Dr. Helen Smirnov, a well-respected physicist at the University of Wobbleton, found herself in an unusual predicament yesterday when her microwave began sending unsolicited emails to Mars. The incident began innocuously enough: Helen noticed her lunch warming up took an extra-long time, and her inbox suddenly filled with out-of-this-world messages from an unrecognizable interplanetary email address.
“I thought it was a phishing scam at first,” Helen confessed. “But then I realized the microwave beeped in Morse code and somehow kept replying!”
After several frantic attempts to fix the issue herself, Helen did what any modern scientist facing technical difficulties would do: she submitted a helpdesk ticket. The ticket, titled “Microwave Sending Emails to Mars – Please advise,” described her appliance’s strange behavior in detail.
“I’m honestly not sure how a kitchen appliance got involved with NASA’s Mars rovers,” she wrote, “but it’s causing quite a disruption. I’ve had to pause my experiments because I keep getting angry replies from an entity named ‘Rover123.’”
Local IT support staff were initially baffled. “I mean, I’ve seen all sorts of glitches, but a microwave turned Mars communicator is a new one,” said Gary, the head of the university’s IT helpdesk. “Our first thought was to check if it had been hacked or possessed by an alien intelligence, but it appears more like a bizarre technical glitch.”
Gary described the troubleshooting process as “half tech support, half sci-fi adventure.” The team remotely accessed the microwave’s firmware, discovering that a recent software update from the manufacturer had accidentally installed a beta version of an interplanetary email client meant for NASA hardware. Accidentally swapped code, it seems, turned a humble kitchen device into the universe’s most unexpected communication satellite.
Helen is now awaiting a patch from the manufacturer but is optimistic. “At least now I know my leftovers might be reaching a whole new audience, even if it’s a bit further than I expected.” The Mars rovers, meanwhile, have not yet responded to requests for comment.