It's hard to miss the little spiteful gesture Quentin makes, but Norman lets it slide. Peter was right: the best way to keep the man from escalating was to be very selective about what you engaged with. Watching the conversations Quentin had had with others over the network - what parts hadn't been filtered, at least - had given him an even better idea of what he'd be walking into.

"How we tend to ... you're not wrong." He admitted it readily, evenly, and still refused to sit until his guest did. "There are a lot of horrible tendencies that I picked up from my field, my lifestyle. I want to change that. Especially since I can see now that you're not a hustler. You had good ideas, and they were taken for granted. You were poorly treated. It's a cycle I don't want to perpetuate, and it doesn't belong anywhere, let alone in a place like this where so many other things are already stacked against us."