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March 6, 2025 16 mins
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells is a classic science fiction novel that follows an unnamed scientist, known as the Time Traveller, who invents a machine that allows him to travel through time. He journeys to the distant future, arriving in the year 802,701, where he encounters two distinct races: the gentle, childlike Eloi and the sinister, underground-dwelling Morlocks. As he explores this strange future, he realizes the dark implications of humanity’s evolution. The novel explores themes of class struggle, the passage of time, and the fate of civilization, making it one of the most influential works in science fiction history.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter seven of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Time
Machine Chapter seven. Now, indeed, I seemed in a worse
case than before. Hitherto, except during my night's anguish at

(00:21):
the loss of the time Machine, I had felt a
sustaining hope of ultimate escape. But that hope was staggered
by these new discoveries. Hitherto I had merely thought myself
impeded by the childish simplicity of the little people, and
by some unknown forces which I had only to understand
to overcome. But there was an altogether new elements in

(00:45):
the sickening quality of the morlocks, a something inhuman and malign.
Instinctively I loathed them. Before I had felt as a
man might feel who had fallen into a pit. My
concern was with the pit and how to get out
of it. Now I felt like a beast in a
trap whose enemy would come upon him soon. The enemy

(01:09):
I dreaded may surprise you. It was the darkness of
the new moon. WEENA had put this into my head
by some at first incomprehensible remarks about the dark nights.
It was not now such a very difficult problem to
guess what the coming of dark nights might mean. The
moon was on the wane. Each night there was a

(01:31):
longer interval of darkness, and now I understood to some
slight degree at least the reason of the fear of
the little upper world people for the dark. I wondered
vaguely what foul villainy it might be that the Morlocks
did under the new moon. I felt pretty sure now
that my second hypothesis was all wrong. The upper world

(01:53):
people might once have been the favored aristocracy and the
Morlocks their mechanical servants, but that had long since passed away.
The two species that had resulted from the evolution of
man were sliding down towards or had already arrived at
an altogether new relationship. The Eloi, like the Carolingian kings,

(02:16):
had decayed to a mere, beautiful futility. They still possessed
the earth on sufferance. Since the Morlocks, subterranean for innumerable generations,
had come at last to find the day that surface intolerable,
and the Morlocks made their garments. I inferred and maintained
them in their habitual needs. Perhaps through the survival of

(02:37):
an old habit of service. They did it as a
standing horse paused with his foot, or as a man
enjoys killing animals in sport, because ancient and departed necessities
had impressed it on the organism. But clearly the old
order was already in part reversed. The nemesis of the

(02:57):
delicate ones was creeping on apace. Ages ago, thousands of
generations ago. Men had thrust his brother men out of
the ease and the sunshine, And now that brother was
coming back changed. Already the eloy had begun to learn
one old lesson anew. They were becoming reacquainted with fear.

(03:20):
And suddenly there came into my head the memory of
the meat I had seen in the underworld. It seemed odd,
how it floated into my mind, not stirred up, as
it were, by the current of my meditations, but coming
in almost like a question from outside. I tried to
recall the form of it. I had a vague sense

(03:41):
of something familiar, but I could not tell what it
was at the time. Still, however, helpless the little peopled
in the presence of their mysterious fear, I was differently constituted.
I came out of this age of ours, this ripe
prime of the human race. When fear does not paralyze

(04:02):
and mystery has lost its terrors, I at least would
defend myself without further delay. I determined to make myself
arms and a fastness where I might sleep. With that
refuge as a base, I could face this strange world
with some of that confidence I had lost in realizing
to what creatures night by night I lay exposed. I

(04:24):
felt I could never sleep again until my bed was
secure from them. I shuddered with horror to think how
they must already have examined me. I wandered during the
afternoon along the valley of the Thames, but found nothing
that commended itself to my mind as inaccessible. All the
buildings and trees seemed easily practical to such dexterous climbers

(04:47):
as the Morlocks, to judge by their wells, must be.
Then the tall pinnacles of the Palace of Green Porcelain,
and the polished gleam of its walls came back to
my memory, and in the evening, taking ween like a
child upon my shoulder, I went up the hills towards
the southwest. The distance I had reckoned was seven or

(05:07):
eight miles but it must have been near eighteen. I
had first seen the place on a moist afternoon, when
distances are deceptively diminished. In addition, the heel of one
of my shoes was loose, and a nail was working
through the sole. They were comfortable old shoes. I wore
about indoors, so that I was lame, and it was

(05:29):
already long past sunset when I came in sight of
the palace, silhouetted black against the pale yellow of the sky.
Weena had been hugely delighted when I began to carry her,
but after a while she desired me to let her down,
and ran along by the side of me, occasionally darting
off on either hand to pick flowers to stick in
my pockets. My pockets had always puzzled Weena, but at

(05:53):
the last she had concluded that they were an eccentric
kind of vase for floral decoration. Least she utilized them
for that purpose, and that reminds me. In changing my jacket,
I found the time traveler paused, put his hand into
his pocket, and silently placed two withered flowers, not unlike

(06:14):
very large white mallows, upon the little table. Then he
resumed his narrative. As the hush of the evening crept
over the world, and we proceeded over the hill crest
towards Wimbledon. Weena grew tired and wanted to return to
the House of gray Stone, But I pointed out the
distant pinnacles of the Palace of Green Porcelain to her,

(06:34):
and contrived to make her understand that we were seeking
a refuge there from her fear. You know that great
pause that comes upon things before the dusk, even the
breeze stops in the trees. To me, there is always
an air of expectation about that evening stillness. The sky
was clear, remote and empty, save for a few horizontal

(06:57):
bars far down in the sunset. Well that night, the
expectation took the color of my fears. In that darkling calm,
my senses seemed peternaturally sharpened. I fancied I could even
feel the hollowness of the ground beneath my feet, could
indeed almost see through it, the Morlocks on their ant hill,

(07:19):
going hither and thither and waiting for the dark. In
my excitement, I fancied that they would receive my invasion
of their burrows as a declaration of war, and why
had they taken my time machine? So we went on
in the quiet, and the twilight deepened into night. The

(07:40):
clear blue of the distance faded, and one star after
another came out. The ground grew dim and the trees black.
Weena's fears and her fatigue grew upon her. I took
her in my arms and talked to her and caressed her. Then,
as the darkness grew deeper, she put her arms right
on my neck, and, closing her eyes tightly, pressed her

(08:03):
face against my shoulder. So we went down a long
slope into a valley, and there, in the dimness, I
almost walked into a little river. This I waited, and
went up on the opposite side of the valley, past
a number of sleeping houses, and by a statue a
fawn or some such figure minus the head. Here too

(08:24):
were Acacia's. So far I had seen nothing of the Morlocks.
But it was yet early in the night, and the
darker hours before the old moon rose were still to come.
From the brow of the next hill, I saw a
thick wood spreading wide and black before me. I hesitated
at this. I could see no end to it, either

(08:46):
to the right or the left, feeling tired. My feet,
in particular, were very sore. I carefully lowered Weena from
my shoulder. As I halted and sat down upon the turf,
I could no longer see the palace green porcelain, and
I was in doubt of my direction. I looked into
the thickness of the wood and thought of what it

(09:07):
might hide. Under that dense tangle of branches. One would
be out of sight of the stars, even were there
no other lurking danger, A danger I did not care
to let my imagination loose upon There would still be
all the roots to stumble over and the tree bowls
to strike against. I was very tired too, after the

(09:28):
excitements of the day, so I decided that I would
not face it, but would pass the night upon the
open hill. Weena, I was glad to find, was fast asleep.
I carefully wrapped her in my jacket and sat down
beside her to wait for the moonrise. The hillside was
quiet and deserted, but from the black of the wood

(09:51):
there came now and then a stir of living things
above me shone the stars. For the night was very clear.
I felt a certain sense of friendly comfort in their twinkling.
All the old constellations had gone from the sky. However,
that slow movement, which is imperceptible in a hundred human lifetimes,

(10:13):
had long since rearranged them in unfamiliar groupings. But the
milky Way, it seemed to me, was still the same
tattered streamer of star dust as of yore. Southward, as
I judged, it was a very bright red star that
was new to me. It was even more splendid than
our own green serious, and amid all these scintillating points

(10:35):
of light, one bright planet shone kindly and steadily, like
the face of an old friend. Looking at these stars
suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of
terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow,
inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown past

(10:57):
into the unknown future. I thought thought of the great
processional cycle that the pole of the Earth describes. Only
forty times had that silent revolution occurred during all the
years that I had traversed, And during these few revolutions,
all the activity, all the traditions, the complex organizations, the nations, languages, literatures, aspirations,

(11:23):
even the mere memory of Man as I knew him,
had been swept out of existence. Instead were these frail
creatures who had forgotten their high ancestry, and the white
things of which I went in terror. Then I thought
of the great fear that was between the two species,

(11:45):
and for the first time, with a sudden shiver, came
the clear knowledge of what the meat I had seen
might be. Yet it was too horrible. I looked at
little Weena sleeping beside me, her face white and starlike
under the stars, and forthwith dismissed the thought. Through that

(12:06):
long night, I held my mind off the Morlocks as
well as I could, and whiled away the time by
trying to fancy. I could find signs of the old
constellations in the new confusion. The sky kept very clear,
except for a hazy cloud or so, no doubt I
dozed at times. Then, as my vigil wore on, came

(12:30):
a faintness in the eastward sky, like the reflection of
some colorless fire. And the old moon rose thin and
peaked and white, and close behind and overtaking it and
overflowing it. The dawn came pale at first, and then
growing pink and warm. No Morlocks had approached us. Indeed,

(12:53):
I had seen none upon the hill that night, and
in the confidence of renewed day, it almost seemed to
me that my fear had been unreasonable. I stood up
and found my foot with the loose heel, swollen at
the ankle, and painful under the heel. So I sat
down again, took off my shoes and flung them away.

(13:14):
I awakened Weena, and we went down into the wood,
now green and pleasant instead of black, and forbidding we
found some fruit wherewith to break our fast. We soon
met others of the dainty ones, laughing and dancing in
the sunlight, as though there were no such thing in
nature as the night. And then I thought once more

(13:37):
of the meat I had seen. I felt assured now
of what it was, and from the bottom of my
heart I pitied this last feeble rill from the great
flood of humanity. Clearly, at some time in the long
ago of human decay, the morlock's food had run short.
Possibly they had lived on rats and such like vermic.

(14:00):
Even now, man is far less discriminating and exclusive in
his food than he was, far less than any monkey.
His prejudice against human flesh is no deep seated instinct,
and so these inhuman sons of men. I tried to
look at the thing in a scientific spirit. After all,

(14:22):
they were less human and more remote than our cannibal
ancestors of three or four thousand years ago, and the
intelligence that would have made this state of things a
torment had gone. Why should I trouble myself? These eloi
were mere fatted cattle, which the ant like morlocks preserved
and preyed upon, probably saw to the breeding of. And

(14:47):
there was Weena dancing at my side. Then I tried
to preserve myself from the horror that was coming upon
me by regarding it as a rigorous punishment of human selfishness.
Man had been content to live in ease and delight
upon the labors of his fellow man had taken necessity

(15:07):
as his watchword and excuse, and in the fullness of time,
necessity had come home to him. I even tried a
Carlyle like scorn of this wretched aristocracy in decay, But
this attitude of mind was impossible. However great their intellectual degradation,
the eloi had kept too much of the human form

(15:29):
not to claim my sympathy and to make me perforce
a sharer in their degradation and their fear. I had
at that time very vague ideas as to the course
I should pursue. My first was to secure some safe
place of refuge, and to make myself such arms of

(15:49):
metal or stone as I could contrive that necessity was immediate.
In the next place, I hoped to procure some means
of fire, so that I should have the weapon of
a torch at hand, for nothing I knew would be
more efficient against these morlocks. Then I wanted to arrange
some contrivance to break open the doors of bronze under

(16:11):
the white Sphinx. I had in mind a battering ram.
I had a persuasion that if I could enter those
doors and carry a blaze of light before me, I
should discover the time machine and escape. I could not
imagine the Morlocks were strong enough to move it far away.
Weena I had resolved to bring with me to our

(16:31):
own time, and, turning such schemes over in my mind,
I pursued our way towards the building which my fancy
had chosen as our dwelling. End of Chapter seven
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