Some Assembly Required

Grace didn’t know where she was. The last thing she remembered, she was riding her bike down the hill just below her house on a beautiful spring afternoon, and then? Everything was black and no matter how hard she tried her eyes wouldn't open.  Even worse, she couldn’t seem to move. Where was she? What was happening to her? She was starting to panic.

“Uh, Sir, I think something is happening,” Ben sounded nervous.

“What is it this time Ben?” Steven was getting quite annoyed, and why shouldn’t he be? It wasn’t his idea to bring the boy with him to work, it was his mother’s. Ben had always been headstrong, but things had gone from bad to worse when Steven married his mom. That is why she suggested sending her son to work with Steven. She thought it would perhaps help them bond a little better, and who knew, Ben might discover some deep seated interest in the work Steven did in his lab. So far, it wasn’t working very well though. Ben had been constantly underfoot , asking a million questions, and he had already broken three beakers and contaminated two very important samples when he sneezed on a set of petri dishes.

“WHAT is it Ben?!” Steven repeated, whirling around to face the now all too quiet boy. “Oh my god, the brain, we’ve caught one.”

“Huh?” Ben said, still unable to break his gaze from the wrinkly grey blob that was bobbing and weaving up in down in the jar of liquid.

“When they start moving like that, it means we have captured one. The experiment worked again!”

“Experiment?”  Ben repeated.

Steven was seriously beginning to question the boy’s intelligence, “Yes,” he sighed, “it is all part of the work I am doing, it began with an attempt to revive the deceased, but it soon became apparent that the people who, uh, were recovered, were not the people who initially inhabited the brains. My only conclusion is that the process I devised is somehow capturing loose soles that are floating in the atmosphere. I don’t know where they are coming from, I have not yet been able to keep one around long enough to find out, but perhaps this time.”

“Oh,” Ben looked more confused than ever.

Steven rolled his eyes, “listen, the next thing we have to do is hook up the computer, with it  we can start communicating with whoever is now in that brain, here, help me plug in this microphone and speaker.”

Suddenly Grace realized she wasn’t alone, she didn’t know how, or why, but she could feel a presence nearby. Perhaps, if she could somehow speak, she could get some help, and then she could figure out what was wrong with her.

The equipment wasn’t working and Steven had no idea why, then Ben spotted the problem, as he plugged the power chord into the wall a deafening scream emanated from the speakers, and echoed through the lab.