DISCLAIMER

The story idea rightfully belongs to whoadrep08

WALL∙E is a 2008 computer-animated science fiction film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and directed by Andrew Stanton.

It's a far enough distance to traverse through the toxic city, as Wally traveled alone on foot down the streets from the mountains of trash of former Central Park. Old buildings crumbled and towers of garbage cubes proudly standing as far as the eye could see but he remained unfazed, remaining oblivious to Buy N' Large mega corporation logos, similar to the one on his uniform. Holographic screens materialize from literally everywhere. Buy n' Large shopping, Buy n' Large bank, Buy n' Large restaurants, stores, skyscrapers, Buy n' Large everywhere!

He passes Wall Street, old newspapers scattered everywhere, barely legible from the dirt, read: "TOO MUCH TRASH! EARTH COVERED! BUY N' LARGE CEO DECLARES GLOBAL EMERGENCY!"

Wally reaches an elevated maglev train station, the train itself derailed and eroded on the abandoned spot so long ago. Wally notions for Hal to follow, as he hops down on the tracks and continues walking, a short cut home, but not a pleasant one.

He keeps looking ahead, for all around him, there are more humans, dead humans. Skeletal remains all wearing the same uniforms as Wally, their bodies scattered and forgotten like the garbage city they were cleaning, and all but decomposed by nature and time. He remembers this place. He was born and raised in here. He couldn't escape it nor change it for it was all his life and job as well as for his fellow cleanup workers, participating since early childhood in excavating the dystopian city, no matter what. It was all part of a global effort that started a very long time ago, by what was left of the governing Buy N' Large to clean the planet for people who left on ships that had set sail for the infinite vacuum of space. They left a certain few millions of selected laborers, including Wally's predecessors and ancestors, to do the work of the societies that left them behind while on a cruise in the heavens. For reasons he doesn't know, never returned, he forgotten how long it's been since they left in the year 2105, decades, maybe centuries passed.

The job was deadly itself for there were constant fatal accidents from falling off the trash towers to being buried alive from collapsing tower landslides. Extremely powerful sandstorms wrecked the most havoc in any area of the sector along with the cause of destroying untold years worth of labor. Disease was commonplace as products of harmful pollution and mass starvation, medicine became scarce to crude improvising to eventually nonexistent, allowing pandemic to spread, people dying off by the hundreds every day. All of these natural forces have lead to violent civil unrest from the workers turning on each other, fighting for survival. Over time, the workers died off by the thousands to the millions, and when Wally was first able to use a shovel, there were very few left, less than a thousand in the sector of the dwindling tens of thousands globally. Every year, they succumbed to the uninhabitable environment or killed each other off one by one. Only Wally himself barely survived and he was just a child. There were probably a few more like him scattered across the globe. Like Sector NA-001, they were all dead and forgotten, virtually at the edge of extinction.

There is uneasiness in him as he kept walking, avoiding looking at his fallen brethren but snapped back into reality by a sharp pain.

"Aah!" he shouts and holds his bleeding foot in reflex. Collecting himself, Wally glimpses under his heavy-duty work boots, they're completely worn to his feet! Wally realizes as he looked at the piece of metal shards along the corroded tracks he stepped on and pierced his foot, and appears to be more along the way. Wanting to get home in time or be lost in this city, at night, in toxic air, alone, he had to find replacements.

He makes his way carefully around the mass grave of his fellow workers. There must be a hundred bodies unmoved from the spot they dropped dead, some completely buried in trash and sand, and few with wearable clothes, let alone boots. Finally, he spots a usable pair, still fit to the skeleton of its deceased owner. From the looks of it, this man was still working when he died, a cube still clung in his arms, faithfully carrying out his directive until death took him over.

Wally's memories filled him with sadness for his fallen comrades. He knew them, almost every single one of their faces and voices. He knew them since his first memories as a helpless worker. He remembered them alive as if it were yesterday, he considered them as his "brothers," the closest thing to family he ever had because they were all he knew. Sure they turned on each other and him when there was no food left to survive, resorting to looting, murder, even cannibalism. He still considered them the only family he had. He couldn't bring himself to kill them in defense, and he just ran away, cowardly hiding and waited until the mass killing ended. Now, seeing all those he knew dead and rotting everywhere… Since then he never tried to look back at them again, only at a time of absolute need, and that need was now.

Wally looks over the bodies scattered about, they were still wondering the streets of an uninhabitable wasteland and cleaning a long hopeless cause until they gave their last breath for it yet they didn't. Deep down, he felt like a grave robber. Worse, felt guilty for them to die and not him.

They don't need to worry about their troubles anymore. Another man's death is another man's survival, Wally shook the thought from his mind. Showing respect for the decomposing worker, Wally carefully exchanges his boots, trying hard not to think about the feelings he felt when they died.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Walking along the eroded train tracks, sporting new boots, Wally chirps triumphantly as he and Hal made their way down the tracks to lower Manhattan. The man climbs off the tracks as he reaches his exit station, Hal following closely behind him.

He passes a series of check stands for the train station. Suddenly a high-tech holographic-ad appears on the walls, displaying static images of luxurious Buy n' Large spaceships leaving Earth.

A voice comes on over the advertisement.

"TOO MUCH GARBAGE IN YOUR FACE? THERE'S PLENTY OF SPACE OUT IN SPACE!" Images with workers like him still on the surface, all with content of cleaning, like a janitorial advertisement.

At last, he reaches the last road leading to his destination. As he stepped off the ramp, a huge holographic-ad appears overhead. The same announcement voice returns.

"SPEND YOUR FIVE YEAR CRUISE IN STYLE! WAITED UPON TWENTY FOUR HOURS A DAY BY OUR FULLY AUTOMATED CREW, WHILE YOUR CAPTAIN CHARTS A COURSE FOR NONSTOP ENTERTAINMENT, FINE DINING, AND WITH OUR ALL ACCESS HOVER CHAIRS, EVEN GRANDMA CAN JOIN THE FUN, THERE'S NO NEED TO WALK!" He has seen these ads before, but he despised them for showing things other humans enjoyed while he is here on this planet. Not to mention his other companions' dead and rotting away without a care from anyone on these moving representative pictures of the society they were serving. Those 'people' will never know who they were or what happened on this world. Wally continues on his walk home as the ad goes on...

"THE AXIOM, PUTTING THE STAR IN EXECUTIVE STARLINER!" Then another image appears, a man in a fine suit, middle aged, wearing an executive Buy n' Large pin on his lapel. Shelby Forthright, the annoying overly optimistic Buy n' Large C.E.O. waving off the massive ship during launch.

"Because at Buy n' Large, space is the final fun-tier!" The great ship's engines thunderously lift it off as the holographic-screen fades away, overlooking an enormous manufactured concave, miles wide and thousands of feet deep in the dried up Hudson Bay not empty like the Grand Canyon. It was the launch pad for the Axiom as seen in the communiqué.

He walks on the Brooklyn Bridge or what's left of it that hasn't collapsed, its main support towers still standing, sections of the bridge still attached. Wally spots a mammoth vehicle near the broken edge of the crossing.

Finally, Wally thought as he walked up to the large truck, a Tonka-like transport with treads, broken down on the bridge, with other smaller vehicles scattered about. He pulls a lever on the side of the back, the sound of loud and obsolete hydraulic actuators activating, lowering a ramp. Wally is home from another day of hard labor.