Stage 2: Creatures of Clay
After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? That's how I answer when I am asked – as I am surprisingly often – why I bother to get up in the mornings.
– Richard Dawkins
0o0o0
"Stand by for landing," Hound called out. "And hold onto your afterburners; this'll get real bumpy if the crust's not strong enough to hold us."
There came a thump and lurch, a topsy-turvy moment as landing gear met uneven terrain, a hiss-clickas the hydraulics took up weight. The little shuttle leveled itself on spindly legs; then with an almost-sentient sigh, shut down.
Not a bot moved or spoke for several kliks.
Then, "Move out," Jetfire ordered. "Let's see what we've come to see."
The little band disembarked with reluctance. One or two bots looked back at the squat yellow Pilgrim that had brought them here, as if to seek some reassurance. But the drop-ship's presence brought no comfort. The homely little craft only accentuated just how alien their homeworld had become.
Beachcomber turned in a slow circle, and gave out a long and cheerless whistle.
This was not Cybertron. This was not home. This was a strange, fire-blasted world which seemed somehow diseased. Between the mottled floes of dull quicksilver, its surface was roughened here and there with greeny-black patches of rubble. Off to one side of the stunned mechs, several fungal outcrops lurked like shameful mutant lifeforms begging their creators for a mercy killing.
There came a soft, watery sigh from Cosmos, a rotund green and yellow minibot. Hound put an arm across his fellow-Autobot's shoulders. "It's all right, Cos'," the four-wheeled scout assured him. "We all feel just the same."
Jetfire tried to pull himself together. He was practiced at keeping a clinical distance, inuring himself to the spark-dulling horror of performing an autopsy on an entire world and all its life. He'd done it all too many times. But he'd never yet had to perform this service for his home. He felt an unreasonable upwelling of resentment for Sixshot, their tag-along weapon of mass destruction. But this desolation was not that infamous mech's fault.
"Cosmos, you're up," he said tersely. "The quicker we get those radar maps of the surface, the better." Then remembering the diminutive bot's sensitive soul, the Autobot team-captain smiled down at the stumpy shuttle-bot, who barely came up to his knee. "Report in any time you see something interesting," he suggested kindly. "Even if you just get bored."
"Yes, Jetfire," Cosmos quavered. With a few mournful clunks he folded down into his short-range shuttle mode, and blasted up into the soot-black sky.
Jetfire turned back to the paltry contingent huddled around him. "We've all got work to do," he said briskly. "Let's do it." He began pointing bots in various directions. "Reflector, transmit photos of everything we see up to Shockwave. Perceptor and Beachcomber: samples, starting here. Find out if the crust shows any reaction to the heat of our shuttle's landing thrusters. Hound, scout the perimeter and transmit your findings. Stay sharp. Sixshot..." He paused, uncertain.
"Guard duty?" the tall, quiet mech suggested.
Jetfire shrugged in mild annoyance. "Fine. But I'm sure there's nothing living here but us fools."
And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet,
for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.
-Exodus 3:5
0o0o0
Longhaul was grumbling. As usual. "Why is it always us who have to do the dirty work?" he complained as he trundled a truck-load of rubble over to the growing pile beside their camp.
"Huh. Yer joking, right?" Bonecrusher bulldozed down some crusted, bulbous outcrops with relish. "Or haven't you noticed your alt-mode, Dump-Truck?"
"Shut up!" Hook ordered sharply. His crane-arm was fully extended; his balance questionable. But unless the six Constructicons wanted to merge and let the gestalt Devastator play at tinker-toys with this equipment, he was the only one able to raise the drill-rig apparatus high enough. "Both of you quit yer yapping and help me-"
"Oh yeah?" Mixmaster interrupted. "Who died and made you leader?" He was annoyed because no one would let him throw a few slabs of the strange gray crust into his mixer to see how they would react with his beloved acids.
"Aw, come on guys," Scavenger wheedled weakly. But everyone else ignored him. So he sighed and went back to swinging his excavator shovel back and forth across the ground in a so-far-and-probably-forever-vain attempt to discover something interesting in its scan readouts.
Scrapper, the front-end loader whom Megatron had officiallychosen as the team's leader (much to Hook's consternation), muttered a few of his standard curses. "Let's just get this hole drilled, shall we? Hook, get that rig into position and stop trying to do everyone else's job. Mixmaster, secure the support struts. And do it right the first time please," he grumbled, "Or we'll end up blowing ourselves into the Inferno."
"Huh. Sounds like fun," the mixer snorted.
Few scientists acquainted with the chemistry of biological systems at the molecular level can avoid being inspired.
Evolution has produced chemical compounds exquisitely organized to accomplish the most complicated
and delicate of tasks. Many organic chemists viewing crystal structures of enzyme systems or nucleic acids
and knowing the marvels of specificity of the immune systems must dream of designing and synthesizing
simpler organic compounds that imitate working features of these naturally occurring compounds.
— Donald J. Cram
0o0o0
I can't see anything familiar. Cosmos's thin voice hissed through the comm-link. He sounded small and frightened and alone. There aren't even any landmarks to show, um, which one was which, you know? Which areas were bits of Primus, and which were parts of Unicron? He forced a weak laugh.
It's all right, Cosmos. Just give me the facts. Pretend this is some new planet you've just discovered.
As he tried to encourage the orbiting shuttle-bot, Jetfire caught Sixshot watching him thoughtfully. Annoyed, he turned his back on the enigmatic Decepticon, and hunkered down to peer into a too-small, too-low vid-screen. It displayed each swath of mapping as Cosmos sent it through the comm-link. You're scanning in full color, aren't you, Cosmos? he queried via the comm-link. No filters or alt-light reads yet? Because I'm only getting shades of gray...
"Probably because this is a gray planet," Reflector commented dryly to no one in particular.
No filters, confirmed Cosmos. I wish I could tell you different.
Jetfire's nerves were twanging, and his temper short. "I don't see how we can live here. I've never seen anything like this." He scowled over his shoulder, "Not even in your aftermath, Sixshot. This planet is like nothing so much as a... a color-bled corpse!"
The soft-spoken destroyer said nothing.
"Duh," commented Reflector.
Jetfire glared down at the short camera-mech's gray-purple back.
"Jetfire, look here." Perceptor's taut, staccato voice cut through the mounting tension. The scientist had transformed into a large microscope, the better to perform his examinations. Jetfire came over and peered into the eyepiece.
"As you can see," Perceptor said in suppressed excitement, "The crust material is unlike anything I have ever encountered. While its chemical structure suggests a mineral of some unknown type, it appears to also have, er, shall we say unusual intra-cellular components... " He waited, wanting Jetfire's confirmation.
The tall white mech just stared down through the lens at the much-magnified patterns, his brow furrowed. "But that's-"
"Impossible," agreed Perceptor. "But, well... I assume you've noticed it too, Beachcomber?"
The blue minibot looked up unhappily from the rough slab he had on a folding table. "I've run all my scans," he reported. "Magnetic, seismic, sonic, infrared... Perceptor's right." He shrugged. "Crystals can grow, sure. But they shouldn't have cells like these." He scrubbed a dusty hand across his visor (which only succeeded in smearing it further). "This place is freaky, man. I'm generally in favor of life 'finding a way' and all, but this stuff is almost... organic. Living metal. But, you know, dead." He shrugged. "I don't get it."
Jetfire sighed, and straightened from the microscope's viewfinder. "I used to think I knew something about how the universe functioned," he said. "Now..." He stared off into the distance, following Hound's encircling dust-trail. "I've seen a lot of impossible things during the last few quartex. I'm not sure I know anything anymore."
He turned back to Perceptor. "Go ahead and transform, and hand me those crust-samples. I'll send up the first carrier drone, and get this material to Wheeljack for analysis. We need to find out what we're dealing with. Reflector!" he called, "Document these cross-sections, please."
"Hooray. I get to take pictures of ugly rocks," the purple, green, and gray camera-bot grumbled. But in a few kliks he was downloading not just the images Jetfire had requested, but a high-definition panoramic view of everything around their little landing site.
"Good work," Jetfire complimented, somewhat grudgingly.
While everyone was busy, Hound drove back into camp without a fuss, and transformed quietly.
"Anything to report?" Jetfire inquired.
"No sign of life or movement besides us," replied the dark green scout. "Nothing interesting in sight for mega-miles, except those creepy outcrops just East of us – funny coincidence, us landing next to them. I hope," he added with a forced laugh.
Jetfire huffed. "We'd better investigate those things next, I suppose," he said unhappily.
"Yes..." Hound was staring intently past his captain's right shoulder. Without a word of explanation, he pushed around the tall white mech to stare into the monitor beside him. It was currently scrolling through the many pictures the Decepticon camera had recorded. "Uh, Reflector?" Hound's voice was strained. "Have these pictures been altered or retouched in any way?"
"Of course not!" Reflector shot back, offended. But something in Hound's manner made him go on, "Why?"
"These show three standing formations."
"Uh, yes...?"
Hound straightened up and pointed. "There are seven of them out there now."
The six mechs stared dumbly at the bulgy shapes sticking up from the ground not too far off. Without quite meaning to, they drew closer together.
Cosmos? Jetfire commed anxiously, Anything... new?
I'm not sure what to tell you, the little Autobot replied. I just finished my last orbit, but my previous scans aren't jibing with the ones I'm making now. I was about to go around again to double-check...
Don't bother. You'd better get down here and stick close to us. Something's... come up.
Jetfire looked into the frightened faces of his team members. His base-program wanted to scream, "Mech-eating zombie-rocks! Run for your lives!" But an expedition captain did not give orders like that. So he put on an outward calm. "Sixshot," he said, "Transform and take rearguard. Hell, change into that crazy space-gun, if you like- what is it, Mode 5 or Mode 6? - whatever. Never thought I would say this, but I'm glad we'll have your firepower at our backs." He paused. "We will have your gun guarding rearward, right?"
Sixshot's masked face showed no expression. He just shrugged, and transformed into a gigantic, flying gun (with a barrel that the smaller bots could have walked into easily), and then turned, hovering, to aim that barrel at the hideous growths. As he did so, an eighth drooping protuberance raised up out of the ground.
Reflector yipped, and jerked back against Hound.
Clanking in haste, the Autobot team-captain transformed into a large cargo-jet. "Let's move!" he cried as he let down the ramp into a capacious rear cargo bay. "Everybody get in."
While the rational mind is important, we gain a new perspective when we learn
how many of the greatest scientific insights, discoveries, and revolutionary inventions
appeared first to their creators as fantasies, dreams, trances, lightening-flash insights,
and other non-ordinary states of consciousness.
-Willis Harman and Howard Rheingold
o0o0o
They lay together on a single berth, limbs so enmeshed that they seemed more like a single organism, than a separate mech and femme. Over millennia, Prime and Elita's frames had adapted (and re-adapted) to one another: facets and flanges lining up and interlocking till whenever the two bots came together, they clicked.
Both were offline. But she was dreaming.
In the dream, Ariel sat beside Orion Pax sat upon the roof of New Iacon's tallest tower, both bots swinging their legs over its side. Of course, few knew them by those names; and out of those who did, fewer still dared to call them by those long-lost monikers. But tonight it was as if the passing of uncounted time had left them somehow still unscathed, still reveling in dreams and plans and wishing on the brightest star.
...Or, as Orion was doing now, wishing on the star just to the left of the brightest celestial luminary. "Why give all the work to one lone star?" he winked sideways to the slim, pink femme.
She followed her bondmate's line of sight, till she found the star now carrying his wish. "I've been there," she remarked in sudden recollection. "Intarras-5 was uninhabited, and rich with iron and magnesium..." She settled in against him. "That was in the early days, before all the trade routes were shut down. I wonder what it's like now..."
"Want to go back and find out?" he inquired.
"Not just yet," she said. She smiled under the shelter of his arm. "I'm content right here, for now."
They mused in silence for a while. "Do you think there's anyone out there looking back at us?" Orion wondered aloud.
She looked out at the slice of cosmos before them. "Someone on Praum might be. Or maybe on Chokoneon..."
"I wonder what they call their constellations?" Orion stared up at the silvered sky, out at the tiny whorls of spiral galaxies, bright clouds of nebulae, and enigmatic swaths of dark matter. In the presence of such vastness, it was easy to feel small. The two bots curled up in the feeling, for it came to them so seldom.
"There's the Chronarchitect," Orion said, pointing at a circle of yellow stars almost directly above them.
"That's right. I'd almost forgotten," Ariel murmured. It had been a few eons since either of them had given a thought to the old stories told about half-imagined figures in the sky. "That's the Singer." She gestured to a ladder-like lineup of stars – a pattern that musicians used to say was a clue to the ultimate melody... if only they could manage to decipher it.
"I like the Builder's Tools," said the red mech, indicating a cluster of small multicolored stars near the horizon. He snorted, suddenly. "We must have traveled a long way since I was forged. Remember how the Square and Compass used to be so far apart? They're almost overlapping, now."
Elita - Ariel - gave a long sigh. "We have come a long way." She reached up to touch Orion's hand on her shoulder, threading her fingers through his thick blue ones. Her gaze shifted down from the stars above them, to the twinkling lights of the expanding city far beneath. New-Iacon was still under construction. (There was hardly any place that wasn't.) But someday, she thought, We'll drop the prefix from the names, and newling mechs and femmes will think their planet's always been this beautiful. She pursed her lips. I hope they take good care of it. We've worked hard to rebuild it for them.
Almost as if he knew her thoughts, Orion gave her shoulder a quick squeeze. "Some day, this will all be forgotten. There will be no memory left of all our wars, of all our follies... or even of us, my love." He drew her close. "It's a relief, I guess."
Elita snuggled into the familiar place at his side. "You know," she mused, "Wouldn't it be nice if after we are gone, this mysterious planet of ours could then become a star in its own right..."
"I like that," Orion agreed. "Imagine, some future being looking out into the night, and wishing upon Cybertron..." He smiled, lost in reverie.
"I wonder if that wish would be granted?" Elita mused.
"I hope so," Prime replied. Softly, he ran a thumb down her cheek-seam. "I hope so, dearest one."
Elita onlined with a painful sense of loss. The Orion with her now had no such hope for the future.
She raised her face to his, and traced a finger down one of the finials spiking up from his darkened head. She pressed her brow against his helm, feeling her spark constrict. "Don't give up," she whispered. "Please. Don't give up on us."
"Perfection would be a fatal flaw for evolution.
Life's hold on life depends on God losing his grip on life every once in a while."
-Author Unknown
o0o0o
Jetfire taxied to a stop along a relatively smooth stretch of quicksilver crust. "Hello, Scrapper," he hailed, trying to sound cheerful.
"Slag off," Bonecrusher warned. "This is our turf."
"I'm not disputing that," the white Autobot said wearily. He'd never liked dealing with this particular combiner team; but since they worked in similar fields, they'd rubbed shoulders – and chipped each others' paint – far more often than any of them would have chosen. He waited as the last of his teammates disembarked and transformed; then he tried to begin again. "We were wondering if you'd noticed anything strange about the formations around here...?" He left it as a question.
"Why? Isn't that what you came to this lump to analyze?" Hook asked with a patronizing huff.
"Yeah," sneered Longhaul, "We've got enough on our docket as it is, without doing your work as well!"
"Look," Jetfire said, trying to keep his cool. "Just tell me how many of those outcrops were here when you started drilling."
"Count 'em yourself!" Mixmaster shouted. He waved a hand toward the strange tall shapes, but floundered suddenly. "Er, boss?" He whispered.
Hook looked up, though he was still not in charge of the unit. Scrapper listened and said nothing.
"How many of those things were there when we got there? Because, heh heh..." the mixer gave a weak chuckle, "I only remember there being, like, five or six..."
Both teams of mechs turned to follow Mixmaster's wavering finger. At least twenty outgrowths - ranging in size from half Cosmos's height to nearly twice Jetfire's size - stood ranged in grotesque parody of the interloping transformers.
Scavenger dropped his wrench. It clanged loudly in the sudden stillness.
"Oh, scrap," somebody whispered.
Just then there came a final, cheery Ding! and the great drill shut down with a slow, chugging putt-putt-putt of its powerful engines. The bit had come to the end of its multi-mile extension cabling. According to the readouts on the holographic monitors, the toothed cylinder was now swinging free in a vast, open cavity down near the core of this mysterious planet.
And the LORD said unto him, Who hath made man's mouth?
or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the LORD?
-Exodus 4:11
o0o0o
"Right then." Hook spoke softly but firmly. "Let's get this damn job finished so we can get out of this Smelting-Pit."
Jetfire and Scrapper shared a look. "You still planning to go down there?" the Autobot inquired.
The Contructicon captain glanced around, and made a face. "Orders," he said. But his expression was that of a mech who'd just been told to eat a mess of mudfins.
"We'll come along then, if we may," Jetfire declared.
But Beachcomber tugged at his arm. "A word?" he asked, with unaccustomed formality.
Jetfire nodded, and followed him aside.
"I'd like to stay topside, please," the dark-blue dunebuggy requested, looking up at his captain from knee-level. "I want to see why these outcrops are doing-" he shrugged, "-What they're doing. If it's a coincidence that they're only appearing at our landing sites, for instance."
"If you stay, then I'm staying with you." Cosmos piped up. The green minibot looked scared enough to start leaking, but spoke with a determined bravery. "You might need a lift," he told Beachcomber, "If things go bad out here."
Jetfire crouched down to meet the optics of the two little Autobots. "I've been told that the Minibots watch out for one another," he murmured, putting a dwarfing hand on each of their shoulders. "I'm glad to see it's true."
He rose. "Make sure you do get out if things get worse," he said sternly. "There's no need for heroics here. Get out before you can't."
The Constructicon commander interrupted with ill-grace. "Anyone else not going down the tunnel?" He directed the traditional air of belligerence toward those not of his own faction; but when it came down to it, the enemy you knew was preferable to the creepy rocks you didn't know on the dead planet that you'd once called home but that was now looking like the setting of your worst nightmares. Even Sixshot was welcome here, as long as his considerable weaponry was trained outward.
To a bot, everyone but Beachcomber and Cosmos stepped forward, grim-faced. "Count us in," said Hound.
"Right then," said Scrapper. "But as far as I'm concerned, it's every mech for himself. I ain't savin' any of your plating, if I'm busy saving mine. And incidentally..." He leered at the flightless Autobots. "I hope you've had your shock-absorbers serviced recently. It's gonna be a very long jump down."