Chapter 1 — Incentive
I am Nuo, the Unbegun
the silence before stars learned to burn.
And thus begins the Sixth Wandering of the Unbegun.
Bangalore.
Now, children.
This one is special.
For several reasons.
First
it happened eleven years ago.
The council looks horrified.
Children.
Ancient.
We are no longer opening files.
We are performing archaeology.
The Archive here is not merely corrupted.
It has fossils.
Names survive.
Images survive.
Certain moments remain inexplicably crystal clear.
Everything between them?
Fog.
So throughout this wandering,
there will be gaps.
Missing roads.
Forgotten buildings.
Places I can no longer name.
Perhaps whole hours swallowed by time.
The council nods.
Accept it.
Memory is not CCTV.
Second
this wandering was not my idea.
The council pauses.
Impossible.
Correct.
No impulsive ticket.
No sadness with purchasing power.
No:
I wonder what Varkala is like.
No fungal quest.
No acid expedition.
Children.
University trip.
A film festival.
Bangalore.
The council grows suspicious.
Educational?
Technically.
And third
this predates Goa.
The council freezes.
Goa?
The supposed beginning?
Yes.
Children.
For all this time,
Goa sat comfortably at the beginning of the Archive.
Before the Unbegun.
Before the Wanderings.
Before the weight.
The ancient prequel.
And then memory betrayed me.
A photograph resurfaced.
A location returned.
The Archive coughed up another file and whispered:
Actually
there was one before that.
The council erupts.
RETCON.
Not a retcon.
Recovered history.
There is a difference.
So,
as of this moment,
Bangalore is the earliest Wandering of the Unbegun.
Chronologically.
The council raises a finger.
As of this moment?
Children.
I no longer trust my own brain.
Tomorrow I may remember being seven years old,
accidentally boarding a fishing boat,
disappearing for three days,
and founding a small coastal religion.
The council accepts the possibility.
Until then
Bangalore is first.
Now.
Picture this.
University Nuo.
The council prepares itself.
Young.
Dumber.
Less mythology.
Significantly worse priorities.
And attending
my third college.
The council pauses.
Third?
Children.
Education and I had a complicated relationship.
Most people go to college for obvious reasons.
Education.
A degree.
Perhaps a diploma.
Professional development.
The acquisition of knowledge.
The building of a future.
Beautiful things.
The council nods approvingly.
I looked at college
and saw something else.
Opportunity.
The council becomes concerned.
To party.
The council sighs.
Children.
To Old Nuo,
a college was less an educational institution
and more a three year subscription service.
Benefits included:
Like minded junkies.
College pubs.
Cheap alcohol.
People willing to make terrible decisions on weekdays.
And occasionally
classes.
The council looks offended.
Classes were the advertisements.
You endured them when necessary to access the premium features.
The council collapses.
I barely attended.
That is not dramatic exaggeration.
Children.
If there was a lecture at ten
and a pub opening at eleven,
my educational priorities became very clear around ten fifty five.
The council nods.
Academic excellence remained elusive.
Pub attendance?
Exceptional.
Consistent.
Reliable.
If universities awarded degrees based on presence at drinking establishments,
children,
I would have graduated with honors.
The council applauds reluctantly.
But this philosophy created a problem.
Attendance.
The council leans forward.
You see,
colleges have this strange expectation.
Apparently,
you are meant to be there.
Frequently.
The council gasps.
Ridiculous.
I know.
And after repeatedly choosing the sacred halls of alcohol over the sacred halls of education,
the numbers began turning against me.
Attendance shortage.
Children.
Two words capable of terrifying even the most committed academic delinquent.
Because eventually,
the institution stops politely suggesting you attend class
and begins saying things like:
Withheld.
The council grows solemn.
That word mattered.
Exams?
Maybe not.
Semester?
Problem.
All those carefully ignored classes suddenly becoming administratively relevant.
And University Nuo,
despite his impressive dedication to self sabotage,
did possess one survival instinct.
Avoid consequences whenever they become visible.
The council nods.
Then
a solution appeared.
Adjacent.
The council leans forward.
Not directly intended as a solution.
But close enough.
A university organized trip.
Bangalore.
Film festival.
Children.
A respectable cultural event.
Cinema.
Art.
Discussion.
Filmmakers.
Students engaging with the medium.
The sort of academic excursion one might attend because one loves film.
The council looks toward me.
Naturally,
I decided I wasn’t going.
The council erupts.
OF COURSE.
Why would I?
University trip.
Schedules.
Faculty.
Structure.
Potentially waking up at responsible hours.
Children.
Nothing in that sentence appealed to me.
My internal response was immediate.
No.
Absolutely not.
Enjoy your cinema.
I have pubs to support.
Then
the incentive was revealed.
The council grows quiet.
Three weeks attendance.
The council pauses.
Three weeks?
Three.
Weeks.
Attendance.
For everyone who went.
The council erupts.
Children.
Suddenly,
cinema became fascinating.
Film?
Art.
Culture?
Essential.
Bangalore?
A necessary component of my personal academic development.
The council laughs.
Curiosity piqued.
Not cinematic curiosity.
Administrative curiosity.
Three weeks.
Do you understand what three weeks of attendance meant to a man who treated classrooms like optional side content?
The council nods.
Salvation.
I sat there.
Processing.
Then slowly
looked to my right.
Sharky.
The council turns.
Children.
Meet Sharky.
Friend.
College companion.
And,
incidentally
my dealer.
The council becomes interested.
Naturally.
Of course my dealer attended university with me.
Efficiency.
Why travel across town for supply when higher education can provide vertically integrated services?
The council sighs.
And Sharky,
through an astonishing coincidence,
also suffered from attendance shortage.
The council pauses.
Coincidence?
Fine.
Not astonishing.
Predictable.
He and I had perhaps made several overlapping academic choices.
Meaning:
we both understood the value of three free weeks immediately.
I looked at him.
He looked at me.
No words.
The council begins detecting ancient telepathy.
Then I looked
to the other side.
Axe.
The council turns again.
My girlfriend at the time.
Children.
Axe.
And somehow,
against all statistical expectations
she too lacked attendance.
The council stares at the three of us.
What an academically distinguished social circle.
Exactly.
Three people.
Three attendance shortages.
One film festival.
Three weeks of salvation.
The equation formed itself.
The council opens the quest log.
ATTEND FILM FESTIVAL.
REWARD:
ACADEMIC FORGIVENESS.
Children.
There was no meeting.
No debate.
No:
Should we?
No group chat.
No planning committee.
I looked at Sharky.
Sharky looked at me.
I looked at Axe.
Axe looked back.
And somewhere between the three of us
decision.
The council goes quiet.
Telepathy.
Pure.
The kind only available between people who already know exactly which terrible decision everyone wants to make.
We were going.
All three.
The council applauds.
For cinema?
Absolutely not.
For attendance.
There.
Historical honesty preserved.
Now,
children,
this is where the Bangalore file becomes interesting.
Because the Nuo standing at the beginning of this trip
was not a wanderer.
Not even accidentally,
as far as he knew.
Goa had not happened.
No Laia.
No Archivist photographing sacred geometry.
No Bongo collar becoming a travelling promise.
No Kodaikanal flower teaching me how to walk away from the pack.
No Kasol proving I could survive alone.
No Rishikesh.
No Varkala.
Nothing.
The council grows quiet.
There was no Unbegun.
No council.
No bone bracelet.
No rituals.
No philosophy.
Just a college idiot
who had discovered a loophole in the attendance system.
The council nods.
That was the entire reason he boarded this road.
And perhaps that is why this file deserves to sit at the beginning.
Not because I chose to wander.
I didn’t.
Not because I needed anything from Bangalore.
I didn’t know enough to need anything.
Not because the road called.
Children.
The university did.
With three weeks attendance attached.
The council laughs.
Origins are humiliating things.
We like beginnings to look intentional.
The hero feels a pull.
The horizon whispers.
A choice is made.
Music rises.
But sometimes,
the earliest road begins because an administrator says:
Students who attend will receive three weeks attendance.
And three degenerates simultaneously think:
Holy shit.
Free attendance.
The council erupts.
Thus,
the party formed.
Nuo.
Sharky.
Axe.
Children.
Not yet wanderers.
Not seekers.
Not temporary philosophers of roads.
Three university students whose academic records were in active rebellion.
Heading toward Bangalore.
For a film festival.
Supposedly.
The council raises an eyebrow.
And what did I know about what was coming?
Nothing.
Which is appropriate.
Because eleven years later,
even Present Nuo remembers only fragments.
But one fragment survives above all others.
A particularly absurd one.
But that,
children,
is not Chapter One.
For now,
there are only three attendance starved idiots
looking at each other across a classroom
and silently agreeing to become patrons of cinema.
The university believed it had successfully encouraged cultural enrichment.
The council smiles.
We believed we had found a loophole.
Both statements,
technically,
were true.
And so begins the Sixth Wandering of the Unbegun.
The earliest file currently recovered.
Bangalore.
The Film Festival.
The Attendance Scheme.
Sharky.
Axe.
And University Nuo
an alcoholic college cryptid
who had absolutely no intention of becoming a wanderer
and every intention of avoiding being withheld.
Children.
The road did not begin with curiosity.
It did not begin with grief.
It did not begin with mushrooms.
It began with the most powerful motivational force available to a delinquent university student.
Three weeks attendance.
