Moojag and the auticode.., p.1
MOOJAG and the AUTICODE SECRET, page 1
First published November 2020 in the UK by Spondylux Press.
Profits from this book go to actually autistic initiatives
and neurodivergent publications.
Writing © N.E. McMorran 2020
Illustration © Chiaki Kamikawa 2020
Cover design, layout © N.E. McMorran / Spondylux Press 2020
Author photo © Giota Panagiotou 2020
‘Soul Captives’ lyrics courtesy Blue Mountain Music
Wizard of Oz quotes courtesy Warner Bros
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication (in any format) may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission from the author / Spondylux Press.
ISBN: 978-1-8380978-0-6 (print)
ISBN: 978-1-8380978-1-3 (e-book)
ISBN: 978-1-8380978-2-0 (audio)
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
‘A very important, thought-provoking read...
This futuristic own-voice novel deals with many
issues that don’t get dealt with in fiction enough.’
Noly, The Artsy Reader - BBNYA panelist 2020
‘What Alice in Wonderland might have looked like
if Lewis Carroll did some soul-searching
and knew about autism in 1865.’
James Sinclair - Autistic And Unapologetic
‘By far one of the most unique and imaginative
books I’ve read in a long time.’
Michelle Saulks
‘This refreshing narrative perfectly frames
the message that neurodiversity should not just
be accommodated - it should be celebrated.’
Beatrix Livesey-Stephens - Artificial Womb Zine
‘A wonderfully weird and whimsical story,
but one with a grounded message...
This book sets a great example.’
Sarah Bauer
For JAKE, CATTI, ERATO, ALEXANDER
and all the late, self, and misdiagnosed autistics
Special thanks to my friend Trine, who read every draft, also editors Tango Batelli and Sonnet Fitzgerald, artist Chiaki Kamikawa, and all who offered their feedback and support, particularly the ND community on whatsnapchatvibeinstatwitface.
About the author
N.E. McMorran is a British-Cypriot autistic writer, designer and teacher, living with her teen and their rescued dog, Ben. She loves fixing things and upcycling stuff. She likes helping animals and people too. Her special interests are autism, art, natural living, and finding a solution to end homelessness. And she’s a foodie, with quite a sweet tooth…
MOOJAG was inspired by her parents’ bedtime stories about giant, rock candy (dad’s Gajoomstiks) and a greedy fairy who magics-up sweet treats (mum’s Poof Poof). The book is a reflection of her experiences growing up and the journey to her late autism diagnosis.
www.nemcmorran.co.uk
@nemcmorran
Contents
ARE YOU A REAL WORLDER TOO?
STICKY CLUES
PHIL'S PHISH BAR
MYSTIC MORAG
THE VISION
THE LIGHTHOUSE
GLYKO RIZA
GAJOOOOM...STIK!
PORTO GAJOOM
DOUBLE YOU SEE
CAMOUFLAG-ATION
STIKLEBY HALL
TAKING THE CREDIT
SUPERAUTS
CONQIP'S PLAN
GAJOOM vs CONQIP
THE SWEET DELIVERY
CANDY BRUNCH
OUT OF JUICE
MOOJAG AND THE KEY
THE SUNSHINE VITAMIN
POF PALACE
THE BOOK
THE AUTICODE
SUPER SENSE
SPARKS FLY
AUT TO CONVINCE
ABOUT THE POF
POF STARS & THE MARSHMALLOW CHAMBER
WINGING IT
MACARON BRIBE
COSTUME CAROUSEL
15:26:14
EXAUTUS
AUT TO STAY, OR AUT TO GO
1
ARE YOU A REAL WORLDER TOO?
Sixteen nautical miles north lies London Tops, home before we lost Mum and Monzi.
It’s ten years since the 2044 tidal surge, when Dad brought me to Box Hill Island with Gran and the others. They created the perfect Real World, so we’d be free to be different, to be us.
We were all gathered right here at the viewpoint when I first met Izzy and Adam. I was only three. Adam and I were the same height, but he was talking already. Izzy was barely even walking.
I stretch out in the grass, as the sun soaks the grey cells of my e-skin-covered body, and hold up my silvery hand. It glistens in the warm light. Behind it, in the distant water, fragments of a sunken skyscraper glimmer like tiny sails on the horizon; adrift in the sky, a wispy octopus-shaped cloud.
Gran says the smart skin we wear instead of clothes is ‘all thanks to those colour-changing, shape-shifting cephalopods of the sea’. She never told us why she called it PIE, only that she designed it to ‘free the people’. She does like to eat pies, though. How did pre-Surgers live without it? And all those homeless, how could they have kept safe and dry?
My neck tingles from my hood vibrating.
Someone’s coming.
I tilt my head and glimpse a small, sparkling turquoise figure.
It’s Izzy darting back from the woods, but she’s headed straight for the curved stone wall beside me. I look round to scan for Adam’s tall body and rainbow-coloured skin. He’s still stood at the forest edge beneath the Autumnalis tree. I watch him plant his feet thoughtfully astride the snowdrops and reach up into its knobbly branches. I turn back.
“Did you see him, Nem?” Izzy calls to me. She’s bent over the wall and waving her sea-blue arms in Adam’s direction.
I shut my eyes, letting a cool breeze sweep my bare face. “Picking blossoms again?” I picture Izzy’s scrunched-up beady eyes staring at Adam. “You know it’s—”
“I know,” she says, catching her breath, “—‘One of the few trees that flower in hölchoko’…”
Weird to think pre-Surgers had more than two seasons. Hölchoko sounds a lot cooler than autumn and winter.
I open my eyes to find Izzy gawking at our friend.
He’s not alone.
A boy, out of nowhere, is lurking in Adam’s shadow. The boy’s face is pale and he looks much older than us, but his body’s a lot smaller than ours. He’s wearing clothes and, stranger still, he’s floating.
Out the corner of my eye, I catch Izzy teetering to squat behind the wall. She grabs her shell-shaped Spondylux brooch from her chest and bolts back up to point the device straight at the boy. Her metallic skin sparkles as Spondylux scans the boy’s short slender body.
It begins projecting a life-sized hologram of him, starting with his feet riding in black sneakers. It skims his dark-green velvet trousers, matching unbuttoned tailcoat jacket, two slight humps protruding around his shoulder blades. It detects a round smartwatch, too, dangling on a gold chain from his waistcoat pocket. And finally, a quirky black top hat with six swaying, gold letters sprung from its brim.
Izzy pulls back her hood and combs her sea-blue fingers through her scruffy peach hair while Spondylux defines the young man’s features: MILKY SKIN. SLIGHTLY UPTURNED NOSE. WIDE SET BLUE-GREEN EYES. MATTE BLACK HAIR. EXCEPTIONAL LASHES.
Izzy crawls up to me at speed. I inch back as she inspects my face with hers. “Your eyes,” she says, biting into an apple-pear. “He’s got your eyes, hair too.”
I glance away from her arctic crunching to check that my eyes and hair are still exactly where they ought to be. Izzy frowns and spins back to view the scan results.
Mum had black hair, too. Most common human hair colour. Wish I could remember her face, though. Dad never talks about her, or ever saved any photos.
SUBJECT UNIDENTIFIABLE, declares Spondylux before projecting miniature holographic possibilities, PRE-SURGE HUMAN. WARCRAFT CHARACTER. FESTIVAL PERFORMER.
Izzy shouts out the letters bobbing about the character’s hat, “M-O-O-J-A-G. Moo jag?” The unclassified being, now balanced on one leg in yogic tree pose, just stands there with his hands clasped over his head.
“Mooooo jag,” I mutter, watching a green woodpecker glide by. The snickering bird lands on a rotten tree stump by my shining feet. It twists its head to probe its razor-sharp beak deep into a crevice. I picture the ants inside, scurrying for their lives. At least this beautiful, rare bird won’t go hungry today. Its cute red moustache means he’s a he…I’ll call him ‘Bill’.
“Are you two mooing?” Adam calls. He still hasn’t seen the boy now hovering upside down behind him. A wave of Adam’s brown hair flops down over his forehead as he prises a frilly flower from the tree.
“A moo man doing the jag,” I call past my shoulder. I jump up to gaze over the wall. Dozens of boats with visitors to the festival are docking along the pier. It’ll be funny seeing Real Worlders dressed up in those scratchy old clothes.
I turn back, so Izzy’ll quit poking my middle. She shakes
“UNIDENTIFIABLE SUBJECT!” she shouts to our friend.
Adam tuts, ignoring his vibrating PIE skin, and presses his long nose into the pile of soft petals in his hand. He must just think Izzy’s winding him up again. “Suppose this cow guy’s wearing a funny pre-Surge hat?” he calls.
Izzy and I stare wide-eyed at the stranger. Adam, grumbling at his skin turning orange, cocks his head to spy for us as the boy’s shadow sneaks over his shoulder. He jumps, startled by two eyes ogling him, and leaps back. The visitor wobbles returning to the ground and greets Adam with a tidier bow.
“Namaskar,” he says, glancing away and popping the hat back on his head.
Adam hesitates, stumbling into us as we creep closer. “Namaste,” I say, trying the greeting from Balancize and clasping my hands. Izzy nods, punching her right fist into the palm of her left hand in Tai Chi salute.
The boy presses his hands together, too. “Nǐ hǎo, jambo, kon-nichiwa…” he calls, spouting hello in multiple pre-Surge languages, “...privet, shalom, ciao, merhaba, salam, bonjour, hola, yiasou, moni, goddag...” We watch, amazed, as he keeps on and on until finally cheering “...gajoom!”
Gajoom? Don’t know that one. But there’s something really familiar about it…
The boy peers through squinted eyes at our faces and studies Adam’s multicoloured mosaic skin. He reaches out to touch it but snatches back his hand, as though something’s tried to bite it, and rummages round his jacket’s inner pockets. He huffs, flinging an arm over his shoulder to pull a sack off his misshapen back. He draws out one.. two.. three thick, pencil-length, striped sticks and dares to stroke our glistening hands as he gifts one to each of us.
I glance away. It’s the sugar stick Gran talked about. Her dad would always buy her one on their trips to the seaside, before the Surge. “It’s rock.”
“Edible rock?” Izzy asks. She raises the stick to her pouty little mouth and licks.
“You can eat it, but it’s hard enough to break your teeth.”
“That’s why it’s called rock, then?”
I lick it with the tip of my tongue and grimace at the sickly sweet taste. Adam’s brown oval eyes look as though they might pop out, as we watch each others’ skins shift to yellow.
“It’s pure SUGAR,” he says, holding out the stick between his fingertips.
I nod. “It’s candy.”
Izzy’s skin vibrates as she coughs up a chunk. “Look!” she shrieks, gawking at the gnawed stick in her hand and rattling it in my face. “It says ‘IZZY’.” Adam inspects his own name, also stamped in thick violet lettering on the end of his. Cupping it behind his long-fingers, he sneaks another lick.
Gran said that the name’s ‘stamped right through; as much as you eat, you can still read it’. I bite off a small chunk to reveal its fractured end. Stroking the warped letters of my name, I turn slack-jawed to the suspiciously familiar Moojag character. “How do you know who we are, sir?”
“How do you know who you are, sir?” He twitches his mouth and turns from our confused stares to rummage his sack.
“Are you a Real Worlder, too?” Izzy asks him.
He glances up at her and pulls out a dusty old scroll, which he cautiously unravels. “Are you a Real Worlder, too?” The unfamiliar material rustles as it unwinds and finally meets the ground. It’s foolishly long. We can barely see the clumsy figure now hidden behind it. He pokes his head out to read the text:
We hereby invite you to
THE ANNUAL EXHIBITION & STICKY PARTY
23rd January 2054 @ 32 o’clock
Stikleby Hall, Gajoomdom
Letting it snap up into a neat roll, he crams the paper back in his bag and hands Adam a flat, off-white, rectangular thing.
“Gajoomdom,” says Adam with his questioning stare. “Is that where you’re from?” Moojag grins, peering eagerly at us inspecting the familiar object. Adam holds it out on the palm of his hand. “It’s the old email symbol,” he says, turning to me and gently lifting the triangular flap.
“It’s an envelope,” I say, gazing round at the stranger.
Where is he from? An island we don’t know? Maybe sailed over for the festival? Which would explain the clothes...but how does he have candy and paper—when they stopped cutting trees decades ago? He hovers too. Even we can’t do that. Maybe it’s some future tech...or from another planet!
I look back to find Moojag spinning on his heels, muttering senseless verse, “Round or square, sour or sweet, yum yum yum, eat eat eat…” He tips his hat to us and drifts off through the evergreen shrubs, releasing the sherbet scent of their yellow flowers as he vanishes into the woods.
2
STICKY CLUES
Adam stands gawking at the forest. “What was he wearing?”
“How was he hovering, you mean,” says Izzy, eyeing the envelope in his hand. “If he can do that, how come he’s wearing clothes and has paper and candy?”
I shake my head. “I know, right? He didn’t even have PIE. Maybe it’s a letter.”
Adam slips his fingers inside the envelope as Izzy shouts “LETTER” into her Spondylux.
“You know,” I say, “those long messages pre-Surgers wrote each other on paper.”
Izzy pouts at all the images beaming from her shell. “Oh yeah, ‘post’. They had a lot to say, didn’t they? Look—they travelled miles in cars, delivering all their words. Hmmm, what a waste of time and resources. What? NO—they printed their e-mails, too!”
I sigh, still thinking about Moojag. “He seemed pretty harmless.” I dream a lot when problems need solving; best use of time. I picture the people writing their letters and having to wait days, sometimes weeks, for a reply. What if they didn’t get one? Dad says pre-Surgers often didn’t Hola back. Sometimes never! He says they were ‘hypocrites for calling us rude just because we didn’t speak’.
Adam pulls a little card from the envelope and reads out the text:
USE THE STICKY CLUES TO GUIDE YOU
BE THERE OR BE SQUARE!
I screw up my face and yawn. “Let’s see,” says Izzy, blurting “STICKY” and “SQUARE” into her shell. “Is it a ‘stamp’? Is it?…Well, is it?”
I grab the girl by her luminous-blue, scaly shoulders. “I am trying to work, here!”
I love working. Thinking, daydreaming, planning my next move: it’s all called ‘work’ now. Pre-surgers thought dreamers ‘lazy’ or ‘dumb’. Real Worlders never use words like that, because we know every moment has a purpose. Even if you miss stuff, it’s impossible to waste time. I might be silent or look like I’m doing nothing at all, but I’m actually very busy. We are all busy every moment of our life.
I turn to Adam, purse-lipped. “Maybe the clues will lead us to Gajoomdom.”
“Sticky clues,” Izzy giggles, “from Stick-leby?”
Adam rolls his eyes. “Can we please just work this thing out?”
“Well,” I say, “since when are there thirty-two hours in a day?” At least I’m paying attention to the really weird stuff; someone has to.
Adam looks back at the card.
“It only says they’re sticky,” Izzy mumbles, trying not to laugh.
I fiddle with the stick, picturing the candy stalls on Brighton Pier that Gran talked about.
“The rock’s sticky,” blurts Izzy, perching on the wall. Adam smirks at her licking her finger. “Why don’t we have candy?” she asks. He sits down beside her.
“Because,” I say, nudging myself in between them, “it causes inflammation and increases disease.”
Adam stands back up to look across the water. “Pre-Surgers couldn’t grow enough food,” he says, leaning over the wall to watch the crowd on the pier. “They had to eat more and more artificial stuff, and sweeteners were added to make it taste good. But real sugar got too expensive for most, and it made the rich sick as a dodo.”
