Legacy
by Alan Green


I sit in my quarters, in the center of the room, on the floor.  I've been 
here for two weeks now, at least.  I haven't moved from this room since the 
Freedom was attacked.  I don't know if any other crewmembers know where I am 
or care at all that I haven't been around.  If they even remember me.  It's 
not like I've been around long or done anything important, anyway.

But that's probably for the best.  If they don't care, then it won't matter 
much when the events of tonight have unfolded.  Over time I've realized how 
shallow my lifestyle really is.  I am completely self-serving and I exist 
only to please myself.  I do this by engaging in simple-minded and often 
superficial activities.  My life has had no profound impact on the universe  
in general or the Transformer race in particular.  Joining the war could not 
change this, I'd be just another nameless mass of scrap metal at the end of 
the day.

My so-called friends would probably not expect this of me, precisely because 
of the personality I project outwards.  It's to hide all this.

I can't take hiding anymore.

I also can't keep living a life that has no meaning.

I've been studying Terran culture a lot.  After all, they've had nearly as 
much impact on us as we have on them.  I believe their psychological 
sciences have a word for my condition.  "Depression."  They can treat it in 
themselves, and I imagine we aren't so different that it can't also be 
treated in us, albeit obviously not with the same chemicals.  But could it 
get so bad that one would rather just end it than chance treatment?

I've also been studying their religious and mystical texts.  Some older 
cultures have a technique they use to purify their minds, to gain clarity 
and insight.  "Meditation", they call it.  Some write it off as 
mysticobabble, some believe it can give them supernatural and impossible 
abilities, but the more serious practicioners use it to gain peace of mind.

It turns out that it's not an impossible task for a Transformer.  The human 
brain is a computer just like our own Spark, and just as our Spark, it is 
not the circuit-board-and-wires form of computer one normally thinks of when 
hearing the word.  Just as we do not really understand the Spark and where 
it comes from and why, humans do not understand where their consciousness 
came from or why.  I'm not really sure if I'm making sense anymore, so I may 
as well cut to the point.  If anybody ever cares to read this log, anyway.

I have discovered how a Transformer can meditate.  Humans essentially shut 
down their thoughts and just sense the world around them, through their 
eyes, hears, etc.  Their minds empty and are purified.  Their thought 
process shuts down temporarily.  A Transformer can do the same.  We all 
undergo "rest" shutdown processes to keep from burning out, or even simply 
to pass time.  I have discovered how to only partly shutdown.  My thought 
circuitry shuts off and "goes to sleep", yet I continue to sense the world 
around me.  I am still online.  And it's easy to come out of, one just 
starts thinking again through willpower.  In practice, it becomes just as 
easy to slip into.

I believe Transformer meditation allows the practicioner to reach the 
Allspark.  The Matrix dimension.  Where all is one, and where it is believed 
Transformer sparks begin and end.  Here one may feel bliss, or euphoria, 
along with the clear mind that humans seek through meditation.  This is why 
I feel comfortable calling it such.

Anyway, this is what I seek.  To quietly fade into nonexistance, to join the 
Allspark through meditation.  I think tonight I may finally be ready.  I 
have set my internal computer to run a systems check ten cycles after I 
enter the meditative state.  If it finds that my spark has left my body, 
perhaps even extinguished, it will shut down all remaining systems.  My body 
will be left a lifeless corpse.

As my last wish, I ask that my memory databanks and neural circuitry be 
analyzed and studied in hopes that a cure can be found for my condition, so 
that others may not suffer to the point of choosing the path I have chosen.  
This may be the one way I can help out as I wish.

Now that that's said, I bid whoever reading goodnight and good life.

Till All Are One.

-Tint