The Time Ships

“But there is a stage beyond the Industrial,” Nebogipfel said. “It is the Post-Industrial. My own species had entered this stage — we had been there for the best part of half a million years, on your arrival — but it is a stage without an end.”

“Tell me what it means. If capital and labor are no longer the determinants of social evolution…”

“They are not, because Information can compensate for their lack. Do you see? Thus, the transmutating Floor of the Sphere by means of the knowledge invested in its structure — could compensate for any shortage of resource, beyond primal energy…”

“And so you are saying that these Constructor — given their fragmentation into a myriad complex factions — are, at base, driving for more knowledge?”

“Information — its gathering, interpretation and storage — is the ultimate goal of all intelligent life.” He regarded me somberly. “We had understood that, and had begun to translate the resources of the solar system to that goal; you men of the nineteenth century had barely begun to grope your way to that realization.”

“Very well,” I said. “So, we must ask, what is it that limits the gathering of Information?” I peered out at the enclosed stars. “These Universal Constructors have already fenced off much of this Galaxy, it seems to me.”

“And there are more Galaxies beyond,” Nebogipfel said. “A million million star systems, as large as this one.”

“Perhaps, then, even now, the Constructors’ great sail-ships are drifting out, like dandelion seeds, to whatever lies beyond the Galaxy… Perhaps, in the end, the Constructors can conquer all of this material universe, and turn it over to the storage and classification of Information which you describe. It would be a universe become a great Library — the greatest imaginable, infinite in scope and depth—”

“It is a grand project indeed — and, yes, the bulk of the energy of the Constructors is devoted to that goal: and to studies of how intelligence can survive into the far fixture — when Mind has encompassed the universe, and when all the stars have died, and the planets have drifted from their suns… and matter itself begins to decay.

“But you are wrong: the universe is not infinite. And as such, it is not enough. Not for some factions of the Constructors. Do you see? This universe is bounded in Space and Time; it began at a fixed period in the past, and it must finish with the final decay of matter, at the ultimate end of time…

“Some of the Constructors — a faction — are not prepared to accept this finitude,” Nebogipfel said. “They will not countenance any limits to knowledge. A finite universe is not enough for them! — and they are preparing to do something about it.”

That sent a chill — of pure, unadulterated awe — prickling over my scalp. I looked out at the hidden stars. This was a species which was already Immortal, which had conquered a Galaxy, which would absorb a universe — how could their ambitions stretch further still?

And, I wondered grimly, how could it involve us?

Nebogipfel, still locked to his eye-scope, rubbed his face with the back of his hand, in the manner of a cat, removing fragments of food from the hair about his chin. “I do not yet have a full understanding of this scheme of theirs,” he said. “It is to do with time travel, and Plattnerite; and — I think — the concept of the Multiplicity of Histories. The data is complex — so bright…” I thought this was an extraordinary word to use; for the first time it occurred to me what courage and intellectual strength it must take for the Morlock to descend into the Constructors’ Information Sea — to confront that ocean of blazing Ideas.

He said, “A fleet of Ships is being constructed — huge Time Machines, far beyond the capabilities of your century or mine. With these, the Constructors intend — I think — to penetrate the past. The deep past.”

“How far back? Beyond the Palaeocene?”

He regarded me. “Oh, much further than that.”

“Well. And what of us, Nebogipfel? What is this ’proposition’ you have?”

“Our patron — the Constructor here with us — is of this faction. He was able to detect our approach through time — I cannot give you details; they are very advanced — they were able to sense our coming, on our crude Time-Car, up from the Palaeocene. And so, he was here to greet us.”

Our Constructor had been able to follow our progress, up towards the surface of time, as if we were timid deep-sea fish! “Well, I’m grateful he was. After all, if he hadn’t been on hand to meet us as he did, and treat us with his molecular surgery, we’d be dead as nails.”

“Indeed.”

“And now?”

He withdrew his face from the Constructor’s eye-scope; it came loose with an obscene plop. “I think,” — he said slowly, “that they understand your significance — the fact that your initial invention propagated the changes, the explosion in Multiplicity, which led to all this.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think they know who you are. And they want us to come with them. In their great Ships — to the Boundary at the Beginning of Time.”

[9] Options and Introspections

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…