Through the Skein

Cybertron, 2387 and Star Saber quietly regarded Perceptor’s lifeless body. Star Saber’s was a special kind of genius. At first everything seemed a mess, uncoiled strands of wild threads with no apparent strategy, eventually coming full circle and making complete sense. He was proud of the way he’d used the Autobot so economically.

There was no doubt that Perceptor was an excellent scientist. He had a healthy curiosity for everything that occupied his field of vision. He was an excellent data recorder, analysing every detail in his life; always sure it would have use at some future point. He always wanted to know more. He wanted to know more about Cybertron, more about the Earth and more about the very fabric and essence of his being. After the destruction of Optimus Prime by Ethan Zachary, he had the chance to learn all he wanted to know about the Matrix. It was really a simple exercise in data collection, he never intended to use the knowledge as a tool against his fellow Autobots. But the data he collected was used, against himself and his leader.

“Ultra Magnus!”

Bumblebee had walked right into the ex-Autobot leader’s ex-body. Blaster ran up beside the small yellow robot. “Keep it down. Or are you hoping to get caught?”

“Sorry, it was just a shock to see it. He looks dead.”

“No kidding,” Blaster said, unnerved by the sight. “Let’s go.”

“No, wait,” said Bumblebee. “There might be clues here.”

“About what?”

“I overheard Star Saber talking about some kind of memory chip. Maybe it’s still here.”

Blaster concentrated for a moment. “Scanning.”

“Got it,” he said. “There’s an auxiliary mnemonic chip embedded behind the cerebral access port.”

It’s difficult not to believe the leader of an alien attack force, hell-bent on retaking their homeworld from you, when he turns your entire Creation Theory on its head. For years, Ultra Magnus believed in Primus and Unicron as mystical demigods, but then Xenon had a different story to tell.

The Quintesson spoke of an artificial intelligence program known as P.R.I.M.U.S. that was encrypted and encoded onto crystal computers called geodes. The Quintessons stole two geodes and buried one deep within their homeworld, Quintyxia. The Masters – those that created the program – unleashed their nanobot enforcers as punishment, and the Quintessons’ homeworld was reformatted into a metallic world. The geode gave sentience to the nanobots and the planet was transformed into a giant decoder. P.R.I.M.U.S. was decrypted and new life emerged from the surface of the planet. These new lifeforms became known as Autobots and the planet dubbed Cybertron. In other words, there was nothing mystical about the creation of the Transformers; it was just an advanced AI computer program.

Ultra Magnus proliferated the story and it became known as the Reductionist Theory. He thought he had a handle on his personal theology. Until the flashbacks started, that is. He came to interpret his dreams and thought for a time that he was the reincarnated form of an Autobot called Scrounge. Somehow, a Transformer’s soul – his spark – could be recycled via the Matrix into another body. Somehow, Scrounge’s spark was recycled through the Matrix Flame into Ultra Magnus. He didn’t know what to think, and if he didn’t escape the mindquake soon, he would surely go insane.

“Well, no wonder it threw Ultra Magnus off at the deep end,” said Blaster as he held the mnemonic chip in his palm. “It was feeding false memories of Scrounge’s death into his brain.”

“So, Perceptor actually engineered this whole thing to make Magnus believe he used to be Scrounge?”

“Seems that way.”

“But where did he get the idea from in the first place?”

“Well, Perceptor is pretty smart. Scrounge died not long before Magnus came online. I guess it’s all about the timing.”

“True enough, I suppose. Yeah, you’re right, Blaster.”

“So, are you feeling paranoid yet?”

“Why do you ask?”

“As Chief Scientist, Perceptor would have had access to any one of us, implanting false memories here and there.”

“But surely he would have realised that you would have detected the transmissions.” Bumblebee paused for a second. “Hang on! Magnus was right then. Your death wasn’t suicide, Perceptor did murder you! What the hell is going on around here?”

“You’re the spy, Bumblebee. It’s your job to find the answers.”

Colours tasted of fruit, and the breeze looked sad.

Perceptor’s journey into the Matrix lasted for months, but in real time, it was over in less than a second. It was the greatest scientific grail – to actually travel through that, which is neither life nor death. In some ways it was wasted on him, he simply categorised and cross-referenced. He had become the librarian in a realm of souls, recording data and untangling the mess, going through the skein and making sense of it all.

It was almost an afterthought, for Blaster’s sake. It was something he’d looked for the whole time while inside the Matrix, something that would give Blaster a sense of closure. Perceptor had checked every spark of every life that had been and gone, and had yet to be, looking for Scrounge’s. He never found it.