This time, the dream was waiting for him. It seemed he had scarcely closed his eyes when the world around him darkened down to the dimly lit table and the seated man. He was still turned away from Peter, but instead of working with formulae, he had a newspaper spread before him on the table.

Peter took that as a bad sign. He wasn't sure why but he didn't want to move closer. What he wanted to do was turn around and run like hell, never looking back. Filled with horrified expectation, he took one slow step closer. "Uh, hi."

The scarred man stiffened, his whole body jerking. "Thank god," he said, as he had said the first time. "It's not too late? Tell me it's not too late."

"Too late for what?" Peter asked warily. He was positive he wouldn't like the answer.

His question must have been the right response. The scarred man heaved a vast sigh, breaking off to cough. Peter realized the fire that had twisted him must have caused lung damage. The salt and pepper hair was grey unnaturally, as if something had stolen years from his life.

"If you have to ask, it's all right. It's not too late. Peter..."

So he did know who he was talking to. His invasion of Peter's dream was personal, not a random arrival, not a fluke caused by the Alpha wave generator. He had been sought out on purpose.

"Who are you?" Peter asked. "What do you want from me?"

"I want I need you to read this paper." He scooped it up with a twisted hand, holding it in Peter's direction. "Now. I've tried and tried to reach you. I didn't think it would work, but it was all I had. I had to try. I had to. All those hours and days sitting there watching him die, knowing he was alert in that broken shell, hearing me as I talked to him, knowing he was dying... I had to do something. I don't care if it kills me, but I had to try. Read it."

Peter took the paper. It was strange that he could feel it as if it were real and not an element of the dreamscape. "Who are you?" he asked as the paper crackled in his hands.

"Read it. I can't say it, not to you but I have to tell you. I can't..." His voice caught.

The urgency he projected was palpable. Peter lifted the paper and stared at it, at the headline that hit him with the force of a racing car at top speed.

"'EXPLOSION ROCKS GHOSTBUSTER CENTRAL.'" Peter read those words aloud, his stomach knotting up as he saw the subheading below it. "'Stantz dead. Spengler dying. Venkman seriously injured.' Jesus."

All those hours and days sitting there watching him die...

"Egon?" he faltered. "You mean Egon? He...died? Uh, is going to die? Ray died? They're both dead?"

"The light just went out of his eyes. I saw him go away and I couldn't stop it. I couldn't stop it. There was nothing I could do but be there, so he wouldn't have to die alone." Abruptly he moved, swung around, pushed himself to his feet with an effort that spoke of a very old pain. He stood eye to eye with Peter, of a height with him, and he gazed at Peter out of a face that was marred on one side, untouched on the other. There were lines Peter had never seen on the unscarred side, deep grooves between nose and mouth, wrinkles across the brows. The eyes were hollow with the kind of unhappiness that never stops hurting. But they were green eyes, and the mouth that twisted so wryly as Peter stared at the vision in sheer horror was the same one that grinned at him out of his own mirror. It was his own face, torn apart by the fire, by the crucible of loss and pain, a face that Peter's would become if he'd seen Ray die instantly and watched Egon die lingeringly, leaving him behind and helpless to save them.

"Oh my god," Peter moaned, cold and numb to the core. "You're - "

"I'm you. What you'll become. I'm sorry. But I had to come. It was the only thing left, the only hope I've got to put it right."

"Dreaming in the future?" Peter hazarded, stunned at how numb he felt. "How long...?"

"Five years." His shoulders slumped. "I've been trying to find a way to undo it for five impossible years. I spent most of the first one in and out of the hospital; the doctors said I didn't want to live, but I lived anyway. I might have died if it hadn't been for Winston; once he caught me with a bottle of pills and took them away. I hadn't taken them, but I kept thinking of it. I kept remembering Egon and the way the light went out of his eyes. God, Peter, he was alert in there, trapped in a shattered body that didn't work. He couldn't talk, couldn't respond, barely could blink in answer to me. He couldn't breathe on his own. They knew they couldn't save him, but they tried. It was a cheat; he always knew they couldn't save him. He didn't hope for it. I sat in there with him every day and listened to the stupid noise the respirator made, and talked to him. I was crazy with pain but I didn't care. I fought them so hard they brought me every day. I think they knew I wouldn't stop fighting unless they drugged me unconscious. I couldn't leave him alone like that, trapped inside himself. Winston was here, he was always here, but Egon needed me. We...tried not to tell him about Ray, but he knew. I could see it in his eyes. He knew he was dying, too. He couldn't talk to me, he could only listen. I had to be there. It was the only thing I could do for him." It was as if he'd bottled up every emotion he'd felt since the explosion, waiting to let it loose, and he'd been unable to do that, even with Winston, until he faced his younger, untouched self, the only one who would understand completely what he had endured, what he had given his life over to changing.

Peter stared at him in sheer apprehension, listening to the nightmare future that awaited him, hearing his own words in that strange tortured voice describing an unendurable life. The newspaper in his hand was a confirmation of his future self's words, spelled out in black and white. He skimmed the first few paragraphs, about how an untested device had blown up in the lab, starting a fire, how Peter had fought the fire and dragged Egon out, burning himself severely in the process. Winston, who had been downstairs, raced up with a fire extinguisher and made it to Ray, but Ray had died instantly in the explosion. He had taken the full force of the blast; the reporter indicated he'd had an instant's warning and had thrown himself between Egon and the device in an attempt to save him. The words were stark and bare, but Peter felt them as if each one was a lash against his back.

"Janine went away for a long time, but Winston and I kept the firehouse," his doppelganger continued. "We had to maintain the containment unit. We didn't bust ghosts any more. I'm not up to it." He gestured wryly at his ruined body. "So Winston trained some younger guys and they do the work because it still needs doing even if I can't do it. But I kept hoping I could find a way to...undo it. To make it unhappen. To get them back."

Until he finished, Peter hadn't realized how tightly he'd been wound up. "Undo it?" he shouted. "I can undo it? There's a chance to stop it? I can get them back?"

"Why else do you think I'm here, Peter? I tried everything. I studied physics, engineering, quantum Mechanics, time travel theories, anything. Then I went on to parapsychology, then to astral projection, all the new age psychobabble I could find, mysticism, the occult. There had to be a way to prevent it, to go into the past and change time. For years I tried. Everybody gave up on me, even Dad, everybody but Winston and Janine; they stood by me; I'd have gone crazy without them. Maybe I am crazy, I don't know. But then, a few months ago, I remembered the alpha wave generator. I was wearing it when the lab blew up so it hadn't been damaged. The dream state is a receptive one. I remembered I'd had a fall the day before the explosion. I'd been sleeping with the helmet on and I just slept too late. If I could link up with you there, I could warn you, make you wake up in time to do something, to stop it."

Peter's mouth fell open in stunned realization. "Now! It's gonna happen now?!" His eyes went to the newspaper, saw the date. It was today's. "Omigod, I've gotta go after them." He hesitated for one last second, reaching out to grab the dream visitor's shoulders and squeeze them with fervent gratitude. "Thanks isn't enough for what you've gone through and what you've saved for me. If I can do it, it won't happen. I promise you, guy. I promise." And knew the promise he made was every bit as fierce and heartfelt as his other self's determination to save his lost friends.

"Good luck," his other self called, the words echoing as the table retreated into the darkness. "Good luck. Good luck. Save them, Peter. Save them...."

Peter bolted out of bed, frantically tearing off the helmet. "Winston, bring the fire extinguisher," he bellowed, causing Zeddemore to drop his book and lunge to his feet.

"Pete? What the heck...?"

"Fire extinguisher. Now!"

Peter ran for the lab like a man possessed, saw Egon and Ray bent over the small device. Its screen was blinking, the lights vivid and bright. Peter didn't know what time the explosion had taken place, whether he had seconds or hours, but it didn't matter. Instead he knocked the thing from Egon's hands, grabbed each man by an arm and yanked them to their feet with brute strength enhanced by sheer adrenaline. "Trust me, move! I know what I'm doing. Out of here! Now!"

He chivvied them toward the door, following them, pushing them toward safety, frantic to move them, and it was a sign of the team's ability to work together without the need of explanations that they let him urge them from the room. He enforced the urgency with a gabbled explanation. "It's gonna blow. Move, guys. It's gonna "

The explosion rocked the whole building, staggering him as he tried to keep his balance. Fire and smoke were instantaneous, even as he and the two men he had rushed to rescue were flung to the floor of the hall. Peter landed hard, the wind driven from his body, barely conscious that he had steered his fall to shield his two friends, still struggling to protect them with his own body as plaster and rubble pounded them, and Winston, yelling, ran against the force of the blast, fire extinguisher in his hands.

"Janine!" Zeddemore screamed at the top of his lungs. "Call 911!"

Something slammed into Peter, crashing against the back of his head with what felt like appalling force.

The world ended.

Peter aroused to the sounds of Egon muttering worried words. "I knew the power level was too high, Ray. Peter, wake up, please. You're all right. Come on, Peter, wake up." Hands gripped his shoulders, fingers checked his pulse.

The sound of that deep voice, alive, in control, unhurt, roused Peter from his momentary blackout faster than anything else could have done. He looked around urgently, the gesture causing a momentary dizziness that passed almost before he felt it. He spotted Ray staring wide-eyed into the ruin of the lab, Janine fussing over Egon and trying to put a bandage on a small cut on his forehead, and Winston powering down the fire extinguisher. His head hurt, and he suspected his earlier bruises had produced considerable offspring, but aside from a new, dull ache in the back of his head, he seemed intact. "Did I do it?" he demanded. "Did I save your lives?"

"We're alive, Peter, thanks to you," Egon said, staring at him with a wondering respect. "How did you know it was going to explode?"

"I told myself," Peter said. He sat up shakily. Although there was no further evidence of dizziness, his muscles ached too much to move abruptly. "God, Egon, that guy, the scarred guy, he was me."

"I wondered," Egon replied. "Based on your instinctive response to him, and ours to the shadowy figure on the tape, I knew he was important. That's why I felt you had to return to the dreamscape. I didn't quite realize he was a future you, but it was a possibility that almost crystallized. And besides, he wouldn't have given a reading apart from your own. I wasn't reading an invader in your dream, I was evidently reading a second Peter. No wonder the biorhythms were elevated."

"Thank god I went in again," Peter breathed, still shaken. "He came in too late the first time around; he didn't have any warning. The EAE blew up and he was wearing the gizmo, just like I still would be if he hadn't intervened. He didn't reach them in time; the explosion woke him up and the damage was already done when he arrived on the scene. He dragged you out, Egon, but you were hurt too badly to live. You were alert, but your body was beyond fixing, and he sat with you for weeks in the hospital, watching you die." He shivered. "Just listening to him tell about it... god, I'm so glad it didn't happen. Ray was dead right away. He tried to save you, jumped in front of you and took the full blast and was killed instantly." Peter looked up at the shocked Ray, relieved to find him whole. "My, uh, future self was pretty badly burned. But he lived. He acted like living was a curse but he took it like a punishment. I - he was so bitter, and so desperate. He studied everything he could think of, to find a way to reverse it and change history, to bring you back. He finally thought of using the Alpha wave generator. He traveled in time by controlling the dream. I think he could only come when I was in it alone, and that's the only time I was. He remembered it, remembered sleeping in because of it, and being just a second too late to save you." He was shaking as he spun out the story, aware of the shocked stares of his friends as they gathered around him to listen, grateful beyond words for their presence and the comforting hands they rested on his shoulders and back as he talked.

"You couldn't have saved us if it really had happened," Egon said as if he realized Peter was prepared to assume his alter ego's guilt for failing to save his friends. "You would have had no way of knowing. You wouldn't have been to blame, but knowing you as I do, you wouldn't have believed that. This was the only way he could prevent it, by undoing it. And it's just like you to try."

Peter nodded. "He didn't know it would be so hard. I think it was only because he wanted it so desperately that he could do it. I don't think we could dream our way into the past and stop the Pan Am 103 bombing or the assassination of JFK."

"No," agreed Egon. "It wasn't even because he wanted it so much, not entirely. It was because he was you, Peter, and because you care so strongly about your friends."

"Gosh, Peter, you saved us," Ray said in an awed voice. "You and the other Peter." He squeezed Peter's shoulder as if he could understand the trauma of the dreamscape.

"He had help," Peter said quickly. "Winston and Janine stood by him. They believed in him." He smiled at the secretary and the black man with open affection. "Thanks, both of you. I know you don't have to do it now, I know it's sort of, well, unhappened. But the me that would have been couldn't have survived without you."

"Teamwork, Peter," said Winston quickly. "That's what made it work. That and the fact that you're probably the stubbornest man I know." He looked past them at the ruin of the lab. "The fire's out, but we're gonna have to do major repairs in there."

"Buildings can be fixed," Peter said. "Buddies can't, always. Thanks goodness this time they could." He pulled himself to his feet and went to Egon, hugging him tightly for a moment, then did the same to Ray, relieved beyond belief that he didn't have to live through what his other self had endured. He didn't even want to imagine life without his oldest friends.

"I wonder if he remembered," Winston mused, eyeing the still shaking Peter, who was only beginning to regain his equilibrium. "I wonder if he woke up and it was like it had never happened."

"Yeah," said Ray. "I hope he had a few minutes to realize what he'd done, how much he'd achieved for his friends."

Peter saw a gleam in Ray's eyes and knew Ray was thinking the present Peter would have done exactly the same thing. I would, too, he thought. "I don't know, Ray. In a way I hope he woke up and found you guys all around him and it was like it never happened. Even if the memory went away right away, two seconds of it would have been two too many. I hope I never see that expression on my face if I live to be a hundred years old." He shivered. "I never want to become that version of me, guys. Think we could work out a means of immortality?"

"I think we should work on the alpha wave generator," Egon replied. "I suspect it has potential we've never tapped. I'll want to study the tape of your morning session, Peter, to see if it was any clearer than last night's. It's possible there may be intriguing applications we have yet to explore."

"It wasn't," Winston replied. "I could see Pete moving and talking but I still couldn't see the other him."

"Maybe the dream couldn't project both of them vividly," Egon theorized. "It will prove a fascinating study, however. Perhaps one of us could try tonight to go back into an earlier session of the dream, simply to see if it could be done."

"Oh, no," Peter groaned, though the sight of Egon in full cry touched something inside of him that had begun to shrivel as he'd listened to his older self's story of Egon's lingering death. He could feel himself uncurling like a flower in the sun at the very sight and sound of Egon's scientific fascination and the way Ray caught it from him.

"I can see it now," Peter said with a huge grin. "Time Travellers 'R Us. I'm not doing it. I'm not going back in time, never again. Least I hope I never have to. I'm glad the other me did it, but I think we should leave messing with the timeline to Doctor Who and Sapphire and Steel and characters like that. It's their job." He draped his arms around Egon and Ray's shoulders. "As for me, I'm gonna settle for being a Ghostbuster. As long as I've got my friends on my team."

A distant siren announced the arrival of firemen or paramedics either in response to the explosion itself or to a call made by one of the team or Janine while Peter had been momentarily stunned. He cocked his head, listening, then he turned to Egon. "You've gotta promise me something, Spengs," he said urgently.

"What, Peter?"

"Next time you don't like the way a ghost smells - "

"Yes, Peter?" Egon's eyes began to sparkle. He knew what was coming; they all did.

Janine started giggling, and Egon and Ray exchanged an amused look, then nodded in unison as if, they, too, could see into the future, at least enough for what was coming.

Peter's grin spread from ear to ear. "Hold your breath."

The future Peter opened his eyes and blinked dazedly at his two allies. "I reached him," he breathed, looking up at Winston, who stood over him, watching him anxiously. Janine moved in from the foot of the bed, holding her breath. "I told him, guys," Peter exulted. "He knows. I did it. He knows."

"Way to go, m'man," lauded Winston, almost sounding like the Winston of old. "Way to go." He raised his hand for an automatic high five, clapping his palm against Peter's unscarred one.

"What will happen?" Janine asked. "Did it...work? How will we know..."

"I don't know." Peter glanced around the bunkroom at the two beds, spotting no change. Maybe he had been too late. Maybe it hadn't worked after all. "We have to give it time."

"Time?" Winston shook his head with a deep sympathy. "We're at the other end of time, Pete. There's plenty of time between. We'd know by now, wouldn't we?"

Peter sat up, the flesh of his burned shoulder pulling at the unwary motion. He'd learned over the years to start out more slowly, to move with a prudent caution, because otherwise it would hurt. He didn't mind the pain, in a way. He felt he owed it to Egon and Ray for living when they were gone, but...

"That's funny," Janine said in a very surprised voice.

"Funny?" echoed Winston, staring at her. Following her gaze he stared down at Peter, and the psychologist frowned as he noticed the grey in Winston's hair seemed far less noticeable this morning than it had when he'd gone to sleep last night. As he watched the rest of it faded until he couldn't see any at all.

"Your hair," Peter started, putting out his left hand, then he drew it to him and frowned as the puckered skin smoothed out, healing, the scars vanishing before his eyes, leaving a normal hand in its place. Stunned, he reached up to touch his face, and found smooth, unmarred flesh under the morning's beard stubble. Smooth flesh... "What the hell..?"

Janine's eyes were huge. "Egon?" she breathed, gazing around the room, past Peter's bed to the neatly made one beside it that hadn't been there seconds before. They all turned to stare at Ray's bed, mysteriously returned as well. "EGON!" Janine's joyful scream was instantly followed by thudding footsteps in the hall, and a moment later Egon and Ray burst into the room. They were a little older than Peter remembered them, but they were intact, alive, in one piece - here.

"Oh, god," Peter moaned. Energy flooded his body, his healthy body. With a glad cry he launched himself from bed and flung his arms around his two long-lost friends as if he would never let go. "You're alive. You're alive!"

"Of course we're alive, Peter," Egon's deep voice rumbled in his ear as he patted the shaken Peter on the back. "What's wrong? Did the alpha wave generator backfire on you and give you a nightmare?"

"Yeah, Peter, you sound a little confused," Ray agreed.

Peter freed himself from the two men and blinked at them doubtfully. A second earlier there had been an urgency, a hollow need inside him that would never be filled, followed by a happiness too intense to contain within himself, but now it was gone. He scarcely remembered it, the desperation and need had faded, and in its place was a sense of contentment he couldn't explain, a quiet joy. Glancing sideways at Winston, he saw him returning the look in equal, if momentary doubt, then Egon bent over the generator, and Ray grinned at Janine with great interest.

"What are you doing up here, Janine? Watching Peter get his beauty sleep? Not that he looks particularly great in the mornings, I'll give you that, but if you're not careful, you're gonna make Egon jealous."

Egon's head came up in a combination of amusement and alarm, then he exchanged a smile with Janine that didn't display a trace of jealousy.

"Die, Stantz," Peter retorted with a huge grin, then he caught himself as if the words held a hidden meaning he didn't remember. For an instant he hesitated then, when Ray gave him a jab in the ribs, he burst out laughing and lunged at him to retaliate. He couldn't remember ever feeling so good, so fulfilled, so free.

"Please, children, not while I'm working," chided Egon as he rewound the tape. "I want to watch this. From your reaction just now, Peter, I believe I have an idea what's on this tape."

Memory kicked in and suddenly his reactions made a kind of sense. "Omigosh," he breathed. "I've got it! The dream into the past! I forgot all about it. You mean this is the day I went back into my long-ago dream and changed history and saved you guys from that lab explosion?" Suddenly he understood it all, the reason he'd lunged for the guys like that, the reason he felt so good. Because it hadn't happened; he'd changed the past, he'd saved them.

"Hey, yeah." Ray grinned. "I forgot all about it after all these years. Gosh, Peter, you don't still remember the other version, now that we've caught up to it, do you?" He leaned closer and touched him on the arm. "I remember when you told us what the other you was like. Gosh, those memories wouldn't be good ones."

"I think I did remember when I woke up, but it just...melted away." Reminded of what had happened so long ago, the strange dreams he'd had, the warning from his future self, he gave both his 'resurrected' friends another hug for good measure, then, content in the knowledge that his life was just the way he wanted it, he asked, "So whose turn is it to make breakfast?"