Ghosts of the Past

A threat from the future returns from the past!

Synopsis

The arrival of the Transformers to Earth also heralded the discovery of many ancient Cybertronian artifacts littered about the planet. In the late 20th Century, the United States government formed the secret organization known as the Intelligence and Information Institute ("Triple-I"), which gathered these Cybertronian items, including one particularly mysterious capsule that they dubbed "Schrödinger's Box".

Now, in the early 21st century, Triple-I has been disbanded, but some of the organization's staffers have taken the items for themselves, including "Schrödinger's Box". Using the advanced technology shared among humans as part of the Binaltech Project, they discover that the capsule is, in fact, the flight recorder from the transwarp cruiser belonging to the future incarnation of the Decepticon, Ravage, which had travelled back in time and crashed on prehistoric Earth. The staffers are able to make contact with a copy of Ravage's personality programming that he had downloaded into the flight recorder before his death, and make a deal to provide him with a new body in exchange for his knowledge of the future.

The Triple-I staffers set up a fake Binaltech project to create a body into which Ravage's consciousness will be implanted. However, consciousness alone will not suffice; in order for Ravage to truly be revived as a living Transformer, he requires a "life essence nucleus", or what Ravage dubs a "spark". As luck would have it, the present-day incarnation of Ravage is currently in Earth Defense Command custody. Stasis locked into cassette mode, the present-day Ravage is permanently inserted into the tape deck of Ravage's new body, supplying the body with a spark. The new body of "Battle Ravage" is specifically built without weapons as a safety precaution by the Triple-I staffers, but Battle Ravage, with his knowledge of future technology, is able to take control of the assembly line and ensure he is armed with top-of-the-line armaments. No sooner has he been brought online than Ravage turns on the humans who had revived him and eliminates them and all data relating to the project that built his body: having realized that his efforts during the Beast Wars to alter the course of history have failed, Battle Ravage vows to make another attempt to change history.

Mentioned characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Notes

• This chapter of the Binaltech story was printed in the pack-in booklet included with the Ravage Binaltech toy. The story points about his weaponry and the original Ravage being part of him are related in his bio and Tech Specs, rather than the story chapter itself.
• Triple-I is a government organization from the Marvel Generation 1 comic. This is its first appearance in the Generation 1 cartoon continuity.
• The future incarnation of Ravage appeared (and met his end) in the three-part Beast Wars cartoon episode, "The Agenda", as did his transwarp cruiser.
• The file that houses the copy of Ravage's consciousness is labelled "Central Consciousness File X-9"; X-9 was the ID number of the Japanese Beast Wars Metals Jaguar toy.
• Schrödinger's Box is named for the famous "thought experiment", Schrödinger's cat. Because Ravage is a cat!
• To this point, Binaltech deliberately avoided using the term "spark", instead referring to it in the abstract as "lifeforce", as sparks did not exist as a concept during Generation 1, and so would logically not be known to the Transformers of this era. However, that is logically averted here, as the Ravage within Schrödinger's Box is from Beast Wars, where the concept of sparks was established and shown to be common knowledge to Transformers of that time.
• In the original Japanese, the original Ravage entity is referred to using his traditional Japanese name, "Jaguar", while his Binaltech self is instead "Ravage". Ichikawa, the author, made a personal request that the translation follow English naming convention, so "Jaguar" is Ravage while "Ravage" is Battle Ravage.

References

• Complete text of "Ghosts of the Past"
• Author-endorsed translation of "Ghosts of the Past" at Ben's World of Transformers (archived)