A long time ago, there was a blue-and-green planet whose inhabitants called it Earth, and as planets go, it was lucky for a very long time - After all, how many worlds are capable of their own self-sustaining ecosystems? And Earth had hundreds of ecosystems, thousands of them, dizzying variations of flora and fauna preying on and living with and connected to each other. And, aside from one close call with a large piece of space-rock fairly early in its life, Earth was doing just fine for a surprisingly long while.

And then, around ten million years after the mantle had cooled and the oxygen had thinned some, a species arose that grew smarter and smarter, and began walking upright, and learned to protect their fragile bodies with hides and claws of the other animals around them. And they just kept getting smarter, kept adapting, until there were millions of them all over the world. A lot of them died, but there were always some who lived, and those who survived kept getting smarter and smarter, kept learning more and more, inventing things like arts and sciences and digital watches. In the process they named themselves "humans," and it was humans who gave the planet its name.

But although the humans were smart, there were some very obvious things they inevitably missed, which was probably due in part to how small an individuals human was, and how short a time they spent on their planet. The average human only knew the immediate world around them, the places they live in and work at, and even the longest-lived is only likely to reach their hundredth birthday. Perhaps this was why, although a few people here and there had thought to wonder about their planet's well-being, that preservation that never really seemed like a top priority. Humans were very short-sighted like that, operating under the cheerfully naive belief that the Earth would never tired from the pressures they put on it, that there'd never be a problem they themselves couldn't solve.

So of course, when that inevitable problem finally came, the world was taken completely by surprise.

At first the signs were small, and easily-missed; they had been occurring for years, little signals gone unnoticed in a sea of environmental noise. The seas were always changing, so who would notices a little spike in their salinity? So what if the weather was starting, at some times of the year, to get a little more erratic? Humanity was at the peak of its achievements, with no more wars to fight and certainly no shortages of life's amenities, thanks to the Buy 'N' Large Corporation. Everything that a person could want was available at their fingertips: Foods that tasted like sin but were nutritionally straight from heaven, tasty drinks to control your stress-levels and boost your metabolism, exercise regimes to keep you looking fit and trim that you could do while immersed in the latest virtual entertainment, burning those unsightly calories while dodging bullets, slaying dragons, or sailing the high seas. And to top it off, crime was almost unheard-of, because for the most part criminal acts have no place in a society where everyone's wants were already fulfilled, and for a minimum of a price!

Yes, maybe the world-wide production WAS shrinking, but it wasn't all THAT noticeable! It just meant a few less months to feed, and maybe a few less potential mates... But there too Science had you covered! There was always a major controversy over whether or not one should be allowed to marry their android, but if you wanted companionship and didn't mind one made out of metal, BnL had the premiere top-of-the-line android for you! Of course, they also manufactured a line for every possible need, but even those destined for menial tasks - janitors, perhaps, or delivery-making - were still so human-like as not to cause a stir. There had been simpler robots before, yes, but they had needed a certain level of awareness in order to do their jobs, and surveys showed that humans were disturbed by machines that seemed to think on their own. It took some time before the developers at BnL's Automated Task Force managed to come out on the other side of the Uncanny Valley, but at last they'd created an easily-reproduced model which was immediately dubbed an "android" for good press, and soon there were different moldings for each kind of task, ready and waiting to deliver service with a smile.

Soon enough, it was common to see more androids than humans on the street of your average city, and when the day came that the total number of androids surpassed the total number of humans left on Earth, that probably should have been a sign that something was going wrong. Of course, by then, Buy 'N' Large was already working on a different problem, a problem much more pressing than that of too many androids, and a problem - as it turned out - that would prove much more difficult to solve.

You see, the changes in the environment had finally become too big for Buy 'N' Large to ignore, if not exactly too big to hide from the public; while the happy consumers immersed themselves in BnL's super-immersive "Perfect Pleasure Vacation Package," all from the comforts of their own homes, Buy 'N' Large's top scientists worked frantically to reverse the effects that had lately grown too severe to ignore. Unfortunately, it had been too late for a while now, and those scientists were only just finding it out. The ocean has undergone immense salinization, to the point where you could pickled vegetables in it, if it weren't already muddied by toxic runoff; vast swaths of sea were barren and dead, clear even of the most hardy plankton, and those 'dead seas' were growing. The skies were now tinged a murky yellow, yet another reason to keep mankind's eyes from rising over the tallest skyscraper, and when it rained, the droplets left dirty streaks on anything it touched and caused itchy red rashes on human skin. And, when the tainted moisture was absorbed into the soil, it killed the plants who tried to drink from it; when the plants died and withered, the now-loose soil turned to dust and blew away, until 'farm-fresh' produce, which had already been a high-end treat, were no longer available at all. True, that's why people had pools and sky-domes and no-muss no-fuss Edibles Generators, but...

And then at last, as people the world over began complaining of tightness in their lungs, shortness of breath, and a bitter taste to the air, the BnL scientists were forced to admit that every scenario they had run had resulted in the same answer: The planet Earth was very, very sick, and they had no medicine with which to treat it. Living in a post-scarcity society might have meant a wonderful standard of living but it also meant people could afford to waste much, much more than they previously had, and the people did, and there just wasn't enough room to deal with the waste. Dumps overflowed, incinerators nearly melted down to belch ash and smoke into the sky, and in many places the garbage was simply left where they were. People didn't go outside these days anyway, right?

In the end, the result of a combination of these factors, and a lesson too long in coming, could not be denied. No matter how many brainstorming sessions took place in the hallowed halls of the Buy 'N' Large R&D division, no matter how much money the company's CEOs threw at the problem, it seemed that Mother Nature - long ignored - was not an opponent they could out-think or buy out. Earth was dying, and to even attempt to rehabilitate it would take a supreme effort... and an empty Earth.

So the R&D division, the best minds in the world, changed the direction of their research. They outlined a plan, a far-off and long-shot of a plan, but the production of the new robot went into gear almost the moment after the plans for the Waste Allocation Load Lifter * Earth-Class came off the drawing-board. (Well, the screen. Same difference.) Because of the need for urgency, they didn't have time to make an all-new body-mold or programming-skeleton, and in fact it wouldn't really be necessary; what they were making, after all, was a fleet of glorified garbage-men, so the developers cannibalized the designs of an earlier construction-type model, BOB v. 2 (Building and Ordinance Bot). BOB had been designed to work under human crew-chiefs, so it had more of a 'personality,' however pre-programmed, than it really needed... but there wasn't time to alter that, and there really wasn't the need. After all, it's not like there'd be humans around to notice.

At the same time, immense factories across the world went into production of the BnL starliner fleet, a massive engineering attempt to create thousands of arks in which to safeguard humanity. Thankfully, the slowing of mankind's reproductive capabilities were working in the favor of those who had to outfit their safe-houses; at an earlier time, the number of ships needed to transport even half of the collective population would be a near-impossible feat, even for such masters of mass-manufacturing as the Buy 'N' Large corporation. Each 'ark' was stocked with enough machinery to ensure a calm, pleasant flight for its occupants, for as long as the trip needed to be; and, while a human captain was chosen for each, there was also a machine in the co-pilot's seat as well. The AUTO-type autopilot had been designed expressly to man the massive starliners which were humanity's last hope, although to save time, the original plans for a physical android form were scrapped; instead the A.I. was wired directly into the ship's systems, and given a holographic projector to allow it to approximate a physical form. There was, of course, the option to turn the autopilot off, but that was included more because it wasn't important enough to change the basic plans - No-one really expected the autopilot NOT to be in use during the voyage.

And then, when everything was ready, the message was given to the world by none other than Shelby Forthright, the Buy 'N' Large CEO himself: The world was going to undergo Operation: Cleanup, and it would take only five years for the planet Earth to be back in tip-top shape! And, in the meantime, everyone would get an all-expense-paid vacation in one of the new luxury spaceliners that Bnl would helpfully provide, spending the five years of Operation: Cleanup on a vacation like none other! And then, when the the helpful little WALL-Es had tidied up the Earth, the spaceliners would return to a cleaned-up planet, ready to institute Operation: Recolonize and get things back to normal. No, even better than they'd been before!

Well, there really wasn't much of a choice after that, was there? Even the most oblivious person had noticed that the world outside his house didn't seem to be doing so well, so the population of Earth packed up their belongings and called up the newly-instituted spaceport hotlines to reserve their cabins aboardship. Everything was done nearly and orderly, with no sense of panic or worry, and those who proceeded up the huge gangplanks weren't particularly alarmed - After all, they'd be back in only a few years, right? It would be a nice, relaxing vacation 'til then.

In flights of twelve, the spaceliners lifted off their launch-platforms and rose into the skies, moving away from the planet which had turned brown under their feet. Space was big, but then, so were the spaceliners; so rather than having all of them remain in orbit, each ship took a pre-plotted course to the farther reaches of the solar-system and beyond. Besides, who would want to look down at that unpleasant spot of dingy planet? It would be much better to remember it as blue and green, and then to come back when it was blue and green again.

The last ship to leave was the greatest of them all, the BNL Axiom, and it was also the largest of the ships of the BNL fleet. Aboard this ship were the most important of the BNL staff, and of the governments, and the greatest minds the world had to offer: Artists and builders and doctors were there, as were the scientists who had tried to save the Earth, and who had now succeeded in - at least - preserving mankind. When the Axiom left the Earth behind, it left only a handful of stubborn humans who, for one reason or another, refused to leave; it left mountains and mountains of garbage, smothering the earth and blanketing the seas; and it left an army of WALL-E 'droids, moving stoically through the garbage-mountains and across the shifting seas, compacting the garbage into man-sized blocks and stacking them neatly, as their programming told them to do. After all, they only had five years to complete a clean-up that spanned the entire surface of the world.

Seven hundred years later, towering stacks of trash-cubes loom where skyscrapers once stood, and still the garbage of a million wasteful humans is scattered across the landscape for as far as the eye could see. The only eyes that see them, though, belongs to the sole remaining WALL-E unit left in active service, the only one that continues to follow its protocol even seven centuries after its creators fled the massive junk-pile they'd made. In and among the carefully-piled cubes this sole WALL-E winds, accompanied by a cheerful song even older than him, scavenged from amidst the trash-heaps and preserved to keep him company on his own hard drive. While some robots could be programmed to want companionship, the WALL-E unit - and the BOB unit it was based on - was not one of those models; on the other hand, seven hundred years alone would probably change a human, if they could live that long, and it certainly could change a robot, who is not limited by conventional life-spans. As long as sun, however sluggishly, continues to be collected by the battered flexible plates on his back, arms, and sides, WALL-E would continue to exist... and, it's not inconceivable to think, maybe he would have the chance to change.

Echoing across an empty, cluttered city, men and women long since forgotten sang of lights like stars and a world somewhere beyond, of girls in white gowns and boys with shine in their hair, a place where you could put on your Sunday clothes and go to town. Those words didn't really have a meaning for WALL-E, who didn't know half the words they were talking about and had no clothes besides the worn and threadbare mustard-yellow worksuit that all WALL-Es wore, but the music made him happy all the same. Android lips weren't really made to whistle, but he hums slightly off-tune in his throat as he flicks the muzzle of his 'gun,' little more than a complex metal tube, at a small mound of garbage and depresses the trigger. Bravo, gravity! The trash is compressed, within a few moments, into a tightly-packed cube of five feet by five feet, and another trigger turns the gravity-force into a suspension-beam, with which WALL-E levels the cube up, up, up, and onto the top tier of this latest tower he's building. WALL-E sets the cube down, wedges it in among the others, and lets it go; turning his attention back to the debris all around him, he selects a new clump of cast-offs and repeats the process, as he's done countless times since he was first activated, when there were still people on Earth and things were much less quiet and alone.

"Put On Your Sunday Clothes" comes to a flourishing finish, then begins again from the top as WALL-E dutifully continues performing his primary function. Strapped to his back is a makeshift backpack, roughly made out of the same mustard-colored cloth as the jumpsuit he wears, and the pack is mostly full with irregularly-shaped items, a large-ish rat perched on a square outcropping that almost protrudes entirely from the fabric. In contrast to the devastated world around them, the rat looked sleek and healthy, although dust caked its black fur brown just as it dulled WALL-E's synthetic skin and hair, the latter of which was once bright yellow but could now best be described as literally dirty blond. Otherwise at rest, the rat suddenly got to all fours, tiny claws gripping the backpack's material as a pointed nose lifted into the air and sniffed, whiskers taut. Not more than a few moments after, WALL-E glanced up as well, his atmospheric sensors feeding familiar readings into his mind.

With the latest-formed cube in place, WALL-E switched off his utili-gun and slung it over his shoulder, very carefully avoiding his little rodent friend, before turning to the south and taking off at a run. For such a battered android he made pretty good time, sprinting across the shifting ground-cover of trash towards home and safety, while at the northern edge of the city a cloud of high-velocity sand and grit came whirling in from the desert.

Author's Notes: This is basically a re-telling of WALL-E, just with human-like androids instead of the obviously-mechanical robots we see in the film, as part of a larger attempt to smooth out what I consider the "rough spots" of the film - logic-wise, I mean. I loved the film as much as anyone else, otherwise I wouldn't be putting time into this! =D Anyway, the way it's going now it'll follow the basic storyline of the movie, which means eventual WALL-E/EVE romance, and any other warnings I might have will be attended to as I reach them. Reviews will be muchly appreciated, whether or not you're signed in, so go for it!