One day, Clark Kent was walking down the street, very distracted, when he thought he heard a gun go off. Much to his surprise, a blue and red blur suddenly flew across the street and tackled him to the ground! Clark might have been squished if he hadn't been Superman. Strangely, though, the person who'd knocked him down looked like Superman, too, right down to the red boots!
"Oh, uh, hi!" the new Superman said after helping him up. "You're Clark Kent, right?"
"I am," said Clark. "Who are you?"
"I'm Superman!" said Superman, and he stuck his hands on his hips and puffed out his chest, showing off the big, red S.
Clark frowned. "What?!" he said. Anybody else might have been surprised and excited to meet Superman; Clark was just very surprised. "Who are you, really?" he asked, feeling very suspicious.
Superman looked very nervous. "Um...I'm...uh...I'm you!"
"Me?" Clark repeated.
Superman smiled at him. "Yes! That's right! I'm you from the future. I remembered someone trying to shoot me with a Kryptonite bullet, and so I came back in time to save my life."
Clark looked at the wall behind them. Sure enough, there was a small hole with a greenish glow where the bullet had landed. "But, wait a minute," he said, thinking very hard, "If I was shot, how could I then go back in time to save myself?"
"Because," the second Superman explained patiently, "You weren't actually shot, thanks to your future self - me - coming back in time and saving you. See?"
Clark thought very hard about this. Time travel always made his head hurt, though so he soon gave up the effort. He looked at his future self very carefully. "Shouldn't you be older?" he asked.
The future Superman looked nervous again. "Pardon?" he asked.
"If you're me from the future," Clark said, "then you should be older than me. You look too young!"
"Kryptonian aging!" the new Superman said, confidently.
"But you look younger than me!" Clark protested.
"Kryptonians age backwards," the other Superman replied.
"So how old are you, then?" Clark asked.
"Twenty," the other Superman responded automatically, then quickly added, "hundred."
"Twenty hundred?" Clark echoed. "Do you mean two thousand?"
"Yes," said Superman. "That's, uh, how people talk in the future."
"Twenty hundred years from now?" Clark asked, raising an eyebrow. "So why--"
"Man, you ask a lot of questions!" Superman interrupted, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "You're even worse than my kid sister!"
Clark paused. "Kid sister?" he echoed.
Superman looked up. "What?"
"You just said you had a kid sister," Clark pointed out. "I never had any brothers or sisters."
Superman suddenly had a faraway look on his face. "Neither did I," he said, sounding a bit awed, "but, suddenly, I'm starting to remember some!" He turned back to Clark, looking very alarmed. "It must be because I changed the timeline!" he said.
"Now, hold on a minute!" said Clark. "First of all, you were trying to tell me that this was just a time loop; second of all, how would me saving my own life in the past have anything to do with me suddenly having brothers or sisters?!"
Superman started to sweat a little. "Well, there's actually a very simple explanation," he said. "You see...hey, what's that?"
Clark looked where the superhero was pointing and suddenly heard a sonic boom behind him. When he turned back, the other Superman was gone.
Clark sighed. Well, that was one mystery that would have to remain a mystery for just a little longer; he and Lois still had to find the recently-returned Lex Luthor and investigate the sightings of a strange man in a bat costume. But right now, he was headed for home: his dear wife had something important to tell him, and he didn't want to be late.
