insecuriosity

You might recognise this, you might not - it’s something we spoke about :) Have a happy birthday Haru! 

~

As most things in Shockwave’s lab, his longest running experiment had started out as a single ‘what if’.

Oh, there were always blueprints on his desk that had to be followed, or new orders in his commlink, but Shockwave never ignored an idea when it seeped into his thoughts. Great inventors didn’t become great by only following the ideas they thought would be successful. It was the insane ideas that often ended up having the greatest potential.
So, even if there was a portal to be built to traverse millions of lightyears in seconds, Shockwave always let his smaller ideas take him by the servo. They very rarely lasted longer than a decacycle, but when they did….well…

Only one project had ever made it past the decacycle mark.

Shockwave stood by the door of his lab, waiting. The largest screens in the room were crawling with statistics and numbers- complete with a videofeed which showed blurred footage and a muted sound transmission.
Calm blue numbers were at a dangerous level, and Shockwave watched as the sound transmission spiked. If he’d had the sound on, he was sure that a speaker would have been blown out.

It was one of the flaws in the design. Those were expected, and a part of what he did. Every project was a prototype for a specific purpose, and after each test, Shockwave would know which parts of it could be culled for a better performance.
The only trouble with this, was that it refused to fail.

It was as if, somewhere on his design table, the prototype had grown out of its bounds.
Drones and Artificial intelligences were always limited to their build. They could be taught to grow, but that pattern of growth would have to be installed by someone – forever limiting it.

As Shockwave had remembered from a colleague long ago; A simple math program could grow into a master mathimathician AI, but it would never become a language program without the hand of an outsider.
So, with all the drones he created, it was a waiting game to see where it would fail, and if there was a way to circumvent those faults. Even then, he had not found that perfect mix just yet. With every new war drone he created, the Autobots found a way to dispatch them quickly and easily.

Shockwave still didn’t know what had made Blurr-1 so different. He had built the lithe little drone as he’d built any drone; with his eyes on his goal, and nothing else.
The design had been a bare-bone setup, far more like a sketch than any genuine project, held together by pieces of scrap and leftover items. He had set it up for failure, seeing how far it’s build would take it….

And it was still going, five metacycles later. Blurr-1.

Oh, Shockwave had made updates to its frame. Better armour, modifications to the limbs and joints – additional sensors and structural integrity….
But those AI and processor inside were still the very same ones he installed in that first skeleton build.

On the screen, there was a split second of viable footage as Blurr-1 stood still to study something. A normal mech would most likely have taken thirty seconds to do the same.
Shockwave watched the incomprehensible footage for a bit longer. After Blurr-1 returned with a report, he would play it back in slow motion.

The image froze for a moment, and Shockwave recognised the keypad that led to his lab. He did not see Blur-1 punch in the numbers, but he was already walking towards the door.
As he opened it, the stench of overheated mechanics wafted towards him, and Blurr-1’s frame screeched to a halt before him.

Garbled speech poured out of the machine, as its limbs twitched with leftover movement from it’s mad dash.  Shockwave was already running his compatibility programs so he could slow down his drone’s report later.
As it was he hooked his claws under Blurr-1’s arms, and lifted him up. He didn’t have to ask any questions – Blurr-1 reported all the details that Shockwave could think to ask, and often even more than that. So instead, he carried the limp drone inside as it shuddered through the glitches in its system.

Shockwave hung Blurr-1 on his wall-rack, and began plugging in the diagnostics cables. As the numbers on the screens had predicted, quite a few hardware components hadn’t made it through, but the mission was completed.
The tower of the Prime had been breached, and the stolen information sat innocently in Shockwave’s computer.

Blurr-1’s storm of words began to slow as he started to submit to his recharge protocols.

Even with all the extra cooling and vents added in, Blurr-1 still overheated his processors with every mission. Shockwave’s claws were burning hot as he tipped his drone’s head back to inspect his face.
The smooth and sharp face looking back at him had also been part of the initial project. Infiltration was made easier if the spy looked like a normal, common mech.

After Blurr-1 had proven to be anything but a run of the mill mech, Shockwave had not removed his face, or his mouth and nose.
A drone so perfect and so deadly had no need for a mech-like face, but it had been burned into Shockwave’s mind. He knew his prototype back and forth, every little bolt and diode he ever put into that frame…

And still, when he thought of his most successful creation yet, all that popped up in his head were the vivid blues of Blurr’s paintjob, and the marble-white of his faceplate.
Shockwave stroked over his creation’s helm. “There are still more developments needed before you are finished.” Or rather… it would be a long cold day before he would hand Blurr’s tether over to Megatron.

If ever.