Log 25: Helpful Archivist
Remember that new visitor I mentioned? I finally got caught up. Lord Megatron and the Prime apparently teamed up against a common enemy. Somehow though, Lord Megatron returned with Orion — who seems to have no memory of being the Prime.
Optimus — or rather Orion has been here for quite a while now. In the beginning he was quite more... I guess you could say young— that hopeful spark of a mech who hasn’t yet seen everything burn.
He has a vibe of a hopeful yet endearing mech... now he is still that, but as if he has slowly begun merging with both aspects of his designations. I sometimes wonder if he’s regaining his memories. No, that would be preposterous… wouldn’t it?
Orion is oddly kind. Recently he’s been helping the less literate of us during lunch break. It started when he noticed a few of us squinting at the datapads during the briefings. He just… came over, pulled up a chair, and asked if we wanted help. No judgement. No lecture. Just calm, gentle explanations like it was the most natural thing in the universe.
He kind of gives off this parental vibe no matter what — pats our helms when we get things right, talks softly when we get confused, and somehow manages to make grammar sound heroic.
He helped me pronounce “historical context” today without sounding like a broken datapad, and then said, “Good work,” in that warm, steady tone that makes you feel like you’ve actually done something important.
Last cycle, one of the new recruits dropped his tray and nearly shorted himself in panic. Before any of us could blink, Orion was there — kneeling, helping him gather everything up, voice calm and patient. “No harm done,” he said. “Accidents are just proof that we’re trying.”
He’s… different. Not soft, exactly — he can be firm, too, especially when we talk down about ourselves. When one of us said, “We’re just grunts. Doesn’t matter if we can read or not,” Orion set his datapad down, optics steady but gentle. “It matters to you, doesn’t it?” he asked. The room went still. “Then it matters,” he said, like it was the most obvious truth in the world.
I think maybe that’s what makes him strange. He doesn’t try to inspire us because it's something he's compelled to do for morality. He just believes we’re worth inspiring.
He doesn’t rush us, either. When someone stumbles over a sentence, he just waits, nods, and sometimes finishes it together, like teamwork actually means something again. It’s weirdly… comforting.
Also, every time he pats my helm it resets my anxiety for approximately 0.3 seconds. It’s like all the static clears and suddenly the war, the shouting, the endless noise — it all fades for just a moment.
Is this what having creators feels like? Because if it is, I finally get why people talk so endearingly about them
Sometimes, I catch him standing by the viewport, watching the stars like he’s trying to remember which one he came from. He’ll trace the glass absently with a fingertip and whisper things too soft for my audials to catch — fragments, maybe, of whoever he used to be.
But when he turns back to us, it’s always with that same small, steady smile — like he’s decided that whoever he was before doesn’t matter as much as who he’s trying to be now.
I still don’t know if he’s really Optimus Prime or Orion. But if he is… maybe the Prime wasn’t just a title after all. Maybe it was always him.
