I'm going to be lazy and copy the comment I posted on Zoom's board...
It was impossible.
Even with all his powers, there was no way Clark could have removed a city so seamlessly from the face of the earth. There should be signs of earth being filled back in, of the subway system, of the extensive underground excavation beneath the main city.
Hobbs bay was still there, and the contour of the land followed what he'd remembered, more or less. But somehow more than two hundred square miles of buildings and more than seven million people had simply vanished into thin air, as though they had never existed.
Oh, wow! This is so eerie, so creepy.
Despite having a woman who loved him, he'd always been a little disconnected from it all. Whether it was seeing what had happened to his parents when he was ten, or living through the foster care system, he'd always had a sense that part of him was broken inside. He loved Lana, as much as he loved anyone, but it was a shallow love.
He'd dreamed once of having something more, a deeper, more powerful emotion that would take his breath away and make his head spin. He'd wanted something like his parents had once had- passion that had grown into something even deeper. He'd wanted to be with someone who made him look forward to waking up the next day.
With Lana there had always been a little dread.
Now, though, he was utterly alone.
I love this description of Clark's unfulfilling love for Lana, and his longing for something more and deeper. And I can't help thinking that this Lois, even though she has only been named Lois because her parents were into Superman, is nevertheless a real Lois, a true Lois, and Clark's existential, cosmos-shattering need to be with her has sent him hurtling from his fictional world of LnC into the real world of terrorist threats and war in Iraq - and Lois.
Wow. Fantastic. I'm so looking forward to the meeting between these two soulmates, whose soulmate-ship extends across, and beyond, time and space.
Ann