Disclaimer: Inspired by Superman I/ II/ Returns, Smallville. Owned by DC Comics, Warner Bros, Bad Hat Harry Productions, the CW, certainly not me. Clark's intern Trish is referred to courtesy of Speakfire. I just get to play in the sand box.
Writer's Note: This chapter draws more heavily on Smallville than prior chapters. This revision includes just a bit more exposition and background on details that came from Smallville, since this is the Superman Movies section.
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Clark did his usual routine of waiting for an elevator by himself and changing out of his suit, into his uniform and flying out the top of the elevator shaft. Placing his Bluetooth ear piece, he used his Blackberry to voice dial his real estate broker. As he counted rings, Superman maneuvered through the air and routed himself over the West bound interstate to stay under cell coverage. To keep his call from getting dropped by the wireless phone grid, he also had to stay under 200 mph. He hoped that satellite phones would be affordable soon. This was slowing him down.
When his real estate broker picked up, he slowed to the pace of a human jogger so that the wind whipping around him wouldn't interfere with his conversation. "Er, yes, Jamie, this is Mr. Kent. Something's come up I have to head out past the suburbs to check on a lead for a story I'm working.
"You can reschedule me? Oh, that's great. I should be back around two and then I have a thing at a school.
"Yes, 3:30 would be great. Thanks, so much." The Man of Steel placed the Bluetooth ear piece back in its pocket in his cape and decided that being able to reschedule his day literally on the fly far outweighed the inconvenience of slowing down for a few minutes.
Speeding up to nearly Mach One, the Metropolis Marvel climbed over the flight levels of commercial and military aircraft. Then he calmly went ballistic: Superman launched himself into a low orbital trajectory which would end in a few minutes on the coast of California. From there, he would follow the highways to Pasadena and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He wanted to find out if the virus that had affected their computers was connected to the transmissions received from Krypton. Coincidence doesn't prove causality, but it was a working theory.
Back in his high school days he would have turned to Chloe Sullivan to help with the virus, but now he didn't know where she was and he hadn't met any good other good hackers yet during his first month back on earth. As it occurred to Superman that he was ignoring the proverbial "white elephant in the room with him" by not watching the complete video of the transmission from Krypton, someone else was thinking of Chloe as well.
Back on the ground in Metropolis, a trim older gent with a lion's mane of graying hair and a well-kept beard who wore an impeccably tailored silk Armani suit and perfectly shined thousand dollar shoes walked up to the gum-chewing, spiky-haired, fresh faced receptionist of the Daily Planet and asked to sign in to see Miss Sullivan. The reception queried if he meant a Miss Jonelle Sullivan in housekeeping or Ms. K. Sullivan in the printing department. The older gent leaned heavily on his cane sighed wearily. He meant Miss Chloe Sullivan the reporter. The receptionist assured him that there was no Chloe Sullivan the Reporter and never had been at least not in all her time at the Daily Planet. The older gent inquired how long her tenure at the Planet had been. The receptionist replied that it was as long as she had been working. The older gent assured the receptionist that he had been reading the Daily Planet since before the receptionist's mother was in diapers and at one time his family had even owned the Daily Planet. The receptionist tapped a buzzer on her desk and said "Security."
The older gent said don't bother and turned and began to walk toward the revolving doors at the front entrance. When he had gone a few steps to show that he was leaving and heard the receptionist cancel the call for security, he stopped, pulled out his wireless phone and speed dialed. The phone rang four times and then was answered, "Perry White speaking and this had better not be a prank."
"Good morning, Mr. White. It's Lionel. I know that I have been away for a while, but I do hope that I still carry some clout around here."
Lois Lane sat at her desk and just stared at the screen of her laptop. The irony of this day was beginning to sink in. This evening she would receive the Pulitzer Prize for an editorial column which was at once the most irrelevant ever written, and the favorite of one of the most infamous criminals of the current age. Her son had thrown a grand piano across a room. Zod. Clark. Superman. Jason. It seemed like the answers were right there in front of her but she just couldn't see them.
Superman knew that he had to see the original video of the transmission from Krypton, before he pursued the virus at JPL. For this, he changed course and headed out into the desert to the control complex for the Very Large Array. Besides, their computers had also been infected with the same virus that had plagued the JPL. The Man of Steel could hit two birds with a single stone there. He climbed back up above 45, 000 feet, to avoid breaking windows at ground level and interfering with aircraft in the flight levels. Then he shot straight over to the VLA's HQ: zero to 60,000 mph to zero in five seconds flat. As he descended to the building's entrance, the Last Son of Krypton wondered absently why his own brains weren't smashed out against the inside his skull.
"Excuse me, can I see some ID, Bub?"
Superman turned back to look at the security guard. He moved his hands in a gesture to point out his uniform "Don't the Shield and the Cape tell you who I am?"
"You been gone a long time, and I got a job to do, Bub. Right here in my policy manual it tells me that the law says, I got to see ID and Security Clearance before I let anyone into this building. Ain't you got a flying license, or anything?"
"Are there any loopholes, for example could I get someone inside to vouch for me and sign me in?" He could rip the doors off their hinges and just walk through, but Superman stopped for this security guard because he had respect for the law.
"Yeah, I s'pose."
"I'll be back," the Last Son of Krypton said over his shoulder as he stepped back outside the building to get decent reception on his Blackberry. Googleing the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelliegence, and the VLA to check on their funding, he found that the Wayne Foundation made sizeable donations to both. So did LuthorCorp, for that matter. But he had Bruce's number. He didn't know where to find Lionel these days. Superman wasn't entirely sure he wanted to owe a favor to a man like Lionel, even though the elder Luthor had channeled the spirit of his father Jor-El many times during the months leading up to Dark Thursday and the first conflict with Zod in Smallville. As the Man of Steel took one Blackberry out of a pocket in his cape the other one rang.
A few minutes earlier, Lionel Luthor sat with Perry White in the Starbucks just off the lobby of the Daily Planet.
"Well, Lionel, since you still own a few percent of our stock and sit on our Board of Directors, I would normally give you ten minutes. But to day is very busy so you only get seven," barked the Editor-in-Chief.
"I'm right here, Mr. White." Lionel gestured with both hands slightly pointing to his face. "I still hear just as well as I used to. I only need to talk to Chloe Sullivan, Mr. White; that's all."
Perry looked stricken.
"Don't tell me she went to New York to write for the Times." Lionel inquired casually. He still had a certain fondness for Miss Sullivan even after all the years.
The Editor-in-Chief gathered his composure, "She did indeed leave the Big Apricot for the Big Apple, but she's not writing for the Times."
"Alright, then perhaps you could tell me how to get in touch with Clark Kent? I recall seeing his byline back in the Planet after a five year absence."
Perry pulled a business card out of his vest, wrote two phone numbers on the back of it and slid it across the table to Lionel. "The second one is his intern. She's in school 'till two this afternoon."
"Thank you, Mr. White." Lionel said looking down at the numbers on the card, not seeing that the other man had already stood and turned away.
"Don't mention it." White called looking back over his shoulder as a waitress set their espressos down on the table, and Lionel dialed the first number.
By the third ring, Superman stood fifty feet above the ground where no on would hear. Though he answered the Blackberry in his Clark Kent style, he couldn't entirely keep the frustration Superman felt with the security guard out of his tone "Clark Kent, Daily Planet, may I have the first question?"
"Very good, Kal-El, I see you've stepped right back into your other persona, even after a five year absence."
"Lionel Luthor. There are some things in this world that will never change. It's good to hear that name; I wish it were as good to hear your voice." The Man of Steel rose an extra fifty feet. He really didn't want anyone to hear him talking to Lionel.
"I read in the Daily Planet about what my son did to your Fortress. I regret that. I also regret what he did with those crystals. I never did teach him enough - -"
"What you did and didn't teach Lex could fill the space between Arizona and Metropolis." Regret and anger touched Superman's tone, for he knew that man Lex was today had been shaped by Lionel and himself.
"Is that where you are now, getting hassled by common folk doing their jobs, while you try to get into a building?" the elder gent enquired with a compassionate tone.
"How could you possibly - -" The regret left the Man of Steel's tone. Anger remained.
"I'm watching you right now on a satellite my company built for the NSA."
Superman looked up and scanned the heavens. He spotted two reconnaissance satellites with LuthorCorp insignia. "Which: the one over Alaska or the one over the Gulf of Mexico."
"Oh, how I wish, I could see your face now, Kal-El." Lionel smiled. "I simply recognized the frustration in your tone of voice. I empathize with the humanity of your situation." Over the years he had made similar statements countless times, though rarely with the genuine sincerity he now felt. "I, too, was similarly frustrated just moments ago in the lobby of the Daily Planet while trying to find a mutual friend of ours, Chloe Sullivan."
"Chloe." Superman began to drift in a circle, almost dancing with her memory.
"Yes, Chloe."
"Did you find her?" Hope began to creep back into Superman's voice.
"No, but I think I can get at least one of your crystals back for you, maybe more. My son has a habit of choosing female companions with heart: Miss Lang, Miss Tessmacher." Lionel looked up into the middle distance and ticked them off on the fingers of his right hand. "… Miss Kowalski."
"Why would you help me like this, Lionel?"
Lionel savored a sip of his espresso, good but not like Martha used to make at the Talon in the old days. "Because, I have been hearing from Jor-El again, though not as clearly as we would both no doubt like. Perhaps, if we were to get the fortress up and running again, I will be able to hear him more clearly. I will also phone the director of SETI and get you access to that transmission."
Superman was about to say thank you, but the line was already dead.
"This is the transmission replayed from the original analog tape." The image was grainy and green. It appeared to be formed from Kryptonese glyphs running up and down the screen almost like the green Matrix code in those Wachowski Brothers movies. The image looked like his father Jor-El. The scientist in the white coat pressed the play button and Jor-El began to speak.
"Beware Zod. He is a military genius, a conqueror like few worlds will ever know. Accompanied by his acolytes Ursa, herself a genius in the design and manufacture of weapons, and Narn, General Zod was banished forever into the Phantom Zone for Crimes Against Krypton. But if any could find a way of escape, it would be these three. And so, I, Jor-El, Chief Astronomer and Physicist of the Counsel of Elders of Krypton, and formerly Ambassador to the Twenty-Eight Known Galactic Civilizations, send all of you this warning."
White Coat hit the stop button. "It goes on like that, poetic I think, almost Shakespearean."
"Can I get a copy?" Superman asked, longingly.
"I'm not sure that would be advisable." White Coat replied
"Why?" The Last Son of Krypton asked with a tear in one eye.
"The more we cross reference the other parts of the transmission, to try and gain clarity, or digitally process it in any way through a computer and not a simple playback machine, it transforms. The message becomes an image of General Zod, saying beware the son of Jor-El."
Superman looked stricken.
"I doubt that's what you'd want. Any computers we process it through also crash from viral activity and then promptly reboot themselves to function flawlessly.
Superman walked a circle and regained his composure, "Can you isolate a part of your system and process a fresh copy?"
"We could, sure."
The Man of Steel removed his Bluetooth earphone from its pocket within his cape, and set the switch from his Clark Blackberry back to his Superman Blackberry. He pointed to it, "I will make some calls and find the best computer-man or –woman to come out here and crack the virus."
"Thank you, Superman. We will need it. I think the virus got out."
Superman rubbed his temples. It was going to be one of those days. One of his Blackberries sounded a chime and he remembered that Clark Kent would soon be due at Jason White's school.