The Diego Diaries: Mitigation (dd8 523)

=0=The next morning

Prime sat in a conference room in the prison considering the position that he occupied as a Prime. The war had devastated his world and people even more than he could have dreamed. Those that could get away often had their own battles, fighting sometimes invisible enemies that lurked inside them. It would seem they faced the ultimate match up with The System, these individuals, the poisoned processors of circumstances that had unforeseen consequences.

A lot of refugees were stranded in isolated places and had faced the prospect of reproduction with a resolve to not do so given the sparcity of their field of choice. Several groups had marched on anyway, living their lives the best they could. Some had done so because of necessity, they were alone and didn't want to remain so but most had just faced life unwitting of the dangers and had moved forward.

That it resulted in messes like this was a natural consequence of war and the fractured nature of their species. This was jut the latest version of The Diaspora shoved into his face.

The door opened.

He glanced toward it watching as mechs and a femme entered followed by more including Gee-Gee and Elita. They walked to the table to sit and stare at Prime who watched them without comment. The small femme Fila was among them.

She stared at him without expression, her amber optics missing nothing. He was huge, battle hardened, his body bore the faint but carefully tended traces of war and he looked through the intensity of his aura like another mech than the one she faintly remembered. She'd seen him in the Revolution and had also personally watched him in the government before it collapsed into all out war.

She didn't underestimate him like some of her caste but she also realized from what he'd accomplished and the extent of his rising power that she'd not given him enough credit as well. He was a very smart wily individual she considered, unconsciously mirroring her own self with her conclusion. She sat silently unwilling to speak first.

Prime considered her. She was small for a femme, smaller than usual but older, the kind of femme that held her age from disclosure unless you could read energy like he could. She was at least as old as the beginning of the Golden Age. Her protoform and armor gave that away along with the classic design and finish of her colors.

She was very high end high caste, someone who had money but hadn't flaunted it like too many others had who were in her income range.

That wasn't done.

She was Fila of Capital City, a bond to a shipping magnate who liked to play at politics. She'd been around the Imperium as a lobbyist for her family business and he'd seen her. She was smart but tough as nails. She was on the leading edge of their failing, a product of a long line of dynastic bonds, some of which were reproductive and bore a closeness in their CNA that testitified to it. That it wasn't enough to make her impossible, it was enough to make her 'one of them'.

"You are Fila of Capital City, the bond of Libre of Iacon," Prime said quietly. "Where is Libre?"

She considered his question, weighed the automatic urge to tell him to frag off, then sat back to relax. Ending the conversation too fast would give her nothing. "He is coming."

"In the next migration?" Prime asked.

She nodded.

"You should have cooperated and given your oaths. You would be living in the colony in comfort with nearly unlimited options on what you wanted and needed to do," Prime replied.

She considered that. "We won't give up what we wish to you, Prime. I doubt that you'll find one of us to cooperate with you. We've made pledges among us when we left Cybertron to make it the last place where our wishes were ignored or challenged."

Prime considered that. "We have done scans upon you, deeply detailed medical scans. You bear chips, detonator chips from the Functionalist era and the Decepticons." He considered her lack of response. "You saw them. You yourself had them."

She considered that. "I am unconcerned about it. We managed this long with them."

"They're old," Ratchet interjected. He and Prime along with Prowl, Ultra Magnus and Jarro were having a conversation off line. "They're unstable. They aren't made of medical grade metals. They didn't care enough about you to do that small mercy. Neither the Functionalists and the 'Cons cared about that. If you bump your helm the right way," he lied, "you can set them off."

She stared at him for a moment, then turned her gaze back to Prime. She didn't respond to the remarks.

:She's remarkable in her defiance: Jarro commented. :She isn't even phased by the danger: He glanced at Ratchet. :Nice lie by the way:

Ratchet glanced at him with a faint smirk. "Your entire party is in danger."

"We decided when we left that we would never bend our knees to anyone ever again. We took oaths together. You won't find fertile soil here."

Prime sat back. "Then if your people young and old die you have no opinion?"

She stared at him. "We made oaths. We are adamant about our position. We won't back down."

"You can't," Ultra Magnus said.

She glanced at him but didn't remark.

"You have a problem that the doctor will discuss. It would do you a great deal of good to listen very closely," the giant mech said in his coldest voice.

She glanced at Prime, then Ratchet. "What would you say to me?"

"Dynastic bonds. You believe in them," Ratchet said.

She nodded. "We do. So what?"

"We've had groups come in who did as well. So many with so many strange attributes came to us that I've started a large study into this phenomenon. There are great consequences to dynastic bonds that result in offspring given that you limit yourself to a small group of individuals when you do this. I'm looking at your records. You have three children, all of them with Libre. Correct?"

"You appear to have information. Speak it," she said with a trace of anger. She sat back staring at them defiantly.

"Your family goes back to the beginning with this practice. Most of you did it to secure an advantage in business, society and politics without real interpersonal relationships involved. It was just business. Then you made the mistake of inter bonding over and over in the same groups making actual bonds. It was a mistake that has born poisoned friut in every group that we've studied."

She stared at Ratchet without comment.

"When you combine the genetic material of organics over a period of time in a limited gene pool the results of that show up sooner and often in very extreme forms. Most of the royal houses of our nearby planetary neighbor are all highly related to each other due to their desire to keep their power and family ties together. Its resulted in some terrible genetic problems that have both physical and mental consequences. We are not immune to this.

"Your family and that of Libre descend in this practice from Markel and DeWitt of Tarn. These two are known to both of us so I won't bore you with the details. They managed to have their seven kids bond both platonically and romantically if you will with just about everyone who matters in the high castes over the period of time following the Functionalist Oppression to The Fall of our world. You, yourself have about twelve bonds or bonds only one step away from them directly in your tree. Libre has eleven." Ratchet considered her blank expression.

"You would do well to listen, femme. This mech is telling you something that bears ill consequences upon you," Magnus said.

She glanced at him. "So you say." She looked at Ratchet with a hard cold expression on her face. "Do continue."

Ratchet considered that. "I'll cut to the chase. Inbreeding can cause harm over time to those who are recipients of it. The humans have entire dynasties of individuals who ruled great empires who died out due to the effects of close relational inbreeding. The Egyptions are a prime example becoming unable to produce offspring to adulthood because of it. The entire 18th Dynasty died out this way. The royal houses of Europe have a lot of genetic defects from this practice.

"We aren't exempt. There are problems with your group that have resulted in genetic mutations over a long period of time and development, one of which explains your unwillingness to help us help you. We've told and shown you that your group bears lethal chips in their helms. You've refused to allow us to remove them.

"Your hard aft attitudes are part of your deformity from dynastic bonding. Your ability to reason is impaired. I would wager that if we went back to where you came from and asked around we would find that you weren't very good neighbors." Ratchet sat back studying her affect with some of his internal specialist equipment.

She stared at him, then Prime. "Is this all? I have to go back to my group in the prison."

"You have to lead, femme," Magnus said. "If you lead then you must. Help us remove the threat to your group. If you don't do so then you're a coward."

She stared at Magnus studying him as she did. "I have nothing further to say."

"Then I exercise a Primal Hold over you and your party," Optimus said.

She glanced at him sharply.

"I am declaring my soveign right to hold you indefinitely, you and your party and all who are in the colony from your party that pose a threat to the safety of others. I do so at my pleasure," he said as he watched her optics, the tell she expressed with them gave away her inner processes. She was ready to rip his helm off.

"So you're a fraud then are you? You who thought Sentinel and the others were terrible and arbitrary," she hissed. "You who dare call me problematic."

"You are," Jarro said. "We just told you that your family and friends could die from this and you won't help us help them. You haven't got the capacity because of your genetic condition to do better. You're a menace to society and until you help us he's completely in his rights to hold you." Jarro leaned closer. "Understand. With this Prime you won't face impurata or shadow play. If it were any other you would be strapped onto a table right now. Cogitate on that."

She stared at Jarro, then leaped forward to slap his face.

Elita who sat next to her grabbed her arm.

Fila turned on Elita kicking and beating on her with her free hand before a jailer slapped her in cuffs. She stared at Prime seething with rage. "You're a liar and a trickster. You're a low caste fraudster. I will never agree to help you. You can't hold me."

"I do believe he can, femme," Magnus said as he nodded to the guards.

She was taken out to be returned to her cell.

It was silent a moment, then Ratchet sat back. "Well, we're going to have to do this the hard way then."

Prime nodded. "I am afraid that we must."

=0=TBC 9-14-2022 9-16-2022

NOTE:

The Egyptians practiced interbreeding including father/daughter and brother/sister marriages. The royal houses of Europe are incredibly interbred with some countries where neices married uncles and so on. They had no idea of the consequences of this practice and it resulted in long term impairments like hemophilia and the 'Hapsburg jaw'.

There was even one king, Charles II of Spain who was impotent, had a jaw so elongated that he couldn't chew food, was 'short, lame and senile, bald before 35' (an age I'm surprised he reached) and when he died they found he had hydroencephaly, a brain condition that exposed most of his brain was water.

Poor damned dude.

But this is too often the result from the desire to keep your genetic pool 'pure'. All of the British royal family for the most part have the Hanoverian jaw. The tiny area of Hanover supplied an enormous number of their boys and girls to be married into every house ever. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert who's marriage started hemophilia (the inability to clot your blood so a tiny scratch can kill you) into their house were first cousins. His father and her mother were brother and sister.