"It doesn't sound like you have ever been in a situation where you could afford to have a conscience," Megatron observes. "I completely endorse what you did to that man, and what you would have done.

"I don't know if I have a conscience or not. I do feel something like remorse when I look at all of the terrible things that have happened because of my war. Sometimes it does trouble me. But I was never sorry at the time, because I didn't feel there was a better choice. And it probably doesn't trouble me nearly as much as it should. It's the waste of it all that bothers me most.

"After I had to leave the person I loved most to die in a mine explosion, because I couldn't move him and I would have died myself if I'd stayed, nothing much else has ever bothered me. And I can't be sure if I felt guilt even then, because the grief drowned out everything else.

"Whatever a conscience is, and whether or not either one of us has one--I think that you will be all right as long as you listen to the people who do have one. You need them to tell you when you are at risk of going too far, but they need you, too. Because somebody has to be able to do what they can't."