eugenesis-text

direct from the planet’s core. But this was the first time he had visited with them with Matrix in his hand;
the first time he had surveyed his creations as governor of New Quintyxia.
He fumbled with the keypad on the railing and shut down a cloaking system. The vacuum above his
head was suddenly filled with a supercomputer the size of a city. It devoured nearly every cubic mile of
space in the vault, expiring a short distance above the birthing tubes. It was designed to accommodate the
thin viewing gallery, and so Xenon now found himself standing inside a black-walled passageway. He
savoured the claustrophobia, the sudden inversion of space. All he could see was his reflection against the
smooth, dark-glass surface of his ultimate creation.
He was not merely facing a computer, he thought, loosening his grip on the Matrix and offering it to
the machine.
He was facing God himself.
He pushed the Matrix into the computer’s velvet maw, where it was tongued and prodded. A plexiglass
shell clicked into place, buffed and blue like hard candy.
Aboard the Ark, Brawn, Windcharger, Mirage, Trailbreaker and Cliffjumper felt something stir in their circuitry;
on Cybertron, Ravage, Dirge and Soundwave suddenly stopped what they were doing and waited for the twitch in their
stomachs to subside. Strung up inside Kledji, Shrapnel, Bombshell and Kickback opened and closed their mouths in an
effort to scream while something melted inside their CPUs.
And that was it. The sacrifice had been made. Somewhere far away, lost in an eternity of theoretical
engineering, an inhuman sound had signalled the beginning of the end.
Nightbeat and Siren walked into the science lab expecting results, expecting a batch of irrefutable
facts and figures to be chalked across the wall in a paean to reductionism. Pincher’s team had all the
necessary materials (an inert Galvatron and five-million shanix of top-grade equipment), so where was the
instant report, the sobering anthology of diagnostics and extrapolations
Wheeljack and Pincher huddled around a dull hemo-glass cube. Normally used for imprisoning
Nebulans or mekanids, it today contained Galvatron. A 3D schematic on a tilted screen held the attention
of Swerve (seated) and Sygnet (jotting notes on a databoard).
Wheeljack’s hands were threaded through sockets in the cube, as if he were manipulating nuclear
isotopes. Micro-tweezers protruded from his fingertips and dissected circuitry inside Galvatron’s trunk. The
painstaking operation was captured on camera and transferred to the big screen.
Siren shuffled to break the silence and asked if any progress had been made.
Wheeljack froze. ‘We’re reaching the integral part of a delicate procedure,’ he huffed. ‘Please be
quiet.’
‘What’s going on’ Nightbeat whispered to Pincher.
Pincher pointed to the screen, which essentially showed a map of Galvatron’s innards. ‘Spot the
mistake,’ he said.
Nightbeat saw an alien shape among the network of white circuitry. It was tiny and circular, and
therefore stood out from its ordered, cubist environment. ‘The paralysis chip’
‘We found two,’ said Swerve. ‘The other one, inside his neural cluster, is impossible to access without
killing him.’
Siren shook his head in disbelief. ‘What have they done’
‘You almost sound sorry for the murderous son of a bitch,’ said Pincher.
‘I was thinking of all the Autobots infected with this… with this disease.’
‘Got it!’ Wheeljack held the Inhibitor Chip between micro-tweezers. The others gathered close.
‘Amazing,’ he muttered. ‘Absolutely incredible.’
Galvatron’s transformation took everyone by surprise. His cage splintered as he expanded and the
Autobots scattered like ninepins. Reinforcements arrived and brought the Decepticon to his knees,
snapping electro-bonds over his wrists and pumping a sedative into his neural cluster. Shouts petered out,
extraneous bodies eventually filed back into the corridor, and soon Fastlane and Backstreet were carrying
the full-sized, humanoid version of Galvatron to Delphi’s only cell. It was all over in a matter of seconds.
Nightbeat helped Siren to his feet. The centre of the lab was a mess but the main worktop was
somehow intact: the maelstrom had been centralised. Siren nodded thanks and left the room, looking
shaken.