This article is classified "Fictional"
Europa As It Is =============== Europa is one of the moons of that solar system planet Jupiter. Please do not confuse Europa with Europe, a continent of Earth! Europa is pronounced "you're -- oap -- aaah!". Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system; if you have a spacecraft, finding it is easy. Simply aim for the ugliest planetary system you can find (can't miss), and look for the biggest planet. If you have trouble finding it, I suggest the book "Finding your way in the galaxy using a home-made Beetle spaceship," available in all reasonably decent bookstores. Europa has fascinated historians from all over the galaxy. Hidden under its ice-covered surface there is a biosphere teeming with highly intelligent life. Now what a fascinating place in the galaxy to find a highly advanced civilization. Just a couple of light hours away is the barbaric planet Earth, completely unaware of being so close to the great brains of the galaxy! Europa orbits its mother planet Jupiter together with its three companion giant moons. The tides and perturbations by the powerful gravitational forces of these bodies flex and crush Europa's icy surface. This has resulted in its core being covered by liquid water. In this liquid water life quickly arose. After only a few million years, its inhabitants realized the silliness of living in cold water. They dug holes in the ice and created warm, comfortable homes, from which they ruled the galaxy. Despite their brilliant brains, however, these rulers of the galaxy have some disturbing and perverse fancies... They simply cannot stand being bored, and one of their favourite ways of passing time is to molest primitive civilizations. A frequent target is their neighbouring life forms, the human beings on Earth. Their most frequent abuse of the "Protection of Primitive Species Act" is to dress up in silly grey suits, land on Earth, and haul some human beings into their spaceship. They then pretend to do tests and stick pieces of metal in them, as well as do some more sinister things not fit for description in an uncensored encyclopedia. Europa From The Perspective Of Humanity ======================================= The story of humanity's raising interest in Europa is both interesting and disturbing. We will be using the currently favoured time system on Earth, the BC-AD system, which is explained in detail in Harry Golombek's book "Time measuring in primitive civilizations". Around AD 1640 an individual, known to others by the name Galileo Galilei, made a crude lens he called a telescope, and used it to look at the skies. Around the `star' Jupiter, he found four orbiting stars -- one of which was Europa. After a little while, even the inhabitants of Earth understood that Jupiter was really a planet surrounded by (at least) four moons. However, it was not until the early 1980s that they finally managed to find out what these moons looked like. The inhabitants of Europa started to fear detection, but managed to arrange it so that the human "Voyager" spacecrafts would take very bad photographs of Europa. However, because of some small miscalculations from the side of the Europans, and pure luck from the side of the humans, some pictures survived, showing a planet devoid of craters. The conclusion? Something was removing the telltale signs of asteroids hitting Europa. Speculations about liquid water began to surface. Currently the species have a very primitive spacecraft called Galileo orbiting Jupiter. To the horrible despair of the Europans the spacecraft has now begun a special focusing on Europa! What is even worse, a human leader, Mr. Clinton, has indicated he wants to send a spaceship to explore Europa in detail. While the inhabitants of Europa are busily trying to avoid this by destroying Clinton's career (by inventing sexual scandals, for example), nobody knows if these primitive beings might actually survive and discover the Europans. Then what would the Europans do when they are bored?