Munmun

by Jesse Andrews

  More specifically I guess it’s Markfive.

  Teaching me was now a whole schoolproject for him, Can You Cure Innumeracy At Age Fifteen? A Schoolproject by Markfive. Apparently middlerich schools force students to do constant projects and enterprises, lastyear he got way too ambitious with a project of Touringtest For Dogs And Robots, Can A Dog Believe A Robot Is A Dog?, What About Can A Robot Believe A Dog Is A Robot.

  “Such a dumb idea, I was so drugged when I thought of that,” mourned Markfive, “but my teacher said brilliant, goforit, it will genralize the touringtest,” he got a terrible grade, no dogs or robots fooled each other, I mean forstarters how can you even tell what robots or dogs believe.

  But don’t fret, this project is going to go way better, Warner I know you feel like you’re not learning fast enough but druggy tweaky Markfive has a secret weapon for you, you’ll never guess what it is, oh wait actually it’s super easy to guess, the secret weapon is a bunch of drugs.

  “I’m on studydrugs now everyday, couldn’t function without tobehonest,” he admitted.

  “How much do I take,” I asked, cradling the giant studypill.

  “Let’s try thismuch,” he guessed, shaving off a sliver.

  I ate the sliver, he gulped the pill, that thing kicked in prettyquick, bop bang broom, it’s mathtime.

  Math math math, let’s bury ourselves in these cozy problems, unsatisfiable hunger for tasty math, everyone’s invited to this party in the mathzone, holycrap it’s dinnertime, we didn’t even have lunch.

  Nextday we did it again, dayafterthat, dayafterthat, life became a blur of math and facts.

  Good side of the studydrugs, I was learning math pretty fast, the room of my brain had scaled up, no longer cluttery and clattery like a middlepoor pawnshop. Instead it was a smooth roomy chamber like in the bank with clever sliding shelves and drawers. Every new thing Markfive showed me, I could find an empty shelf to put it in, clearly labeled, squaredaway, pieceofcake to go back and find it later.

  Bad side of the studydrugs, my entire body was tense constantly, my eyes forgot to blink and dried out, my fingers unjointed themselves, craploads of sweating and some vomming in there too, drymouth, itchyhair, couldn’t stop humming and growling.

  “Markfive, I worry a little that the studydrugs are making my body weird,” I told him after a week.

  “Lol yeah, I noticed you were tweaking,” he said. “You just need to take the edge off, the thing that works for me is fakeweeds, why don’t I give you a little.”

  So at the end of the sesh he vaped some fakeweeds, a rotting golden skunksyrup, then I breathed the steam until my body relaxed.

  Good side of fakeweeds, definitely my body stopped clenching, throat stopped humming and growling, skin stopped itching and sweating too, infact my skin prettymuch lost its feeling completely.

  Bad side of fakeweeds, a complete new personality entered my skull, a guy who’s terrified of everything and imagines disasters constantly.

  Here is a typical fakeweed adventure, Step One, Brand offers to show me a wrestling vid and immediately a weedy fear seizes me. I’m afraid to watch, whoknows why, ohwait actually it’s obvious, drugs have made me afraid of everything. But most of all I’m afraid to tell Brand the fakeweeds have made me afraid, so I just nod my head because also I am afraid to talk because if I say anything he’ll hear my terrified voice.

  So we watch, is it another Cram Jam, nope, instead it’s the Eighteenth Wrestling Worldwar, every wrestler pretends to be a country, dyes his face, wears illaborate insulting costumes, yells in a fake language, stomps around invading territories. The goal is take over countries by throwing guys into the Ocean Pond, a lot of these guys can’t swim either.

  So Brand and I are watching Frants sprint into Ejipped, Frants wraps an accordion around Ejipped’s head and smacks him with a long breadbat, Ejipped yells for help from his best friend, Ironne, but Ironne starts smirking and laughing like a psycho, ohno, Ironne has a secret friendship with Frants and now Frants and Ironne are teaming up to whirl Ejipped around in a circle and then fling him into the pond.

  Meanwhile here are my specific insane frightened thoughts when I watch this, ohno, is Brand showing me this because he is trying to tell me something, a message so awfull he cannot put it into words and instead must show me this vid, it must be the message of, “you are Ejipped and I am Ironne, you think I am your friend but secretly I am friends with your enemy Frants, soon we will choke and drown you.”

  Thanks for that, moron brain, well I guess the nextstep has to be, turn my eyes to Brand without moving my head, make sure his eyes are on the vid and not me, and with incredible terrified slowness begin to creep away, hope he doesn’t notice and thankgod he doesn’t, he’s staring at the evil vid and gurgling chuckles, he’ll never expect that I have shrunk down onto the floor like an animal, it’s my only hope of escape.

  Then Tray ambles up to us and says, “Warner, why are you slinking around on the floor and sideeyeing Brand like a lunatic,” immediately I panic and sprint out of the school and into Mun World and spend the next three hours hiding in the section of Synthetic Trees.

  That I would say was pretty typical for fakeweeds.

  Finally one morning I whispered to Markfive, hey, I’m a little worried these fakeweeds have replaced my personality with the one of a frightened idiot.

  “Lol, that sounds rough forsure and I totally get it,” said Markfive, “soundslike you could use some anxmeds, I’m prescribed two a day because I have anxiety, just naturally though, I mean not from the fakeweeds or anything, fakeweed doesn’t affect me like that, I’ve run a ton of experiments on myself.”

  And he opened a pillcap, I pinched a little powder out and mixed it into a drink.

  Good side of anxmeds, I was no longer terrified, the heart stopped racing, the world was no longer full of people who want to kill me, infact I was pretty sure everyone was excited to hear what I had to say allthetime, also everyone admired the dancemoves that I perform now at regular intervals.

  Bad side, this daily combo of studydrugs fakeweeds anxmeds turned me a littlebit into Markfive.

  What do I mean by that, I mean I found myself maybe a little too confident, a little too brainless and chatty, talking without even deciding to, infact saying every single thought that I have, sort of assuming people want to hear every single one of my thoughts even though my thoughts moreandmore were just boring observations of myself, ee gee, “Hey everybody, I just realized food gets stuck the most often in the third upper toothgap from the right, there always seems to be some soft little mushball in that specific gap, isn’t that kind of special and intresting, let’s all think about the food in my toothgaps.”

  Or, “Hey everybody, I can rotate basic shapes super fast in my mind now, I’m doing it even while talking to you, look at that thing go, well I guess you can’t but trustme it’s pretty amazing, anyway I’ll keep you posted.”

  Also I had fewer feelings, I felt like more of a robot, more intrested in inputs, outputs, drugs, and tasks.

  But maybe it’s an improvement. Afterall, who wants to be the Warner I used to be, who misses that anxious cautious loser afraid of improving himself, forget that kid, I don’t even remember being him, thankgod he’s not running the show anymore.

  DREAMWORLD

  At night my dreaming got stronger, but even less control than before, nodoubt it was the drugs.

  No longer was I deciding to dream things, choosing my dreamstuff, instead it appeared in my head like a homeinvader, usually from the sky and enormous.

  If I thought Lossy Indica was a Cram Jam of flushholes, automatically it was and I had no control, twentyscale kingkongs and godsillas waltzed in the street over our heads, smashing each other down through trapdoors.

  A lunatic skyparade of cartwheeling airships and spaceshuttles, breaking apart and whipping chunks into the ground like oneway boomerangs, oops, it arrived in my mind and now it’s in yours too.

  If I thought a herd of asteroi
ds was slowly charging us from below the horizon, lookout, here they come, sunrising from the ocean, drumming their hooves like a civilwar, this grim avalanche of spinning marbles coats us all in fire.

  If I thought an airless darkness was extincting all lifeonearth, then goodbye lifeonearth, I know it’s my fault but please believe I’m as bummed about this as you are, ohwell though, tomorrow’s anotherday.

  LIFEANDDEATHWORLD

  And in the anotherday I was a charming druggy babbler, handsome Markfive’s cool yoked excon buddy, the math was staying on my brainshelves and prettysoon I truly believed I could do anything.

  But to really look the part you need some style.

  The brand for me was obvious, racks and racks of it existed at Mun World in the glitzy section of Highend Halfscale Fashion, it even resembled the stylish threads of Markfive himself.

  Enough was enough, it was time to get fresh, after a couple weeks of the Markfive drugprogram I yelled outloud to no one, “Enough is enough, it’s time to get fresh,” and strutted into Highend Halfscale feeling amazing and told the salesfriend Jeans, “Guesswhat, it’s your luckyday, you’re about to sell me a subscription to Fresh But Chill.”

  Jeans was overjoyed, I did three or four songsworth of slick dancemoves, we laughed until we cried and then shopped like maniacs and I walked out of there looking like a fresh miracle, thinking, Mun World has been waiting across the parkinglot allalong for me to discover my true self, and now I am truly the truest Warner there ever was, fresh yet also chill.

  Did I think at all about the vanishing munmuns, the vampire hose in my neck, sure I did, it was defiant thoughts of, Look, rightnow I have some muns in munflow so it’s a few weeks before the subscription outruns the allowance and whoknows what can happen between now and then,

  and what, you expect me to never spend munmuns like some kind of cheap scared loser, heck no,

  and hey, prettysoon I’ll retrack to Mathy where you’re guaranteed a sweet income for life, I guess you could say the future’s so bright, it literally blinded me.

  I wasn’t spending tons of time in the parkinglot anymore, all freetime has to be dedicated to math, also the parkinglot became kind of a messedup place for me, suddenly daves started following me around yelling, “CHOOCHOO, I’LL SAVE YOU PRINCESS, LOLLLLL.”

  Tray and Brand got weird around me too, finally I had to ask, crew, what’s up.

  “Dave, sorry, but everyone’s watching this vid, is this really you,” wondered Brand, hitting play.

  Title comes on first: LITTLETRAIN FOLLIES, oldtimey font, nutbrown and flickering like a wildwest, piano clomping away.

  Now in the vid are some rats, sitting in a boxcar, nibbling playingcards.

  Prettysoon the vid wonders, who’s sitting with these rats, let’s have a slow lazy look over there, why it’s little Usher in his cheap kimono, twitching and sweating.

  Who else rides fake little trains, well how about little Prayer, look at her mashed into a passengercab, her princessdress is trapped but flapping in the wind.

  “Loottenant, I do believe these trains get smallerandsmaller everyyear,” she pipes, stiff and weird, in an accent she doesn’t know.

  And guesswho is next, dingdingding, you got it, little soldier Warner, face bulging through the glassless windows.

  “Some rascally savage has surely shrunk them, Princess,” shouts little soldier me in his high thin littlevoice.

  Meanwhile in the parkinglot a whole crowd had formed around us, hooting and shoving, holycrap he’s watching it he’s watching it, lololol dave is that really you.

  “Yup that’s me,” I confirmed, everyone had a massive freakout, I stood calmly in the middle of it making a face of no emotions.

  Somebody found Frank and shoved him at me, this writerboy was the first to find the vid apparently, he wouldn’t look me in the eye, smirking but terrified.

  “Look,” he babbled, “I just found it randomly onenight, it was on a pretty outthere comedy vidshare, I’m into altcomedy and super fringe vids and stuff, anyway I just stumbled on this, and, uh, I thought I recognized you. I mean it’s not my fault it’s outthere, it’s not like I made it or anything, you can’t really get mad at me.”

  Frank you bonehead, ofcourse I can get mad at you, obviously everyone around us hopes I will fight and probably kill you.

  He outscaled me by a little but I was a ropey twitchy clobberer with a lifetime supply of brutal fight experience, meanwhile he had super breakable skinny wrists like the ankles of a chicken.

  I glanced at the Eat Votech entranceway and saw Grace watching us, she looked horrified by everything.

  “Greatjob, nerd,” was all I said to him, pinched one of his cheeks and walked away, everyone groaned at the lack of fighting.

  I showed Prayer the vid on the bus home, she went vomwhite in the face but stared unblinking through the whole thing.

  “Ugh what a creepy clownshow,” she shuddered, “ohwell everyone can go ahead and see it, anyone who tries to shame me with this vid will only add to my superhuman motivation, it’s an artoffact of the life we’ve left behind forever, infact maybe we should watch this vid every morning to get furious.”

  I a littlebit wished I felt furious, instead I mostly felt nothing. Huh that’s me, that’s pretty weird I guess, messedup stuff sure happened to that little guy a lot, sucks to be him but ohwell, those were my thoughts, I knew that was kind of awfull.

  But I was just a calm logical robot from drugs, who cares about the past, who has time for idiot poordramas, my friends now are math and middleriches.

  I liked Markfive and he liked me, I mean how could he not. He liked being the friend and druglord of a smart positive toughguy, liked getting to guest sometimes at dinner and throw some game at eyerolling Daisy, liked the way Hue thanked and praised him for making a real difference in a poor’s life. He even had customwork done on a backpack, put in legholes and a throne, now I can sit there, ride around on his back if he wants to take me anywhere, forexample a forest drugwalk with his doublescale buddies.

  “Warner used to be littlepoor, like ratscale, plus this dave was in jail for a whole freaking year,” he told the buddies immediately, they ofcourse were overjoyed.

  “Warner, is this asshole allowed to call you a dave or do you need us to beat the crap out of him,” said Markfive Buddy.

  “So in jail did you make beers in a toilet, how does that even work, also when you were minimumsize did you ever realize you were so little you could take a razor and jump down someone’s throat and then cut your way out through their stomach, anytime I see a littlepoor skittering around I can’t stop worrying about that happening to me, infact is that why you were in jail in the firstplace,” asked Another Markfive Buddy.

  “Do you miss being littlepoor at all, like it must be amazing and trippy when everything is so much bigger than you and also you can’t breathe I heard, honestly sometimes I wish I was little and freaking out constantly from the terrible pain, atleast I’d have real feelings and not be dead inside, life is pointless am I right, hahaha lmao,” daydreamed Markfive Buddy.

  “Markfive, I saw your dad roasting elephants on the news, eating them in like four bites, your dad is a freaking mammoth,” announced Another Markfive Buddy.

  “His life actually sucks, being that big is pretty terrible,” shrugged Markfive, casually trailing his fingers through a bush, hoping to seem laidback, meanwhile he had ripped the bush out of the ground.

  Mostly I had to admit I didn’t super understand these middlerich guys and their druggy ramblings, their conversationgames of Do I Feel Emotions Or Am I Tricking You and Who Cares The Least.

  But sometimes I had a conversation that taught me something, forexample with one buddy named Elm, pretty quiet and apologetic deepthinker.

  “I’ve been thinking, it must be hard for you to live in the house of a politician,” he told me.

  “Forsure it’s hard, brutally hard sometimes but I mean in a lot of ways it’s easy too, comfortable and pre
ttygreat but yeah, it’s hard allright, hard and easy in different ways I guess and can I ask what exactly are you getting at,” I babbled all druggy.

  “I just mean politicians and the whole government have kind of completely dicked littlepoors over,” he said. “I mean when you really think about minmun, it’s a little crazy.”

  “Littles have been dicked over forsure, but what can you do, life is supposed to be hard and cruel, now did you say minmun, min and then mun, is that the strange fake word you said or did you say a different word and it changed in the air between your mouth and my ears, whoa could that even happen,” I rambled.

  “Nono, you heard me right, minmun,” he said. “The minimum number of munmuns you can have in your scale account.”

  “Minimum muns you can have is zero, telling you from experience,” I said.

  “Aha, okay, that’s not actually true,” he said. “Do you mind if I teach you about minmun?”

  “Ofcourse ofcourse and I think you’ll enjoy teaching me bytheway,” I said.

  “Okay,” said Elm. “When you have zero muns in scale account, how big are you?”

  “Tenthscale,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Elm. “But tenthscale corresponds to fivehundred munmuns in your scale account. So where does that fivehundred come from?”

  “I just kind of figured, it’s physically impossible for people to get smaller than tenthscale,” I said.

  “But it’s not physically impossible,” said Elm. “It’s super possible. Scale is proportional to munmuns in scale account. That’s munlaw, no exceptions. Ess is too to log em less sicks.”

  That shut me up.

  “So what minmun is, is for every Yewess citizen with less than fivehundo in their scale account, the Yewess government keeps the difference in there for them, otherwise they would be smaller than tenthscale, infact anyone who went broke would completely disappear, like die, ess equals zero,” he said.

  “Wow,” I said, amazed, although I didn’t know if it was actually amazing or was it just the drugs.