The reviews and titles suggestions were much appreciated!
Just as a heads up, I might not update for awhile due to my traveling in the next few days. So if there's a long gap between this chapter and the next, you can expect that I'll be on a plane!
Have a great day,
Sunshine
Inception does not belong to me in any way, shape, or form.
Chapter Two
Ariadne looked up at the clock of her lecture hall, a look of disapproval forming across her face. There's still half an hour left? She thought to herself, quietly sighing and turning to look out the window next to her.
It was a beautiful day outside. There were a few clouds running across the deep, blue sky and the swaying of light tree branches meant that there was a light breeze. Ariadne loved these kinds of days.
She had no doubt in her mind that she was frustrated with herself. She had not been able to shake off the desire to go back to the warehouse and dream again. No matter how hard she tried to forget, no matter how hard she tried to distract herself with the piles of homework that formed on her desk, Ariadne would always find herself drifting back to the warehouse where she had entered a world in which she created stores, streets, and bridges, and also met a handsome point man.
That was another thing that Ariadne found herself drifting to, as well as scolding herself about: Arthur. She couldn't get over how he had kept such calm composure in a time where her thoughts had been spiraling anywhere and everywhere. 'You're okay,' he had said, his voice cool and full of reassurance. Looking back on it, she found it hard to believe that she hadn't listened and believed him the first time he said it.
The fact that she had stormed out due to her (to put it lightly) rude introduction to Cobb's subconscious was now only a fading reason as to why she shouldn't go back. It was dangerous and risky, Ariadne figured that much. But what was life without taking any risks, right?
"Ariadne," she heard Miles say, interrupting her train of thought. Lifting her gaze from the scenery outside the window, Ariadne suddenly took notice of how the room had just been emptied of students, excluding her.
"Yes?" she responded.
"You seem to be a bit distracted," her professor said, as he seemed to gather a few papers that were scattered across his desk.
"Um, y-yes, just a little," Ariadne responded, flustered as she stood up and slung her bag over her shoulder. "Sorry, professor."
"Come here one second, please," Miles said, gesturing her over to his desk.
Ariadne stepped down to his desk, unsure as to what he might say. The British man had a thick accent, but she had grown used to it throughout the year. He was a kind man, whose passion for architecture shone when he taught. Ariadne could always see the light in his eyes and slight glee that was reflected when one of his students suddenly understood something that they had been having trouble comprehending for a long amount of time-an "Ah-ha" moment, as he called it.
He looked up at her with his kind blue eyes, the aged English man seeming to radiate with wisdom. You just couldn't help but respect him. "I know that dreaming is a handful at first, and that what Dom has given you is a large responsibility," Miles began, his voice noticeably softer. He had assumed that she had taken the job.
"And I understand that you now have the ability to create buildings, pieces of architecture that you are the sole creator of. I get that this is any architect's dream. But I don't want this job to take over your schoolwork. I don't want this job to get in the way of your very bright future. Do you understand?" Miles looked at her with concern.
"Yes, I do," Ariadne, responded. "Thank you, Professor."
"Anytime. And try your best to not get distracted in my class again," he smiled.
Ariadne smiled and nodded "Yes, sir." And with that, she turned, and exited the room.
Taking a deep breath of fresh air, Ariadne stood outside the building of her classrooms, not knowing what to do next. Around her cars sped past, and people strode. The trees danced with the slight breeze that ran through the air, and the flowers surrounding them were being delicately cared for by their gardeners-petite men with sunburn made evident on the bridges of their noses. Everyone and everything was moving-their lives were moving. Yet here sat Ariadne, feeling as if she had been put on pause, watching everything move in a blur.
To her left would be the way back to her dorm. To her right sat the way to the warehouse. She heard the words of her professor play themselves over in her mind. I understand that you now have the ability to create buildings, pieces of architecture that you are the sole creator of. I get that this is any architect's dream. Any architect's dream. Her dream. Was she just going to walk away from it?
Biting her lip, Ariadne found herself turning on her heel, and beginning to walk down the sidewalk.
Minutes later, Ariadne found herself quietly opening the door the warehouse. She surprised on the way there, as she had not gotten lost once, and she had remembered where the building had been. The door had already been unlocked when she approached the building. 'You'd think that with something illegal like this, they'd at least have the sense to keep a door locked' she thought.
She slipped in to the warehouse to find a man intently working on something on his desk. She stopped in her tracks, not really knowing what to say. 'What am I supposed to say?' she thought. 'Hey, I know I said this stuff was crazy, but I'm back anyway!' She didn't want to make a fool of herself.
Taking a closer look, she found the man to be Arthur. She couldn't help but feel a tinge of happiness flood into her system; of which could be credited to her being back in the warehouse, and seeing Arthur-seeing Arthur contributing to the feeling more than Ariadne would like to admit.
Arthur was in another three-piece suit again, his hair still gelled back, and looking just as professional as he had looked last time. Ariadne could tell he was thoroughly concentrating on whatever he was doing because of the silence in the building. The silence was almost deafening, and she didn't want to break it.
Taking a few more steps, Ariadne coughed. She knew it wasn't the smoothest entrance, but it was the most noise she could bring herself to make. Interrupting the silence would be interrupting Arthur's intense thinking, and the last thing she'd want him to think of her was a bother.
Turning to face her, she saw a small smirk play across Arthur's lips as he stood. "Cobb said you'd be back," he said, placing his hands in his pockets. Ariadne liked to believe that a smile was what had come across his face, but considering his words, she decided that he had worn a smirk rather than a smile.
"I really tried not to come," Ariadne shrugged, taking a few steps, as if admitting a large confession.
"But there's just nothing quite like it," Arthur nodded, his lips twitching upwards, seeming to understand her predicament. This, Ariadne was sure, was a grin.
"Its just…" Ariadne said, scanning her mind for the right way to say her opinion. "Pure creation." She looked at Arthur, seeing a solid smile play across his features. Sharing one look at each other, Ariadne sensed that he understood her perfectly, and she gave him a smile.
She could feel the couple seconds tick by as she dropped her gaze, beginning to lose her composure to her nerves. She could swear that she had heard a quiet chuckle beneath Arthur's breath.
"So, shall we look at paradoxical architecture?" Arthur said, turning his back to the silver suitcase that was sitting on his desk.
Ariadne stood there, unsure. Had she just interrupted something important in his work? "I mean, if you're doing something important, I could just wait for Cobb to come back."
"You weren't interrupting anything," he said. "And considering that Cobb is in Mombasa right now, he won't be back for days," Arthur explained, beginning to pull out the multiple tubes that Ariadne had seen him sort out the last time she had been there.
"Okay then," Ariadne said, taking a seat on one of the lawn chairs.
"Would you rather wait for Cobb?" he asked, an eyebrow slightly arched, his question blunt.
"N-no," she stammered. "I just figured that I'd interrupted your work."
Again, she saw a small grin creep across his face. "Its fine, I don't mind helping out," he said as he handed her a needle.
Slipping the needle under her skin, she watched as he took a seat next to her. In an instant, Ariadne picked up the light scent of men's cologne that wafted around her. She lied back, approving the scent. Arthur then clicked in a certain amount of time on the pad in the sleek suitcase, slipped the needle under his skin, and pressed the button.
People in business suits surrounded Ariadne everywhere she looked. With this in mind, she didn't find it hard to believe that she was in Arthur's dream. They were in a corporate building, standing on a series of staircases while workers strode past her. A few seconds later, she found Arthur standing by her side, his cologne still wafting around her. 'Focus' she thought to herself.
"Come on," Arthur said, beginning to climb the first staircase.
"In a dream, you can cheat architecture into impossible shapes," he began. Walking beside him, Ariadne found it extremely difficult to maintain any sort of focus. She could feel his eyes look straight ahead, busy explaining the new concept, yet every now and then, she could see his occasional glances from the corners of her eyes, as if to make sure she was following along. Which, physically, she was-she climbed the steps, making sure to keep instep with him. Mentally, however, she found herself having a harder battle to fight, making sure to only allow herself occasional glances so as to not give off the notion that she was staring, despite the fact that she wanted to. He was back in his three-piece suit, she noticed.
"Excuse me," he said as they passed a woman in a dress suit who had just dropped her papers onto the floor.
"Like the Penrose Steps," he said, Ariadne suddenly taking notice of the famous staircase they had climbed. "The infinite stair case."
Turning a few corners, Ariadne found herself stepping around the same woman in the dress suit once again. 'Wait…' she thought, a tad bit amazed and a tad bit confused, turning her head to look at the woman as she kept on walking.
"Watch out," Arthur murmured, coming to a stop and holding one arm out across Ariadne. She stopped, her mouth opening in disbelief as she found the ending of the staircase being halted by an open gap. "See? Paradox."
She peered down, seeing the long drop from the end of the step as Arthur turned and began down the staircase.
"Do you get everything so far?" Arthur asked her as they landed on the main floor. "I know it can be a lot to digest." Glancing at him, his eyes briefly met hers, pools of chocolate calmly gazing at her. Feeling a small heart attack beginning in her chest, Ariadne tore her gaze and looked around the corporate building she was in, forcing herself to concentrate and mull over the concept Arthur had just explained to her about the paradoxical architecture.
"I get it," Ariadne nodded, allowing herself to look back at Arthur.
"Cobb was right, you do pick things up fast," he said, impressed.
Ariadne suppressed a grin, satisfied with herself. "So, how large to these levels have to be?"
"Anything from the floor of a building, to an entire city. But it has to be complicated enough for us to hide from the projections."
"So a maze."
"Right," he nodded. "And the better the maze-"
"The longer we have before the projects catch on and catch us."
"Right," Arthur nodded.
Ariadne turned her head and looked at the surrounding corporate people as their eyes began to drift to them with suspicious looks. "My subconscious seems polite enough," she said.
"Just you wait, it'll turn ugly," he chuckled. "No one wants to see someone else messing around with their head."
They continued to walk along the corporate floors in silence, Ariadne glancing at Arthur every now and then. She noticed how consumed he was in the dream. He'd been in this state so many times before, and yet here he was, in a simple shared dream, still peering at the building as if it were his first time dreaming.
"Cobb can't build anymore, can he?" Ariadne asked suddenly.
"I don't know if he can, but he won't. He thinks that it would be safer if he didn't know the layouts of the mazes."
"Why?"
Arthur was silent for a little while, as if considering multiple explanations that he could answer with. "He won't say. I think its Mal. I think she's getting stronger," he frowned.
"His ex-wife?"
Arthur stopped in his tracks. "He's not his ex."
"They're still together?"
Arthur turned to look at Ariadne, his voice quieter. "No. No, Ariadne, she's dead," he said gently. "What you see in there is just Cobb's projection of her."
This, Ariadne had to take time to digest. She felt like she had just touched a sensitive nerve of Cobb's, despite his not being there. "What was she like in real life?" She asked quietly.
"She was lovely."
"So I just go ahead and start building, then?" Ariadne asked, as Arthur began packing up the tubes. She sat up in the lawn chair. She had decided to stay silent for the rest of the dream as Arthur finished his lesson. They hadn't seen much afterwards, as they explored the rest of the building, even talked to a few projections, but Ariadne didn't say much, just nodding and telling him she understood.
"You can start tomorrow," Arthur said. "Take a break for today, make sure you have everything down. Make sure you're ready for when Cobb comes back, that's when we're going to establish what exact idea we're going to plant into Fischer's mind."
"That way I can fit the design of the levels with what we're trying to convey to Fischer on that level," she nodded. "Got it." She watched another impressed look creep across Arthur's features. "Why do you seem so impressed?"
Arthur shrugged. "I haven't seen anyone pick up everything so fast. You've managed to understand concepts that would have, regularly, taken a person a day or two to completely grasp within an hour or two."
"It seems easy enough. It's just too fascinating. It was torture when I kept myself from coming back."
A small grin escaped Arthur's lips. "You couldn't forget about it, no matter how hard you tried," he said, seeming to understand.
"Yeah, Professor Miles actually spoke to me this morning because I'd apparently been very distracted the past few days. He told me how I'd been given an architect's dream. I figured I'd be insane if I didn't come back and take it." She slid her legs over the edge of the chair, placing her elbows on her knees.
"Many architects would kill to be in your place."
Ariadne considered this. There were so many architects who would kill to be in her place; surely millions all over the world exist; yet she had been picked. "That is one thing I don't understand, though," she said, suddenly.
"What is?" Arthur said, looking down at her.
"Well, there are so many architects out of there. Surely there are a few that have done this plenty of times with loads of experience."
"True," he said matter-of-factly.
"If it's true, then why am I here? Why did Cobb pick me out of all the architects out there? I'm just a college student, and a week ago, I had never even heard of this kind of dreaming-I didn't even know this business existed," Ariadne's wondering words tumbled out of her mouth without stopping. "Why me?"
"Because we didn't need just any architect," Arthur said automatically. He stepped to the lawn chair across from her and sat down, looking directly at her. "We need a good architect, one who could handle this kind of project. Inception isn't something we do everyday. This business is just about stealing ideas, not planting them. Inception is something much harder, if not impossible."
"If it's so difficult, why'd I get picked?"
"Because you're good, talented," Arthur said. Looking at him, Ariadne met his gaze, seeing complete confidence in his words. "Professor Miles just isn't some architect professor at a college, Ariadne. He's Cobb's father in-law, and taught Cobb how to build and dream himself. Miles knows his stuff, and we, Cobb and I, trust his judgment. Cobb asked for his brightest and best, and Miles introduced you to us. He said you'd be just as good, if not better, than Cobb. And if that wasn't enough to convince people, you came in and picked everything up in a breeze."
Ariadne could feel her cheeks turning a deep shade of pink, looking down at her feet in embarrassment. She wasn't used to all the praise. She knew she was good, but Arthur was praising her like she was some sort of prodigy.
"What do you think?" Ariadne asked him, after gathering enough confidence to look back at Arthur again.
Arthur reached over and set his hand on her shoulder. "I think you'll do great, if not amazing," he said quietly, as Ariadne suddenly noticed how close they had become.
She smiled at him, and nodded, feeling her shoulder beginning to tingle from his touch. "I-I should get to my school work," she muttered, standing up.
"Alright," Arthur said, coolly, retracting his touch, and beginning towards his desk. "I'll see you tomorrow, then."
Ariadne nodded as she collected her bag and sweater, walking in a daze. "Bye," she said, closing the door to the warehouse behind her. She could still feel pink on her cheeks as she stepped out onto the sidewalk, once again surrounded by continuing life. Only this time, hers was moving along as well.