علبة شوكولاتة: A Letter from an Alien

Dear Andira,

I'm very happy that you plan to visit our planet. Before you come, I want to tell you more about our life here.

Life here is very simple, when a baby alien is born, he's a strange creature, very innocent and smart and since that's very unhealthy for life on our planet, we send baby aliens to schools where they learn how to be real aliens, this system of schools is very convenient for us, we send our baby aliens to these schools innocent and smart, and we get them 12 years later, properly educated aliens with no innocence or smarts left. It's amazing.

After the 12 years of school, a young alien, chooses specific field of study, and go for special schools for a few years, the purpose of these schools is to ensure that no traces of the innocence and smarts are left and also since aliens tend to want to know many unnecessary knowledge, these special schools work on narrowing their minds into small fields, so they don't get overwhelmed by knowledge.

After finishing the special school, aliens do what we call Boxing, they get boxed. Boxing is when aliens go to box-shaped buildings, enter box-shaped rooms and sit on box-shaped desks, in front of box-shaped machines, from 9 to 5 everyday, it sounds boring but aliens love it, aliens would kill to get boxed. Once an alien get boxed, that what he does until he dies.

When an alien is ready, he/she gets married. Marriage here is very simple, there are no prerequisites, you don't need love or understanding or even respect, some aliens require these things but they're not a must. Male aliens get married when they are properly boxed and have a place to live and a vehicle, while female aliens get married when they find a male alien who is properly boxed and who have a place to live and a vehicle.

Then the couple of aliens, make alien babies, innocent and smart, that they send to schools and everything is repeated again. Isn't that so simple and beautiful?

When you're here you'll find that everyone is engaged in a big contest, everyone here is trying to score in it, the goal is to do good deeds to score more points and some deeds give you bonuses.

It's said that in the old days good deeds were done with no rewards expected, they were done out of Duty because they're the right thing to do regardless of the points, but we're not sure about that and I think that's a myth.

So, if you find someone doing something that you don't understand, don't be afraid, he probably read in the morning paper that doing this will give him 6738 points (and that's a big number). In this contest, somethings have more points than others, like wearing certain clothes, saying certain words, while other things like Honesty and Chivalry are "pointless" or with little points, so aliens don't bother much about these things.
Aliens from different scoring systems love each other (because you get a bonus for loving others) but they think that the other scoring systems are wrong and that their scoring system is the only one that's right, but that doesn't mean that we don't love other systems.

If you visit us now, you'll find us in a very special month, this month is an occasion for extra bonuses, so aliens do more of the point-full things and less of the point-less things, so aliens don't respect each other, they have a bad temper and they're tactless, but don't let that bother you, they're busy doing the point-full things, and that's very important.

On your way here, you'll find a hole, we call that the Alienzone hole, it's nothing, so don't worry much about it, we made that hole, and we're working on expanding it, it's a big project over here that everyone happily contributes to.

Andira, we're looking forward to your visit, you'll have so much fun, maybe we'll teach you the scoring thing I told you about. And if you decided to live here we can find you a good box and a male alien, you'll be very happy.

Yours always,
Alien