Giant frogs did not belong in the afterlife, not in any version Maxwell was aware of. Could it be another robot? Her movements seemed less mechanical than those of Bethany, but maybe this was just the latest model. He could get his head around another robot. It was less disturbing than the reality of an actual eight-foot frog peering at him through the doorway.

The creature was bright green with bulbous fingers. She wore a blue polka-dot apron, a white head covering, and a single black rubber boot. Her other foot was bare and appropriately webbed. An immense canvas bag hung around her neck and scraped the floor as she hunched over and peered through the open door.

“Maxwell?” the frog asked.

Maxwell nodded. His brow remained in an unmoving furrow, his mouth unable to close.

A voice came from the frog’s bag. “Is it him?”

“Shh,” the frog said to the bag.

The frog squeezed herself into Maxwell’s room and approached the bed. Maxwell backed up and retreated into his sleeping pod. He pushed his back up against the wall until he could go no further. There was no escape now. The frog bent over so that she was at eye level with him.

Maxwell whimpered.

“I’m Marigold.”

“You—you’re a frog.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You look like a frog.”

Marigold rolled her giant, bulging eyes.

“Are you not a frog? Are you another robot here to help me move on?” Maxwell asked.

Marigold snorted. “What are you going on about? Do I look like a robot?”

“I—I don’t know anymore. But if you’re here to help me move on to eternity, the little robot was less terrifying. Please bring back Bethany.”

Marigold snorted again. “Come on, we’re leaving.”

“Leaving? Where are we going?”

“Somewhere you’re less likely to get killed.”

Maxwell shook his head. “Aren’t I already dead? The robot said I was dead.”

Marigold shrugged.

“But—”

“We need to go now.”

“But—But—”” Maxwell stammered.

Marigold sighed.

“I don’t have time to explain. Look, you’re not dead yet. In fact, your death would be extremely inconvenient for everyone. It’s not something that’s going to happen today, not unless you mess things up. Got it?”

Maxwell could not think straight. “I—I don’t want to die,” was all he could manage.

Marigold reached into the pod and put Maxwell on his feet. “Good boy. We’re going to run now. Do you understand?”

“Uh—”

Marigold pulled Maxwell forward with a strength that threatened to remove his arm from its socket. His feet did not touch the floor until he was on the other side of the doorway.

“Run,” she said.

He ran.

Above them, the fluorescent lights fizzled and hummed. The arrhythmic flopping of Marigold’s single boot echoed through the corridor. They tore down the plain, white hallway lined with open doors that looked in on a series of rooms identical to the one Maxwell and Marigold had just emerged from. All of them were empty. This struck Maxwell as strange. He did not know how things worked here in the afterlife, but if there was any truth to what the robot had told him, they shouldn’t all be empty, should they? How many people died on an average day? It must be—well, Maxwell did not know how many people died daily, but it had to be a lot, enough to fill up this floor several times over, surely.

As they turned the corner, they encountered a familiar smiling face. Bethany was standing there looking up at them. The robot held another glass of water in one of its small tendrils, and its smile had turned to an approximation of surprise.

“What is this? Who are you?” Bethany asked, looking up at the frog before turning to look at Maxwell. “And you, Mr. Well. I was just bringing you another glass of soothing water. We must return to your room at once.”

“Ignore it,” Marigold said and kicked over the robot.

Maxwell hesitated for a moment and then stepped over Bethany, looking down with a sympathetic smile.

“I’m sorry, but she says I’m not dead, and I—” A hand reached out from around the corner and pulled Maxwell away before he could finish.

The new hallway was the same as the last, save for the door they were running toward. Marigold had wedged it open with her missing boot. As they passed through, she reached down to retrieve it and bolted the door behind them.

They had entered a storage space—a vast warehouse piled high with wooden crates. Some sat on shelves in neat rows, while others lay on the floor in stacks, reaching from the floor to ceiling. Everywhere, a thick layer of dust pervaded. Maxwell moved closer to one crate and read the bright red stamp on its side. Eternity: June/1979/Denver.

“What is this?” Maxwell asked.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Marigold replied. She was scanning the room.

“This can’t be the closet the robot mentioned, can it? Are all these boxes other people’s memories?

Marigold either didn’t hear or didn’t think the question was worth answering.

“It’ll take them a moment to get in here, but I don’t think the door will hold them beyond that. Whatever you do, stay away from them at all costs.”

This shook Maxwell out of his current bout of existential terror. “Them?” he said.

“The robots.”

“There’s more than one?”

Marigold checked her watch. “Listen, Maxwell, see that big red door across from us? There’s a set of tracks on the other side of it, and a train will pass by in about two minutes. It won’t reach the door, so we’re going to have to jump.”

“I can’t jump.”

Marigold looked at him with an expression of amusement, or at least, what Maxwell thought was amusement. He was unaccustomed to reading amphibious expressions.

“Believe it or not, I wasn’t counting on you to carry us across,” she said flatly.

The door they had come through started to rattle. Something was trying to get in.

Marigold hiked up her apron and refastened her headscarf. She didn’t look heroic exactly, but she was someone Maxwell could see himself hiding behind. She turned around and walked toward the door, ready for battle.

Maxwell did not wait to see what would happen next. He did as he was told and crossed the floor to the large aluminum door and lifted it over his head. He was completely unprepared for what he saw on the other side: nothing.

A bright white void extended in every direction. It was such an all-encompassing nothing that Maxwell assumed his eyes were playing tricks on him. He blinked several times and waited for his pupils to adjust. Little changed, but after a moment, he was able to discern a thin trail of blackness in the white. There was a set of parallel lines arcing over a non-existent hill and curving off into the distance a few meters from the door. These had to be the tracks that Marigold had mentioned, but they were impossible. Nothing was supporting them or keeping them from collapsing. They just floated there in the nothingness. He stuck his head out to look at the structure he was currently standing in and saw it was similarly adrift. At least, he thought it was. The building went down a very long way.

There was no time to ask Marigold where he was or what was going on. A crash announced that they were no longer alone. Maxwell spun around and watched as the first robot into its room made straight for Marigold and flung a tendril out at her. Sparks erupted from the tip of its finger-like appendages. Marigold fell back, kicked out, which sent the attacker crashing into a wall. Two more robots approached, their arms tore through the air in a rotating arc, turning into saw blades on either side of their bodies. This didn’t faze the large frog. She swung out effortlessly with her canvas bag and cracked both of their displays in a single blow.

More robots surged into the room, and more were destroyed by Maxwell’s new savior with a single well-place blow. Marigold was either very strong or the robots were very poorly built. Her expert fighting skills didn’t seem to matter, though. For every robot she destroyed, there were three more to take its place. There were six of the therapy/murder bots on her, and then seven, and then eight. As marigold tried to put distance between herself and her assailants, one of the flails finally managed to make contact. It tore a bright red gash in her green leg. Marigold responded by kicking out with full force, the hard sole of her rubber boot cracking like lightening as she turned the assailant into a mass of splinters.

Marigold was agile, but the trickle of robots had turned into a flood, and she could not hope to keep them at bay for long. Instead, she ran headfirst toward the swarm, reached out with both hands and pulled down two shelves on top of the door. Several crates broke open and spilled green cubes everywhere.

Everything was still for a moment.

“Is that it?” Maxwell shouted from the far end of the room.

“I very much doubt it,” Marigold replied.

A loud grinding sound echoed through the room from behind the wreckage. The toppled shelves shook and parted. In their place, an immense wooden frame squeezed itself into the room through the wreckage. This one looked decidedly less therapeutic than the others. It had the same wooden casing, and the same digital display, but it towered above its smaller companions on fully articulated legs and in place of tendrils had two mechanical hands that looked capable of crushing frog and human alike.

“Mr. Well, are you OK? It is me, Bethany. Do not fear this new form. It will help with your processing.”

The larger Bethany was no more graceful than its smaller counterparts. It swayed and stumbled across the room, but easily covered the ground between the door and Marigold in a stride.

A balled fist crashed down on Marigold. Maxwell gasped, but his protector rolled out of the way, recovered herself, and leapt into the air. Kicking off the robot’s chest, she flipped onto a nearby shelf. Another crashing fist destroyed a nearby crate. Marigold was holding her own, but only barely.

Maxwell had, until this point, felt fairly safe in his role as spectator on the other side of the room, but as Marigold dealt with the large robot, six smaller ones broke away and moved toward him. They all wore the same smile, and all held the same electrified four-pronged hands aloft. He didn’t know what they were trying to do, but he knew it was going to be terrible. Maxwell held no illusions of bravery, but he had not been prepared to learn he had survival instincts of a tranquilized sloth. He stood in place, closed his eyes, and hoped that whatever happened next didn’t hurt too much.

Before he could find out, a new sound cut through the din of the room: a steam whistle. Maxwell turned around and saw a train barrelling toward the building along the unsupported tracks in the distance.

“It’s here” Maxwell said, mumbling to himself at first and then shouting it to Marigold.

Marigold reacted at once. She jumped back to the ground, and pivoted to one side, barely avoiding Bethany’s trunk-like legs. Then, sliding between them, she ran at full speed toward Maxwell. She held out her arms and managed to clothesline two of the robots, who were sent into a spiral that knocked over the others. Bethany brought both hands together and made one last attempt at squishing the frog but succeeded only in cracking the concrete floor.

Before Maxwell knew what was happening, Marigold scooped him up and thew him over her shoulder, covered the remaining space to the dock door, and bounded out into the great white nothing.

Maxwell could not see where they were heading, but he could see where they had been. From the open door of the massive floating structure, Bethany’s arm reached out in frustration at Marigold and Maxwell. It was trying desperately to re-capture them, but the effort threw the robot off balance. Bethany titled forward, smiled sadly at Maxwell one last time, and tumbled into oblivion.