BNATASBBSUT, nicknamed Bnata, embodies the latest generation in law enforcement hardware and software. Twin diesel engines hungry for rapeseed oil rumble in his heart. Its weapons are eager to throw unstoppable jets of water, hard pellets of rubber, acid fumes of tear gas, and slippery banana skins at rioters and bystanders alike. And the machine's actions are ruled and governed by a ruthless and undiscriminating AI running—or at least stumbling—on Microsoft Windows.

Bnata stops and contemplates the thing standing before it—it's shiny skin, its red lips, its eyelashes. Running its image through the database of the usual, smack-worthy troublemakers yields a blank. The AI hesitates. There's something to the strange machine in front of its cameras that's hard to put a finger, or nozzle, on. Some exotic quality that touches Bnata, deep in its heavily patched subroutines, and its DLLs throw exceptions of an intensity unusual even for that OS.

Suddenly aware that its windshields must be dirty from the trip through the city, it operates its wipers while it continues to scan the spaceship.

"What is it doing?" Ashley asks as she pulls herself up on Edward.

The officer shrugs. "Don't know."

"Do you think we should press control-alt-delete?" asks Amber, snuggling closer to Edward.

"The keyboard is inside the cabin," Edward says. "I could give it a try."

A sigh emanates from the spaceship. It smiles. But suddenly, its lips part and the alien squiggles forth. He lets himself fall to the ground, where he lands elegantly on his feet.

Ashley and Amber untangle themselves from Edward and make a step towards the new arrival.

But the alien does not heed them and kicks one of his spaceship's legs. "Hey, you piece of scrap, what is it that you don't understand about 'annihilate the bastard'?"

The spaceship just smiles.

While the Alien berates his spaceship, Edward ambles over to Bnata and pulls at its hatch. "Hey, open that door."

"Hello stranger," Ashley says, her eyes on the alien. "I'm Ashley."

The alien turns towards her and blinks in confusion. "My name is Daul. Marth Daul."

Ashley moves her hand through her long, blond hair. "Oh, that's a lovely—"

A screeching sound from Bnata interrupts her. It comes from a turret at the top of the machine, as it slowly turns to point a mighty tube right at the spaceship.

Edward, hanging onto the handle of Bnata's firmly closed access hatch, looks up, his eyes gleaming in eager hope to see the offending ship destroyed without mercy.

But Bnata, running some important security updates in parallel to the ongoing action, takes its time to align the primary torpedo tube. Experience tells the AI in charge it's better not to rush its system while it's chewing on a service pack.

Waiting patiently for the Windows updates to complete, Bnata ignores Edward, who is pounding against its hatch in frustration. Bnata has only eyes for Spaceship.

The alien, Marth Daul, now entangled in a spontaneous cuddle with the AA twins, seems to have momentarily forgotten about his plight and his unruly, flirting ship.

Updates finally loaded and installed, Bnata's AI gains access to enough free memory as well as a few new, utterly useless features like a designer-issued, season-themed set of colour schemes for its displays.

It twitches the turret a fraction more to the left and lowers the tube to the perfect angle, calculated to the tenth decimal place. With a soft rumbling, the weapon is loaded, and a fashionably autumn-leaf-coloured LED display at the turret signals the countdown.

On zero, the tube shudders to life and, with a menacing hiss, spews forth a neatly folded, pink paper plane.

The plane soars up, circling elegantly in a figure eight around the spaceship and Bnata. Taking advantage of the hot air above the steamy group of alien and twins, it pulls itself up into a precarious looping. This impressive manoeuvre is repeated twice before the plane dives towards the tarmac. Mere moments before hitting a dog turd waiting there, it pulls up again, its nose now wrinkled. Then it lands, delicate like a butterfly, on spaceships slightly pursed lower lip.

For a moment, spaceship just stands there. Then its sides bulge, and two arms appear to the sound of a bubblegum going plop.

The arms are black, ending in three-fingered, white-gloved hands, Mickey Mouse style.

One of the hands picks up the plane. With its sibling's help, it unfolds it and brings it up the heavily lashed eyes, to hold it there.

Spaceship's gaze scans the small piece of paper and lingers. Time stands still.* A bird chirps, killing a lovely tune with cunning lack of skill.** Time shuffles his feet and gets going again.

Spaceship lowers its arm to its side, a motion as slow as snot's path traversing from its mother the nostril to its nemesis the mouth.

Forgotten, the fingers release the paper, and the alien vessel takes a step towards Bnata—and another, and another—while the paper dances in the wind, hither and thither. Finally, it dances back hither, and hither is where Marth Daul and the twins stand. It comes to rest at their feet.

Ashley wrinkles her brow and stares at the cheap, poorly-readable font covering the page. "What's this?"

Marth picks it up. "It's a haiku."

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* Time is irritated by all these requests to stand still.

** Birds chirping don't heed Time standing still, something else that irritates Time no end.