Chapter Forty-Eight - Changing Places

"So, we're going to Heaven?" asked Lana, as the elevator started moving.

Death nodded. "If that's okay with you? You do believe in Heaven, don't you? If not, we could just fade away into nothingness."

"Heaven will be fine, I guess."

"There's always reincarnation," offered the girl who was Death.

"How am I going to top this?" asked a curious Lana.

"Fair point," said Death agreeably. "Heaven it is, then."

"One question," asked Lana, looking down at her clothes. "Why am I suddenly wearing this pink outfit?"

"Don't worry, Lana. I figured that you wouldn't want to be mistaken for Louise when you turned up in Heaven, so I restored you back to your normal look. I've even taken away that nasty bullet hole."

"Thanks," said a relieved Lana. "That look may have suited Louise, but personally I wouldn't be seen dead in it."

"Any other questions?" asked Death, eager to make the most of her time with Lana.

Lana thought for a moment. "How long until we get there?"

"Well, we've got to cross decades and dimensions to get back to your time and reality and then there's -"

At which point the elevator came to a halt.

"Looks like we're there," observed Death, as the doors opened to reveal the most wonderful place Lana Lang had ever seen.

"It's pink," exclaimed Lana.

"Well, it's Heaven, isn't it?" replied Death. "What color would you expect it be?"


Just over four decades earlier in the Kent kitchen, Clark's grandfather Hiram was helping him with putting on a denim jacket. With the jacket donned, Clark's grandmother handed him the brown leather jacket he'd been wearing previously.

"At least you won't stand out as much if they stop you," she said.

"I know all the back roads - we'll take them," added Hiram.

"I appreciate your help," said Clark, "but I'll find my way on my own."

"I am not sending you out alone," insisted Hiram. "Are you sure these friends of yours are gonna show up?"

"They'll be there," replied Clark. He knew Zod and Ursa would be waiting for him, and that was the main reason he wanted to go alone. They might have been his real parents but he still wasn't completely sure he could trust them.

Clark stepped past Hiram and opened the kitchen door.

"You're welcome to stay and try to clear this thing up," said Hiram, and that was what Clark wanted to do more than anything, but for the future's sake he had to do what the mem-O-random had already shown him doing. Besides, when he returned to Krypton tonight, he could change the things that really mattered to him - he could create a Universe where Krypton didn't explode and where meteors never killed Lana's parents. Of course that would also mean that there would never be a Clark Kent in Smallville but that was the price he'd have to pay.

"I've got no reason to stay anymore," said Clark.

"Be careful," said his grandmother, and then his grandfather Hiram, placing a hand on her stomach, said "Bye, Gene."

"His name is Jonathan," said his grandmother, referring to the baby inside her.

"We're still deciding," explained Hiram as Clark, unable to resist having a last look at his human father before departing to Krypton, used his X-ray vision to take a quick peek at baby Jonathan. Much to Clark's surprise, baby Jonathan appeared to be looking back at him with a judgmental look on his as-yet-not-fully-formed features.

Then Hiram kissed his wife goodbye, and touching Clark on the shoulder, said "Come on, let's go,"

As Hiram left, Clark looked at his grandmother - the woman who'd give birth to Jonathan Kent. "Thank you," he said.

She nodded and then Clark gave her the leather jacket. He wanted to leave something of his here on Earth - the home he'd miss so much.

And then he left.

Mrs. Kent sat alone in the kitchen, thinking about the drifter. There was something about him - not the way he'd looked but the way he'd acted, his basic goodness - that reminded her of her husband. She looked down at her stomach. She only hoped that her and Hiram would be able to pass those qualities down to Jonathan, and then, one day in the future, maybe he'd be able to pass them on to his son.


"We can't just switch her off," said Chloe to The Doctor. "It's unthinkable."

"Of course it's not unthinkable," replied The Doctor. "You just don't want to think it. Of all the humans I've met, I thought you would have been different, but you're just like all the rest. How could I have been so blind, so stupid, so…"

"So human?" offered Chloe.

"Exactly," said The Doctor.

"Okay, Doctor," said Chloe, "I'm listening. Why should we switch Lana off?"

"That's not the question to be asking," said The Doctor, shaking his head. ""Why should we keep Lana switched on? That's the question."

"She's my friend," said Chloe, unable to believe what The Doctor was saying.

"Real reasons," said The Doctor. "Not reasons that you'd feel good not doing it."

"She might respond to treatment one day and make a full recovery."

"I've talked to the doctors," replied The Doctor coldly. "It's not going to happen."

"Couldn't you just take a trip to the future and double-check?" asked Chloe.

"No," said The Doctor. "I go ten years in the future and she's still not responding, so I come back and we take her off life-support and then that future never happens. Paradox! The Universe ends! Lana would have sacrificed her life to save all of time and space for nothing."

"What's wrong with just leaving her on life-support?" asked a confused Chloe.

"For a day - maybe nothing. A couple of days and it starts to have repercussions - a hospital with one more bed that's unavailable - it's bound to have a knock-on effect. Every second we're in this reality we're corrupting it - we can't help it - eventually we'll start to corrupt it too much and then…"

"Then?" echoed Chloe.

"You don't want to know," replied The Doctor. "Reality's like time - you don't mess with it. If time can't make sense of itself, it'll find ways to change things - splitting into separate parallel dimensions, overwriting itself, sending winged monsters in to cleanse the infected area, closing down... all sorts. Mess with reality so it no longer makes sense and things get just as bad, sometimes worse. Next thing you know this reality won't be real anymore - just a figment of someone's imagination."

"But how can you complain about corrupting time?" asked Chloe, even more confused. "You're always visiting different times."

"That's right," replied The Doctor, "but I can never stay for long, no matter how much I want to. I just can't risk the damage my staying would eventually cause. And so I go hopping about time and space, knowing that the only home I'll ever have now is the Tardis. Although, it can get a bit cramped in its infinite corridors - sometimes it feels more like a prison."

"So, we have to switch off Lana for the sake of this reality?" asked Chloe, dragging The Doctor back to the present. "There's no other way?"

"Maybe in some other dimension," replied The Doctor. "But not in this reality, where people don't wear masks or superhero outfits."

"Couldn't we just put her in the cryogenic chamber and then find some other dimension they could save her?" asked Chloe hopefully.

"It's not a cryogenic chamber," admitted The Doctor. "I just told Clark that so he wouldn't get upset. Actually, it's not quite that sophisticated. Sure the alien monsters it came from used it to hold frozen humans, but that was just for snack purposes."

"You had Louise stored in an alien freezer?" asked a horrified Chloe.

"Oh, don't be like that," said The Doctor. "You'd be seeing the funny side now if your friend wasn't incurably brain-dead."

Tears were now pouring from Chloe Sullivan's eyes as she stood there looking at The Doctor incredulously. "How can you say that?"

"I'm nine centuries old, Chloe," explained The Doctor calmly, "and I've seen a lot of death."

"So much death that it doesn't affect you any more?"

"No," replied The Doctor, passing Chloe a handkerchief. "So much death that I got tired of crying. It doesn't make a difference - it never does."

Chloe passed The Doctor his handkerchief back. "There's always a first time."

"Maybe," said The Doctor, putting his handkerchief away.

At which point Rose came running up to them.

"Doctor, look what I managed to get from Lex," she said, as she showed them the strangely-marked stone in her hand.

"It's a stone," said The Doctor, in an unimpressed tone.

"It's not just a stone. It's a stone that transfers minds."

"The transference stone," exclaimed Chloe in surprise.

"If you want to call it that," continued Rose. "Anyway, Lex offered it to me last week so I could swap minds with you, Doctor, but I didn't really trust him. Anyway, I figured it was safer us having the stone than Lex so I put a few false entries in my diary to fool him and, hey presto, here it is."

"You've known about the stone all this time and you didn't tell us?" asked Chloe exasperatedly.

"You knew that Lex was Lex all this time and you told everybody but me?" responded Rose sarcastically. "So, I didn't tell you? What's the big deal? What we really need to do is to get it back to its proper place in Smallville history so that the timeline's kept happy. Isn't that right, Doctor?"

"That's not right," said Chloe, before The Doctor even had a chance to answer. "I read about Smallville Season 4 on the internet back in your reality. Thanks to this stone, Lionel's incurable disease was cured. If it can save Lionel, it can save Lana."

"You read about Season 4 on the internet? After all my warnings?" asked The Doctor disbelievingly.

"You've seen Seasons 1 to 3 - it shouldn't come as that much of a surprise to you that I'd do something like that," said Chloe. "Now, let's not waste time. You two go back and collect Clark from 1961 so he can use the stone to swap minds back and forth with Lana, while I stay here and keep an eye on her."

"But what if Clark doesn't wasn't to come?" asked Rose. "What if he's still intent on returning to Krypton?"

"I know Clark and, trust me, he'll come back…"

"Okay," said The Doctor, turning away from Chloe, "we'll try and get him. Come on, Rose. No time to lose."

As The Doctor and Chloe ran off down the corridor, Chloe pulled out the photograph that her older self had given her. A photograph that had started to change to show a different future. Of course that future was what would occur if Clark returned to Krypton, but Chloe was convinced that Clark would come back now. Clark would always come back for Lana.

Allowing herself to look down at the photograph, Chloe gasped. It hadn't changed at all - surely Clark was going to come back to save Lana, but no, those were still the same eyes in the photograph.

She looked first at the bride's eyes that belonged to Lana, and then at the groom's eyes - the eyes that told her that her past, present and future were in the process of changing.

"Whitney, we have a problem."