Ghost Mitosis

I.

Jillian Holtzmann is a genius. But, you wouldn't know it. Her crazed flyaway hair, tinted glasses and stained coveralls are more the style of a grease monkey or some sort of steampunk cosplayer. At least, those were Abby's thoughts when Holtzmann kicked open the door of her lab at Higgins Institute. Over her shoulder, she carried a backpack held together by duct tape and a Stone Roses patch.

Abby capped her pen and regarded this strange apparition before her.

"Can I help you?"

Holtzmann grinned and swung her glasses down so they dangled on one ear.

"You want to catch ghosts, right?"

Abby frowned, "Did Daniel Peters put you up to this?" Dr. Peters was a bored, cynical chemical engineer at Higgins; his only pleasure came from taking the piss out of the Paranormal Investigation Department, which was comprised of only one faculty member and a few kooky undergrads looking to bolster their resumes with extracurriculars. So, really, Peters only liked taking the piss out of Dr. Abby Yates.

"Never trust a man with two first names," she said and gave Abby a little wink.

Abby raised her eyebrows, "Who are you?"

"Apologies, m'lady," she sunk into a deep bow, "Dr. Jillian Holtzmann, at your service."

"Are you serious?" Abby gaped: This was the doctoral candidate that had the likes of Edward Witten salivating- I am the foremost theoretical physicist and even I couldn't dream up the circuitry of Jillian Holtzmann's brain. Abby dredged up all the tidbits on Holtzmann from her memory: She had finished her PhD defense at MIT by age twenty and, due to a radical and subversive blueprint on a device that split atoms allowing corporeal passage to alternate dimensions, all funding was cut and she had disappeared from the engineering world entirely.

"I'm not what you expected," Holtzmann acquiesced, "I get that a lot."

Abby remembered herself, "I'm sorry, Dr. Holtzmann. Forgive me. It's truly an honor to meet you."

"Likewise." Holtzmann extended her hand, but when Abby went to shake it, she found a closed fist. Holtzmann knocked her fist against Abby's palm. "Boom!" she broke apart her fingers, the universal sign for an explosion.

Abby shook her head, smiling despite herself.

"We'll work on our handshake," said Holtzmann, "I come bearing gifts." With that, she stoops down and unzips her bag, exposing a pastiche of steel planes and copper tubes bolted to complexly wired circuit boards.

Abby stooped down as well to get a better look. Holtzmann freed the device from the bag and laid it tenderly on the floor as if she were handling an infant.

"Is that-" Abby began.

"Yeah, I've been working for years on this baby."

"It looks like a mini particle accelerator."

"That's because it is. A mini cyclotron to be exact."

Abby was aghast: "But, the latest accelerator is the size of a small town!"

"They don't have the Holtzmann finesse," she said, a bit saucily.

Abby looked up into a pair of clear blue eyes. Those were honest eyes. "Does it work?"

"If you mean generally, yes. If you mean, have I successfully captured an electron mitosis? Not yet." These words tumbled out on a single breath and Abby is struck by the lack of embarrassment in her tone. Perhaps, Abby should take a leaf from Holtzmann's book and quit being an apologist for paranormal research.

"But, do you realize what this means?!" Abby sputtered, "If your accelerator works, you've normalized the technology! No more billions of dollars in subsidy! Poor physicists like me can do independent research!"

"True," replied Holtzmann, "I built this thing out of junked cathode ray tubes from old computers- but, Dr. Yates, I think you're missing the point."

"Call me Abby."

"Abby." Holtzmann smiles subtly, "You're missing the whole glorious point."

Abby sits up in her chair. She snaps her fingers excitedly. That was it! The whole glorious point! She casts around the firehouse, which had become the Ghostbusters' new headquarters, looking for a certain quaffed engineer. There's Erin pouring over old notes on nuclear structures, chewing on the end of her pencil. She knows Patty had gone out to get dinner for them. Kevin had left early to make tryouts for New York's first ever professional flip-cup team. Abby frowns, knowing she had just seen Holtzmann go into the bathroom.

"Is Holtzmann still in there?" calls Abby.

Erin looks up; her eyes are like a raccoon's. They had all been working double-time in the last months under a rather oppressive government agenda: Find a way to prevent Rowan's Vortex-as it had come to be known-from ever happening again.

"What?"

"Is Holtzmann still in the bathroom?"

Erin gives a non-committal shrug. "I'm not her keeper."

"Riiiiight," Abby drawls. Erin had been too disinterested about Holtzmann recently and, after all these years, Abby knows when Erin is being deliberately coy. She would have to revisit that.

Erin hangs her head, "Yep, she's still in there."

Abby giggles and walks down the hall to the bathroom.

"Holtzmann! You in there?" calls Abby, knocking on the door.

There is a muffled bang, something metal hitting porcelain, a swear, the sound of a tap squeaking shut.

"Holtz, if you're flushing hazardous waste down the john again, so help me God I'll-"

The door swings open and there stands a rather frazzled Jillian Holtzmann, drenched collar to belt in blue tinted water.

"We have to stop meeting like this," she says.

Abby laughs, "What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm building a Cartesian Diver."

"A what?" Abby pauses, "Wait, nevermind- I need to talk to you."

Holtzmann nods and beckons Abby through, "Step into my office, Dr. Yates."

Inside, the toilet is overflowing with blue dye and small packets of soy sauce. Abby decides to forge ahead, "Do you remember the day we met?".

"Oh, it's one of those talks." Holtzmann leans cavalierly against the sink and winks.

"In your dreams, Holtzmann. No, I'm talking about the cyclotron, the one you brought to me that first day."

"Go on."

"Have you successfully witnessed an electron split?"

Holtzmann counts her fingers, "One, two… seventy-eight times."

"Okay, okay," Abby concedes, "Elementary. But, you still think it's possible to examine the energy transfer at that moment of mitosis?"

"Hmm… interesting, Dr. Yates. You mean capture and preserve the moment of mitosis?"

"Yes."

"I'm an engineer, it's a little beyond my reach. I can calibrate the accelerator and whip up some extra-super-sensitive body tubes. Why don't you let Gilbert take a crack at it?"

Abby considers this, a little hurt that Holtzmann had deferred to Erin as the expert. "Sure. Yeah, I'll talk to her about it."

"What's your game here, Abby?" Holtzmann asks, pushing her glasses up, "Why are you suddenly so interested in my youthful aspirations?"

"Okay, you know how Homeland Security has been breathing down our necks?" Here, Abby becomes excited. "What if we're spending our energy thinking of way to close the portal to the Afterlife, when we should really be thinking of opening it."

Holtzmann fixes her with a serious look. She advances, grabbing Abby's face with both hands, and peers gravely into her eyes. "Rowan, is that you?"

Abby slaps her hands away, "No. Jesus Christ! You get possessed by a ghost one time and now you're always suspect!"

"Sorry," says Holtzmann, "Had to be sure. So, what's this? You want to open the portal?"

"Yes, I want to travel through to the other side and-"

"Take the fight to them," Holtzmann finishes. She too, snaps her fingers.

Abby smiles, maybe she had adopted the gesture from the erratic engineer. That happens when you spend a lot of time with a person.

"You want to harness and amplify the energy of an electron split," Holtzmann continues, "and use it to rip a hole in the space-time continuum so that we can get through and blow the shit outta ghosts!"

"Yeah- I would probably use different terminology- but yes! Essentially, yes!"

Holtzmann begins hopping on one foot, her wave of blond hair bouncing comically. "We're gonna build a bomb, a big bomb, I'm talking the purest nuclear fission. And then we're gonna put it in a paper bag and light it on fire and ding-dong ditch Beezlebub himself!"

Both women begin to squeal, Abby jumps with Holtzmann, swinging her arms around the engineer's neck.

"I knew it." Erin appears in the threshold, arms crossed.

Holtzmann hops over toward Erin, towing Abby with her, and envelops the mousy physicist so they are a giant hugging octopus.

"Abby's a genius! Abby's a genius!" Holtzmann cries.