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“Seriously, he’s got to have his emulator loaded with reports and, like– like spreadsheets or something. Nothing else does it for him.”
Rodimus has been complaining about Ultra Magnus at the next table over for a while, and only Drift is paying him any attention. Tailgate has been tuning him out in favor of trying to figure out what curse word Whirl is scratching into their table, but that was a keyword just now. He lifts his head to address his friends.
“Um, hang on– are you supposed to put things in there? In the, uh, emulator thingy? I never could figure out what it was supposed to be for.”
The question was largely directed at Rewind, but the whole table shares a beat of silence.
Whirl breaks first, cackling high and staticky. Skids and Chromedome join in, and even Rewind looks disbelieving, like he thinks this might be a prank.
Tailgate watches them with his head tilted in confusion. He hates not being in on a joke, but he has no idea what’s funny about a seemingly useless program. He certainly hadn’t been onlined with it; he’d found it in his hard drive after Ratchet updated his software for new firewall plugins.
“You’re joking, right?” Chromedome asks finally, leaning across the table like he could read Tailgate’s mind by squinting at him.
“No! Why is it funny, it doesn’t do anything–”
“No shit, if you’re just running it blank!” Whirl says, voice still distorted by laughter. “What, did they not have porn back in your day, old timer?”
Okay, well, this conversation has certainly gotten out of hand very quickly.
“Porn?! This is about interfacing?” Tailgate’s voice goes shrill enough to crackle as his face heats.
“Uh, yeah? What, do you just not self-service?” Skids asks.
“Maybe he never learned how,” Whirl snickers.
“I know how to self-service!” Tailgate protests, realizing only once the words have left his vocalizer that everyone at the surrounding tables can hear him. He hears somebody laugh from behind them and slumps down in his chair. Maybe he can hide under the table, if he tries.
“Oh, wait, I think I know where the disconnect is!” Rewind interjects, hand raised in the way he does when he’s about to start a history lecture. “The popularity of emulators was in response to a variety of cold constructed frames not responding well to electrostimulation. They wouldn’t have been widely available when Tailgate was first active.”
“Electro– you’re talking about shock boxes?” Tailgate asks. “People don’t use shock boxes anymore?”
“Only if they’re messing around with painplay,” Chromedome says with a shrug.
“Damn, bots in the past were kinky,” Whirl says, approvingly.
“Shock boxes aren’t kinky!” Tailgate cries, all thoughts of the neighboring tables gone. “You aren’t supposed to turn the charge up that high!”
Chromedome makes a short, amused noise. “Yeah, because nobody ever breaks the warranty on interface toys.”
“I think we’re a little off track, here,” Rewind says, giving Chromedome a little nudge. “Emulators don’t burn out circuits like using a shock box on the wrong settings, so they’re included in basic software now.”
“But what do they do,” Tailgate asks, despairing.
“Your system connects to the program like it would another mech you were interfacing with! Then it follows a script to send pre-determined sensory and emotional signals until it overloads your reward system,” Rewind says, clearly quoting from some kind of medical text in his archives.
“How do you make coming boring?” Whirl groans.
“He does not,” Chromedome counters as he wraps an arm around his conjunx, smug.
“Okay, Domey, I think that’s enough engex–”
“You’re leaving out all the fun parts! It’s immersive porn!” Whirl exclaims. “There’s a whole market for sim scripts, there’s some real hot slag out there. I could totally hook you up.”
“I don’t even want to know what you’ve got loaded into your emulator,” Skids snorts.
“Coward!”
Chromedome, who has contorted himself into an impressive shape to rest his helm against Rewind, groans. “Tailgate, just get a set of scripts from the med bay. There’s a reason most bots only share their scripts if they’re looking for somebody compatible to interface with. Trust me, the free sims are not worth finding out that your buddy’s into oil leakage or whatever.”
Whirl points his glass of engex at Chromedome, spilling half of it in the process. “Cowards!! All of you!”
“Yeah, uh, I think I’ll pass on the… oil stuff. But is Ratchet really handing out his sim scripts? That doesn’t sound–”
Tailgate is cut off by a loud crash from behind him. He turns, alarmed, to find Drift looming over him, his chair on its side under a neighboring table. He must have stood up so fast he’d knocked it over.
“Um,” Tailgate says, eloquently.
Drift’s optics flicker as he rapidly resets his sensory systems once, then twice. Tailgate wonders, distantly, how much he’s had to drink.
“I have to go. I forgot to check the–” Drift gestures vaguely, as if that finishes the sentence. “Yeah.”
Rodimus seems just as confused as Tailgate, watching his friend walk right out of the bar.
“....Okay, weird,” Whirl says with a shrug. “What’s this about Ratchet’s scripts? I bet he’s got some nasty rewiring porn stashed away, but he’s never offered to share with me–”
“I think he meant the standard issue medical scripts,” Rewind cuts in.
“There’s medicinal pornography?” Tailgate sputters. “Why?!”
“An overload is the gentlest way to trigger a soft reset! Very helpful if you’re having issues recharging,” Rewind says, slipping back into his lecture voice. “The medical scripts are just feedback loops of approving sentiment, nothing too fancy. They’re designed to be minimally invasive.”
“Boring,” Whirl complains. “If I’m getting off in the med bay, they should at least get freaky about it! Weld me to something!”
Skids sighs. “And this is why nobody wants to try your scripts. Can we please change the topic before he brings up something worse than welding?”
Tailgate, who really doesn’t want to think about how welding would be sexy, is only too happy to comply.
* * *
Tailgate does try to pick up the medical scripts after they leave the bar. He runs into Drift, who is lurking in the hallway outside Ratchet’s office for some reason, and chickens out.
He’ll just… ask about it at his next checkup.