Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 6.6MB)
Audio is good for a change, only a little record noise and static.
As Ernest Chapel recounts today’s tale, he is showing the effects of drinking heavily. He is leaving this message in hopes he can be avenged. The scientist is fond of his alcohol and gambling, and meets up with a few men who want a favor. Taking advantage of the scientists’ weaknesses, they make him an offer to put his skills as a physicist to work. They want him to build a time machine to go in the future so they can rob a bank.
He sobers up, barely, but enough to at least build a device with some limitations. Ernest tells how his experiments progressed from sending inanimate objects to the future, to using himself as a human experiment. The machine allows for only traveling one day ahead, the time that is allowed to stay in the future is limited, and nothing can be brought back. Beginning to doubt the trustworthiness of his captors, he doesn’t tell them those details.
This brings us full circle. Ernest is in his usual drunken state, and begging the listener to avenge his inevitable murder. He knows he will be killed because of what he learned while on his trip to the future. Can the events be altered? Is there any hope that the poor sot will escape death?
