Chapter 3 — Scooter
And thus begins Chapter Three.
Now, children.
Kosmo had arrived.
The party was complete.
Paul.
Kosmo.
And me.
The council applauds.
Three functioning adults.
The council immediately retracts the applause.
Fair.
Now.
The moment Kosmo appeared,
planning began.
Serious planning.
Important planning.
The sort of planning upon which the entire Goa expedition depended.
When would the acid arrive?
How much were we getting?
Where were we going afterward?
Where would we stay?
How were we travelling?
The council nods.
Logistics.
Kosmo spoke.
Paul listened.
Paul responded.
Numbers were discussed.
Times were established.
Routes presumably became understood.
And I?
The council looks around.
Children.
I found a dog.
The council collapses.
Some things apparently existed even before the Wanderings.
There was Paul,
helping coordinate the mission.
There was Kosmo,
providing local intelligence.
And several feet away sat the third member of the expedition,
deeply involved in negotiations with a canine.
Who’s a good boy?
You are.
Yes you are.
The council sighs.
An indispensable member of the planning committee.
Children.
I heard almost none of what Paul and Kosmo discussed.
I did not need to.
Remember the system.
Paul knows where we’re going.
I exist nearby.
Perfect.
Eventually,
however,
one piece of information penetrated the dog related distractions.
We needed transportation.
The council leans forward.
A vehicle.
Preferably something simple.
A scooter.
Perhaps a bike.
Something capable of moving three idiots across Goa without requiring us to understand public transportation.
The council nods.
Reasonable.
Kosmo had a guy.
The council pauses.
A guy?
A local bike rental guy.
Children.
This sounds professional when spoken quickly.
Bike rental.
One imagines a small agency.
Several clean vehicles.
Helmets.
Paperwork.
Perhaps a polite employee wearing a branded shirt.
The council waits.
No.
Apparently,
in Goa,
having a bike rental guy meant knowing a man who possessed access to motorized objects and was willing to exchange them for money.
The council approves.
Entrepreneurship.
Kosmo called him.
Vehicle requested.
Arrangement made.
And so we waited.
Then,
after a little while,
a scooter appeared.
The council leans forward.
Or rather,
something claiming ancestral relation to a scooter appeared.
And riding it
a man.
The council falls silent.
Children.
This man was bandaged.
Everywhere.
Head.
Arms.
Legs.
Enough white fabric wrapped around him that for a moment I genuinely wondered whether Kosmo had accidentally summoned a mummy.
The council erupts.
He looked like he had recently lost an argument with several moving vehicles.
And beneath him?
The scooter.
Children.
The scooter looked worse.
Parts rattled.
Panels hung at angles usually associated with structural failure.
Something near the side appeared to be attempting escape.
The front looked traumatized.
The rear looked disappointed.
The entire machine carried the unmistakable energy of:
I should not still be operational.
The council grows concerned.
Naturally,
we stared.
Paul stared.
I stared.
Kosmo stared.
The man stopped before us.
Perfectly casual.
As though he had not arrived looking like the final survivor of an action sequence.
Kosmo spoke first.
“Dude.
What the fuck happened to you?”
The council nods.
An appropriate opening.
Then Kosmo looked toward the scooter.
“And what happened to that?”
Also appropriate.
The man began explaining.
And children,
history gifted us a legend.
Apparently,
the previous night,
he had crashed.
The council pauses.
Where?
Somewhere.
The council waits.
How?
High as a kite.
The council sighs.
Of course.
Now.
This crash had occurred sometime during the night.
Late.
Very late.
Around three in the morning.
The council becomes interested.
And after crashing,
our hero encountered a problem.
He could not find his scooter.
The council falls silent.
Children.
He had crashed the scooter
and then lost the scooter.
The council erupts.
How does one lose the object one has just crashed?
Excellent question.
The archive contains no answer.
Perhaps darkness.
Perhaps intoxication.
Perhaps the scooter itself fled.
Given its condition,
I would not blame it.
Now.
Unable to locate his vehicle,
the man performed the one sensible action available.
He walked to the hospital.
The council applauds.
Actual survival instincts.
At the hospital,
they bandaged him.
Patched him up.
Probably asked several questions he answered with varying degrees of honesty.
Then,
apparently,
he went home.
Slept.
Woke up the next morning.
And encountered a new problem.
The council leans forward.
He had forgotten where he crashed.
The council goes silent.
Children.
Not where the scooter had gone.
Where the entire crash had occurred.
The council collapses.
A lost accident.
Somewhere in Goa existed a location containing the remains of last night’s poor decisions,
and the primary participant had no clue where it was.
Magnificent.
Eventually,
somehow,
the scooter was recovered.
Or perhaps this was another scooter.
The story becomes structurally unstable here.
What mattered was this:
the machine before us had survived something.
And barely.
The council nods.
Now.
A reasonable traveler might have looked at the injured rental man.
Then looked at the damaged scooter.
Then said:
Perhaps we should find another vehicle.
The council looks toward the three of us.
Children.
You have met us.
We paid the man.
The council erupts.
Naturally.
The scooter was ours.
And immediately,
I named it.
The Abomination.
The council applauds.
A worthy title.
Children.
This was not transportation.
This was a collection of mechanical regrets held together by bolts,
optimism,
and perhaps several divine interventions.
I loved it instantly.
Now.
There remained a minor logistical detail.
Three people.
One scooter.
The council pauses.
Children.
Goa apparently believed mathematics was negotiable.
Kosmo climbed on.
Paul climbed on.
I climbed on.
Or perhaps the order was different.
The archive does not remember seating charts from antiquity.
What matters is that all three idiots successfully attached themselves to the Abomination.
The council becomes very still.
Helmet situation?
The council waits.
Children.
Let us not investigate history too aggressively.
Now.
The engine started.
The Abomination coughed.
Shook.
Made several noises suggesting it wanted to discuss retirement.
Then moved.
The council cheers.
Transportation achieved.
And off we went.
Three idiots.
One scooter.
One destination vaguely understood by two thirds of the party.
Goa opening around us.
The council leans forward.
Roads.
Shops.
Palm trees.
Sunlight.
People.
Beaches somewhere beyond what I could see.
And for the first time,
I was properly awake.
Children.
No fast travel.
No hotel ceiling.
No six hour agricultural waiting room.
I was finally seeing Goa.
From the back of a scooter that had recently survived a near death experience.
The council nods.
Appropriate.
Now.
There is a certain kind of freedom that belongs exclusively to youth and stupidity.
The kind where three people pile onto a questionable vehicle,
have almost no money,
possess one deeply irresponsible objective,
and somehow feel completely prepared for the universe.
We had that.
The council grows quiet.
No philosophy.
No search for healing.
No attempt to become better people.
Just laughter.
Wind.
Road.
Friends.
And somewhere ahead,
acid.
The council sighs.
Yes.
Still acid.
Children.
Remember.
This is an origin story.
The character development happens later.
For now,
the boy had achieved something important.
He had arrived.
Properly.
Not geographically.
Mentally.
The bus ride had been sleep.
The hotel had been waiting.
But now,
clinging to the Abomination with Paul and Kosmo,
Goa finally felt real.
The road moved beneath us.
The city stretched ahead.
And the quest resumed.
Thus concludes Chapter Three.
Kosmo.
The Rental Guy Who Lost His Own Crash Site.
And The Birth Of The Abomination.
Children.
Years later,
I would trust buses,
trucks,
tuk tuks,
teenagers on scooters,
and occasionally livestock with my continued existence.
Perhaps now we know where that tradition began.
Not with courage.
Not with faith.
Not with wanderer philosophy.
With three idiots looking at a half dead scooter
and saying:
Yeah.
That’ll do.
The council nods solemnly.
The Abomination joined the party.
And Goa,
at last,
had begun.
