Which sentence best expresses the central idea that the future was very different from what the time traveler had imagined The Time Machine
by H. G. Wells (adapted excerpt)
As they made no effort to communicate with me, but simply stood round me smiling and speaking in soft cooing notes to each other, I began
the conversation by pointing to the Time Machine and to myself. Then, hesitating for a moment how to express Time, I pointed to the sun and at
once a quaintly pretty little figure in checkered purple and white followed my gesture, and then astonished me by imitating the sound of
thunder
For a moment I was staggered, though the import of his gesture was plain enough. The question had come into my mind abruptly: were these
creatures fools? You may hardly understand how it took me. You see, I had always anticipated that the people of the year Eight Hundred and
Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art, everything. Then one of them suddenly asked me a question that
showed him to be on the intellectual level of one of our five-year-old children-asked me, in fact, if i had come from the sun in a thunderstorm!
it let loose the judgment I had suspended upon their clothes, their frail light limbs, and fragile features. A flow of disappointment rushed across
my mind and for a moment I felt that I had built the Time Machine in vain
I nodded, pointed to the sun, and gave them such a vivid rendering of a thunderclap as started them. They all withdrew a pace or so, bowed
and then came one laughing towards me, carrying a chain of beautiful flowers altogether new to me, and put it about my neck. The idea was
received with melodious applause, and presently they were all running to and fro for flowers, and laughingly flinging them upon me until I was
almost smothered with blossom. You who have never seen the like can scarcely imagine what delicate and wonderful flowers countless years of
culture had created. Then someone suggested that their plaything should be exhibited in the nearest building, and so I was led past the sphinx
of white marble, which had seemed to watch me all the while with a smile at my astonishment towards a vast grey edifice of fretted stone. As
went with them the memory of my confident anticipations of a profoundly grave and intellectual posterity came with irresistible merriment, to
my mind