Conceptions - 10.b
Title: Conceptions of the Self - Home - Mei's Fanfic Master List
FIC Summary: [2007, AU] Sore throats, nightmares, and the differences between organics and Cybertronians - something is terribly wrong with Sam. To live is to evolve, and shape alone is not enough; think of it as a mutual learning experience. (Bot!Sam, PTSD, Mech/mech)
1, 2, 2.b, 3, 4, 4.b, 5, 6, 7, 7.b, 8, 8.b, 9, 9.b, 10
If the events in this chapter seem disjointed: That was on purpose, just like it was every other time, lolz.
Bumblebee's Intermission : The Hero Dies In This Scene
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"Close up: Camera One. The Hero sings in this scene. The boy that gets the girl get to go home where they get married.
-- but stop the tape! The sunset still looks fake to me. The Hero looks like he can't breathe -- the damsel just left everything ..."
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Loneliness was for the most part a foreign concept to Cybertronians. Humans did have something that could compare to the concept, sort of -- their artificial means of communication were actually similar enough. When a human looked at the cell phone in their hand -- they know that they are not alone. At the same time, they could not contact someone they didn't have a number for -- that was what being a Cybertronian meant. It went a little further than that --
So long as a Spark pulsed in their chamber (that mysterious energy that defied every scientific explanation -- much like the human concept of soul, which was widely accepted though there was no proof) they were all connected. Some indicated that this was through the All Spark itself, from which their Spark immerged and to which it went when there was no more reason to stay behind. Though it was widely accepted to say that a mech that had been deactivated 'had their spark extinguished', it wasn't accurate. The Spark merely returned to the All Spark.
The truth was, no one had been completely sure that they would continue to function with the destruction of the All Spark.
But they did -- they continued to live, to function fine, even if they were the last. Bumblebee had been optimistic, though. When it came to their attention that Sam was -- was changing, it seemed like the answer had fallen right in their hands. If that was the answer -- to find the appropriate humans and find a way to replicate downloading the program into them, just like Sam --
Well, being written in ancient Cybertronian was a bit of a hindrance, but ...
And he'd had hope. It seemed that Bumblebee's optimism had paid off. After waking Jazz, Bumblebee had felt the first weak pulses of a Spark inside Sam, as his sensors weren't nearly as delicate as a medics, intended to sense even the slightest hint of a Spark. And then --
With the patience that few thought him capable of, despite several shows of it, he erected firewall after firewall through his processors (firewall, n. - a wall constructed to prevent the spread of fire. Wasn't the English variation of human communication fascinating?) and methodically disabled his AR programs. Finally, he consulted his chronometer, and accepted that it had been thirteen days since his attachment programs had gone on the fritz and had created a sort of software related cascading failure, which his military-installed firewall had shut down in order to run AR.
Technically, he could have pulled himself out of AR within a few hours. He just hadn't.
Unfortunately, there was little his firewalls could do. He could not lock away his memories of Sam without his own curiosity driving him to unlock it -- a problem Sam himself had, before he was taken. He couldn't firewall his attachment programs, either. With nothing there, he'd suffer a cascading software failure of a much more severe sort, and possibly deactivate himself on accident. He would have to live with the knowledge that he had failed to protect Sam -- who was a charge that he had volunteered to guard, but also his friend, a type of partner, and a very young mech that was possibly the last hope of his people.
But he couldn't run forever on AR programs. He wouldn't learn to ... 'cope' while on AR programs, so he would have to face these things. Maybe later he would delve into the automatically recorded events that took place in between Then and now, and maybe later he would even apologize for whatever actions he took during the time he'd been running on AR, but for now ...
A dry squeal escaped his gears as Bumblebee unlocked them, noting by the dirt he had collected on his frame that he had spent at least seven of those thirteen days standing, stock still as a statue, outside the base. With a sharp sonic burst, he dislodged the irritants from his alloy and turned away from the lonely empty dirt road. It was no use watching for something that would never come.
With the nonchalant routine air of someone who had been doing the same thing over and over, Arcee appeared in the hanger doorway, idly carrying a small bucket of fuel -- only to spot him walking toward her. She hissed in surprise, then warily asked, "you running with all your circuits yet, little Bee?"
It was understandable that she was doubtful as to whether or not he was actually aware of what was going on, or just reacting out of pure programming. It was impossible to discern up until the mech in question either spoke or made some other indication that they understood what was going on. Still, it didn't stop Bumblebee from triggering a system's diagnostic, just to determine if he was. Finally deciding that he was, he nodded and came to a stop before her. She glanced down at the bucket in hand and questioningly held it out. He looked at it blankly for a moment, then took it but didn't open his tank valve.
"No thanks?" she said, humorously but with a testing manner. "I give you the fuel out of my own intake, and not a word?"
Bumblebee centered his visual field on the smaller mech, still-still-still. Not a word? Why should he bother? Arcee did not understand -- Bumblebee knew that her Spark was not compatible to his own and therefore her attachment program was bare-bones ... or rarely used, junk software laying unnoticed and unremarked just to keep a systems failure from occurring. Arcee was an excellent comrade on the field, a sharp shooter, swift, loyal, not one to leave another mech alive on the field abandoned. But Primus forbid she ever try to speak to someone with even only a mid-level attachment program, like Bumblebee -- especially after having lost one of those attachments.
It was useless to allow his software to become disrupted at her words: it solved nothing. And words? What use did he have for words?
None. The only one he really needed to speak out loud to had gone away.
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For something with enough memory space to casually dismiss having lived for several million years, was it terribly surprising that life was rarely linear ... and more often, looping, or like a stone, skipping across a lake? And riding each breaking ripple that met another ripple and rippled yet another way?
And so, was it surprising that when Bumblebee decided he didn't like his current time, that he would simply ride a few conflicting-crashing ripples to another?
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4-APRIL-07-2007.VFRR - ACCESSING - CONNECTING ... --
"Hey, 'Bee," a vague thoughtful note, the soft purring touch of a human EA field brushing against him and leaving him pleasantly drowsy, "Do Cybertronians dream?"
Still scanning the radio, " ... No. Not usually."
"But they do." A statement of fact heard somehow through the vibration of an engine, perhaps. Clever intuitive strange little thing. Charmingly so, but so strange.
"Not like humans do. You dream because it helps you process things, or rest your brain." A short pause, then with a shyly embarrassed note: "Or that's why your scientist think you dream."
"But Cybertronian dreams --" like a wrench gripping the edges of a bolt and not letting go until the metal gave "-- how do you dream?"
"Video feed, normally. Like a silent flashback."
"Wow. Really? You just ... remember things? You don't ... because I have dreams, sometimes. I mean -- ... well, it just seems strange."
"How do you think we feel? You say that while you are otherwise unconscious and unaware of the solid world, your mind provides nonsensical visual and auditory hallucinations of varying horrific consistency, and if your body malfunctions, you'll actually get up and move around without otherwise actually being aware of it."
A long, long silence. Amusement rippled across wires in shades of yellow and orange, all due to the hiccup and quickening of the frequency produced by the tiny organic. Mid-to-long length, and still very nice.
"Goddamn, Bee, you know how to make me really freak out about my own species."
"You come from a very insane species. Thankfully, you happen to be their ambassador, so don't worry about it too much." Never had to worry so long as that EA field kept humming pleasantly and soothing out tensions that had gone unnoticed for so very long. With these words, the subcharge output slowed, long frequency again. Pleased.
"Yeah, well -- thanks, I think."
"You're welcome, Sam."
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Cybertronian dreams were both more and less complex than humanity's. A silent flash back was an accurate descriptor -- but Bumblebee had made it sound as if he rarely dreamed, when in fact he dreamed more often that the average. It was probably because his personality matrix was easily upset -- he never forgot who it was that activated him, nor what he learned for the fifth of a vorn that he'd spent with them. It was a careful balancing act, honestly, and the disruptive nature of Earth helped matters little.
But he didn't have much of note to recall during recharge until he came to Earth. All of his Video Feed Recall had been based around his life: trying to deliver messages if he was recalling back far enough, but mostly fighting for his life or offlining Decepticons or risking his life to locate their bases when he wasn't ...
Then he came to Earth, then S7 entered his VFR, and humans with their skin oils and alien prickling EA fields were a part of it. Of all the places for the All Spark to land, it had to land on one of the few planets with sentient, sapient life. Obviously, for much of his time there, his recall didn't improve, and he had very little to look fondly on in VFR. Even when he met Sam -- well, he hadn't done much recharging during that whole fiasco, either. Still, it wasn't until the cycle during which he recalled a thin still-growing human, sweaty and dusty and bruised, cautiously edging up an incline with visual receptors fixed on him and speaking to the female, that he realized that VFR wasn't all bad. It reminded him of the hope that he'd felt when he saw Sam approaching him cautiously, thinking that even his disaster of an introduction hadn't ruined his chances to succeed at his mission and hadn't scared off the tiny human with an EA field like a full tank of power after running near empty for orns.
Though he didn't know it until he came to Earth, Bumblebee used to have nothing but 'nightmares'. It had been sweet when, for a short precious while, he 'dreamed'. Then Decepticons came and took everything important to him, and he was plunged into 'nightmares' again; they always stole everything.
(they would regret stealing this)
But for now, it was better not to recharge deeply enough for VFR. The once he had dared since coming out of AR, hoping for a good memory, it had been ... unpleasant to say the least. For a mech that had come to expect a pleasant recall, of either the purring of Sam's matter-of-factly ownership in his touch, and meeting up with Arcee with the promise of more Chase-class mechs who could challenge him in races, recalling instead Sam's nervous fidgety self-horror was a rude awakening. Ever since Sam had been k -- taken away, though, there seemed to be nothing but war to remember.
His processors and programs were on the fritz, battle protocols insisting that it was a lost chance, logic agreeing, but the attachment programs, the ones that wanted Optimus Prime to be proud of him and made him do horrendously ridiculous things just to gain a few amused clicks, those insisted that he use all of his programing and experience to locate where the Deceptions were and ...
Well, they were attachment programs, not battle strategy protocols. The best he could come up with was 'blow slag up'.
So Bumblebee rarely recharged very deeply. It meant he had to do it much more often, and actually consume some of Earth's odd fuel, but it also meant that he didn't remember the day that Sam insisted they all go out so that he could work up the courage to tell Mikaela about what was happening to him. The day that in a pure power-move that Megatron would have never even considered, the jets came by and took Sam.
Sam was not exactly a quiet human. He was prone to yelling and yelping and repetitive denials, but the day they stole him, he hadn't even squeaked a word.
Though ... even if involuntary video recall was extremely unpleasant, it didn't stop him from accessing his memory banks often, anyway.
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MARCH-19-2007.VFRR - ACCESSING - CONNECTING ... --
After a bout of vicious anger -- Bumblebee wasn't terribly surprised or horrified by it, even if Sam did seem very ashamed -- and a few words back and forth, Bumblebee had been intent on getting Sam home. Something he'd said had meant something in the mysterious stretches of organic tissue that humans used for a processor and called a brain, because by the time Sam climbed into the cab, his EA field was ... well, not like it usually was. Nice, still, but more slick and slippery than a pleasant hum. It happened on occasion, he noticed. It didn't make him lapse on the power to his various programs -- instead, it seemed to encourage the use of more.
That was when Sam so very innocently molested his very sensory laden windows.
What was referred to as a scout bot these vorns were originally designed to be ... well, 'waiters', originally -- 'fetch' bots, in a way. Meant to dodge through crowds of other mechs without inconveniencing anyone, and eventually fitted out with security bot's sensor panels so that the fetchbot could more effectively work his way through a crowd and avoid being knocked over from the back or struck by the short of temper. In either case, the innocent design of a fetchbot also made an insanely effective scout bot, sensor panels and nimbleness and all.
Therefore, having the weak human EA field applied directly to those sensors was a bit more than Bumblebee had been expecting. Even though most of the sensory information was scaled down a lot, as Bumblebee had gone into fits of sensory overload the first time it rained on Earth, an EA field interacted directly with the alloy that makes a Cybertronian's plating.
It wasn't pain, and it didn't exactly feel good, so when Sam had exclaimed in surprise that he was ticklish, that was pretty spot on. Not that Bumblebee was going to admit that.
The second time Sam did it, punishing him for trying to lie, the intention behind it had been completely different and it really had felt ... pleasant. In a wholly inappropriate way. Somewhat horrified at himself, he had little attention to spare the naive human in his cab, far too concerned with trying to figure out what he was supposed to do with himself and trying very hard not to come to a conclusion that he suspected was the truth.
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"(Mayday, baby-bot,)" came with harmonics of wryness and amusement over the radio.
Bumblebee's receptors twitched into a more alert position to make sure he didn't hear anything wrong or lose reception. Jazz's transmission was a little thready, warning him that the silver mech was on the out reaches of radio connection. "(Magnitude?)" he queried, not yet stirring.
"(Hmm -- five point three, maybe,)" Jazz returned. "(Requesting a two-mech team to run interference. Can you com Arcee?)"
Bumblebee obliguingly opened up a communication line on the chasebot's frequency. "(Arcee?)" he queried.
An answer came back in her metallic tones. "(Reading you loud and clear, Bumblebee.)" One day, Bumblebee would ask what made her chose the feminine identity when male was the default gender in English, whether it had been choice or laziness. If it had been chose, he would have to inquire what influenced that, but dreaded a response that she was likely to give -- such as the same when asked 'why blue': "why not?"
"(Jazz has a five-point-three danger situation, requesting a two-mech team's interference, Arcee specified,)" he relayed.
"(Location?)"
Not even four seconds after Jazz called for help, two mechs were on their way to object strenuously to whatever had dared to harass one of their members. (Bumblebee put his fist through one of the black car's engines. He hated S7 just enough to let hidden subroutines overpower his MN programs that normally would have prevented him from harming humans. No one was injured in the Autobot retaliation, but Bumblebee knew it was just a matter of time, especially since that faction had gone rogue.
Them and the Decepticons -- they'd pay.)
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MARCH-23-2007.VFRR - ACCESSING - CONNECTING ... --
For a time, Bumblebee had been well on his way to convincing himself that he really hated organics. It wasn't hard. Just like humanity must wonder about whether or not they were truely alive or only showing a good face, it was a common query between the Autobots -- their human allies ... there was no Spark. Were they really alive, or only meat putting on a good show?
They were alien to him and everything he knew. They weren't ... metal. Alloy. They didn't have processors or programs or codes of behavior that simply couldn't be bypassed without some savage reworking or hacking of said processors. They were ... flesh. Bone. Strangely colored things on the inside that were wet and stank and it was just ... disgusting how they ate and sweated and their skins produced oils and their own skin flaked off and their hair fell out, constantly. All soft like mud or clay and wet and the sound of their juices squishing around inside of them was just ... repulsive.
(Because the beat of the heart, like the thumping of a pump, wasn't special at all, or enthralling, nor was the calming rush-rush of blood through their veins like coolant to straining gears. It wasn't fascinating how their clay-soft malleable faces bent and shaped expressions, or their entire bodies moved in a dance of unspoken communication, so they read and understood each other across rooms the way Cybertronians couldn't unless they were listening, or how every single one of them almost was completely unique from the position of their teeth to the colored streaks of their irises. It wasn't amazing that their white soft struts could be aligned and heal spontaneously without welding, that their skin could darken in shades of Decepticon colors for a while until it repaired itself. It wasn't anything to be impressed by, that on average they lived less than a vorn, but a single one could unravel one of their mysteries of life and harness the power of atoms.)
(Like with everything, humans were two extremes in one small package. Bumblebee was also horrified and fascinated with that.)
He wondered how Sam missed the shift in attitude, although Bumblebee was careful to keep his opinions to himself. It was part of the reason that Bumblebee just sat there, well aware that the human intended to inflict damage on him, though it was nothing he couldn't heal on his own and wouldn't even scratch more than the pigment on the outside of his armor. Whether it was a part of his own lower-processor ploy to distract himself with disgust with humans, or his higher-processor curiosity with humanity at large wanting to know if the boy would actually do it, he didn't set off his alarm at the painfully loud levels that would have protected him. This ... 'Trent' human was a fine example of things that Bumblebee disliked about humanity.
He was actually so wrapped up in analyzing the boy that Sam's appearance and outburst of violence shocked him cold. For the first time, he was thankful for his enforced silence while the other human, Miles, was in the car -- because apparently, the small fragile being that he had chosen to protect ... wanted to protect him, too. That was --
Sam was so small, fitting into his hands easily, though maybe not comfortably. Primus -- if he hadn't caught them that time, their soft little bodies would have given under the inertia and ... and splattered. They would have broken, like rubber stretched too thin and full of fluid ... and ...
And that little thing wanted to protect him? How was he supposed to succeed at that? And some of that must have come through to Sam, because he made a small desperate anguished noise and fled the cab. From there on, it was an outpouring of rage and desperation and pain, and Bumblebee was forcibly reminded of an Autobot he had managed to rescue (accidentally) from one of the Decepticon bases. The mech had been so ...
'Traumatized' wasn't the right word, but his processors had definitely been horrifically scrambled. He refused to admit to his true designation, insisting that it was The Prisoner. Which was better than Slag, which had been his first confused suggestion when they'd asked.
The Prisoner had been one scrambled Autobot ... if he could even be called that. He had been hacked, of course, but they couldn't figure out if he had scrambled his own processors and programs and encoded everything nonsensically to the point where it couldn't ever be sorted out, or if that had been done by whoever hacked him. He was only an Autobot at that point because he'd do anything to destroy the Decepticons. He also raved insanely. No one was sure if they should be relieved or sad when 'anything' became planting an explosive under his pump and behind his fuel tank, and he walked right up to the base and blew himself up.
Either way, Sam had sounded so much like The Prisoner that Bumblebee had been very, very worried about the human. The Prisoner's EA field had grated against everyone, broken and sharp and never the same wave length, always short waves and never the same pitch twice -- but Bumblebee had been willing to risk that just to make sure that the human wouldn't ... suicide like that.
(It was Sam, after all, who had spared no look back toward Optimus Prime, scrambling up with the All Spark in his hands a thrusting it upwards --)
But instead, the rage subsided, Sam calmed while leaning on Bumblebee's bumper, and made promises he could no longer keep.
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Bumblebee could hate humans, and be revolted by organics, but he could never extend those feelings to Mikaela and Sam. But he was still relieved when Mikaela refused to sit in his cab. Nothing would feel right inside his cab but Sam's familiar shape and the long waves of his EA field.
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"(So, it was pretty serious, huh?)"
Bumblebee roused from his power saving state at the sudden transmission over his radio. It took him a nano-klik to remember where he was -- in a parking lot of a mall, resting through the day with Jazz near by. Though they had all spread out over a relay-network so that they were less conspicuous, they had also partnered up a little. Jazz, who was the one of them that had the greatest range of mass shifting capacity, was currently pretending to be a Sunbird in an odd dark blue green and sitting several hundred feet across the parking lot.
It had been necessary to forgo ego, though it had taken very little encouragement for Bumblebee to return to his original body style -- and then he'd painted himself a dark maroon, since he couldn't stand looking at yellow. When being hunted, every last scrap of their natural ability to disguise themselves was used -- which meant that they changed their car shape and color frequently. It consumed a lot of energy, so they also spent much of their time resting. It made Arcee and Chromia nervous, but Elita-One was rather good at controlling her group.
Her group had gotten rather diverse, though. The last time they had actual contact with Elita-One, previous to launching the All Spark, they had been much more standard ... it seemed that the war had changed things. Chromia, for one, had upgraded her body. Though her hardware was still that of a Chasebot's, it was evident that Elita-One had decided that they required actual fire power and that Chromia had volunteered -- unsurprising. She had a warrior's Spark, and would rather stand her ground than use her speed to avoid hand-to-hand. Now she was built nearly as heavily as Ratchet -- and while he wasn't built to fight, it was a lot sturdier than the Chasebot frame without sacrificing all of her speed. Elita-One had also picked up a few of their scattered dormants -- one of which was a minibot currently going by 'Moonracer', which was a relief since ever since the war even started, minibots had been few and far between. Several mechs had expressed hope that they had only taken to hiding deep within the planet, but even if they had ... Bumblebee had managed to get it out of Ratchet that Megatron had razed it.
He was kind of embarrassed that one of their only proof that Cybertron's healers still existed was Moonracer, though. She was -- ah, unique.
Jazz's companionable humming was still coming over his com, in typical Jazz manner. Bumblebee debated ignoring him, especially since he wouldn't get offended at all. Knowing Jazz, he might actually find it amusing.
Giving up, he switched the radio link to two-way. "(What, Jazz?)" he finally inquired.
"(That human kid. Witwilliky, or whatever,)" Jazz sent, still with that undertone of lighthearted impersonal curiosity.
"(His name was Sam,)" Bumblebee sent back, unable to completely stop the transmitter from adding the irritation he felt.
For a moment, the only thing coming over the radio was Jazz's thoughtful static. Then he added, "(So, you're still upset that the Decepticons took him.)"
That was part of the reason that Bumblebee didn't block Jazz's frequency, even though he wished that the mech wouldn't talk about Sam. When he did, though, it was never 'get over it' or 'he's dead' or 'it was bound to happen'. It was probably also the reason why Mikaela had switched to Jazz once it became clear that Arcee just didn't get it. He was a far cry from a therapist (or wanting to be one), and he was a poor choice to confide in, but he knew in a way what words to use.
Bumblebee didn't bother responding to that statement. It was rather obvious, after all, that he was still upset over the fact that Sam, for one had been stolen, and that the program went with him. Ratchet had a copy, they thought they could replicate it, but it was dangerous without waiting to see what sort of effect that it would have on Sam. If this had been the All Spark's last gift to them -- a program that could transform humans into Cybertronians ... to have lost that was devastating. If they would never know if a person could survive it, if they never knew what the end result was ...
Well, it was personal for Bumblebee, but it was easier to look at it as a loss for their species than it was to look at the damage done to his software.
"(He's not dead, yanno?)"
Frame jerking involuntarily, Bumblebee accidentally slammed the communication closed, reeling. Not dead? It was one thing to hear Jazz not use 'killed' when speaking of that day, but not dead? For a long moment, he vibrated in silence, replaying the transmission before he snapped the communication line back open rather sharply, clicking with agitation. "(What do you mean, not dead?)" he snapped.
With twisted humor, Jazz sent, "(I mean ... not dead as in alive.)"
"(Jazz!)"
"(Keep your cannons in,)" Jazz sent tolerantly. "(We don't know what happened, baby-bot. I've been sayin' it all along. The Decepticreeps took the little squishie, but that was Starscream's way of rubbing our noses in. Wouldn't he have done something a little more obvious to make the move complete? Like ... kill the kid in front of us? We haven't seen or heard anything. Pit, we didn't even see Skywarp for most of that lunar cycle.)"
And he wanted to believe it. He desperately wanted to believe it. There was no way Sam, the only redeeming quality that this entire race had, was dead. But if Sam wasn't dead, where was he? He was somewhere, surely. This was just -- just a prolonged version of Sector Seven. Sam would show up as soon as he could. Something was stopping him for a little ... that was all.
And he wanted to believe it so badly it hurt. No matter what his battle protocols insisted, or how much his logic circuits agreed. It was too soon for Sam to convert, there had been no messages, Skywarp had used his vast power reservoirs, they hadn't been able to track him, and while it was suspicious that Skywarp had disappeared with Sam, it was equally suspicious that they hadn't heard a thing about it, either.
So, even as his processors churned out the information that it was very unlikely that Sam was still alive, somewhere, he hoped.
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It was something of a mystery that humans had an EA field. Humans were so small, and their power so organic that the fact that they had EA fields at all had surprised Bumblebee when he'd made planet fall. He'd learned that he didn't particularly like the human EA field, though. It was hard and distant and disinterested, and their skin oils nagged his processors for hours afterwards. He hated how they had to touch everything.
Optimus had trusted him, though, to get this done. Bumblebee had needed this. Needed to be trusted, to go down alone, for perhaps several solar revolutions. He mastered his own revulsion at taking a form that organics rode in and did it anyway. He understood the necessity.
It had been a rash decision to put himself in a position to be purchased by the Witwicky family, though. He had been so surprised when he had accidentally stumbled across them that he had basically panicked, and had no plan going in. By that time, he had known enough about human customs and culture to know that his plan wouldn't work, but his MN codes had been damaged weeks ago during a misfortunate run in with a lightning strike ... (and they wouldn't get fixed until he had the All Spark and used it's excess power on a whim; though, between the excess All Spark energy that build in his circuits and them actually winning, those codes had been useless for weeks anyway.)
He was so eager to be purchased by the Witwicky family (if they weren't the ones, he could just be 'stolen') that he hadn't even paid much mind to the owner of the used car lot putting his hands on him. It had been much harder not to notice when a second set joined the first, and the naturally cold and distant EA field suddenly sharpened and ...
Well, hummed against his alloy. Bumblebee had been a little shocked and off balance by this, and the usual threat of being sat in was now less of a horror and now more than a curiosity. He completely ignored the other two humans, focusing completely on the young one that had leaned in through the window and then opened the door to climb inside. It had been -- fascinating to have that small EA field generator submerged into his own field.
Bumblebee had been activated after the war had started, one of the many inactivated mechs jettisoned into space for their own welfare, as the retainers had been the first thing wiped out, to keep the armies from replacing their dead. By this time, any who hadn't been pulled in and deactivated by stars and suns had been found. So, to be honest, everything Bumblebee knew about EA fields came from the mechs around him. Naturally, the chances of anyone being relaxed enough to emit long waves if they could be coaxed to extend a field at all were zip to zilch, so everyone kept it to themselves and the compounding software issues went unspoken.
Humans called it 'skin hunger'; his own people called it 'long wave deprivation'. Therefore, though it was an acknowledged ailment, it was a given and therefore unspoken one as well.
So, when Bumblebee got his first sample of a field that wasn't unpleasant, he rather enjoyed it -- a lot. Yes, it was human, and was therefore small, weak, and came with that little offness that pervaded everything about the organics, but it was still so good, and such a sudden relief to feel something that wasn't hateful, hurtful, hostile, or cold.
So, maybe his attack on the little round vehicle could be excused, and his following attack on ... all of the cars. His MN programs were malfunctioning, and Bumblebee just honestly wanted that sensation back. Perhaps his subsequent attempt to aid Sam in his courtship rituals could be excused as well. His MN programs were malfunctioning, and a severe overdose of long wave emissions just about shut that software completely down, causing him to suffer logic circuit malfunction -- he was more than just a little high. Sam liked him, and Mikaela's field wasn't so bad either.
He'd look back on those records and feel quiet mortified by his behavior. While unavoidable, it was still embarrassing.
It was a mixed tangle of giddiness, amusement, and panic that had lead up to what Sam had oh-so-quaintly referred to as the 'Satan's Camaro' event. Sam wasn't exactly subtle. Bumblebee had known he was there from the time he woke up. Getting the little organic caught by the cops and then chasing him across town and into Barricade had been far from Bumblebee's intentions. It just ... sort of happened. And right after he'd contacted the others, too. What a mess!
But things worked out. Bumblebee, still suffering long wave deprivation that had lasted as long as he'd been activated, had been eager for more, and Sam seemed like the perfect source, being brave and loyal and liking him anyway. Of course Bumblebee had shared with the others that the cure to the affliction was here on Earth. It even factored into Optimus Prime's decision to remain on Earth. For such tiny, organic creatures with such a weak field, it was a powerful sensation. Getting a larger dose after such an unbelievably long time would have been detrimental to a mech ... overwhelming. It was best to start small.
It couldn't be excused that he hadn't noticed that Sam's EA field was slowly getting stronger ... that Bumblebee never needed for more riders (though Sam provided them incidentally, all very fond of him and therefore all producing long waves), that he never desired for a mech to provide long waves.
Sam's field had nearly tripled in strength before he himself brought it to Bumblebee's attention that something was wrong.
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6-JUNE-12-2007.VFRR - ACCESSING - CONNECTING ... --
" ... this ... is very odd. Bumblebee, you haven't been doing anything strange, have you, because if you have --" and the fist drawn back threateningly.
An alarmed chirp, hands raised to fend off the so-far nonexistent threat of a dent. "No, why kind of strange things do you think I get up to?"
Dryly: "I don't know. I never got up to half the stuff you newly activated mechs get up to. I was spending my time learning how to fix you bolt-for-brains up!"
"I haven't done anything I haven't been since I landed here," defensively.
"Hmph!" A thoughtful silence, more scans. "Did you even notice that your left tertiary shoulder gear has stopped hitching?"
A soft suspicious croon as said limb was adjusted. " ... oh."
A snort. "Oh indeed. If I didn't know better, I'd think you hadn't been activated for longer than a quarter of a vorn."
" ... we both know better than that."
"Indeed. Which is why I asked if you'd been doing anything strange."
A moment of reviewed records. "I haven't done anything unusual."
"Not consuming any strange fuels?"
"Of course not. I'm not new, I don't need it. Or electricity, for that matter."
"... hmm. Well, if your software is fine ...? And your memory banks are complete? Good. Maybe it's Earth." An expansive shrug. "Time will tell; I'm sure it's nothing to worry about. It's not as if you're running worse."
" ... still, it's strange."
"Bumblebee, we've run across strange things ever since this war started and we've ended up in uncharted territory. New phenomena crop up all the time. Just keep an eye on it and report back anything strange you discover."
The only possible answer was an affirmative.
-+-
The question of whether or not Bumblebee wanted to interface with Arcee was actually a little more convoluted than most (probably even Arcee) assumed.
To put it most bluntly (and perhaps too simply), Bumblebee was insanely jealous of Chasebot programming. It was one of the few things he liked about Earth -- with preformed alt modes that were not just disguise but transportation, Bumblebee was allowed to choose the fastest slickest most aerodynamic vehicle he could find that would suit his frame. He eventually came around to admiring the human predisposition to insane speed and their constant struggle for faster because he himself had that same desire. He wanted to be fast. Devoting entirely too much time to hunting down Chasebots and learning through hard work, dedication, and crashes how to pursue and escape them only did so much -- and Arcee just couldn't be beat.
It drove Bumblebee up a wall, to borrow the phrasing. Because being a chasebot went beyond simple shell, he could never outgrade into that model. His hardware was suited to scouting, aimed for running his shell, and the sheer processing capacity that allowed the chasebots to make snap decisions that could keep them from being dashed into pieces against some obstacle ... he just couldn't. Not without being completely reformatted, in which case 'Bumblebee' would only be an ghost in the codes of whoever the chasebot was activated as.
So, when Arcee was the only chasebot he could never seem to beat -- not with speed, not with skill, not with the terrain in his favor and not even with dirty cheating tricks, it was frustrating, to say the least. He was firmly convinced that she was the only chasebot that was actually unbeatable, and that somehow made it completely different. That was -- well, to put it in human phrasing: that was hot.
In human values, his newfound interest in Arcee was rather shallow and superficial. In Cybertronian values, it was perfectly legitimate, and actually a little more founded than most interface encounters. (Or so he'd been told by Elita-One, which was one of the most embarrassing encounters with a superior that he'd ever had.) In both cultures, however, the fact remained that unless both wanted it, it wasn't going to happen. (Well, both had coercion and rape, but that was so repugnant that it was something that was simply locked from being a possibility his action algorithms churned out.) No matter how 'in the mood' racing with Arcee put him, she simply wasn't interested.
It was perhaps why he'd been so eager and willing to help out Sam with Mikaela, even through his malfunction induced intoxication. Sam certainly appeared to be in the same situation ... well, as same as a duel sexed species could be.
Strangely enough, the moment she snubbed Sam, he found himself wondering what was so great about being unbeatable at racing. It wasn't like she had faced down Megatron and lived to tell the tale. His processors turned over in confusion, trying to make adjustments in his programs to account for this shift in attitude. Even stranger, she seemed to approve of the change. Trying to sort that out, he often went racing with her, just trying to see if he could stir up the attraction or even the fixation he'd once felt. He couldn't, and that was ... very strange, and curious.
It wasn't until Sam washed him one day after a particularly rough race that he became alerted to the subdued whisper of the human's EA field, and the way it seemed to cringe away from his alloy even as Sam firmly scrubbed away stains and dried insects -- as if Sam was trying to close off his field the way a mech would (and couldn't without alloy to polarize). It wasn't until he tried to invite Sam to go on a drive and he had to convince the human to climb in that he actually stopped to analyze the last weeks.
"Compared to Cybertronians, it's not even a blink of an eye."
" ... don't blink or you'll miss it."
That was when he suggested that Arcee try giving Mikaela a ride a few times. It was a good suggestion: it seemed that Mikaela could emit long waves, too.
-+-
Sam turning into a Cybertronian turned Bumblebee's world upside down. Not just because for three frightening days, Sam had done little more than either hold tight to whatever he happened to be nearest (the seats inside Bumblebee's cab, or the hood, or whatever limb or niche in his chest armor that was available). No, it was because Bumblebee thought that there might have been some sort of future for them. For Cybertronians as a whole.
On some level, he did understand that human-born Cybertronians wouldn't be the same thing at all as Cybertronians as he knew them, but to be honest, Bumblebee could live with that.
But adjusting to the idea that the frail organic he had befriended would one day (in a blink, for a Cybertronian) be the same as him was hard, and not just on him. He knew the adjustment rate would be low and might take a while, and that it probably wouldn't be easy, either. Sam had his own sort of software of an organic nature -- instincts, built into the blueprints of humanity -- that meant that it would be very difficult for him to start thinking in terms greater than orn-to-orn. For something that lived on average less than a vorn, to living thousands of years when all went well ... to thinking not in the turns of season but in the age of planets and the stability of stars.
Sam's (comparatively weak, but three times as strong as it should be) EA field was sparking and erratic and would be painful if it didn't settle down and move in mid-length patterns whenever he was near the human. Bumblebee made every effort to always be nearby just to keep Sam calm and to keep him from hurting himself. No words were spoken, no music played. Sam drank water, slept, and otherwise remained still, nearly catatonic, as close Bumblebee as he could get.
He had just started to convince himself that they had another The Prisoner on their hands when Sam came out of it and inquired about the date. It had to be part of what allowed them to evolve out in front of the other animals: this strange ability to take even something that repulsed their very core and keep moving.
That didn't mean that Sam took it completely calmly, and having heard his nightmares just a few days before, Bumblebee could understand why: Sam was immersed in one of his nightmares, so other than wrapping a protective hand over whatever Sam began attacking that day until he stopped trying to peel off his skin, Bumblebee just tried to be there for him.
After all ... this strange, tiny organic creature that was insanely brave in the face of certain death and wanted to protect something several times larger and much more durable was going to become one of them. It was ... something out of the legends and just overall fascinating and terrific. Even if he was going to be a minibot, Sam would still be one of them, and Bumblebee would no longer have to accept the knowledge that in less than a vorn, Sam would wither and die like all organics do.
Then he hadn't been able to keep his hands to himself, and touched the Cybertronian alloy socket that was attached to Cybertronian alloy inside Sam. He'd just wanted to make sure, to be able to touch Sam the way one Cybertronian would another. Minor data transfer. That was all. Instead, Sam had gotten a dose of Cybertronian energy from Bumblebee's build up, and it knocked him flat on his face.
When he had to coax Sam into the cab a second time, Bumblebee began to worry that this brave little organic would break.
-+-
A long time ago, when he was still very, very young ... a newly activated mech that had been rescued from the Decepticons that had brought him online and were then displeased with his inability to be cruel ... thousands and thousands of years ago, in between ferrying information that could end up with his circuits blasted to slag over dead-dead rock on this bleak hopeless planet, Bumblebee used to look up at the stars. He wasn't named Bumblebee back then, of course, not having earned such a distinction and still being in his imprinting phase. Back then his designation had been a word that had no equivalent in any Earth language. But when he had a free moment, he would look up and away, quieting his scanners and sensors to a dull roar and switching his visuals to the mild light spectrum.
In the midst of the hustle and bustle of his fellows, the familiar whirl-click, the hum of machinery, the playful crackle-spit of Cybertronian language, the most recently activated mech felt strangely singular. He had to wonder if this was where he was really supposed to be, if this was what he was meant to be doing. It wasn't a glitch, and if it were a program, it was a ghost in his codes. There was nothing wrong with him that even the best of medics, Optimus Prime's Ratchet, was able to find. He was normal and healthy.
But there was something out there. Somewhere. (As if the All Spark was telling him he needed to be somewhere else.)
-+-
"You know what? I wanna know if you were irreversibly turning into one of us, and you had the decision between a guy like me, or a girl like Mikaela, which would you become?"
It was a question that haunted Bumblebee every day since they had lost Sam. He hadn't seriously considered it at the time. It was too outlandish, too unbelievable. He would have to loose tons of mass, and the chance of what was happening to Sam working in reverse was ... astronomically low. Even if he was infected with a program that instructed it how to work, metal couldn't turn into living flesh. He would have only been so much dead meat. The chances of him remaining sane after having as many vorns in his memory banks stuffed into an organic structure that couldn't even recall one vorn with any true precision was ... quite unlikely. Without subprograms, how would he remember to breathe? How would his heart beat?
Could he handle being a soft squishy-clay-and-wet-and-weak human?
He was so wrapped up in the 'becoming human' aspect, he didn't even consider the real question Sam was asking him. If your entire identity was going to change ... if you were going to gain a label you never had before (becoming male, becoming female), how would you chose? That part didn't even register until Ratchet had to help a woman in labor get to a hospital as they were running and hiding.
In labor. Giving birth. Bringing a new life into existence through her own agony, tears, blood, and body. She carried a tiny, helpless life inside of her for nine months (on average, hopefully. Weeks in either direction could be deadly). She would dedicate the rest of her life to raising, supporting, and worrying about another one of her kind. She got that way through that thoroughly disgusting act of sex.
Supposedly, humans really enjoyed it. Recreationally, too. Evolution made them that way, created sexual dimorphism. Sculpted both male and female into forms that the opposite gender found attractive, made reproduction pleasurable, made the humans clannish all in the name of survival.
Cybertronians didn't ... didn't work that way. Physical appearance had little to do with 'attraction'. When it was possible to change their entire body with a careful enough medic, what was the point? They were the same wires, the same spark, the same mech. That didn't change, just what they looked like. They didn't have gender, just model. Model influenced identity very little, and that was probably what allowed them to take the round organic shapes they chose for this planet, trying not to be too foreign or alarming to the natives.
Yes, they enjoyed sculptures -- they made their buildings pleasing to the scanner, symmetrical and sharp and polyprismatic, according to the orderly structures that pleased them most. They weren't attracted to such structures -- rather, it was the function and how well that function was fulfilled. Skill. Essentially, all surviving Cybertronians would be considered the elite of their society for simply having lived so long. They knew what they were doing, and they were good at it. Otherwise, they wouldn't be operational.
Sure, the skill set or function that attracted a Cybertronian was different. Bumblebee's initial jealousy and envy was an immature form of that -- though he still coveted the form, that skill and speed -- and so he fixated on those skill sets, and Arcee in particularly for her reliably aerodynamic forms and ability to beat him in a race. Her skill with projectile weapons was well known.
Skill sets and function.
Well, not always. Humans had the same thing: there were always exceptions to the rule. Generally speaking, Ironhide, for example, preferred his mechs with lots of guns and the know-how. But he was glitched if he thought no one had noticed that he'd developed a bit of a thing for their talkative, temperamental and overall absent-minded medic. Ratchet didn't have much finesse for anything but repairing mechs and verbally (and sometimes physically) abusing them into submission -- but what he could do with metal was amazing. It was only that finesse, that skill, that had kept Jazz only in stasis lock, and not bleeding out and offlining.
Bumblebee hadn't been in the mood to laugh then, not with Jazz in danger, but he could now. Saving Jazz had been a little like being beat at racing with Arcee for Ironhide.
Amusingly, for all of Ratchet's brilliance with wires and power and metal, he was a bit of an idiot otherwise. Jazz and he had discussed at sniggering length that despite the extensive knowledge Ratchet had on hardware and software, it was doubtful he understood why Ironhide gravitated toward him and had a tendency to shove him when situations got a little tense, just that it was a habit the weapon specialist had and was something that was strange but tolerable.
Amusingly, it was Bumblebee's own human translated name that lead him to the knowledge of a species on Earth that was vaguely like the Cybertronians themselves. After all, the All Spark was the source of all Sparks, and they took care of the planet but were sterile without it. Inclined toward order, with procedures and a complex society ... they shared characteristics. They were essentially a hive type of society, with a dead 'queen'.
So why, when they only built proper bodies and the All Spark gave the body its self, did Cybertronians gravitate toward one another that way? It was, according to Ratchet, a part of their society, and always had been -- not common, but it wasn't unusual. It was accepted. Certain mechs would just gravitate toward others, especially those with complex attachment programs -- such as Jazz and Ironhide. Approximately one third of all functioning Cybertronians responded in such a manner -- completely unremarkable until they happened into contact with another and fixated. The two remaining thirds were somewhat bemused but overall tolerant.
With that in mind, to suddenly realize that half of the billions of humans on this planet had the ability to bring another life into the world (not once, but repeatedly) was both awe-inspiring and horrific. Bumblebee had known about humans and genders and sex. But he hadn't known, understood, or actually realized it. And it brought that echo of the question Sam had asked.
"... a guy like me, or a girl like Mikaela ... ?"
Perhaps Cybertronians had the ideal life. Humanity was so ... fractured. Two genders. Two had to work together to fulfill biological demands. Soul mates. Husband and Wife. Man and Woman. Sister and Brother. Father, Daughter, Mother, Son. Pairs. Two parts, and lonely. Bumblebee wasn't a philosopher, or a culturists, but the concept pervaded all of human culture. Two parts to make one whole. Songs and poems and stories and philosophy and psychology, and the all-common sensation of alienation around those that should have cared, understood, loved, known the best. If he had been a human, he would have been very, very lonely. Was Sam lonely? Maybe he was. All of this thought occurred within five seconds of Ratchet's alert, and Bumblebee knew how to answer Sam's question. Too bad Sam wasn't there to hear it.
(would he ever? Bumblebee promised to tell, if he would just. Come. Back.)
-+-
The sun's light hit the curve of Earth's atmosphere and broke, shattering into a rainbow of colors, all short and quick. It painted the curving gases filled with particles in violent reds and vibrant pinks, orange ball in the sky and yellow light. Rich yellow like the color he used to be, the one he favored -- tinged with orange and red so it wasn't challenging, but mellow and friendly.
Not anymore. He was a dark bruised maroon, like human injury. Like the bands of his hand and Optimus Prime's fingers, stretched over Sam's delicate bandaged ribs. He had laughed, bragging about his injuries, but they were all purple and deep red and green and yellow and brown, and he moved so tenderly ...
Bumblebee sat alone, at the look out point, watching the sun break like a ball of colored oils over the blue-water sky. A friendly human-hand-shaped claw (four thin nimble digits as opposed to his griping powerful three, a thumb to match) gripped his shoulder as the smaller mech came to a stop beside him. It was impossible to guess if he were as small as a human or as towering as Prime and therefore impossible to guess the size of his companion.
"Looking at the stars, I can understand," Sam's dry amused voice, amplified to match the size and yet hollow as if from inside some metal enclosure (no mech's voice sounded like that) said, "but the sunset? Isn't that a bit ... I don't know, romantic?"
Bumblebee didn't bother looking (the mech as familiar to him as his own body), didn't take his gaze from the orange sun. "All of our light and heat came from the planet's surface," he explained. "It's odd to see it come from far away."
"But you must have seen solar systems before ours," he said with simple human logic.
"We didn't come across many with life. It was mostly moons, and planets hot enough to leave us operational even though the sun was so far away."
The mech settled down to sit beside him, crouched forward over his knees, though it was more comfortable for Bumblebee to lean back. He looked, then, at the mech with Sam's hollow tin voice that spoke the way Sam spoke. He was heavily armored, solidly built, but with clear human proportions, unlike the wide chests and long legs of Cybertron native. He was ... a tank. Designed to be armored and protected.
Protected from what? Protecting what? Bumblebee didn't know how to ask.
The Sam-mech looked over with bright gold eyes, human face built of dozens of little white ceramic pieces, generic, amour painted a glittering chocolate brown and white. "Do you think a human could survive being on Cybertron? I mean, there is atmosphere, right?"
"Not the kind a human could breathe," Bumblebee said sadly. "Sorry."
"Well," Sam said, the way he did, noisy and round about like he couldn't say anything simply and straight, "I guess I'll just have change, then." He fixed his gaze on the orange-ball sun, face turned toward it and reflecting light off the sharp separate plates like a broken mirror of a mask. Bumblebee watched with only a vague horror, a detached distress rippling across his EA field as red-pink-yellow oil welled up and poured out of all the seams of the Sam-mech, and with a delayed (unrealistic, physics didn't work that way) shifting, the empty shell fell to pieces, empty, as if nothing had ever been inside it at all.
A spitting blue electricity fled the abandoned shell, arching across the tiny thin dead grass, before it disappeared deep into the Earth.
Bumblebee came out of recharge with a rather loud clank of startlement, only to settle when his scanners informed him he was in a parking lot, spending the night until they could leave and hunt for safety in the morning.
"(Nightmare?)" Jazz inquired with an easy nonchalance, though he should be too far away to have heard the alarmed noise that had escaped Bumblebee's ER transmitter.
"(Of course not,)" Bumblebee said with automatic denial, though he felt a hollow echoing inside him as if his silent voice vibrated inside an iron drum. "(We don't have nightmares. Or dreams.)"
"(Didn't used to,)" Jazz agreed with humorous clicks. "(But you an' I haven't been the same since the All Spark was destroyed.)"
Bumblebee had nothing to say to that, processors obsessively turning that statement over while he heard the unspoken words that Jazz himself had been having them, too.
-+-
"Close up: Camera Two, 'cause the Hero dies in this scene. Your inspiration is the lost of absolutely everything.
And flashback on the girl: as we montage every memory; and we bleed out in the bathroom sink --"
-+-
If he were dreaming ... Cybertronians only dream when something was wrong with them. Bumblebee couldn't imagine anything more wrong with him than Sam being gone.
-+-
"And we fade out as the soundtrack sings:
You're like a black cat with a black backpack full of fireworks and you're gonna burn the city down right now ... whoa-oh-o-oh ... whoa-oh-o-oh ..."
-- To Be Continued --
- HO FUCK, WAS THAT A SYMBOLLIC DREAM? 8O
- Please remember that not even humanity understands themselves. This is not different for giant robot aliens.
-An explanation of the EA field and the ER transmitter: Because, as robots, they have no face and no body language, I created a different sort of non-word expression system for them. The EA field is basically waste energy that changes in frequency in accordance to emotion -- feeling a certain way makes them work a little different, just like with humans, and they have developed a way to translate that into mood. An ER transmitter is the thing that lends 'inflection' to their information. It basically turns them into percussion instruments.
- Song: "Black Cat" -- Mayday Parade
FIC Summary: [2007, AU] Sore throats, nightmares, and the differences between organics and Cybertronians - something is terribly wrong with Sam. To live is to evolve, and shape alone is not enough; think of it as a mutual learning experience. (Bot!Sam, PTSD, Mech/mech)
1, 2, 2.b, 3, 4, 4.b, 5, 6, 7, 7.b, 8, 8.b, 9, 9.b, 10
If the events in this chapter seem disjointed: That was on purpose, just like it was every other time, lolz.
Bumblebee's Intermission : The Hero Dies In This Scene
-+-
"Close up: Camera One. The Hero sings in this scene. The boy that gets the girl get to go home where they get married.
-- but stop the tape! The sunset still looks fake to me. The Hero looks like he can't breathe -- the damsel just left everything ..."
-+-
Loneliness was for the most part a foreign concept to Cybertronians. Humans did have something that could compare to the concept, sort of -- their artificial means of communication were actually similar enough. When a human looked at the cell phone in their hand -- they know that they are not alone. At the same time, they could not contact someone they didn't have a number for -- that was what being a Cybertronian meant. It went a little further than that --
So long as a Spark pulsed in their chamber (that mysterious energy that defied every scientific explanation -- much like the human concept of soul, which was widely accepted though there was no proof) they were all connected. Some indicated that this was through the All Spark itself, from which their Spark immerged and to which it went when there was no more reason to stay behind. Though it was widely accepted to say that a mech that had been deactivated 'had their spark extinguished', it wasn't accurate. The Spark merely returned to the All Spark.
The truth was, no one had been completely sure that they would continue to function with the destruction of the All Spark.
But they did -- they continued to live, to function fine, even if they were the last. Bumblebee had been optimistic, though. When it came to their attention that Sam was -- was changing, it seemed like the answer had fallen right in their hands. If that was the answer -- to find the appropriate humans and find a way to replicate downloading the program into them, just like Sam --
Well, being written in ancient Cybertronian was a bit of a hindrance, but ...
And he'd had hope. It seemed that Bumblebee's optimism had paid off. After waking Jazz, Bumblebee had felt the first weak pulses of a Spark inside Sam, as his sensors weren't nearly as delicate as a medics, intended to sense even the slightest hint of a Spark. And then --
With the patience that few thought him capable of, despite several shows of it, he erected firewall after firewall through his processors (firewall, n. - a wall constructed to prevent the spread of fire. Wasn't the English variation of human communication fascinating?) and methodically disabled his AR programs. Finally, he consulted his chronometer, and accepted that it had been thirteen days since his attachment programs had gone on the fritz and had created a sort of software related cascading failure, which his military-installed firewall had shut down in order to run AR.
Technically, he could have pulled himself out of AR within a few hours. He just hadn't.
Unfortunately, there was little his firewalls could do. He could not lock away his memories of Sam without his own curiosity driving him to unlock it -- a problem Sam himself had, before he was taken. He couldn't firewall his attachment programs, either. With nothing there, he'd suffer a cascading software failure of a much more severe sort, and possibly deactivate himself on accident. He would have to live with the knowledge that he had failed to protect Sam -- who was a charge that he had volunteered to guard, but also his friend, a type of partner, and a very young mech that was possibly the last hope of his people.
But he couldn't run forever on AR programs. He wouldn't learn to ... 'cope' while on AR programs, so he would have to face these things. Maybe later he would delve into the automatically recorded events that took place in between Then and now, and maybe later he would even apologize for whatever actions he took during the time he'd been running on AR, but for now ...
A dry squeal escaped his gears as Bumblebee unlocked them, noting by the dirt he had collected on his frame that he had spent at least seven of those thirteen days standing, stock still as a statue, outside the base. With a sharp sonic burst, he dislodged the irritants from his alloy and turned away from the lonely empty dirt road. It was no use watching for something that would never come.
With the nonchalant routine air of someone who had been doing the same thing over and over, Arcee appeared in the hanger doorway, idly carrying a small bucket of fuel -- only to spot him walking toward her. She hissed in surprise, then warily asked, "you running with all your circuits yet, little Bee?"
It was understandable that she was doubtful as to whether or not he was actually aware of what was going on, or just reacting out of pure programming. It was impossible to discern up until the mech in question either spoke or made some other indication that they understood what was going on. Still, it didn't stop Bumblebee from triggering a system's diagnostic, just to determine if he was. Finally deciding that he was, he nodded and came to a stop before her. She glanced down at the bucket in hand and questioningly held it out. He looked at it blankly for a moment, then took it but didn't open his tank valve.
"No thanks?" she said, humorously but with a testing manner. "I give you the fuel out of my own intake, and not a word?"
Bumblebee centered his visual field on the smaller mech, still-still-still. Not a word? Why should he bother? Arcee did not understand -- Bumblebee knew that her Spark was not compatible to his own and therefore her attachment program was bare-bones ... or rarely used, junk software laying unnoticed and unremarked just to keep a systems failure from occurring. Arcee was an excellent comrade on the field, a sharp shooter, swift, loyal, not one to leave another mech alive on the field abandoned. But Primus forbid she ever try to speak to someone with even only a mid-level attachment program, like Bumblebee -- especially after having lost one of those attachments.
It was useless to allow his software to become disrupted at her words: it solved nothing. And words? What use did he have for words?
None. The only one he really needed to speak out loud to had gone away.
-+-
For something with enough memory space to casually dismiss having lived for several million years, was it terribly surprising that life was rarely linear ... and more often, looping, or like a stone, skipping across a lake? And riding each breaking ripple that met another ripple and rippled yet another way?
And so, was it surprising that when Bumblebee decided he didn't like his current time, that he would simply ride a few conflicting-crashing ripples to another?
-+-
4-APRIL-07-2007.VFRR - ACCESSING - CONNECTING ... --
"Hey, 'Bee," a vague thoughtful note, the soft purring touch of a human EA field brushing against him and leaving him pleasantly drowsy, "Do Cybertronians dream?"
Still scanning the radio, " ... No. Not usually."
"But they do." A statement of fact heard somehow through the vibration of an engine, perhaps. Clever intuitive strange little thing. Charmingly so, but so strange.
"Not like humans do. You dream because it helps you process things, or rest your brain." A short pause, then with a shyly embarrassed note: "Or that's why your scientist think you dream."
"But Cybertronian dreams --" like a wrench gripping the edges of a bolt and not letting go until the metal gave "-- how do you dream?"
"Video feed, normally. Like a silent flashback."
"Wow. Really? You just ... remember things? You don't ... because I have dreams, sometimes. I mean -- ... well, it just seems strange."
"How do you think we feel? You say that while you are otherwise unconscious and unaware of the solid world, your mind provides nonsensical visual and auditory hallucinations of varying horrific consistency, and if your body malfunctions, you'll actually get up and move around without otherwise actually being aware of it."
A long, long silence. Amusement rippled across wires in shades of yellow and orange, all due to the hiccup and quickening of the frequency produced by the tiny organic. Mid-to-long length, and still very nice.
"Goddamn, Bee, you know how to make me really freak out about my own species."
"You come from a very insane species. Thankfully, you happen to be their ambassador, so don't worry about it too much." Never had to worry so long as that EA field kept humming pleasantly and soothing out tensions that had gone unnoticed for so very long. With these words, the subcharge output slowed, long frequency again. Pleased.
"Yeah, well -- thanks, I think."
"You're welcome, Sam."
-+-
Cybertronian dreams were both more and less complex than humanity's. A silent flash back was an accurate descriptor -- but Bumblebee had made it sound as if he rarely dreamed, when in fact he dreamed more often that the average. It was probably because his personality matrix was easily upset -- he never forgot who it was that activated him, nor what he learned for the fifth of a vorn that he'd spent with them. It was a careful balancing act, honestly, and the disruptive nature of Earth helped matters little.
But he didn't have much of note to recall during recharge until he came to Earth. All of his Video Feed Recall had been based around his life: trying to deliver messages if he was recalling back far enough, but mostly fighting for his life or offlining Decepticons or risking his life to locate their bases when he wasn't ...
Then he came to Earth, then S7 entered his VFR, and humans with their skin oils and alien prickling EA fields were a part of it. Of all the places for the All Spark to land, it had to land on one of the few planets with sentient, sapient life. Obviously, for much of his time there, his recall didn't improve, and he had very little to look fondly on in VFR. Even when he met Sam -- well, he hadn't done much recharging during that whole fiasco, either. Still, it wasn't until the cycle during which he recalled a thin still-growing human, sweaty and dusty and bruised, cautiously edging up an incline with visual receptors fixed on him and speaking to the female, that he realized that VFR wasn't all bad. It reminded him of the hope that he'd felt when he saw Sam approaching him cautiously, thinking that even his disaster of an introduction hadn't ruined his chances to succeed at his mission and hadn't scared off the tiny human with an EA field like a full tank of power after running near empty for orns.
Though he didn't know it until he came to Earth, Bumblebee used to have nothing but 'nightmares'. It had been sweet when, for a short precious while, he 'dreamed'. Then Decepticons came and took everything important to him, and he was plunged into 'nightmares' again; they always stole everything.
(they would regret stealing this)
But for now, it was better not to recharge deeply enough for VFR. The once he had dared since coming out of AR, hoping for a good memory, it had been ... unpleasant to say the least. For a mech that had come to expect a pleasant recall, of either the purring of Sam's matter-of-factly ownership in his touch, and meeting up with Arcee with the promise of more Chase-class mechs who could challenge him in races, recalling instead Sam's nervous fidgety self-horror was a rude awakening. Ever since Sam had been k -- taken away, though, there seemed to be nothing but war to remember.
His processors and programs were on the fritz, battle protocols insisting that it was a lost chance, logic agreeing, but the attachment programs, the ones that wanted Optimus Prime to be proud of him and made him do horrendously ridiculous things just to gain a few amused clicks, those insisted that he use all of his programing and experience to locate where the Deceptions were and ...
Well, they were attachment programs, not battle strategy protocols. The best he could come up with was 'blow slag up'.
So Bumblebee rarely recharged very deeply. It meant he had to do it much more often, and actually consume some of Earth's odd fuel, but it also meant that he didn't remember the day that Sam insisted they all go out so that he could work up the courage to tell Mikaela about what was happening to him. The day that in a pure power-move that Megatron would have never even considered, the jets came by and took Sam.
Sam was not exactly a quiet human. He was prone to yelling and yelping and repetitive denials, but the day they stole him, he hadn't even squeaked a word.
Though ... even if involuntary video recall was extremely unpleasant, it didn't stop him from accessing his memory banks often, anyway.
-+-
MARCH-19-2007.VFRR - ACCESSING - CONNECTING ... --
After a bout of vicious anger -- Bumblebee wasn't terribly surprised or horrified by it, even if Sam did seem very ashamed -- and a few words back and forth, Bumblebee had been intent on getting Sam home. Something he'd said had meant something in the mysterious stretches of organic tissue that humans used for a processor and called a brain, because by the time Sam climbed into the cab, his EA field was ... well, not like it usually was. Nice, still, but more slick and slippery than a pleasant hum. It happened on occasion, he noticed. It didn't make him lapse on the power to his various programs -- instead, it seemed to encourage the use of more.
That was when Sam so very innocently molested his very sensory laden windows.
What was referred to as a scout bot these vorns were originally designed to be ... well, 'waiters', originally -- 'fetch' bots, in a way. Meant to dodge through crowds of other mechs without inconveniencing anyone, and eventually fitted out with security bot's sensor panels so that the fetchbot could more effectively work his way through a crowd and avoid being knocked over from the back or struck by the short of temper. In either case, the innocent design of a fetchbot also made an insanely effective scout bot, sensor panels and nimbleness and all.
Therefore, having the weak human EA field applied directly to those sensors was a bit more than Bumblebee had been expecting. Even though most of the sensory information was scaled down a lot, as Bumblebee had gone into fits of sensory overload the first time it rained on Earth, an EA field interacted directly with the alloy that makes a Cybertronian's plating.
It wasn't pain, and it didn't exactly feel good, so when Sam had exclaimed in surprise that he was ticklish, that was pretty spot on. Not that Bumblebee was going to admit that.
The second time Sam did it, punishing him for trying to lie, the intention behind it had been completely different and it really had felt ... pleasant. In a wholly inappropriate way. Somewhat horrified at himself, he had little attention to spare the naive human in his cab, far too concerned with trying to figure out what he was supposed to do with himself and trying very hard not to come to a conclusion that he suspected was the truth.
-+-
"(Mayday, baby-bot,)" came with harmonics of wryness and amusement over the radio.
Bumblebee's receptors twitched into a more alert position to make sure he didn't hear anything wrong or lose reception. Jazz's transmission was a little thready, warning him that the silver mech was on the out reaches of radio connection. "(Magnitude?)" he queried, not yet stirring.
"(Hmm -- five point three, maybe,)" Jazz returned. "(Requesting a two-mech team to run interference. Can you com Arcee?)"
Bumblebee obliguingly opened up a communication line on the chasebot's frequency. "(Arcee?)" he queried.
An answer came back in her metallic tones. "(Reading you loud and clear, Bumblebee.)" One day, Bumblebee would ask what made her chose the feminine identity when male was the default gender in English, whether it had been choice or laziness. If it had been chose, he would have to inquire what influenced that, but dreaded a response that she was likely to give -- such as the same when asked 'why blue': "why not?"
"(Jazz has a five-point-three danger situation, requesting a two-mech team's interference, Arcee specified,)" he relayed.
"(Location?)"
Not even four seconds after Jazz called for help, two mechs were on their way to object strenuously to whatever had dared to harass one of their members. (Bumblebee put his fist through one of the black car's engines. He hated S7 just enough to let hidden subroutines overpower his MN programs that normally would have prevented him from harming humans. No one was injured in the Autobot retaliation, but Bumblebee knew it was just a matter of time, especially since that faction had gone rogue.
Them and the Decepticons -- they'd pay.)
-+-
MARCH-23-2007.VFRR - ACCESSING - CONNECTING ... --
For a time, Bumblebee had been well on his way to convincing himself that he really hated organics. It wasn't hard. Just like humanity must wonder about whether or not they were truely alive or only showing a good face, it was a common query between the Autobots -- their human allies ... there was no Spark. Were they really alive, or only meat putting on a good show?
They were alien to him and everything he knew. They weren't ... metal. Alloy. They didn't have processors or programs or codes of behavior that simply couldn't be bypassed without some savage reworking or hacking of said processors. They were ... flesh. Bone. Strangely colored things on the inside that were wet and stank and it was just ... disgusting how they ate and sweated and their skins produced oils and their own skin flaked off and their hair fell out, constantly. All soft like mud or clay and wet and the sound of their juices squishing around inside of them was just ... repulsive.
(Because the beat of the heart, like the thumping of a pump, wasn't special at all, or enthralling, nor was the calming rush-rush of blood through their veins like coolant to straining gears. It wasn't fascinating how their clay-soft malleable faces bent and shaped expressions, or their entire bodies moved in a dance of unspoken communication, so they read and understood each other across rooms the way Cybertronians couldn't unless they were listening, or how every single one of them almost was completely unique from the position of their teeth to the colored streaks of their irises. It wasn't amazing that their white soft struts could be aligned and heal spontaneously without welding, that their skin could darken in shades of Decepticon colors for a while until it repaired itself. It wasn't anything to be impressed by, that on average they lived less than a vorn, but a single one could unravel one of their mysteries of life and harness the power of atoms.)
(Like with everything, humans were two extremes in one small package. Bumblebee was also horrified and fascinated with that.)
He wondered how Sam missed the shift in attitude, although Bumblebee was careful to keep his opinions to himself. It was part of the reason that Bumblebee just sat there, well aware that the human intended to inflict damage on him, though it was nothing he couldn't heal on his own and wouldn't even scratch more than the pigment on the outside of his armor. Whether it was a part of his own lower-processor ploy to distract himself with disgust with humans, or his higher-processor curiosity with humanity at large wanting to know if the boy would actually do it, he didn't set off his alarm at the painfully loud levels that would have protected him. This ... 'Trent' human was a fine example of things that Bumblebee disliked about humanity.
He was actually so wrapped up in analyzing the boy that Sam's appearance and outburst of violence shocked him cold. For the first time, he was thankful for his enforced silence while the other human, Miles, was in the car -- because apparently, the small fragile being that he had chosen to protect ... wanted to protect him, too. That was --
Sam was so small, fitting into his hands easily, though maybe not comfortably. Primus -- if he hadn't caught them that time, their soft little bodies would have given under the inertia and ... and splattered. They would have broken, like rubber stretched too thin and full of fluid ... and ...
And that little thing wanted to protect him? How was he supposed to succeed at that? And some of that must have come through to Sam, because he made a small desperate anguished noise and fled the cab. From there on, it was an outpouring of rage and desperation and pain, and Bumblebee was forcibly reminded of an Autobot he had managed to rescue (accidentally) from one of the Decepticon bases. The mech had been so ...
'Traumatized' wasn't the right word, but his processors had definitely been horrifically scrambled. He refused to admit to his true designation, insisting that it was The Prisoner. Which was better than Slag, which had been his first confused suggestion when they'd asked.
The Prisoner had been one scrambled Autobot ... if he could even be called that. He had been hacked, of course, but they couldn't figure out if he had scrambled his own processors and programs and encoded everything nonsensically to the point where it couldn't ever be sorted out, or if that had been done by whoever hacked him. He was only an Autobot at that point because he'd do anything to destroy the Decepticons. He also raved insanely. No one was sure if they should be relieved or sad when 'anything' became planting an explosive under his pump and behind his fuel tank, and he walked right up to the base and blew himself up.
Either way, Sam had sounded so much like The Prisoner that Bumblebee had been very, very worried about the human. The Prisoner's EA field had grated against everyone, broken and sharp and never the same wave length, always short waves and never the same pitch twice -- but Bumblebee had been willing to risk that just to make sure that the human wouldn't ... suicide like that.
(It was Sam, after all, who had spared no look back toward Optimus Prime, scrambling up with the All Spark in his hands a thrusting it upwards --)
But instead, the rage subsided, Sam calmed while leaning on Bumblebee's bumper, and made promises he could no longer keep.
-+-
Bumblebee could hate humans, and be revolted by organics, but he could never extend those feelings to Mikaela and Sam. But he was still relieved when Mikaela refused to sit in his cab. Nothing would feel right inside his cab but Sam's familiar shape and the long waves of his EA field.
-+-
"(So, it was pretty serious, huh?)"
Bumblebee roused from his power saving state at the sudden transmission over his radio. It took him a nano-klik to remember where he was -- in a parking lot of a mall, resting through the day with Jazz near by. Though they had all spread out over a relay-network so that they were less conspicuous, they had also partnered up a little. Jazz, who was the one of them that had the greatest range of mass shifting capacity, was currently pretending to be a Sunbird in an odd dark blue green and sitting several hundred feet across the parking lot.
It had been necessary to forgo ego, though it had taken very little encouragement for Bumblebee to return to his original body style -- and then he'd painted himself a dark maroon, since he couldn't stand looking at yellow. When being hunted, every last scrap of their natural ability to disguise themselves was used -- which meant that they changed their car shape and color frequently. It consumed a lot of energy, so they also spent much of their time resting. It made Arcee and Chromia nervous, but Elita-One was rather good at controlling her group.
Her group had gotten rather diverse, though. The last time they had actual contact with Elita-One, previous to launching the All Spark, they had been much more standard ... it seemed that the war had changed things. Chromia, for one, had upgraded her body. Though her hardware was still that of a Chasebot's, it was evident that Elita-One had decided that they required actual fire power and that Chromia had volunteered -- unsurprising. She had a warrior's Spark, and would rather stand her ground than use her speed to avoid hand-to-hand. Now she was built nearly as heavily as Ratchet -- and while he wasn't built to fight, it was a lot sturdier than the Chasebot frame without sacrificing all of her speed. Elita-One had also picked up a few of their scattered dormants -- one of which was a minibot currently going by 'Moonracer', which was a relief since ever since the war even started, minibots had been few and far between. Several mechs had expressed hope that they had only taken to hiding deep within the planet, but even if they had ... Bumblebee had managed to get it out of Ratchet that Megatron had razed it.
He was kind of embarrassed that one of their only proof that Cybertron's healers still existed was Moonracer, though. She was -- ah, unique.
Jazz's companionable humming was still coming over his com, in typical Jazz manner. Bumblebee debated ignoring him, especially since he wouldn't get offended at all. Knowing Jazz, he might actually find it amusing.
Giving up, he switched the radio link to two-way. "(What, Jazz?)" he finally inquired.
"(That human kid. Witwilliky, or whatever,)" Jazz sent, still with that undertone of lighthearted impersonal curiosity.
"(His name was Sam,)" Bumblebee sent back, unable to completely stop the transmitter from adding the irritation he felt.
For a moment, the only thing coming over the radio was Jazz's thoughtful static. Then he added, "(So, you're still upset that the Decepticons took him.)"
That was part of the reason that Bumblebee didn't block Jazz's frequency, even though he wished that the mech wouldn't talk about Sam. When he did, though, it was never 'get over it' or 'he's dead' or 'it was bound to happen'. It was probably also the reason why Mikaela had switched to Jazz once it became clear that Arcee just didn't get it. He was a far cry from a therapist (or wanting to be one), and he was a poor choice to confide in, but he knew in a way what words to use.
Bumblebee didn't bother responding to that statement. It was rather obvious, after all, that he was still upset over the fact that Sam, for one had been stolen, and that the program went with him. Ratchet had a copy, they thought they could replicate it, but it was dangerous without waiting to see what sort of effect that it would have on Sam. If this had been the All Spark's last gift to them -- a program that could transform humans into Cybertronians ... to have lost that was devastating. If they would never know if a person could survive it, if they never knew what the end result was ...
Well, it was personal for Bumblebee, but it was easier to look at it as a loss for their species than it was to look at the damage done to his software.
"(He's not dead, yanno?)"
Frame jerking involuntarily, Bumblebee accidentally slammed the communication closed, reeling. Not dead? It was one thing to hear Jazz not use 'killed' when speaking of that day, but not dead? For a long moment, he vibrated in silence, replaying the transmission before he snapped the communication line back open rather sharply, clicking with agitation. "(What do you mean, not dead?)" he snapped.
With twisted humor, Jazz sent, "(I mean ... not dead as in alive.)"
"(Jazz!)"
"(Keep your cannons in,)" Jazz sent tolerantly. "(We don't know what happened, baby-bot. I've been sayin' it all along. The Decepticreeps took the little squishie, but that was Starscream's way of rubbing our noses in. Wouldn't he have done something a little more obvious to make the move complete? Like ... kill the kid in front of us? We haven't seen or heard anything. Pit, we didn't even see Skywarp for most of that lunar cycle.)"
And he wanted to believe it. He desperately wanted to believe it. There was no way Sam, the only redeeming quality that this entire race had, was dead. But if Sam wasn't dead, where was he? He was somewhere, surely. This was just -- just a prolonged version of Sector Seven. Sam would show up as soon as he could. Something was stopping him for a little ... that was all.
And he wanted to believe it so badly it hurt. No matter what his battle protocols insisted, or how much his logic circuits agreed. It was too soon for Sam to convert, there had been no messages, Skywarp had used his vast power reservoirs, they hadn't been able to track him, and while it was suspicious that Skywarp had disappeared with Sam, it was equally suspicious that they hadn't heard a thing about it, either.
So, even as his processors churned out the information that it was very unlikely that Sam was still alive, somewhere, he hoped.
-+-
It was something of a mystery that humans had an EA field. Humans were so small, and their power so organic that the fact that they had EA fields at all had surprised Bumblebee when he'd made planet fall. He'd learned that he didn't particularly like the human EA field, though. It was hard and distant and disinterested, and their skin oils nagged his processors for hours afterwards. He hated how they had to touch everything.
Optimus had trusted him, though, to get this done. Bumblebee had needed this. Needed to be trusted, to go down alone, for perhaps several solar revolutions. He mastered his own revulsion at taking a form that organics rode in and did it anyway. He understood the necessity.
It had been a rash decision to put himself in a position to be purchased by the Witwicky family, though. He had been so surprised when he had accidentally stumbled across them that he had basically panicked, and had no plan going in. By that time, he had known enough about human customs and culture to know that his plan wouldn't work, but his MN codes had been damaged weeks ago during a misfortunate run in with a lightning strike ... (and they wouldn't get fixed until he had the All Spark and used it's excess power on a whim; though, between the excess All Spark energy that build in his circuits and them actually winning, those codes had been useless for weeks anyway.)
He was so eager to be purchased by the Witwicky family (if they weren't the ones, he could just be 'stolen') that he hadn't even paid much mind to the owner of the used car lot putting his hands on him. It had been much harder not to notice when a second set joined the first, and the naturally cold and distant EA field suddenly sharpened and ...
Well, hummed against his alloy. Bumblebee had been a little shocked and off balance by this, and the usual threat of being sat in was now less of a horror and now more than a curiosity. He completely ignored the other two humans, focusing completely on the young one that had leaned in through the window and then opened the door to climb inside. It had been -- fascinating to have that small EA field generator submerged into his own field.
Bumblebee had been activated after the war had started, one of the many inactivated mechs jettisoned into space for their own welfare, as the retainers had been the first thing wiped out, to keep the armies from replacing their dead. By this time, any who hadn't been pulled in and deactivated by stars and suns had been found. So, to be honest, everything Bumblebee knew about EA fields came from the mechs around him. Naturally, the chances of anyone being relaxed enough to emit long waves if they could be coaxed to extend a field at all were zip to zilch, so everyone kept it to themselves and the compounding software issues went unspoken.
Humans called it 'skin hunger'; his own people called it 'long wave deprivation'. Therefore, though it was an acknowledged ailment, it was a given and therefore unspoken one as well.
So, when Bumblebee got his first sample of a field that wasn't unpleasant, he rather enjoyed it -- a lot. Yes, it was human, and was therefore small, weak, and came with that little offness that pervaded everything about the organics, but it was still so good, and such a sudden relief to feel something that wasn't hateful, hurtful, hostile, or cold.
So, maybe his attack on the little round vehicle could be excused, and his following attack on ... all of the cars. His MN programs were malfunctioning, and Bumblebee just honestly wanted that sensation back. Perhaps his subsequent attempt to aid Sam in his courtship rituals could be excused as well. His MN programs were malfunctioning, and a severe overdose of long wave emissions just about shut that software completely down, causing him to suffer logic circuit malfunction -- he was more than just a little high. Sam liked him, and Mikaela's field wasn't so bad either.
He'd look back on those records and feel quiet mortified by his behavior. While unavoidable, it was still embarrassing.
It was a mixed tangle of giddiness, amusement, and panic that had lead up to what Sam had oh-so-quaintly referred to as the 'Satan's Camaro' event. Sam wasn't exactly subtle. Bumblebee had known he was there from the time he woke up. Getting the little organic caught by the cops and then chasing him across town and into Barricade had been far from Bumblebee's intentions. It just ... sort of happened. And right after he'd contacted the others, too. What a mess!
But things worked out. Bumblebee, still suffering long wave deprivation that had lasted as long as he'd been activated, had been eager for more, and Sam seemed like the perfect source, being brave and loyal and liking him anyway. Of course Bumblebee had shared with the others that the cure to the affliction was here on Earth. It even factored into Optimus Prime's decision to remain on Earth. For such tiny, organic creatures with such a weak field, it was a powerful sensation. Getting a larger dose after such an unbelievably long time would have been detrimental to a mech ... overwhelming. It was best to start small.
It couldn't be excused that he hadn't noticed that Sam's EA field was slowly getting stronger ... that Bumblebee never needed for more riders (though Sam provided them incidentally, all very fond of him and therefore all producing long waves), that he never desired for a mech to provide long waves.
Sam's field had nearly tripled in strength before he himself brought it to Bumblebee's attention that something was wrong.
-+-
6-JUNE-12-2007.VFRR - ACCESSING - CONNECTING ... --
" ... this ... is very odd. Bumblebee, you haven't been doing anything strange, have you, because if you have --" and the fist drawn back threateningly.
An alarmed chirp, hands raised to fend off the so-far nonexistent threat of a dent. "No, why kind of strange things do you think I get up to?"
Dryly: "I don't know. I never got up to half the stuff you newly activated mechs get up to. I was spending my time learning how to fix you bolt-for-brains up!"
"I haven't done anything I haven't been since I landed here," defensively.
"Hmph!" A thoughtful silence, more scans. "Did you even notice that your left tertiary shoulder gear has stopped hitching?"
A soft suspicious croon as said limb was adjusted. " ... oh."
A snort. "Oh indeed. If I didn't know better, I'd think you hadn't been activated for longer than a quarter of a vorn."
" ... we both know better than that."
"Indeed. Which is why I asked if you'd been doing anything strange."
A moment of reviewed records. "I haven't done anything unusual."
"Not consuming any strange fuels?"
"Of course not. I'm not new, I don't need it. Or electricity, for that matter."
"... hmm. Well, if your software is fine ...? And your memory banks are complete? Good. Maybe it's Earth." An expansive shrug. "Time will tell; I'm sure it's nothing to worry about. It's not as if you're running worse."
" ... still, it's strange."
"Bumblebee, we've run across strange things ever since this war started and we've ended up in uncharted territory. New phenomena crop up all the time. Just keep an eye on it and report back anything strange you discover."
The only possible answer was an affirmative.
-+-
The question of whether or not Bumblebee wanted to interface with Arcee was actually a little more convoluted than most (probably even Arcee) assumed.
To put it most bluntly (and perhaps too simply), Bumblebee was insanely jealous of Chasebot programming. It was one of the few things he liked about Earth -- with preformed alt modes that were not just disguise but transportation, Bumblebee was allowed to choose the fastest slickest most aerodynamic vehicle he could find that would suit his frame. He eventually came around to admiring the human predisposition to insane speed and their constant struggle for faster because he himself had that same desire. He wanted to be fast. Devoting entirely too much time to hunting down Chasebots and learning through hard work, dedication, and crashes how to pursue and escape them only did so much -- and Arcee just couldn't be beat.
It drove Bumblebee up a wall, to borrow the phrasing. Because being a chasebot went beyond simple shell, he could never outgrade into that model. His hardware was suited to scouting, aimed for running his shell, and the sheer processing capacity that allowed the chasebots to make snap decisions that could keep them from being dashed into pieces against some obstacle ... he just couldn't. Not without being completely reformatted, in which case 'Bumblebee' would only be an ghost in the codes of whoever the chasebot was activated as.
So, when Arcee was the only chasebot he could never seem to beat -- not with speed, not with skill, not with the terrain in his favor and not even with dirty cheating tricks, it was frustrating, to say the least. He was firmly convinced that she was the only chasebot that was actually unbeatable, and that somehow made it completely different. That was -- well, to put it in human phrasing: that was hot.
In human values, his newfound interest in Arcee was rather shallow and superficial. In Cybertronian values, it was perfectly legitimate, and actually a little more founded than most interface encounters. (Or so he'd been told by Elita-One, which was one of the most embarrassing encounters with a superior that he'd ever had.) In both cultures, however, the fact remained that unless both wanted it, it wasn't going to happen. (Well, both had coercion and rape, but that was so repugnant that it was something that was simply locked from being a possibility his action algorithms churned out.) No matter how 'in the mood' racing with Arcee put him, she simply wasn't interested.
It was perhaps why he'd been so eager and willing to help out Sam with Mikaela, even through his malfunction induced intoxication. Sam certainly appeared to be in the same situation ... well, as same as a duel sexed species could be.
Strangely enough, the moment she snubbed Sam, he found himself wondering what was so great about being unbeatable at racing. It wasn't like she had faced down Megatron and lived to tell the tale. His processors turned over in confusion, trying to make adjustments in his programs to account for this shift in attitude. Even stranger, she seemed to approve of the change. Trying to sort that out, he often went racing with her, just trying to see if he could stir up the attraction or even the fixation he'd once felt. He couldn't, and that was ... very strange, and curious.
It wasn't until Sam washed him one day after a particularly rough race that he became alerted to the subdued whisper of the human's EA field, and the way it seemed to cringe away from his alloy even as Sam firmly scrubbed away stains and dried insects -- as if Sam was trying to close off his field the way a mech would (and couldn't without alloy to polarize). It wasn't until he tried to invite Sam to go on a drive and he had to convince the human to climb in that he actually stopped to analyze the last weeks.
"Compared to Cybertronians, it's not even a blink of an eye."
" ... don't blink or you'll miss it."
That was when he suggested that Arcee try giving Mikaela a ride a few times. It was a good suggestion: it seemed that Mikaela could emit long waves, too.
-+-
Sam turning into a Cybertronian turned Bumblebee's world upside down. Not just because for three frightening days, Sam had done little more than either hold tight to whatever he happened to be nearest (the seats inside Bumblebee's cab, or the hood, or whatever limb or niche in his chest armor that was available). No, it was because Bumblebee thought that there might have been some sort of future for them. For Cybertronians as a whole.
On some level, he did understand that human-born Cybertronians wouldn't be the same thing at all as Cybertronians as he knew them, but to be honest, Bumblebee could live with that.
But adjusting to the idea that the frail organic he had befriended would one day (in a blink, for a Cybertronian) be the same as him was hard, and not just on him. He knew the adjustment rate would be low and might take a while, and that it probably wouldn't be easy, either. Sam had his own sort of software of an organic nature -- instincts, built into the blueprints of humanity -- that meant that it would be very difficult for him to start thinking in terms greater than orn-to-orn. For something that lived on average less than a vorn, to living thousands of years when all went well ... to thinking not in the turns of season but in the age of planets and the stability of stars.
Sam's (comparatively weak, but three times as strong as it should be) EA field was sparking and erratic and would be painful if it didn't settle down and move in mid-length patterns whenever he was near the human. Bumblebee made every effort to always be nearby just to keep Sam calm and to keep him from hurting himself. No words were spoken, no music played. Sam drank water, slept, and otherwise remained still, nearly catatonic, as close Bumblebee as he could get.
He had just started to convince himself that they had another The Prisoner on their hands when Sam came out of it and inquired about the date. It had to be part of what allowed them to evolve out in front of the other animals: this strange ability to take even something that repulsed their very core and keep moving.
That didn't mean that Sam took it completely calmly, and having heard his nightmares just a few days before, Bumblebee could understand why: Sam was immersed in one of his nightmares, so other than wrapping a protective hand over whatever Sam began attacking that day until he stopped trying to peel off his skin, Bumblebee just tried to be there for him.
After all ... this strange, tiny organic creature that was insanely brave in the face of certain death and wanted to protect something several times larger and much more durable was going to become one of them. It was ... something out of the legends and just overall fascinating and terrific. Even if he was going to be a minibot, Sam would still be one of them, and Bumblebee would no longer have to accept the knowledge that in less than a vorn, Sam would wither and die like all organics do.
Then he hadn't been able to keep his hands to himself, and touched the Cybertronian alloy socket that was attached to Cybertronian alloy inside Sam. He'd just wanted to make sure, to be able to touch Sam the way one Cybertronian would another. Minor data transfer. That was all. Instead, Sam had gotten a dose of Cybertronian energy from Bumblebee's build up, and it knocked him flat on his face.
When he had to coax Sam into the cab a second time, Bumblebee began to worry that this brave little organic would break.
-+-
A long time ago, when he was still very, very young ... a newly activated mech that had been rescued from the Decepticons that had brought him online and were then displeased with his inability to be cruel ... thousands and thousands of years ago, in between ferrying information that could end up with his circuits blasted to slag over dead-dead rock on this bleak hopeless planet, Bumblebee used to look up at the stars. He wasn't named Bumblebee back then, of course, not having earned such a distinction and still being in his imprinting phase. Back then his designation had been a word that had no equivalent in any Earth language. But when he had a free moment, he would look up and away, quieting his scanners and sensors to a dull roar and switching his visuals to the mild light spectrum.
In the midst of the hustle and bustle of his fellows, the familiar whirl-click, the hum of machinery, the playful crackle-spit of Cybertronian language, the most recently activated mech felt strangely singular. He had to wonder if this was where he was really supposed to be, if this was what he was meant to be doing. It wasn't a glitch, and if it were a program, it was a ghost in his codes. There was nothing wrong with him that even the best of medics, Optimus Prime's Ratchet, was able to find. He was normal and healthy.
But there was something out there. Somewhere. (As if the All Spark was telling him he needed to be somewhere else.)
-+-
"You know what? I wanna know if you were irreversibly turning into one of us, and you had the decision between a guy like me, or a girl like Mikaela, which would you become?"
It was a question that haunted Bumblebee every day since they had lost Sam. He hadn't seriously considered it at the time. It was too outlandish, too unbelievable. He would have to loose tons of mass, and the chance of what was happening to Sam working in reverse was ... astronomically low. Even if he was infected with a program that instructed it how to work, metal couldn't turn into living flesh. He would have only been so much dead meat. The chances of him remaining sane after having as many vorns in his memory banks stuffed into an organic structure that couldn't even recall one vorn with any true precision was ... quite unlikely. Without subprograms, how would he remember to breathe? How would his heart beat?
Could he handle being a soft squishy-clay-and-wet-and-weak human?
He was so wrapped up in the 'becoming human' aspect, he didn't even consider the real question Sam was asking him. If your entire identity was going to change ... if you were going to gain a label you never had before (becoming male, becoming female), how would you chose? That part didn't even register until Ratchet had to help a woman in labor get to a hospital as they were running and hiding.
In labor. Giving birth. Bringing a new life into existence through her own agony, tears, blood, and body. She carried a tiny, helpless life inside of her for nine months (on average, hopefully. Weeks in either direction could be deadly). She would dedicate the rest of her life to raising, supporting, and worrying about another one of her kind. She got that way through that thoroughly disgusting act of sex.
Supposedly, humans really enjoyed it. Recreationally, too. Evolution made them that way, created sexual dimorphism. Sculpted both male and female into forms that the opposite gender found attractive, made reproduction pleasurable, made the humans clannish all in the name of survival.
Cybertronians didn't ... didn't work that way. Physical appearance had little to do with 'attraction'. When it was possible to change their entire body with a careful enough medic, what was the point? They were the same wires, the same spark, the same mech. That didn't change, just what they looked like. They didn't have gender, just model. Model influenced identity very little, and that was probably what allowed them to take the round organic shapes they chose for this planet, trying not to be too foreign or alarming to the natives.
Yes, they enjoyed sculptures -- they made their buildings pleasing to the scanner, symmetrical and sharp and polyprismatic, according to the orderly structures that pleased them most. They weren't attracted to such structures -- rather, it was the function and how well that function was fulfilled. Skill. Essentially, all surviving Cybertronians would be considered the elite of their society for simply having lived so long. They knew what they were doing, and they were good at it. Otherwise, they wouldn't be operational.
Sure, the skill set or function that attracted a Cybertronian was different. Bumblebee's initial jealousy and envy was an immature form of that -- though he still coveted the form, that skill and speed -- and so he fixated on those skill sets, and Arcee in particularly for her reliably aerodynamic forms and ability to beat him in a race. Her skill with projectile weapons was well known.
Skill sets and function.
Well, not always. Humans had the same thing: there were always exceptions to the rule. Generally speaking, Ironhide, for example, preferred his mechs with lots of guns and the know-how. But he was glitched if he thought no one had noticed that he'd developed a bit of a thing for their talkative, temperamental and overall absent-minded medic. Ratchet didn't have much finesse for anything but repairing mechs and verbally (and sometimes physically) abusing them into submission -- but what he could do with metal was amazing. It was only that finesse, that skill, that had kept Jazz only in stasis lock, and not bleeding out and offlining.
Bumblebee hadn't been in the mood to laugh then, not with Jazz in danger, but he could now. Saving Jazz had been a little like being beat at racing with Arcee for Ironhide.
Amusingly, for all of Ratchet's brilliance with wires and power and metal, he was a bit of an idiot otherwise. Jazz and he had discussed at sniggering length that despite the extensive knowledge Ratchet had on hardware and software, it was doubtful he understood why Ironhide gravitated toward him and had a tendency to shove him when situations got a little tense, just that it was a habit the weapon specialist had and was something that was strange but tolerable.
Amusingly, it was Bumblebee's own human translated name that lead him to the knowledge of a species on Earth that was vaguely like the Cybertronians themselves. After all, the All Spark was the source of all Sparks, and they took care of the planet but were sterile without it. Inclined toward order, with procedures and a complex society ... they shared characteristics. They were essentially a hive type of society, with a dead 'queen'.
So why, when they only built proper bodies and the All Spark gave the body its self, did Cybertronians gravitate toward one another that way? It was, according to Ratchet, a part of their society, and always had been -- not common, but it wasn't unusual. It was accepted. Certain mechs would just gravitate toward others, especially those with complex attachment programs -- such as Jazz and Ironhide. Approximately one third of all functioning Cybertronians responded in such a manner -- completely unremarkable until they happened into contact with another and fixated. The two remaining thirds were somewhat bemused but overall tolerant.
With that in mind, to suddenly realize that half of the billions of humans on this planet had the ability to bring another life into the world (not once, but repeatedly) was both awe-inspiring and horrific. Bumblebee had known about humans and genders and sex. But he hadn't known, understood, or actually realized it. And it brought that echo of the question Sam had asked.
"... a guy like me, or a girl like Mikaela ... ?"
Perhaps Cybertronians had the ideal life. Humanity was so ... fractured. Two genders. Two had to work together to fulfill biological demands. Soul mates. Husband and Wife. Man and Woman. Sister and Brother. Father, Daughter, Mother, Son. Pairs. Two parts, and lonely. Bumblebee wasn't a philosopher, or a culturists, but the concept pervaded all of human culture. Two parts to make one whole. Songs and poems and stories and philosophy and psychology, and the all-common sensation of alienation around those that should have cared, understood, loved, known the best. If he had been a human, he would have been very, very lonely. Was Sam lonely? Maybe he was. All of this thought occurred within five seconds of Ratchet's alert, and Bumblebee knew how to answer Sam's question. Too bad Sam wasn't there to hear it.
(would he ever? Bumblebee promised to tell, if he would just. Come. Back.)
-+-
The sun's light hit the curve of Earth's atmosphere and broke, shattering into a rainbow of colors, all short and quick. It painted the curving gases filled with particles in violent reds and vibrant pinks, orange ball in the sky and yellow light. Rich yellow like the color he used to be, the one he favored -- tinged with orange and red so it wasn't challenging, but mellow and friendly.
Not anymore. He was a dark bruised maroon, like human injury. Like the bands of his hand and Optimus Prime's fingers, stretched over Sam's delicate bandaged ribs. He had laughed, bragging about his injuries, but they were all purple and deep red and green and yellow and brown, and he moved so tenderly ...
Bumblebee sat alone, at the look out point, watching the sun break like a ball of colored oils over the blue-water sky. A friendly human-hand-shaped claw (four thin nimble digits as opposed to his griping powerful three, a thumb to match) gripped his shoulder as the smaller mech came to a stop beside him. It was impossible to guess if he were as small as a human or as towering as Prime and therefore impossible to guess the size of his companion.
"Looking at the stars, I can understand," Sam's dry amused voice, amplified to match the size and yet hollow as if from inside some metal enclosure (no mech's voice sounded like that) said, "but the sunset? Isn't that a bit ... I don't know, romantic?"
Bumblebee didn't bother looking (the mech as familiar to him as his own body), didn't take his gaze from the orange sun. "All of our light and heat came from the planet's surface," he explained. "It's odd to see it come from far away."
"But you must have seen solar systems before ours," he said with simple human logic.
"We didn't come across many with life. It was mostly moons, and planets hot enough to leave us operational even though the sun was so far away."
The mech settled down to sit beside him, crouched forward over his knees, though it was more comfortable for Bumblebee to lean back. He looked, then, at the mech with Sam's hollow tin voice that spoke the way Sam spoke. He was heavily armored, solidly built, but with clear human proportions, unlike the wide chests and long legs of Cybertron native. He was ... a tank. Designed to be armored and protected.
Protected from what? Protecting what? Bumblebee didn't know how to ask.
The Sam-mech looked over with bright gold eyes, human face built of dozens of little white ceramic pieces, generic, amour painted a glittering chocolate brown and white. "Do you think a human could survive being on Cybertron? I mean, there is atmosphere, right?"
"Not the kind a human could breathe," Bumblebee said sadly. "Sorry."
"Well," Sam said, the way he did, noisy and round about like he couldn't say anything simply and straight, "I guess I'll just have change, then." He fixed his gaze on the orange-ball sun, face turned toward it and reflecting light off the sharp separate plates like a broken mirror of a mask. Bumblebee watched with only a vague horror, a detached distress rippling across his EA field as red-pink-yellow oil welled up and poured out of all the seams of the Sam-mech, and with a delayed (unrealistic, physics didn't work that way) shifting, the empty shell fell to pieces, empty, as if nothing had ever been inside it at all.
A spitting blue electricity fled the abandoned shell, arching across the tiny thin dead grass, before it disappeared deep into the Earth.
Bumblebee came out of recharge with a rather loud clank of startlement, only to settle when his scanners informed him he was in a parking lot, spending the night until they could leave and hunt for safety in the morning.
"(Nightmare?)" Jazz inquired with an easy nonchalance, though he should be too far away to have heard the alarmed noise that had escaped Bumblebee's ER transmitter.
"(Of course not,)" Bumblebee said with automatic denial, though he felt a hollow echoing inside him as if his silent voice vibrated inside an iron drum. "(We don't have nightmares. Or dreams.)"
"(Didn't used to,)" Jazz agreed with humorous clicks. "(But you an' I haven't been the same since the All Spark was destroyed.)"
Bumblebee had nothing to say to that, processors obsessively turning that statement over while he heard the unspoken words that Jazz himself had been having them, too.
-+-
"Close up: Camera Two, 'cause the Hero dies in this scene. Your inspiration is the lost of absolutely everything.
And flashback on the girl: as we montage every memory; and we bleed out in the bathroom sink --"
-+-
If he were dreaming ... Cybertronians only dream when something was wrong with them. Bumblebee couldn't imagine anything more wrong with him than Sam being gone.
-+-
"And we fade out as the soundtrack sings:
You're like a black cat with a black backpack full of fireworks and you're gonna burn the city down right now ... whoa-oh-o-oh ... whoa-oh-o-oh ..."
-- To Be Continued --
- HO FUCK, WAS THAT A SYMBOLLIC DREAM? 8O
- Please remember that not even humanity understands themselves. This is not different for giant robot aliens.
-An explanation of the EA field and the ER transmitter: Because, as robots, they have no face and no body language, I created a different sort of non-word expression system for them. The EA field is basically waste energy that changes in frequency in accordance to emotion -- feeling a certain way makes them work a little different, just like with humans, and they have developed a way to translate that into mood. An ER transmitter is the thing that lends 'inflection' to their information. It basically turns them into percussion instruments.
- Song: "Black Cat" -- Mayday Parade