(no subject)

[gone_byebye]

September 1st, 2004
Mid-Afternoon
14 North Moore Street, Manhattan

A door opened in the side of the old Hook and Ladder No. 8 building, and two men stepped out. "Looks like home," Ray said, looking up with a slightly disgruntled expression at the huge ad for Keymaster Cologne painted on the side of a nearby building. "Welcome to New York City, sir. Pardon the smell- while we do have a police stable across the street from us, most of what's hitting your nostrils right now is the wonderful scent of burning petroleum, which we use to power our primary means of transportation. If you'll just step right this way..."

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[ilducasaggio.livejournal.com]

Prospero is not scared. He's been deposed and in exile, returned to his seat of power and voluntarily forsook it for the nobler callings in life. He's seen the end of the world, traded barbs with dark fae, even taken on an apprentice who'll probably end up shaving several years, if not decades, off his already-brief allotment of time. For a man of his years and a man of his time, he's seen much, and he's never known fear.

That being said, Ray's city gives him the heebie-jeebies.

He follows Ray with as much poise as he can muster, trying not to gawk at all the passers-by and the--"By all the powers of air and water, what has that child done to her hair?"

[gone_byebye]

And he hasn't even seen the Village yet.

"Oh, that? Hair spray. Um, colored hair spray. Possibly glue mixed with water, but I think that's just extra-hold hair spray- one of the weirder applications of chemistry of modern days." Ray shrugs. "Ordinary hair spray keeps hair from moving around much, so it's possible to style it and forget about it even if there's a lot of wind, but it's kinda popular for some people to use it to make hair do really unnatural things. I don't know why. The color's just a matter of personal preference, really."

He pauses at a blue box near the curb and crouches down to check something. A thought occurs to him; he feeds the box two coins from one of his pockets, then pulls out a copy of the Daily News. "Want to see what's going on in the city today, or would you rather come inside first?" he offers.

[ilducasaggio.livejournal.com]

.

"...I would date myself fiercely if I expressed any sentiments regarding the toilet of the youth in your day, so perhaps I shall just remark on the abundance of time at their disposal, and leave it at that." He peers out from beneath the brim of his hat, then, at the newspaper in Ray's hands. "I think, yes, some acquaintance with the favors and currents would do me well. Nothing might unnerve me so much as a sheaf of river-blue hair molded into spikes, so I should like to acquaint myself with your city while I'm suitably open-minded," he says, in an attempt at self-deprecating humor.

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"Actually, you'd be surprised how many adults disapprove of the hair thing. But here." Ray hands over the newspaper, awfully grateful that it's the News and not the Post. The headline on the front cover is something about the firefighters' union; the Post probably has something along the lines of 'Bloodbath At CBS-FM' or 'Plane Stupid' or some other hard-to-explain bit of trashy writing. "News in the front, entertainment and opinions in the middle, sports and television in the back... um... television's a form of... oh, it'll be easier to explain when there's one in front of us."

[ilducasaggio.livejournal.com]

Prospero takes the paper and examines its front page. He cocks an eyebrow at the large, rather bold font splayed across the top of the page. "This is...a periodical, conveying the happenings and affairs of the city?"

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Ray nods. "Published every day of the week, every day of the year," he says. "With a smaller edition published in the evenings, for people who've been at work and don't have time to read the whole thing. It covers stuff outside the city, too, but the News is more concerned with New York than the rest of the world."

[ilducasaggio.livejournal.com]

Prospero cocks his head to one side. "And everybody in your city can read?"

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This takes a minute for Ray to consider. "Uh... not everybody," he says. "But the vast majority can, yeah. In one language or another. The school system's not the best in the world but I think eighty percent of New Yorkers, maybe ninety percent, can read at a fully functional level. Our country's founding fathers were very big on education."

[ilducasaggio.livejournal.com]

"Marvelous strange, these wonders of modern man," Prospero enthuses. He shakes his head and clucks in mock sadness. "And to think, in a culture so learned in letters, that the fundamentals of exorcism and demonology are all but forgotten."

[gone_byebye]

"They haven't been all that relevant," Ray says. "Not for hundreds of years. People these days rarely consider exorcism as anything but a subject for stories and legends. On the other hand..."

He smiles a bit. "Look at the people on the street here," he says, nodding to the passers-by. "Really. Look at them. Count them- there's bound to be a bunch coming up those stairs over there now. Tell me something, sir...

"Out of all of the people you see before you, do you see even one who bears the scars of smallpox?"

[ilducasaggio.livejournal.com]

It's a good question. Prospero squints and examines the array of passers-by. Some of them are squat of features, others slim-lined and sleek. Some even have...metal studs above their eyes and beneath their lips? He can identify the tell-tale signs of acne upon some, and indeed, not all of them are possessed of robust, stately physiognomy, but...none of them have the tell-tale disfigurements of that pustulent, malformed disease.

"So, this too is among the miracles of your day?" Prospero says. There might just be a hint of admiration in his tone.

[gone_byebye]

Ray nods. "The last natural case of smallpox on the face of the planet," he says, with a small tinge of pride, "occurred in the African country of Somalia- a man named Ali Maow Maalin fell ill with the disease in the year 1977. Two years later we could say it: we'd eradicated the Spotted Death. There are still samples of the stuff in deep freezes, hidden in laboratories in several countries in case someone finds a similar illness and tries to set it loose on the world, but other than those samples the virus is dead. We put everything we had into destroying it, and we chased it from the face of the Earth. Polio's next on the list."

"There was a song a few years ago, 'Boy in the Bubble'... one of the lines in it was 'medicine is magical, and magical is art'. We've lost a lot of stuff along the way, but we've gained a lot as well. It makes for an interesting trade-off."

[ilducasaggio.livejournal.com]

Prospero folds his newpaper up and tucks it into the crook of his arm, in the manner of a gentleman who walks past them just then. "The border between miracle and magic is perhaps not so easy to distinguish as it once was."

[not-oswald.livejournal.com]

"As you wish." Egon adjusted his glasses. "I'm familiar with my colleague's escapades at the far end of Time, yes. The mathematics involved in explaining how he pulls the journey off are enough to give a sane man migraine headaches, but we've just about worked them out. Regarding the lore, I'm conversant with your work on air-sprites and other lesser elemental beings, but I haven't had access to any accurate or even semi-accurate biographies about you beyond the historical plays of William Shakespeare. The man was a phenomenal theatricalist but played fast and loose with fact whenever it suited him, so I can't in good conscience lay claim to any kind of accurate knowledge beyond the spirit material. My apologies."

[ilducasaggio.livejournal.com]

Prospero chuckles. "Nothing to apologize for, nothing at all. I am flattered that even that little record of my existence has persisted through the years. And at any rate, I should imagine that my corpus will have more bearing upon our dialogue than the corpse I've left history." He pauses, a moment's consideration, then continues, "As you are familiar with the records of my era, I shall not pass time by recounting the numerous princes of air and flame and other such eldritch creatures that did dwell in my time, but rather, assume that you know they were in abudance and have at that. It is curious, therefore, that from a position of such pronounced ubiquity, the paranormal would in your day be so debilitated in spirit and in rank as to require assistance to cross over into our corporeal realm, and indeed be relegated to the position of mere folklore and superstition, as though any such things could ever be mere or meek." A smile. "As I am certain that one in your vocation is well aware."

[not-oswald.livejournal.com]

"The radical drop in spiritual prevalence across the planet since the Elizabethan period's been a topic of discussion for scholars in the field for some time, yes," Egon acknowledges. "There've been a number of theories put forth to explain why the available data look the way they do, but none of them entirely explain how it happened. I have some trouble believing that it could be entirely due to shifts in human beliefs alone; if it were solely a matter of what the majority of human beings believed possible, the entire world would be inundated by Chinese and Indian spirit beings even now. Has the process already begun in your time, or are you inquiring about it for your own reference's sake?"

[ilducasaggio.livejournal.com]

Prospero shakes his head. "You've touched upon the crux of it, Ser Spengler--there were sufficient sprites and pixies and hobgoblins of the hill for me to study happily till the end of my natural days, in my youth, and they did not diminish in quantity nor quality, I presume, after I passed out of that realm. Furthermore, I am reminded that there are certain wonders and marvels that exist independent of mortal belief that should survive, and yet do not. Simplicity, as Ser Stantz recalled to my attention earlier, is a powerful fierce force, even if it has no natural composition of which to speak, and simplicity dictates that if creatures which required mortal belief for sustenance and those which did not alike no longer inhabit your time in the profundity which they did mine, something--or someone--must have driven then hence.

"As I say, I recall quite vividly the presence of fae and gnome alike. They were hardly scarce. Whatever incident transpired to dam up the flow of the supernatural and those creatures that are qualified as such, therefore, must have come about after I left. A window of four centuries' time. A mere mote in the eye, when we consider beings immortal and spells of epic duration."

[not-oswald.livejournal.com]

A small gleam touches Egon's eyes; this is the kind of conversation he rarely gets around the Firehouse. Oh, there's Ray, but it isn't really the same when you and the person you're talking to think so closely alike that you don't even need to use complete sentences to communicate.

"Indeed," he says, looking around for a place to sit and finding only Janine's chair and the edge of her desk. The chair is offered to Prospero; Egon perches on the edge of the desk, and Ray on Ecto's hood. "We've never been able to pinpoint the true beginning of the waning, mostly because the records that've been handed down to us since that time aren't anything like complete. Some of the purges that occurred in the more paranoid governments and churches over the course of those years destroyed completely irreplaceable knowledge to a degree that nearly matches the fate of the library at Alexandria. By the time the English colonies were founded on this continent in earnest, though, supernatural activity had definitely dropped off- the so-called 'witch trials' at Salem were almost universally acknowledged within five years as the result of cynical manipulation of local beliefs about the nature of witchcraft, nothing more than a grab for the 'guilty' parties' lands and properties. That was 1692. The colonial records sent back to England make no mention of successful finds of supernatural beings, either. If spirit activity was still as prevalent as you say during your time, then we have a window of less than a century in which the balance was critically tipped."

[ilducasaggio.livejournal.com]

Prospero takes the seat, then listens eagerly as Egon elaborates. "A century," he says, more than a little shocked, when Egon's done. "Some of the greater bindings require as much, invocations handed down from father to son to grandson and so on down the line. A mere pittance." He leans back, then, and tilts his head, as though he were working a particularly irritating cavity at the back of his mouth. "--Ahh, forgive me for digressing, but, witch trials?" There's definitely...something, lurking beneath the surface of Prospero's even, civilized tone.

[not-oswald.livejournal.com]

Ray leans back on Ecto's hood, knowing the sound of a coiled spring when he heard it.

Possibly from two directions; the glitter in Egon's eyes has taken on a distinctly ugly cast. "Salem, Massachusetts. From June through September of 1692, nineteen men and women, all having been convicted of witchcraft, were carted to Gallows Hill, a barren slope near Salem Village, for hanging. Another man of over eighty years was pressed to death under heavy stones for refusing to submit to a trial on witchcraft charges. Hundreds of others faced accusations of witchcraft; dozens languished in jail for months without trials until the hysteria that swept through Puritan Massachusetts subsided. All of it was touched off in February of that year, when a girl named Betty Parris developed what your time called the falling sickness- epilepsy- and other girls of her age started developing similar symptoms. At the time the religious leaders of the colony thought it was the Christian Devil at work through the hands of an African slave woman named Tituba. When the affected girls started accusing people in the colony of having sent specters to attack them, the hunt widened, and the accusations flew. The whole village took to accusing anyone who had slighted them of being in league with the powers of darkness. It wasn't until autumn of 1692 that the standards of evidence were strengthened, requiring that real proof and not mere claims of spectral visitation or the 'touch test' from the accused be admitted in the courts. Once that happened, the trials stopped, and by spring of 1693, all the accused and convicted left alive were released from prison unconditionally."

"It was nothing but religious fanaticism, personal greed, and neighborhood envy all wrapped up under the guise of belief in witchcraft, and before the century turned, it was admitted to be so. And people ask me why I have very little faith in this country's so-called Puritan roots."

[ilducasaggio.livejournal.com]

Prospero's quiet for a while. He makes to lean forward against his staff, but, when he realizes he doesn't have it in hand, he settles for bracing his elbows against his thighs and setting his chin to rest atop his knuckles.

"There was a witch I knew, once," be says, at some length, "dark and terrible and full of the spite of the sea. I made war with her, and then with the goddess she served. It cost me no little amount of myself to emerge, triumphant, implacable and swift in rage as she was. She could command the moon to dance a jig upon its perch in the sky, and there were bindings given to her that were never recorded in aught my books and tomes. This is a witch, aye, not some girl-child still making calf-eyes at pretty young boys.

"To think that--mmm, no, I cannot say that I do not understand, as accusations of the wasting disease are bandied about and deployed for similarly perverse ends in the cities to the north and the west. Men will do terrible things for a choice tract of land or a room with a view of some fine mountain range. Sin remains contagious, it would seem--solely amidst those who would proclaim against its dissemination."

[not-oswald.livejournal.com]

Egon nods, once.

"No true witch would've stooped to such petty, idiotic feats as the people of Salem believed. It's worth noting that when the leader of the Salem idiocy was replaced on order of the colonial governor, he claimed he'd been removed just as he was on the verge of ridding the colony of witches completely. And that the preacher most keenly responsible for whipping up the hysteria in the congregation never once apologized or admitted that he might possibly have been in error, either. Charming, isn't it?"

Ray coughs lightly. "Uh, Spengs... can we save the dissertation on human fallibility for later? We're here for a reason."

"Given that the events of Salem revealed a level of ignorance of the true nature of witchcraft that could only come from years without any kind of exposure to the real thing, this is still relevant." He slides his glasses up his nose a little further. "Let's allow a twenty-year time gap between the trials and the last possible incidence of real witchcraft in either colonial America or England; that's about enough time for pure ignorance to have overwhelmed any youthful exposure the witch hunters may have had to the truth. 1672 becomes our barrier year."

[ilducasaggio.livejournal.com]

The topic of prejudice and human sin is indeed interesting, and certainly Egon's an engaging conversational partner, but Ray's right--they came here with a clear purpose in mind.

"A barrier, yes, as I had said to Master Ray previously. However, I should like to amend that 1672 and thereabouts is perhaps not when such a thing were constructed, but rather, the upper threshold, against which it becomes unfeasible that it should have gone up any later. I departed from this realm for the place in-between in the year 1603, and by certes, the art was strong enough to propel me to the end of all days when I left. Therefore, we must consider a gap of some sixty-nine years, give or take."

[not-oswald.livejournal.com]

"By 'barrier year' I meant the last year possible in which the change in existence could've been accomplished. Sorry I wasn't clear enough there." Egon leans back on the desk and starts rooting around in one of the drawers as he speaks. "Which leaves us, as you said, with sixty-nine years at the very most in which to work. Ray, I still have that copy of Spates you gave me, but I haven't figured out the index yet."

"You've gotta be kidding me. You?"

"The index is nine hundred pages long."

"Point."

Egon looks to Prospero and notes, "Ray brought back a book from Milliways that was as close to up-to-date as it's possible to get when you're standing at the end of all days, as you put it. It's the last printed edition of one of our preferred reference volumes, the Spates Catalog of Otherworldly Denizens and Designations. Unfortunately, it's over twenty-two thousand pages long. It would most likely be easier to search for evidence of the drop-off we're looking for in our other books, or in some of the books in the parapsychology, history, and anthropology departments of the local universities, and work backwards from there."

[ilducasaggio.livejournal.com]

"Ahh, of course, of course." A smile gentles Prospero's face. "It has, mmm, it has been some time since I engaged in theory that challenged me so; I imagine that I am somewhat addled by disuse, so please, mmm, forgive my miscomprehension."

He gawks, then, as Egon describes the book in question. "I am in accord," he says, a little dazedly, "that perhaps it should not be the primary resource in our inquiry. Were we in my own native time, I would conjure up an information elemental and set it to the task of scouring that behemoth tome for pertinent information, but I rather suspect that there are precious few of those remaining, if any at all. Let us turn page, then--though I suggest that before we start in earnest, we draft an outline of what precisely qualifies as indication of a waning of ambient thaumic energies. And, if this is indeed a worldwide phenomena, perhaps we'd also best be on the look-out for cross-references with non-European cultures and civilizations."