Superman Movieverse Forum

Luthor grimaced at the restrictions the ‘authorities’ had placed on him. After much ‘discussion’, he’d been given access to the University of Denver’s geology labs and two of their graduate students had been assigned to help him. Not that he needed their help – his understanding of geology was light years more advanced than theirs – but he still needed their access to the computers and the seismographic equipment.

He growled at the manacle on his ankle. He was literally chained to the desk. The security man standing at the door had the key and the dour-faced schmuck hadn’t fallen for any of Luthor’s ploys to get him close enough that he could steal it. The students wouldn’t let him directly use any of the computers, inputting the information for him instead. They were polite and attentive, but they were also adamant about keeping him away from any tools or equipment.

Their one concession, if he dared call it that, was a large white board where he was allowed to scribble his formulas without interruption. And as his own security precaution, he was writing his formulas in Kryptonian, a language much better suited for such things than any language invented on Earth.

He stepped back to review what he had already written and modified, given the new seismographic data he now had. Something was very wrong but he couldn’t find the error in the equations. There had to be an error. He knew the damned AI hadn’t given him all the information he had needed, but he had been able to extrapolate the missing information.

But the Kryptonian continent should have stopped growing. The oceans and weather should have stabilized in their new conformation. It should have happened that way. But despite his careful calculations, his research, his considerable thought, it hadn’t.

And he didn’t have access to the data in the remaining Kryptonian data crystals. As part of his ‘bargaining’ to get access to the lab, he’d given them instructions on how to find where he’d hidden them.

He thought it would take the blasted fools hours, if not days, to find his cache. It was found within one hour and instead of being given to him to use, the crystals had been sent to another lab.

The answers were in those crystals. He was sure of it.

The lab door opened. He didn’t bother to turn around to see who it was. The interruption was simply one more annoyance in a long list of annoyances. The greatest mind the Earth had ever produced and he was chained to a desk surrounded by apes.

“Come to watch a great mind at work, or are you lost?” he groused.

“I would love to watch a great mind at work, assuming I knew where to find one,” a woman’s voice stated.

Luthor turned to glare at whoever it was who dared speak to him like that. The woman was dark-haired, dressed in a business suit. She looked familiar. With her was a tall man with dark hair and glasses, wearing jeans and a corduroy jacket. The grad students were nowhere to be seen.

Then Luthor placed the woman. “Lois Lane, I love your writing,” he said, forcing himself to grin. She was the last person he had expected to see. “Didn’t you win the Pulitzer for my favorite article? You know the one. ‘Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman’?”

She just stood in the doorway, arms crossed. “Shouldn’t you be in prison?” she asked. “You did have a few years left on your two consecutive life sentences without parole.”

“Well, we can thank your buddy in tights for that. He was real good at swooping down and hauling away the bad guys, but not so hot on the little details… like Miranda rights, due process, making court dates…”

“Miranda only applies if the prisoner is being interrogated,” the tall man said from in front of the white board. He was putting check marks by sections of Luthor’s equations. Luthor hadn’t even seen him move away from Lane’s side.

“What the devil do you think you’re doing?” Luthor demanded. “Do you know who I am?”

The tall man didn’t answer but continued to study the board, checking off pieces of Luthor’s work.

“I am Lex Luthor, the greatest mind in the world,” Luthor announced.

“All I see is a sick old man,” the tall man said. “A sick old man who decided to destroy the world when it wouldn’t cave in to his greedy demented demands.”

Luthor’s eyes narrowed as he studied the man. Tall with black hair and blue eyes. There was something uncannily familiar about him. The man was ignoring him again and had started rewriting pieces of the equations Luthor had worked so carefully on.

“Wait a minute here,” Luthor demanded. “I’m the only one on this planet who even has a clue as to what those formulas mean. You can’t just waltz in here and start correcting them.”

“Wrong on all counts, Luthor,” the man said. The voice… the confident baritone that echoed through his nightmares. It couldn’t possibly be.

“Supes?” Luthor murmured. He couldn’t believe it. Superman was dead, sent to his doom on a poisoned world by information Luthor himself had created. He peered more closely at the man. The same eyes, the same face. “Um, that’s a different look for you, isn’t it?” Luthor asked, trying to keep his voice from trembling. “So, how were things on the old homestead?”

“Exactly as you knew they would be,” the man responded. He still hadn’t bothered to look at Luthor. He pointed to the changed equations. “You didn’t take into account the changes that adding kryptonite to the seed would make. The radiation corrupted the program and made the resultant mass incompatible with life.”

Luthor studied the changes. The new equations made too much sense. “This can’t be right,” he protested.

“I wish it wasn’t.”

Superman put a hand inside his jacket and pulled out a crystal – it looked like one of the crystals Luthor had ‘liberated’ from Superman’s arctic fortress. He placed one end of the crystal into another piece of crystal, this one looking more like a votive candle holder. A brief touch on one facet of the data crystal and a globe appeared in midair. The new continent sat like a cancerous growth in the middle of what had once been the Atlantic Ocean.

“The state of Planet Earth as of three AM Mountain Time,” Superman said. He touched a finger to the sickly green of the new continent and it seemed to peel away, revealing the ocean floor and the damage the monstrosity was causing. It was worse than Luthor had imagined. He’d been joking when he told the priest the world was going to end. Now it appeared to be the truth.

“It’s those aliens,” Luthor said. “They did this. They corrupted the programming.”

“Who are they?” Lois asked.

“The aliens,” Luthor said. “Not him,” he added, hitching his thumb toward the tall man. “The other ones, the ones pretending to be angels. They’re just finishing the job, letting us destroy ourselves.”

He caught the look Superman and Lane exchanged. They didn’t believe him. “If you don’t believe me, go find that priest that turned me in. Mike… go find Mike and use your eye tricks on him. You’ll see.”

Superman - Luthor couldn’t help but think of him that way even though he was dressed like one of the local brainless hicks - sighed and shook his head. “You told the police and the university that you had a way to stop it. What did you have in mind?”

Luthor’s mind suddenly went blank. They were asking him how to solve the problem?  He mentally scrambled for an answer. “I was just putting together the data we’d need for when you got here, big guy.”

“You were expecting me to show up and just fix it?”

“Well, you took care of Southern California… really pulled the fat out of the fire on that one,” Luthor said. “Saved millions of lives…”

The tall man stared at him for a long moment. “You have no idea, do you? We’re not talking about minimizing the effects of a nuke or an earthquake. This planet is being torn apart by a cancer you created. There is no radiation treatment, no surgery. It can’t be simply cut out and it won’t stop growing until it runs out of matter to convert. You made sure of that.”

“But you’re Superman… you can…” Luthor sputtered.

“I can do what, Luthor?” he asked. “Spin the world backwards and make it never happen? I wish to God I could. But I can’t. So unless you can come up with something, like a way to neutralize the kryptonite in that monstrosity so I can do something, or a way to create enough starships to get everyone off the planet within the next twenty-four hours, then you’ll be dead with everyone else.”

“You won’t be dead,” Luthor reminded him.

In response the man touched another facet on the data crystal. The globe started to change – the cracks beneath the new continent opened up and suddenly the oceans were gone – vaporized - and the planet disappeared into a haze of glowing rock and steam. The rock cooled quickly and Luthor realized the crystal continent was still there, still growing, still glowing sickly green.

There was an ineffable sadness in Superman’s eyes when he finally turned back to Luthor. “Won’t I?” he asked.

For once, Luthor had nothing to say.



“Do you think he’ll come up with something?” Lois asked as she and Clark headed back to the Daily Planet offices.

“His life is on the line too, so maybe,” Clark said. “He really is a genius. A sick, sadistic psychopath, but a genius nonetheless. It’s just possible he’ll come up with something that’ll work. Something I haven’t thought of.”

“There’s nothing in the crystals that would help?” Lois asked. Wayne Technologies had been the ones to find the crystals based on Luthor’s less than adequate directions.  To Lois’s surprise, Bruce Wayne himself had handed the crystals over to Clark - apparently they were old friends and Lois suspected Bruce knew about Clark’s previous job as a superhero. It was still strange to realize the quiet man beside her was the most powerful being on Earth.

Clark mulled over her question before shaking his head. “There are a few possibilities. The Kryptonians used a pocket universe they called the Phantom Zone as a high security prison. Nothing in the Phantom Zone would be affected by Earth’s destruction and I have the instructions on how to build a gateway to that pocket universe.”

“But there’s a catch?” Lois asked.

Clark nodded. “Aside from the fact that it’s currently inhabited by convicts whose crimes were so heinous they make Luthor look like an upstanding citizen, my father’s notes indicate that the native radiation within the pocket universe is damaging, probably fatally so, to immature nervous systems. That’s probably why he sent me in a ship to Earth rather than taking the whole family into the Phantom Zone when the planet began to die.”

“We might be able to save some that way,” Lois pointed out.

“Maybe, but if we can’t save the children what’s the use? Would you leave without Jason?” Clark asked.

Lois knew Clark knew the answer to that question. Was it only four hours since she’d dropped the bombshell of her son’s paternity on him?

‘When your mom finally caught up with me, she took one look at Jason and…’

‘Jason?’ he had asked.

‘My son. Our son. Yours and mine.’

It hadn’t sunk in at first. There were too many other matters to attend to first. But finally, Jason wandered into Perry White’s office to meet the stranger that Mommy and Daddy had cloistered themselves with for so long. Lois watched as Clark’s eyes grew moist. He knelt down in front of her son, wonder written across his face. She knew he had never expected to have a family. Coming back to find he already had one had been a surprise to say the least.

“You’re Clark, aren’t you?” Jason asked. “Grandma Kent’s Clark?”

Clark nodded. 

Jason held out his right hand as Richard had taught him. “Pleased to meet you, Mister Clark.”

Clark solemnly shook Jason’s hand. “Pleased to meet you, Jason.”

Jason studied him carefully for a long moment. “Mommy says you’re my bio…biological father but you went away. Why did you go away?”

“I was told the place I was born, a place called Krypton, was okay. I had to go see for myself but Krypton is very far away and it took a long time to get there and come back.”

“Was it okay?” Jason asked. His voice was full of sympathy and Lois was so proud of him.

Clark shook his head. “There was no one there. They were all dead.”

Jason reached out and hugged him. “We’re here.”

Lois hadn’t been surprised to see tears in Clark’s eyes.

“Then there’s the problem of getting the people out and that can only be done from the outside. I would have to take the starship and try to find a suitable planet for emigration,” Clark was saying, bringing Lois back to the here-and-now. “But the database in the crystals doesn’t list a lot of suitable planets within a reasonable distance.”

“Any other ideas?” Lois asked.

Clark sighed, hands stuffed into his pockets. “There is a Kryptonian story about a city that disappeared. Most people on Krypton thought it was obliterated but Jor-El believed the city was stolen by an alien of some sort. He did some research on it, had a theory on how it was done, but I don’t have the technical background to finish his work. Heck, I don’t even understand half of Jor-El’s notes on it.”

“So, Kryptonian technology has nothing for us.” Lois hadn’t really thought Clark could come up with a miracle but she found she was still a little disappointed. And Clark looked so despondent. He’d had such high hopes when he started scanning the crystals. They’d all had high hopes that the knowledge of long dead Krypton would be able to save them.

But the Kryptonians hadn’t even been able to save themselves.

“I’m actually hoping Luthor will have some ideas we can use,” Clark said. “He is nothing if not resourceful.”



Clark was trying to stay hopeful, but it was hard. He honestly didn’t think Luthor would come up with anything useful, but as he had told Lois, Luthor was nothing if not resourceful.

He’d been surprised to find Luthor’s data crystals in the hands of Wayne technologies. Clark had been even more surprised when Bruce Wayne himself handed the crystals over to him.

“Superman should have been more careful where he left these,” Bruce said.

“He was,” Clark responded. “These are copies. Although how he came to have copies is beyond me. As near as I can figure, Luthor found a way to convince the Kryptonian AI that he was Superman and had the AI recreate the data crystals for him.”

The billionaire shrugged. “At least it wasn’t the Joker who got ‘em. He wouldn’t have left anyone alive.”

“Thank goodness for small favors, no matter how small.”

Back in Perry’s office Clark scanned the crystals once again. He had spent several hours skimming the data at high speed before going to talk to Luthor. He was hoping there was something he had missed, some hint of how to reverse the damage Luthor had done.

But apparently Earth’s current difficulty was a unique one. Nothing in Jor-El’s review of the twenty-eight galaxies known to Kryptonian scientists revealed any other planet that had suffered the kind of damage Earth was suffering. The closest examples were of doomsday devices released during wars of unimaginable magnitude. Entire civilizations had died when their planets were ‘re-formatted’ on them.

But there was nothing on how to reverse the process. But then, doomsday devices weren’t mean to be turned off.

He looked out the inside office window, through the drawn blinds. Jason was playing with the other children. They were so innocent, unknowing. Jason was helping one of the younger children – Helena, Bruce’s young daughter. Lois is a mommy. Bruce is a single dad.  Clark hadn’t had time to ask Lois about the girl’s mother. Bruce is a daddy and so am I. Why the hell did I leave? I missed so much and now it’s too late.

Martha and Ben were watching the children. They’d shown up a short time after he met Jason.

“More than five years. I was afraid I’d never see you again,” his mother said after giving him a tearful hug. “If your father were alive, he would never have let you go.”

“I know,” Clark admitted.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

He shook his head. “I thought… hoped… it might still be…”

“Your home?”

He shook his head. “It was a graveyard. This is my home, for as long as it lasts.”

“You’ll think of something,” Martha assured him. “God didn’t send you back to us to simply die.”

“I hope you’re right, Mom.”

He turned back to his task. The crystals had so much information that there had to be something that would be helpful. But it would take time, even for him, to go through everything. And time was the one thing they didn’t have.

“It’s hopeless,” Clark muttered to himself. The last time he’d felt so helpless was the day Jonathan Kent died. ‘All those things I can do, all those powers... and I still couldn't save him.’ Have I come back to Earth to watch my son die too?

“To coin a phrase, where there’s life there’s hope,” someone said. Clark looked up, startled. He hadn’t heard anyone come into the office. Mike from the coffee shop set a cup on the desk. “Grande latte, full caff, whole milk, three sugars.”

“You remembered,” Clark said, wondering at how Mike had managed to escape the destruction of Metropolis. Clark recalled him as one of the staples of the city, always smiling, cheery, giving comfort and advice along with excellent coffee. Oddly, Mike didn’t seem any different from how Clark remembered him – a younger, taller version of the actor that played Bosley on Charlie’s Angels. Everyone else seemed worn and weary and Clark knew he would see the same expression on his own face if he looked in a mirror. But Mike hadn’t changed at all.

Mike smiled, cheery as always. “Of course I remember. You’re not exactly forgettable, even though you try hard to be.”

Mike looked up at the holographic image floating in midair over the desk. “I take you haven’t found anything that will help?”

Clark shook his head. “Everything requires time or resources we don’t have. I don’t know what to do. I’ve even asked Lex Luthor to help. If that’s not desperation, I don’t know what is.” It was oddly comforting to be able to confide in Mike and it felt like something he’d done before but he couldn’t quite remember where or when. It was almost like talking to a family minister or a priest even though it had been years since he had done either.

A priest… Clark regarded Mark narrowly. “Luthor was going on about aliens masquerading as angels and a priest named Mike. Only Jimmy checked the mission Luthor had been hiding out at. There was no priest named Mike. But you’re here and you shouldn’t be.”

“Are you asking if I’m the ‘Mike’ he was referring to?”

Clark nodded.

“There have always been hidden things, things beyond the vision of mortals, beyond the ken of flesh.”

“You haven’t answered the question.”

Mike gave him another of his infuriatingly benign smiles. “You know the answer.”

Suddenly Clark realized he did know the answer. Ever since he could remember Mike had been there, lurking in the background. Even in Smallville. The county clerk, the school janitor, the barista at the espresso bar.

“What are you?”

Mike spread his hands out, indicating everything. “This world is not God’s only dominion, nor is it her first creation.”

“There are more things in heaven and earth…” Clark quoted thoughtfully.

Mike nodded.

“Will Luthor come up with a solution?”

Mike shrugged. “Miracles don’t come easy, but they do happen.”

“We’re going to need a miracle,” Clark reminded him.

“Just remember that your greatest gifts, your greatest strengths, are not the ones everyone else sees. And it’s going to take all your strength and more if this world is to be saved.”

“Can it be saved?” Clark asked.

Mike sighed and for the first time Clark saw tension in his posture. “She knows all of time and space, all possibilities and probabilities. I do not. My vision in that regard is as limited as yours. But there is a possibility.”