***THIS IS NOT THE REAL ENDING TO MASKS***
This was AN ending, one of several, and I thought I'd post it because I do like it. However, the actual epilogue for Masks is very different. Therefore, consider this an "alternate ending" and nothing more.
Mikaela clicked the alarm button on her key chain and the little yellow mini-SUV in the grocery store parking lot beeped twice and then greeted her with a cheerful-sounding, "Hello, Mikaela!"
She jumped, then scowled. Her younger grandson had gotten his license last month, and she'd let him take the car to the mall yesterday. Clearly, he'd played with the settings. With some irritation, she said, "Shut up, car."
"Acknowledged," the car replied, and then fell silent. She told herself it was entirely her imagination that the vehicle was radiating offense and hurt at the rebuke.
She didn't like talking cars -- never had. Not real cars, anyway. Fifty years had passed, she reflected, and it still hurt to think of them. When cars talked, or drove themselves, or even unlocked themselves when she approached, it was a reminder of friends she had once had.
A bit irritated, she lifted the rear gate, stashed her two bags of vegetables behind the seat, and then climbed into the boxy vehicle. It was a tiny car, and underpowered; still, it was yellow, and that counted for something. In fifty years, she'd never owned a vehicle that wasn't. This one was new -- Sam had purchased it for her for her birthday the month before. And he'd known. Yellow. It was custom yellow, and she'd joked she'd keep it until was custom faded, and they'd laughed a good bit, to the mystification of the kids and grandkids.
Always have to have the yellow cars, but heaven forbid they talk.
The paint was nostalgic. The speech was just creepy, because, for all of the technological advances of the last four decades, there was nobody home to back those words up. Her current car could recognize her at fifty paces, greet her by name, understand normal speech, and respond to requests as advanced as 'please pick me up at the curb in front of the store' or 'go park yourself.' But it didn't sing, it did not tease her shamelessly, and it could not tell the difference between her happy moods and her sad moods. It didn't spontaneously play My Girl when she walked up, though she certainly could have programmed it to.
Most of all, it didn't laugh.
And so she told it to shut up and not talk to her at all.
Traffic was light -- it was mid-day, and most people who weren't sixty-mumble year old ladies were either at work or in school. Only retirees and people with very strange work schedules went grocery shopping at eleven AM.
When she started the car, the news collector began to read to her automatically -- stories it had found that fit her search settings. The first two articles were political -- this year's election promised to be a doozy. The third story in, however, was of a meteor sighting over the Great Plains with a huge fireball, and a reported impact.
It was, of course, a false alarm. They always were. At first, whenever there was a report of a bolide -- a fireball -- she had spent days waiting for a cheery phone call (because she'd kept the same phone number) or perhaps a surprise visitor in her driveway. A little yellow Camaro. A great big Topkick with custom exhaust pipes. A Hummer, often politically incorrect both in form and sense of humor. A motorcycle or three. A DeLorean. A Red Porsche. One Peterbuilt, one Mack truck. Even a damned thirty foot tall metal dinosaur, because she had a feeling that Grimlock would not easily give up that alt-form even if he had to walk (stomp) everywhere he went.
As far as she knew, the meteors were always just meteors.
After fifty years she'd mostly stopped looking, though certain car makes turned her head -- like the copper colored Camaro, just now, that had zoomed past her in traffic. The Camaro was a sleek little car, with darkly tinted windows and a body shape that resembled Bee's 2009 model about as much as the 2009 model had resembled the 1976 model. Really, it shouldn't stir any memories at all.
But it was a Camaro.
And she looked.
And wished.
As she always had.
For fifty years.
Her home was just outside of town: an acre, a house, lots of grass. A huge back yard. And it had an impractically big garage -- she and Sam had, when they were house hunting thirty years ago, taken one look at the barn-like structure with the thirty foot ceilings and declared to each other, "Sold!"
Thirty years ago, ten years after they'd left, she'd held out hope they might return soon, within a human lifespan. She wanted to be able to offer them a roof over their heads, at least temporarily, if they came visiting. She'd stopped hoping. The distances were so vast, their lives so long, she'd resigned herself to never seeing them again. The garage now held a boat, and a huge stack of boxed dirt, because Sam was offering free storage to the always-tapped university where he was an archeology professor. Currently, it was boxes of dirt. For awhile, they'd also had some large piles of equipment but those had all been shipped off to Arizona for a big dig.
Still, the Camaro, and her talking car, had reminded her of the real reason why they'd purchased the house with the small-aircraft-hanger sized garage.
She parked in the circular drive in front of the house, retrieved her groceries from the back of the SUV, and started to walk up to the house. She had her keys out and was only a few feet away when she noticed the toy somebody had left on her steps. At least, she thought it was a toy at first -- but then, on second look, she was baffled. It was a strikingly unusual object -- a globe the size of a basketball, made of crystal and gold, ruby glass and shiny obsidian metal, all spun and woven together in intricate braids and patterns. It had depth to it, like the designs went through its core, and a very organic appearance.
The thought that it might be Cybertronian didn't occur to her until the device unfolded. It made a familiar noise, the noise of transformation, as it swirled and spun and twisted in a rearrangement of parts and pieces that was like a dance. A moment later, a waist high transformer, with eyes of the clearest, purest blue that she had ever seen stood there. Then it smiled at her.
She knew it was a transformer. It had to be. There was no other explanation. It looked like no mech she'd ever seen, however. Aside from the pure natural grace of the little mech, it had no weapons, and no more armor than a few thin plates of golden metal over its chest, head, and major joints. This was not a fighter -- not at all. Wheelie had more armor than this creature.
And the face was -- well, not human precisely, but far more expressive than any 'bot she'd known. Those eyes were enormous, shining blue. It had high cheekbones and a mobile mouth -- the smile was abso-freaking-lutely adorable and actually bared teeth -- and a button nose. It was cute. It was beautiful and disarmingly adorable and utterly defenseless. No weapons. None. Not even empty mounts.
"What's your name?" She asked, wondering if it could speak. Of course it could.
"Honey," it said, sounding a little shy, and very female. It -- she -- stared down at her feet, suddenly. "I'm Honey."
She crouched down in instinctive reaction to the little one's nervousness. Her knees protested, and her ice cream was melting, but damnit, there was a transformer on her doorstep! "I'm Mikaela. How did you get here?"
"My creator brought me," the little 'bot -- and she had an Autobot logo, embossed into the back of one small, slender hand -- met Mikaela's eyes. "He said I'm to be yours and Sam's."
"Your creator is Bumblebee, right?" Mine? She thought wildly. But you can't 'own' an Autobot -- how could she be mine? And somehow, she knew this was Bumblebee's work.
"Bee made Honey," the little 'bot said, with a suddenly brilliant smile, and Mikaela belatedly caught the pun and she couldn't help it -- she laughed aloud, and crouched to be on the same eye level with the small Autobot.
"Let me see you!" Mikaela said, grinning so broadly her jaw hurt. "I never thought I'd see another Autobot again ..."
"I'm the first Sparkling from Bee's Cube. Though he's Gold Prime now to everyone but his friends. You're a friend. I guess he's still Bee to you."
"The first from a new Allspark?" She heard what Honey had said, and laughed aloud, with more delight. It was unbelievable good news -- news she'd waited most of her life to hear, and had thought she might never know. The distances between worlds were so vast that she had feared she would never learn if her friends had succeeded in their quest. "Bee brought you? He's here?"
She nodded, suddenly solemn again. "He's right behind you."
She turned around, seeing only the little yellow SUV.
"No, no, no!" She said, in disbelief, laughing, as the SUV suddenly unfolded and stood up. "You idiot!"
His eyes were twinkling in amusement. "You did say to shut up."
Autobots didn't hug -- they weren't built for it -- but she threw herself at him anyway. He bent over and scooped her up, holding her carefully against his chest, knowing what she wanted. He was lumping and bumpy, sunwarmed and smelled of hydraulic fluid and grease and ozone. His hands supported her carefully, and for a moment, she was eighteen again, and he was her best friend in the entire world.
He finally set her down, however, and said with amusement evident in her voice, "I wanted to see your face when you saw Honey."
"She's beautiful!"
The child tugged at Mikaela's sleeve. "I'm this many human years!" And she held up four fingers.
"Plus some transit time in stasis," Bee said, with a smile. "And she'd been watching a lot of human movies while we prepared for de-orbit. I think that's where she got the 'this many' thing from, but she is correct in the years."
"You," Mikaela said, bending over, and addressing the child, "must have made quite a few Autobots very happy when you were created."