"Ghosts in the System" by Matthew T. Summers

Memory : terminated.  New memory upload commencing in 3…2…1… upload started.  Memory upload v. 3.4.01.  Restoring active memory in 3…2…1…

Bob-4 opened his eyes and scanned around, registering the surroundings quickly with his computerized circuits.  Two Joe units, to the left.  One Fred unit to the right.  One Valeria unit ahead of him, staring at him with her scanning orbs.

The Valeria unit spoke, her mouthpiece registering the waves of the sounds as they passed.  “Bob-4 has awoken again.  Please welcome Bob-4.”  She moved away, allowing Bob-4 to shakily return to a standing position.

Mechanically, the other units responded.  “Welcome, Bob-4.”  He wasn’t sure, but he could have sworn that one of the last Joe units added at the end, “.. for a little while, anyway.”

He frowned, and looked around again.  The Valeria unit seemed to be the only one that was moving at all, so he addressed it.  “What am I activated for, Valeria-2?”

“You are to be used for a testing group, Bob-4.”  The unit turned and moved away, towards a door marked “Testing area.”  The Valeria turned once she’d reached the doorway and came to a halt, watching him.

“Testing group?”  Bob-4 turned and glanced at the other male units behind him, but they ignored him handily.  “Testing for what?”  He moved toward the Valeria unit, his mechanical arms restoring function idly as he moved.  His internal processes registered that damage was 98% completed.  But damage from what?

“Yes, Bob-4.  Testing group.  If you’ll please step through this way, all will be explained.”  The Valeria unit’s nodes were impassive, even for a robot. 

Confused now, Bob-4 stepped through the doorway and into a long and dark hallway while he tried to access his memory modules.  There was a large, vacant gap between what his internal clock measured between his current memories and his last known consciousness.  Sixteen days, to be exact.  What had happened during those days? 

His facial unit affected a worried look.  Sixteen days was a very, very long time in computer terms.  His thoughts were interrupted, however, as a light appeared ahead of him.  The light was a terminal, blinking slowly and repetitively.

He approached the terminal and held out his I/O jack, plugging it into the proper slot.  Data streamed across the connection, flooding his consciousness…

A place had been found… that is where they were currently, a place that wasn’t a place… a place where humans had died almost instantly the moment they stepped into the void.  To keep the human masters safe, the Units were sent in instead, to survey this new place and bring back data.  Data that, hopefully, would allow the humans to further colonize into this place and help alleviate the concerns of an overcrowded Earth.

The dataflow stopped, and Bob-4 nodded.  The mission seemed simple enough.  Just a matter of data collection.  So why all the precautions?  Mechanically intrigued now, Bob-4 approached the indicated door into this place in question, and allowed his circuits to scan the doorway as he approached.

The doorway looked like a closet door.  Plain, simple, and wooden.   Nothing at all to indicate any particular reason why humans would be afraid of it, even to die behind it.  After a few more microseconds of deliberation, Bob-4 reached for the handle of the doorway and threw it open.

Madness.

It only took a few moments for data to stream into Bob-4’s sensory nodes.  The world beyond the door was massive… huge columns of white smoky substance flowed across landscapes that were at once green, blue, and red without mixing… massive suns shone in the sky, though no heat could be felt from them… worlds circulated at high rates of speed through the atmosphere, dropping more tendrils of the white substance onto the face of the landscape.

The white substance nearest to Bob-4 turned to him the moment he opened the door, and his circuits began to churn at what they saw.  The substance was massive amounts of ethereal beings, all manners of races and sexes, all jumbled together into one huge melting pot of afterlife.  The sheer collective mass of an entire eternity’s dead looked over at Bob-4 as one, and their screams at the violation of their sanctity shattered his viewing sensors mercifully.

The data collected seared his internal programming, flash-frying his circuitry and motherboards nearly the moment it passed.  The door slammed shut with a finality as the charred remains of Bob-4 collapsed to the ground.  A few silent moments passed before cleaning units arrived to remove the debris and medically sterilize the entire hallway.

* * *

Memory : terminated.  New memory upload commencing in 3…2…1… upload started.  Memory upload v. 3.4.01.  Restoring active memory in 3…2…1…

Bob-5 opened his eyes and scanned around, registering the surroundings quickly with his computerized circuits.  Two Joe units, to the left.  One Fred unit to the right.  One Valeria unit ahead of him, staring at him with her scanning orbs.

The Valeria unit spoke, her mouthpiece registering the waves of the sounds as they passed.  “Bob-5 has awoken again.  Please welcome Bob-5.”  She moved away, allowing Bob-5 to shakily return to a standing position….