Darling,

It’s a little ridiculous how natural this line of work feels to Arthur. Within a few months of being hired to work on Project Somnacin, he’s already so knowledgeable in the field of dream-sharing that if you didn’t know better, you might almost think he’s been working on the project for years. He works with immense efficiency, and thanks to that quirk of his that makes it so every fact he ever learns is cemented in his brain, he hardly ever needs to spend unnecessary hours looking for the proper reference material in search of something he might have heard the other day from one of his fellow researchers.

The only thing he hasn’t done yet is gone under into a dream, but that will quickly change. Dom is planning on taking him under soon (Arthur’s way past ready, Dom thinks, but he wanted to give Arthur some wiggle room anyways, just to be safe). Arthur’s not quite sure what to expect. All he knows is from what others tell him, little snippets of advice and the occasional anecdote recounting a dream collapsing or a particularly painful death. Arthur feels like he should be scared, or at least nervous about it, but he’s not. He knows too much to be afraid. And besides, when you die, you wake up. It’s not like there’s any real danger, so really, what is there to be afraid of?

“Remember,” Dom tells him as they’re preparing to go under. “The most important thing is to stay calm. If you become too nervous or flustered, the dream can and will to collapse.”

Arthur nods and Mal goes to insert the IV needles into their arms. Mal won’t be coming with them today, or any other time within the next several months, for that matter. It’s unknown what affects Somnacin will have on the baby, and until they ascertain that there is absolutely no harmful side effect whatsoever, Mal refuses to go under and Dom refuses to let her. Arthur suspects that even if Somnacin was declared perfectly harmless, Mal still wouldn’t dare try.

“Five minutes on the clock,” Mal says, tapping buttons on the enormous machines humming quietly nearby. “That’s one hour of dream time.” She smiles at Arthur and adds, “Good luck” before hitting a round white button.

Arthur feels the rush of Somnacin into his bloodstream and his eyelids droop shut on their own accord.

Arthur’s walking along a busy sidewalk, rush hour traffic inching along beside him. The city around him looks like it could be New York or San Francisco or Chicago, all tall skyscrapers and busy people rushing to and fro. Arthur lets himself be pushed along with the flow of people. He’s wearing a chocolate brown suit. His shoes tap noisily against the pavement. He doesn’t remember how he got here.

He sees Dom at the street corner and pushes on towards him, receiving a brief nod of hello as the older man sees him approaching. Arthur falls into step with Dom and they cross the street. Arthur gets this niggling feeling at the back of his head like he should know where this is; it’s all so familiar to him, and yet he can’t quite place his finger on exactly where they are.

“Where are we?” Arthur finally asks a few blocks down, his impatience getting the best of him.

Dom smiles at him, a smile that makes it seem like he’s keeping some really great secret from Arthur.

“You don’t recognize it?” he asks.

Arthur looks around and furrows his eyebrows. He stops in the middle of the sidewalk and gets a good look at everything, taking in every last detail, and he can feel it; it’s on the tip of his tongue, hovering just out of reach, but it slips by him without actually hitting him and he shakes his head.

“No,” Arthur says. And then after a moment’s pause, he amends, “Not quite.”

That secretive smile on Dom’s face grows wider and he stands casually with his hands in his pockets. Arthur’s confusion grows and he becomes a little annoyed and a little frustrated. He hates not knowing; it makes him feel so useless. Why won’t Dom tell him? A couple people walking down the street jostle Arthur, bumping into him rudely as they pass.

“This,” Dom says, smiling still, “This is a dream, Arthur. You’re still sitting in a chair in the middle of the lab right now. This is your dream in my subconscious.”

“What?” Arthur’s eyes grow wide and he looks at his surroundings again, closer this time, really looks.

He can’t quite believe it at first. It all just seems so real, the buildings and cars and air muggy with pollution. It seems real right down to the very people bustling around him, weaving in and out of shops, sipping tea in cafés. Arthur blinks once, twice, as if all of this will suddenly give away from beneath him, but the scene before him doesn’t budge. It’s real, but it’s a dream. It hardly makes sense, but then again, hardly any of the research they’re doing makes sense at first glance. A paradox.

Arthur stares at Dom in amazement. He feels his heart drumming a little faster, fingertips prickling with anticipation. Stay calm, Dom had told him before they went under, and this Dom repeats again as he carefully watches Arthur’s expression. And Arthur tries, he really does, but this is all so much to take in at once (after all, how can this be any less than reality when it feels like so much more?), and honestly, Arthur is caught a little off guard, not that he’ll admit it to anyone. It’s just that he didn’t expect this at all, didn’t expect a dream to feel so tangible when his idea of dreams is of such flimsy and insubstantial stuff, forgotten soon upon waking.

“Arthur—” Dom starts to say, and the sentence sounds like it would have turned into a warning of sorts had the buildings on both sides of them not exploded into about a million different pieces flying in all directions. And then everything starts falling apart, chunks of concrete and steel and glass shooting everywhere around Arthur, and it’s this strange almost out-of-body experience as he watches this whole world collapse right before his very eyes, this world that seemed so real and solid just moments ago.

He feels something sharp and hard and most certainly lethal hit the side of his head and experiences a brief flash of pain bloom along his skull. And then he wakes up.

Mal is watching them expectantly, peering over at them over the top of the laptop she’s typing away at. Beside her, the machines monitoring the two men’s vitals are beeping steadily and the Somnacin injection device is whirring in the background. She sees them stir, Dom slowly and Arthur more abruptly. Arthur’s eyes pop open suddenly and he sits bolt upright in the lawn chair he’s been reclining in. Mal saves her work and closes her laptop.

“So?” she asks.

Dom shrugs. “Not bad,” he says, “As far as first dreams go.”

Arthur feels his blood pumping, adrenaline rushing through his body, pounding in his ears. His fingers itch with impatience and he sets his jaw firmly.

“Again,” he says. “Let’s go under again.”

Dom laughs at Arthur’s eagerness and Mal goes to set another five minutes on the clock for the machine to wake them when their time’s up. Time is compounded as you go deeper and deeper into dreams, Arthur has been told. Five minutes can feel like an hour, and you can spend years in a dream only to wake up and discover that it hasn’t been more than a day or so.

It’s very practical, allowing the dreamers to get hours worth of training after only, say, ten or fifteen minutes, but it can get dangerous to spend too much time under; that much the researchers have already discovered. Once you start spending too much time in dreams, you lose your grip on reality. They’ve already had a few cases of people losing their minds, waiting feverishly to wake up when they’re already awake. They’re much more careful now. Five minutes is the standard time for tests, even less is better if possible.

“Five minutes,” Mal tells them, and Arthur’s eyes slip shut once more.