An Open Letter From The Martians

Dear Earth,

Hi. How are you? We’re fine. You may be startled to receive this note, believing as you did that there was no life on Mars, but we felt it necessary to come out from the shadows and reveal ourselves in the light of new events.

You have sent another doodad. First of all: good for you. There’s a lot of tricky math involved in interplanetary travel, but you did your sums so darn good. Gold star for the lot of you. Second: it is adorable. Martian brains are wired to find different physical configurations cute than you do, and this sucker checks off all our boxes. Imagine if we sent you a spaceship that looked like dachshund puppies being held by a Kpop band. Everyone up here is in love with InSight.

(By the way, terrible name. What happened to Viking I? Or Pathfinder? Remember the RC cars you sent up? You called them Spirit and Opportunity. Great fucking names. But InSight? It’s the turkey wrap lunch of spaceship names. InSight sounds like an evil corporation from an unproduced screenplay. Do better. Be best.)

But we come to the sticky wicket: our scientists have determined that InSight has what is called a heat probe installed on it. Notwithstanding the irony of you probing us for once, this is going to be an issue. The probe will be drilled into the ground, and we will not allow you people to start drilling up here; it is clear that you cannot stop drilling into the ground once you start, and you’re just not going to turn our home into the same kind of shithole you’re turned Earth into. We have tolerated all previous landings, but this is going to be the last one we permit.

Please, citizens of Earth, heed our warning. Any further landings attempted will result in a declaration of war. It will go poorly for you. There is an almost complete informational gap between our societies: we have been watching your teevee, and jamming stuff up your butts, and ruling the United Kingdom for centuries; you had no idea we exist until now. How could you prepare for such a confrontation? With what would you counter the D’akh? What is the D’akh? Weapon? Elite cadre of deathtroopers? Maybe it’s a space monster? I’m not telling you. Would you like me to use it in a sentence? Fine: Those who did not fear the D’akh had been killed by the D’akh. Got it yet? And there are so many more terrible words in our language that you haven’t heard yet. Please do not think us bluffers, Earth. You’re fucking with the wrong planet.

In summation: no more visits, and stop paying attention to Lena Dunham.

Sincerely,
J’onn J’onzz