Hi everyone, this is Andre/The-Drive-In Theatre, back after a long literary hiatus! To commemorate Wall-E’s two-year anniversary, I’ve written my first Wall-E fanfic. I had this idea after watching a commercial for a documentary called ‘Life After Humans’. The last shot in that ad was of a telephone dangling by its cord from a pay-phone. I was daydreaming about Wall-E fanart ideas at that time when it occurred to me, what if Wall-E wasn’t alone on Earth, at least for the first hundred years? What if there were other people, humans who didn’t made it on board the BnL cruise-ships and were ‘left behind’? And what if one of these last survivors on Earth accidentally contacts Wall-E one day? For some reason, that image of a phone left unanswered, and of a long wait unfulfilled, coalesced into the story you’re about to read. As our favourite trash-bot is about to discover when he answers this one phone call, when it comes to waiting for true love to arrive, he is not alone…
Rated K+ for Mild Language
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[size=134]WAIT FOR ME[/size]
“Society has parted man from man
Neglectful of the universal heart”
Wordsworth, Prelude, 1850
“The jewel of the BNL fleet… the Axiom! Spend a five year cruise-in style, waited on 24 hours a day by our fully-automated crew…”
The lone robot ignored the cheerful promotional announcer as he trundled past the motion-detecting holo-screens. After encountering the same message for the past 25,550 days, including this one, his programming has learnt to disregard its content entirely. All he knew was that he had been given an infinite loop command to continue what he has been doing every day since the ships left; cubing any garbage he detects and stacking them in neat symmetrical towers.
Today he was scheduled to inspect Sector 15, about ten blocks East of the Downtown BnL Transit Terminal. He had checked his internal GPS before leaving his truck, and the nearest station was ‘Lavender Park’. All he had to do was follow the train tracks.
He passed by a gigantic billboard on the side of a skyscraper, and paused to look at it. It was a 1950s style retro-futurist poster of a huge goggle-eyed robot with a box-shaped body. In the background were an army of similar clones, fading into the distance. The tagline read “A Brighter Future from BnL”. The model’s name listed in the copy text below was Wall-E.
Wall-E. That was his name. As was the name of many of his brethren, who have long since been deactivated, seventy years ago to this date. For some reason, he was the only who did not shut down that day. He could still recall from his video-cache, the sight of a dozen Wall-Es, silent and unmoving, as he left his truck that morning. He assumed that they were in hibernation mode, but after a few years, it dawned on him that they were never going to wake up from their eternal sleep.
Twenty minutes later, he reached his destination. The once shiny and modern tiled platform now had a fine layer of dust on it, which Wall-E left his tread-marks on as he rolled towards the escalator. He emerged from the station onto a deserted boulevard lined with a few unattended cars on the sidewalk, rusting after decades of neglect.
His directive told him to start from the North-West quadrant of Sector 15, which was the entrance of Lavender Park itself, within eyeshot from where he was standing. Upon nearing, the park revealed itself to be nothing more than a mere shadow of its former glorious self. The walls had crumbled over, the lane winding through the park cracked by roots of trees which had died and withered a long time ago.
On the left about fifty feet away was an oak tree, its gnarled branches bald, the once-living trunk now rotten with the bark peeling off. There was a well-worn bench underneath it, next to an old pay phone. On the opposite side, piled against the perimeter wall was a small rubbish tip. Wall-E wheeled over to get to work.
By midday he had managed to compact all the trash into a hundred-and-fifty cubes, which he stacked neatly in a one-storey tower. His temperature monitor chip informed him he was overheating, so he decided to take shelter under the dead oak tree. He lingered to admire his work for a few moments before making his way to the bench. Climbing onto it, he sat with his treads over the edge, and cocked his eye goggles back to stare at the sky. Without the leaves, the tree offered little shelter, with the sunlight beating down between the gaps in the branches. Wall-E continued to gaze at the smog clouds, which were the same colour as the earth beneath his treads.
How long has it been since he saw those ships leap into that sky? Redundant query, he chided himself. 700 years, 50 minutes and 5 seconds ago. The ships departed at midday from the loading docks. From here, he could see the BnL Starliner Terminal, looming in the distance within walking distance of his truck. It was a multibillion-dollar facility built expressly for the sole purpose of loading and unloading its passengers for that one five-year cruise in space. It was intended to be reused any time BnL needed to organise another large-scale cleanup a century or two down the road. It had seen millions of people into the belly of The Axiom, the premier ship of its fleet, but has yet to welcome any of them back. Wall-E pined to see the ship’s return; how proud the citizens of Earth would be upon seeing the amount of work he has accomplished all these years!
He sighed wistfully. He was beginning to feel the first painful pangs of solitude.
There was a shrill ring. Wall-E nearly fell off the bench in shock. He gathered himself and looked around for the source of the noise. The ring sounded again, to his left. He turned and saw it was coming from the pay phone. It was an open-air model, standing on a pole with a rain hood covering it from the elements. Wall-E hopped off the bench and wheeled around to face the phone. It ringed again. Wall-E lifted himself as high as he could on his extendable legs and peered at the unit. There was a traditional keypad, and a handset. Wall-E punched the buttons but the phone kept ringing. He finally lifted the handset on the sixth ring.
“Hello?” a voice asked. For the second time Wall-E got a rude surprise and fumbled with the handset, nearly dropping it. He was not expecting the phone to start talking to him!
“Hello, is that you Annie?” It was a male voice, with a dry, raspy tone to it, like the caller had a sore throat. “Annie, it’s me, Adam!”
Wall-E wasn’t quite sure how to answer to this ‘Adam’. So he listened.
“Annie, I know it’s you! 13 00 hours, pay phone at Lavender Park?” The caller laughed, sounding very relieved. “I just knew you’d return. I’ve been calling here, every day since, what, 2140? It’s been seven decades. I would wait for at least twenty rings, you know, in case you were late or something. I know the twelve-thirty from Downtown can be late sometimes…”
There was a pause.
“Annie, please say something. It’s you, right? Remember me, your ‘Addie’?” A sliver of doubt entered his voice. “Who is this?”
Wall-E didn’t register the caller as saying his name when the question was posed, but decided to humour him anyway.
“Waaall-E…”
There was silence for a moment. Then “Oh, y-you’re… one of those… trash compactor bots. I th-thought you were…” Then Wall-E heard a strangled choke, followed by what sounded like sobs. Wall-E had never experienced hearing another human being cry, so he didn’t quite know how to respond.
“Sorry…” He heard the man gasp and clear his throat. “I though you were Annie. She’s my fiancee, you see… the love of my life.”
Wall-E bleeped an “Ooo…” in understanding.
Adam’s voice wavered for a moment. “Wow, you are pretty sentient for a trash-bot. No, no, no… I can’t believe I’m talking to a Wall-E unit, for crying out loud!” He swore, then Wall-E heard something being smashed, and glass tinkling. There was silence for a few moments, and Wall-E considered placing the phone back in the receiver. Then Adam came back.
“Are you still there? I’m sorry… I just…” Adam took a moment to compose himself. “It’s that I’ve been ringing here for the last seventy years, and no one’s ever answered. You’re the first… I can’t believe I’m hearing you. I thought that cursed corporation shut you all down. As if taking Annie wasn’t enough…”
“Aaa…aa…” Wall-E tried to form the phonetics.
“Oh, Annie… she… I was… to marry her. Prettiest girl I ever seen, and the kindest one, too. She had brown hair, the shade of autumn leaves. Her blue eyes shone like the moon’s reflection on still ocean waters. We met on that bench right next to you now. It was love at first sight.” He sighed, which sounded more like a wheeze. “I’m a writer. Descriptive metaphors and superlatives are my specialty.”
Wall-E listened in fascination. He had never heard a single voice, robot or human, for more than half the century, and his audio-receptors drank in every word, even if he didn’t understand all of them. Adam probably felt the same; he had already forgotten his conversation partner was a machine, or perhaps he didn’t care and just wanted someone to talk to. He continued:
“Unfortunately, writers don’t earn a lot of money. We owned and lived in a studio apartment, and we got by. Every evening, I would take her on my bicycle and we would cycle to the very park where you’re at right now. Lavender Park. We would have picnics together, watch the world go by. And then at night, we would sit on that bench we first met, and try to spot space satellites and see who could count the most.”
Adam cleared his throat, and Wall-E heard him thumping his chest, before he continued. “When the announcement for Operation Cleanup came, I knew we had to leave. Staying here was out of the question. There were underground shelters provided for those who couldn’t afford the five-year cruise at a discounted price, but I heard rumours they would be overcrowded due to BnL’s policy of overbooking. As for those too poor to afford either, they were given a free gas mask and a box of twinkies. Can you believe it? This… this is what you get when you allow a government to be run by a financially-motivated conglomerate!”
Adam could barely keep the derision out of his voice. “I mean, a billion BnL dollars a ticket? I know prices for just about anything were inflated, even back in '105. A pack of BnL Lite Menthols cost about a hundred BnLs back in '99, when I had my first puff. Five years later, when I met Annie and she made me quit, it was a hundred-and-twenty! On reflection, I’m glad she made me do it, those death sticks were costing my money and health.”
He coughed again, a horrible hacking sound. “So when you’re talking one-million Gs, that’s still a lot of money. But we had enough. Had to sell the apartment and empty our bank accounts, but we had just enough. We didn’t want to be ‘left behind’ as those Christians would call it. Oh, you should have seen the day all the ships took off. It was like the Rapture, everyone ascending to the heavens.”
Wall-E’s audio-translators processed the descriptive words, seeing that image of a giant ‘Noah’s Ark’ of humans rising into the sky. He had never imagined anything before, and the renders that he was conjuring were mesmerizing.
“Annie hadn’t been feeling well then. I feared she was going to fail the medical screening every passenger had to go through before boarding the ship. But on the night of our departure, after undergoing a pregnancy test, she announced that we were going to have a baby! I was overjoyed, Wall-E. It is an indescribable feeling to be a father.”
Wall-E could almost picture Adam beaming at the thought of being a parent. Then Adam sighed, and a note of anguish returned to his voice.
“Then we boarded the ship next morning before midday, they discovered her pregnancy during the medical screening at the gates. They said that we should have informed them beforehand of any unborn children. Did you know, they had the audacity to tell us that we had to pay for our unborn child as well? The same price as a ‘Child’ Ticket, which was $500 million alone, half the price of the adult ticket. We pleaded with them, begged them, said we didn’t have any more to give, that’ll we work it off as ship employees. Those heartless bastards told us we either pay upfront or we don’t board. In the end, I told Annie to exchange my ticket for our child, while I stayed behind with the remainder. I would wait for them. Five years would be over before you know it, I assured her. She was in tears… it broke my heart!”
His voice started to crack. “I told her that I will meet her at the bench under the old oak tree where we used to count satellites together. When she gets back, we will get another apartment, a larger one this time, with the remaining money and whatever I earn during that five years. I wanted our baby to enter the heavens, not emerge in this hellhole.” He paused to take a deep breath. “She said… ‘Wait for me’. Those were her last words. Wait for me.”
He was quiet for a few seconds. Wall-E didn’t understand the significance of the phrase, but he could tell it meant the world to Adam. Those three words alone were what kept him going all those years, his ‘infinite loop command’.
“So I stood at the Terminal, along with about a million other families, waving goodbye to our loved ones as they departed Earth. For many of us, it would be the last we would see of them.”
Wall-E could see where this was going, but he stayed silent.
“For the next few years, I helped out at a soup kitchen in the underground shelters. We had a regenerative food buffet similar to the ones on the Axiom, although with less fancier food. But we got by. We had enough. Occasionally we would go out for exercises, and to let the kids and pets play. I remember seeing a couple of you guys around, but we minded our own business and you did yours. We couldn’t stay out too long though, because the pollution was so bad.”
“After the five years were over, many of us waited eagerly for the ships’ return at the Terminal. I sat on the bench under the oak tree. When they didn’t come back, we were disappointed. There was a news blackout, no updates have been transmitted from the Axiom or any of the other ships. Some of us though maybe there was a delay, and came back to the Terminal for the next few weeks. Eventually, some of us realized they were not coming back. Others, like me, remained in denial. It was the hope of being reunited with our loved ons that kept some of us alive long after the rest have perished, some probably due to a broken heart.”
Adam started weeping again, his voice shaking as he shuddered between sobs. “I mean, l-look at you. You’re probably the last of your kind too. When we came out on Return Day, we noticed all the Wall-E bots have been turned off. I’m surprised you’re still alive. Heck, maybe you’re surprised I’m still alive.”
Wall-E only answered with an “Ooowoh.”
“Yeah, the two last living creatures on this godforsaken planet. A geriatric nonagenarian and a sentient trash-disposal robot.” He laughed mirthlessly. “I’m only ‘not dead’ because I know how to work the regenerative buffet! The rest have either… passed or left in search of other survivors. I chose to stay behind again, in the stupid, futile hope that Annie will return with our baby.”
“Aaaadaaaam…” Wall-E called out the man’s name in frustration. His internal voice-command database struggled to conjure words of consolation, to tell this man that it was not stupid or futile to
have faith in the improbable, but not impossible.
Adam whimpered, “I don’t even know whether it’s a ‘he’ or a ‘she’…”
For a terrifying moment there was silence, and Wall-E thought Adam had hung up.
“So here I am,” Adam’s voice returned, sounding resigned. “I call the pay phone now because I’m too incapacitated to go down to the park, even though it’s only a few blocks away… this ancient body of mine ain’t what it used to be!” He had stopped crying and there was the sound of him wiping his nose.
“I guess… I’ll keep waiting, then. Nothing much I can do, except keep that hope alive. I mean, I didn’t expect anyone to pick up this afternoon, and now I’ve finished telling my entire life story to a robot. Imagine that!” He chuckled, then broke into a coughing fit. “Excuse me! Anyway, thanks for listening. I feel really strange saying this, but it feels good to hear someone on the line for a change, even if it’s just a robot.”
“Waaaalllleee,” Wall-E squealed.
“Haha, sorry I forgot you had a name! Getting to know a trash-bot on a first-name basis, I must be going mad!” He cackled, cheerful again, though Wall-E couldn’t tell if it was to hide his sadness. “I guess we all are waiting, huh? We’re always for something. But anything worth waiting for is worth waiting in the end… right?”
Wall-E gurgled an “Uh-huh” in agreement.
“Aren’t we all?” he laughed. “I hope I get to see my girl and child again… You know, we should meet up sometime! Maybe play a round of chess or somethin’. You got GPS, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay, here’s my address. It’s…”
And then the call ended. A prerecorded message cheerfully said “I’m sorry, but we’re experiencing technical difficulties with this phone. Please contact your friendly BnL representative and quote this pay phone’s number, and we’ll send one of our technicians for repair and maintenance. Thank you.”
Wall-E stared at the handset in disbelief, then hung it back on the receiver. Then he wheeled back to the bench and climbed back on it. He stared at the muddy sky overhead, with millions of abandoned space satellites hovering in endless orbit across the endless expanse of space.
The lone robot sighed. Adam was not the only one waiting too.
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I found one typo, you wrote, "It was the hope of being reunited with our loved 
