In case I forgot....
by
Karl Thurgood
<core processor online>
<Primary Database upload complete>
<Spatio-temporal orientation confirmed
<Clock Synch started>
<Clock synch established. Current date 8,700,000 years since Arklaunch>
<Offline time estimated at thirty years(local)>
<Commencing verification of identity and personal memory database.>
<Identity confirmed as Ratchet: Autobot Chief Medical Officer>
<Visual sub-processors on-line>
Ratchet's optics flared into life and he was aware of his surroundings for the first time in ten local years. He was in a small chamber, attached to a support frame with its attached diagnostic equipment. The support frame was familiar, more sophisticated and streamlined than Ratchet could remember, but the principles never really changed. It was the same equipment that he had known from the well-supplied hospitals of the prewar era, the desperate triage rooms of the Siege of Iacon and the precision machine that was the Autobot medical service by the time of the war with the Cybertronian Empire. Ratchet knew that these frames were used for patients undergoing extensive surgical procedures, where a moment-by-moment assessment of their condition was vital. Strange, he didn't remember being damaged recently. Although... he wasn't entirely certain how recent his last recollection was.
#They can't wake up.#
“Good morning Ratchet,” a warm, melodious voice filled the room, seeming to emanate from the air around him, “welcome back to Planet Sandra. I am pleased to see that you are recovering well. You may experience some brief dislocation, you previously advised me that this should pass with appropriate prompting. You have one new message, do you wish me to play this now?”
#Best tool and die man on Cybertron#
“I advised..... Well, good, to hear that I am making a good recovery. I don't suppose you could jog my memory as to what from? And perhaps a hint to help me recall our conversation might help.......” Ratchet tailed off as he realised that he wasn't quite sure of the correct form of address for the voice.
“It is possible that their may be some difficulty reintegrating some memories due to excisions from the mnemonic chains, this was a possibility that you and I had considered.” The clamps on the support frame opened, releasing Ratchet to step out of the frame. He stumbled slightly, gyros and the momentum of his body momentarily fighting the expectations of his balance subroutines. “You may also experience a period of adjustment to your new physicality,” the voice warned him. Ratchet looked down, new physicality was an apt term. Clearly some major amendments had been made to his bodyshell at some point. “Perhaps this will assist the physical adjustment.” An image of Ratchet appeared in the space in front of him, sharp and clear without any of the hologram flicker that Ratchet recalled had plagued early examples of this technology before it became really useful. The image began to rotate slowly, allowing Ratchet to – in essence – see himself from every side. It wasn't that he had fundamentally changed, the basic outline of his design remained much the same. It was more the execution of the design that had changed. Subtle differences in lines and edges, different uses of the same shapes. As if it was the same form, but reinterpreted. It was almost as if he had become a somewhat more stylised version of himself. “To return to your previous question,” the voice continued as Ratchet considered the alterations that had been made to his appearance, “I am Ishtar, the electronic sentience that acts as the caretaker and central coordinating authority on Planet Sandra. I have also been, for the last two hundred and fifty local years, your research collaborator.”
#Cybertron was gone. It had survived wars, the wrath of Unicron, the Eugenesis War, rampaging nano-titans, but now it was gone, lost to them. The entire Cybertronian species dispossessed of their ancestral home. What would become of them now?#
“An AI?” Ratchet asked, putting aside his musings on his new exo-structure in favour of more pressing concerns .
“No, as we have previously discussed, I am an emergent property of Consensus – the sum of the neurally-linked minds of the people of Sandra. My vocal presentation however is most strongly influenced by that of Linna Witwicky, selected by Consensus as first Supervisor of Planet Sandra approximately six hundred years ago.”
“Ah,” said Ratchet.
“I remind you that you have one new message. I would advise that you take the time to listen to it as it may assist with the reintegration of your recent memories.” Ratchet thought for a moment,
“Ok then,” if nothing else it might give him time to process his situation. The full body image of Ratchet disappeared, winking out as if it had never been. It was replaced by a faint shimmering in the air at approximately his head height.
#Hmmm... intriguing, heat-tempered protein cylinders#
“Message for Planet Sandra Chief Medical Officer and Director of Autobot Diplomatic Mission Ratchet. Recorded by Planet Sandra Chief Medical Officer and Director of Autobot Diplomatic Mission Ratchet,” Ishtar explained.
An image appeared on the shimmering. An image of Ratchet as he remembered himself appearing. A squared-off torso and the head that Buster had once said resembled a bucket with a pair of horns stapled to the front. The image began to speak and a familiar voice emanated from the air.
“Ratchet, welcome back. This is, of course, Ratchet. I'll have to forgive me leaving myself this note but I have a few things to explain to me that I know that I won't remember. Firstly I should probably explain why I have been off-line for a while, and why I don't look like I remember. These are both the result of an unfortunate necessity. Both physically and mentally I would not be online to hear this message except for the work that Ishtar will have done by now,” Ratchet thought that he heard a faint embarrassed cough in the background.
On the screen past-Ratchet continued to speak,
“In physical terms cessation of function of the body-shell was judged to be imminent within two years. You may or may not recall, depending on prioritisation of restoration, that one of our ongoing projects was an attempt to develop a vaccine for Corroda Gravis. Ishtar and I had thought we were making progress in reverse engineering its core-code and developing a hunter-killer organism capable of deactivating and destroying its active form. Our confidence was, unfortunately misplaced, and the result was a highly aggressive strain of CG which was resistant to the normal treatments. Regrettably a momentary lapse of attention by Doctor Alletharoksis led to its release from containment. The research labs biohazard containment systems meant that the outbreak was contained within the facility until the strain could be eradicated and the area decontaminated. Doctor Alle was, as a Tyroxian, immune to CG, I was not so fortunate. Ishtar and I estimate that I have approximately eighteen months local time before my internal systems fail entirely. From that point of view,” past-Ratchet's demeanour brightened in a display of carefully cultivated bedside manner that Ratchet knew all too well, “it makes sense to put in the work on a little bit of an upgrade. It is a millennia or so since I had any meaningful work done after all. I wish I could see what I was going to look like but we've mostly been occupied with decisions regarding the internal systems. I'm sure it will be fine though. There are a number of very talented artists on Sandra and Consensus, and Ishtar, can't help take after its members after all.”
This time Ratchet was certain that he could hear a tone of embarrassment in the background.
#You confuse madness with Genius. Do you not appreciate the supreme irony.......#
“But anyway, as I said, there were physical and mental reasons behind the surgical work. In all honesty the mental were by far the more important. I should remember the debates before the war about whether their was an upper limit to our capacity to process experiences. Not just to simply store data and sensory impressions but to integrate it as part of ones experience and make it part of a functioning personality.”
Ratchet did indeed remember the fierce debates conducted across the Cybertron Datanet, his fierce rebuttals of Metatext's 'upper limits of understanding' postulate and his theory that practical immortality of the hardware did not guarantee the permanent integrity of the consciousness.
“It turns out that Metatext was almost right after all. There is a limit to how much a Transformer can endure. I started to encounter problems with my conciousness – lack of focus, inability to access particular memories on a conscious level, false damage indications in various systems. I traced it to a gradual decay of memory handling. Apparently there is a flaw in our hardware and software which can be overloaded by having to process too great a load of memetic structures. In retrospect it was probably this flaw that was targeted by that hive virus in the Second Software War, but that is by the by. In basic terms, it appeared that between all those myriad decades of war against the Decepticons, the Empire, the T'ion Nexus and what-not I had simply seen too much and my mind was giving up the ghost. If we'd never left Cybertron then I would probably have never encountered this problem, but apparently at the sharp end of a rich and varied life there is a price to be paid.”
Ratchet realised that he was half-remembering, half-theorising anew about the information that his past self was presenting to him.
“There was nothing for it but to get radical,” past-Ratchet observed, “so we, Consensus, Ishtar and myself, put our heads together and came up with something. A new paradigm for processing my experiences. The only problem was that it could only be installed in a clean configuration. Raw data was one thing but structured memories, memetic frameworks, identity and personality, all of these things would prevent its installation. Ironic, it is a Radical Reductionist view that our fundamental personality flaws are gifts of the Matrix, hard-coded into us when we become individuals and in this one regard they are almost right. To correct this possibly fatal flaw I'm going to have to be wiped clean, returned to the state just out of the mold. The idea is to hold my memories, personality and experiences within volunteers amongst Consensus until the new paradigm has been coded into my brain module. Effectively I will be a dream in the subconscious of the population for a period. Then we will read my experiences back into my brain module and mem-core, allowing them to for a new structure based on the new paradigm. The unknown factor is how long it is going to take to download and then reupload all that data. To my knowledge no-one has ever tried to move several millennia of life-experience from one physical form to another. For that matter no-one has ever tried to reengineer and execute a bug fix for the way their species handles memory. Ah well, I always did want..”
“to be a medical pioneer,” Ratchet said in unison with his past self.
“..and better that it is me that risks this than someone else,” past-Ratchet continued, “I hope that I can give myself enough time to reintegrate everything before I have to get back to work but the way things are going I have my doubts. I suspect that your earliest memories will reintegrate first, along with some of the more.......affecting later experiences. But you may be short of recent context. Ishtar will help to bring you up to speed. One of the joys of being neutral is that Sandra tends to have a fairly good over-view of intergalactic politics.”
More memories came flooding back to Ratchet, arriving on Sandra three hundred and fifty years previously to petition Consensus to take in refugees from the ravaged Planet Hive. Being invited by Consensus to stay and advise on the medical needs of the mechanical beings amongst their population. The long debates with Consensus which led to Sandra declaring its neutrality and offering the services of its universities and medical centres to advance the cause of learning for the Galaxies as a whole. Standing with the fledgling Unified Sandra Defense – Autobots, former Imperial Cybertronians, Tyroxians, Koos Banians, humans and others - three hundred years ago to resist Stormgyre's attempt to seize the planet. But of the last two hundred and fifty years there was nothing. A sense that there should be recollection there but nothing else.
#Ratchet shook his friends hand, one of the many human mannerisms that the Ark crew had appropriated over the years#
“Hopefully Straxus will be gone by the time I am up and functioning. He isn't the real Straxus by the way, in case I have forgotten. He is just one of the Warlords from what remains of the Cybertronian Empire, had a pocket kingdom out in the Torenis Galaxy until he declared himself Straxus returned to functionality and started a crusade to reunify the Empire. I suppose it makes a change from Megatrons. Maybe that card is getting a little played out. After all, the original Megatron almost conquered the whole of Autobot-kind and lead the Decepticons in over a thousand years of war. The last one wasn't a patch on him and only lasted fifty before getting marooned on a barren, failed Cyberworld by his own followers. Not really a record to emulate. Anyway, if all goes well peace will have descended by the time I hear my message again and my main concern will be the sheer cog-grinding embarrassment of listening to me making a fool of myself for the permanent record. What can I say other than that I hope I'm well and that everything went according to plan. Oh and remember that the Gamerians first space probe is due to finally arrive at the nearest star system in about twenty-five years from now. I promised Professor Takaro that we would try and head to the heliopause of the Flinx system to see it arrive. He'd be really disappointed if he missed it, especially as his maternal ancestor a few hundred generations back worked on the assembly of it. Anyway, still paperwork to sort out before I can get set up for the download. So many things to assign and so many acting appointments to make to see that everything runs smoothly whilst I am away. So.....” past-Ratchet reached for something just out of sight and the image vanished abruptly, leaving just the shimmering in the air.
“Message ends,” Ishtar explained.
#Easier said than done Prime. I fear there is no way I can help them. Some defect in their personality makeup must be preventing them from awakening.#
“Ah,” Ratchet said, “Yes, somethings never change do they.”
“There is a reassuring sense of familiarity,” Ishtar observed warmly, “I hope that your message was helpful to you.”
“I think a few things have fallen into place,” Ratchet nodded, “so, was I right or not?”
“About finding yourself embarrassing?” Ratchet smiled,
“I meant more about this Straxus imposter actually.”
“Ah,” Ishtar replied, “sadly history has borne out your more pessimistic projections. I had hoped to give you more time for your memories to integrate, but I regret that I require your assistance.”
“I see.”
“Please come this way,” as Ishtar part of the wall dilated open like a doorway, “showing you will make it easier to explain.”
Ratchet walked out into a corridor with walls made of some transparent substance. Below him he could see beings, mechanical, organic, and some a fusion of both substrates working side-by-side in laboratories and wards. He could pick out species as varied as Tyroxians, Colthorians, humans, Kymmerians, Tirolians as well as Cybertronians of varied origins – Autobots, Micromasters, Beastformers and former members of Imperial splinter factions working hand in hand.
“Please come forward to the critical care ward observation bay,” Ishtar requested.
“I'm afraid I don't recall what is going on in these labs,” Ratchet observed.
“In this case there is no reason that you should,” Ishtar replied, “whilst you have been offline we have been forced to start several new research programs. The new Straxus has deployed biological and nanological warfare agents in his coreward offensive. Consensus has agreed to requests to develop vaccines and counteragents, initially, for those powers not currently involved in the war, in the hope of providing protection for non-combatant populations possibly at risk.”
“Wouldn't it be better if everybody had the vaccines so that the weapons would be useless and they would stop using them.”
“Parts of Consensus feel that would constitute a weakening of our neutrality. Perhaps in time with you viewpoint added to Consensus once more this may change,” Ishtar replied.
“I'll do what I can to help on a practical level but biological systems were never really my speciality and I'm not sure I would know where to start when it comes to nanological agents. I'm sure I recall us already having well-established departments with specialities that would be much more suitable in those regards.”
“Indeed we do. It is not in regard to this that I require your assistance,” Ishtar admitted, “Please observe the critical care ward.”
Ratchet looked down through the transparent wall, into the large – Transformer scale – room. Medical staff were moving to and fro, observing what Ratchet first took to be vehicles drawn up for repair. They seemed to be just damaged vehicles awaiting parts to repair them, and he wondered for a moment why they would be in a 'critical care' facility. But, when you knew what to look for, the practised eye of an experienced medical practitioner could see the hidden signs which gave away a Transformer in its disguise mode. Lines of separation where mechamorphosis would reconfigure them from one thing into another. Every one of these vehicles showed the signs of their true nature to Ratchet's appraising surgeons gaze.
“What happened to them?” he asked, “and why are they all in vehicle mode.”
“Regrettably this Straxus is not content with simply enslaving the populations of the Cybertronian worlds that he conquers. His forces are employing a process which, thus far we have been unable to fully comprehend, to partially burn out the morph-cores of Transformers and to suppress the brain-modules of their victims. They are then forcing them not only to operate as drone combat vehicles but also to assume a tertiary mode in which they merge with their commanders to form limbs of a combined form held together by some form of stable power-assisted Spark Core Combination.”
“Forcing them to not only fight for their oppressors but but literally unite with them,” Ratchet wished he could still find it in himself to be surprised by this latest horror that Transformer-kind had inflicted on the universe, “are they conscious.”
“I am uncertain of that,” Ishtar admitted reluctantly, “there is much about this process that we are struggling to understand. Even with the full resources of the best experts on Sandra, within and outside Consensus we have made far less progress than I would have hoped. We lack the breadth of insight and experience. There is only one 'bot I know with that experience, that is why I was forced to awaken you early. We need you Ratchet, we, I cannot do this without you.”
Ratchet was silent for a moment, lost in thought. He knew that he had lost so much, memories dotted across his long lifespan that he suspected would never reintegrate properly. Experiences that for all intents and purposes from his point of view he had now never had. But he was not defined by what he did not remember, but by what he did. He remembered his life before the war, consulting on the toughest cases between associating with the elite of Cybertronian society, the desperate struggle of the war years, scrabbling and improvising in a hopelessly inadequate sickbay on Earth. Throwing himself at a Megatron, no The Megatron in a hopeless attempt to defeat him and safe his Autobot friends. Making a surgeons choice, more than once, to cut Megatron from the universe like rust-infected endo-skeletal components to end the devastation he caused. He looked again at his new hands, hands that looked different to those he remembered but at the same time very much similar.
There were things about himself that he would never know again, but on the other hand there were things that he knew without question. Whatever changed on the outside, or even on the inside, some things always remained the same. He knew what he was and what he was in this universe for.
“Right then,” Ratchet looked up from his moment of contemplation, “you'd better remind me where my medical lab is. We have a lot of work to do.”
