Snapshot

You know, it had all been going so well. Megatron had pulled off the coup of a lifetime. Devastator was just going to break his way into the Autobot base, and we were all there, waiting for our 'grand victory'. The next thing we know, three giant lizard-bots come storming toward us, there's a whole load of fire, and the whole lot of us are dropping into a fissure in the ground. 'Sucks' doesn't quite cut it.

Megatron should release that as a fragrance, I think. 'Grand Victory – a fragrance for mechs, by Megatron'. He says the damned phrase at least twice a day, and it gets cornier every time. The perfume wouldn't sell very well, though, 'cause every last one of those 'victories' stinks worse than the southern rust-swamps on a hot day. And believe me, they reek.

And you're looking confused... heh, probably should've introduced myself. The name's Reflector. What? You don't know me? I was practically Megatron's star warrior. I ran the show! I was the head mech, the main honcho, I was... ahh, who am I kiddin'. So far as the grand scheme of things goes, I was the spy, the recon agent, and general dogsbody. The Decepticon equivalent to Ensign Ricky. And you're looking confused again... though it's kinda hard to tell. That's the trouble with you fleshies, every one of ya looks the same, and every one of your expressions looks pretty similar, too.

Anyhow, where was I? Ah, yes, Ensign Ricky. If you've never seen Star Trek, you won't get this. And may I say now, when I first saw that show I figured it was a comedy. I didn't realise your species actually thought that's what space-travel is like! But I'm getting ahead of myself. In the original series of Star Trek, the one with Kirk, not the bald guy, the plot was basically the same every week. And it went something like this:

Starship arrives at potentially hostile planet. Kirk announces an 'away mission' to go explore, and says something like "I will be beaming to the planet with my entire command staff, no matter that they're irreplaceable and the ship couldn't run without them. Oh, and we'll be taking Ensign Insert-generic-name-here." We'll go with Ricky, for the purposes of this demonstration. This would be the guy in the red shirt at the back of the set; you know, the one that gets a look on his face that says "Oh, crap, I should've updated my will" the second his name is mentioned. 'Cause he knows what be comin' next!

The crew then beam down to the planet (Skywarp always cracked up at this point), Ensign Ricky in tow. Kirk, Spock and McCoy go skipping off through the scenery with all the joy immortality brings, and Ensign Ricky gets eaten alive by the first blue fleshling/blob of putty/poisonous plant/giant gerbil with wings that he comes across, all before the first commercial. I swear, their whole five year mission was designed to kill off the weaker links of society... or, at least, that's my theory!

And what's this got to do with anything, I hear you ask? Well, like I said earlier, I am Ensign Ricky. Officially the most expendable member of the Decepticons. As if life didn't suck already! I mean, I'm not the biggest mech in the world, anyone with optics can see that. Hardly a Supreme class, if you follow. Which means, when my so-called comrades are all stumbling around in the morning, optics all fogged up from recharge and looking for their morning rations of energon, I'm busy playing my favourite game of 'which slagger's gonna step on me first?'.

That just about sums up my entire, sorry existence. Or, should that be 'our'? It's bad enough that I'm one of the few mechs that one of you lot could kick in. What's worse than that, you ask? Try never being alone. Ever. Or, worse yet, not being able to even transform alone! How's that for a tank-load of slag? I can't even drop waste without Two and Three being within audio range. Again, 'sucks' don't quite cover it. I mean, whose frakking idea was that? If my life was a game show, the last announcement would have sounded like "Reflector, congratulations! You've won our top prize! A life that previously belonged to a gestalt as a chew toy! Or, you can choose our runner-up prize, where we we incinerate you now!"

Not much of a choice, huh? In case you were wondering, it was a production glitch. I was supposed to have advanced hard-light cloning tech, similar to Shrapnel's. But, as I'm being taken off the production line, and get my spark installed, something goes wrong. The computer triggers my replicant tech, which interfaces with the assembly line, which throws out two copies... which are now a part of my life, regardless. Can't be too far from 'em, 'cause we share spark fragments. Can't transform without 'em, 'cause we are all part of a whole. 'Privacy' is a word in a foreign language as a result.

On the plus side, though, I can sub-space them...

And then, to top it off, I get a new alternate form. In the old days, back on Cybertron, me and my clones combined and transformed into a small, armoured scout car. Emphasis on the 'small'. Anyways, when we crash-landed on your little mud-ball on board the Autobot cruiser, we're all knocked off-line by the impact. A couple of million years later, and the volcano we ended up under starts to rumble, and wakes up the computer systems of the ship. It's defence protocols kick in, and we end up getting our forms re-formatted into something resembling what the computer thought were the dominant life-forms of the planet. Yep, you guessed it, machines.

Most of the Decepticons were lucky enough to get appropriately aggressive forms. Okay, Soundwave ended up as a cassette player, but that kind of fit as he's not a very hands-on kind of mech when it comes to combat. The Seekers, luckily for them, all get fighter jets. Megatron became a hand gun of some variety. And what did I get? A Primus-damned Kodak camera! I mean, how useful is that gonna be for taking over a world? I mean, unless Megs decides he wants to take holiday snaps while he's here, my alternate form is all but useless! I can just picture him doing that though, taking photos of all his big moments, then showing the other Decepticon commanders when he gets back to Cybertron... It'd be like "And here's me, terrorising some innocent fleshlings; and here I am, standing over Starscream as he begs for mercy for the billionth time; ooh, and here's me at the White House, just before Optimus Prime descends from the heavens and kicks my aft..."

Scary thoughts, huh? Funny, but scary. Regular 'Kodak Moments', them.

So, where was I? Oh, yes. That oversized tin-head Megatron has just opened another bottle of 'Grand Victory', and we're all but drowning in it. And it's then that I decided I'd had enough. I can't honest to Primus remember who even suggested it, actually. Think it was Two, but there you go; having a pair of avatars can be fun, sometimes. And sometimes, just sometimes, one of them has a truly brilliant idea. This was one of those moments. Two decided to open a private comm-link as we're all dragging our afts out of the crevice, and sent me a message along the lines of "How sick of this are you?"

My response was less than polite, let's just say that. So he says "Let's bail!" I say "Where the slag to?" and he just says "Who cares?" So we did! The one and only time my small size has come in handy for something other than spying, and it's not used sneaking up on the Autobots but sneaking away from the Decepticons! Now that, Alanis Morisette, is ironic! I still had no damned clue as to what I was gonna do, but it was a start.

At first, I tried to find a way to sneak onto the space bridge, but as luck would have it Megatron decided to step up security just after our – no, his – last failure. So getting past the guards was next to impossible. My next best bet was to stow away on any Cybertronian transport that came along. But so far, not one has. So, somewhere between boredom and desperation, I decided to explore the wonders of this little planet of yours by the most readily available way.

Television.

I tried out your 'video games', but they were, shall we say, less than challenging. I plugged myself in and finished two of the Tomb Raider games in an afternoon! I bought myself a Furby for some company, and found out that it's only marginally better for conversation than Soundwave. I accessed your internet, and twenty minutes later had downloaded the lot. One mass memory purge to get rid of all the smut later, and the rest made for light reading. So, as you can imagine, by the end of a week or so of on-line poker, I was bored near to death. And it's at that point that I discovered the one thing on the t.v. that was worth watching. A wonderful little gem called 'The Discovery Channel'.

At first, I thought it was meant to be comedy. I was amazed at just how much you knew about some parts of your world, but so little about everything else! But, as I continued watching, I began to appreciate something, something I hadn't noticed in my time here. Your planet, for want of a term that wouldn't get my aft kicked back on the Nemesis, is actually quite beautiful. For a weed ridden, organic-infested ball of mud, that is.

So, I decided to see more of it. Not through the television, or through the world-wide web. I decided to see it for myself, in person. So, I created a hologram disguise, and went exploring. I visited a few places nearby, and was inspired to go a bit further afield. And it was at Niagara Falls that it all fell into place, as I did the strangest thing I had done in my life. I took a photograph. I'm not even sure why I did it. But I waited until no-one was looking, transformed and took a snapshot. That photo is still on my apartment wall, as it happens.

I was hooked. Being a camera, rather than just holding one, gave me a certain insight into the photographer's art, I guess. Whatever it was, I got a strange sense of... well-being, I guess. So I took more. And more. I began to travel the world, taking photos of everything I could find, everything that caught my eye. And without getting all artsy on you, I grew more and more in love with this world. And that is why I'm here, now, boring you lot with my story.

See, I'm just one mech. And becoming an eco-warrior isn't on my agenda of 'things to do before I'm a billion'. So I'm asking you all for a favour. Every last one of you. I want you to take a look around you, and find one thing that strikes you as beautiful. Or just nice to look at, if the 'B' word does nothing for you. Take a photo, if you can, or remember it well if you can't. Now comes the hard part: cherish that memory. Then go out and make another. Keep going, until you start seeing something worth taking a picture of everywhere you look..

And why do I ask you for that? Because your world deserves better. And so do you. Until Megatron gets one of his Grand Victories to stick, or Prime and his flunkies finally stop him, the fate of this world lies in the balance. But if you fleshies don't look after the place, it won't matter who wins or loses. If you humans keep going the way you're going, you'll destroy Earth all on your own. And I, for one, don't want that to happen. So do yourselves a favour, eh? Look after the world around you.

Then, just as soon as I can get an army together, I can take over for myself... not!

Authors Notes: Transformers and all associated characters belong to Hasbro/Takara, not myself. I also do not own: Star Trek, Alanis Morisette, Niagara Falls, Kodak, the Internet, or even a Furby. I probably don't even own the whole 'Ensign Ricky' gag, assuming someone beat me to it! If anyone would like to donate one of the above, please call 1-800-BLUES-GONE-MENTAL.

Hope you enjoyed this, and hope it made you smile, if not laugh outright. Please review, if you can. I'd love to know what you think! Thanks for reading.