,000 years ago I allowed him to continue autonomously because he was useful. Brutal, I knew, but useful. And as long as he aimed his brutality solely at the Decepticons it was convenient to overlook the excesses. Sacrificing the morals of one battalion to spare the rest - Wreckers aside. Now? How shall I stop him? I have ordered him to desist, to come to Mars and meet with me. So far he has ignored this directive. I do not want to send Kup or Springer or Highbeam after him; with those spark chamber modifications it is too risky.
Slag. But again you’re trying to avoid sacrificing a few Autobot lives while letting how many others die by Sentinel’s hand? He should be put down, Prime, like a…like a rabid dog. Let the Allspark sort him out. Although that hadn’t worked so well with Jhiaxus.
Perhaps if I cannot compel Sentinel to come to me, I should go to him.
ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FRAGGING MIND???
It is a valid-
NO IT ISN’T! WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALPHA TRION WOULD MAKE YOU THINK I WOULD EVER LET YOU WITHIN TEN THOUSAND LIGHTYEARS OF THE CHAAR SYSTEM???
Thundercracker…
No! Absolutely not! Send the Wreckers. Springer would do it. Springer could do it.
And allow others to risk annihilation, when it is possible I would survive?
I don’t care what Skyfire says, you don’t know that for sure. And what if you were captured? Then Galvatron would have control over both halves of the Allspark. No. It’s an unacceptable risk. Prowl would agree with me. So would Ironhide.
Optimus grinned ruefully. You would lock me in the Simfur temple, then?
Once we’ve moved the planet, Thundercracker snapped right back, that’s not a bad idea. Prime might not have known for certain what that Allspark fragment would do to him, but he’d taken the risk freely. Nevertheless, the thought that Optimus might end up immobile in the temple wasn’t a comfortable one.
I could dispatch Springer with more strongly worded orders.
Oh yes, strong language. That’ll work.
Delivered on a broad channel to ensure that the entire battalion understands the situation. The wording therefore could not be too aggressive, merely firm. Sentinel would stand tribunal, and perhaps Trochar, if Ratchet, Hoist, Catscan, Lifeline and First Aid determined there was just cause to accuse him of violating his medical programming. The rest of the battalion’s guilt or innocence had yet to be addressed. It would be unfair to take an accusatory tone and provoke them needlessly.
And if that didn’t work, he’d have Borealis take him out Sentinel-hunting.
“Prowl,” Perceptor said. They might as well all know. “Scrapper’s…innovations have made possible an alteration in our initial requirements.” Like many important discoveries, the modification to the nova net was a simple one. Perceptor was furious with himself for not having seen it. Scrapper was happy to remind him at any opportunity. “We are only going to destroy one star. A white dwarf that has already rendered its planetary remnants sterile. An old, dying star, not one that might develop life in the future.”
Prowl’s optics widened. He grasped at this desperately, chipping at the looping memories until at last the loop shattered and ceased. He sagged, held up on all sides. Irritated with himself, he flattened his chevron against his helm. His loops were tedious; interfering with his function, though at least the triggers were predictable and mostly avoidable. TC, Strake, Countermeasure and he all needed recharge. The desire to shoot himself in the head was strong. Nothing fatal, just a precise memory-core hit. It would not be against the letter of Prime’s sentence.
“Come on,” Thundercracker said, tugging on the clump. “We’re too tired for this slag.” He completely understood Prowl’s hatred of the way his loops made him the center of attention. People wanted to help, yeah, but even better would be curling up with Strake and County in the nearest bunkhouse, or the medbay if Ratchet got tetchy about it. Whoops, and it looked like Rutile wanted in, given the way he’d clamped himself to Prowl’s side, daring Sunstreaker’s displeasure.
PROWL! all the Protectobots plus Spandrel, Breakaway and Polychrest shouted from New Zealand. RECHARGE! Blades’ voice was loudest, but not by much.
“There ya have it,” Jazz laughed, coming up with Prime. “Executive orders. Not gonna disobey are ya?”
“Would you mind very much if I…?” Optimus reached down into the cuddle-clump and Prowl hooked fingers into his arm, was lifted, uplifted, carried close against Prime’s chest while long strides took them deep into the embassy.
Countermeasure and Rutile clicked in protest, but Thundercracker and Strake laid talons on them, chirring and nibbling; and the younger mechs conceded that a cuddle with Prime would do Prowl a world of good. It always did for County.
Perceptor curled a strong-hand over the pintle of his cannon, shuddering, optics shuttered tight for a moment. Scavenger glomped him, willing him to do nothing impulsive.
…
Jazz had been in a buoyant mood for months, as the estimated date for the moving of their homeworld drew near. Skating everywhere, doing donuts in intersections late at night, challenging the Lambo twins to races, tickling Mirage, snogging Gears and anyone else who got within reach. Prowl’s torment was a damper, but Prowl himself would not want his episode to subdue Jazz’s spirits for long. Jazz got it, that Prowl just wanted to be normal. In the sense of normal for him. Not unscarred, but not with open, sparking, bleeding wounds. At least functional without these inescapable interruptions. He hated disruption of his routine. Jazz loved disrupting routines, but not when they were integral to someone’s health.
Prime hooked Prowl into his own, much larger, cooling system, and after a few moments Prowl went utterly limp in his arms. Jazz fitted himself against Prowl’s back, resting his cheek spar against the space between his door wings. Prime adjusted his arms around them both, opening his chest, going directly for sparks. When Prowl was this bad it was the fastest way to soothe him. Jazz petted Prowl’s sides and lower abdomen, lightly cabling to help track their progress.
Prowl lay open between them. When his sentence was up, if he died, parts of him would live on in his progeny. Organic species that reproduced sexually, like humans, understood this instinctively, and many based a great deal of their social institutions around these kinds of relationships. His progeny would suffer briefly at his death, but it would pass. They would recover.
He was beginning to have the occasional, insidious thought that being embodied was a large part of his problems. As an AI he would not have these kinds of episodes. As an AI Sentinel and Trochar could not have coerced him as they had, he would have been able to erase the sun-killing file before they could have interfered. Jazz curled tighter against him.
Slag them, Jazz tight-beamed to Prime. Slag them in the Pit. How could they do that? How could a medic do that? Outside, Ratchet was in a high fury. Ironhide was driving with him to White Sands, and putting in a request to the Army for a couple of junked old tanks they could violently disassemble.
How could many things have happened in this war? As a species, we are supposed to have cleansed our programming to avoid such errors long ago. And yet they happen.
Slag.
Prowl knew dying, becoming an AI again would not in reality solve all his problems. He knew what would happen to Thundercracker and Strake if, in twenty-six years, he died.
“Doesn’t take forecasting to figure that,” Jazz hummed against his back. “C’mon, Prowl. Recharge.” And Jazz sang softly, for all three of them, until Prowl at last and with great relief shut down.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
The sea beyond the old wooden stairs sheeted foam-white and aquamarine across the cold pewter sand. The horizon blended with sunlight and mist and long streamers of clouds. Low, dark green plants clung to the steep rocks above the narrow beach. Miles walked down the steps slowly, listening to the dull, muted sound of his footfalls, almost drowned by the vast hollow boom of the surf. Beachcomber was waiting for him somewhere down there.
His hair was so thin now he kept it cropped close against his melanocyte-enhanced skin. He wasn’t going to be one of those pathetic hippies still pretending he was twenty with beads braided into the few wisps left. Miles took strength from his age, like an oak, like the rocks, like the robots.
Seaweed and dead fish had always overwhelmed the literary, legendary scent of salt in sea air, as far as Miles had ever been able to tell. Ocean tasted like salt, yes, and different oceans were saltier or sweeter, depending on season and temperature and acidity and underlying topography of the seabed, and the halocline. The fishy, decaying protein smell wasn’t repugnant, though. If that’s what you associated with being at the beach, having good times there, then there was nothing hardwired in the human response that insisted the smell was bad, even if in other contexts it might not be so pleasant. Miles never lingered in the seafood section of the grocery store.
Sushi in Japan was one thing, but the selection and quality at the average Cheap-o-Mart where he tended to shop didn’t bear close contemplation.
The wind caressed his scalp, tugged at his clothes, gusting around him as he followed the winding, footworn stairway down. Salt stained, rain roughened. Redwood if Miles wasn’t mistaken. Teak would have been too expensive in this part of the world. Redwood was a local commodity. The stairway had been here for at least a couple of decades. Funny that it was still a warm, comforting, rusty brown, instead of the silvery grey redwood usually weathered into. Someone crazy had stained it, over the years. Or the local mud had. Maybe they got teams of kids from the nearby schools to come out and work on it as a class project every year or so.
An old book he’d been reading as much for the scent of paper and poorly preserved leather as for the contorted prose dug into his rib under his arm. Nice big pockets in this coat, but he tended to fill them with oddly and awkwardly shaped objects. His habitual zoris flapped against the treads and his heels. The soles were getting thin, he’d need to get another pair soon, or finally give up on shoes altogether and let his feet toughen.
Beachcomber emerged from the surf as Miles reached the sand, and Miles wondered if Perceptor’s spark gave the same kind of little jump whenever the geologist came into view. Whatever into view meant to someone who could see through a few feet of stone, a few inches of steel, across millions of miles of space. Beachcomber said hooking into Perceptor’s senses made him, made just about everyone, dizzy. Or maybe he’d said giddy.
“The sea urchins are having an entmoot,” Beachcomber said, wading up the beach toward Miles, sheeting water from his shields, turning up his heat as he reached and bent toward the human. “Urchinmoot. They found a dead crab, really, but it’s fun to imagine they’ve only just finished saying good morning. Oh, and there’s a whale fall about four miles offshore. I stuck one of the little remote cameras beside it. Perceptor will want samples.” Beachcomber would probably visit the site over the next several decades it might take for the whale carcass to be entirely consumed by the myriad, complex complement of organisms that would feast on it in various stages. Whale falls were lush islands of life, oases in the huge deserts of the mid-ocean plains. Miles liked the idea of them more than the images he’d seen. The exposed skeletons were a little macabre.
“What kind of whale?”
“Humpback. Big one. Old female, probably.” Their numbers were holding steady, despite several kinds of environmental stressors. The last few countries who had still permitted whaling had slowly given it up once Beachcomber had published - and Glyph had edited - the whalesong dictionaries and codexes. Greenpeace had flailed around for a couple of years, trying to decide what else to do with that sizable chunk of its resources.
Beachcomber produced a small, pale something from a thigh cache and held it out to Miles. A turbo shell, recently vacated, with a clean drill hole where some starfish had gotten dinner. The outside was dull and rough, seaweed clinging to it here and there. Inside shone with subtle colors, smoother than skin. Miles held it up to his ear and Beachcomber smiled.
Table of Contents
Now with added AO3 link!
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Pastels??!! They were gorgeous, especially en masse like that, but it was fun to tease him. Ixchel Chase remembered the 80’s.
What’s wrong with pastels? They were very popular when I was your age.
Did you have glittery eye makeup and poofy helms too?
…Er…
You did! She cackled, but he kept on with the memories, and she was soon lost in wonder again. Poofy helms in this case meant a lot of flanges and vanes and things, reminding her powerfully of Perceptor in full-on inquisitive mode. Mmm, Perceptor…
The tenor of his recall became more intimate. Logical enough, considering what they’d been doing. What their bodies were still rather lazily doing. Thundercracker had enjoyed the Prime often. First Volant, but then Optimus - delightfully young, so gentle, so different from his predecessor… Borealis ducked away, trying to steer the stream toward more general memories of Great Dances, but so many of those had ended in the Prime’s arms she veered again and again, arguing with herself even as she did so. Would it be so awful? She was being silly! Childish, ridiculous, bigoted…but the very idea, the mere thought still put her off powerfully. It wasn’t revulsion exactly, but a deep-seated, overwhelming feeling of DO NOT WANT that she had had little inclination to try to overcome. And now her stupid human bias was going to imperil herself and every newspark and progenitor.
Thundercracker wasn’t pursuing, though that impulse was in him; to hunt down the reason for her aversion to what was to everyone else a highly desirable activity. It wasn’t polite to press for reasons, not when everyone carried scars from the war, he knew that very well. But what was this about? He couldn’t help being curious. She wasn’t that old. What could Prime have done to her in so short a time? What would Prime have done? Why would this bother her when her own spark was so like Prime’s…? Her spark…
Prime was drawing sparks from the Allspark. Thundercracker knew that. The Graveyard Legion mechs admitted themselves that they were the sparks of the dead, re-embodied. Galvatron had done the same thing. The ravine kids Countermeasure had told them of were new sparks, though; yet also drawn from the Allspark, the kindling Prime had turned from the course Galvatron had intended. But what if there was something else going on, too?
Why would two sparks that weren’t twins be so similar? Why would Borealis feel both like Prime and like Ratchet? How did that make any kind of sense? Unless.
This planet.
This disgusting organic planet.
The humans. They made new people, by combining information and matter from two parents. They mated.
Kup meeting Hot Rod. Drift meeting Afterburner. Those could have been old friends in new bodies. But what if they weren’t? Prowl and Blades. Blades was new. Not just a new body, he was new. Young. A…child… Whose spark felt like Prowl’s. And like Prime’s.
Thundercracker reeled. That’s… Not… Possible…
Uh, Prime?
Little Bird?
I blew it. I’m sorry! I think TC’s figured out sex makes babies. Or he’s about to.
You. TC’s glyph was the plural, warform, meaning “you Autobots”. You’ve…
Skyfire!
Yes, Prime?
Get me up there NOW!
Yes, Prime!
You’ve…been doing…
Borealis glowered at a hot white streak arcing up toward them from the planet. She had reported a security breach, not called for the cavalry. Ten kilometers. Five kilometers. At 500 meters Skyfire transformed, Prime kicking free of his dorsal hull and jetting closer, optics on Thundercracker. Strake, carrying Prowl, arrived a few seconds later, while Thundercracker was still sputtering.
You’ve been doing…sex!
Oh god, Borealis sighed. Well. Yeah. Technically.
It doesn’t resemble the human method, Skyfire said, as though somehow that would help. He chirped TC the basic merge file, sans the Vector protocols.
TC struggled in Borealis’ arms, she let him go and he rounded on Prime. OUR FIRST SPARK-CHILD IN TEN BILLION YEARS AND YOU PUT HUMAN BRAIN ENGRAMS IN IT???
The Ma-
OMGWTFBBQ THIS AGAIN??? Borealis roared. Her hands clenched and unclenched. She wanted to smack TC, but if she hit him as hard as she wanted to she’d dent his helm and that was way kinkier than she wanted to get with someone she’d been snogging two minutes ago.
Skyfire folded his wings back and down, looking distinctly embarrassed.
Oh dear, said Prime.
Glaring lightsabers at pretty much everyone, Borealis transformed around Thundercracker - who made a major production out of not protesting - and arrowed for Mars.
Which…ones are yours? Strake asked Prowl. Prowl turned and hugged him.
Blades, Nightbeat, Afterburner, Strafe, the Pleiades, Tideline and Highwire. Prowl included his partners for each merge, and the dates of kindling and decantation. Blades made Breakaway with Evac, and Spandrel with the rest of the Protectobots. Nightbeat made Crosshairs with Ultra Magnus.
So you’re a grandparent.
Yes. There are some third generation newsparks among the Water Babies.
The Water Babies are all…?
Perceptor’s. Usually with Beachcomber, but one batch was with Seaspray and another with Hoist. Prowl knew Perceptor wanted a batch - or three - with Prime, but Optimus had been uncharacteristically uncooperative, and uncommunicative regarding why not.
Strake pressed his forehelm to Prowl’s. You’re not telling me something. The angle of Prowl’s subharmonics had been evasive. There was something Prowl was hoping Strake wouldn’t ask.
Sparks made in this way are entangled with their parent sparks. Somewhat like twinning, but the effects are in certain ways more pronounced. There is no communication in terms of language, but there is a certain…awareness. Particularly of a spark’s state of…being.
If you were killed, Blades and Nightbeat and the rest would feel it? Targeting the worst possible case.
Yes.
And if any of your progeny were killed you and whomever you made them with would feel it?
Yes. When Evac died, Breakaway nearly extinguished in the growth tank, and Blades - because the effect on Breakaway echoed to him - briefly lost consciousness. Prowl wasn’t certain whether the unease he’d felt in his own spark at that point had been a further echo from Blades or simply his own grief and pain.
Strake gaped at him in horror, shaking him a little, hands rough on Prowl’s shoulders. Prowl! Thirteen hostages for Prowl’s spark. Thirteen! The bonds of love and honor and long friendships among Cybertronians had been weakness enough that Megatron had slowly reprogrammed them to reject them bit by bit. Now Prime had led his people into absolute, physical bonds they couldn’t undo or reprogram their way out of. The Autobots were insane.
We’re all connected, Strake, Prowl said. One way or another. To each other, to Prime, to our children. Links which, yes, cannot be broken. He kissed Strake, soothing with lips and hands and fields. I think it will save us, not destroy us.
Are you forecasting that?
Yes.
Strake rumbled, unsettled. Then huffed and banked his wings. All right.
…
That hadn’t gone as planned, Optimus thought glumly, on the ride back to Nevada. (Skyfire was conspicuously silent.)
Don’t ask us, said Lustral in the Matrix. You’re on your own for this kind of thing.
None of us ever reproduced. Except Volant, Palladium said thoughtfully. Maybe wistfully. Optimus wasn’t certain. Maximal and Zeta were yelling at each other. Rather loudly. And Decorum was trying to intervene, which sometimes helped, but…not when Zeta was involved.
Yes, but I didn’t…stick around to raise him, Volant pointed out.
Optimus aimed a tight-beam down to Earth. Ratchet?
Yes. You did.
…What?
The question you were going to ask me. “Did I just frag off our daughter?” The answer is yes.
I see. A significant fraction of his personality programming involved the desire and ability to ease people who were upset. Not to upset them in the first place or make them more so. He had examined this programming in minute detail over the millennia of the war, dissecting where he had failed with Megatron. He had long ago come to the uncomfortable conclusion that while he had made a number of mistakes regarding his twin, he could not have prevented, or fixed, everything. He wasn’t the only influence. Megatron had his own programming, had made his own decisions. He couldn’t wave his hands and make everything all right again. He couldn’t make his brother well. And that hurt.
Oh stop fretting, Ratchet grumbled. You’ll live.
…
The Noctis Labyrinthus. Where Autobots and Decepticons had united - if briefly - to fight Thunderwing. Down a small side-canyon where an autonomic scan would pick up no traces of frozen energon. Borealis found a spur of rock and pushed Thundercracker up against it, the angle of the stone fitting neatly, comfortably between his wings. The kissing didn’t stop for a long while.
Night fell, though, and the mist around them froze. Borealis curled around Thundercracker, activating her more powerful shields and spinning up her spark to keep them warm.
“You’re not afraid of alphas any more?” His voice was faint in the thin atmosphere, but she had turned up the gain on her audials.
“No. Not alphas in general.”
“Being wary of Starscream in particular is wise. And don’t discount Skywarp. He’s impulsive, rash, but it makes him unpredictable.”
She mimicked a sigh and nibbled on his crest. She supposed talking about Starscream was inevitable, but she wasn’t about to encourage Thundercracker to elaborate. “Prowl’s going to be almighty sexy as an alpha. Skyfire showed me the latest version of their plans.”
“Whaaaat? Gimme!”
“No, no, bad luck to see the bride before the wedding.”
Thundercracker couldn’t even swear properly, all that came out of his vocoder was garbled noise. He flailed out of her embrace but she caught him by an ankle and pulled him back to ground.
“Jets,” she said, grinning like both her progenitors at once, “are ticklish!”
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
A week later.
Thundercracker watched them. Standing with the others on the mesa top, he dug his claws into the stone of the northern edge, optics gleaming. Keenly aware of Strake brushing against his wings on his starboard side. And Prowl, between them; almost three meters shorter, but his fields, his presence in their private cloud, the sheer magnitude of his touch on their hulls vastly larger. Prowl's engine purred, watching the young ones fly. They were all affected, but Thundercracker knew he and Strake felt a particular ache.
They were rushing this, he thought, but maybe being sparked first and building themselves for two years changed things.
The first trine to claim this world’s skies.
Ranger watched them. Not part of this formal arrangement, and yet part. They would make newsparks together; he and each of them, all of them together. Three points describe a plane, but four described the third dimension.
Down at his feet, Annabelle bounced like a teenager. She was a grandmother now. How had that become a thing? Ranger wondered. How fast would human lives go by for him now? How could sixteen years have gone by so quickly? He felt a sudden levinbolt of sympathy for Ironhide. For Mirage and Tracks and Wheeljack. For Hound and Perceptor and Bee and Ratchet. All those who loved fleeting humans. Fleeting humanity.
Annabelle watched them. “My mother the fighter jet,” she murmured, zooming with enhanced lenses. She didn’t have the tracking software, though, so it was quite a trick to follow the exuberant loops and dives of the three-dimensional ballet going on far above.
Ranger grinned, rumbling his engine happily.
My father the truck. It sounded surreal put so baldly.
“Are they even human any more?” Nick had asked late one night. Anna had stroked his cheek fondly.
“Of course they aren’t. They’re Cybertronian. And they love us like Cybertronians do, with all the power and grace of their sparks.” Giving up being human, was it so terrible? But she had grown up with robots, and Nick hadn’t. It wasn’t his fault - and she thought of it as a lack, a poverty, evoking compassion toward those not so privileged. Dani and Nate understood, and the Epps daughters. Dani maybe understood certain things even better than Anna and the others, having taken a robot Companion. Consort. Something like that. And Dani was more than half robot herself. Most of her peripheral nerves replaced by biomimetic wire; metal and nanofactories lacing her bones; heart entirely artificial now, after that valve problem ten years ago. More things installed in her brain than even Anna wanted to know about. Dani so far looked entirely human, though her options for Halloween were vastly expanded. Anna envied that every year.
In a sci-fi movie, Danaela would be the monster. Autobot Dani. The Modern Promethea! To be justly punished for hubris with fire and windmills. And what of Perceptor who aided and abetted? Who had watched Dani’s cells divide since before her birth, who knew more about her personal physiology than any human ever had. Wasn’t Dani sort of his first daughter, as much his child as Mikaela and Sam’s? Did Perceptor’s love for his legion of children since make his love for Dani any less? No. Anna agreed with the Dalai Lama and Prime. Love and compassion were infinite, inexhaustible.
In the sky above, three bright jets danced, following intricate, ancient patterns Serenity had wheedled - very effectively - out of Thundercracker. A dance whose forms had never been seen in Earth’s blue sky, that hadn’t been seen anywhere since before multicellular life had oozed around Earth’s oceans.
Thundercracker watched them, and was happy.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2080 - March
Jury!
Frag. Sorry, Prime, Sinnertwin got around behind me. Gotta say, I prefer being sniped to shredded.
I’m so sorry.
No, no, it’s fine. I’m up for re-enlistment, though. Got anything in the pipe?
Oh Jury… The Germans have a yard full of old aircraft they’d like me to enspark.
Umm…I wasn’t thinking Legion this time, actually. Next time you merge, add me to the queue? You need a custodian for the Theresa memories, yes?
!!!
You’re so cute when you’re floored.
Heh. Hmm. The plan for those engrams is that Mirage and I will merge once he has recovered sufficiently - and I would like very much to get another newspark from him. But if you’d like to harbor them as well?
Sure, why not? Humans are interesting!
As you wish! Thank you, Jury.
…
It was an unseasonably cold night, the desert’s early spring interrupted by wind shrieking down out of the northeast, carrying the taste of snow off the Rockies. Mirage hugged himself and put up his shields. A good night to be down in the Mossary, or one of the bunkhouses, with Hound and whomever else was about and in the mood. Inferno maybe; always in the mood, that one, and a nice big hot chassis to warm oneself by.
Or…
Mirage pressed the flat of his hand against his central seam. Maybe the cold had at last blunted the sharpest edges of his grief. He’d come to love Theresa so much. The shared stories, love of literature, of words and the ways they could be made to dance through another’s mind, even thousands of years later. Laughing over the snotty, whiny, passionate poetry of Catullus, and his striking similarities to Witsledge, who had also died young, long ago during the reign of Lustral Prime and Lord Stormshatter. Enjoying their shared labors in her garden, Mirage taking over more and more as the quicksilver seasons passed and Theresa’s tall, strong body grew frail. She had never remarried.
Optimus?
Mmm?
Optimus made the most wonderful interrogative noises. Mirage laughed softly at himself. Halfway to heated up just from the sound of his Prime’s voice. Now?
Most assuredly! Where would you like? Merges were seldom performed in the growth chamber these days, especially if Prime was one of the participants. He could easily carry a single newspark, or an entire clutch, whatever the needed distance to the waiting tanks.
The Mossary.
On my way!
Mirage sprang down from the mesa top, boulder to buttress, and skated into the hangar. Garnering handclasps and kisses from various mechs as he passed them. Only a handful of night-shift humans were about, and they were more than used to Cybertronian modes of affection.
“Give the big guy an extra flourish for me,” Jazz said, swooping in for a long snog and grope. Mirage pulsed his cloaking field at him, making Jazz shiver and hum.
Hound said nothing, but his optics and fields communicated the branching, flowering tree of his emotions as he drew Mirage into a brief but intense hug.
Down in the Mossary, Optimus had arranged himself on the wide stone ledge on the far side of the pool. Stretched out with his ankles crossed, fingers laced behind his helm. He had quite unnecessarily removed strategic pieces of his armor, stacked neatly against the side wall. Mirage felt the gold tips of his thoracic cables extend from their housings, and the longing to touch zing like charge from his hands up through his spark to his entire body. He swayed through the moss garden, almost dancing, a subtle ripple running up his torso, fields licking forward at and into Prime’s. Stroking himself lightly here and there - understated gestures that would be easily missed if one weren’t watching for them - he smiled at the vivid flare of Prime’s optics.
Optimus extended an arm, giving him a hand up, and Mirage straddled Prime’s waist, loving the way Optimus ran his fingers up and down the backs of his legs as he leaned against that broad red chest and tilted his head up for a kiss. Cables sleeked between them, closing the small remaining distance between them. Mirage opened his armor, touching protoform to protoform.
Mmmmmirrrrr…
A line of bronze gleamed the length of one of the struts in Optimus’ neck, visible only as he tipped his head back. Wire-thin, the bright inlay was inscribed with microscopic glyphs. Mirage traced it with a fingertip, shivering at the strange currents it introduced into their mingled fields. Irrevocable changes. Neither Ratchet nor Perceptor had any idea how long Prime could stave off this particular transformation. Mirage kissed the fine line of encroaching Allspark material, moved along the edge of Prime’s jaw, settled into the kiss as their mouths met.
By his arts, Mirage overloaded his Prime three times before they began the merge. The sight of Optimus strutless and steaming beneath him was pleasing indeed. His armor was polished to a high sheen these days - Elita, Jazz and Prowl had conspired to keep Prime entirely out of combat since the brief capture of Soundwave. And Primus help anyone who tried to thwart those three.
Their cables grew hot as they sank into the deep link, the Mossary now lit by blue-white and bright copper reflecting off the still water of the pond. They spiraled around and around each other, sinking deeper, falling, until with a piercing effort they reached the field of blossoming stars. Mirage made a low, helpless sound, but Prime steadied him, warm and patient, as the possibilities gleamed and beckoned, no two alike, every one some combination of the two of them. Choosing was the hard part; having matter stripped from one’s spark was simple by comparison. In his mind, Mirage drew the oldest glyph for “love” that he knew - he was working on a new one, for the love of ephemerals - and chose the spark-pattern that rested beneath the last stroke. Optimus hummed happily and the lightning struck, blazing scars across their chests as first one, and then, surprise, another spark whirled into being between them.
Had Prime chosen one as well, or…? When Mirage briefly unshuttered his optics, the thin line of Allspark material in Optimus’ neck was still glowing. He smiled and surrendered himself to recharge.
Ratchet…we need two…
Shaking his head but smiling, Ratchet keyed the next tank for prep and fill. He’d been tinkering with the peripherals and now it only took a few minutes for a cold tank to warm up and be ready with protomass and growth colloid for a new spark. Getting more than you intended had become…not unusual. Not that Prime minded keeping the extras cuddled around the edges of his open spark chamber. Ratchet wondered if the new sparks ever jiggled at each other, vying for who got to stay with him longest. He would, in their place. Gotta plug into a body sometime, kid. Tel and Ven said bodies were overrated. Ratchet wasn’t sure how Prowl felt about it. He’d shared Prowl’s first memories, knew that Lance had not wanted to be embodied. Or at least not as a ground vehicle. How might things have been different if Prowl had been given a delta body? Or an omega? Probably, for one thing, he would have been dead by now, given how few deltas had survived. The omegas were all gone.
Spiral’s AI precursor had been curious, had desired the experience of embodiment. But had the part of Prowl that had been Lance reconciled itself to the change? Had it struggled in the grip of the logic-sinks when they took it from the Fission Blade? How cruel had they been to an entity they had wished to honor for bravery and kindness and shrewd understanding? That could have gone hideously wrong, but they had gotten such a spark in Prowl…
The new body they would build for him would be worthy of that spark.
Ratchet steered his processor back to the present as Optimus came through the door, one hand over his chest. Where was his armor? Never mind. “There you go, there you go,” Ratchet cooed, tipping the new sparks into their tanks to nestle into their protomass. One (a lovely periwinkle blue) seemed to poke about in its hollow curiously, the other (aquamarine a touch greener than Wheeljack’s) set to beginning its bodily construction with single-minded purpose, as though it already had a plan and was anxious to get started. They weren’t twins, that was clear enough. Had Prime and Mirage decided to kindle two for some reason; two of the myriad patterns that would have arrayed themselves before them shining at them particularly beguilingly?
It didn’t matter. Optimus had gone back to the Mossary to curl around Mirage; and Mirage’s fields, before fading offline, had been happy.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2080 - September
She found Ratchet up on the mesa top. Ironhide was sprawled out half on his lap and Ratchet had a hand splayed on his abdomen, moving it slowly in circles. Mikaela stopped, and almost turned around to retreat back down the ladder, but then she saw that First Aid was kneeling beside them, watching intently. Not what she was thinking then. Although Aid’s presence didn’t preclude snuggles, something about his demeanor said study and concern, not…snuggliness.
“What…are you doing?” she asked, walking around Ironhide’s huge feet to stand next to Aid. Aid moved a panel on his leg, offering her a higher platform for viewing if she wanted it. She climbed up readily. Even from a better vantage it still looked like Ratchet was just sitting there rubbing Ironhide’s tummy. “He eat a fridge past its expiration date?”
“Ha ha,” grumbled Ironhide.
“Diagnostic belly rub,” Aid explained. As if that was some kind of technical term, instead of something he’d made up right then.
“Diagnostic belly rub.”
“Oh yes. It’s the latest technology.”
Ratchet rolled his optics - a habit he’d picked up from her, though it was like pulling teeth to get him to admit it. “Ironhide is leaking somewhere inside. His self-repair I think would close it eventually, but not as fast as I’d like. Rampage’s needler.” The Autobots of course weren’t the only ones to constantly develop new weaponry. Rampage had a new double row of tiny launch ports running down the back of his beast mode. The needle-like projectiles had an energy component to them - fields which sliced through most shields like a laser through foil. Fortunately, these new field mechanics were only usefully efficient at a very small scale; something larger, like, say, a cannon, would fall victim not only to horrific fuel consumption but wildly erratic quantum fluctuations. That is if you could get the thing to operate at all without blowing itself to smithereens. Someone had commented that now Rampage was like a porcupine, throwing quills, and Wheeljack had whirled whomever it was around, kissed them and then ran off to his tower. Mikaela was looking forward to finding out what he came up with. From a suitably safe distance. Preferably a different state. Maybe a different hemisphere.
So, anyway, First Aid hadn’t been kidding exactly. Ratchet had some of the same kinds of scanners in his hands as Skyfire did. Mikaela could appreciate how finding a series of small leaks, or even one, might be difficult, even for their high tech senses. They were mechanical beings, sure, but you couldn’t just prop open a copy of Popular Mechanics and wave a wrench around and hope to get anywhere. Their metal was biological. And as Lennox had once pointed out, even mechanical devices could be finicky and complex. Some guns - British and German in particular, he’d said - were so finely machined that if you took one apart you had to put it back together just exactly right or the pieces wouldn’t fit. And you couldn’t replace a worn or broken piece from another gun because that wouldn’t fit either. The LHC wasn’t exactly built with Legos. Cybertronian bodies were at least several orders of magnitude more complicated than any rifle.
“If you move your hand a little to the left does his back leg start shaking?”
“I can hear you,” said Ironhide. His optics were off, though. He might be in some pain. Maybe only a little, maybe a lot - or maybe Ratchet had switched his nociceptors off if the data they were sending were muddying the waters as it were.
“No, but his tail wags,” First Aid said.
Ironhide’s arms twitched, as though he was longing to spin out his cannons…but was feeling too lazy to bother. Optimus came up the “ladder” to join them.
“May I have a diagnostic belly rub, too?” He lay down next to Aid, who fluttered his hands for a moment, and then situated himself - without dislodging Mikaela - so that he could reach.
“Okay,” said Mikaela, covering her eyes and miming a flinch. She was good at pretending to be Sam. “Do I need to leave?” Frisky robots! Optimus stretched extravagantly under Aid’s hands, then relaxed just as elaborately, purring like a giant fragging lion. “I’m out,” Mikaela said. Groping Optimus was more than she was prepared to deal with, especially with Ratchet (TMI personified) poised to reveal the most embarrassing things possible about her current physiological state.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2082 - March
“Another flyer,” Rain said faintly, entranced. Not an alpha, though. She was nothing his CPU could identify. Like many of the Water Babies, she was something new.
“My name,” the eagle said, spreading her knife-feathered wings, “is Airazor.” Mirage sang her name into the welcoming canticle, taking her hands tenderly as she folded her wings back. Memory-custodian for Theresa Epps.
“Holy mother of pearl,” Borealis muttered. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Yeah, yeah, call me Jury again, it’s easier,” said the other new person. Not a new spark, though. “Figured we could use another chopper, what with all those retro jets the Legion just got. Hey, Blades, c’mere, sweets.”
“Jury?” Blades hugged her hard, but his fields wobbled.
No, honey, I’m not Evac. You know that. Volant went back to the Matrix.
I guess so. I’m sorry! I’m happy to see you again, too! It was still an odd thought, to him, that Breakaway was thus a Prime kid. Just not an Optimus Prime kid. He didn’t suppose it really mattered. It was just odd.
I know you are, hush. I know you are. “Ahh, Wheeljack, give us a squudge!”
“Good to have you back,” Wheeljack said, snuggling into a space the two copters opened for him between them. It was definitely Jury. He’d always told himself he agreed with Prime that it was best not to try to match spark-signatures of the Legion with those of long-departed friends. There were so many, after all. Not Keel was as far as he generally let himself get. Besides, would Keel ever come back, given the chance? Always complaining he needed a vacation.
“Good to be back,” Jury murmured into Wheeljack’s helm. She suspected she would always come back, as long as he was alive too.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
“My Lord Galvatron.”
“Shockwave. What are you doing to my army?”
“My Lord?”
“I did not create them to be fodder for your experiments. Particularly when those experiments prove so…destructive.”
“Sacrifices must sometimes be made in order to further the pursuit of knowledge, Lord.” Repeatable results were vital. Megatron had understood that.
“I was not referring to the rebuilding - yet again, must I remind you - of your laboratory. I am referring to the loss of one hundred of my Silent Legion.”
“My Lord. The members of your Silent Legion have proven unsuitable for further modification. I ceased using them 8.6 quartexes ago.”
Galvatron stalked a languid circle around him, dipping his helm to snuffle one of Shockwave’s head-fins. Shockwave ignored this. “No,” said Galvatron. “You’ve moved on to using the newer…recruits.” He trailed a fingertip over the angled plates of Shockwave’s chest. “I of course applaud your efforts to cull the weak, but I do rather wonder what exactly it is you’re working on.”
“Rest assured, my Lord, I will inform you immediately when my efforts yield useful results.”
“Of course, Shockwave, of course. In the meantime I would prefer it if you would make an effort to reduce the number of mortalities.”
“I understand, my Lord.”
“I am certain you do.” Galvatron left him.
Shockwave considered. Runabout and Runamok had just arrived from out-system. They were a twinned spark. Perhaps a twinned spark would more easily render up the unity that seemed to be required for a merge.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
“Ratchet?” Ratchet! Maggie shifted to comms as she ran down the spiral stair from her and Glen’s apartment to the hangar and across to the med-bay. Ratchet, there’s something wrong with Chipchip! It wasn’t like the microbot to remain cold and offline in phone mode once she picked him up.
Ratchet met her in the doorway and knelt to take Chipchip. He scanned the microbot silently. When he was done he didn’t say anything, only placed his other hand over the small, still form. Optimus approached from the other side of the hangar and also knelt. Maggie took one look at him and burst into tears.
“His spark faded a few minutes ago, Maggie,” Optimus said. “I’m sorry.”
Maggie took the little body back from Ratchet. Just a phone now? With a dead battery? No. “What are you…? I mean, what should I…?” she wiped reflexively, uselessly at her face. We can’t bury him, can we? There are trace toxic metals? We don’t have to send him to the Laurentian do we?
“No,” said Ratchet. “That was a stopgap measure at best. I might be able to use his components to repair other micros. Or…?” He looked up at Optimus.
“We can ask one of the jets to take him to the sun. It is up to you, Maggie.”
She kept her hands pressed around the little phone, didn’t look up at him. You felt him? That meant Chipchip had had a real spark, had been a real little person. She hadn’t been anthropomorphizing to think of him so.
Yes. His pattern is a small but distinct ember in the Allspark. He is joyful. He retains memory of you with great love and affection.
She sobbed openly. What was she going to do without him? No more midi serenades or unexpectedly orchestral showtunes. No more little friend riding on her shoulder. He hadn’t been a pet; he talked, he knew things, he understood more than what was spoken. He’d spent most of the time sleeping on her pillow these last few years, but whenever he was awake he wanted to know what the newsparks were doing. She leaned against Prime’s foot and cried. He lifted her to his chest and held her there, rubbing her back, letting her cry all over his windshield.
“Ratchet,” she said, finally, holding out the small body. Using his parts to maybe extend the lives of the other minis was the best thing she could think of. Ratchet took him gently, his fingertips lingering on her hand.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2082 - June
Sunlight through the crystal cast a vivid heliotrope splash across Tracks’ cheek spar. He turned it this way and that, watching the light reflecting and refracting. He felt more than heard Mirage’s approach.
“I’m so sorry.” Mirage stopped short of actual physical contact, though his fields were open and concerned. Tracks had stormed out of the embassy in his flight mode, engines howling. Mirage had followed him, on the ground, to the Oregon base. “Is that his…?”
“Yes.” Raoul had been shot half a block from his own home; caught in rival gang crossfire. They hadn’t even bothered to rob his body. “He always was negligent about updating, though. This is from last year.” Tracks closed the memory shard in a fist. Mirage stepped closer, lifting a hand.
“Tracks. Don’t…”
“He never told his family about anything. About us. What he wanted. His life was compartmentalized, and we were just a small compartment. I’m not even certain he wanted his mindstate preserved; or if he was just humoring me.” Which was fair enough, Tracks thought. Raoul had known he would exist for such a miniscule fraction of Tracks’ lifetime. He’d hardly rate a footnote on the bedpost or some such nonsense. It was the quality of the interaction rather than the quantity, Tracks had tried to convince him. Tracks had thought he’d done so. Now he wasn’t sure.
Mirage wrapped his arms around himself. “Could you…perhaps download the memories yourself? To see what he truly wanted?”
“Oh, come here, Mirage,” Tracks said, holding out an arm to him, “before you rattle something loose.” Mirage clamped onto him and they exchanged cables. I might do that, yes. Or Smokey and Jack might be able to read them from the crystal well enough to determine whether it would be all right to load them into a newspark. I don’t know. Sometimes this human memory thing seems like an amazing, fantastic idea, and then suddenly it doesn’t. The legal complications aren’t even… Prowl worked all that out in about half a breem and that’s with half his old Counselor coding still compressed in long-term storage. I just… Mir, I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.
Mirage closed his hand over the hand holding the memory shard. “Don’t do anything rash, then. Give yourself time.” Tracks had been so kind when Theresa had died, Mirage was determined to return the favor. But he didn’t know whether or not Tracks had had organic, ephemeral friends before. Didn’t know how Tracks coped with losses like this. With loss in general. Tracks was such a hardshell, sometimes.
“Mouthy brat,” Tracks grumbled, holding Mirage tight but glaring at the crystal malevolently. “Even dead he’s still giving me a headache.”
“You strutless scraplet,” Mirage laughed, optics cycling wide. “You’re afraid you won’t be able to keep up with a mech with Raoul’s personality!”
“What?! Shut up!”
…
They installed the memories of course. Raoul’s spirit, if not his explicit verbal instructions, demanded nothing less. Tracks reflected that letting Prime “comfort” one into a merge wasn’t the worst way to go about it, especially after the second overload in “preparation”.
Lying sprawled on Prime’s open chest, Tracks hazily watched Ratchet bustle about the tank. “We probably deserve whatever we get out of this,” he muttered.
Ratchet laughed; he’d met Raoul. “You mean you deserve. Your progeny. No turning back now.”
“Peachy.” Tracks shuttered his optics, recharge stealing over him, system by system. He sent a last, shining, singing glyph to Mirage.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2082 - August
Graham strolled into the hangar, trailing grandchildren on holiday in the States. As the kids dispersed, each finding their favorite Embassy Bot (including 10-year-old Estarra, who liked to go into the Security office and watch Prowl and Red at work. They didn’t mind, as she never spoke and carefully stayed out of their way, sitting on the small gantry along one wall, sometimes swinging her feet, sometimes reading off her contacts), Graham climbed up to the mezzanine to sit next to Maggie and Glen. They were all three about the same age, but Graham couldn’t help notice how much younger Maggie especially seemed. Graham hadn’t taken much augmentation, even after Perceptor had fine-tuned a set of nanites for him that didn’t set off an allergic reaction.
Bots and humans passed, waving or calling greetings, as the old friends from NEST days chatted.
And then suddenly the robots went still. It took him a moment to realize, for the human conversations continued another beat or two. Graham was reminded of the time a wild rabbit ventured down the ramp at the Oregon base and all the Bots had frozen, watching. Even Trailbreaker, the big lug. Rhosgobel rabbit. The Bots now were looking at him, optics bright and soft. Prime came out of the war room, measured tread and slow. Graham leaned forward to set the front legs of his chair on the floor.
“What is it?” he whispered, but he cupped a hand over his breast pocket, where his micro, Tiktok slept.
“Anthony, Tiktok’s spark has extinguished,” Prime said softly, touching his own chest. Graham shook his head. No. He took her out, the little gold pocket-watch he’d gotten from his great-uncle and had carried even in combat. She’d become a person by accident, like Chipchip and Icon and Scuffle and the others. His wee chippie. Her ticking had stopped, true, but she was still warm, how could she be extinguished?
Her warmth, he realized, was from him.
“Her pattern has joined with Chipchip’s.”
Graham nodded. “Good, then. Thank you.” It wasn’t like he could talk with her directly. He’d seen vid of the way Prime had to bend himself back, crack himself open to let others access the Allspark within. That kind of exposure would be like sitting around just outside Hiroshima when the bomb went off. Graham traced the chased pattern of leaves and berries, the fancy Victorian swirls of the initials of the watch’s original owner, his great-great-great uncle. He didn’t want to give up the family heirloom, even if the internals were no longer brass and steel gearworks; but would keeping her body be morbid? Or offend the Bots?
I can remove her obviously Cybertronian parts, Ratchet tight-beamed. I could synthesize replica parts if you wanted it to be a functional timepiece again.
Graham nodded, acknowledging, not deciding. Would gutting the Tiktok parts of the watch be like pretending she had never existed? He pressed the little stud on the side to open the cover. He hadn’t done that for years. It had seemed rude.
You need not decide right away, Prime said.
She wasn’t going to…rot, then, was she. Of course not. Metal and a little bit of carbon crystal. He flicked a rad filter over his vision for a second. She wasn’t even radioactive any more. “I think…I think I’d like to keep her. With me. For a while. If it’s all right.”
“Of course,” Prime said, touching his shoulder.
Twenty-five years later, the robot custodian of Graham’s mindstate would have the watch imbedded on the inside of his chest armor.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
What are they doing? Strake banked hard right, making Countermeasure whoop with delight, and came in low, transforming and landing on the road south of Wheeljack’s tower. Perceptor, Rutile and the Constructicons were spreading a glittering something out across the cleared space in front of the tower’s entrance. Thundercracker, carrying Prowl, landed beside Strake.
“We are testing the solar collection net we will use to power the space bridge,” Perceptor explained, smiling up at the young Seeker.
From ten meters away, Perceptor heard as much as felt Prowl lock up.
Perceptor set his section of net carefully on the ground. He approached the tactician slowly, put strong- and fine-arms around Prowl, pressed their chests and temporal spars together. Prowl moved his head slightly, jamming his helm against the tip of Perceptor’s cannon. Prowl had been on the dayside when Cybertron’s sun had been destroyed. His experiences of star deaths had started bad and gotten worse. Perceptor’s optics spun wide and white.
“You’re going to destroy a sun,” Prowl whispered. He’d known this was the plan for years. He knew the designations and locations of all five of the stars scouted by Skyfire and chosen by Perceptor. He had been thrown into flashbacks then, too; and again each time the plan to move Cybertron was discussed. But he was looping badly now, confronted with the mechanism by which they would harvest the energy from the induced novae. Coryx Primaris collapsing, leaving its planets and the civilization there in darkness and cold, over and over. Billions of sapient lives, trillions, maybe quadrillions of living things slain by his knowledge, if not directly by his hand. Prime’s work had attached other memories indelibly to this sequence, forcing Prowl to consider the whole. Though these were not pleasant memories either. Rutile and the other mechs around him whispered for him to share, to help them understand.
It unfolded through the cloud mind. Sentinel cornering him on the bridge, every other optic turned away from the confrontation - except Trochar, whom Prowl had trusted until then, coming up behind and slipping in a medical override that paralyzed all of Prowl’s motor functions. Including all three energon pumps. Prowl could only stand there, locked down, locked in, Sentinel’s words - persuasive, poisonous - in his audials as his CPU slowly began to fade, his body cooling, chameleon mesh nanocells dying first, his spark spinning franticly in his chest. He should have erased the files long before Trochar got past his firewalls. He should have let them kill him, or sabotaged the Rapacious’ engines before they could construct the missile. A few hundred deaths better than billions. He’d been a coward. He’d wanted - then - to live.
Sideswipe and Sunstreaker joined the layered cuddle around Prowl, shouldering between TC and Strake, flanking Countermeasure. “We suck,” the Twins said in unison. “We’d been giving you so much slag, then. We had no idea, didn’t care, what kind of pressure you were trying to function under.”
That… d-does not mitigate… Prowl struggled to transmit around the loop.
“But we sure weren’t helping either,” Sideswipe growled into Prowl’s neck.
I’m so sorry, Raze transmitted from Bosnia. It wasn’t the first time he’d apologized for this, and it wouldn’t be the last. Prowl wasn’t the only one who needed to atone. The Twins hadn’t been on the bridge during that incident, but Impactor had. He’d turned away, like everyone else. Sentinel bullying Prowl had been turning into a normal thing as the battalion’s numbers dropped, and their missions became more desperate, and farther both spatially and philosophically from central Autobot command. No one wanted to interfere with whatever strife the officers had going - the conversation had not been aloud or over open comms. No one else knew what the dispute was about. But how would things have gone differently if Impactor, if anyone at all, had chosen instead to back Prowl up? Prowl was such a cool, collected mech, everyone assumed he had everything under control. No one had scanned, no one had seen that Trochar had been slowly killing him.
Thundercracker tight-beamed Prime. You haven’t put a stop to Sentinel yet why? You didn’t haul him in 500,000 years ago why?
You are correct. I have been gravely remiss, in this as in many other matters. 500,000 years ago I allowed him to continue autonomously because he was useful. Brutal, I knew, but useful. And as long as he aimed his brutality solely at the Decepticons it was convenient to overlook the excesses. Sacrificing the morals of one battalion to spare the rest - Wreckers aside. Now? How shall I stop him? I have ordered him to desist, to come to Mars and meet with me. So far he has ignored this directive. I do not want to send Kup or Springer or Highbeam after him; with those spark chamber modifications it is too risky.
Slag. But again you’re trying to avoid sacrificing a few Autobot lives while letting how many others die by Sentinel’s hand? He should be put down, Prime, like a…like a rabid dog. Let the Allspark sort him out. Although that hadn’t worked so well with Jhiaxus.
Perhaps if I cannot compel Sentinel to come to me, I should go to him.
ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FRAGGING MIND???
It is a valid-
NO IT ISN’T! WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALPHA TRION WOULD MAKE YOU THINK I WOULD EVER LET YOU WITHIN TEN THOUSAND LIGHTYEARS OF THE CHAAR SYSTEM???
Thundercracker…
No! Absolutely not! Send the Wreckers. Springer would do it. Springer could do it.
And allow others to risk annihilation, when it is possible I would survive?
I don’t care what Skyfire says, you don’t know that for sure. And what if you were captured? Then Galvatron would have control over both halves of the Allspark. No. It’s an unacceptable risk. Prowl would agree with me. So would Ironhide.
Optimus grinned ruefully. You would lock me in the Simfur temple, then?
Once we’ve moved the planet, Thundercracker snapped right back, that’s not a bad idea. Prime might not have known for certain what that Allspark fragment would do to him, but he’d taken the risk freely. Nevertheless, the thought that Optimus might end up immobile in the temple wasn’t a comfortable one.
I could dispatch Springer with more strongly worded orders.
Oh yes, strong language. That’ll work.
Delivered on a broad channel to ensure that the entire battalion understands the situation. The wording therefore could not be too aggressive, merely firm. Sentinel would stand tribunal, and perhaps Trochar, if Ratchet, Hoist, Catscan, Lifeline and First Aid determined there was just cause to accuse him of violating his medical programming. The rest of the battalion’s guilt or innocence had yet to be addressed. It would be unfair to take an accusatory tone and provoke them needlessly.
And if that didn’t work, he’d have Borealis take him out Sentinel-hunting.
“Prowl,” Perceptor said. They might as well all know. “Scrapper’s…innovations have made possible an alteration in our initial requirements.” Like many important discoveries, the modification to the nova net was a simple one. Perceptor was furious with himself for not having seen it. Scrapper was happy to remind him at any opportunity. “We are only going to destroy one star. A white dwarf that has already rendered its planetary remnants sterile. An old, dying star, not one that might develop life in the future.”
Prowl’s optics widened. He grasped at this desperately, chipping at the looping memories until at last the loop shattered and ceased. He sagged, held up on all sides. Irritated with himself, he flattened his chevron against his helm. His loops were tedious; interfering with his function, though at least the triggers were predictable and mostly avoidable. TC, Strake, Countermeasure and he all needed recharge. The desire to shoot himself in the head was strong. Nothing fatal, just a precise memory-core hit. It would not be against the letter of Prime’s sentence.
“Come on,” Thundercracker said, tugging on the clump. “We’re too tired for this slag.” He completely understood Prowl’s hatred of the way his loops made him the center of attention. People wanted to help, yeah, but even better would be curling up with Strake and County in the nearest bunkhouse, or the medbay if Ratchet got tetchy about it. Whoops, and it looked like Rutile wanted in, given the way he’d clamped himself to Prowl’s side, daring Sunstreaker’s displeasure.
PROWL! all the Protectobots plus Spandrel, Breakaway and Polychrest shouted from New Zealand. RECHARGE! Blades’ voice was loudest, but not by much.
“There ya have it,” Jazz laughed, coming up with Prime. “Executive orders. Not gonna disobey are ya?”
“Would you mind very much if I…?” Optimus reached down into the cuddle-clump and Prowl hooked fingers into his arm, was lifted, uplifted, carried close against Prime’s chest while long strides took them deep into the embassy.
Countermeasure and Rutile clicked in protest, but Thundercracker and Strake laid talons on them, chirring and nibbling; and the younger mechs conceded that a cuddle with Prime would do Prowl a world of good. It always did for County.
Perceptor curled a strong-hand over the pintle of his cannon, shuddering, optics shuttered tight for a moment. Scavenger glomped him, willing him to do nothing impulsive.
…
Jazz had been in a buoyant mood for months, as the estimated date for the moving of their homeworld drew near. Skating everywhere, doing donuts in intersections late at night, challenging the Lambo twins to races, tickling Mirage, snogging Gears and anyone else who got within reach. Prowl’s torment was a damper, but Prowl himself would not want his episode to subdue Jazz’s spirits for long. Jazz got it, that Prowl just wanted to be normal. In the sense of normal for him. Not unscarred, but not with open, sparking, bleeding wounds. At least functional without these inescapable interruptions. He hated disruption of his routine. Jazz loved disrupting routines, but not when they were integral to someone’s health.
Prime hooked Prowl into his own, much larger, cooling system, and after a few moments Prowl went utterly limp in his arms. Jazz fitted himself against Prowl’s back, resting his cheek spar against the space between his door wings. Prime adjusted his arms around them both, opening his chest, going directly for sparks. When Prowl was this bad it was the fastest way to soothe him. Jazz petted Prowl’s sides and lower abdomen, lightly cabling to help track their progress.
Prowl lay open between them. When his sentence was up, if he died, parts of him would live on in his progeny. Organic species that reproduced sexually, like humans, understood this instinctively, and many based a great deal of their social institutions around these kinds of relationships. His progeny would suffer briefly at his death, but it would pass. They would recover.
He was beginning to have the occasional, insidious thought that being embodied was a large part of his problems. As an AI he would not have these kinds of episodes. As an AI Sentinel and Trochar could not have coerced him as they had, he would have been able to erase the sun-killing file before they could have interfered. Jazz curled tighter against him.
Slag them, Jazz tight-beamed to Prime. Slag them in the Pit. How could they do that? How could a medic do that? Outside, Ratchet was in a high fury. Ironhide was driving with him to White Sands, and putting in a request to the Army for a couple of junked old tanks they could violently disassemble.
How could many things have happened in this war? As a species, we are supposed to have cleansed our programming to avoid such errors long ago. And yet they happen.
Slag.
Prowl knew dying, becoming an AI again would not in reality solve all his problems. He knew what would happen to Thundercracker and Strake if, in twenty-six years, he died.
“Doesn’t take forecasting to figure that,” Jazz hummed against his back. “C’mon, Prowl. Recharge.” And Jazz sang softly, for all three of them, until Prowl at last and with great relief shut down.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
The sea beyond the old wooden stairs sheeted foam-white and aquamarine across the cold pewter sand. The horizon blended with sunlight and mist and long streamers of clouds. Low, dark green plants clung to the steep rocks above the narrow beach. Miles walked down the steps slowly, listening to the dull, muted sound of his footfalls, almost drowned by the vast hollow boom of the surf. Beachcomber was waiting for him somewhere down there.
His hair was so thin now he kept it cropped close against his melanocyte-enhanced skin. He wasn’t going to be one of those pathetic hippies still pretending he was twenty with beads braided into the few wisps left. Miles took strength from his age, like an oak, like the rocks, like the robots.
Seaweed and dead fish had always overwhelmed the literary, legendary scent of salt in sea air, as far as Miles had ever been able to tell. Ocean tasted like salt, yes, and different oceans were saltier or sweeter, depending on season and temperature and acidity and underlying topography of the seabed, and the halocline. The fishy, decaying protein smell wasn’t repugnant, though. If that’s what you associated with being at the beach, having good times there, then there was nothing hardwired in the human response that insisted the smell was bad, even if in other contexts it might not be so pleasant. Miles never lingered in the seafood section of the grocery store.
Sushi in Japan was one thing, but the selection and quality at the average Cheap-o-Mart where he tended to shop didn’t bear close contemplation.
The wind caressed his scalp, tugged at his clothes, gusting around him as he followed the winding, footworn stairway down. Salt stained, rain roughened. Redwood if Miles wasn’t mistaken. Teak would have been too expensive in this part of the world. Redwood was a local commodity. The stairway had been here for at least a couple of decades. Funny that it was still a warm, comforting, rusty brown, instead of the silvery grey redwood usually weathered into. Someone crazy had stained it, over the years. Or the local mud had. Maybe they got teams of kids from the nearby schools to come out and work on it as a class project every year or so.
An old book he’d been reading as much for the scent of paper and poorly preserved leather as for the contorted prose dug into his rib under his arm. Nice big pockets in this coat, but he tended to fill them with oddly and awkwardly shaped objects. His habitual zoris flapped against the treads and his heels. The soles were getting thin, he’d need to get another pair soon, or finally give up on shoes altogether and let his feet toughen.
Beachcomber emerged from the surf as Miles reached the sand, and Miles wondered if Perceptor’s spark gave the same kind of little jump whenever the geologist came into view. Whatever into view meant to someone who could see through a few feet of stone, a few inches of steel, across millions of miles of space. Beachcomber said hooking into Perceptor’s senses made him, made just about everyone, dizzy. Or maybe he’d said giddy.
“The sea urchins are having an entmoot,” Beachcomber said, wading up the beach toward Miles, sheeting water from his shields, turning up his heat as he reached and bent toward the human. “Urchinmoot. They found a dead crab, really, but it’s fun to imagine they’ve only just finished saying good morning. Oh, and there’s a whale fall about four miles offshore. I stuck one of the little remote cameras beside it. Perceptor will want samples.” Beachcomber would probably visit the site over the next several decades it might take for the whale carcass to be entirely consumed by the myriad, complex complement of organisms that would feast on it in various stages. Whale falls were lush islands of life, oases in the huge deserts of the mid-ocean plains. Miles liked the idea of them more than the images he’d seen. The exposed skeletons were a little macabre.
“What kind of whale?”
“Humpback. Big one. Old female, probably.” Their numbers were holding steady, despite several kinds of environmental stressors. The last few countries who had still permitted whaling had slowly given it up once Beachcomber had published - and Glyph had edited - the whalesong dictionaries and codexes. Greenpeace had flailed around for a couple of years, trying to decide what else to do with that sizable chunk of its resources.
Beachcomber produced a small, pale something from a thigh cache and held it out to Miles. A turbo shell, recently vacated, with a clean drill hole where some starfish had gotten dinner. The outside was dull and rough, seaweed clinging to it here and there. Inside shone with subtle colors, smoother than skin. Miles held it up to his ear and Beachcomber smiled.
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