This is a companion piece to chapter 14 of "There and Back Again". Just for laughs :)
A long time ago there was a great Dwarven city, deep underground. The city was on the shores of a vast underground lake, teeming with fish. The dwarves living there were happy and productive, but they were messy. For some reason, they decided not to bother throwing away their garbage, and instead, just left it wherever it fell. If a stone carver's tool broke, he'd leave the pieces where they landed. If someone ate an apple, they dropped the core on the ground when they were finished. Fisherman left the remains of the fish they'd caught lying around the docks on the lake. No one cleaned up after themselves, ever. After decades and generations of living like this, their city became overwhelmed with garbage. They walked over garbage, climbed over piles of it, every time they went outside. They built houses upon it. Everywhere you looked, all you could see was garbage.
A unique thing about the dwarves who lived there was that they had developed a way to create golems – tiny creatures, made of rock or clay, and enchanted to be alive. Upon creation, the golems were given tasks – some did mining, some prepared food for the dwarves, some tended the forge; each golem was given a purpose. Over time, the golems started taking over the jobs of the dwarves, and the dwarves became rich from the profits made from their golems, and they had only free time. They lived lives of leisure, and started creating even more garbage, because they could afford to waste things.
When the garbage started becoming a problem, they created golems whose job was to dig a bottomless hole, and other golems whose job was to clean up the garbage by dumping it in the hole. The little golems tried and tried, digging ever deeper and cleaning up more and more, but it seemed like no matter how hard they tried, there was always more garbage. Finally there came a day when the garbage piled so high that the city was becoming unlivable. Garbage had damaged the places where their mushrooms grew, and they were having difficulty finding enough; it was also slowly poisoning the fish that lived nearest the city. They started running out of food.
The wisest, eldest members of the city got together to discuss a solution, and they agreed on one after many days of talking. The solution they chose was to build a massive boat, load all the dwarves on it, and sail away. For five years, they would sail, leaving the little golems behind to keep cleaning up the garbage. After five years, they thought that they would be able to return home to a completely clean city. They agreed to send one golem back each year to check on the progress of the clean-up, and report back. Once the clean-up was complete, they would go home.
So the dwarves built a boat, loaded themselves onto it, and sailed away. They took all of the golems except for those responsible for cleaning.
At first, things in the city went well for the little golems. With no dwarves making more mess, the golems could finally make progress with the clean-up. The dwarves, on the other hand, were sailing around the enormous lake, and barely stopped to think about the city they had left behind. Every year the captain of the ship sent a golem back to check up, but each year fewer and fewer people cared what was in the reports.
By the time five years was up, the mess had not been entirely cleaned up, and the dwarves decided to extend their time on the ship. They lived easy lives, the fish in the rest of the lake were plentiful, and they continued creating new and improved golems to serve them. They developed stronger golems to help them expand the boat or make repairs; they created golems who could swim to repair the bottom of the boat. They had golems who were guards to make sure no one stole from anyone else or hurt anyone. They dumped all their garbage in the lake, and never had to worry about it building up. Everyone was enjoying themselves so much that they forgot about the city and the clean-up.
The captain decided to enchant the golems they sent back to the city to only bring their reports to him when they had proof that the city was ready to be lived in again – the proof being a living, healthy mushroom. Otherwise even he forgot about their home and the little golems who were there cleaning it up.
Back in the city, they started having problems. The clean-up was taking longer than expected, and with time, cleaning golems were starting to wear out. With no dwarves to fix them, their enchantments started breaking down, and with each passing month, there were fewer and fewer golems cleaning. No one on the ship knew, because no one was hearing the reports of the golems sent back to check on progress once per year. No one thought to wonder why the clean-up was taking so long.
Time passed, and a new generation of dwarves was born on the ship. These young dwarves hadn't ever lived in the city, and they didn't care about the stories their parents told of living on land. The ship got further and further away, the clean-up was going slower and slower, and no one cared. On the ship, the captain even turned over the running of the ship to a new, very complex, intelligent golem named auto. Auto was part of the ship, and he oversaw all of the golems as well as the functioning of the ship. He also was the one to receive the reports of the city from the golems who were sent each year.
Auto worried what would happen if the clean-up was ever complete. He saw the way the dwarves forgot about the golems back in the city, and thought that if ever they were able to go home, they'd forget about him, too. He would be left, alone and useless, on the ship. He decided he didn't ever want to dwarves to go home, and so he didn't tell anyone about the problems with the clean-up back in the city. And as no one ever asked, he was able to hide it well.
By the time the next generation of dwarves was born, there was only one cleaning golem left active in the city. His name was Goll-E, and he was working his hardest to clean up the city. But one little golem working alone can only do so much, and so progress was very slow. And Goll-E was lonely. To make up for his loneliness, he started collecting interesting trinkets that had been thrown away by the dwarves. He found plates and cups, forks and spoons, children's toys and enchanted lights, and other small things. He treasured the uniqueness of these items which had been discarded, and even though he didn't need them, he took them to a house he decided to use for himself, and kept them as a reminder of the dwarves that used to live there.
Goll-E also loved music and dancing. He remembered times when dwarves used to sing and dance all the time, and he missed it. So after a long day of cleaning, he would go to his house, sing songs for himself, and dance, all alone, just to remind himself what it was like when there used to be company.
After many years by himself, one day Goll-E was working when he heard something down by the docks in the city. Going down to check on the noise, he discovered a small boat that had been tied up at the dock. Getting off the boat was Eve, a golem who'd been sent on the yearly inspection to find out how well the clean-up was going. Now Eve was a much newer golem than Goll-E. She was polished to a shine, was so fast it almost seemed she could fly, and she even had a sword she could use to defend herself in case she came across a lake monster on her way.
Goll-E, by comparison, was covered in dirt, made of rock, and didn't know how to do anything but clean. When he saw Eve, he immediately fell in love. She was so beautiful that he wanted to impress her. He went to introduce himself to her, but when he tried she was suspicious that he was a monster, and she threatened him with her sword. Undeterred, Goll-E followed Eve and kept trying to impress her. He tried showing her how clean things were, or making sculptures for her out of the unique treasures he would find while cleaning, and eventually Eve realised that he wasn't a monster.
Once, a rare underground windstorm arose, and Goll-E knew that any golem left outside would be damaged by it, so he convinced Eve to go back to his house where they would be protected from the storm. He showed her all his treasures, and how he would sing and dance, and she danced with him because it looked like so much fun. She started to realise that maybe Goll-E was actually a really nice golem and that she liked him too.
Encouraged by this, Goll-E showed Eve more and more of his treasures. After a while, one of the treasures he decided to show her was a mushroom which he had found underneath some of the garbage he'd picked up. Not knowing its significance, he handed the small fungus to Eve. Eve, enchanted to react to the presence of any mushrooms, placed it in a specially designed pouch in her chest to protect it. Once she'd done that, it triggered her enchantment. She suddenly, unexpectedly, froze in place, curled into a ball to protect the precious mushroom she had sought. She was completely unresponsive.
Goll-E, worried, tried to wake his new friend. When that didn't work, he tried to protect her. He tried finding new enchantment runes, but none of them could wake her. Eventually, saddened and not understanding what had happened, he went back to work. Then, suddenly, one day, Goll-E saw another golem walking through the city, carrying Eve. This was a special golem designed to bring back Eve or any other similar golem when their mission – to search for fungus – was complete. This golem was a very old design, and had no intelligence – all it could do was find Eve and bring her back to the boat, then row the boat back to the dwarves' ship. Goll-E tried to stop it, to talk to it, but it wasn't capable of doing that. Instead, Goll-E followed it back to the docks, and snuck aboard the small boat Eve had been loaded onto. When the boat headed to the dwarves' ship, Goll-E went with it.
Back at the dwarves' ship, Eve, still inactivated, was unloaded and brought to Auto. Goll-E could not follow without being caught, so he waited outside the door. Auto, not wanting anyone to know what she had found, removed the mushroom from her special protective pouch, and gave it to another golem to be destroyed. When Eve awoke, she tried to report the mushroom to the ship's captain, while Goll-E continued to follow her and hide. Unfortunately, when Eve found the captain, the evidence was gone – the mushroom was missing. The captain thought Eve was broken and did not believe her. Goll-E showed himself, trying to help Eve to find the mushroom. Eve, frustrated, believed that Goll-E had stolen the mushroom while she'd been inactivated.
Taking Goll-E away, she tried to convince him to get on a little row boat and row himself back to the city. Goll-E did not want to go. During their argument, the little golem who was supposed to destroy the mushroom loaded the fungus onto the small rowboat and launched it. He planned to fire a flaming arrow at the rowboat, sinking it and destroying all evidence that the mushroom existed. Unfortunately, Goll-E had also climbed aboard the rowboat. After it launched, Goll-E found the mushroom and showed Eve. Eve felt guilty, knowing now that Goll-E had not stolen the mushroom. She jumped in the water, determined to bring Goll-E and the mushroom back, but before she could, the little golem fired the arrow and the rowboat caught on fire. Unsure what to do, Goll-E tried to row back towards the ship, but knew he would never make it in time. He decided, in the end, that he would have to jump out of the rowboat, even though he did not know how to swim.
Eve, seeing the rowboat destroyed, felt terrible; she had lost Goll-E, who she had come to realise she loved. As she was swimming, she noticed a big air bubble float to the surface and pop. Suddenly hopeful, she dove beneath the water and found Goll-E. She carried him to the surface and brought him back to the ship, where he showed her something else that made her happy – he had saved the mushroom!
Realising that they would have to hide their presence from Auto, Eve and Goll-E tried to sneak in to see the ship's captain. Eve left Goll-E outside and used her speed to sneak into his room and show him the mushroom. Excited, he ran straight to the ship's bridge and tried to turn the ship around to sail home. Enraged, Auto locked him in his room, and called for some of the guards to try to destroy Eve and Goll-E. They ran away, Eve's speed giving her an advantage against the slow guard-golems, and hid to make a plan.
They decided to try to sneak into the bottom of the ship, where the rudders that responded to Auto were. While they were doing that, the captain picked the lock on the door and confronted Auto again. In the scuffle between the captain and Auto, Auto accidentally spun the ship dangerously and almost capsized it. In the process, several dwarven families were almost crushed by falling furniture. Eve raced to save them, using her strength to protect them from the heavy benches. While she did that, Goll-E, who was essentially helpless, was attacked by some of the guards in an effort to destroy the mushroom and stop Eve and the captain's struggles.
Enraged, the captain finally managed to remove Auto's enchantment rune, deactivating the ship's golem. He righted the ship, and Eve, now able to let go of the heavy furniture, ran to protect Goll-E, but he was too badly damaged. He had saved the mushroom, but his enchantment rune was broken.
Broken-hearted, the captain and Eve sailed their ship back to the city of their ancestors. It was not completely cleaned, but much better than it had been. Eve sadly took the body of her golem friend, Goll-E, back to his house, to put him to rest. Once she got there, though, she remembered that she had seen multiple things among Goll-E's treasures – including new Enchantment runes!
Hurriedly, she removed the old broken rune and replaced it with a new one. Anxiously she awaited while the golem woke up. However, when it did, it seemed that Goll-E was no longer himself. The new rune activated him, but he didn't remember anything. Eve tried showing him the treasures he'd collected, hoping to spark his memory, but all that happened was that Goll-E tried to throw the treasures into the garbage pit.
Horrified, Eve mourned the loss of her friend. Sadly, she decided to sing and dance one more time in his memory. The golem who had formerly been Goll-E watched as she spun and leaped about in the dance Goll-E had shown her when they first met. The dance, unlike anything else Eve had tried, seemed to trigger Goll-E's memory. All of a sudden, the golem's eyes widened in recognition as all his memories came flooding back. He grabbed Eve, jumping up beside her to dance with her, and all the dwarves watched in amazement and happiness as the two golems danced off into the night.
The dwarves, having learned their lessons about garbage and being messy, finished the clean-up job that Goll-E had almost completed. They gratefully moved back into their city, but were careful not to waste as much, and not to leave their garbage in the street. And Eve and Goll-E lived happily ever after.