News traveled far faster these days than it had when he was in the business, Clark reasoned from his vantage point high atop the Brooklyn Bridge. Back in the 40s, news would take hours to circle from one side of the world to the other – it was more than easy for him to fly from China to New York and arrive back at the paper with plenty of time to spare before the events he'd seen or been involved in had arrived there. Nowadays, though, with satellites, fiber-optic cable and the Internet running all across the world, information could be communicated across the face of the Earth in a fraction of the time it would take him to fly that distance – and he could still fly pretty fast when he wanted to.
It's like something Brainiac would have cooked up, he thought about the information revolution which had seized the planet in his absence from the public eye. Webs of information, almost infinite quantities of it, being beamed and shot across the planet. Anyone can be connected to it from anywhere. People depend on it for their lives. And without it, the world would crumble. It was amazing to him, how quickly things could change so drastically. He'd know what was going on, of course, years before he ever decided to put the red-and-blue back on; he did watch TV, after all, and he listened to the radio with religious fervor. But his knowledge of these changes weren't restricted only to his own electronics. He'd heard plenty of conversations – thousands, even in the small town of Walker – where people talked on their cell phones, discussed video games, talked about the things they had bought on the Internet.
The biggest difference, though, was the way things looked. Back when he ahd been growing up in the country, young Clark had often climbed up to the top of the silo and gazed out across the landscape. Several miles away lay the only radio transmitter in town, home of Smallville's only radio station, and Clark had loved to climb up there and watch the radio pulses flashing from it, growing brighter and dimmer dozens of times a second along with the music. In time, he'd even learned how to figure out what people were saying over it, just by comparing the patterns of flashes coming off of it with the words coming out of his radio. But that was back seventy years earlier, when the world – especially smalltown America – had been a very different place.
Upon coming to the city, he'd found himself bombarded by radio signals seeming to come from every block in town. Deciphering the transmissions back home had been simple; there was just one source, and it projected clear and true. In New York, though, there were so many frequencies bouncing off walls and asphalt that they were mixing together into colors and patterns that just seemed like jibberish, at first. With time, he'd managed to make some headway against it, eventually learning how to read the different signals and separate them from one another the way a child learns to separate letters and words into sentences.
But all that was nothing compared to the present day. If Smallville had been a man with a flashlight blinking on and off, then New York sixty years before had been the fireworks on the Fourth of July – but the modern metropolis was the night sky, a million stars glimmering in the darkness all at once. Trying to make any sense of it would have been as futile for him as trying to move the sun – and even with his immense strength, even he couldn't do that. Cell phones, radio antennas, TV stations, satellite transmissions, radar dishes – each and every one of them blasting beams of energy into the air that only he could see. It was taking some getting used to.
And they'd been especially busy, as of late. Word had already spread across the globe about his return, the man who'd been called the greatest hero of all time coming out of nowhere. People wanted answers, and the news was full of people without them. Where had he been? Where were his allies, his enemies? Would his return summon forth a new wave of super-heroes, as had happened the first time? What had prompted him, after all these years away, to return? Everyone had something to say about it. Some people blasted him as a relic of a long-lost age, as antiquated and pointless in this modern age as a Model T in the Indy 500. Others heralded his return as a resurgence of the values of earlier, the morality of a purer, cleaner, more Rockwellian America. But what they never knew was that Rockwell hadn't been painting reality any more than a comic book artist; his iconic works of an America that everyone assumed had never existed had never truly existed. There had never been one country, united and idyllic as everyone thought there was. Even back in the "golden age," as more than one person had called it, things were never as clean as they seemed with the distance of generations and years. Women swore and men beat their wives; children vandalized and destroyed property; good men killed sometimes, and bad man did worse. But everyone else had forgotten about all that.
Everyone except Superman.
So, half a century later, Superman didn't want to usher in a new "era of values" as many of the politicians were now prattling on about. He didn't want to preach to the people of the nation; that was hardly his place, no matter what planet he came from. He was there, just as he always had been, to help those in need. To save those who needed saving and protect those who needed protecting. To fight for truth, justice, and the American Way.
But as word of his triumphant return spread across the globe, Clark's thoughts drifted back to a thought that he'd had more than once in his life. He wondered if maybe, there was something greater he was supposed to be doing with his powers. Of course, he'd never stop saving people, but he wondered if maybe he could be something greater than just a man in a leotard to them. Maybe, just maybe, he could bring them something that they really needed.
Hope.
Of course, he had brought hope before; but that had been a different time, a time of miracles and dreams. Back when he'd first appeared, it was the dawn of a new era for America; a world where anything could happen, where dreams came alive. A world where people believed a man could fly.
But that had been a long time ago, and while he'd been gone, something had happened. The world had kept moving, but that sense of wonder had begun to slip away. Too many things kept happening that chipped away at the old ways, leaving an increasingly cynical and pessimistic America where the bright one had once stood. The nation was bigger and richer than it had been in ages, but it had lost that sense of marvel. Perhaps that was why he and all the other heroes of his time had been relegated to legend, Clark mused. Maybe people these days just couldn't believe anymore.
But maybe if they could see it, hear it, get a taste of that old sense of amazement at what humanity and the universe could do, maybe there would be a chance to turn things around. It wasn't something you could do with money, or political power. What the nation – the world – needed was someone to trust, someone to look up to and believe in. A man that they believe could fly.
As a younger man, Superman doubted he would have been up to the challenge. For all his desire to help, for his unconquerable will, he still was just a young man, dealing with a young man's desires and a young man's problems. He didn't want to be to be seen; to do so would only place those he loved in danger. Besides, there were plenty of other people they could look up to directly; so long as the people of New York and America knew that Superman was watching over them, he didn't much care if they didn't get to know anything about him. But now…there wasn't anybody else to look up to. Just surgically altered movie stars, drug-popping athletes, and corrupt politicians.
And him.
But he was ready now. He was older, wiser, ready to put himself out there and let himself be seen. There was no secret identity left to cover, no wife or parents or best pal to watch out for. Just him. And a whole country that needed him. He was ready.
At least, he prayed that he was.
He wasn't sure how the best way to announce his message would be; all he knew was he needed to get it out to as many people as he could. He needed to be seen for it to work, and that meant confronting the cameras. He could, of course, go to the trouble of announcing a press conference ahead of time at some specific location, give the networks time to get all their camera crews and things set up ahead of time. But then they'd have the advantage, not him. Besides, Superman was never good with those sort of pre-arranged press events, especially with himself in the spotlight. He'd learned long ago that it was best to get the unpleasant things in life over with quick – that way, you spent less time worrying about them and more time enjoying life.
So, after a 30-second pit stop at the offices of the New York Daily News (despite the years, he still had an affection for the paper he'd once worked at), he slowly flew down to the intersection of Broadway and 42nd street. Times Square – center of the universe, as it broadly proclaimed. Superman had never seen the true center of the universe; he'd known men and women who had, whose exploits beyond this Earth made his life look like that of a traveling salesman, but he'd never seen it with his own two eyes. He wondered if it could be much more impressive than this. Superman slowly looped around above the streets below, listening in on the thousands of excited people watching him from the ground. He could hear the click of hundreds of camera shutters as tourists from all across the country snapped his picture, hear the murmers between people as they all asked a variation on the same question: what is he doing?
Superman glanced down the blocks to see camera crews shoving through the crowds from the network buildings right on the square, as well as reporters from network vans parked hastily along the roadside just beyond Times Square. Most of the police were too busy watching him to notice any parking infractions. He also saw even more thousands of people quickly streaming down the blocks towards the square, hoping to get a glimpse of him.
If I don't do it soon, there's gonna be a panic. Better get this over with; there's enough people here.
Superman dropped to the ground on one of the islands separating the streets, and instantly found himself surrounded by a wall of people on every side of him. They didn't close in on him, as he'd half-expected; rather; they held back a few feet, eyes wide with shock – and even a bit of fear. Clark, for the hundredth time that day, remembered why he needed to do this. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and began.
"I have a few words I'd like to say today."
The crowd went silent, and he continued.
"First of all, I'd like to apologize for my lengthy absence. I know it's been a long time; I know that most of you watching this have grown up in my absence, believing me to be a myth. The stuff of fairy tales. And that's part of the reason I've returned."
"I spent over fifty years away from this life, attending to other things. And in that time, I learned a lot – both about myself, and the world. But during my time away, things changed. Now, change is not a bad thing, in and of itself. Often times, it is a positive force. But this change was one that saddened me. It was the loss of hope out there in the world. Hope, I always believed, is the most powerful weapon humanity has to fight off the darkness; it's what makes us get up and fight when things can't seem any worse, what makes us challenge the way things are in order to fight for a better tomorrow. This country was founded on the idea of hope, hope that a free people could build a better society. And that hope is something that's been lacking lately, it's seemed."
"So today, I'm here to say that I want to change that. I know that no one man – not even a superman – can change the state of mind of an entire nation. It will take time, and it will take a little bit from all of us. But I'm here to say, I intend to start doing my part again. Hopefully, others will do their part as well. As such, I am effectively announcing my unretirement - plain and simply, I'm back. I can't be everywhere, and I can't do everything, but I'm going to be doing the best I can to help people in need and fight for truth, justice and the American Way again. And maybe – if everything goes as I'd like – I'll be able to bring a bit more hope into our world."
"Thank you."
And without another word, Superman kicked off into the sky, leaving the crowds far below to wonder.