The Sound of Science
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| "The Sound of Science" | |||||||||||||
| Published by | Yolopark | ||||||||||||
| First published | June 12, 2025 | ||||||||||||
| Script and art | Jesse Wittenrich | ||||||||||||
| Packaged with | The Sound of Science | ||||||||||||
Glyph and Soundblaster make a move for the Caretaker IV super-computer.
Synopsis
On the Archa Nine of Primax 704.31 Epsilon, Glyph discovers her archaeological treasure, the Caretaker IV super-computer made by the "old ones" of Cybertron to serve as a repository for the histories of many star systems and their inhabitants. Elated at the discovery of such unimaginable lost knowledge, Glyph commands her drone Dustoff-6 to begin recording as she manipulates the console for the door, finding it communicates via the long-dead language of the Primes. Modernizing the dialect, Glyph commands the door to open, and finds the massive Caretaker node of the "Vector Sigma gestalt" inside. Before she can get to work on her discovery, she is shot from behind by Soundblaster, who commends the Minibot in her discovery. However, he promises that history journals will credit the Decepticons for the find and whatever knowledge gained will be used for the Decepticon cause.
Responding to the recent weapons fire, a hologram of Vector Prime activates. Revealing the existence of the Vector Sigma gestalt being one that transcends universes, the visual warns those present of the dangers of letting the infinite multiverse consume those with greed for ever more. Soundblaster, knowing fellow Decepticon Megazarak would fall to such temptation, destroys the Caretaker and takes his leave after explaining his reasoning to Glyph.
Characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons |
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Notes
Transformers references
- Glyph's drone partner Dustoff-6 is based on Generations Thrilling 30 Blazemaster, who was the partner of that toyline's Legends Class Bumblebee figure. The original Glyph toy, of course, was a redeco of the keychain version of the original Bumblebee toy.
- The universal stream designation Primax 704.31 Epsilon refers to "Shell Game". This is done to realign the story to a more "Generation 1" setting after the Facebook edition of Ask Vector Prime recontextualized "Shell Game" as "Viron 704.31 Epsilon" and added elements of the 2001 Robots in Disguise franchise to this universe's backstory. (Indeed, Vector Prime's hologram is uncertain if it has appeared in a Viron or Primax universe.) A compromise by the writers of this story and Ask Vector Prime is that the basic events of "Shell Game", being of ambiguous placement in itself, take place in both universal streams.
- Soundblaster dramatically warns of Megazarak's potential for "chaos"—referring to his originally intended but unrealized identity as "Chaos Megatron".
Real-world references
- "The Sound of Science" is a play on the phrase "the sound of silence", popularized by a song by Simon & Garfunkel
Other notes
- According to Glyph, the text on the terminal is written in "the dead language of the Primes", represented here by the "Ancient Autobot" typeface. In a meta gag, she "modernizes" the writing by changing the typeface to "Modern Cybertronic". Not much of the Ancient Autobot writing is legible enough to be translated, but what is visible of the modernized version seems to read something about customer service in Indonesian.
