ADAW 2/52 - Fire
So, apologies in advance for the weird way that this story is set up, and that I'm not doing everything in order. I want to try to keep John as the perspective character in as many of my snippets as possible, because that's how it's supposed to be in the story, but it means there's a lot of random infodump conversations without much action going on! But I came up with the idea for next week already and it will be action packed HUZZAH! And it will explain a lot more of the dreamsharing stuff for people who haven't seen Inception. Also in today's story there's a whole other chunk of infodump in here that is completely unrelated to Evie but I couldn't figure out a way to split it up cleanly so have some extra story yay.
Anyway, here is tiny cute Evie and her literally-never-before-photographed sleeping faceplate. Playing with the perfect LTF body always makes me wish I had more kid characters for anything other than dramatic backstory of adult characters! Also little Evie is the shell I've had the longest (Ethan's character came first but he's been reshelled into a different Abadon!), so hugs to her on that front! Also also I spent a lot of time on that stupid fire in the background knowing that it would hardly even be in the pictures, and then it wasn't, but I do enjoy cutting up tiny pieces of paper, so there's that.
***
Ethan and Alan were bartending, they had no VIP clients, and the night was warm. John had persuaded Claire to stand outside with him, though the Tuesday crowd might only reach capacity at the very end of the night. He’d plied Claire with a Long Island iced tea, her favorite, and under the city moon of streetlights, she seemed to be in a good mood.
“Tell me how you and Alan got started in dreamshare.”
Claire glanced around. No one was in line, and theirs was the only bar on the block. The restaurant two doors down was almost ready for closing time. “Well,” she said, “our uncle, the youngest, he was involved. He went to Cornell for grad work, and studied biochemistry, and got into it that way. When Alan was a freshman, uncle Chris talked him into participating in a study group. Alan had a knack for it, and he got me involved, too.”
“And you had a knack for it.”
“Family trait, I guess. Hasn’t worked out so well in all cases.”
“Oh?”
“Well… look, Alan doesn’t really like to talk about things.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Chris’ wife died, early in the project. They had Evie, she was five at the time. She was the only one home when it happened. There was a fire, and Evie ran out of the house. Evie’s mom didn’t. Chris believed that his wife had been attacked or incapacitated, and that the fire had been started to hide the evidence. He couldn’t believe she’d just had a heart attack. When Evie was seven, he put her in the PASIV to try to find out what she remembered. At that point, the technique of building locked rooms for secrets was still being developed, and anyway, there might not have been a secret there at all. And Evie was just a kid. She brought her imaginary friends along. The PASIV was playtime for her. Her father couldn’t really take it. A few years later, he threw a big Thanksgiving dinner for our parents and some of the other scientists. And he drugged them, and hooked them up to the PASIV to interrogate them about his wife. When they all came to, my dad attacked Chris. He was beating him when Alan’s dad shot him. Then his wife. Then himself.”
“Your mother?”
“She never woke up.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It happened a long time ago.”
“Could I get you another drink?”
“Yes, please.”
John didn’t know if he had an advantage, or if he was just torturing Claire, but, when he brought Claire a fresh drink, he said, “Who’s Dom?”
“Where did you hear about Dom?”
“Oh, it’s one of the numbers in the company rolodex I didn’t recognize.” This excuse was slim, doubly so because John had put it in the rolodex himself, wondering if the continued existence of a rolodex in this modern age made his behavior more or less bizarre.
“That’s odd. We haven’t talked to Dom since before we left Cornell.”
“Oh?”
“He’s-he’s in a coma. I didn’t realize Alan had had the rolodex that long. Then again, it is a freakin’ rolodex.”
“How did he end up in a coma?”
“I think you’re channeling my dearest cousin now. You’re never this curious.”
“I want to learn the business.”
“Well. Well, Dom was a researcher. Alan knew him better than I did. I thought they kinda had a thing, but Alan’s so quiet about that. He-Alan-was with Dom during a run, some kind of drug testing. They ended up in Limbo.”
“What’s Limbo?”
“The bottom. The last dream level. When you’re so sedated that you can’t wake up, but you’ve died in a higher level. I mean, to us outside it looks like a coma.”
“But Alan got out?”
“He won’t really talk about it. It must’ve lasted a long time, because the timer on their PASIV was set for twenty-four hours, and every level down lasts longer. He said…”
“What?”
“He said he didn’t realize he was dreaming for a long time. Once he did, he couldn’t get Dom to understand. He woke up, and Dom didn’t.”
“Didn’t they have totems?”
“Those hadn’t been invented yet, or maybe the idea just hadn’t arrived here yet from France.”
“Totems do seem like an awfully French idea.”
“French dreamshare is way esoteric. They float around in colors and drink music and all this other synesthesia shit. I did one job with a team in France. Never again.”
John led her into that story, fidgeting with the strap on his watch. Evie treats the PASIV like a playground, Dom the maybe-ex-boyfriend was in a coma… Were these Alan’s legitimate reasons for avoiding a relationship?