eugenesis-text

The Autobot gunner gestured to his mangled legs. ‘There’s not much I can do, is there I’ve been
soaking up the gossip and generally feeling sorry for myself.’
‘Same as usual, then.’
‘Touché.’ Rev-Tone leaned towards his friend. ‘Hey, you see Nightbeat over there Did you know
that he’s been transferred here from the Canyons’
‘Yeah. I walked here with him.’
‘Oh. Okay, did you know that the Avatar have gone AWOL’
‘That’s ancient news! Maelstrom said he was thinking of splitting after the Strife incident.’
Rev-Tone looked defeated for a moment: he wasn’t used to playing catch-up. He beckoned for
Quark to pull his chair closer. ‘Alright, there is one more thing I’ve heard, but it’s top secret.’ He paused to
heighten the anticipation.
‘Well’
‘Throwback’s returned.’
‘What!’
Rev-Tone looked as if he had just been electrocuted. ‘Keep it down! Ultra Magnus probably heard
that!’
‘That’s incredible! No one ever expected to see him again!’
Quark thought back to the year 2005, when the Autobot theoscientist had volunteered for Project:
Crossover, an experiment aimed at bridging parallel universes. The accumulated research was lost when
Unicron had devoured Moonbase One late the following year. Throwback was classed as ‘Dead’ or
‘Irretrievable’, depending on the mourner’s knowledge of pan-dimensional time travel.
‘When did he get back How did he get back What happened’ The questions flowed easily, and
Rev-Tone was pleased that his bombshell had caused such ripples.
‘Why not ask him yourself He’s over there.’
A stranger was sitting on up on the circuit slab next to Ammo. Despite having no visible injuries, he
was hooked up to more medical equipment than any other patient. His body was a curious amalgam of
styles and materials, as if he had been re-graded and body-shopped with alarming regularity. Only his face
seemed old, with its chipped cheeks and its well-worn visor.
‘Throwback’
‘Hello, Quark.’
‘I’m sorry, I – I didn’t recognise you.’
‘I practically built myself a new body over the course of my travels. Bits and pieces collected from
parallel worlds. Souvenirs, you could call them. I guess each universe left its mark.’
‘When did you get back’
‘About three weeks ago. I was fast-phasing between similar universes – “Alternaties”, I call them –
but spending only a few minutes in each. Intense stuff. There was this one Alternity where Unicron poked
his fingertip across the Space Bridge and skewered Metroplex.’ He re-enacted the scene with his hand and a
looped cable. ‘Then I phased onto a different Earth, with a different Metroplex, and Optimus Prime – you
know, the original – had been resurrected in 2009.’
Quark leant forward in his chair, wrists dangling between his knees. ‘So which universe were you in
before you jumped here’
‘It was very similar to this one, actually - except there was this Powermaster Prime clone running
around, and Red Alert had just been possessed by Unicron.’
‘Amazing. So why do you think you’ve come back now, after seven years’
‘Actually, I’ve been phasing between worlds for over a century. For you, the timeline between 2005
and 2012 was straightforward. From my point of view, it went off at right angles. Retracing my footsteps
wasn’t easy.’
‘So you steered your way back’
‘Well no, not really. I had no control over where I went. Perceptor likens it to an echo. He thinks
the initial phase threw me so wide it took a hundred years to, you know, bounce back. The last few
Alternaties were definitely the most similar – a lot of shared history.’
‘So you’ve visited, what, a thousand parallel universes, each with its own set of Transformers. Any
common themes’
Throwback paused. ‘Well, the vast majority involved Unicron devouring Cybertron.’