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Feb. 28th, 2005 12:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gone_byebyeMay 4, Sometime in the 1980's
Evening
14 North Moore Street, Manhattan
Lobby
Please, thought Ray wearily as he made his way down the staircase, don't let the alarm bell ring. Not tonight. Three calls today and no sleep last night. One night's peace. It's all I ask.
New York City had been nothing but one call after another since the Gozer incident. He and Egon had had to rebuild the containment unit to twice its original size, then cube its original grid strength and build in triple redundancies, and still it wasn't enough. There were things loose in the city that he'd never seen before. Of course, that made sense in its own way. He was, after all, still ... animated.
There really wasn't any other word for it. Everything around him looked animated, not real- as if the whole world had been drawn and was being drawn moment by moment. Oh, it acted as if it were physically normal- he could touch things and they felt right, eat things and have them taste right- but it was still... flat. There was no depth perception, only perspective. It was immensely unnerving.
Almost worse was the fact that it all corresponded almost perfectly with the way of things as he remembered them from home, except for a few minor details. His appearance. The others' appearance- well, no, that wasn't true; Winston looked almost exactly like himself, which Ray found reassuring. There was something solid about him, as if any one of the hundreds of thousands of parallel universes out there that contained a Ghostbuster named Winston Zeddemore would have the same Winston Zeddemore. It was an idea he would've loved to test somehow, or at least explore with Eska at Milliways.
Of course, that relied on getting to Milliways in the first place.
He'd been here, animated and wearing a face he didn't recognize, since October. He'd been taking every possible opportunity he could think of to invoke appropriate circumstances, but other than 'dimensional cross rip' and 'falling off a building', he didn't have any of the known contributing factors from his original trip. There was nothing to recreate with. In a weird way he was glad about the cartoon thing. If he'd been going through that many failures in a reality that looked closer to normal, he might've thought he'd only ever dreamed Milliways. On the other hand, he did have the ring. And the book. If he ever managed to get back, he'd have to find Bart first and give him back the ring, then thank Val for the book.
The thought of Val got him to thinking about philotic connections, sympathetic vibrational resonances, and the possibility of tweaking the new toy Egon had taken to playing with in the lab; he picked up his pace and headed, as he'd been doing more and more often lately, for the jumpsuit lockers. Maybe he'd missed some implication of the text Val had given him, even if he had read the book a hundred times or more since then. He might find something new-
Or he might find an empty pocket.
"Looking for this?" came Venkman's voice from behind him.
***
14 North Moore Street, Manhattan
Kitchen
"It's not that I don't believe you, Ray, I do-"
"And it's not that I'm mad at you, Pete- okay, I am. Sorry, but you broke into my stuff."
"Yeah? You spent nearly six months here under false pretenses!"
"That's not the same thing and you know it!"
"Yeah?" Peter would have folded his arms across his chest, but then he wouldn't have been able to wave Philotic Physics at Ray threateningly. "How? This isn't your universe, is it?"
"Well, no-"
"Then it's not your stuff, and I can go through it if I want to!"
"It's closer to being mine than it is to being yours! At least it belonged to a Ray. It didn't belong to any Pete Venkman-"
"Guys?" came Winston's wary voice from the hallway. "What's going on?"
"Ray here-"
"Needs to come with me to the basement right now," said Egon from over Winston's shoulder. "You can explain it all on the way, Ray."
Peter didn't know who to stare at first.
"What?" said Egon, sliding his glasses up his nose.
"He told you, but he didn't tell me?"
"Of course he did. All he had to do to get me to believe him was show me his notebooks. You would've spent the past six months arguing."
"Excuse me," said Winston, more firmly this time. "Arguing about what?"
Ray pinched the bridge of his nose and counted backwards from one hundred in Greek as the inevitable fight broke out.
***
14 North Moore Street, Manhattan
Basement
"So, let me see if I've got this straight," said Winston, eyeing the metallic arch with a degree of suspicion. "There's more than one world."
"More than one universe, actually," said Ray quietly.
"More than one universe," Winston repeated. "And they're all alike, but different."
"Rather more different than alike, from what I've been able to gather from Raymond's notes," said Egon. He was busily adjusting the wiring attached to the outer surface of the arch, pausing every so often to consult a small, battered, green spiral bound notebook.
"Right, okay, and... Ray here-"
"Isn't the Ray he's supposed to be," muttered Peter, who was hanging back from the group with an injured air about him. Ray winced.
"And this thing you've built is supposed to be a doorway that'll send him back to the universe where he belongs?"
"Not precisely." Egon stepped back from the arch, examining it and making a few last minor adjustments. "I don't have either the power or the necessary equipment to detect the quantum valences and precise energetic signature that would differentiate between our universe and another universe that lies at a functional parallel to our own."
"Functional parallel?"
"Parallel lines don't cross," said Ray. "The universes we're talking about eventually intersect at a single point, but it's so far ahead in time and space that right now, for practical purposes, we can go ahead and consider them parallel."
Peter snorted. Winston just shook his head. "Right, whatever. So you can't find another universe that's just like ours, but you can find... what?"
"The intersection point. The place where all the universes cross, including our own. Ray's been there, and he's brought things back from there with him that very clearly don't belong in our world. They come from somewhere else. Maybe not necessarily from the intersection point alone, but to some degree that's their point of origin. I've managed to separate out the distinctive resonances for each of them and overlap them with Ray's own, and I believe we've found enough commonality to work with."
"So... the arch is..."
"A gateway to the one point each and every thing that's about to pass through it has in common: the bar at the End of the Universe."
***
It wasn't a good ending. Ray would've liked for it to be a good ending. There should've been a chance to explain, to apologize, to at least get Peter to understand. He might've been a cartoon, but he was still Peter, and leaving someone he thought of as a friend in such an angry state went completely against everything Ray believed about how to deal with people.
But there are some things that can't be wrapped up in thirty minutes, or sixty, or even a hundred and fifty. There was nothing Ray could do about that look of betrayal in his friend's eyes, and he knew it. The only cure for that would be to put right what had gone wrong... starting with getting out of this universe so that the Ray who belonged in it could get back in.
Proton pack- check. Goggles- check. Notebooks, hardcover, textbooks- all contents duly copied out and handed over to Egon for research purposes- check. Legion flight ring, check...
He stepped forward, hurler in his hands, and positioned himself squarely in the middle of the arch. "All right," Ray said. "Switch me on."
Whurrrrrrm.
The room flickered. For a moment the figure in the archway blurred, and then it was gone.
"What happens now?" said Winston.
"We wait," said Egon, watching the air shimmer and distort in the empty space where the figure had stood. "By my count, the dimensional flux should be enough to force our Ray to snap back in five, four, three, two-"
Evening
14 North Moore Street, Manhattan
Lobby
Please, thought Ray wearily as he made his way down the staircase, don't let the alarm bell ring. Not tonight. Three calls today and no sleep last night. One night's peace. It's all I ask.
New York City had been nothing but one call after another since the Gozer incident. He and Egon had had to rebuild the containment unit to twice its original size, then cube its original grid strength and build in triple redundancies, and still it wasn't enough. There were things loose in the city that he'd never seen before. Of course, that made sense in its own way. He was, after all, still ... animated.
There really wasn't any other word for it. Everything around him looked animated, not real- as if the whole world had been drawn and was being drawn moment by moment. Oh, it acted as if it were physically normal- he could touch things and they felt right, eat things and have them taste right- but it was still... flat. There was no depth perception, only perspective. It was immensely unnerving.
Almost worse was the fact that it all corresponded almost perfectly with the way of things as he remembered them from home, except for a few minor details. His appearance. The others' appearance- well, no, that wasn't true; Winston looked almost exactly like himself, which Ray found reassuring. There was something solid about him, as if any one of the hundreds of thousands of parallel universes out there that contained a Ghostbuster named Winston Zeddemore would have the same Winston Zeddemore. It was an idea he would've loved to test somehow, or at least explore with Eska at Milliways.
Of course, that relied on getting to Milliways in the first place.
He'd been here, animated and wearing a face he didn't recognize, since October. He'd been taking every possible opportunity he could think of to invoke appropriate circumstances, but other than 'dimensional cross rip' and 'falling off a building', he didn't have any of the known contributing factors from his original trip. There was nothing to recreate with. In a weird way he was glad about the cartoon thing. If he'd been going through that many failures in a reality that looked closer to normal, he might've thought he'd only ever dreamed Milliways. On the other hand, he did have the ring. And the book. If he ever managed to get back, he'd have to find Bart first and give him back the ring, then thank Val for the book.
The thought of Val got him to thinking about philotic connections, sympathetic vibrational resonances, and the possibility of tweaking the new toy Egon had taken to playing with in the lab; he picked up his pace and headed, as he'd been doing more and more often lately, for the jumpsuit lockers. Maybe he'd missed some implication of the text Val had given him, even if he had read the book a hundred times or more since then. He might find something new-
Or he might find an empty pocket.
"Looking for this?" came Venkman's voice from behind him.
***
14 North Moore Street, Manhattan
Kitchen
"It's not that I don't believe you, Ray, I do-"
"And it's not that I'm mad at you, Pete- okay, I am. Sorry, but you broke into my stuff."
"Yeah? You spent nearly six months here under false pretenses!"
"That's not the same thing and you know it!"
"Yeah?" Peter would have folded his arms across his chest, but then he wouldn't have been able to wave Philotic Physics at Ray threateningly. "How? This isn't your universe, is it?"
"Well, no-"
"Then it's not your stuff, and I can go through it if I want to!"
"It's closer to being mine than it is to being yours! At least it belonged to a Ray. It didn't belong to any Pete Venkman-"
"Guys?" came Winston's wary voice from the hallway. "What's going on?"
"Ray here-"
"Needs to come with me to the basement right now," said Egon from over Winston's shoulder. "You can explain it all on the way, Ray."
Peter didn't know who to stare at first.
"What?" said Egon, sliding his glasses up his nose.
"He told you, but he didn't tell me?"
"Of course he did. All he had to do to get me to believe him was show me his notebooks. You would've spent the past six months arguing."
"Excuse me," said Winston, more firmly this time. "Arguing about what?"
Ray pinched the bridge of his nose and counted backwards from one hundred in Greek as the inevitable fight broke out.
***
14 North Moore Street, Manhattan
Basement
"So, let me see if I've got this straight," said Winston, eyeing the metallic arch with a degree of suspicion. "There's more than one world."
"More than one universe, actually," said Ray quietly.
"More than one universe," Winston repeated. "And they're all alike, but different."
"Rather more different than alike, from what I've been able to gather from Raymond's notes," said Egon. He was busily adjusting the wiring attached to the outer surface of the arch, pausing every so often to consult a small, battered, green spiral bound notebook.
"Right, okay, and... Ray here-"
"Isn't the Ray he's supposed to be," muttered Peter, who was hanging back from the group with an injured air about him. Ray winced.
"And this thing you've built is supposed to be a doorway that'll send him back to the universe where he belongs?"
"Not precisely." Egon stepped back from the arch, examining it and making a few last minor adjustments. "I don't have either the power or the necessary equipment to detect the quantum valences and precise energetic signature that would differentiate between our universe and another universe that lies at a functional parallel to our own."
"Functional parallel?"
"Parallel lines don't cross," said Ray. "The universes we're talking about eventually intersect at a single point, but it's so far ahead in time and space that right now, for practical purposes, we can go ahead and consider them parallel."
Peter snorted. Winston just shook his head. "Right, whatever. So you can't find another universe that's just like ours, but you can find... what?"
"The intersection point. The place where all the universes cross, including our own. Ray's been there, and he's brought things back from there with him that very clearly don't belong in our world. They come from somewhere else. Maybe not necessarily from the intersection point alone, but to some degree that's their point of origin. I've managed to separate out the distinctive resonances for each of them and overlap them with Ray's own, and I believe we've found enough commonality to work with."
"So... the arch is..."
"A gateway to the one point each and every thing that's about to pass through it has in common: the bar at the End of the Universe."
***
It wasn't a good ending. Ray would've liked for it to be a good ending. There should've been a chance to explain, to apologize, to at least get Peter to understand. He might've been a cartoon, but he was still Peter, and leaving someone he thought of as a friend in such an angry state went completely against everything Ray believed about how to deal with people.
But there are some things that can't be wrapped up in thirty minutes, or sixty, or even a hundred and fifty. There was nothing Ray could do about that look of betrayal in his friend's eyes, and he knew it. The only cure for that would be to put right what had gone wrong... starting with getting out of this universe so that the Ray who belonged in it could get back in.
Proton pack- check. Goggles- check. Notebooks, hardcover, textbooks- all contents duly copied out and handed over to Egon for research purposes- check. Legion flight ring, check...
He stepped forward, hurler in his hands, and positioned himself squarely in the middle of the arch. "All right," Ray said. "Switch me on."
Whurrrrrrm.
The room flickered. For a moment the figure in the archway blurred, and then it was gone.
"What happens now?" said Winston.
"We wait," said Egon, watching the air shimmer and distort in the empty space where the figure had stood. "By my count, the dimensional flux should be enough to force our Ray to snap back in five, four, three, two-"
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