Shayne:
She glanced at the paper she’d been given, and then blinked. She stared at the masthead and then flipped to the front of the paper.
Her first impulse was to assume that this was some sort of joke. Even if another universe existed which had cities named things like Metropolis and Gotham, it didn’t necessarily follow that the newspaper had to be named the Daily Planet.
Yet that was the name spread across the top of the paper, and on top of each following page. She flipped through looking for the masthead, which was the list of members of the editorial board.
The masthead described .the Daily Planet as having been founded in 1775. She scanned for familiar names; most of them were unknown to her, although Perry White was apparently managing editor.
Shayne, you deserve to be commended, not just for this story, but for your general skill and dedication as a writer. My wife and I have both noticed that you are almost obsessively thorough in your research, both of situations, and of background. How many people actually know that the term
masthead refers both to the logo at the top of each page (and especially the front page) of a news publication, but also to the section containing the business information of the publisher (editorial board, subscription information, etc.)? This does indeed make the title of this story apropos. Very well done.
“Can you tell me what this is?” Pilar asked.
“My footage from the Flight 1013 landing,” Lois said. “You’ve been playing it for the last several days.”
“So why have we had eight different flight engineers and physicists calling to complain about the footage being computer generated?”
Lois blinked. “It’s not computer generated.”
“According to the experts, it takes an airplane that size at least a thousand feet to touch down and another two thousand feet to stop. That’s a minimum, and that kind of stop would likely result in blown out tires and a lot of damage to the aircraft…damage that didn’t show up in the video.”
“They were under the fifty foot mark by the time they reached the fence,” Lois said.
“The experts noted that, but it looks as though the plane made the stop in half the distance it should.” Pilar shook her head. “The laws of physics say that plane didn’t land the way you said it did. Whoever did the computer graphics should have done their homework better.”
“I filmed what I filmed,” Lois said, looking Pilar straight in the eye.
“How did you fake the footage?” Pilar’s voice was quiet, but steely.
I think that those who have posted above are being too hard on Pilar. She is, after all, supposed to be high in the management ranks of CNN, an organization which millions of people all over the world look to for
reliable news. Although she may wish to favor Lois over the word of others, the word of eight independent experts well-versed in the laws of physics and aircraft design simply cannot be dismissed. Remember that she knows nothing about the Metropolis, etc. issues involved. Maybe if she is given some hard evidence (like perhaps a visit from someone claiming to be Clark Kent, complete with an impressive and unarguable demonstration of superpowers, together with pointing out the image of the man underneath the plane in the video and an explanation of what he had been doing there), she might change her tune --
if it is done before the case gets to the review board.
Snave
