Elegant Chaos Part 3: Predestination: An Expert's Guide

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"Elegant Chaos Part 3:
Predestination: An Expert's Guide"
Publisher IDW Publishing
First published March 4, 2015
Cover date February 2015
Written by James Roberts
Art by Alex Milne
Colors by Joana Lafuente
Letters by Tom B. Long
Editor John Barber
Continuity IDW continuity
Chronology Current era (2015)

Faced with the choice of allowing Megatron to be created, or damning Cybertron in order to create a better universe, the time-travelling Lost Lighters learn that there truly is no future but that which they make for themselves.

Synopsis

Realizing his life is in danger, Megatron lashes out at Perceptor, demanding that he be sent back in time to save himself. Ultra Magnus restrains the former Decepticon, and he and Perceptor insist that Rodimus has the matter well in hand. Megatron is unconvinced, given Rodimus's track record, but the decision is out of his hands: Perceptor sends Rodimus's team back in time, draining the last of the power from the ship's quantum generators.

In the distant past, in Con Facility 113, Brainstorm aims his gun at the constructed cold Megatron's half-built form, but is suddenly taken out by a whirlwind-generating "grenado" hurled by Rodimus as he and his team materialize on the scene. Consulting the facility computers, Rung observes that Brainstorm has tried to delete information on Megatron from them, and calls upon Rewind to help him fill in the blanks, but Rewind finds that his database has now been completely overwritten with the history of the alternate timeline. Brainstorm has not yet been stopped! The scientist recover and draws his gun once more, but Rung—having seen in the computer records that Brainstorm had been hesitating for ten long minutes before they arrived—is able to talk him into standing down. Brainstorm explains that he never wanted to kill anyone: he had intended to track Megatron through time using a sparkprint taken from him during his therapy session with Rung, planning simply to steer him away from "life-changing events", only to have his hand forced when he realized part-way into his journey that he was following a print accidentally taken from Rung instead. At that point, Brainstorm's injuries take their toll and he keels over... but just as he hits the floor, Rewind uses his gun to kill Megatron instead!

The shaken archivist shares what his overwritten database has told him: that if Megatron dies, although Cybertron will be consigned to a dystopian Functionist-governed future, the rest of the universe will be spared the devastation of the Transformers' war. No one can really argue against his logic... except for Whirl, who refuses to let the Functionists "win". Grabbing Megatron's body when nobody is looking and snatching the Point One Percenter spark taken from Luna 1 from Brainstorm's chest compartment, he locks himself in a nearby room and implants the spark into Megatron's body. With this action, Whirl ensures the safety of the existing timeline: Magnus contacts Rodimus let him know that time has begun moving again, but that, with the quantum engines out of power, they are now stranded in the past. To spare them this fate, Tailgate suggests they use the time phone to try and prevent the Lost Light from taking off in the first place, altering their destinies. Together, the group sends a message to Cybertron on the ship's launch day, warning their future selves of all the dangers that they will face on their journey—though as Cyclonus points out, if it was successful, all the good they have done on their trip will also not happen. Rodimus cuts off Cyclonus's rant and hands him Whirl's gun: though they cannot travel through time, Perceptor can teleport them one last time to a location on Cybertron that may hold the key to their salvation.

After Rodimus and Cyclonus have left, the weakened Brainstorm explains his motivations to Rewind: originally, he had created the time machine in order to save Quark, the unrequited love of his life, from dying in Grindcore prison. Following the original Rewind's death and Chromedome's emotional breakdown, however, Brainstorm decided to expand the scope of his mission, and decided to save as many lives as possible by preventing the war. Afterward, Tailgate asks Rewind to explain exactly where Rodimus and Cyclonus have gone; Rewind tells him they have gone to Unitrex, the city in which the first interstellar starships were created. Pulling up an image of the region from his database, Rewind is struck by the sight of some very familiar fuel quills poking up from below the city...

Rodimus and Cyclonus arrive in a secret facility underneath Unitrex, where they are accosted by a security guard and his pack of turbofoxes. Cyclonus deals with the guard, blasting him with Whirl's gun and locking his spasming form in a nearby room with his pets, while Rodimus speeds on ahead, locating the experimental generator that Perceptor has sent them to find. At Perceptor's direction, using information gained from the Lost Light's own engines, Rodimus makes a few modifications to the generator to turn it into a functional quantum engine, then plugs the case into it in order to charge it for a jump back to the future. As Cyclonus rejoins him, Rodimus ensures that he has brought Whirl's gun with him—they cannot leave an experimental weapon from Brainstorm's future arsenal lying about in the past, though Cyclonus can't read the scientist's terrible handwriting on the handle, and does not realize he shot the guard with a "Sparkeater Gun". Adding to the weirdness of the day, the entire complex suddenly disappears around them, shunted into the future by the newly-fashioned quantum engine—little do the pair realize that they have just been responsible for creating the Lost Light they will come to call home!

The next day, after everyone has returned to their proper place and time, things get back to normal aboard the Lost Light. Brainstorm is in the brig; Chromedome and Rewind now sleep in the same room once more; everyone enjoys a movie screening and a singalong in Swerve's; and Megatron retires to his quarters with Ravage to silently regard his Rodimus Star. Rung pays a visit to Perceptor's lab to talk over recent events—Perceptor explains that the crew were always supposed to travel through time, their actions having always been part of history, and that the alternate "functionist timeline" only came into being accidentally, as a result of his tampering with the time machine's paradox locks. Further, he speculates that that alternate timeline may now actually exist as its own parallel universe...

...which is shown to be the case, as, across time and space, Functionist Council member One-of-Twelve is summoned by Quark with news of a world-shaking discovery made by janitorial 'bot Sweep. Dubbing Sweep "alt mode exalted" for his contributions, One-of-Twelve bring the news before the 'bot to whom it pertains: the captive Rung, "The Useless One", held prisoner due to the mystery of his alternate mode. But that mystery has now been solved, and the threat that the truth of Rung's form poses to the Functionists' regime demands his execution. But as One-of-Twelve holds a gun on him, Rung merely encourages him to pull the trigger, as doing so will only herald the beginning of the end...

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots Decepticons Others

Quotes

"Rodimus? You want me to put my life in the hands of an Autobot who somersaults onto the bridge? An Autobot who pretends to be dead if you ask him a difficult question? An Autobot who, in response to a crisis in morale perpetuated by his own woeful captaincy, introduced a reward system based on his own face?"
"You were happy to leave this to Rodimus when you thought it was Prime's life on the line..."
"What? Don't be clever, it makes you sound stupid. God, now I'm starting to sound like him."

—Megatron and Ultra Magnus on Rodimus, and Rodimus Stars


"Neatest handwriting. You?"
"Sigh. For abandoning my evil ways."

—Ultra Magnus and Megatron on the attributes that earned them their Rodimus Stars


"The old time-traveling grenade trick!"
"Is it old?"
"It is now."

—Rodimus and Tailgate


"Holy heck, that was intense! And it was exactly like the climax to Crosscut's play—except Brainstorm isn't a giant turbofox and the gun isn't a shovel and we're not trapped inside a carnival mirror and none of us are speaking in rhyme!"

—Tailgate, after Rung gets Brainstorm to stand down


"I never set out to kill anyone. All I wanted to was stop the war by steering Megatron away from life-changing events.
"No one cares."
"You say that, Whirl, but maybe—"
"♪ No one cares what you have to say...! ♫"

—Brainstorm and Whirl


"Cyclonus thought you'd traced the wrong energy signature. I said, 'Percy, make a mistake? The last time that happened it turned out physics had screwed up.' Ha!"

—Rodimus, to Perceptor


"I am so lost. Loved the pink flying sled—but that bit when he watches himself playing guitar? I mean, what?"
"It's from the first one!"
"There's a first one?"

—Tailgate and Riptide on Back to the Future Part II

Notes

Continuity notes

  • The Custom-Made Now is the third part of a trilogy of flashback stories, following Chaos Theory and Shadowplay.[1]
  • Whirl mentions that this issue takes place in the middle of the "Silver Harvest", the name given in issue #31 to the discovery of Tyrest's stockpile of Matrix-born sparks, which was itself originally alluded to in issue #19.
  • The data on Megatron erased by Brainstorm includes his batch code. It was originally established that Megatron had no batch code waaaay back in issue #22 of the 2009-2011 ongoing series.
  • While not explicitly stated, this issue does provide a possible explanation why Megatron is so adamant about keeping his mode of creation secret. As he's a Point One Percenter spark in a cold constructed body, chances are he wasn't so sure of the answer himself.
  • Brainstorm's sparkprint of Rung was taken back in issue #28, during the short blackout that showed the audience an x-ray view of Rung and Megatron. We assumed at the time that the blackout itself was the first of what would be many subsequent power outages that accompanied the slow quantum erasure of the ship and its crew, but perhaps it was, as Megatron suggested at the time, simply a power surge caused by the activation of Brainstorm's scanner.
  • It was in the same issue that Megatron talked about the Maccadam's brawl during his therapy session, which Brainstorm was able to learn about because he was standing outside the room at the time.
  • Brainstorm collected the Point One Percenter spark from Luna 1 in issue #17. The fact that 'bots of two spark-types had been able to use Brainstorm's time machine when it was supposed to be coded for just his own type was a lingering question after issue #37, but the revelation that he was carrying a second spark with him is our implicit answer to how that worked.
  • At long last, Tailgate is revealed to be the sender of the warning message we heard all the way back in issue #1, in an attempt to warn the crew of all the terrible things that await them on their journey: Tailgate himself warns "Don't open the coffin" containing the alternate Rodimus's corpse, in issue #29; Rodimus cautions "Don't let them take Skids" to Luna 1, as seen in issue #19; Rung urges "Don't go to Delphi", where the twin terrors of the Decepticon Justice Division and Pharma lurk, from issues #4 and #5 (and leading to the rescue of Fortress Maximus and Rung's near-fatal head injury from issue 6); Chromedome guards the mistake he made in issue #14, "Do not look in the basement", where Overlord is imprisoned; and Riptide completes the message by warning them not to trust Brainstorm, but as we saw in issue #1, this part of the transmission was lost.
    • Roberts knew all along that the broadcast was from the past and not from the future. That's why it deliberately doesn't say it's a message from the future in that issue! [2]
  • Brainstorm makes reference to when he was "sort of dead once", as seen in the closing chapters of "Dark Cybertron".
  • Brainstorm revelation that he was in love with Quark clarifies the comment he made back in issue #16, when he implied to Chromedome that he had lost a Conjunx Endura of his own.
  • Brainstorm's love for Quark probably explains, to some extent, his fanboyish infatuation with Perceptor beyond his being a rival scientist—he's also a microscope, like Quark, and Quark was always designed to resemble Animated Perceptor.
  • Quark was captured during the fall of K'th Kinsere, a location brought out several times during Roberts's works; the Decepticons' attack on it was specifically described in issue #31. He was incarcerated in Grindcore prison, previously mentioned in "Bullets".
  • Brainstorm's motivations cast new light on certain previous scenes: for example, when he hugs his briefcase to him during the group funeral in issue #16, or when he tells Rewind that he is "not yet" happy, but will be "soon", with his briefcase prominently displayed, in issue #22.
  • As is made obvious by the story though apparently not actually realized by any of the characters, Rodimus and Cyclonus do not simply visit a "secret base", but are actually teleported inside the younger version of the Lost Light itself, inside said base. The launch pad they find themselves on when the ship disappears is labelled "U1", the previous name of the ship, as revealed in issue #31. Essentially "perfected" by its own future crew, the ship is sent into the future, where it will be found by the NAILs who then sold it to Drift in issue #31. How the NAILs knew its original name remains a question, though...
  • And of course, the unfortunate guard, mutated by the Sparkeater Gun, becomes the Sparkeater that menaced the ship in issue #3, and has been locked in the chamber it was freed from since the very beginning. The remains of three turbofoxes were found in the cell in issue #3, but presumably these weren't the original three turbofoxes we see in this issue; in #3, Rodimus speculated that the NAILs who would eventually come to own the Lost Light were feeding the sparkeater the creatures to keep it docile, and issue #31 seemed to back that assertion up by revealing that said NAILs had stolen a brace of turbofoxes from the Alchemy-Seven. Perhaps they were inspired to use turbofoxes after they saw what the Sparkeater did to the ones it was first locked up with.
  • All this would also mean that the poor fellow Whirl shot with the gun last issue also turned into a sparkeater. Could that guy and whatever he got up to after being mutated have been the origin of the sparkeater myth, in turn inspiring Brainstorm to create the gun in the first place?? James Roberts nods and winks and implies yes![3]
  • Ravage is revealed to still be aboard the Lost Light, despite a certain amount of uncertainty being shed on whether he would choose to remain with Megatron or return to the Decepticons back in issue #33.
  • "The Useless One" was originally mentioned in our first glimpse of the "Functionist timeline" in issue #35, and is here confirmed to be that timeline's version of Rung, thought it was fairly easy to deduce at the time. To no-one's great surprise, we here receive our first implication that his alternate mode is part of something much greater...

Transformers references

  • The pistol Brainstorm trains on Megatron (which is also brandished by One-of-Twelve on the final page) is based on Megatron's original Generation 1 Walther P38 alternate mode, sans the fusion cannon/scope and stock attachments, but retaining its barrel-extending silencer.
  • Megatron was constructed cold in "Con Facility 113," yet another of Roberts's many references to the number.
  • The title of this issue, "Predestination: An Expert's Guide", parallels the title of issue #30, "Predestination: A Beginner's Guide."
  • The harness in which alternate-universe Rung is suspended is a callback to the similar apparatus that contained Overlord beneath the Lost Light - they are even presented to us in the same quarter-view looking-up angle.

Real-life references

  • You don't need us to tell you that the 'bots are watching Back to the Future Part II—which is, of course, about characters travelling back in time to put history to rights and avert a terrible alternate timeline from happening, just like this story has been. Tailgate missed out on seeing the first one, but Cyclonus evidently didn't, since he is able to lead everyone in a singalong of "The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News, which doesn't appear (properly) in the sequel. "The Power of love," the song intones, "might just save your life"—a fitting summation of the emotions revealed this issue to have secretly driven the storyline.
  • Whirl likes the film well enough, but he'd rather have Alphaville—it's directed by Jean-Luc Godard, whose work he expressed a fondness for in issue #30.
  • Megatron's personal revelations this issue—that the universe would be better off without him—are an intentional flip of It’s a Wonderful Life; that’s why we never see him again in the present until the end.[4]

Errors

  • When spotting the familiar fuel quills of the Lost Light, Rewind says "They looks awfully familiar", rather than "That looks" or "They look".
  • Cyclonus urges the others at the bar to sing along with a hearty "Altogether!" rather than a correct "All together!"

Other trivia

  • Roberts has said this story is the most self-referential the comic will get, and he was conscious that showing the origin of the Sparkeater and the ship might be skirting the line. [5]
  • Originally intended for release in February 2015, continuing delays afflicting multiple IDW titles as a result of port closures on the west coast of America saw this issue pushed to the first week of March.
  • On the day of this issue's release, "#mtmte" was a trending topic on Tumblr, meaning that the comic was one of the most talked-about topics on the entire platform (itself one of the top 25 internet destinations as ranked by traffic) in the whole world. This is, of course, AWESOME.
  • Perceptor notes that the Functionist timeline may function as a starting point for additional alternate timelines. Although the concept of alternate timelines and parallel universes was discounted as impossible back in issue #35 (in spite of contrary evidence within IDW continuity itself such as the Dead Universe and Spotlight: Mirage), they are a long-standing concept in the Transformers franchise - so it's possible that the Transformers multiverse was created through Brainstorm's briefcase. James Roberts later clarified that the "phenomenally arrogant" subtext was his intention! [6]
  • However, an entry of the 2015 BotCon Facebook blog Ask Vector Prime indicates that Brainstorm's briefcase is not that far-reaching, as Vector Prime states that he was surprised to see Primax 1114.26 Gamma spring fully-formed into existence in the multiverse, as such an event is very uncommon.
  • Perceptor mentions that his actions tampering with Brainstorm's time machine accidentally created the conditions for the existence of parallel universes. But if their timeline hadn't started to collapse and the Functionist timeline hadn't started to intrude, Rewind's database wouldn't have been overwritten. If Rewind's database hadn't been overwritten, he wouldn't have had the motivation to destroy Megatron's original spark. Furthermore, the revelation of the Functionist dystopia was also what prompted Whirl to save Megatron's life by transplanting the new spark, preserving the timeline. So that means Perceptor accidentally creating parallel universes must also have been preordained to occur. So the multiverse and all its infinite timelines were always destined to exist. My head hurts.

Soundtrack

Covers (3)

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References

  1. ↑ TransMissions Episode 94 – James Roberts MTMTE Elegant Chaos Interview 36:00 to 36:07
  2. ↑ TransMissions Episode 94 – James Roberts MTMTE Elegant Chaos Interview 37:40 to 38:59
  3. ↑ TransMissions Episode 94 – James Roberts MTMTE Elegant Chaos Interview 1:08:00 to 1:08:21
  4. ↑ TransMissions Episode 94 – James Roberts MTMTE Elegant Chaos Interview 59:30 to 1:01:11
  5. ↑ TransMissions Episode 94 – James Roberts MTMTE Elegant Chaos Interview 47:44 to 49:39
  6. ↑ Transmissions podcast interview with James Roberts (54:08)
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