JEZERO CRATER, MARS — Gazing out over a red, dust-swept valley now choked with 400,000 motorized space-rickshaws, hundreds of cosmic Tim Hortons, dozens of call centers, and trash and poop as far as the eye can see, many Martians reported that they are officially starting to feel like complete aliens on their own home planet.
“I just went down to the local oxygen-dispensary, and all the signs are suddenly in Hindi,” sighed a 400-year-old native Martian, shaking his head in disbelief. “I don’t recognize this planet anymore. I used to know all my neighbors. Now my next-door crater has been subdivided into 40 micro-pods housing 200 international space-students.”
According to planetary census reports, Mars has recently been designated a “Cosmic Sanctuary Planet” by the Intergalactic Federation. This has led to an influx of over 10 million Earthling settlers—specifically from the Indian subcontinent—seeking cosmic degrees in computer science and entry-level IT gigs.
The massive demographic shift has completely overhauled the Martian way of life, creating a deep sense of psychological anxiety and cultural estrangement among the native population due to nightly Bollywood dance-offs and the blaring horns of interstellar traffic jams.
At publishing time, numerous native Martians were reportedly looking into relocating to the Alpha Centauri system, only to discover it had already been taken over by Muslims.
