“...not, necessarily, my House, but a House, mind you.” Carver explained as he drew a wavy line that didn’t quite touch the dot. “It could be any one of them. We aren’t sure which one came first.

“This,” he indicated the wavy line, “Is the Lane. Or it is what will eventually become the Lane.”

I interrupted. “How far back is this?”

Carver tapped his pen on the table for a few seconds. “I’m not sure. Older than written history, at least. Possibly older than even the earliest cave paintings by primitive humans. Probably not much older than that.”

“I was expecting ‘the dawn of the universe’,” I admitted, eager to hear more despite my caution. “So who made it?”

“I’m getting to that.” Carver leaned over the burger wrapper and began to draw more tiny dots along the line representing the Lane. “These, as you might have guessed, are the other Houses. Nobody near me is quite sure how many there actually are. Personally, I think they might be infinite.”

He drew a rough oval surrounding the Lane and all the dots. When he was done, it took up one half of the wrapper. He moved to the other half and drew a similar oval. “This,” he explained, as he drew it, “Is reality as you know it. Or as you knew it three days ago, at least. The House staff like to call it ‘realis’. It is actual. It exists. Physics applies here. Matter crashes into other matter, and electromagnetism runs rampant.” He punctuated each example by drawing a smaller circle in the big oval. “Probably more that I don’t even know about yet. I only get glimpses of it normally, and the last time I really checked on things was over a decade ago. Might I see one of those fries? The burnt ones, that is.”

“Uh… sure. I don’t like the burnt ones anyway. Help yourself.”

“Thank you,” Carver reached over and held one of the fries in between his thumb and forefinger like a piece of chalk. Carefully, he traced lines in the paper connecting the two ovals.

“This,” he said, “Is what you were asking about. Who made the Lane? Who built the Houses? The short answer is that we did. Humans. All of us.”

“How did they even get there?”

“That’s the thing,” he said, adding still more lines of grease connecting the two ovals. He had to take a second burnt fry when the first one started to get dry. Driver was watching, flipping a ring of keys between his fingers, but had remained silent so far.

“There is no there at all,” Carver continued, still drawing lines. “It isn’t a place. It isn’t an alternate dimension, or at least not one as Star Trek would have you believe. The Lane has a mass of nothing. Less than nothing. The absence of a measurement. The Lane’s length is zero, and it is infinity. The Houses on the lane are uncountable, but even if you could it wouldn’t matter because the Lane doesn’t have numbers.”

“I’ve been to the Lane, though. It has to be somewhere.”

“Like I said, right boggles the mind.”

I waited for him to finish drawing lines before distracting him with questions. My patience ran out when he reached for a third fry. Already the entire space between the oval representing reality and the one representing the Lane and the Houses was stained such that any new line was meaningless. “The grease lines?” I interrupted. “They’re what gives the Lane form? They’re…” I considered for a moment, idly wiping the condensation from my paper drink cup and taking a sip. “They’re something to do with humanity. Whatever those are, they made the Lane, and they impose some sort of rules on a place that has none?”

Carver broke into a grin, setting down the last fry. “Told you he was good,” he said in a stage whisper to Driver. “You’ve got it almost right, Daniel. Yes, those lines are what made the Lane and the Houses. But they don’t really impose rules on the irrealis so much as impose rules on everyone who visits it. It’s effectively the same thing for your purposes, but Archie…that is the old Archie, her father…was quite insistent when he was explaining things to me.”

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“So what are they?”

“Human thought, Daniel. They’re human thought.”

“And since I think houses look a certain way, houses look that way to me?”

“You and a few billion other people, yes. And for most people, they never even get to see their influence. Every single thought matters, Daniel, but for a rare few--for me, for you if you agree to help me out--for a rare few, we can step through to the other side of things and see those rules in play.”

“What does that make Houses?”

“I’m afraid that information is restricted to only the Masters of each House, Daniel. I told you last night. Some things you aren’t allowed to know.”

“I thought you were going to be completely honest here, Carver,” I was shocked when I lapsed into referring to him by his preferred name. I sent my imagination inward to check on the remains of…whatever had been affecting me. Surely enough, a few specs of the dust had started to gather together, nearly forming a shard of glass. My imagination stepped on it, and Carver was Mister Carver again.

“Everything I’ve told you has been true, Daniel. But I have other obligations beyond my truthfulness with you. I can’t tell you what the Houses are. Just a bit about that…other place. Irrealis, if you like. The collective psyche of every human being alive. And Daniel, this probably goes without saying, but it would not be a good look for you if you try to alert people to the existence of the Houses.”

I had thought about it, I’ll admit. But if even I was already preparing to get a brain scan in a few weeks, what would someone who heard my stories think of it? I decided I needed another burger, and excused myself to go order it. When I got back, Carver had crumpled up his little art piece and added it to the small pile of trash on my plastic tray.

“Okay. You said you would explain how you were…I dunno. Using befuddlement on me, or whatever spell it was.”

“Yes.”

“Did I miss the part where you did?”

“Not exactly,” Carver rubbed one hand against his cheek, stretching the skin of his face and pulling down his mustache on one side. “Consider the facts I have just shared with you, Daniel. The Irrealis, the Lane, the Houses, the Realis.”

I took a minute to think about it. “Human thought made a place where…lots of human thought could exist and human thought lets us visit that place, which is inside human thought?” I offered. “Or is that too redundant.”

“Hah!” Carver’s laugh was as genuine as it had been last night over drinks. “Not redundant enough. Well, I told you the House was a sort of magic. That sort of magic extends to all the permanent residents of the House. Myself included. It isn’t really something I know how to turn on or off,” he glanced at Driver, who shrugged. “Though it should be possible, according to the hobs. I just never had the knack for controlling it. By and large, it’s harmless. It doesn’t change your thoughts, merely how you perceive them.”

“Seems like an arbitrary distinction.”

“Perhaps it is, or perhaps that’s only how it seems. Arbitrary distinctions start to seem a great deal more drastic when you’ve been living in a pocket of collective human thought for a while, Daniel.”

I grunted, accepting his reasoning, if not the facts of it. The counter called my name and I went to collect my burger. I ate it while Carver and Driver watched. I tried not to feel self-conscious about it, and partly succeeded.

“Okay, so you accidentally adjusted my perceptions of you. To do what?”

“Can’t say.”

“So it has to do with the nature of the House?”

I finally got to see Carver use his poker face. It was pretty good, I’ll admit. Driver’s was not. He was scowling like I had just splashed paint onto his brand new convertible. You’re getting close. Piped up the imaginary projection of myself, carefully stomping on the glass dust any time it moved. Odd, I didn’t remember deciding to do that.

“Or with the nature of all the Houses,” I kept talking, aloud, trying to work my way through the thoughts.

“Enough, Daniel. I’ve explained myself. Now that you know how you were affected, you should be able to keep it from happening again. Indeed, I had invited you in because I hoped you possessed that exact skill. My question to you is…do you want the job or not?”

Not. said my imaginary self. Carver is still hiding from you.

“Yeah,” the rest of me answered aloud. “But I want to know the terms before I fully agree to it. Formally, that is. A contract.”

“I shall ask Archie to draw one up. Do I have your permission to send her to deliver it to your apartment tomorrow evening? In human guise, of course.”

“Fine. What’s her human guise look like?”

“Human. She’ll identify herself when she rings at your home. Now Daniel, if you don’t mind, I had hoped for a more genial evening, but I am afraid I botched that quite early. I think I shall take my leave.”

Driver was already halfway out the door before Carver finished the sentence. I nodded. Carver tapped his forehead as if tipping a fedora and strode out, confident and businesslike. I turned my attention back to my food. Tomorrow I would make a decision. Tomorrow.