Chapter 12
Autobot base…
Bumblebee had not seen Optimus near the entrance as he came speeding through the tunnel. A squeal of tyres and screech of brakes saw the scout drifting past the Prime with inches to spare. As he came to a stop near the steps, both his doors opened to allow Raf and Alex to exit. Arcee and Jack, who had been closely following them stopped just next to them. Jack took his helmet off as Arcee stood up.
"How was school?" enquired Optimus ignoring the fact that Bumblebee had almost crashed in to him.
"Interesting." Replied Alex. "Definitely not like what I'm used to."
Before Raf could make his way up the stairs he was stopped by Alex.
"Raf," he said. Could I borrow your laptop for a while? I need to check a few things out on the internet."
"Sure." Replied Raf. "Hey Bee, you wanna play video games?"
Bumblebee chirped happily in agreement. Meanwhile Arcee turned to Jack. "You wanna go for a ride?"
"I've got homework to do." Jack said as he sat down in one of the old armchairs. Arcee shrugged her shoulders and started to head off to the training center down the corridor.
Alex had retrieved Raf's laptop and had proceeded to make himself comfy in one of the chairs at the main computer console. He fired it up and immediately opened the default search engine. He began by searching main networks without success. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube. None of them appeared to exist. He then moved on to Transformers. Nothing. Not even a whiff of a toy with the same name. Alex was growing frustrated. In the series common things like social network names or search engines were not addressed. Sure, this had no affect on the show overall, but it was still deeply annoying for Alex not to be able to recognize anything. He slumped back in the chair and sighed. This caught the attention of Jack who meanwhile was trying to finish his science but was having great trouble concentrating. He was too far to see what Alex was looking for, but his body language told him that he wasn't finding it. His eyes narrowed.
Alex failed to notice that he was being watched. He had moved to world history. All the big dates were still there. He tried cities of the world. All the big names were still there too, apart from Las Vegas which had been replaced by Jasper, this world's entertainment capital. Politics. No changes there either.
Then Alex noticed something about the statistics that came up, particularly the population numbers. A quick general search revealed that as of the year 2011, Planet Earth's population was just over the five billion mark. This made huge sense. The idea that the Autobots were able to keep such a low profile when blowing stuff up and leaving massive craters behind in their wake, and of the decepticons having so many energon mining operations and cruising around in a spaceship the size of four Titanics were somewhat far-fetched in terms of being real. Fewer humans meant fewer possible witnesses (Apart from the supposed nerd who had been able capture Bumblebee running in bipedal form down a town street in new Recruit.).
Alex moved to power down the device but not before deleting the internet history. While the action of doing that might be seen as very suspicious, the alternative of someone discovering the history was not preferable.
Unfortunately, Jack happened to see Alex do this.
Alex closed the laptop and hobbled towards where Raf was sitting on the couch. "Thanks, Raf." He said to the boy.
Raf merely nodded as his attention was on beating Bumblebee at racing.
Alex then drew his attention over to Bulkhead. The wrecker was still on the medical berth as on schedule. The steady beep of a monitor indicated that he was still alive.
Alex stood there. He realized that he had no idea of what to do with himself. He couldn't just sit there, do nothing and wait for Transformers Prime to conclude after the 90 minute special, and there was the nagging question of what comes after that. On a positive note his injured leg gave him the perfect excuse to stay off the battlefield and out of certified events, but what would he do meanwhile?
Wait. What was he thinking? Here was standing with a new found ability that could be explored. Thinking of how he could shoot energy from his fingertips was now becoming really cool. Actually come to think of it, what he actually needed was a bit of target practice. Obviously there would be some objection to this from some of the Autobots, but since many of them didn't trust him anyway so what was there to lose? He would to contain it though, find some nice quiet corner in the base and stay there.
But surely there was more that Alex could do around here. Suddenly he had a brainwave. Perhaps he could learn a new language like Raf was basically doing. It would certainly come in handy if he found himself to be having to operate alien machinery.
Walking stick in hand, he made his way to the other side of the balcony to where Optimus was standing at the main computer bank.
"Optimus," he said. "Would it be possible for you to teach me cybertronian?"
Optimus turned to the teenager. He raised his eyebrows. "Why the sudden interest?"
"Well, considering I have quite a bit of time on my hands and since the only skill I seem to have is to blow stuff up with my hands, it might help if I found something productive to do." Alex explained.
Optimus thought about it for a moment. "It would prove to be very difficult. Rafael is also learning but through helping Ratchet with our equipment. Are you willing to take up such a challenge?"
Alex nodded eagerly. As he did the ping of an incoming message came from the monitor. Optimus brought up the message and read it.
"It is from Wheeljack." He stated. "He and Miko are on their way back to base."
He turned back to Alex. "It is important that I see to it that Miko returns safely. We could begin tomorrow if you wish."
Alex nodded again. 'Out of the past,' flashback episode, Arcee and Miko on the roof, couldn't be a better day to get cracking on learning the most confusing of symbols.
Before Alex could move off, Optimus leaned in closer and said hushed tones "Please answer me this though if possible." He looked around for anyone who could be listening. Finding none, he asked "For the sake of Miko, will Bulkhead fully recover?"
Alex gave a small grin at this. You just had to admire Optimus's character.
"Yes," he replied. "Yes he does."
And with that answer, Alex saw a sight that was unique to the show, the sight of a small smile forming on Optimus's lips.
Unfortunately, under the cover of pretending to read, Jack had heard all of this…
….
"And then he said that Bulkhead will fully recover." Jack finished his story to Arcee.
The two of them were standing at the end of a corridor deep within the base. After Arcee had finished her training session she had met Jack coming up to meet her. He had relayed everything he had seen and heard, (as well as what Alex had told him at school that day) and was in the process of trying to figure it out what it all meant.
"Well, Bulkhead is making good progress. Maybe he just said that to keep Optimus's hopes up." Suggested Arcee, despite of what she thought about Alex's movements.
"No, Arcee." Said Jack. "He knows it. The way he said it to Optimus. It sounded full of confidence."
"hmmm…" thought Arcee. She went quiet for a few moments.
After a while, Jack stated "He knew about Cybertron, he knew about your partners. What else does he know? For all we know he could be a spy for the 'cons."
"That wouldn't explain why Megatron would try and hurt him." Arcee replied. "Optimus was there when Megatron attacked Alex."
"So what is he?"
"I don't know."
"So what do we do?"
Arcee looked down at her partner and took a deep breath. "Alex is definitely hiding things from us, like how he really came to be exposed to background radiation. Like Optimus said, he's gonna be here for a while. It's only a matter of time before he lets something slip."
"And then what?" Asked Jack.
"Then we trap him into telling us everything…"
To be continued…
Author's note: From here on in there will be a bit of time jumping, so brace yourselves.