California-Istkalen Summit in San Francisco
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San Francisco, California
Prime Minister adored using the Government Complex here in San Francisco. Sacramento was an ultra boring place kind of like Canberra, Australia. Los Angeles is too crowded. San Diego and San Francisco are ideal to host. The view from the Marin House was beautiful but rainy; it gave The Prime Minister time to reflect on the El Segundo by-election. He waited patiently for the Istkalenic delegation to arrive.
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They were all corrupt, though Ursula Orlich, all so terribly, terribly corrupt . . .
100 days had she spent, already, as Prime Minister, the great conductor and highest representative of the conniving mob that comprised the Istkalenic government. One hundred days, one-zero-zero; short, as governments and tenures went, and yet just long enough to have run her down and left her heart darker than it had been before.
Before - before she had come to Kirelesile, that crowded, hot mess of a city, before her affairs had become those of the government - before, when her occupation had been to render justice and right, as laid out so long ago by Liris, into physical reality, she had thought herself moral, enlightened, high. She had seen herself as a representative of the ideal - the divine - on Earth, a channel of pure light from above that would dispel the darkness and the rot in society, and she had done her work, passing judgment on all things, dividing them into the moral to be promoted and the immoral to be rooted out, plainly, neatly, methodically.
But her time in government, in negotiating and compromising with what so often were those and that corrupted beyond all salvation - in dealing with, in leading, what she instinctively knew was, and would have judged in her past life as, what was as close to pure evil as could exist in this world - had left her ashamed. She had become someone whose life seemed dedicated to the propagation and preservation of vice - and she felt the weight of it bearing down on her every hour, every minute, every second.
San Francisco, she thought, would be something of an escape. She would be doing something for the country - something good, something moral - and she would be away from all the bad of her country, at least for a while. And it was a beautiful city, too - that was another positive.
She came, at last, to join the Californian delegation.
"It's such a pleasure," she said in greeting, smiling, "to be here. Thank you for having me! Now, I'm sorry to get to the point so quickly - but that is our way in Istkalen, I'm afraid - what would you like to discuss?"
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"Oh, no worries," PM Albanese answered in an understanding tone. "I've been wondering if I need to observe Istkalen closer and figured you would know best. I called this up on the basis of encouraging trade and educational opportunity."
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"Istkalen," said Orlich, "is going through a period of transition. We are working to establish a stable democracy, and my government has been tasked with laying the basic foundations for it. Now, as I understand it, California is already monitoring the situation - I'd like to make clear that we are perfectly fine with this."
"We'd be very interested," she continued, "in establishing free trade, as well an educational or cultural exchange program. How do you feel about these things?"
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"That would be most ideal," The Prime Minister said. "For universities, a certain number of Cal State and University of California spots can be reserved and every school can advertize their own exchange needs. Now as a government, we can streamline the student visa process."
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"We can do much the same - we can liberalize and streamline our student visa process in alignment with your reforms, and ourselves move to reserve a number of positions within our national university and polytechnic systems, equal to the number that you reserve. I assume we are in agreement on free trade? If we are, then do you have any terms? Is there anything else you would also like to discuss?"
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"We certainly are so I know you have to run. We'll meet again in Istkalen," Prime Minister Albanese smiled. "Oh and if you run into PM Starmer of the UK...just know he's more serious."
