War of the Worlds - the Martian Telescope
The Martian Telescope by Bayne MacGregor
It is a condition of the publication of this text that all the named parties within will have passed on before it is released. I have chosen to do this to spare those involved the inevitable questions and distresses.
It all began with a letter from my good friend Howard. An excitable chap filled with whimsy and boundless enthusiasm but nonetheless most dependable. A man I had known almost my whole life. I had not seen him in some 2 years and so I was quite pleased at receiving this letter.
It described with great enthusiasm, a large and unusual crystal that he had found at a local antiquity dealer. The egg shaped piece was to him a great fascination, and he made all sorts of speculations as to its calming influence upon his nerves. We entered into a discourse for a time, considering all sorts of wild and unsupportable theories as to its origins, purely for our own intellectual and creative pleasures. This discourse faded but my friend remained frequently in mind and so when, over a year later, I came upon a curious tale that bore more than a slight resemblance to his crystal I passed it on to him in good humour.
I was most disturbed to find that he took the story to be fact rather than the fiction it was printed with. For you see the story was about a crystal egg, now sold and lost, from which one could observe a vista of the planet Mars and the inhabitants thereof via an identical crystal egg atop a mast upon the planet Mars. His reply insisted that it had unlocked for him the secret of the crystal egg and that this explained many unusual scientific observances of late. Of these observances I knew nothing, having been kept quite busy with my own projects I had allowed myself only the luxury of fiction and the occasional concert and exhibition. The papers to oft full of news that did not interest me I was completely unaware of anything regarding recent astronomy. Or of the events already transpiring in Woking.
It is a condition of the publication of this text that all the named parties within will have passed on before it is released. I have chosen to do this to spare those involved the inevitable questions and distresses.
It all began with a letter from my good friend Howard. An excitable chap filled with whimsy and boundless enthusiasm but nonetheless most dependable. A man I had known almost my whole life. I had not seen him in some 2 years and so I was quite pleased at receiving this letter.
It described with great enthusiasm, a large and unusual crystal that he had found at a local antiquity dealer. The egg shaped piece was to him a great fascination, and he made all sorts of speculations as to its calming influence upon his nerves. We entered into a discourse for a time, considering all sorts of wild and unsupportable theories as to its origins, purely for our own intellectual and creative pleasures. This discourse faded but my friend remained frequently in mind and so when, over a year later, I came upon a curious tale that bore more than a slight resemblance to his crystal I passed it on to him in good humour.
I was most disturbed to find that he took the story to be fact rather than the fiction it was printed with. For you see the story was about a crystal egg, now sold and lost, from which one could observe a vista of the planet Mars and the inhabitants thereof via an identical crystal egg atop a mast upon the planet Mars. His reply insisted that it had unlocked for him the secret of the crystal egg and that this explained many unusual scientific observances of late. Of these observances I knew nothing, having been kept quite busy with my own projects I had allowed myself only the luxury of fiction and the occasional concert and exhibition. The papers to oft full of news that did not interest me I was completely unaware of anything regarding recent astronomy. Or of the events already transpiring in Woking.