eugenesis-text

‘He promised to speak to me after the inspection,’ said Nightbeat, folding his arms and sinking deeper
into his seat. ‘Well I’m waiting.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Perceptor. ‘It’s difficult to know where to begin. There’s a lot of background
information to wade through.’
‘Just show him the footage,’ snapped Prowl.
The picture on the main screen looked like a photographic negative that had been nibbled by flame.
Nightbeat knew that he was looking at an area of Cybertron - there were the familiar dirt-curves and
stressed metal, the corrugations and corbels - but the centre of the picture was just a bright white blotch.
‘What do you make of this, Nightbeat’
‘Well, the white area in the middle is spreading outwards – you can tell by the radial pattern.
Obviously a corruption of some sort.’ He peered closer, intrigued. ‘Where was this taken’
‘Lonium, in the Acid Wastes,’ said Prowl. ‘You’re looking at footage shot by one of our surveillance
cameras.’
‘Oh, then it’s just a warped picture. Some sort of processing malfunction; cell-seep or chemical drag.’
‘Those were my first thoughts too. But that wouldn’t explain the unusual distortion up here…’ Prowl
described the overlap between whiteness and the Cybertronian landscape. ‘With a digital glitch you
wouldn’t get a picture at all.’
‘I get the impression,’ said Nightbeat, ‘that both of you have this thing sussed already. Why don’t you
just tell me what you’ve found out’
‘Do you remember an Autobot named Throwback’ asked Perceptor.
‘Yeah. He was a volunteer in your dimension-hopping experiment. He went missing for seven years.’
‘He was found in Yuss about 21 days ago.’
‘And what has he got to do with bad spycam footage’
‘Last week we detected a highly unusual source of energy in Lonium. It had a distinctive signature
that corresponded with no known pansonic frequencies. We calculated the rate of growth and extrapolated
the approximate time of origin.’
‘Don’t tell me. It’s 21 days old.’
Perceptor nodded. ‘Precisely. When Throwback phased between worlds he dragged residual energy
across pan-dimensional boundaries. He circumvented the normal mass-displacement rules – Megatron’s
Limbo Theory - and punched a hole in space-time.’
‘Okay…’ said Nightbeat. ‘So when Throwback returned to this Universe he brought with him a
rogue pocket of energy, which is what we’re seeing on screen.’
‘Not quite. The Multiverse seems to have built-in safety checks, as if it’s insulated against this type of
energy transfer. In this case, however, I think Throwback’s “rogue” energy reacted with the Underbase
residue that still bathes the Acid Wastes, triggering something completely unexpected.’
‘What, exactly’
‘A wormhole. A self-contained gateway that – are you okay, Nightbeat’
Nightbeat was rubbing his temples. ‘A wormhole You’re telling me you’ve found a wormhole in the
Acid Wastes… I thought wormholes were massive.’
‘This one’s special. It can transport the traveller through Space and Time by attuning itself to psychic
impulses. You mentally select where and when you want to go, step into the portal and you’re there.’
‘It’s a glorified time machine,’ summarised Prowl. ‘And as every other time machine was destroyed in
2009, after the Time Wars, it’s the last one on the planet.’
‘We’ve pinpointed its exact location,’ said Perceptor. ‘It’s inside a First Church temple.’
‘This is all very interesting,’ said Nightbeat. ‘But you still haven’t told me where I fit in. Did
Rodimus want me to investigate this wormhole Wouldn’t that have been better left to your tech-heads,
Perceptor’
‘Rodimus wanted you to accompany us. You have specialist knowledge of both trans-temporal and
pan-dimensional portals: it may have been over twenty years ago, but your part in retrieving Megatron and
Ratchet from non-space has not been forgotten. Rodimus recommended you most highly.’
‘Your mission was to be quite simple,’ said Prowl. ‘Travel to Lonium, make an on-the-spot
investigation and then collapse the wormhole. If the Decepticons discovered a naturally occurring time
portal all hell would break loose. We originally wanted you gather data and then shut it down safely.’
‘Originally’