“So you see Mr. Lang, if you don’t want to be responsible for distributing poisoned produce on the market, you will let the EPA finish its work and gather its findings,” said Molina.
Lucas stood there with his hands in pockets wearing a plaid shirt and denim overalls. He took a handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiped the sweat off his brow. “Mr. Castro, is it? I don’t want to get in anybody’s way. I just have a farm to run and bills to pay,” pleaded Lucas Lang. “I thought this was all squared away 15 years ago anyhow. Now you people have been here for the past two months with your tents all over the place and your men every which way, and I can’t get any work done.”
“I’m done explaining our business sir. Now if you would kindly vacate the premises.”
“This is my land!” shouted Lucas as Molina walked away.
A little girl came running up to Lucas when she heard him yell. “Pa, jus c’mon. He ain’t listenin’ no how. Let’s go back in the house.”
Looking down at her Lucas said, “Alright, young lady. Say, where’s your ma’ and big sis’?”
“Well, ma’s hangin’ the laundry behind the house and,” The girl stopped to look around then pointed down the road. “…oh, there she is. Talkin’ to that Kent boy, pa.”
Lucas noticed his daughter’s tone of annoyance in her voice when she spotted her sister. “Well, you go and tell her it’s time for dinner and she needs to wash up. I’ll see you girls back in the house.” Lucas left to go inside as his daughter ran over to where her sister was to relay the message.
The girl’s red pig tails whipped her in the face as she ran. She finally made it to her sister and said, “Pa’ says it’s time to wash up for dinner.”
Her sister, agitated by her presence, said, “Alright, Lisa, I’ll be right there. Now scram.”
“Evening, Lisa. Keepin’ busy?” asked the boy with her sister.
Lisa swung a look at the boy not caring for his question and said, “Don’t keep Pa’ waitin’.” And she ran back to the house.
Lisa’s sister laughed and said, “Looks like I shouldn’t keep Lisa waiting either.”
“No, not at all. Wouldn’t want to get her all upset now,” the boy said with a smile. After a moment of silence, he nervously started to move his foot in a circular pattern in the dirt and said, “You want to meet up tomorrow? That is if you’re not busy or nuthin.”
The girl moved a strand of red hair out of her face and said, “If it’s alright wit ma’ and pa’, sure. That would be nice.”
His apprehensiveness disappeared, “Swell! I’ll stop by then to find out.”
She smiled and walked away. She quickly turned again and gave a short wave and said, “Have a good night, Clark.”
With a smile from ear to ear, he said, “You too, Lana.”
________________________________________________________________
Clark took the short cut through the corn field as he has done many times before. Excited about tomorrow, Clark didn’t notice the brawly man in the next row of corn and bumped into him. "Hey, this ain't no place for some high school boy to be," said Molina.
Clark looked the big man up and down, yet he was unafraid of his massive size. "I beg to differ. Since we're out here in a corn field, I'd say this isn't a place for some city guy in a suit," retorted Clark.
"Well, we got business here, so you need to clear out of the area."
Clark pointed past Molina’s shoulders and said, "No offense, mister, but once you crossed that mesh wired fence about 30 yards back, you left the Lang Farm and came onto the Kent Farm."
Molina looked back and noticed the three rows of wire that was about a foot off the ground. He turned back to Clark and said, "And who the hell are you?"
"Clark, Clark Kent. And I'm tellin’ you to get off my farm."
Molina grabbed Clark by the collar and said, "Listen here boy, you don't want to start nothin you can't finish. Now go on home and play with your horsies."
With a forceless push, Clark sent Molina twenty feet away. Molina was shocked and got up wiping off the dust and dirt from his suit. Before Molina could react, he heard a man's voice calling out for him.
As Molina turned around, the man appeared and asked, "I’ve been lookin for you. What are you doing way out here, Molina?"
"Just talkin’ to the boy." Molina said as he hoped the man didn’t witness what just took place.
"What boy?" asked Emil.
"This..." As Molina turned back he noticed that Clark was nowhere to be seen and continued with, "boy."
The gentleman looked around and didn’t see or hear anyone else. "Alright Molina, I think it's time you stop playing in this here cornfield. This hot sun is getting to you."
The two started to walk back and Molina asked, "Say Emil, what is it that we're really doing out here? What exactly does Luthor want to find?"
Surprised, he asked. "You mean you haven't seen one?"
"Seen what?"
Emil opened his shoulder bag and took out a baseball size shaped rock. It had the appearance and texture of a piece of coal you would get from a mine. Molina looked at
Emil with disbelief. "Coal? Luthor is after Coal? I'm going to break his rich skinny neck."
Emil shook his head. "It's not coal, Molina. Look a bit closer."
As Molina got a better look, he noticed fine edges and outlines of an emerald color. There were little sparkles here and there. Just as quickly as it came, Molina's mood changed. On his face was a type of grin that one would get if they were struck with gold fever.
"What is that, a new type of diamond?" asked Molina.
"It's a new type of something. This meteor has physical properties we've never seen before," said Emil.
"You mean like you scientists or the government?"
"More like the entire human race. Earth has never seen this before."
"Have you done any tests on it yet?"
"You want to see some cool stuff?” Seeing Molina’s smile he continued, “Let's go over to my lab."
Molina and Emil left the corn field and headed over to the lab. As they kept talking, Clark was about a mile away listening to their conversation.
________________________________________________________________________
Clark approached his yellow farm house and could smell the warm pie from the kitchen. He ran past the crops and scared the crows as usual. He loved listening to them squawk as they flew away. The birds never could hear him coming. As Clark made it back to his house, he began to tell about the man who was trespassing.
"So how far did he go?" asked his father.
"Only about 20 feet, pa,” said Clark.
"Clark...!"
"What was I suppose to do dad? He had me by my collar."
"Clark, you can't go around beating people up just because you can whether they deserve it or not."
"Yeah, but…"
His mother stood at the counter cutting into the pie. "Your father is right Clark. Now go on upstairs and wash up for dinner."
Waiting until Clark was out of the room, Martha continued, "What are we going to do with him, Jonathan?”
His father began to set the table. “He's just a teenager, Martha. Besides, he may not be ours by blood, but he'll learn how to deal with his adversaries like a Kent.”
Martha went over to Jonathan and gave him a kiss on the cheek. She smiled, and the two sat at the table and waited for Clark.
________________________________________________________________________
The lab was on the Lang’s property, but it sat off of the dirt road that leads to the paved main street. It was constructed on a small area of the acres of land that was not meant to grow crops, but merely for grass, flowers and shrubbery. It wasn’t a very big structure, yet it was still an eye sore from the picture window of the main house. The barn was just at the end of the same dirt road. From the outside, the lab looked like a single M.A.S.H unit with four fabric walls. However, the inside, which was a restricted area, was a state of the art laboratory. Professor Hamilton gave Molina a brief tour then showed him some more samples of this very special rock.
"Over here is where we keep smaller samples in different temperatures and lighting."
Molina looked over at some desks and noticed mice in different cages. "Why so many mice….hey, is that mouse flying?"
"All in good time, Molina."
In excitement, Molina shouted, "Luthor was right. We're all gonna be rich, ain't we?"
"I wouldn’t rush into all that now. We've only tapped the surface. We just figured out how to bring the rock back to life."
"Back to life…? Alright, tell me everything. And Emil, explain it in a way that I could understand."
"I wouldn't even know where to begin."
Molina took another look around the lab and noticed some red and yellow lights that shone into some of the glass cages. "How 'bout you start off with all these hot lights you got hangin' up. Then you can build your way up to that flyin' mouse you got over there."
Emil agreed and the two sat down. "I personally discovered the use of the lights, but it was my team that realized this rock was green due to radiation. We figured in order to reverse the radiation that we had to cure it in its own environment. However, we didn't know the origin of these meteorites. So, I took all the data we had and reversed the trajectory of the course they took. That process enabled us to get a better idea on which galaxy these meteors came from.” Emil stopped for a moment and asked, “Are you following so far, Molina?"
"Yeah Emil, I'm not a moron. Just don't go all PhD on me."
"Understood, Molina.” Emil continued, “So, when I did the reversal, I found the exact part of space where these rocks could have come from.” Emil stopped and went to look in his desk drawer. “Now where did I put that star map?" he asked to himself.
Emil was looking in and around his work desk for his map. He then asked one of his junior assistants if he knew where the map was when Molina asked, "Jeez Emil, you're an astronomer too?"
Shortly after discovering the location of the map, Emil informed Molina that he had just taken a few classes in astronomy. He then unfolded the map on the table and his finger landed on a section that was circled with red ink.
Molina joked and mentioned that he had a taken a class in astronomy as well, but in high school. He then walked over to Emil to view the map.
"Anyway, the meteors came from quadrant 2C, and there is only one galaxy over there. This galaxy, which its name is only interpreted by both letters and numbers, is similar to ours. However, there are a few differences; for instance, twenty or so years ago, when the map was made, it had seven planets. I did a lot of double checking with my colleagues to make sure I was in the correct part of space, for when I made a call to my friend at his observatory three weeks ago, he informed me that quadrant 2C now has only six planets."
"Maybe a planet was just declassified to a moon. You know like Pluto was."
Emil disagreed. "Molina, our telescopes don't have the power to see moon size objects that far into space."
"So, you're saying that these rocks are left over pieces from that missing planet?"
"Oddly enough, yes. This is what I believe. But this wasn't just any old planet. This planet was in a 'Goldilocks' position compared to its sun."
"I heard that term before. That's the same position Earth is at, right?"360Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ723qqyxO4I
"Exactly. My observatory friend told me that where this planet, that we jokingly nicknamed 'Bizarro' because we don't understand what happened to it, that where this planet was now appears to be vast empty space. We think that Bizarro somehow became unstable and combusted."
Still staring at the map, Molina asked. "What could have caused the planet to fall apart?"
Emil motioned and pointed back to the chairs they were originally sitting in. Emil then sat in a stool across from Molina before answering him. "More than likely by a direct hit from an asteroid or comet. But, I don’t believe that whatever hit this planet caused it to explode. The radiation in these meteors makes me believe that the planet’s core was radioactive for awhile. This collision caused the radioactive core to ignite. And unless the inhabitants knew about this, they had no way of knowing when the core was going to detonate.”
Molina asked, "So, whatever or whoever was on that planet had no chance of surviving, did they?"
"Well, only if they had the technology to leave. But that's just half of it. Bizarro, when it was thriving, had a red sun which is now in its late stages of existing before becoming a black hole. It only gave off enough energy for Bizarro to exist moderately. This would keep the core of Bizarro hot, yet the outer crust would be shear ice. I figured that when it rained, the coolness of the atmosphere would freeze the rain in mid-fall. This would create huge crystallized icicles that would cover the entire face of the planet over time, forcing its inhabitants to migrate underground."
"So, you're saying life could exist beneath the ground?"
Emil stood up and went over to a blackboard. He picked up a piece of chalk and began to draw as he was speaking. "Picture an igloo with a fire place inside. That fire place represents the inner core of Bizarro, and the igloo represents the outer planet. A person could dwell inside this particular igloo and not freeze due to the fireplace.
But, when one exits the igloo the temperature drastically changes causing it hard for one to maintain life. However, if these beings were advanced enough to harness the heating source of the inner core and bring it up to these ice caverns then one might maintain a social environment at the surface."
After Molina was able to match up the Professor’s words with his bad sketches on the blackboard and make sense of it all, he asked, "O.k., so what kind of tests are you running? I mean you said that you brought these rocks back to life."
"Oh yes. This is where my genius comes in.” Emil began to pace back and forth in front of the blackboard. “After getting negative results one after another, I started thinking of the rock’s origin. Then, I realized their red sun. It was as if I was trying to turn on a flashlight that required 'C' batteries by inserting 'D' batteries. Basically, I was implementing the wrong amount of energy."
Molina pointed over to the lights over the cages. "So this is where the red light is supposed to come in?"
Emil stopped pacing and used the chalk that was still in his hands to write again on the blackboard as he described what he was saying. "Our yellow sun gives off an immense amount of Ultra Violet light along with its heat rays. The red sun of Bizarro does not. So, in retrospect, I was overheating the rock and subjecting it to UV light."
"So, life from this Bizarro planet couldn’t survive here on Earth?"
Emil turned and answered Molina. "No, not quite. You see, after a few tests, I've discovered that our yellow sun just can't reactivate, reanimate or reenergize these meteorites. These meteorites would already have to be in their natural composition, and then our sun has supernatural affects on its molecular structure."
"Supernatural? Does that have anything to do with that flying mouse?"
Emil smiled and said, "I'm getting there, I'm getting there. We've been able to stir up the molecular structure of this meteorite. You see, this rock isn't dead at all. It's radioactive, but it's just in hibernation."
Afraid of this last comment by Emil, Molina asked, “Are these things safe to be around?"
"We weren't sure at first, but we've come to learn that it has no affect on us or any other natural matter of Earth. I believe it's because of our exposure to the yellow sun. In its radioactive green state, our sun seems to neutralize the poison it should be giving off. However, it would have just the opposite effect on an inhabitant of its origin."
"You mean something from this Bizarro place?"
"Right,” Emil shouted with a big smile. “Let's say someone from Bizarro came to Earth. The effect of our yellow sun would completely change their biological make up. I'm talking about their DNA, bone mass, hair follicles, sensory perception and just about everything else."
"How did you figure all this out? Are these just your theories or proven fact?"
"A little bit of both, Molina. Again, picture the meteorite as a few molecules of water. When this rock was back home, it was in liquid form, water's natural state. But if you change the element's environment, the element also changes. For instance, take this water and put it in a freezer. Now compare the freezer to Earth. The new environment causes the molecules to expand in every direction until they can't move anymore, they freeze and become ice cubes. The water on Bizarro was clear, but the ice cubes on Earth are green. We obviously can't take this ice cube back to Bizarro to reverse it to its original form and state. But, we can keep this ice cube on Earth and change it back to its original state but giving it a brand new form. It looks the same, moves the same but what was once H2O is now H20O10 because of its new power source- our sun. Somewhere in the process of the molecular change, our sun added a few more ingredients, sort of speak."
"So, if someone were to come here from Bizarro…"
Astonished by the thought, Emil interrupted, "Molina, if someone were to come here from Bizarro there would be no stopping him. He wouldn't just be a man like ordinary H2O; he would be H20O10, a super man."
"Could our sun have made these meteorites radioactive?"
"Absolutely not. Over long periods of exposure to our sun, it makes all natural substances from Bizarro more resilient."
"Well, Emil, it's been about 20 years. Why haven't the rocks changed?"
Emil explained again by going back to the blackboard. "My guess is it had something to do between point A and point B. Point A is Bizarro and point B is Earth. There is nothing but space in between both points. And who knows what kind of gases and toxins are out there, or maybe Bizarro suffered some kind of nuclear disaster and the affected pieces came towards Earth. But that is why in this "green" state this rock can do little for us. But, when we change it back…"
"…You get flying mice," Molina said with simplicity.
"And so much more,” Emil said. “Currently it's still in the beginning stages, but we hope to work on cures for medicine."
"So, what affect do you think this "green" rock would have on one of its inhabitants here on Earth?"
Emil turned and his facial expression was as if he hadn’t pondered the answer to this question before. "That's a damn good question, Molina. I guess the rock being in its pure form would have little or no affect, for it would be just as if they were home. But, in this new mutated poisonous "green" state, though it is harmless to us, well, it would have to be deadly to them. The poison or radiation would trigger the original Bizarro cells and start attacking them. As I see, this "green" rock would be the only physical means to counter their abilities."
"Emil, I don't want to get all paranoid now, but what if Earth was visited by these beings?"
"Molina, there are no signs that extra terrestrial life even exists. Besides, even if this planet was densely populated, they would have all been destroyed."
"But like you said, Emil. What if these beings did know what was happening to their planet and had the technology to leave? What if they abandoned their doomed planet to search out a new home?"
Thinking on some small level that he might be right Emil said, "You raise a good point, Molina. Come on; let's put this rock to work."
A bit nervous Molina asked, "What are you gonna do?"
Emil went over and picked up a meteorite. "We're gonna go play with that flying mouse."
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