she changed her mental assessment to “alimony”.
Oh boy. So, ex-wife out there who knows the secret? Is that wise? And does that mean Superman dabbled in the female rescuees?
He reached into a cabinet and took out a small, flat...thing, as well as something that Lois recognized as being a little keyboard. Jordan connected them and set them down on the table. “It's old, so it may run kind of slow.”
So, MS Surface uuumm…10?
and flat computers that you snap together. This is amazing!”
CLARK: I don’t know. I also had a laptop once where the display and the keyboard-part separated.
“If Jimmy were here, he'd have a field day.”
A sudden tapping at the door made them both look up. Jordan squinted at the door, and his eyebrows rose.
“Who is it?” Lois asked.
“Jimmy.”
and
“Oh?” Lois looked at Jordan in slight confusion. “I'd kind of assumed *you* were her brother.”
“Cousin,” both men said at once.
So, they don’t like each other?
JIMMY: He once hit on my sis at a family function. I thought it was creepy. And so Targaryen.
Lois looked up in surprise. “Charlotte?”
“No,” said Jimmy, “my other sister. Pam.”
“It's not Pam,” said the man on the other side of the door
“Dave!” the other two men exclaimed.
“Hi, Cuz,” he greeted Jordan.
And I hope you don’t mind my saying but I am flashing to all the other great fun next-gen stories with lots of next gen going on.
A bow had been stuck on the girl's hair, and she wore the miserable expression of children everywhere who have been forced into formal-wear against their will. “Hi,” said the woman. “I'm Pam.” She gestured to the girl. “And this is Isabelle.”
Jordan rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Come on in,” he said, as Pam and Jimmy shuffled themselves around to the back of the breakfast table.
The *next* knock was Martin and Edna.
Craziness!
The smell of barbeque began wafting in from somewhere outside.
Someone cooking one of the people living outside in the alley? I mean, that’s what they do in the future told by H.G.Wells, so…
“So, how did Great-grandpa Clark react, the first time you told him you were pregnant?” A young man asked her.
LOIS:
What do you mean, ‘I’m pregnant’?
We're still only engaged; or at least we were when I got here...”
YOUNG MAN: That didn’t stop my girlfriend from telling me…
As the chatter resumed, a man with a bushy mustache began elbowing his way through the crowd in the apartment. “There's too many people in here!” he complained.
Fire marshal?
“Right, Howard,” Lois noted. “And which side of the family are you on?”
“I'm the landlord!”
Someone passed Mr. Blake a burger.
“--So there I am, at nine-o-clock, sharp, knocking on his door, thinking about how I'm going to get through this investigation while having to babysit a rookie from some backwater town in the middle of nowhere--”
“—and then he was naked.”
“--and he opens the door wearing nothing but a towel and those glasses. Now, I—well, maybe I'll just skip this part...”
Doesn’t want to tell everyone the details on how she broke rule #3?
It still looked exactly as small and compact as it had earlier, leaving her to wonder just how it had been temporarily transformed into the inside of a clown car.
“Aunt Midge's famous potato salad!” He removed the lid, stuck in his finger, and promptly grimaced when he tasted the contents. “Or rather, cousin Linda's *interpretation* of Aunt Midge's potato salad.” He closed the lid again.
“We're in a state of war with New Krypton.”
Huh?
“It's just a cold war. It's been going on for a long time.
And which human thought it a good idea to make a state-of-cold-war with a race of being who get super-powers when on Earth *and* own *Spaceships, Spaceships, SPACESHIPS! *?
“Since the last president, though, things have worsened. Nobody is allowed to come or go between the two planets. So, if somebody new started flying around in tights--”
“There would be questions,” Lois filled in.
Oh boy. Maybe if they said Superman died and regenerated into this new body?
“Did anyone accuse him of being an alien spy?” Jordan asked her.
![[Linked Image]](http://cosgan.de/images/midi/froehlich/d025.gif)
“I just don't know what to do anymore, Grams.”
Lois reached forward and took his hand. After thinking for a long moment, she spoke. “Clark was always afraid of losing himself to Superman,” she said softly.
It’s why Kryptonian lords usually have professional caregivers.
LOIS:
, “what would Great-grandpa have done—what would *you* have done—if your son needed to go to a hospital?”
/scratches head/ What *did* happen?
Michael
I hope not, but from his complaints, it sounds like it.
Poor Jordan. He really doesn't have anyone, does he? Apparently, the crowd of cousins doesn't make up for truly being alone. I hope alt-Clark makes it to this dimension. I bet he could give Jordan some insight into how living without a real life really feels. They remind me a bit of one another. 
