Chapter 5In the Golden Age

In another moment, we were standing face to face - me and this delicate thing from the future. He walked right up to me and laughed into my eyes. The fact that he wasn’t scared at all hit me right away.

Then he turned to the two others who were following him and spoke to them in a strange, sweet, flowing language. More were coming, and soon a little group of maybe eight or ten of these gorgeous creatures were all around me. One of them spoke to me.

Weirdly, it felt like my voice was too rough and deep for them. So I shook my head, pointing to my ears, and shook it again. He stepped closer, paused, and then touched my hand. Then I felt soft, little tentacles on my back and shoulders. They were checking to make sure I was real.

It wasnn't anything scary at all . Actually, there was something about these cute little people that inspired trust - a graceful gentleness, a certain childlike ease. And, honestly, they looked so fragile I could have tossed the whole dozen of them around like bowling pins.

But I made a sudden move to warn them when I saw their little pink hands feeling all over the Time Machine.

Luckily, just in time, I remembered a danger I’d completely forgotten about, and I reached over the bars of the machine and unscrewed the little levers that would start it up, putting them in my pocket. Then I turned to see what I could do about communicating.

Looking closer at their faces, I noticed some other unusual things about their Dresden china kind of prettiness. Their hair, which was uniformly curly, ended sharply at the neck and cheek; there wasn’t even a hint of it on their faces, and their ears were really tiny.

Their mouths were small, with bright red, thin lips, and their little chins came to a point. Their eyes were big and gentle; and - this might seem like I'm showing off - I thought even that there was a certain lack of interest in their eyes, which I’d have expected.

Since they weren't trying to talk to me, but just stood around smiling and cooing softly to each other, I started the conversation. I pointed to the Time Machine and to myself. Then, pausing for a moment to figure out how to explain Time, I pointed to the sun.

Instantly, a pretty little figure in chequered purple and white followed my gesture, and then surprised me by imitating the sound of thunder. For a moment, I was totally thrown, even though what he was trying to say was clear. The question popped into my head: were these guys dummies?

You probably can’t even imagine how much it shocked me. I always thought the people of the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand would be way ahead of us in knowledge, art, everything.

Then one of them suddenly asked me a question that showed he was on the same intellectual level as a five-year-old - asked me, in fact, if I’d come from the sun in a thunderstorm! It made me judge their clothes, their frail limbs, and delicate features. A wave of disappointment washed over me.

For a moment, I felt like I’d built the Time Machine for nothing.

"I nodded, pointed to the sun, and gave them a seriously loud noise - like a thunderclap - that totally freaked them out. They all took a step back and bowed."

Then, one person started laughing and came over, carrying a chain of these crazy beautiful flowers I'd never seen before, and put it around my neck. Everyone clapped - like, a super melodic applause!

Then, they were all running around grabbing flowers and playfully tossing them at me until I was practically buried in blossoms. If you'd never seen anything like it, you seriously couldn’t imagine how delicate and amazing these flowers were, the result of tons of care over a long time.

Then someone suggested showing off their fun thing in the closest building, so I was led past this huge white marble sphinx that seemed to be watching me the whole time with a knowing smile, towards this huge grey building made of fancy stone.

"As I went with them, I remembered how sure I was that people in the future would be super serious and smart, and I just burst out laughing. "The building had a massive entrance and was seriously huge.

I was mostly checking out this growing crowd of little people, and these big, open doorways that looked dark and mysterious. My overall impression of the place above their heads was just a crazy mix of pretty bushes and flowers, like a garden that had been forgotten but wasn't overgrown.

I saw these tall spikes of strange white flowers, maybe a foot across the spread of the waxy petals. They grew scattered, like they were wild, among all the colorful bushes, but I didn't look closely at them at the time.

The Time Machine was just sitting there, abandoned on the grass between the rhododendrons. "The doorway had a fancy arch, but I didn't really look at the carvings closely, even though I thought I saw hints of really old Phoenician designs. It seemed like they were really worn down and weathered."

A bunch more people in bright clothes met me at the doorway, and we went inside together.

I was dressed in these old-fashioned, dingy clothes from the 1800s, looking totally out of place, with flowers all around my neck, surrounded by this swirling mass of bright, soft-colored robes and shiny white arms, all laughing and chatting.

"The big doorway opened into a seriously huge hall with brown walls. The ceiling was in shadow, and the windows - some with colored glass and some without - let in this soft, filtered light."

The floor was made of huge blocks of some really hard white metal, not like plates or slabs - actual blocks, and it was so worn down from people walking around for generations that it had deep grooves along the paths they used the most.

"Across the length of the hall were tons of tables made of polished stone slabs, raised about a foot off the floor, and piled high with fruit. Some I recognized, like these giant raspberries and oranges, but most of them were totally new. "Between the tables were scattered tons of cushions.

My guides sat down on them, gesturing for me to do the same. Without any fuss, they started eating the fruit with their hands, tossing peels and stems into these round openings in the sides of the tables. I figured, why not? I was thirsty and hungry, so I joined in.

"As I did, I took a good look around the hall."

"And honestly, the thing that stood out most was how run-down it looked. The stained-glass windows, which just showed a geometric pattern, were broken everywhere, and the curtains at the end were totally covered in dust. And I noticed that the corner of the marble table near me was cracked."

Still, the overall vibe was super rich and pretty cool. There were, like, a couple hundred people eating in the hall, and most of them, sitting as close to me as they could, were watching me with interest, their little eyes sparkling over the fruit they were eating .

Everyone was wearing the same soft, but strong, silky material. "Fruit, by the way, was all they ate. These people from way in the future were strict vegetarians, and while I was with them, even though I was craving something else, I had to be a fruit-eater too."

Later, I realized that horses, cows, sheep, dogs - they’d all gone extinct, like the Ichthyosaurus. But the fruit was really good; one in particular, that seemed to be in season the whole time I was there - a floury thing in a three-sided shell - was especially amazing, and I made it my go-to.

At first, I was confused by all these weird fruits and flowers, but later I started to get it. "Anyway, I’m telling you about my fruit dinner in the far future now. As soon as my appetite calmed down a bit, I decided to really try to learn the language of these new people."

That was definitely the next thing to do. The fruit seemed like a good place to start, so I held one up and started making a bunch of questioning sounds and gestures. I had a lot of trouble getting my point across.

At first, my efforts just got me surprised stares or uncontrollable laughter, but then a fair-haired little kid seemed to understand what I was going for and repeated a word.

They had to chatter and explain everything to each other, and my first attempts to make their delicate little sounds caused a ton of genuine, if rude, amusement. But I felt like a teacher with a bunch of kids, so I kept at it, and soon I had at least a few noun words under my belt.

Then I got to demonstrative pronouns, and even the verb ‘to eat. But it was slow-going, and the little people quickly got tired and wanted to ditch my questions, so I decided, pretty much out of necessity, to let them give lessons in small doses whenever they felt like it.

"And small doses they were - I’d never met people more lazy or easily exhausted."