Transformers: Chaos Theory (part three)

Starting the second issue of the "Chaos Theory" arc. As far as the backstory half of this story goes, the previous issue ended on what seemed like a pretty good resolution. Megatron's mistreatment by the oblivious Optimus' police department caused him to put pride before principles and start turning red fash, giving him his start of darkness (though as I pointed out at the time, I don't think it would have taken too long for him to go that route anyway). However, the "present" subplot, with Megatron in autobot captivity and Optimus not being sure what to do with him, remains unresolved.

So, we'll see what happens next. And also where this whole story ends up leading politically.

The Transformers #23
​

Surprisingly, this issue starts in prewar Cybertron again. An unspecified period of time has passed since Megatron's arrest and release. Optimus, still a police captain, is watching a news report. There was just a major terrorist attack; a suicide bomber detonated himself in the middle of Nominus Prime's big procession, killing a double-digit number of cybertronians including possibly the Prime himself.

A double digit body count might not sound like much, until you remember how hard cybertronians are to kill. We're talking a tactical nuclear scale explosion. There are also conflicting reports that it was a dirty bomb, and released a chemical rusting agent into the air that might kill or maim others in the coming days. All in all, pretty nasty attack. No one has claimed responsibility yet, but there are quite a few militant groups that could have done it.

Cybertronian society definitely feels like it's on the brink, alright.

Optimus' newswatching is interrupted by a trio of brutish-looking transformers who swagger into his office like they own it and immediately start being really, really condescending. And also just...well, apparently Megatron didn't invent the whole "synth master race" ideology on his own.

The last precinct chief apparently went on humanoid-safari, and displayed their heads in this very office. This would have been before Homo sapiens evolved, of course, but these "primitives" are similar enough that they might well be talking about one of the earlier hominids.

What this spells out for the reader is that the decepticons aren't morally any worse than the prewar social order. They cause more destruction because of the need to fuel their war machine, but I don't think they do anything that the old Cybertron regime wouldn't have done if they thought it was in their interest.

Which definitely puts Optimus in a very interesting position, with regards to him and Megatron's beliefs about themselves and each other. Optimus was the agent of a regime whose ethics weren't meaningfully different from the decepticons'. He enforced its laws, mostly against its underclass, while ignoring the office buddies of his who were going around being the villains of Predator movies (with a side order of Christine) in their vacation time. From Megatron's perspective, where the hell did this guy suddenly find his self-righteousness? Does Optimus realize this, himself?

I suppose this is complicated by the fact that Optimus was purpose-built to be a policeman, and possibly to be a police captain specifically. I don't have enough familiarity with the Transformers deep lore to know what that means for his agency at the time. Maybe you can only really judge a cybertronian once it leaves its intended niche and starts developing more of an individual perspective? Like I said, I'm not really sure how the cybertronian childhood/socialization/education equivalents work and how much potential for dissent there is at what points in their development.

Well, back to Optimus' office. Or rather, Orion Pax's office. It wasn't clear in the previous issue, but Optimus Prime took on a completely new name when he was granted the sacred whatsamacallit tha makes him a Prime. Before then, he was named Orion Pax. This was explained to me in @Vinegrape's supplemental info, but I probably would have figured it out at around this point anyway. Anyway, the douchebots disrespect him for a while before finally getting to the point. They're here to see Whirl, the ACABorg who beat up Megatron and probably would have killed him if he hadn't been interrupted. And, Optimus/Orion pleasantly surprises me when he explains that Whirl is no longer employed here, but imprisoned here, and they missed visiting hours.

So he didn't just turn a blind eye. He actually arrested Whirl and has been holding him just like he would any other assault and battery suspect.

Okaaaaay. With the look we've had at cybertronian police culture, how many of his underlings has Orion had to arrest up to this point? How has he been able to keep his position, given the friction he must have built up?

Maybe most of them are just much better at hiding this shit than Whirl was. But that's kind of hard for me to believe when the last chief was literally displaying his skull collection over his office desk.

Well, it turns out that there's a reason Whirl might have been bolder and more brazen than most of his coworkers. The reason he was personal friends with those army guys is because he shares a family-equivalent social group with a bigtime politician who's popular among the military class. Him being convicted - or even tried, and therefore getting public attention called to his conduct - would cause a great deal of embarrassment to said politician. So, in light of this, surely Orion must realize that Whirl has already learned his lesson after these last couple days in jail, right? There's no need for everyone to keep dragging this on instead of learning to forgive and let live.

Orion tells them that he doesn't care if Whirl is a personality fork of the fucking Omnissiah, he assaulted an innocent transformer and he's going to do time for it, now GTFO of his office. They comply, but aren't happy about it, and they make it clear to him that this story isn't over yet.

Return to the present! Optimus Prime, four million years older, wiser, and more regretful than dumb young Captain Orion Pax, is standing in his ship's engineering section, staring vacantly into the reactor. One of his officers, an autobot by the name of Ratchet, asks if he's decided to just go ahead and execute Megatron already. Optimus says that no, he has not. He hasn't decided to let him live either, though. He can't kill him, after their history. He can't spare him, just because some personal history is getting in the way of doing what needs to be done. He also can't yield the decision to someone else, because he already knows what virtually every autobot besides him would choose to do, so effectively he'd just be killing him with extra steps.

Ratchet asks him if he can't just look inside of the Primal Matrix - an ancient artifact of the cybertronians' creators that contains the accumulated wisdom of past bearers, which was implanted into him when he became a "Prime" - to divine the best answer. Optimus replies that he's not sure if he has the will to go through with it, or the certainty that the wisdom of previous bearers have a better perspective on this that he does. Optimus then recounts his experience of being implanted with the Matrix, and the intense pain that it caused him for several days.

Before he can say what the favor is, we go back to ancient Cybertron. Some of Orion's beat cops are patrolling the streets, and finding absolutely no crime or emergencies to deal with. It seems like Orion's policing policies might actually be making a real difference around their part of the city. Then they come back to the station, and find Orion dragging a whole gaggle of suspects in after him. Apparently, he went out early to respond to something or other that he felt called for his personal attention.

"Changing lives," huh?

I'm not sure if we're supposed to see him arresting this bunch as a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand, Orion is uncorruptible. On the other, the laws themselves are unjust, and the comic has been pretty direct about this (apartheid having been a legal institution up until very recently speaks for itself). We don't know what he busted these guys for, and the comic never gets back to this. So, yeah, I don't know if we're supposed to be impressed or disgusted with Orion right now.

Officer Dorkly asks Orion what's got him so worked up today. It turns out that Orion's been reading Megatron's treatise very closely over the last few days, and it's been effecting him much more than he made it seem in the previous issue. Too many things about the world around him that his mind just papered over or rationalized away are sticking out to him now, like Das Teknikal was the key to a cipher that surrounded him. The incident last night was what really drove it home for him; it's one thing to hear anecdotes about rampant cronyism and political corruption, but another to see it firsthand in such a naked display. How brazen those three spooks were, like they were used to everyone always going along with this sort of thing. If Megatron's writing was correct about the nepotism issue, then who knows what else it might be correct about?

Dorkly is apparently a devout Progenitorist, and advises Orion to pray to the Matrices for guidance. Orion, in a rare display of scepticism that he seems to have been hiding up until now, replies that he's not religious. He doesn't think the Primal Matrices are anything mystical, or even particularly impressive technologically. He doesn't believe the progenitors were divine. He doesn't even believe in most of the mythologized early cybertronian history that comes with their ecclesiastical traditions.

It's been not-so-subtly implied that their government has a strong theocratic element to it. What Orion just said here might actually be borderline criminal, depending on whether or not they have outright heresy laws. Probably not, given Orion's scrupulous knowledge of and adherence to the law, but still probably close to it.

Frustrated by Dorkly's attempts at guidance, Orion goes back out on an impromptu patrol. Ignoring the fact that that magnetic storm that's been futzing with communications lately is still getting worse.

Back to the present, Optimus is meeting with another autobot. We don't know what favor he asked Ratchet for, but right now he's speaking with Rodimus, formerly known as Hot Rod. This is actually a detail I remember from the stuff I saw as a kid; something happened to Optimus for a while, so in the meantime Hot Rod had to take his Primal Matrix and lead the autobots in his place. He took on the name Rodimus Prime for that stint, and apparently they still call him Rodimus even after he relinquished the matrix to Optimus. Well, anyway, the relevant detail here is that Rodimus is the only other Prime - past or current - who is alive and willing/able to talk to Optimus.

Optimus wants to know what his own implantation with the Primal Matrix felt like. The answer is disquieting, assuming that Rodimus is telling the truth.

Either Optimus was never actually worthy to bear the matrix, or there's something even weirder and worse going on. Again, assuming Rodimus is telling the truth.

Then again, given what cybertronian society was like, maybe it's less that Optimus isn't worthy to bear the matrix, and more that the matrix isn't worthy of him. If it guided the previous Primes to create a shitty neoliberal dystopia, maybe its opinion was never all that helpful. Maybe the pain was his body warning him about something poisonous.

I think the intended implication is that Optimus thinks he's unworthy. But, him thinking that strikes me as the same kind of naivete that Orion Pax spent his police career plagued by. Him putting so much faith in these obviously flawed historical legacies is probably the most unworthy thing about him. Maybe the only one, even.

Back to the past! Orion comes back to the station in the evening, with the storm at its height, and finds signs of a firefight. Two of his officers - including Dorkly - are dead, their severed heads placed on a shelf. Weapons out, Orion moves deeper into the station and finds those secret service bots walking Whirl to freedom.

Seems like a dramatic stopping point. Next time, we finish issue #23.