(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?"

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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."

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"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.

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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."

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"Well, it's like the author Clarke said... any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." He glances up, shading his eyes for a moment, and points. "Look there."

There's a speck that might, perhaps, be a dragonfly in terms of shape- but dragonflies' wings don't rotate around a central point, nor do they make that kind of noise.

"That's a helicopter- one of a lot of different flying machines we have in this day and age. They're not as reliable as others, but they can take off and land straight up and down, just like an insect instead of a bird. Very useful in certain situations. If we wait long enough, we'll probably see one of the other kinds of flying machine we have, too... but it's up to you, really."

[ilducasaggio.livejournal.com]

Prospero stares as the...thing goes by high overhead. "It bears a resemblance to some sketches of a theoretical nature done up by a certain natural philosopher, who preceded me by a century and some odd years," he says, at some length.

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"Leonardo da Vinci?" Ray guesses. "Yeah. The inventor owed a lot to his designs. His ideas for a device that would fly by flapping its wings as a bird does didn't work out nearly so well. Humans haven't got chest muscles big enough to flap wings that could lift them. We had to come up with engines to do that."

[ilducasaggio.livejournal.com]

"One cannot be a prophet all the time," Prospero says with a chuckle.

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"Darn right. The world'd be a pretty boring place if everything was foreshadowed."

Ray glances across the street, at the parking lot and the police stables, and then looked back over his shoulder. "Was there anything else you wanted to see out here, or would you like to go inside? The city'll still be here when we're done."

[ilducasaggio.livejournal.com]

Prospero shakes his head. "As you say, the city is not Lyonesse, to go hither and thither at the approach of a good, virtuous man. Shall we away to your laboratorium?"

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"Right this way, sir, right this way."

They stand in the alley between the firehouse and the nearest building, or at least at the very mouth of it. Ray leads Prospero over to the smaller door within the main door, pausing briefly to touch the memorial plaque that was part of the building when they bought it.

Then he shrugs a little, opens the door, and holds it for Prospero before going through himself. There's room; Ecto-1 isn't nearly big enough to take up as much space as the old hook and ladder trucks once did, though she does sit squarely in the middle of that open area.

[ilducasaggio.livejournal.com]

Assuming that touching the plaque is custom, Prospero follows suit, then pauses to read the inscription. Quietly, he says, "A former colleague of yours?"

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"No," Ray says. "But this building was where he was based. The city closed down this station a few years after he died, and it stood vacant for a long time. We bought it from them and left the old markings up- there's a message on the back wall from the fire-captain to his men, a sign on one of the doors about how to report a fire if the company's out, and this. When you work with angry ghosts, it's always a good idea to show respect for the potentially benevolent dead."

[ilducasaggio.livejournal.com]

Prospero smiles. It's good to see history accorded proper respect. "Prudence has ever been my favorite virtue," he says, then: "Ser Stantz, I trust you'll be able to explain...this."

Three guesses as to what he's talking about, and unless that guess involves something with four wheels, red spoiler fins and a cheery white ghost stamped out on its side, it probably isn't right.

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Ah, yes, yes indeed... Ray's face lights up with the sort of smile one sees in a breeder of racehorses bringing forth a favored foal. "This," he says, laying a hand on the tailfin fondly, "is my primary vehicle, my steed of choice. We call her Ecto-1, or just Ecto, for short. She's a horseless carriage, like the ones outside. Runs on burning petroleum, the fires tempered and controlled by chemically generated electricity. She'll carry up to six people and their packs comfortably, up to eight or nine in cramped conditions if absolutely necessary. I bought her from a man who was going to have her taken apart for scrap, and I've replaced virtually every single piece of her since that time. Would you like to see the engine?"

[ilducasaggio.livejournal.com]

"By certes, yes," Prospero says, obviously intrigued. He's not a, how shall we say, mechanically-minded sort of person, but...a monstrous-large cart such as this, powered by a chemical reaction of the sort as yet unaccounted for by his alchemy? The old man might as well be a schoolboy on his first school field trip, for the excitement in his eyes.