(no subject)
The Way Out
Inception: Arthur gen
4000 words
PG-13
HA HA HA HERE IS A SUPREMELY SELF-INDULGENT SOAP OPERA BACKSTORY FOR ARTHUR. Spurred by this prompt at inception_kink, where all good things happen, apparently. It was either this story or Arthur as a hoity-toity class president who secretly liked illegal fireworks and grenades. Wait, maybe that's coming later.
I.
“Fuck you, you’re cheating,” Nick says indignantly. He’s 14 years old and in the stage of inserting a curse word everywhere. Turn off the fucking light. What the fucking fuck. I want some Cap’n fucking Crunch.
Arthur likes him, though, in a detached way. He likes being someone Nick can curse at without any consequences.
“I’m not,” Arthur counters. “Here, want me to roll again?”
He does so without waiting for Nick’s response, cupping his hands together before letting the dice tumble out, its plastic reflecting red shadows onto the gameboard.
***
II.
Arthur lives with his foster parents until midnight on November 20th, when he pops out the screen of the first-story window in the bedroom he shares with Nick, his foster brother. It’s easy to sneak outside, like he’s done a hundred times before, except this time he closes the window and puts the screen back on before turning away.
There are sealed envelopes on his pillow, one addressed to Anna and Marcel, the other to Nick. They’ll understand, Arthur thinks. He’s only been living with them for just over six months and he’s two days from turning 18. They’re the first family who’ve been halfway nice and Nick is pretty clingy, but still. They’ll understand.
Slanging weed and prescription pills throughout high school means that he’s saved up a sizable box of cash over the past few years. He doesn’t know how much, exactly, because counting it would set a financial limitation that he’ll constantly be worrying about. Instead he’d hidden it in various places: all the pockets in his backpack, his jacket pockets, hoodie pockets, socks, shoes. His jean pockets are stuffed with enough money to pay for a cab to the bus station and a Greyhound ticket to New York.
*
A couple weeks earlier, one of his friends from school had hooked him up with a cousin, Paulo, who had an open room in Manhattan. It turns out to be a living-room-converted-into-bedroom type deal that’s barely bigger than a closet. The place is also kind of a drug den, but Arthur doesn’t really care; he just keeps the curtain drawn and the windows open. Paulo is gone a lot, working night shifts at a motel, but Devin, his roommate, is friendly enough. He makes small talk and gives Arthur free access to his food, which Arthur is grateful for but never takes advantage of.
The first few weeks in the city pass by in a haze. At night, he drinks a lot and rides the express line up and down Manhattan until he feels like he’s going to puke. During the day, he eats cheap food, takes advantage of free events that are happening, or sits in on classes at NYU, BMCC, the City College, whatever school he runs across. He makes sure to ride to the end of each train line while sober as well, so he can get a mental grid of the city stamped into his mind. No particular reason why, but he just feels more comfortable knowing the surroundings by heart.
Whenever he emerges from the station steps, he’s greeted by faces and sound everywhere. It’s disconcerting at first, but he grows to appreciate it. Blending in has always been a good thing to him.
He could be anybody in this town.
*
The idyllic little vacation ends when Arthur unzips everything on his backpack and finds only a few twenties, his old notepad from school, a handful of pens, and a red die. He tosses the gaping backpack into the corner, then spends ten bucks on a pack of cigarettes and lies on his bare mattress the entire night, smoking and looking out the window with his arm curled behind his head.
Even though his resume is a quarter of a page long and he looks like a junkie needing to save up for his next fix, he manages to bag a job as a busboy at a shady restaurant uptown and starts on a Saturday night. The restaurant has low ceilings and uneven flooring and tables pushed into places where tables shouldn’t fit. One of the waiters points out where the bathroom and kitchen are, and that’s pretty much all the training Arthur gets.
It’s clumsy at first, food spilling everywhere, utensils getting lost in the soapy water, but Arthur starts to build up a rhythm and then he can stop thinking about it and just do it naturally. Everyone yells, the air is hot with oil and steam, and it’s fine, it’s perfect.
The next morning, he wakes up sore and a little cranky. He balls his hand into a fist, then flexes it down and stretches his arm out, feeling the burn of muscles on his forearm. To be honest, he feels like shit.
He calls the restaurant and goes to work three hours later.
*
Eventually his schedule ramps up to six nights a week. Arthur gets used to looking down and seeing the maroon, punched-out rubber mats, his black sneakers soaked with water and suds. He loads the dishwasher, smiles when the cooks yell-sing along with the radio, and barely says a word to anyone. When he gets tired, he hangs around the back door and takes smoke breaks, kicking empty cans in the alleyway and watching birds fight over bits of trash. On the bus ride there and back, he reads library books about military strategy and neurological diseases. He looks out the window when he feels car-sick and usually gets home buzzing with a second wave of energy that hits around one in the morning.
One night, on a whim, Arthur drops his bag off in the apartment before heading back downstairs and taking a run. He has no idea how far he goes, just knows that his heart is beating hard and rabbit-quick when he gets back. The mirror reflects a sweaty, sallow face with bright eyes, hair hanging around and plastered to his cheeks.
The first drawer he opens yields a razor. Arthur plugs it in, clips in the ‘2’ blade, and shaves his head. He blinks at the mirror again afterward -- still with the bright eyes and straight, serious mouth. He can’t tell if he looks older or younger. Mostly he still looks the same.
***
III.
“Jesus, Arthur, do you ever turn it off?” Devin asks after Arthur gets home around 3:00am. Devin’s eyes are hooded, mouth hanging open like he can’t quite be bothered to close it in between yawns.
“I don’t think I have a switch,” Arthur says, and manages to crack a smile.
*
Arthur experimentally goes out drinking with Devin and his friends once. It takes him only a few hours to relearn social cues, to know when to laugh, to make his gestures seem fluid and natural. After that’s done, Arthur pays his part of the tab and ambles home while Devin is off buying another round.
He suspects he should feel bad about leaving, but it seems unimportant all the same.
*
The first thing he ever splurges on is a cheap, pay-as-you-go cell phone. He signs the papers, then stands out on the sidewalk, flipping the phone around in his hand. People brush past him on either direction. Three buses roar by. The traffic signal changes from red to green.
Arthur finally dials a number and presses the phone to his ear. When Nick says, “Hello?”, Arthur hangs up and closes the phone.
Picking out a memory and rebuilding that connection in real life has never been Arthur’s style. He waits for some kind of catharsis or breakthrough while standing at the bus-stop, just in case he's wrong, but nothing comes.
When he shoves his hands into his pockets, he feels his cell phone in one, the red die in the other. Carrying around the latter had been a recent development. The die was just part of a tradition he’d made up: swipe a keepsake from every home he’s ever been in. Bigger stuff for the people he didn’t like -- jewelry from the family who only gave him one meal a day, that kind of stuff.
But the die was a small thing, inconsequential to everyone. Nick was a little weird when Arthur knew him, always getting into pretty bloody fights at school, then coming home and playing boardgames or building puzzles with Arthur. That was the only thing they had in common. Still, whenever Arthur holds the die, he thinks of sitting inside with a roof over his head, playing boardgames with someone who trusted him. It’s just something he’d like to remember.
*
When his birthday rolls around, he enrolls in some classes just for the hell of it. He takes chemistry and history and consistently posts the highest grades in both sections. Running after work had become habit for a while, but those sessions get edged out in favor of sitting in the library, reading about everything from 18th century warships to sporophyte generations in plants. He takes some books home and gets cigarette ashes all over pages outlining neoclassicism in art, all while squinting at the print through his drugstore glasses. No specific subjects interest him, which is kind of freeing.
His life has settled into a predictable rhythm. Now he’s just another guy, living in a city of millions, working and learning. Just a nobody.
***
IV.
Arthur heads out of the library at 11:00, the building lights already dimming as he steps outside. Quitting smoking had been a vague resolution but he’s already lighting one up before he can get ten feet from the entrance.
“Hey. You think I can bum one of those?”
One of the guys Arthur’s been seeing around lately is leaning against the building. He seems like a businessman, not the usual library patron. Arthur wordlessly holds out the pack.
“Thanks,” the guy says as he extracts one. Arthur automatically holds up the lighter, flicking the wheel with a metallic noise. “Thanks,” the guy says again. He inhales and breathes out quickly, gesturing to Arthur with his chin. “You a chemist?”
“No,” Arthur says simply.
“Oh. I thought I saw you up there with a bunch of chemistry books.”
“Just doing a little research. Hey, have a good one.” Arthur turns away, but stops and turns back when the guys calls, “Wait a second. How old are you?”
Arthur laughs to himself. “Listen, I’m not into that kind of stuff.”
“No, not in -- I didn’t mean it like that,” the guy laughs as well, haltingly. He rubs the bridge of his nose. “I mean, how old are you, do you live with your family, all that.”
“I’m not into that kind of stuff either,” Arthur repeats.
“Okay, obviously I’m doing this all wrong. I’m Dom Cobb. I’m scouting people for -- legitimate -- jobs right now.” Dom raises his eyebrows. “Are you open to that prospect?”
“Offering jobs to random strangers doesn’t seem like a good business strategy. Just a hunch,” Arthur points out.
“Maybe not. But I usually have pretty good instincts about reading people,” Dom tells him. “For example, I noticed you’ve been researching about thirty subjects over the past couple weeks. ADD or pure intellectual curiosity?”
“I like to be thorough about what I learn,” Arthur answers. He feels like he should walk away from this, but he doesn’t.
“And that’s exactly what I’m looking for. Here.” Dom flicks out a smooth white rectangle pressed between his index and middle finger. It takes Arthur a second to realize that it’s a business card. “I’m going to be in New York for three more days. Give me a call if you’re curious.”
“Isn’t this the part where you assure me that it’s nothing illegal?”
Cobb starts walking backward. “I’m sure it’s not illegal in any way you’re thinking of,” he calls before slipping into a waiting car that Arthur hadn’t even noticed. It pulls away from the curb and Arthur sees the driver turn around to say something before they whiz by and out of sight.
The business card is finely textured. In the middle, a phone number, and on the back, a single word: ext.
*
Arthur works two shifts before calling the number. “So what is it?” he asks as soon as Cobb picks up.
Surprisingly, Cobb answers in a frank manner. “Well, I guess you could call it corporate espionage.”
“What, like insider trading?” Arthur asks after a beat.
Cobb chuckles. “No, no. It’s different than that. Do you have some time to meet? 86th and 3rd, there’s a cafe.”
*
He stares at Cobb. “So you steal from people’s dreams.”
“Precisely.”
“And they have no idea.”
“Think about it. You have a vivid dream, the clearest, most intricate one you’ve ever had, and you could swear it was real. But what happens when you wake up?”
“You realize it was a dream,” Arthur says slowly.
“Exactly. You don't know it wasn't real until it's too late. Sleep is when you’re at your most vulnerable.” Cobb nods at Arthur and randomly says, “What’s that book smell like?”
Arthur gives him a weird look. “Like a book.”
“Do me a favor and really smell it.”
“You were just starting to sway me into believing,” Arthur says, but he leans over and sniffs cautiously. The spine smells like any other book in the building, old and musty, the scent that’s unique to library books. “Smells like old paper.”
“It smells like a real book,” Cobb reiterates. “Now, Arthur, think of how you got here.”
“What’s with the -- ”
Arthur cuts off. He sits up straight and looks around the library, at all the people that have become familiar to him from the hours he spends in there. “We met at the cafe.”
“How did we get here?” Cobb stresses.
“We met at the cafe,” Arthur says again. His pulse starts thumping through his head, and he looks around wildly as books start flying off the shelves, crashing and sliding all over the floor. It all happens too quickly for him to do anything but panic. He can barely see Cobb through the flock of rustling pages.
“It’s difficult the first time,” Cobb says loudly. “The body’s response is unpredictable. I’m going to wake you up now.”
“Cobb!” is the last thing Arthur yells before the library disappears and he’s sitting straight up on a couch, Cobb’s couch, in Cobb’s hotel room, with Cobb standing beside him and holding the needle pinched between his fingers.
*
After saying goodbye, it takes Arthur an hour of walking around aimlessly to get his heartbeat to slow down. Cobb is leaving the day after tomorrow, meeting his wife in Paris and flying back to New York a week afterward.
Arthur works one last shift at the restaurant before quitting.
***
V.
Cobb explains that they’re still working out the kinks, that this is the first time he's trying to assemble an extraction team of his own. There are very few in the world, and even fewer with any longevity. A lot of accidents occurred in the beginning, people going into comas or developing aftereffects ranging from something akin to several bad acid trips to a borderline psychiatric disorder. Nowadays it’s mostly burnouts, Cobb says, or cobbling together a haphazard team that fucks it up.
Arthur learns the small things first. Sticking a needle into someone’s vein isn’t slick by any means. He takes a phlebotomy class. Also, dreaming isn’t so easy when the subconscious is factored in, so he goes under by himself a lot, trying to pinpoint certain patterns that his mind has. Cobb doesn’t think that’s reliable but his wife, Mal, designs open areas for all of Arthur’s projections to interact in: carnivals, museums, dinner parties.
When he starts feeling disappointed upon waking up from the dreams, he immediately takes a break for a few days. He only goes back when the ache to go under has subsided. No one asks where he’s been, but Arthur gets the sense that he’s passed some sort of test.
“You need to start changing your look,” Cobb says one day.
“Why?”
“It’d be fine if our concentration was graduate students who were on the verge of brilliant discoveries,” Cobb says. “But it’s not. You need to blend in and get comfortable until the mental projection of yourself changes as well.”
Arthur nods. “I can do that.”
Mal takes him to get fitted for a suit. There are two people fussing over him; he raises his arms obediently, and turns when they tell him to. A three-way mirror is set up in front of the platform and he stares at himself, trying to see if there’s anything obvious. He sees the same face that looked back at him that night he cut his hair short. He could be anybody.
“You’d make an excellent forger as well, I think,” Mal says when the tailors have gone to get more clothing. She meets his eyes in the mirror. “But that’s a job for someone else.”
*
His apartment is starting to feel like a stranger’s home. Arthur had never really settled in in the first place, but now he feels completely detached. Still, it’s not an uncomfortable wooden chair in a drafty warehouse, so he’ll take it. He sits on his mattress and reads Cobb’s notes, absorbing everything about dreams and extraction. Most of the psychology books from the city library are checked out under Arthur’s name and he actually goes through every single one of them.
Sometimes he eats. Sometimes he dreams naturally, but it’s never the same anymore.
*
Arthur spends the next few weeks plugged into Cobb’s mind, learning how to shoot, how to fight, how to deal if the laws of physics change. Cobb’s subconscious projections never even notice him.
“Why did you choose me?” Arthur asks abruptly. He reloads the RPG launcher.
Cobb seems unperturbed. “You were smart. I could tell just by watching you.”
“There’s plenty of smart people in a city of millions.”
“What is this, you want a ego stroking?”
Arthur pops off a round in response. Both of them squint in the same direction, following the path of the grenade. “I could tell you didn’t have ties to anyone,” Cobb finally says. “You were young. You didn’t have any experience in dreamscaping that would hinder what I had to teach you. You didn’t seem like the type to have a meltdown.
“And you looked like you needed a purpose,” he finishes.
“I’m surprised you don’t have a savior complex, thinking like that,” Arthur says.
“Ah, it makes a joke,” Cobb says loftily, and Arthur laughs for the first time in what feels like a long while.
*
The thing Arthur likes about Cobb is that he seems perfectly content about not poking into Arthur’s past. He acts like he already knows all there is to know about Arthur, and now they’re just moving forward. Once, and only once, he asks where Arthur’s from. Arthur doesn’t answer.
Mal picks up on it and twists the question, bringing it up when it’s just the two of them in the warehouse. “Do you miss your home?”
“I never really thought of anywhere as home,” Arthur says honestly.
“That must get quite lonely sometimes.”
“You’d think. But not really.” Arthur turns off the flame and eyes the capillary tube, trying to see if the compound is melted yet. “I figure, this is where I am right now. This is what I’m doing. It won’t help me to think about where I came from, or people I knew a long time ago.”
“But you are who you are because of them, whether or not it has been a negative or positive effect. You can acknowledge that without actually thinking about it.”
“And who am I?” Arthur asks with a small smile.
“A wonderful young man,” Mal answers without hesitation.
She smiles back sincerely, then lies on the couch and tells him about her childhood home in France, the brick one with windows that looked like eyes. It sounds nice.
*
That night, he has a dream about being back in the restaurant. He can smell the tepid water and twitches away when a loud burst of laughter cracks into his right ear. There are dishes piled up next to the sink; he loads them into the washer over and over again.
He wakes up and holds on to it as long as he can.
*
The last part of training is learning how to die in the dream. Cobb insists on introducing the kicks bit by bit, eventually graduating Arthur to letting him fling himself off the Empire State. When he wakes up, the sensation of wind whipping past his clothing is already faded, a misty memory somewhere in the back of his mind.
“What if I need to get out before the kick and I don’t happen to be on a skyscraper?” Arthur asks.
Cobb looks at him. “We’re working up to that. You have to be able to trust me.”
“I do,” Arthur says, and it’s the truth.
“Yeah, well, let’s see if your answer changes when I’m pointing a gun at your head.”
The first time Cobb does it, Arthur opens his eyes and swears his head is still reverberating with the shot. Rationally, he knows the disorientation will pass, but he still feels off-balance.
“Are you alright?” Mal asks. She’s crouched by the open suitcase, coiling up Arthur’s free line.
Arthur blinks. “I will be,” he finally says.
Her eyes seem sympathetic. “It’s rough, the first few times.”
He sits up, then carefully rises from the chair and heads to the work table. When he picks up a mug of cold coffee, his hands tremble a little. The only time that tremor shows up again is the first time he kills Cobb in a dream. After those two occasions, his hands don’t shake at all.
***
VI.
Eames is barrel-chested and blond. Apparently he free-lances for Cobb, having flown in the night before on a day’s notice. The first thing he’d said when they met was, “Arthur? Good lord, you must have been bullied as a child.”
“You seem loyal to Cobb,” Eames now says from behind Arthur. Apparently he's content to hang around the hotel for the day, even though the rendenzvous time was several hours from now. “But you haven’t worked on anyone else’s team before, is that right? Cobb’s shaping up to be quite good, of course, but sometimes his jobs get to be too much.”
Arthur shrugs. He doesn’t turn around, instead staying hunched over the coffee table and making sure the die is being held in the vise at a straight angle. When he touches the drill to the lower corner, it goes through neatly, spitting out a red curl of plastic.
“He does vouch for you, though. Do you ever think of starting your own team? Give him some competition in the field?”
Arthur shrugs again. “This is my first job, but I think I prefer to be in the background.”
“You’re a bit uptight, aren’t you?” Eames comments. He makes it sound like an extremely good thing.
“Yes, I agree,” Arthur replies.
It takes him one more hour to finish the totem, and by that time Cobb and Mal have already shown up. Arthur ducks into the bathroom and changes into the all black three-piece suit. His hair is slicked back, revealing the lines on his forehead that take a little longer to disappear nowadays.
He strides out to the foyer where Cobb is packing up the suitcase and Eames is lounging on the couch. Mal emerges from the bedroom, tilting her head as she puts on her earrings.
“Are we ready?” Cobb asks, looking around the room.
Arthur straightens his tie before slipping his hand into his pocket. He feels nervous but focused, capable. He feels ready.
Inception: Arthur gen
4000 words
PG-13
HA HA HA HERE IS A SUPREMELY SELF-INDULGENT SOAP OPERA BACKSTORY FOR ARTHUR. Spurred by this prompt at inception_kink, where all good things happen, apparently. It was either this story or Arthur as a hoity-toity class president who secretly liked illegal fireworks and grenades. Wait, maybe that's coming later.
I.
“Fuck you, you’re cheating,” Nick says indignantly. He’s 14 years old and in the stage of inserting a curse word everywhere. Turn off the fucking light. What the fucking fuck. I want some Cap’n fucking Crunch.
Arthur likes him, though, in a detached way. He likes being someone Nick can curse at without any consequences.
“I’m not,” Arthur counters. “Here, want me to roll again?”
He does so without waiting for Nick’s response, cupping his hands together before letting the dice tumble out, its plastic reflecting red shadows onto the gameboard.
***
II.
Arthur lives with his foster parents until midnight on November 20th, when he pops out the screen of the first-story window in the bedroom he shares with Nick, his foster brother. It’s easy to sneak outside, like he’s done a hundred times before, except this time he closes the window and puts the screen back on before turning away.
There are sealed envelopes on his pillow, one addressed to Anna and Marcel, the other to Nick. They’ll understand, Arthur thinks. He’s only been living with them for just over six months and he’s two days from turning 18. They’re the first family who’ve been halfway nice and Nick is pretty clingy, but still. They’ll understand.
Slanging weed and prescription pills throughout high school means that he’s saved up a sizable box of cash over the past few years. He doesn’t know how much, exactly, because counting it would set a financial limitation that he’ll constantly be worrying about. Instead he’d hidden it in various places: all the pockets in his backpack, his jacket pockets, hoodie pockets, socks, shoes. His jean pockets are stuffed with enough money to pay for a cab to the bus station and a Greyhound ticket to New York.
*
A couple weeks earlier, one of his friends from school had hooked him up with a cousin, Paulo, who had an open room in Manhattan. It turns out to be a living-room-converted-into-bedroom type deal that’s barely bigger than a closet. The place is also kind of a drug den, but Arthur doesn’t really care; he just keeps the curtain drawn and the windows open. Paulo is gone a lot, working night shifts at a motel, but Devin, his roommate, is friendly enough. He makes small talk and gives Arthur free access to his food, which Arthur is grateful for but never takes advantage of.
The first few weeks in the city pass by in a haze. At night, he drinks a lot and rides the express line up and down Manhattan until he feels like he’s going to puke. During the day, he eats cheap food, takes advantage of free events that are happening, or sits in on classes at NYU, BMCC, the City College, whatever school he runs across. He makes sure to ride to the end of each train line while sober as well, so he can get a mental grid of the city stamped into his mind. No particular reason why, but he just feels more comfortable knowing the surroundings by heart.
Whenever he emerges from the station steps, he’s greeted by faces and sound everywhere. It’s disconcerting at first, but he grows to appreciate it. Blending in has always been a good thing to him.
He could be anybody in this town.
*
The idyllic little vacation ends when Arthur unzips everything on his backpack and finds only a few twenties, his old notepad from school, a handful of pens, and a red die. He tosses the gaping backpack into the corner, then spends ten bucks on a pack of cigarettes and lies on his bare mattress the entire night, smoking and looking out the window with his arm curled behind his head.
Even though his resume is a quarter of a page long and he looks like a junkie needing to save up for his next fix, he manages to bag a job as a busboy at a shady restaurant uptown and starts on a Saturday night. The restaurant has low ceilings and uneven flooring and tables pushed into places where tables shouldn’t fit. One of the waiters points out where the bathroom and kitchen are, and that’s pretty much all the training Arthur gets.
It’s clumsy at first, food spilling everywhere, utensils getting lost in the soapy water, but Arthur starts to build up a rhythm and then he can stop thinking about it and just do it naturally. Everyone yells, the air is hot with oil and steam, and it’s fine, it’s perfect.
The next morning, he wakes up sore and a little cranky. He balls his hand into a fist, then flexes it down and stretches his arm out, feeling the burn of muscles on his forearm. To be honest, he feels like shit.
He calls the restaurant and goes to work three hours later.
*
Eventually his schedule ramps up to six nights a week. Arthur gets used to looking down and seeing the maroon, punched-out rubber mats, his black sneakers soaked with water and suds. He loads the dishwasher, smiles when the cooks yell-sing along with the radio, and barely says a word to anyone. When he gets tired, he hangs around the back door and takes smoke breaks, kicking empty cans in the alleyway and watching birds fight over bits of trash. On the bus ride there and back, he reads library books about military strategy and neurological diseases. He looks out the window when he feels car-sick and usually gets home buzzing with a second wave of energy that hits around one in the morning.
One night, on a whim, Arthur drops his bag off in the apartment before heading back downstairs and taking a run. He has no idea how far he goes, just knows that his heart is beating hard and rabbit-quick when he gets back. The mirror reflects a sweaty, sallow face with bright eyes, hair hanging around and plastered to his cheeks.
The first drawer he opens yields a razor. Arthur plugs it in, clips in the ‘2’ blade, and shaves his head. He blinks at the mirror again afterward -- still with the bright eyes and straight, serious mouth. He can’t tell if he looks older or younger. Mostly he still looks the same.
***
III.
“Jesus, Arthur, do you ever turn it off?” Devin asks after Arthur gets home around 3:00am. Devin’s eyes are hooded, mouth hanging open like he can’t quite be bothered to close it in between yawns.
“I don’t think I have a switch,” Arthur says, and manages to crack a smile.
*
Arthur experimentally goes out drinking with Devin and his friends once. It takes him only a few hours to relearn social cues, to know when to laugh, to make his gestures seem fluid and natural. After that’s done, Arthur pays his part of the tab and ambles home while Devin is off buying another round.
He suspects he should feel bad about leaving, but it seems unimportant all the same.
*
The first thing he ever splurges on is a cheap, pay-as-you-go cell phone. He signs the papers, then stands out on the sidewalk, flipping the phone around in his hand. People brush past him on either direction. Three buses roar by. The traffic signal changes from red to green.
Arthur finally dials a number and presses the phone to his ear. When Nick says, “Hello?”, Arthur hangs up and closes the phone.
Picking out a memory and rebuilding that connection in real life has never been Arthur’s style. He waits for some kind of catharsis or breakthrough while standing at the bus-stop, just in case he's wrong, but nothing comes.
When he shoves his hands into his pockets, he feels his cell phone in one, the red die in the other. Carrying around the latter had been a recent development. The die was just part of a tradition he’d made up: swipe a keepsake from every home he’s ever been in. Bigger stuff for the people he didn’t like -- jewelry from the family who only gave him one meal a day, that kind of stuff.
But the die was a small thing, inconsequential to everyone. Nick was a little weird when Arthur knew him, always getting into pretty bloody fights at school, then coming home and playing boardgames or building puzzles with Arthur. That was the only thing they had in common. Still, whenever Arthur holds the die, he thinks of sitting inside with a roof over his head, playing boardgames with someone who trusted him. It’s just something he’d like to remember.
*
When his birthday rolls around, he enrolls in some classes just for the hell of it. He takes chemistry and history and consistently posts the highest grades in both sections. Running after work had become habit for a while, but those sessions get edged out in favor of sitting in the library, reading about everything from 18th century warships to sporophyte generations in plants. He takes some books home and gets cigarette ashes all over pages outlining neoclassicism in art, all while squinting at the print through his drugstore glasses. No specific subjects interest him, which is kind of freeing.
His life has settled into a predictable rhythm. Now he’s just another guy, living in a city of millions, working and learning. Just a nobody.
***
IV.
Arthur heads out of the library at 11:00, the building lights already dimming as he steps outside. Quitting smoking had been a vague resolution but he’s already lighting one up before he can get ten feet from the entrance.
“Hey. You think I can bum one of those?”
One of the guys Arthur’s been seeing around lately is leaning against the building. He seems like a businessman, not the usual library patron. Arthur wordlessly holds out the pack.
“Thanks,” the guy says as he extracts one. Arthur automatically holds up the lighter, flicking the wheel with a metallic noise. “Thanks,” the guy says again. He inhales and breathes out quickly, gesturing to Arthur with his chin. “You a chemist?”
“No,” Arthur says simply.
“Oh. I thought I saw you up there with a bunch of chemistry books.”
“Just doing a little research. Hey, have a good one.” Arthur turns away, but stops and turns back when the guys calls, “Wait a second. How old are you?”
Arthur laughs to himself. “Listen, I’m not into that kind of stuff.”
“No, not in -- I didn’t mean it like that,” the guy laughs as well, haltingly. He rubs the bridge of his nose. “I mean, how old are you, do you live with your family, all that.”
“I’m not into that kind of stuff either,” Arthur repeats.
“Okay, obviously I’m doing this all wrong. I’m Dom Cobb. I’m scouting people for -- legitimate -- jobs right now.” Dom raises his eyebrows. “Are you open to that prospect?”
“Offering jobs to random strangers doesn’t seem like a good business strategy. Just a hunch,” Arthur points out.
“Maybe not. But I usually have pretty good instincts about reading people,” Dom tells him. “For example, I noticed you’ve been researching about thirty subjects over the past couple weeks. ADD or pure intellectual curiosity?”
“I like to be thorough about what I learn,” Arthur answers. He feels like he should walk away from this, but he doesn’t.
“And that’s exactly what I’m looking for. Here.” Dom flicks out a smooth white rectangle pressed between his index and middle finger. It takes Arthur a second to realize that it’s a business card. “I’m going to be in New York for three more days. Give me a call if you’re curious.”
“Isn’t this the part where you assure me that it’s nothing illegal?”
Cobb starts walking backward. “I’m sure it’s not illegal in any way you’re thinking of,” he calls before slipping into a waiting car that Arthur hadn’t even noticed. It pulls away from the curb and Arthur sees the driver turn around to say something before they whiz by and out of sight.
The business card is finely textured. In the middle, a phone number, and on the back, a single word: ext.
*
Arthur works two shifts before calling the number. “So what is it?” he asks as soon as Cobb picks up.
Surprisingly, Cobb answers in a frank manner. “Well, I guess you could call it corporate espionage.”
“What, like insider trading?” Arthur asks after a beat.
Cobb chuckles. “No, no. It’s different than that. Do you have some time to meet? 86th and 3rd, there’s a cafe.”
*
He stares at Cobb. “So you steal from people’s dreams.”
“Precisely.”
“And they have no idea.”
“Think about it. You have a vivid dream, the clearest, most intricate one you’ve ever had, and you could swear it was real. But what happens when you wake up?”
“You realize it was a dream,” Arthur says slowly.
“Exactly. You don't know it wasn't real until it's too late. Sleep is when you’re at your most vulnerable.” Cobb nods at Arthur and randomly says, “What’s that book smell like?”
Arthur gives him a weird look. “Like a book.”
“Do me a favor and really smell it.”
“You were just starting to sway me into believing,” Arthur says, but he leans over and sniffs cautiously. The spine smells like any other book in the building, old and musty, the scent that’s unique to library books. “Smells like old paper.”
“It smells like a real book,” Cobb reiterates. “Now, Arthur, think of how you got here.”
“What’s with the -- ”
Arthur cuts off. He sits up straight and looks around the library, at all the people that have become familiar to him from the hours he spends in there. “We met at the cafe.”
“How did we get here?” Cobb stresses.
“We met at the cafe,” Arthur says again. His pulse starts thumping through his head, and he looks around wildly as books start flying off the shelves, crashing and sliding all over the floor. It all happens too quickly for him to do anything but panic. He can barely see Cobb through the flock of rustling pages.
“It’s difficult the first time,” Cobb says loudly. “The body’s response is unpredictable. I’m going to wake you up now.”
“Cobb!” is the last thing Arthur yells before the library disappears and he’s sitting straight up on a couch, Cobb’s couch, in Cobb’s hotel room, with Cobb standing beside him and holding the needle pinched between his fingers.
*
After saying goodbye, it takes Arthur an hour of walking around aimlessly to get his heartbeat to slow down. Cobb is leaving the day after tomorrow, meeting his wife in Paris and flying back to New York a week afterward.
Arthur works one last shift at the restaurant before quitting.
***
V.
Cobb explains that they’re still working out the kinks, that this is the first time he's trying to assemble an extraction team of his own. There are very few in the world, and even fewer with any longevity. A lot of accidents occurred in the beginning, people going into comas or developing aftereffects ranging from something akin to several bad acid trips to a borderline psychiatric disorder. Nowadays it’s mostly burnouts, Cobb says, or cobbling together a haphazard team that fucks it up.
Arthur learns the small things first. Sticking a needle into someone’s vein isn’t slick by any means. He takes a phlebotomy class. Also, dreaming isn’t so easy when the subconscious is factored in, so he goes under by himself a lot, trying to pinpoint certain patterns that his mind has. Cobb doesn’t think that’s reliable but his wife, Mal, designs open areas for all of Arthur’s projections to interact in: carnivals, museums, dinner parties.
When he starts feeling disappointed upon waking up from the dreams, he immediately takes a break for a few days. He only goes back when the ache to go under has subsided. No one asks where he’s been, but Arthur gets the sense that he’s passed some sort of test.
“You need to start changing your look,” Cobb says one day.
“Why?”
“It’d be fine if our concentration was graduate students who were on the verge of brilliant discoveries,” Cobb says. “But it’s not. You need to blend in and get comfortable until the mental projection of yourself changes as well.”
Arthur nods. “I can do that.”
Mal takes him to get fitted for a suit. There are two people fussing over him; he raises his arms obediently, and turns when they tell him to. A three-way mirror is set up in front of the platform and he stares at himself, trying to see if there’s anything obvious. He sees the same face that looked back at him that night he cut his hair short. He could be anybody.
“You’d make an excellent forger as well, I think,” Mal says when the tailors have gone to get more clothing. She meets his eyes in the mirror. “But that’s a job for someone else.”
*
His apartment is starting to feel like a stranger’s home. Arthur had never really settled in in the first place, but now he feels completely detached. Still, it’s not an uncomfortable wooden chair in a drafty warehouse, so he’ll take it. He sits on his mattress and reads Cobb’s notes, absorbing everything about dreams and extraction. Most of the psychology books from the city library are checked out under Arthur’s name and he actually goes through every single one of them.
Sometimes he eats. Sometimes he dreams naturally, but it’s never the same anymore.
*
Arthur spends the next few weeks plugged into Cobb’s mind, learning how to shoot, how to fight, how to deal if the laws of physics change. Cobb’s subconscious projections never even notice him.
“Why did you choose me?” Arthur asks abruptly. He reloads the RPG launcher.
Cobb seems unperturbed. “You were smart. I could tell just by watching you.”
“There’s plenty of smart people in a city of millions.”
“What is this, you want a ego stroking?”
Arthur pops off a round in response. Both of them squint in the same direction, following the path of the grenade. “I could tell you didn’t have ties to anyone,” Cobb finally says. “You were young. You didn’t have any experience in dreamscaping that would hinder what I had to teach you. You didn’t seem like the type to have a meltdown.
“And you looked like you needed a purpose,” he finishes.
“I’m surprised you don’t have a savior complex, thinking like that,” Arthur says.
“Ah, it makes a joke,” Cobb says loftily, and Arthur laughs for the first time in what feels like a long while.
*
The thing Arthur likes about Cobb is that he seems perfectly content about not poking into Arthur’s past. He acts like he already knows all there is to know about Arthur, and now they’re just moving forward. Once, and only once, he asks where Arthur’s from. Arthur doesn’t answer.
Mal picks up on it and twists the question, bringing it up when it’s just the two of them in the warehouse. “Do you miss your home?”
“I never really thought of anywhere as home,” Arthur says honestly.
“That must get quite lonely sometimes.”
“You’d think. But not really.” Arthur turns off the flame and eyes the capillary tube, trying to see if the compound is melted yet. “I figure, this is where I am right now. This is what I’m doing. It won’t help me to think about where I came from, or people I knew a long time ago.”
“But you are who you are because of them, whether or not it has been a negative or positive effect. You can acknowledge that without actually thinking about it.”
“And who am I?” Arthur asks with a small smile.
“A wonderful young man,” Mal answers without hesitation.
She smiles back sincerely, then lies on the couch and tells him about her childhood home in France, the brick one with windows that looked like eyes. It sounds nice.
*
That night, he has a dream about being back in the restaurant. He can smell the tepid water and twitches away when a loud burst of laughter cracks into his right ear. There are dishes piled up next to the sink; he loads them into the washer over and over again.
He wakes up and holds on to it as long as he can.
*
The last part of training is learning how to die in the dream. Cobb insists on introducing the kicks bit by bit, eventually graduating Arthur to letting him fling himself off the Empire State. When he wakes up, the sensation of wind whipping past his clothing is already faded, a misty memory somewhere in the back of his mind.
“What if I need to get out before the kick and I don’t happen to be on a skyscraper?” Arthur asks.
Cobb looks at him. “We’re working up to that. You have to be able to trust me.”
“I do,” Arthur says, and it’s the truth.
“Yeah, well, let’s see if your answer changes when I’m pointing a gun at your head.”
The first time Cobb does it, Arthur opens his eyes and swears his head is still reverberating with the shot. Rationally, he knows the disorientation will pass, but he still feels off-balance.
“Are you alright?” Mal asks. She’s crouched by the open suitcase, coiling up Arthur’s free line.
Arthur blinks. “I will be,” he finally says.
Her eyes seem sympathetic. “It’s rough, the first few times.”
He sits up, then carefully rises from the chair and heads to the work table. When he picks up a mug of cold coffee, his hands tremble a little. The only time that tremor shows up again is the first time he kills Cobb in a dream. After those two occasions, his hands don’t shake at all.
***
VI.
Eames is barrel-chested and blond. Apparently he free-lances for Cobb, having flown in the night before on a day’s notice. The first thing he’d said when they met was, “Arthur? Good lord, you must have been bullied as a child.”
“You seem loyal to Cobb,” Eames now says from behind Arthur. Apparently he's content to hang around the hotel for the day, even though the rendenzvous time was several hours from now. “But you haven’t worked on anyone else’s team before, is that right? Cobb’s shaping up to be quite good, of course, but sometimes his jobs get to be too much.”
Arthur shrugs. He doesn’t turn around, instead staying hunched over the coffee table and making sure the die is being held in the vise at a straight angle. When he touches the drill to the lower corner, it goes through neatly, spitting out a red curl of plastic.
“He does vouch for you, though. Do you ever think of starting your own team? Give him some competition in the field?”
Arthur shrugs again. “This is my first job, but I think I prefer to be in the background.”
“You’re a bit uptight, aren’t you?” Eames comments. He makes it sound like an extremely good thing.
“Yes, I agree,” Arthur replies.
It takes him one more hour to finish the totem, and by that time Cobb and Mal have already shown up. Arthur ducks into the bathroom and changes into the all black three-piece suit. His hair is slicked back, revealing the lines on his forehead that take a little longer to disappear nowadays.
He strides out to the foyer where Cobb is packing up the suitcase and Eames is lounging on the couch. Mal emerges from the bedroom, tilting her head as she puts on her earrings.
“Are we ready?” Cobb asks, looking around the room.
Arthur straightens his tie before slipping his hand into his pocket. He feels nervous but focused, capable. He feels ready.