milliways_bar | (no subject)

Jim looks at Ray. "Good morning. What's in South Dakota?" Even in Kirk's time, there isn't much there to elicit interest besides Mount Rushmore.

"A federal prison facility," says Ray. "Apparently they've had an escape that the FBI's given up on, so they're asking for us to come in and have a look. Hi, Jim. Any word on your legal status?"

"No offense, Ray, but you don't seem the federal marshal type." He smiles and waves Ray over.

"My legal status is..." The smile gets bigger. "I was demoted. To captain. And restored to my command. Whoever said that no good deed goes unpunished was wrong." He pauses. As only Captain Kirk can. "I have a ship again. A new Enterprise."

"From what they said I'm gathering there may have been slime involved," Ray says with a wrinkled nose. "Hopefully we'll be able to get some readings this far after the fact- you were? Seriously? Oh, that's fantastic! The real thing, a full-blown exploratory ship and everything, not just a science vessel or something?"

"A fullbown exploratory ship. Practically the same model as my old one. All things considered, with my current fame and popularity, they had to do that. I guess there are some advantages to being called a hero. I just hope after this, it doesn't happen again." Oh, he knows it probably will, but there are hundreds of other ships, so maybe next time someone else can save the day.

"Slime?"

"Sweet," says Ray. "Congratulations. Definitely. That's gotta be a pretty incredible feeling."

He nods. "Yeah, ectoplasm. The stuff materializes out of atmosphere when there's a cross-planar or cross-dimensional manifestation- it's the result of ionization across the planar interface, and unfortunately it generally takes the form of anything that could be remotely gelatinous in the local air or occasionally liquid matter coalescing into an especially sticky and pernicious form. We see a lot of it with the critters we bust in New York every day. Someone might've pulled something dimensionally funky in Yankton from the way the prison guys were talking."

"It is, for the most part." He doesn't feel like talking about Antonia at the moment.

"So this prisoner might have crossed a dimensional barrier? Or had help from the other side? Who was he?"

"They haven't given us a name yet. Confidentiality rules- we don't get to find out until we're actually given his physical record files." Ray wrinkles his nose. "He was a non-violent offender, though. Yankton's maximum security, but they had him housed in the section where they keep felons who've committed the less spectacularly nasty offenses."

"Ah, the joys of bureacracy. Bones just said the other day that its' the universal constant, and he was clearly right. I suppose there are reasons for such things.

"Does this mean that you are now officially working for the federal government, or is this still a consultancy?"

"Still a consultancy," Ray says. "We're gonna be an NGO pretty much to the end of our days if I have anything to say about it. The Federal government's conducting their own darn paranormal activity survey nationwide- they're trying to get a baseline reading of everywhere in the country according to decently scientific principle so that they know how to allocate the response dollars and expected response times once they come up with their own responders. The Prison Service phoned us about what happened in Yankton because the FBI agents told them the paranormal survey wouldn't be getting to South Dakota for another six months or more."

"I suppose that approach makes some sense. And I think South Dakota still brings up the rear in the Western Hemisphere in my day.

"Any further news on the Deep Ones?" Let's face it - non-human species are more interesting than escpaed prisoners.

No arguments there. Ray shakes his head. "I haven't heard back from them yet, but I've been ordering every NOAA survey of possible locations for their settlements and doing my best to map out the sites of toxic spills or other potentially disturbing things humanity's done in the region. If they call me back, I'd sort of like to be able to tell them how we responded to particular incidents, just to be on the safe side. Not to mention Naval experiments with sonic weapons, which I can't imagine them being happy about."

"The world really likes to toss things at you, doesn't it? How much of this sort of thing do the other Ghostbusters handle?" Delegation, he must begin to remind himself again, is important, after all.

"Peter does all our marketing and financial stuff and our actual business planning," says Ray. "Egon's our big researcher and theoretician- if it wasn't for his mathematical work and his high-energy physics, we'd never've been able to make our equipment work at all. And Winston's our big man with the public when Peter's not up for it, not to mention all of the actual busting work he does every single time we go out. I'm just humanity's unofficial ambassador to the machine kingdom, and to all the other sentient wackiness out there, that's all."

Jim looks confused. "Machine kingdom? How many AIs does your world have?" He's heard about Ecto, but can't recall much.

"Three that I know of," says Ray. "Ecto's there. There are two other vehicular AIs in my world so far, one being the local analogue of Karr and one being the local analogue of Kitt. Our local Kitt's insane, unfortunately, but Karr's all right. He's paired with a former policewoman from Seattle. I deal with the machine intelligences around here a lot, though, and Ecto's been doing a net-wide survey on an ongoing basis in an effort to locate any other machine or code intelligences- just to be on the safe side. She hasn't found any yet, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything."

"Kitt? Karr?" Jim hasn't met either. "I would persoanlly suggest that you wait for an insane AI to cause an damage. Best to shut it down."

"No can do. He's based in a bulletproof vehicle and I don't have an EMP generator. That, plus I haven't got a clue where he is. Um- Kitt and Karr are a pair of vehicular AIs I first met here; they were built by Knight Industries to do the work of the Foundation for Law and Government in their timeline. They first came online sometime in the early 1980's. THey've got a brother, Eddie- he's a fighter jet."

Jim would probably suggest that whoever is uspposed to find insane vehicular AIs make finding this one a priority. But he's busy enough in his own world. "1980s...that's remarkable. We still don't have many AIs that are reliable. Most are...unstable."

I know, Ray thinks, but all he says aloud is, "The Knight Industries AIs are pretty stable, except for the Kitt in my world. The Karr who comes here is kind of a jerk, but so're a lot of human beings. Eddie was pretty messed up when he first came here, thanks to a decade or so of military researchers screwing around with his programming and his hardware. He's a lot better now. Saved my butt a couple of times, too, not to mention being part of an effort that saved New York from a dimensional intrusion in one of the alternate timelines I keep winding up in."

Jim considers this. He's never going to feel completely comfortable with AIs, or androids, or any sort of technology of that nature. But each timeline has its own culture.

"I find is interesting that such things work at all in your age. But the flow of techonology is apparently a lot more unpreditable than I would have guessed."

"No kidding," Ray says. "I haven't found anybody outside the timelines I've been to with operational Ghostbusters in them who's managed to miniaturize nuclear accelerators as far as we did before the end of the twenty-first century."

All things considered, ginve his own timeline's history, this is just as well. Khan was powerful enough.

"And at the same time, my timeline made advances in space travel even in your day that outstrip yours and most of the timelines I know. And we had a fairly advanced grasp of genetic engineering, though such things are not practiced anymore."

"Oh, yeah. We only just finished sequencing the human genome last decade- actually manipulating it with any kind of reasonable accuracy's a long, long way off. Gene therapy right now mostly consists of treatments for certain very specific diseases, and even that doesn't always work properly."

"We don't even allow that on Earth," he says matter-of-factly. "I think I might have once mentioned the Eugenics Wars? The revulsion at the results of those conflicts led to a global ban on anything manipulating the gene. Some worlds of course do allow such things, but by and large it's common practice throughout the Federation to use other therapies."

"I'm pretty sure you did, yeah," says Ray. "Our biotech's definitely laggy compared to where yours was at my point in the twenty-first century. Which I'm sort of glad about, because it's one more level of divergence from some of the things I've heard about that your timeline has in store for the mid-twenty-first century."

Jim knows he hasn't mentioned World War III or Colonel Green. Must have been Naraht.

"It would be quite a good thing if you could be spared that set of horrors. Though it would be interesting to see if the more positive events that followed in its wake would still happen. The creator of the warp drive felt the need to do something good for the world, and it's possible he might not have done so otherwise." Jim is unaware that Cochrane was quite the drinker, in fact.

Actually, it was Q. Well before Ray met anyone else from the UFP, he met Q, who seemed to take a liking to him.

"I'd almost be tempted to ask about his published work, but that'd probably count as cheating," Ray says. "Some of my dimensional experimentation's turned out to be pretty effective when it comes to making space do things it probably shouldn't be able to. If I can think of that sort of thing, I'm sure somebody else out there can..."

"As much as I'm willing to look the other way on the Prime Directive here, even I'd draw the line at providing information about warp drive. Though if you ever do develop your own theories about them, and if I can understand them, I would probably be able to tell you if you're heading the right direction." Not that Jim has a strong understanding of how his engines work.

Ray nods. "That's about what I figured. Romana's said she'll go over my math and compare it to basic Gallifreyan dimensional theory, since it looks as if I hit on the same initial research track as her civilization did a few million years ago. If I get anywhere beyond making objects larger on the inside than the outside, I'll let you know."

"Good luck with that. I'd say that since you've had first contact, you should at least have FTL capacity to go with it, even if the contact was unfriendly and unconventional." Jim decides to get up. "I probably shouldn't spend too much time here today. My new career awaits." And also some loose ends in his private life.

Ray nods. "Good luck out there, Captain."

Strong Bad checks something on the Lappy, then shakes his head. "Nope. Never been there. Never even got any emails from there. Though I did get one from North Dakota once."

"Oh, well, worth a shot," says Ray. "Hey there. how's it going?"

"Goin' all right. I got to give the welcome speech to somebody; for her sake, I hope I didn't screw it up too badly."

The Cheat is at Strong Bad's side, tugging at the "cuff" of his "boxing glove" in lieu of an actual sleeve. "Oh yeah, the letter from North Dakota was from the town of Cory. Or at least a Cory who didn't give a town. Asking if I could get The Cheat here to talk English."

"[Which didn't work out the way he was hoping,]" The Cheat adds in his own meebly way.

"I'm sure you did just fine," Ray says. "Considering that I tend to leave glazed-over eyes in my wake. Cory, huh? Never heard of it, but then again my phone call's from Yankton, SD, so it's not like anyone ever heard of there, either."

"[I'll bet. Do I get to ask how it did work out?]" Ray adds.

The Cheat indicates Strong Bad. "[This one tried to get me to say 'Douglas'. Not happening.]"

Strong Bad looks impressed and a little jealous. "Ray, dude, you should'a told me you spoke The Cheat! All I know's a couple'a phrases that push his buttons!"

"I don't actually speak it," Ray says. He digs a silver amulet out from under his shirt; it's got the Ghostbusters logo on it. "A friend of mine's a sorceror. He made me an amulet that lets me travel to his world from the front door. It has the side effect of allowing me to understand and communicate with non-humans. That's all."

"Oh, well, magic." A shrug. "Freakin' Milliways, man."

"[You should get the guy to make you one of those,]" The Cheat suggests. "[It'd make you truly unstoppable at lady-ing.]"