The oversized roly-poly launched itself up onto my chest and clutched at my t-shirt like it was hanging on for dear life. I felt a sudden sense of responsibility for the Curculian as it shuddered and held on to me like I was the mother it never had.

“Hey, watch the claws there, little bro,” I said. “I don’t want you poking holes in my favorite—and only—shirt!”

“Oh, no!” the Curculian whined, in a voice that sounded a hell of a lot like a certain cartoon pig. He squeaked and skittered off my chest, burying his round head into the crook of my elbow. “Weevulfurtsnipleteet is so sorry. Meant no harm! But please, please do not let other Curculians bully Weevulfurtsnipleteet any longer. Weevulfurtsnip—”

“Bully you? They’re half the size of you.”

The Curculian shivered. “Do not remind Weevulfursnipleteet of his deformity. Other Curculians ridicule him for large size. Tell Weevulfursnipleteet he is useless. Hogs hive think because of his misshapen brain. Weevulfursnipleteet tried to end self many times to remove link to hive, but shell is too hard. Weevulfursnipleteet failed.”

“I’m sure they meant nothing by it... Weevulfursnipleteet,” I lied. “And if you’re gonna keep talking about yourself in the third person, we’re gonna have to do something about that name, pal. That’s more of a mouthful than I’m comfortable with.” I raised my other hand, hesitated, and gave him a tentative pet. The chitin that made up his exoskeleton was so gouged and chipped it felt like cracked ceramic under my fingertips. “And you’re safe, alright? None of those other guys are gonna bully you any longer.”

He looked up at me with a spider-like nest of black eyes that protruded from just under the half sphere that made up his head. They blinked in unison, then he said, “But why?”

I motioned towards the field of carnage I had created with my combat spur. “Because I killed them all!”

“You kill… Curculians?”

I gave him my best smile. “Yep! Sure did!”

He blinked and shifted his eyes as he scanned my face, obviously searching for signs of something. “You… eat Curculian?”

I let out a nervous laugh. “I mean… yeah, but not on purpose or anything. At least, not at first. In my defense”—I made an OK sign with my hand, brought it to my lips, kissed it, then tossed it towards him with a flourish—"damn!”

He stared at me, blinked again, then let out a shriek that sounded like nails on a chalkboard. His mouth snapped open, exposing a lamprey-like set of teeth. Then he bit down on my hand, sending a flash of red across my vision as my health bar plummeted. The Curculian darted from my arms and ran around behind the drop pod, sending a cascade of dust into the air as his dozens of legs fought for purchase against the ground.

He screeched, “Devil bird! Gallic with flat beak! You just want to eat Weevulfursnipleteet! You want to suck jelly!"

New Milestone: Poisoned!

So, you handled a dangerous animal you knew nothing about without training. Smart move. And because of your complete disregard for personal safety, you have been—surprise, surprise—poisoned! Unlike the video games of yesterEarth, Curculian poison won’t slowly deplete your health until you die an agonizing death. Nope, you just won’t be able to regenerate until you find an antidote! I’d try to keep my distance from now on… but I’m not you and the viewers love a good old-fashioned Darwin Award, so do whatever the hell you want.

“It can poison, Dumbass?” I shouted. “Why didn’t you tell me that in the little description thingie?! I would have been more careful.”

“Would you? Really? And, uh, not my job. Despite what you may think, all those super-important bits of information you get are not coming from me. Granted, they are coming through me so they get a bit of my subconscious flair, but again, not from me.”

I grunted. “From who, then?”

Dumbass huffed. “The simulation, dummy. Haven't you been listening? But to put it in a way you can understand, God is speaking to you through her favorite prophet: me.”

“Huh. And I thought you a god complex."

"Well, I don't. Just a messiah complex, and only when it comes to season two of Firefly."

"That... doesn't surprise me." I shook my head. "So there is a God, eh? Then she definitely must have a sense of humor sticking me with you.”

“No… no, there isn’t a God. Or a deity—deities, if you're into the whole pagan thing. Or an omnipotent universal presence or anything. There is a simulation. Huge difference. And I was just using terms your subpar mishmash of neurons can understand,” Dumbass said with far more snideness than usual. “And speaking of which… way to go, minormind! Your sorry excuse for a processor just got us poisoned and we don’t have an antidote. While you may have a soft spot for insectoid Neville Longbottom, here, hurry and kill him so we can open the loot cache and get out of here before a bunch of Death Eaters show up and cause us some real trouble. We might get lucky and find an antidote inside.”

“Well, if he’s Neville,” I ran a hand through my frill. “We kind of need him, don’t we?”

“Now we don’t need him! Neville Longbottom was nothing more than a buttefingers nincompoop added for comic relief!”

“Sure,” I agreed, as my bill curled into a smile. Getting Dumbass going was just about the only pastime that brought me joy, and sure as shit was going to add fuel to that fire. “In the first few movies, yeah. But in the Order of the Phoenix, we learned that he could have been the Chosen One, and you have to admit he has a serious glow up phase from then on. Learning Defense Against the Dark Arts? Running the Army at Hogwarts while Harry off in the middle nowhere, glamping while was trying to cuck his best friend?”

"Solid points," Dumbass sighed. “I… reluctantly agree. Maybe Neville was a poor choice for comparis—”

“And,” I held up a finger, “You could even make the argument that Neville was the Chosen One all along, seeing as how he destroyed the last Horcrux, making he-who-must-not-be-named mortal so that, Harry, the supposed ‘hero’ could defeat him!”

“Okay, you win this one. Like I said, solid points. All of them. Now, Flap, I hate to drag you out of the Potterverse and back to reality, but look at the poor thing. He’s miserable, and useless. He won’t be any help to us, and frankly… you’re the only meat sack I care about, so do the dirty deed and get it the duck over with! Kill him!”

“I’m not killing him, Dumbass!”

My hand moved for my combat spur on its own. “Fine, then I’ll do—”

“No. No, you won’t. You won’t ever make me do that again without my permission. Understand?”

Dumbass said nothing, but I could feel a sense of compliance emanating from deep within my mind.

"As much as you talk about helping me," I mumbled. "I got a feeling you're going to be the thing that ducks up your chance of getting more of that stupid space western."

"Agree to disagree."

"Sure, whatever." I sighed as I pursed my bill and turned to face the Curculian, his head slowly poking out from behind the drop pod. Ours eyes—my two and his twenty-something—locked for several seconds. "Come on out, little fella. I ain't gonna hurt you."

The alien's body vibrated as he let out a low hum. And as I examined him, a tooltip popped up.

Weevulfursnipleteet

Level 1 Curculian

You are staring at the very last Curculian. The endling of his species, thanks to… someone... not going to mention names or anything. Grossly oversized because of a glandular deformity, Weevulfursnipleteet has lived a life filled with ridicule and hostility. His battered carapace is proof positive that even those so alike in nature that they share a hive mind can be brutally unkind to someone that’s a little different. Did I mention he’s the only living member of his species? Remind you of anyone? Yeah, I can sense the kinship welling up inside you already. You’re thinking about teaming up, aren’t you?

Make no mistake, forming a party with a weakling like this—and before you know his crimes—is akin to suicide. You have two choices, and I’m even going to help you out with this one. Option: kill him and be responsible for the extinction of an entire species, but live to see another day… or maybe even two. Option 2: get all mushy and join forces, eventually getting you both killed in the process. I suggest Option 1. I’ll even throw in another loot cache if you take the smart road. But the choice is still yours. So are you just going to stand there or...

I digested those words for a long time, trying to make sure I truly understood what I was risking. I had no real reason to save this alien. Minutes ago, it had been part of a group hell bent on killing me. I owed it—no, him—no allegiance. But how would I feel if someone killed me because I was going to be an inconvenience? I was a duck foremost, so the harsh reality of survival was no stranger to me. But I was also part human, and something deep down within my simulated soul told me that a human would show compassion when faced with such a choice.

Or at least most of them would. The good ones.

“Pick option one, Flap. Don’t be dumb.”

A scene slipped into my head right then, from a movie I knew both from the media Dumbass has made a part of my personality and from somewhere… else. A figment that felt real—lived—like a memory. And when I spoke, my voice instinctually took on an accent that wasn’t my own, even though it technically was. “Do you see those two weevils, Dumbass?”

“First of all, why the duck do you sound like that?! And second, what do you mean two weevils? Are you talking about the Curculians? Cause there were six. There’s one now. One living one, that is, because you killed the other five.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. Which would you choose?”

“Neither! Five are dead and one is dumb!”

“If you had to… if you were forced to make a choice?”

“Pushy, are we? Fine, I would choose any of the dead ones. We can harvest the carapace for fabricating armor once we find a workshop, the poison gland to use in status chems, and we can put that goo into your inventory to make a ducking peanut butter and jalien sandwich later on, you fat duck!”

I stopped my foot and snorted. “There! I have you! You’re completely ducked! Do you not know that in the Trials, you much always choose the larger of six weevils?”

There was a pause, then Dumbass let out the type of groan one usually saved for the lamest of puns. “Uhmn! Dog, that was bad. Out of all the references I gave you to work with, you went with that?! Master and ducking Commander?! I know people love that movie, but I never got why. It’s a pirate movie without a single yo-ho-ho or shiver me timbers. Just a lot of mister this and mister that, amputation and shit. Damn. I am so, so, disappointed in you. That was awful, and it wasn’t even accurate, like someone saying ‘Luke, I am your father’ when we all know it’s ‘No, I am your father.’ That's the first cardinal sin of nostalgia, man, not getting a quote right. Shame, Flap. Shame on you.”

Dumbass's buttons fully depressed and my mind settled, I made the call, my poisoned body and warnings from the simulation be damned. I took a deep breath and reached out a hand. “It’s okay... Weevul. Is it okay if I call you Weevul? A nickname. Would you like that?”

He peeked his head out from behind the drop pod and nodded. “Weevul? Nickname? Hmm. Weevulfursnipleteet has never been given a nickname before… other than Largeshell, but”—he tested it out—"Weevul knows that is not meant as a nice nickname.”

“Yeah, well, Weevul is. Listen, Weevul. Like I said a minute ago, I’m not going to hurt you. I... want to team up. Me and you. And Dumbass.”

“Flap! You don’t want to—”

I clenched my fists and shouted. “I know what I’m ducking doing, Dumbass!”

Weevul recoiled at my outburst.

I gave him my best reassuring smile. “Sorry, I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to… well, there’s no way to say this without sounding like I’m nuts, so I might as well play it straight with you. There’s a voice inside my head. It tells me what to do—tries to tell me what to do. Its name is Dumbass, and it’s my friend. I gave it that name. Dumbass. And now I'm trying to give you one. It's what I do for my... friends."

"Friend?" Weevul skittered towards me and grabbed my finger with a pair of segmented limbs. The Curculian stood to its full height, and even then only came up to my belly button. “Weevul would be proud to be you friend. To join your team. But... what is name?”

“Oh!” I laughed. “Forgot to introduce myself! Flap. The names Flap. Flap Merganser.”

“Please to meet you, Flap.”

“Dumbass, is there any special thing I need to do to have Weevil join our party or whatever?” Before Dumbass could respond, I noticed a text box on Weevul’s tooltip that said INVITE TO PARTY. “Nevermind. I found it.”

I focused on it, and a warning message popped up:

WARNING: Inviting [WEEVUL] to party is an irreversible action. Once a joinder of parties is executed, all legal matters will be combined for judicial economy and to allow for the swift administration of justice. Do you really want to invite [WEEVUL] to party?

YES or NO

“Don’t do it, Flap. He doesn’t even have an—”

“Shut up, Dumbass! I know what I’m doing!"

And then I clicked YES.