Wells pounded a fist against his nightstand, causing the candle there to shake and almost topple over, spilling hot wax across his lap. Wells scrunched his face in pain for a moment, then nodded. “But we could try maybe one small thing.”
I shook my head. “Sadly, we don’t know how that would affect the chain of time events that streams from that one action. You squash a worm yesterday that you didn’t before and that worm might have been the meal of a starving bird, who if it hadn’t eaten the worm, would not have had a clutch of eggs, which would have hatched into more birds, who would have spread seed across a portion of land that people needed to cultivate. The land might have remained fallow. People might have died that would have lived. Perhaps even you or I would not exist now.”
Wells considered that. “But what if we went into an alternate dimension instead, then it wouldn’t affect us.”
I thought about it. “True, perhaps, but we would have to grow old with the concern in the back of our minds that we could have doomed another world, another life form because of our weakness and poor choices.”
“And…” I paused ominiously. “What if the changes we precipitated by our selfish actions caused a vehement and violent attack on us in the future by those we had affected.”
Wells suddenly understood. “My God! Our War of the Worlds could have been caused by just such a blundering then.”
I nodded my head and sadly answered. “The more this continues. This so-called war of the worlds, I have to wonder if somehow we didn’t create this war as a result of our meddlings with time and space.”
It was a gloomy thought and though both of us felt oppressed by the loss of our loved ones and by the possibilities of suppression by the Invaders that could yet happen, we still came out of that night in a happy manner.
Wells sighed, then propped his chin in the cup of his hands on his nightstand. “Somewhere out there. Somewhere, there must be beings who are more sane than our own species and the ones attacking.”
I put an arm around his shoulder and squeezed. “And someday, I promise you, we will find them.”
A month later I stood on a lonely pier that overlooked the Seine. Across the sparkling waters that were silvered by a full moon stood what was left of the Eiffel Tower. Its top half that had once looked like a might sword piercing the heavens now lay sagged across the bottom half, a sad sculpture made from happier times. I shifted my feet uneasily, for the Invaders were now coming more into the open. I saw three of their ships hovering near the Eiffel Tower, search lights stabbing right and left beneath them.
I could just imagine the terror and consternation of any who might be alive and sheltering there now. Hard to imagine in some ways, because the adults were all gone, as if vanished from the face of the earth.
