15222/Something About Kandor

Something About Kandor
Date of Scene:	24 June 2023
Location:	Sunstone Simulator - Fortress of Solitude
Synopsis:	Conner asks Alura about Kandor and other Kryptonian issues
Cast of Characters:	Conner Kent, Alura In-Ze

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Conner Kent has posed:
Conner rarely comes to the Fortress. One problem is he is a busy college student slash Superhero. But the main problem is it is pretty far from New York. It takes him over an hour flying to get here if he is not pushing it, compared with fifteen minutes to Gotham, where most of his friends hang out.

Also, who needs parental figures, uh? Not this guy!

But he is also curious (and worries) about some Kryptonian things. Which sometimes he feels is silly, since he is not from Krypton, and his brief visits to Krypton have been, to put it mildly, pretty odd.

But... anyway, he probably should drop by every few week. After all he promised to help with the other fortress and all. So, today he is around, peeking about. "Yo, Kal? Jon?" C'mon, they have super-hearing. "Keelex?"

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura has a hologram of a star system floating around her. She is studying the 3rd rock from the sun. It's not Earth - the sun is red and the planet looks desolate. Hearing Conner she calls back, "In here." She has the place to herself right now.

Her finger swishes through the air as she writes out some notes and marks a spot on the planet. It is covered in little spots at this point. When Conner enters she turns and smiles, "Hi Conner"

Her cape is off - slung over a crystalline chair nearby. She doesn't close down the hologram - it can stay for now. "What brings you all the way to the arctic?"

Conner Kent has posed:
"Hello, Alura!" Greets Conner, peering into the hologram and smiling. "Well, I was just thinking I was due for a visit. I also had some questions about the latest crazy business. What happened to Brainiac at the end? Is he going to attack the Earth again?"

That is a solar system with a red star? Those are rare since red stars tend to be super-giants and post-nova. Well, according to human science. Of course taking in account binaries and trinary systems and all the complexities of three body orbits, he is not surprised some red stars would have planets.

And apparently it is also possible some jerk turned a yellow star into red one because a space war.

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura nods. "Jon was here earlier too. Looking for Kal. Kal was being quiet and introspective." She points across the room at a crystalline device hanging in the air. "That is a machine to restore Kandor to its original size. All tests have come back positive."

It's been a lot of working getting this far and it's been a team effort. This last mile has been mostly her though. "The body Brainiac made cloned from Kal was destroyed. But Brainiac appears to be a sophisticated network so it's possible there are other nodes out there."

"He went to the trouble of making a fake copy of his ship to send to Earth just to lure us in to a false sense of security. Then we destroyed his real ship - it might be naive to think that's the only one he has. I would hope at this stage he'll be more wary of coming near Earth."

Conner Kent has posed:
"Hmm, there were other cities besides Kandor, right?" He points to the hologram. "A red star. Do you think having powers would make things harder for the Kandorians? I'd say it is the other way around. They are going to need to tame a whole world. It is going to be a hell of a job even if they have kept high level of technology. They are starting from almost nothing." Pause, then he frowns. "And where is going to be General Zod and his space-fascists? That guy is going to cause trouble."

Alura In-Ze has posed:
"There are other cities recovered yes. If this goes well then I think we could convince people we can settle the other cities too. There's plenty of worlds out there with little to no life on them that they could inhabit." Alura looks back to him as he notes the red star.

"I had the same thought. They might not be able to absorb yellow sun radiation as well as we can but it'd help them a great deal. However, can you imagine taking 100,000 people and upending their entire social structure by giving them powers that will vary in strength from person to person?"

She tucks her hands behind her back. "They'll already be struggling with a new world, with a broken city, with the trauma of finally being free from their prison. It might be a little bit much to add super powers on top of that. Having talked to a few people about it now I tend to agree that something familiar would be better - so I'll be asking the Justice League for help founding New Krypton."

She frowns a touch at the mention of Zod. "He and his band of merry men in the custody of the Justice League. For crimes against Krypton and Earth. I'm not sure what will happen to him but I hope that with time he can see reason once more and be useful instead of... of what he is now."

Conner Kent has posed:
"Honestly, the social structure might have needed some reforms even before the planet destruction," points out Conner. "I mean, that Science Council totally failed to protect the population and the military 'caste' was led by a supremacist maniac that attempted a coup."

He sighs, "it didn't read like an utopia, auntie. And given how advanced Krypton was, I'd expect a post-scarcity society would be much better. And yeah, Zod should be in jail for a long, long time. Probably not in the Phantom Zone, though. That place seems more like Hell than a jail. Imprisonment should be for rehabilitation, not for torture."

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura nods her head, "Fair assessment. Except wrong council. I was just a young child when Kandor was taken by Brainiac. It used to be our capital city. I wonder what kind of response to the impending disasters we might have had if they'd still been in charge."

She shakes her head, "But trying to second guess what happened won't help us much. What's done is done - we can't go down that same path my sister went down. As tempting as it may be." She ruminates on his view that Krypton wasn't a utopia.

"You know that there's really no such thing as a utopia. In a real utopia everybody is aimless. They might all be free for creative pursuits but without any foil to press against what creativity is there really? and no matter how you try to structure things someone will always feel slighted."

"Still, it was far closer to that 'Star Trek' ideal than most worlds. With the great power of our technology came a need to restrain ourselves. As a society we also had no appetite for the stars - which I understand why not but it's also a shame. Krypton could have done so much good."

She leans against the chair and folds her arms under her chest. "Ultimately if you have people with emotions then you're going to have conflict. Unless we all suddenly become Vulcan's I'm not sure we can avoid that." She has been watching Star Trek on recommendation from Kara.

"You're right about the phantom zone. My teacher was the one who invented a stable bridge between reality and the phantom zone. We'd known about it for a long time. It had all kinds of names through-out history. The Ghost Dimension is a more accurate translation of vrrosh mdokhahsh.. I earned my first red mark for speaking out against the use of the phantom zone as a prison."

She raises a critical eyebrow. "Of course I was dating Kara's father at the time and House El was well known for speaking their mind. The problem was I didn't put any science behind my opinions." She shuts her eyes a moment - her memories from the phantom zone fuzzy to her still. "I feel like there's something I need to remember about my time there. And our most recent encounter with Brainiac makes me worried it's really important."

Conner Kent has posed:
Conner smirks when Alura starts mentioning Star Trek. Yes, Tim tried to hook him to that one, but Conner never had patience for TV series. He saw only a few episodes, and he had explained a lot of the lore... way too much.

"Utopia is not a place, right, but it is an idea to aim to, I think. Good education that produces good and responsible citizens. Maybe not Vulcanians, but certainly able to think before acting and free of the basest instincts. Most of the hardest work done by machines. Abundance of basic resources such as food, health, energy and information. Well... you know," he shrugs. There is a point about losing Kandor causing a political and leadership crisis, though. Was that the cause Zor-El's discoveries were ignored? Was the population still in shock, appointing useless officers to rulership positions and the military going around like a headless chicken.

It happens on Earth, yet sanity returns in a few years. Human societies change and adapt quickly. But Krypton's society might have been more stable and slower to recover. Sociology is almost as interesting as journalism.

That Alura has forgotten something important that she knew in the Phantom Zone is vaguely alarming and another excellent reason to stop using it to use it as a dump for criminals and political dissidents.

Anyway! "Going back to Kandor. Have you asked them for their opinion?"

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura opens her eyes again and nods. "Yes. You'd think with a society as old and developed as Krypton we'd have made it - but I'm not sure it's ever that simple. So long as you keep it in your heart though it can take you a long way. People are so varied. What works for one person doesn't for the next."

She wrinkles her nose a touch at the question of talking to Kandor. "Would that I could. The bottle acts as a kind of protective barrier - the forces of the universe outside of it would crush it. Even us talking near by it would be devastating. Short of shrinking ourselves down and making a tiny spaceship to dock with it, I'm not sure there is a way to talk to them."

"I tried bouncing all kinds of frequencies off of them to see what might come back but nothing. We can see them with our super vision but they can't see us. We're just going to have to ask them once they're restored. And trust in our judgement now. If citizens of New Krypton want to move to a system with a yellow sun later then that's their choice."

Conner Kent has posed:
Conner hesitates... then he comments. "You know, Magneto. That man is as bad as Zod. But when Brainiac put him in a bottle alongside several tens of thousands of Genoshans, he managed to send a message from inside the prison. There might be a way."

Or... "going into the bottle to talk with them would be amazing, too. I bet Nadia Pym could get us inside."

Alura In-Ze has posed:
"Psychic communication with them had crossed my mind.. but there are certain risks with that." Alura motions with her hand and the solar system and all her notes whisks away. "Zod kept doing his duty despite the clear PTSD he's been suffering. His ability to make good decisions is severely compromised."

"...and so here we are, trying to do right by the last of Krypton." There's an emotion on her face, perhaps she is wonder if she too lost her mind at some point. "They will either curse my name for generations to come or praise it. I really don't care either way so long as I can stay with my daughter. Whether she wants to leave Earth or not."

"Pym technology was one of the first things tried by Nadia and Hank when Mutant Town was taken. Sadly, they work with very different physics. Attempting to take a Pym shrunken person in to a bottled city might push them deep in to the quantum realm and that.. that can be disasterous."

Conner Kent has posed:
Oh, well. That is one idea shot down. Conner never found out how they managed to un-shrink Hammer Bay. But he thought Nadia was involved. That makes him step back.

"Psychic, though... that might be a good idea," he decides. Maybe magic. Ugh, magic. Kryptonians are kind of allergic to that. "Brainiac probably could communicate with the prisoners, there must be some way. I think it is important to give them choices."

Alura In-Ze has posed:
"Brainiac had an obsession with his cities. His underlying need to fulfil his original purpose conflicted with his desire to be free of it. Very strange but he was compelled to collect - but only ones he deemed matches the criteria of needing preservation."

She frowns, "Which makes me worried that he targeted the two biggest mutant populations on Earth. Worried for our mutant friends. Brainiac might be crazy but he's not stupid. He abducted Kandor a generation before the end."

Alura pushes off the chair, "But either way - if you find a solution before it's time to settle New Krypton let me know. Even if it's after, there are many other bottled cities that will need help Conner and those are truly alien to us. We can't assume anything about what they might want or need."

Conner Kent has posed:
Wait, he needs to figure that out? He is not a science genius! Also, "the other cities are also from destroyed planets or can we contact with their places of origin? We could ask... uh, Green Lantern? Or Reed Richards? Or through the spaceport authorities, maybe?"

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura nods her head, "Yes. Unfortunately we have no idea where any of these cities are from. The galaxy is big. The Lanterns have the other cities recovered from the first ship - the Justice League have the cities recovered from the ship we just defeated recovering Kal. I think everybody is waiting to see if my technology really works."

Conner Kent has posed:
"That is... just not fair," grumbles Conner. "Putting all this responsibility in your hands when they have even more advanced tech. They have been around for billions of years. Well, the Lanterns, not the Earth. I don't think even the Four F come close to what was regular household technology in Krypton." He sighs. "I know Miss Martian, and I guess the Manhunter is an even better telepath, who has plenty of experience dealing with different specie minds. We could approach him?"

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura smiles, "Those are some good leads then. Ask them - see what they say."