The Time Machine
An Invention
by H. G. Wells
CONTENTS
I Introduction
II The Machine
III The Time Traveller Returns
IV Time Travelling
V In the Golden Age
VI The Sunset of Mankind
VII A Sudden Shock
VIII Explanation
IX The Morlocks
X When Night Came
XI The Palace of Green Porcelain
XII In the Darkness
XIII The Trap of the White Sphinx
XIV The Further Vision
XV The Time Traveller’s Return
XVI After the Story
Epilogue
I.
Introduction
The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him)
was expounding a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and
twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The
fire burnt brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent
lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and
passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and
caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that
luxurious after-dinner atmosphere, when thought runs gracefully free
of the trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this way—marking
the points with a lean forefinger—as we sat and lazily admired his
earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it) and his fecundity.
“You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two
ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for instance,
they taught you at school is founded on a misconception.”
“Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?” said
Filby, an argumentative person with red hair.
“I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable ground
for it. You will soon admit as much as I need from you. You know of
course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness _nil_, has no real
existence. They taught you that? Neither has a mathematical plane.
These things are mere abstractions.”
“That is all right,” said the Psychologist.
“Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a
real existence.”
“There I object,” said Filby. “Of course a solid body may exist. All
real things—”
“So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an _instantaneous_ cube
exist?”
“Don’t follow you,” said Filby.
“Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real
existence?”
Filby became pensive. “Clearly,” the Time Traveller proceeded, “any
real body must have extension in _four_ directions: it must have
Length, Breadth, Thickness, and—Duration. But through a natural
infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we
incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions, three
which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is,
however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former
three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our
consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter
from the beginning to the end of our lives.”
“That,” said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to relight his
cigar over the lamp; “that . . . very clear indeed.”
“Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked,”
continued the Time Traveller, with a slight accession of cheerfulness.
“Really this is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension, though some
people who talk about the Fourth Dimension do not know they mean it. It
is only another way of looking at Time. _There is no difference between
Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our
consciousness moves along it_. But some foolish people have got hold of
the wrong side of that idea. You have all heard what they have to say
about this Fourth Dimension?”
“_I_ have not,” said the Provincial Mayor.
“It is simply this. That Space, as our mathematicians have it, is
spoken of as having three dimensions, which one may call Length,
Breadth, and Thickness, and is always definable by reference to three
planes, each at right angles to the others. But some philosophical
people have been asking why _three_ dimensions particularly—why not
another direction at right angles to the other three?—and have even
tried to construct a Four-Dimensional geometry. Professor Simon Newcomb
was expounding this to the New York Mathematical Society only a month
or so ago. You know how on a flat surface, which has only two
dimensions, we can represent a figure of a three-dimensional solid, and
similarly they think that by models of three dimensions they could
represent one of four—if they could master the perspective of the
thing. See?”
“I think so,” murmured the Provincial Mayor; and, knitting his brows,
he lapsed into an introspective state, his lips moving as one who
repeats mystic words. “Yes, I think I see it now,” he said after some
time, brightening in a quite transitory manner.
“Well, I do not mind telling you I have been at work upon this geometry
of Four Dimensions for some time. Some of my results are curious. For
instance, here is a portrait of a man at eight years old, another at
fifteen, another at seventeen, another at twenty-three, and so on. All
these are evidently sections, as it were, Three-Dimensional
representations of his Four-Dimensioned being, which is a fixed and
unalterable thing.”
“Scientific people,” proceeded the Time Traveller, after the pause
required for the proper assimilation of this, “know very well that Time
is only a kind of Space. Here is a popular scientific diagram, a
weather record. This line I trace with my finger shows the movement of
the barometer. Yesterday it was so high, yesterday night it fell, then
this morning it rose again, and so gently upward to here. Surely the
mercury did not trace this line in any of the dimensions of Space
generally recognised? But certainly it traced such a line, and that
line, therefore, we must conclude, was along the Time-Dimension.”
“But,” said the Medical Man, staring hard at a coal in the fire, “if
Time is really only a fourth dimension of Space, why is it, and why has
it always been, regarded as something different? And why cannot we move
about in Time as we move about in the other dimensions of Space?”
The Time Traveller smiled. “Are you so sure we can move freely in
Space? Right and left we can go, backward and forward freely enough,
and men always have done so. I admit we move freely in two dimensions.
But how about up and down? Gravitation limits us there.”
“Not exactly,” said the Medical Man. “There are balloons.”
“But before the balloons, save for spasmodic jumping and the
inequalities of the surface, man had no freedom of vertical movement.”
“Still they could move a little up and down,” said the Medical Man.
“Easier, far easier down than up.”
“And you cannot move at all in Time, you cannot get away from the
present moment.”
“My dear sir, that is just where you are wrong. That is just where the
whole world has gone wrong. We are always getting away from the present
moment. Our mental existences, which are immaterial and have no
dimensions, are passing along the Time-Dimension with a uniform
velocity from the cradle to the grave. Just as we should travel _down_
if we began our existence fifty miles above the earth’s surface.”
“But the great difficulty is this,” interrupted the Psychologist. “You
_can_ move about in all directions of Space, but you cannot move about
in Time.”
“That is the germ of my great discovery. But you are wrong to say that
we cannot move about in Time. For instance, if I am recalling an
incident very vividly I go back to the instant of its occurrence: I
become absent-minded, as you say. I jump back for a moment. Of course
we have no means of staying back for any length of Time, any more than
a savage or an animal has of staying six feet above the ground. But a
civilised man is better off than the savage in this respect. He can go
up against gravitation in a balloon, and why should he not hope that
ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the
Time-Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way?”
“Oh, _this_,” began Filby, “is all—”
“Why not?” said the Time Traveller.
“It’s against reason,” said Filby.
“What reason?” said the Time Traveller.
“You can show black is white by argument,” said Filby, “but you will
never convince me.”
“Possibly not,” said the Time Traveller. “But now you begin to see the
object of my investigations into the geometry of Four Dimensions. Long
ago I had a vague inkling of a machine—”
“To travel through Time!” exclaimed the Very Young Man.
“That shall travel indifferently in any direction of Space and Time, as
the driver determines.”
Filby contented himself with laughter.
“But I have experimental verification,” said the Time Traveller.
“It would be remarkably convenient for the historian,” the Psychologist
suggested. “One might travel back and verify the accepted account of
the Battle of Hastings, for instance!”
“Don’t you think you would attract attention?” said the Medical Man.
“Our ancestors had no great tolerance for anachronisms.”
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato,” the
Very Young Man thought.
“In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The
German scholars have improved Greek so much.”
“Then there is the future,” said the Very Young Man. “Just think! One
might invest all one’s money, leave it to accumulate at interest, and
hurry on ahead!”
“To discover a society,” said I, “erected on a strictly communistic
basis.”
“Of all the wild extravagant theories!” began the Psychologist.
“Yes, so it seemed to me, and so I never talked of it until—”
“Experimental verification!” cried I. “You are going to verify _that_?”
“The experiment!” cried Filby, who was getting brain-weary.
“Let’s see your experiment anyhow,” said the Psychologist, “though it’s
all humbug, you know.”
The Time Traveller smiled round at us. Then, still smiling faintly, and
with his hands deep in his trousers pockets, he walked slowly out of
the room, and we heard his slippers shuffling down the long passage to
his laboratory.
The Psychologist looked at us. “I wonder what he’s got?”
“Some sleight-of-hand trick or other,” said the Medical Man, and Filby
tried to tell us about a conjuror he had seen at Burslem, but before he
had finished his preface the Time Traveller came back, and Filby’s
anecdote collapsed.
II.
The Machine
The thing the Time Traveller held in his hand was a glittering metallic
framework, scarcely larger than a small clock, and very delicately
made. There was ivory in it, and some transparent crystalline
substance. And now I must be explicit, for this that follows—unless
his explanation is to be accepted—is an absolutely unaccountable
thing. He took one of the small octagonal tables that were scattered
about the room, and set it in front of the fire, with two legs on the
hearthrug. On this table he placed the mechanism. Then he drew up a
chair, and sat down. The only other object on the table was a small
shaded lamp, the bright light of which fell full upon the model. There
were also perhaps a dozen candles about, two in brass candlesticks upon
the mantel and several in sconces, so that the room was brilliantly
illuminated. I sat in a low arm-chair nearest the fire, and I drew
this forward so as to be almost between the Time Traveller and the
fireplace. Filby sat behind him, looking over his shoulder. The Medical
Man and the Provincial Mayor watched him in profile from the right,
the Psychologist from the left. The Very Young Man stood behind the
Psychologist. We were all on the alert. It appears incredible to me
that any kind of trick, however subtly conceived and however adroitly
done, could have been played upon us under these conditions.
The Time Traveller looked at us, and then at the mechanism. “Well?”
said the Psychologist.
“This little affair,” said the Time Traveller, resting his elbows upon
the table and pressing his hands together above the apparatus, “is only
a model. It is my plan for a machine to travel through time. You will
notice that it looks singularly askew, and that there is an odd
twinkling appearance about this bar, as though it was in some way
unreal.” He pointed to the part with his finger. “Also, here is one
little white lever, and here is another.”
The Medical Man got up out of his chair and peered into the thing.
“It’s beautifully made,” he said.
“It took two years to make,” retorted the Time Traveller. Then, when we
had all imitated the action of the Medical Man, he said: “Now I want
you clearly to understand that this lever, being pressed over, sends
the machine gliding into the future, and this other reverses the
motion. This saddle represents the seat of a time traveller. Presently
I am going to press the lever, and off the machine will go. It will
vanish, pass into future Time, and disappear. Have a good look at the
thing. Look at the table too, and satisfy yourselves there is no
trickery. I don’t want to waste this model, and then be told I’m a
quack.”
There was a minute’s pause perhaps. The Psychologist seemed about to
speak to me, but changed his mind. Then the Time Traveller put forth
his finger towards the lever. “No,” he said suddenly. “Lend me your
hand.” And turning to the Psychologist, he took that individual’s hand
in his own and told him to put out his forefinger. So that it was the
Psychologist himself who sent forth the model Time Machine on its
interminable voyage. We all saw the lever turn. I am absolutely certain
there was no trickery. There was a breath of wind, and the lamp flame
jumped. One of the candles on the mantel was blown out, and the little
machine suddenly swung round, became indistinct, was seen as a ghost
for a second perhaps, as an eddy of faintly glittering brass and ivory;
and it was gone—vanished! Save for the lamp the table was bare.
Everyone was silent for a minute. Then Filby said he was damned.
The Psychologist recovered from his stupor, and suddenly looked under
the table. At that the Time Traveller laughed cheerfully. “Well?” he
said, with a reminiscence of the Psychologist. Then, getting up, he
went to the tobacco jar on the mantel, and with his back to us began to
fill his pipe.
We stared at each other. “Look here,” said the Medical Man, “are you in
earnest about this? Do you seriously believe that that machine has
travelled into time?”
“Certainly,” said the Time Traveller, stooping to light a spill at the
fire. Then he turned, lighting his pipe, to look at the Psychologist’s
face. (The Psychologist, to show that he was not unhinged, helped
himself to a cigar and tried to light it uncut.) “What is more, I have
a big machine nearly finished in there”—he indicated the
laboratory—“and when that is put together I mean to have a journey on
my own account.”
“You mean to say that that machine has travelled into the future?” said
Filby.
“Into the future or the past—I don’t, for certain, know which.”
After an interval the Psychologist had an inspiration. “It must have
gone into the past if it has gone anywhere,” he said.
“Why?” said the Time Traveller.
“Because I presume that it has not moved in space, and if it travelled
into the future it would still be here all this time, since it must
have travelled through this time.”
“But,” said I, “If it travelled into the past it would have been
visible when we came first into this room; and last Thursday when we
were here; and the Thursday before that; and so forth!”
“Serious objections,” remarked the Provincial Mayor, with an air of
impartiality, turning towards the Time Traveller.
“Not a bit,” said the Time Traveller, and, to the Psychologist: “You
think. _You_ can explain that. It’s presentation below the threshold,
you know, diluted presentation.”
“Of course,” said the Psychologist, and reassured us. “That’s a simple
point in psychology. I should have thought of it. It’s plain enough,
and helps the paradox delightfully. We cannot see it, nor can we
appreciate this machine, any more than we can the spoke of a wheel
spinning, or a bullet flying through the air. If it is travelling
through time fifty times or a hundred times faster than we are, if it
gets through a minute while we get through a second, the impression it
creates will of course be only one-fiftieth or one-hundredth of what it
would make if it were not travelling in time. That’s plain enough.” He
passed his hand through the space in which the machine had been. “You
see?” he said, laughing.
We sat and stared at the vacant table for a minute or so. Then the Time
Traveller asked us what we thought of it all.
“It sounds plausible enough tonight,” said the Medical Man; “but wait
until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.”
“Would you like to see the Time Machine itself?” asked the Time
Traveller. And therewith, taking the lamp in his hand, he led the way
down the long, draughty corridor to his laboratory. I remember vividly
the flickering light, his queer, broad head in silhouette, the dance of
the shadows, how we all followed him, puzzled but incredulous, and how
there in the laboratory we beheld a larger edition of the little
mechanism which we had seen vanish from before our eyes. Parts were of
nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly been filed or sawn out of
rock crystal. The thing was generally complete, but the twisted
crystalline bars lay unfinished upon the bench beside some sheets of
drawings, and I took one up for a better look at it. Quartz it seemed
to be.
“Look here,” said the Medical Man, “are you perfectly serious? Or is
this a trick—like that ghost you showed us last Christmas?”
“Upon that machine,” said the Time Traveller, holding the lamp aloft,
“I intend to explore time. Is that plain? I was never more serious in
my life.”
None of us quite knew how to take it.
I caught Filby’s eye over the shoulder of the Medical Man, and he
winked at me solemnly.
III.
The Time Traveller Returns
I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time
Machine. The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who are
too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him;
you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush,
behind his lucid frankness. Had Filby shown the model and explained the
matter in the Time Traveller’s words, we should have shown _him_ far
less scepticism. For we should have perceived his motives: a
pork-butcher could understand Filby. But the Time Traveller had more
than a touch of whim among his elements, and we distrusted him. Things
that would have made the fame of a less clever man seemed tricks in his
hands. It is a mistake to do things too easily. The serious people who
took him seriously never felt quite sure of his deportment; they were
somehow aware that trusting their reputations for judgment with him was
like furnishing a nursery with eggshell china. So I don’t think any of
us said very much about time travelling in the interval between that
Thursday and the next, though its odd potentialities ran, no doubt, in
most of our minds: its plausibility, that is, its practical
incredibleness, the curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter
confusion it suggested. For my own part, I was particularly preoccupied
with the trick of the model. That I remember discussing with the
Medical Man, whom I met on Friday at the Linnæan. He said he had seen a
similar thing at Tübingen, and laid considerable stress on the
blowing-out of the candle. But how the trick was done he could not
explain.
The next Thursday I went again to Richmond—I suppose I was one of the
Time Traveller’s most constant guests—and, arriving late, found four or
five men already assembled in his drawing-room. The Medical Man was
standing before the fire with a sheet of paper in one hand and his
watch in the other. I looked round for the Time Traveller, and—“It’s
half-past seven now,” said the Medical Man. “I suppose we’d better have
dinner?”
“Where’s——?” said I, naming our host.
“You’ve just come? It’s rather odd. He’s unavoidably detained. He asks
me in this note to lead off with dinner at seven if he’s not back. Says
he’ll explain when he comes.”
“It seems a pity to let the dinner spoil,” said the Editor of a
well-known daily paper; and thereupon the Doctor rang the bell.
The Psychologist was the only person besides the Doctor and myself who
had attended the previous dinner. The other men were Blank, the Editor
aforementioned, a certain journalist, and another—a quiet, shy man with
a beard—whom I didn’t know, and who, as far as my observation went,
never opened his mouth all the evening. There was some speculation at
the dinner-table about the Time Traveller’s absence, and I suggested
time travelling, in a half-jocular spirit. The Editor wanted that
explained to him, and the Psychologist volunteered a wooden account of
the “ingenious paradox and trick” we had witnessed that day week. He
was in the midst of his exposition when the door from the corridor
opened slowly and without noise. I was facing the door, and saw it
first. “Hallo!” I said. “At last!” And the door opened wider, and the
Time Traveller stood before us. I gave a cry of surprise. “Good
heavens! man, what’s the matter?” cried the Medical Man, who saw him
next. And the whole tableful turned towards the door.
He was in an amazing plight. His coat was dusty and dirty, and smeared
with green down the sleeves; his hair disordered, and as it seemed to
me greyer—either with dust and dirt or because its colour had actually
faded. His face was ghastly pale; his chin had a brown cut on it—a cut
half-healed; his expression was haggard and drawn, as by intense
suffering. For a moment he hesitated in the doorway, as if he had been
dazzled by the light. Then he came into the room. He walked with just
such a limp as I have seen in footsore tramps. We stared at him in
silence, expecting him to speak.
He said not a word, but came painfully to the table, and made a motion
towards the wine. The Editor filled a glass of champagne, and pushed it
towards him. He drained it, and it seemed to do him good: for he looked
round the table, and the ghost of his old smile flickered across his
face. “What on earth have you been up to, man?” said the Doctor. The
Time Traveller did not seem to hear. “Don’t let me disturb you,” he
said, with a certain faltering articulation. “I’m all right.” He
stopped, held out his glass for more, and took it off at a draught.
“That’s good,” he said. His eyes grew brighter, and a faint colour came
into his cheeks. His glance flickered over our faces with a certain
dull approval, and then went round the warm and comfortable room. Then
he spoke again, still as it were feeling his way among his words. “I’m
going to wash and dress, and then I’ll come down and explain things....
Save me some of that mutton. I’m starving for a bit of meat.”
He looked across at the Editor, who was a rare visitor, and hoped he
was all right. The Editor began a question. “Tell you presently,” said
the Time Traveller. “I’m—funny! Be all right in a minute.”
He put down his glass, and walked towards the staircase door. Again I
remarked his lameness and the soft padding sound of his footfall, and
standing up in my place, I saw his feet as he went out. He had nothing
on them but a pair of tattered, blood-stained socks. Then the door
closed upon him. I had half a mind to follow, till I remembered how he
detested any fuss about himself. For a minute, perhaps, my mind was
wool-gathering. Then, “Remarkable Behaviour of an Eminent Scientist,” I
heard the Editor say, thinking (after his wont) in headlines. And this
brought my attention back to the bright dinner-table.
“What’s the game?” said the Journalist. “Has he been doing the Amateur
Cadger? I don’t follow.” I met the eye of the Psychologist, and read my
own interpretation in his face. I thought of the Time Traveller limping
painfully upstairs. I don’t think anyone else had noticed his lameness.
The first to recover completely from this surprise was the Medical Man,
who rang the bell—the Time Traveller hated to have servants waiting at
dinner—for a hot plate. At that the Editor turned to his knife and fork
with a grunt, and the Silent Man followed suit. The dinner was resumed.
Conversation was exclamatory for a little while with gaps of
wonderment; and then the Editor got fervent in his curiosity. “Does our
friend eke out his modest income with a crossing? or has he his
Nebuchadnezzar phases?” he inquired. “I feel assured it’s this business
of the Time Machine,” I said, and took up the Psychologist’s account of
our previous meeting. The new guests were frankly incredulous. The
Editor raised objections. “What _was_ this time travelling? A man
couldn’t cover himself with dust by rolling in a paradox, could he?”
And then, as the idea came home to him, he resorted to caricature.
Hadn’t they any clothes-brushes in the Future? The Journalist too,
would not believe at any price, and joined the Editor in the easy work
of heaping ridicule on the whole thing. They were both the new kind of
journalist—very joyous, irreverent young men. “Our Special
Correspondent in the Day after Tomorrow reports,” the Journalist was
saying—or rather shouting—when the Time Traveller came back. He was
dressed in ordinary evening clothes, and nothing save his haggard look
remained of the change that had startled me.
“I say,” said the Editor hilariously, “these chaps here say you have
been travelling into the middle of next week! Tell us all about little
Rosebery, will you? What will you take for the lot?”
The Time Traveller came to the place reserved for him without a word.
He smiled quietly, in his old way. “Where’s my mutton?” he said. “What
a treat it is to stick a fork into meat again!”
“Story!” cried the Editor.
“Story be damned!” said the Time Traveller. “I want something to eat. I
won’t say a word until I get some peptone into my arteries. Thanks. And
the salt.”
“One word,” said I. “Have you been time travelling?”
“Yes,” said the Time Traveller, with his mouth full, nodding his head.
“I’d give a shilling a line for a verbatim note,” said the Editor. The
Time Traveller pushed his glass towards the Silent Man and rang it with
his fingernail; at which the Silent Man, who had been staring at his
face, started convulsively, and poured him wine. The rest of the dinner
was uncomfortable. For my own part, sudden questions kept on rising to
my lips, and I dare say it was the same with the others. The Journalist
tried to relieve the tension by telling anecdotes of Hettie Potter. The
Time Traveller devoted his attention to his dinner, and displayed the
appetite of a tramp. The Medical Man smoked a cigarette, and watched
the Time Traveller through his eyelashes. The Silent Man seemed even
more clumsy than usual, and drank champagne with regularity and
determination out of sheer nervousness. At last the Time Traveller
pushed his plate away, and looked round us. “I suppose I must
apologise,” he said. “I was simply starving. I’ve had a most amazing
time.” He reached out his hand for a cigar, and cut the end. “But come
into the smoking-room. It’s too long a story to tell over greasy
plates.” And ringing the bell in passing, he led the way into the
adjoining room.
“You have told Blank, and Dash, and Chose about the machine?” he said
to me, leaning back in his easy-chair and naming the three new guests.
“But the thing’s a mere paradox,” said the Editor.
“I can’t argue tonight. I don’t mind telling you the story, but I can’t
argue. I will,” he went on, “tell you the story of what has happened to
me, if you like, but you must refrain from interruptions. I want to
tell it. Badly. Most of it will sound like lying. So be it! It’s
true—every word of it, all the same. I was in my laboratory at four
o’clock, and since then … I’ve lived eight days … such days as no human
being ever lived before! I’m nearly worn out, but I shan’t sleep till
I’ve told this thing over to you. Then I shall go to bed. But no
interruptions! Is it agreed?”
“Agreed,” said the Editor, and the rest of us echoed “Agreed.” And with
that the Time Traveller began his story as I have set it forth. He sat
back in his chair at first, and spoke like a weary man. Afterwards he
got more animated. In writing it down I feel with only too much
keenness the inadequacy of pen and ink—and, above all, my own
inadequacy—to express its quality. You read, I will suppose,
attentively enough; but you cannot see the speaker’s white, sincere
face in the bright circle of the little lamp, nor hear the intonation
of his voice. You cannot know how his expression followed the turns of
his story! Most of us hearers were in shadow, for the candles in the
smoking-room had not been lighted, and only the face of the Journalist
and the legs of the Silent Man from the knees downward were
illuminated. At first we glanced now and again at each other. After a
time we ceased to do that, and looked only at the Time Traveller’s
face.
IV.
Time Travelling
“I told some of you last Thursday of the principles of the Time
Machine, and showed you the actual thing itself, incomplete in the
workshop. There it is now, a little travel-worn, truly; and one of the
ivory bars is cracked, and a brass rail bent; but the rest of it’s
sound enough. I expected to finish it on Friday; but on Friday, when
the putting together was nearly done, I found that one of the nickel
bars was exactly one inch too short, and this I had to get remade; so
that the thing was not complete until this morning. It was at ten
o’clock today that the first of all Time Machines began its career. I
gave it a last tap, tried all the screws again, put one more drop of
oil on the quartz rod, and sat myself in the saddle. I suppose a
suicide who holds a pistol to his skull feels much the same wonder at
what will come next as I felt then. I took the starting lever in one
hand and the stopping one in the other, pressed the first, and almost
immediately the second. I seemed to reel; I felt a nightmare sensation
of falling; and, looking round, I saw the laboratory exactly as before.
Had anything happened? For a moment I suspected that my intellect had
tricked me. Then I noted the clock. A moment before, as it seemed, it
had stood at a minute or so past ten; now it was nearly half-past
three!
“I drew a breath, set my teeth, gripped the starting lever with both
hands, and went off with a thud. The laboratory got hazy and went dark.
Mrs. Watchett came in and walked, apparently without seeing me, towards
the garden door. I suppose it took her a minute or so to traverse the
place, but to me she seemed to shoot across the room like a rocket. I
pressed the lever over to its extreme position. The night came like the
turning out of a lamp, and in another moment came tomorrow. The
laboratory grew faint and hazy, then fainter and ever fainter. Tomorrow
night came black, then day again, night again, day again, faster and
faster still. An eddying murmur filled my ears, and a strange, dumb
confusedness descended on my mind.
“I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time
travelling. They are excessively unpleasant. There is a feeling exactly
like that one has upon a switchback—of a helpless headlong motion! I
felt the same horrible anticipation, too, of an imminent smash. As I
put on pace, night followed day like the flapping of a black wing. The
dim suggestion of the laboratory seemed presently to fall away from me,
and I saw the sun hopping swiftly across the sky, leaping it every
minute, and every minute marking a day. I supposed the laboratory had
been destroyed and I had come into the open air. I had a dim impression
of scaffolding, but I was already going too fast to be conscious of any
moving things. The slowest snail that ever crawled dashed by too fast
for me. The twinkling succession of darkness and light was excessively
painful to the eye. Then, in the intermittent darknesses, I saw the
moon spinning swiftly through her quarters from new to full, and had a
faint glimpse of the circling stars. Presently, as I went on, still
gaining velocity, the palpitation of night and day merged into one
continuous greyness; the sky took on a wonderful deepness of blue, a
splendid luminous colour like that of early twilight; the jerking sun
became a streak of fire, a brilliant arch, in space; the moon a fainter
fluctuating band; and I could see nothing of the stars, save now and
then a brighter circle flickering in the blue.
“The landscape was misty and vague. I was still on the hillside upon
which this house now stands, and the shoulder rose above me grey and
dim. I saw trees growing and changing like puffs of vapour, now brown,
now green; they grew, spread, shivered, and passed away. I saw huge
buildings rise up faint and fair, and pass like dreams. The whole
surface of the earth seemed changed—melting and flowing under my eyes.
The little hands upon the dials that registered my speed raced round
faster and faster. Presently I noted that the sun belt swayed up and
down, from solstice to solstice, in a minute or less, and that
consequently my pace was over a year a minute; and minute by minute the
white snow flashed across the world, and vanished, and was followed by
the bright, brief green of spring.
“The unpleasant sensations of the start were less poignant now. They
merged at last into a kind of hysterical exhilaration. I remarked,
indeed, a clumsy swaying of the machine, for which I was unable to
account. But my mind was too confused to attend to it, so with a kind
of madness growing upon me, I flung myself into futurity. At first I
scarce thought of stopping, scarce thought of anything but these new
sensations. But presently a fresh series of impressions grew up in my
mind—a certain curiosity and therewith a certain dread—until at last
they took complete possession of me. What strange developments of
humanity, what wonderful advances upon our rudimentary civilisation, I
thought, might not appear when I came to look nearly into the dim
elusive world that raced and fluctuated before my eyes! I saw great and
splendid architecture rising about me, more massive than any buildings
of our own time, and yet, as it seemed, built of glimmer and mist. I
saw a richer green flow up the hillside, and remain there, without any
wintry intermission. Even through the veil of my confusion the earth
seemed very fair. And so my mind came round to the business of
stopping.
“The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some substance
in the space which I, or the machine, occupied. So long as I travelled
at a high velocity through time, this scarcely mattered: I was, so to
speak, attenuated—was slipping like a vapour through the interstices of
intervening substances! But to come to a stop involved the jamming of
myself, molecule by molecule, into whatever lay in my way; meant
bringing my atoms into such intimate contact with those of the obstacle
that a profound chemical reaction—possibly a far-reaching
explosion—would result, and blow myself and my apparatus out of all
possible dimensions—into the Unknown. This possibility had occurred to
me again and again while I was making the machine; but then I had
cheerfully accepted it as an unavoidable risk—one of the risks a man
has got to take! Now the risk was inevitable, I no longer saw it in the
same cheerful light. The fact is that, insensibly, the absolute
strangeness of everything, the sickly jarring and swaying of the
machine, above all, the feeling of prolonged falling, had absolutely
upset my nerves. I told myself that I could never stop, and with a gust
of petulance I resolved to stop forthwith. Like an impatient fool, I
lugged over the lever, and incontinently the thing went reeling over,
and I was flung headlong through the air.
“There was the sound of a clap of thunder in my ears. I may have been
stunned for a moment. A pitiless hail was hissing round me, and I was
sitting on soft turf in front of the overset machine. Everything still
seemed grey, but presently I remarked that the confusion in my ears was
gone. I looked round me. I was on what seemed to be a little lawn in a
garden, surrounded by rhododendron bushes, and I noticed that their
mauve and purple blossoms were dropping in a shower under the beating
of the hailstones. The rebounding, dancing hail hung in a little cloud
over the machine, and drove along the ground like smoke. In a moment I
was wet to the skin. ‘Fine hospitality,’ said I, ‘to a man who has
travelled innumerable years to see you.’
“Presently I thought what a fool I was to get wet. I stood up and
looked round me. A colossal figure, carved apparently in some white
stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons through the hazy
downpour. But all else of the world was invisible.
“My sensations would be hard to describe. As the columns of hail grew
thinner, I saw the white figure more distinctly. It was very large, for
a silver birch-tree touched its shoulder. It was of white marble, in
shape something like a winged sphinx, but the wings, instead of being
carried vertically at the sides, were spread so that it seemed to
hover. The pedestal, it appeared to me, was of bronze, and was thick
with verdigris. It chanced that the face was towards me; the sightless
eyes seemed to watch me; there was the faint shadow of a smile on the
lips. It was greatly weather-worn, and that imparted an unpleasant
suggestion of disease. I stood looking at it for a little space—half a
minute, perhaps, or half an hour. It seemed to advance and to recede as
the hail drove before it denser or thinner. At last I tore my eyes from
it for a moment, and saw that the hail curtain had worn threadbare, and
that the sky was lightening with the promise of the sun.
“I looked up again at the crouching white shape, and the full temerity
of my voyage came suddenly upon me. What might appear when that hazy
curtain was altogether withdrawn? What might not have happened to men?
What if cruelty had grown into a common passion? What if in this
interval the race had lost its manliness, and had developed into
something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful? I might
seem some old-world savage animal, only the more dreadful and
disgusting for our common likeness—a foul creature to be incontinently
slain.
“Already I saw other vast shapes—huge buildings with intricate parapets
and tall columns, with a wooded hillside dimly creeping in upon me
through the lessening storm. I was seized with a panic fear. I turned
frantically to the Time Machine, and strove hard to readjust it. As I
did so the shafts of the sun smote through the thunderstorm. The grey
downpour was swept aside and vanished like the trailing garments of a
ghost. Above me, in the intense blue of the summer sky, some faint
brown shreds of cloud whirled into nothingness. The great buildings
about me stood out clear and distinct, shining with the wet of the
thunderstorm, and picked out in white by the unmelted hailstones piled
along their courses. I felt naked in a strange world. I felt as perhaps
a bird may feel in the clear air, knowing the hawk wings above and will
swoop. My fear grew to frenzy. I took a breathing space, set my teeth,
and again grappled fiercely, wrist and knee, with the machine. It gave
under my desperate onset and turned over. It struck my chin violently.
One hand on the saddle, the other on the lever, I stood panting heavily
in attitude to mount again.
“But with this recovery of a prompt retreat my courage recovered. I
looked more curiously and less fearfully at this world of the remote
future. In a circular opening, high up in the wall of the nearer house,
I saw a group of figures clad in rich soft robes. They had seen me, and
their faces were directed towards me.
“Then I heard voices approaching me. Coming through the bushes by the
White Sphinx were the heads and shoulders of men running. One of these
emerged in a pathway leading straight to the little lawn upon which I
stood with my machine. He was a slight creature—perhaps four feet
high—clad in a purple tunic, girdled at the waist with a leather belt.
Sandals or buskins—I could not clearly distinguish which—were on his
feet; his legs were bare to the knees, and his head was bare. Noticing
that, I noticed for the first time how warm the air was.
“He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature, but
indescribably frail. His flushed face reminded me of the more beautiful
kind of consumptive—that hectic beauty of which we used to hear so
much. At the sight of him I suddenly regained confidence. I took my
hands from the machine.
V.
In the Golden Age
“In another moment we were standing face to face, I and this fragile
thing out of futurity. He came straight up to me and laughed into my
eyes. The absence from his bearing of any sign of fear struck me at
once. Then he turned to the two others who were following him and spoke
to them in a strange and very sweet and liquid tongue.
“There were others coming, and presently a little group of perhaps
eight or ten of these exquisite creatures were about me. One of them
addressed me. It came into my head, oddly enough, that my voice was too
harsh and deep for them. So I shook my head, and, pointing to my ears,
shook it again. He came a step forward, hesitated, and then touched my
hand. Then I felt other soft little tentacles upon my back and
shoulders. They wanted to make sure I was real. There was nothing in
this at all alarming. Indeed, there was something in these pretty
little people that inspired confidence—a graceful gentleness, a certain
childlike ease. And besides, they looked so frail that I could fancy
myself flinging the whole dozen of them about like ninepins. But I made
a sudden motion to warn them when I saw their little pink hands feeling
at the Time Machine. Happily then, when it was not too late, I thought
of a danger I had hitherto forgotten, and reaching over the bars of the
machine I unscrewed the little levers that would set it in motion, and
put these in my pocket. Then I turned again to see what I could do in
the way of communication.
“And then, looking more nearly into their features, I saw some further
peculiarities in their Dresden china type of prettiness. Their hair,
which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the neck and cheek;
there was not the faintest suggestion of it on the face, and their ears
were singularly minute. The mouths were small, with bright red, rather
thin lips, and the little chins ran to a point. The eyes were large and
mild; and—this may seem egotism on my part—I fancied even that there
was a certain lack of the interest I might have expected in them.
“As they made no effort to communicate with me, but simply stood round
me smiling and speaking in soft cooing notes to each other, I began the
conversation. I pointed to the Time Machine and to myself. Then,
hesitating for a moment how to express Time, I pointed to the sun. At
once a quaintly pretty little figure in chequered purple and white
followed my gesture, and then astonished me by imitating the sound of
thunder.
“For a moment I was staggered, though the import of his gesture was
plain enough. The question had come into my mind abruptly: were these
creatures fools? You may hardly understand how it took me. You see, I
had always anticipated that the people of the year Eight Hundred and
Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art,
everything. Then one of them suddenly asked me a question that showed
him to be on the intellectual level of one of our five-year-old
children—asked me, in fact, if I had come from the sun in a
thunderstorm! It let loose the judgment I had suspended upon their
clothes, their frail light limbs, and fragile features. A flow of
disappointment rushed across my mind. For a moment I felt that I had
built the Time Machine in vain.
“I nodded, pointed to the sun, and gave them such a vivid rendering of
a thunderclap as startled them. They all withdrew a pace or so and
bowed. Then came one laughing towards me, carrying a chain of beautiful
flowers altogether new to me, and put it about my neck. The idea was
received with melodious applause; and presently they were all running
to and fro for flowers, and laughingly flinging them upon me until I
was almost smothered with blossom. You who have never seen the like can
scarcely imagine what delicate and wonderful flowers countless years of
culture had created. Then someone suggested that their plaything should
be exhibited in the nearest building, and so I was led past the sphinx
of white marble, which had seemed to watch me all the while with a
smile at my astonishment, towards a vast grey edifice of fretted stone.
As I went with them the memory of my confident anticipations of a
profoundly grave and intellectual posterity came, with irresistible
merriment, to my mind.
“The building had a huge entry, and was altogether of colossal
dimensions. I was naturally most occupied with the growing crowd of
little people, and with the big open portals that yawned before me
shadowy and mysterious. My general impression of the world I saw over
their heads was a tangled waste of beautiful bushes and flowers, a long
neglected and yet weedless garden. I saw a number of tall spikes of
strange white flowers, measuring a foot perhaps across the spread of
the waxen petals. They grew scattered, as if wild, among the variegated
shrubs, but, as I say, I did not examine them closely at this time. The
Time Machine was left deserted on the turf among the rhododendrons.
“The arch of the doorway was richly carved, but naturally I did not
observe the carving very narrowly, though I fancied I saw suggestions
of old Phœnician decorations as I passed through, and it struck me that
they were very badly broken and weather-worn. Several more brightly
clad people met me in the doorway, and so we entered, I, dressed in
dingy nineteenth-century garments, looking grotesque enough, garlanded
with flowers, and surrounded by an eddying mass of bright,
soft-coloured robes and shining white limbs, in a melodious whirl of
laughter and laughing speech.
“The big doorway opened into a proportionately great hall hung with
brown. The roof was in shadow, and the windows, partially glazed with
coloured glass and partially unglazed, admitted a tempered light. The
floor was made up of huge blocks of some very hard white metal, not
plates nor slabs—blocks, and it was so much worn, as I judged by the
going to and fro of past generations, as to be deeply channelled along
the more frequented ways. Transverse to the length were innumerable
tables made of slabs of polished stone, raised, perhaps, a foot from
the floor, and upon these were heaps of fruits. Some I recognised as a
kind of hypertrophied raspberry and orange, but for the most part they
were strange.
“Between the tables was scattered a great number of cushions. Upon
these my conductors seated themselves, signing for me to do likewise.
With a pretty absence of ceremony they began to eat the fruit with
their hands, flinging peel and stalks, and so forth, into the round
openings in the sides of the tables. I was not loath to follow their
example, for I felt thirsty and hungry. As I did so I surveyed the hall
at my leisure.
“And perhaps the thing that struck me most was its dilapidated look.
The stained-glass windows, which displayed only a geometrical pattern,
were broken in many places, and the curtains that hung across the lower
end were thick with dust. And it caught my eye that the corner of the
marble table near me was fractured. Nevertheless, the general effect
was extremely rich and picturesque. There were, perhaps, a couple of
hundred people dining in the hall, and most of them, seated as near to
me as they could come, were watching me with interest, their little
eyes shining over the fruit they were eating. All were clad in the same
soft, and yet strong, silky material.
“Fruit, by the bye, was all their diet. These people of the remote
future were strict vegetarians, and while I was with them, in spite of
some carnal cravings, I had to be frugivorous also. Indeed, I found
afterwards that horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, had followed the
Ichthyosaurus into extinction. But the fruits were very delightful;
one, in particular, that seemed to be in season all the time I was
there—a floury thing in a three-sided husk—was especially good, and I
made it my staple. At first I was puzzled by all these strange fruits,
and by the strange flowers I saw, but later I began to perceive their
import.