3 The Time Traveler’s Story—in His Own Words

CHAPTER 3 The Time Traveler's Story— in His Own Words Last Thursday, I told some of you about time travel. And I showed you the machine I was building. It's still in my workroom. But it's been knocked about since last week. One of the ivory bars is cracked. A brass rail is bent. But it still works. When I showed it to you a week ago, it wasn't finished. I thought it would only take me another

第三章时间旅行者的故事——用他自己的话上周四，我告诉了你们中的一些人关于时间旅行的事。 我给你们看了我正在造的机器。 它还在我的工作室里。 但从上个星期起它就一直被闲置着。 其中一根象牙栏杆裂开了。 黄铜栏杆弯了。但它仍然有效。 一周前我给你看的时候，它还没完工。 我还以为再来一次就够了

day or so to complete it. But it turned out that it wasn't ready until this morning at ten o'clock. I wrote notes inviting each of you to dinner tonight and asked my housekeeper to have them delivered. Then I went into my workshop. I looked over my machine one last time, climbed in, and sat in the chair.

一天左右才能完成。但结果是直到今天上午十点才准备好。 我写了便条邀请你们每个人今晚来吃饭，并让我的管家送去了。 然后我走进我的工作室。 我最后一次看了看我的机器，爬进去，坐在椅子上。

When I am sitting in my machine, there is a set of dials in front of me that tells me where I am in time and how fast I am traveling. One dial shows days; another, thousands of days; another, millions of days; and another, billions of days. Each has a hand—like the hand of a clock—that counts the days. Beside the dials is the lever for

当我坐在我的机器里时，我面前有一组表盘，告诉我我在时间上的位置和我旅行的速度。 一个表盘显示日期；另一个，千日；另一个是几百万天；再过几十亿天。 每个人都有一只手——就像时钟的指针——用来计算日子。 表盘旁边是控制杆

starting the machine. I have spent years thinking about time travel and working on my invention, but I could still only guess what was about to happen. After all, I was trying to do something that no one had ever done before. I took the lever in one hand and pushed it ever so slightly. Suddenly I felt dizzy, as if I was falling. Right away, I pulled the lever back to its starting position. I looked around the room. Everything looked exactly the same. Had anything happened? Then I saw the clock sitting on my workbench. I'd climbed into the machine at ten o'clock in the morning—it was now three-thirty in the afternoon! To me, it felt as if only seconds had passed. But to the outside world, five and a half hours had gone by! I took a deep breath and pushed the lever forward again. There was a thud, and the room became blurry. It was as if I were looking at everything through water. I saw my housekeeper

启动机器。我花了数年时间思考时间旅行，并致力于我的发明，但我仍然只能猜测即将发生的事情。 毕竟，我是在尝试做一些以前没有人做过的事情。 我一手拿着杠杆，轻轻地推了一下。 突然我感到头晕，好像要摔倒似的。 我立刻把操纵杆拉回到开始的位置。 我环顾了一下房间。一切看起来都一模一样。 发生什么事了吗？然后我看到时钟坐在我的工作台上。 我是上午十点钟爬进机器的——现在是下午三点半！对我来说，感觉就像几秒钟过去了。 但是对于外界来说，五个半小时已经过去了！我深吸了一口气，又向前推了推操纵杆。 砰的一声，房间里一片模糊。 就好像我透过水看一切。 我看到我的管家

come in and walk to the garden door. She didn't even look at me. It was as if I was invisible. But the strangest sight was how swiftly she was crossing the floor. It took her only a second or two to enter, walk to the other side of the workshop, and leave again. My Time Machine worked! I was thrilled and pressed the lever as far forward as it would go. Suddenly it was night. Then, just as quickly, the light coming in the windows returned and it was tomorrow. The room grew faint and blurry. Tomorrow night came, then day again, night again, day again. As the days and nights came faster and faster, a humming sound filled my ears. I looked at the dial that measured days. The hand was counting them off like the second hand of a clock counts off seconds. It's hard to describe time travel. I felt as if I was in a runaway carriage, being tossed back and forth. I was dizzy and felt as if I was about to crash into something.

进来，走到花园门口。 她甚至都没看我一眼。 就好像我是隐形的。 但最奇怪的是她在地板上走得那么快。 她只花了一两秒钟就进去了，走到车间的另一边，然后又离开了。 我的时光机成功了！我很激动，使劲向前按了一下杠杆。 突然，夜幕降临了。然后，同样快，从窗户里射进来的光又回来了，这是明天。 房间变得昏暗而模糊。 明天晚上来了，然后又是白天，又是黑夜，又是白天。 随着白天和黑夜越来越快，一种嗡嗡的声音充满了我的耳朵。 我看了看刻度盘。 那只手在数着它们，就像时钟的秒针在数秒一样。 很难描述时间旅行。 我觉得自己好像坐在一辆失控的马车里，被抛来抛去。 我头晕目眩，感觉好像要撞上什么东西。

Days and nights passed in the blink of an eye. At one point, the walls of the workshop disappeared and I could see outside. The house must have been torn down. I could now see the sun flashing across the sky during the day, followed by the moon at night. I saw the moon go from full, to new, to full in only seconds. That was how quickly a month raced by. I also caught a glimpse of the stars as they whirled overhead. I was traveling faster and faster into the future. Night and day blurred into a deep blue, like the color of the sky at sunset. The sun was flashing by so quickly, it looked like a streak of light across the sky. The moon looked like a fainter streak. Inside my machine, the dials were spinning around faster and faster. I saw the streak of the sun's path move from low in the sky, to high in the sky, and back in less than a minute. When the path of the sun was high in the sky, it was summer. When it was low in the sky, it was

白天和黑夜一眨眼就过去了。 有一次，车间的墙壁消失了，我可以看到外面。 房子一定是被拆了。 我现在可以看到太阳在白天划过天空，然后是月亮在晚上。 我看到月亮在几秒钟内从圆、到新、再到圆。 一个月就这样一晃而过。 我还瞥见了星星在头顶上旋转。 我正以越来越快的速度走向未来。 黑夜和白天模糊成深蓝色，就像日落时天空的颜色。 太阳一闪而过，看起来就像一道划过天空的光。 月亮看起来像一条微弱的条纹。 在我的机器里，表盘转得越来越快。 我看到太阳的轨迹在不到一分钟的时间里从天空的低处移动到天空的高处，然后又移动回来。 当太阳的轨迹高高地挂在天空时，就是夏天。 当它在低空时，它是