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Chapter Text

Serenity lay on the floor of the balcony, her thin ‘chin’ propped up on delicate, five-fingered servos, watching Max chase a red spot.

Max was being very entertaining, leaping and scampering and grabbing with little paws.  She was off the leash at the moment, so Slipstream was handling the laser pointer from a guard position at the stairs. Max, totally absorbed in her wily prey, was in no danger of wandering off, though.

The red dot raced up the side of the couch and over the back, Max in frantic pursuit. Two short ‘pigtails’ of flexible antennae strands followed every move—and then drooped abruptly. It was one of very few body-language ‘tells’ Serenity had, and it generally indicated she was turning attention inward to worry about something.

“Is something wrong, Serenity?”

“Do you think Max is sad that she is stupid?”

Slipstream’s vocalizer reset and the laser pointer flickered. “Max is an excellent cat!”

Kim waved him off and said firmly, “Max’s intelligence is different from yours or from mine, but exactly right for a cat.  They see the world differently than we do.”

Serenity sat up, crossing humanly-proportioned ‘legs’ and shook her head. “Max hasn’t figured out the target has no mass and can’t be caught. This is not…appropriate intelligence for a predator species. If Max were not being taken care of, she would starve.”

Slipstream was charging capacitors. Kim snapped her fingers at him and shook her head.  He shifted his attention to Kim, and scanned her in bafflement. No, that wouldn’t be a gesture he knew. He had never been hushed by a mom. Kim sighed. “Have you considered that Max knows she is playing, and it doesn’t matter that the dot cannot be captured.”

“Max doesn’t understand optics.”

“No, but Max’s brain is…hardwired for pleasurable feedback from the act of pouncing. Earth species play to gain skills. Like you and Hot Rod do trajectory calculations for fun.”  On her last visit, Mearing had brought a box of ping-pong balls and a set of paddles. The children were enamored. “Landing on the spot fills her with… maybe the same feeling you get when you bounce the ball off two walls and score.”

The pigtails perked up. “Really?”

“Yes. Cats play. She might think the dot is just too fast or too small for her. But she doesn’t care.”

“May I try controlling the laser point?”

Slipstream began explaining the safety rules; as weak as the laser was, it could damage some organic sensors.

***

The first day after Serenity’s hatching had started early, although Kim had not gotten a lot of sleep the night before.

She came out just after six to visit the bathroom to find Carly and Chip at the entry way in deep conversation with someone on the other side. With a prick of nervousness, Kim hurried her trip to the loo and joined them at the door. “Good morning, Serenity. What do you think of humans?” 

“I have scanned them. It is amazing. Ratchet says I must ask before scanning humans.”

Kim looked past her shoulder to where Ratchet hovered attentively on the other side of the railing. “Ratchet is very wise,” she said. “He’s usually right. I think passive sonar would be okay, though, even if you didn’t ask.”

She nodded. “Humans are very noisy. May I scan you?”

“Tut,” Carly said. “I have already asked to scan you. It’s my turn.”

Serenity shifted on her feet. “Your scanners…are not very good.”

“True. So this will take a minute.” She made shooing motions. “Step back. I need space.”

Kim and Chip followed Carly onto the balcony. The floor here was metal and cold, and Kim spared a moment to regret not having gotten dressed before meeting the new baby. Carly was walking around her, peering into the wide seams and joints, examining the small head and forward-facing eyes. “How did you choose this structure?” she asked. “I understand there were many plans in the original files.”

“It is human shaped. I am from Earth.”

Carly nodded, leaned down—Serenity was only about three and a half feet tall—to look into a small opening that might be an ear. “What is your mass?”

“Two hundred and twelve kilograms.”

Chip frowned and Carly paused in her examination. “That’s very heavy. Are you sure?”

“I have lots of mass,” she wiggled, or, possibly, preened. “I am mostly protomatter.  Ratchet said having a good protomatter base was essential for long term health.”

Kim glanced at Ratchet, who was definitely preening. “She did an excellent job of growing,” he said.

Serenity, throughout this, had been looking at Chip. “Why are you not bipedal?” she asked. “In all of my files, humans are bipedal.”

“I’m bipedal. I…have a malfunction.  Walking is difficult. Mostly, I use wheels.”

“You can say ‘ill,’” Kim reminded. “That idea will be in her lexicon.”

He frowned in puzzlement. “Your notes mention that. It doesn’t make sense.  Unless you mean some kind of malignant replicating code. How can they be ill?”

Kim bit her lip. “Some kinds of problems with protomatter seem to be classified as illness rather than damage or malfunction.”

Ratchet sighed and rippled his optics.

“What?” Kim asked. “What part was wrong?”

“It wasn’t wrong,” he said pityingly, “just so badly explained as to be useless.”

Kim smiled at him charmingly, “Maybe you could—”

“Can Ratchet fix you?” Serenity interrupted. “Ratchet is very good at fixing people.”

“I can’t fix humans,” Ratchet said, softening. “Nothing about their existence makes sense.”

Serenity leaned over Carly, who was crouched down with her nose only a few inches away from the complex mechanisms that formed the sparkling’s feet. “Why don’t humans repair you? Do humans have human doctors?”

“Humans have doctors. They don’t know how to fix this.”

Serenity went rigid and her optic lenses— each a single, broad camera instead of the complex arrays used by most of the adult mecha—blinked off and on several times.

“Hey!” Chip said sharply. “No freaking out! It’s a manageable problem. I do some things differently, but I’m okay.  Human bodies….vary in ways mech bodies don’t.”

Ratchet had ended it then, with a general sour look for the humans who had upset his baby with their sloppy existing. It had been almost adorable—if Chip had not apologized once they were back in the dorm.

“It’s going to be endless hard questions and awkward conversations,” Kim said. “And we’re going to have to teach the babies boundaries—which, by the way, you are allowed to have. Just. Shake this one off and get ready for next time.” 

This had not, perhaps, been good advice. But it was the best she had.

***

In fact, Serenity was pretty exhausting.  Like a human baby, she didn’t know about boundaries or separate front- from back- stage. Unlike human babies, she was independently mobile and fully vocal. She asked all the questions. She scanned everything. She quickly discovered ‘in,’ and checked every object to see if it opened and what was inside.

She had demanded to see the human side of NEST on her third day.  When Optimus said, ‘not yet,’ she threw a tantrum and discovered the meaning of ‘time out.’ Ratchet took her to the privacy annex and shut off the wifi node.

She was curious about eating and excretion.

It was exhausting, but not unrelenting.   Serenity’s curiosity was punctuated by unusually long shut downs as she made physical alterations to her body. For example, growing each of the strands in her tiny sensor pigtails had taken a nine-hour nap.

Given control of the laser pointer, she was careful and precise, aiming well away from Max’s face. The tiny red spot danced just ahead of the snatching paws. Soon, Serenity was making little clicks of mech laughter.  Kim got some pictures and then took out her notebook to write the moment before it was gone.

It was Hound who showed up to take her for nap duty around noon. He already had Hot Rod draped along one shoulder.

Kim’s next appointment was with Blaster, who arrived with a metaphorical ‘stack’ of magazines. They were digital, of course. He sent the first to Kim’s phone and settled in to go through it a page at a time. “What are they advertising here?”

“Countertops,” Kim said.

“Does it make you wish to buy one?”

Kim sighed. “No. I am delighted with the countertops Fixit selected.”

“What about this page?”

“That’s a website that sells furniture.”

“Yes.  Why does it show that room?”

“You know they’re trying to guess what sort of image, people want, right? And I don’t know who wants that. It’s expensive and spacious and impersonal.”

“I see,” Blaster said neutrally.

The next page was the contents.  The one after that an advertisement for beer. “It’s okay. I haven’t tried that kind. I might. I wouldn’t mind having one I liked a lot, to order in restaurants.  Not that I eat out much.” She had the salary for it now, but not the opportunity.  Eating out was sadly limited in Jasper.

“This is for pet feed. You do not have a dog.”

“Nope. But that is really expensive dog food. I’m not sure—” But she was making a grown-up salary. And spending nothing on rent. She could afford to feed a dog pate, if she had one. “It’s hard to know what is the best nutrition.”

“Is it? I thought nutrition was fairly well understood.”

Kim snorted.

They paged through advertisements: a bank, hotdogs, fancy purse. And, oh, Kim understood why Blaster was doing this. It was tedious and exhausting—never mind embarrassing to delve into the trivial shit humans put so much effort into—but Kim had done the same sort of thing from the other side.

“Are deviled eggs the perfect party contribution?” Blaster asked doubtfully.

“Kind of is,” Kim said, scanning the article and recipe. “In my grad student days, well, eggs are cheap, and deviled eggs are very tasty, and they take time, and you can’t buy them pre-made, so it shows you cared.”

Blaster considered. “You can buy them pre-made.”

“Not good.  You want them, you have to make them.”

“Right. File that. The next recipe is for soup. I understand solid food.  Liquid food, makes sense as a necessity.  But solid food floating in the liquid food…?”

“You all wrap energon in minerals,” Kim pointed out.

“As a practical method for transport, initially. And our buccal cavities are much more complex than yours. And if you shunt the contents to the wrong line, you clog the atmospheric scrubber.”

“That’s true,” Kim said slowly, blindsided by how incredibly inexplicable human eating was. “But soup isn’t usually the problem there.” This is why ethnography broke people. Kim rubbed her forehead.

“Do you like soup?” And that was another thing: fuel was a necessity, not a pleasure. Mecha greatly enjoyed running on higher ratios of energon to artificial fuel, but the idea of doing things to energon to change its chemical reception on intake wouldn’t make sense to them.  Kim, for her part, tried to imagine a meal where the greatest enjoyment came from digestion rather than taste. It was a reach.

And now the question was, did she like soup? “I… like some soups very much. My stepmother makes this thing with chicken and wild rice and cream.  And I like French onion soup. And I’ll eat canned soup if necessary.”

“When would soup be necessary?”

“Well. Cold weather. Or when you don’t feel well. Or if you’re out of other food.”

A pause. A long look. “Is this something that happens often? In your experience?”

“Oh. Well. I spent, like, years as a grad student. And that’s…well, the money isn’t so bad you’re starving. But there isn’t always time to shop or energy to cook. Stop looking horrified.”

“How can you tell I’m horrified?”

“All your extra antennae pulled in.”

“Hm.  So, when purchasing soup, how did you choose which soup you wanted?”

And on. And on. After soup, it was fruit juice, fancy tea, shoes, bedlinens, a theme park, cleaning supplies. Kim was thoroughly glad when Blaster had to leave for a military exercise with NEST.

She ducked into the kitchen to make a quick sandwich and ate it on the way to the ‘Bot commissary, where Chip was having a language lesson with Jazz.  They were settled at one of the cubical stone ‘tables,’ and Chip had the keyboard out.

Kim watched from one side, not interrupting. Chip was very good.  Slowly, resolutely, he put together strings of mech sounds into words.  He didn’t need the keyboard for all of the sounds; he could make six distinct clicks with his mouth and whistle four of the high-pitched phonemes. Between his voice and the keyboard, he could repeat words or phrases he’d heard, if they were short.  He couldn’t produce a spontaneous sentence yet, but his progress was fast. He was already better in less than two months than Kim had been after four.

When the lesson was over, Kim helped pack up the keyboard and joined Chip for the trip back to the balcony.

“Why are you wearing a bracelet that says ‘Energon?’ Is that a statement? Do I need one?”

Kim looked down at her arm, winced. “Yeah. We haven’t talked about that.”  Was now the time to talk about that? He’d stayed for three weeks. He was emotionally invested.  He already knew so many secret, dangerous things….

She had to warn him, if he was going to avoid it.

“I—”

“Where did you get it?”

“I made it to remind me…this is going to sound weird.”

“Okay? Compared to what?”

Kim stopped. She faced him squarely. She sighed. “Raw energon—the ore—it has this weird effect when humans, um, look at it.”

Very slowly, Chip turned his chair and regarded Kim with a look that was probably meant to seem attentive and calm.  He didn’t quite manage to hide the worry underneath. “Weird?”

Kim glanced around to make sure they weren’t blocking access, set down the keyboard, and looked at her bracelet. “It makes you uninterested in it.”

He frowned. “It’s so uninteresting you made a bracelet about it?”

“Yeah. To remind me—otherwise, I’d never think about it.”

He considered. “Carson the geologist.  He said his job was actually pretty boring.”

Kim nodded. “Right.”

“So… energon rocks are abnormally boring.”

Kim rallied. “That’s the thing! They’re not. Aside from the fact that they are a really rare energy-bearing ore that we can’t determine the composition of, they’re pretty. Really pretty. With colors. Some of it facets, like big...opal-diamonds that dayglow.  But after you see it, you don’t want to touch it. Or own it. And you forget what you were wondering about it.”

“Okay, that’s not alarming at all.”

“It’s kind of alarming.” Wasn’t it?

“But it’s just humans, right? Not the Autobots?”

“No, of course not. They think about it all the time. All the patrols are looking for it, not just looking for Decepticons.”

“Right. Right.” He looked at Kim’s wrist. “And you remind yourself energon exists….”

“Um. Sort of. I mean, refined energon, the stuff they use, I don’t seem to have a block about that. Optimus—It’s a normal part of life with them. It’s their food and air and blood, a really pervasive metaphor, the babies—the only reason there could be babies is that there was enough energon to feed them. But. I don’t think about where it comes from, and I forget that it is problematic that I don’t think about where it comes from.”

“Merde.”

“Yeah! And I was going to—there was really something important about it I was going to tell you, but I’ve lost it.”

He was leaning slightly away from her now, as thought the weird forgetting might be contagious. “You were telling me that raw energon does some kind of weird mind control to make humans not notice it.”

“Right. Thanks. And at first, I thought, maybe if we had someone we had warned before taking to see it, the effect might be resisted. But at this point,” Kim fingered the letter beads that spelled out e-n-e-r-g-o-n, “I think it is more important to make sure you aren’t…compromised by whatever this is. You mustn’t ever go to an energon mine and avoid samples….”

“Has it…has it hurt you? Otherwise?”

“Has what hurt me?”

His breath caught. “Seeing unprocessed energon?” he said weakly.

“Oh, right. No. My field is fine. My health is fine. They’ve watched for changes in my behavior.  There is no sign it has done anything else to me.”

“How did the Decepticons do this?”

“Oh. They didn’t. At least not recently. And probably not at all. Nothing about it….”

“Then who did?” He sounded shocked and panicked now. 

“Well. That’s actually the biggest problem about it. We don’t know.”

“Humans don’t know. And the Autobots don’t know?”

Kim shook her head. “Whatever did it, it happened before Isaac Newton. Apparently, there is some really obvious physics principle that should have been discovered or inferred at about the same time as gravity…or because of gravity.  Anyway, whatever it is we as a species can’t notice or deduce is so central to the way the universe works that Einstein invented special relativity to, sort of, wallpaper over the hole.”

“On, come on!  You can’t be serious! This is—hazing the new guy.”  It came out like a question.

Kim shook her head. “You minored in math, right? You covered special relativity at some point in college.”

“Scholar camp in high school….”

“Right. And it didn’t seem at all suspicious to you that that is the explanation we settled on for space and time and light?”

Chip dropped his face into his hands. After a long moment, he whispered, “Oh, my god.”

“Something was done to all of us. Like, hundreds or thousands of years ago, to make us miss something really obvious about how the universe works.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

He looked up at her for a long moment, then closed his eyes. “Why are humans unable to understand proper physics?”

“Because this principle we can’t assume—or mathematical operation we can’t complete, or cause and effect we don’t notice—is what would let us use energon for something.  We don’t notice the energon and we don’t have—can’t conceive of—the concepts that would let us use it if we did.”

“Oh, my god. I thought being chased by Ravage was literally the most terrifying thing I would ever have happen to me.”

“I’d let you take a few minutes to, you know, absorb this, but if I don’t keep my train of thought going, I’ll forget what we were talking about.”

“Damn. Okay. Okay.  Is this physics we can’t do….related to the seventeen dimensional math that makes space travel and the Bridge work?”

“Well. Our physics and engineering would be further along if we had an accurate understanding of the universe, but…. Maggie understands a lot of Bridge math. I mean it’s hard and very complicated and she has to do it in an alien number system that the aliens had to develop specifically to do that sort of weird math. And even the individual ‘Bots here can’t do all the calculations alone. So, I don’t think that’s directly related to our species’ deficiency.”

“So you’re saying that at some point in history, Decepticons or someone  else came to Earth and messed with every single human brain so that they would never notice some really obvious law of physics and pass this defect on to future generations and made sure that if anyone ever saw energon they would lose interest in it, even though it’s really weird and pretty. Is that it?”

Kim took a deep breath. “Unless we evolved this way.”

“Why the fuck would we evolve this way!”

Because we’re the spawn of Unicron, the demons in mech hell, and Unicron wouldn’t want his minions playing with his blood. “Well, look how evolution works—understanding some weird universal property isn’t necessary for survival day to day. Obviously.  Why would we have something we didn’t need? Mecha were made, though, they didn’t evolve. Their ability to understand this might have been built in.  They have to be able to understand their food. And we…don’t.”

“Who made them?”

“According to them, Primus.  But their prehistory is a couple of billion years older than ours, apparently.”

“Their memories are transmissible. A billion years shouldn’t—”

“There were also wars. The Quintessons destroyed a lot of the history they found inconvenient during the occupation.”

“So they don’t know where they come from. I thought they were being cagy.”

“Or it might actually be Primus. The God Primus, who also might be the planet Cybertron.”

“I can’t believe you waited this long to mention this.”

Kim shrugged. “Well. Cosmology, you know. It’s interesting, but not really the priority. I mean, everyone agrees Primus has turned away.  The question of their god’s reality—”

“No, about the energon.”

“What about the energon?”

Chip reached out and gently tapped Kim’s bracelet. “Oh. Right. Focus.  You work mainly here. They don’t bring the ore here. But yeah. If it ever does come up, you need to avoid it.” Kim bit her lip. “And maybe… I mean, yeah, the whole species is compromised. But you are less compromised than I am. So if you’d…watch me. Just in case.”

“In case what?”

“In case it makes me…weird.”

Chip began to laugh. He turned his face away and waved his hands vaguely. “How would I know? You just—Oh, god, you mean weirder than this. Because I’m the sane one?”

“Oh. Good. I seem to have actually explained.”

He stood up stiffly and began to pace. “Do you have any idea how terrifying this is!”

He was talking about humans losing interest in energon, she was fairly sure. She kept her eyes on the bracelet while she answered. “Well. It’s really scary. Yeah. But there’s a Decepticon dreadnaught in orbit. It would take a couple of months to slag all the Earth’s landmasses to glass, but it could do it. And if it just wanted to kill off all the humans, it could do that faster.  And some of—some of my friends are going to die making sure that doesn’t happen.” Kim had to stop. Not crying was jamming up her throat and eyes. She squeezed down, holding her breath until the pain passed. “So. So if some other aliens somewhere have messed with all our brains, well they aren’t here right now and if we’re all dead in four and a half years,” or less, “it’s a moot point anyway.”

“Oh. Yeah. Okay.” He knotted his hands restlessly. “I hear you.”

“All this work may be for nothing,” Kim said. “We have to try anyway. Even if it all ends. Even if there’s no point….we can’t give up now.”

“No. You’re right. The fact that this might be for nothing, doesn’t change what we need to do now.  That was always true.  A meteor could drop on us tomorrow, we could go like the dinosaurs, like that.” He snapped his fingers. “That was always true. We have to keep on living.”

Keep on living. Kim cleared her throat and picked up the keyboard again. “Hey. Good news there. Our satellite telescopes are great now. Slipstream would let us know if we had any dangerous asteroids coming.”

“Oh,” he said faintly. “That’s nice.”

Kim’s evening meeting had been replaced by ‘patrol’ in the calendar. It had a notation that said to dress for cold weather. Canada again? Kim had a jacket and boots. Finding the gloves and scarf took opening  all the plastic tubs piled in the corner. For patrol, she also snared an extra bottle of water and an MRE. And then another of each, because her first patrol had ended in being stranded hundreds of miles away from home.

Oh. Money. Also money.

He was waiting at the Bridge prep area, in alt, but not parked.  Kim laid a hand gently against his grill, felt the tiny vibration of his torque engine. “Hello, Beloved Friend,” she whispered.

“Hello, Kim. That isn’t quite the right term.” Her phone buzzed and an unlabeled glyph came through.

It looked like boxes within boxes. “What does it mean?”

“Fish hatchery.”

Kim smiled, suddenly feeling warm and a little breathless. “Ah. Beloved fish hatchery,” she murmured.

He sighed. “Just a moment.” 

“Can we get close in any human language?”

A soft click: amusement. “Bumblebee and Fixit have settled on ‘companion.’”

“Oh. Oh! That’s very nice.”

“It will do,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind an off-site foray?”

“Anywhere,” Kim answered, belatedly remembering that that kind of statement was revealingly affectionate.

His door clicked open. “Come in, then. It’s almost time for our connection.” He waited while she settled. “So, how did the Trunk-or-Treat go?”

“It was great. Absolutely adorable. You should have gone.”

“I cannot subspace quite enough mass to pass as a minivan.”

“Eh. We’d get some really big fangs for the front and throw a black cape over you and, poof! You’re a really big vampire truck.”

“Do I remind you of a monster, then?”

Kim snorted. “Fine. Giant fluffy ears. And paint a beachball white for a tail.  You can go as a giant rabbit.” She sighed. “Next year we’ll have to take the sparklings.” They had been very upset when they’d heard about the Trunk-or-Treat and been forbidden to go this year. But really, they were too young to turn loose with civilians. No costume could cover up how alien they were. Or protect them from all the dangers in a human environment. They were mobile and could talk, but they were both still infants.

“I was thinking that in a few orns they could each – separately – go with Bumblebee on a short drive.”

“Inside him, right?”

“Of course. Just to look, for the first few times.”

“Shame we can’t just strap them into a car seat and take them to the mall.” Human children were tidy that way. But, of course, human children had a diaper stage.

“A car seat is not a bad idea.”

The warning chime sounded, and the Bridge’s shimmer flowed and swirled into place.

“Are you ready, Kim?”

She closed her eyes and gripped the seat under her from both sides. “Yes.”

When they came out, it was still pretty dark. Kim frowned and leaned forward. It wasn’t a cave. She could make out trees. And stars. “Is it nighttime? Where are we?”

“It’s three-thirty in the morning. In Pskov, south of Velikiye Luki.”

Kim turned that over several times. “We’re in Russia. In the middle of the night.”

“It is very early in the morning.  Hm. I do not have a greeting for that.”

“No shit,” Kim muttered.

“During the day, the quarry is active. It is not possible to come close enough to scan the area thoroughly.”

“Oh. Well. Obviously.” Kim peered out the window. “I don’t see any snow.”

“It is five point five degrees.”

“Celsius, I assume? What’s that in Fahrenheit? Like, forty.”

“You are teasing me.”

Kim laughed. “Yes. Oh. We’re in Russia.” She laughed again.

“We are. You are pleased?”

“Yes. Oh. Sneaking into foreign countries in the dark!  At no point in my life would I have guessed….”

The road was narrow and uneven. Kim was glad she wasn’t trying to drive this herself. Dang. “So what are we looking for?”

“Ironhide got a questionable reading in the vicinity of a quarry nearby earlier in the week. When the site is active, there is simply no way to get close enough for a follow-up.”

“Do I need to plant those portable sensor rods?”

“No, I will be able to approach closely enough to do it myself.”

Kim peered out at the darkness. “You can see fine.”

“Yes, Kim.”

“Should I ask if the Russian government knows we’re here?”

“They will get an activity report at the end of the month. If we find energon, arrangements will have to be made for extraction.  Are you warm enough?”

“Well, yes.  I’m in here. And I know your hydraulic fluid and lubricant is good to minus twenty or so.”

An amused string of clicks. “Fahrenheit again.”

Kim peered out into the darkness, the shadow of trees, the stars overhead.  It couldn’t have been more than five minutes, but in the darkness it seemed longer. The trees disappeared suddenly, even as the dirt road smoothed out. The ground in front gave way to a vague, dark, absence.

“This will be more efficient if I transform.”

Kim gathered up her bag and slipped out into the cold. Her gloves were in her pocket, and she fumbled them on while Prime transformed.  It was above freezing—ostensibly. Kim wasn’t at all used to it.  At night, Nevada got uncomfortably chilly in October.  This was—dear god! Her breath was a pale, foggy little cloud in the darkness.

“I wish to try another angle,” Optimus said. “May I lift you?”

She turned and reached into his scoop. The servo that closed around her seemed generously warm.

He walked along the edge of the pit, huge feet making only a little noise on the soil on the rim.  It was dark and cold—dark enough that there were more stars than she could see from the mesa at night, but clouds were coming in, blanking about a third of the sky.

Optimus paused, peered down into the abyss. His hydraulics swished restlessly.

“Is it very deep?” Kim whispered, pulling her hat further down.

“No. Only, perhaps… seventy feet.”

Kim giggled. Even as a joke, imperial measurements were an effort. “Feet.” 

“Nothing,” he said suddenly. “There is no energon here. There is no dark energon here.  And yet….” He stepped to the very edge and crouched down.

“Scrap, be careful!” Kim said.

Luminous blue optics flicked to her briefly. “The rim is stable.”  Clicks and shushs: a system check. “I wonder if we are catching the energon forming. Interesting, if true. I think we will have to purchase this facility and place sensors so we can observe it.”

“Hm. You’ll need a good story, or the workers will ask questions. Especially since the jobs will be missed.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I’m not sure; my job is to explain you, not keep people from noticing you exist.  Maybe Bill would have an idea. Would it be unsafe to keep running the quarry, just with…new management? Your R&D company has employees, right?”

“And if it suddenly sprouts dark energon? I do not wish to expose humans to that risk.”

“Yeah…as I understand it, any mine or quarry or oil well or canyon or tunnel or rock slide or tectonic fault might suddenly  sprout dark energon with no warning.” It was kind of surprising that Kim wasn’t more panicked about that. But energon was rare and most likely in older disturbances rather than ongoing ones.  The Autobots surveyed thousands of miles every week, but it was a good month if they found even two deposits, and most of them were small.

“I will take it under consideration. In the mean time, there is nothing to do here just now.” He stepped back from the edge and lowered his bulk to the ground. Probably it was deliberate, that he was blocking the cold draft.

“Are we going home?” Kim felt vaguely disappointed.  There wasn’t much to see, but she hadn’t been to Russia before.

“Not just yet, if you agree.”

“No, this is fine. It’s quiet here.” She came in closer. He was down, on his side, facing her.  “Hey? Wild planet, huh?”

“Yes. It is. Are you warm enough?”

“Yes.” It was almost automatic, positioning herself close to his face, but not too close for his optics to focus on. “Is this a serious conversation?  Or something practical?”

“Practical.  To begin with, scheduling.  You have not requested time off for the holidays.”

“No, I’m not going to.” He shifted slightly, a protest rising. Kim waved a hand. “First year in a new job, nobody expects to get time off. It won’t seem strange.”

“Perhaps not. But this sacrifice is unnecessary.  You should see your family.”

“I’m sure that seems very reasonable to you,” Kim said, shoving her gloved hands into her coat pockets. “But I’m not getting on an airplane now that I know the Nemesis can totally wipe out navigation.  And even if my car will start, it’s a three day drive each way. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Kim. Our patrol pattern can be altered to accommodate particular side trips. You could travel by Bridge.”

“Oh. Beloved. It is a very old, narrow street. I can’t take you—I don’t think it would support your weight.”

“Agreed. But I am not your only friend.  If I post a request to the calendar— And Bumblebee and Hound have both offered to travel with you for the celebration of gratitude.”

“Oh,” was all she could think to say. “But. No. There’ll be questions about my job. They’ll ask if I’ve made friends. It’s all top secret.”

“And you will tell them so; you are working with the government in a community comprised of refugees and military advisors.  Your work is classified currently, but will not always be so.”

“I…guess.”

“NEST members have had to negotiate their secrecy for four years now.  It is…a strain. But it can be done.”

Kim took a deep breath of the bracing air. “Wednesday to Friday,” she conceded. “Okay. But not Christmas. I’m staying here for that. No, the babies will want to do all the fun Earth things. Thanksgiving is mostly about food, and they don’t care about that. But decorating the tree and singing the songs and –I think we may have to show them snow.”

“Agreed.”

“Okay.” Kim took another deep breath and then, walking carefully in the dark, moved down toward his thorax. She wasn’t at as good an angle for his optics here, but down here would be the electromagnetic sweet spot; close enough and her tiny human field would overlap his spark. She moved in closer. Another step—

The soft protoform hum that greeted her was the happy sound she was looking for.  Kim took off a glove and wiped the pad of her thumb through the condensation forming on his chest plate. “Is it better? When I can come to you rather than you having to lift me in close?”

“It is meaningful, that you choose this closeness with me… and that you act to create it.”

“You usually initiate overlapping,” she said slowly, and waited.

“I am Prime.”

“So your field is unusually large and beautiful, which means I can sometimes almost perceive it.”

“And, generally, it is only those who knew me as Orion who approach me.”

“Should I worry I’m being rude? Or should I worry about you being isolated?”

The cry was quiet and deep and ran through Kim’s teeth into the bones of her jaw. It rose for a moment and then cut off suddenly.

“Oh,” Kim breathed. “You can—You can cry. If it’s time for that. It’s quiet here. And we’re alone.”

“No. Forgive me. I will not grieve for those who are gone, as though the loss of their company is more important than the company that is here.”

“Oh.” Kim’s voice broke. “No. No, that’s— No. You don’t only get to be sad about things alone. That’s. That would be awful.”

But he made no sound, didn’t move.

Kim turned around, dug her heels into the dirt, and leaned her back hard against him.

Still no response. Or—

Kim checked her phone. No glyph messages.

Right. Okay. He might be talking to someone across the planet. Or he might be silent. Or he might be listening—

If he was listening electromagnetically—he must be, she was overlapping, you couldn’t turn that off—then he was—not hearing, no, fields only gave general information, even for other mecha.  But he would be perceiving that Kim was agitated.

I’m worried. And I don’t know what to do. He’s lost his planet, most of his friends, he blames himself for the war, and at some point—sometime soon—he’s going to manipulate Megatron into fighting him—

Mecha overlapped when they were sad or scared or in pain. Distress. Did they do it to keep each other company in distress? Or to offer a comforting counterpoint? Should Kim be listening?

What would it feel like?

What does it feel like?

Kim leaned harder and breathed. She felt the soft ground beneath her feet. She felt the cold on her face. There was another thing to feel.  It wasn’t a thing humans were particularly built to notice.  But mecha were built around it. I’m here with you, Kim thought. All the things that are not here and not now, they don’t matter. All the things I don’t know. All the things I can’t fix. You are here, and that is all that matters to me—

Kim pushed against Optimus as hard as she could. His armor probably barely registered the pressure.

“Easy, Kim,” he said softly. His servo came around, settled in front of her, not quite touching. “Will you accept counsel?”

“Yes, please.”

“Worry creates turbulence in the flow. Likewise, increasing the flow eases worry.”

Kim felt an unwelcome stab of frustration. “Flow—I don’t have any energon.”

“Electromagnetics also flow.”

Kim frowned. “Mecha can manipulate their fields. Humans aren’t even aware—” She stopped. “The babies. Are they aware of their fields? Can they control—”

“No. That skill cannot be packaged into a file. They must learn this by experience.”

Kim sighed. “But they have the  hardware.”

“They have sparks.”

“Right. And I don’t.”

“Your spark is far more diffuse. It is not less loving.”

Kim flushed hot under her jacket.

“Yes. Like that, Kim.”

“Oh,” she breathed. The flush was spreading inward. “You’re doing something.”

“We are doing something.”

Kim was a little dizzy. She sucked in cold air and reached out with her hand to grasp at his servo.

“Kim. We are not matching frequencies. We cannot. We must not try.”

“No kidding,” she gasped. Her brain was electromagnetic. So was her heart.  “How?”  How….what? Kim couldn’t think. Was that because things were going well? Or badly?

“There is a musical conceit in Cybertronic music. It is not seen in human music.”

Kim gulped, nodded to show she was paying attention.

“A chord,” he said. “A low note with many much higher notes floating on top. Remain yourself. Not unison, chord.”

“Chord,” Kim managed in a small voice. “We blend. We are not the same.”

“You are yourself. Beloved as you are. Strong.”

“You’re the low note. I’m floating on top.” She pictured the metaphor, held it in the front of her mind. She hummed a little, experimentally—and then felt a flicker of embarrassment.  Instead of the click of amusement she expected, Optimus answered with a bass protomatter tone in the same key.

Kim breathed. The cold air made her eyes water. Or maybe that was something else. She wiped a gloved hand over her face and kept humming. I am myself. We are here.

The warm feeling began to recede. It was too soon—and also she had been doing this too long. She was sagging now, against his hand.

“Kim. Easy. A few steps to your left.” He transformed, coming to rest with the driver’s side door open right beside her. She struggled up the steps and crawled in.

Warm. Quiet.

Kim stripped off her gloves. Her fingertips were warm. And her nose. And her ears.  Interesting side-effect of whatever it was they had done.  “Are you all right?” she asked.

A long pause. “It seems there is a learning curve for both of us.”

Kim was distantly aware that that statement should have been alarming, but—weirdly—she wasn’t feeling either scared or sad, and it had been so long since she wasn’t haunted  by both of those feelings that she became a little confused. Calmly, she picked over words until finding the right ones. “Are you harmed? Or uncomfortable?” she asked.

“Neither. Slightly disoriented. Your existence is … very different.”

Maybe he needed some time. Kim tried to hold off talking by counting slowly. She made it to twenty-five before wondering how base pi math worked. And then she wondered how Chip was doing with math and remembered that it had been days since she’d had a chat with Fixit, and he was a primary informant, and then—without meaning to—asked “Is it an accurate metaphor? To picture you as a lower note? Because spark frequencies are in kilohertz. That’s lots of waves a second.”

“It is not accurate to picture either of our fields as a single frequency. We are both a combination of many magnetic waves. However. I have eleven waveforms that propagate at slower speeds than any of yours.”

“Huh,” Kim said. “And what makes you you is those waves, not the equipment you use for cognition.”

“That is a very human way of looking at it.”

That was true. Although not all humans saw the self that way. So. Maybe it wasn’t. And maybe it didn’t matter. “Would it be okay if I touched the interface?”

“Communication from you is welcome.”

“Touch isn’t a one-way message. Or a data gathering. It is a feedback loop.” She curved her hand around the hula dancer base that was growing out of—rather than stuck to--the dash.

“Then this interface is flawed,” he said. “It sends you no information.”

“No. It’s just a different loop than I’d get holding hands with a human. But you’re you, not a human. And I think we agreed, we are who we are.” She dropped her eyes. “I’m sorry I can’t take you home to meet my family.”

“Kim. Human family is an intimidating thought.  I cannot imagine those sorts of ties of biology, or what it would mean to meet someone who had such a claim upon you. And I confess I am relieved I don’t have to demonstrate my goodwill by eating food.”

Kim laughed. “Oh, my god. Really?”

“I’m sorry.  My courage fails me. I have tried to imagine….”

“You’re forgiven. And maybe someday, after you’ve had a while to come to terms with—“ But there was only a seven percent chance he would still be alive when the war ended and the Autobots were public. It wasn’t like she was going to have to introduce him to anyone, or explain this relationship, or worry about her uncle saying something embarrassing. Kim’s other hand curled around the hula dancer. “Damn. I’m sorry.”

“I promise you. If proper introductions are ever possible, I will fortify my nerve.”

“How strange,” Kim breathed. “I don’t feel like screaming. I usually do. I mean, all the time….”

“Kim…perhaps, do not take it as certainty I will lose?”

“It’s going to be awful. Even if I don’t hope… It will be awful and never stop being awful.” It seemed strange to say the words out loud, when she never let herself think the end of these sentences.

“Yes,” he said. “Hope takes courage. I suggest it anyway.”

“Okay,” she managed. “Okay. Hey.” And her voice did not break. “You are heavily armed. You are strong and wily. Maybe we’ll be integrating our species for a long time.” Until I’m old, even. Maybe this can be my life. Astonishingly, the thought did not make her want to cry.

“Do you wish to go home?” he asked. “Or would you rather see more of the terrain here?”

It was dark. There was not much chance that Kim would see anything. But she snapped in the seatbelt and sat back anyway. “Let’s drive around a while.”

***

Kim must have fallen asleep, because Optimus had to wake her for the check-in call before Bridging back. It was hard, climbing out at the stairs and saying good night. But quartering assignments were determined by size. Optimus couldn’t casually hang out in rooms built for humans.

At the top of the stairs, her steps faltered.  One of the couches was occupied.  Director Mearing was seated in the middle, head thrown back, asleep.  On either side of her, under each arm, were the sparklings.  Hot Rod was folded into a ball, and Serenity was tucked up into a lumpy box, and together the three of them were the picture of cuteness. Kim paused for a moment, taking in the utter sweetness of it.  Then, tiptoeing, she crept past and into the dorm.

Kim had expected, coming in so late, that everyone would be in bed. The light was on in the kitchen, and when Kim poked her nose in, she found Chip piling milk, honey, cinnamon, and vanilla on the counter. “Oh. Hi.” He waved vaguely. “I’m making –well, not quite steamed cow.  Interested?”

“Yes. Thanks,” Kim said. She fetched a pan from the cabinet and laid it beside the ingredients. “Working late?”

“Nope,” he said, popping the ‘p.’ “Just don’t want to sleep.” He poured the milk and added a spoonful of honey. “When you said learning the language gave you nightmares? I assume that wasn’t just a figure of speech.”

“No. It was awful. Worse than the nightmares from Russian.”

“You got nightmares from Russian.”

“Yeah. I mean, just the usual: making Fs, not being able to think of a word, walking into the exam and discovering you studied French instead of Russian.  Like that.”

He stirred thoughtfully. “And the dreams from Cybertronix?”

Kim made a face. “Not being able to think of a word. Getting yelled at in binary—weird, don’t ask. Trying to have a conversation, but it’s all arguments, and then something dark and huge eats me.”

“Huh,” he said.  He stirred. “Will you get a couple of cups out?”

“Sure,” Kim said. “Don’t tell me you’re having bad dreams!  You’re a linguist, you like languages.”

“I like Cybertronix very much. I’m still dreaming about something dark and huge and angry. It hasn’t eaten me yet….”

“That’s….”

“Under the circumstances, a little worrying.”

“That movie,” Kim said. “Where the linguist learns the alien language and….and sees the future…?”

He turned to look at her. “Native Tongue, where the babies who try to learn the non-human languages explode…?”

“But mine went away,” Kim protested. “About the time we learned we were hiring you.  It had to be stress. It wasn’t my problem anymore, and I stopped being freaked out.”

“Hmm. And that kid speaks it. And he’s fine.”

Kim opened her mouth. Shut it. “No, we can’t use him as a data point.”

Chip’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

Kim looked at the ceiling. She looked at the lightly steaming milk. She sat down.

The spoon stilled. “Oh. God. What?”

“You don’t work for the military. My guesses are none of their business. You can’t repeat this.”

“We don’t seriously have a weird ‘boy and his robot’ thing going on here, come on!”

Kim bit her lip. “I think he’s got a spark. I think he got stuck with a stray one during the fight over the Allspark. It was throwing off souls everywhere. I think…one landed on Raf and held on. It was an accident. His family was camping not too far away.”

“That doesn’t seem…likely.”

“He didn’t learn Cybertronix. He just…knows it.”

“You are fucking me.”

“God, I wish. I so wish.”

He began to stir frantically. “That can’t happen! How could that happen?”

Kim slumped forward, head buried in her hands. “I don’t know. Have you seen the video with the vending machine?  Or the cash register? Or the flashlight that had huge teeth?”

“We’re talking about a human body.”

“That speaks fluent alien and has a really huge magnetic field.”

He sighed. “Hand me those cups? Thanks.  It doesn’t matter anyway.  You are my data point, and if Cybertronix did things to human brains, it wouldn’t stop doing it when you stopped feeling responsible.”

“Well. Right. I mean logically—”

“I’ve started dreaming about a big darkness that wants to eat me.”  

“Oh. That’s. Um.”

He set a cup of hot, doctored milk in front of Kim. “Apparently a coincidence.”

“Do you need a break?”

“You’re kidding. No. This… I have to do this. Even if I was going to explode, I would do this.”

“Do you keep a personal journal?  So you can track your state of mind?”  

“Maybe I should.  So if I descend into madness, there’ll be a record.” He sipped the milk pensively. “Wow. That’s not Lovecraft at all.”

“Yay,” Kim said. “Oh. I think there’s a psychologist over in NEST.  You could talk to somebody who knows what’s going on here?”

“Maybe. I can’t imagine my issues are like the ones that Ranger team faces.”

Kim thought about Decepticon strafing runs. “Damn. Okay. On the other hand, your arrival here wasn’t exactly civilian. I mean, if you wanted to--”

“I’ll think about it.” He sat down and leaned his arms against the table. “In the meantime, what is this weirdness where nouns have aspect?”

“Oh. I hate that.”

Chapter Text

On Sunday, Kim had planned to sleep late before re-dying her hair and then taking the sparklings to the little greenhouse tucked behind the NEST offices. On the way to the bathroom—very early—though, she heard enthusiastic activity in the kitchen.  Should she check?

Surely. But it would be much better to go back to bed.

Grumpily, Kim poked her head into the kitchen. Fixit was wielding a bowl and whisk with vigorous enthusiasm. The kitchen smelled….good.  There was fruit spread out on the counter. “So,” Kim said. “Hey.”

“Hey, Kim,” Fixit answered politely.

Kim looked around. No, no other humans in the corners. “So…whatcha doin’?” Kim asked worriedly.

“I am cooking.”

“Uh, yeah,” Kim agreed. “I can see that. Um. You don’t eat, though.”

“No. I am making breakfast for my friends.”

“Oh. That’s…very nice.” Kim blinked the last of the sleepiness away. So many questions were rushing in. She picked one: “Why? I mean…what made you think of this.”

“I have been watching cooking shows,” Fixit said brightly. “The instructors all seemed to enjoy this activity.  I wished to try it.”

“Right. Yeah. So you’re following a recipe.” That was somewhat reassuring. “What are you making?”

“Banana bread is in the oven. I am preparing a frittata. I will form a fruit salad while it cooks.”

Kim peered into his bowl of beaten eggs. It looked normal enough. “Who did your shopping for you? Maggie?”

“Sergeant Epps made the purchases from my list. The local grocery store does not offer delivery.”

“Uh. Huh. Right.”

“I am going to surprise Maggie,” he said proudly.

“I imagine she will be very surprised,” Kim agreed. “This is very nice of you. It is polite, when someone is cooking, to offer to help?”

He nodded. “I will refuse help, if that is permitted. I wish to do this myself.”

“Understandable,” Kim lied, pushing down her disquiet. Dear God. Mecha cooking. Mecha cooking and expecting humans to eat the result. “What about setting the table? Can I offer to do that?”

“Thank you,” he said graciously.

Slowly, Kim fetched a sponge and wiped the table. She was desperately trying to think. Fixit put his eggs into a pan and set them in the oven. “So…which cooking shows?”

“Martha Stewart. Julia Child. Alton Brown. The glorious Giada. I watched forty hours of the Pioneer Woman, but she makes meatballs while wearing hand ornamentation. Worst Cooks in America was depressing.  I quite enjoy Epicurious on youtube.”

“Oh,” Kim whispered.  “Huh.” She went to the plate cupboard. Fixit had done the furnishing, and he hadn’t been able to choose a single plate pattern, so he’d ordered one setting of every kind he liked best.  “So, how many?”

“All five human residents, plus Bobby and Dr. No.”

“Oh,” Kim squeaked. If he had made a mistake, he would poison them all at once. “We don’t have enough chairs.  I’ll go get a couple more.” He’s a super genius. He’s watched Maggie eat for four years. Banana bread, frittatas—what even is a frittata? Spanish oven-omelet? Italian oven-omelet? Fruit salad. It’s not Bridge calculations. It’s mixing things in a bowl.

Kim was nearly hyperventilating as she hauled in the chair from her room. There was no way to refuse to eat Fixit’s food.

Her hand, when she knocked on Carly’s door, shook. “It’s Sunday,” Carly protested, still adjusting her bathrobe. “Ratchet gave us off until this afternoon.”

“Yes!” Kim said brightly. “Fixit is making us all breakfast. I need to borrow another chair.”

Carly blinked. “Whosa whatnow?”

Kim nodded vigorously. Her smile was too wide.

“But. We don’t eat energon.”

“No. He’s cooking.”

“Food?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Well. He…needed a hobby.” She blinked again, more slowly this time. “He has no idea what anything is supposed to taste like. Of course, I’m sure he’s following the recipe exactly. Oh. Dear. He isn’t beating eggs together or anything? He knows how measuring cups work?”

“What? Oh! No, he’s been watching cooking shows. And I assume he’s using metric.” Did you still call them ‘measuring cups’ when you weren’t using ‘cup’ as a unit?

“Okay. I guess I better get dressed. I’ll bring a chair.” Carly shut the door firmly.

Dressed was a good idea. Kim went and changed before returning to the kitchen to finish laying out the plates and silverware.

Fixit, at a speed that made his servos literally blur, was chopping apples. “Apparently, this middle part is not eaten,” he said in a bemused tone.  “It seems quite pretty.”

“Too hard to chew and digest,” Kim said, swallowing hard. “Also, the seeds contain small amounts of cyanide.”

Fixit froze. “That substance is highly dangerous to humans.”

“Yes. So we don’t eat that part.”

“This activity is much more complex than energon refinement….” he said uncertainly

“Really? Because we can’t figure out how you do that.”

“Energon is one substance.  There are literally thousands of food substances….” He looked down at the apple slices—each one even and identical.

“Well. Think about how much of Earth’s economy is taken up with it: growing it, processing it, transporting it, storing it, distributing it, preparing it…. It’s very complicated.”

He considered her with his broad optics. “You are concerned about my cooking ability.”

Kim managed a shrug. “The first time someone cooks something, it often turns out badly. Concern—I wouldn’t say concerned.” She smiled fearlessly. “Those apple slices look impressive. I can’t cut that tidily.”

Bobby and Dr. Nomura bustled in with orange juice and champagne, determined to make a proper brunch of it. They had gotten advance warning—which made sense, since Fixit had needed a human for the shopping.  Kim, if she had known, would have supervised this very carefully. Now, there was nothing left to do but eat.

Maggie, of course, was completely charmed by the fancy breakfast. She exclaimed at the presentation and how lovely the banana bread smelled. She admired the fruit salad and even the plates.

The table was a tight fit for seven seated around it. Kim, wedged between Bobby Epps and Pierre, kept smiling.

The frittata tasted a little like a naked quiche. Kim had no idea if it was good, but it wasn’t horrible.  She was on firmer ground with the banana bread and fruit salad, at least. They seemed perfectly normal. Kim ate, bite after bite, smiling.  She’d often lamented that she couldn’t share food customs in this field site. Well. Here was the chance.

In the end, Kim couldn’t tell by the taste of the food that it had been made by someone from another planet. She was so distracted by the question, though, that she could never remember, afterwards, what anyone had talked about.

When it was over, Kim was a little giddy with relief. She gave Fixit a happy hug: he could do anything. Seventeen dimensional math? Piece of cake.  Banana bread? Also cake. (She managed not to laugh at the internal pun.)

She was helping clean up when the sparklings knocked on the outer door.  They had had to close the door before they could knock on it, but they were currently very earnest about human manners.

***

It was the sparklings’ favorite place, the little experimental conservatory in Human territory. It had plants—in pots, in racks, on shelves--all packed in tightly under grow lights. The original experiment had ended a couple of years before, but the minicons had been keeping it up.

Since Ratchet himself couldn’t supervise the visits (he was too large to get into the human office spaces), both a human and minicon were required. Today it was Kim and Jetstorm who waited with overt patience while Ratchet explained—again—that the sparklings must cooperate with people who were trying to help them and that if they misbehaved in any way, they would be grounded for as many orns as they had already been alive.

Kim thought the threatened punishment was harsh, but was relieved he had phrased it as ‘cooperation’ rather than ‘obedience.’ Each of the mech children was as large and powerful as a motorcycle or baby elephant; uncooperative, they could accidently cause huge property damage or badly hurt a human, even if they were technically ‘obedient.’

The trip through the back tunnel was an adventure itself. The babies continually found new things to look at, new dark cracks in the walls to poke tactile or chemical sensors into.  Hot Rod had been fascinated with Serenity’s entry into the world and modified his two forelimbs with more flexible ‘fingers’ for climbing. Where the walls were sloppily carved out of the rock, he tried all the handholds, sometimes creeping up to the ceiling before leaping down and holding out his servos for high fives.

The crude tunnel exited on a narrow, dim, short corridor with old 1950s tile on the floor.  That disgorged into a much wider corridor with bright, white tile and lots of doors.  The kids poked at doorknobs and tapped the walls. It wasn’t, at any stage, a fast journey.

There were vending machines and a table at the next hallway junction, and Lennox, Ford, and Fowler were clustered in conversation.  Hot Rod saw them and dove forward. “Hello!  We are going to see the plant habitat. Today has a name. It is Sunday.”

Ford flinched and stepped backward, but Fowler reached out to pat the little bot on the helm. “Hey there, Roddy. I like the plant habitat, too. Kim. Jetstorm.” He nodded affably.

Serenity went more slowly, looking around, tactile sensor running along the wall. Will Lennox was waiting for her with his hands in his pockets. Now he took out two matchbox cars, a yellow Volkswagen and blue racecar.  “Presents,” he said. They approximated Bumblebee and Mirage, but not so perfectly that Kim was sure the kids would make the connection.

They held out their hands: Serenity’s human-looking fingers and Hot Rot’s multi-directionally jointed claws.  Lennox carefully handed over the toys. “Thank you,” they chorused dutifully.

“You usually have weekends off,” Kim said.  Ford was junior enough to be working weekends, and Fowler’s schedule was weird, but Lennox had been a nine-to-five guy lately.

“Sarah took the kids to visit her aunt.  In a couple years Annabelle will be in school, and they won’t be able to travel whenever they want.”

“Do—"

Serenity popped up between them, holding out the toy Volkswagen. “What is it?”

“It’s a toy,” Lennox explained with a small smile. “You play with it.”

Hot Rod had already flipped it over and spun the little wheels, but Serenity lifted it to her optics and tapped it with a chemosensing finger.  “How?”

“It’s a toy car,” Lennox said, frowning slightly. “You roll it.”

“Like…a tiny alt form?” she asked.

Lennox’s brows rose slightly, and Fowler had his teeth gritted over a laugh.

“It’s a tiny alt form,” Lennox agreed after a moment. “But it doesn’t have a root form. Just an alt. Just wheeled travel.”

“Why do humans make toy alt forms? They don’t transform.”

Lennox blinked. “Um. Well.  Humans don’t have alt forms, Seri. But they build cars to travel in. And we think cars are great, so we make toys for kids to play with.”

Fowler had his face turned to the wall now, and was turning red.

“You know what that is, sweetie,” Kim said.  “I know you kids have toy cars. This is like the others.”

“We don’t have any of these,” Serenity said.

“I hid them,” Hot Rod said cheerfully. “I did not want to share.”

Lennox frowned at once. “Oh, now,” he said sternly, “Hot Rod. Was that nice?”

“It was not nice!” Serenity shouted in outrage. “It was absolutely not nice!”

Kim glanced at Jetstorm. His vocalizer seemed to have jammed and was putting out a buzzing noise that clearly was not a word.

“All right,” Kim said. “Let’s talk about this.”

Seriously, Lennox said, “Autobots share…don’t they, Kim?”

“Well, that’s the way it seemed.” She glanced pointedly at Hot Rod. “Obviously, they seem able to not-share if they choose.”

“That’s very disappointing. I’m sad to discover that.” Lennox hung his head.

Abruptly, Fowler spun on his heel and retreated down the hall.  To someone who did not know better, he might be leaving in disgust or heartbreak, rather than just trying not to be caught laughing hysterically.

“Hot Rod, are you sure you’ve thought about this?  If you don’t share toys, Serenity may also choose not to share. The two of you might have two piles of unshared toys and no one to play with.”

Lennox's voice was soft and reasonable.

Hot Rod made a credible shrug. “I can play with you.”

With a shriek, Serenity’s thin hand shot out and snatched Hot Rod’s toy car. “I won’t share either!”

“Hey! Seri! You give that back!” It took a second to get his limbs unlocked and coordinated, but when he did, he dove for Serenity.

She kicked him.

Jetstorm lifted Kim and Lennox by their clothing and hauled them out of the way. He was yelling  in Cybertronix. Ford was plastered against the wall, gasping, eyes wide with horror.  Hot Rod was scrambling, trying to snatch the toy car.

Kim lost her balance for a moment as Jetstorm let go. Bracing against the wall, she hissed, “Stop it right now or I’m telling—everyone.”

The sparklings froze. Serenity was sort of bent into a pretzel, arms stretched out to the side and lower appendages cinched around Hot Rod’s torso to hold his main mass still.  Hot Rod’s sensor stalks were waving wildly, looking (Kim assumed) for a leverage point.

Lennox brushed himself off and stepped forward. “If you are going to fight over presents, you don’t need to have them.” He held out his hands. “Give them to me, please, Serenity.”

Slowly, she released her grip on her brother, sorted out her limbs, and held out the two toy cars.

“It’s not fair,” Hot Rod said. “Seri took mine.” 

“You! You are a….cheat!” she snapped back. “I—” She froze. Her optics reset.

Hot Rod shivered. All his sensor cables pulled in.

Kim glanced around. “What’s wrong?”

Jetstorm looked a bit sheepish, too. His armor seams were locked very tight.  “Prime wants to talk to them. Now.”

“This is your fault,” Hot Rod said darkly to his sister. 

***

Optimus was waiting for them in the ‘Bot commissary. There was no one else there. Jetstorm came out of the passageway first—he transformed into a sphere and rolled away at speed.   Hot Rod and Serenity hesitated in the entry.

Kim had had more than ten minutes to think about what to do when they reached ‘Bot country. How were mech children disciplined? Were they? Was that even a thing?

Would the kids get yelled at? Or have behavioral guidelines reloaded?

Was this melt-down developmentally normal? Or had hanging out with humans made them greedy and argumentative?

Kim glanced at the sparklings and walked forward to stop in front of Optimus. She knelt and then folded herself forward, an approximation of a box. “I’m not sure of the apology procedures,” she said. “The sparklings were entrusted to me. I could not get them to behave kindly and show generosity. I am very sorry.” She didn’t have to speak loudly. The sparklings had excellent hearing.

“In any complex undertaking, errors are to be expected. I’m sure you did your best.  Hot Rod and Serenity lack experience and perspective. Perhaps they were not yet capable of better behavior.”

There was a long pause. Kim didn’t sneak a look.

Optimus said softly, “Unfold yourself, if you would. I would like to consult.”

When she was standing, he crouched down. “I understand human sparklings engage in…similar bad behavior.”

“Oh, yes. But—I can’t think it’s alike. Human babies don’t know how to act. We can’t download behavior protocols. And their brains aren’t finished yet.  The cognitive hardware.  It can’t be the same for…we weren’t sure what to do. The way humans learn things….”

“Indeed. Both sparklings have fully functional processors and can define what it means to ‘share’ and ‘cooperate.’ And yet.” He sighed. “Come here.”

Hot Rod was on five feet. He scampered forward like a nervous puppy.  Serenity stayed erect, but scooted forward without seeming to lift her feet at all.

“You’ve caused each other great distress,” Optimus said to them. “And yourselves. I feel certain if Hot Rod had had opportunity to consider the implications of cooperation and the relative value of objects and good relations, he would have been less…acquisitive.”

Hot Rod quivered.

Optimus continued, “Like humans, when mecha are angry, we don’t think clearly.  Serenity… Oh, Serenity. It was not a genuine  betrayal. It was a mistake made from ignorance. You and Hot Rod could have come to an agreement that wouldn’t have ended in your presents being taken away.”

They both began to cry. Their protomass was too small to make the sound that resonated in the teeth. Their weeping was a high-pitched, quiet twitter. Optimus hummed softly, a resonant counterpoint. They crept toward him, and he leaned down for overlapping.

Ratchet and Blurr arrived finally, to carry the children off for a stasis and file management.  Optimus stayed still, watching them go.  When they were alone, he turned to Kim.  “Were you worried I would be harsh with them?” he asked.

“I was worried about everything. This parenthood thing…. I  wasn’t actually sure you wouldn’t cave. They’ve always been treated with kindness and respect. I don’t know where they learned this.”

“Interacting with other…beings is difficult. There are things they can only learn from experience.  And they will make many more mistakes.”

“I was kind of hoping, if I took the blame, they would figure out what they were supposed to apologize for. Or that maybe they needed an example of apologizing.” She shook her head. “I really am sorry. It was just a trip to the greenhouse.”

“This will not be the last time they quarrel with each other.”

“Nobody mentioned the creches being a hotbed of conflict.” But if interviews got you the whole picture, you’d never need participant observation.

“It is different when they are many, when they have many identical toys, when they are not given such intense, individual attention.  It is a different life here.” He sighed. “And we have no direct experience with sparklings so young. That is why we are moving forward today.”

Kim nodded.  “Everything on schedule for Sundoor?”

“Yes.” He paused. “Major Lennox has requested he be allowed to observe today’s procedure.”

“Oh. I wondered why he was on base on a Sunday.”

 Kim was standing directly next to his ped. It came up past her hip and was complex and delicate for all its size. Fifty moving parts? One hundred? Every step was graceful and perfect. 

Kim reached up and patted him on the solidly armored ‘shin.’ She sighed. “So, there’s something I think I need to mention. It’s going to be hard to hear.” 

“All right,” he said, leaning his helm further down. “I am listening.” 

“It’s good that you use what you’ve learned from your own experience to...to teach them. It’s really good.” 

“But I have made a mistake.” 

“It’s not a mistake. It’s just. Watch out for projecting your own feelings onto what they do.” It was hard getting the words out. She didn’t want to say this to him. But she couldn’t just pretend it wasn’t happening. What if it got worse? 

“And I have done so?”

“Serenity will forgive him. She will learn how to work together with other people to create a….situation...everyone can accept. She isn’t Megatron.” 

“Ah.” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “If saying that is driving on a closed road, I’m sorry.  But when you deal with the children, you have to deal with where they are, not where you are afraid they are.” 

“You are correct. I was unaware of this hazard. Serenity’s anger….unsettles me. At what is she angry? She has never seen cruelty. She has never been misused.” 

“Well, for a start, she’s angry at her own limitations. She doesn’t know everything yet. She can’t do everything yet.”

“I cannot fix that for her!”

Kim patted his shin again, decided that was not nearly enough, and leaned over for a very awkward and unyielding hug. “Sympathy glyph,” she said. “The one that looks like a face with a very long nose.” 

“Hm.” It wasn’t vocal, but a tense vibration in protomatter. “You draw these conclusions very quickly, using minimal data. It is unsettling. Can you explain your path of reason?”

Kim grimaced. “Maybe intuition?” Which was a sort of magic, as far as mech were concerned. “Or maybe--we have a lot of processing power optimized for deducing the emotional states of others, since we can’t just observe their sparks the way you do.”

“I am grateful I am not a human.” 

Kim chuckled. “For so many reasons, no doubt.” 

“If I were human, parenthood would be a decentralized, individual project. The thought of managing them alone… Older sparklings, yes. We… mentor and apprentice them, place them with work groups or individuals for further development. I have worked with many. But this age-- I do not know how your species manages.”

“Our failures are spectacular and many. How-some-ever, if I ever do it, I’ll do it here and draft you all to help. Turnabout is fair play.”  It was not a thought Kim had had before, but now, hearing it, it was a fantastic idea. 

“Do you plan to?” he asked softly. “Parenthood?”

“Oh,” Kim said. “I don’t know. I think….that is something I’ll decide after.” 

He did not have to ask after what? The silence hovered between them for a moment.  “I assume you wish to change the subject?” he asked softly.

“Yes. Please.” 

“How are preparations for the open house coming?” 

“Oh.  Perfect. Yes. Bulkhead has finally settled on a design for the railing of the assembly room shelf and the raw materials for the spiral staircase has arrived. Fixit and Brawn are all set to re-etch and re-seal the floor Wednesday night so it will look fabulous Thursday. Mirage has decided to build a karaoke machine from scratch rather than move the one in the DFAC. He assures me it’s going...fine.” 

“So. Nothing to worry about.” 

“Everything to worry about, but… we’ll be ready.”

“Do you need lunch before this afternoon?” 

“I had a big breakfast. Fixit has taken up cooking.” 

“How...interesting.” 

“You have no idea.  Eating food made by someone who doesn’t eat. Fortunately, he’s ridiculously competent. Imagine me trying to refine energon. Much worse.”

“Terrifying,”  he agreed. 

~~

Kim was on the shelf. She was settled in with a bottle of water and a notebook, though there might not be much to take notes on.  Most of the action would be invisible.

Sundoor, the flipsides, had been shifted to the central position and was now hooked to the main monitor station. She was small—human sized and lightly armored. She was still—exactly as she had been for well over a month now. There was no cognitive activity. Repair subsystems were dormant. Spark activity was minimal.

Optimus was pacing and, Kim assumed, in conversation with Ratchet, although neither said anything aloud. Watching them prepare, Kim didn’t notice Major Lennox until he called a greeting from the yellow line and asked if he could take a seat on the shelf.

Ratchet scowled and hesitated, then waved him forward with a “Fine, whatever. Don’t touch anything.”

Kim motioned him toward the stack of folding chairs, but avoided eye contact.  Of course the Army didn’t trust this.  Of course, he stopped by just to make sure things went forward as planned. Of course.

He muttered a thanks for the chair and unfolded it.

Optimus popped out an interface line and jacked into a medical port. Ratchet, in turn, connected a line to him. “I’ve never seen that,” Lennox muttered.

“Optimus is very, very good with files and memory, but they won’t take chances that she’s boobytrapped or something.” She motioned for him to hush. “It’s going to be boring; there’s nothing going on that we can see. So just sit there quietly.” 

His brows went up slightly, but he sat. Quietly.

Kim watched the monitors. They would have to bring up power to memory, even while cognition stayed dormant. Spark activity started to rise.

Kim rolled her shoulders and stretched her neck.  Optimus and Ratchet were as motionless as their patient. There was nothing to write notes about; Kim’s hands were awkwardly still. There wasn’t even something to take a picture of.

Power levels rose.  Reports from repair systems began to scroll across a monitor. Kim shifted in the folding chair, then tried to set a good example by holding still and looking patient.

The spark was more active now.  Since his students weren’t watching, Ratchet hadn’t bothered to split the image into frequencies and layers. Kim couldn’t have made meaning out of the details anyway—

Sundoor’s hand suddenly shot out and grabbed all the medical lines, ripping them out with a swift yank.  Optimus staggered backward, tripped over Ratchet, fell. They both went down.

Sundoor was up. She stood in the middle of the infirmary, scanners popping out, antennae hyperextended. Her optics settled on the shelf. She took a step forward, exclaimed in Cybertronix, jerked backward.

Ratchet was climbing out from under Optimus. Kim could hear his capacitors charging; they were as loud as Bulkhead’s or Ironhide’s.

Sundoor stumbled into one of Ratchet’s rolling tables, spilling a rain of unsorted scrap metal. She jumped up. She turned. She transformed into a—three-wheeled egg?—and zipped away down the tunnel toward the bridge.

Kim gasped, realized she had forgotten to breathe, looked toward Lennox—

He was sliding down the ladder rail, was nearly at the floor already—

Ratchet was up, finally. His voice in Cybertronix was coming out of all the speakers and Kim’s phone.  

Kim scrambled along the edge of the shelf. “Optimus?” Shit, shit, shit. Oh, god. “Optimus.”

He was rising slowly.

Kim looked around. There was no one else. Shit, shit.

“Optimus. Request status report.” She was shouting, and it echoed back from the stone.

He was up. His optical lenses were slack and unfocused. “Kim.” Flat, mechanical, barely English.

“Op-Optimus. There is a Decepticon on the base. If you can’t fight, you have to run.” Oh, shit. The children. They were in the human dorm, still napping with Fixit. “I’ll get the kids. You can get them away—”

“She is not a Decepticon.  I disabled—Slag the orbital watchtower!” He skipped over the medical berth and reached out toward the shelf. “I may need you. I’m sorry.”

Kim reached back, relaxed into the servos that closed around her. “If she’s not—Why—?”

Optimus, slowly but smoothly, was headed toward the tunnel. “She awoke during brain surgery with her time, radio, and memory systems disabled on a strange planet among aliens.”

“Not a Decepticon, still dangerous.” That was bitterly unfair.

“It is worse than you think. You must remain calm.”

They rounded the curve, revealing the Ground Bridge bay. The workstation was completely dark, whatever humans on duty evacuated.

There was a human in the corridor, though.  The gracile, pink form of Sundoor was wrapped around Chip, chair and all. Her weapons were out, and one was pointed at her hostage while the other was pointed at Bumblebee. “Oh, fuck,” Kim whispered.  Bee had been scheduled to take him shopping in Minneapolis today.

Ratchet and Lennox had their weapons pointed meekly upward.  Everyone was still.

Well, the mecha were still. Chip was counting in Cybertronix. He counted to sixteen twice as Optimus slowly approached. He had to skip the numbers three and seven because those included sounds he couldn’t even approximate.

Optimus slowly crouched and bent, setting Kim on the floor behind him. The only warning that the Matrix was manifesting was the prickle of static electricity in her hair and then the relic was floating in the air above his head, spinning slowly and glowing with a sharp, blue light.

Oh. We’re doing that, then.

In Cybertronix, Optimus introduced himself and ordered Sundoor to stand down.

Her answer took a couple of seconds for Kim to parse. “What is this thing? Why does it talk?”

His answer included the words for human, sentient, planet, and stop. The Matrix was still turning slowly above him.

Chip resonant-clicked a no and added a whistle-ping-rising pitch of request. It was a form used between intimates for a personal request, not the one for strangers in different power positions, but it was probably the only one he could actually give voice to.

Very slowly, Sundoor uncoiled herself from around Chip. She set her feet on the ground. She put away the tiny cannon she had pointed at Bumblebee, but kept one very long-fingered hand on Chip’s shoulder.

Optimus was talking again, long phrases with glissando modifiers Kim didn’t recognize but which were probably in a category of formality limited to Primes speaking officially. Interestingly, Bee and Ratchet actually boxed themselves. Kim was guessing they were showing how non-threatening they were until Sundoor abruptly let go and folded into a cube about the size of an expensive ottoman.

The Matrix put itself away, leaving Kim blinking in the grey dimness of the tunnel back-up lights and the shut-down Bridge alcove. Ratchet unfolded back into root form, went to Sundoor, and attached a medical line.

Lennox spun on Optimus. “Did she get a message out? Do we evacuate?”

“The alternate personality is not active.  I seized an opportunity to disable that pathway, but doing so triggered a…failsafe that woke her.”

“Oh. Great.  So, you just turned loose a confused commando. In my base.”

Optimus dropped politely to one knee. “I am aware that I am about to receive a number of strongly worded emails,” he said.

Kim spared them a worried look and hurried over to Chip, who had not moved. “So. Still want to go shopping? I think it only takes fifteen minutes to reboot the Bridge.”

“No. I think I’m good for today. Let’s um…let’s go to the dorm. Um. Did I hear right? She’s not—”

“She’s not. And she doesn’t know, I think.  I’m not sure she has access to any event memory--at all--actually. They weren’t finished.”

“She thought I was an…invader,” he said starting forward. “She demanded an escape.”

“Oh, what a mess. Poor thing. Both of you.”

“Yeah. No. I can’t imagine waking up on an alien planet with no idea how I got there.”

They said nothing else on the way back to the dorm. Once inside the small, comfortable human space, he made straight for the kitchen.  “Sugar, right? And fluid?”

“Yeah. Good idea. Are you warm enough? Shock might be a thing.”

He scowled. “Not bleeding.”  The emergency root beers were at the back of the fridge.  Everyone was trying to avoid carbonated, but sometimes—it was unanimously agreed—an emergency soda was necessary. “So. I guess this is normal, right? Being chased by aliens or whatever?”

“Well…I can’t say I’ve ever been chased.  Maggie had to hide from Megatron once. In Utah, back in the day, you know. And the NEST guys—actually, they do most of the chasing.”

“Oh.  So I’m lucky then. What about being held hostage? Normal day at work?”

“I think that’s just you.”

“Wow. Great. Yay.” He slammed the root beer back, shut the fridge door, retreated to the sink and stood up to wash his face.

“Once, I was—well, I’m not sure what you call it when you hide under a camo field while Decepticons launch missiles.”

“Oh. Fun. I have that to look forward to? What did you do after?”

“After? We drove, like, a dozen hours back to base because the Bridge was out.”

“Huh.”

Kim shrugged helplessly.

“What should I do? After?”

“Well. Nap. I guess.  I mean, if you want to go somewhere, they’ll get the Bridge open again—”

His phone made an unusual noise. He took it out and looked. “Well. Your boss has scheduled three meetings with me. All tomorrow.”

“Pick the one you want and accept. The others will disappear.”

“Oh. Thanks.  So? What do you think he wants?”

“I’m guessing it will be a formal apology. He might offer a combat bonus.”

“So it’s not the fightclub talk?”

Kim blinked. “Um what?”

“The first rule of floating cage of blue light is that nobody talks about the floating cage of blue light?”

“Oh. That was just the Matrix.”

“The thing that makes the babies?” he squeaked.

 “Well, yes.” Humans did not facilitate hostage negotiations by waving around reproductive organs of any sort, and she felt a painful laugh bubbling up. “But, well, there is only one of it, and…it can’t be a fake. I mean, they all recognize it. It is proof of identification.”

“So it was the Pope showing the ring, and she had to…obey.”

“Not the ring. The…Chair of Peter. Assuming that was an actual piece of furniture and it… “ made babies and was a reliquary of the dead and you carried it inside the body instead of sitting on it. It was too crazy to say out loud. 

“Kim, it was weird.”

“Yeah.” She filled the kettle from the water filter. Time to make tea.

“Is it…alive?”

“That’s a good question. By the standards of biological life, no. It’s just a really big database that generates magnetic wave forms and propagates them out to…be sparks.”

His voice dropped. “Is it sentient?”

That was the right question. Or, anyway, part of the right question. When a Prime’s spark merged with the others in the Matrix, did it remain aware? A person? Would Optimus remember living in the world?

“Kim?”

“Probably. As I understand it. Yeah.” Chip was looking at her, searching for something. Kim dragged herself back. The horrible future could look after itself. This was the linguist she had brought here. She was responsible. “Did it look at you?”

His breath came out in a rush. “Oh, scrap. Yes. Yes it did. I thought I was crazy, just slipping off the edge. It looked at me and it was huge—”

Kim laughed uneasily. “Nope. Not crazy. It’s really….”

“Can it … talk?”

“I dreamed it did, once. Like, a weird crowd of people talking. But I think I was asleep, so maybe not.”

“It wasn’t…I didn’t hear anything. But it’s like there was an argument.”

“Ask Optimus about it. I guess.”

“Have you?”

“Actually…no.”

“Because while it’s happening it seems really important, right? But now it’s starting to seem…silly.”

“Yeah. Huh.” How problematic was that?

Pensive, Kim made tea. She stared it while it steeped. She poured two cups.

“I think I want to go to church next week,” Chip said suddenly. “The nearest one that works for me is in Vegas. Do you think someone would take me?”

“Yeah. It’s just a matter of playing with the schedule, and a week is plenty of time.  Huh. Do you specifically want to go to the one in Las Vegas?”

“Well, it’s closest.”

“We have a Ground Bridge. You could attend church anywhere in the world. The actual Vatican? The National Cathedral in Washington? Westminster Abby? The Blue Mosque? Hagia Sophia? You could go anywhere.”

“I don’t think they hold services in Hagia Sophia.”

“St. Basils, though. You can go anywhere.  If you were willing to wear a camera in and answer questions afterward, I can think of three or four mecha who would line up for the chance to take you.”

“Oh. That’s a thought. I wouldn’t have to go by myself. Exactly.”

“Las Vegas is fine, though. If that’s what you want.”

“Huh. Thanks.”

***

Kim waited up.

She would rather not have noticed that, but it was obvious, and there was no point in lying to herself.  Sitting alone on the steps as nine turned to ten turned to eleven with water and a cheese-and-nut snack and a book was waiting up.

The rumble of his torque engine echoed out of the tunnel at eleven-seventeen. Kim put away the book.

He transformed as he entered the assembly area and—with an amazing display of grace, given his height and tonnage—sat on the floor before the stairs.

“Good night does not work as a greeting. Despite the fact that it is long past evening.”

“Big irony,” Kim agreed.

“How is Dr. Chase?”

“How good is the NEST psychologist?”

“The best. Do I need to make an appointment?”

“Not for him. There’s no rush. Debriefing immediately after the event…turns out that isn’t what helps. And he’s taking it pretty well. Well. This is twice now.  Be really nice to him. Um. Reassure him the Matrix isn’t doing anything awful when it looks at us.”

“The Matrix…looks at you?” he repeated slowly.

“At humans. Yeah.”

“And you are aware of this…looking?”

“Well—that might be the problem. It’s only a…sort of weird feeling. You know?”

“I do not.” All the little scanners and special-spectrum cameras that were usually recessed in his helm had popped out.

“We’re barely aware of electromagnetic stuff.  Even when it’s really strong.  What’s very obvious to you is kind of… I dunno. Not clear to us at all.”

“I see. Has it communicated with you?”

Kim really wasn’t being clear here. “We can’t tell.” And then, more firmly. “It’s very alien. It may be nothing.  It may be…scared of us. Or something. Or just curious. It seems like it is doing something—” abruptly, Kim ran out of things to say.

“I will consider the situation carefully,” he said.

Kim nodded.

Slowly, the little sensors withdrew again. Kim asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yes.  I’m sure you’re right—Neither of our species has enough experience enough to understand everything clearly. Yet.”

Kim had had three years of practice and training (field work included) to learn to listen without a flicker of any emotion but interest. She didn’t frown now. “I was actually thinking of today’s procedure.”

He frowned now, and it was as much an artifice as Kim’s neutrality. “I admit, it isn’t my favorite activity, explaining my mistakes to our allies. Mr. Keller was particularly articulate in his disappointment.”

Kim did wince now, letting herself go soft. “Ick. Yeah, I can see where that would suck.  You weren’t hurt, though? Hound mentioned sometimes a flipsides has nasty boobytraps, in case people go…poking?”

“Ah. There were traps, yes. I dismantled them before they could be triggered.”

“It’s all right, then? Only—” Kim bit her lip.

“Kim, the traps were propagating lines of code. If I had not undone them, and if they had gotten past my firewalls, the target would have been the power supply to my spark chamber.”

Kim swallowed. “So, you’re fine if you’re not dead.”

“My mistake was seizing the opportunity to sever the reset passageways before isolating them from the current consciousness. And yes, it was my mistake. And yes, I am very fortunate neither I nor any of the nearby humans suffered injury for that.”

“I’m not critiquing you. You’re all trying to do brain surgery under the worst conditions. And not even trying to fix something that broke accidently, but something done on purpose to be difficult and horrible. Of course it’s hard and dangerous.” Kim shook her head. “You don’t have to try to save her. Any part of her. A casualty of war, another after millions. But you’re trying, even though it’s dangerous—” She stopped. She breathed. This wasn’t work now. This was as much about the truths she knew as the truths she was listening for: “It is right to do it. It is hard to do. I understand all that, but what I care about is you—”

“And you saw me fall, and you cannot scan me, cannot observe the state of my spark, don’t understand what the dangers are.” He sighed. “And your perspective…it seems a great danger to you.”

“I see. I’m being silly.”

“You are doing your best to be a loyal and compassionate friend. But this is not ‘brain surgery.’ Processors and crystal memory array are not….”

“Oh. My brain is an untidy, analog puddle of pudding. Your brain is modular, with all the parts labeled.”  My brain is safely sealed in my head, with no ports that would allow someone else to put a virus in.

But, of course, if her brain was damaged or wore out, the parts couldn’t be neatly replaced. And then there were prions. And mental illness. I’m as vulnerable as they are. Just in different ways.

“Your brain is a miracle. That we can even have this conversation….”

“This really hard conversation I think I’m getting wrong.” She cleared her throat. “It’s all hard and complicated and—” It didn’t seem this hard and complicated to anyone else.  Maggie, for example. She had just moved in with her best friend and—boom—he’s cooking breakfast, and everything’s great. Oh. And never mind whatever was—smoothly, calmly—going on with Carly, Ironhide and Bobby. Those humans were managing each other and some kind of sexual intimacy in addition to their epic devotion to an alien older than the domestication of cats.

But for Kim, it was complicated. And hard. And it hurt.

“Yes,” Optimus said. “It is hard. Our situation is complicated.”

“I don’t even know what kind of misunderstanding we’re having right now.” And that sounded like a complaint. But what was there to complain about? The ignorance they were already trying as hard as they could to fix?

“I have asked a great deal of you,” he said softly. “Repeatedly.  And each time I ask, I wonder: will she reverse on this? Will she raise a firewall? Will she explain to me—so patiently and clearly—how I am wrong? And each time I ask, you come forward instead. Hard? Complicated? You still come forward, to extend help, to offer comfort.  If there is no road, you build the road.” He sighed. “That is a very lovely metaphor in the original.”

“Yes, it would be. Building roads isn’t just utilitarian to you.” It was hard to get the words out. Her throat and face had gone tight and prickly. 

“Failure between us was always inevitable,” he said “You said so at the beginning. Your persistence and gentleness through our repeated attempts to understand one another inspire me with hope.  And here we are again, tired and confused and—I am wondering if your faith in me is shaken.”

Kim shook her head, didn’t meet his gaze.

“You think perhaps I am compromised,” he ventured. “That the flipsides programming included a virus that is subduing me even now.”

Kim narrowed her eyes. “No! I just—I know you will see to yourself last, that you’ll suffer much longer than is actually necessary. She ripped the lines out—I know that damages the ports. And I get that you have a lot of issues, and that everything else is somehow more important than you being hurt—”

“The people I am responsible for are more important than my discomfort and inconvenience, yes.”

Well, that was just—But, who was—Oh. Shit. “I think I might be responsible for you, though? In a way. That’s why I go too when Ratchet works on you?”

He paused. “There are limits.  You maintain too much interference would violate my…medical privacy.”

“Oh,” Kim said in a small voice. “I…I’m doing it wrong. I’m sorry. I—how do I do this? How do I do it without…being disrespectful or making you think of think of unpleasant things or crossing the line?” She stopped. How did she do any of this? “What should I have said, when you came?”

“Don’t worry about it. I am closely monitored. Ratchet is very conscientious in his duty.” Stiff. Flat. He had dropped the nonverbal pack. “In any case, the Matrix is currently connected to my firewall. It would not tolerate a breach.”

Wow. This was actually getting worse. Kim thought longingly of the small, human spaces of the dorm, so much easier than this desperate, fraught conversation. She closed her eyes. Her hands, she realized, were knotted together.

And he was still silent.

Kim opened her eyes and took a breath. “This is hard. I’m not giving up. There is a lot I don’t understand. What…do you want me to have said, when you came home? Just now, what should I have said? Or would you have preferred I not be here at all?”

His chin snapped up in surprise. “Of course I prefer you be here--! Yes.” He paused. “We are having a misunderstanding neither of us understands.”

“I’m sorry.”

He drew in his legs and lowered his helm.  All the tiny lenses of his optical arrays were wide and pale. It was a lot of mech body language, and Kim had no idea how to interpret it.

“Please. Tell me what I should have said. Please. I can’t promise I can do it right, but I don’t even know how to try.”

“It isn’t a road we’re building. It’s a bridge.”

“How should I have begun? What should I have said?” she tried to think. “The people closest to you approach when you’re upset. I stayed too far away? Or—Ratchet and Ironhide and Chromia don’t let you get away  with shit. I should have acknowledged that you made an error?”

He started to transform, stopped, lowered his helm further. “If I consolidate my mass, you will interpret that as apology.”

Kim felt knocked over by the wave of helpless confusion. “Box yourself? Yes.  I can’t see how a formal apology—“ She broke off, her voice stolen by the pain of holding back tears. “If that’s what you want to do…do what you need to do….”

“Not apology. An…extreme relenting. But you would not understand that meaning, and if I do it, my spark will be buried too far in for mutual overlapping. That would imply…I’m not even sure. It doesn’t come up for mecha.”

“Oh.” Her voice shook.

“Kim. I interpreted the absence of communication from you this afternoon and evening as having informational content. It was an ambiguous message.  I attributed forty-three percent probability that it was disinterest—you are very busy, the situation was under control.  There was a further twenty-nine percent that you were angry over the danger my actions caused for human staff, including yourself. I placed the probability that you were disgraced by my incompetence at only nine percent, but I did not discount it. The other possibilities I ranked by--”

Stunned, feeling slightly sick, she sank onto the steps. Oh, god. Oh, god. “No,” she whispered.

“Another of my errors,” he said gently. “I overlooked the fact that you have only one node for processing communications input, you were aware that I was busy, you carefully limit the demands you place on my time, and your radio communications system is not integrated, but on an inefficient external. Your silence was not itself a communications about your opinion or feelings.”   

“No. No. I worried all afternoon—“

“And you waited. Patience, persistence, and humility are considered virtues for anthropologists. So you waited.”

“Almost,” Kim said, trying to be clear. “But I wasn’t waiting for professional reasons. Humans wait, when they love each other.” I knew I was doing it. I didn’t realize it was the wrong thing. “It’s stupid.”

“It is understandable.  And pitiable. Your people have had distance communication for only a Vorn.  There has been no recourse but to wait, in silence and ignorance, to know the fate of those you care about. For the uncounted generations.”

Kim laughed weakly. “Yep. Pretty sad. Scrap. No wonder this conversation went so badly.”

“Despite how careful we have both been.”

‘All you need is love.’ What a ridiculous lie. She tried to take a deep breath.

He held out a servo. The small plates along his palm were snugged down tight so human clothing or skin wouldn’t get pinched. Another thing he was careful about.

Tired—dear god, let the rest of tonight be easy—she climbed on and allowed herself to be brought in. He was still sitting, so the carrying position wasn’t very far off the ground. Kim leaned in. “Can I see the port? Where she pulled out the cable.”

“The connector was snapped off.” He brought his other wrist around and held it at her eye level. “The hatch is locked until repairs are complete. It will be several more hours.”

Kim ran a gentle finger over the square outline. The door fit neatly under her index finger. She thought for a moment, smiled a little, said, “I have great faith in your internal repair systems.”  She let go and leaned back against him.

A soft hum of protoform vibration answered. The happy sound.

Kim patted his chest plate gently. “Will you sing to me?”

“You would not understand the words.”

“Your voice is beautiful.  And we can’t do or say anything accidently heartbreaking if you’re singing.”

He chuckled softly, a counterpoint to the even thrum of his protoform.

~TBC

Chapter Text

At six-thirty, Kim turned out for the party with earrings, make-up, and a freshly ironed skirt.  Bot country was all dressed up, too: shiny floors, floating  lights, and some potted shrubs from the greenhouse on the balcony. The Autobots were cleaned up, too.  Kim had spent most of the day washing friends. 

Optimus was at the balcony, examining the play area set up for the kids.  They wouldn’t be allowed to mingle freely, of course. Even if all of the humans had been friends. No. Baby mecha, in a crowd of humans that didn’t know what to expect from them?

Mearing was unpacking set after set of tubular marble ‘tracks.’  Optimus reached over the railing and tapped one. “Fragile,” he said. “They may break it.”

Mearing shrugged. “Toys break, Optimus.  That isn’t a reason not to play.” She paused. “This isn’t spoiling them. This is a developmental exercise.  And it’s important they not get bored tonight.”  Kim had never seen Mearing defensive before. She managed not to smile.

Optimus leaned down and gave the children a firm look. “You will cooperate with your Auntie Charlie. You will cooperate enthusiastically and with gratitude. I impress upon you, it is not merely her kindness and generosity to yourselves you are repaying. This human was our first ally on Earth. She has devoted her life to protecting this planet.  Her planning and political acumen are what made a treaty with Earth governments possible. Indeed, she is the reason any of us survived long enough to open negotiations.”

Mearing wasn’t even blushing at this. “I’m in charge,” she said gently. “No matter what happens, you must trust me.”

Hot Rod and Serenity nodded and promised to be good. 

Optimus offered Kim a hand and they  headed toward the Ground Bridge.

“I’m surprised you’ve got Mearing babysitting,” Kim said.  “Surely, she’s not the only one you can spare to handle the kids.”

“Spare? No.”

Kim hesitated. “Can I ask about your thinking?”

“Tell me where you would deploy her this evening,” he said.

“At the party. She’s very politically sharp.”

“Mmmm. She is also very powerful and has earned a reputation for being ruthless. If our strategy was to intimidate our guests, she would be an ideal choice.”

“Ick,” Kim said. “Scrap.”

“There is another concern.  While it is vital our guests observe and perhaps even speak to our children, not all of them believe our species to be sentient. Charlotte will not permit any of them to test that hypothesis in a way that would be insulting or cruel.”

Kim had no answer for that. Yes, it was asking a lot of most humans to imagine thinking, feeling life that was so completely different. But some humans were shitty to other humans, so ignorance was no excuse.

“It matters,” Optimus added, “that I have set a human to… babysit.” Kim thought that the word he might have been thinking of was ‘guard.’ “This demonstration of my trust in a human cannot be faked. And putting Charlotte specifically in that position further increases her credibility in negotiations to come.”

Kim felt she should say something. “That is a very convoluted strategy for picking a baby sitter.  Oh. That sounds like a criticism. I’m just sorry you can’t just….assign the next person on the rotation and go to a party.”

Optimus clicked a soft amusement. “Compared to dealing with the Grand Senate, human politics are actually pretty direct. Perhaps because you can literally have only one conversation at a time.”

Before Kim could sort out the implications of that, they had arrived. The arrival area was already crowded: every bot seven feet or shorter, Ratchet’s trainees, the off duty Bridge techs, a couple of rail-gun crews, and all of the NEST officers were waiting around the edges of the room to greet the arriving guests and walk them back to the party.  Slow. Friendly. Casual.

Except nobody was looking casual. The military personnel were standing at attention.  Almost everyone else was fidgeting or sweating.

“Stand by,” Fixit said over the speaker.  The incoming Bridge alarm sounded. 

Bill Fowler stepped forward, looked around, and lifted his hand like an orchestra conductor. “Smiles, everyone. Smiles.”

In the seconds it took for the Bridge to shimmer to life, Kim caught the reference.  She was laughing when Drift and Bulkhead drove through the event horizon laden with passengers. When she would have stepped (casually, cheerfully) forward, Lennox’s voice in her ear stopped her. “Indy, we’re going to need you to reposition. We’ve got a party coming in by ground from Nellis.”

Kim was not in sneakers. Her flats went tap-tap on the floor as she hurried up the curving corridor. “Who was on the guest list from Nellis? I don’t remember—”

“Not from Nellis. Through Nellis. Dang.  I gotta talk to Bee.  ETA fifteen minutes. Just be charming.”

Kim squeezed out a bit more speed, thinking hard about the guest list. Had someone balked at the alien teleport machine? If so, they had gotten past research.

Someone not on the guest list?  Someone who wouldn’t bridge and who was powerful enough to just grab a flight to an air force base?  It couldn’t be a president, not from the US or anywhere else—heads of state were prohibited from being in the same room as mecha by the Nonbiological Extraterrestrial Species Treaty.

Slipstream trotted smoothly up, Max splayed comfortably on his shoulder. “What’s going on?” Kim asked.

“We are greeting guests,” he answered mildly.

Kim opened her mouth to demand a little more detail, but it was too late. Two cars came in, escorted by Arcee, one in front, two in the back. A door on the first sedan popped open as soon as it stopped, and a short, soft, balding man bounced out. He was dressed ”casually,” or perhaps what counted as “casually” for ADHD doctors who wound up in the senate. He had on a polo shirt buttoned to the collar, stone washed jeans, and wing-tip shoes. “Dr. Montgomery. How nice to see you again!  Isn’t that hologram magnificent? Descriptions really don’t do it justice. I really thought we were driving toward solid rock.”

Kim blinked. “Senator Briggs. I thought you were coming by Bridge?”

He had turned back to hold the car door for someone else. “Funny story about that,” he said cheerfully. “My friend Bingo isn’t allowed to teleport. There was quite an argument about that, apparently, because aside from being terrifying, it sounds fantastic. I hate airplanes. But rules are rules, so he had to take the long way. And, of course, my new friend Amy isn’t supposed to be here at all.” He wiggled his eyebrows significantly, and motioned to the woman who had climbed out of the car.

Woman? His new friend Amy seemed to be a supermodel: Long legs, miniskirt, tiny jacket over a tight tee.  She was Asian, and the hair that almost reached her hips was black and completely straight and shiny.  Her make-up was perfect, after a trip by plane and hours in a car. Kim blinked very slowly. What the hell? Humans in real life didn’t look this good. Spies in movies looked this good.

Maybe spies in real life looked that good? Wishing desperately she had an internal radio so she could call for help or give a warning, Kim smiled and stepped forward. “I don’t know who thinks you aren’t supposed to be here, Amy, but we’re happy you came.  It’s great to meet you. I’m Kim Montgomery. I work in cultural exchange.”

John Keller had just gotten out of the second car with a very bland, unmemorable, middle-aged white guy. They were both wearing sports jackets, but the guest also had on cowboy boots.  Was he familiar? Flinching, Kim realized the aforementioned ‘friend Bingo’ was Robert Russel, the American vice president.

Slipstream came forward to greet the vice president (and wasn’t Kim glad she’d dodged that snowball), and the elegant Amy tapped Kim’s shoulder. “Is that a real cat? Or a mechanical model of a cat?”

Kim gulped. “Real cat. I picked it up from the pound myself.”

“Why?”

“Well, Slipstream couldn’t go himself.” She relented. “He was curious about having a pet. And cats are so beautiful. We lucked out: Max is a very chill and friendly cat.  She doesn’t seem to notice anything unusual.”

Beside the second car, the vice president was scratching Max on the head while Slipstream watched approvingly.

“Oh, hey.” Kim said. “It’s a long drive up from…the base. How about something to drink? Or maybe a restroom?”

As the party started to move, Kim scowled at Slipstream behind her hand and made faces at Amy.  Slipstream pointed a puzzled sensor at Kim, and she mouthed impatiently, “Who is she?”

The answer came conveniently over her headset. “Her name is Park Ji-woo. She is an agent of North Korea.  Not a secret agent, obviously.”

Oh, boy. North Korea didn’t have formal diplomatic relations with the US, and their position on Cybertronians was that they were a capitalist hoax.

Bulkhead had set up the temporary sanitary facilities across from the med bay.  They looked nothing like portapotties.  They worked nothing like portapotties, too, and Amy came out looking disconcerted. “Am I permitted to ask what happens to the… objects?”

“Flash-dehydrated down to pellets,” Kim answered.

She cast a nervous glance at the cubicle.

Kim smiled brightly. “Snacks?”

They visited the buffet, watched some of the karaoke. Kim was grateful for the excuse not to talk. What was she supposed to say to this spy Briggs had dumped on her?  She had no hope of being subtle.  And should she try to hide details? Or overwhelm Ms. Park with the raw scope of Autobot technology and power so that she reported back that resistance was futile?

Kim was terrible at these sort of games. She’d worked very hard to be direct and clear, not cunning and tricksy. “So. Amy,” Kim said when a pause between songs had drawn out long enough to be awkward. “Most people are here because they don’t believe mecha are real, don’t believe they’re aliens, or don’t believe they are sentient. Which are you?”  Nope. Not cunning at all. Well. Maybe coming to the point would move things forward.

The lovely eyes narrowed. “Believe? Belief is a luxury. I’m looking for advantage.”

“Oh.” Kim said. “Well. Sign into NEST and get along with everyone else. Otherwise you’re left behind.”

Park Ji-woo looked totally unimpressed. Even as Kim was praying for rescue, Mirage pulled up to them in alt. “The advantage,” he said in his quiet, mellow voice, “lies only in chasing the Decepticons off Earth. As long as they are here, every country is in peril, every last human.” He transformed slowly, into a root form of just over twenty feet: gleaming, deep blue, breathtaking. “Your people and mine fight an implacable enemy. The advantages after the war…there is a term that has fallen out of favor among the Americans and appears not at all in some other human languages. ‘Peace dividend.’  I’d be very pleased to speak to you about it.”

Kim took a long step backwards. Dang. How did Mirage pull this off with a straight face?  How could he be so suave and warm in the face of human stupidity and short sightedness? Talking to a spy who would surely try to play him?

Of course, Mirage was an agent, too.  A spy. He had a thousand years’ more experience than this poor human. Kim almost felt sorry for her.

Almost.

She looked around for someone else to casually mingle with. Senator Briggs was by the buffet, methodically examining each branch of broccoli before biting off the florets, examining the stem again, and popping it in. The man next to him—no pretense of casualness there, he was in a three piece suit—was scowling at the stage where Ironhide was introducing a song of profound philosophy.  Bobby and Carly were positioned on the human stage, apparently playing back up singers.

The song was “A Puzzlement” from The King and I.  The performance wasn’t particularly…anything. Not bad. Not great. Bobby got confused on the verses once, which set Carly giggling.

Kim sidled up to Briggs, who was staring, his raw vegetables forgotten on his plate.

“Kind of overwhelming, isn’t it?” Kim whispered sympathetically.

The other man answered: “It looks impressive. But it’s just mimicry.  Siri can manage that.”

Kim looked him up and down. “The first song on the schedule was a hip-hop mashup of ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ and ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow.’ You can’t say Jazz somehow heard that done somewhere and copied it.”

Briggs brightened. “I missed that one. Was it good?”

Kim’s smile was suddenly warm. “It was fantastic in rehearsal.” Should she show him the sparklings?  Maybe not yet. “Anybody want a tour of the infirmary?”

***

It was not the sort of party where people stayed up all night and misbehaved. Not that Kim had gone to a lot of those kinds of parties. But by ten, the DFAC crew was clearing away the mess, the children had been sent off to bed, and the last guests were being picked up by the Autobots assigned to transport them through the Bridge and home again. 

Kim felt like she’d just had a very good day at work, not like she’d partied herself out and was ready to collapse.

She walked through the Bot commissary, the assembly area, even paced the yellow line at the infirmary.  There was really nothing for her to do.  Snagging the remains of a platter of mini samosas, she headed home.

The dorm did seem like home now.  A kind of odd, crowded, commune home that didn’t really have a living room or a back yard, but still. Home.

Chip was in the kitchen, getting out ingredients for  hot cocoa. “Am I making two?” he asked.

“Sure. Thanks. Samosa?”

“Yay.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I miss restaurants. Already.”

Kim got down another mug and brought it over. The mug had dolphins on it. “How do you think it went?” she asked, sitting down at the small table. “The party?”

“Ratchet behaved himself. Six of the guests participated in the Karaoke. No fights or panic attacks. So. A win, I guess.”

Kim ran her hands through her hair. “I still have to do notes tonight.  These sort of events….eventually Earthlings will get used to them, and it will be too late….”

“How’s that going? The ethnography end of things?”

“Great. All the informants answer questions. Even the human ones. When I can figure out what to ask, it’s fantastic.”

Chip had a whisk now, vigorously whipping the hot milk. “What kinds of patterns are showing up in the interspecies romantic relations?”

It was a moment before she could answer.  “I don’t know.” It wasn’t much of an answer. It was an embarrassingly bad answer. Casually, she picked up a cold samosa.

“I’m not asking for specifics,” he said, still fussing with the hot milk. “Is romantic even the right word?  Amorous? Affectionate? Attachment?  Oh—you’ve got a sample of four. Maybe five, if I’m right about Drift and the geologist. Are they all completely different? No patterns at all yet?”

“Not Drift and the geologist,” Kim said thickly. “Springer and the geologist. But I don’t think it’s serious. Most of Springer’s attention is on Arcee right now. Not that I think he has a shot.”

“So four then. Four units?” He hummed under his breath. “You can’t say couple. I’m not sure what conveys the complicated thing with Ironhide and both Bobby and Carly. What are you calling it?”

“I haven’t tried to call it anything,” Kim said.

“Are they calling it something?” And yes, of course, the linguist would want to know the labels.

“I don’t know. I haven’t asked. I’m…not actually collecting data on…that sort of interspecies relationship?” She hadn’t meant it to come out as a question, but out loud it sounded really lame.

“Seriously? Your job is literally to observe how mecha and humans interact? And this you aren’t collecting data on?” He set a mug of cocoa on the table in front of Kim and sat down across from her. He seemed both curious and a little judgy.  Kim was reminded that he was at least ten years older than she was, with a total of four advanced degrees. Geez.

She picked up the mug. She put it down. She folded her hands tidily in her lap. “I don’t think I can collect good data about this. I’m…compromised.”

He squinted at her. “What does that even mean? Compromised? You disapprove or something?”

Kim sighed, shook her head, thought about not answering. Denying it would just make it worse, though. “I am compromised. I’ve been in love with him since the first day. Since that empty, horrible hangar at Nellis when he transformed and…. And that isn’t even true.” Kim buried her face in her hands. “I’ve been in love with him since he asked me what a wig was for and had me account for Napoleon Chagnon.”

“Oh. Yeah.” He chuckled. “I grok that.” Kim glanced up at him.  He sounded sympathetic, but his expression was still baffled. 

Kim steeled herself and tried again. “I’m profoundly biased. So… I have to be careful about everything. And I certainly can’t trust myself to take notes on…whatever it is Optimus and I are in.”

“Wait…you’re compromised because you are participating in the thing you were hired to do participant observation on?”

Well, when you put it that way…. No. Kim shuddered. “He’s an informant. We’re--” Sort of married. She could not say it. “I can’t act like I’m neutral.  And that isn’t even the worst of it. Doing research on someone you are in a relationship with--”

“He’s an informant, and it is very important not to take advantage of informants when they are in a vulnerable position or have less power than you. But that’s not the case here.  He’s the one telling you what questions to ask. I don’t think-- Oh.” He lowered his voice. “Is that what you’re worried about? He’ll use your relationship to manipulate your results?”

Kim looked up sharply. “What? Of course not. If he wanted to cheat, he could fake any document he wanted, published anywhere in the world. He wouldn’t need an anthropologist to lie for him.” 

Chip pulled back. “Damn. Right. We have to trust him. You’re right. So it isn’t that—Or, maybe the problem is the personal half of that? You have to trust him professionally. Is it too much to trust him with your feelings, too?”

No. “Trust isn’t the issue.” The pain that was coming had nothing to do with trust. 

Except, no, that wasn’t fair. She’d tried not to think about her feelings about him even before she knew his strategy for ending the war.

Chip was waiting, looking unimpressed with her excuses.

“I trust him.”

He lifted an eyebrow, a trick Kim had never managed. “You trust him.  You’re doing the thing you are supposed to be gathering data on. You are both being careful that neither the data nor the other person’s autonomy is being sacrificed.  I don’t think it’s an unsolvable problem.  If anything, the biggest risk of mistakes is in taking data on the person supervising your research. I mean, if anything was going to be a problem.”

Oh. Well. Kim made a face.

“Although nobody probably foresaw that relationships would be quite so close when this all started. I mean, nobody could be expected to foresee that. It isn’t your fault.” He frowned at her, thinking. “So…is this a Malinowski thing? Are you a chauvinist, all freaked out because you have a great passion for the other or something?”

“Excuse me,” Kim began indignantly. She couldn’t maintain the feeling of offense, though. She had screwed up too badly, in too many ways, to defend herself.  “Well. Okay. I’m freaked out about having biological feelings for a person who can’t return them and doesn’t even know what they feel like. I mean, that’s….Is that immoral? Am I evil?”

“I don’t think feelings are immoral. Pressuring him to do things he felt uncomfortable about would be immoral. Abusing your access to get at information an interviewer wouldn’t normally get would be wrong. Letting him dictate your conclusions….” He tapped his fingers on the mug. “I expect the head of state for an entire planet has pretty good boundaries, though, so you can probably work it all out if you, you know, talk to him about it.”

She hadn’t. Of course she hadn’t. She hadn’t even been able to stand thinking about it. “Oh, god,” Kim groaned. “This is all so….” Complicated. Terrifying. Weird. “Unprofessional.”

“It isn’t to them, though,” Chip said. “The hardline recreational interface, overlapping, personal relationships, they’re all a separate issue from chains of command, you know.”

Kim thought about Chromia and Ironhide, Mirage and Hound.  Working together did not stop them from intimacy. “Ratchet doesn’t interface his patients, though.”

“That is because Ratchet is pissed off about the war, not because it’s an ethics violation of some kind. Anyway,  Fixit occasionally partners with Bulkhead. And Wheeljack has been intimate with almost half the base.”

“Wheeljack? How do you know this? I don’t know this!”

He shrugged. “Blaster likes to dish.”

“Oh.”  Kim could see that. She mainly relied on Slipstream for her gossip, and she’d made a point not to ask about anybody’s sex lives. No. Not ‘sex.’ This had nothing to do with reproduction for mecha. No reproduction, no glands, no evolution mucking about to trick people into passing genetic material around or form pair bonds to increase the care for helpless offspring. For mecha, intimacy was just intimacy. It wasn’t physical, so it couldn’t be compelled.

What a tempting thought. Just love as you love, forget status and subordination.

No. “I’m not a mech. I am not going native here. Saying I’m collecting data about my own experience with….” With what?  What kind of relationship were they having?

Did it matter, Optimus was willing to accept it, whatever it was.

Kim picked up the mug of cocoa and drained it. It was still hot enough to make that unpleasant.

“Look. I admit it’s normal,” Chip was saying, apparently oblivious to Kim’s mental breakdown, “Well, ‘ideal,’ anyway – to keep personal relationships out of research. Usually. When it’s romantic or … passionate? And it’s iffy these days, in patriarchal situations anyway, to have those feelings for a supervisor or teacher. But it isn’t like it can’t be made to work. Mead and Benedict managed it. Don’t look like that; yes, they were, don’t be thick. You can’t say they weren’t professional or their work suffered. It was fine.”

“This is different.”

“Well, yeah. What they did was only about them. Finding out what sort of relationship is possible between humans and extraterrestrials is literally your job.” He paused. “That is actually a lot to ask of anybody. I see why you’re freaked out.”

“I’m supposed to teach humans how to date giant robots—” Kim said numbly.

“No, damnit. You are supposed to teach humans that giant robots are people! And the only thing you have to do that with is your own experience.” He paused, spoke more quietly. “I don’t know how much time we have. We’re lucky we managed to keep a lid on things in Princeton. But that isn’t going to last. Kim. People are going to find out--”

“Chip. I’m so compromised.” The confession was embarrassing. “I would lie for him. I would put him first. Not the data. Not my career. Not the truth. I should quit. That would be the responsible thing, the honorable thing—”

“Bullshit. Even if we had time to bring in someone else, start over—”

“I know we don’t have time!”

“Really? Because you’re kind of putzing around here.  I get that this isn’t the sort of career you envisioned or the way you think you should work, but the Nemesis is in orbit, the Autobots are outnumbered by humans four hundred million to one, and you need to be collecting all the data, not just the parts that don’t embarrass you.”

Kim closed her eyes.

“I’m sorry.  It sucks.  Man. Thank God, I’m a linguist, not an ethnographer.”

“You can’t help it,” Kim said dully.  “Your brain just…works that way.” Kim hadn’t known many linguists, but they were always too smart.

He shrugged. “Well. Maybe. But either way, I’m too much a coward to be an anthropologist.  Participant observation is not my job. Also, kicking you in the butt over this isn’t my job. So. It would be great if you would, um….”

Kim nodded. “Get over myself and start taking notes.”  She thought about Malinowski’s diaries. Decades after he’d died, people were still judging his feelings. There was no help for it though.  If you were telling the truth, you couldn’t lie to yourself. “You asked me…about patterns,” she said softly.

“Yeah?”

“They don’t have biological families, or most of the problems humans use biological families to solve. Their closest relationships are workgroups and friendships.”

“Normally, do they pick their work groups?”

“On Cybertron? That depended on the power and status of the workgroup and the individuals. Frequently not.” Kim cleared her throat. “Here, of course, it’s…whoever made it to Earth.”

“So if you got assigned to work with a jerk?”

“There you are. Like having an uncle who’s a jerk. You don’t have to be close to people in your work group, emotionally.  But you can still be stuck with them.”

“And if you do have a choice who joins your work group, you choose very carefully.”

Kim nodded.  “Ratchet was very, very picky about his trainees….”

“He calls them students. The distinction is important in the Cybertronix.”

“I know.” Kim thought for a moment. “His relationship with Pierre isn’t just student, I think. I think they’re friends.”

“Are Maggie and Fixit friends?”

“No, Fixit is in love with her. I don’t know how. He hasn’t got oxytocin or serotonin. It doesn’t make sense. But he’s in love.”

“Well,” Chip conceded. “Maggie is a fabulous human. If I was into girls….” He shrugged.

“Oh, god,” Kim breathed. “I’m going to have to ask them.” She was going to have to ask them if it was a physical relationship. She was going to have to ask them if it was exclusive. Damn. Damn. Damn.

***

The children were so excited they were running in circles in the assembly area.  It was the first time Hot Rod had tried to run anywhere, since at every excuse he used wheels.  He could not match his sister’s speed on a curve, and since a circle was all curve there was a lot of falling down.

Optimus, standing by the balcony, was watching them with a soft fondness that made Kim’s mirror neurons fire so hard her eyes felt prickly. He had waited hundreds of years for these babies.

“You should come,” Kim said impulsively. “We can reschedule and do it when you’re free.”

A soft protoform hum. “You cannot tell them we are rescheduling. They cannot contain themselves as it is. And I will feel better if they are elsewhere when we wake Sundoor.”

“She’s totally safe now.” Wasn’t she?

“She is not a Decepticon. She is not—exactly—the person Blaster and his cohort knew. She may yet request to be deactivated for the duration of the war.” 

Kim glanced up. She stepped closer to the rail and h’mmed softly. 

“Mirage has signaled that the camouflage field is up at the golf course.  It’s time.”

There was, on the east edge of the base, an abandoned 9-hole golf course left over from the Cold War. It was in a little valley between a rocky hill and a crumbling mesa. It was low and had bad drainage, so every few years rain turned it into a marsh for a few weeks, and most of the time there were patches of grass to break up the brown ground between the junipers and pinion pines. There was even a left-over flowering agave. The same intermittent marshiness that had led some colonel to put in the golf course still made it inconvenient for military uses.  It was the perfect playground. 

Ironhide and Springer were coming down the corridor.  They had claimed the honor of transporting the children to the surface. Possibly on the basis of seniority, although they both were armed like super-tanks, so it might be that. 

Speaking in Cybertronix, Springer scooped Hot Rod into his arms and transformed around him--not into his usual helicopter, but into a lime-green minivan. Triple-changer. His T-cog could manage two alts without a major structural redesign.

“I’ll see you later,” Optimus said. 

“Good luck,” Kim answered.

Ratchet had settled at the bottom of the steps to wait for the humans who would join the outing: Kim, Carly, Dr. Nomura, and Lennox.  They would have to ride in the back of the ambulance since Ratchet was ambivalent about having humans in his cab. Fortunately, Ratchet’s rear compartment was not kitted out for human emergency medical care. It just had benches and seat belts.  Kim tried to ignore the lack of release button on the seat belt latch.

It was a nice morning for an outing: high-seventies, no humidity to speak of, no wind. The ground was dry, but some of the patchy grass was still green from the last rain. Overhead the inner side of a camouflage field shimmered and glistened.

Ratchet got to the little basin first because Ironhide and Springer were driving very slowly so that their passengers could make the most of the drive through the base.  Mirage, Bee, and Windblade were already stationed at the perimeter of the designated exploration area. 

After a quick consultation, the four humans were set on a rocky outcrop.  They had a good view and were close enough to answer questions, but not so close that they might get trampled by baby mecha overwhelmed by chaotic sensor data.

The moment Springer opened his door, Hot Rod bounded out, lost his balance on the uneven ground, and fell into the dirt.

Seri, watching the spectacular fall through Ironhide’s window, leaned out, unfolded a probe from one of her servos, and poked the dirt. 

Hot Rod was shouting a scale of sonar calls. The first time in his life without walls. Goodness.

Seri was scrambling onto Ironhide’s roof.  Kim wasn’t sure how she was getting purchase on his slick, black carapace.

Hot Rod was trying to stand up. His limbs tapped the ground and then flinched away. Each pine needle and bit of rock seemed to be alarming.

Seri was perched on Ironhide’s roof, shouting sensor scales at the open sky.

Kim glanced at Ratchet. “Is this going badly?” she asked.

“Not particularly,” Ratchet said. All of his antennae were aimed at the children.

“Um, they’re literally howling at the void,” Kim pointed out.

“They have very little experience integrating sensor information. Earth’s environment is initially taxing, even to well-traveled mecha. They will adapt.”

“Oh. So they’re fine, but the Earth is messed up.”

Ratchet nodded absently. “Of the fifty-three celestial bodies I have visited, Earth is by far the worst.”

Carly sniggered.

“Ah. Perhaps that was harshly put,” Ratchet said, glancing at her briefly. “The ceaseless activity of Earth’s life forms creates an unusually chaotic environment.

Suddenly, Seri launched herself off of Ironhide’s roof and charged across the ground on all fours, galloping like a horse. She stopped at the base of a cactus, scrambling around. “Where did it go? There was an animal! A wild animal! It’s not in my library! A new animal!”

Hot Rod scrambled forward, his five appendages badly mistimed so that sometimes he fell over.

Before he reached her, Seri pounced like Max and came up with something caged in her metal fingers. Trembling and careful, she made her way to Ratchet and held up her find. “What is this animal?  It is not an insect. Can I make friends with it? Will the humans want to eat it?”

“It is called a scorpion. Humans consider it a pest species. They will not want to eat it.”

Seri’s optics reset. “Your file says ‘hazardous.’ How is it hazardous. Oh.” She brought her hands close to her sensors and peered at the contents. “It is not hazardous to mecha. Can I bring it home?”

“It lives here,” Hot Rod said indignantly before Ratchet could answer. “We are not kidnapping Earth life.” He paused and glanced nervously at the humans watching from the top of the rock. “Earth life has a fear of being kidnapped by aliens.”

“We are not aliens. We were born here.  Earth life keeps pets.”

Kim felt a stab of panic.  The babies were not ready for pets. “Start with plants,” she said quickly. “Hot Rod has a tree. We’ll get Seri…something.  After you successfully keep them alive for a while, we can move on to…something in a terrarium.”

Carly sat down on the rock and hid her face behind her bent knees. Lennox was turned away, laughing silently.    Ratchet said, “Release the scorpion. You may observe it in situ if it allows it.”

Sulking a little (her antennae pigtales drooped), Seri set the creature down. Both children squatted beside it. “It is pretty,” Hot Rod announced. “Perhaps I will grow my armor to curve like that.”

They watched the scorpion until it scuttled down a hole, then began minute examinations of the squat pinion trees. 

Kim sighed. As far as plants and animals went, Kim thought Nevada was pretty empty. What would happen if—when—they took the kids to a forest, a lake—oh, god a swamp!

After about a couple of hours, Ratchet signaled an end to the excursion, and the complaining children were gathered up. Despite their protests of ‘not in need of recharge,’ they were both shut down when they got back to ‘Bot country.

Kim had a calendar event requesting her on the mesa ‘at convenience.’  She could guess what that was about. As expected, Optimus was there with Sundoor, General Morshower, Mearing, and Bill Fowler. 

Sundoor was broader than a human, but not taller. Well, not taller than a tall human.  She sat a little apart from the humans on a neatly trimmed boulder. Her paint job, which had looked pink in the infirmary lights, was now a dazzling array of peach and coral. Perhaps she had changed her nanites for this interview.

 Kim felt a wave of sympathy: it was understandable that the humans would be worried about her state of mind, but facing this on the first day free on an alien planet—

Now close enough to hear, Kim realized it was the humans who were answering questions.  They were sitting on folding chairs clearly borrowed from the infirmary. Kim started to detour to where her own chair was tucked under one of the solar pods, but Optimus caught her eye and shook his head.

Kim had stuffed her headset into her pocket. It would be noticeable if she fished it out, but she did casually pull out her phone as she ambled over.

SIT WITH ME.

Not a lot of explanation there.  Optimus was off to one side leaning forward with his arms folded on the ground. His legs…did not bear looking at. They were folded up in some strange Transformer origami. Careful not to hesitate, Kim approached his wrist, looking for a foothold to scramble up.

Mearing was explaining, “Well, states are geographically bounded organizations. Usually, a person is a citizen or national of the state where they are born. Sometimes, the determination is the nationality of their parents.”

“Their…parents?”  Sundoor’s voice was genderless and bland, but inflected enough to show she was running the basic language app. “Geography or breeders determines an individual’s political affiliation?”

The three humans glanced at each other. The general sighed. “Yes.”

“And you are all the same species—”  Sundoor broke off, focusing her optics and audials on Kim, who was hoisting herself onto Optimus’s arm.  She asked a question in Cybertronix.  Kim recognized the polite request-for-information modifier and two of Optimus’s titles: Bearer of Holy Wisdom and Beloved of Primus.

Whatever the question, his quiet answer was, “No.”  Not a refusal, a correction of information.

Sundoor watched Kim settle on Optimus’s wrist and then turned back to her informants. “You are all the same species, but you have different governments—not merely different internal alliances, but different sovereign governments.  There is no absolute centralization. And these countries are not chosen because of different governing philosophies or differing structures.”

They nodded.

“But…surely you can see….” She paused for a long time, optics unfocused as she rifled through files. “Surely you can see this is inefficient and unjust?

“Now, wait just a minute—” the general began.

“I’m not sure you understand—” Mearing said at the same time.

Fowler threw up his hands. “Obviously. But most people don’t want to live a different country than their parents.”

Sundoor’s optics focused hard on Fowler. “Why?”

He opened his mouth. He shut it. Frowned. “I don’t know if you will understand this, either. I love my mother. I loved my grandpa. I know family doesn’t mean anything to you—”

“Humans have short lifespans, protracted dependency periods for offspring, and comparatively few children per nest.  These relationships last a lifetime and are usually very intense.” Kim winced.  It had been translated to Cybertronix and back, so the wording wasn’t exact, but Kim recognized the substance of one of her own orientation brochures.

“Yeah…that…sort of,” Fowler muttered.

It went on for another hour and a half. For the most part, Sundoor seemed to understand the Earth situation files all right. She seemed to have trouble believing them. She asked about health care and how it felt to—as a species—have such a poor idea about how your own mechanics worked.  She asked about how people chose careers. She asked about waste management.

Every few minutes she glanced at Kim, seated on Optimus’s smooth, cool (hard) armor. She directed no questions to Kim. So, Kim just watched, her butt slowly growing numb. She wasn’t going to fidget. She was willing to bet that the question Sundoor had asked Prime was either about whether Kim was dangerous or whether her touch was somehow defiling to his holy person. 

Finally, Sundoor stood up and turned to Prime. “I apologize for doubting you. They are, indeed, as...” her gesture took in the entire planet, “peculiar as the files indicate.”  She looked around, sprouting a small sensor array that looked like a fan of small feathers. “It was wrong of me to complain. Compared to our options, this world is very,” she paused, folded the feathers, fanned them again, ‘very congenial to our needs. A comprehensible native species and an abundance of energon is far more than we had any reason to expect to find anywhere. You have my gratitude in bringing us here.” And then she folded herself into a box about the size of an ottoman.

Optimus rumbled slightly, and Kim thought that something about her statement had displeased him.  Scooping Kim into his hand, he rose sedately and set her on his shoulder. Kim carefully kept her limbs out of the armor gaps and gripped the base of his audial antenna for balance. Her hand was next to a heat sensor, there, but the other humans present would probably not recognize the intimacy.

“I realize, Sundoor, that a difficult and unsettling road has brought you here. Adjustment to life among the different human cultures does involve patience and forbearance on the part of all parties. I have every confidence that you will adapt successfully. Your addition to our small community here is very welcome.” He paused, optics shifting to the humans. “I reiterate that—since our community on Earth is so small—dispensation is given to bypass all optional formalities.”

Sundoor unboxed and stood still, looking a little awkward. Optimus stepped in front of her—close enough to overlap—and graciously thanked Morshower, Fowler, and Mearing for their help. Kim glanced back at Sundoor. She was staring out toward Jasper, feathery sensors waving as though there was a stiff wind. 

Chapter Text

Journal excerpt

This should be easy, right? Just write down what’s going on. And if I’m writing down my own stuff, at least I know what I’m thinking. I should just do it. Nobody’s going to read this for decades. We’ll probably both be dead long before

*

They don’t have special separate terms of endearment for relationships with recreational interfacing.  Beloved friend covers it.  If the relationship extends for a long period of time or a couple or group move in together they say f 온입니 c d  .  It doesn’t gloss into English at all. Ratchet and Optimus say you could use the word ‘family.’  Hound tells me the word ‘gestalt’ would convey it better, but that already has a mech concept attached to it in the lexicon. According to Fixit, they are all making this too hard and I should translate it ‘flowing-with.’  I wonder why he thinks that makes sense in English. 

*

Don’t discuss a person’s recreational interfaces with an uninvolved person while a discussed party is present.  The uninvolved person showing interest in the activity would be an oblique proposition, which is awkward if neither of them is interested.

*

Touch isn’t very meaningful for mecha. Or pleasurable. They know we do that. They talk to each other, not cuddle. They talk a lot. Over radio when they aren’t together. And sometimes they just broadcast a carrier wave. Electromagnetic overlapping communicates content and is symbolic. Meaningful. Affectionate. Humans don’t usually notice it, not consciously.

*

Fixit is writing a treatise on human sexuality and gender. He is researching it with Maggie. I am tabling this topic. I don’t even know where I’d start if I was going to ask questions.

*

Ironhide thinks Bobby and Carly are adorable.  Apparently they frequently and enthusiastically engage in rituals of affection. It makes their fields pleasurable. He has adjusted his alt mode infrastructure so that his spark casing is directly under the back seat so he can take advantage of the ‘savoryness’ of their coupling.

Yeah. I have no idea what is going on here. Well. It’s Ironhide. He is experienced and healthy and he deeply enjoys connecting with others. I guess .

I probably know what is going on here. Ironhide loves his humans back.  Ironhide performing his duties and Ironhide performing his interaction persona seems very broad and kind of gruff. Ironhide when he’s designing something (I’ve seen this, like, twice) is focused and businesslike and cold. But Ironhide is very sweet and tender.  He is completely open about finding Carly fascinating and deeply trusts Bobby.  He loves them. They love him. They are managing to communicate this.

I can’t tell if Carly and Bobby are actually interested in each other, though. I mean, objectively, I suppose they’re both pretty hot. And they both have high-stress jobs. So they might just be friends with benefits. Or they might just be frustrated that ‘Hide doesn’t have a desire for the same sort of physical affection.  They don’t act like they are in love with each other, but I’m not sure how to bring it up.

Am I overthinking this?

*

I’m not good at this. It all feels a little embarrassing. There is lots of things an anthropologist can study that aren’t sex or falling-in-love!  And really, it shouldn’t come up with NON-BIOLOGICAL aliens. And you should really not do research on yourself. If you’re going to be taking notes on the inside of your OWN head, you might as well be a philosopher.

*

Bulkhead says Wreckers regularly casually interface. There are different levels of interface.  Medical data is comparatively impersonal, although very intimate. That sounds fairly horrible.  Then there is professional interface, sharing big packets of data over a cable for security or download speed reasons.  And then the way Wreckers do it, which is sending smaller packets of pretty or interesting data and analyzing them together for fun. And then redaction interface, when someone needs help with a software or memory problem, which is what Optimus did with Sundoor. This is very intimate, but, again, not necessarily personal.  And then there is the thing they refer to as  ‘recreational interfacing’ which includes lowering a lot more firewalls and even diverting small pulses of spark energy.

I wish I had a port.

Possibly, that is not healthy. I don’t want to be a mech. But I’m so curious.

*

Strongarm has been married.  (I’m surprised. She’s young. Like, only about 800 years old!!). I asked if she would tell me about it. He was older, apparently. Civilian. Quiet. Earnest. Not a war frame—his alt form was  slow and not particularly maneuverable. Totally overbuilt for data collection and analysis. Which, apparently, made him fantastic in the sack.  On a date. Interfacing partner.

A pacifist, though. Someone she had been assigned to escort.  They had had profound disagreements about the war.  Their separation had been inevitable but painful.

*

So it turns out that humans aren’t alone in the universe after all. And the aliens are comprehensible. Really, that was too much to hope for.  Amazing. A dream come true.

They take quite a bit of explaining. But humans have to be explained to each other, so even that isn’t unusual. So much like us.

I worry that it might have been a plan, that we’re like them—all the better to fight them.

*

You are supposed to love your informants.  Big love, like, have compassion for their struggles and vulnerabilities, respect their resourcefulness and persistence, be humble and grateful for their help. You are there in the first place not just because you want to know about people, but because you care about people. Love like Jesus. Love like a kindergarten teacher.  Love like a doctor.

The whole core of the ethics discussions in the methods class was that nothing you can learn from a person is worth hurting them for.  And even when individuals annoy you or disappoint you or even sabotage or fight you, you are obligated to behave with respect and honesty. At the core of that is that big love.

You’re not supposed to lust after informants. Sometimes it’s going to happen. Don’t act on it.

Is what I’m feeling ‘lust’ though?  Infatuation, definitely. Very nearly obsession. Sometimes he is so beautiful I can’t breathe.   

But I can’t quite picture

I don’t know what to do with these feelings. I keep accidentally asking him to marry me.  And yes, I want him. I want

I thought it would be one-sided. I thought I’d collect the data and be grateful and respectful and love the informants. I thought I could do the big love while I felt around in the darkness, trying to find explanations and meaning. 

I didn’t expect somebody would be reaching back.

I didn’t expect to search for meaning with anyone searching as hard as me, to reach for answers and have someone reaching back. I didn’t expect the big love to go both ways.

There is that arrogance, I guess. A trap they tell us to look out for. You can try really hard to be humble, but always, where you least expect it, you might

 I don’t think they could have seen this coming though. Never in their wildest dreams did any of my teachers imagine Optimus Prime.

*

I have to go home for Thanksgiving. Well. I’d better. We might be looking at the end of the world. I need to tell everyone I love them. And then I need to come back and do my job. I’m lucky enough to have this work, in the place that matters most in the world right now.

Chapter Text

Kim was scheduled to be picked up by Hound at three on the Friday after Thanksgiving. She got a text at ten minutes till from the base that there would be an indeterminate delay.  It didn’t say why.

Kim hurried to the living room to turn on the news. No natural disasters, terrorist attacks, or devastating explosions that might be disguising a Decepticon incursion. She pulled out her phone and checked the internet.  Whatever was happening, it hadn’t made the news.

Carefully calm, Kim explained to her parents that her ride had been delayed. Then she mopped the kitchen floor. And fixed everyone cheese and crackers for a snack. And helped Sidney get the Christmas decorations down from the crawl space above the garage. And helped clear off the sideboard in the dining room to make room for the little tabletop tree Dad and Ma were using now.

She helped make dinner—turkey sandwiches—and ate pretending to listen to Ma explain how they were re-organizing the cookbook section of the bookstore. She took out the trash.

She tried not to worry about whatever was happening in Jasper. Maybe it was just a glitch in the Bridge.  Fixit and Maggie had taken the holiday to go camping somewhere in northern Australia.  All of the ‘Bots could run a Ground Bridge and half of them could do minor repairs, but only a few were able to handle a serious problem. Ratchet was one of those, though. And Ratchet never went anywhere.

Despite herself, Kim wound up sitting beside the front window chewing on her lower lip and checking her phone for special news reports.

There was nothing.

This far north, the sun went down early.  The street grew darker, and the Christmas lights on the house across the street came on. They had an inflatable snail in a Santa hat.

At a quarter after seven she got a text that showed a map of her neighborhood with a  dot—at last—passing the library.  Kim said her good-byes, clutched her overnight bag, and went out to wait at the top of the narrow cement steps that led to the street.

The alt that pulled up wasn’t a Jeep. It was a Hummer. The door opened invitingly and Kim scampered to it. 

“Hi, Bulkhead.” She tossed her bag into the passenger seat and climbed in. The seat belt was around her before she had time to close the door.

She glanced up at the house. Ma was looking out the storm door. Kim waved.  “What happened? Is everything all right?”

“The base is secure. Everyone is alive.”

“Shit! What happened?”

It was several long seconds before he answered. “Have you ever heard of scraplets?”

“No? No. Scraplets?”

“A kind of glitch. Self-replicating drones. They turn metal into more scraplets at…well, really fast.  They seek out fuel sources. They…they’re horrible.”

Kim turned that over in her mind. “Drones. A Decepticon attack?”

“No. An accident.” He seemed very subdued. “Last night…Brawn and Blur picked up a very faint signal while they were patrolling in Greenland. They found a cargo container from Cybertron. It was almost completely inert. The packing jell was frozen solid. They brought it back to thaw out and returned to their survey….”

“It had,” Kim fumbled the unfamiliar word. “Scraplets in it?”

“They thawed out this morning. Ate their way out of the container.” His seat seemed to shiver under her. “I’d gone to town to get the kids so they could play with the sparklings. It’s a school holiday. They were there when, uh, you know.”

“Oh, no.”

“They were fine. They were great. Scraplets don’t really register humans as anything interesting. No metal. Slipstream and Chip managed to get the sparklings into the cat habitat and lock the door. Jack and Raf stood at the outer door with pipes or something.  Pierre stood guard over Ratchet while he tried to fix the Bridge—he had a club of some kind. A cricket bat, whatever that is. Guarding him.  The rest of us—the humans were great. They were great. Miko is the most fierce—” He shook again.

“Bulkhead, were you hurt?”

“Not bad. Not bad, bad. They never made it through my armor. They like wires, when they can get them. And fuel lines. They can’t chew through a spark casing, but sometimes in smaller mecha they can get the power supply.”

“Scrap.”

The road hissed under his tires. “One got in my hip seam. Miko reached in and hauled it out. Like, she grabbed it and pulled it out. She had one of those raw-materials bars about a meter long. You know the ones? She smashed it…Scraplets aren’t tough, you know.  They don’t have, like, real armor. They only win because there are so many of them….”

Kim reached out and patted his dash. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Ratchet followed protocol. Alien incursion, you know. Brought down the isolation doors and forcefields, shut down the vents.  But they took out the Bridge. Pit, but they’re smart for drones. We couldn’t get any back-up in. There were dozens. It took about five hours to dig them all out. And then we had to reboot the bridge.”

Kim realized he had turned toward the city center, instead of taking Broadway toward the federal building whose empty parking structure they were using to cover Bridge transit. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere. Anywhere. I’m just wasting time.”

“We need to get back.” Was he afraid to go back, after being locked in the base with…things?

“Hound wants to see you when you get in. But he’s not all the way put back together yet, and Ratchet thinks it’d be better if…they had a little more time.”

“Hound?” Kim gasped.

“Scraplets bite.” Another shiver. “His armor’s not as thick as mine.”

For a moment, Kim couldn’t breathe. “How….bad?”

“Ratchet and Wheeljack can fix him. But they’ve still got him open and…Mirage is jacked in to help…with some system overrides. In a little while I’ll take you back.”

Kim had gone to a lot of Ratchet’s medical lectures. She kept her voice level. “What kind of overrides.”

“Electropulse fluctuations.”

“Spark distress.” It wasn’t a question.

“Uh. Yeah.”

“It’s…okay if we go back now. I’ve seen surgery before.”

“I got my orders.”

Kim gritted her teeth together.  It took a moment before she could speak. “Okay. We’ll drive around for a bit. Yeah.” Kim folded her hands tightly and sat very still. “It’s, um, kind of cold. Can you--?”

The heat came on.

“Thanks.” Kim tried to remember who else was scheduled to be on base today. “Is Bee all right?”

“Oh, yeah. You know. Mostly.  He’ll need some armor patches, when the medical team has time. I’m okay, really. I took the kids home. They sent me to get you to, you know, keep me busy.”   He turned onto Westmoreland. There was a small park where the trees had been outlined in Christmas lights.

They drove in silence for a couple of blocks. The park gave way to a line of cute little restaurants with matching Christmas lights cascading down the front.  Bulkhead said, “I think it’s nice, the way you take advantage of the darkness provided by the axial tilt to decorate with light.  Having them when daylight extends later would not be nearly so satisfying.”

“Uh, yeah,” Kim agreed absently. “And Jack and Raf are okay?”

“Oh, yeah. As soon as we could Bridge in Dr. Nomura and drop the shields for Nurse Darby, we got them all checked out.  Humans are lucky, though. They don’t have anything scraplets want, and they aren’t in their files as a threat.” His cab shook hard. “Jack had a pry bar. He was so fast, not as fast as a scraplet, but over and over, he just smashed—he got them off me. Pit—”

“Bulkhead, let’s get you out of the city so you can hit an open road and pick up some speed.”

“Oh, yeah. Speed would be great.”

“Bulkhead. We’re okay. Earth doesn’t have scraplets. This was a one-off. This nasty surprise—we won’t make that mistake again.”

A long pause. “They got here once.”

“And you fought them off. You totally did. Hey! How do you celebrate something like this? Total victory?  Does Optimus give, like, medals or something? Because you and a small team heroically destroyed a terrible and implacable enemy. Total victory. If they’d gotten out of the base—” Kim shuddered herself, imagining small, mobile drones with teeth, replicating and swarming, learning to use Terran raw materials and adapting to Earth fuels. Scrap. What mecha considered a ‘drone’ was still a smart learning machine far beyond what anybody on Earth could make. “I mean, you guys are heroes.”

“Yeah. I guess we are.”

“Total bad asses. If you don’t get a medal from Optimus, I’ll talk to General Morshower. You saved our afts.”

“Accolades. Not objects, like your medals.  We get… You add…a title to your name or the right to use a particular symbol when you’re glyphing. Or, when we’re formal, you wear the symbol on your armor. But I was a Wrecker. We take a…vow. The only title we take is ‘Wrecker.’ Nothing after that.”

“That’s really interesting.  Nobody ever mentioned that.” She got him talking about the sorts of commando missions Wreckers went on. 

When they reached the freeway onramp, he opened up and accelerated to (roughly) ninety. After about an hour, he took the exit marked ‘Brackney,’ and sighed. “We got the word to head back.  I’m going to find someplace secluded enough to open a bridge.”

It took a few minutes.  Even the ‘rural’ parts of New York State were packed.  Bulkhead eventually selected a waste management facility and disabled its cameras before radioing base that they were ready. The pink swirling void of the hole in space looked almost like a large holiday decoration. Kim closed her eyes as they went through.

The infirmary was pretty quiet when they arrived.  Ratchet was on one of the berths, passive and silent while Wheeljack did spot-welds with a knitting tool and Pierre smeared raw materials jell on the shallower gashes.  Bee, already taped up and glistening with goo, was parked in alt in the corner.  Mirage was looming over the second berth—that must be where Hound was.

Bulkhead let Kim out in the center of the medbay and then rolled backward to idle uncertainly at the yellow line. Optimus came around the table and lifted Kim gently. “Evening, beloved,” Kim said softly.

“Evening,” he agreed. “Perhaps not ‘good.’ Are you well?”

“Yes.” She was managing to keep her voice quiet and level. “How’s Hound?”

His answer was equally quiet. “His injuries are not life threatening, but very painful. There is sensor damage and some loss of backup memory. Fortunately, most of the parts required are in storage.”

Kim closed here eyes. “Okay. Okay. That’s…not too bad.”

“He is very anxious to speak to you, Kim. He has…” His vocalizer reset. “He has faith in very little. His human friends…are a great exception… it would be good for him to speak with you. But you must remain very calm, Kim.”

“Yeah. Calm. Okay.”

He carried her over, set her down lightly on the metal bracing of the berth. Kim managed not to gasp and squeal in horror. Half Hound’s face was gone, including his left eye. His mandible--she could see into his buccal cavity. Sensor damage. God. The helm was full of sensors. And back up memory.

Optimus had tried to warn her. Kim should have understood.

“Hey,” she said softly. “Wow. I. Am.” Get it together. “I am awed by how amazing you are. I couldn’t heal this. But this isn’t even a long term repair for you. You are so cool.”

Hound answered in Cybertronix without moving his face. Squatting down to be level with Kim and Hound, Mirage translated, “He will not have to grow the most complex parts from scratch. Ratchet has most of the sensors needed in inventory.”

“I’m so glad. I’ll thank him later. But Ratchet’s always on the ball, isn’t he?” Kim tried a slow breath, thinking it would be rude to look away or withdraw, but horrified by the wires showing under the missing face plating.  And the empty cup where his optical sensor should be.  Or the naked stems where three foldable antennae had been—ripped out? Bitten off? Kim gave up trying to breathe and forced her gaze to the remaining eye.  It was dark, but whole, unharmed. “Oh, Hound.” She had not meant to say it aloud.

“He apologizes for not retrieving you on time.”

Her gaze slid to the missing optic again. The shallow, curved base had been cleaned out and filled like a large petri dish with golden fluid. A nanite bath. It shimmered. Kim realized she was taking too long to answer. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here. I shouldn’t have gone.” Too many of the humans had gone. When humans—specifically humans—had been needed, they had not been here. This was not the time to lament about that.  Hound had terrible damage-- “H--How are you perceiving me right now?”

“His sensors are shut down,” Mirage said. “Prime and I are broadcasting our own data.”

“So no hugging, then,” Kim said. “You are spared the weird human custom.”

“He does not find the custom objectionable.” Mirage held out his servo, a sheaf of feathery multi-sensors sprouting suddenly from the palm.

“Kim,” Optimus said sharply. “Be very gentle. That was designed for investigation of passive objects.”

She stretched her hand palm-down over the fronds, slowly coming closer until they brushed lightly against her skin. “This isn’t a hug,” she said. “But that’s me.”

Hound’s answer was in short bursts. She wished she could understand Cybertronix. It was a long moment before Mirage translated, “Thank you. I am supposed to reassure you. I honestly don’t know enough about human distress to do that.”

Kim pulled her hand back. “Shit. I had one job and it was to be calm, but my sweat is full of….” Kim didn’t even know. Cortisol? Adrenaline? “Sorry. Sorry.” Stop apologizing. “Don’t worry. I’m good. I’m really glad you’re going to be okay.”   

“He won’t try to do the redaction himself,” Mirage said softly.

“Redaction,” Kim breathed. “Right. Tidy up the memory.” Because trauma. Because the irregular wave form had not been caused by damage to the casing or support system, his damage was on his helm, far away from central power systems and the seat of his soul. His spark instability had been caused by the terror and pain of having the scraplet monsters try to chew his face off. Slag.  Kim thrust her hand to cup around Mirage’s data collecting fronds. “Oh, Hound. Beloved friend. I am so sorry this happened to you. I’d offer to help if I could.”

“You could, in fact,” Mirage said. “Tomorrow I am scheduled for a diplomatic demonstration. It would be better if he were not left alone.”

Kim opened her mouth, shut it. “Mirage. I can’t broadcast sensor data to him.”

Kim couldn’t pick out the phonemes of Hound’s answer. It sounded like tinkling bells and paper fluttering in the wind.  Mirage purred in response and said in English, “Sixty-three percent of his net is undamaged. We expect it to be rebooted by midnight. He will be able to see and hear you tomorrow.”

“Yes. Of course. Put it in the schedule.” There, at least, she was on solid ground. Letting someone else input a schedule change that affected you conveyed very good relations. It was always the right thing to say.

Optimus stepped back to the table. “Kim. Hound is agreeing to power down now. Say good-night and let him rest.”

“Good night, friend,’ Kim said obediently.  “I’ll be in tomorrow. Good night, Mirage. Thank you.”

As they passed the yellow line, Bulkhead transformed and joined them. He produced Kim’s overnight bag from a subspace pocket and handed it across to her. “Chikushō“ he said. “What a mess.”  

From the height of Prime’s hand, Kim didn’t quite know what to make of the chaos on the  floor. Between the Bridge and the infirmary the…bits had been swept to the edge, but looking toward the assembly room  the floor was strewn with chunks of metal and wires and tubes and data chips.  Slipstream and four of the NEST troops were sweeping them up into piles.  The railing along one side of the balcony was bent and the little elevator was ripped off its guides.  The newly refinished floor was discolored with splashes of coolant and lubricant.

“No one has died. For that I am grateful—” Optimus broke off and turned toward the tunnel. “Kim, I must put you down. If I am holding you during the coming discussion, it might be interpreted that I am hiding behind you.”

She could hear a golf cart in the tunnel now.  It was the general, driving himself (he often didn’t) and speeding much faster than humans normally did.

“Oh, boy,” Bulkhead muttered.

Kim rolled her shoulders and tried to look invisible.

Optimus dropped to a crouch as the general—he was in jeans and an ‘ugly’ Christmas sweater, shit, he’d been at home, off duty today—got out of the cart. “Glen,” Optimus said softly. “I am sorry.”

“A personal apology isn’t going to be good enough, Prime. That’s twice in the last month there’s been—what the fuck were they anyway? Enemy combatants? Some kind of poodle-sized virus? I don’t even know—Let’s call it an ‘incursion’ in my base! You know the sort of people I have to explain things to.”

“General, there have been no incursions into your base. Both incidents were contained in ‘Bot country.”

“Don’t start weaseling—”

“I am not making excuses.  I am pointing out that the embarrassment and very high costs of these incidents are born by my people, not yours. You bear no responsibility for my mistakes. I have already informed your superiors.”

“I’m responsible—”

“You are not.” Quiet. Completely unyielding.

A pause. “Damn it, Optimus.” The general took a deep breath. “How badly is Hound hurt?”

“He is out of danger and we expect a full recovery.”

“Well, thank God for that, at least.”

“I think we must thank the human allies who were here, in fact. Ratchet informs me they showed great courage and creativity in combating the scraplet pod.”

“Please don’t remind me about the civilian minors who were endangered just by being here.”

Optimus said nothing.

“The only saving grace we have, frankly, is that if humans had found this thing and thawed it out, they wouldn’t have had a clue what they were or how dangerous.  Which is a significant point.” He sighed. “What is the chance there are more of these cargo pods full of metal-eating gremlins on my planet?”

“The cargo container was not capable of independent travel—”

“So they were being shipped somewhere?”

“No. I think we can assume that they were assaulting a vessel that crashed on Earth. Since the scouting party did not detect other remnants, I infer the vessel broke up in the atmosphere.”

“So pieces could be anywhere. Lovely.”

“Not anywhere. Those that crashed in salt water would have succumbed to corrosion. Any that landed in temperate areas would have been starved of resources and expired quickly. It was only the freezing temperatures that kept these units viable.”

The general rocked back and forth on his toes. “Do we know how old the crash was?”

“Estimates from the technology of the cargo unit and the ice layers at the retrieval site indicate four thousand years plus or minus two hundred and twelve.”

“So, we have to search Greenland.”

“Agreed. If any other pods were to become uncovered by diminishing ice pack and found by humans, the consequences could be disastrous. Even if none of the other remains contain scraplets.”

“How can we—”

Optimus lifted his hand and turned sharply to Bulkhead. “A moment, General. Bulkhead.  Drop into alt immediately.”

“Oh,” Bulkhead said thickly. “Yeah. Scrap. That might help.” But he didn’t move. His optics were unfocused. And then he started to fall.

Somehow Optimus pirouetted around Kim and caught Bulkhead before he landed on the general, who was already jumping back, pulling Kim with him. “What’s wrong—” he demanded.

Kim could smell it now. Processed energon didn’t have a strong smell, but it was memorable. “He’s got a leak. He’s bleeding internally.”

Bulkhead was down, awkwardly on his back on the flat floor. Optimus was attaching a medical line. “He said one got in his hip joint,” Kim volunteered.

“Yes, I have found it. A damaged line has failed. The valve will not engage.”

The valve would not engage. He was leaking out.

Pedes thundered  in the infirmary behind them and suddenly  Wheeljack was shoving Optimus out of the way and shifting Bulkhead onto his side.  “Prime, trigger the hip plate release.” Despite his swift movement, Wheeljack’s voice was even and calm.  “You humans need to step back. You aren’t in hazard coverings.”

Kim normally had rubber gloves in her field bag. She had added them (and materials tape) to the notebook and pens and bottled water and tissues she had carried before. But she had left that bag in her room.

Wheeljack transformed two of his fingers into tiny instruments, popped off the tasset, and reached in. Energon flooded out over his fingers and poured down Bulkhead’s armor.

Optimus unshipped a second cable. This one was thicker and came from a slot in his waist. A life support line. Optimus snapped it into a port on Bulkhead’s fauld.

Ratchet, limping, thundered out of the infirmary, and he and Wheeljack began arguing in dissonant Cybertronix.

A leak was a standard repair.  The energon distribution and power systems had all sorts of failsafes and backups. This should have been simple. Two doctors in the hall outside a well-supplied infirmary should have gotten him stable in a minute or two. Twenty minutes later, though, Bulkhead was still dripping energon on the floor when Optimus and Ratchet carried him to a medical berth.

Watching them go, it took Kim a minute to get her breath. Then she squared her shoulders and turned. “Okay, Glen? Want to learn how to clean up an energon spill?”

He pulled his gaze away from the infirmary and cleared his throat. “Can humans do that?”

“Yeah.  They have this absorbent stuff.  The energon sort of dries out and we can vacuum it up.”

“We don’t recycle it?”

“It’s been in use. They can’t….” Without meaning to, Kim remembered Optimus connecting his own power supply to Bulkhead. It was like starting CPR—except that, unlike CPR, it wasn’t a desperate step in the face of near-certain failure.  Mech life-support was nearly perfect. Whatever had gone wrong, they would have time to fix it.  Bulkhead wasn’t going to die. “They can’t do anything to clean it up or concentrate it now. Come on, I’ll show you where we keep the supplies.”

Kim couldn’t estimate how much energon was on the flo or. Gallons, surely.  It took half an hour to clean it up.  The general didn’t mind using the shop vac. Perhaps he was glad to have something to do.

When they carried the buckets of powdery absorbent to the trash, they could see Ratchet and Wheeljack working over Bulkhead.  It turned out the attacking scraplet hadn’t bitten through the line, only gotten it twisted and pinched. Bulkhead, running combat protocols even after the fight ended, had been diverting resources to  pressurize the system below the snag rather than flag it for repair.  The time he’d spent in alt had temporarily reduced the stress on his power system, but transforming had pushed his system back into high gear and the strain had torn the damaged fuel line laterally, jammed two primary valves, and decalibrated the secondary pump.  

Kim couldn’t follow the details. When they finished decontaminating the floor, she stood with the general, watching the spark monitor.

Ratchet spent an hour trying to stabilize Bulkhead enough to begin repairs before changing gears and stabilizing for stasis.  Kim felt a wave of relief when she realized what he was doing: shut-down meant the patient could wait in complete safety for the days (or, in the worst cases, weeks or months) it took to do a through evaluation and prepare replacement parts.

“Is there anything else we can do?” The general asked softly.

Kim shook her head.

“Well.  I have—Actually, quite a lot I need to do.  Pass along my apologies to Optimus, but I don’t have time to continue this…discussion tonight.”

“He’ll appreciate that.”

“Tell him to get some rest.”

When Optimus came out of the infirmary a few minutes later, he scooped Kim up and continued on without pausing. Kim leaned hard against his thumb. “Mesa?” she asked.

“I’m sorry. No. I must refuel.”

They went to the ‘Bot commissary.  This was still a mess. There were bits of…what did they even look like? Teeth, Bulkhead had said. Slag! There were pieces everywhere.

Optimus swept the debris off the table with his free hand and set Kim down.  The energon dispenser was a slightly different shape. Kim realized it had been replaced. Oh. The scraplets had gotten a tank of energon. Oh, damn.

Optimus returned with a large container—over seven gallons—of pinkish energon and a two gallon beaker of clear, synthetic fuel. He set them down next to Kim and sank onto the bench, sitting very erect.

Kim stepped to the edge. “Come a little closer?” she asked.

He leaned in so that she could rest a hand against his torso. It was good to be close. She had missed him. And today had been so horrible. “Oh. Beloved. You weren’t here?”

“I was in Siberia, making my best speed to the nearest air base that could handle a Condor cargo plane.”

Siberia! Geez! “What is your best speed?”

“On Siberian roads? Roughly one-hundred and sixty kilometers per hour. Not fast enough. I was still seventy kilometers out when the Bridge was repaired.”

“You need a wash?”

“Thank you. Perhaps tomorrow.”

Right. Okay. No wash.  So where could she start? “Will you need to help the kids manage the memory of this?”

“No. For which I am grateful. They never realized the danger they were in. Dr. Chase—he herded them into Max’s chamber and…cuddled them. He told them stories and sang. He had a wooden cane, in case the perimeter was breached. He was prepared to defend the sparklings with a sliver of tree.”

“Damn.”

“I am so grateful to our human companions here. I am so grateful for them.”

“We won’t be taken by surprise again, Optimus. You won’t have to fight them alone. Hey. I bet Lennox is pissed he missed this.”

“Let us hope he has no opportunities in the future.”

He had not touched the containers of shimmering liquid. “Should I step out of the way and let you refuel?” Kim asked.

“Soon. Not just yet?” It sounded like a request.

“Okay. Do you want to tell me about it?”  It was a vague invitation. He could pretend not to understand.

“My energon levels have dropped below the point permitted for combat deployment. I must refuel. I must. But my cognition is caught in an illogical loop. We lost two-hundred and ninety-five point two liters of energon today.  Every drop is so precious. What is held in that tumbler would bring a sparkling to term.”

“Damn.”

“It is a logic failure, a minor glitch,” he confessed.

Kim folded her arms, turned around, and leaned back against his bulk. “Well. That’s the good part about living in on the dead husk of Chaos—plenty of energon.”

“Your sense of humor is….frankly terrifying.”

“Our life is terrifying.” Kim turned back around and motioned him to pick her up. “It’s totally legitimate to be worried.  I get it with my analog brain, so you have fabulous intersubjectivity about it. From every analysis, it’s…. “ she shook her head. “Everything sucks. Everybody worries about energon all the time. We’re finding it faster than it’s being used. So far. But every one of today’s injuries has an energon cost. And you have to eat anyway.” 

He had her against his chest now, directly beside the spark chamber.  Another mech could have altered their field to comfort him. Kim had no conscious control over hers at all.  Her state of mind determined her electromagnetics, not her will, and Kim was upset.

Could she be calm? She couldn’t be calm. What could she do? She should do something. She could love him. She could trust him. She could think about that. It might be something.

She could remember her astonished bafflement at being asked to explain the difference between a wig and a hat. What a wonderful question. How brilliant he was!

She could remember the trip patrolling Washington state, stopping for turtles and taking them to the side of the road.  That day had started so well and it had gone to hell and he had been so brave and good.

She could—

Click.  A series of almost-silent thumps.  A capacitor switching to trickle-discharge.  Kim took a deep breath, relaxing with him as combat protocols disengaged. “Everybody is going to be fine,” she whispered. “It’s okay.”

“We were fortunate,” he agreed softly.

“So…what about this little glitch? Do you redact that?”

“It is not so severe. I….” He stopped.  Kim let the silence go for a minute, in case he was taking a call over the wifi. But he didn’t move.

“It’s okay. It’s been a rough day. Hey? Should I ask you to explain the semiotics of ‘flow’? Would thinking about that help?”

“Explaining the subtle meanings of ‘flow’ would be delightful. Some other time. Forgive me, Kim, I am….”

“Tired,” Kim suggested.

“Perhaps.”

“You know,” Kim said carefully, “that isn’t gestating a baby mech in that cup.  It isn’t a potential spark the Matrix hasn’t created yet. It’s the safety of the two sparklings you have now. That is the fuel you need to protect them.”

A soft hum. “That has done it.”

“Well. Good. Okay.”  It was a slow refueling. First the energon, and then the synthetic. Mecha didn’t swallow. Or sip.  Or taste very much—or at all, since analysis wasn’t taste.  But if his ratios were off, he would feel better with more energon in the mix.  Kim knew humans were not good at estimating volume, but it was hard not to notice the proportions of pure and artificial fuel he had selected. Kim very carefully did not mention it.

She waited, resting against him, as his complicated buccal cavity ingested first the energon and then the substitute that was so less efficient, produced a waste product, and could not nourish protomatter. She said nothing until he had put the empty containers away.

“I’m glad I’m home,” she said then. “I’m sorry I left.  I missed you badly.”

“I am just as glad you missed the incident. Was your holiday acceptably warm and bright?”

“Oh, yes.  A dozen at dinner, and I showed up gainfully employed with a very expensive ham.  I’ve been in college for a long time. This was nice.”  She leaned against him.  There was schmutz on his windshield. “You’re kind of a mess,” she said.

“Sadly, I do not have time to wash. As attractive as that offer is.  The repairs Ratchet made to the bridge are temporary. Quite soon, I will need to work on it.”

“Rats. Sorry.”  She rolled her shoulders and tried to relax. “Should I be saying something?”

“Why?”

“Well, I’m not broadcasting a carrier wave, and…well….”

“In the current context, where we are not isolated and I am not in active distress, the intentionality of your overlapping is enough. The sensation is not strong, but the action itself is meaningful.”

They got to sit for a few minutes. Not as long as Kim wanted but long enough that she noticed she wouldn’t mind peeing.  Then Optimus cursed in muted Cybertronix. “The Bridge is throwing error messages. I cannot delay any longer. And you should see to your people.”

Kim nodded briskly and leaned away. “Right. Got it. Give me a lift to the balcony?”

It was hard, climbing the steps and not looking back. But he had work to do. And Kim had responsibilities.

She found Pierre in the kitchen, shoveling in what looked like three packets of instant oatmeal. “I’ll fry you up an egg, if you want some real food,” she offered.

“Thanks, but I must rush back to the infirmary. Ratchet is using our shorthandedness as an excuse not to shut down himself and run internal repair cycles. You need to check on Chip, though. He’s in his room.”

Well, hell.  Stopping by the fridge for a couple of bottles of water and a can of cherry fizz, she went back up the hall and knocked on his door.

“Fuck. What is it? I swear to god, if we’re being invaded again—”

“It’s me!” Kim called quickly, cracking open the door. “Everything’s fine. I’ve brought water.”

“Yeah. Fine. Whatever.”

Tentatively, Kim entered. He was in bed. “How are you doing?”

“I’m taking some time off!” his tone was somewhere between announcement and demand.

“Yeah. Sure. I don’t know when the Bridge will be operational, but as soon as—”

“I’m not going anywhere.  I’m staying in bed and sleeping for three days. Or maybe a week. Don’t fucking ask me.”

“If you want—you can get to any doctor anywhere in the world—”

“No, I don’t need a doctor. Give me the water. And the soda. And go away.”

“Are you—"

“Go. Away.”

Kim went.

She checked on the children next. It felt quite late to Kim, but it with the time difference, it wasn’t even seven o’clock yet.  

Jack seemed to be surprisingly fine about the whole thing.  Apparently, after you got used to giant metal aliens and an enemy ship invisibly in orbit, flying mechanical piranha were just another day. “I almost felt sorry for them. I mean, they were awful, but they didn’t fight back against us. Some of them didn’t even try to dodge. And they’ve got no armor to speak of. But mom says they weren’t alive. So.”

“Oh. Hey, yeah. Can I speak to June?”

He handed the phone over very quickly, she must have been right there. “Kim? You’re back? How’s Hound?”

“Stable. Um. Bulkhead went down. He’s in stasis. So. He’s okay.”

“Shit. Should I come in?”

“No. Stay with Jack tonight. Maybe come in tomorrow if you can. Ratchet’s resting, and the most urgent issues are in the Ground Bridge right now. There isn’t anything you can do. You okay?”

“Oh. Sure. I’m wonderful.  I thought it would be great, bring Jack into play with the babies and spend the day Christmas shopping in Las Vegas. A nice treat, right? I hadn’t been there an hour when I got a call…Oh, Kim. When I got there, I couldn’t get in. All the forcefields were up. I was parked outside the tunnel….”

“Wow.” Kim wished she had something reassuring to say.  Or wise. “Damn.” No, that wasn’t it.

Miko was next. She seemed to be doing great. She recounted the battle with the scraplets in gory detail (yipe), and bragged about her own kill-tally (forty-nine). She even had some video of the monsters, if Kim wanted to see sometime (a good idea, but it didn’t sound like fun).  “Listen, Miko,” Kim said when she paused to breathe, “You coming in tomorrow?”

“No. I have homework. The foster parents are being all conscientious. It’s a total drag.”

Should Kim feel relieved? Another day to get Bulkhead back together before she saw him?  Or was Kim just being cowardly, dishonest, and unfair?

Nope, she decided. Leave Miko at home. It wasn’t like she could do anything, or even talk to him. An extra day of ignorance wouldn’t hurt. “Better get busy then.  Don’t want to get grounded.”

Raf didn’t answer his cell right away. His family didn’t know about the ‘Bots, and he had to be discreet.  Kim didn’t push. He called her back before she’d finished boiling water for tea, though. “Hey, Kiddo? I just got back.  You doing okay?”

“Oh. Well. Yeah.” He said heavily.

“Did you get hurt?”

“No. I’m fine.”

“I hear you had a rough day, though. Or a really exciting day. It depends on who I ask.”

“Kim. It was.” He lowered his voice. “I know some things I shouldn’t. Impossible things. Sometimes sort of a lot of things. But—Kim, I didn’t know, I didn’t realize.  How could I have no idea about this?”

Ok. Well. Um. “Are you feeling bad that you didn’t recognize this danger? Or are you wondering what else you don’t know?”

“Um. Yes?”

“Yeah. Right.” Kim sighed. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Maybe? Do you know a lot about the absolute flow of the universe?”

“Nope. But I’ll listen if you want to talk about it. Or if not me—Optimus can have seven conversations at once. Or…Charlotte. She understands your situation is…unusual. You aren’t” Well, she couldn’t say ‘you aren’t alone in this, but, of course he was the only one. He was pretty alone. “Without friends,” she finished weakly.

He didn’t commit to talking to anybody. Kim would have given Hound or Bee a heads up, but both of them had had a worse day than Raf. Well. He was okay for now. They didn’t have to fix it all now.

Exhausted from the very long day that had started three time zones away, Kim got to bed early and then was up again at six. She checked the schedule while brushing her teeth. Fixit and Maggie were back and at the bridge. Ratchet was resting but would be back on duty in two hours. Hound was in an offline repair cycle. Optimus at the Bridge, but was going off-duty in ten minutes.

Oh.                      

Kim speedily rinsed and spit, ran a comb through her hair, snatched up her bathrobe, and scampered out to the assembly room.  The floor was cold on her bare feet. The steps were cool through her thin cotton sleep shorts when she sat down at the bottom.

Optimus, coming around the corner, paused when he saw her, then came closer before speaking.  “According to the schedule, you are off duty.  This is within your weekend sleep cycle.”  

“That’s more of a goal, you know…. Humans don’t have direct control over sleeping functions.”

“I am aware. Errors in the sleep cycle can have serious health consequences.”

Kim snorted. “Getting up early on a Saturday isn’t going to hurt me. So? Off duty?”

“I am. And I am filthy.”

“Oh. Well. Let’s work on that.”

He scooped her up very gently, instead of holding out a hand for her to board. Kim frowned, wondering about his state of mind and how to ask about it. “What music were you listening to on your free channel?”

“Carly Simon.”

Kim winced, trying to recall the repertoire. “Little depressing? You know, Jewel might be a better choice. Or Alanis. Or you could watch nature documentaries.”

“I enjoy nature documentaries.  I also enjoy many human bards. Few capture the tragedy of human isolation so vividly.” A pause. “I was trying to remind myself to have sympathy for the individuals who were reading out the riot act over the scraplet infestation.”

“While fixing the bridge.  Crappy night,” Kim said sympathetically. His impossibly long strides had already carried them to the washracks.  No one else was there, which Kim found a relief.

He set her down delicately and settled into a crouch. “I noticed a secondary theme of gendered ambivalence to committed relationships.”

Kim took a step back and tilted her head up to look at him. “Gendered ambivalence…to committed relationships.”

“I did.  I wondered about the validity of her observations. It occurs to me you might have a resonant experience.”

Kim almost laughed. “If *I* might resonate? With gendered ambivalence? Your gender makes you mom to about a third of your species and potentially requires very intimate file-sharing with any—or every—First of Line regardless of whether you want to.  My gendered ambivalence isn’t on the scale.”

“The Matrix is a blessing,” he murmured. “It blesses me no less than everyone else. Passing data packets is not necessarily an intimate experience.”

Kim sighed. “Put Carly Simon on the speakers for me, then.” She retrieved a long handled brush and a bottle of dish soap and got started. Optimus was a mess. Surely, Siberia was snowy this time of year. But there were bits of dead plant and small rocks in his wheel wells. Had he gone cross-country?

Kim didn’t rush the wash. Sometimes they paused a song to talk about a particular line or metaphor. Sometimes Kim asked him to partially transform so she could wipe out a seam with a shop towel.

She got wet, of course.  Kim ignored the soapy shorts clinging nastily and didn’t rush. The hiss of water. The slightly depressing yacht-rock in the background. The scrapes and creeks of shifting mech.

The song that began, “I have no need of half of anything,” came on. Kim nodded to herself. “That one, Beloved.”

“Ah,” he said.

“Stretch out your servos for me…yeah, relax the seams. What is this, bits of broken rock? How bad was Siberia?”

“Wood. I was reckless in my hurry. I attempted a shortcut.”

“Oh, love,” Kim said sadly. She could imagine his panic.

“They did not need to be rescued.  They managed to save themselves.  Under analysis, it is clear I underestimated the humans.”

“To be fair, I didn’t expect Jack and Miko to be monster-killing bad-asses either. Oh. Did Raf speak to you since last night?”

“He did not. Why?”

“He feels really bad that he didn’t understand the threat the scraplet things were.”

“Ah. I see. I will assign Jazz to check in with him regularly until Bumblebee is fully cleared for duty.”

“How long is Bee down?”

“Limited duty in one point three orns.” That wasn’t too bad.  Kim guessed Bulkhead and Hound would be in the infirmary for more than a week.

Satisfied Optimus was free of Siberian muck,  Kim took a squeegee and an alien microfiber towel and began drying him off.  He was large, and the process wasn’t quick. By the time she was done, her clothing wasn’t dripping anymore, but she was damp and chilly.

“Turn the sprinkle-hose on for me and raise the temperature about five degrees?” she asked, stripping and tossing the sodden t-shirt and shorts aside.

“Fahrenheit, I assume?” he asked.

The water started up again, and Kim braced the nozzle on a ladder and ducked into the stream. To wash. In front of someone else.

For a moment her heart pounded. It wasn’t just the intimacy, she wasn’t sure if this quite counted as reciprocal. It wasn’t like she needed help to wash. Unlike mecha, humans didn’t have an armless alt form.

“You are nervous,” he murmured, rolling slightly closer, stopping just at the edge of the spattering warm water. “Uncovering flesh signals informality and trust. Are you worried about how I will respond to this message?”

“I’m worried I’m being insultingly awkward about it. This is normal for you. Just washing.”

“And it is delicate, communicating companionship with gestures that would signal a mating invitation in some human contexts.”

Kim turned and let the water run down her back. “You are very attractive when you analyze my culture.”

“I have noticed that you think so,” he conceded. He was close enough now that a few of the drops were spattering  his tires.  “You are responsible for understanding so much. Perhaps sharing the burden is a source of joy.”

“You do something cool…beautifully. It’s a source of joy.”

 He rocked back slightly and then sank down so his chassis was a few inches lower. “The trope of powerful extraterrestrials intent on abducting and molesting human women is…inconvenient.”

Kim snorted. “Believe me, if we were compatible, I’d be fine with that.”

“That’s probably very flattering,” he said uncertainly.

Kim, now warm and soap-free, stepped out of the water so she was directly in front of him.  “Any terms, Beloved.”

“I can’t…quite return that.”

“I know. It’s okay. I’m not going to ask—” Kim tipped her head back and looked into the distant dimness of the cavern ceiling. She could not ask him to choose staying with her over ending the war. It was hard, in moments like these, to remember why—what difference would anything make, what point would there be to anything if he were gone? But she had managed so far to hold herself back from that betrayal. “It’s okay.”

“You are losing heat.” He transformed and retrieved her robe from the pile of packing crates where she had left it out of range with the water.

Like most of the clothing she’d bought since arriving in Jasper, the robe was in bright, primary colors.  She popped it over her head and zipped it up. “Thank you—”

Optimus turned sharply back toward the entry. “Our presence is requested in the infirmary.”

“Okay.” Kim held up her arms so she could be scooped efficiently. “What’s wrong?”

With quick steps that resounded off the cavern walls but didn’t jar Kim at all, they were already half-way to the door. “Wheeljack has brought Miko to the base.”

Kim blinked. “Is Bulkhead awake?”

“No. He is still in stasis. Miko is not taking it well.”

Miko was not, indeed, taking it well. She was standing on Bulkhead’s berth, shouting in turn at Bulkhead, Wheeljack, and Ratchet.  Most of it was in English.  All of it was terrible.  Her rage and pain tore at Kim’s heart. 

Also, Kim wanted to slap her.

The two conscious Autobots also seemed completely baffled about what to do.  Ratchet was standing on the far side of Bulkhead’s berth with all his antennae out.  Wheeljack had all his antenna in, and his armor seams were pulled tight. Neither were attempting to answer her.

At Optimus’ arrival, Ratchet retreated completely, transforming and heading for the Bridge tunnel. Wheeljack started to transform, aborted the motion, and lowered his head and shoulders in a human posture of subordination or repentance.

Optimus approached Miko closely enough that she could have touched him if she wished. It was a mech gesture she didn’t recognize. She only turned her wrath on him. “You told me to go home! You told me it was over! I left him. You made me leave him! If I had been here--”

“Miko, that is enough.” His voice was very quiet. Miko’s rant turned into inarticulate sobs.

Kim wasn’t carrying her bag. She didn’t have any tissues.  She said, “Wheeljack, get her a clean shop towel.”

In his enthusiasm, the handkerchief substitute he produced was the size of a twin bed sheet, but Miko clutched it and buried her face.

Optimus said, “Wheeljack, have you explained the treatment plan and prognosis?”

“Before we arrived,” he said meekly. “I think she doesn’t understand—”

Miko lifted her head and shrieked, “He’s in a coma! You turned him off, so he can’t fight—” the rest of it was lost in enraged Japanese.

Optimus set Kim on the berth and murmured, “She is a human. Can you—?"

Kim ignored Miko and said loudly to Wheeljack, “How many parts have to be fabricated before he can be fixed?”

“Fortunately, only the  one, but the machine won’t be free until this afternoon.  And he isn’t completely shut down. Repair systems are running again, on external power.”

Miko was grinding her teeth, but she seemed to be listening.

“What would happen if we woke him up and he and Miko talked. Can you wake him up? Is there any problem with cognitive functions?” Kim thought she knew the answer, but Miko needed to hear it.

It was Optimus who answered. “Waking him would be unkind. His primary power system has failed. The energon delivery network is malfunctioning. The external power support is probably robust enough to remain stable even if we increased the demands on it by rebooting him, but awareness of his generalized deprivation will be extremely distressing.” λλλλ, then.  Energon stagnation. Lack of flow. A suffering that the Autobots said wasn’t pain, but was every bit as bad. Worse, because you couldn’t completely end it by shutting down a nerve; the distress in protomatter and spark would propagate even if no sensation was transmitted to cognitive processors.  Not starving, not drowning, not choking, not dying of thirst in the desert, not falling from great height. Nothing a human could imagine, only desperate and panicked and terrible.

Miko had subsided to a shaking. Through her teeth she said, “Repair systems work better when they aren’t offline.”

“Some of them. For some injuries,” Optimus said firmly. “Not this situation.  When we have performed manual repairs, replaced the damaged parts, and established functionality in his power system, Bulkhead’s cognition and protomatter will be reactivated.”

Kim said, “He’s not dying. Miko? He’s not dying, he’s waiting. I get that it’s hard to see him like this, but he doesn’t need to be awake, aware that there isn’t enough energon flow—”

“You can shut up now,” Miko snapped. “You knew last night. You knew, and you kept it from me.”

Wheeljack slowly transformed himself through his alt form into a flat-topped, almost-pyramid. Was this shame or apology? Or just heartbreak for Miko’s misery?

“Miko,” Optimus said. “The infirmary is not the place to air disagreements. Important work needs to be done. Bulkhead is not the only patient. Please desist.”

Miko turned her back to them, draped herself along Bulkhead’s hip, and closed her eyes.

“You will be permitted to stay only so long as you do not disturb the staff and other patients. Is this understood?” Optimus told her.

She nodded without looking at them.

“I’m sorry, Miko,” Kim said.

There was no answer to that. 

“Wheeljack—” Optimus began.

Wheeljack transformed back into root form in something less than two seconds. “I should have made sure she understood before I brought her. But I’m not apologizing for bringing her.”

“I did not expect you to. I do expect you to stop discussing it here.”

Wheeljack stood very still for a moment, then spun and stalked to the far side of the infirmary to fuss with some of the equipment.

Kim made a face. Optimus offered her a hand. Kim waited until they were nearly to yellow line to ask, “Does he just not understand that Miko is a kid?”

“Perhaps not. He understands that Miko is f온입니c d. I understand why his decision tree prioritized that. My sympathy does not make the outcome less unfortunate.”

Kim sighed. “I need to eat something and get properly dressed,” she said. “I have to be back at ten. Is Hound--”

“Currently in a dormant repair cycle,” Optimus said.

Good. That was good. He needed to rest. He might still be out when Kim came back to fill in for Mirage. That would be good, because Kim wasn’t sure what she’d say to someone who had huge chunks of their face missing. And couldn’t manage English. And was nearly half blind-and-deaf-and-numb to all the other sensory input his helm gear had taken in. 

Okay. Right. It was probably better not to panic in advance.  He was still Hound. 

~tbc

Chapter Text

Maggie was in the kitchen, looking unusually faded and sluggish. “Time change from Australia?” Kim asked.

“I don’t know how the NEST teams do it, all over the globe and back at least once a week!”

“I think they mostly ignore local time.”

“I honestly don’t think there’s enough coffee in the world.”

“Did you get to have any fun at all before the recall order came?”

“Oh, yeah. It was great.” She yawned. “Fixit likes hiking.”

Kim filled three bowls with yogurt, granola, and frozen blueberries and delivered one of them to Chip. He thanked her grumpily and sent her away. According to the schedule Carly and Bobby would be home tonight; they had (separately) gone to see family. Pierre was showing off-duty until three. June would be in tomorrow.

With the humans accounted for, Kim dressed (oh, damn, her night clothes were in a soggy heap near the wash rack. Well. There wasn’t time to get them now), Kim collected her bag and headed back down to the infirmary.

When she arrived at nine-forty five, Miko was still curled up on Bulkhead, Ratchet and Bumblebee were parked in the corner running internal repairs, and the situation at Hound’s berth was even worse than she’d feared.

 Mirage was cradling Hound’s helm in his servos while Fixit—who had produced a whip-like probe from one of his fingers—poked at the open cavities left by the excised sensors.  As Kim timidly approached—there had been no one to ask at the yellow line if she had entry—Hound flinched and whimpered. Mirage crooned melodically in response.

Kim squared her shoulders. Helm wounds were worse than the usual armor gashes. And it was always harder when it was a close friend. But she’d done this before.

And… Mirage was still here. Maybe he wasn’t going after all. Maybe--

That dim hope evaporated as Fixit retracted his probe and said, “Enough for now. We will finish when you return.”

Kim stepped up and called, “Hey.”

“Kim, bring up a jar of the C-S-G when you come, please.”

“Sure thing.”  She detoured to the human-sized cabinets to retrieve the copper-silver-gold raw materials jell that supported wiring self-repair. 

Mirage bowed slightly to Kim as he left. Kim waved, feeling a little guilty. She hadn’t gotten to know Mirage very well. He was, even by mech standards, exceptionally cool: a famous performer, a courtesan, an arbiter of taste, and—most recently—a ruthless spy.  And also an active Wrecker. Wreckers generally were not as interested in humans as most of the other mecha. Perhaps they weren’t as lonely.  Or perhaps they felt themselves above the personal concerns of squishy aliens.

That was not entirely fair, of course. Bulkhead and Wheeljack were exceptions. Well. Bulkhead had left the Wreckers some time back to enter Prime’s service, and the only human Wheeljack thought was interesting was Miko. But that was something. And Springer had very good relations with one of the geologists and was pursuing Arcee openly enough that even the humans noticed. But compared to the other bots, who were huge fans of human media, played video games and raced model cars with NEST crews on their off time, and manipulated their patrol assignments to get their photos taken by Google Earth near human landmarks, the Wreckers were pretty stand-offish.

Kim mounted the ladder to Hound’s berth and handed Fixit the jar. “Hey,” she said.  She wished she had better material.

Kim’s phone buzzed.  The greeting was in glyphs. Apology:: Gratitude:: The Quality of Molecular Slowness. Kim frowned. “Fixit, is he cold?”  Standard lubricants were rated for negative twenty, weren’t they? He shouldn’t feel subjectively cold in the infirmary which never dropped below seventy-three.

“Cold?” He paused. “Oh. He is not cold. He is embarrassed. It is a metaphor.”

A chirp of agreement, very quiet. Kim started to reach for Hound—and stopped. “Um, where do I stand? Is he okay to be touched?”

Fixit turned his head. His optical lens focused on her slowly. “Hound is not currently able to speak English. He still understands it. Stand to his left.  He is having some trouble coordinating primary optical data, but infrared is functioning normally.”

“Thanks,” Kim whispered. Trouble coordinating primary optical data meant ‘mostly blind.’  “Okay. Sorry.” Carefully, she stepped around to the tiny, shiny, black node under Hound’s intact jaw: an infrared sensor normally focused downward to track humans on the floor. She laid her hand next to the lens—as her warmth created a heat differential it would lightly ‘fuzz’ the input, a sensation of human presence. “Sorry, sweetheart. Tell me about this quality of molecular slowness. What is he embarrassed about?”

The answer came as an English text message. YOU ARE FRIGHTENED OF INJURIES. RATCHET WAS CORRECT. YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN KEPT AWAY.

“I’m upset,” she admitted. “I’m scared. And if you’ve changed your mind about having me here, Slipstream owes me a favor--.”

He said something with request-tags in Cybertronix, but Fixit continued applying drops of raw materials jell to the exposed sensor sockets. Hound repeated himself, and Fixit sighed. “Your fear confuses him. Fear is inappropriate. He is in no danger of either extinguishment or permanent malfunction. He is…enduring physical discomfort. Some internal repairs are needed to the sensor system before Ratchet begins replacing the missing components tomorrow. To do these repairs quickly and correctly, the systems must be monitored in real time.” It was one of the nastier parts of the war, Kim knew.  To speed recovery, cognitive functions were kept online to direct repair systems that, under normal conditions, would have been set to automatic and left to repair automatically but slowly.

“He…really is going to be okay?” She had not meant that to be a question. Her eyes went to the missing cheek plating and torn jaw. She could see into his buccal cavity. It was crowded with…small…shapes…coils…and triangles….

It was interesting. Of course, aliens would look different. It was just interesting.

“He will be,” Fixit said. “The sensors and armor will be replaced. We have enough resources and time that the damaged protoform elements will heal. The traumatic memories of this incident will be redacted into a descriptive file. The future is not the issue. The present is.”

“Okay,” Kim said meekly.  “How do I help?”

“Monitoring damaged sensors is unpleasant. The silence of missing data is worse. Occupy his functioning sensors.”

“Well, I sing badly enough that that should be a spectacular distraction.”

Her phone screen filled with humor glyphs, and then blanked. A circle. Change of subject, and one serious enough to need a marker. Then, in English, I DID NOT REDACT MY MEMORIES OF THE CRASH OR MY RESCUE. I WILL NOT.  FOR AS LONG AS MY SPARK PROPAGATES A WAVE, I WILL NOT FORGET THE MERCY OF HUMANS FOR AN ALIEN STRANGER.

That’s what he wanted to talk about? Now? Scrap. “It was a miracle,” Kim said. “Getting anyone out of that crash alive, and then the Deceptions came---”

NOT A MIRACLE. COSMOS SAVED US. He shifted restlessly. HE NEEDS SO MANY PARTS.

“He’s safe. He’s in stasis. That’s a mercy humans don’t have.” A mercy Hound didn’t have at the moment. Kim not being awkward would be merciful, too.  “We’ll get him back.”

I AM NOT UNGRATEFUL. A pause. I WISH YOU COULD MEET HIM.

“Well, yeah. A space ship! Totally cool.”

YES. COOL.

“Will he like Earth, do you think? I guess he’s seen lots of planets.”

HIS MODS FOR INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL ARE BASIC. HE WAS BUILT AS AN IN-SYSTEM PASSENGER FERRY. HE HAS LANDED ON FEW PLANETS. EARTH WILL BE A SURPRISE.

Kim thought about that. “Yeah….”

HE WILL LIKE EARTH AS MUCH AS I DO.

“Well….maybe. You don’t talk much about other planets. Ratchet says Earth is the worst.” Kim frowned. “I’m in the wrong place, aren’t I? Where should I sit for overlapping?”

A soft clicking: amusement. EVEN IN FULL HEALTH I DO NOT THINK I COULD MAKE MY FIELD PERCEPTIBLE TO YOU. THE PRIME HIMSELF CAN BARELY MANAGE IT. BUT YOUR ASSUMPTION THAT I COULD IS FLATTERING.

“Well of course I couldn’t feel it,” Kim protested, embarrassed. “I know humans are like, blind and pathetic! But it’s what mecha do when they’re close, and I can’t hold your hand!”

Fixit popped the  raw materials jell into a subspace pocket and lightly touched Kim’s shoulder with his servo. “You already within his field. He is perceiving your electromagnetics with his spark, not his sensors.”

“Oh. Right. So, I’m being really stupid.”

“Yes. However, it is not your fault.” He patted her softly. Fixit was one of the most generous souls Kim knew. “I apologize for my earlier impatience. I had concluded you were stubbornly insisting on human interaction patterns at a particularly inopportune time.  That was my error. Your understanding of how mecha perceive and process information is too superficial for you to adapt to deficiencies or deduce the correct behavior. I will work on judging humans more generously.”

Kim laughed once, a squawk of hopeless shame. Really, she had thought her understanding of mech perception was…pretty good. Maybe not perfect.

She would not make a fuss about it now; that would completely make this about her, and Hound was still lying there with half his face removed.  She swallowed hard. “I love you, Fixit. I love you Hound.” Damn, that was another “human interaction pattern.” Mecha didn’t normally need to have that in words. It wasn’t something they ever bothered to say, unless they were talking to someone very far away. “I’m sorry I’m being so useless. Tell me specifically what to do.”

Fixit leaned in, lowered his voice. “Hound needs to refuel. If you will be disturbed, you should look away and continue your conversation about space travel.”

“I see mecha refuel almost every day. Why would I—His face is a mess. Are you going to put in a drip line?” But that wasn’t hard to watch. Kim had seen Fixit himself hooked to a drip line. She had watched him pop it out.

“No. Additional raw materials will be useful. The intake system is functional.”  He paused. “Its functionality will be fully visible.”

Kim’s phone wrote out WE ARE FORBIDDEN TO SHOW HUMANS THE INSIDE OF OUR BUCCAL CAVITIES. HUMANS HAVE AN INSTICTIVE FEAR OF COMPOUND MOUTHS.

We do? Kim looked from one to the other.

Fixit nodded. “We have seen video of the Xenomorph.” Oh. O-oh. Well, maybe. Kim was not sure it was necessarily an instinct.  She did not have time to argue the point, though, because Fixit was still speaking. “Hound can refuel, but he cannot conceal the process if you look toward him.” He paused. “A delay of a few hours would not be too great a strain. Perhaps—”

“Oh, come on.  Your mouth isn’t going to freak me out. I’ve seen it before, anyway. I think Blur showed me. He wasn’t supposed to.” Firmly, Kim stood up and shifted to Hound’s shoulder until she had a clear view. “Just tell me he isn’t in pain, and I’m cool.”

FUNCTIONAL AND WITHOUT PAIN. Hound said.

“Okay then.”

Fixit produced a small beaker of shiny, green beads. It was energon in a medical-grade raw-materials membrane.

Kim turned sideways and looked out toward the berth where Bulkhead lay running repair programs. Miko was still there.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see  Hound opening his mouth and Fixit very gently placing something inside. Slowly, Kim turned her head. There was quite a lot of…movement within the open gash.  

IT IS AGAINST POLICY FOR YOU TO LOOK. Her phone said.

Kim dropped her gaze. She cleared her throat.  “Do you mind, though? Me seeing?”

THE POLICY IS

EXCESSIVELY CAUTIOUS

“I think so too,” Kim said.  “Let’s break some rules.” She glanced at Fixit. He could put a stop to this right now if he felt like it.  Instead, he selected another of the shiny beads and introduced it through the opening.

Inside Hound’s face, several small spirals uncoiled into short filaments, snared the energon goodie, and pushed it against a tiny pyramid—

The pyramid—it was no larger than the tip of a magic marker—split open like a beak, tore the green membrane and then three more of the tiny pyramids opened, revealing clusters of hair-like tubes that slurped up the spilling energon in less than second. The green shell…vanished, Kim didn’t see where to.

“Wow!” Kim said. “I had no idea!”

YOU WERE NOT MEANT TO. IT IS IN THE ORIENTATION PACKET.

Kim clicked softly. “Well….yeah. I can see that maybe this isn’t the first thing we should know about you guys.”

Carefully, Hound opened his mouth again and Fixit deposited another bite. Again, Kim watched him neatly demolish it. “There are sensors that analyze the energon and….other stuff, right?”

Fixit pointed. “Here.”  It looked like a miniature, grey pencil eraser. “You can touch it.”

“No, ew, I’m not poking anybody in the mouth in the middle of a meal.”

Soft clicks of laughter from both of them. She was being a silly human again? How could this not be appallingly personal? “Well…okay. Are you sure?” She grappled for an excuse. “I mean, all the energon is gone…right?”

Fixit looked indignant. “Inefficiency in a refueling system would never be tolerated.”

Slowly, Hound opened wide.  His buccal cavity was about the size of a shoe box. Roomy.

Oh. Well. Right. Kim extended a finger. She firmly did not think about putting her hand into someone else’s mouth. This was just…ethnography. Learning about a physical structure Ratchet had never mentioned in class.  Or….two friends getting to know their differences. Hound might want to put a camera in Kim’s mouth later.

She would have to let him, if he asked. Fair was fair.

She would darn well brush and floss before opening up for any cameras.

And then she was running a single finger along the ridge of a closed beak. It was hard and sharp and slick and dry. Hound shifted, opened wider. There was a bigger beak a bit down the ‘throat.’

The tiny filaments reached up and squirmed against her hand. They weren’t long enough to twine around her fingers, but they tugged and pushed insistently, dragging one of her fingers over the sensor.

The sensor was soft. “This is differentiated protomatter,” Kim breathed.

“Almost every component, yes,” Fixit said. “Protoform parts are quite different from armor.”

She started to pull her hand back. The tiny threads somehow tugged and pulled against her. Well. She was not going to jerk her hand away. “So…how do I taste?” She didn’t sound nervous at all.

HAZARDOUS. THERE ARE THREE CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS THAT WOULD BE HIGHLY TOXIC IF INGESTED.

Fixit tisked. “Your sensitivity is set too low. Humans contain forty-three substances that would be toxic if consumed.”

Around the deeper, larger beak a ring of…they looked a little like short linguini. As she watched, they uncoiled and wiggled. “Are we seriously having the conversation where aliens explain why they won’t eat me?” Kim wondered if that was funny.

There was a pause. Fixit looked away. “The sparklings have been going on about how humans and mecha both take in fuel and materials. They are obsessed with the similarities and differences. Everyone is finding it disturbing.”

IT IS THE HOLIDAYS.

“What?” Kim said. The stubby linguini tongues were standing straight up now.

THE TWO FOOD CELEBRATIONS. Kim shook her head. THE SUCROSE HOLIDAY AND THE SACRIFICE OF THE UNPARDONED BIRDS.

Halloween and Thanksgiving.

AND FOR A WHILE, FIXIT WAS EGGING THEM ON BY DISCUSSING HIS FOOD RESEARCH.

“I have apologized for that,” Fixit said defensively. “Enough playing with Kim’s servo.  You must finish the portion.”

“Why are those at the back standing up?” Kim began to ease her hand back.

A REFLEX. EXPULSION OF TOXIC MATERIAL. DO NOT PERCEIVE IT AS REJECTION. IT IS AN AUTOMATED SYSTEM.

Kim’s fingertips seemed to tingle a little as she pulled them back. She took a step away and leaned into Hound’s shoulder. She tried to look calm and encouraging as—one at a time—Fixit fed the compound maw bites of energon.

It was a slow process, but refueling generally wasn’t fast.

Casually, Kim sent Fixit a text request for Hound’s telemetry.  The spark graph, of course, was too complex to read, but the variance was under three percent, so although he showing some stress, he wasn’t in trouble.

Kim rubbed her hands together to work up some heat and reached a little closer to the infrared sensor.

THIS WAS WHY I WANTED YOU. NOT BECAUSE YOU UNDERSTAND. BECAUSE YOU WILL COME TRY WHEN YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND. MERCY RATHER THAN VOID.

Kim firmly patted his shoulder armor. He would only detect the vibration, bit it was something. “It’s my job to understand. And when you feel better, we are going to have long talks where you explain lots of things.” She frowned. Hesitated for a moment. Climbed up onto his chest plating. “You know what? I can’t feel whatever is going on consciously, but humans—when a mech they love is hurt, this is where humans go. They get as close as they can to the spark chamber. I’ve seen both Mearing and Raf climb onto Bee this way. Miko seems to be asleep on Bulkhead right now. When Ironhide was getting his nanite transplants, this is where Bobby sat on all of his breaks.” Where was the right spot? There were shallow gouges in his paint job, but they wouldn’t be sore—armor wasn’t wired for pain. Kim ran a hand lightly over the roughened metal, found a spot just below the cervical plating that seemed to be right, scooted over it, and sat tailor-style. “You don’t have to do anything. We’ll just be here.”

Fixit continued the refueling.  There were five more beads to go.  Each was neatly popped and the life-giving fluid slurped away.  It was a breathtakingly elegant system.

Kim got a video message. She tapped it open—

Oh.

That was what a scraplet looked like. Jaws and teeth with legs and curved wings like a beetle. “Slag,” Kim breathed. It was a rear-camera view. The thing was chasing after the camera. And then there were a bunch of them. “They look… so small.”

“A scraplet masses less than Max,” Fixit said. “They have a much higher density, of course.”

The video ended in a leap and a flash of teeth.

“Wait. Humans fight those things? Humans?”

HUMANS WITH IMPROVISED WEAPONS AND NO TRAINING.

“Dang. Just… oh, man.” Don’t keep going on about how horrible the monsters that tried to eat him were. Kim ran her finger along a deep scrape.  “Should I be jelling you?” she asked.

“We are concentrating on the internal damage first.  In a few days, you may work on his exterior.” 

Ratchet came over then. He was still listed as “off duty,” and Kim briefly considered ratting him out. But she needed his goodwill, and he would do what he wanted anyway, so she didn’t open her phone but only scooted out of the way as he popped a line into one of Hound’s medical ports and got to work.

***

After a long, miserable weekend, Monday morning was nearly normal.  The resident humans crowded into the kitchen for breakfast, darting around each other for cups or counter space or the stove. Dr. Nomura made tidy portions of scrambled eggs for everyone. Maggie sliced up a melon. Carly unpacked some left-over stuffing and offered it around, but it wasn’t popular at breakfast.

 Even Chip had emerged from his cave to pick at coffee and eggs.  He was stiff and unsmiling. And pale. Kim wondered where the line was and if she should be pressuring him to go see a doctor.  “So….” She began.  And regrated it, because she had no follow-up.  “Taking another day?”

“I’m taking the kids up to the mesa later and explaining Christmas again.” That did warrant a brief, wry smile.

“They can wait.” Kim lowered her voice. “If you need more time—”

“I haven’t seen the sun since last week.”

“Yeah. Good point. Good point. But the kids—you’ve already had this conversation twice.  I’ve had it once. Mearing started it and she invented explaining weird Earth shit to ‘Bots.”

“If I can do this, I’ll legitimately be the best linguist in the world. Well. Most accomplished linguist.” It was a joke—and it was funny—and it was cleverly layered in poignancy, because the US government would not relent and let Optimus hire the best linguist in the world, and that sucked—but the smile didn’t quite reach Chip’s eyes.

“Okay,” Kim said. “Compelling argument. Counterpoint though: You now make an absurd amount of money and you aren’t paying for rent or utilities, so you could afford a weekend at a fancy spa anywhere in the world.”

His jaw dropped open. “I could,” he whispered. “Have you done it?”

“No,” Kim said. “I’ll get around to it.”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“Research project, then.”

Kim had to hurry off. Fowler had called an early meeting about the scraplets. Now that they’d been found on Earth, he’d been put in charge of ensuring 1) that humans wouldn’t find any more, 2) that if humans did find some, they didn’t revive, reverse engineer, or identify them as alien, and 3) make sure that two hadn’t already happened somewhere.

It would have been a disturbing meeting, but Fowler was an old hand at digging into human secrets and lying about alien invaders. His questions were spare and precise. The answers Optimus and Arcee gave were technical but clear. 

She made it back in time to catch most of Bulkhead’s surgery. A new regulator core for his secondary energon pump had been molecularly grown in Ratchet’s parts incubator. The mechanism was smaller than one of Kim’s fingernails and delicately lacy-looking.

Installing it involved opening Bulkhead up so deeply that the human scrub team had to wear masks so the condensation of their breath wouldn’t introduce moisture into the power system.  Kim stayed on the shelf, well out of the way.

The surgery itself was only the beginning of the recovery. Ratchet had replaced the worst of the damaged lines and valves on Sunday; a slow, tedious job that Kim had also watched from the shelf, holding Miko’s hand.  That had been awful, actually. The kid had cried twice and cursed Kim out once, although she kept it together enough not to try to climb down (which would have led to her immediate removal from the infirmary). 

At least Miko wasn’t here today. Yet. By the time school was out, Bulkhead should be awake. That might be a good thing.

In the good times, before the war, the standard practice was to keep cognitive processors offline during big self-repairs. There had been externals, then, to direct the nanite repair colonies. Even without central direction, nanites could repair almost anything. Eventually. But the refugees on Earth didn’t have the resources to manage the repairs externally or the time to wait for things to happen on their own. Convalescents frequently cycled in and out of recharge instead of just remaining peacefully dormant.

When the manual repair was finished, Ratchet disengaged his medical line and yielded his place to Wheeljack, who snapped in to wake Bulkhead up. Optics focusing slowly, he stammered a Cybertronix request for a sitrep. Before Wheeljack could answer, he switched to English and murmured, “Scrap, that’s a lot of errors. Why are all my system pressures low?” He started to move.

Wheeljack planted a servo on his shoulder and pinned him to the berth. “You’re integrating new parts. We can bring you up to fifty percent power in a couple of orns.”

“Fuck the orbital watchtower,” he said in English. It was a hybridism Kim hadn’t seen before and she was momentarily distracted while she wrote it down to tell Chip later.  “Can I see Miko? Where’s Miko?”

“Miko’s at school, because it’s Monday. Arcee is bringing the kids in as soon as they get free.”

“Monday?” And then, “My logs are messed up.”

“Yeah, you probably need to run some defragmentation apps.”

Ratchet, meanwhile, was setting up for the next surgery—replacing the armor plating on Hound’s helm.  Armor and sensors weren’t protoform parts. They weren’t deep. They were damaged often enough that Ratchet kept finished parts and components in stock. The procedure was slated to take two hours only because Ratchet was going to slow things down by explaining to his human students as he went.

In a couple of days, he’d be ready to attach and re-calibrate the new antennae.

While Ratchet laid out the equipment, the humans took a lunch break. Despite his impatience with human frailty, Ratchet was careful to leave gaps in the schedule for things like eating and elimination. Carly took a tuna kit—the kind with the mayo in a tube—out of her backpack and climbed up onto the shelf.

“You good, Kim?”

“Yeah, sure!  I mean, I can’t follow most of it anymore, but I don’t need to. And the notes are feeling repetitive. But that’s just patterns, right? It’s all good.”

Carly sat down on the edge with her feet hanging over. “I didn’t quite mean that. The scraplets hurt some of our people pretty badly. Pierre barely leaves Ratchet long enough to sleep. You’re hovering over Hound. Bee’s going to be fine, except he doesn’t play Beatles music to say ‘hi’ when he sees me since it happened. Ironhide wasn’t even here, and he’s running security checks every ninety minutes around the clock.”

“Wait. That isn’t enough consecutive down time for maintenance.”

“No, it is not.” She opened a bottle of water and sucked down a long swallow. “Bobby and I are going to have an intervention.”

“Oh. Good.” Kim took out a granola bar and some water so she could eat socially.

“So?”

Kim blinked. “So? Oh.” She glanced over at the berth where Hound and Mirage were talking softly. “Hound is…very brave.”

“Oh, no question. I’m not sure I’d let student-nurse aliens operate on me less than an hour after crashing on their planet and meeting them.”

“Yeah. Anyway.” Softly, softly, mecha had amazing hearing. “He was supposed to be my ride home Friday. And…he asked for me. And I couldn’t come. I wasn’t allowed to come. Because I am known to be squeamish.”

Carly mixed tuna and mayo with a tiny spoon in the plastic cup. “Well. Yeah. Humans are kind of squeamish. My uncle, he was in this motorcycle accident, almost ripped his leg off. They wouldn’t let the family in to see him until he wasn’t spraying blood everywhere and they’d fixed the bits of bone sticking out.”

“Oh, man!” Kim said. “Is he—”

“Got a metal femur now. He’s practically a cyborg. It was years ago. Anyway, humans don’t have combat protocols to engage so we don’t freak out during emergencies. Well, we do, I guess. But they’re not nearly as well designed. And we don’t have parallel tracks of thought. A mech can freak out while staying calm. There’s a trick to it, apparently.”

“You handle it,” Kim said enviously.

Carly rolled her eyes. “When I did the math and realized how fast Ironhide’s repair colony was cratering, I ran into the bathroom and cried for twenty minutes.”

“Oh.” That was true.

Industriously, Carly began tucking away her lunch, one eye on her phone.  She was cycling through mech telemetry reports. After checking four, she looked up again. “He was leading the parasites away from Ratchet, you know. He made himself bait. Several times. He kept coming back to draw them away so Ratchet could fix the Bridge.  It was the last trip that they got him.”

Kim watched Hound’s procedure from the shelf. The usual routine where she sat on a table and chatted with the patient wasn’t needed this time.  For the first phase, Hound’s cognitive processors were offline, and after that he was participating in tests on the sensor nodes. And, anyway, Mirage was right there. Kim mainly watched the spark graph on the big screen.  It was more reassuring than watching Ratchet tinker with layers of plating. The diagram was adapted for human vision, so it was color coded and exploded into three layers. And looked pretty even. According to the numbers underneath, Hound was doing fine: minimal variance, perfect electropulse. He was okay.

***

On her way up to the mesa she finished the granola bar she’d abandoned at lunch.  Grabbing a sandwich on the way up would have been nice, but Fixit was cooking for the humans again, and Kim wasn’t going to insult him by not being hungry.

It was cool and dim outside—the sun was already down. Optimus was in alt at the edge of the mesa, outlined by the last of the light. Kim thumped him soundly across the trailer mount as she passed. Hitting hard enough to make her own hand sting barely created a vibration he would notice. But, of course, he would have been tracking her from the moment she got out of the elevator.

The driver side door softly clicked open. The cab was slightly warmer than outside, a thoughtful touch she appreciated. “How is the hunt for more scraplets going?” she asked.

“Windblade has found twenty more, along with the remains of an escape pod, a couple of miles from the original location.”

Kim winced. “Viable?”

“Not for much longer. As each is collected, its primary processor is slagged with a laser. The remains will be brought to the infirmary tomorrow so that the NEST strike teams can dissect them.” He sounded very satisfied about this.

“You’re going to bring, like, fifty commandos into Ratchet’s infirmary and have them disassemble things? In Ratchet’s actual infirmary?”

“He is looking forward to it.  The humans will bring their own tables and tools of course. Ratchet will demonstrate the technique and point out the weapons and vulnerabilities of the….The word I want does not translate.  The lexicon offers ‘vermin,’ but vermin are alive. A scraplet has no spark. It replicates, but has no life.”

“Virus,” Kim whispered.

“You will participate as well.”

“I wouldn’t miss it! Are you kidding?  Ratchet’s infirmary full of soldiers breaking things on purpose.”

“No. You will not observe this exercise. You will learn the structure and vulnerabilities of this parasite. A scraplet has no soul, but it has a processor equal to the most effective learning machine currently made by humans. Given a chance, they will come to recognize humans as a threat. Although it is unlikely, it is possible you may someday have to fight one. You will be prepared.”

Kim nodded meekly. “Okay.”

The discussion seemed to end there. There was  a long silence after that. Kim brushed her hand along the hula-dancer interface.  “Shall we work tonight?” She asked.

“Yes. It has been six days.”

“Hard question or easy question?”

“Hard question. Please.”

Kim took a deep breath. She had been saving this one. “What does atheist mean? For Cybertronians?”

“The term is not very nuanced in English.”

“Most terms aren’t."

The word he said seemed to be mostly Ts and vowels Kim couldn’t differentiate. “Can I have—” the word appeared on her phone.

”It means to conclude that Primus is dead, and has been for a long time. We as a people lost both morality and mercy in his absence, and that is why our society degenerated into…predation and cruelty.”

“Oh.”

“In the years before the war began, Megatron was a great proponent of this position. He believed we must find and enact a moral life in the absence of God.”

“That’s…hard.” Not believing that there had never been a god at all.  Being quite certain, in fact, that Primus must have existed, because mechanical life—unlike biological life—could not have evolved.  Life on Cybertron had been created, presumably for some purpose. Hopefully for some purpose.  But Primus had been silent for so long….

“It is hard. And impractical. Megatron demanded absolute justice. He demanded those who had behaved cruelly be punished in proportion to their evil. This demand was fair….but we would not have become a moral society by forcing the most privileged forty percent of our people to fight to the death with brutal and inefficient weapons in the arena until only one survived.” Oooo. Kim winced. Mecha were really bad at atheism.  Lack of practice, perhaps. Or lack of intuition.

Optimus continued, “But application aside, I believe the premise to be in error. Before Vector Sigma was sealed and placed beyond Megatron’s reach, the First of Line were still interfacing intimately. They assure me that at that time, up until the end, Cybertron was not a dead husk.”

Kim thought about that. “Chromia and Windblade,” she offered.

“Windblade did not have the opportunity, no. She is the youngest still remaining. But the others, Chromia among them. Yes. I do not doubt Chromia. Or Alpha Trion. Or Alita. However, there is another philosophical position we gloss as atheist in English. This is the position held by Hound: that Primus still lives, he simply does not care. That no amount of suffering or destruction or cruelty would ever bring him to care, to correct the guilty, or show even a small amount of mercy.”

“Hound was a priest,” Kim said.

“He was in service at the Temple of The Cube.”

“And The Cube didn’t care what was done with the sparklings he generated,” Kim tried—briefly—not to feel horrible about this. She had been told about the last Prime to wield the Allspark. Poor Hound, caught between loyalty and compassion.

“Not he. It,” Optimus corrected. “The Cube had no sentient awareness. It was not a peripheral of Primus. It was a living device created by Primus.  Assuming our dogma is correct.  It had data storage, but no true processor. It made no choices. Made no decisions. Understood nothing of morality or suffering—or anything else. It was a blessing of infinite worth, misused over and over again. Desecrated. And Primus permitted this desecration. Do you understand?”

“Oh. Probably not.” Or rather, she hoped not. It sounded awful. “I promise I respect it.” Anthropologists did not normally encounter the divine themselves. They certainly never published about it on the rare occasions it happened, but she had been in the right room to hear the stories once at the national convention. But professional humility could substitute for personal experience, and she planned to rely on that. “I would even if I hadn’t seen the Matrix create babies. Sparklings.”

“The Matrix is quite different. It is not only a generator of life-to-come, but a repository of souls that have passed. A font of wisdom from the worthy Primes who came before. It is not one, but many, and those many are not anchored in either time or sensation.”

“So…not helpful?”

“Perhaps I do not ask the right questions. Perhaps I am too impatient. Perhaps I do not have the intelligence to understand.”

Kim leaned in to the hula dancer. “Faith in your brilliance,” she whispered.

“How shall I answer that? Would ‘faith in your persistence’ bring you encouragement, beloved?”

“It’s lovely.” She tapped her fingers along the statue base. “Can I ask you a mechanical question?”

“I presume I will know the answer,” he said, clicking softly.

“Those feather-frond things….? Why? What do they pick up? And everybody had tactile pads and EM sensors and nose-wands to sniff things. What do the feathers pick up?”

“They are very high-end upgrades,” he said. “Unnecessary for normal operations.  They offer very sensitive chemical and tactile analysis, processed by a node in the base, so that a neat composite stream of evaluation—rather than raw data—is transmitted along the bus. They were initially developed for advanced gas analysis.”

One had popped out of Sundoor’s helm, and Mirage had  shown one on Friday. Kim might have seen one on Drift, once, but she’d assumed it was a decoration. Even by mech standards, Drift was extravagantly beautiful. “That’s interesting.  Do you have one?”

“I had a set. It was destroyed, and it seemed…vanity to invest the resources to replace it.  Building one would take four orns in the molecular assembler. I could grow one out of protomatter, but maintaining my weapons systems is expensive. Perhaps after the war.”

“That would be nice,” Kim said. After the war would be nice, if they could manage it.

“There were art forms—installations of texture and smell—that were built to be experienced with plumes.” He sighed. “I saved up to get the upgrade when I was still a junior librarian in the Iacon Records Hall.  It took three earth years.”

“Damn.”

“A change of subject, perhaps?” He suggested. “Your choice.”

“Sure. What’s with the orbital watchtower?”

“What orbital watchtower?” he asked innocently.

“The one that gets cussed about so much.  It must have done something terrible.”

“It is metaphorical.”

“Huh. What’s the metaphor?”

“It doesn’t quite translate.”

Kim smothered a smile. “Indeed,” she said mildly. “So many things don’t.  How does it translate…generally?”

“Are there no terms in English you would be reluctant to discuss with me?”

Reluctant. May…be?  Yeah. There was nothing she wouldn’t tell him, though, if he asked. Quite a few things had broken her heart to explain.

But…maybe she didn’t know what she was asking. And, to be fair, she was glad she didn’t have to explain some of the truly awful slurs humans used for each other. He had Urban Dictionary for that.  

“Relenting,” Kim said softly.

“My thanks, beloved.”

She dug out her phone and sent a glyph for “Flow.”

“You have a collective meal starting in nine minutes.”

“Oh,” Kim said. “How nice.” She checked her bag to make sure nothing had fallen out.

“How is Fixit’s experimentation with human dietary requirements progressing?”

Kim sighed. How could she even describe it?  A couple of weeks before, Fixit had made a ‘traditional’ meal for the humans with courses— salmon mousse, shrimp in aspic, split pea soup, creamed spinach, chicken ala king, and baked Alaska for dessert.

For an alien who had never eaten…it had been a good try. Impressive, really. Fixit was a genius. The salmon mousse had weirded Carly and Bobby out (mousse was chocolate, or, if you were being exotic, strawberry) but Dr. Nomura had taken their share when Fixit wasn’t looking, so that was fine.  The salad course—in the name of Primus, what 1950s cookbook had convinced Fixit that shrimp in beef jello was a salad? It got worse from there.  Maggie was trying to eat less meat, so bacon bits had been substituted for bacon in the pea soup. Likewise, the chicken ala king was tofu. For health reasons, Fixit had omitted the sugar in the dessert; it was not a nutritional necessity, after all.

The creamed spinach had been fantastic. Kim had asked for seconds on that, which handily gave her an excuse to abandon the baked Alaska after the second bite. But. Kim was an anthropologist. In the field, you ate what your informants fed you, without complaining. That was the job. So, she had gotten almost everything down.

The fake-bacon pea soup had been a hard go, though.  Kim had not been ready for something so frankly awful.

Fixit’s second foray into dinner—Tuesday night, before everyone had gone home for Thanksgiving on Wednesday-- had been lobster rolls, and he had followed the recipe exactly.   While everyone was telling him it was delicious it was (it was, actually.  Kim had not had one before—when she’d lived in Boston they had been way out of her budget) Carly had kindly mentioned that he didn’t have to stress out and make the most fashionable, cutting-edge food or the most traditional food or the most fancy food. Humans were happy eating regular, unfancy food too.

Apparently, Fixit had eagerly followed the advice and searched out cuisine that was less trendy.  He’d downloaded cookbooks. He’d hacked the DFAC from the inside and worked out how to add his own ingredients to the normal shipments. They were having vegetarian lasagna for dinner.

“It will probably be fine,” Kim said.

***

She’d been reluctant to leave the mesa, and barely made it to the table as everyone was sitting down.  The resident humans were there, along with Bobby and Dr. Nomura and—this time—June and Jack. The lasagna smelled normal. Kim was cautiously optimistic.

“Hi, everybody. Didn’t Miko stay?”

There was a brief pause and much glancing around. Carly scowled. “She yelled at everybody and stormed off when Bulkhead powered down to run a system defrag. She said she’d get a ride home with her host father.”

“Why? Did something happen?”

Fixit, setting plates of lasagna and salad (normal lettuce, Kim was happy to see) in front of Bobby and June, said, “She is impatient with the speed of his recovery.”

June took a breath to speak, paused, and shook her head.

Kim looked at the medical team. Obviously, they had all seen the…tantrum? Break down? “What?”

It was Bobby who answered. “Bulkhead is on reduced power, and most of what he’s got has to be directed to repairs. He can’t play video games or do karaoke or go on patrol. Or even recreational off-roading. And Miko doesn’t understand. Why can’t we just fix him?”

“We did fix him!” June snapped. Carly reached around Jack and patted her shoulder. June sighed. “Kim in human terms, the equivalent…Bulkhead had a major component failure in his power system, and he lost twenty feet of energon line. In a human, that would be like we had to remove five or six feet of his small intestine. Oh. And, we had to put a new valve and a pacemaker in his heart. In a human…this much alteration would be major and life changing with a long recovery. And a human would never completely…absorb the replacement parts.”

Dr. Nomura nodded sadly. “The ‘new’ regulator we implanted is a scaffold, not a complete part. It will guide his protomatter into building a perfect, integrated, living regulator. In a few weeks Bulkhead will be in perfect health. For Lt. Darby and myself, who have had so many patients make…incomplete recoveries, Miko’s impatience at the recuperation time seems profoundly misguided. But, of course, Miko is only afraid. She has come to rely on Bulkhead’s strength. To see him unable to even rise from the bed….” He shook his head.  “The weakness of this moment is hard enough to come to terms with. But she must also face that Bulkhead—like all organisms—is a mortal being. She is young. It may be the first time she has faced this.”

“That is absolutely not a reason to be mean to everybody trying to help him,” Carly said.

“It is a reason. It is not an excuse,” he said. “She will learn from experience.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Carly protested. “You can’t just win all the arguments with being old.”

A small smile. “Fixit is the only person in the room older than I am.  If he disagrees, I will concede.”

Fixit was setting the last plates in front of Kim and Maggie. He said, “Loving others can be frightening and painful.  Bulkhead is much happier since meeting Miko. But you must make her understand that he will exert himself if she demands it. Attempting to speed up the repair or divert his limited resources from the integration may cause errors in the component. If we must start over, Bulkhead’s debility and suffering will be increased, and Ratchet will be very angry at the waste of time and resources.”

“I’ll talk to her tomorrow after school,” Jack said meekly.

That appeared to settle it. Kim silently wished Jack luck. And then, since she could not put it off any longer, she tasted the lasagna.

It was…normal.  Kind of spinichy. And, perhaps, not as much cheese as Kim would have liked. But she had eaten many frozen dinners that were much worse.  Relieved, she took a bigger bite.

***

Spent most of yesterday getting a run-down on different job categories for Cybertronians before the War (see 12/3 notes).  Interestingly, there was is was a category ‘homemaker.’ Not housekeeper, they had that too. A team had to be fairly prosperous to have one, and it was usually a friend who wasn’t equipped to do whatever job the rest of the team were doing and/or really hated it. But there was lots to do, and if the team could afford it, it was a huge benefit to efficiency.  And more comfortable for everyone.

What the homemaker did is still unclear. Obviously not cook. Cleaning was managed mostly with drones. Although a big group would need someone to organize the drones. 

There seems to be some kind of weird data analysis or archiving involved, but whatever it is, Hound can’t explain it just using text.  I’m looking forward to the vocalizer peripherals being fully functional.

*

Well, shit.  Last night Carly asked what was a good gift for a mech for Christmas.

We’re up a creek here. Even if they were human and needed stuff like scarves or ties or bath bombs, they all draw a very nice dividend from their patents. If they want a thing, they can buy it.

We went to talk to Maggie. She has already bought Fixit a 1931 first edition of the Joy of Cooking. It was absurdly expensive and very hard to find.

I am skewered with envy. Why doesn’t Optimus have an absurd hobby I can indulge?

*

Before breakfast on Tuesday, Chip had a ‘linguistic interview’ with Optimus. I know this, because Chip turns in a weekly summary of what he’s doing. Optimus asked him about how talking points are organized in English; reading a meal as text (he struggles a little with Mary Douglas); how many words dogs, elephants, and dolphins are able to learn;  whether criticisms of Deborah Tannen’s work are justified; the use of puns in country music; and ambivalence in Carly Simon songs about marriage.

Well scrap!

! ! !

No, I am not ambivalent about marriage. Marriage is a social construction anyway, like monarchy, money, talk-like-a-pirate day, and the all you can eat buffet.  All the ways we do things is just how we agree to do them, and what can be invented can be changed.  We can rewrite the rules until the rules work.

I really should not have dodged that question. We’re  going to have to talk about this. I’ll probably wind up accidentlly proposing again.

*

So according to Slipstream, Springer convinced Arcee to give interfacing a shot. It did not go well. They are currently not speaking. If there are more details to be had, he is not sharing them with me.  Reminder: ask Chip what he’s heard.

*

So I made a mistake not including Miko, Bulkhead, and Wheeljack in my sample.  I’m now going to have to justify putting Miko into the sample, because she is a child, and the thought is going to completely freak out some humans (assuming anyone ever reads this) even though nothing about it is ‘sexual.’

Mecha have mentoring as a category of relationships. But they don’t see a difference between Miko’s 15 and Carly’s 20. Five years is so little time to them. And Miko isn’t going to get taller. And she isn’t their Student, she’s their crony for sneaking off and getting into trouble with.

And---because they have no libido  nothing a human would recognize as a libido I don’t even feel horrified that what they do have a drive to do is race each other at dangerously high speeds and climb fifty degree slopes in alt. Are these things objectively less dangerous than a pair of teenagers sneaking off to lovers’ lane?

Of course, teenage boys don’t come with safety features, and Bulkhead reformatted his alt like a race-car cage when he started doing missions with humans. Inside Bulkhead or Wheeljack is probably one of the safest places on the planet.

So, anyway, Wheeljack has—because Miko not only has the soul of a Wrecker, apparently, but the competence of a Wrecker—petitioned Springer to make her a full member. And Springer—because a scraplet kill-count of forty-nine when armed with a fire extinguisher and a bar of raw materials is impressive-- agreed.

Optimus got wind of it and called a halt because nobody can join the Wreckers without being released from their existing duty assignment. I had a wonderful moment of relief, because I assumed that Miko’s supervisors were her parents in Japan (whom we could not tell at all) or her host-parents on base (who knew Miko was hanging out with ‘Bots but were not crazy and would surely draw a line) but no.  Nope. Nope. Nope. As far as Optimus is concerned, the humans on base who are not in the military are my responsibility.

And I’m, like, fuck no!  Because one thing I know about Wreckers is, if you join you can’t take any other titles, ever, and they honor that even after they leave. And Miko is fifteen and that is too young to decide she is never going to be a Mrs. or a Dr. or a “Capitan Nakadai” or a “Madam Prime Minister,” her brain isn’t finished yet. No.

Miko is outraged. Understandably. Being a Wrecker is way better than being Prime Minister. Bulkhead is sad. Wheeljack is still looking for an angle. Yesterday, he pointed out that since some physicians had become Wreckers and kept that status-indicator, there was precedent for exceptions to the custom.

And I’m like “Listen, you fucking idiot, if you make her a Wrecker she’ll want to go with you on combat missions and she is a child! She isn’t even allowed to purchase a ranged weapon or join the military, and you can wait.” Belatedly I realize it would have carried more weight if I’d called him a ‘stupid glitch.’

And Miko is barely holding it together anyway, because it’s been over two weeks and Bulkhead is still so weak. He got cleared for a trip to the target range yesterday. He never topped thirty-five on the way out, and he was still so winded when he got there he couldn’t charge up his weapons’ capacitors.   Ironhide (who was babysitting them instead of Wheeljack because Ironhide knows what ‘prudence’ means) distracted Miko with some spectacular explosions.

Carly and Fixit had been monitoring the whole trip on telemetry. The rest at the weapons range wasn’t enough, and Bulkhead’s spark variance was up two percent by the time they got back. He’d gone into λλλλ but he hadn’t asked Hide for a tow or even dropped speed because it would have scared Miko, even when Fixit told him over radio to stop being an idiot.

So when the group returned, Carly and Arcee hauled Miko up the tunnel for a little talk.

Bulkhead freaked out and tried to follow, but Fixit and Ironhide boxed him in. He apologized five times for being stupid and promised not to push himself, he’d stay on the berth for the next two weeks if they’d leave Miko alone.

Miko came back and meekly apologized.  Apparently, they had showed her a projection of how the integration of the regulator was progressing, including the technical details of protomatter and nanite repair, how the new regulator would be perfected down to the molecule, how they couldn’t see from the outside how Bulkhead was healing, but he was, and very soon, he’d be cleared for light duty. If his protomatter and spark weren’t strained—and on that point, if she allowed him to overexert his power system again, she was banned from visiting.

This is third hand—I have the story from Fixit.

And then Ironhide picked up Miko and set her on Bulkhead’s chest, and then finally his spark popped into a normal pattern.

So, yeah, the range of Intimacy between humans and Autobots includes whatever it is Miko has with her partners.

They want to make a human a Wrecker—the most deadly set of commandos on either side of a three thousand year war-- and they have made the case that a fifteen year old girl is worthy.

She is due to return to Japan in May. By then, she will be four years away from 20 (adulthood in Japan), which is not a long time for a Bot. But is a long time for a human. And frankly, if I were Miko, I’d run away.  Bulkhead will not be able  to resist when she tells him to come get her. Wheeljack will not even try to resist.

We are going to have to figure something out.

*

I need to talk to Guillermo Mearing. Apparently, he’s been observing human-mech relations for, like, thirty years. Of course, he isn’t here a lot. And even if I got an interview, how would I ask about this?

*

Optimus is really struggling with parenthood. None of the mecha present have any training for caring for the newly sparked, we don’t have the facilities for doing it the usual way anyway, and none of them ever had close parental figures at this age, so they don’t even have a model for how it might work.

Sundoor does have experience as an educator. The students she worked with were more than two Earth-years old, much better at handling complex data, and much less socially demanding than Hot Rod and Serenity. Like everyone else, she worships these children. Like everyone else, she is baffled about how to raise them.

June and Will and Dr. No, the parents most steadily in ‘Bot country, have become special projects of hers. She questions them at every opportunity, wanting to know every detail, every worry of human parenthood. Most of what she learns is in no way applicable to mech experience. June thinks she is just seeking reassurance that children can be raised successfully, even in the hardships and chaos of Earth.

I don’t know if I should be worried about the children. Does it hurt them to spend so much time with humans? Hot Rod spends every moment he can with Chip or Jack.  Serenity loves everyone, but she communicates that feeling tactically. She doesn’t step up to overlap, she hugs. Gently, in the case of humans.

Maybe this will work out. I have to believe that children who have their needs met and feel safe and have good relations with adults will turn out okay.

*

It occurs to me that the absurd hobby Optimus has might be me. I hope he finds me as fun as Fixit finds cooking.

I’m going to suggest we celebrate the holiday by giving each other a day. Probably it will be a day also spent on patrol, but that’s fine. And it can’t be actually on Christmas because too many people are taking that day off and after the disaster of the last holiday, we neither one of us wants to let out guard down.

~TBC

Chapter Text

The watering of the trees was a daily ritual. It would be an hourly ritual, if the sparklings had had their way, but Optimus pointed out that the cycles of Earth life were matched to the planet’s rotation. He was persuasive, and tree maintenance was an afternoon activity.

A Norfolk Island pine tree for Seri had been set on the balcony beside Hot Rod’s potted palm, and both trees had been decorated with lights and garland.  The sun lamps were on a timer.  The water was carefully filtered and supplemented with minerals.

Every afternoon, the sparklings extruded a probe and pushed it into the soil. They checked the moisture, temperature, PH, and microbes. Then they conversed about tree needs and appropriate action. It was adorable. Kim looked forward to it.  June and Bobby scheduled their breaks—as much as they could-- to coincide with tree maintenance.

It was only Kim and Chip there—because everyone else on base was preparing for the children’s holiday party—when Seri said, “Some humans kill the tree before bringing it in.”

“Yes,” Kim said.

“Why is our tree still rooted?”

Kim opened her mouth to say that they had been going to get Seri a living tree to care for anyway when her brother answered, “It’s wrong for mecha to kill Earth life. Only Earth life should kill Earth life.”

While Kim was still thinking, Oh, dear, Chip said, “Not at all. There may come a day when you need to remove or prune a tree. Or other Earth life. But humans don’t do that when they are two months old. It takes a lot of experience before beings can make decisions for other life. And even then, we often do a bad job of it.  Right now, you are learning about two kinds of tree. That is just the start.”

Hot Rod perked up. “I want a pet chicken,” he said.

Kim winced inwardly, although she had no doubt that the sparklings would be diligent about cleaning up the chicken poop. “Finish up here, we need to go to the party.”

The holiday party on Dec 22 was the result of long negotiations and a grand compromise. The babies had found out about Christmas shopping, Santa Claus, church programs, Christmas tree lightings, and concerts. Optimus, knowing that none of this was appropriate for his baby extraterrestrials, had been beside himself over not being able to remedy their disappointment.

General Morshower—who made a point of coming down to check in with the sparklings every few days—had stepped in with the tight, US Army organization that always took Kim’s breath away (when she could spare enough attention from the aliens she was studying to notice it.)

There would be a party. Of course, there would. It would be in the assembly area of Building B (which was much nicer than building E).  It would not be a mech party—mecha did not have Christmas, after all. It would be a human party, with human children present.

That last had been what most of the negotiations were about. Mr. Keller had had kittens when he found out what NEST wanted to do. The sparklings knew Miko and Jack and Raf. Surely that was all the peer socialization they needed. Other children could not be brought in on the secret!

The general held his position: the alien refugee babies had asked to participate in human customs and he would not reject them.

The compromise was that most of the human children at the party—and they would all be the children of base personnel, living in family housing or in Jasper—would be told that the mecha were prototype rescue robots. Their parents would know better. The human residents of ‘Bot country would be there for support. Sundoor and Fixit would also attend to help keep an eye on things.

Optimus had expressed reluctance for the children to disguise themselves as ‘unliving clockwork mechanisms,’ but Fixit had humbly offered the suggestion that perhaps the Prime had not had time to examine the Human literature on cosplay and that he, himself, had greatly enjoyed the day he spent disguised as a primitive drone.

So the party was on. There would be a visit from Santa (or, as Seri and Hot Rod understood it, a Santa surrogate leading a benevolence ritual), craft tables where kids (or adults or baby mecha) could make ornaments from paper and glitter glue, a tree to decorate, and Sergeant Novak to tell Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule, and Kwanzaa stories.

Kim had spent the last three days envisioning what might go wrong. She was still envisioning it when they went down the steps to Ratchet, who had come to give them a ride in his alt.

The huge Building B training room had been decorated with garlands and a couple inflatable snowmen. There was a tree—artificial, lighted, but not decorated. There were more craft tables than Kim had been expecting, and also more people. There must have been seventy people present, and adults outnumbered children.

Carly and Bobby were waiting at the door wearing community college robotics club T-shirts and carrying tablet computers. They looked very official, walking the sparklings in.  Sundoor, followed by Dr. Nomura (who actually was a roboticist, so he must look the part in black slacks and a light green button-down shirt) with a tablet, would be the supervising ‘Bot on site. She had blanked her colors to grey with red stripes and reflective tape accents. She still looked far too nice to pass as Earth technology, but, of course, all the Human adults already knew who she was.

When the sparklings arrived, the human children were gathered around a motionless Sundoor, asking Dr. Nomura questions. He seemed every bit the benevolent engineer showing off his new toy. Sundoor looked….passive. Except for one stubby EM sensor that was aimed at the door. It was rotating slowly.

Kim came in ahead of the kids, stepped to the side and looked back. In the doorway, Serenity began to vibrate.  Carly, coming behind her and pretending to look at the tablet, murmured, “Keep it together, Honey. I know you can do it.”

As the clump of children around Sundoor saw Seri, they pivoted and rushed over to this smaller, cuter robot. When they got close enough to actually block her path, she froze and announced, “I am a mark nine-thousand and ninety-six search and rescue artificial intelligence!”  She had been coached to drop her language pack, but, as in practice, the attempt failed. Instead of the flat emptiness of a mech doing a concept-for-concept translation from the lexicon, she built her sentences the usual way and then switched up the tone so the emphasis was in randomized places.

Kim had asked Ratchet about it.  He said Seri had integrated the Cybertronix and English language files at the same time and they were both tied directly to her core machine code.

While the children were laughing and cooing over the “Mark Nine-thousand and Ninety-six,” Hot Rod had crept through the door and was now pressed to the wall beside it, sensors half-retracted and optical lenses unfocused. Bobby stepped over and leaned down to whisper into his microphone.

Raf, who had been watching the other children from the side, snagged Jack’s hand and led him over to Hot Rod. Kim, worried now, stepped in behind them, blocking the view as much as she could.  Raf came in so close he was touching the silvery sparkling carapace, leaned up, and said firmly, “Do not be afraid. They are human children like me and Jack. This is okay. I promise to protect you.”

Hot Rod uncoiled an EM sensor and pushed it into the fabric of Raf’s Christmas vest.

“I can’t protect you from everything. But I can promise, you are safe here.”

The agreement chrrrip Hot Rod gave was ‘assent from subordinate to supervisor,’ not ‘agreement between equals.’ It was entirely possible that Hot Rod did not recognize Raf as another juvenile. She would have to remember to ask about that later. Not now. Now, Jack was leading Hot Rod in a slow circuit of the room, low-key and slow, pointing out the tree, the craft tables, the human snacks which must not be touched or probed because it was rude to handle things someone else would eat, the nice office chair draped with a green and red throw rug where Santa would sit….

Kim took a picture and texted it to Optimus. He had been right, bringing Jack Darby into this.

Bobby Epps followed behind, pretending to monitor Hot Rod from his tablet but instead—from the speed he was typing—answering a torrent of questions.

Across the room, Carly was explaining to the human kids that she wanted to see how Mark Nine-thousand could make a paper chain.

Well. That was popular.  There was a rush on the table as about fifteen kids raced to ‘teach’ the little robot how to cut and glue loops of paper.

Seri could handle paper—she had a drawing pad and fancy colored pencils at home—but the glue was new.  The weight of it changed the way the paper responded, and in no time her servos were smeared and sticky. Puzzled, she stretched out her human-ish metal fingers for Carly to wipe off.

Jack was at another table, showing Hot Rod how to make a reindeer out of pipe cleaners.

Kim looked around.  Most of the kids were snacking or making ornaments or staring at the cool robots.  The adults were clustered around the walls or sitting on folding chairs, watching very carefully, but almost relaxed. Was this a normal party?

Seri’s paper chain was growing slowly.  Hot Rod made two reindeer and then twisted a pipe cleaner into the shape of the glyph for ‘sharing.’

Chip had come to the party with a cane instead of his wheelchair. Kim wasn’t sure if this was something to worry about--or to what extent it was her business anyway. He filled a cup with punch and withdrew to the line of chairs around the edge.  Keeping her eyes on the sparklings, Kim worked her way over and sat down behind him. “The punch looks weird. What is it?”

“Sprite and peppermint ice cream.”

“Is it gross?”

“It’s…pleasant.”  He glanced at her wrist and then leaned in close to whisper, “You aren’t wearing your bracelet.”

Kim looked down.  Sighed. “Rats.” She took a pen out of her bag and wrote a little “E” on the back of her hand.

Very, very softly, he said, “So I won’t ask if you’re still having that little problem.”

“I…guess so? How much would I think about it without… interference?”

“What about dark  energon? Do you think about that?”

Kim made a face, whispered back, “That doesn’t get less interesting or alarming. Believe me.”

“Have you ever seen it?”

Kim watched Hot Rod and Jack trundle over to the tree to hang up the decorations they had made. “No, it’s too dangerous. We don’t find very much, and when we do, they transport it encased in lead.”

“Where do they store it?”

Kim turned to look at him.  His hair was getting a little long.  “I don’t know. Why?”

“Why?” he repeated blankly.

“Why? Why does it matter where it is? It’s toxic waste.” Kim winced. Toxic waste. “I suppose I hope it’s buried in an old salt mine somewhere.”

“I guess so.”

A cold thought occurred to her. She dismissed it. “You’ve never seen it, right?” she asked, just to make sure. “I mean—humans don’t go near that. It isn’t even safe for mecha.”

“No, I’ve never seen it.”

One of the smaller children—two? four? Five?—had walked up to Seri and said something. Seri turned to face her and folded down until their eyes were level. It was cute. It made Kim a little nervous. 

It should not make Kim nervous. Seri knew the safety tolerances of humans. Her coordination was good enough to rule out accidents. On the other side, the kid was tiny. Nothing Seri could say would break her cover—preschoolers didn’t know what actual Earthling robotics technology could and couldn’t do. No worries. Everything would be fine.

Of course, something the preschooler said might upset Seri.  They might be cleaning up this mess for weeks, if the child rejected the mech.  Kim carefully relaxed her hands and wiped them on her jeans.  Carly was right there, talking to Seri over the tablet. There would be no outright disasters, and if things were…unsatisfying…so what?

Setbacks were part of life.

Interaction with peers was good for kids. It didn’t always go well, but you had to do it anyway.  Everyone who had raised children thought this party was a good thing.

Everyone who had raised children had raised human children.

It appeared the little girls was correcting something about Seri’s technique, because she was demonstrating making  a paper chain now. What--? Oh. Seri had been doing the links all the same color. Apparently, that wasn’t how it was done.

Kim sighed and rolled her shoulders.

“Hey,” Miko said, pausing on her trip to the tree with a glittery felt owl wearing a Santa hat. “When do they bring in the fried chicken?”

“Sorry,” Chip said. “Fried chicken on Christmas is a Japanese thing.”

“Oh, come on. Next you’ll say there is no Christmas cake.”

He shook his head sadly. “No. But I’ve always wanted to try it. Maybe if you hinted to Fixit….”

“So you’re telling me Americans have no idea how to celebrate Christmas.”

He shrugged. “You might like the punch.”

***

Soon the tree was covered in homemade decorations, and the children were collecting to sit on a gaudy primary-colored rug to get ready for story time. One of the toddlers was fussing, and General Morshower (could you call him that when he was wearing a sweater with dancing reindeer on it) scooped him up and sat down at the back edge of the rug with the baby in his lap. Grandchild?

Sergeant Novak started the story time with a visual aid (five of the older kids with beach balls) showing how ‘winter’ worked and what a big deal it was that the days would start getting longer now.  One of the beach balls glowed, which was a cool touch.

There were stories with lights on and lights off. During lights off, the Hanukkah story got a menorah, and then there was a story about a Christmas tree followed by a Kwanzaa story. He had enlisted different volunteers with hats and electric candles and multi-colored flashlights, and at one point Jack and another high school kid had handed out apples.

Probably, it was lovely, but Kim had more than half her attention on the ‘Bots instead of the story. All in all, it was nicer than a lot of the children’s holiday parties she’d watched in Boston church basements.

After story time, everyone lined up for the visit with Santa. A couple of the older human kids were shocked when the younger ones insisted that the little rescue robots had to meet Santa, too, but Jack stepped up and said of course Santa would be excited to meet them.  It wasn’t like they had those at the North Pole.

And then Kim saw three guys from the NEST strike team head for the door. 

Will Lennox was frowning at his phone.  He kissed the baby he was holding and passed him to his wife and kissed her. And headed for the door.

Kim rocked forward and eased back.  She pulled out her phone. The tiny color-coded icon that had replaced the ‘bars’ indicator had changed from a blue glyph meaning AWARENESS to a yellow STAND BY.

Kim looked around.  General Morshower and two guys from a rail gun crew were headed to the door. Kim bounced on her toes, rolled her shoulders, put her phone back in her pocket and went over to Bobby. “Do you need to hand off your tablet?” she asked.

He shook his head and murmured, “Nope. Not till we get the pink ampersand-thing, or I get a text that they need me.”

Curiosity and worry warred in Kim’s belly. She smiled and joined a cluster of parents taking Santa pictures. The kids were cute. The Santa was a little thin and the beard was obviously fake, but it was Owens from the EU detachment, so he had a charming British accent. The tiny headset (Ratchet was monitoring from outside) was almost completely hidden by the hat.  Each kid got a candy cane and a tiny bouncy ball as they finished.  It was nice.

Jack went ahead of the sparklings. He did not sit on Santa’s lap, but he did shake his hand and solemely ask for a motorcycle. Santa chuckled (it was a good chuckle) and said he wasn’t sure he could do better than the rides Jack was catching now. And if all of NEST knew that Jack was spending as much time with Arcee as he could, Kim might have to add them to her list.

Hot Rod was next. He was far too heavy to sit in Santa’s lap. He imitated Jack’s handshake and said solemnly, “If you please, Saint Nicholas representative, my soul’s desire is a torque engine.”

There was approved muttering from the human children close enough to hear. They had no idea what the request meant or even that a real person was making it, but seeing a robot successfully navigate a visit with Santa was thrilling.

Owens, who had been carefully briefed by Ratchet, patted the thin mech shoulder and said, “I happen to know that as soon as you are ready, you will have the most beautiful torque engine.”

“So not for Christmas?” Hot Rod asked sadly.

“I don’t think so, my boy. Is there anything else you would like?”

He sighed. “Balls.”

Another good chuckle. “Well, certainly you will get balls. In fact, I have one for you here.  I happen to know it is quite different from any of those you already have.” He set a tiny superball in Hot Rod’s hand. “It has a very high conservation of momentum. I think you will enjoy it a great deal.”

“Thank you,” Hot Rod said. All his sensor stalks were bent over the ball.

Serenity was next. She eyed Santa suspiciously. She lifted her metal chin and said carefully, “Good afternoon, Mister Claus. I would like to have my T-cog turned on, but Optimus will not permit it, and Ratchet says you only overrule human parents. And also, you lack a medical cable and cannot input an override code anyway. I think giving Ralphy the air rifle was unwise, but a functioning T-cog would not be worse. And we are on Earth and must properly celebrate the orbital cycle.” She sighed. “However, there is a human present I would like. My appendages do not grip axles efficiently. I would like roller skates.”

Owens blinked behind the Santa beard. He cleared his throat. “Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas, Seri. I’m supposed to ask you if you’ve been a good girl.”

“Ratchet said not to worry about that. But it is customary to send letters to Santa. I can print out a behavioral analysis and send it to you.” She leaned in, “I’m afraid it will not cover a whole year.”

Owens had rallied. “That will be just fine, Seri. I’ll tell the elves to make a wonderful pair of skates, just for you.”

Raf was next.  He was a little too old for Santa, but short enough that he didn’t look out of place.  He asked for a catcher’s mitt. “Do you play little league?” Santa asked, handing him a candy cane and a tiny ball.

“No,” Raf said.

The party was winding down. The last few kids made it through the Santa line. The scummy remains of the punch were taken away. Kim grabbed one of the last tiny brownies off the tray.

***

Ratchet was not there to take them back to ‘Bot country, of course. He would be coping with whatever was going on.  Kim hadn’t expected him to be there. Finding Hound and Bulkhead waiting instead was a pleasant surprise, though.

The two sparklings and Miko climbed into Bulkhead (the sparklings were both bulky and heavy). That left Kim, Dr. Nomura, Carly, Bobby, Chip, and the other two human children squeezing into Hound. Sundoor turned into a lacy ‘bird’ about twice the size of a bald eagle and took off.

Kim looked at the crowd about to climb into Hound and went around to the back to claim the cargo area.

“This space is not designed for human transport.”

Kim chuckled and climbed in. “I’ll just have to rely on you not to get in a huge wreck.”

A cargo handler uncoiled from somewhere and wrapped itself around Kim’s waist. She slyly glanced down. Cargo handlers, like buccal cavities, were too weird to show to humans. They were reminiscent of  ‘tentacles,’ and humans had baggage there. Kim had seen them only a couple of times. “So,” she asked quickly, “what’s going on? We’re on alert.”

“We found an excavation. An energon mine.” He sounded very satisfied.

“We’re planning a strike,” Bobby said, bent over his phone. “This is gonna be great.”

“Oh. Right. Fantastic.”

***

Hound took the kids home after the party, but they were back the next afternoon, set up to sleep over in the cat habitat. The assault was scheduled for nine-fifteen in the evening, and Optimus wanted all the children secure and within reach. He did not say why. Kim assumed that the processor time normally allocated to keeping tabs on Raf and Miko was better allocated elsewhere during combat. (Nobody worried about Jack; he was absurdly prudent for a teenager.)

Kim had spent the day on the balcony, watching preparations. She could read the body language now. Even if she had not seen the roster, she could tell by the way armor was set who was getting ready for combat and who was pissed they were not.

Bulkhead was sulking, hovering around the infirmary. “Cleared for light duty” did not include going into a fight, even though he was technically the Prime’s bodyguard now.  Springer, now the second highest ranking officer, was resigned to staying on base. He and Hound were boxed tidily in the corner, hooked by a hard line into the big global antennae that Slipstream usually monitored alone.

Slipstream was off-site in Israel, doing secondary satellite monitoring from there.

Jazz, Ironhide, and Blaster were going. They had completely inspected and cleaned their weapons and replaced their lubricant. Arcee was also going, but she was off with Blur liaising with NEST in Human country.

Kim had not seen Optimus since before the party. He and Mirage were in Washington. There were meetings. He had texted a STATUS REPORT glyph midmorning.  Kim had sent back an update about a paragraph long, as reassuring as she could manage.

He responded with a pdf file on the nuances of nine different kinds of status report requests. The particular icon he had used asked about how a person (rather than situation or data stream) was doing with regard to subjective experience.

Huh.  Kim was going to have to have a long talk with someone about how glyphs were invented and evolved through use. Or maybe she’d hand that off to Chip.

She texted back that she was fine; worried in a general way, but nothing specific was wrong.

He glyphed back RESPECT FOR and METHODOLOGY, and added in English that the efficiency in generalized worry seemed more convenient than worrying about all possible items individually. 

She re-read the note several times while watching the activity in the assembly area.  She also had eyes on the sparklings, but they weren’t up to much.  The party the day before had given them a lot to process, and they were currently curled up on one of the couches, shut down to defragment their drives.

The couches had been rebuilt by Ironhide; the weight of the sparklings had broken three. The new models were slightly broader, so there was room for them to loosely fold with all their appendages pulled in. Chip, wedged in between them, had also fallen asleep.

Miko and Raf were on another of the new couches, playing video games. Jack had stopped playing for a sandwich.

Kim, restless, paced. Her eyes frequently slipped to her watch.  Dawn in east Africa was creeping closer. Soon it would be time to send the kids off to Max’s room with Chip and Sundoor.

Down in the assembly area, Steeljaw had erected a folding table and was sorting through a pile of tiny disks. They might have been gems or seeds, glittering in the delicate claws.  They were explosives.

Jack, sandwich finished, joined Kim at the rail. For a few minutes they stood there quietly, watching Steeljaw test miniature grenades.

“I used to wonder,” Jack said, “what could possibly be going on when Mom got called to work all night. I mean, what possible operation could be run out of Jasper, Nevada?”

Kim chuckled. “Last place anyone would look.”

“Then I’d wonder…was it dangerous? Was it just some kind of red tape? Or training?  What could be going on?”

Kim sighed. “She’s not a combat medic. She doesn’t go anywhere.” If you didn’t count falling off the berths, energon spills, or electrical burns, there were hardly any workplace hazards.

“My Mom…is a mechanic for aliens.”

Kim smiled thinly, unable to push aside the awareness that there would be patients tonight. “Still a nurse. It’s pretty much the same job.  Just larger patients. And more physics.”

“I wish I could do more to help,” Jack said.

Kim glanced over her shoulder at the dormant sparklings. “More than look after the only children born in hundreds of years?”

Jack followed her gaze and sighed.

“We haven’t tested it with mecha yet, and their internal combat protocols are better than ours…but it really messes humans up when they go to war worried about their children.”

“It…it can’t be the same….” he said protested weakly.

“It won’t be the same,” Kim agreed. It might be worse.

The wall speakers cracked to life and began to blast Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It.’ A second later, the door to the human dorm slammed open, and Bobby Epps came tearing out in desert camo. Kim had time to register that he was carrying his boots as he tore past her and slid down the railing.

On the sofa, Chip stirred and sat up.

June and Carly came out of the inner hall, not running, but in a hurry. “What’s up?” Kim called. The status icon on the phone was pink and blinking.

“Weather front moving in. Ndutu lake is about to get snow,” Carly said, not pausing. “We’re moving early.”

“It doesn’t snow in Tanzania.” Kim knew people who had worked there. Tanzania was liberally sprinkled with world heritage sites. Anthropologists went often. Nobody packed a parka.

June gave her a helpless look as she continued for the steps. “I guess the weather hasn’t settled down yet.”

Kim tried to smile. “I guess this is it. Let’s get the kids inside and put Max in her duty station.” Kim took out her phone and texted the kids ATTENTION glpyhs.

“Are you staying with us?” Jack asked.

Kim shook her head apologetically. “I’ve had enough first aid lessons to be able to fetch things.”

***

The massive weather front had appeared with no warning just to the east and was slamming its way across a (surely very confused) wildlife preserve. Ratchet was happy to grumble about just how much this changed their plans.

The cover of the storm made the operation much less risky; the Nemesis, built for deep space engagements, would have trouble targeting in a dense-atmosphere storm. Since just firing missiles from ten miles up and retreating would not be an option, it would have to descend. It was big enough to be tracked by the turbulence it made in the storm, despite its hull’s invisibility to sensors.

But the risk of Nemesis involvement had also offered great reward; knowing the ship’s location would mean a chance to target their own weapons, and the Autobots had had months to prepare. A lot of NEST assumed the war’s endgame strategy required seizing or destroying the Decepticon warship. Using the storm as a chance to avoid luring it into combat was probably getting some resistance from the brass.

Kim paced the observation shelf as the last minutes of the new countdown ticked away. The risk on this operation had just dropped a lot, and she should be grateful. The Nemesis had never been a priority for Optimus—taking it intact was improbable and the casualty rate would be terrible. Bringing it down had better odds of success, but its engines and fuel would do terrible environmental damage wherever it crashed—and if it came down on a city…. Kim shuddered.

She should be grateful the Nemesis wouldn’t be effectively involved today, but this weather thing also made her nervous. Snow in southeast Africa? It had been half a year since Megatron attacked (re-aligned? Disrupted?) Earth’s magnetic field.  The Bots all said the lasting differences could be measured in milliteslas (not a lot, apparently?), and didn’t do anything that correlated with any of the weird weather phenomena. 

Why was there snow?

Neither the weird weather nor the warship boded well for long-term discretion. NEST monitoring of social media and meteorological professional groups reported that humans had started to notice the unseasonable storms, unusual lack of rain in mountain ranges, surprise hail, the two rains of frogs in Serbia in November…. The heat wave in Antarctica was being passed off as global warming, but humans only fell for that because they were bad at math.  The masquerade was holding thinly at this point. The weather might spoil it. But so might any poorly-explained skirmish between giant robots.   If the Nemesis came down—even if nobody got hurt—everything would come out in the open.

If the Nemesis was brought down, the war would be essentially over.  Decepticon carnage was certain.  The environmental damage to Earth would probably be terrible. Almost certainly terrible. And if Megatron survived, he would not surrender, everyone agreed on that. But—

Kim almost wished—

It wasn’t like she would miss the Decepticons who crewed the Nemesis—

That was the wrong thing to think about, surely—

But the alternative was Optimus trying to end the war himself—

The relentless circle of worry and strategy was interrupted by the announcement that the gate connection was open. All of the screens that usually showed medical information for the students (who could neither scan nor jack into their patients) were now showing combat data. Ratchet monitored telemetry over radio, but the actual action he viewed on externals.

There were no satellite pictures: the storm was too dense. There were visual feeds from six different angles.  Some of them showed darkness and snow. Others showed heat or radar impressions.  Kim couldn’t make sense of any of it.

There was nothing for the humans in the infirmary to do but stare at the screens and worry. “Is there an audio feed?” Kim asked.

Ratchet gave her a pitying look. “It is in Cybertronix, on four channels.”

Of course it was.

Some of the screens were colorful now: explosions and beam weapon strikes. Heat. Targeting. There were shapes, movement—Decepticons.

The center of the target area was a small gash in the side of a ravine. It was dark behind the reflections from the falling snow. It was slightly warm on all the heat projections.

One of the images fizzed and blinked off for a moment, came back up, steadied.

Kim clasped her hands together, wishing she had had a chance to speak to Optimus.

Movement upward—something launching.  Small missiles traced after it, some of them hit. It returned fire—

Kim wished she knew which mech was broadcasting each image.

More colors. More chaos. Three screens whited out and went dark before skipping to other angles. One of these was a very nice targeting scanner. An indistinct shape rippled with spots of color—and then a spray of projectiles striking with tiny explosions.

Everything was moving and then—suddenly—nothing was.

Slow darkness. Was that…good?

The filters on the video changed almost at once to simple infra-red. Half the views shifted outward, the other half rushed the opening in the hill. The combat phase was over. Pierre and Carly hugged each other, and Dr. Nomura cheered and did a little dance.

Kim realized her jaw ached and wiggled it around. The worst was over.

The next step would be a survey of the mine.  If they could come away with any energon, that would be a success.  If there was dark energon, they needed to know before the mine was sealed—

Ratchet snapped up a mech-sized pry bar from the tools table and threw it so hard into the far wall that bits of rock showered the floor.  He was cursing in Cybertronix. Kim caught ‘stupid glitch’ and ‘factory reject clock-work mechanism.’

The students mostly froze, gaping at him, but Carly ran forward, fearlessly rushing an enraged mech who had small armaments springing up on both shoulders. “Ratchet? What’s happened? Ratchet!”

Ratchet froze, eyes locking onto Carly. He snapped the weapons away. In a cold, hard voice he said, “Those…dipsticks tried to deploy a dark energon weapon.” His vocalizer glitched for a moment. “Of all the stupid, self-destructive—even humans would not be so insane.”

“Ratchet, what happened?” Carly pressed.

“They fired it once. Once. Oh-h. And make no mistake, it would be a terrible weapon, devastating and cruel, except the range is short, the power consumption prohibitive, and the mis-made piece of engineering scrap exploded after the first shot, killing the operator! Of all the wasteful, incompetent—” He reset his optics twice. “We’re going to have to decontaminate the entire squad. And ninety-three square meters of ground contaminated by dark energon.” He sighed. “There are injured. They are being stabilized on site. We cannot bring them back to base until they are decontaminated, and by then, the Bridges will be occupied.”

“Is that going to be a problem?” Pierre asked. “Do you…do you need to go?”

“Fortunately, they do not need me, since I am forbidden to go.” He paused. “Optimus redeployed the humans to the perimeter as soon as dark energon was detected. Our NEST allies have not been exposed.” He looked down at the students, who had clustered together next to Carly. “We must stand down for three point four hours. You are directed to attend to biological needs. Return in exactly two hours so we can go over the initial procedures.”

Kim, still on the shelf, sat down and buried her face in her hands. Bobby and Will and the others were okay. That was good. Mecha were hurt…but not so badly they couldn’t wait. And mecha were built to be fixed.

Ninety-three square meters of ground contaminated with dark energon. Within ten miles of two major world heritage sites and between three wildlife preserves. Not good. Not good. But it could be worse.

The Decepticons had kept their operation discreet enough to go unnoticed by tourists, game wardens, and archaeologists alike. The mess made by the attack? The extra hours in the open cleaning up? Kim could only hope that went well, too.

Kim spent a few minutes breathing, trying to settle. The fighting part being over…was good. Very good. Very good. The waiting….would be hard.

When she felt she could reasonably fake being calm, she headed up to Max’s room. The kids were all working together to build a tower out of Ironhide’s Jenga set. Chip was sprawled in a bean bag chair, eyes on his phone. Kim squatted down beside him. “All quiet here?”

 He nodded to the block tower, which was now so tall Raf was having to stand on Hot Rod to place pegs. “We’re good.”

Kim glanced at Sundoor, squatting in her lacy bird-alt next to Max’s cat carrier. “What’s she doing?” she whispered.

“Probably still analyzing episodes of Captain Kangaroo.  You owe me for a dozen questions on Mr. Moose and Bunny Rabbit, by the way.  Mass media explanations are your job.”

“Surreal?”

“So much.”

“Well, you’re probably old enough to have watched it first-run.”

He gave her a look.

“Any conclusions?” Kim asked.

“You’ll have to ask.” He paused. “I think she ordered a crate of ping pong balls.”

Kim took a moment to think about that, and decided there was nothing to say. “So, it’s going well at the mine.”

He indicated the phone. “I know. Chromia has been sending video clips and pithy comments.”

Kim looked him over in surprise. “Should I add you two to the list?”

“Oh, no. I’m in her circle of friends, but we aren’t dating. No off-roading or naps in her cab or anything.”

“Yes, but….she’s not supposed to be using private com channels during combat.  It’s protocol.”

He made a face. “I can’t figure out how she decides which rules to follow. Chain of command doesn’t seem to apply.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “Everybody who doesn’t use an affection address-affix uses speaking-to-a-superior. Even Springer, who is officially second in command.”

“Optimus?” Kim prompted.

“I haven’t heard them talk enough to be sure, but I have heard the ‘beloved’ address. And once I think the more humble  verb-form.”

“Hmmm.” 

“It’s a religion thing, isn’t it?”

“Maybe. She’s the senior First of Line. Interesting.”

He picked up a stack of paper and passed it over. “Here. You want to look at these. We had art-time before they started on the tower.”

It was art. The sparklings had been given high-quality drawing paper and every sort of crayon and colored pencil imaginable. They hadn’t always enjoyed them—between the complexities of fine motor control and their patchy mastery of two-dimensional representation art experiments sometimes ended with frustrated howls.

The top one was a picture of a guitar—not very detailed but very clear and vibrant. “Miko?” Kim asked.

He nodded. The next one down was….abstract? A multicolored fat donut made of lines? A crude apple? Kim wondered what it was supposed to be. “Was one of the sparklings trying to draw a magnetic field?” It didn’t look like Carly’s renderings of spark fields, but of course the mecha perceived it differently.

“Oh, that one’s not the sparklings. That was Raf.  I asked him what it was. He said, ‘the world.’”

“Oh. Well.” It…wasn’t ugly. Kind of uneven.  And he’d mixed crayon and colored pencils. But maybe it was an abstract on purpose. Kim turned it upside down to see if that helped. Oh, well. Raf had never said he wanted to be an artist.

The next one was a portrait of a mech.  It was skeletal, the bare minimum of carapace. Definitely a baby mech.  It was fuchsia, brown, and orange.  “Wow,” Kim murmured. “Seri wants paint nanites.”

He glanced over. “Oh. That one is Hot Rod. You can sort of see the third leg. Yes, he is all excited about paint nanites.  Ratchet says it’s complicated, like keeping a pet or a tree. He’s making them wait another month.”

The next image had recognizable pig-tails and was bright yellow. “Oh. Both of them.”

Chip looked up and adjusted his glasses. Very solemnly he said, “They are going to be very beautiful.”

“Oh. Yes. Very!” Kim agreed. The change would take getting used to.  Yellow was probably going to be a…smoother look than the fuchsia and brown and orange. “They’ll probably change colors a lot at first.”

“Actually, I’m sure it will be completely adorable.”

The last image was a rough but recognizable view of the mesa from the highway turnoff. “Jack?”

Chip nodded absently.

With mellow crashes of wood falling, the tower came down. Miko cheered.  Jack admonished Seri for not getting out of the way.  Raf and Hot Rod clung to each other giggling.

***

Ratchet’s central screen showed the main activity in Tanzania: a thick stream of molten stone pouring into the mouth of the mine. The sun was just up, the snow was melting. The last of the recovered energon was being packed up….

And there, in the middle, a column of glowing lava, dropping out of nowhere.

With the second Ground Bridge coming on line at the Diago Garcia site, capabilities were completely transformed.  Linked together, the bridges could open a link between two off-site destinations and transport material directly.  The Diago Garcia Bridge was open at Kilauea, just under the lava outflow.  The Jasper Bridge was linked in and open in Tanzania, pouring into the mine. 

The energon that was still there wouldn’t be damaged by the heat, and the stone plugging the entrance wouldn’t put the treasure out of reach forever. But for now, it would be safe from Deceptions, who could not discreetly come back and remove the newly situated igneous rock. It was an elegant solution, and it had been Maggie who had thought of it. Optimus had given her a commendation and a raise.

“All right,” Ratchet said, and everyone tore their gaze from the screen. “Triage is easy today. We have two seriously injured, un-stabilized patients. We are going to be short-handed because Fixit can’t leave the Bridge, and Wheeljack had his arm ripped off. Oh. How unfortunate. That is a pun in English.”

“So, Wheeljack is one of the first patients,” Carly said.

“No, it was a clean slice. He’s stable. Our first patients will be Drift and Bumblebee.” He paused. He sighed. A series of diagrams appeared on the secondary screens. “Drift got torn by a vibra-knife and the claws of a Decepticon named Ravage. Damage includes fuel lines, actuator cables, and the second processing node. Arcee will supervise Carly and Pierre in establishing medical monitoring, connecting an energon drip, and cleaning out the damaged components. I’ve sent the manual to your tablets. Relevant sections are highlighted.”

He turned to Dr. Nomura and Nurse Darby. “You two are with me. I…am not entirely certain how we will proceed. Bumblebee was the target of the dark energon weapon. I cannot tell from his telemetry how the blast penetrated his shielding or the mechanism of the damage.”

Dr. Nomura nodded thoughtfully. “What does the damage consist of?”

“An estimate six to eight kilograms of inactive protomatter,” Ratchet said dully.

“Dead?” June asked. “Dead protomatter?” 

“Apparently.”

“Jesus,” June said. “Is he conscious? The pain—”

“No. Arcee settled him in alt and induced a medical shut down. When we get him back, the first step will be to evaluate and decide if medical stasis is necessary.  If the only damage, indeed, is to his protomatter, then after we excise the necrotic tissue—how appalling that that almost has an English equivalent—he should be stable and ready to begin healing.”

“Even eight kilograms would not normally be life threatening in a mech his size,” Dr. Nomura said, flipping through the repair manual that had arrived at his tablet. “Assuming we can remove the inactive material.”

Ratchet shifted restlessly. “If there is no other damage, then no. Rest and energon will set him to rights. At the moment…his spark is stable, and his cognitive functions were normal before he was sedated. But until I have a cable interface, I can’t be sure of anything.”

It was another hour before the strike team was ready to withdraw through the Bridge. Drift came to the infirmary first. He was in root form, limping unevenly, dripping coolant. Chromia, towing Bee, lurched in slowly behind him.

Kim’s phone buzzed with a text. OUR MISSION IN TANZANIA HAS CONCLUDED AND WE HAVE WITHDRAWN. I WILL BE OCUPIED WITH MEETINGS FOR AN UNDETERMINED TIME. I MAY BE LATER THAN YOU ARE ABLE TO WAIT.

Kim closed her eyes for a moment, smiled. I’LL WAIT, she texted back.

Ratchet directed Drift to lie down on a berth, lifted Bumblebee, still in alt, onto an active pallet, and motioned Chromia to park in the corner to wait her turn. While they were still being settled, Arcee arrived in her large, compound root form, Eject tossed over her shoulder.  She set him down next to Chromia and headed over to join Carly and Pierre.

Ratchet jacked into a medical port under Bee’s hood.  A moment later his frame shook slightly, and he protested in Cybertronix.  Ratchet clicked back to him and reached out in a gesture that looked comforting, but in fact braced some of the weight as Bee unfolded in transformation.

Yellow armor split and split again, coming apart to reveal inner mechanics and a rainbow pool of protomatter.

At first, Kim was confused. The small mound of white inside Bumblebee looked like snow. But even if the blizzard had gotten inside his carapace, surely the snow would have melted by now. How could—

Was that what dead protomatter looked like? White and…almost fluffy?

Dr. Nomura scrambled around the splayed armor for a better view.

Ratchet, after a long moment, sprouted a sensor on one of his digits and reached toward the heap of not-snow.

June jumped in front of him. “Don’t you touch it,” she snapped.

Ratchet trilled a ‘stand down’ order at her. “I have to analyze—”

“Are you sure it’s inert? Absolutely not spreading? Nothing is in there still doing damage?”

“Nurse Darby, it was a-a death ray. There is nothing that could—and he’s been decontaminated. It’s fine.”

“It’s new. You said so. You don’t know.”

Ratchet glared at her for a moment and then produced an external probe from his subspace and pointedly waited for her to move aside.  He poked the end of the sensor wand into the white mess fouling Bee’s protoform. “It is inert. There is no propagating damage.” He twisted the probe slightly. Some of the white crumbled. Was it somehow desiccated? Burned to ash? Had it popped like popcorn? “Normally, I’d cut a dead patch out with a laser scalpel.”

Dr. Nomura, scrambling over what was part of Bee’s bumper when he was in alt, tapped the white with a gloved finger. “It won’t need cutting. What about those small trowels we use to spread raw materials jell?”

The ‘small trowels’ were re-purposed serving utensils Carly had ordered online and reshaped with a hammer. Humans didn’t have tools for doing surgery on aliens.

“Scrape it out?” Ratchet said dubiously. “No. I’ll use a friction and a suction wand.”

“Respectfully, your time is better spent analyzing the data from the injury, Doctor,” Dr. Nomura said meekly.

“Primus! How many times do I have to tell you? There is no ongoing hazard. The patient has been decontaminated. The damage is not spreading.”

Dr. Nomura gave a fractional bow and said nothing.

Ratchet clicked and whirred with a system’s check. “In fact, one of the few compensations of an analog brain is analytical plasticity. You are likely to devise a new procedure as quickly as I could. And I do need to check his systems. You may proceed.”

“Kim?” June called. “Can you bring us a bucket?”

Kim wasn’t sure now much volume each kilogram of protomatter took up, so she brought two plastic industrial buckets.  As she approached the pallet, Ratchet reached down absently and set her beside the patient.  Close to, Bee looked dull, almost pastel. “Did the new weapon do something to his paint nanites?” she asked. “Are there other systems affected?”

Ratchet’s optics reset with a snap as he swung around to look. “Oh,” he said. “No.  His paint job is fine. He’s just covered with decontamination residue.”

“It’s biodegradable,” June called up from where she and Nomura were donning masks, double gloves and goggles.  “It will wash off.”  

“We could spray him down with bacteria,” Ratchet said tartly.  “It’s digestible. But that would be disgusting, so he will just have to wait.”

“Sorry,” Kim said.

“No. Under the circumstances, it is reassuring to know that the humans are on the lookout for the unusual. You may continue.” He stopped. “But from a distance. You have no training in protoform handling.”

Kim spent the next couple of hours fetching for the repair teams and pacing the infirmary. Initial procedures on Bee and Drift were completed and the patients hooked to monitors with internal repair protocols running. Chromia settled herself on a berth and opened up without a word.  Her carapace folded back to reveal protomatter spotted with white lesions.  Ratchet scanned and monitored her, and again—was this significant?—the humans with medical training cleaned out the flaky wads of dead material. 

Wheeljack came in carrying his own arm. Arcee and Pierre got busy tidying and capping the torn lines and wires so his internal systems could start prepping for reattachment.  Eject had cut a lumbar hydraulic line, making both transforming and walking in root form impossible.  Carly replaced the tiny tube, taped up the inner shielding, and smoothed the edges of the wound so that Ratchet could weld the armor later. 

When the last patient was bedded down, Ratchet dismissed his human assistants and began to clean and organize the tools and supplies. Kim retreated back to the shelf. It was after midnight now, and she was getting a little tired. The shelf had a good view of the corridor to the assembly area. She could sit and wait.

When Optimus returned, he was likely to stop in the infirmary anyway. Kim had been counting patients damaged by the new death ray.  There had been two repairs; one was missing.

Or not missing. Probably in meetings with Mearing and Keller.

When she heard mech steps, finally, in the tunnel, Kim was seated on the shelf floor, slumped ungracefully against the back wall.  The stone was hard and uncomfortably cool, but there was no danger that, if she fell asleep, she would tumble off a folding chair and drop off the edge.

She was standing at the nearest point to the entry when—slowly, unevenly—Optimus crossed the yellow line. He paused, changed his trajectory, and angled toward the shelf. He was moving like Chromia had, almost limping, steps too small. Kim swallowed hard.

The shelf wasn’t nearly as high as the balcony in the assembly room, and he stopped a step too far back so he could look down at her. “Ah,” he said softly. “I fear extending your active period so long was a sacrifice.”

“Hello, Beautiful,” Kim said. “Welcome home.” And then she froze, because the question she wanted to ask was ‘are you all right?’ but he disliked vague questions—and also wasn’t above using them to deflect from difficult topics. “Request for situation report,” she managed. There were no convenient suffixes in English to mark ‘humility’ or ‘answer optional’ or ‘subjective experience.’

“We accomplished all primary objectives. Human casualties were below predictive models. The operation does not appear to have been detected by civilians.  Our NEST allies are satisfied with the joint team’s performance.” He paused. “Three Decepticons were killed. There were no NEST deaths.”

“And you?” He was too far away to touch, but close enough that Kim could see streaks in the decontamination film.

“I was within the blast radius when the energon weapon experienced structural failure, however the Matrix appears to have provided some protection. I have lost only six hundred grams of protomatter.”

A little over a pound. Not much. Not even more than his internals could clean up without help. “Is Ratchet going to…”

“Of course, I am,” Ratchet snapped. “And speaking of excising damaged protomatter, stop putting it off and lie down.”

Optimus reached out. Kim squatted and crawled on to his broad servo. The residue was both slick and sticky. She didn’t react.

Kim was set on the worktable above Optimus’ head as a safety measure for both of them.  She wasn’t wearing safety equipment that would both protect his inner components from her moisture and protect her skin and respiratory system from microscopic fragments of metal. 

Optimus opened his torso and folded back layer after layer of casing and components until thick ‘coils’ of rainbow protomatter glittered under the infirmary lights.  Kim scanned the shifting surface for white.  For a long moment she saw nothing, and then—twisting jerkily—one of the braided silver strands thrust a white lump about the size of a quarter to the surface.

Ratchet tisked softly and used an external tool to scoop the ruined protomatter out and drop it into the bucket.

“Can I see his telemetry?” Kim asked.

Ratchet glanced at her. “No.” He paused. “Electropulse variance at three point seven percent, but stable. There’s nothing to worry about.  I can’t translate the ways—”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Optimus said firmly.

Ratchet ignored the interruption. “these ‘dead’ patches are fouling up protomatter function, but he’s bearing the strain well, and that will be sorted out as soon as we finish here. There is some pain, but, again, when the lesions are removed the pain will end.” He spotted another fluffy-looking white lump and snapped it out in a single movement. “Until the missing tissue is replaced there will be some sensations of weakness. Extended rest and repair periods would be helpful.”

That was a hint. Kim was Prime’s cover when he needed more repair time than the Autobots wanted to admit to the Human military. “Yes, Ratchet.”

There were four more of the irregular white lumps. By the time Ratchet was done, Kim was lying along the edge of the table, one arm stretched out so that her fingertips could rest on Optimus’ slightly sticky helm.  

He was going to be fine.

Ratchet finished and motioned for Optimus to close and sit up.  Neither of them said anything, and Kim wondered if they were quarreling over radio or if it really was a deliberate silence between them.  Ratchet produced and offered a two-liter beaker of energon. Optimus took it and downed the contents without argument.

Unable to stand it anymore, Kim called softly, “Hey? Want a wash?”

“Thank—”

“No,” Ratchet cut in firmly. “He will just have to live with the residue, distasteful as it is; there is barely time for a minimal five-hour repair cycle before his next meeting.”

“You may stay with me,” Optimus said. “If you will not find it too uncomfortable.”

“Oh. Yes. Please.”

Optimus folded into alt and took the last empty corner of the infirmary.  Kim grabbed a pile of clean shop towels to use as a pillow and hurried after him. And then rushed to the tiny human sanitary facility Fixit had built because human biology was inconvenient. And then, at last, climbed into the truck cab to make a quick nest in the passenger seat.

“This rest period is shorter than you are used to,” Optimus said through the cab speakers. “If I am asking too much of you—"

“Please, let me stay.”

“You were afraid.”

Kim shrugged. It was war. She was always afraid.

“I as well, when I saw that they had tried to weaponize the Blood of Unicron,” he admitted.

“We’ll worry about it later.” Kim ran a finger along the base of the statue. “We’ll worry about it a lot, I promise. For now, just grow protomatter.”

“I suppose that is wise counsel,” he said. “You must sleep as well.”

“Heh. It’s two in the morning. I’m probably asleep already, I just don’t know it.”

~TBC

Chapter Text

She woke stiff and momentarily disoriented—she was in Optimus’s cab, but not on the mesa—and then remembered how awful the night before had been.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Kim. I need to leave for Switzerland in eight minutes.”

Kim managed—barely—to stop herself from asking to go with him. He had work. She had responsibilities.  It was Christmas Eve—she needed to call home. There were presents still unwrapped. The sparklings wanted to go caroling over in Human country.  “Love you,” she murmured sleepily. “Have a good day.”

***

Caroling in the offices was not as exciting as the kids had hoped: about a third of the office staff were on holiday. Kim spent most of the day on a balcony couch watching holiday movies with the sparklings and whoever was available to join them.

Raf couldn’t explain being out of the house, so he wasn’t there, but Miko and Jack were. So were June and Miko’s host-dad (his name was Sal, he and his wife—a custom seamstress who took orders over the internet-- had an elaborate terrarium  for their pet gecko), and a few of the NEST guys (Graham and Ford and the tall guy who sang baritone when he did karaoke) who had not gone home for the holiday. 

All the mecha who were on the injured list or had time off came and went, clustering around the rail to watch the movie.  Mini-cons, of course, could fit on a couch. The large mecha settled just on the other side of the railing. Max moved from person to person, showing no preference for either Humans or ‘Bots. Fixit made popcorn.  It was a nice day.

Optimus arrived toward the end of Elf, the last movie before the human kids went home and the sparklings were scheduled to refuel. Kim got up and eased her way to the railing.  “Do you have time for a repair cycle?” she whispered.  “We could go up on the mesa?”

“I would prefer to stay here for a little while, if that would be all right?”

Kim frowned, shooting him a look. “Of course. Here. Scoop me up.”

He settled her in the carrying position, close against his chest. She was wondering how to ask how he was doing when she felt a soft flurry of clicks: mech laughter. “What?” she whispered.

“You cannot follow the radio conversation,” he murmured, bending his head close above hers. “Seri asked Wheeljack about the flight mechanism for Santa’s sleigh, and now he and Drift are in an argument about the acceleration tolerances of reindeer.”

“Don’t let them test it,” Kim whispered.

The informal party broke up when the movie ended. There were hugs and ‘good nights’ and the two mech kids singing off their friends with a totally unrecognizable translated version of ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas.’  Ironhide and Hound, who was just coming off a defrag shut-down, collected the kids and took them off to the ‘Bot commissary.

Alone, finally, Kim squirmed around in Optimus’ hand and looked up at him. “How are you feeling?”

“There is no pain. As Ratchet warned, I am aware of a mild but distinct…weakness. I am not currently cleared for combat, but that is only precautionary.”

Kim nodded, patted him gently. “Do you have a few hours to run repairs?”

“I do. But I know Fixit has prepared a holiday meal. Perhaps you should not join me.”

“He’ll understand,” Kim said.

He shifted slightly. “I cannot claim I understand this festival, or that I can satisfactorily celebrate it with you.”

Kim blinked. “Oh. That’s very sensitive of you. Thank you. But it’s fine. I think…celebrating a holiday about kindness and generosity while walking out on a friend would be….The holiday is just symbols, you know.”

“This particular holiday is believed to be transcendent and holy.”

“Yeah….” Kim said, frowning. “I’m… gonna do it on purpose this time. Right? This isn’t an accident.”

“What isn’t?”

"These cultural symbols and emotional associations are not more important to me than what is between us, or what you need right now. I choose you over this holiday, over all the holidays. I can’t…I can’t put you ahead of my job. I accept that. And I know your duty…comes first.  But everything else…. You are my family, and I am committed to you. And if you need cover for a couple of hours of down time so you can rebuild protomatter, then I am grateful I can help.”  

He lifted her up to eye level.  “That was lovely. Do I accept? Or make a counter proposal?”

“Neither, maybe?” she said gently. “You don’t need to have this conversation while you feel bad. It can wait until you feel better, and we aren’t sneaking off to find time for repairs.”

“That is an important point,” he said. “You are correct; I am not at my best. But there are factors you have not considered. The loss in Tanzania and the utter failure of his new weapon may make Megatron angry and more susceptible to provocation. We may not have the luxury of extended time.”

Kim’s heart sank. “Oh.”

“There are things we should say.  Things I might very much regret not saying.”

Kim bit her lip. “It’s okay. Your duties have less…leeway than mine. I know you can’t…I know there are commitments you can’t make. I can live with that.”

“There are commitments I can make.”

“Is it right? To let you do this now? When you don’t feel good? Anyway-- I’ve noticed how few people you let help  you. I mean personally help you. You let me do it. That says a lot. I can do something useful right now, and that’s…a lot. You don’t need to say anything.”

“Your impulse to protect me does you credit. I am not too diminished to have this conversation, however.”

He was not going to relent, and Kim couldn’t justify making him argue about it. “Okay.” She closed here eyes and braced herself.

“Kim. Thank you for spending this time with me. Thank you for each of these kindnesses. I’m so sorry-“ He broke off and paused for a moment. “I have two hours and forty-seven minutes until my next meeting. I could manage, perhaps, seven grams of replacement in that time. A tiny amount you could hide in your closed hand.  Perhaps I would rather perform the Santa vigil with you, and listen to your Christmas stories.”

Kim looked up into the dark recess of the cavern ceiling. “How much could you do with twelve hours? Or twenty?”

“No, Kim. I can’t be unreachable for so long.  John Keller will worry. Keller...and others.”

Kim cleared her throat, debating for just a moment longer whether to bring it up. “I’m sure Mr. Keller knows you were caught in the blast. Everyone knows. Miko knows. The sparklings know. You could take tomorrow off. Everyone will still be impressed you aren’t down for a week like Bee. Twelve hours is nothing.”

“I am on monitor duty tomorrow.”

“Yeah, but off-line isn’t like being in Siberia. You’ll still be here, and you aren’t that hard to wake up. You could do it. You could totally do it.”

“I was planning to analyze the data from the dark energon weapon.” His speech had slowed and dropped its inflection. He was, she thought, uncertain.

“Ratchet and Wheeljack are already doing that,” she coaxed gently. “I know because Wheeljack talked to Miko about the actual effect that kills little protomatter mechanisms.”

A soft click, the start of a system check. “What did he hypothesize?”

“Weirdness. He has no clue how it killed protomatter, but he thinks they might have been attempting a mind control device, not a death ray at all.”

“Nonsense.” His vents clicked up to high. “Pardon me. I must have a brief word with Wheeljack.”

Wincing, Kim folded her hands and waited. Autobot radio conversations tended to be quick.  It was only couple minutes later that Optimus focused his optics on Kim’s face. “I apologize. It was rude to shift all of my attention.”

“I’m sure the weapon was complicated and horrible. And I bet Wheeljack isn’t finished yet. You don’t have to deal with whatever he figures out right now. It can wait. And you might as well deal with it later;  everyone already knows you’re hurt. You could spend tomorrow in repair.”

“Kim--” The protest was tentative and incomplete.

“I know you’re scared of the humans getting scared and freaking out.  This won’t do it. Hell, it’s a holiday, hardly anyone will notice. Well—” She could see the objection coming and got ahead of it. “Keller and Morshower and Mearing will notice. But none of them will draw attention to it. We’re talking about one day--and why am I even arguing with you? I’m asking  as a favor. I’m asking because you trust me. Take tomorrow off.”

“I...will adjust my schedule and re-route communications to Springer and Jazz starting at oh-two-hundred hours.”

“Thank you. This….yes, this is the best Christmas present I’ve ever had.”

“Do you still want to go to Italy next Wednesday?”

“If we can, yeah. Always. Anywhere. But right now, two hours is time for a wash.” He didn’t protest, so Kim coaxed gently. “It’s called selfcare. Humans are very big on it just now. I myself shower at least once an orn. I’m almost never covered with slime.”

He clicked softly with gentle amusement.

“So? Shall we?”

“Oh,” he said. “I confess a trip to the washracks would be…lovely.”

***

To borrow a phrase from Kim’s grandmother, the sparklings made out like bandits on Christmas. They had toy cars of varying sizes, balls, puzzles, games, parts to copy, parts to incorporate, custom rollerskates, a set of shelves for each of them to store it all on, and—most wonderfully—tiny subspace pockets to carry a small possession or two in.

The last present made Christmas Day kind of quiet: Seri and Hot Rod wanted Ratchet to incorporate their new upgrades immediately, and then they had to integrate the software.  There was a lot less running around and playing then either Kim or Chip had expected.

Fixit made a special Christmas lunch for the humans who were staying on base—which was most of them after the disaster that had been Thanksgiving. They had bacon and asparagus quiche, spinach salad, and cranberry scones.  Real bacon, not soy, so that was good.

Optimus followed through with his promise to spend the day in the dim garage beyond the ‘Bot commissary, replacing lost mass and recalibrating his systems. Ratchet thought this was such an excellent idea that as soon as he finished with the children’s upgrades, he announced he was ‘celebrating Christmas’ by settling down for system maintenance, too.

Bobby was on duty in Human country, but Carly and Chip did puzzles on a folding table on the balcony.  Pierre drank hot cocoa and looked at repair schematics on a tablet. Kim called home and then worked on notes.  It was calm, which was nice.

At sundown, Hound collected Carly, Kim, and the sparklings for a drive around Jasper to look at the Christmas lights. He had used a satellite survey to plot the best course through the streets. Still, Jasper wasn’t very big.  It didn’t take long.

The climax of the trip was three houses across the street from the funeral home that had synchronized music and strings of lights. The kids were very pleased by this, and pressed their optics to the window. It was going well—normal?—until the song switched to Josh Groban’s “Believe,” which Seri disliked. She solved the problem by hacking the wifi, changing the song to Winter Wonderland, and then taking over the light show so it would match.

Hound caught her, of course, and made her pass control back to the automated program. They moved on, then, which caused minor outrage from Hot Rod, who had been innocent of tampering.

At the edge of town, Hot Rod began to lobby to be taken out to the desert to look at the stars with his new telescope external. “I am told lenses are good at looking at stars? Please, can we look at stars?”

“We don’t have clearance to go into the desert. And we don’t have clearance for you kids to leave the passenger cabin.”

“Please, Hound? Kim can give us clearance.  She outranks everyone.”

Kim laughed in surprise. “Me? I don’t outrank anyone.”

“Kim is not in the chain of command.”

“She is, though,” Seri put in.

“I’m in charge of the human dorm, sweetie,” Kim said. “That’s it.”

“Kim has a null rank for both the Humans and the Autobots,” Hound explained. “It’s so she can collect information freely and give advice without worrying about pleasing a supervisor. For example, if I were to ask Kim’s opinion about the safety and practicality of a detour to look at stars, she would not have to fear retaliation if her answer did not forward a particular agenda.”

Kim managed not to wince. The temple (or shrine or office-building, it wasn’t actually clear) of the Cube must have been awful. Sentinel Prime had been an abusive bastard, and any workplace he organized would have been a nightmare of sabotage, backbiting, and bullying.

She patted Hound’s console and said gently, “To be fair, as far as the kids are concerned, Hound and I have approximately infinite authority right now.  We are the grown-ups taking care of you.”

“What about Carly,” Hot Rod protested. “She’s a grown up.”

“Oh, no,” Carly said quickly. “If Kim or a ‘Bot is here, I count as a kid. Completely.”

Kim turned in her seat and gave her a pointed look. “Unless you are in the infirmary. You count as staff. Only senior medical staff can overrule you.” That distinction was important. Although there were limits to medical authority, cooperation was not optional, and that norm included the human students working under Ratchet’s direction.

“I will request a change of itinerary if you believe it is safe, Kim.”

“I think it’s safe to drive out in the desert. I think it’s safe for the kids to get out and do some starwatching. But they stay next to you and they don’t wander around.” Kim tried to glare convincingly. “You aren’t used to traveling on unpaved dirt, and if you get rocks up your joints Ratchet will never forgive me.”

***

The sky was clear and black between the thick scatter of stars. On the mesa there was the haze of the camouflage field, and the lights of the base, so it never looked like this. Back east, of course, there was always so much light pollution the sky was a dark grey haze.

Carly got out with the kids. Sitting between them, she regaled them with stories from physics classes and Greek myths.  It was all information the sparklings could have looked up for themselves—and possibly had—but sharing and discussing synchronously was as special as it was inefficient.

Hound had turned off his interior lights and rolled down the driver’s side window.  The air was cool, but not cold. Kim sighed.

“Would you like to join them?”

“Nah.  I’m happy here. Would you scoot the seat back a little?”

Smoothly, she slid backwards. “Like that?” Hound asked.

“Thanks.” She patted the dash. “How are you feeling?”

“Much better.  Ratchet will have to make a mechanical adjustment to my replacement memory array tomorrow, and then, after ten hours of integration and a reboot, I will be ready to return to duty.”

“It’s amazing, how quickly you can repair so much.”

“Of course,” he said shortly. “We must be returned to combat readiness as quickly as possible.” The language pack presented that in a cheerful tone of light amusement.

So. That was horrible. “Do you want to talk about it?” Kim asked.

“I think I will not. There is no solution to my problem, and no decision for me to make. This war will continue, and perhaps I shall die. There will be no reprieve.”

“Hound—”

“Respectfully, my friend—and I do appreciate your offer of compassion—you cannot understand. Please do not try. Your wars are short. Human service in war usually even shorter. The deployment period for NEST is two years. Retirement is possible in twenty years.”

Kim took a deep breath of the cool night air and said, “Roll up the window.  The kids have really good sensors.”

“Kim—”

“Please, Hound.”  It was not a request. The windows hissed up. Kim took a deep breath. “You’re right. I can’t understand. But your analysis is incorrect. I’ve seen the stats on possible outcomes. Thirty months is likely.  Five years…the chances of the war ending approaches certainty.”

“I…concur that we will find the Nemesis. However, we will not bring it down. Optimus will not give the order. There is no way to destroy the warship before Megatron uses it to slag several human cities.  The Decepticons hold this planet hostage. We cannot save it. But we will not betray you by deliberately sacrificing the innocent.”

“Hound—”

“Do not misunderstand me. This is not an indictment. I bless him for choosing morality, my Prime. If he asked for my reverence, I would give it willingly. For this. He is worthy. But that does not change the outcome.”

Kim knew the details of a few of the official tactical options.  The human authorities, she assumed, accepted them at face value. Of course the ‘Bots knew more about orbital combat, weapons, shields…they would do their own math, of course.

“Hound,” she said in a soft voice, “You’re wrong. The conclusions are probably accurate.”

He rocked slowly backward on his tires. “You are certain of this? Or it is a kind possibility you share to offer the comfort of hope?”

“I’m certain.” She tilted her head back and rubbed her eyes.

“What kind of certainty? If you told me in Cybertronix, would you append the marker of statistical certainty? Or of observed certainty?”

Was it observed certainty when you knew a fact others did not? Or was an event in the future still a statistical prediction? “I’m certain. But I can’t talk about this. I can’t tell you what kind of certainty.”

“It must be a human stratagem, something political, if you have been consulted.”

No. Nothing human. Kim had not been asked for her expertise. “I can not talk about this.  I am only telling you, you have not been told a comforting lie with bad math.”

There was a long silence. Kim kept her eyes closed. Of course, avoiding eye contact didn’t help with people who were watching your magnetic field. “You are not happy.” Hound said, finally. “You are offering me hope, but you are not hopeful.”

Kim held back her answer until she was sure she could speak evenly. “You’re right. I’m not happy. This war is too much for me.”

“Kim…I’m sorry. I did not mean—"

“I’m not talking about this anymore.”

“Kim—”

“I’m not mad. I’m just not talking about this.”

“I…will change the subject now.”

“Thank you.”  Kim rubbed her sweaty hands along her thighs.

“I hear you are going to Italy.” 

“Naples,” Kim said too cheerfully. “I get to take a peek at Pompeii. And then we get to update our scans of Vesuvius.”

“You do not speak Italian. Are you worried?”

“Nah. They’re used to tourists. And I’m not going to do anything dubious like wander through a strange city alone.” 

“It must be very difficult, not to be able to download language packets.”  He sounded a little too sympathetic.

Kim stayed determinedly on topic.  “I don’t wish we all had the same one, though. Language is such an important part of culture. And the history of Italy is in its language.”

“You will, naturally, sample the local food.”

“Well of course. Humans eat frequently.” She managed a smile.

They talked about little things until Carly and the sparklings returned to the passenger cab for the trip home.  They were chatting happily about physics.  Seri and Hot Rod were making fun of Newton’s Laws of Motion. Kim couldn’t quite follow why. It was very funny apparently.

When Carly and the kids scrambled out at the base of the steps, Kim stayed behind. “Can we talk for a moment?”

“Of course,” he answered easily, rolling over to the corner. “What do you wish to discuss?”

“I’m not sure how this works.  If maybe being injured brought you kind of down, of if… you were depressed before the scraplets tried to…eat you? I don’t know how worried I should be about this.”

He didn’t answer. Kim tried to wait. She made it about half a minute. “Do I need to…talk to somebody about your… is it depression? Do Ratchet or Optimus know?”

A click that almost sounded like a laugh. “Do my doctor and the Prime realize my soul is malfunctioning? Yes. Everyone who approaches to overlapping distance is aware.”

“Your spark—” Kim croaked. “Is malfunctioning?”

“I’m sorry. That was not at all clear in English. My distress propagates noticeably in the corona. The disturbance is not profound enough to endanger my health.”

“Can…anybody help?”

“My situation is not urgent. And you do not realize how much … better my state of mind has been since coming to Earth. “

“That's good. I’m glad.” It sounded weak.

“I am committed to Earth, Kim. I have just checked the file on human ‘depression.’ I understand your alarm, I think. But my situation is not the same. My emotions are unsatisfying and my spark is not operating at peak efficiency, but my cognition is not compromised.  Yes, Ratchet has confirmed this. I have been subjected to medical interface at least once every orn since Thanksgiving.”

“So…. My friend, is there anything I can do?”

“You have already helped. Thank you for your reassurance earlier. I will accept your analysis.”

“Okay.” She patted the dash.  Hound had never pointed out a sensor hub for interfacing.

“It’s getting late, Kim. You should rest.”

***

There was music playing. Was it in the hall? Did Chip have his door open?

Kim stirred sleepily and sat up. Huh. There was reggae. Definitely. Close by. And someone was arguing.

Kim glanced at the clock. Seven thirty. It was Tuesday? Yesterday was Christmas. So…Boxing Day.  It would have been nice to sleep in, but Kim got up, checked to see she was decently covered by her short pajamas (if not professionally dressed), and opened the door. That was the source of the reggae.

The outer door was open, and Steeljaw was standing there, getting yelled at by Carly. Pierre stood next to her looking confused and uncomfortable.  Chip, in underwear, was peeking out of his door. “Hey,” Kim said. “Early day?”

“We’re examining the protomatter samples today.  Steeljaw won’t let us out,” Pierre explained softly.

Kim rubbed her face and tried to pretend she was alert and thinking clearly.  “Steeljaw?”

“I’m only the messenger, I don’t give the orders,” They were playing up the 40s movie star voice, dripping class. “You’ll just have to wait, I’m afraid. There’s been an emergency.  Humans are prohibited from entering ‘Bot country.”

“Steeljaw, we live in ‘Bot country,” Kim pointed out.

Elegant claws tapped the floor. “This is very serious. You must stay where you are.”

“Can I ask why?” Kim pressed.

They shifted uneasily. “The base is locked down.”

Carly’s phone rang. She hastily answered and  listened for a moment. “No, here too. We’re confined to the dorm…..Yeah.” She tapped off. “That was June. She’s at the gate. The base is locked down. Nobody in or out.”

Kim ducked back into her room for her own phone. She hesitated for a moment over the VOIP number she never used and then sent a text: REQUEST UPDATE.  She did not take the time to find the glyph. This was good enough.

The answer from Optimus took only a moment: STAND BY.

Well. Interesting. What did ‘standing by’ entail? Kim hurriedly threw on jeans and a shirt and padded to the end of the hall across from the kitchen. Max’s habitat.

Slipstream was there, seated on the floor in the far corner, Max asleep in his lap. “Hey,” Kim said.

It was a moment before he answered. His optical lenses were dim and unfocused.  “Good morning. I am currently monitoring both the orbital data and sampling Earth communications. I do not have the bandwidth for a complex conversation. I beg your pardon.”

Kim walked over slowly and squatted beside him. “You have seven communication inputs.  And you can’t have a conversation at sluggish human speeds?”

“I have only four, in fact.” He paused and petted Max. His eyes focused briefly and scanned over Kim and then dulled again. “There has been an incident.”

Kim had guessed that. She said nothing.

“The infirmary energon supply was contaminated. Bumblebee was poisoned last night.”

All the air seemed to leave her at once.  The sharp, cold shock of it crushed in from all directions. It felt an eternity before she could speak. “Is he alive?”

“Yes. He is still alive. Ratchet has not yet determined his prognosis.”

Oh, god. Oh, god, oh, god— “What—how--?”

“The contamination was dark energon.  The outlook is not encouraging, but we have not given up hope.”

“But we can treat dark energon—” Kim protested, panic growing.

“He is not manifesting the isolated malfunctions that accompany external exposure. It is all throughout his systems. It is interfering with his spark.”

Kim rocked back onto her bottom and sat still for a long moment. Bee. He was still recovering from the combat injury to—

“Are they sure it was the fuel? He was hit by the new weapon. His protoform—”

“It was the fuel.”

Oh, god….

Kim closed her eyes. “So…’Bot country is off limits, and the humans are in the dorm waiting for the hazard to be cleaned up?”

It was a moment before he answered. “Incorrect. The humans are confined to the dorm, and the base is locked down because the poison was introduced to the medical supply by a human.”

Kim sat bolt upright. “No.”

“The culprit has already been identified. It was Sergeant Ford. He has confessed. His only regret is that Bumblebee was the victim and not his intended target.”

The sparklings—they had had upgrades yesterday, they had been in the infirmary—flashed through Kim’s mind. Ford had never been comfortable around the little mecha.

The innocent, precious sparklings. For a moment Kim thought she might be ill.

She made herself ask, though she thought she knew: “Who…who was the target.”

Slipstream’s hands stilled on Max and his optical lenses focused on Kim’s face. “Prime. Ford’s goal was to assassinate our Prime and defile the Great Matrix. He called it an abomination.”

Not the children.

Optimus.

This was too much. It was too absurd. It was too horrible.

One of my people did this. I should apologize. Kim couldn’t say anything. Her arms were clinched over her belly, and her throat was locked up.

Bee might be dying. Bee might be dying right now.

“Would you like to pet Max?” Slipstream offered.

Kim petted Max.

Max turned over and stretched out her neck.

“Human pets are softer, I think,” Slipstream said wiggling his blunt ‘fingers.’ “Do you think Max knows I am alive?”

Kim’s heart clenched. “Oh, sweetheart. If Max has the concept alive, of course she knows you’re alive. You’re her best friend.”

They stayed that way for a while, Kim overwhelmed and stunned, Slipstream too busy to grieve the betrayal properly.

Betrayal. One of the NEST unit who fought alongside them.

“Fixit is coming,” Slipstream said suddenly. “He has a briefing for the dorm residents. You need to go.”

Stiffly, Kim got up and left the cozy room full of toys and rug-covered cat gyms. She stopped for the bathroom. She collected her shoes—new slip-ons with memory foam soles, a Christmas present from Chip because she was always hurrying somewhere—and opened the outer door.

Fixit had just topped the steps. That always looked odd, with his wheels.  Kim pushed the door all the way open and stepped back.

He shut it after him once he was through it.

“Good morning,” Kim said stiffly.

“It is not, my friend.  It is a very bad morning. We have badly miscalculated the timeline. We are not ready.” He paused. “Everyone is in the kitchen. We should join them.”

Carly, Pierre, and Chip were seated at the table, but Maggie was standing in the doorway with her arms crossed. “What the hell, Possum,” she snapped as Fixit approached.

“Beloved, I know what you are fearing. The situation is worse. Please sit down.” The warning was chilling, but Kim found the delivery even worse. Fixit, whose light, eager voice only ever suggested or encouraged, was stern. He was giving orders.

Maggie sat. Kim sat. Chip slid her a cup of tepid, over-sugared tea.

“How’s Bee,” Carly asked quietly.

“Ratchet has not issued a prognosis yet. Bumblebee is…struggling. We have decontaminated his mechanisms as best we can.”

Pierre had his hands folded on the table. Now he bowed his head over them and asked. “Is it true? Ford did this? One of us betrayed you?”

“Was he working for the Decepticons?” Carly interrupted.

Fixit was silent for a long moment. “It would be best if I described the situation. Answering individual questions would not present a clear picture. Kim?”

Oh. Was she still in charge in the dorm? Interesting, Kim thought dully. But it wasn’t interesting. It was only puzzling. If Ratchet hadn’t issued a prognosis yet, Bee was in bad shape. And the target had been Optimus. An assassin had gotten into ‘Bot country. Hell, Ford had gone into combat with Optimus last week. Nowhere was safe. Why was Fixit pretending Kim was still in charge here?

Kim realized everyone was looking at her and managed a nod. “Go ahead,” she croaked.

“Sergeant Ford was not working for the Decepticons.  His neurological operations were altered by his exposure to dark energon. His actions were motivated by emotions of revulsion and hatred, rather than a coherent plan.”

“So why are we locked in here?” Carly demanded. “If we know it was only Ford, we can get back to work.”

“Your conclusion is incorrect. We do not know it was only Ford. We know of no other human injured by dark energon exposure, but our ignorance does not rule out the possibility. I must confess to you now: we made serious miscalculations. We did not anticipate dark energon as a source of compromise for our human allies.  We had observed that direct contact caused illness, so we took steps to protect you from exposure. But since we did not realize there were other potential effects, we did not monitor carefully for…subtle exposure. It is possible there are other individuals who encountered it but did not exhibit symptoms. This was a great failure on our part. I apologize. We are trying to rectify it now.”

“Would someone who was compromised even know they were compromised?” Carly asked.

“As I understand it, no. Apparently, Ford’s experience was primarily emotional. He does not seem to have questioned his motives. For this reason, everyone associated with this base must be examined.”

Kim closed her eyes. Fixit had said this was worse than she thought. This was worse.

Carly stood up and began to pace restlessly. “So, this can’t possibly work.  Even if someone compromised wants to confess, they can’t. We’re never going to know—”

“The Matrix can discern the influence of Chaos,” Fixit said flatly.

Carly gave him an acid look. “And this counts as chaotic?”

“I apologize. We have broached a topic that you do not have clearance for.”

The long silence that followed rang with anger, fear, and frustration.

Kim said, “You don’t have clearance to discuss it with humans.”

Fixit turned to her imploringly. “Kim. We thought the Decepticons were the most urgent danger. Our situation facing them is desperate. How can human authorities possibly understand how much worse….” He turned abruptly to Maggie. “I am sorry. I am so sorry. I did not realize—”

Maggie softened slightly. “Hush, Possum,” she took a step toward him. He flinched backward, and Maggie gasped like she’d been slapped.

The awkward pause was broken by Chip. “Sit down, Maggie. You and I and Kim need to stay here. We’ve been compromised. Everybody else needs to go into another room. In case we’re dangerous.”

There was arguing—Maggie’s protest, Carly’s angry defense of her friends, Pierre’s plea for calm. Kim let it wash over her.  Compromised. The humans Optimus had brought in to acclimate his children to Earth were compromised. The humans he had invited to live in his people’s home, this tiny rudimentary refugee camp beneath the mesa, were compromised.

Chip slapped the table. “Enough. It isn’t Fixit’s fault. They didn’t look for dark energon to be a source of entry because they already knew the Ravenous Void was trying to get in through the language. They thought they had a handle on it, but it’s all gone to shit, hasn’t it? And now they have to try to….”  He shuddered. “What actually is going on? How compromised are we? Can they fix us? Or do we have to be locked up?”

“What are you talking about—” Carly began.

“They brought it with them,” Chip said. “Whatever made Ford do this. It isn’t just in dark energon, it’s something they brought with them. It’s getting to me and Kim because we’re learning Cybertronix and to Maggie through the math.”

“No,” Kim said quickly. “They didn’t bring it. It’s not their fault. It was already here. They didn’t know--” But they had known. They had known all about Unicron.  They just hadn’t thought their death god was real.

“To answer your question, we do not believe your or Maggie’s behavior has been…altered yet. But yes, it is clear we badly misunderstood the extent of the problem and how quickly it was….” He reset his vocalizer. “You and Maggie can be ‘fixed.’ Kim has already…apparently the Matrix first identified the problem in…Kim…and managed to end the… external interference.” His broad optical lenses layers spun in agitation. “Optimus did not know. The Matrix does not take direction from him. It does not always answer his questions. Your friends did not betray you. We only failed you.” He turned to Maggie. “I did not know. We were told very little until this morning when—I’m sorry. I am so sorry. This is a shit show.”

Staring down at the table, Chip said evenly, “I’m way angrier about this than I should be, and that is saying a lot. I would say ‘shit show’ doesn’t even begin to cover it.  If that thing in my dreams is real, I sort of have an idea just how badly you have fucked everything up. This metaphor is probably going to replace that business with the orbital watchtower. How dare you—” He stopped. He unclenched his jaw. “The other humans need to leave, and Fixit needs to watch Maggie and me. In case.”

Carly reached for him. He batted her hand away sharply. “Did I fucking stutter? Get out right now. Because I do not know how much of this feeling is me and how much is that thing from my nightmares. It hates you, it hates us, it wants to watch mech sparks pop and fizzle out, it thinks that will be delicious. So go away until the…alien pope blesses us or what the fuck ever.”

Sadly Fixit nodded. “Optimus will soon return from Building E where the Matrix is examining the military staff. It will not be a long wait.”

As the others filed out, Maggie was still protesting. “Doing math doesn’t make a person evil. This is absurd.”

“You are not evil.” Fixit said. “Of course, you are not evil, Beloved. Doing our math did not make you evil. It made you…receptive. We will fix that. You will not even notice.  Kim did not notice….”

Kim pulled the kitchen door shut and walked firmly back to her room to finish getting dressed.

She had not noticed. She had not noticed feelings of anger or fear—and Raf had warned her to look for them. Maybe she hadn’t had them? Maybe it hadn’t gotten that far? And whatever the Matrix had done to her the evening of that strange party dream…she had not noticed that either.  It had only been an odd dream.

She washed her face and brushed her teeth. Hunger—well, probably hunger—was making her queasy. Kim dug a power bar out of her bag (since the kitchen was off limits), and settled down to worry.  Had any of the other soldiers been exposed to dark energon? Was Raf in danger because he had a human brain thinking a mech language? Was Unicron actively seeking human vessels to…murder Prime and desecrate the Matrix of Leadership? Or was this just some scrap of aimless evil left over from the monster that set life on Earth evolving?

Was Chaos here and still alive? Of course he was. There was no point in trying to hope this mess away. Still, his fight with the children of Primus was 700 years early, wasn’t it? Maybe he wasn’t ready either.

Could the Decepticons be called upon to put the war aside and fight this older enemy? But no, they were making dark energon weapons. They surely couldn’t be trusted….

At three, Eject, who was guarding the outer door, called for Carly and Pierre.  They didn’t come back, but only a few minutes later Maggie and then Chip were summoned.

Kim paced the hallway alone until Maggie returned, June and Fixit trailing in her wake. Maggie was crying a little. Fixit was still apologizing. “You could lie down for a while,” June suggested.

“I’m making tea,” Maggie said. Was she angry, or only impatient?

“I will make it for you,” Fixit said eagerly.

“No, thank you. I can manage tea. I can’t detect alien mind control or expel it, but I can make tea.”

“It was not your fault. You could not help it. Your species—”

“Oh, right. My species, the analog squishies who can’t do real math or they get possessed by pure evil.” She fled into the kitchen. Fixit trailed after her. Kim and June trailed after him.

“You are not evil,” Fixit protested helplessly.

Maggie dug through her box of tea. “Damn right I’m not. I wasn’t a danger to anyone. I wouldn’t have hurt anyone. It was only math.”

“We could not risk that your firewalls might be breached. If your firmware were to be overwritten—”

Maggie froze. She turned around. She looked at Fixit for a moment, and then went back to making tea. “It wasn’t real. It was only math.”

“The Matrix did not take away your math. It changed your field slightly, so you would not be noticeable.” 

“Noticeable to what?” She stared at the electric kettle. “That wasn’t real.”

“We did not want to think so. It did not seem like it could be.”

Giving up on the hot water, Maggie sat down at the table.  Fixit slowly crept up beside her, lowered his frame, and settled his head gently on her lap.  “I would never have hurt you. Nothing could make me hurt you.”  

“I know,” he said. “You loved me when I did not know who I was or who I would be. I love you whoever you are.”

June took Kim by the forearm and drew her several steps down the hall. “Did you know?” she whispered.

Kim had a hard time meeting her eyes. “I knew enough to figure it out. But we were all worried about something else….”

“There is something else?”

“We weren’t sure…learning an alien language might cause…the human brain is designed to work with human languages. No one had ever tried an alien language.”

“And it could have caused a mental illness?” she said doubtfully.

Kim winced. “Or messed up other parts of our brains. But…if mecha can use an analog language, using a digital language wouldn’t have killed us. I mean, it wasn’t likely something bad would happen. It was just a science fiction guess.”

“But so were aliens.” June took a deep breath. “So you and Chip….”

“It was worth the risk. That risk.” Kim remembered the first linguist they’d interviewed in France. “To us.”

“But what actually happened—?” June was cut off by the outer door opening again. Chip, holding tightly to Dr. Nomura’s arm, came back to the dorm. Chip paused to look at them. Dr. Nomura gently tugged him toward the door to his room.

Going for calm, Kim went down the hall to them. Chip let go of Dr. Nomura to grab Kim by the shoulders. “You are so beautiful,” he said. He let go of Kim and hugged June. “Thank you, thank you,” he murmured. “I love you so much.”

“Dr. Chase,” Dr. Nomura said dryly, “appears to have had a religious experience.”

Kim pushed down a spike of worry. Chip’s pupils were tiny dots. “Shower or bed?” she asked.

“Starch,” Chip croaked. “Like cookies. Lots of cookies. And water. And potato chips.”

Dr. Nomura and June looked at each other and shrugged.

Kim’s phone buzzed.

A meeting in the infirmary had appeared on her schedule. It was marked URGENT.

Kim looked at Chip. She turned back toward the kitchen. “I—”

June sighed. “We’re fine here. Go on.”

She should have walked fast. She should have run. It felt like she was slogging through mud and trying to see through fog. Was this shock?  Was finding out you had almost been possessed by an alien destruction god a reason to be in shock? It had been months ago, after all. However bad it almost was, she should be over it, right?

Maybe she was only worried about what Optimus thought of her now.  Even if he wasn’t personally put off, making commitments to the spawn of hell was probably not allowed for high priests.

Optimus was in the infirmary, huddled with Ratchet over a berth holding a motionless shape. Bumblebee. He was tethered to an external console rather than to Ratchet. Kim glanced at the monitor.  Electropulse variance was over seven percent.  The spark graph…wasn’t showing any color or wave patterns that looked familiar to Kim at all.

Optimus turned and crouched as Kim approached. “I am sorry,” he said immediately.  “I am very sorry. I do not have time to enumerate the catalog of mistakes I have made, or make amends for the damage those mistakes have caused your people or this planet. I need your help, and while I cannot expect you to forgive, I humbly ask you to delay your condemnation until later.”

Kim wasn’t sure how to take that. Uncertainly, she said. “I can see you have a lot of experience with official apologies.”

“When we are out of this emergency, I will make a personal apology as well.”

“Why are you apologizing to me? I know you didn’t understand what was going on. None of us knew what we were looking at—I’m still not sure—” Kim rubbed her hands together. “What do you need me to do? What’s going on?”

He scooped her up and rose smoothly, exiting the infirmary and retreating around the curve of the tunnel before answering. “None of Ratchet’s interventions have slowed Bumblebee’s decline. The Matrix has also failed. We have exhausted our options—” He broke off, shifting to rebalance Kim as she curled forward and nearly fell off his hand.

Bee. Bee. Bee.

He was going to die.

He’d been poisoned, and he was going to die.

Kim gasped, realized she had forgotten to breathe, realized that Optimus was watching her anxiously, realized there wasn’t time to grieve now.  “What do I—what do you want me to do?”

“I would like to send you into town with Jazz, to collect Raf.”

Oh. God. “Are—are—are you sure? I know he’d want to say good-bye. But. This will be so hard for him, and he’s so young. Are you sure?”

Optimus stared at Kim for a long moment. “You misunderstand, I think. I am not sending for Raf so that he can say good-by.  I am sending for him because I hope he can help.”

Kim took a breath. “He’s a human child. I’m not sure how you think him having a sparkling soul is going to help, but if he is aware of Bee’s field, he’s going to feel that,” Kim gestured in the direction of the infirmary, “and he’s not a mech. How is he going to handle perceiving whatever is happening to Bee? Even if he wants to be here-“ and of course, yes Raf would want to be here, “he doesn’t—”

Kim stopped, suddenly confused. All the little sensors on Optimus’s helm had ducked behind their shielding plate. His optics reset. “Kim,” he said slowly, “Have you concluded that Rafael…is hosting a sparkling?”

“Yes?” Optimus stared at her, optical lenses motionless. “I--I’ve seen the video? The Allspark was making babies just randomly, dropping sparks just anywhere, bringing things to life.” She stopped awkwardly. “Raf was in the area. And a human body can hold a magnetic field. And…he speaks Cybertronix. And his field is as big as a mech’s—”

Optimus was shaking his head slowly. “No, Kim. Rafael is not harboring the soul of a child spawned by the Allspark. Rafael is carrying the Allspark itself. If there is any chance of saving Bumblebee, or, indeed, any of us, we will need his help.”

Kim rubbed her hands over his face. “How can that…? How can that have happened?“

“We do not know. It is, I suppose, a miracle.”

A miracle. 

Kim tried to calm down. She tried to breathe normally. She tried to focus. “Does…he know?”

“Yes, Kim. Rafael is aware he carries within him all that remains of the Cube.” He paused. “The integration has been a slow process. There is a great deal he does not…understand. I wish we had had even a little more time.”

How many times had Kim seen Optimus defer to Raf? Accept that Raf had a right to judge him? She had thought it was sympathy for the difficult position an innocent child had been thrust into. But no. The eleven year old flesh creature was literally the Prime’s equal. “This…explains a lot.”

“We have told him Bumblebee has been injured. Will you go with Jazz to retrieve him? He should be told—in person—before he arrives and perceives the state of Bumblebee’s field and how desperate the situation is.  I know it is asking…so much….”

“Okay,” Kim said. “Okay. Yes.”

Chapter Text

Jazz spoke for the first time when they turned onto the highway. “You doin’ okay, there?”

Kim shook her head. “It’s a lot.”

“Yeah, it sure is a lot,” he agreed.

“Does it, um, bother you? Having a human inside you now that you know we can be…hacked?”

“Optimus gave me the scan files from before and after the Matrix blessed Chip and Maggie. I can’t make any sense of it. If there’s a pattern, I can’t find it. And finding patterns is my job.”

Kim shifted, acutely aware of all the places her weight was resting against him.  He was probably wondering if he was transporting a demon. “Sorry,” she said.

“I’ll tell you what really worries me: there were no problems before you became more like…us.  Our language, whatever way it changed you, is what made you vulnerable. That’s….that’s crazy. Kim, how can our language have done that?”

“Would, um, It speak your language?”

“We have no idea.”

“Right,” she said, putting her face in her hands.

“Kim, it’s not like we didn’t look. We’ve been scanning.  We looked before we sent the Allspark. We looked when we sent Bee and Cliffjumper to search for the Cube team.  Ironhide and I are paranoid—we’ve been checking to see if there was any way Earth was off the bell curves and any sign that the life on Earth was being interfered with.  The only thing—the only thing—that seemed unusual was how much life there was and how fast it evolved, and even that wasn’t statistically significant.”

“I…guess that’s good to know. That he didn’t seem to be…running things.” Or he had just done a great job of hiding his influence.

“Can I ask you? What is It like? I mean, you….”

“It was like a bad dream. I mean, a really bad dream I had a lot. But not worse than dreams can be.  I thought it was culture shock or stress or how awful learning a new language is.” Kim bit her lip. “Big. Angry. Hungry.”

“Devourer of Worlds.”

“Yeah,” Kim sighed.

“We have to find him.”

Kim straightened. “What? He’s here, right, that’s the point.”

“He can’t be the whole planet.  He can’t be made of rock. He’s got to be somewhere. Deep, probably, since human activity hasn’t found him.  On the other hand, he’s influenced you enough to stop you from noticing energon. Perhaps you just don’t…mine where he is.”

“The energon thing. It has to be him.” Kim touched her bracelet, remotely surprised to find she was actually wearing it.

“Yeah, that has to be him.”

Kim sighed.

They stopped at Knock Out Burger. Kim had hardly eaten today, and Raf was a growing boy. Well, growing host to a sacred alien consciousness. While they waited for the order, she was struck by a new, frightening thought: “Can you just leave? The planet, I mean? Is energon really so rare you have to stay and fight It for it?”

“Running away and leaving Earth’s energon to the Decepticons was a bad idea. But it isn’t an option  at all now.  We can’t leave. The Allspark is merged with a human.” He paused. “But that was why most of us stopped worrying: Humans could not be the, um, tools of Evil if a relic of Primus found one of them worthy.”

“Oh. I can see that, yeah. So ever since you’ve met Raf--”

“Well…. At first, Raf was only classified as a low-priority, non-hostile anomaly. We are tracking four thousand, six hundred and twenty-two of them. Raf himself took his existence for granted until you started asking him difficult questions.”

“Oh,” Kim said.

When they got to the house, Raf was already waiting outside. He got in, glanced at Kim, glanced at the bag of food. “Is he still alive?”

“Yes,” Kim said. “But he’s…not doing well. He may die.”

Jazz headed out of the neighborhood and picked up speed.

“Was there combat today? They wouldn’t let us come to the base, and then Jack and Miko got brought in. But I wasn’t.”

“There wasn’t combat. Bee was poisoned with dark energon.”

“Oh. I…I see. A spill?”

“No, it was in the fuel supply.  He was in the infirmary, and the infirmary supply was contaminated.”

“Oh. That’s… bad.”

Kim glanced out Jazz’s window. They were passing the strip mall, coming up on the  MartMart. She cleared her throat. “Ratchet and the Matrix can’t….do anything. They’re hoping you’ll know something.” Picked up the take-out bag and handed it to him. “You probably want to eat.”

Wordlessly, he took the two hot dogs out of the bag and passed one to Kim.  She managed three or four bites before feeling ill.

Jazz was on the open road now, the mesa that hid most of the army base growing larger in the windshield.

***

How had Kim not guessed about Raf? None of the mecha treated him like a child.  He crossed the yellow line without waiting for permission, and Ratchet stepped out of the way so he could climb up the berth to stand beside Bumblebee’s motionless form.

Raf looked up at the monitors, studying each of the readings thoughtfully. After a long time, he said, “I kinda want to ask how it happened, but it doesn’t matter, does it?”

“No,” Optimus said. “There is no comfort in understanding the details. Rafael. I must ask…is it possible? Do you have enough control to pass the Allspark to Bumbebee? It would save him—”

“No. I cannot pass the Allspark to Bee.” He blinked back tears and rubbed his eyes. “Even if I could settle it into his spark casing, there isn’t enough coherence here to do it twice. You don’t understand—”

“My friend, I understand that the situation cannot remain as it is. The burden on Rafael’s body cannot be sustained much longer—”

“I can manage long enough.”

“This would save you both,” Optimus was at his most persuasive: soft voice, respectful attention, body angled forward like a human being earnest. Voice still gentle, he switched to Cybertronix.

Kim couldn’t follow what he said, but Raf was unmoved. “I’m not sacrificing anyone,” Raf announced. “If we do it my way, we can save Bee, the Earth, the Allspark, and even maybe some of the Decepticons.”

Optimus tilted his chin, putting Raf in range of his sonic scanner. “The Decepticons?”

“Some will surrender to the Allspark if it demands it.”

Optimus shook his head. “They will not surrender to a human.”

“Yeah. I’ve had to come up with a new plan.” Raf bit his lip, looking uncertain for the first time. “It’s…more creative than I’d like, and we have to hurry.”

“Very well,” Optimus relented. “How are we to proceed?”  

“It’s going to be…complicated. I think the only way to do this quickly and without hurting anyone is to hold a Unification. And I don’t think that rite just happens by itself.”

“No. Unification is preceded by Reconciliation.”

Raf nodded. “You will lead Reconciliation, then.”

“Lead? Not provide?” Optimus drew back slightly. “I will Reconcile…with you?”

“To me. Yes. We don’t have a lot of time. I don’t have any other ideas. So, yes, you will Reconcile to me, Optimus Prime.” He turned back to Bumblebee and ran his hand along the motionless helm. “Will an hour be enough time to recall the deployed personnel?”

“We’ll begin preparing immediately,” Optimus said, withdrawing.

Raf stayed where he was for a moment, leaning his weight against Bumblebee’s helm. Then—carefully, Kim could see he was shaking—he climbed down and walked back to Jazz, who was still in alt, parked just beyond the yellow line.

Kim followed him. What else was there to do?

“I need to speak to Hound, I think,” Raf said. “Would you call him for me?”

“You have your phone,” Jazz pointed out.

Raf shook his head. “It’s not an order, and if it comes from me directly, it will feel like one.” He opened the passenger door and retrieved the cup of soda he’d left behind.  He sipped methodically while they waited the three minutes it took for Hound to come speeding in from the Bridge.

Hound folded down into a box and—very formally, with all the humility markers—gave his name in Cybertronix and started an apology.

“What are you doing?” Raf asked, peering at the featureless cube.

Kim understood none of the answer.

“Seriously?” Raf said. “Maybe you better explain that in English….”

“You are demanding our Reconciliation. I am preparing to beg for mercy. If that will help.”

“I’m not demanding--” Raf protested. “Well, I am. But not because I’m angry.” He took a deep breath. “I’m going to need protomatter. Like, a lot of it. And if we get it like we did to gestate the sparkings, that takes hours to get in the right….mood. And not everybody can do it. And if I ask Ratchet to harvest it surgically, that’s pretty serious physical trauma. And it will also take hours anyway, and we don’t have time. But if I’ve got you all tranced, and ask, then the, um, donations can be kind of sloughed off.”

Slowly, Hound transformed back into root form.  He sat down beside Jazz’s alt. “I’m not sure that will work,” he said. “Not to contradict you but… Why do you think it will work?”

“Of course, it will work.” Raf waved a hand. “That’s the easy part.”

Hound did not press for an explanation.

Kim thought about a room full of mecha  somehow ‘sloughing off’ bits of their internal organs. “What’s the hard part?” she asked.

“Using it to save Bee.”

“Um,” Kim paused, debating whether to finish the thought, decided she’d better. “Optimus and Chromia were injured. They’ve recently lost protomatter—”

Raf shook his head. “I can’t use theirs anyway.” He frowned and counted on his fingers. “Seven, I think. I hope it’s enough. It will be enough.” He looked like a little boy. Little boys didn’t give orders to alien war machines. Kim sat down beside him and closed her eyes.

 Hound said, “If we did include Indictment, it might actually be easier for Prime. It would make the confession part of Reconciliation a lot shorter.”

“That’s an idea,” Jazz said. “But who could do it? I mean, to be authentic, it should be somebody really low caste.”

Raf put down his empty cup. “I don’t even know who that would be,” he said.

“Fixit or Bulkhead. Arguably maybe Slipstream.” Jazz clicked softly. “Slipstream can’t sing worth scrap. Bulkhead is Prime’s Bodyguard, officially. There is no ritual context where that works.”

Hound asked Fixit to come join the meeting.

“We’re holding Unification,” Hound explained when he arrived. “If we do the full ritual cycle, we need someone to sing the demand for justice.  Are you interested?”

Fixit’s head pulled back slightly in surprise. “I am not quarreling with anyone, let alone everyone. Why would I do it?”

Hound answered in Cybertronix. Fixit’s antennae retracted slightly. “Tell Kim that,” he said flatly.

It was Jazz who answered. Slowly, he said, “He wants Fixit to sing a demand for justice…to Prime...for Functionism. And Resource Allocation. And the war.” A soft growly noise, maybe protomatter rather than voice. “He’s going too far.  Why not just record that and send it to Megatron?.”

“This isn’t about the Decepticons,” Raf said. “This is about authentically facing your history and taking collective responsibility for it.  Your history is exploitation, cruelty, and war.”

“All of that is true,” Jazz conceded. “Optimus Prime didn’t start any of it. I’m not sure you remember—”

“I don’t remember anything,” Raf said. “I didn’t have an ‘I’ to remember things with then. And maybe I’m judging this with human morals now, and that isn’t fair.”

“I won’t do it,” Fixit said. “If you have to have this part of the ritual, I am sorry. But I couldn’t do it authentically. I mean…literally anyone else. Sentinel Prime. Alpha Trion. The Assignment Committee. The Justice Committee. But I cannot sing Indictment against Optimus Prime and mean it.”

“It would make it easier for him, I think.” Fixit looked away and Hound tried another tack.  “You could sing in an Earth language, if that would make it more palatable. Ironically, they have many pieces that would accomplish a presentation of grievance.”

Fixit shook his head. “It isn’t just that he saved me. He respected my autonomy, even when it wasn’t…convenient. He is Prime. It only takes a moment to override an hysterical mech.” He looked at their faces. “He did not do it. I am not saying the ritual is inappropriate. But I, myself, cannot accuse him of injustice.”

There was a long, sad silence. Raf said, “I may be wrong about this, but the Humans could have a case for injustice: the Autobots sent the Allspark here, and then they brought the whole war.”

“Interesting,” Hound said. “Clearly true. If that’s the issue, though, is it the sort of thing that supports Unification? And if it does, is it going to matter that Kim can’t ๆα?”

ๆα was the part where the protomatter came out and…danced. And tangled. Kim’s skin—salty, damp, acidic—should surely not be groping protomatter.  Kim closed her eyes. “You know I’ll do anything to help, but…if not wanting to do it disqualifies…I can’t pretend I don’t want Autobots to be here.”

“Never mind,” Jazz said. “Prime appreciates the offer, but he declines.”

“Ohthankgod,” Kim murmured.

Raf hunched up. “Never mind then. It’s an optional part of the ritual anyway.  Another problem, though. I’ve never done this before.  I don’t think there is a—you know, a song for this.”

“The word you want is ‘liturgy,” Hound said. “No. The…The Cube didn’t sing. There are no songs for you. And it would be awful--”

Raf made a face. “I won’t sing any of his high priest songs. Even if I could.” He said he had no ‘memories,’ but Kim wondered what Raf knew about Sentinel Prime.

“No,” Hound agreed quickly. Not that.  

Raf sighed, pushed up his glasses. “Even if we could adapt…something, I can’t sing in Cybertronix. And I have to sing. I have to sing something so beautiful, mecha will willing share their substance with an alien.”  He shook his head.

“Aw, that part’s easy,” Jazz said. “Bee’s been teachin’ you songs for months.”

“He’s right,” Hound said. “We thought, perhaps, you might need a ceremony for…separation at some point. Bee made sure you could sing.”

Raf closed his eyes. “Oh, Bee.” He turned and leaned hard into Hound. Kim, feeling helpless, patted his shoulder.

“Kim,” Jazz said. “It would be best if the other humans…we don’t have time to answer their questions. They don’t have any idea about Raf. I think it’s better that way, don’t you?”

“Ugh. Okay. Right.” Kim fluffed her hair and straightened her shoulders. “Right. I’ll go…not explain.”

It didn’t turn out to be hard: Chip and Maggie were asleep. The others—while curious—immediately agreed that coming uninvited and unbriefed to an alien religious ritual would be (as June put it) ‘tacky.’

Kim was tempted, for a moment, to stay with them. She didn’t want to intrude. She didn’t want to witness—whatever it was they were asking of Optimus. She didn’t want to think about Raf, hosting an alien relic.

A lot of Raf was a human kid. No other humans knew he was doing this. Did Kim want him to do it alone?

If he pulled this off and... took protomatter from a bunch of different mecha and…somehow used them to save Bee….somehow…shouldn’t a human witness that? Shouldn’t she be there for him if it didn’t work?

When Kim came out onto the balcony, the assembly area was already crowded with mecha.  Between patrol, recharge, and training with the military, ‘Bot country was usually pretty quiet.  Now it seemed packed with huge bodies. Even the sparklings were there—they were clinging like baby monkeys to Windblade who was stationed beside the entrance to the outer tunnel.

Everyone was in root form, roughly arrayed facing the balcony. They were eerily quiet, watching Raf, who sat on the top step. Kim handed him a water.

He took a couple of swallows and set the bottle down.

“Is there anything I can do?” Kim asked. The words were swallowed by the quiet hum of mech operation and the silence of their watchful optics.

“Stay up here, out of the way. Even if it looks scary.”

Kim nodded.

There was a shuffling at the entry to the ‘Bot commissary. Someone was making his way toward the front. It was tall, but Kim didn’t recognize—

Kim had never seen a mech un-armored, except for the sparklings. Sometimes a single panel was removed for repairs, but that was all.  They never took off the bright plating or even put down most of their weapons.

Optimus had removed most of his helm, the heavy shoulder plating, the thick sheets that normally covered hips and thighs, the dorsal guards on his servos.

He was still large. The curved inner carapace was matte, like brushed nickel, not mirror-bright like the sparklings. Without the thick helm, every small antenna and sensor node on his cranium was visible. His movement was noticeably quieter.

The mecha parted, sliding aside to let him pass. When he reached the front of the group, Raf stood up, straightened his glasses, and nodded. “Everyone is here. Are you ready?”

“I am,” Optimus answered.

He gestured at Prime’s altered form. “Is this Solus Prime, putting aside her arsenal to treat with Prima? Or is this a human story, Ishtar at the door to the Underworld?”

“This is my acknowledgement that weapons of war are a blasphemy.”

Raf nodded, straightened self-consciously, and glanced around, seeking seeking Jazz toward the front. “We’d better do it then. Do I say something? To start it?”

“No,” Optimus said. “I begin.”

“Okay.”

The song was very quiet. It was not a melody Kim had heard before. It was tentative, each word careful and clear.  She had assumed the Reconciliation song would be apologetic. It seemed, instead, sad.  Surely, it was beautiful, but hearing it tore at Kim. Optimus had stripped himself of his armor, his perfect paint nanites, his weapons. He had humbled himself to beg.

His voice grew louder, resonating off the stone walls. The melody grew more complex. The words tumbled like water, swelling and sliding away, ringing in the stone room, echoing a little in the heights of the ceiling. Optimus sang and sang, uncovered sensors focused on Raf.

There was a refrain of some kind, a section that repeated. The fourth time, Chromia joined in. She stepped up beside Optimus, folded out an arm cannon, detached it, and set on the floor. The song swelled again, Jazz’s clear, bell-like voice twining in a syncopated harmony.

At the top of the stairs, Raf gripped the railing tightly with one hand and wiped his eyes with the other. “And we…will all…be one,” he whispered. He didn’t have the melody, but the rhythm hit in an open spot in the larger song. An answer.

The song was flowing from twenty mecha now. Kim could hear a background counterpoint of protoform vibration, not quite harmonizing. Ironhide transformed through his alt and folded into a box.

“And we will be. We will be one.” The English somehow fit, hooking onto the melody. Bee had taught him to sing—not for this song, but he must have known Raf would be involved in a ritual—and he was prepared to improvise. Raf was clear and on key, blending with the alien tune. “And we will be. We will be one.”

Blaster and Strongarm dropped into their consolidated forms. The sparklings had climbed down from Windblade and were dancing.

 “And we will be. We will be one.” The line Raf was singing was a gloss of a formal blessing. Kim spared a fleeting regret for her linguist, who was crashed in the dorm, recovering from attempted mind control (recovering from aborted demon possession).  Chip would be pissed that he missed this. Kim did not record it for him.

Everyone was singing now, and the wall of sound was physically palpable, a rhythm slightly faster than Kim’s heartbeat. The bones in her temples seemed to vibrate.

Optimus, with large sections of armor missing, had a hard time transforming, and his final cube was lopsided.

Still clinging to the railing, still singing, moving like he was under water, Raf made his way down the steps. He went right up to Optimus and leaned forward, brushing his forehead against the featureless bulk. For a moment, the song seemed to pause.

Optimus unfolded like a flower and his protomatter rose slowly, uncoiling tentatively. And the—

The rhythm of the song bounced off the stone walls and the layers of melody made a tangled echo in the dark cavern above.  The gathered Autobots closed up into their smallest forms and then folded back and poured forth waterfalls and ropes and swaying blades of glittering protomatter.

Kim could barely see. Indoors, the stary fronds reflected the lights like a hundred spinning disco balls. It was all rainbows, in all directions. She gasped, unable to process it all.

Through the shifting branches, Kim could see Raf.  He was dancing with the sparklings, the three of them easily weaving in and out of the twining fronds of living metal.  For a moment, Kim wondered why the babies hadn’t joined in the Unification before remembering that their T-cogs weren’t turned on. But that was all right. They knew how to dance.

Riveted, trying to look everywhere at once, trying to make out even a word of the song, Kim didn’t notice the Matrix had opened until her hair was already standing up and a strange warmth was wrapped tightly around her.

Kim panted, finding it hard to think through the sudden heat, wanting to see them. “Look who decided to show up,” she growled.

If the sacred dead that haunted the Matrix heard, they ignored her.

A quiet settled over the cavern. The dance stopped, and the shifting rainbows reflected from the protomatter slowed and came to rest. Raf was standing in the middle of them. He turned slowly, looked up at Kim. “I have to sing,” he said.

“I’ve heard you do it,” Kim said.  Her voice seemed thin and swallowed by the silence. “You can sing.”

He closed his eyes and the warmth of the Matrix was joined by…something just as large, but simpler.  Raf tipped his head back and sang.

   To be humble, to be kind
   It is the giving of Peace in your mind.
   To a stranger, to a friend,
   To give in such a way that has no end.

    We are love, we are one
    We are how we treat each other when the day is done
    We are peace, we are war,
    We are how we treat each other and nothing more.

Raf was standing next to a heap of folded metal and glistening protomatter that was probably Strongarm. He reached out a hand, and a frond of silver rose in a mirroring movement. Raf cupped his palm and a delicate strand formed a bulb about the size of golf ball dropped off.  He didn’t catch it so much as let it splash into his hand.

    To be bold, to be brave
    Is in the thinking that the heart can still be saved.

Still singing, Raf made his way through the press of swaying—Kim clamped down on the thought ‘internal organs.’  

The heap of green armor presided over by a small weeping willow of silver filagree had to be Hound. Raf reached out. Several thin fronds of protomatter braided together, bunched at the tip, and dropped a splash of silver into Raf’s outstretched hands.

  And the darkness can come quick. The danger’s in the anger, and hanging on to it.

Eject was small. His protoform was not much bigger than a corgi. Raf had to squat down to take the little glittering lump he offered.

Arcee’s protoform stretched upward, branching like a tree or a river delta. Raf’s voice shook as he sang to her.  Her gift glistened like a cluster of soap bubbles.

Raf worked his way through the maze of unstructured bodies, stopping before some of the mecha to take what was offered. 

When the song ended, the tall cavern of the assembly area was silent except for Raf’s steps as he came back to the foot of the stairs. “Kim?” he called weakly, “Can I have my water.”

Kim grabbed his bottle and charged down the steps as fast as gravity would take her. “Are you all right?” she gasped, dropping to her knees and holding out the bottle.

“I don’t think I’m finished,” he whispered, his eyes filling with tears.  He reached for the bottle, realized his hands were full of swirling, metallic silk. 

Kim tilted the bottle toward him. He braced it with his forearms and sucked down half of what was left. He pushed it away and tipped his head back, panting, wrinkling his nose to get his glasses back into position.

“Raf,” Kim said, timidly, “If you need to rest—”

He shook his head. “I have to sing. It thinks it’s a bunch of different people, not one thing. And it’s not built to be…outside of bodies. No carapace. No seals.  It has to change. It’s transformer…I thought it would…change. But it doesn’t have the part that tells it how to be what it needs to be…? I don’t know the English word—”

“T-cog,” Kim said.

“Yeah. There’s no T-cog. I have to teach it a little more.” He cleared his throat, motioned for more water. “I can’t think of any songs.”

“Are you allowed to use the karaoke machine?”

“Oh. Yeah. I guess… Do you know how to run it?”

Jazz’s voice answered. “It’s on the wifi. Here you go.”

The intro to “Higher Love” echoed from the speakers in the next cavern.  Raf managed to stand. He took a deep breath. He tipped back his head. “Think about it. There must be higher love.”

He sang to the handfuls of glistening protomatter he clutched in an awkward mass against his chest. It shimmered and wrapped around hands, sliding on like silk gloves.  The gloves went up his arms, sliding under his sleeves, peeking out at the collar like long underwear. Was it so black it reflected like a mirror? Or was it rainbow-colored? None of it ever seemed to be in shadow….

Kim felt a stab of worry as the silver film spread up Raf’s neck. “He’s human,” Kim whispered to it, in case it could understand. It probably couldn’t—this puddle of protomatter didn’t have a processor or audial sensors any more than it had a T-cog. “He…needs to breathe.”

Raf ignored the strands as they spread over his face, reached lacy fingers into his mouth, frosted his eyelashes.

Kim held her breath.

  Things look so bad everywhere
  In this whole world, what is fair?

Raf’s eyes went silver. Kim squeaked and reached out, but there was no place to touch him. Silver runners were up the sides of his face and twining threads through his hair.

But Raf was unafraid and still singing.

  Worlds are turning, and we're just hanging on
  Facing our fear, and standing out there alone 

Jazz and Optimus were both singing softly, now. Optimus sang in English, Jazz took the translated part Bee had sung before the getting-to-know-you party. There was an on-key hum, too, that seemed to come from several sources.  

Kim realized she was shaking a little.

  Bring me a higher love.

The song wasn’t quite over when Raf broke off suddenly. Gagging and curling inward, he silently coughed out a flood of silver.  Before Kim could panic, he was panting and holding a smooth, mirrored ball in his hands, one last thread retreating from his face to disappear seamlessly into the mass.  Raf laughed and hugged the wad to him. It was slightly smaller than a basketball and clearly heavy.

In the far room, the karoke machine turned off. Jazz started to transform, made it mostly into alt, and crunched to a halt. “Sorry,” he murmured. “I’m going to need a few more minutes.”

Raf shook his head. “’S okay. I just gotta take this to Bee now.”  He stood up unsteadily. The sphere in his arms dissolved into a snake, crawled up his arm, and settled around his shoulders like a stole made of chrome chainmail.

“Okay. Okay,” Raf said. Stiffly, slowly, he skirted around the splayed mecha. The forest of trees and waterfalls resembled a very clean scrapyard. Some of the protoforms had collapsed into lax puddles that looked like pools of mercury or spilled pudding. Raf had to watch where he put his feet.

When he cleared the gathering, Raf plodded toward the infirmary.  Kim followed, not quite sure what to do. She wanted to help.  Touching him seemed like a bad idea. The thing he was carrying was –what even was it? How would it react if Raf were interfered with?

They had made it about half way when Raf said, “Okay,” and sat abruptly on the smooth stone floor. “I need a few minutes, too.”

Kim got down beside him and held out the last of the water. Raf gulped what was left in the bottle and then held out his free hand. His metal cape flowed down his arm and formed into a squat cylinder. “You go ahead and take this to Bee. I’ll be along in a few minutes.”

Kim hated herself for hesitating. She hated herself for being afraid. The cylinder didn’t look unfriendly.

“It’s okay,” Raf said. “It will know what to do. All you have to do is carry it to Bee.”

Kim forced herself to reach out—

It coiled around her hand, squeezing like a quick handshake, and raced up her arm like—

Before she could process what it was like, it was curved around her shoulders, heavy, hard.

It was a little lighter than Max. It was definitely smaller. This was just like taking Max for a walk. Right?

It still felt very heavy and huge. Kim watched it nervously out of the corner of her eye.

She walked as fast as she could and still keep her shoulders smooth. She didn’t want to jostle…it. Or scare…it.

Climbing up Bumblebee’s berth without moving her shoulders slowed her down horribly, but at last she was standing at his shoulder junction, balanced comfortably on two of the metal supports. As far as she could tell, the telemetry screens didn’t show any improvement. Bee’s optics were dark and still.

“Okay,” Kim said hopefully to the…creature. “We’re here.”

It didn’t seem to respond.

Damn.

Kim reached up and tried to lift one end. It was floppy and warm, a little like a cat. It seemed solid now, but she had seen this stuff flow like water. She had the terrible thought of it popping like a water balloon and splashing—

Kim squatted slowly, leaning her shoulders in toward Bee’s shoulder. It slid off like a snake, sliding along the yellow armor until it found the wide neck seam. Kim could see the cabling inside. Fracturing into a thousand tiny threads, Raf’s protomatter ball dove inside and disappeared into the darkness.

Kim took three shaky steps back, so she was beside Bee’s head, and sat down on one of the hard, narrow supports. She breathed in.

Should she pray?

To whom? Or what?

Had the Autobots been praying to Raf?

Oh, please. Please, save Bee. Please, save Raf.

She looked up at the screens. His spark pulse variance was an unsustainable seven percent. The diagram of his spark activity…didn’t look anything like any diagram Kim had ever seen. Bad or good, she couldn’t tell, but it wasn’t normal.

And then, suddenly, it was. Kim couldn’t read distress or struggle, the details meant nothing to her, but the outline and colors were recognizably a mech spark.

Pulse variance was three. It was two-point-eight. It was two-point-five.

It stayed two-point-five. Kim was still staring at it when she heard the heavy tread of a big mech crossing the yellow line.  The pace was slow, and Kim had to look up to identify Ratchet. He was carrying Raf cupped in his servos.

Ratchet set Raf on Bee’s chest. He fit, mostly. Bumblebee wasn’t a large mech, but Raf was a small boy.  Raf patted Bee once and closed his eyes. Bee’s eyes lit, then darkened again with a protoform sigh.

A stream of quicksilver flowed uphill out of the gaps in Bee’s  main vent and gathered itself into a ball next to Raf.

“I have an incubator sack,” Ratchet offered. Kim wondered what he meant, but Raf apparently knew.

“It’s not going to integrate external parts,” he said without opening his eyes. “It doesn’t need an incubator. Just put it in a bucket with some energon.”

“And some raw materials jell and pulverized scrap metal, I assume?”

“Oh. Yeah. Great idea. It’s going to be huge. It’s going to take years.”  He patted Bee again.  

“Ratchet, is Raf all right?” Kim asked.

“Dehydrated and exhausted. I sent his scans to the dorm. Optimus is fetching Nurse Darby now.”

Oh, good. Someone who knew how human bodies worked. Wonderful. Kim eased down off the berth and went to fetch the human first aid kit—two EMT boxes kept in a small refrigerator. By the time Optimus arrived with June (maybe it should have been Dr. Nomura, but most of his actual work had been on the application of robotics to prosthetics, not family medicine, and June surely had more experience with first aid), Ratchet had placed the kit on a portable table and set the height so that a human could stand on that instead of the berth supports.

Optimus did a long scan of the figures on the berth before stepping back, pausing to scoop up Kim as he got out of the way.

Ratchet had retrieved a five-gallon plastic bucket, produced a thin tubule from somewhere around his waist, and was squirting a thin stream of something into it.  “It looks like he’s peeing,” Kim said. Apparently, her internal censor was totally gone. She regretted the words immediately, of course, but Ratchet had heard and gave her a practiced glare.

“The main medical supply is contaminated. I carry a small emergency tank. For emergencies. Because I am a doctor.”

“Sorry,” Kim said. “It’s been a rough day.”

“I can’t understand why humans think waste removal is funny—”

“Enough,” Optimus said softly. “It has been a very…rough day.”

Ratchet finished his fuel collection, added a couple liters of the metal shavings he kept for the sparklings, and then gently lifted up the sphere of protomatter and plopped it in.

“Will Raf be all right, now that the Allspark is out of him?” Kim asked.

Optimus looked down at her for a long moment. “The Allspark and Raf are still together.”

Kim shook her head. “No. Oh, no. He can’t keep doing this. It’s too much. He isn’t growing right. You said so, a human body—”

“Soon,” Optimus said.

“Soon?”

“Yes. Soon.”

“You thought seven hundred years was soon!” Kim protested. “How long will it take to get that new Cube big enough to put—”

“You have generalized past your data. The infant Allspark Raf has given us is a copy, a clone. It is not a new host for the being Raf and the Allspark have become.”

Kim opened her mouth. Shut it. “Raf still has—and what are we going to tell his parents? It’s—” She glanced at her watch. “It’s dinner time. They’re going to miss him. He isn’t even in shape to call home—”

“Agent Fowler is handling the Equivale family.”

“You sent the FBI—”

“Agent Fowler is adept at telling humans comfortable lies.” Optimus paused. “In this case, it is a comfortable half-truth.  His family will be collected and brought to the base in protective custody.  They will be told that Raf has become involved with space aliens and has valuable information regarding an interstellar war. They will be kept safe until Rafael has finished his work here.” He sighed. “If you are willing, I will send you and Blaster to speak with them tomorrow.”

“Blaster.”

“He has made a study of putting humans at ease.”

Kim buried her face in her hands. “How long?” she asked. “How long will Raf….” How long would Raf be lying to has parents? How long would Raf be carrying an alien god?

“Soon. Sooner than we guessed.”

“’Soon’ is a really vague analog term. Soon in relation to…what?”

“When we locate the heart of Unicron, the Allspark will leave Raf and fulfill its greater purpose. We thought to deal with the Decepticons first, that Unicron, if he existed, was inactive, and that Raf would have more time to…find himself. Those calculations were wrong. We will move as quickly as we can. The extent to which Chaos is acting consciously is unclear. It is possible that attempts by those vulnerable to weaponized dark energon was…a generalized impulse. But we cannot risk waiting. The Allspark has created its replacement. It will leave Raf at the earliest opportunity.”

“Damn,” Kim said.

“I fervently hope not.”

Kim resettled herself cross legged in his palm and leaned back against his thumb (which was narrower than her back, so not completely comfortable, but she was tired.) She looked up. Optimus still wasn’t wearing most of his outer armor plating. It made his shape considerably less angular. “You okay?” Kim asked.

“Yes,” he said.

Kim straightened, realizing there had been no qualifiers on the answer or requests for clarification on the question. “Seriously, though, request status report.”

“I am not sure how I would describe it in English without employing religious terms I might misuse.”

Kim turned that over.  “You’re…forgiven?” she suggested.

“No, I have been…brought into wholeness.” He released a soft protoform hum, like a sigh. “If I had ever imagined the Allspark having intentionality and consciousness, I would not have dared hope for a person with Rafael’s compassion and generosity.”

Kim looked back at Bumblebee’s berth.  June had covered Raf with a blanket and started one of the IVs from the first aid kit.  She now appeared to be reading Ratchet the riot act. There was finger-pointing.

“We need to tell her everything,” Kim said.

“I am disinclined.  Until Raf and the Allspark are no longer integrated, his status must be kept secret.”

“You need a human with some kind of medical knowledge watching him.”

“If Ratchet agrees with your analysis—”

Before he finished the sentence, Ratchet had retrieved June from the berth and was carrying her into the corner for an intense conversation.

“Apparently so,” Optimus said.

“Raf should eat,” Kim said. How long ago had that hotdog been?  “I should go to the dorm and find something.” What did she have that was nutrient dense? Nuts?

“Carly is bringing sandwiches and milk,” Optimus said.

***

It was nearly midnight when Kim walked Raf up to the dorm and settled him in her bed. Ratchet was overseeing a global defrag and reboot for Bumblebee. June, satisfied with Raf’s scan results, had left to pick up Jack from Miko’s host parents.  

Kim’s plan was to sleep on a balcony couch (it wasn’t the first time), but the light was on in the kitchen and she could hear movement. Setting her shoulders, she walked down the hall.

Carly, Maggie, Pierre, and Dr. Nomura were waiting in the kitchen. Dr. Nomura was washing the pasta pot. He set it aside and sat down at the table with the others.

“What’s going on?” Carly asked. “Why hasn’t Slipstream come back? Why is the military still on the other side of the silver line? Why is Raf sick? Was he exposed? Why has Ratchet shut us out of the system? Why—”  Dr. Nomura cleared his throat softly, and she subsided.

Kim looked at them. She got out her phone.  She was almost disappointed the charge was still fine, but that was mech power supplies. It was just to robust to use an excuse to put unpleasant things off.   She called up the ‘phone’ number she never used, opened ‘speaker,’ and set the phone on the table.  The line didn’t ring, but the screen disappeared in a wash of fractals. Kim swallowed. “Sorry to bother you, Boss. You need to hear what I’m going to say.”

“Understood, Dr. Montgomery.”

Kim looked at her dormmates.  Where to even start? She almost giggled. “So. There’s good news and bad news,” she began.

Maggie stood up, “How about you begin with why Fixit is passed out propped up against the wall in my room? How’s that for a start, mate? What’s wrong with him?”

“I assume he’s recovering from donating protomatter,” Kim began. “He probably gave as much as he could spare, and now he’s shut down to grow replacement. I guess, um, we’re starting with the good news.  Our partners are rebuilding the Allspark. This is a big deal for them.  Everyone who could donated…substance.”

Dr. Nomura stifled a frown and said mildly, “Protomatter from different mecha cannot be mixed. They cannot donate.” He was carefully not calling Kim a liar. Kim appreciated Japanese standards of politeness.

“They can’t donate to each other. And Ratchet can’t mix them. The Allspark can.”

“It was destroyed,” Maggie said. “It exploded. It left a crater more than ten meters across and killed Sentinel Prime. I’ve been to the site. I saw the body.

Kim glanced at her phone.  The fractals swirled lazily. “There was…some left,” Kim said. “Raf has had it. They have been…working together. Raf worked out how to combine protomatter donations from all the individuals the Cube had sparked to start a new body for it.”

They stared at her.

Kim made herself return the look. “One of the parts of my job is to…minimize how much humans get freaked out by mech reproduction.  I’m not telling you the whole truth, you’re right. I’m telling you the truth I understand as a human, censored for the more…uncomfortable parts. Also, I am minimizing Raf’s role. He’s a little boy. He hasn’t done anything wrong. And if we draw attention to him, we put him in danger.”

“We have to hide this from the Decepticons,” Pierre said.

Carly made a face. “We hide everything from the whole world.”

“So, wait,” Maggie said, “There’s another sparkling running around? A baby Allspark.”

Kim took a shaky breath. “Not running. Apparently, it doesn’t have components. No processor, no actuators, no energon pump or capillaries. No radio.”

“So, it’s a very small, blank cube? What does it do? How does it do anything?”

Kim shook her head. “It’s not a cube. Mostly, right now it sits in a bucket with some energon making more protomatter.” She glanced at her phone, but no correction or admonition was forthcoming. “It looks like mercury and Pepto Bismol soup. You, know, that really bright, low viscosity energon they refine for medical use?” Kim grimaced. “I may have just blasphemed horribly.”

“I as well,” Optimus said. “I am finding your description of our miracle highly amusing. But no, it is not yet growing protomatter. First it must alter its substance into fish hatchery—ah. Never mind.”

Kim closed her eyes and sank into a free chair. “So, that’s the good news. There will be a new Allspark. They aren’t limited to one method of reproduction. And when they do find out about it, this will be the last straw for many Decepticons.”

She waited for their nods.  Maggie said, “And the bad news?”

Kim glanced at her phone. “I’m … not sure what we’ve told NEST.”

“Nothing, as of yet.”

“Oh.” Well, right. What would you tell humans? Prophecies and alien gods would be a disaster on its own, never mind the reality of Unicron. “The Decepticons aren’t our biggest problem any more. There’s another alien on Earth. It’s…been here a long time.  And we aren’t exactly sure what it is, or where it is. Or what its plan is. Or even if it is awake. Or alive, I guess, if we know what ‘alive’ means. But It is what was giving humans who thought in mech patterns nightmares and what made Ford… Yeah.  What made Ford do that.”

“When you say a ‘a long time,’ you mean it arrived before the Decepticons? Or before the Allspark,” Carly asked.

Kim opened her mouth, shut it. Billions of years?  That was not the sort of thing you wanted to tell NEST. “The Allspark….”

“We were estimating about 800 years on that,” Carly began, “although it might be as little as a hundred and fifty.  That is one thing we always got vague answers to.”

Kim’s mouth was very dry. “There is evidence this alien….was messing with humans sometimes before the sixteen hundreds. Surely, it’s been here longer than the Allspark, maybe by a lot. And that’s part of the problem. It’s old. It’s really old. Cybertron knew it existed, but there aren’t any descriptions we can use. If they knew its size or what it was made of, I really think they would have told me—”

“Correct, Kim.”

“Thank you.  Right. It’s supposed to be incredibly powerful,” Planet Eater. Chaos Bringer. Absolute Entropy. “And I’d call foul, because how can you lose track of something like that, right?  I think I’m going to have to write Keller a report on this, and what do I say? But the Quintesson occupation destroyed a lot of their records, and if it wasn’t a priority even then—”

“The Quintesson War was thousands of years ago,” Maggie protested.

“It’s here. Whatever it is,” Kim went on. “Now I’m wondering if it might be a magnetic field instead of a physical creature?”  

“Why do you think that?” Optimus asked sharply.

“Because you can’t find it.” Kim said. “You must have started looking when you found dark energon in Tennessee.  The patrol patterns ramped up then, and they haven’t gone back yet. And the energon isn’t all in one place. Or the dark energon. It’s been found on every continent but Antarctica which is only scanned from space and doesn’t have any human activity tearing up the bedrock, so it might be there, too.”

She glanced at the phone. It was silent for several seconds. “We have not considered that possibility. Our literature assumes that both Primus and Unicron were corporeal.”

Inwardly, Kim cringed. There were humans who, if they caught wind of the Cybertronic religious implications of Earth, would immediately demand a holy war against mecha or start worshipping them. Kim was not sure which would be worse. “Optimus, this is not, in any way, a theological issue for Earth. I’m sorry, but your baggage is not our issue. As far as humans are concerned, we have a problem with one large and dangerous alien hiding somewhere on Earth, and it has a reputation for destroying planets.”

“I see.”

“As far as humans are concerned, the issue is finding it and killing it without destroying Earth’s magnetic field or whatever country it’s hiding under. And we have to do that before it wakes up and takes the offensive.”

“That is not a completely inaccurate interpretation of our situation, yes.”

“NEST is going to ask you if the Decepticons are waking it up on purpose.”

“I do not have enough data to extrapolate Megatron’s motives.”

Kim nodded slowly. “The good news about the bad news is, the Allspark might be able to help with the…hidden monster problem. And there is no evidence so far that It can influence humans who don’t speak Cybertronix or haven’t encountered dark energon. So. Things might not end badly.”

Carly slumped over the table, hiding her face behind her arms. “Oh, god.” Pierre hugged her.

Maggie paced to the sink and back. “Did Fixit know?”

“He knew it was a possibility. Faced with a lack of conclusive or even compelling evidence, and given that both the Allspark and the Matrix did not raise the alarm, the matter was not a priority.”

“That’s your story, and you are sticking to it,” Dr. Nomura said dryly.

“That is what is going in my report. I’m trying to keep their religion out of it as much as I can,” Kim said. “NEST does not need to be reminded that Prime isn’t the equivalent of a general or a king, but a pope or a Dalai Lama. But mecha do take their religion very seriously. My report will say that…religious issues have interfered with analysis.”

“Wait a moment,” Pierre said. “I’m sure that’s not fair.”

“But it is necessary, and, from your perspective, correct. It is an excuse that will allow Humans to feel confident in their own strategies.  I am fighting an ancient evil my people have feared form the dawn of time. But you are only dealing with yet another alien incursion.”  

Kim looked at the phone for a long moment, shrugged, looked at the humans waiting to hear something useful. But Kim had nothing left to tell them.  She picked up the phone, retrieved a pear and a bottle of water from the fridge, and retreated back to the balcony and sat down on the couch.

“Kim? The resolution on your phone’s mic is not high enough for me to gauge your level of  distress.”

“You must not, ever, tell a human that it is possible Unicron made us on purpose. Or by accident.”

“Kim, I have told you; I do not care. Your origin does not matter. Your people are not my enemies.”

Kim smiled a little. “Yes. Thank you. I love you, too. But that isn’t the point. You can’t tell humans.”

“I have just agreed not to engage in speculation to humans.”

“And this is why: Optimus, if humans get the idea that Unicron made us, somebody will start worshiping It. Him. Whatever.”

“I would be appalled, but it is possible Megatron is seeking an alliance with Him.  And the only reason Megatron would not fold himself before the Unmaker is his own arrogance.”

“Hm,” Kim said. “Well, that sucks.”

“It does, indeed.”

~TBC

Chapter Text

 The Esquivel family had been installed in three efficiency units in the visiting VIP corridor. Fowler was with them (Kim thought he was looking a little ragged) when Kim arrived with Raf at seven-thirty Wednesday morning.

Kim and Fowler withdrew to the corridor while his parents and older siblings fussed. Visiting VIPs were housed inside the mesa, on the far side of the DFAC.  “Nothing in on-base apartments?” Kim asked.

“Right now, we’re keeping the upset civilians completely secure.”

“He has seven siblings,” Kim said. “His parents have jobs—”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s like you never heard of witness protection.” He shook his head. “So,” he cleared his throat. “Have you seen it?”

“Seen what?”

He leaned in slightly and lowered his voice. “It. The Cube fragment the kid has.”

Kim wasn’t quite sure what he was asking. She was fairly sure that he hadn’t been briefed about the extent of Raf’s…what would you even call it? ‘Possession’ sounded non-consensual. ‘Riding’ like by a Loa was too dualistic.  “Seen it? Not…exactly.”

“Apparently, it talks to him.”

“Well…he knows things,” Kim allowed. “But it isn’t anything obvious. I mean, he spent a lot of time with the sparklings, and the only odd thing I noticed was that he understood Cybertronics.” She looked back over the statement, but it seemed to be fine. Not a lie, but not anything like the truth either.

“I hate it when civilians get involved.” He thought for a moment. “I hate working with kids.  I hate being lied to.”

Kim nodded slowly. They could not afford to lose Fowler’s loyalty. They needed him to be brilliant. If he stopped believing in his work, he might as well stop doing it. “Bill,” she said. “Think carefully. How much do you really want me to tell you about alien reproduction?”

A pause. “You’re bluffing.”

“Chromia and Windblade have special drives that contain thousands of dormant protosparks. You can think of them like male seahorses with a pouch full of eggs.”

His jaw worked for a moment. “I don’t think I want to know that.” He rocked back on his heels. “How about I tell you that I’ve figured out they are building a new Cube?”

Kim leaned closer. “Don’t repeat that. Don’t transmit that. And they aren’t building it. And it hasn’t been a cube once so far, but it’s been a sphere several times.”

Fowler closed his eyes. “Fuck,” he said. “Okay, at least tell me, does it like humans? Or are we going to have a giant, all powerful enemy that brings toasters to life?”

Kim frowned.  As she understood it, the personality growing in Ratchet’s bucket was a copy of Raf Esquivel’s. And Raf loved individual humans and Autobots. But did he like them as groups? “I don’t know how to answer that question. It isn’t our enemy. It doesn’t want to hurt anyone.”

“And it will only talk to him,” he waved a hand at the apartment door.

Kim shrugged and shook her head.

The door opened, Raf led his parents out. The brothers and sisters were following. “We’re ready to meet them now,” Raf said.

Blaster was smaller than Optimus, but he wasn’t small, so they had to go out the door at the end of the hall and into the bright parking lot to meet him. Kim sat on a concrete parking edger out of the way and watched as Raf introduced his family to mecha.

Blaster sat on the tarmac, which still left him several feet above the humans’ heads. He talked quietly. He transformed several times. His primary alt was a mobile transmitter, and the constraints of that made his driving alt a chunky 90s Volvo. Raf’s oldest brother laughed at that. Blaster took it in good humor.

Kim’s experiences with Blaster were usually exhausting rounds of weird or uncomfortable questions. It was sort of a shock to see him mellow and cheerful, asking easy questions and giving short, easy answers to the Esquivel family.

At eleven, Lennox showed up to take them to lunch in the DFAC: a carefully timed introduction of the military presence. By the time they were shifted to an outdoor apartment, they would have accepted the aliens and NEST as inevitable.

Kim settled on a sofa on the balcony and tried to organize some kind of coherent notes about the past few days. She had to do it on paper, obviously. “Unicron” was not a topic she could commit to digital storage. But handwritten notes clear enough to be kept were slow and tedious. Maybe she could borrow a typewriter from Bill—all the ones in the FBI office were old enough not to have any sort of memory.

Perhaps she was being over cautious—if things reached the point that the firewalls the Autobots kept around human technology weren’t secure, there might be no secrets left to keep….

Kim sighed, rubbed her eyes, wondered if even paper were a safe medium to record what she knew about Raf. Or the ritual he had led. Or what—who--was in Ratchet’s bucket. But the order of events, the things people said, she would forget if it wasn’t written down.  Mecha remembered everything. Human memory was shit. 

Today was Wednesday, she realized.  The day she and Optimus had been scheduled to go to Italy. The patrol would have to be assigned to someone else—Optimus would not get another suitable break in his schedule again for several weeks.

Not that Kim was going to complain. Or even indulge her pangs of disappointment. Bee was going to be fine. Raf had a plan to become fine.  If everyone was fine, she had no business moaning.

And Kim was going to sort out her paper journal and write about…Bumblebee getting poisoned. And poor Ford.  Not that she could really explain what went wrong with Ford.  Saying the Matrix could tell who was being mind-controlled by an ancient alien squatter was probably all right, as long as the details there were sketchy, too.

The service for making a new Allspark? It would be safe enough to commit to paper: religious rituals and reproduction were both low priority for NEST and the Decepticons would have to be told about it eventually anyway. The rite might be private, but it wasn’t secret or dangerous. And it had been beautiful….

Kim’s phone chimed just as she was finally making progress in her description.  Slipstream had sent a calendar request for ‘earliest convenience’ in the Kitchen.

Huh.

Kim closed her notebook and packed up her bag. Casually. Without hurrying.

Slipstream and Fixit were both in the kitchen seated at the table. It was slightly disorienting, seeing them both alone in such a human space. “What up, homie?” Fixit asked.

Kim winced. “Ew. Don’t.”

“I was attempting to signal an informal mood,” Fixit explained.

“I think you did not properly stress the vocative,” Slipstream put in helpfully.

Kim waved a hand. “Stop. Guys. Let’s take it as ‘informal mood set’ and move on.”

“We are concerned about Chip,” Slipstream said.

Kim frowned. “And Maggie?”

Fixit rotated his head slightly in a back-and-forth negative that almost seemed natural.  “No. Maggie is operating within normal parameters.”

Kim frowned. “And Chip…isn’t?”

Her phone chirped an incoming text. “That is his current playlist,” Slipstream said.

Kim took out her phone.  The text was, in fact, a very long list of songs. Kim took a deep breath and counted half-way to ten. “Guys,” she said. “It means a lot that you care.  Don’t get me wrong. But I am really ambivalent about you taping into humans’ internet history. I know privacy is too much to ask. But on the other hand not having any is also too much to ask.”

The two mecha looked at one another for a moment. “Your assumption is in error,” Fixit said diffidently. “We did not compile the list from his wifi usage.”

Slipstream nodded. “The music is audible. The content is concerning.”

Kim looked at the list.

Well.

‘It’s alright,’ by Dar Williams.

‘Something in the way,’ by Nirvana.

‘Hurt,’ by Jonny Cash.

‘Wrought iron fences,’ by Kate Campbell.

‘I still believe,’ by Susan Werner.

Oh, dear.

‘Too soon tomorrow,’ by Brewer and Shipley.

Kind of in poor taste—not flat-out disrespectful, but definitely a sign of stress.

‘February,’ by Dar Williams.

‘Bare to the bone,’ by Carrie Newcomer

Three songs in Japanese. One in Russian. Two in French.

Kim frowned. “I can’t tell about these.  Hm. Who is Richard Shindell?”

“He writes lamentations,” Fixit said.

A new text appeared:

In a crowd, I don´t know which way to turn
I´m afraid I might not see you go by
But if I did, would I find the strength to speak?
And would you want to hear what a stranger would tell you?
That Soledad was your mother´s name
She fell in love with my Juan Luis
They may be gone
But I am still your Abuelita

Oh, scrap. “How many of his songs on this list?”

“Five,” Fixit said.

Kim closed her eyes. “Damn,” she said. “All right.” She pocketed the phone and went back down the hall to Chip’s door.

He answered at the first knock. “Door’s open.”

The lights, except for a purple lava lamp, were off.  Chip was lying on top of the comforter but under an old cotton throw done in moons-and-stars. The speaker was playing some kind of labor song by Pete Seager. With a sigh, Kim pulled out the desk chair and sat in it backwards. “Dude, you’re scaring the giant, alien war robots.” 

He tapped his phone and the music paused. “They send you to fix me?”

“Possibly. I’m not optimistic.”

“You’ll do fine. I have great respect for anthropology.” He sat up, resettled the pillows, and scooted back to lean against them.

“What. Seriously?”

“Give it a shot,” he shrugged.

Kim rolled her eyes. “Okay. Fine. The monster didn’t get you.  You didn’t lose your autonomy. You didn’t hurt anybody.  You’re still you. It’s okay to stop worrying now.”

“I didn’t figure it out by myself. I couldn’t stop it by myself. And I’ve had two sets or aliens mucking around in my head.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

“Well. Clearly it was a near miss. But it’s over—"

He lifted a finger. “Ah. How do I know I’m still me?”

“What do you feel like when you read your old papers and fieldnotes? Or—the software you’ve written?  I always felt like me. And I’ve had weeks.”

“That is true. And reassuring. You’ve had time to notice. But Ford never—”

“Not a good comparison. It was physical, with Ford. Dark energon. Our analog brains…even when we are thinking in a digital language, I can’t imagine…we’re so alien to them.”

“How did Unicron make us then? How did he make something he couldn’t understand?”

Kim froze. “Is that what people are saying?” she asked casually.

“No. It’s kind of obvious, though, if you stop and think about it. I mean, if he got here before we evolved—”

Kim knew she wasn’t keeping a straight face. She closed her eyes and held very still.

“I don’t know. That would be an absurdly long time ago. And apparently there is no evidence he goes back that far?” He paused, waited for Kim’s uncertain shrug. “And how does something digital imagine an analog brain, let alone build one?  And you can’t look at evolution and tell me that was an efficient way of creating a space-faring species. So it is entirely possible we’re an accident. Or squatters.”

“You can’t have this conversation with other humans,” Kim whispered.

“No shit,” he said succinctly. “So. On a possibly unrelated matter: still having that problem with the unrefined energon?”

“What prob—Oh. Apparently.”

“But you have no trouble remembering that Unicron may be hiding in the deeps like a Great Old One?”

“Nope. Think about that daily.”  

“Hmp.” He folded his arms and looked down. “I thought I was ready, you know? Aliens? I thought I could handle it.”

Kim flapped a hand at him. “This is what handling it looks like.”

There was no answer.

 “Well, it’s not like we got a handbook on aliens. Or what would happen or how we should cope with it at all—I mean, it isn’t fair to ask we handle it well.” She waved a hand at the speaker. “Anyway, that was brilliant, the music thing.”

“Why thank you. Any requests?”  He held up his phone with the music app open.

Kim made a face. “Hm. Indigo Girls.”

He nodded. “Excellent. Yes. I should have thought of that.”

***

There was no interview on the mesa that night. Instead, a summons from General Morshower appeared on her schedule.

Scrap.

Kim was prompt to the conference room adjacent to the general’s office. It had a window overlooking the close-combat practice field.  The lights were on, and Jetstorm and a human fireteam were playing ‘magnetic mortar tag’ against Strongarm.  The general paused as he entered to glance down at the field while he waited for Kim to take a seat.

Sighing inwardly, Kim found a spot halfway down one of the long sides; the few meetings she had attended had the general and Agent Fowler sitting at the ends.

He sat across from her.  Informal? Or confrontational?

Kim managed a pleasant smile and got out her notebook.

The general took a stack of manilla folders out of his briefcase and sighed.  “All right. Tell me about the uncontrollable super-weapon our allies are building in the basement.”

Kim didn’t try to conceal her surprise. “They don’t talk about military topics with me. Um. Well, rarely. But I wouldn’t even understand weapons designs—”

He drummed his fingers on the stack of folders and gave her a hard look. “Dr. Montgomery. We could have a very cute conversation about how you are not a spy, and you don’t work for me anyway, and I know how to go through proper channels with my questions because I set the channels up to start with—”

“Glen, I’m sorry. There are conversations you can’t have with me—”

“Your job,” he countered, “is to explain the crazy bullshit our alien allies get up to, so the ignorant humans don’t panic and do something stupid.” He flipped one of the folders open and tossed a sheet of paper across the table. “You have about half an hour to convince me not to demand that the doomsday machine downstairs be removed from the surface of the planet immediately.”

Kim picked up the paper.  It had the slick texture and dark blue edge-painting that marked mech-controlled printers. It was an activity report. One of the paragraphs was circled. “May I ask whose—”

“Prime. Apparently, he decided today was the day to listen to my requests for brevity.”

Kim winced.

“Are you going to explain that or not?”

“It’s not a superweapon. It’s not a hazard to personnel.”

“You’ve seen the video. Haven’t you? I can call it up--?”

“The Allspark was damaged and under fire. It didn’t know what humans were.  No one could talk to it because it’s Prime was—”

“Don’t derail this into another discussion of Sentinel Prime.”

“Right. And it didn’t have an individual identity or a personality of its own, so it couldn’t make coherent decisions.”

“And now we have another one. You can see why I’m not thrilled.”

“It—won’t be finished for years. It’s in a bucket of energon—”

“It took the sparklings—what? Six weeks?”

“They take shortcuts with sparklings. They put finished components in…and files with plans for, uh, things. The Allspark will be all protomatter. Almost three tons of it—”

“It doesn’t have to be that large.  You saw the condensed—”

“It was still that big,” Kim said, stumbling as she realized she had interrupted a general. “Subspacing mass doesn’t make there be less of it. And building a subspace pocket from protomatter--?” Kim shook her head. “It isn’t a threat, even if it wanted to be.”

The general did not look relieved. “Is it likely to want to be? You said it didn’t have a personality. Can it want things? Or is it just a tool deployed by…Can a new Prime be named? Can Optimus do it.”

Kim folded her hands. “Okay, well. That’s on the list of things I don’t know. Um. Optimus can’t manage both. And there is supposed to be a Prime. But nobody has said anything about…how they are going to do that?” Kim paused, cringing inwardly. “But. I don’t think it is ever going to be a weapon. It is not just a tool anymore. It knows that it was used for…bad things on Cybertron, and it doesn’t want anything to do with it.”

“Oh? You seem unusually confident about this particular observation.”

“It’s been living with a human kid for four years. Um. I mean it wasn’t just a thing in Raf’s possession. It was…it communicates electromagnetically. It was in his head. What it knows about being a person at all is about being an eleven year old human.”

He was glaring now.

“I’ve spoken to it. It has Raf’s morality. And fortunately for us all he is a good kid. Loving family. Careful thinker. He cares about other people.”

“And now it is growing into an incredibly powerful person that thinks humans are people too.”

“Yes,” Kim said. “That is what I think.”

“And if you are wrong, Dr. Montgomery?”

“If I’m wrong, it is still starting over as a puddle in a bucket.”

“If I go down and have a talk with it…?”

“Well…I’m not sure it could talk back. Or interpret soundwaves? I assume it might be electromagnetically sensitive, but could it interpret radio waves? It doesn’t have Raf anymore.”

He flipped through his folder for several long seconds. “About Rafael Esquivel. Why are we still holding him and his family?”

That was when Kim panicked. “You can’t let him go!”

“Can’t I?”

Kim winced.  “It is best if he stays here.”

“Why? Is he a threat?”

“He won’t go public. He won’t say anything.”

“That is not what I asked.”

Kim shut her mouth.  Her job was to answer questions.  Every nerve in her body was screaming ‘explain, explain.’ But she wasn’t going to say that a human kid was subletting his brain to a piece of alien god.

“Kim?”

“I’m not qualified to give you a professional opinion, General.”

He stood up. “Then I suppose we’re finished.”

***

According to the schedule, Optimus was in a meeting with Mr. Keller and had been for the last three hours.  

Kim could imagine how that was going.

She went up to the mesa with a tuna kit and ate watching the sun set.

It was a pleasant evening—a few high clouds, artfully painted pink.  Warm. Unseasonably so? Kim pulled out her phone and checked the weather. It was currently 65 decrees in Jaspar Nevada. The average daily high was 63, so no, not weirdly warm.

On the other hand, the “Top Weather News” included a rain of fish in Hazard Kentucky. Kim sighed and kept chewing and zipped up her jacket.  

***

Kim was not waiting. And she wasn’t hiding. There just wasn’t any other place she would rather—

She might be hiding.

After a while it occurred to her that she should be doing notes. What the hell could she even write down at this point?

In twenty years, assuming there was still sentient life on the planet, they would want to know how they had done it. What was Kim possibly going to say? Oh, yes, it was touch and go there for a while, but none of us really doubted.

The American military was acutely aware of their technological deficit—

We couldn’t tell Raf’s parents—

The moon was coming up when she heard the mech elevator engage.

Well. Maybe she had been waiting.

Optimus, swift but graceful and nearly silent, levered himself down beside her to lie along the rim of the mesa. 

“How was Keller?” Kim asked.

“He wants to interview Rafael.”

“Ouch.” Kim scooted closer and leaned her shoulder against his helm.

“General Morshower concurs.”

“Ouch.” Kim cleared her throat. “Actually, that may be an improvement.  This afternoon he wanted to evict the baby Allspark for being a superweapon.”

There was a long pause. “If, perhaps, you are joking,” he began tentatively.

“I told him it wasn’t. It can’t do much of anything, and won’t be able to for a while. I hope that was right.”

“I suppose it was.”

Kim took a breath. Not reassuring. “What about your Orange Tree?” she asked. “She knows where all the levers are. She always gets her way. If Mearing—”

“You believe in a disagreement Mearing will take our part for Bumblebee’s sake.”

“No. Mearing trusts you for Bumblebee’s sake.  But she’ll take your part because her priority is not letting Megatron slag the planet and you are the only game in town for avoiding that.”

“Perhaps. That was the situation before the new threat made itself known.”

“And we probably shouldn’t tell her that whatever plan we have for the hidden, underground alien was designed by a middleschooler. But other than that, I don’t think we have to worry—Well. I mean, we’re going to worry.”

“Raf attends high school. He has Literature with Miko.”

“Never mind.  How is the Esquivel family doing?”

“I was hoping you would supervise their interaction with the sparklings tomorrow afternoon.”

Kim snorted. “Right. You have an entire earth family to show the babies now.”

“You disapprove?”

“No.” She shifted around so her back was resting against his cool plating. “Are you bringing them to Bot territory?”

“I thought, perhaps, it would be best to start on more neutral territory. The golf course?”

“You can sort of see the firing range from the top of the hill. Better not have mecha doing weapons testing.”

“I will adjust the schedule.” He paused.  “Bumblebee is good with humans.  Hopefully, he will have returned to duty by Saturday.”

***

The next few days were more tense discussions between Optimus and the NEST authorities, more questions for Kim about the latest nascent alien life form (mostly from Lennox but also from Dr. Nomura, and Kim, remembering that he was feeding information to the UN, talked him through everything either of them already knew about mech development until there was no way she could see Raf’s…clone? art project? lovechild? Could be framed as a threat.)

Twice, Ratchet demanded the allspark and the Esquivel family be removed to the Diego Garcia site. Optimus flatly refused to argue about it.

The baby mecha and the human children played a lot of ball and hide and seek and Frisbee golf.  Kim described their interactions. Those were the only notes she made.

The call came nine minutes before Kim’s alarm was set to go off on Sunday morning.  Kim squinted at the fractals spread across the phone’s screen and tapped the button. “Hi, Boss.”

“I apologize. There has been a schedule change you will find inconvenient.”

Kim blinked and flipped to the calendar. She was scheduled to deploy on a follow-up survey. The Bridge transit was in twenty-five minutes. “Oh, shit. I’m on my way!”

She threw on yesterday’s clothing and ran to the bathroom, grabbing a bottled tea and a frozen breakfast burrito on the way back. 

In the assembly area, Optimus and Springer stood over Ironhide, who was seated at one of the satellite interface stations. Bill Fowler was standing beside Ironhide’s hand on the console. He was dressed in sweats and sneakers, so Kim assumed he’d been abruptly summoned.

Springer had his weapons hatches open, but his face shield was folded back.  His ire seemed to be directed toward Ironhide. “—Useless to chase down every fluctuation, and given that the Richat Structure is classified as a low-priority anomaly, expending resources—” He broke off abruptly. “There is no need for you to personally conduct a site analysis.”

“You want to look at this, Boss. Right now.” Kim noticed with some relief that Ironhide was maintaining his approachable persona, so neither his calculations nor his argument were using up an undue  portion of his processing power. Things might not actually be dire.

“With respect,” Springer said to Ironhide (telling in itself, since Springer technically outranked him), “why  not Ngorongoro or Mai Mahiu 3 or even Yamal B1? Yamal B1 has doubled in size in the last week. It makes a better candidate for—”

“Oh, for the love of God, tell me we are not going to northern Siberia in December!”  Fowler complained.

Kim looked down at her sneakers and jeans and winced.

“Yamal B1 is thermokarst and methane,” Ironhide drawled. Kim had no idea what that meant, but it seemed to be a mic-drop because Springer changed tactics:

“The Richat Structure is within two standard deviations of the mean—”

“It was point three-six at the start of the orn,” Ironhide said mildly.  “And you are not taking into account the size of the feature.”

“Mathematically inconclusive.” Springer said. “Significance is point oh four-four.”

Optimus turned toward him. “By your calculations, what is the most likely location?”

“Indeterminate at this time. Sour Creek is the closest at point four-eight.”   

“You will take a geological team to Sour Creek. I will investigate the Richat Structure.” Optimus angled down slightly and asked Fowler, “Can you confirm that you have not physically encountered unrefined energon?”

Fowler tapped the badge dangling from his “Magic Kingdom” lanyard. “FBI agents don’t get to go on cute geology field trips,” he said. “Or is that a past-tense thing now?”

“Our embarkation is in six minutes.” Optimus dropped into alt facing the tunnel and opened both doors. “Agent Fowler, you will sit shotgun.”

“Oh, come on!  It was one time.”

“It was extremely embarrassing.”

“What did he do?” Kim asked, tossing up her bag and scrambling after it.

There was a short silence. “He has a heavy hand on the horn,” Optimus rumbled.

Kim gave him a look. “Seriously, dude.” And it was funny, but….

What the slag were they doing? 

The seatbelts clipped themselves, and Optimus started for the Bridge alcove. “Which of us is the control?” Kim asked.

“It is not an experiment,” Optimus said. “It is a calibration. I wish to know what humans perceive…and if they are aware of any phenomena that we are not.”

The Bridge disgorged them into a disorienting whirl of bright and brown. It was a desert, Kim realized: low hills, broken rocks-- not a lot of rocks really, and less plants than Nevada.

No plants at all.

Kim squirmed around: all the windows showed the same brown brokenness.

“Oh,” Fowler said. “This is the one you have to see from the air, isn’t it?”

“It is my understanding that humans were unaware of it the feature until it was seen from space in 1965.”  Slowly, tires crunching, he climbed a low rise and paused. “What do you perceive?”

“It’s a desert—where even are we?”

“The Sahara,” Optimus said.

“Where is it?” Kim asked. “I can’t see anything.”

“We are inside it. The center is about four kilometers straight ahead.”

Slowly, Fowler said, “I wouldn’t have guessed. As far as I can tell, nothing is here. It’s worse than Jaspar.  I feel happy I don’t have to live here.”

Optimus opened his doors and Kim hopped down onto the hard ground.  It was surprisingly pleasant: Kim had assumed the Sahara was always broiling. “Is the weather being weird?” she asked.

“For the date and time of day, we are within one standard deviation of the mean.”

There was, now that Kim looked, a short pole sticking out of the ground about thirty feet away. It was one of the ground sensors the Autobots used to monitor locations they suspected might start producing energon. Optimus knelt beside it and attached a cable.

Kim turned in a slow circle. She was used to seeing desert. She was not used to this lifelessness. There was not a single cactus or scrubby bush in sight in any direction. “Bill. Seriously. What is supposed to be here?”

“It’s here. We had to get permission from the government of Mauritania to observe it. It’s a huge set of concentric rings eroded out of the stone about, I don’t know, forty-five miles across?”

Optimus glanced up at them. “Forty-five kilometers,” he corrected.

Kim blinked.  “So not a lot of tourism, then?”  She scuffed her feet in on the packed sand (rock?) they were standing on. “Does the ground feel funny?” she asked.

Bill bent down and touched it. “Is it…vibrating?”

“There is intermittent vibration at one-hundred and three hertz in the quartzite layers.  We are uncertain of its point of origin.”

“I feel kind of alarmed,” Kim said.

“Would you say your emotional state is out of proportion to the situation?” Optimus asked.

“Um. No?” Kim hazarded.

“Could it be wind?” Fowler asked.

“A piezoelectric explanation is more likely.”

Kim wondered what that meant. She picked up a sharp, brown rock and knocked it against the ground. She thought. “I can remember what we’re doing here.  I don’t feel weird.” She turned slowly around. “Optimus? What does this place look like electromagnetically?”

Kim’s phone beeped. The incoming text was an image of smooth, curved lines of colored light, coherent and sleek, except for a small ripple slightly twisted out of place. “That is a model of northern Africa,” Optimus said.  “The Richat Structure is the anomaly.”

“Huh.”

“Would you object to moving closer to the center?”

“If there is something here, let’s find it,” Fowler said.

Kim couldn’t think of a reason to object.

There was nothing like a road. Optimus took the uneven, rocky ground slowly.  His shocks were excellent, so Kim felt no particular lurching, but she had the feeling that Optimus disliked it. No doubt he was getting covered in brown grit….

They drove down into a narrow basin and stopped at a cluster of boulders. Kim got out. “Put me up, would you?” She pointed toward one that had a flatish top roughly even with his waist. She stumbled and sat down hard on the stone. “It’s really vibrating. I mean, there is no doubt here.”

“The amplitude has increased. It would be best to finish quickly. Kim, if I were to ask you how you felt about this place--?”

“I feel a little afraid.” She glanced down at Fowler, who was gingerly climbing the side of the rock.  He paused to shrug.

“And me? Kim, how do you feel about me?”

“I love you. Always,” she said promptly.  “I’m not thinking about you being an alien.” She tried to think about the emotions Raf had warned her about months before.  It was a long time ago and he had been vague.  “I don’t think you are dangerous or ugly. I’m not afraid.”

“Best job I ever had,” Fowler called up. “Privilege to work with you.” He got his arms over the top of the rock and grunted as he pulled himself up. “Ford…he mentioned once that he thought the kids were creepy. Is that what you’re looking for? I’m thinking about babysitting again right now. I don’t—oh. That’s strange. Is that a noise?”

Before Kim could listen for a sound, Optimus was leaping over them to come down with a bone-jarring crunch among the broken boulders on the other side. The gritty stone under Kim’s hand seemed to almost buzz with growing vibration—and then everything was still.  No noises, not even wind or Optimus’s fans.

Gingerly, Optimus stepped out of the rocks onto flatter ground. “I have detected dark energon point eight kilometers further in. Kim. Bill. You will remain here. I have summoned Strongarm to retrieve you.”

“What are you going to do?” Fowler asked. “You can’t handle dark energon either.  How would we even bury it when there is no mine to seal off—”

“Springer is assembling a hazardous materials team. This is not the first time—”

Kim felt the pressure squeeze in suddenly, like being hit all across her body, before she heard the noise and felt the rock shiver. Fowler, who had been shielding his eyes to look out across the desert, staggered backward and then dropped down beside her, pulling Kim onto her side, shouting instructions that were probably very useful, but which Kim couldn’t hear.

Sudden darkness, as Optimus’ hands closed over them. The pressure came again, and Kim put her hands over her head.

The ground shivered again.

The silence that followed was almost as terrifying as the—were they explosions?

The huge servos that had sheltered the humans slowly withdrew, letting in bright sunlight and a hot, dusty wind.

“What the hell,” Fowler said. “And if you tell me you don’t know—”

“I believe the source of the phenomenon was the conversion of a very large amount of deeply buried energon into dark energon,” Optimus said. “This area is not safe for humans. As soon as Strongarm—Ah. A Ground Bridge is –” With the clatter of unfolding weapons and the scream of charging capacitors, Optimus spun away from them. “Take cover! That is not our Ground Bridge!”

“Where?” Fowler demanded, reaching for a weapon he wasn’t wearing and would not have done much good anyway.  

Kim pointed to a circle of darkness sprouting from the top of a curved rise to the north.  The darkness flashed with colors, bright enough to stand out even in the sunlight, and something came out of it.

Fowler cursed and looked around. “Think you can jump off this?” he whispered.

The Bridge collapsed, leaving behind a single squat shape that transformed into a tall, glittering mech. Kim started to stand up to get a better look. Fowler hauled her back down. “Megatron,” he hissed.  “What is he doing here? Don’t move. It’s not like there are any other biological life forms out here to confuse his sensors.”

Optimus re-subspaced his cannon and began to hike—almost casually, it was absurd, it was impossible—toward the glittering mech. 

Kim’s phone, still clutched in her sweaty hand, chimed an incoming text: the glyph for Hold Position and   STRONGARM WILL COME FOR YOU WHILE HE IS DISTRACTED in English.

Very slowly, Fowler began to ease backward toward the far edge of their rock. Shaking, Kim followed.

Slowly, almost languidly, Megatron turned to look down at Optimus and folded his arms.  Kim bit her lip and tasted fine sand. Were they going to talk? Or was this a trap?

Whose trap? Optimus had been looking for this. But that was before the mech god of destruction started actually doing things.

As Optimus approached the foot of the rise, Megatron stepped off the edge and slid down the steep slope in a small avalanche of rocks and sand.

The sunlight seemed too bright to look through, and everything felt freezing cold, and Kim couldn’t move.

 Megatron was bigger than Optimus. That had been in the files; Megatron was taller than Optimus by nearly two meters.  The description hadn’t suggested that he would be so much broader, too.

Chapter Text

The two mecha--Megatron mirror-bright and fluid, Optimus a knife of shocking color against the brown desert—circled each other. The wind was blowing gently, carrying the staccato chirps and tones of a Cybertronic argument.

“What are they saying?” Fowler whispered.

Kim shook her head. A single sentence dumbed down for humans would take ten minutes to parse. She would never understand—

Well. No. Not understand But she could guess. Optimus was pointing out the dangers of Unicron. Maybe making the religious appeal. Or to Decepticon self-interest. And maybe the Decepticon leader would pay attention. None of the briefing material ever suggested Megatron was reasonable, though.

Kim opened the public glyph app on her phone. Nothing. But the app had a short range, even assuming they would use the same frequency. She tried to check for text, but the screen itself jittered and pixilated. Fowler thumbed on his own phone and held it out: the icons were all shades of green. “Jamming,” he whispered, frowning. “Weird jamming.”

Kim nodded once to show she had heard, eyes already back on the circling mecha. Optimus paused, leaned in for a moment. He dropped his shoulders and took a step back.

Megatron sprung. Optimus met him with a swift, low strike. Metal bodies came together in a terrible crash that was clearly audible almost a quarter of a mile away.

It’s now, Kim thought. This is it, right now.

“Aw, shit,” Fowler muttered. “Come on, let’s get some rocks between—what do you mean no?”

Kim was shaking her head. She would, at least, watch. She would remember there was a seven percent chance—

Optimus might live.

And if he didn’t, if he died protecting Earth and the remnants of his people, it was a trade he made willingly.

And, however it turned out, she would watch.

Optimus was thrown—out and down, armor screeching against rock. Lithely—almost lightly—he sprang up and was ready when Megatron slammed into him. They were both outlined in a pearly sheen that glittered in the sun. The force fields that formed their outer layer of protection were taking a beating.

To really hurt each other, those shields would have to come down first.

Seven percent.

Optimus had pulled what seemed to be a sword from his subspace. Seeing it seemed to make Megatron angry—he began to swing wildly, bellowing curses that Kim mostly recognized.

“Oh, thank God,” Fowler gasped. “The cavalry.”

Kim twisted to see where he was looking. In an open space between rock formations the green and pink light of a Ground Bridge was coiling open. For a moment Kim’s heart sank, fearing it would be more Deceptions.

It was Strongarm, Arcee, and Mirage. They sped out, the wormhole collapsing only a few inches from Mirage’s rear bumper.

“Only three!” Fowler groaned. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

Mirage and Strongarm unfolded into root forms and planted themselves guarding separate directions. Arcee’s three root units, each on its single tire, bounced along the stones like deft unicycles, quickly crossing the short distance to the two Humans. “Come on,” she shouted, two of her bodies holding out arms to catch them.

Fowler flopped onto his stomach and shouted down at her, “What the hell! Get out there and help him.”

“We have orders,” one of the Arcees shouted back. “Let’s go.”

Kim looked back at the struggle. Optimus and Megatron were clinched together, Optimus’ pulse cannon firing over and over, a relentless outpouring of energy. The pearly film of Megatron’s shielding began to flicker.

Fowler was arguing. “Don’t worry about us! That’s Megatron, this is your chance—”

“You don’t understand,” Arcee protested. One of her units started climbing the rock, servos punching handholds into the stone. “We have to get you humans out now, while Megatron is distracted!”

Megatron pulled free and began flailing, his glittering appendages going for Optimus’ torso: Primary memory and processors. Kim knew how good his shielding was there. Optimus ducked under the attack, servos transforming into spikes, and slammed forward.

Pink-Arcee was on the bench with them now, body low and tire folded to the side. She lifted Kim in hands that were not much bigger than Kim’s own, but impossibly strong. The toss and the catch were so quick that Kim’s startlement was only half-way to jabbering terror before she was nestled softly in green-Arcee’s long arms. Kim twisted, trying to see Optimus.

“NO!” Fowler was getting more frantic. “Forget us! That’s Megatron!”

“Stop it,” Kim snapped. “They can’t help it. He has ordered them as Prime. They won’t disobey.”

“But this is our chance, if we take out Megatron—”

“He’ll run,” Kim said. “He only wants Optimus. Outnumbered in a fight, he’ll run.”

Fowler turned pushing helplessly at the Arcee trying to lift him. “I’ve seen the stats. Optimus can’t beat him alone. You have to help—"

The world turned sideways and spun. Kim felt almost light in Arcee’s arms as the ground floated up and seemed to chase them into the sky. Arcee made a sound like a yelp, and the crunch and scrape of metal on stone was not ‘light’ at all. Kim was released onto warm, gritty, trembling earth. She tried to stand up. She tried to see what had hit or tripped Arcee—

The ground under her hands heaved, she could almost hear it rumbling now, a throb in her bones. There was dust everywhere, coating her skin, in her mouth, in her eyes. Kim squinted through tears. Brown. Rocks. Brown rocks in all directions.

There was also a lot of noise. It wasn’t the ‘pop’ of expanding air that accompanied the really big Cybertronic energy weapons or the whine-and-boom of the popular mini-missiles. The noise was loud and disorganized, and it didn’t sound like mecha fighting.

Kim made it to her knees and tried to look around. She saw two of Arcee’s modules. She saw Fowler. She saw Strongarm-- somehow standing up, cannon up and sweeping for a target, sensor antenna reaching and then retracting. Where was Mirage?

Where were Optimus and Megatron?

The light changed suddenly, as though a bank of clouds had moved in or the sun had dipped behind a hill. The rocky slopes were not that high, though. They weren’t like the mesas at home in Nevada—

Except now, apparently, one of the uneven, outcroppy hills was high enough. Or else the shallow valley was getting deeper.

Mirage came leaping over a boulder like it was an Olympic event. He had hold of Arcee’s pink section, which he tossed into the blue section. Subspacing his arm cannon, he scooped up first Fowler, then Kim, and pivoted to run back the way he had come.

Kim squirmed, trying to get a grip on Mirage’s smooth arm. At once she was shifted onto his shoulder like a baby being burped. It was a secure spot, and the view was better—

Behind the fleeing mecha the expanse of brown desert was broken by a pile of rocks that seemed to be getting…bigger?

Yes. The pile was getting bigger. Rocks were flowing like water out of a pucker in the ground. Boulders spread and tumbled and built the broken hill higher and higher.

Strongarm, skidding slightly as she bounded through the sand, came level with Mirage. “Can you get a signal thorough?” she shouted.

“No. It doesn’t matter—they can’t open a Bridge in this interference anyway.” Mirage answered. “We have to get out of range.”

“Scrap, scrap, scrap! Can you tell how big the disturbance is?”

“Yes. Just keep going, Arcee. Get ahead of us and try to get a signal through.”

Behind them, the spreading hill was growing closer to Optimus and Megatron. Megatron was trying to twist away, but Optimus had him by the shoulders and was pulling—

Magatron contorted, struggling to break free. His legs came up and slammed into Optimus, tossing him backward so fast and so hard he was just a blur that flew through the air before sliding along the ground. A second later Kim heard the crash of his impact. She inhaled to scream, but Optimus was already up and charging after the retreating Autobots.

Mirage was moving fairly quickly, his joint system flexing to keep forward momentum while cushioning the vertical bounce so that his human passengers weren’t continually slamming against his pauldrons. Behind them, Optimus was moving much faster. Each quick step shoved him forward into the next step at a terrible speed. He was close enough that Kim could make out his optics when ground seemed to heave under him. Optimus leaped, came down on a boulder that crumbled under his peds, and nearly fell.

Behind him, the dust in the air had turned the sky brown. It was hard to see the weirdly-fluid growing hill of rock now. There seemed to be tiny sparks in the air above it, purple and warm-looking. Hopefully, that was static electricity or a trick of the light….

Optimus kept coming, gaining on them again. Above his battle mask his optics scanned frantically. “Secure the humans,” he shouted, and then there was a string of Cybertronix numbers that—why would he yell numbers-?

And then Kim was flying again, plucked daintily off Mirage’s shoulder by Strongarm. The world spun. Something very soft came up under her bottom. Something narrow snaked around her shoulders and lap. Kim yelped, and abruptly regretted opening her mouth, because the world was still spinning—

And then she was sitting inside Strongarm, in the passenger seat, seatbelted in and driving forward on the uneven ground. In the distance she could see a shimmering blossom of a Ground Bridge opening. Kim tried to twist to look behind her. Where was everyone else?

The weird, bright/dark disorientation of Bridge transit blotted out the desert. Kim tried to count the seconds, but she was panting and blinking and frantically trying to see—

They came barreling into the Bridge alcove at speed. Gracefully, Strongarm swung her rear fender around and drifted into the mouth of the NEST tunnel. Mirage, brakes squealing against the floor, twisted the other way, toward Mech country. Arcee’s motorcycles were right behind him, tipping into slides to break. Optimus was last, thundering out mid-transformation and clawing at the floor to break his forward momentum. “Shut it down! Shut it down!” he shouted. He was barely ahead of a wave of churning light and color that snapped and hissed and collapsed with a high-pitched whine.

The lights went out, and for nearly a second the alcove was in complete darkness. Arcee managed to get her headlights on first, followed by Strongarm and Mirage. The few, narrow beams made the cavern look shadowy and strange. Kim could hear a tik-tik of metal cooling and the patter of a thin, liquid drip. Maggie’s bellow, echoing off the stone walls, made Kim’s heart lurch. “What the fucking hell have you Drongos done to my Bridge!”

Optimus, splayed across the floor in a large, bulky shadow, pushed up on one arm. “You will, at minimum, need to replace all the relays and the—how is the English label for this ‘turtle fuse?’— series and recalibrate.” He sighed. “However, it was not our doing. The feature was generating irregular electromagnetic pulses. You are to be commended for managing a stable wormhole for nearly twenty-six seconds.”

The feature. The high priority anomaly. The Richat Structure.

The Unicron spot. “So, we found him,” Kim whispered.

Strongarm vibrated slightly. “We did.”

The emergency lights came on. They were a sickly, old-fashioned florescent bulb array instead of the clear LEDs of the main lighting. Ratchet, jogging in root form, came skidding out of the tunnel and crouched over Optimus.

Kim patted Strongarm’s dash. “Thank you,” she said faintly. “Yes. Thank you. Can I get out?”

The seatbelt released her, and Kim unsteadily headed across the alcove. It seemed very small while you were in a ‘Bot. Or even on a normal day powerwalking to the DFAC. But Optimus was on the other side, still—still—splayed on the floor.

Fixit was over at the Bridge aperture, taking up the grating that covered the apparatus under the floor. Kim kept moving forward.

Ratchet positioned Optimus sitting against a stone wall and attached a medical line and a refueling line. “I’ve got my gloves,” Kim said, approaching within view of Ratchet’s primary infrared. “Do you need a hand?”

“No, I’ll get him stabilized and move him to the infirmary. Slag. Optimus, let me override that or I’ll offline you.”

“I need communication. I need to speak to Ironhide.”

“He’s not here. The Woodroffe Thrust magnetic field increased to four-point-seven kilohertz and reoriented by eight degrees. He took a geologist. They left fourteen minutes ago.”

“I need his report.”

“Open up your—yes--give me the message, I’ll pass it along….” Ratchet unlatched a twisted armor plate from Optimus’ shoulder, scowled at it and tossed it aside. “He says, there was a localized earthquake—six-point-six. That was four minutes ago. The electrical field strength has dropped back below the mean. Still inconclusive on the presence of dark energon.” Ratchet reached into the opening and clipped an energon line.

“Tell him to fall back ten kilometers. Inform NEST to create an evacuation plan for Pukatja.”

“Kim?” Strongarm asked, transforming to root. “Chromia says you and Bill need to come to the infirmary.”

“I’m fine,” Kim said. “I’ll come with Optimus.”

“It wasn’t a suggestion,” she said apologetically.

“I will bring her,” Optimus said, his words slow and heavy, like stones dropping into a well. “We’ll be along shortly.”

Ratchet snorted. “As soon as someone arrives to help carry him!”

Kim looked speculatively at Optimus’s hip and arm, but there was no way to climb him without either hurting him or getting covered in energon. “I’m sorry,” Kim said softly. She wished she could glyph him, but even her phone was working, his radio wasn’t. “I’m sorry. Surely…there will be another chance.” But no. He had only hoped for one.

His head shifted slightly as he focused on her. “Another chance for what?”

“Megatron,” Kim whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“Megatron,” Optimus repeated softly. He tilted his helm back and let it clang against the stone wall. “Megatron is dead. Unicron killed him.”

Kim sat down heavily on the stone floor. Dead? Megatron was dead?

Kim was immediately scooped up from behind and lifted up in the air to be inspected by Bulkhead. “You can’t sit there,” he corrected gently. “There is energon dripping on the floor. Humans can’t be careless about that.”

Kim glanced down. There were smears of fluid on the floor, but they were a very dark, opaque green. Kim had assumed—as far as she had noticed them at all—that they were lubricant.

Bulkiead set Kim on Optimus’s intact shoulder and squatted down beside them.

“Bulkhead,” Optimus said slowly. “Why are you here?”

Bulkhead scowled, although since Optimus was staring straight ahead the gesture was wasted. “The Bridge at Diego Garcia still works. I transported back as soon as Ironhide called me to explain why I had been assigned to the Indian Ocean.”

“You are understandably angry. However. I must ask that we discuss this later. My com systems are currently offline. I need help transmitting my sensor logs to Wheeljack and Jazz for analysis. Time is of the essence.”

Bulkhead sighed and extruded an interface cable. “Yeah. Fine.” He hesitated only a moment and slid the connector into Optimus’ wrist port. Half a minute he gently disconnected.

Kim closed her eyes and leaned hard against Optimus’ helm. “He’s dead?” she whispered. “Megatron is dead?”

“He is.”

Megatron was dead. And Optimus was alive.

“I’m…relieved?” she said uncertainly.

Ratchet, clipping off leaky lines and cleaning up spilled energon paused. “What do you mean, Megatron is dead?” he demanded.

“Megatron. He greeted Unicron. He welcomed him. He discharged his capacitors, lowered his shields, opened his sensors. And Unicron snuffed out his spark without a ripple. Megatron is dead.”

Megatron is dead. And oh, she had been so afraid that wouldn’t happen. Or that he would have taken Optimus with him. But this was… Megatron was dead. Megatron was-- “Wait. Unicron can…just kill Mecha? Like--how? He was still buried! What kind of weapon—”

Ratchet’s optics reset. “What do you mean?” he repeated. “How is that possible?”

“We will know more when my records of the event have been analyzed. It is possible there will be a way to defend against….” Abruptly he glanced away.

“Defend? You think we are going to defend against the Chaos Bringer?” Ratchet snapped. “If Unicron is awake—”

“Peace, Ratchet. We have some time.” He shifted slightly. “We will need it.” He lifted one of his legs, bending the joint experimentally. “I calculate if I drop my energon pressure by eleven percent I can avoid breaching your patches but still walk to the infirmary. I believe that will be more efficient than Bulkhead attempting to carry me.”

“Preposterous. June and Pierre are coming with an active pallet. That will be much faster than you clunking along, trying not to burst a patch.”

Optimus conceded. Kim, for one, was relieved he wasn’t going to try to walk. Bullkhead, carrying Kim in both hands, seemed to agree.

The active pallet installed itself beside the infirmary’s primary monitor. The bed was very low, since it had spread its material out to hold a large mech. Carly and Dr. Nomura easily hopped up, one carrying a thick life-support line and the other a medical data cable.

“Carly,” Optimus said, angling his head in order to watch her at his waist. “I need communication. Now.”

“Forty-five minutes is the best we can do on the first main node—Pierre, can you put the triage sheet up on screen? —but I can get you wifi.” She produced a chip-case from her back pocket. “It’s only one channel, and it won’t take your usual upload speed, but you can backdoor into the phone system. All your people have phone numbers.”

“Satisfactory,” he said. “Please begin.”

Ratchet’s other human staff were already—calmly, almost silently—at work laying out replacement parts and lifting away damaged armor. June climbed up with a bucket of absorbent and began neutralizing spilled energon.

Chromia suddenly appeared in the midst of them. “Stop,” she said. “Ratchet will take care of Prime. Right now, I need all the trainees to come over to the assembly area and submit to a scan.”

Ratchet, in the midst of transforming his left servo into an arc welder, froze but did not protest. The humans gaped at her in astonishment. “Not now, we are working,” Dr. Nomura said. “Later, certainly.”

Chromia shook her head. “Now,” she said. “I need you to come with me. You all need to be scanned. You too, Kim. Bill seems to be fine, but I still need--”

Kim’s phone chrriped almost angrily and she glanced down at it. A new calendar notice had appeared: she had an ethnographic interviewed scheduled for now, in the infirmary.

Chromia, arms folded moved to stand over Optimus. “Everything has changed. We don’t even know what they are—”

“They are our friends and collogues,” Optimus interrupted. “They have been. So they remain.”

She drew herself up, antenna coming in, every armor port tightly closed. “My prime. Some of the new patterns appearing at the anomaly sites are in the range of human brain activity.” She tilted her head pointedly to where Carly was installing a mech wifi card directly in Optimus’s antenna housing.

Except for Carly, Ratchet and his team had stilled, waiting. Kim pressed her lips together and glanced at the telemetry monitor. The graphs weren’t labeled in English. Her Cybertronix was slow….

“Kim,” Optimus said softly, “I must ask you some questions now. You must answer them honestly and with as much nuance as you can manage. Chromia will be scanning as you respond with infrared and magnetics.”

Kim dragged her eyes from the monitor and gave her attention to his face. There was a broad scrape along the side of his helm and the audial Carly wasn’t working on was bent. “Okay.”

“What are you feeling right now?”

Kim swallowed. “I feel scared. It’s waking up and we don’t have time— and maybe it can just …kill all of you, just like that, without even—"

“Kim. Perhaps I was not specific enough. What do you feel about me?”

“Scared,” she snapped, remembering a second too late that her job to answer questions, even weird questions, even painful questions. She looked back at the monitor. “I’m scared. The repairs everyone is working on are – superficial. Nothing has to be reattached. Memory and processing are fine.” She swallowed hard, “I. I. Your power system has a boatload of warning icons on it. In addition to the life support line,” life support line! “Ratchet has hooked up the energon line. That’s. That’s not good. You didn’t leak that much.” The energon smears on the floor had been so dark. “Something is wrong.”

Optimus glanced at Chromia, still looming at Kim’s shoulder. “Do you wish me dead?” he asked.

“What?” Kim started to step backwards, nearly fell off the active pallet. “No! Of course not! I—” But she hadn’t tried to stop him from facing Megatron alone. She had never tried to talk him out of this plan. She had, in fact, watched—

Her eyes prickled with the beginning of tears.

“Do you want me off the planet?”

“Off—No! Is that what this is about? Megatron is dead, so you’re planning to leave?” But that wasn’t right. They had talked about this. Kim reached out--

Chromia’s servo shot between them. Kim froze. “No, I don’t want you to leave. Oh. Scrap.” She was being so damned thick, and this was important. Even so, it was all Kim could do not to turn and look back at the screen and try to figure out what those error icons were flagging. “You think we’re…compromised. The humans. Even the ones who weren’t there.”

“I am, in fact, satisfied that you are not, despite being in close proximity to the manifestation.”

“What is your sentiment towards Ratchet?” Chromia pressed, ignoring him.

Kim turned to look at Ratchet. She was supposed to give a serious inventory of her feelings. The only thought that came to mind was, “Please get back to work.” Kim looked at the other humans, who were watching in horrified fascination. She tilted her head back to look at Chromia. “I don’t want Ratchet to leave either.”

“This human may not be a representative sample. Her patterns have been adjusted by the Matrix,” Chromia urged, ignoring Kim. “Even Agent Fowler may not be a reliable sample. He knows us. His brain chemistry is contaminated with strong and specific emotions.”

Bumblebee climbed off the recovery berth at the back corner of the infirmary. He made a suggestion. Optimus responded, “Can you and Slipstream repurpose the algorithm you use to monitor the datasphere for rumors about space aliens?”

Kim recognized Bee’s agreement.

“Better coordinate with Chip and Raf,” Ratchet muttered, igniting his welder and leaning down over a gash in Optimus’ leg. “They’ll have a better idea what might indicate a… collective change in mood.”

“I will oversee the project,” Chromia said stiffly. She glanced at the human repair team. “Paranoia, xenophobia. Anger, perhaps.”

“As you will,” Optimus conceded.

Suddenly unsteady, Kim sank down to sit on the edge of the pallet, her back pressed to Optimus’ shoulder. She should face him. She should talk to him.

Her eyes were on the monitor, and she could not drag them away. Most of the warnings were on his power system, his electropulse was swinging wildly between frequencies, and if Kim was reading the spark statistics correctly, his soul was in distress. Yes, the real time diagram was there in the corner. There was a propagating wave in the corona….

God Kim thought. But no. There might only be Unicron.

“I don’t want you to leave,” she repeated, because that seemed to be important. “I don’t want any of you to leave. But listen. Maybe you should shut down your tertiary systems and…and rest. Let Ratchet work on you. Okay?”

“No,” he answered slowly. “I have just scheduled a meeting with the senior NEST officials in two hours. It would be sooner, but using the Diego Garcia bridge for transport is…inconvenient. ”

Kim glanced at Ratchet. He had exchanged the welder for a tiny mesh knitter. She stood back up and dug a handful of tissues out of her bag. There was brown dust all over him, a thick coating across the ‘glass’ plating of his chest armor. “Jazz can hold the meeting. Or they can Bridge Springer back. You’re pretty badly hurt. Your spark—” Where to even begin to wipe him off? He needed a proper wash. God.

But no.

“The injuries are minor. The repair plan Ratchet has designed will see my injuries stabilized in one hundred and nine minutes, plus or minus eight minutes. I will be able to attend the meeting.”

“Okay. But. Whatever you are going to do, you are going to want the main Ground Bridge back. Right? There is plenty of time. So…you could put off the meeting, take a few hours—”

“I cannot. Kim. I overrode my powersystem safeties. A considerable amount of waste was produced, and while I am able to delay clearing polymer chains in the short term, the longer I wait--.” He stopped, slowly reset his optics. “Kim. I must speak to Mearing and Keller. It is best If I do so as soon as possible.”

Kim clutched at his armor so she wouldn’t fall. Waste build-up. That was how he had fired on Megatron so relentlessly, why both of their energy shielding had been so overloadingly bright. He had turned off his safety regulators and burned fuel indiscriminately. But Mecha, particularly well-built mecha with high-end power systems meant to run on pure energon, had trouble capturing and eliminating the waste products of petroleum fuels. His combat damage was minor, but plastic molecules had flooded his power system and were gumming up his lines and choking energon capillaries. The shape of some of those molecules could damage protomatter, and even the most innocuous particles would clog the receptors that took energon in.

“That hurts,” the whisper was out before Kim could stop it. Yes, this would hurt. Talking about the pain would not help.

“At the moment the discomfort is minor. Kim. I must speak to our collogues. It would be useful if you joined us—A human witness of these events….but if you are unable, I will ask Agent Fowler.”

“Optimus, I —all I saw was rocks. And maybe some…glow? I can’t tell them what Unicron looks like.” She stopped, tried to think. Optimus was going to talk to Mearing and Keller. “Are you—He’s under the Sahara. There aren’t a lot of people or animals. We could evacuate the area. Couldn’t we? We could drop a nuke on him?”

His shaky rumble was more protoform keen than sigh. “Unicron is not under the Sahara. Your hypothesis was correct. He is not localized. His consciousness is a wave form inhabiting the magnetic field generated by superionic fluid movement in the Earth’s core.”

“His brain is…in the Earth’s core? What do you mean, liquid? Does the lava go all the way down? How can it—It’s rock! And—and there is pressure. And it’s hot. Mech memory—”

“Unicron is not a mechanoid organism. He is, as you feared, an event.”

“If he’s not in a place, we can’t kill him!” Kim was panicking now. There were so many things to panic about—

“In fact, it will make it much easier.”

***

When Kim was pretty sure her legs had stopped shaking, she eased down from the active pallet and retrieved some cleaning supplies from the human-sized cabinets: tiny vacuum, microfiber shop towels, and a soft brush. Careful to stay out of the repair team’s way, Kim returned to Optimus’ helm and began wiping away the brown dust.

One of his optical arrays was damaged, eight of the tiny lenses dark or missing completely. Lightly, with the brush and vacuum, Kim cleaned each of the others. Three strokes with the brush lifted out the dirt and the vacuum sucked them out of the air.

“I have a maintenance subsystem for that,” Optimus pointed out.

“Your maintenance systems have enough to do.”

It was a bit worrying that he didn’t argue.

Kim was careful. She had to lean over without leaning on anything delicate or damaged. The crystal lenses would not be scratched by the particles or the brush, but if the vacuum slipped it could disrupt their alignment.

By the time the optics were clean the repair team had finished and were packing up their gear. Kim set the vacuum down and began wiping his helm with the microfiber towels. “I’m sorry I can’t give you a proper wash,” she said, watching the blue towel in her hands turn browner with each stroke.

“I am sorry I cannot return the favor.”

Kim froze. She straightened slightly and looked down at (nominally) green top and (formerly) khaki jeans. Brown, now, naturally. Her left arm had a long, shallow scrape that had smeared out a little blood, now dried. Her right sneaker, besides being brown, was ripped along the outer edge. Her hair did not bear thinking about. “Huh,” She said. She looked at herself again. “You know what? Whatever I’m at this meeting for, I will definitely make more of an impression this way.”

A pause. “Perhaps you should desist then.”

“Nah. You already exude credibility.” She folded the towel into a triangle and wiped around the small infrared antenna below his chin. “So. I notice Chromia is pissed off. Is she generally upset at the whole situation? Or is it that you stole her idea?”

“I applied the tactical approach that was calculated as the most likely to result in success while leaving me alive.”

“I’m not criticizing,” she said, reaching into his neck junction to capture the dust coating his cabling. “Hold still.”

“I did not intend…Kim, I did not know Megatron would….”

“I know,” she whispered. “If you had thought it would be today,” she shook her head. If he had expected to fight Megatron today, he would not have brought humans. “Never mind. Now we have to,” No she couldn’t get her head around Unicron. “Are you going to let Ratchet help you clear your power system?”

“I may have no choice. Current calculations indicate we have between five and eight days before Unicron has enough coherence to move against us. Or against terrestrial life he no doubt will find…inconvenient.”

“How long before this meeting?” Kim asked.

The answer came from the floor behind her. “About twenty-three minutes.” With an energetic skip, Raf clambered onto the pallet. He kept going, stepping gingerly around cables and damaged armor to sit over Optimus’ spark. He held up his phone. “I think I understand the gist of what you sent me, but I can’t do the math fast enough to get the details.”

“The data is still inconclusive.”

“Are you going to tell our allies what the plan is?”

“The overall goal, yes.”

“Don’t mention me. You look at me and you see the Allspark. They look at me and they see a kid.”

“They will not agree to endanger you.”

Raf laughed. “They won’t believe I can help.”

Optimus emitted a stuttering protoform hum. It was not amusement.

Raf looked over at Kim. “Will you leave us alone for a minute?”

Kim crumpled the towel in her hand. “Sure,” coming out automatically. “Well, not if you are going to yell at him or something. Now is really not the time, and you’re not…I don’t worship you.”

Raf thought about it. “I promise not to talk.” He frowned. “Kim, Reconciliation and Unification were not just a—a ritual so I could get to the protomatter easily. I’m not angry.”

“Megatron is dead, and you don’t like Mecha fighting each other.”

Raf’s eyes hardened. “Megatron is dead because he chose to venerate chaos and waste. I am sorry we can’t approach the Decepticons now, but while such merciless decay inhabits the Earth—” He stopped. “Kim, I want to try to settle his spark, but my brain isn’t designed to manage electromagnetics this way. I can’t do it and have a conversation. Can you….?”

“Oh. Sure. Yeah.” Kim gathered up the cleaning supplies and hopped off the pallet. There might be time, if she ran, to make it back to the Cold War hallway, but there was no way Kim had enough energy for that. She used the weird staff bathroom Fixit had built in the infirmary and washed her face and arm. She retrieved a bottle of water and a granola bar from the emergency snack hoard in the tape cabinet. She sat down on the floor and firmly did not look over to where Raf was sitting on Optimus, very quietly humming “Higher Love” to himself.

Oh, god. But no.

The granola bar was hard and dry, and she had to wash down each bite with a big gulp of water.

June plopped down on the floor beside her. “So,” she said. “How are you doing?”

“Fine, I guess. We both got scanned. Probably a lot.” Kim shrugged. She was a little stiff and the scraped arm was coming up in bruises. “And we didn’t set off the dark energon alarms.” The blood of Unicron. No, don’t think about that. “Um.” She nodded toward the prone bulk of Optimus, laid out on its low bed. “How are the repairs going?”

“Ratchet has to rebuild a couple of armor clips. Some of the sensor damage…he could do the repairs internally but,” she bit her lip. “Apparently, there is a time crunch?”

Kim said nothing.

“We’re all being sent off to rest. There is about four hours of surgery scheduled for later this afternoon. I wanted to see if you were all right?”

Kim nodded. “Thanks.”

They watched, from the floor, as Ratchet came over and gently lifted Raf away before helping Optimus shift to one of the steel medical berths that could adjust its orientation vertically. The meeting had to be held in the infirmary, apparently, but Optimus was apparently going to do it sitting up.

Kim drew her knees in and rested her forehead against them.

***

When June left, Kim checked her calendar. There was no appointment set for the surgery. Kim sent off a query to Ratchet.

He answered back that her presence would not be required. Optimus was scheduled to be unconscious for the replacement procedures and afterwards would be receiving a high-pressure energon system flush, so humans were restricted for safety reasons.

Kim would have argued, but she could hear golf carts in the tunnel. The Humans were here.

Raf was gone—keeping a low profile, no doubt. In addition to Mearing, Keller, and Morshower, who were all regularly in ‘Bot country, the visitors included the UN coordinator (Colonel Bilai) and an EU representative (Herman Wozniak), both of whom seemed a little freaked out.

“Before we begin,” Mr. Keller said diffidently, “I feel I should congratulate you on the defeat of Megatron.”

Optimus took a long moment to answer. “I cannot accept your congratulations.”

Keller nodded gravely. “We are aware that any loss of Mech life—”

“I am not responsible for Megatron’s defeat,” Optimus corrected.

There was a long silence. Mearing set her shoulders and looked up unflinchingly. “The B.E.M.?”

“I am afraid so.”

“Bem?” Kim mouthed.

Mearing looked at her sharply. “Bug Eyed Monster. The code name for the suspected dormant alien presence. What have you been calling it?”

“I…assumed it was a Mech of some kind.”

“Is it?” she asked.

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” General Morshower spoke for the first time. “Where is it and what is it doing? Is it still in Mauritania?”

“What it is doing is the easier answer,” Optimus said carefully. “It is still not…coherent or fully alert. We are monitoring its activity. We should have at least five days before it has full possession of its faculties.”

“Great. Where is it? We’ll start planning the attack. Five days is plenty of time.” He frowned. “You don’t know where it is now, do you? It got away from you—”

“It,” Optimus stopped. “It has not moved. It does not have a single specific location.”

Mearing cursed. The UN representative stood up looking very put-upon.

“Oh, don’t even,” Kim said impatiently. “You’ve all met Arcee, surely. She is in more than one place at the same time regularly. It’s an alien.”

“So we can’t fight it,” Keller said.

“Incorrect. We can neutralize it,” Optimus said, sounding on firm ground now. “Or, rather, the Allspark can.”

Morshower turned to look at Kim. Well. She had told him it wasn’t a weapon.

Kim clinched her jaw and managed not to sound scathing and impatient. It wasn’t Glen’s fault this wasn’t obvious to him. “They don’t mean to use the baby. The…it’s the fragment Raf has. Isn’t it?” The fragment inside Raf, that hadn’t left him yet. The fragment that thought it was sort of a twelve year old boy.

They’d been keeping it for this.

“Yes, Kim.. The…deployment will require some careful calculation. To bring a weapon against an unlocalized organism…. We must collect more data before we can identify the most effective point for the attack. It may take as long as two orns to evaluate targeting solutions. There will be time to properly repair the Ground Bridge. We will not need to deploy from Diego Garcia.”

“That’s cutting it kind of close,” Mearing murmured.

The humans looked at one another. “What sort of military support will this operation need?” Keller asked.

“A distraction. We have not yet determined what precise NEST action will be required.” He seemed about to add something, but his optics abruptly reset and a soft, grating protoform sound stuttered out.

Mearing’s eyes widened slightly in alarm, but Keller did not appear to notice anything unusual about the sound. “I don’t suppose we can do anything about the weather?” he said.

“Unfortunately, no,” Springer answered. “We have identified four locations which are potentially hazardous and should be restricted. Local authorities are being alerted. Eight more are potentially…hazardous for humans. It might be wise to begin evacuations to a minimum safe distance.”

Keller stood up and began to pace. “I assume Bill isn’t here because he is already working on cover stories?”

The berth creaked slightly as Optimus shifted. “Agent Fowler’s team is working on it. Blaster has volunteered to coordinate them with the media analysis team. He will submit reports every six hours.”

The humans had more questions and a bunch of irrelevant suggestions, but none of it was substantial. After ten minutes or so, Springer ended the meeting by listing everyone’s ‘action items’ in a very earnest voice. Kim would have found it funny and noted it down, except she could feel an odd vibration through the metal of the berth struts. It might be a protoform vibration. Or a gear system off track. Or—

Kim had no idea what was, specifically, going wrong. Optimus was in distress. He was making the protomatter sound again: quite, low-pitched, grating, and uneven.

The sounds of the golf carts in the tunnel were still echoing when Ratchet bustled over, lowered the berth so Optimus was prone, and connected a medical network cable.

Kim waited until the berth stopped moving and then carefully stepped along the struts to get closer to Optimus’ face. Ratchet was muttering to himself in liquid Cybertronix syllables.

“Kim,” Optimus began, his voice an even and calm counterpoint to the susurrations of his struggling protomatter. “I should explain.”

“Never mind,” Ratchet interrupted. “I’ll send her the repair schedule.”

“She will worry.”

Kim had, finally, gotten close enough to reach out a hand toward the overlapping sweet-spot over his mid chest. “I won’t,” she promised. “I am absolutely confident about Ratchet’s skill. I am sure of your strength. You are going to be fine.” She swallowed hard. “Now. If Ratchet is trying to take cognition offline, you need to let him. Optimus? Okay?”

“The procedures are estimated to take point-two orns—"

“Yes,” Kim said gently. “No more of this letting-internal-repairs fix things because we have more time than replacement parts bullshit. A long procedure, but not—” Not the usual long, slow recoveries she had watched in so many of her friends. Kim smiled. “It’s all right. Twenty percent of an orn is just tomorrow morning. It’s not like anybody is going to finish their…math by then. There is nothing for you to do.”

“Ratchet, I am releasing control of my systems.”

There was no visible reaction from Ratchet, but Optimus’s optics promptly went offline. Kim straightened her back. “Was that the right thing to say?” she whispered.

“Obviously,” he said shortly. “You can’t stay here—another human breathing and sweating would be bad enough, but you are filthy.”

Kim took a careful step toward the footholds that would het her down. “I know. June told me. I’ll, um, go get a shower and see if Blaster needs any help.”

***
With Ratchet’s team working in the Infirmary, the Cold War hall was abandoned—except for the luxurious bathroom that Fixit had built. Sari and Hot Rod were in the accessable shower stall pouring cups of water back and forth. Safely out of the splash zone in his wheelchair, Chip was babysitting.

Kim unclenched her jaw and did not ask if Chip was all right. Here at home, he normally used a cane or nothing at all, but Kim was not going to notice because he must never feel obligated to explain. Instead, she lifted her towel in a tired wave and held out her free arm toward the sparklings.

The children jumped gleefully in the air and then began to toss the water back and forth from cup to cup in intricate patterns. Twin balls of water soared to the ceiling and then were snatched from the air by the cups and chucked laterally in a crossover exchange. While Kim was watching that, water balls and streams and sprays from still other cups were flying in other directions. Hot Rod was planted on the floor, all five of his appendages tossing water and then even the cups in the air, while Sari danced through the fountain, snatching and launching water from two cups in each servo.

They didn’t even seem to be spilling any of it.

The display was short—Kim would not have minded watching more—but suddenly, after a spinning finale, all the water was in the air at once and came down in a single sheet that soaked both baby mecha.

Kim hung her towel on her shoulder and applauded vigorously.

“They’ve been practicing all morning,” Chip said.

“Kids, that’s—that’s wonderful!” Kim smiled hugely, hoping to convey approval and excitement and affection. “You must be very proud.”

“Yes, we have acquired skills for having fun,” Hot Rod said. He took a squeegee from the hooks behind the door and began to shift the water toward the shower drain.

Kim blinked, wondering if she should point out the mastery of limb coordination. Before she could decide, Sari said very earnestly, “We must leave now. Kim needs to wash,” she paused to aim a scanner in Kim’s direction, and nodded. “Humans do not like to wash with friends.”

“I…I don’t mind,” Kim began.

“It’s time to make lunch, anyway,” Chip said briskly. “Let’s clear out. Nice job on the floor, Roddy.”

Kim was, in fact, filthy. There was brown dirt between her toes and under her breasts. Her hair took three washings for the water to run clear. The dust of Unicron: she had been standing right over him.

But everywhere was standing in Unicron, wasn’t it? That planetary magnetic field that Optimus had called so pretty, that was just the Chaos Bringer sleeping.

And it made so much sense, didn’t it? A whole planet full of decay and death, taking a billion years to produce a violent, intelligent species that could discount sentience and similarity and cheerfully slaughter the Other? An evolution built on survival of the fittest—and wasn’t that a nice way of glossing over the death of everything else. But even the fittest died anyway, didn’t they? To make room for the next round of genetic variation in an efficient production of a spacefaring, violent, intelligent species.

Kim let the hot water wash over her. It couldn’t rinse away what she was, of course. Seven hundred years short of being a weapon against him.

With a face he recognizes.

The closest they have ever found to an alien that thinks in a way they understand.

Oh, God. Nope.

If they killed Unicron and the magnetic field that protected Earth from cosmic rays collapsed, humans were going to be in a world of hurt. Was there a substitute for that?

If Unicron woke up and found his weapons unready and fraternizing with the creations of Primus…what could he do? A lot of humans didn’t even like war. Surely that would be a disappointment. Even assuming an organism that was wave patterns in a magnetic field the size of a planet could even understand what it had made, so small and so fleshy….

Kim turned off the water, threw on a robe, and went to the kitchen in search of lunch. To her surprise, Hot Rod was taking a frozen pizza out of the oven while Sari criticized his form. Chip watched from the side, trying not to smile. “Have a seat,” he said. “It’s one of the nice pizzas.”

It was: thin whole-wheat crust, vegetable (including artichoke and spinach), ‘artisan’ cheese.

Kim sat down and tried to think about how long it had been since breakfast. All she could think about was how grateful she was the pizza wasn’t pepperoni. Bad enough to eat plants, to turn another organism into her own flesh. Meat? She shuddered.

Sari was cutting the Pizza. One of her servos was holding the pizza cutter, tracing it slowly over a weak laser-line she was using for measurement. That pizza would bisected perfectly. Each final slice of pizza would be perfectly even.

Kim blinked several times.

Ford had been afraid of the sparklings. Afraid, or disgusted by them. Kim’s eyes misted over. How had that not been a warning—afraid of these babies?

Sari set a slice of pizza on plate and placed it in front of Kim.

“Thank—thank you,” Kim whispered.

“Why are you removing the Capsicum annuum from your pizza?” Hot Rod asked Chip.

“I don’t like the taste of it,” he said. “Individual humans vary in their preference for food.”

“I told you different foods tasted different,” Sari said.

Hot Rod ignored her. “So you do not desire to eat this?” At Chip’s nod, Hot Rod plucked one of the rejected green peppers off Chip’s plate and laid it on the table.

“Even if they aren’t going to eat it,” Chip said gently, “A human’s food belongs to them. You can’t take it without asking.”

Obligingly, Kim roused herself. “Chip, may I have your extra peppers?”

He inclined his head. “Certainly.”

Kim long-armed a fork from the drying rack behind her and scooped up the sad pile of rejected peppers. Hot Rod lifted up the one he had laid on the table and offered it up.

“No, thank you,” Kim said quickly. “You may keep that.”

At once the children extruded small chemosensors from servo ‘fingers’ and began to prod the bit of vegetable.

Kim looked down at her pizza. She lifted the slice and took a bite. It had been an awful morning. No doubt she would feel better if she ate. Kim chewed.

Chip was saying, “I know it’s interesting. But. Don’t ever try to eat human food.”

“There’s hardly any energy in this!” Sari complained. She had detached one of her sensor cables from her ‘pigtail’ and was prodding the mauled pepper slice with its needle-thin tip.

“Yes. In a day, we consume much more of this than you do of energon, especially if you factor in size.”

Kim managed another bite of pizza.

***
After lunch (it was not too generous to consider half a slice of pizza ‘lunch’) Kim checked in with Blaster’s web chatter monitoring team. They had the collating parameters set up for English and French, but were still working on Russian, Turkish, Spanish, Mandarin, and Persian.

Kim opened the Cybertronian Services app on her phone and checked to see if she had been looped in on the telemetry. She had. Even with his cognitive processing offline, Optimus had a spark variance of over four percent. Not dangerous. Not particularly good either.

Kim should have been useful. She could write up her notes. She could work on a report. She could start dinner for the medical team. She could go give Chip a hand babysitting the children. Even a nap might be useful: who knew? There might be no time to sleep later.

Tonight was, she realized, New Year’s Eve. If they hadn’t been in the middle of an emergency and if the Ground Bridge had been working, Bulkhead and Wheeljack would have snuck off with Miko to watch the domino-fall of fire-work shows across the globe. They would have ‘chased’ the night from one time zone to another, hopping through the tunnels in space and comparing the spectacle and artistic merit of the different major cities. And Kim would have pretended not to notice.

Hound and Mirage had been teasing, daring each other to sneak into the Rose Parade with a string of wild costumes.

Ironhide had ‘adjusted’ the patrol schedule so he could take Carly and Bobby to Jaipur on New Year’s Day for some kind of outdoor concert.

Fixit and Maggie had planned to stay in. Chip was going to help them teach the kids to make almond cookies—all the kids, including the mech ones. Except, maybe, not Miko, since staying up all night might lead to napping.

The plans had been lovely.

But, obviously, the countdown to the end of the world took priority over family time and dating. And the luxury of the Ground Bridge was beyond reach—Wheeljack and Fixit would spend the next day and a half (at least) repairing what Unicron’s manifestation practically on top of the open end had done to it.

Kim sat and stared at the telemetry feed on her phone.

~TBC

Chapter Text

She woke before the alarm and reached for her phone. Optimus was conscious and in the privacy annex. His spark variance was only slightly improved, but he wasn’t on external power and that was a good sign.

Kim set about finding something clean to wear and put in a call to Bumblebee who was the current coordinator on the chatter monitoring. By text he complained—at some length—about the algorithms they were setting up and the bizarre illogic of human languages.

“You know…human researchers sometimes look for patterns in social media. Can you see what sampling and keywords they use?”

Those are not conducted in real-time.

“Well, right,” Kim reached for her comb. “But you are faster than humans are.”

A series of complaint glyphs.

“Steal the code for Ngram viewer and run it on a server here? Google understands how words get used.”

Her phone began to play “Party in the CIA” by Weird Al.

Slipstream, who had apparently been following the conversation, came on the line. “I think we should ask all our facebook and twitter followers to just tell us how they are feeling. Blaster says that will contaminate the sample.”

Bee began playing “Gangnam Style.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea,” Slipstream said.

“What is?” Kim asked.

“Make a cute meme. Hmmm. We should probably have the kids check our work.” The phone went dark.  Kim guessed the meeting was over. She shoved her feet into sneakers, grabbed a granola bar and some water, and headed out. 

It was very early. The dorm was still silent.  There was no one on the balcony, and in the assembly area, only Arcee was on duty at the communications station. Kim waved as she padded past in her sneakers.

The garage was, as usual, dim and cool. Blaster was a plump box, so Steeljaw and Eject were probably recharging inside him.  Sundoor was a smaller shape beside him.  Chromia and Bulkhead had both powered down in alt. Kim gave them a wide berth so she wouldn’t trigger a sensor and wake them.

It had been months since Kim had been in the privacy annex at the far side of the garage.  Some additional lighting and a monitor had been installed since then, but the smooth tunnel was still not much larger than Optimus in alt, and Kim wondered if it was claustrophobic at all.

“Hey,” she called softly, turning the corner.

“Kim. My  reception and transmission equipment is repaired, but Ratchet has taken all channels offline.”

“Good. You’re resting,” she answered.

“I am unable to communicate.”

“And isolation is hard,” Kim said gently. She stepped further into the alcove. The close stone walls inside the annex echoing softly with a low, unsettling vibration, like an off-key cello. She listened for a moment.

Optimus shifted restlessly on his tires. “If I am silent, our NEST partners will worry. You will worry.”

“I’m not worried,” Kim corrected.  “I trust Ratchet when he says things need a little time, and you need to rest.” That didn’t seem like enough. “And…I had your telemetry. I knew you were okay.” The sound was quiet and deep but unsettling like the way scratching a blackboard made you shiver.  “Maybe not so okay. That’s a protoform noise, isn’t it?  That doesn’t sound very good.”

There was a long pause. The uneven tone modulated slightly, itching through Kim’s kneecaps. Optimus said, “I apologize. The sound is unattractive. Unfortunately, I cannot suppress it.”

Kim froze. “What?”

“The sound results from an attempt to dislodge impacted contaminants with protomatter oscillation.” The sentence was totally flat; he had abandoned the nonverbal pack. “It is unfortunate that the resulting frequencies are unpleasant to both mecha and humans.”

“No.” Kim gulped. “I’m…sorry. I’m so sorry. It wasn’t—what I said wasn’t a comment on aesthetics.”

“The semantic content is unambiguous.”

Kim shook her head. “Not that kind of bad. Or—not bad for me.”

He was silent except for the bass hum of struggling protomatter. Impacted contaminants. Hundreds of thousands of microscopic fragments of plastic were smothering his protomatter, damming up energon flow and jamming the tiny cells so they couldn’t shift or reconfigure.  

Kim felt cold all over. This was—Oh, he thought she had critiqued an ugliness.  Scrap. “It was sort of an invitation.  Like, when somebody comes in with a black eye, and you say it looks bad. And. And the person you’re speaking to can decide if they want to take the opening to complain—or tell the story of how it happened—or blow it off and say it is nothing….”

“I have no desire to complain. You were present when I acquired the debility. And it is not nothing.”

“I know,” Kim whispered. “It’s not nothing. I’m so sorry.”

“We have agreed. Apologies are not needed for a communications failure.”

“An apology for hurting you though.” He took such joy in his beauty. Shaping oneself in an appealing--even artistic--way was a mech value.  Kim stepped in a little closer, although there was not much overlapping that could happen while he was in alt and she was outside his cab. “I, uh, I think I probably gave enough offense that I might need to box myself in apology.”

“Physiologically impossible. You are not a mech. You lack a T-cog.” The hum edged up into a higher register for a few moments and oscillated almost painfully.  “The human idiom. ‘Forget it.’ Let there be peace between us,” Optimus said shortly when the intensity dropped again.

Kim’s eyes blurred over. “Always,” she whispered.

“I fear I must ask…Kim, I do not think I can manage the complexities of human conversation today. I am sorry.”

Kim swallowed hard. Somehow, she kept her voice level. “Are you asking me to be quiet, or are you asking me to go?”

“For now, to go.  We can try again later.”

Kim clamped her teeth shut and kept them still until she was sure she wasn’t going to argue or beg. He was ill, and ill and alone was easier than ill and dealing with humans (with me, with me) and that was a boundary she had damn well better respect.  “Okay,” she said. “Okay. I’ll go back to the dorm now and…I’ll have the phone on.”

“Yes,” he said softly. “Always you must carry the burden of external modifications. Thank you.”

Kim retreated, each step measured and careful, each breath shallow and calm. She wanted to hold back the hurt of wrong, being unhelpful, being unwanted. But that left thinking of Optimus, the best communicator she knew with enormous processing power and multiple tracks of thought…being barely lucid.  

The condition humans could neither pronounce nor understand, Λλλλ wasn’t pain. It was worse than pain. And he was alone.

Kim kept walking.  As she passed through the ‘Bot commissary, she texted Ratchet: He is in distress. Why isn’t he on external power? Why isn’t someone with him?

The answer came back immediately: HE REFUSES.

Kim paused for a moment to roll her shoulders and breathe.

He cannot manage one conversation at human speeds.

This time the answer was a little slower in coming. WHAT HE NEEDS IS ANOTHER POWER WASH, BUT IF WE CLEAR THE INFIRMARY DURING THE DAY NEST WILL NOTICE.

Kim made it back to her room and got the door shut before she started crying. She didn’t cry for very long before a metallic rap came at her door and Fixit called, “Pancakes for breakfast, if you are hungry.”

It took two tries to answer. “No thanks.”

***

The calendar app announced a meeting request. Kim picked up the phone and blinked at the screen: Jazz. The balcony. Earliest convenience.

Well, scrap.

Kim tabbed ‘accept,’ washed her face in the bathroom, checked her bag, and went out into the vast main atrium. Jazz was waiting at the railing.

“Hey there, Kim,” he said softly.

She took a deep breath. “Hey, Jazz.”

“Ratchet has asked me to scan you while I’m here,” he said. “You got bounced around a lot yesterday. Dr. Nomura has apparently been lecturing him on inflammation.”

Kim managed a snort. “And I was standing at a ground zero for the Chaos god.”

He shrugged, a fluid, natural movement.

“Yeah, go ahead,” Kim said. “No x-rays.”

“Please. I didn’t just make my ballistic insertion yesterday!”

Kim turned slowly in place, holding her arms out. “That’s right, though. You’ve got an anniversary coming up. Five years, I think.”

“My algorithm is offering up the idiom ‘time flies’ for this conversation. I can’t do it, Kim. The metaphor is just too weird.”

“It doesn’t mean it is solid and has wings. It means it moves fast. Right. You know that.”

“Too weird,” he repeated. “Thanks.”

“That wasn’t why you scheduled a meeting,” Kim said.

He sighed. “No. We need to ask a favor.”

She closed her eyes. “Yeah. Okay.”

He shifted uneasily, a capacitor clicking on and then off. “You don’t know what it is yet.”

Oh. Kim wasn’t going to like it. Well, she didn’t like anything right now. She ran her hands through her hair. “What?”

“Optimus is getting forty-five calls an hour. On average.”

Kim’s mouth dropped open. “He can’t answer them! I mean, even if –medically—he wasn’t busy with internal repair, he’s not—” Talking to generals and diplomats was more important and more perilous than talking to Kim. If he said the wrong thing—

“Yeah. No kiddin,’” Jazz said. “We’re redirecting his communications. But Kim. There is only so long we can put people off saying that he’s busy. Some of these humans know how long minor repairs take to integrate.

“He’s…analyzing really complex data….” Kim hazarded.

“That excuse won’t work forever, either.” He shifted his weight and leaned a bit closer to the balcony. “Kim. Some of our NEST partners have noticed you and Prime are close. If you seem to be worried, they’ll assume….” He clicked softly in a systems check. “Kim, we can’t afford to have our human allies questioning our ability to deal with the…dormant alien and the Decepticon ship that is still in orbit. They’re afraid. And Optimus, well, they put a lot of faith in him individually.”

Kim took a deep breath. “You need me to go have breakfast in the DFAC and act like everything’s fine,” she guessed. Scrap. What a miserable thought.

“Oh, no! Heck no!”

Kim blinked. “No?”

“You’re the worst liar imaginable. Somebody asks you how you are, you’re going to, well,” several of his antennae quivered. “Forthrightness is a virtue. Obviously. We rely on your…genuineness.”

“You’re saying I’m a horrible actor.”

His faceplates curved into a smile. “Yes. That’s it exactly.”

“So then what can I do to help?” Kim asked.

“Well, Springer came up with a plan.”

“One I’m not going to like,” Kim said tightly.

“We want you to spend the day shopping in Las Vegas.”

Kim took a second to parse that. “You think I should go to…Vegas.”

“Well, we’d send you somewhere more noticeable, obviously, if the Bridge were functional. New York. Or Hong Kong.”

“Hong Kong,” Kim squeaked.

“It’s the most visited city in the world.”

Right. Naturally. For all that Jazz delighted in the persona he crafted, he was still an Autobot and couldn’t quite imagine what a carefree human would do on an unexpected day off. Or to fake a day off. If Kim were going to fake a day off anywhere in the world—she grimaced—it would be Disney World. Or the beach.

“However,” Jazz continued, “NEST personnel frequently visit Las Vegas for recreational purposes.”

Well, that was certainly true. “It’s New Years. Everything will be closed.”

“Kim, it is Vegas! Several shopping malls are open.”

“But. My car hasn’t been driven in months. And you can’t spare anyone—”

“Sarah Lennox has volunteered to join you on a girls’ day out.”

“Sarah—?” Will’s wife. Right. Major Lennox had been there since the beginning, he was a friend not just a colleague and Optimus would answer a message from him if he texted that he was worried. “Jazz, I—” I really don’t want to go to Las Vegas. Kim cleared her throat. Scrap. “Sarah Lennox doesn’t know what—any of this is, does she?”

“Not officially. No.” He leaned closer. “Unofficially, she and ‘Hide have…had some conversations. He’s explaining to her right now, actually.”

Kim frowned. “What is he explaining?”

“You’re a civilian consultant who got caught in unexpected violence yesterday and needs some normalcy. She won’t ask you any questions. All you have to do is go to Boulevard Mall and buy things you don’t need.”

“NEST monitors my credit cards,” Kim realized.

“Not actively. But today…they are trying to figure out how bad things are over here. Someone will check.”

Kim took deep breaths until she was sure she wouldn’t do something unfair, like cuss Jazz out. “What if he asks for me? Jazz, I want to be here. And if you have to tell him I’m off buying stupid shit I don’t need in the most soulless, trivial, empty—.”

“If he askes for you, we will explain that you are giving him cover to concentrate on repairs. Kim. This strategy is difficult. But it is correct.”

“Okay.” The word was like shards of glass in her mouth. “Let me change.”

“I will give you a ride over to family housing.”

***
The mall shops closed at eight. Kim was not entirely sure how she had spent the day. There were shopping bags dangling from her hand and dim recollection of pastel colors and scattered sequins. She had eaten. She distinctly remembered eggrolls. And possibly cookies. There was a mostly-empty smoothie cup in her hand.

There had been a small aquarium in the mall. Kim had stood for a long time before an enormous tank too-full of interesting fish. She had petted a sting ray. The tortoise had been small but photogenic as it enthusiastically devoured a mushroom. The octopus had been very large and playing with a ping-pong ball.

She did not think about Optimus wanting to meet an octopus.

The moments had all been sharp and painful at the time. Now, finally, approaching the doors to the garage, they felt grainy and out of order. They were going home, though. Finally—

The doors opened to a strange roar. It slammed into Kim like a physical wall, and beside her Sarah stumbled. It was a loud, rough noise that seemed to come from nowhere and be everywhere.

Sarah figured it out first, hurrying toward the exterior wall but stumbling to a stop a good twenty feet short. She turned around. “It’s hail,” she shouted into the noise.

Kim peered past her. She could see something sparkling in the streetlights. Carefully she crept closer, but there was no wind. The glittering balls were falling almost in a straight sheet. Only at the edge did her feet crunch on something in the shadow. Kim looked down.

The balls of ice weren’t round and clear, but uneven and white. Some of them broken. They looked a little like chickpeas.

Kim stood there staring while Sarah locked their packages in her car. The roar it made was just astonishing. It had hailed once, when Kim was a kid. She didn’t remember this noise. Or it lasting so long. It had killed the tomatoes her mother kept in boxes by the front steps. Perhaps that had been bigger hail, though—

Sarah’s hand on her arm cut through the pointless whirl of memory. “Come on,” she said. “There’s a restaurant on the first floor that opens onto garage. Let’s get a snack and check the weather.”

Blankly, Kim followed her down the concrete steps. The roar of the ice echoed weirdly in the center of the garage.

“How do you feel about daiquiris?” Sarah asked as the waiter handed them a menu.

Kim shook her head. “Unsweet iced tea.” She looked down at the paper in her hand. Oh. Tapas. She had never been able to afford that in Boston. “Empanadas,” she said. “Grilled squid. Artichoke toast.”

“Stress eating?” Sarah asked as the waiter left.

“Actually…I’m not very hungry. But I’ve never had it before.”

Sarah got out her phone and opened the weather app. “And you think you might not have the chance again?” Her voice was a little hard. Kim remembered that she had two children and a husband in Special Forces.

Kim looked around, but there were no windows in a mall restaurant. “Probably…everything is going to be fine. Yeah. This won’t…go on much longer. But I’m going to be very busy…a lot sooner than I expected.” Busy, she thought. But maybe not grieving. He survived Megatron. And for this next part, Raf would have to do the heavy lifting. And that was terrible, no, she couldn’t be glad a child was going to have to do…whatever it was the Allspark was going to do to stop Unicron.

Sarah leaned forward. “This is us, then? This crazy weather, it’s our problem?”

Kim sighed. “There is a plan,” she whispered.

“Good plan?” Her lips barely moved.

Kim nodded. The plan was, in fact, practically divine. “Come see me when…you’ll know when. I’ll tell you. Well, any questions you have after Will…” Kim looked away. There still weren’t any windows in the restaurant. “Is it still hailing?”

***

They waited thirty minutes after the hail stopped to head home. The food had been good, though Kim had only managed a few bites of it. The weather radar looked clear, but Kim kept the app open while they drove. There were tornados in Colorado and freezing rain in Texas.

The ice on the roadway was mostly melted, but the medians and shoulders were still white with it. Sarah kept to the speed limit on the long, straight highway. Kim sat stiffly beside her, anxious to get home and anxious that there would be more weather on the way.

It was after eleven when they got back to base. Unaware of the back door, Sarah dropped Kim off at the entrance to the NESTS command annex that protruded from the mesa. Kim almost never used the front door, and the guard asked to see her ID.

The night crew was sparse and closed off in offices, so Kim had the meandering hallways almost to herself. The morale cubicles were completely abandoned, the first aid station was playing opera on public radio, and the cleaning crew in the geology suite were arguing about sports. The lights were up in the DFAC, but the corporal on shift was mopping, and the only offering was cold sandwiches and salads.

Kim was a little tired. She’d walked all day, but that wasn’t unusual. The paper shopping bags bumping into her leg were irritating. She stopped for a bottle of cold water.

The communications alcove was set in the last tunnel junction tall enough and wide enough for the larger mecha. It was dark and the struts seemed to loom ominously. Kim walked a little faster around the corner to the Bridge embarkation area. This was bright and busy, two human techs at the console and Wheeljack half-way in the open floor plating making adjustments. Kim waved, but didn’t disturb them. She was—finally—nearly home. Only one more broad curve of the tunnel.

The only sound was the slap-slap of sneakers on stone. Kim went up to the yellow line. Only one of the berths was occupied. The patient was prone with the peds slightly elevated. The data screens were turned off. Well. Mecha didn’t need to see a telemetry feed. Ratchet was parked tidily in alt beside the bed. Probably there was a dataline between them.

Kim could not, from her position, see Optimus’ face. Safety rules were absolute, though. She did not step across the line. She set down the shopping bags and her purse and listened. If there was any noise from the infirmary, though, it was softer than the echo of the ventilation system over head.

For the millionth time that day, Kim checked her phone.

“Hey.” With the barest hiss of tires on stone, Fixit glided to the other side of the line. “How was your trip to the mall?”

Kim exhaled. “Oh, it was a great mall. It had an aquarium. We need to bring you there next time.”

Fixit shifted on his wheels. “Kim, you can’t come in.”

“I know. I do.” She swallowed. “How is it going?”

Fixit’s optics focused on the space beside Kim’s head. Avoiding “eye contact” wasn’t a nonverbal she’d seen in a mech before. There was no point in looking away—even Fixit was always watching the humans around him with infrared and EM when his primary visuals were focused elsewhere. “The first two tiers of processing are off-line,” he said.

“Pressurewash,” Kim began, coaxing. Then she changed her mind and she shut her mouth, waiting, leaving a silence for Fixit to fill.

“Ratchet is oscillating the pressure at a rate of point six hertz. We are finally seeing adequate progress.”

Kim waited a bit longer. Fixit still wouldn’t look at her. “That’s good,” she said.

“Yes.”

Oscillating the pressure. “We aren’t just in a hurry,” she said. “He wasn’t clearing the waste.”

“No. Also. There is an error in his internal repair assessment subroutine. It is likely there has been some protomatter loss. It is probably minor.”

“But there is no way to tell.”

Fixit nodded glumly.

“Is that the worst of it?”

“Yes.” His vocalizer staticked and reset. “The best of it is this: however much energon it takes to scrub and repair his power system and protomatter, we have it. According to current projections, eighty-eight percent of the waste material will be cleared before tomorrow afternoon’s meeting.”

“Thank you, Fixit,” she whispered. The damn meetings had saved them. Optimus would not have allowed such profligate use of energon for his own comfort, possibly not for his own health. But he had to talk to humans—very soon—about Unicron, and he could not afford to show weakness. “When he…when you wake him, please tell him I’m…relieved he is improving.”

Fixit extended a servo. Kim laid her hand on top of it and allowed herself to be led around the curve of the assembly area and to the bottom of the steps.

On the balcony, Kim looked at the closed door to the dormitory for a long moment. If anyone was still up, there would be questions.

She dumped the shopping bags and her purse on the nearest couch and walked to the back corner of the balcony that overlooked a sliver of the infirmary. There was no good view of Optimus from here. And that was probably for the best: if one of those valves failed and energon sprayed randomly—

It wouldn’t happen, of course. Ratchet’s safety protocols were three or four redundancies deep where other people’s safety was concerned. During long medical procedures he even scheduled cascading breaks into the treatment plan so that his human assistants had a chance to drink water and eliminate. It wouldn’t be a real danger for Kim to be in the room with energon being pumped around in a closed loop.

There just wouldn’t be any point. Optimus was unconscious. Sedated, if the term applied.

Kim sat down on the floor and leaned back against the wall. It was…not comfortable, but better than answering questions. Or (ugh, worse) sympathetic looks from people who understood exactly how she felt.

***

The assembly area in mech country was enormous—former missile silo enormous. It could hold the entire Autobot population on Earth at the same time-- comfortably if they were in root form and not moving around vigorously.

It was very odd, then, to find the great, cavernous, enormous room crowded. There were even people hovering in the air above the balcony, and that was….

That was….

Odd. That was odd.

I’m dreaming, Kim thought. And then, It’s that dream.

One of the crowd—tall, broad, voice like a bell or perhaps like an Amazon—was speaking. Yes, I want to do it. Of course I want to do it. It is our purpose and our duty. Why would I not desire it?

To nurture life is not to abandon it. Cybertron— querulous, demanding.

CYBERTRON IS DEAD. OUR FUTURE, IF WE HAVE ONE, IS HERE. And oh, that voice was cold.

And shall we nurture the spawn of Chaos?

Oh, now would be a good time to wake up. Now, now. Kim couldn’t cover her ears or look away.

Shall we miss this chance? To fail here is to fail completely, forever.

The voices jumbled for a while, talking over one another. Arguing. Kim couldn’t follow any of it for long moments.

The saints? The ancestors? It wasn’t Kim’s job to be observing that. And it was probably rude to be listening in.

There was a hush, suddenly. The figures turned in the same direction and seemed to be listening. Kim looked, but didn’t see anyone or hear anything.

A lumpy, silvery, curving figure folded down beside Kim, fitting neatly into a space that could not possibly have held him. It heaved a sigh.

The first one who had spoken—red, tall, pointy— said calmly, I do not know if our creator foresaw this. I concede it does not adhere to prophesy. But to let this opportunity pass is unthinkable.

See her there? The—guy?—crouching beside Kim whispered. Solus Prime. She’ll convince them, eventually.

Kim glanced at him, swallowed.

I understand that what we are asking of you has never been asked of anyone. You are afraid, and that is reasonable. But the path forward is arithmetical in its clarity.

This is how we were ordained to be! You cannot know—

YOU ERR, NOVA. THE ALTERNATIVE IS NOT STAGNANT CONTINUATION, BUT EXTINCTION.

True, the person next to Kim said. But I am not looking forward to it. I’m long past wanting to take an active hand in things. He shrugged. Pardon me. I need to check your brain. He extended a silvery finger and poked Kim in the head, rooting around for a few seconds and then curling his finger in with a tiny spot of green light balanced at the tip.

“Um, what’s that?” Kim asked nervously.

He held it up looking at it from several angles. Your brain. I believe I said.

“That…really not, though.” Which was good. Kim didn’t want her actual brain removed, even in a dream.

A picture of your brain. He clarified absently, holding it out so a small floating green sphere could poke it with a tentacle.

“It’s…really small.”

That earned her a surprised look from the lumpy silver one. Why do you say that?

Kim had no good answer for him.

The question is no longer ‘if’ but ‘how.’ Micronis?

Yes, don’t rush me. I’m working on it.

“Hey, Kim.” At the sound of Raf’s voice, Kim would have leapt up in shock, except she couldn’t move.

“Raf? What are you doing here?” Maybe this was a regular dream after all. Raf couldn’t really be…or, well, maybe he could?

“I’m here for the meeting.” He gave the lumpy silver mech a polite nod and sat down beside Kim. “I was hoping they would come up with some other plan, actually. I don’t want to split the Allspark off and send it…I don’t want to…It is chaos and decay, Kim, and I don’t want to go.”

Kim felt a stab of alarm. “Raf, you can’t keep the Allspark! A human body can’t—you aren’t growing!”

“I know that. I know. I know. I’m just scared. I’m used to being like this.” He drew his knees in and rested his chin on them. “They don’t want to do it either.”

“They don’t--?”

Raf closed his eyes. “The dead Primes. I’m not going to be enough. Everybody’s math is agrees. And we can’t send the baby Allspark. Obviously. But. You know. The Accumulated Wisdom of the Primes.”

Kim’s alarm turned to panic. “Optimus—”

“They just told him. He’s…not taking it well.” He lifted his head, eyes tracking something in the distance Kim couldn’t see. “The guidance of the Matrix, they’ve depended on it—we’ve depended on it—for a million years. But if they don’t help with this, we might not be able to subdue Unicron. Or the Earth’s magnetic field might collapse. And that is protecting Earth, we need that, I can see the math—”

“Optimus is here?”

“You can’t see him. I don’t think he is aware of you either.”

Kim tipped her head back and looked up into the crowed of shifting, debating shapes.

“If they decide not to—”

“They won’t. They won’t. If Solus can’t bring them around,” he winced, “well, I have the moral high ground. They will do their duty.”

Kim experimented with slowly lifting her arm. It obeyed. She put it around Raf’s narrow shoulders. “Bee will still love you when you aren’t the Allspark anymore.”

“Yeah. And I will still love him.” He curled sideways and put his head in Kim’s lap.

***

Chapter Text

Surprisingly (should it be a surprise?) Raf actually had his head in Kim’s lap when she woke up. Her butt was numb, and she felt a little cold. Somewhere below, in the assembly room, a human was talking to Windblade.

Kim wiggled enough to pull out her phone: 6:16. Oh, geez! “Raf, wake up! Your parents—”

He groaned sleepily. “S’okay. I left a note saying I left early to have breakfast with you and Bee.”

“Bee doesn’t eat breakfast.”

He gave her a look and stood up.

In the dorm, every light was on, and all the humans were in the kitchen at the same time. Everyone seemed to be speaking at once, comparing notes about a dream about a large party full of strangers. Kim sighed and asked Raf, “Cereal and milk okay?”

Carly spun on Kim. “Where have you been?”

“Did it happen to you?” Chip demanded.

“It’s fine,” Kim said, retrieving two bowls from the cabinet. “They were just collecting data on human brains. It’s nothing to worry about. They haven’t hurt us.”

“They were upset about something,” Maggie said.

Kim winced. Don’t worry about it, the kid here has it all under control. Uh, no. “Well, we’re fighting a war on two fronts, and one of the enemies is buried somewhere under the planet.”

“Seriously?” Maggie protested hotly.

Pierre cursed in French. Well, Kim assumed it was cursing.

Chip tapped the table. “We aren’t doing this,” he said. “We’re not panicking now. We wanted to work with aliens. We wanted to save the world. Okay. It’s weird and uncomfortable. We need to suck it up. And I assume we need not to be talking about this to Dr. Nomura or Sergeant Epps or Lieutenant Darby, because they report to someone else.” He glanced at Kim and then away.

“What is there to talk about?” Kim asked. “Weird dreams? That’s not anything.” She nudged Carly out of the way and retrieved the milk. “It would be great, though, if nobody panicked now. We are very close to the end now—Megatron is dead and there is a plan for the…B.E.M. And we are probably going to still have a habitable planet and people to live on it when it’s over, so it would be great if we could just do our jobs for a few more days. Please pass me a spoon.”

***

After breakfast, Kim showered and changed and walked Raf back to his family’s set of tiny apartments. She was casual and friendly, and if she and Raf weren’t making eye contact, nobody seemed to notice.

Back in ‘Bot country, Ratchet’s students were studying coolant composition, which superficially looked like busywork, but Kim knew they were preparing to rebuild Cosmo’s thermostasis system. She paused to listen for a few minutes at the yellow line and kept on going. There was no way she would be able to concentrate today.

She got a fancy bottled tea from the kitchen and returned to the balcony to flop on one of the couches, not even pretending to work on fieldnotes or write up reports. She sat and did nothing. For a while Miko, Jack, Hot Rod, and Sari occupied the other couch to play video games, but after lunch Ratchet and June took them on a field trip out to the old golf course to ‘Get some Fresh Air.’

Kim might have napped a little, but she was awake when she heard Optimus coming –trudging, just slightly too slowly – through the doorway from the Bot commissary. She sat up and put her feet on the floor, but otherwise didn’t move until, long seconds later, he turned slightly to angle for the balcony railing.

When it was clear he was coming, Kim stood up and went to the edge to wait. He stopped a couple of feet short of the railing, just past the reach of Kim’s arm. Kim tipped her head back. “Afternoon,” she said softly.

“Afternoon,” he agreed. He did not move closer.

“I’m sorry,” she said firmly. “What I said, it sounded terrible.” No, too vague. “It sounded like I found your suffering … unattractive. I’m –“

“We do not apologize for communications errors,” he corrected gently. “We agreed this.”

That was true. They had. “Then I regret,” she said, watching his face. “And I will regret for the rest of my life, that while you were so ill, I was careless. And useless.”

There was a long pause. “Neither the English language pack nor my interaction protocols—Kim, I. I cannot find an applicable algorithm. I do not feel a rift between us, and I do not desire one.” He was still several feet away.

“You can admit I hurt your feelings.”

“It is unfair to do so. You could not have known—”

“It’s true, though.”

“That metaphor is adequate,” he conceded finally.

“I didn’t mean it,” she said. “I was trying not to think about how badly—” her throat squeezed a bit and Kim rubbed impatiently at tears. “I wasn’t careful. I wasn’t gentle. This was actually worse than the time I threatened to murder you with a vacuum cleaner. And this isn’t about our work or ethnography or language, it’s about you and me. Your radios were off, and you were alone, and I messed up so badly and I’m sorry.”

He closed the distance to the railing and reached a servo around to rest behind Kim. “Enough,” he said softly. “We are reconciled. My field is still too disordered to clearly convey it to you, but we are both doing our best, and that is enough.”

Kim reached out and up. She couldn’t feel the sweet spot above his spark, but she knew where it was. “How are you doing?”

“With considerable assistance, I have managed to clear eighty-six point four percent of the waste material. I have lost a hundred and nineteen grams of protomatter.”

Kim leaned against the railing and let her forehead rest against his carapace. “That’s….not great. I was worried it would be worse. A hundred and nineteen grams—that’s less than a small orange.”

An amused click tangled with a weird protoform-purr and seemed to choke. Optimus drew slightly away, helm tilting back in surprise. “You are not attempting to amuse me,” he said. “You are actually imagining a small fruit and comparing it to some approximation of my mass.”

Kim pushed down a stab of panic and nodded.

“Why? Such a conversion is inefficient. Why not simply envision standardized weight calibrators?”

“Because I’ve never seen…well, maybe. Do paperclips count as a standard gram? But it is easier to imagine an orange than a hundred and nineteen paper clips. I realize it isn’t exact—”

He stepped back sharply, making a softer version of the noise from the privacy annex. It wasn’t loud, but it was deep and painful to hear. “Optimus, I have my phone. I can call Ratchet.”

He shook his head. “A moment.”

“Faith in your strength,” Kim whispered. She did not focus on the implications of his choice of such an indefinite unit of time.

When the –how could she think of it? A cramp? A seizure? A coughing fit? – passed he returned to the railing and touched her shoulder reassuringly with a single digit. “Tell me, how do you picture my protomatter? A very large pile of fruit?”

She shook her head, smiling in anticipation of his surprise. “That much mass I can’t picture in kilograms. I convert to pounds and imagine it as sacks of sand. Just for comparison, I know sand isn’t a particularly elegant—”

“Sand is not an equivalent density for my current configuration. The individual protomatter units are packed very loosely together right now to facilitate mobility and the clearance of contamination. A better comparison might be to Max’s kibble.”

Kim ran her hand along the lower edge of his windshield. “I’m sure someday I will have a good laugh at comparing your internal organs to cat food. Not today.”

He lifted her up and into the carrying position. “I must meet with my NEST counterparts in forty-three minutes and explain to them the plan we have devised,” he said softly.

“Raf is going to send the Allspark to fight Unicron.”

“Yes.”

She thought about Mearing and Keller. “They aren’t going to like it. Over at NEST, I mean.”

The chuckle produced by his language pack did not sound the least bit amused. “They will not.”

“Are you going to tell them the Matrix will be going, too?”

“Not in so many words. They think of the Matrix as a fertility repository. I will tell them one of my weapons will also be effective against the B.E.M. It is close enough to the truth.”

“Mech souls…when Cybertronians die, their sparks just dissolve into the planet’s magnetic spectrum.”

“Yes. Already forty-nine of my brethren have become one with your planet’s electrical field.”

Forty-nine! Kim nearly protested that only eleven Autobots had died on Earth---but of course he was counting Decepticons, too.

“Raf’s Allspark and all the,” how had he referred to it? “all the wisdom of the Primes will have to go into the magnetic field to fight him.”

“They will not fight Unicron. If Unicron is killed, all life on Earth would follow soon afterward. We can not win this by fighting, Kim.”

“Oh.”

“Indeed.”

“Will they…They won’t come back afterward, will they? The Allspark and…and the spirits of your dead?”

“No, Kim. They will not come back. Any more than a bucket of water poured into a pond could be retrieved. But likewise, Unicron will be inseparable from them. And, we hope, he will be greatly changed.”

“Wow. That is hopeful and terrible.” Kim took a deep breath, let it out. “Is there anything…? I mean, what do you need to do to get ready for the meeting?”

“For the meeting? Nothing. But while I have some time, it would be useful to walk a bit in root form. I have spent most of the last two days in alt, which while generally efficient, does limit motion for some internal systems. Inertial shifts and a change in relative position may help gravity loosen some of the more densely impacted molecules.”

Kim carefully parsed that. “Do you want company on the walk?”

“Please. Up the exit tunnel and back should be enough.”

Kim bit her lip. “How long do we have? Before you and Raf have to go and…. Have they calculated the time and place yet?”

“Tomorrow night.”

“No, that’s too soon—” Tomorrow was only the third. It should be two or three more days before—“Tomorrow night?”

“Jazz and Wheeljack believe they have isolated a pattern in the enemy’s electrical activity. The wave forms will crest and begin to fall at two of the most active sites tomorrow night. It is the best opportunity for several days. We think.”

Kim wished she could argue for more time, but the longer they put it off the more awake Unicron would become. Sooner was better, even if Optimus hadn’t completely recovered.

The walk up the tunnel was slow and not very smooth. Kim was glad she wasn’t perched on his shoulder the way so many of Ratchet’s assistants rode on him. She got comfortable cupped in a servo and tried to relax.

“Kim, did you study square dancing as part of your formal education?”

“Did I--? Um, yeah? Every Friday in fourth grade, I think. A few weeks for phys-ed in high school? Why?”

“I was wondering if you knew the origins of the revival.”

Kim thought about that. “You mean Henry Ford?” she hazarded slowly.

“Indeed. In your opinion, is square dancing a hegemonic discourse?” He paused briefly, leaning the arm that wasn’t holding her against the tunnel wall. From the series of tiny, mellow clicks he emitted, Kim guessed he was calibrating his hydraulics system.

“You don’t have to distract me,” she said.

“You assume I was distracting you?” he chided gently.

“Oh! Right, okay.” Kim took a deep breath. “Well, of course…dancing can be a hegemonic discourse. Just because the subjects have to put effort into it or enjoy it…doesn’t make it less true that social resources are being invested in it to advance a political agenda. Well, were invested in it. It caught on, so I guess he succeeded.”

Optimus stepped away from the wall and resumed his path down the tunnel. “By what standard do you gauge ‘success’ here? His goal was to eliminate jazz. Jazz is more popular than square dancing.”

“How did you measure that? Album sales? Never mind, I’m sure you’re right. Jazz is… Yeah. Goal not reached. Maybe the question isn’t ‘can dance be a hegemonic discourse?’ but ‘is dance an effective hegemonic discourse?’ Maybe you can’t destroy joy with joy.”

“Interesting hypothesis. How would we test that?”

They tossed around examples of dominant ideologies that were fun until Optimus paused in the assembly area and asked if Kim would object to continuing on to the meeting with him. Kim was just as happy not to let him out of her sight, but she only said, “If you don’t think it would look strange. I don’t usually make it to tactical meetings.”

“It would be good for you to understand what is happening.”

***

The catwalk where humans and mecha held smaller meetings was in a recession a couple of hundred feet on the far side of the Ground Bridge. Optimus deposited Kim on the platform beside Epps and two of the NEST squad leaders. Kim shot him a grateful look; the brass—Mearing, Morshower, Lennox, Fowler, and Galloway from Washington—were at the other end, and they were all scowling.

Kim looked at the uncomfortable chairs squeezed in among the tables and computer equipment and took a seat on the edge with her feet dangling down. Epps nudged her shoulder with a cold soda can. “It’s that kind of meeting,” he whispered.

Optimus was a couple of steps back from the podium, so his primary field of view encompassed the whole length. Jazz and Springer paced in front of him, each of them booting up a large view screen.

The point of the meaning was choosing the targets for the decoy ‘attacks’ against ‘B.E.M. manifestations.’ The Autobots analyzing patterns in magnetic field interference and weather anomalies had managed to get it down to a short list of potential sites:

Two opal mines in Australia
The Richat Structure in Mauritania
The Sugar Creek Resurgent Dome in Wyoming
The Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia
A remote spot in the Ashikule Volcanic Field in Tibet

“Strike Sugar Creek,” Mearing said flatly. “You can’t set off an EMP in a national park in the continental United States.”

“It’s a small EMP,” Springer said. “Electrostatic discharge stimulator. Ten cubic kilometers, tops. And barely enough charge to take out a minicon. A human standing next to it might not even notice.”

“That part of the park is already shut down. It’s easier to keep clear than Sutter Buttes,” Jazz added.

“You are not setting that off fifty miles from Sacramento, either!” Mearing snaped. And then she scowled. “Not. Funny. Jazz.”

“If we are sending a squad to Tibet,” Morshower said, “We need to deploy early, because there are no roads there, and it will take at least three hours to get the humans into position.”

“Four,” Jazz said. “You don’t want them right on top of it when it goes off. In case it does attract attention and the B.E.M has time to react. They’ll need to climb out of the valley.”

The general flipped through his notebook. “The minimum safe distance from the electrical discharge is listed as a ninety meters. That actually seems overcautious to me-- but, no. It’s not our weapon we need to worry about. And, frankly, I’m more worried about the terrain. Getting in and out of that valley,” he shook his head. “If our activity triggers another earthquake—I don’t suppose you have a manual on the minimum safe distance from an earthquake?” He shared an annoyed look with Mearing.

She said, “I’m thinking, if this doesn’t work, the minimum safe distance is the moon.”

Just behind and above Kim, Epps murmured, “The moon won’t be nearly safe enough.”

Lennox stepped up to the railing, glanced at Mearing, and, at her nod, said. “How close to one of these anomalies can a ‘Bot get safely? It killed Megatron.”

“Humans,” Springer began.

“I’m not talking about humans. Humans are all over a dozen of these E.M. phenomena—Sutter Buttes, Kilauea--heck there is an active shrine under the one by Miyazaki City. The B.E.M. doesn’t notice humans. But are the mecha safe?”

“If the ‘Bots tell us there is no problem, let’s just take it as given and move on,” Galloway said.

“You don’t talk at this meeting, Mr. Galloway,” Mearing said mildly.

Springer froze for a moment. “Will,” he began. He stopped.

“It is not a secret,” Optimus said.

After several long seconds, during which the mecha did not look at each other and the humans did, Jazz finally brought up a satellite image onto the display. Kim could see dark and light curving bands of stone—the Richart Structure from the air. It was overlaid with gridlines and map markers. The image was frozen, and Kim could make out shiny dots that might be mecha. Then a tie-dye blob appeared to the right, about half a kilometer away. “The graphic represents the size and shape of the anomalous magnetic distortion when you arrived. Over the next forty minutes it did not increase in size, but it did increase in strength ten percent.”

General Morshower stood up and began to pace the narrow scaffold. “That doesn’t seem right.”

“Everything about it is suspicious,” Jazz agreed. “But this is the part we need to look at.” The image changed: there was more dust in the air and some of the rocks looked blurry. “These two figures are Prime and Megatron.” In staccato jumps the glittering dots came together, snapped apart, started to come together again. The image froze. “Now look at the anomaly. In three tenths of a second the frequency drops in half but the size increases nineteen percent.”

“He’s noticed them,” Lennox said. “They were what--? About four hundred meters out at this point?”

“It’s no good,” Mearing said. “The shape of the anomaly changes too quickly. You can’t get a minimum safe distance from something that moves that fast—"

The image began to move again. The brighter speck--Megatron, Kim assumed—took off at speed, running toward the center of the energy shape that was growing from the center of the stone circle. Two and half seconds later, the other speck—Optimus—began to move in the other direction. Kim had been there, she knew he escaped, but she still found her hands clinching.

The image froze again. Jazz said, “Megatron stops at this point. He is eighty-two meters from the outer edge of the phenomena. Less than a second later, it stops expanding. At this point he is fifty-six meters from the edge.” He let the recording play out for another two seconds. Optimus was moving, Megatron was not. “And here is the end. It doesn’t show on the satellite image, but this is the moment Prime’s sensors recorded Megatron’s own electromagnetic collapse.”

“We can’t send any ‘Bots out,” Morshower said. “We can’t take the risk.”

Springer sprouted several antennae, all of which pointed at the general. “Fish hatchery,” he said.

The humans had all heard that glitch often enough to sigh and sit back and wait for a mech to sort out whatever had gone wrong in the translator.

“General,” Springer said very carefully. “Your intention to protect us does you credit. However, Optimus was less than three hundred meters away when Megatron was killed, and he suffered no ill effects. Currently, we hypothesize that only close contact with an anomaly is hazardous. We also hypothesize that when Unicron emerges from dormancy no location on Earth will be safe.”

“Springer,” Lennox said firmly, “I really don’t—”

“NEST resources cannot deploy fast enough to stop Unicron before he wakes without our help. This is not a discussion!”

Jazz purred softly and Springer snapped his extra sensors away. “We are all in danger,” he said more softly. “Sudden, excessive weather phenomenon have already killed at least nine humans. We will take reasonable safety precautions, but we must act quickly.”

“In any case, Will,” Optimus said, speaking for the first time, “the decision is mine.”

In the end, they picked Australia, Mauritania, and the Tibetan volcanic mountain range. Each team would have two mecha and five humans. Springer himself would go to the Eye of Africa with Windblade; while the terrain was a little rough for driving, there were no trees to inconvenience wings or rotors.

Hound and Steeljaw were on the Tibet team. For terrain, it was a good fit. Hound kept his chassis wide and his undercarriage high. He’d manage even the worst dirt roads. When he couldn’t go any further, Steeljaw was small, with a low electromagnetic profile. Their alt was legs, not wheels. If the humans could hike into the ravine to the target, so could they.

Drift and Jetstorm would bridge in forty miles north of Coober Pedy and drive their human partners within only two kilometers of the detonation point. It was summer in Australia, and the Outback got ridiculously hot.

The meeting ended shortly after that. Optimus had to retreat to the privacy annex to make some calls, but there was an interview in her calendar for six O’Clock. Epps nudged Kim’s arm and nodded toward ‘Bot country. “I’m mandated off for twelve hours—some weird nursing rule. How about we go make dinner?”

***

Kim put in baked potatoes for dinner and did some laundry while Bobby and Carly assembled a chicken pesto from the supplies in the freezer. Kim swept the kitchen and hall. She stopped in to pet Max and consider his dry food.

She ate.

She dried the laundry.

***

The appointment in Kim’s calendar said ‘interview,’ but it had a five hour duration so they wouldn’t be doing much talking. Five hours was a defrag and repair cycle. Kim was waiting at the foot of the stairs when he entered the assembly room. It was a tremendous relief to climb into his cab for the short trip to the elevator. “How are things going?”

“Mr. Keller is happy with the planned NEST deployment. Relevant heads of state have been informed and are…content with the current plan.”

“Sweet,” Kim said. In a couple of days this would be over. That thought did not make her feel better. “How are you doing?”

He didn’t answer.

“That bad?”

“In fact, no. I am trying to find a system report that would not take half an hour to convey in English.”

Kim managed a laugh. “So inefficient that I don’t have a radio built in. Who designed me anyway?” Not funny. Kim squared her shoulders. “Beloved. Are you in pain?”

“No.”

That was good. Better than Kim had expected. “How many systems are throwing urgent warnings?”

“None.”

Out of danger. Still ill, or he wouldn’t be taking time to focus on internal repairs. But no longer desperate. “Okay, then. A lot better.” She bit her lip. She was out of specific, quantifiable questions. The next would have to be open-ended. “Anything I need to know before you start?”

“I have set up the algorithm. There is time to sleep if you wish.”

Kim smiled, then, and ran her finger along the base of the hula dancer. “Nap it is.”

***

The clicks and wrrrs and thumps of a general system’s check woke her. “Hey,” Kim murmured. “Did it go okay?”

“Yes.” Quietly, but as discordant as speaker feedback, the dissonant cello chords of contorted protomatter shot through Kim’s ears and shivered down her spine. She counted off nine terrible seconds before the spasm ended.

In the brittle silence that followed Kim shifted toward the center of the seat, trying for a few inches closer to his spark. She could not hug him, but she was inside him. Physically speaking, they could not be closer. “Hey. Ping.”

“Ping.” His response was immediate if worryingly inflectionless.

“Don’t try to stop making noise because of me. I want it out of you.”

“You are showing stress markers.”

“Because you are poisoned. Because plastic molecules are choking you—”

Again. And again. From all directions, in short bursts, the low waves of white noise came in dissonant chords. When, finally, the bass peals gave way to the thumps and clicks of a systems check Kim blinked back tears.

“Shit,” she whispered. “Do I need to call Ratchet?”

“Negative.” And then, with deliberate warmth, “It was not as bad as it sounded.”

Kim shook her head but did not protest that ‘not as bad as it sounded’ might still be pretty terrible. “Are you…are you going to be cleared for combat by tomorrow night?”

“I am not going into combat tomorrow night. I am well enough to navigate a Bridge transit, drive two kilometers to the anomaly, and request the blessing of the Great Matrix.”

Scrap. “You’ll take an escort?” she asked hopefully.

“We wish to minimize our presence at the manifestation sites so that we do not draw Unicron’s attention. A large mech presence might be more noticeable than a small one.”

Scrap. “Tell me at least you are planning to take the rest of the night off to rest.”

“In fact, I will spend it in the infirmary. Ratchet has decided to open my seals and apply manual vibration and vacuum extraction.”

Kim sat up, a little alarmed. “On your protomatter?”

“No, primarily on my power system.”

“Scrap.” Kim shut her mouth firmly, regretting the outburst. “I can’t—if your seals are open, I shouldn’t be next to you. But I can be on the shelf for this.”

“It would be better if you spent the remainder of the night sleeping. I have a favor to ask of you. It will help if you are rested.”

“Oh?”

“Rafael and I will be carrying the blessings of Primus to different locations. He will also have minimal ground support. He has requested that the team accompanying him be composed of Bumblebee, Major Lennox, Nurse Darby, and yourself.”

“Oh.”

“I must tell you that while this deployment is unlikely to be hazardous—”

“I’m not worried about that. A child is going. If he wants me, I’ll go.” And then, “Not his parents? No, he’d have to explain.” What would upset them more—that their boy was ‘possessed’ by an alien or that the person they had known for the last four years was going to very suddenly be someone else? What if they forbid him to do it? “Oh, this is so wrong.”

“You may refuse—”

“I’m not refusing! Yes, I’ll go with Raf.” Kim forced herself to calm down. “I’ll go. At least I won’t be sitting here worried about you—Optimus? Raf is taking humans. Are you taking humans?”

“Kim, I am not an adolescent.”

“Yeah. But. Something could go wrong. You should take someone. If all this disrupts bridge travel again, you’ll be alone.”

“It is unlikely there will be disruption to Earth’s magnetic field strong enough to disrupt Bridge travel. In any case, it is more important that you stay with Raf. He has requested your assistance.”

“Yes, so take someone else. Take…Epps. He has the military training, and he is one of Ratchet’s nurses. Or one of the smaller mecha: Fixit. Eject. Slipstream.”

“I will consider it.”

Kim sighed. “I love you.”

“Are you saying this because you are afraid?”

“No. Because you are going into surgery again, and I want to…make sure we are at peace with each other before you do something hard. I don’t want to be what makes it harder.”

“Ah. Thank you, Kim. I love you as well.”

~tbc

Chapter Text

It was, nominally, a two-lane road. Perhaps irregularly spaced wide spots where a car could pull to the side in order to let the other car pass counted as a ‘lane’ in Tennessee. The pavement wasn’t in great shape, and the down-side shoulder was sometimes missing completely. It was a straight twenty-foot drop to the creek below. And, of course, there was the fog. Visibility was about fifteen feet. Bumblebee was navigating mostly by radar and active sonar.

The anomaly chosen for the Allspark insertion was a network of abandoned coal mines in Tennessee. After coming through the Bridge, Bumblebee had reduced his own EM emissions. He would drive them as close to the actual anomaly as he the road would allow. Raf, June, Will, and Kim would have a short hike uphill and around the ridge from a parking lot.

Major Lennox and Lieutenant Darby—and it was unsettling so see them in tactical gear, wasn’t it?—were in Bee’s front seat, leaving Kim in the back with Raf. He had one hand gripping Kim’s wrist and the other curled around the baby Allspark in his lap. In the dark interior, Kim could barely make out the coiled-snake shape of tiny mech….what? holy relic? reproductive organ? manifestation of god?

It was appalling that Raf had brought it, but “He needs to observe this and remember,” Raf said. “But not from too close. I’ll leave him with Bee when we go to the mine.”

“Raf. Are you sure?”

He was. Raf had been sure of everything for a while now. Kim was sure of very little. The whole day had been weird and off balance. Awful. Nerve wracking. But one way or another, it would all be over soon.

Kim remembered not to say that aloud.

The chilly fog was condensing on the outside of Bee’s windows and dripping uneven trails down the ‘glass’ as they bumped over the road.

She had seen deployment preparations more than once before. She had taken notes on it. The efficient hurrying should have been familiar, except today she was too busy getting ready herself to act like an anthropologist. Fixit had gotten her up early and hurried her from breakfast to the quartermaster’s office so his friend Peshlakai could personally issue field gear and make sure it fit properly.

Poking at the heavy, tan, camouflage jacket, Kim said dubiously, “We’re not going into combat.”

“That is kind of true,” Fixit said. “But this is a NEST operation. The US Army has a policy of over-preparedness I find very pleasing. In any case, you must wear the boots. Poisonous snakes inhabit rural Tennessee.”

“It’s winter. They’re hibernating.” She looked down sadly at her comfortable sneakers.

“The weather has been unseasonably warm. Safety precautions are important. Humans are very fragile.” He sighed. “I will be on bridge duty.”

Kim promptly put down the boot she’d been scowling at and turned to plant a kiss on the side of his helm. “There is nobody I’d rather have poking holes through reality.”

***
It was past twenty-one hundred in Tennessee, but the sky wasn’t terribly dark. Although all Kim could see was trees and steep mountains, it wasn’t a wilderness. The historic park they were heading for wasn’t all that far from Chattanooga, and the low clouds above reflected back the light pollution. The fog made everything look soft, the naked trees standing out like black lace on a gray background.

Kim sat back and pretended to not to be worried. There was a lot she was worried about.

The first deployments today had been the ‘contingency teams.’ None of the NEST leadership felt great about relying on the optimistic projections that Unicron could be subdued before he could react, so nine teams each composed of one bot and three soldiers would be sent to anomaly sites near large population centers. Places like Naples, Jakarta, San Francisco, or Fujinomiya couldn’t be evacuated quickly or discretely, but perhaps an extra set of servos could help out if Unicron managed to cause trouble.

If they were needed, of course, the small teams would not be enough, but to take no action to prepare at all was unacceptable to both the ‘Bots and the humans.

At four-thirty in the afternoon, Kim had watched from the balcony while they met for a short meeting before being bridged into position. The mecha arrayed themselves along the walls, standing behind the more than two dozen human partners who were clustered together facing the archway into the Autobots’ quarters. Optimus arrived in alt, pausing to let Mearing and Lennox out at the foot of the stairs and then transformed and stepped very carefully to the front of the crowd.

The humans shifted uneasily, and Optimus cleared his throat, a gentle attention-getting sound from the nonverbals package rather than a necessary precursor to talking. “I want to say first that it is not for the sake of secrecy that you have been given so incomplete information. The situation has been developing very quickly.” He glanced at Mearing and Lennox, climbing the steps to join Kim on the balcony. “It has become clear that the unidentified extraterrestrial intruder is extremely large, entrenched, and emerging from dormancy. Yes, we have a fix on its location, and we possess Cybertronic technology that can subdue the B.E.M. without direct collateral damage.”

He paused to let the humans digest that. “That was the good news. The full effect of our assault may not be instantaneous, and the intruder is able to cause disruptions to both Earth’s geology and meteorology. Calculations do not indicate a particular danger, so the decision about how to prepare is not a simple one. It is entirely possible that no preparation is needed at all; the deployments today may end in less than forty-eight hours, and you might tell those who come after you that it was a boring assignment you spent in a diner eating pie.” His gaze flicked over the human’s heads. “Or in the parking lot of a diner watching telenovelas.”

Arcee shouted from the back, “That was last week. This week we’re reading Chinese web novels.”

The rumbling chuckle was a lovely sound, but not mistakable for the clicks of genuine mech mirth. “My friends,” Optimus said soberly, “I do not know what we will be called upon to do in the next few days. If there are adverse events in human communities, your success will depend on your adaptability, your courage, and your perseverance. Fortunately, I have observed an abundance of these virtues in all of you.”

He shifted his attention to the mecha lining the wall and –for just a moment--a soft protoform hmmm seemed to shiver through the floor. “My friends. Our literature speaks of this day as our ‘darkest hour.’ But today, standing here, I perceive no darkness of any sort. We are not alone. We are not outmatched. We are not homeless. And we have not lost hope. So. Fear nothing and take the blessing of Primus with you. All shall be one.”

The Autobots answered him in Cybertronix, but it was a formulaic phrase Kim recognized: Until all are one.

After that, humans broke off into smaller clusters with their mech partners and headed, one group at a time, for the Ground Bridge for transport. A golf cart came for Mearing. Lennox and Ironhide retreated to the far side of the balcony to talk.

Kim watched the crowd thin for a while before heading down the steps to join Optimus at the satellite monitor. “Afternoon,” she said.

He crouched down so that his head was only a few feet above hers. “Are you equipped and fueled?”

“Yeah. All ready.” She looked down at the clunky suede boots that seemed to cling half-way up her legs. “We go at six-fifteen.”

“It will be later in Tennessee. And colder. Be sure you are warm enough.”

Kim nodded. “And you? Feeling okay?”

“Ninety-four percent,” he answered softly. Six percent of the waste was still too much to be cleared for combat, but, as he had said, he was not going into a fight. Optimus was taking the Matrix to the coast of Tanzania, an anomaly site near the edge of a ‘dent’ in the Earth’s magnetic field. There, it would empty itself into, well, the world, apparently. The calculation teams had concluded that whatever it would do there would take less than an hour. Probably.

“You hate beaches,” Kim said.

“There was not—quite--time to get an aircraft carrier into position. This seemed the best alternative.”

“You head inland as soon as you’re done.”

“Kim, a geological response is unlikely—"

“You just said you didn’t know for sure. A geological response on a coast could include a tidal wave.” You couldn’t fight the ocean the way you could fight Decepticons.

“Kim. If there is a geological response, I will head for the nearest human community and offer my help.”

Right. Of course he would. “An aircraft carrier?” Kim scowled. “Well. I guess…this is better than an air craft carrier.”

“Kim. I will see you soon.” He said it like a promise.

She nodded. “Thank you. And thank you for doing this. I know that—there are ways you could have done it that Earth—Uh. Well.” Kim groped, suddenly aware that words were not enough. “That wouldn’t have kept it habitable. And the Matrix….Thank them, if you…can? I should have at the meeting. Their meeting. The other humans aren’t going to know. But I know. And I’m very grateful. I should have said thank you.”

Optimus sank closer. “I do not know if this was what Primus intended when he gave us the Matrix and the Allspark. Whether or not our path was foreseen, however, I am sure at this moment that our action is correct. This is what we must do. And it is significant that we do not do it alone.”

Kim tramped down on her fear and leaned forward for a moment. “I’ll see you soon,” she said.

***

Bee pulled off onto a noticeably better road. It wasn’t much wider, but the paving was smooth. The climb was angled, and at the first sharp switch-back, Kim turned her head to look out the window. Getting carsick was out of the question. The trees were close on both sides now, looking very dark in the fog. They must already be inside the historic park.

“Are you warm enough?” Kim asked Raf. He nodded and patted the curled up Allspark. “Is it—he—Is he scared?” Kim asked.

“A little. This is the biggest thing we’ve ever done.” He took a deep breath. “How are we doing on time?”

All the humans had turned off their phones already and it was too dark to see her mechanical watch. “I’m sure we have plenty of time. Bee?”

Bee chirrped a schedule confirmation.

Kim wondered if Raf would still speak Cybertronix when this was over. It would be unkind to ask, if the answer was ‘no,’ so she didn’t. Whatever happened, she promised herself, she would stay calm and be kind. She would look after Raf as much as she could. It was the least she could do.

She would not let herself get distracted thinking of Optimus, getting into position in East Africa. He had his own work to do and his own team to look after him. To Kim’s relief, Optimus had agreed to take Ironhide and Bobby Epps with him. Worryingly, they were also taking Carly and Chip.

Carly was still, technically, a teenager. A genius, yes. A truly gifted engineer. But…just so young. As for Chip, his mobility was significantly limited, and he injured easily. A short fall could break bones.

Neither of them belonged as technical support on an operation in Africa. Not that Kim could point out their fragility to the armored, enormous aliens who were heavily armed and thousands of years old: Chip and Carly were different from other human protein bubbles…how?

They weren’t. They just weren’t. One misstep around any of the organics and squish. Any mech Kim tried to discuss this would laugh. So she was left with going along with it.

After watching the contingency teams deploy, Kim went back to wait in the infirmary where Raf (dressed in heavy denim under a waterproof hoodie because uniforms didn’t come that small) was perched on Ratchet’s shoulder. June was checking gear. Will Lennox was on his radio and a tablet.

On the other side of the corridor, Bobby and Carly were doing one last check of their mech first aid kit. This team, too, was dressed for a military deployment. Chip, seated on Ironhide’s ankle, was methodically inventorying the pockets of his uniform.

Kim glanced at the time, crossed the hall, said, “So.”

“Yep.”

She cleared her throat. “The new year is off to a busy start.”

Chip managed a smile. “I almost didn’t notice. After last year being so…. Anyway. This seems to be my life.”

“Probably…it won’t be anything exciting this time,” Kim said. “A trip through a Bridge and a wait and,” Kim winced, “You’ll be back here in a few hours.”

“But if things go moderately badly, we’ll be on another continent,” he said, clicking a small flashlight on and off, “I know.” He put the flashlight away and met Kim’s gaze. “We have a change of civilian clothing and a set of sleeping bags in Ironhide’s subspace. I’ve got a weeks’ worth of medication, four million Tanzanian shillings, two thousand US dollars, and a Swahili phrase book in my pocket. It’s going to be fine.”

“If it’s longer—”

“Kim, if things are so bad we can’t get to the Akonga Air Base in a week…we probably won’t be in a position to be upset about it.”

“Well. That’s true.”

“Hey, look. If you have to worry about something, worry about a whole bunch of simultaneous weird global military operations getting noticed. You might have to start explaining Mecha to civilian humans by February.”

“Yay,” Kim said sourly. “Happy New Year.”

“Exactly! Don’t today’s problems seem really small now?”

“Sorry, Kim,” Ironhide said suddenly. “Bee’s on his way to pick ya’ll up. It’s time to go.”

***
Bumblebee rolled to a stop in front of a steel guardrail. The ground under them seemed to be flat, but Kim couldn’t see far enough in any direction to tell if they were in a parking lot.

“Well,” Lennox said. “Let’s get to it.”

Bee opened his doors.

The night air was chilly and damp. It was creepily quiet, the fog muffling their footsteps. Kim tried to picture the map of the park in her head, but she couldn’t tell which way she was facing.

Bee transformed and scooped up Raf, strains of “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” playing on his speaker. Unerringly, he led them to a trail marker at the edge of the lot and stepped onto a gravel path only slightly wider than his ped. The trees next to it were young and thin—this might be the remains of an old road.

Lennox darted in front of him. “Bumblebee. This isn’t safe for you.”

“He can’t go all the way,” Raf said. “When the path starts to climb he’ll be too big to fit.”

Bee leaned down to chirp a “Thank you,” to Lennox and then stepped around him. He and June exchanged unhappy looks and followed.

It was darker in the trees. Bee turned on a light, but it didn’t really penetrate the fog. Sometimes the bare branches scraped along his carapace. Kim reminded herself they could hardly scratch the ‘paint.’

The path stayed flat for a hundred yards or so, following the ridge around before ending at a set of narrow stone steps that disappeared up the hill. Bee set Raf on the ground and held out his hands.

The glittering Allspark slithered out of Raf’s sleeve and formed a large ball in his hand. “Take care of each other,” Raf said, passing it over.

Bumblebee’s protoform wailed softly, a shivery sound that made Kim’s teeth hurt.

“No, I promise, Bee, no,” Raf said. “This isn’t good-bye. I’m not—I’m not leaving you. Nobody dies today. It’s just change. It’s just change.”

Bumblebee dropped to his knees and wrapped both arms around Raf, crooning quietly.

Lennox leaned over and whispered, “Time. Come on, Bee. Don’t make this harder.”

Bumblebee straightened and stepped back. “I have been, and always shall be, your friend,” his speaker said.

Raf smiled. “Oh. Yeah. I always liked that one.”

Lennox cleared his throat. “I’ll go first.” He took out a flashlight and started up the steps. June took Raf’s hand and started after him. Kim, at the rear, turned back at the steps. “Turn off your radio, Bee. Be quiet. As much as you can.”

“Yeh, sure,” Midwestern accent, but Kim couldn’t place the reference.

The steps weren’t particularly steep, but they were uneven. Some of them were wide enough for two steps across before stepping up. Kim kept her flashlight focused on the ground.

They came to a flat place. Lennox checked the signs, led them along a narrow path scuffed into the earth to the right. The path followed the benchland for a few hundred feet and then came to another set of steps.

Right about now the decoy teams would be getting into position. Kim had watched from Bumblebee’s back seat as the three groups Bridged out. Hound had been happy—almost delighted—with his assignment. He had beeped his horn as he entered the event horizon.

Kim could understand where he was coming from. It wasn’t another in an endless string of missions against Decepticons. and death and destruction weren’t the plan for once. Given his long service to the Allspark, having it do something helpful and good was probably very satisfying. But Kim was acutely aware that none of the decoy teams were carrying weapons that could defend against Unicron. If the pulse ‘weapons’ caught his attention and he managed to fight back they would have no way of stopping him of repeating the trick killed Megatron. This might be much more dangerous than what anyone else was doing.

The decoy strikes might be unnecessary. Hopefully, Unicron would not be aware enough to comprehend what humans and mecha were doing on the planet’s surface. And even if he were somehow aware, it was unlikely (according to Optimus) that an effective resistance could be mounted. But. Erring on the side of caution meant deploying small but noisy NEST teams to secondary sites while Optimus and Raf brought the real thunder.

Hopefully it would only be metaphorical thunder. Hopefully, the Allspark and Holy Wisdom would be able to subdue Unicron fairly quickly, before he was even completely awake. Hopefully, the populations on Earth wouldn’t even notice.
***

The steps grew narrower and more uneven. June was having to help tug Raf up some of the taller ones. The fog seemed to be thinning out as they got higher, though, so the flashlights were more effective. Kim was starting to wonder if they had taken a wrong turn somewhere when the steps ended at another trail sign. It was flat here—really flat, like it had been a road once—but young trees had regrown leaving only a narrow path open.

“Doing okay?” Lennox asked, looking around.

“We’re fine,” June said.

“I want to turn off the flashlights, now that we’re off the steps,” Lennox said. “That okay, Raf?”

“It’s fine.”

It was slow going without the lights, but the clouds above were surprisingly bright. The night here in the damp, verdant, populated south was very different from Jasper, Nevada.

Most of the trees had been cleared away from the mine site, but Kim might have missed it if, ahead of her, Raf hadn’t pulled away from June and stepped off the path. There, in the hillside beside them, was a low, wide cut in the through the soil and stone into blackness.

“That’s it?” Kim asked. She shined her light at it. Inside she could see a rusted metal grating blocking off most of the entry. “It’s so…low. How is this a mine?”

“They went in on their bellies,” June murmured. She shook herself. “It’s pretty small, Raf. Are we sure this is the right place?”

“This is the right place. It’s not time, though.”

Lennox checked his watch. “We have about twenty minutes.” He motioned them over to a section of fallen log that had been dragged into position as a crude bench and passed around a bottle of water. “So, Raf. Did I ever tell you about how I used to be a lifeguard? Yeah, my last year of high school. We lived in Mississippi—my dad worked for a national grocery chain and we moved around a lot because he fixed problem stores. Anyway, one Saturday morning, the assistant manager and I showed up to start opening the pool and there were two snakes in it.”

Quietly, cheerfully, Lennox told the story of spending half an hour arguing about whether the snakes were poisonous or not, then trying to catch them in long-handled nets, finally catching one and getting it into a bucket, but the bucket was too small, and the snake nearly escaped, so they flipped the bucket over on the snake and sat on it. Meanwhile, kids had arrived wanting to go swimming and were not happy that the pool was still closed. A couple of times Raf laughed, and Kim decided she owed Lennox a bouquet of flowers. Or maybe a shipment of steak.

“It’s time,” Raf said as the story was winding down. He took a couple of deep breaths and stood up. June took his hand and he clung to it for a moment.

Lennox checked his watch. “We’ve still got—”

Gulping, Raf shook his head. “It’s time.”

Kim took his other hand.

He led them over to the dark parting in the ground. The air here was slightly warmer. It smelled damp and soft, just an old opening in the ground.

Raf was shaking, nearly shivering through fast, panting breaths. “It’s so cold. It’s so angry. It’s so scared.”

June knelt down and put an arm around his waist. “I wish I could tell you that you didn’t have to do it. But even if we could find another way, you can’t stay like this. It’s familiar and it’s been so good, but you can’t sustain it. Raf’s body can’t support such a big piece of a god.”

Raf nodded, still shaking.

Lennox had stepped to the side and readied his weapon, standing guard although he could do nothing against the invisible enemy. He said, “Raf? Buddy? Do you know what we do when it’s time to do something hard? We trick our brains into reacting as if everything is under control. Breathe with me, Buddy. In for four…three, four; now hold for four, good, three four; now out for four—slow, slow, and hold for four. Now in again, three, four. Now notice, you couldn’t pause your breathing if things were really desperate. You really are okay. Things are under control.”

Raf nodded, breathing now instead of gulping, but still clinging to June’s hand. He did another cycle, whimpering a little on the exhale.

From somewhere below, tinny and echoy with the distance, came the opening notes of “Higher Love.”

Oh, Bee.

Raf let go of Kim and June. “Step back,” he whispered. The thin notes of the backing track floated from the trees. Raf swallowed and rubbed his hands over his face. “Things look so bad, everywhere,” he warbled, “In this whole world, what is there? We walk the line and try to see, falling behind to what could be.”

Raf went still. For several long seconds nothing happened. June took up the lyrics to Raf’s karaoke song. “Bring me a higher love. It’s higher love I keep thinking of—”

Raf stumbled and started to topple sideways. June and Kim caught him easily and lowered him onto the damp carpet of fallen leaves. June reached for his face and flashed a tiny light in his eyes. Raf squeaked a protest and tried to pull away. “He’s conscious.” She sounded very pleased.

“Is he finished?” Lennox asked. “Can we get him out of here?”

Raf squirmed onto his belly and made it as far as his hands and knees. “It’s done. I did it. I’m not—I’m not the Allspark anymore.”

Without a word, Lennox put his weapon away and scooped Raf into his arms. “June, take point. Kim, in front of me—use your flashlight on the stairs so I don’t fall with him. Move out.”

They didn’t seem to be hurrying, just a night stroll through the quiet, winter woods. Quickly, despite the lack of ‘hurrying.’ Lennox was careful of every step, but his steps were large and June kept ahead of them, making hardly any noise. Kim felt a fresh blaze of affection for the U.S. Army.

Kim breathed a sigh of relief as they came off the uneven steps and started along the short, narrow path. Pines pressed close on both sides. As the curve brought them around the spur, they could make out the distant sound of a highway echoing out of the valley.

The next set of steps were longer. Kim’s legs were beginning to feel tired, but that might just be adrenalin wearing off.

The lower steps were still foggy. Lennox set Raf down and held his hand as they made their careful way down. Kim let them pass her and took the rear. She looked back a few times. There was just dark, cold woods. Nothing dramatic here, nothing alien.

Of course, there never had been.

Bumblebee was waiting at the bottom of the steps. He crouched down so his face was even with Raf’s and crooned worriedly.

Raf threw himself forward into a hug. Bee scooped him up in a chorus of protoform happy humms.

“It’s good, guys,” Lennox said. “But we have to get on the road.”

Bumblebee put Raf down, dropped to one knee, and held out a gleaming sphere.

Raf shook his head. “No. He belongs with you, now. You’re his Prime.”

Bumblebee protested. He was still using the very respectful status markers many of the mecha (although not, before now, Bee himself) had begun using for Raf.

“Don’t talk to me about worthy!” Raf said angerly. “The senate said Sentinel Prime was worthy. They said he had earned it.”

All the little antennae on Bee’s helm were out now and his chin was tilted up: surprised possibly scandalized. He protested again.

“No, there is no one else. Of course Optimus can’t manage two! And anyway, he doesn’t want Optimus, he wants you.”

A meek request of some sort.

“It isn’t about that. It’s only about love, Bee. That is the only way it’s going to work. You won’t misuse the power because you love him. Now come on. We’re supposed to be moving.” Raf started back along the path and, naturally, Bee took a quick half-step to catch up and scooped Raf into his arms.

“Wow,” Lennox muttered, starting after them.

June snorted. “No shit.”

***
The fog (and forest) was thick enough that Kim didn’t realize they had arrived back at the parking lot until she nearly bumped into the trail marker. A moment later Bumblebee’s ped clanked against the pavement.

A shadow shifted. Something dark and large loomed just past Bee. It didn’t arrive. It simply was, rising through the fog.

The hum of Bumblebee’s charging capacitors revved and cut off immediately. Lennox, his weapon halfway up, froze. Kim’s ears seemed to ring in the silence of the fog.

It stepped closer, heavy on the pavement. Kim could make out sleek, dark angles and shadows. It was half-again Bee’s height and seemed to have a pale, glowing plate instead of a face.

“Put Raf down,” Lennox whispered.

“No,” Raf squeaked. “Bee can’t attack while he’s holding me. And this Decepticon won’t attack because he’s curious. And he won’t find out if he kills me.”

“Correct.” The voice was quiet and slippery and metallic, making no attempt to sound human or warm. “I am Soundwave. I command the Decepticons.”

“If you’ve come searching for Unicron, it’s too late,” Raf said. His voice shook. “They’re One now.” He took a shuddering breath. “You are going to have to think of something new. We’re all going to—think of—something new.”

“The Allspark was destroyed three-hundred and ninety-three orns ago.”

“It wasn’t destroyed,” Raf said. “It changed. This is your chance.”

“I will not surrender the Decepticons to Optimus Prime.”

Raf laughed. “You don’t have to. You don’t have to stay here. You can go. It’s a whole universe—”

“There is no future for us. We are the last generation.”

“You’re close,” Lennox said calmly. “You are so close to getting off this planet alive. Megatron was crazy. You seem to…have priorities other than rage. You can leave. It can end now.”

“It’s not up to me anymore, Bee,” Raf whispered.

Slowly, slowly, Bee turned and lowered Raf to the ground. June seized him by the collar and shoved him behind her.

Slowly—still slowly—Bee faced the Decepticon and held out his hands. The dim glow from Bee’s running lights and the Decepticon’s featureless face reflected off liquid silver shimmering across Bee’s servos. The sliver formed a sphere roughly the size of a basketball. It spun. It lengthened, folded, was suddenly two smaller spheres. Bee held one out.

“It will be many vorns before this is fruitful.” Was that a protest? An acceptance? A request? The voice was too inflectionless for Kim to tell.

Bumblebee chimed out a blessing and a dismissal. Soundwave reached out and the sphere flowed easily into his servo. Bee, the sphere cupped in his hand gleaming, almost glowing, said something else.

“He says, it won’t follow orders,” Raf whispered. “It’s not a tool.”

The Decepticon turned, took three steps away and lept into the air, transforming as his peds left the ground, into a small jet.

Bumblebee had slammed into alt and was waiting with his doors open while the sound of the engine was still echoing off the ridge. The humans scrambled in, and they were moving before they even had the doors closed.

The flight down the mountain was a far cry from their careful creeping up. Several times Bee caught air as they went over small bumps. Kim, in the front this time, squirmed around to look over her shoulder. “Okay back there?”

“I think he’s asleep,” June said. “You know, I really hope this is the biggest day of his entire life.”

“Kowabunga man!” Bumblebee interjected. Kim wasn’t sure how that applied.

“Shit,” Lennox muttered. “Kim. June. Drink some water.”

Kim actually wouldn’t have minded stopping to pee, but Bumblebee was doing about sixty-five along the narrow mountain road, and halting their progress was unthinkable. When they hit the highway, they would head west. Ground Bridge interference wasn’t high on the list of contingencies, but if they had to drive back, it would take a little over thirty hours to get Raf back to his parents.

Kim opened a bottle of water and sucked some down.

***

No one said anything. Kim looked out the window, trying not to think what else might be hiding in the trees and the fog. When they finally reached Interstate 24, Bee opened up, trusting his countermeasures to avoid police notice.

When, eventually, lights from gas stations and houses and stores began to cluster around them, Bumblebee shimmied in the road a bit and played an upbeat and very odd song.

“What is it?” June asked.

Lennox sighed. “That’s the theme from Hee Haw. We’re almost to Nashville. Bee, how about we take a pitstop on the other side and get break before check-in?”

“Aye, Captain…Hot Diggity….Man’s got a plan.”

“Bee, keep it together,” Kim said. “You might have to save that enthusiasm for a really long road trip.”

They stopped at a truck stop, taking the opportunity to change out of army gear and grab something hot to eat. Raf was awake and put away two hamburgers while they waited the last few minute of radio silence.

Kim had ordered a chicken sandwich. She couldn’t bring herself to eat it.

Had the delivery of the Matrix wisdom been as peaceful as the delivery of the Allspark?

Had the attempt to subdue Unicron alive worked?

Assuming it had, had there been any geological fallout from the fight? Or electromagnetic? It wasn’t just the Ground Bridge that might be affected. If the magnetic poles went haywire--?

What would Optimus say when he found out that half the baby Allspark had left with the Decepticons? Even assuming they kept their side of the deal and left--and what if they didn’t?

Abruptly, the small screen in the center of Bee’s dash came on. Raf darted forward, sticking his head between the seats to look. The image was a complicated wire diagram with a lot of numbers. It reminded Kim of the spark graphs on Ratchet’s displays.

Bumblebee warbled and clicked delicately. Raf said, “Well, whatever it is, it isn’t Unicron anymore.”

“Who is it now?” Lennox asked. “Is it the Allspark or the Matrix?”

“Well, we don’t…actually know,” Raf whispered. “There was no way to be sure, ahead of time. We’re just hoping it’s somebody nice.”

“I thought you were going to overwrite it,” June said hollowly.

“It wasn’t a computer program. Or, like, static data. A being that’s alive…It was just, you know, a person. As far away from mecha as mecha are from humans. Maybe further. But. Anyway.” He reached out and traced a set of fractal swirls on the chart. “A different person now. A new person. Like I was.”

Lennox’s radio popped to life and NEST command asked for a sitrep. In short sentences, Lennox outlined what had happened since their arrival at the mine.

While he was talking the image on Bee’s screen changed: now it showed a timetable for extraction. Apparently the Ground Bridge was working…but retrieval for the Tennessee team had been pushed back almost two hours. They should have been first.

“What’s wrong?” Kim whispered.

Bee answered in a scrawl of basic text across the screen. CASUALTIES IN MAURITANIA. THEY HAVE HAD TO SEND A RECOVERY TEAM FOR SPRINGER. BRINGING HIM BACK IN PIECES.

June made a small, sick sound. “Ratchet is going to need another pair of hands—”

Raf blinked at Bee’s answer before translating miserably, “They aren’t trying to put him back together right now. They are just collecting his body. His spark chamber is on a table in the infirmary on external power.”

“What the hell happened?” Lennox asked.

“It’s—it’s okay, Bee,” Raf said. “You can show them the video. I don’t want to watch.” He slid back into the seat and leaned sideways against his balled-up jacket.

A map of the Eye came up, with the Bridgepoint and deployment point marked. Kim frowned. “They are pretty far from the center.”

“They’re avoiding the Dark Energon,” Lennox said. “Fuck. I hate Dark Energon clean up. I don’t suppose there is any chance it will revert back now that Unicron isn’t…Unicron anymore?”

Bumblebee played a clip of someone explaining “known unknowns and unknown unknowns.”

The screen shifted to the composite action report generated automatically by deployed mecha.

While they were setting up the decoy EMP, the human team had come under fire from an unknown source. Springer sent Windblade up to five thousand feet for reconnaissance and come racing in close to the ground himself to protect the squad.

Calmly, over radio, Springer was directing the humans to withdraw and signaling the base.

“Mistake,” Lennox muttered. “He doesn’t have Windblade’s maneuverability in the air. Bee, you’re displaying more data than we can process on a small screen, can you –yeah.”

The screen split in half—one side a feed from above, the other moving fast and close to the ground. Bee “Pop”ed an attention signal.

“That’s a mech,” June said.

It was. It was hard to make out the scale, but the silhouette was familiar. “Is that---how can that be Megatron?” Kim asked.

Springer, incoming, fired a volley of small, bright missiles. Megatron returned fire with…fireballs?

“What even is that?” June asked. “What kind of damage—”

“They don’t use it on earth,” Lennox ground out. “Too volatile in an oxygen atmosphere.”

Kim swallowed. “His spark was snuffed out. The video didn’t show any damage to his body. Is this just…processors running on automatic?”

Kim was fairly sure the Bumblebee’s interjection was the one about destroying the orbital watchtower.

Lennox clamped down on a hysterical laugh. “Of course it’s Decepticon zombies now.”

While the fireballs had had no effect, Megatron hit Springer with something that took out a rotor and turned his video feed into a pixilating jumble of sky and ground. Windblade’s camera showed him transform in the air, do something by discharging missile’s and distorting his shape, come in at speed, and go down in a tangle with Megatron.

Windblade dove, the image expanding as she descended. Megatron and Springer were fighting hand-to-hand. Megatron was bigger. He moved awkwardly, but he was strong. Over radio, Springer instructed her to cover the humans, who were running. Humans ran very slowly. They had such tiny legs….

Megatron ripped off one of Springer’s arms and tossed it away.

Windblade screamed and banked, firing on him with small precise missiles that should have bounced off of shielding but instead tore Megatron’s helm to fragments.

Both video feeds whited out and Bumblebee’s speakers hissed with weird feedback. The images froze and Bumblebee wrote across the screen, MESSAGE INCOMING ALL CHANNELS and a series of icons that were not any Cybertronix Kim had recognized. It was also, apparently audio, because a series of arrhythmic pops followed.

“Do Decepticons speak another language?” Lennox asked. “Oh, hey!” His hands came up and closed around a slivery coil that had apparently come out from under his seat and was now in his lap. It was shaking.

“Decepticons don’t speak another language,” Kim said. “It’s all the same.”

In the back seat, Raf sat up and half-crawled into June’s lap. “He said, ‘I am cold. I am chaos. I am the end of all things. Do you think to oppose me? Nothing stands against entropy.’”

Bumblebee’s engine revved for a moment.

There was a long silence as the humans stared at the whited-out screen. June said, “So…this is so much worse than Zombie.”

Bee chirred sadly.

The video resumed. Windblade was turning for another pass. Megatron’s hands ripped Springer in half diagonally. Springer’s video blanked out. Megatron tossed the smaller section at Windblade, but she dodged easily and opened fire—lasers and rockets, maybe all of them, because it was a lot.

She didn’t turn after firing. She crashed into him. Her video pixilated for a couple of seconds and then showed bits of shiny metal flying all directions as she cut Megatron’s husk to pieces with some kind of glowing sword.

The recording terminated.

June said, “But Springer is still alive….”

“My god,” Lennox held the Allspark against his shoulder, as though it were a baby he was burping. “There’s none of him left! How are they going to rebuild—”

“Hey,” Kim interrupted, “His head was intact. That means his memory backups are fine. And protomatter regrows.” Eventually. And slowly, if the spark is in stasis, which—oh, surely, Ratchet had induced stasis if it hadn’t happened automatically.

Kim swallowed hard.

Lennox handed her the Allspark. It was a silver sphere a little larger than a softball. “Okay,” he said. “We have about ninety-eight minutes to pick up. Let’s just drive out into the country somewhere and find a discrete location for a Ground Bridge. Raf, put your seatbelt back on.”

As Bee pulled out, Kim tucked the Allspark into her jacket and sat back.

~TBC

Chapter Text

They had only been driving for about forty-five minutes when coms interrupted “Secondhand News” and Fixit’s voice said, “Alpha Team, I’m not comfortable with you driving randomly around Appalachia for another hour. I’m going to remote into Diego Garcia and bring you home the long way.”

Lennox frowned. “That’s not standard procedure,” he replied carefully.

“My discretion, Alpha Team. I’m currently in charge.” And oh, Kim had not heard Fixit use those authoritative tones before.

“Anything going on we need to know about?” Lennox asked.

“Nothing you can’t deduce.  Bumblebee, I have you coming up on a turn off for the county dump in about  a hundred and ten meters.”

Bee trilled a compliance and connection terminated.

Lennox looked from Kim to June. “Can he do that?”

Kim shrugged. “Almost all the ‘Bots are off base. If everybody who is left is working on Springer… I mean, they aren’t going to put Sundoor in charge.”

“No, can he run the Bridge in Jasper and the one in the Indian Ocean at the same time?”

Kim snorted. “He has the bandwidth to run four Bridges at once.” Bee slowed for the turn, and Kim patted the dash. “Anyway, there will be a human crew at the back up Bridge. It’s not like it will be totally remote.”                                                                    

A short gravel road ended at a fence and a padlocked gate. Bumblebee nosed up to it and paused. 

From behind them ripples of flowery pink light made shadows dance inside the car. “Almost home,” June murmured.

Bumblebee turned his headlights off and backed up slowly, tires crunching on the gravel—and then not. 

“Really? Backward?” Lennox snarked. “Show-off!” He sounded just a little too cheerful.

Bumblebee’s interior screen lit up with an image of a …What was that? A yellow starfish? It wasn’t under water.  Kim was happy enough to look at that instead of the unsettling darkness of passing through a Bridge.

“Oh, what a cute baby picture!” Raf said, leaning forward. “I like the look! Definitely rocking the radial symmetry.”

The lights inside the Diego Garcia gate were a glaring bluish-white after the soft darkness of rural nighttime. Unlike the rough stone in Jasper, the walls here were absolutely flat and polished to a mirror finish. It was a very mech aesthetic.  Kim blinked and rubbed her eyes.

Bumblebee rolled all the way back beside the control console and rolled down his window so Lennox could have a few words with the human techs on duty. Kim—who was not, after all, trained for combat—was nearly shaking with relief at having been retrieved.

They had gotten Raf in and out.

Raf seemed to be…was ‘fine’ the right word?

The Decepticon had not killed them and could not, now, follow them through a Bridge to a camouflaged island in the Indian Ocean.

The baby Allspark was curled up in Kim’s lap.

All right, Megatron had apparently reanimated as a zombie or been possessed by a chaos god, but all the parts left from its fight with Springer were being gathered up, so that wouldn’t be happening again. Even assuming Unicron was still a threat, and the data has suggested not….

It took longer than usual to set up the gate coordinates. Because, yes, Fixit was doing it remotely so everything had to be double checked on each end.  Fixit had absorbed Ratchet’s preference for layers upon layers of redundant safeties.

 A disc of light unfolded, the churning colors almost hypnotic.  Kim dropped her eyes and watched her lap as Bumblebee slowly rolled forward into the shimmering curtain. It wasn’t that the darkness of the Bridge transit seemed to be a void. On the contrary, it seemed weirdly small and claustrophobic. Kim firmly did not think about the seventeen dimensional math that made it possible.

The exited the Bridge into a cozier, more natural darkness: night in Nevada. “Where are we?” Kim asked, peering out the window.

“Parking lot behind Building G. Nice, empty space out of the way,” Lennox answered. “Hey, Bee, drop me off at the command annex, yeah? I need to report in.”

When Bumblebee opened the door to let him out, Lennox paused, looking past the seat to Raf in the back. “Good job, everybody. I realize this was pretty much outside everybody’s wheelhouse. I appreciate everybody keeping their heads.” He saluted Raf before shutting the door, which Kim thought was kind.  

“What now?” Kim asked.

“Oh, now we are heading to the infirmary so we can give Raf an exam.” June said briskly. “And then, I guess, back to his family.”

Kim felt a little alarm. “Shouldn’t we watch him for a bit? I mean, nobody has ever done this before.”

June gave Kim a disappointed look. “We’ll put a sensor on him. For roughly the next year, actually.”

“Oh,” Kim said. “Good. Um.”

***

Dr. Nomura was waiting at the yellow line with a cup of hot chocolate the five-gallon industrial bucket that was serving as the Allspark’s bed. While Raf politely said ‘thank you’ for the cocoa, Kim held out the silver sphere in her cupped hands.  It softened, sinking around and between her fingers and dropped with a damp ‘plop’ into the pool of energon at the bottom of its bucket.

“How’s Springer,” June asked.

“In stasis,” Dr. Nomura said shortly. “His primary memory seems to be intact. The recovery team—” he cleared his throat. “The recovery team did a good job with his protomatter, but that didn’t make it into stasis properly so Ratchet and Pierre are…I guess packaging it is as good a description as any.”

June leaned forward, “We can’t rebuild a body,” she whispered.

“We don’t have to solve this problem tonight. Give it six months. It’s not as hard a job as Cosmos—we aren’t getting Springer ready to make escape velocity.”

Bumblebee transformed and followed Raf and the human medical personnel back to the active pallet at the far end of the infirmary.

On the other side, Rachet and Pierre were huddled together at the second active pallet. From the floor, Kim could not tell what they were doing. She stayed at the yellow line. Now was not the time to be in the way….

Damn it. Springer. He wasn’t particularly close with any of the humans, so Kim didn’t know him as well as most of the others. Pressed for a description, Kim might have said he was task oriented. Oh. And the task he was oriented on was being a commando.

With Megatron dead and the Decepticons in possession of their own Allspark twin, there might be no more war to be a commando in.  By the time they got a functioning body rebuilt around him, his place in the universe…might be quite different.

Gritting her teeth, Kim turned away and got out her phone. There was no assignment on the calendar for her. Apparently, she had no responsibilities just now.

She could just…call it a day. Apparently.

Kim texted Jack to see how things were going with the kids.

Instead of texting back, a call came through. “How’s Raf?”

Kim shut her eyes. “He seems to be fine. But. You know. He always did seem to be fine.”  Probably. Hopefully.

“Can he come up and—no, it’s late. He should go home.”

“Call him tomorrow. He may talk to you about stuff he won’t…well, maybe he won’t feel as comfortable with the grown-ups.”

“Yeah…Okay….”

“How are things with you?”

“Miko and the kids are trying to teach Max to jump through a hoop.”

Kim winced and asked how Max was taking it.

“The kids are still arguing over philosophical schools of animal training. Sundoor is in a chatroom trying to figure out if animals have something called innate pedological stance. Miko and Max are asleep.”

Oh. Of course. That was completely predictable. Everything was fine, then. “Do you need anything?”

It was a few seconds before the answer came. “I’m going to stay here tonight. With Miko and everybody. In case mom needs to stay with Raf—”

“Jack—”

“You know those huge bean bag chairs Slipstream got? Well, anything a mech can sit in, a human can sleep on. And he bought sleeping bags. In case there was an…emergency and we got locked down here. Slipstream….”

Kim breathed in. “Yeah.”

“But you’re in charge up here—”

“Slipstream has blanket permission to invite friends over whenever he wants.”

“Ugh. Gotta go. They are arguing about the nutritional value of cat treats and it’s about to get ugly.” He rang off.

 Kim turned toward the assembly room. It would be more comfortable to wait on the couch—

The sound of an engine in the passage had her stepping back closer to the wall. It was Hound with Steeljaw riding on his roof. They were posed a bit like a  youtube video of a surfing cat, but then Steeljaw ruined the effect by rearing back and extending a limb with a single digit upraised.

 Unsure if she was being given a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘the bird,’ Kim waved back. 

Gamma team riding on the inside of Hound was chanting something in unison. The rhythm of it broke apart and reformed into (possibly) a song as he slowed going past the infirmary. Like Bumblebee’s team, they would have had to take the alternate route from the parking lot, but their ready-room was down a hall on the other side of the Bridge alcove.

Gamma Team’s report had been a perfect delivery and withdrawal, even in rough terrain of their target.  

Really, all things considered, everything had gone very well. Very. Truly.

About two minutes later, Hound came back the other way. This time Steeljaw was sitting placidly on his roof, toothy jaw open in an approximation of a smile. They vaulted down and gave Kim a perfect (and completely inappropriate) salute.

“I have to say—and I will say it, because I do complain about Humans—no offense, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Kim said. “I also complain about Humans.”

They continued as though Kim had not responded. “And you wouldn’t know it from looking at them, but your species can climb! Absolute champions. I’m agog.” They waved a servo full of elegant silver claws in Kim’s direction. “Say what you like about evolution’s brutality and waste, the results are delightful.”

Kim blinked and fumbled for the correct response. “Um, thanks? I’m sure you’re a great climber, too.”

“Which is why I’ll be requesting high altitude assignments in the future.” A pause, the ear-shaped antenna on their helm drooping a little. “Springer has been taking the lead on those. I suppose it would be ungracious not to wait.”

Kim bit her lip. “It might…be a while,” she said softly.

The antennae flicked backward, a sign of surprise. “Oh? Oh, yes, by human standards, I suppose. And I don’t envy Ratchet the work it is going to take. But from what I’ve gathered, this isn’t Springer’s first rebuild. And Ratchet has all those helpful humans.”  They shook their head, sensor blades clattering together like a sparkling mane. “Well. I’m on standby. I’m going to check on Sundoor. Oh, but put me on your schedule next time I’m free when you have a minute. The snake habitat is nearly finished. I’d like your blessing—blessing? Tisk. English—before bringing in a resident. That doesn’t refer to a literal blessing, does it?”

“It would mean approval or agreement in context,” Kim said faintly. Damn. She had forgotten about the snake. “I won’t declare it, you know, sacred.”

With a wave of elegant claws they dropped onto all fours and bounded off in the direction of the balcony steps.

Kim turned to Hound. “They seem to have had a great time,” she said.

“It was…very satisfying,” Hound said. “To act against great evil. To free your people from the doom that awaited them. To finally, finally,” his frame shivered slightly. “I will remember this day.” 

Kim leaned against his dusty hood and sighed. “Hound, how is epsilon doing?”

“The team members are intact and in good working order,” he answered. “Transport is slow because there are minor EM variants planetwide, and Fixit is being very careful.  You were the first of the groups brought in. Optimus will be in the last.”

Kim nodded.

“Be reassured,” Hound said. “The anomalous weather phenomenon have stopped increasing in size and frequency. Slipstream’s preliminary analysis matches our best case projections.”

Kim nodded again. “Thanks.”

A vibration passed through her hip where she was leaning against Hound. Her bones shivered, and she flicked her tongue over her teeth, trying to brush away the subtle itch.

Frowning, Kim stepped back to the driver’s side door and rested her temple against Hound’s hood. Protomatter was protomatter; no matter the frame size, the sensation of a crying mech was recognizable. “Hound?” Kim asked. “Sweetheart, are you crying?”

“Yes, Kim.” His voice, of course, was perfectly even. The systems for speaking and crying were separate.

Kim swallowed. “Hound. I really need to know. I’m asking you to tell me. Have you been injured? Do you need medical attention?” His team might not even know—the deployment target for gamma team’s EMP was deep in a canyon. There had been no way to Bridge directly there, so Hound had been left behind at the nearest spot flat and open enough for arrival and exit.

“I have not been injured.”

“So you you’re,” Just? No, not ‘just.’  “You’re upset.”

“Perhaps.” Hound paused. “Yes, but not the way you likely mean. I am not sad.” The vibration rose, a keen loud enough to be consciously audible.

“Do you need help?” Kim asked. Her hands fluttered a bit over his smooth, cool armor.

“Is there help for waste? Or grief? Or fish hatchery?”

Kim scowled. “I’m going to say yes,” she said slowly. “We’re both problem-solving species.” Kim patted his hood. “I think you should open a door and let me in.”

The door under her hand clicked open. Kim climbed in and pushed back into the seat. “Where is your interior camera now? Or a temperature sensor?”

“Dome light.”

Kim reached up and placed her hand against the apparent canvas beside the light. “Where’s Mirage?”

“Armenia.”

Armenia. Another forty hours at least until the contingency teams were called home. Kim ran her tongue over her teeth again.  “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Megatron is dead. Bumblebee permitted a nascent Allspark to leave with the Decepticons. The war is over. It is, Kim. It is over.”

“Are you sure about that?” Kim asked.  “This is a terrible thought, but…if there is nothing here they want, why not just use their weapons to slag the planet?”

“Kim, they cannot fire if they are cloaked.”

“Yeah?”

The seat around her seemed to grow warmer. “The Ground Bridges’ range will allow transport to high Earth orbit.”

“Sure.” The had put and retrieved more than one mech into the satellite network over the years. “Oh. We can get an assault team onto the Nemesis if we can find it.”

“Nothing so inefficient. We can transport out a fifty micron slice of their engines.”

“Oh. So. Crash? Or explode?”

“Both.”

“Oh. Nobody mentioned.”

He gave a language pack chuckle that conflicted appallingly with the wrenching cries that vibrated up through the floor under Kim’s feet. “It was a deterrent, not a practical solution. Statistically it was too unlikely to warrant inclusion.”

“So the Decepticons will leave. And you’ll still be here. And you have to figure out what comes next.”

Softly, “Will we be here, Kim?”

“Um, yeah. Pretty sure. That is why they hired me. Do you…not want to stay?”

The high-pitched whine of mech weeping rose around her. Kim half expected his answer to be fish hatchery. “What is meant for humans to want? I understand not-want. I remember want. I do not understand it. You ask me what I want.”

Ah. More complicated than fish hatchery. “Well, maybe right now…want is the wrong question. I mean everything’s changed. It’s okay to take time to get used to the way things are going to be. To process.”

“What if this is Primus’ plan? What if our entire history was to get us here so we could co-opt Unicron through his planet and his humans and use the most ‘holy’ relics to reprogram His enemy into his own drone?”

Kim blinked at that. “You mean the war and all the death and Cybertron being uninhabitable? All that to stop Unicron waking up hundreds of years from now?”

The cries juddered back into the semi-audible range.

Kim grimaced and tried harder. “And Primus somehow assumed you would figure out how to do it—And be willing to sacrifice the Allspark and the Matrix ghosts?”

“Maybe that wasn’t part of the plan. Maybe… we were supposed to destroy it. Maybe the divine plan was to Bridge a fusion bomb to the Earth’s core.”

“Nice,” Kim managed.

“Or maybe Our Creator sent us to wipe out the humans, the weapon His enemy made… we were made to be weapons, after all. All of us cannon fodder.”

 “Yeah, that’s pretty fucked up,” Kim said. She had never had the courage to follow her own horror at the giant alien chaos god in her planet quite that far. “All of us, just weapons. No wonder we’re all always at war.” Kim felt a little sick.

Hound cried. Kim lowered a hand and rubbed at the bones behind her ear, trying to soothe the shivering-ache in her teeth. She thought about crying.  There was some temptation….but Kim was still half-distracted with worry for epsilon team. She kept her cupped hands around the dome light and tried to breathe calmly instead.

Drift and Jetstorm returned from Australia. They—and the humans who waved as they went past—were thickly coated with brown dust.

“If it makes any difference,” Kim said. “I really can’t picture that whatever made you was evil. Not any of you.”

“I am unable to draw conclusions. Or create a plan of action.”

“Yeah. But, again. You don’t have to.  Primus is on Cybertron and you don’t have a ship that will get you there. The Matrix isn’t storing souls anymore.  The Allspark has been living as Raf for four years—and I really think it is going to be a sphere, not a cube. Whatever Primus wanted, he isn’t here.”

The soft, sustained cry changed key slightly. “You are suggesting that I am overwhelmed by my new freedom.”  

Was she? “Maybe.” Her arm was tired from reaching overhead, so she switched hands. “Hound. Tenacious Pursuit of Useful Information. I don’t know what is coming. I can’t reassure you that everything is going to be fine.”

“It is going to be different.” A shiver. “Kim. Beta team has rerouted to Mauritania.”

“Oh.”  Kim clinched her teeth together until she was sure her voice would be even. “What are they doing there?”

“The tag says, ‘after-action survey.’ Kim the site is secure. They are in no danger. “

“Sure. Right. I know.” Kim wiped a sweaty hand on her knee and switched hands, swiping a thumb over the tiny brown blister she identified as the audio pick up.

“Kim, I am fairly certain that the pressure you are maintaining on my interior canopy is a communicative gesture. I cannot decipher the content.”  

Kim wiped her eyes with the back of her free hand. “Content?”

“Kim, what is the message conveyed by this gesture?”

“It’s not a…message. It’s. Hound, I don’t have a field big enough to overlap with your spark. I don’t have a radio to generate a carrier signal. Ratchet spent a week on sensory processing.  Ongoing input—”

“You are showing me that you are here.”

“Yes.”

The wet-wool sound of mech grief dropped below hearing. “A story I haven’t told you: when I was first given the basic English communication packet, I assumed it was like an interface protocol for a drone; that it would be used to exchange information and convey instructions. I assumed only the most superficial understanding of the local aliens would be possible.”

"To be fair, you also thought you were about to die. That was probably a big distraction from first contact.”

“I did not imagine that a biological creature might try to understand me. That you attempt to communicate in novel ways to compensate for our differences is--” His speaker staticed, and the seat beneath Kim shivered.

Kim cupped both hands over the heat sensor and said, “Yeah. We aren’t nearly as stupid and oblivious as we look.”

“You know that was not a barb,” he scolded.

“I know. You think humans are great.”

“I do.” The keening welled up around her. “I think they are marvelous.”

“Hey? You know what? I’ve never mentioned this.”

“What is it?”

“It is so weird that mecha can talk and cry at the same time. I mean we use the same component for both.  Multitasking works really badly.”

“Ah. I had not considered the inconvenience.”

“You have no idea.”

“But Kim… you realize this is not a sophisticated or graceful conversation. I’m not sure it counts as successful multitasking.”

“You’re doing fine.” And then, “You don’t have to say anything. We can just be here. Or I could hum. Is that as good as a carrier wave?”

“Humming would be—Raf has been released from medical. He is on his way to his family’s quarters.” With a sleek hummmm his windows rolled down.

“Isn’t that a little quick?” Kim asked.

“He is wearing a telemetry bracelet. Ratchet and Dr. Nomura are monitoring.”

Kim could see Raf riding on Bee’s shoulder as they came across the yellow line. He leaned over and whispered something at the spot on Bumblebee’s helm where a humans ears would have been, and Bee offered a servo to lower him down.

“Hound,” Raf said, when he was just above the mech’s hood. “I wanted to thank you. Now that I’m just…me. For all your help. And everything. I hope we can still be friends.”

A snap and shudder as Hound aborted some sort of reflexive transformation. “Thank you. Your friendship is a gift I will treasure.”

“Kim, I really want to go home. I mean home, home. I’ve been thinking. When the military asks if I’m still…special, you’ll tell them I’m not, right? You were there.”

“I’ll tell them you aren’t an alien anymore.”

Bumblebee said something staccato and tagged with a regret marker.

“I Know they won’t ever stop watching me. I just want to be watched from home.”

“Epsilon team is on the way in,” Hound interjected.

Kim’s heart sped up.  She squeezed the seat cushion and breathed.  The seat got noticeably warmer.  After a moment, though, the door opened. “Kim you must get out. I think there will be a protocol issue.”

“Oh. Okay.”  Protocol? But she could already hear torque engines in the tunnel. Kim got out and stepped back against the wall.

Optimus—he seemed clean and completely undamaged—pulled to a stop beside Hound and transformed. And then he kept on transforming, down into a large, rectangular prism.

Kim frowned. Apology? A request for rapprochement?

Just behind him, Ironhide was hurriedly disgorging his passengers and following suit.  Kim looked: yes, Hound was already in his compact form.

Bumblebee was taking a large step back, firmly repeating politely-tagged negations.

Raf thawped him on the wrist. “Stop being a baby! You’re a Prime now. It’s only right he acknowledges it.”

“Rafael is correct,” Optimus said firmly. “However, it would not be inappropriate to accept you in that position as well.”

“Oh, Hell no!” Raf said. Then he winced. “Sorry. But still no. Kim think of some excuse—”

“You don’t need an excuse,” Kim said. She was uncertain Raf was right to turn this honor down, but whatever else, he should not be coerced into it if he didn’t want to. “There is no way your parents are going to let you be an alien head of state—”  

Kim’s phone began do vibrate urgently, and the PA system clicked on, singing out the Decepticon contact alarm. Kim snatched at her phone: The tiny status icon in the corner had switched from orange to pink.

Optimus, Hound, and Ironhide had already transformed and were starting to charge capacitors. Bee leaned down and pushed Raf into Kim’s arms. Oh, shit. Shit.

The alarms stopped, leaving a weird echo in the vault of the assembly room and the stone tunnels.

Raf carefully let go of Kim and stepped back. Kim’s phone vibrated again, this time showing a message: NEMISIS LOCATED. CLOAK DOWN. 38000K AND RISING. TWELVE POINT ONE KPS.

“What?” Raf asked, leaning over to look at the phone. “That’s too fast—they’re leaving orbit?”

“They are—“ Optimus’ vocalizer reset. “They are leaving orbit.”

Kim sat down hard on the concrete floor. “They’re leaving.” Leaving. Leaving. She closed her eyes.

When she opened them, Chip and Bobby were dancing with Raf. Hound had fallen back into alt, and Kim could hear him crying from several feet away. Ironhide had scooped up Carly and was crooning the protommatter happy sound over and over.

Dancing? Crying? Hugging? Surely one of those was the correct response, but all Kim could do was clutch uncertainly at her phone and blink at the words. 102,000K became 114000K became 155000K.

Kim looked around for Optimus. He was standing very still, optical lenses unfocused and fixed. Unsteadily, Kim stood up and—dodging the dancers—made her way awkwardly to his peds. “You did it,” she said softly.

Optimus looked down. “Not I,” he said. “The infant Allspark—It will not cooperate with conquest or oppression.”  

“No,” Kim thought about Raf. “It isn’t a tool. And they need it. So—it will be fine, right?”

“Aw, damn the orbital watch tower,” Ironhide snapped in English. He set Carly down. “What the actual fucking slag!” 

Before Kim could finish admiring his excellent syncretic swearing, Optimus murmured, “Oh, dear,” and scooped Kim off the floor.

None of the other mecha were moving. The humans just looked confused. “Oh, god what?”

“Images of the Nemesis were captured by two different telescopes. Three different. Four different. It is on the internet.”

But—wait, no!” Chip protested. “They were leaving.”

“We can scrub it,” Bobby said hollowly. “We’ve cleaned up sightings before. We can—”

“There goes CNN,” Ironhide said. “Kitt Peak National Observatory just released a picture.”

“No! Look, we have a whole department—”

“They’re leaving,” Carly said hopefully. “So, it doesn’t matter. It isn’t like they caught a spaceship arriving.  I mean….” She trailed off sadly. “Oh, scrap.”

Kim looked up at Optimus. “I guess we’re doing this now,” she whispered.

“It seems so.” He had her in the carrying position, close in and next to his spark. “Ah. A statement has been released. ‘The Assembly of Concerned Scientists.’ They are demanding answers. Interesting. They outmaneuvered our concealment and our surveillance.” He paused, optics unfocused as he rifled through communications channels. “Their spokesperson is a linguist of some note. What a shame your government refused to allow me to recruit him.”

***

Epilogue 

The lighted face of the alarm clock said it was quarter after five in the morning.  Early. Damn.

A sad loss of a few minutes sleep, but today was today and there was no point in lying still and pretending she could drop off. Kim gathered her slippers and her phone and started for the bathroom. The screen blinked on in a pattern of fractals.

Oh. He’d been waiting. “Morning, boss,” Kim said. “Do I need to throw my shoes on and come down, or do I have a few minutes?”

“I need your advice. But you do not need to interrupt your preparation processes.”

Spoken like a species that didn’t brush its teeth. Kim snorted, but kept her comment to herself. “What’s going on?”

“They have reconsidered. They will not meet us at Nellis.”

Oh. Kim continued toward the bathroom. “Oh. Not surprised. They’ve been lied to for years. There are going to be trust issues.”

“Kim. Ironhide is adamant I not meet them at a site of the Assembly steering committee’s choosing. It is unlikely that they have either the resources or intelligence about mecha to pose a threat—”

“No, no, no. No. Don’t think about that. We aren’t doing that. Okay. Someplace outdoors. Someplace we can secure.”

“Someplace nearby. It has been four days since Cybertronians were revealed to the Earth. We cannot postpone this meeting with the independent delegates.”

“Are you calling them that? Out loud?” The Assembly of Concerned Scientists was unofficial. It represented no government and had no authority. No one had delegated anything to them but themselves. 

Most mecha felt that a common purpose based on an interest in science was at least as good a reason to organize as the sort of geographical coincidence that normally legitimized Earth governments, but since it was governments they had entered into treaty with, the Autobots had been advised to keep their opinions to themselves.

“Kim, freedom requires informed choices.  The necessity of lying to your people was never …we have left the topic.”

“We have. My usual answer seems to be the mall. But we can’t get you inside a mall. We want a controlled area.  How about Hoover Dam? We’re still running some research and storage there, right?”

“That seems disingenuous.”

“Not in the dam. Near the dam. Like, is there a picnic area? Or a parking lot we could shut down?  You won’t have to drive there…. Pardon me a moment, I have to wash my face.”

“Yes. I have located a scenic overlook that would be acceptable.”  

The fractals did not retreat from the phone screen. Kim brushed her teeth and started to make something of her hair.

“Mr. Keller is not thrilled, but he is willing to accept this compromise.”

“Great,” Kim said. “Identify their phones and text them directly.”

“That seems impolite.”

“It’s honest. All our technology is tissue paper to you. If that metaphor translates. Anyway, if you want to make it friendlier, you can include a personal message to each of them. Not too personal.” Kim pictured how stalkery the mech files on each of those humans would be. “Professional.”  

“Our departure time has been pushed half an hour forward. Ironhide wants time to secure the area himself.”

“I’ll be ready. In the meantime, how are you feeling?”

“I am within .05 standard deviations from the mean on all performance measures.”

Kim tried to picture that. Then she tried to picture it a different way. Then she carefully put away her hair brush and cup.  “Why aren’t you giving me that in percent-of-spec?”

“I am embarrassed to admit my cognition is,” he paused, and Kim imagined him rifling through human metaphors, although the lag might be from a conversation with someone else. “Sub par.”

“Has there been some damage? In all this?”

“No. I am distracted by the awareness that the collected Wisdom of the Primes is no longer available.”

“Oh. Are you thinking you’ll be lonely in there? When you, you know. Eventually? Um. You die?”

“That consideration had not occurred to me. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.”

“Nice sarcasm,” Kim said, cradling the phone in her hand as she headed back to her room.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t make me guess, though. Unless you don’t want to talk about it.”

“Perhaps I am not wise enough alone to navigate the coming changes.”

“Oh. Yeah. That’s really heavy.” Kim bit her lip.  He had had all those voices in his head for thousands of years. He had relied on them. Now he was on his own. “I can see why you’re weirded out.”

“You are not planning to reassure me?”

“Ohhh, Yeah, I’m an expert on your religion and have business commenting on it. Huh. Okay, but. Speaking of experts, were any of them experts on humans? Or whatever Unicron becomes when he’s suddenly had all the wisdom of Primus we could scrape together a thousand lightyears from Cybertron dropped on him?”

“Seventy-eight thousand lightyears.”

Kim gathered up the outfit she had left laid out on the desk: patchwork skirt, sequined shirt, sandals with giant flowers.  Very hippie looking, not at all military or mechanic.  “Right. Anyway, by my standards, you’ve got plenty of experience and wisdom. And yeah, you won’t make the right decision every time. But I’m not sure the Matrix would have helped. They weren’t experts in all this organic stuff. They had been here for years, and they still were being all curious about our brains.”

“There were concerns that human cognition was not sufficiently independent from Unicron to avoid impact from our…interference with magnetosphere.”

“Well. It’s all new now. I’m not sure how much help they would have been. But all we can do is try to make wise decisions and do the best we can. I mean, we don’t have a choice.”

“Bizarrely, I find that comment reassuring.”

“You’re welcome. I think.”

“Chip has requested again to accompany the mission.”

“Still nope. There are enough humans irrationally afraid of aliens—and these folk just found out you’ve been lying to them since 1912—that we can’t afford to be sloppy. I’m adopting your safety rotation.”

“What safety rotation?”

“You and Bee can’t both deploy at the same time. And you and Ironhide and Jazz can’t all deploy at the same time. Well… Chip and I can’t either until we get the PR people trained.”

“Most of the steering committee members are pacificists of some prominence.”

“Still nope.”

“Noted.”

Kim headed for the kitchen. Tea. Tea.  Toast? No, toaster waffle. “They are going to ask about religion. Maybe not the first conversation. But…no. Sentient machines. They are going to ask about your music, your art, your love life, and your religion.”

In the pause that followed, Kim looked down at her phone. The fractals had gotten smaller and closer together.  “You did not ask me about any of that initially. None of the NEST staff have ever introduced those topics in the first month.”

“I was going slowly to build rapport. And I already knew you were people before the first interview. These guys? Some of them will be wondering if you are a hoax. Or a trap. Or too different from us to have relationships. And at least one has a background in artificial intelligence.”

“You wish me to avoid the topic of religion.” Flat intonation; he was not willing to display his actual feelings using an ad-on language package.

Kim took a breath and slowed down. “Beloved. I know you hate lying. And I agree it is a bad way to start. So I guess you’re going to have to admit to being a High Priest of Primus, if it comes up. Although all the temples and holy places are on your home planet, so on some level it makes sense to claim it isn’t practically relevant.”

“That will bring more questions.”

“You can say you prefer not to answer them right then. Or you might talk about Primus the Creator. The truth is that it doesn’t translate very well so that becomes a short discussion about how it doesn’t translate. Although you have rites of grief and reconciliation that humans can understand fine. Very few rites of passage.  I’ll probably write an article on that eventually.” Kim blinked, chasing down her train of thought. “And you know enough about our religions to tangle anyone down in minutia if you want.  Um. Just…well, I’d avoid mentioning the Creator God-Destroyer God gestalt at the core of the Earth, maybe? I don’t see how that would end well.”

“Is that how you perceive what happened? Or is that your guess as to how I perceive it?”

“I’m kind of militant agnostic about it all.” Yawning, Kim sugared the tea. “But yeah, that’s what Hound thinks happened. And I saw the report last night.” The Earth’s magnetic field had gotten six percent better at deflecting cosmic rays. Nice, from the human perspective. Downright benevolent, perhaps.

“I will not engage in theological speculation with unvetted humans.”  He conceeded earnestly.

In the midst of getting out the butter, Kim froze. “I’m sorry. I know this has to be really…a lot for you. I wish there were someone you could talk to.”

“I suspect the answers to my questions cannot be rationally deduced. Perhaps I envy your intuition. But we do not need to know the ultimate nature and meaning of existence to get through today.” 

“See? You’ve already got the ‘wise’ thing down. Everything is going to be fine. You are much more experienced at meeting humans than they are at meeting aliens.”

“Again, that is more reassuring than it should be. Thank you.”

“Are you on base? I could bring my breakfast out and eat on the balcony?”

“I am preparing to Bridge in from Diego Garcia. The excavation is finished. If you like you can join me in the ‘Bot commissary.  I am in need of refueling.”

Kim assumed he couldn’t see it, but smiled anyway. “I’ll be waiting on the stairs.”

~END