The Greeks would be more appropriately classified as "stupid old." They're extra extra ancient. 2017 is just normal ancient.
[Harper outright stops in place, no longer picking his way through rocks and scrub and grass.]
Kid, I'm from CY 10088. Going by the old Earth calendar that's [He looks upward, mentally doing the calculations] 5168 AD. So you're looking an awful lively for a fossil.
[Why 2017? Why the Superman outfit? Why the claims he's "Superboy?" This is feeling less and less like some hallucination dream and like...something else. Something Harper doesn't understand, something new.]
[He's wearing that symbol when even in Harper's time it means something, and the air smells green and clear and crisp and realer than real, and even in the half-light of the mists and fog, the hills and mountains beyond are looking startingly solid. There's an ache in his heart as he takes it all in. Yes, there's fear of the unknown, but he wants this to be real even if it's strange and difficult to understand. Real means he's got a chance, real means there's something deeper going on. And deeper means... something. He's not sure what.]
You said you're Superboy. You're just... playing pretend, right? Imitating Superman from the old comics. You're not trying to say you're an actual factual real-life superhero.
[A kid in his subconscious running around pretending to be a superhero is one thing, that's grounded in some kind of reality, grounded in things he and his cousins did in childhood, but the more bizarre this gets, the more it feels strangely concrete.]
no subject
[Harper outright stops in place, no longer picking his way through rocks and scrub and grass.]
Kid, I'm from CY 10088. Going by the old Earth calendar that's [He looks upward, mentally doing the calculations] 5168 AD. So you're looking an awful lively for a fossil.
[Why 2017? Why the Superman outfit? Why the claims he's "Superboy?" This is feeling less and less like some hallucination dream and like...something else. Something Harper doesn't understand, something new.]
[He's wearing that symbol when even in Harper's time it means something, and the air smells green and clear and crisp and realer than real, and even in the half-light of the mists and fog, the hills and mountains beyond are looking startingly solid. There's an ache in his heart as he takes it all in. Yes, there's fear of the unknown, but he wants this to be real even if it's strange and difficult to understand. Real means he's got a chance, real means there's something deeper going on. And deeper means... something. He's not sure what.]
You said you're Superboy. You're just... playing pretend, right? Imitating Superman from the old comics. You're not trying to say you're an actual factual real-life superhero.
[A kid in his subconscious running around pretending to be a superhero is one thing, that's grounded in some kind of reality, grounded in things he and his cousins did in childhood, but the more bizarre this gets, the more it feels strangely concrete.]