The Time Machine

In 1899 in New York, Doctor Alexander teaches  mechanics and engineering at Columbia University.   He’s obsessed with science and innovation, but his  babble about Einstein, solar power, and city plans   isn’t taken seriously. This obsession distracts  him a lot from his other responsibilities and he   often forgets things, like the fact tonight  he’s supposed to meet his girlfriend at the   park. After his friend reminds him of the date,  Alexander rushes to the park and remembers he was   also supposed to buy flowers, but he immediately  gets distracted by another innovation: a horseless   carriage. When the driver accidentally starts it,  Alexander grabs the brake and stops it just in   time. Then he runs to meet his girlfriend Emma and  takes her on a walk through the park, apologizing   for the lack of flowers but offering something  much better instead: a marriage proposal. Emma   says yes, and Alexander puts a beautiful ring  with her birthstone on her finger. Suddenly the   sweet moment is interrupted by an armed thief, who  takes Alexander’s wallet and tries to go for the   ring too. Alexander tries to stop him and in the  struggle, the gun accidentally shoots Emma. As the   thief runs, Alexander holds Emma close as she dies  in his arms. For the next four years, Alexander is   depressed and does nothing but work all day  long, convinced that he can bring Emma back.   His friends worry about him, but he ignores their  concerns. One day, Alexander finally cleans up and   reveals he’s finished his latest invention: a time  machine. He sits on it and immediately activates   it, traveling back to the night of Emma’s death.  After a bright light surrounds him, he appears   back in the park and sees Emma. He’s missed her  so much that he kisses her even though they’re in   public, then he drags her out of the park to avoid  the thief. They take a carriage to go downtown and   Emma reminds him he promised flowers, so Alexander  enters a shop to buy them. At that moment,   the horseless carriage causes an accident on the  street and Alexander has to watch Emma die again.   Later at the morgue, Alexander realizes that if he  keeps going back he’ll just see Emma die over and   over, so instead he should travel to the future  to see if advanced science can change the past.   Once he returns to the time machine, Alexander  starts it up and chooses to go to the future.   As the machine glows again, he watches everything  around him change, from the plants on his building   to the clothing in the shops. Suddenly he  accidentally drops the necklace with Emma’s   picture and fails to retrieve it, so the necklace  also disappears through time. Eventually he makes   it to the year 2030, and Alexander is amazed  by the modern apartment buildings and screens   everywhere. After a random person calls his suit  “retro”, he goes to the New York Public Library,   where he discovers books are relics that mustn’t  be touched. There are also a set of screens and a   giant sphere battery that powers them to project  Vox a holographic librarian. Vox has access to   every database on Earth so Alexander asks him why  he can't change the past, but Vox just says time   traveling simply isn’t possible and begins listing  sci-fi works to the point he sings the soundtrack   of famous movies. A frustrated Alexander returns  to his time machine to go further into the future,   but suddenly he feels some shaking and stops at  the year 2037. He’s shocked to see that the whole   city has been destroyed and soon he’s found by  soldiers who want to help him evacuate because   the Moon is breaking up. Alexander looks up to  confirm this disturbing claim, but at that moment   something explodes and the ground starts cracking,  giving him the chance to return to the machine.   Unfortunately an earthquake hits the machine and  he falls unconscious, so the time trip keeps going   for thousands of years. Earth changes around  Alexander, going through dozens of different   climates and environments that include a whole new  ice age. Eventually Alexander wakes up and stops   the machine to discover he’s ended up in the year  802701 before he faints again. Sometime later,   Alexander is dreaming about Emma while a  mysterious person takes care of his wounds.   When he finally wakes up, he sees a child called  Kalen watching him, but Alexander can’t understand   the language he speaks. Kalen runs away and  Alexander follows him, only to discover he’s in a   village built on a canyon. Then Kalen yells a few  words and all the villagers come to check on him,   but the only one that can speak English is Mara,  the woman that had been taking care of him and   Kalen’s sister. The villagers wonder if they  should throw Alexander into the river so he   tries to explain he comes from the past, but Mara  translates it into Alexander being a wandering   idiot that hit his head. Suddenly they hear a horn  announcing it’s time for bed, so Alexander goes   with Mara and Kalen to stay the night with them.  He also shares some stories with Kalen about the   big city and gifts him his pocket watch. After  Kalen falls asleep, Mara explains that their   parents are dead. Then Alexander takes a look  outside and sees the broken Moon, thinking he’s   come too far. Later that night, Alexander dreams  about a white face calling his name followed by a   giant monster head roaring. He wakes up quite  startled and discovers Kalen is also having a   nightmare while repeating the word “morlock”. Mara  quickly calms him down and notices that the pocket   watch is missing. When Alexander asks about the  nightmare, Mara says they all see the same dream,   but refuses to explain what “morlock” means. The  next day, Mara shows Alexander the collection of   building pieces they’ve collected from around the  land. It’s thanks to these pieces that they’ve   been able to keep English around and Mara has  been trying her best to preserve the old culture   by teaching others. On their way back, Alexander  wonders why he hasn’t seen old people, so Mara   says they’re all dead without explaining why.  The rest of the villagers are currently working   in the field with the help of windmills, but Mara  drags Alexander away to show him where his time   machine is. While Alexander gets the machine  ready, Mara asks him to take Kalen with him.   Before she can explain why, she hears a noise and  runs away to find her brother. Alexander follows   her and discovers that the morlocks are monstrous  beings that hunt down the villagers. This is why   there aren’t any old people, they aren’t fast  enough to escape. The villagers panic and run   as fast as possible as the morlocks use darts to  knock them down. While Mara is looking for Kalen,   she gets hit by a dart too and Alexander rushes  to remove it, realizing it has a very smelly   substance on it. The villagers try to make it  to the river to escape on their boats but the   way is blocked when bigger morlocks start coming  out of the ground. As the people try to find a   safe direction to run, these new morlocks grab the  villagers that were hit by the darts and tie them   up to then take them away by sinking back into the  ground. Suddenly Kalen yells for help because he’s   been hit too and a morlock is coming for him. Mara  wants to save him, but Alexander tells her to stay   and he goes instead. He pushes the morlock down  just in time and while Kalen runs, Alexander gits   the creature with a tool then starts running in  the opposite direction. The morlock chases after   Alexander and when it jumps, Alexander dodges it,  which causes the monster to roll into the jungle.   Then Alexander climbs one of the windmills, and  when the morlcok comes back and grabs his legs,   Alexander kicks it until it falls. However the  morlock doesn’t give up and quickly climbs the   windmill until it reaches Alexander at the top,  causing them to struggle against each other until   they fall together to the ground. The morlock  grabs Alexander by the neck, ready to kill,   but Kalen shows up and stops him with a torch.  At that moment they hear Mara screaming,   so the morlock sinks back into the ground while  Alexander and Kalen run back only to discover Mara   is being taken away. Alexander rushes to dig into  the sand to find the hole to no avail. Upset and   frustrated, he asks the villagers why they don’t  fight back, and one of them explains this is just   how their world works; those who fight back are  simply taken first. Then Alexander asks Kalen   where people are taken, but the child answers they  aren’t supposed to talk about the place where the   ghosts are. Later in the evening, Kalen sneaks out  of the village to take Alexander to that place,   which turns out to be an old underground cave.  Alexander is shocked to discover these are the   ruins of the New York library and while the  books are crumbling into ashes, the battery   is still intact. This allows Vox to appear again  and he even remembers Alexander. He explains that   humans have evolved into two different species,  the villagers that live above and the morlocks   that live underground. Vox once met a villager  who managed to escape, apparently this guy came   from the jungle in the east and Alexander only  has to follow the breathing to find it. Kalen   and Alexander immediately take off and follow  the breathing sound through the jungle until   they find the giant head from their dreams, which  is supposed to keep people away. Alexander tells   Kalen to return to the village and light a fire,  that way he can find the way back after rescuing   Mara. Before leaving, Kalen tells him the watch  is missing. Then Alexander enters the statue’s   mouth only to suddenly slip and fall, saving  himself at the last second. He holds tightly   while a bunch of bats flies very close to him,  then he slowly climbs down until he finds some   machinery that indicates he’s on the right path.  Suddenly Alexander sees a few morlocks walking by,   so he hides behind a wall and sneaks around  carefully until he finds the whole group working   together. Alexander goes down an empty corridor  and finds a pile of villager clothes that includes   Mara’s necklace, but he also sees a bunch of  disturbing tools. As he walks back in shock,   he accidentally falls into a pit filled  with skeletons that confirm his suspicions:   the morlocks hunt the villagers for food. At that  moment a morlock finds him and immediately locks   him away. In this new room, Alexander finds Mara  in a cage, but she seems to be unresponsive. When   Alexander turns around, he sees a strange pale man  known as the Uber Morlock, the leader of his race   and the pale face for the dreams. He explains that  after the Moon fell, Earth couldn’t sustain humans   anymore. Some people managed to survive above,  but the rest escaped underground. They spent so   many centuries down there that when they tried to  come out again, the sun hurt them, so in the end   they bred themselves into different castes. Some  of them have good eyes and ears, and others have   big muscles. The Uber Morlock belongs to the caste  that expanded the cerebral abilities, so he’s able   to see and control others' thoughts. He controls  the other morlocks so they won’t overconsume and   exhaust the food supply, and controls the  villagers to use them as food. Sometimes he   also controls their women to use them as breeding  vessels, which is his plan for Mara. A furious   Alexander says it's a corruption of every natural  law, but Uber Morlock points out natural evolution   did this and the unnatural thing is actually time  travel. Then he grabs Alexander by his neck and   sees into his mind before letting him go into a  mental image of what he could’ve had. Alexander   finds himself in his original home, surrounded  by successful inventions and his wife Emma with a   couple of kids. However the illusion quickly goes  away and Uber Morlock explains why the past can’t   be changed: Alexander built the time machine  because Emma died, so if she lives, then the   machine isn’t made and Alexander can’t use it to  go save her in the first place. At that moment   Uber Morlock makes the machine appear and tells  Alexander to go since he has his answer. Alexander   sits in the machine but before leaving, he asks  Uber Morlock for the missing watch. When the guy   comes closer to give it to him, Alexander grabs  him, activates the machine, and starts fighting   him. Alexander’s hits aren’t strong enough to hurt  a strong creature like Uber Morlock, but at least   he manages to disarm him when Uber Morlock reveals  a knife. Then Alexander is grabbed by the neck   again, so he hits the machine to make it lose  steam, which hits Uber Morlock on the face and   makes him fall. At the last second, Uber Morlock  grabs Alexander’s neck, but Alexander makes the   machine go faster into the future and the hanging  monster ages at a great speed until he’s nothing   but ashes. When Alexander finally stops the  machine, he’s billion of years in the future   and discovers the morlocks have ended all life on  Earth. However he doesn’t give up: he goes back   and saves Mara from the cage, then he connects  the time machine to the watch and activates it,   blinding the morlocks that are coming for them.  Alexander and Mara lock the door behind them   and run away until they make it to the main room,  where Alexander is hit by a dart. Mara knocks down   the attacking morlock, but the noise alerts the  other ones, who start chasing them by following   the smell of the dart. The duo runs fast through  the corridor and Alexander throws his jacket away   to distract the morlocks with the smell while they  start climbing out of the cave. At that moment,   the pocket watch causes the machine to malfunction  and it suddenly explodes, killing every morlock   in the cave. The duo is saved just in time by  the villagers brought by Kalen and together   they move away right before the giant head also  explodes, sending a damaging wave through all   the tunnels. Alexander isn’t sad to have lost  the machine because he’s found a new home here,   and he gets together with Mara. Sometime later,  Alexander brings Vox out of the cave so he can   educate the village kids, then he takes Mara and  Kalen to see the spot where his house used to be.   At the same time in the present, Alexander’s  friends are a bit worried that he’s been   missing for a week, but at the same time they’re  glad if it means he’s finally found happiness.