The Diego Diaries: Say what? (dd6 645)
=0=At the meeting
They stared at Wheeljack who was consulting his data pad. Ratchet leaned forward. "Explain."
"Sure," Wheeljack said as he glanced up again. "We figured out how to retrieve Cybertron and bring it here. That is, if you consider all of the many things we have to do to make it so. Here's the short list."
He glanced at Percy who handed him another data pad.
Wheeljack began to recite the steps toward retrieval. "We have to move a planet that's fully populated and in sync with a local group, all of which must go. Therefore, we're looking at retrieving in all 15 planets in the local group and half a dozen elsewhere over time. Cybertron is first of course and poses distinct problems of its own.
"First, we have the moons. Do we take them first and put them somewhere, retrieving them when we get Cybertron seated or do we take them afterward? When you remove moons from planetary orbit it causes tidal reactions in their planet. Cybertron may be a metallic planet but a lot of it isn't, a hold over from when it was an aggregate world with totally organic features. Even those parts that are not still organic, the parts of Primus that He's transformed, they still work in unison.
"When a comet strikes a planet, it rings like a bell. Anything that happens inside a planet causes waves to flow outward. There are also those parts of the core and deep mantle that are globular in nature and shift, usually molten forms of heavy dense minerals and metals. Right now, the Earth is experiencing that with the magnetic poles. Under normal circumstances like that going on there right now, the poles often shift and even cause reversal of the poles.
"Right now they're shifting so fast and randomly that no one can keep up. The humans can't. Its believed that globular bodies of liquid iron moving around down deep in the Earth are causing this and it affects GPS navigation and all that. Planes need it pinpointed to stay on track. We're helping them by the way," Wheeljack said glancing up to Prime who nodded. "And that's just them. We have the same problem as well though its less all encompassing due to our special nature.
"We will have vibrations within Cybertron no matter how this happens. The intensity and its effects will be the concern. We can remove the moons one at a time and post them around a holding planet, one that has no life and no organized purpose so they can stay there until we position Cybertron and get it in line. Taking them with Cybertron is a difficult thing and poses the most danger for transit.
"It takes a good long time for a planet to stop ringing. Caminus did. But that's where we have the advantage. Cybertron is sentient and we can through the Matrix and you, Prime, perhaps enlist His help to make this as comfortable and danger-free for Him as possible. But that's down the list," he said as he perused the data pad.
"The mathematics and physics took this long to figure out thanks to Miler and Teletraan. Now we have the plan and formula. Looking at our arsenal and the upgrading which is constant for our unified field generators, we have the hardware to do this. We need three Triggers, 10,000 unified field generators and the smaller Autobot City bridge to make this transferal. Which we do first I will leave to you. Either way, we have ringing. If we take Cybertron without aligning the moons, they could crash into each other when its removed so it almost tells us what order to do this."
It was silent a moment.
Ratchet glanced at Prime. "Would Primus be able to tell you if this will work without hurting anyone including Him?"
Prime considered that. "I can ask. I would not want to have to do this without His assent."
"Me neither," Wheeljack said.
"I am assuming that you have it in order to go now?" Prime asked.
Wheeljack nodded. "You'd be right. We can do this when you give the word. We've run over 300,000,000,000 sims to go over every single possible problem and its come up aces for the plan we have decided to use."
"What is that plan, Wheeljack?" Prime asked.
Wheeljack keyed on a monitor and input his codes. An image of three Triggers appeared, the two in orbit and the one at Saturn which was used in the shipyard circling that planet that was building the war world space stations. It would be used to transport them including the soon-to-be started Midway Space Station for the humans as well as another war world for commerce down the Silk Road from the one just transported there earlier.
"These three Triggers will do the heavy lifting. One will be at Arcturus to help keep the transport smooth when the two here build the bridge to encircle Cybertron. The unified field generators would build the holding field for everyone, making it firm, strong and stable. Then it would hold it through the bridge which will be sped up utilizing the smaller Autobot City Bridge as the control. The Triggers will move it, the Autobot City Bridge will handle speed and the Trigger at Arcturus will help anchor it and keep it steady when it gets there. It will be so fast that anyone on the surface will be hard pressed to see any change until the sunlight shines on the planet," Wheeljack said as Perceptor nodded.
"That will be the first indication, Prime, that anything has changed or happened to anyone there who might not hear what happened. It will be that smooth and fast," Percy said.
It was deeply silent in the room as Prime placed his donut back on his plate. "Tell me about Arcturus. I am aware that it and Tau Ceti were candidates."
"We've studied Tau Ceti, Sirius and Arcturus among other lesser possibilities to find one that met all the criteria including being free of sentient or transformative life in the system. None of them come close to Arcturus. It's a red dwarf star midway through its journey toward white dwarfism that's a giant entity and is the brightest star in the Bootes Constellation. It's one and a half times bigger than Sol here in this system but is less hot. It does however shed most of itself in heat which was a factor in placement of Cybertron in its orbit. We don't want to be too close.
"Some of its features include it being 26 times brighter than our sun here, its 36.66 light years away which means our ships can fly there at superluminal speed in half a joor. I would reiterate that it takes us 45 minutes to get from Mars to Earth by ship because we don't use warp speed inside a system. The waves generated by such vessels can cause disruption and all manner of unforeseen chaos.
"Arcturus is fifteen times greater in size and mass than this sun here and its 113 times brighter. Because it is, it has 216 times more heat and thus, we have to build in a placement for Cybertron's orbit that won't do damage to the planet and its life forms such as plants and animals.
"It's part of what the humans call the Arcturus Stream and cuts across the galactic plane. It was probably part of a very ancient dwarf galaxy that collided with this one a long time ago and at its current speed in one million years you won't be able to see it with your naked optic from Earth. It's a good solid planet, has no features that will be problematic, it has no planets orbiting it and its stable. It's the one we will choose and we've done the work for the insertion point around the star."
It was silent again. Then Prime sat forward. "What sort of timeline are we looking at to begin?"
"Anytime you want. Probably," Wheeljack said. "We can take the moons and bring them here or nearby, parking them around stars until we move Cybertron. I don't want to even try until you talk to the Pantheon and Primus. Its a doable thing, Optimus, but it would be good to get His and Their perspective and advice. It would make us all feel a lot better if Primus could help with some of the variables, like the internal ramifications. I would also like to hear that He felt He could make this move and be safe and well."
Prime sat back. "Very well," he said as Prowl stared at him with an almost unholy intensity. "I will. I would like to know how it would stack up in the docket thus far. We have a lot of things happening and it would take a lot of conversation with our people to get them ready for this."
"It will be a blink of an optic, the move itself. The shocker will be the sunlight. We can hold and tweak Cybertron in orbit until stability is achieved, then add the moons as we go, balancing them one by one. If Primus has anything He can say to us about bringing them along with Him, we would be open to the advice. We want this to be good and the idea of a summer sky and normal weather for Cybertron is almost unthinkable. But its ultimately achievable. This won't be the first time we've moved a planet and we have achieved three gas giants and Caminus already."
"Cybertron is four times bigger than Earth. Does that pose a problem in placement?" Ultra Magnus asked.
"No. We have calculated the orbit insertion point for it. It is farther away from the sun than Earth for a number of reasons including its size and mass. Cybertron is a very heavy planet but it won't be a problem," Perceptor said.
"Then there's the issue of telling the humans," Ratchet said as he grinned at the humans who were waiting for the communications link to be re-established. "They might wonder why there's a planet orbiting Arcturus. And moons. And many others. How many can Arcturus hold in orbit of our local group and the colonial cache?"
"Well, we can probably put six around Arcturus and bring in gas giants. That's always a need for a successful solar system. We have four of them picked out who are free wheeling on their own for that. Two will probably do it with maybe a small one added. There's a reason that the inner planets here are so intriguing and possible with Saturn and Jupiter as the main brick wall for debris and Neptune and Uranus as the secondary. Nothing much gets past them, hence, Earth," Perceptor said. "As for the colonial cache, they will move last because they're already pretty stable. The local group and Cybertron are wandering together and that's making things urgent."
"Very well," Prime said. "I will do what I can to get the answers. I am overwhelmed at the idea of our home world being safe. It will be a strange thing to leave the constellations of our home for new ones but it will also be good to have a blue sky for Cybertron."
Everyone nodded, then the human's link was turned back on.
Prime sat back and stared at the humans. They were a tough species that he really liked and now they had this, another oddity for them to assimilate at some point. Right now, he was doing his own assimilating. So was everyone else in the room but Perceptor, Miler and Wheeljack. "Is there anything that you wish to say or need, gentlemen, ladies?" Prime asked them.
They glanced at each other, then most of them shrugged.
Owen stood. :We hope to know something about our situation soon and we hope to have our freedom again. We understand how much you have to do, Lord Optimus, but we're getting a lot of pressure from Earth about everything:
Prime nodded. "The finished report is due in shortly. I will inform you of its findings. We are working to catch a killer. The mercenaries were returned to you mostly without incident," he said as he glanced at Springer.
That mech was lounging against Drift and smirked at Prime.
"They will be restricted to Earth2 so that they have at least that much protection against whoever is doing this. We will catch them, Mr. Harris. They will face consequences here," Prime said.
Harris nodded, then sat down again.
Prime looked from one to the other, then sat back. "Entertain me, minions," he said as he stole a big cookie from Prowl's plate.
=0=TBC 4-24-19
ESL: Bootes (There are little diacritical dots over the E but my computer keyboard is a pit) Boo-OH-tees.
Just a note: A person once wrote to me a sort of nasty note about how I 'didn't know fuck all about science' because I wrote that warp speeds aren't used inside star systems. (This person writes nasty reviews, gets you provoked into a fight, then posts them on their website with malignant commentary about it: you're stupid, you aren't as educated as them, etc. (LOL!) I didn't take their bait but I went there and noted that the page went on forever with insults but at the bottom there were no stories. They weren't a writer, just a disrupter. The world is filled with interesting people. :D (I wish I could remember their name. Their modus operandi was to go to different fandoms, pick out someone and then bully them. What a seriously unhappy person.)
Waves and missing colliding with things pulled in by a sun like planets and moons in nanoseconds are a thing and I have never heard of anyone advocating using warp tech drives inside a planetary system for that reason. Even Star Trek advises against it. So sayeth the Kirk. ;)