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

by Robert J. McCarter

  I had no eyes for the battle on the ground. I wasn’t there long enough to notice anything. I flew straight up, allowing as much power as possible to escape from my four limbs. I would not be the bomb. I would not trigger the volcano.

  The earth fell away below me at an astonishing pace, much faster than when I had gone after the meteor. In a matter of minutes, the curve of the Earth was clearly visible and I was above the atmosphere. I didn’t just break the sound barrier, or surpass some speed record. According to what I was told later, I flew at over 8,000 miles per hour (or Mach 11, besting the speed of NASA’s X-43A, the world’s fastest plane—And yes, I am geeking out here).

  Right then, I wasn’t thinking about speed, or about anything really except not exploding, but this incident was a major shift in the scale of what I was capable of as Neutrinoman.

  When the realization came, it was sobering, and even more disturbing was the fact that the aliens, our enemies, had figured this out.

  But, right then and there, I was… I don’t think I can describe the feeling. I was bursting with power, the sensation heady and dangerous. I was in pain—it was like I could feel every cell in my neutrino form tingling and bursting with energy. Everything had a yellow hue, my neutrino form was radiating out from me and coloring everything I looked at. I was running on instinct. I was so close to my elemental form that my thought processes were very simple… “Me not explode. Me protect people. Me save Lightningirl.” It was as if that amount of power had devolved me or turned me into something primal.

  And I didn’t want to explode. I had a feeling that if I did it with that much power, there would be no coming back. Before when I battled the meteor, I had used the analogy of a popping balloon for how I built up energy and let it explode forth. Well, to further that analogy, the balloon is me, and the way I exploded the meteor damaged the balloon, but didn’t destroy it. The way I was now, it felt like if I exploded, there would be no balloon left.

  And to be clear, all these thoughts came afterwards. Then, three hundred miles above the Earth, I didn’t think. I acted instinctively.

  With a silent roar (no atmosphere up there), I consciously opened up a pin-prick of a hole in my containment. This wasn’t like how I flew with neutrino jets. This was something entirely different, a tiny hole in the containment that went to the core of the nuclear reaction running out of control inside of me.

  From that hole, a beam of yellow light, about an inch in diameter, shot forth from my chest out into space. It took everything I had not to let the hole grow, not to let the balloon burst, but I was suffuse with power and used much of it to contain the emission of energy.

  The battle then was keeping the hole small, keeping my containment from totally failing. Once the energy started escaping, it felt like it wanted to keep growing, like water eroding away a dirt dam.

  I battled and the beam widened. Two inches… three inches… six inches…

  Just when I didn’t think I could hold containment any longer, the beam started to sputter and I was able to slowly close the hole until the beam was extinguished.

  It hadn’t taken long, and I had managed to control things well enough that I was reasonably powered. I turned back to the Earth and thrusted. This battle wasn’t over yet.

  Chapter 12

  A Simple Choice

  Fall 2004, High above the Earth

  I am no wiz at geography, but I knew enough to know that Yellowstone is in the northwest corner of Wyoming, and that Wyoming sits a couple states north and a bit east of Arizona.

  The problem is that there were no dotted lines drawn on the ground, no convenient delineation, no arrow pointing north. And then there were the clouds floating over Idaho and Montana making it hard to get my bearings.

  I panicked briefly as I fell Earthward. I was flying fast, but not nearly as fast as I had on the way up, so I had time to think.

  The convenient hole with the convenient uranium (I presume, or other highly radioactive material) left at the bottom for me to fall on and absorb. It was too perfect of a setup. They had known I was coming. And how could they have known? Toxicwasteman.

  And that put Lightningirl in danger. She was stuck in the middle of nowhere, far from high-tension power lines. I flew faster.

  The sun was rising over to the east and I eventually got oriented. I spotted the sharp snow covered peaks of the Grand Tetons and to the northeast of that Yellowstone Lake. As I got closer, I noticed flashes of what looked like lightning and flew towards them.

  On my way down I also noticed some high-flying fighter jets and an explosion to the west of Yellowstone. I surmised that the military was trying to get to the excavation site but was being held back by the alien forces.

  By the time I could make out the details of the excavation site, the lightning had stopped. The site had changed. The small hole was now a huge crater, with earth and debris strewn for hundreds of yards around it. There were small fires burning in the little evergreen shrubs that dotted the plateau.

  I spotted Toxicwasteman south of the crater and in front of him the prone form of Licia. She was naked, lying face down, no longer in her q-morph form. I also noticed that many of the trees and plants around her had this odd wizened look, as if the life had been sucked out of them.

  Toxicwasteman was purposefully striding towards her. I thrusted hard, not concerned about the quality of my landing, and plowed right into him. Earth exploded around us and we carved a long trench in the ground with our momentum.

  His touch, once again, was painful. I felt the green of his toxic form invading my neutrino form.

  I stood up and backed off. We were about sixty yards from Licia now. Toxicwasteman was lying face down in the dirt and I couldn’t see his face, but I could hear his laughter. When he stood up, his face made me take another step back.

  His eyes were wide, too wide, and his upper lip curled back to reveal green teeth. He looked insane.

  “What have you done?” I asked. I wanted to go to Licia, to check on her, to be with her, but that would not have done any good.

  “What?” he cried, his fists striking his chest. “What have I done?” His laughter rang out a shrill sound. “I have ensured my survival. That’s what. I did what I had to do.” He blinked rapidly, his head swiveling to the left and the right. That is when I noticed them.

  More of the tall, blond-haired, human-looking aliens. Each with one of the silver energy guns and big backpacks. There were about a dozen of them.

  “I thought they didn’t offer you enough,” I said, remembering back to his story. “I thought that this was your planet.”

  He rolled his eyes and shrugged. “It was a negotiation, my dear Boy Scout. They eventually made room for my friends. This planet is lost.” With that, he reached down and grabbed some clods of dirt and threw them in the air.

  “You could join us,” one of the aliens said as he lowered his weapon. They had been moving in a semicircle around me but stopped when he spoke. I looked at him and realized he wasn’t alone. Another alien, a short grey humanoid with a large head and huge eyes, stepped out from behind him. The alien that spoke had a distant look on his face, and I got the impression that the little grey guy was speaking through him.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You could join us. You could bring your female,” the blond one said as the grey one pointed towards Licia.

  “What do you want with us? Why are you trying to destroy us?”

  “Choose now,” he said.

  “Choose?” I asked. I needed time to think.

  “Join us and you and the female live. Don’t join us and you and the female die.”

  The dozen guns pointed at me began to hum.

  “Come on, Boy Scout,” Toxicwasteman said as he stepped forward next to the grey. “What choice do you really have? Life or death, it’s kind of an easy decision.”

  I turned and looked back at Licia, but she still hadn’t moved. I slowly turned back to Toxicwasteman and the aliens. I took a
deep breath and said, “You know what, you are right. This is one of the easiest decisions I have ever made.”

  I leapt into the air and started shooting neutrino bolts down upon my enemies.

  Chapter 13

  What Needs To Be Said

  Fall 2004, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

  I wish I had something pithy to say. Something about how raining nuclear hell down on my enemies was a righteous joy. How my skill and power easily led me to victory. How I stood triumphant and exalted on the field of battle.

  But that’s not how it was. It was war. It was hell. I failed. I fell.

  This wasn’t a comic book, or a movie. I was still rather new to my powers and while I was powerful, I wasn’t necessarily that skilled. What ensued was certainly valiant, but not effective.

  I surged up into the air, the blond aliens firing their purple energy balls at me. With my sudden rise into the air, I managed to avoid the first round of energy balls. When I was about fifty feet in the air, I began firing neutrino bolts out of my hands.

  This is where I wasn’t practiced: flying and firing at the same time. My aim wasn’t great and my flight path erratic (the latter was helpful, though). The aliens scattered and some of my bolts hit home, accompanied by the screams of the aliens as the radioactive bolts of energy ate into their flesh.

  They all scattered, some finding cover, some firing while running, some going prone. The grey bolted. All of them moved except for Toxicwasteman. He stood there, his arms crossed, watching the battle.

  The aliens’ weapons took several seconds to recharge, and I took that time to fire as many bolts as I could (making up in quantity what I lacked in accuracy). After everyone had scattered, the energy balls started flying at me at regular intervals. I flew and dodged and fired back, but eventually a bolt caught me in the legs.

  They went numb, the neutrino jets went out, and I came crashing to the ground. On my way down, I fired as many bolts as I could and heard several more gut-wrenching screams.

  Once I was on the ground, it was all over. I was hit time and again by the purple energy bolts. First they made me numb, then I felt them start to bleed my power away. Before long I was left there lying on the ground naked and vulnerable.

  Toxicwasteman approached, his walk slow and confident. “Wrong choice, Boy Scout,” he said.

  A comeback was in order, but I didn’t have one. I stood up, finding that since my q-morph form had fled I could move again. I grabbed several rocks as I stood and backed up, putting myself between Licia and Toxicwasteman and the grey and the blond aliens that were approaching.

  It was cold and I began shivering as I stood there above the prone and unconscious form of Licia. There was blood on her head and her right arm lay at an odd angle. Seeing her like that made me furious. I gripped my rocks, the only weapons I had left, and faced my enemies.

  “Should we terminate them now?” the slack-eyed blond asked Toxicwasteman. It was clear, again, that the grey-skinned alien was using the blond alien as a mouthpiece.

  “It wouldn’t take much,” Toxicwasteman said, a ball of green goo forming in his right hand. He paused then, all of them staring at me. I was shivering and naked, holding a rock in each hand. “On the other hand,” he said, looking at the grey, “the volcano will take care of them soon enough.” He looked back at me, his green eyes meeting mine. “They look so delightfully pitiful. Let’s let them suffer some more.” The ball of green goo disappeared and Toxicwasteman relaxed.

  “Very well,” the blond one said. They all turned their backs on me and walked away. I didn’t watch them. I dropped the rocks and fell to my knees, my hand going to Licia’s throat, checking for a pulse.

  “Licia,” I said, “Licia. Please, wake up. We don’t have much time, please wake up.” I examined her body looking for wounds, making sure she wasn’t bleeding. Her skin was cold to the touch, which wasn’t surprising. My teeth were chattering.

  What did surprise and scare me is that our bodies did not do their usual exchange of energy. For once touching her was completely normal. My heart skipped a beat.

  She had a head wound, various bruises and lacerations, and a broken arm. There was no bleeding.

  I moved quickly, but as gently as I could. It was beyond strange seeing her like that: naked and wounded and vulnerable. I felt scared and angry and confused. I couldn’t stand it, my heart was breaking.

  This was a powerful, confident woman, that I was fiercely attracted to, and the first time I saw her nude was when she was badly injured and we were both about to die. Not exactly what I was hoping for.

  I pulled her limp body to mine and held her. I had to hold her. If we survived long enough, hypothermia would be an issue, but that wasn’t what motivated me. If the end was coming, I needed to hold her. “Licia,” I whispered, feeling tears flow down my cheeks. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stop them. I’m sorry.”

  I sat there on the hard cold dirt, holding her and rocking, when I felt the ground underneath me jump and rumble. I stopped and held her closer, not daring to breathe, or move, or make a sound.

  This was it. They had found another way to activate the volcano. This was the end.

  The rumbling grew more intense, and I pulled Licia’s head to mine and whispered in her ear, “I love you.”

  It was way too early in our relationship to say such a thing. But I knew it, I felt it. In my heart I knew that this was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I knew that this was my soul mate—or whatever you want to call it. She had eradicated the last vestiges of Ashley out of my soul. She was the one. The only one. I also knew that this was the end, and I wasn’t going to meet it without saying what needed to be said.

  As I held her close, tears streaming down my cheeks, an ironic thought came to me, a small consolation in the face of our pending death. We were going to spend the rest of our lives together. Both of us freezing, one of us wounded and unconscious, sitting on top of an activating supervolcano, our last breaths would be taken together.

  A brief laugh, sharp and manic, escaped my chest. I held her even tighter, rocking back and forth, and whispered “I love you” over and over as I waited for the end to come.

  Interlude 4

  Seeking Peace

  Spring 2025, Casita de Soledad, Central Arizona

  The stones crunched under my sandaled feet as I paced the razorback ridge of a hill a mile or so from our home. The sound was comforting, entirely mundane and normal. Rocks rubbing against rocks, friction, some of that energy escaping as sound. The most normal thing in the world.

  I looked to the east watching how the land undulated into hills and valleys and then folded itself into canyons, the raw naked rock exposed where water eroded it away. One drop at a time, over millennia.

  Writing these memoirs can get a bit narcissistic, a bit myopic. Staring at my past, examining my life, living in the past.

  It’s why I had to come up to the ridge. To get some perspective. That and the memories I was harvesting were not at all comfortable.

  I bet you’ve got things like this in your past. Moments when you did your best, but still feel regret. Moments when you couldn’t be all that you wanted to be. We are all human, we’ve all got them.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Licia said.

  I hadn’t heard her, so focused I was, so internal, so “gazing at my bellybutton” narcissistic.

  “You got a penny on you?” I asked as I turned around. She was wearing beige shorts and a blue tank top.

  She turned her pockets inside out and slowly shook her head. I watched her hair flow over her shoulders and move gently back and forth like a curtain of black silk.

  How many times had I almost lost her? Through my dense maleness, through the damn war we fought, through chance. How many times? How many more times would it happen in this extra-long life we were living?

  “You know I love you, right?” I asked.

  She paused, her brows furrowing briefly as
she looked deeply into my eyes. She licked her lips and said, “Yeah, I know.”

  You may think it a silly question, one that doesn’t need to be asked after all the years we had spent together. But I’m here to tell you that question should never stop being asked. Love taken for granted is not love any longer.

  “Good,” I said before turning and resuming my pacing, my feet crunching on the stone, my eyes following the flow of the land, my heart seeking peace.

  I didn’t notice her go, she gave me my space, and for that I am grateful.

  But I didn’t find peace up there on that ridge. Change is coming. I don’t know what it is yet, but I can feel it.

  Chapter 14

  Flying Saucer

  Fall 2004, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

  The rumble became deafening and then stopped. Quiet, sudden and pervasive, came over the landscape. The birds that had been singing a greeting to the dawn became mute. The breeze that had been flowing across my skin from time to time stopped. It was dead quiet, and then I heard something. It was a low, high-pitched hum.

  I lifted my head up and looked around. This wasn’t right. I slowly and ever so gently lowered Licia’s body back to the ground and stood up.

  I was weak, hungry, and dehydrated, my belly sunk in from the toll being Neutrinoman had taken on me. The hum became louder and I caught movement out of my peripheral vision. I turned and saw it.

  Several hundred yards away, in the direction Toxicwasteman and the aliens had gone, a flying saucer was rising into the sky, haloed by the pink light of dawn.

  It was round and silver and the source of the humming noise. My brow furrowed as I thought back to the rumbling. I had surmised that it was the volcano activating, but it hadn’t been. It was this ship rising out of ground. It had to have been buried, or we would have noticed it in the moonlight when we flew above the area. Clods of dirt were still falling off of it as it rose.

  I watched with a mix of awe, wonder, and fear. I wrapped my arms around my chest in a vain attempt to warm myself. The ship slowly rose and a different sound started to occur. It was more of a whine than a hum. It grew in intensity until I had to cover my ears. The bottom part of the ship began to glow.