Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic FDK: Fictitious Persons (3/53): All in the Family

“It’s about my new roommate.”

Emily looked to her bedroom door. “Where is she?”

“Asleep.”

“So, what about her?”

Caitlin flopped down on the end of her sister’s bed. “When I agreed to let her stay in my room, you forgot to include the little detail that she’s completely insane!”

“She’s not ‘completely insane,’ honey. She just has… issues.”

Caitlin rolled her eyes. “‘Issues.’ She thinks her parents are Lois Lane and Clark Kent, and you call it ‘issues’?”

“Look, we don’t know why she’s saying that, but other than that she’s a normal eleven year old.”

“Saying your dad is Superman doesn’t seem very normal to me.”

Emily tilted her head. “I seem to recall a certain ‘Princess Nausicaa’…”

Caitlin waved her hands. “OK, OK, you’ve made your point.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “Was I really eleven when I went through that? I thought I was younger…”

Here's the next part. I'm sure you're all shocked — shocked — to find evidence that Kara is not delusional after all.

Kara answered haltingly. “Well, umm, I… I like, umm, math and science, and… reading books, I guess.” She glanced anxiously at Caitlin, then continued, “Umm, I like to do gymnastics, too, and I’m in the Girl Scouts.” She thought for a while. “My dad’s parents have a farm in Kansas and we go there for a couple of weeks every summer. I like taking care of the animals and riding horses.” She looked at Caitlin again, and seeing a smile answered with a tentative one of her own.

“Are there any TV shows you like?”

“We mostly watch movies instead of TV, but my dad and mom and brother like watching sports, and I watch cartoons with my sister Saturday mornings. Mom and Dad like Doctor Who, and they let me watch sometimes if it’s not too scary. I like it.”

As Kara dreamt, inside her cells tiny organelles reawakened — structures that were both technology and biology. Deprived of their usual energy source, they drew on their host’s chemical energy. They reached out to one another, forming a network that, while not a full, self-aware A.I., was more than a mindless machine.

Its purpose was to assist and protect its host. It did this by manipulating both subspace and the boundary between subspace and normal spacetime. That did not seem to be possible at the moment: the boundary was not behaving as it should, and the network could not reach through it to subspace.

The network set about investigating the curious situation in which its host found herself. It began by probing and analyzing the boundary.

"Actually, the source of your powers is artificial. The
artificial part operates at the cellular level. Your 'perfectly
normal' human biology has been modified. I've found what appear
to be nanotechnology additions to your human genome. These
extensions seem to be located such that they don't interfere with
normal genetic operation. And when I say normal operations, I am
including reproduction."

"But you've said that I'm not compatible with human females?"

Bernie could see the hope spring forth in his friend's face as
he asked that last question. Unfortunately, it was time to
deliver the bad news. He took a deep breath. "I'm very sorry, but
that appears to be true. Please let me get through the whole
explanation and I think you'll understand the nature of the
problem. I know this will seem like I'm not getting to the point,
but believe me when I say that this is all very important. The
information that I'm about to explain to you is central to the
fertility issue. It will also give you a much better feel for who
you are and how your body works."

Superman looked impatient but acquiesced. "OK. But I have to
tell you that the fertility issue is very important."

Bernie felt like he needed to get through the rest of his
explanation as quickly as possible. "We can detect these
modifications. I have been calling them Kryptonian Extensions or
KEs for short, but they are far too small and too advanced to
analyze in any detail. I have no idea how humans ended up on
Krypton, but I have a theory that on your planet, conditions were
too harsh for normal humans to thrive. Based on what you've told
us, I suspect that the gravity was too high and the light and
heat levels were too low. I believe that these modifications were
introduced to allow your ancestors to deal with the harsh
Kryptonian environment."

Bernie found that he was leaning forward over his desk and, in
his excitement, had started augmenting his explanation with hand
gestures. He took a second to lean back in his chair and compose
himself before continuing. "We know that your extra powers are
related to sunlight. My belief is that the KEs were designed to
use the lower energy of Krypton's red sun to boost the
capabilities of your people so that living on Krypton would feel
to them like living on a more hospitable planet such as Earth.
When you came to Earth, two things changed. First, even if the
Earth's sun were a low-energy red sun like Krypton's, the fact
that Earth's gravity and general environment is less challenging
would mean you would be far more capable than a normal human.
Now, add in the significantly higher energy that our yellow sun
produces and your powers go from superior to super."

Bernie watched as his friend took all this in. Finally Superman
asked, "Are you saying that I'm some sort of cyborg?"

"That's true only in the crudest sense of the word. The
additions you carry are at a very fundamental level and are
integral to your biology. These modifications are inherited and
as much a part of who and what you are as any naturally occurring
characteristic."

Virginia,

The only thing I have found similar was in Luck and Consequences by Bob Bartholomew. Bob had Bernie find the source of Clark's power in attempt to explain why he and Lois could not have children by inventing 'Kryptonian Extensions", nano-technology that binds to Clark's cells and processes sunlight into super powers. That story and how they got around it
is a great read but

Bernie/Bob explain it best.
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So basically Debbie is not breaking totally new ground but who knows where she will take it. In this story Kara was found at night, taken to the hospital, kept inside, taken by car to Emily's house, kept inside, and now is sleeping. The poor girl has not had any sunlight in probably a couple of days and the Kryptonian Extensions (Bob's naming) are probably starved. However when they get sunlight, who knows???

Subspace had first been discovered in a reality unimaginably distant both from the one Kara found herself in and the one she had come from. Though “first” and “distant” were questionable concepts when time and causality were so ill-defined.

Dual to and coexisting with the normal space-time continuum, subspace is quite different, having neither space nor time. That difference can be harnessed at the boundary between the two, yielding technology with numerous applications.

Faster-than-light travel. The creation of pocket universes. And notably, the creation of subspace prostheses, exoskeletons of a sort, that can be linked to living beings in normal space, giving them unusual abilities.

Tens of thousands of years ago in Kara’s reality (and others), for reasons known only to them, an ancient race had transplanted a small band of humans to a distant super-Earth circling a red dwarf star. The beings had used subspace technology to enhance the humans, enabling them to survive the planet’s crushing gravity, toxic atmosphere, and highly radioactive core.

Her dream sounds like memories of being in the womb, which would be odd memories to have at this age. Odder still that these memories frightened her. I thought at first that she was whimpering because she heard Caitlin call her "insane".

On Kara's nightmare, it's not based on prenatal memories. It will be clear by the end of the story why she has this nightmare.

Kara scratched absently at her arms as a tiny itch plagued her, and followed the two adults.

Then the dream changed in a way it never had before. She could see; she was inside some kind of opaque bubble not much bigger than she was. It seemed to be made of some kind of multicolored, iridescent light that swirled in intricate patterns. The portions of her skin exposed to the light began to itch.