Yes, yes...how to resolve this dilemma, if I were so lucky to be in CC's shoes??
Hmmmmm
Well, let's see. What do we know? (I love doing this)
* When they arrived in Utopia, they had a slight memory loss
* Lois' diary that Tempus had read stated that Superman flew her home when the dawn was breaking.. but in reality, Tempus arrived in the darkness...
He set her down quickly, knowing it was too late. He had been careless and the horse had left the barn, but he had to try. As much as he didn’t want to sound clichéd, he couldn’t help it. “This isn’t what it looks like.” He cringed even as the words left his mouth.
“Do you have any idea how I wish that were so?” The man stepped into the room and into the circle of light cast by the desk lamp.
Clark could see now what he hadn’t noticed before. He wasn’t the janitor. That wasn’t an industrial gray uniform he was wearing, as much as it was a... shiny silver get up of some sort. Not that he had room to be critical considering what he, himself, was wearing.
“Just as sure as death and taxes,” the man groaned. “And Lois, really. I read through hundreds of pages of this drivel- not much else for me to do during my most recent incarceration- and you got it wrong. It clearly states here...” He waved a book under their noses, “'I waited all night. The sun was rising when we left the building and flew into a sky streaked with pink and orange. Metropolis slept on, but for me, everything had changed...’”
“You know him?” Clark asked Lois.
“No,” she said adamantly. “And I have no idea what he’s rambling on about.”
“I’m not the one rambling in purple prose about first meetings and true love,” the man sneered. “And it isn’t even accurate, Lois! You’re a reporter, you ought to be ashamed. It’s pitch black outside, not yet one a.m. I came early to get the worm, and still not early enough. Because here you two are... together. Eternally, insufferably... together!”
* There is no mention of Tempus in any of the Lane-Kent memoirs.... (not even H.G. Wells?? then how did the Ministry of Peacekeepers and Helpers know about him? Ah, from 50 years ago..the disappearing person case)
Amnesia is always the "catch-all" used when you want to show an "elseworld" situation but don't want to make it stick. God knows, the Smallville PTB use it every week! They used it in STM to make Lois forget she knew Clark was S-Man.
Somehow, though, I think CC has something else up her sleeve, and that there are clues in the story somewhere that tell us how it resolves.
I'm going to have to mull this one over...
I will say I don't think Tempus is really dead. Maybe they're Andrus' bones?? LOL or Herb's??? One of his replicants, which was alluded to early in the story but never really mentioned since?
I'll be back. Actually due to the miracle of re-editing (kind of like a temporal time shift), I've already been back 3 x's and no one knew !<g>
