Chapter 4 — The Invitation
And thus begins Chapter Four.
Now, children.
There I stood.
Inside the bungee jumping office.
The council watches carefully.
And immediately,
something miraculous occurred.
They spoke English.
The council gasps.
Fluently.
Perfectly.
No pointing.
No interpretive hand gestures.
No ancient caveman diplomacy.
Actual sentences.
Children.
Of course they spoke English.
This was a business dedicated to convincing tourists to voluntarily leap from enormous structures.
Maximum customer retention required maximum communication.
The council nods.
A sound economic strategy.
Now.
The man behind the desk presented the options.
Different jumps.
Different heights.
Different prices.
Each package essentially asking the same question.
How much money would you like to pay us to terrify you?
The council applauds.
Capitalism.
There were smaller jumps.
Reasonable jumps.
Affordable jumps.
Jumps designed for sensible human beings possessing a healthy respect for mortality.
And then,
there was the highest one.
The council becomes concerned.
109 meters.
The council falls silent.
Children.
That is a very large number when the unit being measured is:
Distance Between You And The Ground.
Now.
A financially responsible traveler might have considered his budget.
Perhaps checked his remaining funds.
Perhaps remembered that accommodation,
food,
transportation,
and eventually returning home
all traditionally require money.
The council looks toward me.
Fortunately,
I was fully financially stable.
The council pauses.
I emptied my entire bank account.
The council collapses.
Children.
Not literally every final coin.
I retained enough to continue existing.
Barely.
But spiritually?
Financial ruin.
I pointed toward the highest jump.
“That one.”
The council stares.
109 meters?
109 meters.
The council begins drafting my obituary.
Now.
Payment completed,
the man handed me the details.
Tomorrow.
8 AM.
Be there.
The council nods.
Excellent.
A scheduled appointment with gravity.
I walked out.
And strangely,
I wasn’t scared.
Not yet.
That emotion apparently had a delayed delivery time.
For now,
the jump belonged to Tomorrow Nuo.
And children,
Tomorrow Nuo is an idiot I frequently assign problems to.
The council applauds.
A powerful coping mechanism.
So I wandered back toward Odin’s Abode.
Relic around my neck.
Bank account undergoing emergency medical treatment.
The rain fading.
The day slowly settling.
And that’s when I saw them.
The council leans forward.
A group of men.
Sitting slightly away from everything.
Not completely hidden.
But hidden enough.
The kind of hidden where everyone involved would insist they were simply enjoying the scenery.
And then,
the smell reached me.
The council already knows.
Agriculture.
Glorious,
familiar,
highly recognizable agriculture.
The council erupts.
Now.
I did what came naturally.
I lit a cigarette.
Found myself a spot nearby.
And observed.
The council nods.
The ancient ritual.
They looked at me.
I looked at them.
They smoked.
I smoked.
They looked again.
I looked again.
The council waits.
Surely,
the invitation would come.
Any moment now.
A nod.
A gesture.
A simple:
“Come sit.”
Nothing.
The council grows concerned.
Children.
This presented a problem.
My entire social strategy depended on being adopted.
Remember:
Step One.
Exist near humans.
Step Two.
Hope humans claim you.
The system had worked before.
This time,
the adoption paperwork was apparently stuck in processing.
The joint continued moving around their circle.
Nobody summoned me.
Nobody called out.
Nobody extended the sacred invitation.
And then,
something happened.
Something unprecedented.
Something scholars of the archive may debate for centuries.
The council rises.
I approached them.
The council erupts.
VOLUNTARILY?
Correct.
The Unbegun initiated a social interaction.
Without being summoned.
Without an intermediary.
Without a dog.
Children.
Character development had finally breached containment.
Now.
A normal person approaching strangers would perhaps say:
“Hey.”
Or:
“Hello.”
Perhaps introduce themselves.
Maybe ask where everyone was from.
Build rapport.
Establish trust.
The council looks at me.
I walked directly toward them,
pointed vaguely toward the joint,
and said:
“Weed?”
The council collapses.
Children.
Elegance.
Precision.
Efficiency.
Why waste language?
They looked at me.
Then at each other.
Then one of them nodded.
Another gestured toward an empty space.
Sit.
The council erupts.
SUCCESS.
And just like that,
I successfully infiltrated a bunch of junkies.
The council applauds.
Diplomatic breakthrough achieved.
Now.
A complication emerged almost immediately.
They knew very little English.
I knew very little Hindi.
The council sighs.
Of course.
Apparently every friendship in northern India required me to rediscover pre language communication.
And so,
we talked.
Somehow.
Where from?
Kerala.
Where them?
Several answers occurred.
I understood perhaps thirty percent.
The council nods.
Excellent retention.
Names were exchanged.
Possibly.
Children.
None survived the archive.
Gestures did most of the work.
Pointing.
Laughing.
Single words.
Facial expressions.
The universal grammar of people already sharing a smoke.
And strangely,
it worked.
Because humans are wonderfully adaptable creatures.
Give us enough motivation,
and suddenly language becomes optional.
The council smiles.
Then,
the joint was lit.
The council becomes concerned.
Now.
There is something important you must understand.
I possess essentially no tolerance.
None.
Children.
I do not smoke weed regularly.
It is almost exclusively a wandering ritual.
Home Nuo?
Nicotine.
Coffee.
Existential despair.
Travel Nuo?
Apparently agriculture becomes available.
The council nods.
An unfortunate seasonal migration pattern.
So when the joint eventually reached me,
I took it.
Smoked.
Passed it onward.
Simple.
Familiar.
Harmless.
The council waits.
Then reality left.
The council erupts.
Children.
I did not become high.
I ascended.
I launched.
Somewhere beneath Odin’s Abode,
NASA detected an unidentified object leaving the atmosphere.
That object was me.
One moment,
I was sitting among strangers.
The next,
I had lost all meaningful connection to location,
identity,
and perhaps several laws of mathematics.
Who were these people?
Unclear.
Where was I?
Debatable.
Who was I?
An ambitious question.
The council writes:
Status: Buffering.
Children.
I became a zombie.
Not metaphorically.
My body remained seated,
but whatever administrative department operated it had gone home for the evening.
Someone would speak.
I would stare.
A sentence would enter my ears.
Travel halfway through my brain.
Then disappear into some unexplored cavern.
The council nods.
Communication failure.
At some point,
a single thought successfully completed its journey.
Bed.
The council applauds.
Excellent.
A rare useful thought.
I needed my bed.
Immediately.
Now.
I excused myself.
The council leans forward.
With extraordinary elegance.
Children.
I have absolutely no idea what I actually said.
In my head,
I delivered something dignified.
Perhaps:
“Gentlemen, thank you for your hospitality. I must retire for the evening.”
In reality,
there is a significant possibility I simply stood up,
made a noise,
pointed vaguely toward the building,
and left.
The council applauds.
Diplomacy concluded.
Somehow,
I reached my room.
The Ghost Roommate remained,
naturally,
a ghost.
Nobody there.
Perfect.
I collapsed onto the bed.
And that’s when things became strange.
The council pauses.
More strange?
Much more strange.
Children.
Pot should not possess visuals.
At least,
not in my extremely limited understanding of agricultural science.
Yet there I was.
Seeing things.
Not dragons.
Not celestial beings.
Not prophetic visions.
Nothing useful.
Just reality behaving incorrectly.
Patterns moving.
Shadows changing.
The room breathing in ways rooms generally should not.
Eyes closed?
Visuals.
Eyes open?
Different visuals.
The council grows concerned.
Was it laced?
Perhaps.
Was it simply absurdly strong?
Perhaps.
Was my nonexistent tolerance combining with exhaustion,
two days of train travel,
poor nutrition,
and the general neurological instability of being Nuo?
Also perhaps.
Children.
The archive possesses no laboratory.
The case remains unresolved.
All I knew was this.
Whatever those men had been smoking,
it had launched me directly through several floors of consciousness.
And somewhere beneath the confusion,
one remarkably stupid thought appeared.
The council braces.
I need to find them tomorrow.
The council collapses.
Children.
Not tonight.
Absolutely not tonight.
Tonight,
I had learned enough.
Tonight,
the Unbegun finally displayed restraint.
The council gasps.
Write down the date.
I wanted more.
Eventually.
But first,
sleep.
Because tomorrow,
at eight in the morning,
I had an appointment.
The council slowly remembers.
109 meters.
The council erupts.
Oh.
Oh no.
Correct.
Children.
Tomorrow Nuo,
that idiot to whom I had so confidently assigned the problem,
was approaching rapidly.
But Present Nuo had more immediate concerns.
Such as why the bed appeared to be falling.
The council pauses.
Falling?
Falling.
Not tipping.
Not moving.
Falling.
My body remained perfectly still,
yet every nerve insisted I was plummeting through the mattress,
through the floor,
through the hostel,
perhaps directly toward the center of the Earth.
The council considers this.
Practice?
Children.
Do not.
And there I remained.
Flat on my back.
Eyes somewhere between open and closed.
Reality melting gently around the edges.
Feeling like I was falling through a bed,
while tomorrow waited patiently to let me experience the real thing.
Thus concludes Chapter Four.
The Bungee Office.
The Financial Collapse.
The First Successful Social Approach Of The Unbegun.
And the Night Agriculture Acquired Visual Effects.
For once,
I had approached the strangers.
For once,
I had found the smoke instead of waiting for the smoke to find me.
Perhaps that was growth.
Perhaps it was terrible judgment.
The distinction remains increasingly difficult to establish.
But children,
none of that mattered now.
Because the clock was moving.
Morning was coming.
And somewhere in Rishikesh stood a platform,
109 meters above the earth,
with my name metaphorically written upon it.
Tonight,
I merely felt like I was falling.
Tomorrow,
gravity would stop pretending.
