...in a world where his life was, evidently, some sort of... amusement ride, wondering if he’d ever have a chance to... wake up underneath Lois Lane again.
Ah, Clark. I wanted to encourage him, to let him know that there was going to be a lifetime of chances to wake up underneath Lois Lane, but Lois beat me to it. His response was just as I'd hoped: "Married...married...married...wow!"
I really hope you are planning to give us Lois's POV in the next section so we can see some of what she's feeling about this whole marriage thing--especially now that she knows it is/was real and not just some romance junkie's fantasy--or Tempus's attempt to destroy them emotionally. I'm imagining the emotional struggle between the survivor of the DF Wing who knew she wasn't fairy tale material and the closet romantic who saw her desire for a spectacular love of a lifetime played out in vivid 3D images. No wonder she was so desperate to hear Clark's answer--not merely on a practical level to explain where they were, but as an answer to her deepest, most secret dreams.
BTW, CC, you don't have to wish you had deliberately put in that ironic moment in part 4 about the real revelation occurring in front of an audience who knows all about the revelation. The fact that it appeared in the story without deliberate intent means that the story has "organic unity"--where the story is greater than the sum of its parts and has taken on a reality beyond mere planning.
I see where you're going with the lifelines, and after I read this section and went back and reread the earlier ones, I've stopped being so creeped out by Utopia. The Peacekeepers' focus is so totally on Tempus that they don't have time for the suppressing-freedom-of-thought activities that I was starting to wonder about. They're just secretive because they don't want to upset the population with fears of their civilization--and their individual existences--being destroyed by a time-traveling sociopath. First the descendents, and then all the people who had been saved by them who would otherwise have died--and
their descendents and all the people they impacted... With thousands of Lane-Kents, we're talking a lot of impact. No wonder the Peacekeepers are in Doomsday mode.
Do we seriously have to wait for Saturday for the next part?
