Love your entry, Virginia! The ending was just perfect for the way you set it up.
It seems the other half of that conversation is to be continued elsewhere...
Here's my entry.
*****
Clark picked up the phone and brought it to his ear. "Clark Kent," he said, amiably.
"We need to talk. It's sort of an emergency," a strange but familiar voice spoke in quiet tones.After a moment, he frowned in confusion. "Who is this?"
"Uh... Superman. Why? Couldn't you tell?"His shoulders tensed.
"Look, I don't have time for this right now. I need your help immediately, and you're the only guy I could think of who could handle--" "How did you get this number?" he demanded.
"D-- Clark! Could you focus please? This is as weird for you as it is for me, okay?" He looked around the room, flustered. "Look," he began, "I really--"
"Could you just hear me out? I'd like to get home before the end of this century. Now, I need you to make your way up to the roof of the Daily Planet building. Then, I need you to fly out and go pick up an extra Superman suit from your closet, since I'm not sure where your apartment is currently." He stilled.
"I know you will want answers, but I'm just going to have to ask you to trust me on this one. I am Superman, after all. Even if you might find that hard to believe." "Uh huh."
The voice sighed audibly into the receiver. "Look. I don't want to have to get into this over the phone, but I'll try to explain as best I can for now. You ever hear of a fellow named H.G. Wells?"The frown deepened. "Well, yeah," he admitted.
"Well, prepare yourself, Da-- er, Clark. I come from the future-- the year 2023. I was sent back to the past in order to stop something from happening that was going to expose your secret identity to the world. H.G. Wells helped me travel thorugh time to get here. Unfortunately, something went wrong and I kind of ended up... stranded." He sighed. "That's not real," he protested. "It's completely fiction."
"What? Time travel? Oh, it's real. I'm surprised you don't believe me. I was under the impression that by this point in time you had already been through at least one trip through time." Clark gave the handset a dubious look, then brought it back up to his ear. "So you say," he said.
"You mean so you
said. You were the one who told it to me."His eyebrows raised as he listened. "But how?"
There was a loud groan of frustration. "Because I'm your son, okay? I'm your son in the future and Mom always said that I look a heck of a lot like you, and apparently it's true because I'm attracting a lot of weird stares. I'm standing just outside of the Daily Planet building and if you don't get me one of your Superman suits to wear then everyone will think you've got some mysterious twin brother that you've never mentioned and then at least this way maybe I can do some good on the Superman front for you. Someone is supposedly still trying to reveal your secret, and I don't think that's something that would be good for either of us. So could you please just indulge me and meet me on the roof? Or am I going to have to storm into the bullpen and make a scene of my own?"He glanced out the window, lowering his glasses as he peered outside. "I...uh...um..." he stammered. He pushed his glasses back up with one finger. "All right," he said, and immediately hung up the phone.
*****
I might actually extend this a little. Not that I don't have other things to do... but now that I'm thinking about it, it seems like I don't want to do anything else.
