Chapter 7 — Hybrid
And thus begins Chapter Seven.
Now, children.
There I was.
Walking.
Cigarette in hand.
Dead phone in pocket.
Wallet intact.
Three cigarettes reduced to fewer cigarettes.
Four joints reduced to
well.
We’ll get there.
And somewhere ahead,
according to a tea stall man whose directions I only partially understood,
was a railway station.
The council nods.
Simple objective.
Find station.
Find train.
Find Bangalore.
Find university.
Pretend absolutely none of this had happened.
Children.
Excellent plan.
There was only one problem.
I was terrified.
The council grows quiet.
Actually terrified.
Because until that morning,
I had never really needed to navigate the world alone.
Not like this.
Family knew where to go.
Friends knew where to go.
Faculty knew where to go.
Authority figures,
better adults,
people with functioning logistics departments
someone always existed ahead of me.
I followed.
That was the system.
Children.
University Nuo was not independent.
He was portable.
The council laughs softly.
Move him from place to place.
Feed occasionally.
Prevent catastrophic decisions.
And he would probably survive.
But now?
Nobody.
No Sharky.
No Axe.
No faculty.
No map.
No working phone.
No idea what village,
town,
district,
dimension,
or cattle based transportation network I had accidentally entered.
Just me.
The council listens.
And panic hovered.
Very close.
That little internal voice saying:
You’re fucked.
You don’t know where you are.
You don’t know how far Bangalore is.
Nobody knows where you are.
You cannot call anyone.
Children.
All true.
Completely true.
But panic serves no one.
I don’t remember consciously deciding that.
I doubt University Nuo possessed language that sensible.
But instinctively?
I knew.
Stop thinking.
Move.
The council nods.
One step.
Then another.
That was all.
No need to solve the entire journey.
Just get closer.
So I walked.
Road.
Fields.
Small buildings.
Signboards I couldn’t read.
People occasionally passing.
And every few minutes,
I checked my dead phone as though electricity might spontaneously regenerate through optimism.
The council sighs.
It did not.
Eventually,
I required emotional support.
The council becomes concerned.
And naturally
joint.
The council buries its face.
Children.
I found a stack of hay.
Moved behind it.
Like a criminal.
Not a skilled criminal.
A paranoid little shit.
The council watches.
Look left.
Look right.
Behind.
Forward.
Possibly upward.
Because apparently law enforcement might descend from the heavens.
Satisfied that nobody was watching,
I lit the joint.
Took a drag.
Then another.
Children.
Did this improve my navigation?
Absolutely not.
Did it make the existential crisis slightly more entertaining?
Yes.
The council reluctantly accepts.
I smoked quickly.
Still looking around in every direction.
A hoodie wearing university idiot hiding behind hay in rural Karnataka
getting high before continuing his quest toward an unknown railway station.
Children.
If ever there were security footage of this moment,
I would pay money to destroy it.
The council laughs.
Joint finished.
Courage
chemically adjusted.
And onward.
Then
dog.
The council immediately cheers.
Children.
You already know the protocol.
I saw him.
Stopped.
Pat head.
Scratch ears.
“Who’s a good boy?”
The dog accepted.
Because dogs possess excellent judgment.
The council raises an eyebrow.
Usually.
And then
he followed me.
The council grows quiet.
Children.
Relief.
Actual relief.
Not because this dog knew Bangalore.
Not because he could call help.
Not because he possessed money.
But suddenly,
I was not alone.
The mathematics changed.
One terrified idiot?
Bad.
One terrified idiot plus dog?
Adventuring party.
The council applauds.
Canine Protection Protocol:
ACTIVE.
We walked.
Me.
Dog.
Cigarette occasionally.
Road stretching ahead.
And for the first time that morning,
the fear loosened a little.
Because dogs do that.
Children.
They don’t solve problems.
They simply make problems feel less solitary.
The council nods.
For perhaps an hour,
we walked.
Maybe less.
Maybe more.
Ancient chronology remains unreliable.
But it felt long.
Very long.
The sun moved.
My legs grew heavier.
The road kept refusing to become a station.
And eventually
I collapsed.
The council panics.
Not physically.
Relax.
Not:
Vision blackening.
Heart failure.
Dehydration.
No.
The other kind.
The deeply human kind.
The:
Fuck this quest.
Collapse.
The council nods in understanding.
Children.
I sat down at the side of the road.
That was it.
Quest paused.
Hero unavailable.
The dog climbed close.
Eventually,
partly onto my lap.
And I remained there.
For
longer than I care to admit.
The council checks the clock.
Unknown.
Children.
I had reached the limit of Forward.
Not forever.
Just for now.
Sometimes courage isn’t standing back up immediately.
Sometimes courage is sitting beside a road with a dog
until your brain stops screaming.
The council grows quiet.
So I sat.
Pet dog.
Stared at road.
Thought absolutely nothing useful.
Then
engine.
The council looks up.
A vehicle approached.
Not quite auto.
Not quite truck.
Something in between.
Children.
Imagine an auto rickshaw and a pickup truck had a child.
The council pauses.
Concerned child?
Extremely.
Front:
Auto.
Back:
Cargo bed.
A hybrid creature.
The council names it immediately.
The Hybrid.
Naturally.
It slowed.
Then stopped.
Directly in front of me.
The driver looked at me.
Children.
Consider the visual.
Rural Karnataka.
Roadside.
Dog on lap.
Hoodie.
Jeans.
Headphones around neck.
Expression suggesting several poor decisions had recently occurred.
I did not exactly blend in.
The council nods.
Tourist.
Lost tourist.
Very lost tourist.
A human wallet with panic in his eyes.
The driver said something.
Hindi.
The council freezes.
Hindi?
Children.
I have never been happier to hear Hindi in my life.
Not because I speak Hindi well.
I don’t.
But survival phrases?
Yes.
Enough.
Kannada?
Perhaps half a word.
And I am being generous.
But Hindi?
Lost.
Bangalore.
Train.
Money.
Help.
The essentials.
The council applauds linguistic minimalism.
He asked if I was lost.
I nodded.
“Yes.”
Then added the most important qualifier.
“Very.”
The council laughs.
Accurate.
He looked at me.
Probably looked at the road.
Probably calculated exactly how profitable my desperation might be.
Children.
Again
hoodie.
Jeans.
Headphones.
City idiot.
No functioning map.
It would not have taken a criminal mastermind to understand:
This man will pay for transportation.
The council nods.
The driver offered a lift.
I said yes.
Immediately.
The dog?
The council grows quiet.
Children.
The Archive does not preserve the goodbye.
Perhaps he wandered off.
Perhaps I scratched his head one last time.
Perhaps he simply decided his escort mission was complete.
But he had done his job.
He had gotten me through the part where I thought I couldn’t move.
The council smiles.
Canine Protection Protocol:
COMPLETE.
The driver gestured toward the cargo area.
Hop in.
Children.
So I did.
No seat.
No belt.
No question about whether this was technically public transport.
Just metal floor.
Open back.
Road.
I climbed in.
The vehicle moved.
The council nods.
Rescue.
Now.
Where was this lift taking me?
The sensible answer:
Railway station.
The council leans forward.
Shorter.
Cheaper.
Then train to Bangalore.
Efficient.
Logical.
University Nuo did not choose this.
The council sighs.
Of course not.
I leaned forward and asked one word.
“Bangalore?”
The driver looked back.
“Yes.
Bangalore.”
The council goes silent.
Children.
Direct.
This hybrid beast was apparently heading all the way to Bangalore.
No train.
No station.
No additional quest.
Just:
Sit here.
Eventually Bangalore.
The council erupts.
FAST TRAVEL ALTERNATIVE ACQUIRED.
I abandoned the railway station mission instantly.
Why involve trains
when the universe had delivered a cow adjacent cargo taxi directly to my feet?
The council nods.
Questionable logic.
Effective.
And off we went.
Children.
This was an experience.
Standing in the back.
Sometimes sitting.
Sometimes lying down because the road eventually convinced my spine that horizontal was preferable.
Rural Karnataka stretching behind us.
Fields.
Roads.
Trees.
Buildings.
Wind.
The occasional bump attempting to remove me from the vehicle entirely.
The council becomes concerned.
Comfortable?
Absolutely not.
Fun?
Strangely
yes.
The council smiles.
That combination.
Uncomfortable yet fun.
One of the earliest formulas of the Wanderings.
My body complained.
My brain?
Fascinated.
Because I had never travelled like this.
No bus seat.
No train window.
No family car.
Just the open back of a strange hybrid vehicle
carrying me through roads I couldn’t name
toward a city I had accidentally misplaced.
Children.
And somewhere during that ride,
fear began changing shape.
The council listens.
I was still lost.
Technically.
Still unable to contact anyone.
Still had no idea what had happened overnight.
But movement had returned.
And movement,
even then,
did something.
As long as I was going somewhere,
panic had less room.
The council nods.
Perhaps the earliest version of a lesson Kasol would teach properly years later.
But University Nuo did not think that.
He thought:
This is kinda cool.
The council laughs.
Wind hit my face.
Headphones bounced around my neck.
The vehicle rattled.
I shifted positions.
Sit.
Stand.
Lie down.
Sit again.
The driver drove.
And I watched rural Karnataka slide past.
Children.
Not because I wanted to sightsee.
Because there was nothing else to do.
No phone battery.
No music.
No map.
Nothing to distract me.
So I looked.
Actually looked.
The council grows quiet.
Road.
Fields.
People.
Places I would never know the names of.
A world I had somehow entered by accident.
And for perhaps the first time in my life,
I was not being delivered somewhere according to a plan I understood.
I was simply trusting movement.
The council notices.
The earliest seed.
Again
do not over romanticize.
I was still scared.
Still a college junkie.
Still carrying joints in my pocket.
Still entirely dependent on a stranger to return me to civilization.
But something had shifted.
I had awakened somewhere impossible.
Had no map.
No contact.
No guide.
And somehow
I was getting back.
The council grows quiet.
Not elegantly.
Certainly not intelligently.
But back.
Perhaps that matters.
The Hybrid rattled onward.
Bangalore somewhere ahead.
My university somewhere inside Bangalore.
My friends presumably discovering, or about to discover, that one member of the party had vanished.
And children
I still had absolutely no idea
how much trouble my disappearance had caused.
The council leans forward.
That revelation was waiting.
But not yet.
For now,
there was only the road.
The strange vehicle.
The wind.
And University Nuo,
occasionally lying flat in the cargo bed,
watching the sky pass above him
as a stranger drove him toward Bangalore.
Thus concludes Chapter Seven.
The Haystack Joint.
The Canine Escort.
The Fuck This Quest Collapse.
The Hindi Miracle.
And The Hybrid.
Children.
The earliest Unbegun had been stranded somewhere he could not name.
Terrified.
Phone dead.
No map.
No one to follow.
So he did the only thing available.
Walked.
Then stopped.
Then accepted help.
And somewhere along the way,
without realizing it,
learned something that would become painfully familiar in every wandering after.
You do not always need to know the whole road.
Sometimes you only need to know
forward.
