Editing The Time Machine (section)

==Plot==
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[[File:Two complete science adventure books 1951win n4.jpg|thumb|right|''The Time Machine'' was reprinted in ''[[Two Complete Science-Adventure Books]]'' in 1951.]]
A [[Victorian era|Victorian]] Englishman, identified only as the ''Time Traveller'', tells his weekly dinner guests that he has experimental verification of a machine that can travel through time. He shows them what he says is a small model, and they watch it disappear. He says he has a big machine nearly finished in his laboratory, in which a person could travel through time. At dinner the following week, a weary, bedraggled Traveller recounts to his guests what he experienced on his journey to the future.

In the [[frame story|new narrative]], the Time Traveller goes into the future, observing things moving in quick motion around him. He sees his house disappear and turn into a lush garden. The Traveller stops in [[Anno Domini|A.D.]] 802,701, and meets the Eloi, a society of small, childlike humanoids. They live in small communities within large and futuristic yet deteriorating buildings, and adhere to a [[plant-based diet|fruit-based diet]]. His efforts to communicate with them are hampered by their lack of curiosity or discipline. They appear happy and carefree but fear the dark, particularly moonless nights. They give no response to nocturnal disappearances, possibly because they are so afraid of them. After exploring the area around the Eloi's residences, the Traveller reaches the top of a hill overlooking what was once London and finds the ruins of what once was a [[metropolis]]. He concludes that the entire planet became a garden, with little trace of human society or engineering from the hundreds of thousands of years prior, and that [[communism]]<ref>Chapter VI: "'Communism,' said I to myself."</ref><!-- Whether one approves of this or not, it's in the story. --> has at last been achieved. He also theorizes that intelligence springs from necessity; with no real challenges facing the Eloi, they have lost the spirit, intelligence, and physical fitness of humanity at its peak.

Returning to the site where he arrived, the Traveller finds his machine missing; he is confident that it at least has not traveled through time, as he had removed its levers. Later, he encounters the Morlocks, [[ape]]-like [[caveman|troglodytes]] who live in darkness underground and surface only at night. Deducing that they must have taken his time machine, he explores one of many "wells" that lead to the Morlocks' dwellings and discovers them operating the machinery and industry that makes the above-ground paradise of the Eloi possible. He realizes that the Morlocks control and feed upon the Eloi. The Traveller speculates that the human race has diverged into two species: the favored aristocracy has become the Eloi, and their mechanical servants have become the Morlocks.

Meanwhile, he rescues Eloi [[Weena (The Time Machine)|Weena]] from drowning, as none of the other Eloi take any notice of her plight. The Traveller takes Weena with him on an expedition to "The Palace of Green Porcelain", a distant structure which turns out to be a derelict museum. Here, the Traveller finds fresh matches and fashions a crude weapon against Morlocks, whom he must fight to recover his machine. He plans to take Weena back to his own time to save her from the horrors of the future world. Because the tiring journey back to Weena's home is too much for them, they stop in the forest for the night. They are eventually attacked by Morlocks, and Weena faints. The Traveller escapes when a small fire he left behind them to repel the Morlocks turns into a [[Wildfire|forest fire]]; Weena and the Morlocks are lost in the blaze.

The Morlocks open [[the Sphinx]] and use the machine as bait to capture the distraught Traveller, not understanding that he can use it to escape. He reattaches the levers before travelling further ahead to roughly 30&nbsp;million years from his own time. There, he sees some of the last living things on a dying Earth: crab-like creatures wandering blood-red beaches chasing enormous [[Butterfly|butterflies]], in a world covered in lichenoid vegetation. He continues to make jumps forward through time, seeing Earth's rotation cease and the sun grow [[Red giant|larger, redder, and dimmer]], and the world falling silent and freezing as the last living things die out.

Overwhelmed, he returns to his own time, arriving at the laboratory just three hours after he originally left. He arrives late to his own dinner party, whereupon, after eating, the Traveller relates his adventures to his disbelieving visitors, producing as evidence two unusual white flowers Weena put in his pocket.

The original narrator relates that he returned to the Traveller's house the next day, finding him preparing for another journey and promising to return in a short time. After waiting for three years, however, the narrator says that the Traveller has not returned.