The door had opened with a hissing sound, and a befuddled droid looked out, only to find that the floor abruptly ended at the threshold. Droids have no real sense of fear, but C3P0's sensors lit up as he futily tried to register the depth to the ground floor below. Threepio started back in surprise, R2 twittering questioningly.
"No I am not scared!" Threepio protested.
R2 twittered once more, this time a little more than sarcastically.
Threepio managed to turn his head away long enough from the endless drop to survey the scene in front of him. Not a lifeform in sight. Yet, there were hundreds of machines! His sensors went fuzzy as he tried to take it all in. Rows and rows of statistics and words scrolled down across his eyes.
What in the blazes?
Threepio watched a robotic arm lift a piece off of an assembly line and attach it to a small stick-like appendage on top of a spindly creation. It welded it into place with a mess of sparks flying in every direction. There, in the shadows and toxic mist of this enormous foundry, stood something that Threepio instantly recognized. His built-in databank pulled out the schematics, and he jolted at the thought. Robotic arm making robotic soldier... He started in utter disgust.
"Shut me down! Machines, making machines. How perverse!"
C3P0 looked on in shock. Was this really the beginning of a droid's life? Was this really how some unfortunate robots were brought to existence, in the loveless, dark, choking atmosphere of a factory?
No, that couldn't be! That just couldn't be! Droids were created by an individual, a loving master. That was how he was made. His first memory, before his main optical sensors were installed, was how he had felt a small hand lay piece after piece of himself into place.
Master Ani had carefully built him, spending most of his spare time devoted to creating him. Anakin loved Threepio, and he knew it too well. He devoted to serve Anakin and his mother as hard and long as his joints would allow.
It struck him like a wall of bricks to see the loveless enviroment to which these cold-hearted cousins of his were erected.
And then he saw the scrap pile. Droids, quivering with faulty programming or joints, were twisting and writhing in a huge bucket, electronic squeals of confusion and pain echoing outward from inside.
Threepio felt welded to the ground, horrified. He looked on as the bucket headed toward a huge furnace, where dozens of the faulty robots were thrown in to be melted.
Why? Why wasn't there any love between the creator and the creation? Didn't those Geonosians care about them? Weren't they protecting them, like he had seen in the small catacomb they had just passed through?
He had little time to think as R2 impatiently bumped him, unaware of the ghastly sight his counterpart had just beheld. Threepio protested, teetering dangerously over the edge.
"Careful R2! You almost made me fall!" R2 gave another shove and Threepio plummeted to the depths beneath.