Three Days Later…

James Orion was very slowly manoeuvring the back of the truck in front of the large chute. And then firmly put the brakes on the truck, he was starting to see the enormity of his task. He knew there was an army of other cleaning units deactivated and under the rubble, only a few had been activated, notably the protagonist, and that meant until he found them, he had to go on alone.

And the only sensible way was to move out from around the only uncovered facility. Which was… impressive, the trash was dumped in the chute and sorted throughout the facility before being processed and stored behind the hangar doors. When that area filled up James didn't know what he would do, it would be the time he would try and open the Warehouse properly to store the raw material there.

He was going to try and keep as much material on Earth as he could though, the mission did detail setting up the Earth for people to resettle, not simply clean up all the trash and steal all of the cleaned-up material.

Opening the side door on the can he went to the outside control for the truck, he was cubing up trash, storing it in the truck and then dropping it off in large loads. The Transport Truck was designed as a load carrier, instead for carrying robots, and loading and unloading took some time because of that.

Thankfully, the Built to Last perk benefited his frame in another way. As a stronger frame it could endure more stress. So, after James opened the back, he would re-enter through the front and push out a long line of compacted trash cubes. It worked even better if he placed the mostly plastic trash cubes on the bottom as they slid easier.

Pushing with his large shovel like hands he slowly moved past the five stacked high cubes either side and pushed a line into the pit, watching the forty cubes fall into the deep chute. Then he wheels his way back and went again with another line of forty cubes. In total a fully loaded truck could carry two hundred and eighty cubes of trash, he only used the middle as he couldn't push cubes stored in the Wall-E slots straight out.

And based on his blueprints the trash cubes he produced were exactly twenty by twenty by twenty inches and were rated for the average density of pure osmium. Which in James personal opinion was ridiculous as it meant one of those cubes if made out of the right material could be three thousand kilograms. It wasn't likely to happen but the fact that a Wall-E unit could lift in excess of three thousand kilograms was stupid for its small size.

Reality was different to theory however, even a cube of only steel would only be a thousand kilos and the cues a unit produced would be occasionally filled with gaps as there might not be enough material in the Wall-E to compact completely.

Which was the problem with the intake, it was limited by the amount a Wall-E could shovel into its fifty-inch-wide chassis. But even with that a badly filled truck could carry thousands of tonnes of trash per trip… and it barely put a dent in the clean-up.

James had gotten a metal nudge from the Jumpchain upon wondering if he had to clean up damaged buildings too. If a building looked too damaged it read as a contaminant on his HUD, but he didn't know if the Jumpchain wanted him to clean those up too. Well, once he had questioned that it became clear that dangerous buildings were to be disposed of too.

Pushing the last cube into the chute James moved from his forward thinking and closed up the back again… he was currently hoping that he would find so clue to the location of trash cleaning bots as he sorted the piles of junk. Sorting a planets worth was an exercise which could make a basic robot sentient.

Which reminded him, pausing as slightly as he went to drive the truck away. There hadn't been any sort of described time he had landed in; it could be a hundred years since the humans left… or five hundred. He didn't know and the Jumpchain didn't say. However, it did say he was being dropped in a city near the other Wall-E, so, when he got to that point, the cubes that that Wall-E had sorted were just there to be disposed of.

Food for thought.

-o—O—o-

Half a year later…

James Orion was perched on the roof of his truck feeling some trepidation. He had sorted every piece of trash from this city and disposed of it into the centre, a few hundred kilos of material taken and deposited in the warehouse of various valuable materials… after he figured out, he just wanted a door to the Warehouse to open in an appropriately sized doorway in front of him. Thankfully, there was no shortage of empty doorways in an abandoned city, and he had been able to grab some of Wall-E worlds vast sums of material. A large amount not from Earth originally.

Wall-E universe had off world mining after all. One of the bots in his blueprints was an independent asteroid miner. The people of Earth just needed a ready supply of materials to get back too, he had sorted the excess from the facility to one of the stable structures nearby which could be closed off from the elements.

Now however, he had the last pat of this city to complete. The buildings. And whilst he had the ability to ram his truck through them to bring them down there was the non-zero chance of it crashing down and trapping him inside the truck, failing him from the mission.

So, instead he was stood on the truck roof with the sun beaming down on his top mounted solar panels. And, for the first time, was going to use the Plasma Cannon. After this Jump the power requirements wouldn't matter but until then he would have to keep an eye on his charge.

And with a mental nudge the white bulge on his right shoulder unfolded, piece after piece sliding out of each other until he had a long black barrel with white plating on its right-hand side. A cylindrical piece opened on the top of the barrel, and he had a second viewpoint, directly down the barrel through and aiming reticle.

James mentally adjusted the power to twenty percent of maximum and squeezed off a shot. The resulting thwomp of power forced his brake locked tracks to slide back a few feet and a massive burst of blue light to fly at the base of the building in question, near to two hundred feet away.

There was a massive explosion and James watched as the top of the tower seemed to shudder before falling straight down into the massive dust cloud below it.

Once that settled and cleared, James sighed as he realised that he had more mess to clean up again.

-o—O—o-

One year complete…

James cleared out the final piece of trash on the hill and smiled as he looked down from there, he had been moving out in all directions from the starting city and he had finally found his objective, there in front of him was a mostly cleared city, only a few piles of trash here and there and a several vast piles of cubes resembling of coating skyscrapers.

He could also see, by zooming his eyes to the limit, a small yellow cube slowly going about sorting more trash. Which was a problem, he didn't want to derail the plot of the movie as James didn't know if it would mess with his completion requirements, he left the piles of pre made cubes ready for transportation and kept sorting trash the other way.

-o—O—o-

Four years complete…

James almost cried as he found familiar looking towers that signified a second clearing facility under all of the trash. On the past four years he had cleared seven cities looking for the next recycling plant, the trips too and from the first facility taking longer and longer.

And now he set about taking the trash of the facility, careful of where he suspected the chute, to be full and to see if he could turn it on. If he could then he wouldn't have to do several more trips down back to the original facility and just start here as well. The material had stocked up far too much as well, he had nearly filled the last secure building in the first city, filling the doorways with the more weather proof material to defend the less protected stuff inside.

So, James sat and considered, bring up his memory of the first facility, very easy in a robot body, memory banks were something else. Then measuring from where the towers were, he started focusing his attention to where he knew he could gain access to the first facility, scooping up trash and spitting out tens of compressed cubes.

And after several feet of digging, and the whole filling from nearby trash several times he found, a doorway to the facility, locked shut. James left the hole, parked his truck back to where he had cleared down to the floor and went back to the door.

He called out his cannon, otherwise known as the wrecking ball, and put it minimum power as he lined a shot up for the middle of the door. He fired from as far away as possible and watched the door be blown apart, some of the nearby wall as well.

Rolling into the corridor he moved past several halls which he knew led to several rooms where he knew had several other rooms with more storage, which he had found out about and filled after he started with the first building in the starting city. He also moved past several of the reactors that powered the facility, he didn't hear the main ones humming so he assumed the quieter hum was back up power systems.

He rolled down until he reached an open doorway where he moved in to find the control room. Which was more problematic. He knew how a working one looked and now he knew what an offline looked like. How to change their state was something he didn't know.

Studying several of the screens he tried to work out which ones would cause the main power systems to come online. He knew what monitored them, so he went through with his greatest hope. Pressing the buttons that glowed in the first facility but weren't here.

Holding the buttons down until they lit up one after the other with his large square fingers he winced every time they lit, somewhat expecting an explosion. But, thankfully, after he lit up the final off button the every screen lit up, lines of text scrolling and he heard huge whines back in the direction of the power rooms behind him.

Letting out a sigh he wasn't physically capable of he turned to the next screen he had poured over, the recycling plants operational status. James was grateful of the two buttons either side of the screen now had a label from the screen. One labelled, power on.

Pressing down on the button he near shat himself at the terrifying rumble that rocked the entire facility. Relieved he paused at one of the screens on the wall as he went to leave. It stated the operational status of Nearby Wall-Es and Wall-As in a hundred-mile radius.

Operational Status of Waste Allocation Units:

All within radius:

4782/5000 Wall-E units detected.

1/5000 Wall-E units online and operational.

12/100 Wall-E Transport Vehicles detected

1/100 Wall-E Transport Vehicles online and operational.

13/100 Waste Collection Vehicles detected.

0/100 Waste Collection Vehicles online and operational.

1/1 Wall-A units detected.

0/1 Wall-A units online and operational.

James blinked his binocular eyes at the screen comically. He had gone over the original facility with a fine-toothed comb to discover any secrets and the startling lack of this screen perhaps pointed to that facility only existed due to the Jumpchain or the Jumpchain having removed that screen due to his drawback.

Regardless, it meant he now had another objective. To find the army of waste disposal units and vehicles and then getting them online. But first, he had to wait until the small avalanche of waste fell into the no working chute of the facility.

-o—O—o-

Three days hence…

James did his best robot approximation of a scream when he found the first Wall-E unit three days after, starting to clear a building near the second facility he found a Wall-E, in box form, crushed underneath a fallen stairwell.

Hauling the Wall-E out he hauled it to the facility, prematurely dropping off his half-loaded truck, and went to see if he could get it online. He had discovered a hangar where the units and vehicles should stay, unfortunately empty, and there were several ports on the wall, a small on that fit him and charged him up and one for his truck. He hoped they would also re activate units.

After dropping off the smaller load of cubes at the chute James took the Wall-E unit to the cord in the hangar and plugged it into the robot. The joy he felt at the screen turning on and a charging indication turning on was indescribable after spending years slowly cleaning up cities.

Instead of continuing cleaning he waited for the unit to turn online. And as soon as it turned on however, it unplugged itself and drove out of the hangar on its tracks, going to the nearest trash pile and immediately compacting.

James was somewhat sad at the lack of real company but continued his own task and kept an eye out for other units and vehicles. The Waste Collection vehicle was just a Transport Truck with the top taken off like a pickup truck.

With some hope he started his task again.

-o—O—o-

Seventeen years completed…

James Orion almost cried once he felt a mental tingle of the Jump requirements completing. A surety his task was completed. He had spent years slowly compacting trash and re-activating units. He had spent ages re-assigning Waste Allocation units to areas where there was more trash, and he just made a journey across the world to activate facilities and units.

It had been a sight to go across a mostly dried sea bed. Several old tanker ships half buried in the sand, he had large amounts of odds and ends along with a vast amount of material in his Warehouse now collected from the world.

The only reason it took so long was discovering the new facilities and activating the units. It wasn't exponential and he didn't have the ability to re-program robots to re activate their fellows.

But, after years of trawling a destroyed Earth, he finally had the ability to finish. With a light heart he allowed himself to be sucked back into the Warehouse and letting his Jumpchain continue.