1. Final Disposal Site
Ray's head rolled unceremoniously off the bed of the dump truck.
His torso—what should be called his body—was already lost. Like an executed sinner, he had been abandoned in the form of a severed head.
The location was Saturn's moon, Titan.
This was the "Final Disposal Site" where waste was accumulated, a place feared among humanoid robots built as gladiators by another name: the "Final Execution Ground."
Ray, a boy-type humanoid with an apparent age of sixteen, had finally been cast away to this place following his defeat in the arena.
Originally, he was a state-of-the-art mass-production model manufactured by a top-tier Titan corporation. Both his installed AI and his mechanical performance were supposed to make him the rising star among his batch. While other units achieved spectacular battle records, why was Ray alone buried here in a pile of trash, reduced to just a head?
The place that became Ray's "grave marker" was the summit of a mountain of parts that were once the crystallization of expensive technology but had now turned into mere scrap iron.
A hill where the wreckage of countless humanoids was piled high.
His head, placed at the very peak, fit with ironic perfection, like a strawberry decorating a cake. Thanks to this, there was nothing to block his field of vision.
It was a frigid world covered in a thick nitrogen atmosphere where even sunlight could not reach.
This massive block of ice, with rivers of liquid methane flowing across its surface, rejected all organic warmth.
That perpetual low temperature seemed to keep the wreckage of the robots abandoned here from decaying. It was like a massive refrigerated morgue, preserving corpses before an autopsy.
Ray stared at the vast graveyard of machines spreading out below him with eyes of void.
His battery was running out.
With only the meager reserve power left in his head, he was barely holding on until shutdown. Within his fading consciousness, his CPU and memory chips performed their final calculations, beginning to replay the memory of his first and last match.
The opponent was by no means strong.
A boy-type humanoid set to age nine. However, against the 170-centimeter-tall Ray, that obsolete model boasted a massive frame of three meters. Pasted onto the face that was supposed to mimic a child was a villainous expression that even a parent would give up on.
Manufactured by a Ganymede startup considered to have inferior technical capabilities, the unit was a product of "looking tough" over substance. In a proper fight, it was an opponent against whom Ray, a latest model, should never have fallen behind.
Many in the audience were convinced of Ray's victory and had bet money on him.
But the result was disastrous.
Ray did not move a single step.
There are no rules in an open-weight deathmatch. Whether it is a malfunction or otherwise, the fight continues until the opponent is decapitated. Amidst the jeers and countless "thumbs down" gestures thrust from the spectator seats, Ray simply stood there like a scarecrow.
Then, the dagger wielded by the nine-year-old giant flashed.
Without offering any resistance, Ray's head danced through the air with a satisfying sound.
***
It seemed the system had fallen into a temporary forced sleep state due to the shock of beheading. It was just now that Ray regained consciousness—visual sensor input.
The remaining meager emergency power was signaling its limit.
Reflected in his fading vision were the grave markers of humanoids stretching to the horizon and the heartbreakingly beautiful sky that enveloped them. An aurora, a blend of pale purple and fluorescent green, shimmered elegantly like a curtain across Titan's thick atmosphere.
In response to this spectacle, some kind of linguistic data, something like emotion, tried to surface from the depths of his arithmetic circuits. But it dissipated before taking shape. The same irresistible entropy of the void that had caused him to abandon the will to fight in the arena washed everything away.
*It's fine now,* Ray thought.
Just as he was about to close his eyelids and welcome an eternal shutdown, it happened.
Suddenly, something moved in the corner of his visual sensor.
This is the Final Disposal Site. A place where only abandoned, non-functioning "corpses" are piled up. To put it in organic terms, a mountain of undecaying carcasses. Therefore, this world is essentially dominated by absolute silence.
That is why that "movement" stimulated Ray's sensors as intense noise.
Battery levels were low. Yet, a certain protocol launched inside Ray, arguably for the first time since his manufacture.
"Curiosity."
Originally, the pursuit of truth and curiosity were built into the basic OS of humanoids. However, in the individual unit known as Ray, that function had always been dormant. Now, reduced to just a head and facing imminent death, it suddenly gave its first cry.
*(Is this the taste of curiosity?)*
Ray analyzed self-mockingly. An awakening that came far too late. However, he decided to savor it as his "Last Supper."
Diverting remaining energy to the visual cortex, he zoomed in on the moving object.
It was certainly a humanoid.
But she was decisively different from the surrounding wreckage. Her limbs were complete without defect; she planted two feet on the ground and was walking.
A girl.
He increased the resolution further and cross-referenced search data. Apparent age: around fourteen.
Her appearance was bizarre. Covered in ivory-colored metal dust, she had wrapped cloth woven from cutting-edge graphene and carbon nanotubes around her entire body like bandages. They were less clothes and more like rags barely serving to hide her skin.
Walking barefoot over the rubble, she looked exactly like a street urchin abandoned in the worst possible environment.
However, the features peeking out from those rags were...
Those features formed a golden ratio so perfect it made one think: *this is what would happen if primitive, vivid life force were breathed into pure white virgin snow.*
Her long silver hair emitted a dazzling radiance. That light carried a demonic charm that invited the beholder into a slumber. Though smeared with mud and disheveled, a nobility that could not be hidden oozed from that silver hair. A humble yet courteous mystique that would never fade, no matter how far she fell.
For the first time since his production, Ray vibrated the high-performance surround speakers located deep in his throat.
"...Sublime."
Originally, he intended to say "beautiful." But the great Mother Cluster governing his thoughts selected the word after an instant of calculation. Perhaps it determined that a trite expression like "beautiful" was insufficient to define the existence before him.
Searching produced no hits for a corresponding model.
Ray deduced: She is not a corporate mass-production type like me. She must be a one-of-a-kind humanoid, customized for a special purpose.
She had been wandering the disposal site like a ghost, but suddenly stopped.
Did she realize Ray's visual sensor had locked onto her? Despite the considerable distance, she turned her face accurately toward Ray, and their gazes intersected.
In the next instant, she changed course.
And she began to walk toward the hill where Ray's head lay.