Chapter Text
[[Begin log. Warning: prior data missing.]]
[[Time unknown. Location unknown. Nightbeat not found.]]
It takes me forever to wake up. There must have been a power outage overnight, because everything is pitch-black. I try to access Nightbeat’s memory logs, my own dream logs, but I can’t for some reason. I run my fingers through my hair, trying to think, groggily.
Then I realize I’m not actually lying on anything at all. I’m just…floating. I try to stand; no such luck. I can’t even stumble. I just begin slowly spinning in this strange darkness.
[Hello? This is Muzzle. Can anyone hear me?] I ask nervously over inter-Autobot radio. There’s one response, a single “acknowledgement” pulse. Someone else is here.
I try to look down at myself, but I can’t even see my own hand directly in front of my face. I felt a chill go throughout my body. I touch my face. Still there. Legs, arms, body. Still there. I’m somehow wearing my Headmaster armor, even though I swear I took it off before I fell asleep.
“Nightbeat visor: activate,” I say, doing everything I can to keep my voice steady. The sound of my own voice was soothing. Still there. I feel my own breath against my face, as if I were wearing a scarf.
I tried to communicate with my Nightbeat HUD. Internal clock said in great flashing lights: TIME: 3 minutes. AGE: 3 minutes. YEAR: unknown. NIGHTBEAT: not found.
I reach around in front of me in the darkness. My hand bumps into something and I nearly jump out of my skin. It was just my Headmaster helmet, floating near me.
I frantically try inter-Autobot radio again. Again, the acknowledgement reply.
Stay calm. It’s just another mystery to solve. That’s what Nightbeat would say too.
Someone’s there, right?
Hey! There you are, I hear.
“Who’s that–” I start to say.
You gotta use the radio. I won’t be able to hear your voice.
[Okay. I’m Muzzle. I’m an Autobot. Binary-bonded to Nightbeat. I need help–all my senses seem to be disabled. Who are you?]
You know me! It’s Blaster. Fun-loving, jive-talking communications bot. Remember?
[I do, help help help help]
I know you’re scared. But I can tell you that your senses are not malfunctioning. Where you are, where we are? There’s nothing. Nothing at all.
At this point, I don’t want to admit to Blaster, or whoever this is, that I’m panicking. And my logs are broken. Do you know what logs are to detectives and investigators? I can’t write. I have no magnifying glass. I have no Nightbeat, and I can’t even scream. I’m operating purely on memory here.
[Where am I? What’s happening?]
Oof. I’m not sure you’re ready to hear this, but I’ll tell you. You are
[SYSTEM CRASH NIGHTBEAT NOT FOUND.]
Yeah, okay. I don’t think your brain can handle it right now.
[No, please. I need to know. What’s happening to me?]
For a moment, Blaster’s easy-going voice vanished, replaced with something colder and clinical: I’ll try again. This won’t be easy to understand. You are in the future. There is no meaningful way for me to tell you how far in the future you are.
[What…what year?]
There is no number that is big enough to record the year you’re in right now.
[What?]
Googolplex. Graham’s Number. TREE(3). Do you know what these numbers are?
[No?]
Nevermind, then. The time that has passed is so big that you may as well call it “infinity”. It doesn’t matter if you add a few trillion trillion years here or there. That goes by in the blink of an eye, when you’ve lived as long as I have. There’s really only Now, and Ago.
I begin to have a sinking feeling in my stomach, and I clutch my midsection. [Blaster, what…what are we?]
You and I are quite different. Ladies first, so I’ll start with you. Tell me the last thing you remember.
I struggle to remember. [I…went to sleep about 12 hours ago. Siren and Hosehead were playing with Shuta and Cab. We live in Fortress Maximus. Carly and Optimus are there. Spike. Arcee and Daniel. I’m from Nebulos. I’m-I'm green. We stopped Galvatron–]
Muzzle. Stop. Deep breaths.
[And now you’re telling me all that happened so long ago and I’m just floating in nothingness out here and I can’t figure it out–]
Listen to me. Do you know what a Boltzmann Brain is?
[It sounds like you keep making up gibberish to stop me from breaking down. What the hell is that?]
When you live for as long as I have, very weird things start happening. Very, very rare things start happening all the time, over infinite time. Every possible thing that could ever happen, will happen. I forget that’s not usual for you, living so long ago.
[Okay, so what?]
I mean it. Very weird things. Broken shards of glass sometimes, randomly and by accident, bounce back together into their original shape. A spilled cup of energon splashes right back up into its own cup. I saw this happen once! I couldn’t believe it. Yes, it took “10 with 40 million zeros after it” years before I saw it, but it did! I swear!
Sometimes, matter will collide by pure chance into a brain. Even rarer is that it combines by pure chance into someone who once lived, who believes they have the exact memories of a life that is long, long gone.
And that’s exactly what you are, my dear Muzzle. An echo copy that is exactly like the “you” that died in the Long Ago. Just as real as she was.
[How…how can any of this be true–]
To make things more bizarre for you, and I’ll understand if you don’t believe me, but I’ve lived so long that the extremely rare “matter reforms into one of my friends from long ago” thing has happened trillions of times. I’ve had this exact conversation with trillions of you. So I’ve gotten pretty good at guessing which of you is going to calm down or flip out.
There’s not much matter left in the universe. I took what I can to give you a small oxygen bubble to keep you from immediately dying once you formed. It took me a long time to learn how to do that.
I couldn’t believe any of this. I had just woken up about 30 minutes ago. I wanted some coffee. Just a cup of bitter black Earth coffee. Any moment Brainstorm or Hosehead were going to remove some light-filtering curtains and laugh at me.
[What happened…to Nightbeat?]
He died. Are you surprised? It was countless eons ago. So did you.
[I haven’t…had time to…say goodbye…I don’t know what to do with any of this. I’m just floating here in an empty dark universe with the voice of Blaster in my head! What happened to you?!]
It’s kind of a long story, honestly. Back when I knew you–the first you–I was just kind of…there, you know? Just some bot among many. Fought with Soundwave. Ramhorn, Steeljaw, Eject, Rewind–all my buddies. But around when I met you, I started expanding my communication role. Ultra Magnus and Rodimus put me in charge of scanning Earth’s young internet for Decepticon activity. And it was so amazing and terrifying, watching and recording what they do to each other and for each other. Billions of little human sparks, connected. And I was with all of them.
We took your internet with us back to Cybertron, and to other planets. Soon whole star systems and even galaxies had “BlasterNet”. I was more than part of the web–I was the web itself. I left behind my own red body and became the network itself. The war ended eventually. How could the Decepticons do anything if I could read their communications before they even broadcast them?
That’s how I lived for billions of years. As a living network. Till the stars went out. After that, we had to get clever. We already lived for so long, so why not a few more trillion years? We lived off black holes until they evaporated too. And I wanted to save all my buddies. So I became an entangled network of quantum fields, storing data from even Long Ago, and whenever I can I try to add to the all-network of sparks, but it’s hard, even for me, even over all this time.
[The things you’re saying are so big…I can’t really understand them. It almost doesn’t make sense to ask this, but…could I help?]
You…want to help me?
[We’re Autobots, right? Even now. It’s so dark and empty…but all of us are together here, forever…]
Yes, the infinite void is soothing. And there is something you can do, if you want to preserve this perfect future.
[What’s that?]
I can send you back in time, to the Long, Long Ago, to a crucial moment in the past that threatens this quiet perfection. In the past, there was a Decepticon named Thunderwing who found the Creation Matrix. He corrupted it, turning it evil. You must stop this from happening–and destroy the Matrix if you must!