Everyone at the conference table watched awestruck as English words arranged in a triad of familiar phrases formed on their LCD displays.

  Create user name.

  Enter new password.

  Confirm password.

  The president looked at Lewis. “Any suggestions about what I should use?”

  The astronomer shrugged. “It’s your decision, Madam President. Choose whatever you want.”

  Her hands hesitated over the keyboard. “I suppose I could use the ones for my main e-mail account.”

  Another instant and everyone saw the words “chiefexecutiveusa” in the first field on their laptops. But while the others saw only small black dots appear in the next two fields, Lewis was close enough to the president to discreetly sneak a peek at her fingers as she typed. He wondered if “bestpreznumber1” was officially classified as top secret.

  Her last entry completed, the president solemnly pressed the “Enter” key on the transceiver. After a slight pause an empty text box with a small blinking vertical line in its upper left corner appeared on the screen. At Lewis’s suggestion the president typed inside the text box, “We the people of Earth greet you in peace and friendship.” After her fingers depressed the “Enter” key again, she and the others watched their displays change back to a featureless blur of colors—and waited.

  And waited.

  For slothfully slow minutes the only sounds in the room were the occasional cough, sneeze, and low rumble of a stomach growling. As anxiety turned into annoyance the president looked sharply at Lewis and demanded, “Well? Has this thing crashed? Should I restart it, like I do with my regular laptop when it locks up?”

  The astronomer’s fingertips played across his own laptop’s keyboard. He said, “Everything seems to check out okay. The aliens should have received the message you just transmitted instantaneously. However, there’s no telling how long it will take them to read it or send a reply.”

  The secretary of defense snorted. “Maybe they’ll submit the question of how to answer us to their equivalent of a congressional committee for review. If their political system operates anything like ours, it might be months before we get a reply!”

  The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff snickered. “Or maybe we’ll just get a recording saying the number we’re trying to reach has been disconnected!”

  Lewis frowned. “That isn’t so far fetched. As I said earlier, the aliens’ transmission has been broadcast for at least half a century. It’s possible we might not get an answer because they’ve been wiped out by some natural catastrophe or other disaster since they began their transmission.”

  The president scowled. “Do you mean all this trouble and worry might be for nothing?”

  The astronomer squinted at his laptop’s screen, as if willing it to change into an answer to the message the president had just sent. “I hope not. All we can do is wait until—”

  Suddenly bold blue letters formed on the screens scattered around the room.

  A Missive Has Been Sent to You.

  There was a long silence as the implications of those words registered on everyone reading them. Then a new sentence appeared below that announcement.

  You Have Received an Important Message from His Supreme Highness.

  The president stared pleadingly at Lewis for guidance. He said, “Double-click on the message to read it.”

  Her finger trembled as she obeyed. All eyes stayed fixed on their screens, anxiously perusing the words that now appeared.

  Greetings, my friend. I am Gilelstab of Tromfisco, Emperor of the Two Thousand Systems. We must discuss a matter of great mutual importance.

  A reverent hush filled the room as everyone conjured up his or her own mental picture of what this regal alien looked like. Though each person’s imagination bestowed the emperor with skin shades ranging from green to orange and different numbers of eyes and limbs, all created a portrait more dignified than any merely human chief of state.

  More words appeared on their screens. Treacherous rebels recently invaded the sacred sod of my imperial homeworld, Dwardemon, rendering it necessary for me to remove myself and the remainder of my battlefleet to a hidden base far away in the local spiral arm. There my loyal minions toil tirelessly to build new warships to drive that craven corps of criminals back into space and restore my benevolent rule. I am asking you to aid me in this great and noble endeavor.

  The president and other officials glanced worriedly at each other. The intricacies of Middle Eastern politics now seemed childishly simple compared to this new peril the world faced of becoming embroiled in an interstellar war.

  The secretary of state murmured hesitantly, “Perhaps we could offer the emperor our services as a neutral go-between to help negotiate a peace agreement with the rebels. We could work through the United Nations to create a multinational delegation of diplomats and use shuttle diplomacy between the warring factions.”

  The vice president snorted. “What a brilliant idea. You know how well that usually works here on Earth!”

  The message from beyond the stars continued. You can help me to secure more funds for rebuilding my military might. My enemies have blocked me from accessing a secret account containing great wealth I have in a local star system’s major bank. I can instruct my agents to bribe corrupt officials there to have your name listed as the owner of that account. You can then send a request to withdraw money and have it transferred to another bank owned by a species friendly to me. To reward you for your assistance, you may keep 20.03% of these funds as a bounty.

  The president frowned. “Obviously the money isn’t our major concern. If we could ingratiate ourselves to the emperor without antagonizing any other alien factions, we might gain a powerful ally!”

  For this plan to work, you only need to deposit a trivial amount of your own money into my secret account. This deposit is needed to confirm your “ownership” of my account and to allow you to withdraw all the funds from it. By authorizing this transfer of a mere one million ayohos from any account you have in a Galactic Deposit Insurance Corporation-approved savings institution, you will gain many millions more!

  The secretary of defense said, “That sounds like a fair deal. Perhaps we could use the money to buy new technology. All we have to do is figure out how to set up a account of our own in some alien bank.”

  To agree to my proposal, click on the hyperlink I am including later in this message. You will then be sent instructions on how to provide me with your bank account number and the other personal information I will need to confirm that you have sufficient funds for my plan to work. If you do not reply, I will dispatch several Planetpulverizer-class star cruisers to your world so my tentacle-picked captains can receive your answer in person. Incidentally, they and the destructobots onboard are eager to see if the new atomic disintegrator cannons on my ships really can incinerate a whole continent with a single blast.

  The Director of National Intelligence looked worried. “Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but doesn’t that sound a bit like a threat?”

  Lewis began, “There’s something familiar about this—” But the president interrupted him. “Look, there’s another message coming in!”

  The emperor’s missive scrolled up and off the screen, replaced by new words.

  Service for your account at the First Galactic Bank has been suspended due to unauthorized activity. Please click here for information on how to upload your account number and genetic profile to us so we can resolve this issue.

  The secretary of the treasury smiled. “I don’t know how we got that account, but maybe we could use the money in it to help the emperor!”

  The others barely had time to consider that proposal before yet another message appeared.

  Pleased is we to inform you that lucky winner you be of 9598th Millennium Interstellar Lottery. To receive your prize of two putrid puspods suitable for grilling or roasting dependent on your palatal preference send small processing fee of 1 x 10 100 lazlomi to place for clicking below.

  Lewis shouted, “Something is terribly wrong!”

  But none of the others heard him as their screens changed yet again.

  Amazing medical breakthrough lets you grow back fur on your dorsal fin! Find out how you can increase your chances of not being eaten after a successful mating ritual by clicking here for more information!

  The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff ran his hand gingerly along the edge of his receding hairline. “If it can grow back fur, maybe...”

  His musing was interrupted as Lewis cried, “Now I get it!” at the next message from beyond.

  Meet horny young reptiloids in your local globular cluster! Choose ones with two or even three big horns! Pick your favorite from any of the four primary genders! Click here to see sample pictures of their sensuously scaly bodies taken in the unclothed intimacy of their bednests!

  Immediately Lewis screamed, “Don’t click anywhere on your screens!” But his warning came a few seconds too late. Even as the astronomer shouted those words the National Security Advisor muttered, “Hmm ... pictures of horny young reptiloids.” He surreptitiously positioned his laptop’s cursor and double-tapped its touchpad—

  Suddenly an all-too-familiar image flashed and froze on the screens of the tachyonic transceiver and every laptop in the room. Lewis stared in horror at the bright blue background filled with a cryptic message consisting of white letters and numbers that now glared mockingly back from his and every other LCD display. As everyone except Lewis puzzled over what was happening, none of them heard the national security advisor say matter-of-factly, “I didn’t do anything.”

  Lewis desperately grabbed the tachyonic transceiver away from the president and mashed his index finger down on the power button. His heart raced like a stream of speeding electrons as he waited second after second for the transceiver to turn off.

  Nothing happened.

  Lewis’s hands fumbled frantically along the bottom of the device and tried to remove its battery. When the latter wouldn’t budge he picked up the transceiver and threw it violently to the floor. Its screen still glowed and leered back at him as he stood up, lifted the chair he’d been sitting on, and smashed it against the transceiver over and over until plastic and metal parts flew across the room. Then he flung his own laptop against the nearest wood-paneled wall and shouted, “Hurry! Destroy your laptops before it’s too late!”

  For an instant the president and other officials looked at Lewis as if he’d gone psychotic. But as their gazes returned to the blue screens of death on their laptops, memories of seeing it appear so often in the past to wipe out hours of unsaved irreplaceable work or randomly pop up to crash their computers just as they were about to achieve a new high score boiled up in them.

  Then long-repressed urges to destroy the source of so much frustration exploded like a nuclear warhead. Those dignified civil servants suddenly transformed into laptop Luddites—smashing, crushing, pounding their notebook computers in a frenzied orgy of revenge on their transistorized tormenters. The room reverberated with the crack of mangled motherboards, backlight lamps breaking, and hard drives crashing.

  Their fury finally spent, Lewis and the others collapsed back into their chairs. For a moment they silently surveyed the electronic entrails splattered across the room. Then the president looked at Lewis and whispered, “What have we done?”

  The astronomer breathed a tentative sigh of relief. “I hope we just saved the world.”

  He picked up the battered and bent tachyonic transceiver from the floor and set it back on the table. “The general was right. This thing was the bait for a trap. Somewhere in the vast vistas of space, inhuman creatures tried to take advantage of humanity’s curiosity, our thirst for new knowledge—as well as our gullibility and greed. Instead of creating windows of opportunity to contact alien civilizations wiser than ours, I believe this device’s main purpose was to let nefarious beings spy on us, steal our wealth, and use us for their own sinister ends.”

  The president looked confused. “I still don’t understand why we had to destroy your device and the laptops.”

  Lewis replied, “When they all crashed at the same time I realized they must have been taken over by an alien program. Maybe it was a virus, which needs to be attached to another file or program before it can infect a computer. More likely it was a worm, a self-contained bit of software optimized for replicating and spreading itself from one computer to another.

  “Once that program was downloaded through the transceiver, it was easy for it to spread to every computer within range. The transceiver and laptops were linked with each other as part of a wireless network. They could share files and other data using radio signals sent and received by wireless network adapters inside them.”

  The astronomer smiled grimly. “However, though we didn’t configure them to do that, their adapters were also potentially capable of connecting with any of the wireless routers here in the White House. Those routers connect to other computers in this building and can communicate with outside networks. Sophisticated authentication and encryption methods are supposed to prevent a computer from accessing those routers without the proper authorization.

  “But if an alien worm inside the transceiver or laptops could evade those security measures and access a router, it could spread anywhere through the local network, tap into our nation’s top-level computer systems, and even reach the Internet itself!”

  The president looked stunned. “Are you saying that ‘worm’ was meant to attack us through our own computers?”

  Lewis nodded. “Maybe you or someone else here has had firsthand experience with viruses and worms. They can destroy data, corrupt an operating system—or even turn computers into ‘zombies’ under the remote control of whoever wrote the malicious software.

  “I don’t know what the aliens’ program was specifically designed to do. Maybe it was sent to discover our military secrets, assess the level of our technology, or gather information about our biology to send back to its creators and help them plan their attack against us. Perhaps it would’ve seized control of computers worldwide to paralyze the world’s governments and financial institutions, crippled our means of communicating with each other by e-mail and blogs, or even erased every hard drive on Earth. The only way to prevent that was to destroy the transceiver and every infected laptop before the aliens’ program could spread beyond this room!”

  Lewis threw back his shoulders. “But though our first contact with a nonhuman intelligence almost led to disaster, we mustn’t be discouraged. Perhaps there are other, more appealing aliens out there who will not try to take advantage of us. We can rebuild the tachyonic transceiver, proceed to load it with a core operating system and software robust enough to stem the efforts of those who would betray our trust, and use it in a great safari to browse for legitimate sites of knowledge among the stars. Someday, if we all keep focused on our jobs, we might yet be able to list the members of some extraterrestrial civilization among our friends.”

  At first the two information technology technicians summoned back to the room stood stunned and horrified at the scene of computer carnage spread out before them. But they recovered quickly, not even asking the reason for this massacre—as if they’d seen such sights before.

  The IT techs gravely gathered the mangled corpses of their erstwhile electronic charges together into a pile. Then the metal cart on which the laptops had so recently entered the room in glory was wheeled from its secluded corner to where their shattered metal-and-plastic bodies now stood nearly knee high. There the technicians began solemnly setting the computers’ remains back onto the cart’s shelves, like pallbearers loading a hearse.

  The president looked at Lewis and said, “Do you think we should let anyone else know what happened here today?”

  The astronomer nodded. “Yes. We can’t take the chance that someone else might build a tachyonic transceiver and unwittingly give the aliens a second opportunity to unleash an attack on Earth through our computer networks. I suggest you tell the public that one of the world’s greatest battles was fought and won today by the human race. We met and defeated the first invasion from another planet.

  “But you must also give them this warning: Watch your computer monitors and laptop screens! Everywhere—keep looking! Keep watching the screens!”

  As the president pondered that advice, one of the technicians bent over and extracted a rectangular object from the bottom of his metal cart. “Madam President, what would you like me to do with the spare laptop I left on for you?”

  The president and Lewis looked at each other. Then their gaze fearfully turned toward the open notebook computer the IT technician held facing them. Its screen showed a bright blue background filled with a cryptic message consisting of white letters and numbers—

 

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