FLashback - 'Slate' - Iacon Hall of Records

[Deleted]

Hunched over a glossy desk, optics tracking across the glyphs on the embedded screens with the watchfulness he would give a decent opponent, the gladiator no longer felt as sorely out of place as his forging looked. Megatronus had been coming three times a joor for orns, always when the Halls were quiet and dim, and always when Orion Pax was on shift.

Currently he was continuing a trawl through every available record of policy implementation and the general management of Cybertron during the last four Primacies. Of particular focus tonight was the move towards viewing and treating his caste's functions more and more like automated systems. History was infinitely more powerful than hollow promises of the future in rally speeches, and Megatronus was arming himself for each one as if he were to stand before the Senate themselves.

That was still a way off in the future, though his communications with the mysterious Soundwave were looking promising. If he could get out of the Syndicate's clutches through patronage, his political campaign could truly begin. Knowing and exposing the depths of corruption had been the cornerstone of his activities thus far, but it had been Soundwave to tell him that there were records restricted to him on the datastream that he could access in the Halls. Information, uncomfortable truths and disturbing patterns that would have him and his campaign taken seriously.

Intent as he was, and despite his drive to see the change so many desperately needed, sitting reading and making connections for breems on end after a grueling day of training wore his linkages. It was worse after an arena match like today, when just sitting still was difficult. Combat protocols cycled down but still warm. Autorepair itching and stinging as he healed around the medic's repairs. He had to get up and walk around every few breems, processor spinning and struts aching from the hunched pose of data immersion.

It was rare for anyone else to come to this section of the Halls, and it had been just the two of them since he'd arrived earlier. Megatronus rubbed his optics when he came upon Pax's profile bathed in the shimmering light of endlessly scrolling data, just the look of his static attention making the fractal crystals ache. Every cycle the same. It look peaceful in a maddeningly boring sort of way.

"I don't know how you can do that and not glitch, Orion, truly."

[Deleted]

“Just because you,” said Orion, optics never breaking contact from the neon code cascade, “would never survive a single day at this, does not mean it is so abhorrent for others. Did you find what you are looking for, or do you need me to expand my relevance algorithms again?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, a section of his processing power diverging and setting to the task of calling up another data reel that might provide the information his friend was seeking. A fifth hard light screen flickered into luminance to the archivist’s left, hanging as a bright cloud of static beside him, like a thought bubble with no thought inside. Orion didn’t look at it, only lifted a hand and touched it, a dozen glyphs flashing red, spiraling together under his fingers and opening in a dozen small video and text reels. Security feeds of violence, new reports that never made it to the full public, or only circulated in the upper caste media feeds, never the communal data pool of the Cybertronian ether.

“You can have these data-logs beamed directly into your neural net,” Orion reminded his analog-insistent partner with some mild recrimination. His optics flickered once, a half dozen data spikes hitting his neural net and disseminating the data through his CPU. There was a four kilk pause as he rearranged the information himself, mentally made the conscious connections and correlations among the facts and dates and names. He then summarized it and forwarded the condensed version to Megatronus. “I am certain you would have no problem with data surfeit. Only mechanoids with underclocked processors have that issue. You wouldn’t.”

He closed a few windows, having already processed the data, pulled open three more, dismissing them, closing them again. Another four bloomed up in the air around him, haloing around the archivist, casting dim blue light across the floor behind him. He glanced over his shoulder finally, optic ridge arching high. “Or was that your way of saying you are taking a break?”

[Deleted]

Megatronus filed the new wave of data with a cursory glance over the contents, ready to be summoned onto the screens and gone through properly. Orion was entirely correct that it would be quicker to absorb the information directly, but that had not been how he'd lived with data in the past. Time consuming as it was, he actually liked parsing information through his optics, liked the solidity of the screens and the soft living glow of the glyphs. Lower Kaon was a realm of tangibility - rough metal, sour energon, hard fights and functions fulfilled with the strength of one's own hydraulics. Orion's world of clouds and stillness, of things that existed only in processors and databanks, felt less real.

But no less dangerous, the gladiator had found. In fact, the shivs in Iacon were more insidiously deadly because they thrust out without a sound and behind a smile.

The dark mech folded his arms and leaned one shoulder into the archway leading into Orion's domain, the newest weldmarks, scuffs and cracks almost glowing on his dull armour from the light of the multiple screens and projections. "I was going to take a long walk to the dispenser. Do you need a cube?"

[Deleted]

The glowing windows of data froze suddenly in their scrolling, dimming. Orion waved a hand and the holo screens blinked dark and vanished entirely, the podium locking as the archivist stepped away from the interface hub, stretching slightly. He’d been on shift at this for a long time and even off-shift he spent most of his time engrossed in the historical records, sifting through the eons of Cybertronian memory as transcribed through the archivists who came before him – the witnesses and the record keepers. Now a days, archivists were more like to be driven off by enforcers, their right to bear witness no longer a priority… possibly approaching obsolescence.

“No, I will come with you.”

Orion left the now darkened platform, checking his fuel levels and noting, yes, he was under a quarter tank and Megatronus likely had some gauge of it. A habit of his function-class, he tended to get lost in the data, falling out of time and reality in a way that his friend didn’t entirely understand. Either way, the gladiator was well aware of Orion’s tendency to put refueling as a third tier priority. Only in Iacon could refueling not be a top priority during an energon shortage.

“I’ve gotten through most of the logs I wanted to,” he said, as they walked out of the public wing into the hall. “Military data – the record of the wars kept by generals on alien worlds during the expansion, battle strategy and movements. It’s worth a read.” A half smile flickered at the clerk’s mouth. A glance. “An actual read in your case.”

[Deleted]

Megatronus' mouth slanted in a smile, dry and sidelong. "I'll take those away with me, then. The political arena is a warzone in its own right - perhaps I'll get inspired."

Outside in the tall corridors, the overhead lighting glowed to life in their approach. The energon dispenser was an automated fuel and snack station some hundred yards from the archive room, stocking gummies, rust sticks and mineral seasonings in addition to standard cubes of blue energon. A little more expensive in credits, but infinitely more convenient given the entry and exit procedures for the Halls. They were particularly laborious and offputting for non-residents of Iacon and its affiliates, and Megatronus had no desire to waste time jumping through Towerling hoops.

The gladiator palmed a few credits from this afternoon's match from subspace, thumbing them into the payment slot. He turned to face the slimmer mech whilst waiting for the four cubes to fill and descend into the hatch. "I wouldn't have taken you for a recreational reader of military accounts. Do you have some kind of longing for a life outside of these halls? Adventure?" When the first two cubes appeared, he handed one to Orion and popped the seal on the second with a blunt thumb.

[Deleted]

“No,” said Orion blandly. Then, when he realized that response was just a touch too brief, he glanced down at the cube in his hand and thought about it a moment, optics visibly flickering with consideration before he added, “it’s just… there are patterns.” He snapped the seal on his cube, looking at the other mech. “Historically I mean. I do not enjoy reading about whole generations, entire function classes, dying out. It is just the trigger behind each dark epoch – always the same.”

A kind of uneasy apprehension moved into his field just as he spoke on the subject, the data spinning forward from his processor, radiating out through his mind like the spread of viral code through a healthy system – memory soaked in red and hot with hate eons dead.Having data disseminated instantaneously through one’s processor was quick, the only way for an archivist to process, store data, and stay sane doing the function they did, but sometimes the immediacy of the data spiked rudely through the mind. Strange thoughts: They are all dead. They were destroyed and none were witness. How many more are dead and unknown? What mass graves have been turned into the smelter for the ores they carry?What holocaust goes unrecorded?

Thoughts to disrupt recharge with their intensity. Orion didn’t ever bring this up, however. Telling Megatronus he felt for the long dead would warrant a funny look he was certain. More so than the funny looks he got when he fell back into his ‘bookish’ habits around the gladiator. He smirked.

“Are you disappointed? I would make a very poor adventurer, I think.”

[Deleted]

Megatronus twitched his helm in the negative, glancing down at the bright blue reflection of his own optics in the cube, considering. His words were careful, measured. "It is your function to be... contained in records, content with accounts of the past rather than in potential of the future. Personal adventure, in particular. I'm finding that even here there are social devices in place to keep function classes from venturing outwards, though far less strictly than in the lower castes." A grimly wry smile. "Obsoleteness is also less of a problem up here."

The gladiator did not condemn Orion for the comparative luxery and peace of his function and lifestyle. It was where they had been sparked, roles they had been manufactured to perform. Megatronus simply believed that any mechanism deserved the right to ascension. That they were not just cogs in the great system of Cybertron.

"That you are looking at all speaks well of you, even if it is from within the parameters of your function now. Some influence of old coding, perhaps." Draining half the cube in one draught, the larger mech gestured demonstratively to Orion's chassis. The archivist's build hadn't escaped the gladiator's notice, primed as it was to seek out strengths, vulnerabilities and potentials in any encountered frame. "Your frametype suggests that, in the past at least, archivests of your ilk were far less... innocuous."

[Deleted]

Orion arched a browridge, stopping where he was to tilt his head and place o single hand on his hip, looking supremely skeptical. “My frametype,” he said, clearly amused, “hasn’t changed for eons and neither has the function of my class. We keep records and bear witness and in these laters days it seemed all we do is keep records. We are never called into the world to see its happenings first hand anymore and even if we were, our numbers are too few for it to make a difference.”

Point of fact, there were only a handful of Iacon archivists and the nature of their work kept them all separate from one another more often than not. They were not cohort, each sparked separate, not united even by function-class bond despite sharing the work at the Iacon Hall of records. Megatronus was more cohort to him than his fellow archists had ever been, the majority of them older, having sunk into their function at Iacon so deeply they no longer left the Hall on assignment, leaving all excursions to Orion while they parsed through data. Looking at Megatronus, who knew all this - knew about the isolation and the perpetual under-staffing of his kind, how Alpha Trion could never get sanction to spark more of their function - he wondered how he could make such an argument.

Of course, Megatronus could argue anything, given the chance.

“I fail to see how my frametype is anything but innocuous, Megatronus.”

[Deleted]

"Then I imagine it is because the data has been discarded by your forebearers," Megatronus replied with smooth certainty, engulfing the junction between Orion's shoulder and neck in one hand and taking a solid step forwards. It ought to have sent the Tower-built crashing down, but the archivest didn't spill a drop of energon, pedes re-stancing with mass-memory precision.

Megatronus smirked and withdrew his hand, moving back to collect the other cubes from the dispenser. "A little large and very sturdy for a databot," he surmised, flicking an optical ridge at Orion before beginning to lead them back to the archive room. Back to the queer security of Pax's sanctuary, where the gleam of the Tower's felt less acutely sickening.

****Time Jump****


It had been a long time since Megatronus had last ascended into the Hall of Records, and much had changed. His rallies were always in the datastream now, record-bots standing behind the line of security that underlined his speeches. Evidence of the problem, and of how much of a problem his movement was becoming for the Towers. They warrented attention now, and the gladiator was turning it to his will.

He had also drawn the conclusion that this new focus by the upper caste and a handful of politicians were why his matches in the Arena had become more difficult. Before, a truly challenging opponent came up every ten or fifteen matches - pit-scrappers and ascending Tier Twos spoiling to make their names. Now it was every other match, gladiators of a dangerous standard emerging from all over Cybertron to cut off his helm with new funding, new mods and inflated egos.

A joor ago, his latest opponent had crushed both his optics and nearly succeeded. Dead now, of course, but the aftermath of that match had put Megatronus out of the planned rallies and out of the Arena. He was scheduled to fight again in four cycles, almost fighting fit again thanks to Cleaver's repairs and Soundwave's supply of parts. The long break had left him restless and irritable, and Primus help his next opponent.

Tonight he was turning his new optics to the archives, however - both to touch base with Orion and to research a senator who'd been tipped as being behind some of the recent sponsorships of his opponents. A public assassination attempt, arguably legal within the illegal Arenas. He didn't appreciate indirect attempts on his life.

Fairly stalking towards his usual spot, he ran his hand through the watery reflection of his red optics before tapping the screen to life. Sitting with gritted denta as tight welds running the length and near-breadth of his right side pulled, Megatronus began flicking through the datastreams.

[Deleted]

"Are you sure," said a queit voice from the entryway to the mech's left, "that you should be in Iacon?"

A joor ago Orion had received a call telling him that a slamtanker build from Tarn, heavy mod silicate-infused, high-density, triple-changer had out put an axe through his brothers face and buried that blade halfway through his right sideseam into significant portions of his internal hardware. This beast of a mechanoid had been hired out of an ex military unit that recently found itself downgraded to working class at which time they suffered a tremendous pay cut and were displaced en masse across the economic landscape. The still encroaching energon shortage had made mechs desperate, so perhaps that particular highly trained, very dangerous mech finding his way to sponsorship and match with Megatronus was not so peculiar...

Or perhaps it was precisely at that peculiar and someone wanted his friend dead in a ditch.

The archivist moved from the doorway, crossing the floor to the table where the gladiator sat laying two hands on the edge of the consule and looking at other mech for the first time since he got that call. He was unshaken by Megatronus' new eye color, the hardlines of his EM field set into a concerned and unflinching wavelength. The medic had done her work: he looked good as new - only the welds in his sides and new optic-shade to show for the fight that nearly killed him and his nascent revolution dead. Orion didn't look away as he spoke.

"Just because some of your enemies are coward enough to hire gladiators to die at your hand does not mean there are not those willing to take a more direct approach. Iacon is no safer than Kaon and at least in Kaon they don't come at you sideways." Then having said this (knowing Megatronus would not be frightened by an assassination attempt, despite having survived several already) Orion ex-vented hard and tapped the screen his friend was looking at. Several data files on the senator - records of his contact with the now defunct military unit and its failed assassin - bloomed up. It was a private data box, opening exclusively to Orion's decrypting algorithum.

Quietly and more sincerely, he added, "It's good to see, brother."

[Deleted]

Megatronus looked at the data before he raised his optics to his brother, field still hard and tight, but a trace of a smile at the gifted information conveyed that he was torquing down. "Attempts to crush the revolution through terminating me are a sign that progress is being made, and for that progress to continue, I must remain public."

Though the revolution was gaining momentum, it was still fragile - purely because of how much attention the Council was paying to it, and the mounting pressure being applied to the cogs who had seized upon the idea that they didn't much like being treated as disposable drones. If Megatronus fell now, there was no one who could replace him as a figurehead. The Council would storm in and disband the upstarts, rendering them isolated and weak for it, and the revolution would die with the one who had started it.

Lower Kaon, and the bottom caste all over Cybertron, still needed the gladiator to stand in front of them and deflect the killing blows, tackle the ongoing attempts to crush them, and to forge a path closer to planetwide sociopolitical change. Blind and bleeding critical in the Arena, Megatronus's dominant thought was what would happen to the revolution if he let himself be kiled. The outcome was unacceptable, and an impetus to keep pushing on.

The data the archivest had presented to him couldn't leave this console, and Megatronus took time to absorb and notate it before sitting back and regarding the slim mech fully. He motioned with one long hand, voice dry with wry humour. "And it's not as though you visit Kaon, Orion. How else would I see you if I didn't come into the high rises?"

[Deleted]

“I,” said Orion mildly, “have work to do. Unless I receive an assignment outside of my sector, my absence will be noted.”

The other mechanoid took a seat in the chair across from his friend, folding his arms on the table and looking up at him for a moment, just registering and accepting the changes, the brutality that beget them and took a moment to allow a deep thread of thermite anger to snake through the core of his spark. He reached across the table to tap parts of the screen opening file after file, data blooming large and spreading into the neighboring display cells until a series of five data packs and their contents were arrayed, glowing gently under the clear polymer screens.

“Besides…” Orion smiled slightly, watching Megatronus read and understand exactly what his friend had put together during his absence. “I’m sure an archivist better serves your cause here.”

The data packages were almost identical to the ones Orion had created before - one of dozens and dozens of anonymous data streams baring the injustices of the caste system like a raw nerve to the people. But this one... this one was different. It was everything. A manifesto of the discontent, the history of injustice and it told a story. The rise of the Golden Age under Zeta Prime,the evolution of what was, in fact, nothing but a gilded machine powered by the people. Cogs in an ugly mechanism. And it cited how history now, like so many times before, called for a change.

“You’ll want to take all five of these to Soundwave. If he seed them into the Communication Grid at the these time frames.” Orion pointed to annotated numbers in red across each file. “They will decrypt automatically and disseminate into direct download queues with the puppet theatre, replacing it with a real news report.”

He paused. “It's the biggest call to action I've written yet and I think..." I think it will change everything. I think they're listening. I think they're ready. He looked up at Megatronus, his hand on the screen like he was holding it down, everything it could be. "Don’t use it until you’re ready for the fall out.”

[Deleted]

The data packets that Orion had composed and passed to him previously had caused more than mere ripples, instigating an interest in castes Megatronus held little appeal towards. Not as viscerally, but potently - calculated strikes built from information that no one could argue with. The archivest's hesitation now was the first sign the gladiator had seen that Orion truly appreciated the impact of his background part in the revolution.

Megatronus's own appreciation was not insignificant, and he conveyed as much alongside how impressed he was with what Orion had just handed him. Handed the oppressed and voiceless.

"Of course. Thank you, Orion." He lifted his optics after he'd moved his hand, blunt fingers and scarred palm covering the entirity of the archivist's on the screen. "Do you still wish to remain annonymous on these feeds?"

[Deleted]

“I think it best that I not show my hand yet,” said Orion, holding his friend’s strange new gaze, trying to find the hair-line seams where his medic had cut open the alloy around his friend’s sockets to replace the bio-mechanisms with the new bright red lenses. Mentally, distantly, part of him thought the upper caste supporters aren’t going to like that; it was one more visual reminder that Megatronus was a fighter, a gladiator, a drop-caster and their nascent revolution was still not past it’s petty shapeism and caste-prejudice, despite everything in Orion’s data feeds arguing against it. Anger again, that low-frequency thrum through heating engines. “If they are willing to hire assassins to attack the toughest gladiator in Kaon… think how tempting a target one archivist will be.”

It was a joke, kind of.

Megatronus knew as well as he that the killing games of Iacon were subtle but could be – as they had seen before – exactly as effective as a main-line cut in a Kaon black-alley. Orion – his digital persona anyway, the anonymous author/supporter/protestor from the Communication Grid – he had sparked more than a fair share of heat from the Senate and Zeta Prime’s administration. They had called him an ‘anarchist’, ‘a sympathizer of violence’, a ‘sociopolitical saboteur’… Orion had called seven cities to peaceful protests in response. Those too far from Kaon to be part of Megatronus’ public rallies rallied anyway. News feeds and puppet theatre media were taking notice. Everyone knew the name.

“Besides,” said the historian quietly, “this is your movement. I am just one voice of reason and people are listening to me and I am listening to you.” His palm gently pinned beneath Megatronus’ he turned up, catching his comrade’s hand and pulling it up, gripping tight and smiling. “We are allies in this.” His EMF was sure, steady and confident. “As long as I am no one, I am everyone and if the voice of the people supports you... they will have to allow you before the Senate. On that day, I will show them my face. I’ll stand with you if you ask me, but until then I’m just a voice on the Grid.”

[Deleted]

"On that day, my brother, you need to be ready for the fallout," Megatronus replied with the same certainty that was in the grip of his hand around Orion's. A firm squeeze and he slipped his hand back, pressing it to the itching welds in his side as he sat back.

Orion didn't have to do this - he himself had nothing to gain from it. His caste was content and well cared for, his world untroubled before Megatronus began shorting circuits and disrupting the status-quo. The archivist's investment in this was personal to his beliefs, matching the gladiator's own. Alligned against the corruption, working slowly and intelligently, they were an unstoppable force.

Of the two of them, Orion was the voice of the people Megatronus couldn't speak for or perhaps reach, but he was also the vulnerable one. When his designation became public, he would be the easy one to crush in an attempt to stop the escalating civil backlash. They would come for Orion to get at him, and Megatronus couldn't tolerate the notion of them suceeding.

His tone softened to a different kind of seriousness, the inflection of his field and underscoring glyphs transmitting protectiveness and concern. "It would be prudent to -" take you under my protection "stay close to me after such a revelation, given the enormity of what you have already contributed, and the further disruption you are about to cause."

A glance to the powerful files that Orion had created between them, glowing innoculously enough were it not for their content. Megatronus cycled a vent, plates flaring briefly. "I would also be happier if you knew how to defend yourself. You're sturdy, and can absorb and rebound from more than most other Tower mechs, but I'd like you to be a challenge to anyone who is likely to come after you."