[right][sub][i](Addressing: [@Irredeemable], [@Lady Lascivious], Mentions Others)[/i][/sub][/right]
[right][sub][i][Starring: Omar][/i][/sub][/right]

It needs to be a show. Omar knows that, even as he doesn't like it. He wants to be honest by nature: he wants to step up there and simply say what he has to say. But Bezia is New Hollywood- he hates that Oligarch name- and New Hollywood demands a performance. The director told him: stand just so, wear just this, let this song play and this atmosphere build and give this impression, to make a [i]good[/i] impression on the Meeting Place. Don't frown. Use that broad smile. Wear your glasses, don't listen to the feedback chatter. Be a performer.

He feels like a marionette.

Omar has his glasses on, an earwig in his head. Not the biological kind: a metal earwig, a descendent of the headphone, sits buried in his right ear. His curly black hair hides it, that devilish little device, while a cosmetologist-costumer frets and frets over him. She wants to make sure his outfit is just right. Absolutely perfect. She's given him a long, light brown robe, hoodless, loose around the limbs. (He supposes this is her attempt at making him look "religious.") But, funnily, the robe has a little patch in the shape of Earth- sewn right where the heart is. Probably meant to say [i]Look, we still respect Earth too![/i]

"Oh, honey, don't be such a sad guy," the cosmetologist reads his face, and speaks in a near-perfect recreation of a late 20th century Bronx accent. "It's gonna be alright! This gonna be your first time on stage? Just focus on all those words that they made you rehears, you know, and-"

"It's not at all my first time on stage," Omar tries to interrupt, "but it is my first time getting makeu-"

"-if you have to, imagine the audience naked!" His costumer pauses, placing a makeup brush against her chin in a thoughtful way. "Or was it in their underwear? Eh, I can never remember, just do one or the other and you'll be fine, sweetie, absolutely fine, now let's get your little outfit finished- Ah! You're gonna look amaaaazing!"

Will he? Good to know. Omar tries to take it all in stride. He remembers the Ruinist philosophy on situations like this well: recently, he's contributed to some of it. One cannot fully control one's circumstances, they teach, so one must instead readjust one's interior life to accept them. He knows this. Life and Truth will not bow to you; it is your duty to bow to them, drinking the cup that is placed before you. Whatever the situation, one must brace oneself and weather it. This is where peace lies-

"Here you go, honey," Omar's costumer interrupts his attempt at philosophy. She's busy tying golden fabric from his shoulder to his hip, making for a lacy, glittering sash. [i]Huh[/i], he realizes. It's actually unique. A costume worn by a man of New Hollywood- scratch that, Bezia- which isn't an imitation of an Old Earth outfit. Clothes with no connection to the past, made for this particular occasion, by designers working today. It would be a sin under the ECU. That thought does give Omar's heart some hope. Not all that is new has been lost to the old show.

"Get outta there, it's time to go on stage," a man's voice speaks softly and directly into his right ear, and Omar finds himself perfectly in agreement with it, "we've got 120 seconds 'till camera roll." The cosmetologist-costumer makes a face of surprise when big Omar turns, fast, and escapes out of her clutches. She is left with a comb hanging limply in her hands, frozen mid-brush. He realizes she can't hear the director. [i]Now,[/i] he thinks, [i]the pomp has gotten all the way into my head.[/i]

"Oh, uh, uh- good luck with your debut!," she calls behind him, from her habit of talking to all those fresh young actors, but it makes him cringe inside. This is not a debut. He is a serious Liaison. [i]Truth, I need you to walk onto this with me, and walk off it with me.[/i] From a dark, cramped backstage room, he approaches the stage proper.

And by Truth, is it a stage. A newly built section of the Meeting Place, attached at the hip to the White Flower segment, provides a theater-like environment dipped in gold and soaked in the atmosphere of an early 20th century construction. If you were to yell in here, your yell would rise up to balconies, pass bronze railings, climb wood-panel steps and echo right back to you off a far-distant wall. ('We can't let the Zetans or those Ishtari show us up,' someone recently claimed.)

Not that you would ever need to yell. Clever acoustics promise that if you were to whisper from the stage, they could hear you in the thirty-fifth row, and talk back to you from the second balcony. Seating for two thousand. A stage that is, tonight, set for one: Omar.

He steels himself. Any recurring butterflies in his stomach have been firmly squashed. After his success with the Ishtari, maybe he shouldn't be worried? 

No, he knows he is capable. Liaison Affan is nothing if not a people person. He can't see them from here, still being behind the stage's curtain, but representatives of several nations are present, each invited by the Flowers for this occasion. All together, they fill up not even a tenth of the available space. The room must be comically empty. But the Flowers know that any second now, holograms will appear to fill up one-thousand-five-hundred seats: all of which were given to a random citizen by lottery. Scattered all over Bezia, those 1500 citizens are sitting in holo-suites, waiting for the show to begin. When it does, their holo-suites shall immediately take the form of the Meeting Place's Flower Theater, and they shall immediately appear as holograms in the real one. They'll watch virtually. Empty seats are ugly.

"Five, four, three..." the director counts down in Omar's ear. He steps out from the back and onto the main floor of the stage, as velvet curtains slowly pull away, "...two, one. Go time. You've got this, Affan."

The currents are drawn. The holograms of Flower citizens have already appeared, shamelessly swiveling and gawking around this huge room. But in the front seats: there sits the nations. So calm and diplomatic. Omar recognizes the patricians, and wonders if any of them recognize him. He spots their Alfonso. A member of the One lurks somewhere further to the back. And, many seats away from either, Omar spots the Isthari- seeing them does make him smile.

Let's go.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Omar speaks like a showman, inspired by his surroundings, "my name is Omar Affan, Liaison of the White Flower Democracy. I would like to thank you all- my countrymen and visitors both- for coming tonight, whether by hologram or in person. I do have announcements to make. But first... I have a story for you."

A chime strikes at his last words. He is no longer the only person on the stage. Ghostly apparitions of holograms slide into being around him, not at all like the ones occupying seats, abstractions representing figures out of Bezia's past. They're human shaped, without detail: silhouettes in color. They are entirely green, or entirely golden, or entirely blue. They're not-quite-perfect in shape, like a splash of watercolor paint.

"In the beginning, there was a tyrant."

Those shadowy beings of color start to move, a watercolor blur trailing each movement. A single, black figure appears, shorter than the rest, whispering in their ears. Every character he speaks to turns a shade darker, until flowingly, in graceful movements, he leaps away from them like a dancer and slides to another. The darkened shades follow him across the stage.

"This was the first Savant..."

As Omar recites his story, the holo-actors flow with him, enacting each scene like a painting. (Later, it will be found that a recording of the event can be paused on any frame, and will lose none of its splendor.) He moves poetically and slowly through history of the ECU, sparring nothing: he talks about the London Assassinations, the Savant's Seventh Principle, the violent suppression of the '38 Beijing Riots, the horror of it all. Many scenes would make their guests grateful that holograms cannot suffer. And that these holograms do not have faces.

He glances pointedly at the Matuvistans more than once, as if to say [i]'These tyrants were your allies'[/i]- without actually saying it.

Eventually, he comes to modern times.

"The protectors," Omar's voice fills the hushed room, "were a lie. They never protected. They were first founded after an Oligarch's violent death. Vengefully, they carried that same violence into everything they did..."

A figure in gold crushes his mace into a figure in white, sending red watercolor blood to float slowly through the air. A drop passes by Omar's face. When he speaks, it seems to blow away at the breath of his word:

"Until."

As he says that magic phrase, the scene behind him shifts dramatically. New figures appear out of thin air, filling the stage, cramming it to absolute bursting with scenes of New Hollywood history. Directly behind and around Omar is a scene of the Revolution, white specters wrestling against golden protectors and red shapes that might be Matuvistans. To the left of him lie the Beijing Riots, to the right the murder of Dr. Yung, to the far left a work camp, and to the far right the rise of the first Savant.

"Until," Omar says again. By microphone and acoustic tricks, the word echoes through the entire theater. The shades hear him.

From behind, the Flowers move out of their scene of Revolution, invading all the others. They jump in front of Dr. Yung just before the bullets crash into her. They free the prisoners of the work camp and aid the Beijing rioters. They drag the first Savant off the stage and into the darkness behind it. It is as if they are pouring backwards into history, dismantling all the tyranny, righting all the wrongs. It is a message: [i]we're not only taking power; we're setting the past right again.[/i]

Omar goes on for a moment, painting more scenes of battle, victory, violent-glorious revolution. He, wisely, never mentions those foreigners they fought against by name- but the implication is there. The play ends with a lone silhouette, white and shredded with ghostly cuts taken in battle, standing alone. A crown shaped like a flower is on its head.

Whatever the foreign diplomats feel about it, that audience of Flowers bursts into holographic claps that drown out the room.

[center][b]~~~~~~~~[/b][/center]

As promised, Omar does make some actual announcements.

Eventually, the clapping dies down, and the room slowly returns to sobriety. "[i]Ahem[/i]," Omar says. Those few Flowers still celebrating calm themselves to listen.

"Now, I did gather everyone here for some reasons other than a history lesson-" pause for laughter, take a breath, resume- "and in fact, there is some important business to get to." The true delegates and ambassadors in the room prepare themselves.

"In the last six months, the White Flower Democracy has been in formation. Our planet, as many of you know, was in an intense cycle of recovery and repair following recent events. You know the events I'm talking about. We regret that, during that time, we have not always been able to be as active on the intergalactic stage as we would have preferred. But I'm here to reassure you all: that ends tonight. We are reaching out formally, to all nations, to establish [i]true diplomatic and trade relations[/i]. This offer does extend to those who may have been former enemies. We are not unforgiving: the WFD understands that the nature of international diplomacy sometimes causes a nation to take one side or the other. We've decided we won't take it personally." In other words, the door is not totally closed to the Khanate and the Matuvistans.

"There," Omar smiles, "that's the boring part out of the way. The more interesting bit is this..." In his soul, the Liaison must admit, he relishes this moment.

"Months ago, during the Revolution, many of your nations received some rather cryptic messages from the terminal of then-Liaison Abadi. A few sentences, reading something like:

[i]'Some say you're for us, some aren't so sure.

Come out the shadows. Fight openly for what your heart knows is right.

And one day,

We'll pay you back,
	A Flower That Grows Where Nations Meet.'[/i]

You will have realized that they were not from her. No, in fact, they were sent from a Flower who was embedded in the Meeting Place at the time. He had been there since it's opening, since even before the Revolution. Those messages he sent at last were... to poke the bear, so to speak, and see if it lashes out at you. To remind all of you in the intergalactic community 'We are here. We are not only rebels on New Hollywood. We are present with you right now.'

It was me. I am the Flower That Grows Wear Nations Meet, and I am pleased- no, proud- to have been the first citizen to question the Undefeated, to thank the Columbians, to criticize the Khan, and to apologize to the people that were then known as the Zetans and now as the Enlightened."

Pause for reaction.

"If any of you have qualms with what feelings I may have expressed, you may take them up with me. Personally. The White Flower Democracy did not exist at that time that I sent those messages, so naturally, I acted alone. But do not misunderstand: I stand by what I said.

Thank you all for your time."

As Omar turned to walk off the stage- now free of holographic actors and specters- the smooth and low voice of the Director spoke into his ear "Making yourself a martyr, Omar?" Indeed he was, but that word reminded him of something.

"Oh," he said, turning for a moment back towards the audience, and thankful his voice was still echoing properly through the room, "as a final note, I am pleased to announce that Bezia is officially opening her borders to visitors. Please, come see our land. Unlike the ECU, we are not afraid of foreigners, or their ideas. Previous restrictions against religion have been fully lifted. You are all welcome here."

For a moment, as he turns away, Omar accidentally makes eye contact with a Matuvistan priest who came along with his nation's delegation. A tall, imperial man in a black robe with a white collar at the neck. He nods grimly to the Liaison.

[i]Then I suppose we'll see you soon.[/i]

The Flower audience flickers out of being.

[center][b]~~~~~~~~[/b][/center]

[right][sub][i](Addressing: [@jorvhik])[/i][/sub][/right]

[hider=Message to the Kingdom of Kudrion]

Greetings from the White Flower Democracy to the people of the Kingdom of Kudrion! I am Liaison Omar, representative of my people here on the Meeting Place, and would be pleased to make your acquittance sometime. We have heard interesting things about your use of energy-projection. We ourselves specialize in another form of the same art- you may have heard of Hollywoodite Holograms- and an exchange of ideas could be promising for both our nations.

Let me know,
Liaison Omar Affan.
[/hider]