51 Planets to See Before the Universe Collapses

Mars (marz)

Scort Muggins, Human year 3240:

For those of you that grew up on Mars, you already know a lot of this. You can skip down to the fifth paragraph. 

As a species, humans have become a close-proximity interplanetary civilization, meaning that we’ve colonized multiple planets, but nothing more than fifty lightyears away. However, new technology has made it possible to harness the power of our sun and other stars in our galaxy to make lightest speed possible. [Note: Lightest speed - At one point, scientists thought that you couldn’t travel faster than the speed of light, or “light speed.” Then they discovered “lighter speed,” which is a speed faster than light speed. Finally, “lightest speed” was discovered, which is the fastest speed past the speed of light that one is able to travel.] Recently, the Human Galactic has explored planets in the Goldilocks zone and set up trading posts and strategic military bases around the Milky Way and beyond. [Note: The Goldilocks Zone, or circumstellar habitable zone, is a range of orbits around a star in which planets are able to hold liquid water and harbor life - not too hot and not too cold.] Several planets harboring alien life were welcomed into the Human Galactic and now trade freely and openly with humans. Some planets were simply protected because the intelligent species was still too primitive to ethically interact with or influence. 

Mars has become a fully terraformed planet and a beautiful one at that. Humans mined the nearby asteroid belt so as not to use up the natural resources on Mars. Thousands of satellites surrounded the planet and gave everyone free connectivity. Humans had grown accustomed to the different gravity, and any idea of an original home planet was a distant memory. It was written about in history books, but history is boring and stupid. Whenever a chapter would start with “In 3012...” I knew it would be a trip to Dullsville. Travel books were where it was at.

Humans resided on Mars with a couple dozen different alien species, most of which had become refugees fleeing their home planets destroyed by civil war. I skimmed a few of their histories, but kept it brief before I lost any and all interest. They’re all the same story - the species became a globalized society, ran out of water or whatever resource, launched weapons at each other, and fled. Sometimes the order would be slightly different, but not usually.

Things on Mars are great. AI robots handle most of the production, although humans had put a cap on the intelligence of our AI after hearing reports of civilizations killed by their own creations. The work week is still an agonizing three days long. Transspecies are legally able to use whatever bathroom they see fit. Most beings vacation on Jupiter’s moon, Titan, at least twice a year. Illegal aliens had an efficient and lawful way to become citizens of the Human Galactic. The species pay gap had been fixed. The Gorbakins stopped harassing and sexually assaulting the Perxos. Other than the Oscars still only nominating human directors, there wasn’t too much to complain about.

Native Martians start here ---> As for me, I’ve had a decent life on Mars. Of course, I was left to fend for myself for much of it because my father left my mom and I when I was only 4 years old. Growing up with a universal mega influencer father had its perks. I, myself, had about 153 billion followers, and some from planets I had never even visited. That kind of influence got me a lot of free stuff. All I had to do was post something about how hungry I was because my mom passed out on the couch and didn’t make dinner that night. Then, like clockwork, a hundred drones would show up ten minutes later with a bunch of different Feastie Meals©. [Note: Feastie Meals© are meals that are packaged in a tiny cube. You put the small cube on a pan and put that in the oven. When you take it out, you have a three course meal with two different sides on the pan.] Feastie Meals© are great! All you have to do is pop them in the microven and three minutes later, you have a main course and two side dishes ready to be served. With only ten calories, you can stay fit, stay full, and keep feasting. Feastie Meals©. (Scort Muggins is a paid influencer sponsored by Feastie Meals©.) I tried to cook the first three times, but eventually burned down the house. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, though. The fiery prison of hell that we escaped from burned every memory that I ever had of my father before he left my mom and I, plus we got a bigger house. 

Growing up, my average night at home would consist of me googling the answers to my homework, and then making a Feastie Meal©. I’d spend time with my mom too. 

“Mom, are you hungry?” I would say. 

“Guurhhgghhhuhhgguh…” she’d respond. 

Her foaming at the mouth meant she wasn’t hungry. I would always leave her some leftovers in the fridge. Then, we would watch TV for hours. I didn’t have a bedtime. My mom was cool like that. 

Sometimes, when my mom was conscious, she would tell me about my father. She’d tell me how they met at this massive gathering celebrating music, love, and being super attractive. It was called Fyre Fest. Everyone took the same medicine that made you feel great. It sounded amazing. My mom and father found each other at the festival and fell in love at first sight. They had only ever experienced love and euphoria like that in that single moment… and at other music festivals they had been to. They were together through the whole duration of the massive gathering, but after it was over, they lost touch. Then, nine months later, they got back together again, and I was born, and we were a perfect family for four years. Then, my father abandoned us under the guise that he had to go out into the universe to become a bigger influencer. He was a big enough influencer. I knew it, my mom knew it, and my father knew it. He just wanted to leave. At this point in the story, my mom would pop more of her pills.

Growing up, I followed every post my dad made on social media and imagined all of the adventures he was on. I would slip into his DM’s too, just to say “hi” and tell him that I loved him. I wouldn’t get a response, but one time I did get a read receipt. I had it in my head that he was busy responding to the other billions of messages that he had gotten. After all, I thought, it was the price to pay for having the coolest dad ever. I wish I could see the stupid face on the stupid kid that I used to be… and slap it right off. 

It took me too long to realize that I was on my own. As you already know, I became an incredible travel author and artist, but what you don’t know is that I almost became a worldwide superstar dupownball player. I was about to go pro, got injured, and never played the same again. 

Here’s my tangent on dupownball:

When humans came from Earth hundreds of years ago, they wore very heavy shoes to keep themselves grounded in the low gravity. They invented dupownball because it took advantage of the change in gravity - they would just take their heavy shoes off at the beginning of the match. There was one net in the center, one ball, and two opponents on opposite sides of the net. The object was to get the ball to hit the court on the opposing side without the opponent hitting it back. The entire court was inside of a large room where the walls and ceiling were all playable parts of the court. The net was raised, so you could hit it above the net or below the net with your racket. Because human bodies could do incredible things in low gravity, players would jump to great heights to slam the ball down on the other side of the court. The ball would also get up to high speeds and travel extremely far without slowing down, sometimes bouncing off of multiple walls. However, if the ball bounced more than three times on your side of the court, bounced into the net, or bounced back to your opponent without you hitting the ball, then the point would go to your opponent. That was dupownball (See Fig 1.1). 

Over the years, however, human bodies mutated and adjusted to the lower gravity. Humans got weaker. Athletes could no longer perform the incredible stunts that the sport was based on. People just kept getting worse and worse at dupownball. It turned into a really sad spectator sport that no one really watched anymore… until the doping years of the late 3180s. A new drug came to the market called Anyflaxin and suddenly athletes were performing at levels never seen before, even when the sport was first invented. The rumors were that Anyflaxin wasn’t detectable in the bloodstream and it was impossible to tell which athletes were using the drug and which weren’t - but it was clear that all of the athletes were using it. A documentary came out in the early 3200s that went into the doping scandal and uncovered that Anyflaxin was actually able to be detected, it was just covered up by the PDL [Note: PDL - Planetary Dupownball League] in order to get viewers interested in the sport again and increase ad revenue. The fans definitely came back to the sport, but once players were no longer able to take Anyflaxin, a lot of the interest was lost again.

I came onto the dupownball scene as a junior athlete right after the documentary came out. I got some Anyflaxin, but I wasn’t able to take it and was constantly frustrated by not being able to perform like my sports heroes could. I worked out harder and faster every day so I could be just as good, but without the help of Anyflaxin, I never came close. I did, however, become a top athlete in the post-doping age of the dupownball. In one of my matches, though, I ran straight into the wall on a dive for the ball and dislocated my collar bone from my shoulder socket. They were able to fix it right away without any lasting physical damages, but I was never able to get over my new found fear of walls and wasn’t the same player on the court. I still have that one dose of Anyflaxin that I haven’t used yet. 

After my sports career didn’t work out, I looked to writing and the arts. I already had a huge following and used that as a jumping off point. Things were great until I woke up one sol and went on social media to see that I had been inundated with hundreds of millions of tags. They were all a version of the same thing. A simple message: “Where’s Billip?” I figured the masses had finally come to their senses and realized what a terrible father he was for deserting me and my mom. But no, I expected too much from the public. When I went to my father’s profile, I saw he had posted multiple things per sol, but then, three sols passed without a single post. I couldn’t find anything about him going dark for a few days to take a break from social media and recenter himself. He was just… gone.

That’s when my name started to be dragged through the mud. No one would believe me when I said I didn’t know anything about my father, and I hadn’t spoken to him in 18 years. They all thought it was impossible that Billip could be such an absentee father. It didn’t matter to the public when I pointed out that none of my father’s posts included me in the picture, tagged me, or even mentioned me. The conspiracy theories tumbled out of control, and before long, my mother and I were at the top of the suspect list - not the actual suspect list, of course, because there was zero evidence whatsoever. I was number one on the suspect list of the anonymous public. I knew I had to do something to clear my name and prevent getting cancelled. I had to find my father. [Note: If anyone has any information about the whereabouts of Billip Migguns, please reach out to me on the contact page.]

Since I don’t actually care about the well-being of my father, I decided to make this investigation into an incredible travel book as well. This quest is purely surface level and all about what I gain from finding my father and touring the universe - proven innocence and another historic travel book title. There is no underlying layer of my psyche that just wants to see him one more time and finally ask him… “Why?”

None. 

So… check out Mars! You can learn about the origins of the Human Galactic and see where humans come from. 

RATINGS

Hospitality — 5/10
Food — 5/10
Sights — 5/10
Activities — 5/10
Family Friendly — 5/10