The Diego Diaries: Roamin in the Gloamin (dd6 342)

-0-Around

Partition walked into the Diner On The Corner with Lancer to eat lunch. Shortly, he would go on duty at his substation, #46 and be a beat cop and call out medic for that district. Lancer was working on a number of items with Special Ops-Intelligence and would be busy. This was one of the few times they could come together easily for the foreseeable future. The job was a heavy task master sometimes. They took a booth, ordered, then grinned at each other. "What about the weekend? Did you ask them for time off?"

"I did. It depends upon the job, Partition. I hope to have it off but you know how it is," Lancer said with a grin.

"I do," he replied. "What about the plans? What do you need me to do?"

"Show up?" Lancer said with a smile.

"No problem there," Partition said. "Bluestreak said he'd handle the reception and parties. Apparently, there's more than a few."

"Well, I am from Praxus after all," Lancer said as the waiter brought their food to the table. They organized their meal, then Lancer grinned. "I don't have a mob to challenge you about the bond. Just consider it done."

"Your family will come. I know they will," Partition said loyally. They ate a moment, then he looked at her with a serious expression. "What would they think of me, Lancer? Really."

Lancer grinned. "They would love you because I do."

He stared at her for a moment. "I do. Forever."

She nodded. "Ditto."

They ate their meal together chatting companionably until it was time to go to work. Then they parted and went their separate ways. Their bonding ceremony with Optimus Prime was nine orns away.

-0-At Earth2

They settled in and joined everyone in the main recreational room for breakfast. It was strange having dinner with about 1,200 people sitting in the vast space. If pressed, it could hold everyone and it did during the celebrations thus far. Outside, the light was dimming as night time began to assert itself. Inside, lights coded to the internal rhythms of the human body were beginning to rise just slightly. It would be so gradual that no one would really notice. Then at 2200 hours, the lights would go down and nightlights throughout the facility but for the fields of the farm would come on to signal that evening was hard upon them. It would stay dark until dawn when they would gradually rise until they went off for the most part during the sunny day.

Cynthia Tomas sat with some of the newcomers helping them through the first few days. The Walters and Cutters were sitting with her, along with the children who eating and asking questions. Most of them had to do with school and getting outside. Clay sat with Barrett almost in self defense with all the girls and listened. Both of the boys were quieter in their demeanor but not in their actions. All of them had a huge social presence on media on Earth from Instagram to Twitter and Facebook. She had done her homework and had a small pit of dread in her stomach over what the future could hold for everyone with such entitled kids in the habitat. She would make them her special surveillance project.

The adults were interested in getting into their jobs, one of which would be singularly his own personal business. Clark Walters would be running his Earth businesses here rather than contributing directly to the mission of the habitat. Lyle Cutter would be working on efficiency. That also filled her with dread. The Daniels sat nearby eating with the Beliveaus. Most of them knew each other and were friends in the sense that they knew the same people and often ran into each other. Cassie Daniels was a nervous woman who liked to support her husband's aims and goals. She would dive into the social whirl, such as it was and be an ally to Mariah Davis and the others. How the local women would receive that was still a guess.

Bill Nast sat with his children eating with them and Rick Harris. They were a lot alike, both ex-military and well trained. They would become friends, Cynthia thought as she scoped everyone out. His kids were a bit overwhelmed though they hid it well. They were orphaned by Shockwave and here they were, motherless in the heart of Botswana. She would keep her eyes on them, too. They were asking to go to school here at the facility. Tim was 17 and a junior while his sister, Amber was 16. They had always attended Christian schools so this would be an eye opener for both of them. 400+ kids attended the public schools here, both elementary and high school. They would be just two more.

Mariah Davis walked to their table and sat down. She grinned at Annie Cutter and Willow Walters. "How are you doing?"

"It's a change, a big one. I'll feel better when the kids are in school and I can look around to see this place. It's remarkable," Willow said. She was tall and thin, impeccably groomed and wore 'casual' clothing, the type that looked simple but was expensive and tailored. She had blonde hair and blue eyes, was well educated and liked the social life.

Mariah nodded. "I hear you. The schools are good. Are you sending them here or to the bot schools?"

"I want to go to the bot schools," Tinsley said. The others nodded.

Rain who was sitting nearby with the other two grinned slightly. "I think you should go. We'll show you around."

"Then its settled," Willow said as the others nodded. "Barry, Tinsley and Gina will go there. Right?" she asked them as they nodded. "What about your kids, Annie?"

Anna Cutter glanced at her kids who nodded. "We want them to go as well. Nothing like experiences to get you into Harvard."

They all laughed but they all meant it. The kids, on the other hand, were only curious and interested in how they could parlay this experience into fame on their own home world.

-0-Out there

The flare of huge dimensional energy flashed out and rolled into the darkness of space. It was an extraordinary light show for whoever might have been there but no one was. That is, they weren't until the flashes died out. A fleet was present where one wasn't before as the light dimmed all around them. They sparkled with energy across their bows and along the length of their vessels, then it was gone.

Sitting on the command chair in the eye of the storm, a big rugged mech looked around. "Status report."

His second worked it out, then looked at Optimus Prime. "It's happened the same way as before. We aren't where we're supposed to be. Again."

"Get Wheeljack up here," Prime said as he sat back in his chair. "We have to understand what's happening." He glanced at his second. "How far are we from where we were last time?"

Prowl studied a monitor, then turned toward him. "We're several sectors away."

"Take us back there and pull into that nebula," Prime said. "Get Jhiaxus and Shockwave on this. This has to be resolved. We have to go home."

Prowl nodded, then made it so.

-0-Sciences

Wheeljack walked into the sensor control and data room, then halted beside a group of youngsters who were working on a deep space array near the Rim. The energy rifts there were being monitored due to their proximity to the local group and Cybertron. They were unpredictable and dangerous with the whole sector being off limits for Cybertronians to traverse almost since their beginning as space going creatures. They had rescued everyone that was known to have lived there including the unwilling neighbors of the Functionalist Council. Now they had a disturbance that read familiar according to the operator at the console.

"What's the word?" Wheeljack asked.

A youngster looked up. "We had a massive power discharge, plasma that was off the scope. What's left behind is reading like a battle group."

"What's the data? Show me," Wheeljack asked.

They did and it appeared that they weren't there a moment, then they were. He stared at it, then pulled up more data. Putting them together, he noted that they were similar read outs. "Interesting. This is what happened when something attacked us last time. They have a number of similar attributes. Download this and I'll take it to Prime."

A youngster did so and handed a datapad to Wheeljack. He took it and set out for Ops Center and Prime.

-0-Ops Center

"Your genitors want to have a dinner for everyone in two orns," Prowl said as he sat down with Optimus. "They want to have everyone over to their apartment because they want to cook all the food you liked as a child. I think that's brilliant."

"It was very simple food with different things added from time to time. I liked it but then that is what there was," Optimus said as he conjured back to the simple fare that he ate as a youth.

"They eat that now when your ada cooks. I think they need to know both sides. By the way, the Jumble is being set aside for preservation because of your little flat. The entire area will be surveyed, sorted out and made safe structurally. Then they plan to return it to what it was before it was left to really go. All of the few things left in your family's apartment are being removed so that they can be refinished and restored to their condition when you lived there. Then the whole area is going to be a museum for the city and planet. Magnus put the project in for registration in the historical domain files and it was approved," Prowl said.

"Who approved it?" Optimus asked as he thought of the tiny two room apartment that had been his home all of his life.

"The Historical Preservation Committee at the University and the Restoration and Assessment Team at the Museum. They believe that we have to take different places and preserve them for the historical record. Your home and that entire area is considered ground zero for that. I agree," Prowl said. He looked at Prime. "I went to see it before the final vote." …

… The Jumble, Iacon, Cybertron

It was dark on the winding streets that led to the tenement that was home to Orion Pax from birth until adulthood. They were scattered with trash, the debris of war and runaway neglect. They held shadows that were eerie and memories of good and bad times. Families lived here in cramped quarters, homes that were sweltering in the heat and light of summer and cold during the winters. Children played in the streets watched over by elders or other family members too sick, debilitated or indifferent to work. Given the unemployment rates which contributed to the rise of Megatron, a significant factor in his sweeping popularity at the time, it was probably less by choice than circumstance that so many had no work.

There was little here but poverty, broken dreams and pride. It was a closed society, this place and others, where the inmates did their best and showed a solid front to the government that didn't care about them, the landlords that exploited them, the police who harassed them, and the Primes that ignored them. It was a tough, hardcore place and he wondered what it would be like to grow up here in this much disappointment. Then he considered that Ultra Magnus, Ratchet, Elita, and Jetta along with Optimus himself had come from these very streets. It almost beggared belief.

The triumph of the spirit and the spark over oppression and repression was something he could relate to. He had done the same thing from the other end of the spectrum and somehow, somewhere in the middle, the child of poverty and the child of privilege had found common ground. He looked up at the dark sky and felt the longing for sunshine again. He would have to talk to Wheeljack and Perceptor about that. He reached the corner tenement where had Ratchet lived. He paused, then walked in. It was a long haul to the floor where his apartment was, if one could call two closets an apartment.

He pushed the door open and stepped inside. It was ridiculously small and cramped. The furniture was primitive but mended to be useful. There was a small table and chairs, a dilapidated couch and in the other room, a frame for a small double berth. There were small cupboards nailed to the wall, one for the kitchen and one for who knew what in the tiny berth room that obviously was for Ravel and Tie Down. He looked at the couch and thought about Ratchet coming home everyday from hard work to sleep there. It made him sick so he looked at the kitchen. There was a ghetto cold box, one everyone made themselves which could keep a few things longer and a battered pan for a sink. There was no running water, no inside facilities, no comforts at all.

He walked out, went down and continued. He passed the building where Elita and Magnus aka Deion lived and crossed the street. On the other side of the narrow street, the tenement that was home to Jetta towered into the darkness, all of its windows as broken out as any other in this area. He reached the building that was the home of Optimus, then stared upward. He glanced around. This was the home of Orion Pax, son of Tagg and Kestrel of Iacon. He walked in, crossed the battered lobby, then went upward on the winding stairs. It seemed to take forever to reach the door.

Standing outside, he looked around and imagined a small child like Miracle living like this. He put the through out of his mind, then opened the door. The apartment, such as it was, was like all the others, two tiny rooms and shabby furniture. There were notes tacked to the walls about the condition of the place and what needed done first before the rest of the heavy lifting by the restoration team. He read them. They had taken all the furnishings away for evaluation and restoration at some point.

The windows were broken but he looked out of them anyway. The walls were tired and the paint peeled. He wondered if it did when they lived there. Tagg would have prevented that, he thought. Looking around the tiny room, he peered into the other, noting its emptiness. Their room, his couch … just like Ratchet and the others. Growing kids curling up on a couch that at some point would be too short for them to be comfortable filled his processor with unwanted images. Growing up in a gang of kids, playing in the streets, working too young, and watching others live their dreams … that was life here.

He felt shame. He felt white hot fury. He looked around, then touched a wall. If it could tell him the stories of Optimus's life, he would have been grateful. All the orns of his life where Prowl wasn't there were hurtful to him. He wanted to be there to change the awful dreary poverty that had been the relentless companion of nearly everyone he knew. But it was past and this was now. It was only now that he could shape. He looked around, then stepped out and gently closed the door. It would be a long silent walk back to the gates of the Jumble and a bridge jump home.

… now …

"It's important to save that space, Optimus. If we don't learn from history, we're doomed to repeat it," Prowl said.

Optimus nodded. "It was not all bad, you know. Some of it was beautiful. Playing in the street … being there with my genitors when they were young … my grandgenitors. It was my life."

Prowl nodded. "I wish I had known you then."

"I know. I didn't know you but I missed you. There was never anyone else before you, Prowl," he said quietly.

Prowl squeezed his servo, then turned to see Wheeljack walking in with a datapad. "What now?" he asked softly.

-0-TBC 4-29-18 edited 5-14-18