Tales of the Intermezzo - Ripples A Transformers Universe Story copyright 2005 by Dave Van Domelen based on properties owned by Hasbro =========================================================================== "intermezzo - n. A brief entertainment between two acts of a play." - American Heritage Dictionary "Slag YOU, Autobots! Galvatron may be gone, but there's no way we're just rolling over and giving up!" Slugslinger punctuated his defiance with a powerful energon-tipped missile that vaporized most of the boulder Jetfire had been taking cover behind. "A leaf on the wind / I flutter and evade you / Yet prick like a thorn," Sharkticon added as he jumped into the air and transformed into his aerial fortress mode, firing a broadside from his plasma turrets. Hunching down behind the remaining cover, Jetfire muttered, "It'd be a lot easier if we still had the Spark of Combination and could just merge to take care of these yahoos," to the green and tan Autobot next to him. There was a pause, punctuated by another fusillade from Sharkticon. "What in Primus's name are you TALKING about, Jetfire?" Overhaul asked. "What's a Spark of Combination? Some kinda organic mating practice?" Jetfire was so shocked he barely got out of the way when Slugslinger destroyed the rest of his boulder. Overhaul? Hadn't Ironhide been there a second ago? "Er, sorry...musta taken a bit more of a close hit than I thought," he mumbled as he picked himself back up and took a careful shot at Sharkticon, scoring a direct hit that forced the rogue Decepticon holdout to transform and land behind Slugslinger. "Look, I didn't ask for yer help," Overhaul snapped. "If yer gonna go all glitchy on me, just stay outta my way and I'll take care of these two solo!" he gnashed his jutting tusks in irritation before leaping over the low line of rocks and rushing directly at Slugslinger with the sort of reckless abandon that had earned him his reputation in the Unicron War. Jetfire shook his head in confusion. Overhaul had fought Unicron, helped defeat him and turn the planet-sized devourer of worlds into a pinprick of a black hole that wouldn't hurt anyone again for a long time. So how did he NOT know about the Spark of Combination? It seemed like just about everyone in that conflict had combined with SOMEONE at SOME point, right? Yet...Jetfire was becoming equally sure that no Autobot had ever merged with another. That they'd defeated Unicron solely with the help of a massed army of Mini-Cons, who had fled Cybertron to Earth millions of years...wait, no. Mini-Cons weren't from Cybertron at all, right? Something was terribly wrong, Jetfire decided. * * * * "I don't find any evidence of damage to your memory circuits, Jetfire," Red Alert pronounced as he stowed the diagnostic scanner that had temporarily replaced his left hand. "There is no mechanical explanation for these strange memories you've been telling me about." "Am I just crazy, then?" Jetfire asked, uneasily. Red Alert shrugged. "If you are, then maybe I am as well. I know what a Mini-Con is, I've even met a few, but I've never been paired with this 'Longarm' you tell me about. And yet...it seems *right* somehow. Just like this combination technique. I have some vague recollection of you combining with Optimus Prime, but I cannot say that this army of combining Autobots you told me about rings a bell." "I've looked over the historical datatrax for the past few cycles, and they match SOME of my memories," Jetfire admitted. "The way we fought Unicron, how Megatron was lost in the black hole formed by Unicron's destruction, that sort of thing. But I have these other memories too. Where it was a sun, not a black hole, that Megatron died in. Or of, and this is *totally* insane, planet-sized Optimus and Megatron battling it out over some sort of jungle world. That bit *can't* have happened, can it?" Red Alert made a noncommital sort of sound as he reviewed his scans. "Aside from Optimus Prime, Megatron and Unicron, are there any other constants in your memories? You've already said that I'm not in all of them, and that there's some where both Overhaul and someone you call Ironhide share roles. Whether this is insanity or some sort of side effect of Unicron's death, any other common links might hold some answers." Jetfire sorted through his thoughts for a moment. "Well, there's always Hot Shot, although he sometimes seems younger than the one we know, sometimes older. And Starscream, but he's all over the place...it's hard to really say it's the same Decepticon. In fact, there's a lot of people like that, where I know the name in all my memories, but it's a totally different person each time. And the planet Earth figures in a lot of my, ah, *false* memories, even though there's no record of a significant Cybertronian presence there in ages, just some old datatrax about Decepticon exiles and a tracker sent to deal with them." "Hmm, too bad," Red Alert mused. "I don't think Hot Shot is mature enough to bring in on this, he would probably take it as a joke. Obviously, Starscream is right out. I suppose we could ask Optimus Prime if he remembers any of this...." * * * * In the cold star-sprinkled darkness of space, Jetfire sorted through his memories for the 4,319th time, but didn't reach any new conclusions. Prime hadn't been much help...he had some vague memories like Red Alert did, but nothing more. In fact, while several other Autobots did report minor memory glitches, no one had such depth and detail of false memories as Jetfire did. Most of them didn't even worry about it, just wrote it up to the stress of fighting Unicron, although Landmine was a little concerned that he could remember being someone else entirely, especially since he thought that he might have memories of being a Decepticon. So, after making sure that these memories weren't leading to some sort of ongoing mental degeneration, Jetfire had elected to go exploring. To get away from things that were simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar in the hopes that without the constant reminders of another life he might get his head together. Hadn't worked as well as he'd hoped. He probably shouldn't have gone to Earth as his first stop...it was clear that no one there had ever seen an Autobot, there was no sign of any of the cities he remembered helping the humans build. The year wasn't even right, it was as if everyone had slipped back in time a decade or so. Fortunately, without the infusion of Cybertronian technology they'd gotten in his false memories, the humans didn't have anything that could spot him up in orbit. Now he approached a world he'd never been to before, but had heard of in his recent travels. Variously called Nebulon, Nebulos or even Nebula depending on the vagaries of language, it reportedly had a very high level of technology, especially for organics. It would certainly be worth cultivating a friendship with such a world, in case a new threat arose to take the place of Unicron. "In case?" Jetfire chuckled to himself. "Sure, more like *when*." * * * * "You should speak with Vorath," Lord Zarak said, glancing up at Jetfire from his chair in the ornamental gardens of his mansion. Jetfire sat in an area normally used for parties and receptions, although the sod would have to be replaced before any such event could be held again. "Why?" Jetfire noticed that he was already starting to pick up the more twangy sound of Nebulan speech. He kind of liked it, though, and had been thinking of permanently altering his default speech pattern to emulate theirs. The Nebulan nobleman shrugged and took another sip of his wine. "It strikes me that while you probably don't have much to learn from our technology, you don't really have a strong grounding in metaphysics," he pointed out. "You tell me you have fought a living god, but it's clear that you don't worship the supernatural in the same way that many of my people do." "Why would anyone want to worship Unicron? Other than Megatron, I suppose," Jetfire replied. Zarak smirked. "You would be surprised. But there are more gods than Unicron, or Primus. And metaphysics is not restricted to theology. I think it would do you good to broaden your horizons a little." Jetfire wished he had a mouth so that he could grimace. "I don't hold much with hocus-pocus. I've seen people on other planets claim they were magicians, but it was all bunk." "Don't tell Vorath that," Zarak chuckled. "Trust me, it's not all bunk, as you call it. Magic and science are merely different paths to reach the same goals. We prefer science because anyone can do it with sufficient training, because it's more reliable and reproducible. But for those who can do it correctly, magic is equally potent. And Vorath is one of those rare few. Go, talk to him. I'll arrange it for you." "Well, okay." Jetfire was skeptical that there were *any* who could actually use mystic means, but maybe Vorath could do more for him than just broaden his horizons? Science hadn't found any answers to his false memories, maybe magic could. Or, at least, it could give him a comforting lie he could use to keep himself from truly going mad. * * * * As Vorath strode out onto the balcony of his study, putting him at a height where he could look Jetfire in the eye, his robes fluttered slightly in the wind. They were similar to Zarak's robes of office, but with purple trim rather than blue. Jetfire wasn't yet familiar enough with Nebulan politics to tell if these were official vestments or just an affectation of style, but Vorath certainly carried himself like a man of importance. "Greetings, visitor from beyond time and space," Vorath bowed. "Greetings yourse...wait, beyond time?" Jetfire's visor flickered in an emulation of blinking. "Of course," Vorath smiled in a way that wasn't exactly comforting. "It doesn't take an archimagus like myself to notice one who has been at the center of a re-ordering of history. I have been awaiting your arrival at my door for some time now, Jetfire. Even before you landed on my fair world I could feel the approaching herald of the storm." "Really," Jetfire tried to keep the doubt out of his voice. He was the man's guest, after all. "Tell me, Jetfire, what does your science think of time travel?" "Ah, well, I'm not really a science wonk, mind you, but I hear it's theoretically possible. That the space bridges we use to travel faster than light could be tuned so as to send someone back in time as well, but no one's pulled it off yet." Vorath nodded sagely. "The veil of time is difficult to pierce, no matter the means. And what do you know of the effects of making changes in the past?" Jetfire wracked his memory banks, finally dredging up a bit of musing he'd once overheard while escorting some scientists. "They say time is like a river. Small changes don't really do anything, the river returns to its course. So if you go back in time and kill Megatron before he comes to lead the Decepticons, you'll come back to find that history is pretty much the same, except that everything you remember Megatron doing has now been done by some bloke named, oh, Gigatron. Or maybe he's still named Megatron, but he turns into a tank instead of a jet. But change big stuff, and the river shifts to a totally new course." "Good, good. Water is an apt metaphor for time. It does indeed flow around small changes, with only the most astute of observers seeing the differences or even knowing they exist. But time is not a river, it is an ocean. Currents do run through it, and they may be changed by a large enough event, but the ripples of any change do not merely run downstream...they are felt in all directions. A major change in the future can alter the past as easily as a change in the past can alter the future." "So, you're saying that I'm carrying this 'ripple' with me?" Jetfire suggested. "Exactly," Vorath nodded again. "You fought and helped destroy the Chaosbringer, Unicron. There are few things that cause larger ripples than the death of a god. Especially when the universe cannot allow that god to die." "The universe didn't seem to be getting in our way much," Jetfire countered. "Unicron turned into a cute little baby black hole, you don't get much more dead than that." "Yes, he died. But he cannot die. Therein lies a paradox. The universe NEEDS the Chaosbringer, yet the universe has no volition of its own and cannot act to protect the Chaosbringer. So, instead, when events conspire to bring about the downfall of a god, the universe itself changes so that the god didn't die after all. Whether he is in the black hole, or somewhere else, Unicron lives. But, as someone so close to the source of the disturbance, you have not been totally changed along with the world." "Are you saying that my false memories are *real*?" Jetfire blurted out, instantly regretting it. He hadn't told anyone here about those memories, hadn't wanted to come across as a madman. No help for it, though, the secret was out. "What is 'real'?" Vorath shrugged. "The ocean of time is always moving. In one life you and I are bitter enemies, in another allies, and in most we never meet. Reality is constantly shifting, but most never notice it, as the current shape of the world is all they have ever known or ever will know. Magic is as much about seeing the possibilities in the sea of time as it is about manipulating the reality we live in. For most, it takes a lifetime of dedication to catch even a glimpse of another current in the sea of time, but you are one of the rare few who is awash in its waves. Even your comrades in this struggle were left with barely any memory of the changes, and those will fade in time. But not yours. If you wished, I could easily teach you much of my trade, as the blinders that stop most people from attaining skill in magecraft have been forcibly stripped from your eyes." Jetfire shook his head. "No, I don't wanna be a sorceror, I just want to be what I am. How can I get my blinders back?" Vorath sighed, disappointed but not seeming to be surprised. "It will not be simple, Jetfire, but you have helped your cause by removing yourself from the vicinity of your recent lives. Stay here, and in a few years as we Nebulans reckon time you will once again be a mundane mortal, with no more memory of other lives than any other Cybertronian. A few echoes may remain, the occasional moment of confusion or deja vu, but you will no longer be haunted by knowledge of what never was." "Sign me up, mister!" The ripples began to smooth over.... ============================================================================ Author's Notes: Believe it or not, this started as pondering a story about the issue of upgrades, inspired by a thread on the AllSpark boards. But I quickly expanded it to cover the whole farrago of continuity glitches in the "AEC" pseudo-continuity, most caused by Takara's desire to avoid inter-series continuity and Hasbro's often clumsy splices to repair that damage. So I decided that both were right: there was no year to year continuity between Armada, Energon and Cybertron, and yet there WAS continuity. Killing Unicron is an event of cosmic import, so why wouldn't it screw up timelines? Statements like "No Autobot has ever combined with another" (after the first use of Savage Claw Mode) can only jibe with the rampant combining of Energon if time itself has rearranged. Also, in the Planet Key Code stuff for Jetfire, it mentions that his new accent comes from living with the Nebulans for several years between Energon and Cybertron. So that self-imposed exile gave me the mechanism for letting Jetfire first remember the old timelines, and then forget. :) Finally, keen eyes will notice a number of "errors" in character portrayal in this story. These are deliberate, the effect of time ripples on characters imported from previous continuities. I could explain them here, but I'd rather leave them as easter eggs for readers to figure out.