Munmun(85)

So they dosed themselves harder and in Dreamworld the blankets around the rich got heavier, the ghosts got lighter and quieter.

And I just clenched my teeth, worked stronger, faster, pulled the threads, yanked the ropes, melted walls, grabbed and stuffed these struggling riches back into hell, as many as I could before morning, I pushed back against time and slowed it down,

every morning I woke up and was not even human for a while, my brain was just an errorscreen, my eyes said DID NOT LOAD.

Night after night, week after week.

Months slipped by, melted into a year.

I began to notice that the solodream was changing people, all this time spent alone in lonesome dreamboxes.

The lonely solodreamers began to dream robot companions for themselves in there, people who look like you and me but aren’t, are nothing but dreamfluff.

I peeked into the boxes of the richest solodreamers, saw them surrounded by robot weirdos, fake parents, fake kids, fake friends acting super nice and dumb. Constantly complimenting the solodreamers, laughing way too hard at their jokes and nodding way too intrested in their stories, allofasudden can’t take it anymore and rip off their sexy clothes and give the solodreamers a bangdream with porny robot bodies.

The solodreamers were already forgetting what real dreamers are like, ignoring that stuff they can’t control is happening in other people’s heads.

It gave me new ways of making hellscapes, just fill Dreamworld with robots, everyone begins to forget that everyone else is real, everyone begins acting like a selfish lunatic.

And a second year spooled of my sololife, mostly too exhausted to feel alone, it got hard to remember what it’s like to have friends to talk to, obviously the business grads of Dream Division were not my friends, infact I refused to pretend they even exist.

My body got taller, harder, meaner, guess I have a man’s body now, a man’s scarredup face too, no friend to see it though.

Markfive died onenight, carcrash, drugs.

Markfive you genius dummy, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go for you.

I couldn’t go to the funeral because I couldn’t leave my room, maybe nothing outside the room was real.

Prayer was heartbroken and then quickly plunged into a bitter corporate feud, Mark attempted a hostiletakeover to get his company back from the girl who his son made halfowner, maybe that wasn’t legal or something, pirate lawyers fired cannons at my sister’s ship.

Lily tried to help fend him off, Mark you dumb jerk how can you perform a hostiletakeover of a private corpo, also can we just grieve for like two seconds you freaking monster. But Mark pretended grieving is exactly what this is about, grief made him need Markfive’s company. Maybe he wasn’t even pretending, maybe a business is a replacement son to him.

Prayer triumphed, Usher tried to tell me all about it in Dreamworld, Warner you should be super proud of your fivestar general sis. Here’s what she did, went on offense and threatened twenty countersuits with the Solodream warchest, got into patentfarming and took aim at Mark’s corebusiness, et set set setera.

Prettyquick I had to tell Usher to stop, Usher I know you love my sis but please chill, nothing is more boring than a story about business.

In Dreamworld I kept eyes out for an operahouse.

Found it nowandthen and let it live, didn’t turn it to smoke or mud.

Never stepped inside though, never took a moment to hear the music, see the face.

Stayed faraway and disguised, best if Kitty thinks I’m dead, moveon sweet Kitty, forget I lived, just build your happy islands in these hells.

Usher approached me in Dreamworld onenight, I took a break from trampling an endless rotting maze with tusky peenpigs and spoke to him inside the moon.

“Happy birthday,” said my gray friend.

“Hey, thanks for remembering,” I told him. “I had no idea.”

“I like to keep track,” he said.

“How’s the Sitadell,” I asked.

“It’s fine,” he said. “I’m ready to leave though.”

He said it pretty calm and flat, it was kind of hilarious, you had to be there I guess, anyway I laughed for a while.

Then he told me he has a birthday present for me.

Oh yeah Usher, what’s that.

It’s a secret little company actually, snuck it into the paperwork of the Faceboys And Solodream Corporate Partnership, a little shellcorpo called Consolidated Warning.

Shellcorpo huh, what does that even mean.

It’s supposed to be a way to dodge tax, the details aren’t super important. What you need to know is, twentyeight percent of all solodream revanew lands in Consolidated Warning, been collecting there for a while now.

Usher never showed huge emotions, always pretty chill, but a beamy grin was twisting over that calm face.

“That’s a birthday present though, I mean how,” I asked him, feeling stupid.

“I found a way of incorporating you,” he said.

“What does that mean,” I said.

“You’re Consolidated Warning,” he beamed.

“Yeah but what does that mean though,” I said.

“The Consolidated Warning account is your munflow account,” Usher told me. “Legally you can only incorporate at eighteen, but the muns have been collecting there since this whole thing started, so now that it’s your birthday, that account has merged with your munflow, you have some munmuns in there allofasudden.”