h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When (if) we settle Mars, there will first be a debate over whether to try and change the Martian environment to be more Earth-like or not. Then, if the people who want Mars to be changed win the debate, a new debate will start within 100 years as to whether or not to keep factories from pumping pollutants into the air ". . . because the planet is so new, and we don't want to go through the same problem we had on Earth again." Of course, by this time, H2G2 will have expanded greatly. It will no longer be the Earth Edition, but the Bi-Planetary Edition Of The Sol Solar System. Watch, my next unsuccsesful prediction is that people will remember this article for being wrong (or maybe even right!). Then, when the martian stock market first pops up, make sure to invest a lot of Marsmids on MarsAir. I predict you'll be surprised.

So, what do you predict the effects would be on earth weather if a butterfly on mars beat its wings.

I predict that within 50 years of Mars settling, people will grow tired of it and start planning journeys to Venus or Pluto. The human race, as of today, has already developed the habit of getting bored almost instantly after the next big thing has hit the shelves, so it's no use anyway.

I actually see less and less opportunity for discovering new stuff. When exactly was the last dead good new thing discovered and by whom? Not for a long time because the erstwhile 'Discoverers' are surfing the net. Instead of making the voyage of discovery in the great outdoors, in inhospitable climes or the far reaches of our own quadrant of space, we appear to be content to view it all on a screen.

So what happens when we have exhausted the wonders to be beheld on www? Is tommorows creative industry to be inventing Astronauts and the Plutoc spider to sate our hunger for knowledge that we, frankly, can't be arsed to go gather ourselves?

Dunno...

I'll get my coat ......

I for one plan on being on a spaceship with the internet. As for the butterfly thing, I'm going to assume that it would severely weaken the fabric of the space/time thingamabob creating a gigantic whirlpool right on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, dumping millions of gallons of water right onto the spot where the Mars Polar Lander actually landed and is currently confused due to what its reading on the internet.

Oh, I see. But then the new water on Mars would change the atmosphere such that it could support new forms of life. The fish and whales and things that got sucked down the whirlpool would evolve into land-dwelling animals. This evolution would be much faster than earth evolution, due to the conditions on mars, and in a few years an intelegent life form would evolve. Shortly afterwards, a super-intellegent life form would evolve, fly to earth and enslave the population to work in the martian spaghetti mines. Of course, as with most mining operations, the spaghetti mines would also attract a somewhat disreputable portion of society: the pastatutes.

No, I don't quite agree with that. The whales, dolphins, giant squids, sharks, krakens, jelly fish, and sea cucumbers would have become intelligent enough to know that humans would just be lazy workers and machines could do the work instead. Because of this, the price of spaghetti would really go down on the market. Becoming less valuable, and since there aren't any humans left in the mines anyway, the pastatutes will be forced to find some other form of work. Probably in the field of quantum physics, all other interesting forms of work taken. Meanwhile, the enslaved humans would be put up in zoos where they could be witnessed in a more or less natural habitat, complete with TV for the required 18 hours of the day, a bed for the reguired 2, and a kitchen close enough to the TV to watch and still make food. However, all the food will be fat free and/or made of soy products, so in the end most humans will starve to death, leaving the Mighty Sensino Tombi Na, Emporer of The Sea Cucumbers, to begin enslaving the galaxy. All hail emporer Sensino!

We may be a little premature here. Has anyone noticed that the Martians are playing skeet with our probes and landers and so forth?

Lil

Sure, I've noticed. You see, the life we inadvertently created on Mars isn't super intelligent yet. It is still getting through the phase of doing harm to lower species without understanding the consequences. That is why they are doing damage to our probes instead of just letting probes be probes. We can't blame them really. We've been killing off the dolphins for years.

The newly-evolved intellegent martians built many great engineering marvels; the most noted of which is, of course, the martian canals. In their extra-intellegent phase, they invented a time travelling machine using a rare type of proto-spaghetti that they mined in thier secret government experimental mine. Unfortunately, the human slave that was building the machine for them misread the specification for the amount of proto-spaghetti to put in the tardis (time and relative dimensions in spaghetti) and when the machine was first used it zapped the whole planet back 140 million years. The martians were not happy with the human slave in particular and earth inhabitants in general, so they decided to anihilate live on earth. They built a death ray that they thought would kill all life and beamed it at earth. Fortunately, the same human slave had escaped from his detention cell, where he was being held while it was decided which gruesome, painful death was most appropriate for him. He sneaked into the death ray control room and was in the process of disabling it when it was fired. He had managed to disable part of it, but the ray was still capable of destroying large reptiles. This is the true explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs. Anyway, the martians repaired the death ray and were about to fire it when our hero, the escaped human slave, reversed the polarity so that when it was fired, it destroyed all life on mars. Alas, the tragedy of this story is that our hero was also destroyed by the ray. Over the intervening millions of years, almost all evidence of the super-intellegent martian civilization has vanished. All except the canals.

So, basically what you're saying is that the martians which have not quite been created yet will eventually all fall back in time killing themselves off? And the human hero didn't survive. No, the human did survive. He survived by jumping into an escape pod and shuttling off in a random direction. The same is true about the evil martian emporer. They shuttled off in opposite directions vowing to meet in the future to resolve their differences in a less than friendly manner. Meanwhile, the Martian Emporer has been wandering the galaxy, slowly rising in power, prolonging his life to the point of near imortality, and our hero is still wandering around the galaxy, jumping through time and space. As of right now he is running from the law near Alpha-Centauri. There was a misunderstanding regarding his stock market frauds.

I heard about all this, except my informant told me that the human slave managed to rotate the death ray 180 degrees so that the 5th plant from the sun was demolished and turned into a flock of asteroids.

Lil

Ah, you're confusing the death ray and an experimental propulsion system the martians invented. You see, the propulsion system was supposed to work by changing the mass of the item being transported. When the item was being fired from mars, its mass was reduced so that it was easy to fire, then in transit, its mass was increased enormously to increase its momentum. Finally, when it reached its destination, the mass was again reduced for a soft landing. They planned to use this system for cheap transport of building materials, etc to new colonies. Unfortunately, when it was being tested, some human slave operator (could it have been our hero?) adjusted the hyperinverter incorrectly so that the final mass reduction took place too late. Thus, when the first payload was sent to the 5th planet, it was still enormously massive when it hit, shattering the planet.

As for the evil Martian overlord, it was thought that as he was escaping, our hero fired his stolen phaser at his escape pod, causing it to launch directly into a worm hole which deposited him in the far reaches of the Galaxy. He has been trying to make his way back ever since. Let's hope he hasn't found any inhabitted planets on the way, or else he will arrive back with an army!

Our hero, as you suggested, escaped too. Realizing that the evil Martian overlord had escaped, he has been travelling in search of him in order to finish him off, because he knows that until he is dead, there can be no guarantee of peace.

Perhaps you have heard more recent news of these two.

Most recently, the Martian Emporer has been spotted trying to rise to the rank of Assistant Zealotous Manager of a McDonald's while also trying to hostiley take over a bank not far from the wormhole he fell out of. Alas, he has already started reconstructing his massive armies. The human just won the jackpot in a lottery for $100,000 Centauri Credits which will allow him to buy a small cargo ship with which he can begin tracking down the Martian Emporer and earning money from hitchiker's who actually *pay* for their rides. I'm telling you, this is a strange galaxy we exist in.

Wow. So it takes 140 million years to rise to Assistant Zealous Manager. Or maybe he had a few other jobs in between. Or maybe he was sick or something. Whatever the reason, it's a good thing that it is taking him so long. It gives our human hero a chance to get to the far end of the galaxy the slow way. Too bad our hero is the only one who can recognize EMO (Evil Martian Overlord). Otherwise the McDonald's Zealous Manager might fire him. On the other hand, maybe he would promote him, so perhaps it is better this way.

I had heard that those freighter ships were sometimes equiped with DTC's (Directed Tornado Communicators). These work by beaming a tornado-inducing ray at the destination planet. The ray produces a mini-tornado that can be used like a pen. They work well on large expanses of uniform vegetation, such as farm fields. If our hero's ship had one of these, perhaps he would be trying to send messages to earth, even if it is now a time before he is born. It wouldn't do much good, I suppose, since he probably speaks (and writes) in a language unknown to us. His writing would probably just look like random circles and things in the crops.

I guess now that he has a ship, he'll be heading to the Pleides system (might have mispelled that) to buy an astro-turbo-hyper-booster so that he can make some jumps. Otherwise it will take him a billion or so years to get to where EMO is. With the astro-turbo-hyper-booster, that time should be cut at least in half. Um, that's still kinda a long time, isn't it. If only there was some way we could help him ...

Everybody knows Martians are lousy managers.

Lil

I disagree. Martians make wonderful managers for one simple reason: most of them are slimy, heartless, bloodsucking monsters. The managers, not the martians. Alas, the majority of Managers have fallen under this spell, and are easy targets to make duplicats of. As to getting the human to the EMO, he's actually fairing very well. Carefully taking into consideration rotation of planets, solar systems, galaxies, galaxy clusters, etc. he can just make a few well chosen jumps through time, and he'll be within a days journey of wherever the EMO is. Anyway, thats what he should do.

Sounds reasonable, and he must have thought of that, but perhaps he doesn't have the equipment he needs. Maybe we could start a petition where each person not only signs, but sends money for the equipment to some representative of the cause, like, oh, say, me. If you like my idea, you could start things off by sending me some money. The more the better since we'll have to fund a mission to Alpha Centauri to buy the stuff and then another mission to get it to our hero. Not to mention buying the equipment itself. I have a friend who is building a rocket in his backyard, so maybe we could get a deal. I'll be the treasurer and Agfncaap5 can be the pilot. Just send money. On the other hand, if anyone out there has an electronic thumb, we can cut costs substantially. You'll still need to send me money though.

Why? Time machines shouldn't be that expensive. The only expensive things you need are the plutonium reactor, the plutonium, the spatial/temporal relay, and the pan-di 0-shin device. Besides, have you ever gone to Alpha Centauri? Someone left at the year 1 BC, they'd just now be well over halfway there! I think our human hero can fend for himself. Maybe. Then again, it wouldn't hurt to send the money. . . Okay, I'll be the pilot as long as I get paid. A lot. And I don't mean a few stinkin' thousand, I mean a few lousy billion! I'm a great pilot! Really! I am! Why won't anyone believe me! Hey!!! It's! fun! to! write! with! these!! excla!mation! points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, so has everyone got that. Send money to me or to Afgncaap5. Lots of it. It's for a good cause (saving the earth from invasion an anihilation by EMO). Oh, and Afgncaap5, when you fly off on your mission, you can leave your money with me for save keeping.