VI.
"You guys?" Ariadne says one morning as they assemble in the warehouse. "I've been working on something I want to show you. I'm not sure exactly when we'd use it, but I'm sure there's something, and it's demonstrating some principles that I think will be really great for tricky projections."
"Can you elaborate?" Arthur asks, eyebrows raised to the ceiling.
"It'll be easier just to show you." She hands him a PASIV line; he glances first at her, then at Eames, who shrugs. "I think you'll like it."
She settles into her chair and closes her eyes, then opens them.
They're standing inside a massive wheel of crystal, suspended in space, wind blasting at their backs. Above and below and all around them stretch out expanses of intricately twisting shapes, zigzags and loops and curves, like a glass amusement park bent back on itself and hung at forty-five degrees. Jets and streams of water spill and thunder through the air in every conceivable direction, throwing up spray that's already beading in Ariadne's bound-back hair. There's no sky or ground or edge to be seen; everything vanishes into the dim blue mist.
Ariadne glances over at the other two; Eames is craning his neck, rubbing at the back of his head. Arthur is openly gaping.
"What is this?" he says at last. She hides a grin. Well, she's definitely onto something new here, at least.
"Walk back and forth a little bit," she says, gesturing. Arthur is still trying to look in every direction at once, but Eames tries it.
"Oh bloody fuck, it's all turning," he says, dropping to a seat on the crystal.
"No, it isn't," Ariadne says as Eames glances up and Arthur glances back at him, and both men curse at the same time.
"How are you –"
"What the flying – "
"The gravity isn't consistent here," Ariadne explains, beaming and gesturing at her perfectly illustrative example: Eames tilted at a thirty-degree angle to Arthur. That's what's special about this place.
"Oh my God," Arthur breathes.
"Yeah. The gravity is mostly ninety degrees to the nearest surface, but of course once you get out into the space between ledges that's a little more complicated. Just here, you can walk all around the edge of this loop we're on – actually, it's a Mobius strip – and the gravity just shifts with you."
"Is that what was going on, then?" Eames says, looking slightly pale. "One moment, I'm coming back there. I can't keep looking at you two at this angle."
"In between things, in space, is there no gravity then?" Arthur asks, still staring around.
"No, it retains the gravity of wherever it started until it enters something else's field," she says. "Although usually the underside of something has its own gravity, so if you just step off the edge you'll land on the other side. Here." She fumbles in her pocket and hands him a freshly dreamed-up quarter. "Drop this off the edge and you'll see what I mean."
He does, kneeling to observe as it tumbles in a perfect parabola away, then seemingly flies back towards them to hit the far side of their crystal walkway with a stunningly loud chime. Arthur, by this point, is beaming almost as widely as Ariadne.
"How do we get off of anything, then, if we keep coming back?"
"Throw it clear of the gravity field. Here, try it with something bigger –" He's already shrugging off his jacket. Barely a foot from the edge, the wind catches it; it flutters outward like a pinstriped bird and then tumbles gradually 'up', landing spread out on an angled panel nearly twenty feet above them.
"Oh my God," he repeats, staring up. "And it shifts with us, as we move? Excuse me –" He turns on one heel and sets off recklessly fast; he only makes it three steps before he has to fling an arm out for balance.
Eames inches up behind her. "Well, you've certainly made his day," he remarks, sounding strained under the amusement. "Possibly his year."
"It does seem like that," she agrees, then twists around to look at the forger. "You don't like this very much, do you?"
He shakes his head. "No, no, I don't dislike it. This is fascinating. It's just –" He sighs. "I'm slightly less adaptable then our favorite point man. I can handle the height, but the motion is making me a bit seasick."
"Sorry," she says, wincing. "I probably should have warned you."
"It's fine," he says, shrugging. "I'll adjust. Also, for the record, only slightly less adaptable."
She snickers. "Of course." Glancing after Arthur, she adds, "We should probably catch up to him." She moves forward, then turns; Eames is picking his way along the crystal with the care of an Everest climber.
"Need a hand?" she asks, managing heroically not to laugh at him. She'd been a bit disoriented the first time she tested this too, and she built the place.
"That may perhaps be a good idea, at least for another few minutes," he admits, looking pained. She bows slightly and offers him her arm, which earns her a grin. "How gallant," he drawls, taking it; the dainty grace of the movement is more than a bit incongruous with his scruffily bearded self, but logical given the number of times he's been escorted in the skin of a lovely woman.
He moves much more easily with her to help him balance, but they still only catch up with Arthur – now around the twist of the Mobius – because he's stopped to investigate the water spilling past them at a sixty-degree upward angle. Well, upward from where they're currently standing.
"Ariadne, where's this coming from?" he asks, whirling to look at her again. He's gotten quite windblown and damp already; they all have, she realizes.
"The source is a few hundred meters that way," she says, gesturing. "It's this installation, sort of like a giant light for a sports field, because I couldn't get a standard waterfall to work, it always doubled back onto the underside of the source. It's just here to make it easier to orient ourselves, because it's incredibly easy to get lost in here. Same with the wind."
"Makes sense," he murmurs, craning his neck to stare at the splashing water. "Tell me more."
"Well, the world is spherical, and this here is right at the center of it, pretty much. I had to repeat some of the structures in order to fill it all, but they're staggered irregularly so it actually makes it all more disorienting, not less. I've been down here for hours without running into a single projection, sometimes," she slips in, not bothering to pretend she isn't boasting. "And once you hit the edge, things get darker, and from there it's all based on fractals, so it goes out quite a bit without being specifically structured."
"Exactly how big is this?" he asks.
"The fractals? I haven't tested it fully. The base sphere has about a five-kilometer radius."
"And it's all like this?" he asks incredulously, staring at her.
"Pretty much, yes," she says, beaming. "Not bad, huh?"
He laughs, brighter and more delighted than she's ever heard him. "Not bad! Ariadne, I am – more than impressed. Awed. I am awed."
"Thank you," she manages, smile ratcheting up to the point where her cheeks hurt. She realizes that at some point she's stopped feeling the cold. Eames is chuckling, still hanging on her arm.
"How do we get off of this to get a look at the rest of it?" Arthur asks, glancing back and forth. Ariadne twists around to indicate the array of discs at their backs, almost straight 'above' them.
"We jump," she says, "and by the time the gravity from there catches us it isn't a very long fall. You're meant to be jumping from the inside of the Mobius, so it's the same direction all the way down, but we can do it from here."
"I suggest that," Arthur says, "I don't want to go around again." Which means, she knows, that Eames would probably prefer not; Arthur catches her eye and she realizes that he never intended to deceive her on that point. Eames probably knows exactly what's going on here too, she realizes, and, well, good. He might as well know that they're willing to spare his pride.
"We should hang on to each other, then," she warns, "because it does get a little strange when the gravity flips."
"This'll be fun," Eames snorts, dropping her arm to clutch at her hand. Arthur stretches out his own, lacing their callused fingers together, and glances out.
"One, two –"
"Three," they whisper in concert, and she drags the other two out into her whirling air.