"Listening to others, considering well what they say" (Part 3: Maingate Hotel)

[cityship]

The Maingate Hotel was pretty extravagant, and an entire section of it had been eked out for the crew's use during their stay. They had several suites, three communal areas, a conference room, their own kitchen with a chef on call if they required her.

They were all teleported from the main teleport pad of the hotel into the conference room, which was a large enough room to be able to hold a group their size and had plenty of chairs arranged in a circular pattern so they could mostly all face each other or whoever was in the middle of the room.

Everyone had to settle down so they were all able to talk, and the meeting itself would have to be carefully controlled so they wouldn't all talk over each other. But they were up for the task, right?

[ooc: Guardian Setup, General Mingling, Clone Checkup, Newbie Briefing, General Briefing, More Mingling, Back to the Meeting, and The Idea Guy sections are open. Backup characters introduced to the plot can join in the mingling subthreads if they want. The opening of new subthreads will be announced here and the ooc. Please read the linked OOC post for a plot timeline.]

Comments

[zouichi.livejournal.com]

"I can't help you with ratios. You probably saw a more sizable sample of the population than me. However, I cannot imagine that all this comfort and security can be supported without the efforts of a great deal of working underclass."

He paused. "The Central Processing Center has been the target of several attacks so far. However, I believe Kanner's main concern was the potential property damage and productivity. It sees a lot of 'volume', apparently. I was under the impression, however, that it was by no means the only such processing center that had been targeted."

"...Although it's possible he was playing up the severity of the attack attempts, at least somewhat. He was, after all, focused on getting us inside and branded."

Zouichi glanced back at Sakura. "An interesting choice? I'd be surprised if they didn't show you a civilian attack site. All that they've presented to us so far has been in the purpose of gleaning sympathy, of emphasizing how harmonious their side is while demonizing the opposition. Not an uncommon behavior at all. But not a particularly scrupulous one, either."

[encourage]

All of which was exactly why it was interesting. "Yet the dodged telling us exactly who and what the unrest was caused by. They were building up sympathy without talking about who exactly we're facing. For a society at ease with their own use of people for their own ends, the councilors were being very tight-lipped about the fact the resisting force is comprised of clones."

Which showed to her they were aware to some degree that other cultures didn't find the idea to be easy to swallow. Institutionalized slavery was a fact of life in different parts of the world -- ah, but she was thinking too small. In different parts of the omniverse. This world created its own slaves. It was something they could have been entirely unapologetic for, yet they'd chosen to build sentiment before revealing a key fact about their situation.

So they weren't as self-righteous in the face of outside opinion as one might expect. It was something to keep in mind alongside the inexcusable treatment of their crew.

Something that helped make the anger a bit easier to swallow and stamp down, for now.

[zouichi.livejournal.com]

"Yes. I find that incongruency particularly suspicious. Kanner gave us an entire speech about 'expecting' that we'd have already heard about the principles on which their society was based... but when it came right down to it, everything he did suggests that he knew we didn't know."

Zouichi would probably argue that knowing what you were doing was wrong and doing it anyway was far worse than violating others' rights in ignorance.

"At any rate, I'd expect the source of the societal conflict isn't the only thing our hosts have chosen to skim over." He frowned. "The problem is figuring out other surprises they've been saving for us."

[encourage]

"Figuring those out before we're caught up in something we can't easily get out of," she agreed. "They have to know they're putting themselves in an awkward situation by with-holding information and taking action against you, Kang, Jr, Kon, and Fate."

[zouichi.livejournal.com]

He nodded. "Yes. Or if they didn't before, they do now. Still..."

"...Did you get the impression that the attack site you were shown was real?"

[encourage]

There was a long pause. "I think it was real. It was an attack site." She wouldn't claim it was definitely from the resistance, or if it potentially stemmed from somewhere else. "But I doubt it was the most recent one."

[zouichi.livejournal.com]

"Hmm. Do you know what instruments were used in the attack? Explosives? Or how recently the site had been damaged?"

Zouichi didn't necessarily put the government above staging its own 'attack' sites.

[encourage]

She explained her own observations, pointing out that her lack of familiarity with foreign world's weaponry limited her actual understanding. The details she shared from Asmin weren't much help, if Lash may have a better idea of the specifics. "She'll be speaking as part of the debriefing, from what I understand."