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Today's featured article~

WHO: Ambulon and Barricade
WHERE: I'm assuming Barricade's place or his little lab
WHEN: A couple days after Ambulon acquired Tarn's wikireader.
WHAT: As mentioned above, Ambulon wants to figure out what exactly this wikireader does and how it can be used to help Tarn. Barricade holds his hand while they explore the power of Wikipedia.
WARNINGS: I don't think there'll be anything, but will edit if something pops up.

Ambulon had fussed with the damn wikireader for a few days now. Still hadn't turned it on. The wheels and cogs in his head turned, and yet... He needed to know. What sort of information it held that Tarn would find even remotely interesting. It didn't seem these gifts were given randomly, either; they seemed to correspond or somewhat relate to the receivers.

... Actually, Ambulon never did find a gift addressed to him. Was there one out there, waiting in the Junkpile, or did someone claim it for themselves? He actually didn't care, but curious.

Either way, enough was enough. If this could be used as a weapon, Ambulon was going to make sure Tarn never got his hands on it. Barricade had offered first to check it over, and through much debating, the medic finally found himself hunting him down.

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"I have never met a human being in my life until I arrived on this planet," Ambulon confessed, face flat and void of emotion. He is that dunce. "But I still have to wonder how this thing"--he holds up the Wikireader--"would have any appeal to Tarn, if not for some sort of method of torture." Reading can be torture, okay!

"Either way, I trust you know what you're doing."

"... Somehow this doesn't surprise me. But. When they make things, surprise explosions usually aren't involved. ... Or surprise torture." Seriously, what's Tarn going to do, recite the history of the Soviet Union to death? Now that would just be silly. It's boring, yes, but not actually torture. "Does he not have hobbies besides torture?"

You never know! "I don't know," Ambulon replied. "I mean, he spends his entire life hunting down ex-Decepticons. I think he's consumed by his mission. Probably doesn't have many side hobbies." He sighed, one hand on a hip. "Right. So... You ready?" Because now the fear was waning, and the anxiety was building.

"Even hunters need something else to do. 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy' and all that." Of course, it's also the perfect recipe for a crazed ax murderer, but no need to add that. "Yeah, I'm ready." No reason for poor Ambulon to stay this antsy. That would be unnecessarily mean.

"Maybe he sings during his time off," Ambulon half-smirked, something bitter. Yeah, that wouldn't surprise him. If that were the case, Tarn was probably shit out of luck for an audience that lasted more than a couple minutes. Knocked 'em dead - literally.

"All right." Ambulon inhaled. He found the button to switch the device on. "Ready?" He looked to Barricade, firmly. After a beat, he dimmed his optics, prepared himself, and turned on the Wikireader.

... And nothing happened, except the device winking open to the front page of a site called Wikipedia.

"Not a fan of his singing, I take it?" Barricade doesn't really know; he doesn't know of any mechs named Tarn or many that have sonic abilities.

... and that is Wikipedia. He huffs out a short chuckle and taps Tarn's shoulder with the back of one hand lightly. "See? What'd I tell you. Just an online encyclopedia in physical form~" That's not much to worry about.

Ambulon stared at the device, and felt strangely... annoyed? Well, it made sense. All this fussing and worrying over nothing. So far. "Yeah," he mumbled, and now just felt embarrassed.

Ambulon studied the content of the page. He spotted the 'random article' option, optics squinting. "Let's see what sort of data this 'Wikipedia' has stored..." he murmured, and hit the button.

A second later: "... Zíngaro?"

Barricade leans in to get a look at the page, skimming the introduction. "Heh. Speakin' of singers, as it were~ Too bad this thing doesn't include YouTube; I ain't familiar with him myself." He'd been slightly more interested in the lifeforms and their weapons, unfortunately. "What else it got?"

Ambulon blinked and looked back at Barricade, face completely serious. "What is 'YouTube'?" he asked.

Nonetheless, he hit the random article button again. "Implied Spaces?" He scanned the page quickly. "This apparently covers 'transhumanism' and artificial intelligence. A type of... 'opera'?" He continued reading through the article, his optics widening little by little. "Primus, what is this? Is this... Is this real? Is this like anything on Earth?"

The talk of wormholes and supercomputers - by God, was this what Tarn wanted from the Wikireader?

"A Terran video service. They record videos of whatever - usually cats or music - and upload them f'r other humans to watch." He sounds just about like he's talking about the weather.

"Wait wait wait." Barricade scrolls it back up to take a longer look at the introduction. So many links up there. He chuckles. "It's a novel; space opera is a genre. It's fiction about what they think the world'll be like in the future. They're still trying to get a grasp on how wormholes might work, see? It's so cute."

After a moment, he actually taps on the 'space opera' link to bring it up.

Ambulon blinked, tilted his head. He skimmed through the space opera article, and... "It sounds like we're living one of these 'space operas'," he snorted.

He looked to Barricade. "I have only learned recently about 'filmmaking'. Movies, Vandal calls them. They make a variety, but... Is this all they write about? Just... their fantasies?"

"Sometime's it's fantasies. Or dreams. Or nightmares. Sometimes it's real life; documentaries about history and the natural world are pretty popular. Though sometimes they tweak those to make fiction."

He isn't going to get into the slightly more... illicit material. No need to disturb Ambulon more than he is already. Barricade looks back to him and grins.

"They figured out how to set their art and writing in motion and they just never stopped."

That was actually all rather interesting. Ambulon looked mildly intrigued, however. Yet...

"A creative use of one's fantasies and reality then," he mumbled, scrolling through the space opera tag. "They must channel a lot of energy and time in these outlets. I suppose that's good."

Ambulon paused, cleared his vocalizer. "Right." He would smile if he weren't still a little embarrassed. "I suppose it's all very basic information. All within the limits of human understanding." He clicked another random article. "Tarn would probably just bore him--"

He went quiet as the next random article loaded completely.

Ah, yes. Those. ~~One of the things that had intrigued Barricade.~~ He hums quietly as he looks the article over.

"Films is a socially accepted way to channel energy in human culture. That... is not as socially accepted, but it occurs nevertheless."

They aren't exactly the only species with a predilection for harming other members of their species after all.

"They have a bit of a knack for it, all told."

Ambulon frowned. "It doesn't surprise me, really," he mumbled. "I suppose war is a universal constant for any sentient race." Kind of sad, but still, not surprising. He skimmed through the article, wincing. "See they've got plenty of sadists, too."

Ambulon clicked a link, taken to a list of torture devices. He didn't want to look at them, but... "Tarn might get more creative with these," he grumbled. "I guess it's a good thing I got to this device first."

"You know how it is. A species intelligent enough to help itself is intelligent enough to harm itself. And some folks just like causin' pain. Or having that kind of power over someone else." It's just how things are, as far as Barricade knows.

"If he has to get creative with someone else's tools, it's not creative enough," he mutters under his breath. "So, what're you gonna do with it now?"

Ambulon frowned. He studied the Wikireader another moment before looking up. "I'll keep it. Share it with the others, if they need it. Make sure it never gets in the wrong hands."

He paused a moment. "You were a Decepticon once - or, you still are. You're..." Ambulon didn't finish. Wanted to say Barricade seemed to serve as a good example that not all Decepticons were war mongering, violence-hungry sadists. Sort of wished Pharma could see him for himself. But, still, Ambulon didn't really know Barricade that well to make the assumption. And yet...

"Thanks for your help," he said, a quiet moment later. "I know I've been a little high strung, but... Well, it's been a Hell of a past few weeks."

"Decision's yours. I'm just an advisor. Can't see him being too happy, if he found out about this, though."

Barricade looked back to him, shuttering his optics in two sets - upper and lower. "I'm what?" Honestly curious about what Ambulon was going to say. Even if he knew what it was he wouldn't verbally dispute it. That would just be too telling, all things considered.

"You're worried. I get it, believe me." He had been there a lot, himself and he knew how awful it could get.

Ambulon looked back at him. "What was the war like in your world? And you... How did you know Megatron? You two seemed relatively close." The unglyphed Megatron, of course. "You two look vastly different in design, so I don't think you're from the same universe..."

"The war was big. And messy. And both sides are guilty of atrocities and the death of their entire species; I doubt there are enough of us left to keep the race going." He has, at least, come to terms with that.

Though the mention of Megatron makes him twitch a grin. "We aren't from the same timestream, no. I met him in an interdimensional hub, sorta like this one, called Axiom Nexus. He was smart and he listened and he was present more than my Megatron ever had been... and I suppose he found me more knowledgeable and loyal than most of my colleagues did."

"Your war sounded identical to mine back home," Ambulon said, and sneered, bitterly. "I keep hoping we can avoid something similar here, at least. But when you got people the likes of Tarn around here..." He shook his head.

"You travel a lot then," Ambulon smirked. "And... Yes. It was... It was interesting, meeting him. I mean, the mech he was before the war got to his head. Before the idea of forcing his own troops into experiments was perfectly fine." He snorted and folded his arms. "But you still identify with the Decepticons? I don't judge, mind you." He raised and shook a hand. "I was just curious."

"Most of them have a lotta similarities. Unfortunately. But hopefully we c'n all keep off each other's backs long enough to not destroy this Cybertron." He would prefer it that way, himself. Though the mention of Tarn... "And he is just one mech. I think there are enough of us to handle him."

The question about his allegiance gets a shrug out of him. "On occasion I do. More often now, though..." he reaches up and flicks the spot where he gouged out one of his insignias. "The only one I'd go back for is that Megatron. Though I can't say anything about experiments, myself, having been a participant."

"Megatron was just one mech, too," Ambulon said, "but you get one person, who speaks eloquently and knows the art of manipulation, one person becomes two becomes six becomes twelve, so on and so forth." He shrugged and sighed. "I know, I know. I guess... I think, so far, everyone is more inclined to think he's insane rather than inspiring."

He nodded. "That's understandable," he said, in regards to his loyalty to Megatron. "But, if he were still here, I'd like to think... I'd like to think he'd do things differently, if given the chances. Then again, I think we'd all prefer nothing happened. That nothing comes up that would require another civil war." Ambulon snorted. "I know not many of us like or even trust the Firstforged, but the idea of rebelling against them sounds too suicidal for me. But you never know, I guess."

"And there's a big difference between Megatrons... and other mechs," he retorts with a smile. "Besides, Tarn practically smells like trouble, from what little I know." Which is primarily that he behaves oddly and Ambulon is worried about his presence.

"I like t'think that particular Megatron has learned from the mistakes the rest of us made. He would've done things right, maybe." Or at least done something differently. That's what had mattered to Barricade, in the end. "As for the FirstForged... well. If you're from my world, you learn early that you don't fight with mechs that're Primes. You just die. If the others decide to go against them, I ain't joining them."

Ambulon sighed. "I suppose." He shrugged again. "And... I don't know. I may be inclined to remain neutral should the Firstforged start... 'anything', I suppose, but that entirely depends."

He shook his head. "Thank you, again, for your time. It... seems as if I've wasted it, considering nothing crazy happened." Ambulon held out the Wikireader. "Anything you're interested in looking up before I head back with it?"

"Depends on a lotta things, yeah." Such as who starts it; all of the FirstForged Barricade has talked to so far haven't seemed like the sort to start things like that.

He chuckles quietly. "Well, nothing too crazy, anyway. Don't worry about it, though; ain't been busy and this was interesting anyway." If only for Ambulon's reactions. He wags one hand a bit. "Nah. Kind of read all of it I was interested in when I was on Earth. As long as you have it you might wanna check into the artists and poets, though. Some of 'em ain't too bad."

Ambulon nodded. "You're free to come by the clinic any time, check it out if you wish," he said. He nodded again, this time in gratitude. "Thank you again. This is definitely a load off my CPU." Now fifty-three billion more to go down.

"Not much of a load, I'm guessin'." Considering how generally nervous Ambulon seemed about the whole Tarn issue. "But hey, glad I could help. Anything else confusing shows up from Earth, I'm willing t'assist." It's kind of Barricade's thing, whether he likes it or not.

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