Do you ever have those writing moments where it's not quite writer's block, but a scene just doesn't want to be written and getting through it a paragraph at a time is like pulling teeth? Since I had a wisdom tooth out not that long ago, I can accurately attest that this takes five minutes and a drill.
Getting through the sequel's chapter 6 was like that.
Fortunately, chapter 7 came along much more quickly and I'm halfway through chapter 8.
Chapter Twelve: The Mad Men of Science
S.T.A.R. Labs had been founded about five years ago by three educated men who had put their brains together and decided that there needed to exist a laboratory that was unaffiliated with any business or with the military. A place where any scientist, researcher, or engineer could work on their experiments without being hassled by men in suits who weren't interested in discovery for the sake of it. Where the betterment of mankind could be found, rather than forced.
There was a branch of S.T.A.R. Labs in only three cities. Robert Meersman directed the lab in San Francisco. Harrison Wells ran the one in his hometown Central City, overseeing the beginning stages of construction on a massive particle accelerator that might put CERN to shame. And Garrison Slater ran the smallest of the labs here in Metropolis.
'Smallest' was still something of a relative term when you considered the sheer size of the Central and San Francisco branches. The Metropolis branch occupied approximately sixty-five hundred thousand square feet of a bulge on West River Island. The other two facilities were double that size.
This did not include the parking lots or the out-buildings or as-of-yet undeveloped empty lots.
"I don't think I've actually said this before," Lois started, half in a tone of awe at the sheer size of the complex. "But you really do have to respect the egghead scientists when it comes to getting things done. When they buckle down, they're actually very good at it."
"You sound surprised." Clark noted. "There are scientists all over history who have accomplished a lot by throwing chemicals and lava and acids at things."
The older reporter shrugged. "I know, but you don't hear about that progress until after it happens." she said. "And in my experience, scientist keep getting distracted by the new shiny things and it's six months before they get back to their original project."
"You could say the same about writers too."
"True, but a writer's project usually doesn't have such a visible scope until you can see their entire body of work. This, Smallville," She gestured to the complex laid out in front of them. "This is like a testament to hundreds of years worth of dedicated researchers. It's like a save haven where they can all call each other 'nerds' without it sounding like an insult. It's like some giant temple where scientists can worship at the altar of discovery. Science isn't even my thing and I still have some respect for the fact that a place like S.T.A.R. Labs exist at all."
Clark blinked. "I feel like you've gone off on a tangent."
"I probably have."
It took a few minutes for security to clear them and issue their visitor badges, allowing them enough time to ogle over what there was to see from the out-building. The security post was practically nothing but windows, giving them a wide view of the S.T.A.R. Labs complex. It was a network of sweeping white buildings covered in more glass and steel than the entirety of Metropolis itself, many of them connected by sky bridge gerbil tubes. It was like some sci-fi writer's version of the future, where straight lines and sharp corners were nonexistent, where everything else was chrome and stainless steel and whiter than polished marble, where the computer screens were more like projections, glowing an odd sort of blue-green with just a frame and no backing.
"Hey Smallville," Lois nudged him, gesturing to the security's computer. "What do you think the price tag is on those bad boys?"
"More than we make in a year, I imagine." Clark answered. He blinked. "What do we make in a year?"
"Before or after taxes? I pulled down about fifty-two hundred in the first six months when I did my taxes, so I figure we're looking at about thirty thousand a year. Enough to live on in this city." Lois answered. She eyed the computer again. It was a sweet piece of machinery, the broad example of future technology and probably still very much experimental, but just a delight to look at. It might become mainstream one day and she would be pleased to say that she had seen it before it was cool.
She shrugged. "It's probably really expensive, though. You're right."
"You wanna know how much?" the security guard wondered.
"Just fuck me up."
"'Round about sixteen hundred thousand to go from concept through development to actuality." The guard grinned at Lois's cringe. "And they coughed up twelve of these beauties." He stroked the side of the screen a bit lovingly. "Runs about ten times faster than my laptop and that's only two years old."
"Comparatively speaking, your laptop is five years out of date." Clark said.
"True." the guard agreed. He produced two plastic bins and set them on top of the desk's wall. "I'm going to need you to place all electronics and any metal into these bins and then step through the metal detector, please."
"My glasses too?" Clark asked, pointing to them. The frames were plastic and screws might be too small to get picked up by the detector, but those things were often mad sensitive.
"Better let him keep them on. He makes bats look sharp-eyed." Lois said, stepping out of her shoes; they had buckled straps on them. She had never seen anyone with lenses so thick and she used to hang around the pizza-faced nerds in high school. Poor Clark's eyesight must have been so completely shot that no contacts or laser surgery could save him.
The guard just waved them on and they stepped through the detector with no incident. They collected their belongings, were handed their badges, and went on to the visitor's lounge where Dr. Sullivan had agreed to meet them.
It was a testament to how big S.T.A.R. Labs was starting to become when Clark and Lois passed the beginning of a tour group consisting of a dozen or so people. Mostly of the lonely nerd variety and the distinctly out of place Asian couple with their cameras and tourist shirts. The tour guide was perky in voice and smile and chest, the latter of which was going to tear the nerds' attention in two.
Absolutely a disaster waiting to happen. Lois thought. Most of those nerds over there were lonely and hopeless with the concept of social interaction. These were kinds of nerds who didn't communicate with women because they didn't know how. A pretty tour guide essentially paying attention to them on some level was going to cause their minds to slowly self-destruct.
Lois had spent enough time around those nerds to recognize when it was going to happen.
She glanced sideways at Clark who looked every inch the lonely, hopeless nerd she was used to. He had the glasses, only a vague grasp on what could be loosely called a fashion sense, and a demeanor that was prone to being squirrely and non-social.
But at the same time, he just wasn't that sort of nerd at all. Despite his hunched shoulders and occasionally groveling speech, he carried himself with a lot more confidence and made a passable effort at flirting. He smiled a lot, greeted everyone, and there was a bunch of little old biddies at the Daily Planet who were completely charmed by his good farm boy charisma and he bore their cheek-pinching and collar-folding with a good-natured patience.
It was a bit uncanny, honestly.
The visitor's lounge was empty, so Dr. Anthony Sullivan was easy to spot. He had dull blue-green eyes behind rectangular glasses and salt-and-pepper hair. His cheekbones were sharp and prominent, but the rest of his face was stately and distinguished, his jaw square and proud like the face of Greek statuary. Another couple of years and he'd be one hell of a silver fox.
"Dr. Sullivan?" Lois called out, as they approached the round table where the engineer sat. Dr. Sullivan looked over and immediately got to his feet, prompting Lois to hold out her hand in greeting. "Thank you for meeting--"
With a grin on his handsome face, Dr. Sullivan blew right past her without so much as meeting her eyes.
"You must be Mr. Kent." The engineer seized Clark by the hand and pumped it enthusiastically, his grip strong and crushing. "I heard about you on the news last week. It is a pleasure to meet you, absolutely a pleasure!"
"Th-Thank you?" Clark glanced over at Lois. She stood there with her hand outstretched and her expression insulted.
"Really, I've been dying to shake your hand since I heard the story. What a thing you did!" Dr. Sullivan said ecstatically. "A fireball that big and you walked away without a scratch!"
"Uh... Just lucky, I guess." Clark shrugged. "Oh, that's Lois Lane." he added, tilting his head to his new partner. "She's the one who got us this appointment. All of this was her doing."
Dr. Sullivan looked over his shoulder and jumped a bit like he had just seen the woman for the first time. He immediately turned to her, politely not focusing on her gritted teeth smile as they exchanged handshakes.
"My sincerest apologies, Miss Lane, I didn't actually see you." He chuckled warmly.
"That's never happened to me before." Lois said. People usually did not walk right past her like that; like she had all the importance of a shrub. Besides, how the hell had he not seen her? She'd been standing right in front of him!
The engineer smiled apologetically. "I suppose I did get a little caught up in the moment." he said. He gestured to the table. "Well, why don't you two have a seat and tell me what you wanted to talk about."
"First of all, thank you for agreeing to see us." Lois said, once they were situated -- notebooks out and recorders primed. During that, she had performed a quick, cursory examination of Dr. Sullivan. He was in his late fifties or so, wearing a white lab coat with singed sleeves and discolored patches. His I.D. badge was melted on one corner and he seemed to prefer snappy bowties over neck-ties. His clothes were otherwise generic; things he wouldn't be bothered having to dispose of. All in all, the mechanical engineer seemed happy with his job and it probably wouldn't be difficult to get the answers out of him (the way his eyes kept wandering to Clark, though, that might be trouble).
"We would like to ask you a few questions about your old co-worker, Norman Essex." she started. "His name's crossed our paths in conjunction with another story we're working on, but we're not sure how he fits into it."
"Well, you're going to have to fill in the blanks for me. Norm and I haven't spoken or really seen each other in some time." Dr. Sullivan admitted. "Where would you like me to start?"
Clark gave a small shrug. "What was he like?"
"As a person, he was intolerable, smug, and too full of himself. Drunk on his own intelligence. Toxic. I couldn't stand him." the engineer said, sneering vaguely. "As a scientist, he was downright brilliant. A bit mad, but that's what everyone says about people like him. He had these fantastic ideas that were ahead of the decades. They were so advanced that they couldn't even be accomplished."
Clark and Lois shared a look.
"Meaning what?" the more experienced reporter asked.
"Let me put it this way. Say it's the nineteen-fifties and you want to build a cell phone. Just like the smartphones we have today." Dr. Sullivan proposed. "Same size, same functions, identical down to the last specs."
"That'd be impossible. The technology would barely exist and especially not in that size." Clark said. "We didn't develop wireless transmissions until the mid-1990s."
"Exactly my point. That was Norm's problem. What he wanted to do..." Dr. Sullivan shook his head, waving a dismissive hand. "He'd have to invent the technology first before he could even do one-sixteenth of the things he talked about."
"Which was?" Lois prompted.
"Wipe out genetic defects and possibly mental disorders." Dr. Sullivan said. "He talked about cures for cancer and cystic fibrosis. Activating stem cells in the human body to complete the fetal growth that someone with cerebral palsy might have missed out on. Stimulating the hormonal glands to correct chemical imbalances at the root of most mental disorders. All things like that."
"Sounds like he wanted to change the human race for the better." Clark commented. "But all those ideas... That's twenty or thirty years down the road, before we'd start seeing some considerable return."
"Yeah, didn't we really start getting into stem cell research just recently?" Lois asked. She turned back to the engineer. "So, we know he quit working here. Did that have anything to do with a lack of progress?"
"Somewhat, I suppose." Dr. Sullivan's brow furrowed as he trawled through the memories. "Norm definitely wasn't content with having to wait. He wanted progress in leaps and bounds. His ideas were all very commendable, but it never occurred to him that he would be taking baby steps to get there."
"So it was the impatience." Lois concluded.
"Actually, that wasn't the exact reason." Dr. Sullivan said. He smiled wryly. "Norm started to think that if he was going to make any progress and sell his proposal to the board, he needed to begin human trials as soon as possible. Dr. Slater turned him down flat, so imagine my surprise when I discovered a fresh hobo corpse in his lab."
Lois lit up in realization. "Oh! Oh, I heard about this! They smothered it into a rumor, but I did hear something about human experimentation at S.T.A.R. Labs!" She practically squealed this.
"I'd appreciate it if you would let it stay a rumor, please and thank you. This job is about all I have."
Lois mimed a zipping motion across her lips. The engineer looked meaningfully at Clark.
"I'm not one to spread rumors." the younger reporter said.
Dr. Sullivan smiled and nodded before continuing. "Well, after that, it was obvious Norm was going to be fired. He quit before Dr. Slater could tell him to start packing. I haven't seen him since. I can't say I was sorry to see him go, either."
"If you didn't like him, then why did you spend so much time with him?" Clark wondered, and winced at the faint note of accusation in his tone. "I mean, he seems like he might be a toxic person."
"Oh, he was abhorrent! He was nuclear waste! And he certainly didn't come with warning signs until it was too late." Dr. Sullivan corrected, shuddering. He dragged his fingers through his hair. "I promise you, Mr. Kent, Miss Lane, I would have had absolutely nothing to do with him if I'd had the choice."
"Did you two have to work together?" Lois asked.
"Not directly. It was more l like I couldn't be rid of him." Dr. Sullivan said. "I didn't like him, but he had a very different idea. I admit, we were the only two people who were smart enough to keep up with each other, which made me the only person in the entire complex who was worth talking to.
"Norm is someone who doesn't like people. Absolutely hates them, to be honest. If he could shut himself up in an isolated lab in the mountains and communicate through robots, I guarantee he would have done it. He thinks the human race as a whole is a stinking, slithering, disease-ridden mass of undeveloped cells with great potential, but no idea how to get there and no desire to. Norm developed the unfortunate belief that he could become a savior to mankind by curing them of their ills."
This was met with nothing more than a half-stunned silence, as neither Lois nor Clark had any words to grapple with. Because wow that just sounded like the premise of a badly executed villain origin story. It sounded one hundred percent comic book ridiculous to both of them, particularly Lois who dealt primarily with facts. But at the same time, it wasn't as utterly far-fetched as it felt like it should have been. Because there were people like that in the world. Those mad scientists caricatures had come from somewhere and if Dr. Essex has been drunk enough on his own intelligence, he really could have fancied himself some kind of messiah type with the ability to cure humankind of their worst diseases.
"Excuse us for a moment, Dr. Sullivan." Lois said pleasantly.
Then she got out of her chair and dragged Clark with her. He let out a token protest that sounded more like a mumble, but still followed her across the visitor's lounge to the restrooms on the opposite side. He didn't actually protest more audibly until she had pulled him through one of the doors.
"Ms. Lane!"
"What?"
"This is the women's restroom." Clark told her, his eyes skirting around the interior. It seemed vaguely pastel and lacked urinals, and he was almost disappointed about the lack of anything mysterious. The point, though, was that he had never actually set foot in a woman's restroom before because that was just impolite.
"Relax, it's empty." Lois assured him, though she peered briefly under the stalls just to make sure. "I need to ask you something and I needed it private. Do you think everything Dr. Sullivan is saying sounds like bullshit?"
"I-- I can't really say for sure." Clark admitted. "I mean, it does sound a little pre-rehearsed and it feels like there should be something wrong, but I can't put a finger on it."
"Exactly! This is pinging my bullshit radar like nothing else, but I can't tell if he's lying!" Lois complained. "I'm good at telling when people are lying to me. I'm very good at it. But I'm getting mixed signals from this guy, like he's telling what he hopes is the truth but also doesn't think it is."
Clark pondered over the last few minutes, trying to determine exactly when Dr. Sullivan's answers had started to sound just a touch off. Lois must have gone in from the start determined to find something fishy, but he hadn't been so suspicious.
"What do you think he's lying about?" he wondered.
"Hard to say. If he's lying out of his ass, he's good at not showing it." Lois grumbled.
She was probably reading body language and listening to tone of voice to catch the liars. Except anyone could iron out their tells with enough practice. Clark, on the other hand, had the benefit of being able to hear the heartbeat. There was a physiological reaction when someone lied; their heart-rate increased, for one. Dr. Sullivan's heart hadn't even fluttered. He was either telling the truth or he believed that he was.
"What do you think, Smallville? Where do you think the lie is?" Lois asked.
"Well, I didn't start picking up anything remotely suspicious until Dr. Sullivan started talking about how socially repulsive Dr. Essex was." Clark answered. "I get the feeling the relationship between them was like competitive enemies, but if Dr. Essex really hated people as much as implied, I think he would have been in a privately funded isolated mountain lab working for the government. Not here in an independent facility surrounded by people. It's my opinion, but if you don't like people and tend to complain loudly about it, then why would you inflict your company on them if everyone's just going to walk away in bad moods?"
"Very good point." Lois agreed. She had crossed her arms, looking pensive. "To some degree, we're being lied to. We're being told that Dr. Essex is one of those mad scientist types who wants to do good by doing evil. But if he's a scientist with great big dreams, why isn't he holed up in some abandoned barn continuing his experiments? Why is he working for the mob?"
"Good question. We should ask." Clark suggested.
"I'm all over it." Lois declared, shoving her way back out the door.
Dr. Sullivan was right where they had left him, though he had pulled out his phone in the meantime. Lois returned to the table with the determined expression she wore when she was about to light the fires under one's ass.
"Dr. Sullivan, do you know what Essex is doing with himself now?" she asked, sitting down again.
The engineer shrugged. "It's like I said; I haven't seen him since he quit. If you're looking for him, I can't help you." he said. "Do you know?"
"Yeah. He's cracking heads for the mob."
That was clearly news for Dr. Sullivan. He gasped. "My god, really? Are you sure? Are you sure it was him?"
"Spotted him Friday night down at the dockyards with Sofia Gigante herself. Did you know he could fly?" Lois asked.
"Fly?"
"And shoot lasers from his eyes. He's pretty indestructible too and super-strong. Did he ever play mad scientist with his own genes?"
Dr. Sullivan gave them a blank stare before he abruptly broke into laughter like that was the most absurd thing he had ever heard. It was an appropriate response, but to Clark's ears, the whole thing sounded strangely forced.
The engineer was only laughing to cover his nervous response -- the way his heart skipped a beat and the sweat that had started to bead his brow in nearly invisible droplets, the barest of tremors in his laugh.
Lois had poked a vulnerable spot and though she didn't know that, Dr. Sullivan likewise had no way of proving the extent of her knowledge.
Besides, Dr. Essex and Dr. Sullivan had worked together for three years, probably lunch buddies. You didn't spend that much time around a person, talking to them day after day, without learning something about them. And a man obsessed with the idea of his own genius curing mankind probably wouldn't stay very quiet about being able to fly.
Hell, running to tell his parents about his newfound flight abilities had literally been the first thing on Clark's mind upon discovering his ability to throw himself at the ground and miss.
But Dr. Sullivan just laughed it off.
"That's ludicrous! Norm was crazy, but do you really think he was that crazy?" he asked, looking at Lois. "Do you really think he'd be so irresponsible as to inject himself with un-tested anything or subject himself to radiation treatments that might very well kill him?"
"No one thinks Lex Luthor shoved his father off the fiftieth floor." Lois stated. "But you just have to be crazy enough to try something radical to get what you want. And what little footage I have from Friday night that is coherent clearly shows your coworker flying through the air like a goddamn hang-glider. I know what I saw and you're trying to convince me I didn't see it? Do you know who you're talking to, Dr. Sullivan? I'm Lois Lane!"
She didn't thud her fist on the table, like someone else might have done, but the way she drew up her shoulders and chin imperiously had the same effect. Dr. Sullivan's otherwise jovial exterior wilted a little.
"The Daily Planet stands for the truth, so I don't write babble. I write facts!" Lois went on, her tone snapping and firm. "I didn't get my Pulitzer or the vague respect of half the city by letting lies slip past me. I came here for the truth, not your bullshit!"
Dr. Sullivan tugged off his glasses to polish the lenses with a cloth and his blue-green eyes seemed to flare with an impossible glow. Lois didn't see it (so focused she was on glaring the man down) but Clark did and it made his breath catch. The way those eyes turned a rich sea-foam green, a similar color to the nightlight down the hall from his childhood bedroom.
The only eyes Clark had seen do that -- come alive just like that, with that shine and glow like they weren't just reflecting the light but capturing it, turning it back like eye-shine and moonlight... The only eyes he had seen do that were his own.
Dr. Sullivan knows about what Dr. Essex can do. He's known about it long before we ever saw him on the Hell's Gate docks. Dr. Essex can do what I can do. He can hurt me. And Dr. Sullivan's eyes do what mine do when the glasses come off-- admittedly, that's a lot less to go on, but I've been halfway around the world and I've never seen anyone else with eyes like mine...
Feeling detached from the conversation, as Dr. Sullivan tried calmly to convince Lois that he was indeed telling the truth, Clark nudged his glasses down just enough to peek over the rims. He peered under the engineer's clothes and then his skin, past the too-large heart and lungs that must have been as big as his own, and down to the curious bundles of fiber that wrapped the doctor's spine in a helix pattern--
And jerked his eyes away, swallowing a gasp and too many different emotions with it.
"Well!" Lois slapped something down on the table, leaving a business card there. "When you feel like telling me the truth, you have my number." she said irritably, and shoved the chair back. She gathered her things. "Let's go Clark. We're not getting anything done here."
Then she stormed away from the table, her heels striking the floor sharply and shoving things into her purse.
"Well, thank you for your time." Clark said to the mechanical engineer, hastily making to follow the other reporter. He caught up to Lois in just a few strides and fell in step beside her.
"It was nice to meet you, Miss Lane." Dr. Sullivan called out after them. And then, in a pitch that was too low and whispering to carry, he added: "And to see you again, Kal-El."
Because that wasn't meant to be heard by Lois. Only by Clark. And it should have meant nothing to him. It should have been two meaningless syllables, little better than gibberish. And while on some level it was exactly that, the same two syllables still hit Clark like a punch to the gut.
It was a physical, almost visceral reaction he experienced; one that touched his fight-or-flight reaction that made him want to either punch Dr. Sullivan in the mouth or just run out of there, possibly both in that order. But the feeling disappeared as quickly as it had blossomed in the first place, nonetheless leaving with a faint sense of disorientation and a squirmy feeling in his throat like he oughta be shouting or screeching incoherently.
'Kal-El' fell into the same pattern as 'Jor-El' and 'Hayl-El'. Except it was more personal. Those names (he assumed they were names) were accompanied by a vague sense of fondness, like he knew the people who bore them and cared about them in a peripheral way. But 'Kal-El'...
It was as familiar to him as the name given to him by the Kents.
Maybe it was the name his birth-parents had given him.
Maybe Dr. Sullivan knew them too, just like Norman Essex seemed to.
Because they were all from the same planet.
Dr. Essex had the same array of powers and Dr. Sullivan had the same anatomy.
Clark was only human on the surface. On the outside, and the inside for the most part, he was virtually identical. His lungs were a little bigger and his heart might have been classed as "enlarged" if a cardiologist ever got a look at it. His bone density was twice that of a human's and he built muscle tissue very easily. Almost as soon as he learned how to keep himself in the air, he had also learned that he had a transparent nictitating membrane (a third eyelid) that slid over his eyes to protect them from glare, debris, and the wind itself.
Likewise, Krypto had similar bone density and muscle tissue. The size of his heart would have alarmed any veterinarian; it was just far too big even for the size of canine he was. They also both shared one very particular feature that set them apart rather jarringly. He and Krypto both featured a double-helix-like structure wrapped around their backbones. Whatever it was, it was limber like a muscle and flexible like a tendon, bending with their movements and never impeding them. It had a fibrous, slightly spongy texture. Clark sometimes wondered if it was an extension of his spinal cord.
Dr. Sullivan shared this same feature, unlike the other billion humans Clark had seen in the world.
"Hey Smallville," Lois nudged him gently in the side.
Clark startled from the light touch, coming out of his own thoughts. His brain rejoined reality for the first time since leaving S.T.A.R. Labs and he was a little surprised that they were already at the platform for the next train back to New Troy.
"You look thoughtful. What's up?" Lois wondered.
"Funding." Clark said suddenly, the word leaping out of his mouth like his brain had been ready to throw it out there.
Lois blinked. "What?"
"Dr. Essex needs funding." Clark elaborated. Yes, his brain had definitely been mulling over this in the meantime. "He's been on his own for two years. He still has bills to pay and a belly to keep full. Any money he would have had from research grants probably ran out. If he doesn't have the funding, he can't continue his research. And mob pay is probably good pay."
Lois snapped her fingers. "And without leaving Metropolis, he couldn't have chosen better than Gigante. There's no other mob family left in the city." she added. "He stays close so he can rub success in Dr. Slater's face." She grinned in anticipation. "Ooh, we might be on to one hell of a story here. Hell yes! High-five!"
She thrust her palm out expectantly and so quickly that it took Clark an extra second to process what she was requesting. He reciprocated the high-five a tad unenthusiastically.
"Weak, Smallville! That was weak!" Lois crowed. "You do it like this!"
She grabbed his wrist before he could retract it and slapped her hand off his with a resounding smack. Clark could see the very instant she regretted it, when she realized just how rock-like his hand was.
"Ow?... Why did that hurt?" she wondered, shaking her hand vigorously.
"You were very enthusiastic." Clark said, for lack of a better explanation. The actual explanation was that his body tended to absorb blows like that just exactly like concrete.
"Geez, if that was just your hand, I'd love to see what the rest of you looks like." Lois commented, hardly for the first time.
"Ms. Lane..." Clark started, a little weary of her repeated comments about wanting to get a better look at the rest of his physique.
"Right, not the time." Lois agreed, taking out her phone. Then she beckoned for him to lean in so she didn't have to talk over the rattle of the train pulling in. "Okay listen up, Smallville, because we're going to divide up the work-load on this. You're getting Dr. Essex because Gigante's mine. And here's where I need you to start..."
sorry for the delay. I had to swap internet browsers.