Waking ten hours later, I felt much better. I wriggled out of Perry's sleeping embrace and went to the washroom. By the time I'd finished my morning ablutions, he was up and around. It was Sunday, and we could sleep in – despite the need for constant hard work, we humans knew the necessity of a day off every week. Perry, I knew, had arranged matters at the Daily Planet with his capable deputy, Sam Foswell. In fact, Sam had been filling in for Perry a lot lately, although Perry had led Sam to believe that it was due to Perry courting me, which wasn't exactly a lie.

After pouring us some tea, Perry opened the discussion. "Should we?"

I loved him for that we. There was no you – it was all we.

"I don't know," I said, getting up and pacing. "It's downright creepy."

Perry played devil's advocate. "Creepy? No worse than what you went through before." I'd told him about my experiences with Zod and Brainiac bit by bit over the last months. "They changed you then."

Not wanting to remember that painful time, I protested emphatically. "Yes. But I didn't ask for it. I didn't choose it."

"So what are your options now? What are your choices?" Perry was very good about cutting through the B.S. He started talking, not waiting for me. "You're still a half… um, owner of the Fortress. That's not going to go away."

"I know." I did know.

"I have to say, I was really impressed by this scheme of replacing the whole Earth. You don't think small. It's bold, it's daring, and it's decisive. It's very Martha." He smiled into my uncertainty.

"It was your idea."

"It doesn't matter. You're doing it."

"And Clark too."

"Of course. But you're right there." Perry drew in a breath. "So, do you want to quit now? Leave the job with only two Hawaiian islands restored?"

"No." People had said that Jonathan was stubborn, but they didn't know that I had a less-well-publicized core of perseverance. Clark knew, of course. Perry knew too.

"Maybe you want to put this plan on hiatus for awhile and use the Fortress for something else."

What else could I use it for? Having the Fortress frightened me. I had to use it for grand gestures. Using it for personal gain or for tiny, fearful changes seemed wrong. I'd been accustomed to limiting my outlook the past three years – 'just get through today' had been my motto. Then we'd defeated the Kryptonian invaders, and I still thought day-to-day. It wasn't till after I'd been healed that I dared think more than one day ahead, dared to hope. I realized now that with that limited thinking, the Kryptonians were still winning, even after we had defeated them.

"You could ignore the Fortress. Just turn your back on it and walk away."

"I couldn't strand Clark here, not when he has a chance of going home."

"Why don't you send him home and then ignore the Fortress?"

"Because he won't go till the job is done." To me that was obvious; maybe not so much to Perry.

"So, Martha, you're basically saying you have to do the job."

"I guess I knew that, underneath. I just didn't want to face it."

"The only question is, will you do it slow or fast? The human way or the… enhanced human way?"

"It's not just me, you know. What about you?"

"Martha, I wouldn't let you go through this alone," Perry said seriously. What had I ever done to deserve this man? Tears rose to my eyes as he said, "I'll stand by you."

"Aren't you afraid?" I asked him directly.

He looked away. "Yes."

"I'm afraid too."

Perry advanced to me, and took me in his arms. "I ask myself, will we still be human?" He held me for a few minutes. "But, you know, Martha, hardly anyone that survived is truly human. There are a lot of metas out there. So maybe we'll have to redefine human." He hugged me. "I think we'll still be the same people, the same personalities afterwards, just a little different.

"That is," I had to smile, "inexact talk from a newspaperman."

"You know what I mean." He chuckled too. "I guess what it comes down to is, do you trust Clark?"

I considered. "Yes… you know, it's so weird. If you'd asked me that question last year there's no way I would have said yes. I wanted to have him killed. Now I'm – we're going against the duly elected authority in this country to work with him and you know, do these crazy things."

"My life has been crazy since I met you, Martha." Perry held me tighter. "And despite everything, these have been the best months of my life."

"I love you," I said.

"You too." There was a moment of silence, and then Perry said, "So, we're going to do it, then?"

"Be re-made by the Fortress… yes."

"Now?"

Listening to my stomach, I shook my head. "After breakfast."

"Do you want breakfast at the Fortress?"

"I'd rather eat with you here. Even though breakfast at the Fortress might have better food."

"Those molecular replicators are pretty helpful for stuff like that," Perry joked, letting me go.

"I know. I think Clark has been having the Fortress make up preserved food and he slips it into the storerooms. Or he brings it to the base openly and says he found it foraging. Which, when you think about it, is basically true."

"Technology like that…" Perry looked covetous for a minute.

"But what you said before is true, Perry. It's not our technology. Copying it would be wrong. That would be cheating. We have to develop it on our own." I felt strongly about this. "At least Bernie Klein is getting some ideas."

"Wait till he finds he needs helium-three for a power source."

"That's a little hard for the average person to get."

"I'm betting on Bernie. He'll come up with something."

With a chuckle, we separated. After Perry did his morning routine, we shared a quiet breakfast. Then we took the portal back to the Fortress. Perry and I didn't look at each other. We had agreed, but taking the first steps to be… changed... was scary.

Clark was still there, looking a little tired. Bernie was absent. Clark didn't look tired very often. I wondered if his fatigue came from constant exposure to Bernie's unending rush of new ideas.

"Where's Bernie?"

"I took him back home," Clark explained.

"Did he have any new ideas? Were you checking out new worlds? I know that's painful for you."

"I'm all right," Clark said shortly. "How about you?"

I looked at Perry, he looked back at me. I shrugged. "Ready to go ahead."

"I didn't hear you add 'with this crazy idea'," Clark teased, more like his old self.

"My life has been crazy since – " I stopped. Since your race invaded my planet. By his expression, Clark heard what I wasn't saying. "This is just another day's work."

Perry managed not to guffaw, but his expression said it all.

"What we came here to tell you, Clark, is that we're ready to go ahead with what Jor-El said." I was proud for keeping the tremble out of my voice.

He broke into a gratified – and tired – smile. "Thank you. I didn't want to say anything, but I'm glad you're doing this. It means a lot to me." Our eyes met, and I saw the deep gratitude he couldn't say. He, more than anyone, would know how afraid I was about Kryptonian technology changing me, and how much it had cost me to agree to this.

I nodded. "OK, let's go ahead with it." I wanted to get it over with, before I started having waking nightmares.

The avatar appeared. "Very well, Martha Kent," Jor-El said. "If you will be pleased to stand here…" A light stabbed down, illuminating a particular patch of Fortress floor.

"Can Perry and I go together?" I wanted to hold him, to feel his solidity.

"There is no contraindication." Jor-El's tones were even. The light patch grew a little wider.

I looked at Perry. He looked back at me. I took his hand, and together, we walked over to the spot. My heart beat quickly. I was afraid. Would this hurt as much as the pain I'd felt when Brainiac had… adjusted me? Would I be damaged, as I had been after Brainiac's attentions? And, despite what Perry had said, I wondered: Would I still be human?

We stood together in the light, embracing. I waited till my heart slowed, and then whispered to Perry, "Are you set?" He nodded. I turned my head to address Jor-El. "We're ready."

The changing ray stabbed down. With relief, I realized it didn't hurt – there was no pain, only a feeling of warmth that started at my feet and moved upward. What I could see of Perry's body glowed a deep red, and I wondered what he saw when he looked at me. I still felt his arm around me, and I was comforted.

The warmth reached the top of my head. There was a moment where I stood, warm throughout, and then the changing ray switched off. We stood once again in the Fortress, outwardly unchanged.

I stepped out of Perry's grip, and addressed a concerned-looking Clark. "That wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be."

"I'm glad." Clark looked relieved. Was he, perhaps, not quite so sure about things, either?

"I'm hungry," Perry said, surprise in his tone. When he said it, I realized I was starving too.

"This is an expected effect of the transformation," Jor-El said pedantically. "Food has been provided." The avatar gestured at our table, where another breakfast waited. We sat down and tucked in. I put away more food than I had thought possible, and felt a little qualm of anxiety. If I needed to eat like this now… well, given the situation on Earth, it was a bad time to be needing more food.

Clark ate with us, with as much appetite. "What did you do?" I asked him.

"Well, after you two left, Bernie woke up, and he and Jor-El spent some time discussing various quirks in the application of the theory. They pulled me into some of the discussions – not that I was much help." He paused to take another bite. I wished we had fresh fruit, but the Fortress could only duplicate what we'd brought into it and passed through its replicator beam. My mouth watered for the bygone variety that had been so easily obtainable in pre-Invasion Metropolis – the sweetness of mangos and strawberries, the tart pucker of cranberries, all the wonderful colors and textures of citrus and melons and peaches and plums and grapes and pineapple and… I deliberately turned my mind away. I was lucky to have something to eat at all. I'd seen the truth of that way too often in the past few years.

But that gave me inspiration. We needed more farms and farmers first thing. And that reminded me of something… "The seed bank," I exclaimed, my fork halfway to my mouth.

The men looked at me. "When we go ahead with the Big Plan," I said, hoping they could hear the capital letters in my voice, "one of the things we have to save is the seed bank. I think it's somewhere in Norway. There are seeds of all sorts – varieties, hybrids, wild seed, obscure seed – you name it, it's there."

Perry frowned. "I remember reading something about that. I think they deliberately put it in the Arctic so that even with a power outage, the permafrost would keep the seeds cold." He looked at me. "Do you remember where it was?"

"Spitsbergen, Norway," said Clark. "You're right, Martha. That seed bank is generations of work." He cast a sober glance at Perry and me. "Now that you mention it, what else should we save? You two are the ones that'll have to do it, you know. Although I'm a farmer's son, your Earth is different than mine."

"Good question, Clark," Perry answered. "What do we want to save, Martha?"

It was another flabbergasting question of great import. It was too big to think of all at once, so…. "Well, I think we can agree that the nuked cities will all have to go. Not much to be salvaged there." I caught a look of pain in Clark's eyes as he nodded slowly.

"There are several areas where Zod or the other two used their heat vision – enough so that it's like the area was nuked, except there's no fallout," I said softly, thinking of Jonathan's death and what had happened to Smallville. I met Clark's eyes and I knew he was thinking the same thing.

"You mean like Moscow and Beijing?" Perry asked.

"Uh, yeah." Putting Smallville in that company would have been petty. But Smallville was mine, darn it. Clark didn't want to talk about Smallville either, I saw.

"Well, here's my opinion," Perry said, glancing at us. "We have a small population in a large country. Clark's going to be gone. Communications will be difficult. We've lost our tech base, and we can cannibalize only for so long."

"I'll make sure all the comm satellites are in tip-top shape before I go, Perry," Clark assured him.

"Thanks. But I think, Martha, that we should focus on some infrastructure – roads, bridges, that sort of thing. At least here in North America."

"That sort of thing needs regular maintenance," I pointed out.

"Very true. And we won't have the manpower to keep up. But even if the roads crumble, at least we'll keep the grading and the rights of way. The bridges – well, all we can do is all we can do." Perry asked Clark sardonically, "You wouldn't want to slap a coat of paint on the hundred most important bridges before you go, would you?"

Clark smiled sadly. "I know. If we do this – "

"When we do this," I corrected.

"When we do this, humanity is going to lose a lot."

"Lose a lot of nuked cities and trashed environments," I said harshly.

"OK, Martha, maybe we are replacing slums with virgin land, but we're losing all the leftovers of a technological civilization. Which we have been mining over the past few years to stay alive." Perry reminded us of the recent past.

"I guess Perry and I will have to think hard, then." I had to smile to Clark. "I was never one of those survivalists who sat down and figured out all this ahead of time."

"No," Clark said seriously. "You're not a survivalist. You're a survivor."

There was a moment of silence before Perry said, "I have one suggestion, at least. What you said about the seed bank, Martha?" At my nod, he went on. "There's a warehouse in Metropolis that's a clearing house for machine tools – old, new, simple, complex, you name it. They've got everything there from 1950's lathes to the latest in CNC tooling. Over a million square feet of milling machines, routers, you name it. Plus all the tools you need to work with the tools, plus the sets of standard weights and measures."

"And?" I didn't understand.

"Martha, you need tools to make tools. If we keep Metropolis Machine Tool Auction, that'll be one piece of the puzzle." Perry took a sip of his drink. "Plus, let's not get too maudlin here. Bernie will have all sorts of ideas, and it's not like the people who survived aren't smart. They'll come up with new technology, new ways of doing things. And if they've survived this long, they'll be able to survive now that the climate is back to normal and the world isn't…"

"Pauperized? Denuded of plants and animals?" Clark said bitterly. "Oh, by the way, don't forget to put domestic animals on that list you're making. All the breeds of cattle, and dogs, and sheep and chickens…"

How had I forgotten that? I'd lived on a farm. I knew how important domestic animals were. They turned food we couldn't eat (like forage and hay) into food we could eat (like eggs and beef.) I'd bring that up with Perry later.

"Yes." Perry obviously had no clue about farm animals. Oh well, he was a city boy.

"This is a fairly depressing topic. Let's get off it," I said briskly. "Perry and I will speak with Jor-El. Maybe he'll have some insight about what to keep and what to let go."

"Yeah, considering where he's from," Clark said even more bitterly. "At least your world is still there to save. Not like Krypton."

"I'm sorry. I hadn't meant it like that." I really hadn't. "All I meant, was that maybe he could use his AI knowledge, or… " I trailed off.

"One thing, Clark," Perry said. "Didn't you say that the AI could pinpoint the location of every human on this planet?"

"Yes."

"Aren't most of them in North America?"

"Yes."

"But are there any singleton survivors? Like that guy you got from France? If we go around changing… the environment, won't that affect them? I'm assuming that any survivors would have to be scavenging from the dead cities."

"Not necessarily," Clark said, his eyes narrowed.

"But likely," Perry persisted.

"Yes."

"We need to ask the AI about that. And if there are lone survivors, you have to go and offer them a chance to come to Metropolis, or at least to some group over here. Being the only one left when the world changes has got to be frightening."

"It is," Clark said quietly. That stopped the conversation for a minute.

I brought up a topic which Clark had avoided, but which I thought was perhaps the most important.

"Clark… we have to decide what happens to the Fortress after we… fix things and you go home."

"It'll be your Fortress, Martha. I couldn't think of a better person."

"No!" My denial came instinctively. "I shouldn't have this power. No human being should have this power. I'd be as much a target as you are now, Clark, without your invulnerability."

"I'm sure the Fortress could work out something to protect you."

"You're not getting it, Clark. I don't want that burden." I smiled thinly. "You know… 'power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely'. You think I'm a good person, Clark. But would I be, after years of having this?" I gestured around at the alien structure. "Wouldn't I be tempted to use it to make things better? At least for me and my friends? No, it's a slippery slope. The only way to win is not to get into the game."

"I hate to tell you, Martha, but you're already in the game."

"I want to get out. As soon as you get home, I want the Fortress to self-destruct."

The bald statement produced silence.

Perry nodded slowly. "I'm assuming you want us out of here before it self-destructs, Martha?"

"Um, yeah," I said sheepishly.

"We'll have to work in some sort of delay, then…" I saw Perry's mind racing through scenarios. "What does Jor-El think? He's the one being destroyed."

I felt a frisson of unease. Did our control of the Fortress extend so far?

"Why don't you ask him?" Clark said dryly. His gaze turned inward and I sensed a message through the rudimentary telepathic connection we shared now, even when not linked through the AI.

The avatar appeared at our table. "You have chosen a wise path, Martha Kent," Jor-El said. "Should you maintain control of an extant Fortress, analyses of possible future outcomes indicate a seventy-seven percent chance that you will be assassinated in the first twelve months after Kal-El departs." The AI looked at Perry. "Due to his close companionship with you, there is a ninety-five percent probability that Perry White will be killed as well. These figures are estimates for the first twelve months only."

"Can you extrapolate further out?" I asked, mouth dry.

"The probability of your deaths approaches totality within twenty-four months, if expected trends and human actions remain as projected."

"What would happen then?" Perry asked curiously. Clark, I noticed, had paled.

"The Fortress would separate into its constituent elements and await the coming of another member of the House of El."

"It would be a long time waiting," I muttered.

"But what about the elements?" Clark asked. I remembered those irregularly shaped crystals that had merged to form the "S" shield, and in merging, had caused the Fortress to erupt from the Arctic ice.

"The elements would still be on Earth, and could be combined again. Should they be combined, the Fortress would be re-instantiated." Jor-El's voice contained even less expression than usual.

"Wouldn't that require a member of the House of El?" Perry asked.

Clark broke in. "Yes, supposedly, but I've learned never to underestimate people. They'd work out some way to bypass that, I'm sure. Especially given the stakes involved. Martha, don't you think Lex would put everything he has onto that?"

"Yes." If anyone could figure out how to bypass the Fortress's fail-safes, it would be Lex. And Lex Luthor in control of all this power… Frightening.

"The probability is low but not nullity," the AI conceded.

"And then you wouldn't be here to deal with it," I said to Clark. "We have to close the door, cut off the options. When you go, the Fortress has to go, too. No offense, Jor-El."

"None taken, Martha Kent," the AI replied coolly.

"You're OK with self-destructing?" Perry asked Jor-El straight out. I knew him. He wanted to be sure. He didn't mind being blunt. It came from interviewing politicians.

"This intelligence is not biological and does not have the biological imperative to life. Without the presence of Kal-El or another member of the House of El on this world, my purpose is vitiated. Destruction of the Fortress to prevent its misappropriation is a logical corollary to the current plan."

Jor-El's calm acceptance of suicide quieted us for a moment. I felt sorry. I had feared the Fortress, but just like Clark, once I had gotten to know Jor-El – even if the AI was only a personality copy of the original – I had grown to like him.

"Well, then…" Clark said.

"It looks like we have a lot to plan," I said. "Perry and I will discuss what to keep and what to let go. You know, Perry, we haven't even talked about art treasures and world heritage sites yet. Libraries. Museums. I'm getting tired just thinking about it." Perry grinned. I kept on talking. "Clark, you go around and check on lone survivors. And talk with Dr. Klein if you have to. And, one last thing."

"What?" Clark asked.

"Pack your bags, because you're going home."

The tentative smile on his lips was my reward.