The Becoming of Things
5: The Ship of Theseus
After taking more medicine, Dahlia went out to Pier 39 to watch sea lions sunning themselves. She played, busking out in the sun; one thief got a violin bow across the throat before Dahlia pulled out her practice fan. That was exciting, despite the police reprimand. The leaves fell, the city was swamped by more fog, and maybe there could be snow. Maybe.
We were approached by a soldier in fatigues; big, black and possibly dangerous. Dahlia licked her lips, like she'd done when we spotted the male cop passing by. Like when I saw the black-and-white Ford Crown Victoria of the San Francisco police cruiser.
The two of us kept twanging the string of the violin strung with Lazerbeak's entrails. It made a low twang on the E string.
" Aimo aimo neederu ruushe... " Dahlia hummed. " Uchinarase ima shouri no kane o... Koko wa arata na ware no hoshi... "
"Ma'am?" the soldier strode to us, and I could spot the patch on his shoulder. If I told you... I'll have to kill you, with a dagger on it. Nice. And in the distance, a familiar red and blue semi-truck with flame decals beside the large black GMC Topkick and silver...
"Chevy Corvette Stingray," Dahlia supplied the car make and model.
"Sorry?" the soldier blinked.
"It's about fantasy, you see," Dahlia explained to the soldier. "I'm at the place where the fallen angel meets the rising ape. And there is a fallen angel looking for its friends."
The two of them looked out to Pier 39. A passing sea lion cocked its head up, possibly sensing food. It left disgruntled at the humans for giving it a false alarm.
"Ma'am," the guy tried a different tack. "You've definitely ingested some marijuana, and you're unable to make decisions clearly. We've received news of a gas leak around here. You need to leave now while we evacuate the... sea lions."
"They aren't moving," Dahlia waved to the indolent other mammals of the pier.
Apparently, gas leaks were a favourite cover story to explain us tearing up the human settlements, as Dahlia had explained. They apparently forgot to account for the local wildlife.
"Ma'am," the guy started again after a bit. "I'm going to help you up and on your way now."
"I have an appointment here," Dahlia blithely continued, before she sniffed and I felt a wave of slight nausea. "You don't believe me, do you?"
She got up, packing the Lazerbeak-made violin away into its case before hefting the case. That was before she started at a dead run towards the masquerading vehicles. The black guy shouted behind her, making more uniformed men appear.
"Angels will rain down like visitors from heaven," Dahlia sang, side-stepping two of them to round forward, waltzing before I took over to skid over Optimus Prime's alternate form and put the truck between us and them.
"Hiya, Boss-bot!" I drummed a tattoo on a decal. "What's crackin'?"
A pneumatic hiss of steam later and I got my answer, as Optimus Prime unfolded himself to stand at his full height and we skidded down to the ground.
Using those handy wiggly fingers, I snapped a salute. "Code 1MAESTRO. Autobot Meister, reporting for duty."
"...Jazz?" Prime whispered. A few guns started to make their appearance, but Prime waved them off with the instant expectation of withdrawal. I still sensed Ironhide's cannons warming up, though.
"So you brought Ironhide and... who's the newbie?" I asked, before shaking my head. "Never mind. Anyway, voila! The Jazzmeister is back!"
"Wait, you're the..." the blond man gaped, along with a few more soldiers. "I thought... I thought you guys could only trans-scan electronics!"
Somehow, I could feel Dahlia smiling. "I fell on a human with a pacemaker when Megatron tore me in half," I explained, wiggling my fingers and toes to show them. "My spark integrated with the circuits, far as I can tell. It took over a year to integrate into this body and locate you guys, no thanks because some people probably thought me a fake or something."
The soldier beside us put his face into his hands. "Oh crap. Bodily possession of a citizen. This is going to be a nightmare."
"Jazz..." Optimus rumbled with something approaching rage. "Are you saying that you took over this human female's life, body and identity?"
"Er..." I coughed. "Not really took over, per se."
"You are here. The lady is not."
"Which assumes that there's a one-sentient-being per body ratio," I answered before I let go.
Dahlia stumbled, before straightening her back to look up at Optimus Prime with wide eyes, and then looking to the others with a proper degree of caution. She also inched towards the hidden fusee. "Optimus Prime, I presume."
Ever the gentle giant for the perceived meek people of any slagging organic planet, Prime knelt down to rest on one knee. "Yes. It appears that you know my identity, but I do not know of yours."
"I am Dahlia Su," Dahlia answered. "And we have just met, technically. I can vouch that the Autobot you call Jazz did not explicitly take over my life to find your location. Yet, if you would please sort out the current situation."
"Our medic, Ratchet, is a while away." Optimus actually fidgeted.
"Let me get this straight," Dahlia glared at all of the men assembled. "You thought that we were a hostile entity."
"It would appear to be our misconception, yes," Prime affirmed. "I hope you could... follow us, Miss Su."
Dahlia thought, before glancing back at the Ford Crown Victoria. "That was one of your people, right?"
"Prowl, yes," Prime answered, transforming back into his alternate mode.
Dahlia looked back towards the wary soldiers. "Guns. Down. Now."
She was probably carrying that exact same look described in a certain book about psycho-pomps, which went something like:
White Devil, you do not want to do that, for I have millennia of ancestors and civilisation on you; I am history and suffering and wisdom personified; I am a Buddha and a dragon; so get your hand away before you lose it.
The soldiers put the guns away. Dahlia made a sharp rap against the door. "Could you please?"
A moment of pause, the flame-painted passenger door hesitantly swung open.
Dahlia climbed in, searching for the radio, and extracting a CD to hold up. "If you could read this information, this would explain everything better. We had to hunt down Russian cosmonauts in hiding for it."
The radio ejected a pre-placed CD that Dahlia took out, glancing barely at the Elvis picture before slotting our own information into... well, I preferred not to think about it. But Optimus read it, transmitted the information to the others via data packet, and then coughed through the radio as his engine roared and he rolled along with a convoy.
"Why did you include a last will and testament?"
"Irrelevant," Dahlia shook her head. "How do I say it... when you see humanity, what do you think?"
"They are a brave and noble species."
Dahlia nodded. "I thought you might. I find them... ineffable."
Dahlia coughed, and I turned my attention away to quickly regulate her thudding heart, the blood flow spiralling out of control. "I love my world. I realise, it's my only world, and I have no basis of comparison anyway, but I would like to do my part as well. I... It might be hard for me to realise it, but that which I did to collect this, I did for altruistic reasons. It doesn't matter if most of the information turns out to be useless, since now you know, and knowing is half the battle. I realise this is unreasonable, but please... protect... my world... I place myself in your hands, Jazz."
"Miss Su?" Prime demanded, with an edge of panic. "Jazz, what's going on?"
It stopped. It stopped altogether, even as her body- our body jerked in Prime's seatbelts. "Cardiac- arrest-" I gulped, feeling the salty leakage from the tear ducts stream over our face. "Prime! Medic! Get Ratchet! She's dying!"
Over the sudden screech of air brakes, I reflected. Humanity might be a race of cowards, of weaklings, but whatever. Screw them. Unlike us, whether Autobot or Decepticon, they accepted their weakness. They accepted their weakness, and with it still fought, because they were born with nothing, their bodies weaker than the planet's strongest predators, living on a planet that continually tried to kill them for the sheer fact of existing. Their minds, though, and the faith they had that someone, anyone, would continue their work after that... that faith itself was on par with the Primes, except that no human had any sure knowledge or even a fragging Matrix to connect through. Dahlia, though... It sometimes sucked to be a human, that much I knew. But humans had their music and their culture and they were so infectious and in every single thing in my thoughts and I was...
Could I become human by extension? I don't know, but some days it sure felt like I was becoming human.
Prime opened his doors, allowing human medics to safely evacuate Dahlia out. I let them carefully lever us onto a stretcher, maintaining her heart to keep working. As long as her brain was still alive... as long as it was still there...
She had entrusted her world, her music, even the Lazerbeak-made violin to me. She was useful; very useful. So very useful.
It was dark, so dark when they hauled us in. I felt rough cotton blankets against my skin, our skin, as I laid there and felt the mask strap, supplying oxygen into my lungs. Then there was something being forced down my throat...
"Jazz? Are you there?"
"Hatchet?" I asked, hearing the comms. "Yes, I'm in Dahlia's body."
"Prim explained," Ratchet answered. "The surgeon equipped a microphone onto the endoscope, that's why we're having this discussion. You still have control over the body?"
"Yes. I'll use it to ingest fuel too, in case you need me to."
"You might have to. You're integrated into the female's nervous systems, spinal cord, and brain," Ratchet explained. "Extracting you at this junction would mean severing the heart and brain from the body. No human can, or will, survive it."
"You mean that Dahlia's heart won't survive?"
"Her head wouldn't survive it, you mean," Ratchet grumbled. "Prowl's breathing down my neck about you, by the way, and I think Prime's about to worry himself into enforced recharge over the female. Now, I need you to make a medical decision."
"Yeah?" I asked.
"The humans said that they could intubate, but she signed a Do Not Resuscitate order," Ratchet elaborated. "We're stuck leaving her to die a natural death."
"That's ridiculous!" I defended.
"It's their ways, Jazz," Ratchet explained. "You've been living amongst the humans too long. Choices; you let go, she dies, I cut you out and put you back into your body. We're having it flown in at double-speed, see if I can weld it back together."
"Not an option. Try the other one."
"Next, we leave you inside there. But... well, the body's defective."
"Don't say that." I snapped. "You don't have a position to stand on if you haven't lived with human weaknesses yet. Yeah, it's fragile, but it's doing what organic bodies do. Next option."
Ratchet sounded amused, if the enhanced snort that I knew he had no need to do was anything to go by. "The last option... it's only theoretical. And I have no one to corroborate with."
"Tell me," I pleaded.
"Theoretically..." Ratchet finished quickly as the doctor started shocking the body. "We're keeping the female under oxygen and de-fibrillating to help you. Yet, other than possibly transplanting the human spark, there's no other way. And, such a method has no precedent. It would be murder to try it on Dahlia without any idea of what to do."
I froze. Could I... could I do that? Could I rob Dahlia of her senses of taste and smell? Of her coordination in her human body, her multiple ways of managing her bad health and her quiet life of music and performances, for a world of near-constant long-term warfare?
"Optimus said that she left a last will and testament," Ratchet provided after a moment of pensive silence. "He read, and I quote: 'the dahlia has the meaning of deception. One day, this name might be useful to you.'"
The dahlia has the meaning of deception...
"Organic bodies are fiddly, and don't always accept being fixed," Ratchet explained. "There is always more humans. Let her go."
"She researched for me," I pleaded, still feeling around for the spark, the spark of consummate humanity that dwelt here. I felt it in her mortality, in the body that she inhabited... "At least try, Ratchet."
Ratchet vented. "...I'll need some more spark-strings."
Hope blossomed in my chest. "Dahlia brought a violin strung with Lazerbeak's spark-strings. See if you can use those."
"I don't know what's scarier, that you guys took down Lazerbeak or that she strung a human musical instrument with Lazerbeak's innards."
I waited, searching until I could feel the tendrils of violin music. The silvery sounds led me to secure the pulse of sparks, pulling it back towards my current spark chamber in the pacemaker.
Then Ratchet reached into my chest.
Critiquez, s'il vous plaît!