TRUNDLING

(MIND TRUNDLING)

Mind Trundling, or Trundling, is the defining act of a tentacular Martian creature called the "Trundle." A Trundle Trundles another creature by copying all of the creature's memories into its own brain! Yow! A soft "Trund-tacle" is inserted in each ear, where they massage the brain for approximately six Earth minutes, copying all of the memories over like a biological computer hard drive. The mind of the victim is left completely intact! He or she is effectively cloned into an alien body, and the Trundle becomes an exact mental duplicate of its victim, give or take a few instincts. Trundles come in three varieties, the Common Trundle(pg25), the War Trundle(PG39), and the Trundle-Bird(pg40).

Blank or animal-trundled Martians are considerred wildlife, but human-trundled entomophagic Martians are now granted limited citizenship in specific countries. It isn't rare for modern business owners to let several Common Trundles copy their mind, with intent to hire the clones as cheap employees, or "copy-labor."

{illustration of a Jack Russel Terrier being Trundled by a War Trundle}

Trundles typically don't Trundle anything at all until they're three Martian years old. During this child (fledgling) phase they survive on instinct alone, effectively sleepwalking. If a sentient adult Trundle is shaken too hard, its mind might erase, or "etch-a-sketch" returning it to the blank slate, memory-free condition of its youth. Its instincts, however, will allow any blank adult Trundle to successfully stalk and grab new victim! Avoid Carbon forests, and the dark alleys of Earth's urban centers!

{illustration of a baby Trundle-Bird}

A Trundle, dissatisfied with the mind it has copied, can simply "reboot" its own brain by Trundling another creature. A Trundle can only contain one copied consciousness at a time! Most human-Trundled Trundles (Trundlemen) try and keep their new mind forever, with a few rare exceptions in the case of suicidal human Trundlees. The average lifespan of the Common Trundle is 45 Earth years. A War Trundle lives for an average of just 22, but a Trundle-Bird may easilly survive a century!

{Diagram of tentacle with parts labeled}

The experience of being Trundled, while still dreadful to certain human philosophies and religions, is painless and sometimes pleasant! It was first described by by Wes II as "Almost like having a sponge bath around your brain, punctuated by a loud, wet, uh sort of a schlurping sound." The trundled creature wakes up from a brief coma dream with no clear memory of the event. For instance Wes II's human antecedent, Wesley Liu, originally reported his experience on Mars as missing time. "I thought I'd passed out before even landing! I woke up in the ship with slimey ears thinking, oh no, mission failure!"

Despite the relative safety of the tentacling process, trundlophobia is now the 3rd commonest phobia, followed by acrophobia, and glossophobia! <-In the opinion of the Merflin's Encyclopedia staff, this is endemic of a soft bigotry. Every lonely human should try having their brain Trundled at least once! We make the perfect pets, pals, and proofreaders!