eugenesis-text

memmial lids. He was lost in a reverie, a gin-soaked dream of needles and daylight and long-dead Autobot
leaders. Arriving as a Grade A, he had reacted badly to his Inhib Chip and, on re-inspection, been
downgraded to sub-drone class, suitable for ComSim fodder and windowsills.
Slamdance looked through the electro-bars. No guards, no voices. Jolup had grown bored of playing
psychopath and disappeared. About 20 Transformers – Autobot and Decepticon, though mostly the latter –
had been dragged Downstairs, the majority kicking and bleating like lambs. He suspected that the other two
Quintessons, the ones who looked as if they were related to Skywarp and Lancer, were roaming ‘New
Quintyxia’ and gathering new inmates. He leant as close to the bars as his chains would allow and studied
their neon geometry. Too thinly spaced to squeeze through as a duo-form, but as a component robot…
Slamdance was a Duobot. Like the Decepticon Squawkbox, he was the sum total of two robots (in
this case Raindance - cassette/reconnaissance jet - and Grandslam - cassette/all-terrain tank) capable of
physical and mental interconnection.
Despatched to the outskirts of Polyhex by Siren to monitor Decepticon activity, Raindance and
Grandslam had witnessed the Quintessons’ arrival from land and air. They had merged into their bipedal
configuration to escape on foot but been captured on the border. As Slamdance, they had been clawed,
scanned and bundled into a convict pod.
The Inhibitor Chip had attacked Slamdance’s combined CPU - which was essentially Grandslam’s
neuranet with a few Raindance add-ons. Less susceptible to the mechrobe’s influence, Raindance had
already separated his mind from Grandslam’s – not easy when Grandslam, acutely aware of his intentions
and his motivations, was begging him not to go. Such drastic measures had, however, prevented the chip
from infecting them both. Now, having properly recovered from the shock of mental severance, Raindance
wondered what to do next.
Grandslam became the upper torso of the Slamdance module; he, Raindance, became the waist and
legs. The Quintessons, it seemed, knew nothing of bi-combiners - the two bodies were adjoined by
standard limb-lock coupling but not molecularly entwined. He sensed Grandslam’s drowsy, muddled pain
and realised that the Inhib Chip had taken over his partner’s share of their neural cluster completely. He was
the lucky one: he had escaped infection. And if he could shed Grandslam’s mind, what about his body
Thanks to the loud-mouthed guards, he knew that one of the Inhibitor’s prime functions (before identtagging,
tracking and mind-control) was modular paralysis. Theoretically, someone like him could still
transform, but first he had to disconnect himself from Grandslam.
He wondered what would become of his partner. A mechanical chimera with no proper form or
function, he’d probably be fed to the Sharkticons or used to stuff the cracks in draughty cells. He
disengaged with a heavy squelch of popping sockets. He hit the floor hard but the pain felt good: it was
real, it was immediate. He felt his morphcore connect with a network of motors and transformed into a
slim, dark blue jet. His vision returned via cockpit-wired optics.
The electro-bars were not that tightly meshed, but it was still impossible to fly between them. One
option remained, although it was best not to think about it too much or—
‘Where are we’ screamed Hoist, his eyes flicking open. ‘Where is everyone Where’s Optimus
Optimus will save us.’
‘I know,’ said Raindance, activating his fuselage thrusters and balancing on a cushion of antigravity. ‘I
know.’ He lunged for the electrobars, transformed into cassette mode and slipped between them unscathed.
It took him a moment to realise that he was still functioning, but by then he had skidded off the walkway
and gone into freefall. He returned to jet mode and began to climb.
Quintessons appeared on every block and tried to clip his wings. Their laserfire skimmed across his
nose and reacted with the electro-bars opposite, generating bursts of white sparks that covered his escape.
He passed the uppermost cellblock and kept going. In his world of black on black it was near impossible to
plot a course, but up ahead a slab of darkness seemed more intense than the rest. He fired two pencil-thin
heat-seekers (unreachable during the strip-down) and rocketed out of Mt Edeus’ peak.
Inside, 70 levels down, Grandslam’s brain module fizzled out and died.
They used to be called the Terbium Plains – a listless band of tempered osmium prone to weak
tectonic subsidence, high-velocity blister-winds and meagre gravity wells that stretched between four citystates
with equally outdated names. Like the Rust Sea and the Petrohexian Lowlands, like Tene and Stanix