Thanks for the nice comments, I really appreciate hearing from you. And thanks again to Laswa and Sas for the BRing--they have been wonderful.
Again, as a cautionary statement -- notice that there are two views of the future and you will be brought into both of these almost simultaneously. Hope you like the voyage.
From Part 1
“Okay,” the English teacher said. “Let me try again. How many of you believe in time travel?”
Claire walked into Lois Lane’s classroom.
Lois and the students stopped and stared at the young brunette.
“Hi!” Claire began. “My name is Claire Ken...Kennedy. I’m a new student here. I just moved to Smallville from Metropolis and, in answer to the teacher’s question. I not only believe in time travel. I’ve done it. I’m from the future!”
Now for Part 2
“She shouldn’t have said that, should she, Mommy!” the little boy said as his mother paused in her reading.
The dark-haired woman smiled at her son, participating in the game they always did when she read the book. “What do you think?” she inquired, playfully--asking the question she invariably asked when they got to this part.
“Uncle Herbie was upset at her wasn’t, he?”
His mother smiled again and turned the page.
##########
Smallville, Kansas
Monday,
March 14, 1994
“That was a preposterous thing to say!” the elderly man admonished Claire.
“They didn’t believe it,” she said, laughing and joined the man at the dining room table.
“It sort of broke the ice, Uncle Herbie; and now if I say anything even remotely weird, they’ll just chalk it up to my flakiness.”
“What about Miss Lane?” he asked her.
“She’s wonderful! Just like all the history books say.”
“And Mr. Kent?”
Claire paused and bit her lower lip. “He’s so like my father,” she said, tears coming to her eyes. “Since my mother died, my dad and I have only had each other. We have to save him, Mr. Wells. We just have to!”
* * *
Dystopia
December,
2121
Wil Kent paced up and down his small eight by ten foot jail cell. How long had he been there? The days and weeks seemed to have melded into one. And Claire? Where was she? The forty-seven year old father sank down on the cot and put his face in his hands. He tried to think--to put everything together; but it was like reaching out through a pea soup.
The sound of keys jangling, brought him out of his frustration.
“Here’s your supper,” the burly man dressed in some kind of animal skin, told the prisoner and shoved a tin plate with three mounds--one gray, one green and one brown--through the bars. Other than color, each pile was indistinguishable.
“Ain’t you gonna eat?” the guard asked him. “You gotta keep your strength up. We don’t want to burn no cadaver at the stake.”
Wil looked at the food. “I’m not hungry.”
“Maybe you just don’t like the accommodations,” the grotesque man said laughing, his keys jangling loudly as he retreated.
“Accommodations,” Wil said aloud. “That’s what the other guard said.”
* * *
Utopia,
April,
2121
The curtain rose on the Smallville Player’s latest presentation. The one hundred and forty-three year-old community theatre group now boasted well over two thousand members. The legacy begun by Martha Kent was well entrenched and continued to blossom year after year.
The utopian society, now in existence, was one in which literature, philosophy, art, music, dance and drama flourished. Schools for the performing and visual arts were in every community. Factories, banks, department stores, stock exchanges, mini-malls, and medical facilities had all been replaced with museums, concert halls, art galleries, libraries, botanical gardens, halls of learning and most especially, theatres. All basic needs were dispersed through on-line national dissemination centers and health care was monitored through copper ankle bracelets. The citizens, no longer tethered to a work ethic, spent their time studying, recording the history of the world’s cultures, enhancing environmental projects, and participating in the myriad aspects of the arts.
The lights on the Martha Kent Theatre came up, but only dimly in order to give the appearance of a diffused meager light illuminating a large, cold, dank, rock-lined dungeon of a room.
The door at the head of the stairway opened and a harsh light streamed down like a knife cutting into the vault-like dungeon. The metal stairs were lowered slowly and deliberately, creating a chilling sound of chain grating on chain. A small somber procession descended into the bowels of the prison. First was a uniformed Captain of the Inquisition, then two soldiers assisting a chubby manservant with a sizable but shabby straw trunk; then an impressive, yet gentle-looking man in his late 40s, carrying a wrapped oblong package under one arm.
The manservant looked fearfully at the two soldiers who retreated back up the stairs and then at the Captain who remained. The mild-mannered man peered about, uncertainly.
Captain: (Watching the new prisoner, sardonically) Anything wrong? The accommodations?
Man/Wil: No, no, they appear quite interesting.
Captain: The cells are below. This is the common room, for those who wait.
Man/Wil: How long do they wait?
Captain: Some an hour...some a lifetime...
Man/Wil: Do they all await the Inquisition?
Captain: Ah, no, these are merely thieves and murderers. (Starting to leave, then turning back) If you need anything, just shout. (Then as an afterthought, he adds) If you’re able. (He exits)
Manservant: (Apprehensively) What did he mean by that?
Man/Wil: Calm yourself. There is a remedy for everything but death.
Manservant: That could be the very one we need!
A large number of the prisoners in the common room began moving, circling, and approaching the new prisoners like animals who scent pray.
Man/Wil: (With great courtliness). Good morning, gentlemen...ladies. I regret being thrust upon you in this manner, and hope you will not find my company objectionable. In any case I shall not be among you very long. The Inquisition--
With a yell, the prisoners attacked. The new captive among them and his manservant were seized, tripped up and pinned to the floor. The older prisoners began busily rifling the pockets of the interlopers as The Governor, a big man of obvious authority, awakened from sleep.
The Governor: (In a roar) Enough! Noise, trouble, fights...kill each other if you must but for God’s sake, do it quietly! (To the new man) Who are you? Eh? Speak up!
Man/Wil: (Gasping as his throat is freed) Cervantes. Don Miguel de Cervantes.
The Governor: (With mock respect) A gentleman!
Cervantes/Wil: (Painfully getting to his feet) It has never saved me from going to bed hungry.
The Governor: (Indicating the manservant) And that?
Cervantes/Wil: My servant. May I have the honor--?
The Governor: They call me The Governor. What’s your game?
Cervantes/Wil: My game...?
The Governor: (Impatiently) Your specialty, man. Cutpurse? Highwayman?
Cervantes/Wil: Oh, nothing so interesting! I am a poet. A poet of the theatre--a playwright and an actor.
The Duke: (A prisoner of draggle-tail elegance smirks.) They’re putting men in prison for that?
* * *
Dystopia,
December,
2121
Wil looked around his cell. “Precisely for that!” he shouted and walked toward the cell door. He placed his hands on the bars and shook them fiercely. His ancestor would have been able to bend the steel in his bare hands. But each succeeding generation of the Kent family possessed less superpowers resulting in this Kent’s much limited abilities.
His daughter, Claire, would joke that she believed he still possessed a modicum of visual and auditory powers, because he seemed to always know when she was just about to get herself into trouble and chastise her.
“Claire,” her father whispered.
* * *
Smallville, Kansas
Monday,
March 14, 1994
“Clark,” Lois called out as she walked through the front door. She placed the wedding gift, along with a copy of a script she had picked up from Martha, down on the coffee table amidst a pile of presents, yet to be put away.
Clark came out of the kitchen carrying a salad. He leaned in and gave her a quick kiss. “I started dinner. How was the faculty meeting? Sorry, had to...” he explained, making a flying gesture with his hand after placing the salad bowl on the dining room table.
“It was fine. Perry just barking about having to cut back some expenses,” she informed him as she moved into his arms.
Clark leaned down and captured her lips in his once again.
Lois returned his kiss, passionately and then she pulled away. “Anything dangerous?” she asked, looking deeply into his eyes.
“A warehouse fire in Topeka.”
“And earlier?” she asked, tilting her head as she stared at him, sensing something.
“Ah, you saw that?”
“Can’t miss the red and blue,” Lois replied with a grin.
“An airplane almost crashed,” Clark explained, some hesitancy in his voice.
“You okay?” she asked, worried about him. She knew that he always berated himself when he couldn’t be everywhere at once--couldn’t solve all of the world’s problems. She reached up and stroked the side of his face. The advent of Superman had finally given him a grasp on who he was and how he could make a difference--but not even Superman could do it all.
“Yeah, fine,” he paused, kissing her fingers as they moved across his lips.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, knowing that there was something he was holding back.
“Something strange happened today. A new transfer student joined my Government class,” he said and walked away to try to formulate his next words.
“Yes, Claire Kennedy,” Lois said, puzzled. “She’s in my American Lit. Class.”
“Did you notice anything weird about her?”
“Other than she joked about being from the future, no.”
“Didn’t you notice the resemblance?” Clark asked, turning back toward his wife.
“Resemblance?”
“It wasn’t her face, exactly. I mean she didn’t really look like you. But there was something in the eyes, in her determination, in her manner. I don’t know....” He stopped suddenly, finally realizing what his wife had told him. “She said she was from the future?”
“But that’s impossible,” Lois told him.
* * *
“Nothing’s impossible, my dear,” H.G. Wells told the girl sitting across from him. “We’ll ultimately be successful. Utopia depends on us correcting these aberrations.”
Claire bit her lower lip. “I know that my father is not a Superman like the Clark Kent here. But he is a super person. He has done a lot for so many people. He was a great teacher, someone committed to the values of truth and justice, and an incredible performer. He brought joy to...to....” she said, her voice cracking.
“We’ll save him,” the writer told her gently. “*And* the world you two are so much a part of.”
Wells moved his bowler hat to one side and spread out the papers that he had been working on.
“What’s all that?” Claire asked, coming around behind him to get a better look.
“This is a genogram and this is a time line,” he explained. “The genogram delineates your family tree. As you can observe, this box shows our present Lois and Clark. Successive boxes show their son Christopher born in December of 1994; his son, Jordan Kent born in 2022; his son, Lane born in 2047; your father, Wilson Kent born in 2074 and finally you, young lady, born in 2105.
He moved over a sheet to show her the time line he had compiled, and Wells pointed to a darkened circle on the graph. “That represents 2121, when I first met you and your father,” he explained. His finger followed a line backwards and stopped at another circle. “This is now--March 14, 1994.”
Claire watched as Wells moved his finger forward along a different, yet parallel line to the first.
“This circle represents April 27, 1994, the day I first arrived in Smallville and met Martha Kent. I came to seek out Tempus before he had had an opportunity to alter the future. But I was too late, something had already happened, and when I returned to the future, everything had changed.”
Claire closed her eyes, trying desperately to remember her life as it was before the mutation. Most people living in Dystopia as the members of ENCORE called it, were slowly forgetting the utopian society that was. She couldn’t, wouldn’t allow that to happen to her.
Theatre, theatre--her passion--if she could just hold on to the lights, the costumes, the music, the scenery, the words--especially the words.
* * *
Utopia,
April,
2121
The lights at the Martha Kent Theatre changed slowly to signify that the actors were exiting the reality of the cold gray dungeon and entering a world of beauty and rose-colored light as seen only through the imagination and eyes of a madman.
Cervantes/Wil: You have accused me of being an idealist, a bad poet and an honest man. It is true I am guilty of these charges. An idealist? Well, I have never had the courage to believe in nothing. A bad poet? This comes more painfully...still...
The Governor: (Skeptically) Have you finished your defense?
Cervantes/Wil: Ah, no, scarce begun! If you’ve no objection I should like to continue in the manner I know best...in the form of a charade--
The Duke: Charade?
Cervantes/Wil: An entertainment, if you will--
The Governor: (Intrigued) Entertainment!
Cervantes/Wil: Then...with your kind permission...may I set the stage?
The Governor waved assent. The prisoners shifted position to become an audience; as Cervantes gestured to his manservant, who scurried, like a well-trained stage-manger, to assist. Music started softly under the actions of Cervantes, seated center, who began a makeup transformation as he spoke.
Cervantes/Wil: I shall impersonate a man...enter into my imagination and see him! His name is Alonso Quijana...a country squire, no longer young. Eyes that burn with the fire of inner vision. Being retired, he has much time for books. He studies them from morn to night, and often through the night as well. And all he reads oppresses him...fills him with indignation at man’s murderous ways toward man. He broods...and broods...and broods--and finally from so much brooding his brains dry up! He lays down the melancholy burden of sanity and conceives the strangest project every imagined....to become a knight-errant and sally forth into the world to right all wrongs. No longer shall he be plain Alonso Quijana...but a dauntless knight known as--Don Quixote de La Mancha!!!!
* * *
Smallville, Kansas
Monday,
March 14, 1994
“Sure, I have a copy of that,” Martha told the young voice at the other end of the line. “Come on over, Anne. I’ll pull it off the shelf.”
Martha walked over to the appropriate bookshelf as Jinx followed her and rubbed against her legs. She removed ‘Don Quixote’ and carried it to the counter. Just as she set the book down, the bell over the door jingled and two people entered. One was a young girl of about sixteen, the other an older gentleman wearing clothes dated around the end of the 19th century. Being in theatre, Martha knew costumes and she was sure these were authentic.
“Can I help you?” she asked, quizzically.
“We’re here to help *you*,” the man in the bowler explained, stoking Jinx who had come up to him. “We meet again, Jinx,” he acknowledged.
“Uncle Herbie! Get to the point.”
“Hrumph,” the man began, clearing his throat. “My name is H.G. Wells and this is Claire Kent, your great, great, great, great granddaughter.”
“And we’re going to help you enact a charade--that is, help you put on your next play,” Claire explained.
* * *
Lois picked up the script from the coffee table and began to thumb through it as she sat down on the couch.
“You’re not going to audition for the next play, are you?” Clark asked incredulously, sitting down next to her. “I thought we were going to take a break and just get to be an old married couple, sitting home nights getting to know each other,” he continued, cupping the side of her cheek and looking into her eyes.
“As if you’ll be able to sit home most nights anyway,” Lois said, smiling. “Oh, speaking of plays, my American Lit. Class gave me a wedding gift. ‘The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail: A Play’, by Lawrence and Lee.”
“Well since most of them are in my Government Class, that explains this,” he said and picked up a book off of the end table. “It’s Lawrence and Lee’s ‘Inherit the Wind--the play adaptation of the Scopes Monkey Trial, which we discussed in class three weeks ago--*my* present.”
“I guess the students have really gotten to know us and our passion for theatre.”
“Well right now my passion is headed in a different direction.” he told her as he leaned in to kiss her.
“Ready for dessert even before dinner, huh?” Lois asked smugly.
“Mmmmm,” Clark replied and began nuzzling her ear.
“Don’t you think I look like her?”
“I said I thought Claire Kennedy looks like you.”
“No, Audrey Hepburn.”
“I’m not following you,” Clark said, his mind elsewhere as he continued his trail of kisses across the back of her neck. “And you’re not even in babble mode,” he managed to get out before resuming his journey.
“Uh...uh...in the play,” she explained as she turned abruptly in an attempt to concentrate on what she was trying to tell him, and held out the script. “Your mom’s doing ‘Wait Until Dark’. I love that play and always thought I sort of looked like Audrey Hepburn. Although Audrey played the part in the movie and not on the stage.”
“Well, Audrey,” Clark said, lifting her up into his arms and moving toward the bedroom. “I don’t plan on waiting till dark.”
* * *
Dystopia
December,
2121
Wil lay down on his cot and closed his eyes. The darkness enveloped him but sleep wouldn’t come.
“Wil,” a soft voice sang out.
“Karen,” Wil Kent responded. “Are you...?” He jolted awake. It had been a long time since he had dreamed of his wife. It seemed like it had been a long time since he dreamed about anything.
* * *
Utopia
April,
2121
Karen Kent dressed in a wench’s costume and laden with things for the table she was waiting upon, walked toward center stage. She stopped, seeing a stranger gazing at her, stricken.
Don Quixote/Wil: Dear God...it is she! Sweet lady...fair virgin...I dare not gaze full upon thy countenance lest I be blinded by beauty. But I implore thee--speak once thy name.
Aldonza/Karen Kent: (Growling) Aldonza.
Don Quixote/Wil: My lady jests.
Aldonza/Karen Kent: Aldonza!
Don Quixote/Wil (Approaching her.) The name of a kitchen-scullion...or mayhap my lady’s serving-maid?
Aldonza/Karen Kent: I told you my name! Now get out of the way, or I’ll--
Don Quixote/Wil: (Smiling) Did my lady think to put me to a test? Ah, sweet sovereign of my captive heart, I shall not fail thee, for I know. (Singing)
I have dreamed thee too long.
Never seen thee or touched thee,
But known thee with all of my heart.
Half a prayer, half a song.
Thou hast always been with me,
Though we have been always apart.
Dulcinea...Dulcinea...
I see heaven when I see thee, Dulcinea,
And thy name is like a prayer an angel whispers...
Dulcinea...Dulcinea?
If I reach out to thee,
Do not tremble and shrink
From the touch of my hand on thy hair.
Let my fingers but see
Thou art warm and alive,
And no phantom to fade in the air.
Dulcinea...Dulcinea....
I have sought thee, sung thee,
Dreamed thee, Dulcinea?
Now I’ve found thee,
And the world shall know thy glory.
Dulcinea...Dulcinea!
* * *
Dystopia
December,
2121
In the darkness of the cell, Wil reached out. “Dulcinea,” he whispered.
tbc.
