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gone_byebyeThere was a reason the other three Ghostbusters weren't on the job in Poughkeepsie yesterday, and very simply, it was this: turf wars. Law enforcement agencies can be notoriously difficult to make cooperate. The FBI and the BATF were willing to play nice, but the New York State Troopers had very little love for the Feds swooping in, especially after all that happened in Pennsylvania. It was compounded by the fact that no one, other than the Ghostbusters themselves, had actually been told that the Ark of the Covenant (well, its simulacrum) was involved- only that a top secret prototype high energy weapon system had been stolen from a research facility in Ohio. Venkman might have been able to work with that, but Egon was no good at dancing around the truth, and Winston spent a few minutes glowering and muttering that he thought he'd left all that crap behind when he left the Army.
Still, in the end there were phone calls to Washington and Albany, and things were set as close to right as possible. Of all the people of Poughkeepsie affected that night, only the security crew of the IBM Supercomputing Benchmarking Facility knew the truth of what had happened, and that was only because of two video cameras that Peck had failed to disable before commandeering their campus. They received a visit from a General Accounting Office team in gray suits and a variety of cashier's checks with an awful lot of zeroes on them turned up in IBM's offices the next day. A lot can be forgiven under circumstances like that.
The Opera House staff broke down in hysterics and dire predictions of a janitorial walkout upon discovering the zombie remains, but after the FBI's chem/biol investigation crew came to visit, the worst was universally agreed to have passed. At Smith Brothers, the property damage was greater, and their own internal auditing camera system bore them out. They were the first to launch lawsuits. Not at the Ghostbusters, who were acting as Federal agents in pursuit of their duties and therefore largely beyond the reach of the courts, but against the organization responsible for the breaking and entering, not to mention the use of fraudulent security employees. Between them, the Bardavon people, and the Mid-Hudson Civic Center's legal team, the lawsuits that sprang up from Poughkeepsie would bankrupt the Illinois Nazi Party by next year's end.
At the CIA, precious little harm was actually done there, and the school's trustees were immensely grateful. Arrangements were swiftly made after talking to the law enforcement agencies involved, and packets of gift certificates good at the Caterina di Medici restaurant were dispatched to 14 North Moore Street by certified mail. Granted, they'd be no good in other universes, but the school had no way of knowing that.
As for the Ark... well, the Comptroller-General received a memo on November the first stating that space XF-23-2 was occupied with its original contents once again, and space D-17-19 unfortunately housed nothing but a very impressively striated large rock. This was inspected and confirmed, and pronounced good. The less said about the incident, the better.
The spirits of the dead still raged, an inevitable consequence of the time of year, but there was nothing to be done about that... except, of course, the only possible sensible thing to do.
They wouldn't be the Ghostbusters if they weren't there to answer the call.
Still, in the end there were phone calls to Washington and Albany, and things were set as close to right as possible. Of all the people of Poughkeepsie affected that night, only the security crew of the IBM Supercomputing Benchmarking Facility knew the truth of what had happened, and that was only because of two video cameras that Peck had failed to disable before commandeering their campus. They received a visit from a General Accounting Office team in gray suits and a variety of cashier's checks with an awful lot of zeroes on them turned up in IBM's offices the next day. A lot can be forgiven under circumstances like that.
The Opera House staff broke down in hysterics and dire predictions of a janitorial walkout upon discovering the zombie remains, but after the FBI's chem/biol investigation crew came to visit, the worst was universally agreed to have passed. At Smith Brothers, the property damage was greater, and their own internal auditing camera system bore them out. They were the first to launch lawsuits. Not at the Ghostbusters, who were acting as Federal agents in pursuit of their duties and therefore largely beyond the reach of the courts, but against the organization responsible for the breaking and entering, not to mention the use of fraudulent security employees. Between them, the Bardavon people, and the Mid-Hudson Civic Center's legal team, the lawsuits that sprang up from Poughkeepsie would bankrupt the Illinois Nazi Party by next year's end.
At the CIA, precious little harm was actually done there, and the school's trustees were immensely grateful. Arrangements were swiftly made after talking to the law enforcement agencies involved, and packets of gift certificates good at the Caterina di Medici restaurant were dispatched to 14 North Moore Street by certified mail. Granted, they'd be no good in other universes, but the school had no way of knowing that.
As for the Ark... well, the Comptroller-General received a memo on November the first stating that space XF-23-2 was occupied with its original contents once again, and space D-17-19 unfortunately housed nothing but a very impressively striated large rock. This was inspected and confirmed, and pronounced good. The less said about the incident, the better.
The spirits of the dead still raged, an inevitable consequence of the time of year, but there was nothing to be done about that... except, of course, the only possible sensible thing to do.
They wouldn't be the Ghostbusters if they weren't there to answer the call.
