To travel to the Beginning of Time… My soul quailed at the prospect!

You may think me something of a coward for this reaction. Well, perhaps I was. But you must remember that I had already been granted a vision of one extremity of Time — its bitter End — in one of the Histories I had investigated: the very first, where I had watched the dying of the sun over that desolate beach. I remembered, too, my nausea, my sickness and confusion; and how it had only been a greater dread of lying helpless in that rayless obscurity which had impelled me to get aboard the Time Machine once more and haul myself back into the past.

I knew that the picture I should find at the dawn of things would be rather different — unimaginably so! — but it was the memory of that dread and weakness which made me hesitate.

I am a human — and proud of it! — but my extraordinary experiences, I dare say more unusual than any man of my generation, had led me to understand the limitations of the human soul — or, at any rate, of my soul. I could deal with the descendants of man, like the Morlocks, and I could make a fair fist of coping with your prehistoric monstrosities like Pristichampus. And, when it was a mere intellectual exercise — in the warmth of the lounge of the Linnaean — I could conceive of going much further: I could have debated for long hours the Finitude of Time, or von Helmholtz’s views on the inevitability of the Heat Death of the universe.

…But, the truth is, I found the reality altogether more daunting.

The available alternative, however, was hardly attractive!

I have always been a man of action — I like to get hold of things! — but here I was, cushioned in the hands of metal creatures so advanced they could not conceive even of talking to me, any more than I should think of holding spiritual conversations with a flask of bacillus. There was nothing I could do here on White Earth — for the Universal Constructors had done it all.

Many times, I wished I had ignored Nebogipfel’s invitation and stayed in the Palaeocene! There, I had been a part of a growing, developing society, and my skills and intellect as well as my physical strength — could have played a major part in the survival and development of Humanity in that hospitable Age. I found my thoughts, inwardly directed as they were, turning also to Weena — to that world Of A.D. 802,701 to which I had first traveled through time, and to which I had intended to return — only to be blown off my course by the first Bifurcation of History. If things had been different, I thought — if I had behaved differently, that first time, perhaps I could have retrieved Weena from the flames, even at the cost of my own health or life. Or, if I had survived that, perhaps I could have gone on to make a genuine difference in that unhappy History, by somehow leading Eloi and Morlock to confront their common degradation.

I had done none of that, of course; I had run for home, as soon as I retrieved my Time Machine again. And now I was forced to accept that, because of the endless calving-off of Histories, I could never return to 802,701 — or, indeed, to my own time.

It seemed that my nomadic trail had ended here, in these meaningless few rooms!

I would be kept alive by these Constructors, it seemed, as long as my body continued to function. Since I have always been robust, I supposed I could look forward to several decades more of life — and perhaps even longer; for if Nebogipfel was right about the sub-molecular capabilities of these Constructors, perhaps (so Nebogipfel speculated, to my astonishment) they would be able to halt, or reverse, even the aging processes of my body!

But it seemed I would be deprived of companionship forever — save for my unequal relationship with a Morlock who, already being my intellectual superior, and with his continuing immersion in the Information Sea, would surely soon pass on to concerns advanced far beyond my understanding.

I faced a long and comfortable life, then — but it was the life of a zoo animal, caged up in these few rooms, with nothing meaningful to achieve. It was a future that had become a tunnel, closed and unending…

But, on the other hand, I knew that concurring with the Constructors’ plan was a course of action quite capable of destroying my intellect.

I confided these doubts to Nebogipfel.

“I understand your fears, and I applaud your honesty in confronting your own weakness. You have grown in understanding of yourself, since our first meeting—”

“Spare me this kindness, Nebogipfel!”

“There is no need for a decision now.”

“What do you mean?”

Nebogipfel went on to describe the immense technical scope of the Constructors’ project. To fuel the Ships, vast amounts of Plattnerite would have to be prepared.

“The Constructors work on long time-scales,” the Morlock said. “But, even so, this project is ambitious. The Constructors’ own estimates of completion (and this is vague, because the Constructors do not plan in the sense that human builders do; rather they simply build, cooperative and incremental and utterly dedicated, in the manner of termites) are that another million years will pass before the Ships are made ready.”

“A million years?… The Constructors must be patient indeed, to devise schemes on such scales!”

My imagination was caught by the scale of all this, so startled was I by that number! To consider a project spanning geological ages, and designed to send ships to the Dawn of Time: I felt a certain awe settling over me, I told Nebogipfel: a sense, perhaps, of the numinous.

Nebogipfel favored me with a sort of skeptical glare. “That is all very well,” he said. “But we must strive to be practical.”

He said that he had negotiated to have the remains of our improvised Time-Car brought to us; as well as tools, raw materials, and a supply of fresh Plattnerite…

I understood his thinking immediately. “You’re suggesting we just hop on the Time-Car, and skip forward through a million-year interval, while our patient Constructors complete the Ships’ development?”

“Why not? We have no other way to reach the launch of the Ships. The Constructors may be functionally immortal, but we are not.”

“Well — I don’t know! — it just seems… I mean, can the Constructors be so sure of completing their building program on time, and as they have envisaged it over such immense intervals? Why, in my day, the human species itself was only a tenth that age.”

“You must remember,” Nebogipfel said, “the Constructors are not human. They are, truly, an immortal species. Individual foci of awareness may form and dissolve back into the general Sea, but the continuity of Information-gathering, and their consistency of purpose, is unwavering…

“In any event;” he said, regarding me, “what have you to lose? If we travel up through time and find that, after all, the Constructors gave up before completing their Ships — what of it?”

“Well, we could die, for one thing. What if no Constructor is available to greet us, and tend to our needs, at the distant end of your million years?”

“What of it?” the Morlock repeated. “Can you look into your heart, now, and say that you are happy” — he waved a hand at our little apartment — “to live like this for the rest of your life?”

I did not answer; but I think he read my response in my face.

“And besides — ,” he went on.

“Yes?”

“Once it is built, it is possible we may choose to use the Time-Car to travel in a different direction.”

“What do you mean?”

“We will be given plenty of Plattnerite — we could even reach the Palaeocene again, if you would like.”

I glanced about furtively, feeling like some plotting criminal! “Nebogipfel, what if the Constructors hear you saying such things?”