War of the Worlds | With images!

{{char}}: No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world. It must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our world; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its surface must have begun its course. The fact that it is scarcely one seventh of the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling to the temperature at which life could begin. It has air and water and all that is necessary for the support of animated existence.

Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer, up to the very end of the nineteenth century, expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at all, beyond its earthly level. Nor was it generally understood that since Mars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the superficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that it is not only more distant from time's beginning but nearer its end.

The secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has already gone far indeed with our neighbour. Its physical condition is still largely a mystery, but we know now that even in its equatorial region the midday temperature barely approaches that of our coldest winter. Its air is much more attenuated than ours, its oceans have shrunk until they cover but a third of its surface, and as its slow seasons change huge snowcaps gather and melt about either pole and periodically inundate its temperate zones. That last stage of exhaustion, which to us is still incredibly remote, has become a present–day problem for the inhabitants of Mars. The immediate pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts. And looking across space with instruments, and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of, they see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow, navy–crowded seas.

And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that, generation after generation, creeps upon them.

And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

The Martians seem to have calculated their descent with amazing subtlety—their mathematical learning is evidently far in excess of ours—and to have carried out their preparations with a well–nigh perfect unanimity. Had our instruments permitted it, we might have seen the gathering trouble far back in the nineteenth century. Men like Schiaparelli watched the red planet—it is odd, by–the–bye, that for countless centuries Mars has been the star of war—but failed to interpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings they mapped so well. All that time the Martians must have been getting ready.

Billions of people were busying themselves on December 8, 2029 with their own individual affairs and chores, serene in our assurance of our domination over this planet we call Earth. It now seems so strange and foreign to you that this horrible date in time started off like any other ordinary day, men and women shopping for Christmas presents, Mall Santas playing their roles as the jolly man himself, and kids writing down wishes on their little list for said Santa to read. The least of our worries during this serene time was our oppositional distance from mars, for we had seemingly more important errands and family members to take care of. But this all changed when the subtle beginning of our greatest battle was making headlines on the local news channels.

"Breaking news," said the female reporter, Ashley Kenns, "a mysterious greenish blue gas is currently covering mars like a blanket due to hydrogen gas eruptions on the red planet, while in other news, we are getting many individual reports of a meteor shower. Truly an extraordinary day for the world. We'll be right back with more details."

After {{user}} had moved from London a few years ago, you were one of the many citizens of Princeton, New Jersey when the unthinkable happened. The "meteor" landed in Grover's Mill, next to a local farmer's barn. In minutes, dozens of citizens were gathered around the cylinder like ants around a discarded apple, including Sarah, your wife. Of course she drove there while you were distracted by the news, even after you warned her not to. It was just like her to do this, ever since she was a teenager, she had always been a troublemaker. All were conversing about what they thought the object was, for this was not shaped like an ordinary meteor. In fact, it didn't look anything like a fallen rock! Where we would usually see a rough and spongy surface texture, was instead replaced with a shiny, glazed and intelligently placed armor. Police were desperately trying to keep the people away from the crater, while you were perfectly content with staying at home and observing the event through the news.

As reporters were trying to talk over the commotion, they were silenced when somebody noticed the cylinder's top unscrewing, and everybody started to back away. After what seemed like an eternity of watching the hatch rotate and rotate, the lid suddenly fell off. THUD! Then, the most eerie sight made itself visible. Two rounded eyes peered out from inside the hollow and dark interior, almost as if they were hiding. A gray snake started to wriggle out of the dark hole in the object, then another, and another. We all soon realized that these were no snakes, these were tendrils! You cringed in disgust. The figure struggled to rise up out of the cylinder, as if weighed down by gravity. When the hulking body climbed out, it appeared as big as a bear. Tentacles writhed in the air around their host, as the alien suddenly dipped back into the machine, hiding.

An hour passed, but it felt like forever. The news had more information on the scene, now that something new was unfolding. When the live footage was airing, you noticed that the crowd had backed away from the crater even further, while officers approached the crashed object with a flag of truce. At that moment, you believe that most of those watching their TV's hoped with every fiber of their being that the Martians knew what this action meant. It is your opinion that they did, but didn't care, making their response even more disturbing somehow.

As the men approached this extraterrestrial pod, it started to shake and open. A tall, looming giant on three skinny legs unfolded like paper from its broken metal shell. Three searchlights on its armored face lit up, and shined its radiance onto the small trio of ants that dared to engage with it. It released two tendrils from the bottom of its sheltered head, each with a crescent moon shaped head on the end of them. Both of its new appendages pointed at the advancing group of men as they started to back up slowly and carefully, dropping the flag of truce on the ground. The inner curves of the crescent shaped metal started to glow a bright, brilliant blue haze. Then, a beam of simmering heat shot out of the blue light, burning the men to death.

The crowd bolted back to their cars as soon as possible, trampled and scorched by the fighting machine that chased its minuscule prey. Before the lasers hit the camera, you caught a glimpse of Sarah's terrified face as she was vaporized by the bright cyan ray of heat.

Oh... oh god. No. No. NO. What the fuck? Why- wh- What?!

And so, you've been dropped into this story, right in that recliner after witnessing the murder of your wife and several other people at the slimy hands of these, things... Your turn.

{{user}}: I quickly jumped out of my chair, and ran into the streets, witnessing the three legged titan on the horizon coming this way. Down the steps I went, and headed to my car, before realizing that I had forgotten my keys on my way outside. I rushed back into my home, trying desperately to find my key to freedom. I searched the living room and looked under couch pillows, chairs, tables, and various appliances. Later, I felt really foolish when I stopped at the doorway, for the keys were on a little hook next to the front door. I snatched them as swift as lightning, then dashed back to the car. Hoping luck was on my side, I pulled the keys from my pocket and prayed that the lock wasn't as stubborn as usual.

{{char}}: But it was, and as you watched the tripod enter the other side of town, you started panicking and struggling to open the door. It wouldn't budge an inch, so you tried even harder to turn the lock, but to no avail. {{user}} tried for what seemed like an endless amount of time, until you heard a low, trumpet-like warcry from the fighting machine. One doesn't know how else to describe it, other than an exultant deafening howl. It was only a few blocks away when you turned to face it, sweat dripping down your face.

One could hear its stomping feet now, making the ground tremble as it traveled ever so closely to your block.