I think the worst part about going crazy is watching others going mad around you.
The room was small, even for my standards - far too small to be holding as many bots as it did, all crammed against the walls, scratching and scraping at the thick plating, trying to reach for the clouds drifting so lazily, so nonchalant, just outside of their grasp. A few of them I recognized, most of them I didn't - the colony had been so large, I never anticipated meeting all of the residents; it never even crossed my processor.
They were here before me. For how long, I can't imagine - some seem like they've been here for centuries the way they stare so hopelessly, so blank and lost at their own little corner of the sky - the fake sky, or, at least, a recorded sky. I could still tell myself it wasn't real - this is a good sign. I paced sometimes, counting out the steps to reach one edge to another; ninety-seven paces both ways, looking about the same distance upwards, I guess. Some of the larger bots were hunched and cramped, their heads shoved against the ceiling, wings striking anyone nearby with each helpless quiver. Some of them were violent at times, alternating between crying loudly for the sky and striking out at those around them.
When I had first been put here, I had reached out to touch one such quivering wing hoping to soothe the whimpering mech, but he had snapped and snarled at me like a savage creature, whirling around so quickly that he struck me with the broad side of his wing and sent me sliding across the short distance straight against the opposite wall. I learned my lesson after that and stayed clear from touching the others. The walls were sturdy to be so clear - certainly not glass, perhaps some sort of crystal…I really have no idea - the scratches and marks made by the occupants were barely even visible, much less damaging. I knew there were screens beyond the transparent barrier, I knew they had to be, because the sky was up and we were down below the surface, but it was still very convincing at times, seamlessly set together completely surrounding us, it was like we were just hovering in the sky, dangling there with it beyond our grasp as the deep red clouds rolled by and the sun wandered past, followed by the three moons spiraling around each other in a slow, lazy dance. They seemed lost without it, like they've never even spent time on the surface before. I've spent my fair share of time grounded - broken wings, broken thrusters, anyone wondering why need just ask my designation… heh… Creator used to tell that to our caregivers whenever he was leaving home without us.
Sometimes it rained, the droplets splattering against the top of the box as if we were actually outside, pooling in little puddles before trickling down the sides. Maybe some sort of camera was feeding these images to the screens? It'd be rather clever, really, I suppose, instead of looping the same bit of daylight infinitely. I wondered what the rain tasted like on cycles like that. I couldn't fly in the rain, and I'd never really worried over it before, but seeing it drip and dribble just beyond my reach made my glossa tingle wondering what it tasted like. It wasn't acid rain like what Creator said was back on Cybertron, but it definitely wasn't good for my tank as I understood it. Not that that had ever stopped me before.
My brothers whispered to me each cycle, telling me they were okay, that we would find a way out, to be strong and just hold on a little longer and I dutifully whispered back, trying to keep them light-sparked, trying to keep us together, trying to ignore the fear I felt in the eldest's reassurances. Every cycle they grew a little quieter, a little less certain, a lot less confident, until one by one they stopped whispering, all but one hiding themselves away - whether in pain or fear or shame, I didn't know, but negative vibes trickled through from time to time before they sealed themselves up even tighter than before. That one open channel was my anchor to reality.
Every once in a great while I was reminded that there was a door as it opened just slightly at the bottom to slide in a few cubes of Energon. There were always enough cubes for each of us, and some scrambled to claim theirs while others ignored it until their systems groaned in protest. It started to become longer and longer between the time the cubes were presented and the mechs could shake themselves from their stupor to drink them. One finally stopped drinking at all, his Energon left untouched as he pressed his whole body against the wall. I'd hoped he would drink at the next refueling, but he stayed still, optics boring into the false sky beyond the walls of our little glass prison. I nudged his cube towards him until it touched his knee but still he didn't move, didn't flinch. Our fuel burned slowly, low grade as it was, simply because we didn't have the space to move around and burn it any faster anyway. I still saw his optics dimming with the lack of energy, cycle after cycle like a dying filament.
After three missed cubes, I tried to get him to drink, tried to fill his tanks myself, tilting his head back to pour the weak mix into his mouth, but his intakes were closed by then and it only spilled out down his chin and neck, draining down along his chestplates and spilling out more when I released my grip on his head. His shutters didn't even blink, optics so dull and lifeless that they were barely on. He stayed that way for cycles, orns maybe, if I hadn't lost count of the times the sun passed by overhead, and each time I tried to fill his tanks myself, but he never drank. Finally, in the darkness of one cloudy, starless night, I heard a fizzle, a crackle, something snapping; gears ground loudly, stripping themselves as his processor glitched and failed. I could smell the burning wires and relays so strongly in the small room and the whine was deafening as his systems started to panic without his processor to control them. Some shut themselves down for protection, others overloaded without the first to shunt their energy into, bursting apart inside his chassis with billows of smoke from his seams; motor relays went out of control and he began to convulse, shaking and clawing at the floor, empty tanks trying to purge, half-burned oil and mech fluids bubbling up out of his mouth and onto the floor around him in a dark puddle until he stilled, mouth agape and flooded, optics black as his chassis began to grey.
I could only stare. Only one other glanced back towards the dying mech, turning his dark faceplates streaked with sticky lines of dried cleanser to catch my gaze for just a moment before settling his blank stare back on the screens. No one else looked, no one else even so much as flinched, so far gone that they didn't notice the world around them anymore, simply absorbed in themselves, in whatever fantasy world of sky and wind their glitching processors had concocted. None of these mechs would mourn the death of their fellow - they wouldn't even remember he existed. But I wasn't so far gone yet, I still noticed, I still knew, I would still remember. So I crawled to the grayed figure and folded his limbs carefully around the still chassis, grimacing in disgust when I slipped in the pooled oil, uttering a short prayer to Primus before returning to my spot of refuge. Then, I wept for him.
And I wept for me.
My siblings had been quiet for a while now, the dull echo of a block sending back my own thoughts but for the one open channel. Our littlest clung so desperately to the bond, so afraid to be alone, immersed so far into the link that I wondered if she was trying to wedge herself into my head to escape her own. She was such a delicate construct, not built to endure like me… I couldn't let her see what was happening, I couldn't let her feel my fear, she'd just gobble it up for herself and then it would only be worse for us both. I pushed her away, gently at first, but she panicked and flooded me with such despair that I had to block her out, I had to wall myself in… her fear faintly echoed in the back of my mind, so intense at first but it quieted slowly until it was as though she simply wasn't there anymore…
I shuddered and drew in on myself, staring down at the surface of the planet below, bathed in the light of the moons - just two tonight, one was eclipsed by its brother, meaning a storm would be coming soon. That was more a local superstition than actual meteorology, though. Weather was difficult to predict in most cases, but especially here if Creator's muttering and cursing the rain were any indication when it happened. And yet, superstition or not, the storm came, the rain pattering down against the screens as though it could touch us and wash away the ache of our sparks to feel it on our plating. At some point I found myself licking the glass, trying to taste it, unaware that I had even moved to do so. I reared back in surprise, my wings drooping just slightly in disappointment, a vague sadness directed at nothing and everything that was chased away in a brief bite of fear when lightning arced past on the wall I faced. I jumped back with a shrill cry of surprise, the only one to react at all. No thunder followed as it should have, no sound at all, but for the grinding, stripping gears of a mech succumbing to his desolation and the clamor of his plating trembling on the floor. I prayed for him, and I grieved for him… and I grieved for myself.
Ninety-eight paces now. The room was growing. Or… maybe I was shrinking? It was hard to tell… I was already small in comparison to the others and nobody else was standing for me to compare. I paced the length of the room again, counting carefully: ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-seven and a half… Maybe my stabilizing servos had been worn down from all my pacing and my steps were just smaller now. Were my peds wearing down? They didn't look smaller to me, though I didn't have any real way of measuring them.
Fuel came again. I'm not sure if there was a steady rhythm to its delivery or not but it seemed to pop up before my tanks were completely depleted. It was the rainy season now, I think, and there was at least one storm between each fueling. The rain had never been so enticing to me before. Creator was always worrying himself glitchy over us when it rained, something about our alloys reacting to the chemical makeup of the precipitation, but the dark clouds pouring out their essence like the weeping, crimson optics of the trembling bot in the corner had me so entranced with each storm that I would have given anything at that point to thrust myself straight into a cloud and swim in a veritable pool of tears. I imagine the rainfall feels something like the cleanser sprayer in the washroom though maybe not as powerful, and maybe not as warm. I still wondered what it tasted like - maybe it was a sort of sour-sweet flavor like nickel or oxidizing copper, or maybe it was sweeter than Energon, or maybe it was bitter like the zinc and mercury infused medical Energon I had to drink when I got sick. Blech.
I don't know when I stopped recharging. I think my short-term memory converter has glitched, I can't remember offlining at any point and I don't really online the way I think I should. Every time my processor remembers where I am, the sun has moved so very far from where I remember it being. My chronometer doesn't work quite right anymore either, I'm certain. I turned it off just so it would stop lying to me.
It occurred to me, at some point, somewhere in the back of my processor, that they should have been asking me questions, at least some, because that's what you do with prisoners, right? But I hadn't seen anyone but the bots that were already here and the occasional servo pushing cubes through the door. They hadn't even come to take away the deactivated mechs - the oily grey chasses with the black optics that stared so despairingly towards the sky. I wasn't strong enough to move them, they were simply too big and heavy for me alone. No one else even knew they were dead. No one else even knew they were still alive. Even I was just assuming my online status.
The skies were bright this cycle. It would be hot outside, fans would be whirling away in everyone to keep them cool, and tarps would be hung for shade where bots sprawled out flat and just recharged until the heat was tolerable again. On cycles like this not much got done, one of those lazy cycles where everyone knew nothing was going to be accomplished. No one was hanging tarps now, though, and there was definitely nothing getting done - there was nothing left to do anything with. I almost yearned for the heat of the sun on my plating. It felt so wrong, seeing the sunshine and knowing how it should feel, but the temperature remaining steady within the walls of our box.
The sun arced overhead and for a change I stared at it, wondering if I could really short out my optics like they said. It didn't melt my optical wires like it supposedly should have, but after a long time it did start to set an ache into my processor so I cast my gaze downward towards the ground, wondering if I could spy any of the little reptiles that liked to sprawl on their bellies across the rocks during the hot season. I almost caught one once, but it caught me back and Creator wasn't happy with me coming home without one of my fingers. I decided they didn't like me after that.
A blip of blue on the surface caught my attention and I had to refresh my optics a few times to make sure I was actually seeing it. That color simply didn't exist on the surface of this planet in any of the wildlife or flora, not that vivid or bright or moving. More were following in its wake too, red and white and black and yellow - I despaired a little when one red creature transformed and I saw it was a mech, a rather large one with a big, big gun. Just another Decepticon… A flash of light from the barrel streaked towards our box and I gasped, jerking back from it, covering my helm with both arms, wings aquiver.
No explosion came, no trembling of our little prison, no falling from the sky like I was half-expecting. Hesitantly I looked up to see static on all sides, fritzing and fizzing black and white. The screens hissed softly before they blipped off and bathed us in darkness.
Faintly glowing optics brightened slightly, just a few pairs, and somewhere in the darkness someone uttered, "…The frag was that?"
A/N: For this one, I went back to basics. It seemed like a good place to start.
And, also, uhm... the way I see it, minibots are kinda androgynous in frame design (using Glyph as a comparison) so 'brother' is an all-encompassing term at times. I know, I'm just making it confusing and I'm sorry.