milliways_bar | Ex-emperor Inna Bar

Possibly. But whether he is or not, Ray doesn't know. Ray has all the temporal / intentional / spiritual awareness of your average cantaloupe.

This may be unfair to the cantaloupes.

In either case, Ray happens to be settling down at a table not that far from the Observation Window. He likes the view. He's a little odd that way. Tonight, the view is a bit secondary; his tray from Bar included not only his usual drink (which is dark green, faintly opalescent, and gives the occasional hint of sluggishly moving), but a slim volume on the sword-drawing art of iaido. It's got a fair number of pictures in it, including the one on the cover; he's peering at it thoughtfully and almost entirely neglecting his drink in its favour.

In short, the mun really wants to RP, but has no idea how to get these two together, and this seemed like a possible opening. Or something.

One eyebrow raises in spite of Paul's training against such obvious tells. He's seen several men here wearing swords, but this...

"You are no swordsman. May I suggest a less dangerous course of study?" He can be very polite, but not when someone's health might be at stake.

"Oh, I'm way past the point where that would do me any good now, sir," Ray says almost cheerfully. "Considering that I spend most of my working days running around New York City with a man-portable nuclear accelerator strapped to my back, a little thing like an edged weapon isn't going to make all that much difference. In for a radionuclide, in for a technetium cow, eh?"

"You regularly use atomics?" Astonishment, well, a little. "This New York must be a very contentious world. I hope you don't see fit to bring atomics here, even my knife would be but a blade of grass against that."

Seeing no hint of agression, however, his mood softens immediately.

"What's your name, warrior?" with just a hint of sarcasm at warrior.

The use of the word 'atomics' niggles at something in the back of Ray's skull, but he's running just a bit slow on his recognition today. It may be some time before it surfaces, if it does so at all.

"Actually, it's only a city," Ray admits. "Of about twelve or thirteen million people, but we haven't got star travel yet and we haven't even colonized the Moon- heck, we don't even have underwater cities yet- so thirteen million squished into one place is going to cause a lot of disturbance. Not that it matters, because the proton packs aren't being used against anything still among the living."

His mouth twitches, and he gives a small, wry smile. "I wouldn't go so far as to say 'warrior', honestly. I'm a Ghostbuster; I've had to fight a lot of supernatural entities and extremely unpleasant things that meant to put an end to my existence and the rule of the living, but honestly? The last time I saw a human being killed, I spent the next fifteen minutes being violently ill. My name is Raymond Stantz. I'm a scientist. And, uh, an apprentice Jedi knight, but I don't know if that counts for anything either."

Paul rises, intrigued at the talk of supernatural entities.

"May I join you? I'm Paul, of the House Atreides. I never encountered supernatural forces before coming here, outside of children's stories. But having seen some of what happens here, it would be good to know how to fight them if necessary."

"..."

THAT's where he's heard 'atomics' used before. Ohgodohgodohgod-

He shakes himself rapidly to clear the fanboy moment out of his head, and rises. "Please, go ahead," he says, offering one of the other chairs. "It'd be an honor, sir. They've, uh, they've actually asked me to help with that here- the security staff is carrying four of th etraps my colleagues and I use for snaring and removing ghosts back home, just in case something particularly obstreperous breaks loose-"

He sits back down again before he can say anything else, because one more word and he's going to go off into a torrent of fannish babble. And that would be bad.

"Indeed, not all the patrons follow the Rules." He thinks of the fight between Tim and Q. "I have an interest in the security personnel. I need something to occupy my time besides enjoying the food, and I have knowledge of the ways of violence and power they might find useful."

"Yeeeeah, I was just talking about the security folk with a friend's wife-to-be earlier," Ray says. "I've already got several messages I have to bring to them, either to Faith or to Barry Allen depending on who I see first. Shall I tell them you're interested in lending a hand? I'm sure they'd be glad to hear of it."

He looks down at the book that was in his hand before. "I strongly suspect that you're referring to something at a far more important level than just stopping fights and putting down the dangerous incidents as they happen. Which I suspect they would really appreciate, considering."

"I can help with beligerent patrons, if needed, but there are things going on here beyond hand to hand combat. I'm afraid I'm out of my league with creatures like the Endless or other godlike entities, but only through lack of experience. Please mention me to the Management. It has always been my duty to help keep the peace."

Except when revenge got in the way.

"You bet, sir," Ray says. "And may I just say it's an honor to have an offer like that extended? I'm only occasionally employed by the management myself, usually when there's a matter calling for detective investigation or epidemiological work or the supernatural, but I think I can safely say they'll find your offer a very helpful one. Thank you in advance."

Yes, well, there are duties and there are duties.

"You speak of the supernatural, but I take it you don't mean the entities who call themselves Endless or gods. I have heard of ghosts, but the only dead I have seen are here, and they're as human as I. How do you combat disembodied spirits, if that's what you mean by ghosts?" Paul is one of the dead, himself, of course.

"That's precisely what I mean, sir; in my world they're at least as common as- well, as certain types of household pests, since I'm not sure what species' frequency they'd most correspond to. The lower-level ones aren't much more than ectoplasmic bundles of pure uncontrolled emotion, usually hunger or rage or hate or lust or something likethat, and they're prone to unleashing that on anything and everything in their immediate vicinity. The more coherent ones aren't as common, but they do a lot of damage to make up for that fact."

He grins. "It's the atomics that do the trick, you see. Starting from heavy water, if you put the right quantum spin characteristics on the derived protons by passing them through a positron collider, you end up with a high-speed stream of subatomic particles that has exactly the right set of energetic characteristics to interact with the psychoenergetic matrix of the ghosts as they manifest on the prime material plane. A couple of good zaps and they can't exert themselves enough to drive anyone mad any more, or even just to get away, and that's when we whip out the traps, suck them in, and get them off the scene."

"Understand, of course, that we only do this to the ones that're a genuine threat and danger. There's plenty of ghosts out there who're harmless- they just haven't moved on. There's a theatre on Broadway that's haunted by an actor who died about a hundred years ago. Nobody minds, since he behaves himself. They think he's good luck. And around here, of course, there's the embodied dead. But they're the same as any other patron, just like you said. Besides, there's the no-business rule. Dead people here who cause trouble? That's just grounds for calling Security."

"Hmmm." More food for thought. So, in his world supernatural beings can be trapped. And the dead can still inhabit the places of the living. By implication, these traps might work here, as well.

"I wouldn't seek to harm anything that means no harm, but I have reason to believe there are beings here that are manipulating us to their ends. These, I would like to see 'trapped'." Poor pup, he still doesn't understand it's not ghosts or gods writing down the fates in Milliway's.

Ray blinks. When you're talking to someone who's spent a lifetime or two chin-deep in the political intrigue of centuries, you take talk of manipulation seriously.

"What sort of beings are we talking about here? Anybody I know?"

"Have you met an Endless one? The one who calls himself Dream claims immortality and has every appearance of omnipotence, the same with Q and the Raven. And I have been told of an Asar Suti who was once worshipped as a god and overthrown, coming here ostensibly in peace. Any one of these should be able destroy us easily or leave at will, yet they don't. Why, and why are we here?"

"I have seen how our decisions are being guided, but I don't by whom. I only know it must be someone as powerful as these gods."

Ray nods. "I've met all of them," he says. "Asar-Suti comes and goes a lot, though usually it's in someone else's company. Q, well, he comes and goes as he pleases, but Q's a jerk. The other Q beings kicked him out of his Continuum once for too much screwing around with humanity, although they took him back in the end. Raven's been involved with the human race almost since the beginning, if you give the stories about him credence. He likes people."

"Dream, now..." Ray steeples his fingers. "Dream, I think, is pretty much everywhere. If he appears in Milliways, it's because he chooses to make himself physically manifest here. Dream is more than a god the way roots are more than leaves, from what I understand. He's got siblings, too- all of them concepts. And the thing is, he's not the scary one... he's dream and imagination all right, but one of his brothers is Destiny. I don't think I need to tell you of all people just how unnerving a prospect that one is."

Paul frowns. This hits close to home. Does Raymond know his story the way Beowulf did? He searches the man's eyes. Damn his lost Sight!

"You know me, don't you? You're not from my world, unless from some place in the Scattering after my time. A man I met who came from a world that may be far in my personal past brought me stories of my family written like prophesies or myth. Have you read these?" Paul still has Herbert's series in his suite and studies it every day.

There's only one person in the Bar who's a worse liar than Ray Stantz, and that person was in withdrawal from a lifetime of government-mandated psychotropic drug use at the time. This, perhaps, is why Ray opts not to even try.

"Pre-starflight Terra, sir," he says quietly. "About twenty thousand years before your time- ten thousand or so before the advent of the Spacing Guild if I remember correctly. Some of the documentation I've seen indicates that the historians of later years have us down as having been ruled by House Washington."

Mmm, the Dune Encyclopedia.

"That, and I'm currently very personally involved with a woman who happens to be a time traveler. We've been all over the space-time continuum together... but basically, it's the first part. I read the first one when I was ten years old. It was a gift from a family friend."

Terra, in one of the most ancient languages. But he speaks Galactic Common, like most in Milliway's.

"So, Raymond of Earth, You come from a time even before my acquaintance, Beowulf of Home, yet still you have read of me. And the supernatural has some power there. Very curious." How many here know his story, and therefore his weaknesses?

"It seems the power of those who would control our lives reaches far beyond this tavern. You have met a personification of Destiny, do you think this might be the manipulator I'm seeking?"

Ray nods. "The story was written down and published about eight years before I was born," he says quietly. "The author died when I was still in school. I don't think it had anything to do with the supernatural, if that's what you're thinking. It's just that ideas- stories, images, what have you- have a tendency to leak from universe to universe, slopping over from one to another in such a way that they wind up in the collective unconscious as archetypal elements. Or as whole, entire stories. At least, that's how it seems after as much research as I've been able to spare around here."

He considers. "I don't think Destiny is necessarily a manipulator, per se; he has a book that supposedly has everything recorded in it. I've never heard of him doing anything to it. Just... reading." He looks down at his fingers on the table. "Which, frankly, scared me more than the prospect of anybody trying to make me do anything. I wasn't raised to believe in destiny. My parents taught me that free will and free choice were the most important thing...." He glances out across the Bar. "If there's anything genuinely manipulating us here in Milliways, I don't think it's him. I think it's whoever wrote the book. Or whoever is writing the book, now. Because if they're writing that book, then it's their stories and ideas slopping over at us even as we speak."

"No matter what biographies and propaganda are written about me, my story is written only by me." Speaking not only to the Earthman, but whoever may be listening. "If I find the book that Destiny reads, I will burn it. I can make my own mistakes, I take the responsibility for them. My parents also taught me the importance of freedom, and if I am to be condemned, it will be for my decisions and no others'"

Ray nods. "Good," he says firmly. "I had a hell of a time convincing some of my other acquaintances here in the bar of that. One of them was living in constant fear of the writers for a while. I don't know what finally snapped him out of it- it sure wasn't me. I kept trying to get him to understand that he was still free-willed, that he had to take responsibility for his own fate and not curl up in a ball and wait for some mysterious pen-stroke to kill him."

"And before you ask- there are stories about me. I've seen them. They're pretty accurate, but I don't feel any particular need to worry about someone else claiming control over my life. There's too many possibilities out there for that to be the case. I'm the master of my fate and the captain of my soul, dammit."

"That is the hardest thing, sometimes, being your own man. If you know my history, you know holding even the highest throne didn't make me invulnerable to manipulations, because I knew my enemies better than myself."

"The story of my world is finished, though. Even if I could return, I couldn't pay my water-debt. But I can still honor the memory of my mother and father. If you ask after me to those in security, in helping them to keep the peace I can at least fulfill my first sworn duty."

"But that's for another time. I've kept you away from your studies with my ravings. Please forgive me, Raymond." Paul shifts, seeing that the house lights have grown dim and many patrons have left, indicating the Restaurant's 'night' period has begun.

Ray nods. "I'll be sure to let them know as soon as I see them," he promises. "And no worries. I'll be practicing with a training remote for most of tomorrow anyway. It was very good to meet you, sir."

Paul's boyish half-smile betrays his mirth. He knows practice with trainers, there is a particularly nasty one primed and ready for him in his apartments upstairs.

"And you, sir. We should train together sometime. We could share thoughts about the respective strengths of blades and atomics. Until then, may you never want for water."

Ray chuckles. "Sounds good to me. And, uh-" Crap, it's been years since he read the books- "Long days and pleasant nights to you, then, and the Force be with you."

((OOC: Thanks for the RP!))

[[ooc:fanboiz. Ray with lightsabre, Muad'dib toying with the One Power. Milliway's rules!]]

Ex-emperor Inna Bar

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