ToC - for previous parts.
Waking a Miracle -- (05/??)
Juggling multiple grocery bags, a set of keys, and a stack
of file folders was quite a balancing act, Lois decided as
she hopped around to keep from toppling over. She bent over
a bit, trying to grab her key ring with her teeth, belatedly
realizing that there was no way she would be able to unlock
the door with only her lips for a grip on them. Soooo...
tottering, she twisted and leaned backwards until her back
was protesting and the grocery bags were resting more on her
torso than her hands. The manila folders that had been
stacked on top of the bags cut backwards and caught on the
underside of her chin but didn't finish their fall.
She took as deep of a breath as she could manage in her
position, trying not to pay attention to the stars that were
beginning to form in her vision. Somehow, she managed to
get the key in the first deadbolt.
Progress! But she couldn't lean back far enough to get the
key up to deadbolt number two, so she tried a new method.
Leaning forward, she propped her knee up on the wall beside
the door and rested the bags on her thigh. The folders
threatened to cascade downward, but she pressed her head
down like a paperweight and forced them to stay.
Well this was certainly uncomfortable.
Deadbolt number two clicked open as she twisted the key in
the lock.
It was like a game at this point. There was absolutely no
way she was putting the bags on the ground now, not when
she'd gotten this far.
Luckily when she shifted to lock number three, she was able
to catch all of her cargo before it fell off its precarious
resting spot. Lock number four proved to be the easiest of
them all.
The door gave way and she nearly didn't stop herself from
falling flat on her face, but somehow, she maintained her
balance and didn't lose one single item from her collection
to the floor.
She let a triumphant smile radiate from her face as she
hobbled her load over to the counter and set it down. Whew.
She took a deep breath as the manila folders cascaded off
the top of the bags and fanned out like toppled dominoes
across the counter.
"Lucy, you home?" she cried. "I brought dinner."
There was no immediate answer.
Lois managed to cram all of the TV dinners she had bought
into their small, overtaxed freezer. There were already a
ton in there, which she hadn't remembered when she had gone
grocery shopping. Actually, it seemed her entire grocery
list was already in the fridge and pantry, in duplicate, as
if some double of herself had already gotten home from
shopping for the night.
Tried though she did, she could not remember having gone to
the supermarket earlier in the week so...
She shrugged and tossed a dinner into the microwave. The
light came on and the dinner spun lazily in circles,
starting to bubble a bit as it went. As the machine
whirred, she turned back to the fridge to grab a drink, but
found she was being watched.
"Hi!" she exclaimed to Lucy, trying to hide her surprise.
"You in for the night?"
Lucy shook her head and hopped up onto the counter. "I'm
meeting Jose."
"Jose?" Who the heck was Jose? Her sister seemed to
shuffle through losers faster than a dealer did cards in a
poker game. "Is he new?" She tried to keep her tone
neutral, and tried even harder to hide the grimace that
resulted when she realized she hadn't.
"Lab tech," Lucy shrugged. "Works on my floor."
Lois opened her mouth to reply but the microwave's harsh
ping interrupted her. Her two-minute macaroni was done.
She turned to fish it out, grabbing a fork from the
silverware drawer with her free hand.
"So..." Lucy began. "What are you up to tonight?" Her gaze
was tracing the file folders that were strewn across the
counter.
"I've got a ton of work and-- Luce, don't start," Lois
threatened as she closed the silverware drawer with her hip.
Here it came, Lois thought. The speech where Lucy lectured
her that she wasn't social enough. That she didn't get out
enough.
She allowed herself an inward growl. She got out plenty!
Just today she had gone to get groceries, and the proof was
in the fridge that she'd somehow already done that earlier
this week as well. That was twice she had had to gamble on
which checkout line was the fastest, and twice she had had
to complain to the manager about the lousy service,
threatening to run an article about the dirty truths of
express lines, that they weren't express at all, but rather
a trap to those with fifteen items or less to be stuck
staring at all the trash tabloids and impulse candy. Which
she hadn't bought, by the way. She had gotten her fudge
bars from the candy aisle like a good shopper. Totally
*not* impulse. And wasn't there always somebody who had
misread the sign that they let through anyways, with a full
cart of junk and fifty coupons to scan in. Wasn't there?
Pathetic how the management had no policing whatsoever set
up on those lines. Actually she would put that in the
suggestion box next time she went--
"Did you find an escort to Lex Luthor's White Orchid Ball?"
Lucy interrupted.
Oh that. Lois frowned. She wanted an interview with Lex
Luthor almost as bad as she wanted to find out what had
happened to Miracle Man. Jimmy had pulled her out of
Perry's office early yesterday to talk to Mr. Luthor's
personal assistant. The woman had been pleasant enough to
chat with but it was fairly obvious that the billionaire was
dodging her, and dodging quite well. This ball was the only
chance she had at getting up close to the man -- being rich
certainly did help for when one wanted to be a recluse from
the media.
"Not yet."
Lois finally took a bite of her macaroni and grimaced. It
was a bit rubbery, and the cheese was drippy in some places
but practically a solid mass in others. It smelled decent,
at least. She chewed a bit as Lucy continued to grill her.
"Lois, it's tomorrow night!" Lucy sounded quite
exasperated. "What about Alan? I thought you liked him."
"I did," Lois replied honestly. Alan had been quite nice
actually. Very good-looking and polite, but not
chauvinistic like most of the pigs she'd managed to land in
her life. "But after the second date he didn't call, so..."
That's right, Lane, because you're an ice queen. Men don't
want a career woman like you, they want sleaze like Cat -- a
woman who doesn't wear clothes, she wears new skin.
She grimaced when she thought of her own, 'Don't touch me'
business suit. The shoulder pads, dark colors, and fat
heeled shoes made her look taller. Tougher. Strong.
But certainly not delectable.
That, however, was okay with her. She didn't need another
trip down memory lane, like Claude: The Return, except it'd
be one of those crummy remakes with a different actor
playing the lead.
"What happened with that other guy, Barry? He still leaves
messages on the machine."
Lois rolled her eyes and put her fork down, macaroni
finished. "Please."
"He was a very nice guy. He brought flowers."
And chocolates, and more flowers, and called more, and--
Well the guy was a borderline stalker.
"He's a periodontist."
"And Mitchell?" Lucy asked. She was pacing now.
"Hypochondriac."
Now *that* made for some interesting dates. Has this fork
been cleaned? I see a speck. Are you absolutely sure?
Lois, don't use the bathrooms in public places, do you have
*any* idea how many diseases are congregating just on the
doorknob alone? Lois! Don't take the mints by the cash
register, they have more urine particles on them than a lot
of places in the bathroom. And of course it was hard not to
laugh when he placed a handkerchief over his nose to filter
the air.
"They can't all be bad, Lois. They can't all be stupid or
boring. What are you waiting for?"
"Fine," Lois conceded. "I'll ask Mitchell to take me." At
least Mitchell was too preoccupied about catching himself a
cold to do anything lascivious. He hadn't even tried to
kiss her -- probably because of the germs. In fact he gave
her so much personal space a lot of times it felt like they
weren't even together.
Was it sad she was finding that to be a good aspect?
"I'm not just talking about the ball, Lois. You have to get
out more."
Yep, there it was. The 'you have to get out more' speech.
Lois had been wondering what had taken so long for that to
finally come out. She rolled her eyes and sighed. "Will
you stop?" she asked. "You sound like Dad. Jeez, I'm only
twenty-six."
She flashed back to the last conversation she had had with
her dad. It wasn't congratulations, you graduated from
college, I'm so proud of you. It was, do you have a job
yet? Are you absolutely sure you want to be a journalist,
they're so low-paid. It's too bad you only had a 3.9
average, 4.0 would have looked so glowing on your resume.
Her cheeks started to burn a bit and she bit back a growl.
"Twenty-six today. Thirty-six tomorrow," Lucy said, her
hands gesturing flightily.
"Give it a rest, Luce."
She didn't want to have this discussion again, she just
didn't.
By the time she was thirty-six she planned to have a
Pulitzer, nine more Kerths, and a man hanging off *her*
shoulder rather than the other way around.
"And I know why Alan never called you again... dragging him
to that Women in Journalism seminar, 'Weak Men and The Wise
Women Who Love Them.' You've got to stop scaring them off,
Lois!"
"What are you talking about?"
It wasn't her fault that men were scared off by a woman who
could think for herself. A woman who didn't have to bat her
eyes and make him think all his ideas were good. Who didn't
have to say, "Hoooooney, can I borrow the checkbook for some
new shoes?"
It was disgusting some of the behavior she saw these days.
Lucy yanked on her arm and pulled her into the bathroom.
"Look in the mirror. You could get any guy you wanted, but
do you have to be so smart all the time? So intense?"
Lois looked at her reflection. She didn't seem particularly
pretty. Okay-looking yes, certainly not unattractive, but
she didn't see a knockout. Her face was too round and her
hair was too boring. Easy to style, but boring. Boring
mucky brown.
Plain.
"Look, I'm just being myself. If they're not man enough to
handle me, then I'll wait for someone who is." She threw up
her hands and walked back out into the kitchen.
You're not being yourself, Lane, you're being what you know
men wouldn't want you to be.
Something clenched in her gut.
"I just hate to see you sitting home," Lucy said, her voice
sounding plaintive.
"I get out plenty. I have dates."
"You have interviews. It's not the same thing. Lois, I
just want you to meet a super guy -- wait a minute. I know
that look. You're smiling. Who did you meet. Why have you
been stringing me along this whole conversation?" Lucy
bubbled. Her eyes widened and the grin that was on her face
screamed pure elation.
Lois shrugged. The smile had sort of slipped out. Really.
She hadn't meant it.
"Well," she confessed, "There's this new guy at work." Way
to throw a dog a bone, Lane. Yep, there she goes.
Lucy bounced up and down like a cheerleader on drugs. "Is
he cute? What's he look like? What's his name? Have you
two been introduced yet? What's he like? Has he asked you
out?"
"I am not going to gossip like a fourth grader with you.
Lucy, he was attractive, this little chat just reminded me
of him, and that's as much as you will ever hear from me."
She mimed pulling a zipper across her lips for good measure.
Lois could immediately tell that Lucy was not and would not
ever be satisfied with the answer she had just given. The
look on her sister's face was one of unadulterated agony at
being kept in the dark, but Lois, for one, did *not* want to
discuss Clark.
A change of subject seemed to be in order.
Though Clark had been rather cute in an innocent, hick meets
the city, doe-eyed way. What had she called him? A hack
from Nowheresville? That was a class A zinger, she thought,
enough to keep any slobbering hormonal man away. Except he
had kept smiling at her, and when she'd look over and catch
him doing it, she felt a little breathless. It was
unnerving at times.
N.O. Ever notice Clark and Claude have three identical
letters? That was a bad omen for sure. Wasn't it? They
both had dark hair too.
Not that he hadn't surprised her in an un-Claude like way by
completely avoiding an offer to 'help' her on her Pulitzer
story. Everyone at the Planet knew she was interested in
exposing what had happened to Miracle Man, and everyone had
learned early on that any information about it went to *her*
or they risked her wrath. She had learned her lesson the
first time -- she kept her notepad in sight at all times,
and hunted down anyone who threatened her turf with such a
vengeance that the gossip mill had started calling her Mad
Dog.
Not that she minded that much. It was better than Ice
Queen, and it struck fear in the hearts of mortal reporters.
She had noticed that at some point all the new employees had
suddenly started giving her a very wide berth, an action she
attributed to the gossip-mongers who got early warnings out.
Clark, though, seemed to be laid back enough to take her
temper in stride. It was weird finding someone who was
neither chauvinistic nor terrified of her. She wondered
about that for a moment.
Bad, Lois. Didn't we say we weren't going to think about
him?
She blinked.
"Hey," she finally administered her one-eighty. "I'm
supposed to be the big sister here, remember? Go meet..."
What was his name?
"Jose," Lucy said. "Lois..."
"Have fun!"
Lucy gave up at that point and disappeared back into her
bedroom to finish getting ready, leaving Lois alone at the
counter with the pile of folders in front of her and her
empty macaroni tray. Jimmy had given her this stack at the
tail end of the day, claiming it to be the definitive guide
to everything she did and maybe didn't want to know about
George Thompson, but that Bureau 39 seemed to elude his more
basic searches.
Well that made sense, considering the rumor was that
somebody was trying to cover it up. It kind of ruined the
point if it was easy to find. So... What could Bureau 39
be?
She perched herself on a stool and opened the folder labeled
"GT Timeline." It seemed he had been in the Air Force. He
was a member of project Blue Book from, essentially, its
start in 1947 to its finish in 1969, at which point he
transferred into the FBI as a special agent.
Project Blue Book...
She did a double take. Wasn't that the Air Force's
organization of UFO fanatics? They had formed up around the
Roswell crash and just didn't go away. She wished she could
remember precisely the details but she was sure it was
something to do with UFOs.
George Thompson is UFO obsessed. George Thompson could
possibly be related to the disappearance of Miracle Man.
She weighed the two facts in her head. It was a loose
connection, especially since the origins of Miracle Man were
still a complete mystery. No one had even disproved that it
was nothing more than an elaborate hoax yet, but she was one
to disbelieve the hoax theory after seeing witness after
witness report the same thing. A man in black with a funny
symbol on his chest flies in in a blur, saves the day, and
flies back out again, usually so fast that he had finished
his job and was gone before someone could even react enough
to pull out a camera.
She resisted the urge to get frustrated with the fact that
she had been working on his disappearance for a year now and
had come up with absolutely nothing. All she knew was that
he had stopped appearing to save the day after the spree of
arsons that had swept Metropolis. The city had been sucked
into a swell of riots as building after building burned to
the ground. Firefighters couldn't keep up with the blazes,
and only with the initial help of Miracle Man had the fires
been contained reasonably well. Even with the full weight
of the FBI brought down on the investigation no culprit had
ever been found. The CIA and NIA had not gotten involved,
spokespersons from each stating with absolute certainty that
the fires had not been the result of any known terrorist
cells. Miracle Man naturally could not be flagged down for
comment about any clues he may have spotted in the course of
his fire-fighting, but after several weeks, it became
apparent that he was no longer in the business of rescuing
at all. It was as if the man had vanished from the face of
the Earth, which, given his seeming quick entrance onto the
scene of reality, wasn't entirely implausible, she supposed.
So was Miracle Man an alien?
Oddly, she felt more relieved thinking he was an alien than
she did when the popular belief was that he had just been
some unexplained magical phenomena. Like an angel or
something. She hated magic.
Maybe he had a ray gun. Earthlings, I come in peace.
She laughed in spite of her self.
Klatu! Verata!
Stop it, Lane.
Niktu!
Stop!
She focused again. She had to admit that it did seem a
little ridiculous. Miracle Man, she suspected, was just a
man with a lot of neat gadgets, like Batman from the comics.
Except this wasn't the comics, and she knew they didn't have
technology to make a man appear to fly unassisted. She had
investigated that avenue until she couldn't stand to talk to
another scientist again.
Unless *maybe* he had access to classified government stuff
and the only scientists who knew about it were ones they
kept locked up underground in some bunker somewhere with no
way to escape and no way to contact--
She shook her head again.
George Thompson. George Thompson. She rubbed her temples
with her index fingers. Geeeeeooooorge Thoooooooooooompson.
I will get you, George Thompson, she thought.
She dumped out the next folder. It was a list of all the
unclassified cases he had worked on as an FBI agent. The
ones she wasn't allowed to see were blacked out, as was
typical of government documents. She rolled her eyes.
Three fourths of the list was blacker than Miracle Man's
purported costume.
Nothing caught her eye in that folder, at least not yet.
Next folder was a stack of photos. She flipped through them
slowly until she came upon one that made her stop. There
was no caption, but she could tell quite plainly that the
man in the center was George Thompson. A much younger
George Thompson, but what struck her was his eyes. There
was no innocence there, despite his young age. She guessed
he was maybe in his early twenties when it was taken. He
was standing on some barren field, his Air Force uniform
clashing brilliantly with the desert behind. A long metal
fence with a barbed wire top stood in the distance, the only
item of any elevation in the picture besides George Thompson
himself.
She flipped to the next photo and was brought to an even
longer pause. George Thompson was at the center again, but
this time older. He had a man on either side of him. The
one on the left seemed slightly older than Thompson, and the
one on the right seemed about the same age as Thompson had
been in the picture she had just flipped away from. They
were sitting at a table all in uniform -- it looked to be
some sort of formal affair. The man to the left was holding
a pen and there was something on the table that he appeared
to be signing. A large crowd was gathered behind the three.
None of them appeared happy.
She wondered about that.
She flipped the photo around, hoping to find some sort of
label, but there was nothing, not even a date. She flipped
back to it and stared at their faces again. Nothing seemed
to jump out at her until she looked at the left-most man one
more time.
General Burton Newcomb, she thought. That was who he was.
A very decorated general. He had retired recently and the
affair had managed to land a smaller article in the Planet
on the second or third page, she couldn't remember exactly.
He was a lot younger in this picture, which was why she
hadn't recognized him right away.
She would double check with Perry first but the more she
thought about it the more she was sure that was who it was
-- and he lived in Metropolis, that was good. She could get
an interview, maybe.
Next photo. Again no date or description. She quelled a
flash of annoyance.
The trio of the previous picture was down to two men, and
they were in suits instead of Air Force uniforms now.
Without actual dates to assist her, she guessed it was after
Thompson had switched from the Air Force to the FBI. George
Thompson and the young man that had been to the right in the
previous picture stood posing like it was just any old
picture taken spontaneously. But even if it looked like a
completely normal affair, something not normal was happening
in that picture.
Finally she was able to put her finger on it.
The man to the left -- the younger one this time, not
Thompson. His eyes had the same dark look about them that
early Thompson's eyes had had, but there was something more.
Something even darker. That man, she decided, was not nice.
Not nice at all.
His eyes seemed to be undressing her, and the smile on his
face was more reminiscent of a leer.
Something had happened between the span of those two photos
to make him go from 'regular Joe' to 'warning bells: this
man is dangerous' in her mind.
And Thompson looked... She couldn't decide how to describe
it. Haunted, maybe? He had aged terribly between the two
photos, looking more as he did now, with silver hair and
ample crags to his face, claw marks gripping the corners of
his eyes in a vice of time. His angular face had grown
thinner and more pronounced. Whereas the younger man didn't
appear that much older at all. It was obvious no more than
ten years or so had passed. So Thompson got older and the
younger one got darker.
She stared at the photo.
Thompson and the unnamed man stared back.
"I'm going out!"
Lois practically fell off her stool as Lucy slammed the door
behind her. Her heart thudded like a rampant timpani in her
ears, and she took deep calming breaths.
She pushed the folders aside. Contrary to popular opinion,
three times out of five... no, she amended... two times out
of seven, she knew when it was time to quit, and besides, a
bubble bath sounded just delectable at the moment.
*****
TBC...
(End Part 05/??)
