Elemental Factors: Neutrinoman and Lightningirl: A Love Story, #6

1 Nerves

Summer 2006, Phoenix, Arizona

I was an only child. I had great parents. I was curious and loved to tinker with things and take them apart, spending hours at this not even aware if someone was with me or not. You’d think that being alone wouldn’t be that big of a deal for me, but the thought of going into the conference room was terrifying. I’d much rather face down aliens bent on our destruction or go up against Toxicwasteman.

I am Nik Nichols, aka Neutrinoman, I’ve saved the world a couple of times now but am afraid of a bunch of military brass and suits in a conference room.

I was standing there fidgeting while Licia was looking at me with those soulful brown eyes of hers, so full of compassion, and it’s frankly hard for me to meet that gaze. We were standing in a nondescript hallway with short brown carpet and bright fluorescent lights. Down the hall I could see a window and a slice of the orderly streets of Phoenix, Arizona, with the craggy humps of Camelback Mountain beyond. The air-conditioning was humming, the circulating air playing with some of the fine black hairs framing Licia’s round face and escaping her ponytail.

You got this, honey, she said, touching my arm, a brief spark of our q-morph powers flowing between us. She stepped close and fiddled with my tie and smoothed the lapel of the suit jacket I was wearing, and I’m grateful that I don’t have to meet those eyes.

Before September 10, 2003, when the cosmic rays hit and the power plant melted down and the rat bit me and I was transformed into Neutrinoman, I was a janitor working at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. Back then I was still finding myself, still fairly aimless and drifting along, working a low-paying job just so I could see the inside of a nuclear power plant. Back then you’d swear I was fine being alone, that I even enjoyed it.

I swallowed, trying to smile at Licia, my eyes flicking to the conference room door and then back down the hallway, wishing I was a janitor right now, not a superhero, and certainly not this superhero.

At Palo Verde, as a janitor, I was always moving, sweeping, polishing floors, taking the garbage out. It’s not like you weren’t alone walking down those large halls, hearing the slap of your feet on the polished cement echo through the large spaces, hauling garbage out into the Phoenix heat, looking around the flat, sandy landscape as the desert sucked the moisture out of you. Sure you saw people, but only for brief interludes.

How’re the kids, Frank?

Oh great, Nik. Little Fran’s birthday is next week. Did you see the Steelers game on Sunday?

Sure did, the old man and I barbequed, tinkered with the Charger.

Simple interactions. Not that intimate, not when looked at one at a time. Just moments here and there. But you stack them up and you get to know someone, you can see their faces sagging when they’ve had a bad day, or their eyes bright when things are going good.

And I guess before Homeland Security arrested me, threw me into that hole for two hundred days, tried to break me by isolating me, I didn’t think much about it. Being alone, that is.

As a janitor I had frequent interactions, I had the huge spaces of Palo Verde to wander through. I walked miles in a shift and wasn’t locked in a cell walking around and around just for something to do.

As Neutrinoman I had spent a good amount of time off the planet, either in orbit, or farther out when I went after the earth-killing meteor that the aliens sent our way.

But I was never alone for long.

I saw other faces frequently.

I interacted with other humans all the time.

Try being locked in a cell with no human interaction, no smartphone, no internet, no books.

Well, there were a couple of books and Ronald, the kind man that brought them to me. Except he wasn’t really there, a q-morph sent by Tom Tyree (Toxicwasteman) that could project his presence and the books he gave to me into my mind. He was there to keep me sane.

And he did.

But barely.

Back in that hallway, I took a deep breath and let it come rushing out, blowing more of those stray black hairs on Licia’s head. The past, that imprisonment and all that happened around my release is haunting me. It keeps coming back to me.

She looked up and did her best to smile, but I knew her well enough to know it was not a real smile. Things have changed since we met and saved the earth from that meteor, since the aliens tried to kill me and Tom Tyree tried to recruit me, since Gaia destroyed the Hoover Dam, and since they locked me up.

It’s not like I was going to be alone in that room. But… well… I wasn’t going to have Licia by my side, and that now feels like being alone. She’s been with me most every moment since I got out of that prison, since I fought the q-morph soldier, since we ran off to Mexico and agreed to start Heroes Incorporated.

I didn’t used to be like this.

It’s going to be okay, she said, pulling me into a fierce hug. You have to face them, you know this. And they have to listen to you.

I couldn’t speak, I just nodded.

You’re my man, my Neutrinoman, she whispered.

And you’re my girl, my Lightningirl, I whispered back.

She loved me, I know she did, but I needed her too much. How long would she stick with the needy, afraid to be without her, version of me.

I took a deep breath, trying to still my mind, slip back into the meditation routine I started in prison, but it just wasn’t working.

I know it will be okay, I whispered back, telling her the lie we both needed to hear.

She let me go and I turned and walked into that conference room.

2 A Plan

Spring 2025, Central Arizona

Licia had a plan.

Our world had fallen apart, our life in exile in the high desert of central Arizona vaporized, and my amazing wife had a plan.

And I had no idea. I was completely clueless.

After the war with the aliens, after all the madness, the Quantum Metamorph Accord of 2020 had separated us surviving q-morphs, hiding us away from the public, keeping us isolated. And our home had been Casita de Soledad. And the military had planted a bomb under us they called Project Vulcan, and after I learned about it, I hadn’t been able to live with it.

Project Vulcan, and my insistence on poking at it, had literally blown our home and our life up. There was nothing left of Casita de Soledad, just a perfectly spherical void in the ground, everything in the blast radius vaporized… nearly the both of us with it.

I kept seeing it, that spherical void in the ground where our home used to be. Bushes and trees on the edge sliced cleanly, inside the sphere, the ground smooth and a bit shiny like the explosion had polished it. A void where our home used to be, where our lives used to be.

I had hated our small pedestrian life, railed at the limitations, hated how Homeland Security kept us there, watched us, chided us when we used our powers. We had battled the Arcturian Alliance. We had saved the world over and over, and we had become their pet superheroes sent out to the high desert of central Arizona just in case we were needed again. Project Vulcan had been their insurance in case we got out of control.

And, I guess that is what I did… I lost control and brought this on us.

They… I… I mumbled as we trudged over the high Arizona desert naked and barefoot. We had both transformed to our quantum forms during the explosion—the only way we could survive—we had no clothes left to wear. Gone was my giddy laughter of relief right after survival. Reality had settled in on me. I had been in prison once after that mess with Gaia at the Hoover Dam, where they tried to break me through extreme isolation, and I suspected it would be worse if they caught us this time.

The sun was rushing down to the horizon, casting the cactus, sage brush, and brown wild grasses in a warm light that didn’t cheer me like it usually did. The heat of the day would soon bleed off leaving us naked, hungry, and still running.

Anger was coming, brewing just below the surface, but not there yet. It was trapped like that super volcano under Yellowstone the aliens tried to get me to activate.

I was confused and lost trudging through the desert, walking around cactus and yucca on my battered feet, only barely aware that my beautiful wife was nude in front of me, but quite aware that she didn’t seem nearly as heartbroken as I and wasn’t loudly yelping at each bump and scrape to her feet.

She had a plan.

Her spine was erect, her shoulders squared, her long black hair sliding over her shoulders as she walked, her steady rhythm nearly metronomic.

I can’t believe they did that… I… I continued to mumble, barely above a whisper. I was exhausted, I had depleted myself saving us from the explosion—or vaporization. Really, a better word for it.

The desert revealed itself slowly as the hills rose and fell under our feet, covered in dead grasses, prickly pear cactus, sage brush, and yucca plants with their sharp needlelike leaves here and there. It was beautiful land, land that I loved, but I wasn’t feeling it.

We were in the high desert of central Arizona a few miles east of I-17, but Licia had us heading north. The direction didn’t make any sense to me. To the west was I-17 and the possibility of help, and to the east was the high-tension powerlines that carried electricity to Flagstaff. Even though they had been severed where Casita de Soledad used to be, there might be power there to the south.

But she was walking north. With intent and purpose.

Homeland Security would be looking for us. We cleared their hidden base out before I triggered the bomb, so they know what happened. Although, since we barely survived, they must know there is a good chance that we were vaporized in the blast along with every single one of our possessions, along with the adobe house and greenhouses we had built ourselves, along with our lives that were small and boring, but comfortable and simple.

The summer evening was warm, a slight breeze licking the sweat off my bare skin, but I barely noticed as my mind went over what had happened, as that anger got closer to the surface. My foot landed on part of a decaying piece of prickly pear cactus. It was a dull brown and faded green, blending in with the sandy soil, and I hadn’t seen it.

Damn! I cried, hopping on one foot while I raised the other and tried to yank it out. It was old and half decomposed, the once bright skin of the cactus now dull and flaking, bits of its harder skeletal structure a lattice visible through breaks in the skin. The needles were a tawny color, three long ones and many of the hairlike smaller ones embedded in my foot.

I hopped, I pulled at the cactus, and all I managed to do was come down on another piece of the decaying cactus with my other foot.

I fell hard to the ground, landing on some old grass. The grass broke my fall, but it also poked my bare behind in some very uncomfortable places. I just sat there, both feet lifted watching Licia walk away.

It was no use. I had flown us, low and fast, about a mile before my energy faded, before Licia and I had to surrender our quantum forms and become entirely flesh and blood. Homeland Security would be here any moment, but we were naked, we had nothing, and I couldn’t even walk.

And yet she kept walking, her spine straight, her stride steady. She didn’t even look back.

Licia had a plan and nothing was going to stop her, not even my little cactus mishap.

She didn’t speak, she didn’t encourage me, she just kept walking. And I knew that walk, that posture, she was furious. Definitely at Homeland because of the bomb, maybe at me for not letting things be, probably at the world for putting such a burden on us and then discarding us.

I smiled, just a tiny bitter little smile, as I watched her and thought those things. That’s what I was mad about, that’s what I was feeling. I’ve been married long enough to know it’s not a good idea to project your own emotional state and foibles on your spouse. I’m sure Licia was feeling many things, and having known her for so long, I could guess that anger was primary, but it was best to let her tell me what she was feeling. But she wasn’t talking, only walking.

But there it was, that spark of anger, some energy, something I could use.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly focusing on my feet and the decaying cacti embedded there. I dug deep, like I had learned I could do all those years ago after I got out of prison and had to battle the q-morph soldier. The bottom of my feet glowed yellow, taking on the neutrino swirls. Not long, just for a moment, just enough to burn out the needles, and I let it go.

I stood up and took a deep breath and started walking after my wife.

I now had a plan, follow Licia, learn how she plans to get us to that interview with Diane Madison, do whatever it takes to make that happen.

But even below that, guiding that short-term plan was another plan. A simple plan. A one world plan.

Licia.

My love, my life, together we would figure this out, and if not, we would fight and we would fall, but together.

3 A Free Agent

Summer 2006, Phoenix, Arizona

The conference room door clicked loudly behind me and I did my best not to jump, sweat slowly trickling down my neck despite the excessive air-conditioning.

I felt Licia’s absence. It felt like an ache that wouldn’t go away, like I wouldn’t be all right until she was by my side again.

The conference room was on the twentieth floor of an office building in downtown Phoenix. This floor was used by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Not military, not police, but government. Fairly neutral ground.

Out the floor-to-ceiling windows, I saw the flat grid of the city laid out, the north-south, east-west flow only interrupted by the small craggy protrusions of the desert that rose up in rounded humps. Hunks of tan rock that reminded me of Gaia and her ability to control the earth, like how she turned a sandstone canyon into a giant rock monster and destroyed the Hoover Dam.

That destruction is what got me detained and what ended up putting me here. It wasn’t lost on me that Tom Tyree (Toxicwasteman) had lured me to Vegas to try to capture Chaosboy, had sent me out to the dam to confront Gaia, had been instrumental in that detainment.