Cyborg (3)
Jan. 4th, 2009 02:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quidamlingTitle: Cyborg: Spark of Life
'Verse:![[info]](https://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
moya_koordinat 's Machine-verse, with warps and reflections.
Characters / Pairings: Ironhide, assorted faceless scientists, techs, handlers, mentioned Ironhide/Ratchet
Summary: Hints of what the government group's odd request really meant. A little knowledge and a lot of people can be a dangerous thing.
Rating: R, eventual fighting, pain and angst. Things fall apart.
Warnings: Crazy technical ramblings on my part. Angst. Lots.
AN: Italics is usually thoughts. (For some stupid reason I've jumbled from my usual code of thoughts, bond-speak, comms, etc. Dunno why.)
Massive credit where credit is due. I do pic fics, apparently. This (will make sense later) was to community.livejournal.com/tf2007fun/8544
Disclaimer: No, I am poor, don't own anything. I just push them around into situations I find amusing. They belong to Hasbro/Dreamworks/rich people.
>.> Sorry this took so long to post? Iunno.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“It comes down to three things, basically," a voice was saying. "The spark, memory chips and the personality matrix. Now dealing with the memory chips and the personality matrix was the easy part; it was the question of how to deal with the spark that was the true challenge, since from what we've gathered, the spark is of utmost importance to these machines."
"Like our souls, you mean."
Little slip of a delighted laugh.
"Yes, exactly."
"Now the question was, what do we do with them? How do we harness them? Memory chips are easy enough to deal with. Simply reimplant them into the new host, and let programming find its way, which it does, very readily. But there is also the question of the organic matter, to consider. And how did we overcome this...?"
"Don't keep us on tenterhooks, doctor," broke in the music of Ireland, smooth and lyrical. "Do share with us what you've done, here. These specimens are marvels of the new technology."
"Yes, yes, of course. I trust you are all well acquainted with the legend of Frankenstein - Dr Frankenstein, to be exact, and his lumbering, unnamed monster."
"Old stories, Doctor - what we want is the fresh meat you've got for us."
"Ah, yes, well; put quite simply, spark energy."
"Spark energy?"
"Yes. We've harnessed it, used it in lieu of electricity, actually - like Frankenstein's lightning, only so much more potent and pure and unknown. Long ago, machines were given life by a power source very similar to this spark energy, and those ancient records we found, and put to great use, excellent use, indeed. Spark energy. We run it through the biological components. And it reanimates them, gives them a new lease of life!"
"Ooh. Amazing - excellent work, doctor, simply excellent."
"We thought so too, ourselves."
~~~~~~~~
Most of the initial subjects came from the same source. There was a small contingent of prisoners; their warden was getting a nice little bonus under the table for culling men without families or connections waiting for them on the outside.
The first discovery came slowly; but once made, it was a true linchpin of the project.
The aliens depended on their spark.
A flash of a connection could reanimate subjects; ‘jumpstart the car’ came the eerily cold yet apropos analogy. It was assumed that the spark was simply a power source, the battery to charge the machine. It was thought that once active, the subjects would function at capacity without further input from the original “donor energy.”
This proved not to be the case.
Without an incorporated spark, without the strange senses and communications its continual presence imbibed within the subjects, they quickly went mad. They rocked and wailed, crying out for their companions mere feet from each other, perfectly functional, yet somehow blind, deaf and dum. Each quickly descended into a state where they were little more than drones. That, unfortunately, negated the point of the whole endeavor.
The goal was first and foremost a breed of superior soldiers, able to survive harsher conditions, faster, stronger, more agile and more lethal than unenhanced humans. The stories for the masses, to keep the workers compliantly coming in to do their jobs, was that the knowledge gleaned from the Cybertronians, the headway made in cybernetic enhancements would be priceless for the medical fields. Injuries, illness, and aging could all be reversed, healed, repaired.
Such beautiful sentiments.
The second realization came later, as the kinks were worked out of incorporating an alien spark in a human shell. Once the issue was resolved, the subjects began retaining some semblance of functionality. While stable, the conversion was still imperfect. Physically and mentally, they were acceptable, yet when the subjects lasted long enough to be closely observed, it became apparent that there were subtle issues with conflicts between the memory chips and personally matrixes. It became apparent that the personality of the prior host and the implanted sentience needed to have basic core personality traits in common for success. It was fine with the Phase One test subjects, the shells of the defeated Decepticons. They were destined to be the grunts, anyway. But as they prepared to move onto the more elite members, Phase Two and Three, there needed to be more of a match than the running joke around the facility of cons for ‘Cons. And so the forms started coming from a variety of sources. Sometimes genuine accidents, sometimes oddly timely mishaps that hit a particular individual, sometimes volunteers that were not aware that they had been volunteered, sometimes people that simply would not be missed.
One was a soldier, injured in training exercises that were supposed to be routine. Of course, there were always dangers involved with live ammo. His comrades-in-arms waited in the base hospital, fighting that vague sense of guilt that somehow he had ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. When a man in a white lab coat came up to speak with them, they were shocked to learn that unfortunately, with deepest regrets, they had done all they could, sometimes these things just happen… Their Sergeant hadn’t made it. The wounds were serious, but nothing had seemed like too vital a hit. They had nodded in shock, but before anyone gathered enough wits to ask any questions, the information bearer had turned and vanished.
Another was a doctor that had been hit by a careless driver while helping a number of accident victims. While driving home, he had suddenly found an SUV facing him on the highway, which registered as incorrect. Then the vehicle had tumbled, just in front of where he skidded to a stop. Running on adrenaline over the shock and autopilot born of training, he pulled over to help the passengers. His shift had just finished, and he was back in his own car, without the thin veil of protection from flashing lights that EMT’s had in the protective shadow of an ambulance. The only things to alert others to the medic’s presence were the simple hazard lights on his own car. After pulling two from the wreckage the man had been clipped by a passing sportscar. The impact did little besides shatter many of the bones in his body and knock the man into a coma…
~~~~~~~~
It was dark, it was quiet, it was warm, and soft… soft? Mechs aren’t soft.
He groaned, it gurgled. Vocalizers don’t gurgle.
Ironhide shifted. Everything felt wrong. He was too light. His range of movement was off, some joints moved further, some none at all. Sensors were frighteningly muffled. He looked down at himself. It was like someone had forced him into his holoform. Except it wasn’t quite his ‘form, and there were mechanical additions. His lower legs almost looked… normal, for lack of a better term. Somehow it echoed Ironhide’s own familiar black mech frame, but human scale and morphing into an organic thigh at the knee. From there up he looked human. Wearing little but grey scrubs cut off just at his kneecaps, to keep from tangling in the components at the joint. Skin above the waistband, an alien abdomen, with bare chest and arms. A wash of sensations, chemicals and biological feedback. It swamped him and his head twitched against the cold floor. The crack of metal on floor paneling; metal linked to sinew, bone and neurocabling innervated through nerves which made him bark a cry. He discovered he had a visor; pale blue extended out from metallic fins over what would have been ears and shinked into place. It responded to the pain, automatically protecting his optics – eyes. Pain and sensations that were too foreign, too alien, too wrong. Tried to shift back. But… there was no back. It was gone. It was just him.
He heard fuzzy bits of conversation through his fog, eyes closed, as if unable to see he could change what lay behind those eyelids. Sounds were not nearly crisp enough, clear enough. The vibrations of speech were doubly muffled. First, through wet organic audio reception organs that lay hidden beneath black fins. Second, dampened through a layer of observation glass between the cyborg struggling to come to grips with his form and the team of observers.
“Think it’s - Ironhide.”
“Damned if I can keep their names straight.”
“The black one.”
“The truck? Oh, with that cannon.”
“Two cannons. Had to stare ‘em down when we took ‘em”
“Them?”
“Yeah, two. And that weird color one.”
“Huh?”
“Yellow”
“Green”
“Think it’s ‘emergency yellow’.”
“Shut up, smartass.”
“Fine. That one, where’s he?”
“Dunno, tried the same thing on him.”
“And?”
“Heard it was taking longer, he pretty much died in the field.”
“Didn’t make it?”
“Dun think so.”
“Damn…”
Eyes snapped open.
He couldn’t be… no… No!
Ironhide dove into that shared space of his sparkbond with Ratchet. Somewhere in this soft mass of proteins and lipids, he still had a spark. There had to still be a sparkbond. It was slow, organic and messy, flesh did not resonate spark energy exactly like Cybertronian metal and components. Instead, he felt like something within the organic matter muted the sparkbond even within his own skin, but he managed to shift his consciousness there. He found it dark, hollow, empty. The mech… man… cyborg screamed into the darkness of that lonely bond. He pulled himself from that space, still present in his spark but alone, no longer resonating with another’s presence. Back from that gaping ragged hole the loss left in his core, back to the world outside. Rage and…
Ratchet, Ratch… how could he be… I… I couldn’t protect him. They took him from me. I let them take him. Take his spark…
It was crushing. Knowing he would never again feel Ratchet’s spark against his own. Never hear that voice and feel that presence moving through him. So little time. They had denied their feelings for each other for so long. Worried about the pain of losing the other. Fearful of destroying a relationship. Not wanting to tempt fate in the middle of an endless-seeming war. In that one thing, Ironhide had actually shown infinite patience. Remaining by Ratchet’s side, ever watchful, a protective presence. He showed his love by supporting the medic, keeping him safe and whole. Finally, only after the Allspark was destroyed and they had lost Jazz in that same battle, did they finally tear down that invisible wall. They both needed comfort. They needed the echo of another spark to fill the void left empty by the Allspark. Ratchet needed assurance after being unable to save one of their closest comrades. Ironhide made good on his promise to stay beside the medic, swearing to always be there for him. And they made it so. Bonding sparks, so they were always there for each other, mind, frame and spark.
Now one was gone, and the mech that remained howled his agony and collapsed in a heap of alien flesh.
'Verse:
moya_koordinat 's Machine-verse, with warps and reflections.Characters / Pairings: Ironhide, assorted faceless scientists, techs, handlers, mentioned Ironhide/Ratchet
Summary: Hints of what the government group's odd request really meant. A little knowledge and a lot of people can be a dangerous thing.
Rating: R, eventual fighting, pain and angst. Things fall apart.
Warnings: Crazy technical ramblings on my part. Angst. Lots.
AN: Italics is usually thoughts. (For some stupid reason I've jumbled from my usual code of thoughts, bond-speak, comms, etc. Dunno why.)
Massive credit where credit is due. I do pic fics, apparently. This (will make sense later) was to community.livejournal.com/tf2007fun/8544
Disclaimer: No, I am poor, don't own anything. I just push them around into situations I find amusing. They belong to Hasbro/Dreamworks/rich people.
>.> Sorry this took so long to post? Iunno.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“It comes down to three things, basically," a voice was saying. "The spark, memory chips and the personality matrix. Now dealing with the memory chips and the personality matrix was the easy part; it was the question of how to deal with the spark that was the true challenge, since from what we've gathered, the spark is of utmost importance to these machines."
"Like our souls, you mean."
Little slip of a delighted laugh.
"Yes, exactly."
"Now the question was, what do we do with them? How do we harness them? Memory chips are easy enough to deal with. Simply reimplant them into the new host, and let programming find its way, which it does, very readily. But there is also the question of the organic matter, to consider. And how did we overcome this...?"
"Don't keep us on tenterhooks, doctor," broke in the music of Ireland, smooth and lyrical. "Do share with us what you've done, here. These specimens are marvels of the new technology."
"Yes, yes, of course. I trust you are all well acquainted with the legend of Frankenstein - Dr Frankenstein, to be exact, and his lumbering, unnamed monster."
"Old stories, Doctor - what we want is the fresh meat you've got for us."
"Ah, yes, well; put quite simply, spark energy."
"Spark energy?"
"Yes. We've harnessed it, used it in lieu of electricity, actually - like Frankenstein's lightning, only so much more potent and pure and unknown. Long ago, machines were given life by a power source very similar to this spark energy, and those ancient records we found, and put to great use, excellent use, indeed. Spark energy. We run it through the biological components. And it reanimates them, gives them a new lease of life!"
"Ooh. Amazing - excellent work, doctor, simply excellent."
"We thought so too, ourselves."
~~~~~~~~
Most of the initial subjects came from the same source. There was a small contingent of prisoners; their warden was getting a nice little bonus under the table for culling men without families or connections waiting for them on the outside.
The first discovery came slowly; but once made, it was a true linchpin of the project.
The aliens depended on their spark.
A flash of a connection could reanimate subjects; ‘jumpstart the car’ came the eerily cold yet apropos analogy. It was assumed that the spark was simply a power source, the battery to charge the machine. It was thought that once active, the subjects would function at capacity without further input from the original “donor energy.”
This proved not to be the case.
Without an incorporated spark, without the strange senses and communications its continual presence imbibed within the subjects, they quickly went mad. They rocked and wailed, crying out for their companions mere feet from each other, perfectly functional, yet somehow blind, deaf and dum. Each quickly descended into a state where they were little more than drones. That, unfortunately, negated the point of the whole endeavor.
The goal was first and foremost a breed of superior soldiers, able to survive harsher conditions, faster, stronger, more agile and more lethal than unenhanced humans. The stories for the masses, to keep the workers compliantly coming in to do their jobs, was that the knowledge gleaned from the Cybertronians, the headway made in cybernetic enhancements would be priceless for the medical fields. Injuries, illness, and aging could all be reversed, healed, repaired.
Such beautiful sentiments.
The second realization came later, as the kinks were worked out of incorporating an alien spark in a human shell. Once the issue was resolved, the subjects began retaining some semblance of functionality. While stable, the conversion was still imperfect. Physically and mentally, they were acceptable, yet when the subjects lasted long enough to be closely observed, it became apparent that there were subtle issues with conflicts between the memory chips and personally matrixes. It became apparent that the personality of the prior host and the implanted sentience needed to have basic core personality traits in common for success. It was fine with the Phase One test subjects, the shells of the defeated Decepticons. They were destined to be the grunts, anyway. But as they prepared to move onto the more elite members, Phase Two and Three, there needed to be more of a match than the running joke around the facility of cons for ‘Cons. And so the forms started coming from a variety of sources. Sometimes genuine accidents, sometimes oddly timely mishaps that hit a particular individual, sometimes volunteers that were not aware that they had been volunteered, sometimes people that simply would not be missed.
One was a soldier, injured in training exercises that were supposed to be routine. Of course, there were always dangers involved with live ammo. His comrades-in-arms waited in the base hospital, fighting that vague sense of guilt that somehow he had ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. When a man in a white lab coat came up to speak with them, they were shocked to learn that unfortunately, with deepest regrets, they had done all they could, sometimes these things just happen… Their Sergeant hadn’t made it. The wounds were serious, but nothing had seemed like too vital a hit. They had nodded in shock, but before anyone gathered enough wits to ask any questions, the information bearer had turned and vanished.
Another was a doctor that had been hit by a careless driver while helping a number of accident victims. While driving home, he had suddenly found an SUV facing him on the highway, which registered as incorrect. Then the vehicle had tumbled, just in front of where he skidded to a stop. Running on adrenaline over the shock and autopilot born of training, he pulled over to help the passengers. His shift had just finished, and he was back in his own car, without the thin veil of protection from flashing lights that EMT’s had in the protective shadow of an ambulance. The only things to alert others to the medic’s presence were the simple hazard lights on his own car. After pulling two from the wreckage the man had been clipped by a passing sportscar. The impact did little besides shatter many of the bones in his body and knock the man into a coma…
~~~~~~~~
It was dark, it was quiet, it was warm, and soft… soft? Mechs aren’t soft.
He groaned, it gurgled. Vocalizers don’t gurgle.
Ironhide shifted. Everything felt wrong. He was too light. His range of movement was off, some joints moved further, some none at all. Sensors were frighteningly muffled. He looked down at himself. It was like someone had forced him into his holoform. Except it wasn’t quite his ‘form, and there were mechanical additions. His lower legs almost looked… normal, for lack of a better term. Somehow it echoed Ironhide’s own familiar black mech frame, but human scale and morphing into an organic thigh at the knee. From there up he looked human. Wearing little but grey scrubs cut off just at his kneecaps, to keep from tangling in the components at the joint. Skin above the waistband, an alien abdomen, with bare chest and arms. A wash of sensations, chemicals and biological feedback. It swamped him and his head twitched against the cold floor. The crack of metal on floor paneling; metal linked to sinew, bone and neurocabling innervated through nerves which made him bark a cry. He discovered he had a visor; pale blue extended out from metallic fins over what would have been ears and shinked into place. It responded to the pain, automatically protecting his optics – eyes. Pain and sensations that were too foreign, too alien, too wrong. Tried to shift back. But… there was no back. It was gone. It was just him.
He heard fuzzy bits of conversation through his fog, eyes closed, as if unable to see he could change what lay behind those eyelids. Sounds were not nearly crisp enough, clear enough. The vibrations of speech were doubly muffled. First, through wet organic audio reception organs that lay hidden beneath black fins. Second, dampened through a layer of observation glass between the cyborg struggling to come to grips with his form and the team of observers.
“Think it’s - Ironhide.”
“Damned if I can keep their names straight.”
“The black one.”
“The truck? Oh, with that cannon.”
“Two cannons. Had to stare ‘em down when we took ‘em”
“Them?”
“Yeah, two. And that weird color one.”
“Huh?”
“Yellow”
“Green”
“Think it’s ‘emergency yellow’.”
“Shut up, smartass.”
“Fine. That one, where’s he?”
“Dunno, tried the same thing on him.”
“And?”
“Heard it was taking longer, he pretty much died in the field.”
“Didn’t make it?”
“Dun think so.”
“Damn…”
Eyes snapped open.
He couldn’t be… no… No!
Ironhide dove into that shared space of his sparkbond with Ratchet. Somewhere in this soft mass of proteins and lipids, he still had a spark. There had to still be a sparkbond. It was slow, organic and messy, flesh did not resonate spark energy exactly like Cybertronian metal and components. Instead, he felt like something within the organic matter muted the sparkbond even within his own skin, but he managed to shift his consciousness there. He found it dark, hollow, empty. The mech… man… cyborg screamed into the darkness of that lonely bond. He pulled himself from that space, still present in his spark but alone, no longer resonating with another’s presence. Back from that gaping ragged hole the loss left in his core, back to the world outside. Rage and…
Ratchet, Ratch… how could he be… I… I couldn’t protect him. They took him from me. I let them take him. Take his spark…
It was crushing. Knowing he would never again feel Ratchet’s spark against his own. Never hear that voice and feel that presence moving through him. So little time. They had denied their feelings for each other for so long. Worried about the pain of losing the other. Fearful of destroying a relationship. Not wanting to tempt fate in the middle of an endless-seeming war. In that one thing, Ironhide had actually shown infinite patience. Remaining by Ratchet’s side, ever watchful, a protective presence. He showed his love by supporting the medic, keeping him safe and whole. Finally, only after the Allspark was destroyed and they had lost Jazz in that same battle, did they finally tear down that invisible wall. They both needed comfort. They needed the echo of another spark to fill the void left empty by the Allspark. Ratchet needed assurance after being unable to save one of their closest comrades. Ironhide made good on his promise to stay beside the medic, swearing to always be there for him. And they made it so. Bonding sparks, so they were always there for each other, mind, frame and spark.
Now one was gone, and the mech that remained howled his agony and collapsed in a heap of alien flesh.
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Date: 2010-11-02 01:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-03 04:39 pm (UTC)