At the risk of getting further into pseudoscience than I usually like, which is forgivable for the higher goal of Making Fun Headcanons:
Ever hear of SLI? Streetlight Interference?
You’re out walking one evening, or riding your bike. And you notice as you pass under them, the streetlights suddenly go out. Or maybe the ones that were off, come back on when you pass them. Then you turn back a moment later, and they’ve come back on after you moved past them.
SLI is a fun little concept that humans have a field or presence of some sort that interacts with some kinds of technology, and interferes with it just enough to make streetlights temporarily go out - or turn on.
(I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this)
Humans make first contact with Cybertronians, and they struggle to pick up on our EM fields. They can tell we have one, but it’s almost like static. Changes quickly, and is often indecipherable. Reassuring that we have one! We are clearly sentient beings, and eerily similar to them in many ways. But our EM fields? It’s like trying to dial in a faint radio station. It slips away without warning, only to come back full blast and startle them with its sudden strength, clarity, and volume.
Of course, the humans aren’t able to fully provide any answers, beyond some jokes about tinfoil hats, and a few half-serious stories about some people just accidentally frying electronic devices for no apparent reason.
As our species begin to spend more time together, though, and some of the scientists do experiments, it becomes apparent that it’s not our EM fields acting strangely. It’s their ability to perceive them correctly that keeps going haywire. There is something about close contact with humans that causes their perception of human EM fields to be unpredictable, or distorted.
They notice other little things going sideways. A panel on Teletraan burns out when it was just replaced. A mech finds his biolights are flickering. One of the communication specialists has to ban humans from the tower hub…they keep causing the most random fluctuations and outages.
- until one day in an emergency, when one of their squads is in danger and the signal’s too weak to reach them so far away. Everyone is too busy scrambling to worry about one of their humans rushing in, head tilted, watching silently as the mechs struggle to reestablish communications in time.
Then, there it is: a clear channel. Transmissions clear as day. They straighten out the problem, get the team out of harm’s way, and order them to return to the ship.
Only for the signal to drop the second you take your hands off the equipment you’d been leaning against, to punch the air in joy that your friends will be okay.
…What? You ask aloud, concerned, when you realize they’re all staring at you in a combination of awe, wonder, and unease.
Humans, it turns out, are a little bit eldritch to Cybertronians, with strange abilities we don’t even know we possess - much less have any ability to consciously control. But unconsciously is another story.