Maya inherited her father’s super-long lifespan and lived for five centuries.

She led a normal, happy human life—working as a Professor of Sociology at Metropolis University—until she reached her sixties, when her immortality started to attract unwanted attention. That's when she decided to go into hiding. For decades afterward, she lived like a hermit in one of the "Fortresses of Solitude" that Clark had built for her in remote corners of the world—places entirely out of reach and uninhabitable by any ordinary Earthling.

Another reason she withdrew from human society was that L&C died soon after Maya turned 60. Thanks to the "essence" Clark regularly passed on to Lois through intimacy, Lois acquired a partial super-healing ability from her husband and aged at roughly the same rate as Clark. (Sorry, I didn't mean to go all nfic—but I really wanted them to grow old together, and I couldn't come up with a better way to make that happen.) As a result, even at 90 years old, they still looked like a middle-aged couple.

This is how L&C looked when they were in their nineties (Yes, they indeed shared a wonderfully long life together.) :

[Linked Image]

But because of what happened in “Brutal Youth”, L&C's self-protective powers had declined considerably by that time—which is why they were both killed together in a terrorist attack. That was the moment Maya decided to devote her life to building a non-violent utopia for mankind. She spent decades in solitude studying the human mind and social dynamics, crafted a detailed plan, and eventually set it in motion.

Maya took seven human mates throughout her long life—a psychologist, a strategist, a scientist, a physician, an engineer, an artist, and a philosopher. They were all extraordinary men, because they all had to pass Maya's "mind-sweeping" test. With each mate, she bore seven children. The younger ones were mostly brought up by their older siblings. Maya could share minds with every one of them, and each child carried a genetically hardwired loyalty to her—like worker bees to their queen. In effect, she commanded an army of super-beings and could theoretically do whatever she pleased with the people of Earth. And yes, L&C eventually had some 50 grandchildren—though they never lived to see any of them. Maya didn't give birth to her first child until she was nearly 100, which, by human standards, was roughly the equivalent of being 20.

The existence of this goddess-like alien queen and her super-army was exposed to humanity when Maya was over 200 years old. The clan was betrayed by one of her sons’ wives, a woman who refused to let her husband remain Maya’s puppet, bound to her will for eternity. Unsurprisingly, humanity panicked and turned against them. They twisted Maya’s family name into something monstrous—The Lanekens—and with it, damned her entire race. (The name's just a placeholder—I'm going for a "Tom Riddle to Voldemort" rebrand, but I've got nothing good so far.) For generations, parents taught their children to fear and loathe that name. The Lanekens became scapegoats for every inexplicable human death. And in their fear-fueled frenzy, mobs tricked, captured, tortured, and killed one of Maya's mates and three of her youngest children. They subjected these demigods to unspeakable experiments before finally dissecting them like frogs.

*** Lesson learned, L&C—Never, ever swear on the lives of your future grandchildren! ***

This tragedy broke Maya’s heart nearly beyond repair. She possessed every justification to unleash her divine power—to enslave, or even annihilate the entire human race. But she didn’t. Because deep down, her soul was still sheltered by the boundless love that L&C had planted in her heart centuries ago—back when she was just an ordinary, carefree little girl running around a sunlit brownstone on Hyperion Avenue.

***“That one great love that changed us forever.”***

Maya continued her quest until a self-sustaining utopia was established—one that could function without her race's oversight. (The 22nd-century version that H.G. Wells mentioned was merely a flawed prototype, and it didn't last long at all.) In the generations that followed, the lifespans and combat prowess of her male descendants declined rapidly, until they were scarcely distinguishable from exceptionally strong human men. But the longevity and mental gifts of her daughters were much better preserved and passed down to granddaughters and great-granddaughters alike. The female Lanekens are not particularly prolific, however. For one thing, the "mind-sweeping" trials make suitable mates exceedingly difficult to find. For another, unlike the male Lanekens who are able to sustain their wives through sexual intimacy, the females consistently outlive their partners. Which means they're left to endure the agonizing pain of losing their true love over and over again. As a result, many female Lanekens chose to devote their entire lives to serving the clan, forgoing families of their own. Over time, Maya's female descendants formed a secret sisterhood—a shadow organization that would watch over humanity for eons to come. Eventually, though, they would have to elect a new queen bee once Maya passed.

No one knew for certain when or how Maya died. She simply faded from the world at around four hundred and fifty years old. In the post-utopia society that followed, she was remembered and revered as a Gaia-like goddess. L&C, on the other hand, occupied a far more modest place in Utopian memory—they're like Martha and Jonathan to us: beloved, but mortal—because they only lived about ninety years and barely made a dent in human history. To the Utopians, the one true hero—the founding mother of their world—is Maya Laneken.