"Believe me as in humoring the nut or believe me as in you really believe me?" Lois asked.

Clark couldn't help but laugh. She had that effect on him. "I really do."

And he did. He couldn't explain why he did, but he did. Maybe once you discovered you were an alien from another planet you could believe anything. Really though it was because it made his feelings make sense, and he just trusted Lois.

"Thank you, God. I convinced Chloe. She wasn't quite so easy."

"I can imagine. Any idea how to fix this?"

"Yes, actually. We went to see Jor-El-"

"You what?"

"He is only artificial intelligence who wants to help you fulfill your calling, which you would know if your mind hadn't been messed around with. He's neither good or evil, but he was very useful in solving the mystery."

"And?"

"It's a being from another dimension who can manipulate our realities. I don't understand why he didn't manipulate mine or why he did it at all, but I'm glad of it or we may have been stuck this way forever. Now we just have to find it, and this is the weird part, get it to say its name backward."

"I'd say it's all pretty weird, and that sounds really difficult."

"Tell me about it. I wonder if you could see him with your x-ray vision."

"I doubt it if he's not from this world, but maybe we can bate him into revealing himself and talking to us."

She grinned. "I like your thinking. See my influence on you is still there whether you know it or not."

"You say that like it's a good thing," he teased.

"Let's go to our apartment in Metropolis. That's where it all started. For me anyway. Maybe we can pick up some clues."

"Sounds like a plan to me. I'll have to let them know I'm leaving before they put an APB out on me," he said, gesturing toward the house.

His mother must have wondered at his absence though or noticed Oliver's abrupt arrival and departure for she found them leaving the barn.

"Lois, what a surprise. Have you come to help celebrate?"

Clark answered for her. "Actually, Kate's sick. I just got called into work."

"Oh, and Lois came to tell you?" she asked. Nothing got past her.

"She came to tell me she's leaving for Metropolis," he said, relieved he could be honest about part of it.

"Don't be a stranger, and I mean that," she said to Lois, opening her arms for a hug.

Lois teared as she hugged her, moved that some things didn't change like love. "Thank you for always being kind."

He thought they were going to make a clean break now, but Lana came out of the house with the baby in her arms. "What's going on out here?"

"Work," he said. "And Lois was just saying goodbye."

Lana didn't even bother to mask her displeasure this time. "I thought we'd already done that."

"Well, this time I'm actually on my way out of town." Lois said. As she spoke, Shelby appeared on the scene. His tail was wagging a mile a minute. He either didn't know reality had been changed or he thought this a happy reunion. "I always enjoy seeing my old nemesis though."

An awkward silence descended. "I was talking to the dog," she said, reaching down to pet Shelby and sneezing as a result. "Bye again everybody before things get any more uncomfortable."

Lois drove off. Clark gave her a little time with a round of goodbyes before following her. His gaze lingered on his namesake and all he could feel is relief that the baby, whoever it belonged to, wasn't his and Lana's, which would have forever tied them together.

Lois pulled into a gas station outside of town, and Clark parked and got in on the passenger side of her car.

"Not flying?" she asked.

"I don't know the way, and I'm not in the habit of flying."

"Right, or so you think. Okay, no problem. It's not that long a drive."

On the way, she told him all about their life together. She probably hoped it would jog his memory. It didn't, but it sounded like paradise though he knew first-hand Lois was far from perfect, and he definitely was not, they sounded perfect for each other. When he looked at her he could feel the love well up to the point that it hurt him to think he'd hurt her by forgetting their history even though it was out of his power.

She parked in front of a modest apartment building.

"Strange that a supposed wife of a billionaire would live here, isn't it?" he asked.

"Apparently I use it as a crash pad when I'm working at the Planet, but yes, all part of this very contrived reality."

Their apartment was the top floor, no doubt to make it easy for him to fly in and out, unnoticed. She fished the key out of her purse and opened the door.

He looked around but not a spark of memory. The technology, magic, whatever this individual used, was indeed powerful. "So this is where we live?"

"This is it," she said, throwing the keys on the table by the entrance. "Almost untouched." She put a wedding photo of her and Oliver she hadn't noticed before face-down.

"You're the one with the intact memories. What do you remember before it happened?"

"Nothing. Just waking up with you gone. This is the furniture we picked out, the dishes." She went into the bedroom, and he followed. She opened the closet. "See my clothes are there, but yours aren't. I don't know why I didn't notice that morning. Too in a hurry, I guess. None of it is designer by the way, which is also strange for the wife of a billionaire. He or she picked and chose their details."

She sat down on the bed, frustrated.

"And when you went to sleep, I was right by your side?"

"Yes, and when I woke up you were gone."

"And you didn't find that unusual?"

"Not when your husband is a superhero. Duty calls at all hours of the day."

"Of course. Nothing out of the ordinary the night before?"

"No. Except..."

He sat down beside her. "Yes?"

"Do you remember when I made that prediction all those years ago at your graduation?"

His stomach suddenly felt as if a load of stones had been dropped in it and his muscles went rigid. "That's the reality I'm living from Lana to the name and gender of our child to the degrees I chose-"

"To the fact that you bowl," she finished for him. "I obviously was not a prophet, but it seems like someone wanted to make me one. I was thinking of those words as I woke up that morning. I might have even mumbled them in my sleep."

"Somebody heard you and wanted to make it true."

A high-pitched laugh and then a male voice that seemed to come from nowhere said, "You've solved the riddle, but the game goes on."