not_toothfairy

Entry tags:

1982

It's a long slagging way to Earth from where Cybertron used to be. Most of the trip is in the past by now. When you're an organism that measures its lifespan in numbers that require scientific notation by human standards, a couple of decades left hardly mean anything at all.

Or they shouldn't mean anything at all, anyway. Nobody ever makes it to the end of the trip as placid as they were in the middle- and Ironhide's got another reason to look forward to Earth now. One that he figures deserves a crack at coming out of stasis lock once in a while.

"Hey, you," are the first words Bob hears when Ironhide reactivates his particular unit of storage. "Wake up. It's been ten years."

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The storage sector is yet another featureless box, empty except for Bob himself. The Guardian was sealed inside mere moments before--or so it seems to him.

"...I'm sorry, run that by me again?"

"Ten years- Cybertronian ones, anyway. Dunno how they measure up to Earth years."

We're going to assume they're a pretty close match. It's easier.

"You're joking. I just got in here..." Bob shakes his head. "You said we were thirty-five years away from Earth. Why are you waking me up now? Is something wrong?"

"That's why they call it stasis lock. Total suspension. And the only thing wrong is I'm slaggin' bored. I can't even raise a sensor ghost from the Decepticons on my screens..."

"Oh." A beat. "You, uh, wanna talk or something?"

"Might as well," says Ironhide. "Think you could tell me anything worth knowing about Earth?"

This isn't the first time Bob's been a guest in someone else's brain. But before it was with someone he knew and trusted. Ironhide is still, to him, an almost-total stranger, and Bob is acutely aware that the Autobot could delete or rewrite him with a thought. He can, perhaps, be forgiven for being a little nervous.

"I'll tell you what I can. There's a lot of stuff I don't know for sure, though."

"Still gonna be more than what I've got now," grumbles Ironhide. "I'll trade you afterwards for stuff about Cybertron, long as you don't mind it all bein' about a place that's been destroyed."

"Your homeworld's been destroyed?"

Bob didn't catch that fact when talking with Optimus in the bar.

"I'm sorry, I had no idea..."

"Yeah," says Ironhide quietly. "That's what happens when someone like Lord Megatron goes bad on you. Got it into his processor that he ought to have power over life itself, not just the defense forces, and a war that starts from that kind of thinkin' can't ever end well."

"Has there ever been a war that has 'ended well'?"

"Better than a peace where everything's corroding to pieces 'cause nobody's willing to get out there and fight for their freedom, you mean?"

"Why would they need to fight if there's no one threatening them?"

"There's more than one kind of threat," says Ironhide. "Cybertron'd been peaceful a couple million years before Megatron went bad. Stayed peaceful a good long while after that, too- if you can call watching the resources that should've gone to production being moved into the military, and the justice system getting harsher and harsher by the year with no end in sight, anything like peace. I dunno where we'd be if Prime hadn't called him on it, but it wouldn't've been anywhere good."

"And they actually kept him in power while this was going on? Couldn't you, like, have a recall election or whatever?"

Ah, poor, naive Bob.

"... election?"

And then Ironhide starts laughing.

"...you don't have elections?"

Somehow, Ironhide gets his laughter under control.

"Cybertron's been ruled by the Prime and the Lord side-by-side in a straight lineage all the way back to the first Thirteen ever created. No. No elections."

"So you've got pre-programmed leaders, but they're not programmed well enough to do it right?" Bob is incredulous. "And you think Earth tech is primitive?"

"Not the same thing," Ironhide shoots right back. "The positions get handed down, one to the next."

The problem with talking to someone inside your own system is that you cannot adequately loom at them without doing some very painful contortions indeed.

"You'd think a program that talked for itself would recognize free will when it saw it."

"I know what free will is. But sprites don't have it, not like humans do. We have protocols built into our code, we can't not follow them. I take it Cybertronians aren't like that?"

"We've got a purpose, but that's not something we've gotta do," says Ironhide. "I was incepted into a construction cohort. Got into weapons and arms technology once I realized there was gonna be trouble with Megatron and his ambitions somewhere along the line." A little ruefully he adds, "Been a long time since I did any construction work... a long slagging time."

"I'm sorry," says Bob softly.

Being unable to perform one's function is the most terrible thing a sprite can think of.

"Nothin' to be sorry for," says Ironhide, back at his old levels. "That was then. This is now. And now, I'm the best slagging weapons tech the Autobots've got."

That's pride in his voice, not bragging.

"Huh. Well, I guess if you're okay with that..." Bob shrugs. "Sprites can't change functions that easily. We are what we are."

"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings," says Ironhide firmly. "Basic Autobot credo."

"It's not a right that everyone wants," murmurs Bob, almost inaudibly.
(Tell me what I'm supposed to do. Tell me what I'm for.)
"So... uh... is there anything specific you wanted to know about Earth?"

In what passes for 'tact' with him, Ironhide's gonna pretend he didn't hear that.

"Anything you've got would be good," he says instead. "The only Earthers I've ever run into were all on the Ghost-1, and I was a little too busy fighting off 'Cons at the time to get any kind of good data."

Bob hesitates. He knows how to describe Earth in comparison to the 'Net. Describing it to an alien robot? That's something else again.

"Well," he says finally, "you have to understand that I haven't seen that much of Earth. At least from a perspective that would mean anything to you."

"I'll settle for an idea of what to expect from their systems. We're gonna have to access 'em to learn the language if we can't find the Allspark on the first pass."

"Well, that I can do. For starters..."

What follows is a long, involved description of the structure of cyberspace from a sprite's perspective. Programs, systems, networks, how they interact with one another, how one gets in and how one can be kept out.

Bob is yawning by the time he's done with the explanation. "Man. I'm beat. I think I'd better get some downtime."

"You just had ten years of-" Ironhide stops himself. "Ten years of stasis. No stage changes. You need to recharge outside of stasis mode?"

"I need sleep, yeah. You'll like me a lot less if I don't get any, trust me."

Ironhide grunts, which on this data connection level manifests as a minor positive pulse. "All right. I'll be around when you wake up."

He has no intention of going into stasis lock while his passenger is active.

"Thank you."

The floor isn't the most comfortable space in the world, but Bob's slept in worse places. The Guardian curls up on the floor and closes his eyes.

Within nanos, he's off to sleep.

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1982

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