This is the first of Rubicon’s dream levels and, as the title suggests, your dreams are not yours alone. Dreams serve much the same role in Rubicon as they did in Infinity. In fact, the Rubicon team used this feature to help tie Rubicon to the original Marathon Trilogy. The Rubicon manual explains it as follows:
In Rubicon, the player's ability to jump timestreams and receive messages from the Jjaro comes into play. The Jjaro have a time honored quote, "Whatever you say, say nothing clearly." Just like in Marathon Infinity, the Jjaro speak to the player in various dream sequence levels throughout Rubicon. Players with a sharp mind and a good eye can learn a lot from these dream sequence levels, as they tell a great deal about the player's identity and his goal in the game. Needless to say, much can be learned from a woman named Kate, and the player's interactions with her in another timeline. Pay attention.
Time lines and fate? Although Rubicon doesn’t involve the fate of the universe in the way that Infinity does, a lot is at stake and the outcome has a lot to do with the future of humanity. Although the defeat of the Pfhor empire is important, your role is not critical and they will be defeated regardless. Of course, you cannot know this, nor does Durandal, and it is only through these dreams and through the occasional clue that you will learn that your place at this time should be elsewhere. There are three opportunities for you to get to the Salinger Plank, which you need to do to save humanity from its own most destructive influences. There are also a couple of opportunities to move from the Salinger Plank to the Pfhor Plank, leaving humanity to the evil plans of those hungry for power.
Because We Dream You occurs in a vacuum, you may not have the opportunity to read every terminal in detail. There are lots of oxygen power-ups scattered about, along with some ammo, however, that make it worth your while to explore. It’s unfortunate that time is short, because it’s important that you read the terminals. In this interest, I’ve included the full text of the most important terminals here:
What was I saying? Something about a knife and legs Yeah, that's it. Like I've been saying all along, the knife's not real. Hell, the legs aren't even real, they're just a convenient way to trick yourself into believing that you can run away forever.
Not that stupid knife again!
I think the problem is not that the world isn't logical, but that we don't understand logic as well as we thought. How can you possibly understand logic? With logic? You can't see the eye you see with. Or so they say.
This almost makes sense. It certainly fits with Jjaro philosophy. Why in the world there is there a diagram of a circularly polarized electromagnetic wave, or what it has to do with the story, however, is beyond me.
Kate and I had been friends forever. Almost since before we were born. She was the kind of girl that we only see in movies – beautiful, intense, the embodiment of grace, passion, and will. The kind you shouldn't stand a chance with, but end up pretending that you would. Why she liked with me, I still don't know. Why she at one point loved me, I don't think I'll ever know. I don't know what she wanted, and how I could possibly have had even some of it.
Ah, yes, Kate. We’ll hear a lot more about her later.
The memories I still can piece together are good ones, at least in the beginning. So many hours at the lab the table and the computer and the walls and ceiling all blended together. It was the time of my life. My conscious mind was so shot from sleep-deprivation and caffeine I couldn't see the screen as I typed. That's why the Wheeling Hubcap Factory higher-ups liked me. The most frantic of the monkeys, with an infinite number of typewriters all to myself. I didn't know what I was creating. I didn't know why. And I didn't care, because I was in heaven. Or hell, it didn't matter.
Wheeling Hubcap Factory? That hardly seems to fit with a lab and computers. There’s another story here, and it has nothing to do with hubcaps. Do I sense a metaphor here? Or is it a metapfhor? In any case, there’s more of this story to come.
The dreams in Rubicon come at critical times in the game – at crucial junctures. The player is about to enter the level Hairy Legs, the last level in the Chimera Plank. Success or failure will determine whether the player enters the Salinger or Pfhor Plank at this point, and the Jjaro in their unclear way are trying to point the way.
