I loved this part as I have all the others, CC. As soon as I got out of class, I sat down in my office and devoured it, and then came home and savored it again this evening. If I started quoting everything I liked, it would be as long as this section, but I want to point out a few things.
“That’s right,” he returned. “I am. I’m also the guy who saved your life yesterday.”
That drew a smattering of laughter from the crowd now entering the building, but he didn’t take his eyes off hers. “Cool trick for a barnacle, huh?” he added completely unwisely.
The laughter became snickers from the groups of tourists.
“Don’t let him get away with it, Lois!” called one. “Get him.”
OMG, I had been holding my breath for the revelation, but to have it occur in front of the first tour group of the day! The really lovely part is that these people who know L&C's story so well are actually seeing the real revelation in front of them--and don't know it. Wow! With his love of irony, Tempus would be ecstatic.
“Nice meeting you, Lorraine,” Stephen said without missing a beat. “And way to get all testosterone on me, Dave!” he said to the Clark who was perched on the corner of her desk.
“Too far out of character?” Dave looked concerned. “Maybe if Clark had just done that once, it wouldn’t have taken them so long to get to the HEA room.”
Nah, Clark actually behaved that way toward Scardino almost every time he saw him, but
Lois never behaved like that (telling Scardino to get lost), so she kept interpreting Clark's displays of testosterone as dog-in-the-mangerish behavior.
She sprinted up the ramp. Good, familiar ramp. Even nicked and worn in the same ways as the original. Out of long habit she ran her palm over a scar in the wood. The dent she’d left when she’d thrown her shoe at Ralph and, sadly, missed him.
Who did that? Who replicated a world right down to a scuff on a prop? Chocolate bars in a drawer?
Actually, I'm asking this right along with her. I mean, Lois remembers the gouge in the bannister now because it probably didn't happen very long ago. But that isn't the sort of detail that she would pass on to her kids and grandkids, and hence to Utopia. The same with the color sheets on the bed in her childhood home. That takes an incredible obsession to travel back in time to document those minor details just to put them in a museum.
Which brings me up to two minor details I wondered about:
some slivers of soap left drying in the dish
With the technology Clark observed at the Superman Museum, this seems way too unsanitary and archaic for the locker rooms behind the scenes.
Tousled brown hair, brown, slightly dopey eyes
And what's with giving Clark brown hair when his hair is raven's-wing black?
However, I'm really glad you mentioned his feelings about seeing the scenes of Krypton. It's obvious that he found the experience as emotionally devastating as Lois found the Lane wing.
