milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Ray hasn't been in sight for most of today (he's been sticking things to other things and cutting things up before sticking them together, and you may take that however you like). He's had it about up to here with that for the day, though, so he's in the bar now.

Did you know that if you just ask the Bar for 'food', and you're geekish enough, she gives you this brownish stuff on a plate? It's not recognizable visually and it doesn't smell like anything particularly memorable, but it tastes ... um... not very recognizable either. It's just food.

He's got some. Yay him.

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Ray nods, listening, and then winces. "Oh, damn. That's not going to go over wel, is it? I can hear the insurance adjusters weeping from here. Just how bad did it get?"

"Messy. Rex always has the worst damn timing. He could've pulled that Guggenheim trick any time he wanted. So what does he do? Picks the month they were doing Calder mobiles."

"Ever try untangling fifty mobiles? Almost makes me glad I'm here after all."

"So what's this I hear about you almost getting eaten by a shark?"

"The last time I had to deal with something like that, it involved my nephew Alex getting into my old box of chemical molecule modeling kits. Not nearly the same, but I was stuck picking nitrogen atoms out of my sister's carpeting for a dog's age."

"And his name is Ed- at least the part I can pronounce- and he never even got hostile at us. Just stated a warning. We were scuba diving with Naraht. What did Peter tell you?"

"Haven't seen Peter yet. Just overheard some chatter in the bar."

"What kind of warning? A "don't mess with me" kind of thing, or is he trying to claim part of the lake for himself?"

"Talk about pains in the ass. Last thing we need is a turf war in the lake."

"Ah, okay," Ray says. "Basically, he said he'll do his best to follow the Bar's rules and that he's aware of them, but he's got instincts and one of them is to end distress. Terminally. Which basically means, no blood in the water and no freaking out."

"No freaking out? When are people here *not* freaking out?"

"I suppose somebody's posted a note in the bar about it? Guess as long as people are careful that's one thing we don't have to worry about."

"Saw Naraht sunning herself out there too. Figured I'd better steer clear of that one. Not sure there's much I can do to help, and I don't suppose she needs more men hanging around just now. I swear I leave this place for a week and look what happens."

"Oh, by the way. Brought something for you."

K reaches into his pocket and pulls out one of the PDA-ish devices Ray's seen him use before.

"Mine didn't help much during our mission to your New York, but I thought you might like to have one to play with. It's classified but it belongs to our lowest tech-level, so my boss was fine with my giving you one."

"It's called a Spectral Analyzer, but that title's deceptive. These bands of color here scan a lifeform and compare it to a library of known species. The color pattern tells you what you're looking at."

"It's a bit limited, and there are lifeforms here--like Horta--that aren't listed in the MiB databases. But you might get something out of it."

"I mean no freaking out while they're in the water. Spazzing out in water that contains a giant shark is a good way of attracting 'mmm, big tasty bait' attention. At least he's too big to get into most of the shallows- and, yeah, there's a notice posted, so people are aware of it."

He sighs. "You missed it last night. She got bored with her research books and started singing to herself before she found out about siren song." He holds up his right hand; the second joint of his index finger is heavily bandaged. "I was in range. So was Pete, and so were a lot of other people. I kind of broke the skin trying not to respond. Wound up having to hit her with a paper wad to get her to break it off, and there was a lot of fuss afterwards from some of the affected parties.'

The device, however, draws an 'ooooooh' and a very interested look. "Okay, this I gotta see. Thank you! Did you want a PKE meter in return? NOt much good on the living but if any of your alien visitors have psychic powers, it'll generally notice when those are operational."

"Damn. Have to ask bar for some earplugs. I don't think MiB has anything to counter mermaids. Guess I better stick around more. Not sure if I could have helped, but you never know."

"Actually, Ray, a PKE meter would be just the thing. I mentioned it in my report about this place, and it's got our tech guys buzzing. They have a feeling there might be a lot in our world we're missing because we never thought of having something to scan that part of the spectrum. I think you guys have an edge on us when it comes to psychic abilities."

"Just be sure to use a plastic or ceramic wedge when you're opening the shell. The motherboard's sensitive to conduction. Don't want to have you losing any more fingers there."

"Any chance of Naraht switching back anytime soon?"

"Well, she's not really likely to sing again. Massive guilt fits on her part; she's got enough of a conscience not to inflict that on anybody again." He looks ruefully at his bandage. "I'm just glad I'm left-handed."

He nods. "Well, that makes sense. You guys are xenobiology and advanced sociology. Me and Pete and Egon and Winston, we're parapsych and a couple of really odd branches of physics. I've got a spare meter upstairs- fair warning, though. If they're overloaded too quickly, you won't have the option of shutting it down. The presence of supersaturated psychokinetic energies in the very immediate vicinity, which is to say within two or three yards of the meter, has been known to make them explode before they can be switched off. The ensuing craters were roughly the size of a Toyota hatchback. Given that one of these was used to attempt to measure Great Cthulhu at a distance of a hundred meters or so and it didn't explode then, proximity and concentration of power are greater factors than mere power level."

He sighs a touch. "She won't be shifting back for a while, I don't think. Not until the pathogen burns itself out. Raven doesn't know how long that's going to be."

K looks up sharply at Ray. And very carefully sets his bourbon back on the table.

"Did you just say Cthulhu?"

"Um.... yeah," Ray says hesitantly. "I've... the first time I left the Bar after coming here, I wound up trapped in an alternate continuum nearly parallel to my own, and at one point during my tenure there, a cult managed to get hold of a viable translation of the Book and raised the Big C out of the waters off the southern tip of Brooklyn. Why?"

"You're telling me you had a raising of a Great Old One off the coast of your New York?"

"Damn. We never even considered the possibility. We'll have to run a scan off our coast too, just in case there's some bleed between our dimensions."

"We've always had some problems off the coast of New England, but *this* is something else altogether."

Ray nods. "The stars were very briefly right, and the book involved was the only accurate English translation of the Necronomicon. It wasn't exactly my New York- like I said, it was a late 1980's cognate of my own continuum- but it was close enough to make no real difference. There were a few incidents of the Spawn of Cthulhu in the sewers, the cult at one point whistled up a Shoggoth or two, and we only got out alive because we snagged a professor from a certain university in Massachusetts who invoked Nodens on our behalf when Big C got ugliest. We wound up getting his physical form dispersed just in time for the stars to go wrong again, but it's a sixty year cycle for the Brooklyn summoning site, so I suggest you plan ahead."

"Hmm. Ok, it might be just *that* dimension, which would be a relief. We haven't had absolutely positive confirmation of Mythos activity on our plane, but there have been some definite spillovers from *somewhere*."

"And that's one category of aliens we can't take any chances with."

'Aliens' being at least one term for what the Great Old Ones might be...

Well, they do come from beyond the stars, so that probably counts.

"As my colleague Dr. Spengler so eloquently put it, Cthulhu makes Gozer, the Sumerian apocalyptic deity who nearly destroyed New York, look like Little Mary Sunshine. I'll give you all the reading data I have on the big guy and the other Mythos entities we encountered, so you'll recognize it if their traces come up on the PKE meter."

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