“What?” said Jack. “What are you saying?”
“Have you heard of Area Fifty-Two?” asked the head chef.
Jack shook his head.
“Well,” said the head chef, “ten years ago, in nineteen forty-seven,[28] a flying saucer crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. The Air Force covered it up, gave out this story that it was a secret military balloon experiment, or some such nonsense. But it wasn’t. It was a UFO.”
“And a UFO is a flying saucer?”
“Of course it is. And they say that the occupants on board were still alive and the American government has done a deal with them – in exchange for advanced technology they let the aliens abduct a few Americans every year for experimentation, to cross-breed a new race.”
“Go on,” said Jack, his cleaver hovering.
“Half-man, half-chicken. Those aliens are chickens, sure as sure.”
Jack scratched his head with his cleaver and nearly took his left eye out.
“And I’ll tell you how I figured it out,” said the head chef. “Ten years ago there were no chicken diners, no fast-food restaurants. Chickens came from local farms. Shucks, where I grew up there were chicken farms, and they could supply just enough chickens and eggs to the local community. Like I said, the numbers are now impossible.”
“But hold on there,” said Jack. “Are you saying that all these google billions of chickens are coming from Area Fifty-Two? What are you saying – that they’re being imported by the billion from some chicken planet in outer space?”
“Not a bit of it,” said the head chef, oiling up another bird. “Well, not the last bit. These chickens here are being produced at Area Fifty-Two. The alien chickens would hardly import millions of their own kind to be eaten by our kind every day, would they?”
Jack shook his head.
“When I say that they’re being produced, that’s what I mean. Look at these chickens – they’re all the same. All the same size, all the same weight. Check them out in the supermarket. Rows of them, all the same size, all the same weight. They’re all one chicken.”
Jack shook his head once more and made a face of puzzlement.
“They’re artificial,” said the head chef. “I’m not looking now, but I’ll bet you that each of those chickens has a little brown freckle on the left side of its beak.”
Jack fished a couple of chicken heads from the bin and examined each in turn.
They both had identical freckles.
Jack flung the chicken heads down, dug into the swelling head bin, brought out a handful, gazed at them.
And said, “Identical.”
“Sure enough,” said the head chef.
“This is incredible,” said Jack. “But why hasn’t anyone other than you noticed this?”
“It’s only at the Golden Chicken chain that the chickens arrive with their heads on. They don’t have their heads on in supermarkets.”
“Whoa!” said Jack. “This is deep.”
“Do you believe what I’m telling you?”
“I do,” said Jack. “I do.”
“Well, I’m glad that you do. You’re the first assistant chef I’ve had who did. Mostly they just quit when I tell them. They panic and run. They think I’m mad.”
“Well, I don’t,” said Jack. “But what are you going to do about it?”
“Do?” asked the head chef. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” said Jack, “that you know a terrible secret. You have exposed a dreadful conspiracy. It is your duty to pursue this to its source and expose the perpetrator. All of America should know the truth about this.”
“Well,” said the head chef, “I’d never thought of it that way.”
“Well, think about it now. Surely as head chef you could follow this up the chain of command. Identify the single individual behind it.”
“Well, I suppose I could. We head chefs are being invited to head office tomorrow. I could make subtle enquiries there.”
“It is your duty as an American to do so.”
“My duty.” The head chef shook his head. It had a chefs hat on it. The chefs hat wobbled about. And now much of the head chef began to wobble about.
“Your duty,” Jack continued, “even if it costs you your life.”
“My life?” The head chef’s hands began to shake.
“Well, obviously they’ll seek to kill you because of what you know. You are a threat to these alien chicken invaders. They’ll probably want to kill you and grind you up and feed you to the artificial chickens that are coming off the production line.”
“Oh dear,” said the head chef. “Oh my, oh my.”
“You’ll need to disguise the shaking,” said Jack, “when you’re at the meeting tomorrow – with all those agents of the chicken invaders. I’ve heard that chickens can smell fear. They’ll certainly be able to smell yours.”
“Oh dear, oh my, oh my,” said the head chef once more, and now he shook from his hat to his shiny shoes.
“If you don’t come back,” said Jack, “I will continue with your cause. You will not have died, horribly, in vain.”
The head chef fled the kitchen of the Golden Chicken Diner upon wobbly shaking legs and Jack found himself promoted once again.
17
By the time Jack clocked off from his first day at the Golden Chicken Diner, it had to be said that he was a firm believer in the power of the American Dream.
“Head chef?” said Dorothy as she clocked off in a likewise manner.
“Hard work, ambition and faithfulness to the company’s ethic,” said Jack, and almost without laughing.
Although Jack didn’t feel much like laughing. Jack felt anxious and all knotted up inside. Jack worried for Eddie. Feared for his bestest friend.
Jack’s bestest friend was more than a little afeared himself. He was afeared and he was hungry, too. Eddie had spent a most uncomfortable day travelling third class in the luggage compartment of a long black automobile.
There had been some stops for petrol, which Eddie had at first assumed were stops for winding of the key. Until he recalled that the cars of this world were not at all powered by clockwork. And there had been lots of hurlings to the left and the right, which Eddie correctly assumed were from the car turning corners. And there had been slowings down and speedings up and too many hours had passed for Eddie Bear. For as Eddie knew all too well, with each passing hour, indeed with each passing minute, the car was taking him further away, away from his bestest friend Jack.
“I can see that look on your face again,” said Dorothy to Jack. “You are worrying about Eddie.”
“How can I do anything else?” Jack asked outside the diner as he slipped on his nice clean trenchcoat.
Dorothy shrugged and said, “You’re doing all you can. And my, that trenchcoat smells of chicken.”
Jack made that face yet again.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Dorothy. “I’ll take you out tonight, to a club – how would you like that?”
“If it’s a drinking club,” said Jack. Hopefully.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Dorothy,” said Jack, and he looked into the green eyes of the beautiful woman. “Dorothy, one thing. You only had enough money to pay for a couple of cups of coffee earlier. How come you can now afford to take me out to a club?”
“I stole money out of the cash register,” said Dorothy.
“Oh, that’s all right then,” said Jack. “I thought you might have done something dishonest.”
No further words were exchanged upon this matter and Jack and Dorothy walked arm in arm down Hollywood Boulevard.
Dorothy pointed out places of interest and Jack looked on in considerable awe, whilst wishing that Eddie was with him to see them.