(no subject)

There have been days when it has been good to be NYPD Detective John Chen- very, very good. This is not one of them.

He lives in Brooklyn, so we should begin there. The entrances to the DeKalb Avenue subway station is being upgraded for greater ADA compliance, which translates into ‘half the stairs have been closed off and the street level elevator’s tied up with people who don’t’ particularly need it’. He’d drive into Manhattan, but the lower level of the Manhattan Bridge is still having repair work done. Besides, he’s had a look at the traffic advisories for the day. He’ll take his chances with the train.

You see, New York is a city of something like nine million people. Thirty-six per cent of those people were born in other countries, and most of the rest are intensely proud of their heritage in one way or another. They like to have festivals. They like to have parades. They quite often have parades at the same time as each other. This is not the problem, since in John Chen’s experience most of these parades’ spectators are pretty civilized towards one another. The problem is that they like to have parades down the long avenues that run north-south (or the closest approximation thereof, given that Manhattan Island is slanted in a north-northeast direction). And that means that streets are blocked off en masse for safety’s sake. Lots of streets.

Today the streets in question are Sixth Avenue, from 58th south to 39th, and 40th and 41st between Fifth and Park Avenue, then Madison Avenue south to 27th. Armenians down the first, Malinese (and a lot of other West Africans) down the second- Independence Day celebrations. They couldn’t get enough cops over the Yom Kippur weekend to ensure the parades went down smoothly, so they’re doing it today instead.

Which, you know, would be fine with Chen, except that it’s never only one thing. He and the rest of the Spook Squad have a special assignment. The Dalai Lama’s visiting the United States, and he’s speaking in Central Park today. They’re expecting fifty thousand people to turn up at the Great Lawn, maybe more. Given the ever-looming shadow of 55 Central Park West and the incident under Cleopatra’s Needle the year after that, it was pretty much a given from the start that the security would involve paranormal measures. His Holiness’s monks’ve given the area a good solid going-over, plenty of blessings and purifications and all, but the Spook Squad’s still been assigned to security duty just in case.

Could be worse, though. They could be down at the UN. There’s a conference on the restriction of illegal trade in small arms and oh, God, the protesters. Anti-gun groups, pro-gun groups that want to make sure their good names aren’t besmirched by people who can’t be bothered to pay attention to their national laws, Amnesty International, parents of gun violence victims, it just goes on and on and on. It wouldn’t be so bad if half the Burmese population of the city wasn’t also protesting at the UN, mostly as a show of solidarity with the monks and Aung San Suu Kyi back in Myanmar.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the temperature weren’t rising towards the nineties for the third day in a row.

It wouldn’t be so bad if- oh, hell, who are we kidding. Today is a really bad day to be NYPD Detective John Chen, and it’s only going to get worse.

(no subject)

The law in New York City is that you can’t use a cellular phone inside a museum, but the law doesn’t say anything about wireless data connections made by robot dogs. The closest it gets is a ban on animals other than service animals, and Francis isn’t an animal under any real definition of the term. After some discussion the Museum security guards come back to Ray with their boss’s decision: he can bring Francis into most of the exhibit halls, but not any of the IMAX films or the Planetarium shows, and if anybody freaks out about him or otherwise causes a scene Ray’s going to have to leave.

This, thankfully, doesn’t appear to be a problem. Francis gets a few weird looks and a lot of pointing, but for the most part the Museum-going public is pretty polite today. It helps that there’s not a lot of them. There’s too much going on elsewhere in the city for people who’ve got free time during the work day to necessarily spend it in the Museum. Frankly, Ray’s pretty sure most of these people are here to get away from the oppressive heat for a few hours.

Not that it matters. He’s too busy making sure Ecto gets to see all the things she wants to see. The stibnite crystal she mentioned is huge to the point of looking like a movie prop, a thing that fascinates her intensely. The exhibit on exo-planets is a little too mass-market information for her tastes after all, as she’s been reading up on the subject on any database she can legally access (a prospect that makes Ray oddly proud- his daughter’s a space geek!). The special exhibit on predatory mammals, though, is incredible. There’s skulls and teeth and bones here from virtually every point in the history of Mammalia, including some truly spectacular creodont skeletal reconstructions topped off by actual fossil skulls. Andrewsarchus in particular is gorgeous, with the kind of jaws that would make anything in the Dinosaur Halls jealous, and some of the others-

Overhead the lights flicker. Several people flinch; Ray looks up warily. They come back on, nice and stable, but there was something in the sound of the ventilation that he didn’t like. “Ecto?” he says to the dog. “Have you gotten all this? I’ve got a bad feeling all of a sudden.” He’s not going to say the word aloud, but the city did issue a brownout warning this morning.

Francis tilts his ‘head’, apparently listening to Ecto’s remote signal. Then that head bobs up and down. “Okay,” says Ray. “I hate to cut a visit like this short, but we can come back later in the week.”

The dog obediently falls into line as Ray heads for the main entrance. They’re three quarters of the way down the Museum steps when the traffic light at the corner of Central Park West and 81st winks out. The one at CPW and 77th is the next to go, and then 76th, 75th, 74th. . .

“Looks like a good day for a walk,” Ray says to Francis. He’s not about to make a try for the subway if power’s cutting out.

“WHURF,” Francis agrees.

(no subject)

It’s not quite seven miles from the Museum to the Firehouse. Ray doesn’t actually mind having to walk that far. There was a time when he would’ve given up early on and flagged down a taxi, but when you’ve managed to keep in reasonably decent shape for forty-seven years and spent a few weeks walking across an entire country, six-and-change miles of relative flatness isn’t a problem. Oh, sure, he could call for Ecto, or he could get a taxi, but from the look of things none of the lights are coming back on. This isn’t a brown-out, this is a blackout. There’s no sense in adding to the swiftly growing chaos on the streets. It’s not even all that hot, by his standards- if six and a half years in Nyissa don’t readjust your standards for what constitutes inconveniently warm, then nothing will.

It’s not until he’s covered two and a half miles that he realizes there’s more to what’s going on in the streets than mere ordinary chaos. Something is going on that’s got cars trying and failing to veer away from the western side of the island, even though he’s walking down Eighth Avenue. Maybe a truckload of something toxic overturned on one of the other avenues? Without the traffic lights that’s a disturbingly real possibility. He stops, and reaches for his cell phone.

”Ghostbusters,” says Janine. ”Rest assured we have enough generator power to keep the ghosts confined for three days. Whaddya want?”

“Janine?” says Ray. “What’s going on?”

”Whaddya mean, what’s going on? Where are you, Dr. Stantz?”

“I’m at Eighth and Thirty-ninth and the traffic is acting really weird. Are you guys getting any-“

A piercing electronic shriek nearly splits the phone loudspeaker; Ray jerks his head away. ”Just a second, Dr. Stantz. That’s the police scanner.”

He can’t make out the words, but whoever’s reading off the information over the police scanner sounds simultaneously incredulous and horrified. Ray remembers that tone from this city all too well; his stomach doesn’t so much sink as put on a weighted belt, check its swim fins, and drop over the side of the boat with intent to reach the bottom as swiftly as it can equalize the pressure in its head cavities.

”Dr. Stantz?” says Janine very slowly when she comes back on. ”You’re not gonna believe what’s coming down the West Side Highway. . .”

New York In The Time Of Monsters - Port Authority

The door opens onto the corner of Thirty-ninth and Eighth streets on a bright and sunny afternoon. It's a cluster of what most Americans would consider alarmingly large buildings- strictly average for New York, you understand. Forty and fifty floors, tops. You get much taller ones further south, in the Financial District. You get more people here, though- lots of them, in and out of the buildings- and a lot more cars, most of which are being driven by desperate people all striving like hell to beat each other to the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel.

None of the electric signs are working. None of the street lights are functioning. The buildings' shadows are only penetrated by headlights, taillights, and reflections of sun- which is probably exactly as the creatures roaring to each other somewhere nearby like it. It's hard to tell where they are, what with the throngs of people and cars-

Well. No.

The ones who're screaming and running like hell are probably a really good directional clue.

"I got a radio for you from the Bar," says Ray. "Call me or the other Ghostbusters on it if you need anything, okay? I'm going back to the Bar to see who else can lend a hand."

New York In The Time Of Monsters - West Side Highway

Normally the West Side Highway in Ray's Manhattan is an elevated roadway that runs the length of what used to be 12th Avenue, from the George Washington Bridge down as far as Water Street. Normally. Right now it's a parking lot, thanks to the people trying to get the heck out of the city because of the blackout.

It's a parking lot full of screaming people, too. That may have something to do with the shapes one can see from street level, leaping and creeping and moseying and stomping their way inexorably southward, with odd trumpets and roars. There's an awful crunch and a bellow as something huge puts its foot through glass; Ray winces. "We'd better get up there in a hurry," he says, and starts running for the nearest entrance ramp, waving his ID card at the startled police. "They're with me, guys!"

New York In The Time Of Monsters - Central Park

Ray took some time while Alex West was getting his weapons to step out of the Bar and run like hell. He managed to reach his destination largely through waving his Ghostbusters identification card around, but there were a few judicious applications of elbow as well- mostly because the simplest way to get there had involved going east a ways and running up Seventh, then turning again and worming his way through the crowds on Sixth. For all that he covered two and a half miles in about the time you'd expect of a normal human, he still returned to the Bar only a moment or two after he left.

Millitime is a wonderful thing, and he will thank the Bar for it later.

For now he's holding the door open in Grand Army Plaza. "We're at the southeast corner of Central Park," he says. "Fifty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue. There's still a ways to go, but I radioed a buddy in the NYPD. He'll be sending an escort to help you get through- oh, here they come now-"

Bet you didn't know the NYPD used Vespa scooters, did you? At least, these two do.