Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Chapter twelve of The Time Machine byH. G. Wells. So I
came back for a long time.I must have been insensible upon the machine.
The blinking succession of the days andnights was resumed. The sun got
golden again, the sky blew.I breathed with greater freedom. The fluctuating
(00:23):
contours of the land ebbed and flowed. The hands spun backward upon the dials.
At last I saw again the dimshadows of houses, the evidences of
decadent humanity. These two changed andpassed, and others came presently. When
the million dial was at zero,I slackened speed. I began to recognize
(00:47):
our own petty and familiar architecture.The thousand's hand ran back to the starting
point. The day and night flappedslower and slower. Then the old walls
of the laboratory came round me verygently. Now I slowed the mechanism down.
I saw one little thing that seemedodd to me. I think I've
(01:08):
told you that when I set outbefore, my velocity became very high.
Missus Watchett had walked across the room, traveling, as it seemed to me,
like a rocket. As I returned, I passed again across that minute
when she traversed the laboratory, butnow her every motion appeared to be the
(01:29):
exact inversion of her previous ones.The door at the lower end opened,
and she glided quietly up the laboratoryback foremost, and disappeared behind the door
by which she had previously entered.Just before that, I seemed to see
Hillier for a moment, but hepassed like a flash. Then I stopped
(01:52):
the machine and saw about me againthe old, familiar laboratory, my tools,
my appliances, just as I hadleft them. I got off the
thing, very shaky, and satdown upon my bench. For several minutes.
I trembled violently. Then I becamecalmer. Around me was my old
(02:13):
workshop again, exactly as it hadbeen. I might have slept there,
and the whole thing had been adream, And yet not exactly. The
thing had started from the southeast cornerof the laboratory, it had come to
rest again in the northwest against thewall where you saw it. That gives
you the exact distance from my littlelawn to the pedestal of the white sphinx
(02:38):
into which the Morlocks had carried mymachine. For a time, my brain
went stagnant. Presently, I gotup and came through the passage here,
limping because my heel was still painfuland feeling sorely begrimed. I saw the
pall mall gazette on the table bythe door. I found the date was
(02:58):
indeed today, and looking at thetimepiece, saw the hour was almost eight
o'clock. I heard your voices andthe clatter of plates. I hesitated.
I felt so sick and weak.Then I sniffed good wholesome meat and opened
the door on you. You knowthe rest. I washed and dined,
(03:21):
and now I am telling you thestory I know. He said, after
a pause, that all this willbe absolutely incredible to you. To me,
the one incredible thing is that Iam here tonight, in this old,
familiar room, looking into your friendlyfaces, and telling you these strange
(03:42):
adventures. He looked at the medicalman. No, I cannot expect you
to believe it. Take it asa lie or a prophecy, say I
dreamed it in the workshop. Consider, I have been speculating upon the destinies
of our race until I have hatchthis fiction. Treat my assertion of its
(04:02):
truth as a mere stroke of art. To enhance its interest and taking it
as a story. What do youthink of it? He took up his
pipe and began, in his oldaccustomed manner, to tap with it nervously
upon the bars of the grate.There was a momentary stillness. Then chairs
(04:24):
began to creak and choose to scrapeupon the carpet. I took my eyes
off the time Traveler's face and lookedround at his audience. They were in
the dark, and little spots ofcolor swam before them. The medical man
seemed absorbed in the contemplation of ourhost. The editor was looking hard at
the end of his cigar the sixthThe journalist fumbled for his watch. The
(04:48):
others, as far as I remember, were motionless. The editor stood up
with a sigh. What a pityit is. You're not a writer of
stories, he said, putting hishand on the time Traveler's shoulder. You
don't believe it, well, Ithought not. The time traveler turned to
(05:11):
us. Where are the matches,he said? He lit one and spoke
over his pipe, puffing to tellyou the truth. I hardly believe it
myself, And yet his eye fellwith a mute inquiry upon the withered white
flowers upon the little table. Thenhe turned over the hand holding his pipe,
(05:31):
and I saw he was looking atsome half heeled scars on his knuckles.
The medical man rose, came tothe lamp and examined the flowers.
The gynasium's odd, he said.The psychologist leaned forward to see, holding
out his hand for a specimen.I'm hanged if it isn't quarter to one,
(05:54):
said the journalist. How shall weget home? Plenty of cabs at
the station, said the psychologist.It's a curious thing, said the medical
man. But I certainly don't knowthe natural order of these flowers? May
I have them? The time travelerhesitated. Then suddenly, certainly not where
(06:16):
did you really get them? Saidthe medical man. The time traveler put
his hand to his head. Hespoke like one who is trying to keep
hold of an idea that eluded him. They were put into my pocket by
Weena when I traveled into time.He stared around the room. I'm damned
(06:36):
if it isn't all going This roomand you in the atmosphere of every day
is too much for my memory.Did I ever make a time machine or
a model of a time machine?Or is it all only a dream,
they say. Life is a dream, a precious, poor dream at times.
(06:57):
But I can't stand another that won'tfit. It's madness. And where
did the dream come from? Imust look at that machine, if there
is one. He caught up thelamp swiftly and carried it, flaring red,
through the door into the corridor.We followed him. There, in
the flickering light of the lamp wasthe machine, sure enough, squat,
(07:19):
ugly and askew, a thing ofbrass, ebony, ivory and translucent,
glimmering quartz, solid to the touch. For I put out my hand and
felt the rail of it, andwith brown spots and smears upon the ivory,
and bits of grass and moss uponthe lower parts, and one rail
(07:40):
bent awry. The time traveler putthe lamp down on the bench and ran
his hand along the damaged rail.It's all right now, he said.
The story I told you was true. I'm sorry to have brought you out
here in the cold. He tookup the lamp, and in an absolute
silence, we returned to the smokingroom. He came into the hall with
(08:03):
us and helped the editor on withhis coat. The medical man looked into
his face, and with a certainhesitation, told him he was suffering from
overwork, at which he laughed hugely. I remember him standing in the open
doorway bawling good night. I shareda cab with the editor. He thought
(08:24):
the tale a gaudy lie. Formy own part, I was unable to
come to a conclusion. The storywas so fantastic and incredible, the telling
so credible and sober. I layawake most of the night thinking about it.
I determined to go next day andsee the time traveler again. I
(08:45):
was told he was in the laboratory, and, being on easy terms in
the house, I went up tohim. The laboratory, however, was
empty. I stared for a minuteat the time machine and put out my
hand and touched the lever. Atthat the squat substantial looking mass swayed like
a bough shaken by the wind.Its instability startled me extremely, and I
(09:11):
had a queer reminiscence of the childishdays when I used to be forbidden to
meddle. I came back through thecorridor. The time traveler met me in
the smoking room. He was comingfrom the house. He had a small
camera under one arm and a knapsackunder the other. He laughed when he
saw me and gave me an elbowto shake. I'm frightfully busy, said
(09:35):
he with that thing in there,But is it not some hoax? I
said, do you really travel throughtime? Really? And truly? I
do? And he looked frankly intomy eyes. He hesitated, his eye
wandered about the room. I onlywant half an hour, he said.
(09:58):
I know why you came, andit's awfully good of you. There's some
magazines here. If you'll stop tolunch, i'll prove you this time traveling
up to the hilt, specimen andall, if you'll forgive my leaving you
now. I consented, hardly comprehendingthen the full import of his words,
and he nodded and went on downthe corridor. I heard the door of
(10:20):
the laboratory slam, seated myself ina chair and took up a daily paper.
What was he going to do beforelunchtime? Then suddenly I was reminded
by an advertisement that I had promisedto meet Richardson, the publisher, at
two. I looked at my watchand saw that I could barely save that
engagement. I got up and wentdown the passage to tell the time traveler.
(10:45):
As I took hold of the handleof the door, I heard an
exclamation oddly truncated at the end,and a click and a thud. A
gust of air whirled round me asI opened the door, and from within
came the sound of broken glass fallingon the floor. The time Traveler was
not there. I seemed to seea ghostly, indistinct figure sitting in a
(11:09):
whirling mass of black and brass fora moment, a figure so transparent that
the bench behind, with its sheetsof drawings was absolutely distinct. But this
phantasm vanished as I rubbed my eyes. The time machine had gone. Save
for a subsiding stir of dust.The further end of the laboratory was empty.
(11:31):
A pain of the skylight had apparentlyjust been blown in. I felt
an unreasonable amazement. I knew thatsomething strange had happened, and for the
moment, could not distinguish what thestrange thing might be. As I stood
staring, the door into the gardenopened and the man servant appeared. We
(11:54):
looked at each other. Then ideasbegan to come. As miss are gone
out that way, said I,No, SA, no one has come
out this way I was expecting tofind him here. At that I understood,
at the risk of disappointing Richardson,I stayed on waiting for the Time
(12:15):
Traveler, waiting for the second,perhaps still stranger story, and the specimens
and photographs he would bring with him. But I am beginning now to fear
that I must wait a lifetime.The time Traveler vanished three years ago,
and as everybody knows now, hehas never returned epilogue. One cannot choose
(12:41):
but wonder will he ever return?It may be that he swept back into
the past and fell among the blooddrinking, hairy savages of the age of
unpolished stone, into the abysses ofthe Cretaceous sea, or among the grotesque
sarians, the huge reptilian brutes ofthe Jurassic times. He may even,
(13:03):
now, if I may use thephrase, be wandering on some placiosaurus haunted
oolitic coral reef, or beside thelonely saline lakes of the Triassic Age.
Or did he go forward into oneof the nearer ages, in which men
are still men, but with theriddles of our own time answered and its
(13:24):
wearisome problems solved, into the manhoodof the race. For I, for
my own part, cannot think thatthese latter days of weak experiment, fragmentary
theory, and mutual discord are indeedman's culminating time. I say, for
my own part, he I know, for the question have been discussed among
(13:46):
us long before the time machine wasmade. Thought but cheerlessly of the advancement
of mankind, and saw in thegrowing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping
that must inevitably fall back upon anddestroy its makers in the end. If
that is so, it remains forus to live as though it were not
(14:07):
so. But to me the futureis still black and blank, is of
vast ignorance, lit at a fewcasual places by the memory of his story.
And I have by me for mycomfort two strange white flowers, shriveled
now and brown and flat and brittle, to witness that even when mind and
(14:31):
strength had gone, gratitude and amutual tenderness still lived on in the heart
of man. The End of theTime Machine by H. G. Wells
Chapter twelve of The Time Machine byH. G. Wells. So I
came back for a long time.I must have been insensible upon the machine.
The blinking succession of the days andnights was resumed. The sun got
golden again, the sky blew.I breathed with greater freedom. The fluctuating
(00:23):
contours of the land ebbed and flowed. The hands spun backward upon the dials.
At last I saw again the dimshadows of houses, the evidences of
decadent humanity. These two changed andpassed, and others came presently. When
the million dial was at zero,I slackened speed. I began to recognize
(00:47):
our own petty and familiar architecture.The thousand's hand ran back to the starting
point. The day and night flappedslower and slower. Then the old walls
of the laboratory came round me verygently. Now I slowed the mechanism down.
I saw one little thing that seemedodd to me. I think I've
(01:08):
told you that when I set outbefore, my velocity became very high.
Missus Watchett had walked across the room, traveling, as it seemed to me,
like a rocket. As I returned, I passed again across that minute
when she traversed the laboratory, butnow her every motion appeared to be the
(01:29):
exact inversion of her previous ones.The door at the lower end opened,
and she glided quietly up the laboratoryback foremost, and disappeared behind the door
by which she had previously entered.Just before that, I seemed to see
Hillier for a moment, but hepassed like a flash. Then I stopped
(01:52):
the machine and saw about me againthe old, familiar laboratory, my tools,
my appliances, just as I hadleft them. I got off the
thing, very shaky, and satdown upon my bench. For several minutes.
I trembled violently. Then I becamecalmer. Around me was my old
(02:13):
workshop again, exactly as it hadbeen. I might have slept there,
and the whole thing had been adream, And yet not exactly. The
thing had started from the southeast cornerof the laboratory, it had come to
rest again in the northwest against thewall where you saw it. That gives
you the exact distance from my littlelawn to the pedestal of the white sphinx
(02:38):
into which the Morlocks had carried mymachine. For a time, my brain
went stagnant. Presently, I gotup and came through the passage here,
limping because my heel was still painfuland feeling sorely begrimed. I saw the
pall mall gazette on the table bythe door. I found the date was
(02:58):
indeed today, and looking at thetimepiece, saw the hour was almost eight
o'clock. I heard your voices andthe clatter of plates. I hesitated.
I felt so sick and weak.Then I sniffed good wholesome meat and opened
the door on you. You knowthe rest. I washed and dined,
(03:21):
and now I am telling you thestory I know. He said, after
a pause, that all this willbe absolutely incredible to you. To me,
the one incredible thing is that Iam here tonight, in this old,
familiar room, looking into your friendlyfaces, and telling you these strange
(03:42):
adventures. He looked at the medicalman. No, I cannot expect you
to believe it. Take it asa lie or a prophecy, say I
dreamed it in the workshop. Consider, I have been speculating upon the destinies
of our race until I have hatchthis fiction. Treat my assertion of its
(04:02):
truth as a mere stroke of art. To enhance its interest and taking it
as a story. What do youthink of it? He took up his
pipe and began, in his oldaccustomed manner, to tap with it nervously
upon the bars of the grate.There was a momentary stillness. Then chairs
(04:24):
began to creak and choose to scrapeupon the carpet. I took my eyes
off the time Traveler's face and lookedround at his audience. They were in
the dark, and little spots ofcolor swam before them. The medical man
seemed absorbed in the contemplation of ourhost. The editor was looking hard at
the end of his cigar the sixthThe journalist fumbled for his watch. The
(04:48):
others, as far as I remember, were motionless. The editor stood up
with a sigh. What a pityit is. You're not a writer of
stories, he said, putting hishand on the time Traveler's shoulder. You
don't believe it, well, Ithought not. The time traveler turned to
(05:11):
us. Where are the matches,he said? He lit one and spoke
over his pipe, puffing to tellyou the truth. I hardly believe it
myself, And yet his eye fellwith a mute inquiry upon the withered white
flowers upon the little table. Thenhe turned over the hand holding his pipe,
(05:31):
and I saw he was looking atsome half heeled scars on his knuckles.
The medical man rose, came tothe lamp and examined the flowers.
The gynasium's odd, he said.The psychologist leaned forward to see, holding
out his hand for a specimen.I'm hanged if it isn't quarter to one,
(05:54):
said the journalist. How shall weget home? Plenty of cabs at
the station, said the psychologist.It's a curious thing, said the medical
man. But I certainly don't knowthe natural order of these flowers? May
I have them? The time travelerhesitated. Then suddenly, certainly not where
(06:16):
did you really get them? Saidthe medical man. The time traveler put
his hand to his head. Hespoke like one who is trying to keep
hold of an idea that eluded him. They were put into my pocket by
Weena when I traveled into time.He stared around the room. I'm damned
(06:36):
if it isn't all going This roomand you in the atmosphere of every day
is too much for my memory.Did I ever make a time machine or
a model of a time machine?Or is it all only a dream,
they say. Life is a dream, a precious, poor dream at times.
(06:57):
But I can't stand another that won'tfit. It's madness. And where
did the dream come from? Imust look at that machine, if there
is one. He caught up thelamp swiftly and carried it, flaring red,
through the door into the corridor.We followed him. There, in
the flickering light of the lamp wasthe machine, sure enough, squat,
(07:19):
ugly and askew, a thing ofbrass, ebony, ivory and translucent,
glimmering quartz, solid to the touch. For I put out my hand and
felt the rail of it, andwith brown spots and smears upon the ivory,
and bits of grass and moss uponthe lower parts, and one rail
(07:40):
bent awry. The time traveler putthe lamp down on the bench and ran
his hand along the damaged rail.It's all right now, he said.
The story I told you was true. I'm sorry to have brought you out
here in the cold. He tookup the lamp, and in an absolute
silence, we returned to the smokingroom. He came into the hall with
(08:03):
us and helped the editor on withhis coat. The medical man looked into
his face, and with a certainhesitation, told him he was suffering from
overwork, at which he laughed hugely. I remember him standing in the open
doorway bawling good night. I shareda cab with the editor. He thought
(08:24):
the tale a gaudy lie. Formy own part, I was unable to
come to a conclusion. The storywas so fantastic and incredible, the telling
so credible and sober. I layawake most of the night thinking about it.
I determined to go next day andsee the time traveler again. I
(08:45):
was told he was in the laboratory, and, being on easy terms in
the house, I went up tohim. The laboratory, however, was
empty. I stared for a minuteat the time machine and put out my
hand and touched the lever. Atthat the squat substantial looking mass swayed like
a bough shaken by the wind.Its instability startled me extremely, and I
(09:11):
had a queer reminiscence of the childishdays when I used to be forbidden to
meddle. I came back through thecorridor. The time traveler met me in
the smoking room. He was comingfrom the house. He had a small
camera under one arm and a knapsackunder the other. He laughed when he
saw me and gave me an elbowto shake. I'm frightfully busy, said
(09:35):
he with that thing in there,But is it not some hoax? I
said, do you really travel throughtime? Really? And truly? I
do? And he looked frankly intomy eyes. He hesitated, his eye
wandered about the room. I onlywant half an hour, he said.
(09:58):
I know why you came, andit's awfully good of you. There's some
magazines here. If you'll stop tolunch, i'll prove you this time traveling
up to the hilt, specimen andall, if you'll forgive my leaving you
now. I consented, hardly comprehendingthen the full import of his words,
and he nodded and went on downthe corridor. I heard the door of
(10:20):
the laboratory slam, seated myself ina chair and took up a daily paper.
What was he going to do beforelunchtime? Then suddenly I was reminded
by an advertisement that I had promisedto meet Richardson, the publisher, at
two. I looked at my watchand saw that I could barely save that
engagement. I got up and wentdown the passage to tell the time traveler.
(10:45):
As I took hold of the handleof the door, I heard an
exclamation oddly truncated at the end,and a click and a thud. A
gust of air whirled round me asI opened the door, and from within
came the sound of broken glass fallingon the floor. The time Traveler was
not there. I seemed to seea ghostly, indistinct figure sitting in a
(11:09):
whirling mass of black and brass fora moment, a figure so transparent that
the bench behind, with its sheetsof drawings was absolutely distinct. But this
phantasm vanished as I rubbed my eyes. The time machine had gone. Save
for a subsiding stir of dust.The further end of the laboratory was empty.
(11:31):
A pain of the skylight had apparentlyjust been blown in. I felt
an unreasonable amazement. I knew thatsomething strange had happened, and for the
moment, could not distinguish what thestrange thing might be. As I stood
staring, the door into the gardenopened and the man servant appeared. We
(11:54):
looked at each other. Then ideasbegan to come. As miss are gone
out that way, said I,No, SA, no one has come
out this way I was expecting tofind him here. At that I understood,
at the risk of disappointing Richardson,I stayed on waiting for the Time
(12:15):
Traveler, waiting for the second,perhaps still stranger story, and the specimens
and photographs he would bring with him. But I am beginning now to fear
that I must wait a lifetime.The time Traveler vanished three years ago,
and as everybody knows now, hehas never returned epilogue. One cannot choose
(12:41):
but wonder will he ever return?It may be that he swept back into
the past and fell among the blooddrinking, hairy savages of the age of
unpolished stone, into the abysses ofthe Cretaceous sea, or among the grotesque
sarians, the huge reptilian brutes ofthe Jurassic times. He may even,
(13:03):
now, if I may use thephrase, be wandering on some placiosaurus haunted
oolitic coral reef, or beside thelonely saline lakes of the Triassic Age.
Or did he go forward into oneof the nearer ages, in which men
are still men, but with theriddles of our own time answered and its
(13:24):
wearisome problems solved, into the manhoodof the race. For I, for
my own part, cannot think thatthese latter days of weak experiment, fragmentary
theory, and mutual discord are indeedman's culminating time. I say, for
my own part, he I know, for the question have been discussed among
(13:46):
us long before the time machine wasmade. Thought but cheerlessly of the advancement
of mankind, and saw in thegrowing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping
that must inevitably fall back upon anddestroy its makers in the end. If
that is so, it remains forus to live as though it were not
(14:07):
so. But to me the futureis still black and blank, is of
vast ignorance, lit at a fewcasual places by the memory of his story.
And I have by me for mycomfort two strange white flowers, shriveled
now and brown and flat and brittle, to witness that even when mind and
(14:31):
strength had gone, gratitude and amutual tenderness still lived on in the heart
of man. The End of theTime Machine by H. G. Wells
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