(AN: This story was submitted to and approved by the DoD Pre-publication office for release. No OPSEC, PERSEC, or INFOSEC violations are contained within.)

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My time in the Marines was rapidly headed toward a close in 2012, and I was hoping to end the relationship on a good note. However, the Marine Corps can sense when you’re trying to play nice, and it never failed to make Marines regret it. I was now stationed at HQMC in the Pentagon, a floor or two down from the Commandant of the Marine Corps’ (CMC) office, and I had gotten to know the CMC’s Comm Team pretty well. These Marines are supposed to be the best of us communicators and therefore were a source of fascination for the average IT dink.

First there was SSgt Johnson, the usual bro-dude who was good at comm but otherwise kind of rough and quiet. Then there was their chief, GySgt Barber[1] who was atypical in his gift for rubbing other Marines, of all ranks, the wrong way. And then there was SSgt McQueen.

SSgt McQueen was a real oddity. He wasn’t particularly tall or bulging with muscles, but he was nevertheless a monster when it came to physical training. He had all the martial arts belts, maxed out the physical fitness tests, the combat fitness tests,[2] the swim qualifications, everything. He knew computers and networks inside and out. Above all else, McQueen was almost supernaturally likeable. Not only were the physical and professional challenges of being a Marine easy for Q, you couldn’t even hate on him for it because he was a genuinely good human being on top of it all. He was the Marine Corps' own Captain Carrot.*

I expected him to be above average because Marines don’t get to serve on the CMC’s personal team unless they are so far above the rest that most of us never even see them. The CMC Comm Team knew that, and it was routine for them to flex on the rest of us like the peasants we were. But when SSgt McQueen came down to our humble little shop to get assistance with the occasional oddball request, he didn’t carry on with the arrogance of someone who damn well knows he could put any one of us in the dirt with his own prowess, whatever the contest. He was always smiling, kind, friendly, and gracious. No matter how high the pressure, how short-fuse the demands, or how difficult the fix, McQueen just didn’t seem to mind ass pain.

We became friends, so when he showed up at the shop one day with an off-brand tablet device/thing, I was happy to help. The CMC, like many flag officers, was into new gadgets in a big way, and he seemed to feel that stating a wish out loud made it become possible. Therefore, he regularly made insane demands of his staff. Flag officers are Aladdin, and we, the Marines, have to come together to be their genie.

SSgt McQueen came to the front desk, smiling and waving to the troops at Helpdesk, holding the tablet along with its charger in his other hand. I came out from my office to greet him.

“Hey, Q! How’s it going?”

“Hiya, Fluffy! I need some help setting up the Commandant’s new toy here. You got a minute?”

It wasn’t a real question. If the CMC wants something, every Marine has as many minutes as it requires. There was a rule forbidding IT devices in the shop that weren’t authorized, but this was going to be an exception because of course it was.

“Yep, come on in. What’s going on?”

“Gen Amos wants to use this on the upcoming trip, and I’m trying to get it configured so it will connect to the right network automatically. Can you help?”

“I mean, yeah but …”

I was a bit lost. Q was more than equal to the task of connecting a device without help. Why would that bring him all the way down here?

“Is it like, hardwired?"[4]

“Nope. It needs to use wireless.”

“Shit. Well, that hasn’t been approved by security yet, but we can probably get an exception with some paperwork.”

Q winced, and I realized that he hadn’t gotten to the bad part yet. He was working up to it. Suspicions blossomed in my mind like poisonous flora.

“Q … what’s the real issue here?”

Giving me an apologetic smile, Q finally got to the point.

“He…wants it on wireless on the high side network. Not the unclassified network.”

“Fucking WHAT?”

If anyone else had said that I would’ve thrown them out of the shop then and there. To translate, what the CMC wanted was a tablet that connected to specific networks via magical airwaves while he took it on travel with him to foreign countries. Anyone involved with our information security would be apoplectic at the mere suggestion. Q knew this as well as I did. There wasn’t any sort of configuration anywhere in the Marine Corps to allow something like this. Q, however, had his message to Garcia, so here we were, with a stock device straight out the box and a “request” that we create a way for this blatant violation of security to happen and to happen seamlessly.

I took a deep breath and then decided that since I didn’t really have a choice, I might as well see what I could do. If nothing else, pioneering a method for this might get me one last award on my way out of the Corps.

“What’s the timeframe?”

“Oh, we’ve got some time. We’re not leaving on a trip until Thursday,” Q said blithely.

“Are you out of your freaking mind?!? You’re talking about going all the way up to joint comms and getting whole new systems online, approved, tested, secured… Q, this is impossible. Seventy-two hours is simply not enough time.”

I knew saying what the CMC wanted couldn’t be done wasn’t going to win me friends, and I’d probably look utterly incompetent if Q found a way to pull it off anyway. But seriously, this was insane.

Q sighed, but his sunny disposition would not accept defeat in the face of such small obstacles as overwhelming reality.

“Let’s just plug it in and see what it looks like. I’ve never set one of these up before. Just on regular internet.”

I stayed late that night, working with Q to see if there was some shortcut we could do, maybe make a special VPN, whatever we could to make it work for now. Around 2000, we finally reached some sort of compromise that, while it wouldn’t be allowed on controlled networks, could work well enough for the mission.

Yawning, I stretched and leaned back in my chair. Goddamn, these chairs suck.

“Q, what made this come up so last minute?”

Q shrugged.

“I dunno. He’s already got an iPad that does this.”

Wait. What?

Slowly, I repeated back Q’s words: “He already has an iPad… on the wireless?”

Keeping his eyes on the screen, Q chirped, “Yep!”

I felt myself starting to get angry. Did I just sit here for six hours trying to reinvent the wheel and … it just … it already … are you fucking kidding me?

“We’ve been sitting here … struggling with this weird-ass technology … and he already…”

Q stabbed the screen with a finger and closed out of the applications.

“I know, right? He only wants it so he can have pictures of his grandchildren without switching networks.”

Q stood up, twisting his torso to unknot his back muscles.

“Thanks, Fluff, I appreciate it! See ya around!”

I sat there in silence after Q departed and stared at my desk, doing the unthinkable. I cursed the CMC with every fiber of my being.

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[1] He was so upsetting that those of us downstairs referred to him as The Catfish and dodged his demands as far as we possibly could.

[2] CFT was created during Gen Amos’s reign of terror and involved raising a full ammo can over your head one hundred times, running, and some things while moving through a simulated field of fire. It sucked.

[3] McQueen sounded like McQ, so we truncated his name to Q and called it a day.

[4] Requires a physical cable in order to reach the internet

*Captain Carrot of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch