Munmun(43)

“Prettygood metafore,” mumbled munching Hueagain. “Maybe he should go into politics.”

“As the one who knows about politics, I don’t agree,” disagreed Tony.

“Prayer, do you also find Wet Almanac High too difficult,” asked Hue.

“Are you kidding, wildhorses will have to drag me out of there kicking and screaming,” promised Prayer. “Challenges are my favorite thing, second only to achievements, can I just remind everyone that I am in it to win it.”

“Kitty, what do you think,” wondered Dawn.

“I’d miss having Warner at school,” whispered sweet Kitty. “But I do understand.”

“Why would you miss having him, it’s making everyone hate you,” asked Daisy.

In the end Hue okayed me to transfer, but with warnings and conditions of We Need Results From You, I didn’t ask what those exact results were and he didn’t tell me.

And so I transferred to the nearest middlepoor school, down in Eat Almanac, a school with the proud important name of Eat Almanac Middlepoor Vocational and Technical, Eat Votech forshort.

Eat Almanac is a floodplain that doesn’t flood anymore, hot dusty desert gazing up at the Wet Almanac hillsides. It’s a little strange ofcourse that both towns are Almanacs, I guess it’s kind of like having a brother and sister of different scales. Wet is the leafy land of riches, middle and big, down in Eat is very different, lots of cinderblock compounds, factories, dealerships, sweatshops, Mun Worlds.

A Mun World is a vast shopscape, pretty common in middlepoor districts, infact there’s one right across the parkinglot from Eat Votech.

Actually the school seems like Mun World’s little grubby echo, similar squat blank cinderblock struction, similar wide flat warehouse, worse paint job, similar number of cops, forthatmatter similar number of Votech students because at any moment many students are not taking classes and instead chilling in Mun World.

What kind of school is Eat Votech, gladyouasked, Eat Votech features the Track System.

Track System means when you show up, they figure out what you do the best, then they put you on a track where you only keep doing that thing.

Usually they start by seeing, are you good at math. If you show up to Eat Votech good at math, congratulations, you’re on Mathy Track, math and science classrooms for you, and when you graduate you get to work in labs, lots of munmuns coming your way.

Bad at math but can read and write, noprob, you’re on Wordy Track, writing and editing for whoever needs words to sound good, decent munmuns.

Can’t read so good but talk pretty clever and confident, great, you’re on Busy Track, a life in sales or business, better munmuns alotoftimes than Wordy Track even, a little messedup how that works.

Dumb at everything so far but clever with your hands, fine, you’re on Handy Track, fixing cars and robots. Clumsy hands, welcome to Drivy Track, learn to drive stuff around, or Lifty Track, learn to carry heavy stuff, Cleany Track, clean and scrub, Servy Track, politely serve people and shut up.

Day One for me was notsogood. It was me in an unwindowed room with two sleepy middlepoor counselors, were they excited to meet this new mystery student named Warner, nope, not even a little, let’s just figure out this bonehead’s track realfast and maybe we can get an early lunch, afterward cross the parkinglot and rummage through great deals at Mun World.

We started with math, and I was a littlebit hopefull, I’m not terrible at math. Numbers make sense in my head, just not when you throw letters in there too, what is that even about.

“Pick the answer you think is right,” they said, ay bee see dee.

“Can I maybe get this read to me outloud,” I said.

“Ecks minus three is three,” they said.

“Good, good,” I said. “This thing answers itself. I’m pretty sure it’s not even a question.”

“Your choices are zero, three, six, and ecks,” they said.

“Can’t go wrong with ecks,” I said.

“You can and did, so let’s cross off Mathy Track and move on,” they said, but the readingsample was disaster numbertwo. They gave me four little pages about volcanoes and rock science, half the words in there were a crazy vowel aircomma festival, I had fifteenminutes to read it and didn’t even get to page two.

“No Wordy Track for you,” they said. “How about you try and sell us this pen.”

“Do you want this pen,” I said. “It’s super great.”

“Not really,” they said.

“Do you know anyone who wants a pen,” I said.

“Nope,” they said.

“Guess I get to keep a great pen, suckers,” I said, but they took the pen.

“Here’s a puzzle,” they said, handing me two bentup wires all tangled around in each other, and watched me grapple with it for a while like a rackoon, noluck.

“Here’s a driving game,” they said, giving me a little driving simscreen, instant carcrash, wow, programmers had tons of fun putting screams in there.

“You seem good at pushups,” they said finally, so I dropped to the gritty floor and started pushupping, and after I got to fifty I glanced up to see them giving each other grim satisfied looks of, secretly we knew allalong this was where we were headed, and the younger one said, “Welcome to Lifty Track, sign these forms please, don’t need your whole name, W is fine, thereyougo.”