HL corporation/Herwa trade negotiations

HLcorpliz

Lizzie sips on her cappuccino in a little cafe in the diplomatic terminal as she awaits the HCC delegates from Herwa. She wasn't expecting negotiations to start so soon, but life moves quickly. She reads up on the info brief the council has given her so she doesn't accidentally botch their nation's first trade agreement. A little chime goes off and the terminal speakers appear near Lizzie to announce. "The HCC diplomats arriving. Prepare to greet them please."

Lizzie gets up from her chair, checks the info sweeper feed one last time, and dismisses all her screens. She walks her way over to the boarding area to greet the diplomats. She's a normal human female in a business suit with black hair tied up in a ponytail, somewhere around 5'5" tall. Her body guard gets up and follows a small distance behind her. Her bodyguard is a tall android around a foot taller than her made of sleek steel with no face, hardlight circuits carved into its outer layer. They stop a little bit before the door, and Lizzie puts her hands behind her back and a bright, cheerful smile on her face to greet the diplomats. She has her bodyguard hold her cappuccino.

Drbeansguy

By some divine intervention, the Herwan HCC has always been more humble and laid back about their rich status. Especially considering they contained the 1% of Herwa and the biggest companies in Pythia. But even for being extremely rich, they knew limits, per why they only sent a small Teprorian AT-55 with two HCC diplomats. Once the plane landed in classic Teprorian fashion, very quickly and very very loudly. Sending a huge gust of wind

The transport doors fly open and two Skimtari in long suit coats walk out and tower over Lizzie and her android. The one with an actual mouth and who actually can talk speaks up before Lizzie can even ponder what the hell the other skimtari looks like. "Hello, my dear human friend and android. I am one they would call one Grey Tillmen, and this is my assistant Mr King. Obviously, this is a common translation of our names, and we are the HCC diplomats you expected. I apologize for the gust of wind. The Teprorian planes are built for absolute efficiency, not to meet with new and potential business partners. And you would be?"

HLcorpliz

She looks out the window in surprise as the HCC diplomats come in for a quite violent landing, but not a crash. Not like they could crash anyways. And even after reading the briefing that described how tall they were, it still surprises her how tall the diplomats are. The diplomats introduce themselves and she responds shortly afterwards.

"Good to meet you! You can call me Lizzie. I'm the C.E.O of the HardLight corporation and the captain of automata. And I completely understand! But I did see the runway light up which means..." She flicks up with two fingers to summon a hardlight screen, and the ground below the screen glows as the circuits light up. She flicks through some content before saying "Yeah... Air control says you came in so hot you were on the verge of activating the runway's safety mechanism. It's a simple system, but I would imagine it would be confusing for outsiders if their plane suddenly stopped moving in midair. The safety mechanism is something we thought up thanks to the fact that hardlight projectors are embedded in every surface of the city. If a plane is about to crash, the runway grabs the plane out of the air with hardlight and gently sets it down. It also acts as a perfect guidance system for landing and takeoff given the sheer density of this place. And that's only a few of the things our signature technology can do! Oh! Right. Sorry for rambling, I just take pride in our technology, as does everyone here. Please put on these pins." She pulls out a couple red octagonal pins from her pocket. "These will tell the infosweepers we employ to ignore you and not perform blatant privacy violations on our honored guests. Your plane has already been added to the info sweep blacklist for your convenience."

Drbeansguy

"Oh I thank you but there is no need! While my associate will undoubtedly be taking it, I am perfectly fine without it. Unless you can speak and read Electarian I doubt you will find anything." Tillmen glances back at King, who is trying to put the pin on his suit coat. "Now judging by the fact you probably didn't believe our height allow me to explain what we are. I am what we call a regularis geneticae Skimtari, we are the skimtari with no special features, that is compared to the other types of skimtari, but I digress. We are necroids, meaning we are by all measures of biology we arent alive. I suggest you don't attempt to wrap your head around it for we haven't either."

He holds up his hands to show off Mr. King, who waves with his third arm. "This is a Bibliothecarius Genetic Skimtari, Unfortuenly they can't talk, due to lack of a mouth. But they have a third arm and six eyes, which funny story, they would have had four arms. But the first one with four arms died due to falling books. A librarian's death I would say." He says with a laugh, you can even tell King is laughing even without his mouth.

"Anyways enough about us, you and your company and your technological advances, I must say, the HCC sends the most heartfelt apology they haven't made contact sooner! The chairman has even sent me with a gift." He pats his suit coat and then takes out an extremely long piece of paper. "Let me just.. Yadda yadda yadda, risk of death... blah blah blah... Oh, here it is. Whenever the trade routes begin we would like to send you some Transport planes free of charge! We only source the best for all our customers..." He pauses for a moment, "most of our customers."

HLcorpliz

"Ah, well in that case, your data would move to long term storage until we decipher the language later. Collect now, store later is the policy for any unreadable data. I strongly recommend putting on the pin, but if you don't want to, that is completely ok too." She listens to tillmen describe their species, and as she does, she flicks up a second screen and starts typing into both, recording the data around the two different types here with her today. She also laughs along with the other two at the death.

And then they mention that in addition to the trade, transport planes will be gifted. "Oh! I certainly wasn't expecting a gift, but thank you nonetheless! They will be invaluable for transporting our tech across the trade route! Speaking of the trade route, we should have this discussion somewhere a bit more comfortable. And as the council wishes for me to show off some of our culture, I've arranged VIP seating for us at the mega sports arena. It comes with a complementary sushi course. Please, follow me." She dismisses the screens, turns on her heel, and uses hardlight to emulate telekinesis, taking the cappuccino from her bodyguard and finishing it off before tossing it in the trash and letting it vanish as she walks the diplomats over to a large cylindrical station with a tube sticking out of it and into the wall.

"This is our foremost method of public transportation, the pneumatic tube system. Like our construction grade projectors, this system works by taking whatever's in the tube, recording its structure, converting it into pure energy, sucking it into the payload, and travelling down the pipes to the destination. You will remain entirely conscious during the process, so you can get a good look outside the tube as you travel! It's entirely painless, but if you don't want to take it, I can get an AV arranged for us." She pulls up the control panel, setting the destination and number of passengers, simply awaiting the diplomats approval of the method

Drbeansguy

"Yessssss. I believe I at least will take the AV, our other business partners at indefinite color... made me strongly distrust anything that remotely sounds or looks like teleportation. I still remember what terrible travesties go on in those isles...." He shudders as he recants exactly what went down when he was on a trip in the IC Isles.

"But yes please get the AV, we are more than thankful for your current hospitality." Then Tillmen turns to Mr king as the Av is ordered. "What the hell is sushi Isn't that the raw fish that the Elves and Humans eat?" King nods, takes out one of his notepads, writes some seemingly unintelligible chicken scratch gibberish on the paper, and hands it to Tillmen. "Oh dearest apologies king; Oh Miss Lizzie Whatever-your-last-name-is, for our own sake what are some norms in this place we should under no circumstances break? We Skimtari have a habit of being... Stubborn until death as they say, and we would just prefer to avoid topics that we are going to be extremely loud about.

HLcorpliz

She dismisses the control panel, pulling up a screen to call over the AV. She signals for them to follow her as she talks "I see... I'll put them on a list to make sure our diplomats stay cautious around them. But I entirely understand the want to stay away from this transport method. There was a bit of pushback against it, and it took a while to assure people that this wouldn't result in a clone walking around in your place because it moves everything you are, body and consciousness. There is still a little debate on whether souls exist, but the general consensus is yes, and the tubes do transport them with, keeping you as you through the entire process. Of course, it still isn't accepted by all, and there's still quite a few people who take the train or private transportation, but private transportation is only for the elite and emergency services due to the fact that we didn't build this city around cars, and we have no room for ground vehicles other than the train system and bikes."

She leads them to the AV landing pads. Surprisingly, the airport had no security checkpoints along the way, as she leads them to a bright white AV. In fact, just around everything here is white with large pops of color every now and again. Sort of like the mirror's edge aesthetic. The AV is just barely large enough for everyone to sit comfortably. The doors close and they take off "Regarding your question on taboos, the main taboo we have around here is criticizing how someone is living their life, unless said actions are directly harmful to themselves or others. If it's not harming anyone, no one has the right to criticize another person's choices. I say this mostly because we have a large red-light district and we encourage sex-work while other nations can be a bit more... prudish. I think that's the best word to describe it. That's the topic that comes up most often when discussing inclusiveness, one of our core utopia-crafting ideals that we never allow to be broken. I'm unsure of your stance on the topic. As for the menu, if you are dissatisfied with sushi, we have other options, but most options at the stadium are junk food." Below the AV are streets that are giant mega-complexes in and of themselves, being at least 10 stories high, with buildings sticking out on top of that. Lots of sunlight pouring in through the windows, neon glowing advertisements, and white paint lights up the city during the daytime. The tubes do truly flow throughout the city. There are even tubes that are people sized going between buildings. The train system can be seen ferrying passengers from one place to the next just a bit above the top of the streets.

Drbeansguy

"Oh don't worry Miss Lizzie, we know for a fact that souls don't exist. We actually scientifically proved that skimtari don't have souls, now of course I don't mean it in the philosophical sense, more in the se-" King just pushes Tillmen onto the AV as he keeps on his persistent rant about souls and why skimtari don't have them. He is going into a very extreme (and very insane) detailed explanation. And king is just standing there listening to the taboos of these lands, and he just shrugs. Then finally, Tillmen stops talking about souls.

"Oh don't worry, we don't judge how people make their money. If you need to put food on the table who are we to stop you, well the HCC draws lines in the sand, you know the normal stuff, trafficking, blood money to an extent. So we have no ill will agian-" His eyes hit the city filled with advertisements and everything. "WHOH, King you seeing this? THEY CAN DO WHAT?" Tillmen is googling over all the neon lights while King is just recording everything he sees. "We are so going to use this for Fallshaven, the H.A.T.CH would thrive with these. In fact no." The skimtari usually stop listening to the food scene to move to a corner and very clearly start scheming for their own business ventures.

HLcorpliz

Lizzie nods along like she knows what Tillmen is talking about regarding souls. She's unsure of her own species, or any other species for that matter, but she does note the very basic notion that the Skimtari don't have souls, not taking in any of the insane rambling details she's being given. The conversation switches to the taboos of society and she nods

"Yup! That's reasonable. We only have common sense taboos around here. There isn't really anything special-" Tillmen and king get distracted by the advertisements and glowing lights. Lizzie giggles, happy to see their enthusiasm "I see you're interested in how we advertise! We use construction grade hardlight projectors, which are twenty times weaker than civilian grade, but can easily be fused with any construction materials you may use. It conforms to the material and freely morphs to connect to other construction grade projectors. There is no origin point for the wires, and they just flow freely through the city due to their free morphing. We can't provide construction grade projectors to you only because they would be an absolute pain to maintain and/or uninstall in any city other than automata. However, it's pretty easy to make such advertisements with civilian grade projectors. By linking up six projectors and using a specialized casing to attach it to the side of buildings, you can project ads up to 120 m³! Add more projectors and of course, the ad size you can project will grow 20 m³ per projector! This also goes for anything else you wish to use them for! You'll be able to see this in action at the stadium!"

Drbeansguy

They are too busy scheming loudly to notice anything you said. "Then we can- wait what." Tillmen and King turn around and abruptly look at Lizzie. "What you say, we need automata?" They look at her for a bit, then at each other. "Get the radio." King quickly grabs his radio and quickly gets it running.

Anyone who is somehow listening in hears quite a lot of whatever it is that they speak. " Fq̇'zh 'Ksq̇ Qs'fq̇!" Then a radio operator, quickly cuts in. "F'Z? KZH!" The radio cuts out then the two skimtari turn around abruptly and keep staring outside. "Do you know what type of labor exactly would be needed to install these you think will be needed to install these hard light projector thingies?"

HLcorpliz

It takes lizzie a little bit to process what exactly they're talking about in her native tongue, and she can't even comprehend their language. She's silent for a solid two minutes before snapping her fingers and saying "Oh! I think there's a major misunderstanding here. See, the name of this city is automata. What I was saying regarding the construction grade projectors is that we cannot provide those to you due to the fact that they are a pain to take care of anywhere else other than this city. I was not saying you need automaTONS to install it. In fact, you just mix the projector goop with any construction material and it'll automatically bind to it. Now, as for the civilian grade projectors we can provide you, they require no specialized labor in order to install." She summons a projection of a blue box that's 1 m³ large. The bottom side is black "This is the kind of projector I'm talking about, what we can actually distribute. On the bottom side is where you input power or connect to other projectors. We recommend some method of powering the box via contact instead of plugging it in, but of course..." She presses on the bottom side of the box and it pops out just a little bit to reveal a basic suite of ports "We support most basic universal plugs for power and data transmission." She summons an identical projection "Each projector does not individually have to be connected to power, instead, you can connect them like this..." She takes the new projection and places the black side of it onto one of the blue sides of the old projection "and power and data transmits from one to the other, adding their capabilities together. This can be done near infinitely, so long as you can provide enough power for all of them."

The AV finally begins its descent and lands on a landing pad around halfway up the stadium sphere. Lizzie dismisses her demonstration projections. "Oh, we're here! Please, follow me and we'll continue this conversation inside." The android bodyguard stays in the AV until the diplomats are out, taking the back of the group. They're lead into the giant spherical arena's VIP section and are handed menus before being led to their seats, from which they can see everything below with ease. There's a countdown until the game starts. They have a solid ten minutes before it does.

Drbeansguy

"Oh so you have sports too, pardon my obliviousness on this subject of talking. Skimtari where really only ever knowledgeable on the sport of marching bands. So unless the sport in question is marching band, pardon my lack of knowledge and or interest. You know the ar-" While the trio walks to the VIP section, by some unholy miracle Tilmen is going on another long winded rant about how the Herwan Sport scene works and how he is so pissed that the PU hasn't approved marching band to be a union recognized sport yet.

On the other hand King is like a king in a candy store. He is walking around taking note of every possible thing he can, though permanent silent. its clear that if he could talk he would be making a lot of noises that would express absolute joy. Completely ignoring Tillmens rant about marching bands, once and a while trying to understand exactly she is saying.

HLcorpliz

Lizzie sighs and summons a hardlight microphone to record Tillmen's little rant about marching bands, which after the first rant, she cannot care to listen to. She gives king a summoned earbud for her to talk through the ranting and actually be heard. They get seats right at the edge of the VIP section, closest to the spherical barrier that separates the audience from the match.

"So. King! I can tell at least you're interested in all this! Fun fact: This arena is equipped with gravity adjustors so we can play our national sport, astroball! Sadly, that's not on the docket today. Today is a simple item extraction shooter game. We haven't come up with a good title for it, really this is just part of the collective events known as the gun games, but we're workshopping better names for it. This arena is amazing for emulating video games in real life. Anyways, this arena doesn't use construction grade projectors, instead we have a giant custom made one... AKA, 'We stuck some civilian projectors together and slapped a fancy lens on the array because that was easier and has the exact same quality as every other projector'. The picture quality is always maxed out, so don't worry about it, as it will always be premium compared to hardware screens."

A waiter brings them menus and the time continues to tick down as Lizzie browses her menu

Drbeansguy

SOMEHOW Tillmen is still yapping about... something now, he has verged so off topic just somehow went in detail on how the PU works. Because of this king very very gladly puts the earbud in to listen to Lizzie, making note of what she says as they walk to the VIP section, then finally, once the menus get placed in front of them, Tillmen FINALLY shuts up.

"Oh oh, food, yeah we cant eat. Or don't need too, so thank you, but ill just put whatever my loyal scribe king orders in my mouth." King glares at Tillmen when he says that, he quickly scribbles something and shoves it in his face. then he takes his dear old sweet time, smacking Tillmen when he is on the verge of going on another rant without taking a breath (mostly because didn't have to breathe). Then he points out one of the extremely complicated looking food item with the unnecessarily high price tag to Lizzie. He also points out the Personal pizza.

HLcorpliz

Lizzie breathes a sigh of relief when king stops tillmen from going on yet ANOTHER rant. She browses the menu for a bit before king gets her attention "Hmm?" She takes a look at the menu items that king points at "So... I personally recommend the pizza. The other one is a very complicated dish for rich people who like paying a lot for little amounts of food. It's a lot of chemicals coming together like a science experiment of a dish. Of course, entirely edible. It's not all that large for the price, but rich folks seem to like it. I speak like I'm not rich myself... I totally am, but I don't see the point in burdening the chefs. However, the pizza is always a classic choice. You can pick any toppings on the list you would like. Personally, I'll be ordering sushi. It's delicious with some wasabi and soy sauce." She takes a look at the timer. Just a couple more minutes until the match really kicks off

Drbeansguy

King nods, then points to the food again, very adamant about ordering the food. "Oh one more thing, Miss Lizzie, so he was ordering that for me. We are both exceedingly rich. Now I bet you're wondering ho—OW!" This time, instead of a modest smack, this was a full-on punch. It appears that King is sick and tired of his rants for today. And for good measure, he fakes out Tillmen. He doesn't flinch, but he visibly thinks about ranting.

"Yes yes my assistant king, I won't go on another rant. but you can't punch me like that, I sign you paych-" Only to be cut off by King again, he takes out the very same contract and shows the particular clause saying very specifically that King can resort to extreme physical violence in the event Tillmen goes on a long-winded rant. "Oh I guess you can punch me, forgot I put that in there. Then again, I don't remember a lot of things. Anywhoskie, like I was saying, that... whatever the hell that is will be for me, and King will have the pizza with pepperoni, yes a classic in her-" Tillmen catches himself when king starts glaring. "Oopsie!"