Prompt Post No. 17
Welcome to Round 17 of the Inception Kink Meme.
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When it comes to light that the title for the fourth book in the Dreamers quartet is Inception, Eames knows within the hour. When Anthony Ruske sells the film rights for the quartet to Warner Brothers for an undisclosed amount, Eames knows immediately.
Eames does not have a Google alert on the name Anthony Ruske, except that he does. Also on the phrase “Dreamers quartet.” Also on the name Eagen Grey, though that mostly brings up blogs about how likely it is that Grey will sleep with the prickly (but hot) Oliver Lawrence before the series is up, whether that relationship will have any longevity, and how scorching their potential sex will be, regardless.
Posts that Eames usually reads from a critical but overly invested perspective. In his defense, he does avoid the fanfiction, but only because it makes him jealous.
There are times, when he’s trawling (and trolling) message boards (dreamwalkers.com is decidedly the best) that he wonders if he has some sort of problem. He usually writes that off.
He especially write it off when he finds out, fifty-six minutes after the information is leaked, that the fourth book will be titled Inception. Ariadne sends him an e-mail seven minutes later with a series of exclamation marks for the subject line, because Ariadne is the person second-most invested in figuring out who, precisely, Anthony Ruske is.
Eames is the person first-most invested, but that’s only because the books are obviously about him, if he had gotten involved in dreamsharing when he was sixteen years old and been rather a twit.
That might be getting ahead of the story, though. Eames is not Anthony Ruske; neither is he a writer, nor a historian. Ergo no one should expect him to get the pacing or even the chronology quite right.
The first book in the Dreamers series was published by Viking, released in America in July of 2010. It was set somewhere between the present and the future, called Ignition, and traced the development of something called dreamwalking, a novel technology which enables individuals to invade the dreams of others. This was all viewed through the eyes of one Eagen Grey (that’s Grey to you), an ordinary bloke from Oxford, the son of a professor and a librarian, who was not, unlike the protagonists of many such novels, orphaned at a young age. Instead he became involved with the dreamwalking research one afternoon when he was skulking around the university where his mother worked. There, he had encountered a mysterious psychology professor who immediately recognized Grey as uniquely gifted and enlisted him for an experiment.
Eames did not read Ignition for at least year and a half after its British release. By that time, the sequel (Transformation) had topped the bestseller lists of both sides of the pond, and also on several sides of other bodies of water, both with and without quaint nicknames (the ditch, the Indian Ocean, etcetra). It was, in the popular vernacular, an international bestseller.
Eames had just been busy. His father had actually sent him a copy of the first book almost immediately after the British release, wrapping in butcher paper and with a little note written in illegible scrawl--”you might like this one.” And Eames had put it at the bottom of a pile of books, wrapped in butcher paper and festooned with similar notes, that he had a vague intention of reading. Eventually.
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Mostly people were pissed because whoever it was, they seemed to be getting rich. There was a betting pool about who Anthony Ruske might be. Eames had it on good authority that there was at least five hundred U.S. dollars, one thousand Euros, seven hundred pounds, and ten thousand rupees on it being him. But copies of the book were hard to come by, because no one wanted to support the author by actually buying one, so Eames had to wait until he got home to actually read it.
He had been feeling rather smug about being suspected by so many until he actually read the book, and then he called Ariadne--Ignition’s most ardent advocate--immediately.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me it was about me?” he hissed when she answered the phone with her own name, groggy.
“What?” she said.
“Ignition,” he said. “British kid, from Oxford, professor mum, librarian dad--what the fuck.”
“Eames?” she said. “I didn’t know your mom was a professor. And, incidental piece of information here, but it’s two in the morning.”
Eames was actually aware of that. Ariadne was in Paris, he was in London, there was something dripping from his ceiling and his copy of Ignition was splayed open at the foot of his bed. His father would’ve told him to use a bookmark.
“Who the fuck is Anthony Ruske?” he asked, because although he could apologize, that didn’t mean he wanted to. Or would. Or any of that shit.
“I think I only answered my phone because I was sleeping,” Ariadne continued. “And vulnerable.”
“You can’t be a vulnerable sleeper in this business,” Eames said idly “But that’s not the matter at hand.”
“Right,” Ariadne said. “Anthony Ruske. How about we discuss that in the morning.”
“I don’t want--” Eames started, but by then Ariadne had already hung up.
He spent the rest of the evening reading the Wikipedia article about Anthony Ruske over and over, and then fell asleep knowing precisely the same amount of information has he had when he started. Namely, that there was no useful information about Anthony Ruske available. Ignition was his first book. He lived in New York City. All of that was probably bullshit, but even lies could reveal something of the truth, if they were told in any volume. Anthony Ruske apparently knew that.
In Transformation, published in late 2011, Grey learned to change shape in dreams and joined forces with the mysterious American Oliver Lawrence, who had been introduced passingly in the first novel. Together with Lizbet Godoy they began to uncover a plot by World Corps to use dreamwalking to influence consumer habits and bring about a new world order.
In Extraction, 2012, Oliver and Grey stole information from the dreams of the president of World Corps, only for Grey to discover that said president was Oliver’s father. This information was revealed in the frantic aftermath the extraction, when Oliver and Grey are clearly about to kiss out of desperation and joy. At the end of the novel it looked like Grey and Lizbet were going to continue their mission alone. The Greybet shippers let out a roar of joy, but Eames refuses to read their improbably manifestos. Even when they pop up on his Google alert.
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-anonthor
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Well this is a great story, but you switched tenses right there at the end of this and then you (as far as I've read) haven't switched back. I'd love to see this all in one tense and posted as one installment somewhere when you are finished. :)
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Though, on further thought, and because I didn't mean to discount your comments...do people have suggestions for writing events in the past without jarring tense changes? Concrit anon--do you have any suggestions? Is there a way I could've made it clearer that bit was supposed to be in the past?
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Well, hmm. It is really nice for an author to be open to concrit. It is a little sudden and confusing, I'll try to show what I mean. It happens here.
This information was revealed in the frantic aftermath the extraction, when Oliver and Grey are clearly about to kiss out of desperation and joy. At the end of the novel it looked like Grey and Lizbet were going to continue their mission alone. The Greybet shippers let out a roar of joy, but Eames refuses to read their improbably manifestos. Even when they pop up on his Google alert.
Etc. So for the stuff that happened in the past, even if you broke it up into separate chapters or divided it in some way, that might make it less confusing. Because the rest of the tale is told in the past tense before this. It seems like an accident when read this way. The switch comes in the middle of the paragraph with no indication that time has "changed."
So if you break the two sections up and make some indicator like, "and these days" or something along those lines, that might clear it up somewhat.
HTH because like other anon said, this is a great story.
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If I changed that bit to past tense, would this (the beginning of the next part) be less jarring as a transition to present?
And now, Inception. Eames looks at the exclamation marks dashing across the subject line of Ariadne’s e-mail, and dials her number.
The rest of the fic isn't actually in past tense--first 5 paragraphs are also in present. The first transition is here:
That might be getting ahead of the story, though. Eames is not Anthony Ruske; neither is he a writer, nor a historian. Ergo no one should expect him to get the pacing or even the chronology quite right.
The first book in the Dreamers series was published by Viking, released in America in July of 2010.
Thank you, both anons, for your help. That sentence was legit sloppy; I'll fix it in revisions. And no worries if you're busy--this (tense changes indicating past tense) is just something I've been wanting to dialogue about, so I grabbed the chance when I saw it.
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Yeah I think that could be a simple fix just like you said. That could work. And maybe start a new section or at least a new paragraph. Anyway it's still a great fic, can't wait to read the rest!
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“You think it was someone on the job?” he asks as soon as she picks up.
“How could it not be?” Ariadne is practically shouting. “No one else has--”
“That’s not strictly true,” Eames says.
“What do you mean, ‘strictly true’?” Ariadne says. “Superior fucker.”
Eames would not actually argue with the description of himself as a superior fucker, but that’s besides the point.
“There are pockets in the dreamsharing community,” Eames continues. “Isolated populations, so to speak. A military team attempted inception years ago, but since the criminal side of dreamsharing isn’t entirely drawn from military sources--”
“But you know about it, blah, blah, blah,” Ariadne mutters.
“Also,” Eames says, pretending he didn’t hear her. Because he’s the better man. “Also, the military inception didn’t work, but only because they planted the wrong idea.”
“And you were on this team, double-oh-seven?” Ariadne asks, and if they were face to face Eames would try to look coy. As it is, he doesn’t.
“Yes,” he says. “Of course I was.”
“So, what, five other people could’ve written this, and all of them are in the military and tight assed as shit and probably wouldn’t.”
“Do you think I’m a tight ass?”
“It’s also possible one of the corporate teams has achieved inception and we don’t know.”
“Stop raining on my parade,” Ariadne says. “Do you seriously think Ruske is a corporate stiff or a military lackey? Because it takes cajones to potentially out an entire industry in a novel, or a series of novels, let alone bestsellers--”
“And you think it could only be someone who already has the feds on their back,” Eames finishes for her.
“Precisely,” Ariadne says, enunciating the word carefully.
“Or, consider this, maybe it could’ve been someone who just heard about the inception job,” Eames says.
“Did you tell anyone? Because I didn’t.”
“It’s not a completely unique idea, Ariadne.”
“And it’s so hard to believe it could’ve been Cobb, or Arthur, or Yusuf?”
“Yes,” Eames says. He pushes his chair back from his desk and looks down at his toes, spreads them out. Arthur is too secretive, Cobb too serious, Yusuf doesn’t give enough shits about anything outside his chemistry. Honestly, the only people on the team he could imagine actually having written Dreamers are himself and Ariadne, and they--didn’t.
“Cobb could’ve written it for his kids,” Ariadne continues.
“Can you seriously imagine Cobb writing a book about dreamsharing without including a Mal doppelganger?” Eames asks. “Because I can’t.”
“Lizbet?” Ariadne asks, but even she sounds skeptical.
“Even if you take into account sex organs, Lizbet has more in common with Yusuf than Mal. Up to and including being perpetually high.”
“Yusuf isn’t--” Ariadne starts, and then she lets out a whistling sigh.
“Yeah,” Eames says. “Valiant effort though. A+.”
“Oh, shut up,” Ariadne says. “I suppose you know who wrote Dreamers, then.”
“Me,” Eames replies. “In my sleep.”
And then he hangs up the phone, because it’s absolutely not fair that Anthony Ruske stole details of his life, wrote a book about it, somehow twisted it so it’s extremely likely Grey will get laid whereas Eames hasn’t gotten any for months, and then Ruske doesn’t even have the grace to at least admit who he--or she, for that matter--is.
Eames tried to anagram the pseudonym. It didn’t help.
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Because I'm stupid in the 10 seconds between posting this and not posting it I changed the title to Mr Eames & The Story of His Life From Another Angle.
It's not a big deal.
But I'm posting this anyway.
Peace.
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