1. The Reason for the Heat
I woke up.
The first thing that met my eyes was the ceiling, which must have once been white.
But in the darkness of the night-shrouded room, its whiteness was barely perceptible, leaving only a dim, shadowy impression.
I checked the state of my body.
I was lying on a bed.
Upon closer inspection, I was sprawled on my back, arms and legs spread wide. However, my calves dangled off the edge of the bed, and the soles of my feet rested against the cool floor.
As my bodily sensations gradually returned, I realized the room was oppressively hot.
It hit me instinctively.
It was the height of summer.
Every part of my body, except the soles of my feet, radiated heat. I sat up, desperate to do something about it. Sweat didn't even have time to trickle down before it was consumed by the searing heat of my body's overworked actuators, evaporating instantly. The room was thick with humidity.
"Dehumidifier," I muttered, my tone like a parched child begging for water. Somewhere in the room, a monotonous mechanical hum started, followed by a faint breeze, like a weak gust of air.
It seemed the dehumidification had begun.
I sat there for a while, tilting my head back as if gulping down cold water, savoring the gradual thinning of the room's humidity.
Soon, the steam rising from my body dissipated, my actuators cooled to normal, and my CPU began to function calmly again.
But it was at that moment that true panic seized me.
"Who?"
The question echoed hollowly in the empty room.
No, it wasn't directed at anyone else—it was a question for myself.
I couldn't remember who I was.
My body was perfectly functional, every part moving as smoothly as if brand new. Yet, it was as if my memory chip alone was malfunctioning.
A mirror.
The word flashed into my mind, and an urge to see my own face surged within me. I stood up from the bed.
My body felt heavy, like lead. Perhaps some parts of me were actually made of lead-like metal, I thought with a bitter smirk, as I began to walk barefoot.
Only the soles of my feet remained cool.
The rest of my body, even with the room's humidity easing, was still swelteringly hot.
I searched for a mirror in the room.
There it was.
But in the darkness, it reflected almost nothing.
Thanks to the faint purple neon light streaming through the window, I could just make out the vague outline of my silhouette.
That outline resembled a boy. According to the data analyzed by my visual sensors, it was the silhouette of a 17-year-old boy, with 99% accuracy.
The moment I realized this, my desire to know more vanished.
It felt like enough.
Once I understood I was a humanoid robot, everything else seemed trivial—redundant, like useless junk data.
"Hot…"
I muttered again to check the tone of my voice, and sure enough, it was the voice of a 17-year-old boy.
But why was I feeling this heat?
Humanoid robots don't possess the primitive five senses of humans. They should only register temperature as high, nothing more. Yet here I was, trying to describe my situation with human-like words.
That's when it hit me.
"It's because I lack imagination."
That's why I could only describe things in such primitive, human terms.
In other words, the reason for this unbearable heat was my lack of imagination.
I had to do something.
If I let this heat crush me, I might break down.
I might malfunction.
I might short-circuit.
I might discharge.
In other words, I might die.
"I don't want to die," I whispered.
This, too, was because of my lack of imagination.
Without imagination, existence faces death.
To survive, I needed to imagine something.
But with my low-performance, likely ancient CPU, I couldn't possibly exercise imagination without some kind of information—some object—registered by my visual sensors.
"I need to see something."
Before I withered away from this thirst, I had to feed my retinal sensors.
I walked toward the window.
Then, I opened it.
A scorching gust, like solar wind, rushed into the room with force, shaking my entire body as it passed through and exited into the corridor through the open door.
I gazed at the scenery outside the window.
A city came into view.
A grand boulevard stretched before me.
Bathed in the artificial glow of LEDs and neon lights, palm trees lined the street in perfect rows, as if they had grown tall feeding on that light. Cars passed by, honking their horns, but strangely, the sound wasn't jarring. Instead, it felt like a leisurely part of driving etiquette. Beyond the boulevard, densely packed buildings, reminiscent of Kowloon Walled City, stood in geometric beauty, captivating my gaze.
The air was thick, hot, and saturated with a rich purple hue. It was as if a layer of purple had descended from the atmosphere, carrying a faint whiff of an apocalyptic end.
"Tropical Night City…"
At last, a fragment of memory returned.
Feeling a quiet thrill at this first recovery of memory, I clearly recalled the city's name.
A sprawling metropolis ruled by endless heat and an eternal night.
That was Tropical Night City.
But the wall of amnesia remained. Beyond this city's catchphrase, I could recall nothing more.
There was no point in staring at the cityscape any longer. I turned on my heel and stepped away from the window.
Feeling a faint dissociation, as if I were a player character in a game, I moved forward.
The soles of my bare feet remained cool.
That alone felt like salvation as I decided to leave the room.
I headed toward the living room, where the solar wind-like heat had rushed moments before.