The glory of space is the only fitting backdrop for me,
thought Sky Lynx.  Magnificence such as mine deserves an equally
magnificent background.
	His contemplation of his own wonderfulness was interrupted by
a distress beacon that slashed through his consciousness. There was a
babble of voices, screaming in terror, and then, suddenly, a clear
transmission that overrode and subdued all the rest.
	"Chorale of Candarvis I colony to all. We are under
assault...intruder of incredible power. Not the Enemy, but equivalent
in might. Do not attempt rescue. Repeating...."
	He dimmed it to background noise and hastily called up his
navigation data files. Candarvis? Why...that was the world *I*
discovered! How could MY world be under assault? 'Do not attempt
rescue'? Why, Chorale must not have realized I would receive the
transmission! Perhaps it would be too dangerous for any other Autobot,
but certainly not for ME!
	He ignited his primary engines and slid into the fractal
madness of subspace. Theory held there was a "hyperspace" as well, but
he didn't worry much about it. Physics texts were dull. That's what
beings like Perceptor were for.
	Swooping through the anti-geometry of subspace, he began to
formulate a battle plan. Chorale was continuing to transmit, the same
message, over and over. She was like that, he recalled. Just locks
herself into a loop and keeps going, joylessly. Not like me! I
*never* do anything the same way twice!
	The message paused for about one minute, then resumed. He
barely noticed the interruption.
	It was many hours of self-congratulatory reflection later that
he moved in on the colony world. Orbital scans showed nothing in the
area, but there were HEAVY subspace distortions, as if a massive
object, many times larger than even himself, had appeared here and
then left. Funny....no energy readings from the colony at all. Only
one faint trace of a power source...Chorale.
	For the first time, genuine concern arose. His fellow autobots
were, at times, less than appreciative of his greatness...but they
were his friends and allies, nonetheless! What could have happened?
	He swooped through the thin atmosphere, heading towards the
location of the colony. When he reach optic range, he nearly fell from
the sky. The colony was...gone! not even ruins remained! Megatron
couldn't do this. No Decepticon could. This was...alien. A lmost
frightening. A lesser being would undoubtedly flee.
	A glint of metal against dull rock. Chorale.
	He swooped low, slowed, then landed and shifted to his
dinosaur-like mode.  Extending his legs, he trotted up to her, still
locked in her omnisynth shape. She did not respond to a gentle radio
probe, so he shifted to audio. "Chorale? This is Sky Lynx. I heard
you, I'm here to rescue you...." She was not responding. With a
delicacy that his bulk belied, he nudged forward, tapping her with the
tip of his head. The omnisynth shuddered, then rapidly unfolded into a
humanoid robot. Sky Lynx looked at her in shock and dismay. The
copper/silver patterning of her exterior was charred and peeled. Her
back showed signs of warping and damage from extreme heat...several
inner systems were exposed and lubricant had caked along the wounds.
	She staggered back, a sonic blaster materializing in her hand
from subspace. Then she seemed to come back to full awareness. The
blaster vanished and she collapsed forward, onto her knees.
"You...should not..have come here. I *told* you!" She looked up at
him. "Why are you here?"
	"As I said, to rescue you. I heard your warning, but ignored
it, of course. There is no danger so great that it would frighten me!
I faced..."  He looked at her again. She was staring at the vast pit
where the colony had been, saying nothing.
	Sky Lynx sighed....or would have, if he had lungs. He knew,
but did not fully understand, that some beings simply didn't find
tales of his greatness as exhilarating as he did. Over the millennia,
he'd learned to accommodate this odd idiosyncrasy. He shut up.
	They both waited in silence for a long time.
	Finally, Chorale spoke. "You're here. There's nothing I can do
about that.  Take me back to Autobot City, on Earth. So many gone...."
her voice trailed off into silence. Sky Lynx transformed back to
starship mode and opened a hatch. With a final glance at the pit, she
walked up the ramp.

****

	Sky Lynx was not the only Transformer capable of space travel,
nor where all such travelers Autobots. Blast-Off, of the Combaticons,
was 'enjoying' a brief sojourn away from Earth. Soundwave had
apparently detected irregular Autobot transmissions coming from a
supposedly 'dead' sector of space. Megatron had decided to
investigate, and Blast-off was available.  Soundwave was riding inside
him, scanning for transmissions. And, blast the luck, of all
Soundwave's bonded partners, the only one Megatron felt was worth
sparing was that psychotic (even by Decepticon standards) Frenzy.
	"Have you detected anything YET?" Blast-off asked of
Soundwave. This whole affair was a waste of my precious time, he
thought. They all hate me for my superiority...why should I ferry them
around?
	"Negative. Continue search pattern." Soundwaves 'voice' was
utterly flat and emotionless. If he had emotions and didn't express
them, or simply had none, was something Blast-off didn't know...and
didn't particularly care about.
	"Hey! When we gonna get to kick some Auto-butt? Huh?" That, of
course, was Frenzy. Soundwave had let him 'out' of the subspace pocket
that he normally 'lived' in. As far as Blast-Off was concerned, that
was a major error.
	"If Autobots are found, we may engage in combat. Your job is
to record information, however."
	"Yeah, sure! How's about I record the sound an Autobot makes
when I rip out its' optic sensors?"
	"Such information is not...Hold. Blast-off, veer to 65 mark 21
mark 13 Beta. An Autobot distress beacon is coming from that
direction."
	Blast-off made the course corrections and flew off. He wasn't
detecting anything at all. Wait...there it was. Incredibly hard to
pick out of the background noise...of course, it wasn't intended for
Decepticons.  Soundwave could do his job...but that was ab out all he
was good for.  Glorified radio. Of course, he had information on
*everyone*. That made him especially dangerous.
	After some time, Soundwave said. "Signal stopped. Continue
anyway." They did.
	Finally, the reached a dim star. The signal had come from the
innermost world, so they flew to it. Blast-off moved himself into a
low orbit while Soundwave scanned.
	"Curious. No transmissions at all. No power sources. No
Autobots. Begin optic scans. Frenzy. Transform to data-storage mode
and rejoin me."
	Frenzy had been using his weapon to scrawl "Frenzy Rulez" into
Blast-off's inner hull. Shrugging, he tossed the weapon back to
subspace and leapt, folding down into a relatively tiny cassette
shape. Soundwave, in turn, folded down to something the size and
general form of a human radio. He plugged himself into Blast-off, who
focused his powerful optics on the planet and moved into an orbit that
would cover the entire surface of the world.
	In a subspace realm others had wondered at but never visited,
linked with Soundwave in total communion, Frenzy did his job. Data
streamed in, terrabytes of it...he sorted, analyzed, recorded. Dull,
dull, dull...this planet had rocks. And shallow seas. And more
rocks. And more seas. And more rocks. And a gaping, circular pit. And
more seas. And....
	"Soundwave, Frenzy here. We got somethin'....lemme go check it
out!"
	Soundwave processed, considered, reached a conclusion.
"Affirmitive.  Blast-off, bring us down and release Frenzy at a
suitable altitude."
	Blast-off swooped low, towards the pit. At about a hundred
feet, he opened his cargo bay and rolled, tossing Frenzy into the
air. He then sped back to orbit.
	Frenzy flailed at the air, cursed loudly, and plummeted
groundward. His momentum carried him into a cliff, which he grabbed
onto, losing outer finish as he slid downwards. Finally, he came to a
stop, then clambered down. That flying tin can is gonna PAY for this,
big time! he thought. Me an' my buddies can take him an' those
Combaticon pals of his any picosecond of the minute. 'Bout time
someone brought those renegades into line, an' I'm the guy to do
it. Hey! Whuzzat?
	He knelt down. A cybertronian flower was 'growing' in the cold
sunlight.  All around him was dried lubrican and pools of metal which
he recognized as being Cybetronian in origin...this had clearly been
some sort of garden. Definitely Autobots. Now, ain't that cute. The
little Autobots played with flowers. He picked up the single bloom
that remained, crumpled it into a small foil ball, and tossed it
forward. It fell into the pit, and if there was an echo, he didn't
hear it.
	The pit itself..that was aritificial, no doubt about
it. Perfectly circular, less than a single degree of distortion. Glass
smooth, down about one kilometer, then flat.  Down at the bottom of
the pit, he could detect pools of black liquid...oil. This area
was rich in petrochemicals.
	OK, Frenzy, let's put two and two together here, he
thought. We got some Autobot gardens. We got some oil. We got a pit.
	There were Autobots here, drilling the oil. Now they were all
gone. They sent a distress signal, something happened to them.
	It wasn't us Decepticons that did it. So someone else out
there hates Autobots, too! Yeah, well, anyone who knew them would hate
them.
	Great. Allies. Megatron will be so pleased, he might let me
kill Blast-off.
	For the rest of the long voyage back, Frenzy would
occasionally burst into insane laughter, and neither Soundwave nor
Blast-off could understand why.

***
Somewhere else....

]What have We found?
]Purely Mechanical Consciousness
]Can We assimiliate them?
]We can, with difficulty. We must devote much of the Collective to the
	task.
]Is there more?
]Yes, there is. We can find it, use it, incorporate it into ourselves
]We shall do so, then.
]Yes. We shall.
]Shall we seek an incarnation to assist in the assimiliation?
]Yes. We shall.

***

	A part of Earth was being transformed into a scene from the
Golden Age of Cybertron.
	Several square miles of Colorado land had been leased from the
United States government in return for technologies as yet
undisclosed, and declare to be "extraterritorial space". The Autobots,
at long last, had a place of their own, a permenant base to begin
construction on. And they were going at it with a vengeance.
	Grapple and Huffer stood in the center of the construction,
examining the holographic blueprints that floated above the scene.
Ratchet was supposed to be with them, but had left for the old Ark,
apparently needing to take care of some personal business. Huffer
studied the plans intently, and his mechanical visage grew ever more
distressed.
	"It isn't going to work, Grapple. You're trying to push a
dozen fields of science forward millenia, all at once. I mean, look at
this...." he pointed to a small section of the plan, which expanded on
command to show detail. "Your talking about a nearly forty percent
functionality shift in that region alone. Even the Gestalts don't
achieve more than a twenty-five percent redundancy...and we know what
problems there are with THEM!"
	Grapple merely pointed to one of the completed buildings
forming the core of what was turning into a city. "You claimed that
structure couldn't be built, yet built it yourself."
	"Yeah...but that was a lot less complex than THIS. And...well,
frankly...do you want to put so much power in any single being?
Wouldn't some sort of controlled drone be preferable?"
	"Drones can't react fast enough to threats. It would be
useless. Besides..."
	"Besides WHAT?"
	"You aren't supposed to know this...no one is....but the
Decepticons are working on the same technology. We can't let them have
it alone. They were the first with the Gestalts, the first to master
flight-mode forms....we have to at least equal them this time, or the
war is done."
	"They were first because they have no scruples. Do you know
how many thousands of Cybertronians they murdered before they got the
Gestalts to work? If that's what winning means, it isn't worth it."
	"We should not have to engage in such activities. Nor will
we. Now...back to work."
	Grapple shifted to his crane form; Huffer to his truck
form. Both rolled across the smooth metal surface to where the
heaviest construction activity was occuring.
	Inside the Ark, the four-million year old spaceship that had
served as an impromptu base for the Autobots during their nearly 15
years on Earth, the Autobot surgeon Ratchet turned towards the
now-official Ambassador from the United States to the tiny cou ntry of
"New Cybertron"...'Spike' Witwicky.
	"I believe, from studying your human customs, that the
appropriate phrase is 'Congratulations, you're going to be a father'."
Ratchet looked down at the small human curiously. "Odd. You don't seem
totally pleased."
	"Ratchet....are you sure? I mean...you're not exactly an
expert on human physiology...is there a chance you made a mistake?"
	"Highly unlikely. The scans were perfectly clear. I can show
them to you if..."
	"No...that's OK. Thanks. Uh....you've told her?"
	"Certainly."
	"Terrific. Just...oh, never mind. Can you....do me a favor?
Just keep her busy for an hour or so? Tell her you need to run another
test or something. Anything. One hour. Okay?"
	Without waiting for a response, he walked away, heading for
his temporary quarters.
	Once inside, he collapsed on the bed, staring at the grey
metal of the ceiling. For the first time, he actually *felt* twenty
six. His protracted adolescence, he realized, had just come to a
crashing end. And was that such a bad thing?
	Fourteen years. For fourteen years, more or less, I've been
living a life out of...out of....a comic book or something. Kid
sidekick to the Autobots. Living on the front lines of an eon long
civil war and treating it like a game.
	Even this "Ambassadorship"....an act of convenience. The
government would kill for that technology, and they've learned the
Autobots were the only trustworthy ones. And, after all, if they
wanted to build a city here, who could stop them? But best to make it
look nice and above board. And, hey!  That guys been hanging around
them for years. Better give him a fancy title and set him up as our
"representative".
	Well, at least I've got a job now. Not that I'm qualified to
do much else!  One semester at MIT....couldn't handle it. How could I
sit there and play with workstations when I've dealt with genuine
artificial intelligences?  I've travelled through time, I've met alien
races, I've walked on the surface of a distant world.....how could I
sit in a classroom and take notes on theories I already know are
totally wrong?
	Back to here-and-now, Spike. You know her. She's going to want
to have it...him...her...whatever. And you know your father. He's
going to want a wedding. Well, that was sort of inevitable, but so
SOON? No time. The decisions been made for me. I've got to talk to
her, tell her what I feel...but....I'm not even sure myself.
	Spending your teen years watching robots fire energy blasts at
each other does not prepare you well for adult relationships, he
thought glumly. I'm going to have to make this up as I go along.
	There was a sudden blaring of alarms. Spike recognized the
pattern immediately. Decepticon air assault. Thank God there were
still some certainties in life.

Bookmark/Search this post with:

delicious | digg | reddit | newsvine | furl | google | yahoo | technorati