The Superman At The End of This Story

[Big Daddy]

Chapter One

Mac was very bright for a square-headed, precocious, eight-year-old boy that lived in the great city of Metropolis. He had been lately involved in the world of astronomy, taking occasional visits to an old observatory outside of the city and seeing a fellow by the name of Nigel, who used to be the conductor for a popular orchestra. On one night, when there were lots of stars surrounding the big moon in the sky, Mac visited Nigel as he was looking through his telescope at a particular spot in the sky.

?Hey, Nigel.? Mac said, as he entered the observatory. ?How?s it going??

?Mac,? Nigel said, ?I?ve got a question for ya.?

?Uh, okay. Shoot.?

?It?s almost been three years since Superman left our world and had gone out somewhere in the vast blackness that we call ?outer space?. Where do you think the Man of Steel went off to, Mac?? Mac thought carefully; he had been a huge fan of the Daily Planet newspaper and read (and collected) every issue printed. He remembered one issue that estimated that Superman had gone to save other planets from more destructive forces of evil.

?Superman?s just a busy guy, Nigel.? Mac replied. ?His job not just requires protecting us but other worlds as well.?

?So you believe Superman might?ve fled to another planet? Mars, perhaps?? Nigel queried.

?Well, I wouldn?t say it was Mars that he might?ve gone to.? Mac told Nigel.

?So you believe that Superman could?ve possibly discovered a planet not like our own, realized there were people there that needed saving, and decided to be the protector of that world, since there?s no destructive force threatening ours.? Nigel remarked, and Mac became a little suspicious.

?Where are you getting at with this, Nigel?? Mac asked, and Nigel looked away from the telescope, jumped out of his chair, and approached Mac.

?I believe that I had discovered a new planet.? He said, and Mac had gone from being suspicious to interested.

?A new planet?!? Mac exclaimed. ?In our solar system?!?!?

?Hard to believe, isn?t it?? Nigel said, as he gulped down a cup of coffee.

?You do realize that if you tell the world about this, then you?ll be branded as ?The World?s Greatest Astronomer?, right?? Mac said. ?Guinness would be on your doorstep in a heartbeat, man!!?

?I won?t be the one to tell them, Mac,? Nigel said, ?You will tell them.?

?Me?!? Mac yelled. ?But?But all I did was walk in and say ?How?s it going??.?

?Mac, you?ve been coming to this observatory long before I even decided to become an astronomer.? Nigel said. ?It wouldn?t be fair if I were to hog all of the glory over something that I?d discovered only three months after I started working here.?

?And it wouldn?t be fair if I went around telling everyone about something that I didn?t even know about ?til this very moment.? Mac contradicted. ?You?ve spent three months sitting in that chair and looking up in the sky for cosmic phenomenon to tell the whole world about, while all I have been doing is avoiding wedgies from my brother, Terrance.?

?Well, if you tell the world about your latest discovery, even Terrance will learn to respect you.? Nigel assumed.

?Or criticize me in a fit of jealousy.? Mac uttered, just before he walked over to the large telescope and looked through it for a brief moment, seeing an image of the ?new world? that Nigel had discovered. The planet?s appearance was strangely similar to Earth?s; the only difference was in the color?Earth contained a mixture of green and blue, while the new planet was mixed with olive and brass. ?Where did it come from??

?My guess is that it?s been there since the dawn of time.? Nigel said, and Mac seemed very puzzled.

?If it?s been there for that long, then how come no one has noticed it until now?? Mac inquired, and Nigel shrugged his shoulders in reply. ?Well, let?s say if Superman did leave our planet for that one and we told everyone about it, the reaction would be anything but amazed, Nigel.? Nigel didn?t consider that possibility; but the grin on his face didn?t disappear.

?At least everyone will know where he has gone.? Nigel remarked, and Mac just shook his head.

?I don?t know, Nigel.? He said. ?I don?t think the world?s ready for something this big.?

?Then don?t tell anyone.? Nigel said. ?But sooner or later, people are going to start wondering again, and they?re going to ask that infamous question: ?Where has he gone??.? Mac sighed, feeling a little disappointed with himself for not helping Nigel. He wished there was a way to make the both of them satisfied, but there seemed to have been no possibly way to do that; unless?

?Nigel, you remember my friend Frankie Foster, right?? Mac asked, and Nigel reminded himself of who she was.

?The co-owner of that home for imaginary friends at the corner of Sesame Street?? Nigel replied, as Mac moved away from the telescope.

?Well, as of late, she?s been applying for a job at the Daily Planet, where Bob Johnson?a resident of Sesame Street?has been working for almost forty years now.? Mac mentioned. ?If I were to tell Frankie about our discovery, then I?d be giving the Planet an excellent reason for hiring her.?

?Then wouldn?t she be getting all of the credit?? Nigel asked.

?Hey, if she does, then she deserves it, considering all of the work that she?ll be putting at both Foster?s and the Planet.? Mac said, and Nigel nodded, with a smile.

?You are a very bright young man, Mac.? Nigel said. ?It?s just too bad that I won?t be around any longer to see how far your intelligence will take you.?

?What do you mean?? Mac said, a little concerned.

?The city?s going to be tearing down this observatory in a week,? Nigel said, ?And they?re expecting me to leave within that timeframe.? Mac couldn?t believe what he was hearing.

?They can?t do that!? He exclaimed, angrily. ?Do they even realize what this place means to everyone?!?

?This place means a lot to you, Mac.? Nigel said. ?The city would care less about how long it has stood and what it means to science.?

?I?m going to start a petition!? Mac declared. ?Metropolis is not going to get away with such an unruly act!? Nigel just smiled at the furious eight-year-old, as he came up to him and put his hands on his shoulders, calming Mac down.

?Don?t try and become a superman yourself, Mac.? Nigel advised. ?You read the Daily Planet, and you know how the world feels about such a character.?

?Yeah, I know.? Mac said, sadly. ??Metropolis and the rest of the world no longer needs a savior, now that our hero has left??Lois Lane, in a issue of the Planet that was printed in 2004.?

?You were only six when you read that issue.? Nigel indicated.

?And I cried when my favorite reporter on the team, Clark Kent, had gone back to his hometown of Smallville and left the staff for an unknown period of time.? Mac said. ?There are people in the world that are upset that Superman has vanished, wondering where he went off to; but I?m probably the only person that?s concerned where Mr. Kent has gone. I mean, who just leaves the biggest metropolitan newspaper in the world, without telling anyone where he?s going or how long he?ll be there??

?Clark Kent?s just a busy guy, Mac.? Nigel said. ?He?s probably got more going on outside the paper than he does inside.?

?Superman is a busy guy, and it?s obvious enough that Clark Kent?s no Superman,? Mac contradicted, ?So there?s no reason for a great reporter like him, who?s still in his prime, to just retire from journalism like that.?

?Have you asked Bob Johnson where he could?ve gone?? Nigel queried.

?He was too concerned about Superman?s disappearance to worry about Mr. Kent?s.? Mac replied. ?I begged Frankie several times if she could investigate his disappearance, as soon as she got hired; but even she felt that her future job was more important than some mild-mannered reporter.?

?She?ll agree to the investigation, now that you have plausible information on Superman?s whereabouts.? Nigel said.

?Now that I know what this city?s gonna be doing to this observatory, I?m going to keep the information about the new planet to myself.? Mac stated, with a great deal of hatred in him. ?The people of the city are already up to their necks with confidence, since they?ve learned to accept a world without Superman. Telling them that we have a secret world in our solar system will only make them more power-crazed than Lex Luthor himself.? And with that being said, Mac followed it with a small grin on his face. ?Besides, who?ll believe an eight-year-old anyway??

?You got me there, Mac.? Nigel said, as he picked up a brown suitcase and started making his way towards the exit. ?Well, the next time you?ll hear from me, I?ll be orchestrating one of the finest symphonies since John Williams?s London Symphony Orchestra.? Mac noticed how Nigel was leaving before him and couldn?t help but to feel a little uncertain.

?Aren?t you going to wait ?til I?m done scouting the stars?? He asked Nigel.

?No one cares to break into an old, beat-up observatory, Mac.? Nigel said. ?Just leave the door open when you?re finished.? As Nigel left the building, Mac just shook his head in despair; he really wished there was something he could do to change the way Metropolis felt about the observatory. But little Mac knew that doing that would?ve been more impossible than talking Superman into coming back to Earth.

When it was close to ten o?clock, Mac started to leave the observatory for the last time ever, but stopped once he had discovered that one of the drawers in a nearby desk had been left open. Curious, he looked in the drawer and found some folders that contained documents that were as old as the observatory itself was. Looking through each of them, Mac had discovered notes that had been taken many years ago, involving the mysterious planet that he and Nigel came across that night. It suddenly hit Mac that there was a possibility that they weren?t the first people to find out about it.

Mac wondered if Nigel discovered those documents or not, as he quickly flipped through them. He noticed how detailed the documents were, going into things like whether the planet orbits around the sun, moon, Earth, or any other planets in the system and how long had it been there. But then Mac scanned through the very last folder and read some documents that just had puzzling questions, instead of heavy details. There was only one statement that Mac found in the whole document, explaining some bizarre occurrence that the planet had gone through. The statement read, ?It was like some kind of strange eclipse, as the planet was covered by a huge shadow.? That statement was followed by the last question that had been written into the document, and it read, ?Why has the planet suddenly reappeared after twenty years??

Mac looked at the date that the last question was written on and realized that it was written only a year before Nigel took over the observatory, which meant that there was no possible way he could?ve taken those notes. What really made the notes so mysterious to Mac was that some of them were written at a time when he was visiting the observatory, yet he never met the person that worked there. The eight-year-old could only determine that the observatory worker that he never met was the one that wrote the notes. And before he placed all of the folders into his backpack, he wrote a question underneath the last one in the final document that had read, ?Who documented all of this??

END OF CHAPTER ONE