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bring my spear, invested with my youth
Mar. 6th, 2006 01:22 amMarch 7, 2006
Secured Facility
Three Miles Underground
Somewhere Outside Chevy Chase, MD
For all that the people who worked in Technological Intelligence Movement Monitoring served under the deepest of deep covers (to the rest of the world, they were nothing more than an EPA side-project called Foliage Census), they were still quite human. Foliage Census might have been one of the Federal government's dirtiest bloodless secrets, but it generally kept its people pretty happy. You got better work out of them that way. Sometimes that meant high salaries, or cushy homes, or esoteric side-perks that had to be procured from faraway places at great cost.
Sometimes, it just meant letting Alphonse Jannot lock his office door at seven PM and switch the wall monitor over to Channel 7.
The big, bald fellow shifted in his seat and eased back with a mild sigh of satisfaction as the familiar music came on. He was a man of remarkably few vices- drinking had lost its charm years ago. Smoking never appealed to him. Drugs, well... in his line of work you saw things that made any vision any chemical might've granted you look like a bad Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Sex? He had a wife. He had no great urge to do terrible things to people, and most of his voyeuristic tendencies were mostly sated by the firm and absolute knowledge that through his organization, he knew more about things that no one else should know than pretty much anything in the world. Mostly, that is, save for the occasional urge to see something not related to technology. That was what Channel 7 was for.
Channel 7 had the best damn entertainment news he'd ever seen.
There was talk of Tom Cruise's latest insanity- everyone knew the man was nuts, that was nothing new- and some excited chatter about the upcoming Oscars. He smiled briefly at the mention of Fran Walsh, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of the Star Wars prequels, being hired for an adaptation of The War of the Worlds. He attended movies like that when he got the chance; they made him laugh. But then...
"And speaking of Star Wars, Lucasfilm got one heck of a surprise today when one of their creations turned out to be the real thing!"
He sat up straight, blinking. The smiling Asian woman on his monitor nodded to a patch of grainy videotape footage. "That's right, Jim. As you can see here in this security camera video- exclusively brought to you by Entertainment Right Now- the Ghostbusters are big fans of the Star Wars movies. Or one of them is, anyway. Check out what Dr. Raymond Stantz whipped out today during a bust in the middle of Grand Central Station..."
On screen a swarm of reddish-purple ghosts thronged the famous starry vault of Grand Central, blitzing the clock, the screaming crowds, the four men racing in from just out of the camera's range. A proton stream flared (God, how he hated those things), catching one of the ghosts full on, and a second narrowly missed the main swarm. It struck the central clock instead- but only for an instant. The ghost swarm thickened, enveloping the Ghostbusters in a nearly impermeable shell.
And then there was a flash of green light, and a weird shudder in the purplish mass as Stantz sliced his way out of the ectoplasmic mess with what could only be a lightsabre.
He lunged for the speakerphone button. "O'CONNELL!" he thundered. "TURN ON YOUR GODDAMN TELEVISION!"
Secured Facility
Three Miles Underground
Somewhere Outside Chevy Chase, MD
For all that the people who worked in Technological Intelligence Movement Monitoring served under the deepest of deep covers (to the rest of the world, they were nothing more than an EPA side-project called Foliage Census), they were still quite human. Foliage Census might have been one of the Federal government's dirtiest bloodless secrets, but it generally kept its people pretty happy. You got better work out of them that way. Sometimes that meant high salaries, or cushy homes, or esoteric side-perks that had to be procured from faraway places at great cost.
Sometimes, it just meant letting Alphonse Jannot lock his office door at seven PM and switch the wall monitor over to Channel 7.
The big, bald fellow shifted in his seat and eased back with a mild sigh of satisfaction as the familiar music came on. He was a man of remarkably few vices- drinking had lost its charm years ago. Smoking never appealed to him. Drugs, well... in his line of work you saw things that made any vision any chemical might've granted you look like a bad Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Sex? He had a wife. He had no great urge to do terrible things to people, and most of his voyeuristic tendencies were mostly sated by the firm and absolute knowledge that through his organization, he knew more about things that no one else should know than pretty much anything in the world. Mostly, that is, save for the occasional urge to see something not related to technology. That was what Channel 7 was for.
Channel 7 had the best damn entertainment news he'd ever seen.
There was talk of Tom Cruise's latest insanity- everyone knew the man was nuts, that was nothing new- and some excited chatter about the upcoming Oscars. He smiled briefly at the mention of Fran Walsh, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of the Star Wars prequels, being hired for an adaptation of The War of the Worlds. He attended movies like that when he got the chance; they made him laugh. But then...
"And speaking of Star Wars, Lucasfilm got one heck of a surprise today when one of their creations turned out to be the real thing!"
He sat up straight, blinking. The smiling Asian woman on his monitor nodded to a patch of grainy videotape footage. "That's right, Jim. As you can see here in this security camera video- exclusively brought to you by Entertainment Right Now- the Ghostbusters are big fans of the Star Wars movies. Or one of them is, anyway. Check out what Dr. Raymond Stantz whipped out today during a bust in the middle of Grand Central Station..."
On screen a swarm of reddish-purple ghosts thronged the famous starry vault of Grand Central, blitzing the clock, the screaming crowds, the four men racing in from just out of the camera's range. A proton stream flared (God, how he hated those things), catching one of the ghosts full on, and a second narrowly missed the main swarm. It struck the central clock instead- but only for an instant. The ghost swarm thickened, enveloping the Ghostbusters in a nearly impermeable shell.
And then there was a flash of green light, and a weird shudder in the purplish mass as Stantz sliced his way out of the ectoplasmic mess with what could only be a lightsabre.
He lunged for the speakerphone button. "O'CONNELL!" he thundered. "TURN ON YOUR GODDAMN TELEVISION!"
