When I first came online, I wasn't really any different from the other WALL-E units -

I don't remember much from back then, but I was able to review my memory-banks, later on. All I did was what I was built for.

That changed, slowly. Even after a century of trying to figure it out, I couldn't pick out the exact point where it changed, but it did.

Now I can't remember a time when I didn't have a Hal to keep me company, or when I didn't wind up hauling odds and ends back home.

I can't remember a time when, even though I had Hal, I wasn't lonely.

The city of garbage was as still as death... But over the horizon, boots slipping on the piles of tossed-away wrappers and worn-only-once clothing, the last WALL-E android left emerged little by little from the towering piles of rubbish, his dust-caked form and mustard-yellow jumpsuit blending easily into his surroundings. The only thing that separated WALL-E from the litter around him was his movement, and as he crested a small hill of waste and skidded down the other side, his motivation came into view as well: Behind him, but gaining rapidly, was a swirling maelstrom of sulfur-yellow granules, sand and grit swept up from the outside wastelands and brought into the city's limits by momentous wind. As it passed over the ruined cityscape, the dust-storm sucked up mountains of litter at a time, only to spit it back out and re-scatted the garbage across the land; even as WALL-E raced for some kind of protective shelter, one of the mountainous garbage-towers wobbled in the hurricane-force winds and fell apart, the work of months, maybe years destroyed in a single moment.

WALL-E, of course, had bigger problems. Yes, he was programmed to clean up, but he could always re-compact and re-stack the cubes, assuming that he survived this latest dust-storm. However, in seven hundred years he'd lived through his share of dust storms, and although he was definitely not lacking in speed he didn't seem particularly perturbed by the force of nature he was currently fleeing. Even the rat clinging to WALL-E's backpack seemed to take this latest event in stride, his little claws digging into the mesh of the thick-weave fabric as he maintained his position with as much dignity as an ancient monarch astride the royal elephant.

Behind WALL-E, the sandstorm was gaining in fury... and in distance. Then, like salvation in the desert, the form of a chunky vehicle rose like a monolith in the wasteland of trash; it was the same dingy yellow as WALL-E's jumpsuit, and in roughly the same state of wear, its metallic hull pockmarked with countless dings and signs of hard use, but it hadn't caved in yet and to WALL-E, it was a welcome sight. He put on a final burst of speed, skidding so quickly over the garbage that Hal had to curl into a furry ball and half-bury himself inside the pack, the drawstring holding its mouth shut slowly being jogged open from the movement of its wearer. The rear hatch of the vehicle gaped open, and within its depths one could almost make out shelves and shelves of what looked like nothing much; WALL-E made a final dash up the metal ramp, slamming a palm on the red-blinking button just inside the open hatch. Almost too slowly, the ramp began lifting to seal the vehicle, its machinery rusting and old from centuries of pelting grit, but just as the first handfuls of sand began hurling themselves into the truck's interior, the ramp shut itself with a rumbling thud, sealing WALL-E and his rodent friend into the truck's interior, away from the destructive power of the dust-storm outside.

Hearing the roar of the storm outside, WALL-E slumped against the metal wall of the truck, seven inches thick and a sturdy steel barricade outside. His sensitive audio sensors picked up the faint scritchy skitterings of the rat as he scampered across the rugged metal floor; like Hal's eyes, adjusted by nature to low-light environment, WALL-E could make out the dim outlines of the vehicle's interior flashing across his optics. However, the WALL-Es had been manufactured to run entirely on solar power, which meant that they were made to operate only during the day; so, WALL-E functioned best in the same light-levels as humans did, which was why he flicked on the light-switch, just above the large red button that operated the rusted truck's ramp.

Above the shelves that lined the walls, strings and strings of ancient lights flickered on, bathing the interior of the vehicle in hues of light that ranged from red to blue. The lights had been found by WALL-E long ago, restored to working condition (once he'd figured out what they were for) and hung about hit 'home' to make it feel a little more... like his? The truck, after all, was just another piece of Buy 'N' Large equipment that had been left behind on Earth during the exodus, in much the same way that WALL-E himself had been left behind. Originally, the oversized vehicle, with its heavy tractor-like treads, had ferried other androids of the WALL-E model to and from the 'work sites,' which basically was the next sector of land where they hadn't yet compacted and stacked the piling garbage. Over time, however, as the other WALL-Es began to fail, they stopped returning to the truck, and WALL-E guessed that had happened all over the planet; he hadn't met any other working WALL-Es for over six hundred years, although he'd found other storage-trucks that had been abandoned just as long ago.

WALL-E was now the sole inhabitant, along with Hal, which was only the latest in a long line of 'pets' that WALL-E had acquired. It seemed that as each rat grew old and feeble and stopped moving, WALL-E would be able to find another friend, burying the deceased rodent in the hard dirt beside the truck. WALL-E thought that it was lucky, but then maybe they were just attracted to the BnL spongecakes that had been piled up next to the truck.

It was to one of those sponge-cakes, lying in a small heap in the corner, that the current Hal was moving steadily towards, nibbling a hole in the corner and tearing off the plastic with his claws. As the rat began to eat away at one end of the spongecake, still edible (more or less) after all this time, WALL-E stifled an electronic sigh as he slung his utili-gun off of his shoulder and propped it up against the closed ramp, before moving further into the "room." Along the revolving shelves, which lined the wall on each side, were stacked haphazard but neatly-sorted piles of WALL-E's salvaged treasures, and the lights overhead cast an almost magical glow over the junk, turning the scene into something special... but Hal was only a rat, even if he was WALL-E's only friend, and rats couldn't appreciate the effect of WALL-E's carefully-tended home. Although it was rusting with age, WALL-E had made a special effort to keep it neat, sanding away the rust and the edges and trying hard to make it feel like "home." WALL-E saw "home" a lot, on the vid-screens that even now activated whenever he came within range, and on one of them he'd discovered the use of those lights. It had been on a commercial that showed humans and a home that was covered in white stuff, and in and around the house had been strings of lights, like the one WALL-E had found. It had taken him a long time to find bulbs that were both intact and ready to function, but WALL-E had a long time to look for them.

Hal rapidly devoured the spongecake and its cream filling, as WALL-E set himself down on the far end of the cargo-space, folding his legs under him as he set down his backpack and emptied it before him. The results of his foraging spilled across the corrugated-metal floor, odds and ends that would probably have been ignored by anyone else, but WALL-E collected without reason or rhyme, picking up whatever caught his eyes and bringing it back here, to his little spot of life in the wasteland. A magnifying-glass that had miraculously escaped being cracked, a Rubix plastic cube of three-by-three colored squares, all mixed up, and a pocketful of round paper tabs rolled across the floor, accompanied by about three-dozen plastic blocks of varying colors and three little figures of human beings. One was a doll the size of WALL-E's hand, made of durable rubber, its fabric dress smudged with dirt; the other two figures were smaller and hard plastic, their glass eyes opening and closing whenever they were tilted or set upright. With one doll in each hand, WALL-E tilted the dolls back and then set them upright again, shuttering his eyes open and close as well; then, he set them aside, scooping up everything but the blacks and the dolls.

With his arms full, WALL-E walked past Hal and smiled at the rat, who was contentedly stuffing himself with a snack-cake that, by all rights, should have been radioactive by now. WALL-E approached one of the massive shelves, scanned it once, and didn't seem to see what he was looking for; juggling his items into his left arm, WALL-E managed to tap the palm-sized button set into the wall, which rotated the shelves horizontally and revealed the extent of the android's scavenging. Along with all manner of clothes and items, several bins were filled with what looked like a macabre assortment of body-parts, all of them extremely realistic except for the coiled wires that protruded from the "severed" ends. Had there been any humans left, or any factories, WALL-E wouldn't have had to resort to this, which would have seriously disturbed any human being; but, all of the assembly-lines which manufactured new parts for the WALL-E line, or for anything at all, had stopped working long ago, and even a robotic body couldn't last forever.

Fortunately, although WALL-E had definitely gained some human characteristics over the past few centuries, he had yet to develop squeamishness. Practicality, at least in this arena, still reigned.

At last, WALL-E found the shelf he wanted, and quickly busied himself placing his brand-new, if very very old, trophies with their similar brethren. Into a pile of twisted-metal puzzles and weathered, near-crumbling board-games went the multi-colored cube, and the magnifying-glass took its place among an assortment of glasses, lenses without any frames, and the clear glass screens of electronic devices that had long since been broken apart. The round paper tabs, for their part, joined a deep bin filled with poker chips and old coins, enough to have bought a large chunk of the continent that had once been called North America, if there was anyone around to do so. Or if there was anything in that mass of land that was worth buying.

His sorting done for now, WALL-E gave the revolving shelves a happy pat, then moved back across the floor of the cargo-hold; in his corner, Hal the rat was now curled up happily on his nest of spongecake wrappers, causing the plastic to crinkle as he squirmed around getting comfortable. WALL-E went back, in the meantime, to his latest project, something he had been working on for a while now, and which he had stored in the far side of the container because of just how precious it was. Tugging on a long rope-like harness of metal cording, the hold was filled with a soft, low rumble as the wheels on a large wooden platform squeakily turned, coasting into view covered by a large and irregularly-shaped tarpaulin. Closer inspection would see that the entire platform was roughly two-thirds the width of the available space, cobbled together from three different rolling platforms, as WALL-E carefully drew off the tarp and gathered it up in his arms.

There, sprawling across the floor of the truck, was a pieced-together imitation of the places that WALL-E saw in the perpetual commercials, especially those which lined the highways and the spaceport. Little houses and tall skyscrapers alternated in a way that would have made no sense to anyone who had actually lived in the old world, but which made perfect sense if the only way you'd seen those buildings was spliced together in a commercial made long ago. Little two-story ranch-houses were constructed out of tiny planes of wood, singed around the edges were WALL-E had burned them apart with his built-in laser, originally installed to destroy stubborn trash that just refused to be compacted. So long afterwards, though, there was little that hadn't become degraded-enough to be crushed eventually, so WALL-E put the laser to use like a high-tech jigsaw.

It was actually remarkable, what WALL-E had managed to do; the buildings even had little panes of glass for windows, and they were surrounded by bits of wood and debris that happened to be green. In and among these buildings were plastic trees and fabric flowers, and mis-matched human figurines that were once a child's toy, or in one case the little figures on top of someone's wedding-cake. While the dust-storm raged outside and the latest rat snuggled into his plastic bedding, WALL-E ever-so-carefully placed the largest of the doll against the skyscrapedr, which made it look ridiculously out of proportion but which seemed to make WALL-E happy. The other two dolls, somewhat capable of standing on their own, went into a patch of wooden trolley that had been painted green, designated by the look of things as the park, complete with regular designs of the plastic parsley that was standing in for trees.

Apparently satisfied with his masterpiece, WALL-E straightened up and dusted himself off again, a futile yet automatic effort to keep himself looking mostly-presentable, and leaned over to the jury-rigged screen that took up most of the southern wall. Tucked into this corner was a tiny mechanical wonder, a battery the size of a breadbox that ran on roughly the same solar energy as WALL-E himself. Plugged into that was a small, white, electronic handheld, wired to the larger flatscreen with cables that were already beginning to fray, but which - when WALL-E flicked the batteries to life - were adequate-enough to convey electricity to the handheld and the screen.

On the screen there appeared a picture, not without some static, but considering the age of the source material it was actually fantastically preserved; WALL-E had found the tape very long ago, not long after he had found the first Hal, and he'd been puzzled as to the purpose of the tape until he'd passed by a billboard advertising "vintage antiques." The tape, it seemed, was meant to go into some kind of tape-player, but although WALL-E had scoured his assigned cleaning areas, he'd found nothing of the kind - Perhaps 'antique' meant 'not made anymore'? Still, WALL-E was curious, so in the time after his job was done but before he shut down for the remainder of the cycle, he'd scanned whatever film was still readable into his own data-banks, and he'd cobbled together something to project what he found the way he'd seen on the billboard. Most of it was already degraded by the time he'd found its source, but...

As WALL-E watched, a happy expression on his face, humans began to file onto the screen, dressed in brightly-colored clothing and making music and moving around happily. WALL-E didn't know what that was called, but he understood that they did it because the humans were happy... and, sometimes, he'd try to mimic them, although his joints had been built for lifting and not for dancing. Hal would usually perch on one of the shelves, watching blankly, and WALL-E was never able to duplicate what the humans did, but he tried anyway. Someday, maybe, he might be able to move with such ease and grace, even though he was never meant to do so.

There were no such attempts today, however. The snow on the screen cleared, and a man and a woman were walking in a green area of trees and white sidewalk; this part of the recording skipped, having been watched so many times, and it was obvious that the little green path on the miniature landscape had been based off of the park in the recording. WALL-E smiled as the two humans sang, and if ever a robot could be said to look wistful, WALL-E did; this wasn't like the happiness from the first part of the recording, with all of the humans together, but this kind of happiness seemed... nice. The man and the woman sang to each other with smiles, and they held hands - This had puzzled WALL-E the first few times, and for a while he'd thought that they were disagreeing, or one of them was trying to pick the other up by the extension, but that had turned out to be wrong. They looked too smiling to be disagreeing, and physics didn't work that way either.

WALL-E had no words for it, but although this part of the recording made him smile, it also made him feel very strange... Hollow inside, maybe, although he knew that inside he was filled to the brim with gears and microboards. Turning brown-glass eyes from the screen to the miniature at his side, WALL-E looked down for several long moments at the two dolls standing on the green square, side-by-side, and facing the screen as though they were watching the couple move down that other, real tree-lined avenue. Then, carefully, very gently, WALL-E moved the figure that looked like a male human an inch or two closer to the female doll, so that it looked as though they were holding hands.

Author's Notes: I apologize if there are some rough spots in this one; writing during the holidays at my place is always risky, and we've been having pretty severe blackouts on top of that (making typing at a stretch hard), I may edit it later. Also, belated apologies for the formatting, but I'm having PC problems and had to do this in Notepad.