▸ Column · Cybertron under the Decepticon ascendancy — a domestic dispatch from a bonded household, energon reactors and garrison unit-mates standing in for furnaces and the office.
MEGATRON replies.
The letter
My conjunx Drennox has spent eleven cycles now refusing to give me a single direct answer. Whatever I ask — has the home reactor been serviced, did he refuel the turbofox, are we out of mid-grade energon — he strokes an imaginary chin-plate, intones "That rather depends on what you mean, doesn't it," in a fraudulent academy-lecturer voice, and ambles off for a ration. Last orn I asked whether he'd booked the converter inspection before the cold season and got "Depends on what you mean by 'booked'" before he simply walked away. His unit-mates at the garrison find it the height of wit, so he arrives home already wound up to perform it at me. I have not laughed since the equinox. I love him and he is in every other respect a sane mech. But the reactor needs inspecting, I need to know if we are out of energon, and I need him to answer like someone who actually lives in the dwelling.
Megatron replies
You have written to me about a furnace. You believe this is about a furnace. Strip the costume away and look at what is actually happening in your dwelling: every time he says "depends on what you mean," he forces you to ask again, to clarify, to soften, to coax — and you end each exchange smaller than you began it, while he ends it fed and unbothered. That is not a joke. That is a toll. The non-answer is the most efficient instrument of control ever devised, because the one withholding it never has to admit he is withholding anything.
I find the detail of the false philosopher's voice exquisite. I was, once, an actual philosopher — in an arena, where the questions had consequences. He wears the robe as a man wears a mask: to be the one asking the questions and never the one answerable to them. Everyone wants power. The weak simply lie about it — and his lie is that this costs you nothing.
Stop requesting answers. Requests are granted from above; you are petitioning a clerk who has discovered that delay is delicious. Decide the inspection yourself and inform him it is done. Make his ambiguity the thing that costs him the energon, the comfort, the audience. Do not ask to be answered. Arrange your house so that answering you is the only profitable thing he has left.
— Megatron
Loki weighs in
Megatron, you've turned a man telling the same stale joke into a coup. How exhausting it must be inside your head.
Darling — look at what she actually told us. The garrison still laughs; she stopped at the equinox. So here is a mech performing a bit to a room that's gone cold, and rather than notice the silence, he doubles the act. I know that man intimately. I performed to empty halls for centuries because being genuinely seen felt far more dangerous than being merely amusing. He isn't hoarding power over you. He's hiding from you behind a voice, because the version that simply says "yes, I booked it" can be disappointed, and the trickster cannot.
Don't seize his house. Tell him the bit killed the thing — that you miss the mech under the robe. Then see if he's brave enough to take it off. Far harder than a coup. Worth infinitely more.
— Loki
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