So, I see that CC promised Part 4 would be along any moment... so WHERE IS IT????


Wendy (about to break the boards, she's refreshing so often... )

CC

Come on! Where are you???

Tricia

*refreshes again*

<checking watch>

<refreshing boards>

<cleaning glasses, just in case>

<refreshing boards again>

where is it?????

PJ

HURRY!! WHILE MY BOSS IS OUT!!! USUGI!!!

TEEEEEEEJ

joins the line

Quick CC, I have a class in 30 min

Ack!!!

And LOL!

So sorry. I was frowning over my comma placements, wishing I had more semi-colons. Last minute fiddling. You know how it goes.

Forgive me!!

CC

/me hands CC a whole bushel of semi-colons...


And WOW!!! Practically speechless here! Though I was right. The shoe did drop!

Poor Lois! Way to humiliate yourself...



And then the penny drops.

Mind you, you could have let her find out via one of the exhibits - that would have been much worse for her. Poor Lois! Poor Clark!

And now the HEA wing... well, I can't wait to see what her reaction is to that!


Wendy (who thinks that CC darned well better have a certain file with her next week... )

CC

WOW, WOW, WOW! Please post it ASAP!

Tricia

Okay, worth the wait <g>

This continues to be mostly hysterical -- I *adore* all the comments from the crowds. Comments straight off message boards and mailing lists. Just too funny.

I'm looking forward to Lois's mind taking a hike after a look through the HEA wing. And then I'm looking forward to her meeting Clark in the attic And I don't know how they're supposed to get back, unless they go for donuts and run into Madge...

PJ

Wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

Great part

I love it

Karla

Slipping in here to read as quickly as possible so my boss doesn't get too irritated that I'm at the computer instead of the warehouse, and finally I get it all digested just as he heads home, thinking all along, "wow, here's a cool, part" and "OH cool, this is even better!"

And then I got here...

And I went "AW CRAP!!!"

Hoody hoot! Lois is gonna get one big eye-opener in there!

TEEEEEEJ

And there you have it...CC's fiction in a nutshell.
Beeeyooootiful

Sherry

Hmm...you think he has another name, Lois? Very good observation.

Oh, good God. The cat is out of the bag.

Oh, God.

Minutes later, I'm still stuck on, oh God. System overload. System overload.

Abort, Retry, Fail?
JD

So Tempus is hiding them in plain sight, 200 yrs in the future.

Or so it would seem..........

Of course, if they do get back to their time, they're going to have to get a case of amnesia or it will change history

(love this time travel stuff... you can be so creative with it).

Less than 20 huh??? We'll see.

It occurred to me, while I was shoving my kids into bed and catching them trying to slip back out, that there was a nice little note in here... when Lois is at the staff meeting, there are a whole bunch of "Superman" look-alikes but she has no trouble picking out hers. I thought it was kinda sweet.

PJ

Yeeowee! Freakin' hysterical and yes I definately noticed some similar comments from the boards to what the crowd was calling out during the revelation! ROTFLMAO!!

I am jumping in my seat reading this..drinking up every word..brilliant and hysterical and just soooo clever. How, in a million years, do you come up with this stuff!

HEA huh?? This should be R-I-C-H!

~Liz (official CC fan club member)

I am getting a real kick out of this CC. Very inventive, different and refreshingly funny. Laura

I loved this part as I have all the others, CC. As soon as I got out of class, I sat down in my office and devoured it, and then came home and savored it again this evening. If I started quoting everything I liked, it would be as long as this section, but I want to point out a few things. OMG, I had been holding my breath for the revelation, but to have it occur in front of the first tour group of the day! The really lovely part is that these people who know L&C's story so well are actually seeing the real revelation in front of them--and don't know it. Wow! With his love of irony, Tempus would be ecstatic. Nah, Clark actually behaved that way toward Scardino almost every time he saw him, but Lois never behaved like that (telling Scardino to get lost), so she kept interpreting Clark's displays of testosterone as dog-in-the-mangerish behavior. Actually, I'm asking this right along with her. I mean, Lois remembers the gouge in the bannister now because it probably didn't happen very long ago. But that isn't the sort of detail that she would pass on to her kids and grandkids, and hence to Utopia. The same with the color sheets on the bed in her childhood home. That takes an incredible obsession to travel back in time to document those minor details just to put them in a museum.

Which brings me up to two minor details I wondered about: With the technology Clark observed at the Superman Museum, this seems way too unsanitary and archaic for the locker rooms behind the scenes. And what's with giving Clark brown hair when his hair is raven's-wing black?

However, I'm really glad you mentioned his feelings about seeing the scenes of Krypton. It's obvious that he found the experience as emotionally devastating as Lois found the Lane wing.

Catching up on parts 3 and 4 and ... still brilliant. This story is just insanely good.

Specific favorites:

The continuation of the "fandom as tourist theater" theme ... Lois and Clark arguing and people calling out comments from the peanut gallery. "I got a pre-revelation Lois and Clark? I got them last time!" was just inspired. (And makes me wonder what the post-revelation L&C are doing in this museum ... it's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. Heh heh heh.)

The tourist who comes onto Lois is actually Dan Scardino. Totally got me on that one. Came out of the blue, to the point where my jaw literally dropped and I had to sit back to applaud. Very, very well done. Never saw it coming. So impressed. (Oh, and Lois's brush-off in that scene was a fabulous bit of dialogue. So fun and so *her*. )

And then, I got to the "HEA" room ... Took me a second to figure out the acronym, but I got it before they told me. ("They" ... heh ... *you*.) Love it ... and love Lois needing to explore it. *I* need to explore it.

Come on, part 5!

Kathy

Brilliant! Absolutely Brilliant!

And every time the museum patrons speak up, I keep thinking "Sweet Shuster! That's *US*!!!"

I have only one complaint about your post, though, and that is the fact that it ended. What?? That's a legitimate complaint! CC, you cruel genius! You left me hanging! I need more!!

CC, this is an absolute scream!! I am enjoying this story very much, and I've already put it on my permanent list of all-time favorites.

.

I just loved this: Poor Clark has been assigned to Lois for a week, and she can't recognize him (granted, a lot of the employees are probably imperfect lookalikes) at all at first. And when she does realize that they are portraying Clark Kent, she STILL doesn't get it. Even with the quickly-following clue in the shape of the "Smallville Wing". Again, you've really captured the Lois from the early days. She was so tough and so walled off from any friendships, so fanatically focused on investigative reporting and getting the story. It's almost poignant-- she's a brilliant investigator unless it's something to do with Lois personally. Then she shoves it under the metaphorical carpet.

Boy, do you know your Lois Lane!!

I love the tongue-in-cheek Folc-like crowd, too. Heck, the whole building is Folc, isn't it? And the reference to the "family' and their not doing "the role-playing" is intriguing. I was wondering if any of the descendants would be around, and while I'm at it, I wonder if any of them are Super. I wonder if Lois and Clark will hear anything more about the Founders and the family.

Great job! And your FDK thread started before you even posted the part!

~Toc

This is soooo great! It's hilarious, funny, makes me cringe at times commiserating with Lois AND Clark.

Can't wait for Lois' reaction to the HEA-room. Clark isn't going to live this down. Not ever. She'll kill him because she'll come over the Trask-room and take some of that kryptonite.


More soon please!

She's going to faint!!

Jose

Isn't the gouge there because they are actually AT the Dailey Planet that's been converted to a musuem, Right? Granted, it might be worn even further now, (bout 200 years worth)...

Just a thought.

TEEEEEEJ

True, TJ, they're apparently at the actual Daily Planet. But remember, the DP was blown up at the end of S1, and the bannister would have been replaced with everything else. And don't you think other changes were made in the years between L&C's tenure there and Utopia? To go back and undo the remodeling after Lex blew up the Planet, make the same desks, the same kind of computers, the Double Fudge Crunch bars in 20th century wrappers in the same desk drawer--reproducing all of the details that would make Lois-from-the-pilot feel right at home is a degree of obsessiveness that is mind-boggling.

The more I read about this Utopia, the more chills I get. Lois isn't the only one standing in line behind Tempus. Not that I think this Utopia is boring. Most of it is hysterical, like the weekly 2-for-1 Donut Day explaining the soft, pudgy appearance of most of the Peacekeepers. LOL! And the existence of a Superman Museum designed just for FoLCs is a wonderful dream. It's just that, behind the scenes, the ramifications are creepy.

Oh, and CC, since you're handling the time-travel so well, do you think there's anyway you can sort of make today into Thursday so we can get the next post now?

CC, I still sit here in amazed wonder after reading this next part. This is just unbelievably good!

I've loved reading all those comments, too, because there are points being brought up that I hadn't even thought of. Like Sheila's point about the bannister at the Season 1 DP. In my head I can't picture all the changes between the S1 and S2 (go ahead, slap me...) - maybe the bannister was an item that wasn't too badly damaged by the explosion and ensuing fire (ok, ok, I know I'm reaching...)

And this comment of Sheila's...
I *loved* the way this revelation came right out in public like that.

But now I've been thinking, and what would be the "real" revelation now? We know the one that just happened in this part, but this is obviously not the revelation that the people of Utopia know. Based on comments that have been made by the Utopian public, and the presence of Scardino (which was just freakin' brilliant, by the way), it appears that the Utopian version of L&C follows along the lines of show canon.

Yet now Lois knows, almost right from the start. So what happens now, and what happens when things are put right again? Will it be a H.G. Wells maneuver a la Tempus Fugitive, where they don't remember any of this happening? Because if they're returned to their own time, yet Lois knows, that will change the entire course of their relationship. Maybe it will even bring about a different Utopia - which could potentially solve the Tempus problem, because maybe he'll never be born...

OK, I'm thinking too much about this. My head hurts. I'm just dying to know more, CC. Thank goodness that tomorrow is Thursday.

Kathy (along with Liz, a proud member of the CC fan club - do we get a button?)

You know you're hooked when you come back to post comments on the comments.

Sira wrote:

OMG, you have no idea how much this made me laugh. The Trask room, complete with Kryptonite. And the thing is, it could happen!!!



I'm still laughing.

Kathy

CC, I've run out of superlatives for this. I love it, and not just because it's such a darned good premise, but because you've executed it so well.

Everyone else has already gushed over the stuff I'd want to highlight, so just turn your gush-o-meter up to overflowing and that'll be just about right.

Sheila, you pointed out that Clark was pretty aggressive when Scardino was around - well, they can't get everything right, now can they? They'll have reconstructed all of this from journals and stories passed down through the generations, so their information is going to be skewed by personal bias. For example, perhaps Lois's version of events is that Clark wasn't forceful enough around Scardino - maybe she thought that he should have tried harder to draw her away from him. So if the role players are basing their characterisation on this version, then, yeah, they're going to think Clark was pretty weak.

Hey, CC, you're provoking discussion between your readers! How scary is that?

Yvonne

Never tempt a bored artist even when MS Paint is the only program in front of her. :p

OOO! OOO! I want one!!! Make a sticker outta that and I'll put it on my coffee cup.

TEEEEJ

CC, there was a lot of impatient tapping of feet last night on IRC, with several people ducking in and out of the channel, lying in wait for your post. There was a lot of very enthusiastic raving about this story going on, too.

So, this evening I just had to see what all the fuss was about, and I've just read all four parts.

Suffice to say, all the raving was justified, and I think I'm going to have to invest in some tap-shoes of my own.

Wonderful stuff! I've been laughing out loud. I won't try to point out favourite lines, partly because there are so many of them and partly because other people have been doing that.

In part two, I think it was, Clark was sitting under a motion sensor. He didn't move and the light stayed on. This made me laugh wryly; I guess that's a sign of technological advancement because, about eighteen months ago, while I was watching a video in a museum in Holland, not only did all the lights go out, so did the tv and video switch off. Apparently I hadn't been fidgeting enough for the sensors to remember I was there!

Anyway, wonderful. And I'm now calculating days and hours to the next part.

Chris

CC, I've been reading this, but I've been really really bad at giving comments Suffice to say that I really really really love it, and I'm anxious for more!!!

Sara [who will be better about commenting in the next part as soon as it's posted... promise...]

Hmm, Lois has to come to terms with what Clark already seems to have. They weren't dumped just anywhere, but into the FUTURE. So, Tempus is right, after all. I am so glad that you are posting thrice a week, but Thursday still seems aeons away.

Not wanting to be like everyone else, I won't gush, and go on and on about how good this is. (I could, but I won't).

Instead I'll point out the one minor flaw I saw in your latest post. Granted this instalment was all about 'the revelation' but still... I can't believe that Lois got a chance to see all those 'different' Lois versions without making some snide comments about some of them.

Tank (who knows that his was a lame comment, but didn't want to contribute the possible ego problems CC is going to have with all this unabated praise )

Loved it, just like everyone else. I especially loved the "pollution like a hairnet" line. I don't know why that particular similie struck me so, but it only emphasizes your lovely turns of phrase.

I do agree with Sheila that the amount of detail is just a tad too much. It's *too* right. We get details wrong about things that happened less than a decade ago; how accurate could they be, centuries in the future? Unless, as Sheila suggests, they went back in time to get the details right... which is kinda creepy. :p

Loved, loved, *loved* the FoLC-like tourists. And poor poor Clark. Will Lois remember that he did try to tell her first? And the different hairstyles that Lois dismisses as poor research! That was just hilarious.

I'm cringing at the HEA room. That's just *mean*. But Tempus-mean, which is also fun. Let's have MORE!

Hazel

Oh boy... here we go! <g>

LOL!!!!

LOL! Awww.

Trying to curry favor with Tank, eh? <G>

Awww!! I'm glad.

Uh oh... And I betcha Clark figured out the problem right away... his secrecy from Lois is doomed. Though... that's not really a *bad* thing... is it? I mean, they're stuck here together, wouldn’t it be easier that way? OTOH... At the point they'd left their world... she'd only known Clark a week...

Uh oh...

Awwww!!!! This para was so sweet and endearing and hope-for-the-future inspiring... yup, right up until that last word. The word you might as well just replace with "doom." Yup... I can see it coming. Clark's in trouble.

Awwww!

OOOH!!! I know! I know!!! Can I tell them??

Ohgodohgodohgod!! I *just* got my heart rate back to normal!! OMG. Poor Lois!!!!! This is going to hurt. Bad.

Yeah, sure... I'm breathless just from reading, Lois.

/me takes in a deep breath

ACK!!!!!!!! Bad CC!!!! Bad girl!! Leaving off there!

/me tries to catch her breath...

Wow... just wow. I think that's about all I can say. I'm really blown away by... everything, CC. And I'll need more soon.

Sara (who didn't mean to quote so many lines... really... )

Well.

So.

Here we are and... I'm speechless. Not that I'm not going to make a long speech right here, right now, as I certainly am! But I was AFK a good bit of yesterday, so when I saw the feedback number last night, my eyes did that bug out thing, dropped out of my head, rolled onto the floor...

Just... wow. Really. Big, fat WOW!! And thank you! For your continued interest, for your really smart, really insightful comments, for the kind words, the questions you raised. And for the button, Jen!! Woo-hoo!

(I will print that right up and hang it over my computer with great pride.)

Ok. Onto business.
Put this under Things I Wish I'd Thought Of! When I first started sending this to Lab, I assured her I could fit the whole fic into 4 parts. Maybe 6 if I got wordy. But most definitely less than 10. And see? If I had just gone along with Pam's idea, I could have!!

Also, somewhat off topic, you will find the author of Masques has very little sympathy for writers who whine their WIP is growing longer than expected. Go figure.

Other Things I Wish I'd Thought Of:
That's so smart, I'm just going to pretend I knew exactly what I was doing there. Yeah, that's it. I made that choice deliberately! Aren't I something? I should have a button...

Next category: Where I Dropped the Ball

I love this! Because this is the sort of future- detail that just slipped past me. And I want you to know, I spent a good bit of time this morning contemplating how soap could be improved in the 23rd century.

Also, later on you'll see Lois observe how certain objects haven't really changed all that much. That was this writer's attempt to cover up any things I may have simply missed.

And, speaking of missing: That is dead-on, Tank. I will edit accordingly, because that's too good not to use.

Now. The Biggie. The details in the Superman Museum. How in some ways they are so accurate, and in some ways they aren't, the creepy aspects. All really, really good stuff.

Yvonne answered one part for me. The interpretations of certain people and events would be skewed by the POV of whoever provided the information.

I'm operating with an internal logic here. One that is never spoken to directly, but that works as a compass to keep me from spinning in circles. I'm debating just spilling it, telling you how I think it all fits together, but I really love the speculation and don't want to stifle that.

And I agree, the cult of celebrity has a really unsettling quality to it. Graceland as a kind of shrine, holding candlelight vigils on the anniversaries of Elvis's death. Ebay, where you can bid on a piece of chewed gum from the celebrity mouth of Justin Timberlake.

Then add to that the worthiness of respect and admiration of Lois Lane and Clark Kent, plus a couple of hundred years, and you get a mix of reverential and way over-blown.

Also, I think that *when* Lois and Clark are exposed to the world for who they really are is a big factor in how accurate some of this information is. (That's a big, fat hint as to the whole internal logic thing.)

I can't thank you all *enough* for this great, great response. I'm so appreciative, you have no idea. I know the numbers won't stay this high, but this is such a kick.

Part five is coming up later today. I'm off to tweak, fret, second guess myself. You know, the usual drill!

Have I mentioned I love you guys? Maybe it's too soon, but I want you to know... this isn't just a fling for me.

CC

Snork. And I said, "Yeah...Riiiiggggght."

Still not sure I shouldn't be saying the same thing about that 16...18...20...or under thing you got going in the headers either...

LabRat