The delegations finished up and exited the building, they boarded the bus again and headed back towards Zye City.
"Izixs, I know you let me see your capitol building in Arx, so our final stop before the hotel will be our capitol building.", said Andertol.
Hako was back on the bus as well and explained the buildings.
"The ribbed buildings are federal administrative offices. There are a lot more of them too. Currently, they are quite overcrowded and we are in the process of expanding and building another larger office building.
The floro-centric building here in the center of this giant round-about is the capitol building."
This area of the city was a bit lower in average building height than the rest, giving an artifical impression that they were in a valley. The buildings around them weren't so much extremely tall as they were just very dense. Almost forming a distinct barrier between this older section and the rest of the city. The Ellias district crater could barely be seen admidst the newer parts of the city.
The bus parked at one of the drop-off stations and the delegation and a lot of security personell followed went inside the capitol.
"So this building was assembled in 2142 by the Malych. It shows. The building looks more complex on the outside than it really is. The building sort of looks like it was inspired by naturally-occouring geometry. The pillars are steel-reinforced concrete. Actually, most of the building is reinforced concrete. The Malych have had concrete ever since they first became intelligent, so this is nothing all that unusual for them.", he said.
The interior of the building featured ribbed-vaults almost refferential of the high-gothic style, except very mathematical and totally unornamental. On the inner ring of the structure, however, the hallway featured very ornamental ribbed-vaults. The bottoms of the ribs featured almost arabesque detailing which formed whimsical, yet brittle-looking stalagtite forms which appeard to just dissolve into natural geometries.
"The ornamentation on the inner ring was completed later by the Malych during the era when they were beginning to emulate organic creativity. The styling on the inside of this hallway is based entirely on fractal structures. The end result, as you can see, is actually quite naturalistic in structure especially considering it was produced entirely by machines.", Hako said.
The group entered a massive arched doorway, which featured enormous doors. On either side were vertically-oriented 1-foot-wide strips of cloth. On the cloth appeared to be calligraphy. Condensed Kohtohkhan runic figures.
"Before contact with the Dragons, we wrote in this runic syllabary system. Today it is used specifically for ceremonial and honorary purposes. Since for the most part, our culture is atheistic, most of our ceremonies revolve around the natural things as opposed to supernatural things.", explained Hako,
"These Suteroms with the runic text here are typical for the entry-ways of any Dincotian legislative establishment. It's here to remind our lawmakers that the natural world and the tangible is what we are concerned with here."
The group entered the chamber. A large cylindrical hall with a very high ceiling. The group immediately took a staircase up to the gallery level.
"This is a meeting of the lower-house.", said Andertol.
Light filtered through the butressing and plants all along the gallery floor. It was a very airy, open room. Making it more comfortable for the 128 legislators of varying species below.
"The motion for open debate on the matter of kio 3348"
"Yargen. pautal"Pautal du""Motion passed. The floor is open for debate on the matter of kio 3348 which officially extends the law, kio 2814 to the Northern Continental Republic and allows the police to actively enforce it in the Danaton, Tirzah and Harris districts. The law states that: Manufacture of devices intentionally incorporated with MZA6-c hardware anomalies is prohibited with the sole exception of Malych reproductive activities and functions."
A Malych representative stands up at his seat an addresses the assembly.
"I think the justification behind this bill is obvious."
He then sat down. A dragon stood up and countered,
"This restricts my people's freedoms to create as they please. After all, were it not for the freedom to create, the previous representative's species would never have come to exist."
He sat down as about a fourth of the representatives (mostly Malych) began whirring angrily.
A Malych representative stood up and said,
"You will eat your words, organic."
The presiding officer hit the gavel, a metal ball with a flat bottom against the desk several times.
"There will not be racial conflicts in this legislature! Stand down, both of you, or else."
An allosaur representative stood up and said,
"This bill is prefectly reasonable. Saying this bill infringes on peoples' rights is like saying nuclear arms bans infringe on rival nations' rights to start a war and blow everyone the bloody hell up"
A Malych representative stands up and says,
"I agree with Representative Goruwa's analogy."
The same dragon speaker from before stands up and says,
"The government does not have the right to arrest me for making my remote-control battle-bot a little more effective by loading into it, the same software that happens to be in Malych"
Another dragon stands up and says,
"The government would have the right to arrest people who, let's say, grow dragons in labs and use them for thingy-fights which are wagered... Oh wait... That did happen once. Remember South Ckaleron. Do we need a
nardiagiy high school history lesson here?!"
The presiding officer hits the gavel-ball once and says:
"Representative Solorath, please observe that there are foreign delegations present in the gallery who may be offended by the use of derogatory language, even if it is in Kohtohkhan."
Andertol said to the group,
"I apologize, open debate can become very heated and sometimes, a bit vulgar. This is pretty mild compared to what it could be."
Phong then said,
"By the way, Xander. I didn't mean to subtly knock your government when I was talking about democracies before. Most systems classify your government as a "Father knows best state". Although from the information we've gathered, you seem to have a benevolent dictatorship. And from what Blinn has gathered from C.A. It seems that our AI constructs are getting along just fine.
Andertol then led the group to the other side of the gallery and down into a lobby area.
"And now you can meet some of our industry leaders.", said Andertol, and then he introduced them.
In the room were some people sitting at a long table. All of them with computers and presentation materials. They were:
Laragen Gawedo, of the earlier mentioned Hasegawe Motor Company. A wirey brown velociraptor with thin-rimmed glasses. His feathered crest had gone bald, but he didn't seem to care.
Taleri Hakyara, president of Darasouth Energy, the government-regulated energy-production company. A reddish-brown tyannosaurid (bigger head and shorter arms than, but about the same size as a raptor).
Dotdiy Turing, president of MiZCom, the government-regulated telecom company primarily controlled by the Malych. A green-and-white Malych mecharaptor with yellow eyes.
Turing immediately enaged Xander.
"Mr. Xander, we want to create an ultra-high-bandwidth connection between our AI constructs. Imagine the combined intelligence-gathering power of Onyx
and C.A. Two different systems. The greatest examples of two different evolutionary paths of inorganic intelligence able to exchange data at basically instantaneus rates.", he said.
He rolled out a flexible OLED screen, on which there was a power-point presentation.
"We're not talking about merging here. Just connecting. As I am sure you are well aware of, intelligence loves company. That's why we're coexisting, rather than conflicting with eachother."
Turing continued to talk shop with Xander and the guards, while
Laragen Gawedo grabbed Izixs' attention.
He said,
"So by now you've probably heard that my company wants to put a plant in Matabia. I, of course, by now have heard of your laws and requirements...
Well, first off, let me assure you, I'm certain that the factory will meet environmental code. Building green also tends to mean building cost-effectively.
Second, we have representatives informing the Matabia trade council of our plans. From what I last heard, they really like the idea of a factory which powers itself with solar and wind systems, which is what we intend to do. This is our first factory in the north, so we have a bit of an investment in making it a particularly shinning example of green industry.
Third, of course we will use local workers to build the plant, it would be more costly for us
not to.
Another thing to note: this plant in Matabia will be exporting not just to Tinis, but to the entire northern part of the Federation. That means exports coming out of Tinis, which means money coming into Tinis.
Oh yes, and another thing. We will be building both standard class vehicles and luxury cars.
Lucky for you that we have our
own incentives to build those standard cars though. Because all the profit our company stands to make from that will be through our investments. I hope you don't mind that all of the standard cars we'll be making will either be plug-in hybrids that run on electricity
and hydrogen or
ammonium fuel cell-based fleet/general use vehicles.
The Matabia plant will be set up for
lean production a very low-loss high-efficiency manufacturing method that allows the plant to produce several different models with very low overhead costs.
We will be producing these 'standard class' vehicles for Tinis:
-Leike motor scooter
-Omickron commuter coupe
-Omickron commuter sedan
-Omickron microvan
We will also introduce some Tinis-only models:
-Daleth full-size general-use sedan
-Tsanpi full-size general-use fleet van
We also plan on producing some luxury vehicles:
-Tesseract N luxury sports coupe
-Tesseract R high-end luxury sports coupe
And I do beleive we will be able to scrounge up the bookkeeping capacity for that. We'll just hire more Tinisians for the accounting department of the office on-site."
Meanwhile, Taleri Hakyara chatted with Waldo.