Roger Shumway, a reporter, is invited to visit Craig Bennett Stiles, a 130-year-old man also known as the Time Traveler. This is the first interview Stiles has granted since shortly after his return from the future, 100 years earlier. Stiles had claimed then that he invented a time machine (which he privately refers to as his "Toynbee Convector", although he does not reveal the name of the device to anyone until much later). Stiles used the machine to travel forward in time about a hundred years from what was an economically and creatively stagnant society (c. 1984). On returning to that present, he showed evidence — films and other records collected on his journey — showing that humanity developed an advanced civilization with many marvelous and helpful inventions, and a restored natural environment. He also claimed to have then destroyed the machine deliberately to prevent anyone else doing the same.