I loved how you built up the slow realization that the train passengers were
somewhere else. There were no sounds of animals or insects in the landscape around them. And no one's, but no one's, cell phone worked.
This was so great:
It wasn't until the first telephone began to ring that people realized that it was over. First one ring, and then another and then another again. It seemed as though the entire car was filled with the sound of ringing telephones and for the first time it wasn't the sound of annoyance or just the noise pollution of daily life.
It was the ringing bells of victory.
Wow!!!
And this was so scary and perfect:
“There he is! It looks like that's going to be the last batch. Oh….that was close.”
“What?” Lois asked.
“He just lost half his cape.”
(I think, however, that people are a bit slow on the uptake. Given that Clark has performed all kind of super rescues by this time, and that you have a whole trainload of trapped passengers here, there ought to be quite a few of them who had heard about Superman and who'd start talking about Superman rescuing them.)
You gave us a great portrait of Professor Hanover, by the way. That's another very memorable original character that you have created for this story.
All in all, this was an incredibly intense chapter, describing what the chaotic situation looks like to ordinary people who don't understand what has hit them.
I have been thinking of one thing that I find a bit sad to comtemplate. I have been hoping that Clark and Lois will find a way to be together, but what if this thing is an all-or-nothing situation? What if you have to close all the rifts and make sure that everything gets back to the universe where it belongs? Then there will be no future for Lois and Clark. Maybe, like tragic heroes, they will have to find satisfaction in the knowledge that they at least got to meet, however briefly, and that they helped save the world together.
Ann