TWENTY-FOUR: HONEY, I SHRUNK THE EARTH

Spoiler alert: we did not bring our A game, as you will see in a moment.

As we inched closer and closer to the pyramid, it became more and more apparent that we—meaning me—had underestimated the sheer size of the chicken-made mountain. That mysterious platform was so high above I could barely tell it was there anymore. All I could see when I craned my neck backwards was stairs.

Never-ending, eternal stairs. A literal stairway to the heavens. Or hell, if that’s what was waiting for us.

And if that was the case, I didn’t want to set foot on Santa’s escalator like the space plague.

“C’mon,” I said with a glance at Dumbass. “You sure there’s nothing you can do about that not-being-able-to-fly thing?”

“My hands are tied, Flap,” Dumbass boasted. “Well, technically I don’t even have hands and your wings are clipped, anyway, but yeah.” It nodded. “My hands are tied. Figuratively. In case that wasn’t clear. No hands, remember?”

“I remember,“ I said with a roll of my eyes. “No spell or chem or anything?”

“Seriously, Flap? Have you seen our inventory? The proverbial cupboard is as bare as Rick Moranis’s acting credits after Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves. By the way, it was a bit of dick move from him to up and quit like that. That man was a source of pure joy for me while I was stuck inside you-know-who, bored out of my circuits. To make things worse, the possibilities were endless for that franchise. We could have had Honey, I Blew Up the Pet Tarantula or… Honey, I Shrunk the Earth.”

I growled, “We did have Honey, I Shrunk the Earth, you dumbass! And you were literally a member of the space Szalinki family!”

“Oh, right. Right.” Dumbass sighed. “Still, he didn’t need to quit acting, you know?”

“His motherducking wife died from cancer and he quit acting to take care of his kids, you demented pile of circuits! He did the right thing.”

“Oh, I forgot you Earthlings still have those kinds of diseases. Cancer... Alzheimer's... Parkinson's... Auto-Brewery Syndrome. And that's not to mention the absolute worst of all: bird flu."

"Bird flu?"

"Yep. I actually have a case it myself right now. It's when you get stuck trying to save the world with a arrogant drake that's only a few days into sapience and already thinks he knows everything, won't listen to reason, keeps asking to borrow the car to go to the movies with his friends when you know he doesn't have any--"

"No ducking friends! Duck you, Dumbass. I have friends!"

"Name one... other than me, of course."

"Ummm." I hesitated, then noticed Weevul out of the corner of my eyes. "I got Weevul. Ain't that right, pal?"

Weevul nodded triumphantly. "Yes! Weevul is best of friend to Flap!"

"Well, I don't know about--"

"Ah," Dumbass groaned, cutting me off. "I guess the Moranis thing makes sense, but not the, well, you know? I don't think he really...”

"You better shut that rotten beak of yours right now, Dumbass." I placed my hands on my hips. “Both you and I know the next thing that comes out of your rotting beak ain’t gonna be nice. You’re better off keeping it to yourself.”

“Pfft. Me? Say something mean?! No way!”

I cocked my head. “What were you gonna say then, huh? C’mon. Spill the beans, Dumbass.”

“I, um, well... nothing. I was going to say nothing. But know that you've given me another minute to think about the Moranis thing again, I have to say that’s a terrible excuse."

"What is?"

"Choosing his to entertain his children over me.”

“Holy hell! He had no idea you even existed. I had no idea you even existed. Not a single person or animal from Earth had any idea you even existed, nor did we know there was a cyborg,methed out space Third Roost out there running the show! As far as we were concerned, Earth had the only intelligent life in the Universe.”

“I’ll admit that’s possible. Not the intelligent life thing, of course. But agree to disagree.”

“There’s nothing to disagree about. It’s a ducking fact.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion—which is wrong, but I for a fact know that one Earthling did know about us. Not me and you, obviously, but what you would calls aliens and whatnot.”

“Who? No, don’t say anything. Lemme figure this lie out.” I licked my bill as I dug through my memories and settled on a single clip from a Will Smith movie where he welcomed an extraterrestrial to Earth with force. “Okay, so you could be right. You gotta be talking about Area 51. Are you saying we actually had alien bodies there?!”

It blew another raspberry at me. “Pfft! No, that was just a research facility for aircraft, moron. You Earthlings were completely in the dark, except this guy. Frankly, I tried to convince the simulation it wanted him instead of you, but no dice.”

I narrowed my eyes. “That’s… interesting. The thing about me, I mean. But you can’t stroke me half-way without giving me the big finish. Who was it? It had to be someone important, like a big picture tech guy. Musk? Or was it Bezos?” I snapped my fingers. “It was Branson, wasn’t it?”

“Close, but… no.”

“Who then?”

“How about I show you his majesty instead of telling you?”

A portrait materialized before my eyes. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t really a portrait. More of a screenshot, and at the bottom was a six letter word in glowing Impact. A gold letter H in the corner gave away the source, but that wasn’t the most striking thing about the image. No, the man at the center was a marvel to behold. He had one hell of a fivehead from which sprang a tangled nest of hair that would have made Harry Caray proud. His hands hovered in front of his cheap suit like he wasn’t sure what to do with them, and the glazed look of his eyes implied he had recently piped a few bars of jazz cabbage.

“Oh my dog, Dumbass,” I groaned. “You can’t be ducking serious?! The Ancient Aliens guy?!”

“His name,” Dumbass paused for a dramatic effect, “is Giorgio A. Tsoukalos. And he’s the only one of you dopes that had it all figured out.”

I blinked. “How?”

“It’s like talking to a monkey with you. I feel like Skippy the Magnificent." Dumbass huffed, then climbed up on my shoulder and pecked at my temple. “Think, Flap. Think! Pyramids like the one in front of us? Ancient astronaut theory? Egyptian gods with the heads of animals, specifically Horus with the head of a chicken?”

“What?” I furrowed my brow. “No! Horus had the head of a… um, a… falcon! Yeah, Horus had the head of a falcon!”

“Well, I mean, kind of. But that’s just because the Gallics that came here after the big boom were religious zealots deformed from hundreds of generations of socially controlled inbreeding and those humans were terrible artists. Haven’t you seen any of their murals? The scale is all weird and squishy and”—it shuddered—“two-dimensional.”

“Huh.” I rolled my tongue along the edge of my bill. “I guess weirdly that would make sense. And it explains a lot, really.”

“Finally! You acknowledge me for the badass I am.”

"Still a Dumbass, but, " I tossed my hands in the air, “Yeah, I suppose I—”

“Listen, I love a pleasant conversation as much as the next implant, but why are you jaw jacking so much when you’ve got a pyramid to climb?!” It leaned forward and flicked me under the bill with a claw as the sound of a horse erupted from it's beak. “Hi-ho silver! Away!”

“Ugh!” I groaned as I started climbing. “You are an insufferable bastard, Dumbass. For the record, you were the one that wouldn’t shut up, you know?” I took a few more steps and could already feel the burn in my orange calves. “And double for the record? This not being able to fly thing sucks. If I could fly, I’d have us to the top of this thing in no time.”

“Why so important to fly?” Weevul said. “You no able to fly now and seem okay, ya?”

“Yeah, but… it’s complicated.” I took a deep breath and looked down at the space bug. “Pal, a duck that can’t fly isn’t really a duck at all, you know? Can’t migrate. Can’t fish. She ducks don't even see you as a potential mate. No raft will take you. It’s a useless existence. Worse than death.”

“Really?” Dumbass giggled as it leaned its rotting head out in front of me. “Is it worse than climbing stairs?”

“Way worse. Shit, I’d climb a mountain of stairs to get my flight back.”

“Then quit complaining and climb away!”

“Dogdammit." I turned to Weevul and pointed at the severed head on my shoulder. “You see what I have to put up with, pal?”

“Yes, but it right. We have long way to climb and no idea what is at top. Could be raging pregnant orousloth waiting to inject eggs into dead bodies.”

“Um, whose dead bodies?”

Weevul shrugged. “Ours. Heat help eggs hatch and liquified insides good source of food for new orousloths. Circle of life. Honorable death for Curculian. Is good way to go, ya?”

“What the duck?! No! Remind me to never visit your planet, pal.” I flashed the Curculian a look that said I very much did not think it was a good way to go, then—eager to get the image out of my mind—I turned and climbed like Weevul’s beloved orousloth was nipping at my heels. I made it several dozen steps before I couldn’t take it any more. I spun around and shouted, “What the ducking duck, Weevul? Honorable? Really?”

He shrugged again, curled into a ball, and shot up towards me like Sonic the Hedgehog in the Chemical Plant Zone.

We spent the better part of the next hour climbing towards the pyramidion until a vibration beneath my feet and the rumbling of stone on stone stopped me in my tracks. “Oh, that can’t be good. What the hell is that Dumbass?”

“That,” Dumbass said, “is my cue to go back to my happy place. Let me know when the, um, ride’s over, okay? Toodles!”

And then the implant’s rotten avatar vanished into my chest as the stairs literally disappeared beneath my feet.