The Expatriate-the story of a Prodigy

18. Them

  The next day, they came on a truck they had obtained illegally from Canada. The leader himself came. They searched the desert with curious eyes till they found a clump of brown hair sticking barely out of the sand. 

 They sighed out in relief, instead of surprise as if they had seen such a scene for the first time-well, to be exact, seeing people buried in the sand like that wasn't an abnormal occurrence for them. 

 They pulled him up like a carrot, then dumped him onto the back of their bongo truck. Then, leaving deep and hasty tire marks onto the yellow sea of sand, they drove away.

 -Just like that. 

 This boy wasn't their worst fetched people who had been ditched off at the desert by the gov, but he nor wasn't the best. They observed that he had sand inside his air tube, every part of bare(and the parts underneath his thin shirt)were burned or scarred. He was also drying up, and his heart was feeble, ready to blow out its last beat like a candle. 

 Still, they had great technology and set to work on him right away. First, they took him to their base. Second, they stripped him off and assigned him to a professional former doc. Third, when the man was finished, they put him in a room on a bed, waiting for him to wake up. 

 Meanwhile, Alex explored every unconsciousness he hadn't been unaware of, every piece of memory his super-fast brain had remembered from the dawn of life. The notice of grey, his mom, the strange noise in his ears. He saw it all stream away like a fast-forward movie film in his eyes, all those scenes, all those words. He watched the movie silently till it came to the part where the older, current self of him was at the military base, eyes watching Andrew get tied to the rod very vividly. Hell, the movie had gone too far, showing an over-rated part of itself. s**t, he had to stop the movie and get the hell out of the theater. 

 Suddenly, he heard voices. Murmurs, chuckles, shitty words that he also liked to use. He turned his head around frantically, shielding his eyes from watching the horror movie that was unfolding in front of his eyes still, even though he wanted it to stop. He saw 2 men in some strange, green light and medical suits, whispering and groaning about him, eyes behind a big clipboard, every once in awhile flickering over to him as if amused. He waved his other hand up and down(as I told you before, the first hand was being used as a shield for his eyes), and the men turned to him, giving him surprised glances. Alex Mars pointed to the movie still playing out in front of his eyes. 

 "Can you please stop this crap movie of my life right now?" He hollered. A man with wired glasses on his long nose, gave him the most annoyed look that a person could give another human being. 

 "Um-"

 "Or is this a gate that you should definitely pass to go visit Hades in hell? If I am correct, can you just give me a pass straight to the underworld?" He asked, eyes growing big as he noticed that Andrew was now going to be killed inside the screen's frame. 

 He watched in annoyance as one of the men's eyes arched with amusement, taking their time. 

 "Of course not. I mean, you're not dead, even," Then he turned to the other. "Give him some more sleeping pills-if he rants about death and movies once more, give him another dose, but don't let him die from the overdose," The man turned away and opened a door cut into thin air, then got out. Alex stared as the man left in the room with him. He turned back to the screen and found nothing in its space. Just air. Jesus. 

 "Movies and death," The other man murmured, pulling out a tiny syringe and turned to Alex. 

 "Strange-and oddly pleasing-combination of words, indeed," Those were the last words Mars heard before the syringe got him and he drifted away once more. 

 The next time he resurfaced for real was a whole week later. 

 The sensation of waking up for real was a bit strange. He felt as if he was drifting with the clouds for one moment, and the next, as if pulled subtly but quickly like from some vacuum, he was sucked in seconds out of the clouds and sky. He squirmed, not too comfy with the real world against his skin directly, then realized that he was propped against a pillow. 

 If the two men had been true and real-life figures, he couldn't still be in hell. And that only meant... 

 "Motherfuckin' Jesus," He whispered, and got even more surprised that his mouth wasn't as dry as before, and was even capable of making up clear words. 

 "Ok, those words weren't what I really expected to hear from you as you woke up to live your, well, as I like to term it, your second life," 

 Alex Mars opened his eyes with extreme comfort and ease, and let his eyes get used to a dull and yellow mood lamp, the black darkness as the backdrop of the scene, and a Black American face behind the lamp. The man had this beard which he wore as a proud buzz, and amused eyes, head bald, and looking about to be in his mid-30s or something. 

 "Hey there," The man said, wrinkling his eyebrows when Alex Mars just kept staring. 

 "But I can't be alive," Mars replied, and the guy shrugged. "You got a point there, boy. Yes, you can't be alive, and must have been a rotting piece of a carcass out there if we hadn't fetched you after days of waiting," 

 Alex just had to stare a bit more at the man. 

 "f**k. What? Fetch me after days of waiting?" He cried out, gripping a sheet on his body that he hadn't realized it was there. 

 The man gave him the 'Woah, woah, calm-the-heck-down" face, even waving his hands in front of him as if the boy was out of his lasso. 

 "I know, I know, boy. But we were waiting for you to get out of gov hands completely. Please, I'll explain it all to you slowly, don't make me a pleading grownup to you-though I know that here, age doesn't matter too much," Alex felt flustered by the man's bluff, but still, decided to wait and see. 

 "Explain," He demanded curtly. 

 The man grinned, then rubbed his hands together. 

"First? Introduction. I am Lewis. Just Lewis-no back name, though I had one many years ago. And this is a group I made 3 years ago. It focuses on gathering well, Expatriates. Prodigies, usually. I am a Prod myself, boy. I had brilliant plans and extremely fast thoughts, sometimes even faster than the normal Prods. I guess I used my thoughts and words too much against the gov-I worked as a reporter, and secretly publicized my article expressively showing my hatred against the gov's policies. And in a day, they started to corner me, coming to my city, my town, then to my house. I am not very good at P.E. like the others, strangely, so I was caught and pushed in jail the next day without a try at resistance. Then a week later, they pulled me out and banished me. I wandered like you, trust me. After a single day, I felt as if I was dying and was being filmed in some movie all about torture and death. But at about 1 in the midnight, I found Marcus. He had been also a banished Prod, who had been banished a day earlier than me. We both were barely surviving, but Marcus showed me how he had detached his gov tracker from his ankle-well, by constantly burning the thinnest part of the thing with his glasses and the sun, like how the town kids kill ants efficiently, yes, he was complete genius-and he helped me do it, then we were free for real. He studied the GPS and chips inside the thingy and actually, in a single night when I held desperately to my life with sleep, programmed and tinkered the thing around a bit so it would indicate when we were near the nearest piece of land with connections to the satellites in orbit of Earth. So we finally arrived in Canada with only death ahead of us-we had been purely lucky to have made it there, with the base we had been banished that had somehow been the nearest one to Canada. Anyway, Canada had less regulations, but its population was below being meager, with most lands commercialized and industrialized concrete land with no people on it, yet to turn into desert. So we quickly got permission to stay from the gov in a single hour after proving we had been banished from the U.S, and were never spies. So, we built our organization there, at the right edges of the country. And eager to welcome...Prods in. We both wanted revenge and justice, knew that the current gov was ruining the country we had all once loved, that of the time before you were even born, I suppose. And we knew that the best way to change their thoughts that every one it had inside needed to be the same and loyal to the gov-was to utilize the very citizens they detested as 'abnormalities'. So the organization was born in less than a month with Marcus and me-the...Rebels," Lewis Nobody waved his hands in the air, eyes already in the distant past. 

 "Such a...normal name," Alex Mars commented, and his voice cracked. Lewis Nobody gave him a belly-laugh. 

 "I know. But the name to define us when we would finally rouse the coup'de tat. And we all hope it would happen soon," 

 "So exactly, where am I and how did you bring me here?" MArs asked, wrinkling his forehead, all the words the man was saying going directly to his memory space.

 "In Canada, and we brought you here by illegal truck. I went for you myself-" "Wait, what about you explain about how you watched and waited for me till now first, sir?" Alex asked. Lewis gave him one annoyed look, then nodded as if agreeing to himself. "Right. Well, after we established the Rebels, we brought in some hi-tech stuff from the abandoned buildings, and we started to heck in our best to the gov's surveillance cameras in the expatriating bases, though the sounds were all unclear and static. Well, Marcus did most of it. And whenever we saw one being banished, we raced out in a Canadian truck we had fetched from the streets which had been lucky enough to have the keys in already. So we started to fetch people on and on-and thanks to the brainy army we managed to build, all kinds o technology and brilliance was enabled and popped up each day, and now, the Rebels-" Lewis Nobody grinned at the air, then Mars. "I would like to say, invincible. We now have the possibility of winning the gov completely."

 Alex Mars was left speechless. In the world he had thought had been only filled in with dust and sand grains, out there, had been the haven for all expatriated Prods, all wanting to change the current American government. Something he had thought could be only achieved in Utopia. And here, he would be even able to do whatever he wanted without hiding his feelings. 

 "What do you think?" Lewis asked. 

 "This is simply supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, Lewis Nobody," Mars breathed, and Lewis har-hared. 

 "I know, boy, and I have so many plans....but the points, right now, you. What's your name?" 

 Alex swallowed. 

 "Alex Mars," he answered. Lewis' eyes gleamed along with the yellow light reflected into his eyes from the bedside mood lamp. 

 "Cool. Are you interested in joining the army to make the government better, the lives of those normal citizens more promising and fuller?"

 Alex Mars nodded, not believing in the situation. He had been brought back from the dead, and he was very grateful for it, though he had wanted death so eagerly before. And now, his savior was offering him to ticket to Utopia. It as a must so much. 

 He nodded. 

 "Great, Welcome to the Rebels, Alex," Lewis gave the bed a mighty thump, probably since Alex was still too weak for a good clap on the back, and Alex felt his bed waver up and down, but wasn't annoyed at all. 

 He only just couldn't believe it, that was all.  

 He stayed on his bed till the next morning, and only Lewis visited him. He finally now looked around his room, full of hope and glory, instead of thoughts on how he would die, if he would die thinking of whom, etc. It was quite small but looked new and though bare with no much furniture except the bed he was on, a sophisticated door and mood lamp which looked like a pudding. He spent his hours staring at the thing till his eyes would sting and he would let himself slip into his series of sleep he was now having. 

 During the afternoon, Lewis got to him and let him free out of the bed. he gave Alex Mars a sort of clothes-a white shirt and black leggings, then gave him time to slowly dress up after a long shower, after at least 3 weeks, in the bathroom that was right outside the room. When he was done, Lewis led him down a bare and cement hallway. Rather than being worried and nervous, Alex Mars actually felt as if he had been reborn as Lewis Nobody had said as he woke up and everything looked so lucky and happy. A smirk rose from him when he looked at the walls and even Lewis that the man for a second, suspected that the boy might be gay. 

 They reached a metal door and Lewis pushed it open with his shoulder. The door opened to a room with dark marks on the dirty floor showing that walls and machines had occupied the space years ago. A few dirty windows lined the walls on the left and a single desk occupied space in the middle of the room. 

 "What building are we in?" Alex Mars asked, staring at the empty desk. Lewis pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen to check that it was 9 in the morning. 

 "We're simply in an office building of some corporation that made furniture, I think. Well, we Rebels have colonized a few of the buildings in the city, and the government doesn' even care too much of us, so expect to see more, and this building is kind of our HeadQuarters. So, you're going to tell us your best thing and a short summary of your life so we can assign better training and living and maybe psychological sessions in case you might be having problems with mental health thanks to the stupid gov," Lewis reached out and pulled open a thinner and weaker-looking door which led to the metal doors of an elevator. "We're going downstairs, come on," Instead of pressing the button, the man actually pulled open the metal doors and stepped into a cold and metal case, and Mars followed, still not very much deterred by how everything looked so old and budding and makeshift. His smart brain was expecting to see something more sophisticated soon, and he was right.

 The elevator rumbled them down with terrifying speed which Alex found thrilling to the third floor and when they stepped off it, the warm air of coffee that Alex hadn't smelled long since the time he left his house hit his nose. There were a lot of tall white stalls that lined each space like organized mazes. Lewis2 weaved himself through the narrow hallways created by the stalls till he poked his head into an opening that looked like a random stall to Alex. But Lewis poked his head back out, gestured at Alex to someone inside the stall, then prodded the boy inside. 

 Alex Mars found himself in a tiny room created by the thin and tall stalls which had a thin laptop, camera, and a thousand notes and pens on a messy desk. Also, 3 coffee cups were located on a few of the notes. An Asian man was sitting behind the desk, sipping his fourth cup of coffee. He looked to be about, well, surprisingly, in his early 20s, with black hair and a small beard on his chin which he was rubbing absent-mindedly, eyes fixed on the laptop screen. The guy's eyes darted to Alex, then froze-but not in the wordless, staring, and impolite way, but in the 'Woah, there you are' style that Alex wasn't intimidated at all-though there was little possibility for him to be startled in his dreamy, positive state. 

 "Here's the guy, Dave," Lewis Nobody shook his fingers at Alex and the Asian man nodded, banging down his cup of coffee. The man offered Mars a hand, and Alex shook it. Dave nodded. 

 "Hey there, welcome, welcome," The guy murmured as if it was his job's slogan, then stared at the boy. "I'm David Kim, a minor. Now, I'm going to ask you to fill out this thingy here and introduce yourself to the Rebels-" "Um, minor?" Alex asked, confused for a lot of reasons first, he had never met a Korean in person, and he couldn't guess the meaning of the word 'minor' here.

 David shot a look at Lewis, who bit his lip apologetically. 

 "Seems like the boss forgot to explain. Prodigies can be classified into two-some can be just simple, smart-os, while the others can be the real supernatural peeps who are possible at everything. Ok, the last part was a bit of an exaggeration. Anyway. So Since I can only do quick calculations and that stuff, I work at the office. And the majors train and raid the empty, unventured buildings of the city for devices. So, now, to restate, I'm going to ask you if you're. major," As the man whirled around to hand a prepared file to him, Alex Mars felt as if he already liked this guy. 

 David gave him the file, then leaned against the wall. Alex sat at the desk and opened the file to find the first page to be his picture of when he had been 8 and was forced by his homeroom teacher to get his picture taken. Below it was a string of his information, such as where he was living, and even all his school grades, which were all A+, obviously. 

 "Those were all of the personal info we could scrape together about you using face recognition tech we developed ourselves. YOu seem to have done a good job of hiding yourself, Alex Mars," Lewis' voice boomed in the room. "Mars? Sleek," David murmured. 

 The next page was filled with questions from top to bottom-which ability he had, when he had found it out, whether he had been Muted or not, etc, etc. Calmly, Alex filled it all out, not caring of the people watching behind him, but concentrating on reality, like how he had gotten there, and how lucky he had been. He also realized that Fawkes had been wrong-Utopia, though a bit limited, could exist, after all.  

 When he was done, without glancing at the paper, David slipped back the papers into the file and tucked the thing under his arm and left swiftly. Unsure if he would have to leave also, Alex got up from his seat and watched alertly as Lewis pushed his butt onto the chair himself. 

 "So, I have so much to tell you about this world you were so unaware of, Alex," He said, spinning Alex's pen between his index and middle finger. "Then you better should tell me soon," Alex said. Jesus, was he so anxious to learn about the new life he had gotten himself into. "So, we have jobs here, and all the Prods are required to do what they're allowed to do. There are 4 in a big sense. First is for the minors like David-yep, office work. Second is for the majors-developing new tech and strategies to improve ourselves in this grey, empty city. Third, is the governing body, which includes me, majors, and minors. We command in the end, though anyone in the prior categories can ask for a policy. and the last and most difficult-and famed-is the Raiders David and I talked of." Wow, only in a few years had this group resurrected a society out of cement, Alex Mars thought, breathing in the scent of coffee which wafted up from David's numerous cups from the table. "So do you have to be very special to become the Raiders?" He asked. The concept fascinated him-Raiders to raid for technology stuff and develop new stuff out of old remnants of the broken down city-that seemed quite fun to him while all the others would be laboring. 

 "First, you gotta be a major, second, you gotta be very efficient in your work. That's all it takes, but they're few majors, so few people to make up the Raiders right now. I hope we had more of the majors," "WHat of you?" Alex interrupted. Lewis shrugged. "As I have implied before, I am a minor. Marcus was different from me, though. He was a major apparently," "Was?" "He died in the year we got here. From the most silliest mistake-of drinking chemical ridden water he thought was safe from an empty market as soon as we arrived here. So much of a genius, my friend was-and so much of a trivial thing he lost his life to," Lewis rubbed his head with be the pen, making red marks. "Gee," Alex finally answered after trying to decide what to say. 

 Just then, David rushed in, hand diving right away to his last cup of coffee, then waved his file at Lewis. "Goddamit, Lew, the analysts say he may have potential," The man wheezed out, flashing perfect teeth at Mars before turning away to suck in coffee. Lewis got up, rubbing his hands. "Geez, finally, things are going in a good way-a major in months! Anyway. Were you or are you Muted?" Hell, the exact same question Chris the Martyr had asked me. Things were 'coinciding'. 

 "UM, kinda both. I am Muted-" -Alex watched as both men's faces grew sober-"but I grew out of it. I have the thing inside, but it's ineffective," Their faces relaxed, and Lewis punched David on the back, making the guy yelp. "Good, good. Ok, let' wait for the analyzers to study you a bit more, and while that, I'm going to take you to your own apartment room," "Guess we prods have great advantages-a apartment for each of them, I mean," Lewis waved away the boy's words and prodded him back out the door, yelling behind him. "Report to me as soon as possible, Dave," THen, they were both out. 

 As they headed to the steel box-elevator, Alex Mars still couldn't get a grip on how things were going, how they were going on so fast, and so smooth. And though Alex might think of his parents, Chris, suicide, Andrew, killing Fawkes, and so much more, not being able to get a firm grip on how stuff was going on around him could be said to be extra-peculiar. 

 He once more felt as if he was in some dream or a happy afterworld as the elevator closed its doors and plunged down to ground level to intrude him to a more unprecedented world for himself. 

 The doors slid open and they walked out. The first thing Alex noticed was that the ground level was preserved exactly as it had been before the Rebels colonized the whole place-a simple office lobby. A huge counter with pens and pencils lined the wall and the marble floor beneath his shoes rang every time he moved to touch the walls. He heard his new boss chuckle his belly laugh. "It's as if this place's mecca to you. Come on, get out of here and explore the unknown," He gestured to a set of wide automatic glass doors. Hell, yeah, Alex thought and even before he could nod, his feet were already carrying himself to the doors. They flung open on their hinges when they sensed his approach, and Alex watched in disbelief at the street in front of him. 

 The scene was as if it had been brought back to restoration from a sci-fi movie set. 

 A road with 2 lanes each side stretched in front of him, and a few cars raced down each side. However, those cars weren't ordinary ones, like the automatic drivers or hydrogen ones back home, but their designs were completely strange, as if from a sci-fi world. They wheezed on the roads, zapped into his sight, then zapped away. Also, there were people. They strolled the streets, playing pranks on each other, racing, and staring at random objects. Well, Alex thought, those people weren't also very ordinary like the cars. Some held their hands in front of them and concentrated on each finger for minutes, while some others rapped out numbers from a distance, which Alex himself noticed as the...well, 73rd number below the dot on π. 

 He realized that they were his people in 1.08 seconds. 

 They were Prodigies. 

 And they were all over the place. 

 Alex Mars knew that he had to belive his eyes, and it still took him a moment to fully take trust in them. He was seeing his people, who had been living in this safe haven they had been established some time ago without his knowing, and they were flourishing, even planning a rebellion against the government. He didn't feel anger or sadness at being left out, bt actually felt as if he had finally caught of with the trend.

 Thus, he felt as if he was finally 'back' in his place, realizing that he would be able to do so many things that had been restricted in his horrible past. He could be the normal one here, finally-no need for intense acting and playing along.

 -He had never felt so welcomed and satisfied before in his short life of 17 years until that moment.