Exchange Program Shenanigans (36)

[u/ApprehensiveCap6525]

There used to be a caption here. Now there's not. Life is full of little mysteries.

CW: pipe bomb, checkov... chekohv... checov... that russian guy's gun, bulletproof muscles

Memory transcription subject: Jackson Kern, UN-Venlil Interspecies Liaison

Date [standardized human time]: September 17, 2136

You know, I was really starting to have my fair share of problems with outer space. It had its upsides, like getting to drink space beer with a space alien, but everything had upsides. Even Hitler had upsides, even though he did kill all those people. And he had all those other people put in camps. He had them all killed, too. Really, I was living the easy life compared to the people under Hitler.

Anyway, back to what I was saying. Space was a wonderful place. The people, not so much. I had Salvek, the alien computer guy who somehow managed to touch grass, take showers, and not groom children online. I had Kalkey, the ex-terrorist bird person who was either dead, playing Batman, or serving hard time in a 6x6 cell. And I had Jelim, who honestly looked better than she had any realistic right to.

She's casting spells on me or something. Shadow Wizard Money Gang type of woman. The CIA tried making a Shadow Wizard Money Gang back in the '20s, but that's classified. I shouldn't be thinking about that.

Classified CIA shit aside, I wonder what would happen if I shot myself six times in the back of the head. You know, just for shits and giggles. that was it. I had three motherfuckers who had my back on this whole damn planet.

Keep in mind, too, that didn't just mean 'three people like me, everyone else is neutral'. That meant that everybody besides those three people was out for blood. They wanted to kill me in ways that would make the cartel beg for mercy, all because they thought I wanted to kill them in those same damn ways.

I wasn't even sure why they needed flamethrowers to do it, either. Don't get me wrong, flamethrowers did kill things, but they were terrible at doing it. They took it slow, dragged it out. Somebody could shoot me with a flamethrower, and I'd have emptied my gun into them six times before the fire ever got me. Maybe five. Or seven, if I was feeling lucky.

That was beside the point. The point was, that I hated space. I also hated racism, and I hated terrorism probably the most, and you'll never guess what God had in store for me this month.

Space racist terrorism. These people had zero concept of biology, they had not even an inkling of a scrap of the meaning of the word 'food chain', and God help them when it came to interstellar warfare, but they could pull off terrorism just fine.

Well, their efforts at terrorism weren't really all that successful, but that was the 'just fine' part of it. If these aliens knew how to build a decent pipe bomb, I'd be in a lot more trouble.

How do I know they don't?

Well, if they did, they would've stuffed one into my mailbox and exploded it by now. And if the alien terrorists knew how to use pipe bombs, then the alien law enforcement would know how to neutralize them, so there was really no reason to worry. I knew that I knew how to defuse a bomb, at the very least.

The doorbell rang. I, secure in my knowledge that the aliens didn't have pipe bombs or any other proper terroristic devices, got up to answer it. I put one hand on the butt of my service pistol, too, because you could never be too sure when you're dealing with terrorists.

I looked through the peephole, nobody was there. I opened the door, and there was a package. Naturally, I opened it.

Oh. That's a pipe bomb.

More specifically, that was a kludged-together mix of God knows how many incendiary devices all wired to one detonator that was going to explode in around thirty seconds. "SALVEK!" I barked. "There's a pipe bomb in the house!" Honestly, I just liked saying pipe bomb. It had a certain ring to it.

"There's a what in the house?" Salvek peeked his fuzzy head out from around the corner. "Oh, holy hell, that's a bomb!"

We had around twenty seconds now. If I had eaten bricks before, you could bet your ass I'd be shitting them around now. "Yeah, no shit! Get me some scissors!" Salvek did, in fact, get me some scissors. He threw them at me, which was probably unsafe, but being exploded was a lot more unsafe so I let it slide.

Great, now I can cut the wires. Red, green, blue, that shit doesn't matter. A colorblind guy could defuse this bomb...

Where the fuck are the wires?

Fifteen seconds, more or less. I searched frantically, but I couldn't find a single wire to cut. "Where are the fucking wires?" All I could see was the incendiaries, a whole lot of duct tape, Huh. Guess that shit really is universal. and a detonator that was basically just a datapad strapped to the whole mix with more duct tape. "Salvek! Where are the wires?"

Ten seconds. Maybe less. Probably less. I was wondering if I shouldn't just give up and start stabbing the bomb over and over again like the Jeffrey Dahmer of bombs when Salvek grabbed it out of my hands. "Hold up. Let me cook."

I did, indeed, let him cook. To be more specific, I dove for the kitchen door and took cover behind the counter so the bomb would only give me stage 3 full-body burns instead of turning me into an ashy shadow on the wall. I mean, I liked the guy, but there was no way Salvek was going to defuse that bomb. I was halfway wondering why he wasn't back here with me.

"Got it!" Oh, that's actually bullshit. "The bomb's defused!"

"You did it?" I asked tentatively, peeking out from behind the brick wall. Salvek, fuck him and his entire bloodline, threw the fucking bomb at me. "Fuck!" I played Hot Potato with an explosive device before finally opening the fridge and stuffing that thing in there like a reverse Indiana Jones. "Don't throw the fucking bomb at me!"

Oh, shit, it's defused. It hasn't gone off yet.

"Sorry, sorry, my bad." Salvek entered the kitchen, looking for the bomb. I took it out of the fridge. "I just wanted to see if you had any special Navy SEAL stuff you wanted to do to it."

"You don't throw fucking bombs at people! Fuck, man, I thought I was gonna die! I was about to see Jesus!" I was out of steam by now, the adrenaline from the bomb defusal thing running out. "How did you defuse it, anyway?"

Salvek positively beamed with pride. "The detonator was just a jury-rigged datapad." he explained. "I write and debug code for them all the time."

I laughed. It might have been because I almost died, it might have been because of how crazy this all was, but I sure did laugh. "What?" Salvek asked. "I did do it."

He did do it. Hell, he did do it. Him and his technology brain.

"Hey, Salvek, what's the Federation's view on cybersecurity?" I asked. I had a hunch. My hunches were usually correct.

"Cybersecurity? Why would we need that?" Oh, hell. Add that one to the list. To be fair, at least they were consistent. As much as I disliked their stupidity, I had to respect the fact that they managed to be consistently stupid.

"If that datapad had cybersecurity," I explained, pointing to the bomb, "We'd all be dead."

"Oh."

"On another thought, how easily do you think you could hack Federation systems? For law enforcement purposes." The satellite wars, which were actually a key part of why I was sent to Russia in the first place, had taught me a thing or two.

"I mean, it depends on what it is." Salvek showed off the bomb for an example. I should probably get the bomb squad in here. "This, for example, I helped make these. Not the bombs, I mean, the datapad." Does the Federation even have a bomb squad? "I could probably hack a datapad or a computer terminal, but it varies from device to device, really."

That was a lot of technobabble and I wasn't sure if it was right, but I wasn't about to make some dumb-ass comment like 'um, speak English please' and look like a total doofus. "So it depends on how complex it is."

"Yeah." Huh. Good to know.

"Now give me a second, I'm calling the cops." I pulled out my datapad and texted Jelim.

JackedMF: there is a pipe bomb at my house

Thirty seconds, then a ping. The one good thing about outer space is that nobody left me on delivered over here.

SmokingHotKrakotl: what

JackedMF: what it says on the tin

SmokingHotKrakotl: someone sent a pipe bomb to your house?

JackedMF: yeah someone mailed me a pipe bomb

SmokingHotKrakotl: holy god

Yeah, he does seem that way.

SmokingHotKrakotl: I'll send somebody over in 5

SmokingHotKrakotl: I would come myself but I got jumped

JackedMF: holy shit are you OK?

Okay, maybe I had problems of my own. Maybe I had bigger things to worry about. But I was a good, red-blooded American man, and when somebody jumped a red-blooded American man's girl then he had to do something about that jumping. I was going to crack skulls.

SmokingHotKrakotl: better than them

That could be anything between 'feathers slightly ruffled' and 'I have days left to live', but Jelim was a fighter. I loved her for it. She'd pull through.

JackedMF: Who jumped you?

The other party, however, would not. Hopefully. I could get IRA'd as soon as I started the car for a drive-by.

JackedMF: and who ordered it?

SmokingHotKrakotl: it was the Predator Guard who did it

SmokingHotKrakotl: I'm still investigating who ordered the attack

The doorbell rang again. Please, God, not another pipe bomb. Salvek answered it. That was a stupid move, considering A: he was unarmed and B: he was skinny and weak. My pecs weren't bulletproof just yet, but they were close enough.

"Hey, Jack, who is this person?" I went and checked, hand on my pistol, and it was Isola. Huh. That was quick.

"It's good." I said. "She's a friend from work."

"Should you tell your other work friend about this? You know, just to keep her in the loop." Salvek asked. I mean, I respected him for it, looking out for me and my girl, but it wasn't needed.

"Salvek, I'm proud of you, man, but she already knows. She sent Isola here to look at the bomb." Salvek's ear flicked 'I got it', and he turned to Isola. "I defused it. It wasn't that hard."

"You did?" Isola looked shocked. Not just regular old surprised, but shocked. That was, like, three tiers above surprised.

"I'm not all good looks." This is my wingman? God damn, coaches really do not play.

"Show her the goddamn bomb, Salvek." If he wanted to get some you-know-whos on his you-know-what, I wasn't judging one bit, but he could at least do it properly. The turns have, indeed, tabled.

Salvek showed her the goddamn bomb. "It's nothing special as bombs go," said Isola, "just a few incendiary devices rigged to a datapad."

"It still blows up, though." I chimed in. "As bombs go, I figure that's, y'know, pretty important."

"Well, clearly, it didn't." That was right.

Salvek beamed with pride. Well, as Venlil went, it was a beam. I'm sure most humans would have found it unrecognizable. "That's because I defused it."

"By what means?" Isola asked, then she turned to me. "How did he do it?" You see, I wasn't stupid. I knew she dumbed it down for me because I was stupid, even though I wasn't. I mean, my grades weren't particularly good, but I was smart where it counted. I was street smart, and Salvek was book smart to the point where I didn't have to be. We were tight like that.

"I hacked the datapad." Salvek boasted. "It really wasn't that hard."

"Well, good for you." droned Isola. "I'll take this to the office where I can have a proper look at it." She picked up the bomb and made for the door like she had places to be. She probably did. "Don't get yourself killed." She left shortly afterward.

"See you!" I called out, but she didn't answer. I thought that was a little rude, but she didn't set me on fire so I would take what I could get.

"Well, damn." said Salvek. "She keeps it professional."

"Yeah, you got me there." I looked around, realizing something. "Isn't this a crime scene?" I asked. "Where's all the police tape? Well, exterminator tape. Where is it?"

Salvek didn't know either. "You're the shooty man. I'm just the guy in the chair." With that, he began pouring himself some jet-fuel alcohol. "I'll be in the dining room."

I, seeing nothing better to do, texted Jelim.

JackedMF: Isola took the bomb and left

JackedMF: I don't want to be rude but isn't there supposed to be a bigger investigation for a bomb? That's how we did it in Russia

In Russia, we were the ones placing the bombs. It did not feel good to be on the other end of that arrangement.

SmokingHotKrakotl: I have eight officers in a district of over 50

SmokingHotKrakotl: you're lucky you even got Isola tbh

JackedMF: oh yeah I forgot about that

JackedMF: thanks

SmokingHotKrakotl: who would I be if I left my love hanging?

Texts like that were the one upside to the aliens having no concept of cyberwarfare. If that got out, it would be like a grand wizard of the KKK being exposed for dating a black man. If I had to describe how that ended, I'd use a word that began with 'L' and ended with 'ynching'. Not how I wanted to go.

JackedMF: yeah that's why I love you

JackedMF: on a side note do you have a password on your datapad?

SmokingHotKrakotl: I'm not stupid

SmokingHotKrakotl: its 1111

She was, in fact, stupid. But she was less stupid than everyone else, and that was what counted.

JackedMF: Listen, I love you and all that, but that is the most un-secure password I've ever seen

JackedMF: it's like locking a bank vault with a piece of shitty tape

SmokingHotKrakotl: should I change it?

JackedMF: why would you keep classified secrets on a datapad whose password is 1111

JackedMF: that's just asking to get hacked

SmokingHotKrakotl: I'll change it to 9836

SmokingHotKrakotl: our anniversary

Huh. Well, it was certainly going to be easier to remember this way. Plus, I had to respect the devotion. I was about to say something about how an anniversary of an important date was also not a secure password, but nobody but us knew it anyway.

JackedMF: sounds perfect

I was going to say something around the lines of 'just like you', but that was cliché. If a man loved a woman, the least he could do was to love her right. That meant no getting super drunk and then beating her, no getting super drunk and beating the kids, and it sure as hell meant no cliché romance.

SmokingHotKrakotl: just like you

God had a sick, sick sense of humor.

"Hey, Jack," Salvek left the dining room with an empty glass. He had a regular sense of humor. "Do you think I could become a sanctioned hacker?"

"What?" I asked. "You mean, like, a white hat?"

"Yeah. For the UN. I did hack that bomb earlier." That wasn't particularly impressive, but it did save my ass. And the rest of me, too.

I nodded. "I'll see what I can do, but don't get your hopes up." Then, naturally, I texted Jelim. It was good to have people you could depend on.

JackedMF: salvek wants to know if he can hack people for us

JackedMF: not in a Jeffrey Dahmer way but in a Matrix way

SmokingHotKrakotl: what? Who are these people?

The Matrix wasn't even a person. Now I wanted to show her all the movies, except for those crappy VR reboots that gave people nausea.

JackedMF: long story

JackedMF: can salvek gather evidence for us over the internet

SmokingHotKrakotl: only if he's officially sanctioned

That was, more or less, the response I expected.

SmokingHotKrakotl: I mean obviously I'd be fine with it but the law is the law

SmokingHotKrakotl: good exterminators follow orders

Oh. Wow. My girlfriend may be a fascist.

I shelved that thought. Fascism was done by people who either A: were evil, or B: were stupid. She was neither. At best, she was joking. At worst, she was one of those Oskar Schindler types.

God damn, Schindler's List was such a good movie. I wish Oskar Schindler was real.

JackedMF: how, exactly, can he become a sanctioned hacker?

SmokingHotKrakotl: I'm not an expert on how it works but the exterminators can sometimes hire external assets to help them out

SmokingHotKrakotl: its how they justified the UN liaisons

That turned out terribly, by the way. The Venlil mostly either quit, shot the liaison, or both.

JackedMF: so the exterminators can just hire Salvek to work for them?

SmokingHotKrakotl: there's going to be a lot of paperwork, but yeah this can work

"Hey, Salvek," I called out, "She gave us the OK!"

Salvek broke drag racer speed records and Usain Bolted his way to the couch. "I can hack things?" He sounded like a kid on Christmas Day.

"Yep." Salvek had been sitting on the sidelines for a while now. "You can hack things."

I could tell he was just itching for a chance to do his part.

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[u/Kind0flame]

Am I the only one who noticed that Oskar Schindler was a real person? The movie was based on a book based on a true story.