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neil

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She's not nervous, not exactly, but this isn't how she expected it to be. Going inside -- or whatever it is they call it -- was something she always thought she'd do with Eames, but he's gone now and Neil knows more about the machine than she does. More than anyone else in Darrow, she imagines.

So she's not nervous, but it doesn't feel like she imagined it would. Eames isn't here, which is different enough, but it's more than that, too. She isn't sure what to expect. She's excited, but uncertain.

"So how does this work?" she asks, leaning her chin on her hands as she looks at Neil. "Eames only gave me the basics, so I'm completely in your hands here." Not that she minds. She trusts him.

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Snorting out a laugh, I say, "I'll try not to fuck with your head, too much."

We're sitting on the couch, the PASIV open on the coffee table in front of us. Her apartment, instead of mine. It's not the sorta thing that'd be easily explained to the girls, in case they stumbled in for whatever reason.

"We'll start off with something simple, first, just so you can get a feel of it. You're probably not gonna realize you're dreaming at first, but that's what usually happens."

"I'd appreciate that," she says dryly, but she's smiling, looking at the PASIV and then at Neil. "So am I going to be the dreamer, then?" She remembers that much, Eames telling her that one person has to do the dreaming while the other person goes inside. She remembers something about the subconscious, too, about having to be careful with them, whoever they were. She can't remember it all.

"Yep," I say, glad that Eames told her at least a little bit of how this works. "And it'll be my subconscious, my little projections running around in your head."

I start checking to make sure everything's good to go with the PASIV, and it's fucking lucky that I know how to set this thing up, even if I don't really have a fuckin' clue how it actually works. The basics, yeah, but the actual details? It still kind of seems like sci-fi to me, honestly.

"Eames tell you about the projections?"

"Yeah, your subconscious will be the population of the dream, right?" she asks. The details aren't clear, but Eames had told her enough to give her a general idea of how it works and what happens. "I know he said that I shouldn't try to change much once we're in. It draws the attention of your subconscious."

That doesn't make much sense to her, not when Neil will already know he's inside a dream, but she'll trust his knowledge and whatever Eames has told her over her own assumptions.

"Right. When we get down there, it's gonna take a little bit for you to adjust. Most people don't realize they're dreaming, at first, and once you figure it out, your mind's gonna fight against it," I say, tearing open an alcohol swab and gesturing for her to give me her arm. "Even with practice, if you poke it too hard, your subconscious'll do whatever it can to wake you up."

"How?" she asks, holding her arm out toward Neil. She finds this interesting and she's glad she's still getting the chance to discover it, even without Eames here to guide her. "How do we wake up, anyway? An alarm?"

Edited 2013-07-20 14:36 (UTC)

"There's a timer set on the PASIV. But dying in the dream's another way. You die, you pop right out, timer or not. And, uh... You know that feeling you get, like you're falling, in a dream? It always wakes you up, right? That's another way to do it. Eames called it a kick, but we don't really need to worry about that, yet," I say, swabbing at the top of her wrist. "I've got the timer set for five minutes, which'll give us about an hour down there."

"And if I get bored, I can just find someone to kill me," she says, as if that doesn't sound absolutely terrifying in a way. It might not actually be a big deal, but she's seen herself being stabbed one too many times already, even if it never really happened. "So a full hour for five minutes. Jesus, that's one hell of a way to get in a lot of experiences in as little time possible."

"Putting a bullet in your own head does the trick, if the idea of it doesn't freak you out too much," I say, pulling her lead closer and moving to carefully slip the needle into her vein.

"It does make things a little easier, yeah. We got fuckin' jobs, we don't got time to fuck around down there all day."

She watches with interest as Neil slips the needle into her arm, surprised by how easy it is. "The idea does freak me out a little," she admits, trying to imagine killing herself, even knowing she'd wake up from it. It's a hard thing to shake, the thought that she'd really die, and she's not sure she'd be able to go through with it.

"I'm sure I won't get bored, so it won't be a problem," she decides.

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