If Ray Bradbury could write us out of this escalating war, how would he do it? Brush up your writing skills and add your version to keep the opening idea alive as if you were the master story teller himself. Who knows, maybe we'll solve the world's problems along the way..
(Try to keep it under 100 words if you can, but come back to add another twist to the plot.)

Start with this. Rhyming isn't necessary, just creativity.


Inside their dark chambers, sleek preditors wait for their targets of unsuspecting souls as men in stars and stripes become indifferent to the hangman's toll.

Mankind succumbs to the illusions he is told to believe while the ones doing the telling have decided to pack up and leave.

The hours count time backwards as fate draws near to a time when indifference will be replaced by justified fear.......



[This message has been edited by Celestial (edited 03-15-2003).]

Beyond the stars and heavens, aliens keep vigilant watch on the folly of greedy men, waiting to intercede should mushroom clouds appear...

Hill 451

It was a special pleasure to see things blow up, to see things blackened and changed. With the loaded gun in his fists, with this great tank spitting its smelly gasoline upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing war-hero speaking of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of the battle field. With his bullet proof helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he pulled the pin and the house jumped up in a gorging explosion that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black.


LOL, I have too much free time

The soldier watched the remaining embers glow with morbid glory well beyond duty's call. Perverse pleasure was halted by the sight of a crying boy. Tiny dark eyes were crusted with bloody tears infused with remnants of what used to be his home.

Mr. Bradbury, to my knowledge has never been a really "experimental" writer. Much to his credit, I suppose, for if he was, then he wouldn't be Ray Bradbury. But what this string made me think of (apologies for the slight departure from intent, but i think the mood may be right) is the one part in Vonnegut's 'Slaughterhouse Five' that brought me to outright tears. It's where Billy is in a theater watching war movies and slips in time, causing the movie to run backwards. People are put together from their pieces, their tears run back into their eyes, the bombers collect their cargo, which then goes back home and is disassembled, to the betterment of all. It's not very Bradbury, but it's definately "writing ourselves out of this war"...
Thanks, Celestial.

Dan

If only we could run the reel backwards on Bush, not that Gore would have been much better!

Any sense that we should have run the reel back on Hussein?

Excuse my literary ignorance. I'm still a student of the work. I did inject "if he could.." and the aliens are watching us in this tale, leaving their entree at bay. I'm just trying to translate the luster of Bradbury's writing into today's issues and have a little interaction at the same time.

Can we get back to this fledgling story now...

Lieutenant Marcus Hill gave the enemy a human heart at the sight of such an innocent motherless life. His demons lurked just beyond a distant sound as combating comrades called.



[This message has been edited by Celestial (edited 03-17-2003).]

Then the MOAB burst, and all were no more...
once again friendly fire fury. 451 hill no more. "The stars still burn
bright in heaven: tonight on earth we endure the moment of our brief existence, hoping for a glimpse of that far bright joy, so crisply cut can we leave this warm womb of home."
The captain mused again were my courdinates correct? Of course he thought HQ has the intelligence, and sat/photos, no problem, I'll just be back to base soon to confirm the objective. It was an exellent run. I've got three more before tonight is over.

[This message has been edited by uncle (edited 03-17-2003).]

I don't know how to continue the string, but here's a separate fragment:

Salah had never been outside the city, but had seen enough fear and death to make him an old man. He was five. Two brothers dead, one missing. He heard the Americans were coming to kill them, but his father feared death from inside.

Major Cooper had been ordered to stop. He and his troops were fifteen miles north of the city. The tanks and copters were stopped. The machines hummed as they waited. Rumors about a sudden death from within the city put everything on hold. The Americans were told to wait. They were not to approach. Intelligence was checking into some satellite photos and intercepted messages. A large unmarked truck, surrounded by men, was moving toward the center of the city.

"Would they really do it?" Major Cooper nodded. He had been in the mideast for over a decade. "They would do it," he said. He wondered why they weren't reversing course, getting as far away as possible. He had only seen this kind of thing in training films. They were dramatizations. No one knew, really, what would happen, or how. He only knew he wanted to be further away.

Salah looked out the window and saw masked soldiers coming down the street around an old, large truck. They seemed frightened. They could not leave. Some of the men held guns on the others. They were frozen at the truck. It carried a smell of death and fear and inevitability. His father pulled him from the window. He held him and began to pray. Salah felt, rather than heard, the light and heat and terror. Earth exploded suddenly. He never felt anything again.

Major Cooper, at the same time, looking from the top of the tank, saw the large, white flash. He ducked into the tank in time. When he came up, there was nothing but smoke and cloud and death and stench.

Many of his men had not ducked. They sobbed in fear and pain. Major Cooper said, "It is done. They did it themselves." The troops could go now. Death had ended the standoff.

The disarmament was finished. As it turned out, they did have a nuke. Major Cooper turned to his staff sargeant. "You owe me fifty bucks".

The spores they wait, to mold. to cry. to come again to the sterile ground these pioneers the seeds, who were before small, they were unknown, to all unseen, to many waiting silent. Always knowing that with time, patience will overcome the large, the loud, the brash, the bold, the rain must fall.
As the bodies rot on the field of blood lust, lives lost nutrients are not partial to whom they let live. Someones got to eat or be eaten, time to move, grow or be grown upon. The field began again..... And then it thought,

......what next shall life be?

Major Cooper chomped nerviously on his tasteless gum while surveying the leveled ground checkered with mangled mortar and human remains.

Emerging from the rubble, the same sad boy appeared, breathing shallow life through his bloody tears.

Lieutenant Hill had found compassion in his final moments of life, by facing the consequences he left for the homeless tattered youth. And now, fearless Major Cooper unknowingly inherited the dead patriot's wisdom, captured and held in the minature boy's stare.

[This message has been edited by Celestial (edited 03-18-2003).]

"How can he be alive in the middle of total devistation?"

"What are you talking about, Major? Who's alive?"

"That child standing lost in the chaos. See him...over there by that mountain of burning brush on the eastern edge of what's left."

"Where? I don't see anyone, Cooper. No one could have survived the blast at that range. Heck, we're on the perimeter and our men still sustained injuries. The medics are en route. Let 'em check your eyes. Maybe they were affected by the blast."

Was it possible that the war child was a figment of his own making? A residual effect of too many years on foreign soil. And yet, there he stood....staring as if searching for answers that no one could give.

[This message has been edited by Celestial (edited 03-18-2003).]

Yet there they stood, the boy and the burning bush, the second writhing as it was consumed, the first...merely standing passive and yet terrible in the firelight.

The passive and terrible figure took a step forward. And in the Major's head, a still small voice, more than that---a whisper!--rose from nowhere and yet everywhere. A young voice, but aged by horror and weariness as nothing sentient should be aged. A voice out of the Deeps, but also from the burning light ahead.