From Here to Alternity
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| "From Here to Alternity" | |||||||||||||
| Published in | January 2009 | ||||||||||||
| Story | Hirofumi Ichikawa | ||||||||||||
| Packaged with | Convoy Vibrant Red, Convoy Ultimate Silver | ||||||||||||
Optimus Prime is inducted into the Alternity to face a dire threat.
Synopsis
In universal stream of Primax 109.0 Beta in the year 2009, the Autobot forces are investigating a mystery: the appearance of large marks akin to the claws of a gargantuan beast on the most remote planets of Earth's solar system. Following the marks' appearance, a mysterious ring of light materializes in the skies above Vancouver, Washington, and the Autobots, led by Optimus Prime, arrive on the scene. As they watch, the ring resolves into a shape like a race track, with a silver sports car traveling along it. Optimus Prime commands the Autobots to stand down, revealing that this strange visitor is, in fact, another Optimus Prime from a parallel dimension.
Prime reveals this other-dimensional incarnation of himself visited this world once before, two years prior, to deliver a warning: In 2009, their eternal enemy, Megatron, would summon the monstrous "beast of time," Hytherion, to this world. The only thing that would be able to stop the power of Hytherion would be the Alternity, an incredible race of hyperdimensional beings to which the parallel Optimus belonged. This world's Prime agreed that when the threat of Hytherion appeared, he would join the Alternity and take up the fight.
Now that promised time has come. A portal opens at the heart of the "racetrack", and from it, a vibrant red body emerges. Prime fuses with the body and is absorbed into the Alternity, being reformatted into a form resembling the silver frame of the parallel Prime. His perceptions expanded beyond mere three-dimensional space, Prime looks to the heavens, where the terrifying image of Hytherion's fangs covering the sky is now visible to him!
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Others |
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Notes
- Although this story takes place in a separate timeline (or universal stream, to use the in-story parlance), much of the backstory for the Alternity franchise originates with the later stages of the Binaltech storyline. The existence of the Alternity was first revealed in the 2007 story chapter "Binal Time"; the substance of their being, Alternium, was introduced in 2008's "Unfinished Business," parts three and four, which also introduced the racetrack-like teleportation system seen in this story, the Timaeus drive. Only with the release of "From Here to Alternity" did we truly learn what the Alternity was. Subsequent Alternity chapters would later draw further connections between the world seen in this storyline and the Binaltech universe.
- The other-dimensional Optimus Prime who appears in this story is the Optimus Prime from the Binaltech universe, which is to say, a divergent version of the incarnation of the character from the Generation 1 cartoon.
- "From Here to Alternity" is the first piece of fiction outside of the stories associated with the Transformers Collectors' Club to use the universal stream classification system created by Greg Sepelak and Trent Troop for the stories they have produced for the club.
- The title of this story is a reference to the 1953 James Jones novel, "From Here to Eternity"
