The Diego Diaries: A Wandering Tale 1 (309)
=0=The United Nations General Assembly
Ratchet stood framed in the doorway, two big shiny mechs standing on each side of the opening. The cameras lingered on all of them before coming back to him. Jazz stood quietly, a slight smirk on his handsome face, his visual abilities hidden by his visor. He looked like a sport, like someone who could run faster than a train yet make you glad you lost the race anyway by virtue of his good natured personality. He shown like glass as he leaned lightly against the wall, his good humor apparent to all who looked at him.
Mirage on the other hand was harder to read. He was big, handsome with a blue and white paint scheme and a slight look of disdain on his face. He leaned against the wall, his arms crossed before him and watched the spectacle with barely evident disdain. He was a poor little rich boy who had a big estate on Cybertron, opportunities out the wazoo but still sided with the Autobots. His ability to become invisible or project images that fool even Decepticons had served their cause with distinction and would be showcased today.
Of course, Ratchet hadn't told him yet.
Springer and Drift parsing the room over their bond link stood with their usual incredibly competent yet casual demeanor, expressions of amused attentiveness on their handsome faces. They stood together, big and calm, a contrast to the tightly wound intensity of too many of the humans. As they stood where they were Glenn Morshower walked out and went to a chair that Ratchet had called to be placed near to him where the room could see him. Morshower did, relaxing. He was putting his Chairmanship on the line for the alliances.
Ratchet grinned. "I asked that General Morshower join me to illustrate the enormous regard that our people hold for him, his leadership of the Global effort and our great personal mutual friendship." Morshower nodded and grinned.
"You got that right," he said as the room chuckled.
Ratchet smirked and looked back at the crowd. "You are looking at a low caste mech," he said. The room stilled. "I had almost no status once upon a time on my own world. We were a gifted species, bold, brilliant and good. But somehow in the ancient past we lost our way. I am bonded to a mech who is a member, or was of the highest caste on Cybertron. He was Praxian Military Elite. I am telling you about bonds and castes because I realize you don't know us. You have only the things we told you and whatever you could deduce from conjecture and supposition. That hardly seemed collegial."
Morshower who was unaware of what they would say looked at Ratchet with surprise. Ratchet looked at him and winked. Then he continued. "I am in a bond. It is older than you as a species. It is a fulfilling relationship with the result of four sparklings and three younglings, two of which are adults. I am a grandparent, a parent, a partner in marriage if you will and a relation as an uncle and friend to others. I have no brothers or sisters, nor does my bond, Ironhide. I miss that. But I have phenomenal parents. They had nothing, managing to educate me and take care of my dreams even as they sacrificed their own for the entirety of their lives. They are with me now as well as Ironhide's parents and its glorious. I wish you could know how much. Now its our turn to give them everything and we do with gratitude and joy.
"We live in an apartment in a tall Cybertronian style tower, raise our children, take them to school, get them lessons in swimming and football, exclaim over their triumphs, grieve over their failures as well as teach them character and what it means to be Cybertronian. They may never see our homeworld but they will know who they are. They will do it without a caste system holding them down.
"I was forbidden to go to public school. We had to live in a tiny apartment in a tenement. We were not far from the tenement that Optimus Prime grew up in because he too was low caste. The mechs behind me can speak to that life too. Jazz," he said nodding to the handsome bot standing by the door, "was low caste. When his family was broken, he was left to fend for himself on the streets. The mech beside him ... Mirage ... he is high caste. He came from what humans call 'old money' and had a life of comfort and opportunity all his days. He is the pre-bond of Jazz. If this were Cybertron, it would have not happened. When Ironhide, the highest of high castes wanted to bond with me, we had to ask permission from the state. The same would be true of Jazz and Mirage if this was Cybertron then. Prime and Prowl have a bond. The same would be true for them because Prowl is high caste and Optimus Prime was low. Imagine that if you can. If Optimus had not been able to become Prime anyway, we would be over as a species. That is how important and spectacular that mech is to our continued survival and revival now.
"I tell you this so that you can understand and find common ground with us. We have suffered injustice and triumphed. The two other mechs are Springer and Drift. Springer was what we called midcaste. He was from the strata of our society that did the management of things, ran businesses and the like. That caste was allowed to go to school. I wasn't. Neither was Drift. He came from the low castes too. Most of Cybertron was low caste, a status determined from birth based on a system applied to us eons into the past by others. We didn't shake it off and we paid the price.
"Megatron was low caste too. Shockwave, his partner was mid. Soundwave was mid caste. All of them were as fed up as were we. The Seekers to the last mech were given the lowest caste placement of all. Even the saddest low caste could feel slightly better because they had a microscopic level of status higher than the greatest Seeker. That is the past that bred our present. But it isn't the impetus for our future. We are re-writing ourselves to be who we were supposed to be, not what we were. It takes a bit of intestinal fortitude to do so but we are rising like a phoenix out of the ashes of our past. We want you to know that."
He glanced at Morshower who nodded back to him, his own expression thoughtful. "When we came here, we were searching for a relic that was of extreme importance. It had brought Megatron here eighty years before and we were there when he freed himself from your captivity. None of what has happened is strictly your fault. But some of it is. You held a tyrant of incalculable intensity for eighty years probing his body, extracting things to your benefit. I know you thought he was incapacitated but he wasn't. He was entirely aware of what was happening to him the entire time."
An uncomfortable energy went through the room before everyone settled.
"There is really no blame to give to any one country. Any country that had found him would have done the same. It is however the foundation of his grievances against this system and you, the sentient lifeform who tormented him to madness for nearly a vorn. It is against his creed to allow a debt to go unpaid. He will crawl with his last gasping breath toward you to kill you. We who have known him from the beginning, from the moment when he stepped from the shadows of Kaon to rise with the speed of light on the genuine grief and grievances of our suffering people, we know he will never stop until we kill him.
"We don't tell you that to frighten you. Our point is enlightenment. Our point is to help you stay alive. Our military is growing with the addition of each soldier who returns finding us in the vastness of space. Every Seeker, every civilian who comes is one more brick in the wall that protects you, Earth, from his vengeance. We have secured the system out 35 light years in all directions. No one can come within a centimeter of that distance without alerting us. We monitor all movement including the odd comet and planetary fragment well out into the Oort Field, the debris radius of this system's beginnings. Given that Alpha Centauri is only 4.2 light years away from Earth, that tells you how far out we go to claim security and the advantage over anything coming this way.
"During the creation of the system back in the day, a special kind of energy was forged in the volcanic fury of planetary formation. It was an energy that was seeded there by Seeker drones sent out in the beginning of our specie's history as a fail safe against the failure of our local system to provide the building blocks of life for us, energon. Seeker drones went all through the universe depositing energon crystals on planets that had the possibility to encourage their growth. All it took was immense volcanic activity and time. Mars and several of the other planets were places where this happened. Because energon is here grown in the fire of planetary formation, bits of it from failed efforts have drifted through the Kuiper Belt and now the Oort Field. Anyone passing by who knows what it is can use it. We have attempted to retrieve all of it when we came here but it is too vast a dispersal for success.
"Others have discovered it too. There are groups that are nearby, outside the kill zone of our buttoned down system that have found it. It is rare, essential and of a purity here that is almost unheard of. We have it on Mars and it fuels our life there literally. The Decepticons ranging away from the Empire are finding it too. Some of them have decided to put down roots out there because of it, building their own kingdoms against all comers. I don't tell you this to frighten you. I tell you this because its true. I also tell you that none of them are as strong as us including Soundwave who is caretaking Cybertron in Megatron's absence.
"We are training our people to be Home Guard soldiers. We have almost 7,000 Seekers of all the many specialties and armaments who regularly fly the system on security detail as well as defend us on missions and escorts. They are an extraordinarily important part of our defense. Given that they are among the oldest kindreds among our kind and that they are deeply feared as a military asset, Megatron's decision to destroy all of them no matter how young or loyal is not only criminal, but stupid. But it is to our favor that they come. They are welcome among us because they are us too. It is a measure of Megatron's spite and mental condition that he would seek an order of extinction on an entire aspect of our species.
"Our standing army is veteran, diverse and immensely able. They are formidable in a way that will carry us past the enemy in the end. They are a mixture of Autobots, former Decepticons and civilians who have skills that allow them to be considered active duty personnel. They number over 9,000 as of today. We work together for the common good and every Decepticon group that comes here has had defections to our system by their own. We outgun and out class the enemy. There are giants among us who serve Optimus Prime with all their spark. Omega and his siblings, Beta, Alpha, Kappa, Gamma and Zeta are there along with Fortress Maximus and Metroplex, who when he stands is half a mile tall. He is the beautiful city you see in the images near the Temple. These two mechs," he said glancing at Drift and Springer, "are among the finest. Springer is the head of our special 'no hope, suicide squad', the Wreckers. His bond, Drift was a former Decepticon of incredibly dangerous reputation. He is among the most loyal and dedicated soldiers we have among us."
Drift smirked as Springer grinned, both of them looking at Ratchet with great affection.
"There is a lot said about our religion or perceived lack of it. Suffice it to say that it gives us cohesion and solace when needed and a unified sense of self in the face of overwhelming adversity. We are spiritual beings having a physical journey and that is all I can say about that. The diversity of the universe is a good thing and I would hope that it would be embraced by your people even as we embrace you. I could tell you a lot of things, of my gratitude for the leadership of Optimus Prime, of my love for the soldiers of Earth who work with us and the thought that my children will be able to go to school freely with everyone else and not know any differently. But its time for someone else to speak about their life, their experiences with Megatron and his fixations on power and domination.
"The speaker who will come next is named Larc. She is from a species called Hu An. They are organic like you and I know you have seen them in the video downloads that we send everyday from Autobot City. She is the leader of her group, a femme of high standing among her people in her home system and a great inspirational friend of our people. I would like to introduce Larc, Chief of the Hu An of Amacar."
Ratchet stepped back a moment, then looked down as Larc stepped into the room through the great doors.
-0-TBC
05-21-13