Archive 8: Martian Tales

Once upon a time, a Martian woman was working as the clerk of an important Martian chieftan. Things were working fine for some time. One day however, one of the chieftan's spies was performing an inspection on the Martian conduits of data. This spy noticed that the Martian woman had been using a tax funded condiut as a means of collecting documentaries on the dancing kangaroos of the north. This woman was identified and sent to the temple of the Inquisitor.

Now it so happened that at the same time that this was happening, a second spy of the chieftan noticed unusually heavy traffic through another one of the tax funded conduits. The spy noticed this because tax funded conduits are normally used to transfer small packages, not large packages like the ones needed to send kangaroo documentaries. Since tax funded conduits are not meant for personal use, such as for the kangaroo documentaries, the woman responsible for this incident was also sent to the temple of the Inquisitor.

Now while the transport of kangaroo documentaries of the north is perfectly legal on Mars, it was nonetheless inappropriate to transport them through tax funded conduits, and both women were consequently fined several thousand credits (along with a pay cut). Had they been transporting documentaries of dancing kangaroos of the south (instead of north), their punishment would have been much harsher.

Moral: Do not use tax funded conduits to transport your documentaries of dancing kangaroos.

Now as an example of the dancing kangaroos of the south, I shall tell another incident that occured on Mars at roughly the same time. A Martian was minding her own business one day when she found out that she could not unravel her daily scroll of messages. She hailed her data provider about the problem, and the service rerouted her hail to a scroll mechanic.

The scroll mechanic eventually managed to unravel her scroll of messages. Lo and behold, the mechanic frowned upon seeing that the scrolls contained - you guessed it - several documentaries on the dancing kangaroos of the south. The Martian woman realized that her smuggling efforts had been exposed, and the scroll mechanic had no choice but to report this discovery. You see, conspiracy to smuggle in documentaries on the dancing kangaroos of the south was strictly prohibited on that part of Mars.

Moral: Don't let others open your scrolls, even if they are scroll mechanics.

Of course, I do not want you to get a false impression of Mars. As I had implied in the previous story, some districts of Mars actually do allow the transport of documentaries on the dancing kangaroos of the south. Now it so happened that one particular district on Mars called Nippongo was responsible for a large portion of all such documentaries.

It is important to note Nippongo had some customs which seemed unusual to the other districts. It was certainly true that they allowed documentaries on the dancing kangaroos of the south. However, they required that all such documentaries be censored, even if they were documentaries of dancing kangaroos of the north (which the other Martian districts did not have to censor at all).

More specifically, this form of censorship stated that all such documentaries must conceal the dancing feet of the kangaroos. This was unfortunate, because the dancing feet were arguably the most significant part of these kangaroo documentaries. As a result of this regulation, a few popular methods of censorsing kangaroo feet arose. One popular method of censorship came to be known as "helmets".

Now the reason why "helmets" became such a popular form of censorship was that they were actually reversable. In other words, one could censor a kangaroo documentary as the law demanded and then transport the documentary through a conduit to another person, who could then remove the censorship retroactively.

All a person needed to remove the helmet was a magic weasel called LFHelmet. In addition, there were competing helmeting tools, like the magic weasel named Ghelmet. Ghelmet more or less performed the same basic task as LFHelmet, with fewer options.

Now these two weasels naturally angered some of the Martian eunichs of that district, and they fined the creator of LFHelmet for his magic weasel. Nonetheless, the creator of LFHelmet went on to produce several more versions of his magic weasel and appears to be doing well. Incidentally, the censorship law was later effectively weakened.

I should make one more thing about helmets. There exist some red helmets that are slightly more complicated to lift than the usual yellow helmets. These red helmets are often called PC helmets, which is an abbreviation for "Pretty Cat". "Pretty Cat" refers to the little pussy - or kitty as some prefer - that would often play a part in these kangaroo documentaries. Now these little newborn and hairless kitties didn't always meow or play tricks. Nonetheless, it was these things which often made the little cats so cute and adorable, for they were an integral part of many kangaroo documentaries of the south.

Now aside from kangaroo documentaries, the Martians also spent their time worshiping their goddesses, who graced the Martians with their divine presence on good occasion. Those who worshipped the goddesses were often referred to as disciples. Now the disciples adored the goddesses so greatly that many even created collectable cards dedicated to the various goddesses.

Now there were some Martians who would seek to collect these cards through trade. However, by far the best source of these cards were through the conduits of report servants, because only there could a Martian obtain such a large collection of these cards in undamaged mint condition. These report servants served to bring news of the goddesses to the Martians across the planet. In this way sightings of the goddesses were quickly transmitted to Martians everywhere, and the records of such sightings in the form of cards contributed greatly to the collectible card system.

Despite the loving Martians, not all Martians loved and worshipped the goddesses. You see, some Martians dared to approach these goddesses with dark intentions. These demons hoped to play a Martian game of cards with the goddesses - regardless of whether or not the the goddesses were interested. Obviously, these Martians did care to worship or sacrifice to the goddesses at all.

As a result, the other Martians shunned them. After all, such hateful Martians were no different in principle than the other Martians who dared to approch the old sea hags with the same intentions of playing a Martian game of cards.

Incidentally, these Martians gave a bad name to the Martians who loved the goddesses, for these hateful Martians often hung around in the same temples and gardens as the loving Martians did. As a result of their disrespect towards the goddesses, many of these Martians were siezed and thrown into a field as punishment. In this field, these Martians could either spend a few months wandering about, take a dip in the jacoozi, or enjoy reading a book on how to sue the Martian collective. Later in the day, these Martians would retire to their condominiums, often to perform strange rituals at night with their fellow Martian inmates.

Many people did not like these Martians who had no respect for the goddesses, and rightfully so. However, in Nippongo attempts to punish such Martians were rarely successful, and what action the Martian chieftans of that district took were only for the sake of preserving honor. However, in some Martian districts throughout the planet it was decreed that whenever such a Martian ever moves into a district, the rest of the district would be informed of this Martian's disrespect for the goddesses. Other Martians, particularly those in the more barbaric districts, did not think this was sufficient, and some wished to punish such disrespect by severing the head of any Martian that acted against the goddesses. Without a head, these Martians would certainly not be motivated or even be capable of playing cards with the goddesses.

Unfortunately, many Martians also persecuted the disciples of the goddesses, for various reasons. How did such persecution begin? The answer to that question lies in the history of the Mars collective...

Until the later years in Martian history, southern Kangaroos were often the norm. For this reason, it was not until then that the first significant attempt at persecution began with a group of Martians called the Nazoos. The Nazoos began as a small organization looking for a way to better their district socially and economically. However, in order to gain the necessary power and influence to make change, they first needed a Martian agenda. It so happened that the Nazoos decided to target the goddess disciples for their very first agenda, primarily because the other candidates at the time were too influential and numerous and had large amounts of credits invested in that district. Needless to say, the Nazoos had their way and used this momentum to aspire to greater conquests.

The Nazoos then chose as their second target to be those who collected kangaroo documentaries of the west, a group that was known as the Hooloos. The Nazoos accused the Hooloos of strange reproductive practices - practices which would never result in Martian children. While the Hooloos were no threat to the Nazoos and had never wronged them, the Nazoos nonetheless were jealous of the Hooloos, who were often very rich and influential.

In the end, the peaceful Hooloos were ousted by the militant Nazoos, who pointed out that an ancient spiritual comic book named "the Bulio" condemned the Hooloos to death. In addition, one other reason for the defeat of the Hooloos worth mentioning was because no other groups offered any help. One such group that did nothing to help the Holoos were known as the Juliens, who were unconcerned with such affairs. Little did the Juliens know that they were not much further down the Nazoo list.

Meanwhile, the Nazoos began to condemn the Jovian Werthians, the Gorpsin, and anyone else who sypmathized with these groups, hoping to purify the Martian genome. These groups, particularly the Gorpsin, had been condemned many times before, and it was easy to eliminate them. So, it wasn't long before the Nazoos finally began persecuting the Juliens, one of the larger groups in the district.

The Nazoos pointed out that while they did share a few beliefs with the Juliens on "the Bulio", the Juliens had an outdated version of "the Bulio" known as "the Toro". The Nazoos pointed out that "the Toro" did not have as many storylines and superheroes as "the Bulio" had; therefore, the Juliens were the spawn of evil sent to plague the good Nazoos. More significantly, the Nazoos were also envious of the great wealth and civility that the Juliens possessed, so much so that the Nazoos blamed all of their personal failures on the existence of the Juliens. When some of the members of the district objected, the Nazoos responded, "Everyone has their favorite Julien" and executed many of the protestors, despite the fact that they satisfied the genetic criteria that the Nazoos had set.

You can say that I know a little something about that part of Martian history second hand. So, while there are those who would lie or twist history for their own ends, the truth is not easily killed. In any case, these events were nowhere near the beginnings of persecution on Mars, as many Martians would know.