Chapter 2

"A Life in Silence"

Captain McCrea hated the repair wards. He'd seen his fair share of people hurt, screaming as the medi-bots patched them up. He'd been to a fair few funerals, cried over quite a few bodies. It was a fact of life, and he'd taken his fair share of injuries, felt his share of pain. He understood that, he understood the human response to pain. But the silence always got to him.

The robots didn't grieve like humans. There wasn't any outpouring of sobs. He didn't understand machine code, but it was usually completely private. When a robot was badly damaged to actively speak, some just put data cords in each others heads, communicating into each others heads, sitting or floating next to one another for hours on end. Others whispered in machine code, keeping quiet. The repair bots moved among the repair tables and holding areas with complete silence, moving robots and or doing momentary repairs to keep a patient stable. One repair arm was reattaching an anti grav motor to a steward who'd taken a round that gutted its-McCrea corrected himself- his lower body. The steward would be back in service in a few days. McCrea stepped aside as a MV-R passed him, carrying a pair of completely destroyed stewards, two piles of nearly unidentifiable wreckage. They were being taken to the "morgue". McCrea had never really bothered to check what they actually did there.

The robots had an odd way of looking at death. The bodies weren't buried, and there weren't any funerals. But the bodies were never stripped of working parts. They were simply sealed in containers and put on cold storage. The way TYP-R had explained it to McCrea, it was a kind of bad luck to use the parts of the dead, unless it was an emergency, and even then most robots had refused parts of the dead, often shutting themselves down till new parts could be manufactured.

Most of the patients in the repair ward were stewards, damaged by the fight with the rogue. A few more were there to assist in any way they could, as well as a few cleaners led by Mo, and the occasional human mechanic. Mo himself was cleaning off the shattered shell of a steward, the little robot making several passes over a blast mark. Next to the little robot, the steward's innards were open, a repair arm re-soldering several wires. The steward burbled occasionally in machine code, like it was in a fever dream. McCrea moved past the robot with a sigh.

He walked slowly towards the intensive repair ward. He paused before the open portal door for a second, took off his captain's hat, and stepped through. The room beyond was cold, but there was more haste to what was being done. More mobile repair units, spindly eight armed robots attached to boxy bodies filled with spare parts and moving on little wheels, were clustered around a dozen patients. Nearly one side of the room was devoted to repairing the more hideously damaged stewards, some that barely resembled anything beyond burned out chasses, yet still functioned.

What McCrea was more worried about was a frantic knot of repair units, clustered around a knee high table. There was the whine of laser saw, and the sound of steel being carved apart. He quietly walked over, staying far enough out of the way as to not impede the repairs. There was a pop, and a repair droid, who McCrea recognized as the lead repair bot, pulled by him, holding a burned out ion cannon, which it then began to take apart, pulling out several destroyed circuits. The robot suddenly looked up at the captain. It spoke.

"Captain, what do you need?" said the repair bot, the voice sounding slightly frustrated and not a little angry.

"Just came to check in on the repairs. How is she?"

"The EVE probe? She will make it, though we have to do more repairs than we expected."

"That's very good, but actually I wasn't asking about Ariel."

The repair bot looked up at the captain.

"You mean 001, sir?"

"Yes, is sh-," began McCrea, but the repair bot cut him off.

"Follow me, sir."

The droid then turned its head slightly, and beeped out an order in machine code. Another repair unit moved off a stabilized steward to start stripping down the ion cannon. The senior repair bot began to move without another word, not stopping for the captain to catch up. McCrea hurried after him.

The senior led him down to the robot morgue.

"She's not de-," McCrea began, but the robot hushed him quickly.

"I didn't say that. Now be quiet."

McCrea might not have taken that a few years ago, but he did as the senior said. The morgue was dead silent and cold. The captain was glad his jacket now finally fit him comfortably. He would have shivering otherwise. The robots wheels cracked ice as they passed between the rows of broken robots. Several repair arms were carefully interring the remains of ruined stewards. McCrea glimpsed groups of robots slowly moving among the containers, clustered around cargo crates.

The senior lead the captain to a door that was in the very back of the room, where the robot then inserted a data key that was attached to one of its arms into a slot. There was a whirr and click. The door opened silently. The senior entered and beckoned for the captain to follow. The room beyond was odd.

It was almost a complete sphere, except the floor which flattened out the bottom. There was an odd blue light that suffused everything, and the walls didn't seem wholly there. In a circle around the perimeter of the room, were several glass tanks, each one layed out lengthways in a support, though most seemed to be shut down. Each one appeared to be filled with an opaque liquid, shining blue in the light. The senior pointed at one.

Wall-E was staring at one of the tanks. He didn't move to acknowledge the captain or the senior. He didn't make a sound, his hands hanging rather limply by robotic standards at his side. The little robot just sat and stared at one of the tanks. The liquid in the tank seemed to be spinning and moving like it was part of the sea. And then with an odd movement, the liquid became completely transparent. Eve was floating in the middle of the tank.

She appeared to be awake, but she stared fixedly at the roof, eyes wide in shock. The lower quarter of her body was missing, but there seemed to an odd lattice of metal begging to cover the damaged area, other burn marks and fracture mark half covered by swathes of grey…scabs that was the word that came to McCrea's mind. Wall-E reached out and touched the tank. The liquid slowly turned opaque again, and Eve disappeared behind the liquid. The senior grabbed McCrea's arm and urged him toward the exit. They left the room as quietely as they could. The senior closed the door as they left.

McCrea turned to the robot.

"What was that?"

The senior was silent for a moment. Then it spoke almost hesitantly.

"The damage Eve suffered was rather… unique. That blast cut through most of her anti grav unit and central power lines. We couldn't do repairs without simply tearing her apart and rebuilding her from spares," said the senior, as he began to lead the captain out of the morgue.

"So we left with our best, last hope: nano bot reconstruction. With a few simple commands, time and enough materials they can create a working system in any robot. Of course the issue is that it might take days or weeks before the damaged systems are repaired, and the final repairs can begin."

McCrea was silent for a moment. He then spoke.

"There's an unspoken if, isn't there?"

The senior nodded.

"The nanos are smart, but they can only do so much. It's fifty that it'll work, and if it fails, she'll have to be shut down."

The captain fell silent. They left the morgue, the doors sliding closed behind them.

The senior spoke again

"I also assume you came for an update on the other…patient?"

"Yes, but I wanted to see our own people first."

Wall-E stared at the tank. His hands still rested on the glass, his eyes still searching the nano bots for a glance of Eve. He shuddered every few minutes, little mechanical sobs escaping from his voice box. He didn't like this room, but he couldn't, no, wouldn't leave the room unless he desperately needed to. It was something of his duty, and more parts directive.

Wall-E couldn't remember the trip to the Axiom, just a few disjointed images of the way to the ship. He remembered dodging between groups of stewards and MV-Rs as they moved toward the ship. He saw himself pushing past repair bots, and his rush into the morgue, following the first thing that resembled Eve. He heard himself scream almost in equal parts rage and fear when he saw an EVE probe with its head crushed. He remembered being pulled off his feet as a repair arm restrained him.

It had taken him nearly half an hour before he was near calm enough for the repair senior to explain to him that Eve was still alive. He'd been led quickly to the nano repair room. He'd seen the repair arms lowering the shut down Eve into the tank. He eventually calmed, but his mind still played back every memory of Eve, happy and sad. A shudder went through his body as he remembered there flight outside the Axiom.

Revenge is not something that robots are familiar with. It's something that's almost irrevocably human. Robots could feel anger and love, but hate? That was something that Wall- had no words to express. He slammed a fist against the deck.

There was very little in the cargo bay. There was a stack of old battered cargo containers, two hundred pound crates used to hold excess supplies of all types. An old cargo lifter was deactivated in the corner. In the very center of the room, the robot was deactivated, an electric boot attached to its head, as it lay on its side. The legs had been bound under multiple force fields, like it had been hogtied. The remaining arm was removed, placed on a tarp alongside the shoulder cannon and lasers. A repair bot was carefully sealing the hydraulics that had been shattered in the fight. Another was using a laser saw to cut down the ragged tears in the armor plating.

"What is it?" asked McCrea. Even on its side, the robot dwarfed him. A cleaning bot was steadily cleaning up a pool of hydraulic fluid that had gathered on the ground.

"There's nothing like it in the Axiom's files I have access to. It's like it doesn't exist," said the senior repair bot, humming distractedly, "and the only unit with access to the highest level files is the Autopilot."

"Get him down here then," McCrea replied. The senior nodded, well more really bobbed its head slightly, and called across the intercom for Auto.

There was a slight pause as they waited for a reply from Auto. Then there was a crackle as the autopilot called back.

"Yes captain?" the toneless voice said over the intercom.

"Auto, we've got an unidentified robot down here."

The autopilot was silent for a moment.

"Coming, captain."

A few moments later, a small drone flitted into the room. It was about the size of a large cabbage, and was spherical in shape. It was a simple holo drone, almost a flying projector. Since Auto couldn't leave the bridge, and the GOPH-4 unit had never been rebuilt, it was a simple way of allowing him some freedom. The drone hovered over to McCrea. A small portion of the sphere opened up like camera shutter, revealing a small red eye.

"Identify sample," said the drone. McCrea gestured towards the robot on the ground behind him. The drone hovered over, and a scanning field was projected from its eye.

It took a full five minutes for the drone to complete several passes over the robot. When it was finished, it merely closed the eye shutter, and hovered in mid air.

"What is it, Auto?" asked McCrea. The drone was still silent. Auto answered over the intercom.

"Classified unit, under Section Three BNL Secrecy Order, page three hundred, article fifty, section 10."

"Auto, we've had a discussion about secrets. Ten years ago, I believe. And I honestly don't care about some order from men long dead."

The autopilot was silent for a moment.

" Classi-"

"It attacked the colony, Auto."

This led to a longer pause. McCrea knew he was playing with Auto's feelings a little too much. Some days it was almost too easy to forget that Auto did care for humanity, even if it was in his odd, perfectionist way. He did try to help to help the colony where he could, even if most people in the colony still hated him.

"Processing request for unit declassification", Auto said hesitantly.

There was a chatter of machine code from within the drone. The holo-projector reopened on the front of the sphere. A scaled down image of the robot appeared, running in place was projected on the ground, projected with a red light.

"Guardian Observer Battle Line Intelligence - Night Class."

McCrea was silent for a moment, thinking the name over in his head.

"GOBLY-N?"

"Yes, captain."

" I didn't think BNL programmed robots to actually kill people."
"It is not able to actually harm a human being. It fits more in a policing role."

"Like a STUAR-D?"

"On a much larger scale and a good deal more effective."

"How effective?"

"Pre-evacuation tests suggest 90% of field tests were successful."

"Any other pieces of pertinent data?"

The hologram of the GOBLY-N froze. The image was then zoomed in on a small hatch that was set right between the shoulders.

"The primary mission core is located here," Auto said.

"And if we remove it?"

"The GOBLY-N will reset to stand down mode. Once that occurs, it will go to secondary personality drives, and be essentially harmless."

McCrea paused for a moment. Two thoughts warred in his head. One was of all the robots it had destroyed, for Eve in the nano tank, for that look of terrible sadness that seemed to coat Wall-E. But there was also the thought: everyone deserves a chance. Auto was back, and to an extant forgiven, though never fully so. Maybe the GOBLY-N deserved that same chance.

McCrea sighed.

"Could we remove the primary core easily?" McCrea asked as he studied the robot before him. Auto replied after a moment, the sound of holo projector ticking over the only sound.

"Yes, though there are some safety protocols that may need to be overcome."

McCrea clapped his hands together.

"Okay people, let's get to work."