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Tom Hansen was liked by his former boss. More than that, he was really, insanely, incredibly well liked. When he’d wandered into the greeting card company, confessing in the interview that he was an architecture major who didn’t so much as send Birthday cards much less write them, Mr. Vance had still given him a job. When Tom had slipped into a deep, aggressive depression after Summer had dumped him, Mr. Vance had attempted to put him on the right track. When Tom had almost stumbled into the sub-basement level, where regular employees were forbidden any access, Mr. Vance had chuckled, patted him on the shoulder, and redirected him to a floor. Tom had been so relieved to escape punishment, it hadn’t even occurred to him to ask why there was a secret sub-level basement in a greeting card company. Still, when Tom had had a complete meltdown in the middle of a meeting and in front of a potential client, he’d been sure that even Mr. Vance would not forgive him. He’d floated around for a while, wallowing in self pity. Self pity was easy. On some basic, pathetic level, self pity even felt good. Then he’d picked himself up and started looking for a new job. If he was very lucky, he’d find a new boss as understanding as Mr. Vance, but doing something he could enjoy. For a very short while, life was good. He was eventually hired by a reputable architecture firm, dated Autumn until the sting of Summer was gone for good. He didn’t feel like his old self. He felt better, older, wiser even. He took to wearing suits, sometimes even on his off days, and dressing impeccably even when he didn’t. His hair was seldom without gel, his jaw always perfectly shaven. He’s a better version of himself, in every possible way. Still, the time comes for his new life to end, as a niggling voice in the back of his head always told him it would. Autumn was offered a promotion in a different city and, since they were still only casually dating and there was nothing to tie her to LA, she took it. Her departure hurt, but he would survive. He grew despondent in his work and began into fantasy, as he always did. His idle sketches began to take on paradoxical elements, which he taped to the walls of his bedroom. Sure, they were useless in architecture, but that didn’t make them any less fun to design. He began to shuffle into the firm each day, still content, but a little numb. This was probably how most people felt when they found the career they would follow for the rest of their lives. Then Mr. Vance walked right back into his life. “Interesting sketches,” Mr. Vance remarked. “You a fan of Escher?” Tom blinked up at the patient, smiling man he had been certain he’d never see again. “Mr. Vance?” Mr. Vance plucked one of the paradoxical sketches off the corner of his desk. “This is good. I had no idea you could draw like this.” “Yeah, well, my job was coming up with the words, not the designs on the cards.” Mr. Vance nodded thoughtfully. “How would you like a job where you get to use these?” Seriously? Tom let out a startled laugh and shook his head. “With all due respect, I think I made my feelings about greeting cards pretty clear when I quit.” “I’m not talking about greeting cards.” Tom sank back into his seat. Mr. Vance didn’t let anything show on his face. “Excuse me?” “Tell you what.” Mr. Vance pushed some of the sketches aside and sat down on the edge of Tom’s desk. “You’re a clever man. You’re driven, you’re determined, and I’ve gotta admit, I loved working with you. So whenever you feel like designing office buildings is no longer fun, you give me a call.” He set a small, white business card down on the desk. Tom frowned and picked it up. “Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division?” “We’re working on it,” Mr. Vance assured him. Then, with a smile, he left. Tom resisted for two weeks. Whatever this was, clearly it had something to do with that sub-level basement, but what kind of greeting card manager worked with anything that had ‘strategic homeland’ in the title? After two weeks, though, he had to admit he was interested. He didn’t quit his job, he just called Mr. Vance and agreed to meet him. Mr. Vance looked as pleasantly content as he always did, fingers crossed as he smiled at Tom. Mr. Vance’s office felt so alien to him these days. Once upon a time, he’d been some dissatisfied, lazy kid who sat in here accepting guidance in a job he didn’t particularly like. “Tom,” Mr. Vance said. “You look good.” Tom inclined his head. “Thank you, Mr. Vance.” Mr. Vance chuckled at that. “I think it’s about time you stop calling me that,” Mr. Vance replied. “I think, for now, I’d like it if you called me Phil.” “Phil Vance.” Tom tried it out on his tongue. Somehow, it didn’t quite work. Mr. Vance bit back a grin. “Not exactly. Don’t worry about it. What’s more important is that you chose to come.” Tom shifted anxiously in his seat. “Well, you said you might have a job for me, one that might let me utilize paradoxical design.” “You find that interesting?” “I think it’s worth hearing the whole sales pitch.” Mr. Vance smiled, looking Tom over. “You’ve certainly changed since we first met, Tom. That’s good. It means you’re adaptable. You’re going to need it in this line of work.” “I haven’t accepted the job.” That made something twinkle in Mr. Vance’s eye. “Of course,” he amended. “Not yet. Come with me, Tom.” He led Tom through cubicle city. Tom grimaced as he passed his old desk, noting how completely different it looked. Apparently whoever had inherited it had an affinity for cartoon frogs. They stepped into the elevator, sinking down to the lobby, then the storage basement. Tom’s heart skipped a beat as they fell to the sub-basement. The doors opened to reveal an ordinary looking hallway. Mr. Vance pulled an ID card from his pocket and the two of them strode down to the door at the far end. Tom glanced around suspiciously. For such a supposedly top secret floor, there was nothing particularly special about the hall. At least, not until Mr. Vance touched the door handle. Instantly, a panel opened in the wall. Tom jumped, eyes widening because, well, a panel just opened up in the freaking wall like some kind of science fiction movie. Mr. Vance first swiped his card through the slot. Then, he placed his palm against a flashing green screen. Then, because it couldn’t get any weirder, he let it scan his eye. “Voice Authorization Required.” “Jesus, do you work for the damn CIA?” “Access Denied.” Mr. Vance shot Tom a Look over his shoulder. “Just be patient,” he urged, going through the ID card, handprint, and retinal scan once again. When the crazy wall-computer asked for his voice again, Mr. Vance leaned in and said, in a clear, certain voice; “Phillip Coulson.” The hell? “Access Granted. Welcome back, Agent Coulson.” “What the everloving fu-” But Tom lost the ability to speak as Mr. Vance… or Mr. Coulson or whoever the hell he was pushed the door open to reveal an honest to God, secret, sterile underground base, complete with men and women in dark suits walking briskly past, their arms full of files, clipboards and… he had to blink, because that woman was armed. Tom swallowed. “So… this is the, uh, Strategic, Homeland… Energy…” “We’re thinking of going with S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Phil offered. “Has a nicer ring to it.” “You’re a spy,” Tom breathed. “Not a spy,” Phil assured him. “Just an agent.” Tom took a sharp breath and glanced up at the stark, white ceiling. He could see the dozens of employees in his mind’seye, milling around the water cooler and typing up kitschy greeting card lines. “Is this whole thing a scam?” he gasped. “Was I the only person who actually thought you made greeting cards?” “We do make greeting cards,” Phil assured him. “It’s a great cover, don’t you think? Real company, real employees, nice little profit to help fund us, and what’s more it gives me something to think about on stakeouts.” “Oh my God,” Tom moaned, running his hands through his hair, effectively ruining it. Phil laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Come on,” he offered. “Let me tell you about your new job.” “I haven’t quit my old one,” Tom protested weakly. “Of course you did,” Phil objected. “This morning. Sent in the resignation myself. Now, let me tell you a bit about Dreamshare.”
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Dreamshare, as it turned out, was the most incredible thing Tom had ever encountered in his life. Basically, an agent plugged you in, dosed you up, and, as the name implied, you went into a dreamspace shared by anyone else also plugged in. He wasn’t exactly fond of the whole needle-in-the-arm bit, but he was going to have to get over that real quick if he wanted a job, since Vance or Coulson… Phil. He could stick with Phil. Since Phil had been courteous enough to quit Tom’s job for him.“I don’t get it,” Tom said, gingerly poking at the machine with all the needles. “You’ve got a whole building swarming with agents. Why do you need me? And why didn’t you need me when I actually worked for the greeting card company?”“Frankly, Hansen, you needed to grow up before we tried to recruit you.”Yeah, that stung, by the wasn’t going to argue. A proper adult probably wouldn’t have reacted that strongly over a breakup with a girl he’d been dating less than a year.“Okay,” he assented. “So why do you need me now?”“New tech, new needs.” Phil nodded at the machine. “The dream needs a single, steady mind to hold it together. We need an architect to design a landscape that suits are needs, and remains simple enough that the dreamer doesn’t forget details halfway through.”“And that’s my job? Designing it?”“You’ll even get a Christmas bonus.”As it turned out, designing dreams was like night and day to designing buildings. For one thing, he didn’t have to worry about pesky things like airflow or too much light coming in through a window. In dreams, people tended to fill in those gaps themselves. He also didn’t have to follow the rules of reality. Hell, he could Scooby-Doo this shit up if he wanted to, with secret trap doors behind paintings and hidden stairwells that led down ten floors in a single flight. All the paradoxes he’d sketched I times of boredom could become an almost-reality in a dream, and he relished every second of it. The techs started teasing him about living more in the dream than in reality. Maybe they had a point. In the real world, his friends were on his case about being a slave to his job.“I get that you got your heart broken a couple of times, but you can’t marry your work.”If only they knew.After two months of playing with the dream-machine –PASIV, Phil had called it-, Tom had enough track marks on his arms to look like a severe heroin addict. He took to wearing shirts past his elbows, even on his days off, just to hide it. Still, for the chance to build the impossible, it was worth it. He was almost giddy when Phil informed him that it was time to start testing Dreamshare on active agents.A team of three men and two women, all dressed in S.H.I.E.L.D. black, came into the lab, each eyeing the PASIV as suspiciously as Tom had upon entry.“Don’t quite see the point of this, sir,” one announced, crossing his arms. “Last time I checked, I didn’t need more training.”“Get your ass in the chair, Barton,” Phil rebuked with the weary tone of a man who’s had to reprimand his agent one time too many. “That’s an order.”Agent Barton shot Tom another suspicious glance and settled down in his chair. The remaining agents did so with considerably less fuss.Tom plugged himself in and settled back in the most comfortable position possible. The timer was set for ten minutes, meaning two hours. Let’s see what he could do in two hours.Phil’s hand hovered under the plunger. He glanced down at Tom.“Give ‘em hell, Mr. Hansen.”“My pleasure, Mr. Vance.”Phil’s lips quirked in amusement. He depressed the plunger, and Tom sank down into the dream.He awoke on a rooftop in a crumbling city. The agents popped up here and there, some in the decrepit upper floors of nearby buildings, others on the street. One agent was positioned on the corner of the rooftop; Barton. His standard issue S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform had been replaced by a tight, sleeveless black and purple body armor. Draped over his back was not the gun Tom had expected, but a bow. Tom quirked a brow.“Didn’t know S.H.I.E.L.D. hired Robin Hood,” he remarked.Barton turned to look at Tom out of the corner of his eye.“You wanna be a more active part of this exercise?” he challenged.“You can’t take me out, dude, the dream’ll fall apart.”“Looks like it already is,” Barton scoffed. “What’s with this architecture, huh? Fan of 28 Days Later?”Tom smirked and settled in an aging armchair he’d dreamed up.“Something like that,” he offered.“What are you… holy-”Barton whirled around and proceeded to fire arrows down into the throng of zombies. Radios buzzed with static, and like a well-oiled machine, the agents proceeded to take out his undead projections. It was a thing of beauty, really, how well they all really did work together. Seeing it in person, even if was a dream, was about a thousand times better than any action movie.At least until the zombies began to overwhelm the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. One by one, the agents were slaughtered, and Tom had to wince in sympathy. By his calculation, there should have only been about twenty minutes until they timed out of the dream. Hopefully the remaining agents would change their tactic and just try to survive.“The hell, Hansen, you gonna help?”“Uh… sorry. Not supposed to.” He really wasn’t. This was a training exercise, nothing more. For all the trapdoors and secret tunnels he’d built everywhere, he wasn’t allowed to tell anyone about them. Seemed like a damn waste in his opinion.“Are you shitting me?” Barton exclaimed. Tom shrugged.“Well, it’s protocol.”“Screw protocol!”“But Phil said-”“Screw Phil with a big-ass railroad spike, Hansen!”Tom tried to come up with something to say to that –or at least get the mental image out of his head before it popped up in the dream somewhere- but the zombies began to climb vertically up the side of the building. Tom shifted in his seat and sucked in a sharp breath. He had to remind himself that they were technically his projections, so he wasn’t in danger himself.Barton, however, didn’t look particularly amused. He had only a handful of arrows left, nowhere near enough to take out the remaining zombies before they killed him. Still, he nocked an arrow and spun around, aiming it at Tom.“What-”But the arrow pierced his head, right between the eyes. There was a sharp stab of pain, a blinding light, and then-Tom started in his seat, his stomach rolling painfully. He had only enough time to turn over before vomiting right onto the stark white floor. Over the pounding of his heart, he could hear the dismayed moans of the lab techs, and the chuckles of the agents.Barton stretched in his seat and sat up, smirking at Tom.“If you’re gonna dream up battles for us,” he said. “You gotta learn a thing or two about being a soldier.”And that was how Tom entered into his practical training. He tried to fight against it at first. He was just an architect, he was a civilian, he’d never held a gun in his life. Barton didn’t care and, after a word with his superiors, neither did Phil. So Tom had his orders. The shooting range it was.In the real world, his friends went on with their lives. Some got married. Some got promotions. Some moved away and had adventures, and every one of them seemed to think Tom was rotting away in a sub-par architectural firm. Every now and then he still went home for family dinner. If he remembered. His sister had a new boyfriend and dyed her hair blue. They talked about work, school, what was happening on tv. Tom couldn’t come up with anything much to talk about.He learned the difference between a sniper’s weapon and a foot-soldier’s weapon, what sort of position was ideal for a given situation, and how a team really set up. More than once, he went down into the dreams as one of the soldiers, just so he could build them better scenarios. He died a thousand times over, each death more creative than the last. It never really got easier, but at least he didn’t wake up vomiting.Before he knew it, a year had passed. It felt like no time at all. Maybe it was the dreaming. He didn’t dream naturally, anymore, and with the lucid dreaming, it felt like he never really let go anymore. One day, it hit him like an anvil. He woke up in his bed, which felt less familiar to him than the lounging chairs in the lab, and realized he wasn’t really Tom Hansen anymore. Tom Hansen was a skinny guy, drifting between boy and man, hung up on all the petty distractions of everyday life. He was stronger, faster, sharper, and more focused than he had ever been before. His friends had dwindled to fond acquaintances. His family was just a group of people he loved, but could no longer truly identify with anymore. Tom Hansen didn’t know the first thing about guns or warzones. He’d never gone a whole year without being hung up on some romantic notion.So, quite simply, Tom was no longer Tom Hansen. He didn’t really know who he was, but he knew for sure that he needed to go ahead and move out of Tom Hansen’s apartment.It wasn’t as difficult as it should have been. Over the last year, he’d slowly been ridding himself of unnecessary junk. Most of his wardrobe was no longer useful to him. His drafting supplies were inadequate compared to the stuff S.H.I.E.L.D. had to offer. And did anyone really need that many coffee mugs? Seriously? What had he been thinking?He moved into one of the apartments under the greeting card company with only a few of boxes of personal belongings and several garment bags protecting his suits. He took one of his days off to settle in, maybe plug himself into a PASIV to try out a few new paradoxes that, to be honest, the training simulations really never gave him the chance to try.Phil stopped by, dressed as Mr. Vance, and knocked on the door.“I hear you moved in,” he remarked dryly.Tom gestured at his now occupied apartment.“Guess you heard right.”Phil nodded and slipped his hands in his pockets.“Just wanna warn you to be careful, Hansen. This kind of work will take over your life. We all need something outside of it, even if it’s just an apartment.”“Or a greeting card company?”Phil shrugged.“Or that. Get some fresh air, will you? We’re bringing in a team of architects from France in the morning, I want you rested and ready to receive them.”