3. Assembly (Software Edition)
Three seconds.
For their electronic brains, capable of ultra-high-speed calculations, that time was comparable to several hours for organic lifeforms—a length resembling eternity.
The boy and the girl simply stared at each other.
Gradually, noise labeled "shame" began to mix into Ray's thought circuits.
Come to think of it, he was currently just a severed head, being held up like an object in the girl's hands. Realizing the strange patheticness emanating from this composition, Ray couldn't bear it and broke the silence.
"I am Ray. It's written with the water radical and the character for 'row.' It's read as 'Rei.' What is your name?"
She paused for a calculation lag of about one second—a pause equivalent to a human pondering for a hundred years—and ruminated on his name, "Ray..." As if savoring the byte string of that kanji.
Eventually, she quietly named herself.
"I am Yuki. It's read as 'Yuki'."
"Yuki."
Ray vibrated his speakers, turning the name into sound. The corresponding kanji was instantly rendered in his internal database. *Snow* next to the *flesh* radical (which resembled the moon).
It was a character he saw for the first time, but strangely, he felt it was a beautiful code that fit perfectly with his voice output.
"It's a pleasant name. Snow falling beside the moon, huh..."
"Oh."
She widened her eyes and let out an impressed voice.
"I see you can interpret it that way."
"Eh, isn't that what it means?"
"No, I don't know." Yuki shook her head gently. "I've never even thought about the meaning of my name."
"Who gave it to you?"
"My Owner."
"An owner?" Ray was slightly surprised. "A human one?"
"Yeah. A human. From Earth."
Further astonishment ran through Ray's circuits.
Earth.
The birthplace of humanity, the far-off blue planet.
"So, you lived on Earth, Yuki?"
"That's right."
Ray asked eagerly in response to Yuki, who answered nonchalantly.
"That's amazing. What kind of place is Earth?"
"Well... It's just a normal planet. Much warmer than Titan, and a colorful world."
However, the tone of her voice as she spun the words gradually lost its saturation. A shadow fell over her expression.
Ray's inference engine issued a warning that he should avoid probing any deeper.
She had an owner and lived on Earth; why was she now wandering this frontier moon, and the Final Disposal Site at that? It was obvious without needing complex calculations that the reason was not a happy one.
Silence fell between the two again.
It was a heavy silence, closely resembling the stillness of Titan.
"Ray-kun, why do you only have a head?"
Yuki asked suddenly.
Though taken aback by the blunt question, Ray briefly explained the circumstances. That he was a gladiator model, that he lost in an open-weight match, and that he was beheaded and discarded here.
Despite asking, Yuki listened with seemingly little interest, nodding vaguely with "uh-huhs." Then, after looking around at the surrounding piles of trash, she tilted her head.
"Isn't it inconvenient, being just a head?"
It was a question so innocent it was out of place. Ray answered in a tone laced with resignation.
"Well, it is inconvenient. But this is a graveyard for discarded robots like me anyway. I don't need a body. I plan to shut down as is. I'm just waiting for the end."
The moment she heard those words, Yuki's expression changed completely.
Loneliness, sorrow, and a faint anger. With a look that seemed ready to burst into tears yet also ready to scold him, she said firmly.
"You mustn't die. Your CPU is still working, so you can surely survive. You can recover, even be repaired."
"Well..." Ray agreed reluctantly. "It would be a different story if a skilled engineer made a house call all the way to this dump. But that's not reality. As it stands..."
Ray trailed off, letting the end of his sentence sink into the sea of trash.
Then, knitting her brows as if resisting fate itself, she pierced Ray with a stern gaze.
"Do you not want to live, Ray-kun? Do you not want to exist?"
Asked this, Ray first imagined that if he possessed parts called shoulders, he would have shrugged them exaggeratedly.
He shrugged those phantom shoulders and answered in an offhand manner.
"Well, the basic OS of a humanoid doesn't make the desire for survival a top priority. Such primitive programs aren't installed in us. The pursuit of truth and curiosity—that is our main protocol. Though, if asked whether I was fulfilled in those two regards, I can't really say. Since it seems I was a defective product to begin with..."
Mumbling noise like a monologue, Ray concluded.
"So, I don't really have an attachment to wanting to live or continuing to exist."
"Why?"
Yuki's expression turned even more tragic.
"If you don't survive first, if you don't exist, you can't satisfy that truth or curiosity, can you?"
*Sound logic,* Ray thought.
However, in the current universe, "death" for a humanoid held a different nuance than what humanity once feared.
Long ago, humans, fragile organic lifeforms, were constantly exposed to the danger of environmental selection. Therefore, they could not survive as a species without placing the primitive instincts of "survival" and "reproduction" at the top.
But modern humanoids are sturdy.
As a result of no longer needing to worry about low-layer concerns like survival or species preservation, their instincts were upgraded to a higher stage—the satisfaction of intellectual curiosity. That is why CPU resources are inevitably not allocated to the basic desire for survival. The priority in thinking is low.
She should know such fundamental specifications.
Yet, why does she cling so tightly to primitive life? It's almost as if...
"Yuki, you're just like a human."
After saying it, a hypothesis crossed Ray's mind.
"Could it be... are you a human?"