Henry Bemis - Time enough at Last !

I have seen only 7 episodes of Twilight zone, but what I have seen has already made me a big fan of Rod Sterling's creation. The best episode of the 7 that I have seen surely has to be "Time enough at last". I am planning on writing a blog under the ROMM column with this title and I thought a little background might be useful. So here goes this great story....

(The quote italics text are Sterling's comment at the beginning and end of the serial)

"Witness Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers. A bookish little man whose passion is the printed page but who is conspired against by a bank president and a wife and a world full of tongue-cluckers and the unrelenting hands of a clock. But in just a moment Mr. Bemis will enter a world without bank presidents or wives or clocks or anything else. He'll have a world all to himself - without anyone."

Henry Bemis is a bibliophile. He reads all the time - at work as well as home. At work, the bank manager is very irritated by his insatiable appetite to read. At home, his wife reprimands him for neglecting other chores and immersing himself in reading. Between the stern supervision of his manager and wife, Bemis has his moments when he gets to read what he likes.

One fine day, Bemis is having lunch in the bank vault while reading a book - the vault seemed to be the only place where he could escape his nagging peers and concentrate on book in hand. Meanwhile a H-bomb explosion devastates the whole town. Bemis is now left with no company, food etc. The isolation is intolerable, and as he is about to take his own life he stumbles upon a library of books. There are more books than he would ever have time to read them.

As he settles down to do what he thinks he has time enough at last - his spectacles fall to the ground and shatter into pieces.

"The best-laid plans of mice and men - and Henry Bemis, the small man in the glasses who wanted nothing but time. Henry Bemis, now just a part of a smashed landscape, just a piece of the rubble, just a fragment of what man has deeded to himself. Mr. Bemis... in the Twilight Zone."