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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/CodEnvironmental4274 on 2026-02-19 20:24:50+00:00.
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“Okay, first things first: Scratch the human origin theory. Kind of.”
Sonja paused for dramatic effect as the rest of the drab, poorly air conditioned situation room tensed up at her words.
She turned on the projector and pulled out one of those teacher plastic hand pointer things (she saw Dominick mouthing ‘where did you get that?’ In the corner—hilarious—) to draw attention to her slideshow.
“Obviously this thing was written in Python originally, but we looked into it further, and it isn’t actually some totally self-sufficient, super advanced AI that can learn how to wrap itself to alien languages in ridiculously short periods of time. I didn’t notice at first, but buried in the ungodly lines of code, it is specifically programmed to be able to interface with Federation operating systems.” She clicked to the next slide, revealing a beautifully constructed flow chart. “This could mean one of two things: either this thing was made by a human who knew about aliens before we did, or an alien who knew about humans before most of the Federation did. And when I say most, I mean like, before even the government. Which is to say, it’s fucking—sorry—it’s freaking weird either way.”
Commander Liu frowned in disapproval at her language, but said nothing.
“Anyways, that’s all scary, but it also narrows down the list of suspects by quite a bit.” Next slide. “After talking to our contacts within the Federation, we learned that the Concord Virus, or ‘the Blot’ as they call it, either passed by or came from the solar system, so our priority has been combing through suspects here on Earth and the colonies.”
Captain Hassan raised a hand, and didn’t wait to be called on to speak. “Couldn’t there still be thousands of people who could’ve made that thing? How do we know who could’ve secretly contacted the Federation?”
Sonja nodded. “That’s a fair point. We can’t know for sure, but it’s way more likely that it’s someone with significant resources, experience, or connections—to the U.N., for example.” She narrowed her eyes at the group. She didn’t actually suspect any of them; it was mostly for dramatic effect, but she relished the theatrics nonetheless.
“So, the code itself was written in Python, but the comments were weird.” She zoomed in on one such comment, an indecipherable string of characters with no clear meaning. “Anyways, the cryptography team cracked the cypher pretty quickly—great job, by the way—and it translates to English, but… really weird English.” Another click of the mouse, and she showed off a decrypted comment. “For those of you who touch grass,” she joked, getting a few chuckles, “this is all describing the kind of stuff comments in code usually does, but the syntax is weird, right?” She highlighted the grammatical errors in the sentences. “Like, why was it written in English if it seems like it was poorly translated from another language? So we called in some linguists, and get this: none of them could figure out what native language would cause you to write like that!” She put her hands up as if showing off a magic trick.
An older man from the far right end of the room harrumphed. “All this to tell us it’s a dead end?”
“Not exactly.” Sonja smiled knowingly. “What we ended up doing was writing a program that trawled the internet looking for similar writing. It took, uh, probably way too much electricity, but we did eventually find some forum posts from a ‘user132519512924’, which I can’t believe was within the character limit for that website. They were asking some seemingly innocuous questions about deep neural networks, but considering that’s exactly what our culprit was working with… bullseye.” She watched, satisfied, as the man quietly fumed.
“From there it was easy.” She pulled up a map and some coordinates. “Find the IP address, pull some strings, and pinpoint where they were posting from.” Sonja closed the laptop and tucked the pointer into her galaxy-print bookbag. “So I suggest we take a trip to Taraz, Kazakhstan in the near future.”
Aktet, who had finally been included in these meetings, politely raised a paw and waited until Sonja called on him. “I could be mistaken, but aren’t the official languages of Kazakhstan, um…” He pulled out the phone she’d given him. “Kazakh and Russian?”
“Well, uh, yeah, but even with translators, English is still a lingua franca in some settings, so it’s weird, but not super weird.” The agent shrugged, and the Jikaal nodded in understanding.
Commander Liu stood up. “Meeting’s adjourned. Lombardi, Krishnan, Hassan, come here for a moment.”
Aktet waved goodbye and scurried out of the room before he could be swept up with the crowd. It was a shame Sonja wouldn’t get to watch him interact with Dominick again.
“So. Flight to Kazakhstan. You three are the obvious pick; you’ve been doing the most field work for… everything extraterrestrial, honestly… by far.” The commander seemed to realize she was standing for no reason and plopped back down into the worn office chair she’d been sitting in. “Should we send any of the aliens with you three?”
Sonja and Dominick gave each other a look. Things were… complicated right now, with the aliens they’d spoken the most to.
“Well, um.” Sonja cleared her throat. “Uuliska and Eza are both indisposed.”
“What do you mean ‘indisposed’?” Commander Liu narrowed her eyes.
Dominick groaned. “They broke up with each other. Neither of them is in any state to be going on critical, top secret missions across the world.”
Liu rolled her eyes. “Of course they did. What about Aktet?”
Dominick and Captain Hassan looked ready to say ‘sure’, but Sonia beat them to the punch. “No, I don’t think so.”
The two men gave her a strange look. “What? Why? He was fine just yesterday,” Dominick said.
As much as Sonja wanted to tease the two of them, the fate of the galaxy was a little bit more important, and she didn’t want Aktet flustered the entire time. “He’s been too anxious lately. I think he needs more time adjusting to humanity,” she blatantly lied.
The rest of the group seemed to buy it, thankfully.
This left the four of them at an obvious, but unfortunate conclusion.
“We have to bring one of them,” the captain said. “One of them that we know we can trust, I mean. You said it yourself; this code is related to the Federation and humanity alike.”
Dominick shifted uncomfortably, Commander Liu stared off into the distance, and Sonja bit her nails.
“We’re bringing K’resshk,” Captain Hassan said with finality.
“But he called me a skank! In alien, but still!” Sonja pouted. “Besides, can we really trust him? Doesn’t he want to overthrow us?”
“I talked with Aktet about it after breakfast yesterday, actually, since they’re sharing a room,” Dominick answered. He shuddered, probably unnerved by the thought of having to bunk with the scientist. “He’s wholly committed to the whole ‘pledge allegiance to the U.N. so he can eventually climb the ranks and take over’ plan that Aktet put in his head, so I don’t think we have to worry about him spilling.”
God, I wish Uuliska had hit him a little harder with that frying pan. But it was no matter. Her fate was sealed.
To Kazakhstan they would go.
…
Dominick buckled his seatbelt as Omar performed the pre-flight checks for their small private jet.
“I wish we could just take the mag-lev train,” Sonja whined. “I mean, I know we need to be discreet, but it’s so much faster nowadays.”
“Yes, yes, I’m sure your human technology is mind-blowing, but I wish we were taking a Sszerian cable car. The views are stunning, you see.” K’resshk clambered up on his seat and quickly figured out how to tighten the belt as much as possible.
Sonja put her headphones on and pulled out her phone, then began texting.
Dominick’s phone lit up.
“Is it too late to be a software developer?”
He shook his head disapprovingly at his fellow agent, and brought out the book he’d been reading over the past few days: Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan.
It sucked. It was a chore to parse, and in Dominick’s opinion, Hobbes’ philosophy was more telling of his traumatizing childhood in the aftermath of the invasion of the Spanish Armada than of a genuine need for a social contract tied to absolute sovereignty, but it was fun to criticize (and reminded him of the Federation in some ways), so he took out a highlighter and pen and got to work.
Nerd, Sonja mouthed from across the aisle.
He smiled.
A few (blissfully quiet) hours later, the group of four landed on a small U.N.-controlled airstrip and emerged into the chilly April morning, then shared a (also blissfully quiet) chartered ride to the address Sonja had dug up.
The discreet car with tinted windows dropped them off a half a mile from their destination, and off they went.
“You know, I think I prefer the Sahara to this kind of desert,” Omar remarked, zipping up his flight jacket. “It’s better than when I was in my twenties and stationed in New York, though.” He gave Dominick a look. “I don’t know how you do it.”
Dominick shrugged. “It’s just what I grew up with. Also, don’t call me a New Yorker. I don’t want anyone thinking I root for their sports teams. My cousins would kill me if they heard a rumor like ...
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