Time Machine時間機器

　　英國作家威爾斯(H.G.Wells)素有“現代科幻之父”的美稱，其所創作的科幻小說可謂膾炙人口，歷久不衰，如其初試啼聲即廣獲好評的《時間機器》(The Time Machine)(1895)，已成科幻的經典之一。有別于十九世紀末諸多烏托邦思想家對于人類未來的樂觀想象，威爾斯所描摹的未來令人毛骨悚然。

　　以下文章選自《時間機器》，是時間旅行者駕著時光機造訪遙遠未來后所見的末世景象，字里行間無不透示著絕望。本文盡管是小說片斷，但仍不失為一篇富有想象力的景色描寫。

　　I cannot convey the sense of 1)abominable 2)desolation that hung over the world. The red eastern sky, the northward blackness, the salt Dead Sea, the stony beach 3)crawling with these 4)foul, slow-stirring monsters, the uniform 5)poisonous-looking green of the 6)lichenous plants, the thin air that hurts one’s lungs: all contributed to an 7)appalling effect. I moved on a hundred years, and there was the same red sun — a little larger, a little duller—the same dying sea, the same chill air, and the same crowd of earthly 8)crustacea creeping in and out among the green weed and the red rocks. And in the westward sky, I saw a curved pale line like a vast new moon.

　　So I travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides of a thousand years or more, drawn on by the mystery of the earth’s fate, watching with a strange 9)fascination the sun grow larger and duller in the westward sky, and the life of the old earth 10)ebb away. At last, more than thirty million years hence, the huge red-hot 11)dome of the sun had come to 12)obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkling heavens. Then I stopped once more, for the crawling 13)multitude of crabs had disappeared, and the red beach, save for its livid green 14)liverworts and 15)lichens, seemed lifeless. And now it was flecked with white. A bitter cold 16)assailed me. Rare white flakes ever and again came eddying down. To the north-eastward, the glare of snow lay under the starlight of the 17)sable sky and I could see an 18)undulating crest of 19)hillocks pinkish white. There were fringes of ice along the sea margin, with drifting masses further out; but the main expanse of that salt ocean, all bloody under the eternal sunset, was still unfrozen.

　　I looked about me to see if any traces of animal life remained. A certain indefinable apprehension still kept me in the saddle of the machine. But I saw nothing moving, in earth or sky or sea. The green slime on the rocks alone testified that life was not extinct. A shallow sandbank had appeared in the sea and the water had receded from the beach. I fancied I saw some black object flopping about upon this bank, but it became motionless as I looked at it, and I judged that my eye had been deceived, and that the black object was merely a rock. The stars in the sky were intensely bright and seemed to me to twinkle very little.

　　Suddenly I noticed that the circular westward outline of the sun had changed; that a concavity, a bay, had appeared in the curve. I saw this grow larger. For a minute perhaps I stared aghast at this blackness that was creeping over the day, and then I realized that an eclipse was beginning. Either the moon or the planet Mercury was passing across the sun’s disk. Naturally, at first I took it to be the moon, but there is much to incline me to believe that what I really saw was the transit of an inner planet passing very near to the earth.

　　The darkness grew 20)apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening gusts from the east, and the showering white flakes in the air increased in number. From the edge of the sea came a ripple and whisper. Beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives — all that was over.