I Heard it on the Grapevine

The sky was a beautiful mid-blue without any clouds as it hung over the French Alps. In front of the mountains, Lake Geneva reflecting perfectly the colour of the sky, sparkled with beams of sunlight bouncing off its surface. On the north east shores of the lake, a region of vineyards known locally as Lavaux glistened green and gold as the sun heated the leaves of the vines and the grapes hanging low beneath them. Lavaux was a region known for its beauty and indeed had been granted a UNESCO World Heritage protection.

In the north-west area of the lake, west of the historic city of Lausanne, were villages with equally splendid -though less well known - regions of vineyards. For Fechy, a village created in the 12th century by monks from the Great St Bernard monastery, it was surrounded by acres and acres of vineyards. Although mainly having the green-gold grape making the locally popular Chasselas wine, there were also some vines with purple-red grapes, forming the local Pinot Noir or mixing with the green-golds to make a Rosé. This was the time of the “vendanges”, the harvesting of the grapes. In a good year, this could be accompanied by late summer sun making the vineyards golden.  This was clearly a good year.

It was from one of these vines with purple-red grapes hanging, that an alien was to be found. To be fair it looked exactly the same as all the other bunches of grapes. The same colour, the exact same shade, though if anyone was to try and pick a grape to eat, they would get a shock. Literally. Electric circuitry hid behind the organic-appearing outer shell of the grapes. Complex, mysterious alien circuitry, far advanced than anything seen on the planet Earth before.

The alien had a name and in a burst of what it considered to be creativity, had called itself Bunches. It even seemed to have a gender, deciding that he was indeed a ‘he’. Bunches had started life in a shopping centre in a distant land. A strange pulse of energy had passed over the shopping mall and created numerous mechanical forms much like himself, all with an ability to camouflage themselves to hide their alien identity. Bunches had been "born" mixed in with other red and green grape bunches. However, for reasons he didn't know nor understand, only he had caught the energy wave and been altered.

Sitting on the shelf of the shopping mall, Bunches had become scared of the strange large beings he saw. Seemingly made from an organic, possibly carbon-based material (though he didn't know how he knew that), they had a bipedal form and large digits that constantly tried to grasp him. Bunches was able to send out an invisible pulse, an electrical form of a pheromone, to discourage the flesh creatures from handling him. However, over time he realised that this was only moderately effective as, one-by-one, the other bunches disappeared. Bunches became very unsettled with the thought of what he heard the flesh creatures describe as being eaten, understanding it to be some form of consumption- he had no desire to be consumed. He managed to find a way to escape from the shopping centre and soon found himself meeting with a nearby group of larger mechanical beings. They were much taller than himself though he felt considerably less threatened by them than the flesh creatures with their probing digits. When they described that they could use his help, Bunches was very willing to accommodate their request.

He had travelled with them in a large flying white transport, which he heard some call a shuttle, to this land with the lake and the mountains in the distance. Taking his form as requested, Bunches spent his days hanging from the vines and just admiring the beautiful calming scenery.

The late summer sun hung low in the sky, casting deep shadows and a golden glow around the vineyard. Bunches had to wait patiently until the area was perfectly dark so he could get on with the mission he was tasked. It was well after the astronomical twilight, with the sky as dark blue as it would get, when Bunches felt it was safe to move. He carefully disconnected himself from the vine, moving, unfolding and opening sections of his grape-covered form until little mechanical legs, feet, hands and arms could be seen. His body was small and chubby with a head that simply continued up from his body like a stub. His arms covered with grapes, with one also having a green vine leaf on top. For eyes, he had a single strip of yellow across the top of his head, with a small indent midway for his olfactory sensors. Or ‘nose’ as the flesh creatures would call it. Indeed the humans would probably describe his eyes more like a sun visor. Above his stumpy head was a small purple dome, almost like a hat, but made up of the remnants of his grape outer shell. Behind his back were two large grape covered protrusions almost like wings or sections of a cape hanging from his shoulders.

Bunches ran through the vineyards until he got to a small pathway. There was a thin white crescent of the planet’s moon in the night sky casting some light onto the pathway. Bunches was grateful it wasn’t the full round white moon that sometimes appeared, almost making it too bright from him to appear from the shadows of the vines. He followed the pathway down from the vineyards towards a large cottage he could see in the distance. Outside he saw three metallic transports, with forms similar to that his friends had shown him they could make. Sending an electrical pulse towards the vehicles, one started to vibrate gently and he heard a soft humming noise from inside its front section. The door clicked open and Bunches jumped inside. He was still quite small, just a little bigger than the bunches of grapes he disguised as, and hadn’t yet discovered the ability to change his size like his friends could do. As such, he jumped onto the front section of the machine, above a large round object that he knew to manage the vehicle’s direction and sent another pulse to close the door. With a few other signals, the vehicle moved away from the cottage and started along the road towards the city lights in the distance. It had taken him some time to master how to make the vehicle move as he wanted and had had to ask his friends for some advice, which Cordon had happily given. Luckily at the time of night he was driving, the roads were quiet and he hardly met other vehicles. Those that he did seemed to ignore that the vehicle didn’t seem to have a flesh creature in control, though how they could see with the bright lights at the front of the vehicle shining in their visual receptors, Bunches didn’t know. One time he’d been chased by local rules enforcement vehicles, but again he’d asked Cordon for advice and Cordon had sorted it, or so he said.

After some time, Bunches got to his destination, his nightly visit to the nearby university. He turned into the side road nearby a strange wave-like looking building that he’d learned to be the communal area of the young flesh creatures that spent their time there. Abandoning the car by the side of the road, Bunches made his way to one of the small featureless grey buildings. Using another pulse to bypass the electrical security, Bunches discreetly entered. The place was quiet, abandoned as usual for the night time, with just the various flashing lights from numerous computer systems. He’d been told that the building housed some particular scientific experiment, one of specific importance to his friends, but also possibly for some others that his friends talked about in unpleasant terms. He tried not to listen, as the things they described sounded unpleasant to him and he preferred to stay quietly on his own on his vine away from trouble. He surveyed the laboratory area of the building. On a table sat a small black microscope which shook slightly as he looked at it. Bunches assumed that a large vehicle had passed by outside causing the vibration and that would mean that the early morning vehicles were starting to move and his journey back to the vine must begin. Bunches took one last look around, finding nothing that he could see to cause his friends any concern and headed back to his vehicle. Behind him, as the main door slowly swung closed, the microscope began to vibrate more vigorously and a shimmering shape started to materialise.

The sky had started to pass from the dark blue of the night to the lighter blue of the morning twilight with a subtle glow of orange appearing above the tops of the mountains to the east. Bunches carefully placed the vehicle back where he found it and would never hear the flesh creature complaining about the poor fuel consumption it appeared to have. Running through the shadows of the vine, he found his usual spot, jumped, folded himself together and clipped back onto his free vine. Once settled he sent a signal to his friends, “All done for the night, nothing seen again”.

“Thanks Bunches, good work”, he heard back.

As the sky increasingly brightened with the rising sun, the insects came out and stared to buzz around the vines. High in the sky two wasps circled around nearby to Bunches’ vine. For an entomologist, expert in wasps, they would have noticed that neither wasp were really the typical yellow jacket type commonly seen in the area. One, with a black and yellow striped body, though with black legs instead of the usual yellow, the other being totally purple as if it made no effort to hide itself.

A signal passed from the yellow wasp to the purple wasp causing the purple wasp to suddenly disappear in thin air. A few hundred kilometres away, he reappeared and settled on a similar purple coloured hand. A hand that glistened with energy as if the form didn’t quite exist in the physical world. “Ah Skywasp,” a deep voice grumbled, “you have a report?”

Epilogue: In the darkness of the laboratory once Bunches had left, strange happenings had occurred. On the plate of the microscope that Bunches had seen, an object had appeared. A shape that would have been very familiar to Bunches, being it was indeed a small bunch of grapes.  The form was silvery in the darkness, not caused by the minimal lighting, but from the fact its surface seemed obscure, oily and apparently liquid. It was as if the grapes were made by the metal mercury, but was attempting to condense into a solid form.

The liquid-metal bunch of grapes launched themself off the microscope and as Bunches had done, split its form, growing arms and legs to stand by the side of the desk.  Meantime, the microscope too shook again but this time sections of its form started to split and move as it changed form growing in size to become a large bipedal robot.  It stared down at the silvery grapes and seemed pleased with the events of the night.

The metallic grape-robot launched itself back onto the desk and gazed around the laboratory, smiling an evil smile.  A new era had begun. 

A story that’s been two years in the making- possibly even three years! This was the original very first planned text story to support The Alternates story-line, drafted in 2023, however I always planned to release it at the time of the year when the “vendanges” the wine-harvesting was occurring locally.  And I failed 2 years in a row to do so.  More effort and focus this year especially as the website is now active.  Significantly though, the epilogue is “new” and revealing a significant plot-line from The Alternates story.  Mainly inspired by collecting the oil-version of Bunches in the Bot-Bots wave 6. 

All photos of the local vineyards are my own.

As always, Transformers franchise is ownership of Hasbro / Takara Tomy. This is purely a non profit fan fiction. All images and text are my own. Some images created using AI technology to create the backgrounds only, then manipulated to include photos of my models.