re-post Lois Lane – Mother of Utopia
Matchmaker Chronicles Volume 1
By Ken Janney
Disclaimers: The characters in this story are property of DC, December 3rd productions and Warner Bros. No Copyright infringement is intended. I have just borrowed the characters for a short time.
This is a re-write and re-post of my first excursion into an original fanfic. Okay, it’s more than that; actually, what you have here is the third re-write of this story. One of the reasons necessitating the re-write was that it needed to match up with events in later volumes. Therefore, if you read the previously posted iteration there will be some surprising changes. Anyone that read my “suggested Alternate ending to Accidental Husband” will know that I prefer WAFFY stories. You will also see just how ‘rough around the edges’ a first attempt can be. I hope that this story concept meets with your approval. I wish to express my thanks to my Beta readers Ray Reynolds and Artemis for their invaluable help. This was a VERY rough draft when it first landed in their hands. It was also through their encouragement that I didn’t give up on this story and leave it in its original form. I think that those of you that read the original will enjoy this version 1.3 much better.
* * denotes emphasis
< > denotes thoughts
/ denotes telepathic communications./
Please see author’s notes at end for explanations of Sidereal time, TTEMPO, TaDT, Multiverse identification and the Kryptonian naming convention. These are all integral to this story and future stories and will probably be included, in some form, in each.
As always comments are welcome.
Lois Lane – Mother of Utopia - Matchmaker Chronicles Volume 1
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Prologue
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My Dear Readers,
We are about to embark on an adventure. You may wish to be warned as to the nature of this adventure. Will it be in the nature of a Greek Tragedy or a Max Sennett Comedy? Or will it be something along the lines of ‘Lethal Weapon X' or ‘Love Story’? Perhaps it will be like something from the Bard along the lines of ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ – really? We all know just how likely that is, after all we already know who the principles are and Lois Lane would make a very unlikely Bianca. This adventure will have many aspects of the former four.
Well I *will* say that this adventure will be presented in many acts. Most plays limit themselves to three but this will not be like your normal theatrical performance in that there are many more than three acts to this particular play if you wish to call it that. Beyond this brief introduction I will try to refrain from making comment. I will allow our actors to take care of that.
In the far distant future, that naturally, would be in relation to your current location within the time stream and that is if we can actually use a term commonly used for physical travel and try to apply it to time. That is, so to speak, even though we are now ‘traveling’ in time in that we can ‘move’ backwards and forwards in time like you move backwards and forwards on the highway.
To begin, if we were to look into a particular office we would be able to observe a somewhat unusual gentleman. He is somewhat short of stature and wears wire rim glasses, a moustache and clothing which is really out of step with the current time. His outfit could be straight out of a period vid, one set in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, complete in every detail even to the bowler hat hanging on the coat rack just inside the door. Let’s observe this curious individual and listen in to his musings.Herbert George Wells, the 1917 persona, sat at his desk in his office. As he shifted position in his chair it creaked in response to his movements. He was contemplating a new journal entry and his thoughts began to drift hither and yon. It was to have the flavor of a history the only problem was how to describe it …
Speaking aloud so that he could get the full flavor of his thoughts to get an idea as to how they would sound to a reader he spoke aloud with a British English accent,
Herb said, “In the distant or is it not too distant, near, relatively close???? We really need to come up with some new descriptive terms for past and future time.”
Herb continued, “With the advent of time travel, different eras, even if they were separated by eons are no more ‘distant’ than tomorrow or yesterday. In any event in the *future*, an organization which became, will become (?) known as Time Travel Enforcement and Multiverse Protection Organization, or TTEMPO as I like to call it, was founded. Oh dear, there I go again, mixing tenses. How can I use future and was in the same sentence? I, on one of my early (Speaking subjectively, of course, it was early only in respect to my career as a time traveler.) … I guess I should say it this way, I in my 1895 persona after I had constructed the Time Sled from the plans I received I instigated the formation of TTEMPO.”
Unfortunately I feel I must interrupt Herb’s musings at this point briefly to explain. You could very well be asking the question, “Plans he received? I thought he designed it himself.” Well, actually that is a story for another time. Most of the people familiar with the stories of the supermen and a few of the supermen in particular simply think of Herb Wells as a time traveler and the creator of the time machine. They have simply fallen into the mistaken thinking that since Herb wrote about time travel and described the machine, however incompletely, in his book of that name, that he had in fact been the creator. Another reason for this, other than the fact that he was not the designer is the fact that he wrote the book before he received the plans and secondly his book was more of a comment on society and his vision of the future that the current society would produce. In actual fact, Herb was a zoologist. He was not a physicist even though he had studied in that field as well, however a physicist is what would have been needed for the creation of the device especially with the state of science of that time. The materials of the 1890s were very limited. It took a much more advanced intelligence than his to design the vehicle operating within the limited resources available at that time.
But, I stray from the point of the narrative. Herb had built a time machine and traveled to the future, his future, the future of the universe that he inhabited. When he did he discovered a society which to him was a veritable Utopia. In actual fact it was so different from what he had speculated that society would be like in his story that he was dumbfounded. Of course his story had been the product of his imagination, but, this … this society was so far superior to anything that he could imagine that it was beyond belief. In his wildest imaginings he could not have conceived of a society such as this. The future that he had proposed had been very bleak and pessimistic whereas this was bright and full of promise. His fascination with this utopian society was such that he decided that stopping there so that he could do some research was warranted.
He felt compelled to find out just how this society had been founded. His long standing interest in improving society had led him in the past, his past, his personal past, in his younger years (There’s that problem with terminology again!) to read Plato’s Republic and explore socialism in the Fabian Society. What he discovered now, in the future, his future, the future that he was visiting was that it had been the influence of a certain family of super powered individuals in the past, the past of this time but the future from his home time and that through their moral leadership they had brought about this peaceful utopian society. He was fascinated by this family and the influence that they had and read all that he could on them, especially the founding couple. Their history which was still in his future and wouldn’t begin until after his death, even though he was reading about it as an actual history, was especially interesting. The adventures that they had had before even becoming a married couple were fascinating to read about.
When he had managed to assuage his curiosity somewhat in regard to this interesting family he continued to explore and he encountered several individuals, one of whom he was able to entice to accompany him back through time by way of a proof that time travel was possible and that he had in fact built a time traveling device. He still couldn’t believe that he had been so mistaken in his selection of a traveling companion. Tempus had presented a real problem not just on that particular trip but at other times even times when he was not personally present. His diary, of all things, had created a problem for the founding couple.
The events of this trip and the other problems created by Tempus have all been recorded and added to the annals of the founders and you may download that information from the public net anytime you wish and read it for yourself or have the speech synthesizer read it to you. You can even choose the voice – male or female in any frequency range you desire from baritone to soprano, but be prepared for a long session, it is quite extensive. You may wish to download it to a portable device so that you can listen to it in shorter sessions, whenever you have a few minutes. It is a fascinating story which only the highlights of are taught in children’s history classes. There are many nuances that are glossed over in the history texts. I guess they were concerned with the size of the file and making sure all of the search links worked appropriately so they had abridged it.
You really can’t depend on popular myth either. Popular myth places the founding couple on such a pedestal as to be virtual paragons when in reality they were people just like you and me, well maybe not *just* like you and me, after all the super powers do make a big difference. But, powers aside they were a man and a woman with ‘normal’ human needs, feelings and failings.
Anyhow, after that nearly disastrous trip Herb came to the realization that an organization chartered to prevent that kind of problem in the future, well actually, the past, but they wouldn’t know about it until the future even though it had happened in the past and needed to be corrected in the future, er past so that the present could remain the way it was, uh, is , uh, should be?!?!? There’s that problem with terminology again.
Today, ah now there was a term he could use without any question, there would be a number of trips not only into the past but across the dimensional barriers into various universes conducted by specially trained TTEMPO agents primarily to do research and document their findings. There were now very strict orders that in no cases were they to interfere with the normal course of events. They were to simply report back their findings and the board would make the final decision as to whether or not interference was called for. The disastrous changes which had been created by interfering in the course of history were still being documented. Herb himself had been responsible more than once for making changes which had at least temporarily had a negative impact on the course of events. Fortunately the consequences of Herb’s interference hadn’t caused any permanent problems but, he had learned from the experiences. In his personal hubris he had thought that he knew exactly what to do to correct any problem by using the ability to travel through time to key events where a small change could have the desired effect. Unfortunately Herb learned after the fact that he just didn’t know as much as he thought he did and was chagrinned to find that he had to undo what he had done to set things right. Fortunately, this subsequent change had brought about the desired state. If it hadn’t he would have had to keep trying until he did succeed in getting it right because there was really no going back and undoing what he had done, would do, did???
Downstairs, (Now there was another archaic term. Who used stairs in the 2400's Sidereal?), in an area just off the lobby was the transport area. It was a safe area where time traveling agents could use the TaDT with safety. The pads were designed in such a way that when a TaDT was locked on it was inaccessible until after the traveler materialized. It simply wouldn't do to have two individuals occupying the same space at the same time now would it? It was also maintained as a ‘clean room’ so that nothing other than the authorized traveler could move through time or across universes. Untold damage could be done by introducing a foreign species of something as innocuous as a fly if there were no natural controls such as predator species to keep it in check. Once in the new universe, moving around within the time zones was not considered to be much of a problem.
In the time since he had started his travels Herb had learned a lot. It was just a shame that it had taken so many years to get to where he was now in his understanding of the multiverse, how time travel and history interrelated and how the universes within the multiverse were, are, have been, will be constantly in the process of being created. There’s that problem with terminology again. Let’s try that one again. The various universes within the multiverse have been are and will continue to be created as they have been. Yes, I think that conveys the meaning correctly. One thing that had been determined was that fortunately there were only a few key events with key individuals which would trigger a creation event and these have been, are, were, will be constantly being investigated and reported on. There I go again!Herb continued musing aloud to himself, “An unusual event was identified as occurring in Prime some time ago and brought to my attention that is my 1912 persona was notified. I determined that I needed to look into it. It wasn’t so much an event as an inconsistency in the data. Since I had requested that any problems in Prime or Alt1 be brought to my attention as soon as they are identified even if the event occurred three hundred years in the past, well past from this current time frame, they notified me, my earlier self, the 1912 me, self, persona. Actually, it wasn’t so much an event as an inconsistency in the approved record, uh, history, uh, family history of the founders in Prime. Since I had left that standing order that I was to have personal responsibility for a few of the universes within the multiverse it was up to me to investigate. The same would have held true of Alt1, the first alternate universe we had encountered which had led to the discovery of the multiverse.
The discovery of the alternate universes and the composition of the multiverse had actually been a serendipitous event brought about by that sociopath, Tempus, you remember, that miscreant that had caused Herb so much trouble on that first trip. Tempus had been using a poorly made copy of Herb’s time sled which had malfunctioned, causing him to cross from one universe to the next.
Because of Herb's all consuming fascination with the supermen and a few of the supermen in particular he had started working on the books. The supermen he had a particular interest in were so widely divergent in their stories that therein lay the fascination. In the past, his past, earlier in his life, there I go again. His 1905 persona had started compiling the books on the universes and the family histories of the Kent family in particular. It was an opportunity too good to pass up, being able to move back in time, into the past, still his future, from the prospective of where he had originated, ah well, to the point in time when the actual events occurred, would occur. Oh my goodness there we go again. The ability to observe events as they happened was an invaluable tool in ensuring that the story was accurate and also complete.Herb thought <Unfortunately it has taken me all these years, centuries, no years. Even though I am, am now, will be centuries in the future from my home era it is still only years that I have been involved in time travel. It has taken years of traveling through time to learn enough about history and universes and how they interrelate to have a good idea when I should and should not act.>
Thinking back on what he had done in previous years, his years, not historical years, his personal years!?!?!?! Thinking back to what he had done in his 1905 and 1912 personas, that’s better, he could now see where he had made some mistakes.
Herb thought, <I am going to have a full time job just correcting the mistakes I made in the past. Yes, this time I can use past because it accurately reflects what I mean. It means both my personal past, 1917 Herb looking back at what 1905 and 1912 Herb had done and also because he had done a lot of them in the past, past – uh, history, gracious me, there I go again, just when I thought I was safe. When my 1895, 1905 and even 1912 personas thought he was simply doing research or lending a helping hand there were things going on that he just was not ready to learn and now it’s up to me, the 1917 persona to see to it that they, the previous me's, uh, Herbs, uh, personas in fact didn’t find out that they didn’t know just as much as they thought they did.>
The problem was that the acts had already been committed and now he, his later self, needed to correct them.Herb finished his musings, “It all started with a letter received on June 1, 2454 at TTEMPO headquarters addressed to me.”
comments go here TBC - Chapter 1 - Herb Visits
