Thanks everyone!
Yeah, I wasn't intending for Clark to tell Lois his secret this early either. That was originally much later in the story. But the story wasn't really all that well planned out and then Lois was just so nice... Like I said in the last feedback thread, I found that this nice Lois caused all sorts of changes. This was one of them. Like Ann said, she just had the right mix of compassion, trust, and lack of interest so that Clark felt like he could trust her.
There's also a little bit of what went on with Clark and Lois in OTOH. Carol has Clark explaining that it was actually easier to tell Lois his secret (although still clearly much harder than for this Clark) than it would have been Lana. The same is the case here, too. By being happily married and not a romantic interest for Clark, Lois makes a good confidante as long as Clark doesn't need to worry about her publishing this. She has limited ability to hurt him and has shown herself to be someone who is unlikely to do so. As opposed to Rachel, who he loves and thinks would accept him, but would hurt him much more if she didn't.
Sara - I will warn you that I don't think there are too many other shocks of the type that I've posted so far here coming. That would be hard to maintain.
Ann - No need to feel too sorry for Chad yet. I promise that while everyone in this story will go through some hard times, he'll be okay.
Patrick - No Lex Luthor evil deed. Sorry. Lex is only mentioned briefly in this story and only then as a fun day trip idea. He actually doesn't live in Metropolis, nor is he evil. But then, remember, this is a story where Cat is one of the nicest girls in the newsroom and Ralph is a hard worker. While Lois is the character whose change we can see the most, she is not the only character who's different than we're used to.
grinch - While I'm not going to tell you where things end up, I promise that none of they key characters, including Chad, end up dead. Poor Chad died in a rock climbing accident in Visiting Clark's world in Triangle and died in a car accident in Triangle Clark's world. He's a nice guy and I felt badly repeatedly killing him off. So while I can't deny that the idea occured to me, I finally decided I wasn't interested in writing a story where Chad died again.
This, of course, leaves the possibility that he's not going anywhere. Perhaps, Lois, Chad, and Clark will start a 21st Century marriage to each other. (Rachel, too?)
But, then Lois will be heartbroken and will need Clark to comfort her...
