Well, what do you think?

Ten to one it's Clarkie boy in her flat. As usual, it's fockin' brill.

I too hope it's Clark who super-cleaned her apartment and is now in her shower!...

looks like Lois is already connecting the dots... now all she needs is to join forces with Clark.

All the politics and subterfuge is boggling.. wow!

And.. thanks for posting tonight!!

Must be Clark in her shower! Serves Lois right for splattering him with mud!

First: YAYYYYY!!!!

Great part! So I see that they're going with the "crazed religious cult" theory. I hadn't even though of that as an "explanation" and it makes a lot of sense, except it still doesn't explain where the plane itself comes from. It could explain all the magazines and other "props". It wouldn't explain deeper things like Marcus was thinking about: masks on microchips and so forth. But they might not think to even look at that. The one place the explanation falls down is that even a religious cult would not go to the lengths to pull something like this off at the necessary level of detail.

However, no one, including Lois, is even entertaining for a moment the idea that any of it could be real. I guess Clark is going to have to demonstrate that the hard way. How convenient that he seems to have come back into Lois' life (and her apartment).

...and Lois and Clark don't have much time. In a planefull of people, there is sure to be someone who would "confess" if they think it could get them somewhere. And if the government starts using "enhanced interrogation techniques," anyone would "confess" in order to get them to stop.

It just occurred to me: if Lois thinks this is a crazed cult, then surely the person calling himself "Clark Kent" must be the leader!

Another amazing part!!! But please, Shayne, why are they so short??? The cliffhangers are killing me!!!



Debbie said it perfectly: one or other of the other passengers will break and start "confessing" in order to save their own skin. And it's off with Lucy to Guantanamo, or worse.

Of course... but it is shocking to read it all the same, and it is shockingly well written.

Lucy didn't recognize Agent White? Had they been seeing each other before she was killed?

Wowzers.

Oh wow!!!! Lois as some sort of Virgin Mary! Or at least as the Messiah's chosen mate!!!!

What will it be like for Lois to come to Clark's reality, if indeed that ever happens? To know that she is destined to be with Clark, with Superman? To know that she is a sort of Virgin Mary?

So in two days, the authorities will know that Lucy from the plane has exactly the same DNA as dead Lucy in the grave? Somehow, that suggests to me that this is about how long Clark has got if he wants to save the people from his own reality.

What a delightful bit of humour in the midst of all this!

I guess it's going to be like that, Lois, unless you can accompany Clark back to his own reality.

Yes!! She's got it back!!

Please let it be Clark!!!!

And please come back... pretty much immediately with more, Shayne!!!

Ann

If it is Clark I hope he checked for bugs.

Well, I can imagine a lot of people who might break into Lois' apartment, but no one else who would clean it up for her.
Yes, please!

I've been enjoying this very much Shayne. Sorry I haven't posted before but I was hoping to take lurking to an new high (or low). :rolleyes:
I think the story is amazing for all the reasons others have said.

But there is aspect that you have only covered with Lucy that has been niggling at me. If this is some kind of parallel universe then the others on the plane have to have dopplegangers and I wonder when the feds are going to clue in on that. It didn't take them long with Lucy, and I'm sure if they do a check, they'll find that others have living counterparts. How will they explain that? Fiendish cloning? Or will it raise their antenna?

Just wondering.

And I wouldn't mind if you posted more frequently.

Gerry

Shayne, I just caught up and I'm still loving it. The gritty reality of the story is very satisfying and I'm really looking forwarding to seeing how this ends up.

Shayne - fabulous as always. More soon. Now. Now would be good.
Carol

Very interesting chapter, Shayne. I love your a-plot (one of your best) and hate it at the same time. I think I'm just uncomfortable with how telling it is about our real world.

I'm sorry we didn't get to see the conversation with Lucy, but glad to get the recap with Agent White. I keep trying to trust in him as one of the good guys, but if there's one thing I get from your story is that no one trusts anyone and everyone is suspect in our world. How sad.

I have to say again, I really like Susan. Hope to see more of her.

Yay! for Clark in Lois' shower. Can't wait for the next part, assuming that they actually converse in the next chapter

*****
Gerry said: I thought I remembered something from an earlier part, so I took a quick look through the TOC. Check out part 7. Lois overhears the following at the hospital: I assumed that because the Feds had checked on Lt. Evans, they'd been running checks on all of the dopplegangers, including Lucy. That's why they wanted to exhume her body and check DNA. I bet the Feds found that DNA and fingerprints are exact matches to those they've identified so far, but don't know what to make of it yet.

More soon, please.
BJ

My dirty mind ran wild imagining a very angry Lois assaulting a very naked Clark in the shower. Oh, the possibilities...

Please, come back with more!!! The parts are so short that I need a daily fix.

Andreia

BJ glad you found that. Once you pointed it out, I remembered.
gerry

Something else just occurred to me: is no one thinking about the fact that the plane landed with no working engines? We know one of the fighter pilots saw Clark holding the plane up.

Lois doesn't know this, but someone in the government does...

I think part eleven should serve to be interesting.

If it were me with an intruder in my home, I would get out of there so darn fast that rubber would burn on the bottom of my tennis shoes. A telephone wouldn't be enough; I would want to speak to the police in person.

Somehow I think that Lois will respond differently... even if it does sound like the intruder is naked. As I said, this will probably be interesting.

Elisabeth
who is reminded of the time my dad came home to find a whole bunch of people in his house. He screamed... only to realize that he had walked into the house two doors down from ours which looked quite similar after dark, but in the daytime it was intuitively obvious that it was a different house

Love the story, Shayne. I can't imagine anyone else but Clark cleaning up Lois's apartment and taking a shower to wash off the mud she splattered on him. Not sure how he knew where she lived though. Did he x-ray her purse at some point and I missed it?

Kudos to the story. Now for a little hijacking.

A number of respondents have mentioned how "real" this Lois's world feels to them, how her reality seems to correspond with "our" reality so closely. I must take issue with the dark tone of the comments. (Not the story - the dark background in the story is perfect.)

The question of individual rights versus the security of society as a whole is not a new one. The American colonies were thirteen "free and independent states" under the Articles of Confederation from 1781 until 1789 when the Constitutional government was established. These same questions were argued back and forth quite enthusiastically for many months, and the US Constitution was eventually voted on and passed by all thirteen colonies, which then allowed the United States of America to begin operation as a viable political entity. We always have had - and probably always will have - disagreements between those who champion individual rights over the "good" of society and those who believe that individual rights must be preserved - but not at the expense of the rest of the society.

I do not agree that we as a people have surrendered too much to remain safe. There have been no more instances of terrorists killing Americans within our borders since 9/11. England and Spain have suffered deadly bombings, which shows that the terrorist enemy hasn't quit. I support a solution which keeps our society safe.

And just what would you do if you were charged with the safety of over three hundred million of your fellow citizens? How would you protect the rest of us who are unable to protect ourselves? Would you try to "negotiate" with the killers or would you try to destroy them before they destroyed you? Would you go to the United Nations and beg that august body to intervene and solve the problem? They've done so well in Somalia and Darfur and Bosnia, why not let them take care of Iraq and Afghanistan?

Remember that Saddam Hussein killed an average of seventeen thousand of his own citizens each year over a thirty-year period. He ordered the poison gas attacks on the Kurds and forcibly imposed his own version of Islam on his country. There was no freedom of the press, no right to habeus corpus, no legal remedy for his murder squads. And no one was allowed to express dissent.

And let's not forget the terrible treatment of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban. They were less than second-class citizens then - they weren't really even citizens. They were chattel, bought and sold and controlled from cradle to grave and forcibly dedicated to the service of their men.

I don't like the waterboarding at Gitmo. I don't like the way some prisoners were treated at Abu Ghriab. But before you come down too hard on these practices, remember that under Saddam or the Taliban or even in Saudi Arabia today, we wouldn't be allowed to even talk about such things. Those who condemn the US for allowing such atrocities (if that's the correct word) conveniently forget that there were legal repercussions for those involved at Abu Ghriab. They didn't get away with it. And few, if any, other societies would allow a public critique of the interrogation techniques used in Guantanamo Bay. You sure don't see such discussion in Iran about what that country does to people. How many Iranians published anything which disagreed with their government's handling of those British boats and their crews last fall? If any Iranians did publish anything negative, it wasn't printed in Iran. You want to protest totalitarian societies, why don't you start there?

(/end hijack)

Although politics are a hot subject, I'm not sure that everyone means that the security measures in place are always a bad thing. (Some may disagree on certain issues, of course.)

I think most people are bemoaning the NEED for these things, because what we sacrifice in the interest of safety and security IS a sacrifice. We lost our innocence as a nation and we've entered darker times.

Some things that are done may be looked back on by history with shame, just as we now look that way on the internment of innocent Japanese Americans during World War II. Other things may be with us for now on, and those may be freedoms that are lost forever.

Some things in hindsight might be seen as absolute necessities.

But even if the government is totally right in everything it does, it doesn't change the fact that we now live in a time where suspicion and paranoia are necessary, where freedoms are curtailed, and where the innocence of even fifteen years ago seems like a brighter time.

It's a darker world.

On the brighter side, thanks everyone for all the feedback. Some of the suggestions you have given I have already been planning for quite a while. Others hadn't even occurred to me.

Thanks again!

Right on, Shayne!
It is a changed world since 9-11.
Artemis

I think that was the point of my comments. I have my opinions about the things the US government has or has not done over the past 7 years, but what I'm really saying is that Shayne's story exemplifies some of the more bitter results. It's sad to me that my son isn't growing up in a world as kind as the one I grew up in. Although I want him to be able to trust in the goodness of other people, our decisions and situations require us to be suspicious and fearful of others.

Shayne has shown that Lois has followed all of the rules, shown courage and bravery in the face of personal danger and yet, she's a suspect of terrorism through her relation to someone being held as a possible 'enemy combatant.' Susan's warnings are very real - Lois shouldn't do or say anything to piss off the feds, otherwise all the good will earned in the past isn't worth squat.

Elisabeth finally broke me down by going on, and on, and on, AND ON, about this story and I sneaked a peek.

It wasn't that I didn't want to read it, but I rarely read wips by authors that have burned me in the past.

I know, I know, you DID finish SWK, and you have finished everything since then...and, I am reminded, that I don't have a stellar rep in that regard myself, so...I'm sorry for my attitude. But be warned...

(It does make me wonder about your resources with regard to the varied subject matter of your many stories. One could think that several different people wrote them, that just happened to have your same style and manner of writing. Maybe you just have a split personality...)

Can't wait for more.

James

I have read the last few posts, and I simply had to answer. There was one quote in last chapter that made a chill go down my spine.

It made me renember quite clearly the tales my parents told me about their youth in the totalitarian system we had from 1933 to 1945. Yes, I´m from Germany. And my mother always said, there was one central sentence during that time: "Be careful what you say and to whom, or they will come and get you!" My grandfather was a victim of that system because he voiced his opinion, so my family has firsthand knowledge about it.

Because totalitarian systems would do what I described above. You can only protest from outside of their systems, and of course they ignore it as completely as they can. You can get reactions out of them: by giving media time to the opposition they have driven out of their countries, by meeting the Dalai Lama in public (our chancellor Merkel did that, and China didn´t like it at all!), by speaking in front of the whole world about it. By answering their rants in the right fashion... but it mostly only works with high politicians.

The terrorist attacks in England and Spain came from people who already lived there for a long time. Spain especially has a lot of illegal immigration from islamic countries, and it´s really difficult to control because those people come by night with small boats over the Mediterrranean Sea. Both countries haven´t changed their laws to create some "Guantanamo" or "Homeland Security". But both countries - and also mine - have in the meantime been able to uncover terrorist attacks before they were launched, and the terrorists went on their way into usual trials. No change of laws. Of course there are integration problems regarding the islamic minorities in both countries which have to be solved, but it´s not easy.

That was not the reason for the war against him. As far as I know, there were two reasons: 1. Oil. 2. A lie about a threat that never existed.

It´s still the same, but less openly. And the taliban are still there. That´s one of the main problems with religious fanatics. You can´t get the problem solved by bombs. You have to solve the problem behind it - and that´s their whole inferiority complex because of a lot of things that happened during the last 50-60 years, also regarding Israel. But I don´t want to open this special can of worms because I would have to write books if I started one.

As I wrote in the beginning of my post, I renember my parents tales very clearly. The same goes for the history lessons every German child gets. So I´m going to tell you one of these history lessons.

When Hitler became chancellor, he was in a weak position in the beginning. He was forced to make coalitions with a lot of small political parties because his own wasn´t strong enough to rule alone. Then there was something which we would call a terrorist attack today. The Reichstag (German parliament building) was burned to the ground. Hitler very quick in dealing with that. He persuaded the president Hindenburg to give him emergency powers and dissolved the German parliament immediately. The person behind the attack was presented as a socialist, I don´t renember his name (Of course he only was a scapegoat, the nazis did it themselves). But it was enough for Hitler to declare his political enemies - all democratic politicians of the country - public enemies and put them into prison without a trial or legal advice. This was the beginning of that horror time, and it could have been avoided by speaking up in the first moment when he started seizing power. I didn´t happen because the German people weren´t very experienced with democracy at that time, and then it already was too late. My grandfather is the proof to that.

Please don´t get me wrong. Of course I don´t want to compare George W. Bush to Hitler. And of course I know that it´s not that way in the United States. You can´t get imprisoned without trial and legal advice - but there are rules that make a difference between US citizens and others. There is a defense secretary who talks about waterboarding as if it is harmless and no torture. Those are first steps into a different - and indeed darker - world. We know everything about it because we had the experience with such a system in our own country - and we know how it begins. Authorities that have rights that have nothing to do with the constitution, prisons that are no mans land regarding the law... I just want to say: Fight the beginnings!

Fortunately the United States have a long standing, very stabile democratic tradition and that wonderful 2-election-periods-for-a-president-and-not-more rule. And there is an highly educated people also with a lot of democratic experience. So let me get this clear for a second time: I didn´t want to compare. I just wanted to point out some things we see very clearly from this side of the big pond, but which perhaps are not visible so clearly on the other side. I hope this doesn´t sound condescending "we in Old Europe know it better", I don´t mean it that way!

I understand the need to feel safe, but it´s possible to get this safety without breaking the constitution. The European countries are proof for that, we are able to deal with terrorists without anything like Guantanamo or Homeland Security. Of course our Intelligence agencies are working on that, but the ground rules for them are the same as for everyone. The same law for all - and it works.

End of rant - *runs and hides*

I just noticed this:
The expression is usually "lock both of you up and throw away the key."

I've noticed various typos and other minor errors along the way. Shayne, do you prefer to receive editorial comments like that here, or via private message or e-mail?

I'm working without a beta reader and sometimes without sleep. Private messages or e-mail would be fine.

Hi Shayne,

I just started reading and caught up with the story and I must laud you on how clever the whole premise and execution has been. From the transitions in chapter 1 to the portrayal of a world without a Superman reacting to the sudden "threat" - everything has been amazing. I enjoy the rather underlying commentary that the topics are bringing about, and regardless of the varied opinions and arguments that sprout from the discussion, I think the discussion itself is key. So kudos on the subtlety

The way you have explained the connections - or at least hinted to the explanation through the character's theories - is ingenious. Totally things that I didn't think of as a reader, but things that fit so well that I can only smile. I was waiting for Lois and Clark to finally meet, and when they did, the way they did - shortness and all - was somehow perfect.

I too am guessing that Clark is the one responsible for the apartment clean-up and certainly hope he checked for bugs... although, maybe he isn't in the shower and is using the water noise as cover for the conversation they are about to have. Hmmmm.

I really hope the next post is coming soon!

~Sonia

Shayne:

You said:

I know that none of us would like to admit this, 'cos we're so hung up on this really fabulous, really tense, REALLY inciteful story which just happens to be at the ultimate cliffhanger, but --

Get some sleep; we can wait a little longer if we need to -- no!! Get back, all of you!! I mean it; I've got kryptonite...

Snave