eugenesis-text

The digits that slid across the screen meant nothing to him, but the image they captioned could not
have been more familiar. Without taking his eyes from the screen, he activated the personal intercom on his
chest.
‘Blaster It’s me. I think you’d better come and see this.’
It had become a routine. A daily pilgrimage.
Every evening, Ultra Magnus would climb eighteen flights of stairs to the top of the Command
Tower to stand against its glass walls and survey the City – his City.
Today, evening sunlight bounced off the peaks and pinnacles of nearby mountains. Shadows stretched
across the deeper recesses of the complex, enveloping alleyways and plateaux. In the far distance the
December sun was a brittle red disc, chilled by nightfall.
His City.
Over the last eight years, since that summer’s day in 2004 when Optimus Prime had hammered the
final plate onto Metroplex’s elaborate coffin, Autobot City: Earth had changed. Once ‘a substantial Terran
outpost with energon harvesting capabilities and a tri-modular core unit’ (to quote Wheeljack and Grapple’s
brief), it was now a home - a home for the one hundred Autobots under his command. But more than that,
it was a microcosm of pre-war Cybertronia, an oblique link to an era he could only access second hand, via
flickering archive footage and the apocryphal stories of dewy-eyed Golden Agers. While the war on their
homeworld slow-burned towards mutual shutdown, towards blissful genocide, he could stand here and
survey this hard-edged, soft-shine utopia, this sanctuary.
And yes of course there was guilt - because deep down, shielded behind logic codes and emotional
dampeners, he knew that his army of pro-Earthers and pacifists could maybe make a difference back on
Cybertron. Perhaps Thunderclash was right – perhaps they should have been fighting alongside their
brethren in Iacon or the Canyons. But the transfer could always wait until tomorrow, until the emergency
call-up from Prowl, or the red alert from Rodimus. And until then, he would suppress his conscience,
swallow his shame, and remember his responsibility to Earth and its six billion inhabitants; he would pray
that this illusion of peace would last just one more day. Besides, he sometimes thought that the War
continued by force of momentum alone – after all, how could the Decepticons nurture a will to power that
continued to burn after four million years Perhaps one day - perhaps tomorrow - everything would just
stop.
On a normal day he would kill the lights, settle in the observation chair, tilt backwards and stare at
the stars. Mapping the smothering folds of space, counting constellations and heavenly bodies, he would be
overwhelmed by a sense of perspective. He found it ironic that a Flamed Transformer such as himself,
constructed purely for battle, could find solace in such an introspective pastime.
Today, however, was different. Today, he walked past the obs chair and sat behind his empty desk.
Everything was about to change.
He’d heard the news this morning. It had haunted him all day. Tired of bearing the brunt of such a
bombshell, he had decided to tell someone else - a friend, a clear-thinker who could offer some perspective.
Wheeljack stepped out of the vacuum lift and nodded hello. A tool-belt looped his thigh and an
electron microscope hung between his fingers like a cigar. The Chief Mechanical Engineer grabbed the
visitor’s chair and folded his arms.
‘Hi. What did you want’
‘Thanks for coming up here, Wheeljack. How are things’
‘Oh, you know. The usual ups and downs.’
‘What have you done there’
Wheeljack looked at the scar on his chest plate. ‘My new acid pellets were a touch too acidic. My
own fault, of course.’
‘You should have Fixit patch you up.’
‘No, I don’t want to bother the little guy - not when he’s got the medi-bay inspection to worry
about.’
Ultra Magnus thought of the City’s resident Micromaster hurrying through empty wards in
preparation for Ratchet’s inspection. He’d asked the Autobots’ Chief Medical Officer to inspect their