This is a lovely chapter, Janet!
Midway through the morning, they heard a bulletin from the police radio in the command center, reporting that there was a robbery in progress at one of the downtown First Bank of Metropolis branches.
Lois and Clark were sitting side by side at his desk, working on their list of suspects. Lois dropped her pencil on the desk, stretched slightly, and glanced at Clark as he pushed back his chair, ready to stand up. “I need some good coffee, Clark,” she commented around a pretty realistic yawn. “Would you get me a Metropolis Coffee – Double Mocha Latte? From our usual place? They know how I like it there.”
I love this! Lois gives Clark the perfect opportunity to slip away and stop a bank robbery. The two of them work together beautifully.
So Clark is off to buy coffee for Lois, ostensibly, except that that coffee bar is right next to the bank that was being robbed. Clark planned to stop the robbery and then "interview" himself. However, Perry just sent two other reporters to cover that bank robbery - what if they arrive at the bank and see Superman but not Clark? Lois needs to warn Clark to show himself around the bank:
How to warn him? She couldn’t very well call him on his cell phone. Maybe… She looked back down at the desk and focused on a mental picture of Clark’s face. <Clark?> She waited.
Nothing. She shut her eyes and blanked her mind further, blocking out as much of the newsroom noise as she could, and thought of Clark. No – better make it Superman.
Still nothing. Well, maybe she was only transmitting, not receiving. With her eyes still closed, she concentrated on sending him a message. <Clark, Edmunds and Jenner will be there. Be careful. Let them see Clark if you can.>
She's going to use telepathy! Good idea, Lois. But how does this telepathy thing work anyway? Concentrate! Concentrate!
“Lois?”
She yelped and almost fell out of her chair as Jimmy’s voice sounded practically in her ear.
I, too, almost fell out of my chair! Can you believe Jimmy's knack to come and ask for Lois and Clark when they least want to see him?
“Uh, yeah. I…” She heard Clark’s heartbeat just before he stepped through the stairwell door, coffees in hand. “I just need my coffee,” she said with relief. Saved by Superman! Or more precisely, Clark – which was even better. She smiled at him as he approached, and he winked at her as he handed over her coffee.
“Here you are, partner! Knock some of that back and wake up; we’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said teasingly. <Better than Superman?>
So Clark just came back - and hey,
now the telepathy is working!
And then Jimmy tells them why he interrupted them at an inopportune moment, as usual. He has found Antoinette Baines' personal files, right in EPRAD's main system. In these files she describes the sabotage of the Prometheus and generally accuses Lex Luthor of all kinds of crimes! What an amazing find!!!
So Clark and Lois go to Henderson to inform him what Jimmy found for them (without naming Jimmy as their hacker, though). This is brilliant evidence! They are going to get Luthor! (Or is this really too good to be true, Janet?)
Anyway, Lois and Clark start talking about their telepathy, when it works, and when it doesn't. Suddenly Clark understands what makes it work:
“That’s it, Lois! Every time I’ve picked up something from you, or sent something to you mentally, we’ve been happy – laughing, or smiling. That’s it! That’s the key! I’m almost sure of it!”
Laughing, smiling! Yes! Lois and Clark have to be
happy together for their telepathy to work!
And it turns out it's not so hard for them to be happy together:
He smiled at her, and she *felt* the waves of affection rolling over her. It was at once the most wonderful and the most terrible thing she’d ever felt. They just *couldn’t* feel this way about each other!
Wonderful, Janet. Wonderful. Isn't this just generally a beautiful, beautiful metaphor of (for?) love itself? Isn't that what it means to love someone? You understand your loved one so well that you can almost read his thoughts, and the two of you are so effervescently happy together. There is a kind of poetic truth about this telepathy that is so compelling. It's a thing that is born, again and again, from the happiness of Lois and Clark's love.
I feel compelled to point out, however, that the globe spoke to Lois and Clark when they were happy and laughing together. When one of them gasped in dismay, its transmission stopped. I hope that Lois and Clark will realize that happy laughter is the key not only to their telepathy, but to getting the globe to speak to them, too. And I hope they will give the globe another chance to relay its message to them. Its full message this time. It could be that Lois and Clark are indeed brother and sister, but you haven't convinced me of that yet, Janet.
I'm very, very much looking forward to the rest of your story!
Ann
