The Time Machine

by H.G. Wells

There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it.

Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough — as most wrong theories are!

The Time Machine was gone!

I felt hopelessly cut off from my own kind — a strange animal in an unknown world.

perhaps, I may make another.”

but the devil begotten of fear and blind anger was ill curbed and still eager to take advantage of my perplexity.

Then I saw the horror and repugnance of his face, and all of a sudden I let him go.

Putting things together, I reached a strong suggestion of an extensive system of subterranean ventilation,

at first inclined to associate it with the sanitary apparatus of these people. It was an obvious conclusion, but it was absolutely wrong.

that aged and infirm among this people there were none.

They spent all their time in playing gently, in bathing in the river, in making love in a half-playful fashion, in eating fruit and sleeping.

We were soon seated together in a little stone arbour, engaged in conversation, chiefly of smiles.

her name was Weena,

But she dreaded the dark, dreaded shadows, dreaded black things. Darkness to her was the one thing dreadful.

that these little people gathered into the great houses after dark, and slept in droves. To enter upon them without a light was to put them into a tumult of apprehension.

I associated them in some indefinite way with the white animal I had startled in my first passionate search for the Time Machine.

Suddenly I halted spellbound. A pair of eyes, luminous by reflection against the daylight without, was watching me out of the darkness.

and something white ran past me.

and saw a queer little ape-like figure, its head held down in a peculiar manner, running across the sunlit space behind me.

it was a dull white, and had strange large greyish-red eyes; also that there was flaxen hair on its head and down its back.

I cannot even say whether it ran on all-fours, or only with its forearms held very low.

I saw a small, white, moving creature, with large bright eyes which regarded me steadfastly as it retreated.

It was so like a human spider!

a number of metal foot and hand rests forming a kind of lad...

human.

that Man had not remained one species, but had differentiated into two distinct animals:

I had now a clue to the import of these wells, to the ventilating towers, to the mystery of the ghosts; to say nothing of a hint at the meaning of the bronze gates and the fate of the Time Machine!

Plainly, this second species of Man was subterranean.

there was the bleached look common in most animals that live largely in the dark — the white fish of the Kentucky caves, for instance.

large eyes,

that evident confusion in the sunshine, that hasty yet fumbling awkward flight towards dark shadow, and that peculiar carriage of the head

extreme sensitiveness of the retina.

the earth must be tunnelled enormously, and these tunnellings were the ha...

till Industry had gradually lost its birth right in the sky.

Even now, does not an East-end worker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural surface of the earth?

the exclusive tendency of richer people —

is already leading to the closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of the land.

that exchange between class and class, that promotion by intermarriage which at present retards the splitting of our species along lines of social stratification, less and less frequent.

above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour.

the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy in their way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs.

Its triumph had not been simply a triumph over Nature, but a triumph over Nature and the fellow-man.

But even on this supposition the balanced civilization that was at last attained must have long since passed its zenith, and was now far fallen into decay.

the Morlocks

the “Eloi,”

Why had the Morlocks taken my Time Machine?

Why, too, if the Eloi were masters, could they not restore the machine to me? And why were they so...

the Upper-world man had drifted towards his feeble prettiness, and the Under-world to mere mechanical industry.

‘Within was a small apartment, and on a raised place in the corner of this was the Time Machine.

Beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives — all that was over.

The sky was absolutely black.