title: A Custodial Apocalypse aliases: [] tags: [FA] author: [Panda_Fromjaf] id: [48719454] date: 星期五, 八月 26日 2022, 10:48:43 上午 modified: 星期四, 九月 8日 2022, 10:43:28 晚上

[TOC]

A Custodial Apocalypse

Author: Panda_Fromjaf Source: A Custodial Apocalypse

Hype in the R&D lab was at an all time high today. A few weeks ago, they had developed the technology to shrink objects to up to one hundredth of their original size, and without compromising its molecular integrity! What had for centuries been nothing but science fiction was growing ever closer to a reality. The possibilities for what the technology could be used for were endless. Much easier mass transit of materials, better and cheaper food storage, and hopefully even advancements in medicine were just some of the things that Ray X Labs could benefit from if they could get testing done quick enough to patent the device before the technology was discovered elsewhere. One thing which however had not been tested was that of organic matter. The hypothesis in the lab was that the most complex life they could properly shrink would be small fruits, as anything with a proper nervous system would more than likely be fried by the process shrinking the connection between neurons. For this reason even any animal testing was strictly prohibited.

Today’s experiment was related to shrinking electronic components. As the size of transistors was already approaching subatomic levels, the team in R&D was curious to see how the shrinking process would make the devices unusable. If not, then it could be a valuable stepping stone to be able to reduce all sorts of things, and even potentially organics, animals, or even people. One thing which had additionally not been tested was an experimental growth feature. No use in an item that you can’t grow back after all. It was nowhere near ready however, with the scheduled testing date set for the next week. Anxious to finally get this simple test out of the way, a phone was placed on a stool a couple feet away from the gun. The scientists stepped away, as while the device did include a physical trigger, they decided it would be best to activate it remotely as to reduce the risk of the beam hitting any of them. After all the paperwork to cover up the death of an employee would be a hassle nobody wanted to deal with, even with all the liability waivers.

And so the dozen or so people rushed to the edge of the room, behind a protective glass shielding, before activating the shrink ray. Upon firing it, the experiment seemed to be a success, the mobile device shrinking in size while still functioning, the screen turned on and appearing as normal. However, as it reached half of its original size, everything began to go wrong. The phone began to glow a bright hot red, the transistors being crammed into too small a size for it to be able to handle. What stunned the observers most however, is that not only did it stop shrinking, it began to grow, the screen quickly shutting off and beginning to bulge out from the rest of the frame. Knowing that it would likely implode, one of the technicians quickly took the controls for the shrink ray and pressed the button to deactivate, but by that point it was already too late. The phone violently exploded, a blinding blue light following to sweep across the room with any protective shielding effortlessly passed through. Scientists and administrative staff alike felt a warm energy pierce their bodies and flow through their veins, easily becoming overwhelmed by the sheer force of it as it traveled through the building.

And then everything went black.

Mark knew that he was running late. It was the fifth time this month that his alarm clock had failed him, and he feared for his career at this point. Management had not been too kind on him last time he was only a few minutes behind schedule, and still a block away from the lab, the kangaroo was already a quarter of an hour overdue. Breaking into a sprint, he turned the final corner and rushed through the courtyard for Ray X Labs, knowing full well that he looked like a complete idiot hauling his gear through the building’s entrance like that… 

But nobody was there.

Mark quickly checked his phone, immediately thinking that in his tired brain he had accidentally come into work on a weekend. But the display clearly read it as a Thursday, and if it was a weekend, wouldn’t there still be security roaming the premises? Dismissing his concerns, he continued past the entrance, and headed towards the reception. Lydia was always a friendly face to see, the often timid goat always being one to strike up a conversation with Mark, but he would even have taken a stern warning regarding his tardiness than to see the desk completely empty. Peering over the secretary’s desk, Mark scanned the contents of its surface to see if there was any indication of where everyone had gone, yet nothing seemed amiss. He walked to the other side of the reception area, to see if there were any notices that he may have missed, or sticky notes left on the desktop, a staple when Lydia was unavailable or needed to be somewhere. The desktop was turned on, focused on a tab of unread emails, and papers scattered all across the large desk. 

Immediately however, his attention was immediately directed to a stray speck of dust resting upon one of the papers. An object of scorn towards most janitors, the roo decided that now was as good a time as ever to start his cleaning duties, blowing on the dust to excavate it. The force of the exhale was more than enough to lift the dust from the paper, and slowly float down into the wastepaper basket at the foot of the desk. Thinking that Lydia must be on vacation, Mark decided to pay no further thought to the peculiarities, and begin his shift as intended, clocking in through his phone and heading to the janitors' closet. After all, the building needed cleaning, employees or not, and he wasn’t being paid to just stand around doing nothing…

For the secretary herself, it was much more than a slight exhale. Having been shrunk to near ant-size an hour prior, she had spent her time traversing the near-endless expanse of her messy desk, the pens and papers which she had often dismissed during her day now insurmountable obstacles to traverse between. Lydia’s clothes had luckily shrunk with her, so the possibility of freezing at her new diminished size was much less of a possibility, her priority now shifting to needing to be discovered before she starved from the lack of any viable food for what was now miles to her. The fact that nobody had noticed her in the hour following or even walked past the desk worried her increasingly. What if this had happened to everyone? What if the whole planet had shrunk to just as insignificant a height as her? What if-

She was knocked out of her stupor by the sudden opening of the doors at the front of the building. While she couldn’t see who it was due to the barrier between her desktop and the front of the reception area, she knew that it had to be the sound of a person entering, however who it was could be anyone's guess. She didn’t have to wonder for long though, as within a few seconds, a large distinctly kangaroo head peered its way over the indent of the desk, looking over her new enlarged prison. She recognized him as the janitor of the facility, Mark being a friendly face who she was always happy to see, always stopping to say hello when many of the scientists and management failed to even acknowledge her existence. If anyone would be able to save her, it was Mark.

However, she was not so lucky. Through her best efforts to make herself known, she seemed to finally gain the giant’s attention. It was then that Lydia realized her mistake. As the now massive eye loomed over her, she had hoped for a look of recognition, if not surprise. After all, she would feel the same way to see one of her coworkers stranded on their desk at the size of a grain of sand. But instead she was greeted with a cold dead state, the squinting of the planetary orb trying to make out something, but to no avail. If anything, the most she would come off as to Mark would be nothing but an irritating insect, or an insignificant fleck of- 

She didn't have time to finish her thoughts, as the eye moved away, only to be replaced by an all encompassing maw large enough to engulf her whole neighborhood. It would have been easy for him to stick his city block-sized tongue out and gobble her up, but why would someone willingly eat an insect off from a table? Her actual fate was somehow even more unawarely cruel, the massive lips warping into the shape of an ‘o’, before a massive suction began to form around her, threatening to inhale her. However it quickly subsided, before reversing with tenfold the force, a massive exhale easily blowing her off from the table. Lydia screamed, the fall being more than enough to kill any normal goat, however she was no longer by any means normal. Everything appeared to happen in slow motion, the drop that she knew to only be a few feet in height being akin to skydiving, the air resistance combined with her small stature making it unlikely for it to result in her death. However, as the secretary saw where she was headed, a half-full wastebasket filled with decaying leftovers and loose tissues, death may have seemed the better option. 

Mark tried to always keep to the same routine when cleaning the labs. First vacuuming the hallways of the multi-leveled building, before devoting the rest of his attention to the labs and rooms themselves. It may have been an unconventional method, having to run back and forth between the various halls and floors, but it worked for him, and he was never called out on it. Besides, it was worth it just for not needing to retrieve and put away his vacuum every time he needed it. And need it he did, the floors of the building seemed unusually dirty, little pebbles or insects already littering the surface. As he walked to the janitor’s closet, Mark felt a sickening crunch, one that he distinctively noticed as that of him squishing an insect. Feeling squeamish, the roo simply shuddered, refusing to look under his heavy shoe to see the remains, and simply entered the closet to retrieve his trusted vacuum cleaner.

The process of cleaning the halls was practically ingrained into Mark through the years that he had worked at the facility. He simply put his headphones on and zoned out whilst sweeping the vacuum across the hallways, the machine more than capable of sucking up all the abundant specks littering the building. Once he had deemed each hall clean enough, the roo simply moved to the next one, uncaring of the monotonous nature of his actions, and trying to get it done as quickly as possible. After all, there was a whole building to be cleaned, luckily now empty so he didn’t have to deal with coworkers impacting his clean job.

Many of the employees who occupied the labs were left stranded at their miniscule size, the hallways itself being a near country in length. Many of those working at Ray X did not have too much experience with long distance travel, so even if they had all the time in the world, they would be unlikely to make any meaningful distance before collapsing from exhaustion. Not that it would have mattered anyways, with the ground beginning to shake. They knew what was coming before they saw him. It was clearly an anthro who had not been shrunk, giving them a spark of hope that not everyone had met the same fate as they had. When the giant was revealed to be Mark however, they were less enthusiastic, as while he was certainly a friendly face to see, the massive roo was not the most attentive, mostly focusing on his job cleaning, and having little time for chit chat while he ridded the hallways just like these of even the most miniscule dirt and gri…

“Oh shit.”

Hoping that they were large enough to be visible, many tried their best to be noticed by the giant, waving their arms, jumping up and down, anything to get his attention and be saved from starvation or being eaten by insects, but it was as if they did not exist to the roo. By the time that his massive work boots approached them, it was already too late for the micros to realize their mistake. The undertreads were already littered with small red splotches, giving little question as to what had happened to the other unfortunate micros to have fallen under the footsteps of the unaware titan. And those staring up at the massive boot heading their way were unable to get a single step in before it landed directly on them. Luckily there was little pain for the micros, a brief instant of pressure before a pop turned them into nothing but one of the stains littering the boots, indistinguishable from the rest.

Their near-instantaneous death however was a mercy compared to what some of the others in the hallways would endure a few minutes later. Some of the micros too small to be properly crushed by the boots and those who were able to dodge the footfalls were celebrating their survival, but once they heard a faint whirring, amplified a thousand times over due to their miniscule size, they instantly knew that there would be no escape from what was to come. They knew it was a vacuum even before the apocalyptic machine even appeared before them. The terrified scientists of course were helpless, running around for any semblance of safety and unwilling to accept being killed by something as mundane as a vacuum cleaner, even with the suction already becoming noticeable and becoming stronger by the second as Mark continued to clean. Of course, any plan which they could have come up with would have done nothing to prevent their fate, being far too small to make any difference or gain the uncaring titan’s attention. As the mechanical monolith drew ever closer, gravity began to shift, hurricane-like forces threatening to rip their bodies from the ground. And when their own balance failed them, that was exactly what happened, the micros tumbling through the air alongside all the dirt and debris accumulated through the previous few days into the belly of the beast.

The bristles of the vacuum were already too much for many of the micros to bear, the battering instantly causing their deaths or at least paralyzing them, causing them to spin lifelessly within the massive chamber already half-filled. However, many were small enough to be able to dodge much of the deadly interior contraptions, instead becoming embedded within all of the discarded trash held within. Breathing was near-impossible, and the sheer roar of the machine caused them to permanently go deaf. Most senses being destroyed, once the vacuum finally stopped and they were dumped downwards into the now stationary debris pile, they wandered aimlessly in the dark chamber, completely alien from a life they had lived before. Any attempts to break free from their hell were fruitless, the black plastic bag designed to prevent tears from erasing all the work that goes into cleaning. The vacuum bag was already mostly full, most of the dirt having accumulated through the week prior, and with the machine not to be emptied until that following Monday, it was a death sentence for those trapped within. Even without all the shattered ribs and broken bodies, the lack of light and proper air would cause most to suffocate or die of dehydration by the time garbage day rolled around. And so they waited for the inevitable…

Mark knew little about chemistry admittedly, however he was always disappointed when entering the labs. Not even he knew what he expected them to look like, but they weren’t too dissimilar in his opinion to those that he dreaded going to back when he was in high school. However, when entering the laboratory, he was shocked to see the abysmal state it was in. Glass beakers and flasks were shattered all over the floor, with brown liquids composed of god knows what having spilled from them. The tables and desks weren’t in a much better state, it looked as if everyone had just got up and left.

During his induction training, Mark was instructed to never ask questions for whatever the labs were working on, and just go about things as though it was any normal day, no matter the circumstances. However, that was no reason at all for the marsupial to forgo investigating whatever accident must have happened, no matter the potential danger to himself. As to not expose himself to what he knew were likely dangerous and corrosive chemicals, Mark made sure to put on a hazmat suit before entering the room and beginning what was a far greater cleanup job than he had anticipated before entering the building. And so he set off to work, rinsing each of the shattered beakers before throwing them in the trash, and proceeding to wipe down all of the floors with a roll of tissue paper, casually throwing the individual, now wet, clumps out into the hazardous waste disposal bin as to not take any chances with health code violations. 

It was an off day in the chemistry labs, with no real experiments of any kind being performed, however for whatever reason all employees belonging to the building had been called in, no matter the department. Having little to do otherwise, the scientists had just decided to order some food in and just relax for the day, using vials, beakers and flasks to hold their sodas and drinks. It was obviously against company policy, but they knew that the security cameras were rarely checked if ever, and their department was far too vital to justify firing dozens of members just for goofing off when there was nothing to be done.

So when they suddenly found themselves at an eighth of an inch tall, the initial reaction was that they had been found out, some form of punishment dealt to them by management. But as the hours passed on without anyone coming into the room to collect them, they slowly came to the realization that something was clearly wrong. The sodas and alcohol spilled wasn’t enough to drown them of course, but wouldn’t someone at least check to make sure that they were still alive? The fears finally seemed to be alleviated when the door swung open, small earthquakes causing the shallow waters they were treading water in to shake and ripple. But as they looked upon the massive face, obscured somewhat between the visor and a yellow hazmat suit, they saw the death sentence of an expression, one of confusion and worry rather than teasing recognition. For all he knew, all that existed in the room was broken glass and what looked to be errant spills for… The janitor to clean up.

Luckily their small stature allowed them to be wiped up without being turned into a red pulp. The soda that got wiped up with them acted as a sticky adhesive which practically fused the nano chemists with the fibers of the tissue, making any escape impossible. As the tissue mopped up the loose soda, the scientists were dealt quite possibly the greatest amount of whiplash any of them had dealt with, being whipped around larger distances than they could run in an hour in under a second, backwards and forwards, left and right with the erratic movements of thor deities' hand. Finally the tissue had absorbed enough liquid to be rendered unusable, with about a dozen of the micros embedded within, several already nothing but red splotches from the pressure, their final chance at escape evaporating quicker than the ocean they were previously stranded in. As it was lifted up, they were given a full scale view of the colossus, from his muscular legs all the way up to his incomprehensibly large head. Much like with Lydia, Mark did not notice the small specks struggling within the mixture of soaked pulp and coke. Hell, with the dark substance covering them, the micros were practically invisible to even the mega marsupial, even with the face shielding he wore to add an extra layer of inhumanity between the two. They didn’t even get the acknowledgement as specks of dust as their uncaring god carried them to what would be their grave. 

One observant scientist who was more so used to the disorientating g-forces of her movement, having previously worked in aviation, was able to notice where Mark was headed, and could do nothing but scream. The janitor seemed to think that the spilled drink was a contamination, and while this was the correct procedure, it could not have come at a worse time. They were not headed to the regular trash can, a prison which they could hopefully have escaped from with enough collective effort, but the waste disposal bin, filled with used syringes, toxins and acids together in an ungodly mixture that nobody even with protective gear would be able to survive. And so the prison of fibers they were trapped in was compressed into a ball by the titan, and casually thrown in, the same way Mark often did to imitate a basketball toss into a hoop, a reprieve from his mundane tasks. The feeling of weightlessness briefly filled the scientists, until they finally landed. The concoction did not kill the nanos as much as it did erase them, the mixture of acids and bases more than easily dissolving their forms into nothingness. Before the lid of the disposal bin closed a second later, there wasn’t an iota of the chemists left surviving.

A positive to working in a lab was that the restrooms were never all that dirty or in need of maintenance as some of the other locations which Mark had worked for in the past. The scientists and other staff were more than respectful enough to not make a mess in there. Not that they were ever spotless, but it was a relief not to deal with toilet paper strewn through the room or soiled toilet seats. Like with most other aspects of the job, he was just able to zone out and continue his work with little hindrance. One thing which caught his eye however was the appearance of several of the specks of dirt which he had earlier noticed in the halls of the building, ones that needed to be disposed of with ease to satiate his perfectionist mind.

Luckily dealing with the insignificant specks proved no challenge, as the roo simply sprayed the tiles with some soapy water before wiping it all up with some toilet paper, a couple dozen with a single swipe. He had initially considered using wet wipes for the job, but knew that those tended to clog up toilets and sewers. After each stall was cleaned well enough for the mysterious specks to all be embedded within the wet tissues, they were promptly dumped into the toilet, a final sheet of paper used to clean the seat before Mark flushed them away, out of both sight and mind.

The ventilation system at Ray X Labs was hilariously out of date. Most of those working in the labs had lobbied on more than one occasion to have them redone, but the management was often stingy at changing non-essential functions of the building and refused to shell out the fifty thousand required to renovate the aging building. With the system itself simply redistributing the air throughout the labs, many feared that if there was a gaseous contamination that escaped from the chemistry lab, it would easily lead to lawsuits if the vapors didn't kill them all first. However for the micros whom were smaller than dirt, the ventilation had given them a near-death sentence. Like the maw of a hungry beast as it whirred to life, hundreds being swept off their feet and taken into the air ducts above, distributing the nanos all across the facility.

Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the force of the air current was not nearly enough to rip anybody to shreds, and they were far too small to splatter upon colliding with the walls of piping littering the labs, simply bouncing off harmlessly like any insect their size would. With them being thrown all over the labs, a decent amount made their way into the restroom, being dumped carelessly onto the floor, way too small to even cross a single bathroom tile in any reasonable amount of time. What would have otherwise been imperceptible to even the sharp eyes of Mark was amplified to enormous magnitude to the microscopic chemists and physicians. Large stains of what clearly wasn’t water and loose crumbs littered the floor, some being larger than the scientists themselves. So once Mark entered the room, they knew very well that they couldn’t even be seen, much less noticed as living sapient beings. Preparing for the worst, the nanos could do nothing but await the inevitable destruction and death that could come from cleaning the restroom.

But nothing could have prepared them for the spray bottle. The massive nozzle, near the size of an entire room, jettisoned a lake of liquid directly into one of the largest groups, the force of the water obliterating those directly in the path as if their fragile bodies were in the entrance to a dam. Those on the outskirts were nowhere near safe either, as their surroundings quickly began to flood as the lemon-scented suds approached them. While the soapy conviction wasn’t explicitly designed to be anti-bacterial, it still wreaked havoc on the microscopic staff. The bubbles of acidic salts easily ate through both clothing and skin, boiling the micros alive through the suds. Those unfortunate enough to be spared from the quick death were quickly swept up in a paper towel, becoming trapped in both liquid and the fibers, before being carelessly dropped into a massive porcelain bowl. The toilet water was easily able to disintegrate the paper as well as dilute the cleaning liquid, allowing any surviving micros to tread water as best as they could, at least for the few seconds they could before a massive hand pressing a level sealed their fate.

A massive whirlpool forming, the scientists were all easily sucked down into the dark and seemingly endless depths, rushing through the pipes with the rest of the water and waste. Many drowned in the flow of water, but those able to hold their breath for the duration were rewarded simply by being dumped out of a drainage pipe into the sewers leading outside of the facility. Lost in the darkness and isolated from any other nanos who were taken elsewhere in the sewers through the unpredictable tide, Things could not have been more dire. Best case scenario would have them surviving as parasites on the backs of rats, lest they either starve or get filtered out through some waste treatment plant and either become incinerated or trapped within a mountain of compost halfway across the country. While most were flushed, being sent to this watery grave in the sewers, Mark neglected to inflict the fate onto the final toilet, leaving the group to cling to the rapidly dissolving tissue paper, the toilet water easily sparing them from being dissolved in the soap. As Mark turned off the lights and left the room, they were left to a fate worse than death, a purgatory spent waiting, hoping that somebody doesn’t decide to use their hell to relieve themselves.

Finally came the R&D labs. While Mark knew not to question the goings on in the lab, he knew that if there was any explanation for whatever the hell caused an entire staff to disappear, it would be found somewhere in this room. In the years that he had worked for Ray X, he had overheard whisperings of a great many things that may be a cause for what had happened, be it teleportation technology or even rumors of a death ray. Mark shuddered at the thought of what may have happened if he had been in the building at the time of whatever had caused everyone to vanish. He could have been disintegrated, teleported or turned into pieces of the furniture littering the floors. Despite his musings however, he neglected to think of one of the most simple options, one that would have explained all of the ‘bugs’ that had magically appeared overnight despite the whole building being cleaned the day prior.

Entering the room, nothing seemed to be too amiss. The only real evidence that anybody had been there in the first place was a few scattered clipboards near the edge of the room. Mark breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that there wouldn’t be as much to clean as there had been in the chemistry lab. One thing that caught his eye however was two pedestals, situated a few feet away from each other near the center of the room, one with the charred remains of some kind of device, and the other holding some kind of ray gun. Walking over, Mark looked down to see half of what looked like an enlarged phone screen, which must have been what was destroyed. Dismissing the implications, he continued his journey over…

While many of the scientists from the R&D labs, only an eighth of a millimeter in height, were sucked up by the ventilation system to who knows where in the facility, a great number were still inside the room, invisible to the naked eye and trying to figure out why the ray had backfired the way that it did. The first few minutes after being shrunk were in utter panic, knowing that they should be dead, as it had never been tested on a fur as of yet, all their hypothesis leading them to believe that the connections between neurons would have been severed, but yet they were still alive, and somehow even more durable at their diminished size. Despite all the terror, if they could soomehow find a way out of this mess, they would be able to run a lot more controlled tests, not on machinery which would more than likely cause a similar error to what happened here, but to actual organics, which could revolutionize farming and crop harvests. Unfortunately that chance would never come.

As Mark inspected the device, he wondered if it was some kind of prop that had been borrowed from a museum for the actual tests to be performed upon. The gun looked more like a prop from one of those shoestring budget Doctor Who serials from the early 70’s than anything which could actually be used to do anything of note. Mark knew that much of the science team were nerds, for lack of a better term, so the retro design of the device before him was no surprise. Even as he remembered the company guidelines to not interfere or even inquire about any of the research being done at the facility, the roo couldn't help but wonder what the device could have been used for, and whether it was the cause of everybody’s disappearance. 

His first clue would be checking out the remnants of whatever the gun had fired at, which mostly took the form of shrapnel scattered around the room surrounding a pedestal a couple feet from the device. Thinking of it as perhaps a potential death ray, Mark decided that the device was probably best left untouched, and decided to look around elsewhere. Moving away, he swung his tail around as he began his stride to the empty spot where the supposed phone used to exist, until…

CRASH!

Mark quickly turned around to see what happened, only to see the device which he had only just observed topple to the ground. He near-immediately realized what had happened. Being a marsupial, the roo commonly had to watch out for his large tail bumping into things and causing havoc, however he had neglected to give it much thought with everything going on today, and had knocked what he thought must have been a near-priceless device to the ground, surely breaking it. Fearing the worst, he stepped back over to the gun, more carefully this time, to check his handiwork.

Picking it up, Mark’s fears were seemingly confirmed. While the mysterious device was still in one piece, it’s outer casing was heavily cracked and the LED was blank. While he didn’t want to attempt pressing the trigger and risk killing himself with what was obviously a death ray, the marsupial knew that whether it worked or not did not matter. He was fired, as management took destruction of property, especially in the R&D labs, extremely seriously. Even cosmetic damages would cost him the job, which was far less than what he had in his hands. The only way Mark could see out of this was if there was no evidence at all to implicate him. Security cameras were non-existent within many of the facilities for security reasons, and more often than not few outside of the R&D labs were aware of any of the technologies being developed within the room. And so he made his decision, one that would doom the micros to their fate forever…

Anybody watching what had been weeks of effort be destroyed, even if accidentally, would be devastating. Even more so if what was destroyed just happened to be the only device in the world that would be able to return any of the scientists back to their non-sand grain size. But as they watched Mark pick up the dropped ray gun, they seemed almost relieved by the relative lack of damage. Luckily, the damage to the device did not look so bad from the position of the nanos, mostly having the outer shell being cracked. It was a quick 3D printed shell, but made to easily deform itself to protect the priceless internals and mechanisms of the actual shrink ray, much like cars are designed to crumple the exterior to protect their passengers. Some of those with better eyesight were even able to observe that the LED display on the side of the device was perfectly functional, and not even cracked. There was still a way out of this, however unlikely. Unfortunately though, the colossal god had already decided his judgment upon them, deeming the priceless device as nothing but a simple toy to be dismantled without care or concern for what he was doing. 

Massive hands gripped their life preserver, tearing the plastic shell to pieces. Those on the ground near the destroyer’s paws were greeted with a littering of 3D-Printed PLA upon them, some were crushed under the massive weight of the material while others were forced to take refuge both on and around the massive boots which had previously crushed so many of the scientist peers. However this was just as deadly, the janitor shifting as he worked to destroy months of research and bringing a swift end to those who dared get in the way of the marsupial god who had complete control over them, even if he was unaware of both their plight and very existence. 

The technicians and scientists who were lucky enough to watch the chaos unfold from afar witnessed the man they had passed by every day, one that was always a friendly face to see as they worked, completely doom them all to a life of being a speck to a speck, however short that life would be. The internal circuitry of the shrink ray exposed, even a slight touch could leave it to malfunction, if it was not already irreparably damaged by the fall and following abuse by the careless roo. But none of them could have expected the true extent for the uncaring cruelty about to be inflicted. The motherboard of the device, the brain that told the device what functions to perform,  was mostly flat, and while it took some effort, it appeared to easily snap in the same way one would break a wafer cookie. As it happened, a single prism embedded in the device popped off, and bounced to the floor below.

That prism was the deltonium crystal, the catalyst for what made the shrinking technology happen. There was only one of these in existence, and all documentation was heavily redacted or destroyed to prevent a leak from getting out to rival firms to ensure that Ray X’s technology was theirs alone. The scientists had lobbied against this of course, but management had forced their hand, a decision that was the final nail in the coffin as the few remaining scientists near Mark’s boots witnessed it crack upon hitting the ground, its hallmark yellow glow fading, yet still not entirely extinguished. All other options exhausted, they raced towards the crystal in the hopes that direct contact could somehow return them to normalcy. By the time they had reached it, the shadow of the massive work boot had already appeared overhead, threatening to finish the job. There was only time for one scientist to leap onto the crystal, hoping for a miracle. And then suddenly… Nothing. A faint electric hum was all the reward given for his valiant effort before the boot finally struck down, shattering the crystal, and the nano clinging to it, into a thousand pieces. The crystal gave a short burst of energy as it shorted and shattered, and those still watching for an instant hoped for some form of karmactic justice, maybe having Mark shrink down to their level. And yet nothing happened. Mark simply wiped the fragments on his boot into a dustpan, before heading to the trash can and dumping the rest of the now irreparable crystal in.

There was now nothing that the scientists could do to escape their fate. The janitor didn’t know what the crystal could have been used for, let alone fix it. They remembered that he attended the presentation they designed to convince all other staff, including potential spies, that there was no way that miniaturization technology could be achieved in the future, so the possibility of what happened to them wasn’t even a single thought on his mind. And so they resigned to their fate of spending the rest of their lives trying to traverse the new universe of their labs. As it turned out however, starvation would not be their fate. Many of the scientists in a single place, while being too small to be made out as actual human beings, gave the appearance to the titan of a fine layer of dust coating the counter, one that Mark just so happened to focus his eyes on while about to leave the area, finished with his handiwork. The closest thing to what would have been considered eye-contact was achieved, if only for a single second. They knew by the look on the janitor’s face that it was not one of recognition, and only wished that whatever their certain death entailed, it would be over quickly. And their prayers were seemingly answered, a planetary finger slowly coming into view...

It was as if an earthquake had struck the section on which everyone was on, as a massive tidal wave of roo finger swept across the countertop upon which the scientists were located. Their close proximity to each other made it easy for the monster to envelop all of them with a single sweep across. He didn’t even need to lick it for his near-planetary size to stick everyone to the digit when lifting it up miles into the air, as if they were bound by gravity. Brought close to Mark’s eye, the scientists tried as hard to gain the attention of their new god, but he wasn’t looking for them. He wasn’t looking for anything in fact, only checking at his fingertip for an instant to gauge how much ‘dust’ he had picked up with his swipe. He muttered something under his breath about needing to have brought wet wipes, a grumbling eruption coming from his enormous lips, before bringing his finger to another. Grinding them together.

The fingerprints, massive canyons that were thought by many to allow for their salvation, became tectonic plates, grinding together to exterminate and crush every last one of them. Within a few seconds not even red splotches were visible, being too small to be seen, erasing all indication that the micros had ever existed in the first place. For all Mark could see, it was just dirt that he was merging together into a lump, each dust particle even larger than the micros. To those not swiped up, it was as if an extinction event had occurred, hundreds if not thousands of their peers being swiped up to be extinguished by what was effectively a god. As they awaited their fate, destined to be trashed with all the other useless dust, dirt and debris in the bottom of a trash can, awaiting garbage day…

That night, thinking little else of the routine events of the day, Mark began to undress himself to shower, washing all the excess dirt and dust which may have hitched a ride on him over the course of his cleaning. He chuckled at the thought of personifying something so insignificant, a thought which led to frustration as the roo had difficulty removing his clothes. He lathered soap and water, leaving all of the excess grime and sweat to flow down into the drains, both out of sight and of mind. Finally clean of all the dirt which had accumulated through the day, Mark finished his nightly routine, before heading to bed, exhausted after having to deal with whatever mysterious circumstances caused him to be alone in the lab offices.

Before closing his eyes, the roo suddenly realized that he should probably tell tomorrow’s shift worker about what had happened, to prepare him for the unusual day that he would have to endure, or even just telling him to take the shift off. After all, if everyone had vanished from Ray X, there wouldn’t be much need for additional cleaning. However it was way too late for Mark to bother putting any coherent thoughts into a text, and simply drifted off to sleep, dooming the remaining nanos to another day of routine cleaning and sanitization…