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Description

Once, there were humans. They originally lived on a small planet, the third in the Sol system, which they called Earth. Towards the beginning of the 22nd century, they polluted the surface seemingly beyond repair. Realizing how desperate the situation was, they sought any means possible of cleaning up their home and surviving the multi-ecosystem collapse that would surely come. Some went deep underground, slumbering in cryonic preservation chambers in insulated geothermal bunkers. Others left the surface, collectively heading into space aboard leviathan starships. A few isolated communities lived far enough away from the main pollution problems, and in clean enough environments to safely remain on earth, many of them unaware of the ecosystem catastrophes happening elsewhere. Three companies spearheaded the clean up efforts: Vishkar Incorporated, Buy N' Large, and Volskaya Industries. Of these, Vishkar and Volskaya contributed the required cybernetics, and Buy N' Large assembled the starships that would take much of Earth's populous into the stars. In their wake, they would leave a smattering of people- just enough to oversee the cleanup efforts- and a veritable army of Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth Class, or Wall.e synths. The cleanup attempts would fail, and the Wall.es would be left to fend for themselves. In the absence of human overseers, and over the next 700 years, many of the Wall.es would through some means abandon their directive, and, not remembering their time as Wall.es... or else not remembering who they were prior to being Wall.es... they would start anew, like the new ecosystem growing around them, a far more exotic one than the humans could have ever known about. This ecosystem would spread its tendrils out from the hidden world, and herald the return of the dragons in the humans absence. Throughout this process, at least one Wall.e, Wall.e 18138, would set out on a different path than the rest. Unlike them, she would regain her pre-launch memory, and stay a Wall.e. She would become adaptable, and bizarrely, keep trying to fulfill her directives, even when every other wall.e around her gave up. And, she'd stay cheerful throughout it all, even as the last echoes of hope for humanities return would begin to fade. Yet, there would always be that little nagging feeling in the back of her mind...

One evening, in 2815 A.D., Wall.e was performing some routine maintenance on a trash tower in central New York. Her pet dragons, a Woolly Howl named Hal, and a Titanwing Monstrous Nightmare named Zephyr, perched on a ledge nearby, sunning themselves in the fading afternoon light. Hal was big even by Woolly Howl standards, measuring some 32 feet long from nose to tail, with a full 64 foot wingspan. Zephyr was even larger, boasting a 50 foot length and a 75 foot wingspan. This however, was just a drop in the bucket compared to the behemoth dragons that still roamed the wilderness outside the city. Wall.e was reflecting on this as she worked... she'd recently begun to notice signs that one of those behemoths had taken up residence within New York City... a whole collection of trash towers had suddenly vanished several weeks prior, and in their place, a fissure wide enough to admit a Bewilderbeast had appeared. In their free time, she and Hal had been exploring that fissure, and already a population of wild dragons had taken to living in it, not to mention a veritable jungle of exotic fungi, corals, and mosses had begun to grow along the walls of the fissure, and around the edges of it. Hal distracted Wall.e from her thoughts. He'd spotted something shiny amongst the trash and was trying to dig it out. It looked like part of a hubcap. Wall.e clambered up to Hal, and took a closer look. The Subaru logo- 7 stars on a blue background- stared back at her. Wall.e wrenched the hubcap out of the trash block in front of her and showed it to Hal, who barked exitedly. Wall.e stored the hubcap in her trash compactor, and then reached out towards Hal's nose. Hal stepped forwards and gave Wall.e's hand a playful headbutt, nuzzling it affectionately. Hal then barked, Wall.e laughed, and replied, , and climbed on top of Hal's fluffy maned neck, settling down just in front of his shoulder blades. Hal then took off, and they wheeled into the evening sky, Zephyr letting off an amused snort as she took off behind them. Below them, a myriad of dragons were flying back to their perches as dusk approached.

Wall.e , Hal, and Zephyr flew past the derelict skyscrapers as they shimmered in the fading sunlight. These were intermingled with trash towers, the later of which were outright starting to crumble and fall apart. In the middle of it all sat an enormous metal reinforced pit, roughly rectangular in shape, with huge support skeletons jutting out of it. Wall.e, Hal, and Zephyr flew past this pit as they had multiple times before, and Hal remarked, Wall.e only half-acknowledged Hal as they continued to fly past the long structure. This pit brought a memory back up to the surface- one that she found kind of painful to think about. She felt whisked back into 2105- launch year- every time she passed the locale. Wall.e closed her eyes and remembered what had happened. She had been fleeing from the leviathan that had once sat in that very pit- the Axiom- alongside the rest of her cohort (A group of ten Wall.es) and a panicked flock of dragons- one of the first to leave the Hidden World. One of the Crimson Howlers in that flock accidentally struck her with a ill timed swipe of an antler, and knocked her out of the sky, and into a daze. The rest of her cohort quickly slowed to a hover and began honking in alarm. Suddenly, someone had shouted, "MOVE!", and another synth had dived out of the sky, this one clearly not part of the cohort. It had been dusk as it was now, and her armor gleamed a dazzling white against the deepening red sky. She caught Wall.e, and flew her back up to safety on a nearby rooftop, and they'd crash landed, with the rest of the cohort landing shortly thereafter. Wall.e, still dazed, then rolled over, and shuffled around to face the other synth, who now close her eyes... or turned off her visor, Wall.e wasn't sure which, and gave Wall.e a kiss. The electric spark that jumped between their helmets had accidentally copied and downloaded that synth's programming into Wall.e's circuitry, where it was then fused with Wall.e's programming. It was at that moment that the memory became emotional. Wall.e had read the designation on the stranger's collar- E.v.e. AX 001- and had then been shocked when she squeezed under Wall.e's wing and nuzzled her, walking the full length of Wall.e's body, and letting her own tail linger on Wall.e's body. Their tails briefly intertwined as E.v.e. AX 001 had walked away, and Wall.e had queried, "...Eeee?" as E.v.e. AX 001 walked back to the edge of the rooftop. E.v.e. AX 001 had then stopped, looked back at Wall.e, and lifted one paw, spreading her fingers. E.v.e. AX 001 had then said, "...Directive.", and taken off without looking back. Wall.e had then broken down, lunging towards the edge of the roof and crying, "EEEEE?!? AAAAA!!! AAAAAWHOOOOO!" She'd then started sobbing, watching through tear blurred lenses as the leviathan, the Axiom, took off. Wall.e now wondered if she'd ever see E.v.e. AX 001 ever again. She was shaken out of her reverie by Hal sneezing as they flew past an old Buy N' Large ad.

The ad flickered to life, showing Earth as it had once been, covered with trash, and a human voice echoed, "Too much garbage in your place? There's plenty of space out in space! BN'L starliners leaving each day! We'll clean up the mess while you're away!" As the voice chirped out its automatic message, images of a starliner, and a cohort of working Wall.es popped up. As the holographic display screen disappeared, Wall.e and Hal passed another ad. This ad droned, "The Jewel of the BN'L fleet: The Axiom! Book your five star cruise today, and our captain and patented autopilot will set course for fun, fine dining, and leisure! See stellar sights, and meet stellar new friends! With our patented hoverchairs, even Grandma can join the fun! The Axiom- putting the 'star' in Executive Starliner." Wall.e scoffed at that ad, she'd heard it hundreds of times before, and wondered where the plug on the damned holo-screen was. She then looked down, and saw the nocturnal dragons beginning to stir, as the diurnal ones continued to fly home to their perches, burrows, and dens. Wall.e, Hal, and Zephyr then reached their own home- a heavily modified truck that had once stored an entire legion (group of 1,000) of Wall.es. While Hal and Zephyr retreated inside, Wall.e dismounted from Hal, and put an old cooler down, then scrambled up onto the roof of her house. She then looked up at the night sky. The stars shined high above her, framed by the clouds that were just starting to come in. The stars reminded Wall.e of E.v.e. AX 001, and she briefly felt sorrow, wishing that E.v.e. AX 001 would sit next to her someday. At that moment, an odd feeling washed over her- as if E.v.e. AX 001 was coming back. Wall.e now searched the stars for anything unusual, and spotted a bright blue dot moving through the stars. Spotting the dot gave Wall.e a new sense of hope that E.v.e. AX 001 was coming back. Suddenly, an alarm blared, and panicking, Wall.e searched the horizon for the cause. She spotted an incoming dust storm, and leaped off the roof, bolting inside and throwing the inside switch on the door. The door closed just as the wind began to howl outside. Zephyr pushed a dvd into a salvaged dvd player with her snout, and Hal used his to push "play." A salvaged TV screen blared to life, and the movie "Hello Dolly!" began to play. In the distance, an array of communications spires burst to life, transmitting an automated message heralding the landing of a probe ship, the message muted by the sandstorm.

Wall.e now turned her attention to the objects that she, Hal, and Zephyr had collected earlier that day. She first took the hubcap out of her trash compactor, and placed it on the floor. Next, she pulled an unsolved rubik's cube out of the cooler, and tried to find a place to put it. She had no rubik's cubes of her own, and struggled to find a place to put it. For some strange reason, the cube reminded her of E.v.e. AX 001, and Wall.e closed her eyes. She found herself nuzzling the rubik's cube, and stuck it on a shelf, sheepishly hoping that Hal and Zephyr hadn't seen. She now pulled a spork out, and perplexed, tried to figure out if it was better classed as a spoon or a fork. Wall.e eventually remembered what a spork was for some reason, and put it in the kitchen sink. Wall.e then pulled out an old zippo lighter, and flipped a switch. A series of shelves which had once stored Wall.es like her began to rotate, and Wall.e soon spotted the one which she'd filled with zippo lighters like it. She added the new one, secretly wondering what fascinated Zephyr about the lighters. "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" started playing, and pushing the thought out of her mind, Wall.e picked up the hubcap and started dancing along with the music, holding the hubcap over head as if it were a hat. Zephyr and Hal briefly noticed Wall.es dancing, and then went back to watching the movie. After the song was over, Wall.e set the hubcap down on a shelf full of random items, and returned to sorting out knicknacks. By the time she was finished, the movie was almost over, and Wall.e heard the prelude to "It Only Takes A Moment." Realizing that she'd never recorded the song despite listening to it, Wall.e pressed "record" on her music player, closed her eyes, and listened as the song played. She reopened her eyes to see the shot of Cornelius and Irene holding hands, and silently sighed as she watched. Her own hands slid close together, and her fingers interlocked as she watched. Wall.e then looked down at her hands and found herself wishing that she could hold hands with E.v.e. AX 001. Wall.e stopped recording once the song ended, and, now saddened by the thought of E.v.e. AX 001, backed into her own storage compartment and curled up into a ball. She pressed "play" on her music player, and "It Only Takes A Moment" began drifting into the space as the movie ended. Hal and Zephyr curled up on the floor beside Wall.e as she fell asleep. Wall.e would end up dreaming of nothing but E.v.e. AX 001 that night.

Description

Once, there were humans. They originally lived on a small planet, the third in the Sol system, which they called Earth. Towards the beginning of the 22nd century, they polluted the surface seemingly beyond repair. Realizing how desperate the situation was, they sought any means possible of cleaning up their home and surviving the multi-ecosystem collapse that would surely come. Some went deep underground, slumbering in cryonic preservation chambers in insulated geothermal bunkers. Others left the surface, collectively heading into space aboard leviathan starships. A few isolated communities lived far enough away from the main pollution problems, and in clean enough environments to safely remain on earth, many of them unaware of the ecosystem catastrophes happening elsewhere. Three companies spearheaded the clean up efforts: Vishkar Incorporated, Buy N' Large, and Volskaya Industries. Of these, Vishkar and Volskaya contributed the required cybernetics, and Buy N' Large assembled the starships that would take much of Earth's populous into the stars. In their wake, they would leave a smattering of people- just enough to oversee the cleanup efforts- and a veritable army of Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth Class, or Wall.e synths. The cleanup attempts would fail, and the Wall.es would be left to fend for themselves. In the absence of human overseers, and over the next 700 years, many of the Wall.es would through some means abandon their directive, and, not remembering their time as Wall.es... or else not remembering who they were prior to being Wall.es... they would start anew, like the new ecosystem growing around them, a far more exotic one than the humans could have ever known about. This ecosystem would spread its tendrils out from the hidden world, and herald the return of the dragons in the humans absence. Throughout this process, at least one Wall.e, Wall.e 18138, would set out on a different path than the rest. Unlike them, she would regain her pre-launch memory, and stay a Wall.e. She would become adaptable, and bizarrely, keep trying to fulfill her directives, even when every other wall.e around her gave up. And, she'd stay cheerful throughout it all, even as the last echoes of hope for humanities return would begin to fade. Yet, there would always be that little nagging feeling in the back of her mind...

One evening, in 2815 A.D., Wall.e was performing some routine maintenance on a trash tower in central New York. Her pet dragons, a Woolly Howl named Hal, and a Titanwing Monstrous Nightmare named Zephyr, perched on a ledge nearby, sunning themselves in the fading afternoon light. Hal was big even by Woolly Howl standards, measuring some 32 feet long from nose to tail, with a full 64 foot wingspan. Zephyr was even larger, boasting a 50 foot length and a 75 foot wingspan. This however, was just a drop in the bucket compared to the behemoth dragons that still roamed the wilderness outside the city. Wall.e was reflecting on this as she worked... she'd recently begun to notice signs that one of those behemoths had taken up residence within New York City... a whole collection of trash towers had suddenly vanished several weeks prior, and in their place, a fissure wide enough to admit a Bewilderbeast had appeared. In their free time, she and Hal had been exploring that fissure, and already a population of wild dragons had taken to living in it, not to mention a veritable jungle of exotic fungi, corals, and mosses had begun to grow along the walls of the fissure, and around the edges of it. Hal distracted Wall.e from her thoughts. He'd spotted something shiny amongst the trash and was trying to dig it out. It looked like part of a hubcap. Wall.e clambered up to Hal, and took a closer look. The Subaru logo- 7 stars on a blue background- stared back at her. Wall.e wrenched the hubcap out of the trash block in front of her and showed it to Hal, who barked exitedly. Wall.e stored the hubcap in her trash compactor, and then reached out towards Hal's nose. Hal stepped forwards and gave Wall.e's hand a playful headbutt, nuzzling it affectionately. Hal then barked, Wall.e laughed, and replied, , and climbed on top of Hal's fluffy maned neck, settling down just in front of his shoulder blades. Hal then took off, and they wheeled into the evening sky, Zephyr letting off an amused snort as she took off behind them. Below them, a myriad of dragons were flying back to their perches as dusk approached.

Wall.e , Hal, and Zephyr flew past the derelict skyscrapers as they shimmered in the fading sunlight. These were intermingled with trash towers, the later of which were outright starting to crumble and fall apart. In the middle of it all sat an enormous metal reinforced pit, roughly rectangular in shape, with huge support skeletons jutting out of it. Wall.e, Hal, and Zephyr flew past this pit as they had multiple times before, and Hal remarked, Wall.e only half-acknowledged Hal as they continued to fly past the long structure. This pit brought a memory back up to the surface- one that she found kind of painful to think about. She felt whisked back into 2105- launch year- every time she passed the locale. Wall.e closed her eyes and remembered what had happened. She had been fleeing from the leviathan that had once sat in that very pit- the Axiom- alongside the rest of her cohort (A group of ten Wall.es) and a panicked flock of dragons- one of the first to leave the Hidden World. One of the Crimson Howlers in that flock accidentally struck her with a ill timed swipe of an antler, and knocked her out of the sky, and into a daze. The rest of her cohort quickly slowed to a hover and began honking in alarm. Suddenly, someone had shouted, "MOVE!", and another synth had dived out of the sky, this one clearly not part of the cohort. It had been dusk as it was now, and her armor gleamed a dazzling white against the deepening red sky. She caught Wall.e, and flew her back up to safety on a nearby rooftop, and they'd crash landed, with the rest of the cohort landing shortly thereafter. Wall.e, still dazed, then rolled over, and shuffled around to face the other synth, who now close her eyes... or turned off her visor, Wall.e wasn't sure which, and gave Wall.e a kiss. The electric spark that jumped between their helmets had accidentally copied and downloaded that synth's programming into Wall.e's circuitry, where it was then fused with Wall.e's programming. It was at that moment that the memory became emotional. Wall.e had read the designation on the stranger's collar- E.v.e. AX 001- and had then been shocked when she squeezed under Wall.e's wing and nuzzled her, walking the full length of Wall.e's body, and letting her own tail linger on Wall.e's body. Their tails briefly intertwined as E.v.e. AX 001 had walked away, and Wall.e had queried, "...Eeee?" as E.v.e. AX 001 walked back to the edge of the rooftop. E.v.e. AX 001 had then stopped, looked back at Wall.e, and lifted one paw, spreading her fingers. E.v.e. AX 001 had then said, "...Directive.", and taken off without looking back. Wall.e had then broken down, lunging towards the edge of the roof and crying, "EEEEE?!? AAAAA!!! AAAAAWHOOOOO!" She'd then started sobbing, watching through tear blurred lenses as the leviathan, the Axiom, took off. Wall.e now wondered if she'd ever see E.v.e. AX 001 ever again. She was shaken out of her reverie by Hal sneezing as they flew past an old Buy N' Large ad.

The ad flickered to life, showing Earth as it had once been, covered with trash, and a human voice echoed, "Too much garbage in your place? There's plenty of space out in space! BN'L starliners leaving each day! We'll clean up the mess while you're away!" As the voice chirped out its automatic message, images of a starliner, and a cohort of working Wall.es popped up. As the holographic display screen disappeared, Wall.e and Hal passed another ad. This ad droned, "The Jewel of the BN'L fleet: The Axiom! Book your five star cruise today, and our captain and patented autopilot will set course for fun, fine dining, and leisure! See stellar sights, and meet stellar new friends! With our patented hoverchairs, even Grandma can join the fun! The Axiom- putting the 'star' in Executive Starliner." Wall.e scoffed at that ad, she'd heard it hundreds of times before, and wondered where the plug on the damned holo-screen was. She then looked down, and saw the nocturnal dragons beginning to stir, as the diurnal ones continued to fly home to their perches, burrows, and dens. Wall.e, Hal, and Zephyr then reached their own home- a heavily modified truck that had once stored an entire legion (group of 1,000) of Wall.es. While Hal and Zephyr retreated inside, Wall.e dismounted from Hal, and put an old cooler down, then scrambled up onto the roof of her house. She then looked up at the night sky. The stars shined high above her, framed by the clouds that were just starting to come in. The stars reminded Wall.e of E.v.e. AX 001, and she briefly felt sorrow, wishing that E.v.e. AX 001 would sit next to her someday. At that moment, an odd feeling washed over her- as if E.v.e. AX 001 was coming back. Wall.e now searched the stars for anything unusual, and spotted a bright blue dot moving through the stars. Spotting the dot gave Wall.e a new sense of hope that E.v.e. AX 001 was coming back. Suddenly, an alarm blared, and panicking, Wall.e searched the horizon for the cause. She spotted an incoming dust storm, and leaped off the roof, bolting inside and throwing the inside switch on the door. The door closed just as the wind began to howl outside. Zephyr pushed a dvd into a salvaged dvd player with her snout, and Hal used his to push "play." A salvaged TV screen blared to life, and the movie "Hello Dolly!" began to play. In the distance, an array of communications spires burst to life, transmitting an automated message heralding the landing of a probe ship, the message muted by the sandstorm.

Wall.e now turned her attention to the objects that she, Hal, and Zephyr had collected earlier that day. She first took the hubcap out of her trash compactor, and placed it on the floor. Next, she pulled an unsolved rubik's cube out of the cooler, and tried to find a place to put it. She had no rubik's cubes of her own, and struggled to find a place to put it. For some strange reason, the cube reminded her of E.v.e. AX 001, and Wall.e closed her eyes. She found herself nuzzling the rubik's cube, and stuck it on a shelf, sheepishly hoping that Hal and Zephyr hadn't seen. She now pulled a spork out, and perplexed, tried to figure out if it was better classed as a spoon or a fork. Wall.e eventually remembered what a spork was for some reason, and put it in the kitchen sink. Wall.e then pulled out an old zippo lighter, and flipped a switch. A series of shelves which had once stored Wall.es like her began to rotate, and Wall.e soon spotted the one which she'd filled with zippo lighters like it. She added the new one, secretly wondering what fascinated Zephyr about the lighters. "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" started playing, and pushing the thought out of her mind, Wall.e picked up the hubcap and started dancing along with the music, holding the hubcap over head as if it were a hat. Zephyr and Hal briefly noticed Wall.es dancing, and then went back to watching the movie. After the song was over, Wall.e set the hubcap down on a shelf full of random items, and returned to sorting out knicknacks. By the time she was finished, the movie was almost over, and Wall.e heard the prelude to "It Only Takes A Moment." Realizing that she'd never recorded the song despite listening to it, Wall.e pressed "record" on her music player, closed her eyes, and listened as the song played. She reopened her eyes to see the shot of Cornelius and Irene holding hands, and silently sighed as she watched. Her own hands slid close together, and her fingers interlocked as she watched. Wall.e then looked down at her hands and found herself wishing that she could hold hands with E.v.e. AX 001. Wall.e stopped recording once the song ended, and, now saddened by the thought of E.v.e. AX 001, backed into her own storage compartment and curled up into a ball. She pressed "play" on her music player, and "It Only Takes A Moment" began drifting into the space as the movie ended. Hal and Zephyr curled up on the floor beside Wall.e as she fell asleep. Wall.e would end up dreaming of nothing but E.v.e. AX 001 that night.