by David, Peter
Mirage nodded in confirmation. “He won’t talk to me, to Ironhide, to anyone.”
Lennox and the newly arrived woman walked past them to Optimus Prime. He was in truck mode, with the alien artifact—the thing that he had informed Lennox was a fuel rod of some kind—sitting on a pedestal in front of him.
“Optimus,” Lennox said, “you remember Charlotte Mearing, our director of national intelligence?”
No response. Lennox looked up at Wheeljack, who shrugged. It was odd to see such a human gesture being made by a gigantic alien robot. Then he realized that, no, the odd thing was that he was talking to a gigantic alien robot. It served to remind him of just how utterly out of whack his frame of reference had become.
As the lack of reply stretched into seconds, Mearing glanced at Ironhide. “What’s this, the alien silent treatment?”
“Seen that,” Ironhide said. “This is not that. This is worse.”
And suddenly, in a heartbeat—the fastest alteration Lennox had ever witnessed—Optimus Prime shifted from truck into robot and leaned straight in toward Mearing. “You lied to us!” he thundered, sounding angrier than Lennox had ever heard him short of when he was squaring off against a Decepticon trying to kill him. To underscore his fury, he kicked over the pedestal, sending the fuel rod clattering to the ground.
Mearing coolly glanced at the fallen pedestal. “Is that for effect?” she asked, not in the least nonplussed.
He pointed at it. “Everything humans know of our planet, we were told all had been shared. So why was this found in human possession?”
Lennox had once happened to fall into a poker game in which Mearing was involved. He had spent the next two hours getting utterly pounded and had resolved never to get pulled into another such endeavor because Mearing had nerves of steel and a poker face that made the Sphinx look scrutable. Those attributes were on full display now. “Optimus, I assure you, at Langley, the bureau, we were in the dark about this,” she said so smoothly that Lennox could not have told whether she was being honest or not. It sure sounded like she was on the up and up, though. “It was director-only clearance at Sector Seven until now …”
She signaled to an aide who had been remaining at a respectful distance but now hurried forward upon receiving her slightly sardonic instruction, “Please bring me my bag that contains the worst information known to mankind.”
The aide came forward, and there were three men accompanying him. None of them was young. Lennox recognized only one of them, but when he did, he drew in a sharp breath and fought the impulse to genuflect.
As they approached, Mearing said, “This was a secret few men knew. And fewer still remain alive.”
One of the approaching old men was looking at Optimus with a guarded expression, and Lennox could decipher it immediately: He was trying to assess whether the robot presented a threat. The other two men, however, were regarding the Autobot with expressions that conveyed both reverence and camaraderie.
“Optimus Prime,” Mearing said as the elderly men approached, “this is Doctor Johnson, an early mission director. This is Bruce McCandless II, former astronaut who was CAPCOM for the first mission to the moon. And this is Buzz Aldrin, one of the first two men to set foot on the moon.”
“From a fellow space explorer to another, it’s an honor,” said Aldrin.
“The honor is mine,” Optimus replied.
Lennox felt a brief wave of relief. At least Optimus wasn’t so pissed off with them that he wasn’t attending to simple social graces.
McCandless spoke up. “I can fully understand your anger about being kept in the dark, sir,” he said to Optimus. “I was initially kept out of the loop as well,” and he cast an annoyed look at Johnson.
“Out of what loop?” said Optimus Prime.
Clearly irritated that she was discovering something this momentous so long after the fact, Mearing said, “Our entire space race of the 1960s, it appears, was in response to an … event.”
“We were sworn to secrecy by our commander in chief,” Aldrin said. “Our mission was for mankind and science, yes. But there was also a military component, which is where Doctor Johnson came in, being a military astrophysicist. Our mission was to investigate a crashed alien ship. Its cargo hold was empty, as near as we could tell, presuming it was a cargo hold. No survivors aboard.”
“The Soviets managed to land unmanned probes,” Johnson said. “Must’ve somehow picked up that fuel rod.”
Mearing’s aide had produced a small DVD player that he handed to her. She held it up, opened it, and pressed play. A grainy video began to play on it, showing scientists hard at work.
“This is security video obtained by Mossad in ’86, which we’ve transferred over onto DVD,” she said. “Apparently it was being fed into a remote location, for reasons that will quickly become obvious. We believe the Russians deduced the rod was a fissionable fuel assembly, believed they had mastered it, and tried to harness it at Chernobyl.”
On the small monitor, the Soviet scientists were throwing a switch. Instantly gauges spiked with a rising whine, and the scientists were patting each other on the back in mutual congratulations. That lasted for all of five seconds before they clearly realized that they had set events into motion that were going to be cataclysmically horrific. They scrambled to shut it down, and absurdly, Lennox wondered if they were going to make it. Then the screen went blindingly white.
“Obviously,” Mearing said drily, not in the least caught up in the tragedy that she had just witnessed, “not the best use of judgment. The Russian ministry, of course, disavows this incident ever occurred.”
“As I mentioned, I didn’t know about it during the first mission,” said McCandless. “But once the first contact was made, CAPCOM and mission controllers were brought on board so we wouldn’t have to worry about being out of touch with the astronauts for lengthy periods of time.” He glanced in mild annoyance at Aldrin.
Aldrin rolled his eyes. “It’s been forty years, Bruce. Let that out of your teeth, wouldja?”
“Fine, fine, okay,” he grunted, and then continued. “We landed six missions in total. Obtained thousands of photos and samples, locked ’em away for all eternity. There was no way to disassemble the ship.”
“But you searched it entirely?” said Optimus. “Including its crash vault?”
McCandless and Johnson exchanged concerned looks. Aldrin said, “I can’t speak for subsequent missions, obviously, but we barely had twenty minutes in the ship.”
“It wasn’t a ship,” Prime said. “Not just a ship.” He paused, and his voice sounded thicker with emotion than Lennox was accustomed to. “Its name was the Ark. I watched it escape Cybertron myself. It was carrying an Autobot technology that would have won us the war. And its captain …”
“Who was its captain?” said Mearing.
It took Optimus a few moments to get the name out; that was how painful it was for him to recall the events of which he was speaking. “The technology’s inventor: the great Sentinel Prime. He was commander of the Autobots … before me.”
“Then …” It began to fall together for Lennox. “The Decepticons are hunting for whatever happened to that ship.”
Optimus Prime nodded. “It’s imperative that I find it before the Decepticons learn of its location. You must launch another moon mission. And,” he added gravely, “you must pray it is in time.”
NAMIBIA
An old Russian oil tanker truck was rumbling down the cracked, dry, and dusty road of the African savanna, making such a racket as it approached that a flock of swans was startled into taking flight.
Seconds later they were nothing more than a flock of pulped flesh and scattered feathers, blasted into oblivion courtesy of Laserbeak, who had annihilated the flock mainly because he was feeling itchy after having not killed anything for at least a day.
The tanker rolled up to Laserbeak, and then it began to change, just as the Autobots had in their various missions on behalf of humanity. The
re were two differences: First, the tanker had no interest in aiding the hairless apes that populated this misbegotten world, and second, his metamorphosis was taking much, much longer. It was almost painful to witness, like watching a former Olympic sprinter who was now wracked with arthritis and trying to navigate a flight of stairs.
It required a full minute for the mass of twisting metal to assume the dreaded form of Megatron, and even then he was almost unrecognizable. Hunchbacked, leaking Energon from his devastated face, the once proud leader of the Decepticons made for a sheltered clearing while dragging a sack. Trailing along behind him was a head with spidery legs. Megatron had the feeling that he once knew the head, back when it had sat perched upon the body of one of his followers. But time and lack of interest had erased the name from his memory. Now it was little more than a dog whimpering at his side. He had taken to calling it Igor for no particular reason.
Megatron thudded heavily to the ground and loosened the cords on the sack. What tumbled out would have looked to any non-Decepticon eye like a living nightmare. They were hatchlings: a cross between organic and metallic life, partially developed protoforms dripping slime.
He leaned over the hatchlings so that the Energon dripping from his face fell down upon them, providing them with the sustenance they needed. He kept talking to them as they squabbled over the food. “Don’t be greedy. Don’t be greedy. Greed is not a plan.”
The disembodied head was putting in its own bid for nourishment, scrambling around and trying to get anything it could that fell to the side.
There was a roar in the air from overhead, and Starscream slammed to the ground in front of Megatron, kicking up a huge cloud of dust as he did so.
“My brave and wise master,” he said. “Starscream hears your call! It pains me to see you so wounded, so helpless, so weak—”
Igor let out an incoherent, scolding babble directed at Starscream. “Hurgl! Snurgl!” That was followed by something more discernible: “My master! Mine!”
Having no patience for such moronic distractions, Starscream kicked the head, which rolled away. Then he turned his attention back to his master. “No harm meant, my lord! It’s an excellent strategy: hiding. Hiding and scheming. Going very well.”
A third of Megatron’s face was missing, but now a mouth formed upon it made from sheer Energon. “Silence, you insipid fool!” Megatron said with a snarl. “You know what you are told, which is nothing. While I lay prisoner here those many years, beneath their wretched dam, Soundwave was watching over this planet. Perhaps you remember a ship called … the Ark.”
Soundwave, as if out to display his many talents as the foremost spy of the Decepticons, seemed to appear in the camp out of nowhere. Laserbeak landed on his shoulder and gave off what sounded like a sadistic purr.
“It has been found, Lord Megatron … by the Autobots.”
“Then we will race them to it!” Starscream said. “We will get it before them! And if they arrive while we are there, we will confront and destroy them! We—”
Megatron growled in a way that immediately silenced Starscream. “Let the Autobots do our work for us,” he said. “Let them bring the ship’s cargo to me. And as for your ‘human’ collaborators, Soundwave.” He glanced toward the sky. Despite the fact that it was daytime, the faint outline of the moon was visible. “It is time to ensure their silence.” And then his Energon-created mouth vanished.
Laserbeak squawked in delight at the prospect.
HOUSTON, TEXAS
Madeline Singer, all of seven years old, was playing jacks in her backyard when she spotted the most adorable robot toy she had ever seen. It looked like some sort of animal, down on all fours, with a pointed tail on one end and a long neck attached to a head with glowing red eyes on the other. She didn’t know where it had come from. One moment it hadn’t been there, the next it had. But she was at an age at which she didn’t question such little miracles. Instead she laughed with delight at the way the little thing lurched toward her with a stilted gait.
“Hello!” said Madeline, springing to her feet, causing her golden ringlets to bounce around her face. She ran toward it, and it stopped in its tracks. It looked neither right nor left but just stayed there. “Who are you?”
It didn’t answer.
Experimentally she stepped backward and was thrilled to see that the toy mimicked her as it moved toward her in synchronization with her backward step. She stopped. It stopped. She moved back a few more steps, and it followed her. She clapped her hands and then knelt so that she was on eye level with it. “Would you like to come to my tea party? We can have it upstairs in my room. We have to be quiet because my daddy is taking a nap, though. Okay?”
The robot nodded eagerly.
The little girl led him inside.
Her mother, Julia, was on the phone in the kitchen, sounding particularly irritated as Madeline walked past. “Look, any kid who pukes in my Volvo no longer gets to carpool with me!”
“Mommy, I have a robot I’m taking upstairs for a tea party.”
Without even looking her daughter’s way, the harried mother waved her off. “What? No, Bob and I have a party. The NASA gang’s finally sending up the Atlas X. No, don’t worry about me. I’ll drink my way through it.”
She continued to chat as she finished preparing dinner. After a few minutes, she called Madeline down for dinner and asked her to wake up her father on the way down.
Another thirty seconds passed during which time she shut off the carrots cooking on the stove top and slid the meat loaf out of the oven.
Then Julia heard a sound that would stay with her the rest of her life: a scream of mortal terror ripping from her daughter’s throat.
Instantly she dropped the phone and sprinted up the stairs, taking them two at a time. She reached the upstairs landing and saw Madeline on the floor outside her parents’ bedroom, her hands to her face, still screaming. The door was wide open, and as Julia ran toward it, she heard Bob screaming, “No! No, you don’t have to do this! We can still work together!”
And then his pleas were cut off by the shattering sound of small arms fire.
Now Julia’s screams joined her daughter’s.
In the bedroom, a robot crouched over the unmoving, perforated body of Bob Singer. Then it turned its attention toward the terrified mother and daughter.
Laserbeak chattered happily.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
So this is what it’s like to be an Autobot. To be able to move around and be capable of doing so many things, but nobody notices you because you just blend in with everything else.
Those were the thoughts going through Sam’s mind as he pushed his mail cart through the aisles of cubicles in Accuretta Systems. Once in a very great while, a coworker might address him by name, or at least try to (“Thanks, Sid”; “Much obliged, Sol”) or thank him for delivering some letter or package she or he was waiting for. Especially grateful on this particular day was Mickey in cubicle 27A or, as Sam thought of him, the baseball nut. He kept his cubicle decorated with everything from bats to balls to mitts. When Sam handed him a small box, Mickey started telling him about how it was a signed ball he’d gotten off eBay, and how if his wife knew how much he spent on this stuff she’d kill him, and on and on until Sam finally found a way to excuse himself so he could continue on the rounds that he really didn’t want to do anyway.
In most instances, Mickey notwithstanding, Sam would acknowledge the overtures with a nod of his head or a casual wave.
But his thoughts remained on other things, such as the Autobots, and why he wasn’t working beside them, and how was he supposed to be placing any value on work such as this when only a few years ago he’d been saving the world.
In the course of his seemingly endless rounds, he noticed that there was one guy—some young Asian fellow—who seemed to be watching him. But when Sam turned around to look directly at him, the guy walked away and Sam started to wonder if he’d been imagining it.
As Sam
returned his empty mail cart to the mailroom and headed for his office, he tried to think of the last time he had felt this level of despair and decided it was the time Optimus Prime had died while saving him from that demented Decepticon who had wanted to remove his brain. Granted, Sam had been instrumental in restoring Prime back to life. But at this point he was starting to think that had he realized how little use he’d wind up putting his brain to, Optimus could have saved everyone a lot of trouble by just letting the so-called Doctor have the damned thing.
He sank onto his creaky chair behind his desk. It wasn’t as if he even had his own office, since he shared the cramped space with two eager-beaver interns and one beaten-down devil who had been working in the mail room since stamps were twenty-nine cents. Fortunately, they were all still out doing rounds or whatever the hell they were supposed to be up to.
“So I hear this is where the CEO started.”
Startled, he looked up and saw Carly standing there, leaning against the door frame.
All he wanted to do was crawl under the desk, but he didn’t want to let on to Carly how mortified he was to have her see him there. So instead he said, with forced joviality, “It’s true. This was his desk.” He started pointing to other objects. “His stapler, his Wite-Out, his rubber band ball.” Sam stood and gestured around the room, his “excitement” becoming deliriously over the top. “There’s an energy in this place. Hold it. Feel it. It’s electric!”
Carly folded her arms and smiled wryly at Sam’s carefully modulated histrionics. “Had a meeting downtown. Okay to stop by?”
He didn’t bother to say what he was thinking, namely, that it was a little late to ask if it was okay. “Not sure. I mean, there’s probably some company policy about it. Unfortunately, my five-hundred-page employee conduct manual isn’t exactly a page-turner.”