S-I-G-N. Sign. He found it tucked away in the four words on his can of imposo-tuna. Some words demanded a bit more effort on his end, shuffling a sentence or stacking ingredients lists to build the necessary scaffolding. He felt like a poacher building an island for pheasants. N-O-B-O-D-Y. There, another nobody.

Juf worked at the nuclear power plant in Podgorica, Montenegro. Every morning he swiped a card with his face printed on it to enter the building, and pushed a large green button with the word “exit” on it to leave the building. There were two-hundred and four nuclear power plants in Montenegro, ten in the city of Podgorica. The plant that Juf was employed at was called the Garatoo, which was the first plant in the world to be named after the first alien civilization to communicate with planet Earth.

Poor translation is likely due to the fact that the aliens called themselves, in human-speak (Frengdarin is the official language of the humans which combines the colonial linguistic dominance of English with the romance of French and the socialism on Mandarin – three core ideals that just settled on coexisting), Pleasure Boat to Jupiter, Jupiter being the fifth planet in the human’s solar system. Jupiter was a non-consensual capture by the aliens and was used as a trash planet for them to load off all things putrid, rancid, and distasteful to bottom-feeding slimes. Human’s preach to younger generations that they had a say in the matter but the aliens really scared the silly.

There were eight-hundred and fourteen thousand nuclear power plants on the entire surface of the Earth thanks to the Pleasure Boat to Jupiters. Around the year twenty-thirty it became clear that the human race had bred a senile sense for self-immolation into their global population and they were destined to choke their planet into a sphere of gray goop with all their exciting carbon fondling. The Pleasure Boat to Jupiters sent a riveting monologue over low-pass radio that shook the humans into getting the asses into gear, getting together, and just building the nuclear energy that would stop this deranged, wasteful energy orgy. It was effective because the aliens weren’t very nice to look at and they had powerful weapons.

Also the aliens had foolishly invested thirty-percent of their global capital on the proliferation of humans on Earth in the Milky Market, which was carving a hole the size of a hot red giant out of their checkbooks.

Juf started work at eight in the morning at one of the nuclear power plants. Ten-billion other humans joined him at the same relative time. Most of the important work in the power plant like carefully balancing temperature levels, pulling in and out control rods, or feeding the neutron source when it got hungry was done by entities more trustworthy than humans like Juf. Juf just liked inventing crosswords and solving them all day. The entities smarter than Juf just liked balancing significant digits, converting units, and logging the neutron howitzer all day. Humans called these entities “A.I.” for artificial intelligence, but was due to the humans having such a low bar of intelligence to overcome. This made the Pleasure Boat to Jupiters laugh whenever mentioned it.

Juf had found a crossword in the instruction manual of the nuclear power plant. The title of the manual was A-to-Z of Power Plants, From Atomic to Zutzut. He was on page thirty-one-hundred which was explaining how important it was never to touch a Zutzut without full-body protective equipment. Sections of the manual were usually so boring that no human read them, but Juf ate through crossword resources like a paper shredder hooked up to a neutron star. I-G-L-O-O. Igloo. Juf noticed he could extend the word by one letter if he cut the manual and stacked the two pages on top of each other and so he did. I-G-L-O-O-S. Igloos. Prying these words out was like pulling dirt out of a muggy window sill, to Juf it was a mine of jewels left untouched. P-I-G-L-O-O. Pigloo. Pigloo? Juf pondered the new creation, unable to commit to belief in its existence in the Cobster’s Frengdarin Word Standard Dictionary. He had a copy in his pocket now but he didn’t like taking it out to check his work. It felt like cheating.

The aliens had also demanded that every human carry a copy of their language in a book in their pocket. So ten-billion other humans along with Juf worked at power plant stations with a copy of Cobster’s Frengdarin Word Standard Dictionary in their pocket.

I-N-S-O-L-E-N-T. Insolent. Juf was proud of this word and always tried to build his crosswords so it was somewhere buried inside. It was the Frengdarin translation for the alien’s name for “human.” Juf didn’t know where it came from.

E-B-O-N-Y. Ebony. Sometimes Juf surprised himself with his discoveries. Words sprung forth from the page and into his mind as his sacading eyes triggered the vertical and horizontal word-mines. He felt the higher layers of his mind observing the lower layers, completely baffled by what it pried out of the page, but both parties linguistically lost without the other to reassure its cognitive journey.

Juf had cut page thirty-one-hundred into forty different horizontal strips of printed text. These he was shuffling on the surface of his desk finding great satisfaction in lining the characters into vertical columns. G-O-O-G-E-R. Googer. No, he shook his head, that’s certainly not a word. G-O-O-S-E-R. Gooser. Yes, there, that sounds familiar. Some kind of bird? Or was it a person who liked to dress-up as a specific type of bird? Guessing the definitions was only as fun as Juf wouldn’t have to guess for too long. He didn’t like the crosswords getting the better of him and making him feel stupid or silly.

D-R-A-W-E-R. Drawer. Juf gifted himself a soft chuckle as he sat there in the green glow of his nuclear power plant. Drawer. Another one of those alien words, this one he knew the definition off by heart from his younger days at school. Juf had seen the Pleasure Boat to Jupiters call presidents and kings and queens and ministers ‘drawer’s on live television. He recited in his head: drawer (n.): (1) A railed container that is used for holding objects and hiding them inside places. (2) One who is so empty in the cognitive department that they must just be full of drawers and nothing else.