Title: Dormancy
Fandom: WALL-E
Rating: K
Genre: General
Characters: EVE, WALL-E, Burt McCrea, robot OCs
Summary: Captain McCrea brings the other Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluators out of hibernation. EVE experiences an identity crisis.
Author's Note: Originally written and posted to AO3 for Yuletide 2015 as a gift for ChokolatteJedi. :)
.
"EVE."
She looked at the droid, gaze bright and level. "EVE," she replied. For a moment the new designator slipped in her memory, caught between shreds of old data and months spent alone. Then it clicked together. She amended the introduction. "EVE-1."
The other droid buzzed a little uncertainly – was that laughter? – and offered her own correction. "EVE-7." Her headlights contracted, slits of blue in a dark panel.
Automatically filing the image away with similarly composed memory data, EVE flashed through reflections. Wide observatory windows of the Axiom. Dark standing water after torrential brown rains. Gleaming mirrors from the bins in the back of WALL-E's truck. That was EVE, white and sleek and shining. Efficient. Directive. This EVE, hovering before her, flew easily into the same archives, distinction unnecessary and nearly impossible.
The Captain had been at a loss what to do with the EVE droids in the beginning. Along with the WALL-A units and other specialized manual workers, they'd been left to their own devices while the domestic bots set up temporary living spaces and the Axiom workers slowly began repurposing the ship. Some of the communication specialists, out of commission for centuries, had been immediately pulled out of stasis and assigned to attempting interspace connection with the other ships. EVE saw them every night, had seen them every night for months now, crouched on the hulking outer shell of the half-stripped Axiom with antennae outstretched toward a starless sky like the branches and trees the Captain went on about. Once she'd tried to talk to one. It had responded politely, a flurry of beeps, but its focus seemed scattered. She'd bowed out of the conversation as quickly as possible, leaving the communicators to their work. Watching from a distance seemed preferable after that.
Observancy was coded into EVE's nature. She watched everyone now, watched and watched and stored away. For months after the Axiom's landing the other EVE droids had lain undisturbed in a jumbled pile by the truck, only partially unpacked, still dormant. EVE would have preferred to let them lie until the Captain made up his mind as to their next directive, but WALL-E had been fascinated by them. When his efforts to wake them up failed, he'd enlisted EVE and the M-O unit to help construct a shelter from scrap metal. At least with a shed the blank shiny faces wouldn't be staring out in the open, caught indelibly on every visual scan EVE made, so she'd done her level best to build and lift and weld with what she had while M-O shored up the foundations, chattering away to both of them as though this kind of work was what he'd been made for. The end result was aesthetically appalling, haphazard and wildly tilting. It was nothing like what EVE watched the humans and their domestic maintenance bots build, symmetric and calculated, around the skeletal hull of the deserted Axiom. Still, WALL-E was enamored by it. After every night when the wind picked up, his first order of business upon venturing out of the truck was a trip to the shed to brush out everything that had accumulated on the unconscious droids. He worked with infinite care, swathing his grasping apparatus in old human rags so as not to leave a single scratch. Sometimes EVE considered suggesting that they just move the other units into one of the human storage sheds if he were going to worry that much about them, but she was never quite able to reach the point of bringing it up.
After all, she liked watching WALL-E. Even now she wasn't able to pin him down into any single category. Whatever motivated him, however incomprehensible, never seemed to falter. Not content with watching, he inquired enthusiastically into every new development in the humans' construction project, every day. Beyond questions and expressive interest, he involved himself. EVE wondered how he so easily defied his purpose. For now, the Axiom's WALL-A units served as the main trash compactors for the human community. Nobody had even brought up the possibility of reactivating the dormant WALL-E bots scattered throughout the wasteland of Earth, even though she could hardly move without coming across another one. Still WALL-E worked. He sifted through piles of trash and blocks of junk to find trinkets for the children and pieces of machinery for the workers. He guided the new settlers through mazes of hulking trash-block towers to dumps, to stores, to centuries-old human houses. He delivered delicate little pieces of what used to be the Axiom weather control system to the new meteorology center. He told the Captain about the electrical storms of wind and sand and lightning that tore out of pollution-brown clouds and pummeled the earth into wasteland.
Captain McCrea, with his dreams of trees and gardens and summer rain, had appeared doubtful towards WALL-E's warning at first even when EVE backed it up. After the first storm screamed through their settlement in the night after months of calm following the initial landing, he came to them disorganized, almost in a panic. His tiny garden had been flattened. Half the houses had lost their roofs and John's school building, where they'd just finished construction, had been broken back down into its component parts in a matter of minutes.
WALL-E was humming over the other EVE droids when the Captain showed up. The tilting shed had given up and mostly collapsed (its left-side supports still appeared to be making up their minds). EVE scanned the damage over and over, not sure what else to do. There was a piece of tarp, stained the same sand brown as everything else, fluttering under the weight of sand and destroyed roof. EVE remembered tossing it over the others before putting on the roof – it would minimize scratching damage from the storm, at least. She looked away. Her scanners caught movement from the direction of what had been the Axiom.
"WALL-E," she said, focusing in on the approaching Captain. WALL-E beeped absentmindedly, absorbed in an attempt at tugging one of the right-hand wood support struts back into position. EVE wondered whether blasting it away would help at all.
"Hey! EVE!" The Captain stopped walking and waved with both hands. Her auditory sensors could hardly pick up on him from this distance, but she whistled a greeting anyways. It was the sort of thing he expected. By the time he actually arrived, WALL-E had satisfied himself with pulling the support pieces into a slightly less extreme angle from the vertical and moved on to clearing what used to be the roof off of the other EVE droids.
The Captain made his way up to EVE and plopped down on the ground next to her. "Whew!" He folded his hands, unfolded them, cracked his knuckles. He stretched back, sat up, took off his cap and ran a hand through his hair, put the cap back on. He closed his eyes and opened them and looked at WALL-E, painstakingly levering a piece of sheet metal off of the droids. "Some storm last night." EVE hummed low in agreement.
"What're you up to?" EVE knew the question was directed at WALL-E, mostly, but he was invested enough in his current task that he didn't seem up for lengthy explanations. She scanned her memory, reminding herself that the Captain hadn't been up to the truck since before the shed was built, when he'd dropped the EVE droids off with them in the first place. So she gestured to the other EVEs, what had been the shed, and WALL-E, now valiantly struggling under the weight of the metal he'd taken on.
"Oh." Fortunately this narrative seemed to make sense to the Captain. She still had trouble with intricate human communication sometimes, not having been designed to verbalize beyond basic self-identification. "You guys built that for the other EVEs?"
She whirred. Affirmative.
"That's nice! That's…nice."
Most probably he hadn't gotten adequate sleep last night. EVE wondered whether he had only come up to check on them. It seemed unlikely. The Captain left most of the robots to their own devices, even those employed around the human settlement area. His behavior made little sense to her, given their history with the AUTO unit, but she saw no real reason to question it either. She tilted her head to one side and waited for him to offer further explanation.
"I guess they don't – " he started, then cut himself off. "I mean, how are you doing, EVE? And WALL-E? I see him around a lot more, but it's really busy around the camp right now and I always try to say hello but everything moves so fast, you know?" He sighed. "Anyways, I guess I see what you meant about the storms now."
EVE didn't have a sound for that. She stayed quiet, facing him. Her auditory sensors caught wood cracking, and WALL-E's anxious whistle.
"Our garden isn't looking so great anymore. I guess maybe you already heard about that…but…" For a moment he seemed lost for words, an interesting change from his usual easy verbalization. "And all the roofs are gone, and the school building is completely flattened. We lost one of our water supply tanks too. The wind took the cover off, or maybe something flying around hit it, and…do you think you could dig a well, by the way?"
A what? She trilled questioningly.
"Oh, you know, for water. A channel in the ground, to get to the water underground. Like the one we were working on last month, but that took weeks to get deep enough with all the construction robots here on Earth being permanently deactivated, and I was thinking maybe if we tried with your cannon, it would go a lot faster." He took a breath. "I mean, that wasn't why I came up here, but talking about the water made me think of that. If you think it might work."
Now she knew what he meant. The idea seemed workable, if totally unlike any task she'd ever undertaken, directive or not. "Affirmative," she said after only a second's consideration. There was no statistically significant risk involved. She had never used the cannon for anything besides self-defense and maneuvering before, but if Captain McCrea wanted to make an attempt to use it for something else there was no reason not to.
"Great! I mean, thanks, EVE." He was smiling now. Although she still didn't do too well identifying specific emotions, she guessed that was relief. "We're going to be doing a lot more unscheduled construction stuff already this week because of all that storm damage so if you want to just come by whenever we can give that a shot…give it a shot, haha. With the cannon… Sorry."
She wondered again what the reason for his visit was. She wondered how best to prompt him about it.
To his credit, the Captain recovered quickly from his foray into incomprehensible humor. "So! If that works out, or even if it doesn't, what I came up here to do was to ask about the EVEs, actually. The other EVEs. Those EVEs." He pointed at the shed too, as though he hadn't already made himself abundantly clear. Point thoroughly reinforced, he continued. "I know you guys have probably gotten attached to them, the little house and everything, but I was already thinking of waking them up if we could think of something for them to do. And I don't mean that you don't do anything, EVE, just…specific things. With the sensors and the hands and the laser cannons and all that personal navigation stuff that you've got. So maybe wells, but with the big storm last night too – I mean, I don't know anything about Earth, but that was really bad, and the pictures on the computer don't look like here at all. Not just the trash and everything on the ground – " he waved his hand vaguely – "there's the sky. The computer says it's supposed to be bright blue, or pink and purple and orange, or dark with stars, not this hazy brown cloud stuff all the time. And EVEs can fly and go into space and I was wondering if we could look into that cloud of whatever it is around the Earth we saw when the Axiom was landing, and maybe destroy it or clean it up…the computer says anything that isn't reinforced burns up when it goes flying into Earth's atmosphere, so I thought maybe if we got a bunch of EVEs up there to throw all the sky trash away then the weather wouldn't be like this. Or at least everything would look better."
This was much more than the well idea. She looked at him.
"Does that make any sense at all?" Momentarily he seemed deflated. Then he perked up. "Do you think it would work? With all ten of you?"
What he was saying made sense, technically. At the same time she found herself unable to reconcile it with anything familiar. There should be space-going bots for those tasks, shouldn't there? Some form of WALL unit equipped for space travel must exist. She was keenly aware of her inner computer whirring, kicking into overdrive as she searched her memory and programming for any helpful data on the situation. Certainly there was some better way.
WALL-E knocked more sheet metal off the droids, chirping encouragement to them. It interrupted her search process. The Captain was talking again.
" – and so, I think it would be great!" Now his smile was wide, his expression unmistakeably happy. He seemed more energetic than he had been when he'd trudged up to them at first. "I looked up the EVEs' component construction or whatever it's called, the way you're made, and you have all these shields and everything, though I guess you knew that. The manual says it was originally in case of some kind of disaster with your transport ship. And with the way you and WALL-E got all of us working together on the Axiom, well, I bet getting all these EVEs to figure it out can't be much harder. We'll have to give them numbers or letters or something to tell them apart, like with everyone down at the camp, but don't worry, you'll be number one. EVE Prime." He patted her on the back cheerfully. "Oh, it'll be amazing. You'll do great."
Her process translators were thoroughly unequipped for forming words from the complexity of such confusion. EVE settled for a terse, noncommittal beep.
"I know it's a lot to take in." The Captain looked more serious now. It was too much to hope that he was reconsidering. "We won't do anything until after the well, and then we'll start slow, just reactivate the others and see how it goes. You won't have to worry about any of that, either. I'll find all the information about Earth's atmosphere and whatever junk is floating around up there and just plug it right on in to you and the other EVEs, no problem." He started to get to his feet. "And if it doesn't work for some reason, we'll just figure something else out. But I think it'll work. Right, WALL-E?"
WALL-E wasn't visible, though she detected movement behind the shed. She wasn't sure he'd been paying attention to the conversation. It hadn't had much to do with him.
When he didn't receive a response, Captain McCrea shrugged. "I guess I'll leave you to it, then. No hurry on the well – you two should work on fixing your place up first, we can hold everything down by the Axiom." He smiled down at EVE. "Thanks for being available! I know it's probably been tough on you, not having anything to do, and I really appreciate you sticking around and everything and just…thanks." He bent down to pat her head. She hummed, still unsure how else to express her confusion.
"WALL-E," she said again as she watched the Captain walk away, a tinge of desperation creeping into her vocalization code.
He must have caught that. "EVE?" WALL-E's voice sounded a little warped, almost gritty, and when he came around the other side of the shed she was momentarily taken aback. He'd gotten a secure hold on the sheet metal he'd gone after and was dragging it triumphantly behind him. It looked as though he had acquired some sand in the process. His dark, rusted exterior was several shades lighter than usual, dulled from the coating. Sand was crusted in his treads. A heap of sand was slowly forming around his neck, filtering down from the pile on top of his ocular pieces.
WALL-E looked at her, blinked, blinked again, and adjusted his oculars. They creaked, crunching on the small avalanche of sand that cascaded between them at the movement. WALL-E chirped in surprise. EVE laughed.
"EVE," he said, and let go of the metal. He reached out. She phased her digital implements in and gripped his hand tightly.
.
Two days later they went down to the Axiom together. The early sunlight strained through layers of cloud, catching on WALL-E's lenses when he peered up at it. EVE flipped on her visor settings and passed him, maintaining a steady speed. He called out, asking her to wait – he'd found something new, she noticed when she looked back – so she slowed marginally. It took WALL-E a few minutes to catch up, his treads squeaking frantically on dry ground. They settled into a comfortably brisk pace side by side, and reached the camp by the Axiom before the sun had grown much brighter.
EVE dropped back and let WALL-E take the lead when they entered the camp proper. She rarely ventured into the midst of the action, not having anything to contribute to the construction efforts, so he knew the place better. They found Captain McCrea in the remains of his garden with a few young humans and an assortment of domestic bots designed for fine motor coordination, trying to figure out how to build some kind of house for the plants. EVE wondered why they hadn't done that in the first place. It was intuitive that humans needed shelter, so why not other life forms? Then again, the hologram plans the Captain had pulled off his computer looked remarkably similar to the shed WALL-E had attempted for the hibernating EVE droids, only transparent and more finicky. Recalling the image of the collapsed shed, she scanned the flattened plants and wondered how beneficial that sort of construction would actually be.
Looking at the plants, EVE felt a spike somewhere in the depths of her sensory processing system. More than a month ago she'd manually reset her code so her possess-shutdown response would no longer be activated by plant material, following an unfortunate accident at the Captain's newly-sprouted garden. Although the organic identification sensors couldn't be completely shut down, she'd managed to bury and confuse them to the point where they didn't interfere with system process. The Captain had hardly minded about the accident. Ever since the seeds had sprouted, springing up boldly alongside EVE's plant, he had been totally absorbed in them. They'd been salvaged from the Axiom's seed storage compartment where they had lain locked away for centuries. In addition to wiping the compartment's location from the ship's internal maps, AUTO had turned the storage freezer off, so the Captain had been ecstatic that any seeds had sprouted at all. No wonder they enthralled him.
WALL-E chirped politely and Captain McCrea noticed them.
"Oh! Hi there, WALL-E." He struggled for a second getting to his feet. "Hi, EVE. Here to dig a well?"
"Affirmative."
"That's great!" Pocketing the hologram projector, he glanced at the humans and robots, most of whom appeared to be deep in discussion over one particularly battered plant's chances of survival. "You guys just keep up the good work, I'll be back. Okay, EVE, right over here…"
As they threaded their way through sheds and houses towards the northwestern side of the camp he continued chatting with WALL-E, stepping over or around debris left by the storm like it was habit to him by now. WALL-E had a little more trouble evading the chunks of wood and blocks of construction material, so EVE kept pace with him, pushing objects out of his way when she could. Even with the obstructions, they reached the edge of the camp quickly.
She'd seen the existing well before, while the humans were building it and afterwards. It was undeniably in worse shape post-storm. A few humans were gathered around it, working to reconstruct the stone walls. They looked up and waved hello to the Captain. Some of them called out greetings to WALL-E too. She didn't recognize any of them, and returned her focus to the task at hand.
Captain McCrea beckoned her over to an area marked off with rocks, about fifteen feet in diameter. "I was thinking if you fired near the middle of that circle that should work. Just do your thing!" He took a few steps back, folding his hands behind his back, then raised his voice. "Hey, guys, EVE's here to dig the well! You don't mind if they watch, right?" It was almost an afterthought.
Of course EVE didn't mind. She hovered thoughtfully just outside the circle, WALL-E beside her, and tried to ignore the growing commotion as the humans working on the well turned to look at them. With a practiced spin, she unholstered her ion cannon, then rose into the air. The circle's center was easy to calculate. She drew the cannon and aimed. She had no way to calculate its effect when fired for this purpose. EVE flew a tight circle over her target and decided to move to a higher altitude. Dropping aim for the time being she flew another couple of circles, assessing the angle. Would wind speed be a significant factor? Were the automatic equations using the correct constants? She manually calculated the problem and reached the same result. Unsatisfied, she recalculated, then double-checked. Same answer. Firing would probably have the desired effect.
WALL-E was watching her from below. She wished he'd look away. This had become surprisingly complicated, unnecessarily so. EVE drew her cannon again, aimed automatically, and fired straight down.
The noise was louder than she'd anticipated. Her auditory shields flew up in immediate response as a plume of sand, dirt, and pieces of rock exploded into the air. Dodging a boulder, EVE dove to the ground. "WALL-E!" she called, doubting the earth's stability, fearing the worst. But the dust was already clearing. Her auditory shields fell. She heard the Captain coughing, and shouts from the direction of camp.
"EVE," WALL-E said, nudging her shoulder. He was covered in dust and could have easily passed for a compacted cube of garbage if not for the way his eyes shone. "EVE," he said again, drawing it out admiringly.
She buzzed a chuckle – she had to. "WALL-E," she said fondly and morphed her cannon away, then brushed a pebble off him.
The Captain was the same color as WALL-E, but not so cube-shaped that he could have been mistaken for anything but himself when he slowly got to his feet, carefully checking each limb for injury before taking a step. Eventually he found his legs supportive enough. Rubbing a hand over his eyes, he approached the place where EVE had fired, picking shakily around the piles of rubble her cannon blast had created.
"There's a hole alright!" he shouted. The people who'd seen the entire thing cheered a little nervously along with the bots and humans who'd emerged from the Axiom camp at the sound of the explosion. The Captain rubbed his eyes again and peered down. EVE turned her sensory input processors to the highest setting, reaching for the sound of water bubbling up from the ground, and was instantly blasted by the Captain's next shout. "THERE'S WATER!"
She flinched and slammed the processors back to normal as what must have been a third of the camp cheered. They already had a well. Perhaps it was the clearly visible nature of the progress, then. WALL-E pressed his head against hers and sparked softly.
"That was definitely something, EVE!" Captain McCrea was coming back towards them. "Nice work. Very…efficient. Very fast. Gets the job done. A little loud, but what can you do?" He stopped and searched around on the ground, clearing dirt and pieces of rock out of the way with his hands until he found whatever it was he was looking for. It was brown and floppy and didn't become any more distinguishable when he shook it violently. He plopped what had apparently used to be a cap onto his head despondently. "Well, I have more of these. Somewhere. Anyways! EVE! Good power, good flight, nice aim. I think we're okay on water supply now, so as long as you're still down with the space trash plan…"
She didn't respond when he looked at her.
"Great!" He rubbed his hands together. "I'll bring some people by for the EVEs next week, once we're done with cleanup. We'll reactivate them and have a talk with them and assign them numbers and everything. You're going to have an awesome time, and we'll clear up the weather, and the plants will be happier and we'll all be happier!" He patted her head again, then WALL-E's. "As soon as we're done cleaning up everything from the storm we'll be there. Keep an eye out!" And the Captain was gone, on his way back into camp.
EVE blinked.
The buzz and hum of heightened activity around the Axiom caused the week to go by less tediously than usual. Also unusually, EVE found herself staying closer to the camp, close enough to become caught up in the action at times. She carried tools back and forth between human workers on the outskirts. Sometimes they asked for aerial visuals on the buildings they were repairing. When she wasn't performing light reconstruction work, she stayed close to WALL-E, watching him work from closer than usual. He seemed happy to have her there, turning to glance at her every few minutes. One of the HAN-S units tried to pass him a mallet during one of the longer glances and dropped it on his head instead, knocking his ocular pieces askew. EVE valiantly fought down the laughter instigated by her vocal response programming. She doubted WALL-E would have minded if she had laughed – he retrieved the mallet, readjusted his oculars, and trilled reassuringly to HAN-S before returning to work – but it didn't feel right, somehow.
Captain McCrea showed up at their shed bright and early on the day he'd indicated, ready for the activation. He arrived in a helpful WALL-A unit along with five other men and women from the Axiom. They reached the shed just as EVE and WALL-E were exiting the truck for the day.
"Great timing, EVE! You two sure did a nice job fixing this thing up."
That seemed optimistic to EVE. WALL-E hadn't made any further progress on pulling the vertical supports so they were actually vertical again. She hadn't had any success with them either – construction wasn't her forte. When her ion cannon started to feel especially tempting, she'd stopped trying to fix the shed altogether. Together they'd managed to clear off the roof so nothing was resting on the other EVE droids, WALL-E had tucked in the tarp cover more securely around them like a human blanket, and that was the extent of their work. Privately, she hadn't seen the logical point of making everything good-looking again just for the EVEs to be removed and activated within a week, but if WALL-E cared so deeply, the least she could do was help him. She liked working with WALL-E, shiny blank-faced droid bodies or no.
The Captain and his people moved more quickly than EVE expected. In less than fifteen minutes they'd whipped the tarp off the EVEs, moved all nine of them carefully into the WALL-A unit with a little huffing and puffing, and rearranged the tarp around them for padding on the short trip back to the Axiom.
"We're thinking we'll start them up at the place you charge, with the compartments – you know, on the other side of the Axiom?"
EVE knew. She didn't go there very often, preferring to power off in WALL-E's truck and run primarily off solar charge, but whenever her emergency charge began to be depleted the remainders of her transport ship were a welcome resource. There were enough cloudy days that it was still a necessity.
"Then we're going to debrief them and give them our coordinates and all the information they need, and assign them numbers and everything else. Should be fun!"
She wondered how anyone could maintain that smile and that excited tone of voice indefinitely. It seemed depleting.
"We've got room in WALL-A if you two want to come along and watch. EVE? Want to meet them right away and say hello?" By this point he looked almost ready to pull her along into the WALL-A unit regardless of her answer. That was just the way the Captain behaved when he became invested in one of his own ideas, she knew, but she slid a few feet backwards almost involuntarily.
"Negative."
He shrugged. "Okay. Come down in a couple of hours and they should be all ready to meet you! New names and everything. EVE Prime."
As quickly as they'd arrived, they left. WALL-E waved goodbye to the WALL-A unit, which hummed low in response, a deep vibrating sound.
Hours. EVE watched them go.
Now she hovered on the other side of the Axiom in front of the recharge station. The EVE droids clustered in front of her, activated and designated, a plethora of conscious reflections. This one, directly before her: EVE-7. And to them she was EVE-1.
She had always worked individually before. It was what she'd been designed to do. She'd never needed a number. Neither had they. She could not even begin to vocalize this to the droids in front of her or the Captain behind her, or WALL-E, off in the main camp, probably carrying building material back and forth to people who needed it.
Their screens were no longer black, solid and reflective. Lights danced in them, reflections of her own.
"Uh…EVE?" Captain McCrea's voice broke the focused tension. "If you want, you can take them for a flight. A little practice run, get used to the area. I told them that's what you were coming here to do."
EVE turned to look at him. So did the others. Of course.
"Right. Sorry. EVE-1."
Once again they focused in on her, all eighteen familiar blue lights alert and keenly attentive. None of them moved. She realized after a second that they must be waiting for her to take off first. Shifting quickly into flight mode – navigational controls to the fore, sensory input prioritized, somatic features streamlined – EVE accelerated into the air. Once, then twice, she looped over the other EVE droids, who tilted back their heads to watch. Then EVE-7 chirruped excitedly and launched herself upwards too, the others following close behind.
For the first few days, EVE kept their flights restricted to the section of Earth sky the Captain's computer helpfully informed her was called the troposphere. Despite the other EVEs' enthusiasm and the Captain's certainty, she was unsure of their ability to fly in such demanding conditions. EVE droids weren't designed for coordinated teamwork any more than they were designed for self-initiated space flight. Still, she had done both, and now she was only one of many. Surely they could accomplish the same.
Establishing flight formations and navigational strategies went even more smoothly than EVE expected. Shared system and computational structures worked in their favor, lowering reaction time with every repetition of a challenging practice flight through canyons and skyscrapers of junk. The constant activity was something to get used to for EVE, but the feeling of involvement was hardly unwelcome. She knew the other EVEs must be having even more trouble moving back into such demanding work after their long hibernation. Not one of them ever complained – they seemed equally glad of the chance to contribute. Then again, they might fear de-activation. EVE never asked.
Captain McCrea inquired about their progress after two weeks of daily practice. He looked so visibly hopeful, the way humans did sometimes, with a level of expressive emotion that swamped her visual sensors and hit her main communication node with keen awareness.
"Affirmative," she told him, and he beamed.
Proper space missions began in earnest after that, all but taking the place of EVE's daily team practice flights. After a taste of true flight, the others were excited to reach new heights. Each passing day only added to their enthusiasm. EVE appreciated the speed with which they adjusted to new conditions, and meticulously kept a running tally of each individual's general conduct filed away in her memory. It was difficult to tell them all apart going off visual sensory input alone, even for her, so that information made it easier.
EVE tried to find distinct memory markers in their behavior patterns. EVE-2 was never hard to pick out – she was quieter, and had a distinctive, gently looping flight pattern. Once she had compared the towers of trash to mountains, projecting a scene from her memory data when EVE expressed confusion over what she meant. EVE-6 and EVE-9 were conspicuous, too. They were the fastest, at the forefront of every flight, the quickest to try new maneuvers, and it usually took EVE multiple attempts to get their attention. EVE-4 reminded EVE of a domestic bot, almost, with her easygoing responsiveness and playful mannerisms. Unsurprisingly, she preferred to recharge at the communal charge center in the humans' camp rather than the stripped-down but still functional EVE transport on the opposite side of the Axiom. EVE-5 had a markedly mathematical thought process, more graphs and numbers and computations than visual memory data. She preferred to work alone but did excellent navigational work in team flight. EVE-7 lived for the missions. Every morning, even before light started to spread and filter through dust-thick cloud cover, EVE-7 arrived early at the launch area to run drills. Sometimes she convinced a few others to come with her. EVE watched them practice on those days, considered going down to join, but those practices were EVE-7's prerogative.
By now the missions had become daily routine for EVE. Today was no different. The ten of them gathered on the plain they used for launch and assembled into a balanced vee formation, EVE at the head. EVE-7 and EVE-8 flanked her as usual, less because of specific role assignments, more because of their consistent early presence at the launch site. It wasn't anything special, a wide desolate space not completely devoid of old human leavings but flat enough to serve. EVE meant to ask the others to help clear it off one day.
The takeoff trajectory had to be slightly adjusted every morning for wind speed and weather conditions. EVE-5 handled those calculations and delivered them through their shared communications network within seconds of her appearance on the plain. She'd quickly become adept at the task. Despite their lack of objective difficulty, complicated mechanical computations frustrated EVE. She preferred to let EVE-5 handle mathematical heavy lifting when possible.
EVE-6 was the last to join them today – or maybe it was EVE-9. EVE found it difficult to tell. The rest of them were already assembled into an even triangle just missing a corner when she showed up, whistling frantically. She'd be the final member of EVE-7's subgroup today, then. Teams of five were assigned randomly based on order of arrival to the launch site. They'd tried to work the full ten in one radius, the first couple of flights, and while nothing too disastrous had come of that EVE had been uncomfortable with the scattered inefficiency that resulted. When EVE-7 had shyly suggested splitting the group so they could cover double the area, EVE agreed after hardly any deliberation.
They still took off and landed in an assembly of ten so as not to lose track of anyone. EVE checked EVE-6 over her shoulder. To her credit, she'd moved into position quickly, ignoring EVE-9's buzzing giggles beside her. EVE faced forward again. Ahead of them the land stretched on, artificially flattened then artificially texturized again by mountains and valleys of human remnants. Today the wind was soft and the rising sun intense in its warmth through layers of cloud. Gray-brown shifted in hue towards golden brown. The change was hardly distinguishable, and not beautiful.
EVE pulsed her call sign through the network as a pre-takeoff signal. Behind her, she heard the others come to attention. She drew her ion cannon and fired a flare into the sky as per the Captain's request. She wasn't sure if he wanted it for the humans' safety and awareness or for added dramatic flare. It wasted little time and was a decent mission starter, so she didn't see the use of deliberating over his intentions.
Their takeoff was fast and clean along the path EVE-5 projected. By now all the EVEs had caught on, developing a proper ascension technique. They worked remarkably well in tandem now too, in marked contrast to the initial attempts at breaking into space. The days of humiliatingly messy disorganization seemed far away already.
Adjusting her slope – the launch calibrator could be finicky – EVE built up speed, bursting through cloud cover. The ground was out of sight. Only the EVEs' location signatures on the network let her know they remained in formation, maintaining near-perfect distance from each other. Rising above the last layer of cloud, she increased speed and glanced down at the others as they followed her out. The distant sun, no longer masked by cloud, glinted off their shells. EVE dialed up her visor settings to bring down the flare effect.
She looked ahead again. Earth's clouds of dirty water droplets, practically immaterial, were far below them now. New clouds rose up in her field of vision. These angular, broken silhouettes, dark against the sun, were nothing like any space-faring vessel EVE had ever seen. In her memory they filled a category entirely their own. Up here she often wondered at the humans of long ago who had created these lifeless things and left them in space to disintegrate. Old ships, dysfunctional satellites, the ruins of Buy N Large advertisement boards that must have blazed with color in years gone by… EVE drew them into deorbit one after another, but their numbers hardly seemed to decrease.
The ten of them entered the debris field together, then split with little fanfare. EVE-7's group for the day peeled off after her at top speed to establish a radius for themselves. She'd noticed that EVE-7 favored an almost randomized approach to the missions, selecting a new area of orbit to focus on every day. It was an interesting tactic, if not one EVE was especially interested in trying herself.
Work went by at a timeless pace. There was the position of the sun and her own internal clock to rely on, and the mid-day status check to reassure them of each other's progression, but everything moved the same. Small debris – tools, containers, the parts and pieces EVE-3 shattered old advertisements into – all of them slid into deorbit alongside ships and satellites and great flying billboards festooned with lights that no longer shone. EVE moved between them as if she were weightless. The others moved too, flight patterns just as even and practiced as her own, the white of their bodies unblemished and unrecognizable. EVE flew with purpose now.
As usual that day, they didn't descend until long after night had fallen down below. The stars were visible here above the atmosphere beyond the sun's light, not nearly so bright and clear as they had been outside the Axiom. Those images, less than a year old, looked alien in her memory alongside these new records.
The sleek streamlined figures of the EVE droids in flight shone white. EVE-4 and EVE-9 darted between chunks of debris and deteriorating spacecraft, chirruping in glee. EVE-8 pffed in exasperation and bumped the satellite she was shepherding a little too hastily. EVE moved out of her way and continued to watch. In the end supervising this work wasn't any different from watching the humans and the domestic bots and WALL-E at their endless construction down on Earth.
That memory pinged inside uncomfortably. EVE shifted. Spinning her wings, she whistled sharply. EVE-4 cut short her pursuit of EVE-9, and in a second EVE-9 came racing back too. Blue headlights attentively fixed on EVE, she circled EVE-4 playfully, eager for the chase to begin again. EVE-8 gave her satellite another push, more carefully calculated this time, and let it lie. EVE-3 came racing out from somewhere behind a particularly decrepit satellite, and EVE-7'S group was already approaching in graceful formation. EVE whistled again, ending the day, and dove back down towards the haze.
Re-entry felt tricky to EVE. She preferred to take it slowly, avoiding EVE-9's method of wild rushes and high-speed tag games all the way down to the surface. It wasn't as though she doubted her own ability to dodge debris or mistrusted the state-of-the-art technology that protected and reinforced her outer shell from the friction of high speeds, the searing heat of the sun. She spread her wings a little further and added a touch of rotation to the carefully calculated dive, ratcheting up visual input and pulling touch sensors down to a murmur. Otherwise the heat created dissonance. The light burned, sparking a path through her reaction data to the inner temperature regulator which purred into a higher setting, washing cool sensations through EVE's innermost mechanisms. Another external radiation-proof shield rolled across her, skin-tight and transparent, triggered by habit. By now the visual input was assaulting her reactionary computer, sending misguided danger warnings bounding through every system – fire! fire! – she'd turn that down too if she could, but the plunge from light and open space into darkness and arbitrary skyscrapers of trash was too risky to take chances on manual adjustments. EVE flattened her wings to her sides, hurtling through the blaze, focused on her altitude and navigational computers. Nearly there. Accelerating, she plunged. Signals pinged within her. Her wings slid fractionally wider. Sand cracked against her surface. Wind, almost negligible thanks to the incredible speed of her dive, pushed against her. Both shields slammed back as her touch sensors leaped back up to normal settings. She leveled out her flight, not braking yet – that would be catastrophic.
Earth was dark and silent but for the rattle and whine of wind and sand through WALL-E's monuments of trash. The lights on the Axiom – tireless communicators, lights hooked to the generator, human campfires – were faint, miles away. They were gold- and blue- and green-tinted, blurry, grouped together. They looked nothing like the stars. EVE set a course straight for them. Although her charge level wasn't depleted by much, she wanted to recharge fully since she hadn't had a chance to for nearly a week. She wouldn't have noticed when she passed WALL-E's truck except for the noise.
When she circled back, she noticed the lights. The light strings that WALL-E usually kept inside were wrapped around the truck's exterior, webs of cord and color. They hung from the walls and dripped over the open door. Humans were talking and laughing inside, accompanied by bots' chatters and whirs. She recognized WALL-E's voice after a second, then M-O's. Unsure what the occasion might be, she approached the door slowly. WALL-E's cockroach was perched on a half-deflated sphere by one storage rack. He chirped when he saw her. EVE hushed him and looked in.
The sight wasn't unfamiliar: WALL-E, M-O, a few HAN-S and BRL-A units, several REM-Es, and half a dozen other small domestic bots had piled into the truck. WALL-E's treasures were pushed out of the way to make room, some stacked carefully, some hanging from the walls, some reassigned to new homes on the rotating shelves. She'd been with them a month ago the last time they gathered like this, although besides WALL-E and M-O the crowd was different every time. It had been happening ever since the initial unpacking of the Axiom, when WALL-E caught sight of a human child with a portable hologram and became enthralled. Mary noticed and asked about it. WALL-E had shown her his video machine and she'd given him a hologram projector pre-programmed with more human stories than EVE thought existed. EVE preferred not to question the stories' purpose after a day spent pondering and not coming up with any substantial answer. They were entertaining and WALL-E loved them, so she had put aside her confusion indefinitely and simply enjoyed the events he created around his hologram showings.
She hadn't known he was planning another one for tonight. There was no logical way she could have – by necessity she'd been spending most nights on the outskirts of the humans' Axiom camp where the EVEs operated, just like the REM-Es who went scurrying back to the innards of the Axiom when the sun went down. Of course she stopped to greet WALL-E or take a quick rest with him whenever they ran into each other around the camp, but scanning through her most recently compiled memory data she realized with an unpleasant shock that her internal navigational system was already beginning to re-orient with the EVE recharge base as centerpoint. It had been the truck before. There was a distance of less than a mile between them, so this was hardly statistically significant. EVE wondered why she was taking note of it.
There was a breathless whistle very close behind her. She whipped around, drawing her cannon instinctively, then checked the movement when she realized she'd drawn on herself. Or – not herself. EVE's visual sensors scanned the other droid's surface, zooming in then out, as though she'd be able to find some distinctive feature if she tried hard enough.
The other EVE ducked her head and flew a tight, nervous circle over the entrance ramp. Probably EVE-2, then…and EVE realized the droid, whoever she was, was trying to get in. Alarmed at her own observational failure, EVE trilled a sheepish apology and moved quickly out of the way. EVE-2 chuckled and ducked her head again before moving inside. A chorus of noise erupted, greetings from the other robots rivalling the hologram story. Scuttling from deflated sphere to door frame, WALL-E's cockroach swiveled his antennae towards EVE and chirped more insistently. She waved him off and turned away. She needed to recharge.
.
EVE-7 had asked to coordinate next morning's takeoff, which went smoothly enough. Their projected launch time was a few minutes earlier than the daily average, EVE-5 reported as the droids clustered around her, waiting for EVE-7's cue. Wind speed negligible. Adjustment for low light conditions necessary – the sky was still dark and thick with clouds, more than usual. EVE-9 and EVE-4 separated from the group to take a quick practice loop, executing a combined barrel roll with ease and flair. Impressed, EVE filed their teamwork away into the space she reserved for missions.
Sharp and clear in the stillness, EVE-7's whistle brought the others to attention. A few lights came on in the Axiom camp. Already well-practiced, the droids assembled in launch formation with EVE-7 at the head. She fired a flare, whistled again, and they were off.
The rush of air as the group gathered speed was all-absorbing. EVE felt her shields flicker on. She added a touch of spin to her trajectory, making sure to stay in line with EVE-7. The earth fell away below her as the clouds sank down to cover her. EVE-7 beeped, signalling her location. The others sounded off in response and EVE marked them on her navigational chart. When they rose high enough for proper visibility they'd be able to break into groups like usual.
Having EVE-7 in control was different, an irregularity in EVE's recent memory data. When her group of five brought a huge disintegrating satellite under control, guiding it into deorbit with no small difficulty, she'd already stored the record in her mission log before she remembered to send the notification to EVE-7 as well. She caught herself preparing to signal for the halfway check only seconds before EVE-7 called them in. The others made similar errors throughout the day. EVE-2 sent three deorbit reports and two sets of satellite coordinates to EVE before correcting herself. EVE-6 never corrected herself – EVE silently forwarded all of her notifications on to EVE-7.
Still, the day's operations went smoothly. When they assembled to EVE-7's final signal, EVE-5 interrupted the landing preparation to show a daily deorbit record. EVE hummed appreciatively and reviewed her own stored data from the day's work. With all the distraction from erroneous reports, she hadn't been able to stay as meticulously aware of her team's accomplishments as usual. Now that she was able to work the numbers properly the result was encouraging. She trilled congratulation to the group. EVE-7 chirped and spun her wings.
The re-entry felt easier than usual. Wings outstretched, EVE let the heat and light roll over her like wind. Yesterday's recharge had been refreshing, but tonight she'd set a course for WALL-E's truck instead. He usually took his time reorganizing after a night with the other robots, so there would still be light strings to store away and treasures to rescue from underneath the jumbled piles that had formed. Sometimes he needed help reaching higher up. It was faster with someone who could fly. EVE increased speed, anticipating.
The storm hit right on re-entry, a cacophony of hail and lightning and wind and sand. In the fraction of a second before EVE's automatic anti-weather stabilizers kicked in, its force had already flung her end over end off course. Regaining some level of control, she fought back, flying with the wind current as best she could and dialing her lights up to full power. Visibility was still low. Whirling above and below and around her, the storm raged in darkness, brief flashes of lightning blazing like white fire against clouds of sand. She staggered under the sudden impact of airborne debris. Decrease altitude! Her altimeter settings were skewed, whether from the speed of re-entry or the shock of the storm she had no clue. EVE switched on her impact shield. Momentarily she considered enabling her long-range obstacle detection. A brilliant streak of lightning barely ten feet to her left and the accompanying roll of thunder made her dismiss that idea in favor of turning up her touch sensors and charge detectors instead. Object impacts would feel more unsettling, but she'd be able to evade the lightning more efficiently. WALL-E's truck had survived the physical onslaught of countless storms for centuries. A direct hit by lightning might drive her controls haywire. Conversely, it might have no significant effect, but EVE preferred not to learn by experience.
Settings optimized for weathering the storm, EVE reached out along the network searching for any of the other EVE droids' signals. She did a cursory check for the Captain's computer too, though it was unlikely she'd descended near enough to the Axiom to pick up on that signal. Neither effort yielded results. There was nothing to do, then, but to fly it out and let the others handle themselves the best they could. EVE's altimeter was beginning to settle, enough that she could identify her height within a hundred feet. She was more than a mile aboveground, which reassured her. Distance was less dangerous in low-light situations. Her navigational calibration and level of charge could handle the journey back to the Axiom once the storm ended. If by some chance she tore or damaged a wing hurtling through ruinations of skyscrapers and towers of compact trash cubes in this wind, that journey wouldn't even be possible. The wind buffeted her, flinging her to and fro. Wood and scrap metal bounced off her outer shield. Keeping careful track of her altimeter and charge detectors, EVE waited.
After six hours, the storm wore itself out into torrential brown rain. The wind died and the lightning retreated with a flicker and grumble. Turned to full power, EVE's headlights flashed and reflected off falling water. She checked for the other EVEs on the network again, and again came up with nothing. They might be out of range. EVE descended more quickly than usual, almost colliding with an old human building on her way down, and zipped into an old Buy N Large hub to wait out the rain. When he was showing his old data to the Captain, WALL-E had said sometimes the big storms came one on top of the other. EVE had no intention of being caught out in that twice in the same night.
But the rain passed too, slow and dreary, after six more hours. While the sky lightened, EVE ran a full systems check just to be doubly sure the windstorm hadn't knocked anything awry. She reviewed atmospheric conditions before emerging from cover, too, in case of another storm. Nothing indicated significant danger. Humidity levels were higher than average and the morning clouds hung low and thick – EVE attributed this to the rain's recent passing. Staying in the abandoned warehouse with its cement floor and flat ceiling and windowless walls lined with rows of empty shelves was the safer choice for the day, but she preferred to risk the trip back. On her way out, through the big delivery entrance doors she'd entered last night, she sent a general alert signal blazing through the communications network. No hits within radius. If any of the others had gone down nearby, they were in worse condition than EVE.
She finished the systems check, hovering in the covered area right outside the delivery entrance. When the last recalibration finished, EVE activated her long-distance navigational computer, storing away a reminder to perform a full reset when she got back to the Axiom. She generally avoided flying in high-risk conditions since there was no way to tell what they'd do to her most delicate flight calibrations. This cursory check might have found no problems, but EVE still had several hours' flight ahead of her even if she moved at maximum speed, and any number of issues might rise to the surface then.
EVE switched on her primary and secondary solar chargers to soak up as much energy as possible while she was actually in motion, double-checked the course her computer had plotted, and took off, dodging an abandoned giant of a truck. She gave herself a little more altitude to work with and flew. Sandy plains, dead communication centers, the ever-present pits and piles and towers of centuries-old human waste…she passed over them, again and again. It was the same scenery as always. Even though her memory meticulously stored every last processed pixel away, her visual sensors had ceased to fully register any of it long ago.
Halfway to her automatically saved home point – the Axiom's charge center – her battery alert pinged half depletion. EVE pulled up short, circling over the remains of a small human settlement, sky a little brighter above her, ground just as brown below. She reviewed her charge settings again. Normal, normal, all normal. No discrepancy in any of the readings. No indication of power leakage or overuse. Technically this was impossible. She shouldn't be so significantly depleted after less than two hours of flight, regardless of speed.
A look at her primary and secondary solar chargers explained part of the problem. Although they both showed steady connectivity signals and reported maximum intake, some kind of chokage must be occurring along the charge conversion lines. Very little intake had been converted into actual charge during the past two hours. It looked as though her physical movement might be causing the main interference there. The informative manual coded into her base programming advised that the solar chargers only be used when she, as a unit, was not in use, but she had never experienced problems charging mid-flight before.
EVE buzzed, frustrated, and dropped from the sky, catching herself about a foot off the ground. Obviously the electrical storm had taken some toll on her battery. She flipped both solar chargers off, waited for the recommended reset time, then turned the primary charger on again and consolidated her wings back into her main core. The chokage didn't appear to be taking effect anymore. Her battery ought to be fully charged in ten minutes. If the rate of power loss didn't increase significantly, she'd be able to reach the Axiom without stopping again.
Her surroundings weren't particularly notable. EVE scanned them for memory reference without assigning any significance to them. She'd descended into the ground area surrounding a decrepit, battered old human house, as dull and dirt-brown as the rest of the decrepit, battered houses around it. A vehicle, crusted with rust, lay in pieces against the house's side. The ground was choked with boulders and dirty chunks of plastic and old human clothing.
An alert flickered in the back of her sensory processing center, a strange trigger that EVE was unable to assign meaning to right away. Then she recognized it, buried and disconnected as she'd fixed the code to be. It was nothing she'd expected to feel this far out from the Axiom and the Captain's gardens.
She honed in on the signal. It was pulsing from the corner of the house. She'd registered that as a piece of crumbling paper-based trash, yellowed with age, on the visual scan. She moved over to look closer, phasing in her digits and delicately pushing the remains of an old box off whatever had tripped the remnants of her organic material sensors.
The plant was a sprawling thing, nearly dead. Being pummeled into the ground by the storm hadn't contributed to its worn appearance. EVE gently lifted a section of the vine, testing its weight, and the alert spiked again. There were seedlings hidden under the larger plant's leaves, tiny and yellow and storm-flattened but alive nonetheless.
How long had they been growing here? Why this place over any other? EVE lifted another section of the vine, uncovering more tiny sprouts, more muted alerts. These would be impossible to transport together. She marked her immediate coordinates, then double-checked and marked them again. No need to take chances.
As far as EVE was aware, the Captain had never thought of going in search for plants on Earth. She herself had never considered it. If the other EVE droids had come back empty, there was no reason to search aimlessly for life that most probably didn't even exist. Most of the Axiom's seeds had been rendered useless, but enough of them had sprouted to satisfy the Captain so far, and the humans' pre-packaged food supplies were vast. She wondered what his response would be to this discovery.
First she'd have to bring the plant back, and that meant a battle with the compartment-opening code she'd blocked off. She was still charging, so she might as well handle the compartment at the same time. Moving out of the shadow of the house to get full solar coverage, EVE reached back into her memory, pulling up the information from the day she'd closed off the possess-shutdown circuit connected to her plant detection sensors. She'd been in a hurry then, flinging possible fixes willy-nilly at the code until the programmed connection broke down, so calculating the correct way to open and close the compartment without triggering a full shutdown took almost eight minutes.
When she'd finally gotten it to open with a flurry of frustrated internal commands, EVE moved back to the plants. Perhaps the Captain could figure out some way to resuscitate the dismal-looking vine. She scooped it out of the dirt, trying not to break the underground parts – the roots, the Captain always said, were vital. Actually getting the big plant to fit into the compartment was a bit finicky, but EVE managed it, and put three seedlings in as well, just in case of the vine deciding to die within the next hour. Living things were unpredictable like that.
The compartment refused to seal the first time she tried to close it. EVE buzzed at it, vocalizing her urgency – her battery was fully charged now, there was no need to waste even more time. It took a good two minutes to make it close fully, and then it closed on part of the vine's leaf and sent up an error message and EVE had to start over again, pushing the plants in with more vehemence than fragility this time around.
Finally the compartment closed. EVE shot into the air, fully focused on the Axiom's coordinates. There would be no stopping for anything now. She accelerated, wings folded close to her sides. The hours raced by, flying off behind her on the wind.
Before EVE was even within sight range of the Axiom, before she realized she'd moved within range of communications networks, a signal with EVE-5's distinctive wavering sign-off broke faintly on her radar. Wind sliced past her wings as EVE decelerated, spinning in midair as she tried to get a read on its direction. It was a basic position broadcast – a call for help? It pulsed again. EVE re-checked her home point coordinates. No, most likely not an SOS. At least one of the others had emerged from the storm in functioning condition.
Spinning her wings, EVE plunged onward, speeding past brown clouds and brown earth and gritty brown plumes of sand that had become even less notable than before. Out on the edge of a brown horizon she saw it at last, dark skeleton hull just enough of an oddity in Earth's monotonous landscape to register on a visual scan. Not bothering to check the coordinates again, EVE flew straight for it, rolling easily between the same block towers of garbage she'd flown through for months.
On this course she'd pass WALL-E's truck in a matter of minutes. EVE slowed, wanting to imprint a new image of it into her memory before taking the new plant to the Axiom camp. She remembered with an acute flicker of longing that WALL-E would be working at the Axiom too. It wasn't necessary to stop for too long at the truck.
Darting around one of the last towers, she came into full view of the truck and halted. They were there, all nine of them, the white glowing cleanliness of their outer skins unmistakable against the grime and rust of the transport. And there was WALL-E, not working at the Axiom after all, in the doorway still dripping with light strings. The Captain stood beside him, leaned against the doorframe.
One of the EVEs whistled. Was that EVE-9's upward lilt? Captain McCrea jumped. Nine heads turned. WALL-E was already rolling down the ramp of the truck as fast as she'd ever seen him go, which wasn't very.
"WALL-E!" EVE poured on the power, not caring about leaky battery expenditure any more, and caught him up in her arms before he'd made it more than ten feet from the truck. "WALL-E," she said again, soft, almost a hum.
He tucked his head just under hers, tilted ever so slightly, and nestled into her. "EVE."
And then the other EVEs were around them, all whistling and chirping at once, nine projectors flashing blue in attempts to tell their own survival stories or congratulate her on her return or explain how the storm had managed to generate without detection. Even EVE-2 was there, vying for a voice with the rest.
"EVE-1!" one of them was saying, over and over.
EVE's algorithm recognized the inflection. "EVE-7!" Still holding WALL-E, she spun to face the other droid.
EVE-7 laughed, headlights narrowing in amusement. "EVE-1," she said again, more calmly. There was relief there, and respect, and gladness, EVE thought, and was lost for any meaningful response.
"EVE! Hey, EVE!" The Captain was trying to approach through the cloud of droids around EVE, but as they were all trying to helpfully move out of his way at the same time, he hadn't succeeded. "EVE-1, I mean! You're back!"
Nodding to EVE-7, EVE threaded her way between the others and set WALL-E gently back down, sparking a quick kiss to the top of his head. Then she moved back towards Captain McCrea, accelerating about two feet upward to reach his eye level. Forestalling his breathless congratulation and inquiry, she motioned for him to wait as she tripped the last tricky bit of code and triggered the compartment.
"EVE!" Her memory data would never be able to sufficiently anticipate the Captain's ability to attain even greater heights of emotion each time he was overwhelmed by something. The look on his face right now was an expression she'd never quite seen before, even on a human. "EVE! A plant!"
He reached for the most conspicuous vine reverently, eyes wide, then almost dropped it when he realized it wasn't the only one. "You found more than one? Where? EVE, this is great, I bet we don't even have seeds for these things. I wonder what they are. This is amazing!" He stopped only momentarily to glance at the coordinates and accompanying map that she'd pulled up on her projector, then launched back into the verbose chronicle of his excitement. "I was so worried you were lost forever, but you come back with a plant…with so many plants… Oh, I bet this big one is a pumpkin, it matches up just right with the computer, there's a vine with leaves this shape. None of our corn is coming up, maybe there's some of that in here. Can you bring this down to the Axiom? Maybe not right now, if you just got back – if you and WALL-E want to, I don't know – "
She held up a hand again. She needed a recharge and a full reset. Later she could return to the truck, but for now there were plants to be delivered and a power retention issue to fix, and – she looked at the other EVE droids, hovering just beyond the Captain – missions to sort out, somehow. Just the idea filled her with apprehensive uncertainty. Still, it had to be done.
WALL-E accompanied them back to the Axiom, so she hung back to float alongside him. The other EVEs passed them by with ease, a few of them waving or whistling as they moved past. WALL-E waved back. After a moment EVE did too.
"WALL-E," she said, a jokingly scolding tone creeping into her voice as they passed the ruins of what could not accurately be referred to as a shed any longer, even politely. Last night's storm had flattened it beyond recognition. The tarp that he had carefully tucked around the dormant EVEs months ago was entirely gone.
He shrugged, buzzing an apology that sounded distinctly like laughter. EVE giggled.
.
She knew WALL-E was excited about the plants, not for their significance as plants specifically but rather for EVE's accomplishment in finding such rare treasure. That night, he asked again and again how she'd found it, and where, and what the area looked like. Every time she replayed her visual records of the scene, he oohed appreciatively, the light of the projected image reflected in his eyes.
Comfortable in her post-reset system stability, EVE stayed up with him all night. EVE took down the light strings from the outside, WALL-E holding some old human light beam for added visibility that she didn't need but appreciated. They rested together in the truck watching hologram stories on his projector. The gentle vibration of WALL-E's systems computer was warm and pleasant against her sensors when she leaned against him.
In the middle of a quiet scene there was a loud noise outside, a banging on the door. EVE started into full awareness. The truck was dark except for the light strings, soft spots of color against shelves and walls, and the cool blue shimmer of the projector screen. She checked her clock – an hour until sunrise. She'd gotten sidetracked.
WALL-E paused the film and opened the door matter-of-factly, whistling a welcome. Dislodged from the tread where he'd been resting, his cockroach scuttled up EVE's arm and perched on her shoulder, surveying the visitor. Even in the early morning darkness, the shape of Captain McCrea outside was easily recognizable.
"Good morning to you too, WALL-E!" he said, moving up the ramp to stand in the doorway. "Hi, EVE. I mean EVE-1."
Had he noticed when she didn't stay at the Axiom? Did he need all the EVEs earlier today for some reason? She moved into the doorway too, in between the Captain and WALL-E.
His next words confirmed that theory. "Most of the others are already out for a little morning practice, and I was looking for you there but then EVE-2 mentioned you'd come up here for the night and weren't back yet, which is great, but I was wanting to say…" He sighed, an expansive whoosh. "I mean, that's not right. With the plant and everything, I thought I might ask – You've done so much already and I know you've been really committed to this space thing. So if you'd rather not you don't have to."
He stopped, staring despondently out of the truck at the garbage-tower city before him.
Rather not? EVE chirped, prompting him.
"Oh. The question. Like I said, it's only an idea."
Silence again. She waited this time, hoping he'd get to the point soon. It wouldn't be good if she were late for takeoff, no matter the reason.
"So…" The Captain rubbed a hand through his hair. "After yesterday, you're two-for-two on this plant thing, and I know how involved you are with the space cleanup, but you're really good at this. Or really lucky. Or…I don't know. And we have seeds from the Axiom, and I think some of them still might come up if we wait a little longer, and there's plenty of food, so you don't need to. I mean, I asked the EVEs – everyone besides you – before I came out here, and they all love the space flights, they all have their own little things that they do, like EVE-6 was showing me this cool maneuver she has for dodging stuff and EVE-2 records the biggest satellites she's ever deorbited by herself and EVE-5 has this really confusing equation she has for finding old ships and everything, so I know how much fun you're having up there. But if you ever felt like going out and looking for plants sometimes, you could? If you wanted to."
If you wanted to. The words sank into EVE's memory, replaying over and over. If you wanted to. She looked up at Captain McCrea as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. If she wanted to. This was very unlike his space-flight proposal, and yet she was equally lost for an appropriate response.
Didn't the others need her still? Or had they never needed her at all? Why hadn't any of them jumped at the chance for this over the surreal drudgery of daily space cleanups? The Earth was dead, silent, and ugly. Its surrounding sky, clouded with dirt and debris, was the same. Somehow WALL-E had found a growing thing, a change in the sameness. She had done it too, now. And the Captain was asking if she wanted to try to do it again.
"EVE," WALL-E said, low and encouraging.
The others. The EVEs. EVE-2, EVE-3, EVE-4, EVE-5, EVE-6, EVE-7, EVE-8, EVE-9, EVE-10, who had waited for her yesterday after the storm. Nine reflections who were somehow anything but.
EVE looked up at the Captain. "Affirmative," she told him, and meant it.
.
The sun was beginning to rise over the truck when EVE checked the coordinates of the plant site and set out, one of WALL-E's spare human containers in tow. She kissed him in a chorus of sparks before she left. Outside the truck he watched her go, waving enthusiastically. She flew slowly enough to glance back and watch him fade with the distance. First WALL-E became indistinguishable, then the vestiges of the shed, and then the truck itself was a dark far-away smudge alongside the larger smudge of the Axiom's shell.
Above the truck, beyond the Axiom, she saw a signal flare arc into the lightening sky. The EVEs were taking off.