Warning: This chapter deals with a character death. AU from Instability.
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For All Time
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"....Sam?"
Error.
Error.
Memory lock engaged.
Encrypting files....
Complete. Data erased.
................
Bumblebee stared out at the barren landscape, watching the swollen, bloody sun sink beneath the jagged horizon. Ten million, five thousand, three hundred, twenty one years since he had first arrived on the planet once called Earth. Strange how only now its substance suited its name. When there had existed humans to give the planet a name, over 70% of its surface had been covered by water. There had been grassy fields and vast northern forests, ice-capped seas and murmuring streams. There had been life of every possible description, more than any Cybertronian had encountered on one planet before-- bacteria, fugi, plant matter, invertebrates, reptiles, insects, avians, and mammals of unimaginable variety. For a universe composed of 99.999% emptiness, the third planetary body in the Sol system had proven a wellspring of life, refreshing and invigorating.
And, of course, there had been the humans. A singularly endearing and confounding race of organics capable of both great kindness and great cruelty, the embodiment of contradiction. They had sought at all moments to uncover the meaning of their existence-- always striving to see the 'bigger picture'-- while at the same time focusing on meaningless trivialities such as appearance and material posessions. They had longed for truth and independence, but found themselves afraid of both when offered, denying the first and shunning the second, hiding behind the collective. Some had toiled on the path of unspeakable evil, while others had devoted their numbered days to helping the many. There were even a few who had given themselves to the darkness-- stepped willingly through the last gateway from which none, human or Cybertronian, had ever returned-- in order to save another.
But that was before. Now, the planet Earth lay empty, reduced to the dry ash of its name. When the sun had expanded into a red giant and the air temperature had soared to 200 degrees, the ice caps had melted, the seas had dried up, the hardiest plants had withered and died. It had happened slowly, slowly enough to allow the humans time to prolong their fate and retreat from their advanced cities deep beneath the ground, deep where it was still cool enough to survive. But as the oceans shrank and the trees turned as brittle as glass-- as the carcass of the last animal struggling along on the planet's surface finally became entombed in sand, untouched by non-existant predators and perfectly preserved by the dry heat-- they could no longer grow enough crops to feed their people. As the water went away, drawn up into a super-heated atmosphere too hot to allow life-giving rain clouds to form, the humans began to go away too.
Morbidly amused, Bumblebee realized that a human author-- long forgotten centuries before the end of his race-- had accurately predicted the end of his world.
"This is the way the world ends," he muttered to himself in a langauge that had long since died from the tongues of man, "This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper."
The dusty ground didn't answer. The rocks didn't answer. The bloody crescent winking at him from the horizon didn't answer. His comrades had long ago departed for the farthest reaches of the stars, so they didn't answer either. They had tried to bring Bumblebee with them, but after he had nearly deactivated Ironhide in the ensuing fight, they decided to honor his wish to stay on the deserted rock-- but not without leaving the scout with a long-range transmitter should he have ever wished to follow them. The transmitter might have carried his voice to another living being if Bumblebee hadn't crushed it. He carried the pieces with him whenever he decided to wander, just to have something different to look at besides red dirt. If the cities had not already crumbled and dissolved, he might have tried to explore them, speaking into their darkened interiors, imagining that another being awaited just beyond the corner, listening to him silently.
Just so he wouldn't have to be alone. Utterly alone.
Something halted the ongoing train of his inner monologue, and Bumblebee glanced towards the last line of temporary code that had circled through his processor. Alone.
But that wasn't right. He wasn't alone. Not anymore.
And he turned his optics to the not-dirt thing he suddenly realized that he held in his arms.
Error.
Emotion cores in flux. Processors unsta--
Blocking....
His memory banks opened, and a flood of recorded data cascaded into his central processor.
Of course. He had found the thing some time ago, though he couldn't pin point exactly when due to a glitch in his chronometer. Bumblebee started to send a memo to his secondary processor to fix it, then decided not to bother. What was time when the past existed only as a memory file and the future was an endless road of empty days filled with nothing but sand? One minute might as well have been one year, or one century, for all the difference it made.
So instead, he settled back against the rock outcropping behind him and focused his attention on the not-dirt thing he held. An attempt to scan it to discover its identity yielded only corrupted data.
Self-installed block encountered.
Rerouting.....error. Results corrupted by secondary looping program.
Erro--
But that was okay too. It was good company, even if it was inanimate. Something besides dust, dirt, earth.
"I had a friend once," he told it, "Even if I don't remember anything about him. You ever have a friend?"
No answer.
"Really? That's nice."
Bumblebee picked up one of its four appendages and let it drop again, listening to the hollow rattling sound it made, poking at one of the lumpy joints. What was it?
"Was he a good friend?"
The bulbous little calcium lump attached to one end was turned towards him, the two black holes staring at the crook of his elbow. A tattered wisp of data fluttered through his processor, showing him a human gesture of affection from eons ago. Feeling a sudden, inexplicable rush of affection for the strangely constructed thing in his arms, Bumblebee bent forward and brushed the lower half of his face plate against the rounded plane of the bulbous thing, just above the two black holes. Then he pulled back, the feeling gone, and wondered why he had done something so illogical.
"Well, that's silly. He couldn't have always been a good friend."
He stuck his finger up through the hollow in its central portion formed by several arching calcium struts, wiggling it around a little. He sensed that something should have been there. Something important.
"I bet he was awful to you, sometimes. I bet he did terrible, unspeakable things."
A shudder ran through his servos as he spoke, though he hadn't the faintest idea why. An errant program-- still limping along despite the millenia old line of code designating it for destruction-- caused him to pull the lanky object closer to his body, tucking it in against him protectively. Even though there was nothing to protect against. Even though it was only a thing that had no need of protection. Even though it was d--
Error.
Program sweep severed by self-installed block.
Thought terminated.
"And you knew it, too," he whispered, dormant mimicry systems flaring to life and adding a touch of darkness to his words, "You knew what he wanted to do long before he tried to do it. Maybe not at first-- you were too unsure of your hold over him then, too modest to even consider it. But you knew. You always knew."
Bumblebee slowly petted the smooth mineral struts, finding the contact strangely conforting.
"And then, when you finally saw the truth, you asked him to do you a favor. A favor. As if asking your friend to betray you could be considered a favor."
He focused his optics on the two dark holes, peering inside of them. Searching the shadows. Searching. For what, he didn't know. The truth was so close. Just out of reach.
The studied the hollow interior of the bulbous thing (a skull, an ancient memory file supplied helpfully, though the word meant nothing to him), wondering what should have been there. Something was missing. Something. Someth--
Establising temporary shunt....
His emotion cores began to heave with a powerful feeling he could not name. Bumblebee ceased his methodic stroking and pulled the not-dirt object (english term located: skeleton) recklessly close to his metaloid skin, nuzzling it, strangely desperate to do something, though he hadn't the faintest idea what.
"Why didn't you want to be saved?" he pleaded with it, "Why did you ask him to leave you alone? He would have followed you. He wouldn't have left you alone in the dark. Why did you tell him to stay away?"
Error.
Core systems overheating.
Warning: temporary shutdown requested.
"He did an awful, terrible thing, you know. He didn't go with his other friends like you asked. Even after the darkness took you, he didn't leave. He couldn't. Not when you were here. Some of you, at least."
Bumblebee paused, cycling air through his seizing vents. He couldn't be sure how long he sat without speaking (given the obvious malfunction of his chronometer), but when he accessed his langauge program he discovered that he had been quietly muttering 'bad bee, bad bee, bad bee...' to himself the whole time. How strange.
"He doesn't remember you now. Not much about you, at any rate. He doesn't remember your face or your voice, or the way your hands felt when they gripped the steering wheel or trailed against his paint--
Warning: cascading systems malfunction.
Shutdown imminent.
"He knew that eventually he would forget, even given his superior storage capacity. So he stayed, determined to hold on to the last part of you he had for as long as he could."
The sun finally sank beneath the horizon, its lingering rays painting the sky an eery green. Not orange. Not pink. Green. Different particle composition, different reflected colors.
"But even that he eventually lost. Now he doesn't even recognize you, nevermind that you look a little different from before. So he must have been a bad, bad friend-- a real friend wouldn't forget your name." Suddenly, desperately earnest, he bent his head to the side of its skull and whispered, "He tried, you know. He tried so hard to be a good friend. He did exactly what you asked and left you to travel into the eternal night all alone, even though every moment was agony without you, the future a bleak and despairing road to nowhere, void of purpose or meaning. But he couldn't leave-- even if he couldn't die, he still couldn't leave, though you made him promise to."
Bumblebee keened softly, something sparking ominously within his chest. He ignored it. "Did you like cherry tree he burried you beneath? He wanted you to have something beautiful to look at, something not so sad. Did you see him there everyday beside you, never moving? The others tried to pull him away, but he wouldn't go. He stayed there until little spiders spun webs in his wheel-wells and vines grew up around his windows, because he didn't want you to have to be alone in that lonely little hole. He longed every moment to follow you, but you asked him to stay. So he stayed. He stayed just like you told him too."
Beginning shutdown procedures.
Bumblebee sensed that there was something there, something struggling to be remembered. But whenever he tried to access his memory banks he was interrupted by a firewall.
"You made him promise not to follow you. You made him promise to go with his friends. But he had to break part of his promise, because even if he couldn't be with you he could still be close to you. He could still try to keep you company in the dark, at least a little. So he stayed when his friends went away. Don't be afraid," Bumblebee petted the skeleton gently again, "Even if he doesn't remember you anymore, he'll never leave. He'll be here with you forever and ever and ever."
Error. Block encountered. Block--
Attempting to override....
Error. Memory files sealed. Acess den--
Rerouting pathways. Engaging emergency virus removal, target: self-intalled firewall.
Removing....
Access denied. Access denied. Ac--
Complete.
Access approved.
Memories untouched for tens of thousands of years suddenly burst open, filling his processor with previously supressed knowledge.
A skeleton. He was holding a human skeleton.
DNA analysis of the bone marrow confirmed his blackest fears.
No.
Nononononononononono.
Error.
Error.
Error.
Processor overflow.
Memory core overflow.
Emotion core overflow.
Attempts to shunt unsuccessful.
Bumblebee would have given anything at all for it not to be true. But even his spark itself seemed too slim an offering to make the story he had just told nothing more than an insubstantial tale, no more real than dust.
Because now he knew that the annonymous 'friend' of whom he had spoken had not been a fanciful creation, but himself.
Because the object he held was not simply an oddly constructed piece of hard organic matter.
After every last living thing on the planet had finally died, he had returned to the spot he had occupied for so many years, digging deep into the hard earth, bringing up the last physical remnant of the one who had left him so long ago, bones preserved by the moistureless air and prevented from rotting into dust.
Logically he knew that the skeleton held no life and could not hear him.
But logic seemed very out of place in a world that allowed the human to be dead in the first place.
"....Sam?"
Error.
Error.
Memory lock engaged.
Encrypting files....
Complete. Data erased.
................
Bumblebee stared out at the barren landscape, watching the swollen, bloody sun sink beneath the jagged horizon. Ten million, five thousand, three hundred, twenty one years since he had first arrived on the planet once called Earth. Strange how only now its substance suited its name.
Suddenly realizing that something rested in his arms, Bumblebee turned his optics to the not-dirt object. He opened his memory banks, frowning at the reading from his chronometer. It must have been glitched. Surely over 2,314 years had not passed since he had found it. Not when he still sat beside the place where he had dug it up.
He started to send a memo to his secondary processor to fix the glitch, then decided not to bother. What was time when the past existed only as a memory file and the future was an endless road of empty days filled with nothing but sand?
One minute might as well have been one year, or one century, for all the difference it made.
So instead, he settled back against the rock outcropping behind him and focused his attention on the object he held.
Strange little thing.
He wondered what it was.
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Author's Note: Before anyone kills me, this is a 'what if' chapter rather than a tie-in to Instability. The idea started to gnaw on my ankle and wouldn't leave me alone.
Sorry guys, but the next chapter of Instability is going to be delayed a bit. I know I promised a swift update, but I haven't had time to write much between catching the flu and packing for (stressing about) college. It WILL be up in under two weeks, but just not in the next day or two. I am working on it, don't worry.