eugenesis-text

javelin of deep-coded light tear through the wormhole, reaching out for the Decepticon. Had it found its
target He didn’t know.
The mindpurge began to overheat, and Nightbeat wondered whether it was even working.
‘Nightbeat!’ Optimus appeared at the door and ran towards the altar. ‘What happens now’
‘Clear your mind. Let me do all the thinking. I’m going to remember the Ark as it was on my last
visit.’ With the mindpurge in his left hand and Prime’s mighty paw in his right, Nightbeat closed his eyes.
For a moment he thought he heard laserfire in 1986, but the sound soon faded.
Suddenly, there it was: the Ark; the destination point; the flashback made flesh.
They stepped through. Both looked back for different reasons and saw the same thing: a haze of
commingling temporal energies. 2013 was reduced to memory prints and sense impressions, a vague
suggestion of shape and form. The portal’s energies had flowed into 1984, where they crept along the
ceiling and wrapped themselves around cones of rock, leaving fingerprints on monitor screens and worming
their way into Teletran One.
Mount St Hilary began to shake, feeding off the same tremors that were disassembling the Acid
Wastes.
‘Okay, Optimus,’ said Nightbeat, thumping the mindpurge device with his palm to get it working
again. ‘This may sound trite, but we don’t have much time. I want you to… Optimus! Are you listening to
me’
‘Hmm Yes. I’m just…’ Optimus gestured at the deactivated robots littering the floor. ‘I’m just taking
it all in.’ He got down on one knee and took Prowl’s hand. The wormhole light gave shape to a mouth
that had been set in stone for four million years. ‘If you get the chance, Nightbeat, tell Prowl I’m sorry I
missed him.’
Nightbeat thought of quarantine and skeletons and bruise-blue optics. ‘I promise,’ he said, and held
out the mindpurge.
The volcano rumbled and belched, nauseated by the glue of a wormhole coming unstuck. Nightbeat
relaxed his arm.
‘I’ve been thinking, Optimus. I’ve never pretended any of this is fair: the time jumping, the
abduction, the way we used you to win our war. But there is something I can do to make amends: I can let
you keep your memories. Perhaps then… I don’t know. Perhaps then you can find a way to cheat death.’
Optimus stood up. ‘At one point, not so long ago, I’d have snatched that box from your hand and
crushed it. I’d have done anything to preserve the knowledge of my death. I planned to sidestep the
inevitable by creating a facsimile construct to take my place in 1987, and when the end came, when this
Ethan Zachary character shut me down, it wouldn’t be me lying in pieces, it would be a fake. I thought I
could cheat death.’
‘You still can! It would work, Optimus. You and Wheeljack could build some sort of clone that
would – that would…’
‘But then I thought no, that’s not how this works out. Why should I be the one to slip the net when
millions of my fellow Autobots are dead They were never given a choice or a second chance: why should
I My future will be played out the only way it can. We already know how this is going to end.’
‘But you’ve seen the future! Save your memories!’
‘Like I said, there was a time when I’d have done anything to remember. But now, having seen the
future, having lived it… I’d do anything to forget.’
Optimus took Nightbeat’s hand and adjusted the mindpurge so that the lens faced his forehead. ‘Let’s
get this over with.’
‘There’s something else, Optimus. Something I meant to tell you. 1987 is not the end. Not quite.
Ethan Zachary preserves your personality on a magnetic disc, and the following year we build a new body
into which your old character codes are programmed. It’s not really you, not in the purest sense, but it’s an
echo. In a manner of speaking, you live on.’
Optimus scooped a rifle from the floor and handed it over. ‘You’ll need this. Don’t stop until I’m offline.’
Nightbeat aimed the mindpurge and looked away. ‘I won’t forget you.’
‘I wish I could say the same.’
Nightbeat fired. The beam did not need to travel far, just a jagged hop from nub to cerebellum. As
the black box slipped from his fingers, he saw the first flickers of bewilderment in Prime’s eyes. He did not