“Fact-Check This, Feather”

It started, as most Lead Feather misadventures do, with a vodka soda and a bad idea

.I walked into the office and found him hunched over his laptop, muttering like a man decoding the Rosetta Stone in reverse.

“Lead, what are you doing?” I asked, half-dreading the answer.

He didn’t look up.

“I’m fact-checking Alex Jones.”

My stomach dropped.

“For which claim?” I asked, cautiously.

He turned slowly, blinking behind foggy glasses, his Snow White handlebar mustache twitching.

“The frogs, Quill. I think he said they’re turning the frogs gay.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose.

“Lead… it’s not about the frogs being fabulous. It’s about atrazine — a chemical. A hormone disruptor. It feminizes amphibians. It’s real. Even Berkeley admitted it.”

He frowned. “So he wasn’t wrong?”

“No, Lead. He was loud. There’s a difference.”

He spun back to his screen. “But Snopes says—”

“Snopes is run by a guy who got caught embezzling and using escorts. I’d rather get my science from a truck stop meth addict than that operation.”

He blinked twice. “Okay… but what if the frogs are experimenting? Like, on their own?”

I stared at him. “They’re not woke, Feather. They’re chemically compromised.”

He took another sip, opened a Word doc, and started writing the following headline:

“Alex Jones Was Right (Kind Of?): The Frogs, the Chemicals & the Quill”

I sighed. He was learning — in his own glitchy, vodka-splashed way.

You don’t choose your allies. Sometimes they choose you… with an open tab of Vox, a half-loaded Snopes article, and the heart of a confused but loyal warrior.

Even if he still thinks frogs can come out.

— The Iron Quill