The Diego Diaries: Going Onward (dd7 57)
=0=The Jail
Hard Drive, Sun and Jack walked into the cell block calm and collected. Jack and Sun were grinning as they followed 'the kid' to the group of cells in the back where mechs occupied them. He paused when he reached the guards to have an off line conversation together. Then Hard Drive turned to the three cells with their single mech contents. "I'm here."
Pico who was sitting on the berth holding his helm in his servos rose, then walked to the bars. "I would like to speak to you, General. I know that Carbide does as well. If you would … be so kind ..." His voice trailed off. It was clear that he was emotional and so was Carbide nearby.
Rockwell stood, then walked to the bars. "They're giving up. They're giving up on everything that matters because they're weak. Weak and sniveling. You're traitors to your caste. Both of you. You make me sick."
Pico turned toward Rockwell. "If anyone is sick in this group I'm looking at him. Nothing matters to you. You saw what we all saw and nothing mattered. What's wrong with you, Rockwell? Didn't you see everything, too?"
Rockwell stared at him silently.
"Let these two out. I will talk to them in the conference room, gentlemen," Hardie said as he walked toward the door. Sun and Jack followed.
The guards walked to the cells with Pico and Carbide. "No crap. You already have marks against ya," a big mech said.
Pico and Carbide stepped out without a backward glance, then followed the guards out of the room.
Rockwell watched them go, his fury clear to see, then sat down on his berth again. It was silent in the room and would remain so for a while.
=0=Conference Room nearby
Hardie, Sun and Jack were already sitting as the two mechs with guards walked in. He nodded to the seats across from him and both sat. It was tense and silent a moment, then Pico felt tears come to his optics. Wiping them almost savagely, he looked at Hardie. "I don't want to do this anymore."
"Most prisoners don't," Sun said quietly.
"No," Pico said as he glanced at the huge mech who looked a great deal like Ironhide. "That's not what I mean."
"Then tell me," Hardie said.
Pico stared at him, then glanced away. "I can't do the whole thing anymore."
It was silent.
Hardie glanced at Carbide. "What about you?"
Carbide who was staring at his servos which he was wringing with anxiety glanced up with a start. "I can't. I don't … I don't know. I think if I go one more minute I'm going to fly apart."
Hardie nodded. "What made your ideas and position change?"
Moments ticked by as the two mechs stared at the table top, then Pico looked at Hardie with anguished optics. "The kids. All the children. The babies. All the dead. The survivors. They have happiness after all this. All the suffering and starvation, the rest of it, they still have happiness. All the gratitude. They live in tents and have little. They thank everyone they see who comes. They feel such … gratitude. I don't … all the dead." He sat back with weariness and shuttered his optics. He looked drained and weary.
"You've never seen that before, then," Sun asked Carbide.
That mech shook his helm. He stared at the tabletop unable to meet anyone's optics. "No. Never."
"That's war, infant," Sun said gently. "Its was a war of annihilation. No one gets away unscathed. No one ever wins. Everyone thinks they can. Everyone thinks its a crusade or a party. It'll be over in decaorns, they say, then we can all have a parade.
"Those who start them never fight them. Some of them are old and have fantasies. Some want to make money. Some like the power of life and death. Some are mental and just don't care. They never see what they start. They never feel it. This one was different wasn't it."
Pico glanced at Sun. "Yes," he barely whispered.
"Do you hate war, infant?" Sun asked as Jack and Hardie listened. Sun was an expert with confused and scared kids.
Pico nodded as tears spilled down his face.
Carbide slumped a little, his processor almost lying on the table top.
"Yes," Pico whispered. "I never knew it was so bad."
"Most don't. Do you want to know how much of our population are soldiers? Only about 2 percent. That's the ones who have to shovel the slag, face their countrymen and shoot each other. 98 percent watch it on the news net and talk it up in bars. They never, ever see and experience it. When you end up in war it changes you forever. You are never, ever the same. It rearranges your spark and processor.
"That's why so many of us with kids and younger family won't allow them to be regular army and armada soldiers. We know what would happen. You wouldn't know and neither would your family. You never took part in the shit end of the stick. You just got the parades," Sun said quietly.
Jack nodded. "You did. We're Praxian Elites and exempts. We didn't have to do slag but we did for all our people. They're the only thing that matters, all our people because we were slaves once. We know what it meant to be hopeless ourselves.
"We fought the Quintessans and then the Functionalist Council. When they were defeated, it still went on. It wouldn't die no matter how many times we killed it. The System of Exception was a cancer we couldn't defeat. The battlefields of this universe are littered with our precious people fighting to save everyone from tyranny. The only ones who didn't get it were our own caste."
Jack leaned back in his chair, then stared at the two kids who were slumped in abject misery in their seats. "I will tell you that I lost my religion for a while. I couldn't conceive how The One deserved my love and gratitude when this was allowed to happen. I eventually realized that The One and Primus Himself didn't teach or want this. After all, who got the biggest slagging of all? Primus.
"I remembered what the priests always said. We have free will. We have the right to choose and its a universal right. They say that even The One won't transgress on a spark's freely chosen will. Its a universal law, infants. Neither of them caused this. We did. We chose it. I do know and agree with them that whatever is in our processors creates our reality.
"What we chose as a group creates what happened to us. We created our own reality and what a reality is was. We're still fighting it even now. You are what you think. If we decided as one to be the greatest and most peaceful society in the universe, it would've happened because that's how it works.
"But we didn't. We chose injustice, indifference, hatred, greed and bigotry dressed up in religion and 'they way it always was'. We put in place a terrible process that grew to exclude nearly everyone but a handful who drew all the benefits without any of the hardships. What can you tell me that let you know that those excluded deserved it? They created the wealth. We didn't, our caste. Their honest labor did," Jack said. "And they got no benefit. Our caste, the parasite caste took it all without a qualm.
"You know about Ratchet's genitors who own RTR Tools. They're the greatest weapon makers and tool creators that our people have ever witnessed. But Galaxy Industries took them over and denied them not only the benefit of their labors but the ownership of their own ideas. They did that because we didn't value them. We saw them as disposable equipment. We didn't see them as us," Sun said.
"When you look at another, you're looking at yourself. What you do to another, you do to yourself. You do remember that all must be one? We're all the spark of Primus and Primus is from the spark of The One. That means what you do to another, you do to yourself. No one is separate from anyone else. Until all are one means exactly that," Sun concluded.
It was silent as a tomb as the two sat suffering in their chairs.
Hardie leaned forward to rest his elbows on the table. "We understand that you have changed. We would like you to tell us how and why. I would like to know how we can help you. Sometimes the hardest part is the part where you can't say why but you know it happened. From there, you can go forward but until you get it clear in your processor that's harder than it should be."
Pico sat back to stare at Hardie with desolation. "The children. I picked up their body parts. They were hiding from the war. They were hiding with their families. I can hardly bear that they were that afraid. They didn't know what was happening because they were good and pure, all of them. You know they didn't know. We betrayed them. They came to us to grow up and we betrayed them with death and suffering."
Carbide nodded as he hung his helm. "I see them, the kids. In the camps, in the bombed out craters. How many more are out there afraid and hurt? I don't know how to live with this. Everything that I know is wrong. My bond, my family … its all a lie."
Pico nodded. "Rockwell was enraged. He attacked us. We don't want this anymore. I want to do something but I don't know what."
Hardie sat back, then glanced at his brothers. "Well, that's up to us isn't it."
Sun stared at the two young mechs. Their paradigm had crashed and it was still going to be a train wreck. They may have changed but their families and bonds were still in the old group think. Even though he'd seen this come about in high caste mechs through the great democratic process of war and pillage, he knew it wasn't going to be a nice and clean transition. "Tell me about your families and bonds. They won't understand this at all will they."
Pico sat back. "My bond won't. He's pretty mad that I'm in prison. My family, all of them, they won't understand this at all."
"And you?" Sun asked Carbide.
He shook his helm. "I don't think they'll be anything but totally stunned." He looked at the three big mechs. "This has been the worst experience of my life. I never saw such things. All the people … they're so grateful. They ask for so little. It makes me ..." He paused as emotion threatened to topple him.
"Ashamed?" Jack asked.
Pico looked at him, then nodded. He lowered his helm. "Yes."
Carbide rolled his neck from the tension, then looked at Hard Drive. "I want to … speak to Prime if I could. I know he probably won't want to but I think I have to do it."
Sun grinned. "You have him confused with Sentinel and Zeta."
Hardie grinned, then put in a call. He then glanced at Sun. "Can you bring in something to drink? I think they might need something."
"I think we all do," Sun said as he stood. He walked to the door and was gone.
The sound of the clock on the wall could be heard softly running as the group waited for Sun to come back. He wouldn't come back alone.
=0=Moments later in the hallway
Optimus and Ironhide listened to Sun explain the situation, then followed him to the conference room door. Sun entered, then put down a number of cups of something hot and aromatic. It smelled like good coffee, another innovation of a miracle himself, Rampage of Kaon. He stepped aside, then Ironhide and Prime entered.
The two mechs stared at them, then jumped up. Staring at Prime, they bowed their helms awkwardly, then waited as the two sat. When everyone had sat they did, too, demonstrating an aspect of high caste life in important situations. The lower status mechs and femmes sat only after the higher and highest ones did in formal occasions.
In that, they'd be surprised to share a trait with Seekers.
It was silent a moment as Sun handed out drinks, then sat back with his own. The two mechs held their cups, staring at the table top in shame as they did.
Prime who had been briefed by Sun leaned forward on his elbows. "You wished to speak to me. I am here for you."
Pico looked at Prime with anguish, then sat down his cup. "You always were. I never realized it before now. All the slag you got from us when you tried to change things. I remember it. My family told me about it, about how you tried to get the Senate to change things because revolution was coming. They didn't see it as a good thing. They wanted you to hurt people even more but you didn't. You didn't fail. We did. All of us who could have helped you but we didn't."
Carbide nodded. "I'm sorry. We weren't good to each other. We didn't see each other as what The One wanted us to be. We were supposed to be one. I remember reciting the creed whenever it was called for but I never thought about it. I never included anyone else in it. Just us. Just our caste."
Prime stared at the two youngsters and felt pain for them and their people. Here were two kids who learned from the ones they loved and trusted the best to hate their own people for things that made no sense. It was maddening.
"What changed your sparks, infants?" Ironhide asked quietly.
Pico looked at him with tears, then Prime. "Everything," he whispered.
=0=TBC 8-8-19
ESL:
scathed, unscathed: (skay-thd) If someone is scathed, they are hurt. To be unscathed is to be unhurt.