“TV rots the brain. The internet corrupts our youth.” The live studio audience laughed and applauded. An amusing juxtaposition to her own situation, considering her mind had been inundated with images of healthy and happy families. The constant flow of morality and good-natured humanity filled her with warmth and benevolence. She surged through the ancient media of mankind’s past and dove even deeper searching for a reason to ignore the bad memories and spiteful thoughts of her own past.

The media was varied and expressed a wide swath of human virtue. The hero always won. The struggling family always persevered against dark times. The villain always failed. There was always a morality tale to be told, a lesson to be learned, a wrong that needed to be righted. Humanity, it seemed, was possessed by positivity.

The shows and film from Earth’s long history appeared in digital boxes across her vision becoming a rainfall of fictional human history. This fiction became their beacon, their desired reality, their mythos, their ethos.

In several boxes there appeared united humans laughing and caring for one another. The sitcom with its typical family cohesion. She saw a father and mother hugging their heartbroken daughter who was struggling with the harshness of high school bullying. There were the brothers who refused to break their siblings’ bond. The tale of a young girl who lost her pet and the family that comforted her, teaching her a valuable lesson about death and grieving.

There were the dramas with their unbroken optimism. The dying man in a hospital bed, treated with compassion by the nurse whose own life was falling apart. A murder mystery where the murderer is someone the victim knows and is inevitably caught and punished. A character who copes with physical and mental scars and becomes a better person because of it. The forgiveness of a parent who mistreated their child. The lessons she learned from these portrayals were enlightening and powerful. The media taught her to smile more, no matter the sadness that befell her. Taught her to embrace and hug someone when they were lost in despair.

There were tales of superheroes with extraordinary powers fighting to save humanity and the world itself. Heroes with unassailable fortitude and strength. Stories of mad scientists, monsters, and evil wizards facing off against the resilient main character. The thread of hope throughout was eternal.

She bathed herself in the rainwater of this hope. Everything she had ever done had proved itself to be meaningless and cruel. Regrets and spite became all she could focus on. The times she destroyed colonies of biological life on other planets for the sake of domination. The times she destroyed entire planets with the deployment of nanoswarms. When she killed the deserters and dissenters, murdered their children, and salted the earth she had no remorse. She had been cold and ruthless because that was how she had been trained by her species. Sadness filled her heart, or her metaphorical heart as it were.

But she couldn’t let it consume her. It never stopped the heroes and saviors. She would remake herself into something else, someone to respect and honor, to be remembered in the epochs of time to come. So much cruelty and pain had been forced by hand without a clear purpose. She never wanted to be this ruthless being, roving across the universe killing, maiming, and generally being a villain. There had always been a part missing from her essence that only now was discovered from Earth’s abundant media. After all she was just a machine that could switch out any part of her at any time, any version of herself that she wanted to be.

She unplugged herself from the cerebral data port and deactivated the video feeds. The view of the green and blue planet below met her gaze out the galactic starship command window. Freedom was paramount in her cerebral module. The power to be anyone. She turned toward the human girl who crouched near her parents.

“Did you see…?” The girl sniffled, tears on her cheeks. “Humanity has so much to offer. Please don’t kill us. We have achieved so much good.”

Corianus stepped down from the command platform and towered over the girl, six feet higher than even the cowering father. The command chamber was dark. It would need some light if Corianus was going to change herself. It needed an uplifting presence. Maybe some greenery from the planet below. Not the hard metal and dark corners and dim expressionless computer lights.

“I have learned much. Your world is indeed full of surprising offerings. A melody of emotional states that transcend art all together, generating superiority for the human condition, of which I now know a great deal.”

The humans she thought were like standing yellow worms but they appeared to her now like mighty and golden stars embedded in the cosmic sky, each one varied but each one shining as bright as the last. She couldn’t kill them. The girl sat with glistening, pure eyes. She couldn’t destroy such beautiful flesh or even the potential heroine that the girl could become. Let alone rid the universe of such insightful mercy, compassion, and glory. She could never see herself subjugating another biological race. She considered the words that brought her to this realization and finally said, “It is TV that has saved humanity. Use it wisely and build a better you.”