DWB – expanded version
Wheeljack beamed with pride as he personally tested his human facsimile in the outlaying towns around the mountain base. Weaving even a simple hologram program into everyone's already intricate circuitry proved quite the challenge, but in the end, like all challenges, it had been gratifying. Intended to keep the Autobots from unnecessary interference by the human authorities, the research involved also yielded much useful information about the main life form on this new home planet.
But as significant as the utilitarian aspect of the project was, Wheeljack's real satisfaction came from the designing of the humans. It had started with Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, of course, what doesn't start with them. When they heard about the project they showed Wheeljack a poster Spike had given them, depicting two Lamborghinis, one red and one yellow, each with a scantily clad human female draped along the hood. These were the humans they wanted, in fact it was the only human Sunstreaker would accept, he was very specific as to the shade of skin and style of hair. Sideswipe just asked that it be female.
As long as he was customizing all the holograms anyway, he asked the others for requests. Most of them didn't care, so he just pulled generic human images from ads. For Bumblebee he just created another Spike, for the rare occasions that Spike wasn't already inside. But he had fun with the special orders, it was both artistic and informative. Jazz requested Nina Simone, one of his favorite human singer, Raul applied for Dennis Rodman on Tracks' behalf, and Prowl asked for a facsimile of Garrett Augustus Morgan, the human he admired most for inventing the traffic light, with out which traffic law and order would not exist on Earth.
It didn't take long for the holograms to get put into practice, two separate Decepticon attacks, a humanitarian mission to put out a forest fire, plus patrols around the area had all the autobots out of the base over the next day. Even Wheeljack got to proudly display his own reincarnation of George Washington Carver, the man who invented three-hundred things to do with an earth peanut, a human after his own energon pump.
As a personal side project, and because his own programming network has some room for extras, he'd also added a dog, specifically a Labrador Retriever. He'd frequently seen images of dogs and humans in cars together and thought that it might help deflect closer scrutiny.
A few reports had started to come in, indicating that for some the addition of human facsimiles seemed to be attracting more attention by police, but not consistently enough for Prime to discard the program. Wheeljack suspected that perhaps some the holograms were flickering or something, unnoticed by the autobots but noticed by humans, especially those patrolling the streets looking for other suspicious humans. Maybe the addition of a dog would be a simple remedy.
He's thought the less populated rural towns would be a better test, because people would be noticing him more and he could gauge their reactions. Driving around he did notice several strange glances his way, although he verified the holograms functioned with perfect clarity. Something else must be triggering their attention.
After about twenty minutes of circling one town he decided to head to another and judge the reaction there. As he started to get on the highway a lone sheriff car pulled in behind him, lights flashing. Well, here was his big chance to see how the dog worked in defusing an actual confrontation.
Wheeljack obediently pulled over and waited for the Sheriff to emerge. He noticed the Sheriff already had his hand at ready for his gun, apparently suspecting Wheeljack of a crime. But he hadn't so much as made an illegal left turn. Perhaps a crime had already been committed in this area and the sheriff was on high alert, in which case this was a good test of the human facsimile.
The sheriff slowly walked up to the driver side window, which Wheeljack obediently lowered. He leered into the window, close enough that most humans would have shrunk away. Wheeljack's hologram stayed firmly in place, looking straight ahead. The sheriff looked the George Washington Carver replica over with a suspicious eye, and then centered on the dog.
"I'm gonna put this as nicely as possible. We don't allow your kind around here."
Wheeljack's pride deflated. Instead of solving the problem, the dog was making it worse. Well, he'll have to turn this into a learning lesson.
"I'm sorry Officer. Let me take care of that"
The dog disappeared.
"Is that better?"
At this point the cop, already unnerved by the unflinching black man before him and the strange non-panting dog which had been there a second ago, could no longer hide his fear. He'd heard of aliens in these parts, and he wasn't about to get abducted and have god-knows what happen to him. He slowly backed away to his car, got in and drove off.
"Well, I'm definitely going to have to work on this more", Wheeljack mused, as he headed back to base to do more research. Perhaps scrap the dog and instead make the facimile smile?