From Part 36:
Clark looked Lois dead in the eyes. "Honey? I think my telepathy is coming back. Do you know something about this? I just got a distinct feeling from you that you're hiding something from me."
Lois gulped, looking down, not wanting to make eye contact with her husband. "I do. But it's complicated and… well, it was bad enough that I was going to be one to carry the knowledge and the burden…I wanted you to be happy and not to worry."
Clark grabbed Lois by the shoulders. "Honey… that's so sweet, but they don't call me 'Superman' for nothing. Why you should you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders? Tell me… or just *think* it. It'll be faster."
Within five minutes, Clark had mentally grasped the scenario at hand and the information he had garnered was both unbelievable and disconcerting. "So you only have five more days before you have to go back to Ma and Pa's world and solicit their H. G. Wells for assistance? Honey, you must be a nervous wreck. You're quite the actress," he said, admiration on his face. "I wouldn't have known you were going through all this. You were in full "Mad Dog Lane" mode back there at Edge Enterprises!"
"I had years of practice projecting a cold business façade, but in reality, I've been a basket case," Lois admitted. "And what really upset me is that when the whole 'parallel universe' problem is fixed, I don't know if we're going to be together. We don't know if the Lex Luthor that lives will be the good guy or the bad guy. There's even an outside chance that he might be my husband," she spit out. "Yikes."
"Yikes is right," Clark agreed. "Honey, I can't imagine a world that you and I would not end up married. We're soul mates. According to Herb, we have reincarnated together in many, many lifetimes. Our connection is way too strong. I have confidence that when the world changes, our jobs may change, but our love never will. You have to believe that," he said, tenderly kissing his wife and stroking her soft cheek. "It's what kept me going all those years you were in Brazzaville."
"I love you so much, Propaganda," Lois said softly. "Can you imagine that we might wake up and I'll be a nurse and you'll be an EMT? And never remember being reporters?"
"No, I really can't. Journalism is what kept me going through the dark period of my life, when the other Lois left this world and I still hadn't found you," Clark admitted. "Knowing that we had a shared occupation was a comforting thought to me. It made me feel so close to you."
"And if you hadn't worked for the Daily Planet when I sent the e-mail, we might not have met right away. After all, it was *you* they sent to come rescue me."
"True. Honey, I *like* this life so much; well not quite as much with Ma and Pa gone, but I love our friends - Perry, James and Bill, and I'm sure in time, I could get to love your mother too," Clark joked. "I can't believe that their theory is correct. How could that trip in time create an alternate universe? There must be other factors at work."
"It does make your head spin, it really does," Lois nodded in agreement. "They told me that the different worlds' vibrational frequencies are in such close proximity that if we don't unite them, there could be cataclysmic results. Apparently Hank has been studying time travel and parallel universes for some time now, and Herb has shared his body of work with him as well."
"Then by rights, there should only be *one* earth – the original Clark and Lois' earth, right?" Clark theorized. "Why aren't we uniting all three worlds together?"
"I asked that question. Apparently our world was created when Lois and Clark went back in time to Smallville, 1966 to save baby Clark from Tempus. The fact that Clark actually held himself in *his* arms as a baby created *our* earth."
"You mean that when Lois and Clark returned to their time, the world they left behind was *our* world – that was actually *me* that he held?" Clark was beginning to understand the topsy-turvy logistics of time-travel.
Lois smiled. "Yes, I guess it was! And because your life was just beginning, it was like a clean slate. The problem with the third world that was created when Herb, Lois, and I went to San Diego was that I was already 8 years old at the time and since two versions of yourself can't exist concurrently, it created a completely different path for that Lois. You see, there's a balance, somehow. In our world, *your* parents died when you were ten. In the third world, Lois' parents died at age ten. You agonized that you weren't yet fast enough to save them, and in Lois' case, she became a nurse because she felt that if she had known CPR, she might have been able to save them. You have both carried severe guilt over your parents' deaths."
"True. How bizarre," Clark mused. "So Hank and Herb believe that somehow if you three don't go to San Diego, the third world will never be created and the fragility of the time stream and space-time continuum will be repaired."
"That's their theory," Lois agreed. "You know, I'm so glad I shared this with you. It helps to try to make sense of this with another person."
"So honey, if all of this is going to change – why are you so intent to prove that Thorul is Lena's father? Why bother?"
"The man raped me, Clark. He kept me in a horrid environment for ten years to keep me away from my own daughter. There's a karma thing going here. I need to balance the scales before the world changes. I guess I'm actually obsessed by it."
Clark nodded. "Okay, well we have five days until the Wells boys return. Let's make the most of it. Ready to go home?"
Lois leaped into Clark's waiting arms. "Let's do it, Propaganda!"
And Now, Finally,
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Lois sleepily opened her eyes on Sunday morning to the aroma of freshly brewing coffee. Clark's side of the bed was vacant, but still warm to the touch. Memories of the previous night's lovemaking session electrified all of her senses.
"Sweets? Are you here?" Lois called out. "If you are, the coffee smells heavenly, thanks!"
Seconds later, Clark was at her side, cuddling her in bed, wearing only his Superman briefs. His lips grazed the nape of her neck and he gently turned her face towards his to kiss his wife good morning. He then handed his wife a steaming cup of "Lois java", made with skim milk and 2 sweet'n'lows.
"Ok, I bite! Why the red trunks? Did you have a Superman rescue mission already?" Lois asked, sipping her coffee with a pleasant, distant expression pasted on her face.
"Not really. I heard alarms go off downtown. It was ironically the Edge Enterprises building. I flew overhead and looked into the building with my X-ray vision. It was then that I found out that the walls and ceiling of Thorul's office are lined with lead. I wonder what else he's hiding?"
"So had someone broken into the building?"
"Turns out they were testing the alarms that we cut last night. I spotted two security officers and Thorul himself in the lobby, near the entrance."
"Take me back there! Clark, I have a hunch. Now that you have your powers back, we can do a lot more than steal a lock of hair!" Lois exclaimed.
"What? Why?" Clark shook his head. Why did he even bother to question her? He tapped into her train of thought and smiled. <"That's why you're Lois Lane, star reporter!">
<"Don't forget it, Propaganda!">
Floating high above the building, Clark held Lois tightly and waited until Thorul got into his limo and headed for home. Using telepathy, Lois advised her husband what to do and shortly they were floating over Thorul's outdoor patio. Clark scanned the area as well as the inside of the office with his X-ray vision to determine where the enhanced video cameras had been placed.
<"No way to break in without being caught on the surveillance video, honey">
<"Is it a digital set-up?">
<"Yes, looks brand-new, state-of-the-art!">
<"Fry the hard drive!">
<"How did you learn so much about computers in such a short period of time, anyway?">
<"It's my job to continue to surprise and amaze you, Propaganda!">
Grinning ear-to-ear in response to his brilliant wife's mental snark, Clark located the closet off of the adjacent hallway which housed the surveillance equipment. Luckily his heat vision was similar to a laser beam and could pass thru walls without starting a fire. Focusing on the computer's tower, he raised the temperature of the equipment to the point of overheating, causing downtime of about ten minutes. This had the same affect as a hair dryer that overheated, forcing the user to wait until it cooled down sufficiently to automatically restart. There would be no fingerprints and no way to explain why the system had mysteriously gone down for several minutes on a Sunday morning.
<"OK, the system's down. We have ten minutes or so!">
The sliding glass door entrance to Thorul's office was, surprisingly, unlocked. Perhaps being 100 stories high gave him a sense of security, since the door leading to the outer hallway was, of course, deadbolted.
Clark scanned for laser beam alarms; finding none, he flew Lois back into the office, waiting for further direction from his cunning spouse. <"If I didn’t know the world was probably coming to end soon, you know I'd never do this 'breaking and entering' thing with you again, honey!">
<"Well, now you know why I finally spilled the beans. I knew that my Boy Scout husband wouldn't do this under normal circumstances! Ok, now look and see if you can find a secret room or a hidden file cabinet!"> Lois pressed on.
<"Bingo! It's in the bathroom, believe it or not!">
<"I definitely believe it, Propaganda! Are we there yet?">
<"If I didn't love you so much, I'd really think you were a pain in the –">
<"I wouldn't complete that sentence if I wanted another night like last night!">
Pressing the towel bar release mechanism, the tile wall did a 180 degree turn and allowed the pair entrance to what could only be described as "Thorul's secret lair".
Since he had only recently relocated from the West coast, most of his files were still in cardboard boxes. Scanning quickly thru them, Clark located two folders that were the most interesting: one simply titled "Lois" and the other one labeled "insurance for Lena".
<"Let's take these and get the heck out of here, honey!"> Clark insisted.
Without waiting for her typically sarcastic reply, he gathered both the files and his wife tightly in his arms, flew through the patio doors, and whisked off into the upper atmosphere.
Instead of heading back to the apartment, Clark headed due west. Past California…and west some more.
"Paradise Island?" Lois whispered. "Now? Really?"
"Can you think of a better place to flip through illegally obtained reading material?" Clark replied, a wide grin engulfing his handsome face.
"Actually…no," smiled Lois. "Traveling to the Fiji Islands is like time-traveling. We go ahead 17 hours so it's Monday when we get there and then we go home and go back in time to Sunday. Plus the scenery is heavenly!"
Wrapping his cape around his wife and the stolen paperwork, Clark stepped up the speed of his flight. Within an hour, dawn was breaking on Monday morning as they floated down and gently landed on the beach.
Removing his cape and placing it on the sand, he and Lois sat down, each grabbing a file folder to peruse through.
As Clark sped-read thru the file entitled "Lois", his blood pressure began to rise and he involuntarily floated off the ground, jealousy and anger mixing together to form a volatile stew of emotions.
Lois, in the meantime, had found Lena's birth certificate of sorts (parents: unknown; place of birth: Congo-Brazzaville); and a diary detailing Thorul's absolute obsession with her, beginning with her visit to him in high school, and ending with his second rape of her in the jungles of Brazzaville. The Smallville Press newspaper article, file photos of her from the Daily Planet archives, and baby pictures of Lena accompanied the information.
"Oh – my – God!" exclaimed Lois at the same time Clark sputtered "That son of a -!”
Lois, shocked to hear her husband curse, was distracted enough to stop reading and look up at her floating husband, whose eyes were spurting fireballs directed at the clouds above.
It turned out that Thorul had kept a diary of all his Lois-inspired sexual fantasies. Again, they had begun right after Lois' trip to the past, and the most recent one was right after they had first "met" at the Daily Planet, just prior to Edge Enterprises' buyout of the Daily Planet. He had altered photographs with displaced Lois' face with another woman's naked body. It was fairly evident he had used the pictures for self-entertainment.
"Clark! Whatever it is, don't burn the evidence!" she reminded him. "Come back down here. Let's discuss this."
Grudgingly complying with his wife's request, he muttered, "I want to throw up. This is disgusting. The man is completely sick. He's fixated on you, Lois. In a strange way, his obsession with you kept you alive. It says in here that his brother, Lex Luthor, wanted to have you killed early on when you first arrived. After he raped you, he paid some of the rebels to keep an eye out for you. They reported weekly to him. They told him exactly when you were ready to give birth."
"Yes, this file on Lena basically says the same thing. Too bad I can't use this evidence, since we obtained it illegally. I'm sure the DNA evidence will back up my story, though."
"Lois, I'm completely on board with your friend Hank now," Clark asserted. "We need to go back and fix this mess. No matter what happens, I can't rest knowing that this jerk is this obsessed with you. It's taking all of my self-control not to fly back to Metropolis and drop him into Hobb's Bay."
"Finally, a Superman I can get on board with," Lois joked. Noting her husband's obvious annoyance at her seemingly not taking him seriously, she continued with, "Why don't we switch files. You're too upset to keep looking at that diary, and reading about my own daughter like she's a stranger is freaking me out. Then maybe we can resort to our favorite recreational activity to relax before we have to head back home. After all, tomorrow is a work day!"
Lois' reference to their more than active sex life immediately turned Clark's frame of mind around. "You have yourself a deal, honey. But this – diary – is pretty graphic. I don't know that you should be reading it, either. And I'm sure that Thorul will be looking for this, knowing its content. I'm surprised he even packed it up. It looks as if he looks at this file quite frequently. Ugh."
Lois grabbed it out of Clark's hands and flipped through several pages. "Ugh is right. This is really, really nasty stuff. If I'm successful in my quest to stop myself from going back to 1973 to visit him, I wonder which direction his life will head in. He was simply a model son when I met him as a teenager. Apparently meeting me turned him into an obsessive freak."
“There’s always the possibility that he will be the best friend of one Clark Kent,” her husband joked, amazed that in this so-called “third world”, his doppelganger referred to Lex Luthor as his mentor and closest buddy.
“Or, more horribly, that I will be married to him. Well, let’s not go there again. Nothing good can possibly come out of that discussion,” Lois spat out.
“Well, in the event that you and I won’t be together in some alternate bizarre world, let’s recall the very first time that you and I came here. I was so in love with you, and I didn’t want to scare you off. Remember?”
“Well, I didn’t know at the time that you felt that way, Propaganda. I did think you were hot! And I couldn’t figure out why you were being so nice to me. I was skinny as a rail, with long scraggly hair. I was such a mess. I didn’t feel sexy at all. And there you were, at my beck and call. It was so amazing.”
“What was amazing was that I was finally with you. We were actually sharing the same air and I could talk to you, laugh with you. I had nearly given up, after trying to find you for all of those years. You were the most beautiful creature in the universe to me, Lois Lane, and you still are. You always will be. I was a nervous wreck around you.”
Without another word being exchanged, they each filed away the papers they were reading. Clark carefully picked Lois up and flew her over to the lagoon that they had first gone skinny-dipping in. Warming up the water with his heat vision, he slowly undressed his wife. He floated her above the gently cascading waterfall and then descended. Soon they were both swimming in what felt like bath water. Lois giggled as she attempted to remove Clark’s suit while he was submerged. She couldn’t take his briefs off.
“Clark, you’re going to have to do it,” she whispered. “They’re too tight for me to take off, in your present condition, if you know what I mean.”
Clark knew all too well what condition Lois was referring to! “It’s all your fault, honey. I’m turned on like this most of the time when I’m with you. Let’s hope the paparazzi never take a picture of me in this condition!”
As they both chucked at the imagery of a Superman rescue and the resulting front-page picture and scandal that would cause, Clark spun out of the suit, creating a small water spout to rise up.
“Honey, close your eyes and hold your breath. I just found a really special place for us to make love,” Clark instructed, as he licked Lois’ ear lobe, sending a shiver down her spine.
Clark took his beautiful wife and swam underwater with her. He surfaced in the middle of an underground pool surrounded by coral reef. The water was turquoise blue and so clear you could see your feet (and other body parts as well). Clark positioned himself with his back barely touching the water’s surface, and placed Lois on top of him. Floating, they made love with the same sense of urgency and passion as they had their very first time in their hotel room in Brazzaville.
TBC ....sooner rather than later!
