Chapter 2 — Carlos
And thus begins Chapter Two.
Now, children.
The pot had been acquired.
The council pauses.
From where?
Excellent question.
Children.
I have absolutely no idea.
The council looks through the archive.
Nothing?
Nothing.
No transaction.
No dealer.
No heroic acquisition sequence.
No memory of anyone saying:
“I have the weed.”
As far as my personal experience of the event is concerned,
I entered Carlos,
settled into the back seat,
and eventually a lit joint appeared in my hand.
The council grows quiet.
Royalty.
Children.
Kings do not ask where the grapes came from.
They simply accept them.
Likewise,
Old Nuo did not concern himself with supply chains.
There were competent people in the expedition.
Planning had occurred.
Pot existed.
Joint arrived.
I inhaled.
The system worked.
The council reluctantly nods.
Now.
There remained another necessity.
Alcohol.
The council sighs.
Of course.
And thus began our first side quest.
ACQUIRE BOOZE.
Carlos raged onward.
The Duke roared nearby.
And the five of us began scanning the roadside for a liquor shop.
Children.
This took time.
How much time?
The council reaches for a clock.
No.
We did not measure time using clocks.
Approximately
two and a half joints.
The council pauses.
That’s not a unit of time.
It was to us.
Children.
Honestly,
joint time may have been more reliable than asking me to check my phone.
I probably looked at that device once during the entire trip,
and that was likely because somebody called me.
So:
two and a half joints later,
civilization provided.
A booze shop.
The council cheers.
Quest marker reached.
We stopped.
Money was gathered.
And Wing was appointed purchasing officer.
The council leans forward.
Now.
Instructions were issued.
Specific instructions.
Clear instructions.
Instructions which could not possibly be misunderstood.
Lemon Bacardi.
The council repeats.
Lemon.
Delightful.
Fresh.
A respectable companion to terrible decision making.
Wing disappeared into the shop.
We waited.
He returned.
Bottle in hand.
The council smiles.
Success?
Children.
Orange.
The council goes silent.
Orange Bacardi.
There are betrayals one expects in life.
Lovers leave.
Friends disappoint.
Governments lie.
But when a man is entrusted with the sacred instruction:
Lemon.
And returns holding:
Orange.
The council rises in outrage.
UNFORGIVABLE.
Children.
Lemon is delightful.
Orange?
Sewage.
The council records this as official doctrine.
We stared at Wing.
Wing stared back.
He was Wing.
The council sighs.
An important mitigating circumstance.
There was anger.
There were questions.
Possibly accusations of treason.
But the money had already been spent.
The booze budget was finite.
And none of us were sufficiently wealthy or principled to discard a full bottle merely because it tasted like citrus flavoured punishment.
The council nods.
So.
Orange it was.
Now.
A sensible group of people would have done something like this:
Park.
Get out.
Gather around.
Open bottle.
Cheers.
Drink.
Continue journey afterward.
The council applauds.
Beautiful.
Responsible.
Logical.
We did not do this.
The council immediately withdraws applause.
Children.
We were idiots.
But
and this matters
idiots in sync.
The bottle opened.
I took a drink.
Passed it forward.
Paul took one.
Then Mith.
Then
the council pauses.
Wing?
Wing.
Who was on the bike.
The council becomes deeply suspicious.
Children.
Behold the logistics department.
The bottle travelled out the window.
Across to the Duke.
Wing received it.
Somewhere in this ridiculous mobile ecosystem,
the joint travelled the opposite direction.
Bike to car.
Car to bike.
Bottle out.
Joint in.
Children.
It was less a road trip
and more an exchange program.
The council buries its collective face.
And on we went.
Carlos carrying three.
The Duke carrying two.
Music.
Road.
Smoke.
Orange sewage.
Repeat.
Children.
Looking backward,
this is one of those memories where Present Nuo simply stares at Old Nuo
and wonders how natural selection missed the appointment.
The council nods firmly.
At the time?
Perfectly normal.
Not one person in the party apparently stopped and said:
Perhaps our travelling system has become unnecessarily complicated.
No.
We simply adapted.
Bottle.
Joint.
Road.
Friendship.
The council writes:
ECOSYSTEM STABLE.
Eventually,
roughly half the bottle was gone.
The council pauses.
And then something miraculous happened.
Collective intelligence.
Children.
For perhaps the first time that day,
all five minds reached the same reasonable conclusion.
We had paid for the bottle.
Yes.
Money had been spent.
Yes.
But continuing to drink something simply because we had purchased it
did not make the liquid taste any less like fermented regret.
The council applauds.
Growth.
Tiny.
But measurable.
And so,
Orange Bacardi was retired.
Not discarded.
Oh no.
Children.
The bottle remained.
On the floor of Carlos.
Waiting.
The council becomes interested.
Waiting for what?
Its destiny.
Its grand finale.
The council leans forward.
A few chapters from now,
Orange Sewage would return.
And children
looking back?
Funny.
At the time?
Terrifying.
But that story has not yet arrived.
For now,
the bottle lay quietly on Carlos’s floor.
Half consumed.
Unloved.
Patient.
The council whispers.
Chekhov’s Bacardi.
Exactly.
And onward we went.
Now.
The pot?
The council checks inventory.
Infinite.
As far as I was concerned.
Children.
This is another benefit of being the least useful member of an expedition.
Supplies simply occur around you.
Joint finishes?
Another appears.
Where did it come from?
Planning department.
How much remains?
Not my department.
Who rolled it?
Probably a citizen.
The council sighs.
Royalty.
Exactly.
I sat in the back.
Accepted tribute.
Watched the road.
Then,
at some point
fast travel.
The council cheers.
Ancient protocol detected.
Children.
You have seen this before.
Bus?
Sleep.
Car?
Sleep.
Train?
Possible sleep.
Anything moving for long enough?
Nuo enters loading screen.
The scenery vanished.
Consciousness closed.
Then
I opened my eyes.
The council leans forward.
And immediately understood why everyone had refused to let me drive.
Hairpins.
Children.
Hairpins everywhere.
The road curled around the mountain like some deranged engineer had dropped spaghetti onto a topographic map
and declared:
Yes.
Perfect.
Build this.
The council nods.
Sharp turn.
Climb.
Another turn.
Drop.
Another curve.
Steep edge.
More mountain.
I looked through the windshield.
Then out the side.
Then back through the windshield.
“Holy hell.”
The council laughs.
Children.
Not even sober Nuo wanted responsibility for this.
Forget the version currently waking from chemically assisted royal slumber.
Default me
fresh,
awake,
hydrated,
morally restored
would still have looked at those roads and said:
Perhaps somebody else.
And suddenly,
Mith’s purpose became sacred.
The council rises.
THE DRIVER.
Children.
The man had been selected wisely.
Paul had called dibs wisely.
Kosmo and Wing had chosen the bike—
which remained their own relationship with mortality.
And I?
I had been placed exactly where I belonged.
In the back.
Far from all controls.
The council applauds the planning department.
Sensible men.
All of them.
At least in this one very narrow category.
Carlos climbed.
Turn after turn.
Higher.
The air changed.
The temperature changed.
The scenery changed.
And slowly,
sleep left me.
Because now I was looking outside.
Properly.
The council grows quiet.
Children.
I grew up in Kerala.
Green was not exotic to me.
Trees?
Normal.
Rain?
Normal.
Hills?
Seen them.
Mist?
Certainly.
You’d think growing up surrounded by all that would make another green place less impressive.
It did not.
Kodaikanal felt different.
Not necessarily better.
Not more beautiful than everything I knew.
Just
different.
The council listens.
The trees changed.
The slopes changed.
The way houses sat against the hills changed.
The cold carried differently.
Mist hung where I wasn’t used to seeing it.
Roads curled between tall greenery,
sometimes opening just enough to reveal whole pieces of mountain beyond.
Children.
It felt like somebody had taken familiar ingredients
and arranged them into an entirely different world.
My face moved closer to the window.
The council smiles.
Royal Nuo had finally acknowledged the kingdom.
There is something about mountain towns.
The approach does part of the work.
You don’t simply arrive.
The road transforms slowly beneath you.
Climate first.
Then trees.
Then architecture.
Then air.
Until eventually you realize
the place you started from no longer feels close.
The council grows quiet.
And I watched.
Actually watched.
For once,
the mushrooms temporarily left the front of my brain.
The hills were enough.
The road was enough.
The strange cold world appearing outside Carlos was enough.
The Archivist inside me stirred.
Not philosophically.
Let’s not get dramatic.
I was still very much the idiot whose central objective was psychedelic fungus.
The council nods.
But awe had entered.
And awe,
children,
is dangerous.
It plants things.
Tiny little seeds.
A place can surprise you once,
and suddenly some part of your brain begins wondering what else exists beyond the roads you’ve already taken.
I didn’t know that yet.
I just stared.
Then,
eventually,
buildings became denser.
Signs appeared.
Shops.
People.
Town.
The council leans forward.
We had reached Kodaikanal.
Children.
Five idiots.
Two vehicles.
One half dead bottle of orange betrayal.
A supply of pot whose origin remains classified.
And one mission still glowing brightly above everything else.
MUSHROOMS.
The council sighs.
Yes.
The scenery had amazed me.
Yes.
The mountains felt like another world.
Yes.
Something in me had already started recording.
But let us maintain historical accuracy.
Old Nuo looked at the beautiful hill town,
took in the mist,
the trees,
the cold air,
the unfamiliar world
and thought:
Excellent.
Now where are the mushrooms?
The council collapses.
Thus concludes Chapter Two.
The Royal Joint.
The Orange Betrayal.
The Mobile Exchange Program.
The Return Of Fast Travel.
And Carlos climbing into another world.
Children.
Kodaikanal had finally appeared.
And for perhaps the first time on the journey,
I was genuinely impressed by something that wasn’t chemically active.
The council applauds.
Growth?
Steady.
Do not get excited.
Because we had reached the town.
But the quest had not even truly begun.
Somewhere in those hills,
according to rumor,
grew the reason five idiots had travelled all this way.
And the Mushroom Party
had arrived.
