PORTLAND

"Dad?!"

The sound awoke Sparkplug from his brief slumber. It was the sound of Spike's voice - with a hint of urgency.

Sparkplug stayed in bed for a moment, and then slowly got up. The voice was clear enough to echo through his empty house. He wanted to call out "Spike? Son?!" But his history had already taught him about hearing that unmistakable call to him.

It was the exact same phenomena he experienced in the horrible days after his wife, Susan died. He would be jostled awake from the sound of Susan's voice - clear as a bell. It had the same hint of mild desperation as the sound he just heard. And just like the tone of Spike's voice that he swore he just heard, it didn't sound like distress, more like a call for help for a task that only Sparkplug could do. "Dad! Can you help me with this gasket seal?" "Dad, you're missing this drive, they're already at the 8 yard line!"

Sparkplug closed his eyes. He knew hearing "the voice" was part of his new normal. He knew the sound didn't exist in real form. At this moment, he knew his son was at Wilhelm's Funeral Home, the arrangements all made for his funeral service tomorrow. The visitation about nine hours from now.

When Susan died, and Sparkplug heard her voice echo through their old house, it was all he could muster to not answer back. After all, the entire ordeal, the car accident, hit by an inattentive motorist, could have been a horrible dream. But Sparkplug knew that the moment he could call out "Susan!," his 11-year-old son would burst out of his room, still believing there could be a chance that she was still with them. That it was a horrible case of mistaken identity.

But Sparkplug had to check. Just like today. So he did so in the same way when he heard Susan's voice, more than 12 years ago. He crept downstairs, and went into the basement, and after a brief scan of the unfinished room filled with tools and boxes, he made his way back up the steps, and looked into his living room.

The airy silence of the main floor confirmed Sparkplug's assertion that no one had disturbed the area since last night, when he crawled into bed, exhausted just before 8 p.m. He was still wearing the same clothes he had on the day before. Finally, he went upstairs for one futile final check: Spike's old room.

Spike's door was open enough for an inch of the dull sunlight to cast itself on the hallway. Sparkplug gently pushed the door open, confirming what he knew about five minutes ago. He would hear Spike's voice again and again in the very near future, he knew. And despite each hour bringing more and more validation to the finality of Spike's absence, Sparkplug would still do a "run check" through the empty house.

Sparkplug stood just inside his son's room for a moment. It already looked like a museum exhibit. Spike had moved out when he was barely 19. The room still had the artifacts from Spike's high-school life that he no longer needed in his own place. The posters of the Portland Trail Blazers, one of just Kevin Duckworth, the comedically worn Bloom County books, a bottle of cologne that he saved up for so he could impress Carly before they were a serious item. Tapes from bands he no longer listened to since he entered college.

Sparkplug reflexively thought "And this was Spike when he was 17…"

Sparkplug slowly went back to his own room. Once a master bedroom for him and Susan. Now simply his own. He knew the mantra that he had to adhere to, at least until Spike's funeral was done. Get up. Take a shower. Make the arrangements that need to be made today. Do everything you can to get him to his final resting place. You owe him that much.

The shower was short enough to just barely fulfill that task. He remembered wetting his hair, shampooing, and getting his legs, arms, and face. Next was shaving. Then getting dressed.

Sparkplug had already began to think about moving out of this house, once small enough for two, and now unbearably massive. He knew "that voice" would be there, and would belong to this house from this point forward.

He would still occasionally hear Susan's voice in this house, but it was far less frequent, and sounded far more distant than in their previous home. In early 1984, Sparkplug said he was going to look for a different place to live for the two of them, using the excuse of needing a smaller house. In reality, with the absence of another income, their house was going into foreclosure. He kept their dire financial situation from Spike, but he knew there were times Spike would get the mail after school. He knew he saw the letters go from "second notice" to more threatening tones, complete with official stamps and pink backing sheets.

Thankfully, Sparkplug's boss, G.B. Blackrock approached him with a lucrative short-term contract. A four-month gig on an offshore oil rig. It would have been enough to move into a smaller house, even though the loss of Spike's childhood home would still put him several thousand dollars in debt. The only caveat was Spike, who was 14 at the time. He would have to pull him out of eighth grade about two weeks before school was actually over. Sparkplug managed to secure a fake ID for his son that stated that he was 16 - the bare minimum age where he could work on an oil rig (and even that was pushing it).

And that of course, led up to this.

Sparkplug again began replaying "the choice" he made almost ten years ago. He had asked Spike to help flush out a drill bit on the oil platform. Then, a scene that no science fiction had ever prepared him for played out in in less than a half hour. Jets descended on their platform and transformed into massive robots. They quickly scattered the humans like someone clearing mice from a vacant building. Then, another set of gigantic robots emerged, but this group seemed to want to protect them.

He remembered the more fearsome of the "dangerous" robots destroying one of the supports like it was weakened tin. He remembers seeing his son fall into the cold ocean waters, and diving after him. He remembered being trapped underneath a segment of the platform, and watching it slowly sink above him, threatening to pin both him and his son into the ocean where they would drown in a watery grave.

Then, they were saved by the emergence of the largest living being he had ever seen. They crawled onto his shoulders, and with the help of another robot, they were pulled to safety. Soaked, and shivering, Sparkplug could barely process what had happened. First, the unthinkable: the oil rig where they were working on was attacked. Then, something that almost defied quantification: they were not alone in the universe, and he was one of the first ones to communicate with these new visitors.

He quickly volunteered to help these new visitors navigate Earth. At first, it was a reflexive gesture: they had saved their lives, it was literally the least he could do. But secondly, as the days went by after that rescue, he began thinking this was how he was going to provide for his son. Not just give him the basic elements of food and shelter, which even he had problems doing. But provide a genuine future for him. Their association with the Autobots would be sought after by people all over the world. And while he would never sell their access to the highest bidder, he knew he could somehow translate that access into providing a college education for Spike. Something he could never have done with the salary he was making.

But going back to that moment where he introduced himself and Spike to Optimus Prime, the being who rescued them from certain death, he knew the risks. He had seen his coworkers already being treated for injuries. He saw one man apply a makeshift tourniquet with his shirt to another coworker's leg. He saw another person withering in pain from being burned from the ensuing fire that destroyed their platform. Sparkplug briefly thought "this is what you're getting yourself into," but after almost facing homelessness, and seeing his bright, inquisitive son slowly begin to assume he'd be another full-time person on this rig in a few years, Sparkplug took the chance. He would risk his safety, as well as Spike's, to give his son this literal "once in a lifetime" opportunity that almost every other person in the world would happily take in a nanosecond the moment he walked away from this chance. And it ended with Sparkplug exactly where he was right now.

As Sparkplug walked into the kitchen, the phone rang. He didn't have the energy to answer it. He began making coffee, even though right now, he would be fine going back to bed and sleeping some more. The answering machine clicked on. Another media inquiry. He flinched in anger as he heard his answering machine take the call. It sounded like an older reporter.

"…first off, I want to offer my condolences. I know you've been getting requests, and I know how much pain it must be for you. And as much as I hate to say this, I've covered many deaths in my life. As much as I understand you not wanting to talk to anyone at this time, I want to tell you that right now, more people are hearing about your son than ever before. If any time you would want the world to know about your son, now is the time to tell us…"

The last sentence startled Sparkplug into picking up the phone.

"H…hello?!"

"Yes, this is William. Thank you, I was just…outside when I heard the phone."

"Thank you…"

Sparkplug listened to the reporter and shut his eyes. He let out a defeated sigh.

"Yes. If you could, 3:30 this afternoon would be fine. I'm assuming you have my address? Okay. Thank you…"

Sparkplug hung up the phone and let out another sigh. As the coffee was brewing, he couldn't help but think he was just manipulated by a local reporter into getting "a scoop." But she was right. Better to be the storyteller than to have someone else form a story about his son. The world needed to know who Spike was. That he was a good kid. Even if that's all he could think of right now, it would likely fill the 45 seconds of time before they moved onto the next story.