Chapter 8 — Search Party
And thus begins Chapter Eight.
Now, children.
There I was.
On the back of the Hybrid.
Heading toward Bangalore.
For how long?
The council reaches for a clock.
Children.
Please.
We had better instruments.
Three joints.
Two cigarettes.
And perhaps another hour.
The council pauses.
That’s not how time works.
It was how mine worked.
All I know with certainty is this:
when the Hybrid finally returned me to the city,
it was evening.
The council looks toward the skyline.
Buildings again.
Traffic.
People.
Noise.
Civilization slowly replacing the rural roads I had spent the day accidentally exploring.
And for the first time since waking up beside cows
something felt familiar.
Not familiar familiar.
I still didn’t know Bangalore.
But city?
Yes.
City I understood.
The Hybrid slowed.
I hopped off.
The council nods.
Legs functioning?
Barely.
Brain?
Extremely high.
Energy?
Extinct.
I thanked the driver.
Then paid him.
More than he had asked.
The council pauses.
Royalty?
No.
Gratitude.
Children.
You cannot put a proper price on rescue.
This man had found a hoodie wearing idiot sitting beside a rural road with a dog,
barely capable of explaining where he wanted to go,
and transported him all the way back toward Bangalore.
Whatever amount he asked for
he had earned more.
The council nods.
So I paid.
Thanked him again.
And watched the Hybrid leave.
Children.
And suddenly
alone.
Again.
But now in Bangalore.
Progress.
The council applauds cautiously.
I stood there.
Exhausted.
High.
Dirty probably.
Phone still dead.
And wanted exactly one thing.
Bed.
The council cheers.
Finally.
A sensible objective.
Charge phone.
Sleep.
Wake up later.
Perhaps ask someone what the fuck had happened to me.
Perfect.
There was one tiny problem.
I did not know where the accommodation was.
The council sighs.
Of course.
Not the road.
Not the area.
Not even the name.
Children.
I had entered that cursed building once.
Looked at the mattresses.
Insulted the air conditioner.
Refused to enter the toilet.
Then left.
I had retained no useful identifying information.
So I could not even perform the normal lost person procedure.
“Excuse me, where is Hotel Whatever?”
Because Hotel Whatever had literally become its archival name.
The council nods.
But
I knew one thing.
The film festival.
Or at least,
the phrase:
Bangalore Film Festival.
The council leans forward.
Enough.
I began asking people.
And by asking,
children,
I mean I deployed an advanced communication technique.
“Bangalore Film Festival?”
Then stare.
The council pauses.
That’s the whole sentence?
Yes.
I would say the words.
Look at the person.
And wait for them to either:
Point.
Give directions.
Or make the universal facial expression meaning:
I have no idea what this man wants.
The council laughs.
Effective?
Eventually.
I wandered.
Asked.
Pointed.
Got pointed at.
Walked.
Asked someone else.
Corrected direction.
Kept going.
Children.
This was navigation before the Unbegun learned how to romanticize being lost.
No maps.
No GPS.
No phone.
Just strangers.
Fragments.
Movement.
And persistence.
Eventually
there.
The council rises.
The festival.
Sweet,
glorious home base.
Children.
Never before had I been so happy to see a place whose films I had actively avoided watching.
The council erupts.
CINEMA SAVES NUO.
I had returned.
Alive.
Whole.
Mostly.
I should have immediately found faculty.
Or Axe.
Or Sharky.
Perhaps announced:
Hello.
I accidentally disappeared.
Please direct me toward mattress prison.
The council nods.
That would be logical.
Instead
I saw people.
A group.
Moving quickly.
Frantically.
The council leans forward.
Several students.
Maybe locals.
People walking with purpose.
Looking around.
Checking streets.
Buildings.
Children.
Interesting.
So naturally,
I followed.
The council pauses.
Why?
Curiosity.
I walked beside them.
Picked one random man.
Asked:
“What’s up?”
He explained.
A student was missing.
The council grows quiet.
Missing?
Yes.
A student from some university group had disappeared.
People had been looking for him.
This
apparently
was a search party.
The council becomes sympathetic.
Children.
My immediate reaction was:
“Oh shit.”
Some poor bastard was lost.
The council stares at me.
Yes.
I know.
But University Nuo did not.
Remember,
I had spent the entire day thinking my disappearance was a private inconvenience.
I had no working phone.
No concept of time.
No idea anyone even knew I was gone.
As far as I was concerned,
some other idiot had managed to get himself lost too.
The council slowly covers its face.
And children
solidarity.
I knew what that felt like now.
Lost.
Confused.
Unable to contact anyone.
Alone in a place you don’t understand.
So I thought:
I’ll help.
The council goes completely silent.
And thus began
perhaps the greatest quest ever undertaken by the Unbegun.
FIND THE MISSING STUDENT.
The council cannot breathe.
Children.
I joined the search party.
Looking.
Properly.
We checked buildings.
Streets.
Little corners.
Places someone might have wandered into.
The occasional wooded patch where the city allowed one to exist.
I looked around with actual concern.
Maybe called out.
Maybe asked people.
The Archive does not preserve every detail.
But I helped.
Enthusiastically.
The council erupts.
YOU WERE LOOKING FOR YOURSELF.
Patience.
I had not received that patch note yet.
So there we were.
A group of concerned humans
searching Bangalore
for one missing university student.
And among them
the missing university student.
The council collapses.
Children.
Even by the standards of the Unbegun,
this is advanced.
Getting lost?
Standard.
Needing rescue?
Common.
Failing to realize people are searching for you?
Understandable.
Joining your own search party?
The council struggles for terminology.
Mythic tier idiocy.
Exactly.
We searched.
For how long?
Unknown.
I had already used all reliable time measuring substances.
But eventually
a faculty member saw me.
The council freezes.
Noticed me.
Stopped.
Then power walked toward me.
Children.
You know the walk.
The one where an adult is moving fast enough to express rage
but not quite running because running would imply loss of institutional dignity.
The council leans back.
He approached.
His face
bad.
Very bad.
Then he began scolding me.
The council erupts.
Children.
Holy shit.
Words.
Many.
Fast.
Angry.
Where were you?
What happened?
Do you know how long people have been looking for you?
What were you doing?
Why didn’t you contact anyone?
The council pauses.
Did you have answers?
No.
Absolutely none.
My defense consisted largely of:
Dead phone.
Cow.
Somewhere.
Hybrid.
The council stares.
A strong case.
And somewhere during this verbal assault,
the realization finally arrived.
The missing student.
The one everyone had been searching for.
The person this entire group was looking for.
Children.
Me.
The council falls silent.
I looked around.
At the people.
At the faculty member.
At myself.
Then mentally replayed the last portion of the evening.
A man tells me a student is missing.
I say:
“Oh shit.”
I join.
I search.
I attempt to assist.
The council erupts so violently several imaginary members require medical attention.
Children.
I had unknowingly joined a search party
looking for myself.
There are levels to being lost.
This is the final form.
The council writes upon the archive:
LOST STATUS:
SELF REFERENTIAL.
Even Present Nuo,
with all the accumulated disasters of the Wanderings,
has difficulty respecting the achievement.
The man who missed bus stops.
The man who climbed the wrong mountain.
The man who followed dogs.
The man who got launched off a jet ski.
Children.
None of them compare.
University Nuo once participated in his own rescue operation.
The council applauds through tears.
The faculty member,
mercifully,
did not leave me there to continue contributing.
He escorted me back toward the venue.
Children.
At this point,
I had lost all authority over my movements.
Fair.
He gathered people.
Students.
Locals.
Whoever had been helping.
And announced:
Found.
The council cheers.
The missing student had been recovered.
By
technically
the search party he himself had joined.
But children,
the faculty member did something kind.
Something I appreciate eleven years later.
He did not announce that detail.
The council nods solemnly.
Good man.
He could have said:
“And apparently the idiot was SEARCHING WITH YOU.”
He could have publicly immortalized my stupidity on the spot.
He chose restraint.
Perhaps because he was tired.
Perhaps because murder remained illegal.
Perhaps because he saw my face and decided the universe had humiliated me sufficiently.
The council approves.
Either way
thank you, sir.
Then
Axe.
Sharky.
The council grows quiet.
There they were.
My people.
The two I had fallen asleep beside.
The last familiar faces before the Archive turned into cows.
And children,
walking toward them,
I genuinely didn’t know what to expect.
Had they even noticed?
Obviously,
in hindsight,
yes.
Search party.
Faculty meltdown.
But in that moment,
my brain had not finished processing the scale of things.
Maybe they were furious.
Maybe relieved.
Maybe both.
Maybe Sharky had assumed I’d wandered off to find alcohol.
Maybe Axe thought I had abandoned the group.
I had no idea.
So I approached.
Looked at them.
And did the simplest thing.
I hugged them.
Both.
The council grows soft.
And they hugged me back.
Children.
Tight.
No immediate interrogation.
No:
Where the fuck were you?
No lecture.
Just
there you are.
The council listens.
And for one little second,
everything settled.
Lost.
Found.
Home base.
Pack restored.
Then
slap.
The council pauses.
Axe.
Across the face.
The council erupts.
Children.
Before I could fully process betrayal
slap.
Other side.
Sharky.
The council collapses.
Two.
Perfectly distributed.
No words.
No speech.
No explanation.
Just:
Hug.
Hug.
Slap.
Slap.
The council nods.
An ancient emotional language.
Meaning:
We love you.
We were worried.
You absolute fucking idiot.
All conveyed efficiently through palms.
Children.
And honestly?
Fair.
Very fair.
I stood there.
Cheeks probably stinging.
Looked at them.
They looked at me.
No need to ask whether they had worried anymore.
Message received.
Loudly.
The council smiles.
That might have been the first time I understood what my disappearing act looked like from the other side.
For me?
An adventure.
A terrifying one,
yes.
But still:
Wake on cart.
Find coffee.
Walk.
Dog.
Hybrid.
Return.
A sequence.
For them?
I was simply gone.
No call.
No message.
No explanation.
No idea whether I was safe.
The council grows quiet.
Later Wanderings would teach me how strange it feels to be alone.
Bangalore taught me something else first.
Being the one who disappears
means someone else may be standing still,
wondering if you’re coming back.
The council listens.
Did University Nuo absorb this profound lesson?
Children.
Probably not.
Let’s respect chronology.
At the time,
I was mostly relieved nobody had killed me.
The council laughs.
But Present Nuo can see it.
The hug before the slap.
That order matters.
They were angry
because they had been scared.
And somewhere underneath the college degeneracy,
the pubs,
the joints,
the attendance schemes
there was love.
Messy.
Violent.
Slightly concussive love.
But love.
The council nods.
Children.
The earliest recovered solo wandering had ended.
Not by choice.
Not with a train ticket.
Not with some triumphant realization that I could survive alone.
I had awakened somewhere unknown,
walked terrified,
accepted kindness from strangers,
found my way back to Bangalore
and then helped search for myself.
The council begins laughing again.
Thus concludes Chapter Eight.
The Three Joint Hybrid Ride.
The Festival Navigation Technique.
The Missing Student.
The Search Party.
And The Revelation That The Missing Student Was Me.
Children.
I had survived rural Karnataka.
I had returned to Bangalore without a phone.
I had found the festival through nothing but names,
gestures,
and stubborn movement.
That alone would have been a respectable origin story.
Then I joined my own search party.
The council sighs.
Of course I did.
And when I finally returned to Axe and Sharky,
I received exactly what I deserved.
Love.
Relief.
And one slap from each side.
