[rd][fic][Transformers Bayverse] Deus Ex Machina 1/?

[sakon76]

August 31st, 2011. Diego Garcia.

The world booted up with a start.

"Welcome back," said a voice he'd thought he might never hear again.

Wheeljack onlined his optics. "Ratchet?" he asked, sitting up.

Then his gaze focused on what he could see beyond his friend. He stared for a nanoklik, cycled his complete sensor suite, then looked back at the medic. "What in the name of Cybertron...?" he asked, gesturing at the blue-skied world beyond the medbay's doors, and the handful of organics who stood watch within, their eyes on him.

Ratchet smiled. "Welcome to Earth."

Deus Ex Machina: Booting Up
by K. Stonham
first released 17th June, 2011

September 10th, 2011. Princeton, New Jersey.

This year Sam got to their dorm room first. He smirked as he looked between the beds. To do a replay of last year's first meeting with Leo, or not...?

Not, he decided, and for expediency's sake picked the same side of the room he'd had last year.

He was on his final trip hauling his stuff out of Bumblebee's trunk before Leo, Sharsky, and Fassbinder turned up, eerily as one unit. The latter pair didn't know the full truth about the Cybertronian war and what role Sam and Leo had played in it the year before, but leaving them out of the room draw would've only been cause for them to be even more suspicious. Plus Hound liked them.

"Sam!" Leo dropped his first box on the spare bed and fist-bumped him. "How was your summer, man?"

"Didn't hear a peep out of you until the room draw invite came up," Sharsky added.

"Oh, you know. Hectic internship, dates with Mikaela. Kept myself busy. Had an out-of-this-world vacation, briefly," Sam couldn't resist adding. He enjoyed Leo's jaw dropping.

"Seriously?" Leo asked.

"Seriously," Sam told him.

A knock came on the open door. "Hey," Hound said, leaning in, ignoring the bustle of the hall behind him.

"Henry!" Fassbinder said, coming back from checking out where Leo's computer empire would surely be set up this year. "Where's that foxy lady of yours?"

Hound jerked a thumb upward. "Next floor up. I'm right across the hall."

"Excellent." Somehow, Sam didn't know how, Fassbinder and Hound had set up a mutual friendship based on the love of microbreweries. It helped, in Sam's opinion, that Hound was utterly unable to get drunk on liquor and thus could be relied upon to be the designated driver and make sure Fassbinder got safely back to the dorm each time.

Leo leaned in closer to Sam. "Out of this world?" he asked sotto voce.

"Two hours on Cybertron," Sam murmured in reply.

"Holy shit, man."

"Where we learned that the atmosphere isn't conducive to human survival."

"Fuck."

"Exactly."

"Henry." A vision in platinum and blue appeared in the hallway behind Hound. "You were helping me unload," she reminded him.

He turned around, smiling at her. "Sorry. I'll come help."

"I'm done; I'll help too," Sam said.

"Hey, me too!" Leo said. "Mira, mi amore, how was your summer?" he asked, half-putting an arm around her as she went back down the hall. Sam and Hound followed behind, as did Sharsky and Fassbinder.

"Dude, does he even realize he hasn't got a chance?" Sharsky asked.

Hound shrugged. "If he wants to try, let him."

"Someday, man, you and Sam gotta tell the rest of us your secrets for ending up with the hot ladies."

Hound laughed. Sam shrugged. "Just lucky, I guess," he said.

At the parking lot, Leo abruptly stopped, looking at the black Suburban parked right beside Sam's Camaro. "Um," he said as Sharsky and Fassbinder followed the two Pretenders to the vehicle, many hands making light work and all that jazz.

And, yeah, the Suburban's Autobot markings were just as visible as Bumblebee's, if you knew what you were looking at. "Leo, Trailbreaker," Sam introduced. "Trailbreaker, my roommate Leo Spitz."

Keeping the part of a non-sentient vehicle, Trailbreaker's response was limited to a text message on Sam's phone: "Pleased to meet you. Any friend of the Autobots is a friend of mine."

"You guys so messed with the parking pool this year, didn't you?" Leo accused in a whisper. "What's he doing here?"

Sam smiled at his friend. "He's Hound and Mirage's boyfriend," he answered, and went to help the others, deliberately ignoring Leo's sputtering.

***

September 10th, 2011. Diego Garcia.

Perceptor onlined to a most peculiar atmosphere--his sensors immediately began their survey of its contents before he was even fully cognizant of the rest of his surroundings. Most curious. Largely nitrogen, but with an unusually high, and quite possibly dangerous, oxygen content, and... oh my, was that dihydrogen monoxide he was sensing? Indeed it was! How very rare and unusual.

Intrigued, he unshuttered his optics and was taken slightly aback.

"Ratchet?" he inquired. And on his other side, Wheeljack.

Prime's chief medical officer smirked at him. "Hello, Perceptor," he said, and helped shift Perceptor into a vertically-oriented position, which gave him the opportunity to look at his surroundings. A decently sized room (his sensors gave him its measurements to the nanometer), made of strangely shoddy materials, with an open door that led to...

Oh my.

Perceptor stared.

Golden sunlight, the like of which he hadn't seen in vorns, spilled down on a world that was very, very clearly organic.

"Where...?" he asked, stunned.

***

Major William Lennox gave Red Alert this: he might be a paranoid glitch, but once he'd downloaded the language and culture packets the rest of the Autobots had fine-tuned for the new arrivals, he was a damn fine Security mech and hacker. He had, in fact, been hooked into the mainframe, not leaving the building, since assimilating the data Optimus and Ratchet had felt he'd needed, and NEST's communication lines had never been more secure.

Red, in fact, seemed to take a certain gleeful delight in foiling Soundwave's machinations.

"That can't be healthy, man," Epps opined, standing next to Will as they both regarded Red Alert's still form. "He's been wired into that thing for almost three months. Mech's gotta need a break now and then."

"I wouldn't worry about it," Arcee's pink unit told them, pulling up and transforming. Her other half was probably sitting next to her sister's protoform.

"Oh?" Will asked.

She smirked. "You should see the worlds he's been building in Minecraft."

***

September 24th, 2011. Diego Garcia.

"So," Ratchet asked Sam, "how is that school of yours?"

Sam shrugged. "About the same as last year. How goes waking the undead?"

"Slowly. Perceptor's been up for about two weeks now; he's adjusted enough for you to start working with him." The medic's gaze shifted to beyond the building's doors, where a bulky black figure lurked, two human-sized mechs his shadows. "And you, get in here and let me check your levels."

"Have you let Perceptor see the prototypes yet?" Sam asked, ignoring Ratchet's orders to Trailbreaker.

"He got the schematics an hour ago. He's all yours, kiddo." Ratchet stabbed a finger at the hesitant mech, then at the medical berth he'd finally gotten installed. "Don't make me shut you down to get a look at those power cells," he warned.

Trailbreaker slouched in, followed by his trinemates. Ratchet stifled a snort of irritation. You'd think from the tactician's behavior that he was no better than one of those hack Decepticon medbots.

"Right. Catch you later, Ratchet," Sam said, sidling toward the door. "Good luck, guys!" he called to the trio before making his escape.

Just as well not to have any pesky Primes underfoot when performing medical exams. Though Mikaela--currently in California straightening a few things out prior to moving to the island full time--was sure to be annoyed she'd missed it. "I don't like what stasis has done to your power cells," he started, scanning Trailbreaker's fuel system. "They're not running nearly as efficiently as they should be."

"Sorry," Trailbreaker muttered. As if it was his fault!

Ratchet harrumphed, then looked at the mech's two tiny lovers. "Is he still out of it?" he asked.

Mirage nodded, expression miserable. "Yeah," Hound said.

"Why the frag that boy couldn't go to college in a sunny state..." Ratchet groused. Trailbreaker's partners had been a wreck since his rescue, refusing to leave their refound partner even for their mission. Optimus, more compassionate to their plight than any mech rightfully should be, had asked Ratchet to make Trailbreaker's revival a priority over even Wheeljack and Perceptor's. Except Trailbreaker had damage, old and newer, to some of his internals, and Earth simply didn't have the materials needed for proper repairs. Ratchet sighed, a human behavior he'd hard-written into his mannerisms for the duration of their stay on this planet. "We haven't got the materials on this planet to construct new cells for you," he informed Trailbreaker. "You're staying on light duty until we do, and you're to keep topped up, understand? Even with that horrible gasoline the locals use, if needs be."

"Yes, Ratchet," Trailbreaker mumbled miserably.

Ratchet put a hand on the mech's shoulder. If Trailbreaker would truly prefer.... "We can put you back into stasis for now, if it's what you want."

Trailbreaker looked up, a sharp expression on his face for the first time since he'd been brought out of stasis on this planet. "No!" he protested. He looked at his small partners, reached down to them. Mirage took his hand, resting her head against his fingers. "I don't want to, I truly don't. I just don't like feeling so tired and out of it all the time."

Ratchet sighed again. "I'll see what the science team can come up with," he offered. "But no promises."

***

One of the primitive holotables NEST had apparently paid Stark Industries way too much money for had been taken over by Wheeljack as soon as he'd been up and running. On overhearing some of Wheeljack's current project, Sam Witwicky had immediately volunteered his services, knowledge, and assistance.

It hadn't taken Wheeljack long at all to realize he really should have delved into the files he'd been given about Sam.

Now he was enjoying watching Perceptor have the same experience as the young human ran critical eyes over the solar collector schematics and made intelligent suggestions for improving transmission efficiency.

A Prime. An alien Prime, with all the knowledge of the Allspark in his processor. Sometimes Wheeljack was sure the universe was weirder than anything he could ever have dreamt up.

"If we tighten up the connection here and here," Sam said, hands momentarily lighting up two areas of the design, "I think we could squeeze maybe ninety percent efficiency out of it these things."

"Ninety percent is deplorable," Perceptor opined.

The human grinned up at him. "You have to factor in working with materials available on this planet. Keep in mind that human solar panel efficiency is around thirty percent, tops."

The scientist sniffed in disdain.

"So, I think we can rig a few prototypes this weekend and start testing," Wheeljack stepped in. "Are we agreed that given local limitations this is probably the best we can make it?"

Perceptor and Sam looked at each other for a moment, then each nodded. "Just make sure they're not going to mess up the ecology and kill the fish or whatever," Sam said.

"Oh, that's not a problem," Wheeljack assured him. "We've dealt with gathering energy on organic worlds before. It's just the distillation into energon that's going to be new." It would, if his and Perceptor's calculations were correct, be a damnably slow process. But better slow than nonexistent.

"If I may make a suggestion." Perceptor folded himself into a seated position. "There may be a quicker way to gather sufficient quantities of solar power." Thus enabling them to bring their friends out of stasis lock that much sooner.

"I'm all ears," Sam said.

"This preliminary passive gathering of solar radiation is a remarkable first step," Perceptor said, "given the natural resources of both our location and the materials our allies are willing to provide us. But it should also be within the spectra of Terran materials to construct a solar craft to do a close orbit of this star and gather what we require in a sufficiently more expedient fashion."

"Solar craft..." Sam murmured.

"It'll take more time to design, build, and launch, though," Wheeljack mused. "Maybe even a couple years. Is there any reason we shouldn't work on this passive draw in the meantime?"

"None whatsoever," Perceptor reassured him. Sam was looking off into the mid-distance. "Samuel?"

"Hm? Oh." The human started out of his trance, looking up at them. "Sorry, just a thought."

"Anything relevant?" Wheeljack asked.

"Um. Maybe. I think I need to ask Optimus about something first, though."

"Sure," said Wheeljack. Perceptor just nodded in acceptance of needing to consult the elder Prime's experience. Not that Perceptor, Wheeljack thought, was fully convinced that Sam was a Prime. But he was too smart to do anything but reserve judgement, and too polite to be contrary about it.

Wheeljack suspected Sam knew this, and chose not to make an issue of it.

...Which was very Prime-like of him, come to think of it.

*~*~*

Author's Note: The beginning of the (probably) final Simulacra'verse story. I'm looking down the calendar and doubting I'm going to in fact get it done before DotM comes out, but who knows. I'll certainly give it the old college try! And given the tack it seems to be taking, it may be longer than the 2-3 parts I had originally envisioned. We shall see. Also, I am probably borrowing a little from tainry's Kuppies in her incredibly awesome story Borealis (go read!), even though what Jack, Percy, and Sam are baking up is a very different item indeed. And hoshikage may recognize a certain phrase deliberately repeated from our story A Day in the Life. :) Oh, and Red Alert plays Minecraft because I'm sick of what's become a fandom cliche of the mechs playing WoW. Added to which, I can't really picture WoW being Red's thing. Instead, he's building lots of secure fortresses and elaborate creeper/zombie/spider/skeleton/slime boobytraps and being quite happy about doing so.

Comments

[xianghua.livejournal.com]

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! So glad to see this getting started. :D

[synaltern.livejournal.com]

Omigod Red is just awesome. Haven't touched Minecraft myself -- between all the other games I have on my play list and the fact that my netbook can't handle it darn it...well, coworkers gush over it. It does seem intriguing.

Trailbreaker! <3 and Kuppies. Can't go wrong with the Kuppies.

[sakon76.livejournal.com]

Minecraft is fun because you get out of it what you want to put into it... whether that's building impressive architecture or fighting off monsters.

[tainry.livejournal.com]

"He's Hound and Mirage's boyfriend,"
::evil cackling::

"You should see the worlds he's been building in Minecraft."
::laughs so loud it freaked out the cats:: Oh, Red, ilu...

Poor TB! Nice work with his bio, though!
Yay Perceptor!!! (Snerk! Dihydrogen monoxide! Someone get him the MSDS for that! XDDD)
Heee, borrow away - I'm definitely stealing "Melissa" for a grandkid. <333
Just out of curiosity, have you read Brin's Sundiver? Kind of a prequel to his Uplift Wars series? ::ponders rereading those::

[sakon76.livejournal.com]

Poor 'Breaker just can't get a break. (Forgive the pun.) :)

I love writing Percy. And I do admit that I went on a rereading jag of rather a lot of Borealis a few days ago and it helped spark his voice in my head.

Haven't read Sundiver. Or the Uplift Wars series. Good, I assume?

[tainry.livejournal.com]

XD

Happy to be of service! :D

Oh! They are good. Snarky dolphins and chimps, elegant and v, v distinguished aliens who are sekretly total pranksters. I don't remember much about the humans, but the worldbuilding and the sfery is fun! Interesting look at a galactic society, with a bit of humanity throwing monkey-wrenches into the workings thereof. Ha! I said MONKEY-wrenches! ::ducks::

[hoshikage.livejournal.com]

"...are you guys doing?" :)

BTW, I think Perceptor means "rare and unusual" there...

[sakon76.livejournal.com]

:) Yep, that'd be the one.

And, eep, yes! Thanks! *corrects*

[(Anonymous)]

i was so happy to see this. i checked the group with the hopes that you would have updated and low and behold you did. i squealed and my friend looked at me weird. i loved the chapter to pieces and i really hope to see the next one soon.

[femme4jack.livejournal.com]

*snickering madly over breaking Leo's brain* "He's Hound and Mirage's boyfriend" indeed :D I hope he feels better soon. Somehow, I think Sam is going to have something to do with that happening.

Perceptor and Wheeljack are making me so squeeful and happy!!!! Eeeeeeee

[sakon76.livejournal.com]

Mmm, actually, Sam isn't going to have much to do with Trailbreaker getting repairs, though that's an intriguing thought. Living mecha, are a bit harder to repair than mere space bridges, and he's kind of not very good at fixing things. (Note that Sam provided the manual in Summer Job; Optimus was the one actually doing the repair work.)

[ytak.livejournal.com]

You can do some crazy awesome things in Minecraft if what I've seen my brother and cousin do is any indication. Yes, I can see Red Alert enjoying it. :)

Love the little introductions of the new mechs, little snippets that offer insight to who they are. :)

[flybystardancer.livejournal.com]

*squeaks happily at fic* Eee, Trailbreaker acting as Mirage and Hound's car! Breaking Leo's brain! H/M/T being cute! Fun with Wheeljack and Perceptor!

[sakon76.livejournal.com]

...Surely I mentioned at BC that Mirage and Hound were going to have a black Suburban as their vehicle? :)

I need to find Leo a new object to obsess over, though. He's finally getting the clue that he hasn't got a shot with 'Raj.

[flybystardancer.livejournal.com]

It probably didn't click for me then. XD

Maybe he goes back to the kitty calendars? lol *patpats poor guy*

And I read the fic at work. >_>

[morgie.livejournal.com]

/runs around cheering.

[drharper.livejournal.com]

Lovely! I just love the wry humor you drop into these stories.

And Minecraft! I've been avoiding that because enough of my time is eaten by World of Warcraft. Wonder if anyone's introduced Red to the Civilization series.

[lady_katana4544]

I love this series of yours so much. :) I took most of yesterday to reread this entire series and then read this particular chapter two more times.

Love it! :D

[mmouse15.livejournal.com]

I do not get to use this icon often enough, so you can imagine my glee at the H/M/T portion of this chapter. But it also had Wheeljack and Perceptor and Leo being his usual clueless self and so much win!