... and then must figure out how to clean up the stones of her existing platform. She can get them to budge again with her hands, but it's exceedingly tedious.

Instead, she uses some of her stock of iron to make another tool — a crude pickax, which helps her clean up the platform in short order.

When she finishes, the platform looks a lot better. Or, it would, except that it's somewhat hard to see in the dark.

She could burn some wood to make coals and then stick them on a stick to make a torch.

Yes, that does look better — four torches lighting an island of banded stone, a more subtle pattern around the inside, and an irregular cobbled pattern on the inside.

Maybe it looks a little similar to the existing platform.

But this is different — she built this, and it looks good! It looks fine.

She sits on her table and thinks about what to do next. She could make another island, but ... her brain already sort of gave her a quest. Maybe she should try to make some clay. It can't be that hard, given how simple everything else has been to piece together.

Well, to make some clay you need to make a box out of diamonds, and then fill it with stone, wood, grass, emerald, quartz, lapis lazuli, podzol, another diamond, an evil skull and a glowing star that can only be harvested from a deadly monster. Then you need to electrocute it.

And to make grass, well, you need some compost and dirt and water. But compost needs dirt and wheat — or dirt and saplings, or just leaves. And saplings can be made out of sticks, but ...

It's too much, too fast, all at once.

She pushes the flow of information away, and realizes that at some point she screwed her eyes closed against the parading chains of requirements.

That is ... well, it's typical for a dream, actually. She's had dreams about unwinding a spool of yarn, never actually being able to reach the end. This feels similar.

Maybe if she focuses on something smaller ... how can she make podzol?

Podzol comes from soaking dirt in empowered oil, of course.

She follows the chain of requirements back. She needs canola seeds, to make oil, and she can only get those by cutting grass.

Vivian glances around at her plain stone platform.

Okay, so maybe she needs to start with dirt.

Well dirt is easy — pour liquid dirt over gravel. And for liquid dirt, you need a still to distill water of life. But for water of life you need compost, but to make compost without dirt you need leaves. But you can make leaves out of saplings, which ...

Yes, yes, okay. She just needs to figure out where this chain of requirements starts, thank you.

She's going to need a lever.

She puts a stone and a stick on the table, pushing them into place to make a lever. Then she makes a wooden bowl, and grinds the lever up with her pick ax to make a brilliant, shining dust.

It's ... peaceful, just flowing along with the dream logic. Sure, she can grind levers into dust. Why not?

She combines dust, iron, wood, and stone to make a piston, and then makes a wooden box and sets another piston opposite, to squeeze things, and ...

Oh, she needs glass for this, doesn't she?

Actually, glass sounds nice for other reasons. She could make a house, instead of just an island, with big windows looking out into the ... void.

Well, she'll think about it.

She grinds up stones with her pick in a bowl, finer and finer until it becomes sand. Then she puts the sand in the furnace, and waits for it to turn into glass.

It doesn't take nearly as long as it should — a benefit of dream time ­— and a moment later she's holding a squeezing machine.

Vivian is not quite sure where to put it. She's hardly going to use it as much as she'll use her table. But — maybe just there, on the outer ring of stone. That works.

It's sort of boxy. An appliance, like a dishwasher, or an oven.

And if she puts some wood in it, she can squeeze out the water content — and then use that water to make saplings.

She puts wood in it.

... but of course that doesn't do anything. It needs power. How can she get power?

So many ways! But with the materials she has ... maybe she could just build a basic generator.

Yeah, that's simple enough. She makes a stone box, and an induction coil out of iron (somehow) and throws some more wood into it. The wood catches light, and the generator hums, and ...

Water spills into the tank of the squeezer.

Vivian laughs, and dips her fingers in it, feeling the coolness. She's not sure how much water is here. A lot, and simultaneously not that much.

She makes a bucket and scoops the water up, and then pours it over the island. It streams away into the void, making an infinite waterfall.

That has potential — especially once she has some dirt. She could make a garden island, or an island with a lake.

... yes. Yes, that's exactly what she wants to do. She wants to make a garden.

Then she'll need a fermenter, a still, some carpenters, a source of gravel ...

Of course. Dream logic. But step by step — she should start by making some saplings.

She needs more wood. But it's annoying to fly to the other island all the time — can she make another infinite barrel of wood? Yes, of course; just some chests and a bit of wood ...

Okay, now some glass, another table, an axe ...

She holds the carpenter in her hand, feeling the smoothness of the wood. And this is supposed to be able to turn sticks back into saplings? 'Back', as though her sticks came from saplings in the first place.

The real question is where to put it? It needs water ...

She could use those stone slabs in the chest, or make a network of pipes — all different kinds of pipe — or make a tank that transports liquids ...

Hmm. Some of those types of pipe are easier than others. But she already has glass, actually, maybe she can make a nice, clear glass pipe, like an alchemist hooking arcane glassware together.

She giggles.

Sure, that sounds fun. Better than steel-grey pipe, at least. And she just needs a little copper to make it work.

She grinds down more sand, and packs it into the furnace — more than it should be able to hold — and pulls out fresh copper bars.