It was positively insane—Jackie knew it shouldn’t have worked. Knew it in the same way that she knew that comfort was good and pain was bad. Yet incredibly, inexplicably, she was discovering she was wrong.
“So much of how we live is built on unquestioned assumptions,” Hat Trick explained. “Assumptions about where the world ends, about how power ought to be used, about what can be achieved and what can’t. But the end of one assumption is the beginning of the next great invention. Or the next spectacular failure. No way to find out which except to roll the dice.”
They had no choice about whether or not to roll. They had almost a million people now—so many that their food supply wouldn’t last more than a few days, so many that they’d have to spread out over the whole continent if they wanted to forage. And by the time they did that, half their population would be dead. It wasn’t like they could rely on the old Arcane Network, either. Most of that system was basically destroyed now, ancient waystations and supply deposits burned to a crisp in order to oppose Athena’s power for only a few minutes.
“And I’ll be expecting payback,” Eureka declared, the very next day. “I used the power from that network to continue my experiments. I expect this new civilization of yours to rebuild it as you go. To go back to powering it. I’m not particular about where the energy comes from. Blood sacrifices, ancient rituals, solar collectors. Just get the lights back on in my lab, and soon.”
That was hardly their first priority, though. Jackie and her other bats began the greatest endeavor in dreamcrafting history. She called a meeting of anypony who had even a shred of talent, over a thousand bats in all, and brought them to the Dreamlands for a time-accelerated bit of coursework. In a single night, they spent months and months practicing. Every skilled dreamer the world over flocked to their city, and every craftspony worth their skill had contributions to make.
The next night, her thousand ponies could each teach a thousand of their own, taken from the most eager of their recruits found by her other ponies during the day. And together, they could build the city.
There was no real organization at first—the scope of the city they were building was so massive that not one pony on her staff even knew where to begin. In the end the basic suggestions came from not-Alex, who took the virtual model Hat Trick had made and extrapolated it using the pattern of the Arcane Network’s tree grid.
“They’re modular units,” the fish explained, to Jackie, Hat Trick, and the other skilled bats of the city. “The problem with living in big cities is that no one knows each other, communities fracture. So you build a city around solving that. You keep families together, try to mix up the demographics with intelligence and training and stuff the best you can otherwise, and you build these with each one.”
She zoomed in on a single section of the model. Not with dreamwalking magic as the bats would’ve used, but the unicorn flavor, physically enlarging the little model. It was slower and clumsier than any of the bats could’ve done, but she made her point nonetheless. “Each one of these buildings is a thousand people. A huge central tree with services, and ten little housing trees around it, each one with a hundred people and a vertical farm for their food. The big tree holds their school, their marketplace, city hall, whatever.”
“It’s like City Hall, but smaller,” Lavender muttered. “More compact. More planned.”
“She got to plan the whole thing in advance, not figure out the technology along the way,” Jackie said. “It seems bland to house everypony the same way. But I guess when we have a million people and no food, we don’t have time to get fancy.”
“There are openings between each section,” not-Alex continued, fitting her section into the model. “Each one of these is like… a little hexagon. The junction of each one with its neighbors is space for another tree where we can put… whatever we want. Fancy universities, factories, satellites… whatever.”
“I’ve never built a hundred of the same things before,” Hat Trick muttered. “But I suppose no single pony has to build that many.”
“Even building one each would get repetitive for skilled dreamers like you,” Alex-fish said. “Remember, a thousand people live in each one. You can zoom into the model, or the samples of each room Jackie and I have waiting for you outside. Repeating them over and over is going to be a pain. But there’s no getting around the number. We just… split this thing into smaller pieces and…” She trailed off, looking up from the model. Jackie had allowed her to remain normal sized for this meeting, so she could seem like Alex to the others there. “What stops the dream from ending again? What keeps it stable?”
“Bats living in it,” Jackie supplied. “Theoretically.”
“It’s not theoretical,” Hat Trick said, voice perfectly confident. “Our population is way more than half bat. Each one of them is going to be depending on this thing for their lives. And we aren’t going to tell them they’re in a dream… we’re just going to say it’s another world. That little misconception will let them expect the world to be stable. Like it always does, the Dreamlands will conform to their expectation.”
“And if it ever gets out that we lied, they’ll get dragged off screaming by the Morpheans,” Jackie muttered, voice dark. “This doesn’t sound like living in a house of cards at all.”
“If you’ve got something stronger in mind, say so,” Hat Trick replied, looking slightly annoyed. “We didn’t do this because we want to live in the Dreamlands. We did it because we don’t have anywhere else.”
“I’ve been doing some research with Mercy,” not-Alex went on, as though there had been no interruption. “She thinks we should be able to progressively transition out of the Dreamlands and back into physical space. So long as we make the trees overlap with the ones on the Earth side, we can connect them sympathetically… so the more they get lived in, the more they shape the ones on the other side. They should just be able to grow into the ones we want, minus a little magic we can roll out over time.”
“But if that doesn’t happen…” Jackie went on, not waiting for her to finish. “First, all these people will be in the Dreamlands constantly. So they won’t age, they won’t mature, and if they die they’ll transition permanently to the Dreamlands and start growing into dream spirits. Also they might lose their grasp on reality completely, they might go insane from not sleeping enough, or maybe a hundred other things.”
“Pushing frontiers has never been without its risks,” Hat Trick muttered. “Any of those things could happen. Or this could be a crutch to get us out of the population strangulation you almost caused. Taking half the bats in the world out of the only place that could support so many ponies.”
“I get it.” Jackie sat back on her haunches. “I’m approving the plan. It’s not great, it’s probably going to fuck us up in ways I can’t even think of, but if we don’t start something now we’re going to get a revolt on our hands. We have… two more days’ worth of food, I think? If we’re fuckin’ lucky.”
She gestured. “Fish, organize this shit. Delegate. I’ll take a whole team’s assignments, so can Hat Trick.”
“Well…” The fish looked away from her, tail flicking nervously behind her. “It would be better if I started you off building a complete example section using the models here, then… then you wouldn’t have a job at all. That way you could jump to teams having trouble.”
Even her ghost is better at organizing than I am. “Fine.” Jackie tried not to sound annoyed. “That’s perfect, great. Let me see those blueprints again.” She leaned a little closer, inspecting the model. “How about it, Hat Trick? You do the big one, I do the little trees all around it. I’ll channel my inner Bob Ross.”
“Sure, I do all the complex infrastructure, you build a few hundred condos. Sounds fair to me.”
But they did it, in less time than Jackie would’ve imagined possible before dreamcraft. It was a science unlike any other. There were no limits to what could be created, not even the physical laws outside. It didn’t matter if they had enough raw materials to build tree homes in that quantity, didn’t matter if she knew anything about how to forge metals, or any of that. So long as Jackie could picture the outcome perfectly, she could build it.
That got complex when she was building something so intricate. A novice might make the mistake of assuming that she could just imagine a building full of apartments. But she had to picture each one, every amenity, every wall, every system that made them work. She had to hold each image long enough for the glamour of the Dreamlands to swirl together into physical form. The dreamspace surrounding City Hall was already stable with the ordinary laws of the universe, so at least she didn’t have to remind the rooms of gravity or light.
But the process got easier. The first few apartments stretched her abilities, but after that she’d memorized everything and it was just an endurance test. It was slightly more complex than the time Jackie had conjured an entire army of dream-soldiers, but at least that exercise had a war at the end.
Hat Trick had their little branch of the Arcane Network finished by the time Jackie was halfway done with apartments, so she could tie it all together. Magic from the real world flowed through that network, giving this illusion increasing stability. Without that arterial flow from City Hall, so large a dream would’ve already fallen apart.
By the time she was done, not-Alex arrived in fish form to check out some of the units, and to follow her through the air in an infuriating recreation of real Alex’s lack of trust.
“We need to do something about your identity,” Jackie said, from inside one of the matching apartment units. “Honestly, this whole being a dead hero thing, I don’t care if it makes you more respectable. If you’re not yourself, you can’t be anything but her shadow.”
“Uh… okay.” The figment couldn’t exactly argue with her, and she was smart enough to know it. Intelligent or not, Jackie had created her. She could easily alter her without permission, at least now in these early days before not-Alex had accrued a real identity of her own. “What do you mean? New name? New face?”
“Yes,” Jackie said, freezing the fish in place with a gesture from one wing. “I guess all this real estate shit put me in a creative mood. You wanted freedom? Well, the first step is freeing yourself from the shadow of the person you look like. Your new name… Misty. Yeah, that should do it. And your face…” She made a few quick alterations. Shrinking her a little, removing the wing-suggestions that marked her as an Alicorn, introducing some stripes, and dulling her colors. It wouldn’t hurt the figment, though it would probably confuse her.
Sure enough, the first thing Misty did when released was swim through the air over to a mirror and stare at it, touching her face with a hoof. “I don’t understand, Jackie… if I’m not Alex… who am I? What am I supposed to be? It’s already confusing for me. Your subconscious made me to tell you something your conscious didn’t notice. I did that, and now… now I’m pointless. Maybe you should just erase me.”
Jackie actually laughed, dragging her past the mirror and over to a window. The window had a perfect view of the next few buildings, and the spectral echo of the capitol building on the Dreamlands side. “Not a chance in hell, Misty. You’re not a figment, you’re not a program. Then I would’ve let you melt back into the Dreamlands like other characters. But you’re… you’re a person. A useful person, who helped us get this far. I’m not going to throw that in the dumpster. You aren’t going to throw yourself into the dumpster.”
“No, just a fishbowl.” There was a flash of magic—Misty’s own magic—and suddenly she was small again, floating in an identical copy of the bowl that Jackie had locked her in on the first day. “Remember this? I do.”
“It’s convenient storage,” Jackie admitted. “Look, the real you is kinda shit, okay? The real you runs away from authority, avoids responsibility when people need her most. Instead of rebuilding here on Earth, she went to be a space governor. What the fuck is that?”
“Doesn’t sound like any other ponies I know.” Misty said.
Jackie banged one hoof on the glass of the bowl, so loud it cracked. “Don’t you dare.” She relaxed though, she wasn’t finished making her point. “Look, you’ve seen how desperate Thestralia is. We need every tool we can get our hooves on, every advantage. That includes the knowledge of somepony who should’ve been here anyway. Don’t think of yourself as a copy of Alex—you’re better than she is.”