7.21 Apocalypse by TW and AM (Part VI)

as retold by Bill C

AM: And back to Martha's office as Clark is pacing back and forth. Martha is just hanging up the phone on her desk as we come back, and she looks up at Clark and says...
AoT: "Clark? What if leaving Earth isn't enough to stop Darkseid?"
JG: Oh. She's the one who gets to resist the crazy logic?
AoT: She's the only sane person on the show, John.
JG [considers that for a few seconds]: Dammit, you're right. That sucks.
AM: Don't worry. No one is completely safe from crazy logic on this show. Not even Martha.
AoT: I don't like the sound of that.
KK: I do. I could use a good freakout scene to cheer me up.
TW: Anyway. Clark stops pacing and turns to look at Martha. "I don't know what else to do, Mom. I'm not powerful enough to stop him alone."
KK: Whine at Darkseid. He'll either kill you to put you out of his misery or just leave.
AoT: Martha thinks for a moment. "There may be another option."
TW: "I'm listening."
AoT: "Lex."
TW: Clark wasn't expecting that. "Lex?"
AoT: Martha nods. "Have you considered...coming out to Lex?"
[total silence for a few seconds]
TW: I didn't write that.
AM: Like anyone would believe you if you did.
TW: I know I rewrote that scene right before... [frowns] I gave you the master to go make the copies.
KK: Change that line, Tom, and I will destroy everything you hold dear in this world.
TW: You don't--
JG: I'm with her. The line stays.
AoT: Ditto.
MR: Allison, thank you for maintaining the HoYay.
AM [snickers]: It gets better.
TW [realizes something and shakes head]: Oh, God...
AM [sweetly]: Now read your line, Tom. Go on.
TW [glowers at AM]: "Not that Lex is all that crazy about Clark Kent right this second...but he despises Kal-El now."
AoT [laughs]: "But...maybe if he knew that you are Kal-El, he'd feel differently."
TW [scowls at script]: Clark paces a little more, hands moving frantically. "Maybe. But now? After everything that's happened? I mean...well...yeah, I wanted to tell him before, but--now?"
AoT: "This could be your last chance, Clark. Especially with Lex running Athena...he may be the only one on Earth in a position..." [cracks up]
TW: Oh, for the... "A position to help, yeah."
AoT [calms down]: "Maybe it's the only way to resolve this. The two of you, together."
TW: "Mom, Lex and I aren't exactly the poster children for a trusting relationship. We're probably not even remotely that."
AoT: "Well, no, but...maybe the two of you are more likely to make it through the bad times than the good. It happens." Closeup on Martha as she looks up. "And right now, he's probably your best shot."
TW: Closeup on Clark looking conflicted, and we go to a commercial break.
[JG gets up, walks over to AM, and does the "We're not worthy" bow before her]
AM: Yes, yes, I rock, thank you.
TW: You suck, Allison.
AM: Oh, come on! There was no way in hell I was going to let you remove that dialogue--it was perfect!
KK [snickers]: I'll settle for that. I'm happy now.
ED: But did you guys have to put another nail in Lois's romance coffin? I mean, if she still doesn't know that Clark is Kal-El, why not let her have her Bitsy?
MR: Because nobody on this show gets to be happy for more than five minutes. Lois's time was up.
ED: The hell with that.
AM: And Lois's sort of unrequited love for Kal-El is iconic in itself. So come on, it's in character.
ED: That still sucks.
TW: So...after [scowls at AM] that we come back on a bleached-out, entirely white screen. Some ominous music starts up, as a black circle appears in the center of the screen and grows to fill it, then recedes and disappears. Then it comes back, fills the screen, and recedes again...and again...and now we start hearing a muted pounding noise that gets louder and louder as the circle continues to fill the screen.
JG [sits back down]: What the hell?
TW: As the circle continues doing its thing, with the pounding now clearer and sounding more like something hitting concrete very hard, the screen appears to slowly resolve into focus. The black circle becomes greyish, then eventually resolves itself to be a giant fist. At this point, the ominous music has gone to really ominous.
KK: Someone's getting a beatdown?
TW: The fist finally disappears from the screen, revealing a clear blue sky. The camera's POV rotates 180 degrees to show a large crater in what looks like a typical city street. Clark is lying in the center of the crater, lifeless and bleeding from multiple injuries.
KK [pumps a fist in the air]: Yes!
AM: And then a quick cut to Chloe, her head lying sideways on her glass desk, as the music cuts out and her eyes snap open.
KK: No! Dammit!
AM: Pull back fast as she sits up with a gasp. We see various Chlones around her, apparently frozen in the middle of doing various things--monitoring displays, terminals--
MR: Making out in the corner of the room...
AM: Not a chance.
MR: Aw!
AM: The Chlones all simultaneously start moving, picking up from where they apparently left off. Zoom in on Chloe as she looks around the room, then cut to the big wall display showing the world map. Fairbanks is still bracketed, but now there are now red marks in other places--one in north Africa and one near Moscow.
ED: Wait. There were other attacks on Earth and we're not showing them?
TW: We're going to address them in a minute.
AM: Chloe looks from the wall display to other smaller monitors, her face registering shock. "Oh, God! How long was I asleep?" She pulls a keyboard from the corner of the desk and begins typing furiously; cut to a reverse shot of her and the wall displays as they begin showing news footage of each attack area. The sound of multiple news commentators fills the room, and we briefly cut to closeups of each display as it shows a new location.
TW: The first one of course is more satellite footage of Fairbanks, and we hear a man talking about how it appears that most military forces survived but they can't confirm anything due to the electromagnetic pulse from the explosion having knocked out local communications. The second is some aerial footage of Casablanca, part of which looks totally hosed but not nuked--
JG [surprised]: You had them attack Casablanca?
AoT: That's...disturbing somehow.
TW: The third scene is aerial footage of Saint Petersburg.
ED: Darkseid attacked the retirement capital of the U.S.A.?
TW: No, this is the other one. In Russia. We hear female voices talking about it and about Casablanca, and the overall gist is that small splinter groups from the main force that attacked Fairbanks managed to make it to those areas and cause massive damage before being destroyed by local military units.
KK: What, no attacks on Paris or London or, oh, someplace people would recognize?
AM: We could nuke Tokyo, I guess. Anyway. Chloe has stopped typing and is looking from display to display. "Where are you, Clark?"
MR: Running like a bitch!

AM: Chloe finally looks up at the nearest Chlone. "Are the simulations complete?"
TW: The Chlone replies, "No. They are still running."
AM: Chloe looks at a wall clock. "They should be done by now...something's wrong." Chloe starts typing again, increasingly frantically, and cut to the main wall display as it changes back to the world map and then the label "SIMULATION" begins flashing at the bottom of it.
MR: And this is where we get all WarGames, right?
TW: More or less. More red brackets appear on the world map, covering most of the major cities, along with a scrolling block of text. Most of the text is going by too fast to read, but it occasionally stops on lines such as "NUCLEAR EXCHANGE - MOSCOW" and "OVERRUN - WASHINGTON D.C."
JG: Can we sneak in something about Gotham City? That place needs to be destroyed.
AM [thinks]: We probably could...hell, we've already killed Bruce Wayne's parents. This would almost be a mercy killing.
KK: Tom, I...I still don't believe you went--
TW: Don't start that again.
AM: And back to Chloe as she sees this and freaks out a little bit. "No. No, no, no..." She types some more, and the flashing SIMULATION text gains a slowly increasing number after it...but the net result is the same.
MR: Game over!
AM: Yup.

Continued...