How To Save The World: An Alien Comedy by Charles Fudgemuffin Read Free Book Online

It’s a complaint!” Sydney pointed out.  “Look, either some fucking dickhead’s signed my fucking number up to some dodgy expensive fucking robot adult chat-line, or otherwise it’s some dodgy scam company taking advantage of the incompetence of your security checks.  But either way, if I’ve been charged £7.99 on my next bill then I’m not paying the bill.  Simple as that.
    And unless yous provide a signature saying that I authorised that message then I’ll be reporting yous to the fraud squad as well.  And yous won’t have a leg to stand on cos I haven’t signed anything.”
    “Look, unless you stay calm and tell me exactly what’s happened I’m not going to be able to help you with your enquiry,” the operator repeated.
    Sydney took a deep breath and attempted to calm down.  “Right, well basically either someone has signed uz up to a message service I didn’t request, or else some dodgy scam company is sending out random messages to random phone numbers.  And these messages cost £7.99 a time,” Sydney explained.
    “How do you know they cost £7.99?” the operator inquired.
    “Cos it said in the message,” Sydney explained.
    “Ah … well, you see… if you’ve listened to the message that might present a bit of a problem with regard to getting a refund,” the operator declared.
    “Here!  If that £7.99 is on my bill you’ll be hearing from my lawyers!” Sydney threatened.
    “It’s just that if you didn’t request the message then technically you should have hung up straight away,” the operator advised.
    “Here, how was I meant to know if I’d actually requested it without actually listening to it first?” Sydney pointed out.
    “It’s just that if you’ve listened to the message then the service provider may be entitled to make a charge for it,” the operator remarked.
    Sydney’s patience had reached the end of its tether.  “Here!  Fuck off!” he bellowed.  And with that he slammed the phone down.
    Meanwhile, outside Sydney’s house Jixyl and Azleev were in fits of laughter.
    “Har, har!  Class!” Jixyl chuckled.  “He was completely sucked in, like.”
    “Yeah,” Azleev agreed.  “It’s excellent how rubbish the integrity of the phone companies are on Earth.”
    “Aye,” Jixyl smirked.  “It makes it an absolute doddle for pranksters like us to get a result.”
    Sydney had in fact not been sent the ‘horny robot adult chat-line’ message by a dodgy phone scam company.  He had in fact been sent it by Jixyl.  Minutes earlier Jixyl had simply typed out a text message containing a load of made-up patter regarding a robot adult premium rate chat-line and then sent that message to Sydney’s land-line. [10]   Then he and Azleev had used the ‘piggyback network’ feature on their alien mobile phones to simply hack into Sydney’s land-line and allow them to listen in to his irate protestations.
    “Ar, I ’ve got another idea!” Jixyl announced.  “We should ring that operator back and pretend that we’re someone else who’s had a dodgy phone scam message.  Then we should completely lose it with him and totally threaten him and get him all scared!”
    “Do you not think that’s maybe going a bit too far?” Azleev replied.
    “Nar, course not,” Jixyl remarked.  “If he had that lackadaisical attitude on Fyra then his company would get instantly closed down.  All we’re doing is teaching him to take phone fraud more seriously in future.”
    “But if he took phone fraud more seriously it would make it harder for us to play phone pranks,” Azleev pointed out.
    “True,” Jixyl acknowledged, “but he definitely needs teaching a lesson in any case.”
    So Jixyl set about ringing the telephone operator.  Fortunately for the operator though, the maze of automated menus and options proved too tricky for Jixyl to navigate his way through, and so he never managed to play his prank on the operator.
    Within a few more seconds, however, Jixyl