Transformers: Survival of Defective Products

Chapter 149 Awakening

She seemed to hear many sounds, initially as distant as an endless sea of ​​stars. The sounds were not truly clear, coming intermittently from the depths of darkness, carrying with them faint electrical noise.

"Trial..."

"Not a god."

"The Creator..."

"Don't believe it..."

"sign."

When the last word popped out, the vector seemed to pause and think for a moment.

What's the point of signing? Who cares about getting an autograph at a time like this?

Before she could finish thinking about the question, other voices suddenly came from behind her.

They were urgent and noisy, very close, as if some small, heavy object was moving back and forth above her head, or as if two small megaphones were crammed into the shell of her hibernation pod.

"I knew there was something wrong with this record!"

"You said the same thing yesterday."

"Yesterday is yesterday, today is today! It jumped twice today!"

"It jumped twice yesterday too."

"That's different!"

"Aren't they both just two moves?"

"Different is different!"

The awareness of vectors was pulled back a little by this point in such a pointless but effective argument.

Her processor slowly awoke, the optical mirrors gradually lit up, and a tremor, long since silenced, emanated from the ignition chamber.

She finally opened her eyes.

My vision was blurry at first.

A thin layer of cold mist covered the transparent inner layer of the hibernation pod, and the external medical lights were refracted into scattered white spots of light. She stared at those spots of light for two seconds.

Where is she?

What did she just dream about?

The five-faced monster is not the creator, and what exactly is its signature?

The vector lay quietly for a moment, feeling alive but not very intelligent.

Immediately afterwards, the hibernation pod detected the restoration of vital signs, and a very soft "click" came from the top of the outer shell.

She instinctively raised her right hand.

She only intended to hold up the hatch, but she underestimated the strength of her own machine after it recovered, and overestimated the ability of the two small machines lying on the hibernation hatch to withstand emergencies.

She yanked the hatch open. At the same time, the two little ones rolled off the hatch.

"Ugh!"

"Wow!"

The blue one fell to the side of the cabin first, then the red one bumped into him, pulling him down with it, and they all crashed into each other, the metal armor making two crisp sounds.

He leaned against the edge of the cabin, slowly sat up, and looked down at them.

They also looked up at her.

An awkward, historic pause occurred in the hibernation chamber.

The rumbling optical mirror magnified little by little, and the bewildered jaw opened slightly.

The optical lens blinked sluggishly.

"...Who are you again?"

Rumble: "..."

confusion:"……"

The next second, both miniature machines exploded simultaneously.

"You're awake?!"

"She's awake!"

"You're really awake!"

"Didn't you just say you didn't know us?!"

"Is that the main point?!"

"That's definitely the key point! She forgot about us as soon as she woke up!"

"She slept for so long!"

"Even after sleeping for so long, you can't forget!"

The two little ones argued as they rushed to the edge of the hibernation pod.

He grabbed her right arm with a rumble and then grabbed her waist armor with a frenzy. He controlled his strength, but was afraid that she would lie back down in the next second, close the lid, and continue to perform the irresponsible art of eternal sleep.

The vector was startled by their tugging, and looked down at the little blue thing on its right arm, then at the little red thing by its waist.

Memories slowly surfaced from the depths of my memory.

The little guy with sound waves.

She frowned, feeling that many things were still buried in her brain module, or as commonly known, she wasn't fully awake yet.

"I haven't forgotten," she said, her voice slightly hoarse as the voice generator, which hadn't been used for a long time, was finally back in use. "It's just that I just woke up, and the brain module isn't working properly yet."

Boom Boom immediately looked up: "So, are you facing off now?"

The vector looked at him and said honestly, "It's half right."

She paused, then looked at the two little ones whose eyes were brimming with anticipation, and added, "The other half is still restarting. Give it some time; it's not easy for it either."

Boom paused for half a second, then suddenly turned and shouted, "Medical team! She's really awake! And she can still talk nonsense!"

Vector: "...Thank you?"

The warning light outside the hibernation room had already turned on when she woke up.

A row of monitoring ports above the wall turned on one after another, and the light screen popped up, displaying the flame waveform, processor recovery rate, body energy flow, neural circuit delay, and magnetic field deviation index.

Hurried footsteps came from outside, and several medical personnel practically rushed in.

When the lead machine saw the vectoring device already sitting up, its movements visibly froze for a moment, as if its processor had been briefly rebooted by this scene before immediately returning to its professional state.

"Your Honor, please do not move."

Chief Justice—the term was more unfamiliar to her than she had imagined.

She looked down at herself; her body was no longer the same.

She was considerably taller than I remembered, and the outer armor around the spark chamber on her chest was more complete. The magnetic core ring was quietly embedded beneath the deep purple armor, with tiny blue-green light patterns flickering along its edges. The shoulder and back structure was also cleaner and clearer, and the old damage and splicing marks were slowly healing under the spark's own pull.

She raised her right hand, her fingers opening and closing normally.

Then she looked to her left, where it was empty.

Her left shoulder interface was exposed, and her left arm was individually secured to a nearby maintenance frame. The outer armor was closed, and the energy blade was in a dormant state.

Yin Vector stared at his hand for two seconds, wondering if the boot experience was too inconsistent.

Medical machines had surrounded her, their scanning beams sweeping across her head, chest, right arm, waist, abdomen, and legs in turn. Another medical machine tried to remove the rumbling and confusion from her, but the two smaller machines were clinging on so tightly, like two pieces welded to her outer armor.

"Please leave the inspection area."

"No."

"We are small and don't take up much space."

"You've blocked the nerve circuit scan in her right arm."

"Then sweep other areas."

Yin Xiang raised her right hand to support their backs, intending to remove them from her body to make it easier for the medical team to examine them.

But she paused again as her hand landed.

Both little ones were very active, still moving, noisy, and out of control because of her waking up.

Her fingers slowly closed slightly, gently pulling them towards her.

The rumbling suddenly quieted down, and the confused one stopped talking back.

The medical machine glanced at them, then ultimately chose to walk around them.

The examination seemed to take a long time, but it could also have only lasted a few minutes.

For Yin Vector, her sense of time hadn't fully recovered, and everything was somewhat blurry. The data on the medical screen kept fluctuating, and the surrounding sounds were sometimes too close and sometimes too far away.

"The flame waveform is stable."

"Core output is normal."

"Processor recovery rate is increasing."

"The magnetic field offset is abnormal, but there are no signs of it getting out of control."

"The left arm interface is intact and can be re-evaluated."

"Do not perform high-load reads yet."

She was only half-listening and half-processing the information when she heard the last sentence, and she slowly raised her head.

What is meant by high-load read?

The medical machine paused for a brief moment; if it weren't for the exceptionally sharp senses that the vector had just woken up, it might not have been noticed at all.

The medical institution said:

"Sir, your hibernation system has a long-term connection to the Medical Tower's storage system. Over nearly four million years, some visitation records, battle summaries, backups of public archives, data transferred from the judicial center, and private messages have been stored here. According to the recovery process, we recommend that you read them in stages after you have fully stabilized."

The vector is only focused on one word in this long article.

Four million years.

It initially appeared as a meaningless piece of data, flashing briefly in her processor without being properly recognized.

Then it blinked a second time, and it finally finished parsing.

The optical mirror that draws the vector contracts slightly.

"…how long?"

The hibernation chamber suddenly fell silent; neither Rumble nor Confusion dared to speak.

The medical machine repeated in a low voice: "Nearly four million years."

The vector sat in the hibernation pod, slowly looking down at its right hand.

Her hands were still on Rumble and Confusion, and the two little ones looked up at her.

Nearly four million years.

She thought she had just taken a nap and might have missed some things. She would probably wake up to a bunch of messy accident reports, political messes, Megatron and Optimus Prime, and who had angered whom to the point of wanting to tear down the parliament doors, as well as the group of clerks in the judicial center crying and begging her to sign them.

She had indeed prepared herself mentally.

A little, but definitely not four million years.

Who among the good people could prepare themselves for four million years with just a little mental preparation?

The vector remained silent for a long time, its eyes gradually becoming vacant, slowly resembling a dazed little fish with wide-set eyes. (◐‿◑)

The medical team began exchanging glances, and Rumble couldn't help but whisper to her, "A vector?"

She received an external sound, snapped back to reality, and slowly looked up: "Is my channel still working?"

The medical machine paused for a moment:

"Yes. Most of the old frequency bands are no longer valid, but your private core channel has remained sealed. The judicial center also retains your highest-level identification, but it is under silent protection."

"Open."

"Sir, according to the recovery procedure—"

"Open."

All the medical machines in the hibernation chamber fell silent for a moment.

Indeed, they should no longer treat her as a patient; it was the chief judge's order.

The medical machine immediately looked down and brought up the terminal, connecting her private channel back to the main screen next to the hibernation pod.

The screen lit up, then it froze, and a gray spinning circle appeared.

As she stared at the loading screen, her expression grew increasingly complex. This was the first time she had ever seen a Cybertronian page actually freeze.

"Is it broken?"

A medical worker nearby said, "No."

"Then why isn't it moving?"

"Too much news."

She suddenly felt a little like lying back down.

A few seconds later, the interface finally slowly unfolded.

The first batch of archived messages popped up in her private channel, some from a very long time ago, and some from old channels she was familiar with.

I posted many messages in 1997.

At first, she was still stubborn as usual, saying that if she didn't wake up, she would charge interest on her energy drink bill. Later, her tone gradually changed, her messages became shorter and shorter, and finally, she only said "Today was alright" after a long interval.

Knockout has also been sent.

At first, he provided very professional medical records, detailing the progress of each of her joint repairs. Later, he started interspersing more and more irrelevant information, complaining that if she didn't wake up soon, it would be a waste of the beautiful results he had achieved years ago. Later still, he only sent out very short examination conclusions.

An ambulance was dispatched.

The tone always felt like an insult, but every few lines were interspersed with a few words of concern that seemed to be something they didn't want to admit or that they weren't being honest about.

Jazz has released several audio clips.

There was a lot of background noise, as if someone had just come from a battlefield; the sound still had some lingering static. He said, "You used to say that none of them were easy to deal with. Now I have to say, you were absolutely right."

Arcee posted it, Tinker posted it, Ultra Magnus posted it…

The sound waves provided a bunch of records and conclusions, with Red Spider occasionally throwing in a sarcastic remark.

Shockwave also sent a long, cold report with a very Shockwave-like title: "A Phase Observation on the Stability of the Magnetic Core in the Long-Term Dormant State of Individual Gravitation Vectors".

Four million years have passed, and some machines are still the same dead machines, which gives her a strange sense of peace.

Then she continued scrolling down, and the more she scrolled, the more something seemed wrong.

There's too much news.

It's like an entire planet compressing all the unspoken words into a data packet and piling it in front of her.

No matter how many private channels there are, they are only a small part of the total.

She then opened the public frequency band to record more.

Old group chat, new group chat, judicial center notification, medical tower visit log, battle summary, city relocation record, energy control announcement, casualty list, refuge zone list, missing persons list, reconstruction failure record, evacuation route, emergency files related to the AllSpark, Ark voyage record, Nemesis pursuit record…

The finger of the vector-guided man stopped in front of the screen, almost unable to believe his optical glasses.

Her processor told her in a very inefficient, anthropomorphic, and useless way:

Something's wrong, very wrong.

She looked up at the medical machine: "Where is the sealing system?"

"It's right in the main control unit of your hibernation pod."

"Retrieve them all."

The medical machine's expression changed.

"Sir, we do not recommend that you perform a full read now. Your processor has just been restored, and the data stored for a long time spans too large. Direct access may cause short-term information overload."

The vector looked at her: "I slept for four million years."

The medical staff looked at her.

Do you think it's still appropriate for me to take my time watching it now?

"but--"

"I'm asking you," said the Graviton, "what has Cybertron been like in these past four million years?"

The medical equipment remains silent; its silence itself is the answer.

The vector looked at her, its right hand slowly moving away from the rumble and confusion, and bracing itself against the edge of the hibernation pod.

She hadn't stood up yet; she was still in a state of just waking up, her processing not fully recovered, and the waveform of the spark was jumping on the medical screen.

But all the machines in the hibernation chamber clearly realized that she had returned.

"Connect the wires," she said.

So they followed her, just like before.

The main control interface of the medical tower slid out from the side of the hibernation pod, and a thin data cable was connected to the transmission port on the side of her neck.

The cold data stream surged in the instant of contact, and the gate that had been sealed for too long was suddenly opened.

Karon, burned, collapsed, and repeatedly plowed by artillery fire.

The symbol of the Supreme Council was removed from the wall, and fragments were scattered all over the ground.

Under the light of the AllSpark, Optimus Prime's chest glowed with a matrix light that was no longer what it used to be.

In Megatron's battlefield records, his red optical image is a ball of fire burning through the darkness.

The first complete record of the official outbreak of the Cybertronian Civil War.

And then there's more and more.

Cities are destroyed, roads are broken, energy is depleted, and the battle lines are stretched thin.

Negotiations failed time and again, followed by withdrawal and pursuit.

The Spark Source departs, the judicial center relocates to Crystal City, the Ark is launched, and the Retribution pursues.

The optical mirror that draws the vector suddenly tightens.

The data stream, like countless shattered metal fragments, poured into her newly restored processor along the transmission port.

Each piece carries sound, visuals, a timeline, and emotional remnants that cannot be easily archived.

She heard the explosion, the alarm, the last unanswered message in the group chat, and a brief silence in the nighttime records of a certain medical tower that was almost automatically cleared by the system.

A rumbling sound called to her from the side, a confused wave in front of her eyes, and the medical machine seemed to want to unplug the data cable.

He raised his right hand and pressed it against the transmission port.

"Don't move."

The data was still being processed, and she finally saw the end of the timeline.

The Ark entered the synchronization log of Aquitron.

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, and today, Day 4.

The Five-Faced Monster, the Creator, the False God.

The words from her dream crashed back into her processor at that moment.

Yin Vector sat in the hibernation pod, staring at the records. After a long time, he finally managed to squeeze out a sentence through gritted teeth.

"……no."

No one dared to make a sound in the hibernation chamber.

She slowly raised her head, and in the blue-green optical lens, the last trace of confusion remaining from her long slumber was finally burned away.

"What have you been doing for the past four million years?"