The Time Machine Chapter 1

Books at Bedtime by Carming Anxiety. The Time Machine Chapter 1 The Time Traveler, for so it will be convenient to speak of him, was expounding a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and twinkle, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The fire burned bright me, and the soft radiance of its incandescent light caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our glasses.

Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and crushed us rather than submitted to be sat upon. And, there was that luxurious, after dinner atmosphere, when thought runs gracefully free. And he put it to us, in this way, marking the points with a lean forefinger, as we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over the new paradox as we thought it. You must follow me carefully.

I shall have to contravert one or two ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for instance, they taught you at school, is founded on a misconception. Is that not a rather large thing to expect us to begin upon, said Philby, an argumentative person with red hair? I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable grounding for it.

You'll soon admit this much, as I need from you. You know of course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness, no, has no real existence. They taught you that? Neither has a mathematical plane.

These things are mere abstractions. That is all right, synthesized, or having any length, breadth and thickness can a cube of any real existence. Where I object, said Philby, of course a solid body may exist, all real things, so most people think, but wait a moment. Can an instantaneous cube exist?

I don't follow you, said Philby. Can a cube that does not last for any time at all have any real existence? Philby became passive. Clearly, the time traveler proceeded.

Any real body must have extension in four directions. It must have length, breadth, thickness and duration. But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we inclined to overlook this fact. There are rarely four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of space and a fourth time.

There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the four or three dimensions and the latter because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives. That, said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to relight the cigar over the lamp, that is very clear indeed. Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked continued to time travel with a slightest session of cheerfulness. Really, this is what is meant by the fourth dimension.

So some people who talk about it do not know what I mean. It is only another way of looking at time. There is no difference between time and any of the three dimensions of space except that our consciousness moves along it. Section of a three-dimensional body and three-dimensional body, a section of a four-dimensional.

Yes, I think so, said the psychologist. He knit his brows and remained for a space staring fixed into the fire. That is the germ of my great discovery, but you are wrong to say that we cannot move about in time. For instance, if I am recalling an instant very vividly, I go back to that instance of what is occurring.

I become absent-minded as you say. I jump back for a moment. Of course, we have no means of staying back for any length of time, any more than a savage or an alligator has of staying six feet up in the air. But a civilized man is better off than a savage in this respect.

He can go up in a balloon in any opposition to gravitation and why should he not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the time dimension or even turn about and go the other way? "Oh, this began Philby. Is all why not?" said the time travel. "Well, it is against reason," said Philby.

"What reason?" said the time travel. You can show black is white by arguments, said Philby, but you will never convince me. "Probably not," said the time travel. "But now you know, but now you begin to see the object of my investigations into the geometry of four dimensions.

Long ago, I had a vague inkling of a machine. What? To travel through time exclaim the very young man. That shall travel indifferently in any direction of space and time as the driver determines."

Philby contented himself with laughter. "But I have experimental verification," said the time traveler. It would be remarkably convenient for the historian, suggested the psychologist. One might travel back and verify the accepted account of the battle of Hastings, for instance.

"Don't you think you would attract tension," said the medical man. Our ancestors had no great tolerance of anachronisms. One might get one's grief from the very lips of Homer and Plato, the psychologist thought. In which case they would certainly plow you for the little year.

The German scholars have improved the grief pronunciation so much. "Then there is the future," said the very young man. "Just think, one might invest all one's money, leave it to accumulate as an interest and hurry on ahead." To find a society, said I, erected on a strictly communistic basis of all the wild, extravagant theories, began Philby.

Yes. So it seemed to me, and so I never talked to that until "Experimental verification, cried I. You were going to verify that." The experiment cried Philby. "It was getting brainwaring."

"Let's see your experiment anyhow," said the psychologist. "Bow, it's all humbuck, you know." The time traveler smiled round at us. Then, still smiling faintly, and with his hands deep in his trouser pockets, he walked slowly out of the room, and we heard his slippers shuffling down a long passage to his laboratory.

The psychologist looked at us. "I wonder what he's got?" Some slight of hand trick or other said the medical man, and Philby tried to tell us about a conjurer. He had seen a burson, but before he had finished his preface, the time traveler came back, and Philby's anecdote collapsed.

The thing he held in his hand was a glittering metallic framework, scarcely larger than a small clock, and very delicately made. There was ivory in it, and some crystalline sublisons. And now, I must be explicit, for this that followed. Unless his explanation is to be accepted, it is an absolutely unaccountable thing.

He took one of the small octagonal tables that were scattered about the room, and set it in front of the fire, with the two legs on the heartthruck. On this table, he placed the mechanism, then he drew up a chair and sat down. The only other object on the table was a small shaded lamp, the bright light which fell upon the modern. There were also perhaps a dozen candles about, two in brass candlesticks upon the mantle, and several in sconces, so that the room was brilliantly illuminated.

I sat in a low armchair near as the fire, and I leaned forward over the table. He will be stood behind him, looking over his shoulder. The psychologist watched him from the right, and the medical man from the left, the very young man stood behind the psychologist. We were all on the alert.

It appears incredible to me that any kind of trick, however subtle, conceived and successfully executed, could have been played upon those under these conditions. The time travel I looked at us, and then at the mechanism, "Well," said the psychologist, "this little affair," said the time travel, "resting his elbows upon the table, and pressing his hands together, apart the apparatus, is only a model. It is my plan for a machine to travel through time." You will notice that it looks singularously ascued, and that there is a faint twinkling appearance above this bar, as though it was of something unreal.

He pointed to the part with his finger. Also, here is one little white lever, and here is another. The psychologist got up from his chair and peered into the thing. It's beautifully made, he said.

It took two years to make, retorted the time travel, then when we had all imitated the psychologist he said, "Now, I want you to clearly understand that this lever, being pressed over, sends the machine gliding into the future, and this other reverses the motion." This saddle represents the seat of a time travel. Presently, I am going to press the lever, and off the machine will go. It will vanish, pass into the future, time, and disappear.

Have a good look at the thing, look at the table too, and satisfy yourself that there is no trickery. I don't want to waste this modern, and then be told I'm a quagm. There was a minute's pause perhaps. The psychologist seemed about to speak to me, but changed his mind.

Then the time traveler put forth his finger towards the lever. No, he said suddenly. Lemme your hand, and turning to the psychologist, he took that gentleman's hand in his own, and told him to push the lever with his forefinger. So that it was, the psychologist himself, who sent this model, this time machine, on its first voyage.

We all saw the lever turn. I am absolutely certain there was no trickery. There was a breath of wind and a flame of the lamp jump. One of the candles on the mantel piece was blown out, and the little machine, suddenly swung around, became a ghost, was seen as a swirl of paint brass and ivory for a moment, and then it was gone.

Finished, saved for the lamp, the table was empty. Everyone was silent for a minute. Then Philby felt a swearing. The psychologist recovered from his stupor, and suddenly looked under the table.

At that, the time traveler laughed cheerfully. "Well," he said, with a reminiscence of the psychologist. Then, getting up, he went to the tobacco jar on the mantel, and with his back to us began to fill his pipe. We stared at each other.

"Look here," said the medical man. "Are you in earnest about this? Do you seriously believe that that machine has travelled into time?" Certainly said the time traveler, stooping to light a spill of the fire.

He needed to end smoking to look at the psychologist's face. The psychologist, to show that he was not unhinged, helped himself to a cigar and tried to light it and cut. What is more, I have a big machine nearly finished in there, he indicated the laboratory, and when that is put together, I mean to have a journey on my own account. You mean to say that the machine has travelled into the future, Sir Toby?

Into the future or the past? I don't know for certain which. After an interval, the psychologist had an inspiration. It must have gone into the past.

It has gone anyway, he said. "Why?" said the time traveler. Because I presume that is not moved in space, and if it travelled into the future, it would still be here in this room, for this room will exist in the future. Of course it will, said the medical man, but if it travelled into the past, it would have been in this room when we first came in here on Thursday, and last Thursday when we were here on the Thursday before that.

His objections marked the psychologist, appealing to the time travel with a confidence smile. Not at all, said the time traveler. He turned to the medical man, who are a somewhat analytical person. Does a ball exist when it is dropped from the hand to the floor?

Passes through a certain number of positions, but it exists every instant of its flight, does it not? Why then should a time machine not exist at every instant of its journey? In the past, it was in this room, but it was moving through time at a different speed, so it was not visible. Just as a bullet flying through the air at 500 miles an hour is not visible, though it is in the air all the time.

But if it was travelling into the future, it would be here now, only it would be moving so far through time that it would be invisible, just as the spokes of a wheel are invisible when they're spinning rapidly. That sounds plausible, said the medical man, but it's only a story, said Philby. The fact remains that we saw it go, said the psychologist. "Well," said the time traveler, "I don't mind admitting that it's an extraordinary thing, but I've got the machine in there, and if you like to come and see it, I'll show it to you."

He led the way down the long, chilly corridor to his laboratory, and there, sure enough, was a large copy of the "Model Weird" scene disappear. It was a framework of brass and ivory, with parts of translucent crystaline substance, and it was about half finished. On the bench, lace and blueprints, and tools, it was a strange-looking thing, and no mistake. "There," said the time traveler, "there's the machine.

When it's finished, I intend to find out for myself what the future has in store for us." We looked at it, and then we went back into the dining room, rather thoughtful. I must confess, Philby tried to argue, but the psychologist refused to support him, and the medical man was unusually quiet. For my part, I was deeply impressed.

It seemed to me a wonderful and terrible thing, and I lay awake for hours that night, thinking of it.