TOCCleaning out Lois's apartment took longer than they'd planned, mostly because Lois really didn't want to do it.
“We really could just move in here,” she kept saying.
“Even Superman hated that sofa,” Clark stated.
“We can change the furniture,” Lois protested.
“Both Bob and Gary said this place is completely insecure,” Clark reminded her. “And we're paying them to tell us things like that.”
“I just... this and the Planet are our last links to how it used to be,” Lois said. “And our new press passes don't have the right names or faces.” She looked around the apartment. “We had some good times here, didn't we?”
“Lois and Clark had good times here,” Clark corrected. “But we're not them. Not really. We have their memories, and if Asabi is right, we have their souls, but we're different incarnations. We have to become our own people, our own interpretation of them.”
“How did you get to be so wise?” Lois/Lane asked.
Clark/Alexa shrugged. “A lot of traveling and listening, I guess.” She picked up the high school yearbook laying on a box of books she was preparing for storage.
“Her high school reunion is next week,” Lane said. Alexa gave him a curious look at the choice of pronoun. “Lois Lane is dead. I need to get used to it. I mean,
really get used to it. We both do.”
“It's just hard,” Alexa said. “I dream about being him. And then I wake up and hear sirens and screams for help, only I'm not ready. I don't know if I'll ever be ready to do that again. At least not with this body.”
“We'll figure it out,” Lane promised. “We always do.”
Alexa thumbed through the yearbook. She stared at one of the pictures and chuckled. “Well, would you look at her.” A teen-aged Lois Lane with wild fluffy hair looked back at her.
“Just her luck. She wears polyester one day of her life and it's captured on film for all eternity.”
“Lois Lane, Student Body President,” Alexa read aloud. “She got elected with that hair?”
“She was still stuck in her Charlie's Angels phase. Everyone was,” Lane said with a touch of defensiveness.
“And who was Joe Malloy?”
Lane grabbed for the book but Alexa kept hold of it.
“
You're in my dreams Like a touchdown pass,
I can't help noticing You've got a great...” she read.
“It was also her 'dating the quarterback phase.' It didn't last long,” Lane explained.
“You'll have to tell me about it sometime,” Alexa said.
“Or not,” Lane said. He looked around the apartment again. “I'm going to miss this place.”
“Tomorrow we can get movers in to take care of the furniture, move the books and art into Clark's storage unit, and then we can go over the real-estate listings O'Brien's people got for us,” Alexa said. “We'll find a place for
us. One that we can make memories in together. One that doesn't have ghosts lingering in it.”
“And while we're getting rid of ghosts, we should get ourselves a marriage license that
we've signed and find a justice of the peace to make it real for us. And maybe even some wedding rings that don't have Luthor's stink to them.”
-o-o-o-
“So what do we have on the bomb at police evidence warehouse?” Perry asked the next morning after the staff meeting.
“Bad Brain's lockup was definitely the target. Everything he ever built was destroyed,” Alexa stated.
“No great loss,” Perry commented. Bad Brain and his sadistic gadgets had caused a lot of grief for a lot of people.
“The Gotham Crime Museum might disagree,” Lane said. “All of Bad Brain's gadgets were scheduled to be crated up and shipped out this afternoon. So obviously, last night was the last chance whoever was going to have to destroy the gadgets. But why bother? It was all sick... trash.”
“Well, obviously somebody had a beef with Bad Brain Johnson,” Alexa stated. “And whoever it was didn't care there was a guard in the building. But one interesting thing about the device that was used, apparently it had all the hallmarks of something Bad Brain might have built, if he wasn't dead.”
“Are you thinking what I'm thinking?” Lane asked. “What if Bad Brain had another associate, or a helper, one the Lakes didn't know about, somebody who knew his style of workmanship well enough to copy it.”
“And they'd rather see it all destroyed rather than it all being in a museum?” Alexa mused.
“Check it out,” Perry ordered, waving them out of his office.
Outside the office Lane turned to Alexa. “The question is, who did Lois and Clark miss when they were tracking down Bad Brain.”
“We know his father was dead, possibly murdered by Bad Brain himself, and his mother had moved out of state to get away from him,” Alexa said.
Lane shook his head. “We were
told his mother moved out of state. What if we were told wrong?”
-o-o-o-
With traffic, neighborhood of Vernon was a good forty-five minutes from the Daily Planet. Demographically, Vernon was solidly working class. The housing was a mix of brownstones and small single family houses. Unlike Racine, Vernon had yet to be discovered by the city's business class looking for inexpensive housing.
Roweena Johnson lived in one of the single family homes and had apparently lived in the same house since before her elder son Rufus, AKA Bad Brain, was born. Her younger son, Herkimer, still lived in the house with her. Herkimer worked as a bicycle messenger in Midtown.
The Suburban with Lane and Alexa in the rear seat was halfway across the Racine bridge when the first energy wave hit. Lane and Alex both grabbed their heads as the thrum of the energy wave threatened to overcome them. Dotty, their driver, seemed stunned or dazed as did Bob in the passenger seat. Ahead, Lane could see stopped traffic.
“Dotty!” Alexa yelled over the hum. “Dotty, stop the car!”
Dotty hit the brakes, but the driver behind them didn't. Nor did several of cars behind him. Neither Dotty nor Bob seemed to notice there had been an accident. They seemed entranced.
“What the hell is happening?” Lane yelled. The hum was painfully and overwhelming. And then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped.
“What just happened?” Bob asked.
“I don't know, but I think we need to get to Star Labs.” Alexa told him.
-o-o-o-
“No dizziness when the wave hit? Confusion?” Doctor Klein asked Alexa when he was finished with his brief examination. Lane was outside making some phone calls.
“Just loudness and pain, like being in a drum being pounded on,” she said.
“You didn't find yourself prone to suggestion? Suddenly waking up, listening to a love song on a radio, arms and lips wrapped around a lab chimp?” he asked. Alexa just looked at him. “Or something...” Klein added sheepishly.
Lane came back into the room. “At the same time the wave went off, the hydroelectric plant was robbed.”
“What was taken?” Alexa asked.
“Power amplifiers,” Lane answered. “And the police found some sort of advanced electronics at the scene. I expect they'll be asking Star Labs to analyze it for them, but the tech I talked to thought it looked like something Bad Brain might have done.”
“Somebody's copying his handiwork?” Klein asked. “That's positively frightening.”
“Exactly,” Alexa agreed. “What could cause this?”
“A powerful electromagnetic field. It numbs the brain, short-circuits free will and transformed half the city into highly suggestible zombies,” Klein said. “At least it affects humans that way. And if this person has stolen power amplifiers we might be looking at the whole city being affected the next time.”
-o-o-o-
Lane and Alexa didn't get back to Vernon until late in the afternoon. Roweena Johnson's house looked small and quaint from the street – white picket fence, white gingerbread trim. A cottage garden with lots of roses.
The interior was genteelly cluttered. Crocheted doilies and bric-brac, flowered wallpaper and flowered upholstery. Roweena Johnson could have been a story-book picture of an apple-cheeked grandmother who also always had cookies baking and pies cooling on the window sill.
“Would you like anything else? Some cookies?” she asked them, handing Alexa and Lane dainty cups of tea. Bob stood just outside the front door.
“No, thank you, this is just fine,” Lane responded. The ball-and-claw couch wasn't very comfortable. It felt like it had horsehair stuffing complete with insects.
“Rufus favored those cheap chocolate logs with the lard-filled centers. Ate them by the ton. You wouldn't want a lard-filled log, would you?” Mrs. Johnson asked.
“No, thank you, Mrs. Johnson,” Alexa answered.
“Good, 'cause I don't stock them in the pantry now that he's gone. Would break my heart to see 'em in there. You know, Mother's Day is coming up. He always used to send me the most unusual gifts. Meat, mostly. I'm telling you, it was the sweetest tasting stuff I ever put next to mashed potatoes. Don't know where he got it. Tasted like chicken. Only better.”
“We really just want to ask a few questions about Bad... Rufus,” Alexa said.
“Did you know those two reporters, Lane and Kent?” Mrs. Johnson interrupted. “You know, Rufus always said their names like they were one word. Loislaneclarkkent! Like they were some joined-at-the-hip singular burr in his britches.”
“Mrs. Johnson, back to your son...” Lane said.
Mrs. Johnson shrugged. “Go ahead and ask your questions. I don't get many visitors and I certainly don't get out much. It's just too busy out there. Everybody pushing and shoving, in each other's way all the time. I can't stand waiting in line for anything and usually what you're waiting for is not worth the wait anyway. Have you noticed that?”
“We have reason to believe that Rufus may have some connection to the electromagnetic surge today,” Lane said, trying to keep her on track.
“How could Rufus be?” she asked. “Since he's dead.”
“We're looking for somebody in his past who might have known him, befriended him, and then been...” Alexa began.
“Discarded,” Lane finished.
Mrs. Johnson stepped over to the fireplace mantle, to the collection of framed photographs standing between two ornate candles. Above the fireplace was a large, framed "Bad Brain" snarling brain logo with an autograph: "To Mom, From Your Little Devil, Bad Brain!" The ink looked more like dried blood.
“Rufus didn't have any friends. Not a single little pal. He didn't have time for all that. He was too busy creating,” Mrs. Johnson said sadly. She handed Alexa one of the photos.
It showed a skinny boy beside a home-made electric chair. Seated in the chair was a younger skinny boy wearing a colander on his head with wires attached to it. He was giving a thumbs up as he grinned at the camera.
“He loved the classics,” Mrs. Johnson said.
“Is that Herkimer?” Alexa asked, pointing to the younger boy.
Mrs. Johnson shrugged. “Him? Doesn't matter. Rufus... now he was the smart one.”
Bob was very quiet as they walked toward the car.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Alexa offered.
“I'm thinking the apple didn't fall far from the tree,” Bob said.
“We could take a minute and talk to some of the neighbors,” Lane suggested. “Maybe they've seen things.”
The neighbor to the right of the Johnson house slammed the door in their faces when they said they were from the Daily Planet. The neighbor to the left wouldn't let them in the house and kept nervously looking over at the Johnson house. “We were glad when Rufus left the neighborhood. But things... The noises haven't stopped. The weirdness... Even now, nobody has pets that go outside. We'd move but our house isn't worth anything thanks to them.”
“Is there anyone else in the neighborhood that might be willing to talk to us?” Lane asked. The neighbor shook his head and shut the door.
Alexa thought she saw one of the lace curtains twitch on the Johnson's living room window as they headed back to the car. A quick look with special vision confirmed that Mrs. Johnson was standing at the window, watching them. She tried to peer into the basement but that appeared to be lined with lead or at least multiple coats of lead-based paint.
There was no telling what might be hidden down there.
-o-o-o-
There was a note on Alexa's desk when they got back to the newsroom. 'Call Detective Reed.'
Alexa dialed Reed's number as Bob settled into a chair by the newsroom elevators. Alexa had already come to the conclusion that most of Bob's work consisted of simply being vigilant where other people might simply trust there was nothing dangerous in their surroundings. She had to admit that Clark hadn't been as vigilant as he probably should have been. Having Kryptonian invulnerability and senses had desensitized him to physical threat to a certain extent.
Reed came on the line. “Just wanted to give you kids a heads up,” she said. “Deter had a patient show up a little while ago. Fellow was not a happy camper to find his psychiatrist was banned from seeing patients because his medical license had been suspended pending investigation into ethics violations and possible malpractice. Guy left Central Holding demanding Deter be released and that he was going to get even with the people who put his doctor in jail.”
“Do you have a name on this patient and maybe a description?”
“He said it was John Smith,” Reed said. “But we both know that's a crock. Twitchy ferrety little guy, brown hair. Had a bicycle helmet with him. One of the guys over there said he thought the guy looked familiar but couldn't place him.”
“Did anybody ask Deter about him?”
“Invoked patient-doctor privilege. Doc McCorkle's real sure Deter knows exactly who this guy is and he doesn't care what this guy does.”
When Reed hung up, Alexa beckoned Lane closer. “One of Deter's patients was making noises about getting even with the people who got his doctor arrested.”
“Well, we've been threatened before.” Lane grimaced. “Lois and Clark were threatened a lot of times,” he corrected. “And like Perry says, if we run and hide just because of a threat, we're not worth anything to anybody.”
Suddenly there was a loud, agonizing thrum in the air like on the bridge. The people around them just seemed dazed. One of the staffers, Alexa thought it was Doug but it was hard to think through the noise and pain, dropped the radio he'd been carrying. Suddenly the newsroom was filled funkadelic music.
Everyone within earshot began dancing convulsively.
After five minutes or so, the sound stopped and the people in the newsroom seemed to regain their senses.
Perry recovered first. “Everybody, snap to! We just had another one! Hit the phones and find out what went down!” He turned to Lane and Alexa. “Are you two kids okay? You're both as white as sheets.”
“We'll be okay,” Lane promised. Perry nodded and headed off to make sure everyone else was all right. Sirens sounded outside the building. Alexa felt Lane's hand on her shoulder. “We'll figure something out. But not today.”
That didn't make Alexa feel any better.
“It's a mess out there,” Doug yelled, getting off the phone. “Couple of buses ran onto sidewalks, multiple car accidents, people crushed against buildings.”
Another staffer chimed in: “There's a chemical fire on the waterfront. An explosion on a loading dock.”
“Okay people, get on it...,” Perry yelled. “You, Doug, transportation. Marty, waterfront. Janey and Marty, the city's response to this disaster. Lane and Alexa, you're already working the Bad Brain connection, get on it. Move people, now!”
“Chemical fire on the waterfront sounds bad...” Lane commented.
“I have an idea,” Alexa said, grabbing Lane's arm and leading him to the storage room. She ignored Bob's frown as she closed the storage room door.
“Nobody will be looking for Superman,” Alexa continued. “Move fast, stay high. If we do it right, they'll think it's Superman's ghost or something.”
“Okay, let's do this.”
-o-o-o-
Chemical fires were always tricky. One never knew exactly what was in the fire and too many combinations of chemicals burned without air or actually burned water. This fire looked like it started when a forklift operator got hit with the whammy wave and ran into a pallet of auto care chemicals. That would have simply been an annoyance if there hadn't also been chlorine-based pool chemicals close by. The combination was deadly. And it certainly didn't help that the affected workers on the dock had been so dazed that they couldn't save themselves.
“Get the rest of the chemicals away from the fire,” Alexa ordered. “Fast, but not so fast we spread the fire.”
Working at super speed, they cleared the dock of flammables. Then, staying out of sight of the firefighters trying to assess the situation, Lane cooled the adjacent structures to keep the fire from spreading to them while Alexa cooled the fire itself. Luckily, the original chemicals had already combusted so couldn't start another fire.
Job done, they headed back to the Planet.
Bob was waiting outside the storeroom, arms crossed, an annoyed look on his face. “Do you mind telling me how you two went into a room with one door and one window and when I went in to check, you weren't there?”
“We flew out the window?” Lane suggested.
Bob was not amused. He sniffed the air. “The chemical fire?”
“You're not going to tell anybody, are you?” Alexa asked worriedly.
“Tell who what?” Bob asked. “But I'm pretty sure you know better than to go out to a fire without having a change of clothes. And I think we need to be looking at a penthouse in the city for you. Someplace high so people won't notice odd comings and goings.”
“Thanks Bob,” Lane said. “Oh, and what we're probably going to be doing tonight, I'm pretty sure you and Gary don't want to know about.”
Bob snorted. “You're probably right.”
-o-o-o-
It seemed that the second whammy wave attack had been to cover the theft of several thousand dollars worth of sophisticated high voltage electrical components from the Snyder Electrical Supply House not far from where the dock fire had been. This time there was surveillance footage of the perpetrator: a twitchy ferrety little guy wearing a helmet with electrical components attached to it. He looked like someone who was afraid that Martians might attack his brain.
"Over a hundred people dead, thousands injured, not to mention the properly damage," Alexa grumbled. "For what?"
"Well, Bad Brain would have done something like this for the thrill of hurting people," Lane reminded her. "But instead of making people suggestible, he would have fried their brains."
"And the next attack may do just that thanks to the stolen components. And he could take out half the Eastern Seaboard with it."
They were both in dark clothes when they landed behind the Johnson house. Alexa's hair was tucked under a dark knitted cap.
A worn bicycle was leaning against the outside stairs to the basement door and they could hear voices from the living room.
"Mom, give me a chance!" a man was saying.
"What is with that tuxedo? You look like a dead band leader," Mrs. Johnson responded.
"Rufus never gave you anything, nothing that ever helped you."
"He made me proud!"
"I can make you proud," the man said. Lane assumed the man was Herkimer Johnson, Bad Brain's younger brother.
"Mostly you make me sick," they heard Roweena Johnson tell her son.
Lane made short work of the simple door lock and they moved quietly into the basement. The basement was set up as an electronics workshop – shelves of small and large components, some metal working equipment. Pegboards held what looked like finished items – a raygun-like device, shackles, other unidentifiable things. In the far corner sat a large device with controls and status lights on the front of it.
"That's gotta be it," Lane whispered. "Now to make sure it stays off." He found the power plug and pulled it. The status lights stayed on.
"High energy capacitors," Alexa said. "The blasted thing's portable."
"Now what?" Lane muttered.
"We zap it," Alexa answered as she walked around the device, peering closely at it. Lane thought he saw glimmers of heat vision coming from her.
The status lights turned from red to green and the device started to hum loudly. It was all Lane could do to keep from screaming at the pain. Then it stopped and Lane realized that Herkimer and his mother were standing on the stairs.
"Herkimer, what are these people doing in my basement?" Mrs. Johnson demanded. "And what is that monstrosity?"
"Ignore 'em, Mom. Party crashers. Here, put this on. You're gonna love it," Herkimer said, shoving a helmet with his mother's name on it in her direction. There was a remote control in his other hand.
Mrs. Johnson peered more closely at Lane and Alexa. "Snap my girdle, it's those two snoops from the Daily Planet. The ones that knew Loislaneclarkkent! Alexander something..."
Herkimer stopped trying to hand off the helmet. "You're the ones who had my doctor arrested?"
"Your doctor?" Mrs. Johnson sneered.
"My professional family therapist," Herkimer explained. "He was helping me, telling me what to do, how to make you proud of me. He told me to make this for you."
Mrs. Johnson looked to the device in the corner. "What's this thing gonna do, fry their brains out?"
"No, Mom..."
"Turn their bones to jelly?" she asked.
"No."
"Well, is it gonna kill 'em or not?" Mrs. Johnson screeched.
"No, it's going to make the world a better place for you," Herkimer said.
"You want to make the world a better place? Leave it!" She went to the peg board and pulled off the raygun-like device. She focused on Lane. "And you... It was bad enough those two busybodies hounded my Rufus, wrote all that trash, but now you two can't leave him alone."
She adjusted the controls on the pistol then raised it, pointing first at Lane then Alexa. "Why can't you just let my poor Rufus rest in peace?"
Herkimer hit a button on the remote. The horrendous hum and pain were back. Over the noise Herkimer said: "I made it for you, Mom. So that maybe, just once, you'd say you loved me."
Mrs. Johnson's mouth moved but just gibberish came out.
"Tell me you love me," Herkimer ordered.
More gibberish. It was as if she was fighting saying the words Herkimer wanted to hear. Herkimer raised the power level on the device. The whammy device started to smoke, filling the room with the smell of burning insulation and ozone.
Lane saw Alexa crumple to the floor and then the floor came up to meet him. Then the whammy device exploded.
Lane woke up to the sound of fire sirens coming closer and realized that Alexa had hold of him and they were floating over the burning house.
"How many people dead this time?" Lane asked, afraid of the answer.
"I don't see anybody in the neighborhood not breathing," Alexa answered. "I don't think the wave reached much beyond the house since I zapped the antennae. I was getting ready to isolate the capacitors when Herkimer turned it on."
"Do you think Deter actually ordered Herkimer to create a brainwashing machine and turn it on the city?"
"If he did he'll never admit it," Alexa said. "But isn't it a little weird that Deter's partner and now one of his patients were both working on brainwashing machines?"
Oedipus Wrecks was written by David Simkins
