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in pinstriped suits and a grumbling old man in a ratty sweater with a mane of white hair flying in more directions than could be counted.
    "Bars all around me," the old man complained. "I should have stayed to see what Hitler would do with me. At least a concentration camp has people to keep me company."
    "Terribly sorry, sir."
    "I can't smoke my pipe because they're afraid I'll lose my breath. I can't go on a trip because they're afraid someone will hit me over the head with a picket sign. I can't go for a walk some days because it's too cold or too hot or too nice out. God forbid I should catch a cold; people with advanced medical degrees specializing in whichever nostril is stuffed come swarming to my home like a horde of mosquitoes. It's enough to keep me healthy until I'm sick of it."
    "Your nurse was very worried, sir."
    "I shouldn't have made that telephone call. You would think three minutes isn't long enough to trace a call."
    "Our equipment can do it in under two minutes now, sir. Why were you in Smallville, anyway, sir?"
    "That I'll tell you when the Messiah steps out of a flying saucer onto Times Square doing an Irish jig."
    Not long afterward the old man stopped playing the violin. In the next several years he would become fascinated more and more with his work. He would never retire. He would be touched and honored with offers of the presidency of a great university and of a promising new nation, both of which he would decline with regret. He would always continue to receive letters from children. In 1955 the old man would pass away in Princeton, the town that gave him a home for his last twenty-two years. The world would mourn his death. He would certainly be remembered and revered for centuries to come.

Chapter 5 T HE A NCHORMAN
    Y ears of wonder and terror came and went, years of multi-media and future shock. Of Camelot and War of Attrition. Men walked on the Moon, and women marched in the streets. Economic and social institutions fell with the sounds of rolling thunder, and self-proclaimed prophets rode private jets to preach of an end to material values. Cities of silver towers raked at the sky like wire hairbrushes and ancient lakes went stagnant and dead and the world was afflicted with a hero.  
    Among the monoliths in the city of Metropolis stood the Galaxy Building, housing a communications network that reached a greater percentage of the world's population than any spoken or written word since the Voice of God told Adam it was time to wake up on the morning of the sixth day. Here in Metropolis were the theaters and the film companies, the advertising agencies, the publishers, the design and garment manufacturing centers, the think tanks and universities, the ideas, the energy, the vitality that drew young men and women from thousands of miles around to grab at a piece of their own particular dream. One of the young men who came to Metropolis was Clark Kent of Smallville, to study journalism at Metropolis University, to land a staff reporter's job at the Daily Planet and later to become local news anchorman at WGBS, the flagship television station of the Galaxy Broadcasting System. The bespectacled Kent was tall, dark, and inoffensively handsome. His face could be broadcast to millions of viewers each day, and he could walk through midtown crowds without being recognized by a living soul.  
    Morgan Edge, the president of Galaxy Communications and wunderkind of the network television industry, "discovered" Clark Kent when Galaxy bought the Daily Planet . Edge reassigned Kent to television news and it was not until two years later that it occurred to the executive that newspaper experience made Kent capable of doing more than reading aloud the words written by someone else. So besides being anchorman of the local evening news, Kent was associate producer of the show. This made it his responsibility to see that available reporters and crews were assigned to the right stories and to decide what news was