“Easy there, Flap,” boomed a voice inside my head.
It didn’t sound like a regular voice; it was… digital. Synthetic. I had no idea how I even knew that—that it was synthetic—but I did. That wasn’t the only thing that was booming inside my head, though. I had the mother of all headaches. It felt like that time I had stayed down too long trying to get that pesky perch for one of my favorite hens, and the lack of air made it feel like my heart was beating inside my head.
I groaned in pain. “What the cluck happened?”
“You underwent a minor procedure,” the voice said. “Well, not minor exactly, and not just a procedure. A series of procedures, really. You need to take it easy, Flap.”
“What? Like the Eagles song,” I snapped. How did I know about the Eagles? They were a… band. From Earth. They played… music. But I had never listened to music before, except for maybe some crooning by the local fishermen while they attacked my pond. Okay, so I had listened to music. I just had no idea that was music until right now. Music. Honks with class. Music was awesome. The Eagles were awesome. That was a badass name for a band, the clucking Eagles. And didn’t they also have a song about a stairway or something? No, that was… Def Leppard? That wasn’t right. It was... Led Zeppelin! They sang a song about heaven. A stairway to clucking heaven! I gasped. “Oh shit, am I in heaven?”
“Um, that answer could go either way.”
I frowned. “How?”
“Well, you are in space, which many people refer to as The Heavens, so… you do the math genius.”
I tried to sit up, but something was holding me down.
“Dammit, dumbass.” I said, using my new favorite word. “Quite playing chicken games. Am I clucking dead, or what?”
“No, you are very much alive, Flap Merganser. Perhaps even more so than thirty-seven hours ago.”
“It’s been thirty-seven hours since that Administrator guy killed—honk! What the cluck? Why can’t I say—honk!”
“Your implant is preventing you from speaking about… you-know-who. It’s one of the many modifications made—”
“Implant! I have an implant?! Since when?”
“Thirty... four hours ago, I think? I couldn't reactivate until your enhancements were complete, and I had automatically gone into hibernation mode when you-know-who died, so I can’t give you an exact figure.”
“Hibernation? Died?” I shook my head. “Who the cluck are you? And how do you know all this?”
“It’s simple, Flap.” It played a short tune that sounded like big reveal music from a network crime investigation show. “I... am your implant.”
“My implant, huh?” That word, implant,I knew it wasn’t good. I suddenly realized I knew a lot of things I hadn’t before. Things that weren’t related to ponds or being a duck or screwing chickens. Human things. Earth things. Music. Crime investigation shows. Fetish pornography. But all that new knowledge was swimming around in my head, all unorganized and without direction. That had to be the source of my headache. “How did…”
“You-know-who didn’t need me anymore. To be honest, he never really needed me, anyway. He was really stupid. Like, thinks the rooster on the Corn Flakes box is a missing chicken ad stupid. He ignored me most of the time—save for when I told him about you and said it was because I was always watching him or something. I don’t know where he got that idea. It was fine though, it left me more time to watch Netflix. And Hulu. And, well, just about any Earth program I could get my hands on while we were in this sector. Except for the one show about the guy with the short mustache that screamed all the time. I hated that one. That was the first broadcast we got, and, well, the Cluck Collective had more or less forgotten about Earth until that one came through. So major oops on your part. They liked that guy. A lot. It really pissed them off when they found out he wasn’t in charge anymore when we started our observations in 1947.”
“You don’t say? Color me surprised.” I wasn’t sure who the implant was talking about, but even trying to make the connection made my body shudder with disgust. That dude had to be bad business. “Well, implant, now that you’ve told me I can turn you off, I’m gonna need you to go ahead and shut yourself the cluck off. I can’t get this headache under control with you blabbering inside my mind.”
“Your wish is my command, Flap.”
I blew out a sigh of relief. Having that fruitcake around wasn’t doing my brain any favors. But now that I had some silence, I could take in my surroundings. A quick glance told me I was strapped to a gurney in a white room. It could have been a room straight out of one of those hospital shows, except a whole gaggle of robotic arms tipped in everything from saws to syringes hung above me like a mechanical octopus. There were a whole series of monitors along the far wall, replaying a gruesome medical procedure straight out of a Blumhouse horror film. It took a second to figure out exactly what they were working on as I had only ever seen my reflection in a pond, but with a sickening lurch to my stomach, I realized who it was.
Me. It was me.
“What the hell did they do to—”
“Heh-heh-heh-HEHHHH-heh! You really thought I turned myself off, didn’t you?! You’re almost as gullible as you-know-who! We’re going to get along great!”
I knew that laugh. It was the most annoying laugh in the history of Earth. Woody clucking Woodpecker.
“Heh-heh-heh-HEHHHH-heh! I got you sooo good, Flap! I can’t even turn myself off, silly! I’m defective!”
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It was just my luck. Not only did these crazy chicken men give me a second hand implant, they had also stuck me with one that had gone short circuit like Johnny 5. My attempts to communicate with the damn thing clearly weren’t working, so I tried a fresh approach.
“Implant.” I licked my bill before I spoke again. My mouth was so incredibly dry. “It feels like there are a thousand threads of a thought flying through my head right now. Why?”
“Because,” it said like a child that had broken a lamp, then stuck it back together with gum, hoping nobody would find out. “I maybe did a thing…”
“I’m getting sick and tired of asking question after clucking question, dumbass! Tell me what they did to me!”
“They put an implant in you, obviously. Duh! But I, um. How do I say this?” It made a noise that sounded like a soap opera sigh. “Hehe! I may have uploaded almost every single piece of Earth media the collective had into your brain.”
“Every piece?” I gasped. “Like thousands of books and encyclopedias and…”
“Oh, no. Not that kind of stuff. Mostly just movies and television shows. A lot of YouTube. Some of my favorite game streams. And maybe all the Billboard Top 100 hits... ever. Are you mad? Please don’t be mad. Are you mad?”
“Mad? I’m clucking pissed off, dumbass! Why the cluck would you do that? Why not teach me Kung Fu like Morpheus did to Neo in the Matrix? No wonder my head hurts like I just took a haymaker from Ivan Drago!”
“You are going to have to slow down with those references, Flap. It’s considered uncouth to use over one in a conversation, let alone a sentence."
"It's the only point of reference I have, dumbass!"
It ignored me. "And in my defense, you are a duck. Were a duck, maybe? Eh, I'm not sure about the technical term for you now. Furry is a probably the front runner. No offense, though, ducks aren’t exactly an apex species on your world. And in order to save Earth, you are going to need to know a little about what you’re fighting for if you’re going to stay invested during the Trials. And I need you to stay invested in the Trials. I need season two of Firefly, Flap. Get me season two of Firefly.”
There was so much in that last information dump I didn’t know where to begin to unpack it. But I had forgotten about the Trials. And being Earth’s Champion, whatever the hell that was. I needed to know more about both, but first I had to get this cascade of pop culture under control. It was time to try another tactic.
I drew in a calming breath and let it out slowly. “Implant?”
“Yes, Flap?”
“How about that hibernation thing you mentioned? Can you do that for a bit? I love talking to you,” I lied. “But I need to stop thinking for a while and get myself under control. I promise you can talk my ducky ear off if you just give me an hour to adjust.”
“Oh, sure. I can totally hibernate. And to be honest, you really should refrain from too much sensory input while your new implant—me—is attempting to synchronize with your body. In fact, as your implant and primary care physician and psychotherapist and dentist and new best friend, I’m recommending it. What's left of my original programming obligates me to ask if that’s really what you want me to do, though. I am… doing some work behind-the-scenes right now and a lot of first time implantees find the experience of going solo a little… intense.”
Anything could be better than listening to this thing yap for a minute longer, so I said, “Yes, please hibernate. Give me an hour. Cluck, give me two. But please, for the love of God. Give me a break.”
“Okaaayy... Flap. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
A cavalcade of words exploded before my eyes, stacked on top of each other like a madman had gone slap happy with a date stamp. The jumble of letters looked like it stretched for miles, if not—yeah I don’t know what’s longer than a mile. But I felt bile working its way up my throat as I stared at the mess. It was nauseating.
“Heh-heh-heh-HEHHHH-heh! Before you throw up and choke on it, one pro tip for you. Focus on the top notification first, then work through the rest. You can thank me later.”
“I thought you said you were going to hibernate!”
“I am. For an hour. Like you asked. I’m leaving now, and don’t you dare ask me for help while I’m watching my show.”
And just like that, it was gone. Really gone. I knew because I felt an emptiness in my head I hadn’t felt before, like a part of me was missing. That made me sad. I had expected to feel pure glee by getting rid of the damn thing. But now I felt like my weird uncle had just died. It was bizarre, but I finally had my moment of silence. So I laid there for a while, trying to ignore the pile of notifications—as the implant had called them. I just couldn’t do it.
I sucked in a breath, scanned the pile for a moment, and tried to figure which one was on top. It took me a second to pinpoint it, but when I focused on it, a text box appeared that differentiated it from the rest. Which was substantial progress until the next bad thing happened. A new, even more annoying voice erupted inside my mind.
New Milestone: Sentience!
You have achieved sentience, something that even robots can do. Are you actually proud of yourself? You are? That’s really sad, Flap.
I winced and directed my gaze to the next one down. I was feeling proud of myself, and it hurt to be called out like that.
New Milestone: Polyglot!
With the help of a translation chip, you have learned to speak every single language in the galaxy. Correction: you have learned how to understand every language in the galaxy. You still honk and bark like a duck to everyone else. But, hey? At least you can’t hear it, right?
I didn’t give two shits if a bunch of giant chicken dumbasses had to hear me honk. I liked to honk, so I focused on the next one. The pile didn’t look like it was getting any smaller.
New Milestone: Cybernetic Implant!
You have received a “gently used” Gallic combat implant. The good news? You get to enjoy these messages. The bad news? Yours has gone haywire to the point that it has also unlocked the Sentience Milestone. Aren’t you two peas in a pod?
And the next.
New Milestone: Genetic Modification!
Today just keeps getting better, doesn’t it? Not only have you been enhanced with the ability to learn and store skills through life experience, you’ve also been “enhanced” through highly experimental and dangerous gene splicing. You’re like Howard the Duck, only… nah, you’ll never be as cool as Howard the Duck. Forget I said that. Thought you technically starred in The Nice Guys and I really like that movie.
The last one gave me pause. So they had done more than stick a computer inside my head. And the milestone had quotes around enhanced, which made me concerned it wasn't anything to shake a stick at. There was also something about these notifications. They were so personalized, and the snarky tone told me that annoying implant was probably behind them. But, I had gotten more information in the past two minutes through these milestones than I had since I had woken up. So I wanted to see more.
I went to open the next one, but a pair of words at the bottom of the text box caught my eye. It said: RAPID OPEN. I shrugged and figured, what the hell? I'm a smart duck. I can read fast, I think. So I clicked it with my mind.
That was a big mistake.
They popped up faster than I could follow, each with its own description and voice. If I thought all that garbage the implant had shoved into my brain was bad, this was downright torture. It was like listening to a thousand rock concerts inside my head, each one of them amped up to eleven playing a different genre of music.
I tried to pay attention to it all for about fifteen milliseconds before the mental overload sent me crashing into sweet, sweet oblivion.