ADVANCES IN SCIENCE
Clark handed the vial to Emil, who held it up at eye level and studied its contents curiously for a few moments. "I don't remember you putting any reagents in here…."
"I didn't," Clark admitted.
"Weird, cause it looks like it's already started synthesizing…."
Clark also focused on the contents in the vial. There were a few droplets of orangish liquid condensed on the inside of the vial. "You're right."
"But with what?" Emil wondered.
Clark took the vial back from Emil and cradled it in his hand. He hadn't yet studied the opalquine closely. Now was as good a time as any. The laboratory blurred into an otherworldly void as his senses transcended the limits of human perception, honing in on the atoms inside the vial. Sub atomic particles within them engaged in a celestial waltz, their arrangement undergoing a metamorphosis. Electrons, like ethereal dancers, twirled in intricate patterns, heralding the birth of something new. He directed his gaze towards the borosilicate glass of the vial. At the sub atomic level, the lattice of protons, neutrons, and electrons were rearranging, defying the conventional order. Bonds formed and broke with a cosmic grace, as the glass itself became a participant in this symphony of transformation.
As he descended in complete bewilderment further into the microscopic realms, he observed quarks and electrons realigning, creating complex molecules with atoms entirely different from their humble beginnings. Erupting from the simple borosilicate came a cascade of composite structures utilizing a substantial number of different elements. In the corner of his mind, Clark noted that they consisted mainly of elements common on Earth. That was unfortunate since it meant Luthor would have little trouble obtaining the raw materials to mass produce the invulnerablide.
Clark returned his perception back to the tangible world. He shook his head, a combination of perplexity and wonder coloring his expression. "I've never seen anything like this."
Emil threw up his hands in an exaggerated gesture. "What?"
"The opalquine is making its own reagents. It's already used up whatever air particles were in there, and now it's breaking down the glass… at the atomic level, Emil! It's rearranging the subatomic particle into new atoms. It's incredible!"
"Woah!" Emil tried to wrap his mind around that bit of information.
"What's incredible?" Lauren joined them from the other side of the laboratory. As usual, she was wearing her white lab coat, paired with brown slacks and brown loafers peeking out from below. Clark was growing accustomed to and comfortable in her presence. She was very serious about her work. Even though she wasn't inclined to engage in a lot of small talk, he found her to be very pleasant to be around. As Emil had said, she was very sweet, in a reserved sort of way.
"The opalquine," Emil told her. "It's literally making invulnerablide out of thin air." Emil gestured to her head. "We need a sample to test this on."
Lauren didn't catch on right away. "What sample?"
"Hair, like Donovan did to Lois's hair."
"My hair?" Lauren grimaced.
"Yeah. Mine's short…and….well," he pointed to his sparse mop, and then gestured to Clark, "And his is already invulnerable."
Lauren shook her head, just the slightest bit annoyed. Nevertheless, she delicately extracted a small lock of mousy brown hair from her simple, but tidy hairdo and snipped it with a pair of scissors she grabbed from the lab bench. She distractedly ran her fingers through her hair to smooth it, but she ended up making it more of a mess.
Clark gestured to her head as she handed the small clump of hair and the scissors to Emil, but she didn't notice.
Emil took the hair from Lauren and stuffed it in the vial, drenching it with the invulnerablide. He pulled it out and took the scissors. "Here goes nothing." He tried to close the precision scissors on the hair. He tried in vain to cut the hair several times.
Lauren's jaw dropped, a familiar gesture that didn't escape Clark's notice. "That's my hair," she said in wonderment.
Clark and Emil were similarly impressed, though part of Clark's attention was preoccupied with the sight of the no-nonsense woman, her mouth agape and her hair sticking out in several directions.
Emil let out a low whistle. "Beam me up, Scotty." He was such a Trekkie nerd. He handed the vial to Lauren, not seeming to notice anything was amiss with her hair. "Can you quickly confirm or not this is made from the same type of macromolecules as the vulnerablide?"
"Of course, right away." Lauren headed out the door with the vial to test the invulnerablide with equipment in another laboratory in another part of the building.
Clark shot a questioning glance at Emil, gestured to his own head, and then pointed out the door after Lauren. Emil had already started busying himself with providing the opalquine with a larger flask and some actual reagents to work with.
"By the way, I have some interesting news." Emil stressed the word news, trying to imbue it with an air of mystery.
"About Jason?"
"Yup."
Clark leaned on one of the lab benches. He folded his arms and waited patiently for Emil to elaborate. Emil had a tendency to occasionally drag out and dramatize his scientific findings, which could be a little exasperating.
"Jason…" Emil paused for effect. "has a complete complement of 46 chromosomes, including a fully formed and functional Y chromosome."
Clark sighed. "I already told you that."
Emil wasn't done. "But he only shares 50% genetic similarity with Lois… exactly 50%... The other 50% is no more similar to Lois than any random unrelated person. That's not what we were expecting. If you provided some sort of catalyst to make Lois's DNA to recombine in… weird ways… we would expect more than 50% similarity. At least, that's what I was expecting."
"It had to have come from Lois. I don't have DNA. Is it possible there were both mutations and recombinations…?"
"Possible? Anything is possible when it comes to you."
Clark could tell Emil was holding something back, just to increase the drama. He couldn't help but let out another sigh. "Emil, will you please just tell me what you haven't told me yet?"
Emil gave Clark a brief, contrite smile. "Like I said, anything is possible, but it verges on the brink of impossibility that any such mutations would just happen to endow Jason's Y chromosome with both haplogroups O and C markers."
That got Clark's attention. He furrowed his brow, wondering if his usually crystal clear memory was playing tricks on him at the moment. "Doesn't that have something to do with… Asian ancestry….?"
"Yup," Emil confirmed.
Clark shook his head. "That's impossible…."
"Anyone in Lois's orbit with a Y chromosome and Asian ancestry?"
Clark stood up to his full height and gestured wildly with his arms. "He threw a piano, Emil! I'm obviously his father."
"Obviously, but there's obviously something else going on here."
"Lois didn't even meet Richard until she was already a month pregnant."
"Does Richard have Asian ancestry?" Emil deadpanned.
Clark leaned back again heavily against the lab bench and shook his head in bewilderment. "Every New Years," he murmured, now staring straight ahead, "Perry makes a speech at the office party telling us the same story of now his Japanese grandfather changed his last name to White."
"Well… that may very well be our answer. You think Richard will agree to a blood test?"
"Probably." Clark shook his head some more. This was impossible. Of course, up until a couple of years ago, he would have said Jason himself was impossible. To his knowledge, nobody in the entire history of the universe had ever managed to create a hybrid humanoid from distinct planets. Even the most brilliant scientists from the most advanced civilizations had attempted and failed. Yet, on an ordinary fall evening in Metropolis, he and Lois achieved what had eluded countless others. Without laboratories, petri dishes, or microscopes—just two naked, breathless bodies engaged in the ancient, erotic dance of love. Together they had created arguably the most unique and valuable treasure imaginable. As petrified as they were of Earth ever finding out about Jason, how much more catastrophic it would be if news of him travelled beyond the confines of their little corner of the universe.
And now Clark wondered, did Richard have something to do with it, and how?
Lauren returned, her still-disheveled head bobbing up and down enthusiastically. "It's the same type of molecules… the same 7 monomers."
Emil finally noticed Lauren's hair. He exchanged glances with Clark, both of them silently hoping the other would be the one to address the situation.
Lauren noticed them staring at her. A growing sense of self-consciousness enveloped Lauren until she finally couldn't resist asking, "What is it?"
Clark gestured awkwardly toward her head. "Your... um... hair...it's..."
Lauren dropped her jaw and let out a little gasp as she turned to the little window in the lab door, searching her reflection "Oh god!" She hastily tried to smooth her hair down. "It's been like this the whole time?" Lauren turned back around. Her mouth was still open, but now her face was bright red. "I was walking over the whole building like this…"
"Sorry," Clark apologized contritely.
"Now you're blushing," Emil chuckled.
Lauren glared at him.
"Emil, you're not helping," Clark chided him. Suddenly, he had an idea. He reached up with both hands and roughly tousled the hair on Emil's balding head. Then he reached up to his own head and did the same.
Lauren burst out laughing at the sight of the world-famous scientist and the world's most beloved superhero with their hair mussed up as though they had just taken a tumble in a clothes dryer together.
"As penance," Clark told her, "we pledge to spend the rest of the day like this." As it was already late in the evening, it wouldn't be such a big deal, but he was pleased with himself he had made Lauren laugh. She appeared to have a natural inclination to laugh easily, yet she exerted effort to maintain a serious demeanor, at least while at work.
"Hey," Emil tried protesting, but he couldn't stop laughing. He tried to calm down. "OK, fine. You believe me now?" he asked Lauren. He turned to Clark. "She didn't believe me when I told her you were goofy."
Lauren's laughter subsided to a giggle. She gave Clark an appreciative look. "Thank you."
Clark let out another little chuckle, and then he grinned at her.
Emil directed their attentions back to the business at hand. "Can you show us the samples you prepared this morning?"
Lauren regained her composure as she gestured toward an array of sample grids on one of the lab benches. "I synthesized a few short sequences you can study to see what the monomers look like in the macromolecular form," she told Clark. She handed him the first grid.
He took it from her and read the label. "KRYPTON?" He gave Lauren a quizzical look.
"K-R-Y-P-T-O-N. She spelled out the letters. There are 7 different monomers. They're so different from anything we have on Earth, we don't have any appropriate naming convention to apply to them, so we just decided to use letters to refer to them. Krypton has 7 unique letters… it was Emil's idea." She gestured to Emil.
"Uh huh. OK." Clark shifted his gaze to the small sample grid in his hand, and as he had done earlier, he started focusing closer and closer, smaller and smaller, descending into the microscopic abyss, until he could see the particles on the sample grid. They were suspended in a polymer that kept them from floating around, but they still vibrated too much for him to study them comfortably. He returned his focus to the 'normal' world, looked up, and shook his head. "I'm going to have to completely immobilize them. Excuse me for a moment." Clark walked a few steps away from Lauren and Emil and away from any delicate lab equipment. He took a deep breath and compressed the air in his lungs before blowing it onto the grid. He focused his eyes again on the now cryogenically frozen sample and zeroed in on the molecules. "How do I know which is K and which is N?"
"If you see a boron it's a K. If you see an aluminum it's an N."
Clark looked up and stared at Lauren in disbelief. "That's the only difference between them?"
"There's also one small isomerism, but I thought the boron and aluminum would be easier for you to spot."
Clark sighed. "This is going to be tedious."
Lauren gave him a sympathetic look, but then almost burst out laughing again at his hair. She picked up the flask with the opalquine, opened it, and used a capillary tube to withdraw a small sample. "Ahem. I'm going to try to isolate some of the individual components so you can start sequencing whenever you're ready." Despite her best efforts, she let out another quiet burst of laughter before walking with the sample to the other end of the lab.
Clark turned his attention back to the sample and studied it for a few moments, before freezing and studying each of the rest of the samples in turn. When he was done, he walked over to Lauren to silently watch her work.
"What do you think?" Lauren asked when she noticed him.
"This is going to be tedious," Clark repeated.
Lauren gave Clark a sympathetic look. "Hopefully the automatic sequencer will be done in a couple of months. Are you sure your time wouldn't be better spent doing… I don't know… saving people, or something?"
Clark grimaced.
Lauren dropped her jaw for a few moments and looked away before trying to stammer out an apology. "I… I… I'm… so… sorry. I'm… sure you know what you're doing."
"Can I let you in on a little secret?" Clark didn't know why, but he felt comfortable opening up to Lauren.
"Sure…" She raised her eyes to look at him again.
"I actually don't know what I'm doing."
Lauren furrowed her brow and gave him a quizzical look.
"People look to me for answers. They look to me for hope. But the truth is, I'm making everything up as I go along… just hoping and praying I'm doing the right thing."
For several moments, Lauren's eyes, a subdued shade of gray, met Clark's intensely blue gaze. Her mouth, now only half open, betrayed a mix of curiosity and contemplation as she pondered why he chose to share this with her. One of the timers went off, letting her know the fractionation was done. As Clark watched, she applied the desired fraction to a new sample grid and handed it to him. "Let me know if this is pure enough. I can try to isolate it further if it's not."
Clark froze the sample with his superbreath and studied it for a few moments. "Looks good," he told her.
"Here." Lauren motioned for Clark to follow her to the computer workstation. She opened up a new text file and saved it as 'inv_1. txt.' "You can type the sequence in this file."
"Does it matter which end I start from?"
"Nope. I'll be over here doing some more fractionating. Let me know if you need anything."
Clark sat down at the workstation and got to work.
N-N-R-K-R-O… Clark tapped the sequence into the computer. R-R-Y-O-T-K-K-P-K-N…. This was so tedious. At first, it was taking him about 3 seconds to identify each monomer, but as he became accustomed to the shapes and nuances of what he was looking at, he soon was humming along at about one monomer per second. Teeee….diiii….ous…. He had to occasionally pause to refreeze the grid. Every time he did, and every time he looked up or away for whatever reason, it took him about a minute to find his place again.
About an hour later, Emil came over to Clark and clapped him on the shoulder. Clark had been so intent on the sequencing, he startled and lost his place again.
"Having fun yet?" Emil inquired.
Clark looked up, irritated, but immediately relaxed and smiled over Emil's messed up hair. He suddenly remembered his own hair didn't look much better. Emil smiled back good-naturedly. "I'm heading on out. Call me if you need anything."
Lauren walked over to them. "Good-night, Emil."
Emil left.
"Clark, do you mind? I just want to keep an eye on the data coming from the scintillation counter. It's hooked up to this computer."
Clark leaned back so Lauren could reach the mouse and keyboard. She opened up a window on the screen showing the data stream in real time. She shrunk the window to the bare minimum for her to watch the data, then she clicked on the text file window to return focus to it. She took half a step back and peered over Clark's shoulder at the screen. "You can keep sequencing. I'll just watch the data window from here."
"No, sit down." Clark got up and offered Lauren the seat. "I can memorize the sequence and type it out later."
Lauren sat down and got comfortable. "Why don't you tell me the sequence, and I can type it. It'll give me something else to do while I'm keeping an eye on this boring data."
Clark acquiesced. The silence in the lab prior to this was irking him anyway. He focused in on the grid and found his place. "K-Y-K-N-P-O-Y-T-K-P-R…." Clark rattled off the molecular sequence as Lauren typed. Occasionally, he heard Lauren's stomach growl. "…P-P-O-N-T-R-T…. " Clark looked up for a few moments to rest his eyes. The scintillation counter had finished its run and Lauren was staring off into space while she typed the sequence. "Why don't you go home and eat something?" he told her. "I can do this by myself."
"I have an assay that'll need my attention in about two hours. I'll go home after that."
"Married to your career, are you?"
Lauren shrugged. "Not really. This is my one day a week I stay late."
"Ah. Book club's tomorrow then?"
"Huh?" Lauren furrowed her brow, confused.
"No book clubs?"
Lauren shook her head. "Not really my thing."
Clark turned his attention back to the grid. It needed refreezing, so he stepped away for a moment to do that. He started to refocus and search for where he had left off.
"Poker club."
"Nope."
Clark chuckled. "I didn't think so. You definitely don't have a poker face. Cigar lounges?"
"Definitely not my thing."
"O-R-Y-K-K-Y-P-R-O-N So what is your thing?"
"I don't have a thing."
"N-N-R-T-R-K-P-T-T You're not one much for small talk, are you?"
Clark heard the chair squeak as Lauren turned to look at him. He was still focused on the sample grid, but he could just imagine she was probably staring at him with her mouth open. OK, he had to look. He raised his gaze and blinked a few times to come back to the macro-world. Yup. Her mouth was hanging open. "I'm just trying to make conversation."
"I… I'm sorry…. outside of work I have a pretty boring life. I mean… I like it. I'm happy. I just don't think it would be interesting to anyone else, especially not someone like you."
"Someone like me?"
"Yeah." Her stomach grumbled again.
"You mean goofy?" Clark put on his goofiest grin.
Lauren hid her face in her hands and burst out laughing. "Please fix your hair. I can't take you seriously looking like that."
"Good." Clark refocused his eyes on the grid and searched for where he left off. "Just so you know, goofy people enjoy a good conversation as much as anyone else."
"I've never been a great conversationalist. Although…." Lauren's voice drifted off.
"What?"
"Emil asked earlier today what I thought of you, and I said… you're easy to talk to."
"That's cause till now you've been asking the questions and I've actually been answering them."
"Sorry."
"Here… we were at…. K-P-T-T…. you have that? Right?"
"Yes."
"OK. I mean not O-K. Scratch that. After K-P-T-T … then….R-O-R-T-T-O-K tok."
"What?"
"T-O-K spells tok. I'm easy to tok to…. so tok."
Lauren chuckled.
"K-K-P-K-R-T-Y-P-O….Ha! Typo!"
"Huh?'
"T-Y-P-O… typo. We could play anagrams."
Lauren chuckled. "You are goofy."
"So what do you not say to people who are hard to talk to?"
"I don't tell them about my boring life, that's for sure. But if you insist… every other week I have a girls' night out with some friends and I also do some volunteer work. That's about it. Oh, and I videocall three times a week with my niece and nephew in California…. my two favorite people in the whole world."
"See, that wasn't so hard. R-T-P-K-R-R-T-N…."
"Wasn't so interesting either."
Clark shrugged. "Ever think of joining the "Cloud appreciation society?"
"Huh?"
"I rescued a group of them last week. They had gotten lost in the middle of nowhere with no GPS signal. It got me wondering what other strange and wonderful clubs are out there. I did an internet search. There's something for everyone. You'd probably even find your 'thing.' N-P-P-P-N-Y-R-K…."
Laurens stomach let out another loud, long growl.
Clark looked up again. He opened his eyes wide and then shut them tight, and blinked hard a few times, trying to squeeze out a little moisture. "You want something from the vending machine?"
"Ugh, yuck. No thanks."
"I'll get us some takeout." Clark got up and stretched. "What would you like?"
"I have some leftovers waiting for me at home. They'll spoil. I'm fine, really."
"Well, I'm not. I'm starting to see double. I never knew what that was like, till now. Anyway, I'm also getting hungry. Come, I'll take you out to eat."
Lauren was about to decline, but Clark interrupted her. "You have to say 'yes,' because I'm a sensitive soul, and I don't take rejection well."
Lauren was silent for a moment. "I'm… really… not…"
Clark fake pouted.
Between the pout and the hair, Lauren couldn't help herself. She tried to suppress a giggle. "OK."
"Come on, two hours is just about enough time." Clark walked over to the window and opened it. "I have to leave the way I came in or security will have a conniption fit. You want to come with me, or do you want to meet downstairs?"
Lauren didn't hesitate. "I'll meet you downstairs."
"Fine. Last one by the kooky statue is a rotten egg." Clark flew out the window. Lauren closed the window and headed to the elevator.
She made her way downstairs and exited the building. She looked around curiously as she walked toward "Quantum Cat," the statue situated in the plaza of S.T.A.R. labs. It was a sculpture inspired by Schrödinger's cat experiment, featuring a cat in a superposition of states, blending the boundary between reality and theoretical physics. Even at this hour, a variety of pedestrians traversed the plaza, with some heading to work for a night shift or an evening meeting, and others making their way home for a late dinner. Laruen didn't see Clark. Not at first. But then she noticed the man with messy hair in the casual brown suit leaning on the statue's pedestal, looking her way and smiling.
Lauren smiled back at him as she approached. "I was wondering how we were going to go to dinner without creating a scene. Do you do this often? I mean, dress like this."
Clark put on his glasses. "Every day. How about Bruno's Bistro? It's not too far. Ever been there?"
"Of course. Hasn't everybody?"
"You don't sound like you get out much. I think two hours would be just about right. What do you think?"
Lauren nodded and they started walking in the direction of the restaurant.