Alejandro Quesada Ramírez - "The Little Pigs" (1951)

INTRODUCTION

Alejandro Quesada Ramírez (1912-1989) was a Costa Rican engineer, agricultural economist, professor and author. He attended school in Mexico, where he wrote the novella "Tzirosto" (1944) and two novels: "A New Fallow" (1946) and "Women" (1950). In addition to his fiction output, he worked as a consultant for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and after returning to Costa Rica in the 1970s, taught at the University of Costa Rica, where he was a prolific author in university-related publications.

"The Little Pigs" ("Los Cochinitos") was originally published in the October 1951 issue of Los Cuentos Fantásticos (#34), and was later republished in the 1952 short story collection "Breakwater" ("Escollera"). There are minor differences between the magazine publication and the book translation, and this translation is a composite translation between the two. Not every minor difference is pointed out in the notes, but I have added notes for major differences between the two.

For more information on Ramírez's life, see: https://cronicasdelaunion.com/historia/alejandro-quesada-ramirez-el-padre-espiritual-del-colegio-ecologico-del-canton-y-de-la-conservacion-de-siete-manantiales/

THE LITTLE PIGS

On board an interplanetary travel craft, the lecturer was speaking to his pupils.[Translator's note: 'disciples' in book version.]

- "Yes! It was instantaneous. A subitaneous illumination in what had hitherto been darkness. A light in the black barely shrouded under the epidermis of penumbra. I suddenly saw what they were doing and what they were thinking, and I learned the history of our long-suffering species. This history of ours wasn't so instantaneous, because, goodness, how thinking in words slows the poor humans down! When I interrogated their minds about these things I thought essential to know, they began to crawl along a rhetorical path, uttering an innumerable amount of puerile nonsense. Just imagine: just barely twenty minutes to draw from them the totality of their miniscule amount of knowledge of the Universe at that time. You should've seen the expressions across the faces of these 'eminences' when I tore them from their words and spun them into space like spooled thread, unraveling everything they'd known. What temerity! Even so, there was almost no substance of knowledge: a large portion of it was empty words in the thread of their knowledge; heterogeneous, patchy, weak, and with enormous gaps. I pieced everything together and then probed everyone's knowledge to fill in the gaps, and yet, it took me twenty minutes to acquire these absurdities that were known to the humans of 1960. They were dazed: it was the first time they used wordless thought in communication with another being. They were perplexed by the mental exposition I forced them to perform, and found it impossible to comprehend that in such a short time, they could expound on everything they'd learned and accomplished as a species over more than half a million years. They were also surprised by the fact that they'd revealed theories, histories, and many other things that they didn't even know that they knew. They were puzzled by the collective mode of expressions they used, by the uselessness of words, and, ultimately, by the innumerable other simplicities that had the little creatures in awe. These were the 'wise men' of the 1960 Homo sapiens: the masters of 'creation'; those who held the deed to the Universe; those who, having split the atom, thought they could slice up worlds like cheese and turn the pieces into jigsaw puzzles.

"But it must be made clear that the this species' is not due to science; science never leads to failure. Their disaster is due precisely due to what science was not and what they mistook for it. In the humans' research, there was a heavy proportion of 'adventurism' and 'trial and error,' that is, mere chance. Although trial and error is useful in most cases for lower species, it must be used judiciously and completely prohibited in certain kinds of research. Humans didn't understand this simple fact and brought about their own disaster. This disaster, which they attribute to the development of their science, is entirely attributable to their lack of science.[Translator's note: This paragraph is not present in the magazine version]

"Don't laugh, it's true."

- "Well, yes, we already know that."

- "They were the same humans who forced most species, including large swaths of their own, into paying tribute under their despotic demands. Of all the species they victimized, none was as vilified and exploited as ours. Pigs were a target of mockery and consumed to an unfathomable degree. It was rare for a pig to die a natural death. Furthermore, the 'wise men' I told you about turned us into biological experiments, using us in place of the rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, horses, flies, etc. they previously experimented on. It was this new outrage against our species that hastily dragged us out from the horrible conditions we lived in."

- "And how did that happen?"

- "Well, it's quite simple: an 'eminence', whose name I can't recall as it's not worth mentioning, had an idea occur to him of ​​increasing human intelligence by augmenting cranial capacity, brain volume, convolution depth, connections between nerve centers, certain hormonal secretions, and, in short, the corresponding organic and physiological changes. The idea reverberated throughout the scientific centers. 608 specialists and 19 coordinating directors were selected. Lectures were given to this group, acquainting all of its members with their intended purpose, so that each person could carry out their work in a way that facilitated the work of others and harmonized with the overall plan. After preliminary meetings, all of the 608 specialists held repeated consultations with the most prominent members in their field, and thus their programs were developed. The 608 programs were studied by the coordinators, and these were then combined to form the grand general plan. At this point, we come into the picture, because, of course, man wasn't going to experiment on man. After a series of eliminations, we were selected as the best raw material for the experiment. Monkeys and dogs came very close to being selected, but in the end, we won the nomination. Two rounds of voting were held as there was electoral fraud in the first one: someone voted more than once."

- "Who?"

- "It's 'difficult' to say, but I'll give you the voting figures so you can speculate:

VOTES

Animals	First vote (fraudulent)	Second vote (legitimate)
Donkeys	4025	1
Rabbits	4	4
Dogs	204	204
Monkeys	207	207
Pigs	211	211
TOTAL	4651	627

 

"We practically owe our cause's victory to the propaganda of an enthusiastic veterinarian who had much in common with our species. Only the donkey's propagandist exceeded his activism in the campaign, who, as you can see, lost, despite his extensive experience and excellent track record in electoral matters. This gentleman, although he knew no more about medicine than his candidate, managed to ingratiate himself among the group of 'wise men' through his influence. After this electoral defeat, he completely disappeared from the experiment, despite always being physically present. The truth is, we won; by four votes, but we won. New group discussions ensued. New consultations took place between the specialists and their colleagues. The collection, classification, and study of everything published and unpublished about our species followed. New votes were cast, and the wild boars, the subjects of the experiment, were selected. Once each specialist studied their assigned area and the potentially useful data from the material they collected, they realized they knew practically nothing about us. We were slaughtered with greater intensity than ever before. The butchering reached unimaginable levels, as every single cell in our bodies was examined hundreds of times under electron microscopes. They were all mixed together in countless test tubes, beakers, flasks, etc. However, this had no real significance, because a corpse doesn't care whether it's made into pork rinds, pork chops, chorizo, or atomized. Until then, our destiny was solely to be born, grow, and fatten, only to be killed and consumed by the most sensitive being to ever inhabit the Earth. But now, in addition to this, we were subjected to analyses, macerations, auscultations, murder in a wide variety of forms, and experiments while the entire body was still living. You should've seen our fellow creatures sprawled out over hundreds of tables, restrained with steel rings around every part of their bodies, opened from neck to tail, their viscera exposed. The specialist would linger over them, observing the reactions of each organ subjected to an electric shock, the touch of a red-hot iron, the action of an acid, a salt, and dozens of reagents of all kinds. Some of our comrades succumbed instantly at the touch of a transparent droplet, others at the touch of a wire, or from the action of a tiny piece of glass, or under the pinch of delicate forceps. Don't make that face, because out of our grandparents, these were the luckiest. There were other comrades who laid sprawled out and open along their entire body's length for more than five months.

"During that time, bitten by the scalpel, they successively lost not only pieces of their organs, but entire organs as well. Some were subjected to hypersensitization administered expressly by the experimenters, and don't think it was always with a specific goal in mind. No! Often, it was nothing more than seeing what would happen, testing our endurance, or simply reveling in our suffering; this is how the most select individuals of Homo sapiens, the 'superior species,' acted. In the rooms dedicated to the study of the digestive system, intestines cut at one end were hung on racks along the length of the room. In some stretches, they traversed along receptacles containing fats, different solutions, warm or refrigerated tubes. Some of them were opened at the top and received the contents of dripping receptacles; others were opened at the bottom and dripped into flasks. Stomachs appeared at various distances from their owners, performing their functions in artificial environments. The pancreas, spleen, liver, and kidneys, whole or in pieces, inside or outside the body, were subjected to all different kinds of stimuli. A veritable live condiment. This physiological experimentation bore a great deal of resemblance to culinary experimentation. Other pigs were cut open even deeper to extract the veins and arteries for their main course. There were hearts entirely removed from the body, beating before the eyes of their owner and subjected to countless physical and chemical influences, both externally and internally. Many of these comrades of ours were deprived of their digestive system, partially or totally, and kept alive with fluids. This facilitated dissection to follow a tortuous blood vessel or to install instruments in the cavity where the intestines were. There were some of our comrades in this room who maintained fluids that were entirely different from the blood in their circulation. Synthetic chemicals instead of hormones flowed throughout their bodies. The pigs treated in this fashion were subject to strange sensations and unforeseen growth. Some underwent external transformations with cinematic violence. Beyond this room, there was another adjoining room where they studied the endocrine glands, and their secretions were altered by direct or indirect means. Such experiments produced psychological changes often more agonizing than physical pain. In these rooms, through the use of special broths they saturated the tissues in, they managed to dispense with their circulatory and digestive systems. Despite all of this, the pigs still remained alive. Some displayed expressions of intense pain; others were breathing very close to point of asphyxiation, and still others, strangely enough, had the beginnings of dumb smiles across their snouts and cheeks. In the rooms dedicated to the nervous system, our comrades were in every position imaginable. They showed nerves brought to the surface like roots emerging from different parts of the body. If you consider what a nerve is, you'll realize what that martyrdom meant. Hundreds died from pain, but there were unfortunate souls who endured it all. Our comrades were found with their skulls smashed against tables, brains exposed to the elements, subject to the shifting rain of reagents dripping from colored containers. Many were missing sections of varying sizes from different parts of their brain. Some had their spinal columns ripped open, revealing the spinal cord in its entirety; others displayed their sympathetic nerve cords like salamanders intent on getting off their backs. Pigs wandered about, their legs covered in tattered bits of nerves and veins, sutured together like worn-out rag dolls. Although our species is almost as noisy as humans are, most rooms were silent, broken only by the clanging of metal. Don't think our fellow creatures set out to prove their bravery. No! Luckily, our kind never succumbed to the folly of heroism. Quite simply, almost all of them had a nerve severed, and that was that: not a soul uttered the slightest grunt. This seemingly minor detail proved to be of great importance because of the suffering it caused. Those of us who have been trained to complain have largely subordinated our nature to that reflex. Unable to complain, pain finds itself without the expected echo and collapses precisely where it was sure to find a rampart.

"The rooms dedicated to the study of the respiratory system constituted one of the most serious threats to the bright future of our species. There were more than a dozen 'wise men' there, intent on making us speak. There was a high probability of success. They managed to modulate grunts until they came very close to the human voice. With adequate development of the corresponding nerve centers, they would have succeeded. Imagine what that would have meant: something like cutting off the legs of deer or the wings of swallows. Words were the obstacle that most seriously impeded humankind from making any significant progress: they shackled thought, imprinting it with agonizing slowness. In the rooms where they studied the respiratory system, our companions were kept there in a state of asphyxiation for days and weeks on end. Some died, and others adapted to minuscule doses of oxygen. Some were subjected to the action of other gases, and some were completely deprived of them, living in a semi-comatose state. Others were kept encased in transparent liquids and glass receptacles. These containers were suspended by chains or placed on tables to facilitate observation and treatments. The number of pigs that succumbed in the experiments was very high. However, that was of no consequence because we were, and still are, prolific, and therefore provided abundant material. Nor should you believe that death, which was the most desirable outcome in such circumstances, resolved everything. No! Many of the unfortunate creatures were resurrected after death, and then the ordeal began anew. This practice of resurrection was a very important part of the experiments. Humankind always had a panicked fear of death. The more backward the individual, the greater the fear of dying. It should be noted that the fear of death is characteristic of the fainthearted: their indecisive attitude is largely a form of the instinct for self-preservation. It was the fear of death that made them conjure up, I don't know from where, the idea that each one carried within him another human being just like himself, but 'immaterial' and indestructible, which they called a soul. This very soul was supposed to continue living after the death of the flesh-and-blood man. If it had been 'good,' they sent it to God, who, according to them, lived in paradise, or to hell, where it would roast eternally if it had been 'bad.' Those who were 'lukewarm', those who were 'neither fish nor fowl', were sent to an intermediate place they called purgatory. Here, too, they roasted to a certain point, at which point they could choose between ascending to Paradise or descending to hell. According to the most mischievous of human believers, no soul was ever known to choose the ascent, because the overheating they received in purgatory gave them a bit of the common sense they lacked on Earth, and with it, they preferred to descend.

"There were amorphous, yet lifelike, bodies in the room where the skeleton was studied. Some were practically boneless, held by threads pulling up them in numerous directions; others consisted only of the skull and spine. There were collections where sequences of bones were systematically missing; marrow was exposed here and there, and bones lived on their own in bodily fluids. Our sexual organs did not escape the scalpel's bites either, which inflicted horrible gashes upon them. Many aberrations were attempted: they achieved duplication and exchange of the sexes. The glands, nerves, and blood vessels most closely related to the reproductive process were altered. Ovum and spermatozoa were subjected to energetic influences of many kinds. Their development was also initiated in artificial vaginas.[Translator's note: 'artificial wombs' in book version.] They managed to increase proliferance to levels previously considered unattainable.

"The coordination departments harmonized the results that were obtained by each of the 608 partial research directors. New problems arose in these departments, due to unforeseen interference or from other causes. In the course of research, unexpected avenues were sometimes discovered that needed to be explored, even if this meant deviating from the initial plan. Such developments necessitated the recruitment of more technicians. New pavilions, additional floors, and communication lines, not initially considered, had to be added to the large buildings constructed for the experiment. The central coordination offices significantly increased their activity as the experiment progressed. For the correct combination of certain modalities, it became necessary to establish departments of statistics and probability calculation. These resources served as a compass for the coordinators, given the human inability to combine numerous variables mentally. In these departments, the obtained results were organized, and trends were defined. With this data, it was possible to study the discrepancies between the projected and the achieved results; discover the causes of the deviations; and determine the important guidelines that were not taken into account in the previous project.

"The expansion of the skull through bone grafting and increasing the size of the brain were beginning to yield positive results. During gestation, 'mutations' were achieved by subjecting the parents to various energetic influences before mating, while mating, or during pregnancy. The results obtained gave the 'wise men' great hope, who, in their own words, 'worked diligently, erecting the necessary scaffolding to launch their work toward its zenith.'

"They conducted their research for three years, surprising their circle with 'unusual discoveries,' when I was born within one of the experimentation lines. Fresh out of my mother's womb, I was subjected to my first surgical intervention, which enlarged the capacity of my skull. Endocrine treatments followed, along with the combined application of all the formulas and conclusions that were derived from the martyred bodies of thousands of pigs. I remember what I observed in those days with great clarity, but at the time I didn't concern myself with its meaning. I accepted everything as I saw it, without yet being disturbed by the reasons why. I looked at it like someone observing the silhouette of a large steel structure against the light; I enjoyed looking at it even though I didn't know what it was, nor did I care to know. The shapes and the moving lights caught my attention, and I tried to follow them with my eyes. The 'wise men' moved lights of different colors in different directions, making circles within my field of vision or imprinting trajectories that they made disappear. Some of those lights pleased me. I particularly liked the sky blue. I suffered when it went away and rejoiced when it returned. The same thing happened with the matte red, and the opposite with the purple. I liked symmetrical shapes, especially the sphere; asymmetrical ones irritated me, and diffuse ones saddened me. In addition to visual stimuli, I was subjected to noises, tastes, smells, touch, imbalances, vibrations, temperatures, pressure, and, in short, to the adjusting and de-adjusting of all my perfections.

"A few reactions were expressly sought out by the 'wise men'. The majority of them were the result of introducing one or more factors without them suspecting any of the effects they might produce. Human equations were very simple. Some of them understood that anything done, or yet to be done, was a solved equation or one yet to be solved, but in complex matters they could only distinguish and combine a small number of the most important elements. For this reason, the future was a much greater unknown to them than it is to us. This forced them to create a capricious and fickle architect of the Universe; to believe in a blind and unpredictable destiny and live as fatalists. There were some causalists and even determinists, but even these were subject to great limitations: they could not properly interpret the course of present factors and their mutual interferences to predict future results. They knew absolutely nothing about the future. What they could foresee was ridiculously little, and they were even wrong about this. For this reason, in their experiments with us, they only handled a few tens of thousands of factors, more or less following their trajectory. They frequently lost the thread as it wound through the weft, and then went astray: they jumped from one thread to another and arrived at absurd conclusions that disrupted the work of the group. Only by traveling along the broadest paths did they penetrate the most apparent aspects of porcine nature.

"Some humans based their superiority on the fact that they conceived the Universe as something entirely dynamic. They would say to themselves: 'Everything changes; everything is transformed; nothing remains still.' And they couldn't understand that precisely everything they saw changing was being transformed according to rigid laws and that it didn't change in any fashion.

"The egoism of the architects of our greatness was also an obstacle to their research. Each of the 'wise men' felt the need to be considered the best of the lot. To achieve this, they strove to arrive at 'fundamental conclusions' before the others, while simultaneously concealing their partial advances as best they could, striving to seize what the others were hiding for the same purpose. This created an atmosphere of pettiness hardly conducive to the progress of research. Despite this attitude, and so as not to appear ineffective, they all gradually revealed their findings.

"The most bitter envy was directed against a radioactivity specialist. This specialist, acting on glands and viscera, yielded various phenomena and 'mutations.' One of these was my mother. This 'eminence' placed great hopes on me and my twin brothers from the day we were born. Our skulls were large and well-formed. The physicist hoped to take advantage of our growth to achieve much of what wasn't accomplished during gestation. All the researchers had their eyes on the litter I belonged to. We were placed under the direction of a special committee headed by the physicist in question. Surgeons worked on my brothers and me, adding bone and space to the skull, and hormones and reagents to the blood as our brains grew. Then, suddenly, 'it dawned on me,' and I understood what was happening in that laboratory. 'Behold,' the god who had performed the miracle had fashioned another being a thousand times more powerful than himself from the material of our species, who then subjugated him forever." (Applause. A mocking nod from the speaker imitating the humans).

The interplanetary craft carrying this group of pupils, who were being taught history by none other than the one who ushered in the prosperity of the pigs, made a wide turn before entering the Martian atmosphere...

- "If you'd seen," he added, "how humans feared a visit from the inhabitants of Mars. They imagined them to be far more evolved and extravagant than they actually are. It appears that humans intuited that they would replicate the laboratory they transformed us in, hundreds of thousands of times on this planet, for the purpose of experimenting on them, using our colonists, the Martians. As you'll see, these colonists butcher them there in a similar fashion, worse even, than they butchered us on Earth. Indeed, on Mars there were thousands of laboratories where the natives, directed by a technical corps of pigs, selected humans for various uses. Some were prepared to be transported to other celestial bodies, explored or unexplored. They were adapted to live in every imaginable environment in order to be used as preliminary explorers in the pigs' conquest of the Universe. Humans were even produced who, properly equipped, dove into the Sun, returning with priceless treasures for their masters, the pigs. Others were launched beyond Pluto's orbit, penetrating the domains of alien planetary systems.

"It's not just vengeance against the humans," the professor explained, "that we've chosen him as the life form responsible for piercing the Universe, and for many other purposes.

"No! It was mostly because the human is the most malleable form of living matter. It's true that they're also the most unstable, but this is more than compensated for by the former. The pig very quickly satisfied his need for revenge, and afterwards it was more than that feeling, a positive interest that drove him to continue experimenting on humans in order to exploit them more rationally."

The little pigs on this excursion included five wild boars and two little babirusas in their group, which they and their elders regarded without any racial prejudice; they were given the same liberal dose of genetic improvement as the pigs themselves. Their racial characteristics, at most, gave rise to the occasional nickname and, consequently, to some nipping and headbutting without any regrettable consequences. In short, childish squabbles that usually arose in the heat of an argument. Then harsh phrases would emerge, like 'curse words'; sometimes one of the more excitable little pigs would even call his opponent a 'human,' and this offended them greatly because that word was synonymous with not only 'stupid' but also 'dirty.' The most irrefutable proof of this lack of discrimination was the fact that quite a few high positions were occupied by venerable babirusas with sharp tusks, wild boars, peccaries, and feral pigs. All these varieties in the era of darkness formed a sort of middle class, or at least an intermediate class between the selectively bred races and their sullen aborigines.

The craft Marted (that is to say, it touched down on the surface of Mars).

The excursion was of the most interesting sort. The little pigs visited all the biological laboratories where the Martians adapted the humans to the most diverse forms of life. There they saw the procedures used to obtain the humans they observed grazing in the pampas on Earth, humans who surpassed even the most specialized breeds of cattle in size and docility. On some farms, various types were raised for manpens. These yielded very fine meat despite the filth they ingested. Some specimens reached such a degree of obesity that they were unable to move, and even suffocated submerged in their own fat. There were varieties whose highly specialized function was to produce large quantities of nitrogen-rich manure for fertilizer. One strange thing: all those that were specialized in meat and manure production were very sentimental and prone to pessimistic reflections. Nevertheless, their appetite was enviable, and they became fattened in a very short amount of time. They were often seen eating and crying at the same time with singular haste.

The pupils were very pleased with the production of human bait; tiny, agile, timid, and small as sardines. When the hook was threaded through them, they made a tremendous but very comical racket, and once in the water, they constantly thrashed their little legs and arms in such a suggestive way that the first fish that spotted them was quick to swallow them. It was difficult to find better bait. These little ones had the particularity of being very amorous and therefore proved to be romantic and prolific. Rice pudding was among their favorite foods. The human bait, properly gutted, if fried until golden brown, made a delicious dish, as they could be eaten bones and all, and when chewed, they crunched like crackers.

They also obtained forms with gills for breathing in salt and freshwater. These varieties were caught using the baits described. Humans were produced to be hunted. These made a great enhancement to the sport, as they were designed to be fast, agile, camouflaged, intelligent, cunning, and even aggressive. Such characteristics intensified the passion of the hunt. Additionally, starting with individuals from Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky, Virginia and other states, a fine selection of human bloodhounds was procured, whose persistence and keen senses made them invaluable on certain hunts. To spur them on, the Martians simply had to remind them of the fact that the game they were pursuing had a different skin color than their own, even though they were remarkably similar in all other aspects. This fact excited their ferocity to the fullest.

The humans specialized in pulling and carrying loads proved more resilient and hardy than oxen, donkeys, horses, mules, llamas, camels, and some were even larger and more powerful than elephants. However, they turned out to be rather brutish, as they only understood words and found it almost impossible to interpret a mental order. But they consoled themselves by remembering how mules and other "blood engines" only understood through whippings and prodding. On this subject, they often wrote long poems and even novels during their siestas, praising their lot. One of the few things they lamented in these works was their castration, but this was essential to their docility and to make their protests less hoarse. Furthermore, the Martians showed a great fondness for human testicles coated in egg, with vinaigrette, sautéed with onions, and with tartar sauce even. Some breeds of women specialized in milk production became torpid, larger, and more productive than the best cows.

One thing that was of great interest to pupils was the bird-men and the reptile-men: the females of both were similar in their prolific egg-laying, but they differed in that the former had a great fondness for perfecting their arboreal skills and making clumsy attempts to fly, while the latter were happy sleeping in the mud and wallowing in it. Despite these very different inclinations, crossbreeds between these varieties were created. The students also saw how rat-men, guinea pig-men, rabbit-men, and other larger creatures were produced, destined for commonplace research in medical laboratories. The little ones were especially interested in the mouse-men, the cat-men, the dog-men, and unaltered-men, all of whom performed their tasks wonderfully and were extremely entertaining in their chain of dependence. An entire reservation colony of many millions of unaltered-men was maintained, divided into two nations. Here, the life they once led long ago prevailed and was observed with curiosity. The little pigs were very pleased to learn that their desire for domination led the humans to subject the many to the exploitation of the few, dividing the strength of the society they formed. The little pigs roared with laughter upon learning how great masses, deceived by their exploiters, fought to the death to prevent a group that had emancipated itself from removing their yoke. They found the tragedies of men to be laughable, for they were truly dismayed, to an immeasurable degree, by things that didn't even amount to adversity, while they didn't attach the slightest importance to the treacherous crimes they systematically committed against other species. They were amused to learn that the humans dedicated many centuries to the selective breeding of the other subdued species, all the meanwhile ignoring their own selected breeding. They laughed heartily at the memory of how, when humanity tried to surpass itself in a single leap, it backfired, for in his stupidity, he himself created the being that would dominate, transform, and later destroy him. Never before had the young students been so interested in the human race. In the afternoon, they even stopped in front of the toy-shop windows to watch the children turning on the spits.

They also observed, with more attention than usual, the aristocratic Martian ladies who often strolled about with two or three little men, or little women, on dainty chains. Among these humans, there were humans of all sizes, from tall to short, from woolly to bald, from surly to gentle, from big-nosed to flat-nosed. The women often wore pink ribbons around their necks, and the men blue ones. Sometimes the Martian womens' affection for these decorative beings was so great that their husbands became jealous, and not always without reason. They also visited the laboratories where humans (male and female) worked, specially trained for various branches of mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, and a thousand other sciences. These humans served as assistants to the Martians, who used their data in deeper research ordered and planned by the pigs. It is worth noting that almost all of these human scientists were of Jewish descent. This distinction was due to two reasons: the usefulness of their evident intelligence and the historical fact that they didn't consume pork during the Dark Ages.

So that little pigs could observe the idiotic ferocity of humans, a conflict was provoked between the two nations where the species was still being kept in its original state. Words like democracy, freedom, justice, morality, faith, and others that no one understood were enough to unleash the fighting. The action amused them greatly due to its frenetic and inconceivable nature: torpedoing of ships, aerial combat, flamethrowers, bacteriological warfare, clashes of mechanized units, explosions of hydrogen and atomic bombs, great cities reduced to rubble, everything built with great sacrifice over centuries destroyed in a few days, and then peace, reconstruction, sacrifice, the subjugation of one by another, misery, and then conflict again when the oppressed sectors could no longer bear the humiliations and burdens imposed upon them by their "brothers."

- "Interesting!" a little babirusa commented. "They're a lot dumber than I imagined."

- "Yes," a little wild boar replied, "those who had seized the wealth would say, with complete sincerity, referring to their property: 'I made this with MY own effort, that's why it’s MINE.' The funny thing was, if you asked them how what they claimed to have made was actually made, you realized that these so-called property owners didn’t know the first thing about the composition of 'their assets.' Without fail, they found it impossible to understand that even the simplest commodity was the product of the labor of the entire species throughout its evolution. They were doing whatever it is they were doing for over half a million years and still didn't clearly understand how they did it. They didn't see contemporary society as a stage in the species' history and therefore as the sole legitimate owner of everything the species had created up to that point. Quite the opposite: in their society, the most important thing was individual self-interest. This resulted in weak cohesion within the group and sometimes even divisions that became rifts and ended up tearing the species apart."

- "It's a good thing it was for our benefit," a little pig commented.

- "Nothing else could have happened. It's even funnier to know that this absurd procedure was sanctioned by law and was accepted and defended to the death by the vast masses of the exploited to the point of their own destruction. A few who understood the situation managed to correct it in a small part of the world. Throughout the rest, it was demonstrated and repeated thousands of times, in vain, that private property was nonsense, since everything that existed was the product of the labor of the entire species throughout its life, and therefore only society, as a continuation of that species, had the right to the inheritance, usufruct, and administration of such property. The leaders who spread these ideas were destroyed by the property owners when they came to understand them, and by the masses because they didn't."

- "They really were idiots," the little babirusa thought again, showing off her curved, snow-white fangs while laughing.

- "Yes, Babi, imagine, since they didn't know how they originated, they created a God who, in turn, would create them. They made this God omnipotent and in their own image; I suppose they'll reconsider the matter now and have reasons to melt him down and remake him in our image. After they created God, anything or any phenomenon they couldn't explain, whether due to intellectual poverty or laziness, they called a miracle and attributed its creation to that God. Although they accepted the expression 'everything has its cause,' very few understood it, because in other words, this means that every component of the Universe follows a unique trajectory, impossible to change even in the smallest details. And yet, they felt like the architects of their own 'destinies' and of everything they touched. It was incomprehensible to them that the Universe, just as it can never have an end, never had a beginning: they desperately wanted it to have a beginning. And that's where God came in to please them: God was the beginning of the Universe, the archetype of perfection and also... similar to man..." (applause and laughter).

The Martians were greatly amused by the "dignity" and ferocity of humans. To exploit these characteristics, they managed, with extraordinary ease, to make some of the males grow horns and use them as fighting bulls. According to some querulous humans, these horns sprouted with such ease because their appearance depended not on the will or the bodies of the men, but on the bodies and will of their women, and these women loved to adorn their foreheads. They also managed to make them grow a discreet tail to award to the bullfighters when the enthusiastic public was not satisfied with just the ears and the vermicular appendage. Something similar was done with the so-called rooster-men, whom they managed to create with some reddish feathers, magnificent spurs, a horned beak, and claws. With these weapons, they riddled each other in dazzling fights, settling bets. The little ones visited the humanodromes. In some, humans raced, ridden by short, wiry Martian jockeys who gave electric shocks to their rumps in order to accelerate their velocity. In others, the runners raced like lightning after a golden hare, a bag of cash, or a thousand-peso bill that they never caught. They also saw some of the races called the Jealousy Races. These took place on a narrow, semi-cylindrical, circular metal track, from which the contestants couldn't leave. The cuckold, armed with a dagger, was placed ten meters from the Don Juan. If the cuckold failed to kill his rival within two laps, the Don Juan was armed and the cuckold disarmed. If the Don Juan failed to kill the cuckold within one lap, the cuckold was freed, and the Don Juan was thrown into a ring in the center of the track. There, a dozen wolf-men were released, who, within minutes, stripped the Don Juan's skeleton bare, and then lifted it up, dancing with it as a signal of their efficacy. Conversely, if the Don Juan managed to kill the cuckold, he was freed. Afterward, the ring was cleared, and the woman at the center of the dispute was thrown into it, where a rabid wolf-woman was unleashed upon her. It was optional for the surviving contender to enter the ring, armed with a dagger, to defend or to not defend the woman. Since the invention of this spectacle and up until the moment the little pigs arrived, despite countless performances, there was never a case of a suitor entering the ring with his lady to defend her, perhaps because the rabid wolf-women were horrible, terrible, invincible, and even venomous. When the pursued human was a male, the same races were organized with the women vying for his affections, and then there were instances where, in the final third, the woman jumped into the ring to defend her suitor, or rather, to die with him.

On a mild May morning, the little pigs and their tutor prepared to leave Mars in a luxurious craft, without revealing the object of their next study. The moment of departure arrived: white handkerchiefs were waved, and the craft, with uniformly accelerating velocity, disappeared beyond the limits of Einstein's slumbering universe.