Transformers Prime: Convergence is a plot and character-development driven roleplay forum based upon canon material of TFP and RiD, but incorporates characters, elements, and plotlines from various other continuities to craft a unique story. Our community is welcoming, laid back, and dedicated to making each roleplay experience a good one.
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Brainstorm rubbed his hands together gleefully, optics squinted from the hugeness of the smile behind his faceplate. An alternate dimension! Of course! That explained why he was reading the life signals of some of the same bots on Earth as he had previously on the Lost Light. Fabulous! Fantastic! Oh, how he loved it!
While the others attempted to reestablish contact with Rodimus, Brainstorm had already made up his mind to go exploring. He had picked up the Captain's signal somewhere in the place called 'North America', near a collection of other signals. They may not be able to contact him, but, they knew he was there. Which meant it was safe. Brainstorm wanted to see what this other dimension held, and, besides, he had never been to Earth. He would just take a peek...
Fortunately, a telepoter was a fairly easy thing to build, and he'd had one hidden in his lab. No way would Magnus approve his going to Earth...which meant Magnus didn't need to know.
Locking onto Rodimus's signal, Brainstorm pressed the button that would take him, if all things went well, directly to the Captain's side. There was a flash of light, a feeling of weightlessness, and then...
He was in someone's quarters.
He paused, looking about curiously. No sign of Rodders...he turned his head and a flash of red caught his optics.
"Perceptor?"
It didn't really surprise him. This was an alternate universe, after all. But, still, out of all the bots to run into...
Perceptor was poring over his notes on human science fiction. They were creative, he had to admit. Many of their ideas were sadly rendered impossible because of breaking the laws of physics, but there were a few ideas he would want to try out, one of which is a portable wormhole generator.
The sound of a teleporter interrupted Perceptor's review. Before he knew it, he was crouched on the ground, blasters aimed at the intruder, courtesy of the reflexes he programmed into himself.
"Brainstorm?" Perceptor asked. "Most people use the door, you know." He was fully prepared for Brainstorm to say he is not like most people.
Brainstorm tried not to flinch when Perceptor rounded on him reflexively, guns in hand. It wasn't the first time a gun had been pointed at him, not at all. But...Perceptor didn't miss. Hm, that aside, he was readily armed...still in his wrecker days in this dimension, perhaps?
Perceptor was right in his expectations. Brainstorm sniffed, tilting his face upward just slightly, as though sticking his nose in the air. He held up a finger, as though to stop the other scientist.
"I am not most people, Perceptor. Though," he cocked his head, optics shifting to give the impression of a raised brow, "I was trying to lock onto Rodimus...hmmm...I'll have to fix that when I get back..."
He knew he should have upgraded the teleporter instead of the Fear Gun. Though...that idea had been rather ingenious...
"We lack sufficient resources," Perceptor said as he holstered his blasters. "Decepticons have control of most of the supplies on the planet, and even if we are able to utilize a significant portion resources on Earth, I doubt the materials that can be found here are those you require. Your device, which I assume is" "either a portable spacebridge or a teleporter" was what Perceptor was about to say, before he recalled the data from the humans' gravitational wave observatories, streamed directly into his brain module. No sign of gravitational waves, so that leaves "a teleporter, probably won't be fixed anytime soon."
"But while you are trapped here," Perceptor continued, "there are some anomalies on which I would prefer a second opinion."
Perceptor projected a hologram from his telescope, giving a list of astronomical objects that were out of place.
"Active galactic nucleus observed 4 days ago in the Andromeda galaxy," Perceptor started listing from memory. "Lasted 14 hours and 36 minutes. Similar activity started around Sagittarius A-star at the center of this galaxy 2 hours and 41 minutes ago. Ongoing. This early-universe phenomenon appeared nearby for a brief period of time and disappeared without a trace." He glanced briefly at Brainstorm to gauge his reaction. "At least 13 black dwarf and ultracool white dwarf sightings are confirmed with at least a 5-sigma confidence level, spanning a range from 12 billion to 27 light years away, with several more above 4.5-sigma. I'm working on the data. Those stellar remnants are not expected to form until a quadrillion years in the future."
"Another thing..." Perceptor started. He paused for the briefest of moments, optics flicking down towards the ground. "I trust you not to tell anyone. I don't remember reformatting" "into this form" "into a less tank-like Cybertronian form, which, judging by the lack of reaction from Warpath while he observed my adoption of a Terran vehicle mode, must not have significantly changed my robot form. I may have to check with my ship's data log before I am entirely confident. I don't remember programming sniper-level accuracy or full-spectrum vision into myself. And I could have sworn my telescope was on my other shoulder. I would not go so far as to claim my memory is infallible, but it has not failed me before I've arrived on Earth, with the caveat of its being tampered with.
"Needless to say, even though I'm saying it, these are quite concerning events, and I need you and Jetfire coming up with hypotheses. We don't have to bring in the biologists. I doubt they would be able to help."
Brainstorm looked at the teleporter mournfully. That was usually how it went. The Decepticons had all the best tech...and this was such a backwater world. Ah, well. He let the portable teleporter slip into subspace.
"Well, there are worse places to be trapped...at least I'll be able to do research here..."
He paused when Perceptor began to speak. Anytime a bot started with 'while you're here' Brainstorm got a little antsy. That could either be very good...or very bad. But, it was Perceptor so, probably good. Maybe even fun!
"Anomalies?"
Oooohhh, he dearly hoped this was going where he thought it was going. Could it be the same anomaly that had pulled the Lost Light so far off course? But there was more than one! Already, he was getting excited, as shown when his yellow optics brightened.
His processor immediately switched gears as Perceptor began sharing data. Astrophysics and the like were not his specialization, but, he did have experience in the field. He brought a servo to his chin as he listened, expression thoughtful under his mask. Galactic nuclei were interesting phenomena. They emitted light, much as a star did, but their unpredictability laid in their particle acceleration. Particle acceleration used in a lab setting was controlled, and often done for a specific purpose. But, when it happened naturally out in space...
His train of thought cut off when Perceptor mentioned the phenomena disappearing. Without a trace. Things like galatic nuclei didn't do that. There was always some residue left over. Even if it was just an odd mess of particles struggling to right themselves. His optic ridge cocked in confusion at that. This was getting interesting.
His optics dimmed in thought as he continued to internalize information. Black dwarfs were considered rare simply because of the amount of time they took to cool and the difficulty of detecting them. Ultracool white dwarfs were just as surprising. The high concentration within a relatively small range was certainly of note. Especially since they were supposed to happen for so long. Something had sped up the process.
"Where were they in relation to the nuclei?" if they had been within range...it was at least one possibility, and, he was, well, brainstorming.
Normally, if someone had given him this data, he would have questioned their sanity. But, one didn't question Perceptor's sanity. He was the best, and Brainstorm had worked with him often enough to know that he didn't start stating things as fact until he was sure they were.
And then he told him about the personal weirdness.
Perceptor didn't do personal weirdness. That, out of everything else, put Brainstorm on edge. His curiosity and excitement warred against true concern. Were they dealing with something...Dead Universe scale?
"You don't remember," he murmured, half to himself.
The Perceptor he knew had always been a sniper. This really was an alternate dimension! He thought...maybe...
Wait.
Brainstorm held up his hands, only having half-listened to something about Jetfire and biologists.
"I'll give you a bit more crazy in exchange. Could be related...probably is related. What state is Cybertron in at the moment?"
It was a general question. And, he believed that it would confirm his suspicions. If anyone could, it would be Perceptor. This...this had to all be related somehow.
"I'll answer the one on Cybertron first," Perceptor replied. "When I left with the Ark, Cybertron's core entered shutdown due to Dark Energon poisoning, courtesy of Megatron. I've returned since then and it became Shockwave's planet-sized lab, with us Wreckers occasionally wrecking his facilities. I downloaded his data, of course. Another anomaly is that I remember vaguely of Autobots winning the war."
Perceptor's optical ridges furrowed as he spoke. This wasn't like him. He started multitasking, continuing to speak while becoming introspective. He'd taken the effort to weed out every inconsistent belief and memory, investigating them until he found the underlying truth. He did this when he first upgraded his mind. He remembered concluding that search, a fact which is now called into question. Either he hadn't completed his search, or new inconsistencies arose. Either way, it warranted further investigation. His internal consistency circuits were fine, at least, since the inconsistencies stood out like beacons in his otherwise organized mind. False memory implantation, perhaps? No, he had something to counter that. Something mind-wiped at a time when inconsistencies were hard to notice? Perceptor marked the inconsistencies "unknown", promising himself he would get back to them later. His previous answer was coming to an end. Now to answer Brainstorm's question about astronomical anomalies.
"The black dwarfs and ultracool white dwarfs aren't located near the quasars, if that is what you were thinking," continued Perceptor. "More of them are found nearby, but that is likely due to sampling bias. Human space telescopes can only observe eclipsing binaries, and obviously the ones closer are more obvious. A few of them I've observed before crashing using my ship, including the one 12 billion light years away. It was observed under very improbable circumstances involving one of the humans' favorite tropes of stellar bodies aligning. To produce a powerful gravitational lens, of course. Nothing supernatural. But I digress."
Perceptor had the nagging feeling that the weirdness happening to his mind and to the universe had the same underlying cause, but given that his memory had been corrupted, he didn't trust it.
Brainstorm almost squealed. No, really, it was impressive that he held it in. He'd known Perceptor was just the bot to ask about the state of things! He was always so bluntly honest about everything, but particularly science.
Not even the tossing out of his original hypothesis could overshadow his excitement. Gravitational alignment, particle acceleration, spatial-temporal anomalies! It had to be related, he just knew it!
"Alright, Percy, I'm gonna lay on you what I know. The ship I was aboard, the Lost Light -ring any bells? Anyway- it experienced a sudden displacement. One moment we were moving along through the Andoran System- light years away from here, as you know- then, power surge, and the next, we're looking at Earth. No flux of the quantum engines, nothing that should have initiated that kind of jump," he began to pace, just a little, "I ran some tests in my lab aboard the ship, and found my scanners picking up signals of the same bots from two different locations: the Lost Light and Earth. Just a few select bots, mind you, but it was enough to make me wonder," he stopped in front of Perceptor again, voice becoming more animated, "Now you tell me that Cybertron is wrecked, but, in my memory, we took off from a newly restored Cybertron and the Autobots did indeed win the war."
He clapped his hands together once and then spread them, optics gleeful.
"I believe that the Lost Light traveled through an interdimensional rift, and that part of the reason you're having memory problems is because those my universe's you have crossed over too. And!" he jabbed a finger into the air, "I believe that the anomalies you're witnessing may be a sort marker of a series of such rifts."
Perceptor listened patiently to Brainstorm's... well, brainstorming. The name "Lost Light" did strike him as familiar. That was a religious festival for remembering the dead. Perceptor didn't understand why there must be a whole day dedicated to that. Don't people remember the dead more often?
Perceptor sighed. It was obvious that Brainstorm believed everything he said, but whether they were true was another matter. What Brainstorm stated wasn't impossible. Spacebridges were traversable wormholes, and where there are traversable wormholes time, time travel is possible. Actually, time travel might not even be necessary, if the war from the Lost Light universe unfolded differently.
Pain shot through Perceptor's head as several memories flooded back. He let out a groan. He remembered installing aiming arm stabilizers and his targeting eyepiece on a body vastly different from the one he possessed during his time on Cybertron.
"Do you remember..." Perceptor started, the pounding in his head distracting him for a moment, something that never happened. Do you remember when I took up sniping?"
Shoutbox
Please respect the space and don't hesitate to ask questions!
altria : please dont be dead?
Jun 14, 2023 22:40:34 GMT
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Sept 14, 2019 18:53:42 GMT
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