The Diego Diaries: Chaos 23
=0=CMO's Office, Medical Tower of Autobot City, Mars
Ratchet sat plowing through data when Sideswipe and Bluestreak wandered in with their load. Orion who had walked all the way on a short leash looked perturbed and when he saw his ada said so: "ADA! WIPE, BAD! WIPE OW ME!"
Sideswipe snorted and dropped the leash bending down to unfasten it from his harness. Leaning into the tiny bot's space, he grinned malevolently. "Hush, spud," he said unsnapping the baby.
Orion backed up, a weak smile on his face. Turning, he ran to Ratchet who picked him up and set the baby on the desktop. Looking at Sideswipe from the safety of his ada, he frowned again. "WIPE! BAD! ADA?"
"What, Orion?" Ratchet asked encircling the infant with his arms.
"WIPE BAD! HE BAD!"
They looked at him a moment and Ratchet smiled. "He has new words."
"Look, Ada," Sideswipe said setting one femmelet on the table. "Orion, how many?"
Orion looked at him a moment, the miff still in place and then he thought. Pointing at Uraya, he looked up at his brother. "Wipe?"
"How many?" Sideswipe asked again.
Orion looked at Uraya. "One."
It was silent a moment, then Ratchet commed Ironhide over their bond: :IRONHIDE! ORION HAS NEW WORDS! THE LITTLE SLAGGER CAN COUNT!: "That's very nice," he said with a calmness he didn't feel. He fooled no one.
Sideswipe turned and plopped Iacon down beside her sister. "Orion … two," Sideswipe said. He pushed Uraya toward him. "One," he said. Then he pushed Iacon. "Two."
Orion looked at Sideswipe listening hard, then he looked at the infants who sat smiling at him, their little immature wings searching for information they were too new to gather. "One," he said pointing at Uraya. He looked at Iacon, then Sideswipe. Pointing at her, he grinned. "TWO!"
Everyone stood ecstatic, then Ratchet snorted and chuckled. "What?" Sideswipe asked.
"What if he thinks that those words are their names?" Ratchet asked pulling all three in and smothering them with kisses.
"Oh," Sideswipe said with a chuckle. "Never thought of that."
At that moment, several big bots filled the doorway and jammed up. Alor shoving the bots with him backwards entered and grinned. "What?" he asked with excitement.
Ironhide, Blackjack and Flint entered, their faces expectant. "He can count?" Ironhide asked in astonishment.
"Sort of," Ratchet said looking up at Sideswipe. "Show them."
He smirked and did.
"ONE!"
"TWO!"
Ginormous smiles were had by all. Sideswipe took Orion's little book bag and pulled out a stack of cards. "Apparently, these are his vocabulary words. Roto seems to think he knows these words and can say them."
Ironhide took them and looked through the stack. Looking at his little doppelganger, he pulled a chair over and sat. "Orion."
Orion looked at his atar and smiled ginormously. "ATAR!"
Everyone grinned.
"Look," Ironhide said holding up a card. Orion looked at it intensely. "BALL!"
When the mist receded from his optics, Ironhide continued.
"GREEN!"
"BLUE!"
"DUCK!"
"ADA!"
"ATAR!"
"RED!"
"DOG!"
"MOON!"
"NO!"
"YES!"
"LELLO!"
Snorts greeted that one.
"Roto said some sounds he isn't old enough to say. Something about his development or something. Others he can start but the endings are off," Sideswipe said.
They all nodded as they stared with fascination at the little bot poking his 'bellybutton' on the tabletop.
"Orion."
"ATAR!" He smiled at Ironhide and another card was shown. He stared at it intently. "KIPE!"
"SHOE!"
"CHAIW!"
"NAMA!"
"Nama?" Blackjack asked.
Ironhide looked at the card and read the definition on the back. "Apparently it is a fruit thing eaten by humans. It's called a banana."
"Oh." -everyone.
"Continue." -everyone.
"Continue, son," an enraptured Alor said softly, his optics fastened on the astonishing little runt before him.
"RUG!"
"BUG!" (grin)
"MUG!" (Loud cackle)
"PFLUGGG!" (Hysterical laughter as a small bot tipped over in joy)
Grins all around as hysterically cackling little bot is lifted back up. Card gets shown. Twinkling optics look at everyone in the room as a little pug face nearly cracks from the size of his smile) "LUG!"
"LEAF!"
"BLACK!"
"PED!"
Ironhide looked at the next card. He was back at the beginning. "That's the lot."
They sat and stood staring at the little bot who was UTTERLY PLEASED with himself and BASTING in the total attention of everyone in the room. "That bot is a caution," Blackjack said reaching down, picking him up. "You are a caution, just like your atar, sparkling."
"He was like Orion?" Sideswipe asked.
"He was. Same noise level. Same cute ways. Same smarts," Alor said rubbing Orion's back as he lay against Blackjack's shoulder. "You do know that having him do this too many times too long actually wears them out, the processor energy is so intense."
"I will remember that." -Ironhide and Ratchet at the same time.
Hilarity broke out.
-0-In the Tower Habitat
They sat around the table eating dinner and planning their strategy. There were 12 of them who would be doing the heavy lifting here. They would do the editing for each episode using the facilities at IntraComm's production facility in the Cultural Center. It was temporary headquarters until the big facility being created west of the Business Plaza came on line. That would be state of the art and contain not only technological facilities, but studios and creative departments to support any kind of broadcast show or movie anyone wanted to make. Once the edited episode was finished, the censors would review it, show it to the Prime and if it passed, IntraComm would download it to Earth. The networks that would show it worldwide would then receive it like any other program.
Which it wasn't.
"I think we need to do a non-specific first three episodes, just showing all of our cast in brief snapshots of their day. Then we can focus on individuals, perhaps teams like the twins or Springer and Drift. The bonds can come later. We can also find out who is in relationships short of bonds and feature them.
"I also think we can sneak in shots of others like Jazz who is awesomely cool," Aaron said as everyone nodded, "and Ironhide. I thought I saw Ratchet go into a tower in the Metroplex District. We can hunt him down. Also, I think the giants deserve some love too. Metroplex might make an awesome interview in the least."
"We will have to check with Jazz," Leonora Huttle, the scheduling boss/production manager/all-around do-it tech said.
"That's your job, Lenora," Aaron said with a nod. "We have to do this right. We don't want to be sent home because someone fucked up. I will personally hang you if you are the one."
"Or you," James Hogan said. He was the sound director and technician. He was going to coordinate with the Cybertronians about using their music for the ending credits of each show.
They all grinned. Except for Belcher. Producers seldom had a sense of humor and he was no exception.
They sat and planned for the next day's shoot. They would be following Drift, Springer, the twins and Kup. They would be shadowed by the human soldiers and Cybertronian technicians from IntraComm who would be filming too. They would use a composite footage for their shows that would be labeled as such. It would be interesting to see if the human perspective would be any different from the Cybertronian. Aaron and Jack were fully prepared to think outside of the box.
-0-On Io
He stood in the doorway staring into the death spiral all around him. The frozen surface of Io pockmarked with the chemical outcome of geysers spewing detritus hundreds of feet into the air called to him and he hesitated for a moment. This would mark him as only the second person from Earth to step here. Niall Graham and himself, Giovanni Antelli would be the only two humans to do such a thing.
With a smile and deep sense of gratitude, he stepped down onto the frozen surface of a violent and unforgiving world, one torn into volcanic instability by the gravitational pull of Europa and Jupiter herself. He stepped forward and looked around. The ship was behind him. The darkness of space surrounded him. Jupiter filled the sky before him. The dark storm, the Great Red Spot swirled on its terrible surface and he watched it transfixed. This was an impossible dream for a human.
A tech from Autobot City stepped down behind him and gently lifted him with his servo. :Come on, Giovanni. Let's get to the router: The big tech, a civilian mech named Holder walked across the dessicated surface until they reached a small structure with a red beeping light on top. Setting Antelli down on the top of it, he opened a panel and began the scan for defects that was required every ten decaorns. Antelli looked at him. :Do you ever get tired of this, Holder?:
:No: he said. :I have lived in and out of space all my life but I don't ever get tired of it. How can you?: he asked looking up at the sky which was entirely filled with Jupiter. :This is astonishing.:
"It is. I am astonished as well: he said with his beautiful Italian accent, :that this suit protects me. I can see from my meter that there is an awful brew of radiation out there all around us.:
:There is. This satellite will some day die because of the gravity and radiation of Jupiter. Seems a shame, really: he said as he tweeked a setting here and there.
:I can't even find words to describe this to anyone. We have to write something to Earth every day about what we do and see. How do you describe this to anyone who isn't here?:
Holder paused and looked around. :You do the best you can, Giovanni:
He looked at Holder and grinned. They would stay where they were for another joor before turning to go. The next stop would be the Proxima Centauri Deep Space Array out in the Oort Field. Giovanni would stand by a big porthole window on the shuttle and watch as Holder drifted out to inspect it. The massive array was one of four now that monitored space out fifteen light years. What he knew was awesome. What he didn't know would scare him.
-0-Ops Center, Autobot City, Mars
Prowl stood at Teletraan III and watched as the glyphs from the Proxima Centauri Deep Space Array arranged themselves in neat rows. They told of the migration that was coming, itself a known. What it also told was of a large flight of Decepticon ships that were coming from another direction. They were not coming directly their way. The group was stopping in the same place each time. They had been monitoring three waves of similar sized groupings. All of them came from the general vicinity of Cybertron. All of them stopped in the same place.
Prowl looked up as Prime reached him, reading the glyphs silently. "This is interesting," he said drily.
"They have concluded their third wave," Prowl said. "The signatures are unmistakeable."
Prime nodded. "They are building a base. Soundwave has something in his processor."
Prowl nodded. "Do we go out and take a peek?"
"Plan for one. I want only alpha teams, the enhanced Arks and stealth all the way. Whatever they are doing, we need to know but I don't want them to see us."
Prowl nodded. "I am on it."
Prime nodded, turning to walk to the center table to sit and plan a stealth strike. That didn't count pending business as well as a giant migration nearing the point where they would go out on a bridge to meet it, Ratchet's separation, several requests from Earth for hearings over this and that and the big finale, Rambler's award ceremony for maintaining the highest grade point average in his class.
The last one made him grin.
=0=TBC
2012 (9)