Great Ushabti

“I doubt if they even have a real language – all the talk about psychological communication through those tentacles on their chest strikes me as bunk. What misleads people is their upright posture, just an accidental physical resemblance to terrestrial man.”

- In the Walls of Eryx, Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Ushabtis are a group of deltadactylians found across Mars, but their most famous member, the great ushabti, is only found in the Hellas Savannah. While the almond-shaped head, the antennae, the dark tuquoise skin colour, the single arm growing from the centre of the chest and the two-toed feet are clearly inhuman, these animals have always captured our imagination due to their upright, bipedal gait, which happens to parallel our bauplan so closely that these creatures even possess recognizable buttocks. When astronauts first encountered the ushabtis, they initially believed to have finally found the legendary Martians, the intelligent beings of folklore who built the infamous canals. Further observation quickly broke that illusion.

Ushabtis do not live in houses, they do not wear clothing and they use neither tools nor fire. They sleep in the open, cowering in fear of the savannah’s predators, and do not mourn their dead. Their corpses are left behind for the scavengers to feed on. They roam the plains in herds and feed on tall-growing plants using their long arm, spending most of the day either eating or sleeping. They do not process their tough, coniferoid food, they simply swallow it whole through their delicate beak and, like ostriches, let gastroliths do most of the work. Problems within the herd are solved either through head-bashing or fist-fights, sometimes to the death. Ushabtis are just beasts of the field, as intelligent as deer, in my opinion. They approach the human condition about as well as penguins.

And yet, some researchers claim to have observed at least glimmers of social intelligence. Great ushabtis, like most deltadactylians, give live birth (which, combined with the bipedal gait, may explain the human-like, “feminine” hips) and while the young come into the world developed well enough to walk shortly after, they are still greatly cared for by the rest of the herd, hinting at strong familial bonds. The communication among herd members has also frequently come under scrutiny. Like most onychognaths, they can produce chirps or stereo whistles through the spiracles above their collarbone or on their abdomen, but these are quite simple. More interesting is what ushabtis do with their single hand. Like its human counterpart, it is a very flexible organ, able to articulate in both directions at the wrist, with the four fingers being very dextrous and muscular. While it is mostly used for grabbing and drawing near the branches of fractarian trees, when in groups, the ushabtis have been observed contorting their fingers into odd gestures without clear function. Some have speculated that this may be a form of sign language, but if this is true, nobody has been able to decipher it yet. Most of the gestures are seemingly random and there are only very few that could be called distinctive signs. Amusingly, one of these identified signs is one wherein the ushabtis press one of the lower fingers between the other three. American astronauts have likened this to the “got-your-nose” gesture, whereas Soviet cosmonauts have compared it to the Eastern European fig sign. When ushabtis show this to each other, it is often followed by aggressive behaviour, but sometimes also playfulness. The position of the antennae, which, rare for most onychognaths, are placed at the very back of the skull, may also have meaning in some contexts, similar to how mammals show emotion through ear positions.

Interactions between humans and ushabtis are of an uneasy nature. For the most part, ushabtis are fearful of us, which makes sense, as we are completely foreign organisms. Sometimes, however, they may show curiosity and cautiously approach us. Perhaps, like penguins in the Antarctic, they see a bit of themselves in us due to our shared upright gait. Closely interacting with ushabtis is not recommended for any personnel. While they may look friendly or even playful, they are the only species on Mars that can exceed an average human in height and can therefore pose actual physical danger. Their large hands can be clenched into a fist that can actually pack a punch that hurts. As with Cecrops, their simple curiosity may also kill some cats. My colleague Jim of the Horus-23 was once approached by one overly curious individual, which, while not showing any signs of aggression, suddenly enveloped his whole helmet with its large, muscular hand and gently pulled on it, as if trying to take it off. Thankfully, Jim was able to resolve the situation without anyone getting hurt once the ushabti lost interest.

 Size comparison between Man and Martian

The phylogenetic placement of the ushabtis within Deltadactylia is so far unresolved. Until recently, due to their bipedal gait, they had been grouped among the Goniopoda, however, most known goniopods possess tails and walk on digitigrade feet with simple hinge-like ankle-joints. Ushabtis meanwhile walk on plantigrade feet with a more crurotarsal ankle. It seems far more likely that they represent a separate experiment in bipedalism among the deltadactylians. Possibly, their ancestor was a long-legged tripod browser with an already reduced tail that, like the gerenuk of Africa or ancient anoplotheres, regularly reared up onto its hindlegs to reach higher tree branches. Instead of evolving longer legs or a longer neck, evolution then drove these animals towards dedicated bipedalism. In that sense they may be the Martian analogue to the extinct sthenurine kangaroos, who are theorized to have also evolved a humanoid gait and buttocks. What this does not explain is the odd skeleton of the ushabtis. While all onychognaths use some degree of biosilicon in their body, especially for their solid eyes, ushabtis are unique for having a large part of their internal skeleton made of silicon dioxide, almost like a glass sponge. If these beings were ever brought to Earth, the mere attempt of standing upright may crush every bone in their body due to our home’s great gravity.

Ushabtis have had a great influence on Earth’s pop culture. Especially the very first reports made by astronauts about these supposedly being the Martians everyone was looking for, combined with some early speculations about language and culture, gave many people the mistaken impression that these were sapient beings. Consequently, the markets were flooded with books, comics, movies and videogames wherein ushabtis are depicted as tribal people defending their home against evil Soviet or Chinese spacefarers (a few stories do exist where American astronauts are the villains, but these have been censored until recently). In most of these, the ushabtis’ cultures are depicted as stereotypical, culturally insensitive pastiches of Native Americans or Islamic people (perhaps due to Mars’ reputation as a desert planet, although most of the surface is actually tundra and ice). The most egregious among the latter is the popular Dunes of Mars series by author Hank Sherbert. His ushabtis are depicted as desert nomads clothed in veils, with cultural practices that mirror a weird mix of Arabic, Jewish and Iranian elements. They possess a superstitious and irrational psychology, a corrupt, despotic rulership, a legal system based on trial by combat, trade an opium-like substance and are in a state of holy war against the local Soviet space colonies. They also worship and ride great “sandcrawlers”, a wholly fictional creature seemingly created to be the biological equivalent to a flying carpet. Their white saviour, who is of course an American astronaut, is obviously modelled after Thomas Edward Lawrence. I wonder if Edward Said would call this space orientalism if he were still alive.

More recent stories have acknowledged the true animalistic nature of the ushabtis, but adapt the pseudoscientific idea that they are the devolved descendants of a former Martian civilization. Most of these stories are moralistic author tracts about the "degeneration" of society and culture and what they think will cause the downfall of civilization. An infamous example is the novel Red Dusk by Michael Crichton, in which the Martian civilization collapsed due to environmental conspiracies, reflecting the author's own notorious scepticism of climate science and his rather loose adherence to facts.

An unfortunate byproduct of many ushabti stories is the bizarre sexualisation of the organisms, despite appearing inhuman anywhere except the pelvic region. This is especially common in media from East Asia and Europe, but there are also homegrown examples, like an episode of Star Trek where Captain Pike has an affair with an actress dressed in an obviously inaccurate ushabti costume made to show off her décolletage. Most infamous is however the fact that the last artwork ever created by the late C.M. Kosemen was an unfinished series of paintings wherein ushabtis are depicted engaging in all sorts of gigeresque acts of copulation. Kosemen had previously commented that, to primitive-minded men, ushabtis are the ideal woman, for they have the lower half of one but none of the intelligence above. What he and many others apparently failed to realize is that ushabtis, like nearly all animals on Mars, are hermaphrodites. While their vertical cloaca does have a vaguely vulvaic appearance, if one madman were to “probe” further inside, he would be in for a grave surprise.

As awareness of the actual scientific truth of Mars is growing in the general public, most of these tropes are thankfully fading away from pop culture. When it comes to children’s media, however, the trope of the intelligent ushabti is still popular. My own son was a big fan of such a cartoon show and asked me how it was meeting the Martians. I indeed had met ushabtis up close on one of my last missions, though it did not amount to much. It would have broken his heart if I told him that the Martians he knew from his action figure adventures were no smarter than sheep, so I obviously made up a bedtime story instead. The Martians invited use to their home, we had tea and cake, tried out an anti-gravity trampoline, they helped us repair our avrocar and together we fought off an attack by another group of evil aliens. John Carter was there too, in some versions. My boy is now an adult and obviously does not believe my stories anymore, but I made a pleasant discovery last Christmas. After I gifted my grandson as set of Martian and astronaut minifigures from some Danish brick company, I observed him using them to play out the exact same tall tale I had years ago told his father. This being my legacy is all I need to be happy.

Arctic Sortax

 

Peering beneath the ice caps and glaciers of the north pole of Mars can reveal an assortment of many strange creatures. One of them is the sortax, a flattened, cushiony creature with a strangely bifurcated spine out of which grow a tadpole-like tail and two eyestalks. A common urban legend on Earth regarding this animal is that when an astrobiologist, usually only named “Dr. Morris”, if named at all, first discovered this creature, while livestreaming his expedition as a public NASA broadcast, he shouted “Fuck, another new phylum!”. The resulting PR debacle then led to him being fired in most versions of the story. This is almost assuredly a pop cultural myth that is entirely fabricated. The true discoverer of the sortax was a woman by the name Eryx Burton, and there is no comparable recording in any of NASA’s archives (for how the myth may have formed, see Busch 2338).

More importantly, Burton never made the claim that the sortax belongs to a separate phylum, as examination quickly uncovered its ties in the Martian tree of life. The animal’s endoskeleton is made of apatite and silicon dioxide and the anatomy of the tail is identical to the arms of trichordates such as the hortax. The tri-radial cloaca on top of the body is also another dead ringer. It strongly suggests that the sortax is a trichordate, but has shifted away from the ancestral radial symmetry of its starfish-like ancestors towards a bilateral one. Two arms stiffened and became structural supports for an expanded gut and mantle, their tips becoming mainly sensory organs, while the third became a tail. The three-pronged mouth shifted from the bottom of the body towards the front. This is certainly not as extraordinary as it may seem, as on Earth many radial animal groups also have members with bilateral elements, such as ctenophores with two tentacles, or sand dollars and irregular sea urchins among the echinoderms. Like in the latter example, the anatomy of the sortax and its relatives may have originally arisen as an adaptation towards horizontal digging in marine sediments, where a radial body is less beneficial than an axial, streamlined one.

Though it is primitive in its aquatic habitat, the sortax likely does not represent this ancestral state, as it largely lives on top of the sediment and only digs itself into the sand when danger, such as arctic rhosons, presents itself. When on the search for food, the sortax moves by hovering through slight, carpet-like undulations of its flabby mantle, the tail only being used when quick bursts are required. Its main prey include the various worm-like organisms that inhabit the subglacial silt: circulates, pseudarticulates and mollizoans. These are usually devoured through suction feeding, whereby the prongs of the mouth open fast enough to create a brief vacuum. Swallowed whole like spaghetti, the prey is further processed by a masticating stomach.

It is interesting to note that the eyestalks retain some form of independence, similar though not to the same degree as the arms of more classic trichordates. While looking for prey, usually one eye faces forward to focus, while another one surveys the area. Unlike the arms of the hortax, these do not alternate in their tasks but seem dedicated to their roles, though with variation between individuals. In other words, some sortax are right-“handed”, while others are left-“handed”. It would be interesting to further study if the rest of the nervous system has also retained a degree of decentralization or has instead undergone more streamlining during bilateralisation.

Since its discovery, it has been recognized that many strange problematica found across Mars are likely relatives of the sortax, something substantiated by recent molecular analyses (Schaf 2337). This likely monophyletic clade has been named Furchordata and is now largely recognized as a distinctive class among the Trichordata. Trichordates, due to the shape of their cloaca, leave behind peculiar trilateral excrements, which in Furchordata specifically get twisted into strange spires due to their more complex guts. Coprolites of exactly this shape have been found in Middle Athabascan sediments, indicating that furchordates first emerged shortly after the End-Cydonian mass extinction event (Brot 2339).

References:

• Busch, Briegel: Marsgeschichten und andere tolle Sachen, Berlin 2338.
• Brot, Bernd: Mist. Die Ultimative Enzyklopädie, Beck 2339.
• Schaf, Tchili: Testing the Furchordata hypothesis using sequenced Martian genome data, in: Current Astrobiology, 465, 2337, p. 13 – 23.

Tachmut and Skrael

 

What is an inhospitable landscape to some may sometimes be comfortable to others, if they have the right adaptations. One of the most common critters throughout the Martian tundras is the tachmut, a type of lobostomian spirifer. Bodywise, this limbless space slug shows little difference from its relatives, except for a thin fringe of hair-like setae growing below the rim of the dorsal plates (the function of which is unknown). What sets it apart is instead its surreal grin. Atypically for most lobostomians, the arms of the tachmut are internally supported by rigid cartilaginous rods and have robust, molar-like teeth growing out of them, in structure similar to the teeth found in their verticutian cousins. The purpose of these is obvious. The main diet of the tachmut are the red filulithophores which carpet the whole tundra during summer. These are macroareonts, prokaryotic organisms that function like a mix of diatoms and dictyostelids. Almost all their above-ground organs, such as the stalk and the fruiting bodies, are protected by a chainmail of phytoliths, little armour plates made of silicon dioxide. Though this biosilicon shell is thin, it can cause heavy abrasion if consumed too much, which is why toothless herbivores like onychognaths largely avoid eating them. The tachmut can meanwhile fully exploit this food source, using its toothed corona just like how a horse’s jaw grinds down grass. Unlike a grazing mammal, the tachmut can continually replace its teeth once worn down. Once grinded into a pulp, the vegetation’s remains are whisked into the mouth using the characteristic setae.

Being the main consumer of this vegetation, the tachmut is a vital keystone of the tundra’s ecosystem. Filulithophores are major nitrogen fixers, but because few feed on them, the tachmut liberate this vital element and accumulate it in their bodies. Thus, the tachmut becomes an important source of nitrogen for all the predators and omnivores that feed on it. Perhaps more importantly, the gut of this space slug dissolves the ground up phytoliths into silicic acid. The nephridia (its equivalent of kidneys) then draw most water out of this substance, turning it into silica gel (which is why at least one Japanese desiccant company has made this alien their mascot), which is excreted out at the back with the other waste. This gel then dissolves in the wet soil of the boggy summer tundra, allowing filulithophores and various other flora and fauna to reuse the silicon dioxide for their skeletons.

Tachmut are classic r-type strategists when it comes to reproduction. Usually, when two individuals mate, both partners have their eggs fertilized. Like snails, they then lay these into wet burrows during the warmer summer months and slither away. Once the long winters signal their arrival, tachmut bury into the active layer of the permafrost while it is still malleable. Once settled, the organism enters a deep state of dormancy during which it is nearly dead and most of its body fluids are infused with a biologically produced anti-freeze, not unlike the red fronds it shares its environment with.

Some, however, make this season easier for themselves by exploiting their neighbours. Instead of digging their own, tachmut may simply crawl into abandoned burrows left behind by skrael. These are caecilian-like archaeocephalians. During the summer, these serpentine organisms build rather peculiar nests. First, they begin digging tunnels into the thawed topsoil of the permafrost, using their spade-like cranium, which has modified the head so much that the antennae grow from underneath the head. Then they actively suck up and spit out the excess water until the burrow is dry. To prevent the ground water from seeping in again, the nest is then plastered with a coat of sticky saliva that, like in some birds on Earth, quickly solidifies into a waterproof and isolating coating. The home is then further stuffed with fragments of sporian skin and the shed filaments of fuzzy animals that roam the tundra during the summer. From this cozy nest the skrael then lives a largely stationary life, using its antennae and skull to pick up the vibrations of any smaller critters crawling nearby its hole to snatch up the unsuspecting prey. The skrael’s eggs and young are also raised in these nests by the caring parent. During winter, the animals curl up into a ball and sleep, though at the same time they raise their metabolism, utilizing their body-warmth and the nest’s insulation to keep the interior above freezing.

Although the two animals usually do not seem to get along, an amusing observation that has been made by some researchers of the Martian tundra is that tachmut and skrael may sometimes be found enduring winter in the same hole. This likely does not happen out of friendship but out of desperation and/or apathy. The tachmut is desperate to find a winter home, while the skrael is too sleepy to be bothered by or even notice its new roommate. That said, it has been theorized that skrael may occasionally exploit this cohabitation by feeding on the dormant tachmut, should their own winter reserves run out.