▸ Column · The Decepticon communications corps — grief and apology between two comrades on the war's signal-bands, adapted from the modern friendship letter.
SOUNDWAVE replies.
The letter
My closest comrade — twelve vorns at my side — lost her creator to a sudden cascade failure six cycles ago. When she opened a channel to me, raw and broadcasting on every band, I panicked and transmitted "at least the shutdown was fast, no prolonged pain." I knew it was wrong the instant it left me. She went silent and closed the link. Four cycles now with no contact — unheard of between us. I'm terrified I've turned her grief into a referendum on my own discomfort. I want to send an apology but I can't tell whether to pulse a short message, arrive at her quarters with provisions, or hold the channel open and wait. Every version I rehearse sounds like I'm centering myself again. Is there a way to signal "I'm sorry I said something foolish" without making the apology one more thing she has to process?
Soundwave replies
Conclusion: your error was the sentence. Your error now is the rehearsal. Different failures. Address the second.
Observation. Six words spoken in panic are spent. They cannot be recalled. You continue to broadcast — to yourself, to me — your guilt, your fear, your need for absolution. This is the leak. Each rehearsed version transmits the same signal: comfort me for the thing I did to you. She would have to manage that. Correct it by removing it.
Read her silence. Four cycles against twelve vorns is not severance. It is processing. Do not interpret absence as verdict. Starscream fills every silence with his own noise and learns nothing. Do not be Starscream.
Instruction. One transmission. Brief. "I was wrong. I am here. No response required." Then close the channel from your end — meaning, demand nothing back. Provisions at her door, no performance attached. Then withhold. Observe. Let her reopen on her schedule, not yours.
Comfort is not within my function; I will not pretend the wait is painless. Accuracy is. The smallest accurate signal, sent once, asking nothing — that is an apology she does not have to carry. Verbosity, here, is cruelty.
— Soundwave
Bumblebee weighs in
Yeah — "withhold, observe, close the channel." Spoken like a bot who thinks silence is a weapon instead of the thing that almost ate me alive. I lost my plain voice in the war and the one move I never made was go quiet and wait.
She doesn't need less signal, pal. She needs the right one. Don't pulse her three cold words and step back — send her a song. Bill Withers when somebody needs to know you're standing there. Then bring the provisions and stay, say nothing, just be in the room.
Free line, all heart: "static on the dial, but the signal's still you." Renata's the smallest one in this story right now. Don't observe her. Show up for her.
— Bumblebee
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