Droids don't have dreams, which is part of why he knew he was having one. The sensation of random areas of memory being accessed without his logic circuits being engaged was a bizarre one, and definitely not something he'd mistake for reality. It was, however, completely unignorable and unstoppable - try as he might, he couldn't get his logic circuits to re-engage.
Wherever he was - or wasn't, rather - it was dark. Not totally dark, but that kind of dark that a place is in the middle of the afternoon when all of the organics are napping and you've just come in from the bright desert sun outside and your photoreceptors haven't really adjusted yet. Except that they had adjusted, he knew, because they were successfully focusing on what appeared to be a face. It was hard to be sure, because the picture was really dim and adjusting the brightness didn't seem to be helping, but it was definitely not any human face. There were smells, too - not the kind his sensors were designed to pick up, but trace chemicals he had learned to recognize over the years: pheromones, alien sweat, decay.
"The message, -- the message!" The human-like voice was accompanied by a low rumble, which he realized, somewhat belatedly, was alien speech.
"Greetings, Exalted One."
From the moment the holographic recording began to play back, it was as though the rest of the chamber just faded away, odors and all. Part of it could have been that the holograph was just so bright yet it cast no residual light on anything else, so that anything beyond it was impossible to see without refocusing and adjusting to the darkness again. The subject of the recording was a male human somewhere in that valley of age-ranges between 'child' and 'old man' that he had trouble distinguishing. 'Old Enough To Probably Know Better' seemed an apt enough description, in any case. The human wore black - which inexplicably did not help with the excessive brightness - and had lightish-brown hair which matched his equally lightish skin tone.
"Allow me to introduce myself. I am--" The recording skipped.
"Of course not," snapped the same tinny but human-like voice from before, coming from nearby. He tried to look for the source, but there was only blackness. "You don't hold up your end of the conversation."
"-- Skywalker, -- friend of Captain [Something]. I know that you are powerful, and that your anger with [some guy] must be equally powerful."
The recording's audio trailed off at this point and was dubbed over by another voice - or possibly the same one at a different time. The quality of the recording or the tone of voice was different or something, so that he could tell it was a dub-over even though the man in the picture's lips moved perfectly in-sync with the sound.
"[static] is trying to turn you against me." Somehow, juxtaposed with the calm, diplomatic manners and expressions of the man in the picture, the voice in the soundtrack sounded almost disturbingly angry - as though there were some secret hatred behind his voice that he was just barely restraining himself from expressing fully. "Love won't save you, -- only my new powers can do that.
"The Chancellor has given me a very important mission. The Separatists have gathered on the Mustafar system. I'm going there to end this war." There was a break in the sound - static - but when the voice returned it sounded almost too reassuring. Like someone looking for just the right thing to say, just the right button to press, to make his protocol droid stop whinging. "... Things will be different, I promise.
"I am becoming more powerful than any [static] has ever dreamed of. And I'm doing it for you. Together you and I can rule the galaxy! Make things the way we want them to be!
"I don't wanna hear anymore about [someone]--"
Embarrassingly, the picture faded into blackness here, but it didn't seem to matter. All he could hear clearly, really clearly, was the pleading, choked whisper of some female voice repeating over and over and over, "Help me, -- you're my only hope."
Someone shouted, loud and low and commanding, "Let her go!" but that was in the background. He could almost see the scene in the darkness - a man dressed in black and a woman, the latter floating with her feet not quite touching the ground, grappling uselessly at some unseen force squeezing her neck. She had stopped pleading, finally - stopped breathing. An older man was coming down the entry ramp of a starship nearby. Finally, the woman gasped in a breath and fell limply to the permacrete below as the man in black turned to rage at the newcomer.
Raucous alien laughter filled the chamber during a lull in the holorecording's soundtrack which, he realized, he had been playing normally all along. Apparently no one else had heard or seen what he just did - or perhaps didn't. Despite his previous declarations that he could most definitely tell the difference between reality and non-reality, and despite the fact that nothing was making any sense right now, he was beginning to have doubts that this wasn't really happening after all. Was this what bit rot felt like?
"As a token of my goodwill," the recording went on, in its original voice, "I present to you a gift - these two droids. Both are hard-working and will serve you well."
"This can't be!" the tinny voice from before exclaimed. "You're playing the wrong message!"
Was he? He couldn't be sure anymore. Where were they, even, and how did they get there? Hopefully this wasn't anything a quick reboot couldn't fix, he thought, quickly initiating shutdown procedures.