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Coming online… location/ time: Corcapsia Incursion, 3rd stellar cycle. Designation: LT-387 of Corcapsia incursion.
Something push you out of the ship and you are falling. You see that you are not the only one. Others do too, others like you. Even if you don't really know what you are. Fortunately the data you were onlined with can enlighten you.
Made-to-order soldier (abbreviation MTO): Constructed cold. Function: soldier. Alt-mode: M-I37 tank
You wonder what an alt- mode is. Or a tank. It feels important. You want to know more but your danger protocol triggers and you are informed to put yourself in position, otherwise the impact will terminate you- whatever that means- You manage to turn yourself toward the ground, and you see the battlefield for the first time. A mass of mechs like you are fighting each other, the ground already covered in bodies. You notice that there seemed to be two groups determined by a red or purple symbol on their chest.
Red: Autobot. Purple: Decepticon: enemy. Destroy Decepticons, protect fellow autobots, the data said. So that what you are? An autobot?
As the ground gets closer you feel something trigger itself in you and you transform.
You dudn't know you could do that and it is a strange sensation and you would like the time to examine it more closely, time to understand what is happening to you but you still don’t have it. A Decepticon jumps in your direction. Your battle program triggers and you shoot him. He dodge and brings a sword on you. You transform back in robot form, nearly avoiding the sword and a cannon materialise on your arm. Before the decepticon has the time to react you shoot him in the spark.
For a moment the time stop. Your optics lock up and he looks at you, truly looks at you, and it’s the first one someone does that. It’s the first time you do this too. And his optics widens with shock then fear then they turn off
He falls on the ground with a great thud and don't move anymore. Maybe he’s a MTO like you and it’s his first battle, his first minute at life. Maybe he’s been there since the beginning, and he fought for millions of years and in millions of battle just to die there to you. Buy you don’t think about this. You think about the light going out of his optics and the expression on his face and that there's a pink liquid on him and on your face too because it splattered when you shot him. You wipe some of the liquid with your hand and look at it. You think about all this and you realise he was alive then dead and you wonder if you would make the same expression if you are touched and if it means you are also alive and so you can also die. Or maybe it is the opposite. You can die so you are also alive. Both revelations come as a bit of a shock as even if you only have been online for a few seconds, and even if you don’t understand what is really happening other than fight/ kill the decepticons, you feel a deep, instinctive need to live a little longer.
The fight continue around you. Explosions, shot and bodies all around you. You stop for a nanosecond, trying to properly swallow all the informations and almost miss the Decepticon who rushes toward you. His sword leaves a tick cut on your armor. A disagreeable sensation flare from the wound, no, more than disagreeable, pain. You don’t like that. You don’t want to be in pain. You don’t want to die. You have to leave, to go somewhere safe, if it exists, it doesn’t feel like it exists. It feels like there is only the Battlefield. You know that there’s other things out there, because you were onlined with a basic knowledge of the galaxy, even if you have difficulty to process these informations. But it also means you know there’s other Battlefields. So even if you go out of this one, you still won’t escape.
Because you were made to fight.
You were made to kill.
You were made to die.
So you don’t flee. You tighten your grip on your gun, you ignore the death around you, and you fight, then you kill. One, two, three decepticons fall under your fire. You don’t look at their faces. You feel a strange sensation, contentment. You are adequately realising your purpose, and your recompense protocol is triggered. You think that maybe you will survive the battle, and you will be able to know the world outside of the Battlefield if only for a few cycles before returning to it. And maybe the Battlefield is not so bad. You think you could choose yourself a true name and maybe feel like a true person.
And then you die.
The shot came from behind so you have no idea who fired it. It could be a friendly fire for what it's worth. It pierces your armor in the middle of your torso, and you fall. Pink liquid everywhere. Pain flares, far stronger than when you were cut. You really don’t like pain. Your system passes in urgency mode, alarms triggers, multiple survival protocols activates, but you ignore them. Already you feel them disconnect, one by one. You are scared. You should have run away, you think, you should have run far from all this death. You don’t even know why you are fighting. You would have liked more time. But it is over. You think about the first mech you killed. You would have like to know his name. You would have like to know your name.
Then, you go offline.
You lived for exactly three minutes and twenty-seven seconds.
Later, when the fight will be over, not a victory but not quite a defeat too, they will make a list of all the soldiers who died, and from which company they were from, and whether or not they were MTOs as they like to keep all these statistics. There is names and designation too, but no one has time to read it.
Your captain will look at the numbers and he will fell very tired, and then he will think about the MTOs who were online and died today specifically, and think how tragic, and it is the closest someone will come to think about you, except for that decepticons you killed. Your captain would linger on this thought, and feel even more tired. He will open the files, tell himself he will look at the names. No, not names, you had no time to choose one, but the designations. But then a friend of his will come and stop his hand. It’s no good to dwell on those things, he will tell, come get a drink, forgot about this. There will be another list on your desk tomorrow. So the captain nod and close the list and never read you designation. Do not be mad with him or his friend. They know it is only like this that they can survive. It’s been like this every day for nearly two millions years, and it will continue for another two millions. And there have been countless exactly like you and there will be countless again. There’s no good to dwell on those things