For the Futurefolken.

[gone_byebye]

The point of re-entry to Ray's world is the same nearly every time. He makes a point of using the same exit from the Firehouse: a door that leads from the building's side into a nondescript alley. The door opens, this time, onto a windy November day. Ray glances up at the sky, then gestures to the others. "Looks like home," he says. A sniff of the air reveals gasoline, horses, and a couple of tough-to-identify stenches. "Yeah, smells like home too. C'mon, guys, I'm pretty sure this is my dimension."

Comments

[rocketsgrownup.livejournal.com]

Beka sniffed and pulled a face. "Uck. Gimme good, filtered air, any day."

[trustntheharper.livejournal.com]

Harper stood for a moment, his eyes closed and just breathed it all in.

To him, it smelled of home.

...With less of a radioactive tang.

[gone_byebye]

That was because it was Manhattan. For radioactivity Harper would have to go to New Jersey.

"Sorry, Beka," Ray said as he led the way out of the alley. "At least it's not summer. The main stables of the New York Police Department's mounted division is across the street. Plus, we have a-" There was a rumble underfoot that had nothing to do with the traffic on the street. "-subway station on Franklin Street," Ray continued as if nothing had happened. "Which isn't exactly hygienic either. But it's really not too bad, considering. C'mon, I'll get us a cab- Ecto's a little big for parking at the Intrepid."

He paused briefly as they reached the sidewalk, looking up at the building with a fond smile; then he stopped at the curb and put up a hand. It wasn't long before a yellow car came up past the police station and pulled to a stop in front of them.

[rocketsgrownup.livejournal.com]

Harper was staring at everything so much that Beka pretty much had to lead him to the cab by the elbow.

"C'mon, Seamus, or you're walking."

[trustntheharper.livejournal.com]

Seamus Harper rarely had trouble finding things to say.

But as he stumbled along like a blindman, led by Beka's guiding hand, looking at open sky, and--and flags. They had flags out. The Ubers would shoot people on sight for displaying flags of any kind.

His mouth was pretty much in a perpetual state of hanging ajar.

As soon as the cab pulled up, he rushed over and brushed his hand against the hood, feeling the engine rumbling underneath.

"Wow. A real combustion engine. Wow."

He could barely keep himself from popping the hood and taking a look, but Beka would have none of that, as she led him to the car door.

[gone_byebye]

"You can see Ecto's engine later," Ray said with a smile. "I want to check up on her anyway- it's been ages since I was home... Driver? Can we go to the Intrepid, please? And go for the scenic route if you can?"

"First time in the city?" asked the driver, a dark-skinned man whose name had a few too many consonants in it to be entirely healthy for the uninitiated.

"Yeah, you could say that."

The driver smiled toothily, nodded, and took off. "For this," he said, "we go with Canal to the highway-"

There'd only be a few blocks of Chinatown, but even those first few blocks would probably make an impression. Especially since the street was thronging, as always, with more people than it was ever designed to hold- and the signs rapidly shifted from English to Chinese as the cab swung around to head west again.

"Welcome to New York, gang," Ray said. "We can get food here when we come back, or we can stop when we get out of Jim Hanley's. There's some great Korean places near the Empire State building, or fast food joints if you just want something in a hurry- oh, hey, see? There, you get a view..."

Down the right street it was unmistakable: the Empire State Building, off in the distance.

[rocketsgrownup.livejournal.com]

"Oh joy. A building." She looked glad that Harper was enjoying himself though, and this really was a blast from the past.

Everything was so low tech and rustic-looking.

"What the hell is this thing we're riding in? Is this one of those 'cars'?"

[trustntheharper.livejournal.com]

He was probably going to get whiplash from how fast his head was darting around as he looked at everything through the windows.

"Car. Automobile. Oh oh! Motorcycle!" He pointed. "Beka, that's a motorcycle! That's what I was talking about! Look at it! Can you blame a guy for wanting one? Total chick magnet."

Harper pretty much threw himself over Beka and Ray to get a good glimpse out the window at the Empire State building, when Ray pointed it out.

"Wow."

After a moment of staring, he said, "Dad said that some that great-great-great-great-great-great-add a few more greats-grandpappy Harper helped build that thing after he immigrated over. They preserved it, y'know, through the centuries. One of world's most ancient landmarks. Just like Lady Liberty, but when the Drago-Katsoff came..." He mimed an explosion with his hands. "Kaboom, say bye bye."

[gone_byebye]

Ray winced. "Yeah," he said. "I can imagine." He was still remembering the look on Peter's face when he'd had to explain about the Towers falling. Hopefully, there wasn't even a memory of the things left by Harper's time.

"You are wanting to see the statue too, then?"

"Not on this leg of the trip," Ray told the driver. "After the Intrepid." To Harper, he explained, "She's off the southern tip and we're going up to about a third of the way along the island's length. You'll get your chance- we can take the ferry over if you want to actually visit. The head's accessible. The torch isn't."

The taxi swung right again and they were on the West Side Highway, a long street three lanes wide in either direction, punctuated by traffic lights. To the right were buildings; in the middle of the road a divider filled with plants; to the left, past the other lanes, lay, well, the New York Trapeze School, where the teachers were demonstrating the use of the flying trapeze. But beyond them lay the Hudson River, which was riddled with civilian boats of every size and description.

"There's a heliport further up if you don't mind primitive air transportation- you can get a nice aerial tour of four out of five boroughs in twenty minutes."

[rocketsgrownup.livejournal.com]

"As long as we get off the ground, I'm happy. All this solid ground is freaking me out," Beka said.

[trustntheharper.livejournal.com]

Harper could barely comprehend everything.

"Boats!" he exclaimed. "A chopper? Beka, you'll love the helicopter. I wonder if you could fly one, boss. The controls are probably kinda rudimentary."

[gone_byebye]

"They're not going to let you fly the helicopter," Ray said. "It's purely a tour thing. Best I can offer you for control is the kayak club- you can paddle around on the river for twenty minutes if you know how to swim."

The car stopped at a red light. Two women in sweatsuits skated across the street and joined a smaller lane of pedestrian traffic, as did several people on bicycles. Moments later the light changed to green and took off again.

"... that's the Nomadic Museum, they built it out of shipping containers, it's got photographs inside of humans interacting with animals in all kinds of situations. It'll be gone in a few weeks... okay, and that's Chelsea Piers. Sports, sporting equipment, and various sorts of electronic entertainment. That over there is the meat-packing district, and- oh, hey, check it out-"

Mounted policemen. Every so often they turned up and went through this part of the city before returning to midtown.

"Okay, uh, up ahead? See that brown structure on the left? That's where the ferries from New Jersey come in. We're going to the aircraft carrier after that-"

But before they reached the carrier, a yellow-and-red helicopter lifted off from the riverside launchpad, hovering briefly over the highway before peeling off to head for downtown.

"-and that, my friends, is what we'll be riding in after Intrepid."

[rocketsgrownup.livejournal.com]

The helicopter caught Beka's interest.

"...you sure they won't let me fly it?" she asked, her eyes following it.

[rocketsgrownup.livejournal.com]

"--I still think he should've let me fly it for a while," Beka was saying on the cab ride away from the chopper tour. "He was way too hard on the throttle--I've never seen anyone fly so jerky."

[trustntheharper.livejournal.com]

"You'd have been a natural, boss," Harper said loyally.

[gone_byebye]

"You can only ask so much of these old birds," Ray pointed out. "Not that they aren't in good condition, but these are civilian helicopters, made for tootling around in circles and not much else. If you wanted a responsive model it'd have to be one of the Sikorskys the police fly, or one of those yellow buggers they have at the hospitals. Besides, they have rules about that kind of thing here. If they let you fly, they'd have to let a spaz like Egon fly- he's got flight time but no license under the current system. You don't want to see that happen."

[trustntheharper.livejournal.com]

"I gotta meet this Egon guy. You said he was a techie?" Harper asked.

[gone_byebye]

"He's the techie," Ray assured Harper. "He's a high energy nuclear physicist. Completed his bachelor's degree at MIT by the time he was twelve years old, so he took his grad school nice and slow afterwards and did his doctorates separately instead of concurrently. We've got four guys on our team- according to Dr. Venkman, Egon is the brain, I'm the heart, Dr. Venkman's the mouth, and Winston is the sanity, which unfortunately means he gets outvoted three to one most of the time. But yeah. You should see the things he does with dimensional physics."

[trustntheharper.livejournal.com]

"He sounds like..." There was a grin on his face the slowly faded, and ended up slightly forced. "...sounds like somebody I knew."

Harper looked out the window. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to meet him. If he made any lame science jokes about Alice strings, it'd only remind him...

[gone_byebye]

"If the person you knew had facial expressions twice a year, at Nobel Prize season and Hanukkah, then you're on the right track," Ray said. "Actually, no. That's not entirely fair of me. He lights up pretty impressively when you offer him junk food-"

The cab rounded a corner onto Broadway and started into Herald Square, which was decorated for the Christmas season. Macy's and all.

"Next block, Harper."

[rocketsgrownup.livejournal.com]

"What's with the funny decorations?" Beka asked, trying to change the subject, as she knew why Harper's smile had faded like that.

[trustntheharper.livejournal.com]

"...Is that Christmas stuff?" Harper asked, his eyes going wide.

[gone_byebye]

"It's Christmas," Ray said. "Seasonal celebration of a religious festival that was basically a solstice celebration at its heart. Sort of a 'hooray, the sun's coming back and we're not all going to die in the freezing dark' kind of thing. People give presents, visit relatives, and eat inordinate amounts of food. Plus there's Santa Claus, but he'd take a while to explain."

He nods to Harper. "Yep. I know you know It's A Wonderful Life- any chance you ever heard of Miracle On 34th Street? This is where that movie took place."

[rocketsgrownup.livejournal.com]

"Wait wait wait, is this the jolly red fat guy holiday?" Beka asked turning to Harper.

[trustntheharper.livejournal.com]

Harper nodded, a grin on his face. "Got it in one," he said. "This is the jolly red fat guy one--and you can ask Ray about the mistletoe thing, I was serious when I said I really didn't make that up."

He looked out the window, nearly pressing his face against the glass, a reminiscing, almost dreamy smile on his face.

"Before we moved to Boston, when we were still in Dunwich, dad would cut down a tree and bring it in. We didn't have much to decorate it with, but the pine smell was enough to make it Christmas-ey." He suddenly laughed to himself. "One year, there were these preying mantises all over the place, and we realized there was a nest on there. We had to sweep 'em all out. Mom was afraid to touch 'em--she fought off Magog before and here she was afraid of bugs--she kept squeaking every time she came across one. Siobhan, Declan, dad, and I wound up having to get rid of 'em all, although me and Siobhan and Declan wound up playin' with 'em more than anything."

The smile widened a little.

"There were a few ornaments mom had, that were handed down through the years, and we'd make ones outta bits of scrap, y'know, metal and stuff--they looked pretty good, too--and mom had a little star she put on top, made of glass. Every time it broke, dad would fix it and sometimes I'd help him--sorta became tradition. Anyway, the tree looked kinda nice. Christmas eve, we'd watch the old holo dad picked up of It's a Wonderful Life--classic Christmas movie, Beka; Ray told me the end of it finally." The smile faded a little bit, but only a little. "When we moved to Boston, we couldn't get a tree anymore--it was tough sneaking out of the camp without getting shot. So dad would make a tree--outta metal pipes, wood, whatever--he'd just cobble something together that we could hang ornaments on, and since we had to leave all of mom's behind, they were all ones I made--glued bits of scrap fabric onto stuff, gathered whatever colorful things we had--I'd save any little shiny thing I found, all year long, just for that, just for Christmas. Sometimes, if it was a good year, I even got a present."

There wasn't a trace of bitterness in his voice. He didn't even seem to realize he was talking. He was just smiling at the green wreaths, shiny red ornaments, and little blinky lights as if they were the most wonderful thing he'd ever seen.