Aliens Ate My Homework… Then Fixed My Wi-Fi

Lucy Sanderson didn’t believe in aliens, not really, not in the little green men with blinking antennae, nor bug-eyed space invaders you saw on Saturday morning cartoons, at least. She believed in deadlines; in the unforgiving tick of the kitchen clock and the way her heart thudded every time Ms Carter called for her homework. If she had a superpower, it would probably be the ability to instantly find misplace things at the exact moment she needed them, most especially her math worksheet, which was now, quite possibly, lost somewhere under the mountain of, comics, tissues, crisp wrappers, dirty underwear, rubbish that missed the bin, and other unmentionable things she called her “floor.” Her mother swore she was a boy masquerading as her daughter. Her room was that untidy.

But this morning, as she watched rain slide down her window in slanted silver streaks, Lucy knew she was out of time and out of luck. She couldn’t even conjure up a halfway believable excuse for why she hadn’t done her homework. Her mind whirred through the classics, hum, “my dog ate it” (no that wouldn’t work, she never had a dog), “the washing machine ate it” (maybe too on the nose that one, she had used it before), and “I left it on the bus” (no one would buy that). In a moment of pure panic, as Ms Carter’s shadow loomed larger down the hall and entered into the classroom.

Lucy, where is your homework girl, that was due in yesterday? It was not handed in, I see… yet again. Lucy blurted out the most absurd thing that appeared in her brain, then spouted from her lips: “Aliens ate my homework, Ms Carter. Swear on my grandmother’s Christmas pudding recipe.” She had no idea where that had come from, but it was out there now. She couldn’t take it back.

The classroom erupted in a mixture of laughter and boos. A redheaded boy near the back did a pretty good imitation of a UFO, complete with sound effects. Even Ms Carter’s lips twitched slightly, though she managed to smooth her face into something resembling disappointment, tinged with annoyance and a frown.

“Lucy,” she said, voice slow and deliberate, “that’s a new one on me. I hope the aliens found it nutritious. See me after school in my room, please. That is, if you can spare the time. Tell Spock you will beam up later.”

Lucy wilted into her seat, cheeks burning with embarrassment. The laughter continued, even as the lesson dragged on. She could feel the judgment from every corner of the room. She had been too… crazy for her own good, but she still had no idea where that excuse, no, it had been a statement, had come from. It was not planned.

That night, long after the house had gone to sleep, that Lucy’s words came back to haunt her, something prickled at her brain, waking her. The rain had stopped now, but the world outside still glistened, cool and slick under the glare of the porch light. Lucy lay in her bed, one foot tangled in her sheets, the other pressed hard against the wall, listening to the soft hum of the ancient router clicking its tired song. She started scrolling through videos, anything to drown out the memory of her embarrassment, when her bedroom suddenly filled with a shimmering green light.

She sat bolt upright; the phone slipping from her grasp. At first, she thought she was dreaming. But then she saw them, three silhouettes, strange and spindly, outlined against the window, her heart punched her ribs so hard she almost cried out in pain, but something stopped her dead in her tracks.

The window eased open slightly and silently, as if a gentle wind had decided to let itself in. The light intensified, pulsing gently, and with a soft thud, a piece of paper floated across the room—her math worksheet, the name “LUCY SANDERSON” scrawled at the top in her own handwriting.

A globular head with too many eyes peered inside. Another entity hovered beside it, clutching a device that looked suspiciously like her TV remote taped to a salad spinner. The third, smaller than the rest, all pink and ugly, squinted at her, its entire face crumpling in a look of apology.

“Um. Is this a bad time?” the smallest one said, its voice somewhere between a frog’s croak and a musical triangle.

Lucy stared, mouth working uselessly, her brain scrambling for logic that would make this make sense.

“You… You’re not real. I… I must be asleep.”

The tallest alien adjusted what looked like a fanny pack made of glowing noodles and shook its head.

“Negative. You are experiencing an Event of Moderate Significance,” it announced, as if reading from a script. “We regret the ingestion of your scholarly artifact. Blorp here, is… a collector.”

The small one—Blorp, apparently—stepped forward, wringing its three-fingered hands.

“Sorry about your… homework,” it said, producing the wrinkled worksheet from behind its back. “It looked important. I thought it was a form of Earth currency.”

Lucy’s mouth finally found some words. “It’s not currency, it’s algebra. My teacher’s going to kill me. What do you even want?”

The middle alien, who was wearing two left sneakers and a baseball cap that said, “I love sprouts dipped in honey,” fished a notebook from his fanny pack and flipped through it.

“We’re conducting a study on primitive planetary data,” he explained, his eyes never leaving the page. “We take samples. Sometimes we make mistakes. Sneedle ate a cactus last week. That didn’t end well.”

There was an awkward pause. Lucy felt her pulse finally slow as the utter strangeness of it all washed over her. If she was dreaming, it was the best dream she’d ever had. If she wasn’t, she was in the middle of the weirdest science fiction movie of all time.

“Can you… Um, please can you at least help me with my Wi-Fi?” she heard herself ask, the question tumbling out before she could stop it. “It’s been lagging all week, and I have a project due tomorrow. If you have a technology that can cross the galaxy, maybe you could fix a router?”

Blorp brightened, literally. “That, we can certainly do!”

He held out a squishy-looking pod that glowed blue and fizzed in his palm. The pod emitted a pleasant aroma, like minty electricity. Blorp bounced toward her desk and surveyed the jumble of wires, tapping the router with his pod.

The light flickered. Lucy watched as the router sprang to life, its lights dancing in impossible patterns. Her laptop screen flashed, and suddenly, instead of her usual login, a series of windows began popping up, all in strange, looping script.

Sneedle clapped two hands together, delighted. “There! Upgraded. Welcome to the Interstellar Network.”

Lucy blinked. “Um. What just happened to my laptop?”

Blorp peered over her shoulder, antennae drooping sheepishly. “We may have… overclocked your local connectivity.”

Just then, a soft ping sounded from her screen. A message appeared, written in perfect English this time:

HELLO EARTHLING. LOVE YOUR CAT VIDEOS.

Lucy’s jaw dropped. “My—my Wi-Fi is talking to me now?”

Sneedle patted her shoulder, which sent a shiver up Lucy’s spine. “It’s not talking. It’s just… interconnected. Multiverse bandwidth can be chatty.”

More messages flooded in, some in emojis, others in odd symbols, and at least three offering her coupons for zero-gravity pizza. Somewhere, a teen on Saturn wanted to know if she liked “sand jams,” whatever those were.

Lucy laughed, a high, almost hysterical sound, and wiped tears from her eyes. This was insane. Completely, utterly insane. But she wasn’t scared anymore. In fact, she felt a strange, bubbly excitement unfurl in her chest.

“Do you guys do this often?” she asked, looking from one alien to the next. “Just… pop into bedrooms and eat homework?”

Blorp shrugged, looking almost bashful. “We try not to. Last week, we visited a planet made entirely of cheese. It… got messy. Though not as messy as Sneedle passing the cactus.”

Lucy grinned, warmth flooding through her. These weren’t scary invaders, maybe crazy, or they were, well, a little lost. And maybe a little lonely. She found herself wanting to keep them around, at least for a while.

“Can you help me with my next assignment?” she teased. “If you can do algebra, I bet you’d ace my science project.”

The aliens exchanged a look, their features folding into something like a smile. “We’d be delighted,” said Sneedle, and he picked up her notebook, squinting at the diagrams. “Though our understanding of quantum mechanics might be… well, a bit advanced for your curriculum.”

They spent the next hour sprawled across Lucy’s bed, surrounded by open textbooks and glowing pods. Blorp argued with her over the correct way to balance an equation, his antennae twitching with every wrong answer. Sneedle explained black holes using a pair of socks and a flashlight. Kevin, the tallest and quietest, drew her a map of the galaxy using her geometry compass and half a cookie.

For the first time in weeks, Lucy felt lighter. She forgot about her embarrassment, about Ms Carter’s stern face, about the relentless thrum of deadlines. The world outside faded, leaving only the gentle hum of intergalactic voices in her laptop and the soft, silly laughter of friends, somehow friends of sorts, who weren’t even from her planet.

But peace was short-lived. A sudden, sharp crackle of static filled the room, making the aliens stiffen. The laptop screen fizzed, and a new message appeared:

UNAUTHORISED DATA TRANSFER DETECTED. AUTHORITIES EN ROUTE. PREPARE FOR INTERROGATION.

Blorp’s eyes went wide. “Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no. We triggered the network’s security protocols.”

Lucy’s heart stuttered. “What does that mean? Are we in trouble with the authorities?”

Kevin slid off the bed, moving with a purpose she hadn’t seen before. “We’ll handle it. Lucy, stay behind us.”

The green light in the room dimmed as the air thickened, shimmering with strange energy. A swirling portal appeared near the window, and a pair of stern-looking, tentacled beings stepped through, their uniforms covered in blinking badges and official-looking patches.

“Interstellar Data Authority,” the taller one intoned, holding up something like a badge. “Who authorised the exchange of educational artifacts and Earthling communication protocols?”

Blorp stammered, “It was an accident! The homework was, well, it was tasty. But we just fixed her Wi-Fi, honest!”

Lucy stepped forward, heart in her throat, but determined. “If you’re looking for someone to blame, blame me. I told them to help. It was my homework, my Wi-Fi. If you have to arrest someone, it should be me.”

The alien officials exchanged a glance, their tentacles curling thoughtfully. “A noble admission,” the shorter one said, “but our protocols are clear. Unauthorised data exchange must be neutralised.”

Thinking fast, Lucy’s mind raced. She remembered how much her classmates hated homework. Maybe… maybe there was a way to fix all of this.

“Wait! What if I give you more data? A trade of sorts, maybe?” she offered, her voice trembling just slightly. “I can get you the whole school’s homework. Thousands of pages of interesting data. Would that… even things out with you?”

The tentacled beings paused. Blorp’s eyes shone with hope.

“It is… possible,” said the taller authority, “though our dietary guidelines restrict certain preservatives commonly found in Earth paper. Do you possess alternatives of any kind?”

Lucy’s mind flashed to the cafeteria. The food there was barely edible, but it certainly wasn’t made of paper.

“What about… cafeteria food?” she suggested. “It’s weird enough to pass for data, I think. At least, no one else wants it. Students have been trying to work out for years what it is made of. Maybe you can decipher it?”

There was a beat of silence. The alien officials consulted a blinking pad, then nodded.

“Acceptable. The exchange will be made.”

Within minutes, Lucy and her unlikely friends found themselves in the darkened halls of Stanmore School for girls, arms loaded with trays of day-old meatloaf, a large bowl of something they called custard, meat of dubious origins and mystery casserole with an orange ore. The officials scanned the offerings, pronounced them “intellectually stimulating,” and vanished with a polite zap.

Back in her room, Lucy and the aliens collapsed onto the bed, shaking with laughter.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Lucy gasped. “You guys are lucky I’m so creative.”

Sneedle grinned, flicking a glowing purple pod between his fingers. “You Earthlings are quite resourceful. You would make a fine ambassador.”

Blorp offered her a small device. It was a sleek, silvery communicator, no bigger than a deck of cards.

“For emergencies only,” he said. “And for math questions you can’t find answers. We’re just a frequency away.”

The sun was beginning to rise as the aliens prepared to leave. Lucy watched them from her window, wishing they would stay longer.

“I’ll miss you,” she admitted, voice barely above a whisper.

Blorp pressed a hand to his chest lightly. “We’ll visit again. We like your planet. It’s strange but delicious.”

They vanished in a flash of gentle green light, leaving her room smelling faintly of starlight and cinnamon toast. As Lucy crawled back into bed, her phone buzzed instantly with a message.

SCIENCE PROJECT: A+

COMMENTS: Imaginative use of extraterrestrial biology. See me in my office.

Ms Carter.

“Thank you, Blorp,” she whispered to the world as she grinned, snuggling deeper under the covers, her heart full of secrets and laughter. Somewhere, in the quiet hum of her universal router, the galaxy waited for her next message.

And Lucy Sanderson never missed another assignment again.