CHAPTER TWELVE

Gradually, I saw the sun and moon return to their familiar position in the sky. I saw the returning signs of humanity and felt comforted. This had the effect of restoring my desire to explore. I still had a lot of curiosity about mankind in its most advanced age. Even though my feet were complaining, I told myself that I was allowed just one more stop. So I waited until the buildings seemed their highest and brightest and then began to slow the machine down again.

Once at a complete stop, I looked down at my machine's time dial and found that I was in the year 3088, just a little more than a thousand years ahead of my own time. Looking around, I seemed to be in the corner of a very large room of windows. Even the ceiling was made up of glass, through which sunlight shone brightly. Outside the windows the room was almost completely surrounded by tall trees. On all sides, except for the southern one, toward the top of the windows could be seen the steel of huge buildings rising high into the sky. Inside, the room, itself, was completely empty, except for a single black door at the southern end. I climbed out of my seat, wondering what this place could be. While stepping away from the machine, my foot found no ground underneath and I fell clumsily to the floor and reopened the cut on my chin. Picking myself up again, I turned round to find my machine sitting upon a stage of some kind.

Suddenly, from behind the door I heard the sound of people coming. Having nowhere to hide, I quickly ran toward my time machine, but before I could reach it, I heard the door open behind me.

"Stop where you are!" a voice commanded.

I did as I was told. Turning to see who was addressing me, I found a line of ten men standing just inside the doorway. Half of them were dressed in fine suits. The other half I guessed were police, judging by their clothing and the gun-like objects they pointed at me. One of the well-dressed men then spoke.

"Welcome! I apologize for the guns; however, we don't want you running away so quickly."

I did not know how to respond. I had never had a gun pointed at me before, and I was afraid of saying the wrong thing. I decided to remain silent.

"Of course we knew you were coming," the man continued. "We tried to stop you before, when you traveled into the future, but you surprised us with the speed of your journey, so we missed you. This time, however ... Well, here you are, aren't you?"

"But I chose to stop here. I was not forced to stop," I said, quite confused.

"Yes, well, that may be; however, if you had tried to travel any further, you would have found it impossible. You see, over many years we have been designing this room for you. You could say it is a kind of net and you, the butterfly. As I said, we had been trying to catch you going forward into the future, but realized that we had assumed your speed to be much slower than it really was. So, we redesigned the room to catch you coming back from the future at a much higher speed."

"How did you know I was traveling at all?"

"About fifty years ago, your writings on the development of a time machine were discovered in a storage room at one of the older universities. After a little research, we found that you had mysteriously disappeared at the fairly young age of thirty-six, shortly after having built your machine. Although I could not be absolutely certain, I guessed that you had succeeded in your experiments."

"Well, now that you have me, what do you want from me?"

"We simply want to examine your machine and ask you several questions about its construction. You see, we have attempted to rebuild it according to your writings, however, there seems to be something missing from your notes. Something you may not have had the time to write."

Then one of the policemen stepped forward and whispered something into the man's ear. A moment later, the man turned back to me saying, "If you will please come with us, I can explain more to you on the way to our laboratory."

Several policemen then took hold of me and led me out the door. Outside, the air was quite fresh, as if I were in the countryside. However, the surrounding woods were not very deep, for just minutes later we walked out into a large city square, full of people. At one end of the square were hundreds of tables where people were talking over food and drinks. At another end was an entertainment area. There, a large group of people had gathered to listen to four musicians. They were sitting on a small stage, each holding some kind of instrument, which they seemed to be playing with very serious concentration. However, no sound came from the stage. I thought that maybe they were just preparing to play until the musicians suddenly relaxed their concentration and stood up, while the crowd clapped their hands in great appreciation. The rest of the square was just an open space of people walking here and there, all wearing fine, colorful clothing; possibly on their way to work or home, I could not tell. I then noticed that I could not hear the sound of their feet as they hurried across the square; nor could my own footsteps be heard.

"Your city seems to have solved the problem of sound pollution."

"We haven't had pollution of any kind for hundreds of years. Our air and water are all one hundred percent pure. I cannot imagine having to breathe the air of the London of your time. It's no wonder people died during those years before the age of seventy, such a short life compared to our one-hundred-and-sixty years. Now please, this way," the man said pointing to the entrance of a large building just behind the entertainment area.

On my way through the doors, I noticed a number of soldiers standing around the edge of the square with guns hanging from their shoulders. High above them, was a sign that had words running across it at great speed. Some people in the square were watching as the words entered the sign and then quickly disappeared. The words were unreadable to me, for they used a different alphabet than the one we are familiar with. The words came and went from the sign so quickly that I could not begin to read even the first word. The man must have noticed my confusion for he then spoke.

"Yes, that's English up there, however, much more simplified. It's now the only language spoken around the world."

"But I can't read a single word of it."

"A new method of reading and writing has been developed, which allows us to read at a much faster rate than before. We can now finish a long book within just a few hours."

"But how can your brain take in all of the information so quickly?"

"It is just a matter of practice. Lots of practice."

I was then led to an electric elevator that seemed to go up for miles into the air, and there the man started to explain things to me as he had earlier promised.

"Let me introduce myself. My name is Dr Eisner. I once worked as a professor at Rensford University, where I taught Engineering. That was during the good days, when the world was in perfect balance. As you can see, we have made life on earth very comfortable for humans. However, as I am sure you know, this comfort could very soon disappear."

Here we arrived at our floor. As the doors opened, before us stretched a long hallway. As we exited the elevator, Dr Eisner continued.

"There are only two countries in the world today. Our country is known as Ekton, and we, its people, are known as Ektonians. The other country is called Antus. For hundreds of years, we lived very peacefully and often cooperated and openly traded with one another. However, for certain reasons that I will soon explain, over the years our two countries have come to hate one another. Every year we get closer and closer to World War. And, as you might imagine, war has changed quite a bit since your time. Both countries have developed weapons that could destroy the entire world within just a few seconds."

"The Ektonians are a peaceful people, happy with the balance of the world as it is now. The Antusians, as I said before, are a good people, as well. However, their leader is a terrible man, who, ever since coming into power thirty years ago, has made it his biggest goal to join our two countries under his leadership. He has become increasingly uncooperative and there have been a few small battles fought quite far from our capital here. We fear that he may become more and more aggressive toward our country, the more we resist his attempts at taking control."

"At the time he took control over Antus, I had already been studying your experiments for thirty years and had become increasingly confident in the possibility of successfully repeating your work. The one problem was that I did not have the money to carry it out on my own. I needed to somehow get support from the government.

"I decided to write a book about your work and how it could make it possible for us to maintain our peaceful society. In this book I explained that by going back in time we could prevent the birth of the one man who was now trying to destroy our happiness. At once, the government promised me unlimited money in order to build the time machine."

We had now reached a pair of large steel doors at the end of the hallway, which opened automatically as we approached them. Inside, was a huge laboratory, and in the center of the room was a machine almost completely the same as my own.

"Please, have a look at it," Eisner said. "Tell me if there is anything I have forgotten."

The outside of the machine seemed to be complete, however, inside I noticed that his dials were much more modern than mine, and the engine was missing several important parts.

"It looks almost exactly like my machine," I said, "except it appears that your engine is incomplete."

"Exactly! And that is why you are here. We ate ... "

Eisner was suddenly interrupted by an extremely loud noise, like an alarm. Just then a policeman came running down the hall and whispered something into Eisner's ear. The look on the doctor's face made it seem like something bad had happened.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

Eisner did not respond to my question. He was too busy shouting orders to the other policemen. Soon the doctor and I were the only ones in the laboratory.

"It seems that I must again apologize to you. Your time machine has just been stolen."

"What? By whom?" I shouted.

"By the Antusians."

"Didn't you have soldiers guarding it?"

"Of course, but it seems that there was a spy among our staff, who found a way to steal it. Maybe he offered some of the guards money, I don't know. All of that doesn't matter now. What matters is that they have the machine and may be able to use it against us. We must act quickly and get the machine back from them before it's too late."

"But how did the Antusians know about the machine?"

"All scientists around the world were made aware of the discovery of your notes, and I'm afraid that a copy of my book, intended only for the Ektonian government, fell into the hands of the Antusians. Since then, we have been racing to be the first to develop your machine."

Just then another policeman entered the room. "Sir, the General would like to speak with you immediately!"

"You'll have to excuse me for a moment," Eisner said as he began to follow the officer out of the laboratory doors. "Just wait for me here. Do not leave this room."

I noticed as the doors closed behind Dr Eisner that he ordered a guard to stand outside the laboratory to make sure I did not try to escape. Then I was alone again and the reality of everything that was happening to me began to sink in. How was I to get my machine back? In the future, the disappearance of my machine was very frightening, but also very easy to deal with because of the lack of technology and stupidity of the Morlocks. Now, however, I was dealing with very intelligent people in the most modern world the earth would ever see. My machine could be anywhere! I was completely at the mercy of these people. My head began to hurt and my knees started to weaken. Then the room went black.

(end of section)