delimeful

[delimeful]

We have 30 days until the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) laws are rescinded. This is the 50-year bedrock of American conservation. Normally, these actions take years but the administration has provided 30 days for public comment gutting clean water and clean air. Drop what you’re doing, before you make any more calls or read any more social media posts, please populate the Federal Register with dissent.

A. Go to https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/02/25/2025-03014/removal-of-national-environmental-policy-act-implementing-regulations

B. Click on the green rectangle in the upper right corner ("SUBMIT A PUBLIC COMMENT") .

C. Fill in your comment, and info at the bottom, and SUBMIT COMMENT.

[delimeful]

a promise softly sung (1)

BTHB: Rendered Mute

Summary:

Stripped of both his ability to speak and his willingness to communicate, Logan has resigned himself to his new position as the latest hopeless case in the intergalactic version of a wildlife rehabilitation center. None of the staff has managed to identify him as a Human or even as sapient in general. It's not the easiest on his dignity, but in the interest of avoiding more pain, he'd like to keep it that way. Now, if only the strangest alien he'd ever met would stop trying to put enrichment in his enclosure.

warnings: severe dehumanization, miscommunication/assumptions, mentions of violence and injury, mentions of euthanasia, references to torture

-

Logan woke to the familiar buzz of the lighting system flicking on, illuminating the cell around him and agitating the other denizens of his current prison.

He didn’t bother trying to turn back over and go back to sleep; even if the other creatures around him miraculously settled down enough to allow it, the harsh noise of the lighting system was at just the right irritating pitch to keep him awake whether he liked it or not.

It probably wasn’t intentional— from what he’d heard and observed thus far, this facility wasn’t anything close to the first one he’d been kept in. There weren’t any training sessions or punishments for bad behavior, nor was he constantly eyed by speculative buyers.

During the first few weeks he’d been here, he’d frequently observed his neighbors through the thin window that ran along the front of the cell, and most of them didn’t show any signs of discomfort or even irritation at the noise, meaning that it likely wasn’t intended as a deterrent.

He felt fairly confident in his assessment. Early on, he’d gleaned that this was the intergalactic version of an animal shelter, and one that seemed to value proper care for its unwilling residents. He didn’t expect that the aliens running it were intentionally trying to agitate the fauna they were trying to adopt out or rehabilitate.

His daily headache arrived regardless, but it soothed what little remained of his temper to know that this particular suffering wasn’t inflicted purposefully, just to be cruel. Ignorance was hardly an excuse, but he’d found it was far preferable to intentional cruelty.

The thought made him snort as he slowly, painstakingly pushed himself up to a sitting position. The Logan of five years ago would never have been placated by knowing his captors were simply ignorant. If anything, it would have only made him more furious; how could anyone pretend to be fulfilling an animal’s needs without doing sufficient research to understand the animal?

Then again, the person he’d been five years ago wouldn’t have accepted the idea of being trapped in an alien animal shelter, seen as little more than a mindless beast. He would find his present self unrecognizable, unable to reconcile with the very idea of sitting sedately in the alien equivalent of a kennel, silently waiting for the start of a day that was virtually indistinguishable from yesterday or tomorrow.

Sometimes, Logan missed being that person. He’d been overwhelmingly naive back then, but even when things had been at their most painful, there had been a sort of thrilling vindication in seeing his handlers grow furious, a heady satisfaction in his own stubborn refusal to give in.

It had been pointless, of course, just as his nostalgia for that vivacious attitude was pointless. His pride had only earned him more pain.

He began his usual morning routine of simple stretches, keeping one ear on the ruckus around him. There likely hadn’t been any notable new arrivals overnight, but trying to guess which creatures were nearby by sound alone was one of the few sources of entertainment left to him.

Most of the closest noises were dog-like, growls or barks or heavy rumbling. Further away, the cacophony took a much higher pitch, full of the whining, squeaking, and whistling of smaller, less aggressive beasts. As always, Logan was glad for the distance. There may have been more daily variety— the more harmless creatures got adopted out much more frequently— but it wouldn’t have been worth upgrading his daily headache to a daily migraine.

He paused mid-stretch, finally picking out the source of his unease. There was a sound missing, no sign of the familiar rattle of the food and water dish being pulled through the bars and refilled. It was almost always the first thing the employees here did after the lights came on, and while inherently degrading, he had found the routine reassuring.

If they weren’t yet offering the morning meal, there were two prevalent possibilities as to why. Logan didn’t think any of the animals had injured itself or passed away overnight, since there was no urgent calling or somber conversation. That meant an alien had come in to adopt as soon as the facility had opened, a rare but not outstanding occurrence.

If he strained to hear past the growing noise levels, he could make out the mechanical chatter of a translator, confirming his suspicions.

To his surprise, the voices seemed to be coming closer. He shifted out of his stretch, drawing his knees up under him and adjusting the makeshift toga he’d created for himself from one of the provided linens. After being actively dehumanized for years, Logan had long since lost any sense of humiliation or modesty, but he still found some small comfort in clothing, and most aliens didn’t think much of it. There were apparently plenty of animals out there that created simple coverings or incorporated materials around them into fur or feathers.

(At one point, Logan had mistakenly believed that one of his neighbors had been another sapient creature after watching it meticulously tie shredded fabric into little strips and tuck it between feathers in a decorative display. He’d wasted a week attempting to communicate in various ways before realizing the futility, and had accidentally unnerved the poor creature enough to get his cell moved to a different part of the holding room.)

It was unusual that he saw a client approach this section of the shelter so quickly. He was well aware that this was the area designated for undesirables, higher-risk fauna that was more aggressive or feral, similar to how humans would take care to isolate dogs that had been rescued from fighting rings or cats that hadn’t ever been socialized. They didn’t often get visitors, and adoptions were even less frequent.

On his end, Logan hadn’t lashed out too severely at the staff or scared potential clients away like most of the others, but he’d still been relegated to this section. He knew why, of course. Suffice to say, his previous “adoption” had ended poorly.

His mood soured at the memories, and by the time footsteps reached his aisle, he’d shuffled to one corner of the cell and seated himself solidly on the floor, leaning his shoulder against the wall. It would be easier to focus on translating what he could of the conversation if he didn’t have to worry about a sudden headrush or the fatigue that occasionally swept over him after standing for too long.

“—great to hear!” The voice of a staff member trailed into proper hearing range, chirping a phrase used so frequently that Logan had no trouble parsing it out in accented Common.

They launched into a well-worn recitation of what Logan was assuming was standard information about the facility and its available fauna. He still didn’t know enough Common to keep up with the more complicated terms, and could only guess at the general meaning.

Frankly, his attention was diverted by the number of overlapping steps he could make out as they approached. Entire family units came in to look around occasionally, sure, but not to this section. Some of the creatures here were vicious enough to give children nightmares.

There was the clicking sound of a button, and Logan watched dully as the front wall of his cell slowly shifted from opaque to transparent, gradually revealing the muted colors of the narrow hallway outside the cell. Most of the staff used the small viewing windows to check in on them during meals, but when a prospective client came to look, they made sure everything was fully visible.

Two figures came into view as the wall turned almost entirely see-through, with only a faint grey tinge to the material. One was a staff member he’d seen often enough before: a small, feathery alien with big eyes, fluffy antennae, and a poncho that draped over most of its dust-colored form. The other was no species that he’d ever seen before.

It was built vaguely like a centaur, with four stubby legs, two upper limbs, and a long, prehensile tail. Nearly every inch of it was encased in a shining, thick layer of what Logan could only describe as goo. It was as though the alien was covered in an outer shell of vibrant radioactive green gelatin, with only indistinct shadowy shapes visible to indicate that there was any sort of underlying structure at all.

It had no mouth or nose, only two flat black eyes that didn’t blink, and a discolored gray spot below them that was uncannily reminiscent of a handlebar mustache. There were two large, shell-like protrusions on either side of its head, extending past the gelatin layer. From the crown of its head to the base of its spine, there was a stretch of brown plantlike tendrils that writhed subtly in place, looking like a horse’s mane if a horse’s mane was also made of rotting seaweed.

Logan’s interest sharpened despite himself. Most of the shine of being in space had worn off somewhere in the first two years of methodical torture, but occasionally he still felt a glint of that familiar curiosity.

The unknown alien watched him right back, taking in every detail of the small room. A thin pad with blankets piled on it in one corner, and Logan sitting slumped in the other. A few simple toys scattered on the floor, largely untouched.

It asked a question, and Logan noted the way it seemed to hum in different tones before the translator echoed its words. Vibrations produced by an internal organ? Unlike humans, it had no mouth to shape the noise with, so the language must have been composed of variations in the tonal humming itself.

The employee chirped back an affirmative, keeping their gaze averted from meeting Logan’s dull stare directly in the automatic way that he’d noticed in most aliens. The staff especially were careful about eye contact, presumably they received some sort of training to reduce agitation in the fauna they were looking after.

It was somehow refreshing, the way the new alien unabashedly locked eyes with him. He hadn’t realized how much one could miss simple things like eye contact until he was suddenly entirely deprived of it.

It couldn’t last, of course. Logan hadn’t followed most of the conversation thus far, mostly out of general disinterest, but he knew more than enough to recognize the phrase that always came up when he was spoken about.

“There are recorded violent incidents with multiple previous fosters,” the employee recited, the cadence of the phrase so familiar that Logan could have imitated it perfectly, if he was feeling masochistic.

Instead, he kept his mouth firmly closed and idly waited for the duo to move on to the next cage.

The new alien shifted slightly, the reflections of the overhead lights warping along its glossy body.

“What are its—,” it asked, the translator adding a questioning tone indicator. Logan didn’t recognize the last word, but the employee’s response cleared things up within a few sentences.

“Not good,” they answered, antennae angling back in a display of upset. “It’s already been here for a while. If we can’t find the source planet and nobody takes it in, we’ll have to put it down.”

Those weren’t the words exactly, of course. The employee was using a strange euphemism, but unlike most of the creatures here, Logan had more than enough memory retention and cognitive processing to notice just what inevitably happened to the creatures that were referred to as such.

He waited for the spike of panic, the natural response of his body to the threat of death, but it didn’t come. His heart rate may have jumped by a beat or three, but he mostly felt a strange sense of distance from it all.

What difference did it make? Could what he was doing now really be called ‘living’ by any stretch of the imagination?

Logan met the alien’s eyes plainly, still oddly numb to it all.

The alien hummed a long, toneless note, one that didn’t translate into any specific words, and then stepped forward and tapped on the clear material with one of its thick fingers. As though everything up to this point hadn’t been dehumanizing enough.

If things were different, maybe Logan would have tried to snap out a demand or insult to cover for his wounded pride. As it was, he only turned his head further into the wall and closed his eyes.

This didn’t remotely deter the alien. The resulting thunking noises continued to be loud and repetitive, and Logan gained a sudden and unhappy empathy for every fish he’d ever witnessed being pestered by a child in a pet store. Even the employee looked uncomfortable, feathers fluffing out slightly, though surprisingly enough they didn’t try to stop the stranger’s irritating behavior.

Finally, Logan turned back to it with a glare, letting his lips curl back to bare his teeth in an odd configuration, half-sneer and half-snarl. There, he’d confirmed it. He was scary and aggressive, nothing more than a beast waiting to be executed. Now, move along already.

The tail behind the stranger began to wag slightly, a rapid back-and-forth movement that was so reminiscent of a happy dog, it genuinely startled Logan for a moment. Not many species would react to a threat display with playful excitement. Surely, the matching body language was just a coincidence?

Without hesitation, the stranger turned and asked something that Logan heard almost daily, though never before about his own person.

“Can I go in and meet it?”

[delimeful]

a promise softly sung (1)

BTHB: Rendered Mute

Summary:

Stripped of both his ability to speak and his willingness to communicate, Logan has resigned himself to his new position as the latest hopeless case in the intergalactic version of a wildlife rehabilitation center. None of the staff has managed to identify him as a Human or even as sapient in general. It's not the easiest on his dignity, but in the interest of avoiding more pain, he'd like to keep it that way. Now, if only the strangest alien he'd ever met would stop trying to put enrichment in his enclosure.

warnings: severe dehumanization, miscommunication/assumptions, mentions of violence and injury, mentions of euthanasia, references to torture

-

Logan woke to the familiar buzz of the lighting system flicking on, illuminating the cell around him and agitating the other denizens of his current prison.

He didn’t bother trying to turn back over and go back to sleep; even if the other creatures around him miraculously settled down enough to allow it, the harsh noise of the lighting system was at just the right irritating pitch to keep him awake whether he liked it or not.

It probably wasn’t intentional— from what he’d heard and observed thus far, this facility wasn’t anything close to the first one he’d been kept in. There weren’t any training sessions or punishments for bad behavior, nor was he constantly eyed by speculative buyers.

During the first few weeks he’d been here, he’d frequently observed his neighbors through the thin window that ran along the front of the cell, and most of them didn’t show any signs of discomfort or even irritation at the noise, meaning that it likely wasn’t intended as a deterrent.

He felt fairly confident in his assessment. Early on, he’d gleaned that this was the intergalactic version of an animal shelter, and one that seemed to value proper care for its unwilling residents. He didn’t expect that the aliens running it were intentionally trying to agitate the fauna they were trying to adopt out or rehabilitate.

His daily headache arrived regardless, but it soothed what little remained of his temper to know that this particular suffering wasn’t inflicted purposefully, just to be cruel. Ignorance was hardly an excuse, but he’d found it was far preferable to intentional cruelty.

The thought made him snort as he slowly, painstakingly pushed himself up to a sitting position. The Logan of five years ago would never have been placated by knowing his captors were simply ignorant. If anything, it would have only made him more furious; how could anyone pretend to be fulfilling an animal’s needs without doing sufficient research to understand the animal?

Then again, the person he’d been five years ago wouldn’t have accepted the idea of being trapped in an alien animal shelter, seen as little more than a mindless beast. He would find his present self unrecognizable, unable to reconcile with the very idea of sitting sedately in the alien equivalent of a kennel, silently waiting for the start of a day that was virtually indistinguishable from yesterday or tomorrow.

Sometimes, Logan missed being that person. He’d been overwhelmingly naive back then, but even when things had been at their most painful, there had been a sort of thrilling vindication in seeing his handlers grow furious, a heady satisfaction in his own stubborn refusal to give in.

It had been pointless, of course, just as his nostalgia for that vivacious attitude was pointless. His pride had only earned him more pain.

He began his usual morning routine of simple stretches, keeping one ear on the ruckus around him. There likely hadn’t been any notable new arrivals overnight, but trying to guess which creatures were nearby by sound alone was one of the few sources of entertainment left to him.

Most of the closest noises were dog-like, growls or barks or heavy rumbling. Further away, the cacophony took a much higher pitch, full of the whining, squeaking, and whistling of smaller, less aggressive beasts. As always, Logan was glad for the distance. There may have been more daily variety— the more harmless creatures got adopted out much more frequently— but it wouldn’t have been worth upgrading his daily headache to a daily migraine.

He paused mid-stretch, finally picking out the source of his unease. There was a sound missing, no sign of the familiar rattle of the food and water dish being pulled through the bars and refilled. It was almost always the first thing the employees here did after the lights came on, and while inherently degrading, he had found the routine reassuring.

If they weren’t yet offering the morning meal, there were two prevalent possibilities as to why. Logan didn’t think any of the animals had injured itself or passed away overnight, since there was no urgent calling or somber conversation. That meant an alien had come in to adopt as soon as the facility had opened, a rare but not outstanding occurrence.

If he strained to hear past the growing noise levels, he could make out the mechanical chatter of a translator, confirming his suspicions.

To his surprise, the voices seemed to be coming closer. He shifted out of his stretch, drawing his knees up under him and adjusting the makeshift toga he’d created for himself from one of the provided linens. After being actively dehumanized for years, Logan had long since lost any sense of humiliation or modesty, but he still found some small comfort in clothing, and most aliens didn’t think much of it. There were apparently plenty of animals out there that created simple coverings or incorporated materials around them into fur or feathers.

(At one point, Logan had mistakenly believed that one of his neighbors had been another sapient creature after watching it meticulously tie shredded fabric into little strips and tuck it between feathers in a decorative display. He’d wasted a week attempting to communicate in various ways before realizing the futility, and had accidentally unnerved the poor creature enough to get his cell moved to a different part of the holding room.)

It was unusual that he saw a client approach this section of the shelter so quickly. He was well aware that this was the area designated for undesirables, higher-risk fauna that was more aggressive or feral, similar to how humans would take care to isolate dogs that had been rescued from fighting rings or cats that hadn’t ever been socialized. They didn’t often get visitors, and adoptions were even less frequent.

On his end, Logan hadn’t lashed out too severely at the staff or scared potential clients away like most of the others, but he’d still been relegated to this section. He knew why, of course. Suffice to say, his previous “adoption” had ended poorly.

His mood soured at the memories, and by the time footsteps reached his aisle, he’d shuffled to one corner of the cell and seated himself solidly on the floor, leaning his shoulder against the wall. It would be easier to focus on translating what he could of the conversation if he didn’t have to worry about a sudden headrush or the fatigue that occasionally swept over him after standing for too long.

“—great to hear!” The voice of a staff member trailed into proper hearing range, chirping a phrase used so frequently that Logan had no trouble parsing it out in accented Common.

They launched into a well-worn recitation of what Logan was assuming was standard information about the facility and its available fauna. He still didn’t know enough Common to keep up with the more complicated terms, and could only guess at the general meaning.

Frankly, his attention was diverted by the number of overlapping steps he could make out as they approached. Entire family units came in to look around occasionally, sure, but not to this section. Some of the creatures here were vicious enough to give children nightmares.

There was the clicking sound of a button, and Logan watched dully as the front wall of his cell slowly shifted from opaque to transparent, gradually revealing the muted colors of the narrow hallway outside the cell. Most of the staff used the small viewing windows to check in on them during meals, but when a prospective client came to look, they made sure everything was fully visible.

Two figures came into view as the wall turned almost entirely see-through, with only a faint grey tinge to the material. One was a staff member he’d seen often enough before: a small, feathery alien with big eyes, fluffy antennae, and a poncho that draped over most of its dust-colored form. The other was no species that he’d ever seen before.

It was built vaguely like a centaur, with four stubby legs, two upper limbs, and a long, prehensile tail. Nearly every inch of it was encased in a shining, thick layer of what Logan could only describe as goo. It was as though the alien was covered in an outer shell of vibrant radioactive green gelatin, with only indistinct shadowy shapes visible to indicate that there was any sort of underlying structure at all.

It had no mouth or nose, only two flat black eyes that didn’t blink, and a discolored gray spot below them that was uncannily reminiscent of a handlebar mustache. There were two large, shell-like protrusions on either side of its head, extending past the gelatin layer. From the crown of its head to the base of its spine, there was a stretch of brown plantlike tendrils that writhed subtly in place, looking like a horse’s mane if a horse’s mane was also made of rotting seaweed.

Logan’s interest sharpened despite himself. Most of the shine of being in space had worn off somewhere in the first two years of methodical torture, but occasionally he still felt a glint of that familiar curiosity.

The unknown alien watched him right back, taking in every detail of the small room. A thin pad with blankets piled on it in one corner, and Logan sitting slumped in the other. A few simple toys scattered on the floor, largely untouched.

It asked a question, and Logan noted the way it seemed to hum in different tones before the translator echoed its words. Vibrations produced by an internal organ? Unlike humans, it had no mouth to shape the noise with, so the language must have been composed of variations in the tonal humming itself.

The employee chirped back an affirmative, keeping their gaze averted from meeting Logan’s dull stare directly in the automatic way that he’d noticed in most aliens. The staff especially were careful about eye contact, presumably they received some sort of training to reduce agitation in the fauna they were looking after.

It was somehow refreshing, the way the new alien unabashedly locked eyes with him. He hadn’t realized how much one could miss simple things like eye contact until he was suddenly entirely deprived of it.

It couldn’t last, of course. Logan hadn’t followed most of the conversation thus far, mostly out of general disinterest, but he knew more than enough to recognize the phrase that always came up when he was spoken about.

“There are recorded violent incidents with multiple previous fosters,” the employee recited, the cadence of the phrase so familiar that Logan could have imitated it perfectly, if he was feeling masochistic.

Instead, he kept his mouth firmly closed and idly waited for the duo to move on to the next cage.

The new alien shifted slightly, the reflections of the overhead lights warping along its glossy body.

“What are its—,” it asked, the translator adding a questioning tone indicator. Logan didn’t recognize the last word, but the employee’s response cleared things up within a few sentences.

“Not good,” they answered, antennae angling back in a display of upset. “It’s already been here for a while. If we can’t find the source planet and nobody takes it in, we’ll have to put it down.”

Those weren’t the words exactly, of course. The employee was using a strange euphemism, but unlike most of the creatures here, Logan had more than enough memory retention and cognitive processing to notice just what inevitably happened to the creatures that were referred to as such.

He waited for the spike of panic, the natural response of his body to the threat of death, but it didn’t come. His heart rate may have jumped by a beat or three, but he mostly felt a strange sense of distance from it all.

What difference did it make? Could what he was doing now really be called ‘living’ by any stretch of the imagination?

Logan met the alien’s eyes plainly, still oddly numb to it all.

The alien hummed a long, toneless note, one that didn’t translate into any specific words, and then stepped forward and tapped on the clear material with one of its thick fingers. As though everything up to this point hadn’t been dehumanizing enough.

If things were different, maybe Logan would have tried to snap out a demand or insult to cover for his wounded pride. As it was, he only turned his head further into the wall and closed his eyes.

This didn’t remotely deter the alien. The resulting thunking noises continued to be loud and repetitive, and Logan gained a sudden and unhappy empathy for every fish he’d ever witnessed being pestered by a child in a pet store. Even the employee looked uncomfortable, feathers fluffing out slightly, though surprisingly enough they didn’t try to stop the stranger’s irritating behavior.

Finally, Logan turned back to it with a glare, letting his lips curl back to bare his teeth in an odd configuration, half-sneer and half-snarl. There, he’d confirmed it. He was scary and aggressive, nothing more than a beast waiting to be executed. Now, move along already.

The tail behind the stranger began to wag slightly, a rapid back-and-forth movement that was so reminiscent of a happy dog, it genuinely startled Logan for a moment. Not many species would react to a threat display with playful excitement. Surely, the matching body language was just a coincidence?

Without hesitation, the stranger turned and asked something that Logan heard almost daily, though never before about his own person.

“Can I go in and meet it?”

[delimeful]

USA people! Buy NOTHING Feb 28 2025. Not anything. 24 hours. No spending. Buy the day before or after but nothing. NOTHING. February 28 2025. Not gas. Not milk. Not something on a gaming app. Not a penny spent. (Only option in a crisis is local small mom and pop. Nothing. Else.) Promise me. Commit. 1 day. 1 day to scare the shit out of them that they don't get to follow the bullshit executive orders. They don't get to be cowards. If they do, it costs. It costs.

Then, if you can join me for Phase 2. March 7 2025 thtough March 14 2025? No Amazon. None. 1 week. No orders. Not a single item. Not one ebook. Nothing. 1 week. Just 1.

If you live outside the USA boycott US products on February 28 2025 and stand in solidarity with us and also join us for the week of no Amazon.

Are you with me?

Spread the word.

[delimeful]

not always what they seem (6)

warnings: poor decision-making, graphic panic attacks, lack of communication, guilt, fear, angst

—

With a sinking feeling, Logan watched the most easily-agitated of their guests continue on into the next testing area alone.

It was a breach of conduct to hope for certain results while performing an experiment, primarily because objectivity was vital if one wanted to produce genuine analytic results, but in this case, he found he couldn’t help the urge to wish that either of the others had ventured forward first.

The test itself was a relatively simple one: the chambers in this area were a series of identical rooms, as in the last, with sensitive motion trackers embedded in the flooring. In the previous area, the rooms had been temperature-controlled, so they could see which room their guests would seek out as ideal. There had been more mixed results than expected, but in a case like this, any data was good data.

In this area, each room had a different level of lighting, a spectrum ranging from bright enough that some exclusively-nocturnal species would struggle to see, to dark enough that most diurnal species wouldn’t be able to make anything out.

It was one of the simpler tests, with little to actively fear. Virgil had already begun investigating it with far more initiative than they’d shown in the maze before, their ever present hunched shoulders even beginning to slowly ease down as they went. Clearly, the presence of the other two beings and the harmless precedent set by the previous areas was helping settle their persistent wariness.

(A fact which only made Logan feel worse about what they would have to do next.)

Virgil headed directly for the lighter side of the area at first, frequently casting glances back toward the more shadowed areas, a mannerism that made Logan wonder if they had a surplus of natural predators on their native planet. They spotted the only item of note in the first room immediately, providing substantial evidence to support Patton’s proposal that their guests had strong visual abilities, and approached it slowly.

Seeing as they had refused to do even that much in Logan’s maze, this was heartening progress.

A flat dish segmented into two halves sat on a small stool in the corner of the room, and on top of that dish rested a simple nutrient tab and an orb made up of colorful pieces.

Virgil didn’t spare the nutrient tab much more than a glance, but after a prolonged moment of direct staring, they dared to reached out and swipe the puzzle sphere off the dish, immediately skipping back a few steps and craning their neck to look up at the semi-transparent ceiling.

(The opaque coating on the material was one-sided, so they could watch the results directly without perturbing the subjects by looming over them. In theory, anyhow. Virgil’s vision must have indeed been strong, or at least highly cued to motion, for them to have already noticed the muted shadows of Logan and his research partners through the roof.)

Virgil seemed to be waiting for some sort of severe repercussion for touching the puzzle sphere, as though they expected one of them to swoop down and grab the item from their hands— or even grab Virgil themself. None of them had so much as twitched, aware that even the simplest movements had been known to startle their most skittish guest.

After an exceedingly long pause, Virgil’s tense posture dropped away, and they spent a few moments inspecting the puzzle sphere with enough intensity that they even forgot to check over their shoulder for the duration. Despite being a few levels more complex than the treat ball Logan used in his maze— these were sapient beings, after all— it didn’t take Virgil long to align the pieces properly and thus solve the puzzle, allowing the sphere to pop open and reveal their prize: a dark shining stone.

They had all agreed on shiny prizes, seeing how glinting items had often subtly caught the attention of the tiny aliens. Patton had been concerned about the likelihood of them mistaking something inedible for food, so they had switched from polished mineral marbles to valt stones with a reflective sucrose coating applied to them. Valt stones dissolved in medium heat, so even if Virgil did manage to eat one, the stone would gradually crumble away based on the temperature readings Roman had taken.

It seemed maybe they’d been overly-proactive; Virgil flipped the stone in their hands a few times, drew it close to inspect it, but didn’t so much as smell it, let alone put it in their mouth. After a moment of this, they dropped the stone into the pocket of their leg garment.

They all shared an excited glance: positive engagement!

Virgil perked up further when they ventured into the next room and saw the same set up, only slightly altered: the stool and dish were set in a different corner, and the puzzle was a different shape. They didn’t seem nearly as wary this time, and settled into a routine of locating the dish and walking up to it, picking up the puzzle, and using deft fingers to fiddle with it until they got to the small prize inside.

The only sign that the brightest room gave them any trouble was the slight squint they took on, though the light evidently wasn’t perturbing enough to make them take the puzzle into a different room. That was a good sign; it meant that the odds of causing damage to their guests’ eyes with ray-based scans were low, and many of those scans were invaluable for determining physical makeup.

When it came to the dark rooms, Virgil moved slower, and took slightly longer to scout out the location of the dish each time. In the last three rooms, they took the puzzles to one of the lighter rooms to solve it, helpfully confirming Logan’s theory that they were focusing on the color-matching element of the puzzles rather than matching the tactile symbols on the pieces. In the last room, it was extremely likely that they couldn’t see anything at all, as they moved extremely slowly and searched the room through touch, making a circuit around to each corner and then walking back and forth until they gently bumped into the stool.

These results seemed to indicate that their guests could operate in a wide range of different lighting, but had a considerably easier time navigating in the rooms set to daytime-lighting. They also indicated that Virgil, at least, could see a fairly large scope of color, as it was only on the two most color-complex puzzles that they resorted to using the other available senses to solve them.

The test also indicated that they had no choice but to use the next chamber.

After all those rooms, Virgil still hadn’t touched a single nutrient tab, just as none of the three had done more than disinterestedly inspect the nutrient tabs Patton had left on the table with them in the past two cycles.

This wouldn’t have been unusual or particularly concerning if these had been normal specimens. Many fauna didn’t engage with the nutrient tabs, since they were tailored to be non-toxic to all lifeforms in this quadrant, and thus were admittedly rather bland and uninteresting. In that case, they would usually move on to performing more physical tests to discern what variety of foods were safe and tempting to the creature in question, and then provide those instead.

Things were obviously quite different when working with sapient aliens, especially ones who had refused all physical tests more intensive than touching a thermometer. They couldn’t effectively communicate with their guests yet, and they didn’t have time to dismantle that language barrier. It had already been a concerning amount of time since they’d been taken from the stasis of the specimen sects, and they had no idea how to identify or treat starvation.

It was probable that providing items more easily recognized as edible would solve the issue of their guests not eating, but without that testing, they didn’t know what would be poisonous to the small aliens. If they simply offered an array of foods, as they had the textiles, the chances of their guests having a bad or even fatal reaction to something were far too high. That was an unacceptable risk.

Logan had been the one to insist, in the end. No matter how ill-advised it was to ignore the boundaries of their guests, no matter how much he dreaded the idea of being responsible for the reappearance of that upset and frightened body language, he wasn’t willing to allow them to die through his inaction or lack of care.

He had already made a mistake with the three of them previously, letting panic drive him and ignoring their objections in favor of picking up Remus. If one of them had to become untrustworthy in their eyes, better that it was him.

Logan ignored the concerned glances of his research partners, watching grimly as Virgil pushed through the door to the next testing area.

—

Virgil was having a surprisingly okay time, considering the circumstances.

At first sight of the structure, he’d anticipated some kind of horrible alien death maze, full of sawblades and pit traps and possibly even a car-sized boulder that would squash them all flat.

Instead, it had been full of various rooms, not winding or confusing or particularly maze-like in any way, with items or environments for them to react to. He’d gotten a bit concerned about the puzzles, but really, there weren’t any real signs that pointed to this being a bizarre trial-by-fire or even a remotely competitive scenario, even by his paranoid standards.

There were doors between each distinct chamber, but none separating the rooms themselves, and all the chamber doors had remained open even after they’d split the party like idiots in a horror movie.

He tossed the last weird rock he’d earned in his palm, rubbing his thumb over the dull angles of it. Even knowing they were part of some weird alien plot, it had been surprisingly soothing to focus on those puzzles, probably because he could burn some of his nervous energy by fidgeting with them. Not that he’d say as much aloud; that sounded a little too ‘enthusiastic lab rat’ for him. No thank you.

There was probably plenty of data they were getting from each chamber, no matter how simple they seemed, but Virgil wasn’t really in the mood to try and puzzle it out. Dee was probably right about the aliens trying to squeeze as much relevant information from them as possible, but he couldn’t help but feel sort of apathetic on the matter. Sure, they could be using it to learn more about humanity for presumably nefarious purposes, but if they wanted more humans, couldn’t they just grab more humans? They certainly didn’t seem to have a problem nabbing the three of them.

Maybe he was just being stupid, too busy freaking out about their own lives to really think about the big picture or whatever, but it didn’t seem to add up. Like, if he’d found an anthill and wanted to get rid of it, he wouldn’t need to run experiments on the ants to learn more about them first. He’d only have to kick over the anthill.

If all the aliens wanted to do was get rid of them, why bother with all the tests? It had to be obvious by now that they didn’t have any sort of natural defenses that could stand against giant aliens, and their technological capabilities obviously outstripped humanity’s by far.

He wasn’t suggesting they were trustworthy or anything— there was a wide range of options between metaphorical ants and potential friends, after all. Even if their status was closer to ‘interesting lab specimens’ than ‘pests to annihilate’, they still weren’t guaranteed any sort of safety. It was just… something useful to think about whenever the overwhelming panic started to boil up in him.

It was a theory that Virgil immediately lost all faith in when the doors to the next chamber sealed behind him.

He whipped around, a jolt of ice spiking through his veins as he confirmed that yeah, that sliding noise absolutely had been the doors closing, he’d jinxed himself so hard, he was going to fucking die—

“Hey!” he snapped, the word coming out a little strangled on his first try. “Hey! No, no no no, open those back up! Dee! Remus!”

The doors weren’t entirely opaque; he could see through them well enough to tell that the doorways beyond remained clear of any silhouettes. One beat passed, and then another. The fear crept in quicker now, his breathing coming faster. “Guys! I’m serious, something’s happening! Dee!”

Still, nothing.

They wouldn’t just ignore him. Even if they were actually total assholes who didn’t care what happened to him like his brain was screaming, he’d spent enough time around them to know that Dee was nosy beyond belief, and Remus sought out danger like a moth flying into an oven. If they’d heard, they would have responded, one way or another.

So, they couldn’t hear him. That meant this was planned. The aliens wanted something with them— no, with him. They’d separated them, singled him out to get it.

Virgil stumbled hurriedly into a corner, bracing his back against it as he scanned the room, his gaze periodically flickering up to the gray ceiling above where he was sure he’d spotted a shadow of movement earlier.

The chamber itself was empty, with no visible doors other than the two on either side that had firmly locked him in. It was a single blank room, nothing on the floor or the walls, the only notable difference being the fact that it was apparently soundproofed.

It was quiet for long enough that he managed to wrangle his breathing back under control, the tension in him only ramping up as the uncertain moment stretched on and on and on.

And then, a click, and the ceiling was pulled away.

Virgil sank down into a crouch on sheer instinct, as though he could avoid whatever was coming simply by shying away from it. He’d thought the enclosed room was bad, but the sudden feeling of being completely exposed was somehow worse.

The panther alien— Logan— leaned into sight, uncanny eyes locking on him immediately, and Virgil hunkered down a little further.

“No,” he tried, not even sure what he was objecting to, other than everything about the situation. “Do you h-hear me? No.”

Logan’s ears flicked and angled backwards, eyes narrowing slightly, and an audible rumbling started up. Wow! Virgil hated everything about that, actually.

When the alien moved, reaching into the enclosure with one of those inhuman hands, the gesture was almost painstakingly slow. If it was an attempt to not frighten Virgil any further, it failed miserably; it only gave him more time to work himself into a proper panic.

He tried to duck away the moment that hand got close, obviously, but it only took a few tries before Logan seemed to lose their patience. The next grab was too quick to dodge, and Virgil couldn’t help the small shriek that burst from him the moment he was caught, primal terror overriding all rational thought. Logan jolted at the sound, but didn’t loosen their grip nearly enough for him to wiggle free.

“No!” he shouted desperately, but there was no point. Logan may have understood the word, but understanding didn’t mean listening. Virgil didn’t have the same dauntless charisma as Dee, the confidence to negotiate with giants that could choose to do anything they wanted.

His stomach dropped as he was lifted up, the restraining hand wrapped around him never faltering even as he cried out and tried to thrash free. The panic felt nearly blinding, and he barely registered the blur of the much larger room passing by as Logan carried him over to some new surface, presumably for some other strange test.

The moment there was a solid surface under his feet again, he instantly tried to push off of it and scramble free, but even now Logan didn’t release him. He only had a moment to feel oddly betrayed– had some part of him really thought this wouldn’t actually end horrifically?– before he was being repositioned and gently but firmly pressed against the surface, like a butterfly being spread over a pinboard.

Or a corpse set out for dissection.

“Fuckshit fuck, fuck you fuck you fuck you,” Virgil spat as viciously as he could, twisting his limbs ineffectively and frantically pushing against that impossible hold. “Let me go, don’t you fucking dare–!”

The rumbling grew louder, the slightest shake tangible in the hand pressing him down, and the alien shifted their hand slightly, enough for Virgil to see past it.

With their other hand, Logan was holding a narrow silver instrument in the air above him, its purpose indiscernible but its mere presence enough to make Virgil’s voice cut off sharply. His furious struggling died down to involuntary twitches, his wide eyes locked on the tool.

The alien was as unreadable as always, the tip of the tool drifting closer, and Virgil felt his mind go entirely blank with terror.

A high, thin whine split the air, like an animal caught in a trap. It took Virgil a long moment to realize the sound was coming from him.

“Please,” he tried hopelessly, the words barely taking shape. “No. Please no.”

—

This wasn’t working.

Even from an animal, this sort of mindless, terrified whimpering would have been reason enough to stop this procedure and look for alternative, less stressful methods. Knowing they were coming from a sapient being? Knowing that, translatable or not, Virgil had likely been reduced to begging for their life because of his actions?

Logan couldn’t do this.

—

The pressure on him abruptly vanished.

Virgil’s body reacted far quicker than his mind, a fresh surge of adrenaline tearing through him as he hauled himself upright and bolted. It didn’t matter which direction he picked, so long as he was getting away from the threat looming over him.

There were thin semi-transparent barriers set up on each side of the table, preventing him from getting too far and also from doing anything rash in his panic. He twisted to look behind him the moment he reached the furthest corner, half-expecting a massive hand to be hovering over him already, only waiting for him to pause so it could come swooping down–

The alien hadn’t reached forward at all. In fact, Logan looked further away, as though they’d taken a step or two back.

It took a few tense moments for Virgil to pay attention to anything beyond that distance, most of his focus going to keeping his heavy, gasping breaths from turning to outright hyperventilation. His gaze locked onto every small motion Logan was making, but it took several repetitions before he registered the meaning behind the gesture.

It was the same movement as the other one– Roman– had done after trying to separate him from Remus by grabbing him. Dee had hypothesized it was some kind of… apology.

“You should fucking be sorry,” Virgil muttered, still wheezing a little with every inhale. “Serve you right if I– if I keeled over just from– fuck.”

His voice died out as soon as Logan moved, his body flattening further against the barrier behind him as though he could somehow merge through it, but Logan was moving away, reaching towards something to the side.

After a few seconds of rifling, they returned with a thick disc-shaped object in hand. Virgil stared blankly, suspicious and bewildered in equal measure.

Logan seemed to glance over to check that he was watching, and then carefully lifted the disc to their mouth and emphatically sank their teeth into it like they were an excited kid taking a bite out of a cookie. Their lip curled up as they did so, giving Virgil a better look at those fangs than he’d ever particularly wanted, and then, after a long stretch of holding that position, they opened their mouth back up without actually tearing a chunk free from the disc.

Virgil frowned, almost too confused to be frightened, as Logan tilted the disc to show Virgil the clean imprint of teeth left in it. The alien set the disc aside, and then picked the silver tool back up, which set his heart racing anew.

Instead of reaching forward with it, however, Logan simply lowered the tool to the surface where Virgil had been pinned down minutes before, and set a small item down before retreating. Now that he was looking at it from a distance, the tool wasn’t sharp-edged at all, only having two narrow prongs at the end.

… Had he seriously had a panic attack over the outer space equivalent of tweezers?

The embarrassment was powerful enough that he managed to force himself to slowly edge forward, squinting at the item Logan had placed before him.

It looked just like the disc Logan had just bitten, only in miniature.

Oh. Oh.

Virgil was no genius, but even he could put the pieces together on this one.

With a few wary glances at Logan’s towering form, he slid closer and picked the disc up. There was a hard outer shell along the sides of it for him to grip, but the rest of it seemed to be made up of a thick, clay-like material. Not the sort of thing he’d usually put anywhere near his mouth, but… he looked up at Logan again, considering.

There was nothing stopping them from doing this against his will, earlier. Nothing but Virgil’s own protests, desperate enough that Logan had decided to try a different way. Maybe Dee had been onto something, when it came to compromising with these creatures.

Besides, it wasn’t like he was actually eating the stuff. Just… biting it. Eugh.

Pushing past his deep reluctance, Virgil bit down into the disc, jolting a little when he realized there was a flat pane of plastic-y material in the middle that kept him from biting through the whole thing. Really, it felt oddly similar to those mouthguards dentists made him wear while getting an x-ray of his teeth. Except squishier.

He forced himself to hold the weird disc thing in his mouth for what he thought was probably the same amount of time Logan had while demonstrating, and then unhooked his teeth from it with a grunt. Peering closely at the disc, he could see that the holes left behind were perfectly matched to the shape of his teeth.

It had to be some kind of plaster-mold-cast thing, but Virgil had never been all that into ceramics, and so he didn’t have the foggiest idea of what exactly Logan intended to do with a mold of his teeth. At this point, he didn’t even care.

The energy crash was beginning to hit, and so he barely even jumped when Logan reached down at him, only taking a few stumbling steps back and then holding the disc out as far from his body as he could manage.

To the alien’s credit, their touch was gentle enough that he barely registered it as they plucked the disc out of his grasp, the palm-sized disc looking comically tiny between those massive fingers. The rumbling had started back up again. Maybe it wasn’t a displeased sound, after all. Cats purred soothingly, didn’t they?

Logan immediately moved away, presumably to do mysterious alien scientist things to the disc. Virgil spat a few times, trying to get the faint aftertaste out of his mouth, and sat down heavily. His whole body was still shaking like a leaf in the wind, but this sort of wrung-out jittering was vastly preferable to the frantic, burning terror of before.

He’d managed some kind of communication, for what it was worth. He hadn’t died, despite all expectations to the contrary. It had been a horrible experience, but at least he’d managed to figure out what was going on in time to prevent any actual heart attacks.

One thing was for certain: the minute he reunited with the others, he was putting a permanent ban on splitting up in weird mystery mazes. This little excursion had been more than enough for him.

[delimeful]

Feeling incredibly sick and angry about everything. I’ll go about my day and try to be normal and then it just ambushes me and honestly the only people keeping me sane rn are the Arabs who’ve voiced similar experiences and are staying the course and being vocal despite all the attempts to basically blame everything that’s wrong with this country on us

[delimeful]

Help Lina's family get through this week

Can you guess much it costs to survive a week in Gaza?

On Lina's (@linsaif) request, I'm making a new post breaking down her weekly costs, so people hopefully have a better understanding of what Palestinians are going through and require to survive.

Here's what Lina needs to purchase each week:

🍞 A 25kg bag of flour: 80 euros

🐣 Diapers: 60 euros

🍼 3 cartons of milk: 60 euros

🍅 Vegetables when available, and other supplies: 100 euros

💧 Water (for drinking, cleaning, and hygiene): 80 euros

= 380 euros per week for a threadbare existence for a family of four.

Except even just withdrawing money comes with a 30% fee.

Covering the fee, that brings us to 494€ per week. Now you see why Lina has been asking for 500€ short-term goals.

Lately, donations have slowed to a crawl. Lina is forgoing all other necessities in order to afford milk and diapers for her 9 month-old daughter, Sidra, who is suffering from severe diaper rash.

But good news! 🌻 Lina says Sidra's skin has begun healing thanks to your previous donations. Here she is with the diapers and milk that were bought with your generous help.

But please, don't let her healing come at the cost of the rest of the family being able to eat.

You've already done a lot of good for Lina and her family.

Can we get her family through this week?

Current date: November 11, 2024

0/500€

✅ Lina's vetting information here.

📝 Previous campaign details and posts here.

☕ For those without 5€ to spare, you can support Lina's family for the price of a coffee on ko-fi (organized by @cygnettes).

[delimeful]

I was wondering, do you ever play around in any of the worlds you've created without planning to write a story about it? Like imagining what-ifs or imagining if you were in that world? I've been really into the humans are space orcs stories lately and I have certain fantasies in those worlds I've been daydreaming for the past months. But even when I imagine a completely different backstory for them, I recently realized I usually imagine the races you described in WIBAR and YCGB and other alien fics. Still daydream of sanders sides characters a lot and now Ampen and Ulgorii just live in my brain as character concepts lol

it's hard to say that i play around without planning to write about it, because most of the time, if i roll an idea or concept for a story around in my head for long enough, i inevitably end up wanting to put it to words properly :'D but i certainly do like to imagine or daydream about my worlds so often that there's plenty that doesn't make it to my published stories

for "what-ifs" i even have a folder that's mostly a collection of spin offs/alternate POVs of some of my AUs! here's the placeholder titles of a handful of them, ranging from extreme silly to extreme angst lol

when it comes to humans are space orcs stories, i do love to play around with the setting + characters i already have (as my biggest universe, wibar has SO MANY of the aforementioned spin off/AU ideas) but i also love to come up with new alien designs + fun ways the designs can be juxtaposed with human deathworlder stuff, so i often end up branching out and making something new! i'm flattered that my designs have joined your imaginings though :D

as for lime in the wibar-verse... i've speculated on it a few times, and atm i think my wibarsona would probably be not a human, but a crav'on! spiky lime :) i have seen some very cute art/writing/speculation with other people's self inserts, mostly as humans, and i think it's so fun that others are playing in my sandbox too! ^_^

[delimeful]

Hi everyone, Mohammed reached out to me to share his fundraiser for his family. They are extremely close to meeting their goal! if the next 400 people reading this donated €10 ($10 USD) right now, their fundraiser would be complete!

This is a vetted fundraiser (row 178, entry 174). Please share and donate to help Mohammed and his family. they just had another child and need the funds to take care of their newborn baby. You can see more of Mohammed and his family’s story here on his blog @mohammedalanqar

[delimeful]

Attention Pennsylvania voters!

Senator Bob Casey’s race is now at a margin of 0.53%.

An automatic recount in PA is triggered with a margin of 0.5%. That’s a difference of 0.03% or a little over 2,000 votes. We need to make sure every ballot is counted here, and there’s thousands of uncounted ballots right now due to voter error.

Did you mail in a ballot? Check to see it was accepted here:

If it says anything other than accepted/counted/etc, your ballot needs your attention. A mistake in filling it out means that your ballot will not count unless you “cure” it. Check your county’s curing policies:

See full instructions for curing by county here.

You have until November 12 to cure your ballot in PA.

Do you know someone who mailed in a PA ballot? Please pass these links on to them. You may be the difference between their vote counting or not in a super close race.

Everyone else, you can help PA voters cure their ballots. If you live in Pennsylvania, you can help canvass in your county (see links in this thread). If you are in another state, you can sign up to call voters and help them cure by phone.

Want to help another state? Sign up for a shift through November 19.

[delimeful]

been sitting on this one for a WHILE

[delimeful]

i need everyone to know that community is what will save us all in every single way imaginable. you forming a bond with your neighbour or coworker might help them move house or feel less alone or have the courage to leave an unhealthy living environment. you helping a stranger might provide them with hope. in turn, being able to lean on your community in times of need will save you. your broader bonds with your community are the revolution we need. our society seeks to divide and separate us in so many ways but we are all so much more united in our struggles and joys than you are made to believe. we need to hold onto each other very tightly.

[delimeful]

Ada Limón, “To Be Made Whole”, On Being with Krista Tippett

[delimeful]

THOUGHT GAINED: INFERNAL ENGINES

PROBLEM

The world is ending. You know it, your neighbor knows it, the dealer knows it, the jailer knows it, the king and all his men know it. All one has to do is look around to see it— the future is curdling into something pale and incorporeal. The infernal machine that is this stupid world is going to blow, sooner rather than later. So what are you doing? Why are you still here? Why is anyone still here?

SOLUTION

You are doing the only thing worth doing. You are living. *Why,* you ask? Try and remember now. Remember your mother’s hand on your shoulder. Remember the taste of a fresh catch. Remember the times when you were kind to the dogs in the valley and they did not bare their teeth. Remember the weight of a child on your shoulders. Remember the stars throwing their light against the wall of sodium and smog. Remember singing until your throat was raw. Remember crying just as loudly and publicly, and the gentleness with which someone opened your curled fist and pressed a handkerchief into your palm. Crying, laughing, running, eating, screaming, haunting, loving, fighting, fighting, fighting. The fight fuels you, and you fuel the fight. You run yourself ragged just for a chance to keep running. You never stop. You cannot stop. The world depends on it. *You* are the infernal engine. You are the world. And, simply put: you want to live.

[delimeful]

[Video Description: A video of a pangolin rolling around in thick, clay-like mud. It is visibly covered in the mud from head to tail, and is thrashing about with significant enthusiasm. End VD.]

oh to be a pangolin squirming around in the sludge 🥺🥺🥺 this would fix me

[delimeful]

baby pangolins look like an adorable creature someone made up for a fantasy/sci-fi series. just a sweet polite little alien type of beast wearing a nice little scalemail outfit