Munmun(46)

I mean all you have to do, soundslike, is not even sell stuff, just hire other people to sell the stuff and you get munmuns from what they sell. And how hard could it be to find people who want jobs, I mean who doesn’t come running when you yell, “Jobs, got some fresh hot jobs right here, I am a nice friendly boss who will hire you onthespot.”

But Tray saw my ears perking up or my eyes going wide and shiny or something and muttered, “Warner, chill, badidea,” so I chilled, and the Empowerist left super sweaty with no recruits that day.

?

Tray was one of the fatterlooking Lifty kids, no muscle definition and no rascally dave behavior either, no guns or tats, so he was not super popular, prettymuch the opposite, therefore one of the few kids willing to be friends with friendless Warner. Pretty brainy guy for Lifty Track, but also super depressed, sourfaced, everythingsucks, whatsthepoint.

He explained to me during rubblework, “My cousin Gram works for one of those foodchain operations, everyday it destroys his life.”

“Whatdoyoumean foodchain operation,” I said.

“A business constructed like a vampire type foodchain,” said Tray. “You got a predator up top, he sells you a subscription, chomp, now you got a straw in your neck, dave’s drinking your blood every month. So now you’re prey and your only hope is, become a littler predator, trying to get other preys to buy your subscriptions, put your little straws in other people’s necks.”

“What do you mean about straws,” I said, thinking about Fresh But Chill, getting a shuddery feeling.

“Subscription sucks munmuns out of your munflow every month like through a straw,” said Tray. “And worstpart is, straw is stuck there like permanently, you can’t pull it out, because a true foodchainop puts all kinds of hooks and glues on there where the straw hits your neck.”

“Hooks, glues, the heck are you even talking about,” said Brand, waddling up.

“It works like this, you call to pull out the straw, cancel the subscription, company says oops sorry we’re just the middleman, you have to take it up with this other company, next company says the same thing, finally you get to the distributor but they say sorry we outsource to five different providers and you need to call them directly but before we put you in contact with them we need to start collecting removalfees, and bytheway the providers are going to hit you with removalfees too, you’re like dang, crap, thissucks, then they’re like well buuuuuut, hey, another alternative is we could just readjust your subscription, lower rate, you’re like that sounds better to me, they go ahead and lower your cost this month but next month you find out the subscriptioncost tripled permanently, ohmygoodness, it’s eight different kinds of crazy predator moves, Gram lost half his scale already,” said Tray, clearing rubblestones ferociously.

“Dang,” I said, catching rubble like a champ, I was pretty amazing at rubblework.

“But soundslike all you got to do is find other preys,” said Brand.

Brand was also fatlooking, pretty dumb, like I said not terrific personal energy, but atleast chill and not evil. Also he was the only other kid who agreed to be newguy Warner’s friend, because newguys at school are always considered weird and treated with suspicion by the studentbody atlarge, so welcome to Team Warner, dumb chill Brand.

“Brand,” said Tray. “Two answers to that, intheory and inpractice. Intheory answer first, is the foodchain infinite, nope, it has a bottom layer of sad planteaters getting snacked on. Bottom layer supports all the other layers, therefore it has to be byfar the biggest. So mathwise if you join the foodchain you’re probably one of the planteaters, the ones getting attacked and bloodsucked and never finding blood to suck and instead just munching plants, consequence of noninfinite populationsize, right, okay, withmesofar.”

“Nope,” said Brand, peering around for the bodydoll under all the rubblestones.

“That’s fine, because here’s your inpractice answer, ask my cousin Gram if it’s easy to find preys,” said Tray. “Betteryet, don’t, because he’ll try to turn you into a prey, like he tries to do at family beebeecues, it’s a nightmare, everyone hates him now.”

“FOUND THE BODY,” yelled some tatty daves across the rubblepile, yanking out the body, arm popping off. “TEACHER WE SAVED IT.”

“Allright, be carefull, we don’t have a lot of those,” yelled Teacher, hustling to save the body from being jacked up by victorious daves who now were running around taunting all the loser crews who didn’t find the bodydoll, lol wewin, youlose, when we graduate we will get struction and maintenance, meanwhile you’ll be hacking up lungs in the oilrock mines, lololol.

But they skipped us completely, why would you waste even one lol taunting some janky outcasts, two fatties and one newkid.

Tray, Brand, Warner, we were not Votech’s most popular crew, probably closest to most ignored crew, but look, great, most ignored is just fine, perfect really.

Most ignored doesn’t mean completely ignored though, prettyquick a kid found me in the parkinglot.

“You’re the newkid Warner, right,” he asked.

And flashed his hands, bullfaces tatted on their backs, horns up the thumb and pinkey, ohno.

The bulls were supposed to be a happysad combo like the theatermasks you see sometimes, but instead the combo was more like sleepycrazy, crazy one is snorting fire and sleepy one looks more like a goat.