Real World
Written by Anakin McFly
PART ONE – Eddies in the Space-Time Continuum
- Across the Barriers of Time
- Future Visions
- There is No Caffeine
- New Beginnings
- The One with the Bald Principal
- Sibling Rivalry
- Spaceman from Pluto
- Breakfast of Champions
- Real TV
- Of Ghosts and Sofas
- The Hill Valley Band Competition
REAL WORLD: PART ONE
Eddies in the Space-Time Continuum
“Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real?
What if you were unable to wake from that dream, Neo? How
would you know the difference between the dreamworld...
and the real world?”—Morpheus, The Matrix
Chapter One: Across the Barriers of Time
12th December 1985, Thursday
One-and-a-half months after the Back to the Future trilogy
Hill Valley, California
It wasn’t a building that would normally have attracted much attention. An old, large, relatively run-down garage, it was nothing very remarkable to look at. In truth, it would have remained largely ignored, had it not been for the fact that it also happened to be the house-cum-laboratory of the town lunatic, Dr. Emmett Lathrop Brown. That in itself was reason enough for the majority of Hill Valley citizens to stay away from that garage, and stay away they did… fuelled in part by their fear of the unknown and the many rumours surrounding its owner.
Had they got to know him better, however, they would have perhaps learnt that Emmett had departed the late twentieth century more than a month ago and was currently living happily in the nineteenth with his wife and two kids. As it was, only two people had any idea that he had left.
And just as few knew of the existence of a 2003 computer inside the garage, one which ran on a Windows 2000 operating system and had a connection to the World Wide Web.
In 1985.
On that computer on the afternoon of December the twelfth, a seventeen-year-old teenager by the name of Martin Seamus McFly was typing away. Beside him on the table was strewn a mass of wires that showed some form of organisation only when one looked closely at them, and these were attached to a strange, fluxing Y-shaped contraption – a flux capacitor – that was in turn hooked up to both a modem-like device and the computer.
Behind Marty on the opposite end of the dimly lit garage was located the remains of a gigantic amplifier that had blown up somewhere in the vicinity of late October that year, and next to it was now a much smaller one that Marty had brought there to use in its stead.
Jennifer Jane Parker, Marty’s girlfriend and fellow time traveller, sat beside him and stared at the screen in rapt fascination as he concluded his brief introduction to the Internet of 2004.
The brown-haired boy turned to her and smiled. “Cool huh?” he asked, although her reaction was already more than obvious. “And the whole thing’s connected to Doc’s computer, so when one day passes for me and in 2004, one day passes for him too. That way everything’s kept in sync.”
Jennifer nodded slowly, eyes still fixated on the screen. “Doc just gave you the computer?”
“Yeah. He said he got it cheap at a garage sale in 2009. But he didn’t exactly give it to me… I mean, it’s not like I can just take it home or anyth…”
The entire collection of clocks in the garage chose that precise moment to chime loudly, cutting Marty off in mid-sentence. The teen cringed slightly at the sound. Even after more than three years of dropping by at Doc’s garage before and after school, he still hadn’t got used to it.
“You’ve gotta go now, right?” he asked, when the noise had finally subsided to the usual quiet, relatively unobtrusive ticking.
Jennifer sighed regretfully, getting up. “Yeah.”
Marty got off his own chair and walked towards the door to let her out.
“Do you think Doc’s ever coming back?” Jennifer asked.
Marty hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe just for short visits or to drag me off to save the universe again, but nothing permanent…”
“You want him to come back, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” the other teen admitted quietly. “But I think he’s happier where he is now. If he comes back here, there’ll be all those people who keep avoiding him because they think he’s crazy… and he’ll have to explain his family. Maybe it’s better if he just stays…” His words drifted off into the air.
“I guess I’d better be going now.”
“Sure. See you tomorrow.”
They paused, looking into each others’ eyes, and then their lips met in a quick kiss. Marty emerged, grinning, and waved goodbye as Jennifer made her way down the driveway.
When Jennifer had gone out of view, Marty went back into the garage, shutting and locking the door before returning to the computer to find a new message sitting in his e-mail inbox – the first he had ever received. He eagerly opened it and read:
From - julesvernefan@yahoo.com
To - futureboy85@hillvalley-online.com
Subject: Does it work?Marty,
This is a test to see if everything works. Reply if you get this.
- Doc
Marty clicked on ‘Reply’ and typed out a short message:
From - futureboy85@hillvalley-online.com
To - julesvernefan@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Does it work?Hi Doc.
Yeah, it works perfectly fine.
Thanks again for the computer!
- Marty
P.S.: Whenever he hears the title 'Star Wars', my father sort of freaks out. The same goes for Star Trek whenever they mention Vulcan. Maybe it has something to do with what I did to him in 1955.
The teen clicked on the ‘send message’ button, then lay back in the chair and smiled wistfully. Even if Doc wasn’t going to come back, at least he could still talk to him through e-mail. Everything was going to be great.
Around him, the afternoon sun filtered through the small windows to land on significantly fewer things than it used to. Apart from the clock collection, the garage was no longer as cluttered as it once had been. Doc had moved most of his belongings back to the nineteenth century, and it was now possible to walk around without tripping over something. The inventor had decided to leave the clocks behind for lack of space to put them where – or when – he currently lived.
The place almost looked neat. On those few occasions when Emmett decided to visit 1985 for some reason or another, he still stayed here, but otherwise Marty had begun to find the garage a nice hideaway that he could go to after school to finish his homework, practise on his guitar or do whatever he felt like at the moment. Now, of course, the presence of the computer just made the place all the more appealing.
Pulling out his homework for that day, Marty glanced at the question for his history essay and sighed. He had no idea how to go about answering it. After all, who would have been able to pay much attention in class if they had just spent the previous night riding through time and trying to save the universe?
Marty gazed aimlessly around the room, hoping for inspiration but getting none until he suddenly remembered the computer sitting right in front of him. A slow, mischievous grin spread across the teen’s face as he accessed the Internet and typed in the key words of the question into the Yahoo search bar. Several results appeared.
Feeling rather guilty, Marty clicked on one of the links. He wondered briefly if this was considered cheating, and then decided that it wasn’t really. It was just about the same as getting answers from a textbook, after all, something the teacher didn’t mind them doing.
The page downloaded and Marty got down to his work.
Chapter Two: Future Visions
10th November 1895, Sunday
Hill Valley, California
The future.
That was what six-and-a-half-years-old Verne Brown longed for more than anything else in the world. He yearned to belong there, instead of in the late nineteenth century where he currently was. Ever since he could remember, he had always had the feeling that he didn’t belong. And then, when Verne was four years old, his father had revealed his greatest secret to him and Jules: he was actually from the year 1985.
And Verne believed him straight away. He had known, somehow, that there had to be an explanation for why he felt different from everybody else, an explanation for his ever-present feeling that he was missing something important. From that day forth, not a minute passed without Verne dreaming of that faraway time his father had come from, wondering if he would ever be able to return to his true home.
The family’s short trips in their train – and later the new DeLorean – time machine served only to deepen the boy’s desire. The more he saw of the future, he more he loved it and the more he longed for it. Several nights would find him staring wistfully out of his bedroom window into the starry sky, wondering what it would have been like if his parents had managed to return to the future with Marty all those years ago.
He imagined how his life would have turned out then, as he created various scenarios in his mind down to the tiniest detail. He imagined not having to hide in the secret room whenever he wanted to watch a movie or use the computer or play on his Game Boy; he imagined what his house would look like; what kind of friends he would have; he imagined being able to live in the same kind of world as the people he knew online did…
The installation of Internet access in the family’s computer earlier that year had seemed to Verne like a dream come true. After painstakingly teaching himself to type, he would spend hours online instead of watching parts of his family’s movie collection in front of the television set as he used to before. Most of his Internet time was spent playing his favourite online multiplayer game, Runescape, where he went by the name of RuneJedi.
Online, no one knew who he was. No one knew when he was really from. Best of all, no one cared. Slowly but surely, Verne built up his online identity. He pretended to be like everyone else, from the year 2004 and not 1895. He had fun building up his fictional background. No one doubted him; who would have?
He made friends from the future and learnt about their lives, wishing more and more each day that he could be just like them. Verne couldn’t understand those who kept complaining how boring their lives were – to him, their lives were the most interesting he had ever known and he would gladly have swapped with them any day.
Verne lived a dream so intense that he almost believed it to be true. He was living a lie and he knew it, but he didn’t know how he could carry on if he were to just face the truth – he was stuck here in this time, and no amount of hoping would change that.
But Verne continued to dream.
Chapter Three: There is No Caffeine
Somewhere in the late twenty-second or early twenty-third century
About two months after The Matrix
Onboard the Nebuchadnezzar
The hovercraft moved silently through the underground sewers.
Neo lay on his bed in the darkness of his cabin, listening to the quiet hum of the Nebuchadnezzar’s engines and hoping that the storage compartment hanging over his bed would not decide to fall on him.
If you fall on me, I’ll bash you, he thought darkly. And I know kung fu, so I can probably bash you pretty hard. Neo gave the wire frame of the storage compartment a warning look and then wondered why he even bothered.
He rolled over in bed and stared at the metal wall, stained here and there with bits of grime, rust, and who knew what else. Staring so intently at it made him feel a little uncomfortable, so he rolled back over and tried once more to fall asleep.
He’d spent the better half of that day flying around inside the Matrix and freaking out the occasional person who might spot him. Some time later, he had gone to get himself a cup of coffee from Starbucks for no apparent reason other than the fact that he missed the beverage. So what if it wasn’t actually real? The taste of the drink was good enough for him; in fact, it had been so good that he’d bought another cup. Unfortunately, Neo had overlooked one of the more common side effects of consuming too much caffeine. Somehow he’d never thought that it would be an issue, what with the coffee not being real and all that.
The mind makes it real, Morpheus had once said to him what, a month or two ago? It felt much less than that.
The mind makes it real. For some reason, Neo had always thought that that only applied to injuries, death, and that sort of thing.
Apparently, though, that wasn’t the case.
So here he was now, suffering from insomnia because of too much digital-coffee-derived imaginary caffeine in his system. It was kind of pathetic, when he came to think of it. Neo closed his eyes. “There is no caffeine,” he thought aloud, waited a few seconds to let the words sink in, then opened his eyes again. It didn’t seem to be working. He swore under his breath.
Maybe it would help if he walked around a little. Getting off the bed, Neo left his cabin and turned right into the dimly lit corridor, running his fingers lightly against the wall, which soon turned out to be a mistake for the walls were kind of greasy.
Several seconds later, he entered the mess hall, illuminated at this time by a single light near the food dispensers. Ah, the wonderful food dispensers that dispensed the nutritious glop which the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar had to eat three meals a day, twenty-four seven.
The mess hall was empty and devoid of any life forms, humans or otherwise. That is, unless you were one of those people who believed the rumours that the aforementioned nutritious glop had a mind of its own and came alive at night.
Neo missed real food. Then he realised that he’d never actually had real food before. Until he was unplugged, he had been just another one of the many billions of humans jacked into the Matrix – living off nutrients fed through tubes, with the occasional dead guy thrown into the mix. But at least he hadn’t known back then that the slice of pepperoni pizza he was eating technically didn’t exist and was merely an artificial construct of the Matrix.
Ignorance was bliss. Neo wondered what a real Big Mac would taste like. Two flame-grilled patties, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, on a sesame seed bun… Oh, great. Now he was hungry, and save for the possibly alive stuff in the food dispenser – which was a rather unappetising option – there wasn’t anything to eat.
Neo left the mess hall and went back to his cabin. He thought he might just as well lie down, even if he couldn’t sleep.
Back in his room, on his bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering what his life had got to.
He didn’t want to be The One, not really; didn’t want to know to that so many people were depending on him to do something he didn’t know much about. At any moment, he felt as if something would happen and he’d be exposed as a fraud… just like the so many potentials Morpheus had picked up before him who had turned out to not be the real deal. Sure, so he’d defeated several agents that time when he’d first been unplugged – something no one else before him had been able to do – and he’d sort of come back from the dead too – but what if all that had just been flukes? Improbable, but the possibility was still there.
What had he done to deserve all this, anyway? What made him so special? Back then in his life in the Matrix, he was just a normal guy – Thomas A. Anderson, employee of a respectable software company by day, computer hacker by night. He’d spent most of his life trying to escape from it all, always feeling that there was something else beyond the world he knew.
And now he was here, and things weren’t much better.
Sometimes he envied all those people still plugged into the Matrix, blissfully oblivious about anything and everything that happened in the real world. They went about their normal, routine lives day after day, year after year, completely ignorant of the fact that all around their physical selves, a huge war was being waged between the free humans and their AI creations.
Yet Neo had the feeling that quite a few of those plugged-in people would give anything to be in his position now. The chance to escape from all they knew just like that: no more work, no more school, no more stress… who wouldn’t want it?
The grass was always greener on the other side.
It struck him that he’d never actually seen real grass before. Down here on the Nebuchadnezzar, travelling through the sewers, there wasn’t a single green blade to be seen. There were probably none in the underground city of Zion either, unless some people grew plants of their own.
And it wasn’t just grass. The sky, the sun, the moon, the stars… he’d never seen them before. The memories that he had of those things were all fake, mere shadows, mere imitations of the real thing.
Nature. Neo had never really realised it before, but that was what was most lacking in the real world. The surface above, dotted with the last vestiges of humanity: crumbled buildings, now deserted, scattered under the blackened sky. Somewhere above the clouds, perhaps the sun still shone… but its rays would never penetrate far enough for green life to start again. And somewhere, the machines waited, waited for the day when they would finally overthrow the last of their creators, the humans. The humans who were relying on Neo to save them.
He didn’t want to think about that now. Eventually, the time would come when he’d have to, but not yet. Not now.
Neo rolled over in bed again, mentally cursing the day’s coffee indulgence whose effects were starting to drive him crazy. Right, he thought to himself, firmly pushing away all distractions from his mind. Concentrate. Step one: close eyes. Step two: try to sleep. There is no caffeine…
Chapter Four: New Beginnings
5th November 1998, Thursday
About two years after The Frighteners
Christchurch, New Zealand
Frank Bannister surveyed his new home with satisfaction. A large haunted mansion, somewhere on the outskirts of Christchurch, New Zealand – perfect. From behind him, the moving van trundled through the open iron gates – set into the ivy-covered brick wall – and came to a stop on the driveway.
New home, new beginnings. No one ever needed to know about all that had happened back there in the little Northern Californian town of Fairwater. The place held too many memories for him – most of which weren’t good ones. And even though his name had been cleared regarding the series of serial killings that had gone on two years before, he still attracted occasional hostile stares.
But over here, he could start again. Here he was just known as the weird-new-guy-from-America, which he figured was better than being known as the weird-guy-who-thinks-he-can-see-dead-people-and-killed-his-girlfriend-when-his-half-built-house-fell-on-her.
Frank had come determined to act as normal as possible whenever he ventured out into the public eye. To be honest, a haunted house wasn’t the best choice of residence for someone hoping to make a decent first impression, but it was cheap and that was what mattered.
The house was well worth it. Enormous, fully furnished, cheap, with its two friendly resident ghosts, and not to mention the tidy little packet of money he could make by selling bits of unwanted furniture off on eBay. And there was a lot of unwanted furniture around. There were also a lot of unwanted rooms around, which could be rented out…
If that wasn’t a good deal, Frank didn’t know what was. Besides, he didn’t think too favourably on the idea of splurging what little was left of his unexpected inheritance on a house with a better reputation. He had known poverty for the past few years; through it he had learnt to be thrifty, and sudden riches weren’t going to change that.
Almost a year ago, some obscure relative of his had passed away and left him quite a substantial amount of cash – way more than the little he might manage to earn in several good years. Maybe it had been a downright foolish idea to spend the bulk of it migrating to New Zealand, but he had wanted so much to get away from it all.
The moving van guys weren’t all too keen to stay any longer than necessary. They’d heard the rumours about this place. Fortunately for them, there wasn’t much to move into the house: mostly boxes of personal belongings and the odd piece of favourite furniture. Frank paid them, and they drove off thankfully.
Frank watched them go, giving them a small farewell wave that went unacknowledged. The wind blew through the trees in his new garden, rustling up the leaves and causing several to drop off in annoyance.
Whistling, Frank strolled through the main door of his house, used a leg to kick the door shut, and gazed causally at the boxes of stuff lying around the entrance hall. To his right lay the open kitchen; an archway lay on his left with rooms beyond; before him the hall went on a while before leading up a staircase. Down this staircase now floated a semi-transparent dead man, glowing with blue ectoplasm.
“Hi,” Frank greeted. “Are you Bob or Eddie?”
“Bob Alkies,” the ghost replied. “Eddie’s the psycho with the sofa, remember?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Frank had loved the opportunity that the movie The Sixth Sense had given him. Now, he could truthfully inform people that he could see dead people, but instead of freaking out like they used to, most just laughed and assumed he was joking. Which was just fine with him.
From above floated down strains of Eddie’s voice.
“Sofa… my sofa… my precious, oh my sofa, yes my sofa, ohhh… sofa… sofa…” There was a contented sigh as Eddie spread himself out on his blue Chesterfield sitting appliance.
“You’ll get used to it after a while,” Bob assured Frank.
Bob Alkies couldn’t have been more than twenty-five when he’d died. He was a fairly skinny fellow, slightly taller than Frank (most people were), with tousled fair hair and an almost perpetual spaced-out look on his face. Now he sat down on the bottom stair, sunk through it, and stayed there.
The doorbell rang.
“Freddy,” Bob said in response to Frank’s unanswered question.
“Who?” Frank opened the door to catch a brief glimpse of a ghost in pizza delivery uniform leaving through the outer brick wall. On the doorstep lay a box of piping hot pizza.
“Freddy the Pizza Dude,” Bob explained. “I knew him when we were in school. He used to work in that pizza joint down the road, but one day there was an accident and he got killed – fell into the oven or something. Never forgave them. Now and then he steals a pizza or two and gives ‘em to others for free. I told him you were coming.”
“I guess lunch’s settled then,” Frank said, picking up the pizza box and placing it on the somewhat dusty kitchen counter. He gazed around and his eyes settled on the pile of boxes lying in the room. “Now I just gotta unpack.”
“Sofa…” Eddie breathed from upstairs.
Chapter Five: The One with the Bald Principal
13th December 1985, Friday
Hill Valley, California
Marty McFly drummed his fingers impatiently against his school desk as he stared at the clock, counting down the minutes to the end of school. He wasn’t the only one doing the latter, for the teacher was speaking on a particularly boring topic today, and about half the class were either asleep or on the verge of doing so. Only two or three students were staring enthralled at Mrs. Ferguson, hanging onto her every word with looks of rapt wonder on their faces.
Marty didn’t understand them, and neither did anyone else.
Come on… he thought desperately, willing the clock to hurry up. He couldn’t wait to go to Doc’s garage and have another go at the computer, and it wasn’t as if the teacher was saying anything remotely interesting or important that he couldn’t find out for himself on the Internet.
Finally, the school bell rang, and the class joyfully ran out of the room amidst the sound of Mrs. Ferguson yelling out their homework for the day. Grinning as he slammed his locker door shut minutes later, Marty turned to leave when he saw a classmate, David, rushing towards him.
“Hey, Marty!” he yelled. “Strickland wants to see you in his office. I think you’d better go… he looks kinda mad.”
The grin vanished from Marty’s face as he trudged along the corridor to the principal’s office. What now? Marty wondered as they entered the room.
“You asked to see me, sir?”
Mr. Strickland, sitting behind his desk, looked Marty squarely in the eye. “Mr. McFly, do you have any idea how many tardy slips you’ve collected since January this year?”
Marty blinked and tried his best to be polite. “Uh… no, sir.” So this was about his lateness again? It was probably about the thousandth time he’d been sent to the principal’s office for that… although the teen had to admit that Mr. Strickland’s next words had a point.
“Eighty-three,” Strickland hissed in a dangerously soft voice, which suddenly went up in volume, causing the teen to jump. “EIGHTY-THREE! That’s more than last year’s sixty-one! It has to be a record!”
Marty gulped.
“Mr. McFly, I do not tolerate tardiness in this school,” the bald principal continued, his face red. “It appears that you have already accumulated twelve since the start of this school year. If you continue to carry on like this, sooner or later you shall be expelled. You hear me? Expelled.”
Marty tried his best to look apologetic. “Yes sir.”
Mr. Strickland didn’t look as if he believed him, but decided to let it go for that time. “That’s all. You may go.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“By the way…” Strickland added, as Marty turned to go, “I think it’s good that you’ve finally decided to stop hanging around that crazy Dr. Brown.”
Marty stiffened and turned around slowly to face the principal.
“Where is he, anyway?” Strickland asked, eyeing the teen carefully.
Not now, Marty thought, forcing a smile onto his face. Just ignore him, he’s just trying to get you into detention again…
“He’s… he just went out of town for a while,” Marty replied as casually as he could, hoping that Strickland wouldn’t ask any more questions.
“Ah. I see. I was just wondering.” The principal went back to his deskwork, leaving Marty free to go.
Marty left the office, heaving a sigh of relief at the close call. If Strickland had decided to probe further… One simple reply on Doc’s whereabouts could lead to another, and if the matter of time travel happened to slip out along the way… who knew what would happen?
He ran down the steps of Hill Valley High and skated straight over to Doc’s garage, his short visit to the principal’s office almost completely forgotten by the time he had unlocked the door and sat down by the computer.
Almost. Marty wondered just how many people knew that Emmett was no longer living in 1985. His parents, for one, probably thought that the inventor was still around and Marty was hanging around with him as usual, or they would have been wondering just what it was that a seventeen-year-old found so intriguing about an empty garage that he had to visit it every day.
Jennifer knew, of course. He had told her about everything that had happened since the twenty-sixth of October that year; it felt good to share all that with someone else besides Doc. At least he had someone to talk to in his own time period regarding his time travel experiences. No one else would believe him.
Marty turned on the computer and accessed his e-mail to be rewarded with the sight of a new e-mail message:
From -julesvernefan@yahoo.com
To - futureboy85@hillvalley-online.com
Subject: RE: Does it work?Marty!
I can't believe it! I invented something that actually works! Again!
I believe I told you this when I first gave you the computer, but just as a reminder, DO NOT look yourself up on the Internet. By now, you would very likely have an idea of the kind of danger that might pose to the space-time continuum.
- Doc
The teen logged off his e-mail account and spent the rest of the day happily surfing the ‘Net for answers to his homework, his guitar practice forgotten.
Chapter Six: Sibling Rivalry
11th November 1895, Monday
Hill Valley, California
Verne was mad. His Game Boy Advanced was missing, just when he wanted to play with it. A confrontation revealed Jules to be the one who had taken it, and Verne tried desperately to think of something that would make his brother return his precious toy to him.
He couldn’t think of anything.
“Give it back!” Verne yelled again with all the energy a young boy could muster.
Jules stood in the doorway and smirked. “Not a chance, little brother. You spend too much time on that thing, and Dad thinks so too. If you’re not on it, you’re on the computer, or watching TV… when do you think you are, the future?”
Verne heard Jules’ last few words and looked ready to cry. “Give it back!”
Jules shrugged. “I already said you could have it if you gave me a million dollars, so pay up if you ever want to see your Game Boy again.”
The younger boy lunged out with his fists, narrowly missing his brother’s face by several millimetres, which had the effect of making Jules run out of the room yelling to his mother that Verne was hitting him again. Verne scowled and slammed the door shut. Spending some time on the computer would probably calm him down, he thought, so he went to it switched it on.
The computer booted up, and Verne logged onto MSN Messenger as he had done so many times before in those last few months. He had no new messages. Several 2004 friends of his were online, though most had the ‘away’ symbol next to their name. Verne noted the absence of one of them – he had deleted it himself, and blocked off J.T. from talking to or e-mailing him ever again.
He missed Jeff. They had been really good friends since the time they met on one of the Hill Valley Online message boards. Like everyone else he met on the Internet, J.T. had no idea that Verne lived in the nineteenth century, but that did little to prevent their friendship growing nonetheless.
At least, that was until Verne discovered who Jeff was. It hadn’t been intentional; both of them respected each other’s privacy and didn’t go trying to find out the real-life identity of the other. That day, he had just been surfing the message boards as usual looking for anything interesting he might want to comment on when he saw a reply to one of Jeff’s topics. It was from one of his classmates, someone who knew J.T.’s full name and didn’t think much of revealing it online: Jeffrey Tannen.
Verne had been scared.
As far as he knew, there had only ever been one family by the name of Tannen in the history of Hill Valley. And if that was true, it had been one of Jeff’s ancestors who had tried to murder Verne’s father not that many years ago. It had been another one of his ancestors – particularly his grandfather, Biff – who spent his childhood and teenage days tormenting Marty’s father George McFly. Come to think of it, Jeff had once mentioned he had a younger brother who he only referred to by the initial ‘G’. If that were who Verne thought it was, then according to what he knew of future history from his father, Jeff’s brother Griff Tannen would have been the one that got Marty’s future son into jail if Doc and Marty hadn’t gone to 2015 and prevented that from happening.
Verne didn’t know what his family would do to him if they found out that he had been making friends with a descendent of the man who had, in some other timeline that hopefully didn’t exist any longer, murdered Emmett. He didn’t know what Jules in particular might do to him. Not knowing what else to do, Verne had deleted J.T. from his MSN contact list – thus deleting him from his life.
He missed J.T.; he really did. Jeff had been a good friend to him, encouraging him on days he felt depressed, telling Verne to stand up to those who liked to bully him in school, and the two of them had spent countless hours sharing computer game cheat codes or exploring the wilderness together in Runescape.
Verne had known little of Jeff’s family. The older boy didn’t like to talk much about them, and Verne had sensed that perhaps things weren’t all too right between his family members. But he didn’t ask about it. Jeff didn’t ask about his family, so Verne saw no reason to either. They both understood that some things were personal.
After kicking J.T. off his contact list, Verne would sometimes spend his days wondering what Jeff had thought when he saw that Verne had blocked him, especially since they had been on such good terms just the day before. Verne felt guilty, somewhat, knowing that Jeff hadn’t done anything to deserve it apart from coming from the wrong family, but there was nothing he could do about it. He had to move on with life and leave the past – or future – behind him.
Verne accessed his e-mail account, and his spirits were dashed again upon seeing the newest addition to his inbox:
From - death_to_verne@hotmail.com
To - runescape_jedi@hotmail.com
Subject: Hah.Hi Verne.
Like my new email address?
- Jules, Ruler of the Universe.
----------
Die, Verne, DIE!
----------
When will Jules ever leave me alone? Verne wondered, frustration etched all over his young face. He kicked angrily at the table with his foot, then immediately regretted it because it made his foot hurt. Furiously, he typed out a reply to his brother.
From - runescape_jedi@hotmail.com
To – death_to_verne@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: Hah.One day I will steel the Time Train and erays you from existanse.
Verne
Jules didn’t care when he lived. Jules liked being in the time they were, and never gave up poking snide fun at his brother’s never-ending yearning for the future. Jules found living in the nineteenth century a learning journey, a chance to see and experience things that people from the late twentieth would never be able to.
According to Jules, they weren’t missing out on anything important. They had the time machine, after all. They could take a trip to any time period they wanted for a short while, as long as their father didn’t consider it too dangerous and if he went with them. No one else in the world had that opportunity, and Jules couldn’t see what Verne was always so unhappy about. There were people in the world who would kill for a time machine, and to Jules, Verne was just an ungrateful brat who couldn’t appreciate what he had.
The computer still on, Verne left the secret room for a moment to use the toilet, not noticing as his brother came in upon seeing his departure and sat down by the computer, deciding to use the time to check his e-mail.
He discovered Verne’s latest e-mail sitting in his inbox, and scowled as he read it. Jules heard Verne re-enter the room, and he turned around in the swivel chair to face him.
“Good morning, Verne,” Jules greeted. “I just received your little threat. Pay me another million dollars by this afternoon or I’ll tell Dad that you’re planning to steal the time train.”
“But…”
Jules shook his head. “Two million or I’m telling. Take your pick.”
Verne was left speechless as the older Brown child walked past him and out of the room, unable to think up an idea that would enable him to get hold of the two million dollars to give his brother in exchange for his beloved Game Boy Advanced, on which was saved a particularly successful Pokémon game.
Jules therefore acted on his word and went to see his father that afternoon when the latter was working in his lab. “Dad?”
Emmett glanced up at the sound of his son’s voice. “Yes?”
Jules got to the point. “My little idiot of a brother is planning to steal the train. I thought I should inform you.”
His father sighed and turned back to his work. “Don’t call your brother an idiot, Jules.”
“Just keep an eye on the time machines to make sure Verne doesn’t make off with it.”
Emmett looked at him again. “Jules, you know I trust both of you not to do that, and I think Verne knows that too. Even if he does decide to leave with one of the machines, which is highly unlikely, he won’t know how to operate them.” Emmett paused. “Just leave your brother alone, Jules. He’s having a hard time here.”
“Yeah, well, if he spends less time on the computer and watching television, he’d probably appreciate his life here more!” Jules burst out. “All he does all day is think of the future and how much he wants to live there… doesn’t he understand how lucky he is to be able to live here? Doesn’t he know that there are so many people in the future who dream of having the life he has? Can’t he just appreciate…”
His father’s voice was stern. “Jules…”
Stopped in mid-sentence, the boy seemed to realise he had gone too far. Jules bit his lip and looked down as he trying to avoid his father’s gaze. “Sorry,” he said after a while, then left the lab in a considerably subdued manner.
Emmett shook his head slowly as he watched his elder son leave the room, and not for the first time he wondered if he should have just moved the whole family back to the future upon the completion of the train time machine. That would have at least given the boys a chance at having a somewhat normal life – which they deserved as much as anyone else – and all these problems wouldn’t exist…
Pushing his thoughts aside for the moment, Emmett went back to working on a modification for the time train – a cloaking device, made with technology he had got from the future.
Outside, Jules yanked a science-fiction storybook off the bookshelf and headed for his favourite armchair to read, but the book didn’t manage to hold his attention for long.
Verne didn’t understand anything at all, Jules thought bitterly. Didn’t he know what would happen if they moved back to the future, as he wanted so desperately to do? What were the chances that their father would still be as able to spend as much time with them if Marty McFly was there as well? It wasn’t as if Emmett would be able to just ignore his best friend.
Jules couldn’t help but feel a little jealous towards the teen. From what he knew, his father and Marty had been best friends – almost like family to each other, until Emmett had decided to stay behind in the nineteenth century and start a real family of his own. But before that, the two of them had been through so much together, and Jules knew that his father missed him sometimes. That was one of the main reasons why he had set up the whole Internet thing in the first place: so that he could still communicate with his young friend despite living in a different time period.
And the worst thing was that if it hadn’t been for Marty, neither he nor Verne would exist and his mother would be dead. Jules didn’t like to know that the teen was responsible for the existence of his family. He didn’t like to feel indebted to him.
But it wasn’t as if he had a choice. Jules could only hope that his father considered the whole e-mail thing sufficient to continue his friendship with Marty, and that he wouldn’t even think of moving back to 1985.
Chapter Seven: Spaceman from Pluto
13th December 1985, Friday
Hill Valley, California
Robert Galkis of Lightwater Studios flipped through the screenplay of the movie adaptation of George McFly’s best-selling science fiction novel, ‘A Match Made in Space’, as its author watched him with anxious eyes.
“So how is it?” George asked nervously. “If it’s too long, I could cut it…”
Galkis waved aside the suggestion. “Nah, the length’s fine, absolutely fine. You’re keeping the original title, huh?”
“I, uh, haven’t really decided on that yet, but I thought it could do for the time being.”
Galkis’ face lit up. “Really? Hey, in that case… can I suggest a title? How about… let’s see… how about… Spaceman…” – he paused for dramatic effect – “…from Pluto. Huh?”
“Uh…” George said, but Galkis remained unfazed.
“Okay, see, so you have the main guy here – whatsisname – Jason, right, and he wakes up one night to find this alien standing by his bed, and that alien tells him to go to that… dance with that girl and… so maybe, maybe, the next day he mentions it to a friend, and they refer to the alien as the Spaceman from Pluto, see, so that’s where... that’s where the title comes in…
“Then… then after some time Jason starts to wonder why an alien from Pluto would care about him and, uh – Lauren, right? – getting together… I mean, he’s just this normal guy in high school. Why would some extraterrestrial worry about his love life, unless it was… important in some way… maybe like… Hey! Maybe… maybe… this alien is from the future or something, and the, uh, union of Jason and Lauren is somehow an integral part of space history, ‘cause maybe one of their kids turns out to be some… some universal leader or something in future, but perhaps some evil alien went back in time and broke them up, so now this new alien had to go back too and make sure they get together…”
“Uh…” George said again, but it didn’t do any use, for the movie producer didn’t seem to have heard him. Rob was on a roll now.
“…and then meanwhile, Jason starts to get curious, see, because he wonders what this alien wants with him, so he starts up all these investigations to find out what’s going on, and… and maybe he gets some of his friends in to help, and they all call this… this alien guy the Spaceman from Pluto, and… and… what d’you think?” Rob Galkis looked eagerly at George, his face shining.
George just gave an apologetic smile. “I… uh, I’m sorry, but I… I think I’d like to keep the original story, thanks.”
The delight faded from Galkis’ face. “Oh,” he said, and shifted his gaze to the floor. Then a thought occurred to him, and he looked up again. “Where’d you get the idea for the story, by the way?”
George hesitated. “Well, it’s like this,” he started, feeling slightly uncomfortable with Galkis staring at him so intently. “Thirty years ago in 1955, I woke up to some horrible alien noise to see this creature standing by my bed.”
“What kind of creature?”
George gave a nervous laugh. “That’s the strange thing, see… he claimed to be Darth Vader.”
Galkis raised an eyebrow. “Darth Vader? As in that guy from Star Wars with the big black cloak and the breathing problem?”
“Yeah, that one. And I seem to… remember him holding a hairdryer in one hand, only that hairdryers weren’t around in 1955.”
Rob’s interest was piqued now. “Neither was Star Wars.”
George laughed again. “I know. That’s the crazy thing, but I swear it’s all true! Really.”
Galkis’ voice was sincere. “I believe you.”
George blinked. “Really?”
“Yeah. Hey, have you ever thought of sending in your story to one of those UFO newsletters? SpaceWatch, or something. They’re always running stuff like that… they may be interested.”
George shook his head. “Nah. I… I don’t think so. It, uh, might not be good for my… reputation and all that…”
“Oh,” said Rob, looking a little disappointed. “Yeah, I see. Well, then… I guess it’s getting late, huh?” He fingered the screenplay in his hands and held it up. “I’ll send this over to the guys and see what they think of it… and I’ll try to get back to you by next week.”
“Thanks.”
“No prob.”
Walking home that evening, George ran through for the umpteenth time in his mind all the events that time and again had led him to think that there was something very strange going on in his life. Firstly, there was the Darth Vader incident that he had told Rob Galkis about. Secondly was that time in 1977 when then-eight-year-old Marty had set fire to the living room rug – an event that had been predicted in the same week in 1955 that the Darth Vader thing had happened.
That had been one eventful week, if George remembered completely. It was the week when that strange person named Calvin ‘Marty’ Klein (Calvin Klein?) had first made his appearance and seemingly disappeared without a trace when the week was over; it was the week that had the day a yet-to-be-invented Star Wars character scared him early one morning with a hairdryer; it was the week when he’d first kissed Lorraine at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance; it was the week when he’d first stood up to Biff; it was also the week of the great Hill Valley lightning storm.
George had the strange feeling that there had been something more going on in his life, something that he didn’t know anything about. Then again, of course, maybe he was just going senile and his past memories were getting a little distorted. But he could remember it all so clearly…
There had to be a logical explanation for all this. There was always a logical explanation for everything, no matter how outrageous, and he had a feeling he knew where to start.
Letting himself into his house – which was deserted; everyone was out – George went to his room and did a search among the older junk in his cupboards, finally emerging triumphant with the Hill Valley High 1955 Yearbook.
He flipped through the yellowed pages until he had found the ones he had been looking for: several black-and-white photographs taken of the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance.
Flip. There was a photo of Mr. Strickland in his younger days, still bald as usual though and looking rather annoyed. There was a photo of George himself, dancing with a spaced-out expression on his face. On the other side was a photo of Biff Tannen with some book stuck in his back pocket. Next to it was a photo of some people he didn’t know. Flip. There were more photos of people he didn’t know. Flip flip. Ooh, a picture of the floor, taken when someone tripped the photographer mid-photo-shoot. Which editor had decided to include that in the yearbook? Flip. Finally, George found what he wanted: a photo of Calvin Klein standing on stage with an electric guitar and singing.
For some reason, it didn’t come as much as a shock as he would have expected as George realised for the first time just how much Calvin looked like his youngest son, Marty. The photograph showed only the teen’s side profile, but George had the strange feeling that if his whole face had been visible, it would have looked uncannily similar to Martin Seamus McFly’s.
George stared at the picture… and he wondered. Something told him that his son was hiding something, and that in some crazy, bizarre way, Marty was connected to that photograph somehow. The only question was, how?
That week in 1955 had been a really weird one.
Chapter Eight: Breakfast of Champions
Onboard the Nebuchadnezzar
Plop.
The white glop slid off his spoon and back into the bowl from whence it came, sinking slowly down until the surface was level once more.
His breakfast seemed to be calling out to him. Eat me, it said. Eat me, Neo. I'm nutritious and healthy and tasteless, and I'm all you're ever going to eat for the rest of your pitiful little life. And what's more, there's nothing you can do about it. Hah. So there.
Neo stuck his spoon into the food and swirled it around. After a while he took up a spoonful of food, the excess bits slopping off back into the bowl, and he brought it into his mouth.
The breakfast, lunch, and dinner of champions. If you close your eyes, it almost feels like you're eating runny eggs. Or a bowl of snot.
Neo swallowed. There was no need for chewing. Half-heartedly, he scooped up more of the nutrient mix masquerading as his breakfast and mentally prepared his tastebuds for Round Two.
Tastee Wheat, the late Mouse had said. It tastes like Tastee Wheat.
Neo had never eaten Tastee Wheat before – technically, none of them had – but he was sure it tasted better than this. If Tastee Wheat really tasted like this, then it wasn’t the least bit tasty. In general, however, it seemed that the machines knew how to simulate good food in the Matrix.
Like the coffee. The blasted coffee that had kept him up all night. He didn't feel fully awake yet. Maybe this was all a dream, he thought sleepily. Maybe he hadn't actually woken up yet, and when he did wake up he'd have to eat breakfast all over again...
Or maybe he'd discover that everything that had happened in the past few days had just been one long dream, and wake up back at his computer in the dingy little apartment that had been home for so long. And everything would be normal again. He'd go to work, arrive late as usual, get yelled at by Mr. Rhineheart, go to his cubicle and try to look busy, get dinner, go home, vegetate in front of his computer, fall asleep, then wake up the next day and do it all over again. He'd have a social security number, he'd pay his taxes, and he'd help his landlady carry out the garbage. No Agents chasing after him, nobody expecting him to save the world on a diet of glop, no navigating the sewers in a hovercraft... and no Trinity.
But he supposed that everything had a price to it.
Plop.
Neo looked up from his bowl to the others, picking away at their food with varying degrees of enthusiasm and enjoyment, faces bathed in the eerie white light of the ship’s fluorescent lamps. No one was talking. The only sounds in the mess hall were the quiet ones of eating and the ever-present hum of the Nebuchadnezzar.
It was a surreal scene. And once again, Neo sensed it: that elusive feeling that he was being watched. And not only him, but all of them.
Uneasily, he scanned the top of the wall in front of him. He wasn't too sure what he expected to find – cameras, perhaps? – but there was nothing.
Neo went back to staring at his food and reluctantly consumed another two spoonfuls. Vaguely, he found himself thinking that anyone who wanted to lose weight should spend a week or two in the real world. No delicious, scrumptious eatables here to tempt you. Just your average gooey white stuff, take it or leave it.
Plop.
Neo gently shook the now half-empty spoon a second time, and another lump of food fell off to land in the bowl beside the first. They looked like two eyes. He used the spoon and drew a little mouth underneath them, forming a smiley face of sorts.
A rare grin flicked briefly across Neo's face.
The food was alive, it had a mind of its own...
Stop it, said the little voice in his head. You're thirty-seven years old, for crying out loud. Stop playing with your food and eat it up.
But... he protested silently.
I said...
Who are you, anyway?
EAT IT!
Okay, fine, whatever...
Grudgingly, Neo obeyed. He supposed he could always stop by at McDonald's or something for a bite the next time he jacked into the Matrix. But for now, he needed something to sustain him until lunch.
Lunch. More of this stuff. Just thinking about it made him feel like throwing up.
The breakfast, lunch, and dinner of champions. Oh yeah.
Chapter Nine: Real TV
11th November 1895, Monday
Hill Valley, California
Verne looked on in wonder as the television screen filled with images he’d never seen before, channelled straight to their little set all the way from another part of the space-time continuum.
Real television. Before this, all he had ever been able to watch were the videotapes, VCDs and DVDs that the family had collected during their various trips through time. But now… The television set could now show no less than twenty different channels from the future – in particular, the year 2004.
Doc emerged from behind the television set, which had been shifted from its original position in the room to make it more convenient for the wires to connect it to their Internet modem.
“How is it?” he asked.
“Great!” Verne enthused. “Thanks, Dad!”
“I’ll get you some blank videotapes from the future when I’m free,” Emmett said. “That way you can tape movies straight of the television and we won’t have to buy them.”
For Verne Newton Brown, the world’s first ever TV addict, this was possibly the happiest day of his life. All the events of that morning with Jules seemed far away and irrelevant now. Why would he need his Game Boy when he had real TV?
He loved the movies. He loved the TV programmes. He even loved the commercial breaks. And he also loved the fact that for some reason, there were more than twenty channels available although his father had been fairly convinced that the twenty were all there were. Several of the extra channels seemed the same as one of the original ones, but with slight variations. Verne didn’t care. He loved them all.
As he sat in front of the screen watching real television like people in the future did, Verne could not recall ever being so happy.
Chapter Ten: Of Ghosts and Sofas
(This chapter was adapted from a screenplay version of this novel that my brother wrote for fun.)
5th November 1998, Thursday
Christchurch, New Zealand
“So that’s Eddie, huh?” Frank asked.
“Yeah,” Bob replied.
The ghost lay spread out on the blue Chesterfield sofa and appeared to be asleep, until Frank heard soft whispers coming out from Eddie’s general mouth area.
“Sofa… my sofa… my precious…”
Curious, Frank walked over to the sofa and placed a hand on it.
The effect was immediate. Eddie’s murmuring stopped… and then he leapt up at Frank. “GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY SOFA!” he shrieked.
Frank raised an eyebrow. He didn’t scare easily.
Eddie went into hysterics, fitfully flying about and yelling incoherently at Frank.
“I told you, he’s a little particular about that couch,” Bob said.
“IT’S A SOFA!” Eddie yelled, frothing at the mouth and spitting as he spoke.
Frank finally removed his hand, wiping bits of ectoplasmic spit off his face. “Hey, calm down,” he said.
Eddie whipped out a ghostly cloth and aerosol can from a pocket and proceeded to painstakingly clean the area of the sofa that had come into contact with Frank’s hand.
Frank tentatively reached out a finger and touched another part of the sofa. Eddie rewarded him by bashing the aerosol can against Frank’s head.
Frank winced. “Nice guy,” he said to Bob, then strolled out of the room.
“He’ll calm down after a while,” Bob assured him, following him out. “He’s not always like that. Just don’t touch his couch.”
“IT’S A SOFA!” came Eddie’s loud retort.
The aerosol can flew whizzing out of the doorway and hit Bob squarely on the head.
“Ow,” he said, and collapsed in an ectoplasmic heap on the floor.
“How long has Eddie been here?” Frank asked when Bob had picked himself off the ground.
Bob shrugged. “He was here before I moved in. All the other haunted houses were occupied, and I didn’t like living in a house full of living people who screamed whenever I picked up something or moved about. This place is big, and Eddie never knew I was here until quite late. He was too obsessed with his couch to notice me.”
“IT’S A SOFA!” came Eddie’s angry shout. A damp cloth flew out the doorway and fhwapped Bob on the head.
“He’s got a good aim,” Frank observed.
Chapter Eleven: The Hill Valley Band Competition
14th December 1985, Saturday
Hill Valley, California
“These are the rules for the Hill Valley Band Competition 1985,” Mrs. Challis said slowly, as if she were speaking to very young children. She passed out two sheets of paper to each of the four bandleaders in the school, ignoring the incredulous looks most of them gave them. On the first sheet was a list of rules Marty considered simply ridiculous, and on the other was a list of the competing bands. Seeing the name of one particular band there, Marty’s face fell.
“If you don’t follow the rules, you will be disqualified,” the head of the Hill Valley High music department continued. “Simple? There will be bands from other towns coming in to play as well, so please do not give them a bad impression of our school, or of Hill Valley. Understand?”
Half-hearted nods filled the room that didn’t seem to satisfy Mrs. Challis very much, but there was nothing much she could do about it.
“All right, you can go now.”
Leaving the dismissed meeting, Marty ran up to his fellow band members sitting around outside the school.
“Hey, guys!” he yelled, trying to pull their attention away from the bass guitarist’s pet ant, Howard, on the table. “Rules are here. I just received them from Mrs. Challis… you’re supposed to read through them.” Marty sighed and slumped down onto the bench.
J.J., the drummer, was the first to look up. Few people actually knew what his initials stood for; his full name was James Jello Kenbridge. Rumour went that his parents had let him choose his middle name when he was two years old, and he had chosen ‘Jello’ – a decision he was to regret for the rest of his life. His parents had apparently had a warped sense of humour, for they had agreed to it and actually made the name official. It was currently the number one embarrassment in J.J.’s life, and he always introduced himself by his initials alone whenever possible; he wasn’t that fond of his first name either because he already knew too many people named James.
“Let me see that,” he said, grabbing the paper from Marty and reading aloud. “‘To all bands participating in the Hill Valley Band Competition 1985, a few points to note… Number one: The maximum sound volume allowed is fifty decibels. To facilitate this change, no microphones shall be allowed on stage.’” J.J. stared open-mouthed at the other three members of The Pinheads. “Fifty decibels? What are we, mice? It’s not possible to play that softly!”
“Look,” Marty started, but J.J. interrupted him.
“No, don’t give me any of that ‘If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything’ stuff, Marty. It’s just… not possible.”
Marty raised his hands in a ‘whatever’ position and flung them down again in resignation as the drummer continued.
“’Number two: No kicking over of any stage object is allowed. Violators of this law will be punished accordingly. Number three: Keep all clothes on. Number four: Patriotic songs are not allowed on the grounds that they give you an unfair advantage.’ Yeah, like we’ve ever played any. ‘Number five: All band members must be human. So no parrots. It's called 'showing off'. Uh, Marty, does that mean I can’t go? I’m not human… am I?”
The bandleader gazed at a random spot on the floor. “Disaster Area is going to be there too. Think we can beat them?”
“WHAT?”
There was a nervous laugh from the keyboardist, Nick. “Um, it was nice knowing you guys; see you all in the next life.” Nick got up to go and Marty yanked him back down. He sighed. “Seriously, Marty, we can’t win this if they’re in. They’re good and the judges like them, so we’re doomed, okay?”
“If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything,” Marty said, sounding very unconvinced even to his own ears.
J.J. grinned. “SEE? What’d I tell you? I knew he was going to say that.”
“Shut up, Jello,” Steve said, then ducked as J.J. sent a punch flying his way. J.J. missed and hit the table instead, whereupon Steve yelled.
“WATCH IT! You nearly squished Howard!”
“We can win this,” Marty continued, ignoring the bass guitarist and the drummer. “We have to. Please. We’ve practised so much…”
Nick gave him a pitying look. “C’mon, Marty. Be a little realistic here, ‘kay? We didn’t even survive the dance auditions in October, so what makes you think we can win a competition? Why don’t we all just quit the band and concentrate on our studies like good little kids? I’m sorry, but I really don’t think we can win this. Especially since we lost that amplifier at Dr. Brown’s garage because you blew it up. I don’t know why you’re so confident, Marty. It’s not like you know the future or anything.”
Marty stared at Nick. “What?”
Nick stared back at him. “What?”
“What did you say?”
Nick shrugged. “I said that I don’t know why you’re so confident.”
“No, not that. You said something about the future…”
“Yeah, I said that it’s not like you know the future.”
Marty nodded slowly, feeling strangely detached. “I know. Look, don’t give up practising, okay? We can win this. Ah… I’ve got to go.” The teen suddenly leapt up and left in a run, leaving the rest of The Pinheads band staring after him.
“Marty?” J.J. yelled. “Where’re you going?”
He didn’t reply.
Steve stared. “What’s up with Marty?” he asked. The bassist suddenly felt his fingers squish something, and he looked down, gaping in horror at the smushed insect. “Howard… NO!”
The keys to Doc’s garage were in their usual place under the mat. Marty grabbed them and unlocked the door, then hurried inside and locked the door behind him. Dashing over to the computer, he switched it on and tapped impatiently on the table as he waited for it to boot up.
“Come on… come on…”
Doc would probably go ballistic if he knew what Marty was using the computer for, but the teen really didn’t care as he typed in ‘Hill Valley Band Competition 1985+results’ into the search bar.
The search engine gave him several results, and Marty was about to click on a promising looking one when another link lower down caught his attention. It looked different, somehow, a very slightly different shade of blue from the other links and indented one space more than the others:
BTTF.COM – Your Definitive Guide to the World of Back to the Future
Not knowing what he was doing, Marty hesitantly moved the cursor over to it and clicked on the link.
The page downloaded and opened up, and the teen stared wide-eyed as he slowly scrolled down the main page, taking in the words, taking in the pictures.
There was something very weird going on here. Something very weird…
In what took less than ten seconds, Marty closed the Internet window and shut down the computer. He stared unseeingly at the blank screen and took a shaky breath. Closing his eyes, he leaned against the chair, trying to catch his breath and calm down at the same time.
He didn’t know what that site had been. Something about it, however, told him with a definite certainty that whatever it was, it was a website that he had never been meant to see. And he had seen it. He didn’t understand what he had seen. He didn’t think he wanted to, either, and his mind would not permit him to think any more about the website than necessary.
Half of him expected something dramatic to happen at any moment, but minutes passed and nothing did. Slowly Marty opened his eyes. The place was normal. Everything was normal.
Then the phone rang, and he jumped.
Marty stared at the telephone as if it were an alien that had just appeared out of nowhere. About several seconds passed before he finally got off the chair and reached out a trembling hand to pick it up.
“Hello?” he asked in a shaky voice, prepared to yank the phone off the hook and throw it out the window at the first sign of anything abnormal.
He had never before in his life been so thankful to hear Nick’s voice. “Marty? Is that you?”
“Yeah,” the teen replied, heaving a small sigh of relief. “Yeah, it’s me.”
“You weren’t at home, and Jennifer said she thought you’d be here… Why’d you just run off like that? Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
Nick remained unconvinced. “You don’t sound okay. I… can call back later if you want.”
“No, I’m fine. Really.”
“Okay then. I just thought I should tell you that… uh, the school band is having a concert on the same day as the competition, and the drum major won’t let me go for it.”
Marty took a while to digest that piece of information, and his face fell. “So… you’re not coming?”
“Yeah. Sorry. Oh, and Steve told me to tell you that his dog trashed his guitar and ate up all the strings, so I’m lending him mine. It’s kind of old, but it still works okay. But his dog wasn’t as lucky – the vet said that…”
Marty nodded miserably, more depressed over the guitar than the dog. “J.J.’s still coming, right?” he cut in.
“Should be. Hey, Marty, I’m really sorry.”
“Nah, it’s okay,” came the lifeless reply. “We’re doomed anyway.”
Marty hung up the phone dejectedly and sat back down on the chair. He might as well go home. There was nothing more he could do here… well, there was. He could at least e-mail Doc and see what help the inventor might be in finding out the results of the competition.
Somewhat apprehensively, Marty started up the computer again, but nothing strange happened. Logging into his e-mail, he started a new message:
From - futureboy85@hillvalley-online.com
To - julesvernefan@yahoo.com
Subject: HelpDoc, I know you said that I’m not supposed to do so, but just for once, can you please let me check the results of the 1985 Hill Valley Band Competition? Please? Half my band already wants to drop out, and I don’t know how to convince them that we can still do this if we practise hard enough. They don’t believe me. I don’t believe me either, so I don’t blame them.
I know this might cause a paradox or something if we end up getting different results from what we’re supposed to, but you can solve that, right?
Thanks.
- Marty
And it was with some hesitation that Marty typed the final line:
P.S.: Do you know of the site BTTF.com? It’s… strange.
He figured that that would do for the moment. Marty shut down the computer and left the garage.
Skating home, he entered his house and went to his bedroom where he lay down on his bed, all thoughts of the strange website gone for the moment. Everything had been replaced with just one: Why me?
This competition meant so much to him. Ever since its formation in late 1982, The Pinheads had never before entered any kind of major contest. They’d never even performed to an audience larger than fifty, and more than half of those people had just happened to be walking by when they were playing. Marty saw this competition as a way to finally get themselves some publicity, to show Hill Valley and perhaps later the world what their band could be… but with his other band members so convinced that they would lose, how ever could they achieve that?
Marty sighed, sitting up in bed and throwing an impassive glance around his room. His gaze finally settled on one of the three books some classmate had given him for his seventeenth birthday that year – The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams, the second book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. The other two he’d received had been the first and third in the series. Marty had already read the first one (he thought it was funny, though still stupid all the same) but hadn’t touched the sequels yet. He never really had time to, and they weren’t exactly his kind of books. Besides, the later half of 1985 had been a particularly stressful time for him. He had too many things to worry about to have time to read anything outside of schoolbooks and lesson notes.
Reaching over his pillow to the shelves at the head of his bed, Marty picked up the paperback and flipped aimlessly to the last few pages. “Six by nine. Forty-two,” he read. Forty-two: The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, as he had learnt from the first book. So six by nine was the Ultimate Question to the Ultimate Answer?
What the…
Marty turned back to the front page and read from the beginning, immersing himself in the crazily weird world of Arthur Philip Dent and Ford Prefect. He could well do with some cheering up.
Several chapters later, however, he learnt what Disaster Area had named themselves after – Disaster Area was the name of a band from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Was that legal? Hadn’t the name been copyrighted or something?
Just what I needed, Marty thought bitterly, chucking the book aside and slumping back down onto his bed. Why did everything have to remind him of the competition?
Disaster Area. The one he knew comprised of six members: Lewis on lead guitar, Ashley on bass, Eric on keyboard, Ivan on drums and two kids named William and Theodore who just seemed to hang around backstage and help move things around.
Disaster Area. The bane of The Pinheads. The members of the two bands had met before, once or twice; that of the D.A. were actually quite nice people if not for the fact that they had a nasty habit of always winning all the competitions Marty’s band hoped to.
They’d probably win this one too, Marty thought morosely, wondering if it might not be better to just pull out of the competition and save his band the embarrassment of losing to Disaster Area yet again.
Chapter 12 »
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