Behind him, I saw two men, one with a prominent widow's peak and a skinny man with circle glasses.
"Are you our new student?"
"Yes, I am Tanya Degurechaff."
"Great, I knew it well. I'm Dr. Ray Stantz." He held his hand to shake, which I did, but his handshake was very exciting, making my whole arm shake. "Come on in," he said as we walked me into a small room. He then pointed to the other men I saw before.
"This is Dr. Egon Spengler," Dr. Stantz said while pointing to the tall man with circular glasses.
"Pleasure to meet you, Dr. Spengler. I'm Tanya Degurechaff," I said as I held out my hand for him to shake.
"Nice to meet you too. Do you have any experience in this field," he said after a moment taking my hand.
"Afraid not, but that's why I signed up for all your classes," I replied back
"Finally, we have Dr. Peter Venkman," Dr. Stantz said, pointing to the man who had the widow's peak.
"Hello, nice to meet you, you can call me Peter better call everyone here their first name its what we call each other also how old are you? You seem a bit young," Dr. Venkman said, already grabbing my hand and shaking it the way a car salesman would.
"Uh … nice meeting you too, Dr. Venk- I mean Peter. I'm 13. I graduated public school early."
"Isn't this great, guys? We got a gifted student."
"Uhm, Ray, if you don't mind. Why was I sent here? Isn't this your guys' laboratory"
"You see, kid," Peter said as he put one arm around me, "the university is not going to give a classroom to three scientists who mostly do research and experiments … what I mean to say is that you have the great honor of being our first student. See, as long as we prove our department does something, anything really, and we offer classes, they don't do anything, and we have equipment but not anything ridiculously huge, so we don't need much space, and we don't complain since we get plenty of funding from the parapsychology grants, so we are a little bit excited to have a student for a change. At least those two are," he got down to a whisper, "truly, I have no idea what I do here. I'm just here since the classes were easy with these two, and the grant money is very nice also. I'm just going to assume you're here for something similar I won't blame you if you don't believe this nonsense," raising his voice to be a talking point again, "do you understand, kid."
"Are you telling me that this is it?"
"Pretty much, but we do a lot of field research. Egon and I have been all over the state of new york going to every possible sighting."
"Yeah, ray's pretty proud of that even if they never found anything out."
"No, we did like that one time in…."
As the story began, my notice shifted to Egon, who was messing with some teardrop device. He activated the device, and two glowing wings went straight out. He then moved it in a different direction, and the device's wings returned. He then moved it back towards me, and the machine began making noise, and the wings went back out. I wasn't quite sure what this would mean, but it seemed that the device could tell there was something with me that would give me more confidence in learning from these guys.
"So Egon, if it's alright, how will my classes with you all be done if I'm going to be your only student" even if Vennkman said to call them by their first name, I needed to make sure.
Egon jerked when he heard his name, then replied, "right, uh … to be honest, we never really expected anyone to sign up for this class, so for now, it will be assigned reading along with helping us with our experiments and even though you are new to this particular field as long as you help us with the experiments you will be sighted on our papers which will do great for your career, I mean we put Peters name on the papers, and he couldn't even tell you what we do here."
"Hey, I do more than just put my names on paper."
"Now, don't worry, we will have lectures after some time. We were just surprised when we got the notice that you would be a student, and if you don't mind, let's have this day be us getting to know you and answer some questions you might have. It will also help us figure out how lectures will need to be," Ray said while gesturing to the table they had in the small laboratory.
"We'll try to make sure that Egon doesn't run too many tests on you," Peter said while plopping himself in the middle seat "did you know he tried to drill a hole in his head."
"That would have worked if you didn't stop me," Egon said as he took the seat to the left of Venkman.
"Yeah, sure it would have," Venkman said as Stantz took the seat to Venkman's right
"What is that box in front of you, peter, if you don't mind," I asked, taking the seat across from Venkman
"Oh, this, yeah, it's a shock box we are using to test a theory, and could you stop with all the "don't mind" and the "if I may" I understand you want to test your boundaries, but we don't have a stick up our asses and would make this whole "having a student" be a bit easier for us all you included"
"Alright then, and what kind of theory requires shocking people? Isn't that a bit barbaric "
"Well, I am studying the effects of negative reinforcements on ESP ability."
"So you are shocking people till they guess what's on the other side of a card."
"And don't forget making the other party think they have abilities adding to additional negative reinforcement, but yeah, pretty much. I am a bit surprised you knew what it was"
"Well, it was evident since you have some Zener cards right there."
"Fair enough"
"So what made you interested in these classes? Did you have an experience general interest in the unknown, or do you want to be a pioneer of science and want to be remembered as one of the great scientists in this field" Ray said as if he couldn't say it fast enough
"I guess something of a mix of personal experience and general interest."
"Fascinating would you mind telling us what it was"
"No, maybe later" it was a good idea not to tell them about the being claiming to be a god since that might be a bit crazy even for these wackos, but I would like to know what that device Egon had was
"That's fine, we understand," Ray said, slightly disappointed.
"It's just the story is a bit crazy, and I would prefer to know who you guys are before I tell that story. I didn't even tell my best friend the story when I still knew her. I've told no one" I started to get a bit teary-eyed with the memories of Viktoriya.
"Okay, well, let's just start with some simple questions then," Venkman said, seeing that I was getting uncomfortable.
"Sounds good"
"Have you read Tobin's spirit guide?" Egon asked, handing me a relatively thick book.
The rest of the conversation was just basic questions about my interest, what I knew, and general questions about the class, as well as explaining some things they thought I would need to know and will often hear from them.
By the end, I decided I would stick with the classes since the men teaching the class were both odd and unprepared to teach a lesson. Though They seemed competent enough with the material and were used to people not understanding what they do, explaining it to a student would be relatively simple and routine.
Then I got to learn more about them as teachers, where they graduated, what their majors were what they do. Though when ray and Egon were explaining, Peter looked just as surprised as I was. From what I can tell, Peter was the mouth that did the talks with the higher-ups and would get funding as well as the tools and the equipment for experiences devices and other things.
Egon seemed to be the scholar. He would make charts and research and was even the person to design and build That teardrop device that could measure psychic kinetic energy.
Finally, Ray seems to be the spirit. While he is very knowledgeable about the subject on par with Egon, he is much more excited about it. Well, it at least shows. He is a bit of everything between the other two. He can build and chart but can explain things relatively in easy-to-understand terms.
I'm looking forward to my classes. I have to complete all the books they gave me. Why did they have to provide me with so many books? I've had English classes with less reading.