Wells arrives in a distant future where humanity as we know it is extinct. How will he get his bicycle repaired now?
Wells arrives in a distant future where humanity as we know it is extinct. How will he get his bicycle repaired now?
Following H. G. Wells' hurried departure from Orwell's world of 1984, his malfunctioning time-bicycle veers into the far and bizarre future that he will one day chronicle in his own novella, The Time Machine. Facing off against super-evolved pale blue cannibals, he's relieved to run into a couple of unexpected familiar faces.
CAST:
Written and produced by Robin Johnson, with music by the author and sound effects sourced from freesound.org.
References:
A transcript of this episode is available here.
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VOICEOVER (Robin): The story you are about to hear...
[Theme music fades in, and continues under the "previously" section]
VOICEOVER (Robin): ...is untrue.
VOICEOVER (Liselle): Previously, on Untrue Stories...
ORWELL: Wells, are you telling me that you have built a time machine out of a bicycle?
[FX: trundling bicycle, stopping on the 'ding' of a bicycle bell. Pause (music continues)]
JULIA: There's something in my pocket. Sonny... Walk-Man?
WELLS: Sounds like a robot. Picked this up in the 35th century.
[FX: bleep]
WELLS: It’s a quantum consciousness chip. Should be able to slip it into Sonny...
WALKMAN: [From Lionel Ritchie's "Hello (Is It Me You're Looking For?)"] Hello
[Pause (music continues)]
RUTHERFORD: Your papers.
WELLS: Behind this bicycle...
RUTHERFORD: Got a licence for that?
WELLS: Yes. It's over at the other side of the room. I’ll just cycle over and get it.
[FX: Bicycle moving. Bell rings. Wibbly-wobbly sci-fi time travel departure noise.
Music fades out.
FX: Wibbly-wobbly time travel arrival noise. Bicycle bell. Bicycle moving and slowing down, then a crash.]
WELLS: Ow!
[FX: Metal clinks]
WELLS: The wheel’s bent. That’ll teach me to ride on flat tyres. Oh cripes, I don’t have any tools. Well, with any luck I’m back in 1948. Although there’s a suspicious lack of bagpipes. If I haven't gone past 1817 there might be a bicycle mechanic somewhere.
[FX: Footsteps on grass, approaching]
MORLOCK: [Demonic male voice] May I ask what you're doing on my island?
WELLS: Oh, hello. Er. Oh dear. Are you a Pict?
MORLOCK: Do I look like a Pict?
WELLS: What, big angry fellow painted blue? I'd say so, yes.
MORLOCK: I am not a Pict.
WELLS: This might seem like an odd question, but -- what year is it?
MORLOCK: 1948.
WELLS: Oh, thank goodness.
MORLOCK: In the calendar of the Third Morlock Republic.
WELLS: Ah. You wouldn't happen to know what that is in old money?
[FX: Footsteps on grass, approaching]
JULIA: 802,701.
WELLS: Don't interfere, old woman. I was asking the blue gentleman a question.
JULIA: Wells!
WELLS: ...Julia?
JULIA: Come with me if you want to live.
[FX: Metal being dragged. Grassy footsteps, fading.
Rain fades out.
Cave ambience fades in: dripping water, a breeze, echo effect on voices.
Footsteps on stone, approaching. Metal being dragged.]
WELLS: How old are you?
JULIA: It's not polite to ask. And it's certainly not polite of me to slap you, so don't ask again.
WELLS: [Pompously] Oh. I'd rather hoped society would evolve beyond such patriarchal notions of feminine modesty.
JULIA: It's not about modesty, it's about privacy. You don't understand what it means to me, for there to be things people don't know about me. Where I grew up there was a telescreen on every wall and a patrol on every corner. Here I'm just the local mad woman that nobody knows anything about. You can lean your bike on that stalagmite.
WELLS: I'm afraid it's in a bit of a sorry state.
[FX. Metal clink]
WELLS: It's just – when I saw you ten minutes ago, you were about twenty-five.
JULIA: I'm still younger than you.
WELLS: And you live here? I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a very pleasant cave.
JULIA: It is nice. I'm sure you'd rather be living it up in a London flat surrounded by sycophantic sci-fi fans. Here, I can just – be. I grow food. I draw on the walls. Sometimes I trade with the Morlocks. Tomorrow we can see if they've got any bike parts.
WELLS: Morlocks? Is that what our friend with the blue paint job was?
JULIA: It's not a paint job, he just is pale blue. They all are. It's a thing now.
WELLS: Aha. That's why I thought he was a Pict. They used to dye their skin with woads.
JULIA: Well, where we are, they don't need woads.
[Pause. Roar of wind.]
WELLS: Er. So who are they? Do they have a utopia?
JULIA: Very much not. They're more of a consumer economy.
WELLS: Was that a pun? What are they consuming?
JULIA: You've got a lot of questions, but it's late. Here.
WELLS: What's that?
JULIA: Dinner. It's a sort of popcorn. Grows that way.
WELLS: They've got logos on them. "Empire Cinemas"?
JULIA: I think it's descended from something genetically modified. It's tasty.
[FX: Crunching]
WELLS: It's delicious!
JULIA: It's also a temporary paralytic. A few mouthfuls and you're stiff as a board with your eyes wide open.
WELLS: [Trying to speak] Mmmmmm!
JULIA: I think it was so you'd have to watch the adverts.
[FX. Slump]
WELLS: [Painfully] Mmm! Mmmmmm! MMMMM!
JULIA: [Calling] Come on in, Mo. Mind your feet on the drugged Victorian novelist.
[FX: Footsteps on stone, approaching. Bicycle being tinkered with]
MORLOCK: So this is the Original Machine. Model Zero. The keystone of metatemporal history. Surprisingly advanced for the period, but I suppose that's to be expected with time machines. Oh, look. He put a little gramophone in the handlebar.
WELLS: Mmmmm!
JULIA: I never noticed that.
[FX. Gramophone handle being turned. The recorded voice of WELLS is heard over crackle and the squeak of a small motor turning.]
WELLS: Time traveller's log, 21st of September, 1895. About to embark on the maiden voyage of the first of all time machines. I shall begin with a short voyage of thirty or forty years. We live in an age of unprecedented technological change and I am curious to see where this leads us. By 1930, will airships carry us to Neptune? Will there really be a telephone in every town? Zemeckis inductor engaged. Next stop, utopia!
[FX. On the recording, noise of machinery falling to bits]
Oh, blast. Still, as we time travellers say, you can always try again yesterday.
[Pause. Click.]
WELLS: [Tired] Time traveller's log. 15th of December, 1895. Following a complete re-engineering of the relativistic crankset... hopefully about to embark on the maiden voyage of all time machines, with a short voyage of twenty or thirty years. Zemeckis inductor engaged...
[FX. Machinery falling to bits again]
WELLS: Oh, fu—
[FX. Gramophone needle jumping]
WELLS: Oh, fu— Oh, fu— Oh, fu— [slows down and fades out.]
[Crackle stops]
JULIA: 1895! He'd been working on this for over fifty years.
WELLS: Mmm-hmm.
MORLOCK: A magnificent accomplishment.
WELLS: [Gratefully] Mmmmm-mmm!
MORLOCK: It almost feels like a crime to steal it.
WELLS: [Disapprovingly] Mmmmm!
MORLOCK: But of course, it will be invaluable to our war effort against the Eloi.
JULIA: Keep me out of the politics. I'm a woman of honour. I'm doing this for my own personal benefit and nothing else. I let you have the bicycle, you keep up your side of the bargain.
MORLOCK: Yes, yes. We won't expand our territory this side of the quartz cliffs.
JULIA: And?
MORLOCK: We stick to our fishing quotas in the lake.
MORLOCK: [Mumbling] We won't eat you.
JULIA: Say it clearly.
MORLOCK: [Petulantly] We... won't... eat... you.
JULIA: You've got your fingers crossed behind your back.
MORLOCK: No I haven't.
JULIA: Yes you have. Doesn't matter. You know what? Try and eat me. Come on.
MORLOCK: [Confused] Well – that's a bit, er...
JULIA: What?
MORLOCK: ...forward...
JULIA: Does a woman who knows what she wants frighten you?
MORLOCK: Duuh...
JULIA: Go on, take a bite. I had a bath in the hot spring this morning.
MORLOCK: Well..
JULIA: It'll be nice and tender.
MORLOCK: All right... [Slavering roars]
[FX: roars warp into weird sci-fi time wibble. Crack.]
MORLOCK: Ow! I think I broke a tooth? What was that?
JULIA: That was a temporal paradox.
MORLOCK: Why?
JULIA: Look at the bicycle. You sure it's all there?
[FX: Tinkering]
MORLOCK: Well, the tyres need pumping up, and the wheels need truing and the chain's a bit rusty, but it's all... wait, no. [Frantic clanging of metal] Where's the Zemeckis inductor?
JULIA: The Zemeckis inductor? The crucial component without which it's just a bent bike?
MORLOCK: Yes, the Zemeckis inductor, where is it?
JULIA: It's hidden. But I know who has it. Come in, Julia!
[FX. Time travel arrival noise]
OLD JULIA: [Same actor, weak raspy voice] Hello, Julia!
JULIA: Give him the inductor, Julia.
OLD JULIA: Of course, dearie. Catch!
[FX. object being thrown and caught]
MORLOCK: ...thanks?
JULIA: Before you go, Julia, just tell my blue friend how old you are?
OLD JULIA: One hundred and five today, Julia.
JULIA: Happy birthday! How've you been spending it?
OLD JULIA: Oh, I used this here Zemeckis thingy to go back in time to 1948, and sabotage the bicycle so that Mr Wells ends up here in the first place.
JULIA: Sounds like a lovely day. See you round.
OLD JULIA: Bye-bye!
Wells: [In farewell] Mmm-mmm!
OLD JULIA: Now, if I press the button it should g—
[FX. Time travel departure noise]
MORLOCK: What was that?
JULIA: An insurance policy. You eat me, you don't get the bicycle, you don't come here and try to eat me. And that's the kind of paradox that can re-evolve a continent. You're lucky you got away with a broken tooth. There's your inductor.
MORLOCK: You'd endanger the whole timeline to protect yourself? I'm almost impressed.
JULIA: Oh, don't even try to play the ethics card with me. Your people terrorise and literally eat people—
MORLOCK: We are a civilised people with a rich cultural tradition. Can you name me one human society that has not made war on its enemies? In your time, were your own people not traipsing the globe ironshod with rifles and grenades, massacring anybody wearing the wrong colour hat? And if, now and then, we choose to sink our teeth into our fellow humans and feast on their succulent flesh, what of it? Do you not do the same?
JULIA: No!
MORLOCK: You don't? You really should. It's delicious. And the ultimate physical victory. You can beat a man in a fight, he'll get up again. You can kill him, you're both dead in the long run. But only one of you can ever eat the other one.
WELLS: Mmmmm!
JULIA: He'll come round in a minute. You need to leave.
MORLOCK: So that was him? H. G. Wells?
JULIA: You're not eating him.
MORLOCK: Not even a little bite? I mean, who even needs all their fingers?
WELLS: I do! Oh, I can talk.
JULIA: Out!
MORLOCK: I'm sorry, it's just... since the human race evolved into two subspecies, the flavour has just not been the same.
JULIA: Get out.
MORLOCK: All right, I'm going. [Fading] Can't stand to see good food going to waste.
[FX. Footsteps on stone, departing. Bicycle being dragged away.]
JULIA: Can you move, Wells?
WELLS: I can now. What was that about? I thought you were a goodie.
JULIA: I am. The Morlocks are expert mechanics. I don't have the parts to repair the bicycle. They'll fix it as soon as they get it back to their village, then we'll steal it back. We need it.
WELLS: So – you got your future self to sabotage my machine, so you could bring me here, so you could set this all up?
JULIA: Yes. Why d'you think they haven't eaten me already? I promised them if I was here, you'd come looking for me. There's something here that can sort everything out. But you need to take it back to 1948.
WELLS: Sort what out?
JULIA: Everything. Time travel is wrecking the universe. Look, you know how in the twentieth century they found out motor-cars were wrecking the climate? And did nothing until half the world nearly drowned? This is worse. Maybe half a dozen time machines were ever built, but even those... things have got weird. Look on the shelfstone. I found a few books in a ruined library. There's a volume of an old encyclopedia. Look up anything.
[FX: Pages flipping]
WELLS: "Raleigh, Sir Walter. English statesman, soldier, writer, explorer, introduced tobacco to Europe and was eaten by a stegosaurus in 1592."
JULIA: See? Once time travel comes along, the relationship between cause and effect becomes incidental.
JULIA: Are you all right?
WELLS: I will be, it's just -- it's not every day you find out you spent fifty years of your life on something that's destroying the world. I suppose this is how motor-car drivers must have felt when they got the news.
JULIA: It's fixable. We just need to get the bicycle back in the morning.
WELLS: Stegosaurus wasn't even a carnivore... right, from the Morlock village. What's that like?
JULIA: Heavily fortified.
WELLS: And we're going to stroll in there and take it? Just us two?
JULIA: No, us three. There's another one of us, wherever he's gotten to.
[FX: Loud mechanical stomping]
WELLS: A robot!
WALKMAN: [From Lionel Ritchie's "Hello (Is It Me You're Looking For?)"] Hello! Is it me you're looking for?
JULIA: There you are, Sonny. H.G. Wells, Sonny Walk-Man.
WELLS: Hello, Sonny!
JULIA: I don't think you've met in this timeline?
WELLS: He looks fantastic. How did you two meet?
JULIA: I found him in my pocket during a temporal anomaly.
WELLS: In your pocket? But he's huge!
WALKMAN: [From the Kinks' "Tired of Waiting For You"] I had no body
JULIA: Yeah, that was just his head. I found out later he's actually a kind of record player, but you put a chip in that made him conscious. So when I got here and found he was still around, I figured I had a duty of care. So I built him that body.
WELLS: You built a robot body? All by yourself?
JULIA: Yes, because I'm a trained cybernetic engineer. I used to work on robotic novel-writing machines back at the Ministry. That's shit-hard. Took six months' work to stop them making all their protagonists misunderstood middle-aged robots. The Morlocks are late risers. We'll go at dawn. For now, we'd better get some sleep.
WELLS: All right. Goodnight, then.
[FX: Robot stomps, departing, then pausing]
WALKMAN: [From Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams Are Made of This"] Sweet dreams
WELLS: Goodnight, Sonny.
[FX: Robot stomps resume and fade out.
Cave ambience fades.
Morning island ambience fades in: birdsong, sea noise, trees in a light breeze.
Quiet grassy footsteps approach, also thunderous robot stomps]
JULIA: [Quietly] In there. That's the way in to the Morlock village.
WELLS: Good lord, is that a sphinx?
JULIA: Yep. We go into its mouth and down a spiral staircase. Come on.
[FX: Grassy footsteps, then stony ones. Thunderous robot stomping.
Outdoor ambience fades. Tunnel ambience: sinister windy noises and close echoes]
WALKMAN: [From The Jam's "Going Underground"] Going underground...
JULIA: [Whispering] Sonny, you'll wake them.
WALKMAN: [At much lower volume] Going underground, going underground.
JULIA: Come on.
[FX: Footsteps on stone. Thunderous robot stomps.
Steps, stomps and tunnel ambience fade out.
Underground ambience: wind in a cave system, echoes on voices.
Sound of multiple creatures snoring. Quiet footsteps on stone. Robot stomps as loud as ever]
WELLS: [Whispering] There's the bicycle. And they've fixed it up beautifully.
JULIA: [Whispering] Can you get it out?
[FX: Bicycle being dragged.]
ANOTHER MORLOCK: [Not quite waking up] Whuh?
[Pause. Bicycle being dragged more quietly]
OTHER MORLOCK: [Quietly, settling back to sleep] Mmmm... nom nom nom, tasty leg...
[FX: Quietly manipulating bicycle parts]
WELLS: [Whispering] Oh, they've done a good job. Tightening the cables, new tyres, cleaned out the mudguards, degaussed the neutrino filters.
JULIA: [Whispering] Come on!
WELLS: They've even put on a lovely new bell.
JULIA: No –
[FX: Very loud bicycle bell.
Grunts of many, many Morlocks waking up]
JULIA: Shit, Wells!
WELLS: Oops.
WALKMAN: [From Robert Plant's "Too Loud"] You're too loud, too loud, too loud
MORLOCK: [Roaring] Breakfast is served!
[FX: Slavering Morlocks round in on our heroes]
JULIA: Can we get away on the bike?
WELLS: No. We'd never get to eight miles an hour.
WALKMAN: [From Del Shannon's "Runaway"] Run, run, run, run, run away
JULIA: [Running] Come on! Bring the bike!
[FX: Bicycle being dragged.
A couple of quick robot stomps, then the scream of a jammed motor]
WELLS: They've got Sonny!
WALKMAN: [From Flock of Seagulls' "I Ran"] Couldn't get away
JULIA: Sonny!
WELLS: There's nothing we can do.
WALKMAN: [From Duran Duran's "Wing"] ...eating me alive...
WELLS: Come on!
JULIA: We can't leave him!
WALKMAN: [Warping] [From Moroder and Oakey's "Electric Dreams"] We'll always be together... together in electric dreeeee—
[FX: Crunch.
Electrical sparking, loud 'bzzzt']
MORLOCK: Aaaargh!
[FX: Slump.
Clatter of large metal object falling to bits]
JULIA: [Tearfully] Sonny!
[FX: Ambience fades.
Morning island ambience fades in.
Grassy footsteps and trundling bicycle, approaching]
JULIA: You thoughtless bastard!
WELLS: How was I to know—
JULIA: That a bell would make a noise?
WELLS: Fair.
JULIA: Just... get on the bicycle. Start pedalling. Get back to 1948. I won't have let him die for nothing.
WELLS: But what's the thing I have to take with me?
[FX: Running footsteps on grass, approaching]
MORLOCK: Raaaararrr!
JULIA: That.
WELLS: Aaaaah!
[FX: bicycle starting quickly.
MORLOCK: Rarrararrr!!!
[FX: Running stops on a "boing!"
Short pause.
Thump]
WELLS: Aaah!
MORLOCK: Ryowrr!
[Bicycle bell rings. WELLS and the MORLOCK's voices warp into a time-travel effect.
Theme music starts.]
VOICEOVER (Robin): Untrue Stories was written and produced by Robin Johnson, and starred Patrick Spragg as H. G. Wells, Tara Court as Julia, and Canavan Connolly as the Morlock, with Robin Johnson as George Orwell, Liselle Nic Giollabháin as Captain Rutherford, and Lionel Ritchie, Ray Davies, Annie Lennox, Paul Weller, Robert Plant, Del Shannon, Mike Score, Simon Le Bon and Philip Oakey as Sonny Walk-Man. Sound effects were sourced from freesound dot org, and the music was by Robin Johnson. If you have enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating for Untrue Stories on iTunes, Podchaser, or your favourite podcast site or app. Human beings are an endangered species, and their meat should be sourced from sustainable farms.
[Music plays out.]