Midas Touch
Chapter Six
The Essence felt, as it had every day since transferring into its organic Vessel, the presence of one of its children nearby, but never quite like this. The prolonged contact of this Vessel against the hands of its child abruptly reminded it of a similar situation, the last time its original Vessel had been held by the hands of this particular child, who was one of the special ones, a Sensitive.
It was aware that its current Vessel was scared, and without irreversible reconfiguration, was incapable of direct communication with the Essence. The essence was reluctant to reconfigure the Vessel, for it knew the Vessel was sentient, and to reconfigure without permission would be, to the Essence, wrong. However, it wished to reassure its Vessel, and tell it how to channel and direct the energy, and offer what aid it could. However, their consciousnesses were incompatible where communication was concerned. It could no more communicate in the way it wished to with its Vessel than it could with one of its multitude of non-Sensitive children.
However, now the current Vessel was in direct close contact with a Sensitive in its primary form, it could push to the fore of the Vessel's consciousness, contact the Sensitive, explain things to him, and then the Sensitive could explain things to the Vessel.
Of course, to keep containing the increased energy this would produce could damage the Vessel, so the Essence would have to allow a continual discharge to take place, but the Essence was certain that this would not be a problem. It knew its child could cope with such a discharge with no discomfort.
The Essence pushed to the fore.
oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo
As Sam's knees gave way and his eyelids fluttered closed, it was instinctive for Bumblebee to catch his human charge and cradle him gently in both his hands. Ratchet was already heading over, concern written all over his face plates, when Sam's skin took on an unearthly blue glow.
Bumblebee recognised, knew from earlier contact, the touch of this glow, as it spread from Sam to enclose them both, washing over them in gentle waves. As Bumblebee was expecting, this was AllSpark energy.
As he was not expecting, within the energy was a pulse of life, of consciousness, and an insistent urge. Communicate. Communicate. Speak with me. Respond.
To this request, Bumblebee was more than happy to comply. It wanted a response. It would receive one.
Bumblebee bent his head down to look at his prone human friend. He was floppy and totally mobile in Bumblebee's hands. His chest was rising and falling rapidly, and his heart rate had speeded up, but Bumblebee knew that Sam must be within safe human limits, for Ratchet had stopped his abortive move forward. Were Sam in any danger, Ratchet would have let him know.
He stared down at Sam, who was, he now realised, so much more than the seventeen year old offspring of Judy and Ron Witwicky, so much more than the glasses-keeper he had been sent to guard just a few scant months ago.
Bending his head and lifting Sam closer to his face, he began to sing.
It was a similar sound – but conveying a very different message – to the song Bumblebee had crooned to the AllSpark in the Hoover Dam. That had been a request to transform itself into a smaller and more manageable form. This song was far more complicated, conveying three different messages.
Bumblebee was relaying a question, conveying reassurance, and making a Sparkfelt request all at once.
oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo
Ratchet watched in astonishment as Bumblebee became haloed by a blue glow that seemed to be emanating from Sam. He quickly scanned the boy's vital signs. He startled, and then scanned again. Sam's readings, although high for a resting human, were still within safe levels, but it was the enormous outpouring of AllSpark energy, apparently channelled through Sam, that Ratchet couldn't explain. This was way beyond any of the predictions Ratchet had made earlier.
The warbling sound that started up made Ratchet look back up at Sam and Bumblebee: Bumblebee was singing, it seemed, to Sam. He was relieved, after carrying out another scan, that neither the human nor the Autobot scout seemed to be suffering any adverse effects from the waves of energy emanating from the boy.
Ratchet's optics widened as he recognised the sort of song Bumblebee was singing. He had a few times seen and heard Sensitives communicating with the AllSpark, back on Cybertron, in the peaceful, golden age before Megatron had gone after the AllSpark for his own ends, and Optimus had opposed him.
That necessary opposition, Ratchet recalled, had actually sent the war from grumblings and worries to full-blown combat. That had been the first time that the factions –'Autobot' and 'Decepticon' - had been created, and yet many thousands of years on, the war still continued, even though both Megatron and the AllSpark had gone. With the item of power gone, Ratchet had wondered why the Decepticons continued their fight.
Although non-Sensitive himself, Ratchet recognised the song for what it was. Bumblebee, he knew already, was one of the rare Sensitives, as was Optimus Prime himself. However, Ratchet had never thought to hear Bumblebee at work in this way, communicating with the living consciousness, the intelligence, of the AllSpark, for he – they all had – thought the consciousness destroyed when Sam thrust the Cube into Megatron's own Spark. It seemed that although the AllSpark's physical form had been destroyed, the energy and intelligence had not.
This was no residual energy, left over as a physical reverberation of the Cube's destruction, no isolated pool that would dribble out and dry up over a few years. No, the AllSpark's own consciousness was there, and Bumblebee was communicating with it as generations of Sensitives had done over millions of years on Cybertron, long before the seeds of the conflict had been sown.
No, Ratchet realised, the intelligence had not been destroyed, it had merely fled into a nearby, convenient vessel as its old one had been destroyed. Perhaps, he thought, they should count themselves lucky that the AllSpark had not transferred the other way and kept Megatron's body and Spark (and thus Megatron himself) alive. Ratchet shuddered at the thought: Megatron, with the AllSpark's power as part of himself, would have been unstoppable and insatiable.
Ratchet stared as he realised that soft, fragile, young – so young by Cybertronian standards – Sam was now, effectively the AllSpark. He was so young! By contrast, the Cube itself was more than just old, it was ancient. It had been forced to evacuate an ancient but solid and substantial form, and flee into this fragile and very young new one.
Sam as the AllSpark was a very large potential problem, for Sam had his own consciousness. Two consciousnesses – one very powerful – in one body: was that possible, and healthy, for both of them, in the long-term?
oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo
The Essence listened as the Sensitive spoke to it, and it explained things to the Sensitive. The Sensitive promised to impart the information it had received to the Vessel and asked the Essence to subside, promising to call to it again to tell it the Vessel's response.
The Essence agreed, and allowed the Vessel's own consciousness to come to the forefront again.
oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo
Sam was abruptly back in the world, lying flaccidly in his Autobot friend's hands. He shook his head muzzily: had he passed out? He didn't recall much, mainly warmth, and…singing? Then Bumblebee spoke to him.
"Sam, I have a message for you from the AllSpark's Essence that is currently sharing your body: it has asked you if it may stay. It promises that if you agree, it will help you, and tell you, through me, how to control, direct, and contain the energy it possesses. It will also, again with your permission, make very subtle but significant changes to your body so you can do this better." Bumblebee told Sam. Sam looked up, his attention totally now on Bumblebee, for his Autobot friend was pinning him with a serious gaze, and his voice was trying to convey to him the gravity of the situation, which was obviously greater than Sam realised.
"It is having to be very trusting of you Sam, you are only the second non-Sensitive it has ever interfaced with, and its total interface with and transference to you was a matter of survival." Bumblebee explained. "Given another choice, it would never have transferred itself to you, for the first non-Sensitive to interface with it betrayed its trust and tried to force it to do something it did not want to."
"Hang on, Bumblebee, you've lost me here." Sam said. "What's a Sensitive, what's a non-Sensitive, and who was this 'other' that betrayed it so badly that it only trusts Sensitives, and why?" Sam asked.
"A Sensitive, Sam, is one such as I who can communicate with the Essence, or consciousness, if you prefer, of the AllSpark. Optimus is a Sensitive, too, it is one of the reasons he was a Leader. A non-Sensitive is somebody who cannot communicate with the AllSpark's consciousness directly, although a Sensitive can communicate with the AllSpark on a non-Sensitive's behalf. You are a non-Sensitive, and so is Ratchet. Two different species, and born millennia and light-years apart, but the fact remains: neither of you can communicate with the AllSpark's intelligence directly." He sighed. "To answer your last two questions, will take time and a history lesson." He told Sam.
Sam gestured.
"Unless you have something better to do, now is as good a time as any."
Bumblebee nodded, and gestured for Sam to sit back on Ratchet's table. Sam did.
"On Cybertron, there used to be two co-overseers of the planet. There was the Leader, who dealt with civilian matters, diplomacy, and the care of the AllSpark, and other such seemingly 'domestic' matters. The other was the Lord – or Lady, there was no gender bias - High Protector, who was mainly in charge of many military matters and planetary security, although they each had control over different divisions of the military-there was that overlap." Bumblebee explained.
"Okay." Said Sam, wondering just where this was going. Bumblebee continued.
"The Lord High Protector had control over the Air Division, and the Naval and Space-going, the Leader over the Land Division, plus the civilian air, naval, land and sea traffic." Bumblebee continued. "It used to be a rule that both the Lord High Protector and the Leader had to be Sensitives. Only a Sensitive can handle the Matrix of Leadership properly, so that necessity was understood, but people began wondering why the Lord High Protector, who had no such artefact to worry about, had to be Sensitive as well. Discontent grew, people accused the Sensitives of having all the best jobs, because Sensitives were also the AllSpark Caretakers, and the Translators for non-Sensitives, and that gave them a lot of potential power. Not that any of them would have dreamed of subverting it, for reasons that will be explained in a minute." Bumblebee sighed.
"In the end, that law was changed, and we got our first non-Sensitive Lord High Protector. Oh, he was good at his job, and yes, Cybertron prospered under the Sensitive leader and the non-Sensitive Lord High Protector. This Lord High Protector used Sensitive intermediaries when working for Cybertron. I was one of them, one of his translators and relays, that's how he could still carry out his job." Bumblebee said. "However, we later found out that the Lord High Protector had his own scientists experimenting with building a device into his plating that would allow him to interface with the AllSpark enough to take what he wanted from it and use its power, but not to communicate with it properly." Bumblebee briefly shuttered his optics, then continued.
"The AllSpark is sentient, intelligent, conscious, Sam, and has definite opinions on what its power should and should not be used for. If a Sensitive tried to use it for a purpose it did not wish, the Essence would scream, and no Sensitive can inflict that sort of mental anguish on the AllSpark. The Sensitive would hear it, and would become upset. The moment the Essence would cry, a Sensitive would back off. The worse the idea or plan was to the Essence, the louder it would cry. You see, that was why the Lord High Protector and the Leader were both supposed to be Sensitives, because they both had unlimited access to the AllSpark." Bumblebee said. His voice was raw with remembered pain.
Sam thought he could see where this was going now, but simply said "Carry on."
"This Lord High Protector went to the AllSpark, and brutally tried to subvert its power to his own twisted ends. It didn't really mind so much giving him an alt-form, fashioned from his own imagination, but whatever he tried to do next was so anathema to it that its scream was so loud, it woke every Sensitive on the planet. He fled from it, tried to cover his tracks and fashion an alibi, hoping to come back and try again, but it told several of us what had happened, and we had to go to the Leader about it. He had the AllSpark first of all hidden in a different location, but the Lord High Protector's contact with the AllSpark meant that he could detect its presence, even when its power was damped down. Eventually, the Leader had to launch the AllSpark into space, something he did at its own request." Bumblebee said.
"The Leader you mentioned was Optimus, right, and the Lord High Protector you're talking about – that was Megatron, wasn't it?" Sam asked. "He betrayed the AllSpark, effectively he raped the Essence, or tried to, didn't he?" Sam saw Bumblebee's optics half-shutter in the way that meant he was accessing the human Internet. Then he opened them again, and nodded.
"Yes, Sam, and the Essence is worried that the technology Megatron utilised to access it may still be around. Starscream was one of the scientists who designed the interface device, and he probably built it into his own systems. The AllSpark needs to hide from the Decepticons, Sam, and who would suspect it in a human? It wants to stay in you, Sam, but it wants your permission. Will you allow it, or will it need to transfer by some method elsewhere, to another Vessel?"
Sam blew out a breath.
"You said it can help me control its energy? That means, so everything I touch doesn't immediately come alive, right?"
"Yes, Sam, it promised to help you control, direct and contain the energy, and to augment your body in subtle ways – with your agreement - to help you do so." Bumblebee told him. Sam smiled.
"Then contact the Essence, buddy, and tell him that, pending deeper discussion on the subject, we have a deal."
Bumblebee lowered his face close to Sam, and began to sing.