Chapter 7A Sudden Shock

"As I stood there thinking about how totally perfect this victory of humankind was, the full moon, yellow and kinda bulging, popped up out of a flood of silver light in the northeast. The tiny figures stopped moving around below, a silent owl zipped by, and I shivered from the night chill."

I decided to head down and find somewhere to crash. "I looked for the building I knew. Then my eye traveled along to the figure of the White Sphinx on the bronze pedestal, getting clearer as the moonlight got brighter. I could see the silver birch against it."

"There was the mess of rhododendron bushes, black in the pale light, and there was the little lawn. I looked at the lawn again. A weird doubt iced my confidence. ‘No,’ I told myself, ‘that’s not the lawn. "But it was the lawn. Because the white, sickly face of the sphinx was facing it.

Can you even imagine what I felt when that hit me? You really can’t. The Time Machine was gone! "Suddenly, like a slap in the face, came the possibility of losing my own time, of being stuck helpless in this crazy new world. Just thinking about it felt real, like a physical thing."

I could feel it gripping my throat and stopping my breath. In a second, I was freaking out and running down the slope with huge leaps. I fell headfirst and cut my face; I didn't waste any time stopping the blood, but jumped up and ran on, with a warm trickle down my cheek and chin.

The whole time I ran, I kept telling myself: ‘They just moved it a bit, shoved it under the bushes to get it out of the way.’ Still, I ran as fast as I could.

The whole time, with the kind of certainty that comes with total panic, I knew that wasn't true, knew instinctively that the machine was gone, out of my reach. My breath came in painful gasps.

I guess I covered the whole distance from the hill crest to the little lawn, maybe two miles, in ten minutes. And I’m not exactly young. I cursed out loud as I ran, wasting my breath being so sure of myself. I yelled, but nobody answered.

Not a single creature seemed to be moving in that moonlit world. "When I reached the lawn, my worst fears were confirmed. Not a trace of the thing was to be seen. I felt faint and cold when I faced the empty space among the black tangle of bushes."

I ran around it like crazy, as if the thing might be hidden in a corner, and then stopped suddenly, clutching my hair. Above me towered the sphinx, on the bronze pedestal, white, shining, sickly, in the moonlight. It seemed to smirk at my dismay.

"I could have told myself that the little people probably put the mechanism somewhere safe for me, but I was sure they weren’t smart or strong enough to do that. That’s what really got to me: the feeling that some totally unexpected power had taken my invention."

But I was sure of one thing: unless some other age had made an exact copy, the machine couldn't have moved in time. The way the levers were attached - I’ll show you later - stopped anyone from messing with it while they were removed. It had moved, and was hidden, only in space.

But then, where could it be? "I think I might have gone a little wild. I remember running around like crazy in and out among the moonlit bushes all around the sphinx, and startling some white animal that, in the dim light, I thought was a small deer."

I remember, too, late that night, beating the bushes with my clenched fist until my knuckles were gashed and bleeding from the broken twigs. Then, sobbing and losing it in my anguish, I went down to the huge building of stone. The big hall was dark, silent, and deserted.

I slipped on the uneven floor, and fell over one of the malachite tables, almost breaking my shin. I lit a match and went on past the dusty curtains, which I’m sure you remember.

"There I found a second huge room, covered in comfy cushions. Maybe a dozen or so of those little people were sleeping there. I’m sure they thought my second appearance was super weird, popping out of the quiet darkness with random noises and the sputter and flash of a match."

They’re not used to matches, you know? ‘Where’s my Time Machine?’ I started yelling, like an angry kid, grabbing them and shaking them up. It must have been really strange to them. Some giggled, most of them looked totally freaked out.

When I saw them standing around me, I realized I was doing the most ridiculous thing possible, trying to scare them. Because, based on how they acted during the day, I figured they’d forgotten what fear felt like.

"Suddenly, I dropped the match, knocking one of the people over, and stumbled across the huge dining hall again, out into the moonlight. I heard screams of terror and their tiny feet running and tripping all over the place."

I don’t really remember everything I did as the moon climbed higher in the sky. I guess it was because my Time Machine was gone that I lost it. I felt completely cut off from everyone I knew - a weird animal in a strange world. I probably just wandered around, screaming and cursing God and Fate.

I have a memory of feeling totally exhausted, as the long, awful night wore on; of looking around in this impossible place; of reaching out and touching strange creatures in the dark shadows; finally, of lying on the ground near the sphinx and crying, feeling absolutely miserable, even the anger about leaving the machine having drained away with my strength.

"I had nothing left but misery. Then I slept, and when I woke up, it was full day, and a couple of sparrows were hopping around me on the grass, close enough to touch. "I sat up in the fresh morning air, trying to remember how I’d gotten there and why I felt so abandoned and hopeless.

Then everything became clear. With the bright, normal daylight, I could finally look at my situation honestly. I saw how crazy my panic last night had been, and I could think clearly. ‘What if the worst has happened? I said. ‘What if the machine is completely lost - maybe even destroyed?

I need to stay calm and patient, learn how these people live, get a good idea of what happened to my Time Machine, and figure out how to get the materials and tools I need; so maybe, eventually, I can build another one. That would be my only hope, a pretty slim chance, but better than giving up.

And, honestly, it was a beautiful and fascinating world.

"But probably the machine had just been taken away. Still, I had to stay calm and patient, find where it was hidden, and get it back - by force or by being clever. And with that, I jumped to my feet and looked around, wondering where I could shower."

I felt worn out, stiff, and covered in travel grime. The fresh morning air made me really want to feel clean too. I'm pretty sure I’d used up all my energy. Honestly, as I went about my business, I was wondering why I'd been so worked up last night.

I carefully checked out the ground around the small lawn. I wasted some time asking questions to anyone little folks who passed by, as best as I could. But they didn’t understand my gestures at all; some just stared blankly, others thought it was a joke and laughed at me.

It was so hard not to reach out and touch their cute, laughing faces. It was a silly impulse, but the anger and fear bubbling up inside me were hard to control and were still trying to take advantage of my confusion. The grass gave me better clues.

I found a groove ripped in it, about halfway between the sphinx statue and where my feet had struggled with the overturned machine when I arrived. There were other signs it had been moved, with weird, narrow footprints like what a sloth might leave. This made me look closer at the statue.

It was, I think I’ve already said, made of bronze. It wasn’t just a block of metal, but was highly decorated with deep framed panels on either side. I went and knocked on them. The statue was hollow inside. Examining the panels closely, I realized they weren’t connected to the frames.

There were no handles or keyholes, but maybe the panels - if they were doors, like I thought - opened from the inside. One thing was clear to me. It didn’t take much thinking to figure out that my Time Machine was inside that statue. But how it got there was a different story.

"I saw two people wearing orange clothes coming through the bushes and under some apple trees covered in blossoms, heading towards me. I turned and smiled at them, and waved them over. They came closer, and then, pointing to the bronze statue, I tried to show them I wanted to open it."

But at my first gesture towards it, they reacted really strangely. It’s hard to explain their expression. Imagine making a really inappropriate gesture to a sensitive woman - that’s what their faces looked like. They turned and ran off like I’d deeply offended them.

I tried with a sweet-looking little guy in white next, with the same result. Somehow, his reaction made me feel embarrassed. But, you know, I really wanted the Time Machine, so I tried him one more time. As he turned away, like the others, my temper got the better of me.

"In three strides, I was after him, grabbed the loose part of his robe around his neck, and started dragging him towards the sphinx. Then I saw the horror and disgust on his face, and suddenly I let go. "But I wasn’t giving up yet. I pounded my fist on the bronze panels.

I thought I heard something move inside - to be specific, I thought I heard a chuckle - but I must have been mistaken. Then I grabbed a big pebble from the river and started hammering until I flattened a coil in the decorations, and the green stuff (verdigris) came off in powdery flakes.

Those little people must have heard me hammering from miles away on either side, but nothing happened. I saw a crowd of them on the slopes, looking at me nervously. Finally, hot and tired, I sat down to watch the place.

But I was too restless to watch for long; I’m just too Western for that kind of waiting. I can work on a problem for years, but to just sit there and do nothing for twenty-four hours - that’s a whole different thing.

I finally got up, after a while, and started wandering aimlessly through the bushes toward the hill again. Chill, I told myself. If you want your machine back, you gotta leave that sphinx alone. If they’re trying to steal your machine, it’s not gonna do much good trashing their bronze panels.

And if they’re not, you’ll get it back as soon as you ask. Sitting around surrounded by all this weird stuff while dealing with a puzzle like that is a total waste. That's how you end up obsessed. Deal with this world. Figure it out, watch it, and don't jump to conclusions.

Eventually, you'll find the answers. Then, suddenly, the absurdity of the situation hit me: all the years I’d spent studying and working to get to the future, and now I was desperate to escape it. I'd built the most complicated, most hopeless trap ever."

Even though it was at my own expense, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Walking through the huge palace, it felt like the little people were avoiding me. It might have been my imagination, or maybe it was because I’d been banging on the bronze gates. But I was pretty sure they were dodging me.

Still, I made sure to act like I didn’t care and didn’t chase after them. After a couple of days, things went back to normal. I worked on learning their language, and I also kept exploring.

Either I was missing something subtle, or their language was super basic - mostly just concrete nouns and verbs. They didn’t seem to have many abstract words, or use figurative language much.

Their sentences were usually short, just two words, and I couldn’t communicate or understand anything beyond the simplest ideas.

I decided to put the thought of my Time Machine and the mystery of the bronze doors under the sphinx on the back burner, as much as I could, until my growing knowledge led me back to them naturally. But a certain feeling, you know, kept me stuck in a few miles around where I arrived.