no ordinary world

12



Lois Kent awoke to the sound of her hospital room door closing. The drugs left her a little fuzzy, but to her best understanding, if she played her cards right she was finally getting out of this place. After a long haul like the one she'd endured the last half of her career, she'd need a new face lift, maybe a nip or tuck here or there. She imagined she looked like hell right about now and she refused to  let any camera outside of these walls see her like this.

There would be many cameras after Lex let her go. Much more than here, and with a worthy audience and higher resolution than a research monitor. She had been dreaming of the many things like instant celebrity, and sit down interviews on the national evening news. There would be book signings and biographies. All wanting to know the secrets of the woman behind Lois Kent. The woman married to Clark Kent, man of mystery.

Lois opened her eyes and found a petite blonde at her side. Her mind was still hazy, but she didn't look like her nurse, and she wasn't the posted guard at her door either, "Who are you?"

Gradually Lois noticed that there were no radio traffic on the comms, and Clark was no where in sight.  This woman was here on her own volition.

 "I'm Chloe Sullivan."

"Chloe?" the fog settled deep in Lois' eyes, "Oh. You're her."

Chloe wondered what that was supposed to mean but moved past it quickly, "Lois, I'm here about Clark."

"Of course you are. Why else would you be?"

Chloe also moved past that remark, "You're breaking him."

"Me?" the woman laughed through her fog, " Little old me-- nobody? And here I heard he was unbreakable... I suppose that's what they're doing to him now."

Chloe shifted in her seat, "What?"

"They're listening to us, you know that right?"

"Of course," Chloe looked over her shoulder where she imagined the room surveillance was, " Lex listens to everything."

"Then why come talk to me. I'm a little person around here. Look at me, they almost killed me--"

"Lois, I wanted to persuade you to stay in the project--"

"Are you kiddin'?" Lois' eyes opened wide for once, "I'm almost out of here! I'm finally being written out! I've played my part--"

"Clark loves you--" Chloe paused, shocked to see Lois laughing at the remark. Perhaps it was the way she laughed, a mocking, cruel laugh that made Chloe very sorry. "I suppose I don't have to ask if you ever felt the same."

"Honey," Lois took Chloe's hand in hers, still wrapped in medical tape and IV. Her eyes lit up ever so slightly like she was practicing for some future pose on national news,  "I was given a name, a face and my lines. Love? If it wasn't in the script, it was never there. Besides that," Lois narrowed her eyes, "he's beyond dangerous. Even more dangerous than Lex. Look how the entire world is afraid of him, keeping him locked inside."

Chloe searched for some ground with Lois. She needed to reason with the woman, she was a substantial part of Clark's life for the last decade. There had to be some deeper tissue they shared together in their marriage,  "This assignment was always more than a few lines and motive. You of all people should understand that. You lived with Clark for years. Don't you have any concern for his well being?"

"His well being?" Lois guffawed, "what about me? I'm the one who almost burned to death!"

"Clark was the one who saved you. He didn't make a second thought when running into that fire after you, and he wasn't the only person standing outside that night. No one else went after you. That should provoke some sort of credit to him."

And it did, in a way. Lois shifted in her bed sheets, and cradled her hands,weighing her next words.

"Of course he loves me," Lois smirked sadly, "anything he ever wanted was placed right in front of him. He's been catered to his entire life. 'Anything to make Clark happy'," Lois recited sourly, "Anything for Clark. Everything for Clark. And for what? To watch him beg for something more? Clark has never been happy with anything I've given him. He's always wanted something else, something more-- They're blaming me for all this, you know. They say I wasn't able to make him happy. Did they ever think that maybe his kind is incapable of being content? "

"He's only human."

"What did you say?"

"I said," Chloe held her tongue, "I said, it's only human of him to want something... real."

"Real?" Lois looked at Chloe closely, "you mean, you? I've heard about you, about how you came dangerously close to ruining the future of this project. I heard Lionel booted you out on your ass when you got too close to wrecking the entire security of this operation.."

Once Lois saw her sharp words make leeway, she decided to tear another wall down,"I figure I'm on the way out and you're here to help me out. So don't come in here with democratic words. We both know that whatever goes on here is out of our hands. I'm leaving while I still can."

Chloe folded back in her chair.

"You would leave too, if you were smart," Lois bit back, "Real? You said Clark wanted something real? Well how real is it that his wife leave him after pulling a stunt like that? You weren't here when he was yelling and screaming in here like a rabid dog. "

Chloe looked at her, "He said something else happened."

"Yeah, he set the bed on fire."

"Intentionally?"

"Heck, I don't know," Lois threw up her hands, "one minute he was yelling, the next I'm screaming because the sheets are burning and  there's Clark, standing at the corner his eyes wide and scared."

"He thinks that you believe he started all those fires in Smallville."

"Well, that's what I told him."

"You can't truly believe that. You know he didn't."

Lois blinked, "Honey, I believe what I'm told."


Chloe exhaled, and with it, all her hope of reasoning with Lois. She realized now that there were certain people who understood the significance of Clark Kent, and those who played with him like some paper doll. Lois might have cared for him, but not the way she did.

"What?" Lois asked after some silence between them, "You're judging me because I did as I was told? Was I supposed to tell him the truth? That he's a freak and the whole world is watching? If you want to talk about telling Clark the truth, then let's start with you. Why did you come back? Don't you know you've walked into one of Lex's manufactured traps?"

Chloe looked at Lois. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," Lois sat up in her hospital bed, "Lex is running this gig into the ground. Has been for some time. The never ending cash flow is trickling down and the cut backs are showing."

Chloe frowned, "Lex is no where near being broke. He's the leading mogul of Metropolis after his father's death."

"I guess when you find out your dad tied every cent to him name into one massive project you get worried. All of us haven't received a paycheck in two weeks. Only a little pink slip telling us that we were no longer needed after the fifteenth and the check was in the mail. Severance. He's abandoning Smallville, and cutting loose quick."

Chloe frowned deeper, "That would mean project termination."

"What else would it mean?"

 Chloe stood quickly from Lois' side and made for the doo.

"Wait," Lois called after her, "didn't you ever think why Lex let you come back?"

Chloe turned and thought wistfully, "I suppose he thought I could talk sense into Clark."

"No," Lois shook her head, "you're one of the top reporters from Metropolis, aren't you? I remember seeing your face in the little box by the byline. Now I can  imagine never seeing your little face again. Now do you understand? That's right,  Lex lured you in here. Didn't you sign a release form? Well, there you go. As a journalist you should know to read the fine print at the bottom. He's got your signature to keep you here. Now there's no way you are ever going to write to the world what happened to you, this project or what ever happened to the man named Clark Kent."


**

Up above the clouds, beyond the stars and the fatal moon, stood a man. An ordinary man, with ordinary hands and a bag full of hand tools. It wasn't unusual for staffed maintenance workers to roam around these parts of the facility. What was unusual was that it was not a ordinary worker.

It was Dr. Emil Hamilton, newly unemployed, and absolutely disgruntled.

Emil balanced himself along the slender rafters the spanned the roof of the massive studio.  It was the sky dome, the nose bleeds of the show. He shimmied beneath the roof paneling, across the steel beams that arched like a rib cage that supported all of the framework of the Sky. From up there everything was visible: the tiny yellow lights of the many houses, to the little red and green lights of the traffic signals on Main Street, even the straggling car that patrolled around the county roads.  It all looked small and encompassing from up in the heavens  as if you could place your thumb before one eye and capture the world.

The only thing above Emil was the sudden boundary of  thick steel that enveloped the studio as one massive arena.  He moved quickly, he didn't have much time. The access he obtained was forged , and there would be only minutes before Lex would find out. The moon was still low, and on the opposite side of the dome. It rested among the ridges of the black range like an old man reluctant to retire.

Emil slid across another rafter and kept moving, only hours before morning.

Sunrise was less glamorous behind the scenes and more an engineering spectacle. It took a complex system of hydraulics and mechanical tracking for the false star to appear. Day in and day out, the luminous sphere weaved in and out from the ribbing of the upper decks, most of the time flawlessly.

Most of the time.

Emil's intent wasn't to sabotage the sun, no. He was simply going to sabotage Lex's power to manipulate it. Abuse it. No matter how much Lex thought himself as God, he certainly was not. There was no telling how far the childish, reckless heir would take his games. Emil couldn't stand to risk any more loss than there already was. There was scientific value still left inside Smallville. There was still hope.

The sun laid dormant when Emil finally came across its structure as he hopped the last steel rib. It too, was less impressive up close. From a mile or so below, it would fool the eye, but this close...

Emil touched its surface, flat and fragile like tissue paper. It's face was scaled with micro sized photon filaments, millions of them reflecting the light scattering across its naturally shiny exterior. Even in the ghostly darkness of backstage, it shone quietly like a pearl at the bottom of an ocean.

Emil smiled, ever so faintly, knowing that this was the last sunrise he would see.

He swung his tool bag across his back and climbed over the subdued luminescent surface. As he did, he thought of Clark down below.

Clark Kent was raised in the most controlled environment known to man. Should they had expected anything less than the high moral fiber Clark possessed? They often argued the statistics of great men and their environments, but to what degree did that argument involve a creature like Clark?  Clark was the living proof of all of Emil's efforts and many others who were devoted to discovering proof of humanity. To watch it all be snuffed out..

He couldn't let that happen.

Lex treated Clark as a monster to be kept in an elaborate hoax, a labyrinth of sorts. But men like Emil never lost the faith the project once had in the beginning. Smallville started out as a small, forty acre project and blossomed afterwards along with the flourishing research. The studio expanded to the size of a full county in Kansas.

And now, as Emil cut through the insulation of the wiring, he dangled from the sun and looked down at what had became their ambitious project. Never in his mind did he believe it would grow to this. Where would all of this world beneath him go?

 The charred remains of the school and now, the newly demolished plot of the newspaper were precursors to Lex's plans.   It was rare for Emil to view Smallvile from his own eyes and not from some pixelated screen. Perhaps it had been too long since he'd seen it. He could smell the moisture from the atmosphere conditioners that regulated the humidity to a perfect 69 degrees. They had perfected that art of weather control, and moisture manipulation, and as he looked below he could see the hints of moisture clouds forming low like a light blanket of cotton. He looked to his left, and then to his right, admiring how the camouflaged structure disappeared seamlessly with any given vanishing point. It was hard to believe they'd kept this living biodome alive for so long.

Too long.

He figured it would only be a matter of time now before Lex used it's own beauty to destroy itself. Like a dying star, Emil knew Smallville would collapse upon itself and end.

But what he didn't know was what would become of their Clark? There was always the underlying current of speculation among the researchers. Thoughts on what would happen if Clark ever escaped, or be let go. Of course now, they would never dream of voluntarily unleashing him to the outside world, there were just too many variables and liabilities. And with the added evidence of the instability of Clark's abilities, the world would never let him leave. Emil thought it a shame after realizing Clark would never witness true sunlight.

"Hands up where I can see 'em!"

Emil held up his hands, dropping the wire cutters and far below. He looked over his shoulder and saw the men dressed in black uniforms. One of them held a bright light to his face. They asked for his ID and clearance papers, and while Emil floundered, one of them grew impatience and reached for his coat collar and pulled.

Emil stumbled forward, losing his balance and grasped for his life at the end of the guard's arm. Below him, his feet dangled down. The world once again twinkling from below.

Emil looked upward and screamed.  One of the guards reached forward, but it was too short. The other climbed the surface of the sun and attempted to get closer, but what he didn't see were the exposed wires tripping his feet.

There was a scream, and then arcing light.

Sparks shot across the sky like lightning, where from down below it appeared to be some distant electrical storm.

The current travelled down the steel girders and reached Emil, his hand's shooting off the charged metal and flying away.

His eyes shut, his ears popping from the explosion but when they opened,he saw it.

The sun, overloading and arcing like a beautiful halo from heaven. It flickered and hummed to life, its face red, angry almost, as it cycled through a spectrum of other chroma as if it were searching for its own rightful glory.

Emil fell, watching as the colors spun from a moody scarlet, to a frustrated rose. Colors violently rupturing the blackness, and then...

Gold.