VI.1 Once upon a time on Titan

As mentioned, the results of the boy's upload of the tablet's contents to SolNet will be unexpected.

The unexpected results will have their roots in a Landgemeinde* on Titan, one that will have taken place many years before the events reported here. In that Landsgemeinde, a vote will have been taken to block an educational bill issued by sol system. As a consequence, the moon colony will remain essentially illiterate after the 4765th educational reform.

Watching the pictures on SolNet, the Titanians (not the Titans, they are another story) will decide they are in dire need of A) more hemp fields, B) more nudes, and C) less ice.

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* This is a very primitive and old, traditional form of direct democracy where every male (and, grudgingly, female) adult of a community may vote on important developments. It's only practised in remote rural regions of a certain alpine country of Central Europe and on Titan, where inhabitants of said country founded a colony, far away from the disturbing influences of modern times.

The Titanians (the male ones) will sit down and ponder. Beer (imported) will help the pondering. They will come to the conclusion that A) [i.e. more hemp fields] depends on C) [i.e. less ice]. And since C) will be too much work, A) will fall flat. But, this will leave at least B [i.e. the nudes]).

They'll holler for their women. These (there will be three of them) will emerge from the kitchen, and when their men will tell them about their skinny plans to brighten up the light-starved moon, they'll just laugh, kick some butt, and take the next spaceship out of there.

Despair will take hold of the men's hearts as they'll watch the angry, white eye of the spaceship's jet exhaust dwindling to become just one of the tiny pinpricks studding the dark heavens.

The male Titanians (all seven of them) will consider to watch some more SolNet, but somehow this won't be as consoling as they will wish. Not even a bigger intake of imported beer will be able to completely subdue the feelings of missing out on something important.

Soon, they will come to realise a moon colony completely without female population will be doomed to become an oasis of stinking socks, unwashed dishes, and mostly unfulfilled late night longings.

So they will pack their gear, load it into the older of their spaceships (the females will have taken the newer one, equipped with a state of the art plasma hyperspace drive), heat up their rocket boosters, and shoot themselves into the direction of the hemp fields.

In their illiterate state, they will have missed the fact that said fields will be gone for several millennia already. So they'll wrongly conclude their chances to find an adequate number of naked females will be greater on Earth than in pursuit of their own former to be fellow settlers.

Earth, though, will be ruled by archaeologists.*

When the seven Titanians will crash-land on Earth's largest spaceport, they will be apprehended by the police, and the Arch-Archaeologist will be called for. Seeing the captives and their ancient vessel, she'll immediately realize that A) these people are a derelict of humanity's past and therefore B) worthy of an archaeologist's attention, and C) their mummified remains will be the perfect replacement of the lost tablet at the museum.

She'll pull her mummifier and point its business end at the good folks from Titan. An anticipatory grin will tug at the corners of her mouth.

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* Gasp.

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