Comparative Semiotics

by Therrae (Dasha_mte)

Summary:

With a put-upon sigh, Cliffjumper split and retracted his outer and inner chest plates, revealing a torso full of complex mechanisms. Most of what was visible was covered in tough cushioning cable, but Kim identified the brachial actuators from Ratchet’s lectures. And the secondary sensor router. And nests of fans and radiator plates that made up his primary coolant system. Then she noticed the smell. It was not exactly unpleasant—earthy and damp, a little like mildew and a little like swamp. It was a weird smell to come from a mech. Abruptly, June leaned out and down, one hand reaching out to point at the inner surface of Cliffjumper’s armor. “Ratchet, what is that?”

Chapter 1: Boundaries

Chapter 1

The sun wasn’t quite up yet, but already the desert was hot.

Kim adjusted the strap of her bag—heavy with an extra two bottles of water—and climbed out of Bulkhead into the early morning. Bulkhead pulled off to the left to join Ironhide, Bumblebee, and Ratchet in a slight depression. Kim clambered up the uneven rock to the human observation point. The top of the outcrop had been sliced into a smooth, glossy platform.  Fowler, Lennox, and the repair trainees had already set up a table and were laying out recording equipment.

June had traded her usual scrubs for fatigues. She seemed almost grimly serious.  By contrast Carly and Epps were gleeful as they did their part to plug in equipment and test power supplies.

Beside them was Dwight’s replacement; male, middle aged, and almost skeletally thin, Dr. Nomura was a prominent engineer from Japan. With an MD added to a Ph.D. in robotics, he designed prosthetic systems.  As usual (although his English was perfect) he was talking to no one and running simulations on his phone.  A human doctor: what had Morshower been thinking?

Kim, neither part of NEST nor the medical team, had no role here but to observe. It would almost be better if she’d had a set of tasks, anything to distract her from the field test.

Even if it’s a disaster, it won’t be that bad.

She’d been having nightmares all week, ever since Ironhide had announced the plan to sand-test the mods. It won’t be that bad. But she kept hearing the terrible scream Optimus’ vents had made as they tried to pull air through an inch of packed sand.

It had been a busy week, getting ready. On Monday, in the midst of orienting his new batch of trainees, Ratchet had prepared Optimus for the sand adaptations. On Tuesday, Arcee and Jazz had undergone the same procedure. Kim had stayed in the infirmary for all of it--keeping the patients talking, encouraging the  trainees to go closer, ask questions,  see the people and forget how huge and powerful and different they were.

On Wednesday, Dr.  Nomura had arrived, not offering his first name and calling everyone by their title. He’d been consulting with the Pentagon for three years, courtesy of the Japanese government. He’d been analyzing the exit reports of the trainee rejects, the action reports filed by NEST, and the archives of the defunct bureau that had so badly screwed up first contact to begin with. He was the ‘expert’ and acted like it.

He and Ratchet seemed to find each other amusing. And their mutual condescension would have been funny to watch if it hadn’t been part of Kim’s job to make the relationships work, damnit.

Wednesday, too, had been the day Mearing and Keller had visited. Mearing made the mecha jumpy for reasons that still weren’t quite clear to Kim. In a way, Keller was worse: he’d tried to fuss over Optimus, concerned over his recent injury, asking if he’d taken enough time off, frowning when he found out who would be testing the new modifications.

Keller was the international coordinator, the main go-between for the human governments that had only the Autobot leader’s personal assurances to fend off panic. Video of Optimus literally ripping a Decepticon three times his own mass into pieces was much less inspiring when accompanied by the news that he had been carried back to base. Kim didn’t envy Keller his job.

Thursday, Optimus, Jazz, and Arcee had scanned new alt forms. It was a first for Kim, and almost anti-climactic. The rented Honda sports motorcycle, Porche GTS, and Peterbilt 579 were delivered to the motor pool on the human side of the base. In a garage the size of a hanger, Optimus then Jazz then Arcee walked around the model once to be sure it was acceptable, did a full transcan (which apparently involved more than six separate sensor systems but took less than three seconds and was only noticeable as a flash of green light) and then transformed.

Those transformations were something.  They took nearly twenty seconds instead of the usual four or five. They were louder, too, and almost frightening to look at. The bodies didn’t just tidily twist and fold away. Armor seemed to contort—in some cases to even rip apart as mesh was forced into a new shape. Kim saw slivery flashes of nanites, the dark glitter of glimpses of protoform.

The sounds of sliding metal and bending armor were louder than usual, too. Kim found herself holding her breath each time until the new configuration was complete.

Each of the duplicates was perfect. Kim could not have told the model from the disguised Autobot if her life had depended on it, not by just looking. “Amazing,” she said.  Only one of the four motorcycles was not Arcee—and Kim wasn’t quite sure which one that was.

“I never get tired of seeing that,” Lennox said.

The Autobots, of course, were casual and businesslike as they thanked everyone politely before returning to their refurbished silo to finish preparations for the field test scheduled for the next day. Taking a new alt wasn’t a big deal; they’d all done it dozens if not hundreds of times.

***

The sun was all the way up now. The dry air had no haze to speak of. Kim dug out her sunglasses and then her phone.  

There was a lot of glyph activity. Kim could see who was sending what, but determining which conversations they were attached to was harder. Her headset received open conversation channels, but she was physically too far away to overhear content spoken aloud, and sometimes—even when she did have clear access to the entire discussion-- the relationship of a set of symbols to a particular topic wasn’t clear.  

Jazz and Arcee were bragging. Some 600 feet away, on the torn desert of an old target range, they paced the combat area in root form, stretching and turning to show off the subtle changes in their armor. Bumblebee responded with encouragement and victory glyphs—but whether he was teasing or supporting them, Kim couldn’t tell.

Optimus Prime, a short distance past the first two, neither preened nor glyphed. He didn’t even pace. He seemed relaxed and casual—he might be answering email or checking the satellite reports or listening to music.  Kim dug out a pair of binoculars to get a better look. Arcee was doing a handstand.  A couple of watching NEST guys applauded.

One of the office guys from NEST support finished checking the focus on a tripoded camera and came over to Kim. “Fourth of July is coming up,” he said.

Kim keeping half an eye on glyphs, Kim nodded.

“The thing is—every year we have this picnic. The day before, you know.” He lowered his voice. “Fireworks. Games and stuff. To include them, because, well… there’s a lot of social stuff they miss. And they’re real polite and everything. About coming.” He paused.

Kim glanced up, frowning. “Yeah? I think I got a memo about that….” Were they in June already?

“They never complain or anything,” he said earnestly. “They’re very polite.”

“But they don’t seem to enjoy it?”

“Yeah. We’re kind of…We’d like to make an event they’d like. But they don’t eat at the picnic. And I can’t imagine they’re impressed with the fireworks.”

“They probably aren’t very exciting, maximized for human visual wavelengths?” Kim suggested.

“Oh. Yeah, maybe. Anyway—the Fourth is a big deal around here. And you’re supposed to—Well, they’re less polite to you, right?  If you could find out…and maybe they don’t hate it. Maybe they just go along, or something. But. We have no idea what they actually like.”

“I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Thanks!”

Kim scribbled “Holiday ??” and added a frowny face.

 The glyph chatter was now focused on something translated as orange tree. That had to be an error: there were no trees in this patch of dessert. And there hadn’t been trees on Cybertron. Ugh. An error or an untranslatable concept. Whatever it was, it was causing a little consternation, judging from the number of ‘pit’ and ‘no traction’ comments.

 Lennox stepped up beside Kim and leaned over to say softly, “Ever seen Windblade in the air?” He pointed to a speck just above the horizon to the south. It took a moment to find a single speck in the featureless blue sky with her binoculars. The distant figure resolved into a sharp-edged red plane with wings that looked entirely too small and a nose that looked weirdly too rounded. What Earth-vehicle could she possibly be scanned from? Lennox chuckled at Kim’s confused look, patted her shoulder, and stepped away to say into his radio, “Look sharp, everybody.  The party from Nellis has arrived.”

Windblade in the air was a treat: fast, agile, exact, graceful. She landed vertically, as lightly as a robin. The canopy unfolded to reveal Director Mearing climbing out in an immaculate suit and sensible shoes. Everyone on the observation platform set about looking busy as Mearing clambered up on to the rock. Kim had nothing to fuss with, no way to look busy. She managed a thin, “Good morning.”

Mearing did not arrive shooting off questions. She only nodded briskly to Lennox and crossed to the front edge of the cleared stone, waved to the watching bots in the depression across the road, and turned her attention to the combatants pacing the test range.

Lennox shrugged and radioed Ironhide that the humans were good to go.  Ironhide glyphed ‘pay attention/settle down.’ The desert was suddenly quiet. The humans stilled their busyness and looked out across the scarred sand. Over the radio, Ironhide warned no ranged weapons, no bladed weapons, no energy weapons, and no crossing the boundary. He transmitted an exact start time some twenty seconds out. There was no need for a countdown: mecha always knew exactly what time it was.

Kim held her breath.

Jazz and Arcee sprung at once--a single, furious, coordinated assault. Optimus managed to dodge Jazz, but Arcee tangled his legs and sent him stumbling to the side. Jazz recovered and struck again. Two football fields away, and the sound of metal crashing against metal was a hair out of sync with the visible motion…and still far too loud.

Pit. This was as awful to watch as Kim had expected it would be.

Optimus seized Arcee by the ankle and tossed her.  She arced up through the air, dividing into her three base components, landing as the shift to motorcycles completed. One of them promptly spun out in the loose sand.  The other two turned tightly, spraying tails of sand in the air. Their flanking motion was short a prong, and Optimus easily slipped aside. Jazz took advantage of the distraction, though, and this strike sent Optimus into a roll.

Kim wiped a sweaty hand on her pants and adjusted her grip on her binoculars.

Jazz went down. Kim had no idea why—it had been too fast to follow. Optimus—how could a creature that size be so fluid, so quick—had him pinned—

Which was when a soft pop and hiss from the nearby cluster of observing mecha announced the launch of a ranged weapon. The missile was small and blink-fast and hit between Optimus and Arcee’s blue aspect. A balloon of sand swelled up and swallowed the combatants with shocking suddenness.

The snap of the explosion echoed back across the desert. Afterward—for a moment—there was silence.

“What the fuck, Hide?” Epps shouted, stalking across the stone platform.

Ironhide folded his arms and shrugged.

Kim fumbled for her phone.

The last glyph message was from Ironhide: Emphasis (Surprise), Chain of command, Situation normal, Hold position.

Kim blinked.  Scrap. The sand was a slowly-settling, shimmering cloud. There was still no sign of the wrestlers.

Ratchet cut loose with a burst of glyphs: “Emphasis (Surprise), Superior officer, Impatient * Glitched *  Underclocked * Rusted-out * pile of scrap, Null-set.” If there was any doubt about the gist of that rant, Ratchet dispelled it by adding over the general radio, “If Optimus doesn’t deactivate you, I will.”

Kim made herself take a deep breath.

Director Mearing skipped down the footholds of the observation platform like some kind of professional rock-climber and stalked across the packed roadway to the depression where the mecha had their vantage point. “I suppose you thought that was funny.” She didn’t shout, though she was clearly irritated and her listeners were as much as twenty feet above her head.

Ironhide shrugged again.

“If you’ve killed one of them--” she began.

“I have them on telemetry,” Ratchet said, taking a big step out of the depression and heading toward the dust cloud. “They’re fine.”

Ironhide adjusted his shoulders and sighed, a display of exaggerated patience and a little condescension. Kim winced. From what Kim had seen, it was a poor approach to handling Mearing. “Protecting them is the goal. We needed a proper test of the new mods—and we needed it before they scraped all their paint nanites off and lost two or three days each to being naked.” His voice seemed to glitch a little on the last word.

There were shadows moving in the thinning dust cloud. Big, slow, shapes. The sand had probably wreaked havoc not only on their vision but sonar and radar as well.

Kim scrambled down the footholds and started off after Ratchet. There was no chance of catching up, of course. Ratchet’s big strides covered nearly three yards with each step.

The shapes resolved into three dusty, somewhat irritated-looking mecha. Ratchet’s left servo folded in to reveal a set of wicked-looking sensors and tools. Optimus knelt and cooperatively held out his arms for inspection. He twisted and bent, offering access to joints and armor seams.

Ratchet produced two shop towels the size of bath sheets. Jazz and Arcee began wiping off the thick coating of brownish powder. Underneath their paint was smooth and vivid.

Apparently satisfied with Optimus, Ratchet turned to examine Jazz. “I feel a little grit,” he said, “but I still got the moves. Heh.” He shivered, flaring his smaller plates and shaking loose a shower of dust. “I want a scrub.”

Ratchet h’rumphed. “Water and mild surfactant only. The trainees will be in charge of decon.”

Arcee made a face. “The NEST guys just started getting good at it, and now we have to train a new batch.”

Fine. They were all fine. Kim let her eyes close for a moment, the tension draining away. They’re fine.

With swift military organization, the observation platform was cleared, recording devices and unneeded emergency equipment neatly packed away.  Mearing, satisfied with the results, was headed back toward Windblade.

“Well, Ironhide?” Lennox called. “Are we good to go with the new mods? When do you get yours?”

“We haven’t analyzed all the data yet. There may be some changes for version two. But no, I’m optimized for ranged weapons. I’m not a priority for close-combat mods.” He transformed and backed close to the shorn outcrop so that equipment could be loaded into his truck bed.

Lennox laughed. “On, come on. You’ve been looking for an excuse for a reformat.”

Epps, burdened with two laden backpacks and scooting straight down the side of the boulder without bothering with the footholds, called, “Hey, you could go back to that maroon mommy car. That was a great look for you.”

“What maroon mommy car?” Kim asked. She was still a little light-headed with relief.

“You don’t know?” Lennox said. “When we met, his alt was a dark red Honda minivan.”

Epps tossed the backpacks over the tailgate and patted Ironhide affectionately. “No, man. He was a Volvo. And he was definitely maroon.”

Grumpily, Ironhide protested, “It had the right mass. It was very maneuverable. And maroon is a dignified color on Cybertron. Classic.”

Adding her backpack to the collection of supplies in his bed, Carly put in, “I thought the goal was to blend in, not be noticed. Seems to me a minivan is the perfect choice.”

For his answer, Ironhide pulled around toward her and opened his passenger side door.  “I’m keeping this one,” he said. “The rest of you can walk.”

Nobody had to walk, of course. In addition to the small crowd of mecha, there were even two motorpool vehicles. While loading and transport was being sorted out, Kim stepped up to Dr. Nomura, who was packing a pair of equipment cases into the back of an army hummer. “Ratchet is going to have the trainees in the washracks today,” she said casually.

He frowned very slightly. “Thank you for the warning.”

Kim reflected that she was probably being too direct and clumsy about this. There just wasn’t a lot of time. “A year and a half back, Ratchet fired a trainee for refusing scrub duty.”

“I am familiar with the files, Dr. Montgomery,” he said, pausing to give her his full attention. He straightened all the way up so he could look down his nose at her. It was impressively effective.

Kim took a deep breath and went for flattery, since it would be rude to just come out and warn him not to frag this to utter file corruption. “You have a lot of expertise we need—that NEST needs. But Ratchet doesn’t like you—Ratchet doesn’t really like anybody. But he has the final decision here. And….”

“Hm,” he said.  And then he almost smiled. “But he believes humans are incapable of competence and I doubt I will change his mind.”

Did he want to be here?  Surely, he had to want to be here.  He’d come—and unlike most of the human personnel, he had known exactly what he was getting into before he started. What reports had he been reading, that he’d concluded being aloof with the bots and not sucking up to Ratchet was a path to success here?

Kim smiled, feeling confused and foolish. “See you when we get back,” she said.

***

Kim had never been in the washracks before. Because some of the solvents were toxic to organics, it was considered a hazmat zone. Humans were only allowed with mech supervision. It was spacious—four large mecha could use it at once—and well lit. There was scaffolding, so that humans or minicons could easily reach or be reached by bigger mecha. The walls and floor were sealed, so chemicals would not seep into the porous stone; the whole nook glowed a rich, polished, glossy brown. While the walls were smooth, the floor was rough for traction, finger-wide channels cut in the granite to guide the run-off into the drain.

There were hoses for petroleum distillate solvent, plant distillate solvent, and water. On graduated shelves were jumbo size bottles of Bug and Tar Begone and stacks of rough shop towels. There were long-handled brushes and plastic scrubbies and a table where a mech could sit and disassemble hands or peds or weapons mounts for cleaning.

Ratchet put Epps, whom he said ought to have enough experience, in charge of the other humans and stepped back with Ironhide to observe. Without missing a beat, Epps assigned Kim to Arcee (“You’ll have no problem—she’s small, access is really easy, and she can come apart and show you how to do it if you get stuck on something"), gave Carly and June to Jazz (“Start with the armor surface, I’ll be by in a minute to explain about joints and seams") who obligingly dropped into his alt form, and led Dr. Nomura up a scaffolding to start on Optimus.

Kim had washed cars, of course. Not often, but a few times. This was nothing like that. Arcee split into her three combat alts, sprayed a shop towel with a lightly foaming surfactant and led Kim through washing armor.

And it should—it really should—have been like washing a car. The smells were right. The damp feet and the slide of the cloth over slick metal were right. It should have been familiar. But it wasn’t.

Arcee’s combat modules had three opposable claws on each hand rather than anything that resembled fingers. The faces had a single eye and nothing that could be regarded as a mouth. Two of the units had tar spatters in the wheelwells, and Kim had to crouch down and angle around a corner to scrub them off with Bug and Tar Begone, her own cheek resting against chill, damp armor to get the right angle to see what she was doing.

Kim had never washed another human—she’d never even babysat someone young enough to need help in the tub. And Arcee was so, so different from everyone Kim had ever known.

It’s social for them. And they need it—they can’t reach all the spots themselves. This is normal.

It was mortifying.

Not for them.

Arcee demonstrated a long, fluffy brush used in armor seams and joints.

It’s just armor. It isn’t like I’m even touching protomatter. Mesh hardly counts as alive.

Arcee’s segments merged and spread into her elegant root form. When she leaned forward to give access to her back joints, Kim could see the shimmer of her protoform. Kim’s breath caught. Okay, so that’s happening.

She had been up to her forearms in Optimus’s shoulder joint. That was much worse than this, right?

Desperately, Kim turned her mind to data. “So…water and electronics don’t mix. How is all this not a problem?” Even to herself, Kim sounded strained.

Arcee snorted. “Water doesn’t mix with your insides, either. But I’ve seen humans swim.”

“Well, yeah,” There was a—was that a leaf stuck between a cable and a hydraulic line? Yes. It was. Ick. “If you lean a little to the left…yeah…got it. We have skin.”

“Your skin has holes in it.”

That was true. Kim thought of sphincters and lips and swim masks and drops to prevent swimmers’ ear. And how hard it was not to get water in your nose when you jumped into a pool. “Yes. But. Humans don’t have to worry about electrical shorts.”

“True. But we don’t leave electrical systems hanging out. Structure seal is much more watertight than skin. I’m fully submersible to three meters—actually, that’s a little on the low side. Jazz is good to fourteen.”

“So, do you swim then?”

She snorted. “No. I sink.”

“Oh. Right.”

Between Arcee’s smaller size and the help from her components, Kim finished before the others. She managed an “Any time,” to Arcee’s “Thank you,” and wiped her damp hands on her damp pants. She took a breath, grimly decided to set her mortification aside….and admitted to herself that she would have to pretend she had done it because it still felt weird to be in this alien shower.

Kim retrieved her purse from a dry corner next to Ratchet and Ironhide and checked her phone. There were no surprise changes to her schedule and no particularly interesting glyph conversations while she’d been busy.

Ratchet was supervising the scrub-down with his normal little frown of disapproval.  Ironhide—still and quiet, which was unusual for him—was watching the activity with possibly more intensity than showering required. Was that a small-barrel projectile weapon perched on his wrist? Nothing at the washracks seemed worrisome to Kim: weird and out of her own comfort zone, yes, but not actually dangerous. Was Ironhide overtly standing guard? Kim wished she wasn’t dripping too much to pull out a notebook and jot this down for follow-up later.

Carly was clinging one-handed to the scaffolding so she could lean out and scrub a spot between Jazz’s shoulders. She was sopping wet and laughing. Jazz was teasingly critiquing her technique. Optimus was in his alt and covered in suds, while the two men scrubbed away with long-handled brushes. Kim found herself staring: Despite the theme of the paint job, the Peterbilt was distinctly different from the Freightliner.

And the Peterbilt…looked perfect. Looked like a truck, an artifact made by humans. But it wasn’t. It was an alien. A space alien from space. Alive, but not a human kind of life, not an earth kind of life. Not male. Not breathing. Thinking only electronically, not chemically.

For a moment she couldn’t breathe. It was all too impossible, too strange.

Too frightening.

Too perfect.

Kim’s phone buzzed the arrival message.  From Ironhide the glyph: “Generalized Query.”

Kim breathed in, surprised at her own relief. A basic glyph conversation. She could handle that. “Situation normal.”

Ironhide responded with an English text: WHAT’S WRONG? WHY ARE YOU FLARING?

Flaring? Electromagnetically flaring? Well, scrap. That was unfair. Sensors that could pick up her electromagnetic field (and her heart rate? Her temperature shifts?) were nearly as good as mind reading. She sighed and said aloud, “It’s just culture shock. No big deal.”

Ironhide focused his optics briefly on Kim, then looked back at the washrack activity. After several moments, he said, “I don’t understand. The descriptions don’t make any sense.” He had looked it up.

Ratchet hrumphed disdainfully. “He’s asking me if you have an illness.”

“It’s a…glitch in our code. It causes emotional discomfort when we spend a long time immersed in unfamiliar or unpredictable situations.”

That got her Ironhide’s full attention. “Does Prime know about this?”

“Oh, yes. I expect he’s collecting data on it.” On me. “Someday, I’ll ask for his analysis. We’ll probably laugh about it.”

Carly and June were wiping down Jazz’s alt with huge, fluffy towels. Dr. Nomura was swabbing out Optimus’ running lights. Epps was wiping his windshield wipers. They can’t cook for each other. They can’t hug each other. They dance for performance, not for casual play. Just being physically near each other is not necessary for intimacy or private communication. Exterior maintenance makes perfect sense as a mechanism for bonding or an expression of affection. This isn’t like humans taking a shower. They aren’t ‘naked.’ 

Ratchet sighed elaborately and produced a human-sized spray bottle and two fluffy applicators with handles. “If you’re done being freaked out by basic cleanliness, Jazz and Optimus are both due for nanite conditioning. Very light spray, very gentle buffing. Get going.”

***

The afternoon schedule included a change of clothes, a meeting with Bill, a call home to wish her step-mom luck in her upcoming cooking contest, a mathematical glyph lesson with Maggie, and an early dinner at the DFAC with the engineering trainees.

She made it to the mesa at exactly 5:30. Kim was sweating by the time she had crossed to Optimus and set up the folding chair in his copious shade. “This?” she said. “Definitely afternoon. This is just too hot to be evening. Evening is cool.”

“Are you well, Kim?”

She made a face as she sat down. “Totally within operating tolerances.”

“I was referring to this morning. Ironhide mentioned you seemed to be in some distress during the decon.”

So we’re doing this now. “Damn. That. Okay, the thing is, even in PE in high school, we didn’t shower all together. There were half-partition-things between us. It’s just…and you’re all….” Kim waved her hand helplessly. “It feels…intrusive. Like I’m violating your privacy. Embarrassing.”  She fumbled for a moment. “Awkward.”

“To offer or accept help with personal maintenance is to extend a great deal of trust. It is not a matter of privacy, but health and safety. To rely upon one another is to build a sense of community.”

“I hear you, I do. I get it. My feelings—they’re just feelings. I’ll get over it.”

“I see,” he said doubtfully. “Do you expect your response will be typical of civilians? Or, perhaps, the issue is gender? The NEST personnel are almost exclusively male.”

“It’ll be sort of idiosyncratic. I met a guy at a conference last year. He was doing his field research in nudist camps.” She sighed again. “And Alice worked in Muslim India—so, getting used to covering. It’s normal to have something awkward to get used to.”

“Hm.”

“Anyway, I wasn’t the only one nervous. Ironhide was showing a weapon.”

“He wasn’t nervous. He was…posturing.”

“Seriously? Ironhide?”  The last mech Kim would expect to be a drama queen.

Optimus frowned slightly. “Dr. Nomura has almost no firsthand experience with mecha. Ironhide considers him an unknown quantity. While he understood why Bobby decided to oversee Dr. Nomura and work as a team on the largest subject, Ironhide disapproved of someone so new to working with mecha handling me.”

“He disapproved as your bodyguard.”

“Yes. But also as my friend.”

Kim nodded.  Should she mention that Ironhide seemed to be hovering a bit more than usual lately? She was leaning toward letting that go and changing topics with Optimus cut in with a new topic of his own: “Kim? Do you dislike my new alt form?”

“What? No! It’s beautiful,” she squeaked, thrown. She had not seen that question coming. At least the right answer was true and had not faltered: all of the new alts were beautiful. “Why do you ask?” Mecha were a little vain. Unlike humans, though, they had complete control over their appearance. They could look any way they wished.

“NEST personnel always make a point of complimenting new alt forms. While you have asked questions about the process, you have not commented on the result.”

“Yeah, well, most of NEST is men. They think they have a right to pass judgement on other people’s bodies.” The statement was out before Kim had time to reflect on it. Her own vehemence surprised her.

“It is true that standards of beauty are not universal, but our forms on Earth are selected to be attractive to both humans and Transformers.”

“It is beautiful,” Kim said firmly. “But you are not obligated to be beautiful to please me.”

“And if,” he said slowly, “I were dripping with ooze, had multiple heads, and long tentacles? Would you accept me even then?”

Kim lifted her chin. “It would be my loss if I didn’t. Look, be fair about this. I leak corrosives. I’m squishy. I emit a cloud of volatile chemicals.  Mecha are really good sports about that.”

“Humans are not repulsive.”

Kim laughed, “Gee, thanks.”

He answered with a small shrug. His shoulders were not quite the same shape they had been last week. The reformats had, of course, changed the overall look of the root forms, too.  Optimus, Jazz, and Arcee all built slightly differently now. Kim reached out, did not quite touch the gleamingly clean and newly conditioned paint. “I asked Jazz and Arcee if they felt like it changed their true selves, scanning new alt forms.”

“I am aware,” he said thoughtfully. “It was a topic they both found baffling.”

“Yeah. Well. I was expecting to hear that you were sparked beings that just happened to be using cybernetic bodies, and that changes to the outer shell didn’t really reflect true existence.”

“You were?”

“Well, yeah. I feel pretty stupid now. I mean obviously…bodies are how people perceive the world, interact with the world, get perceived by other people. Of course, body is also self.”

“Hm. You had thought, perhaps, that alt forms are a superficial exterior like clothing?”

“Really stupid. I mean even clothing—I bet when June wears scrubs she doesn’t think or feel the same ways she does when she is wearing a party dress or gardening clothes. And Epps isn’t exactly the same out of his uniform. Who a person ‘really is’ isn’t an unchanging, continuous, personality for humans. Why would it be different for you?”

“This is a discussion about identity.”

Kim winced. It was probably too soon to hope to sort out how giant aliens who could reformat their bodies constructed the idea of personhood. On the other hand, not knowing how they conceived of self might lead to unpredictable problems. “If identity is mainly performance….” Kim said. “For you, your physical form is performance.”

“I had not thought to extend that theory to us. I am not sure it applies.”

“What is your self?”

He leaned down to look at her carefully. Then his optical arrays unfocused for several long seconds of research over the base’s wifi. At last he said, “Kim, that which you know of me is my self. There is no other.”

“I’ve barely known you two months. Not even that.  You can’t mean I know everything about you.”

“No, of course not. That is not—I do not know how to explain.”

Welcome to my world, she thought wryly. “That’s okay. We don’t have to do it all now.” The sun had moved enough that Kim was starting to lose the shade. She stood up long enough to scoot her chair back into Optimus’ shadow.

“You know I was not sparked or framed as a soldier.”

“Yes, you mentioned that.”

“I was designed to work in data analysis—I suppose you could think of it as logistics or budgeting. Before I had finished my social integration, the Quintessons re-opened hostilities. I was assigned to a central transportation hub, the spaceport at Kalis. They did not need me in logistics. I was a cargo handler.”

Kim thought about that. “Like a stevedore?”

“Picture a forklift operator. Or a short-distance trucker.”

“Got it.”

“It was useful work—not particularly interesting, but satisfying.  I made friends among my co-workers. It was there that I met Ironhide—that was not his name then, ‘Dion’ might be a close approximation. He was the project architect for a new terminal wing that was going up. During my breaks, I would go watch the construction. I had many questions.”

Kim could picture it; Optimus now seemed interesting in everything. As a young person he must have been so curious….

“I was diligent and earnest. I took my work very seriously. I solved a number of minor problems and came to the attention to the First of Line running the facility. She was a scientist by design, but like me, the necessity of war had placed a different task before her. And like me, she was young and keen.” He paused. “I was happy.”

Kim nodded, trying to keep her body relaxed. She had been taught not to reflect back too much emotion when listening to informants, but Optimus’ sensors could follow her metabolic and electromagnetic state as easily as he could read her facial expressions.

“It was a short, but very brutal, war. The Quintessons never distinguished between soldiers and civilians. They saw all of us as their property.” He paused again.

When the silence  had continued for several seconds, Kim opened the glyph app and sent: Sympathetically * Listening.

“They broke through our lines and attacked the port.” Optimus reset his vocalizer. “Megatron fought in that war. He had no name, then, only a number. The lowest level, most disposable infantry—more or less cannon fodder. But he distinguished himself. He was a surprise. And spoken of—a human might say ‘hero.’ He was in that battle. Our defenders managed to keep our enemies from completely razing Kalis to slag.”

“The leader of the Decepticons?”

“Cybertron was not socially mobile in those days. The same caste rigidity that kept Megatron from being recognized as a hero during the war kept him from being rewarded or elevated after it was over. When peacetime came, he was reassigned to the mines.” Optimus sighed. “Again, only one step above an unsparked drone. It was unjust.”

Kim took a deep breath. This was more than anyone had said about Megatron yet.

“During the attack on Kalis, I was badly injured. There were many, and I…while useful when the port was operational, was not strategically important now that it was in ruins.”

“Oh. God.”

“I was nearly slagged. Dion and Ariel between them did not have the influence or resources to save me, but Ariel was a protégé of Alpha Trion. She requested his involvement and he rebuilt me himself.”

Kim swallowed. “Into a war frame?”

He looked at her for a long moment. “My struts he built to heavy combat specifications, but armor and weapons? No. Because I was designed for information management, he placed me as a clerk working under him at the great Iacon Database.” He smiled slightly. “I was a librarian.”

Kim smiled back. “I grok that,” she said softly.

“I wish I could tell you my history without also telling Megatron’s. I wish my history and the history of my people were not so full of error and injustice.”

“Do you want to finish another time?”

“No.” He shifted slightly. “Megatron earned enough in the mines to purchase the mods needed for semi-legal…’cage fighting’ in Kaon. This was not an uncommon path for lower-caste mecha, but unlike most he survived more than a few orns. He chose a name. He gained some notoriety.  And then, he started speaking out against inequality and exploitation. He was not wrong. I admired him greatly.

“Dion believed Megatronus was too chaotic and violent to bring about effective change. Ariel believed I was a hopeless romantic to imagine our social structure could change. I became something of an activist. There were petitions. Rallies. Meetings with senators and regional coordinators. Do you know the Russian term Samisdat?”

“Yeah,” Kim whispered.

“Alpha Trion increased my workload by thirty-one percent, assigning me to assess and categorize the oldest historical records. I thought at the time that he was trying to keep me busy to discourage political activity. Now…I believe he may have had the foresight to see that I would not have time for such careful research later.  It was a great deal of work. I upgraded my buffers so I could work faster.”

Slowly he leaned down and held out a hand. “Will you come closer for this?”

Kim put down her notebook, pocketed her phone, and climbed into the open servo. He lifted her slowly and set her on the highest of the boulders piled beside him. The rock was warm, but the sun was behind her and low enough to be comfortable. Kim was just below eye level now, and Optimus settled back a bit.

“What happened?” Kim asked.

“A great many of the subordinate were tired of their limited choices, limited resources, limited opportunities. Some in the higher castes could be convinced of the illogic of waste, the dangers of trying to contain widespread unrest. And others were moved by compassion. After nearly three Vorn the guardian of the Allspark, Sentinel Prime, stepped in and convinced the Senate to allow Megatron to present himself to the Great Matrix. The relics are not passive objects, you see. They choose their guardians. It was, perhaps, a clever plan. It is clear to me now that there was never a chance the Matrix would have found Megatron acceptable. Sentinel intended that the Senate would appease progressive forces by offering the chance. Megatron would be rejected, and the loss of status would erode his support.”

Kim shivered, despite the warmth. “Damn.”

“Indeed. It was unworthy to use a relic in political manipulation. But what happened surprised us. Megatron had brought companions with him, several members of his inner circle. He imagined his ascendance as a pinnacle moment. He wanted witnesses to carry the story.”

“And it didn’t pick him,” Kim guessed.

“It chose me instead.”

“Oh.”

“He perceived it as a plot on my part. A great, terrible betrayal, the final and worst in the long line of betrayals that composed his life.”

“He didn’t accept you.”

“He attempted to kill me while the Matrix was still incorporating itself into my system. Sentinel and Alpha Trion stopped him.” He turned his head and looked out over the desert for a long moment. “He injured them badly before he escaped. He spent the next three vorn in hiding, building a resistance. I spent that time trying to demonstrate that I was committed to our cause. I used my position to shape policy towards fairness and mercy. I rooted out and arrested those who abused their power to defy the law. I was relentless. I pushed so hard there was nearly a rebellion at the top. I hoped Megatron could be convinced that I had not betrayed him, not abandoned our dreams of peace and equity.”

“He didn’t believe it?”

“To my tremendous grief, no, I could not reach him. Eventually…” Optimus looked away, “He began his open rebellion with simultaneous attacks on the Senate Forum and the State House where I was living. Ariel was nearly killed. It was then that I was rebuilt as a war frame.”

 There was nothing Kim could say to this. Silently, she leaned forward and buried her face in her hands.

“I have fought this civil war for more than half my life, Kim. I have been victorious, and I have been defeated. I have presided at Kindling, entreating the Matrix to grant life and bring forth new sparks. I have mourned my teacher, my counterpart, many of my most beloved friends. I have killed countless multitudes of my own people.  I have lost my home by my own failures. I have succeeded in protecting very little from the Decepticons.”

There was nothing Kim could say to this. To be silent seemed like an abandonment, but what words were adequate?

“You ask about personhood, and if it is connected to form? Our philosophers asked this also. Am I a Prime or a soldier? Am I the power-hungry traitor Megatron still believes me to be? Or the compassionate servo of Primus Windblade expects? Am I the sum total of all I have been and all I will be? Or am I what I am in this flowing moment? Does my memory make myself? Or my spark? These were questions our philosophers stopped asking long before I was sparked.”

Kim’s stomach was in knots. How had this turned back into a philosophical discussion? Had he actually laid out his life story and bared terrible memories to illustrate a point of psychological theory? What the actual fuck?  Kim would have liked to put some distance between them, but perched on this rock there was nowhere to go. “So, um, identity is the wrong question.” She cleared her throat. “What is the right question?”

“Consciousness.”

“Oh.” She blinked slowly. “That is harder for us. Our science can’t pin down just what it is. We can barely describe it.”

“My science also has no explanation for organic consciousness.”

“Oh. So maybe by your standards…we aren’t….Oh.”

“Regardless of the source or nature of human sentience, compassion is not possible without it. Our species are very much alike.”

So, no, she wasn’t a lower life form. Kim managed a thin smile.  “Thank you,” she said.

“Do not thank me for acknowledging the truth.”

“No, thank you for walking me through all this. It wasn’t an easy conversation. Thank you.”

“You are welcome.” Almost absently, Kim noticed that his vents cycled slightly lower. She paid attention, now, to the sounds mecha made. She had seen Ratchet’s diagrams of so many interior systems. (She would not think of the tiny sparks flashing inside Strongarm’s torn abdomen or the scream of straining fans).  It was all becoming more familiar—the sounds and also the size, the smells, the lack of doors, the rhythm of their three-and-a-half day cycles.

 “Optimus, are you all right?”

“I am able to endure,” he answered quietly.

Kim’s eyes burned. “I’m glad.”

“Perhaps…it is enough for tonight,” he suggested.

“Is there anything I can do?”

His smile was careful and precise. “You must also endure.”

He lifted her down to the gritty path. Kim gathered her chair and bag and returned to the elevator.

TBC~

Chapter 2: Reciprocity

Chapter 2

Bulkhead was hovering at the railing when Kim came out on Sunday morning. “Good morning,” he said.

He looked like he was up to something. “Hi?” she said tentatively.

“I happened to notice there is nothing on your calendar today.”

“That’s…true,” Kim agreed. The trainees had the weekend off. Optimus, Ironhide, and Bumblebee had ground bridged out for international meetings in Scotland the day before.  Sunday had stretched out, open and possibly relaxing.  She eyed Bulkhead skeptically.

“I’ve heard,” he said, “that is, some ‘bots mentioned that sometimes anthropologists do favors for informants.”

Oh. That was all. “Sure. We can’t ever repay the help informants give us. And we learn things sometimes, from the sorts of favors people ask. What would you like?” 

“I need a—I think the term is ‘personal shopper.’ Sort of.”

Kim rocked slightly. “You can’t shop.” A horrified sympathy pricked at her. A planet full of things you only needed money to get—and they couldn’t—“But you have access to money. You can shop on line,” she protested weakly.

“And I can shop by phone. But I can’t pick up things for myself. I need someone to go in for me. A human.”

She was missing something. “If you shop on line, they deliver.”

“Well, yeah, but I can’t buy it yesterday and have it delivered on Sunday all the way out here. And if it does get delivered it goes through the liaison office, and Gomez works in the liaison office, so he’d know something had arrived.”

This was making less sense the more he explained. But. It was none of Kim’s business. Mecha couldn’t go into a store. A basic human freedom—a civil right for Americans, in fact, shopping was considered use of a public accommodation—and Bulkhead couldn’t do it.  “Is now a good time?”

“Actually, they don’t open for an hour. Bee says you eat food, though. When you’re in town. We could leave now, and you could do that.”

***

Jasper wasn’t Boston: the only place open at 9:30 on a Sunday morning was the Knock Out Burger. Kim made the best of it. At least the dubious ‘breakfast burrito’ was different then instant oatmeal or eggs at the DFAC.

To keep things light (it was Sunday, damn it, and apparently she didn’t get the day totally  off, but she wasn’t going to get into anything tragic or terrifying today) Kim asked about Bulkhead’s impressions of Earth.

“Complicated. I didn’t expect different sorts of organic life to be different from each other. That alligator, for example. I didn’t even check about it needing water. I checked the temperature in Nevada—it was within its acceptable limits.”

Kim smothered a smile and wished she could have gotten fries with the burrito. “Hey, if you don’t try something new now and then, how are you going to find out what works?”

“Heh. Yeah. And you should have seen the look on Lennox’s face.”

“Any other cool animals?” A tiny bit of egg slipped free, and Kim snatched it before it could sully Bulkhead’s seat.

“Zebras.  I like those. And emu.”

“You’ve been to a zoo?” Kim asked, puzzled.

“No, on patrol. I’d love to see a zoo.  I don’t fit.”

Kim winced. Obviously. She needed to pay attention. “What about human stuff?”

“Well, I can do without Mardi Gras,” he said. “I’ll never live that one down. I’m sure you‘ve heard.”

“I don’t think I have the details.”

Bulkhead sighed.

“What about other holidays? Independence Day is coming up.”

“Oh, yeah. That one’s great.”

“It is?” Kim was delighted the conversation had moved in that direction with no great effort on her part, but this was not the response she had expected. “Why?”

“I love fireworks. Did you know NEST has our own party? With our own fireworks.”

“Oh. Yeah. Aren’t the explosions kind of primitive and small by your standards.”

“Well, yeah, but that doesn’t—It’s the control, the finesse! Kim, your people paint pictures in explosions! Who thinks of that? Who devotes generations of research and development for transforming destruction into art! The degree of precision it takes to turn gunpowder into something beautiful…I love humans.”

“Oh.” Kim said.

Bulkhead wasn’t finished. “I’m going to tell you something—don’t make a big deal out of it, or we’ll get in trouble. I mean, it is sort of wasteful, but it’s our groundbridge and Prime doesn’t mind.”

“Mind what?”

“Well, the fireworks on base are nice, but there isn’t much to them. So, on the actual Fourth—I mean, we could go up to the show at Nellis or into Vegas, but New York has the light reflections from the river and everything….”

He paused, and Kim thought he might want a response. “Oh. Well, yeah,” she agreed.

You have to pick the right viewing spot, not just for the view, but because when it’s done you have to get out of all that traffic into a private spot for the bridge to open. And you can’t take too long because you want to get to San Diego before it is completely dark on the West Coast.”

“I didn’t think about that,” Kim said, covering her astonishment with a safe field-answer.

“Now if you want the very best fireworks, you go on New Year’s.  I like Sydney and London best. Although Taiwan is really creative about launching.”

“Huh.”

“You done eating? The store’s open.”

“Yeah, let’s do this.”

*** 

It was two stores actually: An electronics store and the hardware store. At the first, Bulkhead said, “I gave them the order by phone last night with my credit card number. I said my mom would pick it up for me today.”

“Your mom. Bulkhead, I’m twenty-seven! I don’t look like the mother of someone who would need things from a hardware store.”

“Um,” he said doubtfully. “Okay?”

Kim sighed. “I’ll say I’m your aunt.”

“If you say so.”

The booty from both stores filled much of the back seat. It was all electronics supplies—small motors, capacitors, LEDs, wifi receivers….actually, Kim had no idea what most of the stuff did. “Um, Bulkhead…you aren’t repairing yourself or anything, are you?”  He had not been enthusiastic the last time Ratchet had had him on a berth.

“Myself? What, with this?” He laughed. “Nah. Human stuff is way too fragile.”

Kim glanced at the back seat again. She was trying to ignore her curiosity—no, she would not press for explanations. She would not take advantage of Bulkhead’s limitation—but curiosity was being joined by worry. That was a lot of…parts.  What if Bulkhead was up to something problematic?

She was not their baby sitter.

What if he were up to something dangerously ill-advised?

“I suppose this is for a prank,” she heard herself say.

“Well, I’ll tell you. But you have to promise not to tell Gomez or Graham.”

“Okay.”

“It’s for the drone races.”

Kim blinked. Drones? She cast aside the image of male bees and considered remote-controlled, flying assassins. “Where?”

“Behind the NEST motor pool. Early in the morning.  Just the guys who live on base. They get bored.”

“When you say drones…are you talking about military equipment?”

He laughed. “Nah.  Toys. Little human cars.”

“You race little toy cars,” Kim repeated slowly. “Huh.”  She glanced at the bags crowding the back seat. “Bulkhead! Are you cheating?”

“No. Absolutely not. There aren’t any rules against using Earth tech to soup up the Earth toys.”

“But I take it Graham and Gomez are the competition?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, not the only competition. But. You aren’t going to tell, are you?”

“Of course not. It’s none of my business.”

***

Since she had nothing scheduled, Kim decided on lunch at the NEST dining facility.  She went by way of the broad drive-tunnel. It was a long walk, but it was pleasant not to hurry. The base was vast, everything was far apart, but there were still just twenty-four hours in a day. Kim felt like she was always running to get somewhere.

When she reached the ground bridge center, Kim ducked into the control alcove. Maggie wouldn’t be there—she only worked alternate weekends—but Fixit might. 

Fixit was, and hummed happily when he saw her, but to Kim’s surprise the human working with him was Pierre.

“You’re back!” Kim said. Ratchet had rejected the remaining members of the last batch of trainees right after the battle with Nautilator. “I had no idea.”

He smiled shyly. “Not quite. Ground bridge technician, not mech repair.”

“How?”

Pierre shrugged one shoulder. “Ratchet recommended me.”

Kim blinked. That had never happened before. “And Dan?”

“No, only me. Dan is working for a Pentagon contractor. In Maryland, I think.”

“Huh.” But perhaps it was not so surprising: Pierre had been both careful and kind. Kim had been the most hopeful about his prospects. “Listen, I’m off to lunch. You hungry?”

His smile turned apologetic, as he pointed to a Snoopy lunch box on a back shelf. “I need to spend lunch reading the documentation. This thing is crazy complicated. Some other time.”

Kim nodded. “Congratulations, though.  Welcome back. What about you, Fixit? You due for a break?”

***

Sundays at the dining facility were quiet: the tables were nearly empty and lunch options were limited to cold salads and sandwiches.  It was still a treat for someone who didn’t get to the store often enough to keep lettuce on hand.  Kim showed her ID and filled her tray, feeling only slightly guilty at taking the last slice of carrot cake.

Most of the NEST crew Kim knew best had an apartment in Jasper or commuted from family housing on Nellis, so they were gone for the weekend. The new trainee Carly was sitting by herself in the corner. She was reading, though, so Kim settled at an empty table. She had barely sat down when Jetstorm and Slipstream appeared. “May we sit with you?” Slipstream asked.

“We do not need to sit,” Jetstorm corrected. “We just want to say hi.”

“Hi, guys. Sure, have a—”

With a dark look at his partner, Slipstream sat. The bench creaked slightly. Jetstorm folded his arms and sat, giving the table a definite slant.

“So? What’s new?” It was clear that if she wanted any time off, Kim would have to go to town to get it. On the other hand, nothing in town was likely to be more interesting than whatever was making Jetstorm glare like that.

“I have been told you are willing to obtain items mecha cannot access.”

“Oh. Personal shopper. Yeah.” Wow, that had gotten around fast.

Slipstream paused. “Personal shopper is a professional service. That is acceptable.” He smiled. It looked awkward on him, and Kim suspected he got very little practice. “I will hire you. Are market rates acceptable?”

“What? No, I didn’t mean you need to pay me!”

“She already has a job,” Jetstorm snapped. “She does not have time to waste on your foolish ideas.”

“It will not take a great deal of time.” Slipstream decisively turned his back on his brother. “I wish to obtain a kitten.”

Kim goggled.

“You don’t even know if it is legal for a non-human to own a domestic mammal,” Jetstorm protested angrily.

“There is no law against it in Nevada.  NEST has no policy against it. The Prime has not forbidden it.” Slipstream leaned imploringly across the table. “Please. I cannot leave the base.  I cannot get it delivered.”

“You can’t have a kitten!” Kim yelped.

Jetstorm looked triumphant. Slipstream sagged. “May I ask why?” he asked meekly.

There were so many reasons why that for a long moment Kim couldn’t figure out where to begin.  “Oh, Slipstream. A kitten isn’t a starter pet. It isn’t even a starter organic. You can’t just….”

“I would take good care of it,” he protested.

Kim’s horror found words: “It would be dead in a week! If that.”

Slipstream dropped his optical blast shields and emitted a series of sad whines.

“You did not have to be so harsh,” Jetstorm said. “Although you are surely correct.”

“I would not harm the kitten,” Slipstream said, sounding hurt. “I have researched what they eat. I would never feed one adult food until it was a full year old.”

Jetstorm slid closer to him, into overlapping distance.

Kim swallowed. “Of course, you wouldn’t! But look around: It so big here, and so busy.  And kittens are small, and their behavior is unpredictable and uncontrollable. You can’t talk to them and warn them. Would their magnetic fields even register? How would Jazz feel if he stepped on one?  And—and they climb into machinery. What if it ran away—”

“My kitten would not run away.”

Dear God! “--Went exploring and climbed into the ground bridge hatch? Is that safe? Slipstream, I see gaps in your armor big enough for a kitten to climb into. And you are warm. They seek out warm spots.  And kittens chew on wires.”

“They are not aggressive,” he said indignantly. “It would not harm me.”

“They are very aggressive. They were domesticated because they hunt rodents! And they won’t know what you are. There is nothing in their evolution like you. Even cars are not like you—but sometimes cats die because they lick coolant leaks—”

Jetstorms eyes reset twice. Slipstream made the sad noise again.

Kim sighed and glanced at the salad she had lost interest in. “It can’t be a kitten.”

“I understand.” Slipstream reset his vocalizer. “Thank you for preventing my disastrous mistake.”

“An adult cat.” The concession slipped out even as Kim tried to talk herself out of it. “A very old, very fat cat. The biggest cat we can find. And no youtube tutorials—you read an actual book on pet care. And you know it’s going to poop, right? You clean up the litterbox.”

“Of course. I desire to be a responsible pet owner.”

Naturally. “All right. Order the supplies and set them up somewhere acceptable for a cat and…I’ll pick one up from the humane society.”

“Thank you. I will be forever in your debt!” Slipstream leaned backward on the bench, transformed into a sphere, and zoomed out of the DFAC.

Jetstorm stood up, his optics in unwavering focus on Kim’s face. “Master Drift was counting on you to put an end to this foolish obsession.”

Oh. Scrap. “Master Drift was free to say so—wait a minute. I thought Slipstream was an adult.”

His chin lifted sharply. “If you mean to imply otherwise—” he began.

“I’m not anybody’s mother. It is my job to make things work, not to find ways to say no.” Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t be unfair.” Justice and balance were both important to Drift. Kim wasn’t sure what else to say in her defense. She pulled her salad closer and ate determinedly until Jetstorm humpfed at her and stumped away.

***

Monday morning’s mech anatomy lesson—sensory capability—was interrupted by Cliffjumper, who was herded across the yellow line by Arcee. “He’s smelled funky all week,” she announced, “but when we met up at the rendezvous point to bridge back he positively reeked. Do something.”

“It’s nothing. I probably drove through something. I’ll go wash my wheel wells.”

Ratchet waved a hand over Cliffjumper and visibly flinched.  “Epps, unfold a berth, please.”

“Aw. Come on. Ratch! She’s blowing it all out of proportion.”

Epps laid out a berth. June and Carly pushed a worktable into position next to it, so the humans would have a place to watch them. Ratchet frowned slightly at the presumption, but set the brake so the platform was stable when the four human trainees and the ethnographer climbed up to observe.

“Lie down and open up,” Ratchet said frostily. He didn’t even bother with threats or criticisms.

Cliffjumper took his time positioning himself on the bed. Arcee folded her arms and glared, her armor glittering as the new mods let her shift the panels in impatient flickers. Ratchet’s left servo unfolded a camera with a long magnification lens. “Open.”

With a put-upon sigh, Cliffjumper split and retracted his outer and inner chest plates, revealing a torso full of complex mechanisms. Most of what was visible was covered in tough cushioning cable, but Kim identified the brachial actuators from Ratchet’s lectures. And the secondary sensor router. And nests of fans and radiator plates that made up his primary coolant system.

Then she noticed the smell. It was not exactly unpleasant—earthy and damp, a little like mildew and a little like swamp. It was a weird smell to come from a mech.

Abruptly, June leaned out and down, one hand reaching out to point at the inner surface of Cliffjumper’s armor. “Ratchet, what is that?”

Ratchet’s fans shot to high and then abruptly clicked off.  He straightened, faceplates rippling but not into a frown. He seemed to be appalled past the ability of the human language protocols to convey it. “What does it look like, Nurse Darby?”

The place June was pointing at was discolored with smears of dark grey and white. In the light it seemed to be wet. “It looks like an infection.” June’s voice was doubtful: mecha didn’t get infections. Parts could fail. High wear areas could, occasionally, rust. Processors could get a code virus. Mecha could—very rarely—suffer from nanite collapse.  But there was no mech equivalent for bacterial infection.

“Yes.” Ratchet said inflectionless. “That is what it is.”

Cliffjumper squirmed on the berth. “Don’t move.” Ratchet snapped. He passed the lens over the inner armor surface nest to the air intake grill. He passed the lens over the mysterious internals. He rocked back slightly, eyes going unfocused as he turned his attention inward.

“What’s going on,” Epps whispered. Carly shook her head, her eyes on the discoloration.

Dr. Nomura said—with a flatness that matched Ratchet’s—"I would guess condensation has created an environment hospitable to mold.”

Cliffjumper held very still but began to chirp in Cybertronix. It was a long monologue compared to others Kim had heard.  The words hissed and beeped and sometimes there were hard, voiced vowels. Ratchet ignored him.

“The infection appears to be mainly common Chlorophyta—though what it’s been eating in the dark I couldn’t tell you--but I have identified Aspergillus and Stachybotrys in the population. These are hazardous to humans. Kim, I believe you know where the masks and gloves are.”

Yes, she knew where the human safety equipment was. Obediently, Kim began the climb down from the table.

“Epps, find me a bucket to put this filter in. All his filters in. Make it steel—we’ll need to melt it down later. And Primus Below, Cliffjumper, be quiet. If you’d purge your filters occasionally and not keep your warning thresholds set so high, you wouldn’t have this problem. I’m tempted to completely flush you out with benzine and have done with it.”

Dr. Nomura cleared his throat and looked amused.

“You have a comment?” Ratchet snapped.

“Oh, no. You are clearly an expert on organic infestations. Obviously, dousing the patient in toxic waste will kill the mold.”

“Kim,” June called down. “Do you have any bleach in your laundry supplies?”

“Only about a quart.”

Ratchet threw up his hands. “Quart? That isn’t even a real measurement!”

“More than enough,” June said. “Bobby, we’ll need two buckets.”

Right then Kim’s phone began to vibrate aggressively.  Over the P.A. a staccato Cybertronix honking echoed against the stone walls. “What is it,” Kim asked, fumbling for her phone.

“Duty stations,” Epps said, fiddling with his headset. 

Kim’s mouth went dry. “Decepticons?”

“Probably. I’ve got to go—”

Ratchet’s ped was suddenly in his way. “You are assigned to me. You deploy where I say you do.”

“You’ve got to let me--”

“Wait.”

Kim’s phone had an ‘ALERT’ text and a stream of glyphs going by too fast to sort.

Epps gripped his ear piece, his eyes narrowing. “Ratchet, we have an open bridge. You have to let me—”

“Where?” Kim asked.

It was Ratchet who answered. “The delegation in Edinburgh. There has been an explosion. Ironhide believes it was deliberate. It appears to be of human origin.”

Edinburgh: Optimus. Bee. Ironhide. Lennox. Graham. Mr. Keller. Oh, God. Kim realized she was shaking.

The P.A. announcement changed. The new repeating phrase was a metallic clatter followed by a chirp in rising tones.

“We are on standby,” Ratchet announced.

Kim’s phone agreed with that. Kim stared at the screen. Seconds slipped by—one minute, then two. It would be very early in the morning in Scotland.

Ratchet was opening cabinets, snatching out equipment and making it disappear.

Another minute.

Cliffjumper said, “Ratch, I’m just gonna--”

“You aren’t going anywhere like that.”

Abruptly, the P.A fell silent. Ratchet snapped the last cupboard shut and stalked over to loom over them. “Listen carefully. The site has been secured. I will be bridging over to confirm the status of the delegation.” Epps opened his mouth. Ratchet cut him off with a gesture. “No. You will all stay here and complete preparations for decontamination. In my absence, Sergeant Epps will be in charge. Yes, this is a test. Do not fail it. Arcee, please accompany me.”

The humans and Cliffjumper watched until they had passed beyond the curve of the tunnel.

“You heard him,” June said at last. “If there are no injuries he won’t be gone long. Kim, you go get the bleach. Carly and I will try to remember where the brushes and shop towels are.”

Epps grunted. “Dr. Nomura, let’s see if we can get a table the right height to work from.”

***

Ratchet was gone nearly  half an hour. It was enough time to position two tables just above Cliffjumper’s open chassis, mix up a bucket of warm bleach water, and lay out a set of small brushes, disposable swabs, and shop towels. 

“I’m going to text a picture to Ratchet,” Epps said, “and see if he’ll just let us start.”

“What?” Cliffjumper protested. “Hey!”

“We’ve all cleaned up stuff like this before,” June pointed out. “It’s not strange and scary to us.”

Dr. Nomura said, “Does anyone have an expired drivers’ license or college ID he or she would be willing to sacrifice? We are going to need something like a spatula for that broad inner surface.”

“We could go appropriate an actual spatula from the kitchen,” Epps said, lining up a shot of the prepped tools on his camera.

“I will not scrape at him with metal, Sergeant.”

“I have a Boston library card,” Kim said. She wouldn’t need that again. She could not imagine ever going back.  She climbed down the grips to retrieve her wallet from her purse.

Ratchet’s voice came out of all their phones a moment before he cleared the curve: “Well, I see you have made quick progress.”

“Ratchet!” Cliffjumper wailed. “Don’t let them! In the name of Primus—” He broke off suddenly and began to run systems checks. Kim wondered what Ratchet had told him over the radio that subdued him so thoroughly.

The humans clustered in a corner of the table, waiting for Ratchet’s huge strides to close the distance between them. It was Epps who was brave enough to ask, “What happened in Edinburgh?”

Ratchet’s vents wooshed for a moment. “One of the representatives at the conference—don’t ask me which country, I should probably care, but I don’t—decided that all aliens are a threat and improvised an explosive. Prime erected a compression field over it with nearly a second to spare, so no one was injured. They are continuing the conference. Don’t ask my opinion on that, because it is not relevant.”

He waited a moment, but none of the humans asked him anything.

“Let’s get to work then. Some of Cliffjumper’s inhabitants are replicating every ten minutes.” Ratchet’s wrist manifested a data line which he connected Cliffjumper’s port. “I see you are equipped to remove the main mass of organic colonies, but to sluice enough sodium hypochlorite to kill every cell would leave a residue on both sensors and protomatter.  Isopropyl alcohol evaporates more cleanly.”  It was his testing voice. Kim relaxed fractionally, hearing it. Ratchet didn’t lecture during emergencies.

Dr. Nomura cleared his throat. “We had not intended to sterilize Cliffjumper with bleach. Algae and fungus cannot survive in temperatures above fifty-two degrees Celsius, but that is well within the safety range of his hardware. After we remove the bulk of the infection, any remaining contamination can be killed off with a…medically induced fever and disposed of by a nanite sweep.”

“I see. Are any alternative plans on the table? No? You may begin.”

***

The mask over her face was warm and smelled papery. The feeling of rubber gloves on her hands was weird and uncomfortable. She held the chum bucket, leaning out over Cliffjumper’s internals at odd angles so Carly, June, and Dr. Nomura could dump used swabs and wads of black and green and grey goop into it.

The little brushes quickly became clotted. Ratchet forbid them to rinse and reuse anything—disposable and not, everything that touched the infection had to be discarded.  Ratchet would use none of it again. Kim glanced up at him when she could—he was watching impassively, occasionally commenting on how to move a cable aside or angle under a mechanism.  Containing (heroically, Kim thought) his revulsion, he pulled and discarded Cliffjumper’s filters himself.  Ratchet’s hatred of the whole planet was an ongoing issue, and today a human had just tried to assassinate the Prime and one of his patients was infected with disgusting goo.

Kim could sympathize. That night she cleaned the Cold War barracks bathroom. She was out of bleach, so she used all the vinegar she had. She still felt kind of icky when it was done. Ugh.

Ratchet had probably showered in benzine. He was old enough that he should have been able to cope with anything, but apparently nothing in his long life had prepared him for Earth. Kim wondered if mecha had psychologists. Or—was this the kind of problem you fixed by writing a new algorithm or something?  Probably, getting used to biology had already taken yards of new code.

Chapter 3

When Kim opened her door on Tuesday morning, Slipstream was waiting in the dingy Cold War hallway. “I paid for expedited delivery. The cat environmental equipment will arrive today.”

Kim blinked sleepily. How had she ever thought Slipstream was the quiet one? “Uh. Great.” She pointed toward the bathroom. “I need to go do…human things.”

“I understand.  I just wanted to tell you the good news.”

All sorts of messages were sent by text, but the impending arrival of cat food and a litter box required a personal announcement. She would have to remember to write that down. “Start checking the websites of the local shelters for large elderly cats.” She patted his shoulder, and—one hand tugging down her nightshirt, although Slipstream probably cared more about her outfit’s lack of fashion than what it was covering—padded onward to the bathroom.

 

***

She had learned to check the schedule while eating breakfast. Today, her heart sank at once: Ratchet had cancelled class. Surely, he was not rejecting this cohort after only one week!

The only trainee whose phone number was in the directory was Epps, but all of the trainees had access to the schedule—and all of them had twigged to it more quickly than Kim had. She added an event: Trainee study session; Cold War bunker; 9:30; snacks provided.

She put her emergency sodas in the minifridge.

She thought for a few minutes and then direct-messaged Ratchet and Cliffjumper to ask if they were okay. Cliffjumper replied with glyphs for immaculate and virtuous. Ratchet replied with English text: BUSY.

Okay, then.

Kim wiped down the table in the Cold War conference room and vacuumed the floor.  

Sometime last week the magnificent, ancient vacuum had appeared outside the double doors to the mezzanine. It had been cleaned.  It weighed half what it had before. It had a rechargeable power-pack rather than a cord. As far as Kim could tell, Ratchet had completely rebuilt it.  Was it possible Ratchet loved this vacuum as much as Kim did?

Determined, she raided her printer paper and laid out pens. The chairs were wooden—from the sixties, even? She dusted them, wishing for furniture spray.

The trainees arrived on time. They had all used the restroom back there—it was closer to the med bay than the break area behind the ground bridge control center.   Carly, who had never given any thought to the Cold War or military spaces, declared it the weirdest place ever.  Once seated around the table, though, she was all business. “We should each make a list of the things that confuse us most. Maybe we can make some progress together. Or Kim might get one of the others to explain the complicated stuff to her.”

Kim refrained from pointing out that she was not the only one empowered to ask Autobots questions. They needed encouragement, not criticism: their teacher was the most discouraging person Kim had ever met.

While the others (including Kim, herself) began to list confusing topics, Dr. Nomura busied himself with his phone. After a few minutes of watching him from the corner of her eye, Kim put down her pen and turned to him. “Say, do you know anything about energon?”

He looked up, brows lifting slightly. “Are our partners unwilling to discuss it with you?”

Carly and Epps glanced up.

“A few do seem to avoid the topic,” Kim said, leaning forward and trying to open her body language. “The ones that do talk about it either go into technical detail on what it does or get weirdly poetic and metaphorical about what it means.”

He laid his phone down. “Ah. And you wish to know…?”

“Well, for a start, I want to know what it is.”

“Ha. So would I. We are still trying to determine its molecular make-up.”

“Wait,” Carly said. “We put things in spectrometers and analyze them. We have to at least know its component elements.”

“You would think so, but no,” Dr. Nomura replied. “We put energon in one of our spectrometers and we get a broken spectrometer.”

Carly gaped at him. June asked, “Well, what do we call it? I mean, it’s a mineral, right? Found in the ground here on Earth? We have to call it something.”

“Again, you would think so.” He shrugged. “With all the mining and drilling we have done all over the world, surely someone would have found this mineral and named it something, put samples into geological collections, tried to make jewelry out of it, et cetera. But, again, no.”

Kim buried her face in her hands. Discussing energon with humans was, if anything, even more weird and bewildering than discussing it with the aliens that ate it.

“Now wait a minute,” Epps protested. “It’s not invisible. I’ve seen it. And it isn’t deep, I’ve helped mine it. Even if it’s as rare as—as—”

“Platinum,” Carly suggested. “Or palladium?”

“Even if it’s as rare as diamonds, we should have noticed it,” Epps said.

“Yes,” Dr. Nomura said solemnly. “Even if it were rarer than any of those we should have noticed it. We should have dug it up, named it something, studied it, found a way to tap its energy. And, in fact, a small amount was discovered in Peru five years ago. It was treated as a minor puzzle—a curiosity in geological circles—until our partners noticed the discussions on the internet shortly after their arrival.  One of NEST’s priorities has been searching for energon ever since.”

“We’ve been finding it,” Epps said. “I think our total for last year was almost eight hundred pounds. Prime was so pleased he threw us a party. It, uh, wasn’t a very good party.” He glanced at Kim. “That’s about the time he started tossing around the idea of hiring a human cultural expert, actually.”

“How big do the deposits get?” Kim asked, thinking of the tiny one in Canada.

Dr. Nomura answered, “The largest so far was a quarter ton.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” June protested. “How have we not noticed five hundred pound chunks of alien superfuel?”

“It does not,” he agreed. “I cannot believe humans failed to notice the existence of energon for thousands of years. But likewise, I cannot believe it has appeared from nothingness. It is a great enigma.” He turned to Kim. “What have they told you?”

“It has to be refined—but it doesn’t take much to refine it. It is fuel, but our word doesn’t cover the whole meaning. They can use other fuel sources—petroleum products, if you refine the heck out of them, or there is this thing they do with solar energy—to supplement power generation, if they need to. But energon is perfect—there is no pollution, no waste products. It’s what nourishes—another word that doesn’t cover the meaning—protomatter.” Kim shrugged. “When I try to get more specific information they get confused.”

Slowly, June said, “There are secrets they don’t share.”

“You mentioned metaphor,” Dr. Nomura prompted.

“Chromia—who is usually very practical—told me, ‘energon is the beginning and all that comes after.’ It might have been an aphorism. Jazz said that human mothers fed their children from their bodies. ‘And it is the same with Primus; he feeds us with his energon.’ I can almost understand that: even human societies that rely mainly on one or two staple foods tend to pile on lots of symbolism.”

“Comprehensible, Dr. Montgomery. But not helpful.”

 Kim could not argue with that.

“Okay,” Carly said. “We don’t know what it is or where it comes from or how much there is or why we didn’t notice it sooner. Let’s start from the other end of things. What do we know about refining, consumption, and metabolism?”

It turned out they didn’t know much. Dr. Nomura knew what equipment was involved and what it, putatively, did, but not why that process would turn dense, oily crystals into  liquid. Carly remembered the parts of the ingestion diagram from Ratchet’s class, but she had no theories on the primary powerplant or energy distribution.

When it was clear that they were circling back over the same baffling territory over and over, Kim fetched the soda, string cheese, little cans of tuna, and crackers.

Munching, Carly flipped through her notebook of diagrams and detailed little sketches. “What’s this thing labeled ‘spark chamber’ do?” she asked.

Epps made a face. “It’s where they keep their souls.”

June’s cracker broke in her hand. “What?”

Dr. Nomura frowned. “Not their souls. It’s an operating system stored as an energy wave in a magnetic bottle.”

“Not according to them,” Epps said firmly.

“Is that what they have said to you, Dr. Montgomery?” Dr. Nomura asked.

Kim shifted uncomfortably. The conversation had strayed very close to mech reproduction—although the others didn’t realize it yet.  Her eyes on the table, she answered, “The spark is life. They can survive the loss of almost everything else, but if spark containment fails, it’s over. It organizes undifferentiated  protomatter into a living protoform.”

“How does that work?” June asked.

“I don’t know,” Kim hedged. “I’m not an engineer.”

Carly was doodling diagrams of protomatter spicules. “But where does the spark come from?”

Kim was saved from having to answer by Slipstream’s appearance at the door. “The cat environmental components have arrived. You must check to see if I have installed them correctly.”

Kim fled, avoiding eye contact with the confused humans.

***

Slipstream had cleaned out a two-room office suite at the far end of the hall and installed—

--Good heavens.

It looked like he had installed half a pet store. Scratching posts with climbing platforms lined the walls.  Some were connected by cute little hammocks. A basked of feathery toys was on the ancient desk beside a basket of toy mice. The center of the room displayed a large, bristly lowercase n  standing on a low pedestal—what was that even for?

The litter box was mechanized.

A covered pet bed was plugged into the wall—possibly it was heated.

A little fountain trickling water sat enshrined next to two porcelain pet dishes posed on a tiny stand.

“Is it adequate?” Slipstream asked nervously.

Kim ran her hands over her face and through her short hair. “Yeah…food?”

“Twenty-five kilograms. It should be enough for several weeks.”

Kim sighed. “Okay. Find a cat.”

“I have found one. Isn’t that good news? She is in a shelter near Las Vegas. She is estimated to be five years old and weighs eight kilograms. Her leg was broken, and she is still under observation, but I have made the arrangements over the internet. You can pick her up tomorrow.”

This was moving far faster than Kim had planned, but there was nothing for it. It sounded like Slipstream had found an ideal specimen. A cat with a broken leg would not be moving very fast or climbing very much.  Kim looked around the room.  Was that a three-tiered track ball?  Although it was possible this might somehow end in disaster, if she were an injured stray cat, she’d want to take a chance on this lovingly prepared paradise.

“Tomorrow. Okay, send the address to my phone and I’ll get my car out of storage tomorrow and--”

“Oh, no!” he said quickly. “You must not drive yourself! Humans should be discouraged from driving, and Las Vegas is such a very long way! No. Bumblebee has agreed to transport you to retrieve the cat.”

Kim tipped her head slightly back. “What do you mean, ‘humans should be discouraged from driving?’ Is that a rule?”

“It is unsafe for humans to transport themselves, particularly without escort. An average of 3,287 humans die in roadway accidents each day.”

“Oh. Right,” Kim said weakly. “I know this part. Our cars are badly built, and we drive at highway speeds faster than our reflexes.”

Slipstream nodded. “You understand.”

“But—NEST guys drive.”

“Yes. But they are escorted. It is not an ideal situation, but sometimes it is necessary.”

“So, I’m not allowed to drive.”

“Oh, no. You cannot be prevented from driving if you wish. It would be wrong to infringe upon human freedom. But – Oh, Prime would be very angry if you were to take such an unreasonable risk and endanger yourself in a favor to me.”

“Right.” Kim took a deep breath. It did not steady her. “Unreasonable risk. But Bumblebee isn’t here.”

“He’ll be back today. I’ve already asked him. He doesn’t mind.”

“Oh. I guess it’s settled then. Uh, who am I saying I am? That I’m picking up the cat you—” What was the word? Ordered? Adopted?

“My personal shopper. They are expecting you.”

“Right. Obviously.”

She walked down the hall to her room and shut the door softly.  Some moments it was all too….something. Her life was crazy. She couldn’t drive herself.  Humans were too slow and clumsy to handle automobiles. Even on the way here, they’d escorted her on the highway, something she’d forgotten to ask about. There was just so much going on, so many other things to wonder about and it had slipped her mind.

Well. Now she knew.

I’m not allowed to drive. How long had it been since she’d driven? Six weeks? More? Would her car even start? How long did it take for the battery to fade? She hadn’t stopped to think about it.

I’m not allowed to drive. But that wasn’t true. Was it? Slipstream had said no one would actually stop her. Driving was just persuasively discouraged.

Am I trapped? Do I feel trapped? She’d hardly driven in grad school. She hadn’t driven in the field—traffic in Boston was a nightmare. What if I want to take a vacation at home? The family would want to see her sooner or later.  

Kim was making more than enough money to afford a plane ticket.

I never go anywhere anyway. Where do I go? Jasper? The old bombing range? My work is all here.

Squishy bodies in badly made cars driving at highway speeds faster than human reflexes. It was crazy when you thought about it.

It is something my species has been doing for a hundred years.

Ugh.

Sarah had worn a hijab for fourteen months in the field. Not driving wasn’t more of an infringement than that.  Jack had lived in a tent in hundred-degree heat every summer for six years.  This wasn’t a bigger inconvenience than that.  Hell, I’ve eaten herring and drunk vodka—Russian parties are way harder to cope with than being ferried to Las Vegas by an Autobot.

How unfair to them, though, having to babysit the fragile humans.

She should sit down, write this all out, collect the data. She should do her job.

Kim curled up on the narrow (but comfortable) bed and stared at the wall until Carly knocked on the door to see if she wanted to walk over to lunch.

***

Kim didn’t mention the moratorium on driving to the others.  Dr. Nomura and Carly had temporary quarters in the barracks wing of human country. June commuted to Jasper. Epps had an apartment in the scruffy and old base ‘housing’ on the far side of the mesa.  If any of them were being discouraged from driving, they hadn’t noticed yet.

The trainees all went separate ways after lunch.  Kim took the narrow shortcut back to Bot country and settled in on the balcony to write up the cat saga so far in detail.  This experiment in Earth pet ownership was clearly a first for the mecha. Really, it was a privilege to be able to watch it happen.

She tried not to speculate on all the ways it could go wrong.

Her phone announced the arrival of a schedule change: Her regular meeting with Optimus had appeared but at an irregular time and place: eight pm, in the ground bridge annex.

They’re coming home tonight, she thought. A tense, unhappy feeling she’d been ignoring unclenched. She tapped accept and the item pinned to her calendar.

She could, she supposed, understand how they wouldn’t want humans driving. She wasn’t thrilled about Bots hanging out with terrorists.

***

Fowler heard about the cat thing. He showed up on the balcony, asking to see the cat habitat. “Are you sure this isn’t one of their practical jokes?” He asked worriedly, looking around the converted office suite.

“If it is, it better not be on the cat,” Kim said. She was fairly certain Slipstream was earnest, but if she was wrong…. “I’ll rat him out so fast to Optimus his head will spin. Or whatever.”

“Hmmm.”

“Do guys on base keep pets? I mean, humans?”

“Generally, not. At least not here. The situation is kind of unusual.” He thought for a minute. “Lennox’s kids have fish.”  He sighed.  “Well. Maybe it won’t be a complete disaster.”

Gee, thanks, Kim thought. But she didn’t say it out loud, because he was right.

~ TBC

Notes:

I hate pet fic.
Just to be clear, I don't hate pets. Just pet fic.

Chapter 3: Interlocution

Chapter 4

Kim got to the ground bridge station just before eight.  Fowler was waiting on top of a gantry.  Fixit and Maggie were both at the controls, though she usually left at five. Drift, Jazz, and Bulkhead were loitering up the tunnel.  Not that we’re eager to see them, Kim thought. She rolled her shoulders and practiced looking patient and calm.

There was a sudden flurry of activity at the control panel and an old-fashioned alarm—reminiscent of the fire alarm at Kim’s first grade school—briefly sounded.  The round ground bridge aperture lit up in a green and purple shimmer.  Even though she had been expecting it, Kim jumped a little.  The light deepened to dark pink, churning and melting. For a moment it seemed to recede—like a tunnel stretching off into the distance, although the cut stone wall was only ten feet behind the circular frame. Then it was too bright to look right at.

Were there shapes?  Kim blinked, and suddenly Arcee was there, three sleek motorcycles moving in tandem. She pulled at once to the side, the three components looking—for just a moment—like a terrible crash as they came together and merged into her single root form.

By the time Kim looked back at the bridge, Optimus was emerging. He transformed without slowing, nodded at the control crew and Fowler, and stepped out of the way.  There were dark grey streaks on his lower abdomen—almost in a starburst pattern. One thin stripe crossed over his left lateral grillwork, blistering the sparkling chrome.

For a moment Kim couldn’t drag her eyes away. By the time she looked back at the bridge aperture, Bumblebee was already through and pausing to let General Morshower and Captain Lennox climb out and retrieve their duffels from the back seat.

Ironhide was the last through, and the bridge shimmered and dimmed behind him. Unlike the others, Ironhide didn’t move aside or transform. He paused long enough to disgorge three more NEST guys and then resumed the sedate speed at which he’d exited and turned down the tunnel toward Bot country.

With a hiss and a pop, the ground bridge connection collapsed, leaving only the dark circular frame and a stone wall where a hole in the universe had been. No one but Kim seemed to take particular notice of that.

Jazz had bent down to speak to Lennox, who was talking so quickly and so much that it was probably as close as a human could get to a high-speed download. The general was headed toward an arriving golf cart for the trip to human country. Optimus was at the gantry greeting Fowler. Bee was at the control console, exchanging high fives with Maggie and Fixit.  He kept Maggie between himself and the minicon and backed off fairly quickly. Social isolation was the price Fixit paid for his overclocked processor. It was something Kim should try to understand in more depth--but she didn’t know how to broach the topic. Or even if it would be too cruel to try.  She should talk to Maggie; that wasn’t going to be fun. Maggie was protective.

Optimus was stepping back from the gantry. He transformed—how did he manage it in a crowded space that wasn’t any too wide to begin with? There was too much movement for Kim’s brain to label what her eyes saw.  

The dark streaks were still visible on the otherwise pristine Peterbilt alt. Kim forced herself not to stare.

He pulled beside her, and the passenger door popped open. The invitation seemed almost abrupt, but Kim made sure she didn’t hesitate. Two steps up and into the cab. The door shut behind her and the seatbelt snaked into place the moment she was in the seat. Yep, definitely abrupt.

She had not had a chance to look at the passenger cab since the reformat. She had not really thought that that would change, too.  It seemed to not only be a different make but a newer model year and top of the line. The seats were slightly deeper. The dash had more lights and dials—pure extravagance, surely, since no driver would ever need to look at them. There was a screen—for GPS in the original?  Was it cosmetic or would it actually display things?

The faux pine tree air freshener was gone but—Kim’s eyes widened—was that a hula dancer on his dashboard?

Kim was so distracted by the redecoration that she didn’t notice Optimus’ protracted silence until they were passing the balcony in the assembly room.  He had not said anything to her at all. “Are you all right?” she asked.

The answer sounded soft and uncertain. “No.”

Kim blinked. “Should we be headed for the infirmary instead of the,” where were they headed? “the freight elevator?”

“I am not in need of repairs.”

Scrap. Slag. Mierda.

Fuck.

Kim rubbed her sweaty palms across her jeans. An easily verifiable lie was an insult. Could she let that stand? Or was it different if the person telling the lie was a Prime? Who was Kim, after all, to call out an alien monarch?

No. Wrong approach.  She was an anthropologist, and she absolutely could not go forward with an interview— do her job, ask penetrating questions, collect data—with an informant who needed medical attention. Monarch or not. Giant alien warrior or not. Thickly, Kim said, “I’ve seen dead chromeonanites before.”

He slowed fractionally. “Kim? Why-- Ah. I understand. No, the damage is superficial. My force field was not penetrated. My armor is undamaged. The disruption of my ‘paint job’ was very limited and there is no danger that the network will collapse. In a few days the chromeonanite layer will repair itself. Do not be concerned.”

Do not be concerned. Right. “Do you want to talk about it?”

They had reached the freight elevator. Optimus turned around to back into it.  He was the size of a small house and his mass was measured in tons, but the movement was as light and precise as a ballet dancer.

When the doors had closed and the elevator had begun to move, he said, “Yes.” A pause--enough time to remember how fast mecha thought, so fast that a pause of a few seconds was several minutes of heavy thinking for a human—and finally, “I am having difficulty constructing an algorithm to analyze the issue.”

“The issue is the bomb?”

“The issue is a human willing to kill himself and many other humans—I understand that we are a plausible threat. We are the same species as the Decepticons.  We are unlike anything in human experience.  I understand. But the nature of this attack was completely irrational.”

“Can you just write it off as glitched?”

“I cannot. This pattern of behavior is common enough among your people that it must be accounted for.”

Kim winced. “Okay. Well. What part of it was the most irrational?”

“The explosive device relied on shrapnel for its offensive force. A very effective approach against humans, but it could not have penetrated our armor. Only a lucky strike on a seam could have caused serious injury.”

“So…he was bad at it.” 

“Worse than that, if I had not blocked the explosion with field suppression, he himself would have died.”

Kim closed her eyes and tried to think like an Autobot. “I can see why that has you all weirded out.”

“Kim…my people are few and weary. Energon is rare in the universe, and allies—If I cannot make peace with your people….”

“We knew it would be hard.”

“We did.” 

The elevator doors opened.  It was just past sunset. Opimus drove past the rows of solar panels and settled near the south edge of the Mesa.

“There is this thing about our brains,” Kim said, finally. “No, wait. Let’s back that up. How did you know that humans as a species had plans and intentions and desires you could understand?”

“It was apparent from the evidence.”

“Evidence?”

“Cities. Radio communications. Interstate highways.”

“Here’s the thing, though. Humans don’t use evidence for that. We are predisposed to expect intentionality. We attribute feelings and plans to—well, each other and our prey species and predators initially, which was useful. But also to rocks, trees, bodies of water, weather phenomena.” Kim took a deep breath. “Copier machines, cars, computers. The divine.”

“I am aware of this aspect of your psychology. I admit it baffles me.”

“Well, that’s evolution for you. If something works, you keep it. Even if it has silly aspects. But. It also has shitty aspects. Just like we can anthropomorphize an object into a person, we can dehumanize actual persons into objects.”

“I had assumed dehumanization is a conscious choice to ignore the common human dignity and rights of others.”

“Not ignore. Become blind to. It isn’t usually a choice but…a by-product of rage or fear. Applying the categories ‘us’ and ‘them.’  It’s a thing. And it can be a really horrible thing. But we can also use it. When the time comes, we have to get Autobots into the category ‘us’ as quickly and as firmly as possible.”

After a few moments, he said, “I see. Perhaps that is reassuring.” He did not sound certain.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“No.” But, again, he did not sound certain.

“Do you want to talk about something else?”

 “Yes.”

The one-word answers were not a lot of help. Kim could have used at least a hint about which way to take the conversation. So many innocuous questions were off the table. She could not, for example, ask how the food was in Scotland. Or if the hotel was nice. “So. I see you have a little dancing girl.”

“It is a five-track sensory suite.”

That was not even a surprise, really. Kim smiled. “Did you get tired of the little Christmas tree?”

“It had to be completely rebuilt. It did not have the bandwidth the new sensors needed.  This one has a one megapixel visual light spectrum camera, in addition to the infra-red capacity. That is fairly low resolution, but it should be enough to qualify as a point of focal contact.”

Focal contact. A place to look during a conversation. “Wait, you did it for us?”

“Do you like it?”

“Oh, Optimus,” Kim whispered. “I didn’t mean you should change yourself to suit us.” The flush at the back of her neck and the sudden dampness on her hands was pure shame. What had she done? “You didn’t have to.”

“Kim. Stop.”

“You were already perfect.”  

“Please stop. You are projecting. Listen.”

Kim closed her eyes and nodded.

“I did not mutilate myself in pursuit of an externally imposed standard. I adapted. It is my nature to adapt to the realities of my environment and to communicate with others. To refrain from adapting would cause me distress. Are you able to understand?”

It was hard. Kim tried to picture herself as able to craft herself into the right shape for any situation, to physically become the solution to problems of terrain or camouflage or communication—and then have a friend disapprove and pity her for it.

“The sensor suite is a fairly minor alteration. Just as you would wear sneakers to play tennis or hiking boots for hiking or strappy sandals for dating, I have ‘dressed’ appropriately for the occasion.” He sighed. “I admit it is a little extravagant, in terms of power and resources expended, but it is no more a violation of my person than a pair of expensive shoes would be for you.”

Kim opened her eyes and made herself look at the little hula dancer. He had made it for interface with humans. It was designed to be looked at. “It’s amazing,” she said.  “It’s wonderful. You said it perceives five kinds of input?”

“Visible light and infrared radiation, pressure, temperature, magnetics, and olfaction.”

“That’s incredible. I can’t see that it does any of that from the outside. Was there a hula dancer in the scanning model?”

“No. I chose the design because I liked it.”

“Wow. It…must be fantastic to be able to do that.”

“Thank you. I appreciate your willingness to adopt an emic perspective.”

“I’ll try to remember.” Kim reached out a hand and laid it on the dash beside the hula dancer—not quite touching it, no. Her heat and smell were surely contact enough. “Are you all caught up on the news from here while you were gone?”

“Mostly, I think. It appears we are getting a felis catus.”

“We are not. Slipstream is.” A horrible thought whispered past her unquestioned assumptions. “Oh. God. Is it like that when you’re all crammed together on military assignment? If one of you gets a pet, you all get a pet?” She had not meant to commit the whole base to pet ownership.

“I do not know. It has not happened before.”

“You’ve never kept a pet in a military station before?” Kim’s heart sank. When she’d agreed to help Slipstream obtain a pet she had not considered she might be introducing  unprecedented chaos.

“We have never kept a pet before.”

The air rushed out of her all at once.  For a moment, Kim couldn't get a thought past the growing horror.  

“Kim?”

“You mean ever?” Oh my god. What have I done. I didn’t even ask.

“This will be our first.”

“But—” Oh, god.  She tried to swallow. “What--what other species are there on your home planet?”

“Species is a concept that doesn’t clearly translate.  The substantial differences between seekers, minicons, carriers, and standard-build mecha would surely seem to be species level differences to humans.”

“But…all those are born from the Matrix or the Allspark or Vector Sigma. Right? One species.”

“Yes.”

“What about life forms that don’t…that aren’t…are there any?”

“No, Kim.”

A miserable moan slipped out. “What about…what about other species? From other planets? Ironhide tells stories about lots of kinds of life forms on other planets?” Could he hear the desperation in her voice? Was her spiraling panic visible in her electro-magnetic field?

“We have encountered other species that were in symbiotic relationships with one another. None were as close to us in temperament and perspective as humans. Your relations to some other species on Earth are more or less comprehensible to us. The topic is…intriguing.”

Kim buried her face in her hands. Pets. Domestication.  It had changed humans so much, shaped so much of what it meant to be human. And she had agreed to help Slipstream obtain a cat, as though it were no big deal, as though it weren’t the first time his entire species had entered into that kind of relationship.

“Why are you distressed? Do you fear our inexperience and ignorance will cause harm to the felis catus?”

“No. You wouldn’t hurt a cat. I don’t want it to hurt you.”

“According to Bumblebee, Fixit has already devised a proximity alert so that we will be able to avoid accidental penetration of armor seams by the animal.”

“Oh, Optimus. What will it do to your society, to start keeping pets?”

“I do not know. But surely you realize that is hardly the largest risk we have taken.  Your relationships with other species are central to human existence. Our relationship with you cannot be separated from your connection to them.”

How much damage could one cat do?

To a society that had never kept any pets at all?

Kim felt sick to her stomach.

Optimus had already moved on. “In human households, pet ownership appears to be usually collective. Slipstream’s pet might be considered to be a collective commitment.”

“No,” Kim said. “The rest of you weren’t consulted. You didn’t agree to this responsibility. And Slipstream has it in a private space. This is his choice and his responsibility.”

“And if others also want to have pets?”

Oh, it just got worse and worse. “Uh? I advise a short test period to see how it goes with Slipstream?  Or. If the others want pets, they can try for fish.”  God, yes, fish. She should have started with fish to begin with. What a disaster. No pets, ever. “I’m sorry.  I should have asked you before I agreed.  I didn’t…I screwed up.”

He sighed. “It is a mistake we will learn from. We can hope the lesson will not be too painful.”

“It isn’t too late. We could--”

“I would prefer to allow this experiment to proceed.”

That sounded unusually definite. Kim swallowed down her burning dread. “Yes, my Prime.”

Optimus frame rocked fractionally on its shock absorbers. “No,” he said. “Not you, not ever. You have taken no oaths to me. You share no relationship of obligation to the Matrix. Your collaboration rests on your free choice and your duty to truth, not duty to me.”  

Wincing, wiping her sweaty palms on her forearms, Kim nodded. “Sorry. I accept your recommendation.”

“That will do.” He sighed, a very pointedly human-sounding sigh. “Kim, this is not a rejection of your friendship. Certain kinds of independence must be ensured.”

Kim parsed that twice. “Is this your version of the ethics discussion?”

“It is not ethics. It is necessity.”

“Okay,” Kim said.  Another mysterious mech thing she would have to figure out.  She leaned back in the seat and rolled her shoulders.  It was nearly dark out. They had talked for a long time. Already, there were more stars visible than Kim saw from Boston or Buffalo or Camden. The dessert was so different—so empty, so dark, so calm. So quiet. 

It wasn’t quiet. There was a faint squeak behind the driver’s-side air vent. Frowning, Kim squirmed over and laid a hand on the dash above the noise that didn’t belong. “Hey?” she said softly. “Should I ask about this?”

“A loose fan blade, no cause for concern. The bracket repairs were unfinished, and the concussion from the explosive knocked the axel off center. Self-repair systems can handle it.”

Kim felt herself scowling. The original injury was two weeks ago now. That was a long time for internal systems to correct minor damage. Wasn’t it? “You did a reformat last week….I would have thought fixing the coolant system would have been included in that.”

“You are correct. That it was not reflects an error on my part.  Before this discussion goes further, I will mention that Ratchet has already berated me on this point—and that he is much more effective at behavioral critique than you are.”

Kim smiled weakly. “That sounds like a challenge.”

“I assure you, it is not.” He paused. “Although you may have a chance to observe him in action: Ratchet is on his way up. He does not seem to be happy.”

“I haven’t seen him all day.”

“He was powered down.” 

Right. Everybody needed rest.  Mecha just did it so seldom…. “Is this my cue to leave?”

“No. You may be able to contribute to this conversation.”

Ratchet, in root form, stalked out of the elevator. “Optimus! Do you know what that thug of Drift’s and your anthropologist are doing?” He thundered. “They want to bring a parasite onto the base! Deliberately!” This was about the cat. Of course it was. Cat conversations had to happen in person.

“Oh, fuck,” Kim breathed.

“When we have time, I wish to unpack that metaphor at length,” Optimus replied softly.

“As though there isn’t enough biological life everywhere, they are planning to infect us on purpose.”

Kim buried her face in her hands. Poor Ratchet. Cliffjumper bringing home mold was bad enough, but cats could walk around.  “How could I not see this coming?”

“I admit to being somewhat surprised myself,” Optimus admitted.

Ratchet had reached them now. He folded his arms and glared downward. “Well? Stop hiding behind the human and get up. I won’t argue with you in alt!”

“I have no intention in arguing with you at all, old friend,” Optimus answered calmly. “Come sit next to me here and we’ll consider the situation.”

Grousing in Cybertronix, Ratchet grumpily transformed and arranged himself facing Optimus’s front bumper.

“What particular hazard does felis domesticus pose?”  Optimus was sounding very reasonable. Kim wondered if that would just make Ratchet angrier.

“They leak corrosive fluids,” Ratchet snapped.

“My understanding is that it is a mild corrosive.” The screen in the dash flashed the glyph for assistance requested.

“Um, not randomly,” Kim put in quickly. “Cats are very good about litter boxes. They don’t just…pee on people.”

“And how will you explain to this animal that we are people.”

Kim bit her lip. “Um. That is one of the things we will be exploring.”

“Lovely.” Kim winced even as she admired how deftly Ratchet has optimized his English language communication pack for sarcasm.

“Ratchet,” Optimus chided.

“They chew on wires! They consume the system fluids used in Earth mechanisms.”

“Steps will have to be taken to ensure no one comes to harm,” Optimus said patiently.

“Of course, that is only taking into account issues with the species we have requested.  House cats are routinely infested with species of Siphonaptera and nematodae.”

“Organic life forms which are not dangerous to mecha.” How reasonable he sounded. Kim’s own fists were balled so tightly that her nails dug into her palms.

“Toxoplasma gondii causes derangement in humans! I find them quite unpredictable and violent enough when their thinking is not warped by parasites.”

“Okay, that is totally true,” Kim agreed quickly. “But we’re getting an older cat and Slipstream will be handling the litter box, so the humans won’t be at risk.” She found the glyphs for situation normal and expert on the phone app and sent them out on the open channel. “I promise you, there is nothing that a cat can do that we can’t cope with. But. I realize I moved too quickly on this.  I didn’t know you’ve never had pets before. We can take some more time….”

“A thousand years will not make inviting an infestation palatable.”

Kim wondered how popular this viewpoint would be with the others.

And—maybe it wasn’t even healthy to try to talk Ratchet out of this. Maybe a certain distance from pets was a better choice. Maybe Ratchet would change his Prime’s mind, and maybe that was a good thing.

But—Ratchet was revolted by organics, maybe even afraid of them. For the alliance to work out, it was necessary for mecha to live with organics.

Optimus trilled softly, a series of quick deep chords that made Kim’s bones shiver. The sound of Ratchet’s response squealed like fingernails on a blackboard.

Optimus—again moving with a precision and gracefulness that should have been impossible in a semi—scooted around Ratchet and parked beside him.  The position Optimus took—his own door even with the back of Ratchet’s cab—seemed oddly specific: why not be even with one another, either at the front or the back?  But then Kim realized that he had moved into position for overlapping.

Scrap.

“I think this will go better without me here,” Kim whispered. “It’s okay. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

After a long moment, the passenger door gently clicked open, and—as quietly as she could--Kim climbed out. “Good night, Kim.”

 

Chapter 5

Bumblebee, Slipstream, and Fixit were waiting at the foot of the stairs the next morning.  Of course they were.

Kim had gotten very little sleep the night before. Worried about the impact pet ownership would  have on mech community and world view, she had stayed up until two reading sociology articles about how humans and animals interacted.

And here was Slipstream with a pet carrier. “Are you ready to go? Is it too early?”

Kim sighed. “It’s not too early. But. What has Prime said about this? There was some concern last night, about bringing a pet onto the base. Are we still going?”

“We have not been forbidden,” Slipstream said. “We are all ready.” He pointed to Fixit, who produced a rhinestone cat collar with a glittering dongle. “See? The exact location of the cat will be known at all times.”

Kim thought of Ratchet’s near hysteria the night before. “Maybe we should just ask. Just to be safe.” Kim reached for her phone.

“It is not possible to communicate with the Prime at this time,” Fixit said. “Chromia and Windblade are presenting a concern.”

Bumblebee splashed a string of consonants at him.

“I assume against himself,” Fixit answered him. “Chromia is surely hoping to forestall Ironhide’s resignation by eliciting a statement of error and apology from Optimus.”

“What, what?” Kim said.

“Yes,” Slipstream said, nodding gloomily. “I think that tactic will fail also.”

“No, what do you mean Ironhide is resigning? How do you quit being an Autobot?”

Bumblebee  made a sad noise.  Fixit said, “He is not quitting being an Autobot. He is abdicating the honor of acting as Protector. He is still very angry about what Prime did in Scotland.”

Kim stepped back and sat down on the bottom step. “What did he do in Scotland?”

For a long moment the three mecha looked at her with palpable uncertainty. Bumblebee chirped imperiously. Fixit retracted the antenna nubs he’d been sporting. Slipstream said, “When the explosive device was detected, Optimus pushed Ironhide out of the way and projected his own forcefield over it.”

“Tactically, it was a sound decision,” Fixit put in. “Optimus can alter the shape and focus of his forcefield and Ironhide cannot.”

Bumblebee’s speaker came to life with the chorus of “Ooops I did it again,” and Slipstream nodded. “It is not the first time Prime has circumvented Ironhide’s protection. But it seems to be happening more frequently.”

So much gossip she missed because she couldn’t hear radio waves. Or rather, because she couldn’t process seven conversations at once.  Putting on a headset open to the public channels was like trying to listen to the trading floor of a stock exchange. Scrap. “And Ironhide is angry.”

The three mecha glanced at each other. “What Ironhide is feeling would take half an hour to explain in English.”

“Dang,” Kim said. “So. Chromia—the First of Lines are—what? Trying to smooth things over?”

Fixit shook his head. “If by ‘smooth things over’ you mean clearly and publicly establish Ironhide’s correctness and induce him to change his mind, then yes. But Chromia is very angry with Optimus. It will not be smooth.”

“How is this happening?” Kim asked after a moment.

“Miserably,” Fixit said.

“No, I mean—Are they arguing? Are they in the same room? Am I supposed to be taking notes on this? Am I supposed to pretend it’s not happening?”

All their eyes unfocused for several seconds of radio consultation. Finally, Slipstream said, “Optimus and the First of Lines are in the new privacy annex, probably arguing, but the contents of the discussion are…not for us to know. Please do not pretend it is not happening; dis-believing in extant events is a sign of a serious glitch.  Unless that is a metaphor for not telling the NEST detachment, in which case, yes, it is better they don’t know. Ironhide is at the firing range. He has asked Ratchet’s trainees to join him. He is going to discuss weapons malfunctions.”

Oh, hell. The trainees. “Is Ratchet refusing to see the trainees?” Kim asked.

“Ratchet is not seeing anyone,” Fixit said.

At Kim’s look of alarm, Slipstream added, “He is defragmenting his drives.  The last few orn have been very stressful.” 

***

Bumblebee insisted they get on the road.  It was inconceivable, he texted, that Optimus had decided to forbid the cat and then forgotten to inform them.  

Kim put the collar in her pocket, loaded the carrier in the back seat, and out the tunnel they went.  Bee did not bother with traffic laws or speed limits until they were off base.  The scope of his sensory inputs and deftness of his braking system were better insurance against accidents than human traffic customs. Kim repeated this to herself over and over until they reached the highway.

Passing through town, Bumblebee turned off at the Knock Out burger and headed into a midcentury-modern residential development. “Detour?” Kim asked after the second turn.

“’We’re taking a road trip.’ ‘The more the merrier.’ ‘Have you met my leetel friend?’”

Kim’s stomach lurched. “Oh. Well. Okay.  If you think I should.” Bumblebee had been skipping texts and going for audio clips all day.  This might be a really long two hours. Each way.  It wouldn’t be awful to pause and meet his human friend.

“’And away-y we go!’”

“Wait. No. We can’t take him with us. We can’t just drive off with a kid!” Kim scrambled for her phone. This sort of conversation needed to happen without whimsical mass media salad.  “He’s underaged. What if--?” What if what? If there were an accident? Actually, that was the one thing she didn’t need to worry about. No, the problem was police involvement. For kidnapping.

They had already stopped in front of a split-level ranch with cacti planted out front. “Bee, I’m serious.”

The passenger door popped open and a tween poked his head in. “Hi. I’m Raf.”

“Yes, Bee, he looks very nice. But we cannot kidnap him.”

The boy pulled the door open wider and climbed into the seat. “It’s not kidnapping,” he said seriously. “I asked my mom. She said it was okay.”

The door clicked shut and the boy’s seatbelt coiled decisively around him.

“You asked your mom if you could go to Las Vegas with a giant alien to pick up a cat at the pound?”

He grinned. “I left out the giant robot part. I said it was a friend whose family lives on base. I have to be home by four. And she wants a picture of the new cat.”

Scrap, she was losing this argument. “Bee, does Optimus know?”  

“’Affirm-ative,’” said Robbie the Robot’s voice.

And that, damn it, was the end of the argument, and yes, Kim had lost. She sighed. “All right. Let’s go.”

At a sedate and scrupulously law-abiding pace they were already headed down the block. Kim glanced at the boy. He was looking back at her.  Kim had gotten used to the lack of children on the base. A child sitting beside her felt more out of place than the alien disguised as a car they were riding in.  What did you talk about with kids?

Two hours to Las Vegas, then two hours back. What was Bee thinking?

The boy was still looking at her. “Yes?” Kim said. Four hours.

“You’re not what I expected,” he said.

“What did you expect?”

“Bee said you were a scientist so…old, thinner. A guy?”

“Because all scientists are guys?” Kim asked, habitually tucking away her reflexive disappointment as though this conversation was in interview.

“Well…no. I guess I just thought that because of the pronoun.”

“Pronoun?” Kim asked.

“There’s just one pronoun for organics. I forget it doesn’t mean just ‘he.’” He shrugged.

“One pronoun? You mean Bee is teaching you Cybertronix?”

“Kind of,” he said.

Bee answered with, “From a nonlinear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly.”

“He’s sort of teaching you Cybertronix,” Kim said doubtfully. She wasn’t sure a human brain could even handle an alien language. “How is that going?”

He shrugged modestly. “I’m picking it up. I can’t speak it, of course.  Well, maybe with a synthesizer. I’d have to get one I could reprogram with the right sounds.”

Well. Okay. Interesting. “So. One pronoun for organic life. That might explain why I still get called ‘it’ once in a—Wait. What am I doing? I can’t talk to you about this! I don’t have human subjects oversight. And I sure as hell can’t study a child without parental permission, even if I were allowed to study humans at all!”

Apparently, Bumblebee had a lot to say about that. He produced a long sample of Cybertronix words of which her brain could only perceive random and discordant noise. When he finished the kid said, “You aren’t studying me. I’m a consultant sharing reflections about my experiences. He says you talk to the military guys about Autobots all the time.”

“Yeah, that’s the other thing. You don’t have security clearance!  I can’t just—”

Bee interrupted. This commentary was shorter. The child’s eyes widened. “He says the High Priest has final word on security clearances. It’s a concession he got after whatever happened in—I’m not sure.” He frowned. “Some damp place?”

For a moment, Kim fought the temptation. Surely this wasn’t how it was done. She couldn’t just—“What term are you translating as ‘high priest?’”

Bumblebee’s answer was a resonant tone that deepened at the end. Kim had heard it before. “That’s Prime, right?”

The chirruping agreement was another of the handful of sounds Kim recognized. Pit. “So, just to be clear, the High Priest has set me up for four hours on a road trip, so I can consult with…Raf.”

“I keep wanting to translate it as Faithful Steward, but that just sounds weird in English.”

Defeated, Kim buried her face in her hands. “All right. Tell me about the pronouns. They aren’t gendered.”

“No, but maybe…could I say they’re flavored? There is a pronoun for High Priests, another for Courier Priests, and, I think, six more that divide everyone else up by social position and higher and lower status. Plurals are easier to form than in French or English, I think. The root form doesn’t change. You just add a modifier to indicate the number of objects you’re talking about. Cybertronix is pretty specific, you know. There’s not really a good way to indicate something as fuzzy as ‘many’ or ‘lots’.

 Kim reached for her bag to write that down. Her hand stopped an inch away. “How long have you known Bee?”

 “About six months.”

“How are you doing this? Even if humans can handle an alien language—Look, babies lose the ability to automatically differentiate foreign language phonemes before they’re a year old! It’s really hard to learn a foreign language after age six.  You’re not young enough that it should be this easy—Is it the-the sounds? Is it a digital—? Of course it’s a digital language! Is it easier?”

Raf made a face. “Nope. It’s really hard. The phonemes are really fast, and some of them are very similar. Also, one is out of my hearing range. Oh, hey. Bee. Show her the words for ‘gravity’ and ‘go off duty.’”

Bumblebee squeaked twice.

“Homophones?” Kim asked.

“They sound different to them, but the harmonics on the second one are too low for us to hear.”

Kim blinked a couple of times. “So how are you doing this?”

Raf winced. “I’m sort of a genius.”

“Bee said you’d skipped a grade.”

He looked down, visibly embarrassed. “Two. But don’t—please, don’t get all weird about it. I wasn’t always like this. It didn’t start till I was already in the first grade.”

“You’re a genius at languages?” Kim tried to clarify.

“Math, mainly. And physics. Not languages. I hate French and I hated Spanish.”

Kim thought about that. “Computer programming?”

“Really boring. It’s too easy.”

“Huh.” Kim felt a stab of sympathy for this inconvenient intrusion in her giant alien research. “So. Tell me about these pronouns.”

***

Raf, it turned out, was a nice kid: intelligent, polite, focused. The pronouns weren’t awful, either. Well…there were a lot of them and the sound of them refused to register in Kim’s brain as either music or syllables, so she couldn’t seem to remember them. 

How was Raf doing it? His brain wasn’t young enough for the language centers to be completely open.  And for that matter, how was Bee teaching it? Media clips? Text messages?

“What is the hardest part in Cybertronix?” Kim asked.

He made a face. “Some of the future and conditional tenses, I guess. Verbs have a whole range of possibilities from near certainty to the mostly–impossible and each one is a separate form. At least they don’t talk about the impossible much, so those don’t come up very often.”

“That’s...a lot of different tenses,” Kim said weakly.

‘’But one cool thing is the degree of specificity they can use to describe actions. People are way more relative in their approach to the passage of time, right? But every verb tense in Cybertronix is a measure of how many nano-orms have passed since the beginning of the universe.”

This seemed almost unbelievable. “But wouldn’t that mean Cybertronix has an infinite number of verb tenses?“

“Only if you think the universe is flat and can expand forever. I lean more towards the universe eventually collapsing into a state of maximum entropy. Bee, what do you think?”

Bee had a lot of thoughts to judge by the rill of sound that bubbled forth.

Hoping to forestall as much eschatology as she could, Kim interjected rather desperately, “So the verb ‘is’ would be translated as—?”

Bumblebee emitted a popping noise and Raf buried his face in his hands.

“What?”

“Well…you can’t just say ‘is.’ I can’t even translate the word ‘is’ by itself. ‘The organic is friendly,’ and ‘The mech is friendly,’ and ‘the road is smooth’ would all use a different ‘is.’  But the word for ‘friendly’ and the word for ‘smooth’ would be the same. Oh. But that sounds like they are attributing an attitude to the road. Or the organic. And they’re not. The word I’m using for ‘friendly,’ well… ‘nice’ might be better.”

Fuck. “Do you mind if I write this down?”

***

When they reached the outskirts of the city it was too early for lunch and they could not eat after picking up the cat, so Bumblebee drove around a little, asking questions about cities and humans that Raf translated so Kim could help him with the answers.

Both of them listened with near-identical horror when she explained how gambling addiction happened and what it resulted in.  

Bee seemed puzzled and irritated by using-basic-math-to-trick-people-out-of-money as a business model.  Capitalism—as an attempt to strategically invest in equipment or research in order to maximize profit—made sense to him as a game that used money to keep score. Kim had had that conversation with a couple of informants already--and been lectured at length on how, while interesting as a game, capitalism was absurdly wasteful and inefficient as an economic system.

Raf just laughed.

“All right,” Kim said. “My turn to ask questions. The Forth of July is coming up. Who’s looking forward to it?”

It turned out Raf wasn’t: July was too hot for a picnic and he didn’t ‘get’ fireworks. Bumblebee said he liked it, though. “He says they do ‘amateur, recreational dancing’ with the--‘co-workers’ might be the right word?”

A video clip of Bumblebee and Jazz breakdancing together appeared on both of their phones. It was only about ten seconds. Kim played it three times. Then he sent a few seconds of black-and-white video of people doing the Charleston. Kim blinked several times. “So. Big plans for this year.”

 

***

Lunch was Indian food, because Raf had never had it.

Then, they picked up the cat.

She was, as required, large. Orange and white, with glittering yellow eyes, and an awkward cast on her front left leg. She meowed when the shelter volunteer handed her to Raf while Kim finished the last of the paperwork.

You are going where no cat has gone before, Kim thought. It was hard to drag her eyes away from the pink triangle of cat nose.  What will you mean, for your species and mine and theirs? She felt slightly nauseated. If the Autobots were going to make a home here, it wasn’t only humans they’d have to live with. It was too much responsibility for one cat. Will you change them? Can they adapt to you? Can you adapt to them?

Numbly, she took the cat back from Raf and gently loaded it into the carrier. A shame you couldn’t interview cats before hiring them, like you could an anthropologist….

The ride north was quieter.  Raf sat in the tiny Volkswagen back seat next to the cat carrier.  He talked softly to Bee and the cat.

“U OK?” Bumblebee texted.

Kim looked at the desert scrolling past and sighed. “Just diverted by unknowables.”  That was something Ratchet had criticized Dan for in the last batch of trainees. It seemed apt.

“A LESS SERIOUS GLITCH IN HUMANS THAN MECHA.”

“But still a glitch?” Kim murmured. She glanced into the back seat. Raf was petting the cat through the little holes with one finger. “My species has imagined much stranger, more alien aliens than you, Bee. But the cat and Slipstream have never imagined anything as strange as each other.”

“I LIKE HUMANS. VERY MUCH.”

Kim smiled. “Thanks. On behalf of, you know, my species in general.”

***

Optimus waited at the foot of the tunnel when they arrived. The cat was getting the formal welcome Kim had missed. The thought made her smile as she pushed forward the seat to retrieve the cat carrier from the back.

Ratchet was up and standing with his arms folded near the infirmary. Drift—looking almost as disapproving—was standing in the tunnel to the ‘Bot commissary with Strongarm. They were all too far away to pay attention to, so she set the carrier down and said to Optimus, “Have you ever seen one up close before?”

“Not one that was living.” And yeah, right, most of his contact with Earth wildlife would be as roadkill. That was sad and wrong….

Kim opened the door and, after a moment, the cat limped out. The cast made a little thunk as it struck the stone floor.

The cat was heavy and soft and warm in her arms. “Come look,” she said softly.

He dropped to one knee, and, with no more noise than the cat had made, rested one fist on the ground so he could lean forward. His face stopped some ten feet away.

Kim shifted the cat so its face was toward him. “Come closer,” she said.

“I cannot. Any closer and I would violate your personal space,” he said.

Why was he concerned about that? Or rather, what research had brought it up?  But that was a conversation for some other time, when she could take notes. “I regularly climb inside you. So, no. And I cannot hold the cat out—she’ll feel unsecure. She’ll fear she’ll fall.”

He came closer, the tiny lenses of his optics shifting minutely over and over. His hydraulics were silent, but the faint ‘tick’ and ‘pop’ of systems checks attested to excitement or worry.  “Truly? This creature has the capacity for fear? Actual fear, not merely the appearance of it?”

“Human fear isn’t the product of our sentience,” Kim said. “It’s a holdover from earlier ancestors’ brains. I think it happens in the lizard brain. I don’t think it is the same for you.”

He was close enough that Kim could feel the air movement from the intake vents—he was using passive chemosensors now, ‘smelling’ the cat.

“It’s not just a wet bag of inputs and outputs,” Kim said. “It feels. It sort of thinks.”

Optimus’ optics reset. “I had hoped not. Your species treats some species—many mammals, even—very badly.”

Kim winced. “The search term you want is ‘Temple Grandin.’  That’s an author, not a—”

“I have it.” But his attention was still on the cat. He moved to the side slightly, and Kim wished she could hold the cat out or even put it down. “I am going to initiate a sonar—”

The cat’s ears flattened and the claws of her good front foot sank into Kim’s arm. Kim’s grip tightened reflexively. The cat could not be allowed to jump down—

“I apologize. Sonar scans of cats are prohibited. Kim, I am detecting human blood. Are you injured?” His fans were at high now and his optical lenses were focused on her rather than the cat. After so much combat beside humans—who were injured so easily—blood was one of the few scents linked to an emotional reaction.

“She scratched my skin a little,” Kim said calmly. “It’s a reflex. The claws are sharp, but really small.”

“Perhaps we should have the weapons removed. It will not need to defend itself here.”

Kim snorted—quietly—and said. “Yeah, nope. Look that up on the internet. We are not chopping off the ends of her fingers.”

Whatever Optimus found on the internet made his head snap up and his eyes reset in less than a second. “Agreed.” And then, “Why do you refer to the cat with the feminine pronoun? Slipstream has informed me that has had its reproductive organs removed in compliance with the policy of the adoption service.  Was our information wrong?”

Kim, suddenly exhausted, returned the heavy cat to its carrier. “I would still be a girl if I were congenitally infertile.  And I’ll still be a girl after menopause. I will never be it. Cats can be it if you are not acquainted with them. I guess. But surgery doesn’t make a cat an it.” Even as she said the words, Kim wasn’t sure they were true. Or, at least, not ethnocentric gibberish. In Russian, the word for cat was feminine. And also dog. She had never been sure what pronoun to use for pets. And what the hell could giant robots understand of organic genders anyway? When humans couldn’t agree, even, on how many there were?

“I have offended you,” he said.

Ashamed, Kim straightened and held out her hand. To her surprise, he leaned back in, his face coming into touching distance.  “Never, I promise.” She let her fingers glide across the slippery-smooth plating on his chin. “Never. But I’m going to take the cat home now.”

Slipstream was waiting at the top of the stairs. His eyes flicked back and forth between Kim and Optimus behind her. Backing up, he led the way through the open double-doors—and then shut them behind her.  “You ended the conversation,” he said at low volume.

“The cat was heavy, and I was making mistakes. It’s for the best. He can see the cat later.”

“Are you important enough to do that?”

“Um, apparently?” Kim cringed inwardly, but decided not to think about whatever lèse-majesté she might have just committed. “Look, she’s been in this box for hours. She might want to pee.”

With a little squeak, Slipstream hurried ahead and opened the door to the office suite he had converted to a cat habitat.

“I’m only worried because Drift would have forbidden this—this experiment if Prime had not implied he was interested in the outcome.”

“All right. Let me worry about that. Your job is to pay attention to your pet. You are responsible for her now, Slipstream. She is in a strange place filled with aliens. She needs you.”

Slipstream sprouted an antenna, something Kim had never seen him do before. “What does she need me to do?” he squeaked.

“Be calm and kind. Give her food and water. Clean the litter box. Maybe once a day until the cast comes off—you do not want that dragged through cat poo. You’ve read the manual.”

“Yes. Of course. I have read all of them.”

No doubt. "What are you going to name her?"

Slipstream brightened. "Max.  According to my research, that is the most popular name for cats. Since I cannot ask her her preferences, the best I can do is apply the name she is statistically most likely to prefer."

Kim blinked.  Slipstream seemed to have missed a step in interpreting the research results. "That is very thoughtful of you."

Kim spent the rest of the afternoon seated on the floor by the door, watching Slipstream watch Max limp slowly around the room sniffing things. She found a carpet-covered, cylindrical cave to crawl into and watched them back. Altogether, it was soothing.

Notes:

In the interest of full disclosure, I have never had an orange cat.

Also, no. I'm not going to hurt the cat. That would be really low and manipulative and Martha would disown me in a heartbeat if I pulled that kind of cheap trick.

Chapter 4: Dative Case

Chapter 6

At five-fifteen, Kim came onto the mezzanine. Windblade turned away from the satellite station and came to the railing.  Her face was slightly below Kim’s eye level. “Hi,” Kim said cheerfully.

“How is the symbiote settling in?” Windblade asked.

“Not a lot of drama. I had a roommate with a cat once—she said every time she moved, it hid under the bed for a week. I don’t think this one is that freaked out.”

“I would be interested in observing the animal. Perhaps when its damage is repaired?”

Or maybe not: for a mech the size of Windblade to see the cat, it would have to be brought out of the human-sized hallway—but a cat with a cast on could not run very fast in the open silo if something scared her the first time. “We’ll talk to Slipstream. It’ll be a few days anyway.”

“Optimus has asked me to convey his apology. Your interview for tonight must be cancelled.”

Oooo shit. How big an insult had she given, ending their conversation? Had she ever done that before?  How could she have forgotten: she wasn’t speaking to an equal—

Oblivious to Kim’s escalating freak-out, Windblade continued, “His presence is required at a conference call. If you are willing, he requests you observe.”

“Oh.”

“Do you accept the change in schedule?”

What did it mean, that the message was delivered by a person rather than just posted in the calendar? Was there any way to refuse—if she had wanted to?

Kim was half-way through her nod when Windblade picked her up. At least this time she used both hands and held Kim close to her body. Kim was grateful—Windblade was smooth but fast. “Where are we going?”

“The communications gantry. The Indonesian president has agreed to join, but he must finish before his meetings this morning.”

“Oooooh.” Kim gripped Windblade’s hand more tightly. Politics, scarier than being carried by giants. Who knew?

The catwalk was crowded with uniformed technicians at desks and alight with large screens showing empty chairs or bustling staff.  Morshower, standing at the top of the stairs, motioned for Windblade to set Kim beside him. His eyes flicked over her. “We’re about to start. Set your headset to six. Don’t say anything.”

The virtual meeting was two hours long. Keller and some general from NATO seemed to be  ‘hosting’ from Washington DC. Kim recognized the Indian prime minister (!) and Mearing, but since everyone seemed to know everyone else already, there were no introductions, so the two men in unfamiliar military uniforms and the three men in very expensive suits remained a mystery.

One of the men in expensive suits was apparently representing a recalcitrant South Asian country that was refusing to allow Autobot patrols. Another was apparently a high official from Indonesia who was acting as an expert witness on the reality and horror of Decepticon infestation. Mearing, coldly impatient and dismissive, was clearly playing ‘bad cop’ to Optimus’ polite and reasonable ‘good cop.’

Large segments of the conversation were not in English though, and the translation coming in over channel 6 seemed to lag a little.  The Indian prime minister seemed nice, though….

Kim had put a tuna-and-crackers snack kit in her bag for snacks during the usual meeting.  There was no way to eat it now, but her thoughts kept drifting back to it. Maybe she could just eat the crackers? It wasn’t like she was on camera.

She made do with the mint that had come in the kit.

The meeting went on for two hours, and when it was finished Optimus still did not have the access he wanted.

The screens went dark, except for Mearing’s. Morshower stepped into the video range and the two of them began to strategize.  Optimus stepped over to talk to Lennox, who had been observing from the other side.

What now? Should Kim leave? Could Kim leave? Should Kim be observing any of this? Humans doing human, military things were outside her field assignment. This was all obviously classified—and possibly differently classified than her usual impossibly classified job.

Scrap.

Kim sat down on the catwalk floor. It was uncomfortable, but that didn’t seem important.

What a weird day.

“A word?” Optimus said, lowering his hand beside the catwalk.

A little unsteady, Kim climbed to her feet and stepped to the gap in the railing so fingers broader than her leg could close around her. The other hand came up and settled her against the smooth, cool torso. “Huh,” Kim said as they headed toward the connecting tunnel. “Is it me or has the procedure for carrying humans changed?”

“I disseminated the new protocol this afternoon.  Is this acceptable?”

“For the record, I never thought you would drop me.”

“Understood.” Once they were clear of the bustling human foot traffic, he set her down and transformed, near door open at once in invitation. “I should perhaps explain that the default of holding humans somewhat away from the body was—In fact, it was simply ethnocentric. To use superior strength and size to place someone else in overlapping position would be…I am not sure what to compare it to.  Demanding a subordinate do one’s Christmas shopping? Sexual harassment? A tacky and humiliating abuse of power, at any rate. The fact that our human allies could not perceive the infringement did not seem relevant to showing respect for the integrity of their electromagnetic presence. But your stress markers rose only thirty-five percent of the usual this time.”

Kim very firmly did not think of Drift dangling her above the infirmary floor. “That’s very interesting. But—wasn’t I always within your field when you carried me? I mean, the usual carrying distance was closer than you stand to most mecha.”

“You were within mine, yes. It is another matter to place my spark within yours with no invitation. At least as far as our customs of ‘good manners’ are concerned.  I had not considered that feelings of fear would be non-rationally connected with position.”

“Yeah. We’re very irrational.”

“I did not mean it as a criticism.”

“I know. Hey, if I was rude earlier, with the cat. Um. I apologize.”

“We are both worried. About different aspects, I think. There are millions of species on this planet. I did not initially…I was focused on humans.”

“Yeah.”

They had reached the mezzanine steps, but he did not open the door. “I wanted to ask you about tonight’s meeting. What was your impression of Mr. Kan?”

“Hm. Is that the disagreeable guy who kept using the phrase ‘alien incursion?’”

“Indeed.  We have been in negotiations with him for most of the last two years. His responses are atypical. I have asked both Keller and Mearing about him. I would characterize their responses as evasive.”

“Huh. Does he just not believe you about the Decepticons?”

“He says he believes. He says he is afraid. He says he is angry. His paralanguage and physiological response do not support this.”

“You’re watching pupil reactivity and breathing, right?”

“I can detect circulatory state, also.”

“Have you ever met with him in person?”

“No.”

“So he may think it’s all some kind of weird fraud. Or he might be a sociopath.”

“Is it likely a glitched individual could preside over a state?”

“Yeah…lots of politicians don’t have fear or compassion circuits that work quite right.  Being distracted by proportion or affection or caring about people can slow down a political career. No, sorry. That’s bitchy. Up to a point, making decisions unemotionally can be really hard for humans. And I don’t think our emotions are as effectively, um, proportionally integrated into our thinking as yours.”

“So while some of your state leaders have panicked at the thought of Decepticon infiltration and begged for help….”

“He’s going to get the help with some concessions. A great plan, unless a monster levels his city while he’s busy dicking around. Sorry.”

“The metaphor is odd, but not offensive.”

He was silent for several minutes. Kim debated offering to leave. Instead she said, “So…Ironhide?”

“His experience is invaluable and irreplaceable.”

It felt as though they had jumped to the middle of another conversation. Kim wished she was less tired or much smarter. “So… you’re going to apologize for whatever made him mad?”

“On the contrary,” he said calmly, nearly inflectionlessly. “I correctly assessed the situation and took the correct action. I cannot apologize where no mistake was made.”

Kim blinked, wishing desperately that her job would let her drop this conversation. “So…he’s going to have to give in?”

“I am certain he will not.”

“Okay, forgive me for listening to rumors, but—he’s quit, right? And this is a big deal!”

“Yes.”

The answers were getting shorter. Kim bit her lip. This informant would not refuse to answer questions just because he didn’t want to. It was unfair to take advantage of that.  On the other hand,  it was Kim’s job to learn everything.

“What will—” She hesitated. “You know what? I’ve got another dataset I’m working on.  Can you tell me what makes a good party?”

“Décor.  Energon is not consumed at most social gatherings. This was true even before the war. And other fuels are not as ‘festive.’ The effort humans invest in the menu we put into the location.”

“Interesting. So…how does the base’s July Fourth party measure up?”

“Hospitable and enthusiastic, but not very stimulating.”

“Oh.”

***

Thursday morning, regular lessons with the trainees resumed.

The topic was raw materials gels. Jazz had returned from a mission in Nepal with his undercarriage gashed from driving on dirt roads that (according to Ratchet) a Porsche had no business even looking at. To compound things, he had somehow gotten himself to the bottom of a ravine he could not drive out of. He’d had to wait till dark and then transform and climb out—but the different materials in the rock had held heat confusingly, which had messed up his infrared sensors.  A bad fall had left an ugly scrape along his left arm.

Kim, unneeded for the repair demonstration, settled herself with her feet on a cross-support of the medical berth and her rear against Jazz’s shoulder.  “Anything interesting in Nepal?”

“I love Nepal.  Something about the geology keeps giving us false positives on energon, though. Heh. That’s why Ratchet here isn’t giving me a harder time about these dents: I’m the only one who complies the reports the way he likes.”

“Actually,” Ratchet said smugly, “I’ve been thinking of handing that project over to Windblade: she can collect her own data. Very convenient. Now, this one is fairly deep. Carly, you’ll need that magnifying lens, but you can see the layers.”

Kim, from habit, brought up July Fourth.  Jazz, as she had expected, waxed poetic about dancing, adding happily that Gonzales and Abramoff would be bringing their guitars. “Live music. There’s something wild and stirring about human music anyway—but live human music!  Not everyone agrees, but I think the tiny imperfections make it somehow vital, glorious. I keep wondering if I could learn to play something analog. It would have to be big. A harp, maybe.”

“Have you seen a lot of live music?”

“Not as much as I’d like.  I go to outdoor music festivals, when I have the time.”

Of course, he did. “I’m not even going to ask how you fiddle with the patrol schedule.”

“I’m looking forward to next Friday. Although,” he added thoughtfully, “the festival itself is a little, well, it can be uncomfortable to think about.”

Kim nearly dropped her notebook. “Difficult to think about?” she managed.

“Well, it's kinda weird, having a party for one state. A celebration for the existence of a government--not an achievement of a government--and then having other humans who are isolated under separate governments. I know it’s your way. It just seems kinda off.”

Kim dredged her brain for an undergraduate class in nationalism she’d sat through years before. “Some people believe each ethnicity needs its own government to protect its way of life.”

Jazz shrugged—but gently, so Kim was not dislodged. “I don’t wanna criticize. Different strokes, and all that. It just don’t make a lot of sense to us.”

“Oh…” Oh, scrap. It wasn’t the party. It was the holiday.

“Of course, we can sympathize with being colonized. The Quintessons made us their labor and their toys for a hundred thousand Earth years before we drove them off Cybertron.”

“Wait—the Quintesson wars—”

“Came after. They wanted their property back.”

“Oh.”

“The situations aren’t quite comparable, though. The Quintessons weren’t our own species.  And we did, eventually, force them out.”

“Oh, my god. Just to be clear—it looks to you like we’re celebrating the conquest of the New World.”

“Well, not all of it.”

“I feel kind of sick,” Kim murmured. She needed to send a report to the morale office. How was she going to explain?

“We try to frame it as a holiday supporting our allies.  The first humans to help us were Americans. Nine of them died trying to save the Allspark. The United States has been quick to understand the danger Decepticons present, and very willing to support us. We are very grateful.”

She couldn’t put this in a report. There was no chance anyone in the support cubicles would understand. They’d be insulted. She could say…she could say it made no sense to Bots for members of one species to have different governments and holidays. She could, maybe, play up the fireworks and the dancing and the decor. Yes, lots of matching red-white-and-blue tablecloths and we’ll all not notice we are celebrating taking the country from the Indians.

“Oh, Jazz.”

His eyes, concentric rings of lenses that reflected bright blue, were nearly flat as they focused on her too-close face. “I take it the humans have noticed that we are not completely…comfortable with this particular celebration. We don’t dwell on our ambivalence.”

“Scrap,” Kim whispered. “Thank you.” She laughed uneasily. “Now I’m afraid to ask about the other holidays.” She shuddered. “Do I want to know what you think about Halloween? And Christmas?”

Jazz smiled. “Halloween is fantastic. A bunch of us volunteer at churches in town for Trunk or Treat.”

“You…what? Does NEST know?”

“Officially, no. Unofficially, Lennox sets it up.”

Kim, thoroughly chastened, decided to leave that there for now.  Scrap. Well, she might as well figure out the name of the morale guy and write up a memo about mech party preferences.

***

That afternoon the trainees worked on comparative mech anatomy; standard builds had changed every few hundred years and ‘non-standard’ experimental designs were always an option.  June complained that keeping track of different system variations was worse then being a veterinarian.

Kim retreated to the cat habitat to work on fieldnotes and her holiday memo.  She found Slipstream sitting in a corner with Max curled up on his leg. “Looks like it’s going well,” Kim said.

“Cats like warm places. I have recalibrated my coolant system to create a warm spot.”

“You’re not in danger of overheating, are you?”

“Certainly not,” he said indignantly.

“Right.” Max looked happy enough. “That was really clever.”   Kim settled on the floor with her laptop.

When Kim looked up a couple of hours later, Max had turned over and was licking a rear foot… and Slipstream had not changed his position.  At all. “Can I ask what you’re doing?”

“Studying Max’s internal mechanisms. I cannot use active sonar, of course. Detail work with passive sonar requires patience.”

“Oh. Is that…Interesting?”

“Since the data has a low processing demand, it would be boring, but I am also analyzing the motion patterns of Earth orbital debris to make sure a Decepticon is not hiding among the trash in order to infiltrate Earth communications satellites.”

“Is that…likely?” Kim gulped.

“It has happened twice in the last four years.”

“But—Lennox said they didn’t have a ship!”

“They do not. But a ship is not needed for work like this.  Reformatting coolant and joint systems for vacuum work is expensive, but not difficult.”

“Ex-expensive?” Kim fumbled.

“Energy-wise.”

“So, you’re very busy?”

“Yes,” he said, leaning forward to watch Max lower herself off his leg and hobble toward the food bowl.

Kim firmly blocked the image of Deceptions in the satellite system and smiled.

At four she was stiff all over from sitting on the floor. And too hot. And almost painfully thirsty. She decided to take the walk to the dining facility and get a sit-down dinner before the evening interview. When she got out on the balcony, though, she saw that Drift had three of the NEST guys at one of the mech-sized view screens and was showing them some kind of—was that an attack strategy? Keeping her distance, Kim settled in to watch. What were they doing? Three screens were going at once—surely humans couldn’t follow three visual presentations at the same time? The humans were asking questions, so they must be following something.  Kim wished she was close enough to hear. The content might be less important, though, then the way Drift and the humans were interacting.

They finished and went their separate ways in about ten minutes, leaving Kim’s curiosity unsatisfied. Another little piece of the puzzle that was life with giant aliens….

Kim tucked away her notebook and looked up to discover that Optimus was approaching the railing. Kim set her purse down and leaned against the metal bars. “Yo,” she said cheerfully. “Do you happen to know the time?”

His face plating stilled, and he glanced away.

Kim stiffened. “Did I ask that wrong?”

“No. I am concerned that we are about to have a misunderstanding.”

Oh, boy. “What kind of misunderstanding?”

His face plating loosened slightly. “The kind in which you conclude my priorities have changed or your performance has been unsatisfactory. Or that I find your company unwelcome.”

Oooh, boy. “Why would I think that?”

“I must cancel our interview tonight. Again.”

“Oh.”

“To repeatedly cancel a standing appointment is a signal of dissatisfaction in both our cultures.”

Kim made a face. “You’ve had really good excuses. I can’t imagine a situation where talking to Mr. Kan instead of me was the fun choice.”

“You may not find this next explanation as compelling. I will not be ‘doing’ anything particularly vital.”

“I’m not your mother. You don’t actually have to explain.”

His optics flickered and reset. “I have no idea what that metaphor means.”

Kim spread her hands. “Research is not compulsory.”

That he understood. Nodding, he said, “This is not simply a research ethics conversation. I am familiar with the human tendency to separate and isolate different social roles embodied in a single person. The ethnographer researching me has no right to an explanation. My colleague and my friend—a singular verb does not work grammatically in this sentence; however I am not actually discussing two separate people.”

Kim frowned. “Optimus? Are you okay?”

“That was the point I was getting to. I have not cleared my drives or defragmented my buffers in two-point-five-four orns. I am experiencing errors.”

Two and a half orns—double eighty-five and—"that’s over a week ago!”

“I fear our interview would not be productive anyway. But I was concerned that cancellation might be interpreted as avoidance or rejection.”

“How could you even—of course not having slept in a week is a good reason! Wait a minute—if you haven’t defragged—you haven’t run a repair cycle? Since before the explosion in Scotland?”

“I have not,” he confessed. His fans were on high. His eyes had stopped shifting focus.  

Mierda. “Okay. You know what? Your explanation is great. We’re fine, you and me. Totally peaceful. I love you. Now go to sleep. Do not keep standing here. Go.”

He bowed his head and leaned slightly forward, the bulk of his helm slowly passing just over and beside Kim’s shoulder. Surprised, Kim held very still. Except for overlapping (and the position was not right for Kim’s tiny field to reach his spark), mecha did not communicate much with distance.

Humans did though.

He’s trying so hard, she thought as he withdrew from her personal space and turned toward the arch that marked the off-duty areas. Oh, my friend.

 

Chapter 7

In the morning she was still—weirdly—stiff from sitting on the cat habitat floor. I’ll get a bean bag chair for hanging out with them. And cold.  And her eyes were crusty.  When, feeling fuzzy and profoundly uncomfortable, she presented herself at the yellow line, she was grumpy and glum.

Instead of absently inviting her in to join the others, Ratchet stomped over and stared down at her. “Tut-ut-ut-ut. Your internal temperature is elevated.”

Oh. Lovely. “Yeah, I might be coming down with something,” Kim said.

Ratchet stared at her.  Kim reconsidered. “Aw. Fuck, Ratchet.”

The staring was now decidedly contemptuous.

“Right. I get it. I can’t contaminate the other humans. I’m going.” Possibly she had been contagious the day before, but nooo, she was not going to mention that to Ratchet. He was already so freaked out by organic life.

Sagging, she headed back to her room. She didn’t feel so bad she couldn’t work. And it wasn’t like mecha could catch something from her. But there was no arguing with Ratchet.

Kim flopped on her bed. If she slept enough, maybe she could speed this along and get back to work?

Her phone began to play some obscure 80s rock song. Oh. We’re doing this now. Kim dug the phone out of her bag. The music abruptly stopped, and the screen broke out in branching fractals. Kim sighed. “Hi, boss. Yeah. It looks like I’ll be taking some sick days. At least three.”

“I have been informed.”

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. But I have to have Ratchet’s cooperation. I can’t argue with him.”

“Ratchet says you are showing symptoms of a viral infection.”

“Yup.” She cleared her throat. “That sounds about right.”

“Strongarm has volunteered to transport you to a civilian medical facility.”

“What? No. Oh, no.” Kim rolled her eyes, remembering a second too late that he had probably so thoroughly taken over her phone that he was using the camera. “I don’t need a medical facility. This is no big deal.”

“Communicable diseases are the worldwide leading cause of death for humans.”

 “Not colds. Humans do this about twice a year. Well. My first term in grad school was problematic for a whole lot of reasons.  I did this every three weeks.”

“Kim. Now is not a good time to be reminding me of your species’ frailty.”

Kim froze.  “How freaked out are you?”

“Kim,” he said in a tone that almost certainly made both mecha and NEST officers immediately quit dicking around and get busy.

“All right.” Kim rubbed her eyes. “Picture a scale where ‘zero’ is perfectly fine, ‘one’ is repairable damage to paint nanites, and ‘ten’ is coolant system shut down and all the vents full of sand.  Got it? A cold is two.”

Slowly, carefully, he answered “Are your cognitive functions diminished?”

Kim was pretty sure her cognitive functions were fine. She pictured waiting for two hours at an ER to be told she had a cold and decided she was quite sane for not wanting to do that. “I’m not that feverish. But nice job ragging on organic brains. Scrap. I’m sorry. I do seem to be a little bit testy. I…didn’t mean that.”

Patiently and respectfully (again, Kim was reminded how flexible and nuanced the English language pack was) he said, “Ratchet tells me you cannot even identify the specific pathogen infecting you. It is simply not possible for you know how serious the situation is.”

Kim’s eyes, already hot and gritty, burned with the start of tears. “Human brains can’t do calculations the way yours do, but they do extrapolate very well with incomplete and missing data.  Cliffjumper and Bulkhead have both said this—Epps says you don’t even have a word for intuition. He said he spent ten minutes explaining it to Ironhide and could not convince him the real secret definition wasn’t ‘choosing at random.’ I have enough data to know this will pass on its own in a few days. And I am not going to an emergency room and let strangers touch me just to please you.”

A long pause. Kim wondered how much trouble from one recalcitrant human he was going to accept. “Will you allow Nurse Darby to confirm your assessment?”

This was probably as much concession as she was going to get. “Yes, if she brings some of those little cartons of orange juice from the dining facility.”

“Research shows that orange juice is less effective than chicken soup.”

Kim laughed. “I like orange juice. And I have cans of chicken soup.”

The knock at the door a few minutes later, however, wasn’t June. It was Slipstream: “Max has started meowing at fifteen point two to sixteen point one second intervals.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Forty-one minutes.” He was fairly dancing in place and was not bothering with facial expression management at all.

“Is there food?”

“Yes!”

“Fresh water?”

“I change it every four hours.”

“Twice a day is probably enough. You have that fountain filter-thing going, so maybe once? Have you tried playing with her?”

“She is injured.”

“Well, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want a feather lure dangled over her.” Kim frowned. “How’s her body temperature?”

“Normal.”

“Pooping regularly?”

“I think so. Although there is less detail about cat feces on the internet than I would like.”

Kim tugged miserably at her short hair.  Her head definitely hurt. “You know, sometimes cats just….meow. Their whole domestication with us—thousands of generations—they got attention and rewards for making noises.  Some of their cries sound like our babies, it takes advantage of something our neural connections are optimized for. Does this make sense? Their relationship with us has built into them…” Kim sighed. “Don’t give her any extra food—she can’t exercise. Overnutrition is—”

Slipstream was pointedly looking both shocked and offended.

“Right. Just try talking to her. She’s still adapting to her new home.”

“Talk to her? But she is not capable of speech. You have mentioned this several times.”

“She can hear. She’s heard English all her life.  She can tell tone.  You haven’t been talking to her?”

His expression froze and his voice was inflectionless when he said, “I had thought humans talking to pets was sentimental affectation. I was going to experiment with it later.”

“Try it now.”

As he returned to Max, Kim trudged down to the bathroom to wash her face. Aspirin, she thought.

June—bearing six mini cartons of orange juice—was waiting at her door when she got back. She was masked and gloved and Kim would have laughed if her head were not hurting and her throat weren’t starting to go raw from post nasal drip.

“Poor Ratchet.” Kim said. “This is such bad timing.”

“It has occurred to Ratchet that you might have picked up something from Cilffjumper’s infestation. He wants to look at a sample.”

“I can’t imagine it would take so long to show up.”

“Yes, it’s entirely predictable how microorganisms react to giant alien mechanical life.” June produced a collection jar from her pocket and held it out.

“Tell me I’m not peeing in this.”

“Used cleanex.”

~TBC

Chapter 5: Backchannel Cue

Chapter 8

Although Ratchet found nothing unusual or pernicious in the sample, Kim was quarantined in the Cold War office wing until Wednesday of the following week. For most of that she couldn’t even work on field notes, since her eyes would not focus properly on a screen. She thought of her informants—aliens! Actual aliens!—and chafed at the lost time.

June came by three times with offerings of food and news from the outside world. Drift was claiming a (not, apparently ‘the’) victory in the selfie competition with fifty Google Earth images at castles.  The most recent one was the White House, which, according to Drift, was the most famous castle in the world. Jazz had disputed this on the grounds that Buckingham Palace was much more famous. While Epps and Carly tried to explain that the White House didn’t count as a castle at all, Bulkhead broke in and announced that Neuschwanstein had already been accepted as the ‘best’ human castle, and he had the selfie there. Drift had countered with the fact that no one currently lived in Neuschwanstein, which lowered its position in the rankings. They had eventually appealed to Chromia for a ruling. Ratchet had pulled the trainees back to work before Chromia’s complex analysis of the merits of various Earth castles had been finished.

Kim was crushed she had missed that. She had not even realized Drift was playing the selfie game.

During the second visit June passed along a request from Captain Lennox to explain ‘what the hell is going on with Ironhide.’

Kim groaned. “I don’t know. They aren’t talking to me.”

“Who have you asked?”

And that was the trouble. She hadn’t really asked. She’d hinted. She’d made herself available. She hadn’t pushed, and told herself she was preserving rapport.

And now she was ‘out sick’ and cut off from everybody but June who was still gloved and masked because Ratchet was an asshole and a paranoid freak. “Fuck.” And then, “Sorry. I seem to be in a bad mood. What have you heard?”

June frowned and leaned against the door frame. “They had a quarrel in Scotland, and now they aren’t speaking to each other.  Ironhide is currently on a three-day patrol in Chad—alone. He is refusing assignments with Prime.”   

“Yeah, okay. I’ll work on it….” What she would tell Lennox or the other humans was not something she made promises about, though.

Later that afternoon she wandered down to cat country.  Slipstream smiled but sprouted a dismayed antenna when she opened the door. “You are undergoing self-repair. Ethnography is forbidden. I can only speak to you in case of an emergency with Max.”

Stymied, Kim blinked stupidly. This was a barrier she had not considered. “Well. What if I’m lonely and I just want to gossip? I’ve been in my room for a couple of days now.”

His face plating furrowed, making him look very stern. “Prime says gossip is working.  We may only discuss human topics of low tactical priority.”

Trying not to look disappointed, Kim sat on one of the sturdier-looking cat igloos. “Okay. That works.” It didn’t, but she was a little bored and lonely.

“Do you like soap operas?”

“No,” Kim answered in startled horror. Too late she realized her mistake—the reason why Slipstream might like something so obtusely human would surely be fascinating.

“How about reality television? I myself am fond of The Bachelorette.”

“Seriously? Tell me about it.” Kim felt—briefly—proud of her response.

Over the next surreal and confusing half-hour, the pride quickly faded. Slipstream was some kind of reality TV fanatic. The combination of naive enthusiasm and cutting pop-culture criticism would have been surprising even if she’d had any idea what he was talking about. After comparing ‘Rachel’ and ‘Jojo’ at length and analyzing where ‘Andi’ went wrong, Slipstream began speculating on the possibilities of getting Kim in as a contestant. After all, she wasn’t married.

Kim, claiming exhaustion, retreated at the first opening.  

At long last on Wednesday, when Kim presented herself at the yellow line, Ratchet scooped her up, set her on the nearest work surface, and leaned in. Kim, startled by the intense attention, froze.  It was several seconds before she cleared her throat and asked, “So what are you scanning me with?”

“Hmph. Infrared. Magnetoreception. Sonar.”

“Anything interesting?”

He scowled. “I suppose you’re fine. Inasmuch as any sort of biological organism can be said to be ‘fine.’”

“Thanks. So, what are we doing today?”

“As it turns out, nurses and weapons specialists—unlike most engineers and mechanics—have no experience at all with welding.”

“Oh, dear.”

So the morning was spent welding armor scraps. The structure of the mesh—kind of like a spun micro-sponge and completely unlike any Earth material—made the process different enough that both Carly and Dr. Nomura made almost as much of a mess of their first attempts as the novices.

Mesh repair was harder work than welding human materials. It was slower. It was hotter. Ratchet kept sniping at Dr. Nomura for trying to make too perfect a seam: “The patient’s nanites will fix that later when they re-spin the mesh. You’re just closing up the gap.” Epps, apparently, fiddled with his face mask too much. June asked too many questions.  In the end, only Carly’s work was deemed ‘not horrible.’

That afternoon Kim had a meeting with General Morshower. He’d gotten a copy of the holiday memo, and apparently, she had not quite been vague enough to slip the underlying discomfort completely past him.  He fussed. Kim listened seriously and overtly. When he ran down, she said, “They don’t think of government the way we do. They don’t have patriotisms the way we do. But they like a party and they like us. I think we should just accept it.”

“Hm. Shame we can’t get them more live music.”

“Not in two days,” Kim agreed.

“Not an outdoor concert in Nevada in the summer. Might find a way later, though. They’d appreciate it?”

“The ones who wouldn’t specifically enjoy the music would still like the, uh, group activity.”

So that was taken care of.  

Morshower wasn’t finished, though. “Any idea on the real story with Ironhide? Jazz keeps putting me off with ‘internal personnel reassignment.’ My ass. ‘Hide was borderline insubordinate in Scotland.”

“I hadn’t heard that. But I haven’t had a chance to hang out and gossip for days now.”  Damn.

***

Kim wasn’t hungry, but she forced herself to have a late lunch/early dinner of a microwaved potato and a soft-boiled egg. It turned out you could boil an egg in an electric kettle. She had already drunk the last of her emergency soda.

At five-thirty she exited the elevator at the mesa surface—damn, it had been five or six days since she’d seen the sky—and walked past the lines of solar panels to the cluster of boulders where Optimus waited. “Evening,” he said.

“It’s still pretty hot out for evening,” Kim said. “Would you pop me into that shady spot?” She pointed to a flattish spot that would be about eye level with Optimus when he was sitting down.

“I suppose I should ask what’s new,” she said, dusting off a corner of boulder. Even out of the direct sun, the rock was still warm. “What have I miss—” She broke off, noticing the angle of his helm.  “So, sonar scan? I assume electromagnetics and infrared, too?”

“And passive assessment of volatile chemicals. Do you consider this a violation of ‘medical privacy?’”

“That alien idea?” Kim sat down and tucked her bag between her feet. “I don’t know. You have a lot of information about me another human wouldn’t. Possibly not even a doctor. On the other hand, your sensory range is natural to you. Should I ask you not to look at me? That hardly seems reasonable.”

“Some human customs do prohibit looking,” he offered thoughtfully.

“Well. Yes. My culture doesn’t have that, though.”

Pointedly, he looked at her clothing.

Kim laughed. “Ooops. Sorry. Too obvious to notice.” Suddenly, the idea of covering up bits of her body seemed arbitrary and weird. “Do you have the idea of ‘naked?’”

“You have said so to the general and Fowler.”

“I gave them a—a metaphor so they would understand the size of the issue and leave you alone.  Paint nanites aren’t the same. Ratchet says the carapace is as much a part of you as the protoform. It isn’t like clothing. Or armor.”

“Correct. To return to our original question--?”

“I…I can’t speak for the politeness or boundaries humans will eventually settle on. When they know. There are things that are not a stranger’s business. But you may look at me in as much detail as you would another Autobot.”

“Thank you.”

Kim swallowed, tried to settle more comfortable on the rock, sighed. “I have to ask you about the thing with Ironhide. The humans are stressing about it—it’s tough when Mom and Dad fight, you know?”

He sat down slowly, optics resetting a couple of times. “I had hoped to avoid being perceived as maternal,” he said at last.

“Oh, Ironhide is Mom. Totally. The safety tour, the equipment checks….Mom all the way.”

“I see.”

“I have to ask what’s going on. You don’t have any obligation to tell me anything. But it would really help if you could give me something to reassure NEST with. Or have a talk with Lennox or Bill yourself.”

“I had thought the situation was clear: I exhibit insufficient prudence; I have modified my situational and combat subroutines in ways that permit unacceptable risks; I have repeatedly, though my behavior, slandered the competence of a subordinate. I am stubborn and unreasonable, and Ironhide was acting within precedent when he abdicated his position.”

“Are you, uh,” Kim swallowed, “Are you angry?”

“No. Is that what worries NEST? That we are feuding? No. Ironhide is still third in command. He is still in charge of base security. There will be no sort of retaliation. The only change NEST will notice is that Ironhide will no longer accompany me into combat.”

“Okay,” she said doubtfully. “I can explain that.”

“But you do not believe me,” he said softly, leaning forward.

“It seems pretty extreme. I mean, he’s had this job for probably hundreds of years--”

“Thousands.”

“—Right. And he just quits, and you’re totally cool with it?”

He leaned in, spoke very softly: “I feel, in fact, deeply relieved.”  This was, clearly, the great secret.  But what could it mean? Was Ironhide so bossy or nosy it was a relief to be free of him? Was there a personality clash? Was he bad at his job?

None of that seemed likely. “I don’t understand.”

“You lack the context.  On Cybertron, family, religion, and government were not in separate spheres. They could not be, given our reproduction. While very powerful and prestigious positions could be gained through election to the Council or promotion in the professions, the positions of highest respect were held by the Primes and those they appointed. At the very top were the two Primes and the most senior First of Line. Nearly equal was the head of the military, selected by the Primes and confirmed by the Senate. We have none now—I make those decisions by default. Immediately below were positions reserved for only the most competent, most prudent, most courageous: protector positions guarding each of the Primes.  I couldn’t begin to translate the title. Or I could, but it would seem so overblown you would laugh.”

“And that was Ironhide?”

“Yes. Not my first. Two others died before him early in the war. You must remember, Ironhide was not originally a war frame. He came to this work retrofitted and retrained, but he was…devoted to the duty. He matched himself to the need. He is, arguably, the best protector that has ever served.”

Kim remembered his patient, careful safety tour and believed it.

“I have carried him from the battlefield forty-three times, Kim. Seven of those times his cognitive functions had offlined from pain. Five of those times he was so badly injured that his power systems shut down.” A tiny hatch at his waist opened, and Optimus unreeled a cord as thick around as Kim’s thumb. He held it out, so she could see the complex connecter. “This is a life support cable. The first time I had to use mine was on him.”

Despite the warm stone beneath her, Kim felt cold. “So, you feel relieved.”

Slowly putting the cable away, Optimus shook his head. “That is not all of the context. You are aware he has lost sensory busses.  You do not know that for the last three hundred years, Ironhide has been losing efficiency in his self-repair systems. His internal nanite colony has lost seven percent of its total mass. Ratchet has not been able to slow the degradation.”

“Oh, no.”

“On Cybertron, before the war, overhauling and refurbishing his systems would have been almost trivial. For someone of his position and achievements to succumb to wear—ridiculous.”

“I’m so sorry,” Kim breathed.

“Do not think my decision is entirely sentimental. To say that his experience and skills are irreplaceable is not hyperbole or metaphor. Statistical models place the chance of our survival—both your species and mine—alarmingly low without him.”

Kim nodded slowly. “Yeah. Okay. But—why not just say all that? Have you been trying to piss him off and get him to quit? That seems kind of…..” Harsh. But she would not say it.

“Context, again, Kim. Direct service to a Prime is a very great honor. But beneath that honor the core issue is the protection of the Matrix inside me. By both tradition and logic, it must have the most capable protection, and that protection takes precedence over all other concerns. The only justification to discharge or retire my bodyguard is unworthiness to serve. Or the appearance of someone more worthy. I could not ask him to retire without insulting him unforgivably.”

“But quitting was okay?”

“Primes…are sometimes—my translation file keeps offering up assholes as the correct adjective. Perhaps I will be more specific and say stupid or abusive. There is precedent for quitting service in anger. It has occasionally served as a form of public rebuke.”

“This must be just awful,” Kim said. “I’m really sorry.”

“I feel only relief. And now that my ‘insufficient prudence’ no longer directly interferes with his responsibilities, I expect we will quarrel a good deal less.”

“Oh.” Yes, it must be awful to be charged with protecting someone who regularly went into combat. Poor Ironhide. “But he has to know all this context. Won’t he see what you did when he cools down? Won’t the First of Lines? They’re going to figure out you played them.”

“No. What I have done is—by Cybertronian standards—irrational. The idea that any one life, either for sentimental or tactical reasons, would be sheltered at the expense of the security of the Great Matrix is absurd. Our history, our customs do not include a situation where we were so few or so desperate. It has taken many years of careful analysis to reach this decision. Ironhide will never imagine I am capable of it.”

“But…what about the Matrix?”

“What about it? I could, in the next hour, kindle from it a thousand new sparks. Babies is your word. But I have no protomatter to embody those souls. No energon to nourish and nuture them. They would die splashing on the rocks, dissipating into the planet’s electromagnetic field. I do not have the resources to frame even one.  In fact, it is possible I won’t even be able to save the few precious beloved who have taken refuge on Earth. And our choice that Sentinel would flee here to hide the Allspark has drawn your planet into our war. Your species is now at risk, too, and all the abundant life of Earth.” He spread his hands. “I cannot promise victory or even survival, Kim. I mourn for the children that might be, but I must try to save the already-living. Somehow.”

She had only meant, who would be taking over the job of protecting the Matrix-bearer? She had not expected this outpouring of grief. Her eyes burned. For a long, lost moment she struggled to remember how to be an anthropologist, what she had been taught about difficult interviews, the commitment she had made to accepting the burden of others’ terrible truths.

This wasn’t that.

Kim curled forward so here head rested on her knees and fumbled in her pocket for a clean tissue. It was a long time before she could say anything. Then, when she could, words seemed both too honest and too empty. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“I must ask you for something now.”

“Anything.” And that was true.

“You have offered me the protections you would owe to ‘human subjects.’ I had not thought I would need them….”

“Privacy,” Kim whispered, looking up. “I can’t repeat this, I can’t record the notes on anything digital—I probably shouldn’t even use paper.” What couldn’t be hacked could be searched.

“Thank you. I would also ask…that any conclusions you draw based on this conversation, you keep to yourself? Human thinking is difficult to predict.”

“The topic is closed. Except what you have told me to pass along.”

“I am grateful.”

“Can I ask—I mean, Ironhide. It isn’t…urgent? I mean, he’ll still…he’ll still outlive me?”

His optical lenses reset and then cupped down to a narrow focus that made Kim want to flinch away. “I would not have phrased it so. But, no, his condition is not urgent.” His attention softened slightly, and he leaned a little closer. “It is not without hope. For the last year, Ratchet has been building a—excuse me, the term is not in the translation pack. I will have to check the dictionary. How odd. Factory floor? Corral? Plant nursery? Fish hatchery? Incubator?”

“Describe it,” Kim said gently.

“A seamless quartz polyhedron measuring one point two meters by point five three meters by point five three meters that serves as an environment for universal construction nanites.”

“A tiny factory floor,” Kim said. “Okay. What does it make?”

“Anything. Replacement parts. Repair nanites. Protomatter.  Ratchet can also make these things, within his body. In small amounts at a…rather high energon cost.  An external incubator can be run on any electrical source.  Ratchet and I hope that with a large enough population, Ironhide’s repair nanite colony can be successfully be reseeded. Or, failing that, maintained with regular—I’m sorry, none of this has been properly translated. Regular inflow?”

“Transfusion,” Kim suggested.

“Metaphorically acceptable,” he nodded. “But all of that won’t help if he gets himself extinguished stepping between me and a bomb.  The next one may not be trivial.”

“Yeah.”

He pulled back slightly, his head tilted to focus a sonar scan. “You are distressed.”

“Well? It’s distressing. I’ll cope.”

“You must. I’m sorry.”

Kim stood up. “I think I want—to just call it a day. Okay? I can’t…I can’t do our regular interview tonight.”

“I understand,” he said, lifting his broad hand. “We can return to our usual topics tomorrow.”

***

Thursday morning Kim opened the calendar to find the daily schedule had imploded. Ratchet’s class was cancelled. Bumblebee had been pulled from the ‘anthropologist duty’ spot. Kim had an appointment at the ground bridge at eight (jacket, closed-toed shoes, and water required). What the hell?

Very quickly the reason for the changes became apparent: Mearing was arriving in two hours with representatives from Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam.  They were to be fetched via ground bridge from D.C. by Bulkhead.

Oh, boy.

Kim dressed quickly, shoved extra granola bars and water into her bag, and hurried out to the balcony. Activity was high. Bulkhead and Windblade were doing weapons checks as though they were going into combat. Jazz, Strongarm, and Jetstorm were clustered around the huge interface in some kind of intense discussion. Drift and Chromia were standing together just (Kim thought) out of overlapping range. Kim guessed they were having a radio conversation.

The glyph traffic was high and interesting.  Emphasis Overlapping, mud, and orange trees figured heavily. Huh. Mulling that over, Kim sat down on the battered couch to watch the activity and wait till it was time to head to the bridge alcove.

One burning question was bouncing uselessly off the corners of her mind: was she being removed from the vicinity of Mearing’s visit? And if she was, why? Was she being hidden from whatever Mearing was doing? Or was it being hidden from her?

She had no answers, of course. And it might be a coincidence.

When Optimus passed close to the railing, she rose, turning over ways to bring it up.

“Are you well?” he asked.

Kim nodded. “You?”

“Yes.” And then, “I find I am looking forward to the unexpected opportunity to leave base. If you are ready, we could proceed. I see no point in waiting.”

“Wait—I’m going with you?”

“Yes, unless you object.”

“No. I mean—Mearing’s coming!”

He shrugged fluidly. “I will not be meeting with her today.”

Oh.

Kim hurried down the stairs, but he had transformed before she had reached the bottom.  She waited until the door was shut behind her before bursting out, “Why are you avoiding Mearing?”

“I am not avoiding Director Mearing. Our collaborations are fruitful. She is refreshingly open and logical.”

“Then…why are we going out?”

“We have decided that I will simply be ‘too busy’ to meet personally with the guests she is bringing.  For tactical reasons.  Jazz, Chromia, and Arcee will participate in the meeting, since I will be engaged in important and complex work elsewhere today.”

“Oh. Okay, then. Where are we going?”

“Highway 20 in Washington State. The area is geographically interesting. Our route will involve a number of large bridges.” 

Her phone beeped and a map opened onto her screen. Kim scrolled around it. “Wow. I’ve never seen the West Coast. This looks great!”

Maggie and Fixit were running a systems’ check on the bridge, so it looked like they might not get off early after all. As much to pass the time during the wait as to have another question answered, Kim said, “Why is Mearing’s code name Orange Tree?”

“Orange tree?”

Kim sent him the glyph.

There was a short pause that seemed more awkward than analyzing before Optimus responded, “That is not her code name.”

“Oh. Darn. I was sure she was the commonality there.  Maybe it is an error in the glyph lexicon?”

“I am certain it is not an error. I had not examined recent glyph lexicon updates in detail. I did not realize….hm. No, not an error, but rather an attempt at propriety.”

“I don’t understand.”

“This glyph,” it appeared on her screen without the gloss, “indicates any organic life form producing acidic or corrosive defenses. It is used in this context as a metaphor for an unpleasant human.”

Kim’s eyes widened. “It’s an epithet?”

“I discourage the usage. I confess, I had hoped it would not come to your attention.”

“Has it—has it been used to refer to me?”

“Not that I have observed,” he answered immediately.

“But—why Mearing?”

“Are you aware of the diplomatic philosophy of Teddy Roosevelt?”

Kim blinked. “Wait, what?”

“’Speak softly and carry a big stick.’ Keller speaks softly. Mearing is the big stick.”

Oh. Right. Kim could totally see that. There wasn’t time to talk about it more, though. The ground bridge was ready, and it was time to go to Washington.

“You are nervous,” Optimus observed as he rolled into position.

“A little,” Kim conceded, wiping her hands on her jeans. “Poking a hole in the universe is kind of a big deal.”

“You appreciate that if this were dangerous I would not be permitted to do it.” A joke, Kim realized.

She laughed obligingly and countered, “You do whatever you want.”

“Want might be the wrong word. But yes, I am good at getting my way. Close your eyes. This will be no different than crossing an intersection.”

The circle of swirling color blossomed into the frame. Kim shut her eyes.

~TBC

Chapter 6: Communicative Competence

Chapter 9

They had arrived in an empty parking lot bordered on two sides by pine forests.

It was a beautiful day.  The sky was clear and blue. A breeze stirred the pine trees. A large, blue bird was flying low over a blocky building. “Where are we?”

“A Navy base on Whidbey Island. Military installations are convenient for transit.  For our return we will have to make do with a restricted area in a national park.”

“Oh.” The nearby buildings seemed to have been cleared out. They encountered no one until they reached the main road off the base. Kim dug out her notebook. “So, what exactly are we doing?”

He listed the scans he was doing and what he was looking for. She understood everything he said as he described the signs of energon and Decepticons, so he must be simplifying to the point of humor.

“Is that why Earth? Because there was energon?”

“No,” he answered, sounding slightly surprised. “The energon was unexpected. We had no reason to know something so rare would be found here in useful quantities.”

“Oh.” Kim said, trying to gamely work up some enthusiasm for another conversation she probably wouldn’t understand about energon. Eventually, it would have to start to make sense. Right?

Only what he said next was something else. “We chose Earth because we believed it would be a location Megatron would be unlikely to consider. And it was an effective choice: It took Megatron some seven hundred local years to trace Sentinel here.”

“The last place anyone would look?” Kim grinned. “Are we that bad? Are there lots of species out there in the universe avoiding us?”

A sigh. “There are not ‘lots’ of species. And it is not your planet they are avoiding, but our war.”

“But seriously. What is it about Earth that makes it the lasts place anyone would look?” She had an awful thought. “Is it all the water and oxygen? Is it that dangerous?”

“It is nothing about the planet itself. The location of this solar system is a trope in our literature. It is used to convey ominousness in classical poetry and allegorical dramas. It is depicted as the origin point of evil, danger, or decay—It was largely replaced by Quintessa after the Quintesson invasion. But not completely.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea. The symbolism is very ancient. Its origins were surely detailed at some point. But the Quintessons were thorough about destroying our historic records.”

Kim tried to picture all that. Her brain seized up. “Huh. Seriously? A trope of ominousness?”

“Hm. Picture a three-story Victorian house with peeling paint, an unmown lawn, a wrought iron fence, and full of mice. Earth served a similar literary function.”

Kim looked out the window and laughed. They were cresting a low hill, and below was a lovely field of flowers extending down to a rocky beach and a peaceful inlet glittering in the sun. “So…you find Earth creepy.”

“On the contrary. As I have said, the planet itself is very nice. It is abundant with life that is alien, but wonderful. Nevertheless. This solar system was avoided.”

“Who thought of it? As a place to hide?”

“After Alpha Trion sacrificed himself to close Vector Sigma, Megatron fixated upon the Allspark. It soon became clear he did not care how many Decepticon lives would have to be sacrificed to obtain it. We could not have protected it. It had to be hidden.”

“Why the Allspark and not the Great Matrix?” Kim asked.

“The Matrix will not function without a Prime. The Allspark was safer and more productive with a Prime, but it could be…managed without one. To continue, we came together to make a plan: myself, Sentinel Prime, Elita—who was speaking for the First of Line then, Ultra Magnus, and Perceptor. It was Elita who said we must begin by rejecting every ‘good’ destination we could think of. I believe Ultra Magnus mentioned this solar system as a joke, but Perceptor pointed out there was a planet with a marginally acceptable atmosphere and a comfortable temperature range….”

“And here you are.”

“Here we are. And Cybertron is lost. And so many of my comrades and friends are dead. And the planet we had carefully avoided is now—metaphorically—the center of the universe. Kim, there is a great deal I don’t understand.”

Kim attempted what she hoped was reassuring eye contact with the hula dancer on the dashboard. “Is this one of those conversations I don’t take notes on?”

“I would ask humans—but they don’t know either. The issues are not covert matters… but I suppose I prefer not to draw attention to my ignorance.”

“Okay….”

“I do not know why any Decepticons still remain on earth after Sentinel destroyed the Allspark. I do not know why energon is forming on Earth. Or why it is forming now. Or if it will continue.”

“And you don’t know why we’re some kind of intergalactic  haunted house. I don’t suppose it was …random?”

“Random seems unlikely. But that may be, yes. I have requested more information, although I am not optimistic about getting it; I have had no communication from Cybertron itself in one point five vorns.”

Over one hundred years, then. Kim closed her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“And that is another mystery,” he said softly. “That human minds should be so like ours that you can truly understand us, even to our grief.”

Kim glanced away from the decorative hula dancer and blew her nose.

“Are you well?”

Kim cleared her throat. “Emotional, not sick. Ill, I mean.” Sick had been translated to imply cognitive dysfunction. “How are the scans going?”

“Nothing so far. Most patrols are uneventful.”

“That why the selfie game is so popular?”

“It seems a safer target for excess energy than transporting interesting wildlife.”

“Oh. The alligator.”

“It is fortunate no one was injured.”

Patrol was not very direct: there were detours onto small, local roads and a lot of time overlooking coastline. The two-part bridge to Fidalgo Island was remarkably picturesque. Near someplace called Shelter Bay, Optimus stopped on a barely-paved, one-lane road so Kim could hop out and carry a turtle off to the side. Over another bridge was a small town. They paused long enough for Kim to get a take-out chicken salad wrap at a local diner.  (She would have preferred tuna, but there was no way she was going to risk spilling fish on his interior. Eating anything at all in his pristine cab made her nervous enough.)

In the afternoon they turned east and north, heading toward the mountains. Kim’s ears popped a couple of times as they gained height, trading ocean vistas for forests and picturesque little streams. They talked about the local life forms, logging, tourism, and Indian Reservations.  Several times Optimus shared a song being played on a local radio station (it turned out he was idly listening to four at a time) and asked questions about the lyrics. Kim dutifully kept a list of the songs and the questions—you never knew what would be useful later.

But. It did not feel like working.

Since arriving at the NEST installation, she had done her best to ignore both the troglodyte feel of the underground base and the relentless openness-heat-parched-emptiness of the Nevada desert. Washington State was cool and green and moist. There were lots of birds. There were wild flowers.  It was amazing.

At a little after three, Optimus stopped at a service station so Kim could use the restroom and get a bottled tea. As she climbed back in, he asked, “Why is a defecation receptacle in a public venue called a restroom, while a defecation receptacle in a private home called a bathroom?”

“Huh?” It was an odd question. He knew about euphemisms for bodily functions.

“Is the presence or absence of a bathing facility a core determinate of function? Also, I can find no evidence that resting is--”

“Stop. Is your language package okay?”

“It is functioning as designed. It is inadequate. I am attempting to correct errors in the glossary.”

“Oh,” Kim said, feeling suddenly sad. “No. The language package is great. The glossary is amazing, considering that a lot of your words don’t even have a direct equivalent. And the body language and tone modifiers…I admire it often.”

“I see.”

“The problem is English. Which is considered a huge pain in the neck even by people in our own language family.  It wasn’t designed, ever. It’s not logical in a lot of ways. And the way humans think…Some of it can’t be translated into Cybertronix anyway.”

“You offer important points.”

“You’re going to keep working on the translation system. And that’s okay. And I’ll help all you want. But—it’s not you. It’s us.” Desperate to convey some kind of comfort or solidarity, Kim awkwardly patted his dashboard.

“The hula dancer is outfitted with pressure sensors.  My experience of physical contact in other parts of the cab are only indirect, through vibration.”

Kim froze. “You built the hula dancer for touch?”

“Touch is a central human communication.”

Kim stared at it in growing apprehension.

“The interface offends you?” he asked.

“Um. Oh. No, but—it’s a really complex, delicate technology! My hands—sweat is acidic and full of salt! I can’t just—”

“The interface is complex, but not delicate.” He paused. “It has been noticed that you touch us less frequently than other humans with which we have similarly good relations. You have been afraid of causing harm?” 

Embarrassed, Kim nodded.

“We adapted our components to this planet, including its life forms. Direct contact with your skin will not damage chromeonanites, armor mesh, or sensor surfaces. Hm. Contact with my spark chamber or energon lines is not recommended, but if you were to encounter either we would have more serious problems then repairing an etched fingerprint.”

Kim scooted forward and gently patted the base of the hula dancer. “That’s meant to be reassuring,” she said. “Or maybe sympathy.  English sucks. And it isn’t like I’m trying to learn Cybertronix. I’m struggling even with the glyphs—”

“It would be inefficient for you to attempt to learn Cybertronix, even if your vocal apparatus could form the words.”

“And I’m sorry I didn’t understand the hula dancer. I do appreciate the effort you went to.”

“You are welcome.”

For the next half hour they worked on the English glossary until Optimus turned onto a dirt road and drove slowly into an old fire site filled with half-grown pine trees. “It is customary,” he said, “for the human to check in before we request the ground bridge.”

Kim fumbled her headset on and followed his instructions for contacting the NEST base.

To her surprise, it was Lennox’s voice that answered. “You’re right on time, Indy, but we may have a delay with the bridge.  Hand the call over to Big Buddha.”

Indy? Kim thought. But then it occurred to her that this was probably not the usual protocol.  There were a couple of clicks as Optimus took control of communications. “Please transmit the error log,” he said.

“It’s not originating in our equipment, Sir.” That was Maggie.  “We’re clean. Fixit says it looks like sunspots, but I’ve got the solar data, and the sun is…quiet.”

“Sunspots!” Fixit said impatiently. “But not this sun! Oh, dear.”

Patiently, Optimus asked, “Do you believe you are able to open a bridge safely?”

“I can definitely open a bridge. I’m not sure it will be stable enough for transit.”

The whirl of deepening pink that sprouted into ‘existence’ in the tree farm looked just like any other ground bridge to Kim. She guessed. She hadn’t seen many. Optimus pulled close to look down its throat, then backed to the side. From this angle, Kim could see that it had no ‘behind.’ The ground bridge existed only from the front.

“Fixit is correct,” he said after a few moments. “The local sun is not capable of generating this particular pattern of interference. Ms. Madsen, please send through a test drone.”

“You know there is only a ninety-three percent chance it will arrive even if the bridge is stable, right?”

“Yes, Ms. Madsen. I am aware.”

“It will take a minute to—”

There was no warning, no change in the glittering kaleidoscope of light before everything whited out with a roar. Kim felt pulled hard into the seatbelt as they slewed sideways. Optimus yelled.

The silence afterward had continued for several seconds before Kim realized that it was silence.  There was a fading roar in her ears and spots dancing before her eyes. But there was no underlying hum of Optimus’ power systems, no tiny vibration that showed torque generation of a mech in alt. “Optimus?”

He didn’t answer.

Kim shifted, trying to get some slack in the too-tight seatbelt, and looked around. His dash was dark. The tiny lights and glittering dials didn’t indicate anything, but they were always lit. Because mecha cared about details like that.

“Optimus?”

Help. She needed help. Frantically, Kim dug in her bag for her phone. It was dead: a clunky, slightly obsolete, alien-modified paperweight.

The NEST headset was dead, too.

And the seatbelt seemed to be stuck or jammed.  Possibly the button had never really done anything—hell, it  was probably just an interface to communicate the passenger’s desire to be released.

Slowly, deliberately, Kim said every curse word she knew—even the glyph ones Optimus disapproved of and the Russian ones she had promised she would never, ever say out loud because Americans never did it right.

Suddenly, accompanied by unsteady flickering across the dashboard and shouted Cybertronix, power systems roared to life around her. “Optimus!”

His vocalizer stuttered, and he rocked sharply back on his tires. “Kim!”

She closed here eyes, hands gripping the seat. “Oh, thank God. Are you okay?”

“I am doing a system assessment now.” His vocalizer clicked and reset again. “Are you injured?”

“I’m fine. What happened?”

“The bridge collapsed. Violently.”

“Because of the drone coming through?”

“They had not yet dispatched the drone. I have a number of hypotheses about the cause, none of them completely supported by the evidence.”  He paused. “The sensors I had aimed at the phenomena are damaged.  They are repairable, but it will take several hours. In addition, my radio communications systems are not functioning. The source of the problem is not immediately apparent.”  His voice had gone very flat; whatever emotion was behind the words was not one he was comfortable using the nonverbals of the language pack to share.

“What about the other one, the ansible?” Mech long range communication was based on physics principles human science didn’t recognize so it was glossed with a science fiction word.

“It is not receiving. The problem may be interference. I am running a diagnostic now.”

Kim took a deep breath. “Okay. I need to go pee in the woods now. Let me out for a minute.”

“It would be best to withdraw from this location first. There is some lingering radiation from the event. It would be unwise for you to be exposed unshielded.”

“Radiation? We created a hazardous waste site?” The adrenaline that had started to recede surged back. Oh, fuck. Absolute fuck.

“The half-life of the particular contamination is seven minutes. The danger will pass quickly. Unfortunately, the trees directly within the blast zone are unlikely to survive.” Optimus liked trees, Kim remembered.

They eased back onto the abandoned road and retreated a short distance away. Kim was shaking and unsteady on her feet, but once out of the cab she breathed and stretched and tried to tell herself things weren’t so bad. They had lost the ground bridge, but they hadn’t been on it when it collapsed. Optimus was not badly hurt. Everything was going to be fine.

Fine.

As Kim heaved herself back up the steep steps she said cheerfully, “So how long will it take?”

“How long will what take?” And that was worrisome—his voice was still so flat it was nearly mechanical.

“Driving back to Nevada. Unless we’re headed to the nearest military base instead.” She knew the Autobots did, sometimes, travel by cargo plane, although this was not something they enjoyed. Either way, she would be a ‘good sport.’ Now was not the time to freak out or complain. She wasn’t going to. Also, she wasn’t going to cry.

Firmly, cheerfully, she did the seat belt and finished the last of the tea.

Optimus still had not answered.

Kim’s hands clutched around the bottle. “What’s wrong?” Oh, God. “Are you hurt?”

“My communications systems are repairable, but they are not currently functioning. I am unable to navigate to Nevada. The only cartographic information in my buffers is our route for today.”

Kim’s mouth dropped open. Surely, she should have realized this. “You navigate by satellite. It’s all GPS.”

“Of course. If you had not had an excellent existing system already, we would have launched our own.”

“Scrap.”

“I am sorry,” he whispered.

“No, it’s okay,” absently, she patted the dashboard, realized her error, and patted the base of the hula girl. “We’ll work it out.  We passed a gas station a couple of miles back. No problem.”

There was a short, shocked pause. “I am not short of fuel. And even if I were, diesel would poison me.”

“Not for fuel. To get a map.”

“Kim. I am trying to explain. My radio systems are not working. It is not possible for me to use a map.” He was sounding deliberately patient and slightly apologetic, now. A good sign, Kim thought.

“No, not a radio thing,” she said. “A—a human map. A road atlas.”

“Do you mean an analog representation of the local and interstate highway systems printed on cellulous?”

“Yes. I’m pretty sure they’re still around.”

“Kim,” the intonation faltered. “I am sorry. I cannot process that sort of map.”

She smiled. “That’s okay. I can use that kind of map.”

He rose up on his shock absorbers, revving slightly. “Kim. No. Even if you had the training to pilot a vehicle my size, I could never, ever permit—I am sorry. Please take no offense, my friend. But no.”

Drive him? Kim almost laughed, but she was pretty sure the emotion he wouldn’t translate was fear. “Not like that. We’ll do it the human way: you drive, I’ll navigate. I’ll say things like ‘go right at the stop sign’ or ‘one mile to our exit.’ It’s not always perfect. And I’ll be honest—sometimes people get lost. But any wrong turns can be fixed. Between us we can find Nevada.”

“This was…standard procedure until recently?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. We shall make the attempt.”

~TBC

Notes:

It is weird writing this when the proposed federal budget would cut 2000 park rangers.

Chapter 7: Illocutionary Act

 

Chapter 10

Two miles to the west, the lights, phone, and credit card machine were off at the gas station. Worried now, about how far the damage from the collapsing bridge might extend, Kim paid forty dollars in cash for the atlas. On another day she might be angry at the guy for taking advantage of the frozen cash register for extortion, but she had other things on her mind.

There had been time to think, as Optimus navigated the abandoned road, about just how terrified he must be. Isolated and lost on an alien planet—even humans could imagine how horrible that was, as dozens of sci-fi movies could attest.

She did her best to stay calm and cheerful as she opened the map and began to look for ways back to Nevada. She certainly swallowed her complaints about missing the GPS functions that estimated times, told you the shortest route, or marked highway work. “Well…we could go back to Route 5. It would take us down the coast on a nice interstate.”

“Is it possible to go east? If the ansible failure is caused by an interference pattern—the weather report I was carrying showed mountains to the east. Perhaps we could get above the problem?”

“East it is. We have a nice state highway.”

Boston had no vistas. It had no wide, open spaces. It had no snow-capped mountains. It had no meadows of wildflowers. The next hour was like something out of a travel calendar.  There were towering pines heavy with enormous pine cones. There were glistening rivers. The late afternoon sky was a deep, glorious blue.

Kim scowled at all of it, every picturesque view. The stirring perfection was an unacceptable distraction from the road signs and mile markers she tracked so carefully. Optimus flew along the road at five miles over the speed limit. If he were navigating himself, there would be no possibility of a mistake. Kim could not offer that confidence.

“How are the repairs?” she asked.

“I have diverted all the attention and energon I can spare. It will still be a minimum of five point two hours.”

“Hey, if you don’t have your EM scanners, how are we avoiding the police?”

He sighed. “I am not. That is why we are not traveling at 110.”

Kim looked at the two-lane, wiggly road with a long drop on the right-hand side. She cleared her throat. “You could do that? On this road?”

“Yes, Kim.”

“That’s…impressive.”

“Thank you. You don’t have a problem with motion sickness, do you?”

“No.” Kim laughed. “Hell of a time to ask.”

“Agreed. It is an unfortunate weakness in your species. No offense.”

“It’s fine. I mean, spinning around long enough gets me. But I’m fine here.”

“It is a very good road. Humans make beautiful roads. I have been on planets with none at all.”

“Root form, then?”

“Or antigrav. But that has been too expensive for a long time.”

The mountain roads went steeply up and down more than once, getting higher the further east they went. She never felt him shift gears.  His braking was as light as a feather. Kim knew barely enough about human transportation to be awed.

The speedy dance over the mountains came to an end when they came up behind a slow-moving, heavily-loaded rig on the far side of Diablo Lake. The road—a double-lined, two-lane coil-- climbed steeply. While Optimus was an unburdened, alien super-vehicle, the Earth tractor-trailer was not. Their speed dropped to twenty-five miles an hour.

“You can’t pass him?” Kim asked after a few minutes.

“I cannot perceive what is on the other side of it, Kim. I cannot risk a collision with an oncoming car. Any human passengers would surely be killed.”

Kim dug out a granola bar and her last bottle of water, trying to contain her frustration.  It was a long way to Jasper. Patience.

The laboring truck up ahead shed another three or four miles per hour as it eased its way around a particularly tight snake in the road. Kim sighed.

“The temperature, I believe, has dropped enough that you could manage without the cab’s climate control?” Optimus asked.

The sun was now hidden by the mountains behind them, and, anyway, Washington was cool compared to Nevada. “Sure,” Kim said.

The sound of the air conditioner died. The tiny whine of the left-hand vent did not. If anything, it was even louder than the last time Kim had noticed it. “What’s wrong?” Kim asked.

It was several seconds before he answered. “Your question is insufficiently specific.”

Kim wondered if there was any chance he actually had not understood her. Perhaps he was hinting she should let the topic drop. She pressed on anyway: “You’re still having trouble with that fan?”

“I have not been able to reseat it properly in the bracket. I may have to ask Ratchet to position it manually. It would be a very minor procedure.”

“Have you been putting it off because you’re avoiding the trainees?”

“Ratchet and I have both been busy.”

“No kidding,” She agreed. Then she frowned: that fan was running awful hard, even without the burden of cabin climate control. How much of a drain did performing sensor repair while driving place on a mech? But repair systems didn’t generate a lot of heat.  And the coolant systems were very well put together, made to take advantage of Earth’s atmosphere. In fact, in alt form, airflow should be mainly passive.  He should be barely needing the fans at all—

“We’re going too slowly,” Kim said.

“The terrain itself is not demanding at this gravity, but at this speed it is difficult to disperse the heat,” he admitted.

“Do we need to stop for a bit?” Kim asked nervously. “Give this guy time to get out of the way?”

“No. The heat build-up is uncomfortable but not dangerous.” The seat belt tightened slightly across her. “I will not risk cognitive sectors, Kim. Do not worry.”

Kim closed her eyes. The straining fan had dropped in volume but increased in pitch. “When you say ‘uncomfortable’ do you mean you’re in pain?” she asked.

The seat belt pressed her firmly into the seat now. “That is not an important issue at the moment.  I’m going to explain something. I need you to listen.”  Each word was even-toned, patient, and kindly. He was deploying every trick in the database for reassurance.

“Your pain is important.”

He ignored the interruption. “Before my sensors failed, I observed an inverted neutrino interference in the collapsing wave. This would not result from equipment error or solar activity. It would be explained by proximity to a large fission reaction.”

He waited for Kim to digest this. It took only a second or two to realize he was referring to a nuclear bomb.

“You think…” she could not say it.

“I do not.  An explosive overload would not have been proceeded by a harmonic that resembled sunspot  interference. There would have been no indication of a problem before the event.”

“It’s possible…it was just a coincidence, though?”

“Unlikely,” he said heavily, “but possible.”

It was possible most (all? Who else was on patrol today?) of the other Autobots were dead.

“Okay,” Kim swallowed. “Okay. Do you have Mr. Keller’s number? We’ll find a pay phone. He’ll know what’s going on. As soon as we can find a place—”

“Kim. Mecha are very social.  At this moment you are the only person in the universe with whom I can converse. I know you have been trained to think clearly and carefully, even when directly confronted with an informant’s distress. I ask for that now. Please.”

Kim rubbed her palm across her eyes. “I have to be calm,” she said.

“It would be…very helpful. Surely, difficult situations are within your experience. What was the worst event while you were working in Boston?”

Yes, because anything in her life could approach the horror of a possible nuclear detonation? But he had asked. And as upset as Kim was, she was not in pain, not lost, not afraid everyone she loved had died—

Blinking back tears, she said “There was a big bus crash.  One of my informants, her grandfather was killed. I’d met him. He was such a nice guy.  He’d been—No. Know what? Let’s not do that.  I’ll tell you the best story, my favorite story. You know the Southie Parade in Boston? Saint Patrick’s Day?”

“No.”

No. Right. He had no wifi. “It’s sort of an ethnic-religious event, except it’s not. It was originally Irish and Catholic, but it got sucked into the big melting pot of syncretism, initially in the big eastern cities that had lots of Irish and Catholic in the population.”

“You did not work with Irish populations in Boston.”

“Right. But I worked with Vietnamese and Cuban populations. Who were also Catholic. And Russians, who were not, but who wanted to put up a table to represent the community anyway.”

The whining fan stuttered and died. Kim pressed her teeth together for a moment and continued, “I guess I have to explain that Saint Patrick’s Day is a really big deal in Boston.” She gave the context. She told the story. She explained. She described.

Suddenly they crested the ridge, crossing again into sunlight. Optimus braked hard, pulling off into a scenic look-out. “I will try the ansible again,” he said.

Kim nodded. There was nothing she could do to help with that.

“Even if this fails, it may be continued interference. In another seventy-eight minutes I should be capable of tapping into the cell net—I have a response. There have been no fatalities.”

“Thank goodness,” Kim whispered, numbly.

“The ground bridge is badly damaged. There is no evidence it was sabotage.  Bumblebee and Corporal Willis are marooned in Honduras. They are moving toward the nearest American air base.”

“Damn.”

“There have been injuries. When the connection violently collapsed, Ratchet began a manual inspection of the base unit. There was a secondary overload and the stabilizer exploded. Shrapnel severed a main energon line. One of the gate technicians and Dr. Nomura managed to coordinate first aid so that he did not drain out.”

“Oh, god. Poor Ratchet,” Kim whispered.

“Apparently he was off-line and unaware during the most urgent repairs. I expect that made the intervention much easier.”

Kim nodded.

“Ratchet is expected to completely recover.”

Kim nodded again.

“Fixit’s injury….” His vocalizer reset. “Fixit overrode his safety protocols during the emergency. He has lost an estimated four thousand cognitive sectors.”

“And they can’t be replaced,” Kim whispered.

“Not at this time.”

“How…how much impact…?”

“A human interacting with him would not notice a difference. But his current work will be impossible.  His processing priorities will have to be re-configured. Perhaps….”

Kim swallowed. “Would you…would you send my love to him and Maggie?”

“I have passed your message to Ms. Madsen. Fixit is in emergency shut down.” He sighed. “Ironhide is coming. When they lost the gate and could not reach me by radio or ansible, he set out toward our last known position.”

“That’s good, right?”

“Yes, that’s good.”

“When will we meet up with him?”

“The current estimate is eight point three hours in an unincorporated area of Idaho.”

“Oh.” Slowly, Kim leaned forward and rested her forehead on the steering wheel. “It could be worse,” she whispered.

He rocked sharply up on his shock absorbers and emitted staticky chirrup from his speakers.

Kim looked up. “What’s wrong?”

After a long moment, he said, “I realize that phrase acts as a reassurance-glyph in English. However, I perceive it as an indictment.”

Dismayed, Kim gripped the steering wheel with both hands. Then, realizing her mistake, she changed her mind and shifted to cup the base of the hula dancer, leaning up and in because he knew distance and position mattered to humans, and she could not make any of the gestures that would have been meaningful to him. “That was the wrong thing to say,” she said. “I’m sorry. And—indictment? I don’t see any of this as your fault.”

“It is kinder not to mention my failures. But you do not need to deny them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Kim. I am in charge. The decision to build a ground bridge was mine.”

Kim blinked. “Wait, what? But. But. How many lives has the ground bridge saved? How many Decepticons has it stopped? Lennox says for the first year they dropped you out of airplanes!”

“The paucity of alternatives does not relieve me of the responsibility for the path I chose.”

“If all the choices are bad…that’s not fair.”

“Fair,” he said gently, “is a conceit of sentience. Cause and effect have no use for it. I will not deny my responsibility for Fixit and Ratchet’s injuries. But it is kinder not to ‘rub it in.’”

Kim shut her eyes—and forced them open because he might interpret that as pulling back from him rather than trying to contain her own horror. “Okay. Okay. I—Just—is there anything I can say that would be comforting? At all?”

“Your desire to offer comfort is…I’m sorry. The metaphor does not translate. I could almost say ‘your kindness resonates in my spark.’ Almost.”

Kim took a deep breath and loosened her grip on the sensor interface. “I could send the glyph for encouragement. The one that looks like a boat in the middle of an equal sign.” But Kim’s phone was broken, and he was not receiving radio transmissions anyway.

“I cannot identify the sign from that description.”  The palm-sized screen that would have been a GPS unit in the original Peterbilt lit up with a line of glyphs. Kim didn’t recognize most of them. “Which one did you mean?”

“Third from the left.”

“Ah. Thank you.” The screen blanked and then displayed—in the slow succession mecha used with Kim rather than the bursts they used with one another—beloved friend; comrade; courage.

Now was not the time to start crying. They weren’t home yet. Kim blew her nose and finished her water. “What now?”

“There is still considerable ansible interference. I may lose contact with the others. Although I have downloaded our route, redundancy in navigation may be necessary.”

“No problem. We got this.”

“Then I am ready to continue.”

***

Downhill was better.  Optimus was only using his torque engines for braking, so he wasn’t throwing off much heat.  He was moving faster, too, so the fans were idle.  Outside, it was quickly growing dark, but Kim could still look across the vast space to distant peaks dusted with snow. (snow! In July!) By the fading light when could look down over the side, the trees and rocks so far below they were lost in distance rather than by darkness. Kim tilted her head back and took a deep breath. “How is the ansible reception?”

“I still have contact, although there is considerable interference…. The most likely explanation was that the bridge collapse had created a localized electromagnetic resonance.  We should be out of range of that by now.   Solar activity would be the next candidate, but NEST technicians have passed along the National Weather Service data. The sun is not unusually active. Perhaps when my sensors are repaired….”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out. So. Do we need to keep talking?”

“It would be helpful.”

“Um. Holding me with the seat belt? Was that Temple Grandin?”

“Yes. I admit, I did not expect it to work.”

“Well. I trust you. It won’t work if the thing the human is afraid of is you. Keep that in mind—we’re pickier than livestock.”

“I will remember.”

Kim smiled a little. And then stopped. “About the seat belt. It really needs a release that responds to humans.”

“I find the idea of passengers moving about the cab in transit…unsettling.”

“I get that. But. What if you hadn’t woken up?”

“You were afraid.”

“Yes. I realize there wasn’t anything I could do to help. This may not be the time to talk about this—”

“No.  You have a point.  Some compromise must be arranged.  I will discuss it with Ironhide. He may be able to formulate a solution.” The seat belt tightened fractionally. “I’m sorry you were afraid.”

“Aw, geez. Really?”

“Your heart rate has dropped five percent. Six. I am astonished this works so well. Why does this work so well?”

Kim tipped her head back and looked at the cab ceiling. “It’s a communication.” That was an evasion, despite being true.

“Not like language.”

“No. Not like language. When humans are in a room that suddenly becomes dark—like when the power fails—they hold hands. We cuddle things: cats, teddy bears, pillows….”

“Soft things.”

“Soft things. But I’ve seen people pat their computers, their cars…. It carries other information, you know. Not just the gesture. If I’m touching someone, I can tell a lot about their mood, if they’re relaxed or not. How they react to me. There is a lot of data in touching in addition to the decision to do it and the way it is done.” She swallowed.

“You can collect no such additional data from me.  And the emotional response is not mutual. Perhaps this is not interaction, but manipulation. I am not sure—”  the seat belt abruptly slacked.

It was dark outside, only the narrow strip of winding road revealed in the headlights. “Were you intending to communicate reassurance?”

“Yes.”

“And you did that. So. I think as an interaction it must be genuine. Imperfect, maybe, like me using glyphs.”

“Imperfect….”

“Hey, do we still have ansible contact?”

“Yes. Barely.  Ansible transmission has a high energy cost, so I am trying to use it no more than necessary. I can report that Arcee and June have talked Ratchet into allowing the trainees to conduct further repairs.”

“Really?” Kim couldn’t picture Ratchet submitting to human care.

Optimus understood her misgivings. He said, “The damage is in his neck and shoulder area, so he cannot do spot welds himself. Arcee will oversee the work. She is a fair field medic, although she does not currently have the mods to do delicate repairs.”

A human doing spot welds on Ratchet. Damn. “Welding. No pressure on Carly at all,” Kim muttered.

“It will be Dr. Nomura who does the welding. Ms. Spencer is not on site.”

Kim frowned, wishing her phone worked so she could check the schedule. “She’s not?”

“Ironhide needed a human to accompany him on his rescue mission.”

“And he took the civilian college kid?” Kim asked, a little shocked.

“Seargent Epps was better prepared, but he was also bound by his position in the military chain of command. Ironhide did not know what the situation would require. An unencumbered partner seemed a more flexible choice.”

“Oh.” That’s ruthless. “Geez. So, they’re on the way.”

“Ironhide will hurry.”

Kim did not doubt that, but another thought occurred to her. “He’s not still mad, is he?”

“Furious. He was cooling down nicely, but then I got myself marooned halfway across an alien planet with busted sensors and no back up.”

Yes, that was probably how he had phrased it. “We’re not halfway across the planet,” she protested weakly.

“I pointed that out. He said I was quibbling.”

“Ouch.”

“Agreed.”

At the bottom of this mountain was another. And another. Fortunately, they were able to maintain a comfortable speed. To pass the time while repairing his sensors, Optimus opened up a file of perplexing Earth music he’d been saving. The first item he played was “Hip to be Square.”

Kim listened and tried not to frown.  “Okay,” she said into the silence. “Is it the whole song, or just part of it?”

“The premise. I have been square. It is not hip.”

“You’ve been … square?”

“More a rectangular prism. Space travel recently has required cramped quarters for long periods.”

“Oh,” Kim said in a small voice.

“It is a very puzzling subject for a song. Of course, humans cannot actually take on geometric shapes.”

“In the song, ‘square’ doesn’t mean a shape. It is a metaphor—I guess people don’t use it much any more—wait a minute! Are you having me on? Oh, my God, you are!”

He was chuckling, a clear and deliberate—and very pleased-sounding--human laugh.

“No. You? You don’t do jokes!”

“Not ones involving alligators.”

“You—you really--? On purpose?” Kim began to giggle.

“Is it funny? From a human perspective?”

“Yes, it’s very funny,” Kim agreed, patting the dancer’s base. “A very good joke. Wait, have you really been cube-shaped?”

“Unfortunately, yes. For months at a time.”

“That’s, um. Wow. How do you even…?”

“Many choose to put their processors in stasis. I maintain minimal activity.”

“Oh.”

“It is what I think of when I hear the song.”

“It’s wide open spaces here,” Kim said. “Can you perceive it properly?” The darkness seemed to press close against the glass.

“Sonar is functioning.” The answer was brief and firm.

Kim changed the subject. “Are there any songs you actually don’t get?”

“Many, in fact.”

“Down Under,” which, as far as Kim could tell, was a fun and fairly straightforward statement about ethnicity.

“Black Hole Sun,” a song Kim had never heard before and could not make heads or tails of when it was presented to her.

 “One Night in Bangkok,” which began with  Optimus explaining the plot and Cold War metaphors of the musical Chess (which Kim had not seen) and ended with Kim explaining sex tourism (which he grasped more quickly than she expected).

“Walk like an Egyptian”—a hard one because trying to explain a pop-culture novelty song as a commentary on obscure, pre-historic art made it sound much deeper than it actually was.

“I have EM sensors and internet connectivity.”

Kim straightened. “What can you see?”

“High-frequency disruption in the ionosphere…but the solar data confirms the cause is not sunspots.”

“So what could cause that?”

“I must assume it is Decepticon activity. I have no hypothesis about the purpose.”

“Oh,” Kim said. “Uh.”

“I will start a detailed analysis of the data. Drift has generated a number of models that might shed light on the cause or impact of the high frequency propagation.”

“Have humans noticed, well, anything?”

“The electromagnetic disruptions are global.  Most countries have grounded aircraft—there were some near accidents because of interference with navigation systems.”

“Scrap.”

“There were a couple of hard landings, but no serious injuries. Yet.”

Kim closed her eyes.

***

When they cleared the mountains, Optimus pulled into a truck stop so Kim could take care of human things and get something to eat.  When she came back out with her warm bag of burger and fries, it was the passenger side door that opened welcomingly. 

Kim climbed into the warm cab. “Have I been demoted?” she asked cheerfully.

“You will need to sleep soon. Even in the dark, it might be noticed by law enforcement.” The knob that looked like it controlled the radio irised open, revealing a tiny crystalline protrusion. It lit up, and a man in a cowboy hat appeared in the driver’s seat.

Kim gasped.  She had been told they made projections of fake drivers. She had not seen one before.  “Wow.” She slowly reached out and poked the stranger with one finger. The finger passed through. “It looks so solid.”

“Seatbelt,” he reminded. The lip-sync was perfect.

Still staring, Kim did her seatbelt and pulled out her fries. “It can’t touch things, though. How does it hand the cop license and registration if you get pulled over?”

“If, somehow, I was unable to avoid an encounter with law enforcement, the traffic stop would be interrupted by sudden equipment failure or an emergency radio call.”

“Ooo. Slick. Also kinda criminal.”

“Regrettably, it is impossible to follow some human norms.”

Kim chewed thoughtfully, her eyes on the simulated driver. “So…is this what you’d look like if you were human?”

The breaks twitched, jostling Kim slightly in the seat. “What’s wrong? Is everything okay?”

“Fine. I—your question caught me by surprise.”

“You’d look like something else if you were human?”

“My imagination is not quite up to composing a model of myself as a human.”

“Seriously? You haven’t even tried? I know Jazz has played the Sims.”

“Fifty different accounts at one point. But that is not an accurate depiction of the human experience. And Jazz has a more flexible imagination than I.”

“Huh.”

“What about you? Have you imagined…?”

“I’ve pretended I’m a motorcycle. I can’t wrap my mind around being three.” Kim shrugged. “I can sort of imagine being a Volkswagen—but not a Porsche. I can’t imagine how it feels to be twenty-eight feet tall and holding a bag of water balloons and calcium struts in my hand. I probably shouldn’t try.  If I ever thought I’d succeeded, I would be lying to myself.”

“A protein bubble,” came the soft reply. “The most fragile…I had the correct subroutines and extensive data on your species’ stress tolerances but….It was frightening, the first time I lifted a human.”

Kim took a large swallow of soda. “Well, you’ve adapted like a champ.”

“Thank you. My estimation of your species' durability was revised upwards when I saw the Ranger team fight.  You can be very aggressive protein bubbles.”

“Have you said this to Lennox?”

“No. And I would appreciate it if you didn’t repeat it.”

Kim winced. “Yeah.”

***

Some time after Ephrata, Kim wadded up her jacket and pushed it against the window for a pillow. The cab was warm and the vibration of the tires lulling. “Is everything okay?” she asked, feeling slightly guilty, as though she were abandoning her post.

“The situation seems to be stable.  The electromagnetic interference is in some areas dissipating.  We are still unable to determine its origin. Air travel has still not resumed.”

Kim nodded and closed her eyes.

***

It was the popping of gravel under tires that woke her. Kim rubbed her eyes and winced at the stiffness in her neck. “Where are we?”

“Our rendezvous point. Ironhide will be here in four point three minutes.”

“What time is it?”

“One forty-three in the morning.”

“Oh.” Kim rubbed her eyes again and swallowed some watery, flat soda from the bottom of the cup.  “Everything okay?”

“The situation is largely unchanged. Ratchet and Fixit are both stable.”

“And you’re…okay.”

“Yes, Kim. Before Ironhide arrives, we should discuss something. I realize gestures of affection between mecha make you uncomfortable, but I’m going to have to ask you to stay put while Ironhide and I greet one another.”

Kim thought about how quickly she had fled when Ratchet had pulled into overlapping distance. “I don’t feel uncomfortable, just…intrusive.”

“Your culture has what I would consider very strict standards of privacy. Leaving aside that neither Ironhide nor I share your boundaries, your presence near an interaction you cannot perceive could be plausibly defined as acceptable—even by your standards.”

Kim took a deep breath. “We have a reputation for being pushy. Anthropologists. Nosing around where we don’t belong. But I’ll do it your way.”

“If you were to withdraw, I would have to track you on sensors.  It would be a distraction. It’s better you stay in the cab.”

“Yes, I get it.”  The headlights were off, and there were no lights Kim could see in any direction.  She had heard about stars in the far west, but the sky was a flat darkness, too. Overcast. “How’s the weather?” she asked.

“Weather forecasts are contradictory. They have reached the exit.”

Ironhide pulled up. As large as he was, the pickup was dwarfed by Optimus.  Kim looked down into the cab. Carly waved up at her through the darkness.

The pickup’s window slid open, and, a moment later, Optimus followed suit. Kim rose up on her knees and reached down to press Carly’s chilly hands.

“Are you okay?” Carly whispered.

Kim nodded. “How was the trip?”

“I’ve eaten MREs. Ironhide keeps some in his subspace.”

“Wow.  Um. He let you stop to pee, right?”

“Of course.” She leaned up further and smiled slightly. “So—Ironhide said that when Prime lost GPS you found the way home by some kind of primitive homing instinct.”

Kim made a face. “Analog map.”

Carly’s eyes widened. “Oh. Wow. Yeah, that would…our maps would be barely a step above abstract art to them.”

Kim shuddered.

Carly lowered her voice. “Kim, it’s been really bad. We couldn’t make contact or get you on the phone and dynamic subspace was a mess, and--We didn’t know what to do.”

“How’s Ratchet—were you there when--?”

“No, we’d already left—The explosion happened afterward.” She swallowed. “Did you hear about Fixit? It’s so sad.”

Kim nodded mutely. Sad was the only word. She squeezed Carly’s hands for a long moment and then shifted one hand to Ironhide’s window frame. “Ironhide?” she said softly.

“Hey there, Kim.”

“Hi. Listen. You need to scan him and get his error records. He lost consciousness for a minute or so when the bridge collapsed. I know it’s not like a head injury for us, but….”

“Already done it.  Simple sensor overload and a hard boot.  The patches are holding.”

Kim let out the breath she seemed to have been holding forever.

“It’s a long way back,” Ironhide said. “We might as well get going.”

Kim stayed in the passenger seat, but couldn’t get back to sleep. The road was a straight, grey ribbon fronted on both sides with empty darkness. She had thought Jasper was in the middle of nowhere.

“Do you need to eat, Kim?”

“No.” It must seem to them that humans refueled almost constantly. She patted the base of the hula dancer. “Anything interesting going on in the world?”

“China is accusing France of disrupting global radio communications as an act of aggression.”

“Global?” Kim repeated, shocked. “France?”

“Global. Electromagnetic disruptions began over the Indian Ocean seventy-five minutes before the ground bridge event. They propagated unevenly and slowly dissipated. And no, there is no evidence that French interests are responsible. I do not know why China made that allegation.”

“Huh.”

She angled to peer upward through the window.  There were still no stars.  The sky was overcast and dark.

“I notice your interest in medical privacy has faded.”

“Well. No, that’s backward. Medical privacy means medical professionals don’t tell me things. It doesn’t mean I can’t seek out someone in a much better position to give aid.”

“I see. But HIPAA laws are quite new.  Your professional obligations to confidentiality are older as well as broader.”

“Yeah. That’s true.” Kim sighed. “Are you angry?”

“Should I be?”

“I don’t know.”

“That is evasive.”

“There’s this thing they do, to get you ready for the field. A situation. You’re in an apartment or a hut or an expensive hotel. Wherever.  And next door is an informant. Someone you’re researching.  And one night you hear—it’s clear, there’s no ambiguity—domestic violence. The informant is beating up his kid.”

“I see.”

“Do you? There’s this—the rule, this moral commitment: protect your informants. Don’t hurt them, don’t endanger them, don’t embarrass them….don’t get your informants arrested.  It goes back to Humphries. Before I was born. A big deal.”

“I am familiar with the controversy.”

“Right. But he’s beating his kid. So what do you do? Do you call the police? And the thing is, there is no good thing to do. There is no right answer. And the Triple A can’t tell you what wrong answer you should choose. You have to face it yourself.  Nothing like that happened to me in the Boston research. I never had to choose between harms.”

“You are very young.”

“Apparently.” She took a deep breath. “I guess I know now. Where my line is.” 

“What was the determining factor?”

“I think I can live with failing as an-an ethnographer. You were—inert. I don’t know for how long. Whatever happened to you destroyed all my electronics. I don’t think I could live with standing by and ignoring it…if you were hurt.”

“And the goal of your ethnography? My people are relying on your work. You may be able to live with failure. I am not certain we can.”

Kim nodded slowly. “Maybe I’m doing it wrong. Maybe you should be angry with me.”

“Would you have made the same decision if you had been here with Bumblebee? Or Drift?”

“Yeah.” She exhaled shakily. “Are you—are you going to fire me?”

“For ratting me out to Ironhide? Hm. If it had been necessary, it would have been the right decision.  What I find unsettling is I do not understand how you made it. I had thought your hierarchy of directives was stable, but you recategorized primary subroutines in a matter of hours.”

“I made a judgement call. Autobots do that.”

“We generate judgement with algorithms.”

“No,” Kim protested weakly. “It isn’t simpler for you.”

“They are very complex algorithms. You use algorithms also, but with such flexibility that it seems almost…chaotic.”

“Untrustworthy,” Kim murmured.

“Unpredictable.”

“Nearly as bad.”

He didn’t argue.

Kim closed her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Shortly after I first met him, Will reordered a decision tree. He explained—I am still astonished at your species’ flexibility.”

Kim toed off her shoes and tucked her feet up under her.  In a low voice she said, “Is ‘flexibility’ a polite euphemism for something else?”

“Capriciousness.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry.”

“I rely on this flexibility. The survival of both our species may depend on it.”

“You thought you knew what I would do.”

“Perhaps I misunderstood the value hierarchy: safety and health of informants over confidentiality?”

“The…” how should she phrase this? “The decision trees that worked in Boston just don’t work here.”

“I sympathize.”

“Thanks.” Kim sighed. “Are you angry with me?”

“…No.”

Kim was trying to decide how to ask for clarification on that when Optimus’s frame creaked slightly. “What’s wrong?” she asked.  “Is something wrong with the road?”

“The wind is gusting at thirty-one miles per hour.”

Kim looked out the window. Of course, she could see nothing.

“Reports of anomalous weather are widespread.”

“How widespread?”

“Global.”

“Is this related to the electromagnetic interference?”

“I have established no connection, but a coincidence is unlikely.”

“How unlikely?”

“I do not have enough data to calculate that.”

“Damn. What’s going on?”

“…I don’t know.”

Notes:

Oooo. Snow day. I'll post a day early.....
~
The news this week: Paramount has decided to cancel the proposed Transformers 6. It is possible this is good news. Surely they aren't going to let this cash cow fade away. Maybe they are planning to make a GOOD movie. With plot. And more giant robots (I like my giant robot movies to have lots of giant robots).

But if they are going to try for good, they need to hurry.

Chapter 8: Pidgin

Chapter 11

The rain started as tiny, hard drops blowing sideways to smash into the drivers’ side glass. Kim shivered slightly. “More anomalous weather?”

“The National Weather Service can offer no explanation.”

The rain got harder.

“Are we going to have to stop?” Kim asked. “Is Ironhide okay?”

“I am feeding him my sensor data.  The highway is straight, and he is behind me.  We do not need to stop.”

 The rain came down and down, bigger, fatter drops. Kim wrapped herself in her jacket and closed her eyes. She must have fallen asleep again because when she woke the rain had stopped and they were braking hard.  It was still dark, and they seemed to be exiting the highway—but there were no lights showing a town or any services. “Whas…going on?” Kim asked.

“When I stop, I need you to get out at once.”

“What? Why? What’s wrong?”

“I cannot angle my ansible array properly in this alt mode. Now, Kim!”

The seatbelt released, but the seat seemed to spin under her and the acceleration pushed her backwards instead of forwards.

The door was open.

Kim started to step out—and found herself falling.

It should have been a long fall, the cab was high—but it was only a few inches—and she was kneeling in chilly mud.

What in the world--?

She looked up. Optimus was above her, transforming fast, his face angled upward, straining.

What in the world?

Kim wasn’t sure it was safe to move. Surely—surely, he wouldn’t lose track of her.

Optimus was motionless, still looking up at the sky.

“Um? You okay?”

Kim looked up. Carly.

“Kim. Come on. I’ve got some water.”

Kim’s knees were wet. “What’s going on?” Kim asked.

“A space ship is trying to enter Earth orbit. It’s got Autobot contact codes, but it seems to be damaged and the ansible has interference….”

“A space ship.” Kim stumbled. Carly caught her.

Ironhide’s door was open invitingly. Kim looked at it doubtfully.

“He’s not going to transform,” Carly said. “He doesn’t generate a signal strong enough to reach orbit through the interference.”

Kim sat sideways in the warm cab. Carly handed her a water and then laid one hand on the back of the seat and the other of the dashboard.  “You okay?”

Kim nodded. “You guys?”

Carly grinned. “An actual space ship. I’m great! This is incredible.”

Ironhide rumbled a snort. “If it is ours and it lands safely, things are lookin’ up. If it’s Decepticreeps, I’ll slaughter them.”

“That’s reassuring….” Kim said. Optimus, motionless, was still staring at the sky. “Um. Hey! Is the arriving space ship responsible for the electromagnetic  interference and the strange weather?”

“No. Not before they entered orbit, and not by accident anyhow.”

Chapter 12

The sun came up as they were approaching the Nevada border. The clear light streaked the westward mountains with dramatic dapples and shadows. It was dry and hilly, and it looked like there would be a little town where the humans could do biological things. Kim rubbed her eyes and shifted under the seatbelt.

She was still riding with Ironhide and Carly. Optimus was bouncing data off various satellites to stay in contact with the ship, but it was possible he would have to transform again.  Kim ran her fingers over the drying mud on her knees and shuddered. It was possible that the arriving ship was good news and things would end well. But that wasn’t how the last day had been going.

In the driver’s seat, Carly was idly playing with the steering wheel and trying to explain why humans—even after four years to build familiarity and trust, which was a long time for a species that usually didn’t even live a whole vorn and much less than it would take for an Autobot—still refused to power down with mech comrades if they could help it.

“Humans are picky about who they power down with,” Kim muttered.

“There’s picky and there’s picky is all I’m sayin’.”

“It’s not just that we need beds,” Carly continued gently. “And bathrooms nearby. And some of us already have people we’re committed to sleeping with, I guess. You just transform into your alt, set up the system maintenance, and power down. We have to change into special clothes, brush our teeth,  read for a while and get sleepy.  Maybe we need a snack.  And when we do fall asleep, we sleep at least an hour longer than you, so when you get up the humans won’t.”

“I’ve been camping with the Lennox family. It’s not that bad….”

“And the snoring. And the drooling—”

“We’ve seen all that,” Ironhide interrupted. “We’ve all been on patrols long enough for humans to power down. Well, not Arcee. But no patrols long enough for us to power down.”

Carly laughed suddenly, and Kim glanced at her.  “Prime said--over the headset—If the mech isn’t moving, there is no actual patrol,” she explained.

“I’m just sayin’, it’s been four years. I realize it’s a little inconvenient, and ya’ll are a little shy about it. But it’s hard not to start taking it personal when we’ve been working late and it’s hours past your ‘bedtime’ and you still take another half hour to go sleep somewhere else.”

Kim pictured camping out in the mecha ‘bedroom’ (garage?) Ugh. Cot? Tent? It didn’t sound like fun.  She stretched sleepily. “I think you had private homes before the war,” she said. “Surely you didn’t always sleep all together.”

“Well, yeah….” He conceded. “Back in the day there were reclining couches and maintenance berths. Only the destitute just shut down in alt in—sort of parking lots, I guess. Prime had several dedicated chambers. I remember this one little room—the berth was done in sliver filigree, seventy-four adjustable support points. Not that he was alone in there, mind you. Primes were properly attended in those days.”

Carly shot Kim a nervous look. “When you say attended…?”

“Attendants.  You know. Support staff. Just—standin’ by.”

“You mean to watch him sleep? Their job was to watch him sleep? That’s…creepy.”

Kim ground her teeth together to stop herself from correcting Carly’s interview technique. She was not an ethnography student learning to collect data. She was just an engineer talking to a friend. There was nothing wrong with her passing casual judgement on other people’s customs.

Ironhide was laughing.  “I’ve read discussion boards about the pros an’ cons of letting dogs sleep with their owners.  You’ll power down with another species up in your grill, but support staff is creepy?”

Abruptly his laugh broke off and the seatbelt tightened. A fraction of a second later they braked hard, pushing Kim sharply into the restraint.  Ahead of them, Optimus had turned so sharply into the oncoming lane that his rear swung like a gate. For a moment Kim couldn’t breathe—surely, surely he would go over! All that mass—

He passed them going the other way, accelerating.  Ironhide, smaller and lighter, made the turn more tidily, but not more gently. The spin made Kim’s stomach roll.  On the dash, the speedometer said a reasonable sixty-five miles an hour. The rush of passing landscape felt more like ninety.

“What happened?” Kim croaked.

Ironhide shuddered as he changed gears. “The orbital insertion failed. The correction failed. They’re not coming down in Nevada.”

“Where are they coming down?”

“Wyoming.”

“Oh,” Kim said. “Scrap. Um. Can we get there before they land?”

“No. And they’re not going to land.”

They abandoned even the pretense of traffic laws. The state police cruiser who noticed their frantic race across I-86 lost power and puttered to a sad stop after only a hundred yards or so.

***

They actually had a police escort through Idaho Falls—Kim wasn’t sure if it was initiated by the military or if Ironhide had just hacked into the local police department and swindled one. They did briefly pause in a place called Alpine as a concession to human frailty.  It was just after they were back on the road that Ironhide said heavily, “They’re down.  We’ve lost ansible contact, but we’re hoping that’s temporary.” Under the hum of his torque engines was the click and whoosh of a hydraulics test. “If we can get a satellite picture…”

“How’s the radio interference?”

“Mostly dissipated. The satellite connection is fine. The problem—He’s intact. He’s enact! Still no com contact, but by Primus, he’s intact!”

Something in Kim went cold. “He? The ship—the actual ship—is a person?”

“By the recognition codes.”

This should not be a surprise. But, oh, God. “Are there—are there other mecha inside him?”

“We hope so.”

***

Mountains, again. Kim had not realized there were so many.  She had not realized ‘The West’ was so large. Or that grass could look so patchy and spiky and buff-colored. She wondered if it was always like that, or if it had been a dry year.  She wondered if there would be tumbleweed.

***

They left the state highway for a hard-packed dirt road. Optimus didn’t slow.

In the sky, in the distance, there was a speck.  Carly pointed. “Is that Windblade?” She had to raise her voice. Ironhide’s torque engines, while still quieter than most earth motors, were louder than Kim had ever heard a mech’s.  Ironhide was not built for speed, and they had been pushing an impossible pace for hours.

“She’s leading in a NEST team,” Ironhide answered above the noise of his mechanics. “The only things flying right now.  They’ll arrive just ahead of us.”

And yes, behind the front speck, a dozen more.  As Kim watched, they dropped back and spread out while the swift little – well, frankly, she looked like an insect at this distance—shape of Windblade continued forward toward—

Kim couldn’t tell. The ground was too flat. The grass, sparse and ugly as it was, was too high.  She was leaning forward and straining for any sign of—

As they mounted a tiny high point in the dirt road she caught a glimpse: a gouge, a trench, a long scar in the scrubby grass up ahead.  Patches of black here and there. A shape—

Kim blinked rapidly, denying the distance, rejecting the scale.  It was small.  It wasn’t even as big as a modest house. How could that be a space ship for mecha? Surely, even earth rockets were bigger.

And then they were down again, and she couldn’t see it for long seconds. When they caught sight of it through gaps in the grass it was just as small….

Just ahead, Optimus turned off the road and took off across prairie. Ironhide pulled to a stop and opened both doors. “This is where you kids get out,” he said. “Odds are it’s not a trick or a boobytrap, but we don’t take chances.” He waited while Kim and Carly gathered their things and stumbled to the ground. “Head straight south from here, where that helicopter is coming down. That’s Lennox. He’s setting up the command and first-aid base. I’ve radioed. He’s waiting for ya’. Everything’s going to be fine.” The doors shut, and Ironhide started to pull forward.

He stopped again and transformed, his root form leaning down to eye level.  “If that’s not Cosmos. Or if he’s full of Decepticons…shut off your electronic devices and lie on the ground. In this endless sea of overlapping organic tangles, even if they’re looking for humans—a mech who just arrived won’t find you.”

Carly nodded, started to step towards him, sagged. “Be careful.”

Ironhide glanced toward the half-buried little ship. “If there is reason to be careful, I won’t be the one who has to worry,” he said darkly. Taking a single step backward, he transformed and struck out across the open ground, flattening grass and bouncing off of rocks. Biting her lip, Carly looked after him.

***

It was chilly.  Kim zipped up her jacket.  Up ahead, the helicopter had landed, and she could see people moving. It wasn’t too far a walk. “C’mon.”

“Do you think they’ll be okay?”

Kim couldn’t answer that.

The strange grass, close up, was prickly and hard. The ground, in between, was a little muddy. It had rained here, too.  The sky was still overcast.  Kim wondered if this weather was normal for—Where were they, again? Wyoming?

Up ahead, the soldiers—NEST! Kim’s heart leaped. NEST had come here! Home had followed them—were erecting some kind of—was it a tent? It wasn’t camouflage. It was brilliantly multicolored and—Kim squinted—sparklingly holo?

“What is that?” Kim asked.

“Huh,” Carly said. “I assume the reflective coating is to throw off Decepticon sensors. But I would have thought….Huh. That doesn’t work the way I would have thought.” Her eyes were fixed on the glittering tarp.

Lennox, covered in what must have been seventy-five pounds of equipment, motioned them to hurry and called, “Step lively, ladies. Get under cover. This isn’t a picnic.”

In light of the last twenty-four hours, Kim was less impressed by his military persona than she might have been.

Under the overly-cheerful pavilion, Epps was setting up a folding table. “Carly,” he said. “Great.  They’ve got injured. Start setting out the first aid supplies. Tape is in that crate over there.”

Carly stuffed her backpack under the table and dug into the crate. “What’s going on?”

“Well, the good news is the ship is one of ours, and it’s not radioactive or so badly damaged it might explode. The bad news is we’re following a lot of Decepticon radio chatter and the crashed ship is crumpled enough that Ironhide and Windblade are having to disassemble parts of him to get the passengers out.”

Kim shivered. “What can I do to help?” she asked.

Epps glanced around. “One of these boxes is marked ‘slushpowder.’ It’s for energon leaks. That stuff can be pretty toxic when it’s refined. If anybody leaks, you dump the powder on the—” He broke off, staring out across the sea of scrubby grass.

Kim followed his gaze. There was a mech loping across the prairie. It was…lumpy. And the gait was odd.  Was he three-legged?  He was definitely a brilliant emerald green.   And tall. As tall as Bulkhead, if not quite as solid-looking.

The newcomer stopped just in front of the awning. In a flat, harsh voice, he said, “I am a person. I am the person designated One Who Swiftly Rises. I am the workgroup coordinator for the third division of the extremely enthusiastic destruction specialists. I am instructed to report to organic ally designated workgroup coordinator Lennox.”

For a moment there was startled, awkward silence. Then Lennox stepped forward. “I’m Lennox.”

“I am to place myself in your chain of command.”

“Um. Great. Yeah, welcome to Earth. How are your long range sensors?”

“They are functioning.”

“Stand twenty yards that way and keep watch.”

One Who Swiftly Rises bent at the waist and his strange lumpiness resolved to be a box which he had been carrying and now set on the ground. “This one is Such Quickness of Uncertain Memory. This one is injured and unable to transform. The Sacred Vessel communicated that the organic work group would be able to provide aid.”

Epps stepped forward quickly. “Uh. Yeah. We can help him. Uh, can you move him over here, under the awning? It’s not much protection, but….”

The green root form obligingly moved the box, which was a matte grey-blue and etched with jigsaw tracings of interlocking seams. Then he walked around the pavilion and took up a position a short distance away.

Kim looked at Lennox. “Were the others like this? At the beginning?”

Lennox blinked. “No. Not at all. Well, Windblade when she first arrived. And Drift.  Sort of. But, I mean, nowhere near this….”

It’s like he only had the lexicon: no cultural data, no paralanguage, the most basic grammar. Probably, we were lucky he had that much. “Wow.”

By the time Kim had located the containers of leak absorbent and laid them out on the table, Epps and Carly were crouched in front of their patient.  He was about the size and shape of a washing machine. A very elegant and post-modernist washing machine.  For about eight inches along one of the top corners was a crinkle. Epps poked at it. “It’s jamming a seam right here. If it were just steel, we could bend it. But it’s mesh. That stuff is—it would almost be easier to—”

Carly suddenly snatched his hand back. “Gloves!” she said. “His coating isn’t adapted to Earth.”

Epps gasped. “How can you tell?” he asked.

“The patina…just isn’t right.”

The box – he had packed himself for shipping, stuffed himself into a cube for transit in a tiny space ship, dear God—began to vibrate.

Epps, gloved now, gently thumbed one of the etchings on the upper surface. A tiny hatch snapped open revealing a medical port. “Here it is.”

Carly popped in a cable connected to a tablet. She yelped. “He’s conscious. That’s a lot of activity. He’s upset. Oh. Kim. Do that thing.” Carly was nearly vibrating now, too.

“Do what thing?”

“That thing. Where you talk to the patient while we work on him.”

“That’s not a thing….” Kim’s mouth had dried up. “Does he even speak English?”

“SpeakEnglish!” The box shouted. “SpeakEnglishSpeakEnglish!”

Oh, God. Kim dropped to her knees in the mud and trampled grass beneath the pavilion. “It’s okay. It’s okay. We’re going to help you. We’ll get you unstuck!”

“SpeakEnglish! Word! Wordwordword! Nothing meaning!”

Carly stared at the tablet with huge eyes. “Kim. Calm him down, darn it.”

“HIM! HimhimhimHIMHIMHIMHIM! Not him! Not revoltingorganic making motile gametes!” volume and speed were compensating for inflection and emphasis. Kim cringed. “NO! NO! NO!”

Kim reached for her phone.  He would understand glyphs—her phone was destroyed. That whole other way of speaking and listening was gone.  

“Wordsnotmeaning!”

“Oh,” Kim said sadly. “I know. English is full of words that don’t have any correspondence in Cybertronix. And the pronouns are all wrong. And we are such strange aliens. I know.”

“StrangestrangestrangeSTRANGEaliens.”

“My name is Kim. I’m with Carly and Bobby, and—”

“Kimnotname! Kim not name! Kim noise. Not name.”

Right. No. Just a sound would not be recognizable as a name. “The word ‘friend.’ That word works, doesn’t it?”

“friend….”

“Yes. We’re friends of Optimus Prime. He sent you to us for help.”

“No. NOnoNOnoNO! Revolting soggy organic aliens not friends with sacred vessel, holy servant, guardianofthewisdomofPrimus.”

Kim registered distantly that he had gone right for the religious terminology. No religion, my ass. “Right. Then. Ironhide. Can you believe Ironhide might be brave enough to make friends with damp organics?”

“ironhide…that which no destruction shall penetrate….”

“Yeah. Carly and I spent all day with Ironhide.  Are your chemosensors working? Can you smell him on us?”

There was no panicked response this time.  Even the trembling seemed to have eased up a bit.

“It’s Ironhide who makes the protocols and subroutines that protect us from accidents.  Humans are very fragile. Ironhide keeps us safe, so we don’t get squished or dropped.”

“Humans squish.”

“And, um, Ratchet. Do you know that name? Ratchet is not my friend, but he’s teaching me about mecha. He’s teaching Bobby and Carly how to do repairs. Carly and Bobby would like to repair you, help get you unstuck so you can transform.”

Carly shook her head, mouthing, “We can’t. We can’t.”

“Cut Such Quickness of Uncertain Memory.”

It took Kim a moment to parse that. “No! Oh, no! We won’t hurt you.”

“Necessity. Frightened. The slicing of Singer of the Cosmos to free Such Quickness of Uncertain Memory. The slicing of Such Quickness of Uncertain Memory to transform.”

“No,” she said quickly. “No. We won’t hurt you.”

“Necessity. Decepticons on spooky mud planet. Decepticons on spooky mud planet FIRST.” Emphasis by volume, not tone. Well, Cybertronix was sort of a tonal language. “FirstFIRST.”

Carly and Epps looked at each other. “The actual part that’s jammed is pretty small. If we can get the welding torch hot enough, we can cut it off,” Epps said.

Carly crouched down beside the boxy alien. “Quickness of Unsure Memory,” she said softly. “Our tools are not as good as Ratchet’s. Cutting will be slow. The heat will blister your chromeonanites, and if there are any fuel or coolant lines near the injury…I’m sorry.”

He shivered. “Transportation through space difficult. Terrible. Fluid and power generation at the core. The slicing. CarlyandBobby do the slicing.”

The other two bustled around, setting up equipment, leaving Kim kneeling in the mud beside the frightened mech.  Folding her arms so she would not give in to the temptation to pat him reassuringly, she said, “Tell me about your name. I’m not sure it is translating properly. Is it supposed to mean fast but forgetful!”

A trilling in Cybertronix. “That is very humorous. Are wet-dripping-organics clever? Incorrect. Wrong. Misunderstanding. Translation error. I am moving too fast for sensors to process properly. The memory is incomplete to store.”

“Oh. You’re a blur.”

“Blur. Yes. Blur, blur. That is a good word. That is encoded with clarity, clarity. Blur, I am Blur.”

“Are you really that fast? Organic sensors aren’t that good, but mech sensors…surely they can see you.”

There was a long silence. Then: “I have found the word metaphor. On twenty different searches there is the word metaphor. Is organic-Kim, sentient being, capable of understanding word metaphor?”

“I didn’t know you could use metaphors for names. There’s a lot I don’t know, about how mecha do things. Can you tell me about names? Did you choose your own?” Her notebook was put away in the bag, under the table. All of her electronic devices were toast. She would forget so, so much of this conversation—even if she wasn’t so tired and so overwhelmed, the unreliability of human memory was an axiom in her profession. Well. Her job wasn’t collecting data today, anyway. Her job was to do the thing where she talked to the patient while the trainees—

The trainees were going to cut the bent bits jamming his transformation seams, so he could unpack himself.  Kim’s eyes misted over.  “That’s really interesting, Blur. Can you change your name? If you ever want to?”

~

TBC

Chapter 9: Munsell Test

Blur talked the whole time Carly and Epps were working.  The flood of rapid-fire words – probably all of it in English—was too fast for Kim to follow. She asked the occasional question anyway.

Carly, pale and grim, angled the welding torch along the crumpled mesh. Epps, leaning hard on a pry-bar to give Carly a little more room in the seam, was as still as a rock. Both of them were sweating. Under the brilliant light coming from the cutting tip, the mesh hissed and popped.

When—suddenly, almost too soon to quite hope it was done—Carly turned off the welder and withdrew it, Kim nearly cried out with relief. With a pair of pliers, Carly snapped the section free and tossed it onto the table. Epps, more slowly, relaxed the pry bar and eased it out of the gap. “Okay,” Carly said, reaching for the tablet. “Run a systems check and then—”

The transformation was so explosively fast that for a moment, Kim didn’t recognize it.  Still tethered to the patient by a medical cable, the tablet jerked out of Carly’s grasp and went flying into one of the poles supporting the glittery canopy.  The table upended. Kim, shoved firmly by something, stumbled backwards—her feet slid—she landed hard on her rear on the damp ground.

When she looked up, there was a blue mech lying in the wreckage of the repair.  It was smallish, only ten or eleven feet tall. Its head was round like a basketball and thickly armored, except for the eyes. There were six NEST soldiers with weapons pointed at it.

“Hey, hey!” Lennox snapped, pushing forward. “Put that away, Lewis. Everything’s fine. Everything’s fine. Everybody just calm down.”

Epps had a bloody nose.

Carly was creeping backwards.

Blur moved, his limbs fluid and jointed in too many places. He folded in the center, uncoiled, stood up.  The round, glossy head brushed the roof of the pavilion.  “Everything is fine. Everything is fine. This is not true. The current status cannot be categorized as fine.  Special Courier Blur must be deployed. Workgroup coordinator Lennox will deploy Blur.” He was still talking so fast it took a moment after he finished to parse what he said.

Lennox swallowed audibly. “Yeah.  Come with me. Let’s talk for a minute.”

Kim, shaking a little, set the table back on its feet.  Carly, muttering that Ratchet would have lectured them on the dangers of disorder, gathered up scattered equipment.

A medic, the kind for humans, was checking over Epps’ nose. He produced water and snacks in little silver packets and demanded the bot support team eat.

“He had no face,” Carly said, staring into her water bottle.

That was possible, but Kim said, “Maybe he just had his battle mask down?”

Carly looked at her doubtfully. Epps said, “Blowing shit up is more fun than this. Just saying. As jobs go.”

Kim looked out across the prickly grass. “Oh…dear.” Ironhide and Windblade were carrying something together.  It didn’t seem inconveniently heavy, but bulky: about the size and shape of a refrigerator.

Hastily, they cleared a place under the pavilion large enough to receive the next patient.

This one was an odd, bland color—not quite grey, not quite tan. One arm had extended from the folded box. A three-clawed hand dragged along the ground. And there was—

Oh. God.  There was a jagged metal bar protruding from the box’s upper surface. Kim took an involuntary step backwards.

Ironhide and Windblade gently settled their burden on the ground, and Ironhide crouched beside it, chirruping and clicking in Cybertronix.

The humans stared, horrified.

“Carly? Come on over,” Ironhide said gently.  “This is Very Senior Scout Tenacious Pursuit of Useful Data. I have told him you are a medic trainee. We got a problem. This is a serious injury, and we can’t treat it here. The equipment on base is much better, and Ratchet would be available to advise….” His voice was calm and slow. The only concession to emotion was a reset of his optics. “Agent Fowler is arranging for a truck. It’ll be you and Private Willis accompanying him back to base.  None of us—we can’t leave Cosmos.”

Carly swallowed hard. “Okay,” she said. “We’ll…we’ll take him home. We’ll get him fixed up. Um. Can he understand me?”

Ironhide was very close beside the trapped mech, leaning awkwardly over him.  Overlapping, perhaps? “He can understand you.”

Carly nodded tightly. “Okay.”

“Tenacious Pursuit of Useful Data,” A voice said softly.  It took Kim a moment to realize it was the folded mech. “That takes a very long time to say in English,” he said. The words were swift and mechanical, but not as fast as Blur’s had been.

“Yeah,” Ironhide said.  “We all take shortcuts. Or we could just give you a human name. James is real popular.”  He snickered very deliberately—demonstrating how to tell a human joke, Kim realized.  “I can’t stay, buddy. I’m sorry. I’ll return to help with the loading.”

“I understand. I will take this opportunity to make the acquaintance of these organics.”

As Ironhide transformed and pulled away, Carly and Epps glanced at each other nervously.   Kim found her eyes drawn again to the metal shaft sticking out of the upper surface. This was a nightmare.  It turned out that as awful as doing field first aid on a mech was, not doing it was worse.

Carly took a step forward, reached out a hand, then firmly locked both her hands behind her back. “T-Tenacious Pursuit of Useful Data,” she said, “is there anything we can do for you? Are you...are you in very much pain?”

“Tertiary peripherals are disabled in my condensed form. Neither pain registry nor error logs are distressing.”

“That’s…That’s good.”

“My sensors are also greatly limited. Are the other organic creatures in this enclosure the same species as you?”

“Oh!  Um, yes. Yes. We’re humans.” She began introductions, asking each of the NEST crew to step forward and say hi one at a time. “I’m sorry. I know it’s a lot to remember.”

“Remembering your designations is not difficult. But my primary active sensor systems are off line.  I cannot perceive the differences between humans well enough to distinguish individuals.”

“Oh,” Carly said, floundering. “Um.”

“Would you mind if I asked you some questions?” Kim asked.

“I would not. I also have questions. It is very exciting to finally have arrived at Earth. I am very curious.”

“Ironhide  introduced you as a very senior scout. Is that—what does that mean?”

“How odd. The English lexicon offers the term ‘spy,’ but your term implies a much simpler undertaking than—” he emitted a brief pattern of low-pitched beeps. “Is the English lexicon adequate?”

Kim sighed elaborately. “It’s enough for really good conversations. And English speaking humans are comfortable. You know. Interacting. Optimus doesn’t like it though. He’s tinkering with vocabulary. And Jazz and Cliffjumper, too. Um. There are other languages. One of the medic trainees usually speaks with mecha in Japanese. And two of the NEST weapons specialists use Arabic sometimes.”

“Ironhide—that name renders beautifully in English, although some of the connotations are missing—only gave me the English lexicon.”

“Did he include the paralanguage and kinesics?”

“I haven’t opened—” He broke off suddenly. The silence stretched out.

Kim gently elbowed Carly and wiggled her eyebrows. “You wanted him distracted,” she whispered.

“Is this what you do all day? When you’re not with us?” Carly whispered back.

Kim nodded.

“Please explain the purpose of these elaborate physical displays and delivery variations,” Tenacious Pursuit of Useful Data said.

“Well, we don’t have any glyphs. We don’t directly perceive radio, so we can’t use glyphs for additional information, even though we learned the idea from you. We make the most of analog nuance.”

“This term ‘analog….’ The translation is incoherent. An error….”         

Kim sat down. The ground was damp but so were her pants, and she was just so tired. I should have been asking them what the hardest or weirdest English words were, she realized.

“We’re not digital,” Carly said. “It took our species a really long time to even think of thinking digitally.”

Epps chuckled. “Analog, yeah. Worst thing about humans.”

“Is your radio working?” Kim asked. “Can you ask Ironhide or Windblade about this?”

“My radio is working.” The voice was still flat. The words had gotten slightly faster.

Kim gritted her teeth and wished her phone hadn’t been destroyed.  Being able to glyph right now would have helped a lot.

“How…curious. I did not expect….” The silence stretched out again.

“Are you all right?” Carly asked anxiously.

“My status continues to be stable. Thank you. Your species is very….I would like to explore this further.  The scope of the lexicon implies that you perceive and process detailed visual input.”

Carly nodded, realized the mech couldn’t see, and said, “Yes. We can see.”

“By what term do you identify my color?”

Carly and Epps glanced at each other and then away. “Well.  Yes. I was wondering about that, actually. I mean, mech are usually more, uh, vividly colored.”

“Your observation is correct. Indeed, my work requires I be inconspicuous. Sacrifices must be made in the service of worthy endeavors.”

Carly was biting her lip. Epps was carefully not laughing—he was willing to razz Ironhide or Jazz about their preening, but this poor guy who was washed-out and box-shaped wasn’t a worthy target for teasing. 

“Are you able to identify my current color?”

“Um, yeah,” Kim said gingerly. “It’s sort of… greenish taupe?”

“Uh huh,” Carly said. “or maybe a yellowish mushroom.”

“Tan,” Epps said.

“That is very interesting,” Tenacious Pursuit of Useful Data said.

“What do you call the color you are?” Kim asked.

“My chromeonanites are tuned in an alternating pattern to five hundred and sixty-one nanometers and six hundred and twelve nanometers.”

Kim’s jaw dropped. “That is the name of the color? The colors are numbered?”

“Those are the wavelengths used in the color matrix. However, there is a seven percent backscatter texture.”

“Well—right….” Carly squeaked.

Kim buried her face in her hands. “Analog color. Oh, my god.” She realized bleakly that this wasn’t the time or place to freak out about what a pathetic substitute she was for a linguist. She reached out a hand toward the deeply etched, greenish-taupe surface of the box.  She did not, quite, close the distance and touch him.

“Perhaps, when my sensor suites are on line and I have control over my chromeonanites again we can continue this discussion. I am very interested in how color is processed in an analog analysis.”

“We don’t analyze it,” Kim whispered. “It goes straight to emotions.”

“Hey,” Carly said. “Physicists analyze it. Artists analyze it, I guess. And paint companies.”

Tenacious Pursuit of Useful Information squawked a burst of static. “Physics. You have a scientific specialty designated physics.”

Kim stiffened, bracing for this conversation—like so many—to turn surreal.

Carly continued cheerfully. “Yes,” she said. “Your lexicon should link to a bunch of sub-specialties. Optics is the—”

The tickety-beep noise that interrupted was a Cybertonix expletive.

“Soooo,” Kim drawled. “Are you shocked that organics study physics? Or that we’re so bad at it?”

“Why would anyone order—Is this arbitrary? Why does astronomy—? How can you even--? What is this other category labeled chemistry?”

“Fuck,” Epps said. “You aren’t on the internet or something yet, are you?”

“This must be some kind of error. The lexicon is faulty.”

Carly rubbed her hands on her jeans. “Oh. I guess it looks really crazy. But we’ve only been doing it for four hundred years, and when we started looking at the world scientifically we didn’t know what we’d find.”

“Four hundred years. But you have fission bombs. There is a definition in this lexicon for fission bomb.”

But we’ve only used them once. Well, technically twice. But it was, like, seventy years ago. Kim buried her face in her hands. “Scrap,” she said. “Okay. Just relax. You knew organics would be weird.  It’s not news. We’re aliens. But we’re aliens that don’t mean you any harm. We’re trying to help. We will help.”

“You are distressed.”

“It’s not fair to freak you out when you can’t move.”

A pause. “You believe I would flee you, if I could.”

“Yes,” Kim said. “Oh, yes.”

“Query. Are you so very dangerous?”

Kim was at a loss. “Not her, personally,” Epps said.

“Seriously?” Kim said. “You’re being a smart ass now?”  She turned to the box. “The Decepticons call us ‘squishy.’ You don’t need to worry about us. We can’t hurt you.”

“Fuck that. The first time Rangers met a Decepticon, we killed it. With sabot rounds. No special training, no pulse cannon emplacement,” he pointed to a complicated thing that had been assembled beside the crashed space ship, “no mech back-up. The most reassuring thing about humans is that we are terrifying.”

Very aggressive protein bubble. Well. There was something to be said for having allies who could kick ass, Kim supposed. Aft. If they weren’t crazy. “He thinks we’re completely glitched,” she said.

“Incorrect. I think you are aliens. And that is true. I am trying to model how difficult it is for your species to meet alien life for the first time and find—”

The NEST guys, who had bustling around the pavilion doing mysterious military things, suddenly paused and then all took off in new directions, moving much faster.

“It is necessary to alter our schedule of events,” Tenacious Pursuit of Useful Data said loudly. “You must begin field repairs immediately.”

“What!” Carly squeaked. “No. We can’t! Field repairs? No.”

Epps had turned sort of grey. “We have to,” he whispered. “Four Decepticons inbound—we have twenty-three minutes.”

Carly pointed at the jagged shaft sticking out of Tenacious Pursuit of Useful Information. “We can’t. We’ll kill him!”

Epps shook her. “He’s a sitting duck here! And he’s the sort of electromagnetic target the camo tent can’t completely hide.”

“What do you think we’re going to do?” Carly snapped back. “We’ve got five kinds of leak tape and  a welding torch. In a field. That’s it.”

Scrap, Kim thought, her heart in her throat. We’re doing field surgery again.

“The time available is adequate, but we must begin immediately,” Tenacious Pursuit of Useful Data interrupted. His flat intonation was the same as his earlier conversation. There was no way to tell, either then or now, what his state of mind was, but surely, surely, he had to be upset. “The bar is currently embedded in a primary hydraulic line. In position, it is plugging the hole, but when it is removed I will begin leaking.  Fortunately, with reduced pressure in the hydraulic system it will not leak quickly. Unfortunately, in order for you to repair the leak, I will have to partially transform, and that may increase the pressure.  You will have to hurry.” His vocalizer reset with a burst of static. “Also, due to the internal damage there is a ninety-percent likelihood that when I transform I will lacerate a secondary energon line. That line must also be patched immediately.”

Carly took a couple of deep breaths. “Is that it?”

“You must do it. The others are trying to stabilize Singer of the Cosmos and free him from the regolith.”

Epps took three roles of gauze from a human first aid kit and climbed onto Tenacious Pursuit of Useful Data’s upper surface.  About ten inches of ragged bar protruded from the wound. He wrapped the length in layer after layer of gauze—a handle for the humans to grip.

Carly began cutting lengths of silicon tape from the mech first aid kit, sticking each strip onto the back of her arm. 

***

“We’ll start pulling on three. Pull it straight out. Pull as hard as you can. Don’t stop till it’s free.  Then we’ll have four seconds to jump down and get out of the way. We have no idea how far he’ll have to transform or what shape he’ll be when he’s done.”

Kim was standing well back, a roll of the dun-colored, flexible repair-tape in one hand and a blunt-ended medical scissor in the other.

“One. Two. Three.”

It happened very fast.  The rod made a terrible squeal as it was pulled out, but Epps and the two NEST technicians helping him didn’t flinch or ease up. They heaved and heaved, and the rod inched out.

With a collective stumble, they hauled the rod free.  Epps tossed it to an empty spot on the ground and the humans jumped off and scattered—

Epps pulled a pair of gloves out of his pocket. He nearly had them on when Tenacious Pursuit of Useful Data began to unfold like one of those ‘flowering’ teas in hot water. The surface split, divided, opened, split, divided, opened. It was quick, but unlike Blur’s, not too fast to follow. “Now. The damage is exposed.”

Epps darted forward, Kim trailing right behind. He vaulted into the maze of panels and mysterious machinery. “Gimme a hint! Where’s the energon leak? Where-- Got it!” He whipped a high-tech looking towel out of a pocket, wiped the green-black smear of used energon, and slapped the tape town. “Another piece. C’mon. C’mon.”

Kim put her foot on a protruding—what? Weapon? Lever?—and stretched forward to hold out the next piece of tape.  She wondered how Carly was doing, but she didn’t have time to look. Tape, tape, tape.

***

Tenacious Pursuit of Useful Information transformed slowly, clicking and swishing and grrring. It looked painful.

At last he was in a recognizable root form, crouching on his hands and knees in the mud his agitation had churned. His eyes flickered and reset. Pushing against the dirt, he tried to rise, noticed the canopy above him, and crawled unsteadily forward. In the open he flopped into a (more or less) sitting position and regarded the humans with rapidly cycling eyes.

Carly went toward him. “Are you okay?” she asked in a loud, level voice.

“I am okay.”

“Have you performed a system check?”

“I am performing a system check.” A pause. “You are the human designated Carly.”

She smiled. “That’s right.”

“You are astonishing.” He lifted a clawed hand to eye level and wiggled the three ‘fingers.’ Mud flaked off. “Astonishing,” he repeated.

Carly went up to him.  “I know. But listen,” she said. “We need to know if the repairs will hold.”

“The repairs will hold for ranged combat. The hydraulics repair will not hold for close combat. It is unlikely close combat will be necessary.”

“Okay. That’s. That’s good.”

Kim picked up the box of absorbent and began to search the ground for drops of spilled energon.

***

The Decepticons, disguised as four Pakistani JF-17s, came down from the north.

Kim didn’t see the fight. Tent walls had dropped down from the canopy, shielding the temporary headquarters from Decepticon targeting  arrays. Which did not mean, of course, that it could not be hit by stray fire. Normally a portable force shield would have been set up over the command post, but it had been allocated to Singer of the Cosmos instead.  He was the priority target.

The force field could absorb two, maybe three, direct hits.

Kim and Carly sat on the ground, under the work table. It couldn’t be effective cover, but at least they were out of the way.

Epps, to his outrage, had been ordered under the table with them. He had complained, profanely and at length. Kim had been awed, but Lennox had not. “Ratchet’s down. Fixit’s down. Not that we have a ground bridge to get the injured to base anyway! Do you get that? The sum total of mech medical care on this planet is four half-trained corpsmen. And only two of you are here. Your best buddy gets ripped up with shrapnel, who’s going to tape him back together? Me? Get the fuck under the table and shut up.”

***

Pulse cannons didn’t sound like gunpowder weapons. They didn’t make a pew-pew of science fiction lasers, either. They went thwum when the fired and chwa when they hit.

Kim stared at a blade of grass that was somehow unbent under the table. When she closed her eyes she saw faces—Optimus, Lennox, Ironhide, Graham, Windblade….

And the new mecha; in that buzzing, terrifying moment she couldn’t remember any of their long, elegant names, but she remembered their shapes. The great green one had had three legs…

Thwumm, chwa, chwa, chwa.

Carly grabbed Epps’ arm. “Tell me the truth, Bobby. Are we going to die?”

He actually looked surprised at that, as though this weren’t the most obvious, most reasonable question in the world.  The only reason Kim hadn’t asked it was that she was too afraid of the answer.

“Hell no. They only sent four—and not even big ones. Do you have any idea how small JF-17s are? They didn’t expect us to be here, not with ground bridge transit impossible and nothing human flying in all this navigation noise. Those bastards thought they were going to fly in and strafe a crashed spaceship from the air, pick off any injured crew who managed to crawl out. Have you seen the guns Prime and Ironhide are carrying? It’ll be a slaughter. Damn, I’d like to see that new green guy fight. I’d guess he was a flyer, from his build.”

The ground shuddered hard, and then a wave of sound so loud and horrible it was almost a physical sensation washed over them.  Instead of fading away, the noise changed into an elongated scream, not a voice, but twisting, ripping metal. It jangled in her teeth, but even more disturbing was the sound under it: shouts of rage, both English and Cybertronix. This wasn’t just some horrible accident of some kind. It was people out there fighting.

Another impact, not so close.  A cheer.

Kim stared resolutely at the blade of grass. She wouldn’t close her eyes. If she closed her eyes, she would see their faces: Optimus, Lennox, Irohnide, Graham, Windblade…. Windblade was a flyer. And maybe the new green guy. Not everything falling out of the sky was necessarily a Decepticon.

An explosion, close. “Damn,” Epps said. “There went our pulse cannon. Morshower’s gonna have a cow.”

Another impact, this time followed by a spray of dirt against the canopy.  Windblade, Kim thought, but no: There was cheering.

~TBC

Chapter 10: Code-switching

Chapter 14

It was Ironhide who flipped open the tent wall and leaned his broad face beneath the canopy. “We doin’ okay in here?”

Carly sprang out from under the table and charged him. He caught her gently and scooped her up in a hand as big as a chair. “Easy, kid. I’m still runnin’ a little hot.”

“Shit,” Epps said. He had already exited the table. “You don’t startle them when they’re running combat protocols.”

Ironhide shot him an indignant look. “Excuse me. She’s unarmed. Just how sloppy do you think my safety systems are?”

Epps snorted, but looked Ironhide carefully over. “Everybody okay, ‘Hide?” he asked.

“Windblade’s got a bent rotor. She won’t be flying for a while. That’s not a field repair, she’ll be going home on a truck.  Blur trashed his suspension on the crappy terrain. Dislocated axle—minor repair. He’s still mobile in his root form and small enough to transport in—heck, I could carry him in my truck bed. Optimus shorted out his radio.  I’ll take a look at that myself. It probably isn’t a field fix.”

“Thank god,” Carly said.

Ironhide gave her a startled look. “Which one?” he asked.

Carly blinked. “Um. Never mind?”

Ironhide shrugged. “What we need you two for—It might be kinda scary, but we still need to stabilize Cosmos’ cargo holds a little more before he can transform for transportation. They’d have a much easier time of it with some help that was…well, the thing is, Cosmos isn’t a big mech, really.”

“You mean somebody small,” Epps said.

“Will ya’ do it? You and Carly? I know it’s askin’ a lot, an alien space ship and all.  And it isn’t like Ratchet has talked about working inside someone—”

“Are you kidding?” Carly yelped. “Inside an actual space ship? I get to help a space ship? This is great.”

She and Epps gathered up the mech first aid kits and struck off across the torn ground and scorched grass that had been Wyoming plain. Kim looked after them, feeling slightly….envious. A space ship, that was special and wonderful, wasn’t it?

And then a large movement in her peripheral vision made her turn her head, and all thought of Cosmos vanished. Optimus was coming in, but he wasn’t walking independently. He was leaning on the arm of the new, big green guy. “I thought you said it was just his radio down,” Kim said.

“I may have been underinformed. Give me a few minutes. Stay calm.” The words were flat. Ironhide had dropped his persona. Kim could not remember him doing that before, and it was chilling. But he was right, of course. Panic would not help. Kim tucked her hands beneath her armpits and resolved to stay still.

Optimus’ optics were pale and unfocused. He reached out, one hand grasping at Ironhide’s shoulder in a gesture that would be totally natural for a human but utterly wrong for him. Mech did not touch one another for comfort or stability.

Chirruping softly in Cybertronix, Ironhide took Optimus from the newcomer and eased him down beside the command canopy.  “Thanks Springer.”

Beeping an answer, the big green newcomer—Springer, now, apparently—sprinted off across the open ground on three fast legs.

Ironhide produced a medical line and snapped it into Optimus’ wrist port. “Well no wonder the repairs didn’t hold!” he scolded, suddenly all folksy and earnest again. “Of all the crappy hack jobs—is there even one safety protocol you didn’t bypass? You’re lucky the overload only took out your gyros.”

“I was in rather a hurry,” Optimus’ plainly irritated answer was possibly the most reassuring thing Kim had ever heard. “What with being marooned halfway across an alien planet with no way of knowing if the base was even still standing. Anyway, the repair lasted long enough.”

Ironhide clucked and whirred in response.

“Thank you,” Optimus answered quellingly in English.

“How bad is it?” Kim asked, unable to stay still any longer.

“Half his sensor system is down, including gyroscopic stabilizers. It’s a fifty-hour fix even if we had replacement parts with us, which we don’t.”

“No leaking, no heating, nothing irreplaceable?”

Ironhide grunted. “Pretty much.” He glanced toward the downed ship. “The trucks will be here in forty minutes. Lennox wants us on the road as soon as we can get Cosmos loaded.”

“Can we get the Decepticon remains readied for transport by then?” Optimus asked.

“If we hustle. Give it to me.”

Optimus’ vents blew hard for a moment. “You have it,” he conceded.

“Shift into alt, then. You can’t fall over and squish a human if you’re already down on tires. Trucks don’t have to balance.”

The transformation sequence looked completely normal. Kim—staring—could see no sign of hesitation or damage. Optimus settled into his alt with his usual grace and popped open the door nearest Kim.

She hesitated for a moment. He was injured; surely he didn’t think it was his responsibility to look after her.  But regardless of the situation, he might take it personally if she refused. Kim scrambled up the two steps—

The seat belt snapped around her at once.

“Hey. It’s okay. I’m fine.” He didn’t answer. “Listen. You don’t have to do the ‘calm the mammal’ thing now. I’m really all right. If you need to run a repair sequence or something, I can go…watch the new guys or whatever.”

“Your understanding of the situation appears to be incomplete,” he said delicately.

Oh. “In other words, I’ve said something stupid.” Kim sighed.  Getting things wrong was the job, but she was tired of that part of it.

“I would not have used those words. Kim.  The shortest repair cycle that would be useful to me is two-point-three hours. We simply do not have time.  Also…my radio is not functional.  If you were not here, Ironhide would feel it necessary to detach someone else to…the glossary is offering ‘babysit,’ but the connotations imply a likelihood of engaging in hazardous behavior in the absence of supervision.”

“English sucks,” Kim sighed.

“At any rate, all other personnel have assigned duties.”

“Right. I stay here.”

“I appreciate your help.”

She couldn’t say ‘my pleasure.’ The last day had been anything but that.  A transparent lie was offensive. “I’m glad I’m here,” Kim said. “I’m not glad that any of this is happening, but since it is…I’m glad I’m here.”

“I am…glad of some of it,” he said, shifting slightly on his shocks. “Can you see Cosmos?”

In fact, the height of the cab gave her the best view she had had yet. “Yeah. They’re taking off the glittery tarps.”

“He is alive. He landed alive with five passengers…You asked me once, about sparks I had wielded the matrix to kindle. Both Cosmos and Such Quickness of Uncertain Memory were brought to this life by my hand.  I had not hoped to see either of them again.”

“Oh. Wow. Do you remember all your….” Not children. Not quite.

“I have a roster. Most of them I did not have a chance to know well, of course. Hardly any.” Abruptly, his voice went flat. “And the war.”

“Oh,” Kim scrambled for a change of subject. “I think Such Quickness of Uncertain Memory is Blur now.”

“Ah. Yes.  He will find English unendurably slow. But Cosmos and his passengers were not the only blessings to arrive today. He also brought a working nanoproduction incubator.”

Kim straightened. “Wait. Is that—It’s the thing that makes parts?”

“Yes, Kim.”

“So…Fixit’s brain damage? Ironhide?”

“And the damage to Cosmos’ power systems. Yes.”

Kim’s eyes burned. “Thank god,” she whispered.

Optimus sighed.

“Aren’t you happy?”

“Not all of the news is good, Kim.”

Kim looked out at the mecha working around Cosmos. “Well, no….” Obviously. Things were a mess. Getting Cosmos to Nevada was going to suck.  There was no ground bridge. And if the Decepticons attacked while they were moving….

And then a horrible thought crystalized: “Did those Decepticons follow Cosmos back?”

“No. Cosmos and his crew followed the Decepticons back. Megatron has returned.”

Kim closed her eyes. “Oh,” Kim whispered numbly. “Scrap.”

“Indeed.”

“So…what do we do?”

“I do not yet have a plan,” he answered softly. “I have not yet received Springer’s full report.”

“…And you have no radio, so you can’t right now.”

“I have no radio.” He shifted on his axels. “Kim, I… My respect for your people has grown substantially this last day. I cannot fathom how you manage it—the quiet, the darkness. So many parts of your culture are more comprehensible now--all those songs about loneliness, the obsession with unattainable love…. How do you bear this your whole life?”

Horrified, Kim sat up and scooted forward in the seat. “Hey, no. It’s okay. This is fixable. You aren’t stuck like this.  It won’t be long--”

“I estimate I can achieve limited radio capability in four to six hours. But that was not what I meant.”

Kim ran her thumb around the edge of the hula dancer’s base. “Pressure sensor still working?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“I’m right here. You aren’t by yourself. I am probably not enough input—you’re used to having several conversations at once while surfing the net.  But I’m here.” She wished her phone weren’t broken. But no, glyph conversations relied on radio. “Wait. There’s Lennox. He can get me a radio.”

There was a short pause. “NEST technology is good, but not compatible. There is no way to integrate it with my systems.”

Kim blinked. “No. I mean. Your audio receptors work. And your voice works.  It won’t track seven conversations at once, but we could listen in to the main work channel. And you could give instructions if you needed to.”

“Ah.  A very human solution.” He sighed. “But I would not give instructions. I have turned command over the operation to Ironhide.”

“Well, anyway. You could listen if we had a radio. But I’d have to go over there.”

“It is safe to leave me alone.”

“You’ll be fine. And I won’t be long.”

“I am over seven thousand years old, and in that time I have endured worse hardship than this.”

“Right. Okay. I’ll be right back.”

***

The shorthand language NEST used in the field was hard for Kim to follow, but the chatter on the radio seemed to calm Optimus a little.  Kim kept one hand on the hula dancer while sitting as high as she could on the seat so she could watch the activity around Cosmos.

“Can you see okay?” Kim asked.

“Yes. I have redirected my lateral rearview mirrors.”

“You—” Kim looked around sharply. “Your mirrors?” In fact, one mirror on each side was facing forward. “Oh. Oh. Optimus. You weren’t…. We didn’t leave Washington state like this, did we?”

“It was not unsafe. My dorsal rear-facing cameras were still functional.”

“No, but. I didn’t even notice.” Oh, god. “Damn, but humans are thick,” she said bitterly.

“Why are you angry?”

Kim shivered. “I. I’m.” Kim took a deep breath. “It would better to be stupid than to…I didn’t pay enough attention.” I didn’t pay enough attention to you.

“The additional information was irrelevant.  Your awareness would not have changed our strategy.”

Carly and Epps were walking away from the downed ship while the other mecha positioned themselves closely around him.

“Were you in pain?” Kim asked. “Do damaged sensors hurt? Did I miss that, too?”

“How could you detect it?  You cannot scan me. You cannot assess the state of my spark.”

Right. So, yes. Kim closed here eyes.  “Are you in pain now?”

“Very little. Ironhide helped me adjust my processing allocations.”

Kim nodded.  The mecha began lifting Cosmos out of the trench dug by his impact. “I’m sorry.”

“I am not.  While I am greatly encouraged by your capacity to be affected by my state of mind, and I have worked to encourage the development of compassion and fellow-feeling between our species, there was nothing to be gained by dwelling on minor difficulties that could not be eased.”

“You’re right. Of course, you’re right.” And then, “I feel like I’ve let you down.”

“Given how very badly the events of the last two days might have played out, I have no complaints about either your response to our challenges—or my own.  We solved the problems presented to us. We brought about the most successful result possible under the circumstances.  I could not have asked more of you—and I hope you do not think you could have asked more of me.”

“No, of course not. You were incredible. But look—tell me, right now, how I can ask less of you? How can I help you?”

In the open, Cosmos didn’t look big enough to hold five other mecha, even if they were small and folded up into boxes. The cluster of mecha around him were doing something. Shifting him? Heaving him through a transformation sequence? Whatever it was, it was slow and laborious and punctuated by long pauses.

Optimus still hadn’t said anything.

Kim rolled her shoulders. “Are trying to think of a polite way to say the kindest thing I can do is just stop talking about it?”

“No. I am trying to think of a polite way to ask you to sing.  It is a request I do not have a template for.”

“You want me to—” Kim choked. The request was baffling, but understanding it was irrelevant: there was no possibility of turning him down. “Okay. What would you like me to sing? What, uh, is the context of the singing.”

“I have analyzed thousands of hours of music transmitted in the mass media. I have—twice—observed an outdoor concert.  Those are very formal and impersonal examples. Sometimes NEST personnel will present an impromptu performance at joint activities. However, I have no examples of humans singing as informal interpersonal communication.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah. A whole new area.” She swallowed down the lump in her throat. “Um, where shall I start?”

“What was the first song you learned?”

“This one, I think. Both my grandmothers were big on it.” She took a breath and sang “Jesus Loves Me.” It was a long time ago, but she hadn’t forgotten.

When she got to the end, Optimus said, “Religious in content?”

“Yes.”

“Is there some significance in being slightly off key?”

Kim smiled. “No. I’m just not a very good singer.  Most humans don’t have perfect pitch.”

“Are you sure? That seems a poor design….”

“We weren’t designed.”

“Ah. Another?”

“My uncle--my father’s brother was a lot younger than he was--he taught me this obnoxious one: ‘Driving down the highway, highway forty-four, someone let a big one and blew me out the door-‘”

She broke off: Optimus had—briefly—brought his torque engine on line.  “I am familiar with the text. It is somewhat disconcerting. Does the song reflect a hostility toward vehicular travel?”

“No. It’s about a fascination with, ah, flatulence.”  

“That seems odd. Why should that particular biological function inspire more interest than, say, homeostasis or hair growth?”

“We’re kind of ambivalent about excretion. It can be an unpleasant process. And it’s stinky.  And when something that was part of our body separates from us—psychology has been talking about that from its start. Let’s not go there. I think the most relevant observation is that kids only have one subversive discourse. They can’t get mad, aren’t allowed to complain or sulk or make fun of people. But while talking about bodily functions—uh, digestive functions—is impolite and gross, it isn’t actually immoral, so while it annoys adults, it isn’t absolutely prohibited.”

Slowly, awkwardly, supported through each stage, Cosmos was definitely transforming.

“I see,” Optimus said, sounding unconvinced.

“The best part about that song was how much it irritated my dad.  That and the song about the beans.”

“Beans?”

Blushing at the stupidity of it but determined to be a good informant (so many hours had been spent trying to coax informants into the topics she needed) she sang “Beans, Beans, the Magical Fruit.”

“Biological songs are a genre?  I can scarcely wait to get my internet connectivity back.”

“Yeah….That’ll be fun.”

“When did you sing it?”

“At dinner.  Frequently.” The other mecha stepped away, but Cosmos, now in alt form, remained on the ground. “Cosmos isn’t getting up.”

“No. He is too badly injured.  Violent Removal of Difficult Obstacles will have induced stasis lock. He will experience no discomfort during transport or while waiting for the fabrication replacement parts.”

Kim closed her eyes. “Do songs from mass media count? We sang an awful lot of the alphabet song.” Come to think of it, Kim’s minimal experience babysitting had been all about the alphabet song. Kim sang number songs and parts of speech songs. She sang the hand game songs from the playground (she had done it enough to still remember the words and hand motions, though she had never been in demand as a partner). She sang the subversive versions of the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic,’ both the nightgown and the duck versions. “Are you sure you want to listen to this?”

“Although not tactically useful, this data is both new and alien. It is occupying considerable processing bandwidth.” Something to distract him from the darkness and isolation. Oh, god….

Kim sang until the FBI trucks showed up and the mecha began loading. First, on the large flatbed, the prone root form of Cosmos, strapped down and covered with tarps. Then, not nearly so gently, the fragments of ruined Decepticons were tossed into enclosed trailers.  The three larger newcomers transcanned  an FBI sedan, while Blur, too small to pass as a government car, was going to ride back in a NEST helicopter.  

Kim watched all of it with one hand cupped loosely around the hula dancer.

 

~end

Notes:

I didn't realize until I started deciding who would be on the crashed space ship how much I missed Hound, Mirage, and Springer. And, geez, how annoyed I was that TFP had turned Wheeljack from a wacky inventor to an embittered commando. Embittered commando just isn't interesting. (But Martha didn't know the other Wheeljack, so now I have to figure out how to make embittered commando fresh and interesting. Ugh).

Also, like everyone else, I always hated watching Blur. But I can have lots of fun with him as an author. Mwa-ha-ha.

Oh!
Thank you, everyone, for the thoughtful and considered comments. I learned a lot from the dialog! I appreciate the time you took to share your observations.

Notes:

My heartfelt gratitude to Martha--the best beta ever. Her gracious patience on my weird fandom paths is a gift I appreciate.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to let me know what in Cultural Exchange worked for them. No feedback, no learning.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of Xenoethnography