Chapter Text
She’d had the nightmare, but it wasn’t what had woken her up this time. That was a relief, for a moment. Then she realized what had woken her up. Her room was too light.
Deep in the mesa, there were no windows. If Kim went to bed with a thin crack of light coming from under the door and a tiny, red, nightlight under the desk, it should stay that dark until she woke up and turned on the light.
Carefully, Kim peeked over the pillow. The line of light under the door was right. Slowly, she turned over.
She was still shouting and sliding backwards when she identified the two disks of light hovering over the foot of her bed. “Fixit! Jesus! What the hell, Dude?”
“Kim! Are you frightened of me?”
She was gasping. Her hair was in her face. She was nearly falling out of bed. “Shit!”
The bright disks of his eyes blinked and reset. He rolled slightly back. “I have angered you.” He had just the right amount of surprise and sadness in his voice. He was kicking ass with the English nonverbals app.
“Don’t do that!”
“I did not wish to anger you. How shall I avoid it?” he asked plaintively.
“Knock! I know you know you’re supposed to knock.”
“Normally yes. But I did not want to wake you. That is also incorrect.”
Kim sagged. She buried her face in her hands. “Fixit. Dude. Don’t creep in and stare at me while I’m sleeping!”
A pause. “Noted. I apologize.” Another pause. “Is this preference idiosyncratic?”
“No. Hell, no. Don’t creep in and stare at anybody while they are sleeping!”
The glowing eyes bobbed up and down as he nodded.
Kim sighed. “So, what’s wrong?”
“Why do you think something is wrong?”
Kim sighed. Sat up. Turned on the light. “Fixit, why are you here?”
“I need your advice.”
“So. What’s wrong?”
He leaned forward, head and neck stretched as far up the bed as he could manage. “Maggie is not going to have a happy and fulfilled life!” he wailed.
Kim’s alarm clock began to squawk. Flinching, she snapped it off, took a deep breath, and tried again. “Okay. Okay. Start at the beginning.”
Fixit’s optics reset. “Where is the beginning?”
“Is Maggie okay right now?”
Wrong question. Fixit regarded Kim in hopeless puzzlement.
“Why do you think Maggie is going to have an unhappy and unfulfilled life?”
“Because the research I have conducted indicates that outcome is inevitable.”
Kim’s eyebrows were half-way up her forehead before she remembered to try to keep her calm face on. “What research? What were you researching?”
“Did you know that human categories are not only a matter of caste but also indicate reproductive potential?”
What? No. “Oh. Jesus. Fixit. You didn’t know before….?”
“It was complicated. And confusing. And it didn’t seem to matter. And I…I’m sorry. I had very little bandwidth.”
“Okay. Yeah. And now you have plenty of bandwidth.” Plenty of bandwidth. And while a problem at the Bridge might use up most of it, on most days he had processing power to spare.
“I was researching human needs for the facilities upgrade. Perhaps you are aware that ‘men’ and ‘women’ had different preferences in kitchen and bathroom features?” He didn’t sound particularly hopeful that she had.
“I knew, yeah.” Fixit had undertaken to renovate the ancient Cold War bathroom and the office next to it into a small kitchen, modern bathroom, and laundry area. It was still in the planning stages, with materials already arriving and being stored in the conference room.
“The material I found was conflicting and illogical. I expanded my research,” he confessed miserably.
“Oh, Fixit,” Kim groaned, sudden visions of what he might be reading crowding her mind.
“I did not know what kind of being Maggie was! I did not know how terribly she will suffer!”
This was going to take a while. “Okay, back up and turn around so I can get dressed.”
“Why?”
“We’ve had this discussion before. I know your memory for events is fine. Turn. Around.”
He complied but did not let the subject go. “Why? I do not understand. I did not understand before.”
“Because I’m not awake enough to sort through the implications of being seen naked by you, so we just aren’t going there.” She found shorts and a tee shirt. Socks. Earrings. Her sneakers were under the bed. “Now tell me what you’ve been reading. Exactly.” She had a sudden sympathy for Optimus’ complaints that her queries about problems weren’t specific enough.
“Maggie has been promoted. Men tend to avoid marrying women who have both a higher salary and more education than themselves. Her field of potential partners is narrowing sharply. She is already in the eighty-fifth percentile.”
“I’m sure if Maggie wants to get married, she’ll have no problem finding someone—"
“Male partners are usually five years older than female partners. Within fifty miles of Jasper there are exactly zero unmarried men who meet those criteria.”
“Oh. Well. I can see why you’re worried. But you know it is not that simple.”
“And Maggie has already dated seven candidates!”
“She…what?” Kim really wished she could give up on this conversation. “Let me get some tea.”
“She has informed me she only intends to date a maximum of two more candidates. Since she has already dated seven, she has already rejected seventy-seven percent of the total. Optimal Stopping Theory applied requires an initial sample of thirty-seven percent of the total—”
Kim waved her arms desperately. “Okay. But it isn’t about math!”
“No. It is about romance. The data on that is incoherent. Although neurobiology—“
“Fixit! Please stop. It’s six-oh-six in the morning and I haven’t had tea and I need to think.” She poured the dregs from the filter pitcher into the electric kettle and plugged it in. She found a tea bag. She found a mostly-clean mug. “Maybe…Maggie doesn’t even want to get married.”
“But intact two-parent families provide the best environment for children!”
“Well, no,” Kim sighed. “Stable is key. The number of parents isn’t important. Does Maggie even want children?”
“But how will she have a fulfilling, meaningful life if she does not have children?” Fixit asked in a small, flat voice.
“Uh, any way she wants?” Kim shot back.
Then she blinked.
Took a deep breath.
Looked the minicon up and down twice.
“Fixit. This is all up to Maggie. You can’t fix it for her. Even if she wants to get married and make rug rats, that has to be up to her. You can’t—oh, honey, you really can’t be an alien yenta. Or whatever.”
“But she is female. She is not maximizing the capacity of her design. She cannot be fulfilled.”
Kim sat down on the edge of the bed, wishing the tea was ready. “How can I explain this to you? We aren’t like mecha. Humans are almost all fertile, so it’s not a big deal if some of us decide not to use that part of our hardware. We’ve got lots of capacities. Some of us more than we can use in our whole lives. Maggie is extraordinary. She can do things—maybe things no other human can do at all. And if she doesn’t want to settle down and be domestic right now—or ever—that’s fine.”
Fixit looked at her. “Have you discussed this with her?” he asked suspiciously.
“Um…no.”
He sagged. “I thought perhaps you had colluded.”
“Maggie tell you the same thing?”
“And she has forbidden me to discuss it with her further.”
“Well yeah. I bet she has elderly relatives nagging her. Or whatever. She doesn’t need you on her too.”
“But it is my fault! I taught Maggie Bridge equations. It is only because of the Autobots she is here instead of Washington DC, where there are approximately ten thousand men who meet acceptable criteria. And Maggie thinks she is happy as a spinster—what will I do when she realizes—”
“Geez, no. You didn’t call her a spinster, did you?”
“That was when she forbade me to discuss the subject,” he confessed.
“Well, yeah. That’s not even—women are not only valuable when they are married and gestating!”
Fixit’s optics reset twice. “What do you mean?”
The water began to boil. Kim snatched the pot up and poured. “I mean, you have to stay off the internet. It’s corrupting you with crap—no. Wait. New research project. Keyword: feminism. Get going.”
“Oh.” He said. “Oh, my.”
“Great,” Kim said. She lifted the mug in one hand and jogged the teabag up and down with the other. “Wonderful. You go research that. Let me know how it goes.”
“But—”
“Fixit. I really think you should study up on the subject before talking anymore. I am also female.”
Fixit left meekly. Kim followed just after; a quick trip to the bathroom, because she was up now, and today was going to be busy, and she really had to pee—
She picked the conversation over in her mind. She’d handled that right. Probably.
Anyway. Fixit would be fine. Thank god for the internet. The information was out there. He could assimilate input from multiple sources at once—and mecha read English at rate (roughly speaking) of forty pages a minute on each parallel track. Fixit would be completely up to speed on gender issues by tomorrow. He’d be fine.
As long as he didn’t find the ‘red pill’ garbage. Or wind up a terf. Or start down a rabbit hole with Dice Clay or some other sketchy comedian. Or actually read the Handmaid’s Tale.
Aw, fuck.
Kim returned to her room and checked the pitcher. Was there enough water for oatmeal? There wasn’t. Okay. Cereal and milk.
Kim tapped through the contacts on her phone as she swallowed the first bite. “Good morning, Boss.”
“You only address me as ‘boss’ when you have bad news,” he answered at once.
“It’s a verbal cue that I’m working,” she said.
“It seems you have gotten an early start.”
Not voluntarily. Kim poked at the cereal with her spoon. “So Fixit has discovered gender. And reproduction. Turns out Maggie is a woman and it’s freaking him out.”
“Ah.”
“Do you have any further comment?” She took another gulp of cereal.
“Kim. Until recently his processor was badly overtaxed. Until he attempted to integrate the European communication packet last week, he believed gender was a…” the pause was tellingly long “optional lifestyle. Or subculture. Like belonging to a motorcycle club. Or being a surfer. Or an American Marine.”
“Right,” Kim said numbly. Marines were slightly rarer in the very army NEST base than women. Why would any of those categories be relevant for Fixit? “Yeah. I can totally see how an inorganic alien wouldn’t notice….” Springer had confessed that for the first month he had differentiated humans primarily by height, which his sonar could measure very exactly. “But he’s making up for lost time. And how.”
“You are concerned.”
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing….”
“Hm. What do you suggest?”
“I imagine you have very detailed files on human genders and reproduction.”
“In fact, I do.”
“You could share those. Ideally before Fixit tries to get someone else to help him fix Maggie up.”
“He didn’t.”
“He thinks her life is being ruined by not….that part wasn’t clear. Being married? Having kids? Depending on what he’s read, he may be thinking ‘housewife’ is a more fulfilling destiny than gate technician.”
“Oh, dear.”
“I think you should front load the packet with not everybody wants to have kids and not everybody is good at it. Biology has to be the most mystifying thing.”
This was met with a heavy silence.
“I’m...I’m not mad at him,” she said quickly. “He’s trying to understand an alien species from the internet. And I know he loves Maggie. She has to be the best friend he has on the planet. It’s just….”
“He does not realize that this is no better than functionalism, and that hearing this limiting of destiny from him is as hurtful as would be hearing your enumerating minicon restrictions—ah. We have not actually discussed this in enough detail for the analogy to be clear.”
Shit. “Maybe…angry, rather than hurtful.”
“You have said you are not angry,” he said gently.
“Well. Yeah. But it’s my job not to be offended. That isn’t Maggie’s job.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Thanks.”
“I will make sure Fixit has the appropriate information. A change of topic?”
“Sure.”
“I will be approximately six minutes late for our rendezvous. Ratchet wanted to go over the consumption numbers for the gestation pods this morning, and I have not been able to make up lost time.”
“Sparklings okay?”
“One-B has consumed the aluminum and silica, and there are more than six orns left in the expected developmental phase. This is unusual, but probably not ‘bad.’ Ratchet is supplementing the depleted resources.”
“Oh. Good. Okay. Six minutes, huh? I dunno. That’ll put us behind. I may have to leave without you.”
A chuckle. “You will not make much progress hiking to Nellis in six minutes.”
“I still own a car, Dude.”
A pause. “You are teasing me.”
Kim spooned up soggy cereal. “Well, yeah! I’m pretty sure the battery’s dead by now. Actually, I was going to Uber. Have to meet them at the front gate though. Security’s pretty tight….”
No answer.
“Too much?”
“Freedom of movement is as precious to humans as to mecha,” his answer was inflectionless.
Kim gave a dark look to her phone. “I am still kidding. How much, exactly, does human driving freak you out?”
“It doesn’t freak me out,” still flat: a mental state he didn’t want to share. “I have written a subroutine to suppress my emotional response when driving in proximity to humans.”
Woah. “I apologize. I shouldn’t have teased you.”
“Human transport vehicles are so badly made,” he said apologetically.
“Compared to the glory and perfection that is you. Yes. And I mean that sincerely. I’m sorry. No more teasing. I’ll meet you in the assembly area at seven thirty-six.”
***
Bill Fowler was already there when Kim came down from the balcony. His brows rose in exaggerated surprise. “A skirt? And no big earrings? And nothing with glitter on it?”
Kim rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to distract the human. And I’m still wearing comfortable shoes.”
“Oh. I see. Priorities.” He glanced at his watch. “He said he was running late.”
“Yeah.”
Fowler glanced around. There were no mecha in sight, although they could hear Ratchet banging on something in the infirmary. “There’s a meeting tomorrow. Keller and Mearing and that weasel Galloway are coming in for a meeting about the flipsides. I put your name on the list.”
“Okay. Why?”
“Because Mearing is going to demand Prime pull the Decepticon’s brain and do a forensic analysis on its data while the rest of the body is chopped up for spare parts.”
“And he won’t want to do that,” Kim whispered.
“Screw want. It won’t work. We have never gotten any useful information out of a dead mech’s memory bank. The bots don’t have the equipment, we sure as hell don’t have the equipment…. That’s a waste. The end.”
“Okay. So.” Kim’s own brain squirmed. How gruesome was this conversation, exactly?
“Keller is going to want to wake her up and try to negotiate. Right now she doesn’t know she’s a spy. If the surface personality is well crafted, she’ll be horrified at the idea of losing her identity and turning on her friends. Keller thinks we can leverage that, get her to agree to have the Decepticon processor removed and then access the…the evil twin memories through a filter.”
“Is that a bad plan, too?”
“It’s a great plan, except Ratchet is convinced it won’t work. If we wake her up and confront her with the truth, the original personality will activate, and her surface personality will be wiped.”
“So, what’s the good plan?”
“I’m not done with the bad plans yet. Springer?”
“Yes?”
“He wants to implant her with a virus, trigger her original personality, and let her escape back to the Decepticons.”
“That’s…ruthless.”
“Ratchet says it might work. Jazz says escalating that way will just make the Decepticons desperate enough or angry enough to do something stupid.”
Kim tilted her head back and looked up into the dim heights of the old missile silo. About forty feet up she could see the outlines of the two gestation pods. “Is there any plan that works out?”
“As far as I’m concerned, it already has,” Fowler said. “We caught the spy before she went all Total Recall on our ass. That’s a win. The POW thing is…complicated. But if we disassemble her, it’s safe to keep her in a drawer in stasis…until the end of the war. Whatever. No wasted effort. No wasted resources.”
“That sounds…a little bit like murder.”
“No, that sounds like more humane treatment then human prisoners get anywhere. I don’t have to tell you what prison does to people.” He glanced around. “Kim, we can’t have NEST thinking a living ‘Bot is captured equipment. Ever. Not even a Decepticon.”
“Ugh.”
“Look, I don’t know what kind of conversation you’re prepared to have about how enemy combatants are…contained. But I believe there are lines that are not only evil to cross, but counter-productive. Get it?”
“Yeah.”
There was a mech coming through the tunnel; large, quick. Kim looked in that direction. “I work for him,” she said.
Fowler shrugged. “Not as a yes man.”
Optimus came around the corner and dropped into alt between one step and the next.
***
At Autobot speeds, the trip to Nellis took a little over an hour and a half. Fowler discovered that the simulated big rig had a working horn—and actually used it twice before Optimus got irritated and turned it off.
Optimus then took revenge by asking Kim detailed and obscure questions about human religion. Kim was sure he already knew most of the answers, but he drew out the discussion in tedious detail that bored Fowler into sighing tragically and rolling his eyes.
After about half an hour, though, he had a stroke of genius and began asking Optimus questions about sparklings. Fowler had vague ideas that human infants needed feeding and burping and changing. And toys. And kiddie pools. What did newborn mecha need?
Little mecha needed toys, yes. And components they could experiment with integrating. A small race track would be nice, but Optimus wasn’t sure where to install one.
***
The interview with the first linguistic candidate had been the previous week. Optimus and Kim had Bridged to France (and yes, ‘first trip to France’ should be a big deal, but all Kim had seen was a French military base near Lanvéoc). The candidate had been the epitome of cool; early 60s, matronly, snow white hair, piercing brown eyes. She was utterly charming. She had brought fine yarn and some kind of hook with her and made lace (or something) while answering Optimus’ questions. She’d been cheerful, friendly, and so confident she didn’t even seem to be trying to be confident. Kim had been thinking about which office to convert for her in the Human Dorm.
For linguists the interview process included by a hands-on sample. This second phase was some kind of semiotic puzzle: a tablet computer, a stack of papers, a blank notebook, a pamphlet. Kim had settled Madam Arnastau at a work table, laid out water and apple slices, and retreated to a corner of the room to read while she took the test.
Kim had looked at the material. The symbols weren’t Cybertronix. The apps on the tablet seemed to be weird games. Well. Kim shouldn’t expect to understand it. If Kim were a linguist, they wouldn’t need to hire one.
Only one hour in, though, Madam Arnastau deleted her work, turned off the tablet, piled up the sheets of paper neatly, and retrieved her purse and craft bag. “Thank you. I am sorry to have wasted your time, but I am finished. Please direct me to the exit.” Her English had no accent, of course.
Kim goggled. “But—I mean, if the test was too difficult—I realize the format is weird—And your reputation—”
A small, patient smile. “I can safely say the sample was clear enough. This isn’t work I want any part of. I do apologize for the inconvenience, but it is best if I leave now.”
So that was that.
The second interview was scheduled today at Nellis. Out of a list of thirty offered by Mearing, Optimus had only accepted two, and if Richard Chase didn’t work out, Kim wasn’t sure what the next step was. If there was one.
On paper, Chase looked spectacularly perfect; Masters’ in engineering from MIT, Ph.D. in computer programming from Stanford. A second Ph. D. in linguistics from McGill. He was in the second year of a post-doc at Princeton right now, unmarried and with no current career commitments. Of course, his credentials couldn’t convey what sort of person he was. He might not be the unicorn he superficially appeared.
Optimus decreed Nellis too close to justify using the Ground Bridge, so he and Kim and Bill Fowler were taking a road trip. Fortunately, not a long road trip. They made good enough time to stop for a snack at a Starbucks (damn, but Jasper was short on pretentious chain fast food pastries) and sit munching it in a parking lot with the doors open. It was a beautiful day. The heat hadn’t set in yet and the pale blue sky was peppered in small clouds.
***
It was the same interview room they had used for Kim. For moment she was caught in the surreality of it, how much she had changed—how much the world had changed—since she first sat here. Agent Fowler left her there to test the technology while he went and fetched the linguist.
“Why do you like the wig and hat question so much?” Kim asked, turning on the webcam over the worktable in the corner.
“Partly, if I had hair, I cannot imagine wanting to cover my head with either. But also, it gives the candidate a chance to demonstrate patience and care. You took a foolish and obvious question seriously. I was very encouraged.”
“View okay?”
“The positioning is fine. I won’t complain about the quality of the camera.”
“Yeah….if you make the job offer, be sure to warn him about ‘Bot chauvinism.”
Dr. Chase appeared to be in his early forties. He had glasses and longish, mousy hair. He used a wheelchair. When presented with interview-by-telecast, he made the Charlie’s Angels joke. Kim glanced away at the déjà vu.
“And this is Dr. Montgomery, she’s the project principal investigator. She’ll be supervising the position.”
Kim made a face. “Supervising. If I was technically competent to supervise a linguist, we wouldn’t need one. And call me Kim.”
“Chip,” he said, holding out his hand. “Nice to meet you. Should I show off by saying that in multiple languages?”
Kim laughed. “It isn’t me you have to impress.”
She sat off to the side and observed while Optimus constructed a path of questions, leading Chip Chase one way and then another. How did his thesis research relate to cognitive theory? (Only tangentially) What was his opinion on the ethics of ‘moral baby’ research? (He was for it; varied experience was good for babies) What was his position on aliens from outer space? (Not mathematically impossible) What was his favorite tabletop game (Fluxx), and would he mind explaining the rules in Mandarin? (It took about six minutes) Could he do it in Cree? (He didn’t seem as confident there, but Optimus didn’t end the interview) What was the role of language in identity production? (It was performative and interactive)
Chip seemed more laid-back about the interview than Kim had been. But then, over a decade more experience and a second Ph.D. would do a lot to calm anyone down.
“Can you explain the difference between a wig and a hat?”
Kim remembered being thrown a bit by that. This guy just laughed and started talking about semiotics.
Kim watched Chase’s face and hands. Half the words she didn’t understand anyway. She had been puzzled, flustered, anxious—what? Not even six months ago? She had been looking for hints in the questions, clues about what this was all about. The linguist seemed to simply focus on each question in turn, sliding from one to another without pausing to search for a bigger picture.
She had heard that linguists could be a little…odd. Not bad. Precise and direct….
At forty-three minutes, Optimus ended phase one. “I think we can proceed with the practical application phase of the interview. Agent Fowler, if you would?”
Bill gave the interface a dubious look, then he turned to the candidate. “You can have a break first—snack? More coffee? Restroom? The practical’s timed. Two hours.”
Chip looked him up and down. “It sounds thrilling.”
Bill shrugged. “Last candidate threw in the towel half way through.”
“I’ll take the coffee. Thanks.”
“Agent Fowler, you need to check your phone,” Optimus said suddenly. “There has been a traffic incident in Missouri.”
Bill called up his messages, rolled his eyes, mouthed ‘Strongarm,’ and handed the briefcase to Kim.
“You take it from here. Have fun.”
“Oh, yeah,” Chip said. “None of this is ominous at all.”
Kim looked at him. “It’s top secret government research. It’s gonna be weird.” She led him to the worktable and began laying out the parts: tablet, booklet, paper notebook, sheets.
“Am I allowed to ask about your…experience with the test?”
Kim glanced up. “Oh, I didn’t take the test. If I could, we wouldn’t need a linguist. “
“So…no hints, then?”
Kim smiled and shook her head.
She retreated to the couch and took up her laptop to work on fieldnotes. It was the one with the pulled wifi card, so there was no chance of digital surveillance. Kim ignored the linguist on the other side of the room. It wasn’t like she needed to watch. Optimus had a little camera in the ceiling.
***
“That’s time.” He closed the tablet and pushed it away. “How long will it take to analyze my results?”
Kim thought about Optimus watching the process in real time. “I’m not sure. Nobody ever made it this far.”
“It wasn’t that hard.” He glanced back at the stack of papers. “Maybe I did it wrong.”
Kim shook her head. She had no idea.
“If I pass… should I take the job? Do you like it?”
“Best job ever,” Kim said.
“The top secret military job,” he said doubtfully. “In Nevada.”
Kim shrugged innocently. “With immigrants. They’re nice people. No, seriously, though. You should take it. You’ll be famous, Dr. Chase. I don’t mean linguist famous. Regular people famous.”
He laughed. “Chip. Really. I won’t be able to publish. That is what Top Secret means.”
“Not now. Eventually though. If you can actually do it.”
“Do what? You can’t mean decipher a language. That isn’t—” He broke off, glanced sharply away. “Is it safe?” he asked after a moment.
“Oh, yes,” Kim said. “Well, as safe as where you are now.” And that was true. If Megatron started bombing cities from space, nowhere was safe.
“I have an Ivy League post doc now. In a city with a low crime rate. At Christmas time, you go into town and all the decorations match. They hire Victorian carolers to sing up and down the streets on the weekends. It’s basically a moving diorama. Nothing is that safe.”
“It’s a military base. Continental United States. Very safe.”
He gave her a hard look. “Oh? I’m gay and I use a wheelchair. I’ll ask again, is it safe?”
“Actually, yeah. Nobody would risk their assignment messing with a civilian contractor. Or risk pissing off—” It was Kim’s turn to glance away. “It’s safe.”
“Living conditions?”
“Well, there’s visiting officer quarters. We put—” some of the humans there. No, she couldn’t say that. Carly and Dr. Nomura--probably should not mention specific names yet. “Well. Or there’s the dorm area I’m in. That’s getting upgrades. It should be really nice in a few weeks. Or you could get an apartment in town.” Kim winced inwardly. Jasper wasn’t Princeton. It wasn’t even Boise. Was she recommending someone move there? Seriously? She sagged. “A lot can be done telecommuting.”
“Telecommuting.”
He was looking at her very closely. Kim wondered what was showing in her expression.
“So. How long have they been here?” he asked. “On Earth. The aliens.”
Kim felt the blood rush to her face. At this confirmation Dr. Chase’s eyes widened and he noticeably paled.
Fuck. Kim opened her mouth. Shut it. “Boss, help me out here. I can’t lie to him. Not if he’s going to work with me.”
Optimus’ voice came over the speaker at once. “Private Headly is on the way with the paperwork. When it is complete, we can continue this discussion.”
So they sat in awkward silence while he filled out paper forms. There were a lot of forms. When Kim couldn’t stand it anymore, she got out a book and pretended to read.
At last he handed the stack over. “So? Aliens.” He glanced at the door.
“We’ll go meet one now.”
“Kim,” Optimus said, “left out the door, to the right past the restroom, down the grey hallway.”
“Right. Thanks. I…wasn’t paying attention.”
“Special environment?” Chip asked.
“Don’t speculate. It really won’t help.” Kim took a deep breath. “You can talk about it here. They were based out of Nellis until… other transportation became available. But—actually talking about it won’t make this any less surprising.”
“You can’t speak their language,” he guessed.
“It’s giving me nightmares. I can understand short sentences sometimes if I know all the words in it. Once I generated a two-word sentence that made sense. It’s giving me nightmares. And I don’t have time.”
“How many others?”
“Other anthropologists? None. But some of the humans on the medical staff live…I don’t even know how to explain.”
They turned onto the grey corridor. There was a door on the left at the end. Kim turned the knob, stepped through, held it open. “Can you manage the height change?” She had forgotten the low step up.
“I’ve got it—” and then Chip gasped. “Do they fly?” he whispered, staring up into the distant rafters.
Kim went to the railing and crouched down, leaning out with her head between the rails. She motioned him over. The wheels of his chair hissed against the gantry flooring. He put a hand beside hers on the railing.
“Are they behind the—”
Optimus transformed. And then just stood there, allowing the human to look.
When she heard Chip start breathing again, Kim whispered, “You can still change your mind. He won’t force you to go through with it.”
“Never.”
Kim smiled slightly to herself, flipped Optimus a thumbs up, and left.
***
There was still no sign of Bill when she met Optimus out front. “Just how bad were things in Missouri ?” she asked, as she mounted the step.
Optimus sighed. ”Strongarm got rather carried away and participated in a high speed police chase. She was unable to leave the scene. Someone attempted to touch the arm of her holoform.”
“Ew.”
“Fowler was retrieved by Bridge in order to sort out the situation.”
“How much trouble is Strongarm in?”
A pause. “If you were not an anthropologist, putting that question to me would be a breach of our military protocol. It would also be considered presumptuous. However. If you were to express vague interest in the topic to, for example, Bulkhead or Blurr, they would share the gossip that she will be patrolling dirt roads devoid of human habitation for the next month.”
“Ouch. I apologize.”
“Rejected. I informed you for professional purposes. Since you will be paying less attention to linguistics...I suppose we should begin work on social hierarchy.”
Kim reached for her bag.
“Not, perhaps, today,” he continued. “My afternoon meeting is cancelled. I thought we might stop for portable food and then take the long way home.”
“What’s the long way home? There’s just Highway 93.”
“Offroading.”
“Oh.” Oh. Oh! “Thai food?”
“There is one within ten minutes of the front gate. I will not fit in the parking lot, however.”
“I’ll cope.”
***
“What are your thoughts on our new linguist?” Optimus asked as he pulled onto the highway.
“If I’d seen any red flags, I would have texted you.”
“That wasn’t quite what I asked.”
“He wasn’t frightened when he saw you. Heh. He was enraptured. Maybe humans can’t use Cybertronix. But he won’t quit trying. How did he take the Decepticon talk?”
“He offered to buy out his own contract and leave Princeton immediately. That won’t be necessary. I have already made the necessary arrangements. However, moving does take humans some preparation. And the human habitat is currently undergoing renovations. Chromia will meet him in New Jersey tonight. She’ll have a copy of your most recent Cybertronix file.”
“And she’s a native speaker.”
They already had the base well behind them and the traffic was quickly thinning.
“Oh. That reminds me.” Kim tapped through her contacts and ‘called’ Fixit on the not-really-a-phone feature. It didn’t ring, but there was a long silence when the line opened.
“Kim? I am sorry. I cannot find the specific greeting humans use for electronic communications. ‘Ahoy hoy’ seems to be out of date.”
“What do you say to Maggie?”
“Maggie texts.”
“Oh. ‘Hey.’” And then, “Hey, Fixit.”
“Hey, Kim. Why are you not texting or scheduling a meeting?”
“Because it might be complicated and it is better not to wait. It’s about the habitat retrofit.”
“Yes. I have been informed the tile has arrived! I will go admire it as soon as my shift ends.”
“Fixit….” He’d already done so much work. But there was no way around it. “We’re going to have to...Universal design. We’re going to have to be universal design compliant. Is that enough of a search term for you?”
“Universal design--Oh. Interesting.”
“Yeah. You may have to send the sinks back.”
“My goodness.”
“I’m so sorry to spring this--”
“I had no idea! Why does--oh. That is more efficient.” He paused. “Does the scope of this mandate include colorblindness?”
“No, that doesn’t matter.” Did it? No, a bathroom wasn’t a powerpoint slide. “Go ahead with the colors you and Maggie picked out.”
“Some of these floor plans are aesthetically...disappointing.”
“I’m sure you can manage accessible and pretty both.”
“Hm. I will have a layout for you this evening.”
“Thank you Fixit. I appreciate it.”
“Humans are very...fragile. And it is very difficult to repair you.”
Kim winced, glanced at the hula-girl shaped sensor node. “Yeah.”
“Out,” and the connection severed. Kim supposed he had not found a civilian protocol for ending electronic communication.
“Kim,” Optimus said softly, “Fixit is now comming me to ask if you have been damaged.”
“Oh. Shit. I didn’t think.”
“I am explaining.”
Kim realized she was covering her eyes. No doubt Optimus could read that body language. “Thanks.”
“How is he doing?”
“Ratchet tells me he has integrated the new processor array and has reloaded all of the corrupted data and applications.”
“That’s really good news.”
“As to his state of mind...he shares more of his personal feelings with Maggie, Pierre, and you than with Ratchet or myself.”
“Well...he spends a lot of time with humans.”
A pause. “Kim? Are you concerned that I will take offense if he prefers human to mech company?”
“Um. No. When you put it like that.”
“I calculate the chances Fixit will spend the rest of his life among humans at point nine three. And he will model interspecies friendship for those who come after. It is good.”
Kim thought about Ironhide and Carly and Bobby and said nothing.
“May I change the subject?”
Kim agreed gratefully.
“How is your experience of energon aversion proceeding?”
“It’s more of a disinterest than an aversion. I’ve pretty much given up trying to understand how it works, seeing as how I know my brain won’t connect the concepts anyway. But that might just be normal giving-up, not mysterious giving-up. But I got a box of beads with letters and made a bracelet.” She glanced down. “And I’m not wearing it. I might have taken it off after I showered last night.” She sighed. “If it was something the energon did to me, it would wear off, right? Eventually?”
“I do not believe energon is the cause. I believe it is a property of human cognition.”
“What about the geologist? And the mine engineer team?”
“They find that part of their work dull and uninspiring. It is a mineral they search for and retrieve, just part of the daily grind and much less interesting than working with aliens, which is ‘cool.’ Since they are not tracking their own thought processes, they do not notice. How are you feeling now?”
“I’ve had to remind myself three times that this is an important conversation. My mind wants to wander. Sorry.”
“Kim, my friend. Do not apologize. I allowed your exposure.”
“Why did you? I mean, you knew….” Kim thought she might have wondered this before.
“I hoped your engagement with the phenomenon would yield useful information. I was confident neither your work nor your health would be compromised--”
That got her attention. “How confident?”
“Point nine four three. Kim. I could not tell you beforehand. I had to know if you--even you, who continually documents and analyzes your experience—would experience the effect.”
“Oh.”
He was silent. The road, straight and empty now, rolled under his tires.
“I’m missing something. What are you waiting for me to ask you?”
“I am waiting for you to ask me why. I have been waiting for a month.”
“I’ve asked you why it happens. You don’t know. You don’t know why, you don’t know who, you don’t know much about when.” She was sure of that. Wasn’t she?
“No. ‘Why do I need to know?’ Why is it so important that I would involve you in this way without your informed consent?”
Oh. Yeah. That was a great question. “Will you tell me?”
“The reaction of humans to energon is one of many--far too many--things I do not know about this planet. Earth is the subject of warnings, a source of danger. It is a literary symbol used to convey an array of complex and frequently ambiguous implications. There was a surprising amount of energon here even before Megatron seeded Earth’s magnetic field. In addition to the planet itself, the dominant species...is enigmatic. There are simply so many low-probability… coincidences. And I cannot tell how many of my calculations are confounded by the simple fact that your brains are analog chemical chains. There are so many...uncertainties. And so many concepts that my own cognition is not equipped to analyze.”
“Hey,” Kim breathed, reaching for the sensor node.
“Can you even focus on this conversation? Can you follow what I am saying right now?”
Kim thought about it for a moment. “You seem to be saying that understanding some parts of Earth are as hard for you as understanding some of your weird physics is for us. You’re saying this planet is freaking you out, because there are too many things you don’t know and some of the things you do know don’t compute.”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
“Do you...still like Earth? You did before the Nemesis came.”
“Yes, Kim. Very much. When I scan the life forms here--even in the desert, where there is considerably less of it than usual--my spark fish hatchery. Oh.” The dash screen blinked on and a spark diagram appeared. “That is a wave form of delight and hope. I suppose a human would say, ‘my heart soars.’ Our word is कθШ도.”
Kim asked him to repeat it, took out her notebook, wrote it down. She took her time putting up the pen. She asked, “Is this conversation hard for you to focus on? Or remember?”
“No. There is no similarity there.”
“Are you afraid Megatron knows more about it than you do?”
“It is likely he does have access to information I do not, yes. And it is likely that--whatever is going on with this planet—it will impact the war. The lack of data is confounding my calculations.”
“I bet that is scary.”
“You are correct.”
“What about Raf? He thinks like both a ‘Bot and a human.”
“Raf’s position…is unique. The only expert on his situation is Raf himself. If you are suggesting I present him with a sample of unprocessed energon, I will not consider it. There is no way to predict his response.”
“No, I wasn’t suggesting that.” Kim closed her eyes.
“Are you unwell?”
“I’m…sorry. It’s my planet. I should know.”
“We shall continue to search. Be brave.”
Kim smiled, ran her fingertips over the sensor node.
The two-lane highway was flat and straight. And empty of other vehicles for miles at a time. It was like a practice perspective drawing, one made with a ruler. They were going very fast. For a while, Optimus played Phil Collins and Bon Jovi on the speakers.
A tap on Kim’s right shoulder. She glanced down; a second seatbelt was creeping around her. “Oh. I didn’t know you’d made another.”
“It isn’t a seat belt. Exactly. It’s for cargo handling.”
“Right. You have internal space for cargo. And no hands.” She ran the fingertips of her left hand over the new restraint. It was narrower and thicker than a seat belt. “Does everyone have these?”
A pause. “Yes. We minimize their use around humans. The analogy to tentacles is…”
“Way over the top alien,” Kim nodded. “Cliché.”
“The comparison of passengers to cargo might cause offense,” he added tentatively.
“No, I’m good.”
She didn’t see the dirt road leading off to the left until they were turning onto it. It shouldn’t have been possible to turn that fast, but he had as much control over each individual tire as Kim did over her fingers. The restraints pushed her hard into the seat and then they were flying down a dirt road.
Sort of a road. It was the same color dirt as the desert around it. There were just fewer pale plants growing on it. Ahead—far ahead—the angles of naked Nevada mountains.
“Damn, we can see far,” she breathed. “I’ll never get used to this.”
“I find it…soothing. My sensor field is un-occluded. There can be no ambush here. And if I stay on this road, I cause no damage to its ecosystem, no inconvenience to its inhabitants.” He sounded very satisfied.
“Yeah. Sure. Road.” It dipped slightly, and they caught air. Kim gasped and then laughed. Despite the uneven surface, the ride itself was very smooth. “Alien shock absorbers,” she murmured.
She felt more than heard a deep, resonant trill. Kim was fairly certain it was a protoform happy-sound. It made her smile.
“How hot is it out? Can we open the windows?”
The windows dropped in a snap. The wind was warm, but not hot. The endless landscape of miniature bushes and greyish dirt raced past while the mountains ahead crept closer. Kim leaned her head back against the seat and laughed.
Another low rise, another brief leap of weightlessness, another delicate landing. Damn, he was amazing. Kim gripped the seat with one hand and the restraint with the other. She wondered if she should ‘yee haw’ or something. Surely, there were words to express this feeling.
Kim couldn’t think of them.
The stop was sudden and smooth. There wasn’t a jolt at the end of it, just stillness. “There is a wild burro ahead. I prefer not to disturb it.”
“How about I have lunch?”
So she sat on a rock beside the narrow track of ‘road’ and ate massaman curry and pad see ew in the tiny bit of shade cast by Optimus’ alt.
***
They followed the road west and then north, climbing slowly upward. They were in the pointy, naked mountains now. The soil was darker here, peppered with spiky not-grass and tiny bushes. The sky was blue. Directly overhead the clouds were thin and wispy, but to the west they were low and dark.
Rain? It didn’t seem likely.
The road got steeper. And then much steeper. Optimus climbed up to a ‘pass’ on a track that had them so vertical that it felt to Kim like a bug clinging to a wall. The drop on the other side was so sharp that Kim couldn’t see the ground past Optimus’ hood.
At the bottom was a narrow creek, barely a trickle of water. There were little trees here. Pinion and Juniper, Optimus told her. She climbed out and walked down to the trees. There were small flowers beside the stream. And butterflies. “God, this is beautiful. We should bring the kids here. How old would they have to be before it would be safe?”
“A few months, perhaps. Earth life is very fragile. They will have to have learned some restraint.” He transformed and stepped down closer to the water. “We will have to walk the next part. There is no road.”
He offered his hand, and Kim climbed aboard. Optimus stepped over the creek and then stepped lightly around little trees that came only to his waist. On soil, his footsteps were nearly silent.
They climbed the next hill. At the top they could see for miles. Optimus sat down and settled against the stony ridge. “Yes,” he said. “It is as beautiful as I had hoped.”
“Are we safe here? Can anyone see us?”
“To the south is a petroglyph area. There may be tourists there. But here we are all right.”
Kim leaned back against him and looked out over the ridge. There was a bird flying in a circle high up and far away. Buzzard? Buzzards were real, right, not just a thing from over-dramatic movies. Or maybe a hawk? Kim had never expected to live ‘out west.’ She was completely unprepared to be a denizen of ‘out west.’
“Thank you for this,” Optimus said softly.
Kim sat up a bit so she could look at his face. “I should be thanking you. You did all the work.”
“Earth’s gravity is lower than Cybertron’s. It was not taxing.”
“Hmm,” Kim said. “Are you being modest? Or dissing my planet’s gravity?”
He chuckled softly. “The gravity is a mercy. We consume less energon, put less wear on engines and joints.”
“Oh. Well. Something about Earth that isn’t hazardous or inconvenient.”
“Kim?”
She glanced up anxiously. “What?”
“Tonight, since the humans are off duty, I plan to wake the carrier and his cohort and explain the situation with Flipsides to them.”
Kim blinked. “Oh.”
“A decision must be made.”
“Well…yeah.” It had been three weeks. “I guess…there’s a meeting tomorrow.”
“The meeting is necessary. But the decision is mine.”
“Yeah. I’m…I earnestly sympathize.”
“Thank you.”
They stayed that way for a long time, until a sudden, cool breeze pushed through Kim’s short hair. She sat up and looked around. The dark clouds were much closer. And lower. And darker. “Um, about the weather….?” she said.
“Yes. This was not predicted in this morning’s forecast. We should head back.”
The shortest route to a road was forward, not back. Optimus didn’t bother with climbing; he cradled Kim with both arms and jumped down the side of the mountain.
The drops were infinitely long and shockingly fast, but the landings were not much worse than an express elevator’s. He caught the shock in his knees, bringing them to a gentle stop before jumping again.
It didn’t help to know the landing would be soft. It didn’t help to know that every Earth technology she had ever trusted with her life was put to shame by his mechanics. It didn’t help to know that he would not do anything that might get her hurt. Kim reminded herself of all that. Repeatedly. Breathlessly. In frantic, staccato thoughts. It didn’t help.
Every endless, impossible drop sent her stomach flying out body. Her arms burned with the grip she had locked around his thumb.
After the fourth (fifth?) he stopped and shifted her to a rocky shelf. Kim did not let go, so he cupped his hands around her and leaned in. “Kim?” he said softly.
She nodded spasmodically.
“You are distressed. Are you injured?”
No. She wasn’t.
“Kim? Sonar indicates your strut system is whole and there is no inflammation. Your field is in disarray and the concentration of stress hormones—”
Kim’s teeth chattered slightly as she unclinched them. “Falling. Oh, my god. That’s incredible.” Her breathing stuttered.
“I will not allow you to come to harm. This is the safest course. I cannot protect you from lightning in root form, and there is not room here to shift into alt. Kim? Please believe you are safe.”
She began to laugh. “It’s a reflex. Falling. Like, hardwired. Oh, god that was the best. Fuck roller coasters or water slides. My god.”
“Kim? Are you able to continue?”
“Hell yes. Oh fuck.” She laughed again. “It’s a reflex. Fall. Panic. Adrenalin. And then your brain makes opioids.”
His head pulled back slightly. “Your cognition is compromised.”
“Yes. Wonderfully compromised.” She looked around. Another jump down, about sixty feet. She felt a spike of terror. And then across a small ravine. And then another little ridge—not as high as the one they had just come down, but probably high enough to be fabulous. She laughed again. “God bless the brain’s fear management system.”
Optimus emitted a protomatter sound Kim had not heard before and scooped her back in against his carapace. He leaped.
***
They were still running toward the road when the storm broke. It came all at once, like a barrel being dumped out. Kim was in it less than a minute, but she was still soaking when she climbed into his cab. “Oh, damn. I’m sorry about the dripping. I’m getting you wet everywhere.” She snapped the seatbelt into place and tried to wipe her wet face on her wet shirt. She could hear thunder now.
“Check your electronics,” he said. “They are not waterproof.”
“Right, yeah.” Kim pushed wet hair out of her eyes and started digging around in her bag. The rain was a waterfall against the windshield and windows. “Can you navigate in this?”
“Of course. I will have to go slowly because of the mud, however.”
The packet of tissues was protected by plastic. She pulled them out and wiped off her laptop. “You’re fantastic. It must be amazing to be you. Dang, what a day.”
“I was thinking something similar.”
Still dizzy with adrenalin, Kim laughed and sassed him. “That’s odd. You’re already you.”
“And I wonder, if were I a small protein bubble, would I be so brave? Could I defy my own self-preservation reflexes? Would I be so generous with my trust?”
Kim sobered. “I’m sure your fears are all rational. I know some of mine are just chemicals.”
“Well…very few of my fears are a condition of somatic positionality,” he conceded.
Kim was still parsing this when the hissing started. It seemed to come from all directions and vibrate through the cab. “What’s that?” she asked, looking around.
“Sleet.”
“Shit. Okay. That’s not right.”
“Global weather patterns still have not normalized.”
“It’s been, like, almost three months.”
“The situation is unique. Our models are still incomplete.”
They spent the next two hours covering about twenty miles. The rain started and stopped several times, but even during the reprieves thunder rolled overhead and four times Optimus foundered in mud. He always managed to coax and finesse his tires out of it and onto firmer ground. Eventually.
Kim was aware the little sensor interface was very acute; she took deep breaths and reminded herself that it really didn’t matter how long the trip home took. And it wasn’t like he couldn’t transform and climb out of any muddy hole. And even if there was a flash flood (those happened in deserts, right?), he was waterproof to—well, Kim didn’t know, but more then the few feet a flood would be. He could take a lightning strike. He wasn’t going to get lost if they were out here in the dark, because he never went out anymore without downloading a complete map back to Jasper.
So, they would be fine. It might take a while, but Kim wasn’t hungry, and he wasn’t injured, and really, this was just an ‘adventure’ not a disaster.
It was almost five when they reached the highway. The second seatbelt retracted and disappeared, and Kim sighed and leaned back.
“Slag the orbital watchtower!” Kim’s eyes widened at the Cybertronix expletive. Optimus rarely cursed. This was one that Windblade had identified as particularly biting, and Kim carefully reparsed it. Then she pressed her lips together: Optimus would surely not have said it aloud if he’d known she could recognize it.
After a slow count to ten, Kim asked casually, “Something wrong?”
“Arcee has broken cover. There is a civilian witness.”
KIm shuddered. “Oof! Bill is having a rotten day.”
“This is not merely a case of explaining a self-driving car and a hologram. Arcee partially transformed.”
“Dang. Is there video?”
“Thankfully, no.” A pause. “Have you met Nurse Darby’s son?”
“Yes. What? You’re kidding.”
A sigh. “You are aware her personal vehicle is malfunctioning again? Chromia has been giving her rides home, however, Chromia has already left for New Jersey. Since the storm seemed to have passed, Arcee was stepping in.”
KIm nodded. She had been given a ride by Arcee once. It was like joining a somewhat flamboyant motorcycle gang.
“On the way, Ms. Darby asked to check on her son, who was at his place of employment. In fact, the power was out, and he was closing up. They offered him a ride.”
Kim tried to picture Jack Darby in her head. It was fuzzy. She never paid enough attention to humans. “That doesn’t sound too bad. What went wrong?”
“The precipitation had ended but a wind gust came up. Although Arcee’s alt components are heavier than a genuine motorcycle, it would have upended the aspect carrying Ms. Darby and her son. The other two transformed into their combat modes and braced it.”
“That...must have been terrifying.”
“I have ordered her to return to base with the humans.”
“Maybe...jack can keep a secret.”
“He will have to, since his memory cannot be redacted.”
“Yeah...don’t say that to humans. Ew.” Kim shivered a little and wrapped her arms around herself.
“Are you cold?”
“I’m okay.”
The vents kicked up to a higher and noticeably warmer register.
Outside the rain had eased back to a drizzle. Kim leaned back and closed her eyes.
~TBC