Beck emerged from his bedchamber in the Reverie quite suddenly, startling Maude, who was tending to a bouquet arranged in the hallway. He very much did not want to interact with her at the moment, especially with the way Fielding had reacted upon him bringing up the actors of his dream world.

“You’re up early. What’s the occasion?” the housekeeper said after collecting herself. Her tone was cordial enough, but Beck couldn’t help but read between every letter, a slow paranoia creeping in about what was going through this woman’s mind. He considered, if the Reverie had drawn out his own experiences into this place, was it feeding off his emotions, too?

Putting that disquieting thought aside, he said, “I have midday appointments on occasion. Inconvenient for my more nocturnal schedule, but as you know I’m beholden to my client’s timetables rather than my own.”

Maude looked at him briefly before returning to clipping the dead offshoots from the plants. Hurriedly Beck went down the hallway to the promenade, then out the front door towards the gateway.

“You should be careful of Miss Maude,” Patch said from his back. “She seems clever, and may be starting to realize you’re hiding something from her.”

“She would have less suspicion if I wasn’t carrying you around everywhere I went,” he retorted.

Patch grunted, but said nothing.

Down at the bottom of the path Fielding was already waiting. The gateway to the estate wasn’t displaying any other worlds to Beck, but he noticed a third button had appeared on the gate column.

“Welcome to my world,” Beck said.

The other man’s attention was on the manor at the top of the hill. “It’s uncanny how similar it’s appearance is to the one in the waking world,” he commented. “I presume your conduit is somewhere inside?”

“Yes, the interior is identical to the real world as well.”

Fielding fixed his gaze on the facade like he wanted to say more, but instead turned his back to the building. “In that case, we need to head in the opposite direction.”

“Very well.” Beck walked through the open gate and made to enter the city proper, but noticed his mentor wasn’t following. The man was staring through the opening in consternation. “Is there a problem?”

“You don’t have an invitation to my world so you were able to pass through, but the gateway back to my own world is still open for me. An oddity to be sure, and an annoyance for me.” He frowned. “I guess I’ll have to use the delinquent method of exiting.”

Fielding went to the iron fence surrounding the property and gripped the bars. The man hoisted himself up using just his arms, making the feat look much easier than it was. He knew that his teacher looked physically adept, but it wasn’t something that mattered in the classroom. Out here in the Reverie where the landscape was as chaotic as it was in the tenements, it seemed that being fit was a benefit. Or, did physicality even matter in this space?

His teacher vaulted over the top of the fence and landed before him in a crouch. Fielding dusted off the knees of his trousers and straightened. “Onward, then.”

And so they ventured into the fake metropolis of his dream. His consciousness had captured Boston’s overstimulating nature; As they walked down the street the acrid smell of vehicle exhaust assaulted his nostrils. The belching of engines and buzz of the crowds hung in the air like mist. All of the sensory noise made him focus his sights above to the towering edifices which stood as dividing lines in the chaos.

They walked down several blocks before his teacher addressed him. “Beck, do you notice anything strange?”

He turned to Fielding. At first Beck didn’t know what the man was referring to, but then he realized that his uncle always brought someone else with him each time they had been together in this world. “You don’t have a velour with you,” he said.

Fielding screwed his mouth up in an attempt to contain his laughter. “You aren’t wrong, although that isn’t what I was referring to. Take in your surroundings, there is an absence here that shouldn’t be.”

Beck did what his teacher suggested and looked through the crowd before him. Focusing on one of the passersby he watched them cross from the corner of his vision to his direct line of sight. Their outline didn’t sharpen, the haziness around their figure making them appear more like the floaters that swam across his vision. Soon he realized that every person surrounding them had the same indistinct quality.

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The blurriness made him bring his hands up to rub his eyes, much like he did to wipe the sleep from them. To his surprise, his vision cleared; there were no other people surrounding them. The smells and sounds of a bustling city persisted, but the only sights were the roads and buildings. With the other elements gone, the other stimuli reaching his senses seemed to be projected from thin air.

“There isn’t anyone living out here,” Beck stated. He tried to remain composed, but the sudden emptiness made him shiver. The illusion of the place being populated made it seem like they were traversing a city of ghosts.

“Yes, there was never anyone here. It would take an extraordinary mind to be able to maintain the pretense of a village in the Reverie, let alone a whole civilization. Did you notice before I mentioned anything?”

Beck shook his head.

“Imagine a painting,” Fielding started. “The epicenter of a created world is like what is displayed on the canvas. But what about what exists beyond the edge of the image? We can guess what is there based on what is inside the painting, but the farther past the canvas you go the less defined the imagined landscape becomes. Such is the case here. The world the Reverie has plucked from your mind loses clarity the farther from the center it becomes. This transition is what we call the world’s gradient.”

That made sense, in the weird Reverie kind of way. Beck was quite certain he couldn’t fit an entire world in his head. “When the workers of my manor go out into the city for supplies, it just seems normal to them, then?”

“As you’ve experienced, the Reverie is excellent at fooling people, even more so those who aren’t awakened to its tricks. Let’s keep going,” Fielding said, continuing to walk away from the estate.

It didn’t take long for the landscape to become even more abstract. The more they walked, the simpler the architecture of the buildings became. The phantom noises of people in the crowd and automobiles on the streets started to blend together into a meaningless drone. Soon the structures and the ground became mere suggestions, fading into an off-white. Each new development made Beck more nervous, but Fielding’s confident stride kept him from questioning his teacher. It was when they were surrounded by nothing but emptiness that he began to worry.

“It is unwise to keep going, Master Fielding,” Patch spoke up.

The man didn’t respond. In the surrounding pale Beck thought that it was the end of the line, but still the environment changed as they progressed. Everything was still white, but saltiness began to fill his nostrils. The breaking of an invisible tide rang in his ears. He gazed around but still saw nothing but the interminable blank space, his teacher now absent from his vision as well. He felt water lapping at his ankles, filling his shoes.

Panic began to swell up inside him. “Mister Fielding!”

The man came into focus at Beck’s side, and the sensations abated. They were once more standing at the edge of nothing, the city of Boston arising in vague contours behind them.

“If you feel like you’re starting to drift again, hold on to my arm,” Fielding said.

Beck balked at him in dismay. “What is happening out here?”

Fielding stared out into the blank horizon. “This is where reality ends, and fiction begins,” he stated.

“What are you even saying? That out there is some kind of purgatory?”

One of the man’s signature smiles crossed his face, but this one was slight and melancholy. “No, people who venture out too far come back, but never as the same person they were when they entered into it. Gradients don’t just regress the sensory experience, but our very identity. If we were to keep walking into this void, eventually we would be naught but a moving picture. Going farther, we would be a collection of photographs. Farther still, and we would just be words on a page. Eventually, you become adrift in the unending ocean of a blank page.”

Beck scanned the emptiness ahead. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what Fielding explained was like, but if it captured the same feeling he felt before his teacher anchored him back to reality, he shuddered to think what fully succumbing to it would be like. “What does this have to do with the actors in my dream world?”

“The objects and people swallowed up by the gradients, they aren’t left on their own; the space on the other side of gradients absorbs them, weathers them into a blank slate, and repurposes them, making them a part of someone else’s narrative.”

“So the staff working in my manor —”

Fielding shook his head. “Are likely not those who fall into this case, but people created by the Reverie. It is uncommon, but those who have had the misfortune to be drawn past the edge of some reality end up in a similar situation as these ‘actors,’ working as cogs of the dream without any knowledge that they had a past life.” He turned and peered down at Beck. “Given this information, what do you think the difference is between us and ‘actors?’”

Still caught up in a rush and faced with such a heavy question, Beck could only reply, “I’m not sure, Mister Fielding.”

His teacher didn’t look disappointed, but neither did he look pleased by the response. “Even if the Reverie’s creations aren’t human, if we cannot differentiate between the two, it would be wise to treat both with the same modicum of respect. Otherwise, we may begin to lose some of our own humanity.”

There was a long pause as they stood at the edge of the world. Beck thought he heard the distant sound of lapping water, but couldn’t be sure if it was a trick of his mind. Eventually, Fielding spoke up again. “Was Rowan the one who gave you the term ‘actor?’”

“Yes,” Beck said.

“I see. Well, we should head back. In the future, Patch can warn you if you are approaching a gradient. That is, if you don’t notice the landscape dissolving first.”

They walked back through the impression of Boston, the shapes and sounds gaining more clarity with each step. When the manor came into view, Beck had never been more relieved to return to the strangeness he was used to.