(Disclaimers in Part 1)

Early Monday morning, Sam was back in DC, having taken a red-eye flight the night before. He still had a grin on his face that any Neanderthal would have understood—he was going to be the father of a son. He'd made a run down to Tranquility to visit his parents early Sunday, and he and his dad had cried for joy in each other's arms.

Of course, his dad had informed him gleefully that he was about to start paying for his raising, which made Sam think about all the dumb stuff he'd done as a kid.

Portman, Bailey and Fitch was a well-established firm, as respected as any lobbying concern ever was. They were a little above used-car salesmen on the trustworthiness scale, but not enough for anyone to start getting cocky.

Sam carried in his large box of office belongings and counted doors. 108, 110—there it was, 112. The door was open a crack. He pushed it the rest of the way with his toe.

"Oh, wow! Here, let me help you with that!" A cheerful female voice called, and his load was lightened by a desk lamp and a laptop computer. Sam set the box on his desk, and caught sight of his office mate, a short, heavy-set young woman with extremely curly red hair, glasses and a wide grin. "Hi! You must be Sam. I'm Abby Fallon."

"Hi, Abby! I'm Sam Witwicky. Great to meet you! It looks like we're going to be sharing an office."

"Looks like. Anything I can do to help you get settled in?"

"Show me the break room? I would kill for a cup of coffee!"

"Sure, we usually have some muffins down there too. I'll bet you came straight from the airport."

"Yes, I did."

The break room was two doors down, across from an alcove containing the copier. Abby made a face at the varnish remover in the coffee pot and quickly started a new one. They got a muffin each and sat down to listen to the coffee maker burble. "They told me I was getting a new partner named Sam, but not much else."

"Well, there's not a lot else to tell. I was with NEST after I graduated, but you know I can't talk about most of that, so...um...not much of an introduction, I guess. I'm from Tranquility, Nevada, married, little boy on the way, and I majored in poli-sci with a minor in economics."

"I'm from Toledo and my family is still there, I'm single, I served two years in the Air Force, then I went to Ohio State. I'm also a poli-sci major, I served a term in Congress, from the Ohio 19th, until I lost my seat in the Tea Party revolt last year, and now here I am. I kinda know who you are, Sam, I remember when the Fallen was after you. I know you've done a lot more for this country than most people will ever know."

Sam said, "Well, I certainly haven't done any more than you did. Thanks for your service."

"It was my honor."

"So…exactly what am I going to be doing?"

"Well, right now, I'm looking into the feasibility of a new clean energy source. A couple of guys out in Silicon Valley have discovered—get this—a way to make cold fusion work."

"Oh, come on, that was snake oil back in the 90s when Fleichmann and Pons tried to convince everyone they'd done it."

"I know, but these guys—Hydronics, they're calling their company—have a working prototype. I've seen it in operation. Look, the process emits a small amount of radioactive gas, which is very easy to capture, though as I understand it that has industrial uses as well. Other than that the only by-product is water. The oil companies are going berserk. My job—now our job—is to get these guys a grant so that they can built a larger-scale prototype. It's really a matter of expediting the paperwork. I'm pretty sure they're going to end up at MIT. If this works out, it's going to be huge."

"Gee. I don't think MIT would be making interested noises if there weren't really something there," Sam had to admit.

They took coffee and muffins back to their office. Abby helped Sam get moved in and set up his account on the firm's computer system, and then they spent the hour before lunch going over the Hydronics files.

Sam had lunch with Charlotte Mearing, to thank her for getting him the position and let her know how he was getting along there. That afternoon, he was kept busy filling out a lot of paperwork for human resources, in return for which he was presented with his ID tag.

The photo ID badge, which would admit him to the congressional offices where he would be doing a lot of his work.

After work, he went to the gym for a couple of hours where he pedaled a stationary bike and watched the news. Then he went to his small apartment, where he watered his plants, settled down with a salami sandwich to call Carly, watched a little TV, and read the Washington Post before going to bed.

Bumblebee called to tell him that he had been delayed by road construction, but he expected to be back in DC the next day. After they chatted for a little while, Sam put his phone on the charger and went to bed feeling that his first day on the new job had gone well, all things considered.

About two o'clock in the morning, he woke up from a nightmare in which the lab building where Hydronics had built their new prototype, as well as a large section of the MIT campus, was now a smoking crater. Having been in Chicago, he didn't have to hear the screams to know how many people would have been killed in an explosion like that.

He'd had enough of these dreams now to know the difference between the ones caused by eating salami at bedtime, and the ones he needed to pay attention to. This was one of the latter.

On his second day on the job, there was no way Sam could go up to Mr. Portman and tell him they needed to bail out of the Hydronics deal because the new kid had a bad dream about it. He needed proof that the process was dangerous. And he had to get it before a bunch of people got killed.

So much for sleep. He got up and put on his track suit and sneakers, and jogged down the hall to the stairwell. A few trips from the roof to the basement and back would help him think.

By the time his legs were burning and he didn't think he could climb one more step, he realized that he was going to need help from the Autobots to get to the bottom of this. A hot shower and a bagel later, he met Bee in the parking garage and hurriedly got in as soon as his brother opened the door.

"Bee, can you get Que for me?"

Bee clicked an affirmative and made the call.

Even though it was still first joor in Mission City, Que was already at his workbench. "Bumblebee! Good joor!"

"Good joor, craftmaster. Sam wishes to talk to you, if you have time."

"Of course I do." Que switched to English. "How can I help you, Sam?"

Sam described the situation with Hydronics. "I have a bad feeling about this, Que. I think it's some kind of a scam, possibly a dangerous one, but I'm not sure how to prove it."

"Well, the easiest way would be for me to go out there and check it out. I can find out a great deal simply by scanning it from the street. Could you send me the address and a description of this prototype?"

The address in San Jose was online—Hydronics was looking for money after all—and Sam told Que what he knew about the prototype. Que said that he would take a ride to California and see what he could find out, and then get back to Sam that evening.

Que's report was the snowflake that began an avalanche of activity. The FBI conducted a swift, intense investigation, at the end of which they made a number of arrests. Both NEST and the CIA wanted very much to talk to the detainees.

Que's scans revealed the presence of very small amounts of Cybertronian fuel substances in the company's cold fusion reactor. The engineers at Hydronics did not know it was Cybertronian, but they did know that the material had been acquired illegally from a Russian arms dealer. This dealer had gotten it from a greedy worker at Chernobyl, who had stolen it while the former Soviets were experimenting there with a power core that one of their unmanned lunar expeditions had recovered from the Ark.

One of those experiments gone wrong had damaged conventional nuclear reactors there, resulting in the 1986 disaster.

Que was able to confirm that a larger prototype would have been very dangerous, because that material required careful handling. Under a constant load, it became unstable. The Cybertronians were aware of this, and their designs cycled power to the core, thirty seconds on, thirty seconds off. The Soviet scientists had lacked the knowledge of this necessity, leading to the explosion.

The material was seized and returned to the Cybertronians, and Sam was responsible for keeping his company, and the administration, from getting involved in a scandal at best and a disaster resulting in a horrendous loss of life at worst.

He managed to avoid mention of his precognitive dream by saying that cold fusion was known to be a hoax and that anything that sounded too good to be true probably was. He treated it as unsurprising that, when in need of a scientist's expertise, he turned to the one he knew. Sam claimed that it was just lucky for everyone that his scientist friend had been able to sniff out the presence of the alien fuel.

It scared him. He remembered very well what it had felt like when the All-Spark energy had started to take him over. He'd had a meltdown in class and it had been months before his professors had stopped looking at him like he was a bomb about to go off. He hoped this wasn't a sign of something similar, something beyond his control that would end with him in a nice peaceful little room somewhere.

The senior partners, knowing nothing about that, were very pleased with him. They rewarded him with a generous Christmas bonus, and a couple days off to go home and see his pregnant wife again. He would be expected back in Washington that Friday, the sixteenth of December, to start his next assignment.

-Sidhe Chronicles-

Frank Hastings got off a private jet in Las Vegas and put on a well-worn pair of Ray-bans. Lowell Zain met him at the bottom of the ramp.

"What's the latest on Pierpoint?"

"He's calmed down, sir. It wasn't like we could sedate him in his, uh, current condition. But once we got him away from his old body and let him figure out he was still, you know, there—he's a little better. Had to be a hell of a shock."

"Yeah. Did they post-mortem the remains? Same deal as the ones from Oregon?"

"No, sir, not at all. There was no brain damage like those poor bastards had. The doctor said he died of coronary arrest."

"That means his heart stopped. That's what they put when they don't know why it stopped!"

"Yes, sir. So far, there's no medical reason. There are still some tests out, but what are they going to find? Whatever makes Pierpoint alive moved into that robot body. You can't stick that in a test tube."

Hastings agreed. He had always been one to look the truth right in the eye, and spit in it on occasion, but he wouldn't avoid that truth because it wasn't the one he wanted to see. It meant those things really were alive.

Anything that was alive could die, and he meant to see all of the Cybertronians responsible for the deaths of his wife and son dead. As for the others, though—maybe he couldn't lump them all together like he had been doing. Still, if they were here, they needed to be under government control. He didn't see why they should get more privileges than any other refugees. And if they decided they wanted more than their hosts were willing to give, they could become a problem real fast. Whether or not they were "real people," whatever the hell that meant, didn't change the fact that the US needed better ways to deal with them.

-Sidhe Chronicles-

The next day the office closed at noon, something to do with a failing server, Sam was told. He had no meetings, so he loaded up his laptop at 11:45 and went to a grocery store, intending to see if he could re-create a Thai dish he had liked at a lunch earlier that week.

Sam, researching, realized that soy and fish sauce were indispensable, and during his commute made up a list of vegetables and other spices that would serve for both Mexican and oriental recipes. (The classic French and German cooking he'd try later, if this proved to be something he could master.)

He had rice. It took two trips to get the rest, and some convenience food (tomato soup, American cheese, white bread, soda).

Grazing in a more-or-less random fashion, and making the second trip, took him quite a while. By the time he got home, he needed a cheese sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup just to keep body and soul roughly in the same room, let alone together. He added an apple to his meal, fetched the grapefruit soda out of the freezer he'd stuck that single can into, ingested about a third of it in a single gulp, and began to feel slightly more like a human being.

Sam was drawing up a timeline for the production of Thai pineapple fried rice— one of the hazards of acquiring a Harvard education is that the sufferer begins to think this way—when his cell went off. "Sam here," he said, not looking at the number as he carefully measured chopped cilantro.

"Optimus, Sam," said that deep warm voice he knew so well. "You asked me to call you. Have I done so at a bad time?"

"Optimus, it's never a bad time for your calls." Sam measured cumin, which was much easier, and temporarily ceased pre-production of the dish. He parked one skinny butt cheek against the kitchen counter and said, "I wanted to talk to you about a precognitive dream I had. Do you have a couple of minutes?"

"Sam, I have as much time as you need, always."

A warm glow originated from somewhere, and settled in Sam's chest. "Thank you. You know that I asked Que for help."

"He and I were glad to give it. I was also quite amused when your firm queried the consultant's fee – it was not too high, they said, but too low. I quadrupled it. They were happy with that."

"Optimus, I am totally shocked. You're cultivating a head for business." Sam tucked the phone into his shoulder, and went to town on some onions, then gave several cloves of garlic the what-for.

"Not precisely. It is only another form of tactics, after all." And he would not tell Sam that ten percent had been used to set up a college fund for one Daniel David Martin Bombus Witwicky, yet to be born, as Sam could not ethically accept a "finder's fee." Ten percent of an obscene amount of money was still a nice chunk of change, as Lennox sometimes put it.

"Yeah...well, I asked Que for help because I had a dream that told me pretty sharply to do that."

"Yes. You and I sometimes share a dream, and I was there with you."

"You…were?"

"Yes. You were where we sometimes meet, in that liminal area closest to the Well of All Sparks where one can be and return alive."

"Optimus, if we share dreams, how come I didn't see you when I dreamed?"

"I do not have an answer to that, Sam. I believe that I am oftener conscious of you than you of me simply because I have been a Prime for several hundreds of your generations, and some small part of me is always in that place."

"Oh. Makes sense."

"Sam, there is something else."

"Oh, God. Lemme sit down, Optimus."

"Sam, are you all right?"

"Yes. I've been chopping garlic, though, and when your voice does what it just did, I can't use an edged blade and talk to you at the same time. I'll lose a thumb."

"Sam, we share a bond."

"Yes."

There was a long silence from Optimus. "You knew?"

"No, but I've thought that might be true for a while now. Didn't know how to bring it up, though." Sam smiled, and let Optimus hear that in his voice. "'Excuse me, Optimus, but do we share a bond?' Maybe you can find a way to begin that conversation that works better. I never did."

"And now we do not need to. Do you wonder why we have such a bond?"

"No. My capacity for wonder got permanently burned out somewhere between the moment Bee first saved my life and, say, twenty-two seconds later."

Optimus made a noise that Sam had no trouble interpreting as a stifled snort of laughter. Sam also wished he'd washed his garlicky hands before coming over here, and didn't touch the couch as he pivoted on his butt to lie along it.

"My best guess," Optimus continued, "is that your long and faithful caretaking of the All-Spark, coupled with your selfless sacrifice in Egypt, led Primus to consider you worthy of the gift of precognitive dreaming. As for the bond between us, Sam, the presence of the All-Spark changes one. Most of the training I received to be a Prime taught me how to remain who I am in its presence by erecting a barrier between an entity more powerful than any living creature and myself. The All-Spark rather ruthlessly grants, or perhaps I should say imposes, exceptional abilities in many areas of endeavor. Every person who has been touched by the All-Spark is…united…in some way to all the others, dead or alive. As that has happened to both of us, and you lacked the training necessary to put up a barrier, a bond formed between us."

There was a considerable silence from the garlic-scented Sam Witwicky. "But…I'm human."

Optimus' smile was audible again. "Either there is far less distinction between our varieties of spark than one might think, or Primus, your God, and the All-Spark among them have a formidable sense of humor. Or perhaps both of the above."

Despite himself, Sam laughed. Sort of. "Optimus, I have to think about this."

"Certainly. I hope, though, that if things seem strange, or strained, or uncomfortable in any way, you will speak to me. And both Adele Hempstead and Diarwen ni Gilthanel, who have precognitive experiences of their own, might be of more help to you than I was today."

"I'll think about that. I'll probably talk to you, though."

"Thank you, Sam. But do not rule speaking with Diarwen and Adele out. For one thing, one is human. For another, they can give you the organic's perspective on managing your gifts. I cannot begin to."

"Well," said Sam, sitting up using only his belly muscles, "you could probably begin, but it might be a short lesson."

Optimus himself laughed. "Yes. But the that's not one of the lessons which are best neither long nor convoluted."

Sam laughed. "Like Skids and Mudflap's?"

"That was less convoluted than entirely justified. Sam, are you going to be all right?"

"Oh sure. Thanks for your time, Optimus."

"You are welcome. See you soon."

Four days, and counting, until his bond-brother was here. Optimus disconnected, and stared out his office window at gray skies.

He had not told Sam everything, but Sam needed time to assimilate what he had been told. And there was the crucial piece of knowledge he hadn't shared.

Hadn't shared, and wouldn't share, not until he had a better grasp on what it might mean to Sam, and those around him.

The entire misunderstanding with Diarwen, though, was still fresh in his memory, and painful. That whole situation had resulted from a lack of needed information, though he truly had not considered the information he had withheld from her relevant to their situation.

In this case, he was deliberately not telling Sam everything.

It all came down to whether telling all he knew was more likely to help or harm, and in this case, he simply did not know yet. Therefore, he would wait, and allow Sam time to deal with what he had learned today. After that, he would re-evaluate the probability of good or harm.

-Sidhe Chronicles-

Diarwen awakened early on Sunday morning, shivering. It was five o'clock in the morning. Rubbing sleep from her eyes, she gathered clothes for the day and parked them on the chair by the bathroom door while she investigated the possibility of breakfast.

Only a stale muffin with her tea was, in fact, possible. As she poured the remainder of the pot into a Thermos to take with her, she made a note to make time today to go into town and restock the kitchenette. Kaela was almost never here any more. She had yet to officially move her things to Chip's quarters, but Diarwen doubted it would be long before they took that step. That made it easier for Diarwen to come and go without being noticed, convenient as long as she and Optimus chose to remain discreet about the particulars of their relationship.

Diarwen was certain that Ironhide and Chromia knew, as though they had said nothing directly to her about it she was beginning to pick up small differences in private such as Cybertronian pronouns that indicated "cohort" rather than "close friend." But no one outside the immediate family seemed to have a clue, and for the present it seemed wise to keep it that way. The constant confusion involving celebrities and paparazzi alone was enough to convince them to "fly under the radar," as the NEST soldiers put it. When the time came, they would tell those who had need to know.

She smiled. For now, it was rather fun to have a secret, and Optimus had little opportunity for plain, old-fashioned fun.

As she left the apartment, she chose her warmest jacket. The air coming around the kitchen window had felt positively frigid, and it was all the more shivery since everyone at the base had grown accustomed to the warm climate. She took extra care with her morning stretches, since it would be far easier to pull a muscle in the cold.

She was first to arrive at Buzzard Rock. Jazz had brought a few solar panels some days previously, and wired them up to a battery bank and a big electric shop heater, adding some lights as well. She got those going to make things a little more comfortable for her circle, because today was to be a discussion day: they would not be doing anything to keep warm.

Chip, Kaela, and Jack were the first to arrive, followed by Evanon, then Jazz and Prowl, and finally Optimus, who had been delayed by an early morning memo kerfuffle in Admin: a report which he had not known about but was desperately needed by 0800 the next morning.

It was good to be able to put all that into a background queue and relax for an hour a day, even if that hour did have to be stolen while sensible mecha were still in recharge.

He transformed and sat where he would block some of the wind, but close enough to enjoy the heater.

Chip rolled his exercise chair close to it, stripped off his gloves, and warmed his hands. "Feels like Christmas out here."

Prowl said, "I do not understand."

"My culture celebrates a holiday called Christmas, which started out in the history of my religion as the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Christ's Mass, see?"

Confusion continued to cover Prowl's faceplates until Diarwen said, "A Mass, Prowl, is a Catholic Christian ritual. Over time it came to be used as a term for any celebration." She nodded at Chip to continue.

"A lot of American culture was imported from Germany, a country in Europe, where it was usually cold and snowy during that time, so we associate Christmas with cold, snowy weather. You'll hear a song, 'I'll be Home for Christmas,' over and over again this time of year, because it's about someone in a place like this where there isn't a lot of snow thinking about Christmas back home."

"I still do not—what do European customs have to do with a religion which arose in the Middle East?"

Jazz said, "Near as I can tell, when Christianity spread into Europe, the Christians adopted a lot of the local customs. They changed their meanings, though, to make sense with what they believed."

Diarwen said, "That is correct, Jazz. Christianity and the Old Religions coexisted in Europe for hundreds of years. That is many human generations. As in my faith, most of those European cultures had a midwinter festival at Yule, which is the Winter solstice, and the holiday which I celebrate. Yule is the longest night. After that, the days begin to grow longer again. We celebrate this as the night that the Great Mother gives birth to the young Sun God.

"It is unlikely that Christ was actually born on December 25th, for the Bible says that at the time of His birth, shepherds were in the fields with their flocks. That would have been in spring, when lambs are born. But since the early Christians did not record exactly when He was born, when the Church moved into Europe and saw the local people celebrating a winter festival to welcome back the newborn God, it was easy enough for them to set His feast day near, but not on, Yule, and adopt the festival as their own. Such traditions as the Yule log and the Christmas tree were brought over from pagan practices."

Chip's eyebrows came down, and he snapped, "Now wait a minute!"

"I was there when this was happening, Chip, but you may certainly research the point if you wish to confirm what I have said. In fact, there are churches who do not allow these customs due to their association with pagan faiths. If they celebrate Christmas at all, it is solely as a religious observance of Jesus' birth. But, from my point of view, the meaning of those customs was changed radically enough when they were imported into Christianity that they are no longer at all pagan."

"Oh," Chip said. He didn't sound very convinced.

Diarwen went on, "The concept of reincarnation, so important to my religious observance, was never involved in the miracle of a maiden giving birth to the Son of God. Evergreen boughs to Christians represent eternal life in Heaven, rather than honoring the Holly King, who like we Sidhe, is reborn right here."

She was diplomatic about that. She believed that most humans were also reincarnated, just as Sidhe and Cybertronians were, but knew that Chip, and possibly the other humans as well, might take issue with that idea. "Yet, all of us, no matter what faith, see this time of year as symbolic of peace and renewed hope."

Chip had little to say to that, but all the Cybertronians read his fields as ruffled and agitated. Undoubtedly, once he returned to the base, he would be on the computer looking for more information, but for now, there was no use being argumentative for its own sake.

Which was a change the old Chip Chase would never have admitted was possible.

Prowl said, "The orbit of a planet around its star is based on principles of physics, not the actions of deities. How is it that the solstices and equinoxes are of interest to anyone except scientists and stargazers?"

"Prowl, think of what it was like for the ancestors—mine, Chip's, Mikaela's, Jack's—who had not yet developed mathematics, and did not have the sensory equipment to observe the orbit of a planet around its star, Indeed, for many millennia humans believed what their eyes seemed to tell them: that the sun orbited the earth."

There was a small but intense silence among the Cybertronians. As fish cannot conceive a life out of water, they had never realized that humans' senses could lie to them. Their own did not; if they did , error messages and a fall into Ratchet's not-untender mercies resulted.

Diarwen continued, "The ancestors had no way of knowing that summer would return. Indeed, when I was a child, most of Europe was still locked in the grip of glaciers. Winter was difficult for everyone, but it was dreadfully harsh for the northern humans and the Neanderthals. Remember, they did not have the technological marvels which exist today: no electricity, no warm, solid houses, no way to preserve food over the winter. And few of them had access to the elemental powers of my folk, which serve us as well as technology. But they were very, very observant. It did not take them long to mark the cross-quarter days. To the shamans and the wise folk, the winter solstice was evidence that winter would not last forever—that the Mother had not abandoned them to freeze in the darkness.

" And after Yule comes Imbolc, mating season for many creatures, and the first inevitable stirrings of spring are visible to those who are looking for them. After Yule, the religious leaders observed the lengthening of the days, and could reassure those who did not have the senses necessary to feel it for themselves that the land was only sleeping, not dead, and would awaken in due time. Also, for those further south who were subsistence farmers, midwinter offered a space of comparatively free time. The herds had been culled at Samhain, and the last harvest had been brought in. The people had time for a celebration, and need of one, in those cold dark days. And, it would seem from the universal popularity of all the holidays, it is a need that we still share today, although our lives now are so much easier."

"And," Prowl said, "although you now understand the turning of the seasons."

Diarwen smiled at him. "Understanding the reason behind a phenomenon need not rob it of its wonder, Prowl."

Chip's face lightened a bit, and his shoulders relaxed.

End Part 7