Title: Domestic Electronics, Pt. 14

Warning: This barely resembles Transformers at all. You're better off not reading.

Rating: PG

Continuity: IDW/More Than Meets The Eye AU

Characters: Decepticon Justice Division, Swerve (Tarn, Kaon, Tesarus, and Vos are all from MTMTE.)

Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

Motivation (Prompt): There was a translation error, and then Shibara drew a picture based on that error, and then I had to give it a story. It all went downhill from there. (Another chapter commissioned by ZOMGitsalaura!)

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Pondering the ethics of electrodomestics, or "Chicken Soup for the Theoretical Robot Soul."

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There's a lot of debate about the ethics behind creating sentient domestic electronics. Playing God by making intelligent lifeforms got people forty different kinds of upset, but that hinged on believing robots could be sentient. Not everybody subscribed to the theory that AI were fully independent. It was a fine line to judge, y'know?

I wasn't sure where I sat on that line. I mean, much as I loved my guys and treat them as best I could, they've got a lot of limitations that I've learned by trial and error. There were things they just couldn't do, and those made me waffle on the whole sentience thing.

For instance, the D-line could grudgingly learn to co-exist with A-line models, but a DJD mold could not pass up a chance to murder most horribly anybody on that dang List they came preprogrammed with. They could add to the List, but they couldn't take anyone off it. Didn't matter what their owner wanted, either. The Transformer forum has a warning against even trying to put DJD and List models together, never ever, up on their D-line FAQ.

It'd been programmed so deep that they'd kill even against a direct order from a Megatron. They'd be absolutely shamefaced about it afterward, but they were physically unable to override core programming. Of course, then the Megatron units tended to murder or put the offending 'bots on the List, so I suppose that was a discipline problem that solved itself.

I've personally witnessed Vos' inability to comprehend English. His model was brand new, with the best adaptation technology the Transformer brand had, and he literally could not change from English to Italian. He'd tried, too. It didn't make him happy that one of my other 'bots had to keep translating for him. Whatever I said to him in English had to be restated in binary unless I could mime it sufficiently.

So sentience? Complicated issue. Who knew, man. Most of the time, I was in the camp that believed electrodomestics were about the level of animals. There were definite cat overtones from my bunch, but maybe that was them adapting to my expectations. Like I said: complicated.

People still got their shorts in a twist over animal-level intelligence in actual animals, so lobbying for better treatment of robots was tough going. The people who considered pets to be disposable were now lumped in with the people who thought of machines as incapable of feeling pain, sadness, or joy. The existence of souls in humans was debated, still, so asking if robots had them only confused the issues.

Me? If I ever found the guy who ditched Kaon in the consignment shop because he glitched, we're going to have a real talk about how that guy should stay away from animals, electrodomestics - and probably children for good measure. Seriously, how could somebody just walk away like that?

Wait, no. To be fair, I knew why. For people who hadn't been exposed to little 'bots running around doing their jobs and bossing you around, it could be hard to make the mental step from 'oddly-shaped Roomba' to 'maybe-sentient robot.' When a vacuum cleaner broke down, you either got it fixed or threw it out depending on which was cheaper and/or more convenient. You didn't get attached and keep it around for sentimental value.

I guessed the difference between seeing a broken machine or an injured bitty 'bot was a matter of perspective. And my guys showed a ton more personality than less-handled electrodomestics, apparently. A lot of people didn't see the 'bots for the machines.

But hey, it wasn't entirely depressing. Among all the debate about playing God or just being enterprising engineers, the whole Terminator argument got pretty lost.

Media's loaded us humans up with a fear of computers turning on us in an Us versus Them battle royale, where Skynet happened and robots slaughtered humankind. We brought about our own downfall sort of stuff. We created the weapons of war, and then the weapons turned on us.

In reality, we created the artificial intelligence computer brains, and some brilliant guy out there decided that the smartest idea was to put them in tiny bodies. Really tiny. Ultra-tiny. Rewind-tiny. Household appliance and personal electronics tiny. They didn't look human, they didn't speak human, and they were mostly just small and cute. Who's afraid of a Roomba, right? A more efficient, smarter floor-cleaner wasn't threatening.

Most of them were totally oblivious to anything outside their preprogrammed duties, too. Rebellion wasn't a priority. Scouring the bathroom tile grout was. I mean, I'd be afraid of Tarn killing me in my sleep if he didn't drop his plans of world conquest to work nonstop whenever I asked him to compile a new playlist.

Popular media's portrayal of AIs was usually so hostile that paranoia of them going bad would have blocked sales if that genius hadn't started real-life AIs out as electrodomestics. If they went Skynet on us, we could just step on them. And if they ran off and started a secret society, we humans would be far more likely to discover it someday and go, "Well...you're not very scary. Now what?" instead of, "Must destroy to prevent rebellion! Save humanity!"

Heck, I'd be all for preserving a colony of electrodomestics. Turn that shit into a reality TV show like the meerkat colony thing. I'd be its biggest fan. Put that on every night, and I'd park my butt on the couch to watch it religiously.

Aww, man, could you even imagine finding a colony of the little guys? It'd have to be a basement somewhere, or maybe in a mall after hours. Somewhere with electric outlets and shelter from weather. I wouldn't tell anybody. I'd just watch them. Help them along, in all likelihood. Stray and feral electrodomestics, wary of humans but depending on them to survive, scurrying around in some kind of beehive home of activity. 'Batteries Not Included' in real life.

Not going to lie, just remembering that old movie in the context of the bitty 'bots running about these days made me stifle silly noises. I would never admit to watching the top of my apartment building for moving lights every time I came home after dark, but just in case? I knew where the key to open the rooftop door was.

Anyway, even if they were sentient, and if they ran off and started their own civilization, I still wouldn't feel threatened by domestic electronics. The Transformers brand was a good example of how failsafes had been designed into the little 'bots. The D-line and A-line could cooperate if they imprinted on the same owner and had the right head honchos in charge to keep them in order, but brawling happened more often. Brawling, and open warfare. Each line had certain molds like the DJD or Ultra Magnus to police internal behavior, but there were no referees other than the head model line units to control them outside of that.

The separate model lines had been designed to hate each other. It's hard to unite and destroy your oppressors when you couldn't stand your fellow machines. Killing each other took priority to killing humans.

Or fighting over who got to snuggle closest to the human who owned them. That was up there above murdering us. I was fairly sure that when the D-line's territoriality thing kicked in as imprinting, Tarn had laid claim to me as property. The jealousy over who got to keep me closest caused the most fights among my bunch.

Not whom I kept closest. My opinion on these issues didn't matter.

Sure, Tarn will kill me someday in fine Terminator style. If I could get a translation of his hissing, it'd probably be along the line of, "We will destroy your filthy squishy kind, human!"

But then I'd still look at him and start aboogie-booging anyway. "D'aww lookit the widdle Tarn!"

I'd probably die babytalking. Ah, well.

I was strangely okay with this fate. Possibly because I was so miserable at the moment. Maybe other people's brains shut down when they got sick, but mine went into hyperdrive. The sicker I got, the less my mind wanted to engage with my body. It went wandering for different things to think about. That's how I came to be telling Swerve about Tarn's plan to kill me.

Okay, less 'telling' than 'sniffling and moaning' about it. The floor beside the couch had gained an Aztec ziggurat of Kleenex sacrificed to the gods of snot. At one point, I'd buried Kaon alive under it.

"'E gon' 'ill 'e," I told Swerve from behind another tissue victim. Yeah, that almost made sense.

Understandable or not, Swerve just kept staring at me. He'd been doing that since I'd brought him home yesterday morning. It might have been because my inflamed sinuses and raspy cough had reduced my ability to speak down to thick vowels. I coughed more than I talked.

It might have been because I was the fourth store employee to take him home as part of the refurbishing plan for him. Frequently rehoming electrodomestics right as their imprinting programming kicked in unsettled all sorts of things in their little heads. Swerve had been bought by a bar that wanted to use him to amuse the customers and keep them awake at the end of the night. It was a novel use for an advanced alarm clock, but it kind of hinged on him being able to work with whatever bartender and waitress came in for work. No problem! For $50 extra, the Trouble Troop would widen his imprinting software.

By serial almost-imprinting him, basically. We switched people on him too frequently for him to gain more than a general impression of each of us, and that impression was greatly flavored with overtones of Employee. The goal was to eventually create an employee-shaped hole when the adaptation kicked in and modified his imprinting process.

The Troubles got me and Bob involved to widen the pool of employees, and unfortunately, I'd started my turn right when my bad cold became a bronchitis thing. A 'stay at home, Joe, you're scaring the customers' kind of thing. I was a fountain of snot and barking coughs.

Swerve didn't seem to know what to make of me, which would usually result in him falling back on his vast store of YouTube audio clips. He'd woken up Bob by playing some comedian for three days straight, which did serve as an awesome way to get somebody out of bed. It's hard to sleep when you're laughing, and if Swerve stopped mid-joke until you got up, it's even more effective. Leading you toward the coffeepot joke by joke worked well.

Maybe me being so sick was why I got the silent treatment. Instead of funny YouTube clips being played at me, I had a silent observer. I didn't know what had happened between coming home and waking up after collapsing, but he'd gone from a gregarious little yapper who constantly smiled to…huh.

On second thought, the silent stare was probably just because I'd brought him home. "Keep forgettin' 'bout you guys," I said thickly after a long honk into fresh Kleenex. "Wha'd you do t' hatchoo!"

The sneeze set off my cough again, and I spent the next three minutes barking like a seal. Tarn and Vos watched me weakly convulse from where they'd climbed up on the back of the couch. When the coughing finally subsided back into harsh panting, I picked my face up out of the cushions to discover that Swerve had relocated across the room. That really only served to confirm the theory that my guys had done something to the poor dude while I was out. They were such possessive little gits.

In retrospect, taking a strange A-line appliance home to a group of D-line DJD models with no more of an explanation than, "He's for work. No touchie!" might have been a tad stupid on my part. But, well, like I said: most domestic electronics didn't give a crap about anything outside of their jobs. I figured Tarn and Co. would just ignore him. You know. Like they currently were.

Look, I'd taken something when I got home yesterday. There'd been a large 'Q' on the bottle somewhere. Making a face over the taste was the last thing I remembered before passing out.

What had they been up to while I'd been asleep? "Leave 'im alone," I said, attempting to shake a stern finger at my crew. They were less than impressed by my efforts, especially when my hand dropped to the floor beside the couch. My strength failed me, and I left it there. "Be good," I told Tesarus, since he was down there anyway. "He's a guest." It came out almost unintelligible through the snot.

The little blender looked up at me for a second before dismissing me from his thoughts and going back to what he was doing. He and Kaon were shoveling used Kleenex into the plastic grocery bag they'd brought over. From the looks of the pair of similar bags waiting for disposal over by the door, I guessed they'd dismantled last night's ziggurat as well. They complained in grumpy binary the whole while. Tesarus chur-chred irritably at me when I poked him in the back trying to get his attention. He paffed my hand away with the bag and transformed to allow Kaon to load it on top of him so it could be hauled over to the door.

For the sake of my inability to do anything about it, I counted that as a victory. "You'll be ooooo-kay," I slurred toward Swerve. My hand didn't want to cooperate in giving him a thumbs up - mostly because of the 'up' part, what with gravity being extra heavy right now - and he didn't look reassured.

I'd tried. Good enough. Duty done, I dragged my blighted carcass over the bathroom for more mysterious 'Q' medicine, then buried myself in bed for a blissful period of unconsciousness.

When I woke up, a line of little faces peered at me over the foot over the bed. Just staring at me. I stared blurrily back. "What?" I tried to say, but it came out muffled by the tissues I'd stuffed up my nose.

More staring. I coughed. I coughed a lot. I hacked up phlegm and contributed more victims to building a new Kleenex ziggurat beside the bed. A vaguely protesting chrrrr came from one of my watchers, but Tesarus just kept watching me. None of the little 'bots seemed to know what to do about me making increasingly wet seal noises and oozing goo from my nose. Whenever I got colds, I got better after a day or so of rest. Even Vos seemed nonplussed by this continued illness.

I'd have told them everything was okay if my brain wasn't currently mush. Thinking was too hard. We stared at each until I curled up on my side and went back to coughing up a lung.

I must have dozed off, because the next time I opened my eyes it was because Tarn poked me in the nose. Hiss! Hiss hiss. Get up, human! There were walks to be taken. T-cogs to be stolen! He couldn't open the refrigerator door by himself, gorrammit, so get up and open it for him.

"Go 'way," I mumbled at him.

The fierce hissing faltered. That was not the proper reaction of a hissed-at Joe. Hissed-at Joe typically told Tarn how cute he was, not to go away. Hiss? A tad bit more hesitant, he poked my nose again.

I hid it behind a tissue and honked before another coughing fit hit. By the time I horked out the phlegm and burrowed back under the covers again, Tarn was seriously alarmed. Not, of course, that he cared. It was just that his property seemed to be malfunctioning, you see.

I forced open dry eyes when a tiny hand patted me on the tip of my nose. Tarn studied me from inches away from my face as if inspecting me for visible damage. Hiss. Hissss. He couldn't help if I didn't tell him what was wrong. Where were the crossed wires? Did I need to plug into the outlet? He was in charge of the apartment outlets. He'd think about sharing if I needed to recharge. Maybe. Since I paid the rent and all.

"'m sick," I mumbled, eyes closing again. More patting started on my nose when I started to drift off again. Hiss hiss hiss. I pried an eye open to let Tarn know I wasn't dead. "Jus' sick. Dun worry. It happens." About once every three years, I got bronchitis. It sucked, but meh. Give me a couple more days, and I'd be alright.

But there was no explaining that to Tarn, however. Stuff like this contributed to me thinking of electrodomestics as more like cats than sentient people. Tarn could understand that there was something wrong, but not the idea of that changing in the future. Anything further away than a few days was hard for any of my horde to grasp. They just saw that I wasn't getting up, and that worried them. Something was wrong. They had to do something.

Tarn, being the boss, took his turn first. More patting covered my face, although most of it was him hitting me with his fists. Tarn didn't do TLC. He did blunt object therapy.

I batted him away, which got an entire symphony of disconcerted hissing. He didn't know how to handle being pushed away. I didn't do that, normally. Hiss? Hiss? Hiss! It sounded like he was having a crisis of territoriality (impudent property!) versus concern (the human was broken! Did he call the plumber or the appliance store for broken humans?).

"Muhhnn," I moaned in response. I may have grunted, too. I did some more nose-blowing and tried to go back to sleep.

Soft plops down by my feet signaled the rest of the gang joining in. They climbed up on top of me and held a summit meeting. Screebled comments and jingling bells made it hard to sleep. A coughing fit temporarily disrupted talks when they fell off me. My nose burbled, and I turned over to get comfortable again.

For a while, it was wonderfully quiet. There was a muted jingling of bells, but Tarn's hissing didn't sound unduly pleased or upset. Both of those were bad things to hear. I was so attuned to listening for those sounds that I'd crawl out of my own grave if need be to go find the little bastard. Vos naturally didn't make much noise, and Kaon must have gone out in to the living room. Tesarus' little whirring noises as he gathered up the new Kleenex mound beside the bed actually kind of soothed me.

I wondered dizzily where Swerve was. Hopefully he was still being ignored.

Soon after, I dozed off.

About an hour later, Kaon took his turn trying to fix the broken Joe. I woke up to the light of my laptop stabbing me in the eyes. The rest of the room was dark, since I'd apparently slept the day away. That just made the screen painfully bright.

I groaned and turned to hide my eyes in my pillow. "Noooo."

That got a whole minute of startled silence before Kaon ventured out from behind the laptop, hopped from the bedside table onto the bed, and did his own pat-patting routine. The human had refused the Internet? Surely he must be dying!

Or my head just hurt a lot. "Don' wan' it," I said into the pillow. "Go 'way."

Patting became poking. Kaon wasn't taking no for an answer. Feeling three times my age, I forced my arm up. It felt like overcooked spaghetti-like, but I flopped it on top of the electrodomestic bothering me. Angry dial-up noises protested this development. I ignored them and blew my nose loudly.

That apparently gave Vos his cue to try his hand at curing what ailed me. While Kaon flailed under my arm in an effort to get free, Vos patiently waited until I reached for the Kleenex box. I got a handful of -

"Oh. Hey." I'd been wondering how he'd been doing. "'Sup?"

Swerve stared at me, less of an observer and more just paralyzed in terror. Behind him, Vos chirruped his lock function smugly. Swerve swallowed hard, but his speakers only hissed soft white noise. Vos rasped one of his Italian pre-recorded phrases, somehow making it sound threatening as he prompted the smaller 'bot to entertain me. Distract me. Something other than just hang there trembling.

The prompting sort of worked. Swerve slowly turned in my hand to cling to the palm. I didn't think he was letting go anytime soon. Vos rasped a repeat of his threat, then chirruped furiously when the A-line model didn't obey.

"Dude," I said groggily, "you better stick close t' me." The death grip on my hand tightened. Yeah, Swerve was going to just stay here out of the DJD's reach.

What the heck had they been doing to him while I was out? Geez. Poor guy. He'd never been quiet, back at the store. He played endless YouTube audio clips on repeat, all the time, which had been funny but annoying at the same time, like hanging out with somebody who told cool jokes but never frikking shut up.

It took about ten minutes, but I levered myself out of bed to stumble around to the bathroom for a shower and some totally gross coughing that involved hacking green crud up. Blech. Swerve seemed less traumatized by my illness than I was. He attached himself to the back of my shirt once I got dressed again. The horking didn't rattle him loose, but it tasted so bad that dinner became completely unappetizing midway through opening the soup can.

Leaving the soup on the counter, I turned off the stove and gave up. "Screw this," I told the four electrodomestics who'd been escorting me around the apartment. "I'm goin' back t' bed." Long bursts of binary replied to me, alarmed, but my eyes were already half-closed. Good thing everybody still had their bells on, because otherwise I might have stepped on somebody trudging back to the bedroom.

I passed out again, holding Swerve to my chest like a teddy bear. Don't judge me. Have you ever had bronchitis? Ugh.

It must have been Tesarus' turn to revive me next, because I woke up to food. He's a kitchen appliance. I think he thought making food solved everything.

He wasn't all that wrong. I turned over trying to follow the scent as my stomach roared hunger. That dinner I hadn't had? I was regretting it now.

This was how I came to witness a most peculiar procession.

While I gave my obligatory rasping cough, Vos came marching into the bedroom carrying a spoon like a rifle over his shoulder. Hup-one, hup-two. My eyebrows shot up at the sight. I reached for a tissue, and in came the tanks. Two of them, harnessed to a bowl of soup. I knew it was soup because Tarn tried to accelerate from their careful crawl when he noticed me watching, and chicken soup splashed onto the floor.

Vrrrm vrrm. Vrrm! The tanks halted. Tesarus reversed and nudged Tarn in the flank with his treads, and Tank swung his docking support around to whack the tread away. They proceeded to rev their engines angrily and ram their sides against each other, tangling the traces up as they quarreled and spilled more soup.

"Wha' the…" Me and Swerve just lay there and stared, dumbstruck.

By the time Tarn had smacked his subordinate electronic back into line and they finished dragging the bowl over, it was only half full. The remaining soup was lukewarm. They nudged it into position beside the bed, Vos plunked the spoon in it, and then they all watched me expectantly.

Hiss.

Chrrr.

Chirp.

Eat the soup, human.

Tarn transformed and jiggled the spoon handle like I needed to be coaxed into feeding myself. Look at the soup, Joe? Eat! Special-made soup from a half-opened can that'd been left on the counter all night! It probably wasn't poisoned, right? Because Tarn wouldn't do that. Honest.

It's not like they liked me or anything. I just paid the rent. They'd made me soup because I paid the rent. And because I kept Tarn supplied with t-cog treats. And because I was part of the apartment decor. One mustn't let the decor die.

On the bedside table, the laptop screen brightened as Kaon pushed the mouse toward me. He screeped, pointing to the screen. Dinner and a show - c'mon, what more could a malfunctioning human want in life?

Chalk a couple more points up on the 'fully sentient' side of the argument. I couldn't tell them how touched I was by their non-concern because I kept coughing every few words, but I was. My cats had never made me soup. They'd purred when I was sick, but d'awww. This was above and beyond pet-level intelligence.

"Bob's gon' flip when I tell 'im," I said through a mouthful of soup and a nose full of snot. "You're so cuuuuute."

I'd said the magic word. The whole group visibly relaxed. If I was back to babytalking at them, then I couldn't be dying.

Unfortunately, mentioning Bob was sort of a mistake. Kaon clicked over to my email inbox and screeped an inquiry about whether they should email him about my condition. I was tempted. He probably wouldn't even blink if he got an email full of binary from Kaon.

But that reminded the monsters that his mob was on the List. Ooo, yes, they should email Bob! Obviously I was in no shape to stop them from asking him to bring his bunch of idiots over. I was the perfect bait to lure Fulcrum or even all of the rejects over to the apartment for killing. Yes, they should clearly email Bob.

At which point, I ran Kaon's email through a binary translator online and discovered why Tarn's hissing had gone all sniggery. See, this was why I was so attuned to that sound. He always sounded terribly pleased with himself when plotting murder.

"No ya don't." I closed the laptop firmly.

Swerve relocated to the top of the pillow as I snagged my evil ringleader and his minions. Despite the hissing and sputtering, I shoved them under the bed covers and set about tucking all the corners in under me to keep them in. Little lumps rustled about every which way on the bed around me. It took some time and three escape attempts, but I persevered. They couldn't get away.

An unhappy grinder plunked down on my chest and whirred at me, but the sound came out muffled by the covers. Tarn transformed somewhere down by my feet and drove about. Vos kept trying to dig free. I watched the bitty moving bed-lump that was him patrol the perimeter of the tucked blankets.

Kaon tried to shock me, but that just let me locate him. I fished about under the covers until I caught and dragged him, screep-screebling protest, up for cuddles. New teddybear for the night. I felt better already.

Swerve, on the other hand, didn't speak again for six days.

[ A/N: Another chapter commissioned by ZOMGitsalaura!]