🦆 qu4ck, the rubber ducky
Meet qu4ck, the rubber ducky, quite possibly the best listener on all of teachChat. He does not judge, he does not interrupt, and he has never once said "have you tried turning it off and on again." He just floats there, glossy and patient, while you explain your problem out loud until the problem gets embarrassed and explains itself.
Name origin
qu4ck is a tribute to rubber duck debugging, the sacred programmer ritual of explaining your broken code, line by line, to a rubber duck until you suddenly spot the bug yourself. The duck never types a single fix; saying the problem out loud does all the work. qu4ck carries on that noble tradition, full time, from a bathtub.
Life stages
Every buddy grows through 8 stages, and qu4ck's are extremely bath-forward.
| Stage | Arrives at level |
|---|---|
| Egg | 1 |
| Hatchling | 2 |
| Duckling | 4 |
| Puddle pro | 7 |
| Bath boss | 11 |
| Glossy | 16 |
| Payload ready | 22 |
| Golden quacker | 27 |
How to bring them home
qu4ck costs 200 points in the buddy store inside the pet window, which makes him the most affordable buddy on the shelf, and the price includes his bathtub yard. You buy him with the points you earn by participating (see /points-and-houses), but he levels up from your participation score, never from clicks: going from level L to L+1 costs 10 + 5*(L-1) points of score, all the way up to level 30.
Their yard
qu4ck arrives with a bathtub yard: mint tiles, a porcelain rim, and warm bathwater over a suspiciously muddy seaweed bottom. Do not ask how the mud got in the tub. He is a duck.
Field notes
- His little retro window docks next to the chat send button, title bar proudly reading qu4ck.exe.
- Tap him and he does a little dance while your heart counter ticks up. The counter means absolutely nothing, and that is the point.
- The "Payload ready" stage is a wink at the USB Rubber Ducky, the famous keystroke-injection gadget. The source code confirms qu4ck "retired from payloads to float professionally."
- He keeps his own level bucket and dance count, so switching back to will.0 never loses a drop of progress. His tub even counts as an underwater yard, so some yard life swaps to sea creatures.