Neutrinoman & Lightningirl: A Love Story, Season 1 (Episodes 1 - 3)

by Robert J. McCarter

  She looked at me, her eyes those of a goddess, and smiled. It was a small smile, perhaps an indulgent smile, but a smile nonetheless.

  “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

  She shook her head then, just as we rose above the clouds into the bright sunshine.

  “I’m not exactly some wilting violet. I can take care of myself.”

  Tendrils of electricity were stabbing out of the clouds and arcing to her body. Her hair was a wild cloud of sparks around her. I felt her weight lift from me, and as she let go of my neck, I let go of her waist. She floated on those tendrils a foot in front of me.

  “I can see that,” I said.

  She nodded once, like a judge banging down a gavel. The matter was settled.

  “These clouds are loaded, can you handle more?”

  I wasn’t sure that I could, but I knew I would need it. I glanced up and saw the first set of jets circling above us, and then above them, almost out of sight, I saw the second set. I lined myself up so I was pointed in the right direction and said, “Bring it on.”

  “Nik,” she said, her voice soft, sounding more like Licia than Lightningirl.

  I looked from the planes back to her.

  “Get that damn thing and come back. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said nodding, and looked back up. I couldn’t hold her gaze. Her face, still the face of the goddess, showed worry and fear and doubt—all the things that I was feeling. In some ways it was a relief, and in other ways it was terrifying. Just, exactly, how long a shot was this?

  I heard the crackle of energy, saw the flashes of light out of my peripheral vision, and felt the bolt of lightning stab into me.

  Chapter 14

  Desperately Seeking Meteor

  Fall 2004, Above the Earth

  I gasped, this was even more energy than I had received before, but I relaxed and let it in.

  It took everything I had, but I held steady, sighting my trajectory, and staying put. I wanted to move, I wanted to shout, I wanted to explode, but I didn’t. I let it in, feeling the frenetic electrical energy build on top of my neutronic energy. I felt myself expanding, my world turning a yellow hue as the yellow nimbus around me expanded larger and larger.

  Just when I thought I couldn’t stand it, just when I thought I would explode right there, I let the tinniest trickle of energy in the form of additional thrust out and shot forward.

  I had done my best to regulate the energy, but I blew past the first set of planes, the second, and the third that I hadn’t seen from above the clouds and shot into orbit.

  As I passed them, my trajectory had looked good, but I kept accelerating for a long, long time, I had a very long way to go.

  ~~~

  As the Earth receded behind me, I searched for the meteor; I couldn’t find it. It was big, about a mile across, but it was a speck in the vastness of space.

  I kept an eye on the Earth, and when it became the appropriate size—the size of a pie pan from ten feet away, we had practiced this—I arrested my motion and began reversing it, attempting to match the speed of the rock as it hurled towards the planet.

  I was about 20,000 miles above the Earth, right about where the meteor should be. I could see the whole of the Earth—a gorgeous blue marble floating in the inky black of space. If I had been breathing, it would have taken my breath away. It was hard to believe impact was in less than one hour.

  Where was the damn meteor?

  I sent out the flares: two neutrino bolts, one to my left, and one to my right. This was the agreed upon symbol; it told those watching I didn’t find the meteor and to signal its location.

  I was tempted to begin searching, but I didn’t; I waited. The problem was I could go farther off course without knowing it. What I did do was slowly rotate myself, keeping half an eye on the planet and letting my peripheral vision search for motion.

  After a time… I really couldn’t tell you how long. Out there time was strange; I think it was no more than about ten minutes, but it felt like it could have been days. I was anxious, still bristling with energy.

  After a time, I caught a flash of light planet-ward; it was one of the missiles exploding that they had sent up with me. I sent out a single flare to let them know I had seen it and kept watching. Soon a string of three dots slowly started to resolve. These were my reinforcements. Unlike me, they had radar and telemetry and guidance. They may not be able to destroy the meteor, but they could find it.

  I waited until the missiles were visible enough for me to gauge their direction and then I adjusted my course. I kept the meteor-matching earthward momentum but moved sunward. My course hadn’t been off by much, but at this distance out it put me hundreds of miles away.

  The size of the thing took my metaphorical breath away, once I could see it. It was made of dark rock and would have been hard to see even if I had been right on top of it. I maneuvered so that the sun was behind it, backlighting it with a yellow halo.

  It was vaguely ovoid and gently rotating.

  I stared. A mile across and I had to vaporize the thing. Doubt, sharp and visceral, found me. How the hell could I do this?

  There was a plan. It had been drilled into me, but seeing it there, I froze.

  As I watched, it moved perceptibly closer to the Earth. I was more behind it now, instead of to its side. I moved around to the other side so I could get a better look.

  I can’t say why I did that, except I was still in shock from the size of the brute, and I was really stalling for time.

  The rock was a flat grey with a smooth, gently undulating surface pitted with craters. And I saw something else: a glint of something reflective, as I passed from the shadow-side of the meteor to the sun-side. It looked metallic and large, but that didn’t make any sense.

  I made for it. The plan called for me to make a landing on the surface of the meteor, but that is not why I did it. It was impulse, instinct; the incongruity required investigation.

  The meteor was the shape of a squat potato, with its long end headed towards Earth. The glints that caught my eye were on the back end of the rock.

  As I flew in I could see more and more details. First were the large cones sticking out of the rock, with their flared, open ends, about twenty feet in diameter, pointed spaceward. There were six of these. The outside of them were a dull grey that closely matched the color and texture of the meteor. The inside of them were what glinted in the light; they were a silvery, reflective color.

  Under the cones was a large bulbous sphere that at any distance would have looked like part of the meteor, but up close you could see the texture was different. It too matched the color of the meteor and had irregular lumps and bumps on it. Out of it, facing around the circumference, were several smaller cones and below those, jabbing into the rock, was a series of what looked like legs attaching it to the meteor. It was clearly man-made.

  Man-made!

  I floated there above it (there was no gravity of note from this thing) agape. A man-made structure. But it couldn’t be a man-made structure. We had never gotten out beyond the moon. We couldn’t have done this, and why would we have?

  A non-man-made structure! Which meant it was… Well, if man didn’t make it, then some kind of extra-terrestrial intelligence did. It was alien-made.

  General Markus had not explained what had pushed this meteor out of its safe orbit and headed it towards us. He had said he didn’t know and “wouldn’t participate in idle conjecture.”

  Well, it wasn’t idle conjecture anymore. This meteor had been weaponized and pointed right at us.

  Interlude 3

  Casita de Soledad

  Spring 2025, Casita de Soledad, Central Arizona

  “Meteor? Why do you keep calling it a meteor?” Licia asked. She had been reading over my shoulder again as I wrote.

  “Well,” I began, “it is a meteor.” She shook her head. “What is it then?” I asked. “It’s not a big snowball, so you wouldn’t call it a comet.”

&nb
sp; “It’s an asteroid. It came from the asteroid belt; you said that yourself, so it’s an asteroid.”

  I looked back to my writing and back to her. She was nitpicking. Anyone reading it would know what I meant by “meteor.” I shrugged my shoulders and moved to continue typing.

  “Strictly speaking,” she said, “in space you might call it a meteoroid. It’s not a meteor until it enters the Earth’s atmosphere. But, no one would call a rock that size a meteor. Ever.”

  “Someone’s been spending too much time on the Internet again,” I said, flashing her a smile, hoping to disarm the situation.

  She snorted and then added, “Well, if you’re going to write this thing you might as well get it right.”

  “Asteroid, meteor… who really cares? The way I have written this will work for all but the pickiest.”

  She crossed her arms in front of her chest and said, “Are you calling me picky?”

  “Yes. Why, yes I am. Besides, I am writing this, I can write it anyway I like.”

  “Well then, I guess you really don’t care about telling the truth of our story. If you are willing to cave on a small thing like this, what will you do when you get to the harder parts of the story?”

  “You think calling an asteroid a meteor takes away from the truth of what I have written?”

  “So there! You admit it is an asteroid!”

  Our argument escalated from there. I saw it coming; once every two or three days we would find something to fight about. It could be little things (like asteroid versus meteor) and sometimes large things (like what the hell we were doing with our lives), but it would always be something.

  The argument would take most of the day: from the spark, to the conflagration, to the smoldering silence, to the tearful makeup.

  It was predictable. Like clockwork.

  It was natural.

  When we first moved out here I started calling it our “Fortress of Solitude,” but that didn’t quite fit, and it was too “Superman.” This wasn’t some crystal ice palace in the Arctic; this was an adobe casita in the high desert of Arizona.

  So Licia suggested “Casita de Soledad,” or lonely little house.

  It fit, it was perfect.

  So what happens when two very active, career-oriented individuals are suddenly without work and isolated? They fight.

  We both knew what was happening, but we needed something to fill up the day. We were no longer saving lives or fighting supervillains. We needed something to do, didn’t we?

  Chapter 15

  Boom Goes the Superhero

  Fall 2004, Far, far above the Earth

  You must remember this was in the early days. We didn’t know about the Arcturian Alliance. All the q-morphs had not been discovered yet. And Licia and I barely knew what we were capable of.

  Floating there above the engines and fuel tank that had been installed on that meteor, I felt… I felt… Well, it was a bit complicated.

  First was the thought that we are not alone in this universe. That, in and of itself, was a thought I rather liked. But, these beings, whoever they were, apparently wanted us dead.

  So first awe, and then dread, and then fear and paranoia. I rotated myself around searching the dark void. I was sure I was being watched. Whoever did this was watching, my paranoia said. Whoever did this might retaliate if I tried to do my job.

  I pushed down the paranoia, laughing it off. They obviously wanted to do this at arm’s-length. They couldn’t be close, could they? In hindsight, from where I sit today having been through the war, that paranoia was justified and prudent.

  But there and then, I shook it off and left. I couldn’t take any pictures of it to bring back, and because of the location of the structures, and the orientation of the meteor, they couldn’t see this from Earth either.

  I flew along the length of the meteor until I was to the middle of the long end and got to work.

  I sunk into the rock, slowly. I had gauged the width of the rock in this place along its long axis. It was about 1500 feet. So, I set about sinking myself 750 feet in. I wanted to be as close to the center as I could.

  I went in feet first, counting the seconds. I let the neutrino reaction spill forth from my form. Not too strong, but enough to vaporize the rock.

  As my feet sunk in, the rock, now vaporized, stayed pooled like a viscous pudding. There was no gravity to speak of, there was no atmosphere, and even though we were hurtling towards the Earth at a great velocity, there was nothing to pull the vaporized rock away.

  As I understand it, solar winds would eventually move the dust away from the meteor (excuse me, asteroid), but in the amount of time I looked at it, it appeared to be static.

  I hadn’t expected that. I fought the fear that rose up in me as the vapor got closer and closer to my head. I focused on counting. One thousand one… one thousand two… one thousand three… It took three seconds for the meteor to swallow me. I did some quick math in my head, and focused on keeping my energy output consistent. I was about six feet tall, which took three seconds. Two feet per second. At that rate, it would take about six minutes. I focused. Concentrating on my energy output, the gentle thrust from my hands forcing me down, the slow ticking away of the seconds.

  It seemed like the longest six minutes of my life. When I was there, I stopped thrusting down, and rotated myself. I wanted to be aligned with the meteor. It was just a guess, but I rotated myself to what I thought was ninety degrees so that my head was now pointed at the front of the rock and my feet at the back.

  It was dark and strangely peaceful in here. I paused, letting my thoughts settle. I pushed away what was at stake and concentrated on what I had to do. I brought to bear all the energy that I had absorbed in the reactor. All the energy Lightningirl had poured into me, and started the reaction.

  Nuclear meltdown. Nothing less would do. Blowing this thing into chunks would do no good; all that mass would still hit the Earth. I had to vaporize the whole damn thing.

  I let the reaction build and build and build. Like air being pumped into a balloon. While the energy built and the reaction cascaded, I held it in. I didn’t let it go. Until—

  Until I couldn’t hold it anymore and the containment that was holding it (me) burst, and the energy poured out of me in a massive explosion.

  ~~~

  This was still during the honeymoon period with the government and the military. This was when things were still good between us, when we q-morphs felt valued and unique. We felt like we were special, that we were needed. We didn’t feel like tools being wielded by the government; we felt like participants, partners.

  I didn’t think of myself as a guided missile—which in many respects I was. I didn’t think of myself as a weapon—which I most certainly was. I just happened to be able to do things that other people couldn’t, and I was doing my part to help make the world a better place. No more, and no less, than most decent people want to do with their lives.

  Don’t get me wrong. If there was another meteor hurtling towards the Earth today, I would do my best to go out and try to destroy it, even if it meant the end of me. Of course I would, you would too in my situation.

  And this was an unusual situation. My actions were clear with or without the military’s involvement.

  What I am getting at is that in those days I was still quite naïve. I was innocent and patriotic, and cynicism had not yet taken roost.

  I miss those days.

  Chapter 16

  Neutrinoman Versus the Meteor

  Fall 2004, Rocketing towards the Earth

  I used the analogy of a balloon being filled up and popped to describe how I built up energy and released it in a massive explosion. The metaphor is apt. I felt like a popped balloon after it was over.

  Consciousness fled me there for a bit. I understand what happened now, but back then I had no clue. You see, us quantum-metamorphs can change to such a degree that there really isn’t any of the human “us” left. We become primal, so elemental t
hat consciousness, as we know it, is gone. This is an extremely dangerous state for a q-morph. Extremely. All I knew was that at one moment I felt my containment of the energy failing, and the next I was floating in space, weak and spent.

  I looked around, and instead of one large hunk of rock, I saw thousands upon thousands of pieces of rocks. Some the size of a fist, some the size of a cruise ship, and all sizes in between.

  Eyeing it all, I estimated that I had vaporized a good 60% of the meteor, but still I was disappointed. Those larger ones could wreak havoc. If they landed on a populated area, hundreds of thousands could die.

  So, weak as I was, I went back to work. There were four whoppers, and I headed towards the biggest one.

  I used the same routine: sinking myself to the center, building my energy until it could not be contained and letting it tear forth out of me, vaporizing the stone.

  And each time I lost consciousness again, and each time I became more exhausted.

  I felt like I was playing the old Asteroids video game. I kept breaking larger rocks into smaller rocks. I kept worrying some spaceship would show up and start shooting at me.

  And it was taking time. The Earth had gone from the size of a pie plate at ten feet, to filling up nearly all of my field of vision.

  As I started sinking into the final whopper, I worried that I wouldn’t be able to do this again. I had gone from feeling so full of energy I could hardly contain it, to feeling like a dried up husk of a man.

  But there was nothing for it. So, one more time.

  I sunk in; built up my energy; let it, much diminished as it was, explode forth.

  I knew nothing for quite some time until I felt the atmosphere, cold and biting, tearing at my naked flesh. Until I felt my lungs empty and desperately sucking for oxygen that wasn’t there. Until I knew that my neutrino form had fled me and I was sure I was going to die.

  ~~~

  It was the sun that saved me.

  I don’t know if it was the neutrino emissions, the UV-A or UV-B or some other type of solar radiation, but it was the sun that saved me.