*This plot stuck in my head a while ago and WOULD NOT leave, since I'm such a 1 fangirl. I was just thinking about how, during the movie, 1 lost almost everything he had known, bit by bit. This is just a postulation: what if he had lost it all? Where would he have gone from there?
*This is set before the movie. 1 through 8 are alive; 9 hasn't awaken yet.
Life around the Scrapheap was simple: strike or be struck. The only way of insuring an edge over your enemies was to make enemies and keep them close, take whatever resources you could get and guard them jealously. It was rough, true, but it was better than the emptiness. At least when a Fabricated machine came by everyone banded together, dragging down the beast, squabbling over the parts and rejoicing afterwards before going back to their own existences. It was written in the Law that this should be, and no one challenged the Law. To know the Law was to know peace, safety, pride.
1 knew the Law well. He had been tasked with writing most of it down.
He was perched on the roof of one of the shelters, taking in the landscape. To an untrained eye, one would see a barren lot, littered with piles of debris and twisted metal. However, 1 had lived here long enough to be able to pick out the carefully hidden shacks and structures. There were no machines to be seen—it was the late time of day, everyone was at rest. Night would come soon, blotting out everything save for the small areas where makeshift generators and lights stood, illuminating the pavement and lighting the way for the inhabitants. Then everyone would come out and begin the nightly Search.
1 chuckled slightly as he remembered how he had once feared the night and cowered in his shelter as soon as the sun sank beyond the world. Back then he had been such a fool—he had had the right motives, the right goals, but no rules. No Law. Memory sparked in his exposed skull, the sparks darting out from the spaces between gears.
"We can't keep going on like this, 1." 7 huffed. "You call this living? Cowering in your 'sanctuary' with your bodyguard, ordering us all around? This isn't living—this is surviving, and nothing else."
"What do you expect?" he angrily shot back. "There's too much at stake to do anything but that!"
7 glared at him. "For you, you mean. You don't want to lose your—"
No matter. 1 let the images and sounds fade from his consciousness. 7 no longer was a part of his life; she was no doubt 'living' somewhere out there with the others. It would do him no good to dwell in the past.
A soft tapping sound alerted him to a visitor; a metal figure scurried up to him, its six metal legs scrabbling on the concrete and clinking rhythmically. Spiderlike, it ran up the side of the small shack and came to a stop beside 1. Two small blue light bulbs lit up, then dimmed in greetings. 1 nodded and held up a hand, closing it, then opening it. I'm busy.
Silirvas needs you. She says she needs your help in repairing the Generator. Payment will be in electricity. The six metal limbs waved and swayed to and fro, signing the message. You need to be at the Generator now.
1 considered the truth of the statement. It was well known that he was not the best repairman—Dremil and Sers were two machines better at fixing things, for a start. But then again, they did not have his four-fingered, humanlike hands. If small objects needed to be put into place, he would be needed.
No machine may refuse to repair the Generator, either with service or parts. Punishment is an embargo.
The Law again. 1 knew that he had no choice in the matter; it was true that he didn't require the electrical charges to survive, but mentally it was a requirement that must be regularly fulfilled. Even now he could feel his last charge winding down—he'd need another jolt soon. No choice, then.
1 pointed to himself, flexed his fingers, then punched the air. I will fix the Generator. He waved the other machine away and began to cautiously climb down from the roof. Once the cracked concrete was under his wood-and-metal feet he began to walk towards that hulking contraption in the middle of the lot: the Generator.