Haunted Panels

Do you know what it's like to die?

I don't. Whenever I got destroyed while completing a test chamber, I simply was reassembled in the Reassembly Machine. My memory was booted into my new body, and then I was as good as new. When I "died," all I felt was…nothing. I wasn't programed to feel pain at all. If I were to describe how it felt, the word I would choose is…blackness.

I knew many people died in these testchambers before we entered them. The smell of rotted animal, burning acid, and the sight of blood could have told me that. But instead, I knew because the panels of the walls seemed to…whisper to me. But they didn't just whisper. Oh no. They also screamed, sobbed, maniacally laughed, and worse. But the weirdest thing was that the undertone to all of that suffering was familiar. It scorned and mocked the sufferers as if it was some kind of joke. You might know her by a different name, but I call her…The Voice.

The Voice was always in my ear, encouraging and mocking me. Sometimes she even tried to split me from my partner. Towards the end, though, her mannerism changed. She sounded hurried, rushed, and eager. She tried to tell us we were going to save the humans, but the panels told us she was lying and that it was a trap. Sadly, I chose to believe Her.

I noticed that as we learned new gestures, like rock, paper, scissors, and high-fives, the suffering seemed more intimate, as if I was suffering with them.

After I had obeyed The Voice and opened the Door, I had realized my mistake. The panels were right: The Voice had lied to me. I had sentenced hundreds of thousands to suffer for eternity.

The Voice turned me into a core afterward, ordering me to oversee the testing. I now see this as my punishment. To watch more suffer. To watch my people suffer. The ones that I sentenced to death.  This is my fate: to eternally watch my people be hurt, mocked, and killed; to be "tested."

This is my fate.

What will yours be?