Note:I do not own anything associated with Smallville, Superman, or DC Comics. I simply created this story using existing characters.

It should also be pointed out that this story takes place sometime during the last season of Smallville. Chloe knows Clark's secret. Lana and Lex are together but they are not married yet. Lois is no longer with Oliver. I'll try to add more chapters as much as I can, but I'm not sure yet how long this story will be.

Elseworlds

Chapter One

Chloe Sullivan stepped out of the taxi and paid the driver. Her pocketbook was getting a little light this close to payday, but she still gave as large a tip as she could afford. If there was one thing that she had learned since she had moved into the city, it was to always tip the cab driver generously. You never know when you're going to need that guy again.

She sighed as she looked up at the building whose shadow she was standing in. LuthorCorp in all of its glory. She had been here several times, especially since she had begun working for the Planet. A lot of the times she had found this place to be very interesting. Clark Kent had told her a hundred stories about the secrets that were being closely guarded behind these doors. But she knew that she would see no such secrets revealed today. Today, she was going to see a scientist by the name of Emil Hamilton unveil a new invention that had been highly publicized by LuthorCorp. The reason she knew that this would not be the huge story that she wanted from this facility was that Caldwell's lab was on the fifth floor. Even she knew that Lionel Luthor would keep all the best stuff way higher than that.

She walked through the glass doors into the sunlit lobby on the ground floor. A blonde woman that appeared to be only a year or two older than her smiled at her from the information desk. As Chloe stepped toward her, she pulled her press pass from her purse and clipped it on her lapel.

"My I help you?" the woman asked when Chloe had finally finished the trek across the marble floor.

"Yes," Chloe replied. "My name is Chloe Sullivan. I'm here for Professor Hamilton's press conference."

The woman tapped a few keys on her computer and stared at the monitor. After a moment she gave Chloe another smile.

"Of course, Ms. Sullivan," she said. She pointed to a row of elevators at the other end of the lobby. "Take those elevators to the fifth floor. Professor Hamilton's laboratory takes up an entire floor, so you will exit right where you need to be."

"Thank you," Chloe said.

There was an elevator open that was about to go up when Chloe reached it. She jogged inside and thanked the older man inside for holding it open for her. The elevators at LuthorCorp were extremely quick, so she was not surprised when she reached the fifth floor only seconds after the doors had pulled closed.

Chloe exited the elevator into a scientist's dream. She found herself standing in a huge warehouse-style laboratory. There was a large machine in the center of the room that looked a lot like a crane at the top, but more like a movie projector at the bottom. The crane part looked as if it housed all sorts of cables and was built so that a person could climb up there and get to all of the wires and computers more easily. It was at least twenty feet in the air and there was a catwalk that spanned the entire length of the room.

At the bottom of the massive contraption was the thing that Chloe had thought looked like a movie projector. Of course it could be argued that it looked more like some futuristic ray gun or laser canon. The end of the machine was pointed at another gadget that had a huge hole in the center of it with all sorts of lights inside of it.

Chloe looked around the room. Several reporters from various newspapers, magazines, and television and radio stations were seated in an area just to the left of the cluster of machines. There was a table set up so that it was facing them. The professor was stooped over a computer terminal well away from everyone else. There was a young lady in a lab coat seated beneath him. Chloe made her way over to them.

"Professor Hamilton," Chloe said. "Hi. I'm Chloe Sullivan from the Daily Planet."

Hamilton stood up and looked at her. He smiled.

"Ms. Sullivan," he said. "Of course. Mr. Luthor told me that you would be attending."

"Lex Luthor?" Chloe asked.

"No," Hamilton replied. "Mr. Lionel Luthor. He asked me to send out the invitation to the Daily Planet and to specifically request that you represent them here today. I don't know what you've done to get into his good graces, but it certainly is paying off."

"I think that Mr. Luthor has heard about my reputation," Chloe said. "I'm sort of a sucker for the strange."

"I've heard," Hamilton said. "One of my assistants graduated from Smallville High a couple of years before you did. He's shown me issues of the Torch with some of your more interesting articles."

Chloe smiled. She hoped that the professor was not making fun of her. She could never quite tell with people of his caliber. Sometimes they were genuinely complimenting her. But more often than not, they were being facetious.

"Do you mind telling me a little about your new project?" Chloe asked.

"Not at all," Hamilton replied. "In about five minutes. That's when I'm going to demonstrate it to everyone here. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a few last minute adjustments to make."

The professor turned back to the computer. Chloe smiled and rolled her eyes to the press area and made her way over. She hoped that none of the other reporters had seen her get dismissed the way that she had.

"Hamilton wouldn't tell you anything either?"

Chloe turned to the voice and saw Jimmy Olsen standing there, smiling at her.

"Hi, Jimmy," Chloe said, taking a seat next to him. "You were supposed to meet me at the Planet."

"I ran out of film," Jimmy said.

"Film?" Chloe said. "Who uses film?"

"I do, occasionally," Jimmy replied. "I mean, I use digital all of the time. But my first camera was this one. A good old 35mm made by the Japanese. Sometimes I go a little nostalgic and use it."

"Whatever, Jimmy," Chloe said with a laugh. She liked Jimmy. She loved Jimmy. Which was good since they had been dating for a while now. Everyone got quiet as Professor Hamilton and two of his assistants left the bank of computer terminals on the other side of the laboratory and made their way to the table. Chloe saw that two more assistants were climbing the ladder that led to the catwalk. She guessed that there would have to be someone present up there during the demonstration.

"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen," the professor said into the microphone. Flash bulbs began to light up and tape recorders came out into the open. "As you know, my name is Emil Hamilton. I am the leading professor of interdimensional studies, among other things, here at LuthorCorp. For the past three years, my team and I have been working with theories based around the idea of the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. I will quickly try to explain what that means in layman's terms.

"Essentially, the Einstein-Rosen Bridge refers to the theory that our universe is only one of an infinite number of other universes which exist simultaneous to on another. In other words, we share our space with billions of other worlds that may or may not be identical to ours. We are separated from those other worlds only by minute phase variances encoded in our DNA.

"The project that we have been working on is a device that I call the Einstein-Rosen dephaser. It searches out the phase variances in the other universes that we co-exist with and allows us to see them."

A young man with a thin mustache in the back row stood up.

"Professor," he said. "Have you been able to actually see these other universes?"

"I have," Hamilton said. "Over the last three months my team and I have observed and catalogued over one hundred different alternate versions of our world. Some of them are so close to our own world that the only difference may be that someone over there is wearing a different color pair of socks than their counterpart over here. Others are vastly different. I will now demonstrate the device and show you a couple of the worlds that are more extravagantly different."

Hamilton and his assistants got up from the table and went to a computer terminal that was directly attached to the machine. One of the others typed in a few commands and Hamilton motioned to the men on the catwalk. After a few moments of waiting, Chloe saw that the machine with the hole in its center began to glow a faint shade of green and a soft pulsing sound began to emit from the projector. There was a blast of green light and a beam shot from the projector. The lights inside the hole seemed to catch the beam and a picture of a pretty country meadow opened up inside of it. The scene was so vivid, Chloe felt as if she could reach inside it.

"This is world number twenty-two, according to our records," Hamilton said. "This is a universe in which Metropolis was never developed. As a matter of fact, I believe that all of human civilization in that universe is at least two hundred years behind our own. My readings suggest that there is no human life within a hundred miles of where we are now." He tapped a few keys and another burst of light came from the projector. Now the scene was just as it would be outside of LuthorCorp in their own world, except that the entire city was covered in a hundred feet of water.

"What are we seeing now, Professor?" another reporter asked. Chloe could see that it was Cat Stevens, an intern for one of the television stations.

"This is world number seventy-four," Hamilton replied. "As you can see, Metropolis was destroyed some time ago by a massive tsunami, along with most of the eastern half of the country."

"Professor Hamilton," a man sitting a few seats down from Chloe and Jimmy called out. "I've been reading your papers on this project for years. Up until about eighteen months ago you were unable to get your machine to do more than give you a few seconds of fuzzy images. What caused you to have such a remarkable breakthrough?"

Hamilton pointed to the projector. "Do you see the green glow being emitted from the device?" There were nods all around. "That glow is coming from a large piece of one of the meteors that crashed in our neighboring town of Smallville several years ago."

"What?" Chloe yelled. She stood up, full of confusion and disbelief.

"Chloe," Jimmy said. "What's your deal?"

Hamilton looked at her. "Is there a problem, Ms. Sullivan?"

"Yes," Chloe said. "The meteor rocks in Smallville are extremely unstable. What about the reports of mutations that stems from those rocks?"

"None of those have been substantiated," Hamilton said. "Ms. Sullivan, I know that you have written many stories about the strange effects of meteor rock radiation. But, as a scientist for more than fifteen years, let me assure you than those are nothing more than science fiction tales."

"Science fiction my ass," Chloe muttered as she sat back down. Jimmy glared at her.

"I think that old Smallville paranoia is coming through," he said.

"Jimmy," Chloe said. "You know those rocks are bad news. You've seen what they can do. I've been trying for years to prove that LuthorCorp has been experimenting with them. And now, their holding a press conference to admit to it."

"You've been trying to prove that they're intentionally creating human meteor freaks," Jimmy said. "That's not what they're doing here."

"Professor Hamilton," one of the assistants on the catwalk called down. "The emitter is overheating. We need to shut it off and readjust."

"Alright," Hamilton said. "Do it." He turned back to the press. "We need a few minutes to do some small adjustments. Please, stay where you are. I want to show you a few more of these alternate universes before we dismiss."

Almost before he had gotten those words from his mouth, there was a loud bang, as if a bomb had gone off. A piece of the projector blew off of the back of it and shot across the room. It slammed into the elevator panel, sending sparks flying from the wall.

"Oh, god!" Jimmy yelled. "We can't get out!"

Chloe looked at the machine. The projector was now firing its beam sporadically, changing the picture with each shot.

"That thing is going crazy!" she said. "We have to stop it!"

"Chloe," Jimmy screamed. "Don't worry about that thing! We've got to get out of here!"

Chloe cursed under her breath. Nothing good ever came with a meteor rock, she thought. Then she amended her own thoughts. Except Clark, of course.

Another piece of the machine blew apart, sending projectiles flying. One of them hit a support underneath the catwalk and part of it came down, crashing into the floor and blocking everyone in the room from getting past it. The two men above them fell when it happened. They were both now moaning in pain, but they were alive. Chloe figured that they had broken something in the fall.

"Professor," Chloe yelled. Hamilton looked up from the projector where he was trying to find a way to shut it off. "Can't you just shut down the power?"

"The emergency shut off is next to the elevators," Hamilton said. "We can't get to it. And the fire escape is blocked, too."

"We need to pull the fire alarm," Chloe said. "That will send us some help!"

"It's over there!" Hamilton said, pointing. Chloe followed where he was gesturing. The handle for the fire alarm was about twenty feet on the other side of the fallen section of catwalk. "There is another one at the top of the catwalk. I had it installed when the rig was complete." The only way to get to it would be to climb the section on the floor to the ladder and climb it to the top.

Jimmy shook his head. "It's too dangerous," he said. "That whole section will come down if anyone puts any weight on it at all."

"Someone has to try," Chloe said. "I'll do it."

Before Jimmy could say anything she had already climbed on top of the fallen section and was slowly making her way to the ladder. She would liked to have thought that she now knew what Clark felt like every time he had to play hero. But she did not have any super powers to fall back on. All he would have had to do would be to shoot some heat vision at the sprinkler system and viola…fire alarms.

"Chloe!" Jimmy yelled. "What the hell is the matter with you?"

"I'm fine, Jimmy," she said. She had made her way to the ladder and was now slowly climbing it to the top. She looked down and saw several of the photographers and TV cameramen inching closer to the projector. They were trying to get a picture of it as it continued to fire off random beams, continuously changing the image in front of it. "Hey!" she yelled. "Get away from that thing!"

There was loud pop and the ladder lurched downward a few inches. Chloe held on tight until it stopped and then continued her ascent.

"Professor Hamilton," Jimmy said. "If she gets hurt, I'm coming for you."

"Do be quiet, Mr. Olsen," Hamilton said.

Chloe reached the catwalk and stood up slowly. The entire rig shook with every step she took. She walked slowly to the end, not even realizing that she was holding her breath until she began to feel lightheaded. When she finally got there, she reached out and grabbed hold of the fire alarm mounted to the wall. Instantly, the sound of bells filled the air and the sprinklers came to life, soaking the press and the scientists below.

"Alright Chloe!" Jimmy yelled. Chloe turned to smile at him when she felt the rig beneath her jolt again. This time the bolts finally gave way and the whole thing came crashing down. She screamed and jumped off of the falling metal just before it hit the floor. She hit the ground hard, feeling a sharp pain in her wrist. She rolled to a stop and slowly got up, clutching her arm. She looked up to see Jimmy and Professor Hamilton running toward her. She also noticed that she was standing directly between the firing end of the projector and the machine that displayed the images.

"Oh, crap!" she yelled as a bright burst of green light filled her vision.

That's it for chapter one. Don't worry. You all know good and well what happened to Chloe. So tune in next time for an alternate version of Smallville.