Chapter Text
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What, however, is our relation to revolution? Civil war is the most severe of all forms of war. It is unthinkable not only without violence against tertiary figures but, under contemporary technique, without murdering old men, old women and children... There is no impervious demarcation between ‘peaceful’ class struggle and revolution. Every strike embodies in an unexpanded form all the elements of civil war.
—Leon Trotsky, Their Morals And Ours
...
RISE
It was sunset, just after the end of the evening shift. Inside the Hall of Records the light was dim and sterile, cut through with slashes of dull orange from windows set high up into the walls, but as Orion stepped out of the main gate into the Scholarship Plaza the city lit up in a blaze of yellow light.
His field of vision went white, reminding him that he'd left his optical settings on maximum sensitivity again.
He stopped before he fell off the edge of the shallow upper-city terrace on which the Hall of Records campus sprawled, and reset his optics. Working within the dimly-lit Hall, he habitually left them on a much lower-light exposure setting. Since he rarely went out into the greater world, this was an arrangement that he seldom rethought.
The reboot finished, leaving Orion blinking into the sunset.
Cybertron's sun hovered just above the clump of low buildings on the other side of the Plaza, magnified by the curve of the atmosphere. Although that direction looked away from the densely-packed cluster of skyscrapers that made up High Iacon’s central business district, the city skyline left nothing of the horizon visible. The colour of the high-altitude clouds that wreathed the sky faded from vibrant red and orange in the southwest to washed-out yellow higher up. Dusky purples and blues ate away at the edges of the blaze as the sun sank steadily toward night.
Direct sunlight. No wonder his visual processor had been overwhelmed.
There was a touch at his hand, a brush of a vibrant EM field against his own. He glanced down at his companion.
“What's up?” asked Jazz. He craned his neck to look Orion in the optics from a level much closer to the ground, EM field smoothing expectantly around his frame.
Orion told him, and received a gleeful burst of static in return.
“Mech,” said his oldest friend, “you gotta get yerself a visor. Or just get outta the Archives more.”
“It's my job,” said Orion, a halfhearted protest. “I can't just walk up to the shift manager and ask her for an assignment out in the sun.”
He moved away from the Hall gate, and the between-shifts pedestrian crowd in the Plaza made room for him with a barely-perceptible shift. Motes of dust and smog danced in the swirls of air left by his passage, glowing faint gold in the setting sun.
Jazz followed, expertly weaving his way through the crowd. “Your job doesn’t require overtime in the homeworld history sections, or extra shifts in the Grid cores, or offshift browsing in the political history department,” he pointed out, counting Orion's various transgressions off on his fingers. “You can't fool me, I've seen your work history for this lune.”
“You have?” asked Orion, only faintly surprised. “Jazz, that's illegal.”
Jazz grinned. “What's a bit of lawbreaking between friends, Orion? Just between you and me, I think you're getting to be a bit of a workaholic. Plainly you need an adventure.”
Orion shook his helm. A bit of lawbreaking, indeed. Jazz was a Chronicler; they got into places other mecha didn't want them to as a matter of course.
They passed behind the shadow of a tall office building. Everything went dark. Orion tentatively raised his optical exposure levels and the visual feed brightened, enough to see depth in the shadows around the boundaries of the Plaza. A shaft of bright light glared at him from a pane of glass on a high skyscraper several blocks away, momentarily scrambling his vision.
“What would I do without you?” he asked, making sure that Jazz could feel the good-natured sarcasm in his EM field.
The minibot cackled. “Not much, apparently.”
Orion responded with a lazy spin of his fans. Jazz was probably right. Not that he'd ever tell him so, of course.
“Very well,” he said, prodding Jazz with a curious pulse of EM. “I have to suppose that you have an adventure in mind?”
They reached the edge of the Plaza and joined the river of pedestrians descending to the transit level beneath the Oratory Forum. Jazz grabbed hold of Orion's wrist and stuck close to his lee. Orion, who stood head and shoulders above the vast majority of the mecha around him, never found it very hard to navigate High Iacon's crowds. Jazz, well on the other side of average, tended to get swept away by the current.
The flow of homeward-bound mecha eased as the pedestrian route opened up onto the Forum’s main road, going east-west across the transit level beneath the district. Jazz transformed, sending Orion a set of coordinates.
:: Here's the starting point. We'll work out what happens afterward when we get there. ::
Orion settled into altmode on the narrow transition lane at the edge of the sidewalk and pulled out smoothly into the westbound traffic. Iacon loomed in over his cab, a precisely engineered honeycomb of steel and glass and shadows, covered in a tapestry of billboards and bright lights in every color. He cross-checked the coordinates against his onboard map of the city. They matched to a small energon bar on the fifth level of the Decagon, close to the district border with the Oratory Forum. A cheery pop-up window on the side of his HUD gave him the drinks menu.
:: Starting point? This is sounding like quite the adventure already. ::
Jazz drove ahead, dodging through the traffic. :: I figure I should probably acclimate you to the lower Decagon, ah, slowly :: he said, tagging the transmission with friendly amusement. :: Take the Level 45 Motorway at the next entry—it doesn’t go down as far as we need, but there's always an elevator. ::
Orion pinged an acknowledgement. :: I don’t mind walking. ::
The signage hovering above the road flashed green: traffic flowing well, no hazards upcoming . Further up, the last vestiges of daylight shone between the upper-level latticework of Iacon's hive city.
Jazz slipped back into the leftmost lane, several vehicles in front of Orion. The motorway entry appeared out of the road ahead. :: Tonight, brother, we are going to have Fun. Take no prisoners, leave no evidence. ::
:: Oh dear :: said Orion.
They descended into the motorway. Street lights took over from natural light; flashing neon signs directed traffic into a network of cross-highways and offramps. Orion sped up as he merged into the slow lane on the side – the speed limit here was much higher.
Jazz swung in beside him. :: Not to worry too much, mech. I got you a nice, cosy little boutique bar to start with. ::
:: It's the 'to start with' part that worries me :: observed Orion, tagging the message with just enough humour to let Jazz know that he was joking. (Mostly. Jazz had calmed down a lot in recent decades, now that his Chronicler masters trusted him to carry out mapping missions on his own, but he still had a reputation for adventurousness—and sticking his little articulate head into things he probably ought not to—that he wasn't in a hurry to get rid of.)
:: Aw, there, there. Such a homebody, Orion. :: Jazz sent him a video file of Orion himself, hard at work in the Archives. :: Don't worry, I'll get you back to your books all safe and sound. ::
:: You'll have my eternal gratitude, in that case. ::
Orion checked the map. The Oratory Forum’s border crossing with the Decagon was coming up. He inventoried the contents of his subspace for the second or third time that evening, making sure that he had his ID card with him. The Forums were Iacon's seat of government, and perhaps the city's most heavily guarded districts. He might not need ID to get into the Decagon, but he certainly would to leave it again.
The highway turned north, skirting the giant bulwark of a hive city support tower. Billboards clustered on the side of the tower, flashing ads competing with the traffic for attention. Further on, the Decagon-bound lanes split off and disappeared into a cramped tunnel between two upper-city business towers.
:: We need Exit 3014 :: said Jazz. :: 2998 coming up. ::
The altmodes ahead of them began to brake as they sped out the other end of the tunnel. A league further on, the traffic lights above the motorway flashed orange.
:: Damn :: said Jazz. :: Road works? ::
Fortunately, they made it to their exit before the traffic slowed to a crawl. This road led them up into an airy avenue, lined by expensive imports shops and open to the weather through a gap in the skyscrapers above. The sky between the buildings was a soft shade of blue-grey, streaked with darkening remnants of sunset.
The district border was a few blocks ahead. They drove onward, transforming in the forecourt of the checkpoint building and joining the flow of night-time revellers into the Decagon.
Orion had been wrong – the customs officers did ask for ID. But they scanned the cards and handed them back to their owners without so much as looking at them.
Jazz led Orion to a bank of transit elevators in the back of the checkpoint building, joining the noisy crowd in front of a door marked with a downward arrow. They squeezed onto the carriage alongside everyone else—Orion felt, as he usually did, a little guilty for taking up so much space on his own.
The elevator disgorged them into the middle level of the Decagon, on the sidewalk of a broad avenue lit by antigrav fae-lights hovering overhead. Mecha ducked into shops and bars, and music pulsed out through the doors behind them. Delicate crystal trees set into brackets perched on the facades of buildings, and flags of wirecloth and imported organic materials hung still in the breezeless air. To the left, the road curved around the forecourt of a terraced restaurant, from the open doors of which drifted exotic perfumes and mineral smokes. To the right, a double-layered wrought iron fence guarded the frontage of a garden bar, and on the other side of that a sculpture gallery squeezed into the subdivided atrium of a video theatre. Orion caught Jazz nodding his helm to a fast tapping beat as they went past a UV-lit dance club.
Orion tilted his helm back, looking up. Three levels above, the gigantic skyscrapers that held up the city branched and arched inward over the streets until they met, forming the skeleton of a vaulted roof. Between titanium ribs, Iacon’s weather shield glimmered faintly against the velvet sky.
“Here,” said Jazz. He ducked into a narrow but well-lit alley between the club and a tiny smoke bar. Orion followed, tucking his shoulders in and stooping. They passed through a small courtyard in which mecha drank tiny glowing cocktails around sulphur braziers, and out into the main strip of a covered pedestrian street, fronted by bar after tiny bar.
Jazz led him past every one, stopping only in front of the smallest of them all.
“Here you go, Orion. Is this quiet enough for you?”
There were voices coming out of the bar, and—Orion looked up—off the second-level balcony above the shop front. They seemed calm enough.
“Perhaps,” he deadpanned, unwilling to let Jazz get away with the prize. “Do you think you could get them to whisper?”
Jazz deliberately jammed his fans, stifling a laugh.
Inside, the establishment was roomier than it had appeared at first. Mecha sat at small tables along the far wall and on tall stools at the bar, examining the menu scrawled across the wall behind the bartenders. At the right, a narrow iron staircase set into the wall led up into the second level. Soft yellow light came from cheap natural fae-lights in brackets set halfway up the walls.
“What do you feel like?” asked Jazz, approaching the bar with an eager shimmer in his field. “First round is on me.”
They left that bar three rounds later, highgrade warming their conversion tanks. Orion judged himself slightly tipsy, energized by the rich fuel and more willing than he might have been otherwise to follow Jazz into the next bar despite the fast thumping beat that poured out through the open doors and the sight of energetic dancers inside.
This bar was much bigger than the first, fronting onto a wide multi-lane street with a view up into the night sky above Iacon. The city's lights lit up a haze of high cloud, striping the darkness with patches of faint colour.
There were bouncers at the door: two tall warbuilds, lightly-armoured, hired from a private security company by the lack of livery on their shoulders. They gave Orion a long look as he showed them his ID, long enough to make him wonder, but waved him on through.
Jazz spoke to him just inside the door. “That was new.”
Orion glanced back over his shoulder. Through the doors, he saw the bouncers give the next arrival's ID card a cursory inspection. “Them?”
“Nah, the sign behind them,” said Jazz. He pulled Orion to a corner table and hopped up onto the inset wall seat behind it. “You didn't see it? The way it used to be, this area was open to anyone, any caste, so long as you could pay. Then some upmarket conglomerate bought the building across the way, and now you can't come in here unless you're Tier Four or higher. Fourth grade or above, in fact.”
Orion frowned. “Why would they do that?”
Jazz was quiet for a moment, his EM field rippling around his frame as he thought. “Attracting a better class of clients, maybe. Some mecha find exclusivity attractive.”
He shrugged and leant forward, peering over the heads of the dancers at the bar. “It's probably only a matter of time before they cut us off as well, so how about we enjoy it while it lasts?”
They were both part of the fourth tier of caste, Orion a member of the Iacon Record-Keepers' clade, a specialised sub-unit belonging to the data-handlers' caste, and Jazz a Chronicler, part of another specialised sub-unit itself belonging to the Record-Keepers. This put them both squarely at the third grade within Tier Four—not quite high enough to be respectable, but not low enough to be undesirable. Yet.
Orion sighed and spun his vents. “Do you think they have any of those molybdenum cocktails here?”
According to the menu, they did indeed. Jazz went up to order the drinks, while Orion lurked at the table and watched the dancers on the floor. He had never been one for dancing—he had come out of the Well with two left pedes and a terrible sense of timing, apparently—but the dancers were smiling and the whole club buzzed with the high frequency of exhilarated EM fields.
The current song wound down into a slower tempo. This seemed to be a cue for those on the floor to make room for new dancers. Pairs expanded into trines. Three sharp notes and a rattling staccato cued in the next set.
One of the outgoing dancers looked up, and caught Orion's optics. He flashed him a quick smile from across the ranks of the audience.
Orion blinked.The mech held his gaze for a moment longer, then disappeared into the crowd.
Jazz returned with an armful of drinks that glowed interesting colours. He put them down on the table, pushing the molybdenum blend across to Orion, and grinned. “See something you like, Orion?”
Jazz had a talent for making the most innocent combination of words sound like an innuendo.
Orion leant his chin on his hands and tried to pretend the comment hadn’t flustered him. “I should think I ought to enjoy myself, after you went to all this effort to bring me here.”
“True,” said Jazz, still grinning. He raised his glass to Orion's, and clinked them together, deep purple vintage swirling in the vessels. “Let's see if we can't get you dancing by the end of the night.”
“I think I'll need something a lot stronger for that,” said Orion. “Jet fuel, perhaps.”
The Chronicler's visor gleamed under the flashing dance floor lights. “Is that a challenge?”
“It depends on what you can get me,” said Orion, giving him a demure smile. “I'll leave it to you to figure out.”
The frenzied thumping of the music intensified, drowning out speech. Orion and Jazz exchanged conversation by text for a while, debating the merits of the drinks on the club menu. Then they were joined by a trio of mecha whom Jazz recognised. Two out of the three were already visibly overcharged. Orion found himself sandwiched between two slim light standards as Jazz shared stories of his last work trip, resisting the urge to hunch into himself so as not to take up too much space. Jazz kept them well-supplied with high-grade.
After a while, the buzz of energy through his lines was enough to loosen Orion's glossa. At this point Jazz’s friends were well and truly drunk and screamed with laughter at every uninspired joke they made. Orion gathered the bravery to share a story from the Archival halls, which was greeted with equal mirth. He looked across the table and found Jazz watching him, smiling with approval.
A databurst landed in his inbox. :: Not to knock your determination to rack up record-breaking overtime credits, but that wasn't so bad, was it? :: Jazz teased.
:: It could only be better if I was getting paid for it :: said Orion. :: That is a large part of the attraction in overtime, you know. ::
Jazz cackled aloud. :: You're wasted in the Archives, Orion! The All Spark should have put you in business administration! ::
It was a joke, but Orion felt a somber mood crash down upon him. Once placed in a caste and clade, there was little hope for a spark to change their profession. He was happy in the Hall of Records, but his thoughts strayed, wondering—as they often did when it came to him that there was a world outside of the Archives—what his life might have been like had he been placed elsewhere.
He smiled, disguising his thoughts from Jazz, and absorbed himself into the current conversation.
The frenzied thump of the music slowed as the midnight shift wore on. Jazz' acquaintances left to try their skills on the dance floor among the pounding bass. It was tempting to follow them, but three cubes of vintage down and Orion wasn't that overcharged quite yet.
It came as a surprise when Jazz too got up, and tugged on Orion's hand. “I don't like the atmosphere in here,” he declared, his EM field shiny and overwarm. “Let's go somewhere else.”
“You want to leave?” Orion stared into the bottom of his last cube, wondering if it was worth upending to get to the last dregs of energon.
“What, you're having fun skulking around up the back here?” asked Jazz. His EM field plastered intimately against Orion's—being smaller, he was quicker to overcharge. “Besides, I got more places for you to see. Better bands, better drinks.”
“That wasn't an objection,” said Orion. He wrapped his EM field around Jazz' much smaller frame and rose, leaving the cube where it was. “Where else to?”
“First? Dunno,” said Jazz. He went to the bar to check their tab, paid it, and they left. “Whatever we find first.”
They stood on the terraced step outside the bar, surveying the avenue. Lights warred for their attention, the blue and yellow hues of fae-lights in front of tea houses and energon bars, flashing neon signage illuminating dance halls and nightclubs, red and gold on the front parlours of gambling dens and purple hovering at the first-floor windows of pleasure clubs. Tiny lamps in crystal trees and on shop porches gave off a soft, unobtrusive glow.
Orion looked up and down the street. “Which way do we go?”
Jazz was quiet for a moment, no doubt consulting his internal map. Then he turned to the left and pattered down into the road, surefooted even when sloshed. “This way.”
There was a speed limit of fifteen leagues an hour in the Decagon. Orion, naturally cautious, stuck well below that. Jazz jinked and dodged around him, disregarding the road rules entirely. He spotted an Enforcer patrol further down the road and was the model of politeness for a single block, but as soon as they turned the corner he slipped up onto the pedestrian paths again, exploring.
They pulled up in front of another large bar, this one attached to an internal dance hall with a wide balcony on the first floor, and a short queue waiting on the forecourt. Again, there were a pair of security guards checking ID cards.
Jazz joined the back of the queue. “I haven't been here before, but it's supposed to be good.”
“The queue would seem to agree with you,” said Orion, transforming.
As with the last bar, there was a panel on the wall, reminding mecha below Tier Four that they were not welcome. Orion frowned at it.
Caste-based segregation was an ancient reality of the Cybertronian world. Iaconian society—and especially High Iacon—worked on thousands of rules, spoken or unspoken, that governed interactions between mecha. As a senior Archivist, Orion regularly worked with mecha of much higher status than himself, and he had had to become intimately familiar with these rules over the years.
He read the plaque again, more closely. This one forbade the entry of mecha below the third rank of tier four.
Jazz noticed his expression. “Just ranked enough, are we?”
“Perhaps that's why it is supposedly so good,” said Orion, less than humorously. “It's built for mecha better than us.”
Jazz caught the undertone to his voice, pressed himself reassuringly against Orion's side. “Let's just see what it's like, hey? We don't have to stay if you don't like it.”
“It's not that,” said Orion. “I'll try it. I'm just a little nervous, that's all.”
“Same difference,” said Jazz. “Just let me know what you think.”
At the front of the line, a third mech joined the security guards. He was an angular light standard, glossy-armoured, with light blue detailing on his limbs and extremities. He observed the guards' work with a critical tang in his confidently-unfurled EM field. As Jazz and Orion came closer to the front of the line, the mech's proximity ident came up on their HUDs. Like them, he used the T4 modifier on his ID. Unlike them, his caste identifier marked him as a member of the first rank. Orion guessed that he would be the bar manager.
As if sensing Orion's scrutiny, the mech looked up. His optics caught Orion's, and narrowed.
“ID?” asked a voice.
They had reached the front of the line.
Orion hurriedly took his ID out of his subspace, handed it to the security guard. The mech waved it past the ID scanner. Orion was expecting for it to be handed back as soon as the scanner brought up no flagged activity, as Jazz' had been, but the security guard held onto it, manually scrolling through his activity history.
Worry tied a knot in Orion's spark.
He waited, as patiently as he could. What had he used his ID for recently? The trip into the Decagon, and the last bar. Before that, he'd signed into and out of the Hall of Records twice that day, having left between shifts to visit the Imperial Education Office down the Via Theophania about a part-time undergraduate course he was hoping to take. The previous day, he'd only signed into work.
The security guard gave him an appraising look. “Designation and caste?”
“Orion Pax, of the Record-Keepers,” replied Orion, put off balance by the scrutiny. The security guard's ident put them at Tier Six. Under the social rules that Orion was used to, there should have been at least a 'please' somewhere in there.
The guard gave his card another long look. Then they seemed to come to a decision, and made a move to hand it back. Orion made to take it, relieved—but suddenly it was intercepted by a slim blue-enameled hand.
“Another question,” said the club manager. “Who did you get this from?”
Orion stared at him, uncomprehending. “What?”
The mech flicked his ID card between two fingers. “This is a good fake. I commend whoever made it. But we do not accept mecha below the third rank of tier four as patrons at this premises.”
“I am third rank,” said Orion. Everything had gone quiet. He felt numb, hydraulics going taut with creeping panic. “Orion Pax, senior Archivist, of the Record-Keepers' clade. I’ve had that ID for as long as I’ve held the rank.”
There was movement by his side. “What's going on?” asked Jazz.
The manager summoned the other security guard with a flick of his servo. “Re-check his,” he ordered, with a peremptory gesture to Jazz. “If they're together, it's possible that both are forgeries.”
Jazz' visor dimmed and flickered rapidly. “The Pit did you just say?”
:: They think my ID is fake :: sent Orion, through text.
He mustered up what remained of his composure, stepping forward. “Please give me back my ID. If you don’t want me here, I will leave.”
“I can't do that,” said the manager. His EM flared, irritated. “This is contraband; it will be going to the Enforcers.”
“Are you glitched?” said Jazz, a thundercloud brewing in his EM field. “They're real . You think someone wants to get into your scrap-framed slagheap of a club that badly?”
Orion became aware that the second security guard had circled around behind them. Ready to throw them out, no doubt. The first stood beside the manager, their face and EM field unreadable. The queue had grown in the time they had been stalled; ranks of blue optics stared at them with growing suspicion.
The manager gave them a tired look. “Clearly, some do.”
He waved a servo at Orion. The gesture took in his entire frame, his full height. Orion reflexively stepped back. “Do you really expect me to believe that a mech like that is working in the archives? The Iacon Hall of Records, no less.”
There was a short silence.
:: I'm sorry :: said Jazz, over private short-range comms. :: I had no idea this place was run by a Functionist drip of slag. ::
Orion tried valiantly to pull together the frayed pieces of his composure. He looked down at himself, at the big dexter frame that had haunted him all his life. “Please,” he said, trying one more time, “I need my ID to get back home.”
The club manager's voice sounded almost reasonable. Looking back, that was what hurt the most. “As I said, this will be handed over to the Enforcers as contraband. You may leave, if you leave now. Try finding a better cover story next time.”
Orion stood frozen for a long moment. He forced himself to take a deep vent, through fans whirling fast with stress-response protocols, then turned and strode away from the bar. Jazz followed him, jogging to keep up.
They made it a block in silence. Then Jazz began to snarl curses. Quietly at first, then rising in volume and malice.
His friend's anger was both cathartic and aggravating. Jazz gave voice to the anger and hurt that Orion himself couldn't seem to vocalise past the heavy weight of shame that had settled on his shoulders the moment he turned to walk away. At the same time, his anger grated, made Orion’s thoughts curl in on himself.
The avenue came to a small intersection across a pedestrian walkway. In the mouth of the walkway, between a tea house and a small game arcade, there was a raised terrace garden. Orion came to a stop, crouching at its foot. His fans sped up, whining with stress. He wanted to sink into the ground beneath his pedes.
Light footsteps approached. Jazz stood for a moment beside him, then sat as well.
Panic welled up. Orion fought it back, crying out in his processor that he would not let it control him. He shook, plating flaring out and rattling against his substructure. Without his ID card, he would not be let back into the Forums, let alone into the Hall of Records complex and the apartment block where he lived.
He pushed back the fear. He had his shift manager's comm code. He would call her, and explain the situation. She would be able to verify his identity, order him a new ID if necessary. If she alone was not enough, she would be able to call in the elders of the Record-Keepers' clade. It would be okay. He wasn't doing anything he wasn't supposed to.
A soft weight pressed against his side. Jazz leaned against him, sinking the wavelengths of his EM field under Orion's plating. Orion took the offered support with a grateful throb of his spark.
It made sense, as much as the shame made it hurt to think. Functionism was a philosophy initially offered as an alternative to a hardline caste system, under which mecha did whichever work they were best suited to rather than that of whichever caste they were assigned or sparked into by luck. Proponents claimed that it loosened the economic drag caused by strict adherence to a caste-based society. Under a Functionist view, the dexter frametype was one best suited to manual labour. Combined with the caste system, which set the manual labour classes between Tiers Five and Seven, and the prejudices which followed, this explained all too well why Orion had been the one singled out of the crowd.
“Should've stayed and argued,” muttered Jazz, sounding as if he spoke to himself rather than Orion. “Pretty sure it's a legal offense to take someone else's ID without due evidence of wrongdoing.”
Orion vented, slowly, deeply. “I couldn't have done that. Had to get away.”
Jazz rested his helm against Orion's elbow. “I'm sorry,” he said again. “Wouldn't have taken you there if I'd had half a clue.”
“It's not your fault,” said Orion. He lifted his helm and patted Jazz's shoulder. “I was enjoying myself, before then.”
“Oh, then the night isn't a complete pile of slag?” Jazz asked, his undertone somewhere between wry and furious. “That's a relief.”
Orion reset his optics. “I'm going to call Torre,” he said. “I'll need someone ranking to vouch for me, unless I want to spend the night here.”
“All right,” said Jazz. “I'll hang out here too. No way I'm leaving without you.”
“Thank you,” murmured Orion. He dithered a moment before connecting the call, still shaken in his spark.
His shift manager listened intently to his story. :: That slagging jointlicker :: she said succinctly, after he had finished. :: And you said it didn't even ping the scanner? ::
Listening to mecha being angry on his behalf was nice, in a washed-out sort of a way. :: Nothing even like it. But they wouldn't give it back, and now I'm stuck in the Decagon. ::
:: At least you won't be short of energon :: said Torre. :: I'm going to talk to the elders. Silverlight says she'll see me. We'll work something out, Orion. ::
The call ended.
Orion exvented, and buried his face in his hands.
“How did it go?” asked Jazz. Concerned tendrils of his EM reached out, still a little shiny with overcharge.
“She's going to work something out,” said Orion, into his palms. He lifted his head. “She didn't say what.”
“Thought not.” Jazz pushed himself to his feet. “You want to find somewhere quieter to sit? I keep getting headlights in my optics.”
Given the lack of traffic around, this was clearly an excuse. Orion looked raised his helm and found two separate groups of mecha staring at them. (More than likely at him , said a minor subprocessor.) The area was a popular one. No doubt they simply thought he was overcharged, but the memory of the mecha at the bar was still sharp enough to sting him into action.
He pushed himself up after Jazz. His spark was roiling fast, but any ready charge from the high-grade he’d drank had been chased away by shame. “I'd like that.”
Deeper into the Decagon, they found a bazaar with a public recharge area behind the rearmost bank of bars. This early in the night, it was nearly deserted.
Orion tucked himself into a shadowy corner and shuttered his optics. The dark was calming. He vented, drawing it around himself, imagining that no-one could see him.
A familiar weight nestled into his lap. He wrapped his arms around Jazz, synchronising his EM field to the slow whirl of his friend's spark. Jazz did not speak, but leant back against Orion's chest, laying his hands on Orion's thighs and gently patting.
Torre called back several minutes later.
:: We've contacted the district Emporium :: she explained. :: The Enforcers won’t step in until we contact the bar directly, which Silverlight is handling. She wants to press an unlawful discrimination suit, incidentally, or at least threaten it. In the meantime, the Emporium can put a note on your file for the district borders, and issue you a temporary ID if necessary. ::
She sent him a small text file. :: If you want to make a civil complaint against the individuals involved, here's the form. ::
Orion considered the prospect after ending the call. The part of him that balked at the prospect of calling any more attention to himself than necessary was, predictably, unwilling to give the idea any thought.
He reminded himself that making decisions based on fear was not something that would get him very far in life, and held onto Jazz a little tighter, hoping the message would sink in.
The ill-fated expedition to the Decagon was over before dawnshift the following morning. Orion was issued a temporary passport by the local Emporium office, and ushered through the long queues at the district border by a sympathetic Customs officer. He and Jazz arrived back at the Hall of Records with time enough to catch a joor or two of recharge before the following day's work.
Jazz saw him to his room in the Residency Hall. The articulate was still feeling guilty over the fiasco their night out had turned into, Orion thought. He made sure to thank him—it was hardly Jazz's fault that things had ended so badly.
He shut the door behind himself, and the silence closed in over his helm.
His room was still as he had left it the previous morning. The windows were clear, and light from the tower block across the street fell across the shape of his recharge berth and onto the floor at his pedes.
He didn't have much in the way of furnishings. The table and berth were supplied by the Hall of Records, of frametype-appropriate sizes. He had a few ornaments and vanity items, most of which were confined to the windowsill. There was a miniature chiller for his energon rations, sitting on top of a shelf by the door. Elsewhere in the room, every flat surface was dominated by piles of datapads. Hardcopy sheets peeked out between them, styluses lurking in the gaps between haphazard stacks. There was one clear space at his table, his favourite chair (his only, unless you counted the backless office chair several sizes too small for him that he kept for Jazz' frequent visits, which Orion didn't) sitting askew in front of it.
Orange light blinked in the shadows beneath his berth. He bent, retrieving a half-hidden datapad.
Whatever Jazz might think, Orion was not in the habit of bringing work home with him. The datapads scattered throughout the room were for the most part retired office devices, which he had acquired from the Hall’s maintenance mecha. The datapads would otherwise have been sold at a loss to a recycling company and either refurbished and sold as second hand, or melted down for parts. Orion paid the maintenance mecha a little more than the recyclers did, so they were happy to let him sift through their collection for the best devices. Orion then brought them home, repaired them, and loaded them to the brim with interesting data. The topics they covered ranged from historical, political, and economic analysis to mythology, ancient fiction, travelogues and science journals. Above all things, Orion Pax loved to read.
The datapad in his hands was a more recent acquisition. For the moment, there was only one file on it. Orion had had to download this file from a public access point in a Datanet cafe across the district border in Iacon Central; the website it had come from was flagged in the Hall of Records system for inflammatory material.
It was short for a political tract. Fifteen pages, sans author's notes. The title was simple: An Open Letter To The Establishment .
He'd started reading it last night. He had had to put it down about five pages in and spend the next half joor staring at his ceiling, deep in thought.
It discussed the division of resources between the strata of Cybertronian society, and questioned the systems which enforced this division. The writing was not particularly polished, but it spoke with erudition and an understanding of institutional abuse that Orion suspected came from experience.
The author went by a pseudonym, or so Orion assumed. The name attached to the text was Megatronus —a modern translation of the household name attached to a figure better-known to history as the first of the Fallen Primes.
And why a mech should name himself for a monster like that, Orion did not know. But the author, whatever his name was, expressed ideas that Orion had never seen before. He was fond of warlike metaphor and ideals dressed in conflict—no wonder the Hall of Records had flagged the site on which the file was stored—and did not refrain from criticism of even the highest ranks of Cybertronian society. Clearly, he was no ordinary political commentator.
The most immediately relevant part of the tract was that it did not shy away from attacking the prejudice and classism that was rampant among all sectors of society, Functionist and otherwise. Orion couldn't remember the last time he had read something so openly critical of the caste system.
He had planned to fall into recharge the moment he returned home. But tonight he found himself in a contemplative mood. His spark whirled, shamed and looking for an outlet. In the datapad in his hand, Megatronus spoke words that might be able to express the outrage he still felt more guilty than not for feeling.
Orion put the datapad down on the small table at the head of his berth, and lay down. He tapped the window pane, and it blacked out, cutting off the city outside. His systems hummed, winding down into rest.
He picked the datapad up again, and began to read.