"Director Yise, you're a veteran of Isolated Star System management. You have extensive experience guiding and controlling the social structures of planets awaiting valuation. But at a critical moment like this, you acted unprofessionally. Even a technical specialist like me knows that against a threat like that, either you don't drop those Nuclear Bombs at all, or you hit harder. If you don't smash a few things, all you do is expose your weakness and leave yourself nothing to salvage in the end..."
If you know you're an outsider, why lecture me? Were you embarrassed because you got driven out of the Isolation Zone and came back with a tail?
Come to think of it, do Uploaders from the Thought Star Cluster even feel embarrassment?
Yise Hui grumbled inwardly, but outwardly he kept agreeing, playing his part to perfection.
He knew he was taking the blame for his superiors. Whether the other side appreciated it or not, he had to put on the right show.
He didn't have to wait long. A few seconds later, Wan Kui's cool voice sounded. "I told him to be cautious, to avoid disrupting the current experiment and affecting the valuation process to come."
"Is that so?"
A hush settled over the virtual meeting room. Yise Hui didn't dare look up. He kept his eyes on the floor and pretended nothing had happened, though he knew the layout of the entire communications space perfectly well.
Over the past eleven Myriad Heavens Standard Years—roughly forty years by this planet's calendar—the arrangement of these meetings had barely changed. At the top were always two people and three chairs.
The two people were Wildfire and Wan Kui, the two leaders. Each had a chair.
Though Wan Kui usually stood. It was her habit.
The empty chair belonged to