(no subject)

[gone_byebye]

Tuesday, October 28, 2008
14 North Moore Street
Manhattan

Ray really should've seen it coming.

Not the phone call from Washington. He knew that was coming the instant Dr. Tsybenko submitted the most heavily profanity-laced facsimile the Firehouse had ever received, regarding the sudden and vicious phenomenological onset in the Caribbean. Not the news from the Australian Coast Guard regarding the Vieras-1, the Uruguayan fishing vessel that'd been dropping nets recklessly in Lemurian waters; he'd been tracking that boat just in case, because nothing said 'diplomatic incident' quite like making a sentient population into fried calamari. Not even the constant stream of cackling and muttering from Walter Peck's fishbowl. That was sort of inevitable.

No, what Ray should've seen coming was the part where he opened the door to the side alley that he and Jhalak always used to get into Milliways and saw only an alley...

Comments

[facile-fivefold.livejournal.com]

Jotoki can't really nod, but Jhalak raises and lowers its central body mass a few times in imitation of the gesture.

"It's okay," it says graciously, and goes back to its fruit.

[gone_byebye]

Winston steps back, letting go of Ray's mouth. Peter, on the other hand, moves forward. "I know what you're gonna say, Ray," he says. "You want to go to the Pacific and see if you can't talk these guys out of sailing somewhere stupid, am I right?"

"Um-"

"I'm gonna have to put my foot down and say no way in hell." Peter folds his arms over his chest. "Wanna know why?"

"Um..."

"I never thought I would say this," comes Egon's voice from the stairs behind Janine, "but Venkman's right."

"Thanks, Spengs, I- hey, I didn't even get to explain!"

"No explanation necessary," Egon says grimly. "Ray, have you read the Waller Protocols?"

"I thought they were just a set of monitoring rules for the no-go zone around Point Nemo," Ray says, bewildered. "You know, to lay out whose duty it was to keep boats away from oh sweet funky Imhotep no. No-"

"Yes," says Egon. "I'm afraid so."

Ray twists in his seat to look up at Winston. "Am I jumping to conclusions? Is it really that bad?"

"For once, Ray, it really is."

"Excuse me," interjects Peter, annoyed, "but I believe I was supposed to be the one traumatizing Mr. Ambassador Who Doesn't Read Things He's Supposed To Be Reading, people?"

"Sorry, bro."

"Apologies, Venkman."

"Thank you." Peter sniffs. "Anyway. The reason we don't go talk to the nice stupid people in the fishing boat is because we don't want to come back glowing like we just spent a month in New Jersey. You might not have read that fax from the Defense Department, but I did."

"On the can," Winston adds in an undertone.

"Hey, the important thing is it got read, okay? Ray, we're not gonna go talk to the fishermen because if the navy doesn't get them to go away, there's this little tiny detail where the government decided it was more important to keep people from bugging Cthulhu into waking up than, oh, pretty much every treaty ever. Pretty much one out of every four nuclear weapons in the country are on tap for anybody who approaches the area without a signed note from the President."

[facile-fivefold.livejournal.com]

"Nuclear weapons create massive explosions by triggering a chain reaction of atomic fission, usually of the element uranium."

It pauses to munch on some fruit, then waves a hand illustratively.

"Boom."