Jack Knight, Starman: “Fathers and Sons”

When Kyle was old enough, when he was beginning to understand the world around him existed, and one day mentioned to his father having seen Stargirl on TV, Jack Knight remembered.

He remembered the old days. He remembered when he used to parade around in a leather jacket and goggles as Starman.

And he wondered if it had been the right thing to give the rod and mantle to Courtney Whitmore.

He wondered that, now, because he’d begun to think, had he given away his son’s birthright? At the time he’d just wanted the story to end, to walk away, to start over fresh. But as time had made clear to him, there was such a thing as legacy, and he had honestly not thought of his own son as a part of it until that moment.

He wished he had his father to talk to about it. Or his brother. But those times had passed.

He’d built a new life with Sadie, in San Francisco, that was unconnected to Opal, to all of it. He really had moved on. He’d raised his son in what he’d thought of as true innocence.

He’d been wrong.

He struggled to find words, to have something to say about Stargirl, about superheroes, about his son’s clear fascination. Which felt like a knife. An accusation.

He sat there mute. The TV blared. He wished he’d never let Kyle watch the thing. Jack Knight had never been a TV kind of person. His thoughts drifted to the attic.

In previous eras the attic was symbolic of the past. It contained treasures. Jack had run a business that emptied attics of such things. He’d been very content, surrounded by them. All he had in his attic was a leather jacket, and a pair of goggles. If he showed them to Kyle now, he wondered how his son would react.

If he did it now, before Kyle had traveled too far afield, he might understand. If he waited his son would only scoff. But he would never really be able to understand. Jack had made sure of that.

Yeah.

It had been a mistake. All mistakes come from the best intentions, like the road to Hell. He couldn’t just ask Courtney, either. And he couldn’t build himself a new one. That was his father’s magic.

And what was his? What did Jack Knight have to show for himself? He’d been so certain of such things, before. When it didn’t seem to matter anymore.

Now he wondered.

And then Kyle ran off, bored, his mind on something else entirely, into the backyard, on another grand adventure. Jack watched. Sadie caught him wiping his eyes. He claimed ignorance.

She knew better.

Star Trek: “Before the Bell Riots”

He doesn’t spend much time dwelling on the past. The past is painful, is why he ended up in the Sanctuary District in the first place. Better to try and forget. Better to try and make it work. Better to try and make it better. If that’s possible. He used to have more optimism. He knows that. But Gabriel has seen better times. They can happen again. Even here. He has to believe. He does. He believes it’s possible. It has to be.

There’s no way this is how the story ends. No. So much bad news. The tyrants over in Europe, the Middle East. Everywhere. Their wars. Their perversion of science. This was supposed to be the road to utopia! Wasn’t that what that tech guru, Starling? had spent so much time proselytizing? 

And that wasn’t what brought Gabriel, here, to California. No, that was just a coincidence. But he certainly found no paradise, here. 

No, things had been rough, they’d been bad, even before he saw the conditions in the Sanctuary Districts for himself. Oh, yes. He had seen horrors. He’d…

No, best not to think of that. The riots. The…Gabriel sits in filth (there’s really no other way to describe it; there’s no sanitation department, here, and he’s never known a humanity overly interested in cleaning up after itself, only advertising, the false face society wore when it still gave a damn), and he struggles with his past. He yearns to escape it, needs to, but can’t.

He had a wife, they had a son. The riots they found, when they came to live here, in California, when they tried to find a home that wasn’t infested by the breakdown of the social order, the factionalism, the tribalism…But when life works that way and you haven’t found a way to fit in, and all you hope for, yearn for, is a belief that we can be better than this, that we can still help each other, hold each other, regardless of the differences, perhaps even in spite of them…

He still has the nightmares. He’ll always have those. He’ll never be able to escape them. And perhaps that’s why he ended up here. He has to find a reason. He needs to believe. 

He’s heard chatter, here. The man called Webb. Gabriel keeps to himself, and most of the people here are only looking out for themselves, like everyone else. But Webb can’t help but try and organize. Always hustling. Finding volunteers. Even with that family of his. Even with something to protect. Gabriel listens. He’s slow to trust, these days. But quick to hope. He’s looking for an opening.

It feels as if something’s about to happen. Maybe it’s something positive, for a change. He’s ready. Whatever it is, he’ll play his part.

Star Trek: Mosaic

Yesterday was First Contact Day.

Marty Kirk might've even noticed if he hadn't been so crippled by his neuroses.  Marty had just passed the entrance exams for Starfleet Academy, showed up in San Francisco, and discovered his roommate was an Andorian named Chinook.  Marty had led a somewhat sheltered life to this point.  This is to say, he'd never actually met an alien before.  He hadn't ever really roamed far from his hometown in Iowa.

He wasn't even particularly aware that he shared his surname with a Starfleet legend.  He knew what he knew extremely well, but not a whole lot beyond that.  He was probably suited to become a brilliant engineer, or at least some career in engineering, that much had been obvious for years.  He was the kind of kid who drove his parents crazy disassembling household appliances and somehow putting them back together in better and more efficient working order, somewhat complicating life when it sometimes turned out the results weren't necessarily compatible with other systems, although his reputation grew so that neighbors would eagerly recruit his services for more deliberate results, duplicating what he'd done late at night in his bedroom, absently drinking proffered milk, munching on replicated cookies, always, always lost in dreamy thought about the possibilities.

Which is also to say, Marty was simply lost in his own head, and never much enjoyed being forced out of it.  It tended to make him grumpy.  Chinook was a shock to his system beyond all previous magnitudes.  Marty didn't know if all Andorians were like that, or just Chinook, if it made him racist, xenophobic, whatever the term was supposed to be, or if it was just the way he faced all obstacles in life, desperate to escape it.  He applied that first night for exemption, to have his own quarters, and then once a week every week despite every rejection, and frequently found himself at odds with Chinook at increasingly petty levels.

He just wanted to be left alone.

He spent all his time studying manuals and every spare minute in a lab, most of the time daydreaming through classes, lost in the cloud of his own thoughts and resentful anytime a professor dragged him kicking and screaming back to the classroom around him.  

It was Chinook who forced him back to reality, or perhaps for the very first time.  He placed a lock on their quarters Marty couldn't force open.  At first Marty fumed, shouting down the hall into every closed door and every one someone foolishly opened trying to will the noise away, and then he just threw himself against the door, slumping down defeated, at which point the Andorian tried talking to him through it.  Marty loudly noted he couldn't hear Chinook and then grew silent for a whole five minutes.  Then he slammed his fist into the door, or rather at the door, because it was at that precise moment it slid open, and Marty's fist ended up colliding with Chinook's blue nose, smashing it out of place.

At the infirmary, Marty apologized profusely for another five minutes, and Chinook couldn't help but grin.  He had an ancestor who probably would have been very amused indeed by the whole affair, but in all the time they ended up sharing together he never once named him.  He instead told Marty he'd been named after a bookstore on Earth, but it'd been closed for centuries, otherwise they might even have made a road trip to visit it.

They somehow became friends.  Marty slowly started making an effort to socialize.  Chinook showed him around campus, even tried to get him into a bar, but of course Marty didn't drink.  

By the next First Contact Day, Chinook showed Marty a holoprogram of the Andorian perspective on humanity's introduction to Vulcans.  That was the day Marty redirected his career.  He had chosen to join his friend in xenoanthropology.  Or to make it official, anyway.  That was also how he ended up learning that Jim Kirk came from Iowa, too.  Chinook just had to laugh at that one...

And It Pleased the Lord: An Easter Tale

In the pit, time had no meaning. David, who used to think of himself as a young boy, when the world still made sense, before he had felt its burden, had momentarily, when he died, experienced elation without the immediate sense of the weight. He saw his son and they had their first conversation about it, but afterward it settled in again. Actually, when he thought about it, it was really that he couldn’t settle. He hadn’t for a long time.

It was the weight of expectations. In the pit there was no parchment, nothing to write with, which for David was a kind of torment. For some people writing is a compulsion only relieved by its act. Otherwise the words store up. It might have helped to sing, but he lacked a harp as well, and he had never been able to unaccompanied. He felt locked up.

It was a long moment, a pregnant pause. He waited.

When Jesus appeared in the pit, David remembered many of the things he’d written, and they all bubbled to the surface. In his days, and under his burden, he had never had recourse to repeat his hymns. These were tasks left to others. Once recorded they had been consigned to history, to others, to later generations, but none of them, when he saw them in the pit, had felt them as he had. 

Jesus was different. David saw that immediately. Without knowing who this man was, he knew. He began to sing.

He found himself exploring notes he’d never used before, words he’d never uttered. They just poured out of him. Those around him, and this was the miracle, rising up like a bubble within his chest, so he felt as if he might burst if he stopped, joined in perfect harmony. He was lost, for the first time in a very long time, among the flock.

And he saw a smile on the face of this man. He knew it had been there before he started singing, but he thought it was a reaction all the same. 

He couldn’t stop singing. He had never been happier. The weight was being lifted at last. And he felt young again.

In the Pit: An Easter Tale

It’s only after you die that you begin to grasp the true nature of God. For God, time has no meaning. That is what the dead learn. Before Jesus died, all the dead collected in the pit, all those who had ever died, both those who knew of and believed in God, and all those who didn’t. There was no distinction. One day, on the day Jesus died, a man appeared, in the pit, Judas Iscariot. In the pit, it was difficult to understand what Judas had done, before he died, since all those who resided in the pit were cut off from the land of the living, as with everything else. But many were curious. There was little to do, in the pit, except indulge curiosity.

Among the believers, there were those who understood the shape of history, in the shape humanity took in history, its relationship with God. Only in the pit could they relax, if they could, if they weren’t consumed by the inexorable course of events. In the pit, too, they awaited the messiah. Those who waited, in the pit, had a much different interpretation than those still existing on Earth. There are no warriors in death. There are no more wars to fight, except doubt. In the pit there was only doubt. Doubt was how they thought of the messiah, since they could only wait.

And yet there was no concept of time. One generation was much like the other. They all intermingled, and they all understood each other, and yet no one knew what anyone else thought. That is the sort of thing you learn in such circumstances.

When they talked, those who believed, who understood, they saw the shape of history, its inexorable march toward destiny. Some of these hoped this would reconcile them with God, even if they had no idea what that meant. In the pit, God was entirely absent, even for those who believed. For many, it was a simple yearning for peace. There was no peace in the pit.

When those who understood sensed that the time of the messiah was ascendant, they began to wonder about how all this would play out. They saw a lot of necessary suffering. They knew someone would have to take the fall. Since the fall of Lucifer, this was a thing that was understood. Lucifer, the fallen angel, the guardian of the pit, the opposite number, at least in his mind, of God. In the pit, no one really believed that, and there were many who wondered if even Lucifer did. There is no opposite of God. There is only the abstract belief that there could be, or should. Or perhaps, the idea of a catalyst against which God acts.

The believers, in the pit, understood that the messiah needed a figure like that, and so that was how they became familiar with Judas Iscariot before they ever met him.

When he appeared, in the pit, Judas was truly the wretched of existence. He was appalled with how things had turned out. He tried to explain himself.

“He told us. He told us what was going to happen. What was going to happen to him. Last night he even told us that one of us would betray him. That one of us already had. 

“I knew what he was talking about, because it was me. I had already been paid to betray him. It wasn’t out of disbelief or disenchantment. I believed. Oh, I believed. Sometimes I even thought I believed better than any of them. It became a curse. I believed, and I understood. I knew what had to happen. I knew that the only way humanity would have the courage to kill him was if he was delivered by one of us. 

“He spent so many years in anonymity and then for a short while he ministered to any who would listen, and there turned out to be a few. Some who listened were jealous. They knew he was better than them. I suppose it’s only natural. The problem is always how to get rid of such people. Usually it’s creating a scandal. He volunteered to do that himself. He made it easy. And still, his enemies were afraid. They needed to be justified. They needed someone to betray him. 

“I saw all this. I knew what had to be done. It didn’t make anything easier. I betrayed him with a kiss. And then I killed myself. And now I’m here.”

In the pit, they all listened to this in utter incomprehension. They couldn’t fathom the insanity of it. Judas was, there, the pariah he had become in life, what he had held in his heart, and what hounded him in his final hours. 

And then Jesus appeared. Even those far away, for the pit was a very large, deep place, knew it instantly. They could feel his presence. He looked whole. There was no trace of what had become of him in his final hours. If anything, he had a faint smile on his face. After all, he had finally endured what he had long dreaded. When you’re God but you have to face time like anyone else, it changes things. That’s when time has meaning. In the pit, it was the first time in decades Jesus was unburdened from time. The faint smile was accompanied, if you were lucky enough to catch it, a sigh of relief. His whole body relaxed.

Then he turned to Judas. The believers thought they knew what would happen next. Holy vengeance. But Jesus opened his arms and embraced Judas. And he gave him a kiss on the cheek.

He forgave him.

No words were exchanged. Everyone who saw this was astonished. There was no time in the pit, and yet this moment had been anticipated for an eternity. That’s what eternity is, a timeless, weightless moment. For those in the pit, they had waited to find their bearings.

None of them could have expected the culmination to look like this.

Those who accepted it, they were finally able to relax. Those who couldn’t, they began a new eternity of torment. That was how the pit experienced the turning point of history. Everyone else, the living, they were thereafter free to believe. Or choose not to. 

A Visit to the Kingdom of Redonda

Several years ago when I was forced to go into hiding for one reason or another under an assumed name and thanks to the generosity of an anonymous benefactor who asked only that I not publicize the results, I paid a visit to the Kingdom of Redonda.

It is perhaps important to note that I was grieving at the time the end of my private detective agency, which I had run with the assistance of a precocious infant with whom I had solved many mysteries, the exact nature of which and credulities concerning are irrelevant to the current tale. 

The Kingdom of Redonda is difficult to describe except to note that it is often seldom in the same place twice and has inspired the dreams of at least several television writers who populated it with all manner of curiosities, not the least of which was a bald man who looked at its eye and saw something other than what was actually there (or perhaps was temporarily blinded, like the apostle Paul, and was later martyred in much the same manner, although to explain further would be a different story entirely).

While there I sipped from a bottle of water I had brought with me that failed to empty the whole time I was there, although this might have no more explanation than perhaps I didn’t drink as much I thought I did, being constantly distracted by the wonders of the island, such as the bookshelves that rearranged themselves even while I browsed them.

I’m afraid there’s not much more to say about the visit, which I now recall I wasn’t supposed to talk about at all, and subsequently must confess is filled with ridiculous lies, which is fortunate because those are the best ones, and thus can inform my benefactor that I followed the letter of their request.

The Kansas Question

Maggie job shadowed for a day at the Smallville Times-Reader. She was assigned beat reporter Ellie Maggin, and it was only a matter of minutes before she caught a staffer cracking the joke she immediately assumed had been traveling around the newsroom all morning, and she told herself, “You’ve got the stuff, kid. You already cracked your first story.”

Ellie’s desk, as it turned out, was actually more like a cubicle, and Maggie watched as she quickly tidied up, not to hide sensitive material from some high school kid but clearly an effort to look more professional. It only kind of worked.  Maggie sat awkwardly beside Ellie for a few minutes, uncomfortable talking with a stranger while the reporter got caught up with the business of the day, listening as the office chatter around them continued, amused here and there by unexpected remarks on both community and cultural affairs.  She'd never really thought about what a newsroom might sound like.  It seemed pretty normal.

Finally, Ellie said they were off to make the rounds of interviews for stories she was expected to file by the end of the day.  One of them was with the woman who'd made the claim.  Just some crackpot, but also the reason Maggie had gotten the invitation, because she'd been the one to listen to this one, the latest in the very long line of people who claimed they knew all about Superman's origins in town.  What set this one apart was that she claimed to know who Superman's parents were, that the mom had had an affair, and that Superman's dad never even had a clue, and so, yeah, wasn't his dad after all.  Juicy.  Ridiculous, and probably not even true, but it was certainly news one way or another, and deserved the attention of the Times-Reader at the very least.

They pulled up to the Kent farm first, just to get the lay of the land.  Maggie didn't know much about cars, but that was another fantasy busted today, what Ellie's was like, which was to say, like any other car she'd ever been in.  They'd be coming back here later.  This was where they expected the drama to unfold.

They left the parked car and headed next door, if "next door" in farmland country meant the same as it did elsewhere.  It was more of a hike than Maggie had anticipated.  "Wrong shoes," she told herself.  The lady she found at the house they found at the end of the trip was older than she would've thought, too, elderly, even, sitting in a proverbial rocking chair, although when Maggie first saw her she thought maybe she was dead, she wasn't moving.  This was Jane, plain ol' Jane.  Maggie went to school with Jane's granddaughter, the one who'd cracked a joke Maggie alone took seriously.  She'd done enough investigating, and math, to take her theories to the paper, just when school was already setting up job shadows for seniors, and that's the short version of how she ended up there that day.

"You come to talk about Superman," Jane greeted.

"Yeah," Ellie said, matter-of-factly.  No dissembling.  Straight to the point.  Professional.  Maggie perked up a little.

"Not much to tell," Jane said.  "Everyone knew the woman was barren.  They never so much as had a pregnancy up at that farmhouse."

Maggie, for the first time, began to consider the implications.  She started to panic a little.

"It was nothing more than an affair with my Jim," Jane continued.  "He was an alien, you know.  Well, folks back then didn't know, that's for sure."

At any other point in history the suggestion would have been greeted as absurd.  But Superman, who looked perfectly human himself, had always been hailed as...Kryptonian?  Was that what they always said?  And he clearly worked with green-skinned Martians.  Others.  These were certainly interesting times.

"Of course, Jim died a long time ago," Jane said.  "Cremated.  No body.  Spread the ashes.  No proof.  All you'll have is my word."

"That's fine," Ellie said, recording all of this, jotting notes at the same time.  Maggie, watching, in that moment wondered if she ought to always have a notebook with her, and unconsciously patted her pockets as if she could have manifested one in them then.

"I don't care what people say, now," Jane said.  "Never did, I guess.  It just doesn't matter anymore.  He's no family of mine.  The Kents can't possibly care if people know.  What'll they do?  Come all the way out here in the middle of nowhere?  Any tourists would quickly get bored.  Not much more to see here than cornfields.  People can get everything they want in the Metropolis giftshops.  The California amusement park.  Maybe we could get a plaque.  Maybe a mention in the history books.  Or the local paper.  No offense."

Maggie started to fidget.  Suddenly she felt dirty.  This didn't feel like a scoop anymore.  It wasn't much fun.

Ellie told the old woman thanks, and they headed back.  The Kents were waiting, with a pitcher of iced tea.  Martha Kent still looked youthful somehow, Jonathan less so, but hardy, the way a farmer should.

"I expect Jane told you everything," Martha said.

"She did," Ellie said, again so businesslike.  They all sipped their iced tea.

"There's no sense denying it," Martha said.

"We talked about all this years ago," Jonathan said.  "I don't think there's much that Jane told you that isn't true.  All of it.  You came out all the way here for nothing.  Just some soundbites, I'm afraid."

"That's okay," Ellie said.

They finished their drink, Ellie put away her notebook and recorder, and she led Maggie back to the car, and back to the newsroom.  Maggie had little to say but much to think along the way.

When the day was over, and they'd done various other things and she watched Ellie type her articles up, Maggie found the courage to ask the question she'd had all day.

"Why?"

"That's all you've got?" Ellie said.

"Why do this for a living?" she offered.  

"Seems kind of pointless, doesn't it?" Ellie said.  "No one is gonna care what news the Times-Reader breaks, not even in Smallville.  And it's kind of insulting to suggest otherwise.  It's a routine.  It keeps the day going.  Superman will still fly off to some new adventure tomorrow, and it won't matter what his father's name was, and nobody will care.  If his mom were famous...But she isn't.  And neither are we.  I'm no Lois Lane, but in the final analysis...even Lois Lane doesn't amount to much.  And she never did.  Just stories journalists tell other journalists.  But somebody has to do it.  And I guess I always had an interest in it.  But I'm guessing you don't."

"And please, please understand it has nothing to do with today," Maggie said.  "I, I'm not judging you.  Not at all!"

"More words spoken just now than all day," Ellie said.  "A girl could start to wonder...I'm kidding!  I'm a reporter, Maggie.  I can read between the lines."

"Thank you," Maggie said.  "I guess that settles it."

"What?" Ellie asked.

"The Kansas question," Maggie said.  

"Your answers are elsewhere," Ellie said.  "They often are.  That's what a good reporter knows best.  Even if they're reporters for a single day."

Later, Maggie wished she'd saved clippings of the articles from that day.  She didn't.  Life moved on.