Smallville BigBang - Being Born Luthor (Prologue)
Prologue
As the small craft hurtled toward the planetary system that was its destination, its secondary systems came on. It was entering the final part of its space odyssey and there were a series of important directives that the Artificial Intelligence guiding the ship had to perform. The AI monitored its deadly train of Kryptonian remains, recalculated and compensated for the weak pull of gravity with which it swept the fragments along in its wake. Charting its route to the third planet from Sol, the AI threaded the craft’s way through the collection of oddly shaped planetoids and icy rock bodies that formed a belt around the seven innermost planets and extended outwards into the distant reaches of the galaxy.
The peripheral scanners on the tiny pod detected another craft. A secondary subroutine began scanning for shape, size, composition and other features. Within moments the AI determined that the craft was of Kryptonian origin. The craft was damaged and the AI calculated that at its current speed and trajectory it would not arrive on the third planet for another 19 years, 7 months, 12 days, 4 hours, 52 minutes, and 12 seconds. The subroutine crystal containing the memory engrams of Jor-El noted for the record that his brother, Zor-El, had always been an incompetent engineer.
Past the Kuiper Belt, the life pod sped smoothly on to its destination. As the tiny spacecraft passed through the Kirkwood Gap, a naturally occurring area swept free of asteroids by the large gas giant’s planetary motion, the AI activated those subsystems not devoted to its primary directives of caring for Kal-El and maintaining the hold on its trailing cargo. It also increased the intensity of solar radiation currently bathing Kal-El to mimic what he would experience on the third planet. Beginning long range scanning, the AI cruised close to the asteroid debris field adjusting its trajectory with short controlled bursts of energy. By exerting a stronger gravitational field than that of Jupiter’s on the debris field, it attracted more space rocks in its wake.
The number of asteroids the lifepod now towed was almost double the amount it had been hauling previous to its oblique traverse close to the fragmented rubble. Several systems were engaged in managing the gravitational pull on the rocks so that the solar wind flowing from Sol would not disrupt the collection. In order to mask the craft’s arrival the meteors would have to be scattered in a pattern guaranteed to do maximum damage while landing the pod as close as possible to the human carrying the genetic code Jor-El had programmed into the AI. Hurtling towards its destination, the AI adjusted the arc of the pod to focus on one of the land masses north of the equatorial belt.
On Krypton, Lara-El was a renowned scientist in her own right. Before the destruction of Krypton she had been slated for a seat on the Science Council at the next cycle. Upon the birth of her son Kal-El she had taken a leave of absence from her daily duties as was the custom in Kandor. Her departure served a two-fold purpose. She spent the time bonding with her son, preparing his brain engrams for memory implantation, but she was also assisting her husband to complete his project. Lara-El had also seen the data on the wobble of Krypton’s red sun and was convinced that Jor-El’s prediction for their planet was correct; but she could not banish the slight hope that Krypton would not be annihilated. While Jor-El spent his days testifying before the Council, trying to sway them to his thinking, trying to persuade them to re-examine his evidence with fresh eyes, she labored to complete the programming on the AI. She hoped the Artificial Intelligence would never be needed, because to need it would signal the end of their existence and the start of a journey that would take her son across several galaxies and into an unknown future.
Nevertheless, Lara-El was a practical woman, a mother who wanted her son to have a mate and some approximation of life as it would have been on Kandor. She knew that Jor-El intended for his son to continue the El dynasty on the planet called Earth, but she wanted more for Kal-El. It was Lara-El who wrote the programming for their son’s future abode which would emerge in the icy terrain of the planet’s southern pole, and it was also Lara-El who included the Kryptonian mutagens and the algorithm for their dispersal.
The mutagens would alter all humans within a specific radius to Kal-El’s life pod as it traveled within Earth’s atmosphere to its destination. Becoming victims to the Kryptonian mutagen, she hypothesized that the altered humans would be compatible with Kryptonian physiology. Kal-El would have many specimens from which to choose his bonded mate. The mutagens would be short-lived for Lara did not want to alter the planet’s biology permanently. The AI on board would accomplish any future manipulation and stabilization of Kryptonian-Terran pairings.
Chapter 1