113-degrees-of-separation

[113-degrees-of-separation]

ok i think thats enough for today if anyone is actually reading these and wants more lmk!! dont be afraid to send an ask or dm or whatever

[113-degrees-of-separation]

"Bullets" A Last Stand of the Wreckers Story [All Parts]

I was searching for where to read the "Bullets" LSotW story and its like NOWHERE but i found it and id like to share this with you all since actually getting the LSOTW paperback is nigh impossible. lmk if this has already been done elsewhere though!!

Part 1 (already done by hunjeok)

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

Part 13

Part 14

Part 15

[113-degrees-of-separation]

(Part 6) Bullets: A Last Stand of the Wreckers story.

Ironfist was safe in the womb that was his workshop. It was small, yes, and it smelt of cordite and coolant, but it was home. The workbench in the middle of the room, worn out but well loved, glistened like brown sugar under filtered light.

The workshop doubled as a museum of Wreckers memorabilia. The main attraction, on permanent display, was Impactor's sky sled. Above the doorway was the broadsword that Springer had used to (literally) disarm Soundwave. Mounted on the wall was a grainy picture of Rack that had been taken hours before the operation that saved two lives. Best of all was something the casual visitor never noticed: if you transformed the workbench into a command chair and repositioned a few monitors, the workshop resembled the bridge of the Wreckers' one-time spaceship, the Xantium.

Ironfist sat in front of his computer and studied an image that was by now as familiar to him as the backs of his hands: a schematic of his own head. Every circuit board and nano-piston was exposed, every muscle wire and actuator made explicit. And close to the centre of the skull there was his own Unmentionable: a cerebro-sensitive bullet. Whenever this dark invader annexed another part of his headspace he would pass out. His first thought upon waking up was always, 'I'm alive!' His second thought, invariably, was 'I'm dead.' Because the bullet was still moving closer to its target.

Three people knew about the accident: Crosshairs, who ten months ago had found him on the floor of the workshop, the cerebro-gun inches from his open hand; Kaput, the surgeon who had concluded - rather too quickly for Ironfist's liking - that it was impossible to safely remove the bullet; and Skyfall-poor Skyfall - who he'd told in the Exit Rooms, and who, rather touchingly, had demanded that he be allowed to personally rip the cerebro-gun to shreds.

Ironfist knew he was lucky to be alive. If the prototype bullet had been at a more advanced stage, things would have been different. In the spirit of making the most of his remaining days he'd considered giving his workshop to Skyfall - thus keeping a promise he'd made when the two of them had first arrived on Kimia - and setting off to have his first and last adventure. He'd decided instead to stay behind and perfect the cerebro-sensitive bullets for one simple reason: it gave him power over them. It meant that he controlled them and not the other way round.

Skyfall had been frustrated by Ironfist's failure to act. 'You need your head examined,' he'd said.

Ironfist smiled at the thought of his friend's knack for making inappropriate remarks. The two of them had met in the Manganese Mountains and were both, initially, of equal rank. They had different styles of working: Ironfist was slow and methodical, happy to test and tinker until everything was in its right place, while Skyfall was the opposite. In those days the success of one had spurred the other on. Ironfist emerged as a clear winner when he developed an ion blaster capable of burning a hole in the nose cone of a Decepticon jet fighter from 30 miles away. Although he'd handed it to Optimus Prime in person, Optimus - distracted by reports of an attack on a convoy of refugees in the Neutral Territories - later told senior officers that Skyfall was behind its creation. Skyfall, for his part, kept quiet for fear of embarrassing Prime.

Although Skyfall had received a run of special commissions on the back of 'Blastergate' it was Ironfist who later made history by inventing cold phosphex, a chemical agent that turned anything it came into contact with as brittle as glass. Skyfall had joked that Ironfist had "stolen" molecular research that he had abandoned years earlier. The next day Skyfall was among those ambushed by the Decepticons outside the Yussian territories. He'd ended up in the infamous Grindcore prison camp and had not seen Ironfist again until his escape a hundred years later. Shortly afterwards, Ironfist had been offered a place at the prestigious Kimia facility, where there was a 60 year waiting list for workshops. Ironfist had accepted on the condition that Skyfall, who was still adjusting to life outside the camp, came with him.

Sensing that Skyfall was unhappy with life in Kimia's manufacturing division, Ironfist had allowed him use of the equipment in his workshop. Black phosphex was the result. A more potent version of the original, it later became apparent that Skyfall had skipped several stages of the testing process in a rush to see it used in the field. The result: 14 Autobots on maneuver near Gorlam Prime had been left exposed when their weapons, loaded with black phosphex, had turned to dust in their hands. Skyfall had been sent to Garrus-9 - not as an inmate, but as a guard. "An enforced change of career," Prowl had said at the time.

Skyfall had spent several years at G-9; on one occasion, much to the envy of Ironfist, he'd even helped the Wreckers thwart a jailbreak. Ironfist had campaigned tirelessly for his friend to be reassigned to Kimia. Demonstrating the type of bad luck that had characterized his career, Skyfall had returned just in time to be caught up in the Magnus Inquiry.

Ironfist touched the scar on his forehead. Sometimes, when he got sick of life on the knife-edge, he would think about pushing. And what stopped him was not the thought of Skyfall collapsing with grief, or of work left unfinished in his lab. No, what stopped him - what stopped him every time - was the thought of a robot with a harpoon for a hand.

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[113-degrees-of-separation]

(Part 5) Bullets: A Last Stand of the Wreckers story.

Springer stood alone on the command deck of Debris, a crumbling Autobot space station in orbit around Klo, and stared at 12 names on a computer screen.

In his right hand he was holding an Autobot bullet (of sorts) that had been fired by a Decepticon (of sorts). The bullet was, in fact, a benign projectile: inside there was no vein of combustible energon, just a data chip containing the latest report from Agent 113, an Autobot working undercover at the Decepticon Justice Division. The name was misleading: it was the DJD's job to scour their own ranks for dissidents and turncoats, and then murder them. Information provided by Agent 113 often led the Autobots to Decepticons who, being dissidents and turncoats, were willing to betray their ex-comrades in exchange for protection against reprisals.

"Your friend has a funny way of making contact," First Aid had said when he'd got in touch three days earlier, and he was right. Terrified of being detected, the increasingly eccentric Agent 113 had developed a unique way of reporting his findings. Instead of, say, a midnight rendezvous on the steps of the Chomskian Embassy, he would wait until the DJD attacked some Autobots and then shoot the 'enemy' with a data-laced bullet. Springer had had to make sure that select medics at key facilities were always on the lookout for Agent 113's calling card: a single bullet hole in the right 'eye' of an Autobot symbol.

With his latest communiqué, Agent 113 had relayed concerns within the DJD that nothing had been heard of Garrus-9 since the Autobot prison had been overrun by Sky Quake's Predators during the early stages of the Surge. The DJD had despatched an exploratory force to investigate. They'd never come back.

Springer had shared this information with High Command, who- on the basis of an earlier report from Agent 113 - had originally concluded that G-9 had been utterly destroyed. They were now faced with the possibility that Fortress Maximus and Co had not only survived the Surge, but were repelling Decepticon invasion parties while waiting to be rescued. All of which had led Prowl to contact Springer to discuss plans for Operation: Retrieval.

Springer would have preferred a more inspiring name, but it was typical of Prowl to opt for something clinical and detached. Fort Max and his team didn't need 'retrieving', they needed rescuing. Drab name aside, Operation: Retrieval was why he was doing what Impactor and Crest and Hyperion before him had done: staring at names on a screen and deciding who he would ask to join the Wreckers.

Guzzle had never held the Matrix before.

The object in his hand was the perfect weight: heavy enough to matter, to tug on the wire sinews in his forearm, but easy to carry. A good size, too: portable, but big enough to stop Decepticons in their tracks. Best of all was the way it felt: the perfect union of holder and held, it sang in his grip.

Guzzle had never held the Matrix before and probably never would, but surely it could never feel as satisfying, as fundamentally right, as it felt when he picked up The Judge, his favorite handgun.

He'd lived an itinerant life of late, latching onto a succession of Autobot squads in the hope of recapturing the sense of belonging that he'd felt when serving in his old platoon. He'd decided to help with Dipstick's reconstruction project until he came across something better suited to his talents (those talents chiefly consisting of the ability to insert various deadly projectiles into various deadly Decepticons). And while the thrill of close combat hadn't entirely deserted him, this most unreflective of robots had recently identified a certain… hollowness inside him. His first reaction, of course, had been to seek medical help. Fixit had carried out a full body search and, finding no internal cavities, suggested that the hollow feeling was not an early indication of corrodia gravis but "an emotional response". Guzzle had pondered this at length, until a pang of acute discomfort had heralded the arrival of bona fide insight: he was in mourning. Most of his old platoon had died trying to rescue Kup, and he was still struggling to accept their deaths and the circumstances surrounding them.

His new life on Igue Moor - a fuel depot on the outskirts of Babu Yar- had settled into a reassuring rhythm. Every day, a few hours before dawn, he and The Judge would go outside and shoot statues. If he'd felt a flicker of guilt when he'd first started using the remains of Sacred Debating Chamber as a firing range, he hadn't recognized it as such.

He loaded a handful of tracer bullets into his gun and looked around for today's first target. On the statue of Babu Fost, the Great Pacifist, he found it: a forehead scar. He slid his green targeting visor over his optics and was beginning to squeeze the trigger when the unthinkable happened: he stopped. This frightened him; he'd always seen a gunshot through. He wondered whether his overworked trigger finger had seized up, but no, Fixit had only last week given him new digits. Which meant that this was something else entirely: another 'feeling'. Something, he sensed, to do with his own mortality. Thankfully, the moment passed quickly and he felt sufficiently at ease with himself to unload an entire magazine of tracers into the Great Pacifist's head.

For some reason the luminous green tracer trails did not fade away. Instead, they hovered over the floor of the Sacred Debating Chamber and began gathering themselves up. They started flickering. Then rippling. Then shimmering.

The Judge slipped from Guzzle's new fingers.

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[113-degrees-of-separation]

(Part 4) Bullets: A Last Stand of the Wreckers story.

"I managed to iron out the kinks. Not that it mattered, in the end." The sky above Hydrus 5 was losing it, no question. Subjected to a variety of rare and recherche weaponry, the browbeaten firmament was now suffering something of a meteorological panic attack: horizontal rain, banks of scalding vapor, clouds that collapsed in on themselves - that sort of thing.

The Decepticons were to blame. And the Autobots. For months the two sides had battled enthusiastically on the ground below, throwing everything they had at each other. Now that the battle was over it was time for quiet soul-searching and private reflection.

"Will you get a load of that!" exclaimed Pyro, surveying the landscape from the top of a mountain created only that morning by the Tremorcons and their tectonic cannon. The remains of a displaced Hydrusian temple smoldered nearby. "Look around you, Afterburner! What do you see? Freedom! A world liberated from the Decepticon menace! I mean yes, the planet has sustained minor collateral damage, but that's to be expected when you're up against an infiltration unit on the brink of Phase 4." He paused. "Or is it Phase 5? I find it hard to tell them apart."

"We fought hard and we came through," said Afterburner. "And if I may say so, commander, I think you tipped the balance. Taking on Seizor single-handed and all that."

"Oh, I don't deserve to be singled out." Pyro puffed out his chest. "Which bit did you like best?"

"Definitely the bit when you were driving towards Seizor's bunker and the Tremorcons were in your way." Afterburner sketched out the action with his hands. "You ram-raided Aftershock and Fracture - bam! - and then activated the boosters under your cab so you could transform -- in midair."

"Yes, well, that's a rather famous maneuver. Go on."

"After you put down Tectonix and the others you found Seizor in the bunker. I think you sensed it was going to be your final battle and wanted to say something to mark the occasion. You must've accidentally switched on inter-Autobot radio because we all heard you say-"

"Anyway!" said Pyro. "Moving on…"

"You said - and I don't think I'll ever forget the sheer sense of gravitas in your voice - you said, 'You're late for a meeting with my fists, Decepticreep!'" Pyro winced. He'd been working on a far more memorable line, something to do with standing and/or falling.

"Anyway," said Afterburner, "I'd better go and see how the rest of the troops are coping. Will you be giving a speech?"

"Yes. Just give me a moment to compose something."

He watched Afterburner turn into a motorcycle and speed down the mountainside, then started to replay Optimus Prime's greatest speeches in his head. As he searched his mem-net under keywords like 'courage', 'resolve' and 'fortitude', he was reminded of how any problem could be solved by asking one question - what would Prime do? - and a supplemental: what would he say whilst doing it? Pulling a soldering gun from a chest compartment he'd had re-sized to accommodate the Matrix (just in case…), he climbed down into the remains of the temple and started patching things up. He was distracted by an odd feeling, as if something was brushing against his spark. For a second he thought he was about to experience a vision, something Prime always seemed to be doing. 'Bring it on,' he thought, steeling himself. 'The more apocalyptic the better.'

He sensed a movement on the periphery of his optic field and turned, afraid of what he might see. Partway down the mountain was a faint green flicker of heat-rippled air; partway down the mountain was the Shimmer.

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[113-degrees-of-separation]

(Part 3) Bullets: A Last Stand of the Wreckers story.

Ironfist looked around Room 113, with its white walls and its featureless surfaces. Buried in the depths of Kimia, it couldn't have been more ordinary - far removed from the high-octane adventures of his beloved Wreckers, with their battles atop disintegrating star freighters and their skirmishes with The Anguished.

And yet as he took his seat in front of the Ethics Committee he knew that it was in nondescript rooms like this one that the important battles would be fought: heated discussions about pacts and treaties, sanctions and reparations. Forget vast armies of heavily-armed robots tearing into each other until the last one standing surrendered to his mortal wounds; the Autobot/Decepticon war would only reach its end when two robots sat opposite each other in a room like this one, forgot about the color of their badges, and started to talk.

"Thank you for your patience," said Xaaron from a table at the front of the room. Seated next to him were Animus and Trailbreaker, one each side. "Sometimes the Committee can reach a decision quickly, but on this occasion it was necessary to examine your submission from several angles. I will summarize the case before delivering the Committee's verdict."

Ironfist reached into his waist compartment and pulled out his trusty data slug; a black rectangle of metal stamped with a white Autobot symbol, he only needed it when nervous. As Xaaron began reading from prepared notes he flipped the slug between his fingers and took another look around. When the Ethics Committee had finished for the day, Room 113 would no doubt play host to another tableful of bureaucrats with glassy eyes and a thousand ways of apportioning blame.

The rush to convene committees was symptomatic of life after what had become known as the Surge. After a betrayal within the Autobot ranks, Megatron had acquired the access codes to all of the major Autobot outposts. Waves of Decepticons had attacked on multiple fronts, gripped by a terrifying desire to win. Prime, as always, had turned the tide, but the Autobot army that was left to pick up the pieces was decidedly ill-at- ease with itself. Now, every sullen soldier was a potential turncoat; anyone who raised their voice was a another one to watch; you'd loiter in a doorway to avoid a ranting comrade-in-arms before quietly passing on their name to Someone Higher Up. Plagued by mutual mistrust and desperate for ideological certainty, for fixity of purpose, the Autobots looked to those in charge to lay down some ground rules. And if that meant extra scrutiny, extra checks and balances, so be it.

Ironfist refocused as Xaaron held up a bullet.

"Your testimony, Ironfist, was crucial in helping the Committee decide whether to sanction the use of these 'cerebro-sensitive bullets' in general combat situations."

Ironfist was tired of the sterile language, the qualifiers and caveats. Everything was carefully considered these days: tactical decisions were made only after month-long strategy meetings, while official pronouncements were equivocal and gently shaded, lest they be undermined by unforeseen events. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that the hunger for accountability had begun before the Surge. It had begun, in fact, the moment it stopped raining on Babu Yar. There was horror at what Gideon's Decepticons had done to Flame's Autobots, but after the horror came the questions: just what was it that had fallen from that bright, cloudless sky and all but eaten the Autobots below? A few days later an anonymous informant had alerted High Command to the similarities between 'Gideon's Glue', the nickname given to this ravenous chemical weapon, and a hyper-toxic vesicant allegedly being developed on Kimia. Prowl had ordered an inquiry and all of Kimia's weapons engineers, from Brainstorm down, had given evidence before a panel appointed by Chief Justice Tyrest himself. A panel, chaired by Ultra Magnus, that had sat in this very room.

To Ironfist, who - like everyone else - had denied playing any part in the creation of the vesicant, the Magnus Inquiry had felt like a trial. Skyfall had been a tremendous source of strength; a confidant and a trusted advisor, his best friend had sensed the depths of his anguish and arranged for him to be ferried away from Kimia so that he could start a new life elsewhere. In the end that hadn't been necessary: Magnus ruled that it was impossible to establish a definite link between the massacre on Babu Yar and any chemical weapons developed on Kimia. But the seeds of suspicion had been planted, and the Ethics Committee was just one of several ways of keeping tabs on Brainstorm and the rest of them.

Xaaron continued: "The Committee understands that, when fired, these bullets exhibit something you describe as 'cranial bias.' They abandon their natural trajectory in favour of the nearest… well, the nearest head."

"Yes," said Ironfist, sensing that he was expected to elaborate. "Each bullet has a simple onboard computer which is activated when the bullet is fired. The computer immediately locks on to its target's neural processor."

"Tell me, Ironfist," said Trailbreaker, picking up the bullet and guiding it in slow motion towards his own head. "Are you proud of what you've done?"

Ironfist dropped his data slug. "I'm sorry?"

"Most weapons can be used to wound. To disarm. To neutralize a threat. Your weapon kills. Every time. And I wondered whether, in your world, that counted as a success."

"Trailbreaker's question will be struck from the record," said Xaaron.

"The moral issues raised by the existence of these bullets are for the Committee to consider, not you." He raised a hand to silence Trailbreaker's objection. "And the Committee has reached a decision. Ironfist, please stand.

"This Committee is charged with upholding Section 19 of the Autobot Code, and to that end we have considered whether to sanction the use of this ammunition. We have decided that to use cerebro-sensitive bullets against enemy combatants would in all but the most exceptional cases constitute a war crime. The manufacture of these bullets is henceforth banned under Protocol III of the Non-Conventional Weapons Act. You have 36 hours to surrender the bullets and any specially adapted firing mechanism." Xaaron and the others walked out, leaving Ironfist standing and staring into space.

"Hey."

He jumped as he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Skyfall holding up his hands apologetically.

"Relax, buddy, it's me. How'd it go?"

"Protocol III." "Aw, no. I'm sorry. Who was chairing? Xaaron? Well, that explains it. The guy lost his bearings decades ago. He's older than most mineral deposits."

Skyfall detected a smile behind Ironfist's faceplate. "See, that's where you're better than me, Fiz. If I'd just been humiliated by a bunch of pacifists - if I'd just seen months of work go up in smoke - I'd be mad as hell."

Ironfist shrugged, stepped into the corridor and closed the door behind them.

"Room 113, of all places," said Skyfall. "I still get flashbacks to the Inquiry. Sitting there in front of Magnus, listening to Nightbeat talk about scar patterns and droplet craters."

"Let's not go there."

"No, you're right. I know I had it bad, but it was nothing compared to the grilling they gave you. I'd have buckled. After the third day of questioning, I'd have buckled." Skyfall steered Ironfist towards The Exit Rooms, a warren of recharge booths next to the shuttle bays and the one place where Kimia's staff could take a break from their duties and ingest energon or engex. "But you, my friend, are made of sterner stuff. The strong and silent type… A little bit Impactor-esque, if you don't mind me saying so."

"Stop it," grinned Ironfist, struggling to contain a spark surge.

"Uh-oh, here comes Perceptor's brainier spark brother," said Skyfall.

"Hi, Brainstorm. Don't tell me - Room 113?"

Kimia's foremost weapons engineer lifted up a slim case that was handcuffed to his wrist. "How'd you guess?"

Brainstorm was a legend among Kimia's engineering community, mainly because his weapons were so horrendously over the top. More often than not, whatever exotic gun Ironfist or Crosshairs or Tripwire unveiled,

Brainstorm had not only developed a more extreme version but had seen it rejected by a scandalized Ethics Committee who had found the weapon so morally reprehensible that to even contemplate its use in all but the most extreme combat situations (such as the imminent destruction of Cybertron) was utterly unconscionable. Brainstorm rather gleefully referred to these weapons as the Unmentionables.

"What's in the case?" asked Skyfall.

Brainstorm leaned forward conspiratorially. "I call it an MCP. Malevolent Counterintuitive Pathogen. It's based on the Uncertainty Principle. When you open this case you'll find whatever you least expect. And then it'll kill you."

"Very funny," said Ironfist. "You are joking, right?"

Skyfall tugged his arm. "Come on, Fiz. Exit Rooms."

"I'm going to need that cerebro-gun back, Brainstorm," Ironfist called out as he was dragged away. "Don't worry about giving it the once over."

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[113-degrees-of-separation]

(Part 2) Bullets: A Last Stand of the Wreckers story

"I know this is difficult to talk about, Flattop, but that's actually a good sign. It means we're getting somewhere. Think of this as a positive experience. Today could be life changing!"

Rung looked at his patient. Flattop was sitting cross-legged underneath the relaxation table, hugging his knees and… well it wasn't quite whimpering, but it was certainly a good approximation.

Wasn't it incredible what vocal synthesizers could do these days?When he'd started out as a psychoanalyst his patients had not only presented with a more limited repertoire of programming disorders, but they'd expressed them simply, and in words. As the Cybertronian race had assimilated speech patterns synonymous with organic life-forms, and as vocal software had became more sophisticated, it had become easier for 'troubled' robots to convey the parlous state of their mental architecture not by talking, but by whining, grunting and, yes, sobbing.

But it wasn't fair to blame hi-tech vocal software for his more challenging patients. It was the war's fault, of course. The dynamics of perpetual combat did not make for good mental health. The number of patients complaining of cerebral malfunctions had increased a thousandfold since that fateful afternoon, all those years ago, when a sniper's bullet had comprehensively emptied the back of Zeta Prime's head.

Some recent cases sprang to mind: the paranoid cadet who thought his optic sensors had been reprogrammed so that he only saw what 'They' wanted to him to see; and the data processor, obsessed with gestalt technology, who suffered from a variation of phantom limb syndrome and refused to go indoors because he was convinced that he formed the right leg of a colossal super-warrior. In recent months he'd also diagnosed several cases of primus apotheosis, which made ordinary robots try to emulate Optimus Prime, and treated a medic who'd been found obsessively examining Autobot badges. (The medic had denied doing this.)

Compared to some of his patients, Flattop here hadn't presented as too much of a challenge. Rung had first assumed that he was dealing with a manic depressive or a soldier grappling with his conscience. Textbook stuff. But everything had changed when Flattop had admitted that he was at Babu Yar on the day it rained.

"I'm so sorry," Rung had said, as Flattop's pristine bodywork had taken on a new and terrible significance. "I wouldn't have guessed that you were a Survivor."

Most Survivors, like Flattop, had accepted the offer of a brand new body; but some went further, having their memory nets rewritten so that they could forget what happened on the day they got wet. Then there were those who refused, on point of principle, to accept a donor body or to have their memories tampered with. They were the ones who would stand on street corners in front of hastily-erected neon signs that read, 'I was at Babu-Yar'. No elaboration was necessary: you just had to look at the way the light poured through their perforated bodies like water through a sieve.

Rung crouched down and tried to make eye contact with the Babu Yar veteran who, by sheltering under a table, was very much conforming to type. And yet Flattop wasn't there to talk about the day he'd became a Survivor. No, he was there to discuss something else, something that had happened only a few months ago.

Rung offered Flattop his hand. "Tell me what you saw," he said softly. Flattop climbed sheepishly to his feet. "I was on Hydrus 5, serving under Bluestreak."

Rung nodded at the mention of his longest-standing patient.

"We were stationed in the mountains, watching some 'Cons below. It was a routine mission. Well, routine for everyone else."

"It was your first tour of duty since… since it rained."

"Yeah. I was twitchy. I'd not long had my new…" He gestured to his body. "I was still breaking this in. Anyway, we were perched on this ledge and Blue asks me to check the southwest vantage point. It's getting dark and I'm aching all over and I look up and I see it. Right in front of me."

"The Shimmer. What was it like?"

"It was… well, it was just like they say. A green light that just hangs in the air. Kinda… spectral, I guess. I'm not good at describing things."

Rung helped Flattop lay down on the relaxation table. "So. What did you do?"

"I… I passed out. I mean, I was terrified. I'd heard all the stories. I knew what the Shimmer meant."

"Hmm. Tell me what do you think it means."

"Death! It means I'm going to die!"

Rung walked to his desk and picked up the model of Ark-1. Flattop was right, in a sense. The Shimmer was a piece of modern folklore. According to legend, anyone who saw it was destined to die in the near future. Being a rationalist at heart, Rung thought the Shimmer was a myth; being a psychoanalyst, he thought it was a projection of the subconscious, the fear of death made manifest. But soldiers were a superstitious lot, and robots like Flattop - poor, traumatized Flattop - had started taking the so-called Shimmer Stories seriously.

"You are not going to die," he said, putting down Ark-1. "I can give you two explanations for what you saw, a scientific one and a psychoanalytical one. Which would you prefer?"

Flattop stared at the ceiling. "Okay. Well, the scientific explanation is pretty straightforward. You'd not long been in your new body. After a spark transplant it takes time for the neural processor to find its bearings. All those sensor-nets to recalibrate. So the simplest explanation is that you experienced a good old-fashioned visual hallucination."

Rung started pacing around his desk, talking to his hands. "And the psychoanalytical explanation? You were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. You may have inherited a new body, but Babu Yar left a trace. You don't feel you've properly cheated death." He looked up. "I hope that puts you at ease." He walked over to his patient, frowning. "Flattop? Is everything okay?" He was about to wave his hand in front of Flattop's face when he realized, with an exquisitely-synthesized gasp, that the robot in front of him was dead.

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