The Diego Diaries: Visitin' (dd8 161)
So … last night's post ... everyone's going on vacation BUT ME so it meant a few things had to get done. It also means I get eleven days off to write. Win-win. Maybe. Here we go …
=0=In an intervention
"We need your memory and wisdom, Wirelite," Lauren said as everyone sat down again, everyone but the five mechs who were staring at her stonily, her and the three others with her.
"Oh, right," she said as she glanced at the five silent mechs staring at her stonily. "Are these some of the poor souls from Meadow Lands?" she asked gently.
Lauren nodded. "They are, Lady."
Wirelite smiled. "Ah," she replied. "I'm Wirelite, though that isn't the name I came into being with. I came in at the beginning, nearly, of our race as sentient beings. My mech here, Como and our friends, Cezr and Colo were in that group, weren't you, my darlings."
They nodded, a small mech and smaller femme who was his sister. Como, Wirelite's bond nodded as well.
"The Well was odd at first. Most don't know that the first sparks It granted were drones. They were just machines without sparks, all of them appreciated but bearing nothing of the qualities of sentience that would inform us later on. That was what the Oppressors as we called them, the Quintessans, thought about what we were. They had no idea that we were a sentient and ancient species, some say the first one. They just believed they found and took over a machine world with hardware they could sell and exploit for their own benefit.
"The Quintessans were created by Quintus Prime and were considered a huge mistake by Him. You would think a Prime of that stature can't make mistakes but He did. He even said so I'm told. I don't blame him because over the duration of my life I have learned to let go of my grudges and hurts. If I don't, then how can I ever be happy?" she asked.
Everyone watched felt her strength and goodness, letting it flow over and around them like the warm tide that it was. The others were still completely closed off with their energetic auras pulled tightly against themselves.
"When I separated, that is, was born from the Well, I never forgot that moment. We were on a platform plugged in when it clicked over and we were alive. It was the most intensely panicked moment I ever had but at that same second an intense tide of love filled me overpowering my panic. I felt incredibly loved. I also understood immediately that I was to play along and not let them know that I was sentient. The others there, three femmes like me were standing on the platform in a circle facing each other and I could see they were doing the same as me, playing the machine.
"It was then that the Well began to grant sentient sparks. It was then that we were cast into the world as toddlers. We didn't know how to read but for the code they downloaded into us and we didn't know what to do but for the feelings that never left us. The feelings that greeted us were guiding us, this we knew."
It was silent as she reflected, then Colo grinned. "It was strange. We didn't know much but we learned to hack into systems, gaining and spreading to others things like reading, writing and thinking for ourselves. We shared it worldwide creating the first networks together. We began to overtake the systems, keeping our people from being sold off world and hiding them when we couldn't. We put non-sentient bots in their place designed to look like them. We were playing their game against them. We began to learn about the Pantheon and The One and understood that They were part of this including the ground beneath our peds."
"It was incredible when we understood that Primus was the planet we lived upon. We felt awe and love for Him and the others because They were helping us grow toward defeating the enemy. We didn't understand Them always but we had ideas, small ones that grew into the truth later on," Colo said.
Como nodded. "We didn't understand Them but we wanted to honor Them because we were so afraid for so long. We made tiny shrines, little ones deeply hidden and put things in them that we felt showed Them our feelings. We didn't know that the Matrix took us back when life was over no matter what. We thought we wandered like ghosts unless they knew our names so we carved the names of the dead on copper sheets, put them into containers, then sneaked them into the little shrines. We believed that if They could see the writing there the Pantheon would find everyone. If we were caught we would've been killed on the spot but we loved each other and wanted those lost to go to the Creator, whoever that was.
"We begged for more, more help, more learning and it was given. It took so long but we began to network with others, building cells and finding leaders. That's when Merrick, Guardian Prime, came to the front of the pack. I can't find enough words to tell you what a great mech he was. We need more memorials to him. We need to teach everyone about him. He was a colossus for us when we needed it," Como said.
Wirelite nodded. "I cried forever when he died. We had such a hard road to get to the point where revolution could happen. When they decided to sell Delphi and six others off world and we couldn't stop it, that was the spark." Wirelite glanced at the five mechs. "It doesn't take a lot to start something. All it takes is courage and the right moment. The idea of losing them was enough. Do you know why that is?"
They stared at her without comment.
"It would be easy to throw even one away and call it necessary for the greater good. Its often done. But what is the greater good but all the small things together, all of the individuals who are as important to their own people as the collective is to the ideas of freedom. We couldn't let even one disappear and when the revolution was over and Guardian was Prime we hunted down everyone from the master list and accounted for all of them. We didn't let one go because the loss of even one diminishes all. That included the non-sentient mechs and femmes. No one was ever going to exploit us again. Funny, thinking about it, that it took us ourselves to do that."
Wirelite sat back. "Guardian understood that instinctively. He was chosen by the Matrix by the bonding ceremony, the first time it happened. The only other Prime I'm aware of having that happen is Optimus. Optimus reminds me so much of Merrick. He understands that the loss of one is incalculable. Understand, there are those who say tyranny, poverty and the like are always going to be with us. I disagree. They're with us because we choose them. We choose either actively or passively what we become and tolerate.
"There is always enough for everyone but some came to the conclusion that this was a lie. Destitution and war affect everyone differently. The idea of lack was a big thing for all of us but we grew to understand that lack is a state of mind. If we wanted things to be better we had to make it happen and it never did. Those who lived with fear and lack, with the ideas of these things took power and from there we had to live in their fear paradigm. It destroyed us in the end."
Como glanced at the five. "You were born into a time when there wasn't the constant fear of an overlord that crushed you at the slightest provocation. You were born into a time when the oppression is more subtle. The simple things like looking at something with more understanding than they thought you should possess had changed to simply keeping your place, accepting your lot and living on crumbs. You have no idea how terrible it is to have dreams and no hope of achieving them.
"Your problem is that you believe all the sentience was granted to a few and that the rest are drones that need to be controlled. That's the thinking of the Oppressors. The Quintessans were aliens who planted that thought into the spark of our great people and we've suffered ever since. The Functionalist Council was just another version of the old hate that never dies. They made a book and said it was true. Words on paper were held to be more valuable than someone's dreams or even their lives.
"We are more than words," Como said. "More than old laws that were the spawn of aliens and which benefited a few at the expense of the many. You seem to think that laws stand forever unchanging and unchangeable and that they don't have to grow with the society they're part of. Words on paper. That's all they are. When the many disagree and decide they don't matter, its folly to oppose that. But oppose it your caste did. Your caste destroyed our world because you decided that words on paper from millions of eons before, words created by an alien oppressor were still valid and worth more than actual lives," she said.
"Its too bad," Cezr said. "We overthrew every oppressor each time but they kept coming back and that's when I knew what the problem was. It was always there, the caste hatred and the poisoned hierarchies created by it. But the deepest part of it was power and greed. Your caste doesn't want to share and give up anything. You created nothing. You benefited off our labor, our back breaking barely compensated labor and you don't want to give it up. You might find that you're not as smart or capable as you've been led to believe."
It was silent a moment, then Reset relaxed his tense body. "You can continue all orn long. Its amusing to me."
Cezr stood. "I suppose it is. Did I ever tell you that I used a machete on the Quintessans to chop them to pieces? I remember every blow, the sights and sounds … the smells. I remember sniping them everywhere I could. I remember the mayhem and the coordination. I remember standing in the street with a bloody machete and a rifle thinking we did it. We were free. I remember fighting for this with all the bad dreams and trauma that it left behind and I remember doing it over and over against the oppressors. What do you remember?"
They stared at Cezr, a deceptively small mech who had more power and smarts himself than any three people in the room. They said nothing.
"I'm Cezr's sister. I was one of those who were boxed up to go. They literally crated us up. I remember thinking I'd never see him or anyone else that I loved again. Those of us who came to sentience together became siblings. That's why Blackjack, Ironhide and Hard Drive are brothers. Cezr and I were the only two on our platform and we became a family because we didn't have one otherwise. I remember shooting every Quintessan I saw without mercy and feeling nothing. I remember only wanting to free all of us that day because we were all one, a family fighting to stay together and be free."
"How many of our people were on the world then? I know it has grown since enormously. But the count then, it wasn't many was it?" Chevron asked.
Cezr considered it, then turned toward him. "Maybe 2 million worldwide. It was the beginning then. We were fewer because we were being created by Primus, though we didn't know that. We were just discovered in the most primordial condition by the Quintessans and thus, they were working out what they wanted through us. We disabused them of this."
He looked at Reset. "We didn't have a lot of complexities then, though we were all unique and special. What we had was a sense of belonging together, of being one, of sharing the burden of freeing ourselves however we could. We did it for us and the future. Yet the future has spurned our sacrifices over and over. We should have never allowed the poison to keep coming back," Cezr said. "I've never loved anyone in my long eventful life the way I loved all of us together then. We were truly and completely one."
"Tell me, Reset … when the elders tell The Story of The Beginning, what do you think? Do you really believe that Primus and The One support you and your thinking? Do you really think that They would create something where part of it wasn't worth much and the other was worth everything?" Ratchet asked as he sat in a chair leaking energon onto the floor.
Reset stared at him without comment.
"What appears to me is that you believe that the Pantheon creates inferior products. If you do, who's the reason for such things? The product or the producer?" Ratchet asked from a chair nearby.
It was silent in the room as that question hung in the air.
=0=TBC 05-12-2021 edited 05-13-2021
All of the information about the Well of Allsparks and drones is canon.