I have already told you about the sickness and confusion that comes with time travelling. This time, I was not sitting properly on the machine. Without thinking, I pushed the levers forward instead of pulling them back. I held onto the shaking machine, not knowing where I was going. When I finally looked at the dials, I was amazed to find out how far I had travelled. The dial that counted thousands of days was spinning as fast as the seconds hand of a watch. I was going deep into the future!
As I went on, the world around me changed strangely. The fast flashes of day and night grew slower and slower, until the sun stopped completely. It sat low in the west, and it had become a huge, glowing red ball. The earth had stopped turning, just like the moon always shows the same face to the earth. I remembered my bad fall from before, so I carefully slowed the machine down until a dark beach appeared around me.
I stopped gently and sat on the Time Machine to look around. The sky was no longer blue. In the north, it was completely black, and pale white stars shone brightly. In the south, the huge red sun filled the sky with a dull light. The rocks around me were a harsh red colour, and thick green plants grew on them.
The machine was sitting on a sloping beach. The sea stretched far away. There were no waves because there was no wind. The water just moved slowly, like gentle breathing. Along the beach, the sand was covered in pink salt. My head felt heavy, and I noticed that I was breathing very fast. The air was very thin, like at the top of a high mountain.
Far away, I heard a terrible scream. I saw a huge white butterfly fly up into the sky and disappear. The sound was so sad and frightening that I shivered. Then, I saw something moving. What I thought was a red rock was actually moving slowly towards me. It was a monster! Can you imagine a crab as big as a table? It had many slow legs, huge claws, and long antennas that waved in the air. Its eyes shone at me, and its mouth moved in a horrible way.
As I stared at this awful creature, I felt a tickling on my cheek. I tried to brush it away with my hand, but it came back immediately. I reached up and grabbed something like a thick thread. With a feeling of pure terror, I turned around. I had grabbed the antenna of another giant crab right behind me! Its evil eyes looked at me, and its huge, dirty claws were coming down to grab me.
Quickly, I pulled the lever and moved one month into the future to escape. But when I stopped, I was still on the same beach. Now I could clearly see dozens of these giant crabs crawling everywhere.
The world felt completely dead and empty. I travelled forward another hundred years, but nothing changed. There was the same dying sea, the same cold air, and the same crowd of giant crabs creeping over the red rocks.
So I went on, stopping every thousand years. I watched with a strange fascination as the sun grew bigger and the life of the old earth slowly disappeared. Finally, more than thirty million years in the future, the huge red sun covered a large part of the sky.
I stopped once more. The giant crabs had disappeared. It was extremely cold, and white snow was falling from the dark sky. There was thick ice along the edge of the sea. Only the deep red water of the ocean was still unfrozen.
I looked for any sign of animal life. A deep fear kept me sitting on the machine. But I saw nothing moving. Only the green plants showed that life was not completely dead. I thought I saw a black object on the beach, but it did not move, so I decided it was just a rock.
Suddenly, a black shadow began to cover the edge of the sun. An eclipse was starting! The darkness grew quickly. A freezing wind began to blow, and the snow fell faster. The world became completely silent. All the normal sounds of life—the noise of animals, the singing of birds, the hum of insects—were gone forever.
Soon, the sky was completely black. A terrible horror came over me. The freezing cold went deep into my bones, and my breathing hurt. I felt very sick and dizzy.
Then, the red edge of the sun slowly appeared again. I got off the machine for a moment to rest. As I stood there, feeling sick and confused, I saw the black object on the beach move again. It was round, maybe the size of a football, and long tentacles hung down from it. It was jumping slowly near the blood-red water.
I felt like I was going to faint. But I was terrified of lying helpless in that dark, lonely world. With all my remaining strength, I climbed back onto the seat of the Time Machine.