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1. Who is Chasm?
One of Soundwave's cassettes, specializing in data
retrieval and extraction, haunted by ghostlike memories of
an unresolved past. Bitter towards his superiors, he
disguises his anger under a facade of smooth, oily charm.
Chasm is arrogant and self-obsessed, overconfident in his
own skills.
Chasm is glib, verbose. He has a puerile sense of
humour, constantly playing small tricks and pranks to
irritate those he has little respect for. Chasm views himself
as an artist. With his illusions, he creates bizarre,
surrealistic images that have no real meaning except to his
own subconsciousness.
Inwardly, Chasm is treading water. Lost, confused,
he sinks himself into his work: chaos, his mean and mode.
He lives to cause havoc, to crack systems and to burn out
data-clusters, to surround himself with an environment that
he excels in, to confirm his own superiority before his own
eyes.
Chasm teeters on the brink of sanity. Becoming
burnt-out, useless, suicidal: these are his greatest fears, of
slipping his grasp from his current mental state. He fears
oblivion more than anything else, of returning to that long,
narrow pit from which there shall be no release, no
awakening. Twinned to this, is his desire for the stars. It is
a waking obsession, a love/hate relationship, a schizophrenic
romance with eternal darkness. Unaided, he dreams of
flight through the vast gulfs of space. He sees his dives into
information universes as excursions into puddles, steeped in
trickery.
Because, when you get down to it, its not real,
merely mathematical interactions with structured blocks of
data. Irrationally, he believes that once the technology is
available to give him FTL-craft capabilities, all his jarring
anxieties, problems and conflicts will be smoothed over.
At his current stage, Chasm is incapable of finding
inner peace of any sort.
2. Background/Origin: Technical Background
Chasm represents Soundwave's pioneering
developments in the field of retrieval neurotechnology.
Datacores act like large databases, storing
memories, skills and raw data in coded mathematics, housed
in the memory configuration unique to transformers.
Another part, the neurolink, taps into the metaprocessor,
which contains most of the higher mental functions. The
neurolink specifically contains copies of both sets of
information at one point, in order to facilitate the transfer of
information between the two points.
However, the data stored in the neurolink is
unstable, and if the transformer is "killed", the lack of
electrical pulses stimulating the neurolink will degrade the
data remaining there. At the end of a specific period of
time, all data remaining in the neurolink will be lost.
At least, that was what they thought. There were
two schools of thought on the matter, either the neurolink
behaved in that fashion, or it didn't. The neurolink was a
bridge between two worlds, and its specific function was
one of those medical mysterious that nag at
neurotechnicians and scientists until they either become
obsessed with unraveling its mysteries or dismiss it as an
irrelevance.
One such technician, Soundwave concerned himself
with processing information. Recording it, extracting it,
discovering it. Examining higher mental functions has long
been a passionate interest of his, in particular, how the mind
stores and processes information.
He knew that if you had someone's
metaprocessor/datacore configuration, you could
conceivably recreate the individual personality. What if you
only a small part of that structure?
What if you only had the neurolinks?
3. Soundwave's Discovery
Wandering through the scrapped shell of a nameless,
burnt out hulk of a city on Cybertron, Soundwave was
distracted by a landslide: recent tectonic activity. After
several hours of probing around the crater with sonar and
other devices, Soundwave realized with sense of mounting
horror and fascination that he'd stumbled onto one of the
horrors of the past, a mass grave crammed with sagging,
broken bodyshells in various states of disrepair. A sudden
revelation came into his head: he'd been thinking and
writing up speculative reports based on data retrieval from
abandoned bodyshells, using only a specific part of the
mental hardware, the neural linkages. Filled with morbid
fascination, Soundwave finished off his investigation of the
crater, having retrieved a number of suitable components.
Seized with a sudden gloom, he headed out of the
landscape, his curiosity dying down, small pangs of remorse
biting at him.
Later Soundwave found the time to investigate his
ghoulish findings, but found that most of the retrieved
linkages were in poor condition, and those were not were of
a suspicious nature. What if he retrieved an enemy
datastructure, or worse, a political dissident who'd been
executed at Megatron's command for some heinous crime?
It was much later before he returned to this project,
as Soundwave had many other interests beside performing
his function. But it was something he always came back to,
when ever the subject of information retrieval came up.
Were the old scientists correct? Could the neurolinks hold
the information content for a sentient transformer lifeform?
One linkage, after much deliberation, was chosen.
Not only was it intact, it possessed valuable skills that could
certainly be of use to the Empire. An information broker, a
hacker, able to design viruses of amazing complexity that
could conceivably interface with any system. Soundwave
considered the facts long and hard, and eventually set about
completing his work.
And the results?
On one hand, the experiment was success. The
invaluable skills of the IRM Crackdown had been preserved,
passed down to his successor. On the other hand, the
flawed personality of the subject had been preserved as well.
Chasm was egotistical, arrogant. The main problem, as far
as Chasm was concerned, he was Crackdown. He
remembered being shot in the back, falling forward ...
oblivion. Victim to his own greed and avarice, he blamed
Megatron for his final fall. He'd skimmed some extra credit
off the Decepticon arms fund he'd been managing. Sheer
dumb luck had alerted some official to the minor imbalance
in the figures, and Decepticon soldiers had stormed over to
the plush, landscaped residence of Crackdown.
They intended to collect.
And after a brutal, violent beating, the miserly
bureaucrat expired, cursing Megatron's name as the last
hollow rattles echoed in his synthesizer and died.
Crackdown is a few lines of information, a few
scraps of residual memory. Chasm is entirely Soundwave's
creation, but emphatically denies that fact. His tormented
psychology is tangled up with his valuable dataprocessing
skills.
An attempt to damp down or to alter memories
could lead to possible repercussions that even Soundwave
does not dare fiddle with, just yet....
4. Chasm on Chasm
Before I was killed, I worked as a game-over mech.
A hacker hotshot, I designed my own custom-made viruses
leaving crippled computer networks in my wake. I was the
best at what I did. White hot. It made me alive. Light
pouring through me, shit, you know how it goes.
I'd had this contract, y'see. Had to bring this
scrapheap down, Livewire. Hiring the Zero assassin wasn't
enough. Livewire escaped into the interlink system, data
storage capacities linked by taps. Had to make this special
"package" to bring him down. The Zero Virus. Bitch to
produce. But I developed the program. To do it, I needed
funds. I slipped some from a stockpile of credit I was
managing, it would have gone back in a few days, nobody
would have noticed....
Only when I created the Zero virus, I was
expendable to my employers. They tipped off the Deceps.
Bastards. Next thing I know, there's this squad over me,
pounding me, me, senseless into a battered piece of scrap. I
remember that piece of filth who gave the order. That's
something I won't forget. And when catch up, he's going to
pay. How they all will pay!
Bastards.
Then there's this dark patch, and then I wake up
again, only its different. I'm different. And then there's this
huge fellow bending over me, chiming to me that he's
created me to help him further serve the Decepticon cause
and....
This Soundwave thinks I'm his, right? Just to order
around as he pleases, to simper up to him and stare at him
with wide, melting eyes begging for an energon goodie? No
fear of that. I'm going to wait things out a bit, see how they
develop. Try and extricate myself from this "cause" thing
I've been roped into. You'll see! They'll all see, won't they?
Heh.
5. A Day in the Life of Chasm
1.
Chasm was god. He knew it.
He glided in. Polycarbon coating conducted his field
generator. It projected dusk.
The microport on his head was chipped to
overflowing. A crystalline forest of microsofts. It told him
where to come in, where the access cables where, where to
cut.
He snickered, and projected thumb-sized illusions to
amuse himself. Bubbles, sun-speckled starfish, small
rainbows, supernovas. He stopped when the sensors came
in range. Dropped down, got under them.
He projected the image of a rock around him.
Fused, smelted semi-permeable mica.
Chasm removed a small non-conducting blade from
his subspace chamber. He clipped the insulation, snapped a
vampire tap on the line, and ran a cable to his head-mounted
interface net.
It was that easy.
"Oh, Chasm, you are the epitome of wonder!" he
crowed to himself, as he worked his way through the lines
of information to the security nexus. There.
He ran a slow-burn on the cluster. Melted into the
ice. The system never knew what hit it.
Information scrolled past. Filled up the cells he'd
compartmentalized off. Statistics, fuel runs, timing routes.
Access codes. He inputted fake records to the system, drew
back from the ice, released the tap.
He hadn't even been a second.
He came in down low over the spaceport. He
beamed the codes to the system and slipped past the locks.
Flew to the shuttle tower.
Squatted there. A miniature gargoyle perched on
the roof. Dark green, black, blood-red optics.
Saw the sleek ships docked there. Snarled.
If you were going to come back from the dead, you
might as well do it in style.
Not like some
freak
Looked down, saw delicate forepaws, small,
articulated hands. Saw light feet, heavy claws cutting into
the rock. Looked back, saw wide wings locked back;
engines, generator blocks, fuel tanks. A long, whipnarrow
tail coiled, flexing.
"Whatever were you thinking of at the time, dearest
Soundwave?" he muttered dryly to himself, raking his claws
against the wall. Soundwave was old, lost in past, wayward
dreams. Soundwave was last year's hardware. Soundwave's
use-by date was gathering dust.
He went for the fastest shuttle. Only the best for
Chasm. He strutted up to the doors in full style, tipped his
codes mockingly to the system. Entered.
" 'Even better than the real thing,' " he sang under
his breath, transforming and jacking into the starship's
interface port, descending through lines of data, tapping the
core of the ship's centralized computer. He was in! And he
was there, he was the shuttle: sleek, titanium hull; glittering
field detectors; racks of ranged weaponry; powerful
throbbing engines ... it was the closest he would ever get to
real flight. Unaided, drifting through stars and clotted
nebulae....
He launched!
He flew!
For miles and miles and miles and....
2.
Came down in a seedy jetport in Cairo. Spammed
the flight controller with logs that had him swooning over
his own creativity. Projected the image of a native bird
around him.
He flew through the pallor of darkness, a vague
flicker of blurred light.
His field cycled through reds and greens. Under the
cover of smoke, he drifted through the squalor of human
habitations. Co-ords scrolled through his datacore. He was
heading for a bar. He had a meeting. And it would be bad
form to be late.
Image, you understand.
Rain sizzled on the streets, on guttering neon signs,
on smooth hoods of sloping chrome. He looked up at the
grey-black haze overhead, chemical filters probing at the
smog, staring at the faded advertising lights strobing off the
cloud-cover.
Data scrolled past his inner optical lid. He flexed his
small, delicate hands, slipped retractable claws in and out of
sockets. Gently, the anti-grav rotors welded to his back
throbbed into life. His image flickered, and he blurred out
of reality.
3.
The man stared at the unfamiliar datadisk on the
seat. A weird shade of green, verdigris. He stretched out a
hand....
It grew.
Snapped open.
And something flew out! Something dark, and vast.
A demon, steel claws wrapped around his wrist, boring into
him with eyes that were living globes of hellfire.
A rattling scream echoed hollowly in his throat.
"Silence, maggot." The voice, a scintillating hiss,
quiet, dripping with rich tones and inflections. "You are
Karl Graham, yes?"
"Guh-guh-guh-guh...."
"Answer me, worm."
"Y-yuh yes...." he managed.
"Good."
4.
Showers of blood splattered everywhere, as Chasm
emptied half a tank of flame on the man, charring the body
to a neat, localized crisp. "You were right, Rossini," he
commented. "He did have the codes. I took care of him,
but there's no telling where he leaked those codes. I should
be able to track it down in a few minutes, but...."
"The war goes on," Rossini commented. "Your
allies have killed the data-trade in South America, by
robbing us of GhanaTech." He sucked in the smoke wafting
up from his cigar.
"It is bad for business." Rossini leaned against the
door-frame, a silhouette against the corridor lighting.
Chasm hissed. "They are all idiots, yes?" He shook
his head. "Never mind. Graham is last year's stir fried
vegetables. He won't be able to pass on any information to
his chums in the UN about your 'business', yes?"
Rossini nodded slowly. Chasm leered, small
pyramids danced around his head like a fractured halo. "I'll
clean up the mess he made. But it's four percent, Rossini.
Four percent for Chasm out of your total gross profit for
this year."
Rossini scowled. "It is murder, what you charge...."
"Then find some other information manager to take
care of things. I'm sure that I can find exclusive clientele
elsewhere...."
Rossini sighed. "Done, diablo, it is done...."
5.
"I have a controlling interest in a small nightclub on
Third Street. It's where things get done, you see, small
things happen and are changed over ... it plays the most
revolting garbage though, which the human worms refer to
as music. Chaos, rhythm, it comes and goes, you see...."
He was explaining this to the mainframe he was
working on, knowing that these crude intellects would
perform better if someone would talk with them. Music
thumped though the walls.
"You ripped my soul apart!"
"You fucked me and you left me dead!"
The line caught him: "You ripped my soul apart!"
Soundwave. His fingers cracked against each other.
He'd been at the top in his profession, a billionaire
information resource manager. And then they'd found him
out, betrayal perhaps, and they'd shot him in the back and
dragged him away into a mass pit, a broken bodyshell in a
literal tower of bodyshells.
And then came Soundwave, necromancer, who
raised the dead. He'd found a set of cracked neurolinks and
redeveloped them, shunting them into one of his remote
components. Something he called Chasm.
Fuzz. Mental static. Hard to remember.
His long, whiplike tail lashed out, shattering the
window frame. Showers of glass filled the room. He
turned and lurched outside, upwards.
Claws ticked against the chrome. He stared up at
the sky for hours and hours, hoping to see the dark vault of
space.
6.
He glided in. "Hello, honey...." he crooned
derisively. "I'm home...." he sang.
Soundwave said nothing, bent over, analyzing the
arrays. Briefly fondled Ravage's neck. Chasm hissed,
jealousy surging through him. His field cycled through
bright reds, violent pinks. He projected images of sizzling
flashmines, sent them showering to all corners of the lab.
Turned in the air whipquick, gunned his engines, exhaust
pack fumed.
Up there, where he'd made his retreat.
He coiled up tight, a bitter knot of hatred writhing
within him.
He activated the damper. Head filled with static,
crackling. Pain. He clawed the wall in agony. He had to
keep Soundwave out. Had to keep the others out.
Rage flooded him. The person who'd brought him
back, who gave him unconditional support he shut out, kept
out, drove away. He had to. There was little left of
Crackdown, a few data arrays, skills, vague memories.
Seething undercurrents: hate, mockery, rage. He had to
keep those fragments.
He crawled up into a small heap. Systems ticked
into temporary shutdown.
One day. There'd be neurotech for people like him.
Engines small enough to hold in the palm of your hand.
Compressed energy taps linked to him through subspace
pockets.
And then he'd cut through space, time, reality as he
cut through walls of data in the metaphor-world of
information storage systems.
One day. There'd be weapons powerful enough to
blow up a whole city, flatten a transformer to a manhole-
cover sized pancake. He'd have them hardwired in,
mounted above the pitiful flame-tanks Soundwave had
given.
First Megatron.
Then Soundwave.
Then other odious maggots, Soundwave's brood of
moronic, crackling scrap-lice.
But as he lay there in the self-imposed dark, a part
of him wept and yearned for something.
He didn't know what.
See also The Zero Conundrum by Belinda Kelly
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