Game 8, Book 1 Vote
1. All that is left of that time now are the shattered memories of those who survived.
2. At the twilight of the nineteenth century humankind met with a shocking reversal; where mankind has been used to see itself as the pursuer of knowledge, the paragon of animals, it now found itself in turn the object of study, study by jealous minds.
3. In spite of London's eternal fog, a few brave stars shone over the cathedral.
4. In the final days of the nineteenth century, as the world bustled with fervid industry, few would have imagined that this same globe was being viewed from afar, by intellects as keen as they were jealous.
5. It is a testament to the vast intelligences of the leaders of the Martian race that their population and industries survived so many centuries beyond the boiling of the red planet's oceans and the blasting of the continents with fierce winds bearing innumerable projectiles of dust, sand, and rust, but survive they did, underground, awaiting the circumstances that could allow their rebirth.
6. Millions of miles away, someone is watching us.
7. No one could have predicted that day.
8. No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
9. That distant red mote, named for the god of war, had glowed innocuously on that evening.
10. The common wherein the vessel had buried itself was pitted with debris, and the red weed was already curling its way across the ground.
11. When a day that you know to be Wednesday starts by sounding like Sunday, there is something wrong.
12. While noone would have considered the possibility, scurrying about our daily business as we do, they were watching.
Poll Game 8, Book 1 Answers
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As it's now the weekend and I don't know whether everyone has computer access outside standard working hours, this will go on until Monday 6pm. Next one will probably be a bit shorter!