XIV. The Further Vision

von H. G. Wells

"I've told you before about the sickness and confusion that comes with time travel. This time, I wasn't seated properly in the saddle; I was sideways and unstable. For what felt like an eternity, I clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, completely oblivious to where I was headed. When I finally managed to glance at the dials again, I was astonished by my destination. One dial tracked days, another thousands of days, another millions, and yet another thousands of millions. Instead of reversing the levers, I had inadvertently pushed them forward, and as I looked at the indicators, I noticed the thousands hand was spinning as quickly as the seconds hand on a watch—into the future.

As I continued on, a strange transformation began to unfold around me. The pulsing grey landscape grew darker. Even though I was still traveling at an incredible speed, the rapid succession of day and night—a sign of a slower pace—returned, becoming more pronounced. This puzzled me at first. The shifts between night and day slowed down, as did the sun's journey across the sky, until they seemed to stretch over centuries. Eventually, a steady twilight settled over the earth, only interrupted occasionally by a comet streaking across the darkening sky. The band of light that once marked the sun had long vanished; the sun no longer set—it simply rose and fell in the west, growing wider and redder. The moon had completely disappeared. The stars, once circling rapidly, now twinkled slowly like creeping points of light. Before I came to a stop, the sun, enormous and crimson, hung motionless on the horizon, a vast dome radiating a dull heat, flickering occasionally as if about to extinguish. At one point, it glowed more brightly, but quickly returned to its sullen red. I realized that the slowing of its rise and fall indicated that the tidal forces had done their work. The earth had settled into a position with one face toward the sun, just as the moon does with the earth in our time.

Cautiously, remembering my previous reckless descent, I began to reverse my motion. The hands of the dials slowed, until the thousands hand appeared almost still, and the daily hand was no longer just a blur on its scale. I continued to slow down until I could make out the dim outlines of a desolate beach.

I stopped gently and sat on the Time Machine, taking in my surroundings. The sky was no longer blue. To the northeast, it was pitch black, with bright, steady white stars shining out of the darkness. Above me, the sky was a deep Indian red and devoid of stars, while to the southeast, it brightened into a glowing scarlet where the massive, red sun lay, motionless on the horizon. The rocks around me were a harsh reddish hue, and the only sign of life I could see was the vibrant green vegetation clinging to the south-eastern slopes. It was the same rich green found on forest moss or cave lichen—plants that thrive in perpetual twilight.

The machine stood on a sloping beach. The sea stretched away to the southwest, rising sharply against the pale sky. There were no waves or breakers; not a breath of wind stirred. Only a gentle, oily swell rose and fell like a soft breath, indicating that the eternal sea was still alive. Along the water's edge, where it sometimes lapped at the shore, a thick crust of salt formed—pink under the eerie sky. A sense of pressure weighed on my head, and I noticed I was breathing rapidly. The sensation reminded me of my only experience with mountaineering, leading me to believe the air was thinner than it is now.

In the distance, I heard a harsh scream and spotted something that resembled a giant white butterfly fluttering erratically into the sky before disappearing over some low hills. The sound was so dismal that I shivered and gripped the machine more tightly. Looking around again, I noticed that what I had initially thought was a reddish mass of rock was slowly moving toward me. It became clear that it was a monstrous crab-like creature. Can you picture a crab the size of a table, its many legs moving slowly and uncertainly, its enormous claws swaying, long antennae waving and probing, and its stalked eyes gleaming on either side of its metallic front? Its back was ridged and adorned with awkward bumps, and patches of greenish crust marred its surface. I could see the many palps of its intricate mouth flickering and feeling as it approached.

As I stared at the ominous figure creeping toward me, I felt a tickle on my cheek, like a fly had landed there. I tried to swat it away, but it returned almost immediately, followed by another sensation near my ear. I swung my hand at it and caught something thin and threadlike. It was yanked swiftly from my grasp. A wave of fear washed over me as I turned to see that I had grabbed the antenna of another monstrous crab lurking just behind me. Its sinister eyes wobbled on their stalks, its mouth was alive with hunger, and its massive, awkward claws, coated in a slimy green algae, were coming down toward me. In a flash, my hand found the lever, and I propelled myself a month into the future, putting distance between myself and those creatures.

But I was still on the same beach, and as soon as I stopped, I could see them clearly again. Dozens of them seemed to be scuttling about in the dim light, weaving through the vibrant green foliage.

I can’t express the overwhelming sense of desolation that hung over everything. The red sky in the east, the dark mass to the north, the salty expanse of the Dead Sea, the rocky beach crawling with these grotesque, sluggish monsters, the uniform, poisonous-looking green of the lichen-covered plants, and the thin air that stung my lungs—all of it contributed to a horrifying atmosphere. I moved forward a hundred years, and there was the same red sun—slightly larger, slightly duller—the same dying sea, the same chill in the air, and the same swarm of crustaceans creeping in and out among the green seaweed and the red rocks. In the western sky, I spotted a pale curve, like a vast new moon.

So I continued my journey, pausing now and then, leaping forward in great strides of a thousand years or more, drawn by the mystery of the earth’s fate. I watched with a strange fascination as the sun grew larger and duller in the western sky, and the life of the old earth faded away. Eventually, more than thirty million years later, the massive, red-hot dome of the sun obscured nearly a tenth of the darkening sky. I stopped again, for the multitude of crabs had vanished, and the red beach, save for its sickly green liverworts and lichens, appeared lifeless. Now it was speckled with white. A bitter cold enveloped me. Rare white flakes drifted down from above. To the northeast, I could see the glare of snow under the starlit black sky, with a rolling crest of pinkish-white hills in the distance. Ice fringed the edge of the sea, with drifting masses farther out, but the main expanse of that salty ocean, bathed in the eternal sunset, remained unfrozen.

I looked around, searching for any signs of animal life. An indefinable unease kept me firmly in the saddle of the machine. But I saw nothing moving—neither on land, in the sky, nor in the sea. The green slime on the rocks was the only evidence that life hadn’t completely vanished. A shallow sandbank had emerged in the sea, and the water had receded from the beach. I thought I saw a dark object flopping on this bank, but it became still as I focused on it, and I concluded that my eyes had played tricks on me; it was just a rock. The stars above were incredibly bright and seemed to twinkle very little.

Suddenly, I noticed that the circular outline of the sun in the west had changed; a concavity, a bay, had formed in its curve. I watched in shock as it grew larger. For a moment, I stood frozen, aghast at the darkness creeping over the day, and then I realized that an eclipse was beginning. Either the moon or the planet Mercury was crossing the sun’s disk. At first, I assumed it was the moon, but I had a strong feeling that what I was witnessing was the transit of an inner planet passing very close to the earth.

The darkness deepened quickly; a cold wind began to blow in freshening gusts from the east, and the flurries of white flakes in the air multiplied. From the edge of the sea came a soft ripple and whisper. Beyond those lifeless sounds, the world was silent. Silent? It was difficult to convey just how still it was. All the sounds of humanity—the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the everyday stir of life—were gone. As the darkness thickened, the swirling flakes danced before my eyes, and the chill in the air intensified. One by one, the white peaks of the distant hills faded into blackness. The breeze turned into a moaning wind. I saw the black shadow of the eclipse sweeping toward me. In an instant, only the pale stars were visible. Everything else was engulfed in a suffocating darkness. The sky was utterly black.

A wave of dread washed over me, a deep, unsettling darkness that seeped into my bones. The cold pierced through me, making it hard to breathe, and I felt overwhelmed. I shivered violently, a wave of nausea crashing over me.

Then, just at the edge of the horizon, the sun appeared like a glowing ember, casting a fiery glow across the sky. I stepped off the machine, desperate to regain my composure. My head spun, and the thought of making the return journey felt impossible.

As I stood there, disoriented and sick, my eyes caught sight of something moving on the shoal. There was no denying it now; it was definitely alive. Against the backdrop of the blood-red sea, it was a round shape—maybe the size of a football, or perhaps even larger. Tentacles trailed down from it, dark against the swirling crimson water, and it hopped erratically.

A wave of faintness threatened to pull me under, but the sheer terror of being helpless in that desolate twilight pushed me forward. I climbed back onto the saddle, driven by a primal instinct to escape.