The Diego Diaries: Day Before (dd7 38)
=0=Later that afternoon
The Resort was swinging as tour groups came and went, visitors utilized the facilities or watched the colony down below with telescopes and binoculars that lined the walls along the front. Sitting in a comfortable chair, it was interesting and amazing to watch The City and everywhere else in a detail no one could match with their own equipment.
Walking across the grand concourse, Gavin Pritchard was heading out for a stroll along the pathways that led out in all directions in the vast domes that were available to guests. There was golf, a full eighteen holes, about 25 miles of pathways that wound everywhere around the grounds, picnic areas especially near the river and lake, bird and squirrel watching, nice quiet strolls through the burgeoning forests as well as a running track. The guests used all the facilities and most things were fine and dandy. It was only once in a while that problems happened.
He stepped out of the building into the amplified sunlight of the domes. It was refracted somehow to make it not only brighter inside but to help keep the temperature an even 75 degrees Fahrenheit or 23.9 degrees Celsius. Shirtsleeve weather, he thought as he hiked outward passing the dining patio where a number of guests were having a meal. The golf course in the distance was well in use as was the children's playground, the children's pool and the huge one for everyone else.
He would hike outward with communicator in hand, checking out the forests, the meadow lands, the places were guests could animal watch, the river and lake, the many different paths to different habitats that were added with the last expansion before coming back around three hours later. He'd have to caution a few visitors about jumping off the rocks that lined a part of the river that was too shallow but other than that, nada. It would be a great way to spend part of his shift.
=0=Intermediate School, Civics and Social Studies class
"So that's why its important to think about your life, what you want and what you're prepared to do to pursue those goals," Lady Sela said as she sat in front of the class as a guest to discuss the deeper meanings of the Festival that would happen the next day.
The students which included half the titans and Genesis listened closely because Lady Sela was holy and she was here to give them a clue about the responsibility they had as Cybertronians and the joy inherent in that very thing.
"You have only a few things to remember in relation to the Pantheon and The One. Primus as well. You just have to 'be'. You don't have to curry favor, worry about what They think of you because They love you and think you're perfect the way you are. You don't have to worry what you think others including Them want you to do either. They need nothing from you. Nothing.
"Understand me when I say that you don't have to do anything, period, to earn Their love and protection. You're perfect the way you are and all you have to do is 'be' … live now and be your best you, the best love, the best happiness, the best 'you' that exists. You can think about the past and dwell there wondering what you coulda, shoulda, woulda done but what in the end can you do about that?" she asked.
Genesis leaned slightly forward. "But what about it, Lady? What about the things we did that we're not proud of? What about our mistakes and the rest?"
Sela grinned slightly. "What about them? Can you fix them? Can you redo anything that's already over?"
They stared at her a moment.
"No. We can learn from them and make amends if they caused offense," Genesis added.
"Have you made amends?" Sela asked.
The kids glanced at each other, then her.
"We have or we've tried," Tru said.
"Then that's enough. Forgive yourself deeply and fully including others, then learn what you can from your behavior and all those moments. At that point, move forward. What's the point of berating yourself maybe all your life about something that you did way back when when you were different, younger and less thoughtful about life and people? Every moment and event of your life is a lesson that will help you become your best version of yourself. Given that the past cannot be accessed again nor changed, you have the moment you have right now and that's all you have.
"The future never comes, the past can't be accessed again. You have right now. Every day is a new opportunity to be the best vision of your best idea about yourself. That's what you should focus on. If you drag the past behind you, a past you can't fix nor access, then the present can't be free and possible. You have now and that's all you have.
"The One expects nothing from you because His acceptance of you and who you are is complete, its total. He created you and He doesn't make mistakes. You don't have to 'do' anything. Love that's unconditional doesn't require anything. Primus wants you happy, filled with love and celebration and fulfilled. If you live half in the past you can't live fully in the now."
It was quiet a moment, then a small femme raised her hand. "Lady … what about the war? What about the Decepticons? They hurt all of us so much. What do we do about that?"
Sela looked at her with deep loving affection. "You find out a way to forgive. You might not ever to be able to do so with every hurt but when you do you cut those moments loose and they fall away into the past where they actually live. Are they here in our present moment? The Decepticons? Are they here hurting us like you remember?"
The kids glanced around, then shook their helms.
"No," the little femme said with relief in her voice.
A young mech spoke a bit hesitantly. "My ada and atar were Decepticons. They regret it."
"Have they forgiven themselves yet?" Sela asked.
"No," he replied. "They just have regret. They love it here and they work in the army really hard for everyone. Both of them have the sigil and so do all of us kids," he said as he showed his arm with it there. "What do we do?"
"You help them find their way to peace and forgiveness. When you forgive you cut the hold the past and all its problems have on you. When you don't, you think about it, you suffer from it, about things you can't fix. Regrets are the ways the past holds you. When you forgive yourself … really and truly forgive yourself, the past falls away. You feel lighter and you don't obsess on what happened that you can't fix. Finally, it doesn't come to your processor. It's gone, resolved. It won't haunt you any more. It takes time but its worth it, infant. Help your genitors to find their way. Have them come to me and I'll help," Sela said.
The conversation would continue.
=0=The Pavilion, The Temple of Primus Restored
The big mechs of the Public Works Department and a number of curators from the museums stood on the steps of the Pavilion. They were going to bring the greatest relics from the collection in the vaults of the Temple shortly but the rest were coming from around the colony. They were watching trucks arrive bringing a number of things that had never been seen in public before. They were in private collections now donated to the Nation.
They pulled up and the drivers climbed out. The Public Works mechs walked to the back as the doors were pulled open. Armour, Chevron, Mraz and Templar were here to help with their placement in the pavilion. It was an exciting time to see venerable relics and artifacts for the first time.
Walking inside, then began to carefully remove boxes on pallets, some of them made by Makers from the distant past. Bringing them down, they were carefully unboxed, then the curators pulled things out. The first was breathtaking. It was the personal copy of The Chronicles of Primus that had belonged to Guardian Prime himself.
Staring at it as Armour slowly turned the pages of the simple relatively unadorned tome, everyone grasped its significance. This was the original copy from which all the others were derived. During the cataclysm of the many battles in the past, invaders and overlords either confiscated copies for themselves or destroyed them. This one was hidden and became rather like a holy grail. From this one came all the others.
"It's sure plain. I expected this to be covered in jewels or something," Mraz said with a bit of awe as he saw Guardian's own hand in the notes written in the margins. This was a mightily sought after treasure for the value of it as the first but also for the wisdom of the writing he added himself in the margins.
"You didn't know Guardian," Chevron said quietly. "He was a truly great mech, one who was unpretentious but deeply attached to the Pantheon and what it represented to all of us. I look forward to reading what he wrote in the margins."
"You and all of us, Lord Chevron," Comity, the main curator for manuscripts, books and other written works said almost breathlessly. "This is a miracle."
Chevron nodded. "It is. Let's see what else lies here."
They began to pull out treasures that included a knife that was attributed to Prima Himself, an image of Solus that was said to be made in Her lifetime on Cybertron and a flask that was attributed to Micronus and held his personally carved naming glyphs on its spectacularly bright and smooth silver surface.
It would be an amazing collection of things added to the enlarged pavilion along with the objects that they already had. The afternoon would pass with a sense of awe amongst everyone there.
=0=Cybertron
They walked along with Blackjack, Sun and Raptor heading toward a major munitions cache that was nearing completion of denaturing. It was a deadly pile of blistering infinity that was held in check by a solvent that rendered most of it inert. As long as air didn't touch the bomb components that had rusted nearly to combustibility in the huge holes were they lay jumbled together, all was well.
Carver was silent and introspective. Pico was emotional and at wits end. Rockwell wasn't with them. He was with Jack and Hardie somewhere else. These two were coming apart on schedule for the mechs who had taken them on, determined to show them the error of their ways and get them back on track again.
They reached the edge of the first big crater, then stared down inside. The solvent was being syphoned off to allow the bomb components to be removed, palleted, then shot into a nearby star for destruction. Nothing about them was stable enough for recycling.
Sun glanced at the two. "Look at that. You don't see something like that often. That's enough explosives there to crack the plating beneath our feet and deliver a massive blow to Primus. He'd feel that deeply and it would cause tremors all over the planet."
The two shifted their peds in anxiety.
"See those mechs down there? They're sappers. They go into jumbles like this and take out the detonators. When that's done, they disarm those that are somehow triggered and those that are so unstable that moving them will cause them to explode. That takes ununtrium bearings," Sun said as he watched the mechs down in the hole. "Sometimes, you don't have to be a warrior on the front lines to be a hero.
"Imagine what would've happened if some little infants decided to climb down and see what everything was? All of those mechs are low, mid and high castes. All of them are my heroes. I love and appreciate them. We all should. This mess got made by all of us but its funny how few really do the work of rehabilitating our world. Caste doesn't count down there, infants," he said as he stared at the two mechs.
Pico turned away, walked to a stack of boxes nearby and sat down dejectedly. Carver stared at Sun, then the ground. They were done. It was too much. They had reached the end of their rope at last.
=0=TBC 7-15-19