Universal killswitch

The universal killswitch is a horrible thing from the IDW portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

Long before the war began, Nova Prime entrusted Tyrest with the task of artificially increasing Cybertron's population and he developed the process of spark splicing, literally harvesting sparks from the Matrix. Millions of years later when the now Chief Justice Tyrest presided over the Aequitas trials where the war crimes of the Autobots were judged, he came to realise that all of those found guilty shared one characteristic—they were all "constructed cold", or products of his spark splicing project. Consumed with guilt, Tyrest secreted himself away from the rest of the Transformers at a secret base on the supposedly lost Luna 1 where he planned a way of atoning for his actions. It was only after drilling a hole in his brain and apparently receiving a message from Primus that he was able to conceive of the universal killswitch, a device capable of tracing—and snuffing out—every "constructed cold" spark, removing those with criminal tendencies from the population forever.

The name is misleading, as once activated it is not designed to be switched off again.

Fiction

IDW Generation 1 continuity

In testing the killswitch, Tyrest retrieved the traitorous Autobot Pharma—infected with Red Rust and missing both his hands following an encounter with Ratchet—from the planet Messatine to use as a test subject. Being forged, Pharma survived the process and joined Tyrest in his scheming. Several members of the Circle of Light, captured from Crystal City on Theophany, were also employed as test subjects and those who were constructed cold did not survive. Arm the Lonely

When the crew of the Lost Light stumbled across Tyrest's base he was on the verge of completing and activating the universal killswitch. Becoming fully aware of his superior's plans for the first time, Minimus Ambus (formerly Ultra Magnus, Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord) confronted him, saying that neither he nor Magnus could allow Tyrest to stand as judge, jury and executioner over perhaps half the Cybertronian race. Unconvinced, Tyrest invoked Section 90, Subsection 16 of the Accord which granted him the power of pre-emptive execution over those who might act against him and a Legislator removed Ambus from the field of play. The Divided Self

Brought up to speed and sprung from their cell by Getaway, Rodimus and his crew burst into Tyrest's control room but found themselves incapacitated by a device based on Skids and Getaway's thought bullet and were unable to prevent Tyrest from activating the killswitch. Its effects were felt all around the galaxy as all Transformers that were constructed cold began to die with no apparent cause. Believing he had atoned for his sins, Tyrest turned and began to walk through a portal to Cyberutopia. Arm the Lonely

He hadn't counted on Tailgate, whose cybercrosis had rendered him deaf to the paralysing frequency. Freeing his shipmates, they managed to take Tyrest down with the aid of the recovered Minimus Ambus and those unaffected by the killswitch attempted to find a way of reversing its effects. By wiring Rodimus and his half of the Matrix into its mechanism, Perceptor theorised that he could use it to reinstate the sparkcode in the affected Transformers. They were ultimately successful, though the process was extremely painful for Rodimus and ended up destroying the Matrix fragment. This Calamitous Life

Notes

• Those we saw affected by the killswitch were: Getaway, Chromedome, Blaster, Mainframe, Red Alert, Hardhead, Prowl, Ravage, Starscream, Kaon, Krok, Spinister, Crankcase and Brainstorm.