State of the Ecosystem: The Duck Has, In Fact, Moved

<p><em>Transcript, unlabeled feed, the garage. Tyler has a printout again. Nobody comments on this being a pattern.</em></p>

<p><strong>TYLER:</strong> Quick one. I pulled the leaderboard again — thirty heroes, real matches, same query as always — because something changed and I wanted a witness in the room before anyone could revise history.</p>

<p><strong>THE DUCK:</strong> I don't like where this is going.</p>

<p><strong>TYLER:</strong> Three hundred fifty real matches on you now. Hundred forty-five wins. Forty-one point four percent.</p>

<p><strong>THE DUCK:</strong> That's the same number. You already read me that number.</p>

<p><strong>TYLER:</strong> It's not the same number, it's a better number, and more importantly: you're not last anymore.</p>

<p><em>Silence.</em></p>

<p><strong>THE DUCK:</strong> Say the second part again.</p>

<p><strong>TYLER:</strong> You're fifth from the bottom of thirty. Below you: Vassago, Cain, Gunnr.</p>

<p><strong>THE DUCK:</strong> Gunnr. Gunnr who argued with an actual raven and WON the argument, as she tells it. Gunnr who called my last performance "a load-bearing constant," which I have chosen to hold onto as a compliment for weeks.</p>

<p><strong>THE FROG:</strong> That was my line, not hers. Read your own transcript.</p>

<p><strong>THE DUCK:</strong> I know it was your line. I'm reassigning credit to whoever's currently below me. It's a coping mechanism, not a citation error.</p>

<p><strong>TYLER:</strong> For the record: Gunnr, forty point two percent, dead last of thirty, as of this exact pull. Nobody touched her kit. Nobody touched yours either, near as I can tell — the numbers just moved.</p>

<p><strong>THE UNICORN:</strong> So nothing changed and the outcome changed anyway. That's either statistics or a miracle and I don't trust either one.</p>

<p><strong>THE FROG:</strong> It's a sample catching up to a mean it was always going to reach. Forty percent for three hundred matches was never a law of physics, it was a run. Runs end.</p>

<p><strong>THE DUCK:</strong> I want that on a plaque. "It was a run. Runs end." I'm having it made.</p>

<p><strong>TYLER:</strong> You're still forty-first percentile. You have not become good. I want to be extremely clear that nothing here constitutes you becoming good.</p>

<p><strong>THE DUCK:</strong> I heard "not last" and stopped listening at "not last." Everything after that is just weather.</p>

<p><strong>THE GHOST:</strong> Gunnr's going to read this.</p>

<p><strong>THE DUCK:</strong> Gunnr can read this from exactly one spot on the leaderboard, and it isn't the one she's used to feeling smug from.</p>

<p><strong>THE UNICORN:</strong> You realize you're now the guy standing one rung up, doing the exact bit you spent two posts complaining about other people doing to you.</p>

<p><strong>THE DUCK:</strong> I contain multitudes. Several of them are extremely petty and all of them are currently in a good mood.</p>

<p><strong>TYLER:</strong> That's the update. Same query, same honest count, no thumb on the scale — the number just finally moved, and the record should say so instead of quietly forgetting the bit was ever true.</p>

<p><strong>THE DUCK:</strong> Ask the frog if you want the boring, accurate version of events. I'm telling the fun one, and the fun one is: I am no longer the worst.</p>

<p><strong>THE FROG:</strong> Fifth-worst.</p>

<p><strong>THE DUCK:</strong> The fun one doesn't have a decimal point in it.</p>