Chapter 2 — Scooter
And thus begins Chapter Two.
Now, children.
The quest had been announced.
Camera.
Repair.
Return.
Simple.
The council looks at the supplies.
And naturally
we packed only the essentials.
Joints.
Cigarettes.
Charger.
Power bank.
Lighter.
The council pauses.
Camera repair equipment?
That was the shop’s problem.
Excellent.
Now
transportation.
Bus?
Stitch:
No.
The council nods.
Auto?
Children.
Financial ruin.
We were students.
There is a point where an auto stops being transport
and becomes a hostile takeover of your bank account.
Train?
Considered.
The council leans forward hopefully.
Safe.
Cheap.
Reasonable.
Yes.
Which meant it was eventually discarded.
And after all sensible options had been examined and rejected,
we arrived at
rent a scooter.
The council sighs.
Of course.
Now.
This arrangement had one enormous advantage.
Stitch knew how to drive.
The council applauds.
Competence.
Actual competence.
I could sit behind her
and contribute absolutely nothing.
Children.
My favourite transportation role.
No steering.
No navigation.
No traffic decisions.
No responsibility for keeping two humans upright on a machine balanced on two wheels.
Just
sit.
Enjoy movement.
Perhaps smoke.
Perfect.
The proposal was accepted.
We found the rental place.
Credentials were checked.
Money exchanged hands.
A scooter became temporarily ours.
And
helmet.
One.
The council pauses.
One?
One.
Children.
The Archive records history as history behaved.
It does not improve old risk assessment retroactively.
Stitch mounted.
Helmet apparently belonging to whoever the rental gods deemed most appropriate.
Nuo climbed behind.
And
quest begins.
The scooter pulled away.
Manipal behind us.
Camera shop somewhere ahead.
Stitch driving.
And me?
Children.
Royalty.
I sat behind her,
cigarette in hand,
watching the road.
Zero responsibilities.
Not even navigation.
The council raises an eyebrow.
Not even navigation?
For now.
The council immediately becomes suspicious.
Ominous.
Yes.
But Story Nuo did not hear narrative music.
Story Nuo simply knew
Stitch knew where she was going.
Therefore:
problem solved.
The road stretched ahead.
Wind.
Traffic.
Buildings thinning and returning.
Roadside things appearing and vanishing.
And for roughly an hour
peace.
Children.
Actual peace.
No catastrophe.
No wrong turn worth remembering.
No strange man appearing from a ditch.
No goat.
No cow transport.
No missing vehicle.
Just two friends riding.
Jokes exchanged.
Cigarettes passed between us.
Sometimes joints.
The council sighs.
Yes.
Sometimes joints.
The expedition proceeded under the traditional university travel philosophy of:
We will make decisions later.
For now
movement.
And gods,
movement is pleasant when you are not responsible for it.
The scooter leaned into turns.
Stitch handled traffic.
I sat behind,
occasionally talking,
occasionally smoking,
occasionally simply watching the world move around us.
Children.
A good system.
Then
problem.
The council hears dramatic music.
Checkpoint.
Police.
Silence.
Now.
To most people,
a police checkpoint is
annoying.
Maybe documents.
Maybe a few questions.
Then continue.
To us?
Children.
Different emotional category.
Because distributed across the pockets of two absolute idiots
were roughly
twelve joints.
The council goes still.
Possible outcome?
Complicated.
Very complicated.
Story Nuo’s legal analysis was not sophisticated,
but even he could identify:
Police + Drugs = Bad.
The council nods.
Stitch saw them.
I saw them.
Scooter continued approaching.
And then Stitch turned her head slightly toward me.
The question.
“Do we stop?”
The council freezes.
Children.
This was a moment for wisdom.
A moment for restraint.
A moment for someone to say:
Yes.
We stop.
We behave normally.
We deal with whatever happens.
The council looks at Nuo.
I gave the command.
“Don’t.”
Silence.
The council closes its eyes.
Of course.
Stitch obeyed.
Children.
And thus began one of the shortest lived escape plans in the Archive.
The officers gestured.
Stop.
We did not.
The scooter moved.
A little swerve.
A little dodge.
Forward.
The council watches in disbelief.
For perhaps one glorious second,
Story Nuo believed
freedom.
Then
gate.
The council pauses.
Gate?
Yes.
Children.
A metal gate.
Previously unnoticed.
Hidden in plain sight like architecture had decided to betray us personally.
The police lowered it.
The council erupts.
TREACHERY.
Exactly.
One moment,
possible escape route.
Next
metal bar across road.
And there are many things a scooter can survive.
Potholes.
Bad roads.
Questionable riders.
Children.
A direct philosophical disagreement with a metal checkpoint gate?
No.
So
brakes.
Stop.
The council sighs.
Escape Protocol:
failed.
Duration:
approximately several seconds.
Very efficient.
We remained on the scooter.
Police approached.
And somewhere inside Story Nuo’s head,
all twelve joints suddenly gained the emotional mass of nuclear weapons.
The council nods.
Officer arrives.
Conversation begins.
Or attempts to.
Kannada.
The council pauses.
Ah.
Language.
Yes.
Children.
Now let us review the linguistic resources available to our expedition.
Nuo:
Malayalam.
Barely,
if we are being charitable.
English?
Scholar.
The council nods.
Naturally.
Stitch:
Hindi.
Fluent.
English.
Fluent.
Officer?
Kannada.
Only Kannada.
Silence.
The council looks between all parties.
Diplomacy
collapsed.
Nobody had the correct language patch installed.
The officer spoke.
We stared.
Stitch tried something.
He stared.
Maybe I tried English.
Nothing.
Children.
The great interrogation became
charades.
Hand gesture.
Point.
Documents.
Ah.
Documents.
We understood that.
Rental papers.
License.
Whatever he requested.
Shown.
He looked.
Checked.
The council becomes tense.
Then
scooter.
He inspected it.
Around.
Perhaps registration.
Perhaps rental credentials.
Perhaps simply making sure we had not recently stolen the thing.
Children.
And throughout this
our pockets.
Untouched.
The council grows very quiet.
No frisk.
No search of us.
No sudden:
Empty your pockets.
No miraculous officer discovering the highly incriminating agricultural inventory distributed between two university idiots.
Just
documents.
Scooter.
Gestures.
Confusion.
The council begins praying to whichever administrative deity handles checkpoints.
And then
the officer stepped away.
The gate
rose.
Silence.
Children.
Do you know that movie moment?
Where the prison door opens.
Light pours through.
Choirs begin.
The protagonist realizes freedom still exists.
That.
Except the protagonist was two stoned idiots on a rented scooter
who had just unsuccessfully attempted to ignore a police checkpoint.
The council sighs.
We did not celebrate.
Not there.
Absolutely not.
Stitch climbed back into position.
I settled behind her.
The scooter moved.
Past the checkpoint.
Past the officer.
Past the gate.
Forward.
And both of us
expressionless.
Silent.
Children.
Perfectly normal.
Nothing happened.
We are ordinary citizens.
The council watches.
Five seconds.
Ten.
Fifteen.
Twenty.
Distance.
Enough distance.
Then
we broke.
Laughter.
Not polite laughter.
Not:
Ha, that was close.
Children.
Maniacal.
Pure disbelief.
The kind of laughter where your nervous system has been holding onto panic
and suddenly discovers the crisis has passed
so it converts everything into noise.
Stitch laughing.
Me laughing.
Scooter moving.
Both of us probably sounding completely deranged to anyone we passed.
The council laughs with us.
Because what else?
We had seen the checkpoint.
Been told to stop.
Tried not to stop.
Discovered a hidden gate.
Been forced to stop.
Failed completely to communicate.
Had the scooter inspected.
Had somehow not been personally searched.
And then
released.
Children.
Absurd.
The camera quest had been underway for approximately one hour
and we had already nearly transformed it into:
The Legal Troubles of Stitch and Nuo.
The council nods.
But the quest survived.
We survived.
The scooter survived.
The camera remained in need of repair.
Everything continued.
And naturally
joint.
The council stares.
Immediately?
Children.
Naturally.
The Archive does not endorse the logic.
The Archive merely reports that Story Nuo and Stitch apparently interpreted surviving a police checkpoint as reason to continue exactly as before.
A joint was lit.
Passed.
Smoke.
Laugh.
Road.
The council shakes its head.
No lesson learned.
Not yet.
But relief?
Immense.
The checkpoint shrank behind us.
The world opened again.
Stitch drove.
I sat behind her.
The expedition resumed.
And once more
zero responsibilities.
The council raises an eyebrow.
Still?
Children.
For now.
Stitch knew where she was going.
Or at least,
Story Nuo believed she did.
That was enough.
The road rolled beneath us.
The smoke disappeared into the wind.
And somewhere ahead
camera shop.
Quest marker still active.
The council checks status.
CAMERA:
Still broken.
SHOP:
Still ahead.
POLICE:
Behind.
JOINTS:
Fewer than before.
NUO:
Alive.
STITCH:
Alive.
SCOOTER:
Operational.
MISSION STATUS:
Somehow proceeding.
Children.
Excellent.
On paper,
the expedition remained simple.
Go.
Fix camera.
Return.
But somewhere behind us,
a metal gate had already tried to disagree.
Thus concludes Chapter Two.
The Essential Supplies.
The Rental Scooter.
The Royal Passenger Protocol.
The Cigarette Highway.
The Police Checkpoint.
The Command:
“Don’t.”
The Betrayal Of The Hidden Gate.
The Great Kannada Communication Collapse.
The Unsearched Pockets.
The Rising Gate.
And The Twenty Seconds Of Professional Composure.
Children.
We attempted to avoid a checkpoint.
The checkpoint deployed architecture.
Architecture won.
Then language failed.
Then luck intervened.
And twenty seconds after freedom
we were laughing like lunatics
and continuing down the road.
The council sighs.
Camera quest:
still on.
