I was early for my appointment so Perceptor wasn't in his lab yet. There were no chairs so I just jumped up onto an examination table and waited.

As Perceptor entered the Autobot-designed imaging chamber, I sat up straighter and perched on the edge of the table.

"What's the word, Perceptor?"

"The word, as you put it," Perceptor said in his precise and somewhat officious-sounding voice, "is both good and bad, RC."

"Give me the good news first, then."

"I am afraid it is not good news per se. Though in the present colloquial, to say 'bad news' implies..."

"Perceptor!" I exclaimed exasperatedly. "Just tell me!"

Perceptor smiled. "I am sorry, RC," he said. "Here it is, then."

He started turning on screens. "Per my examination," he said, "you are fine. For a Cybertronian."

"What?"

"Somehow, RC, the Venus statue has transformed you from a human to something like an Autobot."

"But, Perceptor..."

"I know, I know... you still appear to be a human.,."

"I feel the same!"

Perceptor flashed pictures from yesterday - from my arrival with Susan to my being put in Perceptor's "incubator," and I saw myself as a humanoid robot.

After a moment, I found my voice. "But... how?"

He pressed a few buttons, and a schematic of the new me appeared on the large screen in front of us. But as I looked closer, it looked more like a full-body x-ray or CT scan of a person, not a robot... or was it?

"What you see before you, RC, is a Doppler scan of you, in your, ahem, full glory. And though it looks like a scan of a biological, it is not."

My initial thrill at the thought that I was still human died.

"You," Perceptor said, "as far as I can tell, are a mechanical, like us. Not a partial biological, nor even a cyborg as far as I've been given to understand what cyborgs are, but a full mechanical in the manner of us Autobots."

My shoulders dropped in disappointment.

"Your transformation caused by the de Milo 'mini cube' was probably greatly influenced by your consciousness. The more obvious aspect of it was your change to a human female. If you can recall your last thoughts after you were hit, we can better isolate the roots of your female form.

"In any case, your present form is a little different from us. The difference," he continued, "is that, whereas the rest of us are machines that can mimic other machines, you seem to have been designed as a machine to mimic a human."

He gestured to the image.

"All the functions of the human body, reproduced in the most minute detail. It is quite amazing, actually. No Autobot or Decepticon mechanical has perfected such mimicry."

"Is that why," I asked, "that when I was examined before by the doctors, they thought I was just a regular human?"

"Partially," Perceptor answered, "but it was more because you were still in the beginnings of your, ummm, transformation into what I guess you could say is a humaniform pretender, so you were still more human than Cybertronian at that time."

"I remember Bill telling me about pretenders."

"Pretenders are a subtype deliberately created by the Decepticons. Pretenders are actually Decepticons whose chameleon circuits were deliberately set to make them pass as humans, for the express purpose of espionage, and although their efforts in duplication are quite excellent, as you saw with that woman that delivered the AllSpark sliver to Susan, they are less than perfect. They can only fool humans from a distance, and only for a while up close at best. As for you, aside from a blood test or an x-ray machine... that is what you call it, right?"

"Yes, x-ray..."

"Thank you... a blood test or an x-ray, no one will be able to tell you aren't human."

"How about metal detectors?"

"I don't know how but it seems you emit a type of low-grade electromagnetic field that can fool those types of devices. Come to think of it, I think you can fool x-ray machines as well, if you deliberately thought it through and gave it a try."

"Oh..."

"Anyway, you are as perfect an imitation of a human that I have ever seen or heard of for a Cybertronian. For example, look at this." A microscope-like view of the skin on my forearm replaced the image. "Your skin, although made from a tungsten-titanium-aluminum-copper-silicon amalgam - is designed to mimic the texture and flexibility of human skin. No joints for you, young one. And here," he pointed. "A tiny osmotic pump that imitates the function of a human sweat gland. I do not know if this is part of your heat regulating mechanism, just as sweat glands are for biological humans, but the fact of the matter is - you can sweat."

"I actually sweat?"

"Not real sweat, I suspect. Perhaps a mineral oil-based simulacrum. I don't know that for sure, of course, until I can get a sample. "

"Well, of course mineral oil... What else would it be?" I said sarcastically, trying to be funny.

Perceptor chuckled. "Indeed," he said, and continued. "Here," he said, gesturing at the screen again, "are your equivalent to lungs. Your body does not need oxygen or any other gas to aid in your energy production, but it does allow you to purge whatever waste products or trace impurities you might have in your mechanism at any given moment. Impurities are... metabolized or atomized, I suppose... into an inert gas or as minute particles or inert trace elements in your exhalation. And, linked with this mimic of an esophagus and vocal chords, they are also part of the mechanism that allows you to generate sound and thereby vocal speech."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"Don't you guys have..."

"We generate our vocalizations in a manner similar to your audio devices. As for expelling waste, we usually expel our waste matter as a solid instead of as a gas or liquid." He handed me a small, ball-bearing-like pebble thing. I took the little metal pebble and examined it.

"I suppose you could say that is our analogue to human feces," he said.

"You mean this is...? Ewww!" I threw the... ball bearing away from me.

Perceptor laughed. "I apologize, RC. I couldn't resist, knowing humans' distaste of their waste products." He held another of those ball bearing things up. "Actually, these are almost pure carbon and would be good material for use in your iron refineries and other industrial plants."

I snorted at that. "What else can you tell me?"

"Well, your entire digestive system seems to have been replicated, and it now seems you get your energy from a thermal-chemical breakdown of the material you take in through your mouth, to supplement direct absorption of solar energy or the absorption of energon. And it seems you still have chemical sensors in your tongue and mouth that I suspect allows you to enjoy the tastes and textures of human food as you used to. Currently, only you and Bumblebee can transform material into usable energy. The rest of us need to absorb energon.

"We are? Would I still, you know, poop?"

"Poop? What is... Oh!" He laughed. "As far as I can tell, the matter-to-energon conversion is quite complete and there is no residue you need to, umm, excrete. The mechanism by which your body is able to do the conversion seems to be quite complicated but very thorough - what was once your GI tract has been given over to processes other than digestion to allow this conversion. I do not quite understand the principle behind the process or effect, but it works, and it's quite efficient. In fact, in a week or two, once you have reached maximum energy saturation, you will have to reduce your intake or syphon off your excess energy somehow."

"How do I do that?"

"I don't know, but I did see what looked like energy taps. You can probably release the energy through there. They’re at the bottom of your heels, and on your palms and fingertips, except on your right index finger.”

“What are energy taps?”

“They like, ummm, power outlets or plugs, I guess, where energy can be tapped or released by the Autobot.”

“What for?”

“For many purposes. But yours aren’t online yet. Anyway, don’t worry about your energy levels - we will cross that bridge when we get there." He patted my hand.

"Okay," I said. “You mentioned my right index finger doesn’t have a tap?”

“That’s right. That’s because of this.” He showed a sort-of X-ray on his monitor.

“Hey! That looks like my old handgun!”

“Your handgun?”

“Yes. I had a Ruger-GE 45-caliber Polymer-Frame Electric handgun. I thought I had lost it.”

Perceptor went back to his console. “Yes, indeed, it does match a Ruger-GE 45.”

I looked at my hand. “But, Perceptor, I don’t understand – how did it get inside my hand?”

“Were you, by chance, holding it while you were being hit by the Venus de Milo’s cube?”

“I think so…”

“I suppose the weapon was absorbed into your matrix when you started re-forming into your new body.”“Does it work?”

“Indeed. Look at this.” He punched some more buttons and we saw a video of our battle in the forest as seen from above. He zoomed in on me, specifically, and we could see my image raise my right arm and pointed my index and middle fingers at the enemy, like one would a gun. Then the armored glove covering my hand literally exploded and the Venus de Milo statue was hit.

“Wow…” I said, and looked at my hand. “But… how do I trigger it again?”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out in time. Anyway, let’s get back on topic.”

I nodded and looked at my “x-ray” again. So many things have changed now.

"You're saying I don't poop anymore..." I said, getting back to our discussion.

"Oh, you want to talk about that now. Well, all right. Actually, you can 'poop' if you want to, but it's a voluntary thing. You can also 'pee' as well. Is that the right word? Pee?"

I giggled and nodded.

"Ah, good. Yes, you can do both, but it will be completely cosmetic and voluntary, but unnecessary to your functioning. As to what you would excrete if you DO decide to, I don't know." He suddenly drifted off. "Hmmm. I wonder..."

After he noticed me staring at him, waiting for him to continue, he shook himself from whatever he was thinking, went back to the console and changed the image on the screen back to a full-body scan.

I looked at my "x-ray" and, from my layman's eye, it seemed like a normal CT or x-ray scan. But from what Perceptor was saying, clearly I wasn't normal.

"Perceptor? Do you think I can, you know, change? Sorry - transform, I mean? Like you guys?"

"RC," he said, after he thought my question over, "You are unique in my experience. An aberration, if you can forgive the term - the result of an accident that, I think, is unique in the annals of Cybertronian or human history. Imagine, a biological transformed into a mechanical. As far as I can tell, you cannot switch parts nor transform, so are you a Cybertronian transformer? Are you even a Cybertronian at all? Or maybe, like a young Autobot, that ability will manifest itself later. I have a suspicion, but let's talk about that later. One thing you have to keep in mind, though, is that you are still changing. What your final form would be - I can only guess, and maybe you will be able to transform then."

"I'm still changing?"

"Yes. My internal scans indicate that there are changes continuously happening inside of you still."

"There are?" I looked down at my now-boob-covered chest.

"No, you cannot see the changes from the outside." For a genius, Preceptor does tend to take things too literally.

"My scans show that many of your internal components are still in the process of transformation," he continued, "from direct analogues of human organs that are no longer necessary to mechanisms that I am more familiar with. For example, when you first came to us, I know for a fact that you were consuming oxygen then, and expelling carbon dioxide. Now you don't. Your lungs are still there, but they're changing and doing something else now instead of helping you breathe - your breathing action is actually only reflex." He zoomed in on an image of what was, I thought, my spleen, "Here's another example. I do not know what the former function of this component was, but now this seems to have transformed, just recently, into an energy distribution node that all Cybertronians possess, which regulates the use of energy by the Cybertronian, especially when he transforms, but as far as we can tell, you cannot transform." The pseudo-spleen radiated what appeared to be vermicelli-thick strands of wire that went up and down the inside of my torso.

He changed the image again. "Here's another - most of your former skeleton has been changing, mostly in their internal structure, to a honeycomb-type lattice which provides maximum load-bearing capacity and strength without the need for too much mass. And their main constituents now are mostly iron, nickel and titanium - not calcium. As for the rest of your internals - many I recognize, but there is one mechanism I totally do not understand: this one."

He changed the image yet again. Originally, I thought he was zooming in on my new breasts, which had me blushing (later on, I had to wonder how I could even blush), but he was actually focusing in on something underneath the skin, just under the ribs, in between two ribs and on top of my modified right lung. Almost right beside my "heart," in fact. It looked roughly triangular, about the size and shape of the cap of a disposable pen, with small threads radiating out of it, similar to those from my "spleen," which branched out continuously until the branches were so thin they sort of faded out.

"I have never seen anything like this," Perceptor said. "From its general cross-section, it looks like another distribution node, but this node is far too small and irregularly-shaped, and the energon strands are far too thin, and the strands go everywhere, almost like..." His voice trailed away as he continued to stare at the image.

He touched the side of his helmet. "Magnus! Ratchet! You better come up to the imaging lab. It's urgent. Cliff-jumper! Bring Ms. Blu and Bumblebee. Quickly!"

"What! What did you see?"

Perceptor made a patting-down gesture. "It's nothing, RC. But I think I may have figured what this new node really is." He focused in on it further and studied it silently while we waited for the others.

The big doors to the Autobot lab slid open and Ratchet, followed closely by Ultra Magnus, rushed in. A moment later, Bumblebee in her Volkswagen form screeched in, with Susan inside her.

"What is it, Perceptor?" Magnus said. "Is RC all right?"

Perceptor chose to ignore the question. "Do you remember Ms. Blu's AllSpark sliver that was lost?"

Magnus looked at him in barely-suppressed impatience, waiting for him to continue.

"Well, I think I found it." He pointed to that little node in my "x-ray."

They all looked at the image on the screen. No one spoke for a while.

"What's it doing inside RC?" Susan asked.