Ephemerides
A short story by Locutus
A bright, glaring stream of sunlight was shining down onto the extended solar panels of the WALL-E unit. The robot was sitting there, inactively, head and arms in a neutral position, his triangular wheels tucked to his box-shaped body. He appeared like he was frozen in place, waiting for some cue to wake him up from his apathy.
The small display screen on the robot's front showed the charge level of his battery. It was increasing, slowly but steadily; in fact way more slowly than it should have given the intensity of the light falling onto the panels.
Seemingly the robot's battery had had its days, and due to a seriously reduced efficiency of solar energy conversion, it needed a much longer time now to receive a full charge.
Endless minutes later, a pleasant chime sounded and the WALL-E unit came to life. He moved slowly, apprehensively, like waking up from a deep sleep, and almost as if he needed to get used again to be moving. Carefully he turned around a few times on his wheels which emitted a squeaking sound in the process. Then the robot folded up his solar panels and looked around.
The Sun Room looked just like it had when the WALL-E had last entered it, which caused him a little disappointment, but was on the overall probably a good thing. Knowing that he still had about an hour before his directive core would wake up and start giving him instructions that he could not carry out anyway, he turned towards the door that led out of the Sun Room. He intended to enjoy this one hour of peaceful quiet as good as he could.
He accelerated, careful as not to put too much strain on his locomotion systems. Before he wheeled through the door, he threw a quick glance at the hole high up in the ceiling of the room, through which the sunlight came in, and with a sigh set his internal timer to eleven hours fifty-eight minutes. Then he started on another round of his lonely and utterly boring shift.
Slowly, the WALL-E robot was wheeling along a corridor with rows of doors on both sides, very dimly lit by a faint glowing from the fluorescent tubes at the ceiling. There was barely enough light here, like everywhere in this place, for his optics to pick up his surroundings.
Although the robot knew that most of the doors were locked - and were made of such a sturdy material, like all the doors in this place, that his cutting laser had no chance of getting through - he still tried each of them by rattling at them with his grappler hands. After all, one could never know, maybe something had changed since the last time he had passed along here. Using his laser was out of the question though anyway, for it would have drained his battery way too quickly, and he needed to conserve as much power as he could.
The WALL-E found all of the doors locked except for one. Well, once more, no change so far, he thought and rolled through the one unlocked door. Behind it lay a room that obviously had served as a kind of office space, back in the times when it still had been in use. Some old tattered papers could be seen lying around, in addition to the remainders of a writing desk. The robot looked around for a moment, recognized no change here and wheeled out again to turn towards the end of the corridor.
A set of large sliding double doors sat in the wall, two buttons at its side and a large "15" printed above it. The WALL-E did not know what this door was about; all he knew was that his laser would not get through it either, and pressing the buttons had never had any effect.
Luckily there was a second, smaller, door besides the large one. There was a symbol printed above it as well, in white color on a green background, but it was not a number. Instead it resembled a person running towards a white rectangle. The WALL-E did not know the meaning of this symbol either, but all that counted for him was that the door led to a staircase, which to his fortune contained a sloped ramp, in addition to the stairs which he would not have been able to use.
So he wheeled down that ramp and soon emerged through a similar door and into a similar corridor. A set of sliding doors was present here too, with a large "14" printed above it. The robot looked around if he could spot any changes here and then started rolling along the corridor, repeating the same procedure that he had done on the fifteenth floor.
Directive A-001: Collect Trash.
Despite the annoying and ever-repeating instructions that the directive core made reverberate through the WALL-E unit's mind, the robot was in quite a good mood. He had set a personal new best performance, having reached the eighth floor before the directives set in! And that despite the ever-present need to conserve battery power. A quick check of his timer showed the robot that he had about ten hours left.
Of course this new record also meant that there had been no changes whatsoever on the floors above; the same doors locked, the same furniture standing in the same places, a fact which for now though could not sadden the robot's mood. He knew that the interesting places would start three floors down from here.
Collect Trash, the directive was repeated. The robot would have loved to collect and compress some trash for a change, but there was nothing left to collect in this whole place. He had done more than enough rounds through all of the floors to verify that over and over again.
But again, who knew, something might have changed during all this time. So he kept up his mood and wheeled on, inspecting the seventh floor office spaces. No change here, except for one fluorescent tube that was completely out now. During his last round, it had still flickered at least a little bit. Oh well, it did not make any noteworthy difference to his mission. Also here the same two rooms were unlocked: one without windows, the other directed to the north side.
The WALL-E robot continued on downwards to the sixth floor. Examining the lone accessible office room, he suddenly froze in place. Something had changed here! He inspected the ground more closely. Yes, definitely, those stacks of old papers were not lying in the same alignment anymore as they had before! Also a little container with writing equipment that used to stand on the old desk had tilted over, spilling the long pointy things out. The robot looked around excitedly. Could it really be that...
Then his view fell on the window. There was a jagged hole in it through which the wind blew in. The robot sighed. The window must have gotten damaged during a sandstorm, and it was the wind that had caused the changes in this room. Another small glimpse of hope gone.
Quite disappointed, the WALL-E unit recorded the new positions of objects in the room, turned around and wheeled out. With nine hours and thirty minutes to go, he continued to check the fifth floor.
About an hour later, cursing a little about the seriously reduced performance of especially his locomotion systems, the robot rolled down to the fourth floor, which finally brought a significant change of scenery. While the floors above consisted of generally identical and quite boring repetitions of corridors and for the most part locked office space rooms, the fourth floor housed a wide, large, open area, interspersed with the occasional movable wall. The ceiling also was higher here than on the office floors, and scattered over the area was quite a bit of furniture, which in former times might have served as desks, counters and groups of tables and chairs positioned around them.
There were even a few computer consoles on some of the counters, of course inoperable. The robot had checked that out more than once. But still, this area bore a lot more to explore, since here the WALL-E unit could reach every part and corner of the floor's makeup.
The robot wheeled past furniture pieces, once more checking if anything had changed since the last time he had been here. So far, no luck. All the papers, little writing sticks, and other utensils that once probably had served a purpose in this place - though the robot had no idea what it might have been - were lying in the exact same spot as they always had, ever since he had started his lonely mission here, so long a time ago.
Collect Trash, his directive core instructed yet once more. But it made no sense trying to compact all this loose paper stuff; it was impossible for him to create a cube out of this material that would not immediately collapse and disperse again.
The robot's view fell on a colorfully designed sheet of paper that had survived the times. All he could identify on it was a writing that read, "Save now, so you can consume later!" In a way, the WALL-E unit pondered, he also had to save something, namely battery power. His clock read eight hours and fifteen minutes, from which he had to subtract the time he would need to get back up to the Sun Room. With his impaired drive, and having to go up on the ramps, that would leave him about seven hours of exploration time. Or rather, six and a half. Better save some time in case anything out of the ordinary occurs on the way up. Not that that had ever happened, but the robot did not want to risk not getting back to the Sun Room in time.
He pushed the thought aside of what that would mean for him. Instead, the WALL-E smiled a little. Still some chance left to find help or a way out of here, maybe he got lucky this time.
So the little trash robot continued his tour around the desks and counters, finding some more colorful flyers, but on the overall nothing that would have constituted a noteworthy change in these surroundings. As he finished the tour and turned towards the exit, his view crossed the large row of windows set into one wall of the huge room. Oriented to the north side, of course, like all the other reachable windows, the robot complained and passed the door to the staircase ramp.
The third and second floor revealed, despite being similarly interesting and having a similar layout to the fourth floor, no significant changes as well. The third floor constituted of a wide open area with desks and counters, just like the fourth. It just had some different writings on its colorful flyer papers. The second floor housed what had in former times probably been used by the humans as a place to ingest nourishment.
So finally, the little trash robot reached the first floor and emerged into a huge atrium. It was about two times as high as the halls on the floors above, and instead of functional furniture it contained what back then quite probably had been decorative fittings. There even had been a large fountain in the middle of the hall whose now partly shattered remains could still be seen. A long banner was spanning across the room, colored in the ever-present red and blue tones and reading "Buy-n-Large Los Angeles Savings". The WALL-E unit was once more astonished that the banner was still hanging there after all the time.
The robot rolled across the room, trying to ignore his still quite verbose directive core, and was then once more painfully reminded of the fact that he was helplessly trapped in this building. Across the whole length of a wall that obviously held the exit doors, tons of rubble from a partly collapsed ceiling were blocking his escape route.
Countless times the robot had explored the whole building; ever since he had, in the course of his trash compaction duty, broken through that instable roof up there, into what he now called the Sun Room. His reliable chronometer showed that he had been trapped here for almost seven hundred years now, and after having spent so much time trying to find a way out, he was quite convinced that there was none. The exit doors were blocked, and every wall and window that was accessible on the upper floors was so thick and solid, there was no way for him to get through. It appeared to him that this building had been specificially constructed to keep unwanted visitors out. But now, likewise, it kept and trapped a visitor, who was more than willing to leave, inside.
With a deep sigh, the robot wheeled along the line of rubble that obstructed both his way and his view out. The doors must have been just a few meters behind those rocks, but they could as well have been on the other side of the Earth. It was completely impossible for him to move the debris, even if his systems had been in good working order.
Rolling across the room the WALL-E repeated his centuries-old ritual of checking the surroundings for any changes that might have indicated the presence of another being, of someone or something that might have been able to help him or might have found an escape route. The robot tried not to give up hope, but after all those futile attempts it was getting harder and harder to keep his spirits up.
Ascertaining a negative search result, the robot decided, since he still had quite some battery time left, to explore the subterranean floors as well, despite the chances of finding an exit there being all but non-existent. So he wheeled towards the staircase ramp once more and moved on downwards.
As the WALL-E robot entered a large, damp underground room, his view immediately fell on the gigantic greyish portal in a wall that lay behind a row of vertical metal bars, spanning the room's whole width and height. The surroundings here were even more dimly lit than the office floor corridors, and the metal bars blocked off the robot's way to a closer inspection of what this huge portal might lead to. The row of bars probably could be moved by some mechanism which had long since been inoperational, and the WALL-E did not dare to waste battery power trying to laser through them. Judging by their thickness, he'd have needed half an hour to cut through just one of them.
From this point, he just could see that there were several keypads on both sides of the portal, and a huge turning wheel located in its middle. It was probably some kind of security door, leading to a room that must have held very important and protection-deserving contents.
The robot reached for the metal bars with his grapplers and rattled them, trying to find a weak spot, when he suddenly heard a noise.
He immediately stopped his motion and listened. The noise persisted and became even louder. It was a low rumbling and humming, as if a huge machine came to life somewhere distant. Excitedly, the robot pondered what to do. This was the first event of actual significance during all those years!
A few seconds later, with the noise becoming ever louder and also a little more hissing, the WALL-E now even could feel that something was happening. The ground was trembling lightly. Querying his database, the robot found information about a natural phenomenon called an earthquake. The entry also informed him that it was suggested to immediately vacate any buildings if an earthquake occured. Thanks a lot, that's really helpful, he grouched.
Then he noticed that the motion of the ground and the noises did not coincide with how the effects of an earthquake were described. They must have been caused by something else. Since it appeared to be coming from the outside, the robot decided to return to one of the upper floors, where he would hopefully find a window through which he might get a view on what was happening.
The windows on the third floor turned out to offer an appropriate view. In the distance, mostly unobstructed by the remains of skyscrapers, the robot could - at maximum zoom of his optics - see a cloud of dust that was unlike any cloud that occured during sandstorms. It rather appeared like it had been stirred up from the ground and was now slowly settling down again. The WALL-E's excitement grew larger. Something must have happened there. Maybe a human construction crew had returned to the planet to check up on their robots! But he could not see any further motion or activity.
Suddenly, there was another rumbling noise. It was louder, had set in more suddenly but was also shorter than before. The robot adjusted his optics and could spot another cloud rising up from the ground, this time taking on the form of a kind of mushroom, growing larger on the top and then opening up as it slowly disappeared.
The robot was completely perplexed. What the heck had happened there? He excitedly wheeled from one window to the next, which of course did not change his perspective towards the distant events at all.
He waited for about fifteen minutes, eagerly scanning both the distant and closer surroundings, but he could not detect any further activity outside. So he decided to move to a higher floor, where he maybe might get a better view, and where he also knew of an accessible window that was located at a slightly different angle than those on the third floor.
On the eighth floor, the trash robot found the window that he was looking for, one that offered a good view both down onto the nearby trash-covered streets and off into the distance. He checked the area once more where he had seen the clouds before, but still found no sign of further movement. Then he adjusted his optics to let his view sweep along what he could observe of the surrounding streets and buildings.
So far, his hopes of seeing a group of construction workers had not been fulfilled. But he was not going to give up so quickly now. He looked down onto the street that passed directly by the building he was in, and then he saw it.
It must have been a robot, for it was moving, closing in towards the building from the other end of the street, and it appeared to have an artificial casing. But it was not moving along the ground, it was hovering! It was white, shiny and had a slightly oval-shaped form.
The WALL-E unit zoomed in with its optics. The white robot had a rounded head and two fin-shaped arm appendages. To his utter surprise, he saw that the limbs were not physically attached to the body, but were held in place, as if magically, by an invisible force. Two beautiful blue ovals, indicating eyes, lit up on a black faceplate on the robot's head. The white creature was smoothly gliding along, an angelic shape in her appearance, and every now and then she stopped and a blue flickering beam emerged from her front, sweeping over the ground. It was the most beautiful thing the WALL-E unit had ever seen.
He was completely mesmerized, and so totally taken in by the view that he forgot, until it was almost too late, that it might be a good idea to try and draw some attention to himself and his situation.
When the thought finally occured to him, the white robot was almost out of sight behind the next street corner. The WALL-E unit darted forward and started hammering against the window with his grappler hands, trying to make as much noise as he could. Shouting in his mind, he even banged against the glass with his cube-shaped body, but to his despair the white robot obviously did not hear the commotion, or if she heard it, then she chose to ignore it.
As she turned around the corner and vanished from his sight, the trash robot lowered his arms, regarding the spot where she had disappeared with an utmost longing. Please, come back! Save me, please! he begged inside of him.
Then his view fell onto another motion down in the street. He zoomed in and could not believe what he was seeing. There was another WALL-E unit down there, rolling along the street, obviously following that strange and beautiful white robot from a distance. Incredulous for a long moment, the trash robot then started hammering and banging against the window again with every appendage available to him. Hey! I'm up here! Please, help me, I'm trapped in here! he called in his mind, oblivious in his agitation to the fact that the robot down in the street would in no way be able to hear his thoughts.
And seemingly, he was also unable to hear the commotion behind the window, eight floors up in that almost abandoned building. Without any sign of reaction, the other WALL-E unit rolled along the street and soon turned around the corner where the white robot had disappeared.
Please, come back. the WALL-E up in the building begged once again, but to no avail. He lowered his arms and zoomed in to the street corner, deeply crestfallen. Help me, please, let me out of here.
So great was his feeling of calamity that he almost overheard the warning noise sounded by his internal systems. Torn out of his misery, the robot looked up in alarm and checked his timer. It showed that he had about thirty minutes of battery power left. The exertion of all his movements and his dashing up from the basement to the eighth floor had drained the battery way quicker than usual.
Another stroke of fate; he had no time to wait if the two robots might return. He had to use his remaining power to get back to the Sun Room. He did not want to risk being completely stranded here, in case the robots did not return.
Luckily he was already on the eighth floor, otherwise the remaining power would surely not have sufficed to get him back up to the fifteenth. Deeply disappointed, he retreated from the window and slowly rolled towards the door, setting off to his resting place for the next 364 days.
As the WALL-E robot made it to the Sun Room, he felt that his battery was nearly dying. With a last effort he rolled into the circular area in the middle of the room where he had started his endeavour about ten hours ago. The area was dark now, but the robot knew that in about a year it would once more be the only directly sunlit spot in the whole building. At that time the Sun's path through the sky would - hopefully, if there were no unforeseen events inbetween - take it again to a point where its rays would fall exactly through the hole and down into this room.
Until then, the robot had to wait, patiently. He had done so for seven hundred years, and he would hopefully make it to the next year as well. He also hoped that those two other robots might still be there then. Maybe in a year he would get another chance of calling their attention. He settled down, positioned himself in the best spot below the hole, locked his wheels and unfolded his solar panels.
As the last power in his battery was used up, the world around him slowly turned dark. With his last waking thought, his mind wandered to the strange white egg-shaped robot and his WALL-E brother down there, wondering what they might be doing now. Then his consciousness faded.
Once again, the long night had arrived.
THE END
Author's Notes:
It's very interesting how Isaac Asimov can, with just one line in one of his stories, inspire fanfiction. :)
His short story "Nightfall" ends, although plot-wise it has nothing to do at all with my story, with the very same words about "the long night having arrived". This line, along with the fact that Nightfall plays on a planet that circles a system of six stars, and therefore has a night only once per a thousand years, triggered the idea to write something about a WALL-E unit, trapped somewhere, that can charge up only once per year and then explore the surroundings, looking for help or a way out.
Then add the typical view from Tomb Raider games or Indiana Jones movies where a beam of light falls into some room, onto some object or so. And, add a little what-is-going-on mystery like in the "Cube" movies, and of course a crossover into the WALL-E movie, and there you are. :)
In case you didn't fully catch what had happened:
The WALL-E unit broke, in the course of his duty, through the unstable roof of a well-fortified BnL Bank building. The building was partly collapsed, blocking every possible exit route. Plus, any windows that were reachable for the robot were located on the north side of the building, which means that no direct sunlight would ever be falling in through them. Whatever light was available was insufficient to charge the already quite depleted battery.
The only place where the sun directly entered the building was the room on the top floor where the robot had broken through. But the location of the hole in the ceiling, the sun's path through the sky and the makeup of the room caused the sunlight to reach the ground only once per year, in a specific spot, on a specific day, for about an hour. So the robot could charge his battery only during that time, plus he had no way of getting replacement parts.
So once per year, the robot had 12 hours of battery charge, and when it was used up, he had to return to the "sun room", position himself in the spot where the sun would fall in a year later, open his solar panels and wait - for his battery to run out and hopefully be charged again a year later.
This is where the story title comes in: First, the meaning of "ephemeral" is "temporary, volatile". Then: "An ephemeris (plural: ephemerides; from the Greek word 'ephemeros' = 'daily') is a table of values that gives the positions of astronomical objects in the sky at a given time or times."
The clouds the robot saw were of course a) caused by the EVE delivery ship, and b) by EVE's first blast at the rock behind which WALL-E was hiding.
I hope you liked this little story!