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Spring in Massachusetts can be a time of chaotic weather for those who have lived long in New England's climes, but there are worse days by far than today. The air is buzzing with the work of bees, and birds are winging lazily overhead. A handful of scattered trees dot the grassy, well-kept landscape in all directions, but buildings rise taller than the majority of the trees in the distance.

Somewhere, a not-very-well-tuned carillon is ringing.

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[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

"I'm sorry." Suzi says, quietly, "I can't imagine being stuck anywhere alien that long." She doesn't bother pointing out that she can't be stuck anywhere longer than a short month. They'll either find a way to get her back to Milliways or they won't. "What do you mean by thin?"

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"It's not like I haven't done more time than this in other worlds before. At least this one's Earth," Ray says. "It's just- Suzi, there are things that- all right. At Milliways, you know how we have gods and angels and things among the patrons?"

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

"Uh huh." This is important stuff, so Suzi leans forward with her hands on her knees to listen. Important things are far too often frightening ones.

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"For the most part, gods and angels and their adversaries come from dimensions closely linked to our own world, or from the same plane as the spirits of the dead, or somewhere very close to it," Ray says. "They're usually separated from the everyday world of the living, though. There are definite barriers between the dimensional levels of existence, preventing too much overlap between the spirit world and the everyday one. In some places the barriers are stronger than in others, and you get fewer visits from the spirits no matter what time of year it is or what you do. In other places the barriers are weak, or nonexistent. It varies, from place to place and world to world."

"In some worlds the barriers are exceptionally thin and it's very, very easy for the beings from other dimensions to make the crossing into the world of the living. Which, you know, wouldn't be so much of a problem if it were just the gods or the angels showing up. Unfortunately, that's not the case here. I don't think that any angel's ever so much as cast a shadow over Arkham."

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

Suzi is very, very quiet for a while, "Bad things come here. Very, very bad things. Is that what I'm getting? My world doesn't have any magics, gods, or anything like that."

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"Worse than the usual run of bad things," Ray says quietly. "Things so different from everything that human consciousness is made of that they can't interact with us without things falling apart. What they want from us I don't really know, although I have my suspicions. All I know for sure is this: under the right circumstances and at the right times, things too alien and too powerful for humankind to face without going mad or worse are fully capable of entering this world and wreaking havoc just because they can."

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

Suzi says several very pithy things that would cause her father to scrub her mouth out with soap if he knew she knew them. Then, just to be certain, she repeats them in English. "And you've been here for years."

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"Since early in 1906, yes," Ray says. "I've been building a machine that should be able to return anyone or anything who passes through it to Milliways, if they've ever been to the Bar before. It's hard, though. We're a hundred years before my own time, and the vast majority of technology that I used the first time I built such a machine hasn't even been invented yet."

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

"I'm not a scientist," Suzi says, "let alone one like you. But I can pass a wrench with the best of them, and I've got strength to spare." Not time, but strength, "Anything I can do, just let me know."

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"I'm almost done with it, actually," Ray says. "I was hoping to test it sometime later this week. I-"

He stops mid-sentence and peers over Suzi's shoulder. There's a window there, albeit a very small one. Outside, there's a knot of people growing steadily larger as they pour out of one of the other nearby buildings.

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

Suzi glances out the window as well, "Do you...we? Need to go see what happened? Do you have a coat I can borrow? My arms..."

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"That one there," Ray says, pointing at a coat-rack behind the door. "The Inverness cape should do you just fine. It was always a childhood fondness of mine..." He fidgets a little. "Tell you about it later. We should go check that out. It looks like it might be a gas leak."

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

"Okay!" Suzi says, reaching for the cape and tossing it on. It doesn't take much to get herself hidden in the mass of fabric, she's quite a bit smaller than Ray. "Just show me where to go."

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"Follow me," says Ray, and fairly catapults himself out the door and down the stairs.

The sunlight is bright out here, for a place whose ambient is as tightly wound as Arkham's. It falls clean and bright on the drawn, narrowed faces of the strongest men in the Economics department; they're carrying a sagging, gangling burden-

"I think that's Dr. Peaslee," says Ray, who's standing on tiptoe to see over the heads of some of the taller students.

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

Suzi has no chance at all of ever looking over the head of anyone older than ten. She looks under their arms, instead, and then backs up into Ray. "He zlins weird."

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Ray blinks, looking down at Suzi, wide-eyed. "What do you mean? Weird how?" he asks quietly; around here, 'weird' can mean any number of things, none of them good.

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

"Weird like...like...um. Imagine putting a salt filling in a chocolate bonbon?" Suzi says, trying to figure it out. Also? Pressing against Ray's legs. "Or fish jello?"

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Ray's eyes narrow and he looks back at the crumpled figure being laid straight on the ground. "Excuse me," he says very firmly to the young men next to him. "Let me through, please."

There's a pause.

"Don't make me use my elbows."

Somewhat reluctantly the crowds part, and Ray steps forward. "honestly, you're as bad as New Yorkers- someone's gone for the doctor, I assume?" He doesn't wait for anyone to answer, but crouches down beside Peaslee's inert form instead, bending over him with one hand's fingertips resting lightly on the man's chest. "He's still breathing, at least..."

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

Suzi follows Ray and starts looking over the fallen man as well (she REALLY doesn't want to touch him. That's alright; she doesn't have to) with a hand floating just above the skin, "He's not...I don't think he's sick?"

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Ray falls back on his knees, two fingers resting against the groove in the man's throat. "I think you're right," he says. "That's a pretty normal pulse, for an unconscious man. Does anyone here know what happened?"

A young woman hesitantly puts up a hand and says, "Professor Peaslee was in the middle of his economics lecture, and suddenly started wobbling."

"Wobbling how? Verbally, physically, around the edges?" Ray looks over his glasses at the girl.

"Physically," she says, and several of the others watching murmur their agreement. "Rocking back and forth on his heels, and then his eyes just rolled back in his head and he collapsed on the floor."

Ray looks down at the man, his lips pursed for a moment; then he looks back to the girl. "Was he saying anything unusual at all?"

"No, sir," she says after some thought. "Nothing at all. Just his usual lecture."

Ray nods. "I see," he says soberly. "Has anyone sent for Dr. Peaslee's son?"

There's some discussion, and then someone at the back of the crowd darts off. Ray looks up to Suzi as he pushes himself to his feet. "Suzi," he murmurs as quietly as he can, "I think I might have an idea of what's going on."

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

"Oh?" Suzi responds, without moving her head, "What? Because I don't know, and it's weird and uncomfortable."

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Ray rubs at his nose lightly. "There are more than a few entities in this universe that're capable of touching a person's mind directly," he murmurs. "Usually they do it in dreams, though, when people are most vulnerable. That would ordinarily mean a stroke or a seizure- but if you're not zlinning a physical issue, then it's something metaphysical. Something is leaning so heavily on this man's mind that it knocked him out entirely, and from the sound of things, it's still there."

In the distance, one of the students is leading a man in a white coat in their direction- the campus physician.

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

Suzi says nothing very eloquently. (The local nager says !!!!!!! rather a lot, in a variety of fonts and colors.) "Oh." the Sime manages in words after a time, "That, um. I don't know? It's...it doesn't feel like a human is in there - white coat official man."

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"Huh boy," says Ray, rubbing at the back of his neck with one hand. "And you don't recognize whatever it- hello, Doctor Waldron!"

"Mr. Stantz," returns Waldron in acknowledgment; he's a man in his late sixties, just this side of retiring and heading off to live with his family. "I should've known you'd be here if something strange was going on. So-" He kneels as carefully as he can beside the unconscious man. "What's happened to Nathan now, hmm?"

Ray makes a rapid get out of his like of sight gesture to Suzi with one hand before relaying the story to the physician. The older man, for all that he's physically frail and has something of a heart problem, is very sharp mentally; even as the doctor examines the fallen man he's all but interrogating Ray at every available turn.

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

Suzi? What Suzi? There is only a Very Uninteresting young woman wearing a too-big coat doing her best to look inoffensive and like she belongs.

...Maybe someone will mistake her for a relative of Ray's? Suzi doesn't fit in terribly well. She is, however, hovering out of the doctor's sight.