Grand Central Terminal

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The Main Concourse at GCT in 2015

A major public transport hub in mid-Manhattan, New York City, and the location of the larger complex of New York's two worldgating complexes. The facility appears often in the Young Wizards series, due to characters who either use the gating complex there for "mass transit" purposes, or work there full time. (Much information about the public/nonwizardly aspects of Grand Central can be found at its Wikipedia entry. NB: the usage "Grand Central Station" properly refers to the associated US Post Office, not the terminal.)

The venerable Terminal has an eventful time of it in the series. Most prominently, Nita and Kit flee the Lone Power through the Main Concourse in SYWTBAW; and the downstairs track structure is subject to an invasion by mutated extradimensional saurians in TBONWM -- an incursion which requires a lot of patching, as among its many untoward results is the devouring of a tenor closely resembling Luciano Pavarotti by a dinosaur.

However, the Terminal's use by wizards is mostly much lower-key. Rather than do custom-constructed gatings for long-distance travel -- since these use a lot of energy, and saving energy is a major concern of those out on errantry -- most wizards east of the Mississippi elect to do a short "jump" to Grand Central and then use one of the gates associated with the upper-level track structure there for their onward journey. Since the gates are invisible, it's fairly easy for a careful wizard in a crowd of commuters to go completely unnoticed as they make that longer transit to Borneo or Antarctica.

The worldgates in GCT are managed by a team of feline worldgate managers. Cats are best equipped to work casually with worldgates because they can see and handle hyperstrings naturally; most other wizards must employ special routines to perceive and manipulate these.

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