The Damocles Solution 5

"'ey, Janine, ya think you can slap on the firehouse alarm and get Peter outta bed?" Winston turned up a corner of his mouth, smiling sarcastically as he fumbled with the new, heavier proton gun. "Seems that it's the only thing that's gonna get his day started now."

"Naaaaaah," said the redhead, who was purposely not looking over the top of her beginner's algebra book at the two men, and a third in particular, working across the room. "Though you don't wanna know how bad I want to do that again. When I did that before he began shootin' his mouth off how he'll cut my pay if I hit the alarm with no ghost to catch." She flipped a page. "And besides, I just don't want him to start thinkin' that alarm was installed in this place solely for his benefit."

Winston raised a hand in defeat. "Points taken, m'lady."

She turned to Slimer next to her, who had previously floated in from the kitchen, finished eating everything not nailed down. "Isn't that right, Slimer?" she said with a playful, crafty smile.

Slimer babbled in agreement before pretending to take another look at her desk, covered again with books. There was the latest book from Doctor Phil Dendron, Geraniums – And More Tales of Love and Loss on the corner, and attracted by the bright cover, he moved himself above it.

Janine raised a finger warningly at him. "Don't go near that book from Dr. Dendron, Slimer. That's a personally signed copy and I don't want any slime I can't get off on it!"

Slimer nodded vigorously in agreement, and resumed his place over her shoulder, scratching his head and stroking his many chins in utter confusion at her algebra book.

Winston turned to Egon. "So lemme get this straight, this is an ectoplasmic sniper rifle now?" He looked up and down the gun, impressed, from what he could grasp of Ray and Egon's technical dissertation on its use, but not looking forward to getting used to carrying more weight.

"Yes, you could say that. It now, in effect, has that option. And right now, just leave it as an option you will not want to use very often." Said Egon with his usual gravity.

"Is it gonna go boom if I shoot it?"

"I estimate that there is a very good chance you can get away with maybe ten plasma shots before it should be recalibrated . Constant recalibration will be needed to keep it from overheating, and, eventually, exploding itself and anything near it in a half-mile radius."

Ray chuckled. "No need for an overload button on this pack!"

Winston shot Ray a serious half-glare. "I prefer to keep an overload button on this baby, cuz' it'll give me the mistaken comfort that I'm just shooting and not overloading it. Now, go over that stuff again with me in case I missed somethin'."

Egon gracefully ignored the overload button banter and addressed Winston. "In essence, what I said was that instead of a stream, this feature compresses the energy discharged into a single, bullet-sized mass. At that point, it stops resembling a proton wave and becomes more of a kind of molten plasma. I assume it would be good immediately after firing, to set it back to stream and keep firing to make sure it returns to stasis. "

He gently took the gun out of Winston's hands and demonstrated. "I made the scope you chose for yourself detachable, and it fits in this slot of your pack. Also I have a sort of spring-loaded buffering cushion that'll fit over your shoulder. The kickback from this, I calculate, will be incredible."

"Wow guys. Why just just make a tank and roll in there with that?"

Ray grinned, his face becoming eerily fox-like. "Hey, you're pretty good! That's a future project we're thinking of working on! Isn't it?" he said, turning to the tall physicist.

Egon's answer was a slight upturned corner of his mouth, and a mischievious glint in his icy blue eyes as he replaced the scope on the gun.

Janine rolled her eyes hard from behind the book. Oh my gawd. A tank. Talk about new ways to do stupid things. But, she sighed as she thought, boys will be boys.

And they better be smart enough to let me try it when it's done.

With all the enthusiasm of a ten-year-old, Ray pointed at Winston. "Wanna help us work on it? You can even be the first to try it in combat if you want, too!"

"Uh, nah, man. Bein' the guinea pig for this new thing is quite enough for now!" answered Winston with a rather fearful wave of his hand.

The phone rang, and Janine picked it up. "Ghostbustas—spooks happen, so we zap 'em and we trap 'em!" Setting down the book, the three men could see the smug smile on her face as she tried out a new line. Slimer laughed and cheered when she winked at him.

Ray, Winston, and Egon stopped and groaned simultaneously. "She must stay up all night and think of stuff like that to say," added Winston dryly.

Her face fell as the unknown speaker continued, which made her scribble furiously at the notepad in front of her. After a couple of rather perturbed "say it again?"s, "uh-huh"s and "yep"s, and a final "I'll pass along the message", she simply hung up, and resumed reading her book, kicking her leg as was her habit when irritated.

Peter, in the meantime, had finally arisen and changed, and made it halfway down the stairs, rubbing his eyes and barely grunting out a "whozonth'phone".

"Nobody," answered Janine with a quick, dismissive tone.

"Was it my girlfriend?" asked Winston.

"Was it my aunt?" asked a worried and concerned Ray. "I dunno how my aunt will be feeling this year and the faire back home is soon—"

"Not fer either of you," snapped Janine.

Winston persisted. "Was it a job? An emergency? A ghost?"

"Nah."

Egon took a moment to clean the lenses of his glasses. "It is entirely inappropriate for a secretary to not tell us what the phone call was."

Winston shrugged. "If it's not an emergency, and it ain't a job, and no one won the lottery, who cares? It was probably a crank call. That's what we have a secretary for."

"I beg to differ," said the tallest man. "Peter?"

Rubbing his eyes, he slipped past them all and plopped into his chair. "Janine? Did I win the lottery?"

"No, Doctor Venkman."

"Then carry on."

Smiling smugly at Egon, Janine continued perusing her book. A thought crossed her mind that sometimes Dr. Venkman was indeed useful. She then reconsidered, as he probably already figured out a little of just went on this morning, resulting in her now unusual formality with Egon, and was simply having a grand old time seeing Egon—no, seeing both of them-squirm a little. Damn him and damn his psychology expertise.

And squirm Egon did. Expecting support from his long-time friend, and not receiving it, he looked rather like someone who had just discovered he forgot to put his britches on that morning.

Recovering, he cleared his throat. "Janine, please let us know what the call was about," he said, replacing his glasses and formulating his words, more than speaking them.

Janine sighed. "Here, Slimer, please take this message over to Dr. Spengler. It's in shorthand, but I am certain that Dr. Spengler is well-versed in it. It'd be more…pro-fesh-un-al…than handing it myself."

Egon's recovery was futile. Slimer docily brought the note over to the wide-eyed, stiffened scientist, who now seemed as if he were just slapped. The little green ghost floated back over to Janine, who laughingly opened up the top drawer of her desk and threw a still-wrapped candy into his eager mouth.

The flush slowly drained from Egon's face as he scanned the now-very-slimed note.

Ray, who had been exchanging glances and shrugs with Winston the whole time, finally broke the silence. "So? What is it? Is it a crank call?"

Egon's face grew darker. "I have been invited to a dinner in the Hamptons sponsored by the Eastern Paranormal Interest Coterie, and I may bring one guest."

Ray's mouth fell open. "Woooooow…the Hamptons, home of some of the most expensive zip codes in the US!"

Egon looked at each of them in turn. "Ray? Peter? Winston? Are you interested in going? The dinner event is in three days; the lectures and meetings begin in two."

Peter clopped his feet on top of his desk, and leaned back, always trying to test how far he could go without falling over. "Jeez, two days? Don't these fru-fru-shee-shee people consider that there are people, that don't have people to rearrange their livesfor them or something?" Peter complained as a resounding knock was heard at the front doors. Janine promptly got up to answer.

Winston waved the invitation off. "No way. What happens in ghostbustin', stays in ghostbustin'. I'm sure I won't get a single word anyone says about anything anyway."

Ray sighed. "Well, I can't go, I'll be leaving later tonight because I promised my aunt I'd be there for her. Sorry, but…this time, my family is number one. I wanna keep my schedule pretty clear when I get back, too, because I'm telling her I want to get a call the second she needs anything. I asked Peter to go, too, so I guess he has a choice here."

Peter closed his eyes, considering. "Gee, Ray, should I go to a faire, which promises myriads of girls in hot weather appropriate clothing, or should I go to an overstuffed meeting featuring women who insist on bringing travel irons in case their dutifully closed top button wrinkles?"

Egon looked puzzled. "I'm sure it can't be that bad, Peter."

Returning from answering the door, Janine accompanied two men up to her desk. One was recognised as the Chief of Police, the other a stately man in a long dark trench coat, strangely pushing a shopping cart of envelopes.

Not missing a beat, Peter turned to the visitors. "How 'bout you guys help me decide? Would you wanna go to a faire or would ya wanna go to a penguin summit where people give you dirty looks for not using the correct fork for your olives?"

The police chief grinned. "Let me decide that fer ya, Doctor Venkman. Here in Mr. Martin Stanford's cart we have lots of things you can do, and it will definitely take more than three days."

The man in the suit and trench coat pushed a bit on the cart. "I am Martin Stanford, as you have heard. And, Dr. Venkman, I am acting as an agent of the court, to serve you these subpoenas to appear as an expert witness. The city has run into issues with multiple landowners on Fifth Avenue and needs your expert testimony in defending the necessity of your elimination methods."

Peter lost his balance, fell over, and ran over to the shopping cart. "WHAT! You mean to tell me these are all COURT CASES I hafta DO! Because of that thing on Fifth Avenue!"

Still smiling, the police chief pointed at Peter. "That's right, kiddo. You're the talking head for this group, and you're the one that's gonna clear up this little mess for the city. I suggest you call both the girls and the penguins and tell 'em you have other plans." He gave the court rep a light pat on the arm. "Let's go so they can think about how they're gonna rearrange their prom dates, Mr. Stanford."

Peter desperately opened a letter or two, hoping that this was some very sick joke. After reading a few of them, he turned to Egon. "Spengs, you're the thinking brain if I'm the talking head. Look at these! You gotta tell the court you'll do some of these. Some are even at the exact same time!"

"I cannot until I go to the meeting, Peter. I will handle some when I get back from the trip," answered the physicist.

Peter walked over to him, infuriated. "You're gonna wine and dine with a bunch of snooty, dust-encrusted farts while I'm here getting fried to a crisp because the city had an overpowered class 7 on Fifth Avenue and now it's OUR problem they called US!"

Egon was now genuinely annoyed at his comrade's thoughtless accusation. He crossed his arms, and looked down at Peter, his sheer hight making himself look, indeed, rather threatening. But of course, Peter was one fo the very few people in the world that could push him to that point. "The two names on this paper that requested my presence at this affair are none other than the two people, along with myself, who have the ability to decode the Ragnarok spells. One name is the gentleman that taught me how to decode the heiroglyphs. This could be an issue of national, if not world, importance. I must go."

Of all the eyes that went wide on hearing that, none were wider than Janine's.