The Time Machine HCR104fm Edition recap

An inventor known as the Time Traveller demonstrates a model machine and later tells his dinner guests that he has visited the year 802,701. There he finds the Eloi, gentle and childlike descendants of humanity living idly above ground, and the Morlocks, pale underground workers who maintain machinery and prey on them. When the Morlocks hide his machine, he searches for tools and befriends an Eloi named Weena. A journey to a ruined museum yields matches and a metal weapon, but Morlocks attack during the return; Weena dies in a forest fire. The Time Traveller reaches the machine, escapes a trap, and journeys still farther ahead to watch life fading on a dying Earth. He returns home with two flowers as evidence and relates his story. The following day he leaves again with equipment and never comes back, leaving the narrator to wonder when he has gone.

At a dinner in Richmond, an inventor called the Time Traveller argues that time is a dimension like length, breadth, and height and should therefore be possible to traverse. His guests, including the skeptical Filby, a psychologist, and a medical man, debate the idea. The host displays a small machine of metal and ivory. At his invitation the Psychologist presses its lever, and the model vanishes; the Time Traveller says it has moved into another time. He then shows them a much larger machine in his laboratory and says that it is nearly complete. The guests leave uncertain whether they have witnessed a scientific breakthrough, a trick, or an elaborate joke.

A week later, another group gathers at the Time Traveller's house. He arrives late, disheveled, injured, and ravenously hungry. After eating, he begins explaining that he used the full-sized machine and saw his surroundings change at tremendous speed as he moved forward through time. He stopped in the year 802,701 near a great white statue shaped like a sphinx. The world appeared warm and green, and he met small, beautiful people who greeted him without fear. These Eloi live communally in large, decaying structures, eat fruit, and seem pleasant but intellectually childlike. The Time Traveller first imagines that human progress has produced an effortless society in which strength and intelligence are no longer needed. He is alarmed, however, when he returns to the lawn and discovers that the time machine has disappeared.

The Time Traveller concludes that his machine has been moved inside the hollow pedestal of the White Sphinx, whose bronze doors resist him. He notices wells that draw air underground and glimpses pale creatures moving at night. After rescuing an Eloi woman named Weena from drowning, he gains a devoted companion. He identifies the underground beings as Morlocks and revises his theory of the future: humanity may have divided along class lines, with the leisured descendants of property owners above and the descendants of workers tending machinery below. Seeking his machine, he climbs down a well into the Morlocks' dark tunnels. There he finds machinery and realizes that the Morlocks are meat eaters. They gather around him, but he uses matches to exploit their fear of light and escapes to the surface.

Recognizing that the Eloi fear moonless nights because Morlocks come above ground, the Time Traveller decides he needs weapons and a secure refuge before opening the Sphinx. He and Weena walk toward a distant green building, spending a dangerous night outdoors. The structure proves to be the ruined Palace of Green Porcelain, once a museum. Inside, he finds remnants of science and natural history as well as useful matches, camphor, and an iron bar. His discoveries confirm how much knowledge has been lost. On the return journey Weena tires, delaying them as darkness approaches. Morlocks begin gathering around the pair in the forest, where the Time Traveller must defend them without enough light.

The Time Traveller fights the Morlocks with his iron bar and lights a fire to hold them back, but the dry forest ignites. In the confusion he is separated from Weena and later understands that she has died. The blaze blinds and kills many Morlocks, allowing him to survive. He returns alone to the White Sphinx and finds its doors open, with his time machine visible inside. Suspecting a trap but having no alternative, he enters. The doors close and Morlocks attack in darkness. He restores the machine's control levers just in time and escapes by traveling forward. Carried millions of years beyond the Eloi, he sees a desolate beach beneath a red, enlarged Sun, inhabited by huge crablike animals. Farther on, the slowing Earth is cold and nearly lifeless. He then reverses direction toward his own age.

The Time Traveller arrives back in his laboratory shortly after the moment from which he left, though he has experienced more than a week. He completes his account to the dinner guests. Most remain doubtful, but he shows the narrator two unfamiliar white flowers that Weena had placed in his pocket. The guests depart, debating whether the story could be true. When the narrator returns the next day, the Time Traveller is preparing to leave with a camera and supplies. He promises to come back soon with proof, enters the machine, and vanishes. Three years pass without his return. The narrator preserves the flowers and is left wondering whether the traveller is exploring the prehistoric past, the distant future, or some inaccessible age from which he cannot return.

The Time Traveller escapes the Morlocks' trap by reentering his machine and traveling far beyond the Eloi's era. He witnesses a dying Earth beneath a swollen red Sun, with huge crablike creatures on an empty shore, then goes still farther until nearly all familiar life has vanished. Sickened, he returns to his own time and tells his guests what happened, offering two unusual flowers from Weena as the only physical evidence. The next day the narrator visits again. The Time Traveller departs with a camera and supplies, promising a short excursion, but he never returns. Three years later the narrator is still waiting and cannot know where in time the inventor has gone. He retains the flowers and takes some comfort from Weena's gesture, which suggests that gratitude and tenderness survived even in humanity's remote, diminished future.