Thursday, June 3, 2010

News Desk / Night Shift / The News / Breaking News

A newsroom. A night crew. A web editor, a photo editor, and sports. Quiet night. Discussions of the average days stories. Mockery of celebrity, dismissal of disasters, groan at government. Packing it up for the night. Last minute checking the wire.

A skirmish in the Middle East. Major casualties. Devastation. A city we've never heard of. Annoyance at having to work on a last minute story. Text editor reads the screen, a look of horror crosses his face. Cut to photo editor, from behind we slowly pan in, looking at the pictures of utter destruction from afar. Large clouds, shapes, a great distance. Sports guy watching Spike TV.

Step by step we have them yelling back and forth as new information comes in. The ticker stops, goes blank. A few minutes pass. They huddle around one computer, looking for more and more info. Twitter is the first with photos. AP. CNN breaks video.

Reports are starting to sound like it's one person who broke free and has gone on a rampage, but that's ridiculous. They discuss superhumans, comicbooks, life & death. Mental powers. The ticker kicks back on.

Worldwide state of emergency. The phones start ringing, the chaos of a newsroom erupts, the flow of information overwhelming. They try and figure out who has information and who just wants answers. Few and far between, they find someone with answers. Their boss Ethan. He's got information that the attack is being made by a flying man.

He's rushing and on his way, catching a cab from over by the UN where he lives. Blown up, the line goes dead as a rumble, a slight tremor shakes the room. They try and call him back over and over, when suddenly a video is shown on TV. A helicopter hovers over a destroyed UN, a being standing in the middle of a crater. We get a shot of the world's first superhuman, a middle eastern man, glowing and ripped.

A energy flame whips across the screen and the figure is gone. The reporters try to explain but aren't sure. They all begin to look up information. A twitpic here. Video on youtube. Viral information flow. Drawings of the man, interpretations, theories on the energy beam. Another superhuman?

A flash of light in the high windows, vibrating glass panes, they huddle up. The power goes out. They light their lighters and head towards the exit. The newsroom rumbles. They run out front, and look down the street. Right next the the Empire State Building they see an energy flame smashing into a golden glimmer. With each crash a pulse of energy shoots out. Car alarms go off. People are running down at the end of the block behind them, running downtown.

The energy swats the glimmer and it smashes into the Empire State Building and then into the Post Office, before skipping down the street towards them. The sports guy dives to the side, pushing them aside just as the figure smashes into the pavement.

An energy glow slowly lights up the scene a bit as the trio step closer to the crater. The light passes over them as a being drops down, drifting above the fallen golden figure. Their lights play off each other like competing flames. We see the creature as the photographer lifts his camera and we see in the viewfinder for a moment and it clicks.

It turns into a still picture with the newspaper logo on the cover which becomes a giant framed cover they put on the wall, and the text editor's byline is right on front. They're telling the story as they walk along, finally telling a wounded Ethan how the creature just poofed away in the end. The sports guy's eyes glow as they walk away, him with no glory. But he's okay with that.

No comments: