eugenesis-text

the theft – every Weaver was destroyed within a cycle – and set about hiding the evidence. We buried one
geode deep inside Quiniad and the other inside Quintyxia. We were prepared to wait ten million years
before digging them up.
‘Before we buried them, however, we made a startling discovery. The Masters had protected the
software in two ways. Not only was it encrypted, tied up in knots and scramble codes to the power of ten
billion, but it contained a latent virus designed to purge the Lifecode if the geode was disturbed.
‘But I digress… The geodes were buried and our scientists began building decoders to extrapolate the
Lifecode. They realised that the decoders would need to be the size of cities, of entire continents, but it
didn’t matter, because finally the Ascension was within reach.
‘We didn’t realise that the Masters had discovered that we were responsible for the Raid.
‘One day on Quintyxia the sky was filled with a swarm of tiny metallic creatures – the Masters’
legendary nanobot enforcers. They turned cities into sculptures of bone and silica, whole mountain ranges
into knuckled spines of steel. Those of us that could boarded the mothership, Colonia, and fled.
‘Once in hyperspace we headed for Quiniad, confident that the Masters would not be able to track us
down. But the transwarp jump had been made without the necessary alignments, and we found ourselves
fighting against the current. We should have reached Quiniad in weeks; instead, we awoke from stasis two
million years later. We exited hyperspace thinking that the whole universe might have changed: before
fleeing Quintyxia we’d heard that members of the Sentient Core had banned the Masters from Ascending
and destroyed all the research that had led to the creation of P.R.I.M.U.S. There were nasty rumours on
the Galactic Rim that the Masters had turned their attention to the Base Dimensioned Universe: if they
couldn’t reach Evopeak, they’d bring everyone else to heel.
‘At first it seemed that nothing had changed when we reached Quiniad. The planet was still a barren,
windswept lump of rock. We subsequently discovered that during our hyperspacial exile it had played host
to its own population-pocket, its own eco-surge: a mini-civilisation of telepaths and psychics had
rechristened it Outpost 25. Like I say, we discovered all this much later; there was no trace of them when
we arrived. We began to dig for the second geode and, 13 miles down, hit metal: red hot metal. That night
the quakes started. We boarded the Colonia, convinced that the planet was unstable, and dived back into
hyperspace.’
‘Where are you going with this’ asked Ultra Magnus. ‘You’re hovering there with ten thousand new
troops underneath you, ready to transmit this so-called Lifecode. If anyone should be playing for time, it’s
us.’
‘I’m sorry if this bores you,’ spat Xenon, ‘but the tale’s worth telling, if only to see the look on your
face.’
‘Continue,’ said Galvatron, ‘from where you left off.’ He had a horrible feeling that he knew where
this tale was heading.
‘Where was I Oh yes, we abandoned Quiniad, went back into stasis, and headed for Quintyxia. We
didn’t even know if it existed anymore, but we had nowhere else to go. Some of us thought that it may
have been taken over by another race; others predicted that there would be nothing left except a twist of
blackened rock. And while Quintyxia had changed, it wasn’t in the way we expected. We’d left behind a
lush, verdant world of saltwater oceans, forests and ice floes. We returned to a planet made entirely of metal
– the planet you call Cybertron.’
He looked at Ultra Magnus. ‘There. It was worth the wait, wasn’t it’
Magnus shrugged. ‘You expect me to believe that Cybertron was originally your planet That we
Transformers are the colonists’
‘I think squatters is a more appropriate term.’
‘This is madness! I’ve read reports that trace Cybertron’s geological lineage back sixty million years!’
‘And no doubt your archaeologists found compacted layers of honeycombed metal, evidence of
previous Cybertronian generations and traces of organic matter. Maybe they even found some of the
original Progenitors and their short-lived planetary successors, the Argalians… Nothing they dig up can
contradict the truth, Magnus, only underline it.’
‘So you’re saying that the Masters’ nanobots reformatted Quintyxia,’ said Galvatron. ‘Why Why not
just destroy it’