Reed Richards walked into the lab, following the sound of vigorous swearing.

A woman with her back to him smacked a distressingly delicate-looking piece of equipment. "Stupid machine!"

"That interferometric particle spectrographer steal your quarter or something?" Reed joked.

The woman spun toward him. She was younger than he'd guessed, with dark hair, dark glasses, and a small, pale, chiseled face. She gaped at him for several seconds.

"Do I have something in my teeth?" he joked.

"No. Sorry. It's just...You're Reed Richards. I'm a huge, huge fan. I must've read your paper on passive cosmic ray radiography a hundred times before I got it."

"Thanks?"

"That came out wrong. I mean it was just so well written that I read it even when the math was way over my head. I'm Darcy. Doctor Darcy Lewis." She stuck out her hand. "It's an honor to meet you."

"Thor's told me a lot about you." He gingerly shook her hand. "We'll be working together. Can I help you with anything? I could take a look at this gadget." He gestured at the particle spectographer she'd just been chewing out.

"I don't know what's wrong with it. I've cleaned the lenses, reset the angle, and adjusted the aperture widths to everything I can think of, and it's still just giving me jibberish." She lightly hit a stack of printed readings.

He looked over the readings, hoping he might find something that would indicate what was wrong with the machine.

"I'm not usually like this," Darcy said. "It's just that Jane's been missing inside that thing for weeks, and I have no idea what happened to her. I don't know if she's even still alive."

"0I'm sure she's okay," he said in a reassuring tone with absolutely nothing to follow it up with.

She was right about the particle readings: they seemed simultaneously incomprehensible and physically impossible. Something about them bugged him. They reminded him of something, but he couldn't put his finger on what.

"I want her to be okay, so bad," Darcy said. "You know, before I met her, I was majoring in political science. Then we found Thor and...the world's just been crazy ever since."

"Did you really tase Thor the first time you met him?"

"He was being weird," she replied defensively.

"Sometimes things are exactly what they first appear..." He paused and looked at the particle readings again. "Oh my God."

"What?"

"What if the spectographer's not malfunctioning. What if all these readings are true?"

"That's impossible."

"I have seen a lot of things I thought were impossible in my life. I mean, I am one. But if these are right, what does it look like? "

"Vacuum soup."

"Exactly. Virtual particle froth, but a few dozen orders of magnitude stronger."

Darcy shook her head. "If that were right, the air would be exploding, and we'd all be dead."

"Well Wanda can warp reality."

Darcy shrugged. "Okay. that would explain what we're seeing."

"It would explain more than that. If it's true, and we can see whats going on inside"

"You mean the broadcast?"

"Exactly. Whatever this is its being broadcasted to the surrounding areas as a sitcom."

"But it's impossible," Darcy repeated. "Who could be causing the broadcast."

"Why did Dr. Foster start measuring that distortion?"

"She detected and Asgardian signal. Why?"

Reed frowned. "Weird."

"Well, a jump in unexplained electromagnetic distortions might've had a measurable effect on ionosphere observatories. Should we ask Pym?."

"Yeah. Do that."

She took out her cellphone and scrolled through her very long contacts list, then put her phone to her ear. "Hey, Doctor Pym. How are you? It's about seven p.m., why? ...Oh, I'm sorry, did I wake you up? Sorry. Hey, can you look up some data for me? ...Could you see if there were any unexplained discrepancies in electromagnetic frequency resonances of the ionosphere...Sure, I can wait." She glanced up at Bruce. "I'm on hold. This will take a few minutes."

"I'm going to make a phone call."

He stepped out of the lab and dialed Sue, who answered quickly.

"Any news, Reed?"

"Maybe. We're getting some really weird readings from the phenomenon we're trying to figure out. Hey, you know how you found that broadcast signal?"

"Yeah."

"Do you think we could use it to monitor whats going on in Westview?"

"Uh...let's see."

"What is it?"

"Remember it was like a 1950's sitcom well now its in colour and more like and 80's sitcom."

"Interesting, thanks. We're checking to see if there were any weird readings."

"Let me know what you find."

Reed returned to the lab. Darcy was off the phone.

"Was there any fluctuations?" Reed asked.

She dropped open a notepad, in which she'd scrawled, "Yea."

"About 3:38 in the afternoon she said. "Two people reported unexplained explosions in Westview, one on June 30th."

"Think that might be the cause?" Reed asked.

"It's possible. If they were, it's a miracle no one was killed." Darcy said

Darcy turned toward the window, toward where the town of Westview should have been, her expression bleak. "That we know of."