“It’s been three years,” Clark said slowly. “Things have changed.”
“I can see that.” Lois said tartly. “So what have you and my body been doing while I was gone?”
“That’s all she is to you…just a body to take over when you want!” Clark said. “She’s a person with feelings too. She hated having you butting into her life. There wasn’t a day that she didn’t dread your coming back.”
“If it wasn’t for me, her grandmother would be dead, she’d be broke, and she wouldn’t have any friends. And you’d be dead in less than a decade. Plus, the whole end of the world thing. She’s me and I’m her. This is my body.”
Clark shook his head. “You aren’t the same people. She’s a happier person than you are.”
“Try being disappointed over and over again for ten years and see how happy you are.” Lois shook her head. “At the rate things are going, the next time I wake up will be to seeing the end of the world.”
“Just remember whose life you are taking over,” Clark said. “She’s not there to walk all over.”
Lois felt stung. Clark was supposed to be on HER side. “Are you sleeping together?”
Quickly, Clark shook his head. “It’s never been like that with us. We’re just friends.”
Lois sighed. “She doesn’t see you as anything more than a good guy. Well, that’s the story of my life. I fall in love with a guy, and he falls in love with another girl who rejects him. Only this time, I’m my own other woman.”
“You were never in love with me,” Clark said. “You were in love with HIM…the guy I was going to be.”
“The guy you are still going to be,” Lois corrected. “Just because things have changed doesn’t mean that you will.”
“Well, I switched schools.” Clark said “After everything that happened, I wanted to watch over Lois…er…you.”
“So you changed schools?” Lois asked incredulously. “Didn’t that cost an arm and a leg?”
“A recruiter from Metropolis University got me an even better deal than I had at Midwestern. Also, Lois tipped me and my family off about investing in Lexcorp and Nanosoft. Wow…those stocks are amazing.”
“The Kents invested in Lexcorp?” Lois stared at Clark. “Didn’t you hear a word I said about Lex Luthor? He’s going to kill you.”
“Not if I keep Lois away from him,” Clark said. “And owning Lexcorp stock means that I get to keep a closer eye on him than I’d have a right to otherwise.”
“That’s…sort of what I’d planned to do,” Lois admitted, slightly mollified.
“It was Lois’s idea.”
“It was MY Idea!” Lois said, suddenly irritated. “She just plucked it out of my mind.”
Clark slammed the trunk with a little more force than necessary. “If the two of you are the same person, then it was her idea. You can’t have it both ways.”
“I’m Lois Lane. I can have it any way I want.” Lois suddenly grinned. “Whether it’s reasonable or not.”
Clark shook his head, and then said, “We’d better get a move on…”
“I need to see a doctor.” Lois said. “The man who invented time travel is right here in Metropolis, and I need to talk to him so that I can stop all this jumping around.”
“So that you can take over Lois’s body permanently!” Clark protested.
“This is my body too,” Lois scowled. “What do you think is going to happen in 1996 when there is no more of your girlfriend left and I take over.”
“Maybe you won’t.” Clark said. “Maybe you’ll just become her.”
Lois shook her head. “That’ not how it works. Otherwise, every time I changed something, I’d have a whole new set of memories. I’d already be on my way to being a whole new person.”
“I can’t let you do this,” Clark said.
“Can you watch me twenty four hours a day?” Lois asked. “That’s what it’ll take. And even if you could, all I’d have to do is call the cops and then get away while they were asking questions. You might as well let me go.”
Clark closed his eyes for a moment, as though he was pained. He nodded after a moment.
Lois left him standing there, a slight moistness in her eyes the only sign that her heart was breaking.
**************
Pounding on the door, Lois hoped the man wasn’t in an alcoholic stupor already. When she’d met him the first time, he was a man in his late fifties, even though he’d looked at least ten years older, with a long, unkempt, scraggily beard.
He’d been bitter and sarcastic then. She could only hope that his disposition had soured with time, leaving his younger self more cooperative and less crotchety.
The door was pulled open violently, and Lois stared for a moment. He looked much younger, with a carefully trimmed brown beard and short, combed hair. He was no longer disheveled.
“What are YOU doing here?” He stared at her for a moment than seemed to catch himself. “I told you I don’t want anything you have to offer.”
“Mr. Templeton, my name is Lois Lane. I’d like to talk to you about time travel.”
He paled for a moment, then seemed to regain his composure. He stepped aside, and said, “Come on in.”
She followed him inside into the darkness.
“I saw your book on time travel.” Lois said.
“Did you read it, or just look at the pretty pictures?” He didn’t look at her as he stepped into a sunken living room. The design of the place was odd, all blacks and whites and stark colors. Lois would have called it ultra modernist if she’d had to find a word to describe it.
“It went right over my head,” Lois said. “It was a pretty technical book.”
“It’s my life’s work,” he said. “You don’t exactly get to be a scientist working off Cliff’s notes.”
He gestured for her to sit down.
“Do you really think it’s possible for people to travel in time?”
“This is the second time you’ve asked me that,” he said. “I’d have thought you’d know the answer by now.”
“When did I come around before?”
“A year ago. I told you then that there wasn’t anything I could do about the periods of memory loss without access to the other personality.”
Lois felt a moment of horror and shock. Her other self had tried to get rid of HER.
“And if you had access to that other personality?”
“Assuming you aren’t just deranged?” he asked. “There are things I can do to make this memory shifting go away.”
“What if I said I was from the future right now,” Lois said. “And I wanted to make sure that I stay here this time instead of going away again?”
“Instead of the original one?” The man smirked. “That’d be ironic. I like it! The first girl was an annoying twit. It’d serve her right to be completely subsumed.”
“So you just believe me?” Lois had an uneasy feeling that she was making a mistake. There was something about his expression that was setting off warning bells inside her head.
“I invent time travel and then don’t expect to meet time travelers? What do you take me for, a modest man?”
“So you’ll help me?”
“Well, it occurs to me that you might be the same person I saw a year ago, trying to trick me into sending your other self into oblivion. That person seemed a bit untrustworthy.”
Lois flushed but didn’t say anything.
“It won’t work if you aren’t who you say you are.” He said, thinking for a moment. He reached into a pocket and pulled something out. “If you can tell me what this is, I’ll help you.”
He dropped it in her hand. It was a large, old fashioned key. It was smeared with something green and glowing.
Lois gasped and stepped away,. Before she could react he had a gun in his hand and he laughed. “It really IS you!”
“Mr. Templeton…John…there’s no reason to…”
“Call me by my real name.” He said. “Tempus.”
He stood expectantly, as though waiting for a reaction from her.
“Who?” She asked.
“Oh right…the version of you who knew me by that name is gone forever.” Tempus grinned. “I erased her with that.”
He nodded in the direction of the key, which was still in Lois’s hand. She dropped the key onto the carpet and stared down at it in revulsion.
“What did you do?”
“I‘m sure you‘ve got a pretty good idea.” Tempus grinned. “I picked up a time machine a while back, a real one. I got it cheap…it was practically a steal.”
“So you came back in your own body…why?”
Tempus laughed. “That old technology? Why would I ever do anything as stupid as scatter my atoms all across the cosmos just to relive a few paltry years? No. I had a real time machine, with seats and levers…the whole package.”
“So you just bought a time machine? At radio shack?”
“Well, they didn’t exactly sell it to me. They had it up on display at a museum. They didn’t even realize that it was one of Herb’s working models. Like I said, it was a steal.”
Lois began edging around the small end table behind her. She felt around for something she could use, but the table was austerely clean and neat.
“Let’s not try anything stupid, Lois.” he said. “I’ve had the last several years to practice my aim, and I’d like to think I was pretty good. Still, I’d hate to be aiming for a shoulder and accidentally hit you in the eye.”
“You killed Superman.” Lois said. “Why ? Why would you do something like that?”
“I’ve had this conversation with you before Lois…Nine thousand channels and nothing on…Utopia…any of it ring a bell?”
Lois shook her head.
“Well, I guess maybe erasing your future had some downsides. I find going through all of it again to be so boring.”
He gestured with the gun for Lois to sit down on the couch.
“In the original timeline, he managed to escape on his own. Used his cape to grab the key, which was left in plain sight. But I changed everything, and it was so easy…Of all the places in his life, this was the easiest place to change it all. No big schemes or elaborate traps. No sticking my neck out…All I had to do was pick up a key and wave it at him. The irony appealed to me. Killed by his own biography, written by Lois Lane.”
Lois felt sick to her stomach. She could imagine Superman’s uncomprehending anguish.
“He begged for his life, you know. He was on his knees and he begged,” Tempus smirked. “He wasn’t even afraid for himself. He said something about love, and well, after that I stopped listening. Taunted him a little more, but listening…well, I was on a schedule.”
“What about Clark?” she asked. “Did you have something to do with that too?”
His expression went slack for a moment, and then she saw something she’ didn’t like in his eyes. He burst into joyous laughter. laughter and said “Oh God! You mean I get to do this all over again?”
“This part never gets old,” he said, snickering. “You really are galactically stupid, you know.”
He pulled a pair of reading glasses from his pocket and slipped them on.
“Let’s go through this again. Hi I’m Clark Kent, roving, meddling reporter.”
He pulled them off. “I’m Superman, meddling superhero.”
Slipping them on he said “Clark Kent.”
Pulling them off he said, “Superman.”
Looking her straight in the eye he grinned and said “Is any of this getting through Lois? D’uh! Clark Kent is Superman!”
“But there were two bodies!” Lois protested. “I saw them both.”
“There was a man in Metropolis who made his living by dressing up as Superman. I can’t remember his name- he was a petty, inconsequential man. However, as an impersonator, he was great. The resemblance was uncanny. So a simple telephone call saying I’d spotted Mr. Kent…and after they were done, dropping the wallet I’d taken from his apartment into his pocket…very easy.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Well, as agonizing as the cage was, the things they did to that actor were far worse. I thought it might be fun to make you go through the whole thing twice.”
“So you did it all to make me suffer?”
“I’m about to make you suffer more,” Tempus said. “Remember how you were asking me about getting control of that body? Why don’t we just snuff you out instead and give it back to its rightful owner?”
Lois closed her eyes for a moment and felt very alone.
