Saryu's FanFiction

DEVOTION

A distant voice was humming a repetitive tune. Something was strangely familiar about it... Closer and closer it got, and now he could recognize separate words: "Waaaalleee... Waaallee.. waake up.." A blurry image of an old black gentleman appeared in Wall-e's mind. Just like the one he once heard singing in the old TV while on his duty in the electronic sector of the landfill.The video was forgotten in the recorder and he accidently turned it on. Actually, that was one of the rare happy moments in his life as it was before... After that his memories became rather foggy... The gentleman had soft raspy voice and a brilliant wide smile. His teeth were incredibly white. They were so white the brightness almost hurt his eyes, and it kept growing and growing till the white shine almost fully engulfed him...

"Wall-e, wake up!"- the suddenly clear voice jolted him out of his blurry dream. The vision diffused, the rusted metal shutters protecting his eyes slowly slid apart, and there they were. Six beautiful shiny creatures dancing around him in circles. "Dancing is probably not the right word" - Wall-e thought. They moved in incredibly nifty but elegant fashion, almost levitating.
"Wall-e, you're awake! Thank goodness!" one of the creatures leaned over him excitedly and spark-kissed his forehead.

~*~*~*~

"Wall-e, you're awake! Thank goodness!" - Eve cried out, and the feeling of hopelessness was replaced with that of overwhelming joy. She spent hours and hours trying to repair and reactivate him, trying to fit all of his outdated archaic mechanisms in the right places, hoping she can reboot his memory and make him remember - her. His blank gaze planted uneasy suspicion in her mind though. "Do you remember me, Wall-e?"

~*~*~*~

Remember? The mere sound of the word caused him pain. All he could retrieve from his damaged memory bank was the memory of the accident, when the heavy platform of the holo-detector collapsed right on top of him, crushing his metal body under its enormous weight. That, and the olden days, of course, with him peacefully doing his work on the landfill, erecting monumental towers of compressed trash cubes. It was mostly an uneventful time, the steady routine of it only sometimes broken with a new exciting discovery of another artifact of humanity. What happened between then and the accident was covered in a cloud of dust. Just like the landfill was covered with a thick yellow dusty cloud every time another dust storm swept through it. That was his world and he couldn't remember the presence of any shiny creatures in it, and to be honest, he was simply too tired to dwell on it any longer. He replied with a confused smile.

~*~*~*~

"It was not necessary, Adam!" - Eve retorted to another robot's sarcastic remark in Wall-e's direction. She was a real masterpiece of a female probe robot, her self-improving skills were unmatchable, especially on the level of emotions. And now she was helplessly sinking into a cocktail of disappointment, anger and a new empty feeling that she has never experienced before. Adam was a robot of the same category, only with a few added technical upgrades which made him even more skilled and versatile than her. He had a list of directives behind his belt that made most Axiom robots look up at him with respect bordering on reverence. It was a pity that this admiration only fuelled his narcissistic tendencies even further. He knew he was good and he never missed a chance to flaunt his superiority. Eve hated it. After all, they all were designed and manufactured by humans. Now, Wall-e was different... She was stunned by his humble self-sacrifice and his tireless service to humanity, despite them leaving him alone on debilitated planet to clean up the evidence of their consumerism. He never sought recognition for following his directive. And he was irrevocably devoted to her. But now something happened, and he couldn't remember her anymore... What she felt towards Wall-e could be called 99% compatibility. Humans had another word for it, but sometimes they would misuse it too...

"Eve, come! The transport unit is here and they won't wait any longer. Forget that rusty thing, it's just a damaged robot." - Adam's dictatorial voice brought her back to reality. She didn't want to go. She wanted to stay right here, with Wall-e, and nurse him back to health the way he once nursed her when she went into hibernation mode. But she also couldn't give up her directive, that's what she was made for after all. Besides, she knew what Wall-e would have wanted her to do... She complied. A few minutes later they were well on their way to the least damaged sector. A place that was once known as Greenland, and now simply Sector GL-108. There was a lot of work to be done.

~*~*~*~

Wall-e woke up in the middle of the night. Something was bothering him. A sinking feeling somewhere in the centre of his cubic metal torso, that was rapidly spreading all over his body. It was a dreadful heavy feeling, and it almost paralyzed him. Something wasn't right. Wall-e stared at the garage floor for a few long minutes, and then it hit him. An unstoppable wave of memories flushed into his mind. Suddenly he remembered it all. The landing of the ship, the starliner, the directive, the plant, the struggle over Axiom's control... And Eve, his Eve, in the middle of it all. He replayed the events of last few days in his mind over and over.. Especially his parting with Eve. The kiss, the worry in her voice when she asked him a question, and his detached smile in reply. Could he even call it a "parting" ? Now he might never see her again... The dreadful sinking feeling suddenly returned with new strength.

~*~*~*~

What Eve saw upon landing in Sector GL-108 amazed her. She already heard that out of all sectors that have been cleaned up this one had most potential for plant growth, but this has exceeded her best expectations. In places the layer of dust in the air was so thin that she could see patches of beautiful bright blue sky peeking through. And absolutely no trash. Just the vast empty stretches of land and armies of robots, building and preparing fields for her work. The plan was to build huge greenhouses, different ones for different geographical zones, and breed as many plant species as possible, that will be later used in creating several artificial ecosystems. If Eve was good at something, it was agriculture. Her memory unit contained all information about biology, chemistry, ecology, earth science and genetics that humanity has ever acquired. And she loved plants.

~*~*~*~

The mountains of trash in sector CA-203 were shrinking day by day. It was a slow process, but Wall-e continued doing his job with seeming dedication, compressing the trash into small perfectly shaped cubes and stacking them neatly into towering pyramids. The sinking feeling that he experienced on the night when his memory came back never went away. Days and nights passed with him barely noticing the difference. In the old times, he'd collect interesting knick knacks he found in piles of trash, and store them on the shelves of his garage. He was especially fascinated by movies, music and electronic books. But now, since Eve left him, the old black and white movies and musicals gave nothing but painful memories. The only thing that still seemed to interest him was cubes of compressed trash.

~*~*~*~

The land in Sector GL-108 proved to be fertile and soon became the centre of all agricultural activities in the Northern hemisphere. Eve focused on her work with full attention and was she successful. In a few years her greenhouses came alive with thousands of plant species, everything from bryophyte and lichen to wheat, rye and corn. Some greenhouses were sheltering flowers - bushy rhododendrons and delicate orchids, glossy yellow-headed buttercups and fuzzy mauve cornflowers. Others housed deliciously aromatic herbs. And trees, all kinds of trees. Sequoias, baobabs, eucalyptus trees, palms, firs and cedars, and fruit-bearing apple, pear and cherry.... But her favourite one, a real treasure, was a little four-leaf clover, growing in an old shoe.
Every day groups of robot specialists were going out on expeditions, mapping the land and searching for new areas with low level of soil and air contamination. Once back, they would analyze data logs and photodocumentation for suitability of explored areas in terms of maintaining vegetation. 1300th Thursday after Eve's leaving Sector CA-203 was special. An expedition has just returned from CA-zone and something they discovered there stirred a commotion among robots. Many of them crowded inside the dataprocessing laboratory, their eyes focused on the hologram screen of the main processor. The crowd seemed to grow by the minute, robots murmuring indistinctly and exchanging puzzled looks. When Eve entered the room, all heads turned to her. "What's go..." she started in a questioning tone when her eyes fell on the latest image from Sector CA-203. In the centre of what once was a landfill there stood a colossal monument, a huge sculptural object built with millions of small cubes. Three gigantic letters standing like a memorial to undying devotion. EVE.