The flat, tasteless edges of the city where nothing roamed but the wind and nothing breathed but the sky, there was little more than the hum of the buildings as the air flowed between and around them. That same, monotonous thrum permeated the maze of what may once have been a beautiful city, now brought to a crusted, rusty ruin of flat orange and shattered glass. Though while a space like this would be thought lifeless, moving closer to the center would reveal a busying slew of bodies. Humans, practically new to the environment, arriving but a few years ago.
Someone called out across the landscape, voice echoing against the vast piles of trash and refuse of centuries passed, "Charges primed! Thirty seconds..." Like rats fleeing a fire, people retreated from the ruins of an old building, laid down across a street near the colony.
"Fifteen seconds..." The man with the remote stepped back a little bit himself, moving slightly closer to the blast barrier created some twenty meters away. He rolled his shoulders a little bit, wiggled his fingers in anticipation. As the last man on construction, his boss, reached him and gave a thumbs-up, the countdown continued. "Five... four... three... two... one!"
He jammed a finger down on the button and watched as a large string of explosives ripped through the collapsed building, turning it further to rubble. He counted up as each consecutive detonation pummeled the ruins to dust. One, two, three, four, five... and so on until there was a much more manageable pile left for them to clean.
People around him stood up and gazed upon the rubble in awe, finding themselves grinning despite themselves. It was something they'd done a hundred times by now... yet the feeling never changed.
The man with the detonator thought for a while as the dust settled, recalling vaguely how one of the bots couldn't understand why so many humans started fires as soon as they learned that they could. It was destructive, counterproductive, and could be very dangerous. That primal reaction to explosions, that strange feedback that he got when he pressed the button to watch a building go up in smoke, even sometimes the smell just brought that giddy, childish smile to his face. The sheer destructive nature of fire was simply exhilarating. They didn't need a reason.
The boss clapped his hands and moved away from the eves of a shelter, "Alright everyone! Let's get this all cleared up by tonight, drinks on me if we finish early."
Captain McCrea stood at his computer terminal, shifting his weight from booted foot to booted foot, clicking the heels of them together every once in a while. As the computer continued to offer increasingly little information to him, the captain turned around to pace across his quarters on the Axiom. McCrea had taken to walking rather readily, doing it more and more as he turned it from a chore to second nature, and eventually to something he quite enjoyed doing. Walking was a pleasure now, if he wanted to go somewhere all he had to do was just... go. The ability to turn on his heel and make a change in route on the fly? Even better, it was liberating. It simply delighted him when others caught on to the idea.
Though he never took up jogging as a few others had, he kept the skill in a little slot in the back of his mind, but there was no need to run for him just yet. He suddenly hoped there never would be. Those dreams where he was forced to didn't settle well as he thought about it further. Suddenly he turned to the computer again, "Computer, what are bad dreams?"
The computer cleared the screen of the previous images, of houses layered in snow and pilgrim houses perched on the edges of white cliffs. Then it began to fill the screen with different images, all of some strange and surreal nature, some of it drawn as art with skills ranging from children to the likes of Lovecraft. It spoke once it finished, focusing on an image of a scribbled monster with strange eyes, "Bad dreams, nightmares, or fever dreams: unconscious imagery typically generated as part of the REM processes during sleep, which serve to illustrate subconscious fears or concerns that rack up during the day. They are sometimes believed to precede bad events, though data has no conclusion on whether this is true or not. Other times, they are used by psychologists to-"
"Computer, stop," McCrea only needed to hear about the idea they could come before bad things as a completely different fear swept his heart.
Auto rode his rail to one of the openings that would allow him into McCrea's quarters, then promptly descended and turned to where the Captain was pacing again. He made a noise, similar to clearing his throat, "Captain, you have looked that up for the third time this week. Allow me to remind you that there are psychological analysis programs at your disposal if you require them."
McCrea looked up at the wheel of the ship, frowning slightly, "I'm fine, mind your business on the Bridge."
There was a tense moment as both looked each other in the eyes, before Auto responded, "Yes, sir." He promptly ascended back to the bridge, thinking in that way machines like him tended to do. Auto was only revived because the people seemed to believe he could serve a purpose to them, it was the most logical reason. He could maintain the Axiom, make sure it stayed in shape, and was able to monitor certain important systems vital to the colony.
But somehow, this idea didn't sit right with him. Auto couldn't explain it, that distracting feeling in his mind with no place to go.
In a mirror thought to Auto's thoughts, McCrea sat as he quietly considered the hole in the ceiling that Auto appeared from just moments ago. Why had they revived him again? It was a counsel decision, people collectively recognized the need for him, and they decided it was worth whatever risk that brought with it.
So far, Auto hadn't done anything. Perhaps it was worth the extra set of eyes... eye.
M-O stared vaguely into the sky, his wheel rolling over the dusty mounds and pebbles of the land. He experimentally activated his contaminate scanner again, for the second time that day; the sky lit up as if it were on fire, his directive shouting inside him: "Foreign Contaminate!" He turned it off and shook his head, sighing in that way robots like him did, a sour and resigned noise. All M-O knew was that there was a lot of cleanup to do.
Underneath him, the ground practically leaped up to strike M-O, rocks and dust being tossed into the air. Caught off guard, M-O screeched, activating his alarm and scrubbing brush, waving it through the air as if to protect himself from the loose terrain. As the debris settled back to where it belonged, under his wheel, all he could think to do was grunt at the ground as he kept moving.
Halfway to his destination, M-O spotted some old friends coming out from one of the side streets in what he personally referred to as The Ruin (nobody else of note ever called it that, as far as he knew). It was the old Rogue Robots, the old rejects that caused so much trouble on the Axiom with Wall-E and EVE; M-O chuckled to himself over the idea that they might have been the ones that caused the explosion earlier.
He blinked his alarm light to them and waved, making a cheery little buzz with his brush, moving to join their jolly party.
The lead robot in the group, a D-FIB unit, gave the smaller robot a simple wave and a nod; others simply chirped or waved to his approach. It seemed they were all headed for the same place: the bridge at the edge of the city, the arm stretched to a horizon of waste, the home of two robots who flipped their entire lives so far on their head that they now had to live on a completely different planet. A planet, filled with dirt and filth. Sure, people were living a good life here, but why did this place have to be so... so... There was very simply no better word for it: dirty.
While M-O ruminated over the situation, blinded in thought and guided along only by the bustling bodies of other bots, the longest part of the journey passed as if it never happened. Of course, M-O had his internal clock to tell him, but that wasn't his main focus.
As dirt transitioned to cracked and broken asphalt, the little cleaner robot slowly came back to focus ahead of himself, looking up the road to where Wall-E's truck was perched. It was the truck at the very end, only slightly trailed by two others, derelict and abandoned. Though Wall-E's truck looked particularly similar, the bots knew how simply full of life that it was. Much more so than any other.
When the group arrived, some 5 meters off from the back of the truck, the rear hatch popped open and slowly began that loud, grating descent. M-O found himself convinced that he had to help Wall-E get someone to fix the motor on that thing, at least to make it less loud.
The sound got louder and louder as they got closer, slowly revealing the interior lights, decor, and of course the residents.
Wall-E and EVE stood in the very threshold of the truck, light pouring out around them, framing them around their edges. It both contrasted them and complimented them; where one was squat and square the other was round and light, where one was a foreign contaminate the other was immaculately clean and taken care of. M-O was distinctly aware of how this duality defined them.
Before any further observations could be made on his part, both had rushed out of the truck to meet them. Wall-E rushed around greeting with the best-attempted handshake that he tended to do, easy enough with the other robots who had done it before or had hands similar enough to human's to make it work. M-O cleaned off Wall-E's hand before shaking it.
EVE, in contrast, simply nodded to the other bots. She did not have as pleasant memories as Wall-E did with them, but she was still well aware of how they had helped at the moment. M-O, thankful for not having to clean off another hand, was happy to nod back.
As soon as pleasantries concluded, their hosts beckoned them closer to the truck. Without a moment more to wait, Wall-E pulled a cord and EVE popped a party popper over their heads, releasing confetti as a small banner fell across the entry to their truck. The banner was a flat black plane, with a bright blue and green depiction of Earth in the center, the number 10 in bold over it, colored red. Of course, the tenth anniversary of Axiom's arrival on Earth and the founding of the colony, how could M-O have forgotten? Oh yeah, this place sucked.
Auto looked over the lido deck from his place in the bridge, slowly transitioning to look over the crew on deck. He counted them up in his processors: Steward 60, a SECUR-T model that had recently taken a corporal's position among the other surviving Stewards; Teks, a FIX-IT bot with an eye for repair management; and John, one of the humans who was overlooking parts of the colony. The wheel had almost scoffed at the idea of allowing a bridge crew at all, but ultimately agreed to it as the deal to stay activated.
Steward 60 was only taking part in bridge crew duties to avoid the repair ward, where a personal project of his was taking place. A personal project he didn't want to do, but was admittedly almost finished with it. The robot stared pointedly at a screen on the console before turning to Auto, "Permission to be dismissed from the post early, sir."
The autopilot vaguely considered the screen that 60 had been staring at so intently for the past ten hours. It seemed that this project could be moved from the in-progress list to the finished list. "Granted," he paused as 60 began to leave, but he had one more thing to say, "I commend you for your dedicated work in the colony, thank you."
John blinked in Auto's general direction, while 60 used an epaulet to salute, before departing.
Auto turned his attention to John, "What?"
The man shrugged and shook his head, "Nothin'." Then he returned to his panel. John suddenly gripped the edge of the table as a voice came through the comms link.
"Axiom, something is coming your way, heads up." It was Jan, one of the women working night watch near the construction zones.
Taking his cue, Auto dropped into the captain's quarters, "Captain, you are required on the bridge."