Short Story “Truth Machine,” Part 2

22 November 2025

Part 2 of the short story, “Truth Machine.”

11 February 2013

Truth Machine, Part 2

The microfusion power plant hummed to life. A flash of light prefaced the snapping concussion marking the capsule’s departure. Professor Harwood watched as the numbers blinked in reverse sequence across the actual-time chronometer. Warning lights suddenly flared to life over the entire length of the control board. The actual-time chronometer blinked wildly and went blank. Smoke curled from the control board. The capsule shuddered violently nearly knocking the professor from his command chair. The smell of acrid smoke associated with burning circuitry assailed him. As he reached to close the abort switch, the capsule shook for a second time, flinging him to the floor and knocking him senseless.

Consciousness returned slowly and, after a time, he managed to reseat himself in the command chair. His head throbbed; his eyes refused to focus on the control board. He closed a switch on the arm of his chair that dispensed a remedy for his aching head. He swallowed the pill and relaxed, waiting for it to take effect. When his vision cleared, he punched up the auxiliary control circuits, re-lighting the control board. The actual-time chronometer read: 1-1-5129BCE-03:27:14 LT and ticking forward as it should be. He reasoned that he must have aborted at this time in the past, long after his intended time of arrival. He started to re-program his journey when he noticed light shining through one of the capsule’s viewing ports. Impossible–it was too early in the morning for there to be light, unless he landed in Antarctica and was seeing the south pole’s long summer day. He called up the data for external conditions and was surprised for the second time: TEMP 37C; HUM83%; WIND07MPH-SW; 38.539N 027.171W; the map grid showing his position west of modern Lisbon, perhaps on one of the Canary Islands. He ran the time-diagnostic sequence, suspecting a chronometer malfunction. While waiting for the results, he checked the views on his external monitors. On all sides he was surrounded by what appeared to be a tropical jungle. He saw flowers and fruit of every kind imaginable. Animals wandered carelessly past, taking little or no notice of the strange object from the future–carnivores grazing peacefully next to herbivores. He shook his head thinking he was caught in some kind of time-warp nightmare masquerading as paradise. Paradise? No–it was not possible, it couldn’t be possible. Dim memories surfaced in his mind, memories of a lit course he took as an undergraduate that began with myths of creation. He scoffed at the time, but he recalled that several of them began in idyllic paradises from which gods or men were driven for a multitude of reasons. He shook his head to dispel these memories. Impossible! He knew without looking back at his monitor screen that the results of the diagnostic were all things normal. He shook his head again and pinched himself to see if he would wake from this nightmare. He leaned back in the chair, trying to relax and to convince himself that he wasn’t seeing what he thought he saw.

For a full twenty minutes, George ran, and re-ran, every diagnostic program, every simulation, stored within the memory of his time machine, but the results did not satisfy him–he found nothing wrong. He stared at the monitors, seeing the breeze moving the leaves and branches of the trees and shrubs surrounding his capsule, even seeing a ripened peach fall from one of the trees in his view.

Impossible,” George said out loud. “It is the middle of winter, in the northern hemisphere; peaches do not ripen in January at this latitude!”

He fell silent again, his eyes still fixed on the bank of monitors showing him the area around his capsule. A few minutes later and a new motion caught his eye: a full grown male lion bounded out of the underbrush and stopped suddenly, staring at the shiny capsule. The lion raised its head, turning both ways, testing the air, then moved closer to investigate. George drew back instinctively as the lion moved to and sniffed the small camera, then moved around the capsule, appearing on a different monitor. George relaxed, then reached out and pressed a small switch activating an external microphone. The sudden burst of sound, including the loud sniffing and purring of the lion, caused the professor to jump; he reached out again, quickly lowering the volume. A second loud sound caught his attention, drawing his eye to a different monitor, where he saw a small, white lamb approaching the capsule from another direction.

“This should be interesting,” George said, an eyebrow rising slowly. He watched as predator and prey moved toward each other, waiting for the inevitable moment when the lamb would try to flee and be caught by the lion. The two creatures stopped the moment they saw each other; the lamb ‘baaed’ and the lion gave a low, rumbling growl, then the two turned and ambled away from the capsule, side by side.

George fell back into his seat, his mouth open wide. “Impossible!” he said, staring at the monitor where the lamb and lion walked away, like old friends. “Madness! I must be asleep, in some kind of nightmare!”

He fell silent again, staring from one monitor to the next, his eyes moving back and forth, trying to fathom what he witnessed, as many different creatures passed by his capsule, some curious enough to sniffed at it, most simply ignoring it as they went about their business. His jaw dropped a second time when he saw some large snake–maybe a python–in one of the fruit trees, swallowing a grapefruit.

“It isn’t enough that a grapefruit and a peach don’t even ripen in the same season,” George said, “but then a snake comes along and swallows both! Total madness! Have I fallen into Alice’s wonderland?”

Then something in one of the monitors caught his eye, something that caused him to stand and move his face closer to the monitor.

“No!” he hissed. “It cannot be!” Without another word, he pressed a switch; the door to the capsule whined, and the scents of orange, lilac, and cherries suddenly filled the capsule. George ran out of his capsule in the direction of what he had seen. He jumped at every turn in the path, meeting some of the animals he had seen. He froze with his back against a tree as a large black bear lumbered toward him, then nudged him with its head, as if it wanted him to play some rough game with it. After a short time, the bear gave up and moved on. George’s breath exploded from him, and he slid down the trunk of the tree, but he had only a moment to relax before hearing the sound of footsteps coming toward him. Looking up, he saw a tall man, naked and coming toward him, holding out one hand that was as large as George’s head; this man had an innocent, boyish face, and he appeared to be speaking to George, but the sounds were incomprehensible. Just behind the man, George could see a woman, nearly as tall, with the same innocent look–it was her face George had glimpsed in the monitor, looking at his capsule–and she was also naked. A naked man and woman, alone in a paradise-like place. . . . The implication crashed upon George’s already troubled mind all at once, and he leaped suddenly to his feet. George choked back a cry, turning and running in the direction of his time capsule to escape the implications of what he had just realized. He closed the door and slammed his hand down on the button initiating the emergency return sequence, vanishing from the past in a flash of light.

Back in the lab, George Harwood leapt from the capsule, eyes wild, snatching up one of the tall stools. Using it as a cudgel, he reentered the capsule, smashing the main control board.

Karl put a hand on Igor’s shoulder to restrain him as he moved to prevent his companion from destroying their time capsule. “I believe he has learned again,” Karl spoke in hushed tones, “that the illusion of beauty we perceive is best left unknown.”

Igor relaxed and nodded his agreement. He sighed as he watched the capsule methodically reduced to a jumbled mass of electronics, plastic, and metal.

Later, paramedics led Professor George Harwood from his laboratory gibbering like a madman–“Impossible, impossible . . . ,” the professor repeated like a litany.

Karl shook his head slowly as he and Igor watched their friend as he was led away. “Sometimes the truth is more than any man can bear,” he whispered, putting one hand gently on Igor’s shoulder.

The End

I’m certain that it’s obvious this story came from a “What if . . . ?” scenario: what if someone did create a time machine that could travel back and see what really happened? In my experience (not that I have ever traveled backward in time, mind you), things rarely ever turn out the way we think they should, and I have a suspicion this is true of history, i.e., actual events are much different from historical records. I learned this clearly when my wife began teaching 5th grade, and I read the ‘historical account’ of what happened during the 1960s and the Vietnam War, and/or the moon landing: the words conveyed no sense of what it was actually like to experience those events; in actual fact, they were much different (to me) from the actual record (and who is really surprised?). Be well until next time!