There were thousands - no, tens of thousands - just like him. Endless rows of squat, boxy workers rolling over fields of waste, their treads grinding against the dust-caked earth. The sky was thick with pollution, the air heavy with the human of machinery. They did not speak, but they worked, their compactors pressing the bones of civilization into neat little cubes, stacking them like tombstones over a planet long abandoned.
Wall-E didn't have a name then. None of them did. They were identical, just pieces in a great, tireless machine.
. . . . . ╰──╮The First to Fall╭──╯ . . . . .
The first time it happened, Wall-E didn't understand.
The unit beside him - one he had worked next to for... how long? Months? Years? Decades? - jerked to stop mid-motion. A low, sputtering whine came its chest, and then its arms froze, cube half-formed, its optics flickered, struggling, before fading into darkness.
Wall-E beeped in confusion. He nudged it gently with his claw. Nothing.
He scanned the others, the endless lines of robots continued their work, undisturbed. No one stopped to help. No one even seemed to notice.
So Wall-E did what he had seen the humans do in the old tapes buried in the trash heaps - he reached out, touched the unit's side, and whispered a small, uncertain click.
Nothing happpened.
For hours, he stayed beside it. Waiting for the familiar hum of its motor to start again. But it never did. Eventually, as the sun dipped behind the smog, he did what the others did. He kept working.
. . . . . ╰──╮Collapse╭──╯ . . . . .
The failures spread like rust.
Every day, Wall-E saw another until slow, stutter, then stop. Some overheated, their cooling vents clogged with centuries of dust. Some simply ran out of power, their solar panels too caked in grime to recharge. Others crumbled spart, their treads snapping, their frames too corroded to hold themselves together.
He found pieces from the fallen, carefully prying off panels, pulling wires, trying to fit them into the broken ones. He clicked, he beeped, he poked and prodded. But he was not a repair bot. He did not know how to make them wake up.
The work continued. But it was quieter.
At first, Wall-E still had company. A few others remained. They never spoke, but their presence was reassuring. One in particular always worked beside him, their motions perfectly in sync. He began to notice them - how they would pause every evening, letting the last bit of sunlight hit their solar panels before shutting down for the night. How they always pressed their cubes into perfectly straight lines, as if the order mattered.
One evening, as Wall-E lined up his cubes, he turned to see them stopped. Their arms twitched once. Their optics blinked unevenly.
And then, nothing.
Wall-E reached out. He shook the gently. Click-click?
Nothing.
He stayed with them the entire night, watching, waiting, hoping. The sky remained empty. The wind howled through the towers of trash.
Morning came. The sun rose. The others worked.
Wall-E wallowed the strange, unfamiliar tightness in his circuits and kept working.
. . . . . ╰──╮The Last Goodbye╭──╯ . . . . .
It happened slowly, but it was inevitable. The remaining workers fell, one by one, like stars going out in the sky.
Wall-E stopped trying to fix them. He knew now that it wouldn't work. He just stayed with them as they went.
He held one's claw as its motor sputtered to a stop.
He sat beside another, watching its optics dim until they were nothing more than dark glass.
He whispered click-click to the last one standing. It did not answer.
And then, there was silence.
The air was different without them. The wind still howled, the dust still swirled, but the world felt emptier. He looked at the endless towers of cubes, perfectly stacked by the hands that would never move again.
He was the last.
For a long time, he just sat there, staring at the broken shells of those who had been his world.
