The Expatriate-the story of a Prodigy

28. The 'Bigger Thought' and Martian on Earth

After the long video ended, Alex Mars had nearly forgotten the reason he had visited Lewis so early, even forgetting his work as a Raider.
Lewis sighed through his teeth, rubbing his hands. "You two have caused a Revolution, with a capitol R-you and Andrew. Though I'm still not too sure of you two's relationship, you better tell me why you came to me in the first place now-tell me what you came up with," Oh, right, Alex thought. Mars and its food supplies and Marvick and everything.
"Right. Last night, I found out that a Martian is here on Earth right now and he somehow is the founder of the civilization of Mars. You know that Mars has a great deal of food since they have hi-tech artificial food producers and manufacturing tech though they may be low on natural resources. So, only if we find him, we may do something about it to use it to our advantage," Surely, if this guy reacts in the same way that Thomas did-thinking that my idea is illogically absurd and unsure-I'm gonna kill him, he thought as a single second passed after he pronounced his last word. Lewis scratched his bald hair, staring at the floor, lips a perfect O-at least not like Thomas yet, Alex thought, relieved.
"Woah-a Martian here. Well, this sounds interesting. So you don't know exactly where he is?" "Actually, yeah. But that's why I came here. Lewis, do you have a list of people in the Rebels?"
"Yeah,"
"Then is there is the name of Ryan Marvick?"
"Well, turned out that I know everyone with a back name, since there are only a few, including you. But unfortunately, there's no such person here. There are a few Ryans but no Marvicks at all," Hell, Alex muttered. "Then list every Ryan and if possible, Lewis, their ages," The man took an extremely long breath before starting, eyes stuck at the stopped screen in front of him, hands gripping his pants-well, to add details, that was the way Lewis remembered stuff. "There's a Ryan Lesley-20. And a Ryan Johnson-25 or something. Then a Ryan Aris, 28, a Rian-with an i, Alex-, 33, a Ry-" "Freakin' Jesus, stop. Lewis, I think we might have a suspect," "Which one?" "Ryan 'Aris'. Ryan Marvick is supposed to be 28 also. Maybe, it's a maybe, though, I think we should go to that person to see him. Is he a minor?" "Obviously, he is, Alex. There are only two groups in the Rebels, and the majors are filled by you five," Lewis actually smirked. "But the thing is, Lewis, the guy is supposed to be a super-brainy Prod, maybe even smarter than the majors. Alright, I have to see this guy in person. Tell us where he works at,"
Lewis' smirk had died down and the smirking sound had died down into a tiny growl inside his chest as if he had met his enemy finally. "Fuck. He should have lied when we tried to ask him if he was a minor or major. Anyway. I don't have a brain capacity like a Tianhe-2, so let me ask David now," Scowling, the guy took his phone from Alex Mars and dialed a number quickly, though not as quickly as Thomas had done before. After 2 rings, there was a short beep and Lewis Nobody stuck his phone to his head and grumbled into it so quickly, but unlike the majors, his words were quite ambiguous, words combining and merging up into one word: "Dave, getto the file where eachofthe Prods arerecorded, andtell me where the hella guy named Ryan 'Aris' works. Now Dave, now," Mars could hear a tiny 'Erm, fuck, Jesus. Got it, Lew," from the other side and watched, a bit surprised, as Lewis' face hardened and morphed into different scowls each second till hearing David's voice started to feel like heaven. Finally, the guy reported back, and Alex could also feel Lyra's shoulders sag from relief as Lewis' scowls faded a bit as he listened. "A3-the building across the big street, Lew. By the way, why do you need-"
Poor David, Mars thought-Lewis had already banged his phone down.
"You have good ears, Alex-you must have heard the entire talk. Go ahead. Just tell me if this Ryan is the Ryan after you meet him," The guy breathed, brows pulled together tight, as if he was too annoyed to manage two majors at the same time and only needed the answers.
So, they left.

They walked over once more from the headquarters to the office across the road, Mars' shoes dragging on the floor since his brain was so full of thoughts to recognize that his feet were dragging. Gee, here, in the complex world full to the brim with prominent Prodigies, such unprecedented things were going to be common to him.
An awkward silence jumped into presence between then, so Lyra knew that words were desperately needed. However, her head was looking around inside itself of what to talk about, herself.
"Lewis looked quite angry when his man had lied to him, if the guy we're heading to right now is the Ryan we're looking for," Alex Mars finally said, forcing the word out of his mouth. Lyra nodded her head precisely within merely 15 degrees.
"He's always been like that,"
"Do you think it's 'cause he's overcaring ...or hates disobedience in the Rebels?"
Suddenly, a few questions were forming in his head, and he was, once more, simply glad that Lyra had been the one to get out of the house after him(though anyway, she'd have been the only one to have the brain capacity or capability to fascinate him in any kind of talk).
Lyra paused, eyes darting to the few, gloomy minors on the street before answering. Alright, to be honest, trying to answer, for she also didn't know the answer for that question.
Alex utilized that opportunity to throw her another question.
"Do you trust the guy?" Well, the question had been on his mind lately-for, he had only seen everyone be very obedient to Lewis, as if they were all the man's loyal, personal pets, calling to their owner "Lew, Lew, here's the footage you wanted!" or, "Lew, I came up with the solution to the problem you so wanted!" He knew that history wasn't correct all the time-but also knew that sometimes, history was right a few times, and most nations(to be exact, all nations) had more than one party of opinions, But the Rebels only seemed to have a single party, so dedicated to the co-founder, Lewis.
This simply didn't seem logical nor with positive futures to Alex Mars, for he had seen Napoleon demolish his own country because he had been the leader of the major and only party in France, decades ago.
Who knew something similar might happen to the Rebels? he grumbled inside his head.
"Well, at least, I'm not a 100% fanatic of him," Lyra finally admitted, eyes now chasing a single white cloud in the dusty sky, then looking away and shaking her head.
"Clouds always have a number below 5, though I don't know why and how...that one was a 3,"
"Gee," He replied in the only way possible, which somehow rhymed with the last word she had said and made their silence awkward-once more.
"So what of you?" Lyra utilized his inactivity in spewing up questions to block his previous attacks back. "I don't, either. What did he really do to found the Rebels? He only followed that genius guy Marcus till the poor fella died and now he is the leader, only because he had been there when his friend founded the group, huh? Or, am I narrating a narrow vision clouded by prejudice about the guy right now?" He hit her attack back over the net with quite a lengthy answer. But Lyra now let go of the stupid game they had just been playing, yes, the silly question-and-answer-battle that had jumped into existence between them, with her signature, huge and depressed sigh.
"We'll have to wait and see. This is one of the few correct and true pronouns ordinary Americans have. Time will tell, you know,"
Since there was no point in showing that he agreed with her, Alex didn't reply.
Now in his head, finally cleared by that previous battle, walked in, in a formal style, the perfect and vivid memory of watching the grainy CCTV footage, watching all the people existing there on the bare streets simply for him and Andrew. Though Andrew was the true guy deserving all of the honor and this would have been the first time he'd have been celebrated in his life by so many people(if he had been alive till then), Alex himself still felt extremely overwhelmed to form any other distinct words in his head once more-this was also the first time he'd seen people support, cheer, chant, and march for him, trying to not care about the thought Prods by the gun muzzles of those stupid, obedient soldiers.
And...guess what? He actually felt good to be in the spotlight, being the guy to have his name chanted over and over and over again for minutes(since he had only seen part of the footage, he didn't know every part of it. Actually, the march had lasted an hour and 23 minutes before the soldiers had managed to kick the last protester off the streets). He just loved it, and, realized that he had always craved such huge sums of attention at least a tiny bit in his heart, during his entire life till then, though a larger and stronger part of him had tried to convince himself that he didn't care-of the ignorance he's always received, of all the attention he simply could have gotten if he had announced his true identity as a Prod earlier on...
Then came a 'bigger thought' all of a sudden, and he froze in his tracks, for his brain was, somehow, to small to keep the 'bigger thought' and the string of commands to his legs to keep walking.
And, that 'bigger thought' was this: This opportunity, perhaps his first and last chance of attention, might be utilized to his own benefit, somehow.
Right, Alex Mars thought. Yes, I perhaps can...
If only Lyra had been telepathic enough, she's also be thinking that the idea was brilliant enough to be commented by a "Jesus, hell yeah, Al!", but, she, unfortunately, wasn't telepathic.
"The building's still some 68 meters away from you, Al. Wait, what're you so dearly pondering about?" She asked, so cluelessly. Alex Mars, for the first time, wished that Lyra would use her rare intelligence to just make herself telepathic or something.
The 'bigger thought' still occupied a huge part of his brain, so he couldn't create a command to his own body from the overloaded brain to 'just shake the hell out of it and get movin'.'
His eyes, finally(and after two minutes of staring straight into the dusty air), processed that Lyra Cannes was standing there, her brown brows creased at him, and thin arms crossed, and he finally let himself shake each part of his body back to life.
"Jesus, hell yeah," He finally said.
"Jesus, hell yeah, what in the world, Alex," Lyra said back.
"I can do it. No, we can do it," He answered.
"Yeah, I got that part. So do what, Al. I abhor the need to wait so long-I want to know what you're so concentrating on, for an entire 2 minutes," Lyra now seemed ready to launch herself at him and crack open his brain to find out his thoughts herself in a few seconds, for Mars was still in a dull state and answering rather slowly, compared to the speed of average Prods.
"-Stir up a rebellion with the protestors inside the country now," He finally said.
Lyra only stared as Alex Mars's mind also came back to 100% normal, and the first thing he worried about was, What if she reacts just like how Thomas did to my idea this morning?, for the second time that day.
But rather than that, he would have to have more pride and expectancy in having Lyra Cannes as his companion-
-for she answered much differently, and, positively than that.
"Jesus, hell yeah," She answered.

But rebellions simply weren't what they would arouse there and then-to a city hundreds of kilometers away, to a people who didn't know if Alex Mars was still alive for sure, against a huge fleet of sly military soldiers.
All the two could do now was to push the 'bigger thought' to the back of their heads and move on to go to the Martian.
After walking the 68 meters left to the building, they pushed their way through a pair of old sliding doors and wandered around in an old, dusty lobby to some hallway that led to some office space that had some 20 people behind individual computers typing away or scrutinizing carefully, simply separated by plastic panels.
"Alright. So what, now?" Lyra asked as a single man looked up to them, then, regretting his inattention, flew his eyes back to his monitor and stared like crazy at it.
He was as unfortunate as David just a few minutes ago-Alex Mars walked to the guy in particular and leaned down over the panel. The guy looked back as if he was a bunny staring into the eyes of a tiger.
"Do you know who Ryan Aris is?" He asked in a quite intimidating voice, and for a tiny second, the man's tension melted down-for he knew that Alex Mars wasn't here to accuse him over to Lewis, but to accuse or deal with Ryan Aris. "O'course. Furthest left panel, he is in," The guy said, before the fear slithered back into place and his eyes swished over to Lyra Cannes.
"Oh, gee, thanks," She said, and as they lifted their feet to head to the last panel, Alex Mars simply couldn't help noticing the sound of the man's butt hit his plastic chair gratefully.
"I can't think up of any reasons for them to be scared of teens doing their own business with the same status as them-we're all Rebels," -he also couldn't stop his tendency as asking Lyra of things he was curious of now, since he had finally accepted that the girl was always going to beat him. "There are many possible reasons for it-like, someone who's not an official employee of this building coming here may be abnormal, out of schedule. Or, Lewis may have bullied the guy secretly. Holy molly, the thing you said about Lewis keeps coming to my brain and it's trying to announce him as some internal traitor who managed to become the founder of the Rebels, Al,"
"It may be true, anyway. By the way, who was the one to say that 'time will tell'?"
He had timed his sarcasm at the right time-just after his pronunciation of the 'l' in 'tell' ended, they were at the last tiny room surrounded with those plastic panels.
As he had been throwing words back and forth with Lyra, he had been quickly forming an image of how this Ryan guy would look like. To be exact, how the Martian super-Prodigy would look like, he added. Maybe the guy would be wearing glasses and secretly contacting Mars on his computer during his shift...
Well, in all movies and novels, people who anticipate some event or someone at the first or middle part of it all somehow get depressed or disappointed. He knew that too well, for even in Andrew's The Goner, the exact same thing happened when a legend hero turned out to be a thin guy behind a flushed muscle suit.
However, he had simply hoped.
-And hopes are still anticipations-usually, which turn out to be false eventually.
The guy actually resembled Adolf Eichman in his 1961, April 11th trial. He wore thin glasses, and though he was only supposed to be 28, he had the eyes of an 80-year-old, who had a divorced wife, had smoked, drank, and played computer games for at least 65 years. However, he didn't have a potbelly like such an 80-year-old, at least, and rather had thin limbs, which sat rigid beneath his desk. His hands were still quite nimble-he held the computer mouse as if it was his horse, his car, his own hand, zapping and zipping the cursor here and there on the monitor.
"Hell," Alex said in his head, before realizing that his mouth had actually said it out loud before it was late.
As Lyra seemed to be deciding whether her companion(yes, that companion was Alex Mars) had been rude, or simply if he wasn't exaggerating, for she also thought that this Ryan wasn't Ryan-like from the description that her companion had given earlier that day, the man's eyes flickered up to Alex Mars.
-And he didn't say, "Excuse me?" nor, "Shit. Why did you just call me that way?" Instead, the guy said this:
"You read my diary?"
Jesus, Alex thought, the quickly confirmed that that hadn't been said out loud. But after reconsidering, he thought that 'Jesus' was saying out loud, for now, so he replied back quickly.
"Jesus, yeah. How did you know?"
The man didn't reply, but instead-and, incredibly-, got up from his chair fluidly and shuffled his shirt, pointing to the door.
"Outside,"
And as they walked back outside, Alex Mars confirmed himself that movies weren't always true nor correct-for, this Ryan guy had proved himself already using his brain-power instead of his physical form from the very moment they had met.
And he was so relieved by it, so relieved that his plan might simply work, and his Revolution with a capitol R  might work after all.