I, Lowtech

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A high-ranking TransTech businessman finds himself inexplicably trapped inside a lowtech body, and will stop at nothing to regain what is rightfully his.

Stats

Writers: Greg Sepelak and Trent Troop<br /> Pagecount: 47pp<br /> Originally published: online exclusive for the Transformers Collectors' Club on September 17th, 2008 <br /> Illustrations: Nick Roche<br /> Colors: Winston Bolen<br />

Notes

• Scrounge isn't very good at being Xaaron. He claims he has a Matrix and that he's from universe Primax 093.0 Epsilon. Decoding that technobabble allegedly pegs him as an Emirate Xaaron from Transformers Fan Club fiction published in 1993. Yyyyyeah.

Transformer references

• The Swindle, Swindle & Swindle shop and Ego's showroom are stacked with Transformers easter eggs:
• Swindle, Swindle & Swindle's shop features Catilla's helmet, Bludgeon's helmet, Jetfire's arm guard, Bumblebee's "Bee-Yotch" air freshener, a box full of empty Matrix containers, the bird sculpture from Pz-Zazz, Starscream's crown, one of Omega Supreme's rails, a Golden Disk, the Magnificence, jars with a T-Rex, a gorilla and a spider on their labels, a Powermaster engine/suit and a sheet full of faction symbols.
• Ego's showroom, meanwhile, displays Leozack's gun, Stalker's missile, an Autobot jet pack, Scorponok's claw, a time-jump mechanism, Skyblast's Energon Spear, Blacker's sword, Tantrum's sword, Battle Ravage's tail-mace, Star Saber's Saberblade sword, Skywarp's arm guns, Megatron's fusion cannon, Soundwave's weaponry, Fistfight, Optimus Prime's ion blaster, Ultra Magnus's gun, an Exo-suit, a Velocitronian Cyber Planet Key, the All Spark and the Matrix. While not pictured, Ego's desk is said to be built out of the shield of a Scorponok hailing from Primax 787.3 Alpha (in English, it's the Scorponok from the Japanese Headmasters cartoon, so it's likely the Zarak Shield), and a sword labeled "Sword Of Megatron" hovers over it. Also not pictured but mentionned are a Requiem Blaster, a Reconfiguration Matrix and a spherical Vok instrument.

• "Ego" is Generation 1 Starscream's French-Canadian name. He runs "C-Kar Technologies." Argh.
• Likewise, "Bricolo" is Scrapper's French-Canadian name. And he's an artist making furniture out of Transformer parts.
• "Corvo" is Skywarp's Italian name.

Real-world references

• The title is a reference to Isaac Asimov's famous novel [I, Robot].

• The plush lizard in Ego's office is the Winslow, a central MacGuffin of Phil Folgio's "Buck Godot: Zap Gun For Hire" comics.

External links

• Transformers Collectors' Club exclusive fiction (must be a logged-in member to access)