GEMINI RISING
PART EIGHT

By Fritz Baugh
GBI Case File GBNY-1999-17/613

The core was, to invoke a cliche, so quiet a pin drop could've been heard.

The face of "other" Egon had warped and distorted into a face they all recognized.

The face of Josiah Nodus.

"And thus...he was ready for the last step..." Nodus said.

Nodus Imagonem

It is almost time.

I would allow myself a moment of satisfaction, but that would be a human response. A human feeling. And I have divorced myself from the burdens of human feeling long ago.

I am a creature of logic. Reason is my forte. The messy thrall of sentimentality will not hinder my plans.

I stride around my laboratory. Maybe I will allow just the faintest ember of satisfaction after all...

My pride in this place would be justified, after all. It is a pocket continuum, filled with all of the paraphernalia I will need to carry out my objectives.

It hadn't been easy.

I literally willed this place into being; even in my feeling days, I could grasp the concept in a way no other human alive could, save perhaps one, and with the full force of my transcendance I learned what I needed to warp this reality to my whim. I have created the perfect laboratory and staging base.

But I needed more power to accomplish my perfection.

I pull on the mask, black with a red visor. Interlaced into it are various sensors and detectors, allowing me to observe several different bands of the electromagnetic spectrum all at once. It will also protect me from the intrusion of...unwanted psychic senses. Spengler's equipment I've already taken into account...it was, after all, my own.

The bodysuit is also shielded. It resembles cloth, but carries the protection of an intermeshed material of my own invention, more powerful than kevlar, and expressly designed to disperse the power of an alpha particle ion stream...

The vest and coat are of a look I would describe as "techno-Edwardian", but an anachronistic look is one I have favored since my human days. It is, again, armored against all attacks I could conceive being thrown against me.

And then the gauntlets. Packed into them is a significant amount of firepower, more than sufficient for the task at hand: I could even bust ghosts with it, ironically enough.

I pull the garb into place. After a series of checks, I determine that all is operating nominally.

"Plot dimensional jump to plane 8932 Alpha, Sidereal code 0701-7-C-6"

confirmed. access point?

"Primary access point. Grossjuck Plaza." Maybe there's a touch of irony in me still...Paul Smart's crumbled empire will serve my needs perfectly. And with one year remaining until the Zodiac Lords appear, I will have plenty of time to get my pieces in place

confirmed. dimensional shunt online. awaiting final order.

"Execute"

The shimmering gate appears. On the other side, an empty, closed office can be seen. It will be so easy, and so perfect, to make use of Paul Smart's crumbled domain to mask my true intentions.

I spare one last thought to the ones I left behind. My friends and colleagues. The woman who brought me such ecstacy and such heartbreak. They would never have approved of this action...but they lost any say into my life when they stabbed me in the back. I sneer a last curse at all of them, and angrily push them back out of my mind---wallowing in emotion will serve no use when my plan is so close to bearing fruit.

I step into the gate. The destiny of the universe begins today.

So swears...

Hm...what am I now?

Yes...

So swears Nodus...

"And so he went back into time...to 1990. Made a fortune in the stock market--he knew, after all, which way the stocks would go, because to him it was all recorded history. And he watched...and he waited...he watched the Ghostbusters from afar, and everything unfolded exactly as he'd seen the first time. Egon Spengler became Knot. Knot destroyed Sarim-Lar. Knot went back in time to try to find out what went wrong with the Ascension."

"I don't..." Ray rasped, his throat barely wanting to make the effort of speech. "I don't believe this..."

"Do you understand what it was like? Seeing it all happen over and over again? Failing?! Over and over again?!" Nodus pulled himself upright. "I observed the sequence of events unchanged ten times. I began to wonder if I'd trapped myself in some manner of causal loop. I've lived for over one hundred fifty years..."

The false face of Nodus faded away. The hair was white, but the goatee was still there. The face was lined, but still recognizable--to a one, they realized it drove home his resemblance to Egon's uncle, Cyrus Spengler. But it was unquestionably also the same face as the younger, cleanshaven Egon Spengler standing not ten feet away from him...save for the eyes.

His cold, dangerous blue eyes.

"And finally, I realized my error. I am a scientist. I must investigate. On my last unsuccessful venture, I intervened. I arranged for the Ghostbusters to go to Romania and meet Lord Saggitarius. I obtained a sample of the Gemini Force from the Avatar." Nodus shook his head. "And still the Ascension failed. Until I came back one last time. Until..."

He glared at Egon. "You chose differently. You turned Sarim-Lar down. You changed everything. You returned to your mundane life...Raymond Stantz stayed in California, and married. You formed the Extreme Ghostbusters to battle Achira..." He looked at Janine. "You returned to him." He looked at Venkman. "And instead of dying in a Thanksgiving auto accident, on November 28, 1997, you were in New York City." He spared looks at Ray and Winston. "And all five of you returned to Ghostbusters International. The Five Who Are One became One once again." He finally looked back at Egon and Janine. "And you two, even more than that."

"Ockham's Razor..." Winston shook his head. "I remember how Egon was confused back in '91 when you 'avoided' his PKE meter by generating an 'interference pattern' with his own essence. It wasn't a trick, though. You are Egon, but not our Egon. An older, bitter Egon Spengler.

"You've become intimately familiar with alternate universes of late, Zeddemore..." Nodus answered. "This is not much different."

"And not just any dimension...this is listed in the Chronomantic Archives of the Council of Eight as Timeline 8932. But what they never grasped, neither the Council or Sarim-Lar, was it's true importance: 8932 is actually the primal continuity, the timeline from which all others branched off in the past. They didn't realize that--why else give it a nondescript identification? But I discovered this...8932 is the source code of reality. By affecting it...I could affect the structure of the entire multiverse."

"Why?" Ray asked.

"Why else?" Nodus replied. "The same purpose to which I dedicated my life from the day the Boogeyman started appearing from my closet: perfect safety of the human race. A universe no longer brimming with the supernatural, no longer choked with demonic entities and self-declared gods. Rational, orderly, a universe free of want, and misery, and crime. A universe that is perfect!"

Janine felt a chill at the word "perfect". She knew that impulse all too well. I can't move...I literally can't move....this is just too much...oh, Egon, if this is doing this to me what is this doing to you?!

"But I needed the power of the Children of Zodiac--a unique ability to process temporal energy was integral to my plans. It's a power even I cannot give myself yet. Thus, I was compelled to solve Sarim-Lar's last riddle. Where is Lord Gemini?" Nodus turned back to them. "And then I found him. I found him in the one place I never would have expected--I had ruled out the children of my old comrades. Not Oscar Wallance, not Charlene Zeddemore, not Jessica Venkman--they were born exactly as they were, brought into this world before it was changed. Not Eric Stantz, powerful as he would become, even though he was born later than in your world. And certainly not Lana Tully."

"But you, Egon Spengler, made a different choice than I did. And from that choice, children I did not forsee--because they did not exist in the world I came from. Children, born in the Ninth Year of the Age of Aquarius, on the twenty-first day of the transit of Gemini..."

Ray gulped. "That's...that's Hermetic Reckoning..." He looked at Romulus and Pollux. "That's today."

"You, Johnathan Christopher Spengler." Nodus walked up to him. "You are the answer to Sarim-Lar's mystery. You are the Lord of the Primordial Winds. You are the one everyone's been awaiting."

Romulus couldn't process this. It seemed so impossible. But at the same time...what about the strange ways Delphia always looked at him? Would that even explain the terror he evoked, as but a child, in the likes of Dweeb and Loone?

There was a cracking noise.

"The crystals!!!" Eden called out. The chrono-quartz crystals given to her and her brother by Ulforce were finally breathing their last.

The adult Spengler twins tossed them aside in just the nick of time, as they exploded in blasts of orange light. Two very familiar shapes appeared--Albert and Marie Nodus, the dopplegangers of John and Eden, dazed, with only swirls of light concealing their now nude status.

"Ah...so there are my Nodus twins..." the man calling himself Josiah Nodus smirked.

"They weren't totally lying or being metaphorical when they called you their 'Father', were they?" Winston noted.

Janine's eyes went wide. The last time she'd seen the Nodus twins, she wasn't totally herself...but now, she realized...

"When I procured them, as but newborns, I brought them here, where time is completely under my control." Nodus continued. "I raised them the way they should've been--I awakened the power within them, just as Sarim-Lar had awoken the power I denied. Then, when they were grown, and all was in readiness, we began. The Nodus Twins returned to timeline 8932, and our grand agenda to recreate the universe began--though first, of course, that meant the unravelling of what was already there..."

"The split timelines..." Winston noted.

"Ulforce and Delphia became aware of our plan, and moved to stop us. They held the fracture down to the two causalities, but our success is only a matter of time. Save for Delphia herself, the other Children of Xodiac have been erased from reality. The Order of Hermes and the Sons of Ether never existed. Most of the vaunted membership of Ghostbusters International nothing but mundane shut-ins who post on message boards."

"You're...you're fading!" Janine called, looking at John and Eden.

"The crystals were keeping our temporal integrity intact...without them..." Pollux started to say.

"You are being overwritten by the Nodus Twins." Nodus gloated. "And in a few moments, together, we will have enough power at last to stop Ulforce and Delphia's meddling. They will be erased--as will the rest of you."

"I can't believe you care so little about us..." Ray shook his head.

"That thing isn't Egon, Ray." Winston growled. "And we're not done yet..."

Romulus looked his sister in the eye. "I seem to recall our Pop making a leap of faith earlier today..."

Pollux knew what he meant. "It is not like we have much to loose at this point."

"Accept your fate, Ghostbusters." Nodus continued. "Your reality is forfeit."

"My butt." Romulus snarled, and jumped at Albert Nodus.

Pollux, similarly, jumped for her counterpart.

"What in?" Nodus spattered.

The orange light swirled around, with an intensity that blinded them all.

"John! Eden!!!" Janine called.

"Blast both you brats!!!" Nodus shouted.

The light cleared.

The adult Johnathan Christopher Spengler stood there, solid, orangish electricity cracking around him, a powder-blue bundle held to his chest. "I believe you said something about a 'unique ability to process temporal energy'..."

Eden Marie Spengler was beside him, also surrounded by orange sparks, clutching a pink bundle. "Instead, it is your mockeries that are overwritten..."

"Eden, Johnathan...what..." Egon started to say.

"No time, Pop." John shook his head. "Take care of this guy, will ya?"

Egon was shocked to realize that the blue bundle held a dazed infant whose face and wispy red hair he was already familiar with.

Next to him, Janine was now clutching the pink bundle, passed to her by Pollux. Tears were in her eyes.

Nodus snarled. Despite all his claims of having purged emotions from his nature, something that looked very much like fury was twisted into his features. "Damn both you temporal anomalies...you purged them, took the temporal energy into yourselves, restored them to their proper ages. I shall have to start all over again..."

"You gotta get by us first, Buttf***er..." Venkman snarled, realizing he'd been uncharacteristically quiet this whole time. "Form up!!!" he shouted, and with practiced precision he, Winston, and Ray had their throwers out in a perimeter around the four Spenglers.

"You think you concern me, Venkman?" Nodus sneered. "Robo Busters--kill all unauthorized entities save the infants. Protocol four."

Acknowledge The robots began to march forward.

"Aim for the joints--the knees!!!" Winston shouted, two sets of shadowy memories compelling the idea.

"Why aren't they firing?" Venkman asked.

"The same reason Nodus didn't fire earlier..." Egon answered. "Crossing the streams is..."

"Bad." Venkman finished, and nodded.

"I bet you wish you brought your proton pack about now..." Ray said to the older Twins.

"Not a worry." Romulus smirked. He gestured, and one Robo Buster that attempted to attack him flew back, split in half.

"What in..." Nodus's eyes went wide.

"When we purged your mockeries, it appears we gained the power they had in the process." Eden explained, sending a Robo Buster away with a gesture.

The Twins joined hands. The orange glow crackled and swirled.

They ran for Nodus, Robo Busters trying to stop them flung away with no effort.

Janine called out their names.

"I sense it already...the power is fading. It doesn't belong to you." Nodus snarled. "And it is useless against me anyway..."

John and Eden looked at each other. "That's not what I remember..."

A blast of energy slammed into the shocked Nodus.

"Egon! We gotta shut down the Robo Busters!!!" Venkman shouted. "This guy played us like chumps all along 'cause he has your knowledge of us--now maybe, since we know why, we can use that against him!!!"

"What do you mean?"

"He voice locked the creeps--but think! You have the same voice! All we gotta do is figure out what the access code is! And if anyone can do it, it's you!!!"

Egon thought hard...putting himself in Josiah Nodus's place...knowing all he knew about the man's divergent history...and it came to him. Simple, logical, but something that noone would expect of an Egon Spengler who had "purged his emotions"--something they'd already seen signs of not being as complete as he'd claimed.

"It's worth a try..." he finally said. "Robo Busters! Override access!!!"

Voiceprint Josiah Nodus confirmed. Input code phrase for override

Egon gritted his teeth. "Six Zero Eight Eight Three."

Peter Venkman felt a bead of sweat on his brow.

The Robo Busters froze. Override accepted. Awaiting orders

"Immediate shutdown!!! Full deactivation!!!" Egon shouted.

"NO!!!" Nodus howled. "Reinstate override, access..."

Shutdown Sequence Intiated the Robo Busters said in unison, and went dark, falling to the ground.

"Six Zero Eight Eight Three..." Egon exhaled. "June 8, 1983..."

"I will kill you for this!!!" Nodus screamed, grabbing John. Angry red energies and sparking orange played around them.

"Johnathan!!!" Eden called, unleashing a blast of her own power.

Romulus flung Nodus off of him, sending the would-be dimensional dictator to the ground hard. "Hand to hand combat? You gotta be kidding! Uncle Pete always said Pop hit like a girl..."

Venkman looked at Egon sheepishly. "Well, you do..."

Nodus now looked crazed. Crazed, and old.

Ray Stantz looked at him, and for the first time....he truly saw his old friend. He holstered his thrower.

"Um...Ray..." Venkman said.

Ray walked between John and Eden. "There's no logic in this anymore, Egon."

"Don't call me that..." Nodus snarled.

"But then again...I don't think there's been much logic to this all along."

Nodus cocked an eyebrow. A very familiar gesture.

"Because I look at you, and I don't see the logic. Do you know what I see? I see a man who who's spent a hundred and fifty years going over his mistakes again and again. I see a man who wants to get back at the world that he feels wronged him."

"You made the choice that turned you into Nodus while you were in pain--Janine had just married Louis. All of us had abandoned you. Maybe you felt that was the only way..."

"And then you became obsessed with finding Lord Gemini. But don't you see? You became obsessed with finding why the Ascension--whatever that is--had failed. The problem is, deep down, you know what the failure is."

Ray walked up to him. "You saw the other choice that could've been made--the choice of hope instead of dispair. You see what your life would've been. You may not have had your knowledge, or your power, or been able to crack reality with a snap of your finger. But you would've been happy; the kind of genuine happiness that can't come out of numbers, cold logic, and godlike power. And you would've not only answered the question...you would've been part of the solution."

"I don't..."

"You're the failure." Ray shook his head. "You chose wrong."

Nodus looked ready to explode. "I chose wrong?! You dare to say that to me?! I was destined to be the greatest scientist of all!!! I became a far greater scientist than my father would have ever dared hope!!!" Nodus clutched his head, going into some kind of seizure. "How could I have been wrong?! I chose logic!!! I chose knowledge!!! Why was that the wrong choice?! Why is he the one being rewarded with destiny?! I don't...I DON'T UNDERSTAND!!!"

Josiah Nodus--a man who once called himself Egon Spengler, but a man that Egon Spengler will never be--uttered one last feral howl, which diminished to a whimper, and then fell to the ground.

Ray exhaled and staggered, looking about ready to faint.

"I'm confused....did we just win?" Venkman asked after fifteen long, quiet seconds.

There was an ominous rumbling. The skies became filled with lightning, and dark clouds.

"Oh crumbs..." Egon surmised. "I think the Null Zone is destablizing..."

"Without the chrono quartz, there's no way..." Eden started to shout.

Janine held her newborn daughter, the tears flowing. This isn't fair....their lives have just started...it just isn't...

There was a wheezing, groaning noise. A blue shape appeared.

Ray's jaw looked ready to fall off. "The TARDIS? You're kidding!!!"

"Not quite, Doctor Stantz..." a new voice called out of the ether, as the blue shape solidified. It was an old man in blue and black, sitting in a high tech chair. "Though I was a big fan--couldn't help but to copy the noise..."

"Professor Ulforce!!!" Romulus called.

"There isn't much time!" Ulforce shook his head. "The Null Zone will collapse in seconds..."

They huddled together, as the world around them faded to white once more...

June 13, 1999
2:30 AM

Ray didn't even realize he'd gone to sleep until Venkman poked him hard to wake him up. "Egon!" Ray cried, realizing his old friend was in the room too, looking haggard, exhausted...but ecstatic.

"Eden Marie was born at 1:30 AM, her brother Johnathan Christopher precisely five minutes later. "

Marie Cavendish audibly inhaled. "Eden Marie? Oh my God...she did remember..."

"Remember what?" Doris asked.

Marie shook her tired head. "Back when I told Janine that Ghostbusters was hiring a secretary...I made a joke about 'Just promise that if you get the job and marry your boss you'll name one of your kids after me...' "

There was a hearty laugh around the room as Egon recieved a heartfelt hug from everyone in turn.

" 'Christopher'?" Katharine asked. "Is that..."

Egon nodded. "Janine and I split up the naming duties. I gave our son his middle name, Christopher, from Christopher Melton--my great grandfather. Johnathan is from her side of the family..."

"My older brother." Denise Melnitz said, eyes filling with tears. "He died in Korea...I once told Jay that if she'd been a boy I mighta named her that."

"Marie, as noted, was from a promise Janine made sixteen years ago." Egon nodded in Marie Cavendish's direction. "Eden...well, in addition to being a proper Hebrew name (something Janine felt important)..." he hugged his mother. "It's similarity to 'Edison' is not unintentional."

Venkman laughed. "And heck, you even gave them 'E' and 'J' names, to boot..."

Egon chuckled. "Well...that did occur to us afterward..."

"What are we waitin' around here for?" Denise Melnitz said with noticable glee. "I think it's time we got a look at my new grandbabies..."

"Our new grandbabies..." Katharine added with just as much joy.

"I can arrange that." Egon replied, with the largest smile that any of them could remember seeing on his face. "The doctors said to make it quick--the children have been fed, and are sleeping already, but Janine needs her rest. I..." He looked at them, a strange pang coming...then subsiding. "I wish I could put it into words."

"We've all been there, old buddy." Ray smiled, patting him on the back.

Janine Spengler fought off the sleep. She knew she shouldn't fight it...the doctors told her she needed to sleep...but she didn't want to sleep. She didn't want to miss a second, didn't want to stop watching the two newborns lying peacefully nearby.

They were both so beautiful...she was, for only a fraction of a second, worried that when Egon handed her their son for the first time, that somehow it wouldn't seem as special as the instant she first held Eden...but she was wrong. It was different, but no less precious. Johnathan was no less beautiful. She loved him every bit as much.

She was anxious for Egon to get back. She wanted to see her parents, her sister, and the three men who were her brothers in all but the most literal sense of the word. She anticipated the joy on their faces when seeing Eden and John Spengler for the first time.

There was a knock at the door. Her husband appeared. "Do you feel up to some company?"

"Depends--if it's Professor Dweeb or Jack Hardemeyer, no." she replied.

"Oh, Drat." a voice came from the other side of the door--Peter Venkman doing a mocking impersonation of Norman Draverhaven's nasal voice.

"If it's our families and Ray and Winston, sure." she rolled her eyes and feigned a moment of deep consideration. "And if that Venkman guy is out there, I guess it'd be okay too."

There was a round of laughter, and the room was soon filled up with friends and relatives.

Denise Melnitz hugged her daughter. "Congratulations, Mom."

Janine laughed. "Same to you...Grandma..."

"She was already a Grandma..." Victor piped up amiably.

Everyone else stood back, allowing the Melnitzes and Katharine Spengler first access to their newborn grandchildren.

"They're both so cute..." Denise finally said. "I can't decide which one to hold first..."

Fritz laughed, tears in his eyes, as his wife finally picked up the little pink blanket. "Oh Adonai, I know that face...it's that same grumpy face Jay got from you..."

Katharine was now similarly cradling the powder blue blanket. "The Spengler genes are strong, but not indomitable. You certainly look like your father...but that distinct red hair is clearly from your mother's side." She wasn't a woman used to sloppy emotional displays, but today was definitely an exception. She had one step-grandchild; but Edison...you have a grandson at last. And a granddaughter that is ours. When her grandson grabbed her finger with a little tiny hand that looked like the one that had grabbed her fingers forty-one years earlier, Katharine's eyes welled with tears.

Katharine and the Melnitzes finally switched. "Heh...been a long time since I held a boy, either..." Denise noted. "Course all I had were girls..."

"My case was the opposite." Katharine nodded, stroking Eden's head. Do my eyes decieve me or is that a distinctly blonde wisp of hair?

And finally, the newborns' cousin and the three Ghostbusters got their turn.

"Wow..." was all Ray could say. "Eric is gonna love having some new playmates..."

"Y'know, if there weren't so many throwable objects around here, I'd comment at how much they look like our mailman..." Venkman smirked. "But since I don't want to get killed, I won't."

"Wise move." Winston rolled his eyes.

"Isn't our current postal carrier female?" Egon raised an eyebrow.

"Don't give him ideas." Janine quipped. "I hope they learn early that Uncle Peter isn't the best idea for a role model..."

Venkman feigned a look of hurt as everyone else in the room laughed.

"I feel like I'm intruding somehow..." Pollux said.

They were at the other side of a half-second phase shift, unseen but able to witness the room and it's occupants.

"Technically, you're not." Ulforce told her. "I mean, you both were there..."

"Will they remember anything?" Romulus asked. "Right now it's like....like it never happened."

"In a very real way it never did." Ulforce shook his head. "When the Null Zone collapsed, the timeline was reintigrated. All of history is restored to it's proper flow. But Delphia and I felt...a small gift was in order. They will remember Nodus, and his attempt to kidnap the children--you--later. With that, they will, unfortunately, remember Nodus and the truth about him. They will remember the imperfect worlds in fragments, like dreams. And they will know that Nodus will trouble them no more. But for right now...their moment of happiness is untainted."

Ulforce looked at John and Eden. "You they will not remember, just as they did not remember your previous meeting in 1986."

"Will we remember you?" Eden asked.

Ulforce shook his head. "Only vaguely...you will remember the existance of Professor Ulforce, the Chronomancer. The Fourth Law of Temporal Integrity protects my identity just as it does yours."

"What of him?" Eden asked, looking at Nodus. It was inevitable, she realized, that she felt sorrow at seeing his shattered form. He was, after all, an incarnation of her father...

"His mind is destroyed, his power is gone..." Ulforce shook his head. "If Delphia agrees, he will be returned to the timeline from which he came--it branched off into dimension 10211. It will give his surviving comrades at least some measure of relief to finally...know."

"What of the rest of it, Ulforce?" John finally said, features hardening. "The Ascension...the Children of Zodiac. Am I really this Lord Gemini that Nodus thought I was? If not, who is, and why are we so important to bringing him about? And if I am...what does it mean?"

"That, Doctor Spengler..." Ulforce finally answered. "Is a something that you will discover at a later time..."

Some material excerpted and edited from Ghostbusters: Nodus. And doesn't giving it that title make a lot more sense now? Heh heh...

Some thanks:
--Vincent Belmont, who contributed the idea of timeline 8932 being the "prime timeline"
--Great comic stories like "Crisis on Infinite Earths", "Zero Hour" and "Age of Apocalypse", which provided a great deal of inspiration for this story.
--The posters on the Ectozone Message Board, who inspired me to write in that Junior Ghostbuster scene in part 5 after all. And for being so patient with the long wait.
--Francis Moss, writer of the RGB episode "Robo Buster". Nodus's robots are, of course, based loosely on the ones in that story.

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