Munmun(29)

“But what about before the twoyear mark,” I asked.

“He’s not going to want a divorce,” she promised me.

That wasn’t a great answer but I decided, maybe better not to go there.

Instead I begged her to scale Mom up, atleast get her out of that churchhouse, everytime Prayer came I asked if she had rescued Mom yet.

The first few times I said this her face got sad, and she said, yeah, ofcourse, I’m trying, I mean I talk to Paddy about it all the time.

Each time I got mad and said, what’s Paddy’s stupid problem, how hard is it to let tiny Mom be in your house.

“It’s hard for me to ask Paddy for anything,” Prayer told me. “Because as good as it feels to scale up, I guess it feels worse to scale down, even just from ninetenth to threequarters, Paddy says you feel weaker and punier and it’s not healthy for an older guy. He does complain kind of a lot sometimes, he feels sick and bad from scaling down, Prayer why did you do this to me, et set set setera. So ontop of that he really doesn’t need to hear from me questions like, hey, when are we bringing my mom in here.”

“You’re his freaking wife and Mom is his freaking family now,” I rasped out of my halfbusted throat, someone punched it the daybefore. “You’re a pretty young girl who married an old fat babbler, he owes you big, when I get out of here I’m going to slap his freaking face.”

But it turned out the problem wasn’t just that Paddy hated Mom, Mom also hates Paddy, the whole thing has gotten complicated because Mom has gone a little godcrazy.

“She won’t even take the munmuns I try to give her,” Prayer told me in her big voice, out of her big head. “She just gives them back. She says the Lord King God doesn’t like my marriage.”

“Because Paddy’s old and gross,” I said.

“No, because Paddy doesn’t belong to the Church of the Lord King God,” said Prayer.

“He’s churchless?” I said.

“No, he’s in a church,” said Prayer, bashfull.

“Oh,” I said.

Prayer didn’t want to fill in the blank.

“Maybe I shouldn’t even ask which one,” I said.

? ? ?

Paddy belonged to the New Planetary Church, a church started by a guy who’s still alive, so already, bigredflag.

The major belief is that munmun scales you up in this life, but what about the next life? Goodworks are what scale you up in the next life, and if you think it’s important to scale up in this life, forget it, way more important to scale up in the next, because you spend the next life in, drumrollplease, outerspace.

In outerspace you need to be so huge that you become a planet, otherwise you will drift around all small and cold and breathless and get smacked by comets forever.

So you better get started on those goodworks, start fattening up your little future spacepebble, and guesswhat, a major and convenient goodwork is ofcourse Donate Munmuns To New Planetary Church.

“Why would Paddy even join this church,” I said, confused on account of, Paddy’s super cheap, I can’t see that guy loving to give away munmuns.

“His boss made him,” Prayer explained.

The church likes one thing better than you giving your munmuns to the church, and that thing is, recruit other joiners. So to encourage recruiting, the church’s system is, the goodworks of your recruits count toward your goodworks too. Eye ee, when your recruit pays a hundred munmun entry fee, it’s like you paid the hundo fee too, and also the guy who recruited you, all the way back to the original starter of New Planetary Church, who collects all the goodworks of everybody and will get to be biggest of all in the afterlife, the sun or a blackhole or something.

So Paddy’s boss, an owner of many Quickstands in the Lossy Indica area, at some point mentioned to Paddy, hey, I have goodnews, this church is the True Universal Truth, you should really consider its teachings, it has a lot of guidance on how to lead a fulfilled life, righteousness, virtue and whatever, and bestofall, if you join the church I probably won’t have to double your monthly Quickstand Franchise Fee.

And so Paddy joined as a business decision, and as part of the marriage he made Prayer join too.

“So, Paddy is not troubled that his scale in the next life will always be bigger than yours,” I said.

“What are you talking about,” she said.

“Your goodworks are also Paddy’s goodworks, plus he has his own, so, the math works out like, in deathspace he’ll be huger than you for sure,” I said.

“Warner, no one actually believes any of this stupid crap,” she said.

It’s the truth and I’m sorry for making you learn so much about this stupid church, anyway the point is, once our mom learned Prayer converted to New Planetary, that was it, gameover. Anytime Prayer visited Mom at the Dockseye Middlechurch of the Lord King God, Mom refused to talk anything not churches or gods. Mom do you need anything, Prayer you need to leave that cult. Mom it’s fine how’s your eye, Prayer the Lord King God will still forgive you if you just nevermind that evil cult today. Mom can I atleast fix your janky chairwheels, Prayer join your enormous hand with mine now and say, Lord King God, mybad, forreal.

Mom was always pretty godhappy, but apparently after we left she became some kind of a nun or something, alldayeveryday just sewing clothes for other littlepoors, eating only pastes and gruels, wheeling herself around the streets at night trying to save souls.