Smallville Torch — Season One

SMALLVILLE: MUTANT CAPITAL OF THE WORLD

by Chloe Sullivan

IT IS! No other city or town on the planet has the bizarre happenings that we have going on around here. Do any of your friends at other schools have shape-shifters in their homerooms? How about fat-sucking vampires? Anyone for heat-sucking jocko-freaks? Hello?…Anyone?…Anyone?…Bueller…? Yeah, that’s what I thought. News flash, folks! The answer is no. There’s something in the water supply turning our leafy little hamlet into a freakfest worthy of worldwide attention. And we deserve to know what it is. 

I haven’t whipped out my exact theory yet, but I’m almost 100 percent sure that the answer must lie in the difference between Smallville, Kansas, and the rest of the entire planet. You see, the rest of the entire planet wasn’t violently assaulted by a barrage of rocks from outer space in the last decade or so! Take outer-space rocks, mix with human beings and you get a ton of freaking mutants. 

We cannot blame LuthorCorp for this anymore. There are fertilizer plants all over the American Plains States, and these kinds of genetic mutations aren’t happening there. Trust me, if they were, we at the Torch would know about it. And even though the traditional news media is slower than a Beanery waitress to pick up on these facts, we here at the Torch are all over it. The thousands of theories we receive from you readers solidify the fact that we Smallvillians definitely live in the Mutant Capital of the World. Have you seen any mutants worth investigating? If so, lemme know–e-mail Chloe.

SMALLVILLE: LAND OF THE STRANGE

by Chloe Sullivan

Here are some responses to my theory in last week’s Torch that Smallville is America’s strangest town.

HALF-LIFE THEORY

I believe we are seeing the effects of the strange meteorites that landed here 12 years ago now because their half life is every four years, and most of the pieces of rock are now reaching the end of their life, which for some strange reason is also when they are most potent.

Chris Luthor

C.S.: This is an interesting theory, and I would love to know if anyone out there has any evidence to back it up.

CHICKEN PATTIES

The reason for weirdness? I’m telling you–it’s the chicken patties. Have you ever seen how people cut in the lunch line to get those things? I swear, once the football team gets to the lunchroom, the patties are all gone. Very disturbing.

My theory is that the weird happenings are linked to the chicken itself, the breading, the cooking fat or a strange symbiotic mixture of the three. It can’t be the bun–the lunch ladies use the same ones on the hamburgers, and no one cares.

Remember what’s-her-face, the chubby chick? Well, people are saying that after she ate three of the chicken patty sandwiches, she started to get really, really thin. [Insert eerie music here.]

Chicken patties. You check out the date that the cafeteria first started serving them, and I think you’ll find that the lunch ladies started serving them around the time of the meteors in 1989–coincidence? Conspiracy, maybe…

Chloe, how about an investigative report that matches the dates of lunchroom patties and strange events?

Diane

C.S.: I might stick a mild-mannered freshman investigative reporter on this one next year.

MAGICAL METEORITES

As the chairman of Astrophysics at Metropolis Institute of Technology, I find these theories involving the mysterious meteorites left by the shower preposterous. In no way can a simple meteorite have mutative and seemingly magical properties. These rumors are unfounded and offensive to someone of my standing. The public has a right to know that these mysterious happenings in Smallville are not caused by meteor fragments. If these rumors do not subside, I will be forced to take further action.

Professor James Olsen, Ph.D.

C.S.: Maybe you should take yourself out of the office and come on down to Smallville to do a little field research, pal. BTW, weren’t you the author of the report that discredited Dr. Steven Hamilton’s theories and helped lead to his expulsion from the Metropolis Scientists Society?

METEORS ARE JUST THE START…

The meteors may just be a small fraction of it. I personally believe that when the meteors hit twelve years ago, they knocked the Earth off course by the tiniest fraction of a degree. That, in conjunction with the planets aligning, the toxic fumes from the fertilizer plant and the turn of the millennium, created a semipermanent dimensional rift in the space-time continuum that is localized in Smallville. Due to the leakage of this portal, the meteors might be acting as a catalyst for all of these strange phenomena. Either that, or I’m totally wacko.

Kyle

C.S.: It’s definitely one of the two.

RESPECT: IT’S NOT EXTINCT

By Pete Ross

The more time I spend around my fellow Crows at Smallville High, the more I notice a big problem that’s been going around. There’s a growing amount of disrespect among students, and it leaves people with negative attitudes by the end of the day.

Growing up and going to high school is hard enough: waking up at six in the morning every day…waiting a half hour for your sister to get finished applying her makeup in the bathroom…sitting through that sleep-inducing Algebra 2 class that makes you yearn to ditch third period for a Beanery run. And then there are Spanish pop quizzes that just sprinkle extra stress on top of everything. As if deciphering the difference between “vosotros” and “nosotros” isn’t difficult enough on the brain, reading three chapters of Great Expectations for English homework only compounds your constant worries about which college you’ll be able to get into. So how would you like it if, after you deal with all of this, someone starts making fun of you because you’re not one of the “cool” kids?

For starters, you’ve gotta remember this: The kids who pick on others are often the ones with the biggest insecurities themselves. The guy who makes fun of someone for being overweight might very well be overweight himself, and he’s trying to take the attention off himself and, somehow, make himself feel “better.” Really confident people don’t care how “nerdy” or “whatever” someone else is. Remember that.

Really what it comes down to is that it all goes in a circle. If you treat someone nicely, chances are they’ll give you the exact same treatment. With people at least trying to be nice to you, that’s one less thing to worry about, so you can focus on that pop quiz or whatever else has you down. The same thing goes for backing up your friends and trusting in what they have to say. If you give them that trust, they’ll trust you right back. If my best friend told me he could fly, I’d believe him. I may laugh at him a little bit, but I’d still believe him. Then perhaps if I said that I was attacked by a fat-sucking vampire or something crazy like that, he too would back me up unconditionally, no matter how ridiculous it may sound.

When you give people a little attention, you might also find that they have a lot in common with you. Some folks are shy. Some seem different on the exterior, but they’re just like you and me. You never know where you might find friends.

So instead of wasting your time and making a fool of yourself by making someone else’s life miserable, try treating someone decently, and then see what happens. You might be pleased with the final result.