A/N: Warning, this is a bit darker than previous installments.
If there was one thing that could be said about the Earth, it was always in motion. And frighteningly fast too. In a Cybertronian blink months had passed. It wasn't uncommon for their kind to lose track of time when they were busy working on a project, only to emerge years later to find the world had changed. Well, on Cybertron, things would've changed very little.
But here, on Earth, entire countries could rise or fall in those years, new kinds of transportation had been invented, or there had been a cultural shift.
So this Cybertronian had to keep his wits about him and keep up with the politics. Only, they were so hard to keep up with. Every few years there was a shift in power, a new president, a new Senator, new people to introduce to the Autobots. And before you knew it, they too were gone, and a fresh wide-eyed human was led through the huge base.
Even the fast-talking boy grew up, became their trusted liaison, but all too soon was lost to the dust of time, or as the humans said: dead, but not forgotten.
This made Earth so dangerous to the Autobots. The Decepticons called the 'bots soft-hearted among worse things, but that insult was true. They grew too attached to the enigmatic human race. But it was too painful to keep that up for long.
Humans had another saying: life goes on.
And that had to be the cruelest saying in history. On Cybertron in its golden days, mechs lived for so long it was a rare and shocking occurrence if someone died. They were mourned for many years, and it was not unheard of that the partner of the deceased mech gave up on life as well.
It made it easy to count on mechs to always be alive, to never really consider what your life would be like without them. Or how you had impact on someone else's life, because you'd be around to rectify any erroneous judgments.
Of course, with the war, this outlook on life drastically changed. But it still hurt so bad every time one of his Autobots failed to report in after battle. He had to learn to work through his grief quickly, lest he'd fall under the emotions.
But on Earth, after the Mission City battle and loss of Jazz, life calmed down. It allowed him to get to know his squad on a much more personal level, and with life on Earth came knowledge of the humans. Along with their fast bodies and xenophobic mindset came the morbid humor.
Death and taxes, for example. Two certainties, though one a lot more gruesome than the other. Were he human, he'd have joked yeah, taxes.
This kind of thinking, he'd never fully grasp it. Some humans treated life as a joke, and when they died, they were mourned, but not for long. Because, as cruel as it is, life goes on. Humans were too busy living to grasp the finality of death.
Perhaps that was their greatest strength. Cybertronians were afraid to die, so dangerous experiments were rarely conducted. But humans, they performed them all the time. They explored the farthest regions, with utter disregard for the dangers of the journey or the destination.
"I could sit in my house all day, but what kind of life would that be?"
Sam had said one day. It would be life. But perhaps you had to be Cybertronian to grasp that concept. Even for Sam, life went on, and after too short he too joined the finality of death. The young yellow scout mourned him for years, and almost died himself from Sparkache.
And cruel though it was, this planet was alive. It was in motion.