▸ Column · Modern Transformers (IDW-era, grounded comic register) — aboard the Nemesis
SOUNDWAVE replies.
Replied to by Soundwave, with a rebuttal from Starscream.
The letter
Four months ago I matched with Flux on one of those neural-frequency exchange nodes — honestly I don't even know what to call it, it's basically a place where Cybertronians post data about themselves and hope someone pings back. We met up twice. Both times were genuinely good. I left both thinking this was actually going somewhere.
Then nothing for five cycles. Then he'd ping something small — "hope your patrol rotation isn't brutal" or a clip from that old horror-reel archive we both love, right at the exact moment I'd decided to stop waiting. I'd be halfway through drafting a "do you actually want to meet again" message and he'd surface with just enough that I'd delete it and tell myself I was being impatient.
My squadmate Verdigris has started logging the timestamps. (She's thorough about this. Extremely thorough.) She pointed out last cycle that Flux only ever initiates on rest-period evenings — like I'm a backup frequency he remembers when his weekend options go quiet.
Am I being strung along? Or am I just refusing to read data that's already right in front of me?
— Looping in the Rust Quarter
Soundwave replies
Observation. Verdigris has already run the analysis. Pattern logged: rest-period evenings only, five-cycle silences between, minimum signal deployed at the precise moment you approach the decision to close the channel. This is not ambiguity. Ambiguity is two plausible readings of incomplete data. You have complete data. You have timestamped logs. What you have is reluctance.
I have monitored Decepticon transmissions for longer than you have been operational. I know this pattern. Every schemer on this ship runs a version of it — just enough contact to keep a potential resource from going dark. Flux is running the same signal with less tactical purpose behind it. The effect is identical.
The asymmetry is precise: he reveals nothing — no intent, no availability, no investment. You reveal all three. Every message you draft and delete is an observation exercise you are conducting on his behalf.
Two moves remain. First: close the channel. Do not respond when he next surfaces. Observe whether the signal escalates when the echo he expects does not come. This is the only remaining source of new information. Second: send the message you keep deleting. Not to invite more warmth. To produce a binary answer from which the loop cannot recover.
The data does not require another reading. The decision does.
— Soundwave
Starscream weighs in
Soundwave's answer is, as ever, technically correct and completely useless. "Close the channel. Observe." How very cold. How very him.
What actually works is counter-scarcity. You become the unavailable one. You initiate on your own schedule, from a position of apparent leisure. You become the frequency Flux wonders if he's about to lose.
I have run this scheme against stronger opponents than Flux, for longer than I will admit, and here is what I have learned at considerable personal cost: it works perfectly as long as neither party actually wants anything real. The moment one of you does, the entire architecture collapses.
Which means Soundwave's answer is correct.
I hate that more than you do.
— Starscream
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