Timelines: Stories Inspired by H.G. Wells' the Time Machine (46 page)

Some people screamed, either in pain or revulsion, and their outbursts brought renewed vigor from their cruel masters.

In a central square, humans were being butchered in the open, or consumed by a host of the repellent Morlocks.

He felt his gorge rise, and it was all he could do to keep from becoming physically ill.

The Time Traveler was not a religious man, but he thought that Hell must surely look like this.

How could this have happened? The Morlocks had seemed only slightly more advanced than the primitive Eloi, possessing the knowledge to run machines but surely not to invent or create them.

As if in answer, he saw a blurred motion in the square. There, several devices identical to his own appeared, a Morlock at the controls of each one.

It was then he realized that the Morlocks had not simply stolen his machine to lure him to be fed upon. They had studied it, and had hoped to use him to learn its workings. But he had gotten away, so they had produced plans or models from memory, copying every detail until at last they duplicated the Time Machine.

How long had they toiled? A thousand years? Ten thousand? While he had been teaching Weena about Plato and Aristotle, the Morlocks had been mastering time travel.

And now they had subjugated his world, a punishment for his escape.

And Weena and his unborn child? In this altered reality the Eloi never existed. Once the Morlocks had polluted Time’s river with their ambitions Weena had been wiped from existence, unmourned by none but him.

The Traveler wept, struggling to keep silent lest some Morlock patrol find him.

Somehow he must save his wife. He would extricate her from their home before she was wiped from Time, and travel to an alternate time-line where she might be impervious to the corruption of this one.

And London, his friends and colleagues? Would he return to lead some rebellion, help to send the Morlocks to their demise?

It seemed an impossible task, but one he could take the time to consider. First he must insure that Weena and his child were safe.

He set the controls to arrive a month before she disappeared. This would give him time to tell her what he must do and practice moving laterally along the many tributaries of time.

He engaged the device, steeling himself for the nausea and disorientation of time travel.

Nothing happened.

He recalibrated the controls and reengaged the system, but the machine stood still.

The Traveler carefully removed the housing of the emerald, and his heart sank.

The emerald crystal was fractured, actually broken in two. Closer examination showed many small cracks, and he realized now that some of his difficulties with the device must have resulted from the delicate crystal becoming damaged, the nearly microscopic fractures at times occluding the focused light from the lenses.

For all he knew, the crystal had been suffering from the rigors of time travel with his very first journey. His lie to Weena that excessive use might damage the machine had been almost prescient.

He examined the two shards, and saw that the ends were neatly sheared, almost as if a jeweler had had a hand in it. Surely the harmonic rotation of the crystal had something to do with this.

It might be possible to fit the ends of the crystal together, and hold them in place during the jump.

It might work, but it was foolish to think he could repair the crystal, rescue Weena and make practice jumps with the machine so damaged.

He felt in his pocket and brought out the flowers Weena had given him, their delicate perfume almost lost in the stench of the Morlock metropolis.

One jump, perhaps two… He could rescue her and take their chances along the Timestream.

Sweet Weena, who still dreamed of riding in a carriage with him to museums to see the works of Monet.

One jump, perhaps two…

He looked out over what had been London, and realized what he must do.

The sick man shuffled down the street, checking the number of each house. His hands were badly burned and wrapped in dirty bandages. His face was covered with sores and most of his hair was falling out. Whatever was wrong with him was obviously fatal.

Though he was in a great deal of pain, he could not rest.

44A.

That was the one.

He climbed the steps slowly, painfully, and rapped the knocker sharply on the door.

She was far prettier than he remembered, her hair and eyes so like his own.

“
Yes?” she asked, now registering his alarming appearance.

“
Mother,” he croaked, and stabbed her with a butcher’s knife.

She fell and he tried to catch her, but by then The Time Traveler’s body was becoming insubstantial and he was gone before she collapsed on the stoop.

A most curious happenstance today. I found myself standing before a house unknown to me. I actually tried to enter as if I had some ease of familiarity there, much to the consternation of the owner, a stern man with a stout wife and two surly boys.

I apologized and made as if I had gotten an address wrong, though it was clear they did not believe me. Coming down the walk I saw Filby, a rather argumentative fellow with red hair, walking up with the Provincial Mayor and a Psychologist. They, too, seemed puzzled as to why they had arrived there, and we were discussing this as a Very Young Man and a Medical Man arrived simultaneously, followed soon after by an Editor.

We knew each other through the web of associations and acquaintances one finds in any modern city, and all of us retired to the Ram’s Head for a pint before heading home.

Though none of us could explain our strange and senseless rendezvous, all of had felt a pull there, a compulsion the less learned might construe as supernatural in nature. For myself, I must confess I felt a keen sense of loss, the sort of melancholy when one has been denied a great and grand adventure.

And, though I cannot fathom why, of late I find myself thinking of geometry, and clocks.

by Lyn C.A. Gardner

Georgiana Burne-Jones sat beside the great bed, holding Topsy’s hand while he slept. Georgie had seen this room many times: the whole of Kelmscott Manor was a work of art. The top panel of the bed-curtains bore a verse that Topsy had written, embroidered by his younger daughter in medieval script. The house held furnishings both medieval and modern; he and his friends and family, including Georgie, had created many of the tiles and tapestries.

But Jane, his wife, had only been interested in his vision in the early years, when he still tried to paint her in oils or verse, before her boredom had grown to disgust and led her to the arms of the lovers that her adoring husband chose not to begrudge her. Though they never spoke of it in such vulgar terms, Georgie knew that her friend had spent his time in this wonderful bed alone.

His face looked so worn, so lined—shockingly old. Too much for sixty-two. The unruly dark hair and beard had all gone white. So many marks of care about his mouth; even while he slept, a muscle ticked on his cheek, as if he couldn’t rest. It was his energetic spirit—his need to do everything—that was killing him.

Since 1883, he’d worn himself down, committing heart and soul to the Cause: his form of Socialism, which aimed to bring beauty and happiness to daily life through the revival of handicraft, care for the earth, and the elimination of class disparities. Though he had sacrificed his poetry on this altar years ago, in the end, he’d despaired of the politics. These last few years, he’d turned his hope inward, crafting beautiful books to fuel the imagination and give courage to the soul. But he hadn’t stopped his grueling lectures soon enough to save his health.

She stroked his hand, so large, so talented—so often stained deep blue from the dye vats. His elder daughter had dubbed him “Old Proosian Blue.” Now the hands had grown thin, spotted, striped with the paler blue of ropy veins.

The great man, William Morris, opened his eyes.

“
Georgie,” he murmured. “You came at last. How I’ve wanted a sight of your dear face.”

“
Topsy,” she said fondly. “We’ll be walking through your gardens before you know it. Kelmscott is beautiful in the fall, with all the leaves aflame.”

He grunted, but he smiled. She could see what an effort he made for her. Both of them knew that he would never see Kelmscott in autumn again.

“
How I’ve missed you. Our talks.” He lifted a trembling hand toward her face. She pressed it to her cheek.

“
Ned should be here in a few hours.” She faltered. Her husband, Edward Burne-Jones, would be devastated when Topsy died. Topsy had sunk so fast in eight months. Gout, diabetes, congestion of the left lung, tuberculosis. Topsy had lost so much weight that he might be another man.

“
I don’t have much time left, Georgie.” He squeezed her palm weakly. “There’s something I must tell you.”

Her chest tightened. Here it was—the words they’d never spoken. What had always been understood, in silence and verse. They were dear friends, drawn closer by the fact that both their spouses had broken their hearts—and they themselves were too bound by love and honor to do anything. They’d taken comfort in the warmth of friendship, when they might have thrown themselves into the fire. Both Ned and Janey had entangled themselves in disastrous, painful affairs; but it was Georgie and Topsy who loved too much to cause further grief by finding their own happiness together.

He managed another smile. “You know I love you, dear heart. I can’t tell you,” and his voice trembled, “how glad I am to have you here with me, at the end.”

She kissed his hand. She kissed his brow, as a friend might. Then she sat back and watched him with wide eyes as he told her other things. Painful things. Things she could scarcely believe.

And yet it was her Topsy who said them. It was easy to fill the room with the memory of his booming voice—a whisper now, as he mentioned days that had not yet been. Days that would never be. He reached into the bed-curtains and drew out a letter. “Please, Georgie. Sit here by me and read it now. I could not give it to you before… .” And as she read, she began to understand. Why he had waited to tell her, until it was too late.

He knew, if there were still a chance for him to live, she might have changed his mind.

My dear, my life of late has not been what it seems. There is a reason why I grew so listless toward politics in 1894, and it has nothing to do with my health. Or rather, everything, as you shall soon see.

I suppose you remember that young writer, H.G. Wells—Bertie, we called him—who used to come to Hammersmith for the meetings of the old Socialist League. He seemed quite taken with
News from Nowhere
, my vision of the future. He called it The Dream of Socialism Fulfilled. But he seemed equally fascinated by that damned-dull machine age of Edward Bellamy and the philosophic science of T.H. Huxley, with whom he’d studied at the Normal School of Science.

As we became friends, he would slip round odd evenings to the meetings and stay on afterwards to talk of the future, developments in science, and how things might change—how they
must
change, if the fate of humanity is to be anything but dismal. We talked utopia and time travel, amidst our Socialism, our hopes and fears for the future. Bertie told me he wanted to explore the future in quite a new rational and scientific way. In 1890, he showed me a few exploratory pieces. But it wasn’t until 1894 that I realized the full genius—and danger—of the man.

Bertie came around one evening, agitated. He beckoned me outside. As we stood in the gardens, he thrust some numbers of Henley’s
National Observer
at me, with his work.

“
Here. You must read this first. Then come to my chambers as quick as you can.”

“
The Chronic Argonauts
?”

“
Henley got his hands into it,” Bertie said with disgust. “I’ll have it out by itself in the spring as
The Time Machine
, the way it’s meant to be.”

“
Congratulations!” I pumped his hand.

“
Just read it,” Bertie muttered. “You may think differently then.”

I read all through the evening, in growing disquiet. It was indeed a “utopia” to counter mine—but what a horrifying future. Bertie’s vision presented the ultimate dissolution of society, with humankind deprived of useful work and any ability for intellectual or artistic endeavors.

In those days, Bertie lived in rented rooms with his paramour and her mother, always under threat of eviction. With the awful vision of his hopeless future before my eyes, I knocked in the dead of night. He let me in at once.

And there it was. The vision made flesh.

Wedged in the clutter of a young man’s work sat something that looked like a new form of conveyance. The saddle rested amid twisted crystal bars in a contrivance that looked at once delicate, yet permanent. The metallic framework shone in the low light of the lamp, the bars and levers canted at such angles that they seemed built to withstand speed. But such beautiful lines! Such rich workmanship! Quartz and ivory, ebony and obsidian, steel and transparent bars that seemed to glow from within. I had never expected to see such beauty in the form of a machine.