WALL-E’s Curiosity Gives it Purpose Credit: Pixar Studios

Great Science Fiction films come out so rarely that I am overjoyed when a movie like Pixar’s WALL-E hits the screens. This is one of those rare SF stories that ventures into the distant future, a place so alien most SF writers don’t want to touch it.

WALL-E leaps more that 700 years into the future to a dystopian time where the human race has evacuated the Earth after burying it in trash. Waste Allocation Load Lifters Earth-Class (WALL-E) robots are left with the task of cleaning up the planet so humans may one day return. Only one such robot remains, WALL-E, with a cockroach as a companion, where all the other bots have long-since broken down.

WALL-E is Solar Powered Credit: Pixar Studios

WALL-E has survived these 700 years because it has learned to recycle from the skyscraper-tall mountains of garbage it has assembled. WALL-E is inquisitive, experimenting with the world around it, playing with all the toys left behind from our shopaholic binge on Earth. Its curiosity has obviously also had a crucial role in its survival all these centuries.

WALL-E meets EVE (Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), a vastly more advanced robot sent from the humans in space, in a “boy meets girl” storyline that makes WALL-E a stowaway back to the human ship, where we find a society of humans all turned into obese blobs floating on mobile beds which perpetually feed them commercialized media and “meals in cup.” Such a dystopian future is not difficult to imagine in our present society, where we are encouraged to buy things we do not need and consume nutritionless calories far in excess of what our bodies can burn.

WALL-E and EVE Credit: Pixar Studios

Can WALL-E and EVE save the human race? See for yourself. I left the theater to find myself confronted with a world of brandnames, and a fascinating new perspective on them and what they are doing to our human evolution. Impacting our worldview is what good science fiction is all about.

I also had lots of fun playing with Disney’s WALL-E Website

Most of my photos from this large, science playground of a room came out as just blurs of motion, so dynamic are the displays. Giant molecules, genetically engineered potato plants, microbes, microscopes, and sculptures of the atomic fill the area, begging to be played with.

Thermal Ryan

View the complete flickr set here.

“Father,” Demetrius’ voice trembled, his youthful blue eyes were swollen and watery, “I cannot absolve myself of these doubts.”

Lord Balthasar placed two firm and reassuring hands on Demetrius’ shoulders, welcoming this distraction from the unrelenting hunger pains that plagued them all, “It is uncommon for one to question their faith in such desperate times, when we need it most.”

Demetrius avoided the Lord’s eyes, replying, “I fear my faith is what has brought me into this crisis.”

Lord Balthasar squeezed the lad’s shoulders and gently shook him so that Demetrius looked up into his eyes, coming into the here and now, “It is not our faith that has imperiled us, but that of the heretics who persecute us.”

“But who’s to say whose faith is true?” Demetrius searched the old man’s eyes, pleading, but looked to the far dirt wall as the muffled sounds of explosions found their way into the bunker.

“Ours is the one true word. Theirs is an heretical text,” Lord Balthasar assured him. “Our texts are ancient, written by the hand of God himself. They cannot make the same claim.”

“But don’t they?” Demtrius snapped back at the Lord, his trembling increasing in intensity. The boy was practically in shock with his fear. “I have no proof these words were not written by man! If God wanted to adhere to the scripture, why didn’t he write it on the Moon, mountainsides, and tree leaves?”

Another explosion, closer now, shook the room so that streams of dust poured through the ceiling. The rest of Lord Balthasar’s flock whimpered and cried in fear. Demetrius’ doubting could not come at a worse time.

Lord Balthasar pushed the youth down onto his knees, “You must have faith that there are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in philosophy!”

The boy instantly stopped trembling, and merely gazed up at the Lord in stunned silence.

Then the heretical battle chant roared just outside, sending chills through everyone in the room, “Cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war!!!”

There were only moments of life left to them now. Lord Balthasar dropped to one knee and the congregation followed suit, “Let us pray!”

Together, they recited from the holy passages:

“What a piece of work is a man,
how noble in reason,
how infinite in faculties,
in form and moving how express and admirable,
in action how like an angel,
in apprehension how like a god!
the beauty of the world,
the paragon of animals—and yet,
what is this quintessence of dust?”

This is a short short SF story, less than 600 words, in the spirit of 365Tomorrows.