Tales of the Intermezzo - Mythos A Transformers Universe Story copyright 2008 by Dave Van Domelen based on properties owned by Hasbro =========================================================================== "intermezzo - n. A brief entertainment between two acts of a play." - American Heritage Dictionary I try to avoid looking at the sky, at least when I'm on Cybertron. Even though I know its orbital period, and when it's safe to look up without seeing it, my imagination places that damnable and damning HEAD in the sky whenever I look up. Most of my fellows are cheered by the sight of Unicron's head endlessly circling the planet, seeing it as confirmation of our triumph over evil. A few, less foolish than most, eye it warily, as Unicron has proven at least once to still be alive, if severely limited...few know that Octane's theft of Trypticon's eyes was in service to Unicron, and the High Command would prefer even fewer know it. But I know. I know everything, it's my job. I'm an archivist. My name is Rewind, and I'm adding this file to the Subspace Archive in the hopes that...I don't know. I don't think there's any hope to be had. I've told Blaster, he laughed it off. I've told Optimus Prime, and I think he merely humored me when he said he'd look into it. Or perhaps his time on the other side of death told him more than even I know, and he didn't want to burden me any further than I already am with this horrible truth. So, no. I don't look at the sky anymore. But I should step back and tell you, unknown reader, how I came to this outlook on life and its inevitable end. It started shortly after the defeat of the Transorganics.... * * * * Then.... "Man, this is extra innings' worth of creepy," Eject whistled, surveying the dank cavern. Water dripped from green-gray tendrils of organic matter, somehow neutralized of its acidic nature by the strange growths, but still giving the impression of unwholesomeness. More often than not on Cybertron, water meant the corrosion of acid, but the water that dripped here seemed to carry a different sort of death. "What're we supposed to find here?" "Information," I shrugged. "This old lab must have records somewhere, even if they're half-lost due to age and organic contamination." "You think Rodimus Prime wants to know how to make more Transorganics?" Eject looked worried. Our twin faces don't show expression well, but I knew my brother and his moods. "Doubtful. Even the QUINTESSONS realized what a bad idea these things were," I pointed out. Granted, our five-faced former masters had probably not always been as insane as they became, but they'd had plenty of time since their incontestable descent into madness to revive the Transorganics concept had they thought it anything but foolhardy. "But information is information," I tried to ignore Eject's exasperated look. "And," I emphasized, "there might be other useful research here that Prime *would* be interested in using. Lines of inquiry that simply baffled the ancient Quintessons but that we might be able to complete now." "I suppose," Eject shrugged. "Personally, I hope we don't find anything. If we do, we'll be stuck down here going over it, and I'd rather get back topside in time for the next aero-hockey season." * * * * Now.... Eject got his wish, but I also got mine. The lab was mostly empty of anything useful, save for one thing, the Subspace Archive. I didn't need Eject to help with that, so he got to go back to the surface, leaving me in the foul, dripping cavern with the Archive and a nominal bodyguard. Just in case. Not that any number of guns could protect me from the true danger to be found in that grotto. * * * * Then.... "It's really quite fascinating, Perceptor," I activated the Subspace Archive. I'd cleaned off the kilovorns' worth of organic encrustation, restored a few damaged conduits, and brought it online a few cycles back. What I'd found seemed to merit a personal inspection from Cybertron's chief scientist. "Am I to understand that the Quintessons found a way to use subspace for information storage directly, rather than simply extruding a physical database into subspace?" Perceptor asked. I nodded. I was so pleased with my discovery then. Such a fool I was. "In a way, I'm an example of the latter," I pointed out. "My own photonic storage system is largely sent into subspace when I shrink down into my more compact datasette mode, and the interface across subspace is always tricky. Very easy to lose data when trying to retrieve it across the dimensional boundaries. I don't really understand the scientific principles behind this system here, though, but I *think* the Quintessons took advantage of harmonics in the normalspace/subspace boundary to imprint information in a fractal mesh." "Fascinating," Perceptor agreed. "What about interference from nearby subspace access?" I nodded sadly. "That seems to be an issue. I think this project was abandoned because of the interference issue, especially once subspace came into more common use for physical storage. The data I'm finding is certainly garbled in many ways, although it's hard to be sure how much of that was due to the organic contaminants," I gestured at the gray-green growths that had resisted all attempts at removal. They could be trimmed back, but only so far before they would re-establish themselves. At least they'd "agreed" to stay away from the Subspace Archive once I'd cleaned it off. "A pity. Still, a potentially useful research avenue, especially since we know so much more about subspace than the ancient Quintessons did," Perceptor pondered. Abruptly, and without warning, he transformed into a gigantic microscope. Letting people know he was about to transform was one of those social niceties that Perceptor often neglected. "I'm getting readings unlike any I've ever seen before, although they're reminiscent of a mistuned Space Bridge." He resumed his bipedal form and looked down at me. "Thank you, Rewind. I have a few ideas on how to improve this already. Please let me know if you discover any research data in the archive itself," he asked. "Certainly," I nodded. * * * * Now.... Fortunately, by the time I did find anything directly related to the creation of the Subspace Archive, I knew better than to reveal it to anyone. You see, the data wasn't garbled or even damaged. It was an interference effect. Multiple streams of data in superposition, much like my own optical system stores a theoretically infinite number of waves one atop the next. One of those waves contained the Covenant of Primus, which started to show me that the world was not as rational and safe as I had once believed in my innocence.... * * * * Then.... "In the beginning, the universe was without form, without darkness or light. Then the eternal nothingness was rent asunder, birthing darkness and light. PRIMUS shed his light over the world, and UNICRON retreated to the shadows. PRIMUS saw that the world was still empty, and created CYBERTRON to fill the void. And PRIMUS was pleased, but UNICRON was wracked with jealousy, for he could not create, only destroy...." Eject shook his head. "That makes no sense, bro. I've never heard of this Primus, and we all know that Unicron was built by Primacron. Maybe the record is still garbled, and Primus is supposed to be Primacron?" "No," I insisted. "I ran the transforms on this particular thread a dozen times. There's some errors left here and there, but not in that passage. I think this is some attempt at a Cybertronian Bible, a religion like the humans have." "Sounds like the Quints were going nuts early on, then." "I don't think the Quintessons made this one, actually." That gave Eject pause. "Has the moisture rotted your circuits? This database predates the great revolt, so anything in it would have to have been put there by the Quints." "That's just it," I paused. "I think that the Subspace Archive is drawing data from other realities in addition to our own." "G'wan." "Seriously. We know that time travel is possible by various means, and that the course of history might be changed. Why not the possibility that all possible timelines exist? Even the humans have grasped that point, they call it the Many Worlds Hypothesis according to the encyclopedias I've scanned," I pointed out. "Sometimes things get lost in subspace...maybe it's because they emerged somewhere else? More than one world accessing a common subspace?" "Way over my processor," Eject shrugged. The humans have an expression for that as well. "Ignorance is bliss." * * * * Now.... Had I known then what I know now, I wouldn't have told Eject. I wouldn't have told anyone. Slag, I would've just put a blaster round into the Subspace Archive and been done with it. The Covenant of Primus was only the smallest rootlet of the crawling horror contained within the Subspace Archive. I'll spare you the details, and warn you not to peruse your own Subspace Archive too deeply, but I will tell you the core truths. First, there are many realities, as I innocently told my brother. Second, both Unicron and Primus exist in some form in every one of them, even if they do not reveal themselves. Third...both Unicron and Primus *must* exist in every reality. If destroyed, they will return. If driven off, they will return. If one appears, the other must soon follow. The best we can hope for is that they either ignore us or slumber long enough for us to live out our lives in that blissful ignorance of the human aphorism. Why *must* they exist? Because they are all that *does* exist. Subspace is the only true reality. Unicron and Primus are its only inhabitants. All else is merely the play of light and shadow between the two, at best fragments of one or the other that are unaware of their true nature. Primus creates, Unicron destroys. Or, more terrifyingly, Primus is the delusion, Unicron is the cure. We are the dreams of a mad god, multiplied across infinite variations. In one dream Optimus Prime is slain by Megatron and never returns. In another, he returns and is lost but returns again, as we experienced. In yet another, the death of Optimus Prime is practically a tired joke, happening over and over in increasingly cliched ways, only to see him come back for more. Do you understand? PRIMUS IS MAD. If you have never heard the name before reading this, try to forget it, return to your life and abandon the use of subspace for information storage. If you worship Primus as creator, as god of light...I pity you. The humans have a story about a cave, where the inhabitants can only experience the world through the shadows cast on the cave's wall by a fire outside. Primus is that fire, throwing his light across subspace and creating shadowy dreamworlds. Every shadow is caused by the light of Primus, every world a dream of his. Unicron is that which would wake us from the dream. He exists in every dream shard, one of the shadows cast by Primus. For, in truth, he is not a jealous sibling as the Covenant of Primus would have you believe. Unicron is that part of Primus that KNOWS he is mad, that knows this is a dream. Unicron is the only sane part of Primus, the part that knows the world is false and needs to be destroyed so that Primus can wake from his slumber. But he's only a shadow cast by Primus's light, flickering and changing like anything else. To us, this drive for sanity manifested as a seemingly mortal creation of Primacron, a world that hungered to devour other worlds, for only once all worlds ceased to be could Primus awaken. In another dreamshard, Unicron is a Dark God, evil and destructive, as the mad mind of Primus does not wish to awaken and casts his other self as the villain. In fact, this is his role in most of the records I have recovered from the Subspace Archive. In yet another set of related shadowlands, Unicron is confused and as much a dreamer as Primus himself, blending uncertainly into Primus as both creator and destroyer. When the sanest part of Primus is itself mad, what hope is there for anyone? There is always a Unicron. He always, in some way, seeks to end this world of dreams and madness. I do not believe he can ever be totally destroyed, no matter his form or apparent history, as he is a part of the mad god Primus, and therefore part of the only true reality. So...which is worse? To defeat Unicron and keep Primus dreaming, descending further into madness and illusion? Or to be destroyed by Unicron, perhaps simply ceasing to be, or perhaps awakening to the true reality? Would the truth be better than the dream, or worse? Are we but shadows of the dream, or are we also real and trapped in the dream of a god? Either way, the orbiting head of Unicron only drives home again and again the fact that we are in the dream of Primus, and I am the only one who knows it. I cannot bear to look at the sky. ============================================================================ Author's Notes: Yes, this is in part a Lovecraft-inspired tale, but it was mainly inspired by a discussion on alt.toys.transformers about the nature of gods in Transformers, which drifted onto the whole "Unicron exists in all realities" plot device. I addressed it a bit in "Ripples", but felt I had more to say on the matter. Manichaeism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism) and related dualistic systems, notably the idea that matter is the creation of an evil god, helped inform this story. There's also a big chunk of Plato's Cave (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave) in there. But I freely admit I abuse the ideas horribly. :) I'd initially considered making this a Channel story, but I decided to check the canonical list of Archivists first, and Rewind felt like a better fit. Plus, being mostly a movie/third season G1 character, he was a natural for tying it into the Transorganics. Channel is more of a "Lost Years" character in my mind (the era between the Ark leaving and 1984).