Chapter 2: A World Outside of Yonkers

I don't own WALL•E.

WALL•E timidly rolled out of the alley. The sight of all these strange humans was just bizarre. He had gotten used to seeing to seeing humans again in the last two years, but these people were drastically different. For one thing, he had been rolling along the sidewalk for over fifteen minutes and none of them even noticed he was there. It reminded him of the obliviousness on the Axiom, except some of these people seemed to be actively trying to ignore each other. For another, most of them were incredibly slim compared to the people left obese from a lifetime of doing nothing aboard the starliner.

WALL•E chirped at the humans, but none of them seemed to notice. He rolled along until he saw something strange. He rolled over to a fire hydrant on the edge of the sidewalk. He had never seen one of these before, and wondered the strange red object might be some kind of robot. He waved at the hydrant, hoping to make friends with the strange robot. He was met with silence.

"Yoo-hoo." WALL•E called, waving again. The strange red thing still gave no reply. "Aw."

He then saw the small appendages on the side and thought these might be arms. He extended his own arm to shake hands, but the hydrant still ignored him. WALL•E took hold of the hydrant's "hand" and tried to shake it. It wouldn't budge. The garbage-bot turned his hand from side to side in an effort to get some reaction. His eye brows shot up as he felt the "hand" turn in his own. Finally, he made progress! He excitedly turned his new friend's hand, laughing as he hoped he'd made a new friend.

His happiness was cut short as a huge stream of water shot out from the hydrant and blasted WALL•E several feet back. The humans around him yelled in annoyance as the water drenched them as well.

"What the hell happened?" yelled a man in a now soggy business suit.

"What the hell is that thing?" the business man yelled, pointing at WALL•E.

"I don't know, but it opened the hydrant!" Yelled the angry woman. WALL•E realized that he was in trouble. He saw the cap of the hydrant in his hand and hid it behind his back in a vain attempt to play innocent.

"Stupid thing!" the man said, giving WALL•E a swift kick to his door. The kick sent the little robot rolling backwards into the street.

WALL•E sputtered angrily at the man until the sound of a horn grabbed his attention. He yelped as a big red car rushed right past him. Two more sped by behind him, scaring the daylights out trashbot. He turned just in time to see a huge white pickup truck bearing down on him.

"AH!" WALL•E yelled as he sped out of the way of the truck, running right into the path of a blue mustang. He sped down the street as fast as his treads would go, trying to outrun the car. He whizzed ahead until he suddenly ran into something. He saw that another car had stopped at a red light right in front of him. He turned and saw the perusing car had done the same. He sighed in relief until he heard another angry yell.

"WHAT WAS THAT?" Came the voice. WALL•E took that as his cue to leave. He quickly rolled onto the sidewalk and boxed up behind a garbage can. A man emerged from the car he ran into and saw the dent he left. The man became even angrier and began yelling at the car WALL•E had run from. "You idiot, you rear ended me!"

"I did not, ya jerk!" yelled the man from the blue car.

WALL•E slowly rolled into a nearby alley, trying to remain unseen. He unboxed himself as he rolled behind a dumpster. WALL•E sighed as he looked at the piles of garbage just laying everywhere. His old directive kicked in and he began gathering the trash up and compacting it. In a few minutes, he'd made a dozen cubes. It eased his mind to do something he was familiar with in this strange place.

He rolled over to a pile next to a large cardboard box and began compacting again. He piled another five cubes on the little stack he had begun when he suddenly ran into a problem. He scooped up a load for compacting, but an old shoe amongst trash didn't move. WALL•E tried scooping it up, but it was too heavy.

"Hmm." WALL•E whirred. He reached and tried to pick the show up, but it wouldn't move. He tried to pull it off the ground, only to have it pull back. "Huh?"

WALL•E gave one last tug at the shoe when suddenly, the large box flew into the air, revealing an old man underneath.

"AH!" screamed the old homeless man as WALL•E jumped back in fear, letting go of the man's shoe. The old man had been sleeping underneath the box and WALL•E had given him a rude awakening. He adjusted his stocking cap over his thick head of grey hair. He grabbed a piece of paper stuck in his long white beard and threw it in WALL•E's direction. He pulled his worn old trench coat tight over what appeared to be a badly torn, stained suit. He rubbed his dirty face and looked around, trying to get his bearings. "What? What? What's going on here?"

"Uh oh." WALL•E said, his head sinking part way into his body.

"What is..." The bum began, but stopped midsentence as he saw WALL•E. His eyes widened in a mix amazement and horror. "Oh no! No! No, no, no, no! You... you're not supposed to be here!"

"Uh..." WALL•E backed up, nervous at making yet another person mad at him.

"You don't exist! You can't! HOW CAN YOU BE HERE?" The old man screamed. WALL•E backed away, not knowing how to answer the old man's questions. "Are you here to hurt me?"

WALL•E yelped and shook his optics in an emphatic no.

"It's not my fault! I tried! I did my best! It's not my fault we got into this mess!" The man said desperately to WALL•E. The man's eyes darkened "It's YOU! IT'S YOUR FAULT! WHY DIDN'T YOU DO YOUR JOB! THIS NEVER WOULD'VE HAPPENED IF YOU'DDONE YOUR JOB!"

WALL•E began backing away from this increasingly scary man.

"I trusted you! We all did! And you didn't come through!" The old man roared, grabbing a piece of board from the ground. "You wrecked everything! Well, I may as well return the favor!"

The old man swung the board at WALL•E, missing him by mere inches. That was it! WALL•E sped out of the alley as fast as his treads could carry him. The old man swung at him as he passed, but only hit the dumpster instead.

WALL•E sped onto the sidewalk, maneuvering through people, not caring if they noticed him or anything besides getting away from the scary man. The old man looked around the street for the little robot, but he was long gone. WALL•E slowed his pace as he saw that the old man was nowhere to be seen. He leaned against a garbage can in relief.

WALL•E turned and saw dozens of humans walking in and out of a large building. His curiosity had peaked. He rolled up to the building as the doors slid open for him. This place was filled with many, many things he had never seen before. Judging by the signs that hung everywhere, this place belonged to someone named Macy. Whoever this Macy person was, WALL•E thought he or she must be very nice for letting all these people come in and play with all this stuff.

He saw two female humans looking over a long black dress. They seemed to not like it.

"Look at this." One woman said, holding up the price tag. "I could get this for half the price when Gimbels was still open."

"Outrageous." Said the second woman. The first woman threw the dress back on the rack. WALL•E rolled over to the dress. He lifted it off the rack and inspected the dress. Being a robot, he didn't understand the appeal of clothes. He inspected the price tag in his hand. For some reason, this little piece of paper had made that woman mad. He decided to fix it. He ripped the tag off the dress and put it back on the rack. But then, he noticed that all the other dresses on the rack had similar tags. Well, he'd just have to fix all of them. After a minute of work, all the dresses were free of those bad tags. WALL•E buzzed happily as he rolled away, pleased with his good deed.

He rolled on when he suddenly saw something horrific. He yelped as he beheld what he thought was several mutilated human bodies. The stood there in the isle in plain view, yet the humans paid no attention. There were three missing their heads, three torsos missing their heads, arms and legs and several more that looked more or less intact, but their faces were missing. WALL•E stared at the mannequins in horror. What kind of monster could have done this? Could it still be around?

WALL•E boxed up in fear and rolled in the opposite direction as fast as his treads could carry him. He turned down an aisle and looked behind him to make sure he wasn't followed. He sighed in relief and looked around. He was surrounded by hundreds of pink boxes depicting a blonde girl named Barbie. He rolled down the aisle, taking in the strange shrine to whoever this Barbie person was.

"Hi." came a voice from behind him.

He turned and saw two humans and a small child in a stroller. The man was very large and reminded him of the people back home. The woman was much skinnier, and had the same color hair as his friend Mary. The little girl had dark hair like her father and wore a pink shirt with a picture of a smiling mouse on it. The parents were distracted talking to each other and apparently hadn't even noticed WALL•E. However, the little girl in the stroller saw him and smiled at him.

"I'm Nancy." The little girl said.

"WALL•E." WALL•E replied, pointing to himself.

"Hee-hee, you're a funny toy." Nancy said, giggling in delight.

"Toy?" WALL•E asked. He wasn't sure he had ever heard that word before.

"Mommy, can I have the funny robot?" Nancy asked, turning up to her mother. The mother turned from the discussion with her father and looked down at WALL•E. Her eyes widened at the strange, dirty looking, supposedly toy robot.

"I think you're a little too young for a toy like that. Maybe for your next birthday." The mother said.

"OK, by, WALL•E." Nancy waved as her parents went down the aisle.

WALL•E waved goodbye to the little girl. She was the nicest person he'd met since he came to this weird place, and he certainly liked meeting her.

He turned the corner and saw a large box marked Super Balls. He reached up to try and get one of these "super balls", but he accidentally knocked over the box. Hundreds of tiny, brightly colored balls.

"Wuh-oh." WALL•E said. He better clean this up. He opened his door and reached with his hands down to scoop the balls into his compactor. The second he touched the balls, they bounced out of his grasp. He tapped his finger, trying to rethink his approach. He rolled over to the side and began rolling into the mess of balls, sweeping them into his compactor as he rolled along. He succeeded in gathering them all. He scooped up the last little green one and compacted the balls.

He ejected a neatly crushed cube of rubber balls. Now they would be easier to put back. He reached forward to put the cube back in the box, only to have the cube explode. The compressed rubber balls flew in every direction as WALL•E boxed up again to avoid being hit.

He raised his optics enough to see his little plan had backfired. The balls had knocked over several other toys, several displays of dishware near the toy aisle. Several balls had flown into people's faces or rolled on the floor causing people to slip. And worst of all, several balls were still bouncing off the walls and causing chaos around the store.

Still in his box form, he rolled back towards the door, trying his best to not be noticed. He was so distraught at the bedlam he had unintentionally created that he failed to notice he was zooming right for the mannequins he'd seen before. He ran right into them ad he rolled, knocking them over and causing one to land on top of him. He screamed as what he thought was a dead body fell on him. He rolled at top speed towards the door, too panicked to remember how to open the door He just raced through the plate glass window and got out of there as fast as he could.

WALL•E rolled away from the store and turned into an alley. He shook in his box from this whole experience. He just wanted to hide from this weird place. He wished he could just enter sleep mode and wake up back in the truck with EVE. He stayed there in that alley for the rest of the day.

When night came, he decided to risk a look out at the place at night. He hoped a sandstorm wouldn't kick up when he had no place to hide. He looked out at the brightly lit street and found it strangely beautiful. He wondered if the rest of the city looked like this too.

He looked around and noticed a fire escape on the side of the building. He climbed up the ladders until he reached the roof of the building. He looked out over the city and was amazed.

"Ooh!" WALL•E said, gazing at the skyline in wonder. This place was weird. One minute, it seemed like the most unpleasant place he'd ever been and the next it was a place of magic. He absent mindedly hit his play button. Put On Your Sunday Clothes began to play and realized he'd never really understood those lyrics until that moment.

Out there

There's a world outside of Yonkers

Way out there beyond this hick town, Barnaby

There's a slick town, Barnaby

Out there

Full of shine and full of sparkle

Close your eyes and see it glisten, Barnaby

Listen, Barnaby...

He looked out over this strange new world. So this is what the man, Cornelius was talking about in his favorite movie. The new discoveries, the new places. Even seeing the Axiom for the first time wasn't quite this wondrous.

Put on your Sunday clothes,

There's lots of world out there

Get out the brilliantine and dime cigars

We're gonna find adventure in the evening air

Girls in white in a perfumed night

Where the lights are bright as the stars!

This place was a new adventure. One that no robot had ever had before. The people were different, the city was unlike anything he'd seen in centuries. The buildings were all lit up with thousands of tiny lights, it was so bright it really was as bright as the stars.

Put on your Sunday clothes, we're gonna ride through town

In one of those new horse drawn open cars

We'll see the shows at Delmonico's

And we'll close the town in a whirl

And we won't come home until we've kissed a girl!

The last lyric shook WALL•E from his reverie. This place was amazing, but it lacked the one thing that would make it perfect: having EVE there with him. He pulled out the lighter she gave him. It was his only connection to her. He stared at it for a long moment, then held it close to his chest. It wasn't anywhere close to having her there with him, but it would have to do for now. He promised in that moment that he would find a way home, and when he got there he would kiss his girl.

Author's note: OK, first of all, HUGE APOLOGY to everyone for taking so long. I kept trying to work on this story, but something kept coming up whenever I tried to work on it. I'll try to keep the updates more regular.

I incorporated some of the WALL•E shorts on Youtube into his chapter cause I thought it would fit with his predicament. Congrats if you got the reference. Also, sorry if I don't get the details of the NYC right, I've never been there so I don't know jack about the layout besides landmarks like the Empire State Building and Central Park are there somewhere being.