Freedonian Trade Surplus Soars With Wi-Fi Password Exports

DOS FLEDANS, Freedonia.  Mysklek Isioan has worked at the Uboglow Pl’woznk International Airport here since graduating with a major in logistics from a local community college fifteen years ago, but he says he’s never been busier than he was in 2017.  “It didn’t stop,” he says with mixed emotions.  “I get lots of overtime, but I have no time to tend to my zlotsku,” a creeping ground cover that he cultivates with pride on the modest yard that surrounds his one-bedroom cottage just over the airport boundary fence.

“Ouch–I cut myself on one of those little x’s.”

The source of all that work has been Freedonia’s slow but steady emergence as the leading source of wi-fi passwords in the world, a cottage industry that has replaced the manufacture of shoelace nibs and flanges as the principal source of foreign exchange for this land-locked country.

“We’re not taking any more shoelace nibs, we need room for passwords.”

“Every time a Freedonian woman has a baby, there’s a new name that can be sold to major cable companies around the world,” says Eliot French, an international trade specialist at the U.S. Department of Commerce.  “All she has to do is throw a few errant capitals into little Zoebloew’s name, add a dash of single-digit numbers, and you’ve got a wi-fi password that will last until a Western consumer changes it to something cutesy like ‘Grandpaswifi’ or the name of the family’s recently-deceased cat.”

Freedonian names are prized as wi-fi passwords because of the unique and non-sensical orthographic rules they follow.  “It is ‘i’ before ‘e’ except when following an apostrophe, or when opposite-side parking rules are in effect,” says Tomaksw Giegrigonsfl, a professor of Freedonian Languages and Literature at the University of Kwrieops-Utiaow.  “Also, you should consult an almanac to determine the phase of the moon to see whether nouns are masculine or feminine, or any recently-discovered American genders.”

Goat cart pressed into service to bring Wi-Fi passwords to the Central Agricultural Exchange.

American consumers at first resisted Freedonian passwords because of their complexity, but have become inured to them over time.  “We asked for something easier to type,” says Ethel Messerli of Hoxie, Arkansas, of the password “xO1zkp4B” that was assigned to her and her husband Earl by SouthwesternNet.  “They said they’d be over between 3 and 4 on a Tuesday following a state holiday that ended with a ‘y’, but Earl died before they got here.”