Sadly, I don't own The Time Machine in any continuity.
Please let me know what you think.
What I'd hoped for, and What I finally saw.
The lever on the Time Machine was accidentally knocked forwards, sending the Machine into the future. George leaned back in the saddle and took a deep breath, even as his body ached from the second round with the Morlocks.
He should have realised the Morlocks were trying to trap him in their sphinx. Their method for luring him inside the entrance was so original, and he had been so amazed and delighted that the Morlocks hadn't damaged or even touched the machine as he had first imagined they would, and he'd been elated he could take Weena back in time with him after all…but that had been shattered, of course, when the Morlocks had shut the panel.
George had been so delighted to have seen the Time Machine again that he hadn't considered it being a trap; after everything he had discovered over the past two days in the year 802,701, George had forgotten the Morlocks had once been human, it would make sense they had retained some human intelligence to come up with a simple enough trap.
With a sigh George pulled himself up in his saddle so he could check the progress of the Time Machine…and his eyes caught sight of a Morlock he must have knocked into a wall, killing the creature. As he watched, the Morlock's corpse began decomposing slowly - the most gruesome part was when the eyeball dropped out of the Morlock's socket before it disappeared. George watched on, disgusted; this was the opposite of the natural beauty he had seen when he had switched the Machine on and he had journeyed into the future, and he'd witnessed the progressions of the seasons, watching as flowers and apples on the apple tree in his garden blossom and grow.
As George watched the skeleton of the Morlock turn to dust, he realised what was happening quickly. During the struggle, the lever had been knocked forwards. George leapt forwards and he pulled the lever backwards, listening as the Time Machine almost stalled but he continued pulling on the lever as the Machine groaned in protest before he saw with relief the year meter flash backwards. He was heading back to the past.
He regretted he couldn't return for Weena, but George quickly realised that it wasn't a problem since he could return to her later, and he didn't really want to change his mind and push the Time Machine towards the future. Not only did he not know what could happen, but after what he had been through for the last few days, George did not want to tempt fate anymore and find himself stranded.
George leapt forwards in surprise as everything turned hazy red, coughing at the heat; for a moment he thought he and his Machine were once again surrounded by molten lava again, but they weren't. He didn't know what it was, but he decided to not bother worrying about it…
But he was horrified by the landscape he saw. The land was devastated, the plants and the trees seemed to be changing in a green haze. George looked around in horror, hoping that the Time Machine's speed back into the past where Earth's atmosphere was less and less poisoned by the never-ending wars on the planet would protect him from being suffocated.
For a long time, George had been working on the Time Machine and the theories behind it in the hopes of travelling through time and usher in a new golden age of exploration for Mankind where the human race could ascend to a new frontier. George had hoped to witness the evolution of Earth through the centuries, knowing that even travelling 2 years in the future would allow him to see new strides in science and technology, and he had been right; George had seen flowers blossom and open, he had witnessed the sun and the moon pass overhead in seconds, which would take hours without the Time Machine.
George had been struck dumb by the unexpected possibilities; if other scientists gained the Time Machine and used it to study such natural movements during the day and the night, who knew what they could learn?
Scientists could, say, travel months into the future and witness the movement of the stars and the moons, using the Time Machine to observe the movements of the heavens…who knew what kind of discoveries one could make with that?
Or, what about journeying into the past? There were millions of mysteries just waiting for somebody to travel back and explore; there were the ancient civilisations of Rome, Greece, and China, Japan, India, and Egypt. And who knew, lost civilisations like the so-called Atlantis, just waiting to be proven true or false? What about the myths of the past, like Merlin and King Arthur? Jason and the Argonauts? The Minotaur? Phoenixes? Circe?
But George was more interested in the future. He had wanted to see if the human race grew. He had so many questions about the future, based on his own beliefs about futuristic utopias where things like disease, famine, and intolerance were so foreign nobody could possibly understand it.
But what had he found?
War and destruction.
During his visit to the 10940s and 1960s, George had witnessed wars with increasingly terrifying levels of destruction. He had witnessed the town he lived in being destroyed with enough ferocity, it started a volcanic eruption. But that was nothing in the 800,000 years that passed between that point in time to Weena's time, where he had learnt enough about Earth's fate with the Talking Rings. George had assumed that with new technologies and levels of education, things would be infinitely better, and as humanity's knowledge and scientific comprehension had grown, everyone would be moving to explore space while everything became a paradise.
Big mistake.
Humanity had not changed. Oh yes, their scientific knowledge and technology had grown over the years. More likely being accelerated by the never-ending wars on the planet, while they came up with more and new ways to kill themselves with. George had no idea what had reduced the human race to that state, why on Earth they would waste centuries fighting each other needlessly for no reason but to kill. He had been so excited about the prospect of seeing the future, even dreaming up the sight of witnessing people flying through the air in the same liberating way they walked down the street or travelled on boats, but as he had ventured deeper into the future and witnessed the war with Germany in 1917, which had claimed the life of his best friend, only to travel 22 years into the future, and realise another war with Germany was waging, George had become cynical.
It wasn't until he had witnessed that thing destroy the town and start a volcanic eruption, George began to lose hope in the human race's future. But in an ironic twist, the utopia he had seen had come about. But on the surface, while the Eloi and the Morlock's world was idyllic, it was anything but - George cringed as he remembered how angry he had been when he had discovered how the Eloi had virtually forgotten their own past, dismissing books which were now so hopelessly old, they now crumbled to dust.
It wasn't the Eloi's fault, but if the Morlocks hadn't had anything to do with dumbing them down and keeping the Eloi's minds at a certain level, he would be really surprised.
George leaned back in his saddle and checked the date meter. Not long to go now. Soon he would be home.