"Ratchet?"
"Yes, Raf?"
He looked down at his tiny companion. Raf's glasses glinted up at him in the moonlight, his tiny lips drawn into a hint of a pout.
"What are the odds that two intelligent races on two different planets would both have two arms, and walk on two legs?"
Ratchet looked up at the sky at the stars, away from the desert. "I'm not really sure. I suppose they're probably not good."
"I wonder what planet we're from," the boy mused.
"This one."
Raf placed a warm little hand on Ratchet's leg. "Maybe not. A kid at school said our circadian rhythms are 25 hours, but the day on earth is only 24.'
"Yes, I 've seen those studies. Apparently they didn't account for artificial lighting." Ratchet looked down at the boy again. "You're from Earth, Raf. You're related to all other life on Earth. Your DNA is the same."
"The more I think about what happened, the less I want to be."
"You're not going to let something like that destroy your self-image, are you? Do you hold any other humans accountable for their ancestors?"
"I don't," he offered with a shrug. "But people do. And don't you guys have something like genes?"
"Yes, you could say that."
"So is it like ours?"
"There are certain similarities, but it isn't as if we had no similarities to him, either."
Raf pulled his knees up to his chest, looking skyward, away from Ratchet . "I want us to be like you."
"You are. If anything, wouldn't you be greater than us? After all, we were created to do good. You may have done it in spite of your origins."
He shook his head.
"What prompted this, Raf?"
"I watched a movie that was about how life was seeded on Earth by aliens."
"And what happened?"
"…They didn't like us."
Ratchet rested his head on his own hand. "Art imitates life."
The child sighed.
"You know, I've been looking at paintings that one of the engineers on another Autobot team created," Ratchet offered. "He's found a great deal of natural beauty in this planet of yours. And without our help, your people have created technology, language, society… a society more free than ours was." He looked away, thinking. "Don't your own creation myths say that God breathed life into the soil?"
"So?"
"If Unicron could transcend physical form, why couldn't Primus? Maybe your people and your transmissions were a beacon. Maybe you were meant to draw us here."
"Do you really think that, Ratchet?"
"I'm starting to. It was inevitable that we would find you. It was… it was inevitable we would care."
Rafael leaned on his leg, warm and quivering. "About humanity?"
Ratchet reached down and delicately wrapped his hand around the boy. "About you."
"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."
The Gospel According to St. Matthew, 5:16
The Holy Bible, King James Version
Author's Note
This site's guidelines restrict the use of text from a work that falls under copyright. The King James version of the Bible was apparently published in 1611. Luckily for me, I have an heirloom KJV Bible, given to me by my agnostic father. Anyway, I took the verse from my heirloom KJV Bible, not any of my other ones. I therefore believe the piece is compliant with this site's guidelines.