Chapter Three - Times Change

"So, Doctor, could you help me find this Clark Kent?" asked Jimmy Olsen hopefully. "Or my Clark Kent, come to that."

"Not my problem," said The Doctor, fiddling with the Tardis controls, readying it for take-off. "Probably not even my reality."

"But I've got to find him," pleaded Jimmy.

"Couldn't you just build another one of those transporter devices?" asked Rose, confused by the fictional character's predicament.

"But I didn't build it," explained Jimmy. "It was Tempus."

Suddenly the cavernous interior of the Tardis was filled with noise, as the column at the center of the vehicle's control console started churning up and down.

"Although it was based on a design by HG Wells," continued Jimmy over the din.

Suddenly The Doctor flicked a switch and the Tardis grew silent.

"HG Wells you say?"

Jimmy nodded, wondering why The Doctor would be interested.

A look of concern crossed over The Doctor's face. "I knew I should never have had those chats with him."

"You chatted with HG Wells?" queried Rose.

"He was doing research for a book. He was really interested. What harm could it do?"

"But my HG Wells was from my world," interrupted Jimmy, "not from yours."

"How do you know that?" asked The Doctor. "I told him about traveling between realities as well as traveling between time. Worst of all I told him how."

"So this is all your fault," summarized Rose with a smile.

The Doctor ignored her and turned his attention back to Jimmy. "Finding the Clark Kent who got stuck in an exploding time machine won't be easy. Finding yours however is just a matter of retracing your steps."

"You can do that?" asked Jimmy disbelievingly.

"Should be able to with a little recalibration of The Tardis here and there. Your journey here will have left the usual particle tracks for us to follow back."

"Particle tracks?" asked Jimmy.

"Tachyons, anti-tachyons and … well the others won't get named until the thirtieth century and I'd hate to spoil the surprise. So, Jimmy, where was your last stop before reaching here?"

"Smallville," replied Jimmy.

"Well that's our first port of call," said The Doctor cheerfully and then started pulling panels away from the control console ready to make the necessary adjustments.

"Great," moaned Jimmy. "I can tell everybody I lost their Clark."


Meanwhile, in a future Smallville, Clark sped through the pounding rain to reach the Kent farm, but as he approached it he saw to his horror that it had been burnt to the ground. A millisecond later he was walking amongst the ruins of the only home he remembered, wondering how all of this could have happened. There was only one answer. It was his fault. It was all his fault. They'd always been there for him, but he hadn't been there for them, when it mattered most.

But this was only a building. It was the people who lived there that mattered most. Where were they? And then he remembered the words of the mutant girl he'd met earlier - they're all out stoned in a field somewhere - and then he remembered a vision he'd had once, and then, without even realizing it, he found himself standing in the cemetery surrounded by gravestones, and there, in the center of a circle of gravestones, he read the names upon them, the same names he'd read in the vision - Jonathan Kent, Martha Kent, Peter Ross, Chloe Sullivan and Lana Lang. He always knew deep down inside that he'd outlive them all, but it wasn't meant to be like this.

"No!" he screamed, "No!", followed by a final scream of "No!" that was heard all through Smallville.


Rose Tyler sat on the ground, bored, bouncing a ball against one of the Tardis' interior walls, as The Doctor whistled away while dabbling with The Tardis' inner workings.

She looked at Jimmy, and then realized why she hadn't recognized him sooner. "You're the original Jimmy," she exclaimed.

"No, I'm not," replied Jimmy coldly.

"No, in my reality you got replaced by a younger actor."

"He's the original Jimmy," replied Jimmy Olsen.

"No, what I'm saying is -" started Rose.

"I know what you're saying," interrupted Jimmy, "but I've been to your reality before. I thought, after all that searching, that I was finally home, I thought I'd finally found Clark, but when I started to talk to him he kept calling me Michael and telling me that I wasn't in the show anymore and to just get over it. Of course I kept telling them I was really Jimmy Olsen but they all just gave me funny looks, and then I noticed the cameras everywhere and realized what was going on."

"So you understand what I meant about you being the original Jimmy Olsen."

"Yeah, but I've been to that reality with the other Jimmy too. Even managed to lose Tempus' diary there."

"Excuse me for asking," asked Rose, confused by Jimmy's story, " but who is that guy Tempus anyway."

"He was a villain from the future. He tried to kill Superman by traveling to the past to kill him as a baby. Of course Superman had the last laugh by trapping Tempus in 1866. Well, he would have had the last laugh, except that Tempus escaped and, before he returned to the future, he did a few things that created a separate time line."

"Like what?" asked a curious Rose.

"Well he fathered some children, and furnished his descendents with the knowledge to destroy Superman."

"And you're trying to stop them," concluded Rose.

"I'm one of them," replied Jimmy. "Tempus was my great-great-grandfather."