(no subject)

[gone_byebye]

The door opens, as it generally does, onto a grey and dingy alley in Manhattan in mid-September. Ray glances up at the sky, then says, "Hang on a second." A few moments later he trots back from the street. "Okay. Had to check the paper- once in a while the door puts me out in the wrong universe, but this is definitely mine."

The newspaper in his hands has a headline involving someone called 'Super Dave', but the paper is folded in half, so it's hard to say what else it's talking about.

Comments

[vance_prime]

"Maybe it'd be faster to list what I can do?"

[gone_byebye]

"Stick close to me and do what I do?" Ray suggests after a bit.

[vance_prime]

Alyx smirks. "I can handle that."

[gone_byebye]

"Great," says Ray. "Ecto, we're clear for the rest of the day, right?"

"Uh huh."

"Okay, cool. What kind of stuff do you want to see in this city first, Alyx?"

[vance_prime]

Good question! "I don't know. I don't know what there is to see."

[gone_byebye]

"We should probably go to Central Park to start with, then," Ray says. "It'll take us through a lot of the city to get there, and it's trees and grass and all kinds of other things once we arrive. Ecto'll take us, if you're okay with that."

[vance_prime]

"Sounds good to me." Alyx grins. "I call shotgun!"

[gone_byebye]

Ecto giggles and stands up to her full height of twenty-three feet. "Okey-doke!" she says, stepping into the street and transforming back into the hearse. Both front doors immediately pop open. "Hop on in!"

[vance_prime]

Alyx slides easily into the passenger's side. If she grins any wider the top of her head might fall off.

[gone_byebye]

Ecto revs her engine herself as Ray trots around and slides into the driver's seat. A moment later they're on their way down the street, past some of the tallest human-built buildings Alyx is likely to have seen in her life- and they keep getting taller as they head north along Sixth Avenue.

"Give a yell if you see anything you want to know about."

[vance_prime]

The buildings are getting bigger, and the streets are getting crowded. Alyx can't remember the last time she saw this many humans in one place. "How many people are there in this city?"

[gone_byebye]

"Total, or just on this island?" Ray says. "We've got one point six million people here in Manhattan, but there's close to nine million in New York City total."

[vance_prime]

It's questionable whether there are nine million people left in North America in Alyx's world.

"Wow."

[gone_byebye]

"New York City's one of the biggest cities in the world," Ray notes. "Biggest city in the country, certainly. There was a time when this was the most densely populated area on the planet, too, but that was back around the end of the nineteenth century. Somewhere in Asia has the distinction now. Hong Kong, I think."

[vance_prime]

"Where do they all sleep??"

[gone_byebye]

"A lot of these buildings are apartment buildings," Ray says. "Different levels of size and quality, of course. But you need to have thirty and forty-floor buildings all over town to house that many people on one island."

[vance_prime]

Alyx lets out a long, slow breath. "Incredible."

[gone_byebye]

"There's actually even more people here during the day than that," Ray says. "Most of the daytime population of New York City doesn't actually live here. They come in from out of town to work- that's why there's so much traffic, it's people driving into and out of town. We've also got a huge mass transit system for people to travel around the city underground. Manhattan couldn't really function otherwise."

[vance_prime]

"And it's safe underground?"

[gone_byebye]

"Structurally? Yeah, although it needs serious revamping to deal with hurricane-level rains," Ray says. "Criminally? We're still working on that. Although I've been using the subway since I was fourteen and haven't been robbed, assaulted, or anything else even once."

[vance_prime]

Alyx was thinking more along the lines of 'are there zombies or giant bugs down there,' but based on what Ray just said she's going to assume the answer is 'no.'

"Hm. Must be nice."

[gone_byebye]

Just exceptionally persistent rats.

"It's okay. There are cities with much nicer subways," Ray says. "And it smells nasty during high summer... oh, hey."

They're coming up on 33rd Street.

"See that building up there? That's the Empire State Building. One of the tallest buildings in the world."

[vance_prime]

"...and it's human-built?"

[gone_byebye]

"Yep. Ecto, how old is it again?"

"Finished in 1931," Ecto replies, blue lights pulsing on her dashboard. "So it's seventy-seven years old this year."

Ray nods. "There we go. We've got taller buildings in the United States and a few taller buildings elsewhere in the world, but the Empire State Building's older than all of them. And they're all human-made."

[vance_prime]

A low whistle. "There's nothing that big back home that wasn't made by the Combine. How long did it take to build?"