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.

This truck is in essence, his house. Inside, rows upon rows of rotating shelves filled with salvaged trash, or to him: treasures. Interesting items he curiously found and collected from the trash-compacting over the years, probably since he first picked up a shovel. Since then he has retrieved and compiled seemingly everything random he could find: old broken childrens' toys, parking cones, pony ride stands, hand tools, antique clocks, old books, Christmas lights, utility-home appliances, hardware, weird clothing, a drum, signs, anything.

Wally takes off his new boots and gloves, humming cheerfully to the tunes of the music from earlier as he finally settles down for the day. He removes his goggles, his exposed and spectacled hazel eyes adjust to the harsh light flooding inside the truck. He hangs his boots, gloves, and goggles near the entrance as he walks down the center aisle to the other end of the truck, dusting off and unzipping his filthy jump suit. He had no shirt but wore a ratty pair of workpants underneath. He drags his feet to his humble section-of-the-truck of a home, a fabric sheet with its ends tied to metal rods on opposite sides with another sheet draped over it with a tattered pillow on one end, resembling a hammock, his bed. A stack of car batteries lay next to where he sleeps, wired to a switch to all the hanging Christmas lights in the truck, serving as the only light source.

Wally sets down his bag and suit, collapsing on his hammock, Hal lies on the floor exhausted from the walk as much as Wally was. His whole body aching, but he doesn't mind though, for he has grown use to the stresses and pain of heavy-lifting physical labor, and his body showed it.

Despite his thin frame, Wally is actually physically fit, having barely survived starvation on canned food and collected ground/rainwater, sanitary or not. His skin totally fifthly from almost two lifetimes worth of stoop labor in the dirt and not being bathed in a very, very long time. He felt somewhat uncomfortable that his unclean skin coated with a thin layer of sweat from the scorching 40˚+ Celsius heat. His body pale white from wearing the work suit protecting him from the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays, the areas of his skin exposed to the sun had extreme tans, mostly on his forearms and face except where the goggles shielded his eyes.

Of all the things making his body look eroded and revolting were the numerous, almost unaccountable marks of past injuries covering his body from head to toe. All the scars were the marks left by the dangerous, often unforgiving work and environment. There were scars after scars of healed or partially healed scrapes. Blisters, cuts, calluses, burns, and gashes spread all over his arms, legs, torso, and some on his face, most of them old and some recent, and more to add to his already grizzled body every new day of working. Every inch of him was weather-beaten, making his skin coarse as fine sandpaper in most places. With no proper medical supplies that he did not possess or have the knowledge on how to tend to himself, Wally could only live with the almost endless pain of new wounds and reopened, infected ones on a daily basis.

The most striking features of him were in his torso and his right arm. A small, crude looking device, imbedded inside the front his chest, the shape and size of an ancient cell phone with scar tissue surrounding it. It had a glowing yellow energy meter with an electrical socket built into it. It's some kind of pacemaker, but it was externally charged.

The second feature of him was his mechanical prosthetic right arm that composed his forearm up to his elbow. It was lightweight, but looked crude with different pieces of metallic casing bolted or welded together, if broken down and rebuilt several times by one hand. Its internal workings encaged on one side, exposing wires and servos. The sturdy hand's titanium fingers and joints were worn rough with scratches and nicks from all the work he does. A long scar ran from where his mechanical arm meets flesh at the elbow, up the back of his arm where it splits into two different long scars. One scar travelled over his chest to his pacemaker, it contains the biodegradable line supplying power to the arm. The other scar ran up his neck, and into the back of his head into his cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls motor functions. This scar contains the nano-fiber wiring that processes bioelectric signals in his brain, allowing him to control his arm through a neural link at the speed of his thoughts. The arm lets him to lift considerable heavy objects like trash cubes and has no sense of touch in that arm so he can't feel pain. At the cost of drawing small amounts of power from his pacemaker and it constantly itched at the wiring scar where it connected to him.

He looks exhausted from just taking a look at himself, the years of endless labor on him drained his strength, but he was just glad that he makes it through the day and still in one piece, mostly. Wally acquired the majority of his larger scars, especially his prosthetic arm, from accidents when he was doing his directive since he was just a child. He was very clumsy at the time and still is. Though for him, the memories of those times as a child-worker are too painful to remember, there was lots of pain inflicted on his body from his contraption of an arm, and there even were no anesthetics or painkillers available back then. The consequences on him and his brethrens were worse, trying to get used to his replacement arm and unintentionally harming others and himself. Though he was now used to them to the point they were finally part of him, that what really mattered.

After a few minutes of laying down resting, Wally gets up and decides to find his form of relaxation in this hellhole. He removes what appears to be a video cassette from a toaster, its title still readable on the old tape: Hello Dolly.

Placing it in an old VCR, he turns it on, and an ancient TV screen flickers and comes to life as the cheerful tune of actors dance and sing 'Put On Your Sunday Clothes.'The image and sound quality is poor, but Wally doesn't mind. As he hums to the music, he pulls out what he found today from his bag and sorts them out. He remembers the trash lid he unreasonably took home, but felt an urge to dance to his favorite tune with it like a hat how the actors do. He pulls out an unsolved three dimensional mechanical puzzle cube with blue, green, orange, purple, red and yellow stickers covering the six faces with nine stickers.

"Oh!" Wally sets it aside, thinking about how to solve it later. He then pulls out an eating utensil with a hollowed out bowl of a spoon with tints of a fork at the tip. Wally has truthfully never seen one before. He stares at the collection of spoons and forks, confused.

At his wits end, he sets it in between.

Eh, I'll figure it out later.

Finally, he picks out a handheld, rectangular metallic object out of the bag, without looking, he flips a switch, and the rows of shelves rotate to reveal a box full of them. He places it in with the others, and carefully aligns them.

Perfect! He nods in approval to himself over the precision of his work of placing one of hundreds of lighters in a single mass.

Finishing his collection, he is drawn to new music coming from the video playing on the screen.

It's not like 'Put On Your Sunday Clothes' where it was so cheerful and energetic. No, this one has a soft, slow, and sweet sound. A male actor is singing along with a beautiful woman on the TV screen, in a passionate tone, gently holding her hand and all the while, kissing her.

Instantly memorized by this image, Wally slowly brings up his cassette player and presses RECORD without looking away from the TV screen.

"And that is all…that love's about…

And that is all…that love's about…"

Wally is fazed by the beautiful image before him, thinking of the picture itself as the concept of something you doesn't understand, but you just know. Something he learned to be a happy feeling, called "love."

"That it only…took a moment…

To be loved…

A whole…life …loooooong"

Wally stood there, still fazed by the song just played, it seemed so warm, so safe, so full of kindness and caring. To hold a woman's hand, feeling all of her warmth run through and feeling it to be the whole world. It felt like the greatest thing in the universe, having another human beings giving themselves to you and you give them all your emotions and feelings for one another, if he could experience it himself.

Wally became lost in thought he realized he held his own hands, the cold of his metallic hand grasping his flesh hand snapping his senses out of trance, filling the void of isolation instead of the warm fantasy of warm company of a beautiful woman.

He pushed those thoughts in the back of his mind as he grabbed his bag and goes outside.

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

The hot sun disappeared below the horizon giving way a remarkably purple evening twilight along the western horizon. Hal sniffed around outside the truck with his playthings as Wally cleans out his bag. The winds slightly picking up felt good on his scarred, bare chest after a long day, it was among the only forms of physical comfort he knew, even over sleeping.

A small hole in the brown clouds above opens up. Wally takes notice, pausing and looked up, entranced by a sight he has seldom beheld. The polluted clouds have parted to reveal the darkness of outer space, a void of incomprehensible vastness and the realm of existence for billions upon billions of stars shining all at once, lighting up the sky like diamonds.

He has never seen a starry night sky, at least not one with starlight bright enough to shine through the haze and the trash somehow in orbit. To him, it is a beautiful sight. Like seeing the whole universe for all it was for the first time. is a beautiful sight

Remembering the word beautiful, Wally presses PLAY on his recorder. The soft and loving tune of 'It Only Takes A Moment'played out.

With the song in the background and the starry sky above him, Wally allows his mind to wonder, remembering about the ideas of beauty, companionship, and love. It must be a wonderful thing as the rarity of a clear night sky. Something so inviting and majestic like the infinite reaches of space, the distant stars and worlds that harbor the secrets of life and the unknown was what must be like people holding hands.

"Maybe..."Wally thinks aloud.

"Beautiful is up there." Just imagining how beautiful love was. Wonderful. Heavenly. Unreachable...

As comforting and inviting as the song and sky say about how great a thing love can be, yet it was just like the stars, something he can never actually feel, grasp or hold. It wasn't something in the air he just catches like a paper leaf in the wind. There is nothing he could ever grasp on this world to feel so loved, Wally was just one man, possibly the only man left, stuck on a lonely planet and no one that he knows, probably in all of humanity, even exist.

Wally felt the sky entrancing and haunting to him, having seen a rare, beautiful thing that reminded him that he could never treasure it personally, like it was taken from him. He somberly looks up into the sky with the eyes of an abandoned child...

Maybe…love… is up there.

Wally feels something all too familiar, something he felt since the day he never had any form of human contact, if Hal qualifies for any exception, not just in population count but also in relation or significant bond to any human being. He felt this way since losing his fellow workers, including the other humans who fled Earth. Not since as far as his memories could reach. Certain images of faces he once knew, called parents, who brought him to this world of all worlds; who faded out into nothing, as he could not remember who they were or what happened to them. After that image in his head, he knew he was an orphan, raised in this ugly world by the brutal hands of nature with only his fellow workers to care for him until they all died when he was still young. He was only taught to read, speak, survive, and collect trash, nothing else until he joins his fallen brethren the day he drops dead as well, spent and worked to death like everyone else has.

He worked and worked as told, unfazed by his dead and dying coworkers; even when some of them tried to kill him for survival necessities. All he could do run and hide, and do what he could to clean up, to do his routine, his directive, his down to earth job until he dies, the purpose he been unwillingly given. He cursed everything that happened to the world he now solely resides, for causing the roots of the problems for him stuck on Earth to watch everyone he knew died then trapped on a planet by himself, causing the feeling to transpire in the first place. Questioning whether he was fortunate to have lived through what no one else could, he doubted the purpose of his very existence. For him to have such feelings, he knew of this feeling since his first memories but never realized how bad this feeling was, over the long untold years of his life on this world until now…he was all alone...

Wally snaps back into reality. He could barely hear his music from a raging howl sound and felt his skin tingle from a fast-blowing cold wind into his bare chest. He notices the winds are really fast now, the hole in the sky was gone. He looks around to assess his surroundings.

On the right side of the horizon, something amassed in the distance, it was big, and growing upwards, forward, and fast in an enormous wall of dust that is headed straight for the city outskirts, towards his home, darkening the sky in its wake; a sandstorm.

It hits him these things were deadly, seeing firsthand their seer power and barely survived several sandstorms. Wally hastily cleans the rest of his bag and closes the hatch but froze when he forgot Hal as he's barking outside. He lowers the ramp again.

"HAL!" He gets back in and manages to close the ramp in time just as the first columns of dust started blowing into the truck.

Once safe, Wally slumps to the floor, still getting over almost being caught outside in a sandstorm.

Hal gives Wally a pleading look. Remembering he hasn't fed the mutt or himself yet, Wally gets up and finds a stack of Buy n' Large sponge cakes, canisters of collected rainwater, and canned beans. He unwrap a golden sponge cake filled with creamy filling for Hal and he greedily bites it away from Wally. The man then unwraps one for himself as he opens a small compartment in his prosthetic arm, containing small hand tools, and pulls out a knife. He opens the canned beans with relative ease and eats one of the only sources of food he has had as far back as he can remember. Aside from collecting polluted rainwater, what else was there? It's better to be malnourished than dead from starvation.

He notices Hal already dozed off. Tired and exhausted himself, Wally decides to turn in for the night.

Wally removed his glasses and, in one well-practiced movement, slid the joint off his detachable prosthetic arm from its arm-attachment, and placed it on a shelf nearby. Sleeping with a prosthetic is very uncomfortable on the lump where his forearm used to be.

He switches the Christmas lights off, slipping into the hammock in the pitch black interior. But he won't sleep so easily, the creepy howl of the hurricane-force winds always gave him a spine-tingling chill. Adding to that, his thoughts ran freely about the just-discovered pain of loneliness in his isolation from humanity, with no one and nothing to comfort his suffering.

He always endured suffering alone, but now it was beginning to get to him, the core of his being slowly and surely eroding, going to break down eventually, physically and mentally, like it did to his brothers.

As the night darkens and the sandstorm worsens, it gets colder, sub-freezing. Even in the confinement of the truck, away from the one hundred fifty kilo per hour blast of dirt and rocks, he curls up against the cold in his hammock, like a baby; his only source of warmth and comfort is the loving tune of 'It Only Takes A Moment.'

He turns it on, though the music reminded him of something he can never have, being able to requite his loneliness, but the soothing music was the only thing that felt like a mother cuddling a child, or a loved one comforting him to sleep.

Grabbing the nearest shelf, Wally rocks his hammock like a cradle, closing his eyes and drowning his hearing into the song, giving him some peace over the hellish gale-winds howling outside.

Eventually, exhaustion prevails over his dreadful thoughts as Wally finally falls asleep.

For those that came across this story instead of the original who are somewhat confused about Wally's physical appearance, allow me to explain the way whoadrep08 explained it to me . . . in other words, i simply cut and past the reply and than altered it:

Wally is a natural human who has only two prosthetic acquired from injury and/or birth defects. He has a pacemaker, which he (the author) came up to serve a purpose much later in the story. The prosthetic right forearm is similar to the mechanical arm of Anakin Skywalker from STAR WARS II & III and it incorporated some smaller scale devices used in the movie (like a cutting laser or tool compartment for instance) and serves Wally to help lift heavy objects despite his small stature, keeping him close the humble and ancient mechanical robot he is in the film.

I hope that answers that and hope you enjoy the next chapter!