Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

So there's this top-secret, super special club I know of. Kinda like a secret society -- Freemasons or some shit -- except it's not really a club you'd want to belong to, because the name of the club is Decepticons Want Me Dead.

I first found out about this club a couple of years ago, when my Saturday morning anime cut out in the middle and some giant alien robot started threatening to smash shit up unless humanity as a whole found him a boyfriend.

Or, y’know, something like that. Honestly, I’ve met Sam Witwicky since, and I don’t see the attraction. But I guess Megatron wasn’t after some anal-probing action, because the next I heard was the Great Pyramid got eaten by some gigantic fucking death robot which was then shot by an experimental rail gun mounted on a US Navy ship in the Red Sea, and all of a sudden there was another giant alien robot on TV, but this time he was on the six o’clock news like a civilised person, announcing to the entire planet through Reuters and CNN International that Earth had become the latest battleground in an alien civil war. But that’s okay, because his side were around and they wanted to protect us!

As alien first contact scenarios go, it could have been worse. Thermonuclear worse. Humankind is nothing but adaptable, and the daily top stories were back to sports stars and politicians behaving badly within mere weeks.

Later on, I met a new friend online. Their name was Mlle. (It actually is not, but I didn’t know their real name until later, so I had to work with what I was given. It’s pronounced ‘mill’ in my head.) I knew they were an academic from the first conversation -- far too much biology and shit for a layman, though happily I do not mean shit in the literal sense here, something which I gather is a legit concern for them. I knew they wrote fucking evil fic, the sort I have to read backwards from the epilogue to make sure nobody else’s babies die.

I did not know they were a bloody idiot. But then they went and wrote The Paper That Pissed Everyone Off, going above and beyond in pursuit of proving me wrong. And got themself onto Megatron’s personal shit list.

Megatron. Now there’s a name.

He is, of course, the giant alien asshole who interrupted my Saturday morning cartoon. Back in the early 2010’s, he got his ass kicked big time by Optimus Prime (hell of a name there too!) and laid low for the next couple of years, fortunately while the UN was having its first few conniptions over the idea of working with real live ETs. He made his big comeback recently with an attack on some US military base in Europe, and since then shit’s been flying off the handle every couple of weeks like clockwork.

The episode which involved Mlle took place about four months ago. The first I knew of it was when they got on Skype that evening, gibbering. They didn’t tell us much at that stage -- fucking academic research guidelines or some shit -- but that didn’t matter. We found out exactly what had happened three months later, after they’d published their research.

Unfortunately for me, there's a few too many terrible fanfics floating around out there on the World Wide Web with my name next to theirs in the authors slot. Which means that despite the literal Pacific Ocean between us, I get my own cyber security detachment, just to make sure no Decepticons try to get to them through me.

I mean. Look at my tumblr, full of lovingly crafted xeno smut. Now look back at me. Doesn’t sound likely, does it?

Anyway. Moving on.

My security detachment’s name is Mirage. My first impression of him went thus: he thinks he's so much hot shit my mum coulda dug him out of her compost heap.

Let me explain some family history. My grandma grew up in a one-room shack in the boondocks of the town Mick Jagger once lovingly called the arsehole of the world. My grandpa was a real mountain man who vanished into the hills to go gold-panning every so often. My mum’s been everything from a mechanic to an electrician to a single mother and an architectural technician. The eventual result is me, a part-time fast food lackey with an instinctive distrust of anything that hints at money and class.

Mirage’s alt mode is a fucking Bugatti Chiron. This is a car that sells for two point four million euros, AKA three point fucking six million NZD, AKA more money than my family has ever had over the entire twenty-three-year stretch I've been alive -- cumulatively .

So this sonuvabitch rocks up in my Skype contacts one evening, all polite and smooth-talking, just like you'd expect from someone with a paint job that expensive. He's all like, look, your friend is an idiot -- a smart idiot, but an idiot nonetheless -- and now I'm going to be overseeing your online interactions for the foreseeable future.

To which I'm like, what the fuck.

I called Mlle on Skype that afternoon, and asked them about the same thing.

They took a while to answer. Trying to avoid the question, I'd’a thought, except Mlle hasn't got an avoidant bone in their body. That's half their problem, when it comes to giant alien robot warlords. When they finally got around to answering, they fessed up pretty much immediately:

“I, uh, may have interviewed Megatron about Decepticon ethical practices regarding medical treatment and patient rights. Look, he had my van carried off by Skywarp, and I'd filed the protocols already, so I thought, you know, may as well make the best of the situation.”

So here I am, regretting my life choices and especially my taste in co-authors. Mlle, ILU dearly, but you're fucking nuts.

Chapter Text

I spent the week after Mirage’s first contact floating on cloud eight, which is where you end up when something scary happens and you take a wrong turn down happy hormonal pathways instead. Adrenaline makes me smile, helps me focus. Which is helpful, when you're a chronic multitasker with no staying power like me. I hadn't written so much in literal years.

Thing is, there's a difference between seeing the giant alien robots scrapping all over the evening news and being confronted with the reality of being potentially caught up in their business. At some point over the past couple of years my brain had filed the Cybertronians away in the same place it had put Captain America and Pacific Rim.

(Thank fuck we got Decepticons instead of kaiju. The lack of Jaegers, on the other hand, is too disappointing for words.)

Mirage’s message, politely worded though it had been, disintegrated my happy ignorance entirely. Now I was living in a world where I had personally conversed with a giant fucking alien robot, and suddenly every shitty Honda backfiring on the street was a Decepticon agent out to get me.

And because of a quirk in my biological stress response, I was having the time of my life.

It wasn't going to be a permanent arrangement, said Mirage, hacking into my Facebook, LJ, Dreamwidth, Gmail, Ao3, deviantArt, three abandoned teenage Fanfiction.net accounts, and all thirty-two tumblr blogs with terrifying ease. All they needed was to figure out how vulnerable I was (very), whether getting to me would be an efficient way for the Decepticons -- mostly Megatron, I gathered; this was mainly his bruised ego speaking -- to wreak vengeance (possibly), and whether I was worth protecting at all (definitely not; this Optimus Prime fulla just has a thing about squishies getting squashed, apparently).

We were video chatting, this being the first time we'd had an opportunity to make contact between Mirage’s job, my job, and time zone differences. And by ‘chatting’, I mean Mirage informed me of my rights, the situation regarding Mlle elsewhere, the Decepticons’ violent speciesism and the danger I faced associating with a known Undesirable, while I nodded my head and made encouraging/sympathetic noises. I've never been a very good conversationalist, and also it’s kind of hard to talk when excitement and adrenaline has your chest pumped up like a helium balloon. I felt like I should have floated away at any moment.

Mirage paused his monologue for a moment, making a very subtle face. I’ve never been very good at reading expressions, but this one looked just like the face my cat made when I started buying her a different brand of kibble.

“Additionally,” said the giant fuckin alien robot on the other side of the Skype connection, “you may wish to label the files on your computer more clearly.”

Uh.

Hang on one bloody moment, Mister Bugatti Chiron.

“Did you go through my actual computer?” 

Mirage sighed. (Do giant alien robots sigh? It looked like one, and sounded like one.) “If I can find my way into it, Soundwave can do the same. Though now I know that even if he does, he will find nothing of value.”

I leaned down over my laptop, frowning directly into the webcam. “You found my smut.”

Mirage’s affronted-cat expression grew more obvious. “Your filing system leaves much to be desired.”

A cackle burst out of my tightly-wound chest. “You saw my smut!”

Anyone here seen the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie? You know that expression Keira Knightley makes near the end of the film, where the zombie monkey bursts out at her and screams and she just… glares it into submission? 

Yeah, Mirage just did exactly that to me. And it was fuckin hilarious.

“Please have the decency to confine your pornography to a clearly-marked folder next time,” he said, and his voice was as smooth and posh and neutral as the voice he’d used explaining the situation earlier and it only made me laugh harder to hear the word ‘pornography’ coming out of his mouth. Like I said earlier, panic has a… paradoxical effect on me.

I fought my giggles under control, just barely. “What if I left it there and Soundwave found it? Reckon he’d like it?”

Mirage replied slowly, like a mech counting the seconds until he could hang up. “I very much doubt it.”

“I’m gonna leave it where it is, then.”

He sighed again. There were vents on his cheeks, it looked like -- maybe that was where the sound was coming from. “At the very least, may I request you move it from the folder labeled ‘Giant Robots’?”

I hesitated. 

Thing is, my smut is… special. It’s all written with robots, for one thing. Not the Autobots, not the Decepticons -- although that particular RPF archive was booming, much to the chagrin of fandom at large -- but robots in general. I dunno, but sometimes you’d catch a clip on youtube of some Decepticon or another ranting about how disgusting organics and humans in particular are, and I’ve found myself nodding along a time or two. The robot fandom caught me very much by surprise, but damn I’ve been enjoying myself so far.

Some part of me, buried beneath the happy dumbass, wanted to just comply with all of Mirage’s requests and keep my head down as far from Decepticon notice as possible. The other part of me… did not. The other part of me is used to using my own weirdness as a shield. The other part of me is also, frankly, a vindictive asshole.

If some Decepticon wants to go snooping through my private files, they can damn well get an eyeful of Striker Eureka clapping his giant metal cheeks for their troubles. 

“I tell you what,” I began, attempting a compromise between the happy dumbass and that reasonable part of me, “I’ll make a new folder inside the Giant Robots folder, and I’ll put all my smut in there. I can’t label it, because sometimes my mom borrows this computer and she’s already found some of it once, but you can look at the date it was created and know that you really don’t want to go in there next time you’re poking around my hard drive.”

Mirage made another very catlike face. “I would appreciate that.”

“You’re welcome.” I let myself chuckle again. “Don’t worry, there’s none of you guys in there.”

Mirage froze. Gave a catlike blink.

“I had not so much as considered that question.”

And so that’s how I spent the next half hour educating a giant alien robot from outer space on the ins and outs (heh) of niche xeno smut. In hindsight, starting by showing him the main Decepticon RPF archive miiiight not have been such a good idea.

(He still doesn’t know about the Autobot one, as far as I know, and wew, lads, I am NOT going to be the squishy that tells him.)

Chapter Text

Mirage didn’t contact me again after that. I worried I’d scarred him for life for about five minutes, then decided that he’d probably deserved it for digging through my shit without permission anyway. Word on the internet was the Autobots cared about that sort of stuff.

Life sort of went back to normal. I gradually came down off my adrenaline high when the first month passed and no Decepticons showed up to lecture me about my tastes in nasty robot porn. Judging by the evening news, they were keeping themselves pretty busy in the Northern Hemisphere. And keeping me busy by extension -- with the traditional tourism sites in Europe, Asia and the US disrupted by occasional giant robot smackdowns, visitor numbers to the South Pacific region had skyrocketed. I may have been only a lowly fast food lackey, but my work was located smack dab in the middle of the fancy city downtown, surrounded by hotels and landmarks on all sides. You haven’t truly known fear until you’ve been the only cashier on register and the line for the dinnertime rush is stretching out the door and down the street.

As one month stretched into two, and two into three, I thought about Mirage. What was he up to? You saw most of the Autobots on TV occasionally, those shiny pretty alt modes driving down the freeway in formation or blurry figures in the background of a shaky phone vid punching Decepticons in the face. Mirage? Not so much. For a giant alien robot with the world’s most expensive fashion statement as a vehicle mode, he managed to stay out of the media with impressive consistency.

And then, three months into radio silence, my cat sat down on my phone in the middle of the night and somehow butt-dialed his personal comm line.

He’d given it to me for Emergencies, stressing the capital E on the word. I don’t know what sort of mundane human emergencies he expected me to get into, knowing that the wildest thing I do on the regular is staying up late writing racy fanfic, but he’d been pretty clear that unless the Decepticons were involved, he didn’t give a shit. The number in my contacts was forbidden fruit, there to tempt me every time I went to call someone.

Luckily, I don’t do that very often. At all, really.

So, imagine the scene for me: I’m snuggled in my nice warm bed, sleeping the sleep of the dead, right -- and somewhere deep in my unconscious mind I hear the dulcet tones of Siri, saying something like “DO YOU WISH TO MAKE THIS INTERNATIONAL CALL?” Something like that, I don’t know, it was kinda muffled under my cat’s fat floofy butt. 

And so I throw myself the fuck out of bed, still mostly asleep and running on lizard-brain instinct, grope around on the floor underneath my bed until I find the charger cord and a moment later my cat’s traitorous ass, just as Siri announces, “OKAY, I AM MAKING THIS CALL.” And then she reads out Mirage’s fuckin contact.

I push my cat off the phone in utter panic. I receive a swat full of sharp needle claws for my trouble. I swipe away from whatever screen my cat’s gotten into as the call goes through and I punch the red ‘hang up’ button just as Mirage says my name.

End scenario. Except no, because nothing involving giant alien robots is that easy.

He called back immediately. I chanted a heartfelt fuckfuckfuckfuuuuuck a few times before I dialed the volume way down and accepted the call. My mom was sleeping in the next room and she’d have murdered me if I woke her talking to my own personal giant robot FBI agent at 3AM in the morning.

“What is your situation?” asked Mirage, sounding pretty unconcerned for someone who’s answering what he thinks is an emergency call. Maybe he knew it was an accident already. Maybe he just knew I’m a dumbass.

“I’m really sorry,” I whispered, staring into the pitch-dark of my bedroom. “My cat sat on my phone and I couldn’t stop it in time.” 

Silence.

“Sorry,” I repeated, just in case the first apology wasn’t enough.”I’m telling the truth, I swear.”

“I see.” Mirage paused, significantly. “Good night.”

Then he hung up.

I crouched there in the darkness for a moment, long enough that my screen went dark. Something rustled under my bed. Probably my cat. 

Hoooooooly shit.

I put my phone onto my bedside table -- touchscreen facing down this time -- and slithered back into bed, pulling the covers up to my nose. Gradually the adrenaline rush subsided, leaving me torn between hysterical laughter and despair. Who’s going to believe a cat butt-dialed an Autobot? Do the robots even know what a cat is? (Have they discovered I Can Haz Cheezburger yet? After two years on this planet, I sure hope so. What about Knifecat? Woman Screaming At Cat? Oh, that one’s a mood right now.)

My phone buzzed with an incoming text, loud in the post-midnight darkness. I flinched in my sheets. Who’d be texting me at three AM? Probably the giant alien robot whose personal emergency number I’d just disturbed. 

New Message, said the notification on the lockscreen. From the number Mirage had told me was to be for Emergencies only.

My coworker would like a photo of the cat, if you do not mind sharing.

Record scratch.

Uh. Sure. Okay. 

Does that mean I’m forgiven?

(Coworker? Is there a cat fancier among the Autobots?)

I brought up my camera roll, scrolling through. My pets make up probably 95% of my photos, but unfortunately for me I am not good at catching them while they’re looking photogenic. I admit I considered sending him a pic of the furry troublemaker in question industriously grooming her butt, just to really commit to the night’s cringe, but in the end I’m not that fond of self-sabotage. And my persistence paid off! A couple months back in the roll was a great shot of her performing a dainty cat loaf in front of the kitchen door, dappled sunlight all around her. In the daylight, she’s a calico tabby with a kittenish face that belies her fifteen years, soft and quiet and kind of a scaredycat. Once night falls, her Bastard Index goes way up. I love her very much.

I deliberated a moment, then pressed send. You only get one, you scary metal sonuvabitch -- this costs me fifty cents per photo.

Ask and Ye shall receive. [attachment_201.7548_smely_princess.jpeg]

My thanks, said Mirage, in that prim and proper way of his. He made no further comment.

I waited ten minutes or so to be sure, browsing tumblr in the dark. Oh look, an Autobot group shot on my dashboard. Mirage, as usual, was nowhere to be seen. We the robot fandom know he exists, because he’s been spotted one or twice around the main base in Wherever-The-Fuck, Nevada, and that alt-mode is not something you forget in a hurry. Otherwise, he may as well be invisible.

Ten minutes came and went. I sighed dramatically, turned my phone off and shoved it under my pillow. 

(You know, sometimes I wonder who Mirage pissed off to get stuck with the job of looking out for me. I bet that person is laughing, right about now.)

Chapter Text

You know, when I was a lot younger, sometimes I’d get really pissed off that I hadn’t had the luck to be born in the US. You grow up on a steady diet of American TV (and if it isn’t American it’s British) and you inevitably develop a… particular view of the United States. One might almost describe it as fairytale-like. Then you get online as a weirdo teenager with weirdo interests and all the other weirdos like you are three thousand miles away from you at best, and you start wishing you didn’t feel quite so distant from everything. 

Right now, though? Fuck yeah I live in the arsehole of the world! Because, for the moment at least, we are the only major landmass in the world that hasn’t had a bad case of Decepticons yet.

(I mean, hell, they’ve been to Antarctica. What’s Antarctica got for a giant alien robot that we don’t have? Megatron, pls explain.)

Mirage had gone straight back to radio silence after the cat butt-dial incident. At this point I’d been expecting it. It was probably a good thing, in all honesty, because Christmas was rapidly approaching and that’s seldom a good time for me.

First of all, down here in the arsehole of the world, it’s summer. Summer means heat, and dry wind, and lots of sun. It means I practically live in sunglasses for six months, or my photosensitive ass spends those six months with a neverending headache. It means I gotta either hide out in my local library for about seven hours over the heat of the afternoon, or I spend most of that time wishing I’m passed out on the bathroom floor, hugging the lino for the scrap of cool sensation it contains. I have never lived in a house newer than about the 1980’s and fucking NONE of them have had proper air conditioning. Summer, you might see, is a special kind of torture for me.

My work, I had been surprised to learn the previous summer, threw me a lifeline at these times of year. Yeah, sure, the kitchen could be a bit of an oven at times, but out in the dining room, there was blessed air conditioning. Hey, there’s a reason I work front of house.

Tl;dr, while all my coworkers were scheduling time off for the coming holidays, I was collecting extra shifts like a bargain hunter at a clearance sale. What’s that, fellow cashier, you need someone to cover four days over the New Year while you jet off to the Gold Coast with your new boyfriend? Sure, I’ll handle it! Let’s go get the manager to jot that down.

Yes, it turns out, I am the sort of person who willingly works fourteen-hour shifts in a fast food joint just to get at some air conditioning. (Not gonna lie though, time and a half pay on public holidays is also pretty sweet. University Round Two, here I come.)

That said, fourteen-hour shifts are kind of murder on the feet. I may have walked out the door a little funny after closing on that fateful night, the way you do when you’re trying through sheer force of will to not actually make contact with the ground.

Outside the restaurant, the sky was still sort of light, clearly visible between what passes for high-rise buildings around here, silhouetting tower cranes and scaffolding every other block. There was a bar doing rowdy business down by the riverside, loud voices and thumping music drifting through the still-warm air. I limped in the other direction, past the water-filled hole in the ground that used to be a hotel and the malfunctioning kinetic sculpture at the closest intersection. There were only a few people around, most of them with the look of lost tourists. (Don’t feel bad, tourists, nobody that lives here knows where we’re going anymore either.)

A weird sort of hum approached me from behind. I glanced over my shoulder, moving to the side of the footpath to make way for what sounded like someone gunning it on one of the electric rental scooters that were starting to take over the city.

It was not a scooter.

It was the fucking Bugatti Chiron.

My mouth dropped open. I stared as Mirage glided slowly past me and pulled smoothly into a five-minute park, cutting the odd hum of the engine down to nothing. I wasn’t the only one staring; a pair of the lost tourists nudged each other and whispered something inaudible from across the street.

Deep in my work bag, my half-dead phone buzzed.

I fished it out, answering the incoming call. Mirage’s contact scrolled across the screen.

“Keep walking and do not react to me,” ordered Mirage, the moment I accepted the call. “I am only here as a precaution.”

“You’re gonna attract so much attention,” I groaned into the mic. “Is that thing even street-legal?”

He ignored the crack about his alt-mode. “Your roads are horrific.”  

Yeah, that’s what happens when you build a city on top of a swamp in a country straddling a major plate boundary. “Ha. Have you been to the beach? You haven’t seen nothing yet.”

“I have seen enough,” he said. The harmonics in his voice changed, and the little hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “Listen carefully to me: the Decepticons found something in Antarctica. We do not know what, yet. Furthermore, we believe they may have been active in this country. If you, or any of your friends, have seen or heard of anything unusual, we need to know.”

“You know I don’t have any friends,” I replied on automatic. The thought of Decepticons in Aotearoa had run off with most of my remaining brain cells. Adrenaline bubbled through my veins. A moment’s thought, and I amended my statement with, “Local ones, anyway.” 

“Then make some,” Mirage said, like he was my fucking mother. Same brutal practicality. “I may require your assistance at a later date. I do not wish to involve you if I can at all avoid it, but unfortunately my experience with human society has not been sufficient to adapt to this country.”

My impulse control meter reached zero, and I laughed out loud. Some of the Autobots had gleefully joined in with human cultural practices, like ignoring highway speed limits and getting into pointless arguments on the internet. Mirage was not one of these -- not that I’d expected differently, from my handful of interactions with him. 

“Can I suggest getting a better vehicle mode? A nice Toyota? I stepped in a pothole bigger than your clearance this morning. You’ll get stuck on a speed bump every other suburban street.” 

Mirage sighed. It was a good effort, very human-like. “I will contact you again in approximately two weeks. If you are able to find out anything sooner, please let me know immediately.”

“Sure,” I said, taking the opportunity to check out his alt mode as I passed. I am not really a Car Person, but you don’t have to be a gearhead to appreciate a pretty sports car, even if it is an ostentatious show of wealth that’s painfully out of place in a city where half the roads are still doing their best to crumble slowly into the swamp. “I got a question before you go. How’d you find me? I’ve been doing nothing but working for like the last two weeks.”

“I tracked your phone,” he said, matter-of-fact. “It is not hard. Please do not look at me like that.”

“It would be weirder if I didn’t, trust me.” I grinned down at him, not entirely nicely, then headed for the bus station. “I hope you don’t need me before second week of January. I’m fully booked until then.”

“I was under the impression that you were a fast food worker,” said Mirage. “I was not aware that the job was essential.”

“It isn’t, but I like money. And also air conditioning. You need to give me both if you wanna compete.” 

Mirage remained quiet for a long moment. “I am sure that both can be arranged.”

I laughed, then rubbed my two brain cells together for a moment and stopped dead. “That was a joke.”

“This is a matter of international security.” Mirage let me stew for another long moment, then said, “But I will not require it of you unless it becomes absolutely necessary.”

“Good, because I’ve told a lot of people I’d cover their shifts and I really don’t wanna go back on it.” I limped onward, the bus station in sight. “Dunno what I could help you with, anyway.”

“My thought is that you would be an… intercessor, of a sort, where human contact becomes necessary. We have one contact in this country, yourself aside, and he is… not well suited for this task.” 

“And I am?” That was hard to believe. I’m a mid-twenties uni dropout whose only real skill is writing, preferably weird shit. 

“Your birth certificate indicates that you were born and raised in this country. Our other option has spent only six months here. We hope to avoid detection for as long as possible.”

Aah, so it was a ‘get the natives to show us around’ sort of thing. I wondered why they hadn’t directly contacted the government, then remembered that our current Deputy Prime Minister exists, which answers a lot of questions besides this one. “You definitely need to get a better vehicle mode, then.”

“Better,” Mirage echoed, like I’d just told him to hop in a tank full of cockroaches.

“Yes, better. You know, something that’s actually sold in this part of the world, that won’t make you look like a complete rich muppet.”

“Very well,” said Mirage. Half a block behind me, the Chiron’s engine hummed to life. “Perhaps I shall request your help for that as well.”

He hung up without warning, something I was beginning to get used to. A moment later, the Chiron skimmed past, sneaking through the next intersection on the orange light. 

I ducked into the bus station, checking the ETA on the next bus, and sent him a quick text. There’s a Toyota dealer down St Asaph. Maybe you can check it out.

Unsurprisingly, the bastard left me on read.

Chapter Text

Early in the new year, sometime during yet another all-day fast food shift, Mirage sent me a photo. I discovered it on my “lunch” break, probably a few hours after he’d sent it -- we’d been slammed that day and it was close to evening by the time I was finally allowed to go on break. The photo depicted a very shiny, glossy dark blue new car in a well-lit, surgically-clean showroom. It had four doors, a visible boot, and clearance that at least looked capable of dealing with most roads the earthquake-stricken eastern suburbs could throw at it, all of which was an improvement on his current tastes.  

There was still something… off about the car. I narrowed my eyes, squinting down at my phone. Too shiny, perhaps. Maybe the shape of the headlights. A hood ornament of large but indeterminate shape.

A reverse image search threw the brand and model in my face: Bentley Continental, 2018. One hundred and seventy fucking thousand dollars on TradeMe, second-hand.  

I deliberated upon my response for five minutes, thoughtfully stuffing chicken nuggets into my mouth. Then I sent him a grainy news photo of the mangled corpse of the McLaren F1 that had crashed into a ditch down in Queenstown a few years back. Try again.

My phone dinged immediately. That is unkind, said Mirage.

I laughed, softly and, yeah, definitely unkindly. That’s a car that’ll get you looked at and remembered. I’m assuming that’s not what you’re after.

After a moment, presumably to rethink his priorities or maybe his decision to rely on me, he relented. Very well. I shall keep looking.

Two days later, as I boarded the bus into work at 6:30am: Porsche Panamera, 2017. 190K new. 

I shook my head as I scanned my bus card and stepped into the aisle, looking for a seat. The driver smelled like twenty years’ worth of cigarette smoke, an odor that persistently shadowed me as I headed to the raised seats at the back of the bus. I cranked open the window as I sat and sent Mirage a cynical response: It’s like you think we’re rich.

This is the least expensive of the range, Mirage protested. Your city has a dealership.

At this point I was starting to feel like a reverse snob. It’s still a fucking Porsche. Find me something under 50k and I’ll start considering it.

That is barely anything, he replied. I did not think you were rich but I did not wish to assume you were poor.

I unsuccessfully stifled a sudden laugh, which escaped through my nose as a piglety snort. “You rich bastard,” I whispered under my breath, because some sentiments really have to be voiced. One of the two other passengers on the bus glanced at me. It’s hard to read expressions on the early morning crowd; they might be judging you or they might just still be half asleep. 

50k isn’t poor, my dude. Try 5k or under.

I would rather not, said Mirage, which just made me want to stuff him into a 2k beater even more. How do you propose I find a quality model at that price?

Wow, I thought to myself. Does it matter? You’re an alien robot, you’re gonna have better specs or whatever than anything you wear, aren’t you?

The specs are not the issue. Mirage sent me a new photo, which Tineye informed me was a 2017 Honda Civic Type R, just over my imaginary budget at 55k second-hand. Do you expect me to wear this?

I bit my lip hard, swallowing another burst of laughter. Gonna be honest with you, I can’t tell the difference. It’s red?

It is hideous, he said. No explanation as to why.

Okay then. Keep looking. I’m sure you’ll find something.

Spoiler alert: he didn’t.

The day after was my first day off in about a week. I got up at 7AM, went to feed the chooks, then sat down on the couch with my laptop on my crossed legs and started browsing Trademe in the second-hand cars section, results ordered cheapest first. Operation Torment Mirage commenced.

2005 Mazda 6, greyish. Asking price: 13k. Crappy phone photos in portrait mode, car itself not much better.

No , said Mirage.

2012 Honda Jazz, powder blue and peeling slightly, listed with a $3.50 reserve for some reason. Slightly boxy, something of a mom-of-three-kids vibe.

No, said Mirage.

2002 Nissan Primera. White with a couple of visible dings, round and friendly, sort of boring if you ask me but very much a forgotten-in-three-seconds sort of car.

Absolutely not, said Mirage.

2007 Mazda Demio, nondescript silver and somewhat squat in shape. There was a hay bale in the back of the car for some reason, perhaps to show carrying capacity. A relative of mine had one once, and I know from experience that this bad boy can fit so much bullshit in it.

Think again, said Mirage. Perhaps he was catching on to my plan. T ime to Escalate.

1995 BMW, sedan of indeterminate model, listing sparse on info. Dark red paint, cracking up at the seams, visibly a nineties sort of car. 

That is twenty-three years old, said Mirage. Which was fair, actually; I wouldn’t want to dress up in nineties fashion either.

1963 Morris, just for funsies, a whole million kilometres on the clock. Original paint color obscured behind a thick coating of dust, probably been stored in a shed for years. 

That is horrific , said Mirage. 

1988 Toyota Hilux ute, also just for funsies. Indeterminate grey, again just shy of a million km, looking like it had recently escaped a Top Gear special. I sent the link with a caption: Wanna cosplay a farmer?

Must I dignify this with a response?  

Snickering under my breath, I opened a new tab and ran a search for the old Hilux ads. Gotta wonder what a giant alien robot makes of the Bugger Dog. Toyota was always peak Kiwi. You’ll fit right in with a good ute.

I believe Toyota are Japanese, said Mirage, polite disagreement absolutely dripping out between the lines. 

Well, yeah, but they’re peak Kiwi too. Watch this.

Mirage responded after a suspenseful minute, palpably recoiling. What in the name of Primus is this?

Turns out the Bugger Dog had a sequel I was previously unaware of! It goes in the same vein, with various vehicular shenanigans culminating in the destruction of an outhouse and a lot of people with really good reasons to deploy swearwords a lot stronger than ‘bugger’. 

Advertising as an art form. Here, try Hokey Pokey.

Mirage gave it five minutes before responding this time. There are no volcanoes in the Westland region, yes?

Uh. No? Why?

How much of this is accurate to driving in this country?

Oh my. Sometimes I forget that these guys are, by definition, aliens. 

Well, all the volcanoes are in the North Island and being pretty quiet at the moment. We do get tornadoes occasionally, but they’re nothing like what you have in the US. Aside from the wild boar riding the motorbike and the talking chimp, the rest is probably plausible if you’re in the high country? Needs more rain to be truly accurate, imo.

More rain? Mirage repeated. I’ve never seen someone visibly having second thoughts in text before.

Lots more. Buckets more. There will be mud. Invest in some good mudflaps.

That will be arranged, he said, very seriously. It is summer; will this not indicate drier weather?

On this side of the mountains, yeah. I think it’s the other way around in Westland.

That is unfortunate. He went quiet for a few minutes, his username dropping offline. He had chosen the most screamingly mundane screen name I could think of: Anthony Smith. I had promptly relabeled him ‘Ghost Chips’ to blend in with the rest of the ridiculous names in my contacts. When your friendslist is full of shit like ‘Heaven’s Brawniest Angel™’ and ‘Catgirl Thanos’, it’s the vaguely human names that stand out. 

(My own username was no exception. He’d objected to my first, because apparently ‘Optimus Prime’s Disapproving Eyebrows’ was not something easily explained to the actual Optimus Prime, who reportedly might be checking in on these chatlogs from time to time. I wish they’d thought to tell me that before I went and talked about Decepticon RPF, but ah well, that’s their problem now.)

Mirage returned. He dropped a Google Maps screencap of the West Coast into the chat, file large enough that it took my cheapo internet connection five minutes to download. How fuckin big are their screens?

There appears to be only one highway, and no towns of a reasonable size. You have no concerns regarding access to human amenities?

I guess the West Coast is a pretty rural part of the country, but… no towns of a reasonable size? There’s at least two, by my reckoning. (Maybe three, but I haven’t been to Westport and therefore cannot comment on their amenities.) 

There’s at least two supermarkets in Greymouth and one in Hokitika. If you’re talking about accommodation, there are plenty of hotels and motels. Camping grounds, if nothing else. Unless we’re going freedom camping? Which may or may not be legal in a regular car. Maybe I should stick him in a Wicked Campers body instead.

I am unfamiliar with the term, but hotel accommodation can be arranged. Mirage dropped another screencap, zoomed in on the area between Fox Glacier and Haast. Yellow pins marked an uneven line along the edge of the Southern Alps, loosely following the fault strike and clustering just west of Franz Josef township. The Decepticon activity has been concentrated in this region, though not exclusively. Human seismic monitoring has also picked up multiple shallow low-magnitude events in this area. We do not believe this is caused by the Decepticon agents at work, but our analysts likewise consider it unlikely to be of geological origin. Our primary mission brief is to locate and identify the Decepticons active in the region, and if possible their targets and objectives. We are also to investigate the anomalous seismic signals. 

I sat back in my chair, scratching my chin with my thumb. Shallow earthquakes along the Alpine Fault; that’s got to be making the seismologists antsy. You know that’s going to be crawling with tourists. 

Yes. We intend to send you on a few scenic flights, since they are available. Local tourism may be a useful cover story.

Damn, works for me! I laughed aloud, knowing I never would have been able to pay for any of this on my own. When do we leave?

As soon as you are able.

Okay, that’s sooner than I was expecting. Best I can do is next Saturday. Do you think we can do this in two weeks or do I gotta quit my job?

Two weeks may not be sufficient. Mirage paused for a few minutes, cursor blinking. I opened a Word doc and started typing up a resignation letter, just in case.

Mirage returned. My superiors suggest four weeks is more likely. Perhaps longer.

All right, quit my job it is. You guys gonna pay my wage?

Mirage responded quickly, attaching a PDF document to the message. Yes. My superiors would like to offer you approximately $40 in the local currency per hour.

Hot damn! Sold. That was more than twice minimum wage. I could pay my way through university on $40 an hour. 

I scrolled through the PDF, which turned out to be an official contract. There was surprisingly little fine print for an international job offer, but, I supposed, that tracked with all the secrecy. The employer was identified as Aurora Rampant, a nondescript little co-op based out of a Las Vegas suburb. I googled the name, found nothing identifying.

Are you certain it is satisfying? asked Mirage. $40 seems a little low.  

Really? Maybe my viewpoint is skewed from years of fast food lackeydom. Should I ask for more?

My personal belief is that if one must risk one's life in the course of employment, then one should at the very least be paid highly for the effort. We do not believe the risk in this case is high, but it is certainly not zero. Please excuse me, I shall… make enquiries.  

On that ominous note, Mirage dropped offline again. I spent the rest of the morning rethinking my opinion of the mech. Maybe he wasn’t just a rich bastard after all.

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