Binary Logic

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG
IDW
Jetfire, Ironfist
some canon refs that may be obscure
for tf_speedwriting prompt ‘asexuality’—I took it as a biological, rather than a sociological definition. The application of the male pronoun to Arcee is deliberate. J

Jetfire frowned, even though he knew the data scrolling on the screen couldn’t register his displeasure.  It wasn’t the data’s fault it didn’t make sense. It was his. There was something he was missing, some piece of the puzzle, some fact or variable he hadn’t considered. His failing, his oversight.

He scrubbed his hands over his face, mutely glad he was alone in the lab.  As much as he enjoyed the puzzle of science, when the stakes were this high, he couldn’t, and the puzzle became a snare that trapped him, and thinking was trying to wriggle free.

He needed to solve this.  But the strings of data: CNA sequences, phased-response uptake results, refused to speak, sullen and silent as Arcee himself.

A light flared behind him, the door opening spilling light into the darkened lab from the corridor outside, and he was no longer alone. He turned, having to twist from the waist to see around the broad flat panels of his own wings, cutting through the dimness between them.

“Ironfist.”

A friendly wave from the short, chunky mech. “Thought I was the only one who’d be here,” Ironfist said, sheepishly.  

“I could leave,” Jetfire said, standing up, hand hovering over the console to shut it down.  He probably wasn’t going to get any more out of it, just staring at the string of results.

“Oh no! No need.”  Ironfist rubbed the back of his helm, sheepishly. “I just couldn’t recharge.  I thought I could get something done. You know,” the fingers grazed the dent in the front of his helm, where the cerebro-bullet had penetrated, “while I still can.”

Jetfire couldn’t imagine—didn’t want to—what it was like for the smaller mech: working against time, knowing that every moment a bullet was worming its way into your cortex, slowly slithering to kill you.  Oh, philosophers had said for ages that every moment of life was the awareness of death, but it was different when it was tangible, he thought.  When you could see, and feel, it happening, like Death’s cold breath on your plating.

And the bitter irony, that the bullet was one of Ironfist’s own inventions. Another mech might have shied away from science, after that, taken it as a sign of…something, a warning, a brush of some divine hand.  Even Jetfire, who believed none of those things, an acolyte of science, a believer of reason, would have been so racked with self-doubt.  But Ironfist had pressed on, continuing to spin out weapon after weapon for the Autobots. And more, to keep the same sweet demeanor he always had.

What could Jetfire say, really?  He merely nodded, still hesitating over the console. It was as if he felt the answer fluttering like a moth, just out of reach, and he feared that if he shut the terminal down, it would flit off forever. 

“So, what are you working on, anyway?” Ironfist tilted his head, curious. “Oh! Arcee! Can I look?”

The question was a little belated, but that was Ironfist, too. Jetfire stepped aside, almost shyly.  “It’s like everything Jhiaxus does,” he said.  “And there has to be a logic to it.  I just can’t see it.”  He felt his upper wings sag in defeat. 

“Hmmmm.”  Ironfist reached behind him blindly with one foot, hooking a stool and drawing it behind him.  Jetfire shifted in a nervous anticipation, feeling almost like a student whose portfolio was up for review.  It was hard to work at Kimia, without feeling your worth as a mech judged, your value narrowed to the output of your cortex. And he was fine with that, he’d spent ages focusing on science, but sometimes it felt, well…vulnerable.

Ironfist looked up. Not at Jetfire, but at some place over his shoulder. “You’re focusing on the molecular structure. The chemical interchanges.  Maybe that’s the wrong approach.”

“Wrong.” He felt stung.

“You have data. Lots of it, and it’s all good.  But it’s like looking at a target in the pistol range.  It doesn’t tell you everything about the gun.”  Another sheepish swipe over his helm.  “Sorry. I don’t do metaphors really well.”

“No. It makes sense. And I’ve tried to think that way but…I’m not Jhiaxus. I’m not sure any of us really understand how his mind works.”

Ironfist nudged his lower wing with one shoulder, a friendly, companionlike gesture. “You’re the best reverse-engineer we have, Jetfire.”

 It wasn’t Ironfist’s specialty: he was pure creation, pure science,  a broad and wild field, while Jetfire toiled in the narrower confines, the tunnels of untangling another mech’s work.  It was equal parts psychology as applied science. And he did pride himself on it, until he reached his limits.  He’d figured out much of Bludgeon’s work, and even Thunderwing’s, but Jhiaxus almost seemed to taunt him from across the veil of the Expansion.  If he were a more romantic spark, he’d consider him an arch-nemesis.  “Not good enough.”

“I think,” Ironfist said, swiveling on the stool, “you’re asking the right question. Just to the wrong thing. Don’t ask the chemicals.  Don’t ask the CNA.  Don’t ask a file you have about Jhiaxus. But ask, well, why would anyone want this?”

“Arcee doesn’t.”  The mech hated his new form, hated the difference, unmistakable and yet impossible to qualify. 

“Maybe that’s a place to look.” Ironfist nodded. “But who would, and why?”

Jetfire thought.  He felt…slow in front of Ironfist who had that sort of bright, phosphorescent genius.  “Symmetry,” he said, eventually. “Binarism seems almost an order of the universe: Dark, light, good, evil, Autobot, Decepticon.” A shrug.  “Orderly.”

“But those dichotomies can be false. Day and night get blurry on the edges where they meet. And an Autobot can change sides. And good…,” he gave a helpless, wounded shrug: Skyfall’s betrayal still ate at him, and then the Council’s banning of his own weapons as too dangerous. Good…becoming evil.

And what Jetfire did: trying to untwist evil, to make it good. Or so he told himself.  “But the opposites at least create a scale,” he said.  “Unstable, unsteady, but there’s something to measure by. Or at least…the idea of measurement. It makes us question what we are, and how. And why.”

“Hmm.” Ironfist tapped his mask. “Question is, why would Jhiaxus want us to do that?”

True. Most of Jhiaxus’s experiments were clearly designed as weapons. The gestalts, for one. Or were they?  Jetfire snatched at a datapad, opening the Jhiaxus file.  “Advancement,” he said, quickly. “Jhiaxus wants to push forward evolution.  Maybe this, too?”

“Causing adaptations, mutations, and seeing what happens?” Ironfist nodded. That was half of his science: try it, see what happens.  “Same thing we do. I do.”

“Except we don’t use living subjects.”  Except Monstructor, trying to undo what had been done. Except Arcee.  Was it better, to be experimenting on experiments or was that merely a justification, an imposition of yet another false binary?  He frowned, another thought hitting him. “And then, in the act of undoing, in trying to fix what he’s done to Arcee, we’re doing what he wants. Advancing our kind, our race.”

“But we’re doing it,” Ironfist said. “We are. And we have a better handle on the binary.  We have restraints.”

And the thinness of that restraint hung like tissue between them, neither daring to shred through it with the hard words of truth. 

Comments

[ravynfyre.livejournal.com]

man, your insight is just.... stunning, y'know? *glomps*

[playswithworms.livejournal.com]

I love Jetfire's science-musings, and con-crit wobblies. Poor Ironfist! I don't know much about him at all, other than from this bit, but he sounds interesting.

[silaphet.livejournal.com]

wish English had more gender neutral options. *soft hugs for Jetfire*

[zatnik.livejournal.com]

"‘asexuality’—I took it as a biological, rather than a sociological definition."

Cool! I was hoping somebody would do exactly that with this prompt. I really like how you've written this from the perspective of, errrr, a mind born of their social and biomechanical context, not ours.

It's always really interested me to try to look at a situation from a perspective totally different to my own - for instance a set of ideals that might come from growing up under different conditions, or a different culture, etc.

It doesn't get much different than giant asexual robots, and us... mammals..., in spite of noted similarities.

I also like that this isn't the focus of the character's hang-ups, but rather they're concerned about morality. Sexuality isn't a full time obsession for naturally asexual creatures.

(Enough blah from me)