"Is there reason to believe that's possible?"

"The fact that it happened once. Admittedly it broke Fenris' immortality, which is not reassuring it can be made trivially."

"Do you know how one starts inventing specific magic things."

"I think our best bet is hoping we can find someone that makes you go 'oh, they would totally get this specific thing' much in the same way you got a translation effect."

"They could try through witchcraft? They're totally vetted for witchcraft too, Trevor."

"Oooh, right. So many new kinds of magic around. In that case you should ask Tani for tips."

" - okay."

Tani shifts uncomfortably. What exactly they want to know? She is a mind expert.

Apparently she can give them more magic. They like magic.

...Okay, it does take months of practice to even get the lesser effects. Tani cheats because she can just come with the relevant mental discipline built-in.

(She might be a bit overwhelmed.)

Some of them are less curious about anything that requires months of practice, what with how busy they're going to be. Some stick around.

Alright. Tani feels obliged to give a disclaimer to the effect that Witchcraft is Serious Business, use it responsibly, don't shout about it from the rooftops, don't operate heavy magic on drugs, etc. But after that she is glad to give introductory witchcraft instructions.

The basic elements is that one must meditate somewhere with ambient magic (in other words, pocket dimensions) until they manage to tap into the ambient magical energy. Once you have that you can shape the energy for magical effects, typically simple ones. Once you know how to do that, you can imprint a place to accumulate magical energy from which you can draw upon by visiting it, a witch well. You can use physical elements to imprint more "specific" kinds of magic energy, that are better suited for some effects instead of others, making it useful on how to specialize (she elaborates on this at length.)

There is more to it, but part of it should wait until they got the mental discipline down. She can answer their questions and instruct them on how to get in to the right mental state. They won't get anything magical out of it today. They should have regular training sessions. Tani is currently cheating at things with an ad-hoc method that taps on her own fire-magic (the same as Dana's) and is going to be busy the next few days creating her own witching well, creating an artifact to keep the red permanently awake, mentally warding essential people, etc. But once that is done, they can set up something regular.

They take this in diligently. Then most of them want to go to sleep and play with their pocket dimensions more. Aitim and his team of people want to get started arranging for portal real estate agreements and so forth.

"I want to own my dimension."

"You mean you want to push to change to blue? I can probably wrangle that but it's a steep learning curve to have people believe it instead of indulge it -"

"No, that's not what I mean. I am green and I want my pocket dimension, which I created, to belong to me, instead of belonging to you with me permitted to give instructions about it as a courtesy."

"If wishes were credits then beggars would parent."

"It's stupid. It's mine. I'm better at real estate management than you. And yet -"

"And yet you don't want to actually make a career change into real estate management, you want to - be turquoise -"

"It's a stupid artificial distinction, I shouldn't have to choose between quitting the university and giving up all my real estate."

"This isn't going to be a productive conversation, is it."

"No."

Aitim leaves. Aitim's loyal staff starts drawing up rules for pocket dimension sale. Aitim gives the council a tour of Lina-2 and they bring in some city planners to come up with a portal setup and interdimensional subway system setup that makes it straightforward and not confusing to get between dimensions.

The city planners are deliriously excited. "Okay, so there are a couple approaches - one is to have it be absolutely trivial, the door to every building has an opening to Lina-1 and an opening to Lina-2, at the cost that people will frequently be really confused about which one they're in - and that it doesn't scale well if there are dozens of these, which I take it will be the eventual plan -"

      "By then people'll be more used to it, though, and we'll have a better understanding of how they interact with a paralleled city -"

      "- yeah, fair. One obvious use is for more internal real estate off the same amount of street space - you buy a streetfront in real Lina and the rest of your apartment building in Lina-10 -"

      "We should maybe disallow that as putting too much pressure on Lina-1's trains and streets -"

      "We can use other dimensions for trains and streets, too."

      "Aitim - are you still using Neli - why don't you go to sleep and do a hundred portals in the locations I've got flagged right here and then we'll test that for usability -"

"I still mean to run for office, yes, I just picked up a real estate hobby."

       In a couple blocks of Lina doorways now open on the left to Lina-1 and on the right to Lina-2. The right side is presently locked pending the public announcement.

The real estate blues Aitim picked look at this and choose cities other than Lina. Half a dozen other Anitami cities and two of its major ports get pocket dimensioned. They get started on drafting a public announcement.

Anitam files notice of intent to withdraw from international population control treaties under section 9, technological improvements enabling sustainable growth much faster than permitted by treaty.

Makel emails his girlfriend.

Want to show you and Katin something really cool.

Ooh, what?