Chapter Two: In With The New
Dimension B
"Hey, Miss. Miss, you okay?"
Kimberly Venkman's head was spinning like crazy. The last thing she remembered was the Black Cauldron exploding in front of her and her fellow Ghostbusters, and everything going dark after. It somewhat helped that a foul smell came in and out of her nostrils, snapping her out of unconsciousness. She quickly realized where the smell came from – a hobo stood over her and tried to wake her by shaking her left breast, a method that was highly unusual to Kim. As soon as he saw that she was up, the hobo let go of her breast and took a step back.
"Oh, good. You're awake." He said. "For a sec there, I thought I had to call 911, which is – you know – hard without change for the payphone."
Kim sat up, rubbing the back of her head; she looked around and discovered that it was nighttime and she was in a park. And it wasn't just any park. "Central Park? I'm back in New York!"
"Best damn city in the world." The hobo said before extending his hand out to her. "My name's Harlan Bojay. What's yours?"
Kim looked at Harlan's hand; she wasn't certain where that hand had been, but she'd touched worse before in her career from slime to a decomposed corpse; a little handshake from a bum wouldn't hurt. "Kimberly Venkman," she said upon shaking hands with Harlan, only to realize that he was actually helping her back on her feet.
"Kimberly Venkman? Are you related to Peter Venkman?"
Her face scrunched in confusion over the name. "Who?"
It was then Harlan saw the "Venkman" nametag on her black, crudely-stitched flight suit. "Oh, well, I guess you'd have to be wearin' his name on one of their suits. Is this a new design they're goin' for with new recruits or somethin'?"
Kim was completely lost on what Harlan told her. She was thankful that she didn't have to worry about pondering over it much longer when someone with a groggily voice spoke out near them. "Yo, Harlan! Got another one up and walkin' again!" She turned her head to find another hobo that looked heavier than Harlan walking alongside a dazed J.G. Stantz.
"Great job, Robert!" Harlan told his homeless comrade just before he looked back to Kim and added, "See? We gotcha reunited with yer fellow recruit."
At the moment J.G. saw Kim, he rushed over to her and surprised her with a huge hug. From the way he was able to wrap his arms completely around her, Kim realized that she was no longer wearing the Underworld-enhanced Proton Pack provided by Doctor Finklestein. It was destroyed in the explosion that she and J.G. amazingly survived. "Venkman, I never thought you'd be such a sight for sore eyes! For a moment, I thought I'd lost everybody!"
Kim broke out of his embrace and looked directly in his eyes, expressing a serious side that he wasn't used to seeing from her. "There's just you and me here. Are the rest…?"
"I'm sure they made it across as well." J.G. assured. He then went on full excitement as he said: "Can you believe that we actually crossed between worlds and survived the experience?"
Listening to J.G. and his peculiar question to Kim, Harlan and Robert exchanged odd looks. "Hey, uh, you guys wouldn't happen to be aliens or somethin', would ya?" Robert questioned with caution.
"Why would you even ask that, man?" Harlan uttered in frustration. "Now they'll probably have us committed to Bellevue."
"Us? He's the one talkin' the weird shit." Robert retorted, gesturing to J.G.
As the two hobos started to bicker back and forth, Kim saw it as a perfect opportunity in walking away from them without saying a word. She grabbed J.G. by his left ear, tugging on it to summon him over to some nearby bushes that they used to hide in. "What the hell are you talking about, Jay?" she whispered to him.
"We didn't just cross between the Underworld and New York." J.G. explained. "We crossed over – way over!"
Kim raised a curious eyebrow. "To where?"
Reaching into his flight suit, J.G. pulled out a rolled-up and somewhat crinkled newspaper. The fresh stains on a few parts of it showed that he had just grabbed it out of a trashcan. He handed it over to Kim, who looked at the headline on the front page. "'New York Cleans Up After Ghostly Attack!'" Kim read, and she looked back to J.G. with disinterest. "This isn't anything new, Jay."
"Read the date above the headline."
She did as he suggested and glanced over the date. Her eyes widened in shock upon seeing the year. "1984?" Looking back to J.G. once more, she saw the ecstatic grin on his face. "Did we travel back in time?"
"Not exactly. We did go back in time, but twenty-six years in the past of another dimension – one that's not too different from our own." He indicated the front page article that Kim briefly read from. "The story here talks about a Ghostbusters team just like our own, except they're different people with different first names. In fact, their Venkman and Zeddemore are…"
"Men." Kim finished his statement as she already uncovered the connection long before he gave her the paper. "That guy back there mentioned a 'Peter Venkman' when I told him my name. I had no clue who he was talking about…until you showed me this."
J.G. tried to contain his excitement as he further explained: "They did everything we did just a few weeks prior to our arrival – fighting Gozer, taking down the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man…it's all depicted in this article. Venkman, we've found a parallel universe with Ghostbusters like us!"
His excitement became something of a nuisance to her. "Jay! Focus, will ya? We need to find Spengs, Dye, Meagan…"
"Lisa!" J.G. exclaimed, his excitement fading into concern. "Oh, my god! Kim, she was in that cauldron we…"
"Jay, relax. If we survived, then I'm sure she did with everyone else. It's like you said, remember?" J.G. nodded in agreement, although he was still a bit uncertain of Lisa's case. Meanwhile, Kim glanced at the newspaper again. "Maybe we should try to find these Ghostbusters, too. I don't think our expertise has reached the point of transdimensional travel."
"V-E-N-K-M-A-N…Peter Venkman. You've heard his name enough on television to know who he is."
Janine Melnitz had been on the phone for close to nine hours talking with the police on her missing employers. As the police kept asking for details on their disappearance, Janine grew more agitated; she wasn't clear on the details because she had no idea how they disappeared. Janine left for lunch for a couple of hours and returned to find Peter, Egon, Ray, and Winston all missing from the firehouse. At first she thought they were out on the usual bust in New York or somewhere out of town (maybe Jersey); but, after sundown, she knew something was wrong and contacted the authorities. She even made sure to bring up that "Mr. Woods" stranger who stopped by the firehouse a few weeks ago, giving them some sort of unusual proposition.
When asked to identify "Mr. Woods," Janine went totally blank on his description. He had the most striking appearance that she could hardly forget upon seeing him for the first time; but he made only one visit to the firehouse and since then she had managed to forget it entirely. "Look, just find the Ghostbusters, alright?" Janine told the officer in frustration. "Without them, this city will go straight to hell, you got that?"
She then slammed the receiver down on its hooks, knowing that she probably caused temporary damage to the officer's hearing from doing so; she also probably left herself open to be placed under arrest for rudely conversing with a police officer, but she didn't care. All that mattered to her was finding the Ghostbusters. It was an hour past midnight and they still hadn't returned, which made her more worried than ever. The stress soon took its toll on Janine, who stood weary at her desk; of course, she knew that falling asleep or going home was out of the question; there were chances that someone would call about or for the Ghostbusters, and Janine didn't want to miss it.
"Is everything okay?"
Janine's body jolted in surprise from hearing the unexpected visitor; she fell out of her chair and landed butt-first on the floor. Looking over her desk, she saw two people (a young, bespectacled black man and a middle-aged Caucasian brunette) walking through the empty garage portion of the first floor. Janine took notice in how they were wearing crude black versions of the Ghostbusters' flight suits (along with disheveled appearances) and grew very cautious, believing them to be nutcases. Quickly, she reached underneath her desk and pulled out an aluminum baseball bat.
Aiming the bat directly at the two visitors, who froze where they stood upon seeing her brandish it, Janine threatened, "Take one more step towards me, and I promise you'll be picking both ends of this bat from both your asses!"
The two "Wannabe Ghostbusters" rose up their hands fearfully. "Do you think she means it?" The brunette questioned to her companion.
Hearing her, Janine exclaimed, "Oh, I mean it, lady! I've been through alotta crap today! My bosses are missing, McDonald's got my order wrong twice this week, and I haven't slept in almost twenty-four hours! I am not the girl you wanna mess with tonight!" As she kept her eyes on the two strangers, Janine suddenly noticed how they had "Spengler" and "Zeddemore" stitched on the nametags of their pale imitations of the Ghostbusters' uniforms; she then came to a sudden conclusion about the two visitors standing before her. "Oh, Gawd! Y-You're them! The kidnappahs! You kidnapped the Ghostbustahs and are pretendin' to be them!"
"Spengler" and "Zeddemore" looked to each other in confusion. "Zeddemore" refocused on Janine and began to say, "We're not kidna—"
"I'm callin' the cops!" Janine quickly declared.
With one hand still on the bat, she used the other to reach for the phone on her desk, provoking "Spengler" and "Zeddemore" to protest against it. As Janine's hand touched the receiver, there came a flash of light at the corner of her left eye that made it briefly twitch and then another hand reached over and touched both Janine's and the receiver, holding both of them down. The hand that touched Janine's was completely white with black nails. Freaked out by the hand, Janine followed the arm up to see the hand's owner: a woman with black hair, a pale white complexion, and black eyeballs and lips wearing a tan Ghostbuster uniform with "Zeddemore" stitched on the nametag.
The woman stared at Janine and smiled. "Not tonight, sweetness."
Seeing the terrifying-looking woman in the standard Ghostbuster uniform (another that imitated Winston Zeddemore's, just much better than the other "Zeddemore" that stood in the room), Janine was so overwhelmed with shock that she fainted right into her desk chair. The woman gawked at the unconscious Janine strangely before turning to the other two visitors in the firehouse, who gave her the same look of shock that Janine did prior to fainting.
"I swear that I didn't pass it this time." The strange woman stated.