Behold! I got it up on time!
In other news, I'm working my way through chapter 4 of Whiplash and it looks like I'm back in the groove. Not going to jinx myself, but it is coming along.
Chapter Three:
The northern borough of Lafayette was one of Metropolis's obvious bedroom communities. In between the bungalow starter homes, the four-square houses, and the odd McMansion were a scattering of big box stores, gas stations, and chain restaurants, but the majority of residents commuted over the bridges into the city proper. It was an unassuming part of town where no one expected there to be anything strange and unusual. It wasn't rich and private like Racine and Vernon to the west, but it certainly wasn't disreputable like Oaktown to the east.
Fortunately, Hamstead took the brunt of that, so Lafayette enjoyed being a Stepford-like slice of suburbia with little disruption. The neighborhood mothers gossiped over lemonade with a shot of liquor in each glass and cast fond looks at their children who screamed and chased each other through the sprinklers while the fathers man-cave'd it up in the basements or made excuses not to be around because this was just that sort of neigborhood who attracted that sort of people.
"I wonder what it would do to the collective personality of the place if they ever learned there was an alien living secretly in their midst." Clark murmured.
Krypto snorted and shook himself.
"You're right. Probably nothing."
Saturday was just as warm as Friday, but it seemed less hectic. Clark's piece on the attack at Future World had made it into the morning paper and the rest of his inbox was clear. No time would be spent in the office today. He might throw on the cape later in the afternoon and go for a spin and put off all his errands and laundry until tomorrow.
At the moment, however, he strolled up through Lafayette with Krypto, enjoying the summer sun. The leash hung loose about his wrist; it was only there because Metropolis had a leash-law and it was easier to abide by it. Krypto disdained the leash and whuffed unhappily whenever Clark had to put it on him and accepted it like it was an affront to his dignity, but accepted it all the same.
Some over-protective type parent might get unnecessarily nervous over such a big dog not being properly "secured".
Krypto sniffed this way and that as they walked, tracking the smells of squirrels, cats, and other dogs. He stopped once to pee on a mailbox and then again when he found a particular patch of sidewalk to roll on. He came up with his white fur streaked in colored chalk dust, looking proud of himself.
"I'm hosing you down when we get there." Clark warned.
The big dog gave him a challenging look. 'Try it.'
They rounded the corner and came up the street lined in nothing but those one-bedroom bungalow houses. They all looked identical, painted in boring neutral tones of tan, gray, and off-white, but there was one house that Clark couldn't see right through the walls of.
And it was the only one with sky-blue window shutters.
There was a man waiting for Clark at the door. He looked younger than he actually was; his appearance was that of a man in his late fifties, but his age pushed mid-seventies. He had salt and pepper hair, and sharp, prominent cheekbones that stuck out from a stately, distinguished face with a square jaw. Normally, he wore glasses that rendered his eye color a dull blue-green. But today, those glasses were absent and his eyes were a phospherescent sea-foam green that seemed to glow with an internal light of their own.
As far as anyone in the neighborhood knew, this man was Dr. Anthony Sullivan, a mechanical engineer gainfully employed at S.T.A.R. Labs. Clark had gotten comfortable with calling him "Grandad".
Contrary to what Clark had let everyone else believe, he was not the only survivor of Krypton. The number was actually quite a bit higher than even Clark knew. Krypto, by definition, was Kryptonian. Just a four-footed canid version.
He had an aunt, an uncle, and a cousin still out there somewhere (floating through space, that is), but who knew when they would arrive. He also had an older brother.
But Hayl-El was trapped in the Phantom Zone with General Zod and his army for company. At this point, Clark didn't actually have a guarantee that his brother was still alive. There were generations of Krypton's worst criminals roaming the dimension and General Zod had been sent into the Zone cursing their father's name. A young Kryptonian might not have lasted very long.
The Phantom Zone generator, secure at the Fortress of Solitude, was randomly searching for the frequency of Hayl's beacon tag, but even Jor-El had estimated thirty years before all possible combinations had been exhausted.
On Earth, however, Clark had his grandfather.
Clark let go of the leash and Krypto bounded up to the open door with a deep, welcoming bark. Dr. Sullivan leaned forward like he was preparing to catch the dog, but then got a good look at Krypto's colored fur and withdrew.
"Great Rao, what did you do to yourself?!" he demanded.
Krypto's intended leap was aborted and he dropped too lightly onto the front porch. He sat back on his haunches, tail thumping the porch, and mouth open in a doggy grin.
"He rolled in chalk dust." Clark said
"Of course you did, you great big lunk." Dr. Sullivan refrained from schnoozling the dog so he didn't get chalk dust all over his clothes, but his tone was wholly affectionate and he ran his hands over the least chalk-dusted part of Krypto's head. "I'll set the sprinkler on in the back. He can run through that until he's clean. Or close to it. You might have to wipe him down."
"Oh, he'll never stand still long enough for me to do that." Clark pointed out, knowing full well that Krypto would do everything he could dodge any kind of cleaning. He'd happily throw himself into any lake or river he spotted, but the second anyone tried to get near him with a wash cloth, he was gone in a heartbeat. "As soon as he started flying, I knew he'd never sit for another bath."
Dr. Sullivan smirked. "Disdain for washing up runs in the House of El, then. Whenever Hayl makes it home, I'll tell you all the funny baby stories so I can embarrass him." he promised. He spread his arms. "Now hugs for the old man. I haven't seen you since the Fourth!"
Clark laughed and let himself be engulfed in his grandfather's boisterious bear-hug of an embrace. A year ago, he couldn't have imagined actually having a grandparent, one he could talk to and relate to and actually visit on a regular basis. Hiram and Jessica Kent had passed away about a year before Clark's arrival. Mary Clarke had died in a car accident some time ago and Clark hadn't seen his other grandfather in close to eight years. William Clarke had come around the farm grudging and sullen like he had been making a scheduled check-up that he couldn't get out of and had left in what Clark had dared to call an old man sulk.
So this was nice.
"Now come in, I've got something to show you."
Clark stepped in, closed the door, and the noise of the outside world lost much of its intensity. The house was padded out with lead plates, which had a muffling effect on their powers. Up an entry hallway, past the bedroom and the bathroom and the hall closets, and the main living area were at the back of the house. A partition wall divided the kitchen from the dining and sitting areas. There was a wide patio door that straddled the partition wall and led out into the small fenced back yard.
When he wasn't putting robots together, Dr. Sullivan was a hobbyist gardener. He had no vegetables, but his flower beds were pristine and vibrant. They might have been award-winning, but he had never entered them into any contests.
"Into the yard with you, Krypto!" Dr. Sullivan ordered, directing the streaky-colored dog out through the patio door. "You're not getting chalk dust all over my furniture!"
He always pronounced Krypto's name with something of a lisp, laying a hissing H sound into the first syllable. It made Clark wonder if that was the proper pronounciation.
The big dog bounded out onto the patio with nary a trace of shame and began to tug at the hose faucet. Leaving him to it, Dr. Sullivan disappeared behind the kitchen wall for a few minutes while Clark releaxed on the couch. The ceiling fan whirred overhead and his eyes passed over the three-dimensional images that lined the top shelf of the television stand. There were individual images of Clark's biological parents, his (technically) older brother. Another of his Uncle Zor-El, Aunt Allura, and cousin Kara. And there was one big family portrait that consisted of over a dozen individuals. Dr. Sullivan had painstakingly named everyone Clark didn't already recognize and related an anecdote or two about them. A distant cousin from one side, a great-uncle from another, Allura's twin sister...
Most of them had been lost in Krypton's collapse.
There was a new image that Clark hadn't seen the last time. It depicted a woman who appeared to be in her late twenties wearing a robe that was more intricately decorated and richly colored than any he had seen so far. Her head-dress more closely resembled a crown and a heavy-looking necklace of what looked like blue sapphires was strung around her neck. She had red hair the same color as a burning ember and her eyes were a teal blue. But she had a wasted, somewhat sickly appearance, like she was just getting past a bout of flu. She was almost familiar, but not quite.
"You're eyeballing the photos again." Dr. Sullivan commented, coming over to the sitting area with two glasses of ice water.
"Just... Just thinking." Clark shrugged, accepting one of the glasses. "There aren't many of us."
"No, there isn't." Dr. Sullivan agreed, sitting down on the couch opposite.
"Who's the woman?" Clark wondered, nodding at the new image. "She looks familiar, but I can't place her."
"Ah," And a big smile went across Dr. Sullivan's face. "That would be your grandmother. My wife. Perrine La-Clotte. That was her bridal portrait. The A.I.s found it in the database. Jor and Lara put together quite the family album for us."
"She looks beautiful." Clark commented. Stunning, even in spite of the somewhat sickly appearance.
"Yes, she is. I asked Lara to look for the full-body portrait. That one was my favorite. I can't imagine your parents didn't include it." Dr. Sullivan said fondly. "We randomized Lara's selection, but the scales were tipped in my favor, so she did come out looking a bit more like me than Perrine. But Lara got her eyes."
"That must be why." Clark murmured. "What happened to her?"
"She passed away young." Dr. Sullivan said, looking away. "Perinne had a compromised immune system. She was always getting sick. Someone could sneeze in her general direction and she'd be feverish by nightfall. She lived longer than the doctors predicted, but frankly, not long enough. Even with the gene selection, we could still get mutations.
"Anyways," He pointedly changed the subject. "I have two pieces of news for you. The first thing is that the A.I.s have finally figured out why we can lift city buses above our heads. It's the sun."
"The sun." Clark repeated incredulously.
Dr. Sullivan smiled and nodded. "Absolutely the sun. Us Kryptonians, we were born under a red sun on a larger planet with significantly higher gravity."
"I've heard. We've got all the genetic blueprints for a denser bone structure and rapid generation of muscle mass, plus the spine thing. But that doesn't account for everything we're capable of." Clark reminded him.
"Of couse it doesn't. But it's still the sun." Dr. Sullivan said. "Specifically, it's the yellow sun. A Class K red giant gives off a different type of solar radiation than a Class G yellow dwarf."
"Yeah, it's the... hyrdrogen fusion? Or the lack of?" Clark tried to remember, but high school had been a long time ago.
"The nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium. Once the hydrogen fuel in the core is used up, the star in question will begin expanding." Dr. Sullivan said. "But our red giant was already burning the helium in its core. If Krypton hadn't been falling apart, we might have been done in by the helium flash in another ten thousand years. Suffice to say, the solar radiation was very different.
"As far as the A.I.s have determined, it is the hydrogen-based solar radiation combined with the interaction with the different atmospheric composition and the radiation belts making us indestructible. Don't ask me how the science works; they're still mulling over it. Fun thing about A.I. imprints is that you get all the facial expressions too. They're baffled." He chuckled.
The A.I.s in question were technically Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van. They had essentially copied their personalities and behaviors and then used that as a base for the artificial intelligence programming that ran the Fortress of Solitude. Since running a imprint, as it was called, was a several month process, each A.I. had ended up with the weird personality quirks like Jor-El's vain streak and fashion preferences, and Lara's habit of tapping out rhythms with her hair combs when she was thinking. It was the closest Clark would come to knowing his birth parents.
"So... if my power comes from the sun... How come it took me entire childhood and then some to develop all the powers I have?" Clark wondered. "You told me it only took you about a year to develop everything?"
"Well, I was an adult when I arrived, but you were just a baby." Dr. Sullivan pointed out. "You were constantly growing new cells and discarding the oldest ones, so the new cells hadn't been exposed to the full measure of solar energy. You hadn't reached full saturation from the UV rays. You're younger than me, so you might even develop abilites I don't have." He shrugged. "Hell, Krypto might not even have the full range either, whatever that might be. He hasn't even started his sub-adult growth spurt yet."
Clark nodded, glancing out the window. Krypto had gotten the sprinkler on by himself and was leaping through it with all sorts of doggy enthusiasm and biting the jets. The fact that he had another growth spurt coming was terrifying, because he was already a large dog. He physically resembled a Samoyed-Husky mix and was about the same size; over thirty-inches at the shoulder and around one hundred and twenty pounds. At nine years old, he was still a puppy.
He was expected to grow another ten inches in height and at least double his weight. He might even get larger than that. Krypton's heavier gravity would have limited his growth potential to the expected limit, but here on Earth, it wasn't such a certainty.
"What about the rest of us? Them. The family, I mean." Clark wondered.
Dr. Sullivan thought for a moment. "Allura and Zor would develop their powers in the same amount of time I did. Kara... she was thirteen? Twelve? She might come out of suspended animation ready for a growth spurt, but I don't know if that would delay or hasten her abilities. I think she'll gain them faster, since she'll stop growing sooner. And Hayl..." The man shook his head. "I'm not going to lie to you, Clark. I've only ever seen adults get sent into the Phantom Zone. For as dim as our council was, they believed the Zone was too cruel a punishment for a child. If Hayl gets out, I have no idea if he'd still be the same age or damn near forty instead."
That sobered Clark more than a little. Time didn't pass in the Phantom Zone, or it did so at such a crawl that it might as well not be passing at all. Presumeably, the Zone's occupants didn't age either. From the glimpse Clark had gotten of General Zod last year -- the man didn't appear to have aged a day from the moment he'd gone in.
Would Hayl still age and grow into an adult or had that been stopped too?
"Well," Dr. Sullivan cleared his throat. "I suppose we'll only know for certain once they're all here. Did you bring your phone?"
"Like you asked." Clark pulled the WayneTech Pearl G2 smartphone out of his pocket. "Why?"
"A pet project of mine." Dr. Sullivan answered, reaching under the coffee table for a black tackle box. "I've been seeing whether or not our Kryptonian tech is capable of integrating with Earth's technology. The prelimary testing with some old junk from the eighties went over fairly well. Some flaws, mostly performance-based. The radio was picking up signals from the ISS and I'm not even sure what the television was doing."
He placed the tackle box on the table, flipped open the lid, and turned it around so Clark could better see what was inside. Resting in the compartments chunks of what looked like rock. They ranged the size of a pea to the size of a quarter to some as easily as long as his thumb. They were all the same blue-ish color of raw tourmaline.
"What are these?" Clark asked, gingerly picking up one of the quarter-sized pieces.
"Seedlings." Dr. Sullivan replied. "Our tech was turned into crystals. I believe it was propogated out of environmental concerns. All we had to do was build a template and the seedling would do the rest. Well, we had to apply a growth formula first. Literally boiled tree sap -- I still can't believe Earth has edible tree sap. So obviously, I couldn't find the formula here on Earth, but I had good results with a combination of benzene and tetrahydrofuran, with a few drops of methylene chloride."
He placed his own smartphone on the coffee table. It looked the same, except for the case, which taken on a distinct pearly sheen.
"My phone took the integration flawlessly, but that might have just been a fluke. Mine is a G1." Dr. Sullivan took Clark's phone and removed the case from it. Then he picked up a tiny screwdriver and set work on the screws. "These seedlings were left behind by the expansioners seventeen hundred years ago, so that may have contributed to the success I've had. They're not nearly to the level the crystal tech was at when Lara constructed your ship. That makes them less complicated."
"And you want to try it on my phone now?" Clark frowned at that. What happened if the first time really had been a fluke? What if he didn't have a phone after this?
Dr. Sullivan saw his face. "It'll be fine. Yours is still under warranty, right?"
Clark just frowned a little harder.
"It'll be fine." Dr. Sullivan repeated, though more to himself. "So, how is everything in the world of Clark Kent, ace reporter?"
"Lois's birthday is coming up. On the twenty-ninth." Clark announced, feeling a bit overwhelmed all of a sudden.
"Tell her I said Happy Birthday if I don't see her the day of." Dr. Sullivan said. "Is she doing anything? Are you doing anything?"
"I-- I want to. I want to do something nice for her." Clark said, shrugging. "Take her out for breakfast or lunch or brunch. But she doesn't exactly have friends I can invite along and those she does have are cops so there's no guarantee that I wouldn't be sitting there alone with her trying to make awkward small talk."
That was a dilemma, as far as he was concerned. Lois didn't have a long list of friends or people she would pal around with. Clark knew that he was on a very short list. Colletta was usually terribly busy and the other person was Cat Grant. Cat was quite pleasant, but her eye-flirting was even more blatant than Lois's and it got awkward to be around her. When it came down to it, it was most likely going to be just Clark and Lois sitting in some cozy brunch cafe eating crepes and strawberries.
He wasn't sure he was ready for that.
And that was stupid, because they had lunch together almost weekly.
"What were marriages like on Krypton?" Clark asked. A second later, he blushed red, because he hadn't expected himself to ask that.
"Political." Dr. Sullivan said bluntly.
Clark blinked. Not the answer he had expected.
"That's the long and short of it; marriage was largely a political manuever. Even before the Contact Plague. It just got easier afterwards because the matters of sexual intercourse and physical attraction were taken off the table. We gestated our children in artificial wombs, so it was just a question of gene compatibility and if the marriage was a politically sound arrangement."
"So... If sex wasn't an issue... Same-sex couples?" Clark wondered.
"Oh yes, one in every fifteen, I'd say?" The mechanical engineer pondered for a moment. He thought the number might have been climbing there towards the end. "Honestly, the human abhorrence for same-sex pairings absolutely baffles me. It's not like the human race is in any danger of dying out. The population could drop a little and they'd be no worse for wear.
"Thanagar... Now Thanagar would be horrified by the idea even more so than humans. I don't think they've ever been exposed to the concept, never mind the reality." he added. "Then again, the Thanagarians do have a fairly low birth-rate, so you could see why opposite sex couples would be preferred."
Clark shook his head. "What are Thanagarians?"
"Humanoid avians. Hawk people. They're out in the Praepes system, Accipiter Cluster about forty light-years out. Even at faster-than-light speeds, it's still three months of travel between here and there so you'll never actually meet one on purpose." Dr. Sullivan explained. "And pray you never have the misfortune to meet one."
"Why?"
"They revere a murderous, war-mongering cosmic horror as a god and let it dictate too much of their lives."
"Uh..."
"Thanagarians high-key want to fight everyone."
"Ah."
Curious as Clark was, that sounded like an alien race that he wanted to avoid. Krypton must have had some contact with the planet and its people in the past; it sounded like Dr. Sullivan was speaking from experience.
"So, what about my parents?" Clark asked. "I mean, did they love each other or was their marriage too political."
"Oh Rao yes, those two were sickeningly sweet on each other." Dr. Sullivan made a face. "Jor was third-born in his family, so he had the option of petitioning for a spouse rather than having a spouse chosen for him. Less politics involved for him and Zor. Anyways, their older sister had her eye on a lovely young lady from the House of Aith. It was a good match; the Council had been wanting the House of El to get more involved with diplomacy and such. My House was an ally to Aith, so we were expected to be at the engagement ceremony. I was there when Jor and Lara made eye contact for the first time. It was like the Fourth of July."
Clark smiled. "Love at first sight."
"Everything you'd want." Dr. Sullivan agreed, smiling at the memory all the same. "Lara was my first-born-- first and only, actually. She would have dealt with the council politics and the arranged betrothment, particularly considering that she was the only daughter in the House of Lor-Van. I was an only child myself and a widower, so the pressure was on for her to marry and keep the House going."
"You never remarried?"
"No one expected me to. Perinne was one in a million. I just don't think I would have been happy with anyone else." he stated, albeit a little sadly like he still wondered if he had missed any opportunites.
"Ideally, you'd marry equal or up. There was only a certain point to which it was acceptable to marry down. Ideally, a first-born marries another first-born, but that happened even less often than the Council would have had people believe."
Clark frowned thoughtfully, trying to puzzle out the marriage politics. "So what did that mean for...?"
"In the end, very little." Dr. Sullivan admitted. "The House of El was above us, so the fact that Jor was third-born was moot. Either way, Lara married up into a good family. Once Jor's petition showed up in the system, the Council was willing to let Lara make a choice: Take Jor's petition or let the Council continue the match-making. Quite fortunately for you and Hayl, Jor and Lara could barely keep their eyes off each other. Once the courtship went through, it was their hands we had to worry about--"
"Whoa, I thought we didn't have sexual arousal."
"They enjoyed touching each other all the same." Dr. Sullivan said, wiggling his fingers obscenely. "There's pleasure to be derived from simple skin-to-skin contact, Clark. And hey, when you grow up in a culture that doesn't put a lot of positive emphasis on physical contact, that's as forbidden as nookie in the backseat--"
"Whoa!" Clark stood up to physically walk away from the conversation. Even though his birth-parents hadn't done any naughty deeds to conceive him, he still didn't want to hear about it. Or accidentally imagine it. His bits didn't work that way, but his imagination sure as hell did.
"Oh, sit down." Dr. Sullivan was grinning. He had taken the back off the smartphone, revealing its innards. He picked up one of the pea-sized seedlings with a pair of tweezers and began brushing it down with some kind of liquid. "We abhorred physical contact because of how easily the plague had spread. Walking sticks came into fashion for a while and after the plague was neutralized, it was gloves. By the time I was born, the only acceptable place to touch a stranger was on the left wrist and that was only to get one's attention. Anything beyond that was considered intimate, Clark. It only happened between family members or married couples."
A realization came over Clark and one of his interactions with Nam-Ek suddenly started to make a little more sense.
"Wait... Is that why Nam-Ek thought Lois and I-- were a thing?"
"Did he?"
"Well, he kept calling Lois my woman." Clark scowled. He didn't like the possessive connotations.
"What instance of physical contact did he first witness between you and Lois?" Dr. Sullivan asked.
"I grabbed her around the waist and hauled her off an roof." Clark answered. "To be fair, Nam-Ek was charging right at us and it was the quickest way of dodging."
"But that would do it. It's the waist. That's the couples' zone. Siblings and parents hug at the shoulders. It took me a while to figure out how different it was here. I was confused by the constant touching when I first landed. For all I knew, everyone was related or married." Dr. Sullivan said, shaking his head. "Bless Nam-Ek's black little soul, but he did not even try to understand the concept of touch starvation. I did my reading. Humans need tactile contact just to be properly socialized as infants."
"And we don't?"
"Not after two thousand years of gene manipulation that could be passably considered evolution, but I think we're better off for being the huggy sort."
Clark nodded, glad that his grandfather had a positive thought or two to spare on being huggy. He had been raised as a human and after two decades of platonic intimacy, he didn't think he could have necessarily gone without.
Very carefully, Dr. Sullivan placed the seedling in a small groove between the battery and the rest of the interior casing.
"This will need a minute to react." he said. "So out of curiousity, are you and Lois a thing?"
"What?-- No, no, god no!" Clark waved his hands frantically and back-pedaled away from that conversational pit. "Lois and I are not a thing! Absolutely not. We are friends. Just friends. She actually uses that word around me, so I'm going to stay in her comfort zone."
Dr. Sullivan's eyebrows did a thing where they danced around in sheer skepticism. He'd had twenty years to sort out most if not all of the nuances of human interpersonal relationships. He couldn't say that he understood everything, such as where they drew the lines between platonic and romantic (to be fair, humans didn't quite seem to get it either), but he would swear on Krypton's space-blasted bits that Lois and Clark seemed a bit too close to be "just friends".
Clark, on the other hand, knew that he had a crush on Lois. It was slightly terrifying because it had been such a long time since he'd had a crush on anyone. Lana Lang, and that had vanished about mid-junior year. Strangely, about the time he'd realized that boners were actually a normal part of a teenage male's life and nothing of the sort had happened to him. One horror replaced by another, he supposed now.
But just like last time, Clark knew he wouldn't be able to act on his feelings. Not because Lois was dating anyone, no, but because Lois wasn't dating period. And no matter how many carefully probing questions he asked, he just couldn't get a read on her feelings. She hit on him all the damn time and Colletta (a stellar wing-lady, really) had reported that Lois tended to rant at length about Clark's "completely unfair chest", but it took at least four drinks to get that far. On the other end of the spectrum, Lois had also made it clear that dating was not a thing she was interested in, since her journalism career was really starting to heat up and she wanted to make sure that her focus was where it needed to be.
So Clark was left to pretend that his crush wasn't happening.
Not easy.
Lois was adorable.
"Lois is bisexual." he found himself saying. "She's never said so outright. I only know that because I met I think her only past girlfriend. To be honest, I'm not sure that she personally identifies as bi. She was raised in a military environment, so she's probably kind of wrapped up in 'don't ask, don't tell'."
"And by force of manipulation, we Kryptonians are asexual." Dr. Sullivan said. "Do something." He prodded the seedling with the tweezers. "Clark, sometimes you look at Lois like Jor looked at Lara."
Clark blinked. "I do?"
"In this fond, if slightly exasperated, way where your eyes are saying 'I would move heaven and earth for you'." Dr. Sullivan grinned a little bigger than necessary. "Whatever you've got, you've got it bad."
Clark groaned and covered his heated face with both hands.
"Now the horrible crushy feelings will probably pass if you let them. Just stop being so mortified by them and accept that they're there." the mechanical engineer advised. He gave the seedling another prod and scowled. "I think this one's a dud-- No there it goes!"
Clark lowered his hands just in time to see the seedling open like a popcorn kernel. The blue tourmaline-like exterior had opened to reveal a more pearly-like interior that flattened itself against the battery and the inner mechanics. It seemed to hesitate a second, and then it spread upwards along the back of the phone, skirting around the lens, the USB port, the charging port, and the power button until it resembled just another phone case. The surface of it rippled like it was settling and nothing visible happened. Dr. Sullivan eyeballed it closely for another few seconds and then picked up the phone.
"Oh, it worked!"
Clark raised an eyebrow. "It did?"
"Yes! Feel this, it even conformed to the texture!" Dr. Sullivan pushed Clark's phone back into his hand.
The new casing didn't feel hard and cool like he would have expected from something that essentially stone. Instead, it was slightly warm and a bit rubbery. He pressed a finger against the power button and the screen lit up a moment later. It went through the title screen, which was the animation of an oyster opening to reveal an image of the phone. That was replaced by W.E. PEARLG2, the letters shimmering iridescently before it took him to the password screen.
"Well?" Dr. Sullivan demanded impatiently and expectantly.
"Well, it hasn't blown up yet." Clark reported.
"Did you expect it to?"
"Kind of."
He swiped in his password, pleased when the phone made no strange noises and took him straight to the main screen. A notification popped up immediately, accompanied by the smooth mechanical voice of HAL 9000. "Good morning Dave."
"Jeez--!" He nearly threw the phone.
"Hah! They hit me with Ride of the Valkyries." Dr. Sullivan said sympathetically.
"I hated that movie!" Clark complained. "My parents thought it was a masterpiece, but it scared the crap out of me even the second time around."
"To each their own. I just made fun of the inaccuracies." Dr. Sullivan said cheerfully. "Now if you haven't guessed, the phone has a direct link to the Fortress and the A.I.s. I should warn you; they will probably start asking you questions that you more than me are going to know the answers to. They're trying to understand human behavior and culture, so they've started by going down the National Film Registry list. Because they're scientists, essentially. They're going to do it methodically."
"How-- How much of the world do they have access to?" Clark wondered. Internet access, obviously, so there was a most likely a satellite uplink. Heck, they had probably boosted McMurdo Station's signal in the process.
"Well..." Dr. Sullivan thought for a moment. "The Fortress was built with an uplink to the Krypton oxobcha-- sorry, I don't think there's an exact translation. I suppose, satellite network? Since the Fortress is designed to sync to satellites, I suppose when I reactivated the place last year, it connected with any orbital satellite in a state of active transmission."
"That's... That's over a thousand." Clark stated. Lois had blabbed the number at him once.
A thousand plus satellites that monitored GPS, weather, communications, government, military, the internet, and really anything on the damn planet... And the A.I.s had access to all of it.
All of it.
Clark had seen too many movies about that exact scenario.
"They're not-- I mean, the A.I.s, they have failsafes, right?"
"Don't worry, they do. It is against their programming to knowingly and deliberately endanger the safety and stability of the planet and its governments."
Somehow, the engineer's tone failed to be completely reassuring, no matter how much Clark knew he was right. His biological parents were scientists, meaning that it was most likely in their nature to predict the variables and eventualities. A.I.s had been a common part of life on Krypton, so they had known how to avoid the whole 'unstoppably mad with unlimited power' aspect.
"I'm sorry, the concept just bothers me a little." he admitted. "Sometimes, it just feesl like when anyone gets their hands on even a little bit of power, they go sort of crazy. It's harder to stop A.I.s."
"I know what you mean." Dr. Sullivan said. A dark look passed briefly over his face. "But you don't need to worry about it. I did help with some of the programming, so I know what they cannot and should not do. They're your parents, Clark. The closest there is."
Clark nodded, glancing down at his phone screen as he did. He didn't know why it bothered him, the A.I. business. It just did. But his parents had known what they were doing. He was just going to have to have some faith.
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