by Newbiel
"Clown porn...? Don't tell me anything, I don't even want to know." Nathaniel shook his head, amused and disgusted in equal measures. "But still Lina, you are one of the more hard working employees in this whole tower. If you need to watch some anime to recharge your batteries, it's fine with me."
"Oh." Lina said happily surprised. "Thank you"
"Don't mention it. I'm here because I received your text saying that you successfully hacked into the system I gifted you. Can I see that computer?"
"Of course!" Lina shouted, opening one of her drawers and getting the laptop that Nathaniel had left under her bed some time ago.
Turning it on, Nathaniel quickly typed his password and looked at the log to verify Linda's claim. Entering that particular program was not very difficult for someone with good knowledge in programming but doing it without triggering the huge number of detection programs was immensely more difficult. Looking at the log, Nathaniel could see that Linda told him the truth, she had really done it.
"Very good Lina. I'm proud of you." Nathaniel complimented her, making her slightly blush.
"Thank you." Lina said almost bashfully but Nathaniel could see in her eyes that she wanted to say more than that but did not dare to.
"You have questions." Nathaniel said, it was a statement. "You should ask them. Don't worry, you can ask whatever you want, I will answer truthfully or not at all if I don't feel like it."
Thinking that it was a fair proposition, Linda began to think long and hard about what to ask until she settled on the thing that was the most important to her.
"Who are you?���
"Nathaniel Abraham Lyndon. Singer, Musician, Lyricist, Actor, Millionaire." Nathaniel shrugged, a hint of mirth in his eyes.
"Oh come on! I know that but we both know you are much more than that and despite looking through your life with a microscope, I could not find anything supporting my theory. This is so infuriating!"
"Tell me what you found then and I will see if you deserve the complete truth." Nathaniel offered.
"I know you were in that hotel when terrorists attacked it. The FBI tried to wipe your presence from the scene but like always, they left behind some bread crumbs. I know that you are not the type to hide under a bed while people are dying so you were surely doing something else in there. I know the spybot you used to infiltrate my computer when I hacked into yours was like nothing I have ever seen, even on the dark web. So it's probably gouvernemental in nature and coming from an intelligence agency CIA, NSA or DOD, you name it. It's not your everyday singer that has access to that kind of toy. Am I working for a spy, sir? Lina asked, looking at him intently.
"Hummm, not bad Lina. I'm giving you a B minus for your work. Impressive, but you could have done much better. To answer you, no, I'm not a spy but not that far off either. I do not work for any intelligence agency either, you can do better than that Lina. Don't disappoint me."
"If it's not them, it's surely the army or Minister of Defense."
"Higher than that Lina." Nathaniel smiled.
"There is nobody higher than them! They are the only one in the government with that kind of influence and means except…" She started to say before her eyes went wide.
"Now you got it." Nathaniel laughed.
"But that's impossible! You are sixteen, he probably doesn't even know that you exist!" She shouted.
"That was true until last week when I kind of sneaked into the White House and offered him my service. You heard about what happened with the cats right? That was a cover up to hide what I've done."
Hearing that, Lina kind of gaped at him, hesitating between calling some doctors to examine his head and believing him. She finally chose the second option even if it was a close call.
"Why are you telling me this!? If it's true, everything that you said is classified information, you could go to jail for that!"
"That's where you are wrong. You know, I don't work alone for the President, I created a team with me. A team that needs you Lina, would you join us?"
"Why me? There are a lot of people more experienced and more qualified than me!" She asked, her mouth still open, trying to get her head around what she was hearing.
"More qualified and experienced, yes but you have the potential to become one of the better hackers on this planet. The program that I gave you, the one you cracked building something from scratch in twenty hours was the new encryption program that will be used by the FBI in the coming month. It was developed by the NSA and you still cracked it in less than a day Lina. I need your talent."
"You orchestrated everything. Every talk, every assignment you gave me. That was all for you to test me, examining me, training me." Lina realized, thinking about every conversation they had together.
"Of course but can you blame me? I needed to know if I could trust you, if you had what it takes to do the job and you have it, Lina."
"What will be our job?" She finally asked.
"To resume, helping people."
"American people?"
"No, all people Lina." Nathaniel corrected her.
Thinking about it, it indeed sounded good. Maybe it was finally the chance that she had hoped for all her life. Making a difference, helping people and perhaps, evolving. She always wanted to become more than the shy, bashful and nerdy Lina and now, someone was offering her exactly that.
"Will there be girls in that team? I'm tired of working around so much testosterone." Lina said, making a head movement in the direction of the door, designating the IT department.
"Of course, you will not be the only girl in that team. I promise." Nathaniel said.
"Good. I'm in Sir." She said, trying to make a military salute.
"We have a lot of work to do." Nathaniel sighed, looking at her messy salute.
Chapter 114: :
Los Angeles. 21/11/2012. 10:30.
"... And our two guest for tonight are Isla Fisher and Nathaniel Lyndon!" Ellen Degeneres said while the audience got to their feet and started clapping.
Isla and Nathaniel appeared on the stage, waving at the audience and hugging Ellen before Nathaniel offered the first seat to Isla and sat on the second one. He had flown last night in the company jet with his whole family and Maggie to come to LA since tonight would be the premiere of 'Now You See Me'. Wanting to make the most of the trip, he had asked this day to be the one where he could come to the Ellen Degeneres show and make a promotion for the movie.
He had asked the whole crew who wanted to come along with him here and Isla had spontaneously accepted. They had met backstage and Nathaniel finally met Isla's husband who was on and on a nice guy. He himself did not come alone either as he had his mothers come along and of course Maggie. His grandparents chose to visit the LA branch of their family label without telling anyone about it. His grandfather liked to do this kind of thing to keep his employees sharp.
"I'm glad to see you both here tonight." Ellen said.
"Glad to be here." Isla answered.
"It's good to be back." Nathaniel said with a happy smile.
"Well, since you talked about this, the last time that we were here, you were just a singer that had made music with his girlfriend…"
"Taylor is still not my girlfriend." Nathaniel piped but Ellen continued like she did not hear anything but the smile on her face spoke plenty.
"... and now, you are an actor. How did that happen?"
"By chance actually. The person who had the role got sick and could not continue the film so they were pressed for time to find a substitute. The casting director came across me on Youtube and thought I could be a good addition to the set so she asked me to come and take an audition. In fact, I had that offer just after your show. You are my own lucky charm Ellen." Nathaniel smiled at her.
"Really? I did not know that! So coming here and seeing me makes your luck rise? You should come more often then." She said, smiling. "What happened next?"
"So I accepted to go to this audition but I had only a week and a h
alf to prepare and no experience whatsoever in acting. So I looked at a couple of videos on Youtube about magic tricks and card tricks and I loved it. It was so much fun that I kept looking at videos and eventually made my own tricks. I had an advantage since card tricks need a lot of hand dexterity and I have played piano since I was four or something so it was relatively easy for me. I came like that to the audition, still knowing nothing about acting, I thought that I would never get the role in a million years but it would still be fun. There were other actors, good and famous ones, with me taking the audition so I was sure that I would never get the role. I ended up doing okay I guess but not enough to be taken ultimately. We were going to leave with my agent when I was surprised to see the whole crew coming to me."
"Why did they come?" Ellen asked, getting curious and interested by the story. Isla took over at that point.
"What he did not tell you was when he was talking with the director before doing the audition, he had a spoon in his hand. While he was talking, he was making the spoon appear and disappear in his hand, that was totally crazy! Morgan Freeman was the one who picked up on that and we got curious so we came and started talking with Nathaniel. At first we thought he was really a magician and we did not believe he was a singer until Jesse Eisenberg checked on Youtube. When he left, we realized that he was meshing with us really well and his ability to do tricks could be a plus to the movie, so we fought for him to get the role and he got it." Isla smiled.
"So you took someone who had never done even one acting class in his life and gave him a primary role in a big movie production? This is crazy!" Ellen said astonished.
"Well, not exactly. Morgan was strict with me. He told me that since we had a week before the shooting of the movie begins, they were going to take turns with me and teach me everything I could remember. So for a week, I had fifteen hours or more of acting classes. And you saw the cast right? Morgan Freeman, Woody Harrelson, Mark Ruffalo, Jesse Eisenberg and the gorgeous red head to my left. They were all my teachers."
"That was unbelievable actually, we never met someone like Nathaniel, he was incorporating knowledge unlike anything we had seen before. We would never have to explain something twice as he understood everything that we taught him. I understand now how he could have aced the LSAT." Isla said, awe dripping in her voice.
"Yes, I wanted to talk to him about this, I don't know if you knew this but Nathaniel here, sixteen years old, has been accepted at Columbia Law School after he aced the LSAT and already has been published in a couple of laws newsletter. This is very impressive. How did that happen Nathaniel?" Ellen said to the audience before asking him a question.
"Well, you remember when you asked me what I was going to do next and I told you I would not go to High School?" Nathaniel smiled at Ellen.
"Yes, I remember quite well, so that was it?" How did you do it?"
"Well, I was always good at remembering stuff and the LSAT does not change much from year to year so it's easy to prepare for it. I downloaded the last fifteen years of tests and started working on it until I was confident enough to succeed. It took a lot of work but when I was taking it, it did not appear really difficult at that point." Nathaniel said honestly.
"I'm sure a lot of people working on LSAT right now are going to want to kill you hearing you say it was easy.." Ellen laughed.
"Well, I'm just being honest. If they want to be angry about it, it's their problem. I already talked about it with other lawyers or want to be lawyers and they all agree with me. If they want help, I can open my DM on Twitter, I have done it a couple of times already to help some of my followers."
"Many girls on those DM?" Ellen asked with mirth.
"Well, except you, no. Oups, I believe I was not supposed to say that." Nathaniel said with mock surprise.
After that, the conversation steered to the movie and the song that Nathaniel had made for it. On and on it was a fun moment, especially when like the last time, Nathaniel took control of the show and started playing piano and singing along, bringing a couple of female audience members with him to sing, Isla and Ellen joining along obviously. At the end of the show, Ellen wanted to call that the 'Lyndon game' but Nathaniel stopped her in her tracks saying it sounded a little too much like a drinking game for his taste and to come up with something else.
They left each other after promising to call when one was visiting New York or Los Angeles to get dinner together. Nathaniel agreed and picked his mother up who was still shocked, seeing him so familiar and at ease with Ellen Degeneres. For them Ellen was a huge star and to their eyes, Nathaniel was still their baby. He just laughed at their shocked faces and bought them with him out of the studio.
******
After the movie ended, the audience started clapping. Nathaniel was surprised to watch the movie once done when he was comparing it to all the scenes that he had turned many months ago. He was also surprised to see how much he was in it while he was the youngest by a large margin and the others were all huge stars. Still, his family was happy to see him this much and even his grandfather cracked a smile at the end. He was glad that his grandson was successful since it would also put a good light on him and the company. In fact, he did not say anything to Nathaniel but the fact that Nathaniel was labeled as a genius in law was reassuring his investors and even their stock had taken a couple of points in Wall Street which was always good.
"It was okay I guess even if the magic thing was kind of stupid." He said.
Even if it was said as a compliment and without hostility, he still received a kick from his wife and a frown from his daughter. Nathaniel just laughed it out. He knew his grandfather was not the kind and cute type.
"Thank you grandpa."
"Don't listen to him dear, I think it was fine and you were awesome in it!" Diane said happily.
Thanking his grandmother, Nathaniel started to look around for Maggie. This night was important as the movie was not only shown to the actor but also to the other professionals, the studio and even other directors. The fact that Nathaniel got five seats for himself and his family was not normal as places were usually given scarcely and he knew only Maggie's influence in Hollywood was responsible to have made that possible. That's why he was looking for her to thank her.
Finally finding her, she was talking to a man around thirty years old. Looking in his direction, she waved at him to make him come over. Excusing himself from his family, he made his way to her.
"Ah good, you are here. I present to you Nathaniel Lyndon. Nathaniel, this is Marc Webb, a director who wanted to talk to you." Maggie introduced.
Exchanging a handshake, the two men observed each other before Marc started talking.
"I'm going to be honest here, I think this movie was kind of bad. I was almost willing to leave until I started paying special attention to you. I got curious so I googled you and I was surprised to find out it was your first movie. You have that kind of heroic aura around you and I believe you would be perfect for the movie I'm going to make. The studio already got the green light, I'm just searching for the right main character and I think I found him." Marc said, looking at him intently.
"What is the name of the movie?" Nathaniel asked, curiously. He chose not to debate on what Marc said earlier about 'Now You See Me' being shitty. Everyone was entitled to their own opinion and the man in front of him was without a doubt an expert in this area. Nathaniel was anything but that.
"The Amazing Spider Man." Marc answered with a smirk.
Chapter 115: :
"Spider Man? The movie with Tobey Maguire is not that old I think." Nathaniel said with a frown.
"2002 for the first movie and 2007 for the third and last opus of the series." Maggie interjected.
"Very good." Marc complimented, nodding in the direction of Maggie before refocusing on Nathaniel. "Yes, it's not that old but the studio wants a fresh actor to hype the movie and they want it soon. The movie was originally planned to be released this year but I refused since I did not f
ind the Main Character I wanted. They suggested a dude who was on 'The Social Network' but I was not sold on the idea." He said.
"But why me? You are not going to say that you made up your mind just by watching me making hand tricks on a screen. It can't be it."
"You are right, there is more. I called Jillian Brown and she said only good things about you and god knows how rough that woman is. She is one of the more skilled agents in finding hidden gems in this whole town and she found you. Then there is Maggie here who is also well known in Hollywood to be one of the best agents and she is working for you. They would not back you up this much if you were not talented."
Nathaniel sighed internally. He knew the reason that Jillian only said good things about him was not for his talent in acting but because he saved her life and her daughters life, almost dying in the process. For Maggie, Nathaniel suspected that she worked with him only to bully him and charge him more money but despite all that, god knows she was worth it.
"You are still not convinced." Marc observed. "You know I made a lot of video clips for singers before becoming a movie director. Maybe it's influencing my decision."
"Really? With whom did you work?" Nathaniel asked curiously.
"Evanescence, My Chemical Romance, Miley Cyrus, Green Day, and others."
"Wow that's impressive. I'm nowhere as known as them though." Nathaniel said.
"You say that but you have more followers on twitter than any of them except Miley of course."
"It's because my fan base is relatively young and more inclined to go on social media. It's not proof that I'm better than them, quite the opposite actually." Nathaniel explained.
"At least what they said about you is true, you are indeed smart and humble. It just makes me want you even more. Will you become my lead actor, please?"
"Listen Marc, you seem to be a nice guy and your movie does indeed tempt me but I will be honest. I'm already running for time each day and it will only get worse at the start of next year. I can't become your actor, I'm sorry." Nathaniel said with regret.
