With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

28th January
08:11 GMT -5

Kal-El and I watch from the other side of the room while Kon and M'gann use one of the Fortress's holographic displays to teach Match about Earth. Inefficient, of course, but the social interaction is really more the point. Last time I spoke to Dubbilex he told me that they were still doing trials on telepathic education, but that would probably end up being the best thing for Match. Kryptonian clone soldiers didn't get complicated concepts programmed into them, and those who transitioned to civilian life later on were stuck learning things the analogue way.

"This is going about as well as could be expected."

He nods. "He's less assertive than Conner was."

"Kon was designed to be obsessed with you. That part of Match's programming never took."

Kal-El frowns faintly. "Was he different with the rest of you?"

"He was.. obsessive. Frustrated, snappy, because he wasn't getting the attention he was desperate for." I shrug. "But he wasn't fixated on us. That… Earnest desperation you saw, we didn't get it."

He nods. "And what's your super-vision telling you about him?"

"You're asking me that?"

"I can't see into people's souls. Sure, I can see more of the electromagnetic spectrum than humans can, but as far as telling what people are thinking goes, that… Only really shows me whether they're emotionally aroused at all based on how their arteries dilate or contract."

"You can't see their brain activity?"

"A little, but that's even less accurate. I'm not a telepath, and a particular area lighting up can mean a whole bunch of different things. To be honest, I'm better at telling what people are feeling based on the stresses in their voice when they talk."

"I'm seeing barely any emotional light, which is what I'd expect. I'm not worried that he's going to go berserk again, but I consider it likely that he'll continue to be like… This for a while."

Kal-El nods again as Kara walks in from the kitchen with… Some sort of transmuted Kryptonian breakfast pastry in her right hand. Turns out that the Fortress has a kitchen, though without access to the chemicals it needed to recreate Kryptonian food Kal-El had been limited to Earth food until Kara expressed an interest. She looks at Kal-El's face, focusing on his visible bruises. "Are you going to tell me how you got those now?"

"A woman named Karsta Wor-Ul-."

"A kryptonian woman. On Earth?"

He nods. "Yes, though I.. don't know how long she's going to stay."

"How did she get here?! Where did she come from?! If she-. If she survived, there could be-" Kal-El's already shaking his head. "-others..?"

"'Karsta Wor-Ul' as in 'Sub-Commander Karsta Wor-Ul', of the Kryptonian Stellar Navy."

"The.. navy..?" Kara frowns. "We haven't had a navy since before isolationism."

I nod. "Yes. You didn't..? Cover her in history class?"

"My history classes always focused more on ancient history. How our society formed, why we should avoid-" She glances at me and then M'gann. "-aliens."

I nod. "They stopped teaching events and started teaching goodthinkfulness. Of all the sins Krypton was accused of, I had thought that intellectual dishonesty was one it would avoid."

"It wasn't like history was censored. Anyone could take a look through the archives. And you can't teach all of thousands of years of history equally and thoroughly in a few hundred hours. Something had to be the focus."

"And they skipped the events which caused modern Kryptonian society to have the form it did?"

"How would I know?"

Oh. Yes, I suppose.. by definition she wouldn't. "When the Science Council came to power, they ordered the fleet to return to Krypton in order to be permanently stood down. Karsta Wor-Ul was the leader of a group who went AWOL rather than spend the rest of their life on Krypton."

"That was… They've been on Earth all this time?" She takes in the sober expression on my face. "No. Just her?"

"I'm not sure exactly how long she's been here. At least eighty years. She owns a small farm but don't go looking for her." I turn to Kal-El. "Kal-El, did you actually… Talk to her?"

"A little." He sighs. "I know you said that looking for her was a bad idea-"

I gesture to his face with both hands.

"-but I couldn't let an opportunity like that pass me by. What did she tell you? Assuming you're willing to tell me now."

"If she isn't heading off Earth as soon as she can repair her ship now, she's probably decided against leaving. And since you know where she's been living there isn't much point holding anything back."

I look over to where Kon and M'gann are showing Match images of Happy Harbour. I'm.. not sure that a normal school is a good idea, not until his social skills are up to the level of a teenager of his apparent age. Then again, I'm not sure how people have failed to realise that Conner Kent and Kon-El are the same person.

"There were originally twenty or so marines with her. One by one they started getting killed… Which isn't all that surprising, given how unpopular the Kryptonian Stellar Navy had made itself in some places. So she decided to hide out here, on the grounds that the locals look like kryptonians and that the sun is yellow. When Kal-El turned up she decided to stay, as anyone looking for kryptonians would go after him first. But now that people have started to spot her…"

Kara frowns. "Where else can she go with a yellow sun where the locals look like kryptonians?"

"Several of the worlds of the Thanagarian Empire would work. Maybe Tamaran, if she didn't mind using body paint." I look at Kal-El. "Did she add anything when she spoke to you?"

"A long list of members of House El whom she held responsible for the destruction of our species. I didn't realise how small a minority my father was in."

Kara nods. "Oh, definitely. Most people thought Uncle Jor was a crank. It.. took a long time before even my dad was willing to listen when Uncle Jor tried to convince him that Krypton was unstable."

Kal-El shakes his head. "I still can't understand why that happened. Scientific data is reproducible. Why weren't other people able to replicate his results?"

Kara shrugs. "Scepticism regarding scientific reports isn't a phenomenon restricted to kryptonians. Humans have had space flight for over fifty years, and some of them still think that their planet is flat."

"Even so, shouldn't there have been other scientists looking at the same data? The ruling body of Krypton was the Science Council."

"The same Science Council whose main manifesto commitment was to isolation. The same Science Council who shuffled Krypton's alien population off into ghettos. Don’t let the name fool you, Kal-El."

Kara looks away, shrugging. "That… I don't know. If you'd asked me at the time, I would have said that I assumed that other people looked at the data and came to different conclusions. And… Now…" She shakes her head. "Maybe they said that the seismic activity could be explained by.. a natural response by radioactive elements in Krypton's core to our use of.. force fields, or… Our historical use of exotic matter, or... Something. And the Science Council would accept that, because it would be an explanation which fit their preconceptions and it fit the evidence that everyone could see. And Uncle Jor couldn't get better evidence because he was getting frozen out of Science Council assets."

"But, surely-."

"We don’t send people on arctic surveys if they express an interest in seeing the great ice wall which stops the ocean running off the edge. Heck, the people who proved that stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria and not stress couldn't get published until after they deliberately infected themselves. And couldn't get research funding because pharmaceutical companies were doing perfectly well with their palliatives."

Kara nods. "Eventually, people would have come around. When other researchers found evidence that the official model didn't support. But that takes time, and…"

He nods. "Krypton didn't have time."

"To be fair, he probably did sound like a crank. It's easy to see the right answer in hindsight."

He sighs, then looks at Kara. "Any plans for the rest of the day?"