I don't own The Time Machine in any way, or in any continuity.
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If she had lived, How could I go back?
The moment he heard the ticking clocks and watches and saw the illuminated bureau - lost thousands of years ago in the past, and probably long since destroyed and reduced to dust, like so much of human civilisation in a world where only a few examples remained; meeting the VOX again had been a surprise, but a welcome one -Alexander knew immediately he was looking at yet another illusion; the Chief Morlock seemed to have a need to create and generate them, but Alexander didn't like how this thing was able to break into his mind like that, but much of his disgust stemmed from the way the Morlocks viewed the Eloi as food and breeding stock.
Alexander didn't know what disgusted him the most; the Morlocks being able to justify themselves like that, or the fact they were, in fact eating their own cousins.
He believed it was a mixture of the two.
But the Morlock's statement about how Alexander was no different from them with how he had invented time travel and was trying to change the world around while trying to answer one single question he had been trying to ask since he had tried to use the Time Machine to save Emma from that mugger in the first place; Alexander had thought he had succeeded until Emma had been run over by that automobile, and he had been trying to answer his question ever since.
But if the VOX, a talking library of knowledge, didn't know, how could a Morlock?
Alexander walked over to the bureau slowly, and he almost smiled when he saw his collection of fob watches - many had dismissed this as a quirk of his, to have a different watch for different occasions, but he had come to enjoy the different feels and weights of the watches in his fob pocket - and he caught sight of himself in the mirror; he had barely been able to freshen himself up in this far-future era, but the version of himself in the reflection might have been a completely different man with the immaculate white suit and slicked-back hair.
Alexander was just examining himself in the reflection when the darkness of the Chief Morlock's cold, stone abode vanished and reformed itself into his laboratory, and he looked around himself in awe at the illusion; it could have been completely real. Alexander turned and found that he was holding a sheaf of white papers. Curiously he examined them before he realised he was holding onto the sketches, diagrams and formulas for the Time Machine. He studied them almost nostalgically; he had been working on them for a long time while he had corresponded with Mr Einstein, and half a dozen different scientists, but it wasn't until Emma's death he had worked on them to the point he was ready with a Time Machine model within a few years.
Alexander looked up when he heard a sound coming from the greenhouse, and he gasped. Emma was there, sitting by two small children, a boy and what looked like a little girl. He gaped in awe as the little boy turned and grinned at him, "Daddy! Daddy!"
Alexander's breath choked in his mouth at the vision in front of him, and while barely noticing that he was doing it, he folded the papers in his hands and stuffed them away in the drawer of the bureau. He could come back to them later, right? But right now, he was going to go to his family…
Suddenly the darkness returned and Alexander jumped, startled and horrified by what he had seen; he had wanted to have a life with Emma and he had wanted to raise a family with her, and Chief Morlock had dredged that out of his head to make a point… It sickened Alexander that to this thing the concept of privacy just did not exist.
But the thing was speaking and every single word was a logical strike to the heart.
"You built your time machine because of Emma's death," the Morlock said in a gravelly voice, walking slowly up to Alexander while the scientist had his back turned, "if she had lived, it would never have existed. So how could you use your machine to go back and save her? You are the inescapable result of your tragedy. Just as I am the inescapable result of you."
Alexander had turned around to face the Morlock, listening to the creature's explanation but his mind was more focused on the reason why the idyllic life he could have had could never be.
The Morlock had made a good point, and Alexander could not believe or understand how he couldn't have realised it before. Perhaps he had, but he hadn't wanted to admit it to himself. He had thrown his whole life into the building of the Time Machine to go back into the past and to save Emma, but it had never occurred to him if he had saved her, his fiancé would still die.
And that was what had happened; he might have saved Emma from the mugger, but she had been hit by that automobile by accident. Now his mind was reflecting on it, Alexander wondered if there was some kind of…function where the universe itself had some kind of way of repairing time that no one could undo.
Alexander had travelled into the future hoping to find an answer to his question, hoping to meet a human race with a time-travelling civilisation where the answer to his questions about time travel's practical applications was taught in school classes, only to discover the entire world destroyed after the moon was split into pieces; Alexander had seen enough of the damage to know it would have taken centuries for the Earth to recover from the damage and for the Morlocks and the Eloi to develop, but he had not expected the Chief Morlock to have the answer the question.
I can't change anything, he told himself even as he heard the rumbling of stone and the Time Machine itself, gleaming and crystalline were slowly being lowered into the Chief Morlock's lair; he thought he heard the Morlock tell him to leave, but Alexander had no intention of going. My history back home is completely set. I can't change it. I can't do anything to change the past….but I can do something here. I think I've just discovered the best application for time travel….
Later when he was Mara while Kalen and several other Eloi children were listening as the VOX entertained and educated them, Alexander could not help but look at the exotically beautiful Mara, and think of how he had made the right choice; while it had been tempting to return to his home time and continue his work into time travel and even use his Machine for exploration, he held no regrets. After using the Time Machine to travel forwards into the future and seeing the kind of future under the Morlocks without their leader to hold them back, they would have destroyed the Eloi for good.
He had returned and he had set history straight by destroying the Time Machine. He was trapped, but he could see a way of becoming happy here.