Because of my hangups (and those who have been around for a while know what I mean) I didn't read Tank's vignette. (But I love you anyway, Tank, like everyone here.) I did read your part, Carol, and I liked it. But probably because of Tank's part one, I was not in my most enthusiastic mood when I read it, so the fact that I liked your part is probably the only feedback you'll get from me, sorry. Okay, I should really thank you for saving Lois from the jaws of death!
But I want to comment on something that Marcus said:
Of course someone evil could write a third part in which it turns out that the 2nd part is a hallucination; she realised Clark was Superman as she was dying and dreamed a happy ending...
Hmmmm. I once read a story by Ursula K. LeGuin. In that story, we follow a young couple as they fight a mysterious enemy who sometimes seems to have supernatural powers. Anyway, at the end of the book the young man suddenly realizes that he is dead! No, scratch that, he realizes that he is dying. He remembers that, yes, before he met the girl and started to fight the enemy, he was the victim of some sort of attack. And not just him, but a lot of people. It was... in fact... a bomb that had been dropped on, oh, say, Washington DC. The young man himself hadn't suffered a direct hit, but it was bad enough that he was in fact dying. He reluctantly explained the situation to the girl - who, by the way, was actually a figment of the imagination of his dying brain. He was dreaming her as he was dying.
The girl listened and understood. But then she told her young man that they might as well keep on loving each other for as long as he was able to dream her. And who knows how long your own sense of time and life will last when you are dying? Maybe, objectively, he only had a few more minutes to live. But subjectively, inside his own brain, he might be able to fit an entire lifetime into those few minutes.
I loved that story!
Ann
