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[gone_byebye]

The door, as is usual, opens on an alleyway in New York City. Overhead the sky is grey. The air is unseasonably warm; Ray wrinkles his nose. "It'd be nice if the planet could remember that this is November," he says. "Okay, Matilda. This is where I came in."

Comments

[precocioustilda.livejournal.com]

Matilda peers around, grinning at everything she sees.

"I can't say I entirely mind if your world's taking a little time to realize it's not summer anymore," she comments.

[gone_byebye]

"When I was a kid I had to wear my Halloween costume over a winter coat because it was too cold to go trick-or-treating without one," says Ray. "I played a lot of astronauts and deep sea divers. Anyway, this way."

He leads Matilda onto the street in front of the Firehouse and ignores the faded, years-old ad for Keymaster Cologne on the building across the street.

Firehouse images may be found here.

[precocioustilda.livejournal.com]

She bounces gleefully.

"That's a lovely building."

She's getting to see where Ray works! This is, to borrow a phrase from Enzo, totally awesome.

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"Thanks. It was kind of a pit when we bought it, but you couldn't find a better set of working fireman's poles anywhere in the city."

Yes, that was his major criterion for the place. Shush.

"Robert DeNiro's really gone a long way towards making the TriBeCa area in general more respectable. Egon won't even admit to the area being like a demilitarized zone any more." He waves to one of the police officers across the street. "Of course, the NYPD stables for the mounted officers kind of helps with that... anyway, here we are."

He opens the human-sized door within the Firehouse's normal big black doors and steps in. There's a honk and a "Hi, Daddy!" as well as a "Hey, Dr. Stantz," and then he pokes his head back out. "Come on in."

[precocioustilda.livejournal.com]

Tilda beams. And on hearing Ecto's voice beams harder, though it's flavoured with concern.

She follows Ray into the building, looking around with wide eyes. Ooh. Fireman's poles. (Of course they're a good criterion! They're shiny and lots of fun!)

[gone_byebye]

It must be said here that the firehouse seen in the movies was two different buildings. Hook and Ladder No. 8 was used for exterior shots; a firehouse in Los Angeles provided the interiors. This gives the narration terrible headaches, because the firehouse in Los Angeles was rather larger than the one in New York, and the result is a mild TARDIS effect. We won't say anything about the wild disparity between the cartoon firehouse interior and the building's exterior. That's a disjuncture on the order of Snoopy's doghouse or Oscar's trash can. And Oscar had elephants in there.

Back in the land of the actual narrative, however, Ray's grinning and waving to Janine. Ecto looks her usual vehicular self, though she's switched on the blue overhead lights. "Hi, Matilda!" she calls out cheerfully.

"Did we get any more calls when I wasn't looking, Janine?" Ray asks.

"Just one, but it can wait until tomorrow."

[precocioustilda.livejournal.com]

"Ecto!"

Matilda once hugged Bar without any apparent difficulty. Hugging a car is no trouble whatsoever by comparison, so she does.

"How are you?" she asks, stepping back and beaming again. Tilda was worried! Death threats from crazy men aren't anything to be laughed at, even if the crazy men in question are immediately transfigured into fish.

[gone_byebye]

"I'm okay," says Ecto. "I've been doing a lot of analysis on the scan data I got after the government guys took the fake Ark back. It's neat stuff. And I've been helping Dad with work, of course. It's really busy this time of year."

[precocioustilda.livejournal.com]

"Ooh!"

Again, Tilda perks up at the mention of data.

"What sorts? Of scan data, I mean. Can I see?"

[gone_byebye]

"Lots of PKE stuff and ionic fluctuations in the Poughkeepsie area. Janine, can I use the printer?"

"Yeah, sure, Ecto," says Janine. "I was just going to head out anyway. That okay with you, Dr. Stantz?"

"Sure, Janine," says Ray. "I'll keep the printer fed."

"Wireless networking is great," Ecto says cheerfully as the data begin to print out.

[precocioustilda.livejournal.com]

"Delightful!" She beams. "I can imagine it would be, yes."

[gone_byebye]

"She uses it sometimes to go to the museum with me," calls Ray. "I bring Francis along and she has a wireless webcam feed through his optic unit."

"People get kind of weird about talking robot dogs sometimes," confides the talking car. "But we manage."

[precocioustilda.livejournal.com]

"Really, I don't see why they would. It's only a talking robot dog."

Matilda's sense of the bizarre is inherently skewed by the fact that she's more or less growing up in Milliways.

[gone_byebye]

"I think it's the dog part," Ecto says. "Meat dogs aren't allowed in public buildings. Machine dogs are different, but they're still not used to the idea."

There's a last zzlerp noise from Janine's desk. "Printing's done," says Ray.

[precocioustilda.livejournal.com]

"Terrific!"

She goes to have a look at the results, bringing them back to where she can more easily stand and talk to Ecto about them. Ooh. Numbers.

"Find anything particularly interesting so far?"

[gone_byebye]

Ecto is more than willing to talk in some detail about the fluctuations and variances she's found, but her narration regrets that just this once, pulling said numbers out of thin air is an offline function. Would the waving of hands be acceptable here for that?

[precocioustilda.livejournal.com]

Heck yes!

Eventually Tilda stops oohing and ahhing over the shiny figures long enough to comment, "It's so nice finding someone else who can do these sorts of maths without resorting to external hardware."

Yes, she's finally accepted her own mathematical savantism. A few months' worth of being her social circle's designated calculator will do that.

[gone_byebye]

"I am the external hardware," Ecto points out. "It makes a difference."

[precocioustilda.livejournal.com]

"Well, yes." Beam. "Isn't that what I said?"

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"Math is different for squishies than it is for machines," says Ecto. "We're based on math. You're based on chemical reaction. You guys can't help it if most of you aren't as good as machines are, that's all. People like you and uncle Egon are kinda the exceptions."

[precocioustilda.livejournal.com]

"Point." Tilda nods. "Which is why the only people I know who can do it are artificial intelligences, and your uncle Egon, apparently."

[gone_byebye]

"He says it runs in his family. I found a couple of papers on the Net from people named Spengler who wrote about number theory, but I can't download them because I don't have an educational institution account," Ecto says grumpily. "Dad says he's gonna try and get me one at Columbia, though."

[precocioustilda.livejournal.com]

"If mine were valid in this universe, I'd help," she offers. "Or I could see if they exist in my world."

[gone_byebye]

"Sure. Just don't bother with anybody named Oswald. He's not a mathematician, he's a historian. And a really gloomy one."

[precocioustilda.livejournal.com]

"I'll make a note."

One of her omnipresent notebooks is removed from her omnipresent grey bag (don't look to closely at what else is in there), and she writes: look up number theory papers by Spengler. Ignore Oswald.

"There! While I'm at it, anything else you've been having trouble with?"