"Lois Lane. It's such a pleasure to meet you! I've been following your writing since before I met Clark! I'm Bernard Klein, this is one of my fellow lab rats, Karen Travet. Karen's specialties are mathematics and computers, so I'm going to let her work with you on the files, if that's all right?"
Clark smiled at the assistant, who blushed and nervously pushed at her glasses. "Everything's here on this laptop, Dr. Travet. I'll be happy to guide you through what we've found."
"Oh, call me Karen, Mr. Kent."
"And I'm Clark."
"I just want to say I'm a big fan of your work! I remember the piece you wrote on the diamond cartels in Western Africa and how they caused so many problems… It must have been so strange, living there in the middle of a coup…"
As the two of them walked companionably toward a side desk, Lois watched through narrow eyes. That little geek was flirting with Clark, and he didn't even seem to realize it. <'Call me Karen, Mr. Kent. I'm a big fan…' Yeah, right.> Lois huffed internally, then noticed Clark's own body language. Polite but distant. Ahh, that was familiar. She smiled as she looked up, catching his eye and the warm smile he sent her way. No distance there.
Turning back to Dr. Klein, she sighed and wondered how to broach questions about time travel theory.
"First off, Dr. Klein, I just want to let you know that I'm not crazy. OK?"
"Ms. Lane? I've spent the last two years studying a man who defies all laws of physics as we know them. Not a whole lot you say can shock me," Dr. Klein stated and indicated two lab stools next to the bench.
Nodding, Lois sat on the closer stool, waited for Dr. Klein to sit before beginning.
"A few days ago, Clark and I were approached by a gentleman. He said his name was H. G. Wells, and that he was a time traveler."
"H. G. Wells - the author?" Dr. Klein asked, with humor.
"I'm afraid so. Before we could call the mental hospital and ask if any of their residents had gone missing, he produced an instrument. It generated holograms that were astounding. Suffice it to say, the technology is nothing we can do on earth… now. He also knew some stuff that he shouldn't know…" not knowing how to convey the proof without giving away Clark's secret, Lois paused.
"So, you were convinced he told the truth?" Dr. Klein finished for her.
"Yes. Mostly. And it wasn't like he was asking us for any kind of out-of-the-question help. He wants us to find someone we're already looking for. You read the article this morning?"
"I don't know anyone who didn't. You'd have to be more out of touch than the most absent-minded professor to miss all of this morning's news coverage. Scary stuff. So, this Wells character has tangential information about one of the men in that video?"
Lois nodded. "Yes, the western guy. They call him Chronos on the tape. Wells called him Tempus."
"Both of which are synonyms for time, or a god or lord of time." Dr. Klein stated with a furrowed brow. "So, this man is a time traveler?"
"Apparently so. He's from the future, and he travels through the past, trying to wreak havoc. Sounds like he's pretty successful at it, too."
"So, you want me to tell you about time travel so you can see if this is possible? Outside confirmation of Wells's story?"
"Not exactly," Lois paused. "This is where it gets a little confusing. According to Wells, there are other universes - parallel dimensions."
Nodding, Klein interrupted. "Yes, all theory says that there should be. Have you ever heard of Schrödinger's cat? Say you have a cat in a box, and there's a poison dart aimed at the cat. The trigger for the dart is something - like a particle emission source - that has a fifty per cent chance of occurring every hour. At the end of the hour, is the cat alive or dead? You don't know unless you open the box. Schrödinger says the cat is *both* alive *and* dead - parallel existence - until someone observes the outcome of the event - opens the box and checks. This would lead to infinite parallel universes. Some of which would dissolve when the observations occurred, of course."
Lois shook her head and tried to follow the scientific gibberish. All she got was that what Wells said could be true. There probably were parallel universes.
"Anyway, Wells said that there are a finite number of parallel dimensions that naturally occurred, but that there was something out there causing these splits to occur way too often. Too many universes, and not enough matter to support them all."
"What do you mean by that?" Dr. Klein asked with curiosity.
Lois shrugged. "That's just what he said. He said that too many parallel dimensions were popping up, and that 'matter' was being spread too thin. He said that our own universe was dying because of this."
"You know," Dr. Klein said, turning to his computer, "I remember reading something a few weeks ago about a strange astrophysical phenomenon. The universe, according to telescope readings, seems to be shrinking. According to all the laws, though, it should be expanding. Some physicists are predicting the death of the universe, due to this." Shaking his head, he searched for the article, then turned to Lois. "But what did you want from me? Confirmation that this could be happening?"
"No. More of a why? Wells seemed to think that something Tempus was doing caused these universes to exist. Do you have any idea?"
"Well," Dr. Klein paused, thoughtfully, "It could be that his changing the past doesn’t change the future - it simply causes at least one new future."
Clark joined them at this point, standing close to Lois. "Lois, Karen's going to work on those files today - she's downloaded what she needed into her server because she says it has more horsepower or something. I want to thank you, Dr. Klein, for offering her and your services."
"No problem, Clark. This time thing is intriguing. I'll tell you what. I'll do what research I can on it today. If we come up with anything here, we'll give you a call."
"Thanks, we'll do the same!" Lois smiled, reaching out to shake the scientist's hand. He was so much warmer than her father was, but Dr. Klein was at least as intelligent as Sam Lane, if not more so. Lois had a feeling that, if they could all avoid whatever apocalypse Chronos had planned for them, this could be the start of a good friendship.
*********************
Early the next morning, Lois and Clark sat across from each other in the conference room, both barely refreshed from short, restless sleep.
"So," Lois said as she stretched back in the conference room chair, "we've got the top minds in Metropolis working on those files. I'm at a dead end on Chronos. What about you?"
"I've looked into this time travel stuff as much as I can. I mean, wouldn't the folks in the future know a lot more about this stuff than we would? I think we're spinning our wheels here - we should go back to our original investigation. But that takes us back to the gibberish files…"
Lois sighed loudly, then shook her head.
"Maybe we need more background on Oman," she stated finally. "I mean, obviously, he was no slouch at computers, math even. But what did he study otherwise? Anything at all? That might give us an idea…"
Clark nodded. So much of their investigation had been taken up with the terrorist organizations and Chronos that they hadn't had time to deal with Oman himself. Pulling out his phone, Clark called Ahmad.
Lois listened, bemused, as Clark spoke in the melodic foreign tongue of his friend. Shaking her head, she smiled. He never even hesitated to use his talents - they were so natural to him that he didn't seem to understand just how super he really was.
As she watched Clark disconnect the call, Lois noticed the grim set to his lips.
"He's a trained geophysicist. What on earth could he be calculating with all of those numbers?"
Nodding, Lois thought aloud. "Maybe we don't need to figure out what, but where? Dr. Call-Me-Karen Travers will work on the numbers - let's see if we can figure out his… target, for lack of a better term. Is there anything else on this computer? "
"There are other directories I haven't touched. I went after the stuff he looked at most recently. Let's see…" Clark organized the directories by size, then started surfing through them, looking for text files.
"Here's one. It's in English…" Lois scanned over his shoulder. "It looks like statistics on Lituya Bay, Alaska. What's up with that?" Pulling up a search engine, Lois did a search on the bay.
"Clark, take a look at this."
Frowning, Clark turned to Lois's screen.
"What's a giant tsunami? Isn't that redundant?"
"I've a feeling it's not something we really want to know, first hand, anyway," Lois said, skimming some of the articles she found. "Look, Clark, it says here that an earthquake caused an excessively huge tidal wave in Lituya Bay. The wave was 1700 feet above sea level. That's what?"
"About a third of a mile," Clark stated grimly.
Lois's eyes widened as she read. "The wave was caused by a bunch of ice falling into the water…"
Clark felt his own breathing become more shallow. "And on that tape, they referred to purification by water… fire and water."
They looked at each other in scared silence until the shrill ring of Lois's cell phone interrupted them.
Answering it with an abrupt hello and few words, Lois quickly ended the call with a hurried, "OK, we'll be right there."
"That was Dr. Klein. He said…"
"That Karen has been able to decipher the numbers… yes, I know. I do have some advantages." Clark smiled humorlessly, pointing to his ears. "Let's go."
*****
Dr. Klein greeted the two reporters with a smile. "Didn't think I'd see you both again so soon… but Karen figured out the files pretty quickly. I'll let her explain."
Blushing slightly at the attention, Karen handed Lois a number of printed pictures.
"You were right on target with the graphics program, Ms. Lane. I fed the files into a number of programs we had till one fit. The one that seemed to work the best with all of the files was a topology program. It makes landscapes."
"Like topographic maps?" Clark asked.
"Something like that - more detailed than you'd normally see. It looks like we have one original 'before' snapshot." Pointing to one of the pictures Clark was holding, Karen pulled it away from the others and set it on the lab table in front of them.
"Most of the rest of the files are very similar, except this large crack down the middle of the main structure in the picture deepens or widens. What's interesting is the very last calculation he did produced this."
Karen held up a picture similar to the others with one notable exception. In this picture, the crack no longer existed. Whatever had existed to the left of the crack had disappeared - the original structure had been completely broken in half.
"My guess," Karen continued, as the other three studied the pictures, "is that he's trying to take advantage of a structural weakness in something - he's going to use some sort of large force at the sight of the fault to break the structure. No idea what the structure could be, of course…"
"We might be able to help you there, Karen," Lois closed her eyes. "The man who ran these calculations was a geophysicist. My guess? He's trying to destroy an island."
"An entire island?" Dr. Klein interrupted. "Like Manhattan? Sorry, Ms. Lane, but the kind of force he'd need to have, even if the fault existed, doesn't exist in any weapon we have today."
"We have reason to believe he has access to very powerful weapons, Dr. Klein. Weapons you may not know about."
Remembering the conversation he'd had with Lois earlier, Dr. Klein paled. "But… even then… to plant such a weapon. It would be nearly impossible in a populated place. Someone would notice."
"We don't think that the island is the real target, Dr. Klein," Clark interrupted.
"Do you know anything about giant tsunamis?" Lois asked.
Dr. Klein turned to his computer and typed in a few commands.
"I remember reading something in a periodical a few months back. Postulates about giant waves. Like that one in Alaska…"
"Lituya Bay," Clark supplied, a tense feeling in his stomach.
"Yes, that's right. And it says here that the conditions for a mega-tsunami to be created exist on an island called La Palma. It's geologically incredibly interesting. The island consists of two volcanoes…" Dr. Klein's voice trailed off as he noticed that the island pictured bore a very striking resemblance to the pictures Karen had printed out.
"Where's this island, Dr. Klein?" Lois interrupted.
"Why, it's in the Canary Islands. Off the coast of West Africa. Here it is on the map."
"I have to go. Now," Clark stammered to Lois, a dire look in his eye. She nodded, but to an empty space. He was gone.
The two scientists didn't even notice his departure. They were both reading the stories of Lituya Bay and La Palma with growing horror.
Stopping only long enough to spin into the Guardian costume, Clark flew as fast as he could toward the islands. He kept the picture of the map in his head and tried desperately to find the island in question. But there were so many of them.
As he flew, he heard the rumbling. It was intense - the sound of the earth herself cracking.
Then he saw the island splitting, half of it falling into the ocean. He thought briefly about trying to save the islanders, but realized that the magnitude of the blast would commit him to hours of rescue effort. He knew that his strength would be needed elsewhere today - there was a giant wave building in the ocean beneath him. He needed help to figure out how to stop it.
Turning around, he flew back to Star Labs, landing in Dr. Klein's office. Lois hadn't left; she was taking notes on the tsunami and questioning the doctor on how it would work.
"It's started. How do I stop it?"
"Excuse me? Guardian? What's started?"
"The tidal wave." He noticed that the Doctor had a confused look on his face, then realized he was dressed, from habit, as the Guardian. He was so distracted that he had almost given himself away, despite his ingrained habits. "Clark got a hold of me, told me where to look for the terrorists. But by the time I got there, they just detonated a huge explosion. I saw the island fall apart. I saw the wave start. How do I stop it?"
Dr. Klein felt his heart pause. He and Lois had just read the postulated course of the semi-circular wave. The upper part of the wave would wipe out parts of Europe and Britain's coasts first, in about two hours. Then, about three hours later, the lower parts would reach the East Coast of the Americas. Metropolis was doomed.
Swallowing loudly, Bernard Klein tried to think. How to stop a tidal wave... Tunnel into it? Tunnel along side it? He couldn't think. His wife. His kids. He had to get home.
Clark turned to Lois, a look of defeat in his eye.
"Is there anywhere safe I can take you? Please?" He pleaded with her. He didn't know much about the tsunami, but from Dr. Klein's response, he assumed Metropolis would be in the direct path. And Clark didn't have a great deal of confidence in his ability to stop a wave.
"We have to find a way to stop this. There has to be a way. Do you hear me? Don't you give up yet! We can't let this Chronos guy get away with this! Besides, I won't have to go far inland to be safe." Lois began to tell Clark the details of the predicted wave course.
As they spoke, Dr. Klein came out of his trance. He began typing furiously on his computer, while telling Karen to get out of the city - as far inland as she could get, and to tell others the same. As he waited for results to come in, he made a quick call home to his wife, and telling her to get the kids in the car and head out of the city.
"Guardian, could you please come here?" Dr. Klein requested.
Clark strode to the computer, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach.
"According to this, the wave can only be propagated in the deep sea. If you somehow force it to come to a head before it reaches shallow water, we can avoid a tidal wave."
"Dr. Klein, according to what Lois has told me, I have less than two hours to start damage control. How on earth do I force it to come to a head?"
"You have to disrupt it. I would think if you generated a wave in the opposite direction, it might be enough… but I'm trying to contact Dr. Simon Knight. He would know better than I. He's authored most of the papers on mega-tsunami's, and has a permanent research lab studying La Palma. Not surprisingly, his line's been busy." As he spoke, Dr. Klein dialed the number of his colleague one last time. His breath blew out in relief as he finally got through to the British phone number.
"Yes, what?" a harried voice asked from the other side.
"Dr. Knight? This is Bernard Klein of Star Labs in Metropolis. Please don't hang up. This is very important. I don't know if you're aware, but La Palma just collapsed. The Guardian saw it happen and is here, with me."
"Oh, thank providence. Hold on a moment, please." As Dr. Klein had put the call on speaker phone, Lois and Clark could also hear Dr. Knight talking to someone else in the room, saying the Guardian knew about the problem. "You know about the wave, then? He has to move the water so that it causes a centrifugal shutdown. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"Yes, I think so. He should try to build up a wall of water with velocity perpendicular to the waves, yes?"
"Exactly."
"English translation?" Lois asked, impatiently.
"Make big waves in the opposite direction of the wave front. Like we thought."
Clark nodded, and took a deep breath. "Wish me luck," he whispered to Lois before launching himself out the window.
Dr. Klein wished his colleague good luck and ended the call. He quickly dialed another number, and Lois realized that he was speaking to an official about possibly setting off an alert to evacuate Metropolis and other east coast cities. Surprisingly, the official had already been briefed, and there was an evacuation notice in the works. Apparently, word of the explosion was already getting around, less than twenty minutes after the fact.
Lois hadn't asked Dr. Klein how Dr. Knight had known the explosion happened. She had guessed, as he was the expert on La Palma that he had some sort of monitors installed there. Being the daughter of a scientist, she knew how they worked. She assumed that the others in the room were his colleagues. A niggling thought in her brain, however, said it might be someone even more important. Dr. Knight was the person who knew the most about this La Palma thing. The goons that had taken Oman's computer had probably contacted Dr. Knight when they realized they needed information about mega tsunamis. The fact that national emergency systems had been alerted about the possible wave confirmed this. It appeared that the government agents might have been able to put more together than Lois and Clark had - unfortunately, it was still too little, too late.
Shaking her head, Lois cleared her thoughts. "Listen, Dr. Klein. There's no reason for you to stay here. Call your wife again. Meet up with her. Get out, while the getting's good. At the very least, you'll get a weekend in the mountains and a little grief for being paranoid."
"What about you, Miss Lane?"
"I'm heading back to the Planet. I'm going to update Perry on what's happening, and at the least, write up what we have. Clark and I will decide what to do from there."
"Reporters to the end?" Dr. Klein asked, watching her with the question in his eye.
"Yeah." She nodded. "It's more than what I do, I suppose. It's what I am."
*****
Clark wrestled with the water. <Make a wave, they say. Ha. Might as well try to catch the wind, as Donovan would say. Wait. Wind makes waves. Maybe my super-powered breath…>
Clark launched himself out of the water, ahead of the ever-growing wave. Quickly flying well in front of it, he turned and blew over top of the water. He watched as a wave grew out of his breath. It grew, and it roared toward the quietly powerful tsunami waves. They met.
The tsunami passed through Clark's wave, practically untouched.
Clark tried every method he could think of to move a wall of water, to no avail. The wave started coming ashore in Spain and lower Britain. The screams of hundreds of people silenced almost immediately as the wave made contact with heavily populated beaches.
He had failed. Once again, when it was most important, he failed.
But he couldn't give up, yet. There was still a wave headed to Metropolis. To Lois.
*****
The sirens went off outside the newsroom. Radio and television stations broadcast emergency alerts. Lois could hear the newscasts urging people to stay calm, and all people in coastal areas were advised to calmly evacuate to high, inland ground. Pictures were just coming in of the huge freak wave that inundated the coasts of Western Europe and Southern Britain.
No one (except Lois) was sure what had caused the wave, but officials were stating that a wave of similar magnitude was headed toward the East Coast of the Americas.
Lois heard the news with a broken heart. She cried inside for Clark, who, she knew, was out there somewhere, in the ocean, trying to stop the wave. She knew he would be blaming himself for not stopping the devastation that had already occurred.
Lois wrote up the rest of the story and shut down her computer. When it was all over, one way or another, he was going to need her. It was time to head to the high ground.
*****
Clark tried tunneling into the wave. He tried tunneling in front of it. He noticed that when he tunneled behind it, it slowed fractionally. A slim ray of hope edged its way into his subconscious. He traversed the ocean time and time again, taking small bites out of the wave.
Eventually, he tired, and had to surface to find sunlight and power. Resting momentarily, he took note of his progress. It looked as though he had no more than an hour to go before the wave would reach shallow water. He had a lot of work to do.
*****
Lois sat in her Jeep waiting to get onto the bridge. Traffic was going nowhere. <So much for calm behavior,> she thought as she heard yet another volley of car horns.
She pulled into a parking lot and turned off her car. Glad she had changed into her workout clothes before leaving the Planet, Lois locked the vehicle and stretched a bit. It was going to be a long jog, she figured, before she got to a 'no traffic' area where someone might give her a ride. Grabbing her backpack with its ration of food, water, and micro-recorder with tapes and batteries (she was, first and foremost, a reporter), Lois jogged to the base of the bridge and started the long climb.
She wasn't the only one who had the idea, however, and she was forced to walk over the bridge out of Metropolis with the thousands of others who had decided fleeing on foot was the way to go.
She began talking to the people around her, interviewing them, noting their observations. <This is going to be a hell of a piece. I wish Jimmy were here with his camera.> But Jimmy had gone hours ago, as she had asked him to. He had a motorcycle, and a good head start. She was certain he would be ok.
She was so lost in thought and conversation that Lois didn't notice she was being followed. The man was trim and, though he had a beard, he was clean looking. The light in his eye, however, wasn't exactly sane. That eye was trained menacingly on Lois.
*****
When Clark was sure he couldn't swim any more, the wave started to crest. He felt it building on itself as it slammed into the coastal shelf.
It was huge.
But it was nowhere near as big as the one that had destroyed the coastal towns of Southern England.
It had worked. He'd done it. Relief ran through him as he watched the outlying buildings fall under the wave.
There would be casualties. There would be fatalities. But he had done it. He had done his best, and though he hadn't been able to save everyone, he *had* made a difference.
Soaking in the late-day sunlight, he felt a weight fall off him - a weight he had carried since he watched his mother died.
He needed to find Lois and celebrate.
