The Diego Diaries: Lo-Lo and the Prime (dd8 65)
=0=Later that evening as Veteran's Day and Cybertronian New Year's Orn roll toward a close
The scene opened to Leonora Huttle-Bradford standing on a set with several huge images of Optimus Prime behind her. She wore a black dress, pearls and a big smile. "Good evening. My name is Leonora Huttle-Bradford. Tonight, in honor of the Cybertronian holidays, Veteran's Day and New Years, I am delighted to present an informal interview over a wide number of subjects recorded over the course of several days with Optimus Prime.
"It is a free ranging informal interview, one designed to take a measure of this rather mysterious seeming person. I was given free access to the questions and the Prime's schedule. We are presenting this interview in lieu of our regularly scheduled episode of 'Platoon: Autobot City'. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did conducting it." She smiled and the scene changed to her sitting on a small chair in the middle of a massive flat table in the Operational Center's big conference room.
Sitting in a chair before her was the massive remarkable figure of Optimus, the Prime of Cybertron. He was watching her silently, his surprisingly handsome expressive face filled with curiosity and warmth. It was evident that he held her in high esteem.
:Thank you, Lord Optimus: she began.
"For the sake of this interview, Leonora Huttle-Bradford, Optimus will suffice," he said with a slight grin. The extension of her newish last name since marrying 'Cameraman Jeb' Bradford had been a funny conversation some time back between them when they both explained their names to each other.
She grinned. :Thank you, Optimus. The colony is celebrating New Years and Veteran's Day today. Can you tell us what it means to Cybertronians and how you mark the day?:
"We hold both on the same day because they are both held to be solemn occasions for us. Veteran's Day is obvious but New Years is seen by our people the end of one opportunity and the beginning of another hopefully better one. We remember what happened before, resolve to do more or better in the new one, then hold the day quietly in remembrance of those who are not among us. Its rather a day of memorial for us."
:Your society is martial. Nearly everyone I know is a soldier or pilot. Is that what you always were as a culture or is this the necessity borne of war and disturbance?:
He considered that, then leaned on the table, crossing his arms in front of himself as he sat closer to her. "We are what your historians call a heroic society. We have been martial before the war because we have had Primes who felt they could conquer the universe rather than live in harmony with others, the later Primes, that is. Our focus on martial things was our downfall. It sucked our society dry of the needed capital to make things good for everyone. It also took away our unity with others as well as our humility, making it easier to go to war with whoever we wanted. War sometimes infiltrates you to the point where even if you do not want it, you find yourself sucked in.
"We coincide New Year with Veteran's Day because we do not want to fetishize war from the failure and horror that it is. We also do not want anyone to think that the toll it takes on the warriors is an acceptable cost of doing business. We have been at war off and on over the entire course of our existence. Some of them have been wars of liberation and others have been of conquest.
"The war we found ourselves in, the worst kind, a civil war between brothers and sisters turned into one of annihilation. We were and to some extent are still fighting the extinction of our species. There is an anime on Netflix, oddly enough, that addresses such a consideration, The War For Cybertron. The characters worry that the war will annihilate them from existence. That is what we faced and fought against for nearly six million years of Earth time. Before that, it was the run up to the end of things. One must never glorify that and one must never fetishize the warriors because it makes it too easy to send them out to die for stupid and unnecessary things based on emotion rather than reason or common decency. It makes the enemy easier to destroy that way."
:That is an inconceivable amount of time: -Leonora aka LHB
Optimus nodded. "It is a long time even for us. It did not happen overnight. There was a long decline toward it happening but it was inevitable when power is consolidated into the hands of a few who have no love for anyone or anything else other than themselves. Where there is great injustice there is great fury and retribution. When things began to fall apart, it was a terrible thing to see and experience."
:You were the Prime when this came to pass. What about the others? How did this happen?: -LHB
Optimus sat back to consider this question. "Nothing happens fast and such was so with us. Some plan things to happen in a certain manner, preferring the long game where it seeps in slowly, changing truth to lies. Over enough time and cruel contempt for others it can burn the world down. Some of our Primes had their optics on conquest and personal ego gratification. They were also contemptuous of others based on the racism and hatred of the caste system so they did not pay attention to the domestic front. That allowed corrupt politicians and their benefactors, the super rich and multi-planetary corporations to overtake and control the levers of power. Power abhors a vacuum. With money and media control, its relatively easy to do.
"Our Senate was bought off by the wealthy and got their operational orders from their masters. When I was a child, the deep inequity between the way some lived and most everyone else did began in earnest. Sectioned off areas for the wealthy to live, tenements for the rest of us, low to piddling wages, no protections against hazards at work, no healthcare and help for the injuries and privation problems it created as well as eventually making lawful all who were not rich from having a good education … it was a gradual process and it worked for a while.
"You cannot underestimate the effect of a process that begins slowly, propagandizes itself and makes even its victims believe the lies, then destroys itself and everyone else trying to end an untenable situation for something better and more equal. It was fated to die, our world, when the first Prime decided to not uphold their oath."
:Why didn't the Matrix intervene? The Matrix is the gatekeeper to the other side, to Primus and The One. Right? Were They aware and why didn't they help?"
Optimus considered that. "The fundamental rule of the universe is freewill. No one of The Powers will interfere. Not even The One or Central Power of All Things. Sometimes a group consciousness wants to experience things that do not seem possible to a reasonable mind. Who would want to do this willingly? But if you only know peace, how can you understand war and discord? How can you know what hunger is if you only know prosperity.
"How could you ever face a life where you were never challenged to do something, if not for yourself, then others? And how can you grow if there's nothing to challenge what you already know? Growth is a reason for living and all of us do. Imagine a life without challenges and unknown possibilities? Even if you as a living person would like to, you as a soul want the challenge.
"I will be the first to tell you that I have hated a great portion of my life all of my life. But I will also be the first to tell you that no life ever lived is without opportunity for wisdom, compassion and empathy. The problem with the powers that be was that they did not have those qualities in their spark. They are devoid of the ability to see the other in themselves so they go their merry way creating havoc, half the time unaware of what they do.
"The thing to understand for those who are on the receiving end of this is simple. How long will you take the abuse before pushing back? For us, it was a long time but when it came from the universities, Temple and shrines, from the unions and guilds, the disaffected masses, it was explosive and would have prevailed but for the mech who became a leader of the most disaffected, the criminal and the enraged. If Megatron had not been a part of the event, we would have prevailed peacefully and neither species, yours and mine would have been aware of each other."
:I would've regretted that, though I wouldn't know it. You were the defacto default leader of the Peace Movement. Tell me about that, Optimus. I know that an incident on your dock was the spark that lit the bonfire of resistance, finding for the movement a rallying point in you. What happened? What did that feel like? Were you surprised and how many of the mechs and femmes with you were a part of that? Take your time: she said with a chuckle.
Optimus grinned at her, this femme who was a true friend of The People. "Well, there was a dispute on my dock. I was a foreman of a loading dock and a member of a longshoreman union that was pretty powerful in spite of the situation politically. They were hooked up with all of the other unions and together we were still a force to listen to, if not make change. It involved a mech who wanted something and was prepared to abuse the workers in my group. I put end to it when the police came and when it became known what happened, every union and guild on world and all the professions joined in. Everyone walked out.
"I had to negotiate a settlement and got a good one considering all things. They were thrown off by the size of the solidarity this event had made happen. It shook them when they found they couldn't scare, predict or intimidate us. They prevail when someone is ready to stay on the job. When you band together everywhere, we win and they lose. You have the right to advocate for yourselves. It was then that groups came to me and we began to network. I still had the misguided but hopeful notion that this would change things peacefully. That is when I met and befriended Megatron of Tarn."
:I heard you were friends, close ones. What was that like and what happened to it?: -LHB
Optimus considered the younger mech who burned with the fire of a thousand suns with justice for everyone. "He was at a committee meeting and listened to everything without comment. Then we went out to a bar and talked all night. We had a lot in common and became friends. But some can handle the attention and scrutiny that leadership gives without changing and some cannot. The more attention things were given that involved him, the more he craved it. In the end, it became about him and his desires, his thirst for power and not the freeing of our world and our suffering people.
"The end came when the Matrix chose me over him, when Sentinel Prime was supposedly assassinated. It was a very, very dangerous time with the military on alert and forces within agitating to take over the world in a coup. In the end, the military went with Megatron, the 'strong man', 'the man of iron'.
"We then had to devise an army out of civilians and those military that stayed with us. It was all hanging by a thread. It was the most dire moment for me in my Primeship and in my life at the time because I was not sure who would stay and who would turn on us. The Seekers went with Megatron, though Rainmaker, the Great Elder wanted to stay with me. He was trying to save his people and I hold nothing but respect for him. I did have lifelong my friends, Arcee and Elita as well as Jetta and Magnus become part of my general staff and they still are. The military joined, some, including Ironhide and his family. They were beyond invaluable and we became family, all of us, over this and time."
:As I asked before … The Powers. They were aware. Did They ever reach out to you?:
Prime considered that. "I have learned over the vorns of eons of time that They are always beside me and they are beside you, however you think They may look or act within your specie's framework. None of us were ever alone in our agony though we often thought so. Sometimes I feel a cool breeze in my mind and I know one of Them is by me. I always felt Them, though at times it felt faint. This was supposed to happen and it happened the way it was supposed to or it would have been different."
:You're talking about group agreement then, among The People?: -LHB
Prime nodded. "You are consciousness and so am I. You are different in your appearance and life story than me but we are the same … energy, desires and hopes as well as conscious self awareness, sentience. When you take the entirety of a singular group's conscious thinking and combine that energy together which is how things work, you get a global group consciousness or awareness. It is from that global group think that things flow for your society, moving onward toward you through group agreement on a higher level.
'You are energy and you affect other energy. What you think, you attract. If you think dark thoughts, you get dark events in return. It may take time to rethink that and believe you deserve it but when you do, you get better results for your life. The universe is listening and its neutral. It will always give you what you want and what you think signals to it what you want. It reflects you back to you."
:If I want better, I have to think it and make it a part of me. Then it draws things to me that match it: -LHB
Prime nodded. "Yes. Imagine, Leonora Huttle-Bradford, what your people as a global consciousness could attract and create if you all got behind the same vision?"
=0=In a living room up high
"You're good with this stuff."
"If they want to understand us, they have to understand this."
"Well," Prowl said with a smirk. "I can attest to the attraction part. I carried water for you forever."
Prime grinned as he sat with his arm around the winger of his dreams. "I did as well for you."
[Silence as they watched the show]
"What happened to us?" Prowl asked as he studied Prime on the screen.
"Beats me," Optimus said with a grin.
=0=TBC 01-14-2021