[i][right][sub](Addressing: [@Irredeemable] and [@TimeMaster])
(Starring: Kayla)
[/sub][/right][/i]

Of all nations, shouldn't the ECU have more diplomats? Kayla is tired of picking up social duties every time someone else is off having fun. Why did Tanaka and Abadi get to be the ones to party with the Matuvistans?

It's how ECU politics always go, honestly. The Oligarchs are supposed to be only the smartest people, but everyone knows those "intelligence tests" are fake. It's really more about who has the strongest connections. Kayla doesn't. Her parents, investors but not members of the Noocracy, had to kick and claw for years to get her into the system at all- she thinks they bribed half of New Beijing to do it- and it's amounted only to her being constantly side-lined by generations of the more established, more wealthy Oligarchs.

She's sick of it. Or maybe she's just sick of trying not to think about it? Doesn't matter. She sits in a borrowed office on the Meeting Place, bouncing a rubber ball off a wall, catching it, bouncing it again. This is her passive resistance to the whole system; no matter what task she's assigned, she makes sure she doesn't do it. Not as a lazy thing. Because she doesn't want to help them. Kayla imagines herself as gum in the gears, not really breaking the machine, but slowing it all down just a little bit. One undone task at a time, taking the system down.

Or maybe it is a lazy thing.

That doesn't matter, either. She didn't do a thing during the Zetan Occupation, and you know what, she feels good about it. Why should she help the Noocracy bomb some cyborgs out of reality? The Noocracy never did anything for her. It was only a little bittersweet to hear of the [i]Memory[/i]'s withdraw back to New Hollywood. The last ECU cruiser was finally back home, and was even docking on the planet itself- for inspection, or repairs, or something like that. She didn't read the whole report.

[i]Wish I had more chance to talk to the Zetans,[/i] she thinks, as she often has before. Sitting over orbit of a planet under siege, there was never much chance for conversation. And that's really a shame; she likes conversation. Especially with interesting people. It's the one good thing about babysitting the Meeting Place: you might actually meet someone new. Someone not at all like the people of New Hollywood, with a fresh perspective...

Oh, what's that? The sleek console in front of her, which she's been dutifully ignoring for two hours, starts up beeping. Words flash across the screen, and she only absorbs about half of it, but that half makes her very, very excited. [i]Unknown vessel approaching[/i] and [i]Requesting dock[/i] and [i]Message received.[/i]

Then she listens to the message itself, and suddenly, Kayla really is glad she was on the Meeting Place tonight. [b]The One[/b]? Let's see what you're about...

She bounces back her own voice recording to the unknown vessel:

"Welcome, welcome! This is Oligarch Kayla speaking, member of the Earth Cultural Union. This construct is the Meeting Place, an international space station created for... uh, diplomacy? Yeah, diplomacy. Ahem. Attached to this message are instructions for docking near the ECU segment of the Meeting Place. Come by, we can... break bread."