Herald

 

Writer: Simon Furman

Publication date: August 13, 1999

A second prologue to Reaching the Omega Point, this prose story by Simon Furman continues where Visitations left off. Megatron holds Antagony captive and is subjecting her to the Ultimate Suffering, but by all indications it has no effect on her. There's a cool passage where Megatron muses about his disloyal follower Tarantulas and his skills at subterfuge and psychological manipulation. So he asks Tarantulas if he can borrow his MIND-DRILL, a device that injects nanoprobes into your brain that literally change your way of thinking on a molecular level. Antagony proves more susceptible to this tactic, and as she fights back against it internally she recalls her backstory and it is in turn revealed to us, the reader.

Antagony comes from a future far beyond even the Maximals' and Predacons' own time, where half the galaxy has been conquered by a Transformer warlord called Shokaract, and Antagony is his Herald Maximo, foremost of all his heralds. Her chief political rival is Cataclysm, a herald of lower station but greater savvy. After repeatedly being undermined and having her accomplishments stolen by him, Antagony has taken this time travel assignment to show him up by retrieving the futuristic plot device that was stolen by an as-yet-unseen figure.

In the end Antagony is unable to withstand the MIND-DRILL and the failsafe implanted within her cerebral cortex activates, completely wiping her mind of all memory, knowledge, and consciousness. Megatron is disappointed but not disheartened. He knows that others will soon follow, perhaps even Antagony's master himself, and when they do, he will be ready for them.

This is the purplest prose I've read since my high school creative writing class. Every sentence is so overwrought, each turn of phrase so elaborate and self-serious, it almost becomes comical. That's not to say it's bad, necessarily, but it's inappropriately insistent on its own gravity. Against my better judgment, however, I am kind of intrigued to see where this setup goes. Who is Shokaract, this ultimate badass? What is the "plot device," and who stole it? Why does the illustration of Megatron using the mind-drill on Antagony look like he's threatening her with a giant phallus? I'm curious about the answers to these questions, and if they're fulfilling in any way at all. That's something, I suppose.