Downtown Mission City was a jungle.

Not an urban jungle, one made of steel and glass and concrete, though it had those too, buried in its depths. No, Mission City was a much more literal jungle, overgrown with trees and flowers and vines. They'd sprung up within hours of the alien war that had raged there, seeds buried in cement cracks and deep underground forcing their way up into sunlight and air, sinking roots deep in search of the water that lay buried underneath even the desert floor. Within a week it was an impenetrable mass, attracting birds and insects and rodents, an entire new ecosystem that defied machetes and flamethrowers.

"We'll cordon it off," Tom Banachek decided, "and keep an eye on it. There's no way of knowing who... or what... might come out of there."

The man standing behind him, older and stouter and with a hint of Southern drawl in his voice, nodded, studying the dense growth before them. "Never seen anything like this before." A smile quirked up the side of his mouth. "Let's call it a memorial park, compensate the property and business owners, and let the PR folks take care of it."

"Yes, sir."

The third member of their party made a noise that, were he human, probably would have been a considering murmur. Given how hard he and his... mechs had been trying to adopt human mannerisms in consideration of their host species, it probably was one. "This is... an unexpected side-effect of the AllSpark's discharge. To our knowledge it has never affected organic life before."

"Energy is energy," Tom said prosaically. "It had to go somewhere." He had the suspicion that some of the seeds beneath Mission City's infrastructure might've been laying there, buried, for thousands of years, and made a mental note to get some botanists in to study what could be studied of this new development. "Waking up seeds as well as game consoles seems as good a object as any."

"Indeed." Optimus Prime was silent for a moment. "Would you object to Ratchet studying this vegetation with your teams?"

"None whatsoever, Prime," Keller replied. The Secretary of Defense and the alien leader had, as far as Tom could tell, hit it off immediately. "Any insight you can give us, we'd be glad for."

"Us as well," the massive robot replied, folding down into his truck disguise-an act which still left Tom a little terrified inside, though he'd never show it-and quietly opening both his doors in subtle invitation. "This development is... profoundly unsettling in some ways."

Apple Tree
by K. Stonham
first released 27th August 2008

It was a month and a half since Mission City, three weeks since school had let out for the summer, and Mikaela couldn't be happier. Not only did she have no problem landing a job, it paid better than working at the local auto shop, and she got to hang out with friends and study alien engineering with a master.

Not to mention that, even though Sam was a dork of the second degree, the first flush of happiness with a new boyfriend still hadn't worn off. Which was why, after her lesson had ended, she'd asked her teacher-cum-friend-cum-transportation if he had any idea where Sam was hanging out that afternoon. He'd tilted his head slightly to one side in that "listening" pose all the Autobots got when using their internal communication systems, then reported, "Bumblebee says they're at 1282 Summit Avenue." The medic arched an optic ridge. "We might as well find out what mischief they're up to sooner than later," he opined and folded down into the chartreuse H2 form he used as a disguise. Stifling a snicker as always-the blinding paint job certainly didn't match Ratchet's staid personality-Mikaela climbed into his open driver's side door and buckled herself up.

It didn't take too long to get to the address, and when Ratchet pulled up to a stop, Mikaela looked out his front window and blinked. "Ratchet," she asked, "are you sure this is the right place?" But that was definitely Bumblebee parked at the curb.

"Yes; why?"

"This is a community garden."

A moment's silence as the medic accessed the Internet and probably downloaded a million web pages about community gardens, processed them, and tried to make sense of the majority of them. "Why would Sam not be here?" he finally asked.

Mikaela sat back in the seat with a sigh, trying to figure out how to explain things to an alien, whose thought processes didn't always work the way humans' did. "Community gardens... they're for people who can't afford to spend as much at the store," she finally said. People like her neighbor, Mrs. McKettrick, who had three sons and a deadbeat ex-husband and had to make every penny count because nursing didn't pay enough to feed four people. Poor people. People like Mikaela, if she'd had any aptitude for gardening. Not people like Sam, whose parents had a huge house and a nice yard that they took care of themselves and never had to worry about Christmas presents or the price of a prom dress or shop at a thrift store for any reason other than that it was trendy.

"I believe I understand your reasoning," Ratchet said after a few seconds. Her relative lack of income was a sore point with Mikaela, one she hid at school and a topic that the Autobots and Sam had learned early on not to discuss with her. If one couldn't have financial stability, about all that was left to cling to was pride. "Nonetheless, those do appear to be Sam and Bumblebee inside the garden area."

"Sam!"

His head jolted up at the call and he blinked at the sight of Mikaela on the other side of the garden fence. Then he cringed, standing upright. "I can explain..." he started. His friend/car, still kneeling on the ground next to him, snickered. Sam aimed a soft kick at the hologram.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Umm." Sam looked at the trowel in his hand. "Gardening?" he weakly offered. Mikaela rolled her eyes. Behind her, the chartreuse medical vehicle shuddered and twisted, standing up and unwinding like clockwork. Obviously no one in visual range. Either that or Ratchet was completely ignoring any idea of stealth (like the Autobots were really so good at that anyway) as he picked Mikaela up in both hands and gently lifted her over the fence, then moved to follow himself. "No you don't!" Sam said threateningly, stepping forward and brandishing his trowel at the twenty-foot-tall alien robot. "I swear to God and Primus both, Ratchet, that if you set foot in this garden and compact the soil, I will do to you the things my mom's only threatened!"

There was a moment's staring contest between ancient alien robot and human teenager. Bumblebee rolled his eyes and stood. "Why don't you use your hologram?" he suggested to his comrade. Ratchet shifted his gaze to the seemingly human form, harumphed, and folded back into his camouflage mode.

"Bumblebee?" Mikaela asked, staring. He replied with a pleased-sounding warble/chirp and a wave of his fingers. Mikaela jumped as a shimmer of glittering silver light appeared next to her. Ratchet's holoform took rapid shape, construction of bone being layered beneath muscles and organs, fat and tissues, skin and clothing in a matter of seconds. The unfamiliar man who stood there (slightly taller than Sam, maybe six feet, dark hair and eyes, glasses, red long-sleeved shirt with a white Autobot decal embroidered on the pocket, white slacks and shoes) frowned at the younger Autobot.

"Is this suitable?" Ratchet asked crankily.

Bumblebee smiled brightly. "Eminently," he replied.

"I will never get used to that," Sam declared. "Can't you guys, y'know, just skip the bones and muscles part and get straight to the skin?"

Ratchet's hologram arched an eyebrow. "There is, as certain individuals have informed me in the past, no excuse for a shoddy job."

"...Sunstreaker?" Bumblebee hazarded a guess.

A nod. "Sunstreaker."

"Sam, what are you doing here?" Mikaela asked again, tearing her attention away from the medic's hologram.

"Um." Sam shrugged helplessly and gave up. "This is my garden plot."

"Your garden," his girlfriend said flatly.

"Umm, yeah."

"Why do you have a community garden plot?"

He blinked. "You have seen my parents' yard, haven't you?" She nodded. "Even post-certain-'Bots wrecking it," he said, glaring not at all at Ratchet (at least Bumblebee understood what the words "subtle" and "hiding" meant, unlike certain people who walked into power lines and smashed greenhouses flat) "it's like something off HGTV. Mom would go ballistic if I tried to put squash in with her petunias. So I had to get my own place. This is it." He gestured at the bed behind himself, aware he still had his trowel in hand.

Mikaela tilted her head to one side. "You garden?" she asked.

Sam shrugged a little. "Inherited a green thumb, I guess. Miles dragged me over here a few years ago. He quit his plot last year, though. Diving team took up too much of his time."

"And what are you doing here?" Ratchet asked Bumblebee.

The younger Autobot grinned. "Learning how to grow human food."

There was a moment of blank staring before Ratchet asked "Why?"

Why? Ratchet wanted to know why? A hundred thoughts and memories and reasons ran through Bumblebee's processor, rising and falling like a cloud of dust kicked up by his wheels. On its surface the question was simple enough: why learn about organic food sources when Bumblebee was not, and never would be, human. He didn't need to use their fuel for sustenance and it had little relevance to his life. Deeper, though, Ratchet's question was more layered, revealing an unintentional disregard for their host species and world that Bumblebee doubted the medic even consciously realized he had.

It was fine for Mikaela to learn about the inner workings of Cybertronians... but for Bumblebee to learn about the life cycles and process by which organic vegetation grew and animal life (including humans) derived sustenance from the foreign matter... that was, apparently, a different thing.

"Do you remember," he asked slowly as a non sequitur, trying to collect his thoughts and give them some semblance of order, "when Prowl berated Jazz for wasting his time on music while we were in the middle of a war?"

Ratchet's hologram arched an eyebrow. "Yes," he said, his tone indicating a curiosity as to where Bumblebee was going with the analogy.

"Jazz said that music was beauty and life. And that if he didn't hold onto that, there'd be nothing worth fighting for."

"Mmm...?"

"Nothing is useless," Bumblebee tried to explain. It was one of the things Jazz had taught him while the Ark had wandered so long in deep space. If Jazz hadn't held onto his love of music, Bumblebee would never have been inspired to use it for communication and would never been able to explain his presence and mission to Sam and Mikaela. "Just because we can't use something right away, it doesn't mean it's a waste to learn about it." It was, if nothing else, a way of deepening his friendship with Sam and learning more about the human species. That alone made it worthwhile.

"Here." Sam plucked a pair of elongated red tomatoes from one of his bushes and held one out in each hand toward Ratchet and Mikaela. "Try this and see if you can understand." Mikaela hesitantly took the fruit, but Ratchet just looked at Sam. "Don't tell me you can't eat it," Sam warned the medic. "Bumblebee can convert it to energy, so I know you can too."

Almost unwillingly, Ratchet reached out and took the tomato.

The organic fruit was warm in the hand of his hologram, and just slightly soft to the touch. He inhaled its unique chemical signature, analyzing the scent automatically. Bumblebee rolled his eyes. "Just try it." Deciding to oblige the younger mech and their human ally, Ratchet followed Mikaela's example and took a bite, briefly examining the texture before swallowing. The nanites which comprised his hologram rapidly began to deconstruct the matter to create additional fuel for themselves. It was in its way not too dissimilar from the process in which human bodies first physically, then chemically converted their food into energy.

"That's... okay," Mikaela said slowly.

Sam grinned a little lopsidedly. "Not a tomato fan?" he asked.

"Not so much."

The boy knelt and his hands burrowed through an aromatic plant-basil, Ratchet identified with the help of a few online sources. He plucked two large leaves and tore each in half, bruising them between thumb and forefinger, causing them to release more of their scent markers. He laid one on each tomato. "Try it with that," he suggested.

"Taste it," Bumblebee commanded his CMO. "Don't just analyze it."

With a sardonic look at the scout, Ratchet obeyed.

And stilled, as the two plants combined to reach out and grab his attention with their taste. It was at once pungent and sweet, melting and strident, redolent of sunshine and something that was uniquely Earth as he'd seldom bothered to experience anything that wasn't Cybertronian in origin.

Startled, Ratchet took a second bite almost unknowingly, trying to figure out what it was that had caught his attention. There was something in the flavor that made sense, ordered things as very little in the universe was ordered. The spiral mathematics of seashells, the fragile mechanisms of life that made creatures composed of half to three-quarters water sentient, the way the doors to their buildings were almost unknowingly composed to the Golden Ratio...

Somehow this planet was whole in and of itself in a way that he'd never contemplated anything being since he'd last seen the dying husk of their home world when he'd left it for the first and last time. It had been an extinguished cinder floating in the darkness of space, the glowing lines of energy that had lit it from within flickering for a last moment, then gone.

Cybertron was a world that had come to its end. Earth, though, was just beginning to live.

He looked at Bumblebee's hologram and saw by his smile (such a human expression for one who, in his natural form, didn't even have a mouth) that he'd begun to grasp what the scout had wanted him to learn.

Okay, so Sam's tomato tasted better than the cold, mealy ones her aunt bought at the store, and even better with the addition of the basil, kind of the way a cold drink of water tasted even better than normal on a hot day. Still, she didn't quite get it.

"You fix things," Sam said quietly, sounding a little rueful or maybe bashful. "I grow them."

And somehow that fit in with her quirky, weird, aliens-among-his-best-friends boyfriend. Mikaela tilted her head and considered the lush green behind him, growing around him almost like a picture frame from this angle. "I can see that." A beat. "What do you do with all your vegetables, then, if your parents don't want them?"

"It's not that they don't want any of them," Sam said, rubbing a hand to the back of his head and turning to look at what had to be corn that grew nearly as tall as Bumblebee in his natural form. "Mom cooks some of them. But I grow more than they want, so Miles got me into dropping most of it off at a food pantry."

"That's... kind of cool," she said, taking it in, making it jive with what she knew about him. It did kind of fit in a weird way with the chihuahua and the overprotective parents and the way he'd just accepted the Autobots and the ex-juvenile delinquent girlfriend right off the bat. He'd lived an exclusive, sheltered life, maybe, and was more of a dork at school than anyone with a mouth as smart as his really ought to be, but... he could be kind, and generous, and braver than half the people Mikaela knew. Maybe more than half; she wasn't sure where the ex-Sector Seven guys and Captain Lennox and his men should fit on a comparison scale since they'd had training to deal with wars, while she and Sam had been thrust into one while still in high school. "So... I guess since we're here, wanna show me and Ratchet what you're growing?"

Earthlife was so complex despite its smallness that Bumblebee really wondered if even Skyfire or Wheeljack or Perceptor would be able to understand it. Assuming, that was, any of the reknowned science trio still existed and would come to Earth. Prime's message to the stars had not omitted the information that this was an organic world. Despite his own team's presence here and easy acceptance of the native flora and fauna, there were many who still stuck to the old ways, and the Covenant was clear as to the separation of HardLife and SoftLife. "Never shall the twain meet," as an Earth poet had written not so long ago by Cybertronian standards. Though that poet's purpose seemed to be to ameliorate his own statement, and if the people of Earth could work to bridge the gaps among their own species, surely the gaps between HardLife and SoftLife could be bridged as well.

He knew the theoretical reasons for the theological ban, as well as the dissidential arguments Beachcomber and his Unity Cult followers had preached. SoftLife was fragile and complex. Unable to withstand being taken out of their own environment, the mere approach of a Cybertronian could have serious, even fatal consequences on their systems. Looking through the optical sensors of his hologram at Sam and Mikaela as he showed her the pink and blue borage flowers that the bees hovered around, he still found himself hoping that Beachcomber was right, even while knowing that he would never have been able to show his new friends his own world.

They thought Autobots couldn't swim. He hadn't had the heart to describe to them the Silver Sea, composed of glimmering mercury, that had stretched as far as he could see. He'd been unwilling to let them know that even breathing the air of Cybertron would have killed them. Their kind were unable to survive even the simplest of elements...

It wasn't that he and Sam didn't talk about the differences between their worlds, and it wasn't that his young human friend didn't think about the Cybertronian presence and what effects it might have on humans and the Earth. It was Sam, after all, who had introduced him to the striking example of the cane toad, and hesitantly worried that transformers might have the same effect on humans. They were bigger and stronger, more able to endure, and nigh-immortal by human standards. It wasn't hard to see how a malevolent (Decepticon) or even thoughtless approach to Earth might result in the developing human species being pushed aside or even extinguished.

He had been stricken by the thought, and also by the ashamed way Sam had said "This sounds horrible, and you know I don't mean it this way at all, but... in a way it might be better for the human race that the AllSpark is gone." And the way he'd looked at Bumblebee, optics shining with cleansing fluid, expression apologetic and sorrowful and upset for even thinking it...

He couldn't be mad at his friend for what was best for both of their kinds. "It's better for the universe that it's gone," Bumblebee had agreed with a nod, looking up at the sky. He hadn't thought of it that way before, but now, having met SoftLife and befriended it... he had to wonder if the AllSpark hadn't made his kind too hard, too powerful. Too able to crush those things different from themselves.

He'd transmitted the thought, and the conversation, to Optimus, and the Prime had also been stricken by the implications, issuing a decree in its wake to all the Autobots: tread lightly upon the Earth and its resources.

"So why is bright coloring in plants a sign to eat it, while in animals it's not?" Mikaela asked, running a finger down a hot pink stalk of chard.

"Vegetation on your planet depends on its seeds being devoured and excreted elsewhere by Earth's animal denizens for a method of reproduction," Ratchet replied archly, beating Sam to a reply. "The animal life on this world largely has its reproductive cycle ended by such an occurance, and so endeavors to avoid it."

"Except for parasites like tapeworms," Bumblebee added, just to watch Sam shudder and Mikaela blanch.

"Thanks for that mental image," Sam muttered. "See if I give you any more freebies from my garden." Bumblebee just grinned at him.

"In any case," Ratchet continued, "as toxicity seems to develop as a common trait running parallel with bright coloration in the animal species on Earth, it might be viewed as a warning sign."

Mikaela exchanged a glance with Sam, then the two of them looked as one at the bright yellow Camaro with its black stripes sitting outside the garden fence, and the chartreuse H2 parked nearby. "Ratchet... I don't know how to tell you this," Sam started, "but I don't think you have too much room to be saying it's just our planet, given what color your armor is."

The medic looked vaguely offended, but Bumblebee hummed and tapped a finger against his mouth. "You know, that might explain a few things," he mused.

Ratchet arched an eyebrow. "Like what?"

The scout-bot shrugged. "Sunstreaker and Sideswipe?" he suggested.

Ratchet opened his mouth to retort, but paused. A thoughtful look settled on his simulated features. "That is a point."

"And Jazz was always silver and chrome," Bumblebee added. He looked at Mikaela and Sam. "Cybertron was mostly metallic shades," he explained.

"Camouflage coloring?" Mikaela asked. 'Bee nodded.

"Huh." Sam rested a hand lightly on a wire tomato cage, using it mostly for balance. He smiled. "Maybe there're some ways Earth and Cybertron weren't that different after all."

Long, long ago, in space...

Tumbling through the black void of nothing, the relic drifted, final remnant of the great civilization that had created it, mastered time and space and the universe, then devoured itself until nothing was left but this tiniest fragment of a once mighty empire. It had no destination; only the journey.

A sudden collision with a mass of rock and ice, star-forged alloys and raw elements, threw it off its aimless course. In accordance with one of the fundamental laws of the universe in which they both existed, each bounced away from one another. The Cube eventually crashed on a dark, lifeless world composed of layered volcanic silicon, and the energy pulse its landing released into the ground created the first form of rudimentary life that world had ever known.

The asteroid it had encountered also chanced to fall into a planetary gravity well, many aeons later, and crashed into a vast saline sea. The molecular traces of life that clung to it flourished in this new environment, and multiplied.

Billions of years later, the two species, both engendered from the last remnant of a dead race, met, and knew without knowing that they were brothers.

OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!

They have looked each other between the eyes, and there they found no fault,
They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on leavened bread and salt:
They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on fire and fresh-cut sod,
On the hilt and the haft of the Khyber knife, and the Wondrous Names of God.

-excerpted from The Ballad of East and West by Rudyard Kipling

Author's Note: A crack fic inspired by my community garden plot of a few years ago, but hopefully a worthwhile read nonetheless. One of the less obvious influences to this is the book High Wizardry by Diane Duane, which explains the origin of a computer/robot species... perhaps not coincidentally, she also wrote an episode of the G1 Transformers cartoon. I've often wondered how connected the inspiration there might be. The title comes both from the concept "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree," referring both to Sam's being a gardener like his parents (seriously, take a look at their yard), and the "sibling" races of transformers and humans being so similar, and also from The Spaceship Under The Apple Tree series by Louis Slobodkin, the first example I ever had of an interstellar and interspecies friendship. If you've never read them, I highly recommend tracking them down at your local library. Thanks go to OkamiMyrrhibis for doing beta work for me and letting me use her as a sounding board.