The Diego Diaries: Elders (dd8 191)
=0=At Destiny's Edge. Literally.
They sat on the area they usual occupied on Saturday mornings when the mechs were bowling. It kept them in the crack but didn't put them in danger as the huge mechanisms chatted with them, each other and the waiters who kept a steady supply coming.
Ironhide was up and his delivery was comical. Think Fred Flintstone. Holding his ball as he did the math, he swishy-swished and twinkle-toed his way to the line, then lay the ball down hard and swift. It flew down the lane to take out all the pins. He grinned, then swaggered his big old aft back to the table where his several hot dogs with everything, a large slice of cherry pie and a beer were calling him home.
:HEY, IRONHIDE!:
He glanced toward the humans. "WHAT!? I AM IRONHIDE! I HAVE A HOT DOG IN MY HAND! HURRY UP BEFORE I CRAM IT IN MY FACE!"
Huge laughter greeted that.
:Why do you guys do this when no one ever misses a strike?: Corey McFarlane said as he sat next to his elderly grandpa.
"Wait until we get drunker," Springer said as he sat with Drift sipping a beer.
:Springer, what's the word with your boy? I heard he's in school now: Will Lennox asked.
Springer grinned, then sat up straighter. He tapped his chassis which opened, then reached into his carry hold to pull out a little bundle wrapped in blankets. He handed him to Drift who lay it on his lap.
Pulling the blankets back, Drift then carefully held a baby in a onesie, cap and mittens out and downward to show the humans. Laying half awake and half asleep, Tell stared at the humans, then smiled brilliantly.
Huge laughter and applause greeted that as the humans gathered around him. They touched his little mitted servos, checked him out stem-to-stern, then looked at the pair.
"He was born deaf. They have a plan to correct it because its genetic, then do some work to make him hear again. Right now, he has to be in school to pick up what he needs to be aware of himself. He has about four classmates and goes to school for two joors every day but weekends and holidays. He's going there after things work out a while to learn what he's hearing and other slag. I don't remember it."
"I record it," Drift said with a chuckle. "You're way too nervous for this."
"You're probably right," Springer said. "He's a great kid. He smiles and tries to sit up. He's a real cute little mech."
The humans listening to him grinned. Some of them knew Springer and Drift well, their full story. Two rough mechs, neither of them expecting to live beyond a battlefield nor get a life beyond fighting and dying somewhere had a kid. It was a beautiful thing to watch.
The bowling would go on for a while, then everyone would take the road to the next thing, a poker game at Club Hoyle after a taunting message from the twins. They were nothing if not flexible.
=0=Ratchet
He watched the machine feed the solution into the patient through a drip tube, the first step in the treatment that would hopefully begin the death knell for the mutation that was causing death and destruction among the refugees. They were lying in medical stasis all over the colony with many on the verge of dying in joors if nothing was accomplished to save them. It slid slowly down the tubing into the port in the neck of a femme who looked at death's door.
She had been delirious when brought in and had a very ravaged internal structure around which their protoform swirled to make shapes. It was the liquid that protected all of their internal fittings and networking that made them possible. It was the substance that hardened into whatever they made and was the exoskeleton that gave them shape and form. They were perhaps an almost astonishingly perfect species, the Cybertronians.
Ratchet glanced at Wheeljack. "Start the download of the overwrite."
Wheeljack with a handheld began to load a long convoluted sequence of numbers and letters into the femme through a computer attachment in her arm. It was the information interface that all Cybertronians had including children. It would take a moment or two to download, then it would begin to automatically rewrite the genetic mutation from a life threatening force into an inert line of bracketed script that no longer would observe its function. It would take only seconds and when it was complete, if it worked, then the computer would make a soft beep to signal compliance.
The group gathered around her berth waited tensely for that tiny sound of hopefulness.
=0=At the Clurb
They walked in after a cutthroat game of bowling to spot a game going in the corner with Kup, Hercy, Lon, Bezel and the twins. Pulling up chairs to join the table, the mechs sat and smirked. Those there smirked back.
"I thought you were going to the Temple for services. What are you doing here in this den of iniquity, your holiness?" Sideswipe said with a chuckle as he began to deal the cards.
"We came to whip your aft, infant," Jack said as he took his. They were good so he sat back in triumph.
Hercy glanced at Lon and Bezel. "Best get chips for the elders, infants. Time to show you who wrote the Book of Love."
After a short scan for meaning everyone laughed loudly. The humans did as well as they were placed on the top of the next table to sit and watch. It would be a very amusing and instructive interlude.
The twins were good but cheated.
Optimus Prime might be holy but he had no divine intervention with cards.
Hercy was supernatural in his abilities and luck not only with cooking and baking but with cards.
Kup would say sage but slightly inscrutable things.
Sunstreaker was a sore loser.
All of Ironhide's family were hilarious and very good bluffers.
Jack was a colossus at cards.
Sun was his wing man.
Hardie was amusing, amusing company.
Raptor was a god.
Lon and Bezel would serve with gratitude.
The humans would be rolling in the aisle.
=0=Med Center
She came to sentience after the soft bing of a machine nearby. Induced back to the real world, she glanced at them for a moment without registering anything, then it came to her all at once. She flinched, then moaned softly at the pain of her depleted body caused by her movement.
Ratchet gently pressed her back. "Relax. You're in the hospital with the rest of the group you came with. We're treating your illness. You can't move too much. If you do you can break things. Your body has a severe condition of protoform wasting but we're treating it now. If you rest for a moment you can clear your processor and it'll be easier to talk and understand. Do you hear me?"
She stared at him, then nodded slightly. Relaxing, she off lined her optics to rest.
"Well, what's the verdict, Wheeljack?" Ratchet asked as he watched Wheeljack working over a computer terminal nearby.
It was silent a moment, then he glanced up. "Its isolated the mutation. Its not going to be firing again. Ever."
It was a sharp moment, the release of tension some of them didn't even know they carried to the degree they did.
Wheeljack sat back relieved himself. "The two part treatment worked. The injection stopped it in its tracks. The script rewrote it to put it permanently into remission. This works. We have to move it. Some of the children are hanging by a thread."
"What is the efficacy of the path forward to treat the damage? Will our own established treatments be effective in rebuilding their frames and protoform?" a doctor with them asked. He was Jenes, a specialist in diseases of the skeleton, exoskeleton and protoform. "I haven't come to any conclusions yet myself."
"We have an inert mutation. We also have protoform wasting. There's nothing unusual or strange about the damage this strain did as far as we've assessed. I believe it will work. However, I think a number of surgeries should be consider to replace skeletal framework that's been as heavily eroded as some appear to have suffered. I don't think its effective to try to restore it with a natural process. It might be unable to return to itself with any certainty of repair and the time frame would be enormous for it to be attempted," Perceptor said.
Ratchet nodded. "I agree. I'll get Orthopedics involved and we can make a plan. Right now we have to get everyone on this treatment especially those at death's door. I'm going to the Children's Treatment Center in Pax to supervise the kids. They're the most dire at the moment. I'll start with Reset's son upstairs. Then I'm heading over. Keep me in the loop," he said as he walked to the door and out to the elevator beyond.
=0=In a ward with a father who was on the edge himself
Reset sat slumped in a chair barely holding onto his own sentience. He held his son's servo as his bond lay in stasis on a berth nearby. It was dimly lit in the room when he heard pedfalls. He glanced up to see Ratchet standing over him with a scanner.
"You're a basket case," Ratchet said as he read the meter.
"I'm staying with my son. I don't want him to die alone," Reset whispered through his pain and the gathering fog in his mind.
"No one's dying today," Ratchet said as he moved to the boy. Attaching a line for the script and setting a vial into the drip that was feeding him through his neck port, Ratchet set the machines to deliver both. Then he waited and watched.
Reset sat up painfully to watch himself. "What are you doing?"
"I'm sending your son the cure," Ratchet replied as he watched the machines do their business.
Reset stared at him, then the boy on the berth. His son looked dead already though he fought that fiery image with all his dwindling strength. "What did you say?"
"I'm saying," Ratchet said as he glanced at the faltering mech, "that we figured it out and now I'm saving your son. We're going to save all of you, all of us who worked on this problem because that's what we do here, save everyone. We do it because we're all one. Everyone matters here especially sick children."
It was silent as Reset stared at him with gathering astonishment and hope. It was a very sad sight to see on someone's face, the realization that there might be hope but the fear that it was an illusion in the end. "You have a cure."
"We do and your son is beginning to respond," Ratchet said. "Understand me, we have a lot of rehabilitation to do here but he's going to live. He's already halfway there." Ratchet stared at the machine to check the figures then heard a hard thump. He glanced at Reset to see him out cold on the floor. He glanced at a nurse. "Help me, Shetland. We need to get him hooked up, too."
With effort, the two carried him to a gurney nearby and settled Reset gently. He would be hooked up as well and with everyone else in the ward including his bond find himself on the way toward wellness at last. Ratchet would be halfway to Pax when the machine signaled with a soft beeping sound that his illness at last was ended.
=0=Hoyle
Orion stood on the table in front of Ironhide's stack of cookies. He was 'guarding' it against assault. Praxus was leaning against Hercy while eating a 'chip' while Prowler was standing in the middle of the table smiling at everyone who looked at him as he held his favorite teddy bear in his tiny servo. He was oblivious to the game but deeply interested in everyone there.
:Those kids are adorable: Thelma Lennox said as she sat next to her father, Commander Jake Walker, Army Retired. He was here with the wife, Annie for the celebrations.
Jake nodded. :That little one, the police baby. He's sweet isn't he. He doesn't really care about being in the game like the others. He just stands there being sweet. He's sort of a panda bear cub kind of kid to me:
Thelma laughed. :That's Our Prowler:
Ironhide grinned as he glanced at his son who was smiling at Jack who was making silly faces at him. "Panda cub. That sort of suits him. Prowler walks to his own drummer."
"He does," Hard Drive said. "He's walking with the others to my house tonight."
Ironhide frowned.
Prowler grinned.
Everyone laughed. Not with Ironhide but at him.
The game wore on.
=0=TBC 06-16-2021