Ray's Room- We've Still Got The DOOM

[gone_byebye]

From here.

The door opened to a room decorated in blue and brown and the occasional bit of silver. The carpet was dark blue, the bedspread a lighter one (it's a double); the desk was wooden and brown and stacked with papers. And there were the bookshelves- wire things, silver wire, stacked with reference volumes and the occasional novel and quite a few slim, very neat cases.

"That's the video disc collection over there," Ray said, pointing towards the cases. "The books are mostly reference works, not fiction. Those papers tacked to the wall over there are the blueprints and deck plans for a Firefly class interstellar freighter- I'm very proud of those. That's my crystal-growing rig in the corner, which I mostly use these days for turning silicates and water into synthetic opals for paying my Bar bill... but here."

He opened the closet and started pulling out folding chairs.

"Everybody sit down and get comfortable. This is going to need all of us if it's going to help Danny."

Comments

[blond-w-brain.livejournal.com]

"Ah, excellent. So at this point we're on the same page. Good." Egon puts the things down, laying the book very carefully so the front cover is down.

"Raymond, I believe you have the floor."

[bringnewjokes]

"Uh, no we're not on the same page. But since you seem to have some ideas about what's going on and how to fix it, we'd appreciate if you actually told us them," Sam said, crossing her arms.

[ilovebearbert]

Jazz is fretting like there's no tomorrow.

"Danny will be all right, won't he? You've done this sort of thing before, haven't you?"

[fryertuck]

"Wow, how is this thing powered?" Tucker said from where he was sitting down and fumbling with a very shiny knicknack he'd found.

It wasn't as if he wasn't paying attention or that he didn't want to help his best friend...but there were shiny techie things!

[bringnewjokes]

"Tucker. Do you pay attention? To anything? Ever.?"

[gone_byebye]

"I'll show you the patent application for the K-14 later," Ray said to Tucker. "Just don't fool with anything that has flashy green lights instead of flashy yellow ones. The green lights indicate a deuterium power cell that'll make dynamite look like losing a fingertip to a firework."

He leaned back on his heels and looked to the others.

"Okay. We've dealt with similar situations before, more or less. All three of us are familiar with the mechanics of getting unwanted guests out of the human psyche, although in this case the situation's way complicated by the fact that what we're dealing with is still part of Danny. We can't destroy it, we can't exorcise it, and we can't sequester it away. It'll just come back and bite him in the ass, pardon my French. That's the last thing any of us want."

Noticing the look on Sam's face, Ray let out a long sigh.

"Danny's currently been overrun by his own evil impulses. I'm guessing from the way you were talking earlier that this kind of thing's happened to him before, or something similar in any case. When it first happened... well, when it first happened, he was pretty much about to kill me, or at least incapacitate me. I honestly don't know. I managed to trap him in time and get him up here. We've been working out how to get back the kid he's supposed to be since then, and as far as I or anyone else can tell there's no way we can successfully get back Danny without your help. All three of you."

"To put it as simply as possible, we're going to have to go into Danny's own mind through the collective subconscious's back door- a dimension of sorts called the Dreaming- and help him fight down the evil that you saw in there. Intervening more radically would destroy him, but if the three of you can give him enough support and help from inside, he has a real chance of winning. Permanently, or close to permanently."

[doc-venkman.livejournal.com]

Peter glanced sharply at Ray as he explained to the kids. He didn't say anything, but from what he saw of those blasts, he had a sneaky feeling it was the former. And just now? Oh yeah... if there wasn't a good kid in there somewhere, he really would have said the hell with it, and thought the ghost-kid should be locked up for good. But it was still Danny.

He then spoke up, his tone light, but it seemed clipped, and more professional than he usually seemed, "Gonna be rough sailing. Anybody's unconscious is no picnic. Why it usually takes years to get all the kinks now, if it even works then. Some people spend their entire lives dealing with their psychosis. But you know him better than any of us. He needs familiar things to reassure him, and draw himself out of this. You're the only ones that can probably shake him out of this. I saw how distracted he got when he thought he hurt one of you. Still got a chance with him."

[ilovebearbert]

Jazz raised one eyebrow skeptically.

"This all sounds very scientifically unsound," she says, "not to mention psychologically impossible - but if it will help Danny, I'll do whatever I can." Pause. "but that doesn't mean I have to believe in it."

[blond-w-brain.livejournal.com]

"Actually," Egon says, "if you can accept the concept of a portal between your world and the afterlife, why is the concept of being able to access the collective unconcious in a dream state, then manipulate it, so difficult? The Schulmann Resonance is an example of the underlying interconnectivity you being worked with." He adjusts his glasses.

"There is a sound scientific basis for it underlying the mysticism. My recent researches have indicated to me that many apparently unsound mystical effects may have a significant scientific basis that is not immediately apparent. If you think about it, what we're doing here is simply covered under Clarke's Law."

(For the unaware: Any Sufficiently Advanced Scientific Development Is Indistinguishable From Magic.)

"If it helps, you can think of it as utilizing advanced Jungian therapy concepts in concert with Schulmann resonance shared-sensorium conceptualization through an entity formed in the collective unconcious of humanity."

[bringnewjokes]

"Back to the Dream thing, since I can actually understand that part, are you saying we have to go inside Danny's head?" she asked, raising her eyebrows. "How do we that?"

[gone_byebye]

Ray stepped forward again, heading for the bookshelves. "The entity who governs the Dreaming is occasionally a patron of this bar," he said. "Lord Morpheus- or Dream, as most people seem to call him- was approached some time ago about this very situation."

He pulled down a hefty volume bound in black hide of a kind unknown on most Earths. There was a slender silver chain around the spine of the enormous copy of Tobin's Spirit Guide. Ray flipped the book's pages almost to their end and thrust it out at Sam, open to a page marked ENTITIES BEYOND THE SCOPE OF THIS BOOK. A picture of Dream (as sometimes depicted in the works of Neil Gaiman) stared back at her.

"He gave me a number of artifacts- pebbles, I'm afraid, nothing particularly scientific or manipulatable- and said that when it was time to try and save Danny, I was supposed to give one to each of the people who was going to enter his realm. The gift would be enough to get us there, and at the end of it, to get us back again. More than that was up to us while we were in the Dreaming."

He then held up a small sueded leather bag. The side that read TREAT THEM WELL AND THEY'LL ALWAYS ROLL HIGH faced him, for once, and not the audience. "I've got Dream's gifts right here. One for each of the people in this room, minus one... someone's got to stay behind and monitor Danny, just in case."

[fryertuck]

Tucker raised his hand. "Not it!"

[doc-venkman.livejournal.com]

Peter snorted at that reaction, and said to the kids, "As we've said, all of you are his friends, so gonna need all hands on deck in your case."

He sighed, "As for us." He traded looks with Ray and Egon. "One of us should be monitoring him, making sure everything stays kosher."

He added with a fierce look in his eyes, "You're gonna need somebody who's got an idea of the roadmaps for the brain. I'd say I should go on this, but if you want me to keep the light on for you, I can do that, too. But one way or another, we're bringing him back. I *like* the kid. And he's one of us. A Ghostbuster. And we've always looked out for each other, right?"

[blond-w-brain.livejournal.com]

"In this situation, Peter, you have the superior skills to work through the issue, as well as familiarity with the person. I will remain to monitor."

He's waiting for that expression on Peter's face, the stunned one. And when it hits, he says, casually but with a twinkle in his eye, "It's only logical, Peter."

[doc-venkman.livejournal.com]

Peter closed his mouth with an audible snap at that.

"Uh, right."

He then smirked, "You know I'm going to remind you of that fact later on?"

He added to the group, "Ok, so guess all aboard on the Danny dream train?"

[bringnewjokes]

"We've got the way in, we're all here, so time to go," Sam said with a nod.