Neutrinoman & Lightningirl: A Love Story, Season 1 (Episodes 1 - 3) by Robert J. McCarter

Author:Robert J. McCarter [McCarter, Robert J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Little Hummingbird Publishing
Published: 2015-01-22T06:00:00+00:00

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.

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