I agree with Lauren. The way you made Clark describe the "music of the cities" was fantastic. But I also loved how you pointed out how the pace of our society has become so much more frantic today than it was in the 1990s. When change happens gradually, it is hard to remember that things have not always been like this. But with all these cell phones ringing everywhere, all these people speaking loudly seemingly straight out into the air, and all these different TV channels blaring out their points of view wherever you are... no, things have not always been like this.
Lois froze as she went to close her window. She wouldn't bother locking it; if Clark was hanging by his fingers just around the corner she wasn't going to be the one sending him plummeting to his death.
She frowned for a moment as she stared at her window, and then she stepped into her living room to examine the window there.
Both windows had been cleaned from the outside.
I loved that Lois left her window open for Clark! And she noticed that her windows had been cleaned from the outside. Lois, you have to believe in Clark now!
It went against everything Lana had tried to teach him. He'd been attacked the last time he went flying; these people had the means and the motivation to track him wherever he went, unless he flew low enough to cause damage to buildings through his sonic boom, or possibly high enough to go above the reach of their satellites.
Every instinct was to lie low and hide, to let the world go on thinking he was just an ordinary man. This wasn't even his world. These weren't his people, his responsibility.
Yet hearing the fear hidden in the reporter's voice…seeing the expression on the anchorwoman's face when she didn't think anyone was watching…there wasn't any other choice.
These were people needing help that wasn't going to come. He had a chance to change all that, to save the lives of what the scroll on the bottom of the screen said was eighteen survivors.
He'd been given his abilities for a reason. His mother had believed that, and he still remembered her calming words, soothing his fears about being a freak and different from everyone else.
She'd believed he'd make a difference.
The fact that this world had been telling stories about him for at least twenty years before he'd been born could only be considered a sign of what he was going to have to do.
Whatever the cost to himself, he had to do the right thing. There really wasn't another choice.
This is lovely writing, and it is a wonderful tribute to Clark Kent's true heroism.
It had taken longer to find the site than Clark would have liked. Over populated areas, he could always read road signs, but finding a few ships in the middle of thousands of miles of desolate wilderness was harder than he had expected.
Taking a deep breath, Clark plunged into the water. The water below was murky, with sediment creating an impenetrable wall making visibility almost impossible.
Although his special vision allowed him to see through it, the sand and accumulated sediment floating in the water darkened everything, casting the area around him in a perpetual twilight which was only going to get worse when the sun set.
He could see the darkened mass of the ship half buried in the sand. Three hundred feet down, with three hundred feet of sand and water and other debris between it and the sun, the ship was a pitiful sight.
The men inside were even worse. Even with his special vision he couldn't see them now; there was no light inside the ship. They were cold and lightness and alone. He could hear their breathing though, and he could tell that their breaths were slowing.
As he reached the ship he realized that there was no time for decompression stops or anything similar. Without air, these men were going to die.
Hopefully, the water inside wasn't pressurized.
Clark's greatest fear was that by moving the ship he was going to somehow break a delicate seal and force icy cold water to flood into the hold, killing the men inside almost instantly.
He closed his eyes for a moment as he touched the hull and did something he hadn't done since he was a child. He prayed.
And this is... oh wow! When I read the Superman comics as a kid, I always took it for granted that it was easy for Superman to perform his rescues. Hey, he was superstrong, so what could be difficult about about saving other people's lives? So the way you describe this, and explain the thousand things that could go wrong, is riveting. Indeed, how do you find something that is buried under the vast and unchanging surface of the sea? Where there are no landmarks anywhere? And what would it be like to try to see where you are going in the water once you have located the ship? And then you have to lift the ship and hope that you won't break it... and then you have to hope that you won't give everyone inside the bends and make them die almost instantly...
Below, through the darkened water could be seen a massive shape. Born along on what looked like a massive bubble of air was the form of the Celeste Marie.
Wow! What an incredibly powerful paragraph!
“All we know right now is that somebody's prayers were answered.”
That was such a fitting ending to this part, seeing that Clark had been praying before he lifted the ship.
What will happen now? Personally I hope that Clark won't get caught, and that he will make it back to Lois. And I hope that Lois will understand that it was Clark who saved that ship.
Ann
