Daily Planet Life

Every morning at seven forty-five, Clark Kent walked through the revolving door of the Daily Planet building in downtown Metropolis.

He wore glasses. He carried a coffee in one hand and a notebook in the other. He said good morning to the security guard, Frank, who always said good morning back and never looked up from his crossword. He pressed the elevator button for the fourth floor. He shuffled slightly, shoulders forward, the way a person shuffles when they are not trying to take up very much space.

Nobody in the elevator ever looked twice at Clark Kent.

This was, of course, the entire point.

The newsroom of the Daily Planet was the loudest, most energetic room in Metropolis. Phones rang. Keyboards clattered. Someone was always on the phone with a city council member, or arguing with a source, or hurrying across the room with a piece of paper held above their head like a flag. At the center of it all, in a glass-walled office overlooking everything, sat Perry White — editor-in-chief, twenty years in the business, voice like a foghorn that had learned to love the truth.

"KENT!" Perry's voice carried through the glass. "Where's my follow-up on the Southside water main? I needed that yesterday!"

"Sending it now, Chief," Clark said, already at his desk, typing.

He typed very fast. One of many things people had stopped noticing about Clark Kent was that he was easily the fastest typist in the building.

Next to him, Lois Lane was on her fourth call of the morning, her notebook open on her desk, her pen moving faster than her hand should have been able to move. Lois was the best reporter at the Daily Planet — possibly the best reporter in Metropolis — and she operated at a frequency that everyone around her struggled to match. She could smell a story the way other people smell rain before it arrives.

She was also, Clark thought, looking at her sideways over his glasses, the most genuinely brave person he knew. In a job full of brave people, Lois Lane was the one who went first.

"Got it," she said into the phone, and snapped it shut. She turned to Clark. "LexCorp contract dispute in the harbor district. Source says there's money missing. Big money."

"Need help?" Clark said.

"I never need help," said Lois. "But I'll take a second pair of ears." She was already standing up and reaching for her coat.

Clark Kent's superpower — the one that had nothing to do with the yellow sun or the strength or the speed — was this: he genuinely cared about the people he was writing about. When he interviewed someone, he listened the way you would listen to a story your grandfather told — leaning in, not writing yet, just listening. He remembered what people said. He remembered their faces. And when he wrote the story, you could feel that care in every sentence.

Jimmy Olsen was the Daily Planet's youngest photographer — enthusiastic and kind and occasionally tripping over his own camera strap in exciting situations. Clark was his unofficial mentor, which mostly consisted of Clark telling Jimmy to be more patient and Jimmy telling Clark about every piece of new photography technology that had just come out, in great detail.

"Did you know," Jimmy said one afternoon, setting a new camera on Clark's desk for examination, "that this one can shoot a thousand frames per second?"

"Mmm," said Clark, looking at it carefully.

"A thousand! That's so fast it could catch — I don't know — it could catch the Flash!"

"Probably not," Clark said mildly.

The fire alarm at three PM was, for everyone else in the newsroom, a disruption. Papers saved, laptops grabbed, orderly evacuation per the posted signs. For Clark Kent, it was an opportunity. By the time the newsroom reached the third-floor landing, Clark was not among them. He had quietly, without anyone noticing, not been there for approximately thirty seconds.

The small fire in the print room two blocks away was out before the fire trucks arrived. The firefighters found the source of the blaze had been carefully sealed and the sprinklers had been manually engaged — by hand, on a lever that required a very unusual amount of strength to operate. They filed a report that said "mechanical failure — resolved" and didn't think much more about it.

Clark was back at his desk, slightly warm, when Lois returned from the harbor district.

"You have a smudge," she said, looking at him. "On your forehead."

"Oh," said Clark. He cleaned it with his sleeve.

"Where were you during the fire alarm?"

"I went to get a coffee," Clark said.

Lois looked at him for a long moment with her very sharp eyes. Then she put her notebook on her desk and sat down. "Fine," she said. "The harbor story is bigger than I thought. Come on."

And Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter, shuffled after her with his notebook and his glasses and his coffee, through the revolving door and out into the sunlit streets of Metropolis. Watching everything, caring about everything, protecting everything.

Quietly. As always.