“You are wise beyond your years,” said the head chef, “but it won’t work. The numbers don’t tie up. Unfertilised eggs, fine – battery chickens will turn those out every day for years. Until they’re too old to reproduce, then they get ground up and become chicken feed. But think about this – to produce the fertilised eggs you’d need an awful lot of randy roosters. Billions and googles of them, shagging away day and night, endlessly.”

“Nice work if you can get it,” said Jack.

“What, you’d like a job shagging chickens?”

“I would if I were a rooster. And it’s probably the only job they can get.”

“Well, it doesn’t pan out,” said the head chef. “I’ve never heard of any chicken stud farms where millions of roosters shag billions of chickens every day. There’s no such place.”

“There must be,” said Jack.

“Then tell me where.”

“I’m new to these parts.”

“Well, don’t they have chickens where you come from?”

Jack remembered certain anal-probings. “Well, they do …” he said.

“It doesn’t work,” said the head chef, oiling up another chicken and giving it a little flick with his fat forefinger. “Doesn’t work. There’s simply too many chickens being eaten every day. You’d need a stud farm the size of Kansas. It just doesn’t work.”

“Well,” said Jack, “I have to agree that you’ve given me food for thought.” And he laughed.

“Why are you laughing?” asked the head chef.

“Sorry,” said Jack. “So what is your theory? I suspect that you do have a theory.”

“Actually I do,” said the head chef, “but I’m not going to tell you because you wouldn’t believe it. You’d laugh.”

“You’d be surprised at what I believe,” said Jack. “And what I’ve seen. I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.” Which rang a bell somewhere.[27]

“Well, you wouldn’t believe this.”

“I’ll just bet you I would. Trust me, I’m an assistant chef.”

“Well, fair enough,” said the head chef. “After all, you are in the trade, and clearly destined for great things. But don’t pass on what I say to those Puerto Rican wetbacks – they’ll only go selling it to the Weekly World News.”

Jack raised his cleaver and prepared to bring it down.

“They are not of this world,” said the head chef.

Jack brought his cleaver down and only just missed taking his finger off.

“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.