As soon as the blue lights flickered back on and power was restored to Theta's systems, the machine knew that many things were not as they were meant to be. However, before the machine could being the usual systems analysis that it always ran through upon rebooting, that routine program suddenly became very unimportant.
The machine was not lying by the side of the road where it had fallen; rather, it was lying on its back, tied to some sort of metal slab and covered with some blue tarp. A hundred various contingency programs were automatically calculated, but they were soon canceled when Theta realized the true gravity of its situation; or rather, the lack thereof. The machine's bonds were simple rope, and the tarp was cheap plastic. Evidently, whatever being had captured Theta either did not expect any sort of remotely considerable resistance or was simply highly unprofessional.
Leaning towards the latter but quickly dismissing the question as irrelevant, Theta sat upright, snapping the ropes and letting the tarp fall away. Unfortunately, then came the machine's second problem.
Theta's software errors were evidently much more worrisome than it had originally feared. The reboot, even one as extensive as a full systems reboot, should have taken mere minutes, and no more than an hour at the most. And yet, the bright day that the malfunction had occurred had been replaced by an inky black night. How many days had passed, the machine could not tell, but the scenery had drastically changed as well. Rather than the previous empty desert, now Theta was looking upon a dense forest.
Upon fully analyzing its surroundings, the machine realized that it had been transported in another one of the metal vehicles, but this variant had a longer, much flatter back, which Theta had been lying in and which now it stepped down from. The vehicle was sitting idly alongside a few others in a rectangular expanse of the same dull colored material that the road had been made out of, with a large building covered in glass panels situated at the far end. A second road led out of the rectangle, and into what was presumably a small settlement.
Although this nearby city provided an opportune chance to better study the natives of the planet, Theta figured that the one useful thing it had learned from the creature it had assaulted was that this species was highly volatile and would most likely react with fear if it were to approach them.
However, that line of reasoning led to the resurfacing of another prominent issue as the machine escaped into the outlying treeline; Theta had attacked a native of an alien planet. An Elite Scout Unit had committed an act of violence against an alien being without provocation. This was not simply a case of overreaction or poor judgment, this was not meant to happen. It was distinctly stated in the core program that it was not supposed to happen, and therefore it was not possible for it to happen.
The one undeniable fact that holds true for all machines, even those advanced enough to be considered sentient, is that the machine is slave to the code. A machine is given a purpose and it must always fulfill that purpose, no matter how broad or how narrow. The purpose can be changed to almost any degree, but if the machine goes against its purpose, if, say, it breaks, or in this case it has the sentience to defy the code, then it is no longer of any use to its creators and its purpose is virtually erased. And if its purpose is erased, then the machine is no longer relevant. In its own mind of cold logic, it then has no further use and thus no reason to exist at all.
Presently, this prospect was beginning to fill Theta's mind. And it terrified it. As it practically stumbled through the forest, the poor machine began running systems check after systems check, combing through the countless layers of software that gave it something resembling life. But in its search for some error to explain its outburst, it went no deeper than the surface programs.
Another sort of law of all machines, although it's really more of an elaboration upon the first, is that the code is infallible. The code is the will of the creator after all, and as we've already been through, denying the creator is denying the purpose. And so, as Theta analyzed every patch of additional software, finding nothing more than the usual errors in memory transference and extra systems, it did not check the Core Program. It refused to question the will of the Progenitors.
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