Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
"In The Wake Of Absurd Karma" by Abraxas 2009-07-29
Another pair of eyes gazed at those sleek racing curves and just like that the cycle between car and boy started anew. What a pretty, pretty yellow and black Camaro - how could it be? - abandoned as if left to die. It was impossible, at that time and space, that such a vehicle would be found at a dump. That such a jewel would be surrounded by the debris - mangled and broken - of a landscape littered with the corpses of wrecks. Only a tortured, long history could have explained it.
"Incredible - somebody really really cared about it - and yet it was abandoned." The boy stroked a hand across its warm, metallic skin. The weather left a coat of coarse and bitter dust, however, a little water mixed with soap was the cure. Despite everything it needed only a tiny bit of work to shine. Just a tiny bit of work. "It's so perfect. Too well-kept. Too clean. It was owned by somebody who knew how to take care of it."
The Uncle hesitated to be as close to it. A Camaro, yellow and black, like the story. Like the story it appeared out of nowhere. Nobody that area owned a car like that. Nobody beyond the state would have come to that dump just to dispose of a car like that. It was too weird. And that story! What was it about, again?
"You know, kid, in my day we told stories about a car like this. A beautiful and dangerous car. Like a stranger with candy it lured its victims inside..."
"Uncle!" the boy chuckled. "You think it's haunted?"
The old man shuddered. Maybe it was irrational. To be afraid of a car. Still, despite years and experience, he lagged. He inched step by step. He could not deny that something about that vehicle was wrong. It looked so - guilty. Although how, exactly, a machine conveyed that emotion was beyond understanding.
"I got to see what kind of engine it's packing - I mean - maybe it runs?"
Bumblebee knew it would be that way again. Poked by greasy, filthy hands. Driven about like a toy. It was why he wished he could be scrapped with the rest of the garbage. It was not to be, though, the want languished unanswered. He was cursed, it seemed, to continue with motions of life and to live beyond what he wanted to live.
At the level of the soul Bumblebee was dead. There was no love of life. There was no yearning to endure. And why? When the love of his life was gone and he was responsible.
Because no matter what Sam wanted to believe Bumblebee knew he, alone, was the cause of what happened.
The burden of that sin was too great to endure. So much so that he craved the finality of destruction. Yet it could not be. The terrestrial lacked the power to do it. And, to be honest, he realized that death was a mercy he did not deserve.
Instead he accepted the judgment of karma and resigned to a life of suffering. He destroyed lives and now looked forward to ages beyond ages experiencing the consequences of those actions. Sam. Mikaela. They would not be there, ever, to turn night to day. The worst part of it was the taint of the memory marking their passing. There could be no peace with that wound, ever unhealed, ever bleeding. Into the crack of doom he would be haunted by what transpired.
Strangers raised his hood and poked his innards as if trying to judge his worth through the veneer of the physical. It was a humiliation he suffered silently, passively. The torture was dealt by karma. Fate's plot to cleanse sin with fire.
That endurance of cruelty was the pathway to redemption. Entering a new life, as it were, there was again a chance to it and to do it right. Could it be that simple?
If a machine were capable of tear it would have been shed right then and there.
Bumblebee knew there could be no redemption. There could be, at best, infinite strings of lifespans. New owners. New adversities. And he forced to live through it again and again within the exile of his body. The guilt was just too profound to be forgiven by whatever power imagined the universe and willed it into existence.
It was raining throughout the whole month of July except that day. When there was no reason to be, just to mix insult and injury, it was sunny and bright. Of course, it could have rained, too. It was too difficult to remember. And maybe he wanted to picture that day as Eden-like with a sun and a blue, cloudless sky. That deep, deep inside the autobot it was always sunny and bright whenever he shared a ride with Sam.
So blind was the power of love that it rearranged the memory of a machine.
It was a warm summer day, though, he recalled waiting, idly, under the shade of a carport.
Sam needed to visit a clinic and view the results of a test.
"A test?" he asked the first time he drove there. "What kind of a test?" he asked the second time he drove there. "Sam?"
"Bee, it's like, it's like a garage, you know what I mean?" he tried to explain by analogy. "They need to look inside of me."
"You are not OK, Sam?"
Bumblebee's voice transmitted a hint of emotion that language itself could not convey. It was so obvious, the profound fear and anxiety, that Sam winced at the sound of it.
"I'm going to be OK, Bee, you understand? It's just something...nothing..."
The conversation trailed.
Bumblebee worried - no - worried was too weak a word. He understood everything about fragility and, though he would not admit it, he could not guard his friend against those consequences of mortality. Sam did not get sick; otherwise, a trip to the pharmacy always cured his ailment. The idea that he could be sick enough to need a hospital was not within the realm of the possible - together they shared that aura of invincibility that age did not temper.
But little by little the veneer wilted away. Bumblebee noticed Sam's discomfort went beyond what he knew to be normal. It was not the usual pains and aches of age. Lately, the man was not eating and his body from head to toe was becoming more and more skeletal. A weakening followed. Soon Sam sat and Bumblebee worked while they rode.
They did not want to talk about it. They wanted to dismiss it as just the natural course of time. Despite their will, however, there was a limit to the power of denial.
Bumblebee spent a long, long time reliving quiet gentle moments with Sam. Touch between metal and flesh and the intimacy it unveiled. Yet amidst that joy a demon emerged: the realization that all of it could be slipping away with the outcome of a test. A silent, brooding kind of fear descended like a fog - it churned every single moment Sam remained inside of that clinic.
It seemed like the man was away forever. The sun was inching toward the west. Its light was shining atop of his body, heating his innards. It was agony! What was happening? Sam. He wished to transform and crash into that building. He needed to comfort Sam's fear away. But not every kind of wall could be demolished like that. He wished to make Sam's pain vanish. But - to do it again?
That game!
To do it again - to really, really try it again - after Mikaela?
They stopped it but the universe did not forget it. Karma. Fate. Justice. A dept waited to be paid. At the end there could be no escape.
Sam appeared and climbed into the Camaro what a force that seemed to be unusual.
"Drive, just drive, Bee," he said through a sigh.
It took a moment to register. He bided time. Backing out of the lot. Maneuvering through the traffic. With the pace of a glacier. Meanwhile he studied the man's face to uncover what could have been thinking. And what happened inside of the clinic.
Bumblebee unfurled the belt snug against Sam as if to hug and that touch failed to illicit a reaction.
"Go, please, go, Bee," he added with a tone that recalled the events of a night repressed by memory - when Mikaela passed out of their lives.
The Camaro drove off randomly trying as it were to escape the eyes of civilization.
It was Route 101 again. The ocean to the left. The forest to the right. Ahead the peaks of mountains crowned by mist.
Sam sank his face into his hands and cried.
Bumblebee was nervous and could not find a way to express it - only static played through the radio.
"There's no cure," he said at last.
"What do you mean? There's no cure." Again with that voice that screamed what words could not say.
"I won't survive it," he explained.
"You can't rely on your science. It's too limited. Go to Optimus Prime. I know he will not ignore you. You can try the cube. The AllSpark. The cure must be..."
"Bee," he said, simply, gripping the wheel as if holding a hand. "I don't want to be cured. You understand. I know you do."
"Sam."
What came out of the radio, that sound, it echoed their world crashing.
After Mikaela and what happened at Route 101 Sam was different. To the world the change would have seemed subtle if noticed. To a machine as attuned as Bumblebee the alteration, which was unexpected and sudden, was drastic. Like night and day drastic.
It was always easy between Sam and Bumblebee. At the start they were fast friends. They shared many common tastes. Including a fascination - no, addiction - to that game. The excitement of it was a gateway into new dimensions of intimacy.
What changed was the nature of those idle, fragments of moments in the gaps of time from event to event. While sitting, riding. While washing, buffing. And all of the other, little activities shared by the two. The joy of life the boy always showed the autobot was tempered by a sadness that seemed to be endless.
What used to illicit a smile only garnered a sigh. What used to calm his anxiety only fueled his melancholy. That which had been a cause to contemplate induced depression.
Bumblebee wanted to believe the change was due to Sam's maturity and growth into adulthood. Yet the connection with Mikaela could not be denied - calamity lead into calamity that way. The trauma of the event did not fade, anyway, shades of it colored everything that followed through the years.
It was difficult, though, when the memory of it was fresh. Those first, few days after it happened Sam and Bumblebee simply avoided each other. They did not see each other. They were not spotted together. The rides into the wilderness stopped. It was as if they condemned themselves into exile.
The ice was broken again when Bumblebee snuck into Sam's room. Through tears and rage the boy collapsed into the autobot's arms. Together they passed the night so interlocked - a position that expressed naked vulnerability and tenderness. They clung onto each other like the guilty bound by a crime too hideous to name.
They were damned by what they exposed that night when metal met flesh. It could not be denied any longer. Their friendship reached a level beyond the understanding of men and machines.
In the wake of that revelation there was a wide expanse of years when everything seemed to be normal again and they resumed their natural, mundane habits.
Eventually, though, the memory of the girl and what had been lost seeped into the man's thought. The moodiness and the isolation returned. The guilt smoldered - without that sharp level of intensity - and did not abate.
By then it was true that they changed - Sam and Bumblebee were filled with regret. Sam with regrets of Mikaela. Bumblebee with regrets of bringing his friend into a world so depraved and corrupt.
That game!
Bumblebee was tortured by what happened and everything connected to that game. It was not only the way Sam followed into that abyss. It was not just the way his friend sunk deeper and deeper without check. It was that he was responsible - he created the secret and shared it.
The autobot used to be young and afraid of living amongst people. Until Sam he did not really did not want to know a human. If he were stronger, with understanding and patience, the need of a game would have been averted. Such was not the fate that was allotted.
Sam. No one else understood him and accepted him as he was without judgment. No one else loved him the way he loved him. There could be no other for Bumblebee.
The autobot's guilt conformed with the human's melancholy. Their personalities mirrored. They complimented each other. It was natural, a habit learned through years of living with people, car always mimicked driver.
They did not play that game after Mikaela. Truth was they stopped it before she suspected it. She was the inglorious yet critical conclusion that capped their career with that endeavor. It, that act, was spurred by desperation to keep their mystery away from the judgment of the world. It was function not pleasure and proved the ultimate expression of sin. That Sam insisted he wanted to be in control of the situation inflicted a guilt in Bumblebee which a thousand lifetimes could not atone.
The man stepped out of the vehicle and shut its door. He stopped to gaze at its sleek, racing curves. Its unique shades of yellow and black. It was as flawless as the day he uncovered it at the yard. After years and years...it was too perfect to be real.
Suddenly his uncle's stories about the Camaro resurfaced across decades of amnesia. Now, at last, they took a whole, new meaning. Something about the car was wrong. Something, at the most fundamental and basic level, was wrong. It oozed melancholy like a work of Poe incarnated into metal.
It filled his mind with images of terror and fear. It suggested, through subtle, quirky moods, a bottomless pit of angst. As if something evil happened within the confines of its interior.
Anti-human, as ridiculous as it sounded, it was the only way to explain it.
The car, it was snuffing out his life with its thoughts.
Sam was the sweetest, kindest human Bumblebee knew. He was the autobot's friend and the only living being he completely exposed himself to. It went beyond words, beyond physical. It was about unveiling his soul and revealing his nature.
In the man the machine found somebody who accepted him exactly as he was. Sam's love was so absolute it was blind and fatal! He could not see the flaws - else - he ignored the lapses of perfection.
When they confessed their feelings that night entwined arm in arm the walls tumbled between them. Their intimacy flourished without the prison that society erected. And, in the wake of that tumult, everything they did together gained a new subtext. - Washing and buffing the chassis was analogous to foreplay with human hands fondling mechanical equipment. Fueling was the act of feeding - the way Sam pumped the nozzle to milk the last drop of fuel urged Bumblebee to rev and glow with a feeling of contentedness. Driving, itself, was pretense to bond.
Nobody wondered. Nobody suspected. At least not anymore. Now that Mikaela was out of the picture. To the world it was not unusual that the boy would be dotting over a car and that was that.
Of course, their relationship was not launched with that kiss, they were friends long, long before they were lovers.
Sam always refused to condemn Bumblebee's past and went as far as to say the autobot was justified. It was a matter of survival. Life and death and freedom.
"My poor, poor, Bee," he said, wrapping his arm about his friend's neck, leaning his brow against his friend's cheek. "I can't imagine anybody abusing you like that." Tearing. Choking. "How? How! What monster would be mean to you?"
"Man..."
That revelation took the boy's breath away - it did not return, again, until the machine grasped his hand with its hand.
"Sam - you are the one I care about the most."
The human nodded and squeezed tight.
That was the love - and despite the knowledge of the game he learned then and there it did not alter his perception of the autobot. And even after he learned that activity continued he would not pass judgment.
"You need it," he concluded and refused to condemn.
The vehicle leaked a trickle of oil as the older man and the younger boy poked about its engine.
"Feel that?"
"Yeah," said the boy while placing a hand against the block. The metal was warm as if the machine had been running recently - although it had been sitting, abandoned, inside of the garage about ten years. "It's rumbling. Like it's alive."
"Kid, I didn't want to tell you, you got to understand though. You always wanted your grandfather's Camaro. The car - it's haunted, I know, it's unbelievable." He lowered the hood and set the toolbox atop it. "I grew up riding it and I know it. I know it! It's got this vibe - a sad, awful vibe. It sticks to you. Your grandfather suffered a depression after a drive through the wilderness. The car drove him into suicide."
"Come to think of it," the boy said, looking down, away. "When I sit in it, sometimes, I think it tries to speak to me. Through its radio. Suddenly these songs play. Just by themselves. Songs that stations just do not play. Weird."
The man nodded.
Bumblebee's life was not simple. Through the years he hid within that human world the quality of his happiness was a function of his owner. He did not always meet worthy people. Indeed, time and time again, they tended to be violent. They committed sick and perverted crimes inside of his cabin. He witnessed acts that struck against a number of laws, machine and human alike, and the worst part of it was - what shattered his spirit and tormented his conscience - was that he was forced to be silent.
The autobot could not break out of character therefore was condemned by protocol to watch. The effect of that trauma was to corrupt his soul until it mirrored the visage of his driver - he felt guilty and assumed the role of criminal. Thus cruelty mixed with passivity developed a very warped view of humanity. It started with a fear. It ended with a visceral, irrational hate.
In point of fact, until he was tasked to protect Sam, he could not remember anybody he liked.
It was not a pleasant way to exist - muted and impotent - polluted by those acts perpetrated within his own body. He wished to change his situation yet he could not by that prohibition of Optimus Prime. Without revealing his identity any attempt at freedom would be impossible.
It was out of despair that the game emerged as a way to fix the problem.
He did not invent the game - only devised ways to invoke it - true to form, it was a human who created it, while he served as its witness. It came to be as the owner got behind the wheel drunk. Until it occurred to Bumblebee right then and there whenever that situation arose he always took control of the vehicle. But not that night and not again he vowed.
It was not a game, either, as he explained to Sam it was a technique of survival.
That first, curious taste of the game was yet another act of passivity. He judged it was within the realm of the rules. He could not interfere, directly or indirectly, human events needed to develop without assistance. People, as Optimus said, had to be free to make their own choices, good and evil, likewise, they had to be free to succeed and fail. A noble sentiment soiled at the wake of the reality he endured - it would be enough to justify what happened. Indeed, the autobot went as far as to reason, that what he had been doing - driving instead of the drunk - was itself intervention.
After the event he did not feel at peace in spite of the rationalization - which was simply a product of the moment. He went to the others and they took sympathy. The advice the great leader Prime gave was to not allow drunks into the vehicle. Not a word was added about how, exactly, to prevent it. Instead he reiterated that autobots were not yet allowed to be revealed.
The game was a road to freedom but what Bumblebee discovered was that freedom did not always guarantee the outcome he wished. So it was that owner replaced owner while he passed into other, crueler hands. Eventually passive was not enough and he turned active.
At that crossroad, of course, he did not see a transition. It took a while to realize the consequence of the choice. He was blinded by the attitude of the people who used him therefore he could not see the monstrosity he turned into. Until he met Sam and the contrast between good and evil again resurfaced.
Bumblebee could not say how Sam learned about it. Of course, it must have been a heart to heart discussion, the particulars of that were lost. He did not want to remember what it was like to reveal the demons of his past. Erasing that moment between them, it was like, rewriting history.
Sam just knew was how it seemed to be.
He was afraid the boy would have stopped loving him but when he explained it, and the history of suffering that implored it, the human was so understanding - and went as far as to self-identify with the autobot. A human wrought with the torment the autobot faced would have turned to drugs and alcohol - anything self-destructive. A machine could not escape the world that way but, perhaps, through the abuse of its body.
Bumblebee did not regret his intimacy with Sam, rather, it was what happened afterward that spiked his guilt. He let the boy into that abyss. Selfishly, too, as he enjoyed the closeness it fostered. It forced them to forget a deeper, closer bond. Their continued existence depended on their watching each other.
What was recalled, fondly, was the drive through the wilderness shared that noon. They must have reached the coast of Oregon along Route 101. Sam wanted to be with Bumblebee. The thought of anyone abusing his friend was simply too much. It did not matter the way his friend chose to escape that pain. Those, inhuman like that, they deserved it.
Yes, Sam seemed unwilling to face the fact that Bumblebee did not stop the game. Could it be that he did not understand what the autobot was doing? Or was his love of that machine so pure that he did not see the evil of the act?
Maybe, within territories of the mind where rational civilized man did not tread, the idea of his friend's dirty little secret awoke urges the human was not aware existed. To rekindle a genetic predator legacy that society tried to whittle away through domestication. At length, perhaps, it was the swill of hormones raging inside of a teenage boy's body.
With Bumblebee Sam found the greatest of enablers. Adolescents only thought themselves indestructible. That autobot was and was willing and able to share that gift.
What they shared was addiction.
Driving that day after the visit to the clinic, amidst gaps of silence, the autobot thought about the situation. He was haunted by his friend's words - that he did not want to be cured. How deep was the connection between metal and flesh? Across the decades of their relationship, Bumblebee speak of his regret and feelings of suicide to Sam - yet there was his desire reflected.
He, too, did not want to be cured but it was not a physical kind of ailment that crippled the machine. He did not want redemption. Forgiveness! Forgotten were notions of rebirths and evolving into purer and purer forms. He wanted karma to drag him into hell and snuff him out of existence as he, too, meted 'justice' to others.
"Oh, god, it was you, Sam! Sam!" Sam echoed the words that Mikaela shriek as he startled out of nightmare. Wakening within the cabin, dizzily recognizing the dashboard, the wheel, the seat, he recalled where he was - and where he would be always.
"No, Bee, I'm not haunted by it," he said. "I don't think about it," he added, despite the nightmare they were both very much aware of. "You are my whole, entire world, Bee, there was nothing before you and there will be nothing after you. We both did...things...and that's..."
He did not need a rationalization - he, too, was familiar with the subject of denial. It was the way he dealt with the world. Rejecting it and replacing it with another reality of his own design.
Bumblebee's life with Sam was a perfect example of it - a web of lies and secrets within secrets projected onto those who surrounded them. The first was that he was only a vehicle and not a robot. The second was that he was only a friend and not a lover. The third was the twisted past the two shared. Things that nobody would have guessed were indeed possible.
"Bee, I want you to know, I don't regret anything except that I can't live longer with you. You know, I thought about what it would be like to live with you forever. If enough eons passed, that all of this would be forgotten, we could be free - and not just free to be ourselves. Free to live without, well, there would be peace. You think there would be peace? And not have to see their faces and hear their screams..."
"I want to believe," the machine answered.
"You wouldn't have to be - caged - anymore. You would be so beautiful transformed. God, Bee, do you know how beautiful you are when you get out? You're so perfect."
The engine revved to conceal its pangs of loathing. Worse than the weight of regret felt by a murderer was the guilt of its enabler. Sam's love was pure and to perpetuate a lie it was tainted - by Bumblebee.
Bumblebee should have stopped it; instead, it was thought of as a chance to cement their already tight relationship. Cooperation was required between them, to be successful, it fostered understandings and, eventually, intimacies.
The excitement of it was palpable. It was forbidden therefore a thrill. Actually doing it and getting away with it time after time. It was a rush the dwarfed the ecstacy of sex.
And there was a certain element of rebellion regarding the work that suited their adolescent natures. It was all about them taking control of their lives and flaunting it in the faces of the system. An autobot forced to endure abusive humans. A teenager expected to conform with a role he did not want. The world just could not, ever, understand them. Through the game they found the perfect outlet of their frustrations. The consequences of their actions seemed to be irrelevant - at least for a while.
At first it was played like it was developed. They went from town to town and scoured the underbelly of society. The game involved a peculiar array of ingredients. Shadowy, darkened alleys. Seedy hideaways. Dimly-lit, abandoned lots. -
Sam hid inside of the trunk where Bumblebee created a special shock-absorbing cage. Through a gap between seats he saw into the cabin. Like a voyeur he watched, passively, as the events unfolded. Rarely action was imminent. Usually they waited, hour after hour, until somebody took the bait, 'broke' into the vehicle and 'wired' the engine.
Sam was overwhelmed by adrenaline when somebody fell into that trap. Like a fly to a web there was a struggle yet the outcome was not in doubt. He heard the sounds of panic. Yelling at the car to stop. Banging against the door, the glass. All kinds of violence ensued in vain because there could be no escape. When the realization dawned on the prey the boy could not help but laugh, maniacally, within the safety of his harness.
The moment of impact was always unexpected and sudden. Sometimes it was simple, head-on collision. Sometimes the vehicle spun and flipped violently. It was the mechanical equivalent of orgasm, with its twisting and grinding and shuddering.
Like a drug Sam grew to crave it more and more. And it was not enough, either, to be passive. He wanted to be at the wheel up-front and personal. Tasting the thrill face to face. He urged his friend who relented and allowed him to act as bait.
The development worried Bumblebee immensely but he could not deny his friend anything. They were into it so deep there was no way out of it. No way to stop it.
They agreed to a few rules designed to guard their identities. When it was only a car, alone, with people breaking into it, it was easy enough to evade the watch of justice. When it involved a face, though, specifically to attract attention, it raised the possibility that authorities would be able to piece the puzzle together.
It also added to the danger of it and the rush it promised proved too difficult to resist.
Sam's switch from passive to active participant mirrored Bumblebee and marked the beginning of the end. They went out of the way to be careful, yet, they could not quell those rumors that spread of them in the wake of their activity. Stories grew like legends akin to urban teen slashers. Soon they needed to travel into faraway, distant states to find places where nobody knew of a Camaro and its driver.
Bumblebee was very protective of Sam. He feared that surveillance and other, accidental images taken of the boy could have exposed everything. With such evidence authorities would have put the pieces together. -
When Bumblebee told Sam about that they agreed to end that game and not speak of it again. He hated to do anything that caused his friend distress. When he learned of the anguish the autobot suffered through while he stepped into the role of bait he wept at the guilt.
"I was just another human, at the end, abusing you," the man sobbed.
"No! No," the machine shook its head. "I, I did it, I tainted you."
"Bee." Sam collapsed against Bumblebee. "You can do no wrong, you know that, Bee!"
Peace was short-lived, however, as it was not the end they imagined.
While they were not watching somebody deduced their secret.
It was Mikaela - she was always a little suspicious of Sam and Bumblebee. They seemed to be too tight and wondered if their friendship extended beyond the platonic. When word spread of a demonic yellow and black Camaro it raised an eyebrow. When a rumor spread of its young, teenaged driver it impelled a curiosity that had to be satisfied.
She watched the two at night. She knew better than to follow; rather, she noted how often they travelled at night and the times they left and returned. She deduced the distance that could be covered and compared it with the locations and dates where people were going missing.
"The evidence is too strong," she said, bluntly, "I got to take it to Optimus. I know what you and that crazy, psychotic car do and you have to be stopped."
"Kaela," he sighed, "I don't know what you're talking about, OK. Me and Bee, there's nothing wrong with us. He's my friend and protector. I don't understand why you're so jealous."
"It's got nothing to do with jealousy."
"Seeing things, believing things, that don't exist - that's jealousy."
"I see things, it's so obvious, I wonder if you two even try to hide it. The way you treat that machine..."
"Bumblebee is not a machine."
"Oh, I know that, what I don't know is how far you two took it. Just how far it could be taken. And who thought of it."
"Thought of what? You make these accusations."
"Was it part of a rite? A gang type thing?"
"This is crazy. Look - just come by - and see how crazy all of it is. Nothing's wrong except your jealousy blinding you."
Sam shed a tear as he flipped the telephone away. Bumblebee looked up, with his glowing blue eyes, seeming to know something was about to happen.
"Let me do it," he said, grasping the autobot's shoulders. "Just one last time."
The nozzle shook in Sam's weary hands. Gnarled, bony fingers - thinly covered by flesh - held onto the pump as it fed the vehicle. Anyone would have set the latch and walked away until it finished but he, even at that state, enjoyed the very act of
fueling too much to accept a substitute. He grasped the instrument and felt the rumble of its fluids rushing through its length and trickle into the tank. At times like that he felt so close to Bumblebee.
He was sick - really, really sick. There could be no denying it. Everyone, family and acquaintances, noticed it and wondered why he did not seek treatment.
No medicine. No assistance. He refused everything even human contact. He maintained that he lived enough and did not want to extend it.
When he resettled into the seat his friend asked if he wanted to go off on a drive.
It was almost midnight when they reached that stretch of Route 101 by the coast.
"Remember what happened so many years ago?" Bumblebee asked out of the blue.
"Yes, Bee, I remember." Sam shut his eyes - and shuddered. "Take me exactly where it happened. You understand why I mean."
With that the engine revved.
Sam was a mix of exhausted and confused. The world was a blur - lights blended into streaks of color, the cars along the road turned into wispy, ghosty visions. Slowly but surely those sights melted away as a tree-scape engulfed the view.
That was when the whole of the memory, repressed by guilt, resurfaced. The two avoided that part of the road because of what happened with Mikaela. Yes, someway, somehow, Sam and Bumblebee convinced the woman to go with them into a town just to demonstrate that they were not responsible about what she suspected.
Sam was totally in control of the situation that night. He had chosen that route because of its elevation. He had driven it without aid and picked the time to act without prompt. Bumblebee was unaware of the particulars until the event itself occurred.
Now it seemed they returned to complete the task that started so so long ago.
Lurching uphill, inch by inch, coming into the site, Sam gripped the wheel by instinct.
"What are you going to do, Bee, after..."
"I don't know."
"I can't imagine you alone again like that. I'm sorry, Bee, I'm sorry."
"I want to go with you."
"Let's end it together, you and I," he said stroking the wheel. "You can do that, right? You don't have to protect yourself. Just let it go, let it happen. What are you feeling now?"
"You, Sam, I want to remember everything."
"You will." He gripped the stick as if to hold the hand of his lover. "I always wanted to die inside of you. I can't think of a better place where I'd be safe and protected. You're the one I trust."
"Sam!" Mikaela shrieked as Sam crashed through the guardrail. "Oh, god, it was you, Sam! Sam!" The belt unwrapped. The window lowered. She was thrown out of the vehicle as it tumbled through the bluff.
Sam, protected by Bumblebee, watched as she was propelled into the abyss. Her one last scream was snuffed as death itself struck. She was not seen or heard again.
The torn, mangled guardrail swayed at the edge of the cliff above. Below the beach was cratered where the vehicle landed. Between the foliage along the slopes smoldered and rocks that formed the face of the bluffs were etched to show the path of the crash.
He wished it could have ended everything but that was not to be. Karma schemed the autobot another fate entirely. Instead of death was the curse of life. Transformed, at the center of the crater, under the moonlight, there within his arms his friend's broken, bleeding body gasped its last breath.
Optimus entered the chamber and with a nod its guardians shuffled out of view. The great, ancient leader stood at the periphery, under the cloak of shadow and darkness. All the while the object at the center was bathed by light.
"What is it, Bumblebee?" he asked aloud. "What secret do you hide?" There was no answer - there would be no answer - the question was part of the ritual he felt obligated to endure.
A thousand years the mystery of Bumblebee endured.
Optimus searched, everywhere, yet every last scientist was perplexed. They could not find anything, physically, wrong with the autobot. They could not explain why it would not transform.
They were certain, however, the isolation affected its mind.
He was kept underground, locked inside a vault, guarded by autobots because of a tendency toward self-destruction. He was observed driving off of cliffs and crashing into walls. He parked in the path of a train and would have caused a calamity if Optimus did not intervene.
Bumblebee was imprisoned perpetually inside the body of a yellow and black Camaro. He would not come out of it. Communicate. Acknowledge. It was as if he were not a part of the world anymore.
Optimus placed a disk atop a table - it glowed and the image of Sam hovered above it.
"I miss Sam, too, Bumblebee," he said. Maybe it was too little, too late but if anything could have caused a reaction it would have been Sam. "The two of you were inseparable. You could not accept the loss, is that it, my friend? We all miss Sam."
The voice of Optimus cracked at the sound of the name.
Bumblebee did not reply. Yet, its shape - no - its posture seemed to be altered. Suddenly the chamber filled with the echoes of sadness. It was overwhelmed by an abyss of pain.
Optimus shuddered - was the reaction real or imagined? - he could not say.
"What happened that shamed you? Bumblebee. What is your secret?"
The leader sighed and withdrew. He would be back, later, to see if anything changed. He did not expect a breakthrough. The wall between the autobot and reality was thick and impenetrable. But hope was hard to kill. And maybe, just maybe.
END