A few moments later, Lois Lane and H.G. Wells were alone in a high-ceilinged room with a harpsichord and several silken chaise-longes and armchairs.
“Miss Lan—”
“How do you know who I am?” To Wells, her voice was both sharp and quivering, vulnerability hiding behind authority as she lifted the ostentatious hat from her head. He felt confused; this Lois seemed both large—her body literally enlarged by her outfit—and small at the same time. He had met Lois Lane at multiple junctures of her life and marvelled at the force of nature she was, seen her take on the role of Superman’s consort, her love, support and keen intellect as essential to the superhero as the sun. The Lois Lane he knew was Superman’s equal—in the future utopia, she and Superman were equally revered. But her eyes didn’t glitter with knowledge, and it wasn’t Superman she was married to; it was Lex Luthor. In the 1800s. Having managed to avoid him on his travels, Wells knew enough of the tyrant to doubt that Luthor valued her as an equal as Clark Kent had always done.
“I know who you are because we have met many times,” he said quietly. “The question is, do you know who I am?”
Lois shook her head. Wells sighed, wishing he didn’t have to explain it all to her. It would be so much easier and quicker if she already knew all about time travel.
“My name is Herbert Graham Wells. I believe you would recognise the name H.G. Wells better?”
“H.G. Wells? The writer? From the… future?”
“Yes, exactly.”
Lois’s jaw dropped. It was too good to be true. Out of nowhere, she wasn’t alone. But a writer? From the past. No, from the future. How? Four years of holding it together started to come apart at the seams. Desperation squeezed up from her restricted abdomen. Her mind went into overdrive.
“What are you doing here? In fact, what am I doing here? How do you know my name?” Lois paced the room, wringing her hands, her brown hair which now fell well past her shoulders coming loose from its grips. “Is this a nightmare? Have I gone mad? Do you see me? Am I really here? Am I just a figment of your imagination? A character in a book?”
The man who called himself H. G. Wells stepped up to her and stilled her shaking hands in his. His touch was assured and caring. Her fingers tingled as if grasping onto a long-forgotten memory of kindness. “I assure you, Miss Lane, you are perfectly sane.” His grey eyes glimmered with empathy. Relief flooded through her at his gentle touch. It had been such a long time since someone had touched her with true understanding and sympathy. She had been alone so long, unable to confide in anyone lest they thought her mad, and Lex. Well, she had learned very quickly that he could not be trusted, that his supposed love for her was a performance. But this man. He oozed trustworthiness. She let it soothe her muscles, calm her tight chest.
“What I will say may not sound so, but given our current predicament, you’ll give me a little leeway. Take a deep breath now, there’s no need to panic.” Lois followed his guidance and took several long breaths through her nose. It was hard enough to breathe properly with this ridiculous get up, she couldn’t start hyperventilating as well, they would only have a few minutes privacy which she couldn’t waste.
Wells kept his voice gentle. He wasn’t used to dealing with upset women, and he was feeling a little shocked himself at seeing the great Lois Lane reduced to this trembling state. From his memory, on their travels, even to another dimension, she had always taken everything in her stride. But at least two years stranded in a time she didn’t know, with no understanding of how she got there, trapped with Lex Luthor, would throw even the strongest person off their game. She just needed reminding of who she was.
“I have a time machine—”
“A time what?”
“A time machine.”
She looked at him as if he were the crazy one. “A time machine? Of course, why didn’t I think of that?”
“You and I have met before, many times, in fact, but I suspect at a later point in your life.”
Incredulous, Lois laughed, releasing Wells’s grip, and shook her head. “You know what, I believe it. In the future, I travel through time with H.G. Wells. Makes perfect sense.” She threw her arms in the air. “It’s not like it’s any crazier than all the theories I’ve come up with.”
He sensed that they might not have much time, they needed to focus. “Please, could you tell me what happened.” He was about to direct her to sit but he looked at the size of her skirts and decided against it.
She drew in a deep breath and closed her eyes. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited for someone to ask me that.”
“What year did you arrive here?”
“1818. Four years ago. One minute I was on a plane, the next I was crawling from a wreckage in front of this building. We, Lex and I, were brought into this palace. The Prince Regent was here, no one could understand who we were, what a plane was.”
“Did you tell them you were from the future?”
“Of course not, they would have thrown us into an asylum. Lex told them he was an inventor from the New World, that he had been working on a flying machine and it crashed. He was so smooth, so slick, he came up with a story on the spot. Before I knew it, we were celebrities. We were married. Lex became King.” She sounded haunted. “He was… a… let’s just say born to the role. He wanted me to be his Queen. What could I do but accept what had happened?”
Wells knew all about Lex Luthor and he had no doubt that he was the worst person, barring maybe Tempus, that Lois could have found herself trapped in the past with. But he was a gentleman, and he wasn’t about to ask Lois Lane what Lex Luthor had put her through or if she had ever tried to escape. Lois, starting to look far less glazed and shaky, anticipated the questions anyway.
“I thought about leaving Lex so many times, but in this time, in this country? Where could I go, what could I do? He has spies everywhere; he would just drag me back and make everything worse."
Wells nodded sympathetically and stayed silent; in his lifetime as a writer, he had learned that people want to fill the silence with their stories.
‘And you know what else I thought about? My mom when I was little, telling me that if I got lost to stay where I was, that way she could find me. I thought, I have to stay here. I don’t know how, but I thought it would be Superman who would rescue me, but it was you. My mom was right, I stayed still and you found me.” Tears welled in her eyes.
Wells cleared his throat, embarrassed. He was still not used to the ease with which Americans expressed their feelings. “I didn’t find you on purpose, I’m afraid. I just arrived yesterday. I’m very sorry, but I think I am responsible for what happened.”
“You?” A spark flickered in her pupils.
“I was in my time machine, and I think I collided with your plane. I crashed too, just four years later than you. That’s time travel for you. Somehow, our collision created a rip in time.”
Lois stepped back. “You didn’t come here to rescue me?”
“Not technically. But once I learned that you were here and under what circumstances—” he thought it best not to mention his concerns for the whole of human history “—I rushed straight here.”
“So you’re just as stuck as I am!”
Wells stepped closer to her, his palms upwards, placating. “No, no. The time machine is intact; I just need gold to fuel it.”
“Then we can go home?” She shouldn’t look so desperate, he thought.
“It’s not quite that simple. You see, history has been changed. Lex Luthor was not meant to be king and the ripple effect on the future will be astronomical. At the very least, you left your timeline in—what year was that by the way?”
“1994.”
Wells did the maths in his head. Lois doesn’t yet know that Clark Kent and Superman are the same person. That will make things tricky. If he wants any chance to rectify the situation and preserve the future, he will need to keep her in the dark.
“Everything after you left that would have happened, didn’t happen. And everything that happened from 1818 onwards will be different. You see, when an event like this happens, time splits. We are now on a different timeline to the one you were living, like a different tine of a fork.”
“I’ve seen this movie,” rushed Lois. “
Back to the Future. To fix the future, you have to make it so the event that caused the rip in time never happened.” Wells watched the cogs turning. He didn’t know what film she was talking about. On his travels he hadn’t had time to sit in cinemas, but it sounded like it was based on fact. Although he’d never met another time traveller from the twentieth century, it was plausible that he wasn’t the only one and they had hidden their knowledge in plain sight, in a piece of entertainment. It had always amused him how the public referred to his works as Science Fiction. How little they really knew.
Lois paced the floor deep in thought. “You say you’ve met me before? So, you know about Superman?”
“I do,” he said. The less said the better.
“He can fly. We need him to fix this,” she said excitedly. “He could stop this, move the plane out of the way of your time machine.”
“Yes, yes, I see what you’re saying but I cannot go forward in time on this timeline because then I cement it, and the timeline from which you came will be erased, the crash will never have happened, there will be no moment to take Superman back to. And in this time, I wouldn’t know where to find him, if he’s even there.”
“What do you mean? No Superman? That’s not possible! There will always be Superman! There is no world in which there is no Superman!”
Wells understood in that moment more than ever before why Lois Lane and Clark Kent were always destined to be together: it wasn’t simply a destiny of soulmates, it was unshakeable faith.
“Miss Lane, you’re a genius.”
“Well, I—” She dipped her chin then looked up at him and smirked. There she is, thought Wells. She just needed to be reminded of Superman to shake off the oppression of the last four years.
He pointed a sharp finger in the air. “I don’t need Superman from this world; I need one from another.”
“Wait, what?”
“You see, Miss Lane, this is not the only dimension. You and I have not only travelled through time, we have crossed dimensions together, visited a parallel universe.” Lois didn’t bat an eyelid; after all he’d told her it seemed nothing could faze her now.
“There’s more than one Superman?”
“Countless.”
Lois looked like she might swoon and it wasn’t from her corset. “And I’ve met them?”
“Just one. He, er, needed your help to become Superman. You, I mean, the Other You, the Lois from his world, she went missing before his moved to Metropolis. He never met her and his life wasn’t, well—”
“I help Superman become Superman? I don’t understand.”
“Yes, yes, you see, in each reality, each dimension, you have the same characters, but things never unfold in quite the same way.”
Lois held up a hand. “Maybe you shouldn’t be telling me about this, I mean, if it’s going to happen in my future.”
“Miss Lane, I can tell you anything I want,” he exclaimed, grinning from ear to ear. “Because we are going to get you back to the moment seconds before this happened. When we erase the event, the crash, we will erase this split timeline. Everything that happened here since 1818 since you and Lex crashed here will not have happened. You will have no memory of this timeline, and neither will I.”
As Lois absorbed this information, her demeanour shifted, a glint appearing in her eye. “So, you know what’s going to happen in my future?” There was a dangerous lilt to her voice, one he imagined she had used endless times as an investigative reporter, her target caught in her snare.
“Um, well, yes, I suppose I do.” Wells hopped from foot to foot, suddenly regretting his outburst.
“And it doesn’t matter,” she said slowly, “if you tell me because I’m going to forget you told me? So, what happens? When do I win the Pulitzer? How many times? And… do I marry Lex Luthor?”
Wells put his hands up defensively. “I know I said I could tell you anything and I suppose that’s true but what if…”
“Anything goes wrong?”
Wells nodded. “Would you mind ever so much, Miss Lane, if I refrain from telling you any more than I already have? Our plan, it’s all theoretical, of course. You see, I rather feel it jinxes, as you Americans say, things.”
Lois narrowed her eyes at him. “Oh, come on, it can’t really matter if I get a little sneak peek?” Despite all the swathes of crinoline, Wells felt like he was in the offices of the Daily Planet being grilled by the indomitable Lois Lane.
“It matters terribly, Miss Lane.” He managed to smile through her hard stare.
“Fine,” she said rolling her eyes. Fear crept into her voice “But can you can really undo all this?”
It’s the hope that kills you, he thought.
“I know exactly who can help us. I just need some gold.”
“I can help you with that.”
***
Clark Kent landed on the roof of the Daily Planet. He spun out of his Superman outfit—the one the Other Lois Lane had encouraged him to wear—and traipsed down into the offices of the Daily Planet. For a few hours at least, he was off the Super-hero clock and on the one that paid him to write. Sometimes his life just felt like a treadmill.
A man was sitting at his desk. Older and greyer but still recognisable. Clark sighed. Whenever Mr Wells turned up, there was always drama to be had.
Foregoing the welcoming pleasantries, he said, “So, who’s in trouble this time?” He should be sympathetic but every now and then he thought about the Other Clark living happily with the Other Lois Lane whilst his had never been found, lost to the forests of the Congo. For the most part, he was happy for them, happy that an alter-ego of his was living the life that he wished he had, with both his parents and the love of his life still alive. But sometimes on lonely nights, it stung. Like now, with the time traveller sitting in front of him with a very serious expression on his face, reminding him that Lois Lane kisses another Clark Kent before she goes to sleep at night.
“I’m sorry to barge in on you like this, again, but I need your help.”
“You need my help?”
“In point of fact, not me but Lois Lane, the er… other Lois Lane, not your Lois Lane—”
“I don’t have a Lois Lane. I never actually met mine, remember?”
“Um, yes, sorry, that was thoughtless of me, I just thought, for clarification.”
“I understand.” He waved him on as he slumped into a desk chair. “Why my help? She has her own Clark Kent, doesn’t she? Her own Superman.” It had been a long day. Everyone needed Superman, did they have to need him in another dimension as well?
“It’s a bit complicated, you know, time and all that. But it’s catastrophic. If we don’t fix this, the whole future of that world will be ruined. She’s stuck in the past with Lex Luthor—”
Clark clenched his fist and sat up straight. He repeated angrily, “Lex Luthor?” The millionaire had been a thorn in his side until his death from the fall of one of his skyscrapers; the man had caused no end of trouble trying to bring down Superman, so hellbent on his mission that he didn’t care who got hurt. There were villains aplenty in Metropolis, but no one had ever quite come close to Lex Luthor for evil intent. If the Other Lex Luthor shared the same lack of scruples, then Lois was in danger.
“Yes, and I can’t travel forward in her current timeline to retrieve Superman because that will delete her proper timeline. Right now that original timeline still exists, albeit with a different future from the moment Lois left it. I can still enter from this dimension but I can’t get that Superman to help us, it would turn things even more topsy-turvy. That’s why I need you, someone from another universe whose own timeline won’t be affected by this event.”
With thumb and forefinger Clark pinched the bridge of his nose where he no longer wore glasses. Everyone knew he was Superman; there was no need for them anymore.
“So, what do you want from me?”
“I need you to come with me now to the very moment before my time machine crashed into her plane and move the plane out of the way.”
“That simple?”
“Not exactly; we must be utterly precise. We need to arrive in the split second before the crash so you can move the plane, get back in the time machine to vacate that universe back to here. You’re faster than a speeding bullet, we need to be there for an infinitesimally small amount of time.”
Clark studied the older man. There was something he wasn’t telling him. “This will definitely work?”
The old man blinked rapidly. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure. I’m not entirely sure what the consequences will be of two of me and my time machine appearing in the same reality at the same moment. It is, of course, conceivable that it could destroy that universe.”
Oh, just something small then.
“And me.”
“And you.”
Wells’s stare was unwavering, as if he was looking into his very soul. He knew. Knew that he would put his existence on the line for a woman he had met just twice. A woman he had no claim to. Lois might live in a parallel universe, but he knew she was out there and it drove him every day. When she had entered his world, she had shown him a possibility of love he had been ignorant of. But he had never, not for one second, wished she had never arrived and left him in ignorance. Better to have known love than to have never loved at all. He carried the Other Lois with him in his heart. The idea of her living, suffering, in the wrong time with a tyrant was unbearable. There was no choice to be made. But it couldn’t just be his choice.
“But if you and I… Lois would still survive in her current timeline?”
“Alas no. If we—and I stress it’s a very, very, tiny, infinitesimal likelihood—destroyed that universe, it would destroy Lois’s new timeline too. You see, they are part of the same universe, linked by a time-thread. The future in her current timelines beyond 1822 hasn’t happened yet. It’s all very complicated.”
“Does Lois know you’re going to try this?
“It was her idea.”
“Then I want to see her.”
“What?”
“I need to see her. If this doesn’t go as you hope and we somehow destroy that whole universe, and her, and you and me, I need to have seen her one last time. I need to know it’s worth the risk, that she understands the risk. She’s alive where she is right now, right?”
Wells’s mouth dropped open. “I… I…”
“I want to help you, I do. But I need to be sure this is the right decision, that it’s her decision.”
Wells’s shoulders slumped. He had come to this Clark because he knew Lois, knew him and was sure he could convince him to help. He had not reckoned on this Clark’s sadness, his willingness to risk his own life for Lois Lane. “I understand.” He pushed himself to standing. “This is an earlier Lois, before I met her for the first time, before she learned about time travel and other dimensions. She doesn’t know yet that Clark is Superman so if you’re going to see her, talk to her, it has to be as Superman not Clark Kent.”
“I can do that.”
***
FeedbackFeel free to leave any feedback on the above link! Apologies updates are slow but I'm hopeful I might find a writing groove again soon... I blame time travel just being far too complicated
