“Speak?” I didn’t understand what she was telling me.
“None have done so, none will” she continued. “But for you I will. I am enemy, you saved me. You saved train. You are worth speaking for.”
I turned and looked as I heard a shout from the hallway and the sound of running feet. I assumed that they could hear us and that wasn’t sitting very well. I turned back to Sarah. “Please,” she said, “let me go. I am nobody, but I will speak.”
Her words were strange. I didn’t know exactly what she meant, but I believed her. I let go of her hand and moved to the door. I needed more time. The door opened and Colonel Williams was standing there, breathing heavily, his face flush from exertion.
I folded my arms across my chest, blocking him. “Do you trust me, Colonel?” I asked. His eyes were focused on the alien behind me, not me. “Colonel,” I repeated loudly, “do you trust me?”
His eyes met mine and he nodded once.
“Then please give us a few minutes.”
His eyes narrowed and he looked at Sarah then back to me. “Make it quick, Marcus is on his way.” With that he stepped back and closed the door.
~~~
“I did not send you in there to have a private conversation, to hold hands with it,” Marcus yelled, his round face red. “I sent you in there to gather intelligence. I sent you in there to talk sense into it. To find out why the hell the aliens are here and why the hell they want us dead. I sent you in there to…” he trailed off, the anger fading and his shoulders stooping.
He pulled up a chair and sat across from me in the conference room. It was the one I had been debriefed in earlier.
“What were you thinking?” he asked quietly.
I looked down, my eyes wandering across the warm wood of the table. What had I been thinking? The truth was I hadn’t been. I had been running on instinct. I had been doing what I thought was right. “We need to let her go,” I said.
His eyes widened and his face reddened. He pushed back his chair noisily and stood again. “What?” he asked.
“We need to let her go,” I repeated.
“Son, this is the best break we’ve gotten so far. Why in the blue blazes would I want to let her go?”
“If you let her go,” I said, “she will help us.”
“Help us? How the hell is she going to help us? She’s a pilot of some sort, maybe the equivalent of an officer, but not someone who can help us.”
“She will speak,” I said. I knew it sounded silly, that I sounded like her, but I didn’t know how else to put it. Because in truth I didn’t know exactly what she meant. I just knew it felt like the right thing.
“Speak? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“That is what she said. I think it means that she will advocate for us. Speak on our behalf.”
“But she’s nobody, son. She’s a pilot, who’s going to listen to her?”
“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “But you know what, General? I am a janitor and here you are listening to me.”
He sat heavily in his chair, a noisy sigh escaping him. We talked about this for the next thirty minutes, but in the end he refused.
After he left, I sat there alone in that room trying to talk myself out of what seemed to be the next thing to do. What seemed to be the right thing to do.
~~~
You know those stories about the heroes who act courageously and are never plagued by doubt? Well, this is not one of those stories. While I am blessed to know my own mind, to have a sense of right and wrong, a moral compass if you will, I am also plagued by doubt.
And really, I think we all are. Or we all should be. For example, Tom Tyree has a strong sense of his destiny, of what it is he should do. But, he doesn’t have a shred of doubt. He is not assailed by worry or concerned about consequences. He is free to act without all the weight of doubt. And that is what makes him dangerous.
Me, sitting there alone in that small conference room, with its bland black chairs and its boring white walls, I was assailed by doubt and fear. I had conviction. I was convinced that we needed to free the alien. That she would “speak” for us, and somehow that would be a good thing. But I didn’t know if I had the courage to do it. I didn’t know if I could do it in a way that I could live with.
So, what is a man to do when he is plagued with doubt? Call the woman he is trying to woo, of course, and lay it all on the line.
That is what I did, but that is not how I arrived there. My calling her really had nothing to do with wooing her and had everything to do with wanting her level head and capable presence.
I used the phone in the conference room. I am guessing the caller ID probably said “Luke AFB,” or something like that, because she picked up right away.
“Hello?” she said.
“Licia, it’s Nik. I need your help.” I launched right in. No “I miss you,” “you complete me,” or any of the other romantic stuff that was going through my head. And she responded.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“No,” I answered. “I really need your help, and it’s not something I can speak of on the phone. Can you come here?”
There was a slight pause. I was afraid she would refuse. But she said, “Of course. I’ll meet you by the power lines. Southwest corner in thirty minutes. Please bring a robe.”
Interview, Part 5
Late Winter 2005, WNN Studios, Los Angeles
That symbol I burned into Diane Madison’s desk, the N-circle, stuck. The next week I saw pictures of people in T-shirts with it emblazed on the chest. It had been stylized, and was done in neutrino-yellow, but the N-circle symbol started showing up everywhere.
It was puzzling to me. I know, I know, I was a real life superhero, but that doesn’t mean that I was prepared for the fame of it. I had been trying, quite unsuccessfully, to mess with Diane Madison. I hadn’t expected to brand myself. Or to brand Lightningirl, for that matter.
A few days after the N-circle symbol started showing up, I read one of those fluff entertainment pieces on it. In it they had a picture of a young woman with one of the T-shirts on. Except the symbol had been altered, it had been rotated ninety degrees to the right. The N looked like a Z, and the Z kind of looked like a lightning bolt. One symbol, two superheroes.
And that’s the thing about life. You never know the moments that are really going to change things, do you?
~~~
The interview was decidedly uncomfortable. Not because her questions were hard, they had been provided beforehand and I had been coached extensively. What was hard was knowing millions were watching. Knowing that everything I said would be picked apart and analyzed. Knowing how much rode on me saying the right thing in the right way.
Give me a meteor attack or an alien plot any day. Give me Tom Tyree and his band of psychopaths.
“How does it feel,” Diane asked, “to have so much power? To be able to do so much good?”
I smiled a weary smile. “It’s a burden,” I began, “that’s for sure. That whole Spider-Man saying—with great power comes great responsibility—is not far off. Except I would probably use some stronger adjectives. It’s easy, much too easy, to harm with the power I wield, so I think about it all the time. I do my best to help much, much more than I harm.” I paused, licking my lips. That was the answer I had been coached to give. What I added was off the script. “You must understand that, Diane. Behind that desk, you wield a lot of power, and that power can be used for good, or for ill. Surely you feel the responsibility of it.”
She nodded gravely. “Believe me I do. We work hard here to make sure the stories we tell are what the American people need to hear. Sometimes they are hard to tell. Sometimes there are consequences to the telling. But if we don’t believe in the story, we don’t run it.”
“Like when you revealed my identity to the world,” I said. This wasn’t the time or place, and I had promised myself I wouldn’t say anything about it, but it just slipped out. The wound
was just too fresh.
“Just like that,” she said, her brow furrowed. “We knew it would have an impact on you and your family, but we felt strongly, we still feel strongly, in the need for transparency. From our government and from our heroes.”
I wanted to say more, but I kept my mouth shut. I wanted to say that if she had known of the consequences, why didn’t they warn us and our families, but it was finally becoming clear that in this venue, she was the master, she had the superpowers. Just stick to the script.
She paused, shuffling through the papers on her desk. “Let’s start on a new topic. One that we at Real Life feel strongly needs to come out into the open. And that is the topic of aliens.” She turned to me, her face grave. “Nik, can you confirm or deny the presence of an alien species on our planet that is intent on our destruction?”
This was it. This was, as far as the military was concerned, why I was here. It was time to start the public relations campaign. I took a deep breath nodded, and said, “I can confirm that, Diane.”
Diane stared at me, blinking, her mouth opening and closing. She took a breath and turned to the camera. “Stay with us for more Real Life with Diane Madison where we will find out more about this alien threat.”
After “clear” was yelled, she turned and smiled at me. “We’re going to go a long way, you and I. A long, long way.” I just smiled back. I was terrified.
Maybe she was just arrogant, she couldn’t have known what would happen, but that statement certainly came true as the years unfolded.
Chapter 17
Speak for Us
Late Winter 2005, Luke Air Force Base, Arizona
I rooted around and found a robe. I saw Colonel Williams on the way out and told him that I needed some air and was going for a run. He was about to say something, but I didn’t give him a chance. I pushed past him and went out of the infirmary.
As you would imagine, an air force base has some serious power requirements. The power lines that ran into it were large enough for Lightningirl to travel on. Once I got outside, I jogged past a few drab buildings parallel to the dry, dusty runway to the southwest corner of the base. Luke is a big place, and the location was about a mile away. But at this point my aerobic capacity was improving, so it actually felt good.
I saw her coming in. A flash of light running along the power line and then a small lightning bolt stabbing from a transformer down to the ground, and then she was there.
She was so beautiful, so primal. Every time I see her like that I know that there is such a thing as a goddess, because she is one. I wanted to throw myself at her feet and beg for her love. I wanted to transform into Neutrinoman, sweep her up, and fly her out of here. I wanted to hold her hand and never let her go.
But I didn’t do any of those things. I stopped a few feet in front of her, held the robe out, closed my eyes, and turned my head.
I could feel her transform from Lightningirl to Licia. One moment the hairs on my arm were standing straight up and I could smell ozone, and the next I felt her moving her biological body into the robe and I could smell her. I slowly inhaled taking just a moment to breathe in that scent. To let my olfactory senses break it down: clean and sterile, fresh, a trace of ozone, but still distinctively her. It was a subtle scent—much of what I smell from most people was left behind with her transformation. What was left was the something akin to the smell after a heavy monsoon.
“Okay,” she said quietly.
I opened my eyes. She was wrapped in the white robe, her brown eyes meeting mine. “Thank you for coming,” I said, swallowing every romantically clich�d phrase that was banging around my head.
“So what’s going on?” she asked.
I told her. It came spilling out in an avalanche of words. I paced and gestured, letting my body express the emotions I was feeling, stopping only when a jet passing overhead drowned me out.
I didn’t hold back, I didn’t edit, I didn’t worry about how I sounded. I trusted her so it was okay to be passionate, to be stumbling on my words, to appear foolish. It was Licia, so I could be me.
~~~
General Marcus looked uncomfortable. He was fidgeting in his seat and kept flipping through the papers in front of him. Colonel Williams was there as well as several other people. They were dressed in military uniforms, but I think they were lawyers.
After I had said my piece, Licia marched me back and demanded a meeting with Marcus and Williams.
She had changed and was dressed in scrubs as she paced the length of the little conference room. I was sitting across from Marcus and Williams, my stomach tight and my palms sweating.
“Let’s start over,” Licia said, stopping at the head of the table and leaning against it. “General, Nik is resolved that this alien, this ‘Sarah,’ be released. Nik, the general is just as resolved to keep her, to question her, to use her to help us learn about this threat.” She took a deep breath and sighed heavily. “We need to find a middle ground, gentlemen.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Nichols,” the general said. “There is a chain of command for a reason. This decision comes from above me. It is imperative that we find out more about these aliens. It makes no sense to let her go.”
“With all due respect, General,” I countered. “I am not part of the military. I brought down the ship she was flying. I injured her. I saved her. And I feel responsible for her. She wants to help us. We need to let her try.”
“I don’t think you’re qualified to make that kind of—” the general began.
“Because I’m not drinking the same Kool-Aid you all are?” I said, cutting him off. “Because I’m a dumb janitor who stumbled into power. Because…” The argument escalated from there until the general and I were both standing up yelling at each other across the table.
After a minute of this, two tiny lightning bolts stabbed out from Licia’s outstretched hand and hit Marcus and me in the chest. He looked shocked, I’m sure it didn’t feel good to him, but I liked it. In both cases it got us to shut up.
“Here’s what’s going to happen if you two don’t figure this out,” Licia said, her voice low and dangerous. “Nik here is going to do something stupid. He’s going to try to break her out of here. He’s going to try to get me to help him. And if I refuse him, he will find other help.” I opened my mouth to speak but she held up her hand stopping me and turned to the general. “And when he does, you are going to attempt to use force to stop him. Who prevails in this conflict doesn’t matter. We all lose. The government loses Neutrinoman, and Neutrinoman loses his support system. And then our defeat by the aliens is assured.” She paused and sighed wearily. “Now sit down and talk to each other.”
~~~
“Hi, Sarah,” I said as we entered the hospital room. General Marcus, Colonel Williams, and Licia were with me. “Can we talk?”
She looked at the uniforms the men were wearing, a look of fear on her face, and then back to me. “You. I will talk with you.”
“Thank you, Sarah,” I said. I pulled a stool up to her bed and everyone else stayed back a few paces. They had put her restraints back on. I took them off and asked, “How are you feeling today?”
“Getting stronger,” she said as she pushed herself up in the bed. Her blond hair was dirty and clung to her face. The room smelled of chemicals and she needed to bathe. It was some comfort to me that aliens smelled the same way we did. “But that matters not. I don’t matter. Will you release me?” Her eyes wandered to those standing behind me and back to me.
“I want to. I am trying to convince them it is the right thing to do. But, I need your help, Sarah. I need you to explain to us what you mean when you told me you would ‘speak’ for us.”
She looked confused, but said, “Speak. It is… the word is not good, not right. But you don’t have the right word. No one has spoken for you, so anyone can speak. If you let me go I will speak and they will listen.”
“They?” Williams asked. “Do you mean your leaders?”
&n
bsp; She nodded. “Yes. I am no one, but no one can speak and all will listen. It is…” she trailed off, her brow furrowed. “It is law.”
“What will you speak?” Marcus asked.
“I will speak of him,” she said nodding towards me. “I will tell how he saved me, saved others, tries to help me now. I am no one. I have nothing. But the yellow one helps.”
“Will that change anything?” Licia asked. She stepped forward. I could feel her right behind me, small tendrils of energy passing between our bodies. I focused on Sarah and tried to ignore it. Sarah’s eyebrows rose as she noticed the interaction. “Will that stop the attacks?”
“Yes,” she said. “Maybe for a short time, maybe for all time, but attack will stop. When I speak they will listen. All will discuss. All will decide.”
I turned to General Marcus and saw him nodding.
Chapter 18
Laying It on the Line
Late Winter 2005, Luke Air Force Base, Arizona
“Thank you,” I said to Licia. We had walked silently to the high-tension power lines.
She smiled—it was genuine, but not pure. I’m sure she was happy at the outcome, but the undercurrents of emotions she was feeling almost overwhelmed the smile. “You are welcome, Nik. Thank you for trusting me enough to call. Especially, since… you know…”
“Don’t you see it?” I asked. “What a great team we are? How we are meant to be together?” I raised my hand until it was close enough to her that the yellow tendril of neutronic energy stabbed out from my body to hers while the white tendril of electricity jumped from her body to mine.
“Nik, please. Don’t.”
“I know, I know, you are not the romantic type. You are practical, sensible, worried that my feelings for you will make me stupid.”
She folded her arms and said, “It’s not that simple and you know it.”
“Well then, explain it to me.”
She sighed. “What’s at risk here is all of humanity, Nik. We can’t get distracted by feelings. We have to stay focused. We have to be able to work together, follow orders, do what we need to do.”
Neutrinoman & Lightningirl: A Love Story, Season 1 (Episodes 1 - 3) Page 25