Temporal Choices
Summary: It was my only chance, a perilous effort, but the only hope I had of destroying him. He was strong and intimidating, but I never backed down for an instant …I couldn't go back on my word, couldn't find cleavage, couldn't change the past. What's done is done, and here I am, a professor of Columbia University, and the year is 802,701. One-shot. Based on the 2002 film The Time Machine. Written in Alexander Hartdegen's POV. Book and movie-verse.
Disclaimer: The Time Machine and all its characters, etc. belong to their respectful owners and not me.
I fantasize about going back. I like to imagine the reactions I would receive from my old friends. Mrs. Watchit would probably shake her head at the sight of me and gleeful tears would stream down her cheeks from her merry blue eyes. I reckon Philby would question my sanity first, then ask me to tell him everything. My family would never know that I was gone to begin with, because if I had my machine right here and now, I could easily go back and reappear only an hour after I left, if I wanted. But alas, my machine is gone, disintegrated into nothing but dust more than likely, its tiny particles scattered in the ruins of a cavern.
I know it's wishful thinking and I mean no harm by it. If I could go back for a day I would, even if it were only to tell everyone goodbye. But I couldn't stay. I see too many smiling faces around me and I'm sitting in a place as serene and tranquil as the Garden of Eden. What's done is done, and here I am, a professor of Columbia University, and the year is 802,701. I haven't the least bit of regret, and that surprises me more than anything. But still, I cannot forget what occurred two days ago, an unpromising event. I remember it all clearly…….
.
We walked like shadows over the fields against the unfathomable dark of the sky, eventually trailing through the jungle overgrowth where I was barely able to see the little native boy who followed me. Holding the lantern in my hand, nocturnal insects frequently appeared in ghostly fashion, perhaps fascinated or confused by the large fireflies held captive inside its paper wall. I pushed away the thick leaves of a strange bush-tree, revealing a great, impending sight: The Sphinx.
It looked almost as threatening as the Devil himself, inhaling and exhaling as if it were alive … a large skull, fangs exposing a dark doorway - a doorway I hath feared in my bleakest dreams in nights before when my sleep was disordered. If ever there were a fear greater than that of losing my beloved Emma, this was it. I was standing before it.
I remembering uttering whilst my eyes were wide and upon it, something about how in the dream we were moving toward it, but I believed it was meant to keep us away.
"Now," I said as I rested my hands upon Kalen's shoulders, "I'll find her." I made a promise that I had every intention of keeping. Blind hope.
Before I left him, Kalen told me something about my pocket watch. He confessed that he'd lost it, telling me between pants that they'd taken it from his room and apologizing for it. A flash of curiosity came over me and I began to wonder why they would take it. I was looking back at the Sphinx as if knowing that all answers awaited me in there.
I parted with Kalen. Such a brave boy, and like myself a deep, unbreakable determination had took fast hold of him. He wanted to come, wanted to accompany me further. Had he been but ten years older I might have reconsidered for a moment. But in spite of his willingness to follow me in, I simply told him no. I think my telling him of how cross his sister would become with me should anything happen to him made it easier. And besides that, I needed him to return to the village and light the way should my mission here be successful.
I attempted to climb down into the edge of the pit, losing my footing whilst I tried fruitlessly to clamber on its rocky edges. My foot slipped out from under me and I panicked, losing my grip and letting my rope fall down into the endless parade of darkness. I managed to clutch onto another groove in the stone wall, peering over my shoulder and watching the rope disperse into the underworld. I heard it hit the bottom after a few seconds along with a few rocks that had broken off the wall in my attempt to climb, followed by the squeaking of disturbed bats!
They came swarming at me in a frenzy, and I clung to the wall, although, as I tried to shoo them away, I nearly lost my grip again. When the last of them had come and gone and the frenzy was ended, I gripped the wall tighter, cursing myself for being so stupid.
As I climbed further down, I was greeted by steam and an iron wheel that was rolling steadily. There were leather pipes overhead, moving, rolling, working. Everything around me was running. But I was too busy trying hard not to be seen, darting into the corners each time I heard a snarl or glimpsed a heavy, walking shadow out of the corner of my eyes, to ponder this.
One heavy brute was wandering down the corridor across from me and I waited patiently for him to leave. Another followed in behind him, then two more. At length they were all gone and I ventured forward.
Peering around the corner of which they had trailed, I saw them walking in a clumsy fashion - their shoulders swaying - down the hall. I wasn't apt to follow them, and instead ran across the corridor before me.
As I cantered quietly inside alone in the dark, my ears could hear the gentle rush of running water coming from the little metal streams that lined the halls, and the air was so stifled and hot until I could barely breathe.
I was almost contemplating on freezing up, growing petrified with horror, running away and finding some place to hide until I could hide no more. Perhaps a fool would, but each time the idea occurred to my mind, I remembered her…them. The poor creatures, those gentle Eloi, those beautiful river folk. I couldn't lose another. I just couldn't.
I recalled what the Photonic Vox had said to me in the Library Ruins, something about the answer haunting my dreams for all eternity. Maybe it would. Maybe it would plague my mind, drive me mad even - the things I was yet to witness. After seeing the brutalities that the Morlocks had thrown upon the gentle Eloi, I knew it couldn't be a pleasant world, their lair - but I pressed on despite my fear.
I envisioned the Morlocks that had attacked earlier that day. Large, hairy mongrels with dreadful eyes, ape-like faces - tall brutes with great strength. When that one Morlock got after me in the Monument Grounds, I felt my heart move up into my throat. What a horrid fear that beast cast into me. To think it could so easily thrust the soul from a living man with one good swipe - I doubt I could've ran any faster in a marathon.
When the sound of rumbling, like the working of underground machinery, became audible to me, I began to feel oppressed with perplexity and doubt. I still had that feeling of intense fear for which I could only perceive one definite reason: The Morlocks might have kidnapped the Eloi for work purpose, turning them into slaves to run their mines. But when I caught a glimpse of their running machines from peering around those stone-walled corners, I saw nothing but beasts, some of them forging weaponry, smelting and chiseling out tools, others perched and resting, grunting whilst picking mites out of their partner's fur. There were no Eloi anywhere from what I could tell, and I swallowed hard, realizing that what the Photonic had said was more than true after all.
As I see it now, the upper-worlders have retained their humanistic traits and appearances, whilst the under-worlders have resulted to mere mechanical industry. Apparently as time went on, the feeding of the underworld, however it was effected, has become disjointed. Mother Necessity, who had been staved off for a few thousand years, came back again, and she began below. The underworld being in contact with machinery, which, however perfect, still needs some little thought outside habit, had probably retained perforce rather more initiative, if less of every other human character, than the upper.
I couldn't bear the sight of them anymore, and I desperately needed to find Mara and the others before any harm could befall them - if it hadn't already. The rumbling of the machinery dwindled down to a quieter tone and I ran into another chamber. This chamber I now call The Butcher Room.
When first I entered, I did not heed to the stain of dry blood that painted the floor, nor at first did I notice any of the strange tools laid hither and thither, for my eyes were aimed dead on the pile of colorful clothing - I knew it to be that of the Eloi.
It was a great heap, a knoll of handmade apparel. Near the top is where I saw it: Mara's little shell necklace, apparently ripped from her neck. I began to feel the knot in my gut turn and twist in a sickening motion as I held the little jewel in my hands - one can only imagine the horrors that are liable to run through a human mind. It was that moment -- that moment when I looked up and saw the horror that had been there before me all that time: Tools for cutting, tools for stabbing, tools for hanging one by the spine, all tainted in fresh blood! Some tools were buried into tables, or stabbed into the floor, gory and nasty and waiting for their next use!
I was petrified by my own sickness, no longer mixed up by my misconceptions. I began to feel dizzy and baffled by it all, and as I moved away gasping in horror, I backed into a lever of some sort, one that opened a doorway in the floor beneath me. It sent me sliding down on my stomach straight into a pit! I tried to break the fall by grabbing the chain that fell with me, but it was no use.
I made a splash, and when I surfaced I looked around at the water, seeing nothing but old bones, skulls, ribs, spines and hips, anything you could imagine, but nothing whole! It was a trash heap for the leftover scraps! That's all the Eloi were to them, meat, just as I had feared!
I fell victim to my human instincts, panicking and searching for a way out of the bone pit. I was moving so fast through the water, cringing with disgust as I pushed whatever bone lay in my path aside, trying to reach the far wall. There was no way to climb out, so I turned around, hopelessly looking back upon my worst fear one final time, perhaps expecting myself to faint or withdraw from the reality before me in whatever way I could. Then something from up above clutched the hair of my head in the most ruthless manner. Looking up, I could see it was a snarling, angry Morlock! He was lifting me out of the water and I was trembling like a cornered mouse!
From there I was dragged by force to another place, a darker, deeper place that was kept hidden somewhere past the mines. I was tossed down into what I conceived to be a large cage, as they closed an iron door upon me - confound them!
I figured that while I was here I might as well take pleasure in the fact that they must've been too full to gorge themselves with me. I turned around, hoping to see what sort of chamber this was, hoping that I hadn't been thrown to another gorging beast waiting to feed.
There was a long stairwell before me, carved out of the uneven stone. With slight trepidation, I wandered down the echoing steps and into the darkness, hearing the sound of water dripping from the ceiling above me.
I was slow in my strides, uncertain of what to expect, but I saw something that gave me a great deal of relief, perhaps even hope, and that something was none other than dear Mara. She was sitting with her back to me in a large iron cage, and I ran to her side, finding her startled little face and hoping to relieve her as she had me.
I called her by name several times, but she shot me no glance. Her face was dirty, her hair slightly messy. She had been roughly handled much like myself apparently, and she was in shock. Then it occurred to me that her eyes were likely watching something, a monster perhaps. I slowly peered over my shoulder, and there he was, sitting casually amongst his throne … our observer.
"Come a little closer. I don't bite." Those were his exact words to me. I remember it all clearly, as if it only happened an hour ago.
I stood and watched him as he watched me. Some frightening fascination wanted to paralyze my own actions, but I came closer to him despite this.
He was a pale creature, more human than the other Morlocks, yet he had what looked to be talons on the tips of his fingers. He had long white hair that ran past his broad shoulders, and eyes that seemed to look into my soul.
He dared to ask me if he surprised me. I was willing to be honest and tell him he did, a little. As I stood staring my mind began racing with questions of how such a thing could exist, both him and his Morlocks. He must've read my mind right then and there, for he began telling me his story before I could even finish the thought within.
"We weren't always like this." he said - I had already concluded this obviously, but I listened. "After the moon fell from the sky, the Earth could no longer sustain the species."
Of course! The moon! The fact had slipped my mind in my rhapsody of dreadful observation, and now I had been reminded.
"Some managed to stay above." he told me. "The rest of us escaped underground. Then centuries later when we tried to reemerge into the sun again, we couldn't. So we bred ourselves into castes: Some to be our eyes and ears, some to be our muscles and sinews -"
"-You mean your hunters." I interrupted. He gave me an expression that looked as if he were impressed by my easy judgment.
"Yes." he said. "Bred to be predators," he raised and extended his finger then, as if he were a professor lecturing to me about some intriguing society, "but bred also to be controlled. You see, my caste concentrated on expanding our cerebral abilities."
Cerebral abilities…His caste (not his brute Morlocks) had learned how to expand their use of the brain. They had come to be a high level of intellectual being, becoming efficient by avoiding their emotions and instead contracting the usage of their psychological reasoning.
"You control their thoughts." I said.
"Not just theirs." he told me.
It was more than cerebral abilities, it was cerebral dominance over both the stupid Morlocks and the rational thinking of the Eloi. He was why they refused to fight back, he was why they feared the dark, why they had the dream that was meant to keep them away. It was all leading up to this one individual, this supernatural who controlled their little society and his.
The more I thought of it, the more outraged I became. Who was he to choose their fate, and such a grim one at that? What right did he have to round them up like frightened sheep, let his brutes bind and torture them, take them away from their families and leave the remaining to go about life like careless little insects, accepting 'the day and the night' and waiting for the next fly flap to come and strike them?
"So it's not enough that you hunt them down like animals." I began to challenge him with my statements. That cold, ruthless devil, sitting so arrogantly on his throne.
"That's their role here." he informed me.
"To be your food?" I was provoking him in my way. I wanted him to quit beating around the bush and just come right out and tell me it were so.
"Yes." he said at length, playing with something in his hands. "And for those who are suitable, to be breeding vessels for our other colonies."
Other colonies. Now I knew that there were more of them. They were all over the world, the bastards, hunting and killing every Eloi that lived within close range of their underground caverns, their dark hell.
I turned and looked back at Mara, feeling just as disgusted as I ever was, and seeing her with great sympathy. She was innocent to the matter. Had I not traveled through time she would be one of the hundreds of poor females that were sacrificed to keep his caste going. That damned monster!
"You see, I'm just one of many." he added.
"I don't understand how you can sit there and speak so coldly about this." I said.
As I spoke, he thrust himself up from his chair and I stepped back a little, startled by his haste. I kept telling him,
"Have you not considered the human cost of -- of what it is you're doing?"
"We all pay a price," he half-smirked, stepping toward me, "Alexander." The blue of his eyes became more visible when he was almost in my face.
He walked away and I watched him as the faint sound of Morlock roars became audible. I was too busy thinking of how wretched he was - how evil and wicked - to acknowledge whatever it was he muttered to me - something in response to the roars, I guess.
I saw his back: A grotesque growth. His flesh was raw there, and the bone of his spine was bulging through the flesh. But the further I rendered it, the more obvious it became to me that it was not a grotesque pigmentation around the back, but his large brain that had grown down through the spine. I was traumatized by this deformity! It spilled out of his skull and lapped over his back!
"I control them." he told me. "Without that control, they would exhaust the food supply," I recall him bending down, playing in the water of the little shallow pool, snatching one of the tiny glowing creatures that swam inside, "in a matter of months."
"Food supply?" I shouted at him. "They're human beings!"
As he held the tiny fish in the palm of his hands, he asked me,
"Who are you to question 800,000 years of evolution?"
He let the tiny creature swim away, and I was growing more agitated by his malcontent against me.
"This is -- this is a perversion of every natural law!"
He stood and snarled viciously at me, and for an instant I could see that same beast-like trait that his Morlocks boasted. The next thing he did was extend his talons toward me, and before I could even react, I was flying into his grasp, his long claws coiling around my throat and squeezing me! I couldn't struggle against him, for I was disabled by his mental abilities!
"And what is time travel but your pathetic attempt to control the world around you?!" He was using my own reasons against me, as if putting my attempts down to justify his own. "Your futile effort to have a question answered?" He clawed my face roughly as he spoke. "Do you think I don't know you, Alexander? … I can look inside your memories, your nightmares, your dreams."
As he finished his sentence, I became aware that he had long released his grip on me, and he stroked my face with his gangly claws - his cold skin like needles pricking mine - sympathizing my own worthless existence.
"You're a man haunted by those two most terrible words: What if?"
He unveiled me, making me feel exposed and naked in the dark. He spoke about me in such a way that for a moment I believed he knew me better than I had ever known myself …
I could hear the ticking of a clock, and when I turned around to follow the familiar sound, I saw something that stunned me: It was an image, a warp of my own fantasy right there before my very eyes. For a moment, I could reach out and touch it, and my heart was yearning to make it my own little reality. I wanted it to last. I wanted my adventures here to be the dream, the nightmare, and this to be real.
He let me live it for an instant, as if wanting to satisfy my thirst so that I would be on my way and let him live on in whatever way he wished. I could see myself clad in a fine suit of a pale color, and my eyes glimpsed the little table of which I always kept my best pocket watches and my little mirror. My hand was holding something: The plan sheets of my time machine, an invention I never completed because I never needed it.
Then I heard a little voice and soft laughter that was as delicate as a rose. It was a babbling baby held by my beautiful Emma who was clad in white like an angel, saying to the two small children who reminded me of cherubs, 'Look at you.'
She was so gentle, so happy, and I thought the children looked just like her even from the distance from whence I stood. The little boy seated at her side noted me and called,
"Daddy!"
"Who's that? Is it daddy?" Emma whispered, her voice graceful.
"Daddy!" The little boy called again, beckoning for me to come and join them. They were playing a little game of some sort.
It was marvelous, like Heaven had opened its doors for me, inviting me to come inside and be with her. And the little ones were mine -- ours! They were our two beautiful children! I wanted to run to them, wrap them all in my arms and cradle them. I wanted to keep Emma forever, and our little ones. I wanted it to be this way for all eternity…nothing but smiles and joy with just the four of us together. But like every dream, it came to an end, and I was thrust back into the current day of July 25th, 802,701.
The vision of Emma and our children was only my psychic fancy of what could've been had she only lived. I gained no comfort from it, no joy, no sense of closure, for it only made me sadder, making me long for her even more. Her fair face, golden hair pinned up into a bun, a white dress…my beautiful Emma Malloy.
After the vision dispersed from me, I could hear his ruthless voice laced with that irony of bitterness, speaking from behind.
"You built your time machine because of Emma's death. If she had lived it would never have existed. So how could you use your machine to go back to save her? You are the inescapable result of your tragedy, just as I am the inescapable result…of you."
As I turned and looked him directly in his cold eyes, I could hear the disembodied whispering of strange voices all around me. According to him, I was the inevitable result of my own problems, and he was the inevitable result of me.
I heard rumbling, like the unwinding of a device, and a faint light peering into that dark cavern of which he held me captive as his guest. A floor was leveled down from the ceiling and there was my time machine, unscathed and unharmed.
"You have your answer." he said. "Now go."
It was that simple. I had traveled through time, apparently landing here by fate, only to realize not only why I couldn't change the past, but why the past had been what it was to begin with. I built my machine in determination to save Emma, but after an unsuccessful attempt, I ventured forward, depending on the future to hold the answer as to why. It was him, he was my answer, and now I was faced with another choice. It was a new resolution. I could either do as he said and go home to 1903, or act here. If I could not change the past, then why not prevent the future? I had to save the Eloi, and I knew that if I were to leave and abandon Mara, break my promise to Kalen, I wouldn't be able to live with myself.
To turn back the clock was unorthodox. What good would it do humanity for me to return?
I wasn't actually plotting anything in my head at that moment. I let my mind fall blank and empty because I was afraid of him seeing it before I could attempt it. I had to play along for the moment, let him think he had me defeated, lead him to believe that I would gladly go back and leave him alone. I didn't know what the card up my sleeve would be, but I knew it was there in my conscious, and I was apt to use it against him.
I went to my machine, the glass wheels turning, the golden rods churning. It was ready, like a loyal steed waiting for me to straddle it and journey home. I must admit that the thought was tempting. I was giving up a lot, my whole life, my friends, my family. This world is far from what I am used to. It would be like living on a little island somewhere amongst gentle natives, if I could live through the battle I was yet to face.
"I believe you have something that belongs to me." I remember it slipping off my tongue as if it were a natural instinct.
"We all have our time machines, don't we?" he said, holding my pocket watch, the one taken from Kalen's room.
That little mechanical device was more than a mere timepiece to me. It held a great deal of sentimental value. My beloved Emma bought it for me as a gift - how ironic, how sometimes the little things that our loved ones leave behind, the little fingerprints of our past, can be a tool in the most dire of situations.
"Those that take us back are memories, and those that carry us forward are dreams." he said.
As he handed the pocket watch to me, I just listened. I grasped it gently then, thinking of all that he had said, all that I had learned during my stay.
"You're forgetting one thing…" I said. He shot me a curious look, and I knew I had him unbeknown of what I was to do next - I had tricked him. "…what if?"
My hand was quick. I held the pocket watch firm, wrapping the golden chain around his wrist and pulling him onto the machine. I pressed the lever forward, letting it take us further into the future whilst I fought against him. It was my only chance, a perilous effort, but the only hope I had of destroying him.
I elbowed him hard and he managed to strike me with twice the force in my right side - the part of my body that had been bruised during my abrupt landing in the jungle. We kept pounding and elbowing each other, him bashing me with his quick strikes and I him. I bashed him headfirst into one of the golden bars of my machine, and he came back at me with a swipe at my jaw. Then he clutched me and I struggled effortlessly to free myself. He swiped me again and I pounded his side. Before long, we were grappling each other by the shoulders.
I tried to shove him back, tried to force him to fall out of the sphere that kept my machine timeless whilst I traveled through the fourth dimension, but he caught himself and I knew what he was about to do. I pressed my shoe against his chest, trying hard to push him out - I was just desperately trying to rid myself of his brute strength. I pushed and pushed, but he was too strong.
He was bearing his teeth at me, and suddenly he snatched my ankle, pulling it off from him and sending me spinning in the air. I hit my head against the cold metal bars of my machine, and it was a painful impact. Before I could pull myself up, he wrapped his hand around my throat, bashing my head against another bar, and I knew for certain I was a goner. He was planning to throw me out, planning to use my own plan to destroy him against me. I punched him in the face, but he only grinned, mocking me silently.
He must've changed his mind about throwing me out, for he tossed me into my chair and reached for his handy knife. He swung the blade at me and I dodged it quickly. I gripped his wrist with stealth, causing him to lose his knife - for me, that was a good thing. He grabbed me by the throat again, lifting me from the chair, apparently resulting back to his original plan to destroy me.
Then I realized what he was really doing. He was pushing my head toward the whooshing blades of my machine. He wanted to chop me up, make my death as dreadful as his Morlocks did the poor Eloi. I was about to be diced into a hundred pieces!
I began thinking of what I could do. I was so terrified until I forgot to put my shields up. If he wanted to, he could've easily read my mind, but I suppose he was too intent on watching me suffer to wonder if I was contemplating anything.
I saw the little pressure gages to my left. If I could break the glass the steam would go straight into his eyes, and I'd have a better chance of gaining the upper hand. I cut my hand against the broken glass, but I didn't care. It worked!
Whilst he squinted and grunted, I pushed forward against him and clutched my lever. He was dangling outside of the sphere and his hand was still clutching my throat. He was inflecting a spiteful discomfort upon me, and before I knew it, he had his other hand wrapped around my throat. But I had him cornered…if I could only press the lever forward I could force age upon him, let him hang there and disintegrate into bodily dust. Somehow, I managed.
The sight of him dying and wasting away into a mummified appearance was, in its own way, disturbing. But when I thought of all the horrible things he had put the Eloi through for so long, I was glad to watch him die painfully. I tore his arms off from my throat and threw them aside, letting them fall wherever. Above me the cave was opening and the light of day was slowly piercing through. The world around me was changing further, and my anxiousness to see a brighter future pressed me to wait and see what the world outside would reveal.
At last he was gone, and I knew the Eloi were free. You might think that this meant I could go back, return Mara to the village and go back to my own time. You might think that the Eloi would manage better now that he was gone. They could defend themselves without being under some psychic control, thrive and have a chance. But when I stopped the machine in the year 635,427,810, I realized that there was no hope for them, not even with the Master gone.
The air was thick, heavy and polluted with smog from working factories. There was no lush greenery, no beautiful jungles, not even any sign of advanced civilization. There were only dark, crooked mountains and Sphinx heads everywhere - a vast wasteland.
There was no hope for the Eloi. Without a Master, the Morlocks were adopted by others of his caste, coming and building up their colonies, turning the natural world into a cannibal nightmare. The Eloi were probably all caged in some farm, bred and battered, mindless and hopeless.
I knew what I had to do. I had to go back and prevent this madness. I had to destroy his Morlocks altogether, keep his fellow cerebral castes from coming in and taking his place on the throne. I had to save Mara and give at least one village the promise of tomorrow, give them at least a fighting chance.
I held the pocket watch in my hand. I was thinking on how I could do it, how I could wipe out an entire colony. All I had was my machine and the little timepiece in my grasp. I couldn't go back on my word, couldn't find any other cleavage, couldn't change the past. At length my mind was made up, and so I did it.
I went back. I stopped the machine and leaped out, running to Mara and releasing her from the prison she was bound to. I remember the smile on her face, the relief in her eyes, the way she threw her arms around me. What kind of person would I have been to abandon her?
I heard the Morlocks snarling at the gate. Without their Master controlling them, they were quite literally left to do as they pleased, and I feared that they were at least bright enough to remember that there were two fresh humans down in the office.
Mara watched me as I worked with my timepiece, using it as sort of countdown to a bomb you might say. She asked me what I was doing with it, and I told her I was changing the future. I rolled the chain between the rods and I pushed the lever of my machine upward. By this time, the Morlocks were already wandering down the stairwell to investigate.
I snatched Mara's hand, pulling her along as we raced away from 'the bomb' and past the dumbstruck brutes who had their arms open and ready to snatch us, but the bright light of my machine blinded them, buying us time to flee.
I knew the machine was going to explode, and there was no safe place to hide in the caverns, especially with all the workers running amuck. I closed the iron door on the chamber where my machine and those stupid brutes were, in case they attempted to run after us. They did try to get out, but we left them caged.
Mara and I raced through the narrow passages of the caverns. I was trying to find the exit of the Sphinx in time for us to avoid the blast that was bound to happen. We ran upon the work mines where we heard the screeching and chattering of the restless Morlocks. I knew we'd have to get through this somehow, so I told Mara to wait there whilst I searched for the right passage.
The Morlocks were all busying themselves on the far side, so I figured we were both safe... that was until one of the dart shooters came hopping up from behind me. He shot me dead in the shoulder - the dumb beast - and the little needle stung me terribly. I knew he had me, especially with those bothersome cries and bellows of his, but Mara surprised me by coming round the corner with a cry of her own and a large tool at hand. The beast glanced her and she pounded him atop his thick skull. I must admit I was rather impressed - I don't think I could've hit him harder myself - and even though she was scared, I suspect it felt rather good being able to fight back for once.
We ran into the small passage I had found, both of us knowing that the others who had heard their fellow hunter's cries were on our tail. I knew how fast they were capable of running, and they were far more familiar with the halls of their den than I, but I was confident in where I was headed as I recognized the passageways quite vividly.
I heard their snarls and grunts getting closer behind us and I kept looking over my shoulder to ensure that Mara was close behind. When we found the grooved wall in which I had come down from, I told her to go first whilst I tossed my vest aside - I didn't want it to get snagged on any sharp rocks while I climbed. The Morlocks didn't appear to have the gumption to climb after us, and instead gave out loud roars. I told Mara to hurry. If we could just reach the top and duck for cover, we might just make it out alive.
I heard the explosion. It was loud, almost deafening, and it made the Earth beneath us rumble and vibrate. The worst part of it all was that we were still climbing, and when I looked over my shoulder, I was angered to see that those stubborn Morlocks had found gumption after all!
When I reached the top, I was relieved to see Toren - the Eloi who had originally suggested tossing me into the river - crouched at the top and ready to pull me up, calling me by name. There were several others too, torches at hand … bless Kalen! Bless all of them!
We all took a great leap, diving down and ducking and running into the overgrowth. We raced through the jungle, both the torches and the beam of the explosion giving light for the footpaths we traveled. We clambered up a hillside where we found a safe clearing and a full view of the massive destruction.
We stood silent and watching, deriving, I fancied, a sort of comfort in each other's company. We were all tired and panting from the running and climbing we did through the jungle, but I don't think any of the others were half as tired and bemused as Mara and I.
It was over at last. They were gone for good, those monsters, and I had given these gentle river folk a chance at living a more fulfilling life. Without the Morlocks, my Eloi could grow and learn, have a brighter future for their children and live in peace. I only wish I could've save the others that were taken.
I felt a soft touch grace my shoulder and I saw that it was Mara. She wanted to give me comfort in the best way she knew how, I suppose, by saying she was sorry that I lost my machine. But I told her it was alright … like my dear Emma used to try and convince me of, it was only a machine and nothing more. The important thing was standing at my side, and she was safe and back home with her people.
I grasped her hand, just wanting to hang on to her. I guess it might have surprised her a bit, but I just wanted to embrace the moment, the victory, the release from the nightmares. She didn't pull away, and instead held onto me …
.
I sit quietly beneath a tall, thick palm that gives shade from the warmth of the sun. I can hear the little chirps of birds overhead and all around below me. In the Stone Gallery, I can hear Vox telling the children the story of Tom Sawyer. And every now and then I like to feel the smooth surface of the little shells that are weaved into the leather choker Mara made for me. I believe it is something that symbolizes that I am a part of their colony now, as they all wear them - I only hope that I will not have to follow the tradition of shaving my head, as the other men folk do.
I know I need to stop writing for now. I should like to preserve the rest of this leather notepad that Toren has given me to document whatever new adventures lay ahead.
I can hear Mara and Kalen calling my name. I promised to walk them to the place where my house used to sit today. I'm still a bit sore from my injuries, but I think that the walking stick Kalen has lent me - the one that was once his father's - should prove useful until the pressure eases.
I'll always have that wishful thinking. I'm sure I'm not the only one here who does. But the smiles around me and the cleanliness of the air, the freedom to roam this beautiful garden, gives me pleasure. I'm not afraid to be truthful and confess that I have begun to love it here.
~ Dr. Alexander Hartdegen