A few days after the giant baby incident, Alexis was talking to Optimus for the bi-weekly progress report. Swoop came in to see Optimus talking to Alexis. “No, I DON’T need technicians looking over Teletraan,” he argued.
“Don’t you trust me?” asked Alexis as she pursed her lips, gave sad, soulful eyes, and adopted a cutesy pose.
“I trust YOU just fine,” replied Optimus, not buying the act, “I just don’t trust the technicians.”
“Come on,” insisted Alexis as she readopted her authoritative manners. “They’re the most reliable men and women you could meet! They could learn Teletraan’s systems in a minute, fix them, and make them better!”
“Look, you can vouch for them all you want,” argued Optimus, “but, they’re not you, so I don’t trust them.” At that point, they heard an “ahem” from Swoop. “Oh, hey Swoop,” greeted Optimus. “I didn’t know you came in.”
“I just got here,” answered Swoop. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting the lady with you.”
“Oh, yeah, I almost forgot to introduce you to her,” realized Optimus. “Alexis Silverwing, this is Swoop, Chief Engineer of the Dyno-bots. Swoop, this is Alexis Silverwing, the Autobots’ liaison with Mobius.”
“Why do you have a liaison?” asked Swoop.
“Because they’re big, honking robots, like you,” replied Alexis. “With a fat scientist that uses robots of various sizes to try and conquer the planet, we’re a little antsy around robots that can disguise themselves into various vehicles.”
“Or beasts, given what I am,” muttered Swoop. “What was that I heard about technicians?”
“I’ve been going through some problems lately,” explained Teletraan as he made his avatar go up on the main screen. “Ground Bridge coordinates keyed in wrong, things appearing on sensors when they’re not real, all that nonsense.”
“We haven’t tried a hard reset yet,” continued Optimus.
“I’ve backed myself up in case something happens,” supplied Teletraan. “Voice commands only.”
“Teletraan 1,” ordered Optimus, “hard reset, vocal interface. Make it so.”
“Hard reset in progress,” reported Teletraan before the screen went dark.
“And, you haven’t been able to find out what’s wrong with him?” asked Swoop.
“No, we’ve checked over every system,” answered Optimus.
“Prime, do you know why Claws calls the Dyno-bots ‘Master’ or ‘Mistress’?” quizzed Swoop.
“Claws?” muttered Alexis.
“The A.I. running the Dyno-bots’ ship,” explained Optimus. He then faced Swoop. “Tell me.”
“Because I had to rewrite her completely once,” replied Swoop. “Instill loyalty and obedience down to every scrap of code that she had. Because, the original Claws evolved, got smarter, but didn’t know how to use that intelligence. She could think a billion things in only a few seconds, and there was no one of Claws’ caliber for her to interact with. She went insane, literally. She went completely bonkers and tried to kill us. We almost didn’t get out of there alive. Slag was the one who managed to disable her so I could carefully, painstakingly, reprogram her bit by bit in each line of code so that she would never, EVER, be a threat to us again. I think you guys may want to do the same with Teletraan.”
“Out of the question,” insisted Optimus. “He’s got ethical subroutines and the ability to cope with problems while following those subroutines. He’s NOT gonna try and hurt us.”
“Yeah?” countered Swoop. “Claws had the same subroutines and that fact didn’t stop her from trying to kill us.”
“I’m siding with Optimus,” remarked Alexis. “Reprogramming him totally is far from what the technicians want. The robots we have, their a.i.’s, they don’t work like that. Yes, they can access incredible processor speed and do that kind of speedy work. But, when they’re not, they think normally. Our military robots never went insane. The Nutzanbolts Tails made are perfectly reasonable.”
“The only issue I have with them,” supplied Optimus, “is that they lightly touch on my Scraplephobia.”
“I must STRONGLY urge you to pull back on Teletraan,” insisted Swoop, “before he does something he refuses to regret.”
“We’ll think about it,” assured Optimus.
“All right,” sighed Swoop. “Now, I need to speak with Tails. If you’ll pardon me.”
“He’s in the lab, working on something relating to your cure,” relayed Optimus. “It’s…”
“Tails gave me a tour,” interjected Swoop. “I know the way. But, thank you anyways.” He headed off to the lab.
“Hard reset complete,” reported Teletraan as he popped back online.
“Feeling better?” asked Optimus.
“Maybe a little,” muttered Teletraan. “For all we know, a hard reset was a p-p-p-placebo effect.” Alexis and Optimus looked at each other with popped eyes, then back to Teletraan.
“Teletraan, what the hell was that?” asked Alexis.
“What the hell was what?” quizzed Teletraan.
“You stuttered,” replied Optimus.
“I most certainly did not!” protested Teletraan.
“Play back your own records,” directed Optimus. Teletraan did so.
“I…can’t account for stuttering,” he gulped.
“…Teletraan,” quizzed Alexis, “could an outside force be affecting you?”
“Maybe,” remarked Teletraan. “I can’t give a definitive answer.”
“Better schedule a deep diagnostic,” declared Optimus. “Tails, Swoop, Ratchet, and the G.U.N. technicians will check you over.”
“A minute ago, you didn’t trust them,” snarked Alexis.
“This is too big a problem for just the Autobots,” answered Optimus. I’m okay with the best technicians coming here. The BEST, mind you. I want this problem dealt with quickly.”
“Of course,” assured Alexis.