What is an angel but a divine automata?

All of us were terrified to go to Ki'ikarnath, but we also felt we had to, for the Light's Reach—and we were also resentful that the Light's Reach carried a bunch of Tu'ul missionaries who had gone down on an Anomalous Interdict world because of their own stupidity, and would probably thank their stupid Light if we managed to save them, not a Galactic Aid crew facing down fears that made our eyes bleed. Or a number of other reactions. I know that by the time we landed, I was using isopropyl wipes repeatedly so that the smell wouldn't trigger the rest of the landing party. Talak was in the corner shedding fit to become bald. If you've ever run one of those missions, you know how it is.

Mei wasn't, of course. I'm used to her not reacting. Talak was muttering about species who don't care when other people die, and I told them what they could do with their bigotry, but then I had to worry about crew members who weren't saying it.

We moved to where the wreckage of the Light's Reach was, scanned it with drones. No-one there. Not even in the terror compartment, which is definitely where most of the missionaries would have stayed.

"No sign of damage on the doors," Mei told me quietly, reviewing the drone shots. "It looks like the terror compartment was opened from the inside."

Having frightening anomalies pointed out in very calm tones doesn't always make them better. "Why would they do that?"

"Either there was something to fear inside, something they needed outside, or something made them feel overconfident. How do Tu'ul react to confinement, generally?"

"They're claustrophilic. They like closed spaces. It reminds them of nesting burrows."

"Hmm. Weird."

I knew I wasn't going to get more than hmm weird out of Mei at this point, because she was still processing information, twisting it round and round in that unique human brain. If we were an adventure story, hmm weird would have been her catch-phrase. On the other hand, if we were an adventure story, we would all be guaranteed to make it out alive, just to keep everything friendly for families and people about to lay eggs.

We were just setting the drones for a much wider sweep when someone came running out of the woods, and unfortunately ran right onto Talak—that's Tirifon Talak, you see. A pack hunter. They may shed from tension, but when under attack, they Protect The Pack—whatever they have to do, they protect the pack.

Of course, I'm a freeze reflex sapient, and even though I've been trained to get past it, the remains of what Talak had done froze me for a moment. Our medic was screaming at them. "We came here to save them and you killed them," you know, the sort of thing that comes out when things are getting that bad. It was hard, it was agonizing, to get my jaw unfrozen and tell Medic (Vossi don't give out personal names) to back off.

"Yeah, no, this is weird," Mei said, pressing her hand to her ear, where her personal scan-drone was giving her data. "This is very weird. Talak might have done exactly the right thing. I don't know."

Talak, who was hunching their shoulders from Medic's assault—now Medic's murderous glare—startled, and twisted around to give them a look. "What's weird?"

"First, there's a wound down his back, and I don't think Talak made it. They just ripped into them from the front, low abdomen, where most creatures keep their stomachs. It's just bad luck that Tu'ul have their lungs there, or Medic might have been able to keep him stable long enough to go in the cryo-lab." All of us knew the cryo-lab was a long shot, but you have to try, obviously. "Secondly—Tu'ul run about five points above my body temperature, which is higher even than Talak's, and this one is as close to the ambient temperature as Commander Sikasa." She nodded at me. "Third—Talak, your nose is better than mine, do you smell something weird?"

Talak looked confused. "Why would you acknowledge my input when…"

"When you were rude before? Because I'm sensible. And this is life or death. Do you smell anything?"

Talak was slow to answer, but then they said, reluctantly, "Nendlu. I don't know the Interlang word for it. It's in most violet blood. But—"

But the Tu'ul body was obviously, luridly, graphically green-blooded. Right. And Talak had cloudy gray-translucent blood, not that they'd gotten hurt in the fight. (Tirifon are fast. And temperamental.)

"I say we put the drones to use scanning this area," Mei said, "before we expand and try to find the survivors. At the very least, this one might have been extremely sick before they attacked."

I flared my facial fins in assent. "A good idea. Medic—"

Something bit me in the back. Something that was concealed almost completely by my carry-bag, and also by the fact that nobody was standing behind me.

And then I said, quite involuntarily, "Medic, take charge of the corpse. We need to give this person a decent funeral by their custom. Talak, send the drones out to patrol. High pattern and fast."

Mei looked at me.

Pray that you never get looked at quite that way by a human. They don't mean it—I don't think they mean it—but it gets you right down to the bone. Most species don't stare like that at anything they don't mean to eat, and that's not even counting the uncanny feeling you get from those white corners of their eyes.

Not that I could worry about that now, because there was something on my back. Something on my back, and I was no longer in charge of what I said, or what I did. Some kind of parasite. Some kind of controller.

I tried to scream. Couldn't.

Tried to freeze, because I was far past the point of panic. Couldn't. You don't know how wrong it feels, to move normally when your mind is screaming in fear.

Most of it is a blur. A copper green blur, just like my blood. I know I walked back to the shuttle. I know that I ordered several people out to do in-person patrols of the near area.

I know Mei said, "Countermand that," and I looked at her, and—

In a bizarre way, it was almost a relief to see her holding her weapon, barrel pointed rock-steady at me. At the same time, I didn't want to die. I didn't want to I didn't want to I didn't want to—

Various of the crew were yelling. Mei moved around the other side of me. "Take the pack off. And turn around."

"I will not!" My voice, my vocal cords, but not me. "I am your commanding officer, I order you—"

"Let me rephrase. Take the pack off before I break all four of the arms and remove it myself."

The thing controlling me opened its mouth and hissed, glaring through the green haze, but it was bluff and everyone knew it. It let the pack fall to the floor.

More shouting and screaming. I heard someone say multilegs, I heard someone else say worm.

"You are going to release my commander's body," Mei said, "or else I am going to rip you out, tentacle by tentacle, and then rip you apart, segment by segment. You have access to some of Sikasa's mind. Did I ever tell her what humans do to bugs?" The last word was unfamiliar. A human language.

I saw, out of the corner of one eye, Medic making his way through the crew, snapping at people who got in his way. I also saw Mei moving around to look me straight in the face. She showed her teeth.

Humans don't do that around other people. Not usually. Apparently it's sometimes a friend signal in some of their cultures. It wasn't this time, and I could tell. "We squash them," she hissed. "We poison them. We engineer them to rip their own kind apart. I knew how to pull off a tick before I learned written language, and if you think I'm going to balk at a bigger tick—"

She stopped herself. Went calm, somehow. It didn't matter. I knew what I had seen. What I don't think very few sapients report back about. A human about to lose their temper.

It wasn't like an adventure story, where someone untrained would have to get the thing off me and there might be a declaration of romantic love. Medic got me in the neck with a syringe and cut each of the tendrils out, and Medic wasn't about to declare romantic love to anyone, since his species doesn't have that. I woke up with Talak hanging over me, endured Medic's check, and then sat up. "Where's Mei?"

"In the convenience," Talak said, and then wrinkled its snout in alarm. "You don't think—"

They helped me up and we staggered to the convenience. My stomach swooped and dropped as I thought of violating taboo, but on the other hand—I used my override code and opened the door.

That day I learned: humans can purge the entire contents of their stomach. It is graphic, ugly, and very painful looking.

Mei grabbed a wipe and got the last of the sickening fluid off her lips as we came in. Talak made a horrified noise at the smell, which even I could detect. Acid. "What's wrong? Is this a disease?" I blurted.

"Nope." Mei leaned back against the garbage disposal and stretched her lips slightly, a gesture usually meant to be reassuring. "Delayed emotional reaction. Don't worry about it."

I blinked. Then blinked again. "I've never heard of—delayed emotion, how—"

"Not everyone's as brave as you, 'Kasa." I was going to protest that I wasn't, that my species was a bunch of insectivores for heaven's sake, but she went on. "Some of us can't afford to feel all the emotions in the moment, or we'd fall apart. So we lock in and squash it down and that has consequences." She stood up, not as smoothly as usual. I noticed that her skin, which is always a pale tan, was paler than usual. "Don't spread it around too much? It's a bit embarrassing and I think it might be useful to the crew, thinking I always have it together."

The rest of that mission is on file. How we got ourselves out alive, how we rescued two of the Tu'ul, how we nearly got killed by several more Tu'ul, which was also how we found out that the parasites pilot dead bodies as well as live ones. As far as we can tell, they simply ride a live body until it dies, and then keep doing it until it falls apart. Ki'ikarnath is now under a Known Biological Menace Interdict.

I kept Mei's secret. But I think this information might help you understand what's going on this time. Humans don't lack emotion. They defer it. They can take a boiling rage or a burning fear and crush it into a tiny, compressed space at the back of their mind until the emergency is over. But it exists. It has to be faced sooner or later.

And, Captain—if it isn't faced, your human friend could break. You can't let that happen.

Mitch McConnell is reportedly brain dead. The journalist who broke his cardiac arrest is at the hospital waiting for them to move his body. Her name is Desirée Townsend.

She's the independent reporter who obtained the EMS scanner audio confirming paramedics performed CPR at McConnell's D.C. home on June 14. NBC and CBS spent a week catching up to her.

Yesterday she tweeted that she's physically at the hospital, that multiple sources have told her the 84-year-old senator has been declared brain dead, and that his Capitol Police detail was still there as of 3:39pm ET.

Laura Loomer posted the same claim, citing a White House source. McConnell's office will not confirm or deny. They insist he is "continuing to improve."

The brain-death claim is not yet verified. Here's what is.

McConnell has been hospitalized for three straight weeks with no public explanation.

His office has never said why he was admitted. His last vote was June 11.

His wife Elaine Chao was photographed in Beijing meeting the Chinese vice president three days after her husband collapsed. She has not come home.

His daughter deactivated her X account.

Neighbors of his D.C. townhouse say no one has come or gone since the ambulance took him away. Not family. Not staff.

Kentucky's Democratic Governor Andy Beshear says McConnell's office is not returning his calls.

Now the politics.

Kentucky Republicans quietly rewrote the state's succession law in 2024. If McConnell's seat opens, Beshear cannot appoint a replacement. A special election gets triggered instead.

And the timing matters. If he can't finish his term after August 3, the special election just rolls into November. Before August 3, the GOP has to hold a standalone race.

They’re watching the calendar.

The election they're trying to avoid is the GOP's nightmare. Thomas Massie, the Republican congressman who has become one of Trump's loudest critics, would be a heavy favorite to run and split the red vote wide open.

Every day they hide McConnell's condition is a day they don't have to hold that race.

Whatever is actually happening in that hospital room, this is the picture from outside it: a senator who has not been seen in three weeks, a wife who left the country, a family that has gone dark, a governor being frozen out, and a party racing the clock on a succession law they wrote themselves.

Townsend is still at the hospital.

BESHEAR SHOULD SHOW UP AT THE HOSPITAL AND DEMAND TO SEE HIM - OR HIS BODY!!!

Schrödinger’s turtle

He’s a public servant, the public have a right to know his condition.

So my grandma turned away from him and to the other mom and said “I have another daughter. She doesn’t go to this school and she’s a star softball player with her own bat. You can tell your daughter to stop bothering mine or you can drive her to the hospital with a shattered jaw. That’s your choice.” And walked out.

Few months later that girl stole a necklace from my aunt. My grandma called the cops and they all drove to her house to get it back. The cop came outside with it and said he told the family my grandma wouldn’t press charges if they gave it back. My grandma took the necklace and said “Then you’re going to have to go in and tell them you lied because I am pressing charges. She’s a thief and I want her treated like one.”

She was a nurse up until recently (finally retired after trying and failing 4 times)

She got into it a little later in life and worked as an army nurse for a while before working regularly as a hospital nurse.

Most of the other nurses were either also new and young and did what they were told or older and experienced and were used to being bullied by the doctors. As she had dealt with soldiers and had to learn to tell army dudes what to do, she had no interest in letting doctors treat her less than them.

At her hospital the doctors would go into a room looking for something, ransack it, then leave it messy for a nurse to clean up. The first time one tried that on her she stood in the door and said he wasn’t leaving until he cleaned his mess. He tried to say he was busy and couldn’t take the time to clean and she said if someone started dying she’d let him know, and didn’t move until he cleaned his mess.

She became a terror to the doctors who she did not let give any shit. If she paged a doctor and he didn’t come right away, he needed a good reason and lying wouldn’t work because the nurses would tattle and say he was doing a crossword and ignored her, so if she paged they had to go after her or else she’d yell at them.

One time in particular a doctor was chatting with a nurse and didn’t notice she’d paged him five times. When he realized he went running down the hall, saying “Out of my way, [name] is mad at me!”

When my moms gallbladder was inflamed and near bursting after my brother was born, she went to my grandmas hospital. They told her she was fine and to wait, while she was on the floor holding her stomach and crying. My dad called my grandma and told her the situation so she marched down to the ER and said “That’s my daughter, what time today can you get her in for surgery?” When they tried to say they thought she should go home my grandma wouldn’t let them. Luckily they got her into surgery in time to avoid it bursting.

So my grandma turned away from him and to the other mom and said “I have another daughter. She doesn’t go to this school and she’s a star softball player with her own bat. You can tell your daughter to stop bothering mine or you can drive her to the hospital with a shattered jaw. That’s your choice.” And walked out.

Few months later that girl stole a necklace from my aunt. My grandma called the cops and they all drove to her house to get it back. The cop came outside with it and said he told the family my grandma wouldn’t press charges if they gave it back. My grandma took the necklace and said “Then you’re going to have to go in and tell them you lied because I am pressing charges. She’s a thief and I want her treated like one.”

She was a nurse up until recently (finally retired after trying and failing 4 times)

She got into it a little later in life and worked as an army nurse for a while before working regularly as a hospital nurse.

Most of the other nurses were either also new and young and did what they were told or older and experienced and were used to being bullied by the doctors. As she had dealt with soldiers and had to learn to tell army dudes what to do, she had no interest in letting doctors treat her less than them.

At her hospital the doctors would go into a room looking for something, ransack it, then leave it messy for a nurse to clean up. The first time one tried that on her she stood in the door and said he wasn’t leaving until he cleaned his mess. He tried to say he was busy and couldn’t take the time to clean and she said if someone started dying she’d let him know, and didn’t move until he cleaned his mess.

She became a terror to the doctors who she did not let give any shit. If she paged a doctor and he didn’t come right away, he needed a good reason and lying wouldn’t work because the nurses would tattle and say he was doing a crossword and ignored her, so if she paged they had to go after her or else she’d yell at them.

One time in particular a doctor was chatting with a nurse and didn’t notice she’d paged him five times. When he realized he went running down the hall, saying “Out of my way, [name] is mad at me!”

When my moms gallbladder was inflamed and near bursting after my brother was born, she went to my grandmas hospital. They told her she was fine and to wait, while she was on the floor holding her stomach and crying. My dad called my grandma and told her the situation so she marched down to the ER and said “That’s my daughter, what time today can you get her in for surgery?” When they tried to say they thought she should go home my grandma wouldn’t let them. Luckily they got her into surgery in time to avoid it bursting.

The art i made for IWAG 2026 Electric dreams ✨☁️