"But how do you get back and forwards to your work?"

"Work!" he said. "There isn't any work. It's finished. The last of
it was all done centuries ago."

I looked at him a moment open-mouthed. Then I turned and looked
again at the grey desolation of the street with the asbestos figures
moving here and there.

I tried to pull my senses together. I realised that if I was to
unravel this new and undreamed-of future, I must go at it
systematically and step by step.

"I see," I said after a pause, "that momentous things have happened
since my time. I wish you would let me ask you about it all
systematically, and would explain it to me bit by bit. First, what
do you mean by saying that there is no work?"

"Why," answered my strange acquaintance, "it died out of itself.
Machinery killed it. If I remember rightly, you had a certain amount
of machinery even in your time. You had done very well with steam,
made a good beginning with electricity, though I think radial energy
had hardly as yet been put to use."

I nodded assent.

"But you found it did you no good. The better your machines, the
harder you worked. The more things you had the more you wanted. The
pace of life grew swifter and swifter. You cried out, but it would