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The holidays are back at Starbucks, so share the season with a peppermint mocha, Starbucks Signature Espresso, Velvety Mocha, and cool peppermint notes topped with whipped cream and dark chocolate curls together is the best place to be at Starbucks.
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A dream is a wish your heart made. Step aboard a Disney cruise and discover where memories meet adventure, where escape meets imagination, where magic meets the sea. Disney Cruise Line.
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Hi, I'm levar burton, and this is levar burton reads. In every episode, I have hand picked a different piece of short fiction and I've read it to you. The only thing these stories have had in common is that I love them, and I hope you have too. This is indeed the final episode of season 13 of LeVar Burton reads, Y'. All. But here's the thing. You know how much I love reading aloud, and so rest assured I'll figure out how to continue to engage with you in storytelling that we love. And as it's the final episode, it really made sense to read something today by one of the greats, a speculative storyteller whose work has endured for decades, the great Ray Bradbury. Ray Bradbury's stories are so powerful and appeal to so many people, partially because they are lyrical and colloquial, often playful, while all the time engaging with difficult truths. The story that I've chosen for today is one of Bradbury's tales about time travel. I think it's about human destiny and hope for the future. More than anything, I think it's about the power of human storytelling. The Toynbee Convector was written in 1983 and first published in Playboy magazine and then later featured in a collection of short stories by the same title, the Toynbee Convector, and it's still in print today. Go, Ray. As one of the characters explains, the Toynbee in the name refers to the historian Arnold J. Toynbee, who said any group, any race, any world that did not run to seize the future and shape it was doomed to dust away to the grave in the past. Can't wait for you to hear this story. You'll find a content advisory for this story in the written episode description. And now, if you're ready, let's take that deep breath. Yay us. The toynbee convector by ray bradbury. Good. Great. Bravo for me. Roger Shumway flung himself into the seat, buckled himself in, revved the rotor, and drifted his Dragonfly super six helicopter up to blow away on the summer sky, heading south toward La Jolla. How lucky can you get for he was on his way to an incredible meeting. The Time traveler, after a hundred years of silence, had agreed to be interviewed. He was on this day, 130 years old. And this afternoon at 4 o' clock sharp, Pacific time was the anniversary of his one and only journey in Time. Lord. Yes, 100 years ago, Craig Bennet Stiles had waved, stepped into his immense clock, as he called it, and vanished from the present. He was and remained the only man in history to travel in time. And Shumway was the one and only reporter after all these years to be invited in for afternoon tea and the possible announcement of a second and final trip through time. The traveler had hinted at such a trip. Old man, said Shumway, Mr. Craig Bennett Stiles, here I come. The dragonfly, obedient to fevers, seized a wind and rode it down the coast. The old man was there waiting for him on the roof of the Time Lamasery at the rim of the hang glider's cliff in La Jolla. The air swarmed with crimson, blue and lemon kites from which young men shouted while young women called to them from the land's edge. Stiles, for all his 130 years, was not old. His face, blinking up at the helicopter was the bright face of one of those hang gliding Apollo fools who veered off as the helicopter sank down. Shumway hovered his craft for a long moment, savoring the delay. Below him was a face that had dreamed architectures known incredible loves blueprinted mysteries of seconds, hours, days, then dived in to swim upstream through the centuries, a sunburst phase celebrating its own birthday. For on a single night 100 years ago, Craig Bennett Stiles, freshly returned from time, had reported by Telstar around the world to billions of viewers and told them their future. We made it, he said. We did it. The future is ours. We rebuilt. The cities freshened the small towns cleaned the lakes and rivers washed the air, saved the dolphins, increased the whales stopped the wars, tossed solar stations across space to light the world colonized the moon, moved on to Mars, then Alpha Centauri. We cured cancer and stopped death. We did it. O Lord, much thought thanks. We did it. Oh future's bright and beauteous spires arise. He showed them pictures. He brought them samples. He gave them tapes and LP records, film and sound cassettes of his wondrous roundabout flight. The world went mad with joy. It ran to meet and and make that future Fling up the cities of promise, save all and share with the beasts of land and sea. The old man's welcoming shout came up the wind. Shumway shouted back and let the dragonfly simmer down in its own summer weather. Craig Bennett Stiles, 130 years old, strode forward briskly and incredibly helped the young reporter out of his craft. Shumway was suddenly stunned and weak at this encounter. I can't believe I'm here, shumway said. You are, and none too soon, laughed the time traveler. Any day now I may just fall apart and blow away. Lunch is waiting. Hike. A parade of 1stiles marched off under the fluttering rotor shadows that made him seem a flickering newsreel of a future that had somehow passed Shumway like a small, small dog after a great army followed. What do you want to know? Asked the old man as they crossed the roof. Double time. First. Gasped Shumway, keeping up. Why have you broken silence after a hundred years? Second, why to me? Third, what's the big announcement you're going to make this afternoon at 4 o', clock, the very hour when your younger self is due to arrive from the past, when for a brief moment you will appear in two places. The paradox. The person you were man. You are fused in one glorious hour for us to celebrate. The old man laughed. How you do go on. Sorry. Shumway blushed. I wrote that last night. Well, those are the questions. You shall have your answers. The old man shook his elbow gently. All in good time. You must excuse my excitement, said Shanghe. After all, you are a mystery. You were famous, world acclaimed. You were went, saw the future, came back, told us, then went into seclusion. Oh, sure. For a few weeks you traveled the world in ticker tape parades, showed yourself on tv, wrote one book, gifted us with one magnificent two hour television film, then shut yourself away here. Yes, the time machine is on, on exhibit below. The crowds are allowed in each day at noon to see and touch. But you yourself have refused fame. Not so. The old man led him along the roof. Below in the gardens, other helicopters were arriving now, bringing TV equipment from around the world to photograph the miracle in the sky. That moment when the time machine from the past would appear, shimmer, then wander off to visit other cities before it vanished into the past. I have been busy as an architect helping build that very future. I saw when, as a young man, I arrived in our golden tomorrow. They stood for a moment watching the preparations. Below, vast tables were being set up for food and drink. Dignitaries would be arriving soon from every country of the world to thank for a final time. Perhaps this fabled, this almost mythic traveler of the years Go along, said the old man. Would you like to come sit in the time machine? No one else ever has, you know. Would you like to be the first? No answer was necessary. The old man could see that the young man's eyes were bright and wet. There, there, said the old man. Oh, dear me. There, there. A glass elevator sank and took them below and let them out in a pure white basement, the center of which stood the incredible device. There. Stiles touched a button and the plastic shell that had for 100 years encased the time machine slid aside. The old man nodded. Go sit. Shumway moved slowly toward the machine. Stiles touched another button and the machine lit up like a cavern of spiderwebs. It breathed in years and whispered forth remembrance. Ghosts were in its crystal veins. A great God spider had woven its tapestries in a single night. It was haunted and it was alive. Unseen tides came and went in its machinery. Suns burned and moons hid their seasons in it. Here and autumn blew away in tatters there. Winters arrived in snows that drifted in spring, blossoms to fall on summer fields. The young man sat in the center of it all, unable to speak, gripping the armrests of of the padded chair.