This is the section that just flowed almost faster than I could type it. When I'm writing, I put down whatever I'm thinking, in disjointed phrases and haphazard punctuation, in order to get all the ideas down. It's frustrating to think of something but forget it before you can write it down. Anyway, then I go back and fill it out, making complete sentences, expanding where I need to, etc. The Claude part gave me fits, so I skipped it and wrote this section. Unfortunately, though, this section couldn't see the light of day on these boards until I finished with Claude.
From part 7:
“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.
---
The Girl Next Door, part 8:
By the late afternoon, Lois had worked her way through most of Jimmy’s printouts and all of the scraps in the shoebox. Perry had co-opted Jimmy for something just after noon, so she was still waiting for information on the computer code. With Jimmy and computers, however, she’d learned to leave him alone and let him get the job done, so for now she’d have to be patient.
Dr. Platt had said the shuttle flights had been sabotaged; there did, indeed, seem to be a higher than average number of mishaps in the launches, all of which had been aborted so far. It could be coincidence, of course – computer malfunctions, human error, and structural issues had all caused problems for the space program in the past.
Or there could, in fact, be something going on. She needed to clear her schedule of Perry’s routine little story assignments and focus on Dr. Platt and his allegations.
It was time to get Perry involved. Unfortunately, he’d seen Dr. Platt, so she might have to do a fair amount of convincing. She might as well start right now.
Rising, she headed toward Perry’s office.
“Perry, I have to talk to you –“ she began before she was even all the way inside his office.
“Uh, Lois – Haven’t you heard of knocking and waiting to be invited inside?” Perry drawled, one eyebrow raised questioningly. “As you can see – now – I’m in the middle of an interview here.”
It took Lois a moment to switch gears. Caught up in what she needed Perry to understand, she hadn’t thought about whether he would be busy or not.
She glanced quickly at the man who had risen to his feet as she entered the room. It was intended to be the quick but all-encompassing look she usually used to assess someone she was meeting for the first time. Particularly today, since she had a bone to pick with the chief, it should have been a lightning glance - and then back to her own agenda with Perry.
But there was something different this time. There was something about this man that drew her interest, however reluctantly, and caused her gaze to linger.
On the face of it, there shouldn’t be anything particularly special about him. About her own age, he was a very good-looking man – okay, the most attractive man she’d seen in a long time – but Lois Lane just didn’t react to men that way.
With interest.
At all.
She couldn’t risk it.
This man was undeniably attractive. At least six feet tall, he was well built but not excessively so. He wore glasses with tortoise-shell frames, which broke up the line of his face. But she could still see the high cheekbones and the almost imperceptible slant to his eyes, which hinted, perhaps, at an Asian ancestor or two. His eyes were dark- probably brown, she guessed – and his hair was inky back. While it looked slightly long, as if he was overdue for a haircut, it wasn’t an unattractive style. Cut it just a bit shorter, get some of that hair off his forehead and the back of his neck, and he would be even more devastatingly handsome than he was now.
Lois felt her heart race, unaccountably, at that thought.
What was going on?
He wore the standard city attire – dark gray business suit, shirt and tie – although it was probably a stretch of her imagination to include his tie in that description. It was a brightly colored mix of shapes and lines, rather than the muted patterns most of the men who worked at the Daily Planet wore. On anyone else, she might consider that he’d chosen it in an effort to make himself stand out. But surely he knew he was handsome? That he would stand out anywhere, even in a group of equally attractive men?
He looked startled, as if she – or something about her – was unexpected.
And that brought her thoughts back to her own unexpected – and unwanted - reaction to him. She forced her gaze away, wondering if she looked as dazed as she felt, and became aware that Perry was speaking.
“Lois,” he was saying, “This is Clark Kent. Clark, this is Lois Lane, the Planet’s star reporter.”
Thoughts still in turmoil, she barely heard Perry’s compliment. The man – Clark Kent – began speaking, drawing her attention back to him. “I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Lane,” he said, extending his hand toward her.
She stared at his hand for a moment. She didn’t want to touch him. This – reaction, whatever it was – was alarming. She glanced up at him again, meeting his eyes briefly before quickly looking away.
This was unacceptable. She was Mad Dog Lane – time to act like it. She made herself look at him as she said baldly, “Hi.” She grasped his hand at the same time, shaking it quickly and letting go almost immediately.
But it didn’t matter- sensation shot up her arm and for the first time in her life, Lois felt the pull of a deep and almost visceral attraction - like her body recognized him, even if they’d never met before today.
Wide eyed, she saw his own startled awareness, and she hastily looked away from him. She didn’t have time for this... whatever it was.
She didn’t want this… this attraction, this sudden treacherous longing for a relationship with a man <with this man>. It was simply too dangerous. She’d acknowledged long ago that she would never have a close relationship of any kind. She could never get close to anyone for fear that they would find out about her special abilities.
<Oh, help!> She had to get out of here, but that would be running away. Mad Dog Lane didn’t retreat – she took prisoners.
“What did you need, Lois?” Perry asked, and she remembered why she’d been so anxious to talk to him.
Gratefully seizing the opening, she wrapped her Mad Dog persona around her like armor, and trying desperately to ignore the disturbing presence of Clark Kent, launched into her argument. “Perry, that man, Dr. Platt - I think there’s a story here. I know he looks like he lives in an alley, and yeah, his calculations and notes were in disarray… Okay, yeah, he gave me a paper bag full of notes and diagrams written on napkins, newspaper margins, old gift wrap, and cardboard – but he had a sort of… *conviction*, you know? Like he knew what he was talking about…” She stopped to draw a breath.
Perry looked at her, one eyebrow raised, and drawled, “Where’s that mood piece I assigned you, Lois?”
“I wasn’t in the mood!” she snapped at him. Putting on her most persuasive voice with an effort, she began again. “Look, Perry –” She was interrupted by Jimmy’s quick rap on the office doorframe.
“Sorry, Chief! Lois, phone call! The guy says he’s a source; doesn’t want to leave a message.”
Seizing the opportunity to escape, she bolted, tossing over her shoulder, “I’ll get back to you about Dr. Platt, Chief! Gotta take this call!” She didn’t hang around to listen to Perry’s reply.
She knew it by heart, anyway. An exasperated “Lois!” followed by arms flung in the air and the oft-muttered “Don’t mind me, I’m just the editor of this fine newspaper.” She never let it bother her.
---
Lois’s source had had some information for her – information he’d only give her in person. The man’s preferred form of payment was lunch or dinner – complete with dessert and gourmet coffee. He went by the name Bobby Bigmouth, and it wasn’t because he made his living providing information. He was skinny as a rail but could put away more food at a single sitting than anyone Lois had ever known.
The man was phenomenal at ferreting out information she could use, and she knew how incredibly lucky she was that he’d assigned himself to her. He was much more altruistic than he let on, too. Some of the information he’d given her over the years could have made him a fortune if he’d chosen to sell it to the highest bidder - yet he gave it to her for the price of a meal, knowing she’d use it to expose corruption or crime.
She’d never questioned him as to his reasons, and while she’d been tempted to use her special abilities to follow him – see where he lived, what he did when he wasn’t finding out information for her – she’d decided to respect the unspoken limits they both placed on the relationship. She had secrets of her own she wanted to keep.
Returning from her meeting with Bobby, Lois set a half-empty Metropolis Coffee Company cup on her desk. As long as she was getting Bobby coffee, she’d reasoned, she might as well get one for herself. One advantage she had over the average coffee drinker was that she never had to settle for cold coffee; a discreet glance into the cup and it was warm again.
Dumping her purse in the bottom drawer, she signed on to her computer and picked up the cup. She had just removed the top with the intention of heating the contents when Jimmy appeared in front of her.
“Chief said to send you in to see him the moment you got back, Lois,” the young man informed her, laying a stack of computer printouts on her desk. “And here’s that information you wanted on Dr. Platt, and some more stuff on Space Station Prometheus.”
Lois grabbed the papers and started flipping through them, coffee forgotten. “Thanks, Jimmy,” she said absently, grabbing blindly for a pencil from the mug stuffed full of them near her monitor. She started jotting notes in the margin of one of the printouts.
After several moments she realized that Jimmy hadn’t moved.
“What?” she asked impatiently, looking up at him.
“Uh, Lois…” he began hesitantly, “The chief said he wanted you in his office *right away*.”
She waved her hand in a shooing motion. “Okay, yeah, thanks, Jimmy. I heard you. I’ll stop in there in a little while. Now scram until I decide what else I need you to find for me.”
She didn’t watch to see if he left.
She skimmed rapidly – but at human speed – through the printouts, looking for anything that stood out that might support Dr. Platt’s allegations. While there was nothing obvious, it did give her some more ideas of where else to look. Completely focused, she began one of her investigation lists – jotting questions, suggestions, phrases, and words in the order they occurred to her on the bottom of a partially printed page in Jimmy’s stack.
The sound of her name at full bellow startled more than one of the Planet staff; Lois herself looked up and around at Perry, standing in his office doorway, in mild irritation. Having caught her eye, he continued at full volume, “What part of ‘now’ was unclear?”
With a heavy, put-upon sigh and a roll of her eyes, Lois flipped the printout closed and slid the pencil behind one ear. Rising, she made her way toward him. Stepping back into his office, Perry muttered in a voice she wasn’t expected to hear, “I’ll tell you, son, if that young woman wasn’t one of the best reporters I’ve ever known…” He trailed off as she stepped through the door.
She was instantly aware of the second man in the room, even as Clark Kent rose to his feet at her entrance. He smiled at her – a smile so brilliant and beautiful that she felt herself begin to leave the floor. She almost panicked. She *never* lost control of her powers any more. *Never*.
Looking away from him, she grabbed quickly for the back of the chair nearest her, hoping she looked like she was steeling herself for a possible confrontation with her editor, not trying desperately to reestablish the bonds of gravity. Kent – she couldn’t let herself begin to think of him as Clark, it was too… familiar – made a motion as if to steady her. She glanced at him, saw the concern on his face, and dredged up her best Mad Dog glare while she edged away from him. His face reflected his confusion as he allowed his hand to drop to his side.
Forcing herself not to look at him, she looked instead at Perry, who was just rising to his feet in welcome. The whole unsettling incident had flashed past in mere seconds; it only felt like she’d been standing there for hours. Maybe she could Mad Dog her way out of here. Letting go of the back of the chair, she took a step toward the door and began, “Chief, I’m in the middle of this –“
She was interrupted by Perry. “Sit,” he said firmly, and she dropped grudgingly into one of the chairs in front of his desk. She tried not to react as Clark Kent seated himself in the chair beside her.
Perry sat down as well, leaning back and regarding her with a benevolent smile. It was a smile she’d learned not to trust. “Lois,” he drawled blandly, “I’ve yet to go wrong following one of your hunches. If you say there’s something to this whole Samuel Platt and Space Station Prometheus thing, then I’m giving you the go-ahead on it – I’m not done yet,” he added sharply as she began to rise.
“Chief –“ was as far as she got before he was speaking again.
“Kent, here, is the Planet’s newest investigative reporter. He comes well recommended by your own Professor Sterling at Met U, and has quite an impressive portfolio. For the time being, you’ll be working with him on this Prometheus thing.”
She gaped at him.
“What?”
“Say hello to your new partner, Lois,” Perry said with an expansive smile.
Lois was flabbergasted. A partner?
She didn’t need a partner. She hadn’t *ever* needed a partner!
Why was Perry deciding, after the past several years and her two Kerths, to assign her a partner? Especially *this man*? She couldn’t work with him! How could she?
“Perry!” she started again. “I can’t –“
Perry raised a solicitous and inquiring eyebrow.
“Oh, I get it,” she said. “This is about my blowing off that mood piece, right? You’re taking me down a peg because I got a little too… Perry,” she put on her most beseeching look, “I’m sorry – you know me, I just jump in without checking the water level sometimes. But you have to admit, usually I’m right.” She chuckled a little, inviting him to share the joke.
He was smiling, but it wasn’t a share-the-joke smile at all. It was the sort of smile she used when she knew she was going to get her own way.
This wasn’t looking good.
“Chief,” she began again, but he held up his hand before she could continue.
“Now, Lois.” He sounded like a parent with a recalcitrant child. A noise that sounded suspiciously like a smothered laugh coming from her left forcibly reminded her of the man she was trying so hard to ignore. She looked sharply at him, but he gazed back at her innocently, and meeting her eyes, smiled that… that *smile* at her again. She snapped back to look at Perry, who was rising to his feet.
“Lois, you are the best of the best,” he said, and his smile smoothed into a genuine one. “Kent, here, is new to the Planet, yes. But he is also *very* good. I reckon if I put the two of you on it, this story will be Kerth material for sure. Because I agree with you, darlin’ – there’s something wrong with that whole program. Give this idea of mine a chance, Lois,” Perry added persuasively. “I smell a possible Pulitzer in this.”
She tried one last time. “Perry, I work best alone. You know that. I don’t do that whole partnership thing very well –“
Perry interrupted her again. “Time you learned, darlin’. Now I can give this whole assignment to Kent, here, or you can work *with* him on it. Your choice.”
She knew when to fold. Grudgingly, she nodded. “Fine, Chief,” she muttered. “Now, if you’re done with me – with *us* -” she added as he cocked that eyebrow at her again, “my *partner* and I have work to do. C’mon, Kent!” And she stalked out of the office, trying not to notice if he followed her or not.
He did.
---
Jimmy was waiting for them at Lois’s desk, his usual cheerful smile in place.
“Hi!” he said, extending his hand to Lois’s unwanted companion. “Clark Kent, right? I’m Jim – Jimmy – Olsen. Pleased to meet you.” The two men shook hands as Lois sat down at her desk, trying not to pay any attention to either of them.
“The Chief said to set you up over here, with Lois,” Jimmy continued, earning a glare he didn’t see from her. He patted the top of a computer monitor sitting on the previously empty desk across from hers. “Here, sit down and try this out - I’ve got your computer set up, and it’s connected to the network and ready to go…”
Watching surreptitiously as Jimmy went over the computer setup with Kent, she thought about the whole annoying partner thing Perry had foisted on her. Well, she might have to work with this man, but she didn’t have to like it.
She’d have to find a way to make this tolerable, somehow. She’d overcome a lot of other things in her life; she’d just have to ruthlessly crush this… *insane* attraction to Kent. Glowering at the two men as Jimmy went on and on about the computer, she admitted it would be a whole lot easier to keep this guy Kent at arm’s length if only he was just a little less friendly. But no, apparently he was one of those never-met-a-stranger-everybody-likes-him kind of guys.
Well, most people in the office were intimidated by Mad Dog Lane. Maybe if she just… *deliberately* gave him the full treatment, it might keep him from getting too close. She’d just have to keep the upper hand in this supposed partnership and show Clark Kent the brashest, most abrasive Mad Dog behavior she had.
Jimmy was still talking. “You just need to sign in for the first time and set your prefs, and you’re all set, okay? And the supply closet’s just over there, near the Chief’s office.” He gestured in the general direction of Perry’s office. “Feel free to get whatever you need – paper, pencils and pens, office supplies, and so on…”
Lois interrupted him. “Yeah, yeah - he can do all that later, Jimmy. Any luck with that code?”
Nicely distracted from the rest of his welcome-to-the-Planet chatter, Jimmy answered, “Well, no – I’m still working on it. It’s harder to figure out, you know, ‘cause it’s only a fragment. It’s like… taking a single paragraph out of a book and trying to get the whole story from just that one paragraph. I’m trying to hack into – er, I mean…” He glanced around nervously and lowered his voice. “That is, uh – well, I’m trying to… *access* the space program’s files. If I can get a look at the Lisp code for the whole program - you know, the shuttles’ computer programs? I can get a better idea of what, exactly, this is.”
Clark Kent spoke up. “May I see it?”
“Yeah, sure,” Jimmy said, and fished the folded scrap out of his pocket. He unfolded it and handed it over, continuing, “It’s a fragment of Lisp code; we’re trying to find out what it does.”
“Dr Platt’s?” Kent asked.
“Yeah. Well, I don’t know if he wrote it - you know, authored it - but it was in his research notes.”
“His research notes – which he delivered to me in a large paper bag,” Lois couldn’t resist adding. “The entire body of research is written on an assortment of scraps of paper like that one, and on napkins, pieces of cardboard, a pizza carryout menu, and even a shoebox lid. And none of the… pages… were in order.”
“Ouch. How far have you gotten with them?” Kent asked sympathetically.
“Not very,” she admitted, forgetting her resolve to be Mad Dog Lane. “I’m about a third of the way through them, and they’re full of stuff like that.” She nodded at the scrap he still held. “That one, in particular, gave me fits.”
“Yeah,” Jimmy chimed in. “We know it’s computer code, but we don’t know what it’s for.”
“Couldn’t we just ask him what it does?” Kent asked.
Lois shook her head. “I want an unbiased opinion first,” she stated flatly. “The guy’s supposed to be an expert, according to Jimmy’s info; he could tell us anything. If this is some sort of malevolent… I don’t know, virus or malware or something… I think it’s unlikely that Dr. Platt wrote it – I don’t think he’s in on any sabotage; I think he found it when he wasn’t supposed to. But still, I prefer going into an interview with him pre-informed.”
Kent nodded. “Ah – that makes sense.” He smiled at her across the desks, and she remembered she was supposed to be Mad Dog Lane. She forced herself not to react to his smile. After a moment under her blank stare, his smile faded.
Jimmy glanced at Kent, then at her, and she knew he was contemplating a quick retreat in the face of Mad Dog Lane.
“Do you think it’s malevolent, Jim?” Kent asked the young man, handing back the scrap of code.
“No, not really,” he answered, glancing warily at Lois again. “It’s not deliberately malevolent as far as I can tell – it doesn’t erase a hard drive or anything like that. I haven’t tried to run it yet – not sure I can, since it’s incomplete - but so far it really just looks like nonsensical lines of code.”
He relaxed a little as he forgot Mad Dog and warmed to his subject. “But I don’t know Lisp all that well. I mean, I can read it, and I’ve written a couple of short… uh, search programs using Lisp, but there’s a couple of variants out there. Besides, it’s just a few lines - probably taken from a larger body of code. Like I said, it would be easier to figure it out if I had the whole program.”
Lois asked, “So it wouldn’t necessarily have to be deliberately malicious code…? If some ‘nonsense code’ is written into a program... ”
“Well, usually it would just shut it down - crash the program.”
“You said the shuttle programming is in this same language?” Kent asked. “All of it?” When Jimmy nodded, he continued, “So… if this small bit of code were inserted into one of the shuttle’s programs…”
“Like the countdown and ignition sequences…” Lois inserted.
“…It could it cause the whole process to abort?” Kent finished. He glanced at Lois again.
“Yeah,” Jimmy said.
“And just a line or two of nonsense would be hard to find in a large amount of code, right?” Lois asked him.
“Yeah – extremely time-consuming; you’d have to go through every line,” Jimmy answered.
“I think we need to go through the rest of Dr. Platt’s research notes,” Lois said. “And then we need to go talk to him.”
“Should we get started on it tonight?” Kent asked.
No. She wasn’t ready to have Kent in her apartment. It would feel way too… personal. She looked at him unwillingly, not meeting his gaze, and said gruffly, “No. The notes are all at my place. I need to bring them back in so we can go through them…”
“Didn’t you say you had a lot of them laid out in order on your floor?” Jimmy chimed in unhelpfully, and she glared at him.
“Don’t you have some more research to do?” she snapped at him.
He backed up a step, clearly deciding retreat was his best option. “Yeah… uh, I’d better get to that…” he stammered, already moving away from them. “See you guys later, huh?”
There was a short silence.
“Lois.” Clark – Kent – said her name gently, and her eyes met his sympathetic ones reluctantly. “It’s okay – I understand that you don’t know me. I can see how it would make you uncomfortable to have a perfect stranger in your home. We can work here. I’m sorry you’ll have to undo the work you’ve done so far, but with two of us going through it again tomorrow, it shouldn’t take as long to re-sort it all.”
She looked away from him, from the gentle look in his eyes. The urge to stay and talk was strong, but instead she began gathering up her things. Without acknowledging what he had said, she stood and said abruptly, “I’ll get going now, too… We can start on the rest of Dr. Platt’s notes tomorrow. See you later!”
She was halfway up the ramp before Kent could say anything.
-----
To be continued
