- His mouth drops open at seeing the carplanes.  "No wonder you don't have roads..." he breathes.

And then he hears Oleyyah mention the subway.  Subways - a familiar thing, unless it's going to be strange in some way when he sees it.  "Subway.  Sure; lead the way."

"Alright then!"

Oleyyah is a pretty fast speed-walker, and will actually half-run if it seems like Areli won't have a problem keeping up, only glancing back occasionally to make sure he's following closely. An undercover operation to kidnap Areli, this apparently isn't!

It would be appropriate to call the big concrete subway entrance 'cavernous' if there weren't brilliant lighting-strips running along the ceiling. People stream, at moderate density, out of their right-hand side, through a one-way barrier, and enter on their left. Oleyyah leads Areli in with the stream on the left and down the stairs.

It's bright, and spacious, and peacefully limited to just the one stop; you can't walk to one subway stop from another. A huge, detailed, clearly labeled map on the wall points out their position in the city, which apparently is 'Aineh'.

He pulls out a pocketwatch - an analog, wind-up pocketwatch - to check the time, then checks over the map.

"I live here," he says, pointing out a spot to Areli that's halfway across the city but not too far from a stop. He has to talk over the crowd, but not too loudly since this room is designed for sound-eating acoustics. "It'll just be a few minutes' trip, and there's a train in ten minutes."

Areli keeps up, though in a bit it'll be pretty clear he's out of shape.  While he's catching his breath, he stares at the map, trying to judge how big the city looks and what landmarks are called out.

Areli smiles a bit at Oleyyah's pocketwatch - it's the most homelike aesthetic of anything he's seen in this world.

"Oh, thank you.  And then... is there anything around there you think... someone like me should see?"  (He doesn't want to mention in public how he's from another world, until he's had a better chance to talk through what that would entail.)

(It'd be difficult, in reality, for Areli to say anything that attracted attention, in public, let alone provoked adverse action. Gaha'eka mind their own business unless it's clear someone is actually causing a problem!)

Oleyyah blinks. "What do you mean?"

(In Ev, if he said outright that he'd come from another world, people would assume he was LARPing.  But he doesn't want to depend on that here.)

"Someone who should know about me, or somewhere to help me understand this place better.  Or maybe the thing I need most is just to talk with you where we can be candid."

"Yeah, that last thing is . . . about what I was angling for."

"I get three days off starting tomorrow - tomorrow's my cult meeting, but anyway I'm not really pressed for time, and you're super interesting." Respectfully curious look. "The most interesting thing that'll realistically happen to me at this job where I was hoping interesting things would happen to me. I don't see why I don't just quit. Might as well wait until the end of my break, though."

"Anyway. I have a spare bed in my apartment for reasons, which you're welcome to until you . . ." handwave "until you are oriented. Presuming you" don't turn out to be way more hassle or ?danger? than you're worth "are up to it."

"Wait, you have a cult - or - are you using the word in a different sense?  To me, that'd mean... a religious sect that tries to govern all your life with its people, not just letting you interpret its doctrine.

"... but thank you; cult aside, I'd be up for that.  Till I get a bit better situated?"

Tries to govern all your life with its people . . . Oleyyah has been letting himself be entertained, but the truth is, this guy's got to be insane. There's no other possibility. But the way Areli is coming at things is, is disturbing, somehow, like Oleyyah had wanted to bet Yeilsi about. Calm. Coherent. Alien.

"Around here, a cult is -" he feels so silly, this is something you only have to explain to two-year-olds. He legitimately doesn't know if he's going to somehow have to explain what a job is, next. "- it's what you do to - change the world, on your own, with people who share some aspect of your ideas about how to do that? Even if you all know that the market won't pay for any of your ideas yet."

Chuckle. "We, um. Don't have much experience with people getting governed, in real life. I'd like to hear about that."

There's no way this seemingly eloquent, civilized person grew to adulthood without knowing what a cult is. So what else explains how he's talking?

"That sounds like a sort of Project - either a charity project or a startup project.

"And we don't have experience with people not being governed.  In my world, when you become an adult, you can choose which nation you want to be part of.  Each nation has its own government; there're at least a dozen in any city.  Then of course there's the territorial government on top of that to coordinate things between the different nations.

"If you don't have that... does everyone join a cult?  In your sense?  Because one of the big things about choosing a nation is getting together with people who share some part of your ideas about how to live life!"

"'Nation', what's - oh, hold on, I'll get back to you in a second, but this is us -"

The train hisses distantly, then zooms - brakes - into the station. It's pretty unremarkable, as a subway train - steel and doors and windows - except that it's fast. The base isn't visible, and the sound it makes is kind of indistinct, but if Areli is familiar at all with maglev he'll probably get that from the speed.

They're first in line for this car, probably because it's the middle of the afternoon. Oleyyah puts some silver coins into a machine, which prints out two tickets. He hands one ticket to Areli and holds his own up to a scanner. The semitransparent gate to the platform swings open to allow Oleyyah through, then shuts. Oleyyah nods at Areli to replicate his action.

Areli has heard of maglev, but he's not familiar enough with it to identify it.

He's very familiar with automatic ticket gates, though, and not surprised to see them in somewhere without a government - in fact, he expects to see a lot more of them to guard things.  He takes his ticket and gets through the gate like Oleyyah did.

The door to the subway car opens for them, then.

It's laid out like the inside of a spacious airliner, but with shorter seat-backs that are made of some kind of white, sheer-tough-soft synthetic material. Some of the seats don't have backs at all. There are armrests and self-stabilization handles all over the place instead. It's overall sleek and uncluttered, and not very occupied. 

Oleyyah will go hover by a couple of the back-having seats, body-languaging awkwardly and perhaps incomprehensibly Areli should go ahead and take the window one.

It seems recognizable to Areli, but sort of... low-budget.  Or maybe they're going for a different simpler aesthetic.

Areli nods thanks and takes the window, not that he's expecting to see much in a subway.  Or maybe there're going to be paintings on the tunnel walls, or maybe this's going to break above ground soon.

"So... nations.  Basically, they're groups of people who've agreed to have the same government, because they want the same sort of government as each other.  If you want a different sort of government, and you can't convince your current nation to change, you'll find a different nation."

Something about that finally breaks through something in him, and his disbelief is suspended.

"Is there anywhere without one?"

"Any where?  Nations are a thing of people not places.  There're some people who don't have a nation, but they're in the desert or jungle or maybe remote islands or somewhere like that.  There're also territorial states, but they're a different thing that makes all the nations fit together..."  He pauses to check if this's too much for Oleyyah.

"How so?"

"Well, if you and your neighbor have different nations, someone's got to set the rules for which nation's court you go to if you want to sue him.  And also, someone's got to build the roads and set the rules for them, and a lot of things like that.  That's basically what the territorial state is for."

"Why does it matter which nation you sue somebody in - and why doesn't a road company just build the roads?" He has so many more questions but only so many moves per conversational turn.