eugenesis-text

Chairs scraped and new shadows filled the walls as the Autobots stood to leave. Siren was forced to
synthesise a cough to halt their departure. ‘I know I’m a newcomer to these meetings,’ he said as chairs
were refilled, ‘but I still have something to report.’
‘I’m sorry, Siren,’ said Rodimus, but stayed standing. ‘What was it you wanted to talk about’
‘Nightbeat’s last words: Heath re: nigh know want who. Chromedome and I spent the best part of ten
days trying to decrypt them.’
‘I thought they were just nonsense,’ said Ratchet. ‘A random vox-box snippet or an old speech
fragment that got looped.’
‘We thought so too, at least until Chromedome accidentally speeded up Fulcrum’s message. We
realised that they weren’t Nightbeat’s last words.’
‘He said something else’
‘No, they were his last numbers: E3 9012. They’re co-ordinates. For a place on Earth.’
Languid and groggy in the relentless humidity, the MARB struggled to stay aloft, leaving parallel lines
on the swamp’s terracotta surface. Mosquitoes and tormor flies who could not escape its gold-rimmed
turbines were churned into the foam.
The true Antarctic sky was hidden behind a blanket of yellow cloud. Thousands of years old, blackbarked
and monolithic, the trees huddled like conspirators and clawed the swampland with their roots. A
network of green-streams, algae and soil wallowed in a unique, hermetic ecosystem. Softened and steamed
by geothermal currents and invisible heat, each knot of foliage was brushed with stale sweat and mildew.
‘I don’t know why humans call this place the Savage Land,’ said Hound, carefully pushing branches
from his shoulders. ‘I think it’s beautiful.’
Chromedome struggled with the MARB controls, finding it difficult to negotiate the platform. He
was sick of the heat, the snakes, the poor visibility. ‘This place does not match the library footage of
Antarctica I scanned before departure,’ he huffed. ‘I was expecting ice floes and tundra.’
‘Most of Antarctica is like that. This region, however, retains the geo-systems and indigenous life
forms of prehistoric Earth. They call it the Savage Land. That’s what I love about this planet: so many
hidden treasures.’ He rolled a dollop of sap from a slanting trunk. ‘You never know what you might find.’
‘Speaking of which, Hound, I trust that you’re consulting the life-scanner and not just touching
trees’
Hound flicked on the scanner and held it close. ‘Of course. No bio-signs at all.’ He tapped the screen.
‘Shame. We’ve almost reached Nightbeat’s co-ordinates.’
‘Perhaps we misunderstood his parting message.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Maybe Siren read too much into it.’
‘Maybe.’
Chromedome steadied the MARB engines. ‘Anyway. We’re here.’
Hound stepped onto solid ground and left the platform wobbling like a rowing boat. E3 9012 was
green-walled and wet to the touch, carpeted in sinuous vines and tree roots. He switched off his scanner
and looked around. ‘Still no life signs.’
They stepped into the clearing, and into warm sunlight. ‘Look at the tree-line,’ said Hound. Above
their heads, the tight black coverage of branches was broken, and the sky was visible through a wide hole.
‘Something happened here,’ he concluded. ‘A flying object broke through the organic canopy and crashlanded.’
He backed into something solid and reached out the steady himself. Underneath his palm,
underneath the skin of waxy leafing, he felt something smooth and cold.
He peeled back the vine and saw the glint of old metal. ‘I think I recognise this,’ he whispered.
Chromedome helped him tear off strips of greenery. Soon they were admiring a golden Cybertronian
pod. Even when they had set it upright, it only reached their waists.
‘What am I looking at’ asked Chromedome.
‘An Autobot probe. Very old design; in fact, the last time I saw one was four million years ago, when
we were boarding the Ark.’
The Autobots began dismantling the ancient probe. Hound reached inside and found something in
the darkness.