Tales of the Intermezzo - Youth Is Wasted On The Young A Transformers Universe Story copyright 2009 by Dave Van Domelen based on properties owned by Hasbro =========================================================================== "intermezzo - n. A brief entertainment between two acts of a play." - American Heritage Dictionary "Er, Doctor Prentiss..." "That's Professor Prentiss," the elderly man snarled. "Doctors work in hospitals." "Well, yes, but this *is* a hospital, Detroit General to be specific," the young lady pointed out, although she was bracing herself for another snap from the research scientist. "Yes, yes...whatever," Prentiss sighed. "What do you want, miss...?" he seemed irritated with himself that he didn't know her name. "Haversham. Galatea Haversham. Doctor Black sent me to talk to you. I applied for an internship in his labs, but he told me the position had been filled and that you might have an opening." Actually, his exact words had been, "Old man Prentiss can use all the help he can get!" But no sense telling Professor Prentiss that. Prentiss snorted. "You're better off not working for that hack. Prometheus Black is no scientist, unless your definition of science comes from 1930s horror movies. He's too in love with his genetic doohickey, and I'm not convinced he invented it himself. If you did go to work for him, you'd probably end up in a skimpy bathing suit playing the role of arm candy at one of his silly exhibitions, Miss Haversham." Galatea blushed slightly. "Er, what kind of exhibitions would those be?" she asked, wondering if she'd dodged a rather large bullet. Prentiss fixed her with a glare. "Do you even do basic research on the people you try to work for? Black has been showing off his work in glorified wrestling matches, pitting 'enhanced' humans against each other for the amusement of his financial backers. Little boys and their violent toys, pfeh." "Oh," the color faded from her cheeks. "I knew he was involved in human enhancement, but when you said exhi...never mind," she shook her head. "And you're also working on human enhancement, correct?" Prentiss motioned for Galatea to follow him, presumably in the direction of his office. "After a fashion. Black's crude manipulations are impressive, and can undo the ravages of time, but they're temporary. Once the implants are turned off, the body rapidly rejects the overlaid genetic template. Now, that's fine if you're looking to become a glorified drug pusher, keeping the money rolling in by offering temporary fixes, but I'm looking for something a little more fundamental than the shortcuts Black uses. I presume you learned about telemeres in your college courses...oh, and please tell me you're a college student, not some high school girl looking for a summer job." "Ah, yes, doct...Professor Prentiss. To both. I plan to graduate with a degree in biogenetics next year, but my program requires a practical internship. And I know what telemeres are...the little loops of 'junk' nucleic acid at the ends of DNA strands. They act as buffers to keep the real information from being lost during copying, since cell division isn't 100% efficient." "Good, good," Prentiss nodded. "I hate it when a student doesn't know their ass from their elbow. Especially since a mistake in these labs can render the two things indistinguishable." Galatea blinked at that mental image, then shook her head as Prentiss led her into a small office. It seemed rather cramped, but she figured that this was likely just where he did his paperwork. His real lab would be larger, much like Prometheus Black's. "Not much to look at, is it?" Prentiss smiled crookedly. "Not sure where I'll put you, this is all the space the hospital could give me. On the other hand, the entire hospital is my lab, mostly for observation, but I can reserve various specialized theaters when I need to perform experiments. Sit, sit," he cleared a stack of data slabs off a wooden chair, and Galatea sat town. "I take it your mention of telemeres means you're trying to pick up the old work on telemeric repair that was abandoned in the 2020s?" Galatea asked. He nodded. "Back then, it didn't seem to be going much of anywhere, and a lot of us went off in other directions. I even spent some time working on hard tech applications, antigravity, that sort of thing. Cross-training into other branches of science was very fashionable at the time I first got tenure. But with my own telemeres getting distressingly short, and my shifting to emeritus status at the University of Michigan, I decided to see if a generation's worth of advances could crack some of the blocks we'd run into. A fresh pair of eyes wouldn't hurt, either." "So, I'm hired?" Galatea brightened. "Assuming the paperwork goes through, and I don't find anything blatantly wrong with your application, welcome aboard." * * * * "So, I'm fired?" Galatea asked, several months later. Professor Prentiss sighed. "Not precisely, but that's the net effect, yes. I've lost my grant, which means I lose my position here. And if I'm gone, there's not really anything for you to do, is there?" "What happened? Why did the government pull its funding? I still don't understand all the details, but it was looking like your idea of telemeric transplantation was going to work," Galatea pointed out. "It was. It *is*," Prentiss corrected himself. "The non-human tests have proved it works, and I almost have permission to begin human trials. But the grant wasn't renewed. They decided to fund some nanobot nonsense Sumdac's proposed. And all the private money's getting sucked up by that damnable Prometheus Black and his flashy carnival shows. The University might be willing to pick up the slack, but they're more inclined to throw money at young turks with fresh ideas instead of an old man proving out an old idea." At that moment, Professor Prentiss looked every year of his age, something Galatea normally didn't notice. His inner fire usually gave the impression of a man no older than her father, when he could easily be her grandfather. "So, what now?" Galatea asked. Prentiss shrugged. "Don't worry, I'm sure you can get this to count for your degree program. You did excellent work, young lady. Perhaps you can continue the research once you enter graduate school, I doubt I'll be too busy to lend advice. Or busy at all," he sighed. * * * * Prentiss sat in a somewhat dusty easy chair in the basement of his Ypsilanti home, brooding. All around him was the debris of a life, junk objects that he had accumulated as the junk information in his DNA had slowly broken away. An old chromatic projector and gravitic aligner he'd brought home in 2032 when that lab had closed. Some toys he'd bought for his daughter before the divorce, and never given her. She had her own children now, and even they were too old for such things, or he suspected they were. He'd never met any of them. When Sheila had divorced him, she and the judge had made it clear that she was going to make a new life and he wasn't invited to be a part of it. At the time, he hadn't really cared. He watched her and Tammy go with a sort of clinical detachment, then went back to work. And that was probably why they'd left him in the first place. Work came first, second, third and fourth. He'd never been a bad husband or father, but that was because he'd hardly been a husband or father at all by the time he had made tenure. He'd totally missed Tammy's early childhood by spending long nights and early mornings at the lab. Maybe Sheila had found someone else before the divorce, maybe she hadn't...it's not like Prentiss would have noticed. In the end, all he had was his work, and now that was over. The funding was gone, the human subjects board had turned him down because he no longer had funding, and Miss Haversham had gone on to other things. Everything that had been in his tiny office in the hospital was still boxed up in a corner of the basement, just out of view from where he sat. The stuffed pony seemed to be glaring at him accusingly. "You wasted your life," the animal's voice echoed in his mind. "No one wants your serious work, they want flashy robots and gladatorial combat and violent toys. You're just another dusty plush animal in the basement, unwanted and unloved." The fact that he was being lectured by a stuffed unicorn didn't really bother Prentiss. During his cross-training days, he'd learned about psychological totems and externalized cognition, and he frequently had arguments with himself in this fashion. But it did tend to creep out those around him. Galatea hadn't ever really gotten used to it, for instance. Still, the unicorn had a point, and that bothered Prentiss. Whenever he was losing an argument with his totemic self like this, it usually meant he knew he was wrong, or at least that he needed to do something differently. "So, what do I do about it?" Prentiss asked the animal. "You're stuck in this basement, but I can leave. Do I want to leave, though? What would I do? Who wants an old man with an old theory he can't even prove works?" "That's easy," the unicorn replied, a twinkle in its eye. "You prove it. You have that sample from Galatea...transplant her telemeres into yourself. Human Subjects approval only applies to experimenting on other people, after all." "Do I look like some sort of mad scientist to you?" Prentiss stood, his white hair flaring out from the static electricity of the chair's fabric. "You mean, aside from the fact you're arguing with a plush unicorn? Yeah, you kinda do," the plush smirked. "Doooo eeeet...." * * * * Prentiss slowly regained consciousness. It was like a soft pink haze still covered his brain. Thinking was hard. It didn't feel like brain damage, not really. More like being unable to focus, like a really big sugar rush. Combined with being sleepy and more than a little cranky. He opened his eyes. The ceiling was quite far away, and as he turned his head he realized he was on an almost comically outsized hospital bed. "Wha' happened?" he asked, his voice sounding absurdly high-pitched to him. "Where am I? What ith thith plathe? Eep! Why am I lithping?" A doctor, the medical kind, who Prentiss vaguely remembered from Detroit General, came into view. Well, that answered one of his questions, but he was a little more worried about the others. "Ah, Mr. Prentiss," the doctor hemmed and hawed. "You were found unconscious in your home a few days ago and brought to Detroit General. Apparently you've been...affected by...some genetic manipulation that has had, er, side effects." Prentiss lifted a hand out from under the sheets and looked at it. Small, even childlike. "Oh dear. It appearth my telemeric tranthplant wath a little TOO thuccethful." He was lisping because he had regressed to childhood, and his palate wasn't fully formed yet. "Heh, when motht people my age go through 'Thecond Childhood' it'th, it's a metaphor," he managed to get the lisp more or less under control if he concentrated on it. But concentrating was HARD. And he didn't really wannnna. "Well, Mr. Prentiss, fortunately we recovered enough of your notes to halt the process before you became a zygote. But you're now physically a child, and we're not sure if you will ever age again. But that's not the only thing that happened. Tell me...whose DNA did you use for the process?" "Con-fi-den-ti-al-i-ty, doctor," Prentiss enunciated. "Why thould that matter, in any cathe?" "Was the donor female?" "Er, yeth...what are you getting at?" "You seem to have done more than regress in age. You've become female, Mr. Prentiss." "THA'TH PROFETHOR PRENTHITH!" she shrieked, fed up with being called "Mister". Somehow, that bothered her more than the revelation that she'd gone from being an old man to being a young girl. "Um, I'll be back later. With a counselor for you to talk to," the doctor excused himself. "There may be some psychological effects, we'd like to keep you under observation for a while." "Professor Prentith," she muttered under her breath. "No, I suppose not anymore. More like Professor Princess! I like the thound of that. But if doctor doodiehead thinks I'm staying here and getting poked with needleth, he's got another think coming! Hm, that'th a Q34-ZD diagnothtic computer, I think I can hack that...." ============================================================================ Author's Note: This idea came out of discussion on the AllSpark forums about Professor Princess, and how she could possibly have made all of that gear at such a young age. As you can see, I ran with it in a weird direction, so weird that I can virtually guarantee that if we ever get the true origin of Professor Princess I will be utterly wrong. :) I figure that "Galatea Haversham" is a name that fits well in a setting where people are named Prometheus Black or Colossus Rhodes. Professor Princess doesn't have that strong of a lisp in the cartoon, but I figured it's something she got under control with practithe. In case anyone's curious, the final scene takes place a few weeks before the Autobots wake up and fight the nanobot-monster-thing in "Transform And Roll Out".