Jules Verne was the French father of Science Fiction. He and H.G. Wells changed the course of history with their astounding tales of invaders from space, men in the moon, revengeful captains under the sea, mysterious islands and time machines that criss crossed time and space. I honor them for their contribution to my own memories as well as my writing styles.

Back to War of the Worlds -----

Jules shook his head. “Not me. Hard enough getting along with all my sisters. Imagine trying to do that with hundreds of sisters….”

Wells laughed in amusement several seconds, then nodded his head and sat down again. “Right as always. I only have one and that’s already one far too many.”

Jules and Wells laughed at their own private in joke, then subsided into silence again. Both young teens settled down again, Jules on the stone and Wells beside him on the ground.

“I’d like that, you know.” Jules said finally, breaking the silence.

“Why?”

“Could you imagine the look on Missus Iman’s face if I showed up for her fifth grade math class and I was aleady there.”

They both broke into a riot of laughter. So loud that several older gentlemen walking past, stopped to see what they might be doing to create such joviality. In those days and times even a smidgen of brightness was not something to be turned down. Finally, after Wells and Jules became conscious of the two older men, they shrugged their shoulders and began trudging to the fisherman’s market down the road.

The market was still open, but run by the wives now and their children who were not in school. Life goes on. And so does the need to eat, drink and sleep.

What Jules and Wells didn’t know at the time was that the war was going to siphon off more than just parents soon. They themselves, like all unfortunate  young men, face the chance that they will also become cannon fodder in the ambitions and ravages of war. While they would have considered it their duty to serve, both would feel that they were descending into evil. And of the two, only Wells would despise himself for the act, for Jules, a far thinker from his earliest days, would not even consider serving his or any other country. He did not follow hollow promises and empty flags, or moments of glory. Death was not his mentor, nor his inspiration, but life. And he would do anything possible to insure that life was the force he saluted and not its direct opposite, the vacuum of obliteration.