While Barney got to work and Lily immersed herself in a world of data she didn't understand...
Marshall's Perspective
Marshall decided his bridge needed a little physical help, and although he wanted to go to Alyx's apartment and see her, he felt that the small nearby gallery made more sense. And the hunch he followed was correct.
Because there she was, in all her splendor: Alyx, standing in front of an abstract painting full of color and fury, with her arms crossed. She wasn't smoking—logical in an enclosed space—but he also didn't see a thermos or cup of coffee. She was just there, existing and observing the painting.
Marshall approached her stealthily, as if approaching a deer. "It looks like the inside of Barney's head after three Red Bulls and a strange challenge with ballroom dancers," he murmured, standing beside her.
Alyx didn't startle, though surprised, she managed a half-smile. "I think it's a landscape trying to convey a message, albeit a very, very angry one."
"And what does it tell you?" asked Marshall, who, although looking at the painting, was referring to her general situation.
Alyx remained silent for a moment. "It tells me that chaos can have a form, that it can be contained within a frame... And that sometimes, depending on how you look at it and interpret it, it can even look beautiful." She turned her head to look directly at him. "And what do you see?"
Marshall looked at her, not at the painting. "I see my friend standing calmly, as much as possible, in a gallery on a Tuesday morning, taking her time outside her normal activities to stand in front of something, looking beyond. And for me, that's the most beautiful painting I've seen in months."
It was too sincere and too Marshall, but this time, instead of feeling cornered and pressured to open up, Alyx felt a more solid bridge under her feet. She reaffirmed it by saying, "Well, it's just me, you know," she began softly. "Taking it one day at a time."
"It's a good day," he said, and they stayed there together, looking at that painting expressing a contained chaos within its frame, understanding that it wasn't about fixing anything by force. This moment, and in general, meant being in the same place, on the same bridge, on the same side, without demanding that the other person cross to the other side from one moment to the next, but taking it step by step.
Barney's Office at the Same Time
On the other hand, with Barney and Lily, everything was different. Lily felt that a disturbing song was playing in those four walls as she saw the charts Barney obtained. They showed incredible spikes of profits generated at key moments of economic crises that no one could have predicted in so many different situations. She felt the mystery deepening, colder than just extreme productivity to silence emotional pain. All of this was something completely outside the norm.
Later in Marshall and Ted's Apartment
The whole group was gathered that afternoon, prompted by Lily and supported by Barney.
There, Lily had spread Barney's printouts on the coffee table—a sea of graphs greeted them, marked with trend lines and figures that seemed more complex than understandable.
Robin, from her chair, observed with extreme concentration; although she didn't fully understand what they said, her journalistic instinct awakened at that strange pattern.
Ted tried to find an architectural explanation, something about the structural elegance of market cycles, without much success, and was already thinking of another based on the linear and necessary processes in building a building.
"Look here," said Lily, her voice a loaded whisper, pointing to a specific date with her finger. "August 15th. The day Lehman Brothers collapsed in all the headlines, and the market simply went to hell."
"A black day, I remember," nodded Ted, recalling the general panic among that company's workers and many others.
"Exactly. And here," Lily moved her finger to an adjacent accounting record. "That same morning, early, it says that Alyx liquidated all her positions in the banking sector. But not after the news, like others did when it plummeted. But before. You see, it's as if... as if she knew it was going to rain and had taken an umbrella when no one even had a folder to cover part of their head."
An uncomfortable silence settled in the room. Marshall, who had been silent since the meeting started, said, "That could be... luck or a very strong hunch. Remember, Alyx has always had a sixth sense for disasters. Don't you remember when she predicted that Ted's microwave was going to explode? And it exploded."
"But this isn't a faulty appliance, Marshall," Robin replied, focused on unraveling the news of Alyx's strange investment success. Pointing to another notation, she continued, "It's too precise. Look at this: the mortgage crisis in October. She started investing in safe-haven funds three weeks before it happened, and even before the first analysts began talking about the turbulence they saw. This isn't a simple premonition; it's... it's foresight."
The word foresight floated in the air, heavy and ridiculous.
"Foresight?" asked Barney, who was enjoying the chaos from his sofa. "Like she has a crystal ball? Because if so, my next Legendary Challenge involves lottery numbers, and I'll need that surefire advice for that."
"It's not a crystal ball," said Lily, ignoring him. Her mind, though accustomed to simpler patterns, was now connecting the dots in a more dangerous way. "It's as if... she had an instruction manual for the future, but written in ink that fades. She knows the big events, like those catastrophes, but not the details of her own life. After all, she didn't know I was going to leave, or she would have tried to convince me not to go. But she was so surprised and hurt, now that I think about it. And even more, she didn't know how it was going to shatter her heart. But she knows this."
Marshall rubbed his face; this idea was giving him a headache. "Are you suggesting that Alyx is... a time traveler? Like in Back to the Future? But then why is she so shattered? Couldn't she fix everything?"
"Maybe not," Robin mused, her logical side taking over from her journalistic side of getting to the bottom of this. "Maybe the future doesn't work like that. Perhaps they're flashes of it, you know, like a very powerful and specific form of déjà vu. That would explain why she always seems one step ahead at work but so lost and now guarded in her personal life."
"Exactly," affirmed Lily, clinging to that theory like a lifeline. It was certainly the least terrifying alternative to being a dark and dangerous espionage secret. It was more of a curse—a burden she carries, this diffuse knowledge of tomorrow or the future. Although it only gives her an advantage in the stock market, it condemns her to see possible tragedies without being able to do anything or to constantly wonder if what she does will change something.
"It's horrible," Lily concluded.
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