Real World
Written by Anakin McFly
« Contents Page + Prologue
« Chapters 1.1–1.11
« Chapters 1.12–1.16
« Chapters 1.17–1.21
PART TWO – Welcome to the Real World
- Prologue for Part Two
- Kenselton Hotel
- Can't Change the Past
- Dreams Are My Reality
- Missing or a Sheep
- Neo and Ted’s Not So Excellent Meeting
REAL WORLD: PART TWO
Welcome to the Real World
“If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?”—Shylock, The Merchant of Venice
Chapter One: Prologue for Part Two
Nowhere in particular
Possibly half-way up your large intestine
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy says that space is “big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.”[x]
And what’s more, that’s just one universe. There are an infinite number of hypothetical parallel universes, one for every possible and impossible thing that can happen. Two parallel universes may be exactly alike save for the position of an oxygen molecule at 3:45 a.m. on April Fools’ Day 2004 on the planet Gutkaffee, a place renowned for its excellent coffee.
Parallel universes are a funny thing. They are virtually infinite, with one universe at least home to any imaginable outcome of a cause. In some parallel universe out there, exactly forty-two seconds after reading this word, you will be turned into a very surprised llama. In that universe, everything else might be completely identical to this one save for the sudden llama-transformation, and that is where the scariness lies.
However, it can be argued that parallel universes are only infinite in one sense of the word, as in the same kind of infinity that applies to numbers. Numbers go on to infinity; there is no largest number in existence. Yet despite them being infinite, they will, nevertheless, always remain numbers, which creates an interesting paradox. Let’s say that the number after seventy-three googolplexion is not, in fact, a number, but rather a cupcake. So you get ‘seventy-three googolplexion, 
, seventy-three googolplexion and one.’
Impossible, right? But numbers go on to infinity, and with infinity there is infinite possibility and therefore also infinite impossibility is possible. Infinite possibility is also equivalent to infinite improbability… which basically means that if you activate the Infinite Improbability Drive, mathematics might very likely start to become edible. It would also mean that the time-honoured excuse of homework-eating dogs might start becoming more believable.
But all this is side-tracking and actually a direct contradiction to the point I’m trying to make, so it might be a good idea to forget what you’ve just read in the previous paragraph.
Parallel universes are therefore quite similar to numbers in that there is no end to their number of members, but at the same time they cannot, in normal circumstances, include everything. In the same way that a cupcake cannot be a number save under the influence of the Infinite Improbability Drive, some parallel universes just cannot exist.
There cannot be one where parallel lines intersect, for one, or a universe in which God can make a stone He cannot lift. Neither can there be a universe in which someone invents a machine that makes me spontaneously combust right before I write this.
Or can there?
On a bright and sunny morning, Polly Jane was skipping happily down the transparent street when all of a sudden she saw two parallel lines intersect before her eyes.
Which brings me to the point about the reality of fiction.
If parallel universes are really infinite, as they are, it means that there exists a whole, separate world for every work of fiction ever conceived – be it book, movie, television programme, computer game, outright lie, daydream or shampoo advertisement. In that world, that particular fiction is the reality. There is a universe in which Captain James Tiberius Kirk commands the USS Enterprise; there is a universe in which even now a young hobbit named Frodo Baggins is making his arduous journey to the fires of Mount Doom; there is a world where Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father; there is even a world where Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s mother, but let’s not go into that.
Fiction is a strange thing. The exact boundaries between fiction and reality are never as clearly defined as many believe them to be. What is fiction for somebody may very well be the reality for somebody else.
Take a typical fictional character, for example. Let’s call her Mary T. She eats, sleeps, socialises, works, plays, goes to church, pays her taxes, and uses the toilet just like any other human being. She has feelings, hopes, dreams, personality, aspirations, wants and fears just like any real person and Sim does. She has friends and family whom she loves and cares for, enemies whom she dislikes and avoids, a pet dog named Rufus and a hamster or two. She may be exactly like a hundred people you know, with the only exception being that she is fictional.
Yet she probably doesn’t know that she is. To her, her life is reality, not a mere product of someone’s imagination, and she would not be able to easily accept the truth.
How do you even know that you yourself are real? For all you know, all your thoughts and actions now are being dictated by some writer in another universe. I think, therefore I am… but fictional characters think as well in those little bits of italicised text you see, so how does that make you any different?
What if, five minutes from now, you suddenly find yourself magically transported to another universe, where you are met by some guy who calmly informs you that you are just a character in this story he was writing? Not possible, you think, and ‘not possible’, thinks Mary with a cynical smirk.
All of a sudden, Mary found herself magically transported to another universe, where she met a bored teenage writer who calmly informed her that she was just a character thought up for the pitiful purpose of illustrating an example.
Say hi to Mary.
Mary, stop looking so stunned. And get away from the keyboa;ldskjfrpasafeoiruofjalsf
Ldsafkajsdpofapseurewljsd
Sfauddenly mary lfedDIE ;falsdk f MARY DIED.
Okay, that’s better. Only goes to prove that the keyboard is mightier than the sword, and a whole lot less bloody too.
There is, therefore, by logical extrapolation, a universe in which a girl named Polly Jane did see two parallel lines intersect. The multiverse is a strange place indeed.
Once upon a time in one part of the multiverse, there was a spaceship. This was no ordinary spaceship. It was the Heart of Gold, a ship that propelled its way through the vastness of space through the sheer force of improbability. The Improbability Drive, a wholly ingenious invention (powered by a cup of nice, hot, British tea) that you can read more about in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, made this possible.
However, unknown to anybody, it also made a lot of other things possible.
When Emmett’s device started impacting negatively on the space-time continuum, it would have been highly improbable that the first universe to be affected as a result would be the Hitchhiker’s one. But that’s where the Improbability Drive comes in, and it was.
It was also highly improbable that the next few universes to come in, out of the zillions and oxzillions and googolplexions of parallel universes out there, would be that of what were movies in a place some call the ‘real world’ – and not just any movies, but movies that were mostly connected in some way or other – via actors or directors or whatnot – if you sat down and thought about it with a pencil, a piece of paper, and a encyclopaedic knowledge of the cast and crew of all the fandoms involved in this story.
The Improbability Drive made that happen too.
In the ‘real world’ meantime, a guy named Keith Arthur Fong was working on a little machine of his that could create dimensional tears and through this enable him to grab objects or people from other universes into his.
It was extremely improbable that all of these could be happening at the same time. But that’s what the Improbability Drive does – it makes improbable things happen. And so, as a result of everything that was going on, the space-time continuum was overcome by stress and went crazy. A similar event can be seen happening to school students before a major examination, and in order to witness this all you have to do is pay a visit to any school during the examination period.
Rips formed in the space-time continuum. Things and people started getting transported from one universe to the next, and insanity ruled the multiverse.
Fun, ain’t it?
Now excuse me while I go bury Mary’s corpse in a place the police will never think of.
Chapter Two: Kenselton Hotel
31st March 2004, Wednesday
The Real World
Real world. The words poked annoyingly at Neo. Welcome to the real world, Morpheus had said, after Neo had been plunged out of the reality he’d always known, found himself naked in a pod full of icky pink goo, got flushed out of the system like so much sewage, and got rescued by the Nebuchadnezzar.
Welcome to the real world, this new guy in front of him said now, after pulling him out of the other real world and dumping him in this weird room, just when Neo had finally managed to get somewhat used to the other new reality that Morpheus claimed was the real world.
These people gave him a headache.
Yet he’d known, somehow. He’d suspected something, at least. It was as he’d told Trinity; they had no real way of knowing if their reality was indeed the real one, any more than the people plugged into the Matrix knew their reality was just a computer simulation. All the people who had managed to escape the Matrix were all living oblivious and happily in the ‘real’ world, assuming with an amazing demonstration of logical fallacy that if the previous real had been fake, then this one had to be real.
The way things were going, Neo bet that this new real world probably wasn’t the real one either.
He felt something clenched within the fingers of his left hand, and looked down to see that he had brought the really cool sunglasses across as well. He looked at its case, derived a shred of comfort from it, and stuck it into his pocket as he slowly stood up. His head was still spinning from the journey, but he was glad that at least there was no icky pink goo this time, and more importantly he was fully clothed.
"Who are you?" Neo asked guardedly.
“My name is Keith,” said the man who had welcomed them. “But that’s not important.”
“How’d we get here?” Neo questioned softly. He was about to ask where this here was, but then realised that that question had already been answered. The real world. Probably not the real world, just a real world. Those things were everywhere.
“I made you come here,” Keith replied. He leant casually against the door. “Eight years of research and work and some h- …and… and I finally managed to do it – transport people and things from other worlds into this one. Specifically, fictional worlds.” Keith grinned in a way that barely hid his excitement.
Neo hadn’t been prepared for that last bit. “Wha’?”
“You’re not real, see,” Keith continued. “None of you are. Your lives, everything you’ve ever known… all fictional, mere fragments of someone’s imagination that ended up as movies. Fictional movies,” he added for added, albeit somewhat redundant, effect.
Half-sitting-half-lying on the floor next to Neo, Marty McFly was trembling. Keith gave another grin and walked towards the teen, squatting down so that they were at eye level.
"Hi, Marty," Keith whispered. Marty's mouth moved slightly, but no words came out. "I thought you might want to see this..."
Keith moved his hand from behind his back to in front of him, and placed the Back to the Future DVD in front of Marty.
Neo visibly saw the colour drain from the teen's face.
Taking a shaky breath, Marty slowly reached out an unsteady hand to the DVD and closed his fingers around the case. Nervously, he turned it over to read the words on the back, and he silently took them in – the words that were the synopsis of the movie, the synopsis of his life. Part of it, anyway, but it was enough.
The teen swallowed, trying to keep away from Keith the minor reward of seeing how much the sight of the DVD had affected him. What with all that had been going on, Marty had known that somewhere, in some other dimension, he was just part of some movie... but all that had always seemed so distant somehow. Now, however, seeing the Back to the Future DVD in his hands hit home the hard truth in a way nothing else could have done...
"Why did you bring us here for?"
Neo's quiet voice took Marty's attention temporarily away from the DVD. He placed it carefully back onto the floor with a kind of gentle reverence, then looked up, ashen-faced, to see what Keith's reply to that was.
Keith shrugged. "It's a new technology, and I was… uh, just trying it out to see if it would work. For some reason, it never did before. But I suppose it was partly because I tried it out too early this month, before Doc created that portal." Keith smirked. "I knew all about that, see."
“How?” Neo asked.
The smirk faded a little and Keith shifted his feet around uncomfortably. “That’s none of your business.”
Neo remained unperturbed. "If all that was fictional, as you said, then that portal wouldn't even exist in the first place."
“It did,” Keith said. “I suppose that fiction could be considered real to some extent. For example, say that someone wrote a story in which there was a machine which caused every single universe to blow up. Such a machine would theoretically exist, if there’s a universe for every kind of possible… outcome, every kind of possible reality. So in this story, the guy activates the machine and every single universe blows up. That would include this universe, wouldn’t it?
“So basically I was working with the same kind of principle. I, uh, thought that if there was – which there is – a universe in which Dr. Emmett Brown of the Back to the Future movies invented a device that created tears in the space-time continuum, connecting other universes such as this to his own, then perhaps there might be a way to actually be affected by the effects of those tears… It’s complicated.” Keith paused.
“My father and younger brother Andrew have always been Back to the Future fans, so that’s why I thought it would be fun to use a variant of that universe for my experiment,” Keith continued, concealing the fact that he had a much more important reason to use that particular universe. “Actually, I've never understood why they liked the trilogy so much. Personally, I can't see what's so great about the movies."
Marty subconsciously clenched the fingers on his right hand into a loose fist.
“So I made the connection,” Keith continued, “and, uh, some other universes got affected as well, even those that I didn’t, uh, originally intend to get access to. So I thought it would be nice if I brought two of you over to keep Marty company.”
"What're you going to do to us?" Frank asked, speaking for the first time in a while and keeping his gaze pointedly averted from Marty.
Keith thought about this for a while. “I don’t know,” he said. “I was planning to just let you stay here and see if you survive. There's all that stuff about dimensional incompatibility and all that. You’d probably die, but I want to see how long it takes… If you die, then I’ll have to make use of the sub-meson averager in future; but in the rare case that you don’t die, then I can save energy on that machine and can continue to bring in… other people and things from the universes currently at my disposal." Keith grinned. "Imagine the kind of money I could get from selling lightsabers... and that's just the tip of the iceberg."
Frank called Keith the less refined form of the phrase ‘anal orifice’. "So you're just going to see how long it takes for us to die?" he asked.
“Uh, yeah. I suppose so.”
"You..." Frank took a sudden step towards the older man, intent on separating his head from his body, when with one swift motion Keith grabbed hold of Marty, whipped out a pistol, and stuck its barrel against Marty’s head.
“You were saying?” Keith asked, using one leg to kick Marty as the teen struggled to get free.
“I…” Frank took in the sight of the gun against the head of his struggling teenage doppelganger and faltered, lost for words. He stepped back, and Keith took the gun away from Marty, shoving the teen aside.
“Be glad I'm feeling merciful today,” Keith said. “And I never said that you're all going to die for sure." Keith stuck the pistol back into his pocket and looked back at the trio. "Come on. Unless you want to spend the next few days in here, that is.”
The three characters followed Keith out of the room into what looked a lot like some hotel corridor, mainly because it was. Marty still felt more than a little queasy, and trailed slightly behind the others as he tried not to think about everything Keith had said.
Keith stopped outside the door to Room 437, which had had bolts installed on the outside. Unbolting the door, he pushed it open. Keith fished out a key card from his pocket and stuck it into the card slot near the door. The lights came on to reveal a relatively well-furnished hotel room.
“You two, go in,” Keith said casually, motioning Frank and Marty to enter. They hesitated, glancing uneasily at each other.
“Well?” Keith prompted. “Go on. Be glad I'm so kind to you. There are worse places I could have made you stay in. You even get room service and free Internet access so you don't die of boredom or starvation.” He paused. “Alternatively, if you want to spend what might be the last few days of your life lying out here in the corridor, I’m not going to stop you…”
Noticing Keith's hand moving dangerously close to his pocket, the two finally complied and entered. Keith closed the door, then opened it again as he remembered something. “Oh,” he added, “and don’t even think of trying to escape. Even if you manage to… where would you go?”
Keith grinned, then shut the door and shot the bolts home before leading Neo off to Room 436.
There was a moment's awkward silence as Frank and Marty just stared at each other... and then the teen suddenly realised that he now had the chance to do something he'd wanted to do for a long time.
Dashing over to the adjoining bathroom, Marty bent over the sink and threw up.
Half-heartedly, he washed away the remaining vomit from his mouth before leaning his head against the cool tiles of the bathroom walls, eyes squeezed shut in despair.
Fictional. He was fictional. Created by some movie maker, a figment of someone’s imagination… his whole life wasn't real, everything wasn't real, everything...
Marty broke down and cried.
How long he stood there, he didn't know, oblivious of anything and everything until he felt a hand on his shoulder gently guiding him away from the sink.
"It's okay, kid," Frank said quietly. "It's okay."
Slowly, Marty opened his eyes to look into an identical but slightly steadier pair.
"It's okay," Frank repeated, making an effort to hide the shaking in his voice and trying to convince himself as much as Marty. "It's all right."
Hands trembling slightly, he pulled the teen into a tight hug.
It gave them both the weirdest of feelings, but for a long time neither let go.
#
The first thing that Neo noticed when Keith shut him into his five-star prison was the glaring absence of a computer. Looking dismally around the room, he realised that Keith had probably known better than to put a computer hacker like him into a room with Internet access.
Just how much does Keith know about me anyway? Neo wondered, discomfited. Keith hadn’t told him anything at all apart from the fact that he happened to be some fictional movie character, which Neo still found a little hard to believe. He admitted that his life was strange, but even then…
That was Marty McFly next door. The-guy-from-Back-to-the-Future. Neo had watched that trilogy, back in his life plugged into the Matrix… Marty McFly wasn’t supposed to exist; yet there he was. Neo bet that the teen didn’t think he was fictional either. None of the three of them did. Why would they? They had each grown up in their own world, each convinced that he was real, with no reason to suspect otherwise.
How did they even know that this world was the real one? Was there any definitive 'real world' in the first place? Or just a whole series of parallel universes, the inhabitants of each filled with the selfish notion that their world was the real one, the only one that mattered…
In some other parallel universe out there, Neo might just as well happen to be a purple-spotted fish with radioactive fins and a penchant for shiny things. The possibilities were endless.
And in this universe he just so happened to be fictional. But in that case, couldn’t Keith have at least told him the title of the movie he was supposedly from? Or the name of the person who’d acted as him? With his luck, the latter was probably some weird guy with some foreign name that no one could pronounce. He probably couldn’t act either. Not that Neo would be able to see if that was truly the case, for the simple fact that there was no computer.
Feeling faintly annoyed, Neo walked towards the windows in the room and pushed aside a curtain. Night had fallen outside. A backwards glance at the digital clock on the bedside table showed the time to be 11:42 pm.
The ground wasn’t far down, which was good if Neo somehow managed to overcome his fear of heights and decide to escape that way. Although what Keith had told the other two was true: if he escaped, where would he go? He’d be no better off anywhere out there than in here.
Releasing his hold of the curtain and letting it fall back into place, Neo sat down on one of the two beds and buried his face in his hands.
He thought about the rest of the crew on board the Nebuchadnezzar. What would they do when the discovered he had suddenly vanished? Or did they even exist in the first place, outside his memories? And Trinity… did she exist, either?
“Trin…”
Neo lifted his head from his hands to stare dispiritedly at his reflection in the mirror opposite.
And not for the first time, but ever more so now, he wondered who he was.
#
While everything else was happening, a certain sheep was having a nice time chewing away on the strings of one of Marty's guitars.
"Baaaaaaaaaa," it baaed. Munch munch. "Baaaaaaaaaaaa."
Chapter Three: Can't Change the Past
1979
The Real World
He hoped that no one would be able to find him here. The usual recess sounds of children laughing and playing reached his ears, but it all seemed so far away, as if it were part of another world. But on this side of the school, he could be by himself, all alone, just the way he liked it.
Sitting down on the grass with his back to the brick wall, the seven-year-old opened his lunchbox and munched on a peanut-butter sandwich as he gazed out past the wire fence at the traffic going past outside.
This is how it should be, he thought. If he could keep coming here each recess, he might never have to see Walter Reynolds ever again, would never again have to…
“Oh, so THERE you are.”
No, the boy thought desperately, but he knew it was too late, and so he stood up, trying his best to hide the fear in his eyes. “What do you want, Walter?”
The older boy ignored the question. His two friends stood smirking behind him, ready to assist if the need arose. “What’re you doing all the way out here?” the nine-year-old asked. “You weren’t trying to escape, from me, were you?” He smiled. “Don’t think you can run. I’ll always know where you are.”
Keith remained silent. Go away, he thought. Just go away and leave me alone… just go away… just go away…
Walter snatched his lunchbox away from him, gave it a disdainful look and emptied its remaining contents on the ground. “Hold him,” he ordered his friends, and the two of them pinned the younger boy against the wall as Walter casually stripped Keith of his pocket money for that week. The half-eaten sandwich dropped onto the ground.
Keith glared angrily at Walter, struggling against the grip of the other two boys, but he couldn’t do anything and he knew it. There had been no point in thinking he could escape, after all… Walter would always find him, nothing would ever change…
Walter counted the coins and shook his head. “It’s less than last week,” he said. “Whatever have you been buying?”
“That’s none of your business,” Keith replied, regretting his words the instance they left his mouth. “It’s my money.”
Walter leaned in close to him until Keith could feel his hot breath on his face. “Oh yeah?” Walter asked. “Well, it’s my money now, so too bad.”
“Give it back...”
“What would you do if I don’t? Tell the teacher? Tell the principal? Tell your mummy?” Walter paused, malice glinting in his eyes. “Oh wait, I forgot. You don’t have a mummy any more…”
His friends laughed, and Walter grinned in satisfaction. He knew he’d touched a nerve.
Keith glowered. His hands ached so much to just put themselves around Walter’s neck and squeeze it till he choked and cried and begged to be released and…
Somehow, his foot broke loose and flew forward, connecting squarely with Walter’s stomach. The latter stumbled back, staring at the younger boy with more surprise than pain in his eyes.
“You kicked me?” Walter asked, in a voice that Keith had come to recognise as dangerous. “You KICKED me?”
Walter’s friends slowly backed away, leaving Keith on his own to face the other boy.
The next thing Keith felt was a hard punch that sent him keeling over onto the ground, before a volley of violent kicks rained down on his small body. He yelled in pain and tried to get back up, but always someone would push him down again and he’d be unable to. When the torture finally subsided, it took several seconds before Keith dared to look up again, and he watched with angry tears in his eyes the departing forms of Walter and his gang.
One day they’ll pay, he thought furiously. One day he was going to make them pay, he was going to make them hurt so bad that they screamed and begged for mercy but he wasn’t going to give it to them, he wouldn’t let them go because they wouldn’t let him go…
And how did Walter dare to talk that way about his mother?
Ever since the news of his mother’s sudden death had reached Keith’s ears less than a month ago, Keith had known that life was going to be much, much worse from then on.
Rachel Kenselton-Fong, small-time actress and mother of two, was gone forever.
It had been a car crash. Of all the things that could have happened, it had to be a car crash. Many nights since that fateful day, Keith had lain awake in bed, thinking of what he would have liked to do to that stupid drunk driver that had taken his mother’s life.
She had been his only source of comfort. Whenever Walter bullied him at school and took his money, Keith could always just go home and she would be there for him, and everything would be all right… but now, nothing would ever be all right, never again.
There were days after school when he couldn’t take it any more and would spend his time in front of the television watching his mother’s movies, those few films that she had acted in before she passed away. And he would pretend that those characters on the screen were really her, and wished that one of them would step out of the television set and become real, and hold him in her arms and everything would be all right again…
But they never did. She was gone, and Keith knew it.
Chapter Four: Dreams Are My Reality
31st March 2004, Wednesday
The Real World
“So you’re from New Zealand?” Marty asked, staring up at the ceiling as he lay face up on one of the two beds in the room.
“Yeah… Well actually, I just migrated there a few months ago. Before that I lived in North California in a half-built house with a leaky roof. I designed it myself… I used to be an architect, see. Then one day seventy-percent of the house collapsed after a thunderstorm, and I decided it was better to just move. I didn’t exactly have a very good reputation there anyway.”
“Okay… So what’s it like over there?”
“Full of sheep,” Frank answered simply, clicking on the icon for Internet Explorer. Marty winced inwardly, the memory of a certain sheep coming to mind.
“What else?”
“More sheep.” Frank accessed IMDB.com and waited for the page to load. It was taking forever, as usual. “So… ah, d’you know the other guy?”
Marty rolled over onto his side to face Frank. “What other guy?”
“The one who arrived with us just now.”
“Neo?”
“Yeah.” Frank scrolled down the IMDB.com main page to see if there was anything of interest, but nothing caught his eye.
“I don’t exactly know him… I know he’s from a movie called The Matrix, because I watched it some time ago.”
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” Frank asked, turning back to the computer and typing ‘the matrix’ into the search bar.
“What is?”
“He’s not supposed to exist, and neither are we, yet we’re here.” Frank clicked on the first search result and waited for the page to load, wondering why IMDB.com couldn’t get a faster server.
“Okay, here we go,” he said, when the page finally finished downloading. Marty got off the bed and went to look.
“Wonder if Neo knows about this,” Frank mused, clicking on ‘more’ at plot outline.
“Is this legal?” Marty asked instead.
“I think so.”
“We’re kind of peeking into his private life.”
“It’s a public website.”
“If you say so.”
They finished reading and Frank hit backspace. He scrolled down the main page to the cast list and clicked on the first name.
Seconds passed.
“Have you been to this site before?” Frank asked Marty.
“No.”
“It’s a great place, but the downloading takes forever.”
Seconds passed, and Keanu Reeves’ biography finally loaded. Frank scrolled down to the filmography.
“Are you sure this is legal?” Marty asked again. “I don’t… hey, Ted Logan?”
“What about him?”
Marty blinked. “I know him. He’s that kid from Disaster Area…”
“Disaster Area? Isn’t that the name of the band from The Hitchhiker’s G…”
“Yeah, I think they named themselves after that… I knew Ted looked like someone else, but I couldn’t place it. This is getting… really strange.”
Frank shrugged. “It’s about to get stranger.” He went to the search bar and typed in ‘back to the future’.
Marty looked at him.
“What?”
Marty left the computer and went back to lie on the bed. He lay on his back for a few more moments before rolling over to his side and burying his head in the pillows. It was no use trying to think of something other than his current situation. It was just as useless to hope that he might wake up the next day and discover that it had all been a dream. Marty knew that no matter how hard he tried to convince himself otherwise, everything that had happened in the last hour or so had been completely real, probably more so than his whole life. It was his life that was the dream.
Marty just wanted out. He wanted desperately to go home, and yes, he wanted his mummy. But did she even exist in the first place? Did any of them? Doc, Clara, Jules, Verne, Jennifer, Mr. Strickland, J.J., that person who made him donate to the Clocktower, Einie, everybody…
And if they didn’t exist, then who was he anyway?
His life as he knew it was gone. What was the point of still living?
Frank turned temporarily away from Michael J. Fox’s biography to look at Marty, the latter’s back now facing him. “You all right?”
Marty didn’t reply, and Frank was going to leave him to himself when the teen got off the bed and walked towards the window. Opening it, he stood there, staring out as the cold night air rushed past his face and into the room.
“Marty?”
The teen’s voice, when it came, sounded strangely dead. “What’s Keith gonna do if I jump out the window now?” he asked. “I bet he never thought of that, and it’s not like it matters if I die, ‘cause I’m not real, right? So I’m not even alive in the first place, so if I jump I won’t really be hurt, and I won’t really die, and it won’t matter to my parents ‘cause they’re not real too…”
Slowly, Frank stood up from his chair and walked towards him, not too sure about what he was supposed to do. “Get away from the window, Marty,” he said quietly.
“And when the people out there find me tomorrow, I wonder what they’ll think…”
“Get away from the window, Marty.”
The teen didn’t move. Frank walked over to his side and gazed out the open window at the ground below. He shifted his gaze slightly and counted. “We’re only on the fourth floor,” he said. “You’ll just break a leg or something… the distance isn’t long enough to kill you. Maybe you’ll break your spinal cord and get paralysed for life, but that’s it.”
“What life?” came the numb reply.
Frank looked at him. “Your life, Marty. It’s still our there… somewhere. Don’t listen to what Keith tells you. If you got here, you can get back. The portal is still open. Keith wouldn’t close it, because he still wants his lightsabers, remember? You can still go back.”
Marty shook his head. “What’s the point? It’s all not real.”
“What is real?” Frank quipped.
Marty shrugged half-heartedly.
“Look, we’re all in this together,” Frank continued. “The three of us. We’ll find a way out of this place somehow.” Arms folded and resting on the windowsill, he looked back out the window at the buildings beyond. Nice scenery, he thought randomly. “Don’t let whatever Keith says get to you, because that’s what he wants. He wants to see how long it takes before you crack. So don’t give him that.”
There was no response from Marty.
“I can see dead people,” Frank said randomly.
That got a response. “What?” Marty asked, turning to look at him.
“Dead people. Ghosts. I can see them. I’m never too sure if it’s a curse or a blessing, though it’s gotten me into more trouble than it’s worth.”
“You can really see ghosts?” Marty asked.
“Yeah, I can.”
“Cool.”
“You really think so?”
“Yeah.”
“Most people just get weirded out by it,” Frank said. “Most of the time they don’t believe me. There was this episode a couple of years back that got pretty bad; turns out it’s even been made into a movie here.” Frank paused. “That’s why I moved to New Zealand. I wanted to get away from it all.”
The two of them stood there in silence for a few moments more, then Frank peeled his eyes away from the wonderful view outside and shut the window. “C’mon. We can survive this, Marty.” He tousled the teen’s hair on the way back to the computer, where he sat down and glanced at the digital clock.
It was almost twelve in the morning. Perhaps it had been, too, for Marty and Neo – he couldn’t be bothered to find out – but it had been the afternoon for him when he’d been so unceremoniously dragged out of his universe, and he was in no mood to sleep just yet. He had research to do.
Marty went back to his bed and lay down, staring straight ahead at nothing in particular. Hours passed, and he soon fell asleep on top of the covers.
Frank did some searching on the Internet and finally found what he was looking for. Reaching across the table to grab the pen and pad of paper lying there, he then went to work learning how to forge Michael J. Fox’s signature; he never knew when it might come in handy. It was almost four in the morning when he switched off the computer and got into the other bed, the signature of a certain actor practiced to perfection.
#
Seated at his desk in the control room, Keith took a drink from his cup of coffee and swivelled his chair around to grant himself a view of the close-circuit television screens lining the wall behind him. Through them, he watched as Frank shut down the computer and went to bed, and after some time, the microphones in the room picked up the sound of his steady breathing
It was already early in the morning, but Keith was used to staying up this long. He liked the night; everything was dark and peaceful and he could be alone, away from the noise and bustle of the daytime. So many were the nights he had spent in this room, perfecting some detail of his experiment, downing cups of coffee or tea or Coke or anything with caffeine in it to chase the sleep away.
And he’d finally done it.
Keith gave a wistful smile as around him, his machinery hummed softly and soothingly into the night. After so many years of research, of experimenting, of repeated failures that never stopped him from carrying on, he’d finally reaped the fruit of his own hard work.
At least… mostly the fruit of his own hard work…
The wistful smile faded and was replaced with a look of unease. But now was not the time to think about such things. Now came the easy part of the experiment. The fun part. Whatever had transpired to get him to this stage was irrelevant, for the moment.
The tape in the room’s cameras ran on, recording every movement and every sound of the three sleeping travellers.
Setting the alarm on his digital watch for six a.m. the next day, Keith turned off the lights, then rested his head on his arms and went to sleep on the desk.
Chapter Five: Missing or a Sheep
Onboard the Nebuchadnezzar
The banging on the cabin door grew more insistent with each bang. “Neo?” Trinity shouted. “Wake up, it’s morning!”
When there was no reply after some time, she sighed and opened the door.
The cabin was empty.
Frowning slightly, Trinity entered the small cabin and looked around. “Neo?”
No response. Trinity swore under her breath.
“We’ve searched the ship,” she reported later. “It looks like he’s gone.”
“Why would he have left?” Morpheus asked.
“I don’t know. Should we notify Zion?”
“Not yet,” Morpheus replied. “Get a search party out. If Neo was on foot, he can’t have gone too far.”
#
It is a matter of fact that search parties in the depths of old unused sewers are not one of the most pleasant things in life. They are also, by extension, not one of the most pleasant things to write about, or read, especially when one is equipped with the knowledge that the person the search party is searching for has just been zapped into a parallel universe, and so no amount of poking about in sewers would lead to finding him.
Here follows, therefore, a quick clean summary of what will go on in the sewers.
Firstly, for obvious reasons, they will not find Neo.
Secondly, for not so obvious reasons, Trinity will find an old, ragged sock lying in a puddle with the words ‘my grandmuvver rulz!’ embroidered on it in pink.
Thirdly, along the way a glob of goo will drop off the ceiling and land on Morpheus’ perpetually bald head. He will wipe it off and think no more about it, but two weeks from then he would discover a fuzzy purple tuft of hair growing out from that exact same spot. He would panic, and the stress would make it all fall off.
This is how the search party will go, and now we can just get back to the story.
#
21st December 1985, Saturday
Hill Valley, California
Jennifer checked her watch again and frowned. Eight thirty. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t expected Marty to be late – his tardiness was, after all, legendary throughout Hill Valley High – but neither had she expected to be kept waiting for a whole half hour; especially since this meeting had seemed rather important to Marty from what she had gathered.
For the umpteenth time, Jennifer peered down the road, waiting for the sight of Marty McFly skating hurriedly down it, perhaps with one hand grabbing hold of some unfortunate vehicle.
Once again, she was disappointed.
The small sense of foreboding she had sensed that previous evening while talking with him started growing. There was something strange, something wrong, going on here… something that somehow included Marty, but she hadn’t the least idea what it was about. What if he was in danger?
Fifteen minutes more, she thought, leaning against the fence to wait.
At eight forty-five, she left for the McFly house.
Lorraine opened the door when Jennifer rang the doorbell.
“Good morning, Mrs. McFly,” Jennifer greeted. “Is Marty there?”
“Oh, hi… I think Marty’s still asleep.” Lorraine looked half-asleep herself. “I’ll go wake him; he should have been up long ago. Come on in.”
Jennifer stepped into the house and followed Lorraine to the door of Marty’s bedroom, which was still shut. Lorraine rapped on the door. “Marty?” she called out. “Jennifer’s here.”
When several seconds passed with no reply, Lorraine opened the door.
Both she and Jennifer gasped. Marty was gone. What was there was a large, white sheep. It blinked at them.
“Baaaaaaa,” the sheep said.
Lorraine slammed the door shut in shock.
#
“Our son has been turned into a sheep?” George asked through a mouthful of cereal. He swallowed and looked up at his wife as though she were crazy. “Wha… how’s that possible?” he asked, giving a short laugh.
“It’s not funny, George,” Lorraine retorted. “You know how much he likes hanging around with that Doctor Brown. Who knows what sort of strange experiment he might have involved Marty in?”
“Yeah,” Jennifer added. “Marty said so himself that there was something weird going on. He was going to tell me about it this morning, but then…” She shrugged.
“But why a sheep?” Dave McFly asked. “Why not something cooler, like… like…”
“An ice cube,” his sister Linda finished for him. She took another spoonful of cereal, ignoring the look her mother gave her.
George wiped his mouth clean and got out of his chair. “All right, all right,” he said. “Let’s go see this sheep.”
The McFly family and Jennifer trooped down the now-rather-crowded hallway to Marty’s room, and Lorraine opened the door. The sheep was busy chewing thoughtfully away on Marty’s blanket when they arrived, and did not acknowledge the entrance of everyone into the room.
“It doesn’t look like Marty,” George commented casually.
Lorraine was nearly hysterical. “Of course it doesn’t! It’s a sheep!”
“Baaaaa,” said the sheep, deciding that the blanket didn’t taste so good after all. It turned slowly around and regarded the newcomers with puzzlement.
“Marty?” Lorraine asked tentatively. The sheep ignored her and continued its exploration of Marty’s room.
“How d’you even know that’s Marty in the first place?” Linda asked.
“If that’s not Marty, then where is he?” Lorraine asked in return, not taking her eyes off the sheep. It was in the midst of pulling out one of Marty’s towels from his cupboard. This was a sheep that knew where his towel was.
George walked further into the room and bent down to examine the sheep. It gazed at him for a while, then went back to chewing on Marty’s towel.
“So what do we do now?” Dave asked. “Call the police and tell them that Marty’s been turned into a sheep?”
“Maybe it’s not even him,” Linda said. “Maybe he just went out the window or something, and let the sheep in as a joke.”
“But where’d he get the sheep from?” Dave prodded. “They aren’t exactly local inhabitants of Hill Valley.”
“Marty?” Lorraine asked again in a weak voice, gazing desperately at the sheep.
George stood back up. “Okay, everybody don’t panic, just…”
“Who’s panicking?” Dave asked.
George ignored him. “…just stay calm, I’m sure everything will turn out just fine. We can’t know for sure that the sheep is Marty, so the first thing we have to do is to see if we can find him…”
“And if we can’t?” Linda asked.
“Then… then we see if Doc Brown knows anything about this.”
“He’s not at home,” Jennifer said. “The place is locked up.” As it will be for a long time more, she added silently.
She was pretty certain that the sheep was not Marty McFly. She hadn’t the faintest idea how it had got there, but somehow her boyfriend turning into a sheep just did not fit in as a logical conclusion to what little she knew so far.
She had the feeling that the answers were inside Doc’s garage, possibly on the computer where Marty spent so much time. She volunteered to call up Marty’s friends to see if anyone knew where he was. She at least wanted to make sure that Marty was really missing in a not-ordinary way before going off on what might turn out to be a wild goose chase.
Chapter Six: Neo and Ted's Not So Excellent Meeting
21st December 1985, Saturday
The Preston Residence, San Dimas, California
“Bugs Bunny with a banana in the swimming pool,” Bill guessed.
Ted reached out and flipped over the three facedown cards in their modified game of Clue.
“Sorry, dude,” the teen said, looking at the cards. “It was Donald Duck with a loaf of bread in the broom cupboard.”
Bill sighed. “Bogus.”
Returning his card to the deck, he cleared the board and looked at his friend. “Want another game, dude?”
“Sure.”
The telephone rang in the hallway.
“I’ll get it,” Ted offered, hopping off his chair.
“Thanks.”
Entering the hallway, Ted suddenly thought he saw a ripple of coloured light zip through the air. He looked again, but it had gone… and he was prevented from wondering about it any longer by the ringing telephone. Picking up the receiver, the teen put it to his ear. “Hello?”
“Hi, Prosser’s Pizzeria? Ah, I’d like to order two extra large pepperoni cheese pizzas with extra pepperoni, cheese and crust… um, make that three pizzas. Yeah, and two…”
Ted blinked.
“…with a roll of garlic bread on the side, and…” The voice grew temporarily fainter as the speaker called out to someone else in the room. “Hey, Marge, want any ice cream?”
“Sure!” came the faint reply. “Ask if they have raspberry.”
“…” Ted said.
The caller came back to the phone. “Yeah, uh, do you have any raspberry ice cream available today? I’d like two…”
Ted finally found his voice. “Um, I think you have got the wrong number,” he said.
There was a pause.
“This isn’t Prosser’s Pizzeria on 4077 Potato Avenue?”
“No...”
The caller swore. “Then why didn’t you say so earlier, kid?”
Muttering obscenities, the man hung up, leaving Ted dumbly holding the receiver at the other end.
He was about to put down the phone when another ripple of light flashed past his eyes. Ted Logan stared… and an instant later, he was yanked out of his world.
Getting off his seat, Bill walked out of the room. “Ted?”
There was no reply.
“Ted? Dude, where are you?”
Bill entered the hallway, but all he saw was the telephone dangling off the hook and his friend nowhere in sight.
#
Ted yelled as he was sent hurtling out of the dimensional portal to land painfully on his side. Stunned and hurting all over, he lay on the floor, gazing uncomprehendingly ahead at the whitewashed walls and trying to figure out just what had happened.
The door opened, and Keith entered. Only half-awake, the man nevertheless managed a tired grin.
“Hi, Ted,” he greeted. “Welcome to the real world.”
#
1st April 2004, Thursday
The Real World
Several minutes later, Frank Bannister was jolted out of bed by the sound of a bloodcurdling scream from the next room. Heart thumping, he glanced wildly around his unfamiliar surroundings, when he realised where he was and a strange feeling rose in him. It hadn’t been a dream… unless it was one of those dream-in-a-dream things…
He pinched himself. It hurt. So it wasn’t a dream, unless it was one of those dreams where you pinched yourself and it hurt. He’d had one of those before, but he doubted this was one of them.
Wait. The scream… Sounded like it came from next door. Probably from that other guy – what’s-his-name – Neo. Yeah. Maybe he was one of those people who liked to scream at random intervals of the day. He hadn’t seemed that sort of person, but you never knew… Either that, or Keith was busy torturing him.
There was a thud from next door that sounded an awful lot like someone falling out of bed. Voices… but too faint for Frank to make out the words.
The sun was up, its early morning rays shining through the gaps in the curtains and filling the room with a greyish light. Yawning, Frank glanced over at the other bed, and saw Marty McFly still fast asleep in some unnatural sleeping position the teen had somehow or other contorted himself into during the night.
Frank remembered watching Back to the Future several years ago and seeing the part near the end where they showed Marty sleeping in some awkward position. But that had been different… that Marty didn’t look like him, unlike this one. Different universe, different actor…
Swinging his legs over to the side of the bed, Frank stared at the teenager in fascination, marvelling at the remarkable flexibility of the human body.
The digital clock on the table read 8:13, but Frank’s internal clock told him that it was about seven in the evening… and to say the least, he was hungry. Frank was about to go check the cupboards for something edible, when Marty stirred and he sat back down on the bed, deciding that his stomach could wait.
Next to him, Marty opened his eyes and groaned softly upon realising where he was.
“Marty, can I ask you a question?”
The teen slowly sat up in bed and looked at him. “Yeah?”
Frank decided to get straight to the point. “How on earth do you breathe when you sleep like that?”
Marty stared. “Sleep like what?”
“Like that. Three-quarters on your side, one arm under you, the other arm behind you and your pillow jammed halfway in your mouth. I tried to do that just now and I think I broke something.”
Marty didn’t know what to say to that. He got out of bed and went over to the bathroom to wash out his mouth, because it didn’t taste too good. He pondered for a wistful moment how a toothbrush and some toothpaste would be nice.
Frank stood in the doorway of the bathroom, hands in pockets and watching the teen. Marty felt a wave of unease wash over him. Frank freaked him out, for some reason other than the obvious. Something about his eyes; they looked… haunted, somehow. Then again, Frank had said that he could see ghosts, so it probably had something to do with that.
The doorbell rang. “Room service!” a voice called out from behind the door. Frank left Marty to see what was going on, just as the door was unbolted from the outside and kicked open to reveal a twenty-something-year-old guy with a food tray in his hand and a grin on his face.
“Breakfast,” he said. “The hotel guests never finish all the food so you can have the extras.”
“Who are you?” Frank asked warily.
“You know Keith, right? I’m his brother.”
“…Andrew?”
“Nope. Actually Andrew’s our half-brother. He’s a fourteen-year-old twerp who wants to be an actor someday.” The youth briefly rolled his eyes. “I’m Adwin. And that’s A-D-W-I-N, not E-D-W-I-N. People keep getting it wrong.”
“Right. Thanks for the food. You can go now.” Frank took the tray from Adwin and placed it on the nearby table.
“Eat, drink and be merry… for in a few days you shall die,” Adwin unnecessarily added with a smirk, before locking the door and leaving.
“Breakfast,” Frank explained when Marty came out of the bathroom.
Marty stared suspiciously at the food. “Are you sure that’s edible?”
“Probably. Keith wants to test the possibility of dimensional incompatibility killing us, remember? It would kind of ruin the experiment if the food kills us instead.”
Marty remained unconvinced, so Frank picked up a sausage and bit off one end. He chewed a while, then swallowed as Marty watched him closely.
“Are you still alive?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Frank said, gazing philosophically at the half-eaten sausage. “I’ve died twice before. I know what it feels like.” Frank paused, ignoring the look Marty gave him upon hearing his last two sentences. “The food’s fine.”
Marty joined him after some hesitation. He wasn’t particularly keen on having possibly-poisoned breakfast in a weird room in a weird hotel in a weird universe with some creepy guy who looked like him. His heart ached briefly for the mornings he knew, with the smell of coffee in the air, Dave dressed for work and sitting at the table with Linda, his parents getting ready for the day, and he, Marty, rushing to be on time for school…
Marty mentally scratched the school bit out of his reminiscences and then went back to dwelling on his memories of home.
It was so far away… he didn’t even know if he’d ever be able to get back…
“Hey,” Frank said gently. “Eat up.”
Marty listlessly picked up a spoon and scooped up a spoonful of something that may or may not have been mashed potato.
“Michael J. Fox is a vegetarian,” Frank said randomly after some time.
“How’d you know that?”
“The Internet. I was online last night until four in the morning.”
They lapsed back into an uncomfortable silence broken only by the sounds of eating. It was too quiet, Marty thought. He shifted slightly in his seat and stuck a lettuce leaf into his mouth.
“He’s really rich,” Frank mused in a thoughtful sort of way.
#
Meanwhile, down by the side of his bed, his legs tangled in the bedding, Neo yelled again as Ted made to move closer. “Stay away from me!”
“Are you okay, dude?”
“My name… is Neo,” the man said through gritted teeth. “Stop calling me ‘dude’.”
“Sure, dude. You sure you’re okay? That was one heinous fall.”
“Yes.”One of Neo’s legs shook free of the bedding and accidentally whacked the bedside table. He flinched in pain.
“You don’t look okay,” Ted observed, getting off the bed and moving towards him. Crouching down, he reached out a hand to help Neo off the floor.
“I said I’m… DON’T TOUCH ME!”
Startled, Ted withdrew his hand and watched apprehensively as Neo struggled to his feet and backed against the closets. One hand grasping hold of the closet door’s handle as though preparing to yank the door open and bolt inside, Neo tried to calm down.
“Right,” he said, his voice shaking. “Who are you?”
A friendly smile flitted across the teen’s face. “My name’s Ted. Ted ‘Theodore’ Logan.”
“Okay,” Neo said, though he looked and sounded far from it. He closed his eyes and tried to block the teen from his vision, imagining Ted wasn’t there in the hope that it might make him disappear... He opened his eyes, saw that Ted was still there, and then reality finally hit him with something which people generally wouldn’t like to be hit with. “No,” he moaned. “No. No. No. No. No.”
“…Neo?”
“No! No! No! No!”
“Your name’s ‘No’?”
“NO! No. No. No. No…” Letting go of the door handle, Neo buried his face in his knees and put his arms around them.
Several seconds of silence passed.
“Neo?” Ted asked tentatively.
“Go away,” came the muffled response, so the teen obeyed and went off to explore the attached bathroom.
There was a loud knock on the door. “Room service!”
Bolts came undone and Adwin pushed the door open. He stepped halfway through the doorway, holding a tray of food. “Hello?” he called out. “Anyone home? If you don’t want breakfast I’ll just…”
Neo finally got up, walked over, took the tray and walked back.
“Hey!” Adwin yelled. “Aren’t you even going to thank me?”
Neo went back to the door. “Thank you,” he said, then pushed the door shut and walked back to the tray of food on the table.
He sat down and stared at it in barely-concealed wonder, Ted forgotten for the moment.
Real food.
He’d never seen any of it before, apart from the gooey white stuff he ate on the Nebuchadnezzar, which he didn’t consider actual food anyway.
The possibility of food poisoning fleeted briefly across his mind, but Neo pushed it aside. If he was going to die, he might as well do so eating. Picking up a fork, he poked at a potato and marvelled silently at it, more fascinated with the fact that it was a real potato than the fact that it also happened to bear a curious resemblance to Paul McCartney’s face.
The bathroom door opened, and Ted wandered over to the table. “Is that food?”
“No, it’s a sofa,” Neo replied, in a seriously pathetic attempt at sarcasm.
Ted stared at the tray. “Really?” he asked after some time.
“No.”
“Oh.”
Neo speared a baked bean and ate it. “I thought I told you to go away,” he said quietly.
“I’m hungry, dude.”
Neo’s only response was to fork up another singular baked bean and stick it into his mouth. Ted pulled up a chair and sat next to him, whereupon Neo edged away several centimetres.
The teen took a spoon and scooped up several baked beans. “How old are you, dude?”
“Thirty-seven.” Neo decided that the fork wasn’t exactly the most effective of cutlery when it came to baked beans, and he replaced it with a spoon.
“Are you married?”
“No.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Maybe.”
“What’s her name?”
“Trinity.”
“What kind of a name is that?”
Neo went after the scrambled eggs and didn’t reply. He liked the eggs. They were nice and yellow with bits of white in them.
“Where do you live?” Ted asked.
“Earth.”
“Which part?”
“Underground.”
“Whoa! What’s it like?”
“Dark.” Neo took another spoonful of scrambled eggs. There is no spoon, he thought suddenly for no reason whatsoever, then dismissed the thought.
“You don’t talk much, do you?”
“You don’t shut up, do you?” Neo replied in the same tone of voice, then tried unsuccessfully to scoop up a sausage with his spoon. After trying about three times, he put the spoon down and took back his fork.
Ted found all this very amusing.
“Stop staring at me,” Neo said testily.
“I’m not…”
Neo slammed down the fork, got up from the table and walked off to sit down by the side of the bed. Head in hands, trembling slightly, he then proceeded to stare unseeingly at the carpeted floor.
“…Neo?”
No reply. Ted stared after him for a while, wondering if he should do something, then decided against it and went back to finishing his share of the food.
One thing was certain, though. He missed Bill.
Chapter 2.7 »
#