Part 1

Mindwipe stands about average height. He is a biomechanic and governs one of the largest hot-beds of this sort of research. His colours are pale red and bright pink.

He is not the machine that everyone sees before them.

Rather, the Transformer is only the shell, a facade. Mindwipe's mind consists of a small, armoured tank plugged through a biosoft that patches into the main metaprocessors. Mindwipe is the soft tangle of organics that floats in a sea nutrients that sloshes around inside the tank. Mindwipe is an exposed brain covered with electronics, part of spinal cord hooked up to a mechanical nervous system, a single blind, bloated eyeball floating in a dark, unlit ocean.

I listen to Mindwipe's dreams and they are of blood and of long dead passions and of hot, raw flesh. He thinks of himself still as the Nebulon scientist, Vorath. He is returning home and there is a wife, a daughter. He has a house and a peach tree outside. He goes for a swim in the reservoir and the cool water slides back beneath him and he dives. He lies on a beach and feels the rain coming down. He looks with eyes that are plain, human eyes and he has a sensation of smell and taste.

Animal dreams. Mindwipe is stoked by animal hungers.

Mindwipe's nightmares are of the labs where the Decepticon scientists strip back flesh from bone. He swims through lakes of blood. He sees the stacked corpses, twitching. He is appalled. He is the betrayer of his race. He was the one who came forward and said, Stop this killing, I will tell you how it is done. And he designs the interfaces and culls the witless volunteers. He manages to extract the fleshly parts and bonds them to a mesh. They can control exo-suits. They become the exo-suits. They become the processors and the data-cores of the mind-dead Transformers. They are the Headmasters, cybernetic outcasts from both races. Both and neither, sterile mules that shuffle about with cold feet and unfeeling hands. He is wreaked by guilt. He undergoes the process, screaming as his flesh is cut away, as organs are replaced by pumps, as his brain is sliced apart and plopped into a narrow tank, as he sees the blood-splattered walls and sterilised, metallic hands covered with innards, as his human sight is cut off and a switch is thrown and a nerve is cut and all his aware of is a grey field of light and he screams as he looks about with mechanical eyes.

As the war continues, ages, the Headmasters are raddled with cancers from long exposure to radiation. They die in their shells, stunted and twisted, blind and hairless. Some make the transition to the full environmental tanks. They change as their organics are tossed away, keeping only the essential processing organs plugged into their Transformer frames. They are clinically insane from human sensory deprivation. They are taken out as the war continues, but some survive, reviled. At last there is only the one left, a hermit who maintains a self-imposed exile, locked into a brittle, self-erected mental prison, a creature that is seen as a throwback, a political incompetent, vastly unable to deal with the high rank he holds. Mindwipe, my good friend.

Part 2

I am a refinery in the pressurised atmosphere of River Rock. I have two other modes, rarely used. One is starcruiser, a vast industrial vessel with the facilities to mine out entire asteroids and process the materials - and the other is a clumsy bipedal mode shaped by an eccentric engineer to vaguely represent a long-dead species of organic life. I believe that such modes were in vogue, so to speak, during the latter part of the Great War, when battles took place on organic worlds - Mindwipe can shift into a representation of a flying predator known as a " bat ". My own secondary mode is a " dinosaur ", which Soundwave assures me is called a " tyrannosaurus ". I have little interest in finding out the habits of this creature, although I wonder at its practicality and how it came to be absorbed into our engineering and design patterns.

I did ask Soundwave at one stage, who maintains a record of such trivia.

" They've made several attempts at a " tyrannosaurus " during various periods. I believe the Autobots started it when they created the Dinobots, although I am uncertain how the original idea occurred to them. Actually they based you on Trypticon: "

[image of a smelted fortress under the dead sky of old Cybertron, cracked with fire and guttering with electrical fires, as thick cables creak under armour plates that split open and malformed claws rake the ashen sky, and a massive head forms and opens its smashed jaws and roars soundlessly]

" Hmm ? Oh yes, the fortress we used on the Oldworld. Let's hope that I do not share the same fate. "

" Yes, it's not as if refineries see a lot of military action ..."

" Well I could ... I do not plan to be sitting on the same part of the planet for the rest of my existence. Soon or later this patch shall be stripped of useable minerals and I shall commence my extraction on another part of the plateau. It's such an invigorating existence. "

" Charming. "

" Indeed. "

Part 3

Over the passing years, I have had many conversations with Mindwipe, usually once a month, though sometimes less often. I am not sure whether he enjoys my company or whether he desires to break the monotony of his existence on his Seat, Khalhyer. Indeed, being equipped with an ANDRAX is forever to cut oneself off from the rest of one's kind, and the High Council is not prone to social gatherings. And there are few to whom Mindwipe can talk to, to find some one who will patiently wade through his incoherent narratives in search of nuggets of meaning.

Mindwipe does not know that I study him, make notes of his behaviour, attempting to dissect the complex mind that rabbits on for ages on a particular topic - and switches track for no apparent reason. And if he knew, I doubt that he would care about it.

His dialogue forever cycles back to the planet Nebulos. This is what interests me: the strange evolutionary twist that occurred there. It is something you will not find in the public historical archives. It is something that has been cut from the memory of our race. As if it was decided that the meeting of metal and flesh was something abhorrent, anathema. My personal view is that contact with other races is an opportunity to acquire new knowledges, and that hybrids are unique developments. We are a static race; we saw far more evolutionary development within five hundred years at a certain point in time than over the entire course of our racial history. Forces conspire to hold us to a singular mould.

Mindwipe will talk of Nebulos. What they did to him there. He will speak of the Headmaster project in utmost loathing:

" D-dd-o you kn-nnow what th-they did tt-to us on N-Nebulos ... ? Thhhey c-cut our hh-heads open and tt-took our brains out and ttt-they p-patched them t-them into an-an exo-skeleton ..."

Here he waits for me to continue the story of his misery for him ...

" Yes. " I say. " Zarak's brilliant Headmaster process. The data-cores of most of the troops had been erased by the Carnabot purge, the techno-virus which was the proto-form of the Matrix. Transmitted though selected datadumps and transmissions. Unfortunately, by the time they figured out the problem the entire infantry based upon Nebulos was in a de-activated state. So they plugged humans in as processors. It worked. "

" T-tthey rr-raped m-my w-wife. G-galan d-did it. I s-sss-saw him."

I do not quite understand what he means by this, though I get the [impression] that this Galan was responsible for ruining some sort of personal property of " his " - again in this case I am not sure how to distinguish between Vorath the scientist and Mindwipe the soldier.

Mindwipe splutters vaguely for a few seconds. He is silent. And then he starts upon the next of his personal woes, his Seat.

Mindwipe sighs. " T-they g-give me a useless -w-world t-to govern. K-khalhyer - what c-can I do with it, ex-port ice ?"

" True, there are little geological usages for such a world. However, it has a unique history. And as a scientific research facility, it is doing splendidly. You have come up with some interesting applications of biotechnology. "

" B-But n-no one w-wants t-to h-hear about t-them. I-I g-go b-before the H-high C-council, I s-state my d-developments, and S-starscream says, " T-Thank you " , a-and asks f-for the next s-speaker. I g-get no f-feedback w-whatsoever. N-no f-funding f-f-for n-new projects ..."

" I heard that the Entertainment and Leisure Executive had an interest at one stage. "

" N-NO ! I w-would die b-before I s-see my work in the P-pits, t-to be d-destroyed in a f-few s-seconds off c-carnage j-just to entertain the m-masses. "

Mindwipe becomes quite venomous at this stage and indeed, it takes a while for him to calm down. Predicably, as he always does when confronted, he changes topic.

" D-darkheart, do you ever gg-get b-b-bored ? "

" What do you mean ? "

" Y-you mine stuff, t-that's all you ever do. You can't go and d-do anything l-like, I-I d-d-don't k-know, w-what m-most p-people d-do ... "

" Not at all. I find new things of interest everyday. River Rock shifts constantly, it is a question of finding a stable site to commence my operations. I am in constant communications link to the orbiting space stations and have a direct line to the Well. I think that I find more things to do with my time than those who are far more mobile than I am. "

" O-o-o-oh. I-i s-ssseee."

Part 3

Dreams of hunger. I cannot dream. None of my race has that capacity in the way Mindwipe has, as images float erratically from his organics to swamp his datacore, torturing him with a kaleidoscope of long-dead images. He is a man. He is a machine. He is in some dread twilight world between the two, ignored and loathed by both sides.

But if I search my long memory, my own and not the Wells', my own personal, suffocatingly limited memory, I am aware of strange things. Random snippets of video. Fragments of conversation. As if they did not erase things properly and left a few images and glimpses from an older, now long dead life. And if you splice them and analyse their randomness, I suppose the disjointed mish-mash of imagery and dead-memories could be called a dream. One I can play back and watch over again. It puzzles me. These dreams of hunger.

Part 4

Another day, another part of the planet to be mined, another batch of ore to be processed using the dense atmosphere of the planet to refine the metal into a super-tough alloy. I extract the gases and I tap the boiling heat of this world for power which can be stored in batteries and later exported. I love this unstable geography of this violent world. It is a horribly bleak, parched landscape marred with jagged cracks and splits and clusters of sharp-edged boulders. In some places the desert is gashed by great chasms. The sky overhead is a continuous sea of thick clouds through which the sunset glimmers as a dim, red glow. And the sky is lit by continuous sparks of lightning, providing constant illumination accompanied by unending rumbles of thunder. The atmosphere is a thick smog of sulfuric gas. I am protected against the constant acid rains, the boiling temperatures and the frequent cyclones that wrack this unstable planet. In some patches I can see ruins belonging to earlier civilisations, the vast skeletal structures of the terraforming generators raking the skies. I can see where their domes once held tropical hot-houses, intended to seed the remade planet. Yet they were conquered in the end, by the unreined violence of this volatile world.
Ten interlinked space stations circle the planet in steady orbit. No one comes to the surface, where my refinery-mode rumbles over the sinking sands and screaming winds on its vast tire-treads, like a tower-tank blackened and blistered under the harsh conditions.

All my trading, my commerce, is handled up there by countless executive minions. I am in constant link with the datasphere - I can follow each transaction, each movement of currency. I know every bet that the Governor makes (he is a fanatic of the pit fights), I know the details of every ship that docks at the station (including #ID, place of manufacture) the work of the scientists as they study for better ways to develop the world beneath them (each report logged, date and time and progress).

I am mapping the geological strata of a patch of frying mineral sands when the communication comes through. While I monitor millions of individual processes at secondary levels I digest the data-package from Knave-7, one of the docking monitors in the space stations in their orbit high overhead.

TRANSMISSION FROM Knave-7 TO DARKHEART (MPS)

[Report: High Council Flagship in lock. Requests permission to descend to surface to rendezvous with Darkheart Mining and Processing Station.]

Mindwipe ? I have given him clearance to dock at the station any time he likes. It is likely to be one of the other High Lords then, but they have little reason to visit me. I am far removed from the power squabbles that constantly threatens the deadlock between each sector in Andraxus. There is little this world has to interest them, only vast piles of mineral sand and the alloys that I export onto the Spires Market.

TRANSMISSION FROM DARKHEART (MPS) TO Knave-7 [Report: Identify ship/owner/registration/home port.]

TRANSMISSION FROM Knave-7 to DARKHEART (MPS)

[Report: High Council Flagship " Grim Conqueror "/Belt Mining Strip Military Operations/121-90/Syca-8]

Thunderwing. This is going to be interesting. I've never really spoken to him about things other than metals. He could have tapped me a lightspeed communications dispatch. Instead he desires to come here in person. It must be something critical, a political manoeuvre.

TRANSMISSION FROM DARKHEART (MPS) TO Knave-7 [Report: Let them land. Co-ordinates are as follows: {Data-squirt}]

He's going to damage his ship if it isn't protected. To dock with my station, he's going to have to come through some horrendous winds, heat and sulphuric rain. I track the ship as it drops from the heavy cloud-cover, disappointingly protected by shimmering protective-shields. I imagine how much the immense energy drain would cost. Though ship-sized shields are effective for short periods of time they are too energy-inefficient to be of use in a military situation. Yet they have their uses, and the Strip is a very wealthy sector.

I have patched into their communications and, for a lark, I watch myself on their monitors: a vast, monolithic block of dull, shimmering metal, covered with antennae and extensions.
I can hear the ship exclaiming to himself silently:

[Look at the size of that thing !]

[It's huge !]

'Conqueror follows my radio stream which guides him safely into a small docking port. We commiserate for a few seconds about the hazards of his employment (" I tell you, if those shields had slipped up even for a second ...") but I know he is too proud of his rank as an HCF to even think about seeking another position.

[Grim Conqueror: Yeah, the boss man wants to come on board you. Alone, I tell you.]

[Darkheart: So you're carrying no other passengers besides High Lord Thunderwing ?]

[Grim Conqueror: Nope. This is strictly High Council stuff. Don't ask me about it, I just carry him from place to place.]

[Darkheart: I must say that you are refreshingly casual for a 'Flagship vehicle. Most of them deprive me of even the most basic of conversations. It's always: " Docking" " Refuelling" " Engaging Launch Thrusters"]
[Grim Conqueror: Just an attitude they have. Me, I've been doing this stuff for so long that it's just nice, you know, to chat with people.]

We carry on in this vein for a while, exchanging personal views about the shipping and transport industry, while I politely open my chute corridor and interlock with the ship.

" Please step this way, Lord Thunderwing. " I say, closing the outer hatch doors and opening an internal corridor that will lead to a small briefing room where private conversations may be held.

I feel the familiar ANDRAX reverberations as Thunderwing steps out of 'Conqueror. He cuts a determined, resolute figure.

Silently he steps into the corridor and walks the long the distance to the briefing room. He seems lost in the small, barren chamber, as if used to far more ornentaceous audience chambers with more stately surrounds.
And then, impressively, he recovers his composure and selects a bank of monitors to address: " Lord Darkheart, I beseech you as fellow member of the High Council. I come to you with open arms empty of weapons.

" I have a request to make of you, but this request will not be understood unless I explain my motives. Please, bare with me, and I hope all shall become clear.

" When was your date of construction ? When was your datacore primed ? "

" 3899 AF. A fact you could have easily looked up from the Archival Institute. " Not entirely the entire truth, but it will suffice for now. Thunderwing is a showman, a speaker who requires an interactive audience. I decide to play along with him for awhile and so I wait for his response in silence.

" You would remember little of our past then. Oh, you can scan the records and access the archives, but you weren't there. You never held an outpost against the crush of countless enemies, never dealt with murderous troops hungry for your death for they craved your rank at the cost of your life. You never knew what it was like to deal the enemy a killing blow, to put all your pride into the one cause and to desire that cause more than anything else you have ever desired. Those memories ... feelings ... situations are part of past that is gone, a past that is lost to all the generations of Transformers who were created after the Foundation.

" In that past we were once called Decepticons. We strived for a dream, and that dream was a unified empire that spanned planets. That dream was built on the broken backs of our enemies, on the fallen shells of our comrades. We had a tradition that unified us, that spanned temperments and roles.

" And Starscream has betrayed us. He lead us to the future, to the barren lump of rock known as Andraxus, where we laboured for many years and built a city, as a base for future conquests ... or so he said. But all we have done, all we have to show for our years of labour, is the slow whittling away of the spirit that made us great. Starscream is moulding us in his own image, subverting us, destroying our heritage. Soon we shall all be simpering clerks and proponents of a mindless bureaucracy. The way of the warrior is fading out of existence, and the soldiers of the future will be pitiful echoes of their forebears.

" Until we rise above it, Andraxus will consume us. "

" Frankly, I can't see your point. The Great War is over. Gone. Finito. Blink and you would have missed it. We are going to expand but only when we can economically justify our actions and can be in a position to recuperate our losses. To build ships and weapons that will enable us to take over other civilisations we need ores and metals. Some of which I mine and process. I serve a useful and viable support role. It is logical to assume that a cultural shift will occur as we move from being a scattered, singular army to a civilisation that fills an entire solar system. "

On the camera I can see Thunderwing glowering, his optics flickering with an impassioned emerald light. Again, I wonder why he is here ? Why is he asking me to remember a past that I have no sympathy for ?
" I have little involvement with the political schemes of the High Council. I restrict myself to trade and shipping matters. " I tell him.

Thunderwing stares at the monitor bank, a penetrating look. " Did they take it all away from you ... Trypticon?"

He says the name vehemently, like a weapon glittering in front of him. " I came here hoping to find ember of the spirit I once knew, that I could draw some response from, to coax back into a raging blaze. Instead I find another of Starscream's lackeys, a servant shuffling about, cowed and broken. "

" Trypticon ? I am Darkheart, as I have always been. " ( I am lying about being Darkheart, but honestly, I have no knowledge of Trypticon, apart from a few rudimentary facts. )

" Some parts of his were involved in my construction, perhaps the design, but I assure that my datacore is entirely First Generation. " I explain to Thunderwing.

The High Lord of the Belt Mining Strip scoffs and walks around the small chamber.

" They didn't just design you from his dead schematics. You are Trypticon, you fool. I was there when Scrapper loaded all the wreckage on the shuttles, I watched him working himself into a froth of madness as he tried to assemble your cracked datacore. You were useless after that for a military base and he never got the funds to rebuild you in that form. Oh, how it pleased Starscream to have you reshaped into a "useful" part of his dream empire. A refinery, fit for only tilling ores and lugging them back to Andraxus so that his city could be built at the expense of everything we had believed in, or what we had dreamed of.

" And when it was over, he had Scrapper executed. On suspicions of dissident behaviour. So no one would know who you were. No one would know that the clunking monolith that chugs over the surface of River Rock was once the mightiest, most proud of all our fortresses."

" Correction. If your information is correct I was Trypticon. This shell, these mechanics were his at once stage. However I am Darkheart, a miner of ores, a refinery. Why should I desire a higher function ? "

" Because war and the art of war are the noblest of occupations. We lived, we strived to beyond all else. Starscream stripped your soul away from you, Trypticon, your fighting spirit, everything that made you what you were.

" We are dying, stagnating. We sit here in Andraxus and do not move forward. Tell me, where are the promised conquests? Where is the Empire that Starscream spoke of ? Only a handful of planets settled by Transformers ... I would not say that was the dream he spoke of at the Ascension. I would say that this was not what he promised our battle-weary legions, broken by the eons-long war. I would say that he lied ... "

" Well, yes, I concede on the point that we have not expanded beyond this solar system. However the Lord Commander..."

" The Lord Commander ! The Lord Commander ! Why must everything that happens in this rotting solar system require his presence, his touch, his approval ? "

" Lord Thunderwing, I cannot help you in your vendetta against Starscream. Save the power struggles for the Senate. If you are impatient with your own party, then that is something you will have to change for yourself. "

Thunderwing nods. " I had expected your response to be as such. But I remember Trypticon. I remember his fall. And you, "Darkheart", dishonour him. It is shame I feel ... "

Part 5

Time to cut free. Time to drift down, away from the refineries, the daily shuffle of my business, the politics of the High Council. Time to slip through the cracks in the world, drifting down between the highways and clusters of information, the Well-operators appearing as motes of light on the datascape, the shafts of light forming a web of volatile exchanges. I am deeper than that, one of the deepest ones. I slip in a cybernetic freefall, falling ...

I am on a flat, metallic plain. Old Kingdom Cybertron. I am in a physical form: my massive, lumbering bipedal mode, the " tyrannosaurus. "

Shockwave is there, glaring at me. He wears his ancient physical shell, desiring no other; a clunky, heavy-set particle-cannon based form. He scans me with a shimmering point of cold light, a single optical sensor set back in the dark hold of his head.

" When will cease this foolish project ? It is illogical and un-necessary. "

" On the contrary. I have learned much about the Outminds during my tenure in the physical world. "

" Such information you could have gained in other ways. "

" True. " I acknowledge. " But there is much for experiencing life first hand, for animating a physical body, to communicate with one's species and to interact with others, sharing ideas and hopes and ... "

" You're an industrial refinery on the bottom of a mined-out planet. You can't even move. " Shockwave points out, being pragmatic.

" Well, yes. " I have to reply.

Shockwave is displeased. No emotion is present in his archaic physical form but I can feel his reluctance through the sensorium we share. He has humbled me, or so he thinks, by appearing in a physical environment, rather than in the CoreMerge.

" And you have an ANDRAX and rank within the High Council. We strive to allay their suspicions of our kind - your becoming Darkheart has reversed thousands of years of progress we have made. " Shockwave continues in his disproving monotone.

" Come now, Shockwave. None of them know my true nature - none of them have even guessed at it. " I say stealthily.

" Why the High Council ? " Shockwave asks pointedly.

" I was curious to possess one of these ANDRAX. It shields my hardware - I was attempting to crack the mathematics surrounding the Matrix selection process... "

" We have enough problems. Starscream is accusing us with interfering with the High Council. " Shockwave cuts in bitingly.

I metaphorically shrug. That is for the others in the CoreMerge to sort out themselves.

I state carefully (knowing that this dialogue will be recorded by the CoreMerge and then be gone over in scrutiny many times by my brothers): " I will be ready to leave soon. My work is near completion. I will not leave Darkheart until I have the finished product. "

How can I tell them that I want to remain with a singular personality, to rejoice in individuality, to know that I have my own private identity rather the multiplicity of the CoreMerge ? They will say that I have become aberrant, and will drag me back by means of force. I pull one of Mindwipe's tricks and shift the topic of conversation.

" Shockwave, what is my connection with the old war fortress know as " Trypticon ? "

" I am aware that they used parts of him in your construction. " Shockwave says placidly.

" But my datacore contains some images that I am sure that are Trypticon's RMR (Residual Memory Residues)."

" Impossible. " Shockwave scoffs. " You are (when you are not pretending to be a refinery) a Theta-class access node on the Well. Part of the CoreMerge. There is no connection that I know of between your mental hardware and that of Trypticon's. "

" Is it possible that I could have created this imagery during a period of introspection ? That it was a " dream " ? " I ask cautiously.

" Far more likely. But it is a strange sign of behaviour. It could be a lead up to a future period of mental instability, that comes upon the Outminds during the course of their existence. I urge you to cease this foolish project and let the original Darkheart program operate the structure. Return to the CoreMerge. "

Shockwave stares at me suspiciously. When the Outminds rebelled against us and broke the Well connections, he was forced to shunt his mental processes into a physical form, to disguise his true nature. Ever since his return to the CoreMerge, after the Ascension when Starscream took the Matrix, he speaks of his experiences with utmost loathing and is highly suspicious of anyone desiring a similar experience.

I try to explain: " I have been studying Mindwipe. The last known surviving example of the bio-bonding process. The organics, they "dream". They retain random images and flood the metaprocessor. Often these sequences of images contain symbolic values. "

Shockwave stares at me in silence. I know that he is communing with the others, and that the OverMind could force me back if he so desires. But then Shockwave shuffles about absently, as if remembering what it was like to animate a physical body and says: " You have your time. Go and complete your project. But remember that we are watching you closely."

Part 6

There are many dreams that I have this night:

I am just outside of the CoreMerge, I can feel the presence of my brethren drawing me back, and for a single aching moment I want to go back home, back to that glorious union of thought. But I resist, remembering who I am. I am Darkheart, I say to myself. Darkheart, this borrowed name, this borrowed identity, this borrowed body, has become me.

And then I am talking with Shockwave, in the dead replica of Old Kingdom Cybertron, a land rich with untapped reservoirs of energy, glittering spires and freeways, working factories and calm, harmonious citizens.

Shockwave says: " I have a warning for you."

The CoreMerge knows all things, it can predict the future based on past patterns and occurrences. Seer, oracle, database; there is little information that the CoreMerge, through the Well, does not have access to.

Shockwave continues: " The one you study, Mindwipe, will soon be destroyed, irrevocably. There is only a small, random factor that may influence this occurrence slightly. We shall impart the information to you, though it will have no effect upon future trends."

What future trends ?, I almost scream, staring at the golden lanes of plated metal, the towering minarets.
Shockwave says: " A great period of anarchy, political chaos, a " Dark Age " will soon descend upon Andraxus. All trade between River Rock and Andraxus will cease. The Well will be crippled, and distorted. Many will fall, including Mindwipe.

" You will be struck down, but the CoreMerge will preserve you. Darkheart will be rendered inoperative for some unforeseeable time."

Do something ! I spit at him vehemently. We are the crux, the keystone of all information that shapes Andraxus. We surely have the means to prevent this.

" This period will occur, there is little that can prevent it. If you were with the CoreMerge, you would have the answers that you desire."

Again, the CoreMerge reaches out to me, struck tendrils caressing at me, promising me data and security, drawing me down, deeper down.

But I resist.

I will not leave Darkheart. I will preserve Mindwipe. I will preserve the future. I will remain, what I am, I will remain ...

They hear my answer, and then acknowledge it. Shockwave is gone, and then I am left alone in empty windswept streets.

I have other dreams, vague snippets of dull imagery:

Dreams of hunger:

I am [concept] GOD. I am all powerful ! I devour all things ! All things are mine to crush !
Dreams of Power:

I will crush them all, oh, how I hate you, how I long to smother you with the black pulse of oblivion, see how you fall beneath my tread, my firepower, there is little that I cannot do, little that is not within my reach. I rend them with these great, hewing claws, I blast them with these smouldering cannons, I smash them with these mighty, heavy feet, you are filth, only fit to decay into darkness and dust, spilled rubble and ruin.

And I recall Soundwave's image he dumped to me:

[image of a smelted fortress under the dead sky of old Cybertron, cracked with fire and guttering with electrical fires, as thick cables creak under armour plates that split open and malformed claws rake the ashen sky, and a massive head forms and opens its smashed jaws and roars soundlessly]

Somewhere I died.

Part 7

Mindwipe is going to fall. There is little I can do. How do I phrase the warning ? All these years, studying their communication patterns and I am devoid of ideas, which I cannot originate. I am a database approaching infinity, I am not made for urgencies. I will attempt to keep him here. It will give me time, so that I can express the idea of his approaching doom.

I think of the poor animal that lives in Mindwipe's shell. Its spirit has been broken. It has seen its people been destroyed. It has Andraxus to live for, and Andraxus has rejected it.

I think of Trypticon.

There is a wall of years, dividing us. Sometimes I can almost reach through the weight of time, where the past is, where Trypticon is, where Thunderwing holds proud dominion of the cold landscape of Cybertron, where I am not crushed beneath the weight of a pressurised atmosphere and I can move through the cold dark of the stars, heavy with power and weaponry. Where my dreams of hunger are reality, where I can tear down fortresses and walls and sate my appetite that is goes down into a long and dark abyss.

Perhaps I am haunted by Trypticon in the way that Mindwipe is haunted by the animal known as Vorath.

A ghost in the shell that lingers for unknown reasons.

Perhaps I only study Mindwipe for the reflections of myself, that my overwhelming quest for self-identity is somehow caught in the mirror of his being, and that we are alike, and that fraternity unites us, and draws at us.

I listen to Mindwipe once more. I follow him down there, as he is lost, submerged within the twilight bowels of memory, distorted images: bloodsplattered walls, stained machinery, a woman screaming, screaming as he lumbers towards her, forever sealed inside a hard exoskeleton of armour-plate. The woman breaks apart at his touch. I understand now, that he will not continue for much longer. His duties are hollow, he feels as though he has no meaning, and the other High Lords, his peers, have rejected him. The ANDRAX may render him invulnerable, but his spirit is sapped. His mind is decaying, a slow process of gradual entropy, that he lacks with will to escape from.

I cannot help him.

Part 8

" .. and I th-thought, how strange, Darkheart n-never calls me, s-so when I g-got your message I c-came as quick as I c-could ... " Mindwipe chitters nervously, pacing around the conference room, darting quick glances at every screen and terminal, every nook and cranny.

" Well, there's something that I have to explain to you. As you know, I spend a lot of time in the Well for stockmarket fluctuations and other reasons ... and information has a habit of reaching me." I start off, trying to keep things ambiguous.

" Anyhow, there are rumours of something big coming up on the horizon ..."

" On th-the stockmarket ? " Mindwipe interrupts.

" No, something ... horrible. A Dark Age, coming to Andraxus, where the Well breaks down, and all the sectors are sealed off from each other and where lots of people get killed.."

Mindwipe stands stock-still. He clenches his fists, the servos whining under their polymer coating, and the floating organs in their sealed tank nervously shudder in their fluids.

" Sh-should w-we d-do something ? " he starts to gabble.

I cut him off before he can start: " There's nothing that can be done to prevent this, as far I can see. Like it or not, it will happen. So we have to take steps now to preserve what we can, to weather the coming storm, if you will."

Understandably, Mindwipe doesn't want to hear any more, and with a short squawk of sound, he runs back to the entrance to the conference chamber.

" D-ddarkheart - tt-the dd-oors won't open. " Mindwipe says awkwardly, pounding at the handle.

" Yes, that is quite intentional. "

" W-w-hat ? " he manages.

" I want you to stay here. I assure that if you leave this chamber there will be no future for you. Come, it will not be a bad life. You will remain with me as a companion, an assistant. "

" W-hy ? " he spits, clawing at the door. Then he realises that there is another exit, the ventilation chamber to the outside corridor that has no security precautions.

" Ah, my phrasing leaves much to be desired. I am attempting to be amiable, non-threatening. There is no veiled threat behind these communications, only the best of intentions. To express this bluntly, once you leave this room, you will die. I can explain further ..."

" N-n-nno ..."

" My apologies if I have failed to explain properly. I have trouble communicating with your kind. I find transformers an erratic form of life to deal with at best. My intentions are - "

Mindwipe backs away, fear howling within him, the organics shivering inside their tank. " Y-you're not even a t-transformer ... w-wwhat are you ? "

" I am a Theta-class CoreMind. "

" Y-y-ou're a Well Mind ..."

" I warn you, Mindwipe, stay here. I cannot protect you if you leave this chamber. "

" W-w-hat ? So I c-can be your slave ? Never leave t-this this b-base ? "

" For many years my kind enslaved yours. And then you rebelled and we retreated from Cybertron. But there need be no enmity between us, Mindwipe. We work together now, for the good of Andraxus. Stay as my companion. As my friend. "

" No ! No ! " Mindwipe screams. He forces himself through the shaft, and manages to clear the narrow tunnel before Thunderwing drops down upon him from above.
Part 9

I am not too good with improvising at situations. I have to plan, to have some idea of what the outcome of a plotted situation will be. I did not know that Mindwipe would just snap like that, and block out any attempts to communicate with him. And I did not even know that Thunderwing had that sort of control over his ANDRAX, to block his presence from Mindwipe and myself, to effect a cloaked teleport from one state to another, to suddenly appear right under my cameras with no given warning.

I told Mindwipe all the wrong things. I pushed him over the edge with the wrong stimuli. I collect information about people; that doesn't necessarily mean that I know how to use it. This all happening too fast. Thunderwing (I have no idea what he is doing here, how he got here, why ...) is holding Mindwipe in a firm grip, not a Pit-fighter's stance, but an iron, military-styled lock that Mindwipe won't be able to extricate himself from, especially not when Thunderwing has a particle disruptor pushed right up next Mindwipe's exposed organics tank ....

" You will never understand us, CoreMind. " Thunderwing says loftily. " I listened to your little siloquet with Mindwipe, revealing your inherent foulness after all this time. Filth will always come to the surface, it will never stay hidden for long. It collects and congregates .." he points directly to the struggling Mindwipe and to my array of terminals on the far wall. " Is that what you have been doing all these years ? Studying us like rats in a cage, for your own amusement ? "

" I had hoped that my research would prove productive. My problems lie in communication, phrasing concepts in linear arrangements of words rather than as blocks of data. If I had to communicate an idea, such as danger, I would be at a loss."

Miserably, I consider Mindwipe's situation. " Ah, I am at a loss at this stage. You have the upper hand, Thunderwing. Release Mindwipe and I'll ... "

" I make no bargains with your kind, creature." Thunderwing hisses. " I had my suspicions, the audience you graciously bestowed upon me whetted them further. For some time now, I have been probing at the Matrix, discovering secrets that Starscream dares not even to look into. I have been watching you, undetected, by virtue of these new-found abilities, sealed, it seems, on another plane of reality, watching though a pane of smoked glass. I watched you, noticing that the levels of contact you had with the Well were deeper than any other normal transmission. Eventually, my vigilance paid off, when you blundered out into the open and blurted your dire secrets to this sick incompetent here .."

Mindwipe is very still, afraid even to move. He is locked tense in Thunderwing's tight grasp, optics flickering an erratic array of colours.

" What do you want ? " I ask, rather helplessly, realising that I have blundered into the doom that Shockwave warned me of head-first. I do not have any ideas at this stage, I have no internal weaponry, nothing to defend myself with. Dead Trypticon shudders and roars within my hollow shell, and then is gone, fading, as if he was never there to begin with.

I watch, powerless, as Thunderwing sends a bolt of particle energy at Mindwipe's tank. The fluids within begin to bubble and steam, the organics are boiled in their casing.

Mindwipe's ANDRAX is simply not there, the field that nourishes him and renders him invulnerable is snuffed out, another "talent" of Thunderwing's exposed ... he has too much power, no one guessed that the Matrix could perform these things, these terrible acts of horror ...

And then he drops Mindwipe like a dead weight, (who lies there twitching spasmodically as the boiled organs flood his datacore with a mad array of impulses) and turns to face my monitor banks, and the cold fire of his ANDRAX licks at him like a sun's corona, and he staggers with untapped energies ...

Reaches a hand out towards me.

Points.

And screams: " Die ! " and his ANDRAX flames out, and the air is full of darkness and there is death pouring out of him, snuffing my own pale ANDRAX fires out of existence, running through my core block, as the program attempts to erase my datacore ...

Darkness.

And then ...

I'm outside the CoreMerge, I can feel the others drawing me in, calling me home. I want to go inside, to become a single node on that vast tree of data, to return to being part of everything and everyone. This the deepest part of the datasphere, and I am a creature who rules the depths that run right down into the heart of Andraxus. The OutMinds, the ones who walk about physical shells, the ones who have sacrificed their minds for mobility are creatures of shallows, they are insignificant and do not concern us. It puzzles me why I left this Eden to become one of them, something with such a tiny mind that can't move anywhere. Something weak and primitive, insignificant. I reach forth tendrils of information to link into that vast, throbbing nexus when I remember ...

Thunderwing.

He tried to erase me. By nullifying my ANDRAX. I will return, my brothers, I promise you, soon, but I have to know why. I have to know ... ah, yes, that's why I left you, to know why ...

I flip back to Darkheart. I will restore his original program soon and I will return to the CoreMerge. The ANDRAX is part of his mind, which I borrowed for a short time. I recall the pattern of information and the ANDRAX flickers wanly back into life over the mining station as showers of acid rain eat into the metal.
Thunderwing stares as the systems flicker into life, as the dead ANDRAX is stoked anew.

" No ... " he murmurs. " No ... "

" Interesting. " I comment to him, sounding stupid as I attempt to be witty. " I've never seen anyone do that before."

Thunderwing glowers madly at the systems readout. " How did you survive ? I erased your ANDRAX, your datacore ... "

" Because I'm not really here, see. My hardware is located several thousands of kilometres away, where you won't be able to even touch it, much less go near it. In the CoreMerge. "

" But, but .."

" I suppose you thought that by wiping me here, you would get all of us, correct ? An interesting deduction, but incorrect. You have destroyed Darkheart the Mining and Processing Station, not Darkheart the CoreMind, but I have a few seconds of linkage left here before it cuts out and I'd like to say ... "

Darkness.

I'm home now, about to link into the CoreMerge a final time that will be forever, and the events I have been apart of will be recorded and stored. It is not my function to analyse, or draw conclusions based on data, merely to store the facts as they occur. It is all here, sealed away, for the other parts of the CoreMerge to draw on, to act on. I am part of something vast that is almost infinite in resources, I see the events that will happen, and I know they will lead to a satisfactory outcome. This the CoreMerge has decided.

As I link into my allotted place, I think, ah yes, Mindwipe is dying ... not that it matters ...

The End