eugenesis-text

Ultra Magnus rounded on him. ‘You mean to say you’re buying this! Do you realise what he’s
saying, Galvatron He’s saying that Primus – God – is nothing more than an advanced piece
of software!’
‘Ignore him,’ said Xenon. ‘If he didn’t believe me, he wouldn’t be so worried.’
‘You haven’t answered my question, Xenon.’
‘The nanos were supposed to kill us and collect the buried geode, but it didn’t quite go to plan.
When the nanos came into contact with the geode, it reached out to them. It gave them life.
‘Have you never wondered why Cybertron is metallic Have you never asked why it isn’t a rich,
regenerative organic world The geode could have easily restored Quintyxia to its former glory, but no, it
had other things on its mind. It had some Big Questions. It wanted to know who and what and why it was,
just like every other freethinking being. To get some answers, to fathom its own sentience, it used the
nanobots to transform the planet into an extension of its own body.’
Ultra Magnus waved for him to stop. ‘Wait, wait… so your saying that the geode used the nanobots
to alter Quintyxia – Cybertron – into what, a planet-sized decoder’
‘Exactly. The Cybertron we touched down upon all those years ago wasn’t like the Cybertron of
today, or the Cybertron of your so-called Golden Age. There were no space-scrapers or Great Domes, just
hard drives the size of continents. The nanos transformed layer after layer of Quintyxia’s crust into
extensions of the geode: branches of a supercomputer designed to crunch numbers and crack code.’
‘But it didn’t work, right’ Ultra Magnus looked at Galvatron, wanting assurances. ‘What happened,
Xenon Why are you smiling You’re saying that the decoder actually worked’
‘Of course! The Lifecode was cracked and, suddenly, new life could be created from scratch.
Unfortunately, there was no blueprint, no guiding hand. We touched down on our newly metallic planet
to find robotic husks clinging like limpets to the landscape. They were ovoid or tetrahedral or splayed like
crooked stars – the most basic forms imaginable. So you see, the first Cybertronians were little more than
building blocks clustered around a few hot spots where the planet’s crust was pure nerve-circuitry. We
called these areas birthfields.
‘The nanobots seemed to have disappeared, so we began reshaping our planet. At first we turned the
technology inwards, enhancing our bodies with cybernetic implants. We then set about creating a slave
race. We created brain modules – Seedlings – and literally sowed them into the birthfields. The geode and
the nerve-circuitry did the rest, breathing life into them and helping them grow. I doubt you’ve ever seen
the earth itself rise up and clothe a glistening thought-core, or watched questing tongues of warm steel wrap
themselves around a trembling endoskeleton. It is breathtaking.
‘The resultant mechanoids were dragged from the crust in what became known as the Harvest. A lot
of early Harvests threw up half-formed mutants which were sealed underground and forgotten about, but as
time went on and we became more skilled, we created near-perfect examples of freethinking, bipedal
mechanica. Autonomous Robots, we called them: Auto-Bots for short. In the end, we were drafting
blueprints for each individual Auto-Bot.’ Xenon gestured to the body-pods below. ‘Remember what I said
about re-using old designs
‘Over the next few thousand years we harvested thousands of Auto-Bots and used them to reformat
Quintyxia into a world approaching that which you live on today. As numbers grew it became harder to
keep control, and we hit upon the perfect means of mass enslavement: religion. We had our top
theoscientists write the Primal Pentateuch, the cornerstone of your faith, to ensure obedience. In a sense,
we turned P.R.I.M.U.S. into Primus.’
‘No!’ cried Ultra Magnus. ‘I will not tolerate this blasphemy!’ (And this surprised him, because until
now he hadn’t considered himself a god-fearing robot.)
‘We built a temple near the centre of the planet, moulded around the face we’d chosen to give your
“god”. In retrospect, I suppose we were merely adding fuel to the geode’s messianic fire, embellishing the
god-complex it had been cultivating since being programmed with the Lifecode. The geode itself believed
the lies we were spreading, you see. In the long run we were going to cast ourselves as Light Gods and
Dark Lords, but the book was never finished.’ For the first time Xenon’s face darkened. He leant forward,
anticipating Galvatron’s question. ‘It was never finished,’ he growled, ‘because the Auto-Bots rebelled. Our
plan backfired. Instead of making them passive and servile, religion gave them purpose, and with purpose
came a desire to throw off their chains and preach the Primal message. The rebellion itself was
masterminded by fourteen crusaders; I think they called themselves the Covenant. We’d grown arrogant