"Bring Your Daughter to Work Day"
2001 had brought a great deal of change to New York City.
Egon and Audrey had debated for months about leaving.
Swapping their inner city apartment for a house in the leafy green suburbs, switching the uncertainty of the city for suburban safety.
Ultimately they decided against it, after all, this was their city, Iris's city. Their apartment was her birthplace. It was home.
The following year, Iris Spengler turned 10 years old.
She was tall and lanky for her age, towering over James and the rest of her school mates, but as precocious as ever.
Her height made her self-conscious, resulting in her being introverted and unable to relate to others her own age.
Except James.
James was the only other person her age who understood her, the only one who wanted to be her friend.
But the two were happy to have their own exclusive club.
No one else understood what it was like to be the offspring of a Ghostbuster anyway.
It was a regular Saturday morning when Iris awoke and reached to her bedside table for her glasses.
With a yawn and a rub of her eyes she put on her glasses and sat up.
Hang on, she thought. It isn't a regular Saturday at all!
Audrey had left the night before for Australia, a long overdue visit to see her parents.
It meant that Egon was in change of running the household - a prospect that had led Audrey to cook a freezer full of meals and write several long lists of emergency phone numbers.
It also meant that Egon was going to have to take Iris to the Firehouse with him today if he was going to have any chance of working on his fifth round of psychomagnotheric slime studies.
After breakfast (cereal with chocolate milk - Egon had accidentally bought it in place of regular milk), Egon and Iris caught a cab to the Firehouse.
It was a place that had always delighted Iris.
The clutter, the mustiness, the tools and gadgets, it had all captured her imagination and fed her love for science.
As Egon held the heavy front door open for her, Iris entered the building and took a deep breath.
She trailed her dad to the office, where he pulled off a couple of Post-it note messages from the pinup board and read them with furrowed brows.
Janine greeted Iris with a wide grin as she stood and watered a droopy looking pot plant on her desk.
"Hi Iris! Gee, you're getting tall!" she said, causing Iris to hunch her shoulders self-consciously.
Janine looked over at Egon who was busy flicking through a stack of paperwork, and whispered to Iris.
"If you open up my top draw, I have a candy bar for you. Make sure you share it with James."
"Thanks Aunt Janine!" replied Iris as her mouth began to water.
She'd definitely inherited Egon's sweet tooth.
Iris followed Egon upstairs where Peter lay on the couch looking sorry for himself.
"Hi Uncle Peter!" piped up Iris, causing Peter to wince.
"Hi kiddo," he replied with a scratchy voice.
"Oh no, are you sick?" she asked.
"Something like that," replied Peter, holding a hand to his head.
"That's called veisalgia, Iris. Observe and avoid," said Egon, casting a smirk in Peter's direction.
On the next level of the Firehouse was Ray, who was hunched over the cluttered workbench pouring spoonfuls of slime into test tubes, a look of deep concentration on his face.
James was behind him, spinning around and around on a chair, bored.
Egon couldn't help but smile at the scene - it was a perfect reminded of how their lives had simultaneously changed and stayed the same.
"Morning" greeted Egon, bringing Ray back to reality.
"Morning" he replied before turning around to James and stopping his motion mid spin.
"Enough, you'll make yourself sick" Ray told him firmly.
James slid off the chair and moved to Iris, who was still standing at the door to the research room.
Normally she would enter and take her time looking at all the chaotic experiments, the paperwork, but today she was in the mood to explore somewhere else.
They greeted each other with their secret handshake before excusing themselves from the room.
"Don't touch anything that looks expensive" came Ray's advice.
"Also leave Peter alone, I don't think he's in the mood for conversation" added Egon as they left.
"Where are we going?" asked Iris, as James led the way downstairs.
"Let's go check out the basement" replied James. "Dad's been working on something cool down there."
They snuck past Janine who was at her desk, her nose buried deep in a trashy romance novel, and tiptoed down the stairs to the basement.
As they entered the dank and dimly lit workspace, they found Slimer.
He was as disgustingly ghoulish as ever, but a lot less mischievous.
As he hovered in the air, he picked up a handful of nuts and bolts from a large box and distributed them between two containers, sorting them.
Iris furrowed her brows at the sight.
"Dad let this guy out of the containment unit. His name is Slimer and he's one of the first ghosts they ever caught. Dad's trained him to be a helper around the place. Pretty neat, huh?" offered James.
"Yeah, really neat" replied Iris, slowly stepping towards the ghost.
She wondered if she could talk to him, interact with him. Iris had always had a gift for ghosts.
"Hi Slimer," she said, reaching her hand out to him.
Slimer stopped what he was doing, letting a handful of nuts and bolts scatter across the floor, and stared at Iris intently.
Iris held out her hand, offering it to Slimer, hoping to get a feel of him.
Slimer leaned close to her, as if wanting to tell her something.
"What is it Slimer? What do you want to say?" asked Iris, staring up at his large eyes.
"UUUURRRRP!" replied Slimer, letting a large, stinky burp erupt from his mouth, coating Iris in a fine mist of slime.
He turned away from her, completely unfazed, and went back to work.
Iris turned to James, her face caught between shock and horror.
"Get me a Kleenex!" she demanded to James as she began wiping slime from her cheeks.
James was too busy laughing to hear.
"Er, the kids have been awfully quiet..." said Ray to Egon, interrupting the silence they had been working in for the last half an hour.
"You're right" replied Egon, his eyes widening.
The two raced downstairs in a frantic rush to find Iris and James.
After a mad couple of minutes, they hurried down the basement stairs and stopped in their tracks at what they saw.
Iris and James were sitting of the floor in front of Slimer, helping the ghost sort handfuls of nuts and bolts and placing them into their correct containers.
They were chatting with Slimer, who seemed happy enough to reply with a mixture of oohs, aahs and grunts.
Occasionally they would praise him and toss him a piece of chocolate from Iris's candy bar.
"So this is how you've been getting all those extra jobs done, hmm?" Egon asked Ray with a raise of his brow.
"It's just a little side project" replied Ray sheepishly. "He's surprisingly useful when rewarded with doughnuts, and Hershey bars too, it seems."
"Let's head back upstairs, these two seem okay down here" replied Egon as he and Ray snuck back upstairs undetected.
"Do you ever get the feeling that the next recruits are already in training?" Ray asked Egon with a chuckle as they re-entered the research room.
"All the time" replied Egon with a smile. "Just don't tell that to Audrey and Linda."