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Ultra Magnus did not have a brother. What need did an immortal lawman have for one? Ultra Magnus was infallible, all-encompassing, sufficient unto himself. The (former) Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord did not entertain such silly sentiments as brotherhood or familial affection.
It was, Minimus concluded, an unfortunate consequence of the position. The opportunity to be greater than his creation and more than his diminutive frame. His spark had been forged for such a duty, to bear the burdens others could not. It was simply logical to meet such an expectation. And yet sometimes, “living up to the strength of his spark” had come at the cost of whatever Minimus Ambus was.
Was. Past tense, as many things had become. The monument in the picture Minimus was currently staring at was proof enough of that.
It was an ugly thing, really. The fact that the picture had been sent to him by an obviously over-excited Swerve had done it no favors. It was bronze, and ostensibly depicted Dominus giving one of his famous orations to a rapt crowd, but in practice, it loomed awkwardly in the center of the plaza. Even the actual figure of Dominus had not escaped unscathed -- the limbs were elongated beyond normal proportion, the expression somehow sharpened to an unnatural intensity. Minimus suspected it had menaced many an inebriated passerby in the dark.
Dominus would have hated it as well. He would, of course, have shook the servo of the designer, plied them with florid compliments and far-too-expensive engex. But later, with the celebration in full swing around them -- and more importantly, loud enough to cover their lowered voices -- he would have summarily turned to Minimus to satirize it, mimicked the statue’s lofty pose in an attempt to coax a laugh out of a notoriously unamused Minimus.
Minimus knew this as incontrovertible fact. Dominus had indulged in precisely the same theatrics with countless statues of himself when he’d been alive, after all.
---
Had Dominus screamed? Had he cried out for someone when he realized what was happening -- what was being done -- to him? Minimus preferred not to dwell on such morbidities, but staring now at Rewind, who was happily chatting to his conjunx in Swerve’s bar, he couldn’t help but wonder. Before his brother had been…gone, and only the animal allowed to remain, what had been his final thoughts?
Had he thought of the conjunx he had left behind without a word?
Had he thought of the brother who had left him behind?
Or had he been everything Minimus had tried so hard to be -- concerned only with the war, the cause, those that he had helped and fought for so fiercely?
Minimus didn’t know what option was worse. He wondered if Rewind did.
---
“I guess that’s what we’ve learned, haven’t we?” Rewind asked, almost cruelly, voice echoing in the empty observation deck. “Everyone liked the both of you as long as you were, well, socially acceptable. I wonder if that’s why he fell in love with me.”
“There were many more acceptable choices Dominus could have made that were not you.” Minimus snapped -- no, answered testily, because he did not snap -- at Rewind, suddenly feeling illogically protective of Dominus. And then immediately winced.
Dominus was dead, his desecrated form buried on Necroworld next to the still forms of Skids and Ravage and so many others. Minimus taking out his…discomfort on Dominus’ former conjunx would not bring him back.
“I apologize,” Minimus said, suddenly not entirely sure who he was talking to. “That was out of line.”
---
“You know, when we were on Mederi, I was so happy to have found him, you know? He told me everything I’d ever wanted to hear from him -- that he was sorry to have left me, that he never stopped thinking of me, that he and I and Domey could go off and be happy all together now that we were finally together.” Rewind paused to vent, small digits curled on a shelf in the medbay, where they were currently trying to re-organize some miscellaneous tools a thoroughly inebriated Whirl had knocked over the night before. “And then the planet-- and then it was all a lie, and then he was gone, and I just thought-- because that’s all I could do, think-- that I never knew him at all.”
“You knew him more than I did, by the end of things,” Minimus told him matter-of-factly, feeling like the words were being gouged out of his vocalizer. But it had been true, nonetheless. He had grown tired of Dominus’ long list of accolades forever being compared to his paltry own. In the end, he had contented himself with escaping his brother’s shadow while he created his own -- only ever close enough to feel its warmth.
He himself preferred not to think of what the fake Dominus had said to him on Mederi. I watched it all and I cheered -- and I looked forward to the day when I could stand in front of you and say-- The part of Minimus that had eagerly accepted the role of Ultra Magnus from Tyrest recoiled at the idea that he still yearned for validation from the brother whose success he had always resented, no matter how much he had hated to admit it, even to himself. And yet some part of him would have done anything to hear his brother say those words to him. Some part of him would have done anything to hear his brother’s voice again.
“You never looked?”
“It wouldn’t have been--It wouldn’t have been appropriate--” Minimus started haltingly, only for Rewind to interrupt him.
“Right, because the Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord doesn’t have siblings, or care about things like family -- yes, we’ve heard it all before.”
“Former Duly Appointed Enforcer-” Minimus corrected, before Rewind’s mocking laughter cut him off.
“Oh, please. You might have given up the title, but you’re still acting like Ultra Magnus in spirit. Ultra Magnus has been dead for millennia. Don’t you dare hide behind that armor, when we’re the only two people left in the universe who remember him as he was.”
Sometimes, Minimus hated it when Rewind was right. Because Minimus Ambus had a brother. Minimus Ambus had a brother that he loved and resented in equal measure, beneath whose shadow he had lived for most of his life. They were spark-brothers, coming into existence together, and yet Dominus had excelled in all the ways Minimus hadn’t. He was charming, articulate, the very picture of a noble diplomat. Minimus had always been extraordinarily jealous of his brother’s ability to slide smoothly into conversations with the highest echelons of society, while little bumbling Minimus inevitably informed the wrong person that their extremely lucrative business was illegal because of Subsection 10 in Ambustus Minor’s Regulations on the Proper Handling of Miscellaneous Trade Oddities and Rarely Enforced Provisions.
Minimus was slightly less jealous now. After all, it had been Dominus’ silver tongue that had caught Prowl’s attention, and led him straight into the jaws of the Decepticon Justice Division. Some “justice” that was.
---
“Do you blame me? For choosing Chromedome over your brother?”
Minimus -- well, he was in the Magnus armor now, but he had started intentionally thinking of himself more as Minimus-inside-the-Magnus-armor than Ultra Magnus -- stared blankly at the control panel. Rewind was standing behind him, arms thrown over the captain’s chair. He pushed down the irrational urge to ask Rodimus to take over his shift. “It would have been illogical to sacrifice a perfectly well individual for one that might not ever recover. To say otherwise would be a disservice to everyone on this ship.”
“That’s not what I asked,” Rewind said testily. “You loved him. You might have thought him dead, but you can’t tell me that there wasn’t a part of you that would have wanted him back and well.”
Minimus preferred not to dwell on what-ifs. Hypotheticals had no substance -- they were based in mere conjecture, unmoored from facts and hard evidence. Decisions had to be based on verifiable data. Speculation, in Minimus’ mind, only wasted time and risked error, which was, naturally, unacceptable.
“Why did you do it?” he asked.
Rewind turned away from Minimus to look down at the seat, rubbing his digits over the seams restlessly. “He loved me. It matters that he loved me, but it also matters that he left me without a word, and didn’t even try to get word back to me that he was alive or dead or whatever!”
Minimus shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t suppose he would have said the same of me, would he?”
“I guess you really are brothers,” Rewind said nastily, glaring up at him. “You have that in common.”
Minimus started to speak, but Rewind cut him off, his arms waving passionately.
“You don’t understand. I get why he couldn’t have chosen me -- the war, and everything else -- there were larger things at play. Sacrifices had to be made. I get that. I really do, Minimus. But in the end, that doesn’t change the fact that Chromedome chose me. Over and over again. And Dominus…Dominus never did.”
Rewind vented slowly, a soft hiss escaping from his frame.
“You know, I think Chromedome still thinks a part of me will always be in love with Dominus. You can have him instead of me! I think those words will haunt me forever. Because somehow I managed to make my conjunx think he was worth less to me than the one that left. Which isn’t true! I love him more than you could ever imagine. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t love your brother. You might think that one of those things overrides the other. But I think love is much more complicated than that. I can love Dominus and still hate that he left me behind.”
---
- Suppose there exists some measure of affection between brothers that can be represented numerically. [this is a premise. Note the use of “suppose.”]
- There must be some number M that represents the maximum affection that Minimus Ambus ever felt towards Dominus Ambus over the course of his life. [follows from line 1, by the definition of “represented numerically”]
- Let there also be some number L = M - D that represents the actual affection Minimus felt towards Dominus after all the years without him. D is the distance imposed by society, absence, and the war. [notation, captures the key insight that affection and love may perhaps be strained by distance and unavoidable secrets; that one brother living forever in the shadow of another might cause friction in the relationship; that one brother can hate and resent the other one despite still loving them dearly]
- L < M [by definition, subtracting a positive number from another number -- because the distance between them was always tangible, regardless of what Minimus wanted to pretend -- always reduces the quantity]
- We also know that L must be non-zero. [by observation -- Minimus still remembers Dominus’ warmth and care, even after so long]
- Minimus’ affection for Dominus has never decreased. Thus, the measure of affection L must contain some element that exceeds the limits imposed by physical or emotional distance. [by observation -- memory, loyalty, and a shared history maintain connection despite separation]
- Therefore, L must be equal to M [Minimus cannot imagine a life where he did not have a spark brother. Minimus has never stopped caring for Dominus. Minimus will die feeling his absence like a hole in his spark.]
- This is a contradiction. [from line 4 and line 7: distance reduces L, but memory preserves it]
- Therefore, the affection between Minimus Ambus and Dominus Ambus is not only independent of distance, but also cannot be fully captured by numerical means. [from line 1 and 8: our only premise leads to a contradiction, so our premise must be false.]
---
You are Minimus Ambus, spark-brother of Dominus Ambus.
You remember the days before the war, before your days became filled with endless lists of casualties and coordinates of potential enemy bases. You remember Dominus in the halls of your home, narrating his next treatise and goals. You remember waking up from recharge, taking your morning energon with him while he flitted from idea to idea, never truly content with the way things were.
You remember him in fragments -- the precise way he would tilt his helm when something confused him, the brief glimmer of amusement flashing in his optics when you invariably became annoyed by some minor mistake in a book. Those memories are locked in place forever now, fixed points in the history of you.
There are an infinite amount of universes. The Lost Light has visited hundreds of different worlds by now, met various different iterations of loved ones and even themselves. Brainstorm and Perceptor’s calculations estimate that there are still an infinite amount of worlds and people to meet. And yet, within that infinity, you keenly feel the weight of what is gone.
Dominus had been a constant in your calculations, a reference point in all your measurements of action and expectation. Without him, the grand equation of your life has been fundamentally altered, adding variables that you cannot yet solve for. There are many ways to model absence and grief, but some expressions are simply irreducible.
Still, you find yourself wondering -- if Dominus were here, what would he have thought? Of your quest, of Rewind’s life, of you and your choices?
You are standing next to the statue that your brother would have hated. Various vials of inner energon have been placed at its base, but the square has grown quiet. The statue itself is nothing but a dark blur surrounded by shadows. Rewind stands next to you, silent for once, the red light of his camera a steady flicker against the night. You look up at the stars, and for a moment, you feel a servo against your shoulder. Well done, brother. You’ve made me so proud.