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alchemyaliceTitle: The Outrage of the Years
Author: Alchemy Alice
Artist: Ellegen
Pairing/Genre: mostly gen, eventually Arthur/Cobb, drama
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Cobb is dreaming. But he is also writing. This is a story about waking up.
Prologue: Words
Author: Alchemy Alice
Artist: Ellegen
Pairing/Genre: mostly gen, eventually Arthur/Cobb, drama
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Cobb is dreaming. But he is also writing. This is a story about waking up.
Prologue: Words
Part One: Inception
The scratch of pen against paper paused, the hand that had been writing falling slack for a brief moment, leaving one long line trailing down the page until it began again.
Miles rubbed his eyes wearily and tore off the sheet at the blank space. He blinked, hard, and then rolled back the scroll, reading the scenes in reverse. “Bloody hell,” he murmured. “You did it.”
He picked up the phone that sat next to the unconscious form of Dom Cobb.
Dominic Cobb, whose eyes twitched and tracked beneath closed lids, and whose hand was ceaseless on the slowly turning roll of unlined paper that spun out from his bedside.
Along the walls, nearly three hundred scrolls, black with ink, sat neatly in rows, each one labeled with dates and times.
The latest, the one Miles tore a chunk from, was labeled July 8th, 2010.
The earliest was March 15th.
***
“He’s written himself up four layers, simultaneously,” Miles said, still clutching the fragment of paper. “How is that even possible?”
“He’s Cobb,” Arthur said, easily enough, but he was already on the move, grabbing suitcase and passport and gun and running through his memory of recent flight schedules. “He’s beginning to process again. We can get him now, I know it.”
“If you think it’s possible,” Miles said.
“It’s Cobb,” Arthur repeated, like that was all the explanation needed. “He’s made it easy for us. I’ll call the relevant parties in. We’ll be there in a week or less.”
He snapped the phone shut and looked around at the bare military apartment. With any luck, no one would notice he’d gone.
***
It took him two days to get through to Eames, but when he did, it was more than worth it.
“Remember when I said he’d give us a chance?” Arthur said into the phone, ignoring the crackling of satellite and crowd interference.
“He’s waking? After all this time?”
“Looks like it. Want to help make it permanent?”
“Business hasn’t been the same without him. Name the locale, darling.”
***
Ariadne was even easier. He was courteous enough to call when she wasn’t in class and, without preamble, all he said was, “Professor Cobb needs your help.”
She spluttered. “What? Who is this?”
“A friend of his. Do you want to help?”
From the sound of it, she had gotten up to pace. He could practically hear her think. Eventually she said, “How? The school said he’s on indeterminate sick leave.”
“Not exactly. He’s been in rough shape, but we can fix him, if we try now.”
“Fix him? He’s not sick?”
“No. He’s not sick. But he does need help. It’ll be…difficult.”
He listened to her breathe for a second. Then she said, “Okay. Yeah, okay, I’m in. Can you really…?”
“Absolutely. We’ll get him out.” He smiled down the phone. “I’m Arthur, by the way. Cobb used to talk about you a lot. Said you were his best student.”
“Still unpublished,” she said, shrugging, “But thanks. Where is he now?”
“At his summer house in Los Angeles. I’ve already booked our flight.”
***
“So, how do we know that he can wake up?” she asked him on the plane. “All I’ve heard is that he’s been unable to come to work. They didn’t even tell us that he was comatose.”
“Not comatose, precisely,” Arthur said, “He’s dreaming. He sent himself into a catatonic state because he couldn’t function after…well, after Mal. He’s been trying to work through to a catharsis ever since.”
“He did this to himself?”
“He’s a dreamer,” Arthur said, smiling crookedly, “Fantasy was the only way he knew how to push through to reality.”
Ariadne remembered Cobb from her first year in New York.
He had shone.
The Columbia English department’s most brilliant professor; talented, handsome and young and married to a beautiful Parisian chemist he’d brought home with him after his time abroad, visionary in ways that made people wonder why he bothered teaching when he could have been cranking out bestsellers every year and living the life of a star novelist.
Very few people knew that he did take commissions--just not in reality.
“Dreams,” he’d told her, smiling secretively when she’d dropped in for office hours, and then ended up staying to share Chinese takeout, along with the nip of Johnny Walker Black that Cobb kept in his desk drawer.
“Dreams are the purest manifestation of our ideas. I could churn out ten stories a year here if I wanted to, but everything that I put to paper that’s usable in reality pales in comparison to what Mal and I can build inside. Writing is the purest form of creation we can have in the real world. But it’s nothing compared to what our minds imagined first.”
He’d sworn her to secrecy after that evening, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it—Cobb in the daylight hours, lecturing animatedly and bringing words on the page to life; and then Cobb with his wife in the night, taking commissions from unknown entities, imagining impossible plots and scenes for them. It was romantic and insane and it was Cobb.
Ariadne remembered thinking that Mal was a lucky woman.
“So he’s been dreaming for over a month,” she said, taking a sip of her soda water. “Just trying to get over her? I feel like there are healthier ways to mourn someone.”
“You didn’t see him just after she died,” Arthur said quietly. “It was…it was bad.”
March 8th, 2010
“You’re sure about this?” he said, shoving his hands in the pockets of his trousers.
Dom took a shuddering breath and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “She’s just going to keep haunting me if I don’t. I have to let her go and I don’t know how, a part of me doesn’t want to, and I can’t bring that into jobs, I can’t bring that into my life here. Not when James and Phillipa need me.”
“So I won’t bring you into dreaming with me,” Arthur argued. “That doesn’t justify you leaving everything behind, even for a few weeks. What if you don’t come back?”
“Christ, Arthur, I know the risks. But I don’t…I don’t think I have a choice anymore.” Cobb looked up at him.
Arthur had tried to ignore this, the glazed look Dom got more and more often, the parts of him that were slipping away into the recesses of his mind. “Jesus, Dom,” he said impulsively. “It’s really happening?”
“I don’t put myself under now, and I’m pretty sure I’ll just lose myself in pieces,” Dom muttered. “I can’t hold it together. I want to be out here, you know I do, but I don’t know how anymore.”
“In a way, he did this for all of us. To keep us all safe, while he spiraled down and then climbed back up. He would have gone mad otherwise, I’m pretty sure,” Arthur said neutrally, and accepted the hot towel from the stewardess. “Down there he can get lost, but he can also regain control, and find his way back up. And now that he has, we can go in with him and pull him back all the way.”
“And you know all of this, how?” Ariadne asked, mind reeling.
“Automatic writing,” Arthur explained. “It’s when you write in a trance state, unaware of what you’re putting down on the page, so that the transfer of information is directly from subconscious thought to words, no filter of the conscious mind in between. It’s still sometimes used for psychotherapy, but for dreaming we use it to transfer the information we get from someone’s subconscious into the real world. So now, everything Cobb creates in his lucid dreams, he writes down. It’s the best way to know someone’s subconscious without actually entering it. We’ve been monitoring his writing ever since he went under.”
Ariadne blinked. “So Cobb’s written—“
“—his catharsis,” Arthur nodded.
“We could have been there for him, though,” she argued.
Arthur snorted. “That’s the thing. We sort of are.”
March 15th, 2010
It was rough going, at first. Dom slipped into the dream with the comfort of long practice, but his hand was still as he worked on assembling the dream. Arthur sat next to Miles, both of them almost holding their breath.
“I don’t like this,” Miles said, not for the first time.
“I don’t think he does, either,” Arthur said honestly. “But have you ever been able to stop him doing something he thinks is right?”
Miles snorted. “Not a chance. He and Mal were the same like that. It was a miracle they didn’t argue more than they did.”
Arthur nodded agreement.
Dom’s hand jerked. They both stilled.
And then it started.
Miles looked up as the whisper of pen on paper continued. “Here we go.”
Arthur nodded.
“For all this time, he’s been writing his dreams, dreams within dreams, echoes of the work he used to do, both at the university and with Eames and I,” Arthur explained. “He’s been talking to projections of us, doing jobs with us all this time, just in his head—for him, we’ve never left, and neither has he. But this time, according to Miles, he’s managed to kick himself back up at least three of the layers of dream state, which means that it’s stable enough to go in and talk to him. And maybe bring him back to reality.”
***
The top spins, wobbles, straightens.
The music swells, the familiar distended blare of horns, and then is silent.
The music swells, the familiar distended blare of horns, and then is silent.
The scratch of pen against paper paused, the hand that had been writing falling slack for a brief moment, leaving one long line trailing down the page until it began again.
Miles rubbed his eyes wearily and tore off the sheet at the blank space. He blinked, hard, and then rolled back the scroll, reading the scenes in reverse. “Bloody hell,” he murmured. “You did it.”
He picked up the phone that sat next to the unconscious form of Dom Cobb.
Dominic Cobb, whose eyes twitched and tracked beneath closed lids, and whose hand was ceaseless on the slowly turning roll of unlined paper that spun out from his bedside.
Along the walls, nearly three hundred scrolls, black with ink, sat neatly in rows, each one labeled with dates and times.
The latest, the one Miles tore a chunk from, was labeled July 8th, 2010.
The earliest was March 15th.
***
“He’s written himself up four layers, simultaneously,” Miles said, still clutching the fragment of paper. “How is that even possible?”
“He’s Cobb,” Arthur said, easily enough, but he was already on the move, grabbing suitcase and passport and gun and running through his memory of recent flight schedules. “He’s beginning to process again. We can get him now, I know it.”
“If you think it’s possible,” Miles said.
“It’s Cobb,” Arthur repeated, like that was all the explanation needed. “He’s made it easy for us. I’ll call the relevant parties in. We’ll be there in a week or less.”
He snapped the phone shut and looked around at the bare military apartment. With any luck, no one would notice he’d gone.
***
It took him two days to get through to Eames, but when he did, it was more than worth it.
“Remember when I said he’d give us a chance?” Arthur said into the phone, ignoring the crackling of satellite and crowd interference.
“He’s waking? After all this time?”
“Looks like it. Want to help make it permanent?”
“Business hasn’t been the same without him. Name the locale, darling.”
***
Ariadne was even easier. He was courteous enough to call when she wasn’t in class and, without preamble, all he said was, “Professor Cobb needs your help.”
She spluttered. “What? Who is this?”
“A friend of his. Do you want to help?”
From the sound of it, she had gotten up to pace. He could practically hear her think. Eventually she said, “How? The school said he’s on indeterminate sick leave.”
“Not exactly. He’s been in rough shape, but we can fix him, if we try now.”
“Fix him? He’s not sick?”
“No. He’s not sick. But he does need help. It’ll be…difficult.”
He listened to her breathe for a second. Then she said, “Okay. Yeah, okay, I’m in. Can you really…?”
“Absolutely. We’ll get him out.” He smiled down the phone. “I’m Arthur, by the way. Cobb used to talk about you a lot. Said you were his best student.”
“Still unpublished,” she said, shrugging, “But thanks. Where is he now?”
“At his summer house in Los Angeles. I’ve already booked our flight.”
***
“So, how do we know that he can wake up?” she asked him on the plane. “All I’ve heard is that he’s been unable to come to work. They didn’t even tell us that he was comatose.”
“Not comatose, precisely,” Arthur said, “He’s dreaming. He sent himself into a catatonic state because he couldn’t function after…well, after Mal. He’s been trying to work through to a catharsis ever since.”
“He did this to himself?”
“He’s a dreamer,” Arthur said, smiling crookedly, “Fantasy was the only way he knew how to push through to reality.”
Ariadne remembered Cobb from her first year in New York.
He had shone.
The Columbia English department’s most brilliant professor; talented, handsome and young and married to a beautiful Parisian chemist he’d brought home with him after his time abroad, visionary in ways that made people wonder why he bothered teaching when he could have been cranking out bestsellers every year and living the life of a star novelist.
Very few people knew that he did take commissions--just not in reality.
“Dreams,” he’d told her, smiling secretively when she’d dropped in for office hours, and then ended up staying to share Chinese takeout, along with the nip of Johnny Walker Black that Cobb kept in his desk drawer.
“Dreams are the purest manifestation of our ideas. I could churn out ten stories a year here if I wanted to, but everything that I put to paper that’s usable in reality pales in comparison to what Mal and I can build inside. Writing is the purest form of creation we can have in the real world. But it’s nothing compared to what our minds imagined first.”
He’d sworn her to secrecy after that evening, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it—Cobb in the daylight hours, lecturing animatedly and bringing words on the page to life; and then Cobb with his wife in the night, taking commissions from unknown entities, imagining impossible plots and scenes for them. It was romantic and insane and it was Cobb.
Ariadne remembered thinking that Mal was a lucky woman.
“So he’s been dreaming for over a month,” she said, taking a sip of her soda water. “Just trying to get over her? I feel like there are healthier ways to mourn someone.”
“You didn’t see him just after she died,” Arthur said quietly. “It was…it was bad.”
March 8th, 2010
“You’re sure about this?” he said, shoving his hands in the pockets of his trousers.
Dom took a shuddering breath and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “She’s just going to keep haunting me if I don’t. I have to let her go and I don’t know how, a part of me doesn’t want to, and I can’t bring that into jobs, I can’t bring that into my life here. Not when James and Phillipa need me.”
“So I won’t bring you into dreaming with me,” Arthur argued. “That doesn’t justify you leaving everything behind, even for a few weeks. What if you don’t come back?”
“Christ, Arthur, I know the risks. But I don’t…I don’t think I have a choice anymore.” Cobb looked up at him.
Arthur had tried to ignore this, the glazed look Dom got more and more often, the parts of him that were slipping away into the recesses of his mind. “Jesus, Dom,” he said impulsively. “It’s really happening?”
“I don’t put myself under now, and I’m pretty sure I’ll just lose myself in pieces,” Dom muttered. “I can’t hold it together. I want to be out here, you know I do, but I don’t know how anymore.”
“In a way, he did this for all of us. To keep us all safe, while he spiraled down and then climbed back up. He would have gone mad otherwise, I’m pretty sure,” Arthur said neutrally, and accepted the hot towel from the stewardess. “Down there he can get lost, but he can also regain control, and find his way back up. And now that he has, we can go in with him and pull him back all the way.”
“And you know all of this, how?” Ariadne asked, mind reeling.
“Automatic writing,” Arthur explained. “It’s when you write in a trance state, unaware of what you’re putting down on the page, so that the transfer of information is directly from subconscious thought to words, no filter of the conscious mind in between. It’s still sometimes used for psychotherapy, but for dreaming we use it to transfer the information we get from someone’s subconscious into the real world. So now, everything Cobb creates in his lucid dreams, he writes down. It’s the best way to know someone’s subconscious without actually entering it. We’ve been monitoring his writing ever since he went under.”
Ariadne blinked. “So Cobb’s written—“
“—his catharsis,” Arthur nodded.
“We could have been there for him, though,” she argued.
Arthur snorted. “That’s the thing. We sort of are.”
March 15th, 2010
It was rough going, at first. Dom slipped into the dream with the comfort of long practice, but his hand was still as he worked on assembling the dream. Arthur sat next to Miles, both of them almost holding their breath.
“I don’t like this,” Miles said, not for the first time.
“I don’t think he does, either,” Arthur said honestly. “But have you ever been able to stop him doing something he thinks is right?”
Miles snorted. “Not a chance. He and Mal were the same like that. It was a miracle they didn’t argue more than they did.”
Arthur nodded agreement.
Dom’s hand jerked. They both stilled.
And then it started.
“You have a choice,” the lawyer says.
Dominic Cobb looks between the man’s grim face, and the envelope in his hands. He allows himself the absurd and slightly hysterical thought that his attorney is about to suggest a vacation.
When he speaks, he doesn’t recognize his own voice. “You want me to run,” he croaks.
The lawyer’s expression doesn’t change. “I would never advise something so illegal,” he replies carefully. “But as your attorney, I must point out that you face a life sentence, and thus any alternative measures to avoid such a sentence, or delay it until it may be mitigated, would be…strategically advantageous. So it’s now or never, Cobb.”
Dom has always been good at reading between the lines of legal bullshit. He looks outside.
The sun is far too bright for this to be his reality, too perfect in the way it captures the two tiny and precious figures out on the lawn—James and Phillipa, the last things left of her, the last things precious to him.
Dread lodges itself in his chest. He can’t see their faces, but before he has a chance to call to them, they run to their grandmother.
The lawyer holds the plane tickets out to him.
He takes them.
He runs.
Dominic Cobb looks between the man’s grim face, and the envelope in his hands. He allows himself the absurd and slightly hysterical thought that his attorney is about to suggest a vacation.
When he speaks, he doesn’t recognize his own voice. “You want me to run,” he croaks.
The lawyer’s expression doesn’t change. “I would never advise something so illegal,” he replies carefully. “But as your attorney, I must point out that you face a life sentence, and thus any alternative measures to avoid such a sentence, or delay it until it may be mitigated, would be…strategically advantageous. So it’s now or never, Cobb.”
Dom has always been good at reading between the lines of legal bullshit. He looks outside.
The sun is far too bright for this to be his reality, too perfect in the way it captures the two tiny and precious figures out on the lawn—James and Phillipa, the last things left of her, the last things precious to him.
Dread lodges itself in his chest. He can’t see their faces, but before he has a chance to call to them, they run to their grandmother.
The lawyer holds the plane tickets out to him.
He takes them.
He runs.
Miles looked up as the whisper of pen on paper continued. “Here we go.”
Arthur nodded.
“For all this time, he’s been writing his dreams, dreams within dreams, echoes of the work he used to do, both at the university and with Eames and I,” Arthur explained. “He’s been talking to projections of us, doing jobs with us all this time, just in his head—for him, we’ve never left, and neither has he. But this time, according to Miles, he’s managed to kick himself back up at least three of the layers of dream state, which means that it’s stable enough to go in and talk to him. And maybe bring him back to reality.”
***
Eames met them at the terminal, loud tweed and a PASIV device in tow. “Arthur, darling,” he drawled. “It’s been far too long. Since the assassination in Kuala Lumpur, wasn’t it?”
“Something like that, Mr. Eames,” Arthur replied, pointedly not reacting.
“And who is the lovely pint-sized minx?”
Ariadne bristled. “Did you say assassination? I thought you worked in dreams.”
Arthur smiled. “We do. Sometimes. And work in dreams can be colorful.”
“Your innocence becomes you, love,” Eames said cheerfully.
“But. But it’s Cobb!” she exclaimed. “He’s a writer!”
“Surely you of all people know that Cobb was a big believer in immersion,” Eames grinned. “Why do you think he’s one of the only novelists who dreams on the side? Unlike most, he’s actually willing to get his hands dirty. Well, his dreaming hands, anyway.”
Ariadne began to suspect that she didn’t know Professor Cobb at all.
***
Miles greeted them all at the door. He smiled wanly. “Do come in,” he said, though he reserved a rather dubious look for Eames. “How is school going, Ariadne?”
“The core curriculum is kicking my ass,” she answered, stepping inside, “But I was expecting it to.”
“Where’s the story?” Arthur asked.
“This way,” Miles said, heading towards the bedroom and handing off the latest torn sheet. “This is the conclusion. The rest is with Dom.”
Arthur scanned the sheet. Eames looked over his shoulder.
“Cobb’s still writing in the present tense, I see,” he commented, twitching slightly.
“You know Cobb. Reality is always a relative thing,” Arthur replied, but his brow was furrowed.
“What does that matter?” Ariadne asked.
“Most people, when they do automatic writing from a lucid dream state, indicate their awareness of the dream by writing in past tense,” Arthur explained, glancing at her. “Cobb...never really has. He says it makes for more realistic dreaming if he’s fully engaged in the moment, both in the dream and out.” He sounded like he didn’t really believe it.
“Sounds like Cobb.”
“Sounds like a recipe to get lost in there,” Eames said. He scanned the page further. “Who’s Fischer?” he asked, after a moment. “An avatar, or just a projected character?”
“Projection, but a highly developed one. Cobb keeps his direct portraiture down to a minimum; we’re the only avatars there, apart from Miles.”
“Where did Fischer come from, though? I thought this was all about Mal,” Ariadne said.
“It was,” Miles said, “But it seems that he needed a second goal, a mark to echo his catharsis with its own in order for the revelation to be strong enough.”
“He’s had a ton of marks, though,” Arthur said, looking over at the stacks of paper as they entered the room. He refused to look at the prone body on the bed. “He’s been staging extractions ever since he went under, albeit with more generic characters.”
“This wasn’t an extraction,” Miles said, looking through the stacks. “He wrote an inception.”
Eames sucked in a breath. “Christ. You have to go incredibly deep for that.”
“Deep enough to reach the source of his grief,” Arthur said quietly.
“Okay, I’m assuming extraction and inception are things you guys do normally, but I’m still just Cobb’s former lit. student,” Ariadne cut in. “Explain.”
“Don’t bother,” Miles said. He pulled out the top three rolls of paper. “Everything you need to know about both that, and the situation at hand, is in here.”
“That’s the whole inception?” Arthur asked.
“In its entirety,” Miles replied. “It’s some of his best work, too,” he added.
***
Over the next three days, they read the entire manuscript. Ariadne had to agree—it was brilliant. She frowned slightly at the beginning, however. “We’re architects?”
“Do you remember The Bridges of Paris?” Arthur said, looking up from the manuscript.
“Yeah, his third novel. Oh. The narrator was an architect,” Ariadne said, after thinking back for a second.
“Cobb took three years of courses in architecture to put that novel together.”
“And to make his dreams more stable to work in,” Eames added. “It was a big help on jobs.”
“I almost didn’t believe him when he told me about dreaming,” Ariadne muttered. “But this is really real, isn’t it? He’s writing what he knows, and he knows how to actually do these things.”
“He’s the best extractor out there,” Arthur said. “He’s a better extractor than he is a writer, and as you already know, he’s a damn good writer.”
Ariadne just kept shaking her head as she read downwards, finding herself getting sucked down into the narrative. The story was elegant, even as it wound down the different layers of dreaming, but it was all the more disturbing for that. “How much of this really happened?” she asked eventually. “Did you ever see Mal’s shade?”
Arthur shook his head. “He stopped working as soon as she died. But from what this says, I’d bet she would have come up if he hadn’t put himself under first.”
“His descriptions of my clothing choices are decidedly unflattering,” Eames observed. “I’m going to have some strong words with him about that when we find him.”
“Well, he was aiming for accuracy,” Arthur commented. Then he snorted softly at the page he was holding. “Though with that said, I hope you’d exercise a bit more restraint, Ariadne, before charging into someone else’s subconscious.”
“I would never do that,” she said defensively. “This is clearly just Cobb using his idea of me to psychoanalyze himself. This whole shared dreaming thing already feels incredibly invasive in fiction, let alone actually doing it in real life. I don’t get how you guys are so comfortable with it.”
“You get used to it. You build defenses. It takes some practice, but eventually it’s just another job,” Arthur shrugged.
The van groans as it hits the water, metal
screeching against metal
as the elevator plummets
as the elevator plummets
down from the building,
she opens her eyes as she falls,
sees a brief flash of the hospital
as it goes up in
she opens her eyes as she falls,
sees a brief flash of the hospital
as it goes up in
flames scorching her face, rushing
along with the sound of gears and cables
shrieking and then impact
along with the sound of gears and cables
shrieking and then impact
and cold, cold river water,
kicking the air from her lungs.
“Jesus,” Ariadne breathed.
“I didn’t think it was possible,” Eames said, sitting back. “Four layers. Christ.”
“I almost wish we were there just to take credit,” Arthur murmured, agreeing with Eames for the first time that day.
“Five,” Ariadne corrected. “With limbo. Cobb’s taking massive risks with his own subconscious. Why didn’t you go in sooner?”
“He’s hasn’t been up to the first layer since he went under,” Arthur said. “He’s been at two or three this whole time, and entering into that would be like trying track him down in a labyrinth that’s locked inside an Escher drawing. And besides, he wouldn’t have been ready yet. Not without this.” He waved the sheet where the writing was even more scratched and chaotic as usual. Just looking at it again made Ariadne’s throat hurt.
“How much of that is true?” she asked quietly. “Did he really perform inception on Mal?”
“Don’t know,” Arthur said briefly. “And clearly, he wouldn’t have told us if he had.”
Ariadne must have let the guilt show on her face, because when Arthur glanced at her he said, “Don’t feel bad about him choosing you. After all, he didn’t. He chose himself.”
“Yeah,” she muttered. She had the strange feeling that Arthur didn’t believe it either.
***
They filled the California house with the necessary equipment. It was hardly ideal, but there was no point in moving Cobb, especially since that would mean disrupting his writing, and they needed to keep track of what was going on in his head.
Arthur kept Ariadne busy with explanations.
“The way we work isn’t exactly how Cobb describes,” he said, setting up the PASIV. “He’s been taking creative license in there, what with the inception, which as far as we know is still impossible in reality.”
“And making him and me architects instead of writers,” Ariadne nodded. “Is that why you can’t just give him a kick now and wake him up that way?”
“Sort of,” Arthur said, tilting his head from side to side. “It’s more of a precaution. Cobb’s been down in the dream longer than anyone has, ever—he’s more than qualified to do it, but it’s dangerous all the same. We have the writing to give us some guidance, but in all honesty, I don’t know what we’ll find down there. And Cobb’s only going to talk about the inception and its fallout to people he trusts, people that he knows and who are close to him.”
“That’s why you called Eames and I in,” Ariadne surmised. “Because we were part of the job, so he’ll listen to us and tell us if he’s ready to wake up.”
Arthur nodded. “Cobb’s been under so long that I need as much backup as I can get. And Cobb’s chosen you both.”
“So how does the dream itself actually work then?”
He spread his hands. “Dreaming is more than just setting up an environment, it’s telling a story. It’s far fiddlier than you’d get from how Cobb portrays it. The dreamer isn’t the only one bringing in his projections—it’s all of us, and not in the involuntary way, like he describes Mal. We bring in projections—not many, but some as needed—and we bring in situations.
“Most projections behave just like he said, and without proper experience they’ll just mill around and generally be out of your control. But with practice, and enough creativity? They become characters. Specific people you can build, and bring with you into the dream.”
“Like what he said forging was,” Ariadne said slowly. “Only with my subconscious.”
“Precisely. That’s how Cobb was able to create avatars of us within his dream.”
“Why do we need Eames, then?” she asked.
Eames grinned over his shoulder. “Firstly, Cobb chose me to be in there by making an avatar of me, so I’m going whether I want to or not. But more generally? Because forging a projection is far easier than forging yourself,” he said. “And projected characters can only be set in motion. What they do afterwards is entirely up to who you’ve made them into.”
“They may be part of your subconscious,” Arthur said, “But they aren’t you anymore. So you have to create them precisely enough so that you can predict their behavior and place it correctly within the narrative.”
“That’s why you need writers,” Ariadne said, blinking. “You need people who can create projections and stories with enough accuracy and depth to work with the dream, not against it.”
“Precisely,” Arthur smiled, setting the PASIV on the table between them. “Why else did you think I brought you in for this?”
Ariadne shrugged. “Because Cobb’s my friend?”
“You’re Cobb’s very useful friend now. I wish he could be the one to teach you, but you’ll have to deal with me instead.”
“He’s already taught me quite a bit.” She winced slightly as he inserted the IV into her wrist.
“True.” He looked at her. “You ready?”
She nodded.
He hooked himself up. “Then let’s see what you can do.”
He depressed the release.
***
***
Preparation continued, but not smoothly.
“There may be a problem,” Miles said without preamble, coming out of Cobb’s bedroom a week into the operation. “He’s moved into stream-of-consciousness.”
“Shit,” Arthur said, stepping around him to see for himself.
“What does that mean?” Ariadne asked.
Eames compressed his lips for a moment, and then looked at her. “It means,” he said, “That Cobb doesn’t think he’s dreaming anymore.”
She blinked. “I thought that was how it always was.”
“No. He entered the dream to create a story vivid enough that his catharsis could be real and follow him out of the dream. But he was still creating a story, creating a false reality. And he knew that, most of the time. But when the story breaks down, starts going stream-of-consciousness? It means he’s lost track. He doesn’t know how many layers down he is anymore.”
“So he thinks he’s already kicked all the way out,” she realized aloud.
Arthur came back into the living looking suddenly far older and more tired.
“Okay. We’re going to have to force him to dream down a layer in order to give him the kick,” he said grimly. “The shock of waking him from a dream of this length when he even suspects that it’s real could leave him permanently comatose.”
“He thinks he’s with his children now,” Eames observed. “He’s not going to want to leave them; not after a journey like this.” He gestured at the manuscript.
Arthur pursed his lips. “So we’ll give him a job he can’t help but take. And instead of just riding a kick out to his first layer of dreaming, we kick all the way out to reality.”
“Doesn’t he already have projections of us in there, though?” Ariadne asked. “He’s not going to take kindly to doubles showing up if he thinks they’re real.”
“We’ll have to kill them,” Eames said. “Kill them and take their places.”
“Okay, that’s...god, that’s creepy.”
“You know what that means, right?” Arthur said, ignoring her. “It means we’re going to need another forger.”
“What? Why?” Eames said, looking alarmed. “And how the hell are we going to manage that? Far as I know, love, there aren’t that many of us in the business, and you know I’m far and away the best of them.”
“Because we need complete control over whatever mark we choose, and we need you to play yourself. Cobb’s projection of you would be unpredictable and uncontrollable, and any projection of a mark that we bring in would be as well. We need this narrative to go on without a hitch.”
They fell silent for a long second, and then Ariadne said on impulse, “We don’t need a mark. We need a victim.”
Arthur looked at her, and she bit her lip, but the more she thought about it, the more it made sense.
“Explain yourself, darling,” Eames said, but there was a spark of recognition in his eyes.
“Cobb had to do an inception, a crime, to get home,” she said slowly. “That means that even though he’s home, even though he’s let Mal go, he’s still going to feel guilt. He needs absolution. So he can’t commit another crime, he needs to save someone instead. Someone he cares about enough to go after.”
“We’re not doing anything to his children,” Arthur said immediately. “I don’t care if they’re not real or just his projections, we’re not touching them.”
Eames looked at him speculatively, and then glanced back at Ariadne. She nodded. “We don’t have to,” he said. “How long have you been Cobb’s point man, Arthur?”
kicking the air from her lungs.
“Jesus,” Ariadne breathed.
“I didn’t think it was possible,” Eames said, sitting back. “Four layers. Christ.”
“I almost wish we were there just to take credit,” Arthur murmured, agreeing with Eames for the first time that day.
“Five,” Ariadne corrected. “With limbo. Cobb’s taking massive risks with his own subconscious. Why didn’t you go in sooner?”
“He’s hasn’t been up to the first layer since he went under,” Arthur said. “He’s been at two or three this whole time, and entering into that would be like trying track him down in a labyrinth that’s locked inside an Escher drawing. And besides, he wouldn’t have been ready yet. Not without this.” He waved the sheet where the writing was even more scratched and chaotic as usual. Just looking at it again made Ariadne’s throat hurt.
“How much of that is true?” she asked quietly. “Did he really perform inception on Mal?”
“Don’t know,” Arthur said briefly. “And clearly, he wouldn’t have told us if he had.”
Ariadne must have let the guilt show on her face, because when Arthur glanced at her he said, “Don’t feel bad about him choosing you. After all, he didn’t. He chose himself.”
“Yeah,” she muttered. She had the strange feeling that Arthur didn’t believe it either.
***
They filled the California house with the necessary equipment. It was hardly ideal, but there was no point in moving Cobb, especially since that would mean disrupting his writing, and they needed to keep track of what was going on in his head.
Arthur kept Ariadne busy with explanations.
“The way we work isn’t exactly how Cobb describes,” he said, setting up the PASIV. “He’s been taking creative license in there, what with the inception, which as far as we know is still impossible in reality.”
“And making him and me architects instead of writers,” Ariadne nodded. “Is that why you can’t just give him a kick now and wake him up that way?”
“Sort of,” Arthur said, tilting his head from side to side. “It’s more of a precaution. Cobb’s been down in the dream longer than anyone has, ever—he’s more than qualified to do it, but it’s dangerous all the same. We have the writing to give us some guidance, but in all honesty, I don’t know what we’ll find down there. And Cobb’s only going to talk about the inception and its fallout to people he trusts, people that he knows and who are close to him.”
“That’s why you called Eames and I in,” Ariadne surmised. “Because we were part of the job, so he’ll listen to us and tell us if he’s ready to wake up.”
Arthur nodded. “Cobb’s been under so long that I need as much backup as I can get. And Cobb’s chosen you both.”
“So how does the dream itself actually work then?”
He spread his hands. “Dreaming is more than just setting up an environment, it’s telling a story. It’s far fiddlier than you’d get from how Cobb portrays it. The dreamer isn’t the only one bringing in his projections—it’s all of us, and not in the involuntary way, like he describes Mal. We bring in projections—not many, but some as needed—and we bring in situations.
“Most projections behave just like he said, and without proper experience they’ll just mill around and generally be out of your control. But with practice, and enough creativity? They become characters. Specific people you can build, and bring with you into the dream.”
“Like what he said forging was,” Ariadne said slowly. “Only with my subconscious.”
“Precisely. That’s how Cobb was able to create avatars of us within his dream.”
“Why do we need Eames, then?” she asked.
Eames grinned over his shoulder. “Firstly, Cobb chose me to be in there by making an avatar of me, so I’m going whether I want to or not. But more generally? Because forging a projection is far easier than forging yourself,” he said. “And projected characters can only be set in motion. What they do afterwards is entirely up to who you’ve made them into.”
“They may be part of your subconscious,” Arthur said, “But they aren’t you anymore. So you have to create them precisely enough so that you can predict their behavior and place it correctly within the narrative.”
“That’s why you need writers,” Ariadne said, blinking. “You need people who can create projections and stories with enough accuracy and depth to work with the dream, not against it.”
“Precisely,” Arthur smiled, setting the PASIV on the table between them. “Why else did you think I brought you in for this?”
Ariadne shrugged. “Because Cobb’s my friend?”
“You’re Cobb’s very useful friend now. I wish he could be the one to teach you, but you’ll have to deal with me instead.”
“He’s already taught me quite a bit.” She winced slightly as he inserted the IV into her wrist.
“True.” He looked at her. “You ready?”
She nodded.
He hooked himself up. “Then let’s see what you can do.”
He depressed the release.
***
Ariadne tapped her pen lightly on the edges of her notebook, not out of boredom, but restlessness. The lecture on sustainable design was certainly interesting, but there was an idea forming in her mind, for a modern art museum with sweeping lines and an almost airborne form. She itched to get back to her drafting table.
Stephanie leaned over to her. “You up for going out tonight? Elena and I were thinking of going to Lido.”
Ariadne glanced at her, and shook her head with a smile. “Thanks, no. I have some work I need to do.”
“All you ever do is work,” Stephanie chided.
The lecturer bade them all good day, and Ariadne stuffed her books into her bag and headed out.
She stopped, however, as Miles came into view in the hallway. “Ariadne! Come here a moment, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
Ariadne looked at the man at Miles’ side, and took in his loose, drab clothing, contrasted with the surprising and intent blue of his eyes.
“Mr. Cobb wants to offer you a job,” Miles said.
“What, like a work placement?” Ariadne asked.
Mr. Cobb smiled slightly. “Not exactly.”
Ariadne drew mazes for him. Mazes that would take time to solve. She drew them in ways that wound, that flipped over onto themselves and twisted and ended in unexpected places. Cobb looked at her with a familiar sort of respect that came from discovering a kindred spirit. She warmed under his gaze.
“Meet me tomorrow,” he said, handing her a card, “At this address. Don’t be late.”
She nodded, not knowing where this was going, but wanting badly to find out.
Arthur rounded the corner, hands in the pockets of his supple leather jacket. “Not bad,” he said. “Especially given that wasn’t your story you were working from.”
Ariadne blinked at him, her face going slack. Arthur smiled slightly.
“It’s normal, what you’re feeling; don’t worry. It can be easy to forget that you’re dreaming,” he said, “Even when you’re the one writing the scene.”
She nodded, and felt her mind slowly unlock, re-engage. Almost imperceptibly, the people in the streets below began milling again, after a moment of stasis. “It’s not precisely how Cobb would have imagined it,” she said. “It’s still from my perspective.”
“Ah, but he doesn’t know that. He won’t know that. As long as you keep telling his story, he won’t know it’s actually yours until he’s bought into your version of events. And then it’s your story. You tell it as you imagine it.” He looked at his watch, and then back at her. “Good job.
“Time to wake up.”
Stephanie leaned over to her. “You up for going out tonight? Elena and I were thinking of going to Lido.”
Ariadne glanced at her, and shook her head with a smile. “Thanks, no. I have some work I need to do.”
“All you ever do is work,” Stephanie chided.
The lecturer bade them all good day, and Ariadne stuffed her books into her bag and headed out.
She stopped, however, as Miles came into view in the hallway. “Ariadne! Come here a moment, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
Ariadne looked at the man at Miles’ side, and took in his loose, drab clothing, contrasted with the surprising and intent blue of his eyes.
“Mr. Cobb wants to offer you a job,” Miles said.
“What, like a work placement?” Ariadne asked.
Mr. Cobb smiled slightly. “Not exactly.”
Ariadne drew mazes for him. Mazes that would take time to solve. She drew them in ways that wound, that flipped over onto themselves and twisted and ended in unexpected places. Cobb looked at her with a familiar sort of respect that came from discovering a kindred spirit. She warmed under his gaze.
“Meet me tomorrow,” he said, handing her a card, “At this address. Don’t be late.”
She nodded, not knowing where this was going, but wanting badly to find out.
Arthur rounded the corner, hands in the pockets of his supple leather jacket. “Not bad,” he said. “Especially given that wasn’t your story you were working from.”
Ariadne blinked at him, her face going slack. Arthur smiled slightly.
“It’s normal, what you’re feeling; don’t worry. It can be easy to forget that you’re dreaming,” he said, “Even when you’re the one writing the scene.”
She nodded, and felt her mind slowly unlock, re-engage. Almost imperceptibly, the people in the streets below began milling again, after a moment of stasis. “It’s not precisely how Cobb would have imagined it,” she said. “It’s still from my perspective.”
“Ah, but he doesn’t know that. He won’t know that. As long as you keep telling his story, he won’t know it’s actually yours until he’s bought into your version of events. And then it’s your story. You tell it as you imagine it.” He looked at his watch, and then back at her. “Good job.
“Time to wake up.”
***
Preparation continued, but not smoothly.
“There may be a problem,” Miles said without preamble, coming out of Cobb’s bedroom a week into the operation. “He’s moved into stream-of-consciousness.”
“Shit,” Arthur said, stepping around him to see for himself.
“What does that mean?” Ariadne asked.
Eames compressed his lips for a moment, and then looked at her. “It means,” he said, “That Cobb doesn’t think he’s dreaming anymore.”
She blinked. “I thought that was how it always was.”
“No. He entered the dream to create a story vivid enough that his catharsis could be real and follow him out of the dream. But he was still creating a story, creating a false reality. And he knew that, most of the time. But when the story breaks down, starts going stream-of-consciousness? It means he’s lost track. He doesn’t know how many layers down he is anymore.”
“So he thinks he’s already kicked all the way out,” she realized aloud.
Arthur came back into the living looking suddenly far older and more tired.
“Okay. We’re going to have to force him to dream down a layer in order to give him the kick,” he said grimly. “The shock of waking him from a dream of this length when he even suspects that it’s real could leave him permanently comatose.”
“He thinks he’s with his children now,” Eames observed. “He’s not going to want to leave them; not after a journey like this.” He gestured at the manuscript.
Arthur pursed his lips. “So we’ll give him a job he can’t help but take. And instead of just riding a kick out to his first layer of dreaming, we kick all the way out to reality.”
“Doesn’t he already have projections of us in there, though?” Ariadne asked. “He’s not going to take kindly to doubles showing up if he thinks they’re real.”
“We’ll have to kill them,” Eames said. “Kill them and take their places.”
“Okay, that’s...god, that’s creepy.”
“You know what that means, right?” Arthur said, ignoring her. “It means we’re going to need another forger.”
“What? Why?” Eames said, looking alarmed. “And how the hell are we going to manage that? Far as I know, love, there aren’t that many of us in the business, and you know I’m far and away the best of them.”
“Because we need complete control over whatever mark we choose, and we need you to play yourself. Cobb’s projection of you would be unpredictable and uncontrollable, and any projection of a mark that we bring in would be as well. We need this narrative to go on without a hitch.”
They fell silent for a long second, and then Ariadne said on impulse, “We don’t need a mark. We need a victim.”
Arthur looked at her, and she bit her lip, but the more she thought about it, the more it made sense.
“Explain yourself, darling,” Eames said, but there was a spark of recognition in his eyes.
“Cobb had to do an inception, a crime, to get home,” she said slowly. “That means that even though he’s home, even though he’s let Mal go, he’s still going to feel guilt. He needs absolution. So he can’t commit another crime, he needs to save someone instead. Someone he cares about enough to go after.”
“We’re not doing anything to his children,” Arthur said immediately. “I don’t care if they’re not real or just his projections, we’re not touching them.”
Eames looked at him speculatively, and then glanced back at Ariadne. She nodded. “We don’t have to,” he said. “How long have you been Cobb’s point man, Arthur?”
Ariadne could actually see how Arthur closed up, every part of his tidy frame locking down into something carefully neutral and unforgiving. “Since we met,” he said, giving nothing and everything away all at once. “That’s what my job is. That’s what he hired me to be.”
“How long, Arthur?” Eames pressed.
Arthur didn’t look at him. “Six years.”
“And how many times have you saved his life?” Ariadne said.
“In dreams?” Arthur snorted.
“No. In reality,” Eames said, watching him intently.
Arthur took a moment to answer. Then he said, “Four.”
Ariadne nodded.
“There’s nothing in the world that would stop him from evening that score.”
***
“It’s not going to work,” Arthur said. He stood out on the porch, watching the wind pull the garden flowers and trees into bowing curves.
Ariadne cupped her hands around her mug of tea and watched him. “Why do you think that?” she asked.
“Because,” he started, and then seemed to struggle for words. “He has his kids. He won’t risk leaving them again. Not for me. I would never ask him too.”
Ariadne just looked at him. “I think that’s exactly why he’ll do it. Because you’d never ask.”
“You don’t know him.”
“After reading the inception?” she raised her eyebrows. “I think I do.”
Arthur leaned heavily on the banister. She propped her hip on it. “Why are you so convinced he doesn’t care about you the same way you care about him?” she asked. “That he wouldn’t do for you what you’re trying to do for him right now?”
He visibly flinched. “He doesn’t care about anyone that way,” he said, more callously than he intended.
Ariadne’s eyes narrowed.
“Not anyone alive, anyway,” she guessed, trying to search his expression.
He refused to look at her.
“It’ll work,” she told him, after another moment. “I wouldn’t have suggested it otherwise. I want him back too.”
He exhaled. “It’s your story.”
She smiled crookedly. “It’s everyone’s.”
(Plots, like mazes, were springing up like saplings inside her head.)
***
Endings and beginnings have this tendency to bleed into one another in a way that sometimes is seamless, but usually is messy, filled with awkward words to fill equally awkward silences.
Dom says, “Did you come all the way here just to pick me up?”
Miles looks at him sidelong, and says, “I had two tickets to Moscow on call just in case you failed.”
Dom snorts and then says quietly, “Thank you.”
Then they are home, in Dom’s home, and it looks the same as he remembers but better, and James and Phillipa are more radiant than he could have ever imagined in a dream or outside of it. He holds them close, deflecting questions about what he was doing away but grinning like a loon all the while.
Miles watches him with a soft sort of amusement, and Dom catches his eye. “Thank you,” he says again, quietly beneath his children’s squeals and excited chatter, good with words but not that good, because no words could possibly capture his gratitude and his relief, not here and now.
“Just stay this time,” Miles replies, his smile small but genuine.
“I will,” Dom promises, and believes no different.
Months pass like this, this beginning and end, this end and beginning.
Dom says, “Did you come all the way here just to pick me up?”
Miles looks at him sidelong, and says, “I had two tickets to Moscow on call just in case you failed.”
Dom snorts and then says quietly, “Thank you.”
Then they are home, in Dom’s home, and it looks the same as he remembers but better, and James and Phillipa are more radiant than he could have ever imagined in a dream or outside of it. He holds them close, deflecting questions about what he was doing away but grinning like a loon all the while.
Miles watches him with a soft sort of amusement, and Dom catches his eye. “Thank you,” he says again, quietly beneath his children’s squeals and excited chatter, good with words but not that good, because no words could possibly capture his gratitude and his relief, not here and now.
“Just stay this time,” Miles replies, his smile small but genuine.
“I will,” Dom promises, and believes no different.
Months pass like this, this beginning and end, this end and beginning.
“You have to prepare for the first dream, Cobb’s dream, to be more complex and more engrossing than any one you’ve ever been in before,” Arthur said, when they were gathered in the living room. “Cobb is a craftsman, and he’s deceptively spare with his words.”
“Wouldn’t that make the dream more vague?” Ariadne argued.
“No, darling,” Eames said, calm and wry. “Because it’s not the words that count once we enter the dream. That’s the thing about words. They suggest so much, that they evoke detail from the mind, detail that can be unpredictable. When I say ‘dog’, what do you think of? Describe it.”
“I think about my neighbor’s dog, brown and white patched like a pinto pony, and almost as big as one.” She smiled slightly at the memory.
“And I think of a cocker spaniel. Your mind brings into the dream so much more baggage than you can possibly predict, because we’re entering into a story where the words are what we’ve got to work with. And Cobb’s vision will be different, and it will be vast, and the people in it who talk to you won’t seem like part of some collective unconscious, even though technically they are. They’ll be people with histories and dreams and come from every walk of life. It will feel like reality, because Cobb is just that good, and because he believes it.”
“How do we keep track of the dream, then?” Ariadne asked. “Do totems…?”
“No, not in the least; that was all a narrative device for Cobb. Totems are as much subject to the dreamer’s whims as everything else in the dream world. If you know what it’s supposed to be like, that’s how it will be, in dream or out.”
She looked down, disconcerted. “Then how…?”
“Language,” Arthur supplied. “In reality, people pause, they stutter, they say ‘um’ and ‘uh’. Dreams are narratives; they’re heightened reality.”
“Heightened dialogue,” Ariadne said, sitting back and nodding. “A necessary break from reality to facilitate the narrative’s readability.”
“We’ll have to be careful to speak like that as well, if we want to blend in,” Eames added. “So I hope you’re eloquent under pressure.”
“Ariadne,” Arthur said, eyeing her, “What’s the story you’d like to tell?”
She gazed back at him, unsure of how he would react. She was quite certain of the idea now though, certain enough to defend it if she had to. “I think,” she said carefully, “That Cobb abused all of the people—the projections—around him, to get home.”
“So it needs to be a story of atonement,” Eames said. “Difficult to manage that, in a con.”
“It won’t be a con,” Ariadne shook her head. “At least, not the story we show to him.” She looked back at Arthur, who remained still and had a ghost of wariness about his features. “I want to tell the story of a rescue.”
***
“Wouldn’t that make the dream more vague?” Ariadne argued.
“No, darling,” Eames said, calm and wry. “Because it’s not the words that count once we enter the dream. That’s the thing about words. They suggest so much, that they evoke detail from the mind, detail that can be unpredictable. When I say ‘dog’, what do you think of? Describe it.”
“I think about my neighbor’s dog, brown and white patched like a pinto pony, and almost as big as one.” She smiled slightly at the memory.
“And I think of a cocker spaniel. Your mind brings into the dream so much more baggage than you can possibly predict, because we’re entering into a story where the words are what we’ve got to work with. And Cobb’s vision will be different, and it will be vast, and the people in it who talk to you won’t seem like part of some collective unconscious, even though technically they are. They’ll be people with histories and dreams and come from every walk of life. It will feel like reality, because Cobb is just that good, and because he believes it.”
“How do we keep track of the dream, then?” Ariadne asked. “Do totems…?”
“No, not in the least; that was all a narrative device for Cobb. Totems are as much subject to the dreamer’s whims as everything else in the dream world. If you know what it’s supposed to be like, that’s how it will be, in dream or out.”
She looked down, disconcerted. “Then how…?”
“Language,” Arthur supplied. “In reality, people pause, they stutter, they say ‘um’ and ‘uh’. Dreams are narratives; they’re heightened reality.”
“Heightened dialogue,” Ariadne said, sitting back and nodding. “A necessary break from reality to facilitate the narrative’s readability.”
“We’ll have to be careful to speak like that as well, if we want to blend in,” Eames added. “So I hope you’re eloquent under pressure.”
“Ariadne,” Arthur said, eyeing her, “What’s the story you’d like to tell?”
She gazed back at him, unsure of how he would react. She was quite certain of the idea now though, certain enough to defend it if she had to. “I think,” she said carefully, “That Cobb abused all of the people—the projections—around him, to get home.”
“So it needs to be a story of atonement,” Eames said. “Difficult to manage that, in a con.”
“It won’t be a con,” Ariadne shook her head. “At least, not the story we show to him.” She looked back at Arthur, who remained still and had a ghost of wariness about his features. “I want to tell the story of a rescue.”
Routine has never been Dom’s strong suit, but he relishes it now, relishes the safety of knowing where he will wake up in the morning and what tasks (doable tasks, no more impossible things) need to be done. He knows his complacency won’t last for long, that the grip of creation is not one that loosens easily, but he’ll take it for now, this reality of being a father first, a radical thinker second.
The California sun is broad and full through the windows of the house, neither police nor lawyers come to call, and the phone does not ring.
The California sun is broad and full through the windows of the house, neither police nor lawyers come to call, and the phone does not ring.
***
Eames left for two days and returned with an Indo-British man who Cobb must have been thinking of when he crafted Yusuf, and who looked at them as if they’d all gone mildly insane. “You do realize how incredibly difficult it is to pull someone out of a dream they think is real?” he demanded. “People have died, wasted away in dreams, and there’s nothing anyone could have done.”
“Why do you think you’re here?” Arthur countered. “It’s not as if we couldn’t get a hold of the standard sedatives and drips ourselves. We need custom work to make the entrance stable.”
“Why do you think you’re here?” Arthur countered. “It’s not as if we couldn’t get a hold of the standard sedatives and drips ourselves. We need custom work to make the entrance stable.”
The chemist, whose real name was Fahir, regarded him. “You’re risking a lot for this man.”
Arthur looked back, unflinching. “This man has kids he has to get back to.”
“Hm.”
“Look, can you do it?” he said impatiently.
Fahir weighed it in his head, and then said, “How deep do you need to go?”
He looked at Ariadne and Eames. Eames offered, “Two levels?”
“Three,” Ariadne amended. “We have to go deep enough for it to be a challenge for him. He won’t take the bait otherwise.”
“Then you’ll be working in severely unstable dreams,” Fahir snorted. “Adding any more sedation than what’s already in Cobb’s system could render any of you permanently comatose.”
Ariadne glanced at Arthur. “Well, I think we can use the instability to our advantage,” she said, “Though it will require a fair amount of improvisation.”
“Oh dear. Arthur won’t like that,” Eames commented.
“I’m right here. Though Eames is right; I don’t like it.”
“It’s part of the challenge,” Ariadne argued, “And it will lend authenticity.”
“To what?”
“To your instability.”
Arthur raised an eyebrow at her, and she felt herself flush. “There are many things I’d call myself,” he said dryly. “Unstable isn’t one of them.”
Ariadne nodded, but said, “Cobb needs someone to save, though. Which means you need to have something to be saved from.”
“Instability from too much dreaming, perhaps? Or were you thinking limbo?” Eames said in understanding. He smiled slightly. “It’s a good story, love. A dangerous one, but certainly a good one.”
Fahir threw up his hands. “If you’re certain, then.”
“I am,” Ariadne said.
Arthur looked between her and Eames, and then eventually nodded. “We are,” he confirmed.
Ariadne exhaled, and felt the thrum of inspiration steadily fill her veins like an anticipatory rush of adrenaline.
She murmured, “This was a story about loss.
Now it’s a story about love.”
no subject
Date: 9 Feb 2011 03:47 (UTC)