gone_byebye | (no subject)

Ryan starts to stand, extending a hand to River.

"They work better than-" he shoots a glance at the green ghost, "-better than the other things?"

He's afraid that if he actually says 'jelly beans', he will be slimed.

River takes his hand, interlacing her fingers with his, pulling in tight behind him as she peers over his shoulder at the spectacle.

"Dear sweet Galileo on a pogo stick. That's a -- ghost?"

"Like I said, I'm pretty sure he's more of an embodiment of the concept of appetite than the ectoplasmic remains of a formerly living individual," Ray says. "But, yes, that's pretty much a ghost. He doesn't hunt the seeds down nearly as much as he does the other things, so keeping them around spares me scrubbing off a lot of ectoplasmic goo."

A minute shudder goes through Ryan's shoulders. He hasn't missed the ectoplasm.

"While that's keeping him busy, I believe we should get started?"

"Yes, please."

This sounds like a double plus good idea at the moment, as she watches little black seeds and sticky ectoplasm fly in a two foot radius around Slimer.

"Oh ugh."

"That, right there? That's my typical workday. When I'm not on the State Department's clock, anyway." Ray shrugs. "Anyway. That's Slimer. He was the first ghost we ever busted. The betta in the tank on Janine's desk there is Walter Peck, a former Environmental Protection Agency agent with some serious issues and a bad temper. The skull hanging from the ceiling was the result of a very unfortunate incident wherein I followed a Milliways patron back to her world, which happened to be Earth around a hundred and ten million years ago. If you'll follow me up the stairs I can show you some of the labs here before we continue on our way- oh, and our library, it's not much in terms of size but it's one of the best specialized collections of esoteric lore and history this side of Miskatonic."

...tourists, right. He remembers how to play this. And he is genuinely interested in the differences between the animated continuum and this one.

"Fair enough." He allows himself a faint smile. River will want to look at the books, he knows. "Lead the way."

Her eyes follow Ray's finger as she takes in the flora and fauna of the firehouse. "Oooo, you have a library?" Her grip on Richard's arm tightens a bit.

Called it, he did.

"It's not like we're going to let anyone else take care of our books," Ray says, and starts up the stairs. "This way. Oh, and don't mind the tenant of the big aquarium in the rec room. Someone caught Blinky in the lake at Milliways and I offered to take him home."

Blinky is about nine inches long, orange, carp-shaped, and possessed of three eyes, all of which do in fact have the ability to blink.

"It's kind of a pity Miss Eartha isn't here- she's out with Egon at the moment. Someone has to carry the books home, after all... oh, you'll like this; this is my end of the lab, here." Ray nods at a diagram on one of the walls. "I've been working on adapting one of Nikola Tesla's designs from 1905 for about a year now. He was attempting to make contact with extraterrestrial entities he believed were attempting to signal Earth wirelessly, and in the process managed to build a device capable of sending up a series of energy pulses detectable by entities that move through the fourth dimension as easily as you or I move through all three. I'm trying to work out exactly how he did it so we can make sure it doesn't happen again."

They're getting to the science talk, aren't they?

Ryan'll just be over here, patiently looking things over and not touching anything.

River's eyes flit from diagram to diagram, taking them all in for later perusal.

"Oh good heavens. What kind of entities were they? Not friendly we've-come-to-fix-all-the-ills-of-your-poor-backwards society, I take it."

"Unfortunately no," says Ray. "Significantly more alien than that; Tesla couldn't figure out what to call them, beyond 'time spirits'. The one that showed up in his labs turned out to have a tendency to record time somehow- it could cause objects to age up or move backwards along their entropy gradients to a point when they were younger. He managed to build a temporary containment device for it, but it got loose a year or two ago, and it was 1905 on Manhattan Island for three days."

Ryan tilts his head at that. "That's the thing that invaded the bar for a bit, correct?"

He loathed those clothes.

For River's sake, he explains a more. "A bit like Cubefall, only 1905 themed and not voluntary."

"Oh really. I should have liked to seen you wearing tweed, Captain," she teases. "I bet you cut quite the dapper figure."

To Ray, "A temporal containment device. I should like to see those plans sometime. But that's not what we're here for, so I won't sidetrack us."

Much.

"Right. I'm sorry it ran so long, it was an influence that had to be allowed to fade away at that point... anyway." He throws open an equipment locker and rummages around in it. "I've got those scanners here..."

Ryan steps in a bit closer, peering over Ray's shoulder at the kit.

River sits back, watching the two of them with an affectionate smirk.

"So tell me, Ray, you were mentioning filtering and then shielding the recorder from our PKE fields."

Ray nods. "It's a moderately complicated technique that requires a lot of familiarity with extremely sensitive monitoring equipment, but I'm pretty sure I can pull it off without a hitch."

"You've done something similar before," Ryan guesses. He's still watching to see if he recognizes anything, but he won't be disappointed if it's all just Science to him.

"I would think so," she says to Ryan. "I mean, it was his idea to even try this. I wanted it to be a surprise, but I couldn't get it to work properly. He merely glanced at my notes and knew exactly what the problem was."

"Oh here." She pulls out her sonic screwdriver and pops open the side hatch. "This is for you, along with this." She hands it over to Ray, with the tiny copy she'd constructed, designed to hang off Richard's dog tags.

"A few times, yes," Ray says. "Both here and in one or two of the other universes I've landed in. It's a more basic procedure than I'd previously expected, but everything in the lab really is once you get right down to it- ah, thank you, that should do nicely-"

"So this should be simple, then, correct? What did you need from me?"

Presumably, he'll have to stand still for a moment, if only so Ray has a current scan.

"Hold still, arms out at a forty-five degree angle- I want to get a scan from several positions and it's easier if I take my cue from the people at LaGuardia- and don't actively invoke any particular paranormal abilities or talents you may have," Ray instructs. "This won't take long."

River sits back and watches, curious. A bit amused at the sight.

Ray considers the screen a moment as he straightens up from the scan. Then he nods. "Okay, now turn around, we're almost done... there we go. I think that's enough data, that should do it."