Chapter 4Time Travelling

"I told some of you last Thursday about how the Time Machine worked, and showed you the actual thing itself, still a little rough around the edges in the workshop. There it is now, a little beat up, for sure; and one of the ivory bars is cracked, and a brass rail is bent; but the rest of it's solid."

I figured I’d finish it on Friday, but when I was almost done putting it together, I realized one of the nickel bars was exactly an inch too short , so I had to get it remade; that’s why it wasn't complete until this morning.

It was ten o’clock this morning that the first of all Time Machines started its journey. I gave it a last tap, checked all the screws again, put one more drop of oil on the quartz rod, and hopped in the seat.

I imagine a person about to end it all with a gun to their head feels a similar kind of wonder about what's going to happen next as I did 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 felt like I was reeling; I had this crazy, nightmare feeling of falling; and when I looked around, I saw the lab exactly as before. Had anything happened? For a second, I wondered if my brain was messing with me. Then I looked at the clock.

Just a moment ago, it seemed to be a little past ten; now it was nearly half-past three! "I took a deep breath, clenched my teeth, grabbed the starting lever with both hands, and blasted off with a thud. The lab got blurry and went dark."

Mrs. Watchett came in and walked, apparently not even seeing me, towards the garden door. I guess it took her a minute or so to get across the room, but to me, she seemed to shoot across the room like a rocket. I pushed the lever all the way over.

Night came like someone turning off a light, and in another moment, it was tomorrow. The lab grew faint and hazy, then fainter and fainter still. Tomorrow night came black, then day again, night again, day again, faster and faster.

A buzzing sound filled my ears, and a weird, dumb confusion washed over my mind. "I’m afraid I can’t really explain what time traveling feels like. It’s super unpleasant. It’s like being on a roller coaster - that helpless, headlong feeling! I felt that same horrible feeling of about to crash, too."

As I sped up, night followed day like the flapping of a black wing. The vague idea of the lab seemed to fade away, and I saw the sun racing across the sky, leaping it every minute, and every minute marking a day. I figured the lab had been destroyed and I was out in the open air.

I had a blurry impression of scaffolding, but I was already going too fast to notice anything moving. Even the slowest snail that ever crawled zoomed past too fast for me. The rapid flashes of darkness and light were really hard on my eyes.

Then, in the brief moments of darkness, I saw the moon spinning quickly through its phases from new to full, and caught a glimpse of the circling stars.

As I went on, still gaining speed, the constant change of night and day blended into one continuous grey; the sky took on a gorgeous, deep blue, a brilliant, glowing color like early twilight; the rushing sun became a streak of fire, a brilliant arch in space; the moon a fainter, flickering band; and I could barely see the stars, except now and then a brighter circle flashing in the blue.

The landscape was all misty and blurry. I was still on the hillside where this house now stands, and the slope loomed above me, grey and indistinct. I saw trees popping up and changing like puffs of smoke, sometimes brown, sometimes green. They grew, spread out, shivered, and then vanished.

I saw huge buildings rise up, faint and beautiful, and disappear like dreams. The whole surface of the earth seemed different - melting and flowing right before my eyes. The little hands on the dials that showed my speed spun faster and faster.

Soon, I noticed that the sun belt was swaying up and down, from summer to winter, in less than a minute, and that meant I was going over a year a minute. Minute by minute, white snow flashed across the world and disappeared, followed by the bright, quick green of spring.

The weird feelings from the start weren't so bad anymore. They finally blended into a kind of wild, excited feeling. I did notice the machine was wobbling around a bit, but I couldn't figure out why.

My mind was too messed up to even think about it, so with a kind of crazy feeling growing on me, I just jumped into the future. At first, I barely thought about stopping, barely thought about anything but these new sensations.

But then a fresh wave of impressions hit me - a mix of curiosity and a little bit of fear - until they totally took over. What crazy developments of humanity, what amazing advances beyond our basic civilization, might I see when I really looked at the hazy, shifting world zooming past?

I saw massive, impressive buildings rising around me, bigger than anything we have now, but as far as I could tell, built of shimmer and mist. I saw a richer green flow up the hillside and stay there, without any winter break. Even through all the confusion, the earth seemed really beautiful.

And so, my mind started thinking about stopping. The real danger was finding something in the space where I, or the machine, was. As long as I was traveling so fast through time, it didn’t really matter: I was, basically, stretched out - slipping like a vapor through the gaps between things!

But stopping meant forcing myself, molecule by molecule, into whatever was in my way; it meant bringing my atoms into such close contact with those of the obstacle that a huge chemical reaction - maybe a massive explosion - would happen, and blow me and my equipment out of existence - into the Unknown.

This possibility had crossed my mind again and again while I was building the machine, but then I cheerfully accepted it as a risk a guy has to take! Now the risk was unavoidable, and I didn’t see it in the same light.

The truth is that, without me realizing it, the absolute strangeness of everything, the sickly shaking and swaying of the machine, and especially the feeling of falling for so long, had totally rattled my nerves.

I told myself I could never stop, and with a frustrated burst, I decided to stop right away. Like an impatient idiot, I yanked the lever, and the thing went spinning over, and I was thrown headfirst through the air.

"There was this huge clap of thunder in my ears. I might’ve been totally stunned for a sec. A crazy hail was pounding all around me, and I was sitting on soft grass in front of this tipped-over machine. Everything still looked gray, but then I realized the ringing in my ears was gone."

I looked around. I was on what seemed like a little lawn in a garden, surrounded by rhododendron bushes, and I noticed their purple and pink blossoms were falling in a shower under the hailstones. The bouncing, dancing hail hung in a little cloud over the machine, moving along the ground like smoke.

In a moment, I was soaked. Seriously? That’s your idea of hospitality? I said, to a guy who’s traveled for, like, forever to see you? Then I realized how dumb I was for getting drenched. I stood up and looked around.

"This massive figure, carved from white stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons through the misty rain. But everything else was invisible. "My feelings would be hard to describe. As the hail thinned out, I saw the white figure more clearly.

It was huge - a silver birch tree touched its shoulder. It was made of white marble, shaped kind of like a winged sphinx, but the wings weren’t straight up; they were spread out, so it looked like it was hovering. The pedestal seemed to be bronze, and it was covered in green stuff.

It just so happened the face was towards me; the sightless eyes seemed to be watching me; there was a faint shadow of a smile on the lips. It was really weathered, and it gave off this creepy, sickly feeling. I stood there staring at it for a bit - maybe half a minute, maybe half an hour.

It seemed to move closer and farther away as the hail drove past, thicker or thinner. Finally, I tore my eyes away for a second, and saw that the hail curtain had worn thin, and the sky was brightening with the promise of sunshine.

"I looked up at the crouching white shape again, and suddenly I was hit by how crazy my whole trip was. What would I find when that misty curtain cleared away? What could have happened to people? What if cruelty had become a normal thing?"

What if, during all this time, humanity had lost its grit and turned into something inhuman, unfeeling, and super powerful? I might just look like some old-world wild animal, even creepier because we’d still look similar - a disgusting creature to be killed instantly.

"Already I saw other huge shapes - massive buildings with fancy walls and tall columns, with a wooded hillside slowly creeping towards me through the fading storm. I was gripped by a wave of panic. I spun around to the Time Machine and desperately tried to adjust it."

As I did, beams of sunlight broke through the thunderstorm. The heavy rain was swept away and vanished like a ghost’s cloak. Above me, in the bright blue of the summer sky, some faint brown clouds swirled and disappeared.

The buildings around me stood out clear and sharp, glistening with the rain, and dotted with white hailstones piled along their edges. I felt totally exposed in this strange world. I felt like a bird might feel in the clear air, knowing a hawk was circling above, ready to swoop.

My fear grew into a frenzy. I took a deep breath, clenched my teeth, and wrestled fiercely with the machine again. It gave way under my desperate push and flipped over. It slammed into my chin.

With one hand on the seat and the other on the lever, I stood there, panting heavily, ready to climb back on. "But with this chance to escape, my courage returned. I looked at this world of the far future with more curiosity and less fear."

In a circular opening, high up in the wall of the closest building, I saw a group of figures dressed in rich, soft robes. They had seen me, and their faces were turned towards me.

Then I heard voices getting closer. Guys were pushing through the bushes near the White Sphinx - just heads and shoulders, running. One popped out onto a path, heading straight for the little lawn where I was standing with my machine.

He was tiny - maybe four feet tall - wearing a purple shirt, with a leather belt around his waist. I couldn’t tell if he had sandals or boots on his feet; his legs were bare up to his knees, and his head was shaved. Seeing that, I realized how warm it actually was.

He seemed like a really beautiful and graceful dude, but totally fragile. His red face reminded me of those super pretty people who were sick - you know, that kind of delicate, almost glowing look. Seeing him, I suddenly felt way more confident. I took my hands off the machine.