A World of Wonder

Now that life has been discovered on Mars, the new question on many people’s lips is “What’s next?”

Already plans are afoot to send a team of scientists to the red planet to meet our new neighbours in the Solar System, and commence dialogue. And stake claim to the planet should that dialogue fail.

Scaremongerers everywhere are warning of imminent invasion, end of the world apocalypsisises, and petitioning for us to have nothing to do with the Martians and keep them away from our planet in case they bring incurable diseases with them.

Dreamers are welcoming our newfound friends with open arms, and decorating their spare rooms for their visitors to stay overnight if they so wish.

Tourist Boards are producing specially prepared landing sites for these Martian visitors to land on, should they decide to visit… similar to helipads, but with U for UFO rather than H for helicopter.

And governments are… well, keeping quiet of a fashion. They can neither confirm nor deny the existence of extra-terrestrials, so in keeping quiet they hope we won’t think about them either.

So, now that life has been discovered on Mars, what’s next?

Given that the life discovered is somewhat amoeba-sized, the chances of communication may be pretty slim, giving planetary conquest the upper hand in that scenario; should we humans ever venture down such a path.

We needn’t worry about imminent invasion unless our scientists return with these miniscule creatures, infections and all, and we all become extinct in a Nano-second. And if that happens, there’s no point worrying about anything anyway. And if the invasion is us to them, then there’s really no point in worrying about that, is there? Aren’t we good at invasions?

There’s no need to decorate spare rooms… if our dogs and cats don’t think much of our decor, I doubt single-celled aliens would care about it either. Then again, the colour scheme may clash with theirs which may provoke a reaction.

And tourist boards should save their money, or invest in larger landing platforms for when our visitors from Nibiru or some other large passing planet decide to pop along.

Official sources are saying there’s nothing to see. Move along. Look at the new gizmo that helps you to lose weight overnight. We’re in for a bad winter. A new species of tree has been discovered in Patagonia. Dolphins once spoke English. Apples were genetically modified in the fifteenth century to grow on trees. Martians? Aliens? To what do you refer?

If you’re reading this, and you’re a Martian, then hello. We aren’t all the same. Some of us are nice and we’re just caught up in all of this other-worldly stuff. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover (if you know about books and covers that is, although if you’re reading this it’s more than likely that you do…) And if you do call to visit, please don’t wipe us all out in a Nano-second.

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This post has been written somewhat out of time. Exactly how out of time remains to be seen. The image of Mars is one of NASA’s… my mobile phone’s camera doesn’t quite reach that far (I can only just about get the Moon!)