May contain spoilers for Book 2 of Infinity Train

One of the main staples of the Infinity Train show on Cartoon Network is the glowing number on the passenger’s hand. In the show, the number represents the person’s progression. The higher the number the further they are to leaving/solving their problem or shortcoming. As the passenger learns, the number goes down.

While watching the series, I thought that’d be nice if we had numbers in real life. Something to let us know that we are being stupid. Just like in the show, we could also identify creeps/bad people by how high their number is. But, then I realized we’d act similar to the characters in the show. When Jesse has to kick a toad to escape one train car, he keeps checking his number. When he is about to kick it, his number goes up. When he stops, it goes down.

I could see people depending too much on their number. They would do things not because they were the right thing but so they can lower their number. We’d also start consulting the number for every choice. “Should I wear my blue shorts today? Oh, my number went up, so I’ll wear something else.”

So it’s probably a good thing we just have our conscience to tell us when we’re being stupid. If it was something more physical or blunt, we’d pass the blame on to it. “I did it because my number went down.”

Until next wormhole…thanks for reading.

Who Pranked JR releases March 24. You can preorder it from many online retailers.