Meet who I have affectionately named "Ball-E" - its real "name" being much less interesting (f1a-f8d-b74cb9).

Ball-E is part of the species The First, an Archiver unit sent to a newly discovered planet along with tens of thousands of Archiver units just like it.

Nascent Mind depicts a scene some time … (read more)

Meet who I have affectionately named "Ball-E" - its real "name" being much less interesting (f1a-f8d-b74cb9).

Ball-E is part of the species The First, an Archiver unit sent to a newly discovered planet along with tens of thousands of Archiver units just like it. 

Nascent Mind depicts a scene some time after these units have been sent down to the planet. The Traveler unit has left, after all Archiver units return to it. All except one.

Poor Ball-E had gotten stuck in a crevice. After finally setting itself free, it discovered that it had been left behind. This was not something it knew how to deal with. The First are a collective consciousness/hivemind species. Units sent out on various tasks have almost unlimited autonomy, and intelligence equal to the entire species, but always re-merge their complete memory/experience matrix with the collective upon returning.

As its silvery moon rises on the purple planet, Ball-E, scanning through a thin atmosphere into vast emptiness, is now aware that it will never return to the collective - the closest thing to the human concept of "home" that it knows. The collective is wholly unaware of their abandoned sibling/child - just as no human is aware of the state of any singular brain cell. 

Human emotions are wholly unknowable to The First, but Ball-E, for the first time, becomes aware of... of itself, and of its unique alone-ness, and is not sure how to process it.