Chapter Title: Examination and Questions
Disclaimer: I still don't make any money from this.
Challenge: 18coda (on livejournal) #18 Rhapsody: (French: rapsodie) implies a work free in form and inspiration
Rating: K
Characters/Pairings: Sam Witwicky, Ratchet
Warnings/Comments: Unbeta'd Post-RoTF, Ratchet found the famous Exposition Hat of video game fame
Summary: Sam opens up his little mental box of 'Questions to ask Ratchet' and leaves with a lot of information, some despair, and oblivious to what he may have started. While Ratchet comes away from it all with a small bit of hope and a lot of needed thinking.
The examination table was mercifully lukewarm when Sam found himself once more being given a full check up by the now looming yellow-green Autobot, and not the skin stealing cold it had been the last time. Seeing the medic was not grumbling something barely out of his hearing range, and that the doors to the slowly being built medical area made Sam also feel bold enough to start asking the stupid questions in his mental box of things to ask Ratchet. As this meant there were no new arrivals and that Mudflap and Skids were probably regulated to manual labor somewhere far away from Ratchet. Something in his own face or pheromones (Because he was never going to let that incident go.) must have shown because Ratchet got the slightly suffering look of someone who has fielded a lot of stupid questions from humans but would do so again for political courtesy.
"Do you guys have kids? I mean, you guys tend to hover around Annabelle when Major Lennox is allowed to bring her onto base and that doesn't seem like just something picked up from the internet."
"We may not reproduce like organic creatures, but we do have social and nurturing emotions. Sparklings were a luxury in our society and so were rare and tended to be amongst the higher ranks of our economy."
"You just made a baby, I think that's what that word you used means, like some sort of rich mans toy."
"In a way."
He knew Ratchet was somewhat amused at his changing expression as his brain tried not to implode while translating that into a way he could understand. Only to have it not know what to do when Ratchet continued in Lecture Mode.
"For the most part we Cybertronians are sparked into a fully programmed and specifically upgraded for a certain job that was in need of another worker. However, some of the more financially stabled of our kind, and those of the general population who saved up both credits and resources would sometimes build or commission a frame not fully upgraded and lacking all but basic soft and hardware and a rudimentary emotional coding. Thus when ensparked it would be the equivalent of a human toddler and would thus imprint upon its caretakers and its environment to create its own unique personality and thus skill sets. Normally this is done to see what sort of mech would be created at the final upgrade, as many unorthodox professions have been invented this way in our society."
"Wait, wait so sparklings are like a social experiment to see what happens when you let the kid grow up randomly?"
"On an intellectual level yes. Emotionally it is similar to the relationship you and your caretakers display. It's just an inefficient way of population when you factor in the various modifications to frame and hardware and the time it takes for the changes to settle in the youngling."
"Then why do it? I mean you just said you guys come off the assembly line, or whatever ready to go be productive members of society already."
"Emotional by product of studying various other organic cultures. You humans are not the first organics we've encountered or observed with such social structures as yours have. Thus after a while are adaptation programming picked up some traits from these studies and firmware coded it into us."
"…So you guys suddenly got parental wants and found a way to handle that."
That must be a new record in gaining that annoyed look from Ratchet by his repeating things back in a far simpler way. Even as the examination started coming to a close.
"Aside from a small hormone imbalance that can easily be remedied you're fine."
"No super powers or a third arm growing?"
"If you were going to 'mutate' you would have done so by now."
"You never know it could like be dormant and will like trigger under certain conditions like the runes did."
"Get off the table and get dress before I make you clean the light fixtures again."
"Going."
It was after he had fallen over while trying to get his foot through the pant leg that was fighting him, did he remember another question was sitting in the 'Ratchet Box'.
"You guys are staying on earth right?"
"No, we're only vacationing here."
"Right stupid thing to ask, but well since you guys are staying and Megatron has been really quiet…does this mean more of you?"
"That is what we're hoping for with our constant broadcasts into space."
"Not like that…I mean are you guys going to make more of yourselves? I mean it is pretty quiet and all and what if someone wants a baby, sparkling I mean, and settle down while here?"
That pause was a little too familiar to the one he had gotten from Bumblebee. Like they didn't expect such or saw it happening. Which was stupid considering how his species kept getting into wars all the time and they kept having families and such, and Ratchet did say that they had such in a way. Which was weird to think about, but funny as well in trying to imagine Cybertronians raising kids alongside humans, like some weird sitcom show. It was why they had gone after the…oh…
"You guys can't anymore, can you?"
Ratchet's fascination in cleaning a wrench for the second time this conversation made the little bubble of things he was actively oblivious too pop and settle like a lead ball in his stomach. He knew the Allspark was important to them, but he had thought, had hoped that it hadn't been a death warrant for his friends. Sam Witwicky killer of an entire race.
"There had been studies and tentative experiments to replicate the abilities of the Allspark, but the war had put a halt to them."
"So it's too much to hope that you were going to say something like you take a bit of your spark and a bit from someone else's spark to stick together like glue and bam new spark."
"To take off from even multiple sparks without endangering any of the mechs doing so would create a spark that would not be able to power all of the upgrades needed to function…in a fully upgraded body that is."
If Sam had been paying a bit more attention he would have taken that pause as one of deep thought and not of uncomfortable feeling like that last one. As he finished getting dressed and left the now oddly silent Ratchet to his thoughts he mentally kicked himself again for his stupidity.