Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic FDK: Night Fell 1/5

Poor Clark, no friends, no memories, in a world that's been torn apart! This looks like the start of a great fic! I can't wait to see where you take it.

I am beyond intrigued. I'll definitely be coming back to read your updates.

I really like the melancholy feel of this story (indeed, how could it be anything but melancholy?) as well as your great use of detail, like this one:

Great job.

Wow. I love the premise of the story and you've written a beautiful beginning. So many things make me wonder about what will come next, like the fact that from the very first lines, we know that Lois is in trouble, but Clark can't find her. That's essence of Clark, right there. Could he have made his way from San Francisco to Metropolis (at least where it used to be) and can now hear her heartbeat from deep in the earth, trapped in Luthor's Ark?

I'm wondering about the men that shot at Clark. I'm making an assumption that it's been less than three years since 'Impact', because that's what Lex says in ASU, that he has provisions for three years. So, if it's only been a few years, wouldn't those men remember Superman? Wouldn't they at least wonder if the bullets didn't hurt him because he's Kryptonian, rather than a mutant?

I'm mourning Martha and Jonathan, for Perry and Jimmy. I don't know for sure if they died, but it seems likely. WHAMmy indeed.

I agree with Lisa - the details are great, as well as the imagery. Sorry to quote the whole ending, but I could picture the whole thing, including tuxedo-guy's ill-timed victory dance just before the shockwave hits.
That said, I can hardly wait for the next post. I love this.
BJ

Wow, what a powerful opening. The world has ended. And Clark - because it has to be him, of course - is thinking so much of Lois, although he can't remember her name, or who she is at all. But he knows that she is in trouble and that he ahsn't been able to find her or help her. And he knows one more thing: he loves her.

So starkly melancholy, sad, horrible and beautiful. Clark suffers from complete amnesia:

He doesn't remember that heused to be Superman, and he doesn't understand that he still has powers. That shooting incident was horrifying and full of an underlying menace that didn't have much to do with the isolated incident in itself:

Have people like these taken over as civilization has faltered? What has happened to the world?

Clark does not understand why their guns don't hurt him. He can only assume that their guns were just toys.

Are there mutants out there for real, or have these disgusting gangsters just seen too many horror movies?

And because of this, Clark is going to continue his solitary existence.

Let me just say that I find it highly likely that Clark wouldn't be able to stop that asteroid. After all, the asteroid is coming at the Earth because it is being pulled at by the entire mass of the Sun, and the Sun contains about 330,000 times more mass than the Earth! And Superman is supposed to counteract that? He is supposed to apply a stronger force on it than the gravitational pull of the Sun?

And if he manages to do that, the asteroid is supposed to withstand the stress of two such mighty counteracting forces? Astronomers believe that most asteroids are loose collections of pieces that have collided and stuck together. But the gravity of an asteroid is puny, so its ability to itself together is not great at all. No wonder it broke apart when Superman tried to stop it! And no wonder Clark was knocked unconscious by the supreme effort it would have taken to try to stop that many miles wide chunk of rock from rolling down the "gravity well" caused by the Sun and continuing straight in the path of the Earth. Honestly, the idea of Superman doing something like that is like an ant trying to stop a boulder from rolling down a hill and colliding with an ant-hill!

Well, I'm so looking forward to the rest of this! You have really captured my imagination.

Ann

I've always believed that Clark's amnesia in "All Shook Up" was due in part to the tremendous impact against Nightfall, partly due to his shock at failing to destroy all of it, and partly because he expended so much energy in getting to and hitting the thing in the first place. Because his suit was completely burned off during re-entry, but because any physical injuries he sustained were healed by the time that homeless guy found him, his powers (or at least his aura) had to have been suppressed for the moment. So maybe a lack of oxygen to his brain also contributed to his loss of memory.

Enough dry technical stuff! This is an excellent beginning, one which promises so much more. The suggestion that maybe Lois is down in Lex's "ark" is intriguing, not in the least because she might despair of Superman's return if they stay down there for the three years (which is what Lex said he had provisions for). And the way this is going, it might take that long for Clark to regain his memory. Of course, if she is down there, she's alive, but she's also at Lex's mercy, the quality of which is quite strained at the best of times.

As for the "soldiers" in the Jeep, I suspect they're part of a larger gang of former military who've taken over a base and killed or co-opted all the officers. Or, maybe an officer went rogue after the chain of command was disrupted and decided to become his own local warlord. In either case, the men (and some women, surely) would roam the countryside looking for supplies and occasionally killing their robbery victims. This is the kind of thing that has happened throughout history when an army disintegrates. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the US is one of the more stable regions in the world.

That asteroid fragment would probably have touched off a global cooling which would bring back the glaciers in the Northern hemisphere, at least in the short term. Remember, if you will, that the volcano Tambora, which blew up in the fall of 1815 with a force of a hundred Mount St. Helens, caused a global drop in temperature which led to 1816 being termed "The Year Without A Summer" in both Europe and America. The cold weather caused food riots in many major European cities and led to reforms in the social safety nets, and it also caused hundreds of New England farms to fail and forced thousands to move west to warmer climates. Tens of thousands died of starvation and exposure, and this event changed the course of American and European history.

So something like the Nightfall fragment would be even more disastrous. Society would fragment and slowly re-establish itself in small pockets, but large areas would have no law or order within them save for the aforementioned roving heavily armed bandits.

This is truly an apocalyptic vision you're giving us. It's not just chilling, it's all too possible. And without Superman to lend a stabilizing influence, there's no telling just how bad it might get.

I hope Luthor has lots of guns and ammunition in that bunker of his. I have a feeling he's going to need it.

How fascinating! I had never heard about this, Terry. *goes to look up more details and returns Kevin's FDK thread to the subject at hand*

The information about the Tambora volcano was fascinating, Terry. I checked Wikipedia and came across this climate change estimate:



As you can see, there appears to be a steep, sharp drop in temperature in what could well be 1816. Note, however, that the 1600s and 1700s were generally colder, certainly in Northern Europe. I have heard quite a lot about "The Little Ice Age" of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but I had never heard of 1816 before. Well, a sudden sharp drop might cause a lot of devastation, I'm sure.

Anyway, if a three-mile-wide asteroid crashed on the Earth, surely the global temperature effects would be a lot worse than those of 1816? And they would probably last a lot longer, too.

Ann

Oh I love post-Apocalyptic. Like others have mentioned the descriptions were on point. The image of the drunken man stayed with me and people being scared enough to lash out irrationally.

I remembered a novel I read recently called The Road by Comac McCarthy (btw the award winning No Country for Old Men was adapted from his novel).

I'm looking forward to what happens next!

alcyone

In this fandom we encourage different people to explore the same ideas in different ways, just as long as credit is properly issued.

I'll take notes as I read. An intriguing intro. Perhaps Nightfall didn't go as we saw it? Clark landed someplace else and wasn't entirely able to save the earth? (Oh, duh! Of course that's what it is. I just reread the title.)

Like all good intros, you've left us wanting more.

Elisabeth

Hi,

Just found your story, and, at first, was amazed by the similarity to the start of my fic The Forgotten, but after the first paragraph they parted company in a very big way. Apart from the fact that Clark has amnesia.

This is a really good, atmospheric beginning. Clark's misery was very tangible and I could picture the state of the country.

I enjoyed it very much and look forward to reading the rest.

Yours Jenni

Super cool plot... hmm, so I hope Lois is in Lex's ark... or maybe she was lucky enough to have survived on her own. Looking forward to more...