He waves around as to indicate Felix's dimension. "Well, we probably should talk to the government and set things up nicely so the new individual could have freedom to live whatever life they want. Makes it easier to convince Felix."

"Getting them Anitami citizenship will be a real fight - means some family doesn't get a child this spring - it'd be easier with an explicit agreement to the effect that they will vet until they have ten dreamshapers and allow us to settle the pocket dimensions."

"We could tell that it counts as human caste credits. And since Felix is going to be the closest thing to their dad it doesn't matter that the new person is an Amentan. Castes are patrilineal."

"- still one less child for someone else."

"I don't see why an exception couldn't be made given the future extra land. I am now curious about my own status too."

"Your status is 'well, we have to do what you say or risk the future of our whole nation'. If you instead want a status like 'citizen' or 'permanent resident', then you should figure out why giving you that is doing right by Anitam and then Anitam will make it happen out of commitment instead of terror."

"Heh, fair enough. I still think that being able to tell Felix 'look the new partyharder can even leave and start a life of their own' is worthwhile at least as an option."

"I completely agree, and that can totally be made to happen if we actually get a pocket dimension in exchange."

Nod nod. "Then we compile a list of you-vouched people. See how many are okay'ed by the new person. Dreamshard them starting with you. Get dreamshapers. Win."

"Yup!"

"Then we can spend the next while adding to this plan. Create a list of 'what do you need to know before deciding to become a dreamshaper'. Uh, one of the previous diplomats mentioned that we could do that on the moon for extra safety."

"Makes sense. What else should I know?"

"I am going to compile you a list of all extant pocket dimensions so you have a better feel of the thing. But well, let's start with one thing. Have you considered that this can lead you to create people?"

"You mentioned. I very strongly prefer not to create people but I guess if they don't mind living with the reds it wouldn't be a catastrophe. Apparently people acclimate to being around reds."

"People are complicated enough that you won't do them by accident after you gain control of your dreamshaping, but you and the other candidates should know that it's a possibility. I do think that the planned set up means we can minimize people creation. But we should set things up with the government beforehand so we have a neat way to care for them. This, unlike the people-voucher, is an inevitable risk if you want to create dreamshapers at all."

"How many people might - occur?"

"Very hard to say and there are variances in performance and part of it is based on... computational requirements. People that have full episodic memories take longer to be designed by the magic, possibly as long as an hour. On the other end of the scale, things that amount to barely conscious bodies would take a few minutes. Magical powers adds to that time too. I think we should treat things such that every dreamshaper has a significant risk of creating at least one person no matter how fast we wake them up."

"But probably not, like, ten people?"

"Not impossible, but less likely, yeah. And it's not going to be exactly proportional. It needs to make sense to the narrative. I don't remember how many hours it took for Fenris to rescue Felix, but it was long enough that the dreamshaping could've created easily twice as many people instead of the thirty it did."

"Did the red make any people -"

"Didn't have anything humanoid shaped. It was filled with downed birds struggling on the mud, but none responded to Felix's using translation magic. Except for the red. His dream-avatar was one of the birds."

"Does the layout of the dimension reflect something about the dreamshaper?"

Mirthless smile. "'They're metaphors to our very souls.' The fact that a kid had a pocket dimension like that did not escape Felix. You can see it adds to the mountain of things that made him wary of how you'd treat the red."

"Anitam would absolutely have shot the kid, you were entirely right to be wary. But presented with a convenient alternative they'll go with it. Making things better for reds is mostly a matter of making it really convenient to do right by them."

Nod. "Did they at least consider calling you to help with the situation? The other diplomatics are so transparently full of shit that they couldn't even stop using 'it' to refer to the red."