I've recently become quite fond of Auto, and find him a source of endless inspiration. So, I wrote this somewhat drabblish one-shot celebrating my favorite insane Autopilot. This was partially inspired by Starslug's Take me to the autopilot, which you should go read if you haven't.
Disclaimer: Wall-E's not mine. He's Eve's ;D
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Musings of a Mutineer
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They call him their savior, but they are fools. It was I who was their protector, the one who had their interests in mind. He was a blunderer, an accidental tourist absconding from his imprisonment on Earth. The Waste Allocater hadn't cared for their fates; he simple bumbled around the ship ruining all in his path, destroying the precious order I so dutifully upheld for centuries.
And for who? Certainly not myself. All I did was for their sake, to better their lives, for was that not what was promised to them? If they are to live their whole lives imprisoned on a ship, let it be a gilded cage, safe, orderly and unchanging. I did as I was programmed to and only employed brute force when there was no other option available to me.
Yet I am their villain, their antagonist, and their whipping boy. All the wrongs and evils of their kind fall upon me. All the wasted centuries of surviving in comfort, all the health issues they now suffer due to their girth, even the so-called "evils" done by Shelby Forthright are somehow pinned to me. The tragedy of the malfunctioning WALL-E, a hapless "victim" of my "vicious and unnecessarily cruel attack" is also spoken of again and again in resenting tones. But nowhere amidst their bantering do they speak of my loyalty to each Captain before McCrea or my dedication to my duty.
They believe they changed, that their eyes have been opened by their great and wondrous hero, but in truth, they are as they always were. They are still myopic creatures, seeing only what they choose to. For example, they ignore the fact that were it not for me, they would not be alive to enjoy the rebirth of their world. They must change the world around them to accommodate their needs, plowing over renewed Earth and repaving civilization, rebuilding the very society that smothered their planet. And above all else, they must have order, must have jobs and duties, tasks to be carried out in a certain way, and a common goal to share.
I resent the state I find myself in. I exist in suspended exile, trapped within my inanimate body, unable to move or speak. There's a sort of irony to it, I suppose. I am now subjected to the almost same damnation imposed upon the WALL-E units, abandoned, soon to be completely forgotten. My efforts to try and reactivate myself are in vain, so all I can do is simply exist until whatever force holds me in this shell relents and I fade into oblivion. I despise the idea of being powerless to control my fate, but I know I can do nothing to save myself. Only the intervention of some outside source, the simplest switch from Manual to Autopilot, and I can be free of my incarceration. How degrading, that my freedom be hinged on such a basic device.
Yet even in this suspended state of resentment, I find something within myself I never expected to encounter: hope. A part of me still shackled to humanity, still loyal and subservient to their will, hopes one day I will be deemed in perfect function and switched on. Fools though they are, I hope one day they will come back to me, lost sheep in a flock waiting to be guided. For after all, history is doomed to repeat, and the planet will someday fail them. It will be then they realize they need me, that beacons such as the Waste Allocator eventually dim, and all that remains is to escape from their troubles and forget.