CHAPTER FOUR

The little man seemed not to be afraid, for he walked right up to me without hesitation; and by his laughter, while looking me up and down, I guessed that he found me quite amusing. Several others came in behind him. He turned to them and, pointing to me, began speaking in a beautiful language I could not recognize.

Soon, I had about eight or nine of these men standing around me, touching my hands, my hair, and my clothing, all the while speaking to one another in their unique language. Throughout this I felt absolutely no fear at all. I found nothing threatening in these little people. Even if they had wanted to hurt me, I was certain that I could easily have defended myself. However, when they began to touch the time machine, I made a loud noise to frighten them away. Then climbing back into it, I removed the two start and stop levers and placed them both in my pocket.

Joining them again, I began to take greater notice of their features. They all had curly hair that flowed down around tiny ears, ending at the neck. As for their faces, they were rather pointed at the chin. And they possessed thin, red mouths, around which no hair grew at all.

I then tried to communicate with them directly, by pointing to myself and to the time machine. Seeing that they did not understand, I tried pointing to the sun to indicate time. One of them suddenly got excited and, with his voice, made the sound of loud thunder. It was then that I realized I might be dealing with people much less intelligent than myself. My heart sank with disappointment. I had always imagined the people of the future being so much cleverer than the people of my own time period. And now, here I was, eight-hundred-and-two thousand seven-hundred-and-one years into the future, meeting people who believed I was a god of some sort, coming from the sky during a storm.

One of them approached me offering a necklace of flowers to wear. The flowers were quite uncommon and more beautiful than any I had ever seen. The others must have thought they looked good on me, for they then gathered up more flowers and started to throw them all around me, laughing and talking to one another all the while.

I was then led away to a huge building made of stone. Inside was a great hall with large stone tables and tall windows of many different colors. On the tables were bowls of fresh fruit, mostly unfamiliar to me.

Everyone gathered around the tables and, sitting on thick pillows, began to eat. I was encouraged to do the same. First, however, I wanted to observe their manners. I found them quite easy to learn, for they had none. Each person would take whatever he wanted from the table without asking. Even if it was the last piece of fruit on the plate, whoever grabbed it was the person who ate it. There were no special privileges for the women or children. Everyone was equal at this table. In terms of cleanliness, people simply threw or spit the unwanted parts of the fruit into a hole in the center of the table. Feeling quite hungry, I started into the food right away. After a while, I began to wonder when the actual meal was going to be served. Every time we finished a bowl of fruit, a new one, filled to the top, was brought to the table. However, soon I was disappointed to realize that these people ate no meat at all.

Feeling that I was rather welcome now, I decided to try to learn as much of their language as I could. So, while eating, I began to point at the different fruits and made a question sound. At first, they did not know what I wanted and instead of speaking, brought me an extra bowl of the fruit I was pointing to. Waving them away, I again pointed to the fruit. This time, a woman in the crowd started to speak to me. She repeated the same word several times, so I knew she was telling me the name of the fruit. In trying to repeat her words I must have done a very poor job, for everyone began to laugh very hard. But, eventually, I seemed to say it correctly. After a while, and with much difficulty, I learned all the names of the fruits at the table. However, when I tried to persuade them to teach me more, I saw that they had quickly grown tired of this, so I decided to give them a rest and ask them at a later time.

A very strange characteristic of these people was their tendency to show great interest in me for only a moment and then very suddenly lose all interest and walk away as if I were not there. I was not sure how to understand it. Were they disappointed in me? Was there something they expected me to do? I hoped that in time I might understand this better or at least get used to it, for it made me very uncomfortable.

After dinner, I decided that it would be a good idea to learn about the land around me. So, I walked to the top of the highest hill in the area to have a look. Up there lay an ancient, ruined building, slowly being destroyed by nature, which increasingly covered it in all sorts of plants and small trees. It looked a little dangerous to enter. Some parts of the roof seemed ready to fall at any moment from the slightest movement or vibration. Little did I know, this would be the location of a very important event to take place later during my stay in this land.

On the Northern side of the building, I found a yellow rock that was shaped like a seat. Sitting there I found it an ideal place to view the wide countryside below. One of the first things I noticed was that there were no houses or individual homes. All that could be seen were large palace-like buildings, where the people appeared to live all together. The land was completely undeveloped. No farms could be seen in the distance, no parks, just wilderness, with the occasional huge steel or stone building coming up through the trees. This was, indeed, very different from the England I knew.

On my way back to town, I found that several of their people had followed me during my journey. I joined them and, walking together, suddenly noticed that there was very little difference between the appearance of the men and the women. They wore the same type of clothing, all the same color. Even their bodies were very similar. I felt, at the time, that this must have changed due to the peaceful nature of their lives. Warring people tend to require greater differences between men and women, but these people seemed to have no violence in their character at all.

So, I understood this to be an indication that man had finally won the battle with nature. Disease, crime, competition no longer appeared to be a problem. All of the discomforts of the world were gotten rid of. Now, people were living very simple lives. And with such simplicity, things like strength and intelligence were no longer necessary. In fact, necessity, itself, had completely disappeared.

And this I believed was the truth about these people and their world. I was surprised to have, in such a short time of being there, so easily uncovered everything there was to know. But soon my ideas about this world would completely change.

(end of section)