Chapter 6 — Candy Flip
And thus begins Chapter Six.
Now, children.
Four hours passed.
The council nods.
The rave approached.
The sacred geometry waited.
And three idiots sat at That Krazy Hostel preparing to make several decisions that would have caused Future Nuo to request paperwork.
Kosmo opened the envelope.
The council leans forward.
Seven stamps.
Tiny squares.
Almost offensively unimpressive considering the reputation surrounding them.
He handed one to Paul.
One to me.
Kept one for himself.
The council grows quiet.
Children.
My first acid.
I had imagined this moment for a while.
Perhaps there would be ceremony.
Perhaps hesitation.
Perhaps I would stare at the tiny square and contemplate whether I was truly prepared to watch reality lose structural integrity.
No.
Onto the tongue it went.
The council applauds.
Quest item consumed.
Well.
Not exactly consumed.
It sat there.
Slowly dissolving.
A remarkably anticlimactic method for beginning what was supposedly going to be a dramatic experience.
I waited.
Nothing.
The council pauses.
Still nothing.
Children.
Acid possesses patience.
Apparently it enjoys allowing you several minutes to question whether you’ve been scammed before rearranging existence.
So there we were.
Waiting.
Then Paul spoke.
The council becomes concerned.
Children.
Whenever someone says something interesting immediately after you’ve taken an unfamiliar psychedelic,
history suggests the correct response should be:
No thank you.
Paul asked:
“Y’all wanna candy flip?”
The council pauses.
Candy?
Flip?
Children.
These were two pleasant words.
Surely nothing dangerous could emerge from combining them.
Then Paul produced a small packet.
Inside
tiny crystals.
The council leans closer.
MDMA.
Now.
For the innocent council children among us,
a candy flip is the charming name humans invented for combining LSD and MDMA.
The council stares.
Because apparently:
“Let’s consume two powerful psychoactive substances together”
did not sound whimsical enough.
Children.
To Present Nuo,
this sentence inspires several reasonable questions.
Old Nuo heard:
More drugs.
The council sighs.
More fun.
Exactly.
There was no internal debate.
No risk assessment.
No moment of:
Perhaps experiencing one new substance at a time would be enough.
Paul had barely finished asking.
“Yes.”
The council collapses.
Immediate consent.
Children.
Remember.
This was before self control.
Before limits.
Before Travel Nuo eventually learned that perhaps one does not need to consume every available substance merely because it has entered the room.
Back then,
my decision making tree consisted of one question.
Will this alter my consciousness?
If yes
excellent.
The council writes this down with concern.
Now.
The crystals were crushed and divided into lines.
Paul went first.
Kosmo followed.
Then my turn.
The council watches.
And children.
I discovered something very quickly.
MDMA does not possess acid’s patience.
There was no waiting room.
No loading screen.
No gradual knock at the door.
One moment,
I was me.
Then
POWER.
The council erupts.
That was the word.
Power.
Nothing philosophical.
Nothing spiritual.
Nothing subtle.
It felt like someone had plugged my nervous system directly into the electrical grid.
My heart?
Ready.
My legs?
Ready.
My brain?
Extremely ready.
Children.
Imagine drinking twenty five espressos.
Then imagine every espresso simultaneously telling you that life is magnificent.
The council nods.
A medically questionable metaphor.
But accurate to memory.
I stood.
Energy everywhere.
Too much of it.
My body suddenly felt built for movement.
Run?
Yes.
Dance?
Certainly.
Fight God?
Perhaps later.
The council immediately vetoes.
Then we remembered.
The rave.
The council cheers.
Perfect.
Music.
Lights.
People.
Movement.
Exactly where this newly acquired energy wanted to go.
And so,
naturally,
we climbed onto the Abomination.
The council falls silent.
Children.
Perhaps driving a half dead scooter containing three increasingly intoxicated men was not the finest transportation decision in recorded history.
But once again
this was the old era.
Risk management had not yet been installed.
Kosmo started the engine.
The Abomination coughed awake.
Paul climbed on.
I climbed on.
My legs resumed their traditional positions upon mechanical components whose functions I did not understand.
And off we went.
Three idiots.
One scooter.
One rave ahead.
Several pharmacological variables beginning to introduce themselves.
The council braces.
Now.
At first,
the road looked normal.
Beautiful.
Night beginning to settle over Goa.
Lights appearing.
Palm trees passing.
Headphones absent this time.
My mind already had sufficient soundtrack.
Children.
I felt incredible.
Too incredible.
The kind of incredible where one should probably recognize that chemistry is doing most of the emotional labor.
Old Nuo did not care.
He was having an excellent time.
The council nods.
Then,
somewhere halfway there,
the acid arrived.
The council grows quiet.
Not dramatically.
Not with trumpets.
The world simply
changed.
At first,
I thought perhaps the road was strange.
Then I realized the road had not changed.
My relationship with straight lines had.
The council leans forward.
Buildings appeared to breathe.
Trees leaned in ways trees traditionally do not.
Streetlights dragged little tails behind them as we moved.
The road stretched,
then compressed,
then seemed to curl slightly upward at the edges.
Children.
Reality had begun bending.
And because I was seated on the back of the Abomination,
already electrically enthusiastic from the MDMA,
this did not concern me.
It delighted me.
The council sighs.
Naturally.
I stared at everything.
Every light.
Every vehicle.
Every shop.
Every face we passed.
The ordinary world had become impossibly interesting.
A sign was not a sign anymore.
It was an event.
A tree was not a tree.
It was clearly attempting communication through geometry.
The council pauses.
What was it saying?
No idea.
But it seemed important.
Now.
Paul and Kosmo were talking.
Probably.
Children.
Their voices had become part of the environment.
Words entered my ears and dissolved before becoming meaning.
I understood tone.
Laughter.
Excitement.
That was enough.
The council nods.
And somewhere inside my pocket,
my phone remained.
The Archivist had been born only hours earlier.
But children,
the Archivist was about to encounter his first serious challenge.
How do you record a world that refuses to stay still?
The council becomes interested.
The answer,
as history would eventually prove,
was:
Poorly.
And excessively.
But not yet.
Because ahead,
somewhere beyond the bending roads,
the rave waited.
Lights.
Music.
Strangers.
Chaos.
And three first time psychonauts approaching on a scooter that had already survived more than most vehicles experience in a lifetime.
The council grows quiet.
The Goa wandering had finally reached the thing we came for.
Not the substance.
We had already found that.
The experience.
The unknown.
The moment where curiosity stops being theoretical
and becomes something happening inside your skull.
Children.
There was no turning back now.
Not because we couldn’t leave.
Because the acid had already arrived.
The road stretched ahead.
The lights began smearing into color.
The Abomination rattled onward.
And somewhere inside me,
the boy who had come to Goa asking:
What’s all the hype about?
was about to receive his answer.
Thus concludes Chapter Six.
Sacred Geometry.
Candy Flip.
Twenty Five Imaginary Espressos.
And The Moment The Road Began To Bend.
The council nods solemnly.
We had eaten the acid.
Added MDMA because apparently moderation had not yet been invented.
Mounted the Abomination.
And headed toward a rave.
Children.
The trip had begun.
And Goa was about to become considerably less geometrically reliable.
