The atmosphere in the sterile, high-tech observation deck of the Soviet High Command is heavy with a strange, melancholy nostalgia. Red Son Superman—the Man of Steel who fell in Earth’s orbit and landed in the Ukraine instead of Kansas—looks out over the sprawling, perfectly ordered collective below.
Standing beside him is Kristin Kreuk, a woman who seems to represent a life he never lived, a ghost from a timeline that shouldn’t exist.
RED SON SUPERMAN (His voice a low, resonant rumble) I didn’t abandon you on that bus, Kristin. You have to believe that. It was another life. Another version of a man who didn’t wear this crest.
He pauses, his eyes glowing with a soft, crimson heat as he looks back into the foggy corridors of a shared, subconscious memory.
RED SON SUPERMAN The radio was playing that song… “One of Us” by Joan Osborne. It was the song of the year. I remember the lyrics echoing in the cabin. “What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us?”
JOE (A voice from within the Red Son’s psyche, the “Average Joe” construction worker he might have been) I didn’t feel like a God back then. I was just Joe. A construction worker. A petty thief. I was just trying to get by, lifting what I could, looking for a way out. I didn’t care about the world until 9/11. That day… the sheer, unadulterated evil of it. It disgusted me so deeply I tried to be good just to spite the dark.
RED SON SUPERMAN (Continuing, his hand tightening on the balcony rail) Joe says he was about to walk back onto that bus. He had his foot on the step, ready to turn around and ask you on a date. But the doors hissed shut. They shut right in his face before he could say a word. It is what it is.
He looks down at his hands—hands that can move mountains, yet couldn’t hold a bus door open in a dream.
RED SON SUPERMAN Deep in my subconscious, there’s a memory of a bird. Nelly. She was a little bird I found as a child. She was sick, fragile. I cried for her out of pure pity. If Nelly dies… if that small, innocent thing can’t survive in this world I’ve built… then I will DELETE all hope of a One World Order. If there is no room for a sick bird, there is no room for my Utopia.
He turns to Kristin, his expression hardening into one of duty rather than romance. The “Chosen One” of the State cannot be the “Chosen One” for a girl from a bus.
RED SON SUPERMAN I cannot give you the life Joe wanted. I am a symbol now. All I can do for you is let my mother, Mary, find someone for you. She has a sense for people—she’ll match-make for you. She’ll find a man who doesn’t have the weight of a planet on his red-draped shoulders.