Poughkeepsie Attacks!!!: Team Big Blue

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The IBM Supercomputer Benchmarking Plant in Poughkeepsie lies at the center of an enormous corporate campus on the northern side of town. As far as Ray can tell, that's where the really hairy readings were coming from, although he could of course be wrong.

He's about to find out. Ecto pulls to a stop just outside the main entrance to the IBM property. "Are we good?" Ray asks.

Comments

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"As soon as I can get my legs unbent," he says as jokingly as he can manage.

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"Sorry," says Ecto. "I'm not a convertible."

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He pats the dashboard.

"It's not your fault," he tells her gently, very aware that she's only a little older than his own daughter.

"People here aren't built on the same scale."

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"Yeah, no," says Ecto. "Okay, Daddy, what do you want me to scan for?"

"Keep your radio channels open and see if there are any cell phone signals coming from the property," Ray says. "Don't tap into them unless we can positively identify the source. And any kind of indicators of moving human presences..."

"I don't think this place really sleeps, Daddy," says Ecto. "There's a lot of people here still."

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"I should be able to sense any active mind near to us," he admits. "Then it's just a number of getting behind them and knocking them over the head."

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"Anybody who comes off as particularly loathsome is probably Peck or one of his minions," says Ray, surveying the complex of buildings before them. "I don't know if anyone ever told you about what the Nazis believed, but next to them, Torak and Ctuchik come off like a couple of Sendars."

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He looks sideways at Ray.

"Did you travel through Mallorea? Cthol Murgos?"

He shook his head before Ray could answer.

"It doesn't really matter," he says, thinking of what he'd seen in Rak Cthol. In the temples of Torak. In Torak's eyes.

"But yes, I'll have a sense of the mind and act accordingly."

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"I never left Melcene, but they had a lot of stuff at the College of Comparative Theology," Ray says. "I read most of it. Someday I'll show you some of the chapters from my old history textbooks back home about what happened in Germany between 1936 and 1945, which is when the original Nazis were defeated and their leader committed suicide rather than let the Allied forces capture him. These guys revived a dead ideology for the sake of destroying everybody who was born funny-looking, funny-thinking, or the wrong religion. And Peck, well, he's ... you'll probably know him if you spot him."

Ray has never, ever, ever met a ghost of the Shoah, or of those who perpetrated it. And for that, he is profoundly thankful.

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He looks at Ray just once more.

"And what am I allowed to do to him when I do?"

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"Daddy made me bring a fishbowl and some water," says Ecto, "but I think he'd make a really interesting radish."

"Ecto, you know perfectly well what our luck is like. Someone might eat him by mistake if Garion did that." He looks at Garion. "There's a Dorling Kindersley illustrated guide to tropical aquarium fishes under the passenger seat. Pick something small. I'd like to be able to keep an eye on him for the rest of his existence, and most fish haven't got the memory to pull together enough PKE to make a candle flame flicker."

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There was a grunt before he pulled out the book and started looking through.

He didn't want anything too pretty, since he wasn't all that interested in making Peck look good... but if Ray was keeping him around, then he should make it look nice.

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While Garion looks, Ecto quietly reports on the major concentrations of people on the campus. Most of the groupings are small, probably just IBM employees on the night shift, but there's a few suspiciously large clusters. And-

"Daddy, there's a huge EM interference source sitting in the middle of what's supposed to be an open green space," Ecto reports quietly. "Like, truck size, huge."

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"What's an EM interference?" Garion asks as he finds the one that he'd use as soon as he found the troubling former government employee.

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"Electromagnetic interference," Ray says, scanning the area map Ecto's brought up. "Usually it's put off by computers, radios, and other devices of reasonably high technological level. There's a few deliberate means of generating it if you're trying to cover up communications equipment or a signal of some kind..."

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"I see," he says, not looking up from the page. "Do you know why he'd have one?"

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"He stole a truck to haul the Ark from Ohio to here," Ray says. "One of the bigger ones commonly in use on the road today, in fact. If he or his cohorts are using any kind of communication equipment worth mentioning, he'd have to store it somewhere."

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He nods.

"I'll take my cues from you, Ray. I've heard and seen enough not to gape at most things, but I don't think we have the time for you to explain every little thing to me. Like I said, point me in the right direction and tell me what you need."

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"I'll explain about it later as far as I can," Ray says. "Thank you, Garion."

He frowns a little at Ecto's display and says, "Kiddo, can you jam any communications frequencies he might have going?"

"Not without messing up our own radios, Daddy. I'm gonna work on decrypting his signals if that's okay."

"You do that," Ray says. Then he looks at Garion. "I don't suppose there's any chance that you can sense a major concentration of power from an artifact belonging to a god not of your world?"

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He smiles.

"Of course. Energy is energy and all of it makes--"

He decides that while it does sound a little odd, he might as well use the same analogy his grandfather had used with him.

"Noise, for lack of a better word."

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"Terrific," says Ray. "Because I can't use the PKE meter. The poor thing would overload, this close. I'm hoping that this area-" He taps Ecto's mystery EM source. "-is where he's got the Ark, but he could have any number of traps out there being laid. From what people were saying over the radio, we caught him by surprise- he was getting ready for a confrontation tomorrow."

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"That's the best way to do it," he says with a small grin. A not-particularly-nice grin.

Then he nods out the window.

"Unpacking now?"

He means himself.

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"No time like the present," Ray says. "Gonna need a hand getting out?"

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He shakes his head.

"Though I might travel as a wolf next time in here," he says as he pops the door open. "If you don't mind a little bit of fur."

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"Fur's easier to clean up than slime," Ray says. "I'm good with it."

He eases himself out of the car and slides a radio earphone on over one ear to stay in contact with Ecto. Then he points in the direction of the EM interference source.

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Garion nods and rolls a shoulder before cracking his neck and flexing his legs.

Then he walks up beside Ray.