Chapter 37: Translator

A fine morning. Back in the MIB Snehatheeram base, a slightly annoyed Lonappan paced himself towards Ponnappan's office. Rather than waiting for confirmation from the inside or knocking at his door, Lonappan bursted through the door. Things changed a lot from a few months back. Well, it turned back to how it usually was for Lonappan seven or so years back.

"Why did you call me at this time of the morning?" A moderately irked Lonappan asked.

"Calm down. Take a seat instead of fuming at me. You want a cup of coffee?" Ponnappan asked as he pointed his junior towards a seat.

"Well, the coffee here is pretty good, so why not!" Lonappan said as he sat on a chair. "Now, are you going to tell me why you called me here?" He got straight to the point.

"Dude, calm down! At least wait until the coffee is brewed." Ponnappan felt mentally exhausted upon seeing the hyperactive but irritating subordinate of his.

"Fine, whatever. I can wait for two or three minutes." Lonappan scoffed and sat silently. However, with each passing moment, his discomfort was clearly visible for Ponnappan. His eyes twitched and he swung his legs more intensely with each passing moment. In the end, he started fidgeting his entire body.

"Here's the coffee, sir." An MIB official came in with their coffee.

"Thank goodness!" Both Lonappan and Ponnappan heaved a sigh of relief, for entirely Different in what way?different reasons, of course.

"Okay, tell me now. It's six in the morning. I hope you called me for a reason. Unlike you, I'm a pretty busy man, you know?" Lonappan said as he took a sip of the coffee.

Ponnappan suddenly broke into a laughter so hard that he coughed out his coffee a bit. "Dude, don't go joking around like that. As if you're busy!" He laughed yet again.

Lonappan didn't like this one bit. "Fuck off. Stop with your laughing and tell me why you called me." He demanded.

After a few more seconds of laughter, Ponnappan finally managed to control it. "Fine, fine! Take a look at this." He tossed something towards Lonappan which he caught with pure reflex.

"Dude, don't throw stuff like this. And what is this?" Lonappan was pleasantly surprised when he saw the thing in his hand. "Are you kidding me? You fast tracked the translator's manufacture?" He asked.

Ponnappan shrugged. "Well, my friend did ask for it!" He smiled.

Lonappan stood up and bowed before him. "Thank you. This is gonna help Taro a lot." He bowed yet again.

Ponnappan was slightly embarrassed by his subordinate's actions. "Don't thank me. Thank the manufacturing team for doing it as soon as they can.

"Yea, I'll thank them as well.." Lonappan smiled as he turned back to exit.

However, Ponnappan stopped him. "Wait. Let me tell you one more thing. As I said before, this product is a fast tracked one. So, the dev team were unsure about its performance. Therefore, be careful about that too." He advised.

"Can I ask you a question?" Lonappan asked.

"Shoot."

"How long does it actually take to build this translator?" He asked.

"Well, as you know, the universal translator, the real one I mean, is near impossible to build for us. However, a close replica like the ones that the junior field agents use takes about an entire year to make. And an inferior one of those which the aliens use takes about half the time, maybe a bit less if they really tried their level best. However, it is Different in what way?different in Taro's case." Ponnappan explained.

"What do you mean?" Lonappan asked, confused.

"That guy… He is scary beyond imagination!" Ponnappan slowly replied.

"I get that! But why would that make his translator production any Different in what way?different than any other aliens?" He asked.

"Nah, I'm not talking about him being a calamity level threat! I'm talking about his crazy mechanic skill or whatever you call that. You do remember what he did with the universal translator, right?" Ponnappan asked, as he reminisced about the time when Taro called them Glomera's little bitch. Suddenly, his annoyance sore up, therefore he decided not to think about that anymore.

"Hmm. So? What did you do with this translator?" Lonappan asked, pointing at the translator in his hand.

"The question is what did I plan to do with it? Well, initially I planned to disable every other function that a normal translator has and make it a simple translator consisting of only the Wadorian language and Malayalam, you know? Which would've meant that there wouldn't be the auto translate option and he couldn't read the texts and hell, he couldn't even speak in any other language other than Malayalam; not even English!" Ponnappan replied.

"Why would you do that?" Lonappan looked at his boss with utter disbelief. He never expected Ponnappan to go to such lengths.

"Why not? I don't trust him one bit. You give that alien something and you never know what he'll end up with." Ponnappan revealed his reasoning for doing so. Well, it wasn't much of a reason, but a gut feeling.

"And? Why didn't you do that? You did sound like you failed in that attempt." Lonappan said with a doubtful look in his face.

Ponnappan sighed. "You guessed right. Well, if you thought about it, simplifying such a complex mechanism to a simple version should be pretty easy and less time consuming, right? Wrong! It seems like making a simple edition from an extremely high level piece of machinery requires the same level of expertise and understanding of the machinery as making the exact copy of that complex machine. Which means, it might've taken us an year or maybe more to make that, which wasn't possible since someone requested me to fast track the process." He responded.

"What did you do then?" Lonappan asked curiously.

"Well, we had to scratch out our initial plan to make that and instead we changed it into the normal version that all the aliens use. Even so, they still had to work their ass off on this since they would be nowhere near completion if it was the normal speed. Hell, they didn't even get a proper chance to give it a check up. Hence, I ask you to consider my request from before." Ponnappan replied.

Lonappan immersed in his own thoughts for a moment before finally opening his mouth. "Well, why didn't you just build a few extra ones rather than building it on the fly? Would've saved you the time and effort from doing this then." He said.

Ponnappan shook his head in dismay. "Do you really think we don't know that? Well, you do know about all the anomalies that happened this year, so you're not allowed to ask such a stupid question." He scoffed.

Lonappan nodded at that. "You're right. That's my bad! I should've thanked you a little more instead." He apologized.

"Dude, enough with that! Go butter someone else." Ponnappan said, requesting him to leave.

"Sure!" Lonappan chuckled as he turned back.

However, yet again, he was stopped by Ponnappan. "By the way, the calamity threat management squad called me up from the headquarters." He said.

Suddenly, the atmosphere turned heavy. "What did they say?" Lonappan asked.

"Well, they said that they usually get this type of reports from multiple bases. However, they usually turn out to be a dud. Therefore, they can't just place Taro in the calamity level list just yet since it is such a rare case." He replied.

"Understandable. So, what are they planning to do?" Lonappan asked.

"Well, they said that they're gonna send someone from the calamity threat management squad to evaluate the situation. And they'll rate him depending on the situation. Anyway, let me tell you two things. First, I don't know how this agent from that squad's coming. Which means that they could swing by incognito or they might announce their arrival beforehand. Therefore, always keep a check on Taro and don't let him do anything reckless. I'd much rather have a dud calamity threat case in our area, rather than grabbing the attention of the entire MIB society." Ponnappan sighed imagining the scene that would cause.

"Hmm, I'll make sure to keep a check on him. Even if I am not around, Thankappan is. I choose to place my complete trust on him." Lonappan confidently replied. He wasn't kidding though. Even though he made fun of his junior, he believed that there's no one better than Thankappan if they are to strictly talk about field agent stuff.

"Cool. You do that. Next thing, I have no idea how they're gonna assess him though. I don't know whether it'll be some provocation or whether he'll be invited back to the headquarters to take some random test. Hence, I'll repeat my previous statement yet again. Tell him to lie low. I'd be fine even if he resorted to hiding his power in that case." Ponnappan spoke.

"Dude, why did you even try to register him as a calamity level if you were this concerned about your peace? You could've just let it by." Lonappan shrugged.

"Well, momentary excitement, I guess? Calamity level is a big thing, isn't it? Naturally, I got excited and did it without thinking and I deeply regret it now." Ponnappan answered.

"Well, you contradict yourself at times like these. Well, I'll try explaining it to Taro. Don't worry! So, shall I go now?" He asked as he turned back once again.

"Sure." Ponnappan gave a thumbs up and Lonappan exited the room.