eugenesis-text

The rest of the Autobots flowed past Chromedome and Prowl, many weighed down with the injured
and immobile. Prowl looked away as Kup was carried past.
Meanwhile, inside AMC1, Q-715 waded through the shifting rubble counting blast marks on the
medi-vault wall. Someone was whispering through the audio-chip in his ear.
‘We’ve searched the entire complex, sir. We’ve found bodies – about 40 – but I’m told that these are
the leftovers from an earlier purge. There’s no one else here.’
‘Once again, they flee rather than fight.’
‘Shall I give chase I suspect some hidden escape route.’
‘I don’t think that will be necessary. They could be anywhere. Besides, we have what we came for.
715 out.’
He looked at Rodimus Prime lying peacefully on his deathbed, tagged by a lonely energon feed, and
pushed his fingers into the Autobot’s chest as if it were piecrust. The life support monitor skipped and a
suddenly frenzied spark-line went off the scale. Underneath Prime’s firebrand chest plate was the Matrix,
wrapped in its familiar casing.
He went to touch the bright blue orb but his fingers were met with resistance – subtle but persistent,
as if the Matrix was shielded by a weak magnetic field. At the same time, his feet pressed that bit harder
against the floor and he found it difficult to focus. He flexed his fingers, concentrated, and broke the
invisible seal. As his hungry hands made contact, a spasm of heat ran up his arm.
The Matrix came away easily: linkage pins snapped happily, balance frames loosened without
argument, and every nut and bolt became lax. He held it at arm’s length, afraid it might implode, or shatter,
or disintegrate; perhaps he might trip some age-old contact lock and hitherto unknown absorption pores
would suck him inside. But no, it just winked and shimmered, content to bounce blue light against a
thousand chips and kinks and facets. He brought it close to his face and looked through the crystalline
coating.
Amazing, he thought, disconnecting Rodimus Prime’s life support cable without taking his eyes off
the Matrix. It looked exactly as the Old Texts described it.
Well, the screaming had finally stopped.
Slamdance had long held that Autobot and Decepticon screams were subtly different – not by much,
of course, but by enough to question whether they were based on one and the same genetic template.
Screaming was often said to be the purest sound: the true screamer has no control over the sound he is
making. For whatever reason - some intricate delineation in the voice box or some program quirk in the
synth-chords - Autobot screams were always tinged with surprise, as if the screamer is amazed that he can
make such a sound. Decepticons were far more visceral, screaming only when wounded or tortured. Their
screams were ragged and guttural, and continued until the pain stopped.
Sunstreaker’s scream had been problematic, though, sounding neither Autobot nor Decepticon. It was
a thick-whipped combination of raw nerves and psychological horror, and it had gone on forever. Slamdance
searched for comparisons. Perhaps it was the noise that a freshly minted bio-morph made as it punched its
way from the iron womb and hit the floor as boneless silicate. Perhaps it was the sound of the Matrix itself,
the howling, lung-less cacophony that would fill the room - then the city, then the world - if you cracked
its perfect surface and loosed the essence of the Creator. Perhaps it was the sound that your mind would
make if you lip-read the suicide code, if the digits 4/11.002983712 passed from your mem-net to your
neural cluster. Perhaps it was the sound the First Ones made when they dragged themselves from
Cybertron’s scalding, fudgy surface all those years ago; when Primon and his council moulded themselves
from sizzling techno-genetic mud and realised they were alive.
Sunstreaker had been silenced by a swift, savage beating from Ramjet and Kickback (as savage as was
possible when an Inhib Chip was sapping all your strength). Slamdance wondered how many Autobots had
silently cheered them on when the blows fell, and how many hated themselves when the egotist finally
swallowed his tongue.
He watched his cellmate, Hoist, flicker in and out of consciousness. The engineer’s head moved from
side to side as if he were following a bee drunk on pollen, except his optic sensors were trapped behind