Trouble Sleeping
This ridiculous takes-itself-way-too-seriously fic operates on the premise that a) Arthur and Tom Hansen are one and the same, b) this is Arthur dancing.
Trouble Sleeping • AU: Inception crossed over with 500 Days of Summer • mild Eames/Arthur, past Tom/Summer • PG-13.
Usual fanfiction disclaimer: I don't own the original story or the characters. Those are Nolan's. I don't own, for that matter, Alain de Botton's The Architecture of Happiness. Non-profit, all good fun.
EDIT: I wasn't expecting this overwhelmingly positive reception! Thank you to everyone who commented!
+
The interview at the Bradbury Building had gone surprisingly well. Tom had been confronted with a row of faceless interviewers, and presented them with a hefty portfolio of blueprints and sketchy, futuristic constructions - not exactly to his tastes, but it was what the public seemed to want in their new cityscapes. Innovative. Cutting-edge. Soulless. Tom agreed: it epitomised their era perfectly.
They'd liked his work. In Tom's opinion, he'd held up admirably, even when the interviewers had gone off-topic and started interrogating him about dreams, and made him draw them mazes till they were satisfied. Odd, but it'd gone great, so he wasn't complaining.
He smiled at Autumn on his way out, full of youthful suited-up optimism. He thought about the coffee he'd order with her. About how they'd walk to Angel's Knoll Park with a spring in their steps, admiring their favourite slice of Los Angeles.
Yes, Tom was certain, this was the first day of the rest of his life.
+
In his first dream after the interview, he gets an obscure impression of Summer Finn in soft focus, pirouetting in a swirl of patterned skirts. Somewhere, a Narrator speaks: acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation.
Thomas Arthur Hansen wakes up confused.
+
He was in a seminar room of Allen, Prince & Gethers, notes in hand. Opposite him sat an elderly man and a younger woman; the former in a sensible brown suit, the latter in a conservative, elegant black dress. Something about them suggested that they were European, perhaps even English. They were Professor Miles, apparently, and his daughter Mallorie. On the desk between them was something they'd said was called a PASIV machine.
Tom, for the most part, was nonplussed.
“What you're saying that there's a drug that makes it possible to share dreams, to design them” - he sat back, raked a hand through his slicked-back hair - “and you want me to do it? I...this is crazy. I thought I was gonna be an architect.”
“You are,” agreed Miles, sipping his tea. Definitely English, Tom thought. “You'll be one of the best. You'll push the boundaries of human creativity. For artistic development,” he added meaningfully, “not profit.”
Mallorie made a disapproving noise. “Oh, come on. Dom is a good man.”
“Wait, if this is a dream,” Tom interrupted, “then you're not real. Neither of you. Nothing you're saying is real. I'll wake up in my own bed, check my answering machine and find that nobody called me to the firm -”
“Think, Thomas,” interrupted Mallorie - Mal - gently. “How did you get here?”
Tom opened his mouth and found that he couldn't think of anything to say. The woman smiled, not unkindly. “This is a dream - but we are real.” She spoke with a soft French accent. Tom couldn't help but notice she was very pretty.
He swallowed nervously. “So what you're trying to say is...I'm dreaming right now, and we're sharing my dream?”
“No, Thomas,” she said. “This is my dream.”
Tom sat back. “Holy shit,” he said finally.
Miles nodded. “Quite so. Would you like to try it yourself? You are an architect, after all.”
“You mean like...” Tom paused, searching for words. “Here? Now?” They nodded. “A dream within a dream.”
“Indeed,” agreed Miles. “You were shortlisted, Thomas. Consider this the next part of your interview.”
+
Tom, on the whole, wasn't really comfortable with Miles looking into his subconscious, but here they were anyway: an anonymous bank, built of Somnacin and limestone and marble. Tom looked around, somewhat pleased with his work.
“Desires manifest their ideals in architecture,” he commented.
Miles nodded. “De Botton. Very good.” Tom didn't know if he was referring to the bank's design or Alain de Botton. “Your subconscious seems quite a sensible sort.”
“I guess.” Tom believed that precision and accuracy was key in architecture, as well as a certain skill with mathematics and physics. The conviction had manifested itself in the form of clean lines and sturdy columns.
“A little old-fashioned,” mused Miles, “but not half bad. Creativity knows no bounds, Thomas. You can experiment a little more if you like.” He glanced sideways. “Nice shades, by the way.”
Tom looked away guiltily. “So does this mean I'm the dreamer and you're the subject...?”
“It is entirely possible for you to be both at once, though it isn't always the case.”
“Right. Yeah.” Tom looked around. The people swarming around him looked like bankers were meant to look, awkward and modern in their sharp suits. “These people, they're...”
“Projections of your subconscious,” said Miles mildly.
“Okay,” said Tom, and stopped. There was a girl with long dark hair behind the counter - somebody he knew. An anomaly amongst the black suits. She stared at him. He stared back.
“Somebody you know?” enquired Miles.
“Yeah,” mumbled Tom. “My...ex.”
“Ah.”
Summer blinked balefully and pressed what must have been an alarm button hidden beneath the counter. Doors flew open, and grey-uniformed security guards poured into the room.
“Congratulations, Mr Hansen," said Miles. Tom couldn't tell if he was being ironic.
+
He sold his apartment, abandoning his IKEA furniture and bedroom chalkboard for a beautiful, minimalist serviced flat in one of LA's most fashionable districts - all paid for by the company, of course.
Tom found a curious blankness in the designated features of his new dwellings. Was it customisable? Could he make it suit his tastes? Perhaps. He'd once believed that you are where you live. But did it matter? He thought about it, and was surprised to find that he no longer cared. Dreams held infinitely more promise, and you didn't even have to worry about the mortgage.
He ended up not living in that apartment much. Allen, Prince & Gethers paid for his ticket to Paris, where he enrolled in Professor Miles' college. As a graduate student returning to his artistic roots, Tom felt at home, though some things had changed.
He enjoyed research, for one thing. For another, he was beginning to realise that his sensibilities were out of place at the college, where his classmates' visions seemed to be all about liquid modernity and digitised embellishments.
Thirdly, Tom had liked art well enough before; but now he found himself favouring mazes, clever illusory patterns, and visual experiments in architecture and mathematics. Tom, whose own style was more along the lines of precisely detailed ink illustration than traditional architectural blueprints, was fascinated by Escher's work. Identified with him, even. Maybe he was maturing.
For the most part, he studied hard and worked on his dreams. He went to the Louvre. He spoke broken French, ate baguettes with honey, danced with the local ladies, learnt to love Edith Piaf, and never once called Summer or Autumn.
+
In his second year of graduate school, Tom was introduced to a man named Dom Cobb, who had come to - as Professor Miles put it sourly - “corrupt” him. Dom what, Tom wondered. Dominic? Domovoi?
“I need a new architect,” Cobb had said. “A new point man wouldn't hurt either. Miles says you're brilliant with research too. Submitted a great thesis.”
Tom acknowledged this cautiously. Cobb nodded.
“You know about dream-sharing?”
Again, Tom replied in the affirmative. Cobb, it transpired, was a businessman - and dream-sharing, it seemed, was very big business. Cobb was the best at his job, and was regularly hired to steal otherwise inaccessible corporate secrets from the minds of top executives.
“Once an idea has been generated,” explained Cobb, “it stays fixed in the subconscious forever. My job, as the extractor, is to retrieve that information through dreams.”
Despite his fascination, Tom was slightly appalled. Miles had taught him about creation for creation's sake. To use dreams for espionage, deception, theft of ideas? The artist in Tom was outraged at the idea. Where was copyright? Inspiration? Originality?
Starving artist, Tom reminded himself, if you don't get a job soon. Many companies recruited from the pool of talent that universities had to offer. He'd be a fool to pass this up.
“Welcome to the team,” said Cobb. “Now, corporate dreaming can be dangerous, so you might want to find yourself an alias. A new identity. Our job can get pretty rough.”
+
Together they were the dreamer, point man, architect and extractor rolled into one lethal partnership. Mal sometimes joined in -- assisting with research, according to Cobb - but not this time. The job involved extracting expansion secrets from a Middle Eastern oil sheik, and they needed to enlist a Forger.
They meet Cobb's chosen Forger in the dream of a Shanghainese gambling den, playing dice with the Chinese. Tom knew of the man. Eames had only been in the trade a little longer than Tom himself, but in that period of time he had proven himself to be one of the world's best Forgers.
“This is the new architect,” Cobb told Eames, who was staring at Tom appraisingly. “He's working as our point man too; Mal's trained him. Eames, meet -”
“Arthur,” said Tom immediately. It was his middle name, and thus close enough to the truth that it could be a convincing lie. The last thing he needed was an identity thief knowing anything about him.
Eames studied him. “Yes, you do look like an Arthur.”
What does that even mean?
“Arthur.” Eames glanced around at the decor, and settled back into his chair. “So you're the dreamer? Nice dive. Congratulations, Arthur, on this spectacularly uninspired location.” He glanced down at the table. “Do you know what the name of this game translates to?”
“I wouldn't know, Mr Eames,” said Tom steadily. “I don't gamble.”
Eames grinned. “Cockfighting.”
Silence. Tom stared, poker-faced. Cobb looked exasperated. “Lay off him.”
“So tell me, darling,” said Eames, “we are all conmen here. How would you control the outcome of a gamble?”
“Anything's possible with a little background knowledge and the proper application.” Tom watched Eames roll the die between his fingers. “As I said, Eames, I don't like to gamble.”
Eames' laugh seemed significant, somehow. “We'll see about that, cupcake.”
+
He's back in the bank with Summer, and they are young and beautiful in the dusty light. Tom's still a novice dreamer. His two-piece suit isn't as elegant as it could be, and his hair is far from perfect, but he dances much better here than in reality. The decor is second-rate but who will judge him, here and now?
They are a silent-movie whirl of fluid motion, merrily running the gamut from cakewalk to tap dance. He plays with gravity, executing a perfect double somersault, landing breathless and exhilarated.
They're dancing on the desks of indifferent projections when Tom's watch goes off: his hair's a mess, he's out of time, and the sedative will wear off soon, but Summer curtsies and takes him out for one last dance.
She runs circles around him, in a swirl of slate-blue skirts. He hasn't laughed this hard in ages.
For the grand finale, he sends Summer falling, slowly lowering her as one would a puppet, and stops her before she hits the ground. Gravity is something that happens to other people. (Eat it, Newton.)
It's not Pulp Fiction and he's not John Travolta, but it'll do.
+
Arthur was writing in the second seminar room of what was meant to be a New Orleans hotel, filling in de Botton's words in his own handwriting. The result was different enough to not be his memory of the original book, which might have screwed things up, yet close enough to retain the quote's originality. The architects who benefit us most may be those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius in order to devote themselves to assembling graceful but predominantly unoriginal boxes.
Really, the writing was purely cathartic. The political campaign they were dismantling was still in its early stages, but the subject was the head of the party and a strong contender for one of America's biggest presidential elections to date. They were extracting a senator's secrets for a rival politician, or meant to be, anyway. Their architect had gotten smashed that morning - really, nobody should drink at eleven A.M. - so here Arthur was, furiously dreaming his way through a layout he'd only partly designed. He would have revamped the whole structure but there hadn't been time, dammit, and he wanted everything to be perfect.
The intensity he was pouring into the work had caused a minor hurricane outside. Truly, Arthur hated this last-minute development, this urgency and loss of control. He preferred to design at his own pace, and would honestly rather stick to research than run the risk of a shoddy job.
“Amazing. This place looks like a history museum. Try using Photoshop next time. Half the effort, twice the result.”
Then there was that. Arthur was somewhat less technophobic than Tom had been, but he was still annoyed. “Aren't you supposed to be impersonating the bulimic secretary? You spent the last week observing her.”
“The good senator thinks I'm regurgitating my breakfast in the little girls' room.” Eames could look amused and condescending even with a mouthful of barbecued shrimp and a pair of secretarial breasts. “It's called imagination, darling. You need it to dream. Are you sure you're in the right line of work?”
The same words of so many other architectural interviewers in LA. Thunder boomed in the distance, drowning out the hail of gunfire in the next room, but Arthur barely noticed through his annoyance.
“So it's not the Walt Disney Concert Hall,” he said coldly. “What an outrage.” He continued writing, surreptitiously observing the passageway from which Cobb was expected to emerge. Architecture should have the confidence and the kindness to be a little boring.
Eames opened his mouth for some witty rejoinder, but was distracted by Cobb's reappearance. Their leader was sprinting, bloodied and ashen-faced, towards them. Behind him was a group of CIA agents - no, militarised projections - in hot pursuit, along with the senator.
Arthur was on his feet in an instant, book abandoned, Glock in hand. “Did you get it?”
“Yes.” Cobb thrust the file he was holding into Arthur's arms. “Now go!”
They ran, Arthur leading the way, with Cobb and Eames covering him. Arthur tried to remember where the fire escape was - maybe he could throw in a last-minute Penrose...
He shot the lock and burst through the door, only to find himself in what was unmistakably Angel's Knoll Park, complete with full-blooming trees and the wooden benches and Summer Finn staring down at him, exactly as he had last seen her.
Silence.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Arthur muttered, and kicked the door shut behind him, interrupting Eames' mumble of “I think there's a bullet in my arse” and re-entering. This time it was the 1927 Fine Arts Building on 7th Street. Slam.
Cobb didn't look pleased. “Arthur, what the hell!”
1902 Continental Building on Spring. Him and Summer, walking. Another slam.
“Arthur!”
“Damned if I know! Nash designed this!” And a sloppy job too, for patches of subconscious to emerge. Arthur flung the door open again. Greeting card company headquarters. Slam. Summer Finn's blue-walled apartment, complete with half-dressed girl on bed - just lying there, a perfectly benign projection, but still distracting. Oh, Christ. Arthur nearly knocked Cobb over trying to get away.
“Arthur!”
“I'm going to kill Nash,” snarled Arthur, and threw the door open again, revealing - blessedly - their escape route. They charged out and up.
Eames looked remarkably sceptical for somebody who had a bullet in the arse and a trail of semiconscious projections in his wake. “Why were there patches of L.A. in New Orleans?”
“Nash's fault,” muttered Cobb, grabbing the file from Arthur again and scanning its contents - lengthy notes, handwritten. “At least we have what we wanted.” He glanced up, clearly relieved, and nodded at Arthur. “Outstanding, Arthur. Really.”
Eames smirked. “Yes, outstanding, Arthur.”
“Eames,” said Cobb reprovingly. “By the way, you did take out all the guards, right?”
“Should think so.”
“Let's go,” said Arthur shortly. As the strains of Edith Piaf's voice floated through the air, he saw Eames' eyes widen in horror at something over Arthur's shoulder. “Pull yourself together, Eames. The kick is in thr -”
He never finished the sentence. Even in dreams (and it was all Eames' fault for not killing all the guards), bullets to the brain still hurt.
+
Time passed, and so did jobs; the transition from architect to point man wasn't that difficult. No matter what, both occupations meant equal chances of blood and guts. Besides, Arthur rarely built now. He was not Tom Hansen the failed architect, he was Arthur, top point man, assistant to the greatest extractor of their time.
Speaking of that, Cobb had fled the country. Wisely so. In that position, Arthur would have done the same.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, however - Mrs. Cobb had done a sterling job of covering her tracks - Arthur didn't believe Cobb had killed Mallorie. Cobb was a good man, and still Arthur's leader. He'd died for Dom Cobb a hundred times and there were certain loyalties to follow up on, so he attended Mal's burial in Cobb's place. It wasn't pleasant, and nobody but Miles seemed to know how he was acquainted with the deceased, but it didn't matter.
Arthur left flowers after the funeral.
+
All Tom's dreams are lucid now, and protectively militarised: he crafts fantastic contradictory realities of razor-edged precision and surrealist mathematics. He organises his subconscious, locking nostalgia and romance and Summer Finn into compartments before swallowing the imaginary keys.
Professor Miles and Cobb have told him never to recreate from memory, yet Tom finds himself imagining the Forger in the gambling den, all cheap shirt and biker glasses, twirling dice between his fingers.
Tom's conflict manifests in two projections passing Eames by and staring him down. He thinks he may understand why Eames is here. Tom - Arthur - likes logical fallacies, and Eames is surely a logical fallacy. He is a living affront to human logic. Still, Tom can't take a Forger at face value.
To divert his thoughts, he conjures optical illusions. Kusama, Ladder to Heaven. Two mirrors, and a bright neon ladder into infinity. Escher, Relativity. A labyrinth of twisted gravities and featureless projections. He runs in circles, like on the Penrose staircases that he can climb forever and go nowhere.
Yet Eames is always there with his dice, echoing: tell me, darling, how do you control the outcome of a gamble?
Arthur woke up thinking that it was high time he made himself a totem.
+
Trying to sleep with someone, de Botton had suggested, may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
Arthur didn't care much for love or Valentines these days, and would have let the occasion pass unmarked - or could have, if he'd cleaned the last job up properly and thus prevented the delivery of Eames' card. (From Morocco, no less.) Standard saccharine fare, mass-produced, mocking: Happy Valentine's Day, sweetheart. I love you.
Tom Hansen would have eaten the card, but Arthur merely had it recycled. 'Love' didn't matter in this context, anyway: everyone with half a brain knew that Eames was full of shit.
+
Tokyo had turned out to be an electric rainbow haze of neon and skyscrapers. Architecturally, it was yet another sharply sophisticated metropolis. Even in three-piece Armani and a Japanese hotel suite, Arthur felt terribly caged.
All the Proclus heists had gone terribly awry, though on the whole it could have been much worse. (Polyester? Really? God is in the details, Nash.) Had he been the Architect, Arthur decided, he would never have been so careless. It didn't matter, though: he no longer built these days, merely decorated. He'd painstakingly reproduced the restaurant layout in accordance with Nash's designs, and dressed it up in a fashion that would be aesthetically pleasing to Saito.
(At one point, Arthur could have sworn he'd glimpsed Summer Finn beneath the lanterns, waiting for him in a sea of suits. He'd toyed - briefly, irrationally - with the idea of starting a conversation, but then Mal showed up again and the operation went to hell. Arthur still ached from the phantom pain of all the dream-wounds Mrs Cobb had inflicted on him.)
Saito's proposal - the Fischer inception - had sounded intriguing, though Arthur was rather concerned about Cobb's quick acceptance, to say the least.
If nothing else, he was relieved to be back in Paris. Cobb busied himself with finding a new architect, presumably either recruiting Professor Miles himself or uprooting another one of Miles' proteges. Arthur kept himself posted on potential teammates and prepared the warehouse for their training exercises.
(He wished they'd hired a different Forger. Arthur was beginning to worry that he might finally snap and shoot Eames.)
On the bright side, they found their new architect. A student. Cute girl. Visionary. Arthur decided he liked the newcomer enough to show her the Penrose staircase. He wondered if he ought to warn Ariadne that her chosen field of study might well lead her down the path of greeting cards, dead-end jobs and broken hearts.
Arthur dismissed that thought. Sure, they were architects at heart, but Ariadne was a hell of a lot better than he'd ever been.
Bad architecture is in the end, de Botton said later, as Arthur lay in bed and read himself to sleep, as much a failure of psychology as of design.
+
They flew to Australia to connect with Robert Fischer's flight from Sydney to Los Angeles. The journey was quiet. Cobb read inflight magazines, Saito ate from a gigantic seafood platter that definitely hadn't been on the inflight menu, Yusuf played Hangman and Ariadne cried at a sad French movie.
Eames sat out of Arthur's sight, at the back of the cabin. To Arthur, the lack of visibility felt like a taunt.
When the Airshow and newspapers proved to be insufficient distraction from this sudden personal weakness, Arthur immersed himself in the entertainment system. As with everything else, he had finely honed taste in music: the old, the unusual, the unknown, the unloved. Arthur wanted classics. Mozart. A little Sinatra. The Smiths. Arthur found familiarity in the feeling of headphones over his ears, and was at peace for a while.
Then Eames got up to go to the bathroom and Steven Morrissey sang, in a display of tragic musical timing: haven't had a dream in a long time.
An uncomfortable flashback: Tom Hansen, long ago, playing Summer the same song as she passed him by. The Forger sauntered past, and for a moment Arthur felt like Tom: sensitive, clumsy, ignored. Again.
See, the life I've had can make a good man bad.
Arthur's hands curled unconsciously into fists. He was the point man: observant, with great organisational skill. He liked his job. He knew his role and how to toe the line. He just wasn't sure Eames did.
So for once in my life, let me get what I want. Lord knows it would be the first time.
Arthur spent the remainder of the flight being tremendously pissed off.
+
Ariadne had mapped all three levels of the operation. This was the second, and though the layout was hers, the aesthetics were entirely Arthur's. Warm tones and wood in the upper levels, glass and cooler hues for the lobby: everything clear-cut, precise, elegant. More unimaginative contemporary architecture, he thought. The image of the interior of every other skyscraper in the world. Eames must be loving this.
On the whole, it had gone well. Everyone had been successfully sedated. There were minor altercations, courtesy of Fischer's militarised projections, and some difficulty with the missed kick. Zero gravity? Tight security? Nothing Arthur Hansen couldn't manage, thank you. ("Go to sleep, Mr. Eames"? Really? Sometimes Arthur hated himself.)
Once they were in the lift, he played Edith Piaf into Eames' ears. Arthur chalked it up to work experience, but this part of the ordeal felt pleasantly natural. Then again, it wasn't the first time he'd been in a lift with good music and the object of his affections. First Summer, now Eames. Lord, he really knew how to pick them.
To die by your side, he thought, before the explosion shot the elevator down, is such a heavenly way to die.
Trouble Sleeping • AU: Inception crossed over with 500 Days of Summer • mild Eames/Arthur, past Tom/Summer • PG-13.
Usual fanfiction disclaimer: I don't own the original story or the characters. Those are Nolan's. I don't own, for that matter, Alain de Botton's The Architecture of Happiness. Non-profit, all good fun.
EDIT: I wasn't expecting this overwhelmingly positive reception! Thank you to everyone who commented!
+
The interview at the Bradbury Building had gone surprisingly well. Tom had been confronted with a row of faceless interviewers, and presented them with a hefty portfolio of blueprints and sketchy, futuristic constructions - not exactly to his tastes, but it was what the public seemed to want in their new cityscapes. Innovative. Cutting-edge. Soulless. Tom agreed: it epitomised their era perfectly.
They'd liked his work. In Tom's opinion, he'd held up admirably, even when the interviewers had gone off-topic and started interrogating him about dreams, and made him draw them mazes till they were satisfied. Odd, but it'd gone great, so he wasn't complaining.
He smiled at Autumn on his way out, full of youthful suited-up optimism. He thought about the coffee he'd order with her. About how they'd walk to Angel's Knoll Park with a spring in their steps, admiring their favourite slice of Los Angeles.
Yes, Tom was certain, this was the first day of the rest of his life.
+
In his first dream after the interview, he gets an obscure impression of Summer Finn in soft focus, pirouetting in a swirl of patterned skirts. Somewhere, a Narrator speaks: acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation.
Thomas Arthur Hansen wakes up confused.
+
He was in a seminar room of Allen, Prince & Gethers, notes in hand. Opposite him sat an elderly man and a younger woman; the former in a sensible brown suit, the latter in a conservative, elegant black dress. Something about them suggested that they were European, perhaps even English. They were Professor Miles, apparently, and his daughter Mallorie. On the desk between them was something they'd said was called a PASIV machine.
Tom, for the most part, was nonplussed.
“What you're saying that there's a drug that makes it possible to share dreams, to design them” - he sat back, raked a hand through his slicked-back hair - “and you want me to do it? I...this is crazy. I thought I was gonna be an architect.”
“You are,” agreed Miles, sipping his tea. Definitely English, Tom thought. “You'll be one of the best. You'll push the boundaries of human creativity. For artistic development,” he added meaningfully, “not profit.”
Mallorie made a disapproving noise. “Oh, come on. Dom is a good man.”
“Wait, if this is a dream,” Tom interrupted, “then you're not real. Neither of you. Nothing you're saying is real. I'll wake up in my own bed, check my answering machine and find that nobody called me to the firm -”
“Think, Thomas,” interrupted Mallorie - Mal - gently. “How did you get here?”
Tom opened his mouth and found that he couldn't think of anything to say. The woman smiled, not unkindly. “This is a dream - but we are real.” She spoke with a soft French accent. Tom couldn't help but notice she was very pretty.
He swallowed nervously. “So what you're trying to say is...I'm dreaming right now, and we're sharing my dream?”
“No, Thomas,” she said. “This is my dream.”
Tom sat back. “Holy shit,” he said finally.
Miles nodded. “Quite so. Would you like to try it yourself? You are an architect, after all.”
“You mean like...” Tom paused, searching for words. “Here? Now?” They nodded. “A dream within a dream.”
“Indeed,” agreed Miles. “You were shortlisted, Thomas. Consider this the next part of your interview.”
+
Tom, on the whole, wasn't really comfortable with Miles looking into his subconscious, but here they were anyway: an anonymous bank, built of Somnacin and limestone and marble. Tom looked around, somewhat pleased with his work.
“Desires manifest their ideals in architecture,” he commented.
Miles nodded. “De Botton. Very good.” Tom didn't know if he was referring to the bank's design or Alain de Botton. “Your subconscious seems quite a sensible sort.”
“I guess.” Tom believed that precision and accuracy was key in architecture, as well as a certain skill with mathematics and physics. The conviction had manifested itself in the form of clean lines and sturdy columns.
“A little old-fashioned,” mused Miles, “but not half bad. Creativity knows no bounds, Thomas. You can experiment a little more if you like.” He glanced sideways. “Nice shades, by the way.”
Tom looked away guiltily. “So does this mean I'm the dreamer and you're the subject...?”
“It is entirely possible for you to be both at once, though it isn't always the case.”
“Right. Yeah.” Tom looked around. The people swarming around him looked like bankers were meant to look, awkward and modern in their sharp suits. “These people, they're...”
“Projections of your subconscious,” said Miles mildly.
“Okay,” said Tom, and stopped. There was a girl with long dark hair behind the counter - somebody he knew. An anomaly amongst the black suits. She stared at him. He stared back.
“Somebody you know?” enquired Miles.
“Yeah,” mumbled Tom. “My...ex.”
“Ah.”
Summer blinked balefully and pressed what must have been an alarm button hidden beneath the counter. Doors flew open, and grey-uniformed security guards poured into the room.
“Congratulations, Mr Hansen," said Miles. Tom couldn't tell if he was being ironic.
+
He sold his apartment, abandoning his IKEA furniture and bedroom chalkboard for a beautiful, minimalist serviced flat in one of LA's most fashionable districts - all paid for by the company, of course.
Tom found a curious blankness in the designated features of his new dwellings. Was it customisable? Could he make it suit his tastes? Perhaps. He'd once believed that you are where you live. But did it matter? He thought about it, and was surprised to find that he no longer cared. Dreams held infinitely more promise, and you didn't even have to worry about the mortgage.
He ended up not living in that apartment much. Allen, Prince & Gethers paid for his ticket to Paris, where he enrolled in Professor Miles' college. As a graduate student returning to his artistic roots, Tom felt at home, though some things had changed.
He enjoyed research, for one thing. For another, he was beginning to realise that his sensibilities were out of place at the college, where his classmates' visions seemed to be all about liquid modernity and digitised embellishments.
Thirdly, Tom had liked art well enough before; but now he found himself favouring mazes, clever illusory patterns, and visual experiments in architecture and mathematics. Tom, whose own style was more along the lines of precisely detailed ink illustration than traditional architectural blueprints, was fascinated by Escher's work. Identified with him, even. Maybe he was maturing.
For the most part, he studied hard and worked on his dreams. He went to the Louvre. He spoke broken French, ate baguettes with honey, danced with the local ladies, learnt to love Edith Piaf, and never once called Summer or Autumn.
+
In his second year of graduate school, Tom was introduced to a man named Dom Cobb, who had come to - as Professor Miles put it sourly - “corrupt” him. Dom what, Tom wondered. Dominic? Domovoi?
“I need a new architect,” Cobb had said. “A new point man wouldn't hurt either. Miles says you're brilliant with research too. Submitted a great thesis.”
Tom acknowledged this cautiously. Cobb nodded.
“You know about dream-sharing?”
Again, Tom replied in the affirmative. Cobb, it transpired, was a businessman - and dream-sharing, it seemed, was very big business. Cobb was the best at his job, and was regularly hired to steal otherwise inaccessible corporate secrets from the minds of top executives.
“Once an idea has been generated,” explained Cobb, “it stays fixed in the subconscious forever. My job, as the extractor, is to retrieve that information through dreams.”
Despite his fascination, Tom was slightly appalled. Miles had taught him about creation for creation's sake. To use dreams for espionage, deception, theft of ideas? The artist in Tom was outraged at the idea. Where was copyright? Inspiration? Originality?
Starving artist, Tom reminded himself, if you don't get a job soon. Many companies recruited from the pool of talent that universities had to offer. He'd be a fool to pass this up.
“Welcome to the team,” said Cobb. “Now, corporate dreaming can be dangerous, so you might want to find yourself an alias. A new identity. Our job can get pretty rough.”
+
Together they were the dreamer, point man, architect and extractor rolled into one lethal partnership. Mal sometimes joined in -- assisting with research, according to Cobb - but not this time. The job involved extracting expansion secrets from a Middle Eastern oil sheik, and they needed to enlist a Forger.
They meet Cobb's chosen Forger in the dream of a Shanghainese gambling den, playing dice with the Chinese. Tom knew of the man. Eames had only been in the trade a little longer than Tom himself, but in that period of time he had proven himself to be one of the world's best Forgers.
“This is the new architect,” Cobb told Eames, who was staring at Tom appraisingly. “He's working as our point man too; Mal's trained him. Eames, meet -”
“Arthur,” said Tom immediately. It was his middle name, and thus close enough to the truth that it could be a convincing lie. The last thing he needed was an identity thief knowing anything about him.
Eames studied him. “Yes, you do look like an Arthur.”
What does that even mean?
“Arthur.” Eames glanced around at the decor, and settled back into his chair. “So you're the dreamer? Nice dive. Congratulations, Arthur, on this spectacularly uninspired location.” He glanced down at the table. “Do you know what the name of this game translates to?”
“I wouldn't know, Mr Eames,” said Tom steadily. “I don't gamble.”
Eames grinned. “Cockfighting.”
Silence. Tom stared, poker-faced. Cobb looked exasperated. “Lay off him.”
“So tell me, darling,” said Eames, “we are all conmen here. How would you control the outcome of a gamble?”
“Anything's possible with a little background knowledge and the proper application.” Tom watched Eames roll the die between his fingers. “As I said, Eames, I don't like to gamble.”
Eames' laugh seemed significant, somehow. “We'll see about that, cupcake.”
+
He's back in the bank with Summer, and they are young and beautiful in the dusty light. Tom's still a novice dreamer. His two-piece suit isn't as elegant as it could be, and his hair is far from perfect, but he dances much better here than in reality. The decor is second-rate but who will judge him, here and now?
They are a silent-movie whirl of fluid motion, merrily running the gamut from cakewalk to tap dance. He plays with gravity, executing a perfect double somersault, landing breathless and exhilarated.
They're dancing on the desks of indifferent projections when Tom's watch goes off: his hair's a mess, he's out of time, and the sedative will wear off soon, but Summer curtsies and takes him out for one last dance.
She runs circles around him, in a swirl of slate-blue skirts. He hasn't laughed this hard in ages.
For the grand finale, he sends Summer falling, slowly lowering her as one would a puppet, and stops her before she hits the ground. Gravity is something that happens to other people. (Eat it, Newton.)
It's not Pulp Fiction and he's not John Travolta, but it'll do.
+
Arthur was writing in the second seminar room of what was meant to be a New Orleans hotel, filling in de Botton's words in his own handwriting. The result was different enough to not be his memory of the original book, which might have screwed things up, yet close enough to retain the quote's originality. The architects who benefit us most may be those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius in order to devote themselves to assembling graceful but predominantly unoriginal boxes.
Really, the writing was purely cathartic. The political campaign they were dismantling was still in its early stages, but the subject was the head of the party and a strong contender for one of America's biggest presidential elections to date. They were extracting a senator's secrets for a rival politician, or meant to be, anyway. Their architect had gotten smashed that morning - really, nobody should drink at eleven A.M. - so here Arthur was, furiously dreaming his way through a layout he'd only partly designed. He would have revamped the whole structure but there hadn't been time, dammit, and he wanted everything to be perfect.
The intensity he was pouring into the work had caused a minor hurricane outside. Truly, Arthur hated this last-minute development, this urgency and loss of control. He preferred to design at his own pace, and would honestly rather stick to research than run the risk of a shoddy job.
“Amazing. This place looks like a history museum. Try using Photoshop next time. Half the effort, twice the result.”
Then there was that. Arthur was somewhat less technophobic than Tom had been, but he was still annoyed. “Aren't you supposed to be impersonating the bulimic secretary? You spent the last week observing her.”
“The good senator thinks I'm regurgitating my breakfast in the little girls' room.” Eames could look amused and condescending even with a mouthful of barbecued shrimp and a pair of secretarial breasts. “It's called imagination, darling. You need it to dream. Are you sure you're in the right line of work?”
The same words of so many other architectural interviewers in LA. Thunder boomed in the distance, drowning out the hail of gunfire in the next room, but Arthur barely noticed through his annoyance.
“So it's not the Walt Disney Concert Hall,” he said coldly. “What an outrage.” He continued writing, surreptitiously observing the passageway from which Cobb was expected to emerge. Architecture should have the confidence and the kindness to be a little boring.
Eames opened his mouth for some witty rejoinder, but was distracted by Cobb's reappearance. Their leader was sprinting, bloodied and ashen-faced, towards them. Behind him was a group of CIA agents - no, militarised projections - in hot pursuit, along with the senator.
Arthur was on his feet in an instant, book abandoned, Glock in hand. “Did you get it?”
“Yes.” Cobb thrust the file he was holding into Arthur's arms. “Now go!”
They ran, Arthur leading the way, with Cobb and Eames covering him. Arthur tried to remember where the fire escape was - maybe he could throw in a last-minute Penrose...
He shot the lock and burst through the door, only to find himself in what was unmistakably Angel's Knoll Park, complete with full-blooming trees and the wooden benches and Summer Finn staring down at him, exactly as he had last seen her.
Silence.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Arthur muttered, and kicked the door shut behind him, interrupting Eames' mumble of “I think there's a bullet in my arse” and re-entering. This time it was the 1927 Fine Arts Building on 7th Street. Slam.
Cobb didn't look pleased. “Arthur, what the hell!”
1902 Continental Building on Spring. Him and Summer, walking. Another slam.
“Arthur!”
“Damned if I know! Nash designed this!” And a sloppy job too, for patches of subconscious to emerge. Arthur flung the door open again. Greeting card company headquarters. Slam. Summer Finn's blue-walled apartment, complete with half-dressed girl on bed - just lying there, a perfectly benign projection, but still distracting. Oh, Christ. Arthur nearly knocked Cobb over trying to get away.
“Arthur!”
“I'm going to kill Nash,” snarled Arthur, and threw the door open again, revealing - blessedly - their escape route. They charged out and up.
Eames looked remarkably sceptical for somebody who had a bullet in the arse and a trail of semiconscious projections in his wake. “Why were there patches of L.A. in New Orleans?”
“Nash's fault,” muttered Cobb, grabbing the file from Arthur again and scanning its contents - lengthy notes, handwritten. “At least we have what we wanted.” He glanced up, clearly relieved, and nodded at Arthur. “Outstanding, Arthur. Really.”
Eames smirked. “Yes, outstanding, Arthur.”
“Eames,” said Cobb reprovingly. “By the way, you did take out all the guards, right?”
“Should think so.”
“Let's go,” said Arthur shortly. As the strains of Edith Piaf's voice floated through the air, he saw Eames' eyes widen in horror at something over Arthur's shoulder. “Pull yourself together, Eames. The kick is in thr -”
He never finished the sentence. Even in dreams (and it was all Eames' fault for not killing all the guards), bullets to the brain still hurt.
+
Time passed, and so did jobs; the transition from architect to point man wasn't that difficult. No matter what, both occupations meant equal chances of blood and guts. Besides, Arthur rarely built now. He was not Tom Hansen the failed architect, he was Arthur, top point man, assistant to the greatest extractor of their time.
Speaking of that, Cobb had fled the country. Wisely so. In that position, Arthur would have done the same.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, however - Mrs. Cobb had done a sterling job of covering her tracks - Arthur didn't believe Cobb had killed Mallorie. Cobb was a good man, and still Arthur's leader. He'd died for Dom Cobb a hundred times and there were certain loyalties to follow up on, so he attended Mal's burial in Cobb's place. It wasn't pleasant, and nobody but Miles seemed to know how he was acquainted with the deceased, but it didn't matter.
Arthur left flowers after the funeral.
+
All Tom's dreams are lucid now, and protectively militarised: he crafts fantastic contradictory realities of razor-edged precision and surrealist mathematics. He organises his subconscious, locking nostalgia and romance and Summer Finn into compartments before swallowing the imaginary keys.
Professor Miles and Cobb have told him never to recreate from memory, yet Tom finds himself imagining the Forger in the gambling den, all cheap shirt and biker glasses, twirling dice between his fingers.
Tom's conflict manifests in two projections passing Eames by and staring him down. He thinks he may understand why Eames is here. Tom - Arthur - likes logical fallacies, and Eames is surely a logical fallacy. He is a living affront to human logic. Still, Tom can't take a Forger at face value.
To divert his thoughts, he conjures optical illusions. Kusama, Ladder to Heaven. Two mirrors, and a bright neon ladder into infinity. Escher, Relativity. A labyrinth of twisted gravities and featureless projections. He runs in circles, like on the Penrose staircases that he can climb forever and go nowhere.
Yet Eames is always there with his dice, echoing: tell me, darling, how do you control the outcome of a gamble?
Arthur woke up thinking that it was high time he made himself a totem.
+
Trying to sleep with someone, de Botton had suggested, may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
Arthur didn't care much for love or Valentines these days, and would have let the occasion pass unmarked - or could have, if he'd cleaned the last job up properly and thus prevented the delivery of Eames' card. (From Morocco, no less.) Standard saccharine fare, mass-produced, mocking: Happy Valentine's Day, sweetheart. I love you.
Tom Hansen would have eaten the card, but Arthur merely had it recycled. 'Love' didn't matter in this context, anyway: everyone with half a brain knew that Eames was full of shit.
+
Tokyo had turned out to be an electric rainbow haze of neon and skyscrapers. Architecturally, it was yet another sharply sophisticated metropolis. Even in three-piece Armani and a Japanese hotel suite, Arthur felt terribly caged.
All the Proclus heists had gone terribly awry, though on the whole it could have been much worse. (Polyester? Really? God is in the details, Nash.) Had he been the Architect, Arthur decided, he would never have been so careless. It didn't matter, though: he no longer built these days, merely decorated. He'd painstakingly reproduced the restaurant layout in accordance with Nash's designs, and dressed it up in a fashion that would be aesthetically pleasing to Saito.
(At one point, Arthur could have sworn he'd glimpsed Summer Finn beneath the lanterns, waiting for him in a sea of suits. He'd toyed - briefly, irrationally - with the idea of starting a conversation, but then Mal showed up again and the operation went to hell. Arthur still ached from the phantom pain of all the dream-wounds Mrs Cobb had inflicted on him.)
Saito's proposal - the Fischer inception - had sounded intriguing, though Arthur was rather concerned about Cobb's quick acceptance, to say the least.
If nothing else, he was relieved to be back in Paris. Cobb busied himself with finding a new architect, presumably either recruiting Professor Miles himself or uprooting another one of Miles' proteges. Arthur kept himself posted on potential teammates and prepared the warehouse for their training exercises.
(He wished they'd hired a different Forger. Arthur was beginning to worry that he might finally snap and shoot Eames.)
On the bright side, they found their new architect. A student. Cute girl. Visionary. Arthur decided he liked the newcomer enough to show her the Penrose staircase. He wondered if he ought to warn Ariadne that her chosen field of study might well lead her down the path of greeting cards, dead-end jobs and broken hearts.
Arthur dismissed that thought. Sure, they were architects at heart, but Ariadne was a hell of a lot better than he'd ever been.
Bad architecture is in the end, de Botton said later, as Arthur lay in bed and read himself to sleep, as much a failure of psychology as of design.
+
They flew to Australia to connect with Robert Fischer's flight from Sydney to Los Angeles. The journey was quiet. Cobb read inflight magazines, Saito ate from a gigantic seafood platter that definitely hadn't been on the inflight menu, Yusuf played Hangman and Ariadne cried at a sad French movie.
Eames sat out of Arthur's sight, at the back of the cabin. To Arthur, the lack of visibility felt like a taunt.
When the Airshow and newspapers proved to be insufficient distraction from this sudden personal weakness, Arthur immersed himself in the entertainment system. As with everything else, he had finely honed taste in music: the old, the unusual, the unknown, the unloved. Arthur wanted classics. Mozart. A little Sinatra. The Smiths. Arthur found familiarity in the feeling of headphones over his ears, and was at peace for a while.
Then Eames got up to go to the bathroom and Steven Morrissey sang, in a display of tragic musical timing: haven't had a dream in a long time.
An uncomfortable flashback: Tom Hansen, long ago, playing Summer the same song as she passed him by. The Forger sauntered past, and for a moment Arthur felt like Tom: sensitive, clumsy, ignored. Again.
See, the life I've had can make a good man bad.
Arthur's hands curled unconsciously into fists. He was the point man: observant, with great organisational skill. He liked his job. He knew his role and how to toe the line. He just wasn't sure Eames did.
So for once in my life, let me get what I want. Lord knows it would be the first time.
Arthur spent the remainder of the flight being tremendously pissed off.
+
Ariadne had mapped all three levels of the operation. This was the second, and though the layout was hers, the aesthetics were entirely Arthur's. Warm tones and wood in the upper levels, glass and cooler hues for the lobby: everything clear-cut, precise, elegant. More unimaginative contemporary architecture, he thought. The image of the interior of every other skyscraper in the world. Eames must be loving this.
On the whole, it had gone well. Everyone had been successfully sedated. There were minor altercations, courtesy of Fischer's militarised projections, and some difficulty with the missed kick. Zero gravity? Tight security? Nothing Arthur Hansen couldn't manage, thank you. ("Go to sleep, Mr. Eames"? Really? Sometimes Arthur hated himself.)
Once they were in the lift, he played Edith Piaf into Eames' ears. Arthur chalked it up to work experience, but this part of the ordeal felt pleasantly natural. Then again, it wasn't the first time he'd been in a lift with good music and the object of his affections. First Summer, now Eames. Lord, he really knew how to pick them.
To die by your side, he thought, before the explosion shot the elevator down, is such a heavenly way to die.