Chapter 2 — The Sign
And thus begins Chapter Two.
Now, children.
There I stood.
Threshold crossed.
Ticket acquired.
Civilisation behind me.
Wildlife Safari: Controlled Edition
ahead.
So I stepped forward.
One foot.
Then another.
Then another.
The council watches carefully.
And?
I walked.
Excellent.
No immediate disaster.
No police.
No missing vehicle.
No hostile architecture.
Just
walking.
Children.
A promising start.
And almost immediately,
the zoo presented its first challenge.
Two paths.
Left.
Right.
The council leans forward.
A choice.
Yes.
But conveniently,
there was a sign.
The sign pointed
left.
Instructions written beneath it.
In Malayalam.
The council turns toward Nuo.
Ah.
My ancestral tongue.
Kerala.
Home.
Surely
Children.
Please.
I can speak Malayalam.
Mostly.
Good enough.
Enough to live.
Enough to order food.
Enough to complain.
Enough to communicate with family.
Enough to make myself understood unless the conversation suddenly becomes sophisticated and I must retreat into English like a frightened colonial administrator.
The council nods.
But reading?
Different beast.
Technically
yes.
I can read Malayalam.
The council perks up.
Progress.
Slowly.
With great effort.
Painfully.
Imagine archaeological translation.
One symbol.
Then another.
Combine.
Wait.
Was that letter attached to this one?
Go back.
Try again.
Children.
By the time I finish reading a sentence,
the sentence has aged.
The council laughs.
Consider public transport.
Bus arrives.
Malayalam destination board.
Nuo squints.
Begins decoding.
Ka
zh
a
The bus departs.
Silence.
The council watches it disappear.
Destination successfully identified?
Yes.
Approximately thirty metres too late.
Excellent.
I never claimed competence at being a good Kerala man.
The council accepts the disclaimer.
So there I stood,
inside Trivandrum Zoo,
looking at a Malayalam sign pointing left.
Could I decode the full instructions?
Probably.
Eventually.
Was I going to?
No.
Because the arrow already contained the important information.
That way.
The council nods.
Good enough.
Left.
Presumably the intended zoo route.
Perhaps a structured circuit.
Maybe the designers had carefully arranged the experience so visitors moved through habitats in a sensible progression.
Perhaps there was an elegant flow.
Beginning.
Middle.
End.
Children.
Humans love ordering experiences.
Enter here.
Follow arrows.
See thing one.
Then thing two.
Then thing three.
Do not disturb chronology.
Very civilized.
I looked left.
Then
looked around.
And saw it.
The council follows my gaze.
Aquarium.
Pause.
Aquarium?
Aquarium.
On the right.
Children.
Not subtly hidden.
Sitting there.
Inviting.
Fish contained within architecture.
The aquatic kingdom.
And immediately,
my internal map changed.
The sign said left.
The aquarium existed right.
The council sees the conflict.
What did the instructions say?
No idea.
Could have said:
START HERE.
Could have said:
THIS WAY FOR THE COMPLETE ROUTE.
Could have said:
PLEASE DO NOT IMMEDIATELY IGNORE THIS SIGN.
The council laughs.
But the aquarium?
Right there.
And I thought:
I’ll do that first.
The council pauses.
Why?
Because it felt like dessert.
Children.
The zoo
main course.
Large.
Land animals.
Paths.
Enclosures.
Several hours perhaps.
Aquarium?
Little side structure.
Contained.
A bonus.
Aquatic dessert after the zoological meal.
And I have never understood why dessert must come last.
The council sighs.
Of course you haven’t.
Why should joy be sequenced according to culinary bureaucracy?
If cake is available now
eat cake now.
If aquarium is available now
see fish now.
Simple.
So I stood there and thought:
Aquarium first.
Then I’ll come back.
Then left path.
Perfect.
The council opens the itinerary.
OFFICIAL ROUTE:
Left.
NUO ROUTE:
Right briefly, then probably left.
Reason:
Dessert.
Approved.
Then another thought appeared.
Wait.
Is that the wrong way to experience the zoo?
The council sits upright.
An unexpected concern for proper procedure.
Yes.
For perhaps three seconds,
I entertained the possibility that there existed
a correct zoo order.
Maybe the aquarium was intended as an ending.
Maybe you were supposed to emerge from several hours of mammals and reptiles,
weary,
emotionally fulfilled,
and then receive fish as closing credits.
Maybe going there first would somehow
ruin the narrative.
Children.
Stop.
The council freezes.
There is no right way to have fun.
There.
Problem solved.
The council applauds.
This was not school.
No teacher holding clipboard.
No guide herding thirty children through predetermined educational sequencing.
No:
Nuo, the aquarium comes later.
No.
I was alone.
Adult.
Free.
The council raises an eyebrow.
Fully functional?
Mostly.
Important qualifier.
But functionally enough to buy my own zoo ticket.
Functionally enough to choose left or right.
Functionally enough that nobody possessed lawful authority to tell me:
You are enjoying the animals incorrectly.
The council nods.
And besides
who was going to stop me?
This was not Wonderla.
Children.
Wonderla had faculty.
Teachers.
Schedules.
Land rides now.
Water rides later.
Groups.
Rules.
Timetables.
Then twelve year old Nuo saw the wave pool,
quietly detached from civilization,
and accidentally became missing.
The council remembers.
Here?
No faculty.
No school bus waiting.
No teacher eventually discovering that one child had spent several hours living an independent aquatic life.
No search party.
At least
none planned.
The council looks suspicious.
Do not foreshadow.
Correct.
As far as Story Nuo knew,
nobody was responsible for keeping track of him.
He had entered alone.
He could leave alone.
He could walk in circles if desired.
Children.
The freedom was almost embarrassingly complete.
And perhaps because the zoo was so close to home,
the act felt even more casual.
I had not travelled far enough to feel obligated to maximize anything.
No:
I came all this distance,
therefore I must see everything efficiently.
No expensive flight.
No hotel.
No limited vacation schedule.
The zoo was ten minutes away.
If I somehow missed half of it?
Come back another day.
The council nods.
That is a luxury distance provides when the distance is almost none.
So I stopped negotiating with an imaginary rulebook.
Left path?
Later.
Aquarium?
Now.
And turned right.
Children.
This is not rebellion.
Let us be clear.
I did not overthrow the zoological establishment.
I simply ignored an arrow.
The council lowers the revolutionary flags.
Good.
But there was something satisfying about it.
The first decision inside the zoo
was not:
What am I supposed to do?
It was:
What do I want to see first?
The aquarium.
Easy.
So
walk.
Toward fish.
The council nods.
And as I approached,
I had no checklist.
Again.
No fish species I desperately needed to see.
No childhood favourite.
No:
If there is no shark, this visit is a failure.
Children.
I knew almost nothing.
Aquarium meant:
water.
Fish.
Perhaps something weird.
Excellent.
That was sufficient.
The building sat there like a little separate world attached to the larger one.
Outside
trees.
Paths.
Zoo.
Inside
presumably blue light,
glass,
and creatures who had successfully rejected land.
The council approves their decision.
Reasonable.
I walked toward it.
And perhaps this is where the Fourteenth Wandering began feeling familiar,
though I was not yet calling it that.
Not because something dramatic happened.
Because the first fork arrived,
the world pointed one way,
and curiosity pointed another.
The council smiles.
Now.
Do not turn this into destiny.
Right.
Story Nuo’s thought process remained considerably less poetic:
Fish first.
The council approves.
Fish first.
Because dessert first.
Because I can.
Because no faculty.
Because adult.
Mostly.
And children,
that is a remarkably satisfying sentence after years of institutional life.
I can.
Not in the grand existential sense.
Not:
I am master of my fate.
Calm down.
Simply:
I want to walk right.
So I will walk right.
The council nods.
Sometimes freedom is extremely small.
It is choosing the aquarium before the zoo route.
And yet small freedoms are still freedoms.
Especially when nobody is there to ask:
Where are you going?
What are you doing?
Why aren’t you following the group?
There was no group.
Just Nuo.
One ticket.
One mildly altered brain.
And one aquatic side quest visible approximately several metres away.
The council updates the quest log.
MAIN QUEST:
Zoo.
OPTIONAL QUEST:
Aquarium.
NUO:
Immediately doing optional quest first.
Classic.
Very.
I kept walking.
The sign behind me continued pointing left,
presumably disappointed.
The council imagines it.
THIS WAY.
Nuo:
Later.
THIS WAY.
Nuo:
Fish.
The council laughs.
And somewhere in that tiny act,
the day loosened.
There would be no proper order.
No checklist.
No optimized route.
If something looked interesting,
I would go there.
If another thing looked more interesting halfway there?
Potential rerouting.
The council becomes concerned.
This sounds familiar.
Does it?
Perhaps.
But again
Story Nuo was not philosophizing.
He was going to the aquarium.
Children.
Let the man see the fish.
So there I went.
Right path.
Toward aquatic dessert.
My first zoo visit had lasted perhaps minutes
and I had already rejected the suggested route.
The council sighs approvingly.
The Archive records:
Expected.
And the wonderful thing?
Nothing prevented me.
No teacher materialized.
No guard blocked the path.
No announcement called:
NUO, RETURN TO THE DESIGNATED EXPERIENCE.
The zoo simply allowed me to wander.
The council pauses at the word.
Hmm.
No.
Not yet.
We earn that later.
For now
I walked toward the aquarium.
Behind me,
the proper route waited.
Ahead,
fish.
Children.
Fish won.
Thus concludes Chapter Two.
The Threshold.
The First Steps.
The Fork.
The Malayalam Sign.
The Extremely Slow Literacy Protocol.
The Left Arrow.
The Aquarium On The Right.
The Culinary Theory Of Zoo Navigation.
The Brief Crisis Over Correct Fun.
The Absence Of Faculty.
And The Decision:
Dessert First.
Children.
The sign pointed left.
The aquarium sat right.
I considered the correct route.
Then remembered
there is no correct way to have fun.
Besides.
I am an adult.
Mostly.
So I turned right.
And went to see the fish.
