Red's Matrix Notes

During the Matrix Quest, Red Alert has managed to gather together quite a bit of information on the Matrix itself, as well as the false Matrices. Lightspeed has copies of some of these files, while others are held by Red Alert alone. The Security Director can understand the plain English files as well as anyone. He has just enough technical expertise to sort and classify some of the more technical files (schematics, process logs, etc), without being able to fully comprehend them. Red Alert is currently under orders not to try to investigate the Matrix, and so these are now locked files.

Italics and bold comments come from Red Alert himself.

Bakrane Files
Much of the data retrieved is so huge, file-size-wise, because it is video -- there are about twenty video logs of Maxitran in the lab, often indistinctly muttering to himself. In a few, they are literally just snippets of him sitting at his computer typing; in another, he is building a Matrix casing but not actually doing anything with it yet; in another, he and another scientist are discussing the planet's weather and how the rainwater might be harvested to serve as a primary power supply. Essentially, it's vlogs of his working life; there are a lot of stretches where nothing relevant occurs, unless one's goal was to study exactly how Maxitran sits in a chair.

However, five files are of particular interest:

- In one, Maxitran explains his theory -- that the Matrix is indeed a portal to the afterlife, but that the afterlife is in fact another dimension of reality that can be accessed if it's ever figured out how. He talks a bit about theoretical study involving the death process of Transformers and suggests that perhaps this 'Matrix dimension' consists of pure data, and that in dying, a Transformer essentially infodumps them to this second world.

Problem: During the time spent in the Matrix itself, only Primes were encountered.

Of all Transformers, do only Primes have an afterlife?

Does a returned remember nothing because that is data they can't bring back, or because death is oblivion for a non-Prime?

Why do I remember nothing?

- Maxitran has a spirited argument with a colleague, Proctorox, who insists that Maxitran is mad. Maxitran throws a cyber-stapler at him just before the clip ends.

- Maxitran explains his latest theory in hushed tones -- as if sharing a secret. He claims that he is near a breakthrough and can only test these hypotheses through live research, and that surely the Autobots will forgive him in the end.

''"We do not study the Matrix. The Matrix studies us." - Rodimus Prime''

We understand next to nothing about the Matrix.

The Matrix gains its knowledge from us.

"Know thyself" is not sufficient wisdom for the ancients?

- Maxitran is sitting near a Matrix glowing yellow in some kind of protective cube. He explains how the Matrix engenders some sort of strange fear reaction in everyone who comes to near it -- and hypothesizes that it was because of the terror that the test subject felt when he was under the drill table. The log ends before he can elaborate further.

- In the final clip, Maxitran is with a red-glowing Matrix -- the one that attacked the Transformers on Bakrane. In a hurried tone he explains how the rage Proctorox felt at being converted into raw Matrix data backfired and created this /thing/, which is already starting to affect his colleagues. Maxitran says that it's only a matter of time before anyone finds out, and so he's taking the 'Fear Matrix' and leaving to continue his research elsewhere, leaving the red one behind.

Is it the final emotion of the Transformer sacrificed that creates the nature of the Matrix?

What would happen with a willing sacrifice of noble intent?

''Must the data come from a single source? They consume one whole. Can they consume parts of many?''

Or are the bad Matrices bad because they do not draw from a Prime?

Is the afterlife only for Primes?

Included in several subdirectories are partial schematics and process logs for converting a Transformer's mind into fodder for these false Matrices. It appears that these are incomplete backups; Maxitran likely deleted the originals before fleeing.

''"Beyond our knowing." "It studies us." "Some things are not meant to be understood."''

Some Transformers are designed, programmed to question.

When is curiosity a virtue, when is it a sin?

The Goth Files
Nothing so nice as the video log files from Bakrane, but the files retrieved from Goth were those belonging to Thunderwing himself. Like the Bakrane files, there are partial schematics for false Matrices. There is some overlap with the Bakrane files, but each has some unique portions as well. Also, unlike the Bakrane files, there are a number of studies and observations on the actual Matrix, gained through Thunderwing's short possession of it. During this period, the Matrix was badly corrupted by Unicron, and his notations will reflect that state. Of particular note is its tendency to advance the decay of anything around it, a phenomena that can be held in check with force-fields of the proper frequency and lead-lined containers.

"Know thyself."

Was the study the sin?

Back to The Red Files.