"Similarly they'll need to pass the Board here, but I expect it'll be a unanimous decision on our end. More contact is good for business."

"And more contact gives people more chances to learn about and from other cultures."

"I'm glad we can see eye to eye. Is there anything of ours you'd be interested in importing immediately?"

"I think for now we're just interested in importing information. I expect most of your interesting items require exotic magics or physics and those can't be imported without the agreement of at least several committees since allowing magics and physics to spread is generally irrevocable."

"That makes sense. I can offer you bulk rates on our public knowledgebases."

"What would we be trading you and what would we be getting?"

"Either credit from your Cernnous, or knowledge of your own in return, or one of our other currencies. In return you would receive the compiled OTC internal databases of all the magic and goods in our Consortium. It's our business to know things."

"Knowledge for knowledge seems like a fair trade if you're going to put a price on such things. What would you like to know?"

"Your science, your magic. Any exotic materials or technologies you have access to, any pharmacology... In general, we'd want to know about all your advances and culture."

"That seems quite doable, if anyone came to visit our sphere they'd be able to get that anyway. Though I think we'd need to transport that in physical form or as a console interface to the Archive. We have done a lot of research over the past hundred and fifty years and that's not counting the knowledge from before the crisis or that we've received in similar trades from other worlds we've contacted."

"That seems settled, then. Is there anything else you'd like to negotiate?"

"I think that covers the important points. I would be interested in a summary of the situation with Heresy, especially open problems you're having there in case there's something we could do to help. I'm not sure if that's something we would need to purchase though." Siobhán will be quite disappointed if they do charge but these people are already established to be weird.

"That you can have for free, on Director Sunaira's authority. Do you have devices I can dump data to?"

"I have an auxiliary processing core in my bag. That has five petabytes of data storage. Will that suffice? Otherwise I can make another storage orb those have much higher data capacity."

"That will suffice. Please place it in plain view for me?"

She almost levitates it out of her bag but then decides she isn't sure if the permission to use magic still applies and rummages in her backpack instead to pull out a rectangular machine and puts it on the desk.

She taps it once. 

(The gesture mostly is meant as a visual cue. The real data dump is wireless.)

"There," she says. "Our most up-to-date analysis. You'll want to start with the Threats abstract."

"Thank you, I expect myself and my colleagues will be studying that information a lot in the coming days."

"Thank you for your time. I expect that at this point our governing structures are going to have a lot to talk about. Is there a good place for us to stay in this area while we're waiting to hear back? Also do you want to write any formal language around the terms we tentatively agreed to?"

"The OTC maintains pocket-space apartments for visiting employee housing - we can get you two an Executive's pocket condo for immediate use as a temporary residence. An official embassy will no doubt be established on Oifilei itself, but it'll take some negotiation of the exact circumstances. Space there is at a premium. As for formal language - do you object to any of the contents of this meeting being released to the public?"

"Of course not, we'll be releasing the contents on our side too as part of our political process. Is there anything you'd like us to redact? We can do that for a time within reasonable limits."

"No, I think a full release is a good move. I'll talk to the other directors about a formal wording and get back to you with a draft document tomorrow."

"I'm glad we agree then and I look forward to hearing from you."

"Anything else before we adjourn?"

"I think we covered everything we needed to."