The Metro-Ledger, October 1, 2000:
For President: Lex Luthor
By George Killian
"...Mister Luthor brings a wealth of information, new knowledge, with him to this highest of offices in the Republic. Where we sense temerity and unease with Mister Bush, where we sense unrelatable policy robotics with Mister Gore, we sense resolve and an openness to ideas with Mister Luthor. One of the common criticisms levied at Mister Luthor is that he lacks the experience, most of it in foreign policy, necessary to running the government. We find this reasoning specious, and proceeding from a basic fear of change. Such fear is what Washington is founded upon, but we believe this need not be the case. We believe Mister Luthor can best be the change-maker Washington needs, and that he can do it with a relatable edge which we must admit we do not see in Mister Gore or Mister Bush. We support Alexander Luthor, with the belief that the twenty-first century, already upon us, must be welcomed for the ways in which it can enrich our lives—and the hope that Mister Luthor is the chief executive most capable of allowing us to reach that future."
Luthor.
And Sam Lane.
The inimitable General Lane, as Lois used to call him. Only he wasn't a General when Luthor knew him. Just a Major. Formerly a Captain. Formerly a private. In the early days—those beautiful old days when the company was just him and Lois in a broom closet on the top floor of the Planet, the whole world laid before him and hope in he palm of his hand—Luthor would've settled for calling him father in law. These days he was a retired General, US Army if he remembered correctly.
Not that it mattered.
He didn't care about Lane.
But he needed him. Or more precisely wanted him.
To send a message.
They were at Pebble Beach, the fairway flat and beautiful before them. Beyond, the Pacific was a portrait in stillness, the sun warm and comforting.
Under a yellow sun he felt renewed, and comfortable. He marveled at it the way he marveled daily at the Atlantic from behind the glass of his office. He supposed he felt a certain affinity for the ocean, little different from his blithe objectivist view of his city as its own achievement. He regarded both as curiosities, with distant intellectualism he had developed over the course of a lifetime. Out here in nature—out here among life, plant and human, which to him seemed more alien at times than the humans with whom he interacted on a daily basis—he wasn't sure he had words for what he was experiencing.
It felt.
Unsettling.
He breathed and imagined Pebble Beach could be so much more. A golf course felt so introductory: why not develop this and give human society something they can use, something they deserve. That hoariest of bromides, perhaps—low-income housing. He made a note of it for his victory speech. He imagined dragging Pebble Beach into the twenty-first century. California would be good for it. Golf is the lodestar of privilege and elitism, something to be tossed out and forgotten. Better, instead, to level the field. Don't separate the slums from the diamond district, build a subway between them. Give these foolish people the equal shake they all clamor for. Take Pebble Beach and rename it Lexor City or something else. Make it worthy of his name. Like the rest of the planet. A developed supercity from this spot inland and further.
Eventually the world.
"Do you golf, Lex?"
He made a face. Leaning on his driver like it was a cane, in khakis he despised, in clown shoes, in this ridiculous polo—habiliments for the unwashed masses, small people who aspire to be more than what they are—Luthor wasn't impressed. Sam was in front of him dressed in plaid finery. An amateur, a poseur, at work. But there was an earnestness to the General. Luthor began to understand where Lois got it from.
"No."
"No taste for it?"
"Mm," Luthor said. "No time."
Lane let out a single laugh. "Guess you're a busy man."
"Yeah," Luthor said. They started walking. "You sure you don't want to go back for a cart, General? I could send Mercy."
Lane waved one hand. "I'm alright, need the exercise. And you don't need to call me General."
"You'll pardon me, but it's not easy to forget the rank. It's a matter of respect."
"I'm retired, Lex."
"Then all the more reason to respect your service."
Then Lane looked at him. "My father died of liver cancer when I was thirty-one years old. You know what I told him? I thanked him for raising me, for doing a good job. I called him sir. He looked me right in the eye and said don't call me that ever again, Sammy, and then he died right there. I don't have time for sentiment anymore, Lex, and I know you don't either. So don't bullshit me. I still read the papers."
"Even the Planet?"
"Especially," Lane said. "She's still my little girl."
"That she is," Luthor said. "And quite tenacious, if you don't mind me saying."
"She's married to this reporter. Kent."
"I know," Luthor said. "I was at the wedding."
"Hm. Should have been you."
Luthor stared at him.
"Lois and I—"
"Were too much alike," Lane said. "She didn't like to be challenged. Remind you of anyone?"
Luthor let a smile creep in.
Lane was setting his Slazenger on the tee. Not looking at Luthor, he said, "I also heard you told Bush and Gore how it's going to be."
Luthor waited a moment.
Lane swung.
The Slazenger disappeared down the fairway.
"They want everything in little boxes," Luthor said. "No imagination."
Lane thought about it. "Maybe."
"I'm working on that."
"You didn't come out here to play golf," Lane said. "So let's have it."
"Secretary of Defense. On the condition that we win."
Lane watched the sky and still imagined his Slazenger was flying, majestic and true, for the most coveted of hole in ones. He breathed and pretended to pause time so he could maintain this feeling. The warm sun all around him, life being just the way he'd long imagined.
He caught himself frowning.
He'd have to sell the house.
Tell the wife.
Tell Lois.
—She'd.
She'd understand.
He turned to Luthor.
"Mister President."
GCN's "Man on the Street," September 12th 2000:
"Yo, I think Mister Luthor's doing a good job, okay? He comes by the youth center a couple times a week, he plays basketball with us. He's a good guy."
"My father was a LexCorp janitor from the very beginning, top floor of the Planet, and he always talked about how Mister Luthor never forgot his name. That means something."
"I think he's f— nuts."
"He sit up there in his tower, he doesn't know what it is on the streets, man. He say he from Suicide Slum he balls-lying, man. Old Man Luthor to the Manor born he only interest is money and more of it."
"He gave my nephew a college scholarship—it was the craziest thing I've ever seen, we were just at Pablo's one night and my nephew, bless his pea-pickin' heart, made some remark about Superman or something and Mister Luthor was at the bar and came over and asked if Jesse studied, Jesse said yes, and Mister Luthor wrote him a check for seventy-thousand dollars right there. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen, Miss Grant."
"His charitable donations outflank Wayne and Kord by a wide margin, his defense contracts are a little suspect, his stump speeches are in the right place, but I don't know how he'd get around conflicts of interest. That said, he offers the voters something Gore and Bush can't—a third way—and I think everyone knows it."
"I'd vote for him just to see what happens."
"I think he's kind of sexy, that bald head reminds me of Yul Brynner."
"Dude, go watch Woodburn, okay? Luthor gives you a reason to vote again! F— that two party bulls— and vote for real change."
"I'm very enthusiastic about what he could do for our country, but he's not married, no kids. It must be a terribly lonely life he leads."
"I want to know what he's going to do about the Middle East, anything can happen over there and whoever wins needs to be able to have a strong hand."
"He makes my flesh crawl."
"I don't think it's of any concern to me. Politics doesn't really touch where I live, you understand."
"All you're tryin to do is run him through the muck. He doesn't beat women, or do drugs. He's a good man and he deserves a chance to lead."
Jenny.
His voice in her head.
All these years later.
Jenny.
Shall I tell you the truth of your life?
November the fifth, still about fifty out, which seemed a little weird to her, but also still a few weeks away from the snow, so yeah, not bad. She was watching the countryside pass her by from this Greyhound. Every few feet or so she'd feel the rumble underneath her, the bus rollicking over cracked and sealed asphalt on this nowhere road in the middle of bumfuck Virginia.
Wally's word. She patted one hand with the other, self-discipline, and looked at the ceiling. Discipline, Jennifer.
She swallowed the lump at the back of her throat, and closed her eyes. The seat seemed to envelope her: that matted, mass-market synthetic velour, ever so abrasive to the touch after all these years of service. She breathed. Her hands were clasped, one in the other, on a pleather handbag on her lap.
She pressed one finger down against the fake hide, feeling the contour of the barrel within.
Good. Good.
You're still in there.
That's good.
She looked at the ceiling, her eyes tracing the luggage rack rails. She pressed the hide again.
Couldn't fly with it.
Couldn't eat up valuable time in Metropolis looking for a gun store.
She had loaded it and stuck it in the purse on her way out of the house, the very last thing she did. Now here she was.
Wally's old revolver, a twenty-two, barely worth anything. But it could send a message. Or at least she hoped it could.
She remembered the stories.
Early days, a bunch of mobsters whose names she couldn't pronounce, dropping like flies out in Gotham City. Papers near home all thought it was the Bat, finally gone off the deep end.
She read that it was some mobster's mentally ill son who actually did it.
A father's love—
One by one.
She remembered seeing somewhere or reading somewhere that he did it all with a twenty-two.
He brought that city to its knees.
With a twenty-two.
She breathed.
She pressed on the hide again.
Just a few more hours.
Clark.
Under a yellow sun, floating in its encompassing warmth, he felt reborn.
Beneath him, Kansas was a broad interconnected lattice of farmland with long grey lines for roads and dots for cities. This high up it looked quiet. Peaceful. He knew once he landed it would be anything but.
He knew, for instance, that once he landed and changed into Levi's and a flannel and started walking down Main Street, Whitney's dad would see him and ask how everything was going, how's Metropolis, how's the wife, how's the job. He was always supportive, doggedly nice to everyone. Whitney and Clark never really got along—both too prideful, Clark supposed, for what they were. Kids. Kids doing their best. Trying to be something in this world that takes everything. And of course Clark, good old humble Clark, he'd merely say, thank you Mister Fordman please tell everyone I said hello, I'm going to go out to see my parents now. And Mister Fordman would slip off his knackered old Massey-Ferguson hat and hold it in gnarled arthritic hands over his heart and say, bless you Clark, your parents were saints, I miss them every day.
I do too.
He landed in the berm at the end of the drive. Ahead lay the farm. Older than time, or memory. Ma always said it was Jonathan's parents who started it all those decades before. Immigrants from Wales, by way of Ellis Island, who decided Kansas would be it for them. They settled, made babies, made this farm, made lives.
He thought of that boy in the No Man's Land.
He looked down at himself.
He was still in his Superman suit.
Anyone who would drive out this far past town these days and see him could be pretty well assured to have the view to themselves:
Not that it mattered anymore, either. The danger, he had to admit, had dropped off. Most of his major villains were already too underpowered to threaten him, Lois could handle herself, and the rest were dead. Killed in Cadmus' last great tantrum.
Maybe that's part of it, Father.
There's no challenge anymore. I caught Corben so long ago trying to sneak into the No Man's Land but it was not suspenseful. He was hiding in a shipping container in the Dixon Docks, cowering like a child in spite of all his power. Poor Winslow Schott disappeared only to turn up dead on the front steps of an orphanage in Thailand. Oswald Loomis, Maxwell Jensen. All dead.
So much darkness in this world, Father.
You sent me here to fight it.
I fear.
I fear I am not enough.
The Fortress—
Why can't I find the answers I'm looking for.
He shook his head.
He started up the lane slowly. The gravel and dirt crunching underfoot. The breeze wrapping around him like an old friend.
The house was empty. The barns were empty. Some equipment he still left out to give the illusion of use.
Of course Smallville knew the difference. Small towns always do. Hard to hide here. Easy to present the farm as this quiescent idyll, a snapshot of a life that once was.
Jonathan and Martha Kent were dead. Killed in a car crash a few years ago. Long after Clark had saved the Constitution. Long before this moment—it felt like dog years in some respect.
He kept the house as it was.
It's better that way. Something to remember them by. If you're not going to have someone around in your life, it's best to remember the good times.
He walked up the steps and the wood creaked under his weight. He couldn't help a smile. He laid a hand on the banister, dry wood and old paint curling off it. He ran his hand up the angle of it and felt the infinitesimal dance of the atoms within.
He kicked up the doormat with one foot and lifted the key. Such a simple hiding place, and yet…
Sometimes, he had learned over the course of a very long experience, hiding in plain sight was best.
Slid the key in the lock. It still turned as easy as ever.
He stepped in lightly, the hardwood groaning under him, and looked around. There. Between the clawfoot coffee table, and the matching end table with a bright green hurricane lamp upon it—Ma was always proud she was able to get the full set at Trostel's that day. Talked about it for years.
But she was never materialistic. It wasn't about appearances. It was about what she liked. And Martha Kent liked everything. Loved everyone. He smiled again. The davenport sat as it always did, against the far window, a long solid piece of glass that stared out at the field between two silos.
It was better that way. If you're going to go, do it side by side with someone you love.
He was standing in front of the corner curio cabinet, tucked away in the parlor's far end before you passed into the living room and the kitchen. He bent down in front of it and pulled one of the doors open. He reached in and found himself quietly pulling out the photo album on top.
Newspaper clippings.
All of them from The Daily Planet:
PANIC IN THE SKY—and a picture of the crashing proto-shuttle Constitution.
TERROR AT SEA!—and a picture of Superman arresting Lex Luthor.
INVASION!—and a picture of Superman fighting the alien Dominators.
NIGHT OF TERROR, MORNING OF LOSS—and a photo of his ragged cape in the middle of Fifth Avenue.
WHICH ONE?—and the four reigning Supermen.
ZERO HOUR—and the Justice League fighting Hal Jordan.
He smiled and choked back the tears.
They kept everything. All these years.
He pulled out another album. A yellowed cover, white in another life, with hard cracked plastic over it. "Treasured Memories."
He sat on the davenport, but really sunk into it, and opened the album. Careful. Careful.
Their wedding invitation bulged under the plastic sleeve. A cut-out photo, blurred in that Seventies way, of Jonathan and Martha in their nuptial finest: Jonathan in a brown tuxedo with a magnificent giant bowtie. Martha in her gown, white lace over her head in a beatific cowl.
They were happy.
He breathed.
"Clark-Kent Wedding: Mister Jacob and Rosalind Kent invite you to the wedding of their son Jonathan to Martha Clark, son of Marvin and Grace Clark of Osage, Kansas, to be held at the Grafton United Methodist Church, Smallville Kansas, at one-thirty in the afternoon. Lunch following in the church basement."
A news clipping almost a year later, from the Smallville Gazette:
"…Martha Kent, reported missing in the great blizzard last evening, has been safely located in a snowbank off County Road 125-A. She reports no injuries and is glad to be home, although she tells this writer she can't say the same for her beloved '46 Ford still stuck in that snowbank…"
Another:
"…Farm Bureau Federation proudly announces Jon Kent as its record-holding youngest president, for a two-year term. His wife Martha, photographed below, dines with him at the VFW…"
Another:
"…Martha and Jon Kent of Smallville proudly announce the birth of a young boy, Clark Joseph, born last week weighing 8 pounds, 7 ounces. Attending Doctor Hayward reports mother and baby are in fine health, although father has humorous doubts about the family's luck during heavy snowstorms…"
They had lives.
An entire existence, apart and then shared, before they drove down that road and found an infant in a crashed space capsule.
I wonder.
If they knew.
Did you know, Father?
You never know.
When you're living in times of great change, that is.
You have an idea. Everyone does. Everyone thinks they're the most important, the most famous, the hero of their own story. They think they have a good handle on things.
And then something amazing happens.
Imagine it.
Driving down that road, with the love of your life next to you.
He imagined it. They're driving down the road living one life, and in a few moments everything will change.
Any minute now.
He was outside in an instant.
In his civilian clothes.
In the middle of the cornfield, just staring at the horizon. The evening sun hid behind growing strands of grey clouds. The distant tree line. The grain elevator. He focused and saw all the way into town. The general store. The used bookstore. Ralli's Diner.
This world.
My world.
It's so beautiful, Father.
Worth cherishing in every way.
These people.
They're born here, they live their whole lives here, they raise their kids here, and then they die, and the wheel just keeps spinning.
I wish I could have it sometimes. Far away from the concerns of this Earth. Lois and I—
We could be happy.
He was at their graveside.
Jonathan and Martha Kent. Beloved parents.
It all just disappears, Father. We are here in one moment and gone in the next.
He laid one hand on the headstone and felt it sing. He smiled.
I was dead once, Father.
And I didn't see you.
I saw my Pa.
Oh Clark, he says. I knew you'd come.
Any minute now.
In the dream, Pa pulls me into the light.
I brought him back, Pa says, and Ma recounts it to Clark later. Clark is back. He is so weak, Father. And so strong. He is everything you said they are, and were, and shall be.
And I?
Here on Earth.
Under a yellow sun—
He hears the voice of a god in his mind.
"Clark. This is J'onn. It's November the fifth. As you requested, your monitor duty begins in three standard hours. Please report for duty and the cycle-meeting as soon as you are able. Thank you."
And then—
A red streak shoots into the sky.
Continued...