James burst into the downstairs and sprinted to the clean room. He stopped at the door and looked at the sight.
He could hear Amy humming lullaby.
"Amy?" he asked
No response but the melody continued.
Slowly he walked around the mess and stopped, his heart in his throat.
Amy didn't look up. She just sat there humming with pieces of grey matter cradled in her lap.
She looked up at James.
"He stopped talking...but he can still see..his eyes I can see in his eyes he's still there."
James walked over. Terror overcame him as he realized what had happened.
A piece of cardboard sat next to Amy, a flaky grey mass on top of it.
Amy paused and spritzed both with the spray bottle. "They like this" she said
James went over to his workstation and ran his hands through his hair as he managed to get one monitor functioning he looked back through the program log files.
The system was built to turn inorganic matter into degradable organic matter that could be used for fertilizer. The process was still very new but the team had made tremendous progress over the past six weeks.
The kids must have been messing around in here and accidentally kicked off the test run.
He looked at the error codes that indicated user caused errors. The software was fine and the hardware..at the time worked perfectly.
Already formulating a plan to help his kids he looked around. His equipment was not going to work, and based on their condition, Mia and Eric had very little time before degrading completely into dust.
He rubbed his temples. They needed to get to his lap at the office. Running upstairs he grabbed two plastic containers from the kitchen and ran back down.
"Amy" he said calmly "We don't have much time but we need to go now".
Amy looked up at him. "and do what?" she asked flatly.
James knelt down. "Here, gently put him in here" he said putting the container on Amy's knee.
Amy shook her head. "He's so fragile"
James nodded, "I know, I know but if we have chance at helping him we need to move now...understand?"
Amy nodded and very gently put the pieces into the plastic container.
Very gently James lifted the piece of cardboard and slid ever so slowly Mia into the other container. Some grey flakes stuck to the cardboard which he scraped off with his finger.
Amy pointed at the light fixture, which now had a dried out, flaky, grey smear on the side of it.
James swallowed and shook his head..."it's too late for that now....lets go to the car"
Amy insisted on carrying the containers to the car and clutched them tightly as James fastened her seat belt. James dialed his associate and asked her to prep the lab for project 433d and to cue up test A253-B. "Just have it ready to run when I get there, it is an emergency"