Dear all,
You’ve all been extremely questioning when I told you about my brilliant
time machine. You just thought it was something impossible to do, but the
thing is, nothing is impossible. I am sending you this letter in the year
Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One A.D. “For that, I
should explain, was the date the little dials of my machine recorded” (28).
Many questions and many comments have been made over how the future
will be like in the coming years. Some say that the Earth is going to stop
existing and explode and scatter into fragments, forcing us to Mars. Some
say, technology is going to improve so drastically that it will overcome
and rule humans. Some say we are going to be living just like how we are
now in the year of 1895. Guess what, you people are all wrong. Frankly, I was
not even expecting such a shock. Down below, I am going to write about my
day in the future, and whether you want to believe it or not, I must
emphasize that nothing is false in this letter.
“The night came like the turning out of a lamp, and in another moment
came tomorrow. The laboratory grew faint and hazy, then fainter and even
fainter. Tomorrow night came black, then day again, night again, day
again, faster and faster still. An eddying murmur filled my ears, and a
strange, dumb confusedness descended on my mind. ‘I am afraid I cannot
convey the peculiar sensations of time travelling. They are unpleasant” (17).
I am not exactly sure of how long it took me to get here, but not too long.
Well, technically, it took me 800,806 years. As I’ve already told you before, “I
had always anticipated that the people of the year Eight Hundred and Two
Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art,
everything” (25). In contrast to my fantasy, a white sphinx laid in front of
me with a couple of midgets approaching me. “Their hair, which was
uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the neck and cheek; there was not
the faintest suggestion of it on the face, and their ears were singularly
minute” (24). Through hand gestures, I tried to explain that I came from the
time machine, but one of those creatures took me by surprise “by imitating
the sound of thunder… were these creatures fools?” (24). This idiot just
asked if I came from a thunderstorm! “For a moment I thought I had built
the Time Machine in vain” (24).
After a while, they showed some sides of prosperity. Apparently, all these
creatures live in one colossal building and the design was extremely
intricate. The windows caught my eyes the most. They were “colored glass
and partially unglazed, admitted a tempered light. The floor was made up
of huge blocks of some very hard white metal, not plates nor slabs” (25). On
tables, there were all kinds of fruits, and some I already knew of. The
terrifying thing was “fruit, by the bye, was all their diet” (26).
As I conversed with these creatures, I was also able to acknowledge some
queer things from their actions. They were like children. “They would
come with eager cries of astonishment, like children, but like children
they would soon stop examining me and wander away after some other
toy” (27). Whenever I tried to have them teach me their language, they
would stick with me for minutes, then stray to somewhere else.
Conspicuously, I was slightly disappointed with these people, the future
of mankind, but the idea of being stuck with these people forever… makes
everything a whole lot worse. “The Time Machine was gone!” (35). “I was in
a passion of fear and running with great leaping strides down the slope.
Once I fell headlong and curt my face; I lost no time in stanching the
blood, but jumped up and ran on, with a warm trickle down my check
and chin” (35). “All the time, with the certainty that sometimes comes
with excessive dread, I knew that such assurance was folly, knew
instinctively that the machine was removed out of my reach” (35). “I
suppose I covered the whole distance from the hill crest to the little
lawn, two miles, perhaps, in ten minutes. And I am not a young man. I
cursed aloud, as I ran, at my confident folly in leaving the machine” (36).
Crying out loud with fear, I saw a doomful shadow nearing me.
“When I reached the lawn, the worst fears were realized. 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” (36). You all probably don’t
understand how I felt, but I can tell you right now, it felt like as if I was
chasing for my life. The “unexpected nature of my loss maddened me. I
felt hopelessly cut off from my own kind – a strange animal in an
unknown world” (37). I tried to communicate to the creatures, but they
never understood my message. They always sat there laughing at it like
fools.
I can’t find a time to relax up to this moment. I am writing to you right
now to tell you, that I may never be back.
Kind regards,
The Time Traveler