The Universe's Mixer

Love was in the air, and Fred hated it. Not hated it, but it just felt all sorts of wrong. Of course, she was alone, and she didn't have anyone. Her heart was full of possibilities, but her mind just kept telling her to forget about it. So, she put her mind into working out the City; there had to be some equation, some formula, some way to put the City into a working model. That had been her plan, to try and ignore the love-fest by solving the world around her.

She'd picked a nice cafe to curl up with a muffin and her clipboard, her pencil moving quickly over the paper, taking notes, writing figures, just keeping busy. While she was trying to factor in the idea of nonlinear time, which was something to say the least, she noticed a certain older man. He didn't look like what she remembered, if she had ever really seen him in the flesh before, but she knew who he was. He was that mean editor who had a stick up his butt about Spiderman. She'd have to be careful not to say Peter Parker, but she could keep the webslinger's identity hidden, she could. She had a few alter-egos hidden away in her head, and she wasn't going to give this man the power over them; but, she was going to have a word. Seriously, when was she ever going to get to do this again?

After tossing the empty muffin wrapper, she gathered up her clipboard, tucking the pencil away, and headed rather determinedly over. She wasn't going to let him frighten her; she'd faced demons, vampires, and Cordelia on a bad hair day - she could face him.

"Excuse me, Mr. Jameson. I'd like to have a word with you." Yes, she could definitely do this.

In Vietnam, Private Jameson observed that the officers never ate with the enlisted men. He asked around about why this was the custom, but there was no clear answer. Some said it was so the officers could talk tactics without interruption. Others said it was because their table was on top of a secret escape route so they could disappear if the camp was attacked. By the end of the war, Jameson was fairly certain he knew the real reason. It was simply to make them separate from the other soldiers, so the enlisted men couldn't see that the officers were just like them. If an officer were to eat with his subordinates, no amount of stars or stripes could regain the respect he would lose. The officers relied on the respect of their company as much as they did on their hardware and ammo.

Civilian J. Jonah Jameson later employed the same strategy in the workplace. He and the other editors ate lunch in a closed-off conference room, leaving the writers, copyeditors, artists, and clerks to their own devices. This was key to maintaining the respect of the general staff.

But today was Pizza Friday. The pizzas arrived in the break room, and it was first-come, first-served. This was the City Voice's great equalizer.

"Gangway! Lemme at that mushroom and olive!"

Sidney Prescott had been wandering this place for the last couple of hours as she tried to unravel what had brought her here. "Feels like a really bad movie come to life" she mused as she looked over the paper she had found near where she landed. She saw she would be going back to college as a theater major and would also be working as a desk clerk for whoever was in need of help. "Interesting" she muses,"But for now I have to find a place to stay and basically not get sick" that was when she let out a nasty sounding sneeze.

She was miserable, no doubt about that. Besides looking like she was coming down with something (since she has no clue about the zombie invastion) and being too skinny she was otherwise in one piece. But at the moment all she wanted was pretty simple: a friend and a safe place to stay while trying to find out what exactly was going on.

"Maybe this office has an answer, paper did say they need clerks" as Sidney went inside and well she was hoping for coffee.

"Sir, you'll have to put that out," said the woman at the front desk. "City Ordinance #331 states no smoking on City property. That includes the Police Station."

"So that's what I have to do to get attention around here? Commit a crime? Jesus." J. Jonah Jameson chucked the partially-finished cigar into the soil of a potted plant. "I've been waiting around for damn near four minutes for someone to help me out."

"What's your problem, sir?" The woman asked, not especially interested in the answer.

"I'm here to report a missing person."

The woman suddenly gained a little interest.

"Me," Jameson stated. "One minute I'm in my office at the Daily Bugle in New York City, the next I'm in an office of some newspaper called the City Voice. And to top it all off, nobody will tell me *what* city I'm in."

"Take a brochure, sir," the woman directed, now losing interest again. She pointed to a wall covered with a variety of brochures. A sign above the display read, NEW TO THE CITY?

"I don't need a brochure, I wanna talk to somebody. Listen, peaches, I'm the Executive Editor of the Daily Bugle, and when I get back home I'm gonna give this podunk little town such a bad rap it'll make Baltimore seem like Disneyland."

"Your tag says City Voice," the woman pointed out.

Jameson took a look at his chest. The ID tag that had previously marked him as Executive Editor of the Daily Bugle now indicated he held the same position for the City Voice. "That's right," he said, jumping on the opportunity. "I've got your little burg wrapped around my finger. If I say you're all crooked, that's what the people will believe. Now let me talk to someone before I get unreasonable."