"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

[brustriese.livejournal.com]

"If this is a test to follow orders, I'm happy to fail it. I only take orders this ridiculous from people I trust," Signum replies, "And I have no reason to trust the 'GIA'."

"Besides, if we're guessing at motivations, it's equally likely that this is a test of our ethics, or that the GIA didn't know anything more about Galileean society than we did, or that this was a random prank by some transdimensional clerk, or the GIA is secretly a cabal of infinite monkeys typing out orders at random. We have no information whatsoever on the people giving us orders."

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Zetta attempted to nod, wobbled, and only regained his balanced through some panicked shifting. "True enough. But let's face it, they've had no problems saying they don't trust us. Won't give us the access to the ship we want, almost certainly hiding things from us? I'm promising you they want control."

[brustriese.livejournal.com]

"Hmph. Well, I'll play along for now, but I'll have some damned harsh words for the GIA in my debriefing," Signum concludes huffily. "And as soon as I have the opportunity, I'm going to lodge as many protests as I can with the council here."

The tone of Signum's voice would have been the same if the last phrase had been 'lodge as many swords as I can into the rectums of the council here'.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"Trust me, we heard," Zetta groaned. "But stuff like this is Command. It's a military mission, not a civilian thing. Believe me, if it were Council purview I'd be a lot happier. For what it's worth, I expect the guy in charge to say 'screw it, we're helping the clones and screw the consequences' as a kneejerk reactions."

[brustriese.livejournal.com]

"I meant the Galilee Council. That's what their title is, isn't it?" she clarifies. "Obviously Command will be hearing about this as well."

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"Oh, them." Anything that keeps him from having to deal with it any further. He'd really had enough. "Don't expect them to see your point of view. You might as well complain that you had to buy an adapter to make your toaster work with their outlets."

[brustriese.livejournal.com]

"You should see how worked up they get when someone declines their entertainment, let alone their laws and culture..." Signum says, retrospectively realizing she should have seen something like this coming from her guide's proclivity to apoplectic stubbornness.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"Oh? How did that all play out?" He hadn't heard any stories from the other groups, so he was curious.

[brustriese.livejournal.com]

"Mundanely, but still poorly. The high-class entertainment here consists of full-sensory VR simulations of particular narratives. One of the crew understandably didn't feel inclined to that kind of thing, and he nearly got in a fistfight with our overbearing boor of a 'host'," Signum explains.

"Also, Zedd was there and I think he was being contrary for the hell of it."

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"And they say I'm not diplomatic," the book said contemptuously. "What were the narratives, anyway?"

[brustriese.livejournal.com]

"Something about mermaids. It was fairly crass and hard to follow, though it might have been because I'm used to a different kind of VR."

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"Huh, the way everything's played out so far I figured it'd be something about the Great Government Crusade Against The Bad Clones." No, he didn't think much of the government's capacity for subtlety. "Well, no opportunities for more information lost."