This part is dedicated to both my BRs (Sas & Laswa) for being so supportive and helpful -- but especially to Laswa who is home today, sick. Get better!!!!!
From Part 5
The sound of Lois’ body hitting the floor, brought the two men up the stairs. Using super speed, Clark arrived before the older man.
“Nooooo!” Clark shouted and knelt beside her.
Alongside Lois’ outstretched hand was the amber bottle that read: Take one a day with breakfast. Dr. Tim Post.
***********
Now Part 6
“But Uncle Herbie is in time--*this* time, right?” the little boy, always a fount of questions, asked. “Nothing bad happens to her, right?”
“You know the answer,” his mother told him.
“Yes,” he said, pouting. “But sometimes maybe it will come out different.”
The young woman smiled at him. “You’re just like your father,” she told him as she saw her husband walking in with a load of firewood for the fireplace. “And,” she whispered. “I love you both.”
“Keep reading, mommy,” her son said, dodging the kiss she tried to plant on his cheek.
##########
Smallville, Kansas
Sunday,
March 20, 1994
Once again, Martha was preparing a circle of chairs to be used during an audition. But this time, Claire was helping her place scripts on each of the seats. Martha watched the girl carefully, and shook her head. Her great, great, great...well whatever number of greats...granddaughter. Could it be possible? But looking at the fifteen-year-old, she noticed something--a grace, a defiance, a genuineness--a promise of the future and a reminder of the past--a reminder of a young man searching for his own truths.
Clark had been a gift, the most remarkable of gifts. And, according to H.G. Wells and the young girl moving between the chairs, that gift was going to create a new world--unless stopped by Dr. Post. Martha didn’t need Clark to be a great man, although he was. She wanted him to be and do what was in his heart. She would have loved him if he had been a grocery clerk, a gas-station attendant or an unemployed actor. But he had become something great--a teacher imparting understanding, and the man who saved the world on an almost daily basis. Martha knew that no matter her incredulity, she had to believe Claire and be strong enough to help save Lois and Clark.
Martha picked up her clipboard. This audition was going to be different--as if any of her auditions seemed to be routine anymore. So much had happened since the beginning of this season’s presentations. How could she ever believe that any audition would be mundane again?
Let’s see, an audition that introduced the wonders of Lois Lane to her son and his family, a forced presentation by an evil and ruthless man that provided a juxtaposition between reality, or their view of it, and the stage. A resurrected corpse auditioning, a supposed murderer trying out for the role of a murderer, and now time travelers! What else?
* * *
Liz Lathrop paused from her work and reflected. In the past few weeks, her life had been ripped apart at the seams. She had finally, after years of searching, found her biological mother--a woman who was upstairs in this very hospital in a coma--a woman who had so little time left.
Liz had been informed that she had had a twin brother--a powerful man by the name of Lex Luthor, whose life had been cut short by that self-same woman who now lay almost lifeless, attached to several machines. Liz’s anger mounted. Although she had loved her adoptive mother, Rebecca, her growing up years had been hell. Brian Lathrop--a man she couldn’t bear to connect with the word father--had treated her like a leper, a pariah he wanted nothing to do with. He viewed her deformity as a punishment of some sort from God and Liz as the anti-Christ.
As the years went by and he and her mother were unable to have children of their own, Brian had vilified her. He used her as the scapegoat and the reason why he had not been a success--why their family had been relegated to the ‘wrong’ side of the tracks and why he had never been able to cash in on that elusive pot of gold he was always trying to find.
Well, she--Brian Lathrop’s little crippled adopted daughter--had found that pot of gold and *she* was going to cash in on it!
Liz went back to her work and then looked up quickly from the small spinning centrifuge that contained a minute sample of the strange red crystals, as she heard the door to the basement lab open.
The man from the future in his guise of Dr. Tim Post entered the dank, secluded room. “A bit musty for my taste,” he commented, as he removed his sunglasses. “But workable,” he said, as he scanned the room. “So, darlin’” he continued, slipping the shades into the pocket of his white coat. “How *is* the work coming?”
“Slowly,” Dr. Lathrop explained.
“That response is unacceptable,” he said to her. “Although, as the great philosopher, Mick Jagger said, ‘Time is on my side, yes it is’, I’m an avidly impatient man.”
“Well, that’s why I’m spending hours in here on a Sunday. But we do have time,” Liz insisted. “Mrs. Kent hasn’t been impregnated as yet,” she reminded him.
“Ha! So, the man of...,” he paused, realizing he almost played his ace in the hole, “passion, of decency...of uprightness hasn’t been able to...to....
“And this pleases you?”
“Duh! I do so love irony,” Tempus sneered.
“Why don’t you just eradicate one of them?” Liz asked. “Wouldn’t that be easier?”
“Easier, perhaps--but not quite as much fun. And I must have my fun. This is a profusely more ingeniously devised and insidious plan,” he assured her, smiling evilly. “I believe that the Kents conceiving a child who is apathetic, dispassionate, and phlegmatic--would be the irony to end all ironies. And then were their heir to go on and sire listless, lethargic, languid little ones--ooh the synonyms go on ad infinitum.”
“Ad nauseam, you mean,” Liz injected.
Tempus walked over to where Lex’s twin sat and put his hand under her chin, jerking her to look at him. “Don’t spar with me! It would be folly on your part! And,” he added, removing his hand to reach for his sunglasses, “Speaking of parts,” he continued as he put on his glasses and turned toward the door, “There’s a role I have to see about.”
* * *
Lois and Claire faced Martha with the scripts in their hands.
“All right,” Martha began. “Claire, you’re Gloria--a young girl who lives upstairs from Suzy and Sam who are the recently married couple who rent the basement apartment from your mother. You’re sort of a brat and you aren’t very nice to Suzy because you have a crush on Sam. You are coming into the apartment to put back the doll you stole earlier.”
Claire smiled over at Lois. “Okay,” she said.
“And Lois,” Martha said, turning to her daughter-in-law. “You’re character’s nerves are somewhat frayed. Suzy has been blind for eighteen months due to an automobile accident and her husband is forever pushing her to become as independent as possible--a sort of tough love concept,” she explained.
Lois smiled to herself. Martha saw the play the same way she did. Lois knew that her mother-in-law/director would understand the characters and see their relationship vividly.
“You go to school, studying Braille and mobility; and every day Sam gives you some kind of project to do on your own,” Martha continued. “You’re tired, irritable; and, to top it off, there has been a murder in the neighborhood and several men have already invaded your house saying that they’re the police or interested parties. They are hinting that your husband has had some kind of an affair and as a result has had something to do with the murder,” she explained. “And here comes little Gloria sneaking into the apartment as she does on occasion just to taunt you.”
Lois beamed at Claire. “Ready?” she asked.
“Uh huh,” Claire responded.
Suzy/Lois: Who is that...Mike?
Gloria/Claire: Oh, hello, Suzy.
Suzy/Lois: (Startled) Oh! It’s you, Gloria. Don’t *do* that to me! How did you get in here?
Gloria/Claire: I borrowed Mother’s key. Because when I got upstairs, I found I’d left a stick of butter in the bottom of the bag...
Suzy/Lois: (Putting out her hand) Thank you, honey.
Gloria/Claire: It’s already in the icebox. I closed the door. You can pay me tomorrow if you like. It came to four seventy-two, but you owe me thirty-five cents from last time--so if I give you thirteen....
Suzy/Lois: Don’t! No more numbers, please, I’m not a computer. Just call it quits--O.K.?
Gloria/Claire: Thanks. Bye-bye, then. (Gloria pauses) It’s none of my business but that man who was in here with Sam’s friend...
Suzy/Lois: That was a Mr. Roat...yes?... What about him?
Gloria/Claire: Is he a detective?
Suzy/Lois: (Very interested) Why?...What makes you think he is?
Gloria/Claire: Because of the lady who was murdered last night--that’s all.
“Okay ladies, I want to stop you here. It’s at this point that Suzy begins to use the psychology that Sam suggests to her earlier in the play--being positive with Gloria. In fact, it’s right now that Suzy brings Gloria in as her ally,” Martha explained. “Gloria realizes that she is being trusted, which is something new for her, and she begins to work with Suzy instead of against her. Now just follow the script’s directions as to movement, and let’s see what you can do with it.
The stage directions told Suzy to get a kitchen stool. Lois reached out into the air and felt around and finally pulled over one of the chairs.
Suzy/Lois: Look, honey, if you stand on this...can you see through the window?
Gloria/Claire: (Stepping up) I think so.
Suzy/Lois: There’s a police car outside... You see it?
Gloria/Claire: No.
Suzy/Lois: Look carefully--are you sure?
Claire mimed looking through venetian blinds.
Gloria/Claire: No police car.
Suzy/Lois: It must have gone. There was one there a few minutes ago...can you see a policeman? ....*Anywhere?*
Gloria/Claire: No.
Suzy/Lois: Or *anyone* who might be watching this house?
Gloria/Claire: Don’t think so. Not many people around. It’s been raining. Can I get down now?
Suzy/Lois: Yes of course... Oh wait a minute. When we first moved in here--Sam used to make his phone calls from a phone booth somewhere out there. I think it was near some traffic lights. Can you see a phone booth from the window?
Claire pantomimed looking harder by going up on tiptoes and straining.
Gloria/Claire: Yes, there’s one by the parking lot at the end of the street.
Suzy/Lois: Is there--a car parked anywhere near the phone booth?
Gloria/Claire: One of those Volkswagen buses...it’s right beside it.
Suzy/Lois: Anyone in it?
Gloria/Claire: I can’t see.
* * *
“I...can’t...see!” Rod Purcell told his father slowly and deliberately, emphasizing each word. “And I will *never* be able to see. Can’t we just accept it?”
“*No!*” his father shouted. “I will never accept it.”
There was a knock at Dr. Purcell’s office door.
“He’s here,” Rod’s father told his son, getting up to let the guest in. “If anyone can help you, he can.”
“No, Dad!”
“He’s flown all this way and arrived here on a Sunday for the sole purpose of examining you. You’ll comply!”
Rod shook his head sadly. Years of searching, years of chasing after something that just seemed out of reach. He knew that his father blamed himself for...for.... Rod had tried to follow his father’s wishes, but he had had enough.
Dr. Purcell opened the door to let the renown doctor in. “This is my son,” the hopeful father said to the specialist. Rod, this is Dr. Light.”
* * *
Dystopia
November
2121
Someone removed the blindfold from around the new prisoner’s face and shoved him into a cell. Before he opened his eyes, Wil Kent knew where he was. He had heard the hollow clang of the door as it was opened, and the air he inhaled was no longer pure, but thick and putrid--he was in prison.
Wil opened his eyes slowly and blinked several times while he adjusted to the light, as minimal as it was.
He scanned the area. The bare rock walls, the high window covered by an iron grate, the straw covered cot was reminiscent of the way the set designer had constructed his Spanish dungeon. But no longer in a play, he was confronted with an authenticity he could not refute. Wil turned and saw several of his compatriots being dragged off in different directions. Two guards unlocked the shackles from Wil’s hands and feet and moved out of the cell.
Wil rubbed his wrists, grateful at least that the manacles that symbolized the cessation of his freedom, had been removed. He looked around again, trying to ascertain a mode and method of escape and then turned to watch the guard as the tall gaunt man lifted a large set of keys from his leather belt and locked Wil inside.
“You’ll be...” the guard began.
“Where’s my daughter?” Wil questioned angrily.
The guard looked left and then right. “She’s run off--got clean away.”
Wil sank down on the dirt floor of his cell. “Thank you,” he whispered in prayer. “Thank you for that, at least,” he said louder with a glimpse of the anger that was locked up inside him, just as he, himself, was locked up in a prison of the new order’s making. Wil took a deep breath and centered himself. He couldn’t let his anger take over. “Please, wherever she is, please--please keep her safe,” he said gently.
* * *
Smallville, Kansas
Sunday
March 20, 1994
Claire jumped off the chair.
Suzy/Lois: How would you like to do something that’s difficult--and terribly dangerous?
Gloria/Claire: Yes!...*What?*
Suzy/Lois: Can you see that phone booth--from upstairs?
Gloria/Claire: From Mother’s bedroom--I think.
Suzy/Lois: Write down our phone number.
Gloria/Claire: I know it.
Suzy/Lois: Good. Now listen very carefully--this is difficult...go upstairs and watch that phone booth and don’t take your eyes off it. Not for a second! Now, if *anyone* from the Volkswagen goes in and makes a phone call--phone me the moment he comes out...do you understand?
Gloria/Claire: (As if it was nothing.) Sure--I understand.
Suzy/Lois: Only the Volkswagen people--and *only* after they come *out* of the phone booth.
Gloria/Claire: I’m *not* stupid.
Suzy/Lois: I know, honey. I’m just...well I’m....
Gloria/Claire: No problem.
Suzy/Lois: No, wait, I’ve a better idea. When you phone me *I won’t answer*. Just let it ring *twice*. And then hang up.
Gloria/Claire: I know. Like a signal. There’s a friend of Daddy’s who does that. Only she does it seven times.
* * *
Dystopia
November
2121
Claire heard the signal--a long soft whistle replicating the first few notes of ‘Impossible Dream’. Claire carefully looked out from behind the wooden crate that sheltered her, whistled a response and ran from her hiding spot right into the arms of Scott Purcell.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” she responded and then letting her emotions finally get the best of her, she buried her head on his Superman tee-shirt and began to cry.
Scott let her cry, stroking her hair softly, then raising her face, gently--oh, so gently kissed her.
* * *
Smallville, Kansas
Sunday
March 20, 1994
Rod Purcell had to get out of there. He couldn’t face another examination. He waited until his father and Dr. Light were thoroughly engrossed in discussion. He grabbed his cane and moved as quickly as he could out the door and headed for the high school. Maybe there, he could find some peace.
Rod walked quickly the block and a half--the 234 memorized steps from his dad’s office to Smallville High School and opened the auditorium door. He had remembered that the Smallville Players were auditioning today, and the school would be opened. He sat down in the last row and listened. Here, he felt safe.
On the stage, Rod heard the Director explaining the next scene.
Martha looked over at Dr. Post sitting with the group of regulars. “I want to welcome you once again, Dr. Post. It’s so wonderful that you would choose to join us in our little theatrical venture.” And, playing into his ego as Wells had told her to do, she added. “And I’m sure that you will provide us with a wealth of knowledge and creativity. Being just a small-town theatre group, I know we can benefit from your vast expertise. And, I promise to listen to read very shortly.”
Dan, Donald, Cindy, and Cat eyed each other. This was so unlike Martha.
Lois glanced over at her husband with a quizzical look. It was one thing to make a newcomer feel welcome, but this?
“The following is the most difficult scene of the play,” Martha explained to the group. “It takes place entirely on a dark stage--no lights at all. Suzy has created this environment because as she is blind, she will have the advantage over her attacker. Now, it is paramount that the audience understand where you are, what you are doing and what you are saying. Sometimes the facial expressions and gestures help an audience to realize dialog that may be a little fuzzy. As it is completely dark, you and the audience will have no visual aids here,” she emphasized as she looked at each of them. “You will have to use sound to your advantage. Footfalls, scraping chairs, striking matches, and clearly enunciated words are a must.”
Out in the back row, Rod Purcell sat up straight.
“In fact,” Martha went on. “For this particular production, we will be using microphones and will require the assistance of a very good sound engineer.”
“May I volunteer, Mrs. Kent,” came a voice from the darkness, as Rod walked down the aisle toward the stage. “I’d like to help.”
* * *
Dystopia
November
2121
“I’d like to help,” came a voice from the darkness, and the two young people turned to face an older man, wearing a bowler and carrying an umbrella hooked over his arm.
“Mr. Wells!” Claire exclaimed. “Scott, this is H.G. Wells, he visited me and my family earlier this year.”
“I’m so desperately sorry to hear of your mother’s fate, Claire.”
“Thank you, Mr. Wells. My father’s been taken...”
“Yes, I’ve grasped the situation. Come with me, we must push on.”
“Where?” Scott asked.
“To extricate your father, to salvage your world.”
* * *
Smallville Kansas,
Sunday
March 20, 1994
The potential cast of ‘Wait Until Dark’ turned to look at the voice that was moving toward them.
“I’m really good with sound, Mrs. Kent,” Rod explained as his cane felt for the steps and he moved slowly up onto the stage. “I guess I could also be of help to whoever you cast as Suzy--a technical advisor, sort of.”
“That would be wonderful,” Martha told the young man. “I was planning to approach you, anyway. I’m so glad *you* found us.”
* * *
Dystopia,
November
2121
“I’ve found her and I’ll take care of her,” Scott told Mr. Wells as he put his arm around Claire to protect her.
“Yes, son, I comprehend your anxiety. But Claire is required elsewhere.”
Just at that moment, three soldiers dressed in brown leather tunics, came out from the shadows. Two grabbed Scott and one went after Claire. Claire turned quickly and kneed her pursuer in the groin.
As the man bent over, Wells took his umbrella and hit him over the head. “Follow me!” Wells insisted while grabbing Claire’s hand.
“What about Scott?”
“He’ll be satisfactory, trust me. For the moment, it is imperative that we proceed at once.”
A few seconds later came the sound of an electrical whir, and steam poured out from behind a fence.
* * *
Smallville, Kansas
Sunday
March 20, 1994
The cyclotron emitted a whir and Liz Lathrop waited patiently for the outcome. She took the resultant mixture and put a miniscule portion on a slide and placed it under the microscope. She adjusted the focus and peered into the lens. She looked up and smiled.
She had succeeded in doing what Tempus had asked of her. She had created two caustic mixtures--one for the public at large, and one for Lois Lane Kent. The chemical compounds that the man from the future had provided her were unique, indeed, with properties unknown to the physician; but she had altered them into a soluble solution capable of sublimating a person’s will, drive, and innate desire to achieve.
One small flaw existed in the pill for Lois, however, which would render her permanently comatose, yet capable of carrying her child to term--a defect she would keep secret from her so-called mentor. He needn’t know everything, especially when Liz detected within him, a hidden craving for the soon to be pregnant, Lois--a craving that might necessitate Dr. Lathrop having plans of her own.
Yes, Mr. Time Traveler, she had a plan. Something else was obviously being kept secret as well--a link to the 22nd century that she wasn’t told about. How could two low-paid high school teachers sire the eventual creator of a new world? She reached into her pocket. The globe rested lifeless and quiet in her hand. And how did this fit into the puzzle?
Think, Liz! There’s some connection, some unknown quantity that the formula lacks to make it work, some unknown plot fragment. Nothing jumped out at her--nothing unraveled itself. Perhaps she *had* all the pieces. Maybe she was seeing intrigues where there were none. Possibly it was just as Tempus explained it--Lois and Clark the antecedents of a classless utopian society where power, wealth and decision-making were spread among the many, instead of delegated to the intelligent few with the capability to appropriately utilize that wealth and power. Perhaps Tempus wasn’t holding back something. Conceivably Lois and Clark were the simple beginning of what was to be. After all history and religion had painted such simple beginnings before.
Then, too, there was that simple woman who lie upstairs in her hospital bed, dying, who had bore Liz and her twin brother Lex. And, although, her brother was no longer destined for greatness; once she had his wealth, she would be. And Tempus would insure that she obtained that wealth as long as she completed the work he had given her.
Lex’s sister looked once again into the microscope and smiled. Just a few days to double check her results and to run a test or two. And, due to her work, generations of the Kent family, will become spiritually stifled, emotionally crippled, and psychologically scarred. Ah ha! Better living through Chemistry!
But *would* it be the result of the chemically induced mutations she had created in her basement lab; or would it be the environmental lack of love and nurture caused by a mother eternally asleep and a devastated father whose energies would be lost to his family, friends and community? The old nature versus nurture controversy. How fitting.
Liz Lathrop thought back on her own life. Was she now sitting in this laboratory chuckling over the plight of Mr. and Mrs. Goody Two Shoes--Lois and Clark, because she was part of a divided bad seed--Lex and Liz, the antipodal Bobbsey Twins? Or was her conditioning by the abuse of a sadistic, defeated, adoptive father what made her what she was, what she had become? Nature vs. nurture--a question for the ages. A question that only time might one day completely answer.
She looked at the globe again. Maybe time would answer all the riddles.
* * *
Somewhere in the
space/time continuum
H.G. Wells regarded his young passenger, who sat so still and quiet, in the seat next to him. “Your father has been imprisoned. But trust me. Nothing horrendous will happen to him for another month. This...this...chaotic world that that monster--that fiend--has created may be vile, and, indeed, barbaric. But it does have some rules. And remember one thing, we *will save him* because we have all the time in the world at our disposal,” he explained gesturing around him. “And, as Thomas Edison said, ‘There is time for everything’--and we will use that time to get you installed into the Smallville, Kansas community of 1994.
Claire looked over at the strange man at the controls of the machine. Her father had trusted him when he first appeared on the scene. She knew that she had to as well. Mr. Wells--no, she was to call him Uncle Herbie, now--had told her that she would have to portray the part of a lifetime because so much was depending on it. Well, she did come from a family of actors--incredible actors. She sat up proudly in her seat. She wouldn’t let any of them down. Claire thought about their family saying: Theatre is more than brick and mortar, it’s drama, passion, mystery, comedy and life. And she had a life to protect--many lives.
* * *
Smallville, Kansas
Sunday,
March 20, 1994
So, having been piloted to the past by Wells, introduced and fully ensconced into her part to where she was accepted by the other characters in the ‘play’, Claire watched the actors as they listened to their director. Martha was something very special, Claire realized. Yes, the family stories had not simply been hyperbole, they had been based on truth.
The young visitor from the 22nd century glanced over at Lois and Clark. According to Wells and to her parents, those two wonderful people had established Utopia--Elysium--her world. They were the actors who played--no! No theatre analogies. They were simply incredible human beings who embraced love, truth and justice and gave those feelings to the world.
Clark took Lois’ hand and moving it to his lips, kissed it. He then glanced over at the teenager who was staring at them. “You really don’t see it, do you?” he whispered to his wife. “She’s you! When the two of you were up there reading that scene, it was like watching a holon unfold.”
“Okay,” Lois said looking at Claire then back at him. “What’s a holon, smarty?”
“Arthur Koestler invented the word to describe a whole singularly unique entity which at the same time is a part of everything else,” Clark explained.
“Uh huh,” Lois said.
“The word doesn’t matter,” Clark told her. “I just have this..this feeling that she’s part of us--a very important part.”
tbc
