FATEFUL ENCOUNTER
By Fritz Baugh
GBI Case File GBNY-1991-9/149
Dimensional transit really sucks...especially when one is unprepared for it...
He pulled himself up, and shook his head. He looked around to see people milling around. A few looked at him and pointed
"Probably from the World of the Future exhibit or something..."
"Doesn't he kinda look like Doc Hazzard's assistant?"
It had seemed such a simple bust. A minor Class Five raising ruckus at an Amtrak station. Egon and his three companions--Ray Stantz, Peter Venkman, and Winston Zeddemore--seemed to have the situation well in hand. Until the creature had screamed and begun to glow just as Egon had blasted it...
"I think he's some kinda' astronaut."
Egon's computer brain quickly booted up a series of observations. A prevalence of conspicuous Brooklyn accents, leading him to believe he was still in New York City...but as he looked around there seemed to be a quite different fashion paradigm in place. Crew cuts. Simple, bland clothing with only the occasional patch of color. A great resemblance to the fashions I remember from my own childhood.
He pulled out his PKE meter and determined that his opponent was still close by. He heard several loud crashes and some screaming. He looked up to try to visually verify the entity's location and received a different answer: a banner reading 1964 WORLD'S FAIR
"I've been temporally transported." he noted. Which meant he had one more concern: temporal paradox. Egon had been born in November 1957--somewhere in Ohio was his six year old younger self. Hundreds of miles away, but nothing in cosmic terms "I have to get out of this era quickly before a temporal backlash occurs. Hopefully containing the entity will negate the time-shunt."
He ran off toward the entity, which looked around with panic in it's eyes (all five of them).
"Do not move." Egon ordered it.
It lunged and grabbed the first person it could, a red headed girl of approximately age four or five.
"Blast me and the meat child gets squeezed!!!" the entity snarled.
The girl thrashed and growled.
"You and your pals let me go...just no fuss, no muss..."
"Fine. Just let the child go."
The little girl had other ideas. "GET YOUR DAMN HANDS OFF ME, DOO-DOO HEAD!!!" With that she kicked him hard in the groin.
By all logic, that really shouldn't matter. But it did. The monster howled in pain and threw the redheaded moppet in his agony.
Egon Spengler was not an athlete. But he ran and jumped with all of the might his scrawny body could muster, and made a catch for the ages.
He put the little girl down. "Are you all right, Miss?"
The girl just stared at him with her big, blue eyes.
The monster growled, composing itself...then realizing that he no longer had any protection.
"Any last words?" Egon asked sternly.
"Um...sorry?"
"Blast him!!!" the little girl shouted.
Egon obliged.
"The box on my backpack with the black and yellow stripes...reach up and remove it."
"Okay!"
"Now kick it over to the monster."
The little girl kicked the ghost trap energetically, sending it right over to the writhing entity.
"Good shot. Now stomp the foot petal, and hold it down until I tell you to release it."
The familiar cone of white light grabbed the monster, which was now sobbing like a baby.
"Now!!!" The girl took her tiny foot off the pedal, and the creature disappeared, now safely contained in the ghost trap.
Egon hefted the trap, and looked at the little girl. "Not bad. You might have a future in Ghostbusting..." he commented. He could already feel the beginnings of what he hoped was the return trip to his own time.
The little girl just stared at him some more. There was something in that stare that started to unnerve him, especially when the girl blushed and smirked. "You're kinda cute, Mister..."
Egon's eyes went wide as a shocking possibility began to roll in his brain. "It can't be..."
But before he could quiz the adoring child any further, he vanished in a blaze of light. Several spectators applauded. "And we thought this Fair was gonna be boring..."
"Egon, you all right?!" Ray asked.
"I am unhurt. I was...temporally dislocated, but was returned when I contained the entity." He held up the smoking ghost trap.
"We're glad you're okay, Egon." Winston added sincerely.
Venkman, of course, was less sincere. "No kidding. I wouldn't want to go back to that firehouse if something happened to you. I'd be afraid Redzilla'd murder me alive."
Egon said nothing, handing the trap to Ray and heading for the ECTO-1.
"Now that was weird, even for Egon." Venkman commented.
Egon sat down, thinking about the little girl with the hauntingly familiar gaze. He reached into his pocket and extracted one of his favored possessions--Egon was a man of deeper sentiment that he let on, and one tiny little coin meant a lot to him for what it represented. He stared at it.
"This is my lucky coin" she had said, just before the fight with Gozer. "I got it from the 1964 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows..."
"I don't believe in luck." Egon had replied simply.
"Keep it anyway." she winked at him. "I got another one at home..."
Egon put the coin away before the rest could see it.
It couldn't have been...could it?
"Janiiiiiine!!! There you are!!!" Her older sister, eight-year old Doris Melnitz, ran up to her. "Where were you? I heard all those noises and was afraid something happened to you!!! Mom and Pop would kill me if I let something happen to you."
Five year old Janine gave her sister an enigmatic look. "Something did happen. But I'm okay. Where's the closest cotton candy stand, anyway?" she grabbed Doris's hand and drug her away. She was too young to put it into words, but she had the weirdest feeling that she would see that tall blond man again some day, and she had to be ready for it.
