[center][h3]Collab between [@Tortoise] and [@Irredeemable][/h3][/center]


Isabella was having a wonderful evening. She had managed to wrangle herself aboard the [i]Santa De Angelo[/i]’s prestigious gala, not as one of the entertainers, but instead, simply to enjoy the evening. Not even just the evening too- the journey out here had been a sumptuous experience filled with fine alcohol and wonderful food, and she’d gone to countless practises and rehearsals. Now, with the gala in full swing, she had given herself a personal mission.

In her pocket was a metal capsule of ‘Alicia.’ Among the various…. [i]Extramedical[/i] pharmaceuticals that Matuvista’s chemical plants produced, Alicia was new, unique and pricey. It was the designer drug to beat all designer drugs, a full audiovisual hallucinogen that allowed for [i]mutual hallucinations.[/i] Isabella didn’t understand it of course, she was no mathetes and had not the attention to figure out how it worked. She would merely enjoy it with a foreigner. Speaking of which, here came two now, leaving one of the poetry readings.

“Hello there,” she said pleasantly. She looked ravishing; the Lobasla family was more than wealthy enough to afford to have her in fine clothes for the main event, and the muscle and scars that marked an experienced jetknight were neatly hidden behind her clothing. “I hope you’re enjoying the festivities…” She paused for a moment. “And I was wondering if one of you would be interested in enjoying a… [i]New sensation[/i] with me. It’s freshly approved for human usage, as safe as could be.” She procured the small metal cylinder, which sat innocently in the palm of her hand.

Tanaka and Abadi quirked eyebrows at each other, but Abadi's eyebrow quirked noticeably faster. She was much quicker on the uptake with that kind of thing.

New Hollywood had drugs, although they were (of course) of the Old Earth variety. And since many of those were narcotics, they were also of the illegal variety. Some criminal gangs pushed them around here or there; nobody cared enough to stop them. For an Oligarch, it started and stopped with alcohol or tobacco.

Well, officially. Many Oligarchs went in further behind the scenes. But since they were powerful, nobody commented on it. Abadi didn’t go that far, but her family sometimes said she was too fond of the 1960's Rock Culture Parties, and a few of them guessed at the reason. She occasionally came home smelling a little herbal.

"A... new sensation?" She asked. "That sounds like a euphemism for something."

“Ah yes! I forgot! I heard that you ECU types weren’t all that big on narcotics. A shame really, but luckily for you, this is Matuvistan territory!” She smiled. “And we’ve gotten very good at what we do. This is a capsule of Alicia: one of the latest and greatest inventions from our pharmacological mathetes. I’ve never tried it before, and I’ve heard the greater the difference between the people taking it, the [b]wilder[/b] it is. And who’s more different from me than a total foreigner?” She gave the capsule a soft shake, although it didn’t rattle.

“So, what do you say? Interested in seeing what happens when things go topsy-turvy?”

Tanaka and Abadi gave each other another look; and then a few more, more intense looks during the argument that ensued. It was done quietly, off to the side and in English- which they both secretly hoped Isabella didn't speak.

Abadi wanted to try it, but Tanaka thought it was dangerous, and "beneath her status." Abadi asked if Oligarch status would ever start being a privilege for her instead of a burden. Tanaka said that Heralds wouldn't like it. Abadi said that nobody has cared what Heralds thought since they lost a war on his watch- and you know, maybe she wanted to use her position to try something fun for a change, instead of just covering for Tanaka every single day.

And at that Tanaka's face fell, Abadi felt very guilty, and they both silently agreed to go separate ways for the evening.

Abadi returned to Isabella and, with no preamble, said "Sure, why not, sounds fun."

Isabella thought it best to not reveal that she understood what they were saying. Yes, the plebeians spoke [i]Tongue Nuevo,[/i] the bastardised mixture of Spanish, Portuguese and English that had slowly subsumed the planet to become its dominant language, but patricians learned English as it was spoken back on Earth, along with proper Spanish, Portuguese, and even a little Latin on top. 

So it was that when they returned from their argument, she pretended she hadn’t understood a word. “Just you then?” She said innocently. “Wonderful! Now, please don’t take this the wrong way: would you like to come to my berth?”    

"Just me then," Abadi confirmed. She struggled only slightly in making out Isabella's words; Spanish was her third language, after English and Arabic, and this woman's speech sounded like some fusion of English, Spanish and something Abadi didn't fully recognize. Like you put three languages in a blender and left it on for a few centuries.

The ECU phrase for that kind of language-mixing, "Dog Tongues," was not considered polite.

Abadi laughed a little when she heard the offer. Well, she did come to meet another culture. "Alright, [i]amiga[/i], lead the way."

The patrician grinned and, just as promised, guided Abadi through the [i]Santa De Angelo.[/i] Unlike all the other guests, they took a peculiar little elevator-shuttle away from the main event and to the accommodation hub of the craft, and then wandered through abandoned, hotel-like halls until they reached one innocently marked 129B. There was a mechanical clunking sound as Isabella opened the door, implying some kind of locking system, but the patrician hadn’t drawn anything out or spoken a command, indicating that whatever kept this door shut was doing so through a much more sophisticated system than normal, and then the door [i]clunked[/i] close behind them.

Inside was, unusually for a berth in a spaceship, although perhaps not for the Oligarch, room and comfort. It was a peculiar cross between a teenager’s dorm room, a colonial-era boudoir and a barracks. A rapier hung above a double postered bed, jetbike schematics were affixed, poster-like to the walls, a partially disassembled rifle sat next to a pile of physics textbooks, a small electronic machine sat next to what was unmistakably a bong, despite three hundred years separating it from the old world, and, of course, like any good Matuvistan, a golden cross hung on the wall, just above a shelf that had been populated with various common religious texts. [i]Exaltations of the Saints, On The Nature of The Divine, Standing in The Saint’s Garden, Life Beyond Life,[/i] and so on. To a Matuvistan, the bare minimum a patrician’s religious education should have covered.

“Alejandro,” she called out to the room, and a series of lights embedded in the walls faintly glowed in response. “Put on my… Eh... “ She paused for a moment. “Why not. Put on playlist: Songs To..” She turned towards Abadi, suddenly feeling self conscious. “Songs To Get Railed On A Jetbike To.” The walls lit up for a brief second again, and then a flamenco guitar broke through the quiet of the room, lonely and mournful, then joined by trumpets, a drum machine, synthesisers and a heavily autotuned voice.

Abadi might recognise it, if not for the content, than for the style. This was a throwback to years bygone, a peculiar retrofuturistic flavour of what the music of tomorrow would sound like. She restrained the urge to laugh at the name of the playlist: she’d made several, all labelled things like "Playlist A3" just to avoid that situation. She considered it to be her lifetime smartest decision.

“Alejandro?” she joked. “Mine’s just called ‘Butler.’” 

“Yours? Oh, no.” She grinned for a second. “Alejandro isn’t a unique system or anything. [i]Santa Alejandro[/i] was De Angelo’s squire, and his name is used for these types of systems all over Matuvista. He comes with the ship. In Lobasla we have unique pseudo-AIs though.”

But, that was irrelevant. Isabella set the capsule she had in her pocket down atop the physics textbooks and flicked a switch on the device, causing it to open up into… What looked like a harmonica had been welded to an inhaler’s canister. “I guess it’s a little unhy-… Oh, no, wait! Here! ‘Room setting.” She grinned, then gave the mouthpiece a twist, opening it up like a flower’s petals.

“Alright, and then just…” She depressed a button, and the capsule let out a slow, soft hiss, a visible purple haze seeping out of it. “Should just now fill the room. Effects begin between five and ten minutes after activation, and last between one and two hours.” She examined the capsule carefully one last time, then eased her shoes off and hopped up onto her bed.

“So, now I guess we just wait for it to kick in.”

It struck Abadi as a little odd, the way Isabelle could combine such clinical language with such a casual setting. She was used to performing roles, being fully this, or fully that. The "Liaison" role had taken up her mind fully lately. Whatever this Alicia stuff is, hopefully it’s strong enough to take her mind off of it?

It was.

It started with the floor falling out. Although she was sitting on her bed, Isabella suddenly became aware that she was actually plummeting down through the floor, into what appeared to be an endless black void. Too shocked to say anything, she tried scrambling forward and only succeeded in toppling off her bed (which now didn’t exist any more,) and landing on the floor hard enough to hurt her tailbone.

And then… They were… In… Space? She looked around; up above her was the floor of the Santa De Angelo, notably without a hole in it. The milky way swarmed around her, far more stars than she’d ever seen looking out of the ship blanketing space in a thick cloud of brightness, and the sun’s light, gloriously incandescent, brighter than all the others combined, all shining upon…

“Hijo de puta, the fuck kinda Earth do you think about?”    

It was Earth, but not Earth, because it was without any flaws. Like the world seen through a nostalgia-tinted filter: even from this distance, they could both make out shimmering blue seas, golden shores and impossibly green forests that went deeper than the imagination. It was a kaleidoscope of colors that never clashed.

"That," Abadi said, trying to sound casual even though she felt anything but. "That's the kind of Earth I think about."

Their descent looked slow at first, but only because of the distance. By the time they passed through the atmosphere- that may have smelt a little like lilacs- they were clearly hurdling into Earth like little comets.

Isabella’s mind was struggling to keep up with what was going on. Not only was she dealing with the conflicting sensations she was getting from her aching rear, but this… This was definitely a foreign look at Earth. A gorgeous one, nonetheless, but a foreign one. As the duo hurtled down through the atmosphere, the patrician’s instincts kicked in and she reached for a jump pack that wasn’t there, her eyes widening as the two careened wildly towards a strange, square-shaped peninsula on the western coast of one of the continents. 

“GAH!” She screamed, a second before the duo smacked into the ground, but, of course, no harm came to them, even if she swore she could feel the branches whipping past her face and the crunch of undergrowth beneath her. Both her hallucinated form and her real one pushed themselves up to their feet, looking around. “[i]Mi madre…[/i]”

"What does your mom have to do with this?"

Abadi leaned over to the side, running her fingers over the emerald-shade grass shining underneath them, and-

She burst out laughing. "It's foam! Girl, the grass is made of foam! Oh, that's gotta be a metaphor for something, I swear." She dug deeper, and the dirt was definitely some kind of soft plastic, and she’s pretty sure those trees they felt on the way down were… well, [i]wooden[/i], but not alive wood. Not a tree. Just wooden.

“That’s not what that means.” Isabella frowned, then looked as Abadi dug into the ground and discovered it to be… “The perfect Earth is fake, eh?” She raised an eyebrow. “Shit amiga, you’ve got some funky thoughts banging around up there.” The track had changed now, their soundtrack as they explored this bizarro Earth filled with electric guitars and psychedelia. 

Looking up from the ground, Isabella paused. Those trees… Weren’t… As she looked up, the trees seemed to elongate and extend, rising up higher and higher as she craned her head. Falling back down, this time, thankfully, back on her bed, she gazed up, to where even the sky itself had been blotted out by these towering creations.

Then, through the forest, figures emerged, sat astride horses. They were shimmering and pale, so much so that it hurt Isabella’s eyes to look at them for too long, and she had to squint and shade her gaze. “Dios mio…”

Now, Abadi knew that had to be an addition of Isabella's; the New Hollywoodite had never imagined something like this in her life. Her eyes didn’t even want to look at them. They were stars made into people. Spectacular, in a completely alien and terrifying way. These guys probably were not foam.

"Hey, you're not made of foam, right?" she asked anyway, for some stupid reason.

Even squinting as she was, Isabella could make out recognisable faces among the crowd. Santa De Angelo, of course, leading the host. “Santa Jorge. Santa Alejandro, Santa Don Juan, Santa Pedro…” She hadn’t even realised she was saying their names out loud, the host pressing past and through the two women. Turning around, Isabella’s eyes widened as she saw…

That was a monsturo. Like the kind she had trained to fight back on Matuvista. Towering. Imposing. Nigh indestructible without struggle and sacrifice. She had never fought one herself, thank the lord, but their mere existence reduced humanity to ants… and here it was, down on Earth? If this trip didn’t give her a heart attack, maybe it was time to go and visit a psychiatrist.

Abadi stumbled backwards in shock. (Somewhere in the real world, her body knocked a jetbike schematic off of Isabella's wall.) She looked up at the towering creature, and kept looking up, because it kept going. That thing reached high as the sky- did it still smell of lilacs up there?-  and she found herself shouting "Hologram: Exit!" by instinct. It's what you say to end a holo-program when it's gone a good bit farther than you would've liked.

The program didn't end, since there was no program. The air did shimmer and mist exactly like a hologram turning off, but instead of vanishing and leaving a plain white room behind, as Abadi thought it well should have, it simply morphed into another world completely.

The world was clouded with fog and mist, blanketing the duo. Reeling further back, until she hit the headboard of her bed, Isabella paused, looking wildly about for what was next to come. Half of her was confused and wanted off this ride, whilst the other half was almost eager to see what their combined subconscious would drag up next.
Street signs formed. Neon advertisements hanging off nondescript skyscrapers and apartment complexes, their colours a swirling kaleidoscope. Above them, she heard the distinctive roar of jetbikes zooming by, but this wasn’t Matuvista… Or at least a Matuvista that she knew. Gold-armoured officers strode through in lockstep formations, against… Colonial protesters? 

Abadi recognized this particular variety of neon vomit: the many clashing colors of New Hollywood. With jetbikes added.

“The men in gold are protectors,” Abadi realized and explained at once. “They put down dissidents. Like those people over there must be?” 

“They’re…” Isabella paused. She was dragged back to a news article, and even as she remembered it, the same footage was pulled into the hallucinations. One chant in particular, ‘Hell no, we won’t go!’ She remembered that one. It had been after a large Yyasum incursion across the four celestial bodies, and mandatory conscription had been instated for the first time in fifty-six years. On Matuvista, it had been orderly and neat. Offworld, it had been… Well… This.

The protectors moved forward in lockstep, wielding batons. Intermingled with them, men-at-arms, dressed in riot equipment, activated stun-maces and hefted riot shields. Despite their differences in appearance, they were as one.

[i]This is so trippy[/i], Abadi thought. Isabella knew that the colonial protestors were rebels, and Abadi knew that the protectors put rebels down. But how did the drug know those two concepts had a connection?

And more than that, how did she see what Isabella was thinking? It played like a holo-film in her mind, the footage of the colonial conscription protestors. It reminded her of the White Flowers she’d watched and read about. They always sprinkled petals on the ground, for some reason, coating the streets in…

There they are. Abadi looks down at her shoes, and white petals are on them. From the opposite end of the distorted neon-lit street they’re standing on, a familiar marching sound beats out, and a crowd of White Flowers and Mixtists round the corner.

They exchange glances with the colonial protestors, and with mutual nods, it's obvious the two kinds of dissident understand one another. They charge together in a riotous roar. Abadi thinks they're going to attack the protectors and men-at-arms, but her heart skips a beat when she realizes- they're rushing directly at herself and Isabella. A thousand imagined footsteps, coming to kill them.

"Protectors!" She called out, panicked, as she was taught to do if her life was ever in danger. And as she said it, the golden men formed around her and Isabella to protect them both; and the men-at-arms came with. Together, they stood in a circle around the two, shielding them from mutual threats. The rebels could never break through their combined ranks.

A chill went down Abadi's spine. Is this a drug, or a vision? Because she thinks she sees an answer here.

“[b]To me[/b]” Shouted Isabella, and just like that, her steed had arrived, hurtling through the air along with a host of other jetknights, set astride their bikes. As the men-at-arms and protectors lashed out, clubs and maces beating back the crowd around them, and the riot descended into a bloody street brawl, Isabella clambered atop her bike and kicked the ignition, offering a hand down towards her new friend.

“We are peculiarly alike,” she mused as the other woman clambered aboard the vehicle, and even as the jetknights on either side drew out their carbines and began to fire into the crowds, she was lifting off, up, into the rain and the strangely logic-defying colours of the advertisements. Flying like this was an instinct so ingrained into the patrician that her body was fooled along with her mind.

They both left behind the messy streets, people of lower classes fighting beneath them. While they soared higher and higher into the sky, into the horizon, into…

Reality. The scene faded, gently returning to normalcy. The walls of room 129B were back, with their decorations and schematics and rapiers, and Isabella in the midst of it, leaned against the headboard of her bed. Abadi's hands were grasping against the wall, which she now realized was not actually her friend’s jetbike, and very quickly straightened herself. What to do now? Her whole life was based on assuming roles: the dutiful student, then the fresh new Oligarch. The girl at the party, and then the Liaison at the Meeting Place. But she didn’t know what role this was. How do you behave after an experience like that?

“So, that was… cool,” she started, awkwardly. Testing the waters.

And at last, the veil was lifted. “That was fucking [i]insane chica.[/i]” Isabella looked to the oligarch. “How the fuck does that even work? Those pharmacy mathetes are crazy fuckers.” She shook her head as if to clear out the last of the hallucinations, realising as she did so that there was a faint smell of… Lilacs? In the air? 

[i]Lilac in the air,[/i] thought Abadi, at the same time. Funny. A little bit of the hallucinations left-over? She realizes now how fried her brain feels.

“Yeah, they must be. This is why we have restricted research back home.” Abadi rubbed her temples. “That, and protectors to enforce it. But I guess you saw what they are already.”

“Those your men-at-arms. Yeah? Fighting the protestors?” She eased herself down from the headboard and lay supine on her bed, a hand slung underneath her head. “Restricted research just means you don’t get shit like that.” Isabella laughed a little. She was exhausted: she felt totally fucked in the head, but at the same time the whole thing had been more than she possibly could have expected.

“You got a riot problem eh? My papa’s in the Upper Senate back home. Think that would be a good idea?”

Abadi thought about it. The recent news had White Flower “protestors” organizing into cohesive groups much larger than protests; rumors were that they’d try and take over areas of Neo London, Neo Paris and New Beijing soon. That’s three major cities crippled by... well, maybe it’s time to just call them what they are: rebels. 

Abadi didn’t like the idea of dragging foreigners into this. It didn’t work so well last time. But something strange lingering in the air made her trust Isabella just a little more, and made her just a little more anxious at the thought of rebellion. That hallucinated image of charging discontents flashed back through her mind.

“You’re offering back-up? Yeah, yeah, we’ll take it.”

Isabella promised she would talk to her Papa about it. Abadi said thank-you, and offered support in kind. The conversation gradually drifted from there, skipping semi-randomly around different subjects while both women dealt with the aftereffects of Alicia. Somewhere in this, Abadi couldn't help but notice that the Matuvistan didn't seem to go more than three sentences without some reference to "Santa" whoever. Santa Pedro, Santa Teresa of Ávila... 

Really, Abadi had no idea what a [i]Santa[/i] was, except a myth about a guy who gave children presents by going down their chimney in a way that totally, definitely wasn't terrifying. Supposedly he did that on December 25th, but she didn’t know what was special about that date. Anymore then she recognized the golden cross on the other woman’s wall. But she liked the color, and- perhaps this is because of the lingering high- somehow felt herself striding across the room to touch it. "What is this?"

Isabella froze for a moment. Right, of course. This foreigner wouldn’t know about the saints. “Don’t touch that please,” she requested quietly.

“It’s the Matuvistan Cross. A symbol of the saints, taken from Old Earth.” She paused. “It reminds me that there is always something greater looking down upon us, shining light into darkness, truth into lies.” She paused for a moment. She was unsure exactly how she should go about introducing her own religiosity to a woman who had no clue about any of it.

“You don’t worship anything?” She eventually asked.

“Earth,” Abadi answered, without being sure why. Nobody ever said that they worshiped Earth, out loud, but it felt so true that her lips said it for her. 

Isabella’s mind was dragged back to that first hallucination. The Earth. Gold. Shiny. ‘Pure,’ and yet at the same time totally fake. Was that really what the oligarchs believed in?

Abadi felt high-jacked, and immediately covered her mouth with her hand. “Sorry,” she said, recovering from the embarrassment just a bit, “don’t know why I said that one. No, I don’t worship anything. New Hollywoodites don’t.” Except the Mixtists.

“You ca-” Isabella was cut off. Alright, sure, they didn’t worship anything, she guessed. Reluctantly, she reached up towards the shelf and took down [i]Exaltations of the Saints,[/i] flipping to a random page. [i]The Selfless Conscription.[/i]

[i]We, the saints of the sea and sky.
We who have heard our descendants cry,
All who dwell ‘neath tyranny
Our hands shall save…[/i]

She handed the book almost gingerly over to Abadi. “Be careful with that please. Mama’d kill me if I got it damaged.”

Abadi took it just as gingerly, even though she didn't fully catch what could be so delicate about a book. There have to be other copies of it, right? If you spill coffee or something on it, you just buy a new one. That was elementary.

But she didn't argue. And out of politeness, flipped through the pages meanderingly. Faith, prayers, saints, faith. It all reminded her of exactly one thing back on New Hollywood.

"You know, this feels like Mixtist stuff. They're a religious group on New Hollywood, the only one. But they're dangerous. They encourage dissent. You can't be loyal to your nation and to- gods, or whatever- at the same time. You have to value one over the other, right?" This was a commonly held belief back home, one of the usual justifications for keeping Mixtists down, which she never thought would be seriously questioned.

“You…” She paused, blinking a few times. The idea of splitting your loyalty like that… It confused Isabella. “No? I follow my government and the saints equally. I am loyal to the former, and I love the latter, with all my heart.” She smiled.

“But what if they, I don’t know, disagree? Like if the government asked you to do something you don’t think the saints would like?” But then Abadi stopped, and smiled back. “You know, it’s not that important. Have there been any new saints, since the Tragedy?” She cleared her throat. “I mean, since the Fall of Earth?”

If they disagreed? Isabella thought on this for a while, and was about to reply before Abadi retracted the question and gave her a new one. “Oh yeah! Lots! The one this ship is named after is the most famous: Santa De Angelo. Without her, we’d still be living under a series of idiotic, uncultured tyrants.”

[i]A series of idiotic, uncultured tyrants.[/i] A rough way to paint your own history- but then, ECU history was taking its own turn for the worst lately. Abadi and Isabella kept talking about these things, for far longer than either of them realized, and both latched on to those things they did agree intimately on. Rebels are a threat, culture is important, and force is sometimes required to stop the first from destroying the second. The lines were drawn; the Matuvistans would help the ECU keep their dissidents down.

Abadi left the party with a strange feeling. Neither her nor even Tanaka had seriously expected to win over anything more than empty words and pleasantries, but it looked like a real- alliance, friendship, bargain?- had been formed. The two obviously most cultured nations had found each other.