sakon76

Summer Job: Celestial Calculator
by K. Stonham
released 5th July 2010

June 16th, 2010

"You do realize," Sam asked Optimus, "that Ratchet is kind of expecting either one of us to go off the deep end at any moment and turn into a CPU-eating zombie, right?"

"I had noticed the increased medical checkups for both of us, yes," Optimus agreed. "Ratchet worries too much."

Sam snorted, leaning one elbow on Optimus' passenger-side window frame and letting the warm summer night air ruffle his short hair. "That's what I told him."

"And what did he reply?"

"That somebody had to in this infernal, glitching, rag-tag group of interspecies lemmings. That's a quote, by the way."

"He does have a way with words."

"I don't think we're going to, though, are we?"

"I hadn't planned on it."

"Me neither."

*

June 17th, 2010

Okay, so it had taken him a little longer than anticipated to get men and mechs to cave on his need to investigate that theoretically-defunct space bridge in England. This, Seymour could live with, especially as Lennox and his boys had extracted payment in the form of an intra-base ice hockey game. Amused as any set of spectators, the Autobots had agreed to provide the ice (in the tropics, in June) and somehow magically the base budget had coughed up the funds for gear. All Seymour had to do was recruit his team.

"No," Witwicky categorically refused. "No, no, no and no. No way. I don't know how to play."

"You," Seymour informed the kid, "are going to play. I'm making you goalie."

"What part of 'no' don't you understand?"

"Now, Lennox has no shortage of willing baboons to play on his side. Us, we've got to be smarter. It's you and me, kid, against alla them."

"NEST versus the rest," Banes chirped from where she was poking up inside the medic's wrist.

Ratchet harumphed. "And who are your other players?"

"Her," Seymour declared, pointing at the girl.

"What?!" she demanded.

"You don't think you can handle a few Marines?" he goaded.

"Oh, I can handle them, all right. It's your funeral I'm plotting," Mikaela retorted.

"I'm also calling dibs on Mirage and Hound," Seymour informed Ratchet.

"And your sixth?"

Seymour's grin was wolfish. "Madsen."

*

Somehow, Sam wasn't sure quite how, he'd been dragged into the madness that was NEST's downtime.

The base's Olympic-sized swimming pool had been frozen solid in seconds with one of Chromia's little devices, probably a sibling to the one she'd used to sublimate ice in Antarctica. Gearing up in ice skates, padding, and mask had been insane in the tropical heat. Not to mention the fact that Sam was a skateboarder, not an inline skater, and he wasn't sure he wasn't just going to fall flat on his face the first time he tried to stop a puck.

Mikaela, of course, was utterly adaptable. Maggie was quick and ruthless, and Simmons... well, Sam supposed growing up in New York had to've taught the guy a few things.

All that, though, was nothing compared to coming out and seeing Hound doing jumps and spins like something out of the Olympics, while Mirage tested the ice with all the ferocity and ease of a professional hockey player.

Yeah, role reversal much.

Around the edge of the pool humans and mechs jostled for prime viewing space, and Sam suspected a few of the base's cameras were feeding to control room screens for the benefit of those on duty. And oh fuck the NEST guys looked even bigger, bulkier, and scarier with knives strapped to their feet.

Once again, Sam wondered what he was doing here.

"I expect a clean game from all of you," Ratchet intoned. "Frag each other up, and I will make sure you regret it later." He dropped the puck on the ice.

And the game was on.

*

June 18th, 2010

The first annual NEST interspecies hockey game had been a rousing success, with the final score being 5-3 in NEST's favor, due largely to Sam's incompetence as a goalie. Though there had been one memorable stop where he'd yelped, gloved hand before his face, the puck hovering untouched in the air inches away. Mirage and Hound had played exactly as well as Seymour had expected, seemingly born to the ice. Mikaela hadn't been bad either, for a California girl. But Madsen... oh, he had lucked out when he'd picked her for his team.

Maggie was a shark on the ice. She might wear Barbie heels in day-to-day life, but no one on the opposing team was going to take the blonde tech for granted any more.

"Everybody packed and ready to go?" Seymour called, looking around. Twenty humans, including himself, Sam, Mikaela, and Glen Whitmann. Seven or eight--depending on how you counted Arcee's two bodies--mechs. And one cleared section of tarmac that had been designated the departure point.

As his watch ticked over to seven a.m., he heard Jetstorm murmuring something in that robotic language to Optimus, felt the weird twisting and saw the flashing lights of the teleport--

--and then blinked, eyes and ears adjusting to darkness.

*

Home was Graham's first thought.

It was ridiculous, of course, to think that there was some magically inherent difference between British soil and that of anyplace else on the planet, but still he couldn't help that wistful feeling of homecoming.

Hot and muggy even at two in the morning. There was no place like Britain in the summer.

"Right, round up," Major Lennox called even as the Autobots dropped into vehicle mode, their American license plates rippling briefly as they changed to elongated British number plates.

Graham mentally snorted. As outlandish as most of their vehicle forms were, a change of plate didn't help in the least.

Arcee's riders flickered into view as Graham passed her, heading for Jolt. The quiet medical apprentice, he'd found, was good company and the two of them had spent hours asking and answering questions about one another's cultures.

"Twenty miles north," Jolt reported as Graham closed the door. The blue Autobot pulled up off the verge and onto the road as the last of his passengers finished stowing weapons and fastening their seat belts. "Or would that be thirty-two kilometers?"

"We use both here," Graham replied. "Stick with miles." Then he looked up out of the windshield and yelped, grabbing for Jolt's wheel. "Other side of the road!"

If a string of flashy vehicles could look abashed as they all drifted to the left side of the road, this lot certainly did.

*

Mikaela's list of countries she'd seen was fairly short: America, Mexico, Egypt, Jordan, and Diego Garcia. She could now add England to her list. Or she could if the streetlights illuminated anything beyond Ratchet's bulk on the road ahead of them, Ironhide's night-black form pacing behind them, and seemingly empty fields separated by hedgerows.

Someday she would have to see about getting a passport and actually getting stamps in it to prove she'd been places.

But she and Sam had a map in Bumblebee's back seat, one they pored over with each turn on and off the tiny British roads, until Sam frowned and groaned theatrically, flopping back against the faux leather of Bumblebee's seat.

"What is it?" Lieutenant Casey asked from the front seat.

"I think I know where we're going," Sam replied.

"Where ya goin', partner?" Bumblebee queried.

Sam's index finger tapped at a notation on the map. Mikaela picked it up to read the tiny print, and her eyes widened.

*

"Stonehenge," Seymour breathed from his position in Ratchet's passenger seat. "Awesome!"

Their little convoy pulled off the A-344 and engines cut out, allowing human passengers to exit the sentient vehicles. Across the road and beyond a low fence, the ancient stone circle loomed in the darkness of the night.

The fence, of course, was no obstacle. The military men (Seymour proudly among them in this ability) merely hopped it. Witwicky flew himself and Banes over it. Whitmann was given a gracious lift over by Ratchet. The robots, for the most part, just stepped over, with a hop in Arcee/Chromia's cases.

Pacing to the center of the standing stones, Seymour flipped open his radiation sensor. "--And the crowd goes wild," he concluded to its frantic beeping that indicated Cybertronian traces, and shut off the device before it became too annoying.

"So, like, where is it, then?" Epps asked.

Looming over the other Autobots like the stones loomed over the humans, Jetstorm snorted. "It is down, of course. Beneath all this accumulated... earth."

"So how're we gonna get at it?" Glen whined. "We didn't bring any shovels."

"We don't need 'em," Sam said quietly, and damn if the kid didn't sound like a man for a second. "We've got me."

*

"Absolutely not!" Graham declared. "We cannot destroy Stonehenge!"

"They're just rocks piled up against one another," Ironhide argued. "Any fool could do the same."

"This structure is forty-five hundred years old!"

"Do you know how little time that actually is?" the night-black mech asked. And, yes, Graham had actually paid attention in his briefing, thank you very much, and knew that the very youngest of the Autobots had to be at least twice that age.

But that wasn't his point.

"It's not that little of a time to us," he hissed. "The damage in Egypt and Jordan was unavoidable. This is not. In three days this site is going to be flocked with Neo-Pagans for their solstice rituals. You explain to them why Stonehenge is suddenly gone!"

"It's not actually, you know," Sam broke in.

"Not what?" Major Lennox asked him.

"Not actually a solstice calculator or anything. The angles don't line up right for anything, even accounting for axial shift."

"So what is it, then?" Glen Whitmann asked.

"I think..." Sam looked around the standing stones again. "I think it's a way to remember."

"Remember?" Ratchet asked, raising an optical ridge.

Sam nodded. "We built a pyramid over that machine. We carved rooms in the rock in Petra. And we put standing stones over a space bridge that had been buried twenty feet deep by time." He started pacing. "Humans tell ourselves stories about a war among the angels, about the destroyer, the one who fell." He stopped and looked up at Optimus. "The gate to the garden of Eden was guarded by an angel with a flaming sword."

Having seen the Prime's weaponry in action, Graham got the implication and swallowed dryly.

"Sam, you can't think..." Lennox started, then stopped as if he didn't know what to say.

"I don't know what to think," Sam said, shaking his head. "But I know our answers are down there."

"You're serious," Agent Simmons said.

Sam merely nodded.

*

"Stupid sheep," Sam muttered under his breath, trying not to think of how many tons of dirt and rock he was holding above the British countryside by force of will alone, "move!"

The sheep, unfortunately, did not get the clue.

Lennox, fortunately, looked at Ironhide, whose expression was shifting over to "let me just get my cannons out," and took the initiative. "Come on, move those sheep!" he shouted, rallying his men into action.

In short order the ovines were herded out of the way and part of the grasslands was much, much higher, standing stones peeking over the top of the new butte. It slumped a little, dirt spilling into a hill as Sam released it, but the stones themselves stayed in place. Sam breathed a sigh of relief and stood from where he'd knelt on the grass, walking over to the edge of the twenty-foot-deep hole he'd excavated.

Inside the huge pit, the remaining clods of dirt were being chased out of the revealed ring by some sort of sonic repeller Jolt was wielding as Jetstorm was showing the control panel to Optimus. It was obvious where the Fallen had damaged it: huge claw marks scored deep into the pewter-colored metal.

"Jeez, no way we can fix this," Glen said, laptop and camera out, taking photographs and uploading them to NESTNet.

Looking across the circle at that damage, Sam felt knowledge flare to life inside his head.

Optimus' head turned suddenly. As if Sam had taken a sharp breath that he'd heard, or something.

Quietly, the Prime crossed the expanse of the space bridge. "Sam?" he asked.

Sam looked up at his brother. Part of him was thinking this might be a really bad idea. But Optimus had mentioned that there were Autobots trapped on his planet, unable to escape the dying world into space....

"I think we can fix it," Sam said softly. "You and me."

Optimus blinked, taken aback. "Are you certain?"

Sam shook his head. "No. But I've got the manual and you've got the Matrix, and I think that's all we would need. So the question is...." He looked up into blue, blue optics. "Do you think we should?"

*

It was a... as humans would say, "breathtaking" possibility. To have the ability to easily transverse the great distance between Earth and Cybertron, to be able to liberate those of his people who remained trapped on their homeworld....

And also to potentially open a door here on Earth for Decepticons to come through.

It was a decision Optimus could not make without the consent of his allies.

"Shit, if it was my world and my people, I'd do it in a heartbeat," Major Lennox said after having the possibility--and possible risk--explained to him.

"Indeed. But this is your world, Major, and I will not bring any further danger down on it."

"Hell, we'd be getting more allies out of this, too," Master Sergeant Epps pointed out. "Seems like a pretty good trade for a 'maybe'."

"And the Decepticons don't know how to use the bridge?" Lennox asked Jetstorm.

The massive Autobot shrugged. "Old ones, Seekers... if any others of my kind awaken, they will know how to use the bridge."

"Can't we just take the keys out of the ignition when we're not using it?" Captain Graham asked.

Optimus looked at his human brother. "Sam?"

"I think... I think there is a control chip we should be able to take with us," Sam replied, brow furrowed as he accessed the Allspark's knowledge.

"Then I'm good with it," said Major Lennox, speaking for humanity.

"All right!" cheered Glen Whitmann. "Let's get this baby repaired!"

*

In the end, it was as simple as sitting on Optimus' hand as the giant knelt before the damage, each of them touching the Matrix. Whispered thoughts were shared between them through the relic as Sam showed what needed to be done and Optimus guided the Matrix's energy to repair the damage, creating new whole parts as needed using interdimensional mathematical equations that would make Sam's professors at Princeton go cross-eyed.

And then it was done, as gleaming as new. Sam was lowered to stand on the brushed silver paneling inside the ring.

"So what now?" Simmons asked.

"This," Jetstorm replied, touching a single screen on the five-foot-tall control board.

A galaxy of characters appeared swirling above and around them, glowing gold against the star-lit sky. Sam smiled, familiar with this.

"Wow," Glen breathed, looking up gape-mouthed, spinning around to look at all of the Cybertronian characters.

"Wait," Sam asked. "You see them too?"

Lennox and Mikaela shifted their gaze to Sam instead. "Wait, you see this all the time?" Lennox asked, gesturing at the hovering glyphs.

"Pretty much," Sam confirmed.

"Sam..." Mikaela said, and he wasn't sure just how to take her expression.

"Now this," Jetstorm said, reaching out and touching the glyph that meant Cybertron, "is being the fastest way home."

"No, wait--" Lennox said futilely even as Jetstorm hooked a claw through the quasi-holographic glyph. It flared to life in a golden spate of coordinates, and light crackled up all around them with a thunderous noise--

*

With an awakening of light on long-disused screens, the space bridge whirred to life.

Blue-white lightening flared and then vanished, leaving only a thunderclap of displaced air in its wake.

Inside the metal circle seven Cybertronians straightened cautiously, as did the twenty organic creatures scattered among them. In the ringing silence, they all looked up at the absolute blackness of a sky that held no sun and whose two inky moons could only be seen as blots on the field of unfamiliar stars.

Humans had come to Cybertron.

*~*~*

Author's Note: Visceral pretty-glowy-things music is "Hanging By A Moment" by Lifehouse. Stonehenge got picked as Ancient Architecture Likely To Conceal Cybertronian tech by simple virtue of it (or another stone circle, anyway) appearing in Beast Wars, and the fact that I've been there. In winter. It was cold. The space bridge in my head is much closer to the G1 version than the Animated version. Unfortunately I wasn't able to justify

drharper's wonderful commentary about Sam having Space Bridge Repair For Dummies into this chapter, nor the fact that I think the aforementioned volume was likely authored by a mech named Bulkhead. :) Editing for correct Britishness done by my Wonderful Husband who is, in fact, British.