PART 35: The Device's Original Purpose Unveiled

Tarantulas scanned the files that he had been trying so hard to access the past few megacycles. A lot of things were making a lot more sense now. He had been right, the machine was never designed to be a time travel device. But if it wasn't that, then what was it? And who had designed it?

The one thing Tarantulas was focused on, however, was the meaning behind the password. It was "Starscream" that had opened up the files, and Tarantulas needed to know why. It could be the meaning behind all of this somehow.

Starscream had been a treacherous traitor in the time of the Decepticons. And somehow, his spark had managed to survive the millennia in space and wound up in the location of the Maximals and Predicons. Starscream had found his way to the Predicon base and, through the computer, had possessed Waspinator. He had shown his traitorous nature by playing both sides.

Naturally he had come up with a plan to overthrow Megatron and destroy the Maximals. For a short time, he had taken Black Arachnia as his apprentice. But when Starscream had betrayed her, Black Arachnia had paid him back in kind. A shot at a deposit of energon had sent Starscream's spark plunging back into the coldness of space.

"I've found something!" Tarantulas couldn't help but exclaim. He was getting so absorbed in uncovering the mystery behind all of this, he couldn't' help but get excited.

"What did you find?" Black Arachnia asked, coming to stand behind Tarantulas.

"I've found a video recording," Tarantulas said. He quickly had the computer access the file.

"Waspinator?!" Black Arachnia exclaimed. "That's impossible. There's no way he possesses that sort of intelligence."

"No…I do not believe Waspinator was really the one behind all this," Tarantulas replied.

"This is Air Commander Starscream," Waspinator said. Though, it didn't sound like Waspinator's voice. Somehow, his voice had become more high pitched and scratchy.

"Starscream?!" Black Arachnia exclaimed.

"While the others are divided between here and the Maximal base, I shall be working on a project of my own," Starscream said. "Because I may not have the amount of time necessary I won't be working on this alone. Tarantulas is lending his services…"

"You helped him?" Black Arachnia asked. "I thought you didn't trust him."

Tarantulas was stunned and it took him a moment to gather himself. "I…I have no memory of this!"

"Granted," Starscream continued, "if things go wrong, he won't remember anything. If something should happen, the memories of all involved will be erased and the files contained here will be encoded so not even Tarantulas will be able to access them."

Black Arachnia snorted. "He didn't do a very good job did he? You found them."

"Actually, he did do a good job hiding them," Tarantulas said. "If the device had not turned up, then I never would have gone searching for the files."

All of a sudden the video fizzled out and, despite his efforts, Tarantulas was not able to recover it.

"What's happening?" Black Arachnia asked.

Tarantulas hissed and clicked. "Starscream rigged the files to deteriorate in case anyone other than himself opened them! The files are slowly disappearing!"

It was a race against time. Tarantulas had to find the information he needed before the files were permanently deleted. He didn't have the time to attempt to back them up or stop the process of deletion.

Not long afterwards, Tarantulas found the answer he had been looking for. The machine that was currently in his lab was never meant to be a time machine; he knew that, it was in fact meant to be…

"A bomb?" Black Arachnia questioned. She was still looking over his shoulder, which was quickly becoming annoying. "Why was Starscream trying to make a bomb? And why go through such trouble?"

"I can only guess that the bomb was meant to wipe out Megatron and possibly the Maximals," Tarantulas theorized. "A malfunction probably caused it to end up in the hands of those aliens."

Black Arachnia suddenly had a revelation of her own. "Right before I shot that energon…he must have sent the signal that erased your memory circuits and encoded the files!"

"Nooo!" Tarantulas suddenly screamed. His time was up apparently. The more he had tried to access files, the faster the deletion process had gone. Now all the files on the machine were gone. Not that it mattered much anymore because the aliens had fused some of their own technology onto the device and that changed things. Though what was the purpose of the device for them?

The one thing that still bothered Tarantulas was why he had agreed to help Starscream at all. And how had Starscream erased those memory circuits? Those files, if they existed, were gone for good. Starscream's spark was somewhere out in space again so that mystery would remain unsolved.