Chapter 7 — Barbecue
And thus begins Chapter Seven.
Now, children.
When last we left the three idiots,
reality had begun bending.
Streetlights stretched.
Trees became suspicious.
Straight lines had apparently resigned.
And somewhere ahead,
the rave waited.
The council leans forward.
We arrived.
Kosmo slowed the Abomination.
Paul and I climbed off.
Kosmo began the sacred ritual of attempting to park a vehicle that looked fundamentally opposed to remaining upright.
And then
the silencer touched my leg.
The council pauses.
Not touched.
Grazed.
A sizzling hot piece of metal dragged itself across my skin.
Children.
A portion of my leg was essentially cooked.
The council erupts.
MEDICAL ATTENTION.
Now.
A reasonable human being might have reacted.
Pain.
Screaming.
Concern.
Perhaps:
“MY LEG.”
Perhaps:
“WE SHOULD GO TO A HOSPITAL.”
Perhaps even the radical proposition:
“Maybe we should not enter the rave.”
The council looks toward me.
Children.
Whatever combination of chemistry and adrenaline currently governed my nervous system had apparently decided pain was not an immediate administrative priority.
I felt almost nothing.
Then the smell arrived.
The council becomes very still.
Burnt flesh.
Children.
There are smells that make the human brain immediately recognize something is wrong.
That is one of them.
Paul smelled it.
I smelled it.
We looked around.
Then I looked Paul directly in the eye.
And asked:
“You suddenly craving barbecue?”
The council collapses.
Children.
Calm.
Hungry.
High.
These are apparently the ingredients required to make human injury funny.
Paul stared at me.
Then at my leg.
Then back at me.
And somewhere nearby,
Kosmo realized what had happened.
The council watches.
Panic.
Immediate panic.
Children.
Kosmo cared significantly more about my leg than I did.
He apologized.
Repeatedly.
Looked horrified.
Probably assumed he had ruined the evening before it even began.
And I,
finally following his eyes downward,
looked at the burn.
“Oh shit.
That’s my leg?”
The council erupts.
YES.
THAT IS YOUR LEG.
Children.
Body ownership had become somewhat theoretical.
Now.
Paul,
being the only person currently displaying even partial medical common sense,
suggested we clean it.
The council nods.
Good.
Excellent.
Proper wound care.
Then Kosmo reached into the Abomination.
The council becomes concerned.
And produced vodka.
The council pauses.
Of course he did.
Children.
Did we have antiseptic?
No.
Bandages?
Unclear.
A first aid kit?
Do not insult the Abomination.
We had vodka.
So vodka was splashed onto the burn.
The council winces.
I stared at it.
Still barely registering the situation.
Then,
with medical treatment apparently concluded according to the standards of three intoxicated idiots,
we entered the rave.
The council buries its face.
And children
there it was.
Noise.
Not music.
Noise with rhythm.
The kind that doesn’t enter through your ears.
It enters through your ribs.
Your teeth.
Your organs.
The ground itself seemed to pulse.
Lights cut through the darkness.
Colors bent across walls.
Patterns moved.
Smoke hung in the air.
Bodies everywhere.
Dancing.
Jumping.
Swaying.
Colliding.
Junkies of every known subclass gathered beneath one roof.
The council nods solemnly.
My people.
Some stood completely still,
apparently witnessing entire civilizations rise and fall behind their eyelids.
Some danced like they had solved gravity.
Some sat in corners discussing truths that would almost certainly become nonsense by sunrise.
And somewhere inside all of it
Paul.
Kosmo.
And me.
Now.
Paul and Kosmo chose a sensible strategy.
The council leans forward.
They sat toward the back.
Watched.
Talked.
Observed reality dissolve from a relatively stable location.
The council applauds.
Excellent.
I chose differently.
Naturally.
Children.
There was music.
There were lights.
My entire body contained the energy of several power stations.
So I attempted to dance.
The council immediately becomes interested.
Attempted?
Correct.
Because I did not know how to dance.
At all.
There was no technique.
No rhythm.
No choreography.
No understanding of what human limbs traditionally do in response to music.
The council nods.
And yet,
I possessed confidence.
An extremely dangerous substitute.
So I entered the crowd.
The beat hit.
I moved.
The council watches.
Left.
Right.
Forward.
Back.
Occasionally upward.
Frequently into other people.
Children.
I did not dance through the rave.
I ricocheted through it.
One person bumped me.
I changed direction.
I bumped another.
Changed direction again.
Someone spun past.
I bounced away.
A shoulder redirected me.
A stranger became a temporary wall.
The council begins laughing.
And thus
the Pinball was born.
The council erupts.
THE ANCIENT TECHNIQUE.
Children.
Years later,
at Pirates of Parvati,
the Pinball would return.
Brace face.
Close eyes.
Jesus take the wheel.
But this?
This was the prototype.
The origin.
Before I had a name for it.
Before it became tradition.
Just a high idiot discovering that a dance floor can be navigated using principles normally applied to arcade machines.
The council applauds.
Innovation.
And gods,
I loved it.
The music became physical.
The lights left trails.
Faces appeared and disappeared.
Every collision felt like part of the dance.
Every stranger became scenery for half a second before vanishing back into the crowd.
And somewhere between MDMA energy,
acid geometry,
and my complete surrender to momentum,
I forgot about the leg.
The council sighs.
Naturally.
Forgot about Paul.
Forgot about Kosmo.
Forgot there was an outside world.
There was only music.
Color.
Movement.
The Pinball.
Then
collision.
The council leans forward.
Not an unusual event.
At this point,
colliding with humans was approximately seventy percent of my dance technique.
But this one was different.
I bounced into someone.
Stopped.
Turned.
And there she was.
The council grows quiet.
A woman.
A stranger.
Another person who had simply happened to occupy the exact square of reality my terrible dancing had launched me into.
Children.
Destiny is often portrayed incorrectly.
Books give it prophecy.
Signs.
Stars aligning.
Ancient voices whispering:
This moment matters.
Real destiny?
Sometimes you just body check someone at a rave while high on acid.
The council nods.
Far more believable.
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
Perhaps amused.
Perhaps equally intoxicated.
Perhaps wondering what strange creature had just pinballed into her evening.
And somehow,
conversation began.
Her name
Laia.
The council repeats it.
Laia.
Children.
At the time,
that was all she was.
A girl at a rave.
A stranger.
One collision among hundreds.
I had no idea whether I would speak to her for thirty seconds,
thirty minutes,
or never again after the music changed.
The road had not yet revealed her importance.
The council listens.
And that is the strange thing about old memories.
Present Nuo knows what younger Nuo did not.
He knows which faces disappear completely.
Which strangers become stories.
Which moments that feel ordinary while happening eventually become landmarks.
But I cannot give that knowledge to the boy standing there.
Not yet.
He simply saw Laia.
And smiled.
The council grows quiet.
Behind us,
Paul and Kosmo watched reality bend.
Somewhere outside,
the Abomination waited.
My leg was cooked.
The acid was climbing.
The MDMA was roaring.
And the Pinball had just collided with someone who would become part of the archive.
Thus concludes Chapter Seven.
The Burn.
The Vodka Medical Department.
The Birth Of The Pinball.
And Laia.
Children.
Years later,
I would dance the exact same ridiculous way beneath the mountains of Kasol.
I would call it a protocol.
Turn it into lore.
Laugh about it with the council.
But every ritual has a first time.
Every recurring character trait begins somewhere.
Apparently,
the Pinball began in Goa.
With a burnt leg,
a rave whose name I never learned,
and enough chemistry inside me to make rhythm entirely optional.
The council nods.
And then,
as though destiny itself had grown tired of watching me bounce randomly through strangers,
it placed Laia directly in my path.
Or perhaps I crashed into her.
The distinction,
children,
is mostly academic.
