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    War of the Worlds Combo
    War of the Worlds Combo
    War of the Worlds Combo
    Ebook218 pages3 hours

    War of the Worlds Combo

    By John Pirillo

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    About this ebook

    Earth is being invaded by cruel monsters from another time and space. The event is so powerful that the masses don't even know it's happening until it's too late.

    This combo explores how the War of the Worlds began and how two brilliant writers, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, joined together to explore the mystery of
    the battle of the worlds, and then to solve it.

    Follow our heroes as they develop a friendship that never ends and explore space and time in ways that our current scientists are considering and exploring at
    this very moment.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJohn Pirillo
    Release dateMar 1, 2014
    ISBN9781311526779
    War of the Worlds Combo
    Author

    John Pirillo

    The author was born in Washington, Pennsylvannia. He loves animals and birds. Has two pet cockatiels that keep him company while he writes. He has a lovely daughter and a rascally grandson. He is rich in friends that matter and well adjusted to a life of challenges. He writes and draws every day. He loves anything science fiction, fantasy or extremely well written. Same goes for movies and TV. Not married currently, but has an eye and ear open to possibilities. :)

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      Book preview

      War of the Worlds Combo - John Pirillo

      Preface

      For a long time humanity appeared as if it would disappear off the face of the planet, the Martian War Machines destroyed anything and everything that moved. They were ruthless and cruel as no one could ever have imagined in their wildest dreams. Their experimentation on human beings went far beyond any tales of terror from the World Wars of old. No, they were a race of cold, calculating beings, whose intellect was so remote from the simplest of human feelings and emotions, that the word compassion, kindness, friendship, love and sympathy just didn’t exist.

      Into that world H.G.Wells and Jules Verne forge a friendship that will be tested as no other as they face the War of the Worlds.

      WAR OF THE WORLDS COMBO

      JOHN PIRILLO

      A SMASHWORDS EDITION

      COPYRIGHT 2014

      Volume One: The Forever Friends

      Chapter One: The Authors

      Jules was a mild manner man, far from the more adventurous image his stories cast upon the world and its hungry readers of his fantastic adventures. Born in Paris, France, to poor parents, he was never one to seek attention, but somehow always got it anyway.

      His parents, Franco and Marie Verne, were famous writers and artists. They had chosen early on in their marriage to split the duties of script and brush to create harmony and balance the needs of the family to the needs of making an earnest and rewarding living. Franco Pierre Emile Verne was a large man with steep sideburns and a large bushy beard, which his mother would call the burning bush sometimes because he would catch it on fire from time to time when he lit his pipe to smoke.

      Marie was the sensitive one and Jules got that side from her, but his father was a fisherman of tales, always throwing bigger and bigger stories back into the waters because of his seemingly endless backlog of adventures only he could imagine. Jules was born with a dash of Marie and a huge helping of his father Jules Senior.

      Jules Senior always put his son to bed with a huge story, complete with multiple characters and places of exotic interest. Marie, on the other hand, would have Jules or Junior as she would call him, help her in the kitchen. There in her splendid world, he learned about the craft of spices, and how just the right amount of parsley, and sage could improve the taste of beef. And the holding back of salt would stop the food from making you so thirsty afterwards.

      His sisters, Marie, Chenelle, and Julie made fun of him because he was so set on becoming a master chef. He loved storytelling, but it was evident from early on that food was a direction he would probably end up mastering a career in. His father loved the idea, but his mother encouraged him to write.

      Jules, a man of Letters will go much further in the modern world, than a Chef. Perhaps someday there will come a time when a Chef will be seen by the entire world and then his fame will occlude that of a writer, but that seems impossibility at this time. She said brightly.

      Jules immediately perked up, his head full of ideas, just like their oven was filled with cup cakes at that time. Imagine this, Mom, a device that will hold a man’s face within it and project it around the world so everyone can see it.

      His mother had given him a hug of delight. You’re so creative, Jules. No matter what you choose to do, I know you will be a success, and no matter you choose I will love you no more and no less. She said proudly, and then leaned closer to whisper. But don’t tell your dad that, he’ll use it against me.

      At the time Jules didn’t know what she meant, but as the years peeled away from his youth and his adventures grew, he came to understand the meaning of many things which had eluded him in his youth.

      Jules fondness for his mother was only exceeded by his fondness for inventing. He and his sister, Chenie, as he called Chenelle, would go out back into the tool shed and weasel various components of old stoves, pipes, bolts, wire, and whatever they could find and make things. Their father and mother thought it unusual for them to take on such a hobby, as most siblings, especially male and female didn’t want to be together so much, but Jules and Chenie were like hand and glove.

      One day they proudly built a new kind of dog house. It was built so that wherever the dog was a door in it could open. They called it the automatic dog house. Jules and Chenie sat in front of their house one weekend and tried to sell it. Their father and mother watched from the bedroom balcony with amusement, until one elderly gentleman stopped to take a look at the house. His face was all red and puffy from his exertions. He was quite overweight. He listened to the children explain what the device was for, and then he took out a card and handed it to Chenie, and then one to Jules. Next, he gave them each ten francs. Whistling, he gathered up the doghouse under one arm and walked off.

      Jules and Chenie were heroes at the dinner table that night. When the father and mother looked at the cards, they were flabbergasted. My God, you children know who just bought your work?

      They shook their heads. The Ministry of Defense!

      Jules and Chenie jumped up and down for several minutes, yelling at the top of their lungs, while the family sat at the table quietly watching with amusement. Finally, they sat down, picked up their fallen napkins and placed them properly back in their laps again.

      Sorry, Mama. Sorry, Papa. Chenelle said quietly.

      Not me! Jules burst out and let out another whoop of happiness.

      Needless to say Jules was relegated to clean up duty that night. And cleaning up after a family of six is no

      easy task, especially when it’s a six course meal like

      tonight was. Jules carefully cleaned each piece of

      silverware after letting them soak in boiling water for about thirty minutes, and then placed them in their slide out drawer his father had made for his mother. He called it the Utensils drawer.

      Jules asked him if he had ever tried to sell the idea. Jules Senior’s eyebrows arched high on his forehead, indicating the thought had never struck him, then answered. But if I sold the idea, then everyone else would have it and I would no longer have the pride of owning the only one.

      So its pride is more important than sharing? Jules had asked innocently.

      Marie had stepped in then to save him. Your father knows what’s best for his family, doesn’t he, Mon Cherie. She said, pinching his right cheek playfully. He turned around and gave her a swing around the kitchen as if dancing with her, while the children rushed in to watch. They began clapping their hands, and soon they were all dancing with each other.

      Jules would always remember those peaceful happy nights, because a day would come when they no longer existed. But at that time, and in that moment, his heart was full of delight and warmth as only the member of a contented family could experience.

      The next morning Marie had asked Jules Senior to watch the kids while she went to her Naturalist Meeting. She was the Chairman. He gave her a peck and with a smile shooed her on the way. He winked at the kids. Since its summer and the cat is away, perhaps the mice will play?

      Chenie shook a finger at her father. Naughty. Naughty!

      Jules preened under her admiring glance. But of course, or it would be no fun.

      And so they had all dressed up in their outdoors clothing, as it was dizzily that day and made their way to the bakery shop up Andelay Street. There Montclief the Chef brought out a tray of sweets he always kept for that special time when his customers needed to be naughty.

      He plied the family with raspberry tarts, strawberry tarts, lemon squares, cherry froths and his specially made crèmes, which he nearly froze in his basement with ice left over from the winter a few months ago.

      Jules, again, etched this memory into his brain, knowing someday it would become precious. It was not that he could

      see into the future, but he had overhead his parents sometimes at night, remembering their youth and the things

      of importance they had forgotten and wished they could

      remember, but were long gone.

      Jules had promised himself that he would always treasure his past as much as he valued his present, and later the future. He was a child of the moment, and a man of the present. A young man true. But a man, nevertheless. For in the France of that time young men of thirteen to fourteen were treated as adults, and often would step into the shoes of their fathers to take their paths in life.

      Anyway, getting back on topic, forgive me my delays in getting back to the delicate and sweet Marie. She was in the forefront of the naturalist movement, in a group of French leaders who believed that food was next to God, but had to be administered properly, or it would become the devil’s playground…causing such horrible things as Javier’s missing toes, or Grand Ma’s black growth on her scalp, or the horrible smelling things between one’s toes and fingernails.

      Cleanliness and nutrition is the next best thing to godliness, Junior, she would tell him in her sweet, lilting voice. And he believed her, even as he believed Jules Senior when he boasted of chasing a dinosaur across the Antarctic ice for its precious oils. After all, everyone knew that dinosaur oil was the healthiest drink one could consume for one’s health. Though sometimes when he went into the local pharmacy he was puzzled that he never saw any dinosaur oil advertised there. He had asked the pharmacist and been told only Old Timers could purchase it. He had said that with such a strange grin that Jules thought he was pulling his leg, and as he grew older he came to understand what dinosaur oil really was and laughed at his youthful naivety.

      But despite all those incredible uplifting moments, Jules found himself lingering longer and longer in the park beneath the Eiffel Tower, savoring all the different personalities of people who strolled, ran, hopped, skipped, cleaned, patrolled, and did the countless thousand other things humanity did moment to moment, and day to day.

      Jules was becoming a writer and his ability to observe was being honed, not only by his exquisite diet of fatherly and motherly advise, but by his own inclination to go beyond what was expected of his personal education. To go beyond what people said, to what people truly meant, and what their actions foretold with subtle movements, such as a glimpse, a nod, a dismissal.

      It was on one of those solitaire sojourns beneath the

      glistening gold tower of the Eiffel that he first met

      Wells. Jules had been eating a pastry his mother and he had made together. She had insisted he eat all of it, making sure that she added some sausage into it, as well as the creamy topping he liked so much made of honey.

      What’s that? Wells had asked in his rather stiff and proper English accent.

      Jules had looked up; his mouth quite stuffed with pastry, with topping oozing around the corners of his lips and said profoundly. Mmmph?

      Wells had broken into laughter. Jules had thought he was making fun of him and was ready to jump up and stuff the pastry between Wells’ ears, until Wells flopped down beside him, and offered a different sort of pastry made of whole ground wheat and topped with raspberries.

      Jules eyes bugged out. You have raspberries? He asked, his pastry spitting out as he tried to talk and swallow at the same time.

      Wells nodded his head, and then did a remarkable thing. He split the pastry in two and offered Jules half. And that did it. Their friendship was sealed in gold. And never to be broken.

      Jules accepted the offering, setting his own pastry aside to savor the raspberries, eating each one as if they were the last his lips would ever touch. When he had finished those, he nibbled at the pastry proper, relishing the deep brown sugar that was thickly addressed to its sides with his tongue, and then gulping it down before it could melt away.

      In between their snacks the two boys covertly examined each other. Jules noted that Wells had a kind of dark look to him, besides the obvious hair color. It was like he was a storm waiting to happen. Later on, Jules would remember that first insight when Wells burst into one of his famous tempers. But Wells was not an unjust person. His anger was not generally reserved for the innocent, but rather those things he couldn’t change, or those things he wanted to change, but hadn’t found a way to yet. He, just like Jules, loved writing. He had read all the eclectic literature of his time from Asimov, Heinlein, Disney, Pixar and the late, but great Lucas and Spielberg, one of the finest writing teams on the planet that ever lived.

      There wasn’t a child alive who hadn’t read one of the team’s super stories about beings from other worlds and wars between distant galaxies.

      In fact it was those two that had urge Wells to pursue his own story War of the Worlds, about the Atlanteans and

      Lemurians who had demolished each other and ruined most

      of the planet in their efforts to conquer the other.

      He had described the Atlanteans as giants with a third eye in the middle of their forehead, and the Lemurians as winged creatures that resembled humans, but had foul temper and no love of life whatsoever, even going so far as to eat their own kind when annoyed with them.

      That had set his mother in fits of terror after reading it. People eating people. Oh, Wells, that’s just horrible! No civilized being would ever do such a thing."

      Wells had tried to explain to his mother that it was just a fairy tale, but she had said that humans needed tales that were more uplifting, and his would make them sad. That had set Wells to working on his next story, The Invisible Man, where a crime fighter used his abilities to vanish to track down Jack the Ripper. His father had actually liked that one and sent it off to the local paper, The England Royal Journal. It had been published and for a time young Wells had become a household name to match that of Verne.

      Even young Jules had made a stir with his story about a vehicle that could burrow beneath the earth, which he had called the Nautilus, and called the story The Adventures of Captain Nemo.

      While the science was weak, it was enough to impress quite a few scientific scholars, who sought out Jules to see what else he could come up with. Later he had found out from his father that he had sent them, because the Admiralty had wanted to try out new ideas to strengthen their armed forces, and his young mind was a brilliant one.

      His father had been quite proud of

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