The lies of Pi

It took a bit of technology to make a stunning revelation about Mars that left the planet red-faced.

Before technology kept little boys busy with PSPs, tablets and Attacknids, they had little to do except indulge in outrageous creative exercises, during which they imagined that they saw the emperor without his clothes or had conversations with stuffed tigers.

Close on the heels of the story about a boy who stayed afloat on a boat for months with a tiger for company, has come another incredible tale about this kid and his gigantic dog being lost in Mars. Apparently they were afloat for several days in the sea of tranquillity on the moon. And when they sighted Mars, the boy expected his companion to come back to him, with his tail wagging. But the dog simply looked up at the planet, howled and gravitated towards it.

Heartbroken, the boy got back to earth. Night after night, he watched the stars and the planets. And on one cloudless night, he zoomed into Mars and spotted the huge canine.

Needless to say, no one was willing to believe him - until he shot images of what he saw and posted them via Instagram. His argument was simple – if there could be a rabbit on the moon, why couldn’t there be a dog on Mars? Besides, Instagram itself was an acronym for ‘Mars giant.’ He sent a white paper on the topic to NASA, but they found his story unbelievable. The image of the dog on Mars soon featured on Facebook, which was the quickest and the most sure-fire way of catching the attention of any authority and predictably enough, the powers-that-be ordered a probe into the matter.

 A ‘name the dog’ contest was conducted online by an unknown body which also announced that Bill Gates would give away half his wealth to the name that most people liked. A tidal wave of creativity engulfed cyberspace and finally the dog on Mars was named Rover. A space song titled Hover like Rover was created by Snoop Dogg and The Mars Volta, an American rock group and went viral, infecting the entire planet.

Meanwhile, NASA decided to prove the boy’s story wrong and, leaving the moon and the rabbit alone, embarked on a mission to Mars. If it didn’t work, at least they had good footage from Brian De Palma’s movie of the same name that they could beam across to the world.

There were several parallels between their mission and the child’s story. To start with, there was a Rover, but it was the robotic space vehicle that they had sent to Mars – Curiosity Rover. The incredible story of the boy’s space odyssey with his dog was the outcome of a child’s curiosity, and NASA’s next expedition to Mars in 2020 was nicknamed Curiosity’s child - aptly so, as it would be based on Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) architecture, which was used to design and develop the Curiosity rover.

But the clincher was what the Rover - the space exploration vehicle - dug up. It was a bone, which not only proved that life existed on Mars, but also the fact that Rover - the dog - had hidden the bone playfully, hoping to find it later on an acid-rainy day. The dog was wrong about the acid rain, but the kid was right about there being a dog on the planet. With the exhumed part of the skeleton becoming a bone of contention, the space organization finally decided to go with the child’s story – and that’s how, when we look at the sky with superhuman vision or through a high-powered telescope, we can spot a dog on Mars.