Alarms sounded as Sclerimus stumbled down the hallway in search of food. "Darn buzzers!" he shouted to no one in particular, although there was a considerable amount of MWF guards blocking his refrigerator. "We'll have to check your identification, sir," said the General.

Sclerimus fumbled for his MWF identification card, which was in the first pocket of his pajama jacket. He wondered why there were guards surrounding his refrigerator, and why buzzers went off when he went down the hall.

"I'm sorry sir, but you do not have clearance to access this refrigerator," stated the guard. "Please return to the sector you came from."

"But...I...err"

"Return!" hissed the guard.

"But I used to have clearance!"

"The security status has changed from popcorn yellow to Tickle-me Pink. This is a heightened state of alert. And, your refrigerator has been classified as a possible target for sterilization." He said the last word particularly hushed.

Sclerimus unhappily retreated to his CubiculRoom. He recalled the situation at hand.

The Andromedians, who were allies of the Milky Way Federation, said that their Health Administrator deemed the Milky Way "dirty beyond comprehension" and ordered immediate "sterilization." There was rejoicing in all the streets in the galaxy; all the dirt in the galaxy would be swept away. But it was later clarified in a friendly email that this meant the complete and total eradication of all organisms. In the Andromedian culture, cleanliness meant holiness, even if you had to be killed in the process. Spring-cleaning was not a joyous time where families swept under the counters and emptied the junk draw. Instead, the Andromedian administration used one of the most powerful weapons in the whole universe, the Hoover QuikVac v.506, because unique aerodynamic air vanes channel the debris, liquids, and cultures into the air ducts quickly and efficiently, wiping out almost 99.9% of everything. The MWF quickly ordered the Andromedians to discontinue their course of action and cease and desist all cleaning. However, the Andromedians politely refused and offered to use a Swiffer EasyClean v.902 if it made them feel any better. Despite criticisms from the jiberals saying that attacking because of an email that only stated when and how, but did not say anything about the approximation of mass in nanometers of the type of weapon they were using would be preemptive, the MWF declared war.

That was why Sclerimus hated life on the MWF galaxial hyper-spatial space ship. Everything was regulated and observed. He could not get a single thing without "clearance". It was only because he was one of the best code analysts of his time that he was even there. In fact, Sclerimus hated code. Everyone made such a big deal over his talent with code that he was sick of it. His true aspiration in life was interpretative dancing. He was planning on attending the Academy of Dance after this whole crisis was over.

"I hate my life," said Sclerimus as he turned off his light, accidentally knocking everything off the night table.

The next morning Sclerimus was instructed, via the announcements, to meet in the LGI - or the Legitimately Great Interior room. As he walked in, he noticed a long black rectangular table and 5 other highly decorated military men sitting around it. They were all eyeing him over, and not one of them could try more earnestly to suppress their laughter. Sclerimus immediately started feeling out of place with his plaid pajama bottoms and over-sized tee shirt.

"Welcome, Sclerimus," said the man sitting at the head of the table.

"Uh, hello," murmured Sclerimus. He sat down at the opposite end of the table.

"We have heard much about your ability," the man continued.

Sclerimus was in dismay. They obviously meant his interpretive dancing ability. Perhaps this was his big break. "You mean my interpretive dancing abilities!" he blurted.

The men at the table could suppress their laughter no more. Sclerimus blushed a bright red and looked down at his slippers. "You mean my code analyzing skills," he said in a let down tone.

"Yes. These men are other fairly established code analysts. They will be helping you with the enormous task at hand."

"What task is that?"

"I thought you were briefed."

"No, I wasn't." The other men at the table started to chuckle again.

"You, with the assistance of The Others, will have to figure out what type of coding the Andromedians use and how to crack it. The Andromedians have an unstoppable fleet, a weapon of incomprehensible power, and a leader who teaches 8th grade math."

"Shouldn't their leader spend time leading, not teaching?"

"Of course! I just made that last piece of information up."

"Oh."

"Well, I'll show you and The Others to the computer room. Oh, and by the way, it is a cell phone free zone." The group started walking.

"What is a cell phone?"

"I don't really know. I just heard it in this really old color movie about this school that did not allow them, especially in their tech room."

"A color movie?" inquired Sclerimus.

"Yeah."

"Wow, it must have been pretty old. I can't imagine how people could sit and watch color movies!"

"Me neither," agreed the man.

Finally they reached the computer room. Sclerimus hated rooms like this. They were bleak, white, and filled with complicated looking machinery. Of course, any experienced code analyst knew that the only thing that mattered was behind all the complicated stuff.

The man wheeled the outer shell of the machinery away. "You must not waste any time! Good luck!"

Sclerimus immediately got to work. The Others crowded around him to see what he was doing. He asked one of them what their name was.

"We go by the name of The Others. We are one of those groups that were genetically structured to perform this single task."

Sclerimus paid little attention to the un-named person's answer. He was already cracking the Andromedian's security program. Within a few minutes, he was staring right at their code.

"It's organized in Tic-Tac-Toe grids!" exclaimed The Others in perfect synchronization.

"Ok, one of you start making a program that can decode the data. I'll check to see if there is any hidden data."

After a few minutes of searching, he concluded that there was no hidden information. He checked the status of the program. It was finished, so he signaled The Others to come over and watch. He ran the program, and slowly, the data was translated. It said, "Our vacuum is ready and are fleet is armed. We therefore challenge you to a tic-tac-toe game!"

Sclerimus typed, "Ok. If we win, you don't vacuum us." The program translated this back into tic-tac-toe language.

"If you tie, we do vacuum."

"Fine."

"Let's play."

Lights mysteriously appeared at the top and streaked down the sides of the wall was suspenseful music played eerily in the background, much like the lights of an old, TV era game show. This, still today, causes much debate among physicists. They do not know how, with out a photon extension source (at that time known as a "light") photons could have just appeared. A popular theory to explain this is the theory of quantum entanglement. The photons most likely came from an entanglement generator in the Andromedia galaxy.

The second question raised was how music could be played without any possible source. Unfortunately, the physicists were too busy solving the problem of a mysterious microbus that caused the extinction of a rare species of skunks on an island off Peru.

The computers flashed "Andromdians vs. the MWF". Sclerimus' first choice was "G". This was always his lucky letter; almost every time he used he won. However, because the game options were set to "old fashioned", he chose "X". This left the Andromedians with "O".

The game proceeded in a usual manner, until the Andromedians were left with one move. Unfortunately, this one move ended the game as a tie. Sclerimus was dumbfounded. He could not believe that he had come all this way to become inhaled by a giant vacuum. He thought about his life, about how he spent most of it in front of a computer, not practicing tic-tac-toe. He thought about all the useless things in life he had been taught, like how to care for "egg babies", 8th grade honors math, … "That's it!" exclaimed Sclerimus. The Others looked at him with a kind of terror. Instead of playing "X", he played "X2". Minutes passed before the next event took place on the screen, although Sclerimus could have sworn that each minute was really a slow, agonizing hour.

An interesting commentary written by one of the famous scientists of history, Repap Pilc, says that the previous line may actually be factual. Dr. Pilc, on his deathbed, in perfect Yiddish, said that there could have been a wormhole in the space-time continuum, making time actually fluctuate. However, it was later determined that Dr. Pilc did not ever in his life know Yiddish, making the whole incident a fluke.

The next event that took place on the screen consisted of random lines, upside-down question marks, and celebrative music.

Another message immediately followed, which stated plainly, "No input signal."

"We won!" exclaimed The Others.

"We won!" exclaimed Sclerimus.

"We won!" exclaimed the CEO of Hoover Corporation. He was then quickly scolded by his lawyers for saying something that could lead to violent hate crimes against vacuums in the Andromedia galaxy.

* * * It was years after the Andromedia Crisis. Sclerimus was reclining in his dressing room ComfortAChair relaxing before his last interpretive dance performance. He thought to himself about how important 8th grade honors math was. If he had forgotten about it, who could say where he would be now? He concluded that there was a definite moral to his story. Never forget what you think is useless information, for it may mean the difference between life and death.