When he reached the hatching room, he found Jake and Pecky looking nervously at the others.The boy was tall with light brown hair and a serious expression on his face. The girl was bouncing on her toes and looked skittish.
“Oh good, you’re here.” Jake moved closer to Pecky, standing protectively between the interlopers and the bird.
“I know you have grown close to the bird, but--”.
“His name is Pecky,” Jake said defiantly.
“Right. Pecky. I know you’ve grown close to him, but we really do have to take him with us. It’s for his own protection as well as yours.”
Jake rolled his eyes. “Can we cut the secretive talk? Why is Pecky in danger?”
The girl, Maya, sighed and slowly approached Jake. “He’s part of a science experiment.”
“Maya, that’s enough,” warned her partner.
“He’s obviously attached to the bird, Adam. We have to be honest with him about the situation.”
“What situation? What experiment?” Jake prodded.
“He’s part of an experiment that went...wrong,” said Adam. “An experiment to create a more intelligent breed of chicken.”
“A secret group called the Poultrygeist decided that chickens should be able to defend themselves against predators.”
“That doesn’t sound like such a bad idea,” said Gilbert.
“No. It didn’t. But their methods were inhumane...and illegal.” Maya paced the room.
“Before they even started the experiment,” Adam went on. “Their requirements got out of control.”
“Not only did they want the birds to talk,” added Maya. “They wanted them to be able to reason and process conversation so they could use them to gather information from competing chicken farms.”
“What information?” Gilbert asked.
“Customers, profits, anything about the businesses that they could use to undercut and steal customers. They want to monopolize the egg industry. Once they have all the hatcheries under their power, they’ll move on to getting all of the farms.” Adam stopped and looked at Maya.
She took a deep breath and went on. “Once they have all farms and hatcheries under their control, they can start their true objective.”
Which is?
“Control of...people.”
“People? How would owning all the farms and hatcheries give them control of people?” Jake shook his head, confused.
“Through the eggs. They plan to modify the eggs to implant a microchip into whoever eats them. A chip that would give them full control over the mind,” said Maya.
“So why did they sneak into the hatchery and start...getting rid of the chicks?” asked Gilbert.
Maya looked at Adam, silently asking permission to share the rest. “Tell them.”
Taking a deep breath, Maya launched into the story.
“It wasn’t the Poultrygeist. It was us.”
Previous Chapters
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Coming Soon
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapters 1-11 originally published on A Pinch of Homestead