The Good Life

[Dr. Josef Henrik]

Henrik set up his supercapacitor next to some large power transformers in the substation. {"Finally... Time to rip off those big electric companies who've been ripping everyone else off for years!"} he thought as he worked, connecting wires between the supercapacitor and two long tungsten rods, insulated with fiberglass to half their length. Upon finishing this task, he stepped between the wires. The telecommunications engineer gripped a tungsten rod in each hand and, being careful to hold them only by the part that was covered in fiberglass, touched them to the terminals of one of the power transformers. There was a momentary flash of bright blue light and a loud noise like a digitized gunshot as he completed the contact, which would hopefully discourage anyone from coming and watching what he was doing...

Then Henrik heard the sound of a vehicle approaching. He turned and saw the familiar garbage truck driving in his direction. In his excitement, the somewhat crazy scientist dropped the tungsten rods - resulting in another loud electronic-sounding bang and an arc of electricity which followed the conductors for a short distance as they fell. "'Ay! 'Ay!" he shouted, jumping up and down and waving his arms before grabbing the supercapacitor and running back toward his truck on the other side of the fence which surrounded the substation.

[Tarnish]

Tarnish and Bulkhead slowed to a stop by Henrik's truck. He waited at idle, not sure when Henrik was going to be done. "Need an extra hand?" he called out. "Either one of us can use our holoforms!" it seemed like he had things under control though, but it couldn't hurt to ask. Nevertheless, Tarnish propped open his door, indicating that Henrik could take the supply of antimatter whenever he was ready.

He watched, both mechs wondering what exactly this man was planning to do here.

[Dr. Josef Henrik]

"Nah, I'm good, thanks! I've done this before," the somewhat maniacal man yelled as he crawled back under the fence, dragging his supercapacitor with him. As soon as he was clear of the fence he jumped back to his feet and ran frenetically back to his pickup truck, the heavy supercapacitor seemingly causing him no effort... Henrik felt great! He felt as if a weight had been lifted off him, having this opportunity to get even with those infernal electric companies that gouged the working man by taking advantage of the high demand for electricity in this world. Even though the telecommunications engineer's factory was equipped with its own generator and he no longer had those problems, they still owed him for the time before that.

As soon as the supercapacitor was secured in the back of Henrik's stolen pickup, he made his way over to Tarnish to retrieve the antimatter. Henrik removed the container very carefully... Despite his usual over-excited personality - especially when it came to things like this! - the scientist was very well aware of what a sufficient quantity of antimatter could do if not handled with absolute precision. "'Ay, thanks for that," he said to Tarnish. "If you guys are ever in Michigan, look me up... I live in a huge factory with a loading bay, so there's more than enough room for you to get in... and I've got my own particle accelerator in the basement!" Henrik grinned. He was proud to have figured out how to build that particle accelerator...

As Henrik was headed back toward his pickup truck to secure the container of antimatter, the air was suddenly filled with the sound of electrical sparking and zapping, and the rather strong smell of ozone. Before the mad scientist could figure out what happened, one of the shorting electrical transformers in the substation he'd just finished robbing exploded, in a violent shower of sparks and metal fragments. Several more neighboring pieces of equipment were set on fire. "O-ho, WOW! Now how's THAT for an electrical malfunction!" Henrik shouted, staring wild-eyed at the sparks coming off the energized equipment.

[Bulkhead]

"Now what exactly does that station belong to?" Tarnish asked curiously, wondering if there were a network of stations/towers from the same company/makers that might be significant to the humans.

Though Bulkhead could care less about the source of what Henrik was targeting, he was impressed with the display. So much so that he clapped his large metallic hands together, making heavy clanks as he did so. "I like this guy. We should offer him a job with the Autobots as a tech! Tarnish works solo most of the time so you wouldn't have much competition from him. We could use more smart folks like you around. I worked with construction in the past but I kinda ended up breaking stuff on accident half the time!"

[Dr. Josef Henrik]

"It belongs to the electric company," Henrik answered simply before it occurred to him that an alien robot might not know exactly what an electric company is. "They've got these big old machines that make a magnet go spinning round and round in a bunch of coiled wires, which motivates those lazy electrons in the wires to move and you get electricity. People pay electric companies to get those dallying electrons moving so they don't have to do it themselves..." It occurred to the telecommunications engineer to wonder how these fascinating extraterrestrial creatures managed to distribute electricity on their own planet... Through their own bodies, for that matter. A robot, even an alien robot, had to have some kind of power source! Likely one that would be useful to Henrik... Eventually he'd have to capture some hapless Cybertronian and disassemble them, hopefully that would answer some of these questions... Not one of these two, though. They were proving to be incredibly useful in their own right.

"'Ay, if I got a job working for a bunch of alien robots, that'd mean I wouldn't have to pay taxes on the money I made, right?" Henrik responded to Bulkhead's comments. That was a really awesome opportunity! What other scientist got the chance to work with sentient robots, aliens no less? Those hotshots at CERN would be so jealous! Henrik had to wonder, though, how far away he would be from his factory in Michigan and all of his research. He was reluctant to leave his own work behind, lest his master robot back home screw up the factory in some way...

[Bulkhead]

Tarnish and Bulkhead exchanged looks. "Uh, probably not. If you end up getting hired it'll probably be by contract, and the provisions can vary. We're probably not the right kinda Bots with the details yer lookin' for. But if you got time to travel with us, we can introduce you to some of the others and see what they think of a new civilian recruit. We got nothin' but time, and we could always use more humans like you." The simple truth was, they just didn't have many from what Bulkhead had observed so far. It would be useful to have a human scientist or two around - he was sure Ratchet and Wheeljack would be thrilled to have someone new around to exchange ideas with as well!

[Dr. Josef Henrik]

Henrik frowned in consideration. On the one hand, he wanted to get back to his set-up shop in Michigan with the antimatter, preferably before some nosy person decided to take it away from him... On the other hand, how many chances in a lifetime does one get to go to work with a sentient machine from outer space?! Who knew what kind of awesome lab equipment they had, maybe they even had something better than antimatter! {"Better than antimatter? Who the hell am I trying to kid?"} What could possibly be better than antimatter? {"I want to find out!"}

"Yeah, I've got time to go with you..." he said finally, waiting curiously to see what would happen next.

[Bulkhead]

"Well in that case, ya get to experience a ground bridge. It makes travel easy. Don't worry, the travel won't hurt or anything. " Bulkhead called for a ground bridge, and the trio would promptly go through it as soon as one was activated. Henrik would see that the ground bridge was like a portal, a large one, and behaved much like a mini stabilized worm hole. It was a quick trip but it was surely something Henrik would remember unless he got used to using them in the future. Bulkhead nor Tarnish bothered explaining what exactly it was to them, because they were quite sure he would marvel in it - or at least enjoy the trip.

[Dr. Josef Henrik]

Henrik had been studying quantum physics for years. He'd even written a few papers on the subject when he was getting his first Ph.D... Only to have the stuffy, narrow-minded professor criticize his "wild ideas" of course. He was very familiar with Einstein's Theory of General Relativity and the concept of the wormhole. None of his experience prepared him to see a stabilized wormhole right in front of him. The extra-corporeal structure bent light, creating abstract fractal-like patterns from blended colors. It occurred to Henrik to wonder what spectrum of light the robots saw in (Probably infrared, he thought) and whether they were seeing the same thing he did. The scientist grinned and said, "I'm gonna' travel faster than the speed of light! Well, sort of... The acceleration inside an Einstein-Rosen bridge isn't actually faster than the speed of light, but because the fabric of time and space is bent, it makes a shortcut between the two points and light still has to travel around... It's pretty awesome!" With that, he took off running into the ground bridge.

Henrik had no idea exactly when the world distorted around him, but suddenly, all colors had changed to shades of yellow, then red, and finally he couldn't see them anymore as he accelerated through spacetime. He lost proprioception and was completely unaware of the presence of his body amidst his consciousness. Time and space had lost meaning, as did direction... There was no up, no down, and no point of perspective... There was only acceleration, but even that had lost meaning with the three dimensions of the universe bent around him.

And then - maybe less than a second later, maybe more than an hour - it suddenly stopped, and Henrik was standing on the cement floor of some kind of military hangar, his mass and his body completely normal once again. "Oh... wow. My atoms are all scrambled," said the engineer as he remembered that he had limbs and stepped forward to look around the hangar.

[Bulkhead]

((I really am sorry I've been so slow to reply of late, as you may have observed I'm not on that much, even less in the cbox. I'm in the state of deciding if I want to stay on certain forums but I have a hard time going through with the decision to leave the two Transformers sites I'm on xP. I guess I'll just try to keep my thread count light so I don't keep people waiting. And I'm sorry if the post sucks, Im rather out of touch with most of my canons...blarg

Also, you should talk to Katt about meeting Wheeljack.))

"Well it gets pretty busy and crowded here. Maybe I'll hook ya up with 'Jackie if I can get a'hold of him. But Tarnish can give ya a little place to stay if youre looking for a secondary base - I figure you have yer own home somewhere." Bulkhead said once they stepped through and walked off with a wave.

"The speed of light? A true concept there. I don't work much with our space craft anymore since most of us are stuck here but I believe they would share a similar concept." Tarnish commented after they transported. "Follow me, I work here from time to time."

Similar to Bulkhead's assumptions about Henrik, Tarnish didn't necessarily live and work here full time. Such were the benefits of developing portable teleportation devices.