16.Sept.06

Spiral

I have no pity, no sympathy, and no mercy for Rampage. There is only hatred. He’s a monster that tore the lives of countless people to pieces, then stomped on the pieces and laughed as he did it. He’s a macabre imitation of a Cybertronian; a shell with an oozing hole where anything remotely resembling emotions should be. Rampage isn’t a person. He’s a thing. A monster. An element of pure evil that should have been destroyed. He has nothing but hatred for anyone, anything. He’s killed and defiled everything he’s touched since he’s gotten free.

Except for me.

Why? Am I so special, so lucky that I alone survived? No. I’m not really sure WHY he spared my life back on Omicron, but I know why I keep following him. I know why I’ll kill him. Oh, I know. I have only hatred, and I will kill him because of it. Why do I have the hatred, though?

You see, one day I had courier duty. It’s as simple as that. After Omicron was destroyed, people tried to make Guardian duty seem glamorous, the fighters standing between the colonies and destruction. In truth, it was the most boring thing I’ve ever done. I wasn’t the Security Chief. I didn’t get to escort important people around on inspections of the colony. I had signed up because ‘bots who served terms of duty as Guardians got a chance to buy good property at cheap prices. I was going to serve my time as a Guardian, then start a business. For Primus’ sake, I was going to be a colonist!

And so I got courier duty. Somebody needed to tell people where to go, how to strap in, what was expected of them when they got on board the shuttle going to Starbase Rugby and back, and I got stuck with the duty. This shuttle flight had enough people that I actually had someone sitting next to me in the front seats. I didn’t get to fly the shuttle, of course. I was a Guardian, not a pilot. I was, however, bored enough that I was willing to talk with this person sitting next to me.

Turned out that he was going to Omicron for much the same reason I had gone. There was a science institute in the center of the colony, and it had put out a call for volunteers for experiments. Nobody showed up. I mean, who wants to volunteer to be experimented on? Even if it’s harmless stuff, people have better things to do with their time. So the institute had added the same incentive for volunteering the Guardians had: cheap property prices. Come to Omicron, put up with a few scientists poking at you, and then settle in! Except that unlike the Guardians, this guy’s discount was larger. If I had known THAT when I’d come to Omicron, the institute could have signed ME up!

By the time we had landed back on Omicron, this guy had good-naturedly put up with my complaining and I had answered most of his questions about the science institute and the colony. Everybody knew about the science institute. You could take the tour when you were off-shift if you wanted to watch some very dull experiments being done. I had done it a few times. We parted at the shuttle terminal, and that’s the last I saw of him until I took the tour again. I was surprised I actually recognized him. I usually didn’t remember people from the shuttle flights.

Well, YOU do it thirty gazillion times and see how many people YOU remember.

Anyway, this guy stopped whatever he was doing and waved at me, which probably was why I remember him. He was in a group of ‘bots who all had wires leading into their chests, and even as he waved a group of scientists gathered around him, chattering and taking notes. He didn’t look like he was offended by the sudden attention. Kind of pleased, really. He probably got a bonus on his land discount for every time the doctors singled him out.

I absently noticed a reference to it in the news that night. The whole science community was exciting about some quality they had found in him and a couple others. Something about spark resistance. I don’t know; I didn’t really care at the time. I was bemoaning courier duty on my next shift.

There wasn’t much else to do on the colony yet, so I ended up taking the institute tour again. Things changed in there, if nothing else. There was once a laser array that turned everything a weird shade of orange that I thought was entertaining, but they got rid of that. This time, though, I saw the guy from the shuttle storming down the hall yelling that he’d had enough, and there was a whole bunch of scientists running after him trying to get him to reconsider.

Stupid me, I waved.

He recognized me, of course, and came over to rant about nothing while those scientists kept trying to calm him down. Eventually, he let himself be led back the way he’d come. I thought it was kind of funny, especially when one of doctors asked if I could talk with the guy for a little while, like I was some sort of close friend. But, slag, I was bored enough that I agreed. Why not?

I kept asking myself that when he was pacing around the room. He wasn’t ranting about nothing anymore. He had picked a topic, and it was a disturbing one.

In every ‘bot, there’s the potential to go insane. In insanity, there’s the potential to be violent or passive. In violence, there’s the potential to turn it inwards or outwards. In turning violence outwards, there’s the potential to murder a few or massacre many. In massacring many, there’s the potential to repent or revel. In reveling, there’s the potential to do it again…

Do you see the spiral? You keep making choices and going deeper, circling around and around…

He started at the top, and his voice rose with every turn. Pretty soon he was hysterical, and I half-expected him to run out the room yelling again. But instead he began telling me about the experiments. What they were doing to his spark. He seemed calm when it came to that, but it made me glad I hadn’t signed up for it. I mean, the way he explained it was very rational and logical, but I wouldn’t want people messing with MY spark. But the link between his spark and his mind was what had brought him to this point, apparently. His spark appeared to be doing fine, and the scientists were very pleased. But the longer this went on (he told me), the more he felt like something inside him was building out of control. It was burning him up from the inside, and he was balanced on a razor’s edge, trying to dodge laser blasts with his optics turned off. And he wouldn’t be able to dodge every blast; he’d slip, and he’d be cut to pieces as he fell. What was left…he wasn’t sure what would be left, but whatever it was that was burning him up would take over.

He had thought about telling the scientists, but he was afraid. It might just be his imagination. He wanted to stay on Omicron, and he wanted to finish this experiment. The longer it stretched out, the bigger his discount would be. Besides, he liked the attention his spark was getting. Whatever it was about him, he had been chosen out of the few ‘bots who had passed the first tests.

But he was terrified. The spiral he had been ranting about hadn’t been something he thought about normally. It had never occurred to him until the last couple of days, and now he couldn’t get it out of his mind. Each new test sharpened the razor, made the lasers more accurate, and he was terrified of what would be left behind if he fell. What scared him the most, however, is that he felt that he would be the one to make the fatal choice that would start the chain reaction, begin the spiral.

I’m not a psychologist. I don’t pretend to be. But I asked him if there was anything I could do.

He told me. I laughed at him.

I wish now that I hadn’t.

He turned away, tired, even as I tried to apologize, still laughing. I couldn’t believe that’s what he really wanted. I thought he was kidding! Finally, he asked for something else: come and visit him. What the slag—I didn’t have anything else to do most of the time. He wasn’t really a friend, but my social life wasn’t that great, anyway. Guardians don’t have regular enough schedules for social calendars. And even though he wasn’t a prisoner here, the scientists didn’t like him going places they couldn’t monitor his spark. It was a guilt thing.

So I visited him. It was nice to be able to complain to somebody who didn’t have the same complaints as I did, for once, and I returned the favor by just listening to him. He got less coherent as time went by, more obsessed, but there was always the same theme in his ranting: that spiral. I thought it was mostly his imagination, but I told him that he should talk to the scientists about it if he was so worried about insanity. He never did. Maybe I should have insisted.

It’ll come as no surprise to you that he snapped. You know who he was. The experiment he was in was called the Protoform X project, even though he wasn’t really a protoform. Rumors to the contrary, he was never a criminal, never insane, never anything but a would-be colonist. The only way the project was a secret was that it was put in plain sight, and anyone who took the tour could see it happening. When you can see it happening any time you want, it’s not interesting enough to take a second look at.

Perhaps you’re thinking that after everything I’ve told you, I should pity this guy. I don’t. I recognized his body when he entered the shuttle terminal where I was on courier duty (again), but just because he’s physically there doesn’t mean he’s the same person. He was right. He took that wrong step, and it killed him. What was looking back at me was an out-of-control psychopath searching for his next victim. I just didn’t see it at first. All I saw was the guy I knew opening the doors and stepping inside the terminal. I didn’t know that he had just slaughtered the colony; the terminal was soundproofed to spare the neighbors the sound of the shuttle taking off. I hadn’t heard the neighbors screaming for help. I saw this guy opening the doors, covered with mech-fluid, and I thought it was his. I thought HE needed help.

Stupid me, I waved.

I don’t know why he didn’t rip my spark out like he did the shuttle pilot’s, or the neighbors, or every other colonist’s. He knew I was still alive after he hurled me through the wall. If he could track the last colonist’s spark down so he could tear it out, then he knew I was still alive. If he took the time to find every single colonist, then he could have taken the time to kill me, too. Why he didn’t, I don’t know. Hatred is unconditional, and he hated everyone. By that right, I should have died. It took me three days spent desperately trying to find another survivor before I realized it hadn’t been an accident I had lived. I had three days to build my hatred, destroy the mental image I had held of this guy as my friend. He wasn’t the same person, anymore. By the time I found a working radio, I still didn’t know X’s motives for keeping me alive, but I knew my hatred wouldn’t return the favor. Someone had already discovered Starbase Rugby, and help was on the way.

There wasn’t anyone alive on Rugby, either. I was a phenomenon. I wasn’t sure they would let me go. There were people concerned about my mental health, my physical health, my story, ect…there were some ‘bots who even thought that I had been the killer, but there were a few functioning security cameras that had recorded enough to back my story up. That’s probably when the legend of Guardians began. I might have started it myself, the way I kept insisting that I needed to bring X to justice for what had been done. I didn’t care. I still don’t. I hated him, and I still do. That spiral the guy I knew talked about? Notice how there’s a choice for every turn in it? He had to make those choices. Despite everything he said about feeling helpless, there was still that first, fatal step. He made the choice. He ripped those emotions out and left nothing but hatred for the universe. He let that killer take his place.

Rampage I hate unconditionally, but I don’t hate the guy I knew. Even knowing he took that first step, I think I still actually like him, and I can’t forget the times that he put up with me complaining about being a Guardian. I can’t forget how I listened to him. It might be why I’m here, now, doing this. I hate the thing that took his place, and there will be justice. Justice means bringing him to trial, alive…but there are no conditions for hatred.

They were eye to eye, and for a moment, Depth Charge thought he was mistaken. Emerald optics glared back at him, the faint light that reached down here spinning down into the empty green glass, and there, at the bottom of the spiral…someone looked up at him. It might have been his imagination, it might have only been a trick of memories and lights, but—

--Rampage let go of the energon shard.

I know now why I survived Omicron. I wish I didn’t.

My hatred is unconditional.

His isn’t.

Click here for part 15