Author's Note: And here we are again. This is probably the last of the slower moving chapters for a while. A lot happens next time. Thanks for reading and for the nice comments. Transformers belong to Hasbro and a whole lot of others, but not me baby.
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Come Around
By: Quetzal
Chapter 6
Twenty (Thousand) Questions
"If'n you ain't the grandaddy of all liars!" – Stinky Wizzleteats
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"Where are you from? Are you some kind of secret government project or did the Russians create you or what?" Erica asked.
"We are far beyond the understanding of primitive Earth science," the mech said, sounding a little insulted. Our race is from the planet Cybertron."
"You're aliens?" She said, in a quiet, awed voice that wasn't really questioning, and then:
"I knew it! I knew there had to be life on other planets and it wasn't those little gray guys with big heads and eyes," she said, sounding very happy at this new knowledge. "So why are you here?"
"Our home has been embroiled in a civil war for millions of your years."
"Millions? Really?" Again with the quiet awe. Humans were so easily impressed. "Sorry if this is rude, but… are you that old?"
It was amusing that she would project their peculiar social mores about age on an alien race. Why would he be offended by curiosity about such an irrelevant fact?
"Yes. I have been in this war since the beginning," he said, leaving out the little fact that it was him who actually started it. There were several seconds of silence as Erica tried to grasp the concept that these guys had been on the planet, lasers, spaceships and all, before there were even cavemen.
"What's it all about?"
"There are two factions on Cybertron, Decepticons and Autobots. There are also neutrals but they hold no importance. These factions co-existed peacefully until our governing body began to fall under the influence of the Autobots and started discriminating against Decepticons. They wished to keep us beneath them, under their control." His eyes began to glow a little brighter. "But we would not bend to their will."
"And that led to war?"
"Correct. The war went on for so long that eventually Cybertron was nearly depleted of energy. The Autobots left to find new sources and we followed. We cannot allow them to get the advantage or they will destroy us."
Erica was amazed. A race as old and advanced as this and yet they were fighting over the same old bullshit as anyone else.
"Then you came here?"
"This wasn't necessarily our destination. Another clash damaged both ships. We crashed here, as did they. Both spacecraft were beyond repair. In time we were able to build a new cruiser but they managed to thwart our attempt to leave and it came down here in the ocean so now we use it as a base of operations."
"Wait a minute. All this is a spaceship?"
"Yes," the mech replied, again amused at the reaction. Erica began to look all around the room, amazed. Understandable when one considered that the humans had only recently constructed a re-useable spacecraft of their own. Well, if you considered something that didn't really leave orbit around the planet a true spacecraft. Pathetic.
"What do you do here now? Are you building another ship?" That she had to see.
"No, we have solved the problem of getting back to Cybertron. What we are doing now is collecting energy to send back there so that we may move the war in our favor. We have been on this planet acting in secret, disguised as Earth vehicles and objects. It was an ability developed early in the war. Decepticons and Autobots are both referred to as Transformers."
"What are these Autobots like? Rumble said they hate you guys, but why?"
"They hate what they cannot control. They want to crush us and will stop at nothing to achieve their goal. They are vicious and ruthless."
"Does anyone know about them?"
"Ah, that's another part of the problem. Such talented liars are they, that they manage to insinuate themselves with governments of whatever planet they are on, presenting themselves as friends, as protectors."
"Protectors from what, you guys?"
"Yes, they spread lies and paint us as evil. Forces are mobilized against us before we have a chance to refute any of it."
"Which forces you to do whatever you have to do to get by and that just makes it look like it's all true."
"Correct. And humans have been very quick to condemn us. If any of us were to fall into the hands of some government we would certainly be destroyed in the name of science," Megatron said, pronouncing the last word with enough scorn that Erica suddenly wanted to mover farther away from him even more than normal.
"How can you be so sure? Wouldn't most people would be amazed to meet an alien life form? I am," Erica said.
"You cannot possibly be that naïve. While you may be impressed, most Earth dwellers are fearful and we all know what would happen because it almost did."
"What?"
"Are you familiar with the Roswell incident?"
"That was you guys? Seriously? What happened?"
"One of our faction crashed there," Megatron lied. "He did not have a chance to recover before he was attacked by the humans' military. He was on the verge of being deactivated and then would have been dissected by your scientists and engineers, but a raiding party managed to get there in time to prevent that."
These guys crash a lot, Erica mused before asking, "What happened then? What did you do to them?"
"What would anyone do? Let us just say that a suitable reminder was left to warn them off any such attempts in the future."
"But it didn't work, did it?"
"No. Not all of your kind learn as quickly as you do,"
"If they got him out, what was all that stuff in the pictures?"
"Something made up to explain all the commotion in the area, no doubt."
"What about all the UFO sightings around there?"
"We don't know for certain, but it's suspected that it's some sort of Autobot trick."
"Why would they do that?"
"Possibly to condition the planet to accept the idea of off world entities, so that when they chose to reveal themselves it would be less of a shock." Another lie, but still a plausible scenario.
Erica sat there silent for a moment. This certainly cleared up a lot…if it were true.
"But why is all this happening now? If all of you have been hiding so long, why are you suddenly coming out into the open?"
"Cybertron is in a very bad way. The need for energy has reached desperate levels. The Autobots are stepping up their actions and have quietly enlisted the aid of humans."
"What is Cybertron like? Is it anything like here?"
"No, nothing like this mudball of a planet. Would you care to see it?"
"You mean like, go there?" she asked, choosing to let the 'mudball' comment slide.
"Perhaps one day, but for now I meant this," Megatron said, reaching out to tap a few brightly lit buttons. Static came up on the main monitor but faded out to reveal a landscape unlike anything Erica had ever seen.
It looked like twilight. Lights glowed and reflected here and there on the shiny metallic surfaces. Curved strips of highway wound around towers and carved airy arcs through the sky.
"Impressive, is it not?" Megatron said with obvious pride.
"Yeah," she replied in a faraway voice, understanding that she might possibly be the first person in the world to have seen an inhabited alien planet. Of course if she could have seen it from a distance instead of a surface view, she would have known that probably everyone on Earth had seen it before.
"What are you going to do to get the energy you need to fix it?"
"For now we shall continue as we have been, stealing it where we can."
"How are the Autobots getting theirs?"
"They mislead the humans into giving it to them."
"Can they get back to Cybertron?"
"That is one thing we have in our favor. While they may have energy, they cannot take it anywhere."
"And you can get it there, but you don't have it."
"Precisely. We manage to get what we need to power ourselves and our base here, but excess to send back can be very difficult to acquire."
"What would happen if you lost and the Autobots took over? I mean, if we're just handing over the energy to them already, what's their problem?
"Once we were out of the way and there was no one for the humans to turn to, the Autobots would reveal their true spiteful natures. The populace would be enslaved and they would completely bleed the planet dry of energy before destroying it and everyone on it," Megatron said in a bizarrely satisfied sounding way.
"You know, you sound kind of happy about the idea," Erica said, frowning at him with uncertainty.
"It would serve them right."
Who's the spiteful one? She thought.
Megatron noticed the doubtful look he was getting and then said; "However, this is not something you need to fear. Eventually we will crush the Autobots."
"What do these guys look like, anyway? How would I know one if I saw it?"
Megatron reached over and tapped a few more buttons and once again the screen began to display several different images. Some were still photographs and others were short bits of video. The transformation process was an amazing thing to watch. Erica had only gotten a good look once when Skywarp did it. Whoever created these guys were the kings of all engineers, that's for sure. Erica had pondered how you'd go about making such a thing happen even if the mechanism wasn't thinking for itself and kept running into problems with small things like how fuel and hydraulic lines could be routed and connected, never mind the rest of it. Megatron explained who each of the enemy mechs were and why they were so dangerous. It was weird. She would hear what sort of atrocities each had committed or was capable of, and yet they looked friendly. There was nothing at all that looked menacing about any of them. Of course maybe that was part of their sneakiness. It was a lot to get your mind around. And then it got a little stranger.
"But what about you?" Megatron asked, sitting back and propping his head up with one hand to regard Erica. His inquiry seemed to knock her off balance a little.
"Huh? What about me?"
"What are your origins? Do you have a mate or progeny?" He already knew the answers thanks to the pitiful computer security measures on this planet. He just wanted to see if she would lie.
She snorted in an amused way before answering. He sounded like an ultra-proper version of her Aunt Betty who was always asking about her love life. "Well, there's no mate. Even good potential candidates for that are hard to find. Definitely no progeny nor any interest in them. I was born in Illinois and lived there until after college, which was when I came to California because I got offered a job with Terradyne."
"Where are your creators? Do they still function?"
"My parents still live in Illinois with my little brother," and then after a short pause she asked: "Do you think I could call them?"
"No."
"Why not? I know they're worried and it would be so much better for them if they knew I was alive and okay."
"Would it? Just what would you tell them? I don't think that knowing you were with us would put their minds at ease."
"Sure it would, a little maybe. They wouldn't think I was dead in a ditch someplace that way."
"By now the authorities within your government have contacted them. The communications system is being monitored and your creators are being questioned and kept under surveillance. For you to contact them would be to intensify all of that. You would only be making their lives more difficult."
Erica thought of the newspaper article with all the lies. Yeah, the feds probably knew something really strange was going on. If the Autobots had already gotten to them, then they'd have a good idea of what that something was.
"There has to be some way I can…"
"No, and I suggest you disabuse yourself of the notion right now. They are better off thinking you are dead."
"That's crazy! How can it be better?"
"Erica, things are about to change. Our war is going to be in the open before much longer and sides will be chosen."
"So?"
"So you have already declared yourself to the side of evil in the eyes of your human compatriots."
"I haven't declared anything!"
"But you did. By asking to stay here, you declared yourself to me, and the Decepticon cause."
"It was that or death! I didn't know offering to be a tech was taking sides in a war that has nothing to do with me!"
"I believe you have a saying here… 'Ignorance of the law is no excuse.'"
"Alright, fine, what if I did?"
"As I said, our struggle will be public knowledge soon. And contrary to what you may think, our war will have everything to do with you. We will be branded the enemy and anyone with us will be considered traitors. You wouldn't want your family to be considered guilty by association would you?"
"No." Erica said, the anger deflating like a balloon. If what he said was true… but it was unthinkable that she'd never get to see or talk to them again. Maybe after the war was over, or averted somehow.
Megatron watched as she sat there. He could practically see the ideas forming and then being rejected.
"Are you sure that there's not some way to convince everyone that you aren't what they think?"
"It's much too late for that. Things are already in motion."
"And there's no way to prevent this war?"
"No. But perhaps you can take a small measure of comfort in the fact that you know the truth and are on the right side."
Yeah, fat lot of good that does me or anybody else on Earth, she thought bitterly.
"Unpleasant as it may be, you do see that I am right, don't you?" Megatron asked, not unkindly. He was finding this pretending to care very challenging.
"I don't know. Maybe you are. It's not like there's a whole hell of a lot I can do about it either way."
"Was there anything else you wanted to know?"
Erica knew she had other questions, but they had slipped her mind in the face of what she had discovered. She sat there leaning forward with her elbows resting on her knees and her head in her hands looking down. The emblem on her collar caught the light and suddenly reminded her of something else.
"What's Arkeville Labs? Is that some other humans who are helping you?"
"Dr. Arkeville was helping the Autobots. He was responsible for the device that brought Cybertron into Earth's orbit causing unspeakable amounts of destruction."
"Wait, that was Cybertron?" Of course Erica remembered this. Everyone thought it was Armageddon. The news reports all said that is was a massive rogue comet or something, and that NASA had it all under control. In the meantime there was epic destruction until an explosion moved it away.
"What would have possessed him to do such a thing? And what happened to him?"
"I am certain that the Autobots must have promised him something and the reason is unknown. As to what became of him, we aren't certain. He is presumed dead."
"Wouldn't this prove that you guys aren't the bad ones?"
"One would think so. Despite the fact that we were responsible for the explosion that returned Cybertron to its rightful place, the blame for everything was placed on us and by then we did not care."
"If he's dead, how did you get this?" She asked, picking up the collar and dangling the emblem at him.
"I decided it would be wise to find his laboratory and prevent anything like that from happening again. Of course we took whatever looked like it could be valuable to us in the future."
"And is all this kind of stuff the reason why some of you really seem to hate me?"
"Why would you be any different from what they have encountered so far?"
"But I am,"
"That has yet to be proven."
There was just no winning with this guy. It was starting to feel like there was no winning at all.
"And when do I get a chance?"
"You're feeling sufficiently repaired and charged?"
"Yes."
"Be in the repair bay at seven a.m. and we shall begin."
"Okay. Can you tell me something else?"
"What?"
"Who is your creator?"
Megatron paused for a few seconds before answering.
"There are some who believe that all Ttransformers were created by Primus. I, however, think this is so much religious drivel perpetuated as yet another means of control. The true answer is probably lost to time."
Yeah, you don't seem like you'd be a religious fella, Erica thought.
"And now I think you should go back to your quarters and prepare for the morning," Megatron said, once again extending the hand to lower her to the floor.
Erica got up and stepped carefully across the gap between the console and the waiting hand. It was a pretty good drop to the floor. Once down she looked around at the room again. It was a lot of information to take in. And how could she tell what was true? She was almost as confused as when she first arrived, and it showed.
"Have patience Erica. In time you will understand and I think you may even be happy here." You might as well try because you will never leave, he added silently in his processors. And then, as one last thing to further confound her, Megatron actually reached out and gently patted her on the head. Seeing the huge hand above her and getting lower, she simultaneously turned her head and pulled her shoulders up, kind of looking like a turtle. ICK! She could have done without that. The sooner these guys were won over or just didn't notice her, the better.
The best opportunity would come a lot sooner than anyone expected
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Remember Ren and Stimpy? Stinky Wizzleteats was the character who sang Happy Happy Joy Joy.