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TFP: The Fate's Way

Chapter 38: Doubt

Alyssa could not help but look through the window next to her. The poor amount of studying had caught up to her despite of her heightened mental capabilities thanks to her mutation. Apparently, simply glancing at the pages without reading properly was not enough; she had not understood a thing of what she had gone through from her chemistry book. She probably should have listened on the lessons more too.

Well, she could take the below-average grade from this and just study better next time. In the meantime, she could imagine what Optimus and Bumblebee had actually encountered when they had gone to investigate an Energon signal. Apparently, Fowler had gotten himself involved in the case, but the girl had not heard the full story yet.

It was probably nothing glorious, but it would be interesting to hear a bit about how Fowler operated on the field; it could help both her and Silverwind in the future if they decided to trust the man more.

A jet flew over the school. It did not look like any of the Decepticon ones – at least it was clearly not a Vehicon – so Alyssa did not get too agitated. She stayed on guard, though, and waited for the moment she could return her test and get her phone back. With her thoughts flying faster and more efficiently than before, the tens of minutes she had left crawled even slower. How did Cybertronians perceive time? Were they just more used to it than her, eons-old as they were? Alyssa decided that she had to ask the Autobots; especially the eldest, Optimus and Ratchet, could tell her a lot about it. Bumblebee could definitely give his two cents as well, being the youngest and thus closest to her in age, not that it made any significant difference in years.

They were insanely apart, yet Alyssa was still welcome despite of her immaturity.

And now, as she was becoming more and more alien compared to her age mates – even so alien that Alyssa could not help but fear that her class would reject and cast her out, should they ever find out what she had become – she truly needed to feel welcome as who and what she was now.

She had no idea how long she would live with her mutation changing everything she was to the very building blocks, but if the Cybertronian side ever took over, she might find herself living as a robot for far longer than any human like who she had been before all this mess had started in her life: centuries, perhaps even millennia.

Hells, it was difficult to even imagine such a long period of time.

Four hours later

Alyssa sighed inwardly when she saw Fowler at the base. This would not be fun.
"Good morning, Alyssa," the special agent greeted her, then yawned.
"Hi," the girl greeted. "I take it you're up early?"
"It's six AM for me and I'm no early bird."
Alyssa groaned. "I feel for you."
"I take it that you're not an early bird either?"
"Not enough to wake up at six." Alyssa stepped onto Ratchet's hand and waited as the medic lifted her to her workspace. "How's it going here?"
"Not much since Optimus, Bumblebee and Fowler took on Skyquake. It's been quiet for once," Ratchet told.
"I didn't get to hear that story to the end. What happened?" Alyssa asked.
"Starscream woke up a Seeker named Skyquake from stasis, then had him attack Optimus and Bumblebee. Fowler intervened and helped them finish him off," Ratchet told.
"I must admit that I underestimated these 'Cons," Fowler remarked. "Next time I have to fight one, I'll get 'im."
"If I were you, I would leave fighting with 'Cons to the people their size," Alyssa remarked. "I doubt even your military has stuff that can take beating or shooting from them."
"I will not back down," Fowler remarked.
Fine, be stubborn, Alyssa mused. She shrugged. "Don't tell me I didn't warn you several times when you crash down or something." After that, she loaded her previous work and resumed it. While she absolutely should have worked on homework, she knew that it would highlight her position on Earth to the special agent too precisely. The less she gave the man chances to target her outside the Autobot base, the better for her position in Team Prime.

Just as she had expected, Fowler came to see what she was working on. "What is that?"
"Some algorithms that I've been developing for better Cybertronian-detection in pictures online," Alyssa told. "The 'Bots do their best to stay out of the sights of human cameras, but unfortunately 'Cons and Energon crystals don't share their interest in staying hidden."
"You can do that?"
"I'm still learning. The problem isn't that the machines aren't finding what they're looking for but that they're finding shittons of false positives, usually in forms of cartoons, art and toys. Not to mention that it's even tougher to filter text to get only people telling about sightings online."
"What do you do when you find something?" Fowler had his own suspicions.
"It depends on the response and what I've found. Blurry things on conspiracy theory websites can be either left alone or hidden while more serious ones we have countered either by 'nice photoshopping' or stuff like that."
"Nothing illegal?"
Alyssa turned to look at the special agent, having seen the trap coming kilometers away. "Of course not! What do you take me for, a black hat?"
"'A black hat'?" Ratchet repeated, confused by the term.
"Black hat hacker, a dipshit who uses their hacking skills to do crimes," Alyssa explained. "I reckon Soundwave's a black hat if he does hacking."
"Knowing your species's penchant for using black for bad things and white for good things, I assume 'a white hat hacker' is a hacker who uses their skills for good?" Ratchet asked.
"Precisely," Alyssa answered. "They help find and fix security issues before black hats – or grey hats who've decided they're doing black hat stuff that day instead of white hat stuff – get to take advantage of them."
"Can you hack?" Fowler asked, suspicious.
Alyssa laughed. "Dude, do you seriously think I don't have anything better to learn than how to poke around systems and see if anything goes through? Sure, the money companies have paid people for reporting those holes have been tempting, but I'm perfectly fine with trying to figure out how I can make my own computer do what I want. I'm still learning, especially now that I have a far more complex and powerful system to learn to use for the best of the team – and, by extent, Earth."
Fowler relaxed, taking the bait formed with a counter-question and truth besides the point without a question. "That's good. I don't like the idea of a hacker, especially one as young as you, having an access to technology like this."
Of course. "Well, even if I knew how to hack, I probably wouldn't want to be in this team if I was a black hat."
"Right."

Alyssa resisted rolling her eyes at the unconvinced tone and turned her attention back into the algorithm designed for detecting Energon crystals. While the photos the Autobots had helped her obtain had been substantial for getting a base for the algorithm, she was still getting lots of false positives on similarly colored or shaped gemstones, whether they were actual minerals or plastic.

While arduous, at least all this was fantastic training for her skills; perhaps someday she would end up doing something cool with human machine learning thanks to what she had learned there.

Alyssa shook her head. She could daydream later. Now she had to look deeper into the algorithm and hope that she would figure out a solution without having to hunt for more photos.