I have been insanely busy, and I still am, so I'm late to the party. But this was another wonderful part. Since I feel I have so little time, I won't quote much, but I have read through the other responses and I heartily agree with everything that has been said.
For myself, I want to point out two things. First, that it is amazing how you make us
be with Clark when he performs his super stuff. You make us understand his decisions and see how he actually does what he does - I loved how he built that road. And you make us feel his despair, and then, you make us feel his determination once again. I loved this:
He glanced back at the rescuers filing slowly out of the truck. Their expressions reflected his own horror, and for a moment Clark wanted to do nothing more than run.
It was overwhelming and he had no idea where to start. Every person he chose to save meant he wasn't saving someone else.
Clark felt frozen, paralyzed with indecision. It was as though the entire world was slowing around him.
He wasn't going to be able to save everyone. The realization of that felt like a lead weight in his stomach. How was he going to decide who was going to live and who was going to die?
How was he going to live with the guilt of his failures?
He felt Colonel Kwan's hand on his shoulder. He glanced up at the older man, who was looking at him with an expression of sympathy.
From his expression, Clark could see that Colonel Kwan had faced this sort of decision before, although probably not on this scale. The man looked him in the eye and said, “Let's start with the school. The parents would want it that way.”
Clark felt the breath rush back into his body as the world snapped back into focus. Suddenly it all seemed very clear.
It didn't matter who he saved as long as he saved as many as he could. He'd already learned a great deal about shifting rubble in his work on the other schools and he wasn't as afraid of causing collapses as he had been before.
He moved forward, his body suddenly a blur. He'd be faster this time; he had to be.
People were depending on him.
Sorry about the long quote, but it is brilliantly, exquisitely written. One sentence leads compellingly to the other, and when you are done you have transformed Clark from a horrified newbie who just knows that people are going to die, into a magnificent hero who knows that he is going to have to save as many people as he possibly can.
But for me, who grew up during the height of the Cold War, this quote is the most amazing one, the one I can't stop thinking about:
“I thought you were going to keep your boy under control,” Agent White said, his voice tight with controlled anger.
“Clark?” Lois said. “The interview was my idea.”
“He's taking orders from the People's Liberation Army in China,” Agent White said.
“It's probably the most efficient way to coordinate the rescue efforts,” Lois said. “They know where to send him.”
“They've apparently seen your interview. They've made an offer of asylum for him and any of the other passengers who want it.”
China has offered Clark
asylum!!! And they have offered asylum for all the passengers in the plane!
I grew up with pictures like this one, of an East German soldier jumping over barbed wire to the freedom in West Germany:
[img]http://www.cs.utah.edu/~hatch/images/europe/berlin.guard[/img]
The idea of American people being given asylum in China is, well, mindboggling to me. (Of course the passengers were not
given asylum, only offered asylum, and I can't imagine that they would accept it.) Still, if this entire chain of events had really happened here and now, in this world, I can imagine that the passengers might be better off in China than in the United States. In China they would probably be released immediately and maybe offered jobs that required a good knowledge of English. For all of that, they would of course have felt extremely lost and out of place.
The interesting thing is that this could
never have happened in the show. The way I remember the 1990s, there is no way whatsoever that a planeload of ordinary Americans could
ever have been treated like they have been treated in this story. I don't think that the mysterious nature of the arrival of the plane would have been kept such a secret. And while I don't doubt that the 1990s American authorities would have detained the passengers for a while, I also believe that they would quickly have provided the passengers with lawyers and explained the situation to them. And there is no
way that any of those passengers would even have considered going to China to be given asylum there!
What happened? Why is the United States of today so different from the United States of the 1990s? Silly question. 9/11 happened, that's what. (And maybe the Bush administration. I still wonder if things might not have been very different if Al Gore had been President in 2001 instead of Bush.)
In 2002 or 2003, I read a column by someone who speculated that the whole 9/11 thing might blow over, that it might soon be as forgotten as some sort of Spanish attack on American warships that happened in the late 1800s. That attack apparently made the American public outraged, but it was relatively soon forgotten, and it certainly hasn't poisoned the U.S. relationship with Spain in the long run.
I remember that when I read that column, I scoffed. 9/11 would be forgotten? Come on! And maybe Santa Claus exists, too! And after I read this part of your story, Shayne, I remembered that column again, and I nodded in satisfaction. 9/11 would be forgotten? Hah!
But then I thought about it a little more, and I realized that - yes, 9/11
has been forgotten. Sort of. At least when I check out American newspapers on the internet, they so rarely mention 9/11. And here in Sweden 9/11 has been forgotten for real, at least among some people. In less than two months I will get a new class of 16-year-old students. These kids were nine years old when the towers fell, and if they are anything like the students I teach most of the time, then most of them will take little or no interest in politics. If I ask them what happened on 9/11, many, and possibly most of them, will look blank. If I show them footage of the falling towers, more of them will remember. But still there will probably be some who think I'm showing them a scene from a movie.
So 9/11 has been sort of forgotten, but the world has been profoundly changed because of it. We live in a totally different world than we used to, but many people don't really remember how it got that way, or what the world used to be like before.
The biggest change is what has happened to America. The difference between the 1990s and today is the level of fear permeating the American society. Fear is an ugly thing. I think it may have been Winston Churchill who said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself.". Well, I think Churchill was wrong about that, because there
are other things to fear, too. But Churchill was at least partly right, because fear is a particularly ugly emotion. It dehumanizes us. It takes away our ability to identify with others and feel sympathy for others. Protecting ourselves is all that matters. The world shrinks around us, and all we can see is what is threatening us. I think Agent Randal was ridden by fear when he tried to kill Lois. I also think that Agent White was ridden by fear when he lashed out at Lois for not controlling Clark. And I think that their superiors are ridden by fear when they are ready to protect Agents Randal and White, even though one of them tried to kill Lois and the other one put most of the blame for what had happened on Lois.
I also think that the Chinese authorities in your story are not really scared of Clark. They believe in what the Superman suit stands for, and they can see that Clark is living up to the promise of the suit. They believe in him, so they want to keep him. And I think it is true that people in China today are generally not as scared as people in the United states are these days.
Is there a way back to the time when America was not so scared? I think many people all over the world would be happy to see that happen.
This is an incredibly thought-provoking story, Shayne.
Ann
