Lovely readers...this is just a short preview of an Inception fic that I've had rattling around in my head for some time. I'm still not 100% sure on this, I think I may have dreamed up something too difficult to actually put into words. So, as a tester, I'm posting this preview chapter. Please tell me what you think...Victoria James went by many names. Her "official" work colleagues at the Library called her Victoria. Her "associates" in the world of cyber-terrorism called her Vix. To those that she sought to incapacitate on a purely subconscious level, she was V, the sign she left indelibly scrawled across their mind with a can of spray paint that didn't really exist.
But to her beloved father, the only person in the world that she could call hers, she was Vicky. Nobody else was allowed to call her that name any more. Sure, when she was an awkward, slightly chubby, nerdy teenager, those at school had called her that. But they were largely idiots whom she knew even then, possessed a much lower Intelligence Quotient than her. She had joined MENSA at 13 and was immediately top of the age to IQ ratio tables. So her schoolmates views on her were easy to disregard. But every so often, she used to get irrationally upset when one of the more popular boys would taunt her. Mainly due to the fact that if you took away his obnoxious personality and general contempt for those not in his group, he was stunningly gorgeous. But boys like him would only take an interest in Victoria if it was to berate them for the pleasure of others.
It did not bother her for long. Her father always had interesting tasks for her to assist him with that took her mind away from those Neanderthals. The largest of which had peaked her interest the minute he had started musing aloud over it. Dream-walking he called it. The ability to enter the subconscious of another in order to assist them to "find their way back". Victoria's mother had been diagnosed with Early-Onset Alzhiemers at the age of 39, when Victoria herself was only five. Two years later, her mother accidentally took far too many of her tablets and died after a 3 day stint in Intensive Care. At the age of seven, Victoria was left alone with her father who until that time, she had always regarded as a funny, but slightly batty "mad professor" type, always inventing useless junk and talking to himself animatedly. Her view of him changed quickly and she soon realised that she was more a child of this man than of her lovely mother. Their intellects matched perfectly. He was a genius of creation and she a genius of practical application. He had seen this and professed her his mental equal by the time she was nine.
From that point on, their shared passion was to invent a tool to help people such as her mother. People whose minds were stuck somewhere in their own head, where conventional means could not reach them. Her father envisioned that anyone suffering from the affliction that killed his wife, or those suffering major, brain-damaging head trauma, could be "brought back" if someone else's subconscious was there to guide them home. Although it was a shared dream, for her father, it had been an obsession, albeit one that she fully understood. He had been a devoted husband who treated his wife as any woman would want to be treated, with kindness, respect and love. So, Victoria allowed him to somewhat scrimp on his fatherly duties, in the hope that his creation would prevent the heartache that others may feel when someone they loved was taken away in the manner her mother was.
His progress, with her assistance had been remarkable. So much so that within only four years, people in high ranking places were taking notice. One Saturday morning, a knock came at the door that changed their lives forever. Government officials entered their home and removed any and all traces of her fathers work, threatening him that he should just "forget" about everything he had dedicated his life to for so long. He had nodded his consent with a terrified look on his face, as had Victoria.
But her father was no mug and neither was he the sort of man to indiscriminately trust those in authority simply because of their positions. He had ensured that the device he created to assist in their work, which he nick-named the PASIV, had copies secretly stashed away in places only he knew of. So he continued his work in secret, with Victoria his willing accomplice. Since that day, Victoria had "Dream-walked" in her fathers mind nearly every day that they were together. As she grew to adulthood, they had found several like-minded and trust-worthy individuals to help them, mostly thorough her secretive and highly illegal work with computers. That was when the problem of "projection aggression" had first reared it's ugly and very near fatal head. When in her fathers mind, his overwhelming love for her had ensured that his projections readily accepted her to the point that she could flat-out tell them that she should not be there, but no adverse reaction was ever made apparent. However, when Victoria drew even the slightest attention to her presence in someone else's mind, the projections attacked her to the point of her violent death in the dream.
Although panicked when this first happened, she quickly realised that the key to combat this lay in how she thought of herself when within someone else's subconscious. If she believed that she had more right to be there than any of the projections, they not only paid her no attention, but allowed her to manipulate the dreams landscape at her will, giving her almost superhuman powers within that world. Not that she would ever use these to bring harm to anyone. No, she used these to play and make life easier for herself when trying to continue the research. Say she was at the top of a tall building and wanted to be back at ground level. Her mind would simply "flatten" the building so that she could walk from the ledge to the pavement without batting an eyelid. In the same way, she could walk on water, move objects that in the real world would be much to heavy for her to make an impact on and manipulate the dreamers self image to allow her easier access to their still hidden depths. These talents had led to the nickname of "Female Jesus" being given to her by one of their co-conspirators, a lovely, if odd computer hacker called "Weasel".
Weasel had suffered severe brain damage at the age of 14 when a drunk driver had knocked him from his bike onto another oncoming car. Although his brain functioned perfectly now, it had been a struggle for him over the last 12 years, one that had left him without use of his legs at the cost of his now highly attuned mind. He had jumped at the chance of entering a world in which he could walk again and so, his loyalty to Victoria and her father was set in stone. He would never betray them to anyone.
Victoria was now 36. Her father was 66. Although her "unofficial" work took her all over the globe, she kept in close contact with both him and Weasel, through emails, texts and phone calls. While on a trip to Australia, she called Weasel, concious that although there was a huge time difference, he would be awake as he only slept for about 2 hours every day. He had once jokingly said that this was a positive side effect of his brain not having to negotiate walking and the energy saved from not using those muscles. Victoria had laughed and kissed his forehead, which made him blush. She tried the house phone first of all, as Weasel always stayed with her father when she was out of town. There was no answer which was surprising as it would have been around 8.30 pm there, and her father was always in bed by 9 on the dot. So she tried Weasel's mobile. It rang about five times, which was again unusual because he always picked a call straight up.
When he answered, his distraught state became obvious immediately. Victoria knew that her fathers mental stability had been rocked by the "bastardisation" of his work, encompassed in the fact that his invention had been used for underhand and nefarious purposes by both governments and individuals. That was the reason that she was in Australia right now, She had received word that some group had been targeting Cobol Engineering executives and she had wanted to join them in the dreamscape and scupper whatever shady plan they were up to. Sure, she couldn't stop everyone from extracting information from others, but any time she stopped this happening, by either "training" others to defend themselves against such an attack or by "going in" with them under guise as part of their team, helped to eradicate the misuse of her fathers life work. She also hoped that her efforts would help him to focus on a positive again, instead of regretting inventing the machine that had assisted with the deception.
So when Weasel answered his mobile after five or six rings with a very stressed "Thank god, I've been trying to call you for hours", she automatically knew something was very very wrong. He proceeded to tell her that her father was in Intensive Care after suffering a massive stroke. When she asked Weasel if the doctors knew what had caused it, he had scoffed. "You know about these things Vix, no-one knows why people have strokes". There was a long pause as she let the news fully sink in. Then Weasel spoke again "Although if you ask me, the news he got yesterday might have pushed him over the edge!".
"What news Weasel?" she asked stonily.
"Inception...someone did it. Some idiot went and planted something in some poor fuckers brain, Gibney called your Dad yesterday and told him that the rumours were all round the "Dreamshare" world. Happened about five months ago from what he heard. Maurice Fischer, heard of him?".
"Yeah, he died a while ago. His son was all set to take over the Fischer/Morrow empire but then demolished the whole thing. Something about wanting to be his own man or some such bullshit that those types always spout".
All Weasel said in response was "There you go!".
Victoria thought for a while and said "Whats Dad's condition like now?, Is there any point in me rushing home?".
"They've put him in a chemical coma in the hopes that some of his synapses start to rebuild. Said they're going to keep him like that for a week. So, I suppose technically no, you don't need to be here. But I think you should".
She was silent for a while and said "I'm not coming, not just yet. I'm going to the US. There is only one person stupidly self-serving and devious enough to pull this off and we both know who it is. I'm going to find him and kill him. Then I'll come home and see to Dad. Is that okay with you?".
"Vix, you know I would do anything that you or your Dad ever asked me to so of course, I'll handle things here. But seriously, killing Dom Cobb wont reverse what's happened and you know it!".
Victoria visibly flinched at the mention of his name. She had been targeting that son of a bitch for a while now, due to his reputation as the best Extractor around. But there was always some roadblock of other. Like the ridiculous loyalty he seemed to inspire in his team members or the sympathy card he regularly played on concerning his wife's death that some used as an excuse to forgive him just about anything. But now, she was determined to get to him and not just to ruin whatever job he was currently running. No, this time, she would end the bastard that had been the bane of her fathers life for so long. She would kill him and enjoy doing it.
"I'll speak to you soon Weasel!" she stated simply as she disconnected the call.