Dominating Hollywood: Starting with Scarlett

Chapter 243 Inception
After Saito's mission failed, Cobb returned to his home. The audience watched him spin the gyroscope and then point a gun at himself. They all gasped and realized something.

"So this could also be a dream?" Mirren guessed.

But in the end, the gyroscope stopped spinning, and both he and Cobb breathed a sigh of relief.

Next, Cobb received a call from home, and the audience realized that Cobb had no home to return to, no way to see his children, and a bounty on his back from a large company.

After the call, Arthur found Cobb and asked him about Mel.

But this was obviously a sore spot for Cobb. He refused to answer and took Arthur to the airport, intending to leave by helicopter.

However, they saw Saito actually appeared in the helicopter, and sitting opposite him was the mixed-race man who was the dream builder and had mixed up the material of the carpet.

"He's planning to sell you out." Saito asked his men to hand the gun to Cobb.

Cobb shook his head: "I won't do it."

Saito raised his eyebrows, asked his men to take the dream builder away, and then let Cobb and the other man get on the plane.

On the plane, Saito used the opportunity of returning to America and his children to get Cobb to agree to his request to implant an idea for the heir who was about to take over a huge company.

Implanting thoughts is much more difficult than stealing dreams.

At least Arthur doesn't think it will succeed, but Cobb doesn't think so.

"Why?" Arthur asked him.

"Because I did."

"To whom?"

Cobb didn't answer, so Arthur didn't ask any further questions.

In order to gather new troops, they went to Paris.

In Paris, Cobb met his children's grandfather, his wife Mel's father, a university professor.

Cobb graduated under his guidance, and he knew that there must be talented dream builders here.

But Mel's father replied: "There is someone better than you."

"Ariadne." The old professor introduced Cobb to his most favored candidate, a short girl with curly hair, the student played by Ellen Page.

After meeting this so-called "dream builder better than himself", Cobb first tested Ariadne with a simple maze drawing.

Draw a maze in one minute that takes one minute to solve.

Ariadne failed to solve the puzzle correctly twice in a row, but she got it right the third time and drew a rotating circular maze on the paper.

"That's right." After Cobb praised, the scene changed.

Two people sat in a street cafe.

After explaining the content of the work, Cobb suddenly asked: "You never remember the beginning of a dream, right? You only remember the middle part."

"It seems so." Ariadne nodded.

Cobb continued, "So why are we here?"

Ariadne answered subconsciously: "We just came from..."

"Think about it, Ariadne, how did you get here?" Cobb leaned over and asked seriously.

"Where the hell are you now?"

Ariadne then looked around carefully. This was a very ordinary coffee shop. There were people drinking coffee, people leaving, and waiters around. There was no sign that anything was wrong.

But she knew Cobb would not speak without purpose, so she turned around and asked: "Are we dreaming?"

Cobb reminded: "Actually you are sleeping in a factory now. This is the first lesson of sharing dreams."

Ariadne was startled for a moment when she heard this, and then she found that the ground began to shake, and the coffee on the table was creating ripples.

"Bang!" The newspaper stand on the roadside exploded.

Soon after, various shops and the ground exploded, and the exploded objects floated in the air as if frozen.

In this magical scene, Ariadne wondered: "If this is a dream, why are you..."

The next second, she was engulfed by the explosion.

His eyes suddenly opened, and he found himself in the warehouse. Cobb explained, "Because dreams are not just dreams. Glass piercing your face will hurt a lot."

"So that's how it is!" Mirren and other viewers suddenly realized and thought this scene was wonderful.

"Dad, I dreamed of being attacked by a mammoth yesterday. It was so painful." The little boy next to him suddenly spoke up.

His father hugged his shoulders and said, "It's okay, son, it's just a dream..."

After saying this, he seemed to come back to his senses, frowned and asked: "So what the hell is the mammoth man?"

But the little boy was already concentrating on watching the movie again.

"Five minutes in the real world is equivalent to one hour in the dream." Cobb explained another theory and then took Ariadne back to the dream.

On the same street as before, Cobb explains to Ariadne what to pay attention to in dreams.

It was at this moment that she suddenly asked a very important question: "What if the physical rules in the dream are messed up?"

After asking, she stood there in a daze.

Because she saw the end of the distant horizon, and the entire city suddenly rose up out of thin air, sweeping towards them like a rolled up towel.

The buildings, vehicles and pedestrians seemed to be unaware of anything and remained on the streets. Even though they were upside down relative to each other, they were not affected.

Just like that, the whole city folded together.

Ariadne and Cobb walked to the edge of the fold. The street here had become a 90-degree angle, but they walked up without any obstacles or inconveniences, as if the rules of physics had become invalid and completely new rules had been established in this world.

"Wow!" Although this is Cobb's dream, it is controlled by Ariadne.

But as Ariadne created more and more scenes, she saw that passers-by on the street were looking at her viciously and some even bumped into her shoulders.

"These are my subconscious minds, and they will attack anyone who tries to change my dreams, just like white blood cells."

They then walked under a Paris bridge, where Ariadne pulled out two mirrors, creating an endlessly looping scene and then shattered the glass.

However, after seeing the scene she created, Cobb's face changed, and he told Ariadne in a very unpleasant tone that the design must not be based on the real scene, because it would make people unable to distinguish between reality and dreams.

Just as Ariadne was about to ask, the passers-by rushed over and pulled Ariadne away. At the same time, Mel, who was wearing a windbreaker, walked quickly out of the crowd and stabbed Ariadne to death with a knife.

Ariadne was very angry after waking up, and said that Cobb's mental problems were very serious and he was simply a walking bomb.

But Arthur had long been accustomed to it, so he just gently told her the function of the totem. "Just like this dice, only I know its weight, center of gravity, and texture. This way, when you see the totem, you can be sure that you are not in someone else's dream."

Seeing this, Jessica picked up the necklace on her chest and said, “Tang, can this also be used as a totem?”

"This won't work." Tang De picked up a popcorn: "This one will work."

“It’s just a popcorn.”

“Maybe it’s gold or silver, but as long as other people don’t know the weight and texture of this thing, it can be regarded as a totem.”

"I see."

Not only Jessica was interested, other viewers were also very interested in this. They touched their rings and necklaces, as if they were going to use them as totems.

Although Ariadne chose to leave in anger, Cobb told Arthur that she would definitely come back again.

Because the real world can no longer satisfy her. After being a creator, she will no longer be interested in the mediocre and powerless reality.

So Cobb rushed to the next location without stopping and found the impostor Eames he needed.

However, in the process of communicating with Eames, he also realized that if he wanted to implant an idea, he had to simplify the idea as much as possible. Otherwise, an overly complicated idea would cause the target to become confused and give up.

Eames also recommended a unique pharmacist named Yusuf to him, but he had to wait until Cobb was out of tracking before he could take him to recruit people.

What follows is a thrilling chase scene.

With Saito's help, Cobb managed to escape, and then found Yusef with Eames.

On the other side, Ariadne also returned to the warehouse. Yes, she finally couldn't resist the temptation of the Creator.

Arthur was not surprised and took her into the dream to create some contradictory buildings.

For example, the Penrose stairs.

When the audience saw that the stairs that were originally completely connected on the screen were actually a visual misalignment, they couldn't help but exclaim.

After this, the plot developed by leaps and bounds.

Saito tells Cobb about the situation of his target, Fisher, the heir to a huge company that is about to monopolize half of the world's energy. He has a complicated relationship with his father and has been unloved since childhood.

So after discussing with the team, Cobb unanimously decided to start with Fisher's relationship with his father and create a triple dream to implant ideas in Fisher.

To do this, they knew everything about Fisher and got in touch with the people around Fisher.

In order to create the conditions for a ten-hour dream, Saito even bought an airline.

That night after all the preparations were completed, Ariadne saw Cobb dreaming alone, so she connected in and tried to find out what happened in Cobb's dream.

As a result, she saw Mel who was in love with Coburn, and Mel who was crazy in the basement because of her intrusion.

Later, she learned from Cobb that the reason he couldn't go home was because the American police believed he had killed his wife.

Cobb did not explain the reason, but just looked painful.

However, after seeing this, she realized that Cobb was using his dream to trap Mel, and his dream was already in danger and in danger of collapsing at any time.

But Cobb believes that everything he does is to return home. He just wants to see his children, and he will not let Mel come out to make trouble.

Seeing Cobb so determined, Ariadne couldn't say anything else.

The mission continues.

On the plane, several people took their positions, pretending to be passengers, and sat in the same cabin with Fisher.

After making Fisher drink ice water mixed with sleeping pills, several people quickly turned on the dream-stealing device, connected the wristbands, and sneaked into Fisher's dream.

There are six people in this operation, Cobb, Arthur, Ariadne, Eames, Yusuf and Saito.

But something unexpected happened. The moment they kidnapped Fisher, a train suddenly appeared in the city and ran rampant, and many armed forces came and tried to kill them.

This was obviously not good news. They had only just found out that Fisher had received subconscious training. His subconscious mind had become an army that would kill anyone who interfered with his dreams.

After a violent escape, Saito was injured.

But when Eames was about to kill Saito with a gun to get him out of the dream, Cobb said that there was no way to get out of the dream now.

Because the sedatives used this time are completely different and more powerful, death cannot wake them up.

Instead, once they die, they will fall into the realm of confusion, which is an uncreated dream world filled with only chaos.

Almost no one who enters there comes back alive.

Upon hearing this news, the other members of the team suddenly lost their minds. This meant that if they failed to complete the mission, they might never wake up again.

The heated argument made the audience sweat in their palms.

Fortunately, they were all very rational and knew that it was useless to continue arguing, so they just followed the original plan.

Eames pretended to be Fisher's godfather Peter and was kidnapped along with him to extract his words.

He first got the password to his father's safe, and then asked him about the circumstances before his father's death.

Then they learned that Fisher's father left a message before his death, although Fisher only heard two words clearly.

"disappointment."

At the same time, Ariadne is forcing Cobb to tell the truth about his wife, because if this problem cannot be solved, then a bigger surprise will surely occur when he dives into the next level of dreams.

Cobb was silent for a moment and finally told everything.

It turns out that he and his wife are dream builders. In order to explore dreams, they dived into the deepest part of consciousness and stayed there for 50 years.

They created a world for themselves, but then Cobb began to feel bored and left the dream with Mel.

But he didn't expect that in order to immerse himself more deeply, Mel even locked his totem in the deepest part of his consciousness.

This caused Mel to wake up and believe that the real world was actually fake, and only death could escape from this dream.

She hopes Cobb will commit suicide with her and escape from this world.

Cobb tried to persuade her for a long time, but she still didn't change her mind.

Finally, on Valentine's Day, Mel chose to jump off the building, and used his death to force Cobb into a desperate situation.

After hearing this story, Ariadne persuaded Cobb to choose to forgive himself, otherwise his psychological problems would only get worse.

But now there is no time for Cobb to forgive slowly.

They are about to enter the second level of dreams and use a more radical method to stimulate Fisher and implant consciousness.

(End of this chapter)