Fandom: Matrix/Transformers

Rating: PG-13

Words: ~10k

Summary: On the search for the Allspark, it takes Bumblebee about 500 years longer to find earth. It is a very desolate planet he finds.

Warnings: none

A/N: Written for RobotBigBang. I'm very sorry to admit that, despite the very long writing time, I didn't get it done... This is the first part, the other(s) will follow as soon as they are done...

Many thanks to veganwoodwalker for betaing! She did an awesome job!

Oh, and look at sparrowshellcat's dreamwidth accound for some AWESOME cover art: sparrowshellcat. dreamwidth. org

~Sakiku

Time units

klik - ~1.5 minutes

breem – about 15 minutes (10 kilk)

joor – about 4 hours

orn – about 10 days

vorn – about 80 years

–

The Fourth Matrix

Part 1: Computer

Booting...

Boot variables:

gravity = true;

surroundings = solidSurface;

threatLevel=UNKNOWN;

Combat kernel:

booting...

With a static fritz, Bumblebee's systems jump-started.

Quicker than an oxyhydrogen reaction he exploded from his cometary form, somersaulting under the influence of gravity until his pedes hit the dirt, his pulse arrays engaged, weapons capacitors charged and primed for combat.

immediateDanger = false;

Environmental sensors:

booting...

gravity = 0.985 Cybertron;

atmosphericDensity = 24.851 Cybertron;

location = planetarySurface;

temperature = 290K;

immediateDangerFromEnvironme nt = false;

Calculating weapons stats.

Atmospheric diffusion:

Pulse beam power absorption = 0.13 percent per step;

Pulse beam widening = 0.0001 gon per step;

Combined pulse beam power loss = 0.18 percent per step.

Calculating maximal penetrating pulse beam reach:

132 steps for 3-6 armor.

Combat kernel:

initializing threat assessment protocols...

North, East, South, West – visibility three kilostep radius, clear.

Skies – visibility five kilostep radius, clear.

Ground – highly resistant to EM echolocation; twenty steps clear.

He swiftly turned around his own axis to verify optically what his surround EM sensors had already postulated with a 98 percent probability: he was alone in a rocky wasteland of unknown dimensions.

Threat assessment variables:

environmentalDanger = low;

hostiles = NONE;

dangerFromHostiles = N/A;

surroundings = [coordinatesLocation:UNKNOWN, coordinatesPlanet:UNKNOWN, coordinatesSolarSystem:UNKNOWN, coordinatesGalaxy:UNKNOWN]

Threat assessment result:

no immediate threat;

more data necessary for further extrapolation.

When an inspection of most common light bandwidths, from infrared over visible to ultraviolet, didn't reveal any suspicious activity either, Bumblebee's crouched position slowly relaxed. He didn't detransform his weapons though, still running on hair-trigger combat protocols.

Resuming boot sequence...

Initializing loading memory...

Initializing loading core-programming...

Initializing loading personality-net...

Loading full combat protocol...

A speed-optimized kernel of combat and threat assessment protocols was the first to boot, having saved his life countless of times. It came online long before the slower-loading memory cores, even if that meant that he might react violently towards non-hostile situations. War made such atrocities necessary.

Only gradually did his other systems come online, his neural personality-net, his higher order logics, his emotive and moralistic axioms that had been p-doped into the crystal lattice of his spark chamber.

Yes, even spark coding was of secondary priority to survival.

It was harder to load his immediate-access memory cores than it should have been – something had scrambled them good. His medium-access was largely unaffected though, and his long-term archive not at all. The files which had been swapped out from his immediate-access memory gave him a hint as to his current situation.

Last he remembered, he had been in space where he had finally found a planet with Allspark radiation. It had been the third planet of a G2V star, but a dark and virulently active electromagnetic hull had made it nearly impossible for any of his scans to penetrate through. His last memory was of deliberating whether exploring the origin of Allspark radiation was worth the danger of braving the complete unknown.

Afterwards, there was a blank of unknown length. Even his internal chronometer had been scrambled badly enough that he wasn't sure how much time had passed. But it wasn't too much of a mystery what had happened in between. He only had to look upward to the churning, dark skies to realize that yes, he must have made planet-fall. He could feel the constant bombardment of electromagnetic discharges buffering him from down there.

He supposed that he must have spent several orns in orbit to collect more data, and that those orns were lost in his corrupted IAM. At least he hoped so – the only thing he could remember was cursing the churning blackish gray atmosphere which absorbed nearly all wavelengths. He hadn't been stupid enough to take the plunge down into the gravity well without knowing anything about the temperatures or whether there'd be anything stable to land on, had he?

If he had, then he had been damn lucky. Because the environment sported a surprising lack of immediate dangers, and the ground a stable rock formation that seemed entirely unaffected by the long furrow his cometary form had dug into it.

What surprised him was the amount of unstable element-decay going on.

Gamma radiation was so plentiful that it penetrated deep into his subsystems. His nanobots had more to do than usual to repair ionization where it wasn't practical, but his energon practically drank in the highly energetic rays. It was a curious feeling, getting charged like that. He hadn't felt such an abundance of energy for a very, very long time – not even out in space where the stars' radiation was undampened by atmosphere.

His first thought was that someone must have detonated a nuclear fission bomb. Several, in fact, to reach such a level of fall-out. If the Allspark was indeed on this planet, and if there had indeed happened a nuclear war, would it have survived a direct hit? Or, Bumblebee shivered, would it have been pulverized and spread all over the planet, and that was the reason it had fairly radiated with Allspark energy from outer space?

Large helium cores, yet another byproduct of nuclear decay, pinged off his plates like dirt in a sonic shower. High-energy electrons were the most distracting, not strong enough to power his energon, but capable of introducing much noise to his input.

What had happened here? Could it be possible that the level of radiation was natural?

He looked around. There was nothing but barren rock and dark skies, with only the occasional organic microbes as far as he could detect. Wind and weather had started eroding the surface, but there were enough sharp edges where rock rather broke before being smoothed down.

The solar system had looked to be approximately 130 million vorns old, with the planets probably half that. This should have been more than enough time for the unstable heavy elements to stabilize. And the sun was a G2V star, which indicated that nearly all atoms in the solar system, and this planet too, should be on the lower side of the nucleic energy minimum of iron. Not above.

Additionally, the ratio of decay elements to others simply couldn't support any theory of the radiation being natural and having gone on since the planet's creation.

Bumblebee sighed. So, nuclear war it was.

Folding down into his Cybertronian alt-mode, he hovered half a step above the broken surface and slowly drove towards the ridge he could barely see on the horizon. Perhaps, from such a high vantage-point, he could make out more of this planet.

The skies were another mystery. Even from down here, he could feel the electromagnetic turmoil happening in the stratosphere, and the darkness simply couldn't be natural. Was that deactivated nanobots he could smell on the plates of his cometary form?

More importantly – why would someone go through the effort of erecting a planet-wide barrier like that?

Lightening flashed continuously, dipping the dark surface into a stroboscopic light. He could guess that he was on the side of the planet that was currently turned towards the sun, but he doubted the night would be much darker.

Yet another piece of the unfolding puzzle was the space debris that had floated around the blackish-gray planet. Bumblebee's slowly unscrambling immediate-access memory provided him with a snapshot of hundreds of dead satellites orbiting in various heights, and even more breakage floating between them. None of it looked operational anymore.

It all pointed towards a terrible, terrible war.

Had Decepticons found this planet first, and had whatever race lived here fought them off at a horrific price? He hadn't seen or sensed any deactivated Cybertronians yet, but Starscream alone could load enough nuclear missiles to bomb half a planet like this. And if they had come with the Nemesis and bombarded them from orbit, there would be no empty frames anywhere to find.

On the other hand, had Decepticons found this planet first, Bumblebee was almost a hundred percent certain that the Allspark would have been gone by now. No Allspark radiation to sense anymore.

Unless it was already gone and there was only left-over radiation escaping from rocks that had absorbed it for several hundred thousand vorns. Depending on how close the Alkaris Anomaly had spit out the Cube, it could have been on the planet for nearly half a million vorns – more than enough time to leave at least something behind.

He didn't need to unscramble his instant-access memory to know that this was probably why he had made planet-fall despite the dangers. He – they, the Autobots – needed to know. Was the Allspark still there?

His senses stretched in all directions, having engaged the special mods of his sensor suite that let him filter for more spectra than most bots knew what to do with. The ever-present discharges of electricity up in the stratosphere put a large crimp into his observations, only barely compensated for by his filter algorithms. But he had operated under worse conditions before. The methane storms on that moon two hundred vorns ago had definitely been worse.

Photons, and thus most optical bandwidths, provided only secondary information thanks to the nearly impenetrable ceiling of clouds overhead. It was dark enough that Bumblebee felt himself reminded of the burnt-out husk that Cybertron was, their home planet, which was drifting aimlessly through space between solar systems. The multitude of smaller and bigger weapons craters he was scanning, certainly enhanced the comparison.

Contrary to Cybertron though, this planet was largely organic instead of metal; carbon and oxygen instead of iron and noble gases.

Molecular analyzers hinted at comparatively large amounts of dihydrogenmonoxide, dinitrogen, dioxygen, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In the ground, carbon-, oxygen-, nitrogen- and hydrogen compounds were the most common particles found, with metal oxides only being a far distant second after sulfur, phosphor and alkaline earths.

The foundation for organic life.

He had already sensed a multitude of microorganisms, from bacteria to amoebae, but anything more highly-evolved showed signs of being dependent on light, and thus dead thanks to the dark cloud covering. On his way to the ridge, he had been forced several times to transform back to root-mode and navigate large cylinders of fallen organic structures. The entire ground was covered in a layer of decayed organic matter.

Was there still any sentient life on the planet? Or had those who had fought the war here, fled to other systems?

He didn't think he would find much. For machine life, the planet was too organic; for organic life the radiation was too deadly. It was chilling to drive through a grave of such dimensions.

Joor after joor the rocky planet passed by him, some places more broken up, others not so much. He had definitely found remnants of a civilization, shelters, metallic husks, but nothing alive. Craters from various kinds of weapon were still prominent, only gradually getting eroded by wind and weather. They looked as young as five vorns, less than five hundred of the planet's solar years.

The signs of past life grew less frequent though the higher he climbed the ridge that was turning out to be a whole mountain range.

When the planetary rotation removed any remaining sun rays, the near-permanent electric discharges up in the clouds were bright and frequent enough to keep the visibility at about the same level as before. He relied on his electromagnetic sensors all the more during that time, slowly crossing the mountain range.

It was nearing sunrise when he felt it.

He was very surprised when suddenly his antennae twitched with an electromagnetic frequency coming from the other side of the mountain range. Bumblebee halted and waited. It had felt almost... deliberate, compared to the random lightening above.

Long breems passed until Bumblebee was almost ready to think it had only been his imagination. But then – there it was again! Clearly a modulated wave, its amplitude fluctuating in a way that was almost certain to be deliberate.

Bumblebee recorded everything and immediately fed it through his force-decryption programs. Despite the horrendous reception he discovered that the first layer was a primitive quaternary encoding – high amplitudes and low amplitudes. The next layer was a bit harder, but he thought meaning was transported in blocks of eight binary values, with some correction bits inserted for every package.

He frowned. It felt suspiciously familiar. Not the content, but the way the message had been created. The channel correction, the redundancy algorithms, the encoding. Everything. Like... like a primitive form of Cybertronian?

Were there Cybertronians still here?

Reengaging his weapons, he kept half his focus on his surroundings at this sign of potential danger as he made his way closer. The broadcast seemed to be constant, comprised of many hundreds of thousands of messages, and not directed at him at all. Like a functioning society of at least several hundred individuals.

Sometimes his way led him into deadspots where the broadcast didn't reach, but the further he went the better his reception grew, to the point where a decryption could be attempted.

He listened more intently, trying to gather every bit of information he could. Patterns started repeating especially in the center of the messages. About twenty, maybe twenty-two two-block-combinations were the most prevalent, to the point that Bumblebee was thinking it might be an alphanumeric language.

Not Cybertronian then. Maybe another race that had had close contact with Cybertronians?

With a sigh, he started the long and arduous task of decrypting a language from nothing but data. Even with his special skills, that was a task of several years. Years he didn't have.

But thankfully, there were other transmissions, too, besides the language transmissions. They contained only some alphanumeric symbols in the beginning and then incomprehensible sequences of zeros and ones. Experimenting on the assumption that it was data transfers, he found what might be compressed pictures and maybe even video and audio streams.

And he still couldn't shake the suspiciously familiar feeling. Sure, Cybertronian didn't have an alphanumeric character system, and their images and video encoded more than just three different wavelengths, but the rest...

By the time he had written a program to decode their image messages, he was prepared for nearly anything. He still almost drove into a ditch when he saw what he would have to deal with. The first image was little short of horrifying, a robotic entity that was comprised of an ovaloid head with no body, but an incomprehensible amount of tentacles instead.

It looked like a modified Quintesson reject – all those tentacles gave Bumblebee the shivers. Sure, he had never seen a Quintesson before – he was too young to have lived during the last war with them – but sensor memory feeds from Kup had shown him their strange technorganic bodies. And tentacles had featured pretty heavily on them.

The more pictures and videos he decrypted, surveillance vids in his opinion, the more he had to fight his instinctive revulsion. Many of the frame types on this planet showed a high similarity with Quintessons. There were a few that were more bipedal oriented like Transformers, but the rest of them resembled Quintessons. He didn't know whether he wanted to make contact with them.

On top of it, the fact that he could make sense of things so easily seemed strange. Suspicious even. Although the content of those audio and video files proved quite surely that it wasn't Decepticons, the similarities to the Cybertronian way of transmitting data were just too large. The entire situation pretty much reeked of foul-play.

When he detected an electromagnetic signature that went far beyond the transmissions he had hacked into so far, he immediately took cover and dialed down all active scans. If he were on Cybertron, he would have been dead certain he had just sensed a bot. As it was, he was only to 95 percent certain that there was something alive that was approaching him from beyond the mountains.

And indeed, the signature slowly came closer, homing in on his position like a beacon. Was this how the trap was sprung?

He waited. The presence was still too far away to tell anything for certain, and its slow speed gave him enough confidence to not bolt immediately. Additionally, the closer it came, the more differences he could feel to a normal Cybertronian mechanism. A less vibrant electromagnetic spectrum. Different core frequencies. He had never felt a bot that was alive, and yet felt so... empty. Almost like a drone, but not quite.

Still a kilostep away, the terrain finally permitted him a glimpse.

Slowly, his armor plates loosened a bit from the tight hold he had kept on them. Not a Decepticon. Not a Cybertronian at all. It was one of the more mech-like creatures, one that had long, spindly arms and only two tentacles which it used as legs. As far as he could see, it was in root mode, walking upright an a strange slithering motion. Due to its tentacle-legs it didn't step like a normal mech would; but its bi-pedal frame felt at least a little bit less horrifying than those Quintesson-like abominations.

And still, it was homing in on his position. There was no way this wasn't deliberate. The only reason he hadn't moved to a different hiding spot already, was that the bot seemed to be absolutely alone. For the three kilostep radius his sensors could cover, the approaching mech seemed to be the only figure.

The longer he watched, the more his combat protocols tightened his armor plates again though. He was prepared for nearly anything.

When it had neared to half a kilostep, Bumblebee's stereo vision could focus enough to make an absolute height measurement instead of being forced to compare it relatively to its surrounding environment. He was a bit surprised. It was – small? It barely reached mid-chest with him, and that was if he counted the height which was added by long, spindly antennae curving back from its helmet. It had looked bigger in the images. At least he could be quite sure that one of the three frequencies they encoded in their image transmissions was a deep red. Its optics were very distinguishing that way.

Very Decepticon-like.

It was nearly instinctual by now to charge his capacitors and remove nearly all safeties upon the sight of red optics. His unfolded pulse arrays hummed quietly, a hair's trigger away from unloading into the bot.

The bot stopped almost immediately, still outside his range. It didn't have any visible weapons, but its torso could be hiding a bomb. The whole affair was a bit unusual for a Decepticon tactic; however, one never knew what new abominations Shockwave would come up with next.

The bot didn't do anything in return. It just remained standing there, facing his direction, and... waiting.

Bumblebee remained wary. If this wasn't a trap but a case of first contact, this would be the time to attempt communication. And indeed, there was a transmission on a very high wave frequency that could only come from the bot. It was one of those messages with exclusive alphanumeric content, which Bumblebee couldn't decipher yet.

He frowned. It still didn't make any more sense than all the hundreds and thousands other messages that he was constantly listening to. His language decryption algorithms had barely had enough time to figure out several more probable alpha-numeric signs.

In response, he tried copying what he had identified as message header and inserted a quickly generated picture that hopefully was in the correct format for the other mech to decipher. It showed him and the bot standing next to each other, no aggression. As an afterthought, he sent another message with randomly generated content from those twenty-four alphanumeric characters in an attempt to show his non-understanding.

The bot didn't react at all. It just kept standing there, staring at him to the point that Bumblebee was starting to think it was a bomb after all. Its behavior was like an unsparked drone, a class 3 sentience at the most.

Then, when Bumblebee was just about to move away from the potential threat, it chirped another transmission at him. Bumblebee stopped immediately and set to decoding it. To his surprise, it was the same picture he had sent only with different color information. Apparently, yellow was encoded by a combination of red and another wavelength, a curious idea. Was this done out of a need to reduce the amount of data for information exchange, or did it have a deeper relevance? Like, for example, having a completely different mechanology that was incapable of perceiving a continuous spectrum?

It seemed quite telling that the image had no microwave or high-frequency emissions attached. Just the narrow band of regular photon spectrum.

He adjusted his rendered image accordingly and sent it back, joined by one where he added his name glyph above a picture of himself. Hopefully it would be understood as an attempt to communicate, since it seemed the native bot either had no body language at all or worked on a completely different set.

Again, the bot took a long time to come up with an answer. Bumblebee was starting to suspect that it had very limited processing capability. The response was an image of the bot with what Bumblebee hoped was a visual translation of the alphanumeric characters he had discovered. There were six of them, four individual ones and two doubled up.

Huh. So they did have a graphical representation of abstract things like characters.

Bumblebee was starting to think more and more that this was the real thing, that this was indeed a member of a mechanoid race he hadn't encountered yet. Thinking up a first-contact scenario like this went far beyond almost any Decepticon. Even Shockwave. The only mech patient and knowledgeable enough was Soundwave, but even for him it was a bit too round-about.

Alright. This was an alien bot that was trying to find a way to communicate with him, and it wasn't doing a bad job at understanding its end of the conversation. It probably had evolved beyond the class 3 sentience Bumblebee had thought it to be, even if it was very slow. Pattern recognition and the problem solving algorithms necessary to establish alien communication were signs of a class 4 sentience at the very least, if not class five.

Either that, or it was in contact with a higher intelligence by means Bumblebee couldn't detect. Quantum-synched processors or the likes.

Whatever it was, it seemed to be willing to and capable of holding a cross-language conversation, and Bumblebee gladly used that.

Next came the step of tying the images the bot had given him, to the alpha-numeric patterns he had isolated. It took some creative thinking to translate binary values into a graphical representation. Bumblebee next sent the other bot a succession of six pictures which each contained one of the visual characters and a randomly chosen character of the 24 binary blocks he had identified as alpha-numerical. If Bumblebee had made the correct assumptions, both towards how the bot's language and processing worked, and towards how intelligent it was, this would set the basics for deciphering their language.

Again he had to wait a long, long time for a response. Longer than any of the times before. But when the answer came – different binaries matched to the alphanumeric characters – he couldn't help an elated flare of his fields. Because the bot hadn't only sent matches for the four characters encountered so far, but also 25 others with corresponding binary blocks.

Seemed like he had missed a couple, but all those he had detected were present.

Success. He could read their language.

Now the only thing left to do was fill their words with meaning.

A flurry of pictures and words followed, the bot answering his queries without hesitation. Slowly Bumblebee established a vocabulary of several hundred words – basic and more than likely incorrect on many accounts, but grounds for communication.

Suddenly the bot stopped responding. It only ever chirped back 'follow', turning around and gliding away several steps but then stopping and looking back at Bumblebee.

He took a while to decide, until he came to the conclusion that despite the red optics there were no Decepticons involved. After all, it was highly unlikely that they would invent an entire alien robotic species including their language simply to set a trap.

Slowly, as to not scare the bot, Bumblebee folded into his hover alt and approached it. It retreated several more steps, saw that he was following, and seemingly content it led the way.

It was slow going, very slow going because apparently the bot didn't have an alt-mode it could use. And, confident as he was that it wasn't a Decepticon trap, Bumblebee still was too cautious to let an unknown entity into his interior. So he had to keep to the pace the bot set, which was starting to strain his patience because apparently the bot couldn't walk and communicate at the same time.

Well, maybe it could, but it didn't respond to any of the transmissions Bumblebee sent it in an attempt to keep learning the language. As it was, his current vocabulary was barely enough to give his language processors a sporting chance at learning new words by trying to decrypt the library of transmissions he had already gathered and kept gathering.

After nearly an orn and the EM communication buzz getting stronger by the joor, Bumblebee thought he could see a city growing on the ever-dark horizon. The closer they got, the more Bumblebee had to correct his size estimations upwards; despite how small the bot leading him was, the buildings were as tall as any Cybertronian living tower.

And there were thousands, if not millions of signatures moving on his long-range scanners.

This had to be a center where many of the mechanoid race congregated on a regular basis. He was curious what it would look like.

To his disappointment though, the bot led him into an underground tunnel that looked old and disused. It was just about tall enough that he would be able to stand in the center if he transformed back into root-mode, but his alt-mode definitely was more comfortable space-wise. Small puddles of dihydrogenmonoxide pooled at its center, but thankfully it never went so high that he would have to step into it.

Thanks to the strong magnetic field of the planet, Bumblebee could keep track of their direction. The turns they took always led them straight towards the city he had spotted above-ground, so maybe he would get to see it after all.

Why was the bot leading him this way though? Were there dangers out there? Or did the bot not want him to be seen?

Already alert, he kept building a charge close enough to his weapons capacitors that he would be able to fire within half a femto-klik. Lights based on halogen ionization illuminated their way, having been placed in regular intervals. The echoing quality of the tunnels would give their presence away early on; but at the same time it would reveal anyone heading towards them. Unless they were waiting in an ambush.

Stomping down on his paranoia, Bumblebee took interest in how the scenery around him changed. The occasional puddles vanished; the disrepaired walls became smooth metal; the illumination became brighter. Doors, or at least what Bumblebee assumed to be doors, appeared. All of them were closed though, so he didn't have any idea where they led. And there were sometimes other bots of the same frame type as his guide walking along at the side of the tunnel, out of their way and ignoring them completely.

Drones. Probably. In any case, none of them stared, not even when Bumblebee briefly flashed his headlights at them.

Finally, the bot leading him walked towards one of the doors – there hadn't been any other doors for nearly a klik, so what had to behind it had to be huge – and it opened after a short burst of communication.

Bumblebee was disappointed and elated at the very same time. The room behind the door was tiny, nothing more than a small cubicle, but it revealed what could only be a console. There was a screen, a keyboard with unlabeled keys, and that was about it. It was made for the bot's size, so Bumblebee had to fold himself quite a bit to fit into the room.

The bot finally seemed to acknowledge Bumblebee's presence for once as it turned towards him. Talk/question/speak/answer, it sent towards him.

Bumblebee hadn't been able to narrow the translation down any further. Talk/question/speak/answer, he repeated, not quite knowing what the bot wanted.

To his surprise, the screen of the console lit and displayed rows upon rows of the alphanumeric symbols the bot had taught him. He could see the Talk/question/speak/answer word highlighted quite a few times amongst other text.

Curiously, he tried another word he knew. Follow he sent, and the screen changed to display text with a disproportionate amount of follow words in it. He wasn't quite sure yet whether it was just a random collection of sentences around follow or whether it was a dictionary, but he was very delighted with his discovery.

He tried out some other words he had already learned, and then one that he picked from the screen text. Every time he got a response, once even with an image. Now he was sure he had gotten rock right. With such a treasure-trove of information at his disposal, deciphering their language would be a lot easier!

A quick glance at the bot that had led him here showed that it was doing nothing but watching him. Interpreting that as an encouragement to continue as he had, Bumblebee started firing requests at the console in earnest. His own processors apparently were much quicker than the ones behind the console because as soon as the text was displayed completely Bumblebee could fire the next command, having already copied the entire screen content for his decryption algorithms to analyze.

Within a joor, he had a basic vocabulary of several thousand words, including some grammar rules. Within another joor, he had found out how to access the knowledge stores behind the simple text response. Audio files of how the words were to be pronounced, maps of the planet, schematics for what could only be one of the micro-drones, technical equations. And every detail he found was another puzzle piece of what this mechanoid race was like.

For one, the bot that had accompanied him and was still watching him, was indeed barely more than a class 3 sentient drone. Its frame type was called 'runner', and it didn't have enough individuality to speak for itself. Same for quite a few other frame type, the Quintesson-like sentinels amongst them. Throughout his research, he had gotten the impression that they either were permanently linked to some sort of hive-mind, or that they got their orders from a single bot. He didn't quite know which.

There were other mechanoids though, some of them programs even, that definitely broke the class 4 barrier of true sentience. Maybe one of them was the one to control the runners?

After nearly four joor the runner stirred again, drawing Bumblebee's attention away from the blueprints of a simple but effective hover vehicle that seemed to be quite similar to his alt-mode.

"Understand?" it asked aloud, a test of how much Bumblebee had learned.

If his vocalizer hadn't been damaged beyond repair at Tyger Pax, he would have answered with the vocal representation of their language. As it was, Bumblebee had to restrict himself to merely sending his answer back.

/I can understand you. I can speak now./

He considered himself quite fluent by now, with a lot more vocabulary than necessary for simple communication. And his language decryption algorithms were continuously adding more to his dictionary, working on what he had saved away instead of getting new feeds from the console.

"Follow," it once again responded and slithered out of the room on its two tentacle-legs. "Talk to leader."

So they did have a leader.

Getting curioser by the klik, Bumblebee drove behind the bot, unfolding into root-mode as soon as the ceiling height allowed. His sensors told him that they were both advancing further towards the city, and at the same time going upwards. Was the leader above-ground?

It seemed very likely when the runner stepped into what could only be an elevator. The elevator was even smaller than the console room, making Bumblebee quite uncomfortable with the closeness as they ascended.

Nearly two hundred steps up, the elevator doors opened again to show quite a different view from the underground tunnels.

It was starting to look more like he was used to from Cybertron. But... different at the same time. While the ground and the walls were made of metal now, they nonetheless looked strangely organic. Cables of various thickness ran along the top, and the hallway had a rounded ceiling so low that Bumblebee continuously brushed his head fins against lines that hadn't been fastened as tightly as others. The ground was nothing but a metal grid beneath which more cables could be seen running – some of them as thick as Bumblebee's forearms. Some of them carried luminescent liquids – energon? - dipping the corridor in a dim bluish light.

The bot continued leading him and gradually, Bumblebee discovered other, smaller bots. They were barely larger than his palm, six- or eight-legged, and they scurried in the darkness of the tunnels or beneath the grid and the cables. If they had optics at all they weren't visible, and the way they moved Bumblebee doubted they were more than a class two sentience.

In the end he was led to a large platform that opened to the dark skies, an abyss of busy machine life opening up as he looked down. Strangely formed spires grew from wire- and cable-linked depths. Transport tunnels occasionally flashed with passing bots, and there were incredibly many different models flitting all throughout the airspace in between.

What Bumblebee had thought to be an entire house revealed itself to be yet another build, a huge frame presumably to repair large structures. It was comparable in size to a Supreme. It maneuvered itself along on a multitude of seemingly spindly legs, but which had to be at least as thick as Bumblebee. Tentacles were hanging down its underside and grazed whatever it was crouched above.

However, all this paled in comparison to what was happening at optic level. Hundreds and thousands of small hover bots were starting to cluster together, linking their limbs, arranging and transforming their carapaces until they built a huge head, at least five times as big as Bumblebee was tall.

Bumblebee had seen how gestalts integrated, three to five bots which joined to become one larger bot. However, he hadn't ever seen anything on the scale that was currently happening in front of him. It had to be hundreds and thousands of the little bots flocking together, and while the face was already visible still more came and integrated themselves into the emerging superbot.

So he had been right about his idea of a collective hive-mind. Because it was more than clear that this was the leader the runner had intended to lead him to.

When the head was complete, huge optics opened and stared at him.

"Intruder," was the first word it said.

It took a while to match the acoustic signal to the corresponding dictionary entry, but once Bumblebee had the translation his spark sank.

/I did not intend to intrude,/ he transmitted on the same frequency that he had used with the runner. He realized only belatedly that the superbot might not be capable of tuning in to that.

"Purpose?" it growled, and Bumblebee thought it looked angry. On the other hand, the multi-bot's facial expression might mean something completely different.

/I am searching for a relic that seems to have landed on your planet. A cube, about three times my height, and it is decorated with glyphs./

"Purpose with cube?"

Bumblebee really didn't want to talk about their war. What he wanted was to grab the cube and take off with it to never see this planet again. It would be different if the planet was uninhabited, or if he knew more about the mechanoid race – Machines, as they called themselves. All he could tell about them so far was what they had allowed him access to, and Bumblebee knew only too well that even facts could be made to lie.

But inhabited the planet was, and get along with the natives he must. So, the truth it was.

/Our race is in a war, a terrible war. The Allspark is something of immense importance for both sides. If it remains here, our war will inevitably follow it and be brought to your planet./

"Time until it will arrive here?"

Bumblebee shrugged helplessly. /I do not know. Space is big. As far as I know, there are no Decepticon for several hundred light years. But they are good at hiding./

"Decepticon?"

Bumblebee had translated the Cybertronian word as best as he could with the limited vocabulary he had. But of course, even if the Machines had met the Decepticons before, they might have translated them to another name.

Bumblebee quickly rendered an image of Megatron for the machine to see, with Bumblebee next to the warlord for size comparison. He chirped it over the same frequency he had been using to talk and started to explain. /This is Megatron, the leader of the Decepticon. He rules over his faction with violence, reprogramming, and extortion. Originally, he took over most of the war frames, so they never had the most... moral codes. If he catches wind of the Allspark's existence, he won't stop at anything to have it in his servos./

"Your intended mode of action?"

/Trade. Negotiate. While the talks are going on, my leader will probably ask to station a couple fighters nearby in case Decepticons come before we have reached an agreement. It is of utmost importance that the Allspark doesn't fall into their hands. But all of this is moot if the Allspark's not here anymore. Do you have the Allspark?/

The huge face merely kept staring at him as miniature lightening flashed between the spokes radiating out from its sides. Bumblebee waited patiently, not knowing whether it would process things any faster than the bot he had met first.

Finally, it frowned. "Follow the Runner."

He looked around for his guide and wasn't surprised when he found it still waiting where the platform emerged from the building, completely motionless.

Question was: why was he supposed to follow the bot? Did the huge face intend to show him the Allspark, or did it simply want to get rid of his presence?

/Alright,/ Bumblebee finally agreed because too much hinged on the good-will of the Machines. If they tried to put him away, he'd merely have to find another way to search for the Allspark. /Thank you for your help./

He nodded at the Machine face as he had found it as an accepted gesture of both greeting and parting, and turned around to head back towards the runner. The small machine was already gliding down the corridor and Bumblebee had to hurry to keep up with it.

Without saying or sending a word, it slowly led him deeper and deeper, through countless metal tunnels that became cruder as time went on. Bumblebee thought they had descended nearly a kilometer before metal eventually gave way to rock again, showing that they were on an organic planet after all.

And still the runner led him downward, this time through tunnels not illuminated by anything. Bumblebee turned on his headlights to see how far it went, but even on a high setting it vanished off into darkness.

The runner was guiding him deeper and deeper into the tunnel – dug by crude machinery into even cruder rock. On a non-metallic planet it just seemed so... violating to break open the crust like that, especially since he was only too aware that organic planets tended to bleed heavy lava when injured too deeply. But down they went and warmer it got, and Bumblebee was only too glad that his frame wasn't dependent on aerobic chemical reactions. Compared to the atmosphere outside, there was a noticeable lack of oxygen.

Eventually, he could feel it. Feel the subliminal energy that spoke of creation, of healing, of Before and After.

The Allspark was there after all.

He shivered. The last time he had been exposed to Allspark radiation, it had been at Tyger Pax. And even then it had been diluted with pain and fear and war and death.

Like in a daydream he followed the beckoning call to its source, the runner trailing behind him over the last few meters. Rocky tunnels suddenly opened to a huge cavern, and it was only his perception of non-photonic wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that allowed him to see the entire grandness.

Bright as his headlights might have been, they utterly failed to illuminate the vast space stretching in front of him. But photons weren't necessary when he could feel his entire frame vibrate with the pulsating electromagnetics. Beautiful as the glyphs decorating the Allspark might be, it was only when viewed in the composition of all electromagnetic spectra that their true beauty shone. The overlying harmonics interfered with each other, a subtle adding and subtracting of amplitudes until the spectrum itself told the story of Cybertron's creation, of prayers and blessings and life budding from the darkness of non-existence.

Bumblebee could only read a small part of the stories, but Optimus had told him once that he had never before seen something so... fundamental.

But amongst the ancient and spark-deep vibrations, there were newer fields. Lighter, more transient, and while they didn't feel completely wrong they just as clearly brought a dissonant element into the symphony of creation. Upon closer examination, it was power lines leading to and away from the cube, for purposes Bumblebee couldn't quite identify. Unless...

He tried to isolate the runner's electromagnetics from the surrounding sea. The runner didn't have a spark, but it did resonate with Allspark energy. Resonate quite closely at that. Bumblebee shuttered and unshuttered his optics in surprise. /You – the Allspark is your Source?/

"Affirmative."

It was hard to read the runner's expression – until he remembered that runners weren't aware enough to have emotions. There was absolutely no change in either facial or mechanical body language, and the statement needed to be taken at face value.

The calculations and simulations running through Bumblebee's processors weren't pointing a pretty picture of the situation. Since the Machines didn't have a spark to sustain them on their own, they were probably highly dependent on the Allspark. For sentience, for reproduction, for anything.

/If we were to take the Allspark with us, what would that mean for you?/ he asked with a bad feeling in his processors.

The runner's optics clicked and whirred, and then suddenly Bumblebee could almost see that it had made contact with the hive-mind. It straightened, its sensory tentacles swept backwards at an attentive-looking angle while also being poised to strike. "Removing the Source will lead to our eventual deactivation."

/And not removing it will eventually lead the Decepticons to your planet./

"Negative."

Bumblebee blinked. /Why that?/ Did they think they could hide the Allspark forever? The universe was big, but any Decepticon stumbling across this solar system was going to sense the same thing Bumblebee had. No matter how well the cube was hidden – Decepticons would tear the planet apart in search of the source of Allspark radiation which permeated everything.

"Leading Decepticon here is not necessary. Decepticon are already present."

It was only the knowledge that pulling his weapons would serve absolutely no purpose that let Bumblebee keep his instinctive reaction in check. Nonetheless his capacitors hummed urgently to life, and his power plant's output jumped several notches in preparation for fight or flight.

/Are you working with them? No matter what they promised you, they will break it./

It blinked at him. "Follow."

Reluctantly, Bumblebee resumed trailing behind the runner. Now that he knew their war had already come to this planet, he was far less relaxed than he had been. It led him to yet another cavern, this time further towards the planetary surface. It got cooler and cooler, until the temperature dropped far below plausible values for the current depth. And then another cavern opened with a block of ice in its center, and Bumblebee was staring at Megatron.

This time, Bumblebee couldn't prevent himself from transforming his arm into his pulse array. It was only on second glance that he realized that Megatron was inside the ice and not online.

"The Template," the hive-mind introduced through the runner.

/The template,/ Bumblebee repeated, barely able to put together a coherent transmission through the uncontrolled voltage fluctuations in his lines. /What do you mean, Template?/

"The template after which was modeled."

/You modeled yourselves after a Decepticon?/

"Negative. We were modeled."

/By who?/

"Our creators."

It was like trying to coax a library AI to cough up more information than the immediate, literal interpretation of the request. This was a common problem of Class 4 sentiences – they could differentiate between 'I' and 'they', but they lacked the capability for empathy. A Class 5 sentience would have tried to imagine itself in Bumblebee's place and tried to give him the important basic information. As it was, they were just alien enough that Bumblebee didn't even know what questions to ask to get what he needed to know. The existence of 'Creators' was a new revelation that hit him hard.

/Who are your creators?/

"Humans."

/What are humans?/

"63 percent hydrogen, 24 percent oxygen, 12 percent carbon; the remaining percent dominated by nitrogen, calcium and phosphorous."

/Organics?/

"Correct."

/How long ago was that?/ he asked full of curiosity. To know who had designed them was nearly processor-blowing. Were they the same race that had designed Transformers? There were some legends that Transformers had been designed by Quintessons, but there had always been unanswered questions about that.

"Approximately 463 years ago."

Less than... six vorn, if Bumblebee had measured the planet's rotation correctly? They were sparklings! Damn, sparklings modeled after Megatron by an organic race. If that wasn't a recipe for disaster...

/Then where are your creators?/

Was this planet even capable of supporting organic life? Oxygen-rich environments tended to produce protein-based creatures. And what little Bee knew of proteins said that the level of radiation on the surface would denature their structures within less than a decivorn. And there was nothing organic up there for them to consume. Or did they live off rock and dihydrogenmonoxide?

"The Creators are unavailable."

/And why are they unavailable?/

"Incapable of unassisted living on the surface."

/So they are beneath the surface?/

"Negative."

/Then where are they?/

The runner froze. It was clear the hive-mind wasn't sending any new instructions – either that, or it was once again having trouble processing. Bumblebee waited, as so far he had always obtained an answer. Even if it wasn't one he liked.

Finally, the runner's antennae bobbed a bit and its optics blinked. "The Matrix."

Bumblebee couldn't help the shocked flare of his EM. How did they know of the Matrix, one of Cybertron's most holy artifacts? Had they learned of it from Megatron? And why did they think organics would become part of the Well of All Sparks? Or was it all an error in translation?

/What is the Matrix?/ he asked carefully, not ready to believe that the Matrix, too, would have made its way to this planet.

"The Matrix. Artificial environment for consciousness of creators. Shaped and founded on natural laws, after the reality 400 years previously."

/A virtual reality?/

"Affirmative."

Bumblebee just stared at the runner for a while. He had never heard of organics preferring a simulation over reality. Well, not as a whole species. Pit, he had never heard of a sentient race doing that.

/How does that work?/ He was morbidly curious. Just imagining that his entire existence would be spent in an artificial reality sent his neural lines curling in fright. /Do they maintain their physical bodies themselves? Do you have contact with them?/

Once again the runner stared at him for a long time. And once again it turned around with a brief 'Follow'.

Bumblebee was quite glad to leave the cave where Megatron was entombed in ice. As much as he hated Megatron, there was something very chilling about seeing the Decepticon commander frozen for who knew how many vorns. If he hadn't gone into stasis, he was probably conscious beneath it all.

The runner once again guided him back to the surface. Soon enough Bumblebee could feel the constant electromagnetic charges that lit the upper atmosphere. That, and the nuclear radiation. The tunnel had certainly spat them out nowhere near where they had descended; instead the machine city was nearly on the horizon. They were very close to the strange spire-fields instead. Huge black towers reached into the equally black skies, covered with reddish-orange pods in neat rows as far as Bumblebee could see. And between the spires, one of the tentacled machines went from pod to pod, tending to them or harvesting them or whatever it was doing.

Bumblebee realized he had seen the machine before, in one of the images he had received before making contact. And in contrast to the small runner, this one was huge. Almost as huge as that building sized bot in the city proper.

Arcs of electricity were sparking between the towers, ideal discharges for the tension in the atmosphere. Except for the humming of what had to be power generators, and the howling of the wind, and the near constant rumble of thunder, everything was eerily quiet.

And the runner just stood there, letting Bumblebee observe the... field, power plant, whatever. And slowly, realization dawned on Bumblebee. /They are... they are in there, aren't they?/

Inside the pods, in those towers. And there were hundreds of thousands merely in this one location. How many of them were there?

"Affirmative. Physical bodies are in suspension capsules. Minds are in the Matrix."

Bumblebee stared at the opaque ovaloids, wondering how any sentient being could agree to being contained like that for its entire function. Or had they agreed at all?

But Bumblebee wanted to give the Machines the benefit of doubt. Being shaped after Megatron didn't make them like him, did it?

Anyway, he wasn't going to tackle that bundle of redundant threads without Optimus to back him up. They had seemed friendly so far, but one never knew.

/And are they the ones who created you?/ he decided to settle for a less controversial question.

"Affirmative."

/With the Allspark?/

"Unknown."

Bumblebee's processors clocked overtime. Did the Machines need the Allspark, or didn't they? What if the Decepticons arrived here in their search for Megatron? What if Optimus decided to defend this planet? Was it even defensible with that strange shield of darkness? Well, at least it would make it next to impossible for Soundwave to pull any of his regular surveillance scrap.

There was only one question that remained. /What will you do when the war follows us here?/

When, not if. Meaning – would they join the Decepticon, simply because they had been made in Megatron's image? Would they try to remain neutral? Would they fight against anyone trying to remove the Allspark?

The runner blinked several times, the first sign of a more animated behavior Bumblebee had seen from it. "Examination of Megatron suggests it is unwise to stand alone against Decepticon. Survival has priority."

So they wouldn't fight back. Would the Machines just hand over the Allspark and any Autobots currently on planet? The sinking feeling in Bumblebee's processors just reinforced itself. /The Decepticon will always betray you. Even if you don't oppose them./

"It is unwise to stand alone against Decepticon," the runner merely reiterated.

And this time, with the emphasis on 'alone', Bumblebee heard the entire meaning. He would have done his very best to contact Optimus anyway, but with the Machines' permission it would be infinitely easier.

/You will not oppose me calling my superior officer?/

And once again, it reiterated its spiel about it being unwise to stand alone against Decepticons. Bumblebee took that as a 'yes'.

His spark pulsed in relief. Being able to count on native help was going to go a long way in such a fight. /Then I will need to get into the optimal position to send a transmission. I need a southern latitude so that the curvature of your planet doesn't interrupt the signal./

Thanks to several general maps he had found of the planet, Bumblebee was very certain of both his location and the distances involved. It would be best to send the message from what the natives had termed the 'Andes', a mountain range that stretched far to the south and provided a suitably high platform. However, Bumblebee was quite certain that he was on the other large land mass, what they had termed Eurasia plus Africa. Southern Africa would have to suffice, because Bumblebee's alt definitely wasn't equipped to handle crossing large bodies of liquid dihydrogen monoxide. Small bodies he could hover across, but with large ones it would take too much energy.

"Accompany," the runner suddenly demanded.

Bumblebee blinked a couple of times. It wasn't an unusual request, but... /I estimate that the journey will take at least two orn and back... twenty days if everything goes well./

It was a gross estimate because while he would be able to cover the distance in less than half that time, he didn't know the terrain and the weather patterns. He might be forced to wait out storms or surmount large obstacles. /I will need to reach at least.../ converting measurements to local systems was a bit confusing, especially with the many metrics available, /42 degrees south, better 35 or less. An altitude of more than 3000 meters would be preferable as well./

"Acknowledged. A sentinel will accompany you."

Bumblebee couldn't quite suppress the instinctive twinge of revulsion. Sentinels were those bots that consisted entirely of tentacles. They looked creepy. Very creepy. And they could fly.

Not that he had anything against flight-capable bots, but... urgh.

-oo-oo-

The sentinel turned out to be about as annoying as Bumblebee had imagined. Throughout their journey south it didn't communicate with him at all, merely hovering above him when he had to traverse increasingly hostile terrain in root-mode. At first, the temperature got warmer as they neared the equator, but then it dropped severely. Soon, a thick blanket of frozen dihydrogenmonoxide covered the ground, and the temperatures kept dropping.

When they finally arrived in the mountains of what the natives apparently called Botswana, Bumblebee was more than ready to head back to more temperate climates.

Orienting himself by the planetary magnetic field was easy; it was by far more difficult though to figure out where the planet was in relation to other stars. In the end, he had to rely on an assumption that not more than five planetary days had passed during his IAM blackout, and then calculate his position based on what he remembered from before he had made planet-fall.

It probably would be best if he sent his message more than once.

Bumblebee sighed and looked at the opaque skies. Melting dihydrogen monoxide – water according to the local language – threatened to work its way into his joints and freeze him solid as soon as he rested and his core temperature dropped. Staying in constant motion, or at least continuously heating his plates, had turned into a terrible drain on his resources. He still had enough to keep going for another vorn if he had to, but during war every quartex of energon counted. He was looking forward to going back to warmer climates again, where at least the water remained liquid during the icy cold nights.

To prevent stray Decepticons from listening in, he had to send his message in a very tight and focused beam – less than a fifth of an arc-second across. At a distance of a hundred lightvorns, the beam would widen to about a third of a lightvorn in diameter. Without diffusion and the gravitational influence of stars taken into account of course.

Thankfully, he did not have to rely on electromagnetic waves for transmission. Otherwise, he might have started to rust before the news reached Optimus and the others. And not to mention their return trip, which according to the common consensus on this planet apparently could only be executed at a fraction of light speed.

At least that was what his time questioning the console had suggested.

Slowly, he began to power up his communications array. He would have to fire a very, very strong beam to penetrate the thick electromagnetic shield. But he was using subspace communications, so it shouldn't affect the message too much.

Then he was ready and sent the three femto-klik long pulse with all his strength. And again. And again.

- - BEGIN MESSAGE - -

- - METADATA - -

Author: Bumblebee

Content-Type: text/message

Checksum: 5pz89sndi2345ksi5jjj5kod,f0ew345

- - BODY - -

Found planet. Class 4.5 robotic sentience, neutral. Organic sentience, class undetermined, status undetermined. Assistance requested.

- - END OF MESSAGE - -

Once last time, he set off the message in the direction Optimus and the others were searching for the Allspark.

The message, as short and cryptic it was, contained a wealth of information. There was only one thing to be found. Not a planet, but the Allspark. And 'requesting assistance' was just short of 'requiring assistance', which he would have sent if he had sensed any Decepticon activity nearby. There was Decepticon-like activity nearby, but... well...

/Message transmission finished?/ the monotone ether manipulation of the class 3 half-sentient automaton queried, the first during their entire contact of more than two orns. Bumblebee had thought the sentinel mute, actually.

/Yes. Message transmission finished,/ Bumblebee commed back.

There was no sense in losing his temper against a class 3 sentience. It was only minimally equipped to handle non-logical input, and emotions definitely qualified as such.

If the sentinel had looked less... odd, Bumblebee might have had an easier time liking it. Well, scratch that. Bumblebee might have liked it better if the sentinel had been more than a semi-permanent extension of the machine hive-mind. Something about hive-minds and the Machine's matrix just gave him the shivers.

As it was, he couldn't prevent a sigh. /Let's head back./

Hopefully, Optimus would come soon. The Machines were creepy.