milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Back home there's everyday work (if dealing with possessed cinnamon buns and haunted highway overpasses- don't ask, but you really shouldn't take the BQE across the Gowanus for a while just to be on the safe side- can ever be called everyday), and an overenthusiastic ghost, and an angry sister. This is not very appealing to Ray right now. There's also his daughter, but she's a big girl. She can take care of herself for the handful of picoseconds between Ray heading for Milliways and Ray returning, Ray figures, much as he misses her while he's here. Right now he just doesn't want to deal with everything else back home. That'll happen soon enough.

So for the moment, he's reading a copy of the New York Daily News. There's a two-page spread on the city's proposed new disaster response plan. The police and firefighters' unions' response to the suggestion that special units be set aside specifically for the 'undefined phenomena' category of disaster is absolutely fascinating.

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"In reverse order: yes, and there's more than one New York?" No government conspiracy Munch can think of can account for that.

"Welcome to the Bar, then, and yeah. Yeah, there is. More than one version of Earth, strictly speaking. I have a map I've been putting together of where and when the visitors I've met are from, and there's a lot of multiple versions of familiar places. New York just leaps to mind first."

"Thanks. So, you're from a version of New York that has an increase in supernatural activity or something?"

For the record, Munch has never watched either of the Ghostbusters movies.

"Yeah, but it's only been genuinely measurable in the past three and a half years or so," Ray says. "This October, though? Completely insane. Not just at Halloween, either. We had a Sasquatch loose in the Bronx and a burrito in Fort Greene, Brooklyn that just started screaming and wouldn't stop no matter how many times it was whacked on the counter. And I won't even go into what happened in Morningside Heights this year. Hoo, they won't get the stains out without sandblasting."

Pause.

"Oh, yeah. My name's Ray Stantz. Pleased to meet you."

...And Munch thought his job could be interesting at times.

"John Munch. I'm a detective with the NYPD; Manhattan SVU to be specific."

"Whoo. Now there's a job I don't envy you," says Ray. "I don't mind the stuff we do with the dead most of the time, but real-world police work's out of my league."

Munch nods in what appears to be agreement. "So what are you, a cop for ghosts or something?"

"Something like that." Ray digs in his pockets and comes out with his duct-tape wallet, which he flips open. One side shows an ID from the City of New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (Sanitation Division), authorizing Dr. Raymond Joseph Stantz to investigate, confine, and remove spirits, ghosts, poltergeists, paradimensional entities, and other supernatural or paranormal threats to the health, life, and/or well-being of the residents of the counties of New York, Kings, Queens, Richmond and the Bronx.

The other side has his Ghostbusters business card in it.

"If it goes bump in the night, makes the dog speak Latin, or makes the walls bleed green, you probably want to call us about it."

Sounds like an interesting job, but Munch is glad that they don't have anything similar in his version of New York. Or if they do, the government probably has methods of covering it up so the public doesn't know what's going on. Typical.

"I take it you do a good business?" he asks, eyes flicking to the newspaper and back to Ray.

"Enough to pay the rent and some truly phenomenal Con Ed bills," Ray says. "We're not usually in the black for the year until October rolls around, but that's nothing unusual in the world of business. When I get back to the city there's probably going to be a stack of messages as high as my elbow about this news article, since unless I'm greatly mistaken the city plans on including a couple of NGOs in the response plan- and Red Cross only does civilian aftercare."

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