[rd][fic][Transformers Bayverse] Deus Ex Machina 2/?

[sakon76]

October 1st, 2011. Diego Garcia.

Optimus made his way to the native graveyard where Sam was waiting to meet with him. His human brother had requested a meeting in private--not even his guardian to be present--and Optimus had no idea why.

Sam stood with his back to the base--and thus Optimus--as the Prime approached. His arms were crossed and he was looking at the headstones they had cleaned not all that long ago.

"Sam?" asked Optimus.

"What would you think," asked his brother without turning around, "if I said it was possible to get Cybertron a new sun?"


Deus Ex Machina: How to Win Friends and Influence People
by K. Stonham
first released 29th June, 2011


His brother was speechless for a moment. Sam turned, looking up at Optimus. "It's possible," he told the Cybertronian. He tapped the side of his head. "Something Perceptor said sparked the idea."

The mech knelt in one swift, smooth move; that much mass moving so fast would've freaked anyone who had less confidence in Autobot precision than Sam. "How would it even be possible?" asked Optimus.

Sam sighed. "Ratchet said no one had gone down beyond a certain depth and returned to tell the tale, right?" he asked. Optimus nodded. "Well. I don't know what's between that layer and the core, but... the turtles, and the caves, do go all the way down. And at the very heart of Cybertron, there's a guidance computer." Sam grimaced. "It's noted in my head as Vector Sigma." He traced the Cybertronian characters in the air between them, knowing Optimus could accurately mirror and reproduce them to get at their meanings.

"Vector meaning direction and magnitude," Optimus murmured, tilting his head to one side, "and Sigma as its sum?"

Sam nodded. "That's what I got from it too." Though there were intriguing layers to the glyphs that hinted at more, and some kind of connection to Vector Prime that Sam hadn't teased out yet.

"You're proposing... an expedition to the heart of Cybertron, to reprogram its directional computer to find a new orbit around a suitable star?"

"No." Sam shook his head. "It'd take forever to get there. I'd be dead before it was achieved." He looked at Optimus, all seriousness on his face. "I'm proposing an expedition to the heart of Cybertron, to open a space bridge to jump Cybertron into a stable, nondisruptive orbit around Earth's sun."

"That would never be permitted by Earth's governments," Optimus said.

Sam snorted. "Yeah, well, since we demoted Pluto I haven't been very fond of what humans have to say about the local astrography."

***

"The problem, of course," Perceptor said, "is that of a power source sufficient to move the entire planet--preferably including its moons--into a solar orbit. An ordinary space bridge," and here he looked at Jetstorm and Optimus, "takes minimal energy expenditure on the part of the one who opens it. Given the correct modifications, it merely requires moving what Samuel so quaintly refers to as 'cosmic strings' into the correct configuration; in essence, moving the teleported matter between spaces rather than across them."

"So it's similar in method but different in effect than telekinesis?" Sam, seated atop an eight-foot-high shipping container, asked for the sake of clarity.

Perceptor paused, looked at him, then nodded. "Essentially, yes. A wormhole works via much the same, albeit significantly grander, principles. The strings are naturally caught and twisted together, either in a stable configuration or, more often, in temporary knots that gradually come undone under the stresses of local quantum phenomena."

"And what you're talking about," Wheeljack summed up, "is creating a temporary wormhole with two fixed endpoints: Cybertron and this solar system." He shook his head. "Even before we wrecked ourselves with war, that was beyond our capabilities."

"Aw, come on," Sam said. "You're scientists. Whatever happened to pushing the envelope of possibility?"

Perceptor shook his head. "You do not understand. It is not possible." He spoke with a tone of finality. "To reconfigure cosmic strings on such a scale, the power needed would be on the magnitude of the destruction of half a dozen suns such as your planet's. We, as a race, have never been able to channel such amounts."

Sam met the glowing blue gaze evenly and didn't back down. "You know what? You're right," he agreed. "Today? Right now? Totally not possible yet. But everything I have in my head says it can be done. So if you want Cybertron to have a sun again and maybe return to being a living world? You have one human lifetime--mine--to make this impossibility workable."

The engineer and the scientist looked at him silently for a moment. "You're serious," Wheeljack said finally.

Sam nodded.

"All right. I'm interested." At that, Perceptor shot a fast, alarmed look at Wheeljack and trilled a spate of Cybertronian protests that Sam just let wash over him, rolling his eyes. Wheeljack replied in the same language. Apparently, they didn't get the memo that he understood Cybertronian. Or for that matter the one that said talking in their own language over the heads of native allies was just plain rude.

For a moment, Sam considered asking his mother to come to the island to browbeat some manners into the newly-awakened Cybertronians. (Trailbreaker, he admitted, was pretty good about these kind of things. But then Trailbreaker was also quiet to the point of seeming shy.) For a glorious instant Sam imagined Judy Witwicky in her element, waving a baseball bat at twenty-foot-high metal alien robots, haranguing them to behave properly or else get off her planet....

No, no. Lennox would never let Sam import his mom. Not even for just an hour.

***

He eventually ended up wandering into the main hangar, leaving the arguing scientists behind in the building they shared with Ratchet, Jolt, and Mikaela's workspace. She was asleep right now, totally conked out in their joint quarters, Bumblebee parked outside the window, systems humming low. But Sam's inner clock was set to Eastern Standard Time, so middle of the night on Diego Garcia was middle of the day for him. And despite occasional boasts of "NEST never sleeps!" by people with crew cuts, there weren't nearly as many people running around when it was dark out.

Honestly, the time difference made the whole weekend job thing a little ridiculous. During the summer it had been okay; on the island almost every single day, his sleep schedule had adapted. But five days off the island and two on? No way. Still, he was still getting paid for hanging out with the coolest bunch of humans and 'bots on the planet, so Sam guessed he had to count it as a win.

A frown puckered his mouth as he thought about the fact that a normal college student, like he would have been if the Cube hadn't decided to take up residence in his head, would never have been able to get by on as little sleep or studying as he did. Well, maybe the sleep.

Hound and Mirage needing similar study hours wasn't too much of a comfort.

"Troubled, Prime?" a quiet voice asked him.

Sam blinked and looked up into the blue optics of Red Alert. The Autobot was in his root form at the moment, leaning back against the wall of NEST's main hangar, networking cables trailing from a wrist and keeping him hooked into the computers. Most of the time he'd been staying in his alt mode, which looked suspiciously like a red-and-white Cray workstation, but at night, when the building was quieter, he sometimes switched back. For the most part NEST let him be. The general scuttlebutt, according to Maggie, was that everyone thought he was shy and they were giving him time to acclimate.

"Not really. Sort of. Maybe," Sam replied.

Red Alert gestured with an open hand, apparently willing to listen to whatever Sam might want to say.

Sam sighed. "Just... is there a reason why Wheeljack and Perceptor don't really seem to believe I'm a Prime and know the things I know? I sometimes get the feeling they might as well be telling me 'Good boy. Smart monkey!' and giving me a banana."

Red Alert hummed for a moment. "They are scientists," he said finally. "It is not in their natures to accept things without hard data. And--forgive me this--an organic lifeform claiming to be a Prime is a fantastical claim indeed. Optimus is within the realm of possibility, however narrow the odds. But you, Samuel? You are unprecedented."

"You believe me," Sam pointed out.

"You gave me proof," said Red Alert.

"I'm not burning out my throat again to prove it to them," Sam said, shaking his head. "Not during term time, anyway. Bumblebee may be able to work around the whole mute thing, but I don't have commlines or speakers."

Red Alert chuckled softly. "It will resolve itself in time," he said. "They will continue watching you, testing you, until they make up their minds one way or the other. Things need not be resolved now." He smiled. "If you are to be one of us at spark, as Hound believes, you may wish to contemplate the effects of the long-term view, and our, mm, reliance, shall we call it, on the virtues of patience."

Sam looked skeptically at the mech. "Human. Lifespan," he bit out for the second time that evening.

"Yet," Red Alert replied, leaning forward and gently poking Sam in the chest, "do you not believe that the soul is immortal? You, who have met the Primes? Patience may well be a virtue to have in eternity as well. Best, perhaps, to cultivate it beforehand."

"Thanks, Red," Sam groused, shoving the metal finger away from him. He sighed. "Really not much I can do about them, is there? Except give them time."

"I'm afraid not."

***

October 26th, 2011. Princeton, New Jersey.

"The singular identity theorem posits that within each universe, all things are unique," Sam said under his breath, pen making neat Cybertronian characters across the line-ruled pages of his newest notebook. A row of others, all black-and-white speckled covers, stretched across one of his bookshelves. An entire year's work of transcribing the history of the species of which he had become part.

There was one slight gap in the sequence. Mirage was currently borrowing the third volume.

The books... were worth more than all the tech in Sam and Leo's room combined. They were in fact irreplaceable. They were also the reason that Sam went through pens at a ridiculous rate, his fingers and the side of his right hand rather more ink-blotted than was usual for a college student at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

"Each individual has their own hyperspatial signature. This unique energy trace is the basis of all space bridge technology," Sam continued muttering and writing.

This was a new endeavor for him, one he'd set aside the Decrees of Novax Prime, half-finished, for.

This was science.

Buried under blankets and his pillow, Leo moaned and twitched, dry-humping his mattress. Sam ignored his roommate with a year's studied practice, and continued writing.

"The energy signature of an individual object, whether it be alive or not, whether it is where one left it, or far away, is unchanging." Meaning things like no matter where the Earth was spatially in its rotation around the sun, it was the same planet and thus had the same energy signature. Or, more importantly, that Cybertron would have the same energy signature regardless of location. He just had to keep writing down the knowledge flowing from his head and hope it led to something that would help them find the wandering planet.

Because he knew in the marrow of his bones, in that same way that he'd known a sock full of black dust could return a dead friend to life, that if he couldn't convince Perceptor to join him in this project, it was doomed to failure.

***

November 6th, 2011. Diego Garcia.

"He's restless," Ironhide observed quietly to Lennox after the Major had consumed his first cup of coffee.

Lennox raised an eyebrow at him.

Ironhide nodded at the tarmac outside, where a human figure stood, black-limned against the rising dawn.

***

"Sam," Mikaela said, setting down her torsion wrench. He turned to look at her. She stripped off her gloves, right first then left, and set them down next to the wrench before dropping down her perch to the ground. She walked over to him and put her arms on his shoulders. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," he protested.

"Oh, come on, I know you better than that."

"No, really, everything's perfect," he said, slipping into one of his patented Sam Witwicky running at the mouth fits. Fortunately for him, Sam had been born with the intelligence to have his brain keep up with his speech. (Even if, she admitted, the aforementioned brain wasn't always connected to any kind of survival instinct. But given that she worked with giant alien walking arsenals, Mikaela wasn't about to throw stones.) "I mean, I'm here, I have a great weekend job, I've got you, college is going great, what could be going wrong?"

"Oh, I don't know," Mikaela said, swaying back and forth a little. His hands automatically found her hips. He moved with her. It was almost like they were dancing in place. "You're not burning the candle at both ends?" She looked up at Bumblebee. "He's not living off Red Bulls again, is he?"

"Hey, that was finals week only," Sam denied even as Bumblebee shook his head in the negative and held up two fingers together in the "scout's honor" position.

"And my boys are taking good care of one another while I'm not there?" Mikaela asked Bumblebee, smiling up at him.

"Oh yeah," the smooth bass voice of Yello crooned to her.

She smirked. "I want to see holo-files of that sometime."

"Mikaela!" Sam was flustered by mention of what she knew he and 'Bee did without her.

Mikaela stood on her toes (Ratchet insisted she wear sensible shoes in the workshop and medbay; Mikaela hated being that much shorter without her heels) and leaned forward to whisper in Sam's ear, "If you're good, maybe he'll show you the ones of me and him."

Sam's fingers tightened reflexively on her hips, and if his eyes were a bit dilated and his jeans a bit tighter, well, mission accomplished. He was no longer stressing over whatever was bothering him.

"You," he told her, "are an evil, evil woman."

"That's why you love me," she told him, giving him a peck on his nose.

Bumblebee nodded vigorously.

*~*~*

Author's Note: Well, I avoided 90% of spoilers for Dark of the Moon, didn't read the novelization, was two-thirds done with this chapter, and then found when I got to the theater that there were certain looming similarities to what I'd been planning for months for this story. I suppose it's understandable; Ehren Kruger and I were both drawing on G1 for ideas in this, though in intriguingly different ways. (macx_larabee has also done some fantastic work on the theme.) The thing about DotM, though, is that I actually didn't like it. I'll probably see it again, after reading the novelization to see how that informs and alters my viewing experience, but I cannot stand Carly, and the only two scenes I found her even remotely interesting were very obviously written with Mikaela in mind. The film (like RotF) also has major inconsistencies with both of its predecessors, and goes in a completely different direction than what I have built up in the Simulacra'verse stories. So, basically, Simulacra'verse is not going to take DotM as canon. At this point I'm not even sure there's anything I want to steal from the film and port in. On the other hand, while I had been planning this story to be the final close point of this 'verse, since there's nothing I want to write for DotM, I may not end up finishing it out here after all. We'll see how things end up unfolding. ^_^ As for those who think my characterization of Red Alert sounds like he's stolen some of Beachcomber's hooch... it's entirely possible. I have no idea what he's doing being all mellow. My inner Ratchet thinks the personality change is because Red is no longer in a true high stress/high danger environment. Me, I always take the medic at his word. His wrenches are bigger than me. Thanks for reading!

Comments

[pagen-godess.livejournal.com]

i enjoyed this chapter. you're updates tend to be the highlight of my day. i really do hope that you'll be able to make this go on longer.

now as for the movie i really enjoyed it. though they could have tied it into the other to movies better. and ya carly could have been a little more active and done something other than play damsel in distress. of course i completly loved the fight scenes (and the fact that sam took out starscream) though they could have given us a bit more of shockwave and soundwave. and of mirage and wheeljack.

[sakon76.livejournal.com]

I loved the scene of Sam taking out Starscream. Well, it could have done with a little less swinging around on the grappling line, but other than that it was great. Final Bayverse score is Sam: 3 Decepticons + 1 human. Decepticons: 1 Sam. :)

[xianghua.livejournal.com]

I *love* the bits here you've set up highlighting the difference between human and 'Bot lifespan.

[morgie.livejournal.com]

Heh. Your listing is the first thing I check in the morning, and after work. The LJ in general is second. Awesome read, as always.

[morgie.livejournal.com]

Also, this isn't listed on your fic-page. Those who are less obsessed with checking your lj in general might be missing it! ;)

[sakon76.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that you like my writing so much you check that often. Wow!

By fic page, do you mean fanfiction.net? I haven't posted this (or, in fact, a lot of my writing) there because I have a policy of not posting unfinished works there.

[morgie.livejournal.com]

Naw, your tag page for all the postings. Uhm...

http://sakon76.livejournal.com/tag/simulacra%27verse <-- that?

[sakon76.livejournal.com]

*blink* You're right. I completely spaced on that tag for this chapter. Thank you! *fixes*

[femme4jack.livejournal.com]

Great chapter, and honestly, though I did not have the same complaints about the film, I very much like your version of canon better :)

And if no liking DotM means MORE MORE MORE Simulacra-verse, then please please continue to hate the film. I'll encourage it!

Love the scientists being skeptical of Sam, and even more LOVE SAGE RED ALERT, all calm and philosophical. So lovely to see a different take on his character, and love even more that his muse has just taken over and insisted on it.

The mental image of him as a Cray workstation is just perfect - transforming only when things are quiet, and still being plugged in through all of his tentacles cables.

Love the little mention of how painfully shy TB is (though I think this may have as much to do with his injuries as anything else).

AND OT3 action at the end! Squeeeeeee. I think I may not be alone in saying that I, too, would like to have access to Bee's memory files of all of these lovely activities being alluded to. *purrs*

[sakon76.livejournal.com]

Meh. I'll give the film another chance (and probably that chance will be IMAX in case there's extra footage) now that I've finished reading the novelization, but honestly there's not too much I want to do with it. There were a few loose ends, and a few amusing thoughts I've had in relation to it, but there's just not much of a draw. I suspect it's because I so actively dislike Carly; I look at the framework of the script and see where it was written for Mikaela, and then they did the "oh yay my pointless MacGuffin blonde hottie is paested on!" crap and it pisses me off. She exists solely as an object for Sam to chase after.

Anyhow. Back to subject! :)

I asked Wonderful Husband for something roughly car-sized and stationary for Red to turn into and he suggested the Cray. I looked it up and it was so perfect I couldn't believe it.

(Not writing Red Alert tentacle porn. You feel free to, though!)

And, mwahaha, YES. That is in fact a very large part of why TB is so withdrawn. He's hurt and he's low on energy and he's generally feeling lousy and miserable, but he has Hound and Mirage again and that's worth everything to him.

As to the OT3... I have no idea if Sam has gotten over his shyness of anal probing yet or not, but he's a teenager away at college. Of course he's going to be making out with his car! :) And even though touching Mikaela doesn't get Bumblebee worked up, he apparently loves making her feel good in the best way. So the threesome is made up of one-on-one relations as well.

[ytak.livejournal.com]

Well, don't let DotM (which I haven't seen yet but don't care about spoilers) spoil writing for the Simacula'verse. I may not comment much but my reaction when I see a post is "EEEEE! New chapter!"

I love Optimus's reaction to the bombshell Sam drops on him. It's too bad he didn't get a recording, it isn't everyday that he is shocked like that. :)

I have to admit that with the movies, I go to see the action and basic background only. The fanfics are where the real story is at. :D

Would it help to pretend that Carly is actually Mikaela?

[sakon76.livejournal.com]

Sam seems to be making a hobby of shocking Optimus speechless. He did it in By The Pyramid too, the second fic I wrote in this series. ^_^

As to pretending Carly is Mikaela... yes. Except Mikaela would be more competent. She would still get kidnapped, but she would fight back and do more than wander around battlegrounds looking helpless. Maybe I'll figure out eventually a way to rewrite the movie as it should've been with her, and then springboard fanfic from that.

[tainry.livejournal.com]

Ohhhh yeah. (doo bombom chk-chkaaa)
Oooohhhhhhh yeah. (doo bombom)
The sun...
/dork

Red as a Cray!!!! Ahahahahahahaha that is fantastic!!!!
One notes that Hide waits until after Lennox has had coffee to attempt communication. I sort of wish my mother was like that.
Sam's Allspark Logs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! <33333333333333333333333 Stardate 56789876.37 1/2 - Sentinel made the energon goodies for the Fizzbin game tonight. They sucked aft.
Heee! Rude science geeks! XD

"Vector meaning direction and magnitude," Optimus murmured, tilting his head to one side, "and Sigma as its sum?"
HOLY CRAP I FAIL AT REMEMBERING CALCULUS DAMMITTTTTT! Awesome. Also Optimus tilting his head is SO CUTE.

"Yeah, well, since we demoted Pluto I haven't been very fond of what humans have to say about the local astrography."
Oh Sam, ilu.

the turtles, and the caves, do go all the way down.
XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD Beeeeeeachcomber can heeeeeeeeeeeeeelp... ::noodle arms::

[sakon76.livejournal.com]

Ferris Bueller's Day Off soundtrack FTW. ^_^

Glad you like Red as a Cray. It did end up being just about perfect for him; Wonderful Husband's suggestion was, as usual, impeccable. And after being on our planet for four years, Hide has learned to appreciate the tactical advantage of coffee. :)

I honestly didn't remember what sigma meant either; I had to go read Wikipedia and consult the mathgeek husband to try to figure out a way for VS' name to make sense in the context I needed it.

And I love Sam's snark. He's so good at it, and usually manages to survive the aftermath.

[darkdanc3r.livejournal.com]

As far as the movie goes, the movie was better than the book, for certain definitions of the term.

I like this. It's going in interesting places, and I love how skeptical Perceptor and Wheeljack are.

[aughoti (from livejournal.com)]

This series continues to be such a blast!

Sam does a very good job throwing people for loops; by now, it's practically a profession. And I adored the conversation with Red Alert.

[xantissa.livejournal.com]

oh my god I just found this series and can't stop reading long enough to commenyt properly. It's the best Allpark!Sam I have ever read. You managed to avoid the trap that so many other authors fall into - avoided makink Sam all powerful. So damn good.