MARTIAN NEWS
All the News around the Solar System from a Martian Viewpoint

PLANETARY INTELLIGENCES AND DATE SYSTEMS - AN EXPLANATION

MERCURY:
Mercurian dates are measured according to the Mercurians (of which there are very few nowadays) by their solar "year" of approximately 88 of our days, but other factors also come into account, mainly their odd habit of counting everything in trinary.

Mercurians are a dying race, and spend most of their lives deep underground on their planet, or travelling around the Solar System and our Local Group of stars, which is handy for us as they are able to deliver our News service much further afield than we would be able to achieve by ourselves. They are extremely hardy creatures, and are able to withstand everything from empty space to the harsh pressures of the Saturnian atmosphere with little discomfort. Only the Venusians and Jovians and are beyond their (or anybody else's) reach. Yes, they really are the Solar System's messengers!

VENUS:
Venusians are unique amongst the intelligent species of the Sol system in that they have absolutely no concept of time. This is due to the thick cloud layers covering their planet; thus completely obscuring their view of the heavens. They are only aware of us by telepathic link, and receive news of the outside worlds by this method alone. (What they do with this information is anyone's guess, but they are entitled to it as are all intelligent stage 4+ life forms within our system.)

Before we first made contact with the Venusians it seems they had no concept at all of worlds outside their own - our first messages to them came as a total revelation. Hardly surprising when one realises that they see no sun, no moon, no stars, they don't experience day or night, their world has no seasons, no tides; etc. etc. Their infra-red vision is limited to the glowing rocks and molten metal seas that they inhabit, and until we contacted them, that was all they knew of the universe. We have no idea what they look like, but we do know that they are highly intelligent and intensely curious of the Solar System above their incredibly dense clouds.

EARTH:
Earth date systems are by an actually very similar to Martian dates - despite the fact the Martian civilization is considerably older than the dominant intelligent species on our neighbour planet, and the fact that their "year" is only half the length of ours. Their system of counting is decimal (like ours) and their day length is only a few heartbeats shorter than ours. This makes translation of our date system to theirs remarkably easy.

There is a reason for this however - "Humans" are quite unaware of the fact that they are a result of a bio-engineering experiment, which was carried out over a million years ago by our illustrious ancestors. This noble race of Martians have long since left the Sol system, but have entrusted us with the preservation of vast libraries of knowledge, which have been bequeathed to the Humans and are to be handed over only when they reach stage 4 of their development. Currently however they are only now entering into Stage 3 (Interplanetary travel and colonisation) so the next millennium is going to be difficult for us as we try our hardest to hide our presence from them until the the time is right for us to hand over their inheritance.

At the moment the Humans are a primitive but highly motivated race, and are a cause for concern right across the Sol system and beyond. They have only recently started exploring space, mostly with mechanical probes and robots (as our reports show) but seem hell-bent on getting out here and causing mayhem. We must keep our presence hidden from them - at least until we have decided how best to deal with them once they discover they're not the Lords and Masters they think they are!

MARS:
We Martians are the oldest intelligent species in our system, so naturally our date system dominates. We use the decimal system and count our years from the Great War with Ceres which took place 12004 years ago this year.

However our civilisation goes back a great deal further than that; we are the descendants of the Great Race of Martians who were at their peak over a million years ago when this world was green and watery (as Earth is now); the few Martians left on our now dry and dusty world content ourselves with being the keepers of the Great Libraries and Guardians of the Solar System. We have a great responsibility to watch over all life in this system, and keep the peace at all costs.

JUPITER:
Jovians have an extremely complex system of marking time which involves counting revolutions of their four major moons Io, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa (or 1, 2, 3 and sorry, I can't translate this, it's in Jovian - E. Herring). The most intelligent Jovian race would appear to be enormous gas bags some 5-10 miles across, and float serenely in the thick turbulent layers of the dense Jovian atmosphere. None have ever been seen however, and all communication between Martians and Jovians has been of an electro-magnetic nature since the year 3067 when we first made contact with this awesomely intelligent race.

SATURN:
Saturnians have evolved a system of measuring time that is the most accurate in the known universe, (at least the dominant species are; there are several other intelligent life forms living on, in or around the planet.)

URANUS:
Uranians are the total opposite to Saturnians; they are an extremely lethargic species who mark time not by their planet's spin or solar rotation, but by its precession cycle, which takes approximately fifty million Martian years to complete. In fact it is much more complex than this would suggest, as Uranus's "spin-cycle" is highly erratic, to the point of appearing totally chaotic. However, the Uranians have incorporated it into a highly complex time system, albeit incredibly slow. Their smallest unit of time is equivalent to a couple of thousand of our years!

NEPTUNE:
The most advanced Neptunian species (again there are several) constitute an evolutionary oddity: although each individual Neptunian is highly intelligent, as a species they are almost totally independant of each other. Consequently (or inevitably) they have never developed any kind of language amongst themselves; in fact most of them don't even have a concept of language. The few that do are the only Neptunians we are able to communicate with, and of course each individual invents a different method with which we have to contend. Each individual Neptunian is a super-genius; if they ever learn to communicate as we do we will all be in BIG trouble...

PLUTO:
Plutonians are a queer bunch: they count time backwards (as they live their lives) and reckon that they don't want our news stories as they always know what is going to happen anyway. However they fail to realise that the moment something has actually happened they have forgotten about it - but just try telling them, they won't believe you!

OTHERS:
There are dozens if not hundreds of other intelligent life forms under the influence of Sol, always depending of course on what you consider "intelligent". The Cerenians (which we Martians almost completely (if inadvertantly) wiped out 12000 years ago) still occupy fragments of their shattered world between us and Jupiter, but in the intervening years have degenerated into shadowy creatures that are almost completely incomprehensible to any other species. There are intelligent inhabitants of Quaoar and Sedna, although they are so far away from us that communication is impossible under normal conditions. Some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn also have quite advanced life forms, which deserve a mention. Then of course there are the colossal Minds of Sol herself - compared to whom we are mere viruses, but at least we are aware of them and pay homage accordingly. There are the space drifters, of which we know very little, but seem to be benign and curious of our terrestrial lifestyles. And then of course there are the inhabitants of Earth, (the planet which seems to cause us the most concern), who still firmly believe that they are the only intelligent species in the UNIVERSE and throw their weight around as if they own every rock out here.

Boy, are they in for a shock soon!

Translated from original Martian by Elwood Herring

For another slant on Elwood's awesome knowledge of extra-terrstrial intelligences, see his poem Solaria

© P. Williams 2004