PREVIOUSLY IN LOST IN TIME...
She was about half way through them when something suddenly occurred to her. To make sure she hadn’t missed something, she went back to look at the pictures again. No. She wasn’t wrong.
“What?” asked David.
“Well, look at these pictures. There isn’t a single picture with him smiling from the time of his debut until he disappeared.”
“Are you sure?” asked David.
“Well, look!”
Making her way back to earlier pictures of Kent, she found herself realizing how obvious it was once she figured it out. In the pre-Superman pictures, he was smiling and his eyes almost danced, as if he had a secret he was just dying to tell someone. In the post-Superman pictures, he remained serious and his eyes... It was his eyes that bothered Lois the most. They just looked so incredibly sad, as if he alone carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.
“You know,” David said as they were about to leave. “I think it’s not so much that you don’t believe in Superman. I think you don’t want to believe in Superman.”
Lois didn’t respond. It took her a long time, thinking seriously about his comment, before finding an answer for herself. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to believe. She did - more than anything she wanted to believe. But she didn’t. No one was that good. Everyone had an angle. Still, she didn’t share that with David. It was just too... depressing.
AND NOW...
* * * * * * * * *
CHAPTER 2
* * * * * * * * *
Lois was deep in thought as she stepped onto the floor of her apartment building later that evening. For some reason, she’d been unable to get Clark Kent’s haunted eyes out of her mind. Stepping up to her door, she keyed in her four digest lock code before placing her thumb on the fingerprint identification pad.
“Voice recognition?” the computer generated voice asked.
“All right. All right. It’s me. Just open the door already,” Lois responded impatiently. Kal-El. There was something about that name that rang some bells in her mind. She just couldn’t seem to figure out exactly what seemed familiar about it.
Click.
Lois quickly pushed the door open and stepped inside.
“Good evening, Ms. L,” the computer said as Lois closed her door behind her.
Lois stopped dead in her tracks. “What?” she asked.
“I said, ‘good evening, Ms. L,” the computer repeated in a friendly tone of voice.
Lois was silent for a moment before dashing over to the old trunk she kept beneath her bed. Pulling it out, she fumbled through it until she found what she was looking for - an old, timeworn note. ‘My name is Lois ‘L’.’
Kal-El.
Lois ‘L’.
Lois rocked back on her heels. What was the author of note trying to tell her? Was the ‘L’ some sick attempt at humor? Was the author claiming she was somehow connected to Kal-El? Maybe she had been spirited away in the middle of the night because... what? Maybe she was a descendant of Kal-El and some crazed alien-hunting group was tracking down and killing all of his descendants.
She’d never heard of Kal-El having any children. But after tonight, she realized there was a lot the world didn’t know about Mr. Clark Kent. Could he be an ancestor? Could he have had a child with the unnamed woman who had appeared with him on that stage? After all, there was no denying that the woman and Lois were practically indistinguishable. Or was she simply reading too much into the use of quotation marks?
She closed her eyes and tried floating. Nope. Whatever this connection was, it didn’t give her superpowers. Damn! She could really use some of those powers. And she’d put them to better use than ‘grandpa’ had. No way was she rescuing cats from trees. She felt a giggle erupt in the back of her throat.
Once the laughter at the direction her thoughts had taken passed, Lois sank down to sit beside the trunk on the floor. She studied the note in her hands for a long time as she tried to reconcile it with everything she had learned tonight. The man who had exposed Kal-El was in her dreams. The woman present was the spitting image of her - except for her hair. And the note had put the letter ‘L’ in single quotation marks. What did it all mean? And how did she follow up on it?
* * * * * * * * *
Clark Kent sat back in his chair and stared at the two documents before him. All his searching and this was the sum total of what he’d been able to find.
The good news was that Lois Lane had been born at Mercy Hospital in Metropolis to a Dr. Samuel and Ellen Lane on October 7th, 1967. The bad news was... He picked up the newspaper article he’d found in addition to the Statement of Live Birth. ...she’d been kidnapped by person or persons unknown from the hospital two days later. The only thing that had been left behind was the pink identification bracelet that had been cut off her small wrist. She had never been heard of again.
Still, he couldn’t... wouldn’t give up. After all, no body had ever been found. She might have another name. But there was no way he could ever forget that face.
* * * * * * * * *
Lois ran her hands slowly down the hard muscles of his chest, allowing her fingers to trace each one through the tight-fitting material. Reaching over, she picked the wet cloth out of the basin and raised it to her chest. Keeping her eyes firmly on the brown eyes of the man beneath her, she twisted the cloth in her hands, wringing out the excess water. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back as the water ran down her chest, wetting both her shirt and the thin satin material of her panties. She could hear the strangled growl of the man, starting a slow burn deep within her.
Opening her eyes, she took the cloth and began, slowly, methodically running it over the blue spandex in front of her, watching with increasing fascination as the material melted away as the cloth stroked across it, leaving her staring, unhindered, at the hard muscles of his chest. She dipped the cloth back in the basin and increased her tempo, finding that by augmenting the water she could make the suit disintegrate even faster. She quickly finished her task until the chest and arms of the man beneath her were fully exposed to her viewing pleasure. She groaned in pleasure at the mere sight of his perfectly formed upper body. Never before had just looking at a man been able to raise her body temperature to such a degree.
Unable to resist, she leaned over, using her tongue now to trace those same muscles, starting at his neck. Tracing the tendons down his strong neck with her tongue, she heard a dark, masculine growl arise in the back of his throat. The sound called to her, drawing her in, making her quickly his.
She pulled back again, needing to see his eyes. They were dark, almost black. Passion seemed to jump between them, fanning the smoldering embers in her belly. Her heart rate increased when she looked down and realized that the water she’d spilled on herself had also disintegrated the front of her top. Her eyes snapped up to meet his, realizing immediately that he, too, had noticed her current attire - or lack thereof.
Lois jerked awake, covered with sweat. It took her a moment to realize where she was. In her small apartment. In her own bed. Alone. What the hell had that been about? All she had done was seen his statue and a few pictures and yet... God, she hadn’t had a dream like that in years. So why was her subconscious... insisting on taking her places she would never have a chance to go? Had no desire to go, in fact.
Getting out of bed, she made her way over to the window, once again forcing it open, allowing the cold evening air to slow her ragging hormones. Until this moment, she’d never really understood the meaning of frustration. She’d read about it, of course. Heard about it. But until tonight, she’d never really experienced it - the almost overpowering desire to crawl back into bed and finish what the dream had awakened inside her. No! No, that was crazy. She had no intention of feeding these unrealistic, completely insane fantasies.
She forced her mind onto other topics. The cold night air. The argument she could see taking place in an apartment across from hers. His smiling eyes as he’d sat sprawled out in an over-stuffed chair before his exposure as Superman. His solemn eyes as looked back at her in all those pictures after he became Superman - as if he was calling out to her across the years, telling her of his loneliness - a loneliness which she herself shared - as if he, too, was somehow also cut off from those around him, not ever quite belonging. She felt an unexpected twang in her heart.
She gave her head a shake, growling slightly. What was she doing? He was a con-artist. And not even one she’d ever meet. Besides, it was more than a little troubling that she might be having exotic dreams about her great, great, great grandfather. She shivered slightly, confused by how much that possibility suddenly bothered her. On the other hand, even if the woman was an ancestor, it was highly unlikely Kent was in anyway related to her. Besides, it wasn’t as if she could help what her subconscious did while she was sleeping. Sleeping. She glanced back briefly at the bed, but didn’t return. She knew there was little chance she’d get any more sleep tonight.
* * * * * * * * *
The next morning, Lois spent her time reviewing all the information she could find on the life of Clark Kent. She searched but found almost nothing about Tempus or the strange woman who could have been her twin. It was odd but both of them seemed to appear out of nowhere and then disappear again after Superman’s debut. Tom Balsam came over several times, asking what was happening with her story from Dr. Philip Klein. She’d been vague, but promised him that the story was huge - provided she could confirm it.
It was true, of course. But that wasn’t the main reason she was doing this. There were simply too many coincidences... too many for her to let this go. But none of it had to do with Clark Kent himself. None of it!
She’d noticed David watching her several times during the course of the morning, but she ignored him. She wasn’t willing to talk to him yet. Not until she figured out exactly what she was going to do.
By early afternoon, she’d finished finding out everything she could about Kent. Sticking her palm computer into her purse, she headed out for her next destination.
* * * * * * * * *
“I wasn’t sure you’d be back,” Philip Klein said as he continued fussing in his lab. “You took off awfully fast yesterday.”
“I had some research to do,” Lois replied vaguely. “But I’ve got some more questions.”
“Shoot.”
“Well, one of the things that makes a lot of scientists dismiss the idea of time travel is the idea of paradoxes.”
“Uhh... you mean if I go back in time and kill my grandfather, how could I then be born so that I could go back in time and kill my grandfather. Well... I discovered something rather interesting when I was experimenting with the machine.”
“What’s that?”
“It seems that ‘time’ is a lot more resilient than you might think. If you go into the past and try to change something, time itself will bounce you forward to your own time. For example, when I went into the past, I tried to warn Clark Kent that he was about to step into a trap Tempus had set for him.”
“You mean where Tempus exposes Clark Kent to be Superman?”
“Yes. Quite. Anyway, before I could do it, the machine sent me back to my own time. Now, I imagine scientists will eventually find a way around this safety mechanism, but for now... There’s no danger to the time line by doing a little time traveling.”
“So time somehow recognizes when you belong and sends you back?”
“Yes. I instantly found myself back in this room wondering what had happened. So I went back again, tried again and the same thing happened.”
“But what if time hadn’t protected itself. What would have happened if you had changed the time line?”
“Uhh... well.... in case something happens...” He led Lois into a small room. “Before I go back, my assistant and I come in here and close the door.” He closed the door to demonstrate. “This room is protected by... well, I call it a time bubble. By looking at this screen...” He pointed to a computer screen.”...you can see the time line. Any anomalies to the time line would show up there as a red flashing light. Now, I know it works because when I go back in time, I show up as such a light. Then, if you need more details about the anomaly, you just touch the light and the computer will give you a more detailed analysis. The time bubble around the room ensures that you are... I guess the easiest way to explain it would be to say that you are outside time. It gives the people in this room time to make any corrections to the time line - if necessary.”
“But if time protects itself...”
“Why do I still need this room? Ms. Lewis, I built this before my first trip, before I knew about this remarkable ability of time to protect itself. Since then... I figure better safe than sorry. That’s my motto, Ms. Lewis. That’s why I’m the only person who has used this machine. And that’s why I will be the only person to use it until such time as I’m satisfied that time travel is completely safe.”
“So there’s no chance that I....”
“I’m afraid not, Ms. Lewis,” Philip said, realizing what she was going to ask.
Lois studied the man for a long moment, assessing her chances of changing his mind. Deciding he was not about to be budged, she proceeded to her next question. “So how exactly does this machine work?”
“Well, first you step in here.” He pointed to a large, upright glass cylinder. “This machine takes your vital statistics. Your height, weight, DNA, chemical compounds in your blood, everything. It’s scanned into the computer so that it can find you to bring you home.”
“So... how exactly do you operate the machine?”
“Oh, well, you just...” He demonstrated, pushing the appropriate buttons while explaining in great detail what every button and knob did. “And when you’ve done all that, you press this button - and presto. The machine knows everything there is to know about you. Well, not whether you’ve cheated on your income tax,” he added with a chuckle, clearly amused by his own joke. “But everything else. I won’t actually push it now since there’s no one in the machine. Don’t particularly want it to scan a fly that might be in the machine.”
“What if there’s a fly in the machine with you when you’re scanned?”
“That’s why...” He picked up an aerosol can filled with bug spray. “It’s my own special blend. It’s not dangerous to humans. But when I step inside the machine, I give it a blast and then make sure any bugs on the floor are picked up and disposed of in that small box so that they don’t get mixed in with my DNA. Hey, I saw ‘The Fly’ when I was a kid, too.”
“So what would happen if you went back to a time in your own lifetime. Would the machine get confused then?”
“No. After all, this is the only second of your life when you will be exactly the age you are now, with the same level of chemicals in your blood, the same scars, the same... well, everything. And why would you go back to a time when you were that exact age. You could just look in the mirror. I’ve done some experiments of going back only a couple of hours and the machine doesn’t have any problems distinguishing the time traveling me from the me of that time.”
Lois nodded slowly, trying to take it all in.
“Anyway, once you’re scanned into the computer, you enter this machine.” He gestured to another upright glass cylinder. “You set the time you want to go to...” He demonstrated how on a computer pad on the consol outside. “You enter the length of your trip. And the time you want to return - for that I’ve already got one hour entered. I suppose I could come back a minute after I leave, but I did that once and it confused my assistant too much - hearing me talk about a day’s worth of adventures after only being gone for a minute. So I leave it set at one hour.” Again, he demonstrated how to use the controls. “Then you step into the machine and your assistant hits this button. And... poof.”
“So you don’t take any sort of machine with you in case you have problems getting back?”
“Unnecessary. And until I find a way to make a handheld model, impractical. At the end of the length of time you entered for your trip, the computer will send you back here - unless, of course, you’re bumped back early because you try to change something in the past.”
“And if something goes wrong.”
Klein shook his head. “I’ve built back-up systems into this machine until they’re redundant. Nothing can go wrong.”
“Power failure?”
“Back up generators - three of them. All regularly maintained.”
“Short in the controls for the length of the trip.”
“Any problem is immediately caught by the computer and the information is instantly sent over to the back up controls. Listen, Ms. Lewis, it’s nice that you’re so concerned about my safety, but I’m fine. Really. My only real concern at the moment is whether there will be any long term effects from extensive time travel.”
“What type of long term effects?”
“Well... will I continue to age normally. That sort of thing. I suspect it might slow down my normal aging process. Oh, hey. That reminds me. I learned something interesting in the past. I met my great, great grandfather - the Dr. Bernard Klein himself. He was studying Superman’s physiology and he told me something I don’t think I’ve seen in any texts about Superman.”
“What?”
“Well, he believes that Superman will age slower than humans. Of course, I couldn’t tell him that there was no need to do those experiments.”
“Why not?”
“Well, Superman will go missing in three years. And... well, I have to tell you, Ms. Lewis, I suspect he died a few years later. He would never have just sat around while we blew so much of our world to pieces.”
“So you think he was dead before the advent of World War III in 2014?”
“I’d bet my reputation on it. But for some reason, even though I’ve now gone back dozens of times, I still have no idea what happened to Superman. He really did just seem to disappear. I suppose it’s not as if it matters,” Klein continued. “After all, even if I did find out what happened, I wouldn’t be able to change anything.”
“So what can you take with you into the past?” Lois asked, sensing the need to get them back on track. “I saw the remake of The Terminator. I hope you don’t end up back there stark naked.”
Klein laughed. “Oh, no. I assure you I was quite decent. You can actually take anything that’s in the chamber with you. But you do have to be careful because when you come back, unless you leave something that will affect the time line, it won’t come back with you unless you’re holding it. I lost a perfectly good pair of sunglasses that way.”
“And where do you appear when you get to this new place in time?”
“The same place you start out. I know. I know. That’s something I need to work on. After all, if you’re going back to observe... let’s say the explorations of Marco Polo and you appear in Metropolis... or where Metropolis will be in the future, you won’t be able to get to the part of the world you want to be.”
“So where did you end up when you went back to Superman’s debut?”
“In Klein Labs... Well, it was called Star Labs back then,” Klein said. “But I’ve managed to minimize initial contact by setting the controls so that I arrive in the early hours of the morning. So far I’ve managed to sneak out without anyone seeing me - well, except for the odd occasion when I got caught by Dr. Klein. But then, I told you I’d spoken to their Dr. Klein. Remarkable man. Remarkable. Did you know that he won two Nobel Prizes. The first one, as you might expect, was in quantum physics. But the second one was for his work with AIDs patients in Africa before the war. He did remarkable things in getting the disease under control over there so that it didn’t wipe out their entire population. It’s a pity that the war came and...”
“Dr. Klein!”
“Oh, right. Sorry,” Philip Klein said somewhat sheepishly. “Anyway, I’ve been lucky. This lab has remained relatively untouched for the past 300 years - since the initial construction of Star Labs. Which, by the way, is why I chose this particular lab to set up the time machine. And before the construction of the building, this area was nothing more than an open field on the edge of the river. So... taking off and leaving from here isn’t as much of a problem as you might expect. Still, allowing me to choose the destination as well as the time is right on the top of my ‘to do’ list.”
“So there’s no way I could persuade you to let me go back in time. It would make a great angle for this story,” Lois said. “Hey, I’m just asking,” she continued when she saw the resulting look on Dr. Klein’s face.
* * * * * * * * *
Lois took a detour after she left Klein Labs, riding the transport past the ruins of the old city. Bigger bombs. Better bombs - the people at the time had claimed. All the destructive power of a nuclear bomb but without the radiation. Tell all the people who had died in the war how great the new bombs were. She shook her head as she saw the miles of destruction that still lay on the outskirts of the city. A hundred and forty three years was not enough to completely purge the stain. And Metropolis had been lucky. New York and Washington had not faired nearly as well, not to mention all those great cities in other countries that had never been rebuilt.
She couldn’t say that she was a Superman fan - or even that she really believed that he’d existed. But... if there was a Superman, surely he would have come out of retirement when mankind started killing each other off in such vast numbers. To do otherwise would make him a monster. No, Klein was right. Assuming that the entire thing hadn’t been some sort of hoax, she had to believe he’d died before 2014. For some reason, that thought depressed her.
* * * * * * * * *
Later that evening, Lois stood in her apartment, looking around at the familiar walls. It occurred to her as she observed the small apartment that although she’d lived here for the past ten years - since she was twenty-one, in fact - she’d never really made it feel like a home. As if she was just putting in time.
She shook her head at the crazy thought. She’d be back here to sleep before first light. And then... maybe she’d buy that edgy little painting she’d seen the other day by one of the local artists. And she’d ask David out on an actual date. It was time... Actually, it was long past time for her to get a life. It wasn’t as if she could stay in the past anyway. She’d be sent back after a set period of time - if she didn’t try to change something in the time line first. And really, what chance was there that she wouldn’t try to change something?
No. No. No. No. She was just going back to find out what she could about Tempus and her twin. Now she only needed to get David on board and she’d be all set.
* * * * * * * * *
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”
“Shhh... Do you want to get caught?” A few moments and a couple of muttered curses later... “Okay, we’re in.”
Lois snuck slowly into the lab, stopping in the middle of the room. “Hey,” she grumbled when David bumped into her.
“Sorry, it’s dark in here. Do you think we could turn on a light?”
Lois turned back to the door, closing it firmly before hitting the light switch. Since the button for the time bubble was right next to the light switch, she hit that, too.
“I’m not sure about this, Lois,” David said, looking around at all the equipment. “What if something goes wrong?”
“Dr. Klein said nothing can go wrong,” she said while turning on all the various pieces of equipment.
She stepped into the cylinder to be screened, being careful not to have any bugs in there with her. Once that was finished, she headed towards the time travel cylinder.
“Wait!” David said, causing her to turn towards him.
“What?” she asked. She couldn’t believe the level of excitement that was rising in her at the prospect of this trip and felt somewhat annoyed at having to take time to address David.
He stepped closer to her. “Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?” he asked, placing his hands on her upper arms.
“I’m doing this, David,” she responded, leaving no room for doubt in her voice. “You can watch me the whole time on that screen.” Lois pointed to one of the computers. “I’ll be the cute, little red dot with the great legs,” she added, hoping to use a little humor to combat the tense vibes she was getting from her co-conspirator. She was about to turn away when something stopped her. On impulse, she stepped up on her toes gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Take care,” she said. “You’ve been a great friend to me.”
“Okay, now that I didn’t like,” David informed her.
“What? You don’t like me kissing you? I’ll have to remember that for future reference,” she responded cheekily.
“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it. That... seemed like a goodbye. A permanent goodbye.”
“Don’t be crazy,” Lois said, refusing to meet his eyes.
He gave her a small shake, forcing her again to look at him. “If the leggy red dot as much as blinks funny, I’m calling Philip Klein.”
Lois rolled her eyes. “Relax. Nothing’s going to go wrong.” She quickly inputted the necessary information into the machine. “I’ll be back before you know it.” Stepping into the machine, she closed the door. “All I need you to do is push the button.”
David stared at her for a long time before looking down at the button. After one final look at her to ensure that she really wanted him to do this, he pushed the button, gasping when she disappeared from the room.
TO BE CONTINUED...
