Superman gets to business [private submission to the Creative Writing Contest from a little while back]
“I don’t understand,” she repeated. “I mean, you’re Superman.”
“Well yes,” said Clark. “That’s exactly why I need your help! I can’t spend my time researching how to prioritize while I should be off answering someone’s call for help.”
“But why prioritize? Can’t you just take the calls as they come?”
Lois clicked “Send” on the email she’d been typing up and rejoined the conversation. “See, we realized that we’ve been too reactive. We were taking calls as they came in without appreciating the enormous potential we had here. It’s amazing that we get to help people who are being attacked, help people who need our help, but we could also make the world safer more proactively, and end up helping even more people, even better, and when we realized that, when that clicked—”
“We couldn’t just ignore it.”
Tina looked back at Clark. “Ok, so what you’re saying is that you want to save people— or help people — and you think there are better and worse ways you could approach that, but you’re not sure which are which, and you realized that instead of rushing off to fight the most immediate threat, you want to, what, do some research and find the best way you can help?”
“Yes, exactly, except, they’re not just better, we think they might be seriously better. Like, many times better. The difference between helping someone who’s being mugged, which by the way is awful, so helping them is already pretty great, but imagine if there’s a whole city somewhere that needs water or something, and there are people dying, and I could be helping them instead. It’s awful to ignore the mugging, but if I’m going there, I’m ignoring the city, and of those...”
“Basically, you’re right, Tina, yes,” said Lois.
“Ok,” Tina felt like she was missing something. “But Lois, you’re this powerful journalist, and Clark, you’re Superman. You can read at, what, 100 words per second? Doesn’t it make more sense for you to do the research? I’d need to spend hours reading about everything from food supply chains in Asia to, I dunno, environmental effects of diverting rivers or something, and you could have read all the available research on this in a week.”
“It’s true, Clark reads fast, and we were even trying to split the research up like that at some point,” said Lois. “But we also realized that the time that Clark was spending reading, even if it wasn’t very long, he could be spending chasing off the villain of the week or whatever. And I couldn’t get to all the research in time. I tried for a while, but I have a job, I need to eat, I need to unwind and watch Spanish soap operas sometimes. I was going insane. So we’ve been stuck in this trap of always addressing the most urgent thing, and we think we need help. Your help.”
“Plus, we don’t even really know what we need to find out. I don’t know which books I should be reading. It’s not even just about how to best fix the problem that’s coming up, like the best way to help that city without water. It’s also about finding new problems. We could be missing something huge.”
“You mean, you need to find the metaphorical cities without water?” Clark was nodding. Lois was tapping out another email. “And you should probably be widening your search, too. Not just looking at people specifically, or looking for cities without water, but also looking for systems to improve, ways to make people healthier. Animals, too, maybe. Aliens? Are there more of you? I’m getting off track.” Tina pulled out the tiny notebook her brother gave her and began jotting down some questions to investigate.
“So, are you in?” Lois seemed a bit impatient. Tina set the notebook aside, embarrassed for getting distracted.
“I think so. I mean, this is crazy, I need to think about it a bit. But it makes sense. And you need help. You definitely shouldn’t be working as a journalist, Clark. I mean, not that I’m an expert, really, but—”
“You kind of are. The expert.” Tina absently noted that Clark perfectly fit her mental image of a proper Kansas farm boy. He was even wearing plaid.
“If you accept the offer.” Lois said, without looking up from her email.
“That’s a terrifying thought. It feels like there should be more people helping, here. You should have someone sanity-checking things. Someone looking for flaws in my reasoning. You should maybe get a personal assistant, too— that could free up a massive amount of your time, and hopefully do a ton of good.” Tina knew she was hooked, but wanted to slow down, wanted to run this whole situation by a friend, or maybe her brother. “Can I tell someone about this? Like, is all of this secret?”
Clark shook his head. “We don’t want to isolate you from your friends or anything. But there will be things that need to be secret. And we’ve had trouble before— secrets are hard—” Clark glanced apologetically at Lois, who looked up from her frantic typing for long enough to shoot him a look, “But as much as possible, we don’t want to fall into bad patterns from the past.”
“I guess there are some dangers with information leaking. You probably have secret weaknesses, or maybe you know things that are dangerous—” Tina’s mind was swirling with new ideas and new worries. “Wait a second, how did you even find me? How do you know I’m not going to, like, tell everyone everything...”
Clark and Lois looked at each other.
“We didn’t really think that through very much. You seemed smart, and nice, and you’d started that phone-an-anonymous-friend service in college. And you wrote a good analysis when we asked you to. Sorry about the lie about the consulting job, by the way.”
“And you really need help.” Tina nodded. “Ok, we definitely need to fine-tune the hiring process. And I’ll start by writing down a list of some key questions.”
“I’ll order takeout,” said Lois, and pulled out her phone.
[I wrote and submitted this shortly before the deadline, but was somewhat overwhelmed with other stuff and didn’t post it on the Forum. I figured I’d go ahead and post it now. (Thanks to everyone who ran, participated in, or encouraged the contest by reading/commenting!]
Superman gets to business [private submission to the Creative Writing Contest from a little while back]
“I don’t understand,” she repeated. “I mean, you’re Superman.”
“Well yes,” said Clark. “That’s exactly why I need your help! I can’t spend my time researching how to prioritize while I should be off answering someone’s call for help.”
“But why prioritize? Can’t you just take the calls as they come?”
Lois clicked “Send” on the email she’d been typing up and rejoined the conversation. “See, we realized that we’ve been too reactive. We were taking calls as they came in without appreciating the enormous potential we had here. It’s amazing that we get to help people who are being attacked, help people who need our help, but we could also make the world safer more proactively, and end up helping even more people, even better, and when we realized that, when that clicked—”
“We couldn’t just ignore it.”
Tina looked back at Clark. “Ok, so what you’re saying is that you want to save people— or help people — and you think there are better and worse ways you could approach that, but you’re not sure which are which, and you realized that instead of rushing off to fight the most immediate threat, you want to, what, do some research and find the best way you can help?”
“Yes, exactly, except, they’re not just better, we think they might be seriously better. Like, many times better. The difference between helping someone who’s being mugged, which by the way is awful, so helping them is already pretty great, but imagine if there’s a whole city somewhere that needs water or something, and there are people dying, and I could be helping them instead. It’s awful to ignore the mugging, but if I’m going there, I’m ignoring the city, and of those...”
“Basically, you’re right, Tina, yes,” said Lois.
“Ok,” Tina felt like she was missing something. “But Lois, you’re this powerful journalist, and Clark, you’re Superman. You can read at, what, 100 words per second? Doesn’t it make more sense for you to do the research? I’d need to spend hours reading about everything from food supply chains in Asia to, I dunno, environmental effects of diverting rivers or something, and you could have read all the available research on this in a week.”
“It’s true, Clark reads fast, and we were even trying to split the research up like that at some point,” said Lois. “But we also realized that the time that Clark was spending reading, even if it wasn’t very long, he could be spending chasing off the villain of the week or whatever. And I couldn’t get to all the research in time. I tried for a while, but I have a job, I need to eat, I need to unwind and watch Spanish soap operas sometimes. I was going insane. So we’ve been stuck in this trap of always addressing the most urgent thing, and we think we need help. Your help.”
“Plus, we don’t even really know what we need to find out. I don’t know which books I should be reading. It’s not even just about how to best fix the problem that’s coming up, like the best way to help that city without water. It’s also about finding new problems. We could be missing something huge.”
“You mean, you need to find the metaphorical cities without water?” Clark was nodding. Lois was tapping out another email. “And you should probably be widening your search, too. Not just looking at people specifically, or looking for cities without water, but also looking for systems to improve, ways to make people healthier. Animals, too, maybe. Aliens? Are there more of you? I’m getting off track.” Tina pulled out the tiny notebook her brother gave her and began jotting down some questions to investigate.
“So, are you in?” Lois seemed a bit impatient. Tina set the notebook aside, embarrassed for getting distracted.
“I think so. I mean, this is crazy, I need to think about it a bit. But it makes sense. And you need help. You definitely shouldn’t be working as a journalist, Clark. I mean, not that I’m an expert, really, but—”
“You kind of are. The expert.” Tina absently noted that Clark perfectly fit her mental image of a proper Kansas farm boy. He was even wearing plaid.
“If you accept the offer.” Lois said, without looking up from her email.
“That’s a terrifying thought. It feels like there should be more people helping, here. You should have someone sanity-checking things. Someone looking for flaws in my reasoning. You should maybe get a personal assistant, too— that could free up a massive amount of your time, and hopefully do a ton of good.” Tina knew she was hooked, but wanted to slow down, wanted to run this whole situation by a friend, or maybe her brother. “Can I tell someone about this? Like, is all of this secret?”
Clark shook his head. “We don’t want to isolate you from your friends or anything. But there will be things that need to be secret. And we’ve had trouble before— secrets are hard—” Clark glanced apologetically at Lois, who looked up from her frantic typing for long enough to shoot him a look, “But as much as possible, we don’t want to fall into bad patterns from the past.”
“I guess there are some dangers with information leaking. You probably have secret weaknesses, or maybe you know things that are dangerous—” Tina’s mind was swirling with new ideas and new worries. “Wait a second, how did you even find me? How do you know I’m not going to, like, tell everyone everything...”
Clark and Lois looked at each other.
“We didn’t really think that through very much. You seemed smart, and nice, and you’d started that phone-an-anonymous-friend service in college. And you wrote a good analysis when we asked you to. Sorry about the lie about the consulting job, by the way.”
“And you really need help.” Tina nodded. “Ok, we definitely need to fine-tune the hiring process. And I’ll start by writing down a list of some key questions.”
“I’ll order takeout,” said Lois, and pulled out her phone.
[I wrote and submitted this shortly before the deadline, but was somewhat overwhelmed with other stuff and didn’t post it on the Forum. I figured I’d go ahead and post it now. (Thanks to everyone who ran, participated in, or encouraged the contest by reading/commenting!]
Great!
A similar story exists here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30351690
I really liked this. It was simply, but a smooth read and quite enjoyable. I’d be happy to see more of this type of content.