Memories

Alright, before I begin, there are a few things that I want to say about this story.

This was the first fanfiction I have EVER written. I wrote it back when I was 14 and a member of the Wall-E Fanbase (a Wall-E site started by a friend of mine), and since then the story has been re-written three times. This is the third and final revision of my story.

I am a suspense/thriller writer, so this story may be highly disturbing. On FF.net, it has a T rating. Reader discretion is advised.

I will take this opportunity to thank the friend who had picked Memories apart and helped me revise it, gothicorca1895 (as she’s known on FF.net and DeviantArt), and the same girl who helped me figure out some parts to the story behind this one.

And now, with my rambling over and done with, please enjoy the first installment of Memories!


Prologue

[i]The human mind is a complicated place.

It is a realm never lit by the light of modern knowledge; a dark, dangerous corridor riddled with dead ends, unending turns, and unmarked tangents. As often as we discover the solution to one of the mind’s puzzling mysteries, hundreds of other erratic behaviors open up in its stead, snatching away our only sense of security. There seems to be no such thing as a complete understanding of human ethics and morals.

A robot’s thinking is much clearer. The corruptibility of the mind and the many places we have yet to find in it’s labyrinth leave too much to risk on the basis of caring for these citizens who are about to embark on this journey of a lifetime. That is why, here at Buy N Large, we have automated our starliner crew with over a thousand different types of specialized robots, ready to accommodate to every passenger’s needs. We care about you, so it is all but expected of us to give you our very best; we will give you workers who will never let you bake under the UV lamps, never let a kitchen accident delay your mealtime, and best of all…never go against a superior’s orders. This is their job, their directive…without you, they are nothing. So welcome your crew with open arms, and guarantee yourselves a pleasant stay with BnL’s best. [/i]

Shelby Forthright, Buy N Large Global CEO
Axiom Send-off Speech (the Robot Appraisal)
June 28th, 2101

You know the way that things go…when what you fight for starts to fall…

And so began the voyage of the famed “jewel-in-the-crown” of the BnL Delta fleet: the Axiom. For 5 years, any and all inhabitants of Earth pay a small price to be pampered while specialized cleanup robots pack and put away the heaps of trash that they had so carelessly left behind. It seemed like a pretty good deal to these ignorant humans, and along with the Axiom several other starliners were soon lifted into orbit for their own 5-year-cruises: The Vulcan, The Sanctus, The Postulate. All fleets from Alpha to Echo carted off a grand total of 3 million dumb, happy people who were completely unaware of the deteriorating state that the planet below was in. After all, it wasn’t their problem. They were simply here to enjoy a well-deserved vacation, and they would be back home when half a decade had passed.

However, those 5 years went by quickly.

The humans who had escaped in the starliners were the lucky ones. Those who had decided to stay on Earth and wait out the growing calamity suffered a terrible fate in the end. Many died from carbon monoxide poisoning and suffocation from various other gases that had accumulated from vehicle and incinerator smoke over the centuries. Others died in miniature wars that were fought over what was left of the basic necessities of life, or seared by the intense UV rays bombarding Earth through multiple ozone holes. Shelby had made a grave mistake, and it was in these last few days of humanity that he broadcasted a frantic message to all starliner autopilots…a message that contained the order known to day as Code A-113. Without the passengers or the captain’s knowledge, each BnL starliner was overtaken by the autopilots themselves, thus beginning a new era of permanent residence in space.

100 years passed, and life on the Axiom was still sweet as ever. Despite the fact that the ships had been in orbit for over a century, it didn’t seem to be a problem for the former citizens of Earth. The main focus at that moment was the development of a new security robot; a robot that could tap into the minds and memories of others and-for the first time-empathize with humans. As the passengers awaited this breakthrough technology, the ships’ staff began activating their EVE probes, ready to begin the second phase of Shelby’s cleanup plan that had been canceled so long ago.

And in that fuzzy picture…the writing stands out on the wall…so clearly on the wall…

Another century passed, and the first of many small disturbances were recorded on all the ships as the passengers seemed to finally become somewhat aware of their situation. However, anything that got too out of hand was quickly subdued by the new force of long-awaited security robots; the Citizen’s Order and Defense Interrogators. The EVE program also continued without a hitch, with rotations of pods being sent out annually to each of the six previously inhabited colonies: Mars, Luna, Europa, Titan, Creed; and of course, Earth.

Send out the signal…deep and loud…

200 years later, things in space and Earth began to worsen. The Wall-Es, BnL’s dedicated cleanup crew, were finally starting to shut down from the sheer size of their workload; and without humans or specialized robots to repair them, the 3-foot, track-shoed garbage robots’ numbers started to dwindle, leaving the mounds of human trash hardly disturbed. The final straw had broken the camel’s back, and now it was assured the vision of Shelby Forthright’s “new again” Earth would never happen. The human’s former home became a dusty, windy wasteland, a toxic sphere void of any sign of life.

Conditions on the starliners weren’t much better. The Sanctus had been intercepted by an alien race and the Postulate caught in a supernova, causing the already small population of surviving humans to decline. The Vulcan was obliterated when a group of mutineers unwittingly piloted the ship into a black hole, and the Axiom had also fallen to an uprising that caused the captivity of every person aboard, until the ship’s autopilot finally fought back and freed the humans from their bondage. The peace was short-lasting, and soon after another 2-year war raged, this time among the robots themselves.

Turn up the signal, wipe out the noise…

200 years since, and the Axiom was finally released from its space exile. Due to the heroic acts of a stowaway Wall-E Unit and EVE Probe 1 of the Delta pod, the Axiom touched down in its home port in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on June 28th, 2801…exactly 700 years since its send-off. The 60,000 humans aboard the ship at the time were the only known survivors of the ultimate display of ignorance, the largest unintentional holocaust to ever be recorded in history. It was not going to be an easy recovery, but by no means was it impossible. And even today, 7 years later…the passengers of the Axiom live on…

Turn up the signal, wipe out the noise…

Wow, Epic Lover! This is a very detailed recount of BnL’s past, and the way you have written it is very intriguing.
I love how you made up the names of other starliners (the Postulate is mentioned in another Wall-E fanfic- in fact, it was in a parody) and how each one had been banished from space. Very creative! :stuck_out_tongue:
I also like Forthright’s speech at the start and how he compared a human’s mind to a robot’s.

Please continue to write more! This story should get interesting :mrgreen:

Wow… that was amazing! Very well written! :wink:

This is an incredible story, Epic Lover, and a stunning artistic debut on these forums! I love the opening monologue by Shelby, the comparisons between a human and a robot’s mind. And then the descent of human civilisation into sloth and ignorance…

I actually wrote a recent fanfiction called ‘Wait For Me’ when I pondered the possibility of survivors who didn’t make it aboard the BnL starliner fleet… but you took it to a whole new level with the miniature wars and details about environmental pollution and all… and then the suppression of rebellion on board, and the demise of the other ships (and like Biggest_Pixar_Fan_Ami, I like the names of the ships, even though another fanfic happens to share a name with one of yours!). It gets quite depressing, but then the light at the tunnel appears and everything is all right with the world again, although not without cost.

The only thing I’m confused about is the interspersing lines in italics… are those song lyrics? I don’t understand the significance of the lines, even though I’m usually good at picking up literary metaphors… but other than that, fantastic work. Equal times poignant and pensive.

Thank you guys for the reviews! I am currently in the process of updating the next chapter of this story, and if all goes well I should have it up by the end of the week. I’m just going to take this opportunity to thank my readers(since comments and positive reviews make me a happy Epic)…and to explain some things. ^^;

First off…I had no idea there was a fic out there where the Postulate was the name of a ship. XD But nonetheless, this Postulate isn’t mine, anyway. The original story of the Postulate I used (and it’s autopilot, Auta) belonged to Angel624 from the Wall-E Fanbase. I went very vaguely into this ship’s story, but if you’re really interested with the story of the Postulate and Auta, send me a PM and I will go into it from there.

And I also believe there was a question about the italic lines between the paragraphs. Those are indeed song lyrics, from Peter Gabriel’s Signal To Noise, to be exact. I was listening to that song while I was writing this chapter, and I thought that since the whole theme of that song is civilization in the world spiraling downward and “turning to noise” so to speak, it fit with the deterioration of Earth and how Buy N Large let the consumerism of its customers destroy the planet they lived on.

Thanks for enlightening me, Epic Lover. So it was from a song, and a Peter Gabriel one, at that! I should give it a listen…

Oh, and I know Angel624 from Youtube and the Night Fury forums! :smiley: Do post me a link to the fanfic, I’m a fan of her works.

I…don’t think there was ever a fic about it. ^^; It was sort of just a sub-plot in our Fanbase canon, a way for her to explain Auta’s backstory. If she did make a fic about it, though, I would have loved to read it. :slight_smile:

That would be my fanfic. If you’d like to read it, just click my sig. I should be updating it soon…

JSWeC, I’ve already read your lastest chapter a while ago! It is beautiful though :wink: I can’t wait for you to update it soon, I 've feel like I’ve been waiting forever! :smiley:

Epic Lover, I hope this week ends quickly because I can’t wait for your next chapter either! :mrgreen:

I read what you’d written, and I like it so far! ^^ Once again I’m sorry about using the Postulate’s name…like I said, it’s not your Postulate I’m using but I’ll give both you and the creator of the one I used credit.

Just think of it as another moment of Epic fail. XD (no pun intended.)

ANYWAY. TEH UPDATE BE HERE.

Part I: Echoes of the Past

Chapter I: Seven Years Later

For the former passengers of the BnL executive starliner, they day had started normally enough.

The dawn came, pink as always, over the twisted metal tops of the ruined city beyond the landing site, bathing ring after ring of sprouting vegetation in beams of gold and fuchsia light as the sun struggled to ascend the still-clouded skies of the wounded planet. The wind from the nightly sandstorms had quieted, and the first-awakened humans could pull the emergency pins keeping their doors shut and walk out for the first time into their fresh, dew-covered ground, bathing their bare feet in the damp, chilly earth. For a people who had never seen the surface of the land they hailed from, this was a beautiful sight…but not one they could enjoy for long.

Within a few hours of the daybreak the work began. Every human had some part of the “green rings” to tend to, as was expected of them by the Captain and starliner officials, in order to keep the recolonization of Earth constantly going forward. These tiny sprouts were the only hope the planet had, the only way the humans could continue to live here and never have to set foot in space again. Throughout the day they would take shifts pruning, watering, planting, inspecting, replanting, sampling, and irrigating the vast acres of foliage; when they were not farming they were making trips to the city ruins, salvaging what they could use to keep the colony itself from collapsing. Surprisingly, the Ultra Stores that had been built over 700 years ago still held up the old Buy N Large tag-line to this very day: they did indeed have all the humans needed, and so much more.

Things inside the Axiom itself had not settled either, despite the ship’s obsolescence. True, the humans did not need the resources provided by the automated crew; they did not need most of the robots who had served them for centuries anymore. However, the ship remained in operation, and it still stood regally in the center of the human colony, on it’s home port. Today, it serves as a museum and resort, providing exhibits about the past and history of the ship, the history of Buy N Large, and (to most) as a lasting reminder that what had happened 700 years in the past must never be repeated.

On most days, the Axiom was packed with visitors. Children ran amok through the crowds as their parents chased clumsily after them, still wobbly on their weakened, flabby legs. Eager treble voices drilled deeper, mature ones about the many exhibits on display, followed by the sighs of both: the children glad their own life isn’t nearly as sedentary, and from the adults, who only wished they hadn’t been so pitiful. On the outer fringes of the crowd, tall, white SECUR-Ts kept the activity levels down to a safe level and made sure the traffic kept moving in order to lessen the damage caused by so many people in such a limited area.

“Mama, Papa! Over here!”

A young, seven-year-old child darts from a mass of idle adults, making a beeline for a particular exhibit roped off in the middle of the floor. It doesn’t seem like much more than a glass case, standing freely next to the diving board of one of the Lido Deck’s main pools, but upon closer inspection the boy managed to make out a mess of shattered glass and metal, strewn in random places all over the floor of the case. Screwing his freckled face up, he leaned a little over the ropes just as his parents, a large man with short, blonde hair and a woman with a red ponytail sticking up from the back of her head approached from behind, panting with the effort of chasing after their hyperactive child.

“Don’t lean so far over the bastions, Jeremy,” the woman chided gently, grabbing the back of his jumpsuit to put some distance between the display and the boy’s eager face. “You’re only going to excite those stiff old Stewards milling about here.”

“What’s this a display of, Mama?” Jeremy’s brow furrowed a bit as he looked to his parents. “It kinda looks…broken.”

“It’s the ship’s first mate,” the man answered, laying a hand across the boy’s backside. “They called him GO-4. He was the right-hand guy…or bot, I guess…for the Captain himself, and was usually the first to hear about anything that went on in the decks below.”
“But then…why is he broken?”
The blonde man sighed, rubbing his fleshy chin. “When the autopilot rebelled…GO-4 tried to help him. He was knocked out of the bridge window when Captain McCrea tried to silence him.” He cast his blue eyes down at the twisted heap. “Good riddance, too…”

“John, don’t say that!”

The woman leaned to scold her husband, when suddenly, the crowd parted and grew silent, and the family turned to see what all the commotion was about.

“It’s them!”
“Why, they’ve never come so early…I wonder what the matter is…”
“Clear the way, you idiot! Can’t you see they’re trying to get through?!”

As the last few people moved to the side, John, Jeremy, and Mary finally caught sight of “them”. Moving slowly through the mid-morning crowd in the Axiom’s Lido Deck were none other than Wall-E and EVE themselves, the praised saviors of the human race and the ones who had helped the Captain found a successful human colony amidst all of the destruction. Wedged between them was a smaller, green-eyed robot who hovered like EVE, yet was gold in color and almost blocky enough to qualify as a sort of refined Wall-E unit; staring worriedly up at EVE as the white probe continued on her way and Wall-E trundled faithfully beside her.

Despite the cheerful atmosphere of the humans pressing in on her from all sides, EVE kept her gaze downward and stern, refusing to look even Wall-E or her daughter in the face as she continued across the floor of the Axiom’s main area. As much as she would have normally wanted to take part in the merriment (as she usually did when she came to the ship…as a human had nodded earlier that she and Wall-E were not strangers here), this time the white probe had a purpose in mind…a directive, dare she call it; though a temporary one.

She had to get to the bridge.

Things had not gone well in the night for EVE; in fact, the things that she had experienced last night at the height of the moon still troubled her even as she reviewed them in her database now. During her dormant mode, a sudden, strong memory had chosen to rise up from her repression and startle her awake, and ever since that had happened she had been turning the concept over and over again in her mind, trying to make sense of why something like this would happen…and why at such an odd hour. The harsh look she had set her luminous blue eyes into was merely a front to keep her real fear from showing through; she was at her most vulnerable at the moment and the last thing the probe wanted was human pity. She came for answers, not sentiment, and as the crowd finally thinned and halted right at the entrance to the bridge, EVE finally stopped and turned to her faithful companions.

“Wall-E.”

The squat trash compactor cocked his goggles up towards EVE’s LED screen, the bars above his lenses springing up at the sound of her voice. He whistled in response, though her look remained unchanged and she pointed at his chest, then at the bot clinging to his arm.
“WENDI.”
Wall-E nodded in comprehension, laying a dirt-caked shovel across his daughter’s backside as EVE finally pointed to the ground before turning to the glass double-doors of the bridge. The gold bot, WENDI, whimpered and called out, but EVE simply turned and pointed to the ground again, keeping her stern gaze. Wall-E gurgled his concern, and tightened his grip on the girl, watching as the doors slid shut behind EVE and the humans began to press in on him.

“What’s wrong, Wall-E?”
“She’s not letting you go in?”
“Well, of course not. She’s Axiom-class, he’s not. Simple hierarchy.”
“They’re robots, not wolves. She just doesn’t want him to come along. Don’t you think she has the concept of privacy?”
“Don’t worry, WENDI…your mama will be back.”

Wall-E nodded, pulling WENDI close to him as the crowd grew tighter around him. He moaned in protest…ever since his accident with the ship’s holodetector, Wall-E had never been comfortable with tight spaces. The humans should realize that, he mused, but all he could do at the moment was hunker down and hope that eventually…

“Enough.”

Suddenly, the crowd gasped and quieted, the area around Wall-E suddenly being bathed in a dim, eerie red light as a slight, pneumonic hiss emanated from behind. WENDI’s emerald eyes grew wide as the red light grew brighter, this hissing closer, and the humans finally spreading outward from their claustrophobic formation.

For hovering only a few feet above the trash-compactor’s head, a large, black-and-white robot had descended from a track in the ceiling, his inner workings twitching slightly behind a visage that looked strikingly similar to that of a ship’s wheel.

AUTO had arrived.


NOTE: WENDI isn’t mine either. She belonged to gothicorca1895 on the Fanbase. ^^;

Comment away!

Oooooh, love it! :mrgreen: Your attention to detail is so good- I love your consistency.

1.I love John and Mary’s reference, and their over-eager, hyperactive son. And the GO-4 thing was great too.
2. I like how the Axiom is now like a museum- in another story I’ve read the ship became derelict and neglected, but I like it when something that isn’t needed for its original job any more is turned into something else and lives on.
3. Aww, I adore the fact that WALL-E and EVE now have a daughter, and how you tried to collaborate the two bots to make WENDI. Sweet! <img src=“{SMILIES_PATH}/love2.gif” alt=“:loves:” title="In

Love" />

Hmm, I wonder why EVE had to go to Axiom Superior by herself. Poor Wall-E and WENDI. And I wonder what AUTO’s gonna do next.

Keep this brillant work up, Epic Lover! :wink: The next chapter will be great, I’m sure.

Whoa, how did Auto get back!?!?!?? <img src=“{SMILIES_PATH}/youwhaaa.gif” alt=“o_0;;” title="You

Whaaa…" />

Great chapter, EpicLover! Can’t wait to hear more! :wink:

Well, I rather enjoyed this. I really want to know now why EVE entered the Axiom Superior, and why she chose to go alone.

I hope to see another chapter posted. Are you still on the forums Epic Lover?

Yes, I am still here. I’ve just taken a bit of a hiatus for a while. coughcoughprocrastinationcough XD

I swear this shall be updated soon!