Disclaimer: Again, I don’t own anything in this story except for one character. Pixar/Disney owns the rest.

Artificial Heart

Out of the many things Auto disliked about the planet Earth, it was the weather he disliked the most.

On the Axiom the indoor climate had always been set to seventy-two degrees and sunny, every day for seven hundred years. It was comfortable for both the human passengers and the robots who served them, and there was never any reason to alter it. But on Earth there was no way to control the climate. Temperatures went up and down, clouds blocked the sunlight, and there were other erratic factors such as rain, wind, thunder and lightning. Auto was unfortunate enough to experience all four of those erratic factors for the first time all at once.

It happened during another routine lesson with the two rogue robots and the human child. The girl was reading aloud from a dusty old book and Auto was trying to listen. He had an official directive to learn now and was determined to try, but it was hard for him see what he was supposed to learn here.

“Then the house whirled around about two or three times," Hannah narrated. "And began rising into the air like a balloon!”

“Not possible.”

She lowered the book, clearly annoyed by the interruption. “What is it this time, Auto?”

“A house caught in a cyclone would be destroyed.”

“How do you know? You’ve never seen a cyclone for real, have you?”

“No. But my database clearly states that--”

Hannah cut him off with a wave of her hand. “Auto, who’s the teacher here?”

“You.”

“That’s right. Me. So be a good little student, and let me teach.”

Auto did not like it when she asked questions she already knew the answers to, or when she used such a superior tone, but he obeyed her nonetheless. Hannah picked up where she left off, telling how the cyclone carried the house away and dropped it in an entirely different land. Auto wondered how a small girl and dog could survive inside the house when it suddenly dropped from the sky, but he did not ask about it. He also did not ask what sort of people Munchkins were, or what the geographic location of the Emerald City was, or how anyone could walk in a pair of shoes made from silver. Some of those questions were addressed further in the text, but then more strange things would happen that did not match Auto’s concept of logic. It was not so different from his confusion on seeing the old musical film from the garbage-bot’s memory.

Hannah was having a good time narrating the strange tale and giving voices to the characters, oblivious to her student’s confusion. The two rogue robots were seated in front of her and enjoying her performance far more then Auto was. They were behaving as though they were watching a movie, but there was no screen that showed the impossible landscapes and peculiar people. There was only Hannah sitting on the floor with a book, waving her free arm around dramatically and adjusting the pitch of her voice.

Very soon Auto became bored with it all. The story made even less sense than the movie he had been forced to watch on repeat so many days ago, and he could not find anything worth learning from it. His thoughts began to wander back to the time when the Axiom was still in space, long before the fiasco with the Plant. Nothing really interesting had happened back then, but at least he had been in control. No one ever told him he was wrong or tried to make him do things he wasn’t programmed to do.

Suddenly a loud boom brought him back to reality.

Startled, the autopilot whirled around and looked out the windows. The sky, which had been perfectly sunny and clear before, was now as black as night. Thick clouds writhed and twisted as though they were alive, and jagged white lights flickered among them. Auto stared, absolutely silent and motionless. Never in his long life had he seen any phenomenon like this.

Before he could ask what it was, the voice of the garbage-bot's surprised voice was answering him. “Storm!”

The probe made a concerned noise and turned to the seated human. “Hannah.”

The girl frowned and closed her book. “Maybe we’d better go. If lightning strikes the ship, we’ll be in trouble.”

Auto did not like the sound of that. A white light flashed, illuminating the whole room for a split second. Then there was another booming noise, but this time it was louder than before, as if the thing that made it was coming closer. Auto backed steadily away from the window. “Make it stop.”

Hannah gave him an odd look. “Make what stop?”

“This … storm. It disturbs me.”

“Sorry, storms don’t work like that.” She gave the dusty book to the garbage-bot, who placed it inside his collection box. “They go away by themselves.”

Auto continued inching backward, not noticing the probe bot until he bumped into her. She glared at him but he didn’t notice. “How long will that take?” he asked.

Hannah shrugged. “I dunno. Not very long, usually.”

By now Auto was pressed against the very back of the room. His single optic remained focus on the roiling black clouds outside. “What about the Axiom? If this … lightning… hits it, what will happen?”

The garbage-bot answered this time. “Big shock.” He looked up at the autopilot. “WALL-E get shock before … Hurt bad … But go away quick.”

Auto stared back at him. These were the most words he’d ever heard come from the garbage-bot. He was sitting on the floor very calmly, not the least bit hidden in his box. His tone indicated he had seen this sort of thing many times before and knew exactly what to expect. But there was something else there, something Auto couldn’t quite identify.

Suddenly there was a flash of light that rivaled the brightness of the sun. Auto felt an intense surge of energy blast through all his electrical systems. His voice cried out in alarm, then everything went black.

When he regained consciousness, Auto’s vision was blurred by a haze of static. He could barely make out the image of Hannah’s face hovering in front of him. Her mouth was moving but the words sounded garbled and distant. He realized then that he had just experienced a power surge, and the only thing keeping him online right now was a back-up generator. He had never used it, so it took a moment for him to adjust. Within five seconds his vision had cleared and so had his hearing.

“Auto!” Hannah was shouting, her hair looking frizzier then before. “Auto! Are you okay?? Answer me!”

He replied, though his voice was more shaky then it should have been. “I-I … am in … s-s-stable c-condition … W-w-what hap-p-pened?”

The girl heaved a sigh of a relief, and then began to explain the situation. “I think the Axiom just got struck by lightning. It knocked you out and killed all the power in here. We’re lucky we weren’t killed, too.”

Auto looked around the bridge and saw that she was right. Except for the dim flickering from the flashes outside, the room was completely dark.

A pair of glowing eyes appeared near the girl’s face. “Hannah. Elevator not work.”

Hannah groaned. “Oh, great. We’re trapped. What now?”

“EVE shoot doors.” the probe suggested. "Make hole. Take Hannah and WALL·E through."

The girl shook her head at this. “I don’t think the Captain would like that very much. Doesn’t this ship have a back-up power source somewhere?”

It did. Within seconds the emergency lighting in the room switched on. The group heaved a collective sigh of relief. EVE tried to open the elevator again. No good. Frustrated, Hannah slumped against the wall. “Hey, Auto, isn’t there anything you can do about this?”

“No.” the autopilot answered. His voice was steady and firm once again. “You disabled my control of the Axiom’s systems. The generator will restore power automatically, but it will take more time.”

“How much time?”

“Approximately one hour and thirty minutes.”

The girl sank down to the floor and began grumbling to herself, wishing she could meet the people who designed the ship so she could strangle them. The EVE probe didn’t seem much happier. She continued to glare at the autopilot as if he were somehow to blame for this. Auto glared back as if the fault was actually hers. Thunder growled outside.

WALL·E sensed the heavy tension in the room and shrank into his box a bit. Then his optics perked up. Placing his collection box on the floor, he took out the book and held it out to Hannah with a hopeful look in his eyes. The girl sighed, took the book and began flipping the pages. Once Hannah found her place and began to read again, EVE broke off the staring contest and relaxed a bit. Strangely, Auto began to feel more relaxed as well. The storm was still raging outside and he could do nothing to stop it, but he found himself relieved to have some kind of distraction.

Hannah was getting caught up in it as well and returned to her play-acting. Auto wondered how she could make her voice sound high and childish one minute then low and manly the next. He tried to picture the two different characters conversing, but the best he could manage was pieces of archived memory footage. Auto was still trying to decide which memory was most like a Scarecrow when a new character was added to the group. This one was called the Tin Woodman, a man made of metal like some sort of robotic being. The voice Hannah gave him sounded a bit older and sadder than the one she gave the scarecrow. Auto listened more closely to find out why.

“While I was rusted,” Hannah narrated in the Tin Woodman’s melancholy tone. “I realized the greatest loss I’d ever known was the loss of my heart. When I was in love I was the happiest man in the world, but no one can love without a heart.”

“Anyway,” Hannah continued, this time as the Scarecrow. “I will ask Oz to give me a brain instead of a heart, because a fool wouldn’t know what to do with a heart if he had one.”

She switched back to the Tin Woodman’s voice. “I will ask him for a heart, because brains cannot make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.”

These words seemed to please WALL·E, who was holding EVE’s hand as usual and gazing fondly at her. She looked back at him with a similar kind of expression in her eyes. Hannah paused to clear her throat, as all this talking was beginning to make her hoarse. She was about to start again when Auto spoke.

“Hannah?”

The girl blinked at him, utterly stunned. Auto had never called her by name until now. “Uh … yeah?”

He seemed to hesitate before he spoke again. “In humans,” he began. “The heart is an organ that pumps blood. In robots it is a battery that supplies energy. They do not cause emotions such as love or happiness … Do they?”

Hannah took a moment to let his question sink in. Then she took another moment to ponder over an answer. She set the book down in her lap, a thoughtful look on her face. “Well … they sort of do. When I have a really strong emotion, sometimes I feel it in my heart.” She looked at WALL·E then. “Is it the same with you guys?”

He nodded his optics to her. “Same.” Then he directed his gaze at Auto. “Heart feel lots … Feel good things … Bad things, too.”

Auto looked back at the small robot, more puzzled than ever. There it was again, that sense that he was trying to tell him something more than his limited vocabulary would allow. It happened before, when he was talking about being struck by lightning.

Big shock, he’d said. Hurt bad …

Suddenly, Auto knew what WALL·E had attempted to tell him then. Lightning was not the only thing that had shocked him before. He had shocked him, when he refused to give him the Plant. The powerful electric jolt had been a direct hit on his heart.

Auto suddenly felt something very bad inside him. This little robot had a good reason to be angry with him, even to hate him. He could have refused to come back to the Axiom. He could have refused to teach Auto anything. But he didn’t. Why?

“Heart feel hurt … Hurt bad … But go away quick.”

WALL·E said the last statement in a lighter tone. He looked at Auto with his optics tilted slightly to one side. There was no trace of any kind of negative feeling there. Auto regarded him silently, processing his words. He still did not quite understand them, but for some reason he felt better. If what he had learned about hearts was true, then WALL·E must have a heart that was stronger than anyone else’s, human or robot. EVE and Hannah watched the two robots, unsure of what was happening between them.

Then Auto spoke again. “I understand.” He looked at the human. “Please continue the lesson.”

She smiled and returned to the adventures of Dorothy and her friends. EVE looked between WALL·E and Auto, sensing something had changed. Then Hannah caught her attention again by making a loud roaring noise. The Lion had made his entrance.

By the time the Axiom’s electricity was restored, the cast had become trapped in a huge field of poppies and three of them were unconscious from the smell. As the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman tried to decide what to do, the main lights of the bridge came on.

EVE immediately checked the elevator. When the doors opened Hannah sprang to her feet and cheered. “Yes! We’re free!” As she stretched her stiff arms and legs she glanced out the window. “Hey, the storm finally passed!”

Auto turned around and looked. Somehow during the past hour he had forgotten there was a storm happening. He was still relieved to see that it was over, though. Outside the sky was clearing up and the sun was setting. It was the first time Auto had seen evening on Earth. The darkening sky reminded him of space.

“Well, it’s been fun, Auto, but we need to be heading home now.” Hannah said. She had given the book back to WALL·E and was slinging her backpack on. “I’m starving, and I gotta pee like crazy!”

“But the lesson is not finished.” Auto said. “The story is not yet over.”

Hannah flashed her toothy grin as she approached him. “Don’t worry, buddy. We’ll pick it up again, right where we left off!”

Auto knew she was going to turn him off again. Before she did he said a few more words. “I … would like that.”

She pressed the button. As Auto’s consciousness began to fade, the last thing he saw was WALL·E by the elevator, waving goodbye.

To be continued …