This is totally unreal... I am just chugging away at the word count. Sure, the words aren't exactly in an order that lends itself to an intelligible novel... whatever... editor's problem, not mine.
CHAPTER ZERO
"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 scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water."
- War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells
- - - - - - - - - - -
Yeah yeah yeah, whatever.
Those intelligences that watched the Earth way back then, well, they kept on watching all throughout the twentieth century, too. And what little of the twenty-first they had to themselves, well, they were still playing peek-a-boo from their little duck-blind out there, making their plans and dreaming their little dreams.
Fat lot of good it did them, Herbie.
Got a problem with my tone? Well, I'm sorry about that, but I get a little peeved at H.G. Wells and Jules Verne and all those other turn-of-the-century woolgatherers rambling on about invasions and observations and such nonsense, scaring the bejesus out of everyone from page to page.
Nobody's invading anybody today.
Trust me.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Somewhere on the moon, far away from the assorted toys and scrap left behind by fledgling human space explorers whose mighty wings have been clipped and silenced for many a year, a telephone rang. A leafy green frond picked it up and held it to what appeared to be five gigantic ochre asparagus stalks held together by a pulsing red jumprope. Several wisps of grassy stalks waved themselves over the telephone receiver and began to rasp against each other.
"Howdy," said the bundle of greenery. It twirled the coiled plastic cord for a moment with another leafy frond. "Yes. Sure. I understand. Okay. Toodles." It rustled its stalks and then it put the telephone receiver back on the hook.
Linear Mode
