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"...A swift and dark silence descended on the table, amplified by the final patron's slamming of the door behind him. The barman flipped the lock switch. A resounding clack signaled the establishment's lockdown from the outside world. The lights came up. The two men, by now the only people left in the place, stared at each other across a dozen empty bottles and several years' worth of something else. Quietly the barman disappeared into a back room...."
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"Chief Secretary Ramini Vos sat in silent contemplation before the communications panel. Thousands of lights and buttons sparkled before him as they tracked a complex flow of information; the conversations of a hundred people all tracked in a digital language he understood more intuitively than his native Vherokior.
The Arek'Jaalan project had become a 24-hour operation in recent months. Initially, only a handful of capsuleers used the Eifyr & Co. networks that he oversaw, maybe a dozen in the first few weeks. Nowadays, the capsuleer channel hovered around fifty at all times, peaking to double that during the big meetings. Information requests from the public had increased even more aggressively, with Eifyr staff - lead in part by Vos - now handling upwards of 1,000 unique inquiries a day."
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"The Glittering Dream. How banal, the man thought. He stepped out of the transit tube to the top level of perhaps the most famous nightclub in the Federation and walked over to the bar. The place was, by its standards, quiet and the crowd parted easily before him. At the bar, he glanced in the vast crystal mirror behind it and noted his own classically Deteis features with a wry grimace. Ideal, always ideal without pre-conditioning. He used the mirror to scan the bar behind him while he gestured to the barman for a drink. May as well play the game."
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