Zero Point

Roadbuster cares for a comatose Springer.

Synopsis

In the abandoned Debris, Roadbuster spends his every day caring for the dying Springer, cleaning his optics and reading him excerpts from Fisitron's Wreckers: Declassified. The medics can't bring the Autobot back from his slow death because they can't find the "zero point", the tiny, near-invisible gap between two energy conductors that keeps the Spark going. Rung had suggested that the Spark may respond to emotional triggers, and so Roadbuster taught himself how to read so he could recount old war stories to his friend. He's read through 331 of the logs though, struggling through the "Fisitronisms" and the repetitions and the discomfort about himself being described in the logs as a one-dimensional gun nut, and nothing has yet happened.

Springer had always tried to be a black-and-white, Heroic Autobots vs. Evil Decepticons type of guy, but as the war dragged on he decided being a decent 'bot was holding him back. A chance encounter with Impactor and the Wreckers at the Battle of Sherma Bridge was a jolt to the system and he eagerly signed up as a reservist. He was made a member of the 17th line-up and grew to see Impactor as an older brother... but the Wreckers soon became uncomfortably violent and dirty, just as the war did. There were too many abuses of prisoners, too many battlefield atrocities, and Springer found himself saying that it wasn't his problem. He wasn't doing any of it, and sometimes he helped calm them down (less and less as time went on).

Then the Wreckers became obsessed with Squadron X, ignoring all other threats in favour of tracking down their opposite numbers. It came to a head on Pova, where Impactor murdered eight helpless prisoners. Springer immediately contacted High Command, where Prowl been waiting for just such a whistleblower, and testified against his leader. Roadbuster, Whirl, Rack'n'Ruin, all of them then came to Springer (each thinking he was the only one) to beg him to become the new leader, admitting their horror at what happened and afraid that Prowl would use this as an excuse to end them. Roadbuster was shaken by the fact his gun had been used, thinking Impactor only wanted it for self-defence in case the Squadron broke free. Springer promised he'd become their leader if they got through this, and testified that the others had nothing to do with the murders.

Roadbuster tries to read the Declassified account of Pova but can't: he knows it's a lie. He finally confesses to Springer: that they all knew Springer was making Impactor's hatred worse, pumping up all the Wreckers with atrocity propaganda against Squadron X, and all because Springer needed them to be doing something foul to give himself an excuse to cut loose. And Roadbuster had known that Impactor was going to murder them and so had the others, and they were glad he was doing it, Roadbuster was even proud of him; their concern had been that Springer would stop him. And because they knew Springer felt he was leadership material and could 'correct' the Wreckers, they lied to him and played him to avoid being arrested as well.

After his confession, Roadbuster apologises because he now knows Springer was a great leader: their best leader.

Then, the life-support machines register a resurgent Spark, and when Roadbuster checks a small tear in Springer's optic, he sees a touch of its old Matrix blue is coming back.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Notes

• This story was first printed in the hardcover of Last Stand. Like Escape and In Word and Deed, it was also re-released with Transformers: The Wreckers Saga.

Continuity notes

• Springer is described as having been comatose for 'nearly nine months', so it's been that long since 'Last Stand of the Wreckers' #5.
• Roadbuster name-drops the Nanocons, which would later appear in the More than Meets the Eye Annual.
• The Heliobots were first name-dropped in the original printing of the text-only story Bullets in the Last Stand of the Wreckers trade paperback version. However, there Kup mentioned them as part of a story he told to Springer as if the latter hadn't been there himself; yet here, Springer himself is stated to have been a member of the Heliobots! For the reprint of "Bullets" in the hardcover edition of Last Stand of the Wreckers alongside this story, Kup's mention of the Heliobots was thus changed to refer to only "a dozen other" Autobots in order to avoid the contradiction. However, the Wreckers Saga trade paperback, which also contains reprints of both "Bullets" and "Zero Point", again features the original version of the line in question with the Heliobots as part of the raid. Huh.
• Ultra Magnus is stated to have been the subject of a "freak recovery" of a Cybertronian suffering from a zero point injury. However, as we would learn later, that's merely a cover story.
• Kup and Rung are old friends.
• In one battle, Impactor used the words "not more poetry", a line he originally said to Megatron in "Chaos Theory Part 1", back when the two were still coworkers and friends, before Megatron turned evil. Ironfist/Fisitron included the line in his datalog, but was seemingly unaware of what it actually meant.
• In slight contrast to Last Stand of the Wreckers itself, which appeared to use the Pova log as just one example of Fisitron's hagiography, Roadbuster here internally declares that only Datalog 113 is fully untruthful; the rest just take artistic license in the telling of events, but are broadly correct.
• Among the threats that the Wreckers ignored on their X quest were the Black Epoch, the Simanzi Massacre and the Crucible, and the "Rise of the Dethroner".
• Squadron X were merely refueling on Pova. The hardcover's Squadron X profiles reveals more: they were only transporting munitions in the Redan Quadrant, and two members were not long for the team anyway.
• Transformers' optics glow because the Spark is healthy, and act as a genuine 'window' into the soul. Springer's optics hint that he might actually be Matrix compatible.
• Ironfist's memorial statue on Kimia, briefly seen in The Transformers (2009) #24, is mentioned. All of Ironfist's "Fisitron" writings were released in a collected format when the statue was unveiled, and Prowl wrote the foreword. (Roadbuster thinks the foreword is rubbish)
• Curiously, Sandstorm is the only member of the Wreckers at the time of the Pova incident who does not approach Springer about absolving the team. Remember that little tidbit; it becomes important later.

Transformers references

• The collection of all 332 of Fisitron's Wreckers: Declassified datalogs is called "The Complete Works of Fisitron". The title alludes to two collections of previously published issues by Marvel UK named The Complete Works Part 1 and The Complete Works Part 2.
• In "Bullets", we learned that Ironfist aka "Fisitron" had the habit of inserting odd recurring phrases into his Wreckers: Declassified datalogs, which readers would go on to call "Fisitronisms", inspired by the real-world fan term of "Furmanisms" for similar recurring phrases that writer Simon Furman would insert into his Transformers stories—in fact, the in-story Fisitronisms are literally the same phrases as the real-world Furmanisms. In this story, Roadbuster skims through several of them ("never did want to live forever", "reap the whirlwind", "all the dirty jobs", power beyond measure") before arriving back at the point where he had previously left off. Later, when he reads datalog 113, another one pops up: "Pova, and the Wreckers were in a whole world of pain.", which was also the opening line of "Bullets".

Real-world references

• Springer's call to Autobot High Command to inform them of Impactor's misdeeds took place at the G'th Semane spaceport, named for the Biblical garden of Gethsemane, where Judas betrayed Jesus. A bit on the nose, that one.

Other trivia

• The title of the story comes from the concept of zero-point energy in quantum physics. In particular, the zero point in this story being a small cavity between two circuits is similar to the Casimir effect, a small force between two closely-placed objects.

Foreign localization

Japanese

• Title: "Zero Point" (ゼロ・ポイント Zero Pointo)

Swedish

• Title: "Nollpunkten" ("The Zero Point")