(no subject)

Sunday, February 17, 2008 / November 20, 1905
32 West 40th Street, 17th Floor
Manhattan
Late Afternoon

People did not generally hammer on the door at this hour on a Saturday with any sort of urgency whatsoever, in Rajko Hrvanovic's experience, but today... well, to put it mildly, today was not a general sort of day in the slightest. He stepped away from the artifact showcase he had been polishing (for the fifth time that day) and answered the door.

The pounder was a tall, pudgy, dark-haired man in a flat cap, a maroon shirt, suspenders, and brown tweed trousers. His face was familiar, but before Rajko could speak the man whipped out a neatly folded piece of paper from one of his pockets. "Dr. Rajko Hrvanovic, Secretary General of the Tesla Memorial Society of New York?" he asked.

Rajko hesitated. "Ah- who wants to know?" he asked. There was an intensity about the man that worried him.

"Dr. Raymond Stantz, sir, of the Ghostbusters."

"Oh! Oh. I knew I'd seen you somewhere. I just couldn't remember where."

"Thank you, sir, I get that a lot." Stantz held out the paper. "The city of New York's authorized us to investigate the current abominable state of temporal affairs in the Manhattan area. This is the best explanation I can offer of the situation at the present time. Read it at your leisure, but I don't know that we currently have enough time for me to go into any kind of detail. For the moment, I need to ask you whether the Society keeps any of Dr. Tesla's personal papers on hand, particularly anything dating from the time period surrounding October and November of 1905."

Rajko glanced over his shoulder at the artifact case. "As a matter of fact. . ."

---

14 North Moore Street
Manhattan

"...he said they don't normally allow the general public to handle Dr. Tesla's papers directly, but under the circumstances he was willing to make an exception," Ray said, clearing the kitchen table off with a sweep of one arm. "Starting with the fact that the majority of the objects and papers in their possession had been rendered one hundred per cent brand spanking new- the ones that still existed, anyway. They don't actually have anything left from after November of 1905."

"That would explain why the Metropolitan Museum of Art's staff was going into collective hysterics," said Egon. "I never got inside, unfortunately."

"What were you doing at the Met in the first place?"

"Nothing as relevant as this. Go on."

"All right," Ray said. "According to the journals I had access to today, there was a streak of research under way at Wardenclyffe Tower in late 1905 that had to do with the extremely unusual radio signals first heard in Colorado Springs. Tesla was under the impression that the repetitive signals he was picking up from the portion of the sky in which Mars was ascendant were possible attempts at communication. So, like any radio fiend worth the name, he modified the original receiver plans for greater sensitivity and started tweaking his other inventions in an effort to make some kind of contact with the signalers."

Egon nodded. "The Teslascope in the Matthews book. Supposedly used to communicate with Venusian intelligences. Yes, I remember."

"Right. Well, Matthews was talking out his ass," Ray said. "The plans for the device were severely water-damaged in 1906 and too moldy and fragmentary to read after that- but when the timewave passed over Manhattan, they were restored to their original 1905 condition. What Tesla did invent had nothing at all to do with Venus. It was a signaling device that just so happened to have an output in a very peculiar portion of the electromagnetic spectrum." He opened the folder of copies he'd made and slid one of the papers over to Egon. "He may have been the first human being in the world to come up with a means of transmitting energy through the fourth dimension."

That got Ray a long look. "I realize that considering the things we've done with spacetime vacuum bubbles to open the planar barriers with the spirit world, I'm hardly in a position to object," Egon said, "but the logistics involved in creating a device with that kind of capability makes everything north of my substantia nigra throb."

"It gets better," Ray said. "The transmitter worked- and worked a little too well. Tesla's device caught something's attention, and it came running."

Egon went very still at that.

"The entity that answered the signal was almost completely incomprehensible in its actions and nature, but as nearly as Tesla could tell, the thing was an entity that existed in at least four if not more dimensions at the same time. It appeared in multiple locations at once, randomly appearing and disappearing-"

"Like a three dimensional creature intersecting a two dimensional plane as it walks," Egon said.

"Yup. Exactly like. And the problem was that it started taking objects with it- passing them through one another, winking them out of existence, returning them exactly as you'd expect if they'd been through a significant portion of the fourth dimension- rapidly aged or youthened, depending on the object and the entity's whim."

Egon adjusted his pince-nez and looked down at the documents again. "And he had no means of returning it to its point of origin," he said. "Only of attracting more."

"Bingo," Ray said. "The best he could do was whip out the advanced mathematics and start putting it through the kinds of contortions that you normally only see in your finer Japanese bondage porn. Don't look at me like that, it's in Venkman's collection. As nearly as I can tell- and understand, I don't actually speak Serbian and Dr. Hrvanovic couldn't translate all of the abbreviations and idioms being used- Tesla managed to construct that box in such a way that the interior was fractionally dimensionally offset from the exterior. Not to the degree of a TARDIS, or even of the magnetic box I made last year, but enough to make it all but impossible for the entity to extricate itself once the box was closed. The geomatic sigils were part of that- the dimensional calculations were substantially based on Babylonian computational geometry."

"Fascinating," said Egon. "How did the box wind up in the time capsule?"

"Apparently," said Ray, "Tesla had originally intended to give the box to the city government with the intention that they find somewhere to store it until another scientist could devise a means of either banishing the entity, or permanently sealing it. The box was never more than a stopgap, since his own studies really weren't along those lines. One of his assistant seems to have inadvertently sent the box to the police instead of City Hall and, well..." Ray gestured at the Firehouse around them. "You get the idea."

"Unfortunately," said Egon grimly. "What do you propose we do now?"

"Well, we're going to have to start by modifying one or more of our existing traps," Ray said. "I can't build another offset box without at least two weeks' notice and more magnets than we currently have on the premises. Vitally important goniochronicity issues. Our traps've been altered just like our packs and PKE meters. I've had a look at them. They're pretty similar in design to Tesla's silver box now. Then we're going to have to track the thing down and lock it up again, and then we'll have to devise a long-term storage solution, because the Geib-Spevack process could run from now until Judgment Day and it still wouldn't produce enough deuterium oxide to make me willing to shove a time entity into the containment unit." He shook his head and looked down at the papers ruefully. "We'll jump off that bridge when we come to it."

"You left out one step," said Egon.

"Oh? What's that?"

"Someone's going to have to explain this to Peter." Egon's expression took on a faintly smug aspect. "Not it."

"... dammit."

(no subject)

Monday, February 18, 2008 / November 21, 1905
Near 65th Street and Park Drive South
Central Park
Manhattan

Well, it had been a good plan at the time. . .

No, really, it had. Ray had reworked the trap from top to bottom, bringing it into line with the specs on Tesla’s silver box. They’d pleaded, cajoled, and eventually bribed Lenny into following the time spirit’s trail despite his claims that it gave him the mother of all migraines. They’d done the math on the proton packs’ new capabilities (frankly, they strongly reminded Ray of the devices used by the Great Race of Yith against the only half-physical polyps, but he was pretty sure Egon didn’t want to hear that just now).They’d even run the thing to ground in Central Park, a disturbing experience given the park’s decidedly threadbare condition in 1905. Now there was just one problem.

Fighting a spirit entity capable of moving through the fourth dimension as easily as a human moved through dimensions one, two, and three was like trying to get a bead on a Muppet in an industrial blender.

“This is incredible!” shouted Ray over the swirling winds that marked the entity’s passage.
“This is exactly what Tesla and his research team had to deal with when this thing got loose at Wardenclyffe! Right down to the random aging and de-aging of parts of the surrounding environment!”

“That’s great, Ray,” Peter answered. “I’m glad you got to see it, I really am. Now how did they get it into the box? The proton streams-“

“Actually, Peter, right now they’re almost exclusively electron beams-“

“Thank you, Egon, like I cared. The point is they’re barely even slowing that thing down! How do we get it into the trap?”

“Yeah, Ray,” chimed in Winston. “How did Tesla pull it off? You’re the one who read the papers.”

“Unfortunately, he didn’t give specifics,” Ray said. “Not that Dr. Hrvanovic could understand, anyway. Too many abbreviations and dialect words.”

Peter clapped a hand over his face. “That’s fantastic,” he said. “So, what now? Do we jump up and down and shout ‘come and get it, big tasty bait’, or what?”

Ray grimaced, dodging a blue-tinged bolt of energy from the spirit. Where it struck the ground, a squirrel’s forgotten cache became four of New York’s newest and most surprised-to-exist oak trees. “That part I don’t know,” he answered. “My experience with aphysical chronal entities is pretty limited-“

“Winston! Get down!” Peter tackled the other man to the ground just in time; a red-edged blast tore through the rock that had been behind the Ghostbuster, turning the weathered, grimy, ancient hulk to a sharp-edged, fresh-from-the-massif piece of clean stone.

“-the Reapers devour whatever’s damaged the time stream, the Hounds only ever attack a particular target, and the Yithians aren’t like this at all, so this is obviously a separate class of-“

“Ray, look out!” shouted Egon.

“Yipe!”

The blast this time was directed not at Ray but at the ground under his feet- which did not so much explode as simply cease to be there. More precisely, a circle of ground some four feet acrss and about three and a half feet downwards ceased to be there all at once. Ray hit the bottom of the newly extant bit with a bone-jarring thump and fell heavily against the side of the pit. As he pushed himself upright, the time being’s half-there form suddenly loomed over him.

”Mother,” he blurted , and hunched his shoulders up around his ears.

The spirit’s disjointed, ululating wail entered the brain by way of the bones, rather than the ears. It took Ray a moment to realize three things: one, the spirit wasn’t attacking, two, it was in fact retreating at speed, and three, someone had just shouted in-

“Egon?” said Ray, opening one eye and scrambling out of the pit. “Is that Hebrew?”

Egon didn’t answer, as he had both hands clamped over his mouth and a horrified expression on his face.

“Oh, get over it,” Ray said. “So you’ve got an exorcist lurking under the surface. Big deal.”

“Can you do it again?” asked Peter. “That thing’s fallen back a lot. “

“It’s just getting ready to strike again,” Egon answered. “I think we should try the packs one more time.”

“Hate to break it to you, Egon, but that only pissed it off,” said Winston.

“That’s the point,” Egon said. “It’s not trying to get away. It’s regrouping. If we make it angry enough to attack us directly instead of firing on us-“

“Then one of us can open the box as it makes its charge,” Ray finished. “Egon, that’s brilliant.”

“No! No it is not brilliant!” Venkman snapped. “If you don’t open the box in time that thing’s gonna rewind us so far back in time we’ll be our ancestors’ ancestors, or we’ll end up a million years old or something.”

“Then we’re just going to have to open it fast enough,” Ray said. “Do you have any better ideas?”

“I don’t know,” said Peter. “Try asking it nicely?”

“Actually, Tesla’s notes did mention that-“

“Guys?” said Winston. “Do you think we could have this argument after we’ve nailed this thing to the wall?”

“Sorry,” said Ray. “Okay, everybody, all together on the count of three-“

The electrical strikes weren’t very much by comparison with the sort of energies the Ghostbusters’ proton packs usually unleashed, but there was still a hellaciously impressive display of light and sound as four crackling streams tore into the air around the time spirit. The being turned their way, hissing like a sandstorm.

“Ray! Trap now!” called Peter- but Ray was frantically stomping on the pedal already. “Oh, no…”

Stupid, stupid, stupid,thought Ray erratically, I should’ve tested the opening mechanisms after all the modifications we made- although there is one thing-

”What the hell are you doing?” Winston roared as Ray dove forward- straight at the point where some unknown part of the time spirit intersected with the ground.

Or rather, at the point about a foot in front of that point, where the trap lay inert. As the spirit winked out of its original configuration and blinked back into existence oriented downwards, the better to stare at the odd little human, Ray snatched up the trap and rolled over onto his back. “Hi there!” he said brightly to the thing. “I suppose you’re wondering what I’m doing here today.”

It stared at him. Everyone stared at him.

“I could probably give you a very impressive speech right now. But really? I’m turning this knob right here on the left-hand side,” Ray said. “The emergency open knob.”

It lunged.

The wail that echoed through Ray’s entire skeleton as he wrenched the knob all the way around, forcing the trap open, would snap him out of a sound sleep for a solid fortnight. But it was very much a wail of utter defeat; the thing’s charge had carried it straight into the box, and all its disjointed, ill-connected parts followed. As something on the order of Cerenkov radiation flared from the box for the last time, Ray forced the knob back around and snapped the doors shut.

There was silence in the park for a few moments as Ray lay there panting. Then Winston coughed and poked Peter in the shoulder. “I think it worked,” he said. “Take a look.”

Peter, Winston, and Egon all looked up in time to see the pre-war buildings that edged the park shimmer and change, drawing themselves upwards into some very familiar outlines indeed. The ground underfoot went from a patchy, scabrous mess of neglected earth worked and reworked by chronal energy blasts to the still-scungy but at least reasonably uniform ground cover of Central Park in February. The wood-and-brass boxes that had contained their electrical charge accumulators even shimmered and shifted back into the familiar forms of the proton packs-

“Um, guys?” said Ray from his prone position. “Could I get a hand up here? I think I wrenched something.”

“That’s what you get for playing tackle football with the invisible time monster,” said Venkman, but he grabbed Ray’s hands and hauled him upright. “You okay there? Anything broken?”

“I don’t think so,” Ray said. He ran his fingers over his torso and prodded at a few sore places. “It hurts like the dickens, but it’s all in one piece.”

“Good,” said Winston. “That means I don’t have to feel guilty if I slug you. What were you thinking?”

Ray grimaced. “Sorry, Winston. I had to get the trap, fast, and I didn’t have time to pull it in by the cable hand-over-hand. I didn’t think I was going to wind up that close to the thing- whatever it was.”

“You’re just lucky the knob functioned at all,” said Egon, who was examining his glasses as if to make absolutely sure the earpieces weren’t going anywhere. “If it hadn’t, you would’ve been in a great deal of trouble. Immortality or no.”

“And speaking of trouble,” said Venkman, “what are we gonna do with that thing now?”

Ray looked ruefully at the modified trap. “I haven’t got a clue,” he admitted. “Although a trip to Milliways might be in order, if the door’s opening again-“ He stopped, wincing. “Huh boy. I just remembered I’ve got that get-back-to-the-Bar-free ticket from Dominic. I could’ve used it to get us some help at any time.”

“Oh, like we needed it,” said Peter. “We did pretty well in the end, didn’t we? Our world, our war. Not theirs.”

“I suppose you’re right,” said Ray. “Still, I think I’d like to get back to the Bar. Romana or Ace would be better equipped to deal with this thing. Or the Doctor, if he’s around. Or-“

“Ray,” Egon interrupted, his face gone even paler than usual, “I think you need to turn around very, very slowly, right now.”

A lean, horrible, starveling thing of fangs and angles was boiling out of the intersection of two fallen tree limbs. Ray swallowed as the Hound of Tindalos manifested, but did not move. His brain, however, chose that precise moment to give the lone neuron responsible for common sense and survival instinct the afternoon off, and so without really meaning to he said, “Took you long enough to get here.”

It cocked its head- or possibly its entire body; space in the thing’s vicinity did not look quite right no matter what angle you approached it from- and yowled, the sound oscillating rapidly between just above and just below the upper and lower limits of human hearing.

“…really? I would’ve thought you’d have been long since done with that trip,” Ray said, blinking. “Did the directions work?”

“Directions?” asked Peter. “What are you- ow!”

As Egon somewhat theatrically dusted off his elbow, Ray nodded to the Hound. “Okay, that’s something, at least. Is it too much to hope for that you’re here for this guy?” He held up the trap.

The Hound’s jaws snapped once with a sound like the collapse of empires. Droplets of phosphorescent ichor sprayed from its muzzle.

“Ew,” said Ray, wiping at his face.

It yowled again.

“Apology accepted,” Ray said. “One last question. Do you show up on cameras?”

The Hound’s entire physical structure was composed of pure angular wrongness, and everything about it was alien to the human experience, whether so massively so that it caused the eye to slide off or merely in subtle, disturbing fashion. Nevertheless, it managed to give Ray a perfectly recognizable look of pure disbelief.

“Sorry, thought I’d ask,” Ray said. “Anyway, if you’re ready-“ He hefted the trap. “Run for it.”

The sound of iron filings snapping into line with a powerful magnetic field filled the air as the Hound turned and bolted for Park Drive. Ray drew back his arm and threw the trap as hard as he could. It tumbled through the air exactly as one would expect an un-aerodynamic object made of metal to tumble, but that didn’t much matter; the Hound twisted in mid-run and leapt up to snatch the trap in its jaws. There was a spine-shivering crunch, and then the Hound leapt again, this time for a pair of crossed electrical wires overhead. A moment later it had vanished completely into the angles of the intersection, leaving no sign at all of its presence.

As the faint sounds of cheering started to rise from the Park Drive- it appeared that people had come running into the streets from every direction as soon as 2008 reasserted itself- Ray allowed himself a momentary sag forward. He braced his hands against his knees and closed his eyes. “That was too close,” he said. “That’s twice now I’ve run into Bingle there-"

"Bingle?"

"It's the closest I can get to a comprehensible pronunciation of its name. We don't have either the anatomy or the neurolinguistic concepts to understand how to produce the whole sound accurately- anyway, people aren’t supposed to survive even one encounter with the Hounds.”

“Yeah, well, you’re a freak,” Peter said with a shrug. “Our freak, and we love you, but a freak nonetheless.”

“Thank you, Peter.”

“Not a problem.” He grinned. “Of course, now we’re stuck with an entirely different problem.”

“Which is?”

“One of you three has to tell the Mayor what went down,” Peter said. “The way I see it, we could all use some vacation time after this. Me, I’ve got just enough time to take Dana and get us both the heck out of Dodge for a few days before we have to start training the new crews.”

Ray rubbed at his face with both hands, but nodded. “All right,” he said, “all right.”