Road to the Matrix, Part 1

Part 1 of the Road to the Matrix arc of Season 1 of Transformers: Stories of Steel.

Vector Prime let out a yawn and stretched his arms as he emerged from recharge. Not that he needed it.

"One of the benefits of being outside the space-time continuum: You never get tired," thought the ancient bot.

"Except of boredom," he finished, his gold-plated face turning to a scowl. He rubbed his blue optics, the motions helping them adjust faster to the light around him. He checked his internal clock. 5 cycles since he went into recharge. Here, however, in this constantly swirling, yet oddly intangible, maelstrom of yellow, reds, and greens, 5 cycles might be anything from just that, to 1,000 Macro-Cycles. He might have even slept into the past!

"No, no, then everything would be green," he reassured himself. Green portals let one gaze into the past, and were the easiest ones to see through. Red ones showed the future, but were often too small to be seen through clearly. Yellow ones were the present, but were sometimes too blurry to make out anything.

Vector Prime sat here, in the Nexus, where the future turned into the present, and the present turned into the past.

He glided through the colorful storm down to a yellow portal, which showed a thin, grey bot, with blue optics, sitting on a throne.

Vector was taken aback.

"This is the current Prime?!" he exclaimed in disbelief, to no one in particular. He reached out and grabbed the edge of a green portal, pulling himself up to it.

"Zeta Prime," mused the white and red Prime, looking through Zeta's past.

"Hmph! He doesn't even bare the Matrix! Ah, scrap you, Nova Prime, for breaking tradition!"

Vector pushed away, heading for the red section, just to make sure nothing bad would happen while this frail being was in charge of his home.

Suddenly, he stopped. The space-time continuum was supposed to be an endless tunnel of red turning to yellow and then to green, with a bright, white, light at the far end of the green signifying the beginning of the universe. But there, at the opposite end of the tunnel, was a solid, black wall.

More soon...