This part is also a bit short, but I broke it at a logical place. Hopefully, the next part will be posted Saturday or Sunday. Thanks for sticking with me!
From Part 6:
“I’ll be fine, Perry,” she assured him with a smile. “It’s like fighting dragons, you know – not real pleasant but it has to be done. This is no different than exposing any other wrongdoing – just, it’s my story, okay?” she asked him with a cheeky grin.
He laughed. “Atta girl, Lois – but you come to me if anybody gives you trouble, young lady.” And with a cheeky grin of his own, he continued, “Now… seems to me you never got that afternoon assignment I had for you…”
---
The Girl Next Door, part 7:
The Daily Planet investigation resulted in a total of seven stories of questionable authorship. Where possible, former partners, interns, and research notes would be used to determine the writer. The independent team also re-examined Claude’s Kerth-winning story, with the result that its authorship was called into question.
Unfortunately, his partner at the time had been killed in a car accident shortly before the piece was published, so there was no way to verify ownership of the article with certainty. Claude was allowed to keep the award, but its status was changed to ‘provisional,’ with the Daily Planet itself and both reporters listed as ‘award holders’.
Emboldened by Lois’s willingness to testify against Claude, two other young women at the Planet - one in the billing department and one in distribution - came forward with their own experiences of Claude refusing to take ‘no’ for an answer. Both had kept silent out of fear that they wouldn’t be believed. Their tales were similar – too much alcohol and the belief – promoted, apparently, by Claude - that they were to blame by getting into a compromising situation.
Faced with assault charges in his attack on Lois, and with the threat, however thin, of possible further charges in relation to the other two women, Claude accepted a plea bargain that gave him some jail time with several years’ probation.
---
The story of the set-up, Claude’s attack, and the resultant charges was told and retold around the newsroom for months, with varying degrees of accuracy. While the bulk of the staff felt Claude deserved everything he got, someone coined the title ‘Mad Dog Lane’ for Lois – and it stuck.
She heard the comments, of course, even when she tried not to. The gossip was not necessarily intended to be cruel, but it isolated her further from the casual gatherings around the coffee machine.
Already lonely, Lois began to focus almost exclusively on searching out stories, determined to be the best investigative reporter the Planet had. By sheer determination, she was at least partway toward achieving the goal by the time her internship ended.
Alone in her apartment, Lois thought long and hard about the other truth her experience with Claude had demonstrated – that while she was, of course, invulnerable, she couldn’t always rely on her special abilities to get her out of trouble. Not unless she revealed them. She needed something more – a self-defense course of some kind. Tae Kwon Do, perhaps? Something that would help if she were ever in a similar situation.
Needing a sounding board, she mentioned it to Perry. He endorsed the idea whole-heartedly, and pointed her toward a Planet-sponsored self-defense course that all of his reporters were encouraged to take.
He also offered her a job before her internship was even over. Of course, she had to officially apply for the job after she graduated, but that was a mere formality.
Based on her performance to that point, he started her as a junior investigative reporter, even though that wasn’t the norm for a new hire. Inevitably, his decision caused some mild dissension among some of the other staff members, despite the fact that she had already demonstrated that Perry’s faith was not displaced.
Lois couldn’t shut off her enhanced hearing completely, so she heard a lot of the comments and resentment put forth by some of her coworkers. While she also heard those who defended her abilities and Perry’s decision, the knowledge that some of the staff resented her made her defensive around them.
Focused fiercely on her job, unused to casual banter and unable to blithely share confidences with almost-strangers the way many of her coworkers did, Lois’s reputation as the prickly, unapproachable Mad Dog Lane was cemented. Intent on becoming the best she could be, and wary of letting anyone get too close, Lois herself allowed the illusion.
---
By the end of her first year of full-time employment, Lois was already a name to be reckoned with. She was consistently bringing in quality stories and Perry was allowing her the kind of latitude he normally reserved for his veteran investigative reporters.
Shortly after she entered her second year with the Daily Planet, she was nominated for a Kerth. Unheard of this early in a reporter’s career, her subsequent win surprised everyone – except Perry. By the end of her third year, she had a second Kerth under her belt, and had been promoted to senior investigative reporter.
Sam and Ellen may have disagreed with Lois’s choice of careers, but they both showed grudging pride when she started winning awards.
They never really understood how much Lois loved it, though. She was living a Princess Elizabeth life, making a difference, fighting dragons and exposing corruption. Forcing change for the better.
Neither of the Doctors Lane ever understood that. They never saw the parallels to what *they* considered a noble career, the field of medicine.
Gradually, the three of them drifted farther apart. Lois saw Ellen once a month or so, for what had increasingly felt like a duty lunch. Their ideas and goals were so different that it was hard to find any common ground. Ellen wanted to see her safe and settled in a good society marriage, while Lois wanted to keep fighting dragons.
Sam she saw rarely. He and Ellen had finally divorced when Lois was in her third year at the university, and he’d moved to New York. He sent her a card and a check at Christmas each year, and he usually called when he was in town. They would sometimes meet for lunch, but neither of them was good at small talk, so their meetings were uncomfortably stiff and formal.
-----
Lois’s days were filled with her investigative work, and she often worked well into the nights as well. It was only in the deepest, darkest part of the night, as she was dropping off to sleep, that she ever allowed herself to acknowledge that she was lonely.
It was usually a thought she stifled at once. She couldn’t afford to get close to anyone. She needed to accept that loneliness was just another of her… ‘gifts’ wasn’t the right word. But it was just another thing she did – unlimited speed and strength, fire vision, enhanced sight and hearing, flight, loneliness – all part of the package.
She had continued on in Tae Kwon Do, finding that the discipline necessary for advancing through the different levels also helped her refine her control over many of her enhanced abilities.
She’d progressed frustratingly slowly at first, fear of inadvertently exposing her secret in some manner making her uncharacteristically hesitant. Learning the mechanics of the different techniques of striking, kicking, and blocking had been relatively easy, as were the forms - putting the movements into specific patterns. Those were done individually, so she could concentrate fully on learning them.
But the sparring drills had been a problem. The program promoted increased strength, flexibility, and endurance, and the knowledge that she already had unlimited strength and endurance had kept her stiff and awkward while attempting to apply the techniques with a partner. But Lois Lane never gave up. She had doggedly overcome every other obstacle she’d ever faced, and she had resolved that this would be no exception.
After several weeks of her struggling grimly and unsuccessfully through the drills, her instructor had made the observation, “You’re trying to pit your strength directly against your opponent; that won’t work. You are a small woman, and you would have no hope of outmatching an assailant on strength alone.”
Not without exposing her secret.
He’d continued, “Do you know how to dance – ballroom dancing, the waltz?” And when she had nodded, “Think of this in the same way. Let your opponent ‘lead’- then allow his own impetus to work in your favor. Remember the laws of motion - once he is moving, his tendency is to continue moving in the same direction. Changing his direction makes him unstable. So as he shifts, you simply use his own momentum to do the work for you.”
That suggestion, simple as it was, had helped immensely. One of the many things that the Doctors Lane *had* considered that Lois should learn was ballroom dancing, and she was quite good at it. Approaching the sparring not as a combative situation, but as if it were a dance to be performed, had made all the difference. Moving with her opponent rather than pulling away reflexively allowed her to use his own momentum to break his hold, and to her delight, flip him almost effortlessly over her shoulder.
Once she’d made that breakthrough, her skill and flexibility had increased rapidly. She was currently taking three classes per week: two forty-five minute self-defense classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and a fifty-minute light sparring class on Fridays. In this, the fourth year of her employment with the Planet and her fifth year since the incident with Claude, she was at the brown belt level.
-----
Eduardo was one of the few people, other than Perry, who didn’t seem intimidated by Lois’s Mad Dog reputation. Possibly because of his role in Lois’s confrontation with Claude Rochert - although neither he nor Lois ever spoke of it - he treated her with a casual sort of friendliness that she got from very few people.
He refused to be drawn into any sort of gossip about her, and greeted her pleasantly whenever their paths happened to cross. Since he had been promoted to one of the two senior sports editor positions shortly after Lois won her first Kerth, that wasn’t very often. His attitude, however, had influenced at least a few of the newer employees, especially those who had had no or very little interaction with her.
One such employee was an eager, earnest young man by the name of Jimmy Olsen. He had been hired as a copy boy, a position that included running errands and other general gofer work. Now twenty-one, he had started at the Planet at age nineteen. In those first years, he spent most of his time delivering paperwork to different departments for Perry, and very little time with any of the main newsroom staff.
He had, however, shown a high aptitude for all things computer-related, a talent that had not only Perry but an always increasing number of reporters relying on him for everything from fixing a balky keyboard to ferreting out information for a story. And while Jimmy’s heart seemed set on making a career as an investigative photojournalist, he willingly and cheerfully helped whoever needed him.
Lois had picked up on Jimmy’s talents relatively early in his employment, and did not hesitate to make use of them whenever she needed to. It was something she did so often after his first year at the Planet that Perry hired another young man to take his place as copy boy, and promoted Jimmy to Production Assistant – a fancy title that included all of the things he was already doing.
And since Jimmy had a mild case of hero-worship on the Planet’s star reporter, which she knew and ignored, he now tended to be at her beck and call. He was, perhaps, the closest thing she had to a friend at the Planet, although he was clearly intimidated by her in full Mad Dog mode. But even when he was lying low and staying out of her way, Jimmy, like Eduardo, obviously respected her.
He had recently completed a two-year technical college course in photography, and Perry had allowed him to accompany a couple of reporters, particularly those on the National and City News Desks, on one or two occasions. At least twice, the photos Jimmy took on those occasions made their way into the newspaper.
Right now, he was sitting at the unoccupied desk directly across from Lois, sorting printouts into stacks for her.
She was currently investigating a series of setbacks in the final phases of the deployment of the international Space Station Prometheus, looking for any indication of shoddy workmanship. A local philanthropist was offering to finance an alternate space station, claiming that the current station’s construction had been dangerously underbid and was therefore built with inferior and unsafe materials.
A sudden racket at the railing near the elevators drew her attention. Someone was calling her name repeatedly in an increasingly loud and desperate voice.
As she looked up, a man stumbled down the ramp toward the bullpen, his progress so erratic that he bounced off the railing several times on his way down.
“Miss Lane! Miss Lane!” His volume increased as he caught sight of her. “I must talk to you! I must tell you my story before they try to stop me!”
He wore a ragged and stained coat and what was either scrubs or pajama pants. A threadbare slipper on his left foot and a dirty gray tennis shoe on his right foot appeared to be the reason for his unsteady gait. His hair was tangled and unkempt. He had a large, torn, stained paper bag bulging with papers clutched tightly in his arms
Ignoring the curious looks from other employees, Lois stood and stepped around her desk as the security guard caught up with the man.
“Sorry, Ms. Lane, he got past me,” he said apologetically as they reached her.
“Wait,” she said, as the unkempt man pulled away from the guard’s grip and held the bag out to her. “Who are you?”
“Be careful, Ms. Lane,” the guard told her urgently. “You don’t know what he has in there!”
“No, no - I mean no harm,” the ragged man exclaimed. “No, I need your help to tell my story, Miss Lane. My story, and the story of Space Station Prometheus and the sabotaged shuttle flights. I’ve brought you all of my research notes; you are the best -” He dumped the bag’s contents out on her desk; scraps of paper, fast food napkins, a torn piece of cardboard, receipt tape from an adding machine, and a shoebox lid, all of which appeared to be covered with closely spaced writing, cascaded across the desk’s surface.
By now, a second guard had arrived; between the two of them, they grasped her unkempt visitor’s arms and drew him firmly away from her. “Do you want us to call the police, Mr. White?” one of the guards asked Perry, who had exited his office when the commotion caught his attention.
“Just remove him from my newsroom, Hank,” Perry said, and continued more loudly, “Back to work, people!” He glanced at the mess on Lois’s desk, shook his head wryly, and said to Jimmy, “Get a garbage can, son,” and turned and headed back to his office.
As the guards started up the ramp with her unexpected visitor, he pulled ineffectually at their hold, protesting, “Look at my work, Miss Lane! Please! My name is Samuel Platt – Professor Samuel Platt. I live in the Bradner Apartments building. Please come see me - I need to show you the proof…” His voice grew fainter as the guards muscled him into the elevator and the doors closed behind them.
Lois could hear him reassuring the guards, all the way down in the elevator, that he meant no harm but needed Ms. Lane to tell his story.
She was still staring thoughtfully after the man when Jimmy spoke, close by and startlingly loud, and she hurriedly shut out Samuel Platt’s fading voice.
“Boy, that guy is one cookie short of a dozen, huh, Lois?”
“Jimmy,” she said abruptly, not acknowledging his comment, “see what you can find me on Dr Platt, and everything out there on the Space Station Prometheus shuttle flights, too. And find me a box for his… research.”
“Lois, are you *serious*?” Jimmy exclaimed. “The guy’s a nutcase! I mean, look at this –” He held up the stained and torn paper bag, still partly full, and more scraps of paper, napkins, and torn pieces of cardboard fluttered onto the floor at their feet. “He says these are his ‘research notes’ - it looks more like something a wino would use for a pillow in his cardboard box down in Suicide Slum! I mean, -“
Lois turned and gave him a mild version of her Mad Dog look, but it was enough to stop him in mid sentence. “Uh, yeah…” he stuttered awkwardly. “I’ll just… go and… just, you know… see what I can find…” Still talking disjointedly, he made a fast retreat.
Lois didn’t watch him go; instead, she sat at her desk and, after looking at the mess the man had left, shifted Dr Platt’s papers to the side. More of them cascaded off the edge of the desk, but she left them where they landed for the time being. She would have to go through them all, but that was a job probably best left until she was on her own and unobserved. Hopefully, a little judicious use of her enhanced speed would help her to read through all of it and get an idea of what Dr Platt was talking about.
For now, she was already jotting questions and ideas down as fast as they occurred to her.
-----
Even with her enhanced speed, Lois found it incredibly slow going putting Dr. Platt’s papers in some semblance of order. Some scraps had mathematical formulae written on them; it was difficult to place those in any sort of order. She had better luck where the man had been merely writing - piecing straight narrative together into chronological order was much, much easier.
She’d been working on it for two nights now, the first night at the Planet at the end of the day. After that first night, she had simply shoved it all in the box Jimmy’d found for her and flown back to her apartment with it. By then, she had been more than half inclined to believe everyone else’s opinion that the man was some kind of crank. But some sort of instinct - she couldn’t explain it, but it had served her well in the past – nagged at her that regardless of the fact that he looked like a street bum he should be taken seriously.
And tonight, finally, she was beginning to see a glimmer of what the man had been talking about. She still needed much more information, of course; once she’d slogged her way through his mess of notes, she would have to talk to him again.
Lois sighed and leaned back, gazing idly around at Dr. Platt’s bits and scraps and pieces spread out over her living room floor. She already had several lines of pieced-together notes spread out in front of the coffee table, stretching to where the kitchen tile started, but the box was still at least two thirds full. She needed to find time to devote to this. It was looking like she would have to get out of the feelgood story Perry had assigned her for the week - not that she’d mind, of course.
Everyone had their share of ‘ordinary’ story assignments – non-earthshaking, non-breaking-news stories - including the investigative reporters. Not even Lois could find scandals twenty-four hours a day. As a matter of policy, Perry expected every reporter to research, write and turn in a number of other articles assigned as he saw fit – human interest stories, AP news bits, press releases, etc.
Lois had little interest in those types of stories. She wrote them grudgingly, and got out of writing them at all whenever she could. She was continually finding creative ways to dump the assignments on other reporters, or get Perry to reassign them. Her various strategies worked a fair amount of the time because her instincts for situations worthy of investigating were so extraordinarily high. Perry recognized that, and quite often allowed himself to be swayed by her arguments - but not always.
She sighed again, and carefully gathered up the first twenty feet of Dr. Platt’s lined-up research notes and placed them in an empty shoebox she’d retrieved from her closet. These would need to go back to the Planet with her tomorrow; she had a number of things she wanted Jimmy to clarify for her.
-----
Nine hours later, she was sitting at her desk in the newsroom, studying one of Dr. Platt’s scraps. It was covered with a combination of what appeared to possibly be hieroglyphics, and disjointed lines of letters – only some of which were recognizable words. She was systematically turning it ninety degrees, studying it, and then turning it another ninety degrees and studying it again, on the odd chance that the hieroglyphics parts might make more sense sideways or upside down. The man’s notes were in such a mess, it was entirely possible he’d started writing down words in one direction, got distracted, and not noticed that the scrap had got turned around.
Her thoughts were interrupted by Jimmy’s arrival at her desk, bearing a thick sheaf of printouts.
“Lois, I found some interesting stuff on Space Station Prometheus,’ he said. “You know, technical specs, and even a couple of blueprints. I also found a couple of reports on the shuttles that they’re supposed to be using for transport. Apparently, they’ve had a lot of problems with ‘em.”
She tossed the scrap back into the shoebox. “Thanks, Jimmy. What about Dr. Platt?”
“I’m still working on that,” he told her. “Apparently, he was highly respected at one time. Lately there have been some rumors that he’s let personal problems interfere with his job. But then other sources – former colleagues – say he’s always been a bit odd but that he’s brilliant.”
Lois, only half listening, had began to page through the stack of printouts he’d laid on her desk. “Well, keep at it, okay?” she asked, reaching for a pencil.
As Jimmy turned to walk away, he commented, “You know, this Dr. Platt would normally be the kind of guy I admire - although it’s hard to believe he’s a scientist, having met him. It’s only slightly easier to believe the guy’s computer-geek rep.”
“What?” Lois asked abruptly, her interest caught.
He turned back. “Huh?”
Somewhat impatiently, she asked, “You said Dr. Platt’s a computer expert? I thought he was an aeronautics and aerospace scientist.”
“Well, yeah… But a lot of those guys really know computers, you know. This guy apparently did some AI work…”
“Well, I guess the computer thing might explain this,” Lois said, gesturing to the scrap of hieroglyphics at the top of the notes in the shoebox. “I thought it might be computer code, but I can’t read it.”
Jimmy picked it up. “Yeah, it’s computer code… Oh, cool! It’s Lisp – that’s like, AI’s mother tongue, you know,” he said excitedly.
“Lisp? AI? What’s that?” Lois asked.
“It’s – Lisp is - a computer programming language,” Jimmy began, “It’s used in AI – artificial intelligence - programming, among other things. It’s been around a long time – since like the 1950s, I think. It’s almost as old as Fortran. It’s called Lisp ‘cause it’s a list-processing language – get it? L-I-S from ‘list’ and P from ‘processing’. It’s also popular with hackers. It’s better than C or C++, actually, because it’s extremely versatile…”
“Jimmy –“ Lois started.
“See,” he continued, warming to his subject, “it handles complex data structures more easily than other programming languages, using list processing, recursion, and character string manipulation…”
“Jimmy –“ she tried again.
He dropped the scrap of paper on the desk and started shuffling through the printouts he’d given her. “You know, I read an article that said that a lot of the space shuttles’ programs are written entirely in Lisp… I think I printed it for you; it should be here somewhere. It said that’s one of the main reasons that the shuttles have managed to reach the runway at all. It also said the Space Station Prometheus expert environmental and energy management systems will all be implemented in Lisp, too…”
“Jimmy!” she snapped.
He stopped shuffling through the printouts and looked up at her with the slightly wary look he often wore when faced with Mad Dog Lane.
She waved the scrap of computer code impatiently at him. “What exactly does this computer code do?”
“Uh, I don’t know, but I can find out,” he answered cautiously. “All I’d have to do is work through it – maybe try to run it, you know…”
“Fine. Do that, okay? I want to know what this does,” she said. “And why does Dr. Platt have this in his notes? Did he write it? Is it part of the shuttle programming, or is it malicious? He said the shuttles had been sabotaged; what about the space station itself? Oh, and –“
Jimmy was beginning to look alarmed; she waved the scrap of paper she still held at him again, and took pity on him. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jimmy – go find out what this code thingy does. I’ll find out the rest. Go!”
He went.
---
To be continued
