A Time Machine

A Time Machine

In the year 2028, when debates felt more like divorces than disagreements, a political moderate known simply as the Mediator grew tired.

He had watched talking heads on Fox News and CNN speak as though they were describing two different countries rather than one. He had read endless threads online where compromise was treated like treason. He watched debates online where it felt like it was more about proving someone is wrong than explaining why you are right. And after finishing with online and TV politics, he reread his favorite classic novel, “The Time Machine” by H. G. Wells and wondered whether its warning had gone unnoticed.

He wanted to prove whether the human species will evolve and split apart because of class or because…of something else. So he built… a time machine.

He spent months and months building the machine. He begins finishing the machine during stormy weather. Lightning strikes outside and thunder boasts loudly. He finally finished it. He finished…his time machine, and looked at it while lightning continued to strike outside. It was less brass and crystal than Wells had imagined but it pulsed with the same optimism. He set the dials not for decades, nor centuries, but for a date he chose exactly as described in the book: 

A.D. 802,701.

The machine dissolved into light and it soon vanished. 

When the Mediator arrived, the sky was a soft violet and the air looked impossibly clean. Rolling meadows stretched beneath vast white structures that seemed grown rather than built.

From those structures emerged the first species.

They were small and sort of feminine looking. Their faces bore no lines of stress, and their speech sounded musical with soft syllables that blended into each other like wind chimes. They called themselves the Harmonians.

The Harmonians lived communally in giant towers of glass and stone. Resources were shared. Decisions were made by consensus rituals that lasted days, accompanied by song and elaborate storytelling. They spoke a language without sharp consonants; even disagreement sounded like a lullaby.

The Mediator quickly realized they were descendants, evolutionary, culturally, perhaps even biologically, of what had once been called the political left.

They valued empathy above all else. Conflict had long ago been declared a pathology. Even the concept of “mine” had faded into obscurity. Their children were raised collectively. Their art celebrated inclusion, diversity of thought, and within strict boundaries of gentleness.

Yet something troubled him. The Harmonians never said no, and just accepted whatever danger was in them, because they’re opposed to being seen as hateful, and they’ve evolved to be so tolerant, he learns any sense of intolerance is enough to kill them, except strangely, being intolerant for their own species. The Mediator watches a Harmonian stab another Harmonian and no one does anything. The Mediator went up and said “Hey stop!” and goes up to the authorities and gets arrested for being intolerant. He was then let go because of how loose the justice system was, serving only for 3 seconds. 

When he asked how their cities were powered, they pointed vaguely toward the horizon.

“They keep the Engines,” one Harmonian said, her eyes flickering with unease.

“Who?” the Mediator asked.

She flinched at the word.

“The Others.”

At dusk, the ground trembled.

From beneath the earth rose massive iron doors. Out marched the second species.

They were shorter, thick boned, and powerfully built. Their skin was wrinkly and rough; their garments basic and dark. Where the Harmonians moved like dancers, these beings moved like soldiers.

They called themselves the Bastions.

Their language was clipped, direct, almost mathematical. They communicated in short bursts of information and command. Symbols marked their armor with geometric patterns denoting rank, trade, lineage. They lived underground in fortified complexes powered by roaring engines that lit the night with a giant glow.

The Mediator saw in them as the descendants of what had once been the political right.

The Bastions prized order, hierarchy, tradition. They maintained ancient texts, with fragments of constitutions, charters, and manifestos preserved in metal vaults. Their children were trained early in discipline and self reliance. They believed the surface world was decadent and fragile.

“The Soft Ones,” a Bastion engineer told him, pointing upward. “They drift. We build.”

The Mediator felt the chill of recognition.

Over millennia, ideological separation had hardened into geography. The split of geography into culture…and then culture into biology.

Each side had caricatured the other for so long and became so extreme that natural selection had begun to favor those who fit the caricature.

The Harmonians, avoiding conflict at all costs, had lost physical robustness and much of their knowledge of harm or conflict. The Bastions, rejecting vulnerability and indulgence, had compressed their emotions and sense of helplessness.

There’s two species, with two languages, with two civilizations, and each incomplete.

In the days that followed, the Mediator traveled between tower and tunnel.

He observed how the Harmonians relied entirely on the Bastions for infrastructure. The engines that purified air, stabilized the climate, and provided food were maintained below ground. In exchange, the Harmonians provided technological abundance and genetic therapies developed through centuries of experimentation.

Yet neither side admitted dependence.

The Harmonians spoke of the Bastions as relics, saying they’re outdated and regrettable. The Bastions described the Harmonians as ornamental; weak and unserious.

And neither could understand the other’s speech.

When the Mediator attempted translation, he discovered something astonishing: certain words had no equivalent.

The Harmonians had no word for “sovereignty.”

The Bastions had no word for “inclusive.”

Both had lost the word “compromise.”

The Mediator realized then that class had not made two species.

Ideology had.

Before departing, he buried his machine beneath a hill between tower and tunnel, leaving behind a simple inscription in both scripts: “You were once one.”

Then he returned to 2028.

The debates still raged. The commentators still shouted. The feeds still scrolled endlessly.

But the Mediator no longer despaired.

For he had seen the end of polarization, and it was not victory for either side.

It was a divergence.

A divergence, left unattended long enough, that becomes destiny.