eugenesis-text

‘Get me a gun,’ whispered Soundwave, climbing to his feet.
Sygnet checked the corridor one last time before slumping in front of the keyboard. His head felt
lopsided and translucent, and when he plugged the transfer cable into his cerebral plate he half expected his
brain module to explode. Loyalty, betrayal, deceit – they damaged you inside, not out. He’d known that for
four million years.
As he bypassed the Quintesson password request, wiped the file named ‘Old Texts’ (who wanted to
know the secrets of an extinct race) and accessed the download facility, he thought about Wheeljack’s
parting words. He replayed their argument with alternate endings, adding the things he could have said, and
then plugged the other end of the transfer cable in place. Time to let it all out.
He downloaded everything he had stolen in a rush of super-compressed data and info-flow. Dense
blocks of coded text scrolled up the screen, throwing lime light around the darkened room. The walls were
full of Autobot secrets as Delphi’s entire database was sucked from his mem-files and stored onto the
Quintesson computer: force statistics, medical records, personal files, base locations, covert projects, weapon
design, trade routes, vehicle schematics and blueprints for new troops.
He tore the transfer cable loose and tapped his forehead shut, feeling as if he’d dumped ten lifetimes’
worth of memory. A single cursor kept rhythm with his fuel pump and the voice in his head: Wheeljack’s
voice, telling him to stay. How different would their conversation have been if Wheeljack had known the
truth: that he’d copied every byte of data from Delphi’s motherboard the moment he’d been left alone in
the lab.
He stared at the cursor, shook his head and tapped the keyboard. Suddenly, Fulcrum filled the
doorframe. The surgeon folded his arms and nodded at the computer screen.
‘I think it’s time that you and I had a little chat,’ he said. The word ‘Deleted’ flashed quietly against
his chest plate.
Mounted on a tripod fashioned from the bones of the Ark, the giant incinerator orb bubbled with
fuel-dregs siphoned from dead Autobots. As highest-ranking officer and therefore – in Creationist
genealogy – closest to the Matrix, Perceptor opened the Rites of Departure by lighting the spark. Harsh
blue flames settled on the blubber-thick meniscus and spread a crackling glow around the funeral pyre.
Perceptor’s eulogy was short (how could you talk about the violent deaths of hundreds of Autobots in
anything other than general terms), but coached in layman’s language. Since assuming leadership, he had
reprogrammed his speech circuitry and widened vocab routes. As a scientist, he had relied on language that
was precise and expedient, but that way of speaking sounded impersonal now. He was talking about
people’s lives, not molecular fission or fossil fuels.
As ‘all are one’ rang hollow on the pre-dawn air, the Autobots raised their arms and fired at the sky.
Their laserbolts faded before they reached the funeral barge, loaded with bodies, which would eventually
puncture the planet’s atmosphere and fall into a pre-programmed collision course with Alpha Centauri.
Every Autobot had the capacity to work out – to the nearest millisecond – the projected point of impact,
the moment when a tiny solar flare would mark total meltdown. Not one made the calculation.
The mourners filtered back inside Delphi to lose themselves in petty tasks. Only Wheeljack, Ratchet,
Mirage and Hound remained by the flickering pyre.
‘Makes you think, doesn’t it,’ said Hound eventually, rubbing the joints in his neck. ‘About the war, I
mean. Perhaps we’ve fought our last battle.’
‘We’ve thought that in the past,’ Wheeljack sighed. ‘After Klo. After Hydrus 4. Even 2006 seemed to
draw a line under things.’ He sat down, and beckoned the others to do the same.
‘No, this feels different,’ said Mirage. ‘Population-wise, our race is at an all-time low. We’ve barely
enough energy to function, let alone fight. And the Alliance… I don’t know, but it seems to be holding.’
‘Yeah, but for how long’
‘Come on Wheels, at least give me the luxury of saying “what if” What if Galvatron agrees to talks
What if the four of us formed a negotiation team and thrashed things out on mutual territory How long
before we grant the Decepticons amnesty and start over How long before the name “Decepticon” ceases
to exist, and we call go back to being Autobots, or just plain Cybertronians’