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

by Robert J. McCarter

  “Did they speak?”

  She nodded. “They seemed to be taking orders from him. He told them when to trigger the explosion, the one that buried Nik in there. One of them stopped firing and pulled out a small device. The ground shook, and the crater formed.” She pointed over to the large depression of land.

  I looked and blinked. It seemed like it had all just happened and that it was ancient history at the same time. The wreckage of the alien ship was strewn around the landscape to the right of the crater. It was still smoldering and people in hazmat suits swarmed around it, the ants looking for more treasures.

  “Was your lightning effective against the aliens?” William asked.

  She nodded. “Yeah, it was. It took some doing. I think their clothing protected them some. You know, Colonel, they were expecting us. They were ready for us.”

  Williams nodded, a grim look on his face. “I know.”

  I noticed the odd trees around the area. They looked wizened and desiccated. They looked like they had been sucked dry. I recall seeing an alien or two that looked like that.

  “Did you do this?” I asked her, pointing at one of the trees. I remembered how she had drawn electricity from the buffalo and that had calmed them.

  “I did,” she said. “I had no good source of electricity, so I drew it from the surroundings.”

  Licia continued to describe the battle, but I walked away. I didn’t want to hear it. I already knew what happened. They overwhelmed her. They hurt her.

  My feet carried me towards the crater until the marker on the ground stopped me. There was a white outline sprayed on the dirt in the shape of a prone body. The maker was yellow and written on it was “Hostile #5.”

  I remembered him. I had tripped over him on my way to try to stop Toxicwasteman from hurting Licia. He had taken a neutrino bolt to the chest and was dead, the hole ragged and red with bits of bone sticking out. His corpse had smelled like badly burnt barbecue. I stood there, my eyes blinking rapidly, remembering what it felt like when my foot collided with his lifeless body.

  The memory of him came back in a flash. He had leveled his energy weapon at me, a purple ball flying from it towards my chest. I had thrown myself to the right, a neutrino jet coming out of my left hand to keep me from falling to the ground, while a neutrino bolt fired out of my right hand. I remembered seeing the bolt connect with his flesh, hearing him scream, being vaguely fascinated at how round a hole it had made, at how the edges of his clothing smoked, of how he fell to the ground like some sort of puppet with its strings cut.

  I felt nausea rise and managed to stumble a few more yards away before I vomited.

  His face, his handsome, blond-haired, blue-eyed face, I can still see it in my mind. I can still see the look of surprise when the yellow bolt hit him, when his life fled, when I killed him.

  After I had emptied the contents of my stomach, I wept. The tears were hot and bitter and I did nothing to stop them. I couldn’t. I had crossed a boundary, one I couldn’t come back from. I had looked a being in the eye and killed him. My world had changed, I had changed.

  I knew I was making a scene, and some part of me knew it was the trauma, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t care about it then. I could only sit there on the cold ground weeping.

  Jennifer came and put a blanket around me, gave me water and a handkerchief, and sat there with me. She didn’t speak, she didn’t try to stop me burbling, she just watched over me and kept others away.

  I promised you the real story, the whole story, what it was really like to be a superhero in those times. And that is what it was like. Sometimes it was sitting on the ground crying your eyes out because of what you did, because of the trauma you had suffered.

  And I know that this was war, that we all view killing differently in a war. I know that he was an alien, that he was trying to destroy our planet. I know all that.

  And you know what? Those are fine intellectual concepts, but bullshit when it comes to being human. The emotions can’t be denied, or at least not for too long.

  I kept seeing his face and those wide blue eyes, how surprised they looked when the neutrino bolt connected with him. I kept seeing and smelling the corpse when I stumbled over it, kept feeling my foot against his inert flesh.

  He was my first but not my last.

  Chapter 17

  Complicated

  Fall 2004, Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming

  The air was cool but refreshing. The sun shone brightly, and I soaked it up. Licia and I were walking just outside the infirmary at the Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

  Jennifer was a discreet distance away with a wheelchair in case one of us needed it. It had taken nearly a presidential decree from the powers that be to let us out of the building for a walk. Well, not a presidential decree, but a look of grim determination in Licia’s eyes that even Colonel Williams was not inclined to deny.

  Our conversations had been awkward so far. You know, how we were both feeling, the weather, nothing that mattered. I felt this shyness that I couldn’t explain. Well, now I can explain it. I knew that I loved her. I knew that I needed to tell her, but I was scared to death of her not returning the sentiment.

  “So…” I said after a long pause. We had found a bench to sit on.

  “Yeah,” she answered.

  “Listen… I realized something out there. Something important. Something I need to tell you.”

  “Me too,” she said nodding her head.

  “Oh… Okay. Ladies first.”

  She pursed her lips and looked at me. Her brown eyes were so sad, I felt my stomach clench at the sight. “This thing with the aliens,” she began. “This war. It’s… It’s not what I expected. It’s much harder, much more complicated than I thought.”

  I nodded in agreement. “I couldn’t have said it better.”

  She stared at me, her brow briefly furrowing before looking away. “And there is no doubt that we are going to be working together… Going into battle together…”

  I bit my lip and nodded as fear gripped me. Despite the cold, I was sweating.

  “We have to have clear heads. We have to make the right choices. We…” She trailed off, her brown eyes meeting mine again. They were moist with tears. I knew what was coming.

  “Wait,” I said. “Stop. Please, don’t say it.”

  “Nik. We can’t keep—”

  “No!” I stood up and paced slowly in front of her. “Look, I realized something out there. And before you say what you are going to say, I have to tell you. I have to—” I kneeled in front of her and took her hand, squeezing it. She didn’t resist, but she didn’t squeeze back either. The typical electrical sensation, though, was coming back as we healed, and that was a relief.

  “I never expected this,” I began. “Not since the accident. I never expected to find someone that I was compatible with. To find someone that made me more than I am alone.” I raised my hand so it was an inch from hers and a thin white tendril of energy jumped from her skin to mine as a tiny yellow tendril jumped from my hand to hers. “Look, Licia, look. We are meant to be together. We go together.”

  She grabbed my hand, closing the connection and squeezing hard. Her eyes met mine. The sadness was still there, but this time they were fierce. “I can’t, Nik. I can’t feel like that about you and do what we need to do. I can’t, I’m sorry.”

  “But… Licia, I love you. I have never felt anything like this before. I love you.”

  “I’m sorry, Nik.” Tears were rolling down her face as she stood up and walked away, leaving me there kneeling in front of an empty bench.

  ~~~

  It was stupid to be out in the cold and I knew it, but I couldn’t go back into the infirmary. I couldn’t risk seeing her.

  Yeah, I know. This is the point in the movie where you just can’t believe how stupid the romantic lead is being. When you feel like shouting at the screen, “Go get her, you fool! What are you waiting for? Despite what she s
aid, she loves you.”

  And in retrospect, I agree with you. As I am writing this, I too am shouting at my former self. From the perspective of where I sit today, going after her was the right thing to do.

  But the me that was there, huddled on the bench shivering, couldn’t do anything about it. I was traumatized from the recent battle with Toxicwasteman and the aliens, and my heart was broken.

  So I sat there, cold creeping into my aching body, and stared at the ground.

  “Let’s go,” Jennifer said, wrapping a blanket around me.

  “I’m not going back in there,” I told her.

  “I know,” she said. Her smile and the compassion on her face made me look away. “We’re going back to Palo Verde. You’re well enough to handle some radiation. It will help you heal.”

  I looked up at her and shook my head. The kind of healing I needed wasn’t the kind that Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station could give.

  Chapter 18

  What We Fight For

  Winter 2004, Central Arizona

  The rolling hills of Central Arizona lay before me. The winter grasses were brown, and the sky above was a piercing blue. I paced in a tight circle, the ground below my neutrino feet slowly transforming into something lava-like.

  I was scared—deep in my belly, fear was running wild. Give me a world-ending meteor or murderous aliens any day. Even give me Toxicwasteman. Better than this. Much better than this.

  My nervousness was compounded by the fact that it had taken me months to work up the nerve to do this. Women can make you strong, but they can also make you weak. Ashley’s leaving all those years ago had made me weak. I had let her go without a fight. I was not going to do the same thing with Licia. But to say that Ashley wasn’t part of my reticence would be a lie. We all drag our past into the present with us.

  I heard her approach. The crackling of electricity flowing down the high-tension power lines from the south. There was then the flash of lightning and the crack of thunder and she was standing in front of me.

  Lightningirl. The coruscating electrical form of a goddess.

  I blinked rapidly. As Neutrinoman, I am not biological, I cannot cry, and for that I was grateful. I could, though, still feel a full array of human emotions.

  I smiled as best I could and said, “Thank you for coming.”

  She looked around. This was the same spot she had charged me at the end of our second date before we flew off to deal with Toxicwasteman. She nodded slowly. “It’s nice here. Peaceful.”

  I almost followed up on that. It would be so much easier to chat about the beauty of the land or the weather. But that is not what I was here for.

  “If you don’t mind,” I began, “I am going to get right to it.”

  Her expression was bland and inscrutable as she said, “Please.”

  The silence grew thick as I struggled with how to begin. I knew her well enough to know that I would have only one chance at this. That I had to get it right. Yeah, no pressure there.

  “Nik?” she said after a time.

  I stopped my pacing and looked at her. I’m the romantic, she is not. Even back then I was getting a view of that. I needed to appeal to her practical side.

  I smiled and shook my head and began. “Our lives are not normal. We have these powers. We are living in this time, in the middle of this war fighting an enemy we don’t understand.”

  She nodded her head in agreement.

  “The stakes are high. And the one thought that keeps going through my head is: what am I fighting for? It would be easy to say that I am fighting for the Earth, for the entire human race. And I am, but that is so distant, so ephemeral. That is not where I will go when I need courage. When I need strength.

  “I will look to what I am really fighting for. My family. My friends. My loved ones. I will fight for the things that really matter.

  “And when I fight, when I am out there making hard choices, doing my best, win or lose, I will be fighting for you, Licia.”

  “Nik,” she began. “Please…”

  “I will. You think that love will somehow lead us down the wrong path. Make us weak. Cause us to make the wrong decisions. But I don’t see that. Love makes us strong. Love gives us reason to get out there and do what we need to do.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but I forged on.

  “And it doesn’t matter if we are a couple. It doesn’t. I will fight for you and my parents and my friends. I will fight for Sunday barbecues and winter skiing trips. I will fight for starry nights with nothing to do but stare up at the sky. I will fight for giggling babies and smiling seniors. I will fight, Licia, for you.”

  She nodded, her brows furrowed. “But can you do what you have to do for the planet? Could you sacrifice me, if that is what it took?”

  “Yes,” I answered without hesitation.

  She looked at me intently. She didn’t believe me. “I was awake, you know,” she said. “Out there in Yellowstone with Toxicwasteman. I heard some of that.”

  “Good,” I said. “Then you know that his threatening you gave me strength.”

  “It also made you stupid,” she said.

  My jaw dropped and I stared at her.

  “You attacked him in your biological form to try to protect me,” she continued. “When there was no chance you could defeat him. When he could have easily killed you.”

  I tried to speak, but couldn’t, my mouth moving in a mute pantomime. Thoughts raged in my mind, but nothing more than incoherent fragments.

  “I care for you, Nik. I do. I just don’t think this is a good idea.” With a sharp crack and a flash of lightning, she was gone.

  I took a moment, okay a few minutes, to stand there in despair. I then screamed and raged and pounded the ground. I kicked rocks and shot neutrino bolts at innocent shrubs. It wasn’t completely effective, but I did my best to get it out of my system.

  I then took a deep breath and hardened my resolve. I had two battles to fight. One for the planet and one for Licia’s heart.

  Epilogue

  Spring 2025, Casita de Soledad, Central Arizona

  “Well?” I asked after Licia finished reading the manuscript. The soft whisper of the pages moving as she read had ended several minutes ago, and I was getting anxious.

  We were in the greenhouse. Licia had been occupying herself a lot lately with gardening. I spend my days writing, she spends her days growing plants.

  It seems a little… what’s the right word? It seems a little “pedestrian.” I am not saying there is anything wrong with either activity, but after the life we’ve had, it’s just so small.

  Not that Licia can’t grow plants. At this point she has a subtle control over her use of electricity and can perk up a tomato plant just as easily as she can suck the life out of a weed.

  She was sitting on the flagstone floor of the greenhouse looking kind of pale.

  “I…” she began.

  She flipped back a few pages and read again. From that reaction, I was desperate to ask her what had happened. What was wrong, but I didn’t. Through long experience I had learned to give her space when she needed it.

  She dropped the papers, stood up and hugged me. It wasn’t a romantic hug, it was a fierce one. As if by holding me tightly enough she could ward off what she was feeling. “I am so sorry,” she whispered.

  I was still confused, but my lack of understanding didn’t seem important. I returned her hug and whispered back, “It’s okay.”

  She held me for several minutes before stepping back. “You don’t have any idea what I’m sorry about, do you?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. It would do me no good to deny it; she knew me too well. “No, I don’t.”

  She went back to the sheaf of papers and shuffled through them and pointed at a passage. It was where I made my rather laughable attempt to run naked across the Yellowstone landscape to intercept the pending energy beam from the spaceship. “Kinda lame, huh?” I said. “Actually, it’s kind of embar
rassing to write about—”

  She put her finger on my lips, cutting me off. Her face was a play of guilt and surprise. Her eyebrows furrowed and tears began to flow down her cheeks. “You left me…” she began.

  I was worried then. Tears are the danger zone. It can be really good or really bad, and I had no clue which one this was. “Yeah. You know the world was going to end… Last desperate gamble…”

  She laughed, throwing the papers into the air. They floated down, landing on the tomato and pepper plants, making a rather huge mess.

  “I had to try. I had to do something,” I said by way of explanation. “I couldn’t just watch the aliens turn Wyoming into a volcano. I—”

  “God, I am so sorry. I was so hard on you. I came to right at the end there, right when it looked like you were throwing your life away to save mine. I missed you leaving me there alone and injured and vulnerable.”

  I started to speak several times, but cut myself off. I was too damn confused to say anything intelligent. “Honey, I need you to pretend that I am stupid when it comes to the ways of a woman’s heart. Please explain this to me in short sentences, using small words.”

  She smiled, tears returning. “I broke up with you because I witnessed you, the flesh and blood you, trying to take on Toxicwasteman. It looked like you were willing to throw your life away to save me.”

  “Yeah…” I said, more as a prompt for her to continue than in agreement.

  “And right before that you had left me. Put my life at risk to try to save us all.”

  “Right,” I said, trying to keep my face as neutral as possible. I was still confused. This didn’t seem like a revelation to me; that is what happened.

  She laughed and bumped me in the chest. “Jesus, Nik. Don’t you get it? If I had witnessed it all, if I had known. I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t have broken up with you. We could have avoided a whole lot of crap.”