Chapter 3
"I think we should make the rock wall higher."
"Why?"
"Because if the humans' weather reports are correct, then there is a seventy-percent chance that a storm similar to the one twenty joors ago will occur late tonight or early tomorrow morning."
"... I'll get us some more boulders."
Bluestreak's dull cyan optics followed Sideswipe as the red Lamborghini forced himself to not run out of the Ark. He watched the front-liner activate his deconstruction protocols and transform his arms into the powerful pile-drivers that had killed more Decepticons than his guns as he power-walked through the open hatchway and out into the desert beyond. Bluestreak leaned over his crossed arms and arched one optic ridge at Sideswipe's hasty departure. He turned to Sideswipe's conversation partner as the mech strode towards him.
"Good morning, Bluestreak." Wheeljack greeted amiably, one hand raised. He tried to saunter nonchalantly over to the reclining Datsun mimic, but his legs were too stiff for his gait to be called a saunter. He only succeeded in moving like he were a newly forged drone awaiting a badly needed tune-up.
"Morning, Wheeljack." Bluestreak replied, keeping his tone natural. He fingered his too-watery morning half-ration as the engineer stepped up beside him. "How're you doing?"
Wheeljack clasped his hands behind his back. "Pretty good." He said with false cheer. His back panels were still stiff. "Been watching some of the humans' television broadcasts. They're fairly accurate when it comes to predicting this planet's weather patterns."
"So that's why Sideswipe's in such a hurry." Bluestreak said into his cube. He took a tentative sip. The energon and trace amounts of water in the cube had begun to oxidize. He frowned into the cube then downed the whole thing in one gulp. He ignored the sensation of inert energon sludge sliding down his throat and hoped his internal filters and refinement processes would take care of it. Something told him after Jazz had wound up in the Med-bay with clogged tanks that Ratchet would not like to see anyone else with a similar problem.
Bluestreak's coping mechanism was not the only one that the mechs found irritating.
The Prime did not like finding pieces of the Ark where they weren't supposed to be.
Wheeljack sighed and sank to the ground next to Bluestreak, all false cheer gone. He pulled out his own half-filled cube and stared down into its slightly blue and sludgy contents. His look became dubious. "How's the energon?" He asked rhetorically.
"Fine," Bluestreak replied casually, not looking at the engineer. He fiddled with his empty cube. "But you should drink it quick. I think some of the cubes are beginning to oxidize."
Wheeljack's back panels drooped. "I wish they'd store the cubes away from water." He complained quietly.
Bluestreak kept his optics firmly on the empty cube he was playing with. He gave a small shrug. "Hydroelectric plants are supposed to be wet." He stated flatly.
"Doesn't make it any less disgusting." Wheeljack said, a note of bitterness in his tone. Still, he unsealed the top of the cube, retracted his mask from his scared intakes, and drank the contents quickly. Bluestreak saw Wheeljack shudder. The mask slid back into place when he was finished. "Yuck." He heard the engineer whisper to himself.
"So, what are you doing?" Wheeljack asked casually, slipping his empty cube into a subspace pocket, pretending as though nothing had happened. Bluestreak was glad for the change of subject.
"Waiting for the rest of my patrol." Bluestreak said, subspacing his own empty cube. He crossed his arms again and leaded further against the wall. Wheeljack tilted his head, optics too dull.
"Who's going with you?" He asked.
Bluestreak shrugged. "Don't know." He said honestly. He paused and wondered if it was too early in the morning or if it would be okay to continue. Hound had listened. Why not Wheeljack?
He took the chance.
"Prowl changed up the roster this morning," Bluestreak said as though this kind of event happened every day, not once a decavorn. "Or at least that's what Inferno told me. Red Alert's not happy that Prowl changed it without telling him and he's locked himself in Security Control. He's not letting anyone else monitor the cameras with him so Prowl's had to change the rosters again to give everyone who had Monitor duty this morning something else to do. I asked Prowl if my duties had changed and he told me no. I didn't get to ask him who else is going with me because he was kind of busy. I think he was shouting at Red Alert on his comm. link. I didn't get to hear much else before he shut me off."
"Huh." Wheeljack replied dully. He brought his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. Bluestreak took that as his cue to continue.
"I hope Red Alert and Prowl aren't fighting." Bluestreak said sadly. He looked down at his peds. "I don't want them fighting. We do enough of it as is."
Wheeljack leaned his head back and offlined his opitcs. He sighed dejectedly and whispered. "I hear you."
Bluestreak's spark felt lighter at the tiny pun and he smiled. He didn't know whether or not Wheeljack had meant to make the pun, but he didn't care. The aphorism still made him feel happy.
"So what are you going to do today?" Bluestreak asked the slumped engineer, trying to infect him with the little bit of amusement he had miraculously found. Wheeljack, unfortunately, was immune.
"Tune-ups, maintenance, repairs to the Ark's flooded sections," He listed monotonously. "The usual work."
"Oh," Bluestreak replied. They stayed silent for a few minutes before Bluestreak spoke up again. While the energon issue was rather depressing, he did have to ask. "Can you find a way to prevent the energon from being contaminated? Or remove the water before the energon oxidizes?"
Wheeljack stared ahead. He said listlessly, "I could try."
Bluestreak knew he wouldn't. There was no way any of them could or would get within ten miles of a power station without a Decepticon raiding party present. Cybertron's arid environment assured that processed energon was mostly free of contaminants and the raw crystals could withstand anything, save an uncontrolled chemical reaction. Separating the water from the energon had to be done in the production stages. Energon and water reacted faster than any post-refinement process could separate them.
Wheeljack and Bluestreak watched the other Autobots go about their daily business. Not another word passed between them until Bluestreak's patrol finally gathered ten minutes later.
Thomas Malond had a problem.
There had been many problems in Thomas's life, but no more than in anyone else's if he did say so himself. They were the same kind of problems faced by the majority of the human race, ranging from basic math sets in preschool to finding a job at a decent university to managing his wife's funeral. Thomas had never really thought he was destined for great things and had not done any great things in his life. The life of a mathematics teacher at a local community college was not the career he had wanted when he graduated, he will admit, but he had enjoyed his work. Gaining experience, his future wife had called that period. She, like always, had been right.
But Thomas had known from an early age that he was a follower, not a leader, and that was fine by him. He had no desire to be head of the mathematics department at the University of Nevada in Reno. He had been content to teach undergraduate Calculus I and II while discussing mathematical theories with the graduate students. He had never mentored a graduate and his career, while solid, was uneventful. And so it had continued for years, he happily employed and married to the love of his life. Until six years ago when they both had received disturbing news about his wife's abdominal pain.
Her pancreatic cancer had taken her from him three years ago. Neither she nor he had known she had had it until the doctor had told them how far it had progressed. The cells were already metastasizing by the time of the diagnosis. Like always though, they had made the best of it. He had been allowed to leave the university and they had both moved to a small house in Brookings, Oregon, for peace and the sounds of the ocean. Her ashes had been scattered to the Pacific as she had requested.
He stayed in Brookings, not quite ready to leave the small house he had occupied with his wife. He played the stock market, he tutored high school kids, he substituted at the local schools when the math teachers were sick, he volunteered at beach clean ups because his wife had loved the ocean, he paid his bills, he wrote letters to old friends, and he listened to the radio.
That last one was why a fifty-seven year old, graying, balding man was staring with intense brown eyes at his current problem:
A cassette tape.
Never had there been a more pressing matter presented to Thomas than that cassette tape.
Thomas had been another face in the crowd, just another number in the record books of the state. He was a friend to the neighbors, a firm teacher to the students, and a grouch to overly obnoxious rock music lovers.
He was also privy to the memoirs of an alien robot.
And while he couldn't say anything definitely, he was also fairly certain he knew more about the aliens than any non-government affiliated person on the planet.
The problem was what was he going to do about it?
Thomas picked up his old, scratched, black ballpoint pen and placed its tip at the top of his yellow notepad. He paused as he thought about what the alien had said and quickly reviewed his two pages of notes.
"1140 AM Broadcast: June 18, 1987" it read at the top of the yellow pad. Following that title was a list of people, places, and events the alien had talked about. Below those were more notes as to what he initially thought those people, places, and events meant. Thomas sighed and read them for the sixth time since 9:00 AM that morning.
He had asked himself a simple question as he had sipped his morning coffee:
What did he know and what did he learn from the broadcast?
It was like answering the questions the English professors had loved to throw at the Science and Mathematics professors just to tease them. Thomas approached his self-imposed question like he would one of their prompts.
Step One: Gather Information.
He had listened to the recording again and again as he wrote down his observations, speculations, and inferences. He paused, rewound, and replayed portions as necessary for two hours. When he listened to the recording for a final time, he was fairly certain he had gained all he would from the monologue. His notes had taken up almost two pages of the long notepad.
Step Two-A: Organize and Analyze the Information in a Rough Draft.
Step Two-B: Write Everything that Comes to Mind.
Thomas pressed the pen into the pad and began to write.
The first thing he learned was the name of a place.
Ark.
It did not take a genius to realize that Ark was the name of the alien ship that was crashed somewhere in northern Oregon. It was also, apparently, home to the speaker and the other aliens.
Thomas had not given thought to the alien invaders before, beyond hoping that they stayed as far away from him, his wife, and his students as possible. Reno, Nevada, hadn't boasted a great energy industry, so they were fairly certain that they would be safe. And that had been the end of that.
But now he considered the alien speaker's situation. The government had told the media that the alien ship was nonfunctional, embedded deep within a half-active volcano. However, it was a starship. It was meant to travel between worlds, Thomas had reasoned. So it would make sense that the ship they had arrived in would also be the place they lived in. Thomas also knew that none of the aliens were living anywhere else, otherwise the media would have been all over that location. And perhaps the government, too.
Thomas had never really cared where the aliens were as long as they were not near him. He frowned and paused in his writing as he reached that conclusion, but he could not argue with it. He had simply not cared about the aliens. They had either been nuisances or threats. Or both.
And he realized he just did not know anything about them.
Thomas continued writing.
The second thing he learned was a name.
Hound.
It was fairly obvious that this was another alien. A 'mech' as the alien speaker called his fellow soldiers. Would 'mech' be a term for them in their professional capacity as soldiers or was it a name for what they were, like humans calling themselves 'men'? The word wasn't in the dictionary when he had gone to look it up, but it would have been next to 'mechanical'. Since there was nothing else he could go on, Thomas eventually decided on using his latter definition for 'mech'. Since 'mech' was closer to 'mechanical' than 'soldier' or the like, he assumed it referred to their bodies rather than abilities.
Thomas paused and frowned as he pondered the name of the alien.
Hound.
Hound.
H-O-U-N-D.
Hound.
Thomas traced the letters several times as he just looked at them. He tapped the end of the pen against the pad in a steady rhythm. It was such an... odd name, if Thomas was honest with himself. Hounds were types of dogs, or another name for them. 'To hound someone' meant to go after them persistently and continuously.
Thomas continued tapping as he reviewed his notes on the mech's characteristics. This mech was a tracker, a scout, and very patient. It was his job to look for things and to find out everything he could about his enemies. A scout or a tracker, especially a military one, would, of course, go after his enemies relentlessly. Hound, if he were really a military-grade scout, would hound his enemies.
Thomas could not believe how lame that pun had been, even in his head.
It brought up an interesting point however.
Did every mech's name describe its owner's job or function?
Thomas's eyes widened as he realized he didn't know something else: the aliens' original language.
His pen stilled on the pad.
Hound only meant 'to pursue relentlessly' in English. Thomas might have been a mathematician, but he was no fool in the realm of languages. Aliens would not speak in any human language on their own world nor would they necessarily follow human-like rules of grammar or syntax. Especially when it came to names. So what would Hound's name be in his original language? A word or phrase that described the mech like 'Hound' did or something completely different? Was 'Hound' a direct translation? Was it the closest word that sounded like his original name?
Thomas made a quick note off to the side (Analyze section on Wilds Between more closely) before he stopped as a detail of the broadcast hit him with the force of a train.
The alien speaker had mentioned that in his written language, Wilds Between meant more than what English could convey in a single word or even two words. So what if it was the same in their spoken language as well? What if using English was limiting their ability to convey what they wanted to say because there just weren't words for it?
Thomas's heart sank.
Was there a whole underlying and context-providing portion of the broadcast he'd missed because the alien speaker wasn't talking in his native language? Sure Thomas wouldn't understand what was being said, so he was grateful that the mech spoke in English, but that still–
Wait.
Thomas's eyes widened.
The alien speaker had said something about happiness halfway through the broadcast– about how he had said that while he was happy with his comrades, he was not as happy as he assumed his listener was. Thomas had noted that the mech had been trying to find a word but had given up.
What if the mech couldn't find a word?
What if that was an example of the alien's inability to accurately and succinctly convey what he meant?
Thomas slumped in his seat and placed his head in his hands. He contemplated his conclusions for another minute before he once again felt like a complete idiot despite the master's degree and decades of teaching experience:
He didn't even know the alien speaker's name.
Thomas groaned and bawled his hands into fists. He sighed angrily once before grabbing his pen and writing in big capital letters at the top of his musings.
WHAT IS HIS NAME?
Thomas, despite the anger he felt at himself for not realizing that he didn't even know nor questioned the name of the mech talking to him, only quivered as he put pen back to paper where he had left off. He knew that the broadcast didn't hold many clues to the name of its speaker, but methodical, careful analysis could bring him an answer. Not only the mech's name, but information about him, his fears, his hopes, his life, and every other topic he indulged on the airwaves.
Show your work. Don't skip any steps. Box your answers.
The mantra of the math student.
Thomas, pen poised as he refocused on his notes, continued his reflections.
At three o'clock in the afternoon, Thomas placed his pen down. He stretched his tight and tired muscles and groaned. He picked up the yellow pad with its pages and pages of reflections, guesses, revelations, notes, and singular angry reminder. He gazed at the words on the paper intensely, as though they could give him more answers than what he had received.
He placed the pad down again when no more information was forth coming. He glanced again at the cassette tape sitting innocently off to the side.
He let out a long, slow breath as he reached for the telephone on the edge of his desk. He quickly dialed a well memorized number and held the receiver to his ear. The phone on the opposite end rang twice before there was a click sound and a deep, professional, yet slightly bored voice floated out of the speaker.
"Chetco Community Public Library, my name is Sean Barlow. How may I help you?"
"Hello, Sean. It's Tom," Thomas replied, evenly.
"Oh, hey Tom!" Sean's voice lost its bored edge, even as he spoke relatively quietly. "What's up?" He asked jovially.
"Can you come over this evening?" Thomas asked. "There's something I want you to listen to..."
AN: Slow, but important, I think.
'Uncontrolled chemical reaction' is fancy chemistry jargon for 'explosion.'
