Note: Like I said before, chapter order is determined by what you guys vote for on the poll on my profile (which is updated with the release of each new chapter, and if you voted for this one you now have an extra vote to spend on another chapter idea), and not the chronological order of things. Which is partly because I'm not too sure of those myself :/ Anyway, this story fits in after Jazz's sections, but before Red's by roughly a year. I do think however it's only slightly before Pleasure Dolls.
Dolls Have More Fun
By Uniasus
Chapter 7 - Evolution
If you asked any Creator who was the authority on sparks, they would answer Wheeljack. Sure, he was a little crazy and you typically don't want someone fond of explosions near your life source, but the white Creator was where to go. He built the best dolls.
Wheeljack though knew he wasn't a spark expert. Oh, he used to be, no doubt about that, but now he was beginning to doubt it.
He, as well as many other spark engineers, had learned what they knew from studying the dead and dying bodies of other Creators. This was acceptable when they all first woke up, what other use did such mechs and femmes have? And before Cybertronian society reached it's current status, Creators had been stricken by various aliments. Some lived, some didn't, but they all presented fabulous case studies into the spark.
Obviously, the building of dolls and having them do all the work relieved the stress on Creators' systems and it had been a long while since a Creator got sick. So Wheeljack moved on to making dolls. Which he was rather good it.
The secret to making a doll wasn't just in the chassis and wiring, but in the spark. Building them was unpredictable; Wheeljack knew what they were made of, how the interacted with the body, but every time he constructed one it looked different. The frequency of them varied, as did the hue they had, but Wheeljack put it down to effects of the programming and personality Creators wanted.
Always though, doll sparks were dimmer than those of Creators. It was an artificial life after all; there were bound to be some imperfections that made them of a lower status. Not to mention they couldn't shift forms. That was something linked to sparks, and dolls just didn't have that capacity. And drones? Not a chance. Drone sparks were pretty much all the same – small, low frequency, and gave off a dime white light. They were lesser sparks and Wheeljack didn't concern himself with them.
He had never been able to create a Creator spark, but that just confirmed that Creators were natural beings meant to rule and that Wheeljack couldn't create a perfect life. It was a nice reminder to be humbled before nature.
Being the expert on sparks made him also the go-to guy for doll repairs and those curious drone cases.
"What do you mean he stop working?" Wheeljack asked while prying open his chest plates.
"I mean exactly that," Perceptor said. He was a doll Wheeljack had built to help around the lab. "Alpha Trion said that Red Alert said he just left his post and started walking towards the door. And he did it the next week too even after a reinstallation."
"Most interesting." Drone sparks were pretty much all the same because they had the same limited programing. Do this job, and only this job, stopping only to fuel or if you need repairs. They were more machines than anything else, though gladiator drones had a bit of life to make fights interesting. Not that Wheeljack ever went to one. For a drone to be acting against his orders even after having them reinstalled, there had be an issue with the spark.
The chest cover came off. Wheeljack spent a moment pushing aside wires and Perceptor clamped them down so they wouldn't get in his way. Opening the laser core, white mech figured that maybe the engineer who had made this spark did it improperly and it was starting to come apart. Instead, the spark had a slightly red-orange tint to it and the frequency was much higher than any drone's spark. Still, it was more drone than a doll.
"How upsetting," Wheeljack muttered.
"I don't understand." Perceptor said.
"The engineer who made this drone tried to give him a personality. That never goes well, it drives the drone insane, especially if it isn't in line with the programming it's installed with. I guess we'll just have to build a replacement spark."
"And what about this one?"
"Destroy it."
Perceptor seemed to freeze, hesitate, and Wheeljack looked up at him frowning. "It's not strong enough to be a doll and any mind it might have would just get destroyed due to programming conflicts."
Slowly, Wheeljack removed the spark from the laser core and deposited in Perceptor's hands. "Get rid of it," he enforced with his Master protocols and Perceptor turned around to do as he asked.
What he had dismissed as a freak occurrence came back to his main processor as he looked over a doll over a vorn later. He hadn't built it; he never would have put so many sensors on a doll's frame. Which was essentially the problem. The doll was to sensitive and overloaded too fast, killing any fun his Master had planned. It was no wonder the doll had had several owners.
On a whim he had decided to look in on the seeker doll's spark and was surprised at how un-doll like it was. It was a bright orange and large enough it almost seemed too big for the laser core. It was a Creator spark, but the seeker was most certainly a doll.
He dropped his tool and Perceptor looked up from across the lab. "Everything alright?"
"Yes, just clumsy. Do you think you can build me a new laser core slightly bigger than the one he already has?"
The doll tilted his head, looking up the seeker's schematics. "No problem."
Wheeljack nodded and then got lost in his own thoughts. Had the spark evolved? And why wouldn't that drone spark leave his processor? Had it too? And what about that set of twins?
Mirage had come in looking worse than the twins he had commissioned, all beat up and dented and had demanded replacements for the defected dolls. And defected they were, sparks not consistent but constantly fluxing and shifting color. Linked doll sparks just weren't meant to be, no matter how many times Wheeljack looked at Blaster's or reviewed his notes from the Construction mechs. They turned violent, unstable. Mirage's pair was the first and last set of doll twins ever.
But what if they simply had evolved sparks, sparks whose personalities rebelled against Mirage and doll programming?
It was an intriguing thought, but one he couldn't prove as the dolls were no long around to study. But this doll, this seeker, if he could convince his Master that there would be times he would be useful and wanted… Not often of course, but if he wanted simply to play by making another overload repeatedly instead of himself, this doll would be perfect. And Wheeljack could keep track of him, a small tracker and vital monitor on the new laser core would be easy to hide. Who else would ever open this doll up?
And I wonder, he thought, looking up to watch Perceptor program the vectors into the metal cutter, if it's a trait all dolls have or only certain ones, those that are faulty. Or is it 'faulty' because of a lack of explanation?
Wheeljack did love discovery and answering questions.
A/N: I don't know where Perceptor came from! He wasn't in this chapter plan originally, and now he has a whole story waiting to be written if you guys vote for it.
A couple of notes. In this verse, there is only two flier models - seeker and shuttle. So the doll Wheeljack is working on here can be pretty much anyone with wings. You're welcome to take a stab at who he is if you want. Also, as mentioned, only Creators can transform. I don't think I've mentioned that previously because, well, I didn't think of it before this chapter XD But in all honesty, there really isn't a reason for dolls to have an alt form to begin with and Creators don't shift very often either (with the exceptions being seekers on occasion, but all Creators, and dolls for that matter, can fly a la 80s cartoon style in bipedal mode. Tis just not very practical for anything other than short distances, and most Creators/dolls take transports).
I swear, when I get this all straightened out and chapters rearranged so they're in narrative order, there will be a lot of changes in the details. Goodness!
So yes, I figured it was soooo long since I updated for this fic I just had to bring in a new chapter. That I wrote while I was at work tonight, fancy that! Does that count as being paid to write?
