Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the sixteenth chapter of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.

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Welcome to Byte At A Time Books, where we read you your favorite classics one Byte at a Time.

My name is Brie Carlyle and I love to read and wanted to share my passion with listeners like you.

If you enjoy our show, be sure to follow us so you get all all the new episodes.

If you want to see exclusive behind the scenes of our show, join our Patreon.

We would also love for you to drop us a rating on your favorite podcast platform and share our show with your friends.

You can catch us on all the social medias at Byte At A Time Books.

We are now part of the Bite At A Time Books Productions Network.

If you ever wondered what inspired your favorite classic novelists to write their stories, what was happening in their lives or the world at the time, check out Byte At A Time Books Behind the Story.

Wherever you listen to podcasts today, we will be finishing The Time Machine by H.

G.

Wells 16 after the Story I know, he said after a pause, that all this will be absolutely incredible to you.

But to me, the one incredible thing is that I am here tonight in this old familiar room, looking into your friendly faces and telling you these strange adventures.

He looked at the medical man.

No, I cannot expect you to believe it.

Take it as a lie or a prophecy.

Say I dreamed it in the workshop.

Consider, I have been speculating upon the Destiny's far race until I've hatched this fiction.

Treat my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art, to enhance its interest, and taking it as a story.

What do you think of it?

He took up his pipe and began, in his old accustomed manner, to tap with it nervously upon the bars of the great.

There was a momentary stillness, then chairs began to creak and shoes to scrape upon the carpet.

I took my eyes off the time traveler's face and looked around at his audience.

They were in the dark, and little spots of color swam before them.

The medical man seemed absorbed in the contemplation of our host.

The editor was looking hard at the end of his cigar.

The 6th.

The journalist fumbled for his watch.

The others, as far as I remember, were motionless.

The editor stood up with a sigh.

What a pity it is.

You're not a writer of stories, he said, putting his hand on the time travelers shoulder.

You don't believe it?

Well, I thought not.

The time traveler turned to us.

Where are the matches?

He said.

He lit one and spoke over his pipe, puffing.

To tell you the truth, I hardly believe it myself.

And yet his eyes fell with a mute inquiry upon the withered white flowers upon the little table.

Then he turned over the hand holding his pipe, and I saw he was looking at some halfhealed scars on his knuckles.

The medical man rose, came to the lamp, and examined the flowers.

The genesium is odd, he said.

The psychologist leaned forward to see, holding out his hand for a specimen.

I'm hanged if it isn't a quarter to one, said the journalist.

How shall we get home?

Plenty of cabs at the station, said the psychologist.

It's a curious thing, said the medical man, but I certainly don't know the natural order of these flowers.

May I have them?

The Time Traveler hesitated, then suddenly, certainly not.

Where did you really get them?

Said the medical man.

The Time Traveler put his hand to his head.

He spoke like one who was trying to keep hold of an idea that eluded him.

They were put into my pocket by WINA when I traveled into time.

He stared around the room.

I'm damned if it isn't all going.

This room and you in the atmosphere of every day is too much for my memory.

Did I ever make a time machine or a model of a time machine?

Or is it all only a dream?

They say life is a dream, a precious, poor dream at times, but I can't stand another that won't fit.

It's madness.

And where did the dream come from?

I must look at that machine, if there is one.

He caught up the lamp swiftly and carried it flaring red through the door into the corridor.

We followed him.

There, in the flickering light of the lamp, was the machine, sure enough, squat, ugly, and a skew, a thing of brass, Ebony, Ivory, and translucent glimmering quartz solid to the touch, for I put out my hand and felt the rail of it, and with Brown spots and smears upon the Ivory and bits of grass and Moss upon the lower parts, one rail bent awry.

The Time Traveler put the lamp down on the bench and ran his hand along the damaged rail.

It's all right now, he said.

The story I told you was true.

I'm sorry to have brought you out here in the cold.

He took up the lamp and in an absolute silence we returned to the smoking room.

He came into the hall with us and helped the Editor on with his coat.

The Medical Man looked into his face and with a certain hesitation told him he was suffering from overwork, at which he laughed hugely.

I remember him standing in the open doorway, bawling good night.

I shared a cab with the editor.

He thought the tale a gaudy lie.

For my own part, I was unable to come to a conclusion.

The story was so fantastic and incredible, the telling so credible and sober.

I lay awake most of the night thinking about it.

I determined to go next day and see the Time Traveler again.

I was told he was in the laboratory, and being on easy terms in the house, I went up to him.

The laboratory, however, was empty.

I stared for a minute at the time machine and put out my own hand and touched the lever.

At that the squat, substantial looking mass swayed like a bow shaken by the wind.

Its instability startled me extremely, and I had a queer reminiscence of the childish days when I used to be forbidden to meddle.

I came back through the corridor.

The time traveler met me in the smoking room.

He was coming from the house.

He had a small camera under one arm and a knapsack under the other.

He laughed when he saw me and gave me an elbow to shake.

I'm frightfully busy, said he, with that thing in there.

But is it not some hoax?

I said.

Do you really travel through time?

Really and truly I do, and he looked frankly into my eyes.

He hesitated.

His eye wandered about the room.

I only want half an hour, he said.

I know why you came, and it's awfully good of you.

There's some magazines here.

If you'll stop to lunch, I'll prove you this time, traveling up to the Hills, specimens and all.

If you'll forgive my leaving you now.

I consented, hardly comprehending then the full import of his words, and he nodded and went on down the corridor.

I heard the door of the laboratory Slam, seated myself in a chair, and took up a daily paper.

What was he going to do before lunchtime?

Then suddenly I was reminded by an Advertisement that I had promised to meet Richardson, the publisher, at two.

I looked at my watch and saw that I could barely save that engagement.

I got up and went down the passage to tell the time traveler.

As I took hold of the handle of the door, I heard an exclamation, hardly truncated at the end, and a click and a thud.

A gust of air whirled round me as I opened the door, and from within came the sound of broken glass falling on the floor.

The time traveler was not there.

I seemed to see a ghostly, indistinct figure sitting in a whirling mass of black and brass.

For a moment a figure so transparent that the bench behind, with its sheets of drawings was absolutely distinct.

But this Phantom vanished as I rubbed my eyes.

The time machine had gone, save for a subsiding stir of dust.

The further end of the laboratory was empty.

A pane of the skylight had apparently just been blown in.

I felt an unreasonable amazement.

I knew that something strange had happened, and for the moment could not distinguish what a strange thing might be.

As I stood staring, the door into the garden opened, and the man servant appeared.

We looked at each other, then ideas began to come.

Has Mr.

Gone out that way?

Said I.

No, sir.

No one has come out this way.

I was expecting to find him here.

At that I understood.

At the risk of disappointing Richardson, I stayed on, waiting for the time traveler, waiting for the second, perhaps still stranger story and the specimens and photographs he would bring with him.

But I'm beginning now to fear that I must wait a lifetime.

The time traveler vanished three years ago, and as everybody knows now, he has never returned.

One cannot choose but wonder will he ever return.

It may be that he slept back into the past and fell among the blooddrinking, hairy savages of the age of unpolished stone, into the abyss of the crestaceous sea or among the grotesque sarians, the huge, reptilian brutes of the Jurassic times.

He may, even now, if I may use the phrase, Be wandering on some plesiosaurus haunted ulyk coral Reef Or beside the lonely saline seas of the Triassic age?

Or did he go forward into one of the nearer ages in which men are still men, but with the riddles of our own time answered, and it's wear some problems solved into the manhood of the race?

For I, for my own part, cannot think that these latter days of week experiment, Fragmentary theory, and mutual discord Are indeed man's culminating time.

I say for my own part, the question had been discussed among us Long before the time traveler was made thought but cheerlessly of the advancement of mankind and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers.

In the end, if that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so.

But to me, the future is still black and blank is a vast ignorance lit at a few casual places by the memory of his story.

And I have buy me for my comfort two strange white flowers shriveled now and Brown and flat and brittle to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, Gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.

Thank you for joining bite at a Time books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

If you enjoy our show, be sure to follow us so you get all the new episodes.

If you want to see exclusive behind the scenes of our show, join our Patreon.

We would also love for you to drop us a rating on your favorite podcast platform and share our show with your friends.

You can catch us on all the social medias at Bite atitimebooks.

Also be sure to check us on our website, www.btetitimebooks.com.

We are now part of the Bite at a Time Books Productions network.

If you ever wondered what inspired your favorite classic novelist to write their stories, what was happening in their lives or the world at the time, check out bite at a Time Books behind the story Tuesdays wherever you listen to podcasts again.