"Welcome.”

The robotic voice resounded through the pitch black room. Our gang of three stood stock-still for who-knows-how-long, but at last I resolved to at least find a light switch. Alas —

Clang! A box was in my path. I tripped, stupidly rolled on the floor, and hit another big box.

“Ouch, that must have hurt! Watch your step.”

I froze.

“Who are you?” the voice asked.

“Are you The Robot?” It was the goose’s squeaky voice, voicing the words I could not let out.

There was a brief pause before he let out a blood-curdling, clanking noise, like the sound of oil leaking from rusted machinery. “Why, everyone has forgotten my name. Judging from the frequency and pitch of your voice, you aren’t human, are you? But at least something capable of conversation has come to visit me at last! Come closer, make yourselves comfortable.”

Nobody moved.

“Oh, right, you can’t move because you can’t see anything —”

A dim yellow light flickered. I numbly registered that the light switch had been somewhere behind the Robot.

“Now that we have lights, come to me!”

The goose inched forward. “We came here to ask you about our friend, who has recently arrived. He doesn’t have any clue what he is and we believe you can help him out.”

“Interesting,” it said, “Where is he?”

I stepped into the light, and finally saw the Robot’s features: his head was cubic, with a black hollow screen instead of a face. That was the only thing I could notice before the Robot violently grabbed me by my neck and lifted me off the ground.

“IT’S YOU!!”

He started marching towards the entrance door as I dangled limply in his grip. The goose and the cat tried to stop him, but both of them were batted away. I hoped they would be okay…

“You’ve come to find out who you are?” the Robot boomed, its ominous robotic voice reverberating in the gloomy corridor, “That’s exactly what you’ll see. Look carefully.”

We went out of the laboratory building to the streets I had passed before, but this time I noticed the blue character with the long pointy head in the banners on the roadsides. There were quite a lot of them — has I always been this popular? How come I didn’t see it before?

The Robot finally stopped at the rooftop of a building. Holding me high above the ground, he said, “You are Nupjook, a mistake created by this school to serve as its mascot, and in doing so casting me into oblivion.”

Slowly, it released its grip.

To be continued next time in The KAIST Herald...