LESSONS
Kick.
Ariadne's head fell back against the comfortable first class seat, chest heaving as she panted. Images of falling down a tall building, seeing concrete chunks free-falling towards her- the crack of a fissure opening nearby, a ringing sound magnified in an elevator shaft, a burst of cold water, the feeling of breaking the surface, collapsing against the rock. Opening her eyes into an airplane, gasping, breathing, clutching her golden chess piece tightly, feeling him opening his eyes before she saw them. The look in them was like another kick to her, the burning fiery intensity better than any small object to remind her they were no longer dreaming.
Totem.
Grueling, strenuous, danger work that had never excited or fulfilled her more. She dreamed of running through mazes, drew in twisted labyrinths; until the prick of the needle was like untying a string and unraveling the pent up feelings that had been building as her exacto knife sliced through skyscrapers. Dreaming had made her feel alive. Powerful. Building whole worlds and planning, projecting, seeing her buildings come to life as she thought them. Discovery and creation. But not God. She knew what was dream and what was reality; the elegant solution only her own intellect and common-sense. She was not him, filled with guilt and regret and leaning on dreams and memories and shades and elevators with iron gates so heavily they became his crutch, his reality. She was Ariadne- she could recognize her own work in the dream world, the subtle differences between reality and lucidity. The gold bishop was pocketed and fingered as a token- a physical representation of her own change and growth. A token.
Penrose Steps.
Ariadne was an intellectual- when she brought her passion, enthusiasm, and intelligence to any task it was apparent. Her mentor hardly needed to finish sentences; a simple look or stirring of a thought could convey his message. She was quick on the uptake and quicker on the solutions, and though they both shared a love of detail his focused on the concrete, hers the abstract. His Penrose steps were glass, modern, efficient and cutting hard lines against her dreamscape. Yet when he drew the needle from her wrist, carefully, his gentle fingers seemed to smooth and slightly caress. He taught paradoxes and totems and time spent in dreams until she was teaching him again- layouts and dreamscapes and mazes to confuse projections. They went around in circles; spiral staircases; stairs that led upwards right back to where they started.
PASIV
Passive. Pensive. And on the outside, they were- dead to the world, asleep and defenseless. Chests rising and falling, shuddering breaths, eyes twitching behind heavy lids. They were still outwardly yet restless inside. Being under was being free, trapped under sedatives and constrained to time. The world inside was far bigger than the gleaming silver case containing it.
INCEPTION
Inception.
The idea was planted too deep for Ariadne to eradicate, had she wanted to. Pure creation. A whole other world. Opening her eyes to new ideas; new boundaries, new mazes to weave her way through, red scarf around her neck, the proverbial red string guiding her team through levels of projections with guns, levels of projections with more guns; levels with freight trains flying on blacktop, grinding through intersections- levels with muted colors and straight lines and the press of serioiusness and limbo and gentle lips and projections who refused to look away- levels with endless snow and the burn of her legs and her chest and a figure who was no mere projection- levels with sand and the roar of waves and long, long falls where the echoes of gunshots still reverberated in her head and terrible, terrible ideas came in that moment of suspended free-fall. The ideas, planted so deep in Limbo; ideas that would come to define her or destroy her. Dreams that would come to destroy her or define her.
Level One.
A Parisian café. The sight of city curling in on itself. Mal in a coat and a carrying a knife, stabbing it in her. A mysterious visitor who has blindsided her- who has opened her eyes and changed her world. Pure creation.
You are dreaming.
Rain. Cold splatters soaking through her hair; the Tourist's blood staining her finger tips. A memory of falling shoes and a whisper of Limbo. Raw Subconscious. Cobb subconscious. A train. Vehicles skidding at 360 degrees, the feel of speed and bullets and racing hearts.
You are dreaming.
Level Two.
Penrose steps. A gentle hand catching her from stepping off the ledge. The sound of a gold bishop falling, precise and with no room for doubt. Broadening horizons, encapsulating worlds and people and projections within labyrinths of her own design.
These dreams are of your own creation.
Gleaming silver elevator, gleaming silver briefcase, the muted thump of a mentor leaping off the edge of a dresser; off the edge of the known, because it was worth a shot. The wide eyes who won't stop staring, who never stop staring suspiciously, and yet she's slumping in a chair, the flash of a silver needle and darkness once more.
These dreams are of your own creation.
Level Three.
The sweep of a pencil, the rise of a model, the shadows of a structure in dim warehouse lighting. The shadows leading you towards the light, towards the whir of the suitcase, towards the enigma before you can quite comprehend the switch from reality to a shaky elevator, to memories. Memories that tangle and become a prison. Models that tangle and become a labyrinth. The simple idea of simplicity- a non-descript city and a barely filled in warehouse. The idea of specificity- the lamps are evenly spaced and the bench is precisely set half-way up the stairs. Catharsis- what is in that safe, what is in that elevator, two men she is saying at the price of a third, though at times the lines blur and the roles all shift and it's hard to keep track of which two are being saved and which one is not.
These dreams have a purpose.
Snow. Blurring your vision, obscuring the support you stand on. Coldness, roughness, the press of time and the haunting rumblings of music from the worst getaway driver money could buy. Unraveling plans and figure collapsing under the trigger, her look of shock mirroring Ariadne's. Unexpected developments towards the end, the end where they spun the web, where they spin now, spinning in sedatives and vans rolling over embankments and hallways that defy gravity and spinning in revolvers and secrets and deaths until the silver briefcase and the flash of needle is a relief- a reminder.
These dreams have a purpose.
Level Four.
Three tries. Two minutes to draw a maze to be solved in one minute. A bridge. Shattered mirrors. Paradoxical architecture. The sweep of her hands illuminating the path, the angle of his hands in his pockets- his glasses sliding down his nose- the curve of his shoulders hunching over a spinning top- the planes of his face as it reflects into a mirror and coming over as someone else's. She's explaining her dreams, her work, her pride. They listen. The space between the floor and the legs of his chair. The hardness of his toe as he nudges it over, explaining with a grin the purpose of a kick. The brightness of the soft smile he gives as he talks about inner ear balance. The fold of his arms as he lists times. More numbers. Her bank account-growing. The hours of sleep- dropping or building; she can't tell what counts as sleep anymore. The clink of cuff links and soft unhurried sighs as collars and ties are loosened. That damned notebook, that poker chip, a hundred sterile needles crawling over her skin like spiders day after day, and a top, spinning, spinning, spinning, never stopping, because he's always twirling it, and she wants it to stop.
This is where you belong.
Pounding surf. She's up, dripping, scrambling over swirling sand into a road, and there's buildings all around, but they aren't building, they're falling. Sixty years. She's worked hard to get here, to convince him, to save them. She's seeing his life flash before her eyes, seeing the water everywhere and why is there so much water. So many buildings. So easy to get lost. He's confident, leading her through a labyrinth she could not design, should not design, should never have seen. Improvising, she says, screaming for him to get Saito and kicking the mark off the face of a cliff, but it's not a cliff it's the porch of their house, and she's still not quite sure how they have a house in this type of building. These are desperate times that call for desperate measures, and she's falling and praying and falling some more and eyes flash open on more than one level and she's breaking the surface and gasping for air, huddled on the rocky beach of a river, slouching in the seat of a first class airplane, and if it wasn't for her he wouldn't be opening his eyes and he wouldn't be smiling and Yusuf wouldn't have made it to the bathroom in time because he was too busy waiting for a sign. It's because of her that they've made it, the Architect, the one who designs the dream. She designed it and let them follow her red scarf on a merry chase, and now they've come out and there's brushing of totems and eyeing the PASIV and she's not sure what to think, only what she knows for sure.
You belong here.
And the ideas been planted, from the beginning, and it's growing, growing until it assimilates into her and she thinks she came up with it herself (because she did, they only planted the ideas of freedom and family and talent and belonging and adventure and danger and contributions and Penrose steps and kicks and falls and totems and tokens and sedatives and toes tipping over chairs and gentle lips and Cobb screaming her name and the blood that falls levels under and bleeds out into the waters of Limbo; and she did the rest).
She's been incepted just as much as the mark, and she never realizes it, because that's pure inspiration in the way he blends his chemicals and changes his face and spins his top and finds pinwheels in pictures and has a platinum card but a heart of gold and huddles in the corner with the music playing counting down the elevator shaft and lifts buildings with hidden Penrose steps and they all sleep for ten hours that day but live forever.
TEAM
The Architect and the Mark.
It's only after the dream we realize we were dreaming, he tells her, and her job is to lure the subject in with realism and details, and she never realizes he's the real architect, reeling her in with a formula almost as precise as those the chemist improves in. He starts with the realism- she designs things, things need to be designed, but adds mazes and paradoxes- he's got secrets upon secrets built on secrets, and he's stern and hardened and leaping from floor to ceiling with the grace of a point man but gentle and encouraging and supportive and just so happens to be the Architect's partner and a good kisser to boot. He adds a second level- a whisper, a shade, the guilt that seeps into him until she just wants to hurl the top into a river and put her hands on his face and yell until she can't anymore that this is reality because he never believes. He tests her, and he lets her in, and it's only afterwards she realizes helping him was as much a part of the job as planting an idea in a dollhouse. He needs her and she needs him until she can no longer separate them without tearing apart a support he, as the Architect, knows should stay together. She defines him as the mark and spends her time divining his secrets, extracting his pain, keeping the dreams from collapsing when he becomes afraid. She's with him every step of the way, until his secrets are exposed, so big no vault is big enough to hold them and only Limbo can contain his dreams, and even Limbo lets the Shade out.
The Point Man.
He holds her wrist down as she shudders, clutching her abdomen, and he lets her in close to his totem but pulls away at the last second, pocketing his faded chunky red die. He's her mentor the second he hears her cough, and he teaches her paradoxes, and they become a symbol of them both, the way he's so tough and pristine and notices everything and professional and she's wearing a scarf and jeans and scrubbing charcoal onto his fine white paper with an indecent enthusiasm. They fit together, paradoxically, meandering quietly through dreamland and she soaks up knowledge and he doesn't miss a beat handing it out. Mentor, friend, the hint of something more as he brushes her lips and smirks when he catches her blush. He's always first up after the timer winds down and last to leave; locking up the warehouse behind him to sleep, because though he's a workaholic he of all people is well aware how important sleep is. He is so soft and gentle, yet so detailed, complex, firing into projections and cursing, loosening his tie and shoving his fingers in his pockets as they go over again, because he is he and she is she and they enjoy their work, the hotel floor design, until he knows it like the back of his hand and he really isn't risking a thing or being unprofessional when he takes a shot at it. He's a detail man. He notices everything. She's the dreamer, she needs to be pointed out all the details to believe it's real.
The Forger.
His roles shift, from enigma to colleague to friend to brotherly to the typical pick up artist, to the extractor of blushes as he winks and sends loaded glares to the man with the loaded die, tilting his head to observe and tilting his chair to overcompensate when he never shows emotion. He's the one who switches the mood and lightens it and plays a role because they all know there is too much pressure on them, on him, for him to be so nonchalant and debonair. He uses his trade- his real trade, of noticing people and the things they do- to make her forget she's dreaming, and that eventually she'll be sent back to Paris alone and out of contact. He makes her laugh and he annoys her to no end and his role in her life is one of fluidity and ease, to contrast the clean edges and precision of the one who reminds her details- the crown moldings and the shade of coffee of the hallway- he's the one reminding her Fischer likes cities, feels comfortable in upscale bars, points out that thing doesn't look like a hospital at all. He forges her passports and he forges her a new life, one where her coworkers are friends she swears she must have known her whole life, because she trusts them to share space and dreams and shades and danger.
The Chemist.
It's the chemist who ties her to the team, both with the oozing liquid trailing from tubes connected to the PASIV and with the shy smile he gives while explaining her compounded time. He's gentle and quiet and older, and the two don't talk much, only share a city-wide level together, hosting and polishing and detailing, from the exit signs on the interstate Fischer will only notice for a flash second as he passes through an intersection (they're the numbers of the periodic table, because she notices details and notices things about people). She's the only one who doesn't tease him that it's raining, and she's the first to compliment him on his work. His compounds draw the team closer and stronger together sharing dreams, but it's his quiet support and presence that cement the feelings of safety she has. Yusuf is a chemist because he's far too moral to shoot and kill aimlessly, and he's not very good at it either, she knows from his retelling of the van ride. It's Yusuf who puts Cobb under, and it's Yusuf who tells her goodnight, leaving no room for her to stay and be curious, because Yusuf understands people who share dreams need their own secrets and privacy every once in a while, and it's Yusuf who never notices the smiles Arthur only gives to her.
The Projection.
He's just the Mark to the others, but to her he is symbolic. He is the part of her subconscious that will not shut up about the morality and legality of the job, though she never voices her fears, and he is the reason she wonders if killing projections damages him- forgetting, should the plan he designed worked, he will be damaged forever, because he will not be the same. She has a conscious and a responsibility to him, because one cannot control their subconscious and she certainly cannot control him.
The Shade.
She is so caught up with him, that she becomes her shade too, and it is in the few nightmares that dwindle the more she goes over that she sees what she may become- someone else's projection, twisted beyond recognition. To him, she is everything; his guilt, his obsession, his wife, an idea he planted in his own head he cannot remove. To him, she is lovely, in a soft voice, stemming from a soft place. She's a nightmare, literally and figuratively, and the only person to ever make her wake up clutching her side. Clearly, she is a brave person, yet there's something about Mal that makes her scream to wake up, anything, please, only to feel angry for what- she's not even sure. She follows Mal like another circular maze she's trying to solve, whether she's finding her in the dark of the warehouse under the PASIV or chasing her through the maze and confusion of real life, where the detail of her presence is still very noticeable and very clear. She is the shadow, the darkness, the totem of dreams and the weaknesses of humanity.
The Dreamer.
It is he who pulls the strings, designs the tasks, organizes the team and builds the levels in his mind. He is infinitely generous in his wealth and infinitely stubborn- a red wetness marking his weakness, his heart. He is a business intent on securing himself, but she often forgets, the way he mentions that he bought an airline startles, yet the way he looks just waking up, bleary-eyed, a little tired from keeping the dream together, keeping the team together, keeping Cobb sane is endearing. He is kind, patient, and he always bleeds out, every level, a sacrifice for keeping the dream alive.