Open Comms

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"Open Comms"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	February 12, 2020
Written by	Sara Pitre-Durocher
Art by	Sara Pitre-Durocher
Colors by	Sara Pitre-Durocher
Letters by	Jake M. Wood
Editor	David Mariotte, Tom Waltz and Riley Farmer
Continuity	2019 IDW continuity

A chance meeting between two lonely souls grows into something more.

Synopsis

Cosmos's new position of Chief of Space Security sounds glamorous... but the job of defending Cybertron's inner moon turns out to be a job that's as isolated as it is mundane—Cosmos spends most of his time either gathering drifting space debris or rescuing Gears from one mishap after another. While on one such patrol, Cosmos picks up a transmission from what he assumes is a stranded Gears, but actually belongs to Blast Off, a lonely orbital transport specialist who's taking a detour specifically to annoy his boss.

Flustered and eager to hear a friendly voice for the first time in many cycles, Cosmos's overenthusiastic response leads him to initially worry that he's scared away his mysterious new friend... but he's surprised and pleased to learn that Blast Off is still interested in making conversation. This chance meeting soon evolves into a long-distance relationship; the pair chat as Cosmos goes about his duties, discussing this and that, but after many, many cycles of conversation Cosmos eventually points out that he's never even seen Blast Off's face.

Almost immediately, Blast Off pings him a picture, one that includes both him and a dozen other 'bots. As a confused Cosmos tries to match a name to a face, Blast Off laughs; the picture was sent as a joke, to keep him distracted...and, as Cosmos picks up a new blip on his radar system, he turns and comes face-to-face with Blast Off for the first time.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Others
Cosmos (1) Gears (2) Blast Off (3)

Quotes

"Yeah, I mean, it's a thankless job, but I take it seriously. Mostly."
"That why you're using your comm channel to talk to me instead of keeping it clear in case of emergency?"
"...'Mostly' is the keyword here."

—Cosmos and Blast Off make small talk

Notes

Continuity notes

• The Winged Moon makes a cameo appearance in the first panel.
• Gears made some prior appearances in the earliest issues of the main ongoing comic as a worker on the Tether. Given the unclear (and extremely long) timeframe of this story, it's not clear his frequent space-related accidents happened while he was working on some prior job, or if occasionally drifting off into space is just a natural hazard of working on a space elevator.
• Blast Off's picture is a veritable smorgasbord of characters (but see "Transformers references" for more on that); the presence of the now-unstable and currently AWOL Quake in the photograph suggests that it might have been taken at some point around the time of the War of the Threefold Spark.

Transformers references

• Potential vacation spots suggested by Blast Off include Monacus and Eurythma; the former appeared in The Transformers episode "The Gambler", the latter appeared in "Carnage in C-Minor".
• Blast Off's picture contains a huge variety of characters taken from all across the franchise. Notable cameos include the other four Combaticons-to-be, Tailgate, Quake, Hardhead, First Aid, what's probably Robots in Disguise Tow-Line, Black-Out (modeled after Animated Blackout), Lugnut (modeled after Animated Lugnut), Tidal Wave (modeled after Armada Tidal Wave), and, last but not least, Aileron. Generic characters based off pre-existing characters and toys include lookalikes of Armada Jetfire and Scavenger, a flier who uses Jetfire's Classics toy, and another 'bot based off of Animated Ratchet and Ironhide's Cybertronian bodies.

Other trivia

• The print version of this story has no title; the title was suggested by editor David Mariotte.