Locker Room

Realism = making the conditions of the present available.


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Toby is reading The Time Machine by HG Wells.

I gave it a last tap, tried all the screws again, put one more drop of oil on the quartz rod, and sat myself in the saddle. I suppose a suicide who holds a pistol to his skull feels much the same wonder at what will come next as I felt then …
I seemed to reel; I felt a nightmare sensation of falling…
I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time travelling.
They are excessively unpleasant. There is a feeling exactly like that one has on a switchback - of a helpless headlong motion! I felt the same horrible anticipation, too, of an imminent smash. As I put on pace, night followed day like the flapping of a black wing…
The twinkling sensation of darkness and light was excessively painful to the eye… The sky took on a wonderful deepness of blue, a splendid luminous colour like that of early twilight; the jerking sun became a streak of fire, a brilliant arch, in space; the moon a fainter fluctuating band… Minute by minute the white snow flashed across the world, and vanished, and was followed by the bright, brief green of spring…

enormous jewels

Cagliostro in a house near Trinita di monti, making gems bigger...













Parts were of nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly been filed or sawn out of rock crystal. The thing was generally complete, but the twisted crystalline bars lay unfinished upon the bench beside some sheets of drawings, and I took one up for a better look at it. Quartz it seemed to be.