Orion Pax looked up at the stars, and between him and the stars the twin points of Moon Bases One and Two. The other near-Cybertron object, Trypticon Station, was out of sight on the other side of the planet. He walked the swooping streets and bridges of Iacon, pondering some of what he had heard Megatron say.
Freedom is every Cybertronian's right!
Perhaps. But what did freedom mean? If there were no castes, if Cybertronians were not organized and channeled into productive lines... if every Cybertronian simply decided what he wanted to do, the entire planet would descend into chaos. Orion Pax remembered being taught that freedom consisted of being free to contribute to the tasks that were appropriate and necessary to the caste you were born into. Unlimited choice, rather than leading to freedom, led to the paralysis of confusion.
This was the teaching of... who, exactly? Sentinel Prime had never said it out loud, but he had overseen the rise of the caste system, preserving Cybertron when individuality threatened to tear the civilization of the Cybertronians into contending splinters.
Who does the caste system benefit? The higher castes! Who do the higher castes live off? You.
Orion Pax climbed a tower to an observation deck from which he could see all of Iacon. The contours of Cybertron, the living expression of Primus, arced away in all directions. Canyons leading to the interior, where Plasma welled up from the Well at the center of Cybertron, split the surface. Far, far to the west he could see the highest peaks of the Manganese Mountains. To the north, over the horizon, was Six Lasers Over Cybertron.
Thinking of the amusement park, Orion Pax felt a twinge of anger. He had never been there. It was the preserve of the higher castes. Only rarely did lower-caste Cybertronians pass through its gates, and Orion Pax had not yet been one of those fortunate lower-caste individuals.
Individuals know what isbest for them Who but I know what I need?Who but you may decide what is best for you?
I would like to go to Six Lasers, thought Orion Pax.
But if anyone walked up to Six Lasers and demanded to get in whenever the desire struck, the park would be overwhelmed. Structure was necessary. And individuals would never impose Structure on themselves. Would they?
Surely not. Sentient beings banded together and made decisions for the collective good. Not all of those decisions would benefit every individual.
He was tangled up, uncertain what he should be thinking or feeling.
What I need, thought Orion Pax, is a conversation that doesn't happen inside my own head.
What Orion failed to notice,was his friend behind him staring at him intently,as he stood behind him, deciding to break him out of his trance he spoke up.
"I knew I would find you here" A familiar voice said,as he turned around and saw his friend, standing with his arms folded.
"And how did you know?"
"I can tell Orion Pax thinking on a tower to an observation deck anywhere on Cybertron"
"You know me all too well"
"I do,you seem deep in thoughts care to share?
"I would,but I am not so sure,I can do that right here"
"I think you should,over a drink? With a fellow bot friend of ours to quench our reflections?"
"Sounds like a good plan"
"What we should do," Jazz said, after Orion Pax and Razer had tracked him down and met him at Maccadam's Old Oil House, "is go to Kaon and see the gladiator fights for ourselves."
"Are you serious? They're illegal. It's not even legal to see one, I don't think."
"That doesn't seem to stop any of the people who do it," Jazz pointed out. He drained off his can of Visco and waved at the bartender for another. "We could go, you know. And if some authority discovers us, if we get arrested or questioned, I'll claim it's a cultural investigation. That is what I do, you know."
This much was true. Orion Pax had met Jazz because he was a cultural investigator, charged—more or less—with making sense out of all of the communications and other data that Orion Pax harvested from the Grid every day. Jazz came into the Hall of Records looking for this or that bit of history often enough that he and Orion Pax crossed paths regularly with Razer as well. They had developed a friendship. Orion Pax was a little intimidated by Jazz's carefree attitude toward life and authority. His caste was enough higher than Orion Pax's and Razer's that he could get away with more—but it was also true that Jazz was more interested in getting away with things than Orion Pax ever had been. Where he saw an opportunity to bend rules, he bent them, and always just a little bit further than was perhaps prudent.
"And risk ourselves a lifetime of brig imprisonment? I hear the stockades are lovely this time of Cycle". Razer joked as he guzzled his Energon drink,for he was no fan of Visco like his two friends were.
He sipped his own Visco. "Kaon is all the way on the other side of the planet. I've never been anywhere near there." He realized as he finished speaking that he had meant the words to come out as dismissive, but they sounded wistful.
There was a great deal of Cybertron that Orion Pax had never seen. He had heard its citizens speaking from every nook and cranny, every tower and station of the planet; he had put their conversations and transmissions into useful categories so that people like Jazz could come into the Hall of Records and use the work of Orion Pax as raw material to fashion theories with.
He felt a sudden kinship with the workers in the factories. They made machines. He made data. Were they so different?
As soon as he mentioned this to Jazz, the cultural investigator laughed. "Yes, Orion. You're different. Yours and Razer's work won't kill you. And when you both can't do it anymore, nobody's going to throw you into a heap and turn your broken body into datacubes or image matrices."
Jazz's words hit Orion Pax like a physical blow. "You're not pulling any punches," he commented.
"Better a brutal honesty from a close friend than a flattering lie from your sworn enemy"
"He's got a point,those who are fortunate should know how fortunate they are," Jazz said. Then he sipped at his Visco and waited for Orion Pax to get his thoughts in order.
"I wonder if I could get in contact with him," Orion Pax said after a silence. The Visco, as it always did, invigorated him, filled him with possibilities.
"With who? This Megatron?" Jazz shrugged. "Possibly. Why would you want to?"
"You don't find him interesting?"
"Define interesting".Razer implored as he waited for an answer.
Jazz laughed. "I find everything interesting. This is what I was made to do, find things interesting. Listen, Pax. If you want to go to Kaon, let's go to Kaon. I can get travel passes for research. I can claim that I need someone like you to harvest data. Should I talk to the Archivist?"
Orion Pax considered this for some time. "History moves in cycles," he said after awhile. "This much I've seen just rooting around in the archives."
"I thought you weren't supposed to be rooting around in the archives," Jazz said. "Careful you don't step outside the boundaries of your caste, my friends."
"How can I not?" Orion Pax asked. He drank off the rest of his Visco. "I have a mind. I can think, and analyze."
"There's a reason why we can think Jazz,to ask questions and find answers even if some aren't found". Razer pointed out agreeing with Orion's point of view.
Jazz waited the perfect amount of time before responding. "If you say so."
"Easy for you to joke. You can do whatever you want. I'm a data clerk." Orion Pax leaned over the table toward his friend. He trusted Jazz implicitly, and could say things to him that he would never say to anyone else. "Where is it written that I have to stay a data clerk? Is there some ledger somewhere that the Primes keep, out in one of the Spiral Arms? Is my name in it next to the designation Data Clerk? I don't think so."
"You sound a bit like your gladiator friend," Jazz said.
"He's not like him,but he is right we were not the ones who choose our occupations,those who did are not exactly the reasonable and just gallery bots, instead of giving us a chance to put our abilities to test to know what we can do,they only judged us by our appearances,and frankly this needs to change." Razer protested,which made Jazz go quiet at everything he just said,while Orion listened to every word as he let them sink in.
"He's not my friend." Orion Pax thought about it. "But perhaps it is time that I talked to him."
"Oh no..." . Razer thought knowing where this was going.
————
He knew how the Grid worked. He spent his days wading through its matrices and intersections. If there was one thing Orion Pax had learned as a consequence of this, it was how to get a transmission across the Grid without anyone but the intended recipient knowing about it. During his next shift, in the dim silence of the data-mining section in the Hall of Records, Orion Pax did his job, but while he did his job he also was formulating a plan to get a secret transmission through to this gladiatorial insurgent Megatron.
Different possibilities for what to say overwhelmed him. He thought about it for the duration of his shift; then, as he was due to leave, he decided on something simple.
Whatyousayisinteresting,butmorepeoplearehearingthanyourealize.Let'sspeak.
He attached contact information to it, using a dead-end bit of storage space that wasn't coded for anything in the current Grid configuration. Then he sent it off and stayed late, combing the Grid for more signs of what Megatron might be thinking, doing, saying… or planning.
The next day he met Jazz and Razer at Maccadam's again. "He answered," Orion Pax said.
"'He' being this Megatron, I take it. What did you say to him?" Jazz asked.
"That he had more of an audience than he might have expected."
"And what did he say?"
Orion Pax shook his head in amazement. "He said, 'You are more right than you know. I am also more right than you know.'"
Jazz laughed long and loud. "Confidence," he said. "No shortage of it in this one, is there?"
"Yet,it would become his undoing". Razer commented.
This put a serious look on Jazz's face. "Are you ready to take the chance on this? I was flippant about it before, but it's something you should consider. The consequences for you are potentially much worse than for me."
"I'm ready," Orion Pax said.
"Very well,then proceed". Razer encouraged as he left his friend in shock at what he has just heard, usually he would disagree on these kinds of matters but to allow him to do so without objections, really made him speechless.
Alpha Trion tapped the tip of the Quill against his desktop. Before him, scrolling in text on a screen, was the substance of a conversation between his clerk Orion Pax and the gladiator-turned-revolutionary. A loaded word, revolutionary, but it seemed to fit, if Megatron's side of the conversation could be taken at anything like face value.
OP: In my caste, I may read and I may index, but I am forbidden to analyze.
M: How do you know where to index if you don't analyze first?
OP: I try not to ask myself questions that don't have answers I can do anything about.
M: Who has told you that you can't do anything about the answers? I never even had a name. I went out to die for the pleasure of strangers. Now I am Megatron, and I will fight when and where and for what reasons I please.
OP: Fight who?
M: Those who would tell me… like they tell you… that we do not have the right to determine our own fates. Interesting that even in Iacon my words are being heard.
OP: It is my task to hear all words.
M: But you don't answer all of what you hear. And surely you don't answer all of what you hear on channels that you hide for fear of being eavesdropped on.
OP: No.
M: A great many Cybertronians would love to have Iacon as their home. Yet you are there and still unsatisfied. What does that tell you?
OP: We should meet.
M: Should we? Why would I meet you?
OP: If you have goals beyond Kaon, you're going to need to tailor your message so it will resonate beyond the castes who smelt ore and die in the pits.
M: Or the rest of Cybertron should learn to understand those castes. Even you do not, and you consider yourself one of us.
OP: Then show me what I do not understand.
Alpha Trion closed his eyes. It was beginning. The Covenant had seen it clearly, and now he was beginning to see the dim outlines of it. The days of Orion Pax, data clerk in the Hall of Records, were drawing to a close. New days, of upheaval and strife, were on the horizon. This much was certain.
What was uncertain, Alpha Trion reflected, was how much he could do to influence the coming events in the correct direction. Orion Pax was raw, and young, and not the one he would have chosen.
Yet it was not given to him to make the choice. He, like every other Cybertronian, would have to experience the future only at the moment of its becoming the present.
"This is only the beginning...". Razer quoted as he watched from the shadows the warrior knew, without a doubt that this is only the beginning for both he and Orion Pax's journey.