Intergalactic Summit

Straight Outta Foundation

I've been rather quiet over the past few weeks. Probably out of character for me, I know. I'm usually pretty loud. It will likely however be a while before I return to the public stage, and I thought I should elaborate on where I've been and what I've been up to in the intervening time. This will be a long and amusing tale, and it is far from its end at this point. A good deal of drugs went into the creation of this post, as a forewarning.

So where have I been? I've been traveling. Streya and I bought an old beat up electric convertable ground car, and set out to drive across the newly built Highway 1, which stretches from Hive City in the east to Heaven's Gate in the west.

Accompanying us on our journey are three pounds of blue pill, twelve books of X-Instinct, two bricks of exile and crash, a bottle of mindflood, three jars of drop, a box of sooth sayer, a crate of whiskey, enough dryweed to start a signal fire, a case of beer, and an entire cornucopia of various uppers, downers, side to siders. This was to be an adventure for the history books, a voyage across Renaissance and a journey into the depths of the human mind.

Blasting out of Foundation City at 90 klicks per hour, rubber met road as we began our great crusade. The towering towers of Foundation fell behind us as the road rose up to meet us. Shops and businesses blurred together in a wash of holographic color and light, before falling behind and giving way to houses and parks.

Our ride is an old YC99 Asharade Land Cruiser, one of the greatest vehicles ever to grace the roads of New Eden and beyond. Despite the hardening plastic seats and peeling red paint, she still drives like the day she rolled off the assembly lines on Huggar. I lit a cigarette and put the top down, feeling the wind whip at my hair as Streya eagerly broke into the x-instinct, popping the drug coated candies like they were non drug coated candies.

"This is the dream Streya, this is what makes it all worthwhile." I proclaimed over the roar of the wind.

"I think I've had this dream before." Streya answered quietly as she chased down the X with whiskey.

"Do we make it to the end of the line?" I asked her, taking another drag of my cigarette and swerving around a slow moving autotruck.

"I'm not sure, I was too high at the time to tell." She scratched her head and reclined the seat with a creak of metal and plastic.

"Well now we're living the dream. Two capsuleers out on a joyride across their own planet. We own this ****. We own those trees!" I shouted, pointing out to the forest blurring past us on either side.

"Pwn, we pwn those trees, that's what the kids are calling it these days anyway." Streya corrected me.

It takes about two hours for X-Instinct to settle into the mind like a heavy fog of madness. She couldn't have been feeling the effects yet, and still the strange lexicon of young pilots and rogues sounded for the world to me like a drug induced mania. Who would possibly have the megalomania to claim ownership of some random trees? It was clear my companion was deep in the grip of madness.

"You know, I never get tired of the view, despite having been here for years now, this planet remains as beautiful as ever." Streya said after a quiet period of introspection.

"You should see Serendipity at night, now that is a sight I could stare at for a few decades. Still doesn't beat a nice pair of ****, but its pretty nice." I said with a laugh.

"I've been to Serendipity Saede, and you'd stare at breasts for decades? Have you been doing drugs without me?" She laughed back.

"I may have indulged in some harmless doses of drop before we left." I had to swerve at that point to avoid the tree that had rudely chosen that moment to get in our path.

"Maybe you should let me drive." She squeaked in the same tune as the rubber on the tires.

"You? You just ate enough X-Instinct to think you're shitting cats, no way, driving while high is dangerous. What would make you suggest something so foolhardy?"

Another tree had gotten dangerously close to intercepting the front of our vehicle but I deftly avoid it as any skilled driver would.

"You're more high then me Saede!" Streya yelped as the changing velocities threw her to the side.

"Ancestors you're right! I'm clearly insane!" I threw the breaks on hard and we were flung to an abrupt halt. "You drive."

We switched seats and took off again. We had possibly an hour left to reach Castle Rock before the drugs turned Streya into a slobbering animal, so clearly the only recourse was to sit back and indulge in some of that X she'd been doing. It tasted fruity, like fruity candies dipped in drugs.

They say the road to hell is paved in good intentions, but I assure you dear reader, its definitely paved in psychoactive substances. Who paves a road in intentions anyway? That would make a terrible road surface. A building made of intentions?Ideals can't hold up a structure, you need actual physical materials for that. Or maybe balloons.

"Streya! Make a note of that!"

"A note of what?" She asked incredulously.

"Balloon buildings! You inflate them and then they stay upright!"

"How high are you Saede?" She asked me with a shake of her head.

"Not high enough," I answered, packing dryweed into a glass pipe.

Our adventure was only just beginning.

Well...... That sounds like fun!

Manifest Destiny

We were somewhere on the highway south of Castle Rock, on the edge of the Howling Plain, when the drugs began to take hold. X-Instinct is a hell of a drug, it doesn't just warp your perceptions of reality like any old hallucinogen, it eats them, ***** them out, and smears that fecal mishmash of sensations all over your face.

I remember saying something like "Streya, maybe you should drive." As I slowly came to the realization that I was already in the passenger seat, there was a great roar all around us, like some colossal beast was breathing down on our vehicle, hosing us in its fetid and rotting breath. The sky was filling with huge flying fish and eels, whooping and shrieking all around us. Diving around the car like they wanted to pluck us up and swallow us up.

There was a terrible voice suddenly shouting "Great spirits what are these damn animals!"

"You say something?" Streya asked, glancing over to where I was rolling around in the seat, ducking below the windshield to avoid having my head taken off by a twenty foot long snake of some description.

"Uh, no, nothing." I said, "No point in mentioning the eels, the poor bastard would see them soon enough." Did I say that out loud?

It was no matter, the drug induced mania would have us both in its clutches before long. Castle Rock rose up to the north like a great ship of stone, the sort of structure that a billion years of teeming ants might slowly erect, all lit up like a solstice tree. And the lights were moving, flying up into the sky and getting devoured by those eels. We were in the midst of some alien invasion, there was no other explanation for these strange apparitions. And maybe there was no explanation, better to savor the mystery.

A lone figure appeared on the distant highway, soon to be prey to the monsters all around us, when Streya in her infinite drug induced wisdom said, 'Hey, let's give that kid a lift."

"What!?" I shouted abruptly, nearly dropping the cigarette from my lips, "We can't stop here, this is eel country!"

The tires screeched like those beasts soaring above us and we came to a 4 G stop next to this scrawny looking gallentean kid.

"Hey kid you want a lift!?" I called out to him. He looked at us strangely. Two vagabonds, kilometers from civilisation, suddenly meeting a third. When he didn't start moving I added, "Get in before those eels get you!"

He raised an eyebrow but climbed into the backseat, probably wondering if we were some sort of variety of serial killers. Maybe we were? This far into the tunnel of X, it was hard to say much one way or the other. If He'd been in a venture in space I doubt I'd have hesitated to blow him away. But here on the ground? Who knew anything anymore.

"I'm Saede Riordan, I own this ****." I told him proudly as Streya pushed the accelerator to the floor and we tore back out onto the highway. He seemed doubtful of my claims. A strange woman on the highway claiming to be Saede Riordan. That didn't happen very often. Or did it? I thought it best to assuage the boy's fears.

"I want you to know that this woman at the wheel isn't just some scrub I found on the strip, she's a coordinator. A real war hero. Vherokior I think. Not that that matters, you aren't racist are you?"

"No way." He stammered out.

"Good, because in spite of her race, this woman is extremely valuable to me. Oh ****, I forgot about the beer, you want one?" I tumbled over the back of the seat into the rear of the vehicle with the boy.

"No." He said.

"How about some mindflood?"

"What?"

"Nevermind, lets get right to the heart of this thing. Twenty four hours ago we were sitting in a bar in Indigo City watching the sun rise over this hunk of rock and drinking overpriced champagne. Hiding from the foul realities of this foul year of YC117." I think I said more after that, but the kid had stopped paying attention. Maybe I just stopped talking, maybe my train of thought derailed somewhere around the last bend in the road. Who knows anymore? Those eels certainly don't, all they know is their insatiable hunger for human flesh. Maybe we should throw the boy to them so they'd leave us alone. No, that way lay madness, we had strength in numbers. Oh and also the absurd amount of firepower you can squeeze into an artificial limb.

If they were real at least. Were they real? Or just another part of my drug fueled paranoia? Was anything real? Where was I? Who was this kid with us? Was I being kidnapped? I was clearly in the depths of depravity.

How long could we maintain I wondered. How long until one of us started raving and jabbering insanity at this boy? There weren't any recorded murders in this part of Renaissance, but would the kid remember that when Streya started hollaring about giant eels and fish and space whales swooping around the car? What would we do then? Would he want some of our drugs? I wasn't sure if we were sharing. Maybe better to just cut him loose before he said anything.

At that moment a hundred meter long serpent dove out in front of us, opening it's mouth into a dark tunnel ahead of us. I didn't hesitate, my arm bifurcated into a chemically pumped fusion laser and blasted out into the gathering twilight, possibly taking off the top of the windshield in the process.

"**** man what the ****!" The kid suddenly shouted, trying to climb out of the moving vehicle. Streya threw on the breaks and gave me a severe look.

"What are you doing Saede?!" She shouted.

"Saving your life! What does it look like?" I said, taking another drag of my cigarette. That kid was long gone by the time I looked back. Probably got himself eaten. Not really my problem. Probably had a vore fetish.

Streya sighed and threw the car forward again, we still had to get to Castle Rock.

See thread named 'Stories of a New World ', get interested.

Author 'Saede Riordan'. No thanks. I don't have a couple hours to read a drug fueled novella.

Say what you will about Saede, she can at least never be accused of being average.

This makes me long for the times I could have had as a younger man. Keep doing your thing, Saede. Just watch out for those damned eels.

I don't miss my younger days all that much except for that one time in the RMS where everybody got a cancer scare because of a non-calibrated Geiger counter reading suggesting that the reactor was leaking radioactive fuel and said radiation had spread all the way to the bridge.

Good times.

(In case anyone wonders what happened to the guy who caused the scare, well, he was sentenced to fedo duty for a month)