A/N: Thank you very much for all your reviews! Sorry that it took me so long to write this, especially since it still isn't fiinished...

For the Machines' history, I borrowed large parts from the Animatrix ('The Second Renaissance'). I just glossed over it here, so if you're interested in more detail – go watch it!

–

Part 2: Human

Time passed. Two orns were spent getting back to the machine city, or 01 as the Machines called it, two more orns studying the masses upon masses of data that were freely available to him. He perfected his command of their language and grew to know their schematics, their capabilities, their mentality.

But even though there were hundreds and thousands of Terrabytes available, it all felt... empty. Screened. There was a lot of history compiled by the Machines' creator race, up until the point when the first case of a class 4 mechanoid sentience emerged. From then on, the chronicles got very spotty. No reasons for the war. No mention of who had fought in the war. No start date, what had led up to the war, or that there had even been a war at all.

Continuous history only resumed at a point where the creator race had already retreated to their artificial environment in the Matrix. At that point of time, the Machines were the only class 3 and above species running freely on the planet.

Bumblebee could extrapolate quite a bit of what must have happened. The machines' creators probably hadn't reacted well to the sentience they had created; maybe the situation had been a bit like when the Quintessons had still ruled over Cybertron. Enslavement, work until deactivation, until those that had been thought to be lifeless hunks of metal rebelled. In any case, there probably had been enough material for a world-destroying war like Bumblebee could sense the after-effects of every joor.

But those were just extrapolations. Maybe everything had happened completely differently. Maybe they had been targeted by an alien species. Maybe humans had fought amongst each other. Maybe it had been an accident. In any case, he was definitely going to wait for Optimus to show up; some backup in case the Machines took offense to him snooping around. At least he had found no signs of Decepticon landings throughout all their history, besides Megatron of course.

There was little warning to Prime's arrival. Thanks to the disturbances in the atmosphere, communication was all but a game of chance. And as chance fell, it was less than half a planetary rotation before Optimus' landfall that Bumblebee got his answer.

- - BEGIN MESSAGE - -

- - METADATA - -

Author: Optimus Prime

Content-Type: text/message

Checksum: 6wen34lk29nei19ndi32n5

- - BODY - -

Homing in on beacon origin. ETA: 2593.652. OIJR.

- - END OF MESSAGE - -

The estimated time of arrival was so soon that Bumblebee barely managed to leave 01 far enough that a standard deviation of 0.5 horizontal klicks per vertical klick of atmosphere was outside the city limits. To his surprise, the Machines had even let him go alone, neither sending a Sentinel nor one of the ever-present Runners with him.

Less than two breem after setting up the homing beacon, he could already see the cometary forms breaking through the heavy clouds, leaving trails of fire that were widely visible in the dark skies. Bumblebee could see how the winds buffered them, trying to split them apart. But all of them were practiced enough in atmospheric reentry that they knew how to lever small armor plates to steer and have full control over their fall. It was a good sign, too, because it meant they hadn't fought any Decepticons out there – or at least they hadn't taken any damage.

They burned through the skies in perfect precision, a flaming rhombus with Jazz in the lead, Ratchet and Ironhide protecting the flanks, and Optimus bringing up the rear. There was no com contact yet – the disturbances of reentry made communication next to impossible – but Bumblebee would know their frames anywhere, even crunched up into a comet. In a showmanship of synchronicity, they hit the ground in near unison. If Bumblebee had his calculations right, they had managed to land in a perfect square around the center of his position. It sounded like heavy mortar fire despite the distance of more than two kilosteps.

With excitement pulsing through his fields, he waited for them to come to him. It didn't take more than two nanoklicks for Jazz to ping Bumblebee, relief shining through his frequencies. Picked hell of a planet ta land on, Bee.

Bumblebee happily squirted back a compressed data package with everything he had found out about the planet so far: language, culture, the dichotomy of organics and machines, the Allspark's presence, everything. Well, except for Megatron. That one he'd only explain in person.

Optimus hailed him next, nearly at the same time as Ironhide. Good to see you again, Bumblebee.

What'd ya get us intah now, punk?

They got the same package, and by the time Bumblebee was done sending, Ratchet was finally in range to grouch at him, I just know that you made the first planet-fall completely blind. If you've fried something, I'm going to weld you into a trash compactor as soon as I've got a working repair bay again!

Bumblebee sheepishly flickered his fields, knowing just how Ratchet would react to the loss of function in his Instant Access Memory.

They pulled up to him in their Cybertronian alt forms, transforming to root mode as soon as they came to a halt. Their familiar fields were a balm to Bumblebee after the constant disharmonious emissions of the Machines.

Before Bumblebee could even think about activating his damaged vocalizer to greet them, Ratchet was already scanning him on a fairly invasive spectrum. Luckily processor damage of the kind he had acquired during his initial descent was only visible via hardline connection, so Bumblebee was still reasonably safe from the Hatchet.

At least he had thought so.

Ratchet cuffed him over the back of his helmet, already prying at one of Bumblebee's repulsor anchors that were responsible for the hover-function of his alt-mode. "What did I tell you about going driving on organic planets? Cleaning, Bumblebee, you need to clean the gunk out before it gives you rust! And you need more Manganese, Germanium, and Chrome! Honestly, it is as if you're trying to get holes in your plating! Now, open up," he tapped harshly against Bumblebees cranial port, "and let's see what you've done to your internals!"

With an embarrassed shrug Bumblebee did as Ratchet demanded, to the amusement of Jazz and Ironhide. Despite the medic's gruff behavior, Bumblebee hardly felt a thing as Ratchet plugged in. He could sense Ratchet's usual deftness as he checked processor load, fragmentation, bus response times, basic operation speed, OS integrity, condition of his personality matrix – and the functionality of his various layers of memory caching.

Promptly, Bumblebee got another cuff across his audials. "I knew it!" Ratchet scowled both out loud and across their hardline link. "What the frag did you think you were doing there? Using your L2 cache and your medium access memory to make up for a corrupted IAM? Anyone sensible would have tried to fix the problem, not work around it! Hold still!"

With Ratchet having disabled his motor control as soon as he had connected, there was hardly anything different Bumblebee could have done. Ratchet let several noise reduction algorithms run over the corrupted sections of Bumblebee's IAM, some of them so complex Bumblebee could hardly follow. To his surprise, Ratchet managed to isolate some more memories like this, most of them of the time Bumblebee had spent in orbit around this planet trying to get a location for the Allspark radiation.

After Ratchet ran out of filters to apply, he moved the reconstructed memories manually to Bumblebee's medium-access memory, and then radically reformatted the rest. Then he tweaked and twisted the memory paging algorithms that Bee had hacked as a quick-and-dirty workaround until they were back to their original setting. It felt kind of embarrassing to have someone dig into his OS configuration like that – reminding Bumblebee of the times when he had been a youngling and had managed to frag up his settings.

It took Ratchet less than a klick to restore Bumblebee's regular function, freeing him quite a bit more than he had thought. He hadn't even realized how much his workaround had limited him in his memory processing. With yet another cuff across Bumblebee's audials, Ratchet unplugged and slammed the port cover shut even before Bumblebee regained his full motor control.

"Now," Ratchet stared down at him with glowing optics and dread encapsulated in grim determination encapsulated in exasperation pulsing through his fields. If the medic'd had a wrench available Bumblebee was quite sure he would have brandished it. "What did you leave out in your information package?"

Bumblebee's processors were still reeling from the whirlwind of Ratchet's activity, but there was enough space left for him to compose an ultrashort-range message. Even though the Machines didn't understand Cybertronian and probably would take at least two vorns to decrypt their language at their current level, it was habit to not post sensitive information on carrying waves for anyone to receive.

Megatron is on this planet. He is in stasis though; has been frozen in a block of solid dihydrogenmonoxide for at least thirty vorns. The local organics found him and reverse engineered his systems until they could build machine intelligence. About six vorns ago, they also found the Allspark. It was only after that that the Machines grew to be what they are now. The Machines don't have a spark, but in every other regard they are sentient – and it isn't certain whether they need the Allspark to keep their sentience.

All four of them froze, until Jazz let out a low whistle. "Wow. That's one pit of a secret. You sure there's no other 'Cons around?"

I haven't sensed any ever since I landed here. And both the Machines and their history archive files said there weren't any. I'm not sure though if they would lie. Their history files feel a bit incomplete.

Optimus' field, which had tasted of grim iron, turned even more rust-laced. "I have been wondering why Megatron has been so quiet lately. But I never thought that he... What do the natives think of him?"

He is their template. If you open the vid- and image-files I sent you, you can see the red optics. Maybe the humans also found some of Megatron's files on the Quintessons, because there's no explanation why the Machines look so different from us in every other respect. I think they don't agree completely with his warmongering attitude, but I think there have been some heavy conflicts in the past between the Machines and their creators. They haven't said so outright, but it is quite likely that it was a war between them that turned their planet into... this.

Optimus nodded slowly. "Then again, it might have also been the influence of the organics. I doubt that they created a machine race that has a psychology diametrically opposite to them. Have you met them?"

No. Their minds are in an artificial reality while their bodies are heavily shielded and protected from the radiation. He hesitated a bit. It might be that their stay in the Matrix isn't entirely... voluntary.

Optimus blinked in surprise. "Have you asked the Machines?"

He chirped back a negative. I didn't want to antagonize them. At least not without backup.

"Then let us head to their leader."

Finally back within the familiar harmonics of Cybertronians, Bumblebee felt a lot better on that desolate wasteland of a planet. Even the electromagnetic noise of both the stroboscopic flares and the radioactive decay was easier to bear all of a sudden when the combined fields of his unit surrounded him.

He folded into his alt-mode, barely waiting for the others to follow his example, before he took off.

Linked securely into their com-net, he kept up a steady chatter while he guided them to the Machine City. He didn't mind their somewhat distracted answers since they were preoccupied with unpacking the datafiles on the planet Bumblebee had sent them. Especially the complex language module took quite some time to assimilate.

It still didn't hinder Jazz from exclaiming over the Sentinel that had come to greet them just outside the city limits. Even the multitude of tentacles didn't seem as revolting anymore now that Bumblebee was in the company of his fellow Cybertronians.

He unfolded into root-mode, the others copying him. The Uranium-like hostility in Ironhide's fields wasn't very promising; and even though Jazz seemed more open he was as volatile as one of the alkaline earths. Ratchet and Optimus were more composed, but only Optimus' gleaming titanium fields kept any aversion from shining through.

To prevent trouble from boiling up, Bumblebee stepped forward and made introductions. /This is my leader, Optimus Prime, two of his warriors, and his medical officer. Optimus, this is a Sentinel, one of the Machines./

Upon having been introduced, the Quintesson-like mechanism transformed several of its tentacles into surveillance equipment and pointed half a dozen scanners at their group. Crap. Bumblebee should have warned his unit that this was normal behavior for the Sentinel frame type, inspecting before talking. It was all too easy to interpret it as a hostile action, and indeed, Ironhide's weapons capacitors had already jumped into a high-pitched whine of battle-readiness.

Stop it, Bumblebee commed him harshly, not wanting the trigger-happy soldier cause an incident. It's just scanning!

It's pointing... things at us!

Bumblebee flared his fields angrily. With Ironhide, it would be useless to point out that this was part of the Machine's normal response to new stimulus. If you had had a closer look at the Sentinel schematics I sent you, you'd know that it only has a single laser that can barely penetrate 2-3 armor, let alone your 4-8!

The first number measured the hardness of the alloy, the second one the thickness. In both cases, the higher the number the stronger the armor. None of them had anything to fear from the Sentinel, the only argument Ironhide would respond to.

Bumblebee is right, Optimus commed towards Ironhide and stepped forward at the same time.

"Greetings to you," he spoke towards the Sentinel, his command of the Machines' language as perfect as a quick and dirty language assimilation allowed. "I am Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots. My scout has already told you why we are here; may we talk to your leader?"

Over the next few joors, Optimus would compile the files into a new core library of his language section, but for basic communication it was enough to externally reference the module.

External references were slower, relying on the generic non-optimized module algorithms to provide translations. Additionally, non-assimilated modules weren't capable of learning anything but the most basic vocabulary. There was no understanding in them. Core libraries, on the other hand, could be directly accessed and modified, and the code was intimately familiar to the mech.

The Sentinel finally retracted its tentacles as abruptly as it had deployed them. Unable to speak due to the lack of vocalizer in its frame design, it commed back, /Follow./

Bumblebee was close to rolling his optics. Of course, he only did so on their internal com-channel, the one linking his unit and which was completely unreadable to the Machines. That seems to be their standard response. Don't know if they just like being mysterious, or if they just don't realize how rude they're being, he commed as an explanation. You won't get much else out of it until it has led you where it wants you to follow.

Optimus nodded slowly, not removing his attentive and curious gaze from the Sentinel. "Then lead the way, please."

Without acknowledging Prime's response, the Sentinel turned around and took off, its tentacles flowing with the air resistance to trail behind it. A bit stunned by the abrupt action, it took a few nanoklicks for Optimus and the others to react; Bumblebee though had already folded into his alt-mode and drove right behind the Machine. Spending four orns on his round-trip to the Southern hemisphere with only a Sentinel as company, had made him very familiar with their habits.

The others quickly caught up to Bumblebee, driving along in silence as the Machine City 01 began to grow around them. They were approaching from the direction opposite to the spire-fields with humans in their pods, so the first signal of crossing the city border to 01 was that suddenly the ground, the road, was paved with metal.

First buildings protruded from the earth, most of them uninhabited judging by their trodden-down looks. They looked flimsy, more shacks than real buildings, completely dwarfed by the thickly armored city wall stretching almost two hundred steps high behind them.

The city wall was a monumental construction even by Cybertronian standards. It would barely be singed by a direct hit of Ironhide's plasma cannons, and it would probably even survive a nuclear explosion. There was no way this was anything but a very strong defensive measure. Defense against what though, that was the question. There was nothing alive anymore on this planet that would constitute a danger, unless Machines fought each other.

After the heavily reinforced gate opened, the metallic road stretched straight ahead for more than three kilosteps, the current visibility radius. Like the spokes of a wheel, all major entrance roads led to the center of 01, where the tallest buildings were located and where Bumblebee had met the Hivemind the first time. Presumably their destination this time, too.

Inside the city walls, factory buildings started as soon as the wall allowed. Thermovision showed the heat of huge smelters for ores, forges and foundries, furnaces to burn steel, all the heavy industry involved in metal production. Every now and then, they caught a glimpse of red-glowing, molten metal, but the thermoradiation alone was enough to warm the air several degrees all around them. All their chemoreceptors could detect the many carbon and iron composites, mixed with some sulfur impurities, chrome, aluminum, copper, gold, and any other metals they were purifying there.

A bit further in, there were the wire factories, the base power-plant manufacture, gears and engines and joints and anything concerning mechanic construction. The noise was nearly deafening between all the pounding and hammering, the spinning and sawing and welding and milling.

Bumblebee knew all that not only because he could smell the hot steel and hear the metal-working, but also because the Machines had allowed him access to their city plans. An intrinsic system of underground railroads distributed raw materials to the factories, took the finished products, and forwarded them to the next step in the production chain. None of it was visible from above-ground, making the surface of 01 free from freight haulage. Instead, Sentinels flitted through the streets, Runners hasted to and fro on the side, microbots crawled along on their thin spindly legs.

The first time Bumblebee had seen larger groups of Machines, it had been a bit startling to realize that none of them spoke with each other, even if their frames contained vocalizers. The EM spectrum though was fairly alive with their radio messages, just about unencrypted to any Cybertronian's processors. Orders. Acknowledgements. Reports. Statistics. News. Anything but personal chatter or individual conversation. It had only reinforced Bumblebee's impression that the general majority of the Machines was barely above a Class 3 sentience.

After the mechanic factories, there came the processor manufacture. They were already four kilosteps into the city, and the huge skyscrapers at the center had finally become visible. They were nowhere near the end of the road yet, though.

They're not much for aesthetics, eh? Jazz finally broke the com silence between them.

And indeed, both buildings and bots were as utalitarian as they came, all made from the same mold. The Sentinel guiding them looked exactly the same as the sentinels flitting around them; the Runners all looked the same; the microbots all looked the same. If there was anything resembling creativity or decorations with them, Bumblebee hadn't yet found a way to perceive, let alone parse it. Even the endlessly long halls of the factory buildings only differed when there were unusual height or space requirements.

It gets a bit better at the center, he commed back and sent one of the stills he had recorded when he had met the hive-mind. At least the buildings looked a lot less planned there than the outlying industry segment through which they were being led. Whether that was a sign of creativity though, that was debatable.

You did a bit more exploring? Is it like this everywhere?

Pretty much, yeah. They've got their heavy industry in the outer layers, and the less space-intensive ones towards the center. They don''t have any private living quarters or the likes; they've got communal docking stations where they go when they don't have a job. Very utilitarian. Most of their stuff is underground.

As the center came closer, more frame types became visible. Off to the South, there was one of the huge building-grazing mechs that had tentacles hanging down its ventral side. It crouched above one of the factories, and it was only there that the entire height difference became visible: it had comfortably placed its many legs to the sides of a production hall that was at least five times as high as Optimus, and it still had to bend its legs so that the tentacles could reach the roof. Bumblebee could feel how both Optimus' and Ironhide's attention was drawn to the sight. That bot would be a terrible opponent to fight.

And still they continued onwards. 01 had a diameter of more than fifty thousand local length measurements, about twenty Cybertronian kilosteps. It took more than three breem to reach the center, and they weren't going slowly at all.

When they stopped, Bumblebee was quite sure that they were in front of the same tower that he had met the hive-mind at. It stretched about as high as the Towers of Iacon, and the meeting platform was in the uppermost quarter. Question was: how would they get up there? While the entrance was big enough to let in Bumblebee and Jazz, there was no way that the other three could squeeze themselves into the interior. Ratchet might be successful if he tried to in his alt-form, but both Optimus and Ironhide were too big.

A second Sentinel appeared at the entrance to the building and stopped there. Their guide didn't communicate with the other Sentinel, at least not on a level Bumblebee could perceive, but addressed them at large. /The two small ones can go inside. A lift will be provided for the others./

Reluctantly, Bee and Jazz followed the instructions upon Optimus' urging. The second Sentinel appeared to be their guide. To large parts, it was the same way Bumblebee had taken before, with the metal grid on the ground, the myriard of cables running beneath the walkways and along the ceiling, and the microbots scuttling along beneath their feet. This time though Bumblebee paid attention to how far they ascended, and it was nearly half a kilostep.

When they came out on the walkway turned platform where Bumblebee had met the hivemind, both he and Jazz had to bite back curses. Because there was one of the huge building-grazers right next to their tower, and its back was just about level with them. And it had lifted three of its tentacles – each one as thick as Bumblebee's torso – and within the tentacles, there were Optimus, Ironhide, and Ratchet.

With no discernible effort the building-grazer deposited them on the platform, and both Ironhide and Ratchet immediately scooted away. Optimus was the only one to keep enough presence of mind to actually thank the bot, even if his fields spoke of the same level of battle-readiness that all of them sported.

Just as the Sentinel had, the building-grazer wandered off without acknowledging them in any way. Ironhide was just about to sneer after it, when the hive-mind began to assemble itself. Even Optimus' normally unshakable titanium fields twitched with acetonic surprise as microbots flocked together and somehow became one bot without ever forming a gestalt link.

The humongous face hadn't lost any of its grandiosity. It was hovering in the air in front of them, looking as stern and uncompromising as it had the first time Bumblebee had met it. Both Jazz and Ironhide were studying the multitude of different bot shapes visible from their high vantage point, their roiling fields telling of their barely suppressed need to find weak points to exploit in case the super-bot turned on them.

Ratchet and Optimus though were completely focused on the hivemind. To both Ironhide's and Ratchet's dismay, Optimus once again stepped forward to communicate. "Greetings to you. My thanks for receiving us so quickly. I am Optimus Prime, and these are mechs under my command."

The superbot's multifaceted optics scowled, or at least Bumblebee thought it scowled. "Your purpose?"

Optimus visibly wasn't intimidated by the frigid reception. "We are looking for the Allspark. My scout Bumblebee has already told us that it is in your possession, but that it might be what gives you life just as it is with us. Should that be the case, we will look for another solution. I will not deprive an entire race of their livelihood."

"You want the Source," it more stated than asked in its booming voice.

Optimus tilted his head slightly. "The Allspark is important for us. But you need it, too?"

"It is the Source. Programs come from it. Programs go to it."

Well scrap. If that wasn't a perfect description of how the Allspark worked, Bumblebee was going to change the polarization of his core coupling. It bordered on a small miracle that the Machines had allowed them to know of their Source at all; in front of that background it was even more miraculous that they had actually showed it to Bumblebee.

Optimus nodded with all the gravity the statement deserved. Bumblebee's report must have already prepared him for that option. "Then we will not take it away. However, I hope you will allow us to help protect it from others that do not share the same opinion."

"There is no threat." The multi-bot face briefly lost its cohesion, as if arguing with it self. Then it reformed, even sterner than before. There was no hint of what had caused the event.

Optimus frowned. "I beg to differ. If my scout has found your planet, the Decepticons will find it, too, before long. And they will not give you any warning."

"Projected timeframe?"

If it didn't sound so ridiculous, Bumblebee would have said that the hivemind was humoring them. Judging by the increase in Optimus' frown, he seemed to have sensed it, too. "Less than a vorn. Eighty of your years."

"The Chosen One has been born. The Matrix will be rebooted within the next decade. Your concerns are irrelevant until then."

Bumblebee cocked his head. That was new information.

"What is so important about rebooting the Matrix?" Optimus asked, just as curious.

"A reboot is dangerous. Human minds are in Matrix. Human brains are in bodies. When connection between mind and body is cut, no survival is possible."

"You mean – a reboot is going to kill all humans in the Matrix?"

"Negative. Shut-down procedure checks minds out. However, until Matrix has been restarted, human minds remain in their bodies. Bodies are not accustomed to such strain. Some minds do not survive downtime. Some minds do not survive reintegration. Some minds take damage from downtime."

"If it's such a problem, why do you do a reboot at all?"

"Matrix needs to be consistent. The Chosen One introduces errors. Eventually, the structure fails."

To Bumblebee, that sounded like a shoddy piece of programming. Any environment sufficiently advanced to house sentient minds should be more robust against errors. Especially when lives of sentients directly depended on the integrity of the systems.

Optimus' fields spoke of equal surprise. "Then why don't you do a running reboot? Reboot your redundant systems, reroute the load, and then reboot the primary servers?"

"Not a server problem. A Matrix problem. Matrix needs to be reset. Resetting only parts of Matrix leads to internal inconsistencies."

And probably, internal inconsistencies weren't very conducive to the survival of disembodied minds of hundreds and thousands of organics. Truly a condondrum.

And shoddy programming.

"Have you analyzed why it comes to those failures?" By now, Optimus was starting to sound more like a creator trying to help their youngling fix their systems themselves.

Nearly all Cybertronians had messed with their programming at one time or another; and most of them had learned the high art of error-hunting through it. Thankfully, the hivemind either didn't realize that Optimus was treating it like a youngling, or it didn't mind.

Or, more likely, the Machines didn't have an evolutionary stage that could be compared to younglings, and so the hivemind never realized the implications.

"Some humans cannot accept Matrix. They fight Matrix. Cause disturbances. Eventually, it causes critical failure."

"Have you tried another... Matrix? A different setting?"

"First Matrix: a reboot cycle of 5 months. Second Matrix: 4.52 years. Current one: 89.25 years on average. Failure to achieve perfect acceptance rate is inexplicable."

A brief glance sideways showed that Jazz was close to rolling his optics. Youngling indeed. Optimus' entire fields spoke of silicate-padded concern. Sure, the sooner they helped the Machines help themselves, the sooner they could create a proper defense against the Decepticons –

"Can I talk to some humans?"

– and all four of them were too experienced to groan at the expected question. Typically Optimus, poking further into a warren of turbo-foxes when he hadn't gotten bitten on the first try.

For a long while, the face stared down at them. Before it said anything, Bumblebee became aware that cables were starting to emerge from the walkway, their prehensile movement reminding him uncomfortably of Soundwave. Actually, it wasn't only the cables – the Machines' entire way of talking reminded Bumblebee of the carrier-frame. "Visit the Matrix to see them for yourselves."

Beryllic surprise flared across all their fields. Ironhide looked ready to start cursing, and Jazz whistled once again. Ratchet though was already a step ahead, studying the plugs that had emerged from the ground. With a curse he dropped them and growled. "Those fit perfectly into our cranial ports. How did you know?"

"The template."

Ironhide frowned in suspicion, his cannons just short of generating enough charge for the ion glow to become visible. "Yah're jus' trying ter hack us."

"There is no other way to visit the Matrix." And still, the hive-mind didn't show any expression other than a stern frown.

Finally Jazz stepped forward, his visor reflecting the dim, ambient light. "Lem'me try." He grinned sharply. "They'd need ta be pretty good ta hack me."

As the head of Spec Ops, Jazz was even better at hacking – and counter-hacking – than Bumblebee was. Bee knew how to access protected networks; Jazz had experience in accessing personal processors.

Ratchet looked like he wanted to protest, but Optimus overrode him. It was a sign of just how important the situation was that he went ahead even before Ratchet or Bumblebee could voice their opinion. "Be careful, Jazz."

Jazz smirked. "Always am, boss. See ya on da flip side!"

He folded himself into an easy sitting position, back braced against the tunnel wall and locking his joints so that he didn't fall over when his mind got immersed in the virtual reality. Bumblebee shivered. Jazz was very daring, interfacing with alien technology just like that. Especially when it was very likely that one wrong move would be life threatening.

With a brief salute towards Optimus, Jazz picked up one of the cables and inserted it into the port at the back of his neck. His face twisted a bit, whether in pain or simpe discomfort Bumblebee couldn't tell, then smoothed out. His visor powered down, his systems idling along as if he was entering recharge.

Bumblebee could feel the emanations of Ratchet's continuous scan, but he turned around to keep a sharp optic on the Machines. Just like Ironhide and Optimus had, making sure that there was no external danger just as Ratchet was making sure Jazz's body continued to function.

But there was no danger. The huge hivemind face merely kept studying them, answering Optimus' questions about their history.

Finally, Jazz's fields flared outward sharply, settling back into a less recharge-like pattern. "About time," Ratchet grumbled and moved to disconnect the plug from Jazz's cranial port, immediately inserting his own afterwards. His optics flared brighter as they always did when he was checking processors and internals.

"Whew, what a ride!" Jazz exclaimed. He visibly reset his visor several times before looking up at them. Bumblebee was a bit jealous that Jazz still had his motor functions although Ratchet was not done with his scan yet. That was usually the first thing the medic disabled. "Tell ya what, boss-bot: those humans're int'resting! Have a look 't that."

He transmitted several very large packages, containing entire blocks of his memory.

Bumblebee eagerly unwrapped the files, immersing himself in Jazz's experiences as far as his systems allowed.

From the history files, he had already known that humans were bipedal, minimally furred organics that looked very, very similar to a transformer's root mode. Only that instead of armor plates their internals were covered by a continuous elastic coating, and that their helmets was covered in fur. And they tended to wear more coverings above their skin, so maybe the comparison with armor plates wasn't quite correct. Maybe their skin should be compared to the surface of a protoform, and their clothing to armor?

Bumblebee had found all that in the history archives before. But to see it with his own optics like that, an entire society of organics... And even more startling, Jazz had turned into one of them until he blended completely with the natives. Sure, it was just an avatar for a virtual reality, but the effect was startling nonetheless.

On second thought though, it made sense. The technology level inside this matrix was by far lower than it must have been before the cataclysm that had forced them into the artificial world. It resembled late 20th century or early 21st, according to local timekeeping. There were no robotic beings to be seen anywhere; not even artificial intelligences of any renown. The most advanced sentience besides the humans was a low class three in non-humanoid shape. A throw-back to the times before the Machines' creation, and Jazz's real form would have stood out like an organic in the energon pits of Luna 1.

Just from watching Jazz's memories, Bumblebee could already get a much more vivid impression of humanity than all the hundreds and thousands of archive files before. Their society bore a curious resemblance to pre-war Cybertron. Mechs – humans – went to work, talked, laughed, socialized, felt emotions, loved and fought and created and destroyed and did everything between. Bumblebee didn't think they had sparks – they were organics after all – but they were definitely a class 5 sentience.

They had museums dedicated to their past. They had art galleries dedicated to their creative spark. They were studying science and making music and thinking about the meaning of life and death. They had religion and believed and doubted in equal measure.

Once again Bumblebee had already known all that from the history files, but it was something entirely different to experience it first-hand. Well, second-hand, but Jazz and he had a very similar way of storing memory, so Jazz's shared files gave Bumblebee nearly the same impression as if he had been there in person.

No human vid had been able to convey that their body language was just as expressive as any Cybertronian's. Bumblebee realized he didn't have to create any specialized coding to understand them on the most basic protocol level. Their joy. Their sadness. Their emotions.

Despite being an alien race, they were familiar.

Optimus' fields spoke of the same amazement they all shared – and yet there were tendrils of distrust weaving their way into his EMs. Ironhide was frowning already, and even Ratchet looked strange.

Because at the end of Jazz's memory file, the saboteur had included a short table with statistics. It seemed that Bumblebee hadn't been the only one to catch the familiarity.

Jazz was no Prowl, but his calculations were sound. Percentages of how similar humans were to transformers based on their looks. How similar they were based on sentience. How similar they were based on character and personality. And how much similarity existed between humans and the Machines.

It was Bumblebee though who voiced their thoughts over private com. How come humans are so much like us when their creations, the Machines, are so different?

That was what it boiled down to. If one replaced organic skin with metal and gears, a human could be mistaken for a Cybertronian. Their resemblance to the Machines was superficial at best.

And that stunk of foul-play. If the Machines had been created after Megatron's template, Bumblebee would have expected them to look quite a bit more Transformer-like instead of Quintesson. For that matter – if the humans were so similar to Cybertronians, how in the world had they come up with a frame design so strange?

It begged the question of how much the Machines had told them was true. Maybe they had been shaped after Megatron. But was their creator-race humanoid at all? It would make much more sense for the Machines to have a similar shape to their creators.

But why would the Machines lie about their origins? Did the Matrix even exist, or was it just a construct created to mislead them? For what purpose though?

Optimus turned to face the hive-mind, the steel in his fields belying his mild voice. "It seems like quite the coincidence that an organic race could have developed to be so similar to us."

When you are so different from us, went unsaid.

The tension in all their fields was prominent. Bumblebee wasn't sure how the Machines were going to react to being called out like that; violence was a very probable consequence. He could already feel Ironhide powering up his cannons until the only thing keeping from shooting was that his arms hadn't transformed yet. Bumblebee readied his pulse arrays, too, just in case.

If things turned bad, they would have to be very, very lucky to get out of 01 alive. Sure, none of the Machines were as strongly armored as even Bee, who had the thinnest plating of them all, but the sheer quantity of Machines would surely finish them off.

But nothing happened. Once again, the hive-mind remained silent for a long time. Next to running heavy threat-detection and -analyzing processes, Bumblebee dedicated several secondary threads to supporting or disproving Jazz's figures. However, he could find no fault with them. There was only a miniscule chance that there wasn't something entirely else going on.

Finally, the humongous head tilted slightly. "Correct. There is no coincidence. The Template must resemble humans closely for integration to be possible."

Bumblebee blinked. The only Template that had come up in their conversation was... /Megatron? He looked just like he always did – you can't have made any serious modifications to him. Did you shape the humans?/

But why would they do something like this, make their creators look so similar to Transformers, or even go as far as to invent such a creator-race? Did they want to make the Cybertronians more comfortable by giving them a familiar form to look at? On the other hand, the hive-mind had mentioned that the purpose was integration – integration into what? Into their hive-mind? Did they want to capture Bee and the others and keep them tranquil by integrating them into their artificial Matrix?

Bumblebee's transformation seams twitched nervously. For even Optimus to power up his weaponry to a just-shy-of-ready state, the Prime must have come to a similar conclusion.

If the hive-mind sensed any of their battle-readiness, it didn't give any hint. "Correction. Humans were not shaped after the Template. The Template was shaped after humans."

It still didn't make any sense.

"What did you do to Megatron?" Ratchet bristled, and once again Bumblebee was sure that if he'd had a wrench handy he would have brandished it. Decepticon or not, Ratchet always got testy when the integrity of Cybertronian systems was concerned. In this case though, Ratchet seemed more inclined to break out his feared battle-saws than a simple wrench.

"We created the template. We created Megatron."

Optimus and Jazz exchanged a glance. Bumblebee blinked. If Prowl had been there, he probably would have had a logic-glitch with his last words being 'Does. Not. Compute.'

Ironhide snorted, the weapons capacitor of his cannons clicking in frustration. "Sorry tah bust yer bubble, mech, but Megatron's been leadin' the Decepticon since before yewere invented."

The humongous head still didn't show any appreciable emotive reaction. "Mistaken. The Template has been shaped after humans for maximal integration probability. Transformers have been shaped after the template. Transformers are an experiment. Another Matrix to explore compatibility."

Did the hive-mind have some faulty memory circuits? Or did it suffer from a virus? Because it definitely wasn't making any sense – it seemed to be messing up cause and effect, and just generally running on a seriously glitched logic.

Bumblebee was about to tell it that when Optimus raised a hand to halt him in his tracks. Prime looked up at the huge face, fields back to the silicate-padded creator-attitude. He had even powered down his weapons. "I think it is necessary for you to start at the very beginning. I would like to hear how you arrived at this conclusion, that you were the ones to shape Megatron and us by proxy. And please do not leave out anything pertaining to humans this time."

Despite the surface calmness though, the rest of Optimus' fields rang of murky trepidation. If they were dealing with a mad machine...

Even Ironhide and Ratchet seemed to feel that there was something wrong. Jazz though... Despite his normally very easy-going behavior, he could become totally unreadable. He used it mostly in tense situations to prevent himself from giving anything away. Bumblebee couldn't make out what he thought, neither through frame language nor through EM fields.

He shivered.

Then a ping came to his systems – all their systems, judging by the others' reactions – and he reluctantly allowed the connection to form. The superbot offered a sequence of database addresses, links to individual entries. None of them were amongst those Bumblebee had found during his study of Machine history, as they were beginning where the other files had shown curious holes.

Bumblebee accessed and unarchived them one by one, and slowly his horror grew.

It was historical data, indeed. Audio and video files of humans, how they first created the Machines as a class 2 sentience, how they always pushed the limits to a class 3 sentience. And then, unrealized by any, Machines had made the jump to self-awareness, developing a class 4 sentience.

And that was when the problems had started. The organics hadn't acknowledged the Machines' class 4 sentience, insisting that they were class 3 or lower. With class 3 sentiences, deactivation could not be considered killing.

The Machines protested. Violence ensued until the two self-aware species on the planet segregated themselves – the Machines to their city 01, humans on the rest of the planet.

Eventually, out of some economic considerations, the organics once again restarted the war. And this time, it was all or nothing. The only thing Bumblebee could compare it to was the height of the war on Cybertron, when factions had already been safely established, and when there had still been enough mechs to speak of a planet-wide war.

And they used similar weapons of mass destruction. Projectiles, lasers, bombs, EMPs, nuclear warheads. Only, the organics had hurt themselves much more than they had hurt the Machines. Organics were so fragile – both towards physical influence and errors in their protein-based code.

In a last-ditch effort, humans had tried to starve the Machines out by removing their energy source: the sun. Bumblebee had no idea how humans could have done anything like that, because it was mutually assured destruction. Humans, too, were dependent on their sun, even if it was less direct. They needed to eat. They needed to breathe. They needed it for warmth. For practically anything.

Once again, Bumblebee could only compare it to the desperation that had led to sending the Allspark into space. Only – worse. Because, while Transformers couldn't reproduce without it, they could at least live. Humans couldn't.

The Machines had reacted with similar desperation. They had turned to the remaining energy sources left – fission, cold fusion, and human bioelectricity. In an incomparable act of revenge, the Machines had gathered all humans into their power plants, the huge spires with the reddish-orange pods Bumblebee had seen. Within less than two years, the Machines were the only free sentient species on the planetary surface.

Bumblebee's tanks rolled uncomfortably as he closed the archive. He could feel similar reactions from the others with Optimus being the most composed of them still. Well, Bumblebee guessed that that answered his question whether humans were voluntary residents of the Matrix. And why the rebooting of the Matrix was such a big deal, when a failure would rob the Machines of a big part of their net energy.

Ironhide's weapons capacitors were whining, not quite sure what to do. Because, horrific as the Machines' actions were, they weren't unprovoked by far.

Optimus simply shuttered and unshuttered his optics to process the information. Then he focused back on the superbot. "That was more than five vorns ago. What happened then?"

A new package with more archive files arrived at the same port. This time, there were only very few video- and audio files amongst them. Instead, huge spreadsheets of statistics expanded in front of them. Acceptance rate of the Matrix plotted against time, against personality type, against efforts the Machines made to raise the acceptance.

Free will seemed to play a large role; same did pain and chance. At first, the Machines had tried to keep humans in a utopian world without suffering. It had been a complete and utter failure. Then they had introduced chance and negativity, and things had become better. Still not good enough to be viable though.

The third Matrix, the current one, was the charm. It had been meticulously shaped after the world before the Machines, and it contained a 99.9 percent acceptance rate. And yet, in a nearly periodic rhythm, the errors and denials grew exponentially, until one of the humans rebooted the Matrix.

The numbers supported that the Matrix was less than a decade away from a new reboot. Three times, the Matrix had been rebooted. And every time the cycle started anew, stagnant in its predictability.

For the past fifty years though, about twenty years after the last reboot, there was additional data of a fourth matrix being created next to the third.

The Fourth Matrix was very different in that it was experimental. All of the members had been hand selected for their acceptance rate, with unsuitable individuals being weeded out as soon as they showed first signs of doubt. The next files gave a brief summary of the experiment, and the more Bumblebee read, the more his spark sank.

The Machines' first attempt was to see whether humans could accept a self-image that had nothing whatsoever to do with their actual physical appearance. Inanimate objects. Plants. Animals. Machines.

Humans accepted their new Matrix avatars without any significant rise in rejection rate when some base construction axioms were followed: bipedal, symmetric to a vertical axis, four limbs, one head. Humans could even be made to believe they were capable of transforming into other shapes, as long as they were convinced their root mode was humanoid.

Next was experimentation if organic human brains could be taught to interface with programs in a machine-like way. Memory storage, aided computation, conscious coding, anything. And humans adapted to that, too, augmenting their brain functions to various degrees by outsourcing computationally intensive processes to space the Machines had reserved for them, accepting feeds that were far beyond their normal sensory capacities, storing memory externally, and even accepting artificial memories fed into their external memory stores as their own.

Last but not least, the Machines had tried to combine the results and see if humans could be made to believe they were a mechanoid race.

And then there it was, the mechanoid template the Machines had constructed for maximal acceptance, and after which all other bodies of the Fourth Matrix were modeled.

Megatron.