Hey FoLCs
don’t worry, A Spark In The Dark is still going to be posted but if I want to contribute in the location challenge I need to submit something before the end of the month. So you get a teaser, well several teaser, for “Lifelines” each lifeline is a separate story (or several stories) but there might be some connections.
The stories aren’t betaed, not fully edited or done.
Teaser for Act 1: The beginning
(39 Ogtal 10000)
The skies above Krypton burned.
Fiery streaks split the heavens like lightning strikes, casting an angry, blood-red light over crumbling cities.
Argo, Kandor, Kryptonopolis.
Gone.
Krypton’s society, art, knowledge.
Gone.
All of it.
The ground trembled, a gut-wrenching shudder that rippled outward, shaking everything in its path. The planet’s heart cracked and screamed in agony.
A deep howl tore through stone and sky, a death cry, as Krypton itself raged against its end.
Ash and dust choked the air, searing lungs and stinging eyes. Rao, the red sun barely visible through the thick layers of dust.
The atmosphere reeked of scorched metal and sulfur, laced with the acrid sting of countless homes and lives, lost to flames.
The symphony of the planet’s death had begun five years ago as a whisper: a single discordant note, easy to dismiss.
Dissonance crept into daily life, tremors like errant drumbeats, flickers beneath the surface like a melody out of tune. At first, the shifts were subtle enough to be mistaken for noise, the fluctuations Krypton had always known.
When Jor-El had stated that these weren’t simple variations in the rhythm of life, people had laughed at him.
“There have always been seismic cycles, this is nothing new.”
“The core has fluctuated before. It’s self-correcting. It always is.”
“Another one of Jor-El’s doomsday fantasies. Let him conduct his end-of-the-world tale alone.”
“We’re Kryptonians. Our world has survived for millennia, it’s not going to just… fall apart.”
“Just a few tremors and magnetic shifts, and suddenly he wants to evacuate the entire population?”
“If the planet were truly in danger, the Council would have taken action by now.”
The laughter had stopped.
By then their fate was unraveling and the finale had already begun.
In the shadow of this dying world, Jor-El wiped the sweat from his brow, his hands trembling as he made the final adjustments to the small spacecraft’s navigation system. Beside him, Lara worked in grim silence, her face pale and drawn, her fingers dancing over the life-support console, checking their protocols.
She had given birth only a few days before, her body hadn't even completely healed, yet she worked beside her husband, only stopping to briefly clutch Kal to her chest. Calming him, feeding him, caring for him.
He was the only reason they didn’t allow each other to give up.
Even before he was born, he was their miracle: conceived against the odds, in a world that had long replaced love with algorithms and birth with machinery. While others placed their children in chambers and programmed their destinies, Kal-El had been created in defiance of that cold precision, shaped by choice, by love, by the fragile hope that something natural might still have a place in the world.
Some nights, when the tremors stilled just long enough for quiet to return, Jor-El would rest his hand on Lara’s stomach and speak softly to their son. He told him stories of the stars, of their people, of all the wonders he might never see. Lara would close her eyes and feel the flutter of movement beneath her ribs, the little kicks that answered back as if he was listening. They would smile through tears, holding on to the moment as if it could stop time.
He was still so small, yet his warmth, his breath on her skin, his heartbeat were signs of life in a world unraveling. He gave them hope.
And hope demanded action.
He hadn’t always been building an escape. At first, he’d poured every moment, every ounce of his reputation and brilliance into warning the Council, into waking his people before it was too late. For years, he’d argued, lectured, pleaded, not just to save his family, but to save Krypton itself. And once the tremors grew too loud to ignore, they did believe him. He worked with other scientists to salvage what could be preserved: genetic archives, cultural memory banks, evacuation protocols. But it was already slipping away. After Kal was conceived, everything changed. His focus narrowed. If he could save even one life, it would mean Krypton hadn’t entirely failed itself. But the Council pulled him back again and again, demanding reports, wasting time in deadlocked meetings. And outside the chambers, the materials he needed grew scarce. The world was dying and so were its resources.
The ship wasn’t ready. It was barely holding together, constructed from scrap metal and discarded parts, its shields patched with a cheap, unstable alloy. Every piece screamed desperation. It ran on calculations Jor-El revised each morning, on nights without sleep, on hands that shook more often now. It ran on blind faith and on the one thing they couldn’t quantify: their belief that their child could live beyond this dying world.
They had no choice. No support. No time. Just the wreckage of what might have been.
Jor-El could still hear the Council chambers, five years ago now, echoing in his mind. The marble floors, the polished glass ceilings. The endless arguments. The hollow reassurances. The laughter that met his warnings like they were eccentric footnotes in an academic debate.
Denial had blinded them. Pride had shackled them.
It had begun like this...
***
High Councilor Var-Ek leaned forward, his robes shifting. “Krypton’s core is stable,” he stated. “We’ve tracked its readings for over ten thousand cycles. Minor flux is natural."
Jor-El stood alone on the central platform, the crystalline data array casting pale blue light across his face. “This is not a fluctuation,” he replied. “The magnetic fields are collapsing. The core is becoming unstable. If we don’t act…”
“We are acting,” interrupted Councilor Reya, younger and sharper. “By investigating. Not by inciting fear. The population has lived through tremors before. We must maintain order.”
“At what cost?” Jor-El’s voice cracked through the chamber. “You want order while the foundations crack beneath us. You want patience while time slips away.”
Var-Ek folded his hands. “And you want us to do what? Abandon the cities? Evacuate an entire planet based on your models? There’s no precedent for this kind of action.”
“There’s no precedent for planetary death,” Jor-El shot back. “That doesn’t mean it won’t happen.”
“You've always had a gift for drama,” someone muttered from the gallery.
Jor-El turned, eyes burning. “This isn't drama. This is data. Krypton is dying.”
***
T. B. C.
