Chapter Five - Brownian Motion

"Martha will be here soon," explained Jonathan as Jimmy, Rose and The Doctor stood there waiting to impart their bad news.

Even though this was his third visit to this reality, Jimmy was pretty sure he hadn't encountered this Jonathan Kent before. He'd have definitely remembered Bo or Luke Duke being Clark's father. While he waited for Martha to turn up, he started to wonder if she'd turn out to be Daisy Duke - no, that would be wrong in oh so many ways.

Just before his mind started wondering if Boss Hogg would be Lex Luthor, Martha Kent made her entrance. He recognized her instantly, he'd even seen her at Clark's wedding back in the future that might no longer be. Of course when he'd seen her then he'd just assumed she was who she was when he'd met her in a previous reality, Lana Lang. But now it turned out that Lana Lang was Clark Kent's mother - that was wrong in even more ways than Daisy Duke.

As The Doctor explained things to the Kents, kindly taking responsibility for something that was all Jimmy's fault, Jimmy looked at the Kents' faces - he'd expected them to have trouble believing this unbelievable tale, but raising Clark had obviously conditioned them to expect the unexpected.

"Isn't there anything you can do?" asked Jonathan.

"No, there's only one man who could track him down now. Someone who knows all about time and space. I got in touch with him on my way here. He's going back to the scene of Clark's disappearance, see what he can find."

This was the first Rose Tyler had heard of this, and she was surprised The Doctor hadn't mentioned it until now. "So who is it? HG Wells?"

"No way," replied The Doctor. "He's caused enough trouble, whizzing through time and space picking up passengers without a second thought. The man's just irresponsible."

"Einstein?" guessed Jimmy.

"Near, very near," replied The Doctor. "Actually it's Einstein's owner."


As the two boys struggled to drag their latest discovery through the debris, they heard a loud exclamation from their father.

"Great Scott!" he yelled, as he looked at the readout from the large clockwork particle tracer he carried on his back (the localized EMP blast he'd used to halt the Daleks preventing him from using his smaller electronic version). "Correlating this readout with the traces of plaid shirt in the surrounding subspace and extrapolating the subject's journey leads us to Smallville, five years on from his original starting point. He's gone back to his future. The odds against that are astronomical."

The boys stifled a yawn at their father's amazement and used their sophisticated set of levers to haul their latest finding onto the train.

"Quick, Jules, Verne, we've got to go and rescue Clark Kent from the future before time unravels and the Universe is destroyed."

"Yeah, whatever, we've really got to rush. It's not as if we've got a time machine," said Jules sarcastically, while Verne dismantled their finding, and placed the blue creature from inside it into a jar.

Dr. Emmett Brown, ignoring his children's apathy towards his over-reacting, pulled the lever on his time-traveling train to set it in motion. "Next stop: Smallville."


"Batman?" asked Clark disbelievingly. "What sort of name is that?"

The stranger threw Clark to the ground. "It's a name that strikes fear into the heart of criminals everywhere."

"I'm not … a criminal," gasped Clark, struggling to stay conscious.

"No, but you'd stop my master achieving his goal. A new world order. A utopia with no crime."

"Your master?"

"Ra's Al Ghul!" replied Batman.

"And I thought your name was bad," laughed Clark before lapsing into unconsciousness.

Batman walked over to Clark's still body and held one of his batarangs to Clark Kent's throat "Sorry, Clark, but sometimes sacrifices have to be made."

Suddenly from behind him Batman heard the sound of a train in the distance. He turned around but couldn't see it, and then looked up, and there it was flying towards him faster and faster.

Suddenly it stopped, with deceleration that he wouldn't have thought possible, inches away from him, and then turned sideways so that he could see the train's driver.

"I've come for Clark Kent," said a white-haired man looking at him.

"Dr. Brown I presume. Ra's told me you'd be here," said Batman, and then, slitting Clark Kent's throat, added "Unfortunately you're too late."