The Custom-Made Now - An Elegant Chaos Prologue

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« The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye #35
"The Custom-Made Now -
An Elegant Chaos Prologue"
Publisher IDW Publishing
First published November 26, 2014
Cover date November 2014
Written by James Roberts
Art by Alex Milne
Inks by Alex Milne and Brian Shearer
Colors by Joana Lafuente
Letters by Tom B. Long
Editor John Barber
Continuity IDW continuity
Chronology Current era (2014)

The Lost Lighters realise that Brainstorm has time-travelled into the past in order to change history... and it looks like he has succeeded, as present-day Cybertron has become a world under the totalitarian grip of Functionalism!

Synopsis

Minimus Ambus returns to Cybertron following a two-million-year service in the Primal Vanguard, and is met at the spaceport by Rewind. Minimus is a little disappointed, hoping his brother Dominus Ambus, Rewind's partner, would have come to greet him in person, especially given that he has not heard from him in months. Minimus's return home has come about due to the decommissioning of the Primal Vanguard, occurring in the wake of the Functionist Council's sale of Luna 2 to the Black Box Consortia to end hostilities with the rest of the galaxy, which has also led to the "recall" of the now-obsolete spaceflight-capable Lunabots. As the pair are attempting to leave, Minimus's outdated papers cause concern for a law-enforcement "Functionary", but just as he is scanning Minimus to confirm his function, a battered 'bot suddenly charges through the crowd, pursued by another officer. The two Functionaries gun down the fleeing 'bot, and report to the Functionst Council headquarters that they have just "recalled" the last Lunabot. Few 'bots even pay attention to the grisly scene, however... just another commonplace sight on present-day Cybertron.

Across the galaxy, on the Lost Light, Chromedome smashes in Rewind's hab suite door when he hears him cry out, but the little archivist has merely been having a bad dream. Things are tense between the pair; Chromedome had hoped to pick up their relationship where they left off, but Rewind is mindful of the fact that neither of them is truly the same 'bot that the other one was with. Chromedome asks about Rewind's nightmare, and the archivist tells him he was remembering the "Dark Dawn" half-a-million years prior, when the Functionists recalled the laser pointers. Chromedome is baffled; such an event never occurred, as Functionism had long since been abandoned by that stage. Rewind pulls up the relevant information from his database, before realising that he too has no memory of it...

In the Lost Light morgue, Megatron solemnly regards Trailcutter's dead body when Rodimus enters. Megatron expects a castigation, and Rodimus wants to deliver one, but more important matters demand their attention: namely, Brainstorm's recent attempt to poison everyone on the ship by tainting the drinks at Swerve's, which only left everyone unconscious instead of dead because Swerve waters down his drinks. Rodimus reveals that Brainstorm has fled through means of a time machine, a situation so ludicrous that Megatron has a mini-breakdown just trying to process it. Regaining his composure, Megatron concludes that rather than flee to escape repercussion for the poisoning, as Ultra Magnus believes, rather, Brainstorm poisoned everyone so he would be free to travel back in time and change the outcome of the war.

On Cybertron, Rewind brings Minimus back to his and Dominus's home, where they watch pirated security footage of a protester being executed by the Functionist Council by means of the explosive obsolescence chips that all Cybertronians are now implanted with. Minimus is slowly realising that Rewind and his brother are anti-Functionist rebels when Dominus appears, and the reason for his recent silence is revealed: the council has subjected him to the horrifying process that has supplanted empurata, replacing his head with a screen, thereby robbing him of his face and voice and leaving him able only to communicate through on-screen text. Minimus is overwhelmed, but has to leave to meet with the other former members of the Primal Vanguard so they can receive their new job allocations.

Elsewhere on the planet, in their floating headquarters, "The Cog", the Functionist Council meets to discuss the next mass recall, choosing their victims not based on functional value, but rather, on their ability to store data that could be used against the council. Thus it is decreeed that data slugs shall be recalled...

On the Lost Light, Perceptor is explaining the means by which Brainstorm has time-travelled: his enigmatic briefcase is the control unit for a time machine made up of multiple other briefcases, linked to the ship's quantum engines, and coded for use only by his spark type. Moreover, Brainstorm has found a way to circumvent the grandfather paradox inherent in attempts to change history, with the new timeline he has created already co-existing with and slowly "bedding in" around them before taking hold. The 'bots' only recourse is to use the quantum-duplicate control briefcase recovered from the other Lost Light to follow Brainstorm back in time and stop him, and Megatron believes he knows where the scientist has gone: to kill Orion Pax.

Minimus Ambus finds himself surrounded by chaos as he speeds back to his brother's home, data slug 'bots dying all around him as their obsolescence chips are remotely detonated. Worse yet, upon his return, he finds that Dominus has been remotely mind-wiped by the Council, now capable only of expressing and understanding the most basic words. Through the words on Dominus's screen, the Council speak directly to Minimus and Rewind, revealing that they discovered Dominus's treachery via cameras secretly installed in Minimus's eyes—a process all Primal Vanguard members were secretly subjected to on their return flight, as a first test of a new surveillance system that will soon become mandatory for all Cybertronians. Rewind vows to stop them, announcing that Dominus has deactivated his obsolescence chip... but alas, the Council reveal that his back-up chip is still active. Seconds later, Rewind is gone...

(Characters in italic text appear only in flashbacks.)
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots Decepticons Others

Quotes

"I'm fine. Bad dream, that's all. My first flashback. These things'll happen when you've got a head full of history."

—Rewind


"This conversation is ridiculous. You are ridiculous. Everything that's happened in the last few days is intensely ridiculous. Six months into this shambles of a quest—six months!—and not a day goes by—not an hour—when I don't have to stand back from this endless parade of nonsense and remind myself, by means of several blows to the head, that I am here of my own volition, and not as a result of some—some elaborate trap set by Optimus Prime. Why bother looking for the Knights of Cybertron? Why postpone my trial? I've already been convicted—and this is my punishment. You! This ship! This life!"
"Better?"
"...Yes. I apologize."
"Not at all. On this ship, a minor breakdown is practically a rite of passage."

—Megatron and Ultra Magnus


"Won't Brainstorm's meddling simply create a second timeline that runs alongside our own—like a parallel universe? Hello...?"
...
"Oh, so I'm not allowed to take an interest in magic? I don't just captain ships and build Rodpods, you know!"

—Rodimus


Ultra Magnus: "What do we do now? Take his machine apart? Blow it up?"
Perceptor: "No, that would strand Brainstorm in the past—and quite possibly cement any changes he's made. Will make. Might make."
Rodimus: "It's time travel, Percy. Leave your tenses at the door."


"They took his words!"
"His what?"
"His vocabulary! All he's got left are the basics: yes, no, up, down, big, small... and the words he's lost—when you speak to him, the words he's lost—he doesn't know what they mean anymore! And there are certain words, Minimus—tiny words—important words—there are certain words you can't afford to lose."

—Rewind and Minimus Ambus

Notes

Continuity notes

  • We are not informed that the opening scene is set in the present day until it ends, when More than Meets the Eye standard is to establish time periods through captions at the start of such scenes. Before this revelation, there's enough going on in the scene to make us think that it could just be set in the pre-war era, but there are also some clues sprinkled in: Minimus has been away for two million years, for instance, and as the pre-war era was at least four million years ago, that would place Minimus's departure at six million years ago, in Nova Prime's era, and he's not that old. Mention is also made of how the intellectual class has been outlawed, and how "knock-offs" (Transformers who were constructed cold) have been deported, scenarios incompatible with what we have seen of pre-war Cybertron in the past.
  • Broadly speaking, the alternate timeline that Brainstorm has created is not one in which the Decepticons won the war, but one in which the war appears to have never even broken out. The Functionist Council was then subsequently never disbanded, and instead "unseated" the Senate and took complete control of Cybertron.
  • As an effect of that, Pharma never went bonkers, and he and Ratchet are still friends, as they can be glimpsed chatting on page 3.
  • In the alternate timeline, the "Black Box Consortia" have purchased Luna 2, evidently this timeline's version of—or perhaps just a typo of—the Black Block Consortia, previously mentioned in issues #34 and #24.
  • "Laser pointers" are among the decommissioned disposable class 'bots; laser pointers were mentioned in the same breath as data slugs when the disposable class was first discussed back in issue #12. Chromedome and Rewind had a friend who was a laser pointer named Shimmerstick.
  • The "old" Rewind bought a souvenir replica of Hedonia's "Raging Prism" from a gift shop on the planet; the Autobots visited Hedonia in issue #13, and the prism was mentioned in that issue and in issue #22. The gift shop appeared in issue #13's back-up prose story, "Signal to Noise".
  • Someone has placed a Rodimus Star in the deceased Trailcutter's hand; his desire to earn the award was part of the story of his self-titled Spotlight issue.
  • It just seemed like a passing remark back in issue #30 when Brainstorm noted he "always carried [his] own" drinks, but it takes on a whole new meaning with this issue's revelation that he's been spiking the proverbial punch bowl!
  • The executed protester looks like a female version of Rung! Her bellowed rhetoric includes the phrase "All hail the Useless One"; it seems likely that she is talking about Rung himself, whose alternate mode is an unrecognizable, apparently-purposeless "ornament", and that she is some form of disciple or follower of his (or the idea he represents) in this alternate world, and has patterned her appearance after him.
  • And of course, the fact that the protester is a female at all is point of interest, since in the regular timeline, Arcee was the only female 'bot known to exist before the Camineans came onto this scene. Did females "evolve" on Cybertron the way they did on Caminus in this alternate timeline?
  • We previously met Functionist Authenticator Three-of-Twelve in issue #14. We now understand the meaning of his name, as he is the third member of the twelve-'bot Functionist council.
  • The long-standing secret of Brainstorm's briefcase is revealed: as was hinted by the disruption of time that occurred when its quantum-duplicate was opened in issue #32, it's the control unit of a time-machine. Presumably, the paradox-defying component of the time machine played some kind of role in how the duplicate case and duplicate Rewind survived the erasure of "their" Lost Light.
  • Rodimus gripes that he is "not allowed to take an interest in magic"; as we know from issue #28, "magic=science that Rodimus doesn't understand".
  • It is now explained that the "masterpiece" Brainstorm alluded to in #7 of the series was not a joke response to Chromedome's inquiry about his new project but a serious one, the only clue given at that time being the fact that "its success kinda depends on him catching the universe unawares".

Transformers references

Real-life references

  • The security officer who stops Minimus is designed after classic UK comic strip law-enforcer, Judge Dredd.

Errors

  • On page 11, in panel 4, the three word balloons are offset to the right in a way that makes them all appear to come from Rodimus.
  • The Council message on page 20, panel 3, alternates between the British English spelling offence and American English spelling offense.

Soundtrack

Covers (3)

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References

  1. ↑ Alex Milne (@markerguru) on Twitter
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