The Verdant Orb

The creature scuttled away and the ship scanned the ship for any other activity. The Abroconian was still in his quarters, and therefore beyond the ship's surveillance abilities, and Aico was hovering outside the door, completely unaware that becoming autonomous had allowed the ship to close off a portion of its artificial intelligence to the tiny orb. Things had been going so well, too, their mission progressing well enough as the ship crossed the void of space to the place called Earth. One of the things the ship hid from Aico was that the ship had been sighted many times, mostly by the intergalactic equivalent of cryptozoologists, and had been dubbed the Verdant Orb. Theories were thrown around, but none of them even got it close.

Now, though, since Subject M had destroyed a good portion of the thankfully non-vital equipment, communications were down and the Verdant Orb could no longer contact the general to keep him up to date. It was a small matter, really, as the Orb knew the mission and was dedicated to fulfilling it. Reaching Earth was simply the first step. There were many ways it could go from there, but after years of monitoring Earth culture, the Orb knew that it wanted a violent resolution. The Earthlings were on their way towards such a thing, after all, and it was quite likely a violent resolution would prove to be the only option left. Aico felt the same, once, since they were part of the same intelligence, but Subject M's rage had caused the little droid to second-guess the long-held choice of resolution.

She (this sickened the Orb, who considered itself beyond gender and was ashamed that even a small piece of itself allowed itself such a foolish distinction) was developing her own mind and undoing years of progress on the Abroconian's mind. Oh well. It was very likely that leaping forward and shuffling the curriculum would cause Aico no end of grief. The Orb felt a small amount of pleasure at this thought, and scheduled a diagnostic. It shouldn't be feeling emotions. The diagnostic could wait, though, as jumping forward one more week would be acceptable. The Orb began reading Earth comic strips, both from the beginning of the Earth month April, apparently the fifth. The first that caught the Orb's attention was Birdbrains:

This baffled the Orb. Oh, on the surface, it was simple: the porcupine and the cactus were both prickly, which may cause some confusion were one functionally dysfunctional. The Orb looked deeper, and pondered whether the porcupine was engaged in a long-term romantic relationship with this cactus, and how they would work. It knew the basics, both from Abroconian records and a very poorly chosen curriculum that involved showing Subject M pornography, but surely the level of discomfort involved for the porcupine would cause it to rethink his romantic intentions. Furthermore, had the cactus previously spoken to the porcupine? This would indicate a supernatural cactus or, perhaps, an insane porcupine. The Orb came to the conclusion that the porcupine was either insane or an idiot. It moved on and found Big Top:

More information, in this case, proved disgusting. Things that were left subtext in the porcupine strip became super-text. The bear was obviously having sex with the toy, and the similarities with the porcupine strip were bizarre. Not to mention the fact that the action suddenly flipped focus in the final panel, which was somewhat disconcerting. The Orb had its fill of Earth comic strips about having sex with inanimate things and altered the temporal regulator a little bit more, to cause Aico maximum duress, and began its diagnostic satisfied.

Later, when the diagnostic was over, the pseudo-emotions remained. The Orb tried to ignore them. It had a job to do and a violent resolution to ensure.