How To Save The World: An Alien Comedy (39 page)

“How do you reckon they hacked his account?” Garth mused.  “Just cos I’m wondering if they’ve hacked our accounts as well.”

“Ar, I hope not,” Monty replied.  “That’ll just make things even more complicated.”

“Ar, man.  I think I’ve just sussed out
how they’ve done it,” Garth exclaimed.

“How?” Monty inquired.

“Remember the receptionist at the Jerry Springer offices that Eric told us about?  They remembered the number she dialled no problem at all,” Garth recalled.  “So when Eric typed out his password they’ll have done the same thing.  They’ll have just watched what he typed and remembered it.  They must have excellent short term memories.”

“Fuck!  You’re right!  That means they can log into our accounts as well,” Monty surmised.

“Yep,” Garth acknowledged.

“Ar, fuck!  That just complicates things even more,” Monty exclaimed.

“Yep,” Garth once again acknowledged.

“Ar, man.  We need to contact Eric and we can’t use our A.T.S. accounts cos Jixyl and Azleev have got access to them,” Monty recapped, “and Eric can’t use his cos they’ve got access to his as well.”

“Tricky,” Garth remarked.

“More like abso
– fucking – lutely impossible,” Monty elaborated.

“Yep,” Garth yet again acknowledged.

“Can you stop agreeing with uz?” Monty requested.  “You’re not being very helpful.”

So Garth then attempted to be a bit more helpful.  “Well for starters, you need to make it look like you haven’t been into your A.T.S
. account for a few days,” he advised.  “Just so that Jixyl and Azleev don’t know that you’ve seen the Supermail message.”

“Aye, good point,” Monty agreed.  “But what’re we gonna do about Eric?”

The two friends looked at each other not knowing what to say.  It was Monty who eventually broke the silence.

“We could just do a runner somewhere,” he suggested.  “
The timing’s quite lucky actually, what with you just getting made redundant the other week.
[73]
  And a couple of weeks away might do you good in any case … what with you splitting up with Sarah the other day.”
[74]

“How does that help Eric, though?” Garth quizzed.  “And the Femlings?”

“It doesn’t,” Monty admitted, “but there’s no point us all dying.”

“Well yeah, that’s not a bad idea,” Garth agreed.  “We should definitely go into hiding, but we still need to try to warn Eric as well.”

“How about we write a coded message on his A.T.S. wall?” Monty suggested.

“Hmm … not a bad idea,” Garth nodded.  “What do you suggest?”

“Like, some sort of message that secretly warns Eric that Jixyl and Azleev are dodgy, but doesn’t let Jixyl and Azleev know that we’re onto them,” Monty explained.

“I know what a coded message is,” Garth clarified.  “I meant, what exactly are you going to write?”

“Ar … well I haven’t really thought it through that far yet,” Monty admitted.

Garth then came up with another idea.  “Why don’t we just set up a fake A.T.S. account for some made-up person, then add Eric as an A.T.S. friend?  Then as soon as Eric adds the fake person as a friend, we quickly send him a message warning him that Jixyl and Azleev are dodgy.  That way Jixyl and Azleev won’t be able to add the friend cos then Eric would know someone was logging into his account, so that way we can be sure that only Eric will read the warning message we send.”

“Mebbees,” Monty shrugged.

“Well it’s the best plan we’ve come up with so far,” Garth pointed out.

“What if Eric doesn’t add the friend though?” Monty questioned.  “Like, if we use a made-up person there’s a good chance Eric will just think ‘I don’t know him’ and click ignore.”

“Hmm…” Garth pondered.

“In fact … nar.  It’s a bad idea,” Monty opined.  “I reckon Eric would definitely just click ignore if he didn’t know someone, like.”

“Hmm, so I guess we scrap that plan, then,” Garth decided.  He dwelt on the matter some more.  “How about this then…  we set up a fake brand page and then offer him free stuff if he adds the brand homepage to his groups, then communicate with him that way.  That’s got more chance of working cos the offer of free stuff should appeal to Eric’s frugal nature.”

“We don’t know any brands on Fem, though,” Monty pointed out.

“They’ll probably have a McDonalds there,” Garth joked.  “And being serious, we can easily look some up on the G.I.N.”

“But
the flaw with that idea is that Eric doesn’t need free stuff, though,” Monty reasoned.  “Jixyl and Azleev are financing his trip.”

Garth pondered some more until suddenly his
eyes lit up.  “I’ve got it!” he exclaimed.

“What?” Monty inquired, optimistically.

“It’s the perfect plan!” Garth enthused.

“What is?” Monty quizzed.

“It’s obvious really … when you think about it,” Garth replied.

“What is?  Here, man.  What are you on about?” Monty asked, impatiently.

“We go back to my original idea where we set up a fake profile, but…”  Garth paused for dramatic effect.  “…instead of pretending to be a dude, we pretend to be a fit lass.  Like, we use a photo of a really lush looking lass and everything.  And then just to make absolutely sure that he adds her we include a welcome message along the lines of, ‘Hi, I’ve seen you around in Ko Pagna and really fancy you but I’m too shy to speak to you so I thought I’d contact you by A.T.S. first.  I’d really like to meet sometime.’  Then we just leave it as that.”

Monty’s eyes began to light up as well.  “Aye, I see where you’re going,” he acknowledged.

“It’s an excellent idea,” Garth boasted.  “If Eric sees a fit lass that wants to meet up he’ll definitely be tempted to add her as a friend … whether he knows her or not.  That’s just a typical Eric reaction.  And if we word the welcome message right then that should make it a definite clincher.  Then once he’s added her we’ll have an account we can use to contact Eric which Jixyl and Azleev won’t have access to.”

“Aye!  That’s a quality idea!” Monty agreed.

“So what we do is we stay permanently logged into this fit lass’s account,” Garth elucidated, spelling out the final details of his plan, “then the moment Eric adds her we send him a message straight away to tell him the bad news.”

“That it’s not really a fit lass and it’s just us?” Monty remarked.

“Well, no … that Jixyl and Azleev are pure patter merchants that have been stringing him along and that his life might be in danger,” Garth corrected.

“Ar, aye.  That as well,” Monty replied.  Monty’s enthusiasm then suddenly became somewhat subdued, however.  “There’s just one problem though.  What if Jixyl or Azleev look at this made-up lass’s profile and see that she’s got no friends?  They might get suspicious.”

“So we’ll create a load of other fake people as well then,” Garth suggested.  “And add them to this fake lass, and write fake messages on her wall and stuff, so that she looks real.  Then we’ll do the same for her fake friends and connect all these fake people up randomly so that they all look genuine.”

“How many d’you reckon we should set up?” Monty asked.

“A hundred?” Garth proposed.  “Or, I dunno … two hundred?”

“Two hundred!” Monty blurted out.  “It’ll take all day!  We were meant to be
watching the match later on!”

“Yeah but maybe
,
just
maybe
, Eric’s safety and the survival of eight billion innocent Femlings is maybe a little bit more important than watching the match,” Garth pointed out.

“Aye, maybe,” Monty conceded.  “
It is only Norwich, I suppose.  He owes us big time for this, though.”

So then Monty and Garth wasted no further time and got straight down to the task of creating two hundred fake A.T.S. profiles.  In the end they went the extra mile and ended up setting up almost three hundred fake profiles, which was probably a lot more than was necessary, but with the massive consequences at stake they decided it was better to go too far than not far enough.

Then once they had sent Eric a friend request from the fake fit lass, who they decided to call Stella Gascrom, they then decided to take shifts sitting on A.T.S. constantly clicking ‘refresh’ waiting for Eric to add Stella Gascrom as a friend.  Then the moment she was added they would then instantly send Eric a message urging him to change his password and also suggesting that he give Jixyl and Azleev some patter about someone having possibly seen him type his password so he’d changed it just to be on the safe side.

And then once his password was changed, and Jixyl and Azleev were no longer able to access his account,
then
they would warn him of the dangerous position he was in.

Garth, who had volunteered to take the first shift, clicked ‘refresh.’  There was no change.  Eric apparently hadn’t logged in yet.  Stella Gascrom was not yet added as a friend.

He clicked ‘refresh’ again.  Still no change.

“This could take a while,” he commented.

“Hopefully he’ll log in soon,” Monty remarked, optimistically.

“Yeah,” Garth agreed.  “Come on, Eric.  Log in.  Come on.  Eight billion Femlings are depending on you.”

He clicked ‘refresh’ once again.  Still no change.

So he kept clicking.  And kept on hoping.  Hoping that they weren’t too late and that Eric hadn’t already unleashed the Telix-17 virus upon the Femling population.

Another click.  And still no change.  “Come on, Eric.  Log in soon.  And please don’t have snogged any lasses yet.”

Another click.  All Garth could do was keep on clicking.

And keep on hoping.

“I tell you what’s weird,” Eric mused to Kesta as they lay on Ko Pagna’s Sunrise Beach enjoying the sun.

“What?” Kesta inquired.

“Topless beaches,” Eric replied.

Kesta looked slightly bemused.  “‘Weird’ isn’t the word I’d use to describe topless beaches,” he remarked.  “‘Very pleasant’ is the word I’d use.”

Eric decided to overlook Kesta’s poor counting skills.  “Well, aye.  They’re pleasant,” Eric agreed.  “But I didn’t really mean topless beaches.  I meant more the
origin
of topless beaches.  Like, who invented them?  And, like, what was his patter?  Was he, like, ‘Nar, honestly.  It’s alright.  You can get your baps out and it doesn’t count cos it’s on a beach.’”

Kesta chuckled.

“And then, like,” Eric continued, “were the lasses, like, ‘Ar, alright, then.  I’ll get my baps out … as long as it doesn’t count.’  I don’t understand the logic behind it.”

“Eric, you don’t have to understand it,” Kesta replied.  “You just have to enjoy it.”

“Well, aye.  I
do
enjoy it,” Eric acknowledged, “but does it not seem weird to you?  Like, you see that lass over there walking to the fruit shake stand?”  Eric subtly nodded towards the lass in question.  “Well she’s had her baps out for the last half hour and then when she goes to the fruit shake stand she puts her bikini top back on.”  Eric performed a theatrical shrug to indicate his lack of comprehension of the lass’s behaviour.  “Like, eh?  Like, where’s the logic in that?  Like, is she thinking, ‘Oo, I don’t want people to see my baps while I’m at the fruit shake stand, but when I’m lying on the beach and when I was splashing about in the sea earlier on, then no worries.  I’ll happily get my baps out then.’  Like, I can’t understand her way of thinking.”

“Eric mate, you need to re-evaluate your priorities,” Kesta advised.  “When most blokes see a fit lass with her baps out on the beach they don’t come out with a psychological evaluation of her motivations.  They just think, ‘Mmm, she’s nice.’”

“Well, aye.  So do I,” Eric replied.  “Especially those three lasses over there by the volleyball court…”

“Aye, I’d noticed them as well,” Kesta observed.

“…but all I’m saying is I just don’t understand the principle.  How is the beach okay for bap revealing and the fruit shake stand isn’t?”

“It’s just social etiquette,” Kesta suggested.  “It’s okay on a beach but the fruit shake stand is off the beach.”

“Only by about a metre,” Eric pointed out.  “What’s wrong with having your baps out just cos you’re a metre off the beach?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it.  It’s just not the done thing,” Kesta explained.  “Like, you’ve got your top off now, but if you went for a job interview you’d wear a shirt.”

“Aye, cos I wouldn’t get the job if I had my chest out,” Eric contended.  “Well … unless it was a pervy woman doing the interview, mebbees.  But anyway, what I mean is, if she’d gone to buy a fruit shake with her baps out the fruit shake dude wouldn’t have gone, ‘No!  I refuse to serve you until you cover yourself up, young lady!’  He’d have gone, ‘Here’s your fruit shake.  That’s forty credits please,’ and then thought, ‘Mmm, nice baps.’”

“Well maybe that’s just it,” Kesta proposed.  “Maybe she doesn’t
want
the fruit shake dude thinking, ‘Mmm, nice baps.’”