The Last Days of Krypton (2 page)

D
RAMATIS
P
ERSONAE

JOR-EL—Krypton’s most revered scientist

ZOR-EL—Jor-El’s brother, an accomplished scientist in his own right and leader of Argo City

ALURA—Zor-El’s wife, an expert in botany

YAR-EL—father of Jor-El and Zor-El, a genius who now suffers from the Forgetting Disease

CHARYS—mother of Jor-El and Zor-El, a researcher in psychology

FRO-DA—Jor-El’s head chef at his estate

LOR-VAN—a well-respected artist and muralist

ORA—Lor-Van’s wife

LARA—Lor-Van’s daughter, also an accomplished artist as well as a historian and aspiring writer

KI-VAN—Lor-Van’s young son

DRU-ZOD—head of the Commission for Technology Acceptance in Kandor

COR-ZOD—Dru-Zod’s father, former head of the Kryptonian Council and legendary politician

NAM-EK—Dru-Zod’s ward, a burly mute

BEL-EK—Nam-Ek’s murderous father, killed by Kryptonian Sapphire Guards

AETHYR-KA—an independent woman cut off from her noble family, a former classmate of Lara’s

BUR-AL—fourth-level assistant in the Commission for Technology Acceptance

VOR-ON—young man from a minor noble family

HOPK-INS—minor worker in the Commission for Technology Acceptance

GUR-VA—an insane criminal known as the Butcher of Kandor

SHOR-EM—the leader of Borga City

DONODON—alien visitor to Krypton

KIRANA-TU—dry and humorless female doctor

THE KRYPTONIAN COUNCIL

ANCIENT HISTORICAL FIGURES

JAX-UR—ancient warlord, generally considered Krypton’s most terrible tyrant

LOTH-UR—cruel father of Jax-Ur

SOR-EL—ancestor of Jor-El, one of the leaders of the Seven Armies

KOL-AR—one of the leaders of the Seven Armies

POL-US—one of the leaders of the Seven Armies

NOK—ancient chieftain

KAL-IK—adviser to Nok, who sacrificed his life to speak the truth

HUR-OM—legendary star-crossed lover depicted in a Kandor opera tapestry

FRA-JO—legendary star-crossed lover depicted in a Kandor opera tapestry

DISSIDENTS

GIL-EX—leader of Orvai in the lake district

TYR-US—leader of the metal city of Corril in the mountains

GAL-ETH—vice mayor of Orvai

OR-OM—industrialist in a mining town

KORTH-OR—refugee from Borga City

ZOD’S RING OF STRENGTH

KOLL-EM—younger brother of Shor-Em, head of the Ring of Strength

NO-TON—a nobleman and scientist

The red sun of Krypton
loomed in the sky, an unquiet giant. In its gaseous layers, planet-sized convection cells churned like the bubbles in a hellish slow-motion cauldron. Wispy coronal streamers danced across the gulf of space, disrupting planetary communications.

Jor-El had been waiting a long time for a flare storm like this. In his isolated laboratory he had monitored his solar probes, eagerly making preparations. The moment was at hand.

The visionary scientist had set up his equipment in the large, open research building on his estate. Jor-El had no assistants because no one else on Krypton understood exactly what he was doing; in fact, few others seemed to care. The people of his planet were content. Too content. By contrast, Jor-El rarely let himself feel complacent or satisfied. How could he, when he could easily imagine so many ways to improve the world? He was a true anomaly in the “perfect society.”

Working alone, he calibrated beam paths through crystal concentrators, used laser-alignment tools to adjust the angles of intersecting reflector disks, checked and double-checked his gleaming prisms for any flaws. Because his work pushed the envelope of standard and uninspired Kryptonian science, he had been forced to develop much of the basic apparatus himself.

When he opened the set of louvered alloy panels in the roof of the research building, scarlet light flooded into the laboratory. Soon, the solar flux would reach the level he required. Keen scientific curiosity gave him more incentive than his awe for the red giant, which the priests had named Rao. He monitored the power levels displayed on flatcrystal gauges.

All the while, the sunlight outside blazed noticeably brighter. The flares continued to build.

Though he was young, Jor-El’s distinctive thick hair was as white as bleached ivory, which gave him a regal appearance. The classically handsome features of his face looked as if they were modeled directly from the bust of an ancient Kryptonian nobleman, such as his revered ancestor Sor-El. Some might have thought his blue-eyed gaze distant and preoccupied, but in truth, Jor-El saw a great many things that others did not.

He activated his carefully arranged crystal rods, setting up a harmonic melody of wavelengths. On the rooftop, angled sheet-mirrors clashed their reflections into a central concentrating prism. The crystals stole only a precise segment of the spectrum, then diverted the filtered beam into parabolic mirrorpools made of half-transparent quicksilver. As the sunstorm’s intensity increased, the quicksilver mirrors began to ripple and bubble.

According to plan, Jor-El quickly withdrew an amber crystal and inserted it into its proper grid point. The slick facets were already hot against his fingertips. The primary beam splintered into a luminous spiderweb that connected the labyrinth of mirrors and crystals.

In moments, if his experiment worked, Jor-El would break open a doorway into another dimension,
a parallel universe
—maybe even more than one.

The large and lonely estate many kilometers from Kandor suited Jor-El. His research building was as large as a banquet hall. While other Kryptonian families might have used such a space for masques, feasts, or performances, Jor-El’s once-celebrated father had built this entire estate as a celebration of discovery, a place where every question could be investigated regardless of the technophobic restrictions imposed by the Kryptonian Council. Jor-El put these facilities to good use.

For an experiment of this magnitude, he had considered calling his brother from Argo City. Although few could match Jor-El’s genius, dark-haired Zor-El, despite his occasional temper, had the same burning need to discover what was yet to be known. In a long-standing cordial rivalry, the two sons of Yar-El often tried to outdo each other. After today, provided this experiment succeeded, he and Zor-El would have a whole new universe to investigate.

Jor-El withdrew another crystal from the control grid, rotated it, and reinserted it. As the lights glowed brighter and the colors intensified, he became entirely engrossed in the phenomena.

Sequestered in their stuffy chambers in the capital city, the eleven-member Kryptonian Council had forbidden the development of any sort of spacecraft, effectively eliminating all possibility of exploring the universe. From ancient records, Kryptonians were well aware of other civilizations in the twenty-eight known galaxies, but the restrictive government insisted on keeping their planet separate “for its own protection.” That rule had been in place for so many generations that most people accepted it as a matter of course.

In spite of this, the mystery of other stars and planets had always intrigued Jor-El. Not one to break the law, no matter how frivolous the restrictions might seem, he was nonetheless willing to find ways around it. They could not prevent him from traveling in his imagination.

Yes, the Council had disallowed the construction of spacecraft, but according to Jor-El’s calculations, there could be an infinite number of parallel universes, countless alternate Kryptons in which each society might be slightly different. Jor-El could therefore travel in a new way—if only he could open the door to those universes. No spacecraft was necessary. Technically, he would not be breaking any rules.

In the center of the spacious lab, he set a pair of two-meter-wide silver rings spinning to establish a containment field for the singularity he hoped to create. He monitored the power levels. He waited.

When the intensified solar energy reached its peak, a shaft of collected light plunged through the ceiling lens into the center of Jor-El’s laboratory like a shaft of fire. The multiplied beams gathered into a single convergence point, then ricocheted into the very fabric of space. The focused blast pummeled reality itself and tore open a hole to somewhere else…or nowhere at all.

The silver containment rings intersected, spun faster, and held open a pinprick that expanded in an equilibrium of energy and negative energy. As blinding light poured into the small speck of emptiness, the rip grew as wide as his hand, then the length of his forearm, until at last it stabilized, two meters in diameter, extending to the edge of the rings.

A circular portal hovered in the middle of the air, perpendicular to the ground…something a curious person could simply walk into. Behind that opening Jor-El knew he might find new worlds to explore, infinite possibilities.

On a pedestal in front of the hovering doorway, the crystal control array glowed hot and intense. To stabilize the volatile system, he pulled out the subsidiary power crystals, then tilted the quicksilver parabolas to deflect the main beam of sunlight. The power dissipated, but the singularity held. The dimensional portal remained open.

Dazzled, Jor-El stepped forward. Many times he had felt the delicious thrill of discovery, the rush of success when an experiment either produced the results he had predicted or, almost as exciting, something wonderfully unexpected. This doorway had the potential to be both.

When the strange portal did not waver, he cautiously slowed the spinning silver rings so that they hung motionless vertically in the air. Though eagerness tempted him to take shortcuts, his analytical mind knew better. He began his testing process.

First, like a child tossing a pebble into a still pond, he found a small stylus on his worktable and gently threw it into the opening. As soon as the slim implement touched the unseen barrier, it winked out, vanishing entirely and appearing on the other side, in the other universe. Jor-El could barely see a blurred reflection of it floating beyond his reach. But he could see no details of the strange place he had discovered. He ached to see what was there.

Filled with wonder, Jor-El approached the empty gateway. He saw nothing—
literally nothing
—a bottomless void in the air. He wished he had someone with him. Such a great moment should be shared.

He shouted into the opening. “Can anyone hear me? Is anybody there?” The portal remained silent, a vacuum that drained all light and sound.

For his next test, Jor-El attached an imaging crystal lens to a telescoping rod that he removed from an unused piece of equipment stored against a wall of the research building. He would carefully extend the imaging crystal through the barrier, allow it to record the surroundings, then withdraw the tool. He would review the images and determine his next step. He would have to test the air, the temperature, the environment in that other universe.

Sooner or later, though, he knew he was destined to explore.

Holding his breath, Jor-El extended the telescoping rod and pushed the imaging crystal into the edge of the void with the slightest, most delicate touch.

Suddenly, as if a great wind had swallowed him whole, he found himself yanked to the other side, sucked through the opening along with the rod and the imaging crystal. In less than a heartbeat, he was nowhere, suspended in a black and empty void—adrift, yet more than adrift, for he could not feel his body. He sensed no gravity, no temperature, no light. He didn’t seem to be breathing, didn’t need to. He was just a floating entity, completely aware and yet completely detached from reality. As if through a dirty window, he caught a glimpse of his own universe.

But he could not get back there.

Jor-El shouted, then quickly realized that no one else could hear him in this whole strange dimension. He yelled again in vain. He tried to move but noticed no change whatsoever. He was lost here, so close to Krypton, yet infinitely far away.

Working with her fellow apprentice
artists around the wonderfully exotic structures, Lara couldn’t decide if the design of Jor-El’s estate was the result of genius or madness. Maybe the two things were too similar to be distinguishable.

Rao shone down on “light chimes,” ultrathin strips of metal dangling on fine wires that spun under the pressure of photons, producing a racket of rainbows. A milky-white corkscrew tower without doors or windows rose at the center of the estate, like the horn of a giant mythical beast, tapering to a sharp point at its apex. Other outbuildings were unique geometrical structures grown from hollowed crystals and covered with interesting botanical designs.

The bachelor scientist’s manor house was a sprawling labyrinth of arches and domes; interior walls met each other at irregular angles, intersecting in unexpected places. A visitor walking through the chaotic layout could easily become disoriented.

Though Jor-El spent most of his time in the cluttered research building, he had apparently realized that something was missing on the estate his father had left him. Chalk-white external walls of polished stone beckoned like pristine canvases that practically demanded artwork. To his credit, the great scientist had decided to do something about it, which was why he had called in a team of talented artists led by Lara’s famous parents, Ora and Lor-Van.

Lara wanted to make her own mark, apart from her parents. She was her own person, an adult, independent and filled with her own ideas. Given the chance, she imagined creating a distinctive showpiece that maybe even Jor-El himself would notice (if the handsome but enigmatic man ever bothered to emerge from his laboratory). One day Krypton would recognize her as an imaginative artist in her own right, but that wasn’t enough for her. Lara wanted to go beyond that, and she wouldn’t limit her possibilities. In addition to being an artist, she considered herself a creative storyteller, a historian, a poet, even a composer of opera tapestries that evoked the grandeur of Krypton’s never-ending Golden Age.

Her long hair fell in ringlets past her shoulders, each strand the color of spun amber. As an exercise, Lara had tried to paint a self-portrait (three times, in fact), but she never quite got the startling green eyes right, nor the pointed chin or the rosebud lips that curved upward in a frequent smile.

Her twelve-year-old brother, Ki-Van, with his faintly freckled nose, inquisitive eyes, and tousled straw-colored hair, had also come to the work site, which he seemed to find more marvelous than any exhibition in Kandor.

Around the main buildings, teams of artists in training clustered around Lara’s mother and father. More than just underlings and assistants, these were true apprentices who learned from Ora and Lor-Van so that one day they could add their own genius to Krypton’s cultural library. They mixed pigments, erected scaffolding, and set up projection lenses for transferring patterns that the master artists had scribed the night before.

If her parents did their jobs well, Kryptonians would no longer focus on Yar-El’s tragic fading and confusion that had marked the poor man’s later life as he succumbed to the Forgetting Disease. Instead, they would remember Yar-El’s visionary greatness. Surely, Jor-El would be grateful to Lara’s parents for that. What more could he ask of them?

With the limberness of youth, Lara sat cross-legged on a lush patch of purple lawn, a strain of grass found in the wild plains that surrounded Kandor. She stared at what she considered to be the most puzzling objects on the grounds: Twelve smooth sheets of tan veinrock stood around the estate’s open areas, each one two meters wide and three meters tall, with irregular edges. The obelisks were like flat upraised hands, blank and unblemished. Eleven of the flat stones were arranged at precise intervals, but the twelfth was startlingly offset from the others. What had old Yar-El meant by that? Had he intended to cover the obelisks with incomprehensible messages? Lara would never know. Though he was still alive, Yar-El was long past explaining the visions locked inside his head.

Lara propped her sketchplate on her knees. She used a charge-tipped stylus to change the colors of the coating of electromagnetic algae, drawing what she had already painted in her imagination. While her mother and father painted epic murals showing the history of Krypton, Lara had made up her mind to use these twelve blank obelisks for a more symbolic purpose.
If
Jor-El would let her do it. She grew more and more excited as she made plans for each of the flat panels.

Satisfied with her ideas, Lara froze the images on the sketchplate and climbed to her feet, brushing flecks of purple grass from her pearlescent white skirt. Exuberant and determined, she hurried over to the scaffolding where her parents were discussing the best dramatic portrayal of the Seven Army Conference, which had taken place thousands of years ago and changed Kryptonian society forever.

Lara proudly held out her sketchplate. “Mother, Father, look at this. I’d like to have your approval for a new project.” She was full of energy, ready to get to work.

Lor-Van had tied his long auburn hair back in a neat ponytail to keep it out of his way. His expressive brown eyes showed his love for his daughter—as well as long-suffering patience. He tended to indulge Lara whenever she came up to him with one of her new (and often impractical) schemes, but he still seemed to view her as a child rather than an adult in her own right.

Her mother, though, was harder to convince. She had short hair, amber-gold like Lara’s, but streaked with gray; as always, a few smudges of pigment dotted Ora’s cheeks and hands. “What have you done now, Lara?”

“Produced a work of brilliance, no doubt,” her father teased, “but beyond the capability of mere mortals like us to understand.”

“Those twelve obelisks,” Lara said before she could catch her breath, pointing back toward the nearest one. She forced an evenness, a determination, into her voice. “I want to paint them, each one different.”

Without even a glance at the sketches, her mother turned away. “That’s beyond the scope of our project here. Jor-El hasn’t given us permission to touch those.”

Lara pressed the issue. “But has anyone actually asked him about it?”

“He’s inside his laboratory, working. No one should disturb him. I had to send your brother to the perimeter of the grounds because he was making too much noise.” She looked to her husband. “Maybe Ki should be back in Kandor attending classes with the other children his age.”

Lor-Van snorted. “He is learning far more here. When will the boy ever get such an opportunity again?”

But Lara persisted with her own question, not accepting the easy answer. “Has Jor-El ever commanded us not to disturb him while he’s working, or are you just making an assumption?”

“Lara, dear, he’s a revered scientist, and we’re here on his estate at his invitation. We don’t want to overstep our welcome.”

“Why are you so afraid of him? He seems perfectly kind and nice.”

“Now, Lara,” her father said with a tolerant smile, “we aren’t afraid of Jor-El. We respect him.”

“Well, I’m going to go ask. Somebody has to clarify our parameters.” She turned determinedly away, ignoring her parents’ words of caution.

Lara signaled at the door of the research building, which was as large and ornate as a temple of Rao. When the door beacon elicited no response, she rapped hard with her knuckles, but again heard only silence. Finally, she impulsively poked her head inside. “Jor-El? Am I disturbing you? I need to ask you a question.” She had chosen her words carefully. What true scientist could deny a seeker of knowledge who simply wanted to ask something?

“Hello?” Though she knew he must be inside the brightly lit lab, she heard only the echoing hum of equipment. “I’m one of the artists, the daughter of Ora and Lor-Van.” She hung on her words, venturing farther inside, waiting to hear from him.

Jor-El’s spacious laboratory was full of crystals that glowed like a light bank. The huge chamber was a wonderland of unusual apparatus, half-dismantled experiments, equipment racks, and exhibits. The man seemed to lose interest in a project once the challenging part was over, Lara thought. She could understand that.

Still, she couldn’t find the distinguished scientist. Had he secretly left the estate? “Jor-El? Is anyone here?”

In the center of the laboratory hovered a motionless pair of silver rings that enclosed a…hole. And pressed up against the intangible surface membrane, she saw Jor-El floating there, gesturing wildly, his features blurred and oddly squashed. Though his lips moved, he made no sound.

Lara hurried forward, her sketchplate and drawings forgotten. She raised her voice. “Are you trapped?” Though he tried to answer her, she couldn’t hear what he was saying.

Frowning, she went around to the back of the silver-ringed frame, and on the other side found Jor-El staring out at her again, as if he’d been sealed inside a two-dimensional plane. Curiosity spurred her on. “Is this an experiment of some sort? You didn’t do this on purpose, did you?” The desperate expression on his handsome face was the only answer she needed. “Don’t worry, I’ll figure some way to get you out of there.”

Drifting in the numb and empty void, Jor-El experienced a moment of bitter irony: For so many years he had dreamed of a place of absolute quiet where he would not be disturbed, a place where he could let his thoughts wander and follow them through to their conclusions. Now, trapped in this dead and surreal silence, he wanted only to get out.

In the initial moments of being trapped here, he had lost his telescoping rod and the imaging crystal. As soon as he had reoriented himself to face the window to his own universe, he had poked at the opening with the rod in his hand, but the barrier recoiled, somehow at a different polarity from this side. The imaging crystal had shattered, the rod had bent and shot out of his grasp, tumbling off into the nothingness. Jor-El just hung there like a disembodied spirit.

Some time later, almost like a consolation prize, his stylus drifted into reach. Jor-El grasped it, not knowing what might eventually become useful.

He had no way to measure how much time had passed. He calmed himself and turned his mind to the challenge rather than succumbing to panic. Normally, when faced with an insurmountable problem, Jor-El would have used his best calculating devices, worked with endless strings of equations, and followed his mathematics to often startling conclusions. Here, though, he had only his mind. Fortunately for Jor-El, his mind was enough. Time to think!

He applied himself to the physical explanation of this hole in space, trying to learn how he had been transported here and why he couldn’t simply step back out. Once created, the portal would be self-sustaining; he doubted he could close it if he wanted to. He pondered the resonances in his crystal control array, the coherent beams of red sunlight and the quicksilver parabolas, until he devised a technique that just might work to get him out of there. But from this side of the barrier, Jor-El was completely helpless. He needed someone to help him from the opposite side.

Then, as he stared out into the laboratory, he spotted a face, a beautiful face like that of an ethereal dryad. Her lips moved, but he could not make out her words through the barrier. When Jor-El shouted back at her, she clearly couldn’t hear him either. They were cut off from each other, separated by a gap between universes.

Jor-El thought he recognized the young woman, having seen her once or twice outside. Yes, she was with the muralists he had invited to embellish the structures on his estate. Maybe she would think to call for help—but who could help him? No one else, except possibly Zor-El, would understand his apparatus or what he had done. But it would take his brother days to arrive from Argo City.

The young woman paced in his field of view, deep in thought. Jor-El found it maddening that he had concocted a possible solution, yet was unable to communicate it to her. If he could just get the young woman to reverse the polarity on the central crystals, he might be dumped back out. But Jor-El didn’t know how to tell her this.

Demonstrating amazing patience, the woman cleared her sketchplate and began to write down the Kryptonian alphabet. He quickly grasped what she was doing. It would be a slow process, but since she could see his face, she would have him spell out words one symbol at a time.

Jor-El clung to a thread of hope and began to compose his message.

Lara stored her drawings in her sketchplate, cleared the screen, and got to work on the problem. At first she scribed questions that he could answer with a simple nod or shake of his head. Was he in trouble?
Yes.
Was he in pain?
No.
Was he in immediate danger? A hesitation, then
no.
Did he want her to help him?
Yes.
Did he know how to get back out? A pause, then
yes.

Soon it became obvious that she wouldn’t gather enough information this way. Finally, tapping one letter at a time with the stylus and waiting for him to choose, she painstakingly picked out his message.

Reverse Polarity.

Master Crystal.

Main Array.

With a look of consternation, Lara wrote,
What is the main array?
and
What is a master crystal?
and
How do I reverse the polarity?
But she could get only one question answered at a time.

It was often said that Jor-El spoke of things incomprehensible to the average Kryptonian. He created a gulf between himself and the majority of citizens, who were perfectly content to accept the status quo. By the time she spelled out his equally incomprehensible second answer, she still didn’t know what to do.

Experimental Hub.

Solar Focusing Grid.

In Lab.

Lara looked around, but the whole chamber was full of exotic equipment, none of which made any sense to her. Which question was he answering? She found a great many crystalline panels, glowing arrays, humming equipment. At last she decided to do what she did best, a form of communication that didn’t depend on mathematics or technical terms.