Aitim drops by.

Dana greets him. She is accompanied by one of Afen's tiny people who is flying around in a suitable sized drone-thing. They lead him towards Felix's office.

Felix stands up from the table.

"Aitim, It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

He bows, extending his wings.

"Hey, Aitim," Trevor says just waving.

"Nice to meet you too, Felix! Hi!"

"Hi."

He is... polite.

"Please, have a seat. How are you today?"

"Pretty excited! Spent most of the day fielding very courteous requests from our neighbors."

"Oh?"

"They want it. Of course. We said probably next year."

Nod. "We had hopes that, once your country had enough dreamshapers, we could move the operation to a moon. For the sake of safety."

"Makes sense. You've got a way to keep the shard absolutely inaccessible?"

"Considerably, given our resources."

"How are you going to vet people?"

"At this point we are more than willing to accept your recommendations. Tani can do mind-reading, but we would rather have her in a more defense-related duty, not to mention it makes her too much of a point of failure and she is already pretty essential. One possibility is the instantiation of one or more fireblue, who could help with interviewing."

"We have been calling the Amentans that Felix can create Fire plus color. It's a common name scheme for magic people. Fireblues can do lie detection as it is."

"Yes, thank you, Trevor. Obviously, that option has all the obvious problems and a non-obvious one is that if I do insatiate a fireblue with lie detection than all my Amentas are going to be set with the power set of fire that shows you something. Firegrays can see things that they hate, which I believe would be unfair to permanently set despite my personal bias on the matter."

"It certainly does not measure up to the blue one as a power. I'm not worried people will lie, I'm worried that countries will go to war for all the usual reasons they do and people will be moved by loyalty or fear or idealism to use their dimensions for the war."

"I remember talking about this with Isel. I suggested creating an international dream police. She proposed that if a country did start a war we should go there and kill all their dreamshapers and that would avoid a second war."

"Presuming there are no better alternatives."

"Needs to be set out as a clear policy in advance. You die if you use dreamshapers in war in any capacity - and spell out what counts, clearly - and then you shouldn't need to enforce it often - the countries that obviously won't be responsible just don't get to have it in the first place." 

Nod. "We are going to have something before we move on to the next country. Opinions on uses for self-defense? Should we let countries or international treaties handle how to divide up dimension lands after conflicts or have a more active role in that as well?" He thinks. "I think one of the terms I might want is something to the effect that dreamshapers will make me things. Not forever, not even necessarily for a long while, mind you. I'm going to need to brainstorm the details. But possibly a stable population of whatever kind of people they produce, the use of the moon sections of their dimensions and number of their artifacts. At my discretion. This is so I can be sure that killing a dreamshaper doesn't mean the loss of hard-to-replicate magic."

"That will be unpopular. If you set specific terms as repayment for the dreamshaping, then it'll be fine, but 'at your discretion' not as much. One thing that should be settled under international law is how to divide dimensions after conquest, but I think that should be mostly Amentans deciding it, the stakes are higher for us and we're more accustomed to doing that. The problem with allowing an invaded country to use dreamshaping in self-defense is that Anitam could more-or-less be as provocative as we pleased knowing no one could attack us for it; the problem with disallowing it is that under desperate circumstances people'll do it either way and are less likely to abide by conditions.  Could maybe say that if you are invaded you ask an oversight committee for authorization to use dreamshapers and if you were behaving provocatively they'll deny it."

"Oh, I meant that I would have set specific terms, but that I could simply not exercise the option. Some species might not be worth preserving for any number of reasons including their own desires on the matter. I suppose I might want dreamshapers to set convenient portals between dimensions I don't control, but that sounds like the only long-term commitment that I would need. Oversight committee sounds acceptable. When you say it should be mostly Amentans deciding things to what degree do you think we should influence things?"

"What role would you like to play?"

Thoughtful pause. "My goal is to be of optimal use to this world. I believe that the influence that dreamshaping-granting gives me is strong but too blunt as it is. But I would like to know how to best navigate this world. The balances between influencing directly or leaving it be and posturing one way or another as your friendly magical alien or immortal overlord. The important thing is being useful."