Title:Seven Days of Superman
Author/pseudonym:Mr. D8A
Fandom:Seven Days/Lois & Clark:The New Adventures of Superman
Rating:PG-13
Status: NEW Parts 1 - 5 with more to come
Archive: Yes
E-mail address for feedback: mr_d8a@yahoo.com
Desperate to get feedback on the story
Series/Sequel:Seven Days/L&C:TNAOS
Other websites:BACKGROUND INFORMATION.SEVEN DAYS (Details supplied by http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Launchpad/9329/SevenDays
Disclaimers: Lois and Clark and the rest of the show's entourage are the property of DC, Warner, ABC, and Joanne Siegel and Laura Siegel Larson. Seven Days is the property of UPN.
Notes: This story, in no way, links in with Mr. D8a's and Elisabeth's Lois and Clark universe. This is purely the creation of Mr. D8a's mind...so beware! (Okay there is some dialog help from Elisabeth)
Summary: Superman fails to stop the nuking of Washington DC and gets some help from Frank B. Parker from Operation Backstep.
Wednesday, October 6, 1999
12:40pm EST
Metropolis
Daily Planet
"Are you sure you want to do this? It's not to late to back out."
"Are you kidding! Little Ivan loves his Uncle Jimmee and Aunt Lucee." Jimmy Olsen exaggerated the 'EE' sounds just like the toddler in question.
"Ha ha. Okay. Our reservations are for 6:30, so be there by 5:30 so that Lois will have enough time to give you the litany of things to do, phone numbers to call..."
Jimmy's eyes started to motion over Clark's shoulder before he said, in a positively cheesy grin on his face, "Hi Lois!"
"... and don't bother eating beforehand. We'll have something for you when you get there."
"Who's doing the cooking?" This was said with a mock look of horror on Jimmy's face.
"I heard that James Olsen! Just for that *I'll* do the cooking! What do think Clark, Ellen’s Spam souffle with spinach leaves stuffed with pureed black olives, smothered in a Alfredo cream sauce or Lucy’s No-Crust Vegetarian Pizza?"
The look on both their faces was reward enough. Lois turned on her heel laughing all the way back to her desk.
Clark leaned toward Jimmy and spoke in a sotto voice, "I'll throw in a pizza about ten minutes before you get there."
All comments and suggestions are welcome. Please let me know publicly of any blatant plot holes. Please let me know privately of any grammatical/spelling blunders.
Wednesday, October 6, 1999
8:01pm EST
Metropolis
Dining Room at the Lexor Hotel
Even though it was overcast the cityscape looked beautiful. As it passed slowly by their window, Clark couldn't help but notice the pensive look in Lois' face. That and the fact that she had tortured her chocolate mousse for the last ten minutes without eating a bite caused him to raise a questioning eyebrow and clear his throat to get her attention.
“Oh! Sorry. I was off in the ozone wasn’t I?”
“Yes. I thought that was my job.” Clark flashed her reassuring smile. He put his fork down and gave her his full attention. “What’s on your mind?”
"Should I feel bad, Clark?"
"Why should you feel bad, Lois? We finally have a night alone. No evil plots unfolding. No hot story to investigate. No two year old wanting yet another drink of water and yet another story to be read to him. Just a quiet evening dinner for two, atop the city's most expensive rotating hotel."
"That's it exactly. It's great that Lucy and Jimmy agreed to watch little Ivan tonight, but..."
"But you're wondering if it is alright to *enjoy* being away from Ivan considering that you feel like you're barely there for him during the week. This from the woman that spends every coffee break and half her lunches in the Daily Planet's Early Editions Day Care"
"I know it's been months since we've had any time alone, but I still feel like we don't spend enough time with him. We were so lucky that the adoption went through and we where able to bring little Ivan here to the states. But now that we have him we hardly ever see him. The hours we keep are atrocious...hectic...completely unacceptable if we hadn't been doing this for so long! Don't look at me that way. I know we spend nearly every waking hour together but mostly it's Daily Planet time or commuting time or stake out time or chasing bad guy time. Combine that with the world's hold on your time and there is no time for *family* time or us time." Lois finished with tears welling up in her eyes and her hands clenched.
Clark reached his hand across the table and slowly disentangled her hands and wrapped hers in his. The look in his eyes spoke volumes of the sorrow her words had brought to his heart.
"I know you have cut back as much as you can. And I know that your heart breaks when you have to ignore a cry for help. I'm not begrudging you that. The world needs you. I've never asked you to stop helping people, and I won't start now. But I've been looking at the last two years of our lives and something has *got* to change…."
And, as if on queue, Clark got that look in his eye. The world was calling her love away. The shocked look on his face told her this was no ordinary emergency. The investigative juices started to flow.
"What?"
"There is a old SS-5 nuclear missile heading for Washington D.C. It seemingly came from Cuba but at speeds not possible. Every counter-measure along the path has failed to stop or even slow it down. President Clinton has already been evacuated and they are trying to get the Members of Congress out of the city. There is no time to evacuate the entire city. It will hit in 7 minutes. Those things carried enough fissionable material to level the entire city and spread nuclear waste for miles around. I gotta go."
"GO. GO. Congress was having a late session to overturn President Clinton's veto of the new tax relief bill. If that bomb goes off we will lose most of the politician in the country." Lois' eyes got a mischievous look. "Maybe you should let it go off."
"Cute. I love you. Kiss Ivan good night for me. I will tuck him in later." And with that, he was gone.
Within seconds, a familiar sonic boom rattled the windows of the restaurant as once again the man she loved went off to save the world.
Wednesday, October 6, 1999
8:27pm EST
The sky over Washington D.C.
The missile was headed straight for the heart of Washington D.C. It chewed up the air miles faster than most radar systems could track. Superman spotted the missile five miles above the city. Superman tried to intercept the missile, but the last moment it moved aside and veered away from him, almost like it was guided. A little over a mile and a half above the capital, he made contact with it. It exploded. It lit up the sky for miles. Distant viewers in Aberdeen, Maryland; Richmond, Virginia; and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania remarked on how it cast a slight lime-colored glow. Outdoor thermometers registered one hundred twenty plus degrees for over 10 minutes as far as forty-five miles away in Frederick, Maryland.
Washington D.C. was 20 miles across and it became a memory in the blink of an eye. The White House was the epicenter. Destruction was swift and relentless. The fireball consumed everything in its path. The White House blacked for a moment before it was smashed to the ground. The titanium lighting rods on the Washington Monument melted a nanosecond later, quickly followed by the monument falling over like a child's stack of building blocks. And even those fragments were pulverized to nothing. The waters in the Reflection Pool were instantly vaporized followed by the Potomac River a heartbeat later. The Capital was gone, as was every monument in the Washington Mall. The statues of Lincoln and Jefferson were reduced to puddles of molten metal in a matter of seconds. Anything and everything that was not atomized became lethal projectiles. Tombstones from Arlington National Cemetery were found more than fifteen miles away stuck in houses and trees. Everything was instantly seared then shattered against the ground or each other. Even the subway systems proved no protection as all the oxygen in the area was instantly consumed by the raging firestorm that was once the nation's capital. Anything living never knew what killed it and would never be found.
Three point four million people ceased to exist in under a second. Six million more suffered everything from temporary blindness to second and third degree burns over one hundred percent of their bodies. What wasn't knocked over in the initial outward blast was brought tumbling down by the massive suction of air back into the area at several hundred miles per hour.
The farthest reach of the damage was the Electromagnetic Pulse. The EMP reached out its tendrils south to Jacksonville, Florida; Northeast to Quebec, Canada; West to Chicago; and East into the Atlantic. Everything electronic was fried into uselessness within twenty-five miles of the blast. Beyond that it was varying degrees of burnout and fluctuations. Nearly every single aircraft in the twenty-five mile zone came down whether they wanted to or not. Computerized trains rolled to a stop and the brains of hundreds of thousands of cars went dead. Pacemakers shutdown and critical systems fail. Anything computerized stopped. Technology just stepped back forty years.
But while the Metropolis’ power-grid struggled to keep going, Lois knew. She knew that her Love had died. She let out an audible gasp as her soul was ripped asunder by the separation of her other half from this world. Her mind and emotions battled over what to do. Her mind told her to go home and be with their child. Her emotions wanted to stop the Jeep right where it was, curl up and die. The mind won out, at last, for now.
Friday, October 8, 1999
4:30pm MST
Area 51
Operation Backstep
Project Leader Bradley Talmadge sat at the end of the debriefing room table. The group was solemn and quiet. In less than two days the world had been turned upside-down. “The US Armed Forces has cordoned off Cuba by sea and air. Nothing’s going out or in. Cuban President Fidel Castro claims to be as surprised as the rest of the world. The…”
Nate Ramsey chose to voice his opinion at this point. “Fat chance. That Commie ba…”
Dr. Olga Vukavitch cleared her throat loudly. Ramsey decided to back down a bit.
“That Commie ‘bureaucrat’ has been chomping at the bit for years to get back at us for what happened in the sixties. Personally I wish we had done the job right back then and *we* wouldn’t be sitting here having this little discussion.”
“Well, maybe if you had helped him remove that animal Batista from power instead of ignoring the situation then he would not have turned to Comrade Khrushchev for help in the first place. Then maybe ‘*we* would not be having this little discussion’ at this time either.”
“Listen here Mis…”
“Nathan! This is resolving nothing!” Ramsey and Talmadge locked eyes in a silent contest of wills. Talmadge won.
“The U.N. is calling an emergency session to investigate and determine what sanctions, if any, are to be implemented. The order to over-run the island has not been given and will not be given until they say so. However, most nations across the globe have already tried and found Cuba's attack on the U.S. indefensible and are strategizing on how to take advantage of the situation. Certain members of the world community are urging Cuba and other nations to continue the work of destroying the U.S. International tensions over the event are in continuous flux as the world edged closer to a worldwide conflagration. Here in the States it’s worse.
“Martial law has been declared nation wide. All Cuban Americans are being incarcerated and investigated. Retaliation against anyone of Hispanic decent is out of control. Emergency situation plans are being pulled out and dusted off. Special elections are being planned to replace the lost representatives. President Clinton is promising swift justice from his temporary headquarters in Fort Knox, TN. The dead, dying and injured tolls scroll across the screen of every working TV. Thousands are dying daily due to the lack of medical help. Across the world teams of relief people outfitted themselves to come to the help, but it won’t be enough. Fallout continues to drift north, killing hundreds of thousands in Delaware and New Jersey. Metropolis, New Troy has so far escaped the worst, but the Jet Stream is threatening to change direction at any time. New York City and Boston will eventually succumb as well.
“The President has ordered a Backstep as soon as we have figured out what happened. We have until tomorrow to do that because he doesn’t want to cut it to close. Here’s what we know at this time. Apparently an old SS-5 nuclear missile was fired from the Isla de la Juventud just off the coast of Cuba. All missile sites on that island were dismantled some thirty-seven years ago. All they could find at the point of "launch" was burnt ground and an some slagged metal components."
This brought up Dr. Isaac Mentor's eyebrows quickly. //Something familiar about that and where it was found.//
"Has anyone heard any word about Superman?" This was from Dr. Olga Vukavitch.
Dr. Isaac Mentor spoke up at this point. "Star Labs' Dr. Bernard Klein confirmed the presence of powdered Kryptonite was indeed found in the radioactive fallout. It has been speculated that the bomb was rigged with Kryptonite and that Superman was vaporized when it exploded." This last statement brought dismay to all faces around the table, with the exception of Ramsey's face.
"I've said it before. We can take care of ourselves. I knew that alien was going to be trouble the first time I saw him. The rest of his people proved that to be the case! I for one am glad he's gone. It was probably his fault that this happened in the first place. The Kryptonite in the bomb proves that he was probably the intended target all along."
The looks of dismay turned to disgust. Frank Parker turned to give Nate a piece of his mind "Of all the bone-headed, callused and out-and-out-stupid things I have heard you say I think that one beats 'em all. Do you really think we would be having this conversation today if Superman hadn't stopped that asteroid? Or when..."
Talmadge stopped listening to Frank as the phone rang. He picked it up and listened. Pointing toward Capt. Craig Donovan he said, "Turn on the television."
"What channel?"
"It doesn't matter. It's on all channels."
Friday, October 8, 1999
2:30pm EST
Metropolis
Star Labs
Lois swiftly drove around abandoned vehicles on her way to Star Labs. //Thank goodness Star Labs is in the opposite direction of the docks or I’d never get there!//
In the last two day the East Coast had been thrown into chaos. The warm coastal breezes had turned deadly with the fallout from the bombing of Washington DC. A fine silvery green mist traveled swiftly on the air currents, slowly covering everything in its path. Nowhere was safe. It was sucked into ventilation systems and settled into water reservoirs. It only took one inhaled particle to start the deadly radiation spreading in the body. Birds that flew into the cloud never came out. In its wake it left a ecological nightmare.
As the cloud traveled northeast, town after town fell to its relentless advance. The National Guard fought a loosing battle trying to evacuate the people out of harms way. Baltimore and Annapolis, Maryland where the first major cities to depart from the land of the living. Little Delaware gave up it north most tip for the next hundred or so years in little under an hour. Central and Northern New Jersey bore the worst of the nuclear decimation, as far as lose of land are goes.
People fled using every means possible. Planes where the first to disappear after a couple of planes crashed due to over crowding and being mobbed on the runways. Next were trains for similar reasons. Bus companies stopped all service to most of New Jersey and New York City. Truck drivers were being offered exorbitant fees to safely transport desperate families from their life long homes. Families fled to the east and west to avoid the nuclear specter. The New Troy National Guard finally had to close the bridges between New Jersey and New Troy due to over crowding and to the threat of a possible shift in the wind currents. Metropolis became the new Mecca as ships continued to dock and take on passengers in quarters so cramped that it made Cuban refugee boats look spacious by comparison. It was impossible to get anywhere near the docks. Nearly a tenth of the death toll was due to drowning alone as people tried to swim to safety.
And New York City was next in line if the wind did not change direction.
~*~
Lois found it easy to get to Star Labs. She just hoped that Dr. Klein was still there.
Concrete barriers, three tiers high, had been erected around the front gate and side of the building facing the road. There wasn’t really any danger of the building being laid siege to, but the powers that be thought it a wise precaution. The guard shack designed to house one, now held three and all of them watched as Lois came to a rolling stop at the closest barrier to them. They moved not a finger as she unbuckled her son and carried him up to the entranceway.
“I’m here to see Dr. Klein. It’s an emergency!”
The shortest of the three found his voice first. “No-no one g-goes in exc-cept official Star Lab p-personnel.”
Lois gave the man a look that could wilt the hardiest soul. Ivan covered his ears and buried his head in his mommy’s shoulder. He knew what was coming next.
“I am Lois Lane of the Daily Planet! I am here on official business with Dr. Klein! I demand you let me in!”
The tall, Gunter-looking, individual stepped forward at this point. “Oh, a reporter. With a brat in-tow. I can see that this is real ‘official’ now. Maybe we should let her. NOT!” The rest of the guards started laughing at this point. Ivan started to mumble “nononononononononon.” over and over again.
Lois reached up a hand and stroked the back of her
little boy’s head.
The first guard noticed and started to edge around
‘Gunter’ and feebly pointed at her. “S-she’s g-gotta
g-g-g-g-g…”
‘Gunter’ spun around and his eye went wide, and
started to un-holster his firearm.
Lois stopped and using just two fingers pulled out the
antenna for her cell phone. Satisfied that it was not
a gun the three guards relaxed a little. They were
premature in their relief.
Lois dialed the number for Dr. Klein’s office and
hoped that the Cellular service was up and going. It
was. She explained to Dr. Klein the situation and
immediately hung up. Seconds later the phone rang in
the guard shack. ‘Gunter’ answered the call. As he
listened he grew paler and paler. After about a
minute of listening he quietly put down the phone and
looked at Lois in a new light. He slapped the
as-yet-to-actually-say-anything-guard and told him to
escort Ms. Lane to Dr. Klein’s office.
“Never mind. I know the way.” And with that turned
on her heel and walked straight toward the
entranceway. They fell all over themselves to press
the button to open the door before she had to touch
it. Ivan stuck his head over his mommy’s shoulder,
stuck his tongue out at the guards, and made raspberry
sounds in their general direction.
Lois admonished Ivan. “Now sweetheart, it’s not nice
to make fun of the unemployed.” She then laughed a
hollow laugh and turned her thoughts on how she was
going to get Dr. Klein to help her, in her own time of
need.
~*~
The last day and a half had been hard on Lois. She
had planned on telling Clark that they were expecting
on the night he died. It was part of the reason she
had been so fragile that night. It now was the one of
the few things keeping her going. She adored little
Ivan, but growing inside her was her last link to her
husband and she was going to fight tooth and nail to
make sure he would live and carry on in his father’s
footsteps.
And to do that she was going to need help. Dr. Klein
seemed the most likely candidate. He was the expert
on Kryptonian physiology, even though he had said that
they would not be able to have any children naturally.
Everybody makes mistakes and she was so happy that he
was mistaken.
Friday, October 8, 1999
Dr. Klein was usually a neat nick when it came to his
office. He had to be. It was the only way he could
find things. When Lois walked in she first thought
she had the wrong office. It was in total disarray.
Dr. Klein stood up immediately the moment that Lois
walked in.
“Lois! I am so glad to see you and Ivan. I don’t get
to many visitors and I am glad to see a friendly face.
Sorry about the guards. Most of our regular ones
have already left the city and pickings are slim….”
Dr. Klein seemed lost in thought for a while and then
he seemed to see her for the first time. His face
blanched and he had to steady himself for a moment.
“Dr. Klein! Are you alright?”
“Such a sweet thing to say. Especially with what
you’ve been going through! My word Lois! How are you
able to put such a positive face forward at time like
this? How can you stand the loss!?”
Lois’ face went ashen at the meaning of what Dr. Klein
was saying.
“You knew?”
A slight smile crossed his face as he bid her to sit
in the only free chair in the room, his. Ivan started
flipping through a colorful stack of picture
magazines. Dr. Klein paced the floor in front of her.
“I have actually know for years. I figured that
eventually you or Clark would tell me all about it. I
just wish he had known before…”
A silent tear slid down Lois’ face. “What gave it
away?”
“Oh, it was pretty obvious to someone who makes their
living observing people’s reactions to different
circumstances. I could see the depth of your love for
both of them and their love for you. After you got
married it became obvious that you loved only one man
and that man just happened to have two careers.”
The tears started to flow freely at this point.
Little Ivan got up and gave his mommy a hug and looked
questioningly into her eyes.
Wiping the tears from her eyes and cheeks she looked
solemnly into her son’s eyes. “It’s alright sweetie.
Mommy’s not really sad just relieved. Go back to the
pretty pictures.” Ivan went back to the magazines,
but kept a wary eye on his mommy.
“This makes it easier to tell you what I need to tell
you. Dr. Klein I'm pregnant."
"You can't be! All the tests showed it to be
impossible! Unless..." Dr. Klein’s eyebrows started
to climb.
"Bernard Oliver Klein! I can't even believe you'd
think..."
"NO! NO! NEVER! Well actually maybe…”
Glare.
“…but when I really think about it, it's not likely."
The look in Lois' eyes could have given even her
husband’s heat vision a run for its money.
"Never would have crossed my mind. Nope. No-way."
The femme volcanal had been soothed…for now.
“What I was really thinking was that since I gave
Clark those results I have learned a considerable
amount about his physiology and I could redo the
test…”
“You don’t need to. I am pregnant. With Clark’s
child, just to set the record straight!”
“Like I said ‘Never a doubt in my mind’. Did you use
one of those home pregnancy tests or is this gut
instinct?”
“Both. After a solid week of heaving my gut I decided
to take a test. It came out positive.”
At that moment the door to Dr. Klein’s office flew
open. A young man just a few years Jimmy’s senior
burst into the room.
“Dr. Klein! Turn on your TV! You’ve got to see
this!”
"What channel?"
"It doesn't matter. It's on all channels."
+++++++++++++++++++++++
~NNL~
Donovan turned on the TV. A series of messages were
being displayed on a psychedelic screen. In the upper
left hand column was a timer counting down. It
currently was at 58 seconds. The words and time were
easy enough to read if you could ignore the dancing
colors in the background.
Olga was the first to find her voice. She read the
first part of the message. "…you will experience for
yourselves the…"
~SL~
"…truth," Lois turned to Dr. Klein with a questioning
look.
He returned an equally blank look and threw in a
shoulder shrug for good measure.
~NNL~
"…and the truth will…"
Talmadge turned toward Frank "Sounds faintly familiar.
Do you know the source Frank?"
"It's a paraphrase of John 8:32, from Eugene H.
Peterson's THE MESSAGE. The King James Version states
it as '…ye shall know the truth. And the truth will
set you free.' Wait there's more."
~SL~
"…really tick you off.' Really tick you off! What
kind of message is that!"
Dr. Klein pointed to the upper corner. "Look the
counter has five seconds to go. Four. Three."
~NNL~
"Two. One. Zero." The screen went black and was
immediately replaced by the image of a well-dressed
man in his mid-to-late thirties contemplating his
watch. Slowly he looked up and stated "My name is
Tem…"
~SL~
"…PUS! It's Tempus!. I should have known that that
no good, ego-centric, psychopath was behind this!"
Lois lifted her head to the heavens and shouted, "Mr.
Wells! Where are you!"
Dr. Klein looked at Lois like she had grown a second
head. All the while Tempus continued talking.
"…without further adieu I give you the mastermind
behind the demise of Superbore, Tempus!" The camera
pulled back and showed Tempus looking at the blank
space next to him.
~NNL~
"I think that guy is one French fry short of a Happy
Meal if you ask me."
Frank couldn't help but grin at Ramsey's statement.
**You can always count on Ramsey to turn a colorful
phrase.**
But in the next moment no body was laughing. The
sound of a hundred angry vacuum cleaners spilled forth
from the speakers in the room. In the empty space
next to Tempus a small brass colored disc appeared in
mid air. It rapidly expanded into a squarish yet
octagonal, metallic wall that had four triangular
panels whose points met in the middle to form a curvy
'X' in the middle. It immediately opened, a ghostly
blue-white light emanated from the edges of the panels
as they pulled back into the sides of the 'wall' like
something out of Star Trek. In the center of the
leftover metal ring was a shimmering veil of energy.
It was completely transparent in the center with
floating dark spots around the edges. A man was
visible on the other side of the veil. When he walked
through it, it sounded like he was passing through a
pool of water. It was Tempus! Just before stepping
through he turned around and stuck his head back
through the veil for just a moment, raising one hand
in the air as if waving goodbye. He then proceeded
straight through the ripples of energy. As soon as he
stepped through a blinding blue-white flare of light
issued out of the portal as the four panels closed in
on themselves. Upon connecting with each other, the
portal closed in on itself moving toward the upper
left of the screen, about even with the top, right
side of the second Tempus' head. It collapsed into a
small ball of light that became a small silver
metallic object roughly the size of a man's palm.
Even before it had completely coalesced, the second
Tempus was reaching back to catch it as it fell. He
slipped it into his pocket and turned to face the
cameras. The smile that grew on his face showed that
he was not to be trusted.
The first Tempus wasted no time. "So, Tempus, tell
all the kiddies in TV land how you were able to pull
off this amazing feat of brilliance and daring."
~SL~
At the mention of kiddies Ivan turned his attention to
the TV screen. “Who’s that Mommy?”
“He’s a very, VERY bad man, sweetheart. Just ignore
him. He’s really just making fun of the adults that
are watching. Go back and play with your Pagimon
doll, Tara-a-Chu.”
“Okay Mommy.”
“Boy Lois, this guy is full of himself. Are you
listening to this?”
“…what an apt description of my feat. It was all
quite simple really. It's a tried and true ploy that
gets the good guy every time. Cunning villain
threatens mass destruction of a city. Thickheaded
hero comes and tries to stop the weapon. Thickheaded
hero gets vaporized by well-placed chunk of Kryptonite
that the cunning villain places in with the
fissionable material. In fact let's go to the close
up of the momentous occasion."
At this point the screen is replaced with a remarkably
clear video of Superman chasing after the missile.
Tempus' voice can still be heard in the background.
Lois took a sharp intake of breath at the sight of her
now dead husband. Dr. Klein put his are around Lois’
shoulder.
“Superman! You said that Daddy was really Superman
and that he was dead!”
Lois put on the best pokerfaced look she had. “Yes
sweetheart, Daddy was Superman and…and he is dead.
But, remember what Daddy said about TV? This is like
one of your videotapes. This is only a recording of
Daddy. Daddy, Daddy is no longer with us. Come here
baby, and let Mommy hold you.”
Tempus continued brightly in the background. "As you
can see Big Blue is still alive and well at this
point. But as you can see he’s getting closer. Let’s
have that close-up of the action.” The view zoomed in
as Superman got closer to the missile. Just before he
made contact the view stilled. “Let's advance the
film slowly.” The film slowed to a crawl, showing
Superman taking hold of the missile. You could see
the muscles in his upper arms bulge and flex as he
strained to change the missile’s trajectory.
Lois could stand the strain no longer. Even though
she knew it was useless she cried out at the screen
“CLARK! GET AWAY FROM THERE!” At this Lois turned
Ivan’s head away from the screen so that he could not
see what was about to happen.
“The missile was programmed to explode if it deviated
from it’s own course. Normally this would not effect
Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes but I was a step ahead of him. As
the explosives slam the fissionable material together
it releases a energy so intense that the missile
casing is gone in no time at all thus exposing
history's biggest killjoy to the Kryptonite that is
mixed in with the uranium. The hybrid
uranium-Kryptonite substance released sufficient
enough radiation to destroy his invulnerability.
THERE! Do you see the initial wave of energy
enveloping him? It is at that moment that I, Tempus,
was able to save the world and all futuredom from the
most BORING individual to walk the face of history!"
“I want to SEE! I want to SEE!” Ivan squirmed in
Lois’ grasp just in time to see the ball of fire
engulf Washington DC. “Daddy go boom?”
When Lois didn’t answer right away Dr. Klein nodded in
affirmation, “Yes, son. Daddy go boom.”
~NNL~
Talmadge and Mentnor turned away from the screen as
Superman dissolved into oblivion. Both in their own
heart of hearts wished the hero Godspeed to whatever
afterlife awaited him, even though they knew that they
were going to do everything in their power to undo
this wrong.
Olga covered her face and sobbed. **NO! NO! This is
not fair. He is such a good man. He deserves more
than this. He was the hope for the hopeless. We must
not let this happen. I will not let this happen.**
Frank and Donavon just stared at the screen in
disbelief. It was one thing to know someone was dead.
It was quite another to witness it for yourself. The
two turned to each other and they knew what the other
was thinking. **No matter what it takes this is going
to be undone.**
No one even heard Ramsey whisper silent thanks that it
was quick and painless. Even though he thought the
world would be better off without Superman, no man
deserved to die that way.
Doctor Ballard eyes where the size of his glasses. “I
don’t believe it.”
Talmadge started to speak. “I know it hard to believe
John, but he’s go…”
“No. No! I mean I don’t believe this is real
footage.”
Everyone turned toward Dr. Ballard.
“The image quality is beyond anything that we have,
short of a satellite. And the angle is wrong for that
kind of surveillance. There is no way that he could
have this kind of footage. We’re talking thousandths
of a nanosecond here. This must be faked!”
The image fades back to the Tempi.
~SL~
“This Tempus must have access to some pretty covert
technology. I don’t know of anything that could give
that kind of clarity.”
This sparked Lois’ ire. “He’s a TIME traveler! He
pilfers from time any gizmo or gadget he needs.”
“Oh!”
~NNL~
Tempus, always aware of his audience’s short comings,
was glad to explain it to them. “For those of you
that DON’T know me let’s just say that you should buy
stock in MemoLex. By the 25th century they make a
dandy imaging system that gives new meaning to ‘is it
live or MemoLex.’ I also popped ahead a few decades
and believe me he’s dead.”
Everyone started talking at once. “25th century…He’s
a…time traveler…500 years!…Amazing…popped ahead
decades!”
Talmadge brought order to the room. “People! People!
Listen!”
The Tempus on the right had asked his counterpart a
question. “… your not going to take any chances this
time. How do you plan to ensure your vision of the
future comes about."
The Tempus on the left leaned back, stared at the
ceiling and closed his eyes. "Yes, even dead Superman
is a thorn in my side. In the past I've always
focused on just getting rid of the big, brawny oaf.
But every time Lois Lane has always thwarted my plans,
with a little help from Herb. Well, I've made sure
that time-traveling do-gooder is out of my hair. All
that’s left for me to do is get rid of Lois Lane and
their super-brat and my revenge will be complete."
~SL~
“Oh no! What has he done to Mr. Well’s?”
“Who is this Wells you keep talking about?”
“H.G. Wells, the author! It’s a long story, remind me
to tell you sometime.”
Dr. Klein opened his mouth only to close it again and
shook his head. **I don’t want to know. I don’t want
to know. I will be happier if I don’t know.**
“Super-BRAT! He knows! He knows I’m pregnant! Well
if that time-tripping-twit thinks I’m just going to
rollover and die he has another think coming!”
While the hormones raged on inside her mind, her
glucose levels dropped and hard. She quickly put Ivan
down and ran out the door to the nearest bathroom,
retching horribly, with a worried Dr. Klein on her
heels. They both missed completely what Tempus said
next. Had they heard they would have known that there
were bigger problems ahead.
2:45pm EST
Metropolis
Dr. Klein’s office.
Friday, October 8, 1999
4:59pm MST/2:59pm EST
+++++++++++++++++++++++
