Do they scrap him in the end?
No, he seeks out the blue fairy (from Pinocchio) to make him human, so his mother will love him and take him back.
He finds the Blue Fairy, but she is really a statue that is underwater and he endlessly repeats the wish to her until the ocean freezes.
Eventually, a long time later after humans are extinct, some evolved aliens rescue him and tell him as the Blue Fairy that they can't make him human. They can recreate his mother from her DNA from a lock of her hair he has saved, but she will exist only for 24 hours and can't be recreated again. He has one perfect day with his mother and she tells him that she loves him and has always loved him, then she drifts away.