eugenesis-text

Rewind sat with his arms on the windowsill and stared outside. Whenever he looked across Autobot
City’s sun-bruised vistas he was reminded how unlucky he was to work in Recycling, halfway between
street level and the underground bunkers.
The street outside was lined with poplars, planted by Hound to mark the passing of a year in which
the Decepticons had kept well away. They’d not launched any sort of attack on Earth since December
2011, making this winter the quietest on record.
He pulled away from the dust and sunlight and wheeled his chair towards the ATI screen. He didn’t
know why Blaster had installed the ‘revolutionary’ ATI system in the Recycling Room, but his superior
officer was always droning on about the Comms Level needing an extension. Perhaps he’d put Hound’s
miracle machine in here to make a point.
Automatic Tracking and Identification: ‘It will change the way we live our lives,’ Ultra Magnus had
gushed, and Rewind knew it was true - he’d only been on scanning duty for three days and he was the
most bored he had ever been. For all the City Commander’s hyperbole (he always was too friendly with
Hound), the machine was basically a satellite-linked tagging system capable of pinpointing Autobots
programmed with a certain biocode. So it could count heads, crunch statistics and transmit messages - big
frikkin’ deal. Magnus only liked it because it made his job easier. He didn’t have to sit indoors watching
LCDs and pining for the sun.
Rewind decided he would rather be back on Level 14, updating the Earth archives and trying to
discern the identity of the two ‘giant iron men’ who had appeared sporadically throughout the last few
thousand years. Real work, not this grunt stuff. In the corner of the room, the recycling unit juddered
noisily to life, bounced off its base clamps and shuffled from wall to wall.
Balancing his ankles on the lip of the ATI keyboard, he noticed that the recycling hatch was wide
open. He balled a slab of waste metal, narrowed his optics, and threw it across the room. It dropped into
the recyc unit perfectly, adding another chord to the symphony of crunching metal. Flushed with success,
he selected another slab and repeated the process.
Bang on target.
After nineteen consecutive successes he decided to disarm his auto-targeting system and rely solely on
good old-fashioned spatial co-ordination. Scrunching up an audaciously small wedge of steel, he leant
forward, took careful aim, and threw ball twenty.
It missed by ten metres.
He retrieved the rubbish and returned to his seat for a second attempt, thankful that Eject wasn’t
around to see his failure. This time the ball bounced off the rim of the recyc unit, skated across the
windowsill and landed hard on the ATI’s touch-sensitive keypads. His optics widened as the monitor
became jumbled with fresh commands:
SCANNING…
WIDE RADIUS SWEEP INITIATED
‘No, no, no – closedown.’ He jabbed escape and looked for a killswitch. The ATI was designed to
keep track of Transformers within Autobot City – what the hell was a ‘wide radius sweep’ A column of
shifting digits filled the left side of the monitor and a topographical representation of North America filled
the right. Images raced by and the map became more specific.
Once the onscreen environment had dropped to eye-level, it froze. Fresh detail emboldened the
wire-frames and sketch-prints, adding colour and contrast.
EX/000001
EX/000002
EX/000003