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sakon76Warning level... mm, some cursing. So don't read if that offends you. Elsewise, enjoy!
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
part 2: Signal to Noise
by K. Stonham
prereleased 15th August 2007
The fight had been mercifully brief and its results somewhat unexpected. Brian managed a mechanical chirruping warble of surprise as Ironhide staggered briefly to his feet only to fall again.
"Y' got anythin' more t' say?" Jazz asked the downed man. A quiet groan was his only answer. "Good. Then I expec' ya t' keep your comments t' yourself." He turned and headed for the door, passing between Brian and Ratchet where they stood on either side of it. "He's all yours, Ratchet. Maybe ya should see if ya can wire his brain t' actually filter what comes outta his mouth."
"And where are you going?" the doctor inquired.
"T' report t' Prime," came Jazz's annoyed reply as he stalked out the door.
Ratchet stepped forward sighing, gesturing Brian to come help him.
Ironhide was half again Jazz's mass and twice his weapons capabilities. It seemed like the fight should have gone in the other direction. But Jazz had been fast and angry and hit hard. Angry over what, Brian didn't know. He scrolled the question up on the holographic display screen over his left arm and showed it to Ratchet with a quizzical sound.
"You know Jazz went off base last night, right?" Ratchet asked, hand sweeping over Ironhide, doing a scan of systems mechanical and biological. Brian nodded. "Well, he didn't come back until this morning again." Brian raised both eyebrows and cocked his head inquiringly to the side. "No, I don't know why. And given Jazz's reaction, I don't intend to ask. Unlike Ironhide, I don't enjoy being beaten to scrap. Help me get him up and to the medbay."
*
The video, a collection of images taken at different times and dates over the course of several months, all from the same camera and always showing the same thing, ended. Jazz stood before Peter's desk, expression impassive beneath his visor. "Care to explain?" Peter asked quietly.
"Th' new kid hack that?" Jazz asked in reply. "Pretty good. That camera's supposed t' be closed circuit."
"Perhaps," Peter replied noncommittally. "Regardless, I'd like an explanation."
"Wasn't aware I was confined t' base or quarters," Jazz quipped. "M' personal life's m' own business, Prime."
"Not when it involves a civilian police officer, it isn't," Peter returned. "How much have you told him, Jazz?"
"Told him?" Jazz smirked ruthlessly. "He knows damn near everythin'. He's th' one person on this planet I trust. No offense, sir."
"The Project's top-secret, Jazz," Peter said simply. "You know this. Why are you taking risks like this?"
"If I told ya, would you court-martial me?" Jazz replied. "Imprison me? Hand me m' discharge papers?"
Why Jazz thought he would.... Peter's eyes widened only slightly as he caught the implications. Perfect. Just what would make the day complete if the higher-ups ever caught wind of it. "No," he answered. "I don't want an excuse. I would, however, like understanding."
Jazz was still for a moment, then sighed and looked off to one side. "What keeps y' sane, Prime?" he asked softly. "This kind'a gig... bein' rebuilt like this... what keeps y' goin'?"
Ariel, Peter wanted to reply. Robin. The reasons he hadn't objected to Sam joining their team; he understood the teenager's motivations all too well. Marshall... the reason he'd had to join the Project. Too many memories of love, sorrow, pain, and shame, all mixed together.
"Prowl... Michael," Jazz said quietly, looking back, his visored gaze seeming to study Peter, "keeps me human. Reminds me that there's more t' me than a machine. An' not by anythin'... physical," he admitted. "He jus' makes me remember that there's someone who gives a damn, that knew me before and knew me after an' doesn't care 'bout th' difference."
"You trust him."
"With m' life."
"With government secrets?"
"If th' man was runnin' for President, I'd vote for 'im inna heartbeat," Jazz replied. "That said, not sure I'd want t' condemn th' man t' that kinda hell."
Peter chuckled a little, and relaxed just a hair. "You haven't been a bad judge of character as long as I've known you, Jazz," he said. "I'll let this slip with just a warning in your file. Don't do it again."
"M' thanks," the ex-Air Force Captain replied. "What's it gonna cost me?"
"No more baiting Ironhide," Prime replied. "For two weeks at least. Find some other way to take your aggression out."
"Yessir." Jazz saluted.
"Dismissed."
As Jazz nodded and left, Peter sighed and thought longingly of the unopened bottle of vintage single-malt whiskey that sat in the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk. It would never be opened; Ratchet had been quite clear about the effects alcohol had on synthetic systems, and Peter had no desire to experience any of them. But it was still tempting sometimes to pull the bottle out, hold it up to the light, admire the refraction though the golden liquid, think about drinking the whole thing down and getting properly smashed....
Sometimes he wondered again if the Project's psych manager had really thought things through when he recommended that only men without families be considered for alteration. If they'd had outside social support systems, maybe Jazz wouldn't have revealed the Project's existence to an otherwise uninvolved police detective. Whose security clearance Peter now needed to do something about without revealing his subordinate's blatant breach of legal parameters. He sighed again and returned momentarily to the contemplation of light through amber....
*
Brian perched on a counter, legs swinging beneath it as he watched Ratchet fine-tune a few things inside Ironhide's chest. He could be sitting closer, he knew, studying, learning things about Ironhide's body and by extension his own, but he couldn't stomach the thought. As it was, it was bad enough that the way Ironhide's chest was opened reminded him more than a little of an autopsy scene. He shivered and made a gesture with his right hand, averting the unlucky, morbid thought. But one thought followed another and he wondered if he'd looked something like that, lying on Ratchet's table, body mangled from the accident that had killed his parents, sister, and girlfriend, barely sparing him--
He flinched at the crunching sound as Ratchet yanked something out of Ironhide's chest, studied the slick-gleaming shard of metal briefly, then dropped it on the small rolling table by his side. A minute later the door to the "operating room" opened and Mikaela came in, carrying a replacement part and a small welder. Ratchet had probably radioed what he needed to his assistant. She set both on the table, peered inside Ironhide's chest, and shrugged, rolling her eyes, when Ratchet shooed her away. She came over to Brian and hopped up on the counter next to him, watching her boss work. "Hey, 'Bee."
Hi, Mikaela, Brian wrote on his hologram display. Not letting you help?
"Apparently not. What happened to him, anyway?"
Ironhide ticked off Jazz.
"Jazz did this to him?" Mikaela asked, her eyes wide. "Wow. He must've been really pissed off."
Brian nodded.
Ratchet made a minute final adjustment, then closed up Ironhide's chest. The "living metal" sealed the opening without a visible seam. A few dents marked what would have been bruises on normal humans, but the nanomachines would eventually work those out without Ratchet's assistance. His hand glowed red as he briefly ran it above Ironhide, scanning again. What he came up with apparently satisfied him because he nodded once, then balled his hand into a fist and thumped Ironhide's titanium-plated skull.
"Ow!" The soldier woke instantly, growling already, but froze once he noticed who was looming above him.
"Do you realize how incredibly stupid that was?" Ratchet's voice was mild and dangerous. "Not to mention infantile, suicidal, oh, and by the way, hypocritical?"
...I'll be going now, Brian wrote, hopping off the counter.
"You sure?" Mikaela asked. "Watching Ratchet go off is half the fun."
I get quite enough of his temper on my own, without watching more, Brian responded.
"Suit yourself, Bumblebee," Mikaela replied, waving goodbye as he ducked out the door and headed down the hall.
*
Sam sat in the central control room of the Project's building, aimlessly spinning the swivel chair he sat in back and forth, attention rather less than half on the physical action and rather more than half on the satellite links and channels that flickered across various screens faster than anyone who didn't have a cybernetic brain could follow. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, out there that interested him and he wasn't supposed to dive deeper into the communications network without a partner to bail him out if he started to redline.
Lost in thought, he practically jumped when someone took the seat next to his.
Jazz smirked at him. "Y' should pay better attention t' what's goin' on around ya, Spike."
"...Are you going to hit me?" Sam asked warily. He'd passed by the medbay after giving the data file to Optimus, and seen what Jazz had done to Ironhide just for asking where he'd been. And Sam had done worse--he'd been the one to actually collect the data that had resulted in Jazz being called to Prime's office.
"Don't hit kids outside a' training," Jazz replied. "An' you're not altered enough that I'd really hit ya in any case. Even if y' did spy on me."
"Optimus asked me to."
"I know he did," Jazz retorted. "An' I understand why, believe it or not. I even admire th' skill it took to get th' info from that closed circuit system. Which is another part a' why I wouldn't hit ya even if I wanted t'." The ghost of a smile warmed his face. "'Sides, Prowl--Michael--said t' say hi. He's worried 'bout ya."
"You told him?" Sam was aghast.
Jazz shrugged. "Y' ain't th' only one who can sweet-talk old info outta th' Net."
"So is he your--" Sam was cut off by Jazz.
"Don't say that word," Jazz warned sharply. "It's one a' th' words we don't say 'round here. Ya sure you're a military brat?"
"Fuck yes," Sam retorted. "You want my list of how many schools I've attended, to prove it?"
"Don't need th' list," Jazz replied. "It's all spelled out in th' attitude." He studied the flickering screens
"Um," Sam said. "So... why 'Prowl'?"
"Y' ever watched him at work?"
"Some," Sam replied.
"Y'know how he's so quiet, methodical, always lookin' around an' askin' questions an' managin' t' disappear int' th' background at th' same time?"
"Yeah."
Jazz smirked at him. "Would ya believe th' man has th' highest arrest an' conviction record in th' state?"
Sam blinked. "What? No way." As fast as light traveled he turned to the monitors and remote-hacked his way into the state police department, pulling up the records and statistics of one Detective Michael Richard Powell.
In his peripheral vision Jazz was still grinning. "It's th' quiet ones ya've got t' watch," he opined. "Y' shift's over," he said. "Why don't ya go find 'Bee or somethin'? He's prob'ly lookin' for ya."
Sam nodded absently, still processing the data he'd downloaded, and closed down his links to the computers, drawing slowly out of the systems until he was sure he had everything of himself back in his head. He stood and headed for the door, but paused just inside it to turn and ask "Jazz... why?"
Jazz didn't even turn to look at him "'Coz once in a while," he said quietly, "I need t' be reminded that I'm human."
*
Brian found Spike at the swimming pool and leaned against one of the walls, watching the clean way the younger teenager cut through the water. Spike was good in the water, his motion sleek and easy, his hair dark and clouding around him as he moved beneath the surface.
It should have been Brian swimming, playing in the water.
He'd gotten scholarships for swimming. They had been his ticket into college and he'd picked one that was only a couple hours' drive from home. He and Marissa had planned to go to the same university together, him majoring in language studies, her in theater arts....
One rainy night and one drunk driver had been all it had taken to destroy that dream. Five lives cut short, so there wasn't even anyone left to blame.
He'd wanted to yell, to scream, when he'd woken up in the post-op room under Ratchet's gaze. Except he couldn't; there was no voice left in him any longer, and nothing Ratchet had done had been able to resurrect his vocal cords. All he could do was cry until there were no more tears left and his eyes burned dry. He hadn't even been able to attend the funerals; he'd still been unconscious and in the process of being rebuilt when they'd happened.
Not that he'd have been allowed to in any case.
On the wall in his quarters still hung a framed copy of his own death certificate.
For a long time he'd wanted to die himself, thought it would have been better if he had, wished Ratchet had never gotten his hands on him and resurrected him into something different, into one of his Frankenstein monster toy soldiers. It hadn't mattered at the time that anything less wouldn't have saved his life. At that point he hadn't wanted to be saved. He'd gone through the training and refinement of his new skills, dutifully memorizing what he was taught, trying to imagine faceless enemies who had taken his family and life from him and fight them instead. He'd gone on a few missions with Ironhide and Jazz, doing what he was supposed to. Going through the motions. He supposed that he eventually would've either burnt out into not caring the way Jazz had done, or just plain snapped. Luckily Optimus had read the signs first, and stopped him.
He wondered if the headstones would have felt the same way under real fingers as they did under cybernetic ones. Smooth white marble, just a hint of granulated roughness underneath his sensors, like the sugar crystals in the dregs of the British tea his grandmother had always made, hot, sweet, milky, and strong. Names carved in a flowing font, ends of letters marked with tiny serifs. Dates plain and unrelenting. An angel on his sister's stone. A pair of interlinked wedding rings on his parents'. A dove bearing an olive branch on Marissa's. He wondered if her parents blamed him or the drunk driver. She wouldn't have been in the car that night if he hadn't been dating her. Weren't seat belts supposed to prevent you from dying? Apparently they didn't work.
The hardest headstone to look at had been his own. Brian Patrick Bergstrom, the names read, and that was his birth date below them, but not his date of death. He was still alive, wasn't he? Why was it lying? He'd traced every letter, every number, on that slab of stone, memorizing the feel of the marble with golden fingers.
Prime had waited behind him, silent, for hours. The sun had risen and he knew there had been other people on the path behind them, going to other graves, but never once had his commanding officer suggested that they should leave, that he wasn't supposed to be here. That he was going to get caught at his own grave.
That, he supposed, would have been trouble.
Prime had surprised him even further that day, though, when in the early afternoon Brian had finally stood to leave. Wordlessly Optimus had produced a half-dozen long-stemmed white roses and given them to him. He'd stared first at the man, realizing like a punch in the gut for the first time that maybe he wasn't the only one who had lost something like this... then he'd stared at the roses themselves, before finally taking them.
His parents' he crossed on their shared grave. One was laid each on Jane's grave and on Marissa's. The fifth he tore the white petals off of and let them fall from his fingers like a flurry of snow, onto his own grave.
The sixth, he took and searched for the drunk driver's grave. It wasn't too far away. He'd knelt there for a moment, looking at the stone and its final date, then very gently laid the rose down. He'd stood then and walked back to his commanding officer, ready to go on with his life.
*
Sam didn't miss the movement when Bumblebee turned and walked out of the pool area. He'd known the other teenager was there, watching him, from the moment Bumblebee had come in the room. Frowning to himself, he did one more breast stroke through the otherwise empty pool, then took a breath and dove beneath the surface.
It always seemed like it should be more quiet beneath the water than above for the instant before he remembered that water was a conductor. Electricity. Sound. Clickings of the water lapping against the edges of the pool. Hummings of ducts and machinery transmitted distantly through the surrounding concrete. The sound of his own heartbeat, loud in his ears. And behind his closed eyes, in the silence of his own mind, a hundred thousand million streaming images, colors, sparkles, flashes of music, words, concepts. The vibration of electricity in a light bulb. In a human being. In a cyborg.
Wireless indeed.
He wondered if they knew he could see them, even unconnected. Wondered if they knew he could hear them thinking, if he bothered to listen. Could hear a heartbeat. Stop a pacemaker. Increase a train's speed and derail it. Fritz the traffic lights and cause an accident. Turn off the power and generators to a hospital. He wondered if they knew Ratchet had made him too well.
He could "pass," as Ironhide had put it, could get away with going to a beach and wearing nothing more than swim trunks, and not stand out. Nothing on the outside of him looked different from anyone else.
No one ever looked on the inside, though.
His own heartbeat. His own breath. He counted them sometimes, when he was struck by impulse or whimsy. It would be so easy to give in, to do things just because he could. So easy to dive into the Internet, hunting for that one piece of information that he wanted, needed, more than anything. So easy to lose himself in the flow, in what he could do, and forget the reason why he'd become something like this. Too easy to forget a mother's smile, a brother's laugh. Too easy to forget the way he sometimes caught his father crying into his pillow. Too easy to forget...
...being human.
He surfaced with a gasp, chills prickling down his skin despite the water's ambient embrace.
Was that what Jazz had meant?
The Detective was nice, sure, and he'd done his best in the missing-persons case, but... was that kind of madness, that doing things just because you could, what he kept Jazz from?
Sam barely noticed the tracks of heat on his face until he reached up and touched them. Wet. He touched the tip of that finger to his tongue. Salt. Not chlorine.
He wanted to run away, suddenly, from what he'd made himself into. From what he had volunteered to become.
Arms wrapped around himself, signal buzzing always in his head, he tried not to panic.
Tried not to be scared.
Tried not to lose himself to the noise.
*
"Do you miss flying?" Brian asked quietly on a private comm channel.
Jazz turned and looked at him from his seat before the communications bank, visored gaze slightly unnerving in the way it concealed his thoughts. "Sometimes," he admitted aloud, and leaned back in his chair, looking back at the monitors. "There's a poem, written by a young pilot 'bout your age, name a' John Magee, back durin' World War Two, called 'High Flight.' Y'know it?" Brian shook his head mutely. "They make us memorize it at Academy. Pretty much sums up how any pilot who ever flew feels 'bout it." He was silent for a moment, then recited: "Oh! I've slipped th' surly bonds of Earth an' danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; sunward I’ve climbed, an' joined th' tumblin' mirth a' sun-split clouds, an' done a hundred things ya've not dreamed a': wheeled an' soared an' swung high in th' sunlit silence. Hov’rin' there, I’ve chased th' shoutin' wind along, and flung m' eager craft through footless halls a' air.... Up, up th' long, delirious, burnin' blue I’ve topped th' wind-swept heights with easy grace where never lark nor even eagle flew, an', while with silent liftin' mind I’ve trod th' high untrespassed sanctity a' space, put out my hand, an' touched th' face a' God."
"You miss it," Brian said, walking forward into the room, taking the empty seat by Jazz.
"Askin' me if I miss flyin' is like askin' yourself if you miss swimmin'," Jazz replied. "'Course I do. It's phantom pain, like feelin' a limb that's been cut off. Doesn't mean that it's all that defines me, though. Got other things in m' life, and so do you."
"I miss the quiet inside my head," Brian said. "I miss not having things to think about. I miss...." He floundered for words to convey what he meant.
"Y' miss a simpler world," Jazz told him. "Y' miss what was taken from ya before ya even knew what it was. Not that ya can really know what it is until ya lose it."
"I don't understand why he'd do this," Brian said. "I mean, you and Prime I can kind of understand. Ironhide and Ratchet... well...."
"You can understand the math, if not the motivation?" Jazz questioned. "Me too, sorta. But Spike?" He was quiet for a moment, gaze on the flickering screens. "Y' gotta understand, B', he's lost somethin' important too. Somethin' that meant more t' him than himself. Th' reason he got int' this gig is for th' exact same reasons ya ever wanted outta it."
"Why do we need a psychologist when we have you?" Brian asked.
Jazz's half-grin was dire and amused. "Y' need the psychologist for me, B'. As th' Cheshire Cat said t' Alice, we're all mad here. We must be mad, or we wouldn't'a come here."
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
part 2: Signal to Noise
by K. Stonham
prereleased 15th August 2007
The fight had been mercifully brief and its results somewhat unexpected. Brian managed a mechanical chirruping warble of surprise as Ironhide staggered briefly to his feet only to fall again.
"Y' got anythin' more t' say?" Jazz asked the downed man. A quiet groan was his only answer. "Good. Then I expec' ya t' keep your comments t' yourself." He turned and headed for the door, passing between Brian and Ratchet where they stood on either side of it. "He's all yours, Ratchet. Maybe ya should see if ya can wire his brain t' actually filter what comes outta his mouth."
"And where are you going?" the doctor inquired.
"T' report t' Prime," came Jazz's annoyed reply as he stalked out the door.
Ratchet stepped forward sighing, gesturing Brian to come help him.
Ironhide was half again Jazz's mass and twice his weapons capabilities. It seemed like the fight should have gone in the other direction. But Jazz had been fast and angry and hit hard. Angry over what, Brian didn't know. He scrolled the question up on the holographic display screen over his left arm and showed it to Ratchet with a quizzical sound.
"You know Jazz went off base last night, right?" Ratchet asked, hand sweeping over Ironhide, doing a scan of systems mechanical and biological. Brian nodded. "Well, he didn't come back until this morning again." Brian raised both eyebrows and cocked his head inquiringly to the side. "No, I don't know why. And given Jazz's reaction, I don't intend to ask. Unlike Ironhide, I don't enjoy being beaten to scrap. Help me get him up and to the medbay."
The video, a collection of images taken at different times and dates over the course of several months, all from the same camera and always showing the same thing, ended. Jazz stood before Peter's desk, expression impassive beneath his visor. "Care to explain?" Peter asked quietly.
"Th' new kid hack that?" Jazz asked in reply. "Pretty good. That camera's supposed t' be closed circuit."
"Perhaps," Peter replied noncommittally. "Regardless, I'd like an explanation."
"Wasn't aware I was confined t' base or quarters," Jazz quipped. "M' personal life's m' own business, Prime."
"Not when it involves a civilian police officer, it isn't," Peter returned. "How much have you told him, Jazz?"
"Told him?" Jazz smirked ruthlessly. "He knows damn near everythin'. He's th' one person on this planet I trust. No offense, sir."
"The Project's top-secret, Jazz," Peter said simply. "You know this. Why are you taking risks like this?"
"If I told ya, would you court-martial me?" Jazz replied. "Imprison me? Hand me m' discharge papers?"
Why Jazz thought he would.... Peter's eyes widened only slightly as he caught the implications. Perfect. Just what would make the day complete if the higher-ups ever caught wind of it. "No," he answered. "I don't want an excuse. I would, however, like understanding."
Jazz was still for a moment, then sighed and looked off to one side. "What keeps y' sane, Prime?" he asked softly. "This kind'a gig... bein' rebuilt like this... what keeps y' goin'?"
Ariel, Peter wanted to reply. Robin. The reasons he hadn't objected to Sam joining their team; he understood the teenager's motivations all too well. Marshall... the reason he'd had to join the Project. Too many memories of love, sorrow, pain, and shame, all mixed together.
"Prowl... Michael," Jazz said quietly, looking back, his visored gaze seeming to study Peter, "keeps me human. Reminds me that there's more t' me than a machine. An' not by anythin'... physical," he admitted. "He jus' makes me remember that there's someone who gives a damn, that knew me before and knew me after an' doesn't care 'bout th' difference."
"You trust him."
"With m' life."
"With government secrets?"
"If th' man was runnin' for President, I'd vote for 'im inna heartbeat," Jazz replied. "That said, not sure I'd want t' condemn th' man t' that kinda hell."
Peter chuckled a little, and relaxed just a hair. "You haven't been a bad judge of character as long as I've known you, Jazz," he said. "I'll let this slip with just a warning in your file. Don't do it again."
"M' thanks," the ex-Air Force Captain replied. "What's it gonna cost me?"
"No more baiting Ironhide," Prime replied. "For two weeks at least. Find some other way to take your aggression out."
"Yessir." Jazz saluted.
"Dismissed."
As Jazz nodded and left, Peter sighed and thought longingly of the unopened bottle of vintage single-malt whiskey that sat in the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk. It would never be opened; Ratchet had been quite clear about the effects alcohol had on synthetic systems, and Peter had no desire to experience any of them. But it was still tempting sometimes to pull the bottle out, hold it up to the light, admire the refraction though the golden liquid, think about drinking the whole thing down and getting properly smashed....
Sometimes he wondered again if the Project's psych manager had really thought things through when he recommended that only men without families be considered for alteration. If they'd had outside social support systems, maybe Jazz wouldn't have revealed the Project's existence to an otherwise uninvolved police detective. Whose security clearance Peter now needed to do something about without revealing his subordinate's blatant breach of legal parameters. He sighed again and returned momentarily to the contemplation of light through amber....
Brian perched on a counter, legs swinging beneath it as he watched Ratchet fine-tune a few things inside Ironhide's chest. He could be sitting closer, he knew, studying, learning things about Ironhide's body and by extension his own, but he couldn't stomach the thought. As it was, it was bad enough that the way Ironhide's chest was opened reminded him more than a little of an autopsy scene. He shivered and made a gesture with his right hand, averting the unlucky, morbid thought. But one thought followed another and he wondered if he'd looked something like that, lying on Ratchet's table, body mangled from the accident that had killed his parents, sister, and girlfriend, barely sparing him--
He flinched at the crunching sound as Ratchet yanked something out of Ironhide's chest, studied the slick-gleaming shard of metal briefly, then dropped it on the small rolling table by his side. A minute later the door to the "operating room" opened and Mikaela came in, carrying a replacement part and a small welder. Ratchet had probably radioed what he needed to his assistant. She set both on the table, peered inside Ironhide's chest, and shrugged, rolling her eyes, when Ratchet shooed her away. She came over to Brian and hopped up on the counter next to him, watching her boss work. "Hey, 'Bee."
Hi, Mikaela, Brian wrote on his hologram display. Not letting you help?
"Apparently not. What happened to him, anyway?"
Ironhide ticked off Jazz.
"Jazz did this to him?" Mikaela asked, her eyes wide. "Wow. He must've been really pissed off."
Brian nodded.
Ratchet made a minute final adjustment, then closed up Ironhide's chest. The "living metal" sealed the opening without a visible seam. A few dents marked what would have been bruises on normal humans, but the nanomachines would eventually work those out without Ratchet's assistance. His hand glowed red as he briefly ran it above Ironhide, scanning again. What he came up with apparently satisfied him because he nodded once, then balled his hand into a fist and thumped Ironhide's titanium-plated skull.
"Ow!" The soldier woke instantly, growling already, but froze once he noticed who was looming above him.
"Do you realize how incredibly stupid that was?" Ratchet's voice was mild and dangerous. "Not to mention infantile, suicidal, oh, and by the way, hypocritical?"
...I'll be going now, Brian wrote, hopping off the counter.
"You sure?" Mikaela asked. "Watching Ratchet go off is half the fun."
I get quite enough of his temper on my own, without watching more, Brian responded.
"Suit yourself, Bumblebee," Mikaela replied, waving goodbye as he ducked out the door and headed down the hall.
Sam sat in the central control room of the Project's building, aimlessly spinning the swivel chair he sat in back and forth, attention rather less than half on the physical action and rather more than half on the satellite links and channels that flickered across various screens faster than anyone who didn't have a cybernetic brain could follow. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, out there that interested him and he wasn't supposed to dive deeper into the communications network without a partner to bail him out if he started to redline.
Lost in thought, he practically jumped when someone took the seat next to his.
Jazz smirked at him. "Y' should pay better attention t' what's goin' on around ya, Spike."
"...Are you going to hit me?" Sam asked warily. He'd passed by the medbay after giving the data file to Optimus, and seen what Jazz had done to Ironhide just for asking where he'd been. And Sam had done worse--he'd been the one to actually collect the data that had resulted in Jazz being called to Prime's office.
"Don't hit kids outside a' training," Jazz replied. "An' you're not altered enough that I'd really hit ya in any case. Even if y' did spy on me."
"Optimus asked me to."
"I know he did," Jazz retorted. "An' I understand why, believe it or not. I even admire th' skill it took to get th' info from that closed circuit system. Which is another part a' why I wouldn't hit ya even if I wanted t'." The ghost of a smile warmed his face. "'Sides, Prowl--Michael--said t' say hi. He's worried 'bout ya."
"You told him?" Sam was aghast.
Jazz shrugged. "Y' ain't th' only one who can sweet-talk old info outta th' Net."
"So is he your--" Sam was cut off by Jazz.
"Don't say that word," Jazz warned sharply. "It's one a' th' words we don't say 'round here. Ya sure you're a military brat?"
"Fuck yes," Sam retorted. "You want my list of how many schools I've attended, to prove it?"
"Don't need th' list," Jazz replied. "It's all spelled out in th' attitude." He studied the flickering screens
"Um," Sam said. "So... why 'Prowl'?"
"Y' ever watched him at work?"
"Some," Sam replied.
"Y'know how he's so quiet, methodical, always lookin' around an' askin' questions an' managin' t' disappear int' th' background at th' same time?"
"Yeah."
Jazz smirked at him. "Would ya believe th' man has th' highest arrest an' conviction record in th' state?"
Sam blinked. "What? No way." As fast as light traveled he turned to the monitors and remote-hacked his way into the state police department, pulling up the records and statistics of one Detective Michael Richard Powell.
In his peripheral vision Jazz was still grinning. "It's th' quiet ones ya've got t' watch," he opined. "Y' shift's over," he said. "Why don't ya go find 'Bee or somethin'? He's prob'ly lookin' for ya."
Sam nodded absently, still processing the data he'd downloaded, and closed down his links to the computers, drawing slowly out of the systems until he was sure he had everything of himself back in his head. He stood and headed for the door, but paused just inside it to turn and ask "Jazz... why?"
Jazz didn't even turn to look at him "'Coz once in a while," he said quietly, "I need t' be reminded that I'm human."
Brian found Spike at the swimming pool and leaned against one of the walls, watching the clean way the younger teenager cut through the water. Spike was good in the water, his motion sleek and easy, his hair dark and clouding around him as he moved beneath the surface.
It should have been Brian swimming, playing in the water.
He'd gotten scholarships for swimming. They had been his ticket into college and he'd picked one that was only a couple hours' drive from home. He and Marissa had planned to go to the same university together, him majoring in language studies, her in theater arts....
One rainy night and one drunk driver had been all it had taken to destroy that dream. Five lives cut short, so there wasn't even anyone left to blame.
He'd wanted to yell, to scream, when he'd woken up in the post-op room under Ratchet's gaze. Except he couldn't; there was no voice left in him any longer, and nothing Ratchet had done had been able to resurrect his vocal cords. All he could do was cry until there were no more tears left and his eyes burned dry. He hadn't even been able to attend the funerals; he'd still been unconscious and in the process of being rebuilt when they'd happened.
Not that he'd have been allowed to in any case.
On the wall in his quarters still hung a framed copy of his own death certificate.
For a long time he'd wanted to die himself, thought it would have been better if he had, wished Ratchet had never gotten his hands on him and resurrected him into something different, into one of his Frankenstein monster toy soldiers. It hadn't mattered at the time that anything less wouldn't have saved his life. At that point he hadn't wanted to be saved. He'd gone through the training and refinement of his new skills, dutifully memorizing what he was taught, trying to imagine faceless enemies who had taken his family and life from him and fight them instead. He'd gone on a few missions with Ironhide and Jazz, doing what he was supposed to. Going through the motions. He supposed that he eventually would've either burnt out into not caring the way Jazz had done, or just plain snapped. Luckily Optimus had read the signs first, and stopped him.
He wondered if the headstones would have felt the same way under real fingers as they did under cybernetic ones. Smooth white marble, just a hint of granulated roughness underneath his sensors, like the sugar crystals in the dregs of the British tea his grandmother had always made, hot, sweet, milky, and strong. Names carved in a flowing font, ends of letters marked with tiny serifs. Dates plain and unrelenting. An angel on his sister's stone. A pair of interlinked wedding rings on his parents'. A dove bearing an olive branch on Marissa's. He wondered if her parents blamed him or the drunk driver. She wouldn't have been in the car that night if he hadn't been dating her. Weren't seat belts supposed to prevent you from dying? Apparently they didn't work.
The hardest headstone to look at had been his own. Brian Patrick Bergstrom, the names read, and that was his birth date below them, but not his date of death. He was still alive, wasn't he? Why was it lying? He'd traced every letter, every number, on that slab of stone, memorizing the feel of the marble with golden fingers.
Prime had waited behind him, silent, for hours. The sun had risen and he knew there had been other people on the path behind them, going to other graves, but never once had his commanding officer suggested that they should leave, that he wasn't supposed to be here. That he was going to get caught at his own grave.
That, he supposed, would have been trouble.
Prime had surprised him even further that day, though, when in the early afternoon Brian had finally stood to leave. Wordlessly Optimus had produced a half-dozen long-stemmed white roses and given them to him. He'd stared first at the man, realizing like a punch in the gut for the first time that maybe he wasn't the only one who had lost something like this... then he'd stared at the roses themselves, before finally taking them.
His parents' he crossed on their shared grave. One was laid each on Jane's grave and on Marissa's. The fifth he tore the white petals off of and let them fall from his fingers like a flurry of snow, onto his own grave.
The sixth, he took and searched for the drunk driver's grave. It wasn't too far away. He'd knelt there for a moment, looking at the stone and its final date, then very gently laid the rose down. He'd stood then and walked back to his commanding officer, ready to go on with his life.
Sam didn't miss the movement when Bumblebee turned and walked out of the pool area. He'd known the other teenager was there, watching him, from the moment Bumblebee had come in the room. Frowning to himself, he did one more breast stroke through the otherwise empty pool, then took a breath and dove beneath the surface.
It always seemed like it should be more quiet beneath the water than above for the instant before he remembered that water was a conductor. Electricity. Sound. Clickings of the water lapping against the edges of the pool. Hummings of ducts and machinery transmitted distantly through the surrounding concrete. The sound of his own heartbeat, loud in his ears. And behind his closed eyes, in the silence of his own mind, a hundred thousand million streaming images, colors, sparkles, flashes of music, words, concepts. The vibration of electricity in a light bulb. In a human being. In a cyborg.
Wireless indeed.
He wondered if they knew he could see them, even unconnected. Wondered if they knew he could hear them thinking, if he bothered to listen. Could hear a heartbeat. Stop a pacemaker. Increase a train's speed and derail it. Fritz the traffic lights and cause an accident. Turn off the power and generators to a hospital. He wondered if they knew Ratchet had made him too well.
He could "pass," as Ironhide had put it, could get away with going to a beach and wearing nothing more than swim trunks, and not stand out. Nothing on the outside of him looked different from anyone else.
No one ever looked on the inside, though.
His own heartbeat. His own breath. He counted them sometimes, when he was struck by impulse or whimsy. It would be so easy to give in, to do things just because he could. So easy to dive into the Internet, hunting for that one piece of information that he wanted, needed, more than anything. So easy to lose himself in the flow, in what he could do, and forget the reason why he'd become something like this. Too easy to forget a mother's smile, a brother's laugh. Too easy to forget the way he sometimes caught his father crying into his pillow. Too easy to forget...
...being human.
He surfaced with a gasp, chills prickling down his skin despite the water's ambient embrace.
Was that what Jazz had meant?
The Detective was nice, sure, and he'd done his best in the missing-persons case, but... was that kind of madness, that doing things just because you could, what he kept Jazz from?
Sam barely noticed the tracks of heat on his face until he reached up and touched them. Wet. He touched the tip of that finger to his tongue. Salt. Not chlorine.
He wanted to run away, suddenly, from what he'd made himself into. From what he had volunteered to become.
Arms wrapped around himself, signal buzzing always in his head, he tried not to panic.
Tried not to be scared.
Tried not to lose himself to the noise.
"Do you miss flying?" Brian asked quietly on a private comm channel.
Jazz turned and looked at him from his seat before the communications bank, visored gaze slightly unnerving in the way it concealed his thoughts. "Sometimes," he admitted aloud, and leaned back in his chair, looking back at the monitors. "There's a poem, written by a young pilot 'bout your age, name a' John Magee, back durin' World War Two, called 'High Flight.' Y'know it?" Brian shook his head mutely. "They make us memorize it at Academy. Pretty much sums up how any pilot who ever flew feels 'bout it." He was silent for a moment, then recited: "Oh! I've slipped th' surly bonds of Earth an' danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; sunward I’ve climbed, an' joined th' tumblin' mirth a' sun-split clouds, an' done a hundred things ya've not dreamed a': wheeled an' soared an' swung high in th' sunlit silence. Hov’rin' there, I’ve chased th' shoutin' wind along, and flung m' eager craft through footless halls a' air.... Up, up th' long, delirious, burnin' blue I’ve topped th' wind-swept heights with easy grace where never lark nor even eagle flew, an', while with silent liftin' mind I’ve trod th' high untrespassed sanctity a' space, put out my hand, an' touched th' face a' God."
"You miss it," Brian said, walking forward into the room, taking the empty seat by Jazz.
"Askin' me if I miss flyin' is like askin' yourself if you miss swimmin'," Jazz replied. "'Course I do. It's phantom pain, like feelin' a limb that's been cut off. Doesn't mean that it's all that defines me, though. Got other things in m' life, and so do you."
"I miss the quiet inside my head," Brian said. "I miss not having things to think about. I miss...." He floundered for words to convey what he meant.
"Y' miss a simpler world," Jazz told him. "Y' miss what was taken from ya before ya even knew what it was. Not that ya can really know what it is until ya lose it."
"I don't understand why he'd do this," Brian said. "I mean, you and Prime I can kind of understand. Ironhide and Ratchet... well...."
"You can understand the math, if not the motivation?" Jazz questioned. "Me too, sorta. But Spike?" He was quiet for a moment, gaze on the flickering screens. "Y' gotta understand, B', he's lost somethin' important too. Somethin' that meant more t' him than himself. Th' reason he got int' this gig is for th' exact same reasons ya ever wanted outta it."
"Why do we need a psychologist when we have you?" Brian asked.
Jazz's half-grin was dire and amused. "Y' need the psychologist for me, B'. As th' Cheshire Cat said t' Alice, we're all mad here. We must be mad, or we wouldn't'a come here."
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-16 08:21 am (UTC)I like it.
So much, so much, so much. I wish I could give you more.
OH:
Ironhide was half again Jazz's mass and twice his weapons capabilities.
-You might want to fix that, it doesn't make much sense, that first part.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-19 07:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-19 07:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-19 12:19 am (UTC)Hope that makes a bit more sense. (Three years after you posted. Hee.)
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Date: 2007-08-16 08:46 am (UTC)Still amazing, simply. That's the best word for it, and it's making me want to write my own cyborgs and technopaths again. Which is good. *g*
no subject
Date: 2007-08-16 08:03 pm (UTC)It took me a few paragraphs to realize that Brian was Bumblebee. ^^;; *is slow* And was the scene with Prime and the whiskey inspired by that comment I made in the original plot bunny post?
no subject
Date: 2007-08-16 08:29 pm (UTC)For each point of view I'm using how they think about themselves, which is usually their birthnames rather than their codenames. Except for Jazz in chapter one, because he really was in a bad place at that point, on the brink of losing the person to the weapon. Thank god for Prowl.
And, yes, Prime and the whiskey was totally from your prompt. ^_^ And, honestly, I'm not sure the *original* Optimus doesn't have similar feelings once in a while.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-03 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-05 04:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 08:33 am (UTC)