Alter Ego: A Tale of Clark Kent

He wakes up in the morning, and his hand reaches out for his glasses.

He places them on, and then he stretches. He doesn’t feel like himself until he’s aware of his limits, which can be difficult. When he places the glasses on, they actually dull his vision. Since his cells regenerate in the sun, no permanent damage is done, but as long as he’s wearing them, he’s accepted his first limits of the day.

He walks to the apartment door, opens it. He hears the city. They say when one sense is lost, or in his case dulled, the others are amplified. His hearing is always excellent, of course. He uses this time to process, to sort. He isn’t his friend in Gotham. He keeps regular hours. It’s the limit he conceded when he decided to keep the Clark Kent identity.

He loses sleep every night, but he never stirs.

The paper is always waiting for him. It’s the same paper he works for. He browses. With his glasses off he can read the whole thing without unfolding it at all. His carrier folds it three times. He usually just sees the masthead, with his glasses, until he unfolds it. 

He uses it as a gentle reminder of current events. He usually spends his day somewhat distracted. He likes how it keeps him grounded. He never really enjoyed writing. It’s easy to tell stories when you’ve witnessed them. He’s been using that crutch since he was a kid. Back then he learned they’ll call you a liar if you do it in person. In type, they’re likely to give you awards. Just ask Lois. That’s how they first bonded, when they realized they had the same relationship with the written word.

Before that he would listen to Pa for hours. Pa always had the best stories. His were full of morals, though.

Journalists don’t have the luxury of such things.

When he shows up at the office, he looks for her, first. He’s done that since the first day he accepted the job. She’s always distracted, too. That’s what he understood about people, that they’re always distracted. Lois, though, usually has a good excuse. He sometimes thinks he went public as Superman because then, at least, he would always have at least a fifty percent chance of guessing what she’s thinking about.

But her thoughts are always chasing stories, and a paper filled with Superman would grow stale quickly. Actually, Superman, in print, doesn’t carry as much weight with Perry as you’d think. Eat steak too much and it’s not really steak anymore.

He sits at his desk and switches on his computer. He’s got that one story he’s been working on for years, that he always begins his day reviewing. He checks his notes, sees if he can use any of them for pitches. Perry loves that; what he loves most about Clark is that he’s always prepared with pitches. Clark never just assumes a story will present itself. Why would he? Stories are happening all the time, but they’re not always the sensational kind. A good journalist digs. A good story isn’t just about supervillains, after all. In the real world, supervillains have their fans. Superman’s greatest triumphs are the stuff of firefighters. Rescuing cats. From tall buildings. He usually leaps, for those. It looks good. People appreciate the small things.

He always packs a lunch. That’s the Smallville in him. 

He brings the morning’s paper with him. By then he’s already filed new copy. Nobody bothers him. Lois leaves him alone. He doesn’t really worry about people, as Clark Kent. It’s the only time he can have a little peace. That’s really what Clark Kent is all about. He’s just a byline. Nobody really cares about the face behind those. He’s anonymous. He’s nobody. He’s like anyone else. That’s actually how he views humanity. He doesn’t see stories. He just sees people. 

If Clark Kent is Superman’s critique of humanity, it’s his professional judgment that people are a lot less interesting than they think they are. He doesn’t write opinion pieces. He never saw the point.

As the day ebbs, he feels a little tired. He’s been busy. Tired, for him, is different than it for others. Tired is more or less an admission that he has to let the world exist without him for a little while. 

So he can start the process all over again. As he sleeps, he’s at his weakest. He tends to take one last flight, just to recharge the batteries. Then he settles down. 

When he closes his eyes, it’s the only natural way he knows to shut the world out. But he doesn’t sleep much. Mostly he just lies there, thinking.

Barrytown: A Tale of the Man in Black from Lost

She fled across the beach, and he followed.

Not enough has been said about the survivors of Ilium. For there were survivors. Enough has been said about the laments, the epic journeys, the grand destiny revealed in a later empire. But there was also a woman lost at sea, and she found herself on an island, and there she lamented, too, and awaited destiny.

She wasn’t alone. The old man who greeted her told her about the island, and that she would live for an eternity, if she wanted, except that she would never be able to leave the island.

Eternity is for those who cling to the idea of youth. Eventually everyone grows tired of its comforting lies.

She began to feel cursed by the gods. On this island they were totally absent. There was a light that was beyond anything she had ever known, and it was nothing like the gods, who had forsaken her people, allowed them to be conquered, and left her here in exile, to protect an island, to save the world…

Many years later the northmen came. Their ships wrecked on the shore, and she believed for a few weeks that there were no survivors. None strolled about the island. She waited.

Then she saw them. A mother and her two young boys. 

She watched. She found the other survivors. She knew what she had to do. She killed the mother, and took the boys as her own.

One of them was special. He knew things he shouldn’t. She thought she had found her successor. But his brother complicated things. His brother doubted. He was weak.

Then one day, everything fell apart. Her son found out the truth, and felt betrayed. He killed her. He said all he wanted was to leave the island.

His brother wouldn’t let him.

She lingered. She had met all the souls who lingered on the island. She was now among them. She watched. Her son was murdered, too. His brother cast him into the light.

And then she knew. She knew before she heard. She knew that her son had been transformed, and now she understood what had made him special.

He turned into a monster, a vengeful beast. He came to her first. He asked her why. She told him what she had tried to tell them before. He still insisted all he wanted was to reclaim his birthright.

His brother took over as protector. He had tried his own arguments with her son, how the world needed hope, essentially. But her son had rejected such ideas. All he wanted was the idea of what he had never known. He looked at his life as one massive betrayal. He saw nothing but despair and ruin and defeat, and he had become an avatar of what he saw. He just didn’t know it.

She grieved, as she had since she first came to the island. Not for herself, not for her son, but for his brother. For the boy she had never seen, the ordinary boy, the one who stumbled into this life.

For her son, she grieved harder, though. She had failed him. Not in the way he thought. But in failing to understand what he was, so that what he became had been inevitable. Her fault. Her failure. Her loss of faith.

His brother was the opposite of all these. She began to watch him instead.

Illuminated

On Holy Saturday, the monk had a tradition he had cultivated for himself over the years.

He was one of the monks who labored illuminating the Bible, a painstaking task very few would ever see, and yet he had always considered it a special privilege. 

On Holy Saturday each year he always set the day aside to contemplate Christ in the tomb. The point of all these illuminations was to glorify the faith in all its visual splendor, and yet he gave himself the challenge, each year, to imagine the darkest moment of the faith, when all seemed to have been lost.

He was aware of how the world saw the faith, in his time.

Most of Europe had been won to the faith at this point. The fall of the Roman Empire had brought about a seismic shift in the balance of power, away from its centralized nature, previously, and into the regional hands that had labored to cultivate themselves over the centuries, which in recent years had encountered a menace worse than anything they had confronted before, a horde that sought to sweep over their lands, assimilate them into a different faith, a different culture entirely. Many strongholds had resulted, many vanguards, and perhaps a few of them had perverted their roles. The Church, too. Perhaps.

He didn’t care. His faith was strong. There were always challenges. His faith told him the truths of civilization would endure. There were among his number those whose sole task was to copy the treasures passed down from previous generations, well beyond the scope of the core interests of the Church, what in other hands would be hailed as rediscovered, as if they had been lost. He knew the Church was considered oppressive. He knew there were those who agitated for autonomy, who wanted to break its power up into regional interests. Given all the forces at work it was inevitable.

He knew much of the Church was being condemned. He also knew he had one job, and that was to paint the Bible, not in works of art that would be collected and displayed in the homes of rich men, but would be sealed forever in pages that hid them away. 

That was his faith as he understood it.

On this Holy Saturday, he tried to relax. His faith was strong. He spent most of the day in quiet contemplation, his brushes set aside, his inks in their pots. 

When evening drew, he selected black. Red was the color most often used, in this work. He sketched, at first, his Christ in the tomb, hidden beneath a shroud, in the darkness. Then he focused on the outline, the highlights in the dark, a suggestion of an angel, seated patiently, and in the far corner…a finger, the hand of the Father, reaching out. 

His faith told him, Christ truly rested, was truly dead, had not yet descended to the pit, was nowhere but in this body, the portrait of defeat. 

He had always treasured this day for precisely that reason. The believers had often, from the very beginning, been defined by defeat. They had persisted in their belief anyway. They had seen that there was always a way forward, a belief not so much in another world where they needn’t fear their fellow man so much, but in this world, itself, the ability to push past difficulties, if not to solve them but to move past them, to keep going, to endure. No matter where it led. Even unto death. To believe all men might rise above themselves. As Christ had demonstrated even on the cross.

The scripture he embellished had very little to say about what Christ experienced after his death. It was a record of man’s experiences, and no one had witnessed Christ in the tomb. They had placed a body there, and then they had sealed it away. The next day it would be opened and the scriptures had plenty to say about that, who had witnessed the risen Christ. In the tomb, in the darkness, however, all was silent.

That was why the monk gave him company. His faith told him no one was alone.

Star Trek: The Emissary’s Return…

 Many years later…

Kasidy sat in her cabin, alone, feeling her bones, feeling alone, feeling…lost. Something told her to go digging in her closet.

She’d moved into the old cabin recently. It’d sat at the edge of the property where she had built their home, in Kendra Province, when she had still hoped for his return, when she would take Jake’s daily transmissions in the spirit in which they were intended. 

There had always been…something that drew her to it. Certainly not the state in which she’d found it. Abandoned even before the Occupation, by the look of it. Ancient. Waiting to collapse. Like she was, when she finally moved in.

Rubbish, refuse, decay…Yet she found herself…digging. Someone had told her something of the history, in town, how there had been a vedek retreat here, long ago. 

There were…crawling insects. She slipped on a pair of gloves, reminded herself that she used to be captain of a cargo ship, long before she ever met him, before she had adjusted to…

Near the bottom of all the detritus, there was a scroll. In the old days on Earth, there was something called the Dead Sea Scrolls. Hers was sheltered in much the same way, preserved, lost to time. Waiting to be found.

She’d taught herself how to read such things. Of course she had. She’d married the Emissary.

Yet she still couldn’t…

The Emissary had returned. In the distance past…When the Prophets had first spoken to the Bajoran people. The forgotten origins…Her Benjamin. 

He’d known, somehow, all along. He’d known she would find out. He’d known she would find him. Again. 

She felt her heartbeat.

She could…feel his presence. If she just turned around…But she couldn’t. She couldn’t bring herself to. 

She held the scroll to her chest. She could feel his heartbeat, too. 

The Last Judgment…

In her final moments Jisoo labored just to breathe, forgetting all else, a lifetime, and then…

There she was. 

There were no longer doubts in her head. She knew everything that there was to know. She knew where she was. She was in purgatory.

She was remote from him. Remote from God. That was how she knew. But she could still feel his presence. Here, there was the Holy Spirit. Here, she was aware for the first time, the Holy Spirit had always been somewhere close by…Elusive, but there.

And it was Judgment Day. It was always judgment day, on the day someone died. Everyone skipped immediately to the end…

Christ was the aspect that understood time, that experienced its passage, although God otherwise saw all of it, all at once…Christ was presiding. She saw him, in judgment. An inversion of how his life had ended. 

She did not feel judged. She didn’t feel pure, either…She’d known, in her life, but had always been able to find…excuses. To believe she was, ah, good enough…

The judgment had been rendered. There had been two judgments, under Christ, one upon his death, and the other, at the end. 

In life she had always feared this. In life she had been led to believe in fire. But she found that she was cold. And those…elsewhere, surely colder still…Remote, removed. Knowing what they had turned against, no longer able to deny it. Run fresh out of excuses. 

Judgment, not condemnation. What had been earned freely. The judge, Christ, the human aspect…sad. Disappointed. The only real judgment.

She waited. She didn’t know how long it would be…

But she supposed it didn’t matter anymore.

Star Trek: Ballad of Dartog

Worf stayed awake late into the night watching over the body of Jadzia…It had been many days since he had slept. Sisko, Bashir, O’Brien…they’d all tried convincing him to rest, even Martok. He couldn’t. And he did not know how to explain it to them, not anymore. Their patience had ran out. His had not.

The silence, though, had become oppressive. Jadzia had never…allowed space to be filled with so much of it. In that moment that was what he missed most. He needed to hear…

He requested the computer play the Ballad of Dartog. Since he was a boy he had always found comfort in it, a connection to his lineage that often proved…elusive. Dartog was a warrior of the generation after Kahless, whom many Klingons honored with establishing the foundation of the new way Kahless had introduced into their society. Kahless had been unforgettable…Dartog hadn’t had such luxury. In fact his role had been thankless, and for three generations he had been forgotten. 

A playwright brought him back into polite society, and then the opera had been composed, and from it, the Ballad. 

Worf found the idea of Dartog’s rediscovery…comforting. Perhaps a part of him yearned to be found by his own people…But that had never happened. He joined Starfleet, and his debut in Klingon society was…complicated. He met his brother, he fought for the honor of his late father. And he met his son.

Listening to the Ballad now…Worf realized he’d heard that voice before. It was Alexander’s. He’d had no idea. Their relationship had been repaired, but they had never again lived as father and son. He still missed…much of his son’s life, it seemed.

It was a good voice. He opened a communications link, and found Alexander…busy. So he left a message. He talked about the Ballad, he talked about Jadzia, he talked about the war…Alexander’s service had become…acceptable. He didn’t mention how he appreciated his son’s talent. He thought it was implied.

When he brought it up with Martok, it was only in recommending the recording. Martok recognized Alexander immediately. Worf ground his teeth. Of course he had known…

After this war, he knew now the path his son would follow. He felt…pride.

Star Trek - The Human Adventure

In a quiet corner of a salon there was a little girl.

This was not just another girl and this wasn’t just any salon. The salon was in the city of Kambata, in the planet the Federation called Delta IV. The little girl was called Ilia, after her mother.

Ilia had been born before her mother reported for duty aboard the Enterprise. She was a product of her mother’s affair with the human, Will Decker.

Deltan society had room for Ilia, had a place for her when her mother went away, but it didn’t account for her mother never returning, or never meeting her father. She was lonely, all the same. Among Deltans, their peculiar pheromones work differently. In their society, they had mastered themselves. With the child, it was a little different. She found it difficult to process her impulses. When she was in public, she was at the salon, where she could study her people at their most uninhibited.

And they were her people. She was never made to feel any differently. She felt isolated, all the same. When she was told what had happened, it hardly made things easier. She was young, but not too young to know the yearning she had felt when her mother told her she would return.

It was a blessing, then, when she closed her eyes for a nap, one day, and saw her father.

“Hello,” Will Decker said.

“Hello!” Ilia replied.

“Sorry to drop in on you like this,” Will Decker said.

“That’s okay,” Ilia said, in her sleep.

“I really didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” Will Decker said. “Not your birth! That’s not what I mean. Ilia didn’t tell me..I don’t mean to make excuses. I had placed my career first. Always so ambitious…That’s what brought me here in the first place, the ‘impossible assignment,’ they all said. No one could have the discipline. Well, I did. Mostly. Until I met your mother. And then I was given command of the Enterprise. It was a big assignment! They wanted the ship totally overhauled. It was practically a new ship, by the time the work was done. Some of the crew from its prior mission was retained, some had moved on. I asked for your mother. I needed her by my side. I didn’t know how selfish that would…Listen, something happened. You were told, but no one could really explain. That would’ve been, well, impossible.

“I will try my best. Your mother was killed by a machine. This machine was going to, it was going to destroy everything. It was headed toward my home planet, Earth. You have family, there, too. Someday you’ll meet them, I’m sure. The machine was something Earth had sent into space long ago, before humans had begun living amongst the stars, before we had visited other worlds, before we’d met any of their inhabitants. Before we knew Delta IV existed. Before we knew your mother’s people. The machine encountered a problem we couldn’t have anticipated, or hadn’t accounted for. It became confused, in its programming. It went in search of its creator. But it had forgotten what it was. 

“It absorbed your mother, really. It transformed her into a kind of emissary, a representative, and it…had all of your mother’s memories, but it didn’t understand them any better than it knew itself. I knew her, though. I chose to accept what had happened, and to bring those memories back…

“I stepped away from things. I don’t really know how to explain what happened, better than that. I was absorbed, too. It was the only way to explain to the machine what its creator was. This time, the machine didn’t destroy, though. I remained in control of myself. 

“And a very curious thing happened. This was the moment I learned of your existence. Your mother hadn’t told me, but the machine knew, and didn’t know that I didn’t. It was just information. It devastated me. I fell in love with you instantly. I was able to see everything, the moment of your conception, your mother’s pregnancy, your birth, the whole of your life that she witnessed…That was how I met you. I just couldn’t be part of your life. This is what I tried to explain to the machine. Your mother, the version that existed, the memory, the echo, she became herself, again, when she saw you, too, for the first time, all over again, and that was what convinced the machine…

“I’m sorry, this is a lot. You’re not going to remember…Anyway, I think we taught the machine…love. And that’s what I want you to feel, now…I hope you can. I can’t cross back over…I realized, later, that I died, too…I love you so much. I’m sorry for everything. I should’ve been there. I should be there now. We should both be. The machine learned something about selfish impulses. I did, too. Too late. Or maybe not.”

Ilia woke, and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. It was exactly the kind of dream that lingers. She woke happy. She thought about talking about it, but decided to keep it to herself. 

She murmured, “I love you, too,” and then went to explore other corners of the salon.