Chapter 3 – The Empyrean Suite

The visitor chime sounded at Rung's door. He tucked Red Alert's belongings back into the box, arranging them with care, and closed it before answering. Rung had not been expecting company; his focus had been on the message buried in Red Alert's surveillance video and on the security director's apparent and distressing attempt at suicide. He opened the door somewhat cautiously.

"Hypothetically speaking," said Skids, leaning against the door frame, "if someone had an issue that you might be able to help them with and that person wasn't designated as your patient, you wouldn't be breaking First Aid's orders not to practice if you chatted with that person. Strictly hypothetical, of course."

"Strictly hypothetical."

"Oh, entirely."

"Perhaps you should come in and we could discuss this hypothetical situation in greater detail?"

Rung stood aside and let Skids enter. The theoretician sat down in Rung's only chair, legs crossed, and assumed an expression of deep contemplation. He didn't speak right away.

"Clearly this proposed thought experiment involves something of a delicate nature," Rung prompted.

Skids' mouth quirked up at one corner. "Not so much delicate; just personal. In a non-personal, hypothetical way."

"You're just here as a concerned friend, with an interesting but utterly theoretical problem, to help exercise my logic centres." Rung smiled.

Skids winked. "So theoretically, what do you know about amnesia?" he said. Rung sat down on the slab, across from Skids, and folded his hands in his lap.

"Well, I know that it can have a variety of causes," he began.

"I assume that the treatment differs depending on the cause?"

"It can."

"I see." Skids ran one hand over his helm. "So, in a situation where, say, someone's recent memories had been destroyed and that destruction allowed the person to forget a bunch of older memories as well- well. That sounds like two different causes to me."

Rung nodded. "Potentially. One initial event caused by an exterior catalyst; a second event caused by the first. Assuming it was only two events. These things can cascade, depending on the original catalyst."

"They can?"

"In my experience, yes. Damage builds on damage."

Skids sat back in the chair, thoughtful. "If someone knew enough about processor architecture, could they intentionally provoke that kind of cascade?"

"Hypothetically speaking?" Rung raised an eyebrow. "Yes."

"Let's be honest for a second. What are the odds that my amnesia is accidental?"

Rung shook his head. "I don't know. Low, I think. What you've described is very thorough."

"So it's possible that this wasn't the result of an accidental injury; someone did this to me?"

"Yes, it is possible."

"You've seen this before?" Skids asked directly. His gaze flicked over Rung's features, worried, searching.

Rung kept his expression carefully controlled. "Not frequently. Not recently. I have seen it before."

Skids leaned back, rubbing his optics with the heels of both hands. He sighed. "Okay." Then he sat up again. "Is there a way to fix it? Is there a way to revive my memories?"

Rung propped his chin on his knuckles, thinking.

There were any number of reasons why Skids might have chosen to blank his own memory and all of those reasons pertained to his standing within the Diplomatic Corps or his place within the network. He had done it once long ago, before Rung had met him. It had been a starting point for their friendship; Rung asked to interview him for a first-person perspective on self-inflicted amnesia. The information was useful in both of Rung's professions and the interviews had turned into friendly meetings after several months.

"It depends on the specific damage." Rung hesitated, not long enough to appear suspicious, but perhaps long enough to signify trepidation. "You'll need Chromedome to help you look at what's left behind for a better diagnosis."

Skids' mouth twitched. "He didn't want to be in there any longer than he had to, Rung. I don't know if he'd be happy to help again."

"Why?"

"He said he could see my older memories, and said something about 'knowing when to stop'." Skids shifted forward. "Something in there made him back off. Do you have any idea how... distracting that is? Something in my head- in my past- scared him." He chewed his lip for a moment. "He didn't seem too fond of the song, either."

"Song?"

"I've had this song- melody- stuck in my head since I woke up. Chromedome called it the Empyrean Suite. What do you know about it?"

"Empyrean Suite?" Rung looked up. "Stuck in your head?" No, not stuck in his head, Rung thought, fighting to keep his hands from fidgeting, his optics from blazing. A self-inflicted memory purge targeted the volatile memory housed in the processor. If Skids was hearing a melody, then it was stuck in his spark, in the persistence layer of his immutable, non-volatile memory.

"Yeah... I've been hearing it off and on since I woke up but I didn't know what it was. Chromedome said I should be glad I didn't know what it meant. Do you know? What it means?"

"It's..." Rung pressed his lips together, eyebrows pitched down. He clasped his hands together to mask their shaking. "Well, it's a very old piece of music, with unfortunate connotations nowadays."

"Decepticon war anthem?"

"No, older than that," said Rung. "It was written around the time Nova Prime proposed the Primal Vanguard."

"And the connotations?"

"Zealous patriotism. Mechacentrism to the point of racism. It celebrates Cybertron as the only source of moral truth and the physical embodiment of perfection in the galaxy." It means you're carrying something beautiful and terrible inside your mind, something that many people are willing to kill for.

Skids made a face. "What? Really? It doesn't even have words. Does it?"

"No. It was the spirit in which the piece was composed; purpose-written to glorify Cybertron. It was used repeatedly in propaganda campaigns and promotional rallies."

"I'd never heard it before this. I mean, I don't think I have." Skids propped his elbows on his knees, shoulders slumped. "I can't remember a damn thing about my own life but I can remember this music." He shook his head.

Rung reached out and touched Skids' knee, briefly, tentatively. His hand was steady, through sheer force of will. "Then let's ask Chromedome to have a look, regardless of whether he likes what he hears inside your head."

Skids inclined his head toward Rung, smiling a little at the touch, pleased, welcoming. "I've been thinking- well, worrying, I guess. If someone did do this to me, I want to know why. I mean, nobody seems to know where I was. Everybody keeps telling me they thought I was dead." He looked up, met Rung's gaze. "Well, am I supposed to be dead? Does someone or something want me dead? Did I endanger everyone on the Lost Light by joining up with you? Or did I do something so - so reckless or so ill-advised or so – I don't know, pick any adjective on Whirl's resume – that I should've died, but didn't? Because that, I want to be able to brag about it, if that's it." Then he hung his head again. "Argh! I just want to know."

"We'll find out," Rung said. "One way or another. If Chromedome can't help us, then we'll do it the old-fashioned way."

"Clues, forensics, and prolonged investigation?"

"Exactly." Hopefully not too prolonged.

Skids smiled again. "Thanks," he said. Then he frowned and glanced away, looking out the small porthole. "You know, it's not bad. The song, I mean. For something that's been stuck in my head for months, it's still... it's pretty listen-able. Without the context. But knowing what it is... Rung, what if it's stuck in my head because that stuff is stuff I believed in? I mean, what if I recover and find out I don't like the person I used to be?"

Rung shifted his seat. "Then you can choose to stay the person you are now."

Skids said nothing for a moment, then reclined in the chair again, resting one ankle on his opposite knee. "Yeah." He seemed to be deep in thought for a moment. Then he flicked his yellow gaze back to Rung. "How're you doing?"

"I'm-" Rung hesitated. "I'm making progress." He flexed the fingers of his right hand, glanced down at it. It was starting to be an unconscious gesture, opening and closing his fingers like this. Stress related. "First Aid wants to finish going over the differential analysis of my spark output before he clears me to return to work."

"I meant how are you feeling?"

Rung made several attempts to answer, keenly aware that he occupied the position he normally put his own patients in, but swallowed each potential reply before he put them to words. Most of them were politeness or half-truth, but he felt that Skids' question was sincere, and deserved sincerity in response.

Finally, he shook his head. "I've had all this time and I... still..."

"Haven't really thought about it?" Skids reached out and took his hand- his right hand, the hand with the distractingly new digit. Rung let his fingers close around Skids'. "I know that problem. You're always 'on', Eyebrows. Even on Hedonia. That was supposed to be a vacation, you know."

Rung smiled, watching Skids inspect his small fingers. "I know, and it was, truly! I enjoyed myself immensely." And he had done, he realized, despite his injury, and his revelations to Whirl, and the whole business with Ultra Magnus in the bar, which had been a little more borderline-chaotic than Rung liked. "I was going to say that I'm still processing everything. I mean- everything. You're right, too. I suppose I'm 'on' because this is all such unfamiliar territory."

"Which part?"

"All of it!" Rung confessed. "No war. Cybertron primordial. Getting shot- you know I went the entire war without receiving an injury that serious?- but the quest mostly. The quest is what unnerves me the most."

Skids was silent for a moment, looking at their entwined fingers. "Do you believe?" asked Skids. "In the Knights?"

"That aspect of it doesn't unnerve me. It's the questing itself."

"How's that?"

"The act of travelling, of moving physically in pursuit of a goal. It feels like progress. It temporarily allays any doubts about the goal; whether it's realistic, whether it's correct. As long as you're moving, you can measure some value for progress. I don't like that, that illusion."

Skids rubbed the tactile sensor pad on his fingertip over Rung's tiny microphone, completely rewired into his thumb. "You know, you're the last person I would expect to see it that way." He frowned slightly.

"Why?"

"Well... Because you're a psychiatrist. You know there's stages to progress, that nothing is static, that progress is long-term." He held up both hands, letting Rung's fall back into his lap. "I'm not presuming authority here. I've just done a bit reading. I was curious about what you do."

Rung nodded once. "Go on?"

"Every act of travelling, every little moment of motion, is progress. I mean, we're not where we were last month and every place we've been so far is a place we know the Knights of Cybertron aren't. This is the beginning of the game. We've a lot ahead of us and we've got to start somewhere."

Rung digested the words. "That's an interesting perspective," he said at last.

Skids laughed. "Translated as: you disagree with me completely! Well, that's interesting too. What do you think, then?"

"I don't disagree completely," Rung admitted. "You're right that we have to start somewhere. Starting is small, and daunting." He gave Skids a tiny smile, then his face fell. "But I think we do need to worry about the goal of this quest, and I don't mean the Knights. The Knights of Cybertron are... well, at best they're a first step toward an even larger goal. At worst, we're gambling a lot on their very existence, and willingness to help us. But the real goal is a new Cybertron, a place for everyone, and although the Knights are supposed to help us, guide us how to get there..." Rung shook his head. "We should be practising what we want to become right now, in small ways, and we aren't. We're being what we've always been and letting the distance we've travelled count as progress."

Skids was quiet for a moment, studying him again. "I see," he said at last and Rung turned his optics away. "Can I ask you a personal question?"

"Yes. But I reserve the right not to answer it."

"Fair enough." Skids leaned in. "Why are you out here?"

Rung paused before answering. The shifting, shadow-patterned form of Control lurked in his mind's eye. "For Rodimus," he said. "He convinced me that this needs to be done." Rung looked up. "Even if this is an illusion of progress, I think the illusion needs to be explored."

"What's this illusion?"

"Hoping the Knights of Cybertron will have a technology or a piece of wisdom that will restore Cybertron when we find them."

Skids pursed his lips. "That almost sounds like cynicism but I don't take you for a cynic."

"A realist," said Rung, firmly. "Restore Cybertron? Rebuild it? To what? Which version? The fractious, divided Cybertron in the early years when the war wasn't yet wholly consuming? The strict class system and socially-ingrained prejudices of the Functionist era? Or the values from Nova Prime's age, that produced the Empyrean Suite?"

"Oh dear," said Skids, "you do need me here as a friend, and not at all hypothetically."

"The Cybertron that we want to build isn't a version that we can find in history," Rung continued. "It's something new that we've never had before. That's why I came along. It's something that's going to be built by all of us, but even though we're looking for it, we're still-" Rung gave a sharp huff from his intakes. "We're still waiting for it to come to us. We're not working on it, we're... just hoping for it. Do you see what I mean?"

Skids tilted his helm. "I think so. No, I do see what you're saying, Rung. I do. But, see, Eyebrows- the whole quest idea is what brought everyone on this ship together. I'd probably be dead if it weren't for the Lost Light popping up on the right planet, at the right time. And if we're going to make this happen, rather than just waiting, then the first step is putting a bunch of people with good intentions in the same place. Right?"

"Yes, but-" Rung reflected for a moment. "Yes. But the quest is- hmmm. Because Rodimus-"

"'Because Rodimus'," Skids laughed. "Yes, that seems to be a reason unto itself sometimes."

"Truly," Rung said and smiled. "You know, you're right, Skids. You, First Aid, Ambulon- even Cyclonus and Tailgate and Whirl- none of you were supposed to be here. But you are here and it's..." He hesitated. "It's right." He studied Skids' face for a moment, searching for a trace of the tiny Matrix emblem that the theoretician had once worn as a mark of his faith. "I want to speak with Fortress Maximus."

"Now there's someone who could use a vacation."

Rung chuckled. "He wasn't supposed to be here either."

"But he is, and somehow he ended up on the only ship in who-knows-how-much-volume with a Cybertronian psychiatrist on board." Skids winked. "I don't know about you, but that seems like Providence to me. Like the universe conspired a little to finally give the guy a break."

As soon as Skids said it, Rung could not rid himself of the idea. Like the universe conspired a little... It was statistically unlikely, perhaps, but then perhaps not. Rung counted the people he had named – Skids, First Aid, Ambulon, Cyclonus, Tailgate, Whirl – and added Fortress Maximus; none of them had been signed on to the voyage; none of them figured into the original, expected configuration of the crew or the mission. But they were here now. And they each affected decisions and events in unanticipated ways.

If not for Skids, Rung remembered, he would have died at the hands of the Sparkeater.

Their conversation turned to lighter subjects, idle gossip and speculation, until Skids withdrew to let Rung rest and continue his recovery. The theoretician seemed more relaxed when he left, confident in what he needed to do.

Rung was not so lucky. He ran statistical simulations of the Sparkeater event, one after another. Without Skids on board, Rung's chances of survival tanked. After the 53rd iteration, Rung realized that if not for Whirl locking Animus out of their hab suite, and the unlucky bot's demise delaying the Sparkeater as it tracked Rung, Skids could not have arrived in time. (Whirl had expressed no guilt for Animus' unintentional death; he had not known the Sparkeater existed and any other time, his antics would have been mildly annoying rather than fatal. Whirl did not blame himself and seemed to think little of it.)

Rung had no choice but to conclude that his present survival aboard the Lost Light hinged on at least two persons whose presence was unanticipated. Though no one had known about the existence of the Sparkeater, either. Perhaps it was simply a series of events, unrelated and uncounted.

Perhaps it was the outcome of duelling conspiracies, one to protect Rung and his mission, and one to destroy them.

There was a fine line between paranoia and healthy suspicion in such a case. Rung's ability to recognize existing patterns in the apparent chaos of an individual's emotions, or in galactic events, the very trait that made him a useful observer for the network, relied on truthful input. But sometimes, even when a series of data was entirely authentic, it was important to remember that correlation did not imply causation. Just because events could potentially be related did not mean they were related. At best, it was a waste of time to analyze a pattern that didn't exist. At worst, it could distract Rung from something truly important.

But it was also Rung's experience that he should not discount such a series of events entirely. The most successful conspiracies were those too broad to be seen by a single observer, those with too subtle a pattern to evoke suspicion. The network itself functioned on exactly this principle.

In the end, Rung did not allow himself to be unduly perturbed by the series of occurrences that allowed him to be alive. Neither did he ignore it.

Most importantly, what he recognized in the conclusions of his survivability model was a lack of information. He had research to do, and questions that needed asking.

Abruptly, Rung remembered Red Alert's troubled message. A monster in the basement. Yes, he had to look into this. Especially now, with the hint of an opposing conspiracy whispering through his processor.

But it was late, and Rung needed rest; he was exhausted from worry and thought and simple, physical fatigue. He would look into Red's 'monster' after he recharged.


"You can't obfuscate with me when I'm looking at your neural read-out," said First Aid. "You're tired and it's because you didn't recharge long enough last cycle."

First Aid twisted in his seat to cast a peevish glance at Rung.

"All right, yes; I was up late, against your stated directive."

"There's a 13% decrease in your auto-repair efficiency. Since yesterday. Don't do this again, Rung. I advised you to take it easy for good reasons."

"I know. It was an ill-conceived idea."

"Oh, so it was premeditated?" First Aid stood, fists on his hips, giving Rung's supine form a critical once-over, before glaring back at the read-out in front of him.

"Not as such," Rung protested. "It was a- a cascade of events and I decided somewhere in the last quarter that I would stay up longer than advised."

"Cascade. Uh huh. Well, try not to do it again." First Aid shook his head and pecked at the input keys, changing the display. "Medical professionals. The worst patients."

Rung listened to him grumble and whinge under his breath for another minute, until First Aid apparently deemed that Rung was sufficiently chastised.

"What does that area high-lighted in amber mean?" he asked, shifting onto his side to point at a section on the neurological display.

First Aid zoomed in. "This is a visualization of the differential analysis I performed on the non-volatile memory volume in your spark. The high-lighted sections are volumes of memory without specific addresses allocated to them."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that your spark's total memory capacity is bigger than the volume occupied by your actual memory."

"I'm still a little..." Rung gestured helplessly. "Is that bad?"

"No," said First Aid. "It's... different. At first, I thought it was a false report. I guessed that some sectors of your non-volatile memory were duplicated while you were recovering. I've seen it before when the connection between brain module and spark is severed by trauma. So I ran a differential analysis to find similarities- duplications- between the sectors, just in case what the scan showed was simply one sector that had been reported twice, which would make your memory appear larger than it actually is."

"Okay, I follow you now."

"But there don't appear to be any duplications. You just have... more memory sectors- more space- than you do information to fill it."

Rung frowned. "That doesn't sound like a problem."

"Well, it isn't. It's just odd. Volatile memory, stored in your processor- the sort that can be programmed, recorded into, erased and modified- that is supposed to be larger than the information it stores. But our non-volatile memory typically holds only key programs, subroutines and memory files that let us function normally. It houses the base-line data that we need to be, you know, us. Language, how to walk, where we were born, that sort of immutable stuff. But your spark seems to contain more than that."

"Yes," said Rung, "but we knew that already?"

"That part, yes. But we didn't know there was extra space in your spark. I was a little worried."

"Why? Should I be-?"

"Oh, sorry! No. I was worried that the scans were inaccurate. If they were, I'd have to worry about what else they were reporting incorrectly and probably do a bunch of tests over. But no, it does work and confirms that you have a unique spark." He straightened up, pleased with himself. "Nothing to worry about."

Rung's hand drifted up to touch his chest, the circular translucent plate limned with the glow of his spark.

"I don't-" he began.

The medibay doors swished open and they both looked up. Rewind strode in, steps quick and sharp, evidently perturbed about something.

"Not here either?" said the archivist, with overt annoyance. He focused on First Aid and Rung. "Have either of you seen Chromedome?"

Rung shook his head.

"I haven't," said First Aid, "but Skids was looking for him earlier; check the oil reservoir. Skids likes hanging out there and maybe he took Chromedome with him."

Rewind huffed. "Skids is at Swerve's and he hasn't seen Chromedome either."

First Aid shrugged and spread his hands in a gesture of ignorance. "Why don't you just comm him?"

"I tried. He's not answering." He nodded to Rung. "How's the recovery going?"

"It'd be going better if the doctor would listen to his doctor," said First Aid.

"It's going well," said Rung with a smile.

"Sounds like it." He glanced around again, frustrated to distraction. "Well, if you see Chromedome, get him to comm me."

"Will do."

Rewind slipped out the door. First Aid turned back to Rung, gesturing to the neural charts again.

"Anyway, the diff analysis only flagged your spark volume with a warning because it was outside expected parameters."

"It's not possibly a product of my injury?"

"No. It's something you've had your whole life, a perfectly natural variation. The injury just illuminated it for you."

Rung sat up slowly. "Well, in that case, I'll find something else to worry about." He smiled at the medic.

"Try to do your worrying in a restful fashion, okay? Seriously."


Rung chose to worry about the lack of a functional communications suite aboard the Lost Light. He should have checked in with Control weeks ago but the ship's own transmitter had been off-line since their quantum jump-splosian and Rung had not found an opportunity away from the ship to make contact. Now that Control knew he was still alive, an update was required as soon as possible.

Of course, Control could target Rung with long-distance communications and they could exchange information, but it required the Lost Light to be stationary, which the ship rarely was. So Rung had to rely on the ship's capabilities, which were, as far as he knew, nearly repaired. The trouble was that Rung was one of 200-something bots on board with the desire to call home.

He needed to jump the queue. He thought he knew someone who could help him.

Whirl was in the quill reactor's maintenance room again. He wasn't scheduled for a shift and he had been inside for almost two hours according to the Lost Light's surveillance system. This gave Rung some cause for concern. But when he arrived in the area, Rung found Ultra Magnus standing before the door, fists on his hips, glowering at nothing. He acknowledged Rung with a sideways glance.

"What did he do?" Rung guessed.

"Perpetrated an act of minor vandalism."

Rung remembered something Whirl had said about Magnus' chair.

"Why's he in the reactor room?"

Magnus' mouth pressed into a thin line. "It bores him, and therefore offers a more effective punishment than the brig."

"The brig isn't boring enough?"

"The brig is full of Decepticons and Fortress Maximus. That is ample material with which Whirl may amuse himself."

"Ah. True." He paused. "When are you planning to let him out?"

"In eleven minutes, 56 seconds."

Rung decided to wait. "Thank you for allowing me access to Red Alert's possessions."

Magnus nodded once. He turned his head, seemed about to speak, then appeared to reconsider.

"I didn't find any conclusive explanation for why he did what he did," Rung said gently. "I can tell you that much."

"Of course," said Magnus.

Rung glanced up at the broad, insulated doors to the reactor. "However, I would be remiss if I didn't inform you that Red Alert appeared to believe that there was a malicious conspiracy of some sort taking shape aboard the ship."

Magnus turned his full attention to Rung. "Did he have evidence of this?"

Rung thought of the fragmented video recording, and Red Alert's assertion of a 'monster'. "No," said Rung. "He had no evidence, just a powerful belief that it existed."

"I am aware of Red Alert's psychiatric history."

"Yes. I still feel it's my duty to impart his belief to you, in your position as the new head of Lost Light security."

Magnus nodded. "I appreciate your diligence."

"I appreciate that you take my concern seriously," said Rung. He paused. "I must ask- on a similar topic, have you reconsidered allowing me to speak with Fort Max?"

Magnus' frowned deepened. "Rodimus does not believe that Fortress Maximus requires or deserves your company at this time. I am... disinclined to disagree with him." He straightened, staring over Rung's head into the distance for a moment. "In my authority as the head of security, I could give you clearance for a visit to the brig."

"I would appreciate that."

Magnus studied him. "You are not to attend him as his psychiatrist, of course."

"No. This would be a personal visit."

"Very well." Magnus nodded. "I will authorize it."

"Thank-"

There was a faint trill from behind the reactor doors. Magnus straightened. Rung glanced up at him.

"What was that?"

Magnus punched his comm, frowning. "You still have seven minutes, 24 seconds, Whirl."

"Then I guess you'll have to wait seven minutes and 24 seconds to find out what tripped the alarm," said Whirl's voice through the comm.

"What caused the alarm?"

"Hull breach! Swarm after swarm of slimy, biological creatures with a taste for Cybertronian alloy- leave me and save yourself, Big M!"

"Whirl..."

"I dunno. There's six lights flashing on this panel and nobody bothered to label any of them."

Magnus covered his face with one palm for a moment. "What does the diagnostic say?"

"Uh... Interference due to localized radiation spike, blah blah blah... temporal dimpling something-or-other – heh, dimpling is a funny word - some scrap measured in picometres, and... yeah, no, it's the first thing tripping the alarm. Some kind of other radiation messing with the quill radiation."

"Messing with?" Magnus inquired.

"Not actively messing, just making odd ionization patterns around the quills, according to the diagnostic."

"That tripped an alarm?" said Rung.

"Did you put me on speaker?" said Whirl. "Anyway, yes, it did, because it's from an unknown source and it's focused on the ship."

Magnus eyes widened and he took a step toward the door.

"Whirl, come out of there. "

"What about my remaining six minutes and-"

"Whirl."

The door cycled open and Whirl stepped out into the hall, stretched, then glanced from Magnus to Rung.

"I was just starting to have fun."

"Precisely why I pulled you out," Magnus replied. "Rung, did you require me or did you come to see Whirl?"

"Whirl, sir."

"I will take over the diagnostic," he announced.

Whirl shrugged and made to leave, but Rung moved to touch Magnus' arm. "Should we be worried?" he asked.

"Are you kidding? M's always worried."

Magnus ignored Whirl's assessment. "Certain types of focused radiation bursts can be used for clandestine intergalactic communications. I will determine if this is one such instance. There is no immediate cause for alarm."

Once Ultra Magnus had sealed himself into the chamber, and Rung and Whirl had put several corridors between themselves and the reactor, Whirl glanced at Rung.

"So?"

"Let's talk in my suite."

Whirl followed Rung to his hab suite, silent. Once inside, his playful edge disappeared.

"This's something to do with you, isn't it." Whirl was glaring. Whatever good will Rung had earned yesterday was worn out now.

Rung nodded. "Control is attempting to re-establish our location. I'm long over-due to de-brief him on our situation."

"Re-establish? I thought they knew where we were."

"He did, roughly. The trajectory the Lost Light took when we departed Hedonia probably caused the signal loss; we angled for deep space, an unlikely destination."

"Unless you're looking for something old and mysterious and probably not real. Then deep space makes sense."

Rung raised an eyebrow. "Does it?"

Whirl put his claws on his hips and cocked his head. "People avoid flying into places like this. Places between star systems. There's nothing out here anyone could want, except maybe a place to hide. Things that want to hide are usually bad things to find." Whirl shrugged and turned to face the porthole. "But if you're looking for something that's hiding, well, then it makes sense."

"I suppose it does."

"So anyway, your handler's lost us and now they're messing with our engines trying to find us?"

"The engine-messing isn't on purpose, but yes."

Whirl tapped the transparent material of the porthole. "Hmph. Seems like Mags might be wise to your espionage tricks.

"We'll see. In the meantime, I was hoping you might do me a favour."

"Depends." Whirl narrowed his optic.

"Swerve said Blaster's got the comm system working again. I'm quite far down the queue for a communication back home, though. I don't suppose you...?"

Whirl made an amused chuff. "I've got no excuse to be calling home to Cybertron."

"No?"

"Well, I guess I could call Sideswipe. Prowl stuck us together patrolling and he was all right. 'Hey, remember me? That bot you worked with for three weeks? I'm still alive!'" He waved both hands. "But if you're hoping for me to deliver some message for you, it probably won't work."

"I was hoping we could just swap spots in line. But if you didn't sign up-"

"I didn't say that."

Rung waited. Whirl's optic curved into an amused crescent. "So you do have a spot...?" Rung prompted.

"Yup."

"Can we swap?"

Whirl sat down on the recharge slab. "What are you going to tell them?"

Rung remained standing, one hand on the back of his chair. "I... I am beginning to suspect that there is more to this mission than I was lead to believe." He looked down at his hand, gripping the metal of the chair, then looked away. "I think it may be somewhat outside my expertise and if that's true, then I have to question why I was chosen for it."

"Are you gonna share the details of your suspicions or is this 'need to know'?" Whirl made exaggerated air quotes as only Whirl could.

Rung sighed and sat down in the chair. "I'll tell you what I know." He shifted, propped his chin on his fist, leaned forward a little. "I don't think it was at all random that the Lost Light and Skids' escape shuttle ended up in the same volume of space together. There's something in his head, something he doesn't know about, or at least doesn't remember knowing about. It's something very important. And I think someone on board knows about it, and wants it."

"So what is it? Memory of a... I don't know- boring technical, political thing?"

"It's not a memory," said Rung. He reached down, popped open a compartment on the inside of his lower leg, and brought out a small device. Whirl's antenna perked forward, but he said nothing until Rung had activated it.

"Dampener/jammer? Now we're finally getting to the good stuff! You gonna put out a hit on somebody?"

"No, Whirl." Rung frowned. "I think- I suspect- circumstances have lead me to believe-"

Whirl sprawled back on the slab. "Wake me up when you get to the point."

"Skids might have the access codes to a neural retrogression program hidden in his processor."

"I'm going to assume that's important."

"In the interest of full disclosure, Whirl... you're on my list of potential suspects."

Whirl sat up. "Suspects for what?"

"Whoever wants the codes. Whoever is acting counter to my mission."

Whirl's optic contracted and he stared fixedly, long enough to make Rung apprehensive. Then he flopped back down. "I'd suspect me too. And," he raised one claw, "I'd suspect Chromedome, because he worked for the New Institute and they like to mess around with people's brains. And Brainstorm because he worked there too, and maybe Rewind, because he knows pretty much anything Chromedome knows. Let's throw in Ultra Magnus too, because he's been up to his helm crest in special access programs and top secret shenanigans for millions of years. And the medics. Medics know everything about everyone." He tilted his helm to peer past his own cockpit at Rung. "Especially First Aid. He's nosy and he's bored. Throw Skids on your list too - maybe he's faking. Hell, let's suspect Tailgate - who actually spends six million years in a hole? And-"

"Aside from Tailgate, you just laid out my entire list of suspects." Rung raised his eyebrows. "I forgot you were a police officer, once."

"Yeah, once. And we both know how that ended." Whirl pushed himself up on his elbows. "So what's a 'neural retrogression program'?"

"A program that can repair certain mnemosurgical alterations ."

"What kinds?"

"It was designed to reverse Shadowplay."

Whirl scoffed and stared up at the ceiling. "Oh, Rung. You sound so serious!"

"I am serious."

"Shadowplay is permanent."

Rung shook his head. "It isn't. Or rather, it doesn't have to be."

Whirl didn't say anything for a moment. Rung could not guess his emotional response from his body language, but when he did speak, he seemed indifferent. "Is that all it does?"

"That's the function of the program, yes."

"Could it fix a minor mnemosurgical alteration?"

Rung nodded. "Yes, it was tested on-"

"Wait, you've used this program?"

"I was party to its creation."

"Party to. You helped write it." Whirl sat up straight and pointed at him. "That's why you were helping Brainstorm."

"Brainstorm?"

"With the human avatar things! In his lab! How did he know you were capable of coding something like that? I mean, he's smart, but he's smart about weapons, not people."

"He didn't," Rung said, slowly. "First Aid told me to help him. Brainstorm didn't question my ability but it was First Aid who suggested it."

"So they're both firmly on the suspect list, then. Wait, you distracted me." He reached out and tapped a claw against Rung's chest. "Tell me about this program."

"Are you going to interrupt me every time I use technical terms?"

"Probably."

"Then this might take a while."

"You're stalling."

Rung acknowledged that he was.

"The network wrote it," he began. He settled back in the chair. "I don't know who had the initial idea or started the coding; it was shared out in small parcels to different network members. No part of the code on its own could give away the intended purpose of the whole. But they needed someone to integrate the parts once they were finished and that was my job." He paused, took off his spectacles, frowned at their spotless lenses, and put them back on, aware that he was fidgeting. "It was good work."

"'Good work'," echoed Whirl.

"The New Institute used mnemosurgery to manipulate or coerce a number of Autobots during the War. Their own side. By their comrades." Rung was aware that he was frowning in a deeply disapproving way.

Whirl was not perturbed; he looked out the porthole with all appearance of indifference. "I know it happened. I guess the Institute had their reasons."

Rung made a fist. "There is no reason 'good' enough for meddling with someones mind without their consent. And that's what the New Institute were doing."

"So you were doing 'good work' by constructing a way to reverse it." Whirl focused on him, body language .

"Yes."

"'Kay. Go on."

Rung flexed his right hand. "The first few drafts of the program were rough, imprecise- brutal. We used dynamic models to test it, models that mimicked a processor damaged by mnemosurgery, then applied the program to them. I imagine there must have been mnemosurgeons within the network who were able to provide precise details on how certain techniques were applied. But our first few versions of the program were too destructive; they stripped away the damage and left nothing in its place. That wasn't our intention."

He examined the seams in his palmar armour, watching the small plates shift, exposing glimpses of internal structure as he opened and closed his hand. "You don't care how it works; I'll spare you the trials and triumphs we went through perfecting it."

"Thank god."

"But it worked. It wasn't perfect, it's still... I imagine it would be painful to endure. I never saw it applied to an individual, rather than a model. But I saw the results. It does work." He shook his head. "But once we had a working version of the program, somehow its existence was leaked to the New Institute, and they came after us. There is no 'us' though, not really."

"The benefit of a de-centralized operation," said Whirl, nodding.

"We scattered, but the program couldn't be broken up any more, not the way it had been when we were building it. We had to make it disappear. Or at least, appear to disappear." Rung glanced at the porthole. He shifted in his seat, crossed one leg over the other.

"So encrypt it," said Whirl.

He seemed interested in this. Despite Rung's prudent suspicion of Whirl as the counter-agent to his mission, he didn't truly feel that the helicopter was a threat, at least not to himself in an espionage capacity. Whirl's interest seemed to be the interest any bot might have in a program as mythic as the one Rung described.

"We did. The information was coded into a series of colours by a bot with colour-grapheme synaesthesia. This bot saw the individual glyphs in the lines of code as different colours and translated the program into an abstract image where the colour of each successive pixel represented a glyph in the lines of code."

"Huh," said Whirl. He leaned his helm on an open claw. "But that sounds like it could be broken by trial and error, once the image was recognized as a code. Run enough computational power against it and it'll re-translate into the original lines of code."

Rung raised an eyebrow. "You've worked with cryptography before?"

Whirl shrugged one shoulder. "If it's to do with filthy-dark black ops missions, then yeah, you can bet I've probably dealt with it in some capacity."

"I didn't know that."

Whirl cocked his head, optic contracting. "Yeah, well, you told me that you were nothing more than an observer. This program-writing stuff is pretty active for a mere observer."

"You had a gun to my head,' Rung reminded him. "My job is difficult to define."

"Yeah. No kidding." They eyed each other for a moment. Then Whirl cast his gaze sideways and gestured for Rung to continue. "Tell me about the encryption."

"Our cryptographer also perceived sound as colours," Rung continued. "For the second layer of encryption, the number and colour of the pixels in the image were conserved, but our synaesthetic friend re-ordered them by matching each pixel to a single tone in a musical composition."

"Wait, wait," said Whirl. "They turned the characters in the code into coloured pixels in an image, then they translated each pixel into a note and wrote a song with it?"

"No, they used an existing piece of music with the same range of colours as the image to re-order the pixels."

"So they made a new image?"

"No."

Whirl tapped his claw against his knee. "Okay, wait. Code into coloured pixels that make an image, pixels in the image get rearranged to match notes in a song, therefore the code is all scrambled up now." Rung nodded an affirmative. Whirl narrowed his optic. "So in the end, you just have a song. If you don't know about the colour step, you don't even know there's a code to decrypt because all you have is a song." His optic flared. "Sneaky, doc."

"Yes," said Rung. "And the piece of music was pre-existing, so it drew no attention to itself. Even if you did know about the colour step, the particular colour-sound associations are unique to one bot; that bot is the key to their own code."

Whirl eyed him. "Guessing that bot's probably dead?"

"Sadly, yes."

"But... they made decryption keys. The access codes you were talking about."

"Yes," said Rung. "I think Skids has one or more of them because the piece of music that our cryptographer used was the Empyrean Suite."

Whirl leaned forward, staring. Then he raised a claw and pointed emphatically at Rung's face. "You... are... so much cooler than you let on! Observer, my aft! I've heard that damn song before, hundreds of times. Never thought it was anything except music."

"It isn't anything except music. Unless you have the decryption keys activated in your processor when you perceive it. The first key translates the notes back into colours. The second key puts the colour pixels back in sequential order. There is a third key that translates the colours into characters but, as you pointed out, that final key isn't necessary. You can substitute brute force computing, if necessary."

Whirl shifted, crossing one leg over the opposite knee. "Yeah, but I don't get why Skids would be hearing the Suite. Shouldn't he be seeing colours or something?"

"No, not unless the keys are active. But if he's had his memory wiped and the Suite persists in his memory, it's because he's carrying it in his non-volatile memory, in his spark, where it can't be erased. That's where all of us who were involved in the project carry a copy of it."

Whirl's optic widened. "He's one of you, then."

"He doesn't know it. And I wasn't sure until last night, when he told me about the Empyrean Suite."

"He's not supposed to be here. I mean, he wasn't supposed to be on the ship. Was he?"

"I don't know," said Rung, finding his spirits unexpectedly bolstered by Whirl's recognition of the same unlikely truth that had unnerved him the night before.

"And you're on this ship too. Two of you. You weren't informed of his involvement?"

Rung shook his head. "If it even is involvement. It could still be a coincidence."

Whirl gave a sharp chuff of air from his thoracic intakes. "Yeah, right." He stood, abruptly animated, movements quick and sharp. "You're right. There's something going on here. That's too many coincidences." Rung realized his animation was excitement. "Enough talking. What's your plan? You got a target for me?"

"A target? No! I need more information, and I don't anticipate- well, having to kill anyone."

"You don't anticipate having to kill anyone? How did you even survive the war?" said Whirl incredulously.

Rung didn't say anything for a moment, letting the silence hang between them. "If the success of the mission hinges on someone's death, then I will give you a target. But right now, we need information and subtlety."

Whirl sat down again. "Have you ever killed anyone? Directly? With your own- well, I guess not your hands exactly, but with a weapon?"

Whirl spoke so easily and enthusiastically about death and horror that for a moment Rung chalked this question up to morbid antagonism. But the helicopter was studying him with a level gaze, motionless, not crowding him or needling him with further, graphic questions.

"Yes," said Rung.

Whirl was still for a moment, then nodded once. "Well," he said, and rose again, "let me know when you've decided. I'll go see about swapping our spots in the comm queue."

"Thank you."

Whirl left.

Rung deactivated the dampener/jammer and replaced it inside the compartment in his leg. Then he sat for a long time and thought about the bot he had executed.