Chronicles of Perfectly Documented Martian Mundanity

Dear Journal,

I've landed in yet another version of 2021, and I'll admit, today's stop caught me off guard in the most amusing way. Imagine a world where not only humanity's achievements but the very act of brushing one’s teeth is chronicled with the same vigor as the discovery of fire. Welcome to this peculiar timeline, where they owe much of their detailed obsession to a curious cultural development dating back to the European Middle Ages.

In this version of history, an order by the name of the "Chronological Clerics" emerged, practicing the sacred art of documenting everything—yes, every ridiculous thing you could imagine. They've got scrolls dedicated to the migratory habits of garden snails from the 800s, which, frankly, says enough about them. Now, that level of detail has been turbo-charged by technology, and the latest thing to capture their fancy is today's landing of Perseverance II on Martian soil.

Ah, and Perseverance II, what an interesting story. It turns out it received its name not from innovation or bravery, but from a clerical blunder—literally. During its commissioning, a misplaced letter got copied down, and here we are with an oddly familiar suffix suggesting déjà vu.

The real adventure of the day was, however, not just watching the rover touch down on Martian dust—though that's impressive on its own. The spectacle unfolded with the troupe of "Meta-Scribes" assigned to the mission. These folks are the modern-day descendants of the Clerics, tasked with recording absolutely every, and I mean every, aspect of this milestone down to the dust impact statistics collected from the rover's descent. Spanning several encyclopedic volumes, each note reads like a melodrama where even the tiniest tilt of a camera lens isn't just noted but given its own story arc. Text like "The Great Static Discharge of 14:03" spawns analyses I could only liken to literary dissection.

Civilians here seem to have adopted this compulsive documentation as well. Local schools teach transcribing daily life with such energy that not a single sneeze goes unchronicled. Suzie’s accidental trip entering the school hallway? Expect twenty pages—and, apparently, now every playground spat is archived as carefully as history's biggest battles. It confuses the children each year as they attempt to distinguish themselves from the myriads of similarly named contemporaries. Finding their place in history becomes something of a fevered sport.

And don’t get me started on their dining habits. I ventured into a local Martian eatery—yes, they have those up here—and ordered soup. A simple soup, mind you, but to my surprise, it came with a detailed backstory extending three generations back. Not a spoonful is left uncontextualized. Who knew “Potage à la Grand’mère Louise's Third Cousin Twice Removed” could then also be a conversation starter?

Thinking back on today, as preparations begin for my next jaunt—perhaps to a dimension where mutual understanding reigns among tectonic plates—I contemplate the true essence of this timeline. There’s humor buried within their self-imposed complexity, and there's a real lesson here, too. They've brilliantly grasped at the vines of existence, every leaf recorded for eternity, yet seem unaware of their own pruning in the process. Are they drowning in their own indispensable moss? Perhaps. But, oh, what a vibrant theater they've stitched with tapestries of their own monotony.

And so here they stand, at the frontiers of our cosmos, wandering not just to new worlds but into endless footnotes of their own narrative. Each new Mars footprint captured with the same scrutinizing excitement once reserved for royal ascensions. I often wonder if in trying to preserve everything, they’re immortalizing nothing at all.

As I jot down thoughts on the dullest pen in existence (a necessity, because, naturally, heaven forbid a detail slip through in this timeline), the day in its twisted humor closes on me. Not every reality is as engaging as the last, yet every reality does echo the profound absurdity of the human quest for meaning. Yet here I am, moments after witnessing humanity scoot further into the cosmos, musing over misplaced quantum memorandums and trying to find the pencil sharpener. What a life.