Official News page 2

THE DIVORCE

by Hazed

"Oh Gorx, I am so unhappy," sobbed Flaph, tears of green ichor streaming down her face. "It's all gone so wrong. Marjj and I were so in love when we got married, but then he left one morning after setting up his stockpiles for the day, and never came back. He's not been seen in Federation DataSpace for six months."

Gorx sighed in sympathy and draped a tentacle around his friend, offering what comfort he could. "There, there, dear," he said, using a sucker to wipe away the green tears.

"I've been abandoned! He doesn't love me any more!" Such was Flaph's distress that she started to go into premature molt, and clumps of her long silky fur fell out and drifted away on the breeze, leaving unsightly bald patches in her pelt.

Gorx knew that drastic action had to be taken. "There's nothing for it, Flaph my dear. You are going to have to bite the bullet. Accept the inevitable. Wipe the slate clean and start over with a new life."

"You mean...?"

"Yes. You need to get divorced."

And so it was that a miserable Flaph, supported by her friend Gorx, presented herself at the registrar's office on Earth to dissolve her marriage to the long-absent Marjj. The registrar recorded the details of the divorce with all due solemnity, and the tie between them was broken. It was an unhappy day.

The next day, Flaph determined that she would forget her wayward ex-spouse and enjoy her life as a new singleton. She took down Marjj's photos from the wall, sold the wedding ring to a gold dealer for cash, and tore up the wedding dress to use for cleaning cloths.

Finally, she decided to take one last look at Marjj's SpyNet Report before mentally bidding him goodbye...

In the next room, Gorx was having a lie-in after a few too many pints of Diesel's Old Peculiar the night before. He was startled awake by a furious shriek from the other room. Flaph was having a tantrum.

"That... that... he... I don't believe this... LOOK!" she yelled as Gorx stumbled out of bed to see what was going on. She shoved the SpyNet Report towards him. "He's been here. He was in DataSpace when I was divorcing him. Maybe he was even watching me! How could he be so cruel?" And she collapsed into another pool of green sticky tears, her triple hearts breaking, and this time Gorx couldn't comfort her no matter how many tentacles he wrapped around her.

Gorx couldn't stop thinking about that SpyNet Report on the errant husband. He was puzzled. Sure enough, it showed that his last known appearance in DataSpace was the day before - at the exact time of the divorce. But he just couldn't believe that Marjj would show up, after six moths absence, at the exact time his poor, neglected wife had given up on him. It was too much of a coincidence.

He decided to couldn't let this rest. He had to find out whether Marjj really had appeared, or whether there was an error with the report. He had some contacts in the Galactic Administration so he asked them who in the government was responsible for the SpyNet information. He soon found out that it was nothing to do with the GA - SpyNet was an independent organization, a shadowy group about which very little was known.

It's not necessary to detail the extraordinary lengths to which Gorx had to go in order to find out more about SpyNet; suffice to say that his diligence would have done credit to a newsdroid. Finally, his investigations yielded the fact that SpyNet had an office near the GA HQ which appeared to be deserted but was in fact the nerve-center of the information-gathering organization. It also got him the recognition signals he needed to be admitted. Wearing the hat he had been instructed to wear, with ribbons of the correct shade attached to his tentacles, and making the gestures he had been told about, he gained admittance and got to talk to a SpyNet employee, a stern man in black who wouldn't give a name.

Laying a copy of Marjj's SpyNet Report on the desk in front of the MiB, Gorx explained the circumstances. At this point, the stern demeanor of the SpyNet man crumbled and he looked... embarrassed.

"Yes, you've pinpointed a subtle flaw in our system," he admitted. "What we have always advertised as being the date last seen in DataSpace, isn't really that at all. It's the date his record last changed. Now normally, those things are exactly the same, since records only change when a person does something, such as make or lose money, move about, or die, which implies he, she or it is present. But divorce is a special case, since somebody can become a divorcee without being present."

"So you mean that Marjj wasn't actually here, the date is just an indication that his record was updated with the divorce date?" asked an incredulous Gorx.

"That's right," admitted the MiB. "We've been meaning to do something about this for absolutely ages, but somehow there's always something more important to do. You know how it is..."

Well, Gorx was outraged at the fact that so much pain and suffering had been caused to his friend Flaph by a simple confusion about data, and he resolved that something should be done about it. So he sued SpyNet, on behalf of Marjj, and after a lengthy court case, won a substantial settlement which went some way to mending the poor divorcee's broken hearts. SpyNet finally fixed the bug in their recording procedures, and now, the date last in DataSpace reported on a person's SpyNet Report is guaranteed to be correct.

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