When Worlds Collide and Go Kaboom
Written by Anakin McFly
Chapter One: Back to the Future
4 November 1985, 2:53 a.m.
Hill Valley, California
The hum of lightsabers overpowered everything else as the glowing blades of the two Jedi weapons clashed against each other, sending sparks in all directions. Sweating from exhaustion, 17-year-old Martin Seamus McFly grasped the lightsaber handle with both hands, finally mustering up enough energy to give one final swipe. It hit home, and his opponent dropped his weapon. As if in slow motion, Darth Vader fell to the floor… finally hitting the ground with a thud, his helmet opening upon impact. Marty stared in horror at the uncovered face as he was hit with a wave of realization…
The face was his own, the face of his future self.
Marty’s world was spinning. For a moment, he thought he heard Marty Jr. yelling…
“You killed my father!”
“I am your father!”
“NOOOOOOOO!”
His world in a blur, Marty watched helplessly as his future son picked up the fallen lightsaber and rushed towards him, weapon ready to strike. He reached for his own and clicked the activator button, but nothing happened…
His lightsaber wouldn’t come on. Looking up, he saw the brilliant glare of red as the other lightsaber came down on him. And he knew that he was going to die…
Marty threw his hands up to protect his face, stumbling backwards in the darkness as his lightsaber fell from his hands and hit the floor with a resounding clang that echoed away in his head.
The blade was coming closer… and closer… and closer…
“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!”
Marty jolted out of bed, heart thumping away as his eyes wildly scanned his surroundings, confused. Reality slowly sank in… but it took a while more for him to calm down.
It was just another nightmare, he thought, trying to no avail to reassure himself. Just another nightmare… a real one, for once… that’s what comes from watching Star Wars before bedtime… Still shaking at the memory of the dream, Marty rolled over to his side and reached for his alarm clock. According to it, it was barely 3 am – he didn’t have to get up yet. He wasn’t that desperate to get to school on time.
For a while, Marty toyed with the notion of doing just that. He tried to imagine the look of shock on Mr. Strickland’s face if he were to turn up at three in the morning. The boy grinned. It might just be worth it… if the principal was in school that early in the first place.
Sighing, Marty closed his eyes and tried to doze off… when the relative peace of his bedroom was shattered by the all-too-familiar sound combination of crackling electricity, several sonic booms, the skidding of car tyres and someone swearing as the vehicle smashed headlong into a trash can.
It was enough to get him out of bed and running. For once, Marty was glad that he had slept in his clothes. At least he didn’t have to waste time changing.
Vaulting the side gate, the teen entered the driveway and stared as the front door of the time-travelling DeLorean lifted open amidst clouds of whitish stuff. The same car that he had seen getting crushed by a train barely a week ago.
“But it can’t be,” he thought, as he watched someone climb out.
The person turned.
“Doc?”
Marty couldn’t believe it. Running towards the car, he tripped over in his excitement… banging straight into the same trashcan the DeLorean had collided with. It hadn’t overturned then; but now it did, sending him to the floor.
Covered with banana peels, drink cans and various other bits of rubbish, Marty got slowly to his feet. “Stupid dustbin,” he muttered, removing an ancient copy of the Hill Valley Telegraph from his head.
“Marty? You’re awake?”
“I uh… had a nightmare.” Marty paused, bending down to peel off the apple skin clinging to his foot. “But… what’re you doing here? I mean… what about your kids? And the car… where’d you get… I thought I destroyed…”
Doc swung the car door shut and walked towards Marty. “I made a new one. I thought it would be more inconspicuous than the train. And the kids didn’t want to come along. Verne just got a Game Boy, and nothing save the end of the world can separate him from it now.”
“Inconspicuous?” Marty wondered incredulously. He figured the DeLorean’s three sonic booms had awakened the whole of Hill Valley. Already lights were coming on in several houses, and it was only a matter of time before someone came out to investigate the source of the noise.
The two were now standing face to face, and Marty thought he saw Doc take on a look of concern. “Marty, are you okay? You don’t look too good.”
“Ah, yeah. I’m fine.” The teen flicked a piece of plastic wrap off his clothes, and reached out his hand to pull a fishbone out of his hair. Giving it a look of disgust, he flung it to the ground and hoped he wouldn’t get caught for littering. “So… uh, what did you come here for?”
“I was going to get some things from my house… maybe stay the night, then come to get you in the morning. But since you’re awake… Marty, you’ve got to come back with me!”
“Where?” Marty ran a quick check over himself and decided he was sufficiently rid of whatever junk the trashcan had dumped on him.
“Back to the future!”
“WHAT?” Marty looked back up. “Doc… it’s three in the morning! And why…”
“I’ll explain later. It’s about your kids.”
“Again?”
For the first time, Marty began to seriously consider abortion.
Doc walked over to the time machine and opened the DeLorean’s door. “Get in the car!”
Marty finally gave in and climbed into the vehicle, bashing his head on the car roof in the process.
“OW!”
This was definitely not his day…or night for that matter.
Doc came in after him. “Oh, and watch out for the roof.”
Marty grimaced, rubbing his head. “Thanks.”
The time machine lifted off into the night sky, accelerated to 88 mph and vanished into the future in a burst of electricity.
Meanwhile on the ground, a neighbour had decided that enough was enough. He burst out of his house, brandishing a gun, and dashed towards the source of the racket.
“OI! CUT OUT THE NOISE!”
All was silent. Crickets chirped in the background, and two rats scuttled away to safety.
Muttering insults under his breath, the neighbour returned indoors, occasionally casting suspicious glances behind him.
Chapter Two: 19 December 2015
19 December 2015, 7:30 a.m.
Hill Valley, California
There was a bright flash of light as the DeLorean appeared out of nowhere, knocking another airborne car off course. The latter’s driver struggled to steady his car, then wound down his window and stuck his head out.
“WATCH WHERE YOU’RE GOING, BOJO!”
Another car’s driver wound down his window and looked out angrily. “Are you talking to me?”
“NO! I’M TALKING TO T…” He turned, but the DeLorean had flown off.
“Doc, what’s going on?” Marty yelled, as the car swerved violently to avoid a flying taxi. He was tossed a newspaper cutting in response.
“Read this!”
Marty looked down at the piece of newspaper, which was covered all over with various colourful and humorous illustrations. “Comic strips?”
The car swerved again, causing the 17-year-old to feel more than slightly nauseated.
“Turn the page!”
“Oh.” Marty flipped the paper over just as the time vehicle put down in an alleyway. The doors opened and the two time travellers got out. Eyes still glued to the newspaper, flipped back to the comic strip side, Marty just missed banging his head on the car roof again. He swung round and glared at it, as if daring it to hit him, turning the newspaper cutting back over again as he did so.
Marty looked back at the paper and read through the article headings.
“’Four Headed Chicken Born’… ‘Marshmallows Found to Increase Lifespan’… ‘Passengers Killed by Cancelled Train’… ‘Talking Broccoli Grown’… ‘Ice-skating Budgerigars…’”
“It’s the last article!” Doc shouted from behind, as he moved towards the car boot and opened it.
“Uh…” Marty scanned the bottom of the page. “Okay. Found it.”
“’20th December 2015… Martin McFly Jr., the victim of yesterday’s car accident, died in hospital this after noon. The driver of the car concerned, Jake Rulb, 36, confessed to have been engrossed in a Star Wars movie as he brought the car to land and thus did not see the boy. Martin Jr. was admitted to the Hill Valley General Hospital after suffering major injuries to several parts of his body…’”
Marty looked up, a somewhat stunned look on his face, to see Doc rummaging in the car boot. “He died?”
“Yeah,” Doc replied.
As if in a sort of trance, Marty continued staring ahead at nothing in particular.
“They can breed four headed chickens but they can’t save a car accident victim?”
“The future is a strange place. Here… get these on.” The scientist chucked Marty the bunch of clothes he had worn on his last trip to the future.
Marty caught the clothes but was still in a daze.
“They can grow talking broccoli but they can’t…”
“MARTY!”
The teen jumped.
“Huh? What?” Marty looked down at the clothes, as if he’d just realized they were there. “Oh.”
“We’ve got to hurry. There isn’t much time left. The accident took place outside the Hill Valley Clocktower. The time now is…” Doc glanced at the time circuits. ”7:35 am. You’ve got less than half an hour. Do whatever you can to prevent that accident… even if it means being seen.”
“Okay…”
Suddenly, the lid of the car boot slammed down on Doc’s head and he fell, unconscious, to the ground. Time machines are hazardous to your health.
“DOC!”
Marty rushed to his friend’s side to try and revive him, but nothing happened. Checking his pulse, Marty decided that he was still alive, and managed to get him into the car. Then, he saw the time circuits. It was 7:40 am. He had to go.
Marty donned the futuristic clothes, took one last look at his friend and then set off for the clock tower. He ran, avoiding all the trashcans he could.
Time was of the essence.
Chapter Three: Incident at the Café
19 December 2015, 7:45 a.m.
Hill Valley, California
The Clocktower was in sight, the time displayed on it still stuck at 10:04, as it had been for the past sixty years. Marty ducked as a car flew over him and landed a few meters away, narrowly missing his head. Leaving the swearing driver behind, he wandered around aimlessly admiring the scenery and watching as a six-year-old boy fell off his hoverboard and into a pond to the amusement of his friends.
Picking up a newspaper from a nearby dustbin, Marty sat down on the bench and flipped to the comics section where he read for a few minutes or so. He soon lost interest, though. The standard of comics was dropping and he didn’t even get half the jokes. Bored, Marty returned the paper to the place from whence it came, i.e. the dustbin, then stood and walked towards the Café 80s. He needed a drink. Badly.
Entering the café, Marty walked up to the counter. A group of teenagers were laughing away at some private joke at a nearby table, but he paid no attention to them.
“One Pepsi…”
The drink popped up and he took it, pressing his thumb down at the allocated area to pay, hoping his future self wouldn’t mind. Then again, it was just a drink… it couldn’t cost that much. Casually, Marty turned his eyes to the price displayed on the screen…
“FIFTY DOLLARS?” he half-yelled, attracting the attention of a few people.
“Yeah. Kinda cheap, huh?” another customer remarked in a bored voice, sipping away at his own drink, apparently oblivious of the expression on Marty’s face. Eyes opened in disbelief, the latter looked back at the bottle.
And discovered the inevitable problem… opening it.
Marty tried to remain inconspicuous as he pushed, pulled and twisted the bottle cap any way he could and then some, but more and more heads were turning his way. What was more, he couldn’t blame them. Frustrated, Marty brought his hand down and smashed the lid. It flew open, and the bottle squirted him in the face.
“AAAH!”
The café went deadly silent. Every head was turned towards Marty, and the boy swore he could even hear crickets chirping.
Dripping with about two dollars worth of Pepsi, Marty smiled sheepishly at them and tried to look away. At least he’d got the bottle open. As Marty lifted it up to drink, however, he heard an unfamiliar voice call out.
“Marty?”
Slowly, he turned to the source of the sound, someone in the group of teenagers he had seen earlier laughing by themselves.
The speaker continued, breaking up into a grin of recognition that Marty could not return.
“Hey, it is you!” The teen motioned Marty over to sit. “You’re early. Come on. I didn’t see you just now, MJ. What were you trying to do? I mean, with the Pepsi and all…”
Marty moved over slowly, trying to think of a way out. “Uh… nothing…”
The boy sat down, as another one of his future son’s friends started speaking. “See that guy over there?” the latter whispered, pointing to a rather plump man sitting in front of them. Oh, fine. He was fat. REALLY fat. You know the kind.
“Yeah?”
“Okay. In about… twenty seconds, he’s gonna get up real fast and run for the toilet. Watch.” The teen grinned.
“Why?”
“We put… uh… something in his drink when he wasn’t looking. It takes a while to work, so just wait…”
All the occupants of Marty’s table were now watching the man intently.
And were rewarded, as he jumped up with a yell, knocking over his drink, and dashed to the toilet as fast as his stout legs could carry him. Strains of “I NEED THE LOO!” were heard coming from his general direction.
The teenagers collapsed with laughter, and Marty tried unsuccessfully to suppress a grin as his eyes took in the scenario. But then his gaze settled on the clock, and his grin vanished.
It was 7:53.
He had to go. And not to the loo. Slowly, Marty got up from the table.
“Hey, where’re you going?”
“Ah… I need the toilet…”
“Oh.”
Once away from the table, Marty sprinted towards the door.
“Hey, McFly!”
He screeched to a stop and turned back round.
“The toilet’s THAT way.”
“Oh.” Marty tried to come up with some sort of excuse. “Uh… I meant, the OTHER toilet…”
Not bothering to figure out what he had just said, the 17-year-old ran out the door, as the entire café stared after him, noting the departure of one of the most interesting things that had ever happened to the place.
Once outside, Marty looked around, trying to get his bearings. He licked his lips; there was still some Pepsi left there.
Marty started to head towards the Clocktower, when he noticed someone staring at him. It was a girl of about his age, perhaps a few years younger, standing a little way off. And somehow, it struck Marty that she was… different, like she didn’t quite seem to belong. Like him. There was just something strange about her; strange yet familiar… that made her stand out amongst the other people around, as she fixed her eyes on Marty, looking at him silently with an expression that he couldn’t really decipher… it was as if she knew… knew who he was, what he was doing…
Feeling uncomfortable, he turned away and moved off, headed in the direction of the Clocktower once more.
And then he saw Marty Jr., walking backwards onto the road as he talked to a friend, holding what could possibly be the last conversation in his life.
And he saw the car, a little further off in the sky, and he knew.
There was no time to think of any kind of plan… and even if he did, there wasn’t much of a chance of it actually working. It was 7:55 am, but Marty could be sure that the newspapers would never be able to give the exact time of the accident.
Dashing out towards his future son, Marty had room for only one last thought: the last time he had saved a family member from a car accident, he had nearly erased himself from existence. Did he really want to do this?
The car was coming closer… it was now or never…
Marty lunged forwards, shoving his future son out of the way in the only method he knew of preventing car accidents.
He felt something hit him as he fell to the ground.
Then all went black.
Chapter Four
19 December 2015, 7:45 a.m.
Hill Valley, California
(Note: ‘Marty’ in this chapter and this chapter alone unless I change my mind refers to the 2015 guy.)
Marty ran his fingers lightly over the guitar strings another time, producing a gentle strum that vibrated throughout the room. It had been a long time since he had last played that guitar in public. Vaguely, he remembered the days of long ago, back when he had been rich, back then when The Pinheads had been one of the most successful bands around…
Putting down the instrument, Marty walked out of the room to the TV. He couldn’t concentrate on anything somehow… for some reason he had this nagging feeling that something was going to happen that day, but he wasn’t sure what it was.
He was the only one at home at the moment. Jennifer was at work, and the kids were out with friends or something. “TV on… Channel 5.”
The television came on to the requested channel, and he slumped into the sofa, relaxing… that is, until the all-too-familiar words reached his ears…
“Hiya dudes! I’m Ted Theodore Logan!”
“And I’m Bill S. Preston Esquire!”
“Together we form… the WYLD STALLYNS!”
The sound of two guitars badly in need of tuning was heard. Marty groaned, and gave the command for the television to turn off.
It was THEM again. The Wyld Stallyns, as they called themselves. The two dudes and their pals who had robbed The Pinheads of their hard earned popularity.
He remembered that day about two decades ago – the Hill Valley band competition. The Pinheads had practiced day after day from dawn to dusk… and then the Wyld Stallyns had come in and ruined it all. They didn’t even know how to play. All they had done was stand there twanging random strings on their instruments and singing out of tune… and they won. Just like that.
And it wasn’t only that time, Marty knew. Even earlier on, in 1988, The Pinheads had travelled to San Dimas for the great ‘Battle of the Bands’. Once again, the Wyld Stallyns won. It wasn’t so much their playing as the little show they put on which won the total support of the audience – the robot thing and their so called ‘time machine’. To Marty, It looked more like a phone booth, but he hadn’t said anything. All he had been able to do was stand and watch as The Pinheads were totally and utterly defeated… ‘Time machine’. Indeed. Of all people, Marty should know what one looked like. And a phone booth just did not fit the description…
Suddenly, the phone rang, disrupting his thoughts. Marty got up from the couch and answered it, the feeling of foreboding he had had all the while for some reason intensified.
“Hello?”
“Dad, that you?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s… been a car accident of some kind, I don’t know what happened, but someone tried to save me and he… he got knocked down instead… I think he’s unconscious… you’ve got to come here!”
“Junior, what… where are you?” Marty asked.
“Outside the Clocktower. You’ve gotta hurry, I think the guy blacked out or something, I don’t even know if he’s still alive…”
“Wha… are you okay?”
The other side had hung up. Still hanging onto the phone, Marty just stood there for a moment, feeling confused. Then, he put down the telephone and left the house.
As he locked the door behind him and got into the car, Marty wondered what had happened. Car accident? It seemed to be a McFly tradition or something that one person from each generation would experience nearly getting murdered by a vehicle.
His vehicle moved along the sky lanes of Hill Valley towards the Clocktower. Traffic was okay for the first part of the journey, but got worse as Marty neared the town centre. He felt some sense of urgency. Partially because of his son’s phone call and partially because suddenly, for no reason at all, he was getting flashes of memories he wasn’t sure had been there before. The more he thought about it, though, the more he felt that they had always existed.
He remembered that day about 30 years ago when he had woken from a nightmare and left the house to find the DeLorean outside. He remembered how Doc had sent him to the future to… he couldn’t remember too well what happened after that.
Marty put the car down next to the Clocktower, which had been the cause of countless fund-raising projects for the past 60 years or so ever since it had been struck by lightning. And the fund-raising was not showing any signs of stopping just yet.
“Save the Clocktower!” someone yelled in his ear as he got out of the car, jingling a can of coins in front of Marty and absolutely refusing to let him pass until he had donated something. “60 years ago, lightning struck the Clocktower and it hasn’t run since! Save the Clocktower!”
Marty sighed. He was broke enough already, what with the Wyld Stallyns and all that… relying on a plan that always worked, he pointed at a random spot behind the fund raiser and yelled.
“What the *beep* is THAT?”
“Huh?” the Clocktower worshipper turned in surprise.
The momentary distraction had worked. Seeing his son a little way off, Marty ran towards him.
“Dad?”
“What happened?” He saw Marty Jr. standing next to someone else who lay prostrate on the ground. The latter seemed unconscious, but yet no one had stopped to help or anything.
“Which goes to say a lot about the people here,” Marty thought, kneeling down to have a look at the victim’s face. His mind reeled at the sight, nearly causing him to collapse from shock, though in a strange kind of way he had been expecting it. The face was his own. The face of himself 30 years ago… Marty could only stare, feeling a bout of dizziness coming up on him as pieces of his memory began to come together suddenly. He was the one who had got knocked down… it had been him… Marty glanced up to see his son looking at him strangely.
“Dad, you okay?”
Marty tried to calm himself down and gave a slight nod. ”Uh, yeah. I’m fine. How long did you have to wait for me?”
“About ten minutes. But I couldn’t just LEAVE him here! I mean, he like saved my life…”
“And the responsible car just flew off, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Ok… just… help me carry him back to the car, okay? We’ll decide what to do later.”
Together, father and son lifted up the unconscious form of Marty McFly circa 1985 and moved towards the vehicle, which had attracted a ticket for illegal parking.
“Dad?”
“Huh?”
“He looks sorta like me.”
Marty gave a wry smile that his son could not see. “Yeah. I know.”
There was a pause.
“Oh, and I’m supposed to meet someone at the Café 80s soon…”
“You can go if you want to. I’ll manage.”
“Sure?”
“Yup.”
“Okay.”
Marty Jr. left his father with the load and scooted off to another part of Hill Valley. Marty was almost at the car… just a few metres to go…suddenly, someone banged into him.
“OW! What the…” Marty turned his head.
“SAVE THE CLOCKTOWER!” *jingle jingle* “60 years ago…” the history lecture began by the person who seemed totally unperturbed by the fact that the guy he was pursuing carried an unconscious one.
“NOOOOOOO!”
Marty got into the car, slammed the door shut, shoved his other self into the backseat, climbed over to the front and lifted off into the sky. Below him, the Clocktower person had found another potential customer.
“Hey there, Mr. Tannen! Donate and save the Cloc…”
There was the sound of someone bashing someone else in the face.
And the latter was out for the count.
#
(Switch perspective back to the 1985 guy)
In his semi-conscious state, Marty perceived someone carrying him. Who, or where he had no idea. His right leg hurt. Badly. He hoped he hadn’t broken it. “What’s going on?” he finally managed to mumble, eyes still shut.
For a moment, there was silence. Then someone spoke.
“Don’t worry, Marty. You’ll be fine.”
The voice sounded strangely familiar, but he couldn’t exactly place it. Then he wondered: How did that person know his name?
He heard a door open, followed by an electronic greeting.
“Welcome home, Marty.”
The door shut. He was vaguely aware of being put down on a bed somewhere. “Where’m I?” Marty murmured groggily, only semi-conscious of what was happening around him.
“Don’t try to talk, kid. Just rest, okay?”
Marty nodded vaguely. Then he blacked out again, because the author is one sadistic person who enjoys making people black out and needs to get a life.
Marty did not hear the sound of an approaching car.
And he did not see his future self run out of the house to stare up at the sky, up at the flying DeLorean which had suddenly appeared there.
Chapter Five: Close Encounters of the Fourth Dimension
19 December 2015, 8:05 a.m.
Hill Valley, California
Martha McFly, the youngest of three kids, crouched by the side of her house behind a rosebush and waited, heart thumping as she watched her father carry him into the house. She let her hoverboard fall from her hand onto the grass, where it bobbed a few metres above the ground as she tried to make some sense out of everything.
It all started a few days ago. Feeling bored, the 14-year-old had been going through her parents’ stuff when she came across this old black and white photograph which had her father, 30 years ago, and the now deceased Dr. Brown standing next to the huge clock that now hung on the Clocktower. She had wondered about it, when Marlene had entered and scolded her younger sister upside down for looking at her parents’ private things.
Martha had supposed that the picture could have been taken against some kind of backdrop or something, and tried to forget about it… only she couldn’t. There was just something about the photograph that kept nagging at her mind.
And then, just the day before, Marty had taken his family over to their grandparents’ house for dinner. Over there, Lorraine had decided that her granddaughter looked like she could do with some entertaining and took her to the room where the family kept their old photographs and stuff. She then proceeded, for the umpteenth time, to tell Martha all about how she and George had got together, chucking the girl the 1955 Hill Valley High yearbook as she did so.
Trying to remain polite, Martha had flipped through the pages, only stopping when a certain photo caught her eye; one of the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance ones. It was not so much the photograph that took her attention, though, but rather the guy in the picture up there on the stage, playing the guitar.
He looked exactly as her father had in that clock photograph; although it would have taken a closer shot of the guy’s face to be certain for sure.
Grandma Lorraine had looked over Martha’s shoulder at the photo, and apparently noticed the same thing, for she had suddenly stopped talking.
“Who’s that?” Martha had asked.
“Oh, that was Marty,” – the girl stiffened at the name – “Martin Klein. Without him, your grandpa and I would have never met.” Lorraine had smiled at the memory, the looked back thoughtfully at the picture. “Funny… he looks a lot like your father did when he was young. I wonder…”
Martha had looked up, watching her grandmother intently as she waited for her to continue. Lorraine, however, had just laughed.
“Nah, it couldn’t be him,” she had said with a small chuckle. “Not unless he had a time machine,” she had added, not knowing just how close she had come to the truth.
Martha had smiled along at the joke; but she wasn’t so sure that it wasn’t true.
For today, barely moments ago, she had seen him, standing outside the Café 80’s looking lost. The guy from the photos. He had stared back at her… and she was almost completely certain that it was the same person. Marty. But how could he be here?
Not unless he had a time machine… but what if he did? It was not possible, but what if? And what if that guy was actually her father, on a trip from the past…
Martha had watched as he saved her brother from the car accident. She had watched, unnoticed, as her father had arrived and taken him away. And then she had skated to the car and climbed onto it’s back, staying low and trying to ignore the curious glances from passers-by as she clung on, undetected, all the way home. She had jumped down a little way off to decrease her chances of being seen by her father, and then skated on her hoverboard over to where she was now, waiting.
She didn’t know what she was waiting for, exactly. All she knew was that that guy was now inside her house, and all she had to do was wait for her father to leave so that she could get in there and confirm his identity.
Just then, the sound of an approaching hover car filled the air. It was like none Martha had ever seen, but before she could wonder about it any further the door of her house flew open and her father ran out towards the vehicle.
Now was her only chance. Leaving her hoverboard there on the ground, Martha move as quickly and as quietly as she could to the front of her house, then scooted in through the open door unseen. She ran to her brother’s room and pulled open a drawer, rummaged in it and emerged victorious with the fingerprint identification device she knew was there. Marty Jr. knew the son of a police officer, and had somehow got hold of the thing.
A quick search of the house revealed that the guy was in her parents’ bedroom. Martha entered the room cautiously, and crept down to his side to get a good look at his face, turning on the device as she did so.
It was him, she was certain of that now. And he also bore an uncanny resemblance to both her father and her brother.
Slowly, Martha reached over for one of his hands, gently placing his thumb on the scanner.
Fingers trembling, she hit the activator button.
And the screen flashed, displaying a name.
Martin Seamus McFly.
“No…” Martha whispered, her voice barely audible as her eyes stared at the unconscious form on the bed, so strange and yet so familiar.
Her father…
The sound of approaching footsteps and two voices snapped the girl back to her senses. The door was opening.
With nowhere else to go, Martha dived under the bed, clinging onto the device. Face down, she tried to keep silent, trying not to sneeze at the dust there. Strategically placing the gadget at an angle to the floor, she tried to see what was going on through the reflection on the screen.
The local Marty entered the room and sat down on the bed next to his unconscious younger self. Doc followed behind, taking up a standing position by the doorway.
“Are you sure no one else knows we’re here?” Emmett asked. “If someone were to come in now, you’d have a lot of explaining to do.”
Marty smiled, playing with the fingers on his other self’s hand, interlocking them with his own. It gave him the weirdest of feelings. “Nah, no one knows. Jen won’t be home till lunch, Junior’s out with friends, Marlene’s got extra classes at school or something and Martha’s out too…”
“Martha?”
Marty grinned. “Yeah. She’s our youngest. Jen and I weren’t really expecting her… but as you said, Doc, the future’s always changing.” Marty paused, still playing with his younger self’s hand. He found it strangely fascinating.
“Doc… I’ve got to tell you something about the future,” he continued, in a quieter tone tinged with sadness. Marty looked up to see the scientist staring sternly back at him.
“Marty, you can’t. You know the consequences of that,” the latter replied.
“Yeah, but…”
“Nothing is worth that, Marty. I’ll find out what happened in the natural course of time.”
Two equally stubborn pairs of eyes met. Marty shrugged, turning his gaze away to stare at the floor. “Then… maybe I’ll just write you a letter,” he said slowly, looking back up at his friend. “Like I did that time in 1955.”
“Are you implying something?”
Marty was silent for a moment before speaking. “Maybe.”
For a while, neither of them said anything.
“It’s not going to be the same, Doc,” Marty continued quietly, talking more to himself than his friend. “You survived that time, but it was so close… this time, something’s sure to have changed at least a little, who knows what that could mean…” He paused. “Times change. Literally. And even if it all turns out the same way, it’s still going to be hard. It could have all be avoided so easily…”
“Whatever happened, I prefer not to know. Everything’s fine now, right?”
Marty sighed and nodded resignedly. “Yeah. Sort of.”
The man then gave a wan smile, as if he had thought of some other way to solve his problem. He released his hand and got up from the bed. “Are you hungry? I think there’s still some food leftover from breakfast…”
Emmett eyed his friend suspiciously, and then consented. The two walked out of the room, Marty closing the door behind him.
Neither noticed Martha sliding cautiously out from under the bed, trembling as she got to her feet.
For she had just discovered her father’s greatest secret.
And she was scared. Very scared.
#
19 December 2015, 8:34 p.m.
Hill Valley, California
Marty did not know how long he had been knocked out. Opening his eyes slowly, painfully, he found himself in a half-sitting half-lying position in the front seat of the DeLorean. It was night outside; but the car’s interior lights hurt his eyes and he shut them again.
“Doc?” Marty asked weakly. There was no response, but the faint voices of two people in conversation reached his ears, too faint for him to make out the words or the speakers.
The teen figured he had been hit on the head; that’s where most of the pain was, though his whole body ached all over. Vaguely, he recalled the accident; he remembered the car coming towards him, finally hitting him…
Wincing, Marty tried to stand up and pushed open the gull-wing door of the time machine. A blast of the cold outside air hit him as he staggered out, raising up a hand to close the door as he did so.
The voices had stopped. Marty squinted in the dark, trying to see ahead, and walked towards a nearby streetlamp.
“Doc?” he asked again. He knew the scientist couldn’t be far off; he would never leave the DeLorean unattended like that. So he had to be around here somewhere…
“You’re finally awake, huh?” an all-too-familiar voice said, just as he felt a hand rest on his shoulder.
Marty swivelled around on instinct, letting out a short scream and stumbling a few steps back as he saw his local counterpart standing barely a metre away from him, a weird yet rather amused look on his face.
The latter removed his hand. “Hey, it’s just me. I’m not going to do anything…”
Trying to stop hyperventilating, Marty looked back up at his future self’s face. Their eyes met, and he flinched, turning his gaze down to the floor. The feeling of having eye contact with himself was just too weird for his liking.
He would have fainted, had it not been for the fact that he had just recovered from one. As it was, all Marty felt was totally freaked out. “Uh… hi?” the teenager managed to croak out. “Just… don’t do that to me… I didn’t even know you were there…”
The local Marty smiled wryly at his younger self’s uneasiness. “Don’t worry. After a few years of time travel, you’ll almost get used to seeing yourself.” He paused. “Almost.”
The teen didn’t know how to respond to that. One hand on the streetlamp for support, he just stared.
“How’s your head?” the older Marty asked, looking somewhat concerned.
The visitor touched his head and winced. “Uh… it’s okay, I guess… it still hurts a little though.”
“Sorry… but I couldn’t do much. If I’d brought you to a hospital or something it wouldn’t have been easy to explain who you were.” The local then became serious again, his voice lowering in volume. “Listen, I’ve got to tell you something really important. Later…”
Before he could continue, however, Doc’s voice suddenly came out of the shadows. “And what do you think you’re doing?”
Both Martys jumped, the older one suddenly looking guilty as they noticed the inventor there. “I was just… uh… can’t I even say hello?”
Doc started muttering something about paradoxes and the end of the universe. “You said you needed the toilet.”
“Ah… yeah. I do. In fact, I think I’ll go now. Uh… bye.” Local Marty smiled awkwardly and turned to go, then stopped and looked back. “You know, you really look a lot like my son,” he added as an afterthought.
“Marty…” Doc warned, visibly gritting his teeth.
“Okay, okay, I’m going! Uh… the toilet. Yeah. Bye.”
The teenage Marty grinned nervously as he watched his future self run off. Doc, however, seemed far from pleased at the whole meeting. The only thing that seemed to be preventing him from going totally nuts was his confidence that thirty years later, Marty was unlikely to remember much of the incident. That and the fact that he was already nuts, to a certain extent. Just joking.
“Thirty years from now, remind me to come after you once you reach home,” he said as the two of them walked back to the time machine.
“Well, you talked to him, so why can’t I?” Marty asked.
Doc gave him a strange look in return. “That was… different.”
Marty shrugged and climbed into the DeLorean. Noting the temperature difference, he threw his jacket off onto the floor. He had to change clothes sooner or later, anyway. Swinging the door shut, Marty sat back and waited for his friend to get in the other end of the car and program the time circuits.
“It’s going to be hard to sleep after this,” the boy commented, more to himself than anything. “I mean, I just got up. I suppose I could try counting sheep, but after the fiftieth one or so the sheep always seem to get into weird accidents, fall off the fence and die.”
“You’ll find a way,” Doc replied, sending the time machine into the sky.
Back below on the ground, the local Marty watched the car from a corner, feelings of nostalgia washing over him as it lifted off. The sound of approaching footsteps caused him to turn, as 39-year-old Verne Brown walked over to his side.
“Did you tell them?” Verne asked, looking up at the sky with his hands in his pockets.
Marty shook his head slowly.
Verne sighed. “I guess it’s better that way, though.”
“Yeah. I just hope it’ll all turn out the same way it originally did and nothing… bad will happen.”
The younger man nodded understandingly. “But what’s the worse that can happen, anyway? You did everything the same way as you remembered, right? There’s not much that can go wrong; after October 22nd, all the other trips we made were less complicated. I mean, programming that holo-newspaper to change on cue and all that…”
“I know. They’ll be fine. I just hope.”
And the two of them stared up at the DeLorean in the sky, watching as it sped up to 88 mph, killed a few dumb birds on the way, and sent its occupants home… or so they thought.
Chapter Six
5 November 1985, 3:10 a.m.
Hill Valley, California
From the moment the DeLorean arrived back in 1985 and he got out, Marty had the strange feeling that something was not right. He didn’t know what it was exactly, but he just knew something was wrong. He could sense it…
The teen gave a soft laugh, trying to chase away his uneasiness. “Sense it? What am I, a Jedi?” he wondered, shaking his head in amusement after bidding Doc goodbye and walking through the side gate in the driveway.
Emmett was about to climb back into the time machine and drive off, when he saw something that stopped him in his tracks.
The trashcan had not been overturned. It was still standing… and what was more, the area around it showed no signs of rubbish or anything else that might have indicated that it had been tipped over.
The scientist doubted that there had been enough time between the DeLorean’s departure and arrival for some considerate neighbour who just so happed to be taking a stroll at three in the morning to see the upset trashcan, put it back in its proper position and clear up the junk around it.
Which meant that one of four things had happened. Firstly, that he had entered the destination time wrongly into the time circuits and they had arrived back too early. Secondly, that something they had done in the future had somehow altered the past, like in the Almanac incident. Thirdly, that Marty had put the trashcan back properly and had not spilled enough of its contents for the latter to be visible. And fourthly… something else had happened.
Doc started after Marty to warn him to be careful, just in case, but then decided against it. The boy was now out of hearing, and he couldn’t go nearer because it wasn’t his house in the first place. Emmett had no wish to get caught for trespassing or, worse, mistaken for a burglar.
So all he could do was wait, and hope that his young friend wasn’t going to do anything stupid.
#
Marty walked around the outside of his house to his bedroom window, thankfully remembering that he had left it open. It would’ve been much harder to enter his house by the normal way.
For some reason, the Star Wars theme song had started playing itself non-stop in the boy’s head. He sighed, trying to lose the tune, but it just stayed on. John Williams was a really great composer, but at times like this…
Marty reached his window, opened it and climbed into his room without making a sound. It was too easy. If only his parents knew how burglar-friendly their home was… the 17-year-old grinned, closing the window and turning to his bed… only to stumble a few feet back in shock.
There was already someone sleeping on it.
Heart thumping away, Marty approached the bed slowly and peered down at the person lying fast asleep on his bed.
It was himself.
The teen stared, not able to believe his eyes and not wanting to know what this meant. “*Beep*,” he muttered under his breath, his gaze still fixated on his sleeping other self. Something must have gone wrong… something always went wrong whenever he deigned to enter that freaking time machine.
And so Marty did what any other human being would have done in his position: he turned on his heels and ran. Which was a mistake, seeing that his room wasn’t all that large. Narrowly avoiding a painful collision with the wall through the execution of several acrobatic movements Marty never knew himself capable of, he dropped back out the window and dashed out towards the DeLorean, where Doc was waiting for him.
Emmett looked up as the teen breathlessly rushed towards him, and the expression on the former’s face confirmed his suspicions that something had gone wrong.
“Doc… I… we must have come back at the wrong time… I went into my room and saw myself, Doc… I was still sleeping there, it really freaked me out, something must have…”
Marty’s gaze had reached the trashcan, still standing properly by the gate, and he fell silent.
“Marty… you didn’t put that back up earlier on, did you?”
The boy shook his head slowly. “No… what’s that supposed to mean?”
Doc was silent for a while before he replied. “I’m not sure… I just hope our problem is an easy one. Maybe I just got the time wrong, though I doubt it. Get back in the DeLorean, and we’ll try again and see what happens.”
“You mean we can do that?”
“What?”
“I thought that every time we get back from a trip the car can’t move for a while ‘cause it’s frozen or something.”
“I fixed that. This is a new one, remember?”
“Oh. Yeah.” Marty climbed back into the car, casting occasional glances at the trashcan and his house with its sleeping occupants. He shut the door and watched as Doc added ten minutes into the destination time display.
The latter got ready to lift the car back into the air, when he appeared to change his mind. Reaching over to the time circuits, Doc took away the ten minutes he had added and set the destination time to one minute earlier instead.
“Doc, what’re you…”
“I’m checking to see if what I think happened, happened,” he replied to a blank look from Marty, before sending the DeLorean into the air and flying a few metres away from where they had landed.
Then, the time machine hit eighty-eight and was off again.
Everything was silent when they arrived and put down several streets away. Marty soon understood what his friend was doing and slumped back into his seat, waiting for the minute to pass.
It came and went… and nothing happened, as it should rightly have. They didn’t see nor hear their slightly younger selves arrive back from 2015 in the DeLorean, which they would have had if everything were going fine.
But it was already quite clear by then that everything was not going fine.
Doc’s face creased into a frown as he revved up the car and drove back to Marty’s house. The trashcan was still standing outside, upright as ever. They both stared at it, speechless; then the teen finally spoke. “What’d we do now?”
“You’ve got to go in,” came the reply after a moment’s hesitation. “Wake yourself up and find out exactly where – or when – we are. It’s the only way. I doubt we can do much else at this time of the morning, and I dare not risk another trip without some idea of what’s going on.”
Marty made a face. “Why can’t you do it?”
“It’s not my house,” Doc answered simply. “I’ll wait for you outside.”
Marty sighed and got out. When he wanted to talk to himself, Doc wouldn’t let him, but when he didn’t… The teen had a sneaking suspicion that the scientist had several ulterior motives for making him do this.
For the second time that night, Marty climbed through his bedroom window and dropped down to the other side.
He glanced at the clock ticking softly away on the bedside table. It read 3:15 in the morning, which wasn’t really much help at that moment. Just beside the table, however, was a clarinet case; and Marty wondered about it. He’d got kicked out of band more than five years ago after Biff Tannen’s son, Marc, ruined his instrument… well, ‘ruined’ was an understatement. Marc had somehow bent every key on the instrument out of shape and broken every single reed in the case before tossing the whole thing into the pond, and Marty would have followed it there had not Emmett Brown appeared just in time to save him.
The band major had been furious, unwilling to believe Marty’s ‘excuses’ and kicking the boy out of the school band without any delay upon seeing the state his clarinet was in. Only the section leader, Roy, the one who’d taught him to play the guitar, believed him and told him go tell the band major the truth. But Marty hadn’t dared. He preferred to be out of the band to having to face the band major’s rage again. Roy called him a chicken and stopped the guitar lessons, saying that he didn’t want to teach someone who didn’t have the guts to stand up for himself.
And it had hurt. Marty didn’t know how he could have survived those days without Doc, who had become his friend after saving him from Marc. The Pinheads came into being when he was fifteen – after Doc bought him a guitar for his fourteenth birthday, the best present he’d ever received. After that, his less-than-one-year-worth of band days were history… never thought about again more than necessary.
So what was the clarinet doing by the bedside table?
Marty decided to ignore it. He had other things to do. Taking a deep breath, he moved over to the bed.
“Hey… wake up,” he whispered.
No response.
The teen tried again, a little louder, tentatively reaching out his hand to give his other self a gentle shake.
The latter stirred slightly. “Mom, that you?”
Marty winced slightly at the voice. “Ah… not really…”
Local Marty sleepily opened his eyes, found himself looking straight into those of his visiting counterpart and reacted on instinct.
“AAAAAAAAAAAHHH!”
The rest of the McFly household were jolted rudely out of their sleep. Lights started coming on all over the house, and by the time Marty got back on his feet after falling down in shock, footsteps were heard fast approaching the door.
There was no time for him to think. Marty ran back across the room, accidentally knocked over the clarinet and hoisted himself out the window, ignoring his local counterpart hyperventilating away on the bed.
The door swung open just as he landed outside. A quick glance back into the room revealed Lorraine, David and Linda bursting in, and Marty noticed with a slight shock that they looked as they had before he’d gone back to 1955 and changed history.
As Marty ran, he thought he saw Dave attempting to climb out the window after him, obviously mistaking him for a burglar.
“Go, Doc! Go!” Marty yelled breathlessly, hurling into the DeLorean and slamming the door shut as the vehicle lifted off into the air.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know! They’re after me!”
“Who?”
“My family… I think…” Marty turned to look back out the window. Dave had got out and was staring open-mouthed at the flying car, soon followed by his sister.
The teen smiled slightly at their bewildered expression, when his gaze travelled down to the door… and to the sleeve of his jacket caught in it, preventing the door from closing all the way.
“Doc! It was the jacket!” Marty shouted.
“What?!”
“My jacket! It caught the door, so it couldn’t close properly, maybe that’s why…”
The scientist turned to see, hands still on the wheel, eyes widening as he saw what his friend was pointing at. “Marty! How could you not notice something so…”
“DOC! Don’t look here, look at the r… WATCH OUT FOR THAT TREE!”
A bright blue flash of electricity filled the air in front of them, obscuring for a moment the large, way-too-close tree as the DeLorean hit eighty-eight and temporal displacement took place… and then all of a sudden the tree was there again, coming closer… and closer… and…
CRASH!
Chapter Seven: Just Count the Sheep
4 November 1985, 3:10 a.m.
Hill Valley, California
“Ow…” Marty groaned, tentatively moving his limbs to check that nothing was broken. Nothing was, but the same could not be said for either the DeLorean or the tree it had rather violently crashed into. The car had swerved just in time such that only one side of it had actually come into contact with the tree – Marty’s side – but a quick glance back revealed the smashed flux capacitor, the half-shattered windscreen and the time circuits which flashed random dates before switching off completely. Amazingly, though, the vehicle had still managed to stay in the air.
“Are you all right?” Doc asked, looking over at his friend.
“Yeah… I think so.” The teen looked over once more at the totalled flux capacitor. “So I guess we’re stuck here forever, and it’s all my fault, right?”
“In a way, although I hope the ‘forever’ part won’t come to pass. You should know better than to yell at me when I’m driving. And how could you not notice something so obvious as your jacket caught in the door? We could be home by now!”
“It was dark,” Marty replied lamely, although his answer was true to a certain extent. After all, not much illumination was present in Hill Valley both at 8 p.m. in 2015 and 3 a.m. in 1985. Emmett, however, who was now busy running a damage check over the time machine, didn’t see that as a valid explanation and said so.
Marty decided to just let it go. “So… what d’you think happened? Where… when… are we?” he asked, trying to change the subject.
“I don’t know,” came the honest reply. The scientist paused. “Did you see anything different between the two times you entered your room?”
The teen racked his memory. “I can’t really remember. It was kinda dark,” – Doc gave him a look – “but uh, I think so. The second time there was a clarinet in the room, and my family looked weird, like they did before I went back to 1955. I didn’t really get a close look at them just now though, so I can’t really be sure. But the clarinet was definitely there. I remember thinking it was strange ‘cause I haven’t had a clarinet for five years.” Marty paused. “So what’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that we should tell the Hill Valley Town Council to do something quick about the lighting in this place. As for where we are…” Doc paused for a moment. “I have a feeling we’ve probably landed ourselves in some other dimension… alternate reality… parallel universe… whatever. That’s what I was trying to check just now, though I had no idea what we had done to bring about such a situation. But now we do, and we can’t do a thing about it because we’re obviously not going any where save through normal space with a flux capacitor that looks like that.” Doc motioned in the direction of the glass fragments. Marty gulped. “I think we already have quite a good idea of what will happen if you go into your house, so I doubt we should try that again.”
“So… ah, what’d we do now?”
“Go over to my home for the night. It’s the safest thing we can do – there’s no one there at least, and we need someplace to stay while I fix the DeLorean. It’s a miracle this thing can still fly.”
“So you think you can fix it?”
“Most of it. I have the necessary tools and equipment in my house and it’ll probably take less than a week. It’s the flux capacitor that’s the problem, though. I don’t have a spare one, and all my plans for it are stuck back in the late nineteenth century. I’ll probably have to start again from scratch… but we’ll find a way.”
The car flew through the [dark] night skies of Hill Valley and put down outside Doc’s garage-turned-home. The two got out, opened the door, and flicked the lights on.
It was then that Marty realised that he was in deep… *beep*.
“Great Scott!”
Somehow, the teen had a feeling that Doc wouldn’t believe him if he claimed that he hadn’t done a thing to the amplifier and it was perhaps only in this reality that such a thing had happened. Besides, it wouldn’t be much good to deny anything since Doc would find out the truth sooner or later when they got back – whenever that was – so he might as well get it over and done with.
“What did you do to my amp?” Emmett continued, his face paling as he took in the rest of the room and its messier-than-usual state.
Marty felt slightly hurt that his friend had concluded so quickly that the amplifier owed its horrible demise to him, although the scientist had good reason to think so. Marty was the only one who actually used the amp regularly; he and the rest of The Pinheads when they came over to practise.
“I sort of… ah, set the controls to override and when I plugged in my guitar the amp kinda blew up…”
“I thought I warned you explicitly not to do just that!”
“Well, yeah… but I only got your call after the thing exploded, see, and by then it was a bit too late.”
Doc shook his head but decided to just let the matter rest. After all, the amp would be much more missed by Marty than him, considering the scientist didn’t find much of a use for it. Besides, the prospect of not being able to use the amplifier again anytime soon would probably be enough of a punishment for the teen; not to mention what the other member’s of Marty’s band would do to him once they discovered that the best (and largest) amplifier the four of them had access to would not be available for quite a while, if ever.
The two travellers turned in for the night, but just as Marty had predicted, he was unable to fall asleep… although it probably had something to do with how he had been doing just that less than an hour ago. The 17-year-old groaned, turning over on the couch to look out the window at the dark world outside. Everything was still, save an occasional movement as some small animal or insect made its way through the night, and in the silence, Marty’s mind began to wander back over the past week or so. It had been an eventful time, and even that was an understatement to describe the things he had gone through then, especially during that weekend.
In that one weekend alone, he had visited four different time periods inclusive of his own, doing things that everyone else only dreamt about. And after that… after that he had thought that his life would be finally getting back to normal, or as normal as it could be living with a family that was drastically different from when he last left them; not to mention strange memories of a life he had never lived which were slowly but surely appearing and gradually replacing his original.
For example, in his original life, he had never joined the school band. He had met Doc later too; the latter had come knocking on his door one day in 1983, asking him if he’d like to help the inventor in cleaning out his garage for $50. He had gone, was soon earning money on a regular basis for himself, and along the way a friendship developed between the two. In that timeline, he never experienced being called a chicken by Ray; subsequently, the insult never brought up any painful memories and did not lead to Marty doing whatever he could to make the speaker take back that particular comment.
But now things had changed. Doc found Marty after saving him (and his clarinet, Firewood) from the pool when the boy was fourteen years old, and the extra year had probably got them closer as compared to originally. And Ray affected him for life after calling him a chicken that first time.
There were times when Marty tried to forget, tried to focus his mind on the earlier memories which were starting to fade away. A part of him didn’t want to let go; he wanted to still remember something of what his life used to be. But nothing he could do would stop the slow erasure of the memories; memories of a life that was his but wasn’t any more.
It was weird, but he’d get used to it. The same went for the double memory he had of the whole Almanac incident; in one, he remembered returning to 1985 from the future to find it ruled by Biff… in the other, he remembered coming home to a normal world and seeing the book in Biff’s pocket in a photo of the Enchantment Under the Sea dance from his parent’s yearbook. Meanwhile, Doc had discovered the top of the man’s cane and the bag the Almanac had come with in the DeLorean; they’d put two and two together and concluded that somehow, Biff must have received the book sometime around 12 November 1955 – and so they’d set out to get it back.
After Marty watched the first DeLorean be destroyed and Doc and his family had arrived and left as quickly as they’d come, he couldn’t deny the sense of disappointment he’d felt as he saw the train disappear through time with his friend. He could not know then if Doc would ever come back to see him; anything could have happened when the train arrived at its destination some place else, some time else… he could have never got to see the inventor again…
And then he finally did, and look where they were now.
Marty sighed and shut his eyes; but sleep still would not come no matter how hard he tried. In his mind, the boy tried counting sheep to pass the time and hopefully help him doze off somehow. He envisioned a large happy field full of green grass with sheep scattered all around under the big blue sky. A wooden gate stood inexplicably right smack in the middle of the field, and one by one the sheep went up to it and jumped over, baaing as they did so.
1…2…3…4…5…6…
Marty decided that whoever thought counting sheep would help a person drop off was seriously nuts, for it didn’t help one bit.
17…18…19…20…21…23-oops, 22…
He persisted a while longer before finally giving up around 50 or so. The unfortunate sheep which just so happened to be crossing at that time met with a gruesome fate as it caught a leg in the fence and hung there, baaing desperately until it fell off. Marty sent it to an imaginary sheep hospital to recuperate; but the next one wasn’t so lucky. It died and he barbecued it to eat.
The teen groaned. This wasn’t helping at all… sitting up, he looked across the room at Doc, fast asleep on his bed. Marty slid off the couch and picked his way through to the door, deciding that a short walk outside in the cool night air would be of more use than counting imaginary accident-prone sheep in helping him to just sleep. He wasn’t even asking for much… all he wanted to do was sleep.
The soft chirps of crickets greeted the boy as he let himself quietly out of the garage-house, softly closing the door behind him. Outside, everything looked so quiet and peaceful; sure, it was dark too, but that was of a minor concern to Marty then. The darkness served only to add to the calm aura that surrounded the area, and to give the place a slightly mysterious, exciting feel to it.
The whole of Hill Valley was deep in slumber; only Marty was awake. The world was his for now… Marty made his way slowly to the other side of the garage, his footsteps making soft crunching sounds as he moved through the gravel. From what he could see, the other side was slightly more illuminated; the lighting department of the Hill Valley Town Council probably wasn’t as slack as he had thought.
Marty turned the corner… and then stopped dead in his tracks.
Right before him was another DeLorean time machine.
At first Marty thought his eyes were deceiving him; it was dark, after all, but upon moving nearer that was proved to be wrong. Closer inspection of the vehicle revealed it to be not the new DeLorean, but rather the original one; although for one it wasn’t crushed, and secondly it seemed in much better shape than when Marty last remembered seeing it intact. So perhaps Doc had been right about the parallel universe thing… and somehow, in this world, something had happened which had prevented the DeLorean from being destroyed, which meant…
Heart thumping, Marty pressed his face against one of the DeLorean’s windows to see inside; and in the dim light he managed to make out the interior of the car, the time circuits… and the flux capacitor.
They could go home now.
And yet that particular realisation came to the teen along with a strange feeling of fear. He was nowhere near home; whether in time or space… who knew if they could even get back? And if the DeLorean had not been destroyed, what did that mean? For all Marty knew, its owner could suddenly appear and freak out upon discovering a certain two too-familiar visitors fast asleep in his house.
Suddenly the darkness seemed darker than ever, as if in it lurked strange, mysterious things of the foreign universe that at any moment might lunge out and grab him from behind. Marty shivered, and thought it was time he should be getting back. Leaving the DeLorean, he ran back into the safety of the garage, locked the door and lay back down on the couch.
About half an hour later he finally fell asleep, somehow… and he slept through the rest of the [dark] night into the morning; not stirring when the sun came up and shone its light through the windows; unaware as somebody unlocked the door from outside and stepped in.
Chapter Eight
4 November 1985, 8:02 a.m.
Hill Valley, California
The local Marty had made up his mind. He’d do it. After a quick goodbye to his parents, the teen left his house and skated his way to Doc’s garage. The DeLorean should still be there… all he had to do was get in and go back; how hard could it be? And when he got there… Marty groaned. He needed a plan. He didn’t have a plan. But maybe it wouldn’t matter, maybe when he arrived there he’d just know what to do, maybe it’ll all work out somehow, maybe pigs could fly…
It was all his fault that everything had happened in the first place. All his fault, and that of the stupid Almanac. He’d found it so hard to smuggle it back from the future without Doc noticing anything, but the scientist had been getting more and more suspicious… and then yesterday, Marty started feeling guilty and thought that maybe he should just admit what he did and face the consequences. After all, he couldn’t hide forever… and Marty didn’t dare to just throw it away for fear that it might end up in the wrong hands. And there was no way he could burn it without people wondering what he was doing, especially not in the house where his parents still worried whenever they saw him with a box of matches, for they had by no means forgotten that little incident that had led to the horrible demise of the living room rug when he was eight.
Marty didn’t know why, but something about the Almanac just kept nagging at his conscience. It wasn’t just the fact that the plain act of using information from the future for monetary gain was wrong, but the book also served as a constant reminder of his few trips through time – and time travel was something that Marty was very willing to forget. Just one last time… and after that he was staying away from that machine as well as he could.
Yesterday evening, he’d finally given in. He’d taken the Almanac and gone over to Doc’s place. The inventor had seen him and come out… just as a van appeared coming round the corner; and Marty had stared, helpless, as he saw his friend get shot to death for the second time that week as the Libyan terrorists in the van opened fire on Emmett and Einie before driving off.
Everything after that was a blur in Marty’s memory. Somehow, he’d managed to call the police and the ambulance; they’d come, but they were too late… Doc was gone. But he could stop that; he could prevent everything from happening, just one last trip…
Marty arrived at his destination and headed towards the DeLorean he knew was parked there. Finding it locked, he decided that the car keys were probably in the garage somewhere. He walked over to it and unlocked the door, mentally preparing himself for a journey through the junk on the floor.
He turned, ready for the challenge of crossing the room… when he discovered that he was not alone.
Marty started.
And then he freaked out.
“Calm down, McFly,” Marty muttered to himself, taking a nervous second look at the two visitors sleeping a little way from him. There had to be a rational explanation for all this… They couldn’t have come from the past, because he couldn’t remember it; apart from the possibility that Doc had once grabbed him from his bed unknowingly and whisked him off through time to a trip he’d slept completely through – which was highly unlikely if not ridiculous – the most probable origin of the visitors was the future.
Was that even possible? Marty thought that the only way he could get a visit from his future self was if he himself had made that trip to meet his past self, and the visit would be a mere memory as compared to something he had physically gone through... which would mean that he was living in the past. But then again, he vaguely recalled Doc mentioning something about what they saw in the future being the most likely outcome of the present circumstances, so if the most likely future was one where he’d make a trip back in time, then maybe…
Marty shook his head to clear his thoughts, feeling really confused. Time travel migraine would be the death of him one day if he didn’t manage to erase himself from existence first.
Right. So they came from the future. In other words, that probably meant that his rescue trip was… would be a success, but why on earth would he have been so stupid as to stay the night?
Marty sighed. Whatever it was, the important thing now was for him to find the keys to the DeLorean so he could make the trip in the first place. Marty had no idea where Doc hid them, or if he even hid them… all one needed to do was toss a tiny bunch of car keys into the mini-rubbish dump on the floor and it could be lost forever.
The teen tried to carefully pick his way through the junk, looking for bare patches of floor where he could safely place his next step, all the while searching for any glint of metal that might divulge to him the location of the keys.
For about three minutes, Marty managed rather well… until his foot caught on something, sending the boy straight to the floor with a rather loud thump.
The noise instantly jolted Doc out of bed. Marty’s other self, however, simply murmured something about sheep, rolled over and was silent again.
Apprehensively, the local backed away on the floor as Doc approached him, knowing what he was in big trouble now. He had no idea why; he just had a real bad feeling about this. What if Doc tried to stop him from making the trip in the first place? He couldn’t… Feeling totally perplexed, he looked up at his friend.
“Doc… what’s going on here?” Marty asked weakly, not knowing what else to say. Nothing made sense to him anymore. He’d probably just created a paradox or something and the universe would blow up at any moment – the nearby galaxies at least – and it would all be his fault. As usual.
“Marty?”
The teen swallowed nervously. “I’m sorry Doc, really, if you don’t want me to go I won’t, but I didn’t know you didn’t want me to, I had to save you, so can someone please just tell me what the *beep* is going on here?”
The inventor blinked. The last thing he had been expecting was an apology of any sort, and he didn’t even have any idea as to what it was for. “What do you…” Doc paused. “Get off the floor. I don’t know what else might be on it.”
Marty scrambled up, utter confusion still etched all over his face. “What’s happening here?” he asked, the desperation evident in his voice. The sound of conversation awakened his sleeping other self. Mumbling something about barbecued sheep, the latter got up, yawned, and stared blearily at the other two people in the room. “Uh… did I miss something?” The local teen shrugged slightly, not taking his eyes off his counterpart. “Just what I wanted to know,” he said vaguely. The two of them looked nervously at each other for roughly three seconds before turning to face Doc expectantly. “Uh, Doc? What’s going on here?” Marty asked. Doc sighed. “Nothing’s going on here. We just got a visitor this morning, that’s all.” Local Marty opened his mouth in indignation. “Look, you’re the visitors here, okay? Not me.” He paused. “You’re from the future, right?” Doc and Marty looked at each other. “Ah… not exactly,” the latter replied, stifling a yawn. “What d’you mean, ‘not exactly’?” Doc and Marty looked at each other. “We’re not from the future,” the inventor finally said. “We’re not from the past either. We’re…” He hesitated, unsure as to how to continue. “We’re from a different… reality altogether. At least, that what I think from what’s been happening so far. The problem now is how we’re going to get back from where we came from, considering how our DeLorean… crashed.” Marty looked guilty. “Most of the damage seems rather minor,” Doc continued, “but the main problem lies with the flux capacitor. It broke completely, and I doubt I’d be able to repair it. I can’t remake it either without the plans, and I was hoping that we could find some help here…”
“There’s another DeLorean here,” Marty cut in suddenly, remembering. “I couldn’t sleep last night, so I went out and I saw it. It’s completely intact and everything; we can use it, right?”
“There’s another DeLorean here?” Doc repeated. “The new one?”
Marty shook his head. “Nah. It’s the old one. I think it wasn’t destroyed here for some reason. But it’s got a flux capacitor inside, maybe we can take it out and…”
Local Marty’s face fell. They couldn’t just take apart the DeLorean like that… they couldn’t… he NEEDED it, for crying out loud! Everything had been going so fine that morning; why did they have to come and ruin it all? Doc could have been saved by now. Everything could have got back to normal by now. But instead he was stuck here helplessly, watching as two intruders from some other dimension talked about dismantling his last hope of doing anything.
His life sucked.
And what was more, the teen thought, panicking as his gaze settled on one of the many clocks and he mentally added 25 minutes to them… he was late for school.
He muttered a random swear word under his breath, loud enough to interrupt his counterpart.
“What?” the latter asked.
“I’M LATE FOR SCHOOL!”
“Oh.”
“Uh… I… see you guys later.” The local ran out the door, screeched to a stop, and executed two perfect U-turns as he ran back into grab his skateboard and exited again, a very dazed look on his face.
The two visitors were left staring after him in his wake. Marty blinked. “I guess some things never change, huh?”
Doc shook his head. “Let’s just go have a look at that DeLorean.”
Chapter Nine
4 November 1985
3:15 p.m.
It rained that afternoon. He had thought it would, judging from the overcast sky that had hung outside the classroom windows the whole day.
The local Marty had spent his last few hours in school on edge; unable to concentrate on anything but what he hoped was not currently going on at Doc’s garage. What if the visitors took apart the DeLorean, or did anything to it…?
Part of him knew that his thoughts were irrational. The DeLorean didn’t belong to them. They wouldn’t just dismantle it if they wanted to – they would ask him first… right?
Marty had waited for what seemed ages for school to be over so he could go and check up on things himself and find out what exactly was going on… but now that school finally was over, it had to be raining. Heavily.
He could barely make out through the rain the vague shapes of hapless students running for the nearest shelter, carrying their books or files over their heads to keep off as much rain as possible. Several luckier ones jumped into taxis or their parents’ waiting cars, and others had actually got umbrellas.
Marty wasn’t one of them.
Heaving a sigh of resignation, the teen left the shelter of his school and walked out into the pouring rain. He descended the front steps of Hill Valley High, then sped off on his skateboard as he mentally calculated the most sheltered route home. He’d go there, get an umbrella, then skate over to Doc’s garage and sort things out.
Blinking the rain away from his eyes, Marty tried to ignore the mental image of himself cruising along on his skateboard and holding an umbrella.
Lightning flashed.
1 Mississippi… 2 Mississippi… 3 Mississippi… 4 Mississippi… 5 Mississippi… 6 Mississippi… 7…
A clap of thunder sounded in the distance. Seven seconds. So that meant the lightning was… how far away? Marty didn’t know, and he couldn’t care less.
By the time he arrived home, Marty was almost completely drenched. Almost, for no one can know what being totally and completely drenched is if they haven’t been in a kayak for ten and a half hours non-stop out in the open sea in a thunderstorm, with jellyfish in the water, where the only means of relieving yourself is jumping out of the kayak and spending ten minutes trying to get back in. In the rain. With jellyfish. That is being completely and utterly drenched, which the author has experienced before and bets you haven’t.
Marty was far from that soaked. He was just as drenched as someone who had just skateboarded home from school in the rain. With no jellyfish.
After shaking off as much water from his shoes as he could, Marty entered his house and grabbed the nearest umbrella. He was about to step out again when his mother’s voice halted him and Lorraine came into the room.
“Marty! Did you get caught in the ra…”
The teen dripped water in reply, trying not to look as guilty as he felt or give any indication of what he was about to do… but the umbrella he was holding was a bit of a giveaway.
“Uh…”
“Where do you think you’re going?” Lorraine asked, right arm akimbo.
“Uh…”
“Well, whatever it is, you’re not going anywhere in that weather.”
“Uh…”
“It’s not urgent, is it?”
“Uh…”
“Close that door.”
Marty sighed and complied. So much for his plans…
He took a quick shower, changed into dry clothes, then plopped down on his bed and stared at the ceiling as the rain continued outside. He briefly wondered if his mother knew about the local Doc’s murder the day before, but decided against asking. If he actually managed to change it, it would be easier if he’d never asked. Besides, knowing the kind of reputation Doc had in Hill Valley, whatever report there might have been would have probably been relocated to some small corner somewhere.
Somewhere on the other end of Marty’s ceiling, a lizard lost its grip and fell. Why it fell, no one will ever know but the lizard. Just consider it yet another one of the many mysteries of Life, the Universe, and Everything, the answer to all of which is forty-two.
At least there probably couldn’t be much going on at Doc’s garage now, Marty thought, not in this kind of weather anyway. The visitors were most probably inside watching television on that new plasma television set that Doc bought from the future a few days ago.
But he was stuck at home, helpless until the rain stopped.
His life really sucked.
#
Meanwhile, over at Doc’s garage, the two visitors were busy watching television on the new plasma television set that the local inventor had bought from the future a few days ago. Marty, in particular, found it fascinating… whereas his friend expressed some concern over lightning striking the house and short-circuiting the television. After a while, though, Emmett too gave in to temptation and sat down next to Marty to watch as well.
“I wonder where the TV came from,” Marty wondered aloud somewhere during a commercial break. “I didn’t even know such sets existed.”
“They do,” Doc replied. “In the future, that is. I assume my counterpart must have bought it from there, considering that the DeLorean seems to have survived in this world.”
“So where is he now, then?”
“He probably went away a while for work. I do that all the time.”
"Oh."
The commercials ended and the two sat in silence, engrossed in the television programme.
All of a sudden, lightning struck.
The sky flashed.
The television set went blank.
A lizard fell off the ceiling.
Chapter Ten
Somewhere between 4 November 1985 and 5 November 1985
Hill Valley, California
The first day in that alternate universe passed swiftly. The two visitors had spent their time watching television (until the set got struck by lightning), trying to clear up the mess in the garage, and attempting to catch one particular lizard once it had become certain that it had been responsible for the small, dark lizard waste on the television screen. At first, the said lump had been thought to be merely an abnormally large pimple near the news reporter’s nose, but when it made the next news reporter look as if he had three nostrils, this was discovered to not be the case.
Time passed, the rain eventually stopped, and night with its darkness soon descended upon the town of Hill Valley. At one o’ clock in the morning, an alarm clock went off under the pillow of a 17-year-old teenager asleep in 9303 Lyon Estates.
Silencing his alarm clock, the local Marty took up his torchlight and skateboard and slipped out through his bedroom window into the night. Outside, he paused for a moment, giving a quick glance around to make sure no one had heard him leave. Nothing moved in the stillness of the night, and so he dropped his skateboard on the road and quietly skated off to Doc’s garage.
To Be Continued...
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