Fassbinder jolted awake to find a line of drool on his chin and Lisbeth absent from the adjoining seat. He blinked to focus and found her after a moment, approaching with what looked promisingly like something energy-related.
"It's not Bull," she said, "but I thought you could use some electrolytes after your sugar crash."
He guzzled it obediently after a word of thanks, then remembered to wipe his chin. "What'd I miss?"
"A security briefing, communications with the NSA, and a blood test."
At the sound of "NSA," he straightened his posture in an involuntary reflex. "Seriously?"
"No, but I bet you don't need caffeine to wake up now." She returned to her seat and took a long gulp from the water bottle she was always toting to keep her voice in top form. "You're not the only one who dozed off."
He tipped the generic gatorade bottle, but only got a few more drops. "Do we have an ETA?"
She shook her head. "I know from dropping a few eaves that we're on-schedule, but I don't need to know the details of that schedule until we land."
Much as he had gotten a buzz of excitement from her fib about security, the thought of the impending landing was even more of a stimulant. There wouldn't be time or bandwidth for admiring the scenery, but they were being secreted away to a classified installation where what happened on Diego Garcia stayed in Diego Garcia, on pain of actual prosecution.
He rubbed the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes and cracked his neck like a prizefighter preparing for a title match. "Then, what do you crazy kids do around here for fun?" he drawled.
"Well, Sharsky borrowed my Sudoku book and I got to hear some funny stories about Mikaela's first Close Encounter now that I'm in the know. Otherwise, I've been narrowing down monologues for the next round of auditions."
Which meant that he would leave Diego Garcia with a greater understanding of humankind's place in the universe and something about "Yet Brutus is an honorable man" stuck in his head.
...
Bumblebee led the way off the plane, rolling down the ramp ahead of the human he was supposed to be guarding. Fassbinder tried to keep close to his former roommate, but al-Sharif somehow kept everyone a pace or two distant, so a crowd kind of piled up behind Sam.
A Black man in uniform greeted him just inside of the open hangar door. "Mr. Witwicky."
"Don't 'Mister' me, Epps," Sam practically growled. "This isn't my fault."
"This time," Epps grunted with a half-smile. Falling in step beside Sam, he added, "Glad you made it in one piece, kid."
"Thanks."
Epps called out, "You, too, 'Bee."
The yellow Camaro started transforming, and Fassbinder's heart leaped to his throat. He'd known for years now, but still, it wasn't every day that 'Bee could transform, so it was awesome to see it again. Bumblebee replayed Sam's voice in answer. "Thanks."
Fassbinder's eyes adjusted as he followed them and crossed into the hangar, but his brain took a little longer. This was Sam, his goofy ex-roommate, Alienboy, the n00b who didn't even speak Klingon. He wasn't some admiral or general to go swaggering into a top-secret military installation like he owned the place. And he sure as hell shouldn't be on teasing terms with a soldier who could tie into a pretzel anybody who crossed him. The man was packing heat and made al-Sharif (who had scared Fassbinder half to death several times) look like some weird and weedy Pentagon pencil-pusher.
And then he realized the heavy equipment in front of them wasn't some kind of high-tech scaffolding. It turned and looked down on them with bright blue eyes.
"Welcome, all of you, to Diego Garcia," the towering giant said with a voice Fassbinder recognized. Optimus, Sam's "blood brother," he'd said back during their freshman year. "I wish it were under better circumstances," the giant continued, "but it is not an exaggeration to say that the world as you know it is in danger, and the team we are assembling here is Earth's best hope for stopping the threat."
Fassbinder tilted his head in curiosity when a pink robot face peeked around a corner behind Optimus and then disappeared again.
"You will be briefed on the current situation and - "
Another robot, a little more than half as tall as Optimus but still bigger than an elephant, came storming from around that corner. "Where are they?" he roared.
Optimus paused his monologuing to look back at the interrupting robot. "Ratchet…"
"Where are the carbon-for-brains nincompoops who thought it was a good idea - "
"Ratchet," Optimus repeated more firmly.
Ratchet turned toward Optimus, brandishing an array of saws, welders, and lasers that made Fassbinder think for a split second that he was some techno-Cthulu. "You're not the one trying to save lives to the tune of that for the last THREE DAYS," he snarled as the Spongebob Squarepants theme started playing.
Optimus wisely kept his mouth shut, and Ratchet turned to the assembled humans, still brandishing his tentacle-weapons. "Where are you, you fragging squishies?"
Everyone around Fassbinder took a step back, and he'd never felt so betrayed in his life. Someone belatedly shoved Sharsky up beside him.
"It was an accident, Ratchet," Sam said.
The green-and-metal demon leaned closer and snatched up Fassbinder in one hand and Sharsky in another. Fassbinder managed to keep all bodily fluids in their corresponding vessels just barely, but in no way did he squeal in terror like Sharsky. Striding back to the corner, Ratchet said over his welder-bristling shoulder to Sam, "No, it wasn't. It was recklessness." He paused mid-stride and turned half-way back toward the hangar. "Which reminds me. 'Bee, come with me. You'll have to answer to Arcee."
'Bee made a disappointed sound as he dejectedly followed.
The corner led to a short hallway which opened on the left into another, gigantic room. In it, two more robot-figures were laid out on oversized beds.
"See this?" Ratchet demanded, his voice dripping fury. "This is the result of your 'accident!'"
"Season 3? We had nothing to do with this!" Sharsky babbled, "We're not animators and even if we were, we were still just kids back then, but I'm not gonna lie, I wish we had some magic invisibility spray right now!"
"Not the cartoon, flunkie," another familiar voice said behind them, and Fassbinder cringed that they were getting schooled in front of Seymor Simmons. "He means Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum here. It's not just Decepticons who are getting taken out by this virus. You're killing off the good guys, too."
Ratchet's tools finally retreated back into their proper places and he turned to loom over Simmons. "Worm."
"I'm human," Simmons growled in response.
"No, I mean the Twitch isn't a virus. A virus, even one as alien as this one, we could deal with. A virus won't start replicating unless the infected user takes a proactive action to accidentally trigger it. Originally, that's what the Twitch was. But you two mindless drones," and here he gave Fassbinder and Sharsky a none-too-gentle shake, "have turned it into a worm that spreads on its own. And it's spreading everywhere."
Ratchet finally freed Fassbinder and Sharsky, standing them on one of the beds next to the head of a little, orange robot. Then turning, he addressed the crowd of humans who stood in a knot just inside the door, with Optimus and Jolt behind them. "What are you all doing here?"
Optimus was the only one brave enough to speak. "We decided it was both more efficient and wiser to let you explain only once what has happened and how the humans can help."
Ratchet harrumphed but couldn't find anything in the Prime's logic worth yelling at. "This virus-turned-worm has thwarted our malware algorithms because it isn't recognized as a threat by our defense systems. It's basically cloaked in human coding, which our systems have always allowed because even the most advanced human malware is no match for us. Worse, the logic has been fundamentally altered. It's thinking like a human now. And acting like one - reproducing insanely fast and in inexplicable ways."
"Hey!" Sam protested on behalf of the whole of humanity.
Ignoring him, Ratchet continued, "You all are here because we can't think like squishies and you can."
"You need us to outwit this virus - worm - for you," Simmons said with just a smidge of a smug smile.
Ratchet vented a defeated sigh and hung his helm. "Yes."
"Right." Simmons whirled to look at first Maggie and then Glen. "Let's get to work and save these Transformer's afts."
"NEST has set up workstations for you in the main hangar," Optimus said, leading the humans back out into the hall.
Fassbinder grimaced and, inspired by his drama queen's influence, muttered under his breath, "At this hour/lie at my mercy all mine enemies." Like hell any of these glorified HTML lackeys would be able to crack the code. He and Sharsky had created this monster - and they would be the ones to bring it to heel. But first they had to find a way off the table.
Looking around, Fassbinder saw the pink alien robot from before talking with 'Bee. It? She? Whatever seemed less inclined to shout at them. "How do we get down from here?"
The pink alien strode closer and, one by one, lifted them like toddlers and set them on the floor. "Word to the wise," the 'bot said with a female voice, "stay out of Ratchet's way. He's prone to throwing hardware when he's pissed, and you two have made us all feel like chucking wrenches your way."
"Yes, ma'am," Fassbinder said crisply.
"Don't I know you?" Sharsky said to the girl-bot, but Fassbinder grabbed him by the elbow and hurried them both after the rest of the humans before Sharsky could get them both slapped with a metal hand or with a restraining order.
"Only as triplets," she said, and Fassbinder skidded to a halt, remembering the rough-and-ready trio of hotties who had flirted with Cam Romero - Bumblebee's holoform - during their freshman year. He pivoted to look at her, but her back was already turned, and she was whacking 'Bee upside the helm.
…
Fassbinder sighed as he looked around the room. You knew you were a pariah when your fellow humans treated aliens better than you.
Everyone else had gotten spacious banquet tables with dual or triple monitors and comfy office chairs. By the time he and Sharsky arrived, there was one rickety little table left that was missing the foot on one corner so it wobbled. There was barely enough room for two laptops on it, much less a mousepad. Oh, and they also got stuck with folding metal chairs - not even any padding.
"Seriously?" Sharsky protested.
But Fassbinder wasn't focused on their makeshift workspace. No, he was looking at his girlfriend. She was currently perched in the hand of an alien robot, a male by the sound of his voice, and he was projecting some kind of...something that she was exclaiming over.
"Lisbeth?" he called.
"Just a second, babe." Then to the silver mech, she said, "You're right, the similarities are striking. So much of our iconography is rooted in mythology, though. I'd love to learn more about the symbolism behind your work, Sideswipe."
"Lisbeth!"
"Don't you have work to do, squishy?" the mech grumbled. At his side (where Lisbeth couldn't see it), a blade slid forward into his hand.
Fassbinder ducked his head and focused on booting his laptop. To Sharsky, he muttered, "I think we caught less hell when we hacked the blog."
Sharsky was already plugging in the ethernet cable - a local area network had been set up so all the computers we could see in the hangar were networked together and pooling information but none were connected directly to the world wide web. Apparently there was a military lackey who was tasked with just being the one watching the internet and relaying any important information about the worm's spread. The short, but very thorough, briefing on the walk from the sick bay to the hanger had covered a number of do's and don't's and included the indignity of confiscation of their phones.
Sharsky said, "The blog didn't lead to us kicking tech back to the '50s. I kinda get why they're mad, but you have to assume that it's a damn shame we can't put this on our resumes."
"Resumes? We'll be lucky if this doesn't go in our FBI files."
Behind them, Sam said, "This is a worldwide crisis and you're worried you're not going to get credit for it?"
Fassbinder wasn't about to admit that "Mr. Witwicky" had gotten the drop on him and nonchalantly shrugged. "It'd spice up my list of qualifications for sure. Sadly, that's one of the many reasons that NDAs exist around here."
Sam shook his head and wandered off.
Fortunately, despite their being banished to the rickety table, they weren't so shunned as to warrant cruel and unusual, and they had full access to the cola fridge and coffee station. Unfortunately, the fridge was stocked with Monster instead of Red Bull. The way al-Sharif glared at him when he opened his mouth to protest this, he knew two things: it was deliberate, and he was toast if he complained. Huffing in irritation, he grabbed an extra can of Monster for Sharsky and headed back to their digital dungeon.
With the jet lag and in-flight nap, he wasn't sure exactly what time his body thought it was, much less what date would display on his cell phone. He and Sharsky worked without stopping for at least 18 hours after arriving on the base, though. The tutorials had given them some additional syntax and logic of Cybertronian programming, but Sharsky was the first one to admit defeat.
Throwing his fourth Monster can away in disgust, he said, "It's no good. This isn't like a programming language at all. It's one thing to tweak code that's already written - it's another thing entirely to write an antivirus. It's way too complex."
Fassbinder grimaced and rubbed his burning eyes. He needed to remember to blink more. "It's like trying to pick up Mandarin Chinese overnight. But Robowarrior thinks he can do it." Fassbinder glared in the direction of Simmons' table, but it was empty. With a start, he realized all the programming tables were empty. He and Sharsky were the only code monkeys in the hangar. Some military types were up on the command scaffolding or whatever it was, but they mostly ignored anything happening at ground level.
"That twelve o'clock flasher couldn't code a simple calculator in this language, and we both know it," Sharsky grumbled in answer still focused on his screen. "I mean, we know way more than any of them. Not counting our innate coding genius, we at least had a 5-day head start."
"Sharsky..." Fassbinder whispered very loudly, "Where'd everyone go?"
Sharsky finally looked around, puzzled. "Maybe they've been abducted by aliens."
"We were abducted by aliens, you doofus!" Fassbinder sighed. "What is the local time anyway?"
Only then did Fassbinder realize that - not counting crossing the international date line - this was his third all-nighter in a row. It made him a little proud, though, knowing they had already succeeded in producing something viable in actual, alien code. Even if it did basically end the world.
"So we can't beat it," Sharsky said, stretching in his chair and popping something - either in his back or bolt on the chair, it was hard to tell.
"Maybe we could join it," Fassbinder said, only half-joking. "Maybe it could help protect us from Ratchet."
"Get insider intel," Sharsky agreed. "Be the double agent and make it believe we're on its side."
Blinding inspiration struck. "Oh! Oh! Oh!" Fassbinder exclaimed. "What if we could convince it to join us! Its AI is basically as smart as a human. Maybe we could win it over!"
Sharsky stared for a second and then shrugged. "It'll probably be more productive than trying to write this effing antivirus. Let's see…" He pulled up a shared file folder from the LAN. "Do we want the Windows-compatible version of the Twitch that apparently came from your lame-aft computer, or do we want the more-advanced and formidable version I wrote that can even attack a Mac?"
Fassbinder blinked in confusion. "Did you seriously just dis my version of the Twitch?"
"I'm just saying - my coding baby can do things yours can't. I'd even put down a twenty that mine's the one that brought Megatron to his knees."
"Whatever. I'm the evil genius here."
Sharsky scoffed. "Whatever. You sound like a valley girl. Or Leo."
"Same diff. Go with my Twitch version. It's more versatile than your snooty Mac version."
He snorted and pulled it up. They together stared at the GUI - it had been written for manipulating the Twitch's underlying code, not for communicating with the AI. But it did also have a "compile" function with a syntax checker and everything.
"Hello, Computer," Sharsky said in his best Scotty voice.
Fassbinder snorted in amusement, then more thoughtfully asked, "Think 'Bee could write us a chat function?"
Sharsky shook his head. "No way, he's in the doghouse now, too. You saw how Biker Chick was beating on him. We're on our own on this one."
"Well, the GUI already does all the hard work for us," Fassbinder suddenly realized. "It already converts whatever we're doing in English into Cybertronian. Let's play to our strengths here and let Bumblebee's code do the rest."
Reinvigorated, they dove into the code again, this time Bumblebee's handiwork instead of the Twitch.
At some point, Fassbinder noticed Lisbeth beside him with a breakfast burrito and a latte. He rubbed his eyes, wondering if he'd nodded off again, but this time, his dream girl seemed to be real. Hallucinations didn't remember the hot sauce and definitely didn't remember his slow-and-steady-work drink order.
"Here - have something to eat. I'm pretty sure someone has a monitor on when you last got REM sleep," Lisbeth said, "but I'm looking at your eyes and guessing it's been too long."
"Yes, dear," he answered indulgently. "But saving the world requires a lot of espresso if they don't let me have any other stimulants."
He took a sip and grimaced, but before he could put the problem into words, she handed him two packets of sugar. "I'm not bringing you anything stronger than this until you've shut down the computer and gotten some shut-eye."
She had apparently been working on alliteration in that improv workshop, Fassbinder thought. He turned his attention away from the screen to give her the kind of adoring look that had to be practically scheduled when he was getting single-minded about a project.
"Thanks for the sustenance," he said. "This is why you're twenty percent more awesome than any of my roommates."
"Hey," Sharsky protested, but Fassbinder just waved in the general direction of the break area someone official had set up.
"Go get your own breakfast," Fassbinder told him. Sharsky grumbled something unintelligible and looked mournfully at my burrito, then trudged off to the food.
Once he was gone, she leaned forward with a lazy tilt to her smile and ran a hand along Fassbinder's arm. "I hope that's not all I'm better at than your roommates."
He decided he needed to stretch his legs right then and there. He downed the latte and got a few blisters for his trouble but was on his feet before he could articulate an excuse for being AFK.
"I need a fresh set of eyes on this," he announced to no one. "Don't crash the world while I'm gone." Lisbeth looked in confusion for a moment at the empty tables around them.
The computer whirred in a very non-sentient way as he turned his back on it. He and Lisbeth walked out of the hangar, but Fassbinder stopped in confusion, "Wait, is that sunrise or sunset?" he asked, gesturing at the sky. She snorted and shook her head before leading him across a bit of pavement to a utilitarian building and, inside it, to a room.
"Where are we?" he asked.
Lisbeth pointed to a piece of paper on the clipboard by the door.
TEMPORARY BARRACKS ASSIGNMENTS:
FASSBINDER, NADIPATI
SHARSKY, JOSEPH
Opening the door, he found two twin beds (his hastily-packed bag already distributed on one, with Sharsky's bag on the other), two desks, and a semi-functional A/C unit. "Cozy," he said.
"It does the job," Lisbeth answered.
She planted one hand in the middle of Fassbinder's chest and shoved him with a disciplinarian sexiness. He smacked his head on the wall but was still conscious enough to be a little turned on.
"Tuck me in?" he hopefully asked.
"Only if you promise to stay here," Lisbeth said. "Don't make me tie you down."
"I wouldn't object," he mumbled.
Her next words were somewhere between a purr and a growl and she leaned over, pulling the pilly blanket back so I could get horizontal. "I'll even kiss you goodnight."
"So it is a sunset!" he said with a yawn. Caffeine could only carry a body through so many all nighters.
"As the saying goes 'Morning is whenever you wake up.' You'll be in a better mood eight hours from noon if I say so."
"Seven hours, forty-five," he haggled. "I'd be willing to go as low as seven. Hell, some doctors say it's healthy to get three to five and do some light exercise before bed!"
She kissed her palm and smacked him lightly on the forehead with it. "Sleep, you maniac. I'll be back for room service and maybe another latte later."
He was out cold before she closed the door.
...
When Fassbinder woke up, Sharsky was sawing logs in his own bunk. It was twilight outside, or maybe the sun was just rising. Fassbinder really had no way to know. Regardless, his bladder was telling him he'd had way too much sleep on way too much caffeine.
One restroom break later, he headed out into the tropical morning...scratch that, evening. It was getting darker, not lighter. He'd slept the whole day away. The others had probably written the antivirus and fixed the whole world while he snored. Too bad, he really wanted in on that action. As a silver lining, maybe he and Lisbeth could slip away to enjoy the beach for a bit under those bright stars...
Fassbiner walked leisurely back towards the big hangar, taking deep breaths of the tropical air. He was a little glad he hadn't been awake during the heat of the day, but the evening breezes were a refreshingly cool relief from the residual humidity. He opened the human-sized door next to what could only be a huge roll-up alien-sized door. The scene that greeted him was complete chaos.
His and Sharsky's little kids' table with laptops had mysteriously collapsed, and what had been Fassbinder's laptop had a burrito squished between screen and keyboard. Hot sauce was gently dripping like blood from the trackpad.
"OH YEAH?" Simmons was shouting at his own computer and, rather oddly, being held back by Ratchet. "YOUR MOTHERBOARD IS A FRAGGING PAPERCLIP!" On Simmons' screen a giant Clippy GIF appeared and made a rude gesture.
A blonde woman was furiously typing away at her computer with a scowl, when suddenly the CD drive popped out causing her coffee cup to spill all over her. She jumped up and quickly started trying to dab the coffee with a napkin while swearing in an Australian accent.
A Black guy slammed his fist down on his own keyboard. "I'll show you 'Will not compile!'"
"Sup?" Fassbinder said to Sam, who was watching the whole thing with a kind of gray-faced expression associated with military men in the movies.
"Dude, you fell asleep on the job at the WRONG time," he pronounced grimly. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are at war."
Fassbinder shifted nervously and looked at his computer. "Is that why little Tiffany had to die?" he asked, riffing on Men in Black.
Sam grimaced. "'Little Tiffany' had the worst potty mouth of them all."
"Kinda sad Sharsky's sleeping through this mess," Fassbinder commented.
"Sleeping through it? Near as we can tell, he started it," Leo snarled, coming over. "My fragging computer just called me a pinchi son of a puta. How da hell did it learn to be a glitch in Spanglish?! We're not even connected to anything but the LAN."
Sam gave him a steely glare. "It learned from the best."
"Wait - what exactly did Sharsky do?" Fassbinder asked.
"He wrote a chat function for the GUI. Now the fragging 'twitching awfuls' worm can be awful over chat, too. It's also learned to commandeer the audio, web cam, screens, and printer," Sam explained, rubbing his forehead tiredly.
"And, so far, has dumped coffee on four people via optical drive," Leo said pointing to a drenched pant leg.
"We're just lucky they physically removed the wireless cards on all the machines prior to setting up the LAN or this would have already infected the entire internet," Sam sighed.
A piercing whistle rang through the hangar and everyone quieted and looked at the source. An intense, bald, military guy who obviously was of some high rank spoke once he had everyone's attention. "These machines are not salvageable and we don't want any chance of this virus getting out. Everyone clear out, get dinner. We'll have techs come in and disconnect everything. The machines will be destroyed and you will all be issued new computers. We'll be continuing in the morning. We will not be setting up a LAN so if something like this happens again it only takes down ONE machine."
Sharsky happened to enter at this last moment and stared around, clearly in need of six ounces of caffeine and a comb. Channeling Clone Wars-era Kenobi, he demanded, "What the blazes happened here?"
Leo took one last look at his computer and mournfully stepped away to let the military techies put it out of everyone's misery. It wasn't pretty, but it was necessary.
Then glaring at Sharsky, Leo said, "You broke the internet, man."
Before any of them could think of a comeback for that, Intense Bald Military Guy approached with a woman in tow.
"Epps," Sam greeted. Fassbinder remembered that this was the guy who had met Sam when they first arrived.
Epps nodded at Sam but beadily glared at the techies beside him. "Misters Fassbinder and Sharsky."
Both Fassbinder and Sharsky straightened up a little nervously.
"Meet Sergeant Patricia Thomaczech," Epps continued, "she'll be your guide and manage your schedules while you are on base. You are to follow her orders." He practically stomped off as Fassbinder and Sharsky looked at each other in confusion.
Leo snorted, "Y'all got a babysitter!"
"Only while you are here in the Autobot hangar," she grimly said. "You know where the mess hall is."
"Wherever it is," Sharsky muttered, "it's not this mess."
The gaggle of college guys headed for the human-sized door, and Mikaela and Lisbeth were just a few yards away when they made it outside.
"Hey babe," Lisbeth said with a wave. "I was just coming to see if you were alive still when we heard about the whole project crashing."
"Don't remind me," Sam grumbled. He perked up a bit, though, when Mikaela took his hand and gave it an encouraging squeeze.
"Go ahead without us," Mikaela said, making eyes with Sam. "We'll catch up in a few minutes.
Fassbinder shook his head at them, but Lisbeth locked arms with him and they meandered in the same direction as the rest of the techies, Leo and Sharsky falling in step behind them. While he'd been given a map of the areas he was allowed to go, 'Binder hadn't actually been to the mess hall yet and wouldn't have been able to find it right now if his life depended on it.
"So, nice night, huh," Fassbinder said hopefully to his girlfriend.
"Sure," she easily agreed, "but the next time you need a break, you should see some of the artwork Sideswipe and his brother have made. It's amazing!"
"You mean the 'bot you were talking with…"
"...Is an artist, yep!"
"What's his handle on the blog?" Fassbinder asked over his shoulder.
"ConSlayer," Leo answered. "Because, unlike your girlfriend, most people remember him as the silver psychopath who likes to slice people open."
Lisbeth shrugged, grinning. "All true artists have their quirks."
…
When they got the call to return to the Autobot hangar, the place was set up again with shiny new laptops, office chairs, and tables. Apparently, the carnage had taken out the last of the old, rickety temporary furnishings, because Fassbinder and Sharsky even had a decent set up this time (though they were still banished to the corner furthest from the command center). Sergeant Patricia was there to greet them at the door and escorted them to their new station.
Another human - a guy in coveralls - was kicked back in a third office chair near their station. He glanced up from his phone and nodded to their escort. "Thomaczech."
"Davis," she nodded in return. "Ratchet sent you?"
"Yeah. Epps assigned somebody who could shoot them if needed, but I can actually keep an eye on their code."
"Who are you?" Leo demanded.
Davis rose to his feet and met Leo's gaze in a totally dominating stare. "I'm here on Ratchet's say-so. I'm one of the members of his human repair team."
"You repair humans?" Fassbinder snarked.
"No, I practice percussive maintenance on them," Davis replied with an evil grin that caused both Fassbinder and Sharsky to step back.
Thomaczech snorted despite the uniform.
"Han Solo would be so damn proud," Sam said. To Fassbinder and Sharsky, he added, "Davis was an electrical engineer for the Air Force, before Ratchet recruited him."
Davis crossed his arms. "I was one of those punk kids who taught myself to code and built my own home computers back when War Games seemed plausible."
"In what language? FORTRAN?" Sharsky asked, daring to pull his chair out and sit down.
Davis shrugged. "That's what the Pentagon computers were using back then, and how else was I supposed to hack them? Nowadays I roll with the tide and look up anything I need to on Stack Overflow, like all good programmers."
Fassbinder and Sharsky shared a look of both frustration and begrudging respect. "Got a first name?" Sharsky asked.
"Not for you, not yet," he said, letting his hands fall to his sides and smirking. "I'm here to keep an eye on your code. You two have a knack for absolute chaos. Ratchet wants to watch the next time you two do something interesting, and I get to decide when you hit that threshold. So get to work."
Fassbinder and Sharsky shared a glance, wondering if they were being insulted or praised, then turned their attention to their respective machines.
"Did you keep my chat function?" Fassbinder asked Davis.
He sighed deeply. "Yes."
Fassbinder was relieved by that. He'd been feeling vaguely cheated that Sharsky had chatted directly with his Mac-compatible code-baby, while he hadn't been able to make first contact yet. Cracking his knuckles, he set to work.
...
Fassbinder looked up in surprise when Davis offered him a soda and a burger. A cafeteria tray with identical contents was set in front of Sharsky as well.
"It's 22:00 hours," he explained. "All the other techies are turning in for the night. Eat something and go to bed."
"Dude, between multiple all-nighters and globe-trotting, my brain doesn't know what time it is. I slept all afternoon. I'm good for at least another 20 hours."
Thomaczech snorted. "We don't need a repeat of you taking down the LAN."
"But the lab computers are no longer networked," Sharsky protested.
"That's not the point," Thomaczech said.
"You'd find a way," Davis added.
Sharsky took a bite of the meal Davis had brought for him, ignoring the soda and reaching for his Monster. "Just a couple more hours," he haggled like a kindergartener hoping to stay up 'til 10. "There has to be a way to crack this thing and we'll never find it if you cage us in with bedtimes and stuff."
"Why don't they have you working on this, Davis?" Fassbinder asked, more to stall while he ate his burger than anything.
"Because I really haven't done much programming since FORTRAN was all the rage. I can write a website and query a database but I'm a little rusty on my hacking skills."
"So how'd an early 80's nerd end up in the Air Force anyway?" Sharsky added.
Davis popped open a Monster of his own in what Fassbinder hoped was a good sign. "I wanted to be an astronaut, of course. Many astronauts, especially the early ones, were test pilots from the Air Force."
"So what happened?" Sharsky asked.
"Turns out I go into G-LOC at a relatively low threshold so I didn't qualify," Davis said with a nonchalant shrug.
"G-LOC?" Fassbinder nearly tried Googling it before remembering he didn't have any internet connection.
"G-force induced loss of consciousness," Davis explained.
"That sucks, man." Sharsky commisserated.
"Yeah. One of my buddies from the Astronaut Training Program is on the shuttle in space right now. I did kind of envy him - until I ended up being the one to work with aliens," Davis replied with a grin.
Sharsky considered that this was the one thing capable of making Armstrong and Aldrin green with envy. "Fair point."
...
Thomaczech's radio crackled to life just after midnight. "Bring in the techie twins," a man said through the speaker. "JCS called and shit just got real."
"You want a hand?" Davis offered.
"I can handle 'em, but you may as well tag along," she answered. "Fassbinder, Sharsky, you're with me. Davis, lead out."
They made an unconventional Walk of Shame through the Autobot hangar, though thankfully none of the aliens or G.I. Joes were there to see. They stopped at a door labeled "Lennox," and Thomaczech opened it. Epps was waiting inside, tapping a pen on the desktop with the kind of determination that made Fassbinder wonder if he wasn't tempted to throw it instead.
"So. You slaggers managed to screw over NASA. We've got a shuttle in orbit that's going to be lucky if it stays that way. Flaps and landing gear are fragged up."
"Mac or Windows?" Sharsky eagerly asked.
"Neither," Davis answered. "NASA's OS is Linux-based."
Fassbinder and Sharsky shared a look of awe. "We broke the Linux barrier!" they chorused.
Epps' arm moved, and Fassbinder reflexively ducked, but Epps' hand was still clenched around the pen. "It's not something to be fragging proud of!" he bellowed while hammering the pen like a gavel with each word. It not only shut them up in a hurry, but they looked slightly abashed at having been colossally short-sighted.
"How long do we have?" Davis quietly asked when all parties were in a more even-tempered state..
"Dunno," Epps grunted, setting down the pen. "The shuttle started showing signs of the Twitching Awfuls about an hour ago, so hopefully we've got at least a little while yet. We'll brief the rest of the team in the morning. But if you techie twins can't keep the craft from burning itself up on reentry - along with a whole bunch of astronauts - not even Prime will be able to keep me from killing you. Go to bed, and you sure as hell had better bring your A-game tomorrow morning."
"But we don't look at all alike," Sharsky protested as Thomaczech ushered them from the room.
"Keep walking," Davis urgently muttered.
Out in the hallway, Sharsky added, "But we don't!"
"In code, we all look alike," Fassbinder quipped.
Sharsky grinned at the thought. "Dude, that's beautiful."
"How long HAVE you been awake?" Davis demanded.
"Too long on not enough lattes," Fassbinder answered.
With a sigh, Thomaczech said, "The term 'twin' has become something of an insult in NEST. Like beauty, twin is as twin does."
"Wonderful," Sharksy proudly quoted. "We are now a part of the tribe."
...
Thankfully, they'd been met at the barracks by Lisbeth, who had a can of root beer for Sharsky to settle him down. Fassbinder also was able to sleep a little bit later, with some help from Lisbeth.
The next morning, Leo was waiting in front of their barracks with Sam, 'Bee in his bipedal form, Lisbeth, and Mikaela. Together, they walked toward the Autobot hangar-turned-computer-lab. Having everyone together reminded Sharsky of a question he'd thought of off-and-on all day yesterday. "What have you been up to, Sam?"
"Mostly talking the biggest of the alien walking weapons down from various panic attacks," he grumbled.
'Bee quoted, "A likely story!"
"Well, one recurring panic attack," Sam defensively added.
"You heard about the shuttle?" Fassbinder asked Leo.
"Yep," he said. "Sam told me. It'll probably be in this morning's briefing."
"We've got a bet going for whose baby made the leap," Sharsky said.
"Wait! What?" 'Bee demanded via quotes.
Mikaela started laughing, and Sharsky explained, "I wrote a Mac-compatible version of the GUI you gave us, so there's two variants floating around. Now three, I guess."
"So it didn't...make the leap to...Mac-compatible...on it's own?"
"Is that important, 'Bee?" Sam asked as they entered the hangar.
"I'm not sure."
Epps was up on the command scaffolding and glaring at them. All the rest of the gang was there.
"You're late," 'Bee quoted Frodo Baggins.
"A tech wizard is never late," Leo retorted.
To the room at large, Epps announced, "The space shuttle is showing signs of the Twitching Awfuls. It looks like the Mac-compatible variant is the one that made the jump to Linux."
Sharsky celebrated with something between a shimmy and a shake. Fassbinder turned a pointed glare on him, which didn't stop the dance, but at least caught his attention.
"You're not supposed to be happy," Fassbinder snapped. "Someone, somewhere, is going to get your little Super Bowl shuffle entered into evidence in a congressional hearing and you do not want that on C-SPAN."
Sharsky perked up. "You really think they'll talk about alien interference in Congress? That'd be epic!"
"I don't know," Fassbinder said, "but Dad would definitely use imperiling NASA as an excuse to write me out of the will."
"GENTLEMEN," Epps' voice interrupted, "You done so I can continue the briefing?"
Fassbinder and Sharsky, looking sheepish, turned their attention back to the man in charge.
With one last glare their way, Epps said, "Our best conclusion is that it's evolving faster in the wild, since it doesn't have Cybertronian antiviral software to suppress it. And in other bad news, Skids and Mudflap's condition is deteriorating. Ratchet says that, statistically speaking, the chance of this turning fatal for one of the twins is uncomfortably high after another 24 hours or so. This thing is accelerating, and we have got to find a way to stop it. Techs and flunkies, get to work!"
"You're the flunkies," Mikaela not-so-helpfully said to Fassbinder and Sharsky. "Good luck!" Then she and Lisbeth ambled in Sideswipe's direction.
Everybody else started heading toward their computers except Sam and 'Bee, and Fassbinder asked them, "What about breakfast?"
"You've already had it," 'Bee again quoted, this time from Aragorn.
"No we haven't," Sharsky protested, while Fassbinder accused, "You've been binge-watching Lord of the Rings, haven't you!"
Sam ignored him and answered Sharsky. "Well we did. Grab something from the snack station to keep you going until lunch. And set your alarm earlier tomorrow morning."
With a long-suffering sigh, Sharsky headed toward the stash of food. "Look, they've actually got something besides protein bars and fruit. Donuts!"
Maybe it was the aroma of donuts combined with the Autobot smell of the place - diesel fuel and machine oil and everything - that brought him back, but Fassbinder felt an odd sense of nostalgia as he filled his plate. Freshman year, Bumblebee had stuffed them in his trunk and hauled them off to a military base for interrogation. And they'd had piles of donuts there just like this. Thinking of Bumblebee reminded him of the Autobot's question just a few minutes ago, and Fassbinder paused mid-bite as that question finally lodged in his brain.
Chewing and swallowing in a gulp, he said, "How did the Twitch make the leap to Linux?"
Sharsky shrugged. "It's an advanced alien AI. It programmed itself."
"But you wrote the Mac-compatible Graphic User Interface. Do you think the Linux variant kept the GUI or wrote its own?"
"Why…?" Sharsky's eyes flew wide. "The GUI!"
Fassbinder sprinted toward his work station as fast as his piled breakfast plate would let him, Sharsky hot on his heels. Davis and Thomaczech were already there casually talking. "We need to see the Linux variant!" Fassbinder panted.
"I leave you two unattended for five minutes…" Thomaczech grumbled.
"No, no, no!" Sharsky said. "The GUI! We need to see the GUI!"
"Why?" Davis suspiciously asked.
Sharsky set his plate down. "If it's remaining compatible with human systems, it's gotta have a piece that's still human, like a .dll or something that's keeping our languages, code syntax, and everything. Find that - a combo of Cybertronian and human code - and it paints the target. You can find all the variants!"
Thomaczech looked to Davis. "Does that make any sense?"
He tilted his head and then stood. "Surprisingly, yes." Pointing to the office chair he'd just vacated, he said, "Get to work. I'll go talk to Ratchet."
Leo had noticed the excitement and drifted over. Before he could ask what was going on, though, Ratchet walked into the hangar. Crouching down so he could glare optic-to eye at them, he demanded, "Explain in precise detail what you are proposing, so I can figure out where it might explode."
Fassbinder took a deep breath. "The Mac variant didn't evolve spontaneously. Sharsky wrote a GUI for it. With the virus - sorry, worm - making the leap to Linux, we are wondering if it took Sharsky's code with it."
"And even if it didn't," Sharsky added, "there's got to be a file or something where it's keeping all our human-related code to allow it to interface with human systems. We've been hunting for the Cyber-bug, but it's the human armor it's cloaked in that we should be looking for. The 'inside' of the code is evolving, but the 'outside' can't. Not if it's going to stay Windows-compatible. Or whatever."
"It's thinking like a human and a Transformer," Fassbinder added. "It's programming in disguise."
Ratchet straightened, and his optics dimmed for just a flicker. Looking to Davis, Ratchet said, "Give it to them on a jump drive - their computer only."
"Lucky," Leo jealously muttered under his breath.
And for the first time since getting the news they were going to the island, Fassbinder felt inclined to agree.
As soon as Davis turned over the jumpdrive, Fassbinder and Sharsky got to work. It took them less than an hour of comparing all three GUI's to flag several possible targets for Ratchet. Since Cybertronian antiviral systems still had been able to neutralize the Twitch when it could find the worm, all they really had to write was the query that would light up all the variants.
When they ran the search on their computer, it identified all three of the variants from the jump drive.
"We have a winner?" Sharsky asked.
"I sure as the Pit hope so," Fassbinder said, and saved the query to the jump drive. "Let's see what Ratchet says."
