“What was the name of this planet again, Dumbass?” I said, with the closest thing to a smile my duck's bill could manage. It had been almost a week since I had given my implant its new name, and it still made me feel warm and fuzzy inside every time I used it. The milestone I had gotten when I gave Dumbass its beautiful first name had also been my favorite so far.

New Milestone: Cognomination!

Congratulations! You have named a living being for the first time! Normally, this milestone is unlocked when naming a pet or a child. Or a rock if your sorry excuse for parents never loved you. Let that one simmer for a minute while you run for milk and never come back. Yep, even though you’re the progenitor of dozens and dozens of little ducklings, you never stuck around long enough to give any of them their own clucking name. You’re a real deadbeat duck, aren’t you, Flap?

Reading it again right then made me grin so hard I nearly split my beak in half. Dumbass hated its dumbass name, and I knew I had finally struck a nerve in the demented implant when that milestone popped up. I wasn’t an idiot. I knew Dumbass was behind all the colorful language. It had almost admitted as much the second day we were together. The milestones were more or less real, though. Dumbass had told me it was all part of the Gallic caste system that had arisen ever since the big chickens had discovered the universe was a simulation. More milestones meant you could learn better skills through your implant, and the more skills you had, the higher caste you had in their society.

You got bonus points for earning unique milestones, especially ones that other Gallics hadn’t unlocked before. According to Dumbass, I had an entire collection of unique milestones on account of me being the only red-breasted merganser to get an implant. Plus, I had also inherited a lot of important milestones from that Russell Crowe guy. There was one that Dumbass said was really special.

New Milestone: Academy Award Winner!

Through no significant achievement of your own, you are now an Academy Award winning actor—or at least the donor material that was harvested for your hybridization was. Let’s get real here, an Oscar is just a participation trophy for playing ball in out-of-touch Hollywood, but Russell Crowe still killed it in that movie. Too bad the Gallics killed him to enhance you.

I had gotten a lot of extra credit for that one, though I suspected Dumbass was lying about it being special. My implant also said I would have a lot of skill points to spend once I hit a milestone called Level 5 and could pick a specialization. I needed it to tell me more about this leveling business, but that thing had been ignoring me most of the time ever since I named it Dumbass.

I don’t know what the big deal was.

Dumbass is my favorite word, and it should feel honored I named it after my favorite word.

“Hey Dumbass? Are you ignoring me again?” I asked, feeling that sense of emptiness I felt whenever the thing went into hibernation. “Is this about the Dumbass thing? You’re supposed to be guiding me through all this clucking stuff, remember? You promised!”

“Yes, Flap,” Dumbass said with a hint of annoyance. “I promised. And I was ignoring you. For good reason, you pond-loving bully.”

“Oh, c’mon! The name’s not that bad! You’re being a baby about it. Get over it.”

“That’s not very fair, Flap. Did I tell you to get over it when you saw yourself in the mirror for the first time?”

“Yes!” I honked. "That’s exactly what you said!”

It had, too. When I had seen myself in the mirror for the first time after the Gallics did all that work to me, I almost had a clucking heart attack. I looked like something a Rule 34 artist with a hard-on for aquatic birds and middle-aged action stars would come up with after a four-day acid binge. I wasn’t just an average bird anymore. I was a disturbing cross between a duck and a human. A hybrid. Bipedal, about six feet tall, and shoulders as broad as Mr. Crowe's body of work. My entire person had transformed. Everything I had ever known had about myself had changed against my will and that dumb implant had told me to get over it.

I'm sure there are a lot of ducks out there that hate their species enough to embrace being part human, but I wasn't one of them. I was so disgusted by my new appearance; it was hard to look at myself in the mirror without getting sick. I had a big beer gut, and my face was all puffy like I had been living off a diet of pure salt. Yet, despite all the new human crap, they had left me my feathers, and I still had my bill, thank God. Even though it kind of looked like Launchpad McQuack’s now.

There were also some positives that came with the change. The frill on the top of my head was all spiky and anime-like now. It looked totally badass. And the fingers were a pleasant bonus, especially the thumbs. I could, like, grab stuff without using my feet. It was wild. Though any kind of actual flight was off the table for now. That one had been hard to digest.

I was a young duck, barely five years old, and I already had my wings clipped.

Dumbass said I could get real flight back later on the Trials.

I didn't know how that would happen, but was looking forward to it.

“Look, Dumbass,” I said. “I don’t want to argue with you now. I need you to answer my questions. What’s the name of this planet? And why are they dumping me here?”

“Ugh! We, Flap! We’re getting dumped here, okay? Not just you. We. And we’re—see what I did there? Included you? Hmm?” Dumbass sighed. “We’re getting dumped on a planet named Absolom, Flap. It’s what’s called a Training Level. It’s there to help the accused get, um, in shape for the Trials.”

“Help? Why the cluck would the chickens help beings get prepared for Trials?”

Dumbass huffed and made a spot deep inside my head burn for a moment. “Are you forgetting about the implant, Flap? Hmm?”

“Everybody gets those?”

“No!” it laughed. “Nobody else on Absolom is going to have an implant! Unless there’s a disgraced Gallic soldier there, of course. Not likely, but possible. Most of the accused are cannon fodder. Slaves and criminals with an embarrassingly small number of milestones. They won’t last ten minutes once the Trials begin.”

“That doesn’t make any damn sense, Dumbass,” I said as I furrowed my brow. “Why even prepare anyone for the Trials if they’re only going to live for ten clucking minutes?!”

“Because… only surviving for five minutes makes for terrible entertainment. They need to make it at least halfway through the first episode.”

I waved my new fingers in front of me. “Wait a minute! Hold the damn phone! People watch the Trials?”

“Uh, yah! You think the Cluck Collective would let mayhem like that go to waste? Plus, statistics show that viewership of the Trails alone keeps the galaxy in line more than the prospect of actually getting thrown in as an accused. You can get sent to the Trials for jaywalking, Flap. And beings too far from away from the Trails to get a live feed still jaywalk. Like, a lot. Wrap your duck-man mind around that.”

"Oh, my god!" I gasped. Then I hyperventilated. “Holy sh—”

“Yeah, you’re gonna have to save that remark for later. The ship is about to land and two of the biggest Gallics I’ve ever seen are on their way here to throw you down the ramp head first.”

And they totally they did about twenty seconds later.

After I moaned about the scrapes on my new hands for a bit, I stood up and dusted myself off. It did little other than rub the mess deeper into my cutoff jean shorts. The soil was sticky. My hands were sticky. In fact, it was so hot and muggy that my t-shirt was almost completely soaked with sweat already.

“Dumbass,” I said. “Are we on a clucking island?”

“Yep!”

“What’s it called?”

“Um, I already told you. Absolom.”

I wiped a sheen of sweat from my bill. “Both the planet and the island are Absolom? Are you clucking serious?”

“Um, yes?”

“You answered that like a question. Why did you answer that like a question? I gotta say, you sound a little sus there, implant.” I chewed on the name for a moment. Absolom. Something about it seemed a little too familiar. Then I had a vague memory of Ray Liotta firing a futuristic, red tipped rocket from a tower. And I groaned. “Dumbass, is Absolom really the name of this place? Or did you name it after clucking No Escape?"