PILEUP [68] While James was facing the two nailguns with little hope of seeing another morning or handling one of the guns himself, life was in danger on the M5 motorway nearby also. Dense traffic had driven too fast in fog at night, and Ratchet and Hoist, summoned to the scene, had to transform and walk across fields, with a delay breaking a gap in some farmer's 12 foot tall untrimmed hedge. "Matrix, what a mess." said Ratchet as he reached the top of the east side of the motorway embankment. Cars and lorries and vans strewn about and on top of each other like a tipped-out boxful of toys blocked all lanes both ways. There was plenty load for two ambulances which had had to drive the wrong direction along the northbound lane to get there. "Won't help looking at it. Good thing I brought plenty of blowtorch gas. Let's start." said Hoist. An artic cab was lying on its roof. A rescuer trying to get its driver out of its crushed cab was thwarted by its driver's unhurt and angry Alsatian. "Leave, Tiger, it's all right." came a voice as if in pain from inside, but the dog stayed on guard. Hoist, approaching, saw that diesel was spilt about, which luckily makes a lot less vapour than petrol, for he had to blowtorch. He protruded a built-in blowtorch from his left hand, and cut through the crushed bodywork. The snarling dog bit his steel hand in vain as he dragged it out. Now the driver could be got out. "All sorts of junk in here. Some of it's cut him, flying about in the crash." said a rescuer. "It's not junk, it's my stuff." said the driver. "Aiyinn?" the dog whined as it followed its master being taken away on a stretcher along the verge past where another driver was realizing that his holiday had ended before it had started, for the swinging rear end of the jackknifing artic's trailer had broken his caravan apart. Ratchet started to stack wreckage on the grass verge, startling a man with `doctor' on his fluorescent overjacket who was wondering how heavy lifting gear to get at trapped people could get in through all the mess. "What in Hippocrates's name is that!?" the man exclaimed, seeing Ratchet. A white giant robot with its chest like the front end of an American wedge-fronted ambulance was a bit too much for him that late at night. "I'm Ratchet Autobot. We're based at a factory in Droitwich." said Ratchet briefly, for he was busy. [69] The doctor followed Ratchet to a car which had rolled 360 degrees over and crushed its roof on the central barrier on the way. He tore its roof open with his hands, for its petrol had spilt about making it unsafe to blowtorch. Ratchet, noticing something, protruded a needle from a hand and sucked up a little of the trapped driver's blood, and then went to blowtorch an access gap in the central barrier while the doctor looked at the driver. "Sample has 91 mg/ml of alcohol." said Ratchet, "Another one. Business conference or something, everything discussed over drinks, then didn't set off home till the bar shut, drunk in charge of the firm's affairs as well as in charge of a car, no wonder business often can't get its act together nowadays.". "I know this sort." said the doctor, "Must have a separate drink with each person consulted. Meets x people, so ends up having x drinks. No idea of lemonade or `no thankyou' or merely offering a drink and not having one himself also.". "Ooh my head." said the driver, waking and standing up giddily, "I'm all right, nothing broken. Important papers. All I want is aspirin and a phone, please. I must get home, another meeting tomorrow.". "Not by car you don't, for a good while. Your safety belt saved you, but you must still go to hospital for a check up." said the doctor. "Please. My licence. My job." pleaded the driver, rummaging in his wrecked car for papers. "You should have thought of that before." the doctor snapped, "There's no law ordering you to drink alcohol.". The jet-propelled hawk-shaped robot called Laserbeak landed by a damaged car, and tore its jammed door open with his hooked beak, startling one of two ambulancemen who were carrying an empty stretcher to it in case its driver needed it. "It's only Laserbeak." said the other, and explained. "He'll have to go to fetch some plasma and blood and adrenalin soon, we're nearly out of them. Quicker than a motorcycle in this fog and traffic and drunks driving home." he added. The driver mumbled something as the ambulancemen got him out. "It's all right, we're here." said one of them to him. "What did he say?" a man asked wearing a factory-type safety helmet and a fluorescent overjacket with the word `paramedic' on it. "Rubbish. Sounds like he's delirious." said an ambulanceman. "What did he say?" Laserbeak asked. "Not now, we're busy." the ambulanceman curtly replied. "What did he say?" Laserbeak asked, louder. "OK, keep your feathers on, bird." the ambulanceman replied, He said `I'm immune to hell and hen.': I told you it was nonsense.". "Skwaak!" Laserbeak replied, "That's `L and N', two blood group substances! I bet he's had a transfusion before, and his immune system's got fussy. Happens sometimes. He needs L-minus N-minus blood.". "Great. One more thing special to send for." the paramedic complained, and told Laserbeak to fetch it. Laserbeak found a clear bit of road and took off and flew away. His jets faded away into the silent foggy damp night. A man with his suit a little scuffed came up to Ratchet and asked him: "I'm Dr.Arnoldson, and I've got to get to a meeting at ...". "No." Ratchet interrupted, "You've got patients right here. Go to Hoist, that's the green robot with the orange towing-gear on his back, and help treat anybody injured he gets out. Never mind going away and leaving people untreated.". "Er - can't - Doctor of Philosophy in Physics - not medicine. I wouldn't know what to do or look for." Arnoldson whined. "No. You're `Mister', till you get a medical degree, idiot. Go help shift wreckage and never mind your fancy suit." Ratchet snapped, for in emergencies he had little patience for the confusing university habit of using (Ratchet called it `misusing') the word `doctor' to mean someone with a degree in irrelevant nonmedical subjects. A mobile crane found its way in. A policeman riding with its driver showed the usual fright at suddenly seeing Ratchet in robot form, but urgency forbade delay. "Can you help us right that flatbed artic?, so we can load some of the wrecks on it. We'll have to cut the cab away, but it should drive. Pity Optimus isn't here ..." said Ratchet, and broke off and threw a piece of scrap iron backwards. The piece hit the back of a man who was standing among cars. The man grunted under the blow, and his hat and two objects that he was holding to his mouth went flying. [70] "You thought that like a human I can't see backwards!" said Ratchet angrily, making three quick strides up to him and grabbing him, "Petrol spilt all over the place, and you tried to light a fag, you scraplet! People still trapped in that car nearest to you! To make up for wasting my time and being stupid, give the cop the rest of the smoking materials and help shift wreckage. Never mind your posh suit.". "Sorry, cop, but it was the only way for me to stop him in time." said Ratchet to the policeman. "Put me down!" the man protested, "Lucky nothing broken - assault - making me lose a valuable cigar lighter - bruises - I'll have the law on you, or on that Mr.Whirr-nick who made you overgrown tin heavies. Go see to the injured.". "You better do what Mr.Ratchet says. The rest of the fags, please." said the policeman. "I that smoke, to calm my nerves! No wonder!" the man complained. "What if you'd started a fire?" Ratchet snapped, "If a fleshling dies, you can't get him back by making a new body and restoring his mind from a computer disk dump copy!". "I protest. I've lost enough time through this lot." the man continued, "It wasn't a `fag', it was an expensive Virginia cigar. No smoking, no smoking, nicht rauchen, ne kurit' [= Russian for `no smoking'], defence a fumer, there's no getting away from it!". Jazz and Wheeljack appeared, climbing up the embankment as Ratchet and Wheeljack had before. They had been at the factory building repair, and had come as soon as they had heard of the crash on the local radio. They still had no news of Optimus, except that he was going to Wednesbury with a load for Bangor in North Wales. A lorry with a big crate tied on its rear had reared like a horse and fallen back down on a car, squashing it and its occupant. Jazz and Wheeljack untied the crate to lift it off, then they would lift the lorry off; but a fireman ran up to them and called them off, telling them to attend to the living first. They and Ratchet found plenty of work, among the tangle of damaged flesh and metal caused by people too impatient to drive slow enough to stop within the visibility limit, and the blood and the fractures and the internal injuries and the general mess. The wind stiffened and blew the fog away. The man in charge, seeing a bright light lowish in the eastern sky, complained over his radio about it being probably an airliner in difficulty to add to the work; but Jazz, who was righting an overturned lorry in the course of helping to clear at least one lane each way for traffic, recognized it as being not that, and not a UFO, but only the planet Venus, and said so. Venus and Jupiter, and sometimes Mars, cause many spurious object in the sky reports. The police arranged transport for stranded people, and had to shoo away the first sightseers. As Ratchet transformed to ambulance form and parked himself with the ordinary ambulances, Wheeljack went on his knees and loaded into him the last living casualty except for `walking wounded': it was the man needing the L-minus N-minus blood. Laserbeak flew in with three transfusion bottles of it, and also some insulin, which was useful, because one of the minor casualties was diabetic and overdue for his dose of it. [71] By now the slow lane each way was clear. An overturned sand and gravel lorry was righted, leaving a pile of spilt sand on the middle lane; the police radioed for a JCB to shift it. Wheeljack `kneeled' by bending his hips at a right angle backwards and treated a long queue of minor injuries. An ambulanceman looked in Laserbeak's cargo compartment for A,Rh- blood and found one bottle left, and used it. Jazz pulled a spilt crate aside. The artic with the squashed cab was drivable when the cab body had been cut away; Hoist loaded another wrecked car onto its flatbed trailer. Most of the other undrivable or driverless vehicles had been lined up against the central barrier. A policeman radioed to let traffic pass, one lane each way. The multiple crash cut the threads of many men's plans, as usual. Another policeman was thanking Hoist for his help when the policeman's dog got very interested in some white powder smeared down Hoist's left leg. It had been in a polythene bag in an overturned red Cortina car's boot, and it spilt about when Hoist righted the car. The policeman, sounding a little alarmed, asked Hoist where it came from and scraped a sample of it off into a bag of his own and emphatically told Hoist to wash the rest off in a nearby stream at once, and anything else that the powder may have got on. He also asked Hoist for a description of the people that were in the car. "One, man, white, tall, blue eyes, red anorak, broken left leg. In the middle ambulance north end northbound lane." Hoist replied. In that ambulance the described man overheard this message on a nearby policeman's radio, realized that his `consignment' had been found, reached in his pocket for something, and ordered threateningly "I'm taking over in here! Sit over th...". "Bang aagh." said the ambulanceman tiredly and sarcastically, for his intellectual ability was suffering the inevitable consequences of being awake too long at a stretch, "Forget it. We found your `equalizer' while you were sedated. The cops've got it.". "That's the end of our marketing conference this afternoon." said one of two casualties who were in Ratchet's rear, "It must be nearly morning by now. Papers and slides lost. Five delegates travelling together all hurt. Other meetings were waiting for its decision." "I am Ratchet. You are inside me." said Ratchet to two casualties in his rear. "Who said that?" said one of them. "What!? Oh help." said the other, realizing that he was in a sentient robot vehicle, "We'll have to try to discuss what we can from our beds. That meeting's important.". "No!" said Ratchet sharply, "Hospital patients' phones are for short messages only, and nurses aren't patients' secretaries. Couldn't you spare the time for a proper night's sleep in all your urgency? Oh well, plenty delay for you now. I bet you fell asleep at the wheel. And I found 47 mg/ml of alcohol in you.", and unfolded some mechanical arms from the inside of his rear to examine the two casualties. Ratchet set off, and switched out a link in his brain, temporarily dividing his brain's cortex and personality into two, one driving and the other attending to the casualties without distracting each other. "OK. OK. The usual accusation, you cold electromechanical thing that couldn't get drunk if you tried to. Agh, robots." said one of the two casualties, and tried to look in his briefcase, which had been thrown under his stretcher. "Lie still. You've got three broken ribs, and I'm on the move." Ratchet ordered, "Stop waving that arm, it's the one with the drip in. I'll reach Birmingham Hospital soon.". [72] I got to the address in Wednesbury, and nobody there knew anything about the job. Nor did they recognize the voice of the man who had said he was one of theirs, who had arranged the haulage job, when I played it back from my memory. They had never heard of me as real; they thought they were hallucinating when I transformed into robot form to stand up to talk in at their manager's window. At least the 20-mile drive to the pile-up when I heard of it over my radio was straight down the M6 and M5. Nearing the pile-up, I found Stephen Jameson, businessman, collapsed on the grass by a motorwayside emergency phone. "Ohhh. Meeting tomorrow. I tried to phone. Phone's gone wrong, nothing on it but motorway police, wouldn't put me back to the operator. Oh my head." Jameson groaned as Optimus unfolded his right arm and picked Jameson up and put him across the driving seats to take him to the doctors at the pileup. "I've just come there. I'll be all right in a bit. I just want two aspirins and a few minutes lie down ..." complained Jameson. "No!" I said firmly, "You're injured inside somewhere. You're for hospital. Forget your meeting. You shouldn't have wandered away from the accident. Comes from cutting into your sleep time to fit extra work in.", guessing rightly why Jameson had crashed. I drove up to Ratchet, who by now was back at the pileup, in ambulance form. I took Jameson out and transformed and went on hands and knees to load Jameson into Ratchet. "Now what!?!" importantly complained Jameson, who had not seen Transformers real or fictional before, "Look, I told you, all I want is (a) two aspirins for this %$# headache, (b) use of a phone to call a taxi to get home to collect replacement documents and notes, then off to a most important company conference starting at 1.30pm.". "For the last time, !" I ordered, "You're obviously bleeding inside your head somewhere, from when you bumped it. The only taxi you're having is Ratchet the ambulance, and the only meeting you're having is with the emergency surgeon. I can tell you're getting confused, or you wouldn't have tried to ring ordinary phone numbers on a roadside emergency phone, where I found you unconscious. How come you're missing a night's sleep to travel, anyway? That causes accidents. Who's your boss?, so I can give him a piece of my mind. Always it's Ratchet and the other ambulances and police that end up picking up the pieces. Humans need rest and sleep, and there's no avoiding it.". People who are knocked out by a bump on the head should go to the doctor after it, even if they seem all right afterwards. Inside Ratchet as he sped along the M5, Jameson realized that his plans could not be kept to. "OK, OK." he said, "I need a checkup, or I may get unpronounceablitis of the qwertyuiop. 'll do all the talking to my boss. I can't afford to lose my job just now, him getting a mouthful of lip and jargon from some medic and I get accused of being a complainer and unable to keep up the pace. And I've one of my own cust' - I'll need to be completely out of anaesthetic by 9am, as I'll have a lot of phoning to do.". "`-omers', you were saying." Ratchet picked up the broken word, "Now it slips out. A job and your own business also, cutting into your sleep to run both. Black coffee is not a proper substitute for sleep, I know you've been at it, your breath smells of it. You drive badly from sleeping and help to injure other people in this multiple pile up, interrupting sleep to tidy it up. The surgeon'll operate as and when he thinks best, not being ordered about by some business boss getting patients tense when they should be resting.". A mechanical arm unfolded from Ratchet's roof. Jameson, noticing it, pleaded for "No sedative, please. I've got to rethink my plans for tomorrow with this delay to important business.", but the needle went in and put Jameson to sleep. [73] By now the left lane and hard shoulder each way were coned off and reopened for traffic. Smith and Singh's sand lorry had been righted, and a JCB was shovelling its spilt load back into it. The bits of the wrecked caravan had been stacked on the grass verge. Jazz and I were loading wrecked cars onto my flatbed trailer. "Move on, there's enough blocking the road without sightseers. I'll be in the papers in the morning." said Jazz to a passing car driver who slowed down to see what had happened. All the casualties had been taken away, except for one. "No, I'm OK. I just lay down to get over the shock." he said to a policeman who persisted in wanting his particulars. "I still want your name and address and a statement. We'll take you to the next services northbound." said the policeman. "No. Wrong way. I was going to Bristol. I stopped in time, them someone shunted me in the rear. Where's my car? My stuff's in it.". "Gone to a police pound for safe keeping before the scrap pickers arrive.". "Whoa!" said a policeman to Hoist who was about to drive away carrying a squashed red car, "Mr -er- Hoist, is that the red Cortina that you found the bag of white powder in?". "Yes." said Hoist, "I'll take it to Optimus for him to put on his trailer with the other wrecks, if there's room on it.". "No." said the policeman, "Leave it on yourself, I'll get it in your cab and you come to Droitwich police station with it. Did you get a look at its driver's face?". "Yes." said Hoist, "I can connect my brain seeing cortex to a television to play it back for you. Something that humans can't do. Have you still got him?". "He's in Droitwich Hospital by now, if he's the right man, but you'd better confirm identification." said the policeman, "He tried to pull a gun out in the ambulance, but they'd already taken it off him while he was sedated [see 71]. Droitwich magistrates may have accepted you robots as witness so far, but drugs are a serious matter, this'll be a Birmingham Crown Court job. Some time there'll have to be the legal decision: Are you `Autobots' merely James Wernicke's machines, and him responsible for your actions in law; or are you `persons' in the eyes of the law and responsible for your own actions and capable of entering into agreements and owning prop ...". "" Jazz's voice loudly interrupted in alarm over Hoist's cab radio, as two cars abreast, the left one blue and the right one green, approached the start of the pileup area where three open lanes narrowed into one. Jazz spread his arms at them and shouted "Stop! Stop!", but whatever evading manoeuvre the blue car made to avoid the all too probable was matched by the green car's driver in his addled dim awareness as he drove home from a champagne and spirits ridden party which had lasted nearly all night. [74] The blue car, which had at least three people in, kept as far to the left as it could, nearly touching the left crash barrier; the green car, swaying about a lot, kept abreast of it, scattering cones. Then the green car's driver through a fog of muzzy convivial party images saw very near and straight ahead the solid unyielding steel rear end of my trailer. "That artic!" he yelled in fright and frantically swerved to the left, knocking the blue car over the crash barrier. It rolled over and over down the embankment and lay upside down. The blue car, stopped by the impact, tried to get away, but I with two quick strides reached it and trod on its right front wheel, crushing it, and wrenched the car open and pulled its driver out. "Shorry, offsher." said the man, looking fatuously at me, "I di'nt shee the ... Why you weh- wearing armour made out of lorry partsh? Contraflowzh, contraflowzh, I thought tha' contrazh were only in Naragua. I wanna go home. Put me down.". "It's not a contraflow. It's a multiple `akshi'en', as you lot that help to cause them could call it." I shouted, in a fury of anger pronouncing the word `accident' as close to human drunk fashion as I could, "Next time get a taxi home or stick to ...". "Forget it." said a policeman interrupting me, "You'll get no sense off him now. I'll take his documents and your statement now, and he can sober up in a cell.". By now the eastern sky was starting to lighten along the horizon, promising dawn and more light to see by to work. Jazz went on hands and knees and climbed down the embankment to right the blue car and extricate the people in it. All the medical people had gone with the last casualties, and now there were more casualties. Optimus radioed for Ratchet or Wheeljack to come back. (Wheeljack also had had some ambulanceman training.) Jazz suggested finding if Dr.Mackinley at Chellingham was in. Jazz extracted a 3 year old boy, who was bruised but otherwise unhurt and called "Mummy! Daddy!" in vain. There was no more work for a doctor there. The family had been going to Cornwall on holiday; they would never get there. I went on hands and knees to look over the edge of the embankment, angrily calling down bomb and bullet and laser and Straxus's melting-pit on all makers and sellers of alcoholic drinks; then, more realistically as my anger faded, threatened to find who had made and sold the drink responsible and sue them for manslaughter and all damages possible. "As the law stands, that charge wouldn't stand. I wish it would." the policeman regretted, "At least he may possibly go to prison. gets out of it unhurt!", and asked me who Straxus was. "I wanna go home." said the culprit, and started to weep. "Another maudlin drunk. Ratchet and the human ambulancemen that he meets are sick of tidying up after this sort of thing." I said, and explained who Straxus was. (He was the Decepticon ruler of the city of Polyhex on Cybertron, in the stories.) [75] Jazz fastened a chain to the blue car and climbed back up the embankment. I pulled the blue car back to the motorway by the chain while Jazz transformed to car form and a policeman tried to comfort the boy, who still wanted his mummy and daddy. "I'll take you to the police station and put you to bed there. I'll tell you in the morning what's happened. Do you know your address?" he said, "Look at Jazz. he can turn into a car, he can take us there.". I reached into the blue car and took something large out and put it in a big plastic bag; then another. I loaded the rest of the wrecked cars, including the two new wrecks, on my trailer. "That leaves the three lorries and the plumbers' van." I said, fastening my load on. "We'll send the breakdown men for those. You've done plenty." said the policeman to me, and picked up the boy and got in Jazz, who followed Hoist and me to Droitwich police station, which luckily had a very big yard to stack the flattened and fragmentary cars in. Hoist put the red Cortina separately, sheeting it over in case rain washed any evidence away, for he did not trust English weather further than he could have thrown Megatron who led the Decepticons in the stories. The boy had fallen asleep on Jazz's back seats; the policeman carried him into the station to a spare bed. Two other policemen carried in the drunk on a stretcher, snoring loudly like a self-satisfied dirty and wallowing pig; he would not be so carefree in the morning - or rather, in the afternoon, for it was already morning. Hoist and Jazz connected their brain outputs to a videorecorder and a lineprinter which the police station had, to record their statements. On the videotape all the sound was actual sound of the events, to avoid confusion, and all comments went on subtitles. The humans looked at this enviously, for the only way that humans can output pictures is by drawing, which is tedious. They had to be asked to make three copies of the lineprinter output, for the police station's photocopier was still out of order. They finished and unplugged themselves, and I gave his statements, interrupted by a man running out and frantically thumping my steel bulk with a pickaxe handle to stop me when the lineprinter suddenly decided to crumple its ribbon. "Hang on while he changes it, then restart from `and the third car was lying ...'. It keeps doing that. Why can't they buy better ribbons?" he said. I wondered why they couldn't have merely pressed the lineprinter's `off line' button instead. He swore and got his fingers inky and marked with printing, and eventually changed the ribbon. I printed some test text and examined it; the left ends of the lines were into the perforations, and a line of the text was astride the page end fold. "Ouch, you've cut me in half." I printed on that line of the next two pages. He swore and struggled with the paper feeding sprocket mounts, and eventually got it right. I finished printing my statement, and suggested that someone could usefully spend half an hour with a toothbrush and some meths cleaning compacted ribbon fluff out of the hollow letters such as `o' and `8' on the printer drum. "Birmingham Central police station say could you take me and the red Cortina to them?, and on the way collect its driver from Birmingham Hospital if they've finished putting his leg in plaster." said a policeman to Hoist. "Wuff wuff." said a police dog. "All right, all right, Rover, you can come with me." said the policeman. "OK., but I'll need some diesel first," said Hoist, "and to ring James Wernicke to tell him where I am. I was beginning to think I'd get home some time. I've only just loaded that car off myself.". [76] Hoist, as he left the police station yard, was astonished to pass Prowl, real and full size in England and not on page or screen, coming in. "Prowl! It can't be! he exclaimed, "What are you doing here in the real world? or is it just a car painted to look like him? I've been too busy recently to keep much track of Op's latest project.". "Yes, it's me," Prowl replied, "and only just in time for James! He's had another scrape with intruders. [see 61 to 65] They're in me, it's OK. I'll tell you later. How strange it is to meet familiar people like you here, so far from Cybertron and Oregon.". "Prowl! You've been quick finding yourself a job." said Optimus as Prowl stopped. "What kept , Op?" Prowl complained, "James had intruders again. Lucky I got there just in time to see them off! I only just saved him from a firing squad, literally!". "Oh, hallo, Optimus, what brings here?" said a policeman who got out of Prowl, and then to two handcuffed men in Prowl's back seats: "Journey's over. Come out of there, you miserable two. If Mr.Wernicke wants to fight off thieves instead of letting them steal, he's entitled to. Not so impressive without your kit? Get in the police station. Proper guns go `bang', people know they've been used. Silent battery-electromagnet-powered guns that fire 4-inch nails: domine' libera nos! [Latin for `Lord, deliver us] The beak'll send you two down for a good long while.". "We were helping to tidy up a multiple pile up on the M5." I said, "Jazz and Hoist were with me. Laserbeak's delivering urgent medical supplies. Ratchet and Wheeljack are at Birmingham Hospital. Huffer's in Merseyside with a load for shipping to Peru.". One of the policemen there, seconded from Kidderminster while two of Droitwich's men were off ill, wondered why his friend Alf had painted his car line a USA police car, and guessed that the Inspector wouldn't like it. The car seemed to fall apart, then rearranged itself into a tall humanoid robot. "Oh Charlie. I better go to bed" he said, gaping vacantly, wondering what sort of new kit the local police had; then presumed that he was `seeing' the result of sleepiness and watching too many Transformers cartoons with his children on top of too many late nights writing up incident reports. But Prowl was real; after transforming to robot form he stood with his face at a first floor office window. Inside, the Inspector leafed frantically through a copy of `Transformers Universe' to identify what part of the Transformers fictional world had now been made real. "Omega Supreme, Onslaught," he said, turning pages hurriedly, "Perceptor, Powerglide, Predaking, he's none of them. Make-believe suddenly becoming real and intruding into the adult real world. Oh, Prowl, transforms to a white and black USA police car. I should have expected it. I'm about getting used to your great steel faces at the window.". Prowl quickly explained what had happened and gave the inspector a floppy computer disk with a copy of his report on it, and said: "I can't stop, I'm going to the Black Horse affray with one of you, as I radioed.". He transformed back to car form, and Alf got in him, and he sped away, sounding his two-tone USA-type police car siren, which was decidedly not Home Office standard. [77] The disturbance was unremarkable; as the publican at the Black Horse opened his front door to take the milk in, several passing workmen took the opportunity to try to buy beer to drink with their midday sandwiches. The publican refused, for the pub opening hours laws forbade it; the men persisted, and a shouting match developed. One of them called the publican's Alsatian a "rabid wolf" and did not understand why laws meant to stop drunkenness among workmen from impeding war production should still apply so long after the war was over, "it's time that law came out of the trenches", until an approaching police siren told them that "the inevitables" were coming and the end of one more hope of confronting a matter to its finish. Then the car came, and they saw that it was painted like a USA police car in England, and guessed that it was only some relative of the publican who had painted his car like that to scare off trouble; but a policeman got out of it - leaving it unattended with its door open. Two of the men got in it, then found that it wouldn't go into gear, and the doors jammed shut, trapping the two inside. This is a technique called `rat trap' that the police use sometimes to catch car thieves. "Ha ha, you two have arrested yourselves!" said the car, which startled them badly, for they hadn't heard of Prowl or the other real Transformers before. [78] The two were taken to Droitwich police station. While Prowl was telling what had happened, his well remembered fictional past surfaced and he called Wernicke's factory "The Ark". "The Ark? As in Noah?" someone there inevitably asked. "No. It's the spaceship that the Transformers came from Cybertron to Earth in, and it crash-landed in Oregon in USA, in the fiction stories that we were copied into reality from." said Prowl, "From our fictional past that James Wernicke copied into the real Optimus Prime that he made, we remember so much that we'll never see again. No such thing as a spaceship. Only with huge effort have men in the real world managed to reach even the moon. Even many Transformers would be impracticable as the real thing. We'll never see a real Predaking, for a start, thank the Matrix! And some Transformers are supposed to shrink as they transform.". Prowl went back to Wernicke's, where he for the first time met the real Wheeljack, who told him where the rest of the eight real Transformers were, and more of what had happened. (By now there were eight of them: Optimus, Ratchet, Laserbeak, Wheeljack, Hoist, Jazz, Huffer, Prowl.) James had collapsed into an armchair and gone to sleep in his riotsquad gear. (After three bad scares with intruders, he wore it most of the time.) I was still at the pileup site. Ratchet was between there and Droitwich Hospital. Inside, Hoist was telling Jazz about Stephen Jameson, who had stayed awake too long to tie too much business together, thinking wrongly that the human brain's need for sleep could be ordered off by serving it an injunction to desist, or the equivalent, until it surfaced regardless and he fell asleep while driving at 70mph, causing the pileup. Jameson had proved to have a slow bleed in the layers of packing called `meninges' between the skull and the brain; the accumulating blood pressed on his brain.