(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]

Alyx walks to the elevator without complaint, slightly embarrassed but also tremendously relieved that Ray isn't upset.

She'll ask him about that 'grad student' thing once the guard is gone.

[gone_byebye]

The ride down is awkward and silent, but in the end goes off without a hitch. Once they're on the sidewalk on Fifth Avenue, Ray glances over at Alyx. "Bathroom, huh?"

[vance_prime]

A sly grin. "Sorry. Can't resist a challenge. I miiight have done a number on the security cameras, too."

[gone_byebye]

"If it weren't for the fact that it'd end with somebody getting kicked squarely in a very sensitive location, I'd almost say you need to be introduced to my colleague Dr. Venkman," Ray says. "He used to pull that kind of stunt all the time at college."

He flashes a small smile and adds, "They'd've called for the real police if they were going to charge you with actual property damage, so we're probably all right. Let me call for Ecto and we can head out from here."

[vance_prime]

Alyx nods, then hesitates. "Dr. Stantz? What exactly do you do for a living?"

[gone_byebye]

Hoo boy. Ray could actually answer this question about six different ways, but at this point it's easier to grab his wallet out and just flip it open to the ID cards:

- the State Department ID indicating him to be 'Ambassador-At-Large For Issues Of Non-Human Sentient Beings', signed by Secretary of State Flaherty;

- the Defense Department ID indicating membership and advisory capacity in the Paranormal Threat Reduction Agency, signed by Secretary of State Keller;

- the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (Sanitation Division) ID listing off all of the things he's legally allowed and in fact charged to do to paranormal or supernatural threats to the good people of New York City, signed by Public Health Commissioner Frieden and Mayor Gonick, and

- a Ghostbusters business card.

"My world's a little weird," is all he says as he waits for the reaction.

[vance_prime]

"...no kidding."

Says the woman whose world has been conquered by extradimensional aliens twice.

[gone_byebye]

"My colleagues Dr. Spengler, Dr. Venkman and I started off as parapsychology researchers at Columbia University," Ray says. "Trying to scientifically investigate and quantify the existence of ghosts and other paranormal phenomena's more difficult than you'd think, and we lost our grant pretty quickly. We wound up going into business for ourselves as private investigators into said phenomena and eliminators of the really troublesome kind, and ultimately wound up having to deal with the effects of the Shandor Building ourselves because no one else in the country was even remotely qualified to handle a four-fold dimensional cross-rip of that magnitude. Everything else proceeds from there."

[vance_prime]

The words 'dimensional cross-rip' are what Alyx locks onto.

"How did you handle it?"

[gone_byebye]

"The portal formed by the cross-rip was constrained by the building's architecture," Ray says. "Essentially, locked in position between several major superconductive structural elements- Ivo Shandor may have been crazy, but he knew what he was doing. Our primary tools of the trade are what we call proton packs- man-portable nuclear accelerators with positron colliders that produce particle streams capable of sharply warping local spacetime. Crossing the streams results in a transdimensional interaction that would institute total protonic reversal in everything along the streams back to their sources under normal circumstances, but given that Shandor had already torn reality a new one, quite literally, instead drew the edges of the gap close enough together to force the portal's energy gradient to reverse itself. Gozer and the rest of the attendant detritus from the other side were forced back through the portal before the worst of it slammed shut. Reality's still a little porous in the vicinity, but it's not getting any worse."

[vance_prime]

...huh.

"I don't suppose you could give me documentation of the physics behind that reaction?"

[gone_byebye]

"Egon's got the data back at the Firehouse," Ray says. "You're more than welcome to it. It made his old professors back at MIT cry when he showed it to them, fair warning."

[vance_prime]

"I'll manage," says Alyx. "Where was Ecto going to park again...?"

[gone_byebye]

From off to the left, northward on Fifth Avenue, there's a brief honk. Ray glances up in time to see the hearse come rolling down through the traffic light and stop just shy of the 'No Parking' zone designated for the buses. "No clue where she goes, just that she comes back when she's needed," he says. "She's a little big for most city streets. Up to the park sound good to everyone?"

[vance_prime]

"Sounds good to me."