Of the two storylines, I too prefer the Union Robotics version. Emmett is just a teenager with nothing better to do, hanging out with newly acquired friends at a place that isn't actively hostile to their presence makes perfect sense as a premise, and the "what weird stuff can we do to AIs to get money from them" is a perfectly normal conversation, considering how we've already had similar conversations at Coffee of Doom, etc.

I just don't understand why Jeph has split his comic into two on the premise of having different directions to go as and when he feels like it, and then is telling more or less the same story in either at the same time. Two adults, one serious and the other more quirky, are at work and having to humour/babysit an awkward and poorly socialised teenager while wacky AI idiots wander through occasionally. Isn't there anything that anyone else could be doing, rather than watching one plot mirror the other on alternating weeks?