(Bonus Episode) TIME ENOUGH AT LAST: The Classic Story Used On THE TWILIGHT ZONE

In a world left in ruins, a lone survivor discovers he finally has all the time he ever wanted—to read, undisturbed and alone.

“Time Enough at Last” by Lynn Venable; originally published in “IF Worlds of Science Fiction” January 1953

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Time enough at last by Lynn Venable from IF Worlds
of Science Fiction, January nineteen fifty three. For a long time,
Henry Beamos had had an ambition to read a book,
not just the title or the preface, or a page
somewhere in the middle. He wanted to read the whole thing,

(00:24):
all the way through, from beginning to end. A simple ambition, perhaps,
But in the cluttered life of Henry Beamus and impossibility,
Henry had no time of his own. There was his wife, Agnes,
who owned that part of it that his employer, mister
Carsville did not buy. Henry was allowed enough to get

(00:46):
to and from work, that in itself being quite a
concession on Agnes's part. Also, nature had conspired against Henry
by handing him a pair of hopelessly myopic eyes. Poor
Henry literally couldn't see his hand in front of his
face for a while. When he was very young. His

(01:08):
parents had thought him an idiot. When they realized it
was his eyes, they got glasses for him. He was
never quite able to catch up. There was never enough time.
It looked as though Henry's ambition would never be realized.
Then something happened which changed all that. Henry was down

(01:29):
in the vault of the East Side Bank and Trust.
When it happened, he had stolen a few moments from
the duties of his teller's cage to try to read
a few pages of the magazine he had bought that morning.
He'd made an excuse to mister Carsville about needing bills
in large denominations for a certain customer, and then, safe
inside the dim recesses of the vault, he had pulled

(01:51):
from inside his coat the pocket size magazine he had
just started a picture article cheerfully entitled The New Weapon
and what They'll Do to You. When all the noise
in the world crashed in upon his ear drums, it
seemed to be inside of him and outside of him
all at once. Then the concrete floor was rising up

(02:12):
at him, and the ceiling came slanting down toward him,
and for a fleeting second, Henry thought of a story
he had started to read once called The Pit and
the Pendulum. He regretted in that insane moment that he
had never had time to finish that story to see
how it came out. Then all was darkness and quiet

(02:33):
and unconsciousness. When Henry came to he knew that something
was desperately wrong with the east Side Bank and trust.
The heavy steel door of the vault was buckled and twisted,
and the floor tilted up at a dizzy angle, while
the ceiling dipped crazily toward it. Henry gingerly got to

(02:55):
his feet, moving arms and legs experimentally, assured that nothing
was broken, he tenderly raised a hand to his eyes.
His precious glasses were intact. Thank god, he would never
have been able to find his way out of the
shattered vault without them. He made a mental note to
write doctor Torrance to have a spare pair made and

(03:17):
mailed to him. Blasted nuisance not having his prescription on
file locally, But Henry trusted no one but doctor Torrance
to grind those thick lenses into his own complicated prescription.
Henry removed the heavy glasses from his face. Instantly the
room dissolved into a neutral blur. Henry saw a pink

(03:38):
splash that he knew was his hand. Had a white
blob come up to meet the pink as he withdrew
his pocket handkerchief and carefully dusted the lenses. As he
replaced the glasses, they slipped down on the bridge of
his nose a little. He had been meaning to have
them tightened for some time. He suddenly realized, without the
realization actually entering his conscious thoughts, that something momentous had happened,

(04:04):
something worse than the boiler blowing up, something worse than
a gas mane exploding, something worse than anything that had
ever happened before. He felt that way because it was
so quiet. There was no whine of sirens, no shouting,
no running, just an ominous and all pervading silence. Henry

(04:30):
walked across the slanting floor, slipping and stumbling on the
uneven surface. He made his way to the elevator. The
car lay crumpled at the foot of the shaft like
a discarded accordion. There was something inside of it that
Henry could not look at, something that had once been
a person, or perhaps several people, it was impossible to

(04:52):
tell now. Feeling sick, Henry staggered toward the stairway. The
steps were still there, but so jumbled and piled back
upon one another that it was more like climbing the
side of a mountain than mounting a stairway. It was
quiet in the huge chamber that had been the lobby
of the bank. It looked strangely cheerful with the sunlight

(05:13):
shining through the girders where the ceiling had fallen. The
dappled sunlight glinted across the silent lobby, and everywhere there
were huddled lumps of unpleasantness that made Henry sick as
he tried not to look at them. Mister Carsville, he called,
It was very quiet. Something had to be done. Of course,

(05:34):
this was terrible, right in the middle of a monday too.
Mister Carsville would know what to do. He called again,
more loudly, and his voice cracked hoarsely, mister Carrsville. And
then he saw an arm and shoulder extending out from
under a huge fallen block of marble ceiling. In the
buttonhole was the white carnation mister Carrsville had worn to

(05:56):
work that morning, and on the third finger of that
hand was a massive signet ring, also belonging to mister Carsville. Numbly,
Henry realized that the rest of mister Carsville was under
that block of marble. Henry felt a pang of real sorrow.
Mister Carsville was gone, and so was the rest of

(06:18):
the staff. Mister Wilkinson and mister Emory and mister Prithard,
and the same with Pete and Ralph and Jenkins and
Hunter and Pat the Guard and Willie the doorman. There
was no one to say what was to be done
about the East Side Bank and Trust except Henry Beamis.

(06:38):
And Henry wasn't worried about the bank. There was something
he wanted to do. He climbed carefully over piles of
fallen masonry. Once he stepped down into something that crunched
and squashed beneath his feet, and he set his teeth
on edge to keep from wretching. The street was not

(06:58):
much different from the inn side, bright sunlight and so
much concrete to crawl over, but the unpleasantness was much
much worse. Everywhere there were strange, motionless lumps that Henry
could not look at. Suddenly he remembered Agnes. He should

(07:19):
be trying to get to Agnes, shouldn't he. He remembered
a poster he had seen that said, an event of emergency,
do not use the telephone. Your loved ones are as
safe as you. He wondered about Agnes. He looked at
the smashed automobiles, some with their four wheels, pointing skyward
like the stiffened legs of dead animals. He couldn't get

(07:41):
to Agnes now anyway. If she was safe, then she
was safe. Otherwise, of course, Henry knew Agnes wasn't safe.
He had a feeling that there wasn't anyone safe for
a long long way, maybe not in the whole state,
or the whole country, or the whole world. Now that

(08:05):
was thought, Henry didn't want to think. He forced it
from his mind and turned his thoughts back to Wagnes.
She had been a pretty good wife, now that it
was all said and done. It wasn't exactly her fault
if people didn't have time to read nowadays, it was
just that there was the house and the bank and

(08:25):
the yard. There were the Joneses for bridge, and the
Graysons for Canasta, and charades with the Bryants, and the television,
the television Agnus loved to watch, but would never watch alone.
He never had time to read, even a newspaper. He
started thinking about last night, that business. About the newspaper.

(08:51):
Henry had settled into his chair quietly, afraid that a
creaking spring might call to Agnes's attention. The fact that
he was momentarily unoccupied, he had unfolded the newspaper slowly
and carefully. The sharp crackle of the paper would have
been a clarion call to Agnes. He glanced at the
headlines at the first page, collapse of conference imminent. He

(09:14):
didn't have time to read the article. He turned to
the second page, Solon predicts war only days away. He
flipped through the pages faster, reading brief snatches here and there,
afraid to spend too much time on any one item.
On a back page was a brief article entitled prehistoric

(09:34):
artifacts unearthed in Yucatan. Henry smiled to himself and carefully
folded the sheet of paper in two fourths. That would
be interesting, He'd read all about it. Then it came
Agnes's voice, Henry, and then she was upon him. She
lightly flicked the paper out of his hands and into

(09:55):
the fireplace. He saw the flames lick up and curl
possessively around the unread article. AGAs continued, Henry, tonight is
the Jones Bridge night. They'll be here in thirty minutes,
and I'm not dressed yet, and here you are reading.
She emphasized the last word as though it were an
unclean act. Hurry in shave, you know how smooth Jasper

(10:19):
Jones's chin always looks, and then straighten up this room.
She glanced regretfully toward the fireplace. Oh dear that paper.
The television schedule. Oh well, after the Jones leave, there
won't be time for anything but the late late movie.
And what don't just sit there, Henry, hurry. Henry was

(10:40):
hurrying now, but hurrying too much. He cut his leg
on a twisted piece of metal that had once been
an automobile fender. He thought about things like lockjaw and
gang green, and his hand trembled as he tied his
pocket handkerchief around the wound. In his mind, he saw
the fire again, licking across the face of last night's newspaper.

(11:02):
He thought that now he would have time to read
all the newspapers he wanted to. Only now there wouldn't
be anymore. That heap of rubble across the street had
been the gazette building. It was terrible to think there
would never be another up to date newspaper. Agnes would

(11:22):
have been very upset. No television schedule, but then, of course,
no television. He wanted to laugh, but he didn't that
wouldn't have been fitting, not at all. He could see
the building he was looking for now, but the silhouette
was strangely changed. The great circular dome was now a

(11:43):
ragged semi circle, half of it gone, and one of
the great wings of the building had fallen in upon itself.
A sudden panic gripped Henry Bemis. What if they were
all ruined, destroyed, every one of them. What if there
wasn't a single one left. Tears of helplessness welled in
his eyes as he painfully fought his way over and

(12:05):
through the twisted fragments of the city. He thought of
the building when it had been whole. He remembered the
many nights he had paused outside its wide and welcoming doors.
He thought of the warm nights when the doors had
been thrown open and he could see the people inside,
see them sitting at the plain wooden tables with the
stacks of books beside them. He used to think, then,

(12:29):
what a wonderful thing a public library was, a place
where anybody, anybody at all, could go in and read.
He had been tempted to enter many times. He had
watched the people through the open doors. The man in
greasy work clothes, who sat near the door night after night,

(12:50):
laboriously studying a technical journal, perhaps difficult for him, but
promising a brighter future. There had been an aged, scholarly
gentleman who sat on the other side of the door,
leisurely paging, moving his lips a little as he did so,
a man having little time left, but rich in time
because he could do with it as he chose. Henry

(13:13):
had never gone in. He had started up the steps
once got almost to the door, but then he remembered
agnes her questions and shouting, and he had turned away.
He was going in now, almost crawling, his breath coming
and stabbing gasps, his hands torn and bleeding. His trouser

(13:34):
leg was sticky red where the wound in his leg
had soaked through the handkerchief. It was throbbing badly, but
Henry didn't care. He had reached his destination. Part of
the inscription was still there over the now doorless entrance
pub clib R. The rest had been torn away. The

(14:00):
place was in shambles. The shelves were overturned, broken, smashed, tilted,
their precious contents spilled in disorder upon the floor. A
lot of the books, Henry noted gleefully, were still intact,
still whole, still readable. He was literally knee deep in them.

(14:20):
He wallowed in books. He picked one up. The title
was Collected Works of William Shakespeare. Yes, he must read
that sometime. He laid it aside carefully. He picked up
another Spinoza. He tossed it away, seized another, and another,
and still another, which to read first? There were so many.

(14:45):
He'd been conducting himself a little like a starving man
in a delicatessen, grabbing a little of this and a
little of vat in a frenzy of enjoyment. But now
he steadied away from the pile about him. He selected
one volume, sat comfortably down on an overturned shelf, and
opened the book. Henry Beamus smiled. There was the rumble

(15:09):
of complaining stone minute, in comparison with the epic complaints
following the fall of the bomb. This win occurred under
one corner of the shelf upon which Henry sat. The
shelf moved threw him off balance. The glasses slipped from
his nose and fell with a tinkle. He bent down,
clawing blindly, and found finally their smashed remains. A minor

(15:33):
indirect destruction stemming from the sudden wholesale smashing of a city,
but the only one that greatly interested Henry Beams. He
stared down at the blurred page before him. He began
to cry.