The Time Machine - International World History Project

The Time Machineseemed, built of glimmer and mist. I saw a richer greenflow up the hill-side, and remain there, without anywintry intermission. Even through the veil of myconfusion the earth seemed very fair. And so my mindcame round to the business of stopping,‘The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my findingsome substance in the space which I, or the machine,occupied. So long as I travelled at a high velocity throughtime, this scarcely mattered; I was, so to speak,attenuated—was slipping like a vapour through theinterstices of intervening substances! But to come to a stopinvolved the jamming of myself, molecule by molecule,into whatever lay in my way; meant bringing my atomsinto such intimate contact with those of the obstacle that aprofound chemical reaction—possibly a far-reachingexplosion —would result, and blow myself and myapparatus out of all possible dimensions—into theUnknown. This possibility had occurred to me again andagain while I was making the machine; but then I hadcheerfully accepted it as an unavoidable risk— one of therisks a man has got to take! Now the risk was inevitable, Ino longer saw it in the same cheerful light. The fact is thatinsensibly, the absolute strangeness of everything, thesickly jarring and swaying of the machine, above all, the30 of 148