3.1.3

The next week was finals, so Alick spent most of his free time studying, as best he could without his book. He spent most of his time in the congregation, as a way to make up for his absence on Friday night. Being at home, of course, there was a constant need to keep up his sonated walls, but the further the incident fell into the past, the more it faded, little by little, from his mind. Most people were still wary of what had actually gone on, but when the descriers tried to read him, all they continued to find was layer upon layer of information about the Russo Japanese war and the number e in relation to ln. By Monday, as he left he could feel their scrutinizing letting up, at least a bit.
Finals week was over by Thursday, and his three finals were spread out between the four days pretty evenly. Monday morning he headed back to the library for a few hours of studying before his Math 356 final. He headed to his regular spot on the tenth floor, and settled in to work. He hadn't heard any after effects of the incident that took place on Friday, but then the congregation was so isolated from the outside world that he probably wouldn't have heard anything if World War III had started.
He had been studying for a good ten or fifteen minutes in a comfortable chair overlooking the back pathways behind the library before he heard the elevator ding and a group crowd out of it to their various places on the floor. He could hear a large jumble of people's thoughts as they passed by, all of them incredibly loud according to their individual  stress level, so he had been able to successfully tune them out for a moment before-
That's him! Alick knew the thought was pointed at him, about him. He whirled around to face the girl who had just exploded with emotion - he felt shock and confusion and maybe a bit of happiness. It was, in fact, the same girl that he had come to the rescue of Friday night. She wore an expression of shock on her face as she stared at him, and he back at her.
"You... You're back." she said, in case Alick had missed the fact that he was, in fact, back. Alick panicked. He didn't say anything, he knew he shouldn't be relating with this girl, whomever she was, she knew too much already. Unsure of what to do, he started packing up his bag. He'd just leave. It didn't occur to him that she would follow him.
That's definitely him. I know I'm not crazy. What should I do? Should I say thank you? I should ask his-
"So, um, what's your name?"
Her thought pattern lead right into that question, but Alick was still caught off guard. He paused in the middle of putting the last book in his bag, "It's, uhm, Alick." As calm as he may have seemed on the outside, adrenaline was pumping through his veins. He shouldn't be here. This was not okay. He slung his bag over his shoulder and bypassed the elevator in favor of the stairs. To his chagrin, however, the girl followed him. Tentatively at first, but before the door to the stairs closed behind him she was in the stairway as well. "Alick. Uh, that's a weird  name... So, uhh..." Alick heard the question in her thoughts before she said it out loud, "If you don't mind me asking, you said that you... had never used a phone before. That was you, wasn't it?"
Alick ignored her. He was already down to the doorway to the fifth floor and didn't plan to engage in conversation now. The girl seemed to realize this plan of his as well.
"Hey!" she called, jumping stairs to catch up to him, "Hey, you were the guy from Friday, right? The one who..." he could see her going through the events in her mind again, saw himself from her point of view. There was no way that she could doubt who he was. His dark hair hanging in his face and in need of a trim, his awkwardly thin, tall body, the grimy moccasins that he always wore - was wearing right now, in fact. He cursed, inwardly. Why was she here again? How did she find him so fast? He was so lost in his thoughts - and hers - that he didn't notice that she passed him on the stairs until she blocked his path.
"You! Hey!" she snapped her fingers in his face, angry and much braver than she seemed a few nights ago, "I know that you're ignoring me. I can tell. But I also know that you just freaking saved my live so I think that you owe me a bit of an explanation here."
Alick stopped short to avoid running into her. What was he supposed to do? He surveyed the options, what would it hurt, giving her a few minutes of his time? It could hurt a lot, actually, but it had also recently occurred to him that she may do a huge amount of harm with part of the information as opposed to at least a bit more of the story. He also knew that every word said to her was going to be a word against the congregation, and he certainly wasn't the only congregant here. Someone might hear him.
He sighed, "Fine," he fixed her with a look, "but not here. If you want to talk to me we're going to do it at the Science Research Laboratory."
The girl tilted her head, her gaze still fixed on him. After a second she nodded, as though satisfied with his answer, "Lead the way."
Apparently without a gun pointed at her head, the girl had a much stronger personality. They made their way swiftly to the SRL, which was known as the best place on campus to catch a nap. There was only one person who was ever found working there, and that was an old man with any number of bow ties that could be seen running from one room to another with various science-y looking instruments (according to the students, no one really knew who he was, he just showed up one day and started to act as if he belonged). Once inside, the girl led the two of them up to the second floor, to a side hallway with a wall of windows and a row of benches, deserted. She sat. "Well?" she asked, motioning for him to do the same.
He did, slowly. He didn't know how this was going to go, conversations with outsiders didn't just happen. He had no idea what she wanted to know from him, his mind had gone blank. "What explanation do you want?"
"First. Hi, my name's Ama, short for Amanda. Second, the phone." She said, "What did you mean by saying that you had never used one before? That doesn't make sense, you're in college."
"We don't have phones where I come from, we don't need them."
"Don't need them? This is America, you need phones. What are you, Amish?"
"Not... No, not exactly." Alick didn't want to elaborate, but she wasn't willing to let the issue lie.
"What the hell does that mean? I'm tired of vague, if you're not Amish, what are you?"
"I'm from the congregation." She didn't want to dance around the subject? Fine. Everyone knew that members of the congregation went here anyway, might as well know who they are.
"Really?" she looked interested, rather than the repulsed reaction that he expected, the kind that he overheard when he heard people talking about it without knowing that he was a part of it, "and you don't have phones there. Legit, no phones?"
"No phones." He shook his head, relieved. "Anything else?"
"YEAH." the girl's outrage was apparently back again. He felt her thoughts explode, as if this was the question that she really wanted to ask, but she couldn't quite form it. "You. You come up there, beat up a guy with a GUN, you can't use a phone, and right before you leave... You said that I was thinking too loud." She shook her head, "I don't get it. What the hell did that mean?"
Alick felt the fear that had subsided welling back up in him again. This was what he had been fearing. His one slip-up and she had caught it. What was he supposed to do? Well, lie was the first option, obviously. "I don't know, I wasn't thinking straight. It was nonsense words."
"No it wasn't," she shook her head, "you meant something by that. You meant something and now you're avoiding me so that you wont have to tell me. I want the truth, no matter how ridiculous."
She didn't want the truth. No one could want the truth. No one would truly want to know that someone could hear every one of their intimate thoughts. God gave the congregation this ability to abide over the outsiders, not along side them. No one was supposed to know. Telling her was clearly not right, it would be the biggest mistake he ever made.
Alick took a deep breath. "I'm going to tell you something right now, and you are going to be content with my answer. You will accept it without question. You got that?"
She nodded, rapt.
"You are thinking right now about the phrase 'nonsense words'. You've just repeated it five times in your mind and decided that it sounded like something from Alice in Wonderland. You then proceeded to think about the purple shirt with Alice and the Cheshire cat that you want to get for Christmas. The whole time that this went on, you were also thinking about what my answer to this would be, making guesses. One of them was right."
Alick got up and walked out. He was going to have to sonat that whole conversation, which was why he had gone to the SRL, where everyone goes to catch a nap. Ama didn't follow him, but her thoughts were loud enough that he could hear from the end of the hallway; she was in freak out mode, full of excitement and bursting with more questions that he wasn't going to answer. He hoped she would calm down soon, before another descrier happened by. Hoped she would forget about this.
But really, he doubted she would.