Chapter Text
Absorbed in his work, Perceptor glanced up only briefly as the humans darted in and out. The ship was nearly empty now, but organizing everything and stowing it safely aboard Oceanus would take several cycles more. For now, Perceptor’s and Shockwave’s makeshift laboratory -- and the humans’ habitation corner -- was largely unchanged.
A pair of soft-fingered hands poked up over the edge of Perceptor’s worktable, followed by a crest of helm fur and two bright, wet little optics. “What are you doing?” the Miles human said, peering intently at the tangle of half-assembled mechanisms and other parts.
“I am installing tuneable terahertz optical diffraction lenses into ultraviolet gyrotron tubules,” said Perceptor distractedly. Shockwave’s camera drones had been shipped as ‘some assembly required’, which was little trouble, of course. But once he’d started, Perceptor discovered no less than thirty-four non-optimum configuration relays. With a little work, the drones could be made to perform almost six percent more efficiently. And once he’d finished those modifications, Perceptor had retooled the limb configuration, and then there was more room for an alternate, broader configuration of optical sensors....
The end result didn’t look much like the picture on the box, and a number of spare parts had been left over. But Perceptor was certain it would work just fine.
“They look like diamonds,” Miles said, climbing another rung to peer at the little crystals.
“If you mean low-expansion tetrahedral carbon, then yes, they are,” Perceptor said. One of the miniature lenses had several flaws, rendering it somewhat less useful for his purposes. He selected it with unfolded manipulation tweezers and placed it before Miles. He’d discovered that, without parts of their own to play with, the humans frequently attempted to ‘assist’ Perceptor. Occasionally, this trait was useful, but all too often it simply meant fingerprints and micro-flecks of shed derma all over his experiment.
“Wow,” Miles breathed, picking up the glittery little crystal, hardly the size of the last joint of his thumb. He turned it back and forth in the light, watching the flash and ripple of light across the surface, apparently fascinated. “Do you need this one?” Miles asked after a klick, offering the tiny object to Perceptor.
“I do not,” said Perceptor, unexpectedly warmed. The humans frequently appreciated objects with unique optical properties, he recalled. “Indeed, several of these others are below the specifications required by the enhanced thermal assembly I constructed; could you perchance uncover a use for them?”
“Uhm, maybe,” said Miles, holding both hands out to accept the other four substandard crystals. “Woah, thank you! The guys are gonna be so stoked!”
Perceptor watched the Miles-human trot out of the laboratory, pockets bulging, already calling for his fellows. He exvented softly, shook his helm. Buy the humans a Deluvian hologram generator, and they used it as a chair. Give them several flawed parts, chipped from some of the most common elements in the galaxy, and they played happily for joors.
He doubted he’d ever really understand his humans -- so obscure, and so fascinating for it.
Humming a modified refrain from one of the many musical ensembles Bumblebee had collected, Perceptor turned back to his project.
----------
“Oh frag,” said Buzzsaw, beak clacking in irritation as he peered into the human’s tank.
It wasn’t there. Not under the scraps of metalmesh, not hiding in the water cube, nowhere. “Told ya,” squeaked Ratbat, fluttering by behind the large tank.
“Yeah? Well you could’a told me a joor ago, back when it was escaping!” Fraggity frag frag. He’d been gone for such a little while -- how could this have happened?
“I was recharging,” said Ratbat haughtily. “‘Sides which, it wasn’t my job.”
“Not your job -- awwk!” Buzzsaw flapped his wings in dismay. He hopped back and forth in front of the tank, peering around the corners as if the human had possibly hidden itself there. It hadn’t. One of the fuel cubes that the Boss had dropped inside, before heading off to report, was missing -- either the human had fueled itself a great deal, or... “Look here, you little glitch, I--”
Buzzsaw snapped his beak shut as Flipsides’s comm drifted over the cohort channel. //Laserbeak just told me -- this is so great! I didn’t think we’d get one as well -- Prowl hasn’t even left his quarters with the other one, yet, so they must be pretty interesting. You probably have this already, but I looked up the humans’ language pack. Has it been talking much? I just can’t wait to see it!//
Buzzsaw’s wings drooped. //...Uh. No, not much,// he hedged awkwardly, accepting the language data. Frag and double frag. A glint caught his optic -- a tiny, wavy bit of metal, doubled over and jammed into the cube’s control chip. He had no idea how the human had reached the thing, let alone known where and how to interrupt the containment fields. The human had planned its escape, frag the creature, and it was gonna haveta be Buzzsaw who broke the news to poor Flipsides.
Or, yanno, not. //Hey Flipsides, I gotta go, ok? Bye!//
The flightframe fixed a baleful optic on Ratbat. “We’ve got to go find it,” he said.
“What!” Ratbat scrabbled at the underside of a wall perch, wings flailing, nearly missing his landing. “What’s this ‘we’ thing!”
“You wanna explain to everyone how we let the human escape? You know the mechkin are gonna want to see it. And the Boss ain’t gonna be happy when he comes to interrogate it, and--”
“Again with the ‘we’!” Ratbat made a rude noise. Buzzsaw was right, though -- Rumble was gonna be madder than a razorsnake. Frenzy had gotten to see the human all during the flight from Kalis and had been just fascinated, tapping on the cube walls to watch its reactions, until the boss had scooped him up. “And anyway, how are we going to find it?”
Buzzsaw hop-stepped around perimeter of the low table, peering over the edge. Nope, no human. It could have at least left a trail of fuel cube bits or something, but no, inconsiderate creature. He could smell the thing’s pheromones, but it wasn’t like a flightframe had the hardware for olfactory tracking. No visuals, no trail -- Buzzsaw slumped. Then he called Ravage.
-----------
Chip frowned down at the holographic projection in front of him, tracing the glyphs with a fingertip as they morphed and transformed in three dimensions. While Cybertron didn’t have a morass of conflicting languages the way Earth did, that didn’t make it any easier to learn. The Cybertronian language had a logical base, to be sure, but those deceptively simple expressions had a seemingly infinite number of modifiers. And those modifiers had modifiers, and those modifiers could be modified yet *again*, or even more confusingly, modify another glyphset in another part of the statement. And many of those upper layers of modifiers were entirely context-specific, with meanings that could themselves change with the slightest alteration elsewhere in the expression. Or by the very act of being expressed, Chip was starting to suspect, because if quantum mechanics weren’t involved in this somehow, he’d eat his hat.
Or Shroedinger’s cat. One of the two.
It was fascinating. And frustrating, and Chip was beginning to understand the sheer immensity of the task he had taken on. A single human lifetime wouldn’t be nearly long enough to map the language, not even with the willing help of several mecha…
“Pettin’s!” Four scarlet optics peered hopefully up at him, small, almost finger-sized golden talons gripping the edge of the table. The Seekerlet--who went by the designation Sunstorm, if memory served--sent more charge to his tiny antigrav nodes, floating himself higher in order to clamber onto the tabletop.
Jarred out of his train of thought, Chip gave the sparkling an absent-minded smile. “Not now, kiddo. I’ve got work to do.” He glanced around. “Where are your ::sibling-creations::?” he asked, trying to imitate the staticky crackle of a word never designed for organic mouthparts. The infant mech--who was already pushing six feet and outweighed Chip by at least several hundred pounds--tilted his helm, all four optics blinking in sequence. Apparently Chip’s accent still wasn’t good enough.
He tried again, this time in English. “Where are your brothers?” Adult mecha could easily extrapolate meanings from Chip’s attempts at Cybertronian, but hatchlings, he had discovered, were very literal. Not to mention very single-minded.
“They flew away.” Sunstorm wriggled, already bored with the line of inquiry. “Pettin’s!” he demanded again, mixing clipped English with basic Cybertronian. “::Chip:: pettin’s!”
For a moment, Chip considered asking Thundercracker to come collect his wayward hatchling. The resident clutch of hatchlings wasn’t even strictly his, as Chip understood it, but apparently had been built by an absentee cohortmate, some sort of brilliant artisan who had decided to go wander the universe for a few hundred years. How Thundercracker and his trine had gotten stuck with fostering the resultant baby mecha was a story Chip hadn’t quite yet gotten out of the big Seeker. Still, the hatchlings didn’t seem to mind their creator’s absence, and Thundercracker was an affectionate enough stepdad. Foster parent. Mentor. Something.
But then another plaintive look from those wide optics, combined with a series of pleading chirps from the hatchling Seekerlet, proved to be his undoing. Chip caved. Babies were babies, no matter what the species, and humans were pretty much hardwired to love them. Right? Okay, it was an excuse, but Chip was sticking to it.
“Fine, you can have pettings,” Chip told the expectant hatchling. “But only for a little while, okay?”
“Okay!” The Seekerlet scrambled forward, folding winglets back out of the way. He plopped down on the tabletop with stubby pedes outstretched, and gathered Chip into his lap. Thankfully Thundercracker had taught the hatchlings to be careful of both their talons and their strength, though Chip had suffered through a few bumps and scratches until the sparklings had figured it out. As Chip wiggled into a more comfortable position, Sunstorm began happily combing talons through his hair. “Softwarm pretty ::Chip::!”
Some days, you were an interstellar explorer, a genius mathematician who had boldly gone where no--well, few--humans had gone before. Other days, you were demoted to ‘kitty’.
Somewhere out there, Chip was certain, God was laughing at him.