Little Moscow Mall
Bengal and Assam wrote:"Excuse me. I'm from the Kawanese Embassy. Would you consent to being recorded for a very brief interview?"
The query startled Akane from behind as she sat on a food court bench, busy searching for local spots on her smartphone. She'd landed last night after a grueling 21 hour 2-stop flight from LAX, and an even longer but much more comfortable 1-month starflight on the MLV Calming Ambience, which would be returning to a easily accessible fractal Earth iteration in a couple weeks after finishing missions elsewhere. Under her very effectively AI constructed cover as a Japanese-American student taking a gap year following graduation from CalTech, that gave her plenty of time to spend a break in this country.
She was a young woman of average height, twenty since a month, with long black hair, and an ethnicity close enough to Asian to pass as such. She was presently dressed inconspicuously, with a light grey sweater and jeans, a far cry from her usual attire but one that was useful for her current wish to not stand out too greatly.
"Eh, sure!" She nodded, smiling slightly. "Not like I have much else."
Bengal and Assam wrote:"Do you have an idea as to how Christmas is celebrated in Bengal, either from books, mangha, anime or video games?" and "What do you think sets Christmas in the PAS out when compared to Bengal?"
She frowned. Wasn't Bengal mostly Muslim? The thin diamond strings of her neural lace still encircled her brain, inconspicuous as they were, and she could have had the answer with a thought - but half the point of this vacation was to avoid such things, try spending some time in a place where all needs couldn’t be resolved with the flick of a mental switch. So she didn’t, tried to rack her brain’s own memory, and came up hapless.
“Out of luck on the first, sorry!” she answered.
“But for the second… I’m from the states, and I’ve only been here for a day, so I can’t say much more. If I had to guess, I’d expect with the more, um, socialist culture they’d put more of an emphasis on the… communal aspects of gift giving as opposed to the, uh, religious and consumerist aspects - (and that's certainly something i have experience with) - but that’s a guess, really!”
She smiled and sat back, hoping that little bit of bullshitting would be enough to satisfy them.