Comment:

One of my guiding principles of making Forward was "no one cares how the warp drive works". When Roddenberry made Star Trek, he was not required to show a working model of a faster-than-light spacecraft before filming. It is enough to know that this sort of thing is plausible, given a few centuries of technological advancement, and to know how it affects the lives of the protagonists.

Similarly, I don't want to write political or economic or sociological or technological treatises to explain how everything in Forward works. I can simply have a character state, in passing, that an act of violence on a college campus is - for whatever reason - implausibly rare, and I think it is enough that we can move on from there.

Transcript:

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0063 - 2167/07/06/11:32 - Rosenthal College, hex
Zoa: Alright, so now we gotta schlep your tuches back to home base. I can't get another cab on credit, so either you're payin' or we're walkin'.
LC: I... I didn't know I'd be sharing a classroom with someone who had... three hundred kills.
Zoa: Yeah, but... they're a veteran. A good guy. You're supposed to like those.
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LC: You weren't... intimidated?
Zoa: I don't really feel pain, most of my programming and memories are backed up offsite, and my chassis' insured against criminal vandalism for five times what it's worth. A lot of things scare me, random physical violence ain't one of 'em.
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Zoa: 'Sides, when's the last time you heard of someone being physically assaulted on a college campus? Doesn't happen.
LC: I didn't say I strategically assessed that they were going to beat me up. I just... I felt intimidated. It was instinctual.
Zoa: Fair enough. I don't really have instincts, so I guess I'm not going to get it, but I get it.
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LC: I'm surprised you didn't offer them your services at all.
Zoa: Eh, I can't really provide my best quality work with what Caleb's packin'.
LC: ...too big, or too small?
Zoa: ...I'm just going to say they're not to scale and leave it at that.
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