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

by Robert J. McCarter

  Quinn’s transformation sound started up again for a minute or so. “It’s okay now,” he said in his normal, deep voice. “Sorry, thought you might find that funny.”

  “Don’t ever do that again,” I said, glad to see him back.

  He smiled at me, this perfect white-toothed grin. “Of course not.”

  We drove in silence the rest of the way to the Golden Nugget Casino in old Las Vegas. We knew Chaosboy was there. We had a plan.

  Chapter 3

  Nabbing Chaosboy

  Spring 2005, Las Vegas, Nevada

  In the car sitting in the parking garage of the Golden Nugget, Quinn started transforming again. The sound always sent a chill down my spine. What he did just wasn’t natural. I looked away. I didn’t want to witness it.

  “It’s a little hurtful, you know,” he said, his voice feminine and sultry.

  “What?” I asked, looking at him. He was now a statuesque blond dressed in heels and a tight red cocktail dress. This was one of his go-to forms he had practiced and was good at. He called her Sadie, so I’ll refer to Quinn as this when he is her. (His transformations can certainly challenge the use of pronouns.)

  “You are disgusted by who I am,” Sadie said, a pouty frown on her face.

  I took a deep breath. I couldn’t believe he was bringing this up now. Here.

  “We are partners now,” she said. “We need to embrace each other’s unique capabilities.” She then pulled up the front of her strapless dress, in a move that is entirely distracting to the heterosexual male. Sadie was well endowed so it was quite the show.

  As I tried to come up with something to say I realized that when Quinn turned into Licia earlier and then into Sadie he didn’t leave any clothes behind. His clothing as Quinn had been part of his form. Part of him.

  “You’ve been naked this whole time?” I asked. “Seriously, dude? That is not cool.”

  Sadie shrugged, her blue eyes looking me up and down. The eyes were the one part of Quinn that was still part of Sadie and the lecherous look she/he gave me freaked me out. “Clothing just gets in the way, don’t you think?”

  I got out of the car and slammed the door. “Oh, hell, Quinn. What is wrong with you?”

  Sadie got out of car, her movements slow and sensuous. “Do you know how much fun I can have with this body in a town like this?” Her feminine hands raked up and down her body, the dress leaving little (or just enough) to the imagination.

  I sighed. “Just stick to the plan, okay?”

  She shrugged and tugged her dress up again. “Chaosboy won’t be able to resist me.”

  Of that there could be no doubt.

  ~~~

  My intel put Chaosboy playing craps in the Golden Nugget right now. He was having what he called one of his “Chaos Meets” with a few of his fans. It was basically him showing off to a crowd and raking in lots of money from the casino. His groupies bet with him and made money too.

  There were reports of previous versions of this on his Yahoo group. Since they’re such a public thing he really had to bend probability hard for the casino to not catch on too soon. Inevitably someone got hurt. A stumble leading to a broken arm in Reno, a fatal heart attack outside of Phoenix, and lots of lots of dropped electronics.

  The weird thing was his groupies didn’t seem to mind. They seemed to get off on the danger of being near him. This world has no shortage of weirdos.

  Our plan was simple. Quinn--or rather Sadie--would go in playing the role of a groupie and lure him away up to her room. Not that we had a room, he was to get Chaosboy to the elevators where I would be waiting.

  I had a Bluetooth headset on and was listening through Sadie’s phone. She had dialed me once she had spotted him and then stashed the phone (I didn’t know where and didn’t want to know). The Golden Nugget is a bit of a labyrinth, just like all casinos, and I was hanging out in the south tower lobby at the end of a long hallway that went past the outdoor swimming pool.

  “Hey, Red,” Sadie said through the phone line. And I do have to admit that she has a wicked sultry voice, a bit Demi Moore, a bit Scarlett Johansson.

  “Well, hello there, beautiful,” Chaosboy said with his Irish accent. “You’re just in time to blow on my dice for luck.”

  “On this peach of a day,” Sadie said. “I’d love to.” The phrase “peach of a day” was the code phrase from the Yahoo group. It identified Sadie as one of his core groupies. There was then a very exaggerated blowing sound and a boyish giggle from Chaosboy. I can imagine how Sadie bent over giving him a fine view of her epic cleavage.

  No. I don’t want to imagine that.

  There was a lot of background noise, his cheering groupies, overlapping conversation, the jangle of slot machines, but I could hear pretty well. I went over to the little Starbucks stand near the elevators and got a coffee. I was nervous, and knew the caffeine probably wouldn’t help, but I needed something to divert my attention from Sadie seducing Chaosboy.

  Not that it was much of a seduction. I suspect Chaosboy was pretty sure he’d get “lucky” at all of these. He probably didn’t even need to bend probability to do it.

  I pulled the Red Sox baseball cap low on my head and adjusted my mirror shades. This amounted to my disguise. It wasn’t much, but enough. No one recognized me.

  There were a few little tables in front of the Starbucks and I took a seat and waited. I listened over the phone to the cheering as Chaosboy had an improbable run at the craps table, as Sadie gushed at his brilliance, as Chaosboy did his occasional boyish giggle.

  The coffee was bitter and I drank it slowly. By the time I was down to the cold dregs, the “Chaos Meet” was breaking up and Sadie had convinced Chaosboy to go to her room.

  ~~~

  He was twenty-one, short with flaming red hair and green eyes. He was wearing white pants and shirt and a straw hat, the kind of outfit some Florida mobster might wear. Sadie towered over him in her heels. Chaosboy had the biggest damn grin on his face as they walked past the Starbucks to the bank of elevators.

  I relaxed a little, it didn’t look like he suspected, and he didn’t even glance my way while they passed. He was telling her a dirty joke about an Irish priest and a donkey.

  After they passed, I tossed my coffee cup in the trash and ambled towards the elevator. Sadie made a show of bending over to press the up button and Chaosboy took the opening and stared at her ass. I shook my head, the two of them were the pair. Sadie really looked like just the right kind of dumb blond that would go for Chaosboy.

  The elevator door dinged, some tourists spilled out before some more got in. Chaosboy made a step towards it but Sadie held him back. “Maybe we can get lucky, Red,” she said. “Maybe we can get an elevator to ourselves.”

  Chaosboy looked her up and down (his head came up to her bosom, so it’s more looking them up and down) and grinned. It wasn’t long until an empty elevator opened up and they walked in.

  I walked in right behind them. Well, I almost didn’t. I was positioned properly, only a few steps away, but a guest with a huge trolley of luggage got in between me and the elevator at the last moment. Very unlucky.

  Quite ungracefully, I plow right through the middle, spilling their luggage on the floor, and stumbled into the elevator just as it closed.

  “Hey, lad,” Chaosboy said. “This here is a private party.”

  “Yes it is,” I said, grabbing him by the lapels of his fancy white suit and slamming him against the back of the elevator.

  He hit with an “oomph” and then the elevator suddenly stopped as Sadie hit the red emergency stop button. Sadie didn’t turn back into Quinn. It was part of the plan, if we could confuse Chaosboy in any way during this it was worth a shot.

  I kept him pinned to the back of the elevator with one hand and took off my sunglasses.

  “Neutrino!” Chaosboy said. “What is this?”

  “It’s time for us to have a long talk. A very long talk.”

  ~~~

  With a little
help from Chaosboy, that required a little coercion from me, we managed to make it to the roof of the Golden Nugget’s south tower. It’s a flat expanse of dull white with a waist-high wall all around. We were twenty-five stories up in the air and I didn’t think it would be easy for Chaosboy to escape us.

  Except once we got up there, once the door slammed behind us, once I let go of his neck, his demeanor changed. Radically.

  “Well, Neutrino, I’m mighty glad you got my meetin’ invite,” he said as he strolled across the roof like he was taking a walk on the beach. There was a swagger to his step and a lilt in his voice that made me want to punch him.

  “And Quinn,” he said, turning to Sadie. “As much as I enjoy ya like this, ya can drop the disguise. We know all about ya, lad.”

  Sadie looked at me and I nodded. The click-squish sound emanated from him again and soon he was back to Quinn.

  It was hot up here, well over a hundred degrees, and I was starting to sweat. “What is this?” Quinn asked, looking at me.

  “Chaosboy here,” I said, gesturing to the still strutting redhead, “and his gang set this all up. He was expecting us.”

  “You knew?” Quinn asked.

  “I suspected, but it doesn’t matter. We can still do what we came here to do.”

  “Okay, gents,” Chaosboy said. “If we’re done with pleasantries, let’s get down to it.” He trotted over to the north edge of the roof that bordered the outdoor ground-level pool and courtyard below and hopped up on the little wall, a big grin on his face.

  Quinn rushed over and said, “Don’t jump.”

  I took my time. I wasn’t worried about Chaosboy hurting himself. Quinn didn’t have much firsthand experience with him yet. Chaosboy was in no danger. I was beginning to doubt that we would be able to contain him, though. I was casting about for a plan when he started talking.

  “Your mission, gentlemen,” he began in a comical attempt at a deep voice, “should ya decide to accept it, is to stop the q-morph known as Gaia from causing major loss of life in the Las Vegas area and to, if you’re able, bring said q-morph onto our side in the battle against the Arcturian Alliance.”

  He stopped, his hands spread wide, a huge grin on his face. Quinn and I were about five feet away.

  Chaosboy pulled a keycard out of his pocket and tossed it to me. “That is for the penthouse suite. Ya have it for the night. A dossier on Gaia is in there--it won’t self-destruct or anythin’, so don’t ya worry. The odds are long on this one, lads,” he said, looking at me. “So ya will need your little firefly if you have any chance of capturing Gaia alive.” By “little firefly” he was referring to Lightningirl. As I stood there, I hoped to be around when he called her that in person. “There is a plane waiting for her in Flagstaff. Details in the suite.”

  Quinn and I stood there with our mouths open. In truth I had suspected this as a setup, but not to this degree. A mission? And from the Mission Impossible speech it sounded like a hard one. And who the hell was Gaia?

  His smile broadened and he looked to Quinn. “If Sadie ever really wants a good time… Well, I’m game.”

  He took a step back on the wall and looked down before meeting our gazes again and continued in his not-so-deep voice. “As always, should anyone get caught or killed in this mission, LoVE will disavow any knowledge of your actions.”

  He got this blank look on his face and then stepped off the wall falling out of sight.

  Want more? The next episode of “Neutrinoman and Lightningirl: A Love Story” will be out soon. To keep abreast of the latest news, sign up for my newsletter at Neutrinoman.com (use the blue box on the right side of the screen).

  Books by Robert J. McCarter

  Novels in the “Ghost’s Memoir” world:

  Shuffled Off: A Ghost’s Memoir, Book 1

  Drawing the Dead

  To Be a Fool: A Ghost’s Memoir, Book 2

  Books in the

  Neutrinoman and Lightningirl Series:

  Meteor Attack! Lightningirl and Neutrinoman, A Love Story. Episode 1

  Toxic Asset: Lightningirl and Neutrinoman, A Love Story. Episode 2

  Protocol X: Lightningirl and Neutrinoman, A Love Story. Episode 3

  Off Book: Lightningirl and Neutrinoman, A Love Story. Episode 4 (Coming soon)

  Novelettes

  Probability: Resolve

  The Turing Test Will Be Televised

  Ghost Hacker, Zombie Maker

  For a complete list, go to RobertJMcCarter.com

  Neutrinoman & Lightningirl: A Love Story

  Season 1 (Episodes 1 - 3)

  Copyright ©2012-2014 by Robert J. McCarter

  Except as permitted under the Copyright Act of 1976, this book may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any manner.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover images (Earth and asteroid) courtesy of NASA’s Visible Earth: visibleearth.nasa.gov

  Cover image © Fergregory | Dreamstime.com

  Cover image ©iStockPhoto.com/alxpin

  Version 1.0, January 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-941153-93-2

  Find out more about this series at: Neutrinoman.com

  Visit Robert’s website at: RobertJMcCarter.com

  Published by:

  Little Hummingbird Publishing

  P.O. Box 23518

  Flagstaff, AZ 86002

  www.LittleHummingbird.com

  Little Hummingbird Publishing is a division of Arapas, Inc. Find more about Arapas at: www.Arapas.com.