S M A L L V I L L EKansas, United States of America
April 14, 1964“...up now we take you back to 1944 with this piece by the Glen Miller Band.”
The engine case on the tractor was open. A woman in a sun bonnet and a long skirt sat in the driver’s seat, watching as a man rolled up his sleeves and labored with a wrench.
“I told you, I didn’t like the look of that salesman.”
Wiping the sweat from his brow, the man shot the woman a look. Middling in his forties now, Jonathan Kent was a powerful figure of an aging soldier. “Just some bad fuel,” the man offered flatly, before adding, “Try it now.”
Pumping the gas pedal a few times, the woman leaned forward to turn the starter. The engine seemed to give a whirl of protest before the starter turned over.
Closing the engine case, the man pulled a rag from out of his pocket and wiped at the grease staining his hands. As the woman stepped down, he just looked at her and said, “Tractor’s fine.”
“Or I just married a good mechanic,” the woman tossed back playfully.
As she stepped by, the man gently smacked her butt to send her on her way back to the farm house. Then, tucking the rag back into his pocket, climbed up into the tractor and moved the tractor into gear.
The plow was already attached. The fickle contraption took an act of God to get going, then the engine had stalled on him in the middle of clearing the field. At this rate, it felt like it’d be summer before he had the field tilled. Easing the tractor forward, he grimaced at the notion that Martha might have been right as the vehicle lurched awkwardly. A sigh escaped him when it had finally started creeping forward.
Relaxing into the drive, the man just held the wheel steady as he continued on down the row. The goal was to have corn and cabbage planted, but if he was going to get caught up with the almanac schedule, he might have to take on some extra hands…
The tractor stopped.
Jonathan lurched into the steering wheel. It was only after the fact that the realization hit him. It wasn’t a stall, the plow had hit something. “Oh, God damn,” the man swore under his breath. The engine seized, then summarily died.
Martha had heard it. He could see his wife walking back from the house. Holding up a hand, he waved the woman back as he jumped down. “It’s all right. Something in the ground,” the man shouted, before glancing back at the plow as he stepped to the back.
Over on the porch of the house, the radio seemed to skip several frequencies. “Bottom of the seventh inning, Twins and Indians, the score now…”
Kneeling down, the man looked over where the plow seemed lodged in a purplish sand.. Flecks of something like gold stood out. It was, quite simply, the oddest thing he’d ever seen. Reaching down, the man pinched a bit of the odd substance. It looked like sand -- it had a grit to it -- but it felt more like... gelatin?
The radio slid over another band of stations. Andy Williams suddenly came across the air, singing, “A fool never learns and I’m gonna do the very foolish thing...”
There was a moment where Jonathan stopped being curious and a sense of dread sank in. The hair stood up on the back of his neck. It felt like...
It felt like there was someone standing over his shoulder.
From underneath the plow, the purple goo seemed to shift and move on its own. It floated up from the ground. Large droplets at first, then a stream. A series of streams. Jonathan took several steps back, watching with his jaw agape as a purple ball formed in mid-air.
When he finally found his voice, the man shouted, “Martha, get in the house!”
The purple ball just hung in the air. Hovering, like a bee over a flower. Except, there were no wings. It was just a... ball.
A ball of what, Jonathan was certain he had no idea.
A series of lights seemed to flicker around the ball. Then, he could hear his own voice echo back at him as he heard, “Martha, get in the house!”
The man took another step back.
The ball started to change. Subtle at first, expanding outward until something like arms, legs, and a head began to appear. The roughly humanoid shape was like a figure made of a purple clay, until there was a shimmer and...
And then Jonathan Kent found himself looking at a boy.
He couldn’t be more than ten years old. A mop of dark hair and a pair of blue eyes that seemed to glow. He was dressed in a blue shirt and red shorts, with red boots and a crest emblazoned across the front like a giant S.
The child’s feet silently touched down on the ground. He looked directly at the man. And then he said, “There is no cause for alarm.” Holding out his arms, palms open, the boy inclined his head toward the man, then slowly turned and did the same toward the woman. When he had turned back to Jonathan a moment later, he said, “I mean you no harm.”
Jonathan shot a glance over at Martha. She was giving him the same look. Mouth still agape, the man turned back toward the boy with more questions than he knew how to ask.
Hands still raised, the boy gestured faintly to indicate the spot that the plow had hit. “I was dormant here. It was never my intention to disturb you,” the strange youth offered. Then paused a moment, again looked at the man and then the woman. This time, when he spoke again, he said, “I have frightened you. My appearance is meant to be non-threatening. Is there a different form that I could assume which may put you more at ease?”
During the War, Jonathan had seen a lot of things he couldn’t explain. More than a couple he didn’t care to recall. Still, he’d have thought himself crazy for what he was about to say.
“You’re not human.”
Now it was the boy’s turn to be taken aback. Or, at least, he seemed uncertain of how to respond. “That is correct,” the youth stated finally. “I am still calculating my period of dormancy. Has your species made contact with non-human lifeforms?”
“Non-human lifeforms,” Jonathan echoed. He was trying to wrap his brain around that statement. He thought he understood it, but he didn’t like the implication.
“You mean animals?” Martha uttered, speaking up from where she stood off a distance.
The boy gave a tilt of his head. “Curious,” he uttered aloud, as though not certain, himself, just what to think of the two of them.
Jonathan recovered enough to ask, “Who are you?”
The boy looked back at the man. For a brief moment, the boy seemed to flicker and the purple clay figure underneath was visible. “As you have observed, this appearance is an illusion. Though, it is not my intent to deceive you,” the strange figure offered, as the child-like appearance again shimmered into being. “This form is intended to facilitate interaction. I am a what, rather than a who. A tool, or machine, if you will.”
“All right,” the man uttered, holding up a hand as he asked, “What are you?”
“I am a protoplasmic matrix. Or just matrix, if you prefer,” the youth answered, with the same seeming candor as before. Slowly, the child-like figure lowered its arms and then gestured toward the man as it asked, “To whom do I have the honor of addressing?”
The man’s jaw hung open a second time. The honor of addressing? Well, this was just a first time for everything. “Name’s Kent,” the man stated flatly.
“Mister Kent,” the boy intoned politely, then turned toward the woman as he asked, “And you are Mrs. Kent?”
“I’ll ask the questions, if you don’t mind,” Jonathan uttered. Hearing his own voice, he realized it was a tad more forceful than he’d intended.
Turning back toward the man, the child seemed to give a nod of acknowledgement. “I do not,” the boy responded.
Which, honestly, threw the man off for a moment as he hadn’t expected a response. Or, that response, anyway. When he recovered, the man asked, “You referred to yourself as a tool. Were you left here?”
“I am designed for exploration and research,” the boy stated, preferencing the explanation as he added, “I was conducting a geological survey of this area when I lost contact with my home observatory. When that happened, I assumed my input was no longer required and shut down.”
Yeah, this was going exactly where Jonathan had hoped that it wasn’t. “And this observatory,” the man began, pausing there as his mind was still working through the implications. A machine? No way he was Russian. Jonathan couldn’t fathom anyone with technology like this. “It's on another planet.”
Yeah, it sounded crazy. Even to him, and he’d just said it aloud.
“Mars?”
The child’s head tilted in the other direction. After a short pause, as though mulling that question over, the boy responded, “I am unfamiliar with an astronomical unit of that designation. Do you refer to a world within your solar system or outside?”
“Mars is the red planet,” Jonathan answered, in his mind trying to recall his school science lessons. “It's the fourth planet from our sun.”
“Noted,” the boy chirped, as a planetarium seemed to pop into being right over the man’s head.
“Holy Jesus...” the man uttered, taking yet another step back as he craned his head back to what seemed a night’s sky at mid-day.
“This is your solar system as I recorded it when I arrived here,” The child explained, reaching up to motion toward a red object. “So this planet is Mars,” the boy remarked, before pointing to a blue-green orb. “My creators know your world only by its astronomical designation Y-two-one-seven. How is it called by your people?”
Pursing his lips, the man just blurted out, “How long were you lying in that ground?”
A tangent. The boy seemed to pause, as though considering the question. Or, perhaps, how to address the question. “It is difficult to correlate time as it is perceived in different star systems. Without a connection to Kelex, I am unable to determine the present Krypton Standard Time,” the boy offered, all of which sailed straight over the man’s head.
“I’ll take that as you're not sure.”
“Accurate,” the boy affirmed with a slight nod. “I require further analysis of your stellar bodies to arrive at that answer. However, I have not previously recorded human development of electromagnetic frequencies or internal combustion engines,” the strange youth clarified, gesturing first toward the radio and then back to the tractor behind him. “Clearly, a significant period of human societal development has occured in my dormancy.”
“Earth,” Jonathan offered finally. When the boy again tilted his head, the man explained, “We call our planet Earth.”
“Thank you,” the boy offered politely.
Gesturing up at the planetarium, the man threw whatever sanity aside as he asked what seemed, bizarrely, the only sane question. “So you’re not from any of these planets, I take it?”
The planetarium illusion seemed to dissolve. For a brief moment, Jonathan got the sense that something like a fine sand was hanging in the air, before the boy drew his attention back to the youth as he said, “I originate from a planet located in a different star system, which my creators named Krypton.”
The man seemed to weigh that for a moment. “And Kelex is..?” the man asked, recalling the boy’s words from earlier.
The head tilt again. After a brief pause, the child spoke and offered, “Based on a limited perception of humanity’s present level of technology, it is difficult to articulate a response that may be within your comprehension.”
“Huh,” Jonathan uttered gruffly.
The grunt seemed to prompt the boy to consider his earlier statement. “I do not mean to demean or seem dismissive. It is merely a difficulty in composing a translation.”
The man merely gave a nod. Then, he started to walk around the child-like figure. “I take it you’re not intending violence,” the man observed candidly, rationalizing aloud as he explained, “If you were, you wouldn’t be lying in the dirt or having this conversation with me.”
“So why come here?”
The man and the boy each looked over toward the woman as she spoke. Gesturing faintly as she spoke, Martha asked, “If you’re from outer space, why come to Earth at all?”
The boy seemed to consider his response for a moment. Then he finally spoke and posed, “Your people developed telescopes in order to study the stars. Why did they do that?”
“You’re answering a question with a question,” Jonathan remarked from behind the boy.
“Because I believe our answers are one in the same,” the strange youth answered, turning to look at the man for a moment, then back over to Martha as he said, “And hope to provide you a human example that you may better associate with.”
“So you’re a….” Jonathan began, finding himself at a pause. What would someone from Krypton be called? If someone from Mars was a Martian, then: “Kryptonian?”
“No, but I was invented by the Kryptonians.” the matrix supplied in answer. “Three matrices dispatched to three different astronomical objects in order to answer several questions about those planets. I was the matrix assigned to study this planet you call Earth.”
“So what were the questions?” Martha asked. When both Jonathan and the boy had looked her way again, she added, “The ones you were sent her to answer.”
“Is there life on this planet? What kind? Does the life exhibit art, music, language, or demonstrate social constructs that may be unique to it?” the boy rattled off, before he paused and stated, “I am not a living being as you are, but if I understand my creator’s desires then I believe the ultimate question is, are we alone in the universe?”
Are we alone in the universe. Jonathan couldn’t have said he hadn’t heard the question posed before. Perhaps a dozen times. “That is the ultimate question,” the man echoed finally.
The boy turned to regard the man for a moment. “It resonates with you?”
“I think I understand it, yes,” Jonathan answered, oddly finding himself at ease with the strange figure.
The man glanced over to his wife for a moment, as though debating his next words carefully. Then, turned and asked,“You still have no contact with your observatory, I take it?”
“I have initiated a signal to indicate that updated information is available,” the boy responded simply. “However, due to the distances involved, it will be approximately one of your years before any response may be forthcoming.”
“Well, I seem to have plowed your resting spot,” Jonathan noted, laying a hand on the till. Glancing down at the boy, the farmed asked pointedly, “What will you do until then?”
The matrix again gave a tilt of its head as it contemplated the inquiry. Then, when he had looked up again, asked, “You appear to be in the process of tilling the soil. May I be of assistance?”
