"This is getting ridiculous, Doc! I feel like we're in some kind of demented loop!"
"Well, unless you've got a better idea as to how to go about things...."
Marty gritted his teeth, his hold on his temper tenacious at best. He took a moment to try and calm down, walking a few steps away from the phone booth where Doc was looking himself up. It was so damned repetitive to Marty -- arrive in a new place; see that it wasn't home; look up their names in the book; visit their counterparts; grill them; then leave, 'cause no one was able to help them.
He couldn't even remember how many times they'd done this already. Things were starting to seriously blur together, helped by the repetition of it all, stress, sleep deprivation, and the constant coming and going in the machine, to the same date and time of day. The only reason the musician had any concept of time anymore was that he hadn't bothered to reset his watch once since they had started the endless journey. It didn't help his mood that more than two full days had passed since they left for a "quick jump"; the longer they were away, the more screwed up and out of sync he was going to be.
"Why don't we just steal one of those books and bring it with us?" Marty said when he had calmed down enough to not snap the words out. "It'd change every time we went somewhere new, right?"
"Wrong," Doc said. "Remember the photograph that my other self gave me last year, of him getting the Nobel Prize? That's an event that is definitely not going to happen in my world -- not from creating fusion, anyhow -- and that photo hasn't altered at all."
"Well, then why did other pictures and stuff change when we've taken them with us?"
Doc answered without looking up. "They changed because they reflected time lines that changed -- time lines that were direct results of our misadventures. Not already established foreign dimensions. Anything we bring with us now, print or photograph, will not alter when we leave the dimension to reflect what is so in the new dimension. Even if I brought the discs for the TIPS, I have serious doubts that the system would help us with this process at all."
Marty thought that was lousy. He scowled and sat down on the curb nearby. There was no rain falling from the skies as there had been in almost every dimension they had visited, so far. Instead, the weather was clear and sunny, the temperature warm but not unseasonably so. The musician hardly noticed, though, too distracted by their neverending parade of problems. He still felt chilled, in spite of the sunshine, just thinking about the last couple of places they had visited -- especially the one with the female versions of himself and Doc. The memory alone of "Marti" and her creepy flirtatious smile still was enough to turn his stomach. All the more so because he thought she was really cute, at first, and that if he hadn't been married to Jennifer maybe he would've enjoyed flirting back and forth with her....
I am not gonna think about this now! Marty told himself, feeling the chills and dizziness come back with the memories. No way. That's one thing I hope I never have to relive or re-see again in my entire life!
Doc came out of the booth with two ripped pages clutched in hand. "Let's go," he said, heading back to the disguised train parked nearby. Marty got to his feet slowly, the events of the day beginning to catch up with him. If they'd stayed put in the reality where he and Jennifer were unhappily married with a son, it would've be about midnight or so by now. Stress had made the fourteen or so hours of sleep from the so-called night before feel more like four at this point. The musician couldn't resist a yawn as he followed Doc back into the cab.
"When are we going to take another break?" he asked.
"Soon," Doc said, the response sounding both automatic and vague. "I don't think we need one quite yet."
"Speak for yourself," Marty muttered under his breath, the words either ignored or unheard by his friend. He stepped over and tried to see what was on the cheap pages from the phone book. "Are we still women here?"
"No," the inventor said immediately. "Both of our full names are in the book, and they're as they should be. I don't recognize my address, though, or yours. It looks like you live in an apartment."
Doc passed him the page that bore his information. Marty's eyes found the proper listing, and he was relieved to see that he was married, again, to Jennifer. But Doc was right; the address that followed his name had a number in it -- 1232 S.W. Pine Road, #213 B -- and could only be an apartment or the like.
"At least I'm not living with my parents," he murmured, though he hadn't seen anything like that, yet. It was probably out there somewhere, but most people seemed to have gotten out by the time they were twenty-seven. Especially if they were married.
They rose back into the air, but five minutes after that were once more landing, as the local Doc's place seemed to be close by. It was a smallish house, older, on a large parcel of land. They were able to settle down in the slightly unkempt yard, between the home and the sidewalk. Lights were on inside.
"If this guy doesn't look like you, are we gonna leave again?" Marty asked as they prepared to exit the cab.
The inventor grimaced at the question. "We'll see how much he could help us," he said.
The musician wasn't about to lay bets on that any time soon; he seriously doubted that this world's Emmett had any hidden train time machine nearby -- maybe he never even had one. Nevertheless, they went up to the front door to see. This time, Doc had him do the knocking while he waited off to the side, out of immediate sight, similar to the way Marty had hidden when they visited the version of himself who was single and grief-stricken.
Marty had to pound on the door, hard, for a couple of times before it was finally answered. He was pleased to see the person who answered it looked just like Doc. And he was even more happy when the first words out of his mouth were, "Marty! I didn't expect to see you today. Is everything all right?"
The musician couldn't resist a little smile of relief, knowing that he was not walking around in a bra or with a different face in this dimension. "Not really," he said, honestly. "Listen, Doc, you might wanna sit down.... I've got something big to tell you."
The Emmett of this world blinked at the announcement. He looked, to Marty's cursory eye, like he had been through a rejuvenation at some point; Emmett didn't look as old or ragged as some of the versions of Doc that hadn't had that kind of treatment. Good. Maybe it meant there was a time machine, somewhere. "Did you and Jennifer have another fight?" he asked, rather wearily. "I've told you before, Marty, I can't keep refereeing between you two. You've got to work out your marriage without dragging me into it and--"
"No!" Marty said, more sharply than he intended, both out of the horror that his counterpart's life seemed to, once more, suck in some way, and out of the desire to not hear any more. "Listen -- did you ever make a time machine?"
Emmett's eyebrows drew together as he regarded Marty with the most confused of looks. "Marty, you know the answer to that," he said, his voice pitched low.
The musician gathered the answer was yes, since the local didn't seem completely baffled from the question. He hedged a moment, then decided to plunge in and tell the man the news. "I'm not the Marty McFly you're thinking of -- I'm from a different dimension and reality."
Skepticism immediately flooded the local inventor's face. "I know your life isn't going the way you'd like it to right now, but there's no need to make things up like that," Emmett said.
"He's not making anything up," Doc said, stepping into view.
Emmett jumped back at the sound of the voice and sight of the subsequent figure, so startled that he tripped over his own feet and sat down with a hard thud on the floor. He goggled at his counterpart, now standing beside Marty on the porch.
"This is impossible!" Emmett burst out from the ground, after a moment of stunned silence. "I destroyed the time machine ten years ago! Neither of you can be here, now!"
The verbal denials sounded strangely like the same sorts of things Marty had heard from Doc in 1955, the second time he had appeared in need of the scientist's help. "It doesn't matter if you'd never built a time machine at all," Doc said. "We're from a parallel dimension. An alternate reality. We came here in our own machine -- which is malfunctioning rather badly."
Emmett's eyes narrowed as he studied his counterpart from head to toe. After a moment he got back up to his feet, still clearly suspicious for reasons that Marty couldn't begin to fathom. Unless he was another deep denial case like that Doc who was a vet. "And this brings you here? How? Why?"
Doc lifted his shoulders in a shrug. "We don't know. That's actually a great deal of the problem."
Emmett frowned -- then, without warning, he reached out and grabbed Marty's right hand, lifting it up in the air before his dark eyes. The musician was so stunned that he simply allowed the local to examine his hand before it was let go once more. "No scars," Emmett muttered, sounding surprised. He looked at the visitors with a new glow in his eyes. "Why don't you both come in?"
"What did you mean with that?" Marty asked as he and Doc stepped inside the local's home. "'No scars' -- what's that about?"
Emmett didn't answer him immediately, waiting until he had led the guests into a rather cluttered living room before he said, "The Marty I know has scars on that hand, from the accident he was in ten years ago that broke his hand."
"Accident?" Marty repeated, his ears perking up. He had a sinking feeling in his gut that he already knew what Emmett was going to say.
"Yes. He got himself talked into a drag race while on the way to the lake with Jennifer during his senior year of high school. It was the last weekend of October in '85. I was still dismantling the DeLorean. He totaled his father's car and got pretty banged up, but no one was killed." Emmett sighed heavily. "The lawsuits, on the other hand...."
Marty frowned, noticing something weird about the details. "Why was I driving Dad's car? I had my own... right?"
Emmett shook his head once. "Nope. Not so far as I know, unless you were keeping it a deep, dark secret. You didn't get your own car until a few years later, I think. I helped you fix it up." He paused, studying the visitors as they stood rather awkwardly near the doorway of the room. "Should I telephone Marty?"
"Maybe later, if you feel it's necessary," Doc said. "You say that you dismantled the DeLorean? When did this happen?"
"The same weekend I created the blasted thing. I started taking the machine apart on Saturday night, October twenty-sixth, 1985, after Marty, Jennifer, and I came back from the future."
"And you didn't come home to an alternate reality?" Doc asked.
"No. I've only heard about such things in the theoretical sense. I've certainly never seen one in person, and I've never met anyone who claimed to be from one... until today, I suppose."
"So Biff never got his hands on the machine?" Marty asked, recalling that his friend had identical plans for dismantling the first DeLorean before that Tannen had thrown a huge monkey wrench into things.
Emmett looked at him blankly. "Who's Biff?"
"Biff Tannen. You know, the guy who bullied my dad until I accidentally changed things in '55. He's the one who stole the time machine from 2015 and screwed up the world as we knew it by making himself rich and powerful." Emmett continued to look baffled with Marty's words. "You know the Tannens... don't you?"
"I've never heard of that name in my life," Emmett said.
Marty looked at Doc, who was clearly intrigued by it all. "Do you have a phone book I could look at?" the latter asked.
"In the kitchen," Emmett said. "I can get it. Can I offer you two anything to eat or drink?"
They declined the offer. Marty's appetite had fled after that last reality, and it had only been about nine hours since the Clara of the stopover world had stuffed them full of food before they left. Emmett took only a moment to get the book, so quick in his errand that Marty and Doc were unable to discuss the bits of information that they had so far learned about this world and what it all might mean. Nevertheless, the musician had a hunch about the reasons behind the inventor's request, and they were confirmed a moment later, after Doc had found what he had been looking for -- or not, as the case was.
"There's not a Tannen in all of Hill County," he announced, closing the book and passing it back to Emmett. "It's as if they never existed -- or chose not to settle out here."
"Wow," Marty said, his mind reeling for a moment from the idea, which he had wished for countless times growing up, and during several trips through time. "Isn't that like paradise or something?"
"Or something," Doc said, his tone oddly flat. "You dismantled your DeLorean about ten years ago, then? You never tried to rebuild it?"
"No," Emmett said. "After that trip to the future -- and Marty's experience in '55 -- I thought that time travel was too dangerous to muck around in." He paused, his eyes growing distant with a memory none of them knew. "I thought I was helping Marty's future by having him help out his kids... but Jennifer wandering off and traumatizing herself was an unacceptable repercussion. We were fortunate nothing serious happened to end the world -- or her life."
"So if there's no Tannens, what trouble did my son get into in the future?" Marty asked, a little confused. "Biff's grandson was getting him to take the fall for something illegal, then."
Emmett looked at him with an odd, slanted smile. "It sounds quite similar to what I discovered -- your son was framed for media piracy, creating illegal copies of music and video from the Internet. It was clearly a set up -- he had apparently lost his laptop computer for a day, and a week later a tip had the cops confiscate it and find the illegal media. He was pretty bullied in high school and there were some rather tough individuals who weren't beyond setting him up for a little fun. Of course, if I'd known then what I know now, I wouldn't have bothered with such a scheme. Marty's future was miserable before his son was jailed, and I think it really came down to the car accident -- or, rather, his temper."
The musician swallowed hard, this sounding way too familiar in spite of the other changes.
"This Marty had that same problem," Doc said, causing the subject of the conversation to turn his head in surprise at the statement, stunned that the inventor was being so candid.
"Doc!"
The visiting inventor didn't appear to notice his friend's voice or scorn. "He did get over it, though... after another trip through time to 1885, and getting involved with another Tannen." Doc rubbed his chin, his eyes narrowing. "It almost sounds like our lives were actually made worse from a lack of Tannens. Interesting."
"How could my life be worse?" Emmett asked. "From what you've implied, it sounds as if this family caused nothing but trouble. Especially if they were into stealing time machines."
Marty, miffed at his friend for that rather not-so-nice nice statement to his counterpart -- never mind if it was true or not, it was kind of his business -- didn't hesitate in providing that answer. "That was how you met your wife," he said.
Emmett's eyes widened. "Wife?" he echoed. "I don't have a wife...."
"But I do," Doc said softly, shooting Marty a quick look of irritation that told him he hadn't appreciated his announcement. "I met Clara in 1885 when my DeLorean was struck by lightning -- accidentally -- and sent back there. When Biff stole my time machine in the future, he ended up giving himself an almanac from the future, and to retrieve it we had to go back to the date he gave it to himself in 1955 -- on November twelfth, no less."
The local saw the connections and cause and effect at once. If the news upset him, though, he didn't show it. In fact, he focused on something else entirely. "You actually told someone else about the time machine?" Emmett asked, sounding rather scandalized. "Someone in the past? How could you be so irresponsible?"
Doc looked both confused and irritated. "I didn't tell her immediately," he said. "It was a few days after I knew her."
"A few days?" Emmett was clearly horrified. "That's appalling!"
"Why? We were in love," Doc said, defensive. "It happened fast; I couldn't just leave her behind without an explanation, and I didn't want to take her with me without letting her know what she would be getting herself into."
"In love?" Emmett asked. "After a few days?" He looked scornfully at his counterpart. "Don't tell me you bought into that 'love at first sight' nonsense."
Marty almost smiled at hearing this, remembering his friend's old attitude with that matter before he met Clara. His lips started to curve up in amusement, but halted when Emmett immediately added, "Witnessing Marty and Jennifer's relationship makes me even more certain of this. Marty tried to argue for years in favor of such romantic notions, but I don't think he and Jennifer would have so many problems if it was indeed some cosmic event of 'love at first sight.'"
The musician bristled at both the insult to his own counterpart, and to Doc. "That means shit," he told Emmett flatly. "Maybe if the me here had learned how to stop being goaded into doing stupid things, his marriage would still be fine. My wife and I are doing great -- because I got over that stuff ten years ago." And because of at least two Tannens, he thought with a bit of a wince, hating to give credit for positive changes in his life to that family.
"Clara is a very special, unique woman," Doc said softly. "In every reality that we've seen, so far, I've either been married to her -- or I haven't been married at all. I sincerely and wholeheartedly believe that we were made for each other. But I will also admit a certain... skepticism myself about the idea of love at first sight -- until it happened to me."
Emmett's mouth puckered into a frown. "Well, I find it beyond difficult to see it like that."
Doc 's hand moved to his pocket and pulled out his wallet, opening it and riffling through the contents. "Look at this," he said, pulling out what was a small headshot of Clara, smiling. "Can you really deny that your feelings wouldn't change after meeting her?"
Emmett studied the picture through narrowed eyes. His expression softened -- a smidgen. "She's very attractive," he admitted. "But I still find this whole idea hard to swallow. Sorry," he added, handing the picture back.
Marty changed the subject, figuring this was something that was getting them absolutely nowhere in their mission. "Doc thought you might be able to help us," he said. "That's why we came here in the first place instead of going to my other self."
"What do you need my help with?" Emmett asked. Before Doc answered, the local shook his head quickly and tried again. "That wasn't what I meant: what could I possibly help you with? I don't have a time machine anymore; I've been using the DeLorean as a normal car since I dismantled the time circuits and mechanisms."
"Well, that answers that question," Marty muttered under his breath, looking at Doc. The inventor's face was hard to gauge.
"Did you want to have a look at it, regardless?" he asked his counterpart. "See if you can spot anything that's painfully obvious to you, but not us?"
The local considered it a moment, then shook his head. "No thanks. It'd be better not to open up that chapter of my life again. Time travel is far too risky to play with. I'd advise you to perhaps give it second thoughts, too, since it's clearly causing some big problems for you right now."
"It's also given me more than I could ever hope to have, with a wife and kids," Doc said, a bit edgy. "And it's taught Marty a lot of things that he needed to know to save his own future."
"You have kids?" Emmett asked, latching on the first statement with surprise. "At your age?"
"Four of them, aged nine months to nineteen years," Doc said dryly. "And I dare say my age hasn't made one bit of difference. You're the one who seems to have grown old and... stodgy. Afraid of taking risks. Why are you living here?"
Emmett drew himself up, defensive. "I saw no need to continue living in a former garage on a busy road surrounded by strip malls and fast food franchises," he said. "Not after achieving the dream.... And once achieved, why did I need to linger and keep the so-called 'trophy,' at the risk of ending the world as we know it? That's pure egotism."
The two inventors were kind of glaring at each other. Marty decided there wasn't a better time to leave. "Come on, Doc, let's go," he said, turning and heading for the door. "We don't need to waste any more time here."
Doc followed him, but he couldn't resist getting in one final dig to his counterpart. "Better to follow my dream all the way through, and beyond, learning constantly from it than getting scared at the first glimpse of the responsibility. I don't envy your life at all, Emmett."
The local scowled at the insult, and Marty wondered for a moment if the guy was going to chase after them to either tell himself off, or deck him, but they made it out of the house, across the lawn, and back in the time machine without any further remarks from Emmett. Doc was still simmering as he prepared for their inevitable departure, though.
"I never in an eon thought I'd say this, but I thank God that the Tannens moved to Hill Valley and maintained growing families," he half muttered, punching the switches and twisting the knobs harder than necessary. "I believe we just witnessed what a Biff-less and Buford-less world would create."
"Yeah," Marty agreed. "I always thought a place like this would be heaven. Sounds like my life here sucks, though -- again! Why can't I ever meet a me who is successful and happy?"
"You have," Doc said. "You're just focusing on the negative again, Marty. You need to learn how to be more optimistic."
The advice irritated Marty for no clear reason. Maybe it was just his current exhausted, frustrated, and cynical state of mind. "More like you are?" he asked, faintly sarcastic.
The scientist didn't catch his tone, or pretended not to notice. "You could simply do better not to look at the darker side of things," he said.
The time machine lunged up into the air, hard, nearly knocking the musician off his feet, a move that was probably venting some of Doc's frustrations at his counterpart. Marty caught his balance against the wall, leaning against it as they went up high enough to take off to the next place. The sharp reply on the tip of his tongue stayed in his mouth, mostly because even he knew it was neither the time nor the place to start something.
"Are we gonna stop in the next place so you can check out the computer stuff?" Marty asked as the train rushed forward. "Seems like we've hit enough places, now."
"I suppose that can't hurt," Doc said. "Not that we should get our hopes up unduly."
"Now who's the pessimistic one?" Marty muttered under his breath.
The sonic booms that came about from their next transit seemed to go on a lot longer than the musician was used to, with a kind of echoey sound to them. While Marty was still trying to figure that out, the floor seemed to drop a foot without warning. His mouth popped open in a gasp.
"What's wrong?" he yelled, his heart thudding against his ribs as the machine twisted to the right with a sharp, unforeseen turn. "Did something go wrong?"
The noise of the boom finally began to fade out. Doc's face was ashen as he gripped the controls, his eyes locked on the small porthole window in the front of the cab. "It's lightning," he said, his voice tense. "We've arrived in the middle of a thunderstorm!"
Doc's hands gripped the steering mechanism of the train tightly, his fingers aching from the tension coiled in them. He craned his neck over to the left, trying to see how far above the earth they were and what was below them. "Marty, is there a place to set the train down?"
The musician stepped over for a look. "Uh.... I think so. I can see the roofs of some houses, but they all look like they've got big backyards."
"Good." Fighting the wind, and his own fear at getting struck by a bolt, Doc took the train down in a descent that twisted and jumped enough to rattle everything not nailed down. Marty looked rather green by the time they touched ground, but the inventor was hardly aware of the turbulence. Their surroundings lit up as another bolt of lightning streaked across the sky, and the sound of thunder was so close that Doc knew the storm was almost right on top of them.
"Great Scott!" he breathed when the machine was safely on the earth again. He let out a deep breath and wiped his damp brow, leaning against the controls. "That was too close...."
"I thought you said the machine now had some kind of weather predicting thing in it," Marty asked, grimacing a little as he looked towards the window.
"No," Doc said softly, closing his eyes a moment as he tried to steady himself and slow his still-racing heart. "It has a weather detection system, yes, but it can't foresee the weather in another time period -- let alone another dimension. I didn't think we'd run into a storm, but the weather's varied enough in some of the worlds that I think it was pretty naive of me to not foresee a possibility like this...."
"We weren't hit, were we?" Marty asked, glancing away from the window and the sheets of rain that were coming down. The roar of it on the roof above was almost deafening.
"No," Doc said, certain about this beyond a shadow of a doubt. "We would know it -- definitely. Remember what that felt like?"
"I guess. It looks like we're hanging out in the backyard of someone, but I don't think there's anyone home. I can't see any lights on in the house."
"Good. We're still invisible, and the storm probably concealed any noise that might've been produced in our landing. We'll wait out the weather in here," he added before Marty could ask what they were going to do next. "I don't want to walk out in that mess, or leave the time machine behind here, and it's far too unsafe to take it back into the air until the lightning has passed, at least. And the visibility's a bit better."
"Yeah, I can barely see the house from here with all the rain. I'm surprised you were able to get us on the ground so fast and without crashing into something."
There was a note of admiration in Marty's voice, but Doc hardly noticed, too rattled from the surprise turn with the storm. "Thank God I did," he half muttered. "If the machine breaks, we're in big trouble."
Marty sighed, taking a step back from the window. "I'm starting to think that the best thing we could do might be to just toss this one out and start with something new."
"It wouldn't work that way," the scientist said, finally leaning back from the console. "If it was that simple, then we could've used some of the other working machines in other dimensions to take care of that problem. It has to do with the subatomic frequencies."
"Figures." Marty looked down at the floor. "Is your computer all right?"
Doc followed his friend's gaze to where the laptop was resting, wedged halfway under the boiler where it had likely slid during the moments of turbulence with their arrival. "Shit," the inventor swore, having completely forgotten about the device in all the excitement. He knelt down and gently pulled it out for a look, bracing himself for the worst. "And of course this has to happen now, when I've finally got a chance to look over what information this thing might've gathered...."
Marty came over and crouched down for his own look. The top of the laptop's casing had a very visible crack zigzagging across it. Doc was almost afraid to open it up. "You still might," the musician pointed out. "These things are probably made with the idea that they get dropped sometimes."
Doc hoped so. Nevertheless, he sat down on the floor before popping the lid and screen open. A headache began to pulse around his temples as he reached out to press one of the keys to bring the machine out of a sleep mode. If it didn't come back on....
But the computer did. The screen began to glow and a moment later the familiar icons and backdrop came up. "It looks like it still works," Doc said, so relieved he felt weak.
"Great," Marty said, taking his own seat on the floor, his back against one of the padded walls. He glanced up as another flash lit up the semi-darkened cab and outside world. Thunder rattled the windows three seconds later. "It looks like we're gonna be here a while."
Doc sighed as he brought up the comparison analysis program, feeling both curious and skeptical about what it had tracked. He wasn't expecting to find anything. Yet as the computer took the time to gather the readings it had on all the jumps, and the minutes stretched on, he found himself feeling fidgety and nervous.
It's the storm, he thought, looking up at the window and the very dark, very wet world beyond the glass. Anyone with the sort of experiences I've had would be jumpy from this weather, especially sitting in a structure that is about as conductive as a lightning rod....
The sound of another thunderclap made him jump in spite of himself. Marty, sitting a few feet away, hugging his knees to his chest, looked at him somewhat quizzically. "We're safe in here, right, on the ground?" he asked.
"Safer than we might be standing outside, but not as safe as we might be in a house," Doc said honestly, looking back at the glow of the computer screen -- the only thing throwing out any light in the cab at the moment. The program was displaying a message: "Preparing Comparison Chart and Report. Approximately 27 minutes remaining." "Looks like my counterpart was nothing if not thorough," he muttered. "This is gonna take a while...."
Marty yawned. "That's good, though, right? That it's detailed?"
"I suppose it certainly can't hurt."
The time ticked by slowly on the computer's display. Feeling restless still, Doc got to his feet to look out the window and better attempt to ascertain their surroundings. He had brought the train down into the large backyard of a home that was both completely unfamiliar and rather large. There were a few things that struck the scientist as rather odd, though. In spite of the size and obvious expense and newness of the house -- it looked as if it had been built some time in the last ten years -- the home was a bit run down. The yard was rather weedy and overgrown, too, a few large tree branches scattered across the lawn. He supposed it was possible that the branches had come down in the wild storm outside, and that the owners simply didn't care that much about their yard or the exterior of the home. But it gave him a strange feeling of foreboding, and he couldn't quite figure out why.
Maybe it was the darkness outside. That in itself wasn't anything to cause alarm, not with the thick clouds, the sheets of rain, and the early hour that the sun set in the late fall. But he couldn't spot any lights on in the home from where he stood, and he had the nagging impression that the streetlights -- which automatically came on when things got this dim outside -- weren't lit.
And you're really getting paranoid now, Doc thought, chiding himself for the nerves. The owners of this home might very well be out for the day, you can barely see around the house from this angle, let alone the street -- and even if there are people home, the storm might've knocked out all the power.
The inventor waited out most of the time that the computer was working by pacing back and forth in the cab, though it made him feel like a caged animal, as there was so very little space to move about in. He and Marty didn't speak; Doc couldn't think of anything to say, and he was too tired to bother with petty small talk. The sound of the rain on the roof, too, would make it necessary for them to raise their voices a bit to be heard by one another. That particular roaring sound made Doc feel more on edge, but Marty either didn't care or was able to shut it out; by the time the laptop finished its work, he had fallen asleep, his head propped back against the padded wall.
Doc dropped back down to the floor the moment the computer let out a soft ping, announcing the completion of its chore. It had successfully recovered the readings from the last five jumps. The inventor didn't hesitate to see what information it had collected and how it had been compared. He went through it slowly, meticulously, concentrating hard enough to shut out the sound of the rain and the claps of thunder that were still going on outdoors.
The flux capacitor appeared to be functioning fine. The structural distribution of the flux dispersal was as it should be. The operation of the time circuits was normal. In fact, everything looked right, and he was starting to feel that sickening hopeless and frustrated feeling again -- until he finally noticed something strange.
The program apparently had tracked the process of time travel in a step-by-step manner, highlighting what functions, mechanics, and power distribution was taking place in the machine each second of transit. This wasn't entirely surprising to Doc -- but he was surprised by the numbers that came up on at least half of the processes, and that the numbers seemed to have no rhyme or reason. It was visible on everything from a few microchips that held the information input for the time circuits, to the wires that ran out to the flux capacitor, to the flux capacitor itself.
Most areas of the machine were stable, but a staggering amount -- about a third -- of the functions varied by tenths of a point in power and function. For example, while the recent jump displayed a reading of 1.2133333 with the power allotted to the flux capacitor, the jump before that had a number of 1.2144444, and the one before that was 1.20999999. The dozens of wires that ran out from between the flux capacitor to the time circuits and other portions of the time machine also boasted wildly different numbers that didn't sync up with one another.
"What the hell?" Doc muttered, leaning closer to the screen, as if that might tell him more. He looked at the options offered by the program and decided to do a focal comparison on those discrepancies, telling the computer to go through, find all those strange quirks, and organize them for him on charts and in other informational formats. The computer informed him this process would take close to another half an hour.
The inventor bided the time by lying down on the hard floor and staring up at the darkened skylights above, working his brain over the problem so hard that it ached. Something was starting to emerge, and it bothered him that he couldn't bring it entirely to view.
It would only be natural to assume that in a normally functional time machine, all those numbers hold steady and sync up with one another. So I think this could be the problem that's plaguing us. But how did this happen? And why? And how can we fix it? Would we simply have to power down the machine for a day and recalibrate everything a step at a time? Great Scott, that could take weeks! Or will we have to replace all the parts that are malfunctioning?
Doc frowned, recalling Marty's earlier comment about getting a new machine to use. We can't do that because it would prevent things from being in sync with our dimension. That's why we couldn't replace things entirely the last time we were stuck in an alternate reality and had to--
The inventor suddenly froze, mid-breath, mid-thought. He ran his mind over the last part again, remembering his words to Marty. "If it was that simple, then we could've used some of the other working machines in other dimensions to take care of that problem. It has to do with the subatomic frequencies."
Subatomic frequencies. Almost microscopic, almost undetectable shifts in electromagnetic activity. It wasn't limited to merely the human body; biological forms simply showed symptoms early because it made such a tremendous difference in how they functioned. Not like inanimate objects. It would take very powerful, sensitive machines and computers to notice those things, and it really wouldn't make much of a difference in the function of the device or whatnot. Maybe never; maybe just not for a year....
Doc put a hand to his head, the realization trickling in faster and faster, now. When they had arrived in that alternate dimension a year and a half ago, most of the machine had been fried and shorted out from a bolt of lightning. They had remained in the reality for almost three weeks, patching things back together, trying to repair and use every salvageable part they could. Emmett had said something about a fear that too many new parts from his dimension might not allow Doc's machine to "lock in" on his home dimension when it came to leave, so it would be better to fix as much as they could. But a lot had still been borrowed from that world, from wires to the entire flux capacitor itself. In spite of the new parts, though, they had made it home.
But Doc had never thought to replace the borrowed parts from the alternate dimension. And he hadn't used the time machine once since then.
Until he and Marty had left to check out the new software.
"Great Scott!"
Doc bolted into a sitting position, stopping the computer with less than ten minutes to go. The laptop squawked at this untimely interruption, but the inventor was too driven, too horrified, too desperate to prove what he now felt was certain. Doc scrolled quickly through the various parts and wires and circuits that had been tracked during the transits and compared against one another. He groaned aloud when he saw his hypothesis was correct.
Every single part that had been borrowed from the alternate dimension in June 1994 to get home was showing huge discrepancies in function. Every single one of those parts was slowly deteriorating from the subatomic discrepancies that had probably worked away slowly for the last year and a half since the train had returned home from that alternate dimension! It was so obvious -- and so subtle.
"How could I have been so blatantly stupid!" Doc muttered, angry with himself for his complete lack of foresight in the matter. He should've replaced all the borrowed parts as soon as they had arrived home! But Clara had just found out she was pregnant, the inventor had decided to present some of his inventions to the world, and day-to-day life things had just started and hadn't stopped. He hadn't thought about that chore -- he should have, but he had assumed that the machine was fine if it had been able to make it home from the other world....
"No."
Doc jumped at the sound of the word, half moaned and murmured from somewhere very close by. He looked over to Marty, wondering if the musician had somehow picked up on what was going on, but his friend was still slumped back against the wall, his head now drooping forward, asleep. "No..." Marty mumbled again, adding something else that Doc couldn't quite catch. Talking in his sleep, nothing more.
The inventor turned his attention back to the laptop, studying the display with his head in his hands. He knew what was wrong, now. The only question -- the most important question -- was... how the hell could he fix it?!
* * *
Marty was back in the driver's seat of the DeLorean, his eyes locked in horror at the diesel train that was gunning straight for him. "No," he said aloud, his hands flying to his seatbelt that had been strapped across his lap. His hands worked at the buckle, trying to pop it open, but it remained frozen or jammed in place. The train before him let out a warning whistle, and the ground began to shake from the vibrations. "No, dammit!" he said, trying the doorlatch, now. That, too, remained jammed or locked. He was stuck; he was trapped.
The train continued to bear down on him. Marty reached up and tried to tug at the seatbelt itself, thinking that it might be able to give enough to allow him to slip out of it. It didn't. It remained snug against his clothes. He started to panic.
"Stop!" he yelled out, to the train, knowing even as he did so that it was a pretty pointless move. Marty's hands went back to the seatbelt latch and the door, working each with one hand to no avail. "Somebody... anybody! Help! Get me outta here! Get me--"
"Marty! Are you all right?"
Marty's eyes popped open at the sound of the voice and the rather jarring shake that his upper body was given. Doc's hands were gripping his shoulders, and his face was staring hard into his, clearly concerned. "Calm down," the inventor said, as the musician silently stared at him. "You were just having a nightmare."
Marty had to blink a few times, still left with the feeling that he was dreaming this situation. It didn't help that he was sitting on the floor of the cab of a train. The interior of the DeLorean was more vivid to him at that moment than his current physical surroundings. "Doc..." he murmured, his mouth dry.
The inventor nodded once. "You sounded upset, so I thought I would wake you. I didn't know you talked in your sleep."
Marty didn't, normally, though Jennifer had mentioned a couple of times hearing him mumble things while out. She thought it was amusing. It didn't happen often, usually just when he was under a lot of stress, and it was probably some strange form of his body coping with it. There was positively no doubt about his stress level, now; it had passed high days ago.
That stress, and the kind of disorienting confusion that came from waking up abruptly from a hyper vivid dream, was probably what caused Marty to blurt out what he did, then: "Dammit, Doc, why the hell didn't you tell me about wrecking the DeLorean with the train?"
The inventor blinked three times, his face expressionless. "What?" he finally asked, sounding thoroughly baffled.
Marty shook Doc's hands free of his shoulders, suddenly angry. "Why didn't you tell me what you were gonna do when the DeLorean came back from 1885? Jesus, did you want to kill me, too, while you were at it?"
"Marty!"
The words poured out of Marty's mouth, unbidden. "Why didn't you tell me you had planned that on purpose at all over the last ten years? Why did you keep that from me? How could you keep that from me?!"
Doc frowned. "Marty, calm down. We already went over this; you're overreacting on something that happened more than a decade ago -- and more than two, for me! You're reading far too much into this --"
"You're not the one who's having nightmares that you're stuck in the DeLorean as a train is coming at you!" Marty shot back, unpacified. He got to his feet, shaking a little. "I can't understand how you just never brought that up at all over the last ten years! I mean, you came back to give me that picture at the same place where the DeLorean was trashed. I thought then that was just some weird coincidence, but you knew what had happened! You knew I'd probably be there! You're lucky I wasn't in pieces or anything like that--"
"Marty!" Now Doc sounded angry. He stood and looked the musician in the eye, frowning. "I can't believe you'd ever think I'd be that callous. I had a lot on my mind the day we borrowed the locomotive, and I had every intention of letting you know about the plan when I was in the DeLorean with you. I didn't know that Clara was going to come after me, or that I would end up being left behind."
"But why didn't you tell me before then? When you were having me set up the time circuits?"
"I already explained -- I didn't want you to talk me out of the decision. Beyond that, I really don't know. Good Lord, Marty, let it go. What happened happened, and everything ended up fine."
"But I could've been killed!"
"But you weren't. This isn't really what's bothering you, is it?" Doc added, his tone softer, now.
"Yeah, it is," Marty snapped, irritated. "I just can't believe you didn't tell me... what else have you been keeping from me all these years? Would you even've bothered to move back to the future if you weren't scared of changing history? Did you check my future out and find out it's gonna suck and you're not breathing word, now?"
Doc rolled his eyes. "Marty, this is getting ridiculous! Calm down. I don't understand why this is so upsetting to you. It happened ten years ago!"
"You don't get it, Doc!" the musician said, scowling. "I was almost killed!"
"But you weren't."
Doc's calm and rational tone only served to irritate Marty even more. "What else have you been keeping from me all these years? What other things did you think weren't a big deal? Seriously, I'd like to know!"
"Nothing -- you're acting paranoid, now. I know you're exhausted and under a lot of stress -- and I am, too! -- but if you'd just sit still for a minute and calm down, you might feel--"
Marty turned around and headed for the door, struggling with the latch that to open it. Doc interrupted himself. "Where are you going?"
"Somewhere," Marty said cryptically. "Anywhere -- away from here!"
"Now, Marty...."
The musician turned around. "What, Doc? Look, you're not listening to me, and I'm sick of wasting my breath. I need to get out of this cab. No offense, but you're really pissing me off right now."
Doc's lips drew together tightly. "Fine, go for a walk. Hopefully that rain outside will cool your temper down a little!"
Marty turned away from the inventor's angry gaze, slamming his palm hard on the switch to open the door. It popped open a moment later and he ran out into the deluge, ducking his head against the stinging raindrops. The weather had soaked him by the time he had reached the back of the strange home who's yard they were borrowing, but he kept going, anger and pride not allowing him to go back to the train just yet. He hadn't lied to Doc, either -- he needed out! If he had to stay in that cab one more minute, he was gonna go nuts!
Breathing hard, fighting the urge to physically hit something and vent his frustration that way, Marty cut through the side yard and circled around to the front of the house. He had absolutely no idea where to go, and so lost he was in his own thoughts that it wasn't until he went a few blocks before he noticed something weird.
There were no lights on in any of the homes, or out in the street, even though it was definitely dark enough to warrant it. That probably wasn't something too unusual, considering the dismal weather, but there was an awful lot of debris in the street -- tree branches, leaves, trash, that sort of thing. Taken with the problem of no power, Marty noticed a sinking feeling in his gut.
This is some weird alternate world, he reminded himself. Anything could've happened here, from people getting zapped up by aliens to a World War III.
He actually stopped mid-step, spooked almost badly enough to turn around and go back to the train. Almost. Marty squinted as he studied the immediate area, raising his hand to shield his eyes from the rain drops, trying to both figure out more clues about the world as well as where he actually was. The disorientation lasted until he reached the end of the street and found a sign: W. Fiesta Drive, which joined up with 292nd street. They were way on the other side of the town, in the area where most of the wealthy had homes.
Marty ran a hand through his hair, slicking it back out of his eyes, as he tried to figure out his next move. He had no idea if there was a gas station or 7-11 nearby, and didn't feel driven enough anymore to want to walk out in the rain until he found one. He sighed, realizing for the first time that he was completely soaked, and it was actually rather cold out....
So I'll just try one of the houses and see if anyone there can tell me what's going on.
Marty turned around and headed for the first house on the block -- a three story contemporary-looking place painted in a dark navy. A faded and tattered American flag dangled from a stick that jutted out from beside the garage, and a handpainted sign mounted under the flag told him that this house belonged to the Jennings. The musician took a moment to compose a quick cover story for his appearance and his reason for knocking on their door -- his car broke down and he needed to see a phone book to call a tow truck.
When he reached the porch, though, he didn't knock; curious to see if the home even had any power, her pressed the doorbell. When he could detect no chime -- no sound at all, really, except for the wind, the rain, and a low rumble of thunder in the distance -- he raised his hand to knock on the door... and froze when he noticed the dead and wilted Christmas wreath hanging on a hook. A chill ran down the length of his spine, different from the cold rain that was already trickling down his skin. A premonition of sorts assaulted his senses; somehow he had a feeling that this was more of a case than someone being extremely tardy with the removal of their holiday decorations.
Something is seriously wrong here....
Marty pressed on, though, curious to discover exactly what it was. It would save them time, if nothing else, since Doc probably wouldn't want to leave until he had an idea about the options here. So the musician knocked on the door. Hard. A couple of minutes passed with nary a sound or movement from within. Marty knocked again -- and then tried the doorknob. It turned freely, inviting him to come inside and see what there was to see.
"Shit," he murmured under his breath, the cold shivery feeling getting worse. He looked back over his shoulder, feeling like he was being watched or something. No one was around. Marty gave the door a slight push and it swung open.
"Hello?" he called out. His voice echoed back to him, then died away entirely. No one -- and nothing -- answered his call. He took a step in the house, noticing immediately a musty, sour smell in the house. The scent made him freeze, for reasons he wasn't entirely sure about. There was something about the scent that told him it was bad, though. That the best thing he might be able to do was to turn around and leave.
But what the hell was going on in this world? Marty pressed forward, breathing shallowly from both the tension and the desire to avoid the strange, creepy smell. He headed out of the entryway, down the hall that ran towards the back of the home, searching for a kitchen. Most people seemed to keep phone books and newspapers around there.
The hallway and rooms were gloomy and dim, with no electric lights to lead the way. Marty went slowly, pausing to listen every minute or so, feeling jumpy and nervous. Probably from trespassing into someone's private home. The main corridor reached a dead end, branching new ones to the left and the right. Marty could see what looked to be the kitchen at the end of the hall on the left -- the stove range and fridge, at any rate -- and turned in that direction.
He had only gone two steps before his foot struck something on the floor. Marty looked down, seeing what appeared to be a bundle of clothes or towels. He raised his foot to step over them -- and then saw the almost-but-not-quite skeletal human hand lying on the floor, sticking out of a sleeve.
It wasn't someone's laundry he had stumbled over -- it was someone. Long dead. Lying face down in the middle of the hall.
"AHHHHHHHHH!"
The scream was out of his mouth the moment the realization hit him. Marty spun around, nearly tripping over the rotting corpse in the hall all over again in his haste to escape. He burst outside seconds later, gasping and shaking and feeling sick to his stomach. Radiation poisoning! his mind screamed, hurtling towards full blown panic, now. I'll bet this is another version of a nuked world! We gotta get outta here!
Marty would've run all the way back to the train, full speed, if he hadn't tripped over the "Welcome" mat set on the porch of the Jennings' home. He landed hard on the cement, on his stomach, his breath whooshing out of his lungs.
The musician lay where he had fallen for a moment, stunned. His heart was thudding so hard and fast that it was actually shutting out the sound of the rain. It was only then, lying on his stomach on the hard, cold cement, that he saw the newspaper resting a few feet away, still bundled up from a delivery who knew how long ago. The musician reached out and grabbed it, glad that it had fallen under the eaves of the porch and therefore was sheltered from the elements. He sat up as he pulled off the rubber band and unfolded the slender periodical, anxious to see the headlines of the day.
EPIDEMIC OVERWHELMS HILL VALLEY; Hospitals , doctors overtaxed; 156 confirmed dead in last 24 hrs; 2500 in past week.
MAYOR ENCOURAGES CITIZENS TO REMAIN CALM, AVOID TRAVEL.
CREMATION NOW REQUIRED FOR EPIDEMIC VICTIMS.
CASUALTIES NUMBER 1.2 MILLION IN NEW YORK CITY; CDC promises vaccine is on the way.
The grim headlines were accompanied by an grimmer photograph of a hospital hallway filled with white-sheeted gurneys. "Jesus Christ," Marty whispered. His eyes went to the date on the masthead. Monday, December 5, 1994. Not quite a year ago.
The musician looked up towards the street, then back over his shoulder at the door that he had neglected to close on the way out. There wasn't enough money in the world to make him go back in there and check things out further. This newspaper told him everything he needed to know -- some horrible modern-day equivalent of the Black Plague had apparently swept through the country, possibly the world, about a year ago. The very fact that this Jennings had died in his or her home and had never been removed or discovered spoke strongly about that. It looked like a family home; where was the rest of the family? Probably dead in a different room, or maybe in one of the hospitals....
Marty shuddered, shifting his mind to the less gruesome details that added to the idea he was getting. The lack of power and the dirty streets. The relative stillness and quiet of everything. Not seeing one other person or animal since their arrival. And other little things that he had noticed on some subconscious level while on his walk.
He had to tell Doc; they had to get the hell outta this world before whatever germ or disease that wiped out all those people infected them.
Marty rolled the newspaper up as he stood, tucking it under one arm in the vain hope of keeping it as dry as possible, then set off at a run down the center of the road. His ribs and chest ached with the exertion after the hard fall he had taken on the porch, but he simply gritted his teeth and ignored it, as well as the rain stinging his face and his eyes. He took no care in trying to be subtle or quiet; who was around to notice him? By the time he reached the train, he ached all over from the fall and subsequent frantic jog, was soaked to the bone, and numb from cold. He didn't think he could feel much worse.
Although he had basically tried picking a fight with Doc earlier and lit into him rather unnecessarily, venting a frustration and anger that really was no fault of the inventor's per se, Marty didn't hesitate at all in his approach to the train. He had heavier things on his mind at that moment than sniping about something that had happened ten years ago.
Doc was still in the cab, bent over, fiddling with or looking at something behind the boiler and the time circuit display, when a frantic and dripping Marty returned. Doc's head snapped up at the sound of his arrival, then he looked back down at what he was doing.
"Get away from the circuits," he said flatly. "I don't want you causing more problems by soaking them with water."
Marty ignored his edgy tone. "Doc! We've gotta go right now!"
"Why? I'm still hearing thunder out there. It's not safe to fly, yet." Doc pulled his head back to look at the musician, frowning. He was still obviously irritated about the earlier incident. "I didn't expect to see you come back so soon. Did getting soaked out there calm you down at all?"
"No -- seeing this did." Marty held up the wet newspaper, the headlines still clear enough to be read in the dimly lit cab. The frown faded from the inventor's face as he scanned the dark letters on the paper. He looked grim by the time he finished it, but didn't say anything, looking back towards the boiler and time circuits.
The musician thought he was severely underestimating the news. "Doc! We gotta get the hell out of this place! I was out there and there's no one left! No one alive! This thing killed everyone, probably, or at least all Hill Valley, and God knows how contagious it is.... The longer we stay, the more likely we could get sick with this plague shit!"
"Not necessarily," the inventor said. "Diseases take time to incubate and infect, and if there's no one left alive to spread it, it shouldn't spread anymore. That's why the bubonic plague eventually stopped. Unless you came into direct contact with a disease carrier."
"Uh... well, I did. I tripped over someone, but I sure as hell didn't touch them anymore when I saw... that it was someone. I was outside in two seconds after that. And I'm positive it was someone who was sick with this thing."
Doc looked at him hard, an expression that was a strange cross of concern and disbelief. "You went into someone's home?"
Marty rolled his eyes at the pointless question. "Believe me, if I'd known that some Twentieth Century plague had wiped everyone out and there was a dead body inside, I would've definitely avoided it...."
Doc shook his head, sighed, and stepped towards the door, "I think--" he began, only to stop, suddenly, mid-sentence and mid-step. His eyes grew wide and vacant. Marty thought he saw something outside -- visions of plague-infested zombies danced through his head -- until the inventor pitched forward. His left foot was frozen in the air, poised for his step, and he seemed unable to put it down to catch himself.
It happened so fast and so unexpectedly that the musician was unable to do a thing. He watched numbly as Doc fell towards the still-open door, the side of his head clipping the frame of the doorway, landing hard on the metal floor of the train. His head snapped forward over the edge of the floor, outside, then he went limp all over.
It seemed, for a moment, that the entire world froze -- even the raindrops falling outside. Then Marty became aware of the sounds and sensations once more -- the roar of the rain on the roof, the cold wind gusting into the cabin, his completely sodden state, the ache of bruises on his own body, his thudding heart, and a fierce headache that had crept up on him sometime in the last half hour. There was also a cold fist of fear that gripped his heart and his lungs, making it hard to breathe.
Oh my God! I killed the Doc!
Gasping in horror at the idea, Marty dropped the newspaper and fell to his knees, next to his friend's side. "Doc?" he asked tentatively. When that provoked no response, Marty reached out and shook him by the shoulders. "Hey, Doc?"
Nothing. His hands trembling, now, Marty reached over and felt for a pulse in the inventor's neck. He couldn't find one immediately, and just when he was certain that the plague or some horrible stroke caused by all the grief he'd given his friend had killed him, he found it. The beat was strong and steady. Thank God.
"Doc? Come on, wake up," he begged, but there was still not the faintest of movements from his friend.
Realizing how soaked he, the inventor, and the inside of the machine was getting from the downpour outside, Marty grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him out of the doorway, into the cab, and closed the door against the elements. The musician then rolled his friend onto his back. He half expected to find him foaming at the mouth with his eyes wide open or something terrible like that, but eyes were closed and his face slack. He appeared to be simply asleep -- or unconscious. There was a faint bruise Marty could already see forming near the arch of the inventor's left eyebrow. Probably from clipping the metal frame of the doorway. But why had he even fallen in the first place?
What if it is that plague? Or what if he did have some kind of stroke or heart attack? Jesus, of all the places to get sick....
Marty shivered at the thoughts. "Doc?" he called again, lightly smacking the inventor's cheeks with his hand. That earned him no reaction whatsoever. The musician bit his lower lip, frustrated and scared. The back of his throat burned, and he knew that he was perilously close to crying -- and if that happened, he knew he wouldn't be able to stop or calm down anytime soon. He was hanging on by a thread as it was. He had to think; there had to be something he could do!
The first aid kit; maybe there's something in there....
Marty crawled over towards the small silver case at the back of the cab, under the seat. His heart sank as he opened it up, though. Because it was from the future, there were a ton of things in it that he had absolutely and positively no idea what they did or were supposed to do. There were instructions on the inside of the lid, slipped behind a transparent folder, and he pounced on that immediately. The water that was still dripping from his skin, hair, and clothes immediately soaked the page transparent, but Marty hardly noticed, trying to find the future equivalent of something like a cold compress or smelling salts.
He was still looking when he heard a rather weak groan from the inventor. The directions fluttered from Marty's hands as he turned around to tend to his friend. "Doc! Are you there? Wake up!"
Another groan. Doc's eyes were still closed, but he was grimacing. Encouraged, Marty lightly tapped his cheek again with his hand. "Doc? C'mon, open your eyes."
The inventor's eyes squeezed shut even more, then managed to crack open. "Marty..." Doc muttered around a moan. "What... what happened?"
"I don't know! You were gonna step outside, I think, and then you suddenly froze and just hit the deck. You hit your forehead when you fell; does it hurt?"
"My whole head hurts...." Doc blinked a couple of times, reaching up to his brow. He winced as his fingers found the point of impact. "How long was I out?"
"Between five and ten minutes, I think. I couldn't wake you up and I was trying to see if the kit had anything in it...." Marty tried to smile, but he didn't quite make it. His hands were still shaking from the scare. "I thought you'd stroked out or something. Shit...."
Doc sighed. "No, I'm fine. Except for this headache." He started to rise, propping himself up on his elbows for a moment before continuing to sit up all the way. His complexion was rather pale. "I think I just had an episode."
"An episode? An episode of wha--oh!" Marty looked at him with alarm. "Oh my God! Are you sure?"
"Unless I fainted.... Did I?" The inventor glanced sidelong at Marty, holding one hand to his head.
"No, I don't think so -- you just kinda... froze." Marty remembered the way it played out, then nodded to himself. "Yeah, I guess you probably did have one of those reactions. So does this mean that we're in real trouble, now? That we can't postpone this stuff anymore?"
"I don't know," Doc said. "Perhaps prolonged travel in different dimensions causes an eventual and inevitable breakdown to the system. Or maybe it was simply my exhaustion and stress level; you got to sleep for about an hour here, and I did not. But," he added, his tone lightening a little, "I believe I have figured out why the machine is having this problem."
"Really?" Marty asked, skeptical. "How?"
"The computer." Doc waved a hand in the direction of the device, resting on the floor a foot away. "The program that one of my other selves gave me. I noticed some very odd but consistent discrepancies...." He winced again, rubbing his head gently.
"What kind of things?" Marty prodded, both hopeful and pessimistic. Something told him this news wasn't going to be great.
The scientist took a deep breath and let it out in a gush of a sigh. "To be perfectly simple... every part that we replaced on the train when we were stuck in the alternate reality last year is out of sync with our dimension. They have been and are deteriorating just as the human nervous system does when it is out of its home world. Because of this deterioration, a multitude of wires and circuits and even the flux capacitor are not functioning as they should -- but they're also not malfunctioning consistently. Thus, this result."
Marty chewed on the words while Doc attempted to climb back to his feet, using some of the boiler tubes and gauges as handholds. "Why didn't this happen when we tried to get home from that one alternate reality?" he finally asked when he was sure he got the gist of it.
"The parts weren't malfunctioning, then," Doc said, groaning under his breath as he leaned against the time circuits. Marty was too preoccupied with trying to understand what the hell was going on to think of telling him that maybe he should still stay off his feet for a few more minutes. "The replacement parts were essentially designed to be a Band-Aid to our problem -- not a permanent solution. I should have replaced everything we 'borrowed,' but I didn't; I forgot." The inventor took another breath and sighed heavily. "I assumed that because we got home safely, the problem was solved. I can't believe I overlooked that...."
Marty got to his own feet slowly, trying to keep up with the rather complicated explanation that Doc was feeding him. "So there's a way you can fix this... right?"
Doc massaged his forehead with the heel of one of his hands as he managed to let go of the equipment at the front and stand on his own. "Maybe," he said.
"Maybe." Marty was aghast. "What do you mean maybe?"
Doc turned slowly to look at him. "Logic would suggest that if broken parts could be entirely replaced in an alternate reality, and still allow us to return home safely to our dimension, one time, the same can happen again. If that's the case, then all we really need to do is find a version of myself with the time, skills, knowledge, and equipment to help us with replacing the diseased areas of the train. However, it is also possible that this slow deterioration, coupled with our prolonged stay in worlds that are foreign to us, might have broken things beyond repair with the machine. If that's the case then we're--"
"--Stuck doing this forever and ever?!" Marty cried, moaning the words out. "Oh shit, Doc, no...."
The inventor blinked a couple of times, staring coolly at his friend. "No. Don't interrupt, Marty. What I was going to say was, if that's the case, then we're going to have to find a way to build a device that can move between dimensions on purpose, and be able to control our travels in it. It can be done -- my counterpart in that world last year had to do just that with another one of his... our... counterparts -- but I don't think it will be very simple or easy. This is actually a very big reason for why I don't want to attempt any repairs before we find another me with the right knowledge and a working time machine -- it will certainly take longer than thirty-odd hours, and if I'm already showing early symptoms after being in this world for only about two hours...."
Marty got the message loud and clear. "We'll have to keep resetting our systems," he said. "God, I hope that things can get fixed sooner than later, then...."
"Me too," Doc said, most sincerely. His eyes drifted down to the soggy newspaper that the musician had dropped during his friend's spell. "I suppose there is no need to linger here any longer. Especially if there is the possibility of infectious deadly disease."
"We might already be doomed enough with that," Marty muttered, his eyes darting to the current time display. They had been in this world almost two hours. "I don't think you should drive now, Doc."
"Probably not," the inventor agreed easily. "Why don't you take care of that... in a few minutes. I'll tell you everything you need to do. I need to prep the machine first and save all the data I collected on the computer."
Marty let him work at the tasks, hanging back a few feet in the desire to stay out of the way -- especially since he was still so sodden from the weather outside. Now that the huge excitement was past, the full force of his physical state hit him. He shivered a little, trying to cover it up, feeling like a world class jerk, now, for going at Doc's throat earlier. His drenched clothes merely reminded him of his folly; that was, after all, the reason he had stormed outside into the rain.
After a bit of squirming, Marty finally said it: "Sorry about earlier, Doc."
The inventor didn't answer immediately, and Marty wondered if he even heard his softly uttered apology. "I don't understand why that matter bothers you so much, Marty," he finally said, tapping a few keys on the computer. "I did what I thought was best at the time, and I never intended to conceal the plans from you... not once we were in the DeLorean together."
Marty sighed. "I guess," he murmured. "It just... bugged me that you didn't bother ever telling me. Like you were trying to hide it or something."
"No," Doc said. "I simply forgot, and the subject never came up enough to remind me. And it seemed quite irrelevant by the time I saw you again. You were obviously whole and unharmed at the train tracks, and I was in a hurry. I didn't like the idea of bringing the train out into a new time in broad daylight like that."
"Maybe if I wasn't having dreams of reliving that moment...."
Doc glanced up from the computer. "I'm sorry about that, but your bad dreams aren't really in my control. Likely it's stress; perhaps it won't be so bad now that we know part of our problem."
The musician pursed his lips, silently disagreeing with that. He didn't feel much better at all; beyond having some idea of what was going haywire, nothing about their situation had changed.
"I'm not the enemy in any of this," Doc went on, looking back to the laptop. "I'm doing as much as I can realistically be expected to do to solve the problem. We're in this thing together, and we're going to have to stay on peaceful terms if we want to get home safely, I think."
"So what are you saying?" Marty asked, his remorse having faded enough for him to feel a bit impatient over what his friend was rambling about. "That I shouldn't bite your head off? I said I was sorry about that...."
"Actually, I'm saying that due to both of our high-strung, exhausted, and stressed states -- and not to mention the close quarters of this train -- a reaction like yours was probably inevitable. And it could very well happen again. But we've got to get along if we want to get home; you've got to hold your temper in check with me, Marty. If you need to get away for a while and go for a walk, I'm perfectly fine with that." Doc gave his friend a quick glance, perhaps to gauge how he was taking this blunt assessment. "Even if you are probably completely miserable right now from doing just that. I'll turn up the heat in here, and maybe we can find a change of clothes for you in the next reality."
"The next reality," Marty muttered, echoing Doc's words. "The problem won't go away on it's own, will it?"
"No, it won't," Doc said bluntly. "But knowing what was going wrong was half the battle. It's just a matter of time, now, I think, before we'll make some serious and definite progress."
Doc may have believed that success was inevitable, but it took a long time before they hit anything remotely resembling a jackpot. After what Marty had come to think of as the "plague world," there were a number of strange situations and places that the travelers found themselves witnessing.
First, there was a world where, ironically, the DeLorean had not been destroyed on the train tracks. Marty had almost thought this was some sort of cosmic joke aimed at him when he found out, and even Doc had looked faintly amused by the news. The change, though, had done nothing to better the world. In this place, Clara and Doc had never met because the DeLorean had never had a ruptured fuel line. After their uneventful return to the future, the local inventor had taken the machine apart by hand -- much like the Emmett in the Tannen-free world, and the world where Marty's counterpart had used the sports almanac. Because he had avoided the run-in with Buford Tannen, though, the local Marty had gotten into the car accident and was on the road to the miserable future of 2015. Their story to the local inventor was met with a great deal of sympathy and interest, but in the end he had to tell them that they might as well move on; he had put time travel behind him to focus on hover technology, which was something that could benefit the entire world -- and didn't have the horrible potential side effect of ending All Life As We Know It.
Their next stop took them to another place without a time machine -- it had apparently been destroyed in an accident when Marty had returned from 1955 and had plowed it into the former movie theater. While the musician had done the exact same thing at home, in this reality the local Marty had turned the wheel in the hopes of avoiding the building, and the car had gone into a spin and struck the theater rear-first. The collision had ripped off or destroyed the sensitive circuitboards, wires, and the fuel chamber that were all mounted on the back of the car. Marty, though, had walked away from it without a scratch on him. Doc had survived the terrorist shooting fine, but without a machine to check out the future he never saw an inkling of Marty's fate, and thus the local version of the musician had once more gotten into a car accident and destroyed any hopes of a music career.
Then there was the reality that Marty wished fervently had never been. Not because it foretold death, destruction, or auto accidents, but because of what he was doing for a living. Singing. At weddings. The only thing possibly worse than that, in Marty's mind, was being a one hit wonder band forced to play state and county fairs, still trying to rock on the power of one hit song. The thing that blew his mind was that his other self -- who happened to be visiting the local Emmett when the visitors had dropped by -- seemed perfectly happy with his line of work. Unlike the visiting musician, though, this Marty McFly seemed to enjoy performing more than songwriting. They didn't stay more than a couple of hours in this world, because once more the local Emmett didn't have anything to help them out; he had destroyed his time machine after returning home from an uneventful trip to the future.
They saw a reality where Doc was still a professor, and was still trying to build a time machine; a reality where Marty's other self had discovered a love of writing and film instead of music and was trying to write screenplays; a reality where Marty was named "Calvin" after the nice young man who helped Lorraine and George McFly get together; a reality where Doc had been killed when his mansion had burned down; a reality where Marty had erased himself from existence in '55; a reality where Doc had never moved back to the present after being left behind in the past. And on. The only thing those worlds all seemed to have in common was that there was no working time machine still around. It had never been created at all, in a couple of cases, but in most it had been around about ten years ago, then destroyed by accident or on purpose.
There were also a few worlds they came across that had apparently evolved entirely differently, in ways beyond the greater Hill Valley area. The World Without Microchips was one, which was sort of like a futuristic version of the 1940's to Marty's eye. Naturally, this location would be of no help to them, and once Doc figured out what had happened, he left without even bothering to try and find himself. Then there was a really strange reality that looked like it was still stuck in the 1890's; Marty thought the time circuits were now acting flakey until Doc checked them over -- and when they left and were back in a twisted 1995, it became a moot point. There was also the world where the U.S. was still a British colony, having lost the Revolutionary War, and one where America had apparently never been discovered.
Marty soon got the mind-numbing feeling that he was channel surfing for a show that never seemed to be on. Doc, for his part, was trying to keep their stays in the alternate worlds increasingly short. Not knowing how much time they could linger before the side effects was most of the motivator, but another part of it was that the inventor was clearly getting more frustrated and impatient to find someone who could help them with the problem -- especially now that they knew what was going wrong.
After one particular brief layover in a world where Doc had simply never been born, the scientist had finally had it. Marty hardly paid attention when they went back up into the air for yet another transit -- but he definitely sat up straighter when Doc merely slowed down after their next arrival and then picked up speed for another jump.
"Doc!" he said when this happened not once but twice in a row. "What the hell?"
The inventor didn't bother to turn around and look at the musician. He glanced casually out of the window to his left. "I'm speeding this process up a bit," he said. "I don't see the point in stopping when my home below is clearly not inhabited. This should save us a little bit of time."
"I thought you said we should explore every place, to make sure we weren't skipping over the one place that had the answer? And, Doc, remember last year? Remember the you in that dimension we got waylaid in? He didn't live in your house on Elmdale Lane -- and he helped us out a lot!"
Doc's head bobbed once in a nod. "Perhaps so," he agreed. "But I'm too tired to check out every reality in depth anymore. Do you really want to be stuck doing this for the next week? Or year?"
Marty backed off immediately, far too exhausted to argue against it. He was getting more than a little tired of this game. "Carry on," he said, leaning back into the seat.
Doc's new modus operande definitely saved them some time, but there was more than one world that had the restored farmhouse and barn the way that the inventor was used to seeing. When they did touch down in those places, though, they found not answers but excuses. There was no time machine because Jules and Verne had taken off in it once for a joyride, and freaked out the local Emmett and Clara. There was no time machine because Emmett saw no point in holding onto one after his family had successfully moved out of the past. There was no time machine because it had been destroyed during a severe earthquake in 1994.
With each negative answer to that oh-so-important question, Doc's jaw tightened, his posture grew more tense, and he spoke less and in more clipped sentences. Marty, for his part, simply felt more exhausted. They hadn't stopped to catch their breath since the forced layover in the plague world, not even to eat; the snacks that an alternate Clara had given them were consumed on the fly. By the musician's vague count, they had been up more than forty-five hours since their night's sleep in the Marty-and-Jennifer-as-teen-parents world. It felt like twice that.
He was so drop dead tired, in fact, that at some point during Doc's back-to-back-to-back jumps in the machine, he started to nod off where he sat on the bench, his exhaustion great enough that the turbulence and sonic booms were simply not enough to bother him anymore. His awareness came in brief snatches and snippets for what might've been five minutes or an hour -- until they hit the ground with a jarring halt. Marty jumped at the sensation, nearly falling out of his seat, blinking at Doc as he tried to bring his mind back to the present.
"What is it?" he muttered.
The inventor heaved a deep, weary sigh before turning around to face the musician. "Another possibility," he said, glancing for a second through the window. "If you want to stay in here, I suppose I can understand that."
Marty was tempted -- especially since it was once again raining outside. But if he waited in the cab, he knew the only thing he would do or want to do was sleep. Although he was definitely wiped enough to consider -- for a moment -- curling up on the cold, hard metal floor, it wasn't his first choice. The bench, too, wasn't much better. Might as well keep moving and hope that maybe, just maybe, this might be a place to settle down for a while... or at least for a night.
"I'll come," he said, getting to his feet rather stiffly, reaching up to rub a kink out of his neck. "You think we could maybe stay here for a night, even if it doesn't have anything for us? I feel like I might pass out if I don't get to sleep soon."
"Maybe," Doc said, clearly distracted.
Marty frowned faintly at the answer, both annoyed and concerned for his friend. The phrase "one track mind" was one that seemed to be coined especially for the inventor. When Doc had his mind set on something, he didn't give in or let go, no matter how long it took him to get to the bottom of the problem. Marty recognized that obsessiveness showing its ugly head right now. In spite of a blow to the head from one of the earliest symptoms of the incompatibility problem, Doc wasn't slowing down at all. And he had to be just as tired as Marty was, if not more.
"You know, Doc, rest might keep both of us from spacing out from the incompatibility stuff," the musician couldn't resist mentioning as the inventor opened the door and paused on the threshold of the streaming showers. Marty made a face at the weather as he took it in. Parts of him were still damp from the thorough soaking he got in the plague world. They never had found dry clothes for him. "You don't want to have one of those when you're flying the time machine, do you?"
"Of course not, Marty," the scientist said flatly, without an ounce of conviction in his voice. Marty had the clear impression that Doc had hardly heard a word of what he said, or really cared. "We can rest when another chance presents itself."
The musician rolled his eyes, finding that answer less than satisfactory. He had managed to deal with Doc without much of a problem since the blow up in Plague World, the memory of the moment he thought he was the cause of his friend's swoon still extremely vivid. But now it started to pale compared to the very real and vivid problems of inescapable exhaustion. If Doc wanted to move on after five minutes here, he was definitely going to have a few words to say about that!
Unless, of course, to stay a day would mean their death or something like that.
The visitors walked briskly through the rain to the back of the home, once more knocking on the back door to summon the owners. Marty leaned against the wall next to the door, resisting the urge to go over and sit in a comfortable-looking wicker chair nearby on the porch. There was no answer from Doc's first try, so the inventor knocked again. Another long minute passed.
"Maybe no one's home," Marty suggested. So far, they had pretty much caught Doc's counterparts at their houses. It stood to reason that there was always a world around where that wasn't so.
"Perhaps," Doc said, sounding faintly perturbed by the idea. He took a few steps away from the door, towards the side of the house where the separate garage was located for his and Clara's cars. Doc didn't reach the corner of the home before the door was finally flung open by a rather frazzled Emmett Brown of this world. He saw the musician first and immediately assumed him to be the person who had knocked.
"Marty! What are you doing at the back door? Did you think I was out in the lab?" He clucked his tongue and shook his head, clearing taking an assumption to that, perhaps because Marty's clothes were splashed with rain from the trip between the train and the house. "Clara had to run to the store last minute, so I'm keeping an eye on all the kids. Were you out here long?"
"Uh... a couple minutes," Marty said, wondering if he should alert the local to the presence of his counterpart a dozen feet away. The musician's eyes darted quickly in the latter's direction, but Doc's expression was unreadable.
"Sorry, I didn't hear you. I was upstairs changing Clay-- Great Scott!"
Emmett's gave a wheezing sort of gasp and clung to the door frame for a moment as his gaze followed Marty's and he caught sight of his other self for the first time. He recovered from his shock impeccably quick, turning his eyes back to the musician. His voice carried a trace of admonishment to it. "Marty! Did you use one of the time machines?"
"Oh, thank you, God," Marty muttered, raising his eyes heavenward as he spoke, immediately picking up the news that he and Doc had so desperately searched for. "Did you use one of the time machines?" This Emmett hadn't destroyed his greatest invention yet; what was even better, it sounded like he had more than one. Please, please, please let this be someone who can help us....
"No," Doc told his counterpart, some of the tension leaking from his face as he caught the same inference from the words that Marty had. "He didn't. It's a rather long and complicated story to tell; is there somewhere more comfortable to explain it than the porch?"
Emmett tilted his head to one side as he studied his other self, then shifted his eyes to Marty. He stared particularly hard into the musician's eyes, long enough to make Marty decidedly uncomfortable, before shifting his gaze back to his counterpart. "All right," he said. "Why don't you both come in."
They filed in through the back door. The kitchen looked pretty much as Marty was used to seeing Doc and Clara's-- just slightly messier, with what looked like toys and some cooking ingredients and supplies scattered about on counters and the table. The local inventor offered them chairs at the kitchen table, but Doc declined them. Marty was used to that by now; no use in making one's self comfortable when it was unclear if you were going to have to get up and run off again a few minutes later. The visitors remained standing near the door, Marty leaning back against the wall and crossing his fingers that this Emmett would have the answers they wanted.
"We're not past or future versions of yourself or Marty," Doc said immediately, once Emmett had made himself comfortable, leaning back against the edge of the table. "We're from an alternate reality. I can go into more details if you want, but right now I need to know this: Do you have a working time machine?"
Emmett frowned faintly, suspicious. "Yes," he said shortly.
"Is that machine -- or one of them, as you implied you had more than one a moment ago -- a locomotive that you modified in the nineteenth century?"
"Perhaps," Emmett said cryptically. "What's going on here? What is all of this? Why do you want to know these things?"
Doc rubbed the bruise on his forehead from the fall more than a day ago. "As I told you, we're both from an alternate reality. Alternate counterparts to you and the Marty McFly here. My time machine -- constructed from a locomotive about a hundred years ago -- is having some problems and has been sending us from world to world for about four or five days, now. I know what's wrong with it -- that's a long, long story in itself -- and I have a few ideas for how the problem can be repaired, but I would need your help, time, and access to your equipment. Maybe it's a lot to ask, springing it on you like this, but.... Well, you are a version of me. Think of it as helping yourself."
Emmett stared at his counterpart for a moment, then looked at Marty. He seemed to favor the musician with far more scrutiny than he had Doc, and it made him slightly uncomfortable, as well as confused. "If this is all true," the local said slowly, swinging his eyes back to Doc, "then where is your machine? I didn't see anything out back."
"It's concealed under a hologram," Doc said.
"An HIS?" Emmett half-murmured, almost to himself.
"Exactly," the visiting scientist said, nodding. "You made one, too, then?"
"Yes -- I considered it rather necessary to the security of the time machines." Emmett stepped away from the table and over to the closest window, squinting as he peered out into the rainy mess. "I can't see a thing out of the ordinary out there. Do you have it on an invisible mode?"
"Yep. It's parked near the barn. I figured it would stand a good chance of not getting walked into there."
"Mmmmm." Emmett looked away from the outside world and over to a clock set near the stove. "Clara should be home in about a half hour. I'd like to go out there and look at it, if you don't mind; I'll have Jules keep an eye on the other kids."
Marty wondered how old the kids were in this world, since Verne definitely didn't need a sitter or supervision where they were from. He figured he could find that out later. Doc stopped the local before he could leave the kitchen.
"Do you think you can help us? If not, we can leave right now. We've done it many, many, many times before, already."
Emmett paused to look at Doc. "I'll do everything that I can to help you," he said. "I just hope that it's enough to help you with your problem."
Doc sighed. "Me, too," he muttered.
Once he had left the kitchen to presumably locate his eldest for baby-sitting duties, Marty asked Doc the question that he'd been sitting on for the last couple of minutes. "Do you think we can stay here a while?" he asked, his tone almost a plea.
"We'll see, Marty," Doc said. "I'm just as eager for a break as you are -- but only if it can help us get home. Otherwise we're just wasting our time."
"You think getting sleep is wasting time? Doc, for someone so smart, you can be really dumb about this! How many times have you screwed something up 'cause you were so tired you could barely see straight? And don't give me any BS answer -- remember when we were working on the Aerovette? And you chewed me out for pushing myself too hard? You should listen to your own advice, especially since we're messing around in alternate realities. Was one spaceout not enough for you?"
Doc's lips tightened and Marty could tell the advice rankled him a little. His tone remained even, though, as he said, "I am aware of all of this, Marty. But I'm not doing anything right now that requires an overwhelming amount of mental concentration."
"Piloting a flying train isn't one of those?" Marty shook his head, irritated by Doc's unyielding stubbornness. "You've said yourself that if the machine crashes or really breaks down somewhere, we're pretty damned screwed. I say we stay here for at least a night, even if the you of this place can't do anything to help us out."
Emmett returned before the visiting inventor could voice a reply to that. "Let's go," he said, walking for the back door already attired in a rain coat -- and with a couple of others draped over one arm that he handed to the visitors. Marty accepted it gratefully, not looking forward to another trip into the cold and damp outdoors without any sort of protection against the elements. Had he not felt so lousy, the memory of Doc's long ago assurance that he wouldn't need his jacket because he wouldn't get one raindrop on his clothes, during his little test jump in the machine, might've been faintly amusing.
"What exactly did you want to see?" Doc asked as he slipped into the borrowed coat. "Proof of our claimed identity? If you were hoping to actually see the problem with the train, I don't think you'll come away very satisfied. It's a rather subtle malfunction, detectable only by a sensitive and specific computer diagnostics program."
"I'd like to see the train, first off," Emmett said, opening the door. Wind gusted inside, bringing with it a few raindrops. "And then we can go into my lab and I'll show you what I have."
Doc seemed satisfied by that. The inventors left the house, Marty hesitating a moment before going after them. Even if he was now clad in a rather oversized raincoat, it didn't make his energy level any higher, or make him any more eager to exchange the warm, dry house for rain and wind. He didn't linger indoors, though, wanting to be around to put in his two cents if Doc decided that this Emmett wouldn't be of any help to them.
Emmett let out a faint gasp when Doc shut down the HIS to reveal the train in all of it's damp, broken glory. "Amazing!" he said, walking a few steps to examine the front of the time machine. "It looks almost identical to mine!"
"Great," Doc said, very sincerely. "Did you want to look at the way I have the system laid out in here?"
Marty sighed and rolled his eyes, not looking forward to what would undoubtedly be a long Q & A session between the scientists. "Is there any way I could wait in the lab for you guys while you poke around?" he asked, trying hard to keep the note of whining from his voice. "The weather really sucks out here and I think I've heard you give your other selves tours a million times now."
Emmett looked away from peering into the cab to regard Marty. "Sure," he said. "I'll let you in there. I don't imagine we'll linger out here very long ourselves."
Yeah, right, Marty thought, knowing his friend -- and just about every version of him -- would probably be too interested to notice things like weather and damp. He followed Emmett to the door of the lab, waited as the local inventor used his thumbprint to unlock the door, and then went gratefully into the warmer and drier lab.
"We shouldn't be too long -- honestly," Emmett assured him as Marty shed the wet coat and set it on the hook near the door. "It's pretty miserable out there and I'm not looking forward to spending much time out the rain."
"There's enough room to put the train in the cellar, even with the other one in there," Marty said, recalling that fact from one of the first worlds they had visited.
"Is there? Well, I imagine we'll move it there, then, soon. If it can be moved."
"That's not the problem," Marty said, a little testily.
Emmett gave him a sympathetic look, then went back outside to join his counterpart at the train.
Marty waited patiently for only a minute, then was unable to resist the opportunity of exploration. A couple of go-rounds in the main floor of the lab told him little, except that the second time machine here was clearly a DeLorean, and that this Emmett seemed to have many of the same ideas he was working on as Doc did. The musician guessed that was all good news. It seemed to get even better when he looked up and saw that this version of Emmett Brown had also had the time or inclination to build a study in the upstairs loft. He headed up the stairs, curious to see if the similarities would continue there.
The lights were out; Marty felt around on the wall where he was used to the switch being, found it, and clicked on a couple of the floor lamps that were the main sources of illumination for the upstairs room. His immediate impression was that the study was laid out approximately in the same way, with the same pieces of furniture scattered about. The musician took a couple of steps towards the couch, which had a variety of papers and other odds and ends strewn upon it, only to stop when he glanced over in the direction of Emmett's desk and noticed the photographs that were framed and mounted on the wall. A couple of them looked different, even from halfway across the room, and Marty went over to investigate further.
There were a few photographs that looked identical to ones that Marty had seen before -- specifically, ones of Jules and Verne as babies. But there were far more full color ones of the two oldest kids that began around the ages of four and two, respectively. And the wedding picture that had a rather prominent place in Doc's collection at home had changed. Emmett and Clara were shown standing before the church, smiling for the photographer and clad in their best attire, but now there was a third figure that stood at Doc's side.
It was him -- or, rather, the Marty McFly of this world.
The photograph was in Marty's hands a second later. "Jesus," he breathed, amazed. He studied the faces in the photograph, especially his own, searching for an explanation. Unlike Emmett and Clara, the local Marty was not smiling. He didn't look terribly enthused in general. Maybe he hadn't wanted his friend to marry. Or maybe....
...Maybe I got stuck back there, Marty realized, shuddering at the idea.
He set the photograph back on the wall where he had removed it and looked at the other ones, more critically now. Aside from the pictures of Jules and Verne as babies, and a family portrait that looked as if it had been taken when Verne was an infant, there were few photographs from the Nineteenth Century. And no more with Marty in them. Then he looked down at the desk and saw a small, framed sepia-toned picture, grainy with age, showing what appeared to be himself posed with the local Emmett, sitting in the doorway of the locomotive time machine. An inscription, with a date, was etched at the bottom of it: "Tues, December 2, 1890 -- it works!" Marty's counterpart was smiling in this photo, faintly, but the expression was muted compared to Emmett's wide grin.
"Oh, no," Marty murmured, horrified by what was implied by the two photos he had seen so far. He turned away from the desk and made his way over to one of the bookshelves, where he knew for a fact that Doc had some photo albums. That was an aspect that had also remained constant here; Marty found them without a struggle. After moving some boxes and clutter off the couch and to the floor, he sat down and opened the albums, eager and afraid to see what was in there.
He had apparently overshot the start date of the pictures; the handwriting under the color photographs on the first page of the first album he opened was "Jules' 8th Birthday Party." But the date was strange: January 6, 1990. Jules hadn't turned eight in 1990; he hadn't even turned eight in the Twentieth Century! Marty frowned, remembering the date on the picture that showed both him and Emmett with the train. "Tues, December 2, 1890 -- it works!" Doc's train didn't work until 1895, and he hadn't left the past until about a year later. If it worked five years sooner, though, and he moved his family to the future earlier, then....
"The kids would be younger," Marty muttered aloud, realizing now how this world was different. Emmett had finished the train sooner, and the local Marty had apparently been stuck in the old west. Maybe that made a difference in how fast the local inventor completed the time machine.
Marty would have to ask about that later. The musician closed the album, his interest waning now that he figured out part of the mystery. He moved the small stack of albums from his lap and onto the floor next to the couch. Once that was taken care of, Marty lay back on the cushions, too tired to go back downstairs and wait out the inventors' time in the train. He'd be able to hear them when they came in and then he'd go downstairs. Probably.
The sound of the rain drumming on the roof was rather soothing when one was indoors, out of the chill and damp. Marty rubbed his forehead, a headache having consistently plagued him for the last several hours, and let his hand drop down on his chest. He knew if he closed his eyes, he was toast, but when a couple of minutes went by and there was no sound from the lower levels of the barn, the urge to do just that got worse and worse, until blinking became dangerous. It had been so long since he had laid down anywhere....
You know, I don't care anymore -- I need to sleep... just for a few minutes, at least.
With that thought, Marty allowed his aching eyes a reprieve. If Doc wanted to yell at him for getting some rest later, so be it. He just didn't care anymore. Marty's sigh of relief turned into a yawn as he let himself finally relax and sink deeper into the cushions... and into the temporary oblivion of sweet sleep.
* * *
In spite of Emmett's claim that they wouldn't be too long, it was starting to get dark out by the time the two inventors wrapped up their conversation and tours around the foreign time machine. Doc was pleased that his counterpart here seemed competent and knowledgeable about most of the workings of the time machine. His experience in alternate dimensions was as lacking as most of the other Emmetts that Doc had encountered in his trip, though he did share visiting a Biff-twisted alternate 1985 as a result of the sports almanac incident. It was better than nothing.
"I can't promise that I can get you home," Emmett said, after Doc had shown him the gist of the problem with the laptop's help. The local frowned and rubbed his chin as he looked once more at the computer screen. "The situation still seems rather complex, to me, but I'll do whatever I can to help you fix it."
Doc smiled for the first time in hours -- or maybe days. "Thanks," he said quietly. "It might take a while, I'm afraid, and we'll probably need to use one of your time machines at least once a day in order to avoid the side effects of interdimensional travel."
"Of course," Emmett agreed readily. "That side effect sounds rather unpleasant, if you ask me; I never knew that this sort of travel was dangerous to one's health! You can use the DeLorean when you need to take care of that -- it'll be far easier getting that out of the lab than the train. And," he added suddenly, "we should probably move your train into the cellar with mine. It will make it far easier to work -- and be much drier, too."
Doc nodded once, having intended to suggest just that. "I don't think we need to take a jump until tomorrow evening, at least," he said. "Probably the best thing for Marty and I to do right now is to get some rest. It's been... a while."
Emmett looked at him dead in the face, his eyes not missing a thing. "I should say. I haven't seen my own face look like that since the last time I didn't sleep for a couple of days." He threw a look outside at the rain, then turned back to his counterpart. "Let's move your train inside, first. I don't know if it'll make the problem any worse to have it out in this weather all night, but I know I'll sleep better tonight if it's under lock and key."
"As will I," Doc said, most sincerely. He shut the laptop down and pulled up the hood of the borrowed coat, preparing to make the dash to the lab nearby. "How is your family going to react to this rather... bizarre news?" he couldn't help asking as he and Emmett left the cab of the train.
"In stride, I imagine," Emmett said. "Clara will probably have a few questions, but I don't think there will be any problems with her. As for the kids, Clayton won't bat an eye, but I suspect Emily might be a bit confused by it. Jules and Verne are probably old enough to understand the general concept, I think."
"How old are they all?" Doc asked, recalling the earlier implication that the younger kids needed watching.
Emmett gave him a slightly baffled look as he opened the door of the lab. "Clayton's just a baby -- he's nine months old. Emily will be eight in a few weeks, Verne just turned twelve, and Jules will be fourteen in January. Are your kids not the same ages?"
"Not the older two -- Jules will be twenty in January, and Verne just turned eighteen. That's an interesting discrepancy."
Emmett looked surprised by the news. "Is that normal?" he asked. "To have things be different in that way?"
"Oh, yes. I dare say it's more unusual to find so much the same. I can't even begin to tell you some of the weird deviations that we've seen.... Little would surprise me at this point, to be perfectly honest."
The local looked intrigued, but did not press the issue, for which Doc was grateful. He was too tired to answer any but the most pressing questions at the moment. There would be plenty of time, later, to go into detail. "Is this set up much differently from your lab at home?" Emmett asked as they entered the barn.
Doc swept the hood back and looked around the large room, his eyes running over the worktables, the equipment, the parked DeLorean near the large doors, and the multitude of devices and clutter. A small smile tugged at his lips once more. "It's very familiar," he said, stopping beside one of the tables to pick up a small circuitboard the size of his palm. "This is for your security system, isn't it?"
Surprise flooded the face of his counterpart. "Yes," he said. "Are you working on the same thing?"
"Essentially -- I'm refining the design a bit for mass marketing. Are you doing that, too?"
"Ah... no." Emmett frowned as Doc set the part down. "You're mass marketing your security system? How did that come about?"
"That's another long story," Doc said with a bit of a sigh. He looked around the room again, finally realizing something. "Wasn't Marty going to wait for us in here?"
"He was," Emmett confirmed. "It's possible he got sick of waiting and went to the house. He'd be much more comfortable in there."
Doc didn't question the suggestion; it sounded like something his friend would do, especially as cranky as he had been the last several hours... or days. He turned the subject back to the matter at hand. "Can you access your cellar the same way I can? Through a trap door and stairs in the floor?"
Emmett's response to the question was to roll back the rug over the door and pull up the wood to reveal the stairs. "Guests firsts," he said when Doc made no move to go down. "I'll show you my machine, quickly, and then we can move yours in, and tell my family about the houseguests we'll be having for the next week or two. And then you can finally get some rest."
The local Marty McFly pulled up in his truck before Doc's house, checking his watch as he cut the engine. He grimaced. Almost twenty minutes late. And he had left his place early, this time.
"I'll just blame the weather," he muttered aloud, though he doubted his friend would give him a very hard time over the matter. Doc knew him all too well -- better than his parents, now, really. He pulled the coat's hood over his head, grabbed the bag with a box of cake in it that he had bought at the supermarket on the way, and left his vehicle.
Marty ducked his head against the raindrops and ran straight for the house, not bothering to knock before he went inside. The foyer was uncharacteristically quiet and void of any kids. "Hello?" Marty called out, closing the door.
Emily ran out to meet him seconds later, her dark hair bouncing behind her. "Marty!" she said, throwing her arms around the bewildered guest's waist and giving him a tight hug.
"Whoa," he said, staggering back a couple of steps. "What's with the welcome?"
Emily looked up and grinned at him, showing off all her teeth. "I'm just glad t'see ya," she said. She took a step back and made a face as she looked down at her shirt and arms. "Ick -- you got me all wet!"
Marty smiled apologetically. "Sorry," he said. "You didn't give me enough time to take my coat off."
Emily made a face, then headed for the stairs, presumably to change her shirt. "Mom's in the kitchen an' Daddy's in the lab," she said as she went up the steps, answering the questions that Marty hadn't yet asked.
"Thanks," he called out after her. The musician headed to the kitchen at the back of the house, wanting to drop off the cake before he went out to see Doc. Just as Emily had said, Clara was in their, supervising a few pots on the range top. She looked up as he came in and smiled.
"Hello, Marty. How are you doing?"
"All right, I guess. I brought dessert," he added, setting down the water-flecked plastic bag containing the cake on the kitchen table. "Emmy said Doc was out in the lab?"
"Apparently so," Clara said, replacing the lid on a pot and turning away from the stove. "I haven't seen him all afternoon. He was supposed to be keeping an eye on the kids when I was at the store, but Jules said he asked him to watch the baby while he went out to work on something rather pressing. Were you intending to go out there and join him?"
"If that's okay, yeah."
Clara smiled again as she wiped her hands off on the apron tied around her waist. "If you weren't going, I'd ask you to," she admitted. "Will you let Emmett know that dinner will be on the table by six?"
"No problem."
Marty slipped his hood on again before opening the back door and stepping outside. He made a face at the weather as he left the warmth of the house. It had been raining almost a week straight, and the weathermen were not optimistic that it would let up anytime soon; it was actually supposed to turn even colder later that night and bring snow or sleet to Hill Valley and the surrounding areas.
Marty just couldn't wait. He sighed a little as he crossed the lawn for the barn, his mood matching the gloom of the dusk and damp surrounding him. It was the ultimate paradox for him that the people he felt closest to also happened to remind him the most about the unfortunate events of his life, and the things he had spent the last ten years trying desperately to forget.
Don't think about it, Marty told himself firmly, not wanting to spend the rest of the evening sulking. What had happened had happened; there was nothing he could do that would change things. If there had been, Doc would've helped him do it a long time ago. Doc, in fact, had done everything he really could to fix the situation, short of erasing it from ever happening.
"Time travel can't repair all human errors," the inventor had said to him, more than a decade ago. "Some things -- some unpleasant things -- need to happen to pave the way for change -- positive changes. You may not see this now, but I think you will, in the future."
At the time, Marty had been furious with that attitude and response, unable to understand why his best friend would let the hell he had to live through for five years go and happen. Now he was able to see things far more clearly -- but it didn't make him feel much better, really.
The door to the lab was locked, which was typical, but Doc had cleared him for entry into the barn a while back. Once the locks recognized his ID and popped open, Marty stepped inside. He took a moment to wipe the mud and water off his sneakers on the mat near the door, then threw back his hood and took a look around. The room appeared empty.
"Doc?" Marty called out, curiously.
There was no response. The local musician shrugged, then peeled his drenched raincoat off his body to hang on a hook near the door. As he wandered around the room, trying to figure out where his friend had gone, he noticed the lights on in the study, up in the hayloft. Marty headed over to the stairs, pausing at the bottom of them.
"Doc?" he called again, listening hard for a reaction.
Once again, the only sound he heard was the rain drumming on the roof above. Still, the musician figured that his friend had to be up there. Doc didn't typically have the lights on for no reason, and it was fully possible that the inventor was so completely engaged in something he hadn't heard Marty at all.
So he headed up the stairs, a nibble of worry chewing away at him as he went. What if the scientist was up there -- and something had happened to him? The guy was eighty-one, now, after all -- future rejuvenations notwithstanding. It was always possible that some medical problem -- or accident -- could strike, and then....
Marty swallowed hard as he reached the top of the stairs, his eyes darting nervously back and forth. His imagination was riled enough so that he half expected to find the inventor collapsed on the floor, under a pile of books, or victim of some unforeseen medical disaster. But the room appeared empty at first glance.
The musician sighed, relieved, then stopped when his eyes caught sight of a shoe hanging over the side of the couch. He blinked, starting to smile at his foolishness -- Doc had just fallen asleep up here, that was all -- when his eyes took in the rest of the prone figure on the couch.
For a moment, Marty froze at the sight of the familiar face -- then reacted completely on impulse.
"Holy shit!" he cried, taking a few quick steps back -- and then found air beneath the soles of his shoes. His hand shot out for the railing, but it was too late; Marty tumbled backwards down the stairs. It seemed to take an eternity and a half before he finally came to a rest, at the bottom.
Things were a little hazy for a minute or two; he had knocked the breath right out of his lungs, and a multitude of aches told him that he'd picked up a dozen or so nasty bruises in the fall. But he was alive and whole.
There were rapid footsteps from somewhere nearby and below, and then suddenly Doc was in the room. "Marty!" the inventor said, with a mixture of concern and scolding in his voice. "What in the name of Sir Isaac H. Newton happened?"
Marty couldn't answer the question for a moment, too stunned from the fall. And a second later he simply couldn't answer because another Doc appeared from right behind the first one. "Jesus!" he wheezed, wondering if he had hit his head during that fall and was now seeing double. "There's two of you!"
"Well, of course there's two of me!" the first Doc said, frowning. The second Doc put a hand on his arm and shook his head once.
"I think that's my Marty," he said softly, but not softly enough for the musician to miss it. "He was due to come over at five for dinner tonight -- I completely lost track of time." He stepped past Doc #1 and knelt down next to Marty's side, plainly concerned. "Are you okay? We could hear your fall all the way in the cellar."
Marty nodded once, his eyes wide, though he made no move to sit up from where he was sprawled awkwardly at the base of the stairs. "What the hell is goin' on, Doc?" he asked, spooked. "Why are there two of you... and two of me?!"
"You met the other Marty?" Emmett asked, sounding surprised. "Was he in the house?"
The musician shook his head, easing himself up on his elbows. He grimaced as he rested his weight on one arm, apparently touching one of the wicked bruises that would no doubt be mighty colorful tomorrow. "No -- he's up there, in the study. I swear, I almost fainted when I saw that."
The Doc who was still standing slipped past Marty and went up the stairs without a word. The musician turned his eyes to his friend, his mind half-frozen with confusion about the whole situation. "What's going on, Doc?" he asked again, softer.
The inventor smiled faintly and patted him on the shoulder. "We've had a little excitement here today," he said in a low voice. "It's nothing to be concerned over -- and I will explain everything to you very soon."
"But who are they?" Marty asked, glancing up the stairs, though he couldn't see either of the doubles from where he still lay. "Are they from the future? Or the past?"
"Neither," Emmett said. At the completely baffled look that crossed the younger man's face, the scientist smiled again. "I know you're confused, Marty -- and I'll admit that when I first met them, I was rather taken aback myself. And I'm sorry this gave you a scare -- I should've remembered you'd be stopping by soon."
The other Doc appeared at the head of the stairs and headed their way. Emmett looked up at the double. "How is your Marty doing?" he asked.
"Fine," Other Doc said. "He's sound asleep up there, on the couch. I rather envy him right now." Other Doc rubbed his forehead, and for the first time Marty noticed how exhausted and haggard he looked. Like he hadn't slept in a couple of days -- or had gone to hell and back.
What is going on? I don't get any of this at all!
Emmett stood. "I'd better show you to the house, so you can go to bed yourself," he said, rather apologetically. "There's no need for you to do anything more tonight, now that we've moved your train. And I'd better let the family know what's going on. Will you be all right out here alone for a few minutes, Marty?"
"I--I guess so." The musician finally sat up all the way, wincing from the now-present aches from the fall. "Are you coming back out here?"
"Once I get our guest settled, yes. And then I'll answer as many of the questions you have for me as I can."
Marty accepted the promise, watching his friend leave the lab with his double a moment later. He remained frozen where he was for a full minute after their departure, trying to let the last few minutes really sink in, then got to his feet. He glanced up in the direction of the study, once more, then mounted the stairs again. His trepidation was matched only by his curiosity. Nevertheless, he paused on the top step before continuing into the study for a closer look at the matter.
The couch was about ten feet away from the stairs. Marty covered the distance quietly, his eyes unable to resist blatantly staring at... himself.
"This is too heavy," he mumbled.
Other Marty lay on his back on the couch, one foot dangling over the edge, the other propped up on a small stack of folders that the inventor had probably set down some time before. The double's hands rested limply on his chest, which rose and fell gently with each breath. The awake Marty crept closer, emboldened a bit by the clear oblivion of the other. He stared first at the face of the double, tilted towards the back of the couch with his mouth hanging open. He was snoring softly. With his eyes, the local Marty traced the overly familiar features with a sort of uneasy fascination.
So that's what I look like when I'm completely out of it....
Marty edged closer to the couch, sitting down on the edge of an ottoman that came with the armchair nearby. He leaned forward unconsciously, resting his chin in his hand, still watching his snoozing double. The clothes, he noted with a weird kind of chill, were identical to his own, down to the shoes. It was both creepy and interesting. Marty dropped his gaze to his double's hands, studying them for a moment. And froze. His fingers slipped over his mouth as he exhaled, both pained and startled by the sight of the gold wedding band Other Marty wore.
"Oh, damn..." he murmured under his breath.
The sight of the ring caused a flood of memories to return. Memories he really didn't want to think about, and spent most of his life now trying to forget. Marty closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, fighting it.
Jennifer. Oh, God, Jennifer....
He still remembered the last time he had seen her -- Saturday, June 16, 1990. She had been at the mall, getting gear together to move to Boston for some newscasting gig. She hadn't seen him; he had avoided it, staring at her through the linen store window as she rang up a stack of items for her future. The pain hadn't dulled at all over five years since his return, and it still was sharp five years after his last sighting of her.
Why, dammit, do I always keep coming back to this?
There was a part of him that wanted to blame Doc, still. Doc had been the one to assure him of the success of pushing the DeLorean up to eighty-eight with a train. He had been the one to set everything up. But the inventor hadn't expected the time machine to derail at thirty-five miles an hour, right after the first log blew. The scientist had been in the train, still, at the time, and pulled the brakes immediately. But the damage had already been done to the time machine, with the engine catching the back bumper and dragging it along almost fifty feet.
It had been close for Marty, in the DeLorean at that time. The teen had been tossed out of the car in the turbulence and had struck his head; he hadn't regained consciousness for almost two days. Doc's pale, drawn face was the first thing he saw when he woke up, weak and disoriented. He didn't remember the accident then, or now.
The inventor hadn't told him the bad news immediately, of course. He simply said that there had been a bit of a "mishap" with his plan. The good news, Doc had mentioned offhand, was that Clara had caught up with him immediately after he had stopped the train. Aside from going into town to fetch the doctor, she had also apologized to the inventor for not believing his claims of being from the future from the night before. They were now officially "seeing each other." Doc's tone had grown lighter as he talked about this, even as his face remained grave with worry over his young friend. Marty, for his part, had been too groggy to really get a grip on everything. In retrospect, he should've savored that confusion. When understanding came, it was not kind.
A couple of days later, once it was clear Marty was out of any sort of danger, Doc broke the big news to him: when the time machine had gone off the train tracks, it had been damaged beyond contemporary repair. The inventor had launched into some scientific babble, which made the teen's still tender head ache, until Marty had finally broken in and asked him to get to the point.
"Well..." Doc had said, glancing down at the floor for a moment and bracing his fingers together, clearly uncomfortable. "What it means is that you're stuck here. As am I."
There was a moment of complete numbness and denial. It wouldn't last. "Stuck here?" Marty had echoed, incredulous. "You mean until you repair the DeLorean, right?"
The scientist cleared his throat. "No," he said softly, his dark eyes staring into Marty's blue ones. "I can't repair it with the contemporary technology. We're both stuck here, Marty, without a working time machine. But," he added quickly as the teen's face began to pale as the news sunk in, "I'll have you know that I'm already working on something that should get us back to the future. It may take a while to build... a few years... but I will get you -- us -- home eventually. I promise."
Marty had hardly heard the vow. His mind had spun with an echo of Doc's words. Stuck here... a few years.... It had to be some sort of horrible nightmare!
"No," he finally mumbled, when he had found his voice again. "No, Doc, c'mon. Be serious. I can't be here for God knows how long! What about my family back home? My life? Jennifer?"
"I'm very sorry, Marty," Doc had said, quite sincere with his apology. "I don't like it any more than you do. The repercussions this could have on history alone are frightening. But you won't be left to fend for yourself out here. You can stay with me; the town already thinks we're family in some capacity. I'll take care of you; it's the least I can do."
"But my life's in 1985, not 1885, Doc!" Marty had said, feeling close to tears as the numbness wore off and the full magnitude of the situation really started to hit. "I don't want to spend a few years living in the old west -- this time period sucks! And, Jesus, my family is going to miss me--"
"Marty," the inventor said softly, something in his tone making the teen stop his panicky tirade. Doc's eyes were kind and sympathetic as he put his hand on Marty's shoulder. "Don't worry about that. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it -- and with your help, I think we'll come to it sooner than later."
It would seemed much later by the time it finally happened.
A month after that conversation, Doc had made a decision -- he wanted to ask for Clara's hand in marriage. The inventor approached his friend first with the news, and it was clear that he was eager to hear Marty's approval as well. Marty told him to go for it, but he couldn't stop a sinking feeling from growing in his gut. It wasn't Clara so much; she was nice, and definitely as much in love with Doc as he was with her. They were compatible. What worried him more was what marriage might mean and do to his own friendship with the inventor -- and would it distract Doc from his goal of creating a new time machine? It also reminded him, acutely, how much he missed Jennifer, and how truly far away and out of reach she was.
Doc proposed on Friday, November sixth, the closest non-school night to the fifth of the month, which was a special date for him. Marty wished him good luck before he set out for the date with her, nervous and dressed in his very best, in a new suit purchased for the occasion, the ring in his coat pocket. But once Doc left, the solitude and worries about this new turn of things really got to him. So he headed over to the Palace Saloon in the hopes of forgetting his problems for a while and proceeded to -- not intentionally, but not very unintentionally, either -- get completely wasted.
At some point in the evening, Seamus McFly came into the saloon and saw Marty alone at a table near the back of the room. After the farmer picked up a drink at the bar, he headed over to sit with the teen. When Marty looked up at him, he could barely focus his eyes on his ancestor; his memory still had the farmer as a blurry double form.
"What's all this, Mr. Eastwood?" Seamus asked, a concern clear in his voice. "Men shouldn't drink like this alone."
"Alone," Marty had said with a drunken nod, picking up one of the empty shot glasses and rolling it under the hand, across the tabletop. "You're right, I'm all 'lone.... All alone an' far from home...." he added, singing it softly, then snickering.
Seamus set his beer glass down and pulled up a chair next to the teen. "Is somethin' wrong, lad?" he asked softly. "You're lookin' as if ye lost your best friend."
"I will," Marty said, eyeballing his great-great-grandfather's drink with interest. "He's getting engaged tonight, y'know."
Seamus blinked, surprised. "Are you speakin' of the blacksmith, Emmett Brown?"
Marty bobbed his head once. "He's asking Clara Clayton to marry him tonight." He sighed, pained, and looked to the bar, wondering if he could make it over there to order another round.
"Why, that's wonderful news!" the farmer said, smiling. When Marty did not join him in the joy, the expression faltered somewhat. "Tis good tidin's, isn't it?"
"I'll be alone, then," Marty said, resting his chin in his hands, his head feeling wobbly. Maybe he'd have to wait a couple of minutes before returning to the bar. "You know what they say when your best friend marries...."
"No," Seamus said, oh-so-seriously. "I don't."
The teen tried to think hard about what it was that "they" said and came up completely blank. His attention to that matter didn't last very long, and Seamus decided to change the subject then, anyway.
"Do you need any help home, Mr. Eastwood?"
"No," the teen said immediately. "I'm not done here, yet."
The farmer surveyed the half dozen empty shot glasses scattered across the table, which earlier had been filled with the strongest stuff the bar boasted. "I'm thinkin' ye are," he said gently. "Let me help you home, now. You still stayin' at the 'smithin' shop?"
"I don't wanna go there -- I wanna go home," Marty said, annoyed. He watched Seamus as the man stood and slipped his arm around the teen's shoulders, to help him to his feet. "You can't take me home, Seamus...."
"Ah, sure'n I'll try," Seamus said, grunting a little as he dragged a rather limp and uncoordinated Marty to his feet. The full strength of the alcohol seemed to really strike the teen once he was standing, and black spots danced in his vision as the room spun. He nearly passed out then, clinging hard to his ancestor.
Somehow, Seamus dragged him out of the saloon and over to the livery stable around the corner. When they got there, Marty became distraught.
"This isn't home!" he groaned as Seamus led him inside. "This is hell!"
"Where, pray tell, is your home then?" the farmer asked patiently, pausing a moment.
Marty moaned in frustration. "Far away... an' not here...."
Doc chose that moment to return to the stable, an uncharacteristically dreamy smile on his face. He came back to earth in a hurry, though, at the sight of Seamus supporting a clearly inebriated Marty.
"I found 'im in the saloon, Mr. Brown," Seamus explained before Doc had the chance to ask. "I thought I'd do right in bringin' him back 'ere for you. He's had his fill of drink tonight, I think."
"Is that so?" Doc said mildly. He held up the lantern he had brought with him to take a hard look into Marty's face. The teen squinted sluggishly at the glow.
"She say yes, Doc?" he asked as the inventor lowered the light. "Are you and Clara gettin' hitched now?" He laughed a little, the sound slightly bitter.
Doc didn't answer the question. He looked once more at Seamus as he set the lantern down on one of the tables nearby, then came around to the other side of Marty. "Thank you for bringing him back," Doc told the farmer sincerely. "I can take it from here."
The farmer allowed the scientist to take some of Marty's weight off his shoulders, then watched as Doc led the teen in the direction of the cot Marty used for his bed. "Far be it from me t'pry, but... if Mr. Eastwood's words were right, an' you were askin' for Miss Clayton's hand t'night, and she accepted, well... let me be the first to congratulate you," he said.
Doc paused and turned to smile at Seamus. "Thank you," he said. "We'll probably be having the wedding next month, and we'd love for you and your family to come."
Seamus smiled. "Sure'n we'll be there," he said. "Feel better, Mr. Eastwood," he added on his way out.
Doc waited until he had the teen sitting down on the cot before he spoke. "Marty," he began, a note of scolding and disappointment clear in his voice, "if you think this is a way to deal with your problems, then you are sorely mistaken. Drinking like this is not going to make anything change."
At that moment, Marty was inclined to agree with his friend. Getting loaded hadn't made him feel any better; if anything, it made him feel worse. And the numb, euphoric feeling was wearing off quickly. But there was a part of Marty that was angry with his friend, feeling betrayed by his engagement and the fact that Doc seemed anything but miserable trapped in the past.
So he denied it all.
"Why not?" he demanded as forcefully as he could, with the room spinning and a rather drowsy, cloudy effect hampering his thinking abilities. "What else is there t'do here, anyway? You got Clara -- I have no one. Jennifer's a hundred years away.... I can have a few drinks if I want; it's legal here!"
"Perhaps -- but getting drunk is not going to fix any of your problems. In fact, I think you will find it'll make them worse."
Marty shrugged carelessly at the words. "Why should you care?" he muttered, taking off his hat and tossing it aside. "You're getting married, now. You don't need me 'round anymore. I'll never see you anymore, an' I'm sick of feeling like a... a third wheel. And Jennifer! Jen's too far away for me. Dammit, Doc, you don't even care about this anymore! You're -- you're enjoying yourself here! You don't care I'm going through hell, an' you'll never build another time machine now. Not with a wife. She'll take up all your time...."
Marty stopped rambling only because he felt too dizzy to continue. Doc stared at him a moment and rubbed his forehead, as if he was getting a headache. "None of that is true, Marty," he said. "You should know better than that -- and there are other ways to deal with your feelings that are far more constructive than downing large quantities of alcohol at the saloon. I'm not going to discuss this matter with you now and ruin the rest of my evening; we'll talk about this tomorrow, which I don't think will be very pleasant for you. Hangovers here are not easy, and there aren't any painkillers that can really remedy it for you. But you brought this all on yourself. Remember this."
Remembering that evening was not going to turn out to be one of Marty's strong points; most of it was pretty hazy. After Doc's brief speech to him, the teen had managed to lurch to his feet with the intent of laying into the inventor everything on his mind at the moment -- even if it was rather muddled in his brain.
"You listen," he began, swaying, punching Doc's chest with his finger for emphasis. "You can't marry Clara -- that'd screw up history, right? And if you screw up history, you might never be born. Already happened to me, almost, remember? You keep talkin' about how we're not s'pose to mess anything up, but how is marrying someone not gonna do that? You're not from here, Doc, and I'm not either. You should be spending your time making something to get us home. Not chasing girls like Clara, 'cause they could break your heart. And then what're you gonna do? And you gotta remember that I... I..."
Marty faltered in his tirade, the room doing a somersault around him. He tipped forward as he tried to catch his balance; instead, Doc caught him. But the room kept on spinning and spinning and he suddenly felt quite ill. What happened next was far from intentional, but it couldn't be helped.
Marty threw up, all over the front of Doc's brand new suit.
The scientist's gasp of horror was quite audible, though there were too many shadows for the teen to really see his friend's face. When the sickness abated, Marty stumbled back, sitting down hard on the cot. "Sorry," he mumbled, raking the back of his hand across his mouth. He saw the dim outline of the pillow a few feet away and suddenly wanted nothing more than to put his head down on it. "I think... maybe I should just lie down for a few minutes."
He passed out a moment later, his legs still hanging over the side of the cot, Doc still uncharacteristically silent and frozen to the spot.
Marty woke up the next morning tucked into his cot, with a headache that made his skull feel as if it had broken in two. The nausea that began minutes later only made it worse, and he found himself wishing fervently for death well into the afternoon. To Doc's credit, he didn't say, "I told you so," but he didn't offer any words of comfort or understanding, either. Marty learned the lesson, though; he never again drank that much at the Palace. And when Doc asked him later about his real feelings about his upcoming wedding, the teen told him he was glad, not up to rehashing that drunken night.
The suit, though, had been ruined; the very next week the inventor was out shopping for a new one, for the wedding.
Doc and Clara married on December 15th, about six weeks later. The teen half expected to be booted out on his own after that, but Doc told him he was perfectly free to stay in the livery stable where the inventor still conducted his blacksmithing business. The schoolteacher's cabin, where the couple would make their home until Doc could gather enough money for something more permanent and larger, was far too small for another adult. Marty didn't mind that arrangement, as it gave Doc and Clara some space to settle down to married life -- but in the evenings and at night, he would almost go mad from solitude and his own thoughts.
As months trickled by, he picked up a lot of the blacksmithing techniques, aiding Doc in the business, and found a lot of kindness aimed towards him from the townsfolk. They still thought of him as a hero for putting Buford Tannen in his place, and then in prison. One of the weirdest matters was the local McFlys carrying on a friendship with him, much to Doc's clear discomfort. Marty enjoyed hanging out with them, feeling a kinship towards his distant blood that couldn't be matched by anything in this time -- even with Doc around.
Still, no matter what, it wasn't home. Each night he lay alone in the double bed that had once been Doc's, staring up at the dark ceiling and hoping that when he woke up the next day, he'd find that this was all a bad, bad dream.
When Clara discovered she was pregnant in May 1886, Doc had decided he couldn't put off getting a home any longer and set out to find one. The house he selected was one that he had been eyeballing for a while, a few miles away from the center of town. Aside from providing a nice place for a new family, it also boasted a large cellar and a barn that would give him all the room and privacy he needed to begin construction on a time machine that could run on steam power. The owner of the home had died suddenly from a bout of pneumonia, and the place went on the market rather abruptly in June.
Doc purchased the white house by July, and in August he, Clara, and a reluctant Marty had moved in. A part of the teen had been blatantly against the idea of the home purchase, because it seemed to be some sort of sign that the inventor and his wife were settling deeper into 1886 Hill Valley... but the cabin the older couple had been living in was for the schoolteacher, and Clara planned to leave that role after classes concluded for the summer. And it wasn't really practical to raise a baby in a place like the livery stable.
Once everyone got settled into the new home, with Clara bustling around as much as Doc would allow her to do in her growing condition, the scientist had gotten started in earnest on his promise of building another time machine. By Christmas of 1886, he had somehow managed to locate a steam locomotive that was on the way to retirement from the railroad company. Marty had no idea how much he spent on it, and when Doc had revealed it to his wife and friend on Christmas morning, the sight was greeted with more questions and confusion than anything else.
"You really intend to create another time machine out of this, Emmett?" Clara had asked as she surveyed the locomotive parked in their backyard on a pair of temporary rails.
"It's the most logical vehicle to modify for fourth dimensional transportation," was Doc's answer. "You can't build a time machine out of a Conestoga or anything of that nature. The steel construction will lend itself perfectly to the flux dispersal, and the boiler is the ideal present-day source of power for the necessary 1.21 jiggowatts."
But the modification had to wait for a bit. Jules was born in early January 1887, and for a couple of weeks Doc was too busy helping out his wife and taking care of the new child, as well as working at the stable. Marty found himself running right behind the scientist most of the time, helping out where and when he could, and feeling just as exhausted and sleepless as the new parents. His bedroom was on the first floor of the home, selected by Doc so that he might have more privacy, but the cries of the new baby reached him loud and clear. Even the pillow over his head wasn't doing much to shut it out. By the time he was wiped out enough to sleep through it, and the baby was getting past the worst of the colic or whatever befell him, it was halfway into February and a few inches of snow had gathered on the locomotive, still parked outside.
Work really started in the spring, when Jules was old enough not to need so much 'round the clock care, and the weather wasn't as bad. The days soon began to blur together. During a typical weekday, Doc would usually wake Marty around seven, the teen would get washed up and dressed, and after a quick breakfast the two of them would ride into town to deal with the 'smithing duties. They would take a break for lunch around noon, then work until about four or five, depending on the season. Doc would then close up shop, and they would ride back to the white farmhouse. The commute to town took about an hour, on horseback.
Every weekend was spent working on the evolving time machine. Doc was usually the one to call it quits every day, with Marty too desperate and eager to get home before his thirtieth birthday. He didn't mind being so busy, however, because it made the time go by that much quicker -- and then he'd be exhausted enough to actually sleep at night, instead of tossing and turning with thoughts about the time he had left.
By the time Verne was born, in late October 1888, the project was probably about halfway done. Memories of home seemed like a distant, delusional dream, yet Marty held onto them tightly. He spent so much time out in the barn, where most of the work was being conducted, that Doc and Clara each took him aside more than once to suggest gently that perhaps he was pushing himself too hard. Marty would respond to their concern with a shrug or say something along the lines of, "The sooner we finish this, the sooner I can get home, right?"
Two blows came down on him soon after -- one dealt by either bad luck or his own foolishness, the other by Doc. The winter of 1888 - 1889 was bitterly cold and snowy, with the roads all but impassible more days than not. Marty didn't mind it much, since it isolated him and Doc at the house, where they could spend all their time working on the budding time machine. So when a blizzard dumped two feet of snow over a day in late-January, he privately rejoiced.
A few days into the snowbound period, though, he started to feel rather crummy. He decided to ignore it. Jules had had a cold recently, and Marty figured he picked it up from the toddler. A sore throat was no reason to stay in bed and waste time staring at the wall. But he next day, and the day after, brought no relief; instead, his head started to ache almost as badly as his throat, and he felt the chills that told him he was running a fever. Doc and Clara were not fools -- they could tell he was sick, and tried to tell him to get off his feet and rest. Marty brushed their concerns aside -- but when he got up in the middle of the night to go out to the outhouse, and ended up fainting in the hallway outside his room, he couldn't ignore them any longer.
For nearly a week he was bedridden with what would turn out to be scarlet fever, delirious and mumbling for Jennifer and home. Clara isolated Jules and Verne upstairs in the nursery, fearing they might fall ill with it next, and Doc kept a vigil over his friend until the roads had thawed enough for him to fetch the doctor. By the time the fever broke, the entire Brown household had been close to a standstill, and Marty ended up getting the lecture of his life from Doc -- and even Clara, who didn't characteristically chew him out. They weren't angry with him for getting sick as much as they were for him ignoring the symptoms and their well-meaning advice.
"This project isn't worth your life, Marty -- or the lives of my family," Doc had said, rather sternly, two days after the young man's fever had left. The twenty-year-old was still stuck in bed on doctor's orders, feeling weak and spending most of his time sleeping, trying to get over the illness. The inventor's words made him feel worse. "I know you want to get home, but you're pushing this too much. It took me thirty years to build the DeLorean; it shouldn't take so long with this time machine, especially since I know what I'm doing now, but it's still going to take time. Weeks. Months. A couple more years, maybe. Pushing yourself as you've been doing is not going to make it go any faster, and in fact can end up harming just you like this illness has. You'll burnout."
"I just wanna go home, Doc," Marty had muttered then, as passionately as he could, considering his condition. "I feel like I'm stuck in some kind of limbo hell."
The scientist's face softened a little, then. "I know you do," he said. "It was about the only thing you talked about when you were delirious last week.... I'm trying my best, Marty. But I've got a family to support and think about now, too. I can't devote all my time and energy into the project -- they need some of that, too."
"But the longer I'm stuck here, the more out of sync I'm gonna be with everyone back home. I can't go into my house being twenty-five-years-old or something! They'd freak! And if you're thinking we'll come back a hundred years after leaving here... I can't do that either. My family and Jennifer... that'd kill 'em...."
"Settle down, Marty. You're still recovering. I've given this matter a lot of thought over the last few years, and I believe I have an acceptable solution."
"What?" Marty croaked, unable to see a way around the problem.
But Doc wouldn't tell him then.
The second blow came shortly after a day that Marty had been anticipating since September 12, 1885, the day that Doc had given him the news that he was stuck there. Since his illness, Marty had taken it a little easier, though this wasn't entirely his decision. Doc and Clara would call him on it when he wanted to put in a whole day at the train, or stay up until two A.M. working on something. Marty felt guilty enough for scaring them all with the scarlet fever incident that he would back down, though he wasn't happy about it.
Finally, on Tuesday, December 2, 1890, the last bolt was screwed into place on the steam train, and a test run was conducted with Marty volunteering to be the guinea pig. It went fine; and they had a working time machine again, albeit one that had to take a week to charge up for one trip. Doc announced that the second trip would be straight to the future, for a hover conversion and a fusion generator installation. And then, after that, they would return to 1985.
Up until the night before they left on that future trip, Marty thought that Doc was going to do something to make the last five years basically erased from his memory and life. Specifically, that the scientist would somehow prevent the DeLorean from derailing through a bit of time travel. But when he mentioned this to the inventor, and Doc had immediately shaken his head, Marty's temper had gone through the roof. He had spent more than a few months with that subconscious assumption, and now, suddenly, it wasn't going to happen?!
The scientist had fed him the line about some things having to occur in life, even crummy ones. Marty had stormed out of the barn and sequestered himself in his room, ignoring Doc's knocks or Clara's questions of concern -- even almost-four-year-old Jules' empathetic pleas to come out and play with him. He lay in the dark room, on the bed, his mind endlessly replaying the memories he had of his family and his girlfriend. They seem more distant than ever.
Finally, near midnight, when he had managed to slip into an uneasy doze, his bedroom door opened and Doc came in carrying an oil lamp. Marty's eyes flew opened at this interruption, and he started to speak to tell his friend to get out, but Doc's face was stern, and the inventor spoke before the young man had the chance.
"This is ridiculous, Marty!" he said. "You're acting like an angry, immature child! You haven't even given me the chance to tell you what I've planned to do to try and make amends with this mess. And I'm not letting you delay the trip tomorrow morning. You're going to listen to me right now."
"Why should I?" the twenty-two-year-old asked sullenly, rolling away to face the wall. "If you're gonna screw up my life when I get back worse than you already have...."
Doc set the lamp down on the table near by with a loud clatter. The anger was uncharacteristic of his friend. Marty closed his mouth against further complaints, turning his head back to look at him. "I've done a hell of a lot to try and help you out over the last few years," Doc said flatly. "I gave you a roof over your head, I fed you, I took care of you when you were ill, and I spent every spare moment and dime I've had building a time machine so that you can return home. But I am not changing history for you! Erasing the event from happening is not an option. It would create a hell of a paradox at this point." The scientist paused to take a calming breath while Marty just watched him, wide-eyed at the forceful words. "But I'm not about to return to 1990, or take you home with a body older than you left. You recall what I had done in 2015?"
"No," Marty said, not getting where Doc was leading. "Unless you're talking about getting a hover conversion on the DeLorean."
Doc drew his lips together tightly into a humorless smile. "I had a rejuvenation. They're quite commonplace by 2015, so I foresee no complications with your case."
Marty didn't get it. "Why the hell would I need one of those? I'm only twenty-two!"
"Precisely. And everyone will be expecting you to be seventeen. Now, granted, you don't look that much older, but I suspect those who are closest to you would notice if you came back looking as you do now. People typically age gradually; not five years in one day."
Some of this was finally starting to sink in and make more sense. "So you're gonna drag me to one of these places tomorrow to... erase the last five years of aging I had?"
"Essentially," Doc said. "And that's about all I can do, Marty. I can't erase your memory of your time here. And I can't change the past with this situation," he added, still edgy about that subject. "But I can make it so that you don't appear a day older than when you left. No one will know you're chronologically twenty-two -- except, of course, you. And Clara and myself."
Marty was silent as he considered Doc's offered bargain -- though he knew he didn't have much of a choice in the matter. "I'll physically be seventeen again, but with all the memories and stuff that's happened to me over the last five years?"
"Yes. Just as I turned my physical clock back about thirty years when I was sixty-five. So, though I am chronologically about seventy-one right now, I really don't have the physicality of one of the same age. And, trust me, if I had wanted to, I could've looked just as young. But that would've presented far more problems than were worth it for me."
"And there's no way you can erase any of the memories or that stuff from the last five years?"
Doc shook his head, frowning. "No. You'll have to live with them. But look at it this way, Marty -- you should be sleeping in your own bed tomorrow night. Finally." The last word was uttered with a half-sigh, half-groan, and the inventor left the room then before the young man could say another word.
And that was that.
The next day, Doc took Marty to 2030 to have the two hour procedure done. The technicians were a bit confused as to why he needed the work, since the young man already looked so youthful, but Doc was adamant and made up a fib about how Marty was an actor who needed desperately to look like a teen in order to land a coveted film role. Marty was rather nervous about the whole procedure, but they put him out with a sleep inducer before they started, and he didn't feel a thing. When he woke up afterwards and looked in the mirror, he really couldn't see much of a difference in his face, but Doc seemed satisfied. They picked up the train from the place where it'd had hover systems installed, then the inventor took a couple of hours to install the new fusion generator before they headed back to 1890. Marty exchanged the future period garb for the clothes that Doc's younger self from 1955 had packed, so long ago -- and then the inventor took him back home.
For five years, Marty had desired that moment, dreamed about it and wished for it. When he finally stepped out of the train, though, his first instinct was to go back. Doc wasn't going to be returning that day; the inventor had to tie up some matters in the past before moving to the present, and he expected to be in and out erratically until his whole family was moved over by Christmastime. Doc waved cheerfully as he let Marty out at the train tracks near Shonash Ravine, reminded him to stop by his place to take care of Einstein over the next few weeks, promised to contact him soon, then blasted off into the air and back to 1890. It was ten A.M. on Sunday, October 27, 1985.
During the walk to his house, the young-man-turned-teen had a lot to think about. His world suddenly seemed ten times louder and more polluted than he remembered it being. Cars inexplicably made him nervous, and he jumped when he heard a helicopter above for the first time in five years.
By the time he reached his house, he had a pulsing headache from the sensory overload. He was delighted to see his family, but his mother looked in his face a few seconds too long when he gave her a hug and asked him if he was feeling all right; her instincts seemed to be telling her something. Then, when Marty went out to his truck to drive over and see Jennifer, he had a moment where he couldn't remember how to operate the car! Horses and wagons were much more familiar to him, now, than the gas guzzling autos. He made it to his girlfriend's place in one piece, though he had ground the gears in his new car a bit, and probably violated a few traffic laws.
Jennifer was still sleeping on her porch swing. Marty woke her with a kiss that he had waited far too long for. She gave him a funny look a moment later, similar to the one he had seen on his mother's face.
"Something wrong?" he asked lightly, smiling at her.
"I don't know," Jennifer said, clearly dazed. She reached up and rubbed her forehead. "Something feels strange... maybe it's just the dream I had.... Oh, Marty I dreamed that we went to the future and... it was horrible!"
Marty decided not to tell her that her "dream" was real. He really didn't want to get into it at that moment.
He thought his problems were finally behind him, then. But after a week at home, Marty was struggling hard with his picked up life.
Having departed two months into his senior year of high school, he found himself completely and totally lost in most of his classes, unable to remember where they had left off in the lessons. His family was creeping him out because they weren't as he really remembered them; his parents were happy and successful now, as were his brother and sister, but he still remembered them from Before. Foods and drinks tasted weird after five years of made-from-scratch stuff and well water. Marty was getting headaches almost every day from all the noise and the chaos that was so prevalent in the 1980s, a huge change from the 1880s. His guitar playing skills were rusty after years of just practicing on a instrument that Doc had found for him, which hadn't been nearly as high tech as his electric guitars, and the band was starting to get concerned. He felt older and alienated from almost everyone around him; no one could understand what he had gone through except maybe Doc. And Jennifer seemed uncomfortable around him, though she didn't come out and say it. She didn't need to; he'd slip an arm around her, and she'd stiffen up like he was some kind of stranger.
Two weeks after his return, Jennifer showed up unexpectedly at the McFly house to utter the dreaded phrase, "We need to talk." Marty tried not to worry as he joined her on a proposed walk around his neighborhood. Up until that point, he thought his life possibly couldn't get any worse. Later, much later, he would smile ruefully at that naive attitude.
"This is hard for me to say, Marty," Jennifer began softly, her head bent slightly so that her hair concealed part of her face. "You're a great guy, sweet, funny, talented, but... something's bothering me about you. About us."
"What are you getting at, Jen?" Marty asked tersely.
Jennifer glanced at him for a moment, then looked down at the ground and the dead and dried leaves that had fallen. She shivered as a cold wind gusted by. Marty started to put his arm around her shoulders, to pull her close, but she took a step away, dodging the maneuver. "I think maybe we should not see each other anymore," she said rapidly to the sidewalk. "It's just me, I think. I feel like... something's changed. Something feels off. This doesn't feel right anymore. It feels... wrong. Like something changed," she repeated again.
Marty swallowed hard as her words sunk in. "You're dumping me? Because you feel weird?"
"It's... more than that," Jennifer murmured, vaguely.
A new and terrible idea occurred to him, then. Marty stopped walking and grabbed Jennifer's arm to pull her to a stop. "Is there someone else, Jen?" he asked evenly. "Did you meet someone else? Is that it?"
Jennifer turned her eyes up to his for the first time since she had dropped the bomb. "How can you even ask me that?" she asked, clearly hurt.
"How can you stand here and try to break up with me because you've just 'don't feel right' anymore? Jesus Christ, Jen!"
"But that's the truth, Marty! It feels like... oh, I don't know, like you're a different person now. You seem so distant and so serious, now. And I... I'm not comfortable with this new person. There's something about you that's so... different."
The back of Marty's throat started to burn and he swallowed hard, not about to let Jen see how much those words hurt him. "I am different," he muttered, half to himself. "I'm a twenty-two-year-old stuck in the body of a seventeen-year-old. I spent the last five years living in the 1880s with Doc and his family."
Jennifer blinked. "What?"
"Nothing," Marty said. Nothing he said to her was going to make a difference; he had the feeling, in fact, that it might make things worse.
Jennifer gave her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend a look of great sympathy. "I still care about you, Marty," she said. "I just think we should have some space now, you know? It'll give you some time to go through whatever it is you're dealing with, and maybe I can get a perspective on this, too. I -- I'm sorry."
With that, she had walked out of his life forever, leaving him alone on the sidewalk a block from his house. It started to rain a few minutes later, suiting his mood, and making him feel only a little less humiliated by the tears that escaped from his eyes to run down his cheeks.
The phone was ringing when he walked through the door of his house. Marty walked right by it without answering it, making a beeline to his bedroom where he planned to spend the rest of his life, if possible, hiding from the cruel world under the covers. His father answered it, and a moment later was calling for him to pick up the extension. Doc was on the phone.
The inventor had popped in a couple of times since he had left Marty in the present, and seemed concerned with his adjustments to home. Now, Doc asked him rather cheerfully if he wanted to come over to his place and help him with some packing and cleaning that needed to be done, and after a moment of thought, Marty mumbled an affirmative reply. Being alone probably wasn't the best for him at that moment, anyway. And, yet, by the time he reached the old garage on JFK Drive, Marty wasn't sure he wanted to tell Doc the dreaded news. It would make it more real then.
As it would turn out, he didn't have to; Doc took one look at his white, shocked face, and red and haunted eyes, and guessed the cause immediately. Marty was too upset to even think of denying it. He stared down at the cement floor, at Einstein who was whining and looking up at the not-teen, sensing his distress, and fought hard against the flow of tears still burning the back of his throat.
"I'm very sorry, Marty," Doc said, a warm hand on his friend's shoulder. "I know how upsetting this must be to you, after everything you've gone through."
Marty sniffed as he scratched Einstein behind the ears. "I thought we'd be together forever," he murmured. "You said we were married in the future... we had kids...."
"But the future is not written, and can change," the inventor said, his tone gentle. "What we saw on that visit to 2015 was simply the most likely future from the moment we left 1985. Without taking into account the sports almanac fiasco, my getting sent to 1885, and you joining me there for five years. Incidentally, I have to ask: Does Jennifer know that whole story?"
Marty shook his head. "I thought it might make things worse," he said with a rather shuddery sigh. "She thought it was a dream, that stuff in the future. I don't think it would've made any difference if she knew; she probably would've run faster away from me. I'm a freak, Doc!"
"Oh, Marty, you're not a freak. You're just in a rather unusual position." Doc sighed. "You changed -- but the world you left behind hasn't. I thought this might be difficult...."
"Then why the hell didn't you say anything like that earlier? You could've warned me for cryin' out loud...."
"Would you have even listened to me? All you cared about was getting home, Marty. I don't think you were thinking much beyond that. And I hoped it might be easier for you," Doc added, following Marty as he trudged over to an armchair and collapsed down into it. "I know that I'm going to have to go through an adjustment period when I come back here permanently next month. Clara and the boys will possibly have a more difficult time of it. Future shock, I believe the term is, and it's incredibly apt for this situation."
Marty leaned back in the chair and rubbed his head, wishing for the umpteenth time that paradoxes didn't exist so he could undo his extended stay in the past. "I feel so out of sync here. I can't relate to anything anymore. Even my music isn't helping! I mean, the guys in the band think I've lost my mind or something; I'm way out of practice with the electric guitar...."
"Give it time, Marty. Things should get better in a couple of months, I'd wager. You'll certainly have company soon with readjusting to the 1980s!"
Marty shrugged miserably. Doc studied him silently a moment. "Is there anything I can do?" he asked. "Would you like to go somewhere?"
"Yeah -- back in time to undo this mess," Marty muttered. "But you already nixed that...."
Doc sighed again, clearly exasperated by that tired suggestion. "You'll have to give it time," he advised again. "I know that sounds terribly cliché for a broken heart, but that's about all you can do."
Time, though, didn't entirely heal that wound. Thoughts of Jennifer remained vivid in his mind for the rest of his senior year of high school, maybe because he had to see her every day in class. His grades plummeted even worse, and he came close to not graduating. His parents were concerned, blaming his mood and depression on Jennifer, though that wasn't entirely the case. Marty spent most of his free time over at the Browns, who had elected to stay in the same home they had owned a hundred years before. They felt more like a family to him than his own blood kin.
When he wasn't moping about, he was writing songs, pouring his frustration, confusion, anger, and hurt into music. The Pinheads thought his new stuff was a little dark, but when it was played it generated a lot of positive feedback from the audience. Word spread, and offers to do more gigs slowly trickled in.
One show in July 1986 happened to have an agent in the audience. After the show, the man had approached the group with some questions and, once he found out that Marty had written many of the songs performed that night, took him aside, gave him his card, and told him to call him on Monday if he was interested in selling some of his work. For the first time in months, Marty smiled and felt a rush of hope and pleasure.
Music, then, became about the only thing that went remotely right. He had decided not to go to college, in spite of the pressure from his family, but even his parents were wise enough to see that he wasn't ready; his grades during his senior year screamed that out. His love life was completely nonexistent; Jennifer's space only grew after their break up, and by the time they graduated, she was starting to see one of their classmates. He felt alienated from everyone around him. And he felt miserable most of the time trying to fit back into his former life.
He sold his first couple of songs by September of '86, much to the Pinheads' envy. A year later the group had disbanded, but Marty was quietly making good money off his music. Performing didn't interest him so much; he was content to simply write the songs, and indeed spent much of his time doing so. It became a way for him to cope with his life.
As the years passed, he began to have a strong reputation in the business. Bigger names and bands wanted to use his work. His parents were relieved that their youngest son had found something to do that he enjoyed. Doc and Clara were proud of him. Life looked great on the surface, and most of the time Marty could pretend it was. But....
"Marty, what are you doing?"
Emmett's voice startled the musician out of his heavy contemplation. He gasped with surprise, blinking a few times as he came out of the trance. "Thinking," he said honestly, when his nerves had recovered.
Marty heard his friend's footsteps approach him slowly from behind. "Has he met you, yet?" the inventor asked softly, indicating the double on the couch.
The musician shook his head once. "He's been asleep the whole time. This is pretty weird. Seeing myself asleep, I mean. And I never knew I snored before...."
"Most people do when they sleep on their backs with their mouths hanging open." Emmett stopped at his friend's side, looking down at him with concern. "Are you all right?"
Marty shrugged, not sure he wanted to answer that question right now. "Who are they, Doc? You said they weren't us from the future or the past. What does that leave? The present?"
"In a manner of speaking," Emmett said. He stared at Marty's double, still sound asleep. "They're us -- but from another dimension."
"Another dimension? What do you mean? Are they aliens or something?" Marty frowned at his twin, suddenly worried.
"No," Emmett said, heading over to a shelf nearby where a few folded blankets were resting. He pulled one out, then headed back over to the couch. "They are as human as you and I. Do you remember when we visited an alternate reality, where Biff was married to your mother and all powerful?"
"Christ, how could I forget?"
"Well, the me here, and this Marty, as well as the time machine they came in... it's all from another reality. Their machine -- which is almost identical to the train, incidentally -- is malfunctioning and has been sending them to different worlds for about four or five days, now. My other self -- in the truest sense -- knows what the problem is and has some ideas on how to repair it. I'm going to help him with that, so they'll be staying here until it's taken care of." Emmett shook the blanket out and covered the guest with it. Other Marty didn't stir at all as it was tucked around him, continuing to snore softly.
"Are they from that Biff-ruled world?" Marty asked, getting a gradual grip on the explanation.
"No. Somewhere else. From the discussion I've had with my counterpart, they really aren't that different from us."
The musician could think of one mammoth difference immediately. "He's married, Doc," he said softly, indicating his counterpart. "I saw the wedding band."
Emmett sighed softly, putting a hand on his friend's shoulder. "They aren't us," he said. "The Jules and Verne of my other self are much older than my sons. And this Marty didn't stay in the past for five years. He got home successfully in the DeLorean."
The musician nodded once, the news not entirely unexpected. He couldn't stop the painful feeling of jealously that clutched his heart at the news, though. His life would've been my life if that had been different, he thought. It's not fair....
"We can talk about this more later," Emmett said, changing the subject, perhaps knowing very well what his friend was thinking. "Clara's got dinner set on the table."
"I'm not that hungry," Marty said. "I'd rather stay out here. I need to think some more."
Emmett frowned faintly. "You mean mope," he said.
Marty shook his head once, lying a little. "I wanna talk to him," he said, indicating his other self. "What if he woke up when we were all eating?"
"I don't imagine he will. Emmett -- the other me -- mentioned how it had been about two full days since either of them had gotten any sleep. He's probably out for the night; he certainly hasn't been bothered by any of the noises around him."
"Then I'll wait, too. Not like I had anything else planned tonight."
Emmett stared at the musician a moment, noting the set line of his jaw and the stubborn light in his eyes. He sighed and threw up his hands in resignation. "All right, Marty, fine. I'll bring out some food for you in about an hour. But I think this is rather pointless. You might be here all night."
"I don't care; I want to talk to him."
Emmett sighed again, shook his head, and turned around to go back down the stairs. He paused a moment before going down them. "Don't you wake him up," he warned. "He's had a very long, stressful day."
"Honestly, I don't think I could right now, even if I tried. He's out...."
Marty heard the inventor go down the stairs, his footsteps cross the floor below, then the sound of the door to the outside open and close. Alone, now, the musician moved from the edge of the ottoman to the more comfortable armchair, listening to the sound of the rain pounding the roof. He settled down to wait, watching his counterpart intently and willing him to wake up... soon.
The cure for the nightmares and creepy dreams that had plagued Marty just about nonstop since embarking on the crazy, never ending multidimensional trip from hell was apparently extreme exhaustion. After lying down on the couch and giving up the fight against the inevitable, he slept straight through the whole night, undisturbed and unbothered by any dreams -- or anything else for that matter.
When consciousness finally began to seep back in, the first thing the musician noticed, with a touch of surprise, was how much better he felt. His head and eyes weren't aching anymore, his body didn't feel wound up with tension, and thinking clearly was no longer a supreme struggle. He was so relaxed, in fact, that for a moment he wondered if everything that had happened was just a dream. He opened his eyes, hopeful, blinked a couple of times, then sighed ruefully. He was still in Emmett's lofted study and could see the photo albums on the floor next to the couch, where he had left them earlier.
"Damn," Marty mumbled, disappointed, but not entirely surprised.
Someone had covered him up in the night. Probably Doc. Marty snuggled back under the blanket, trying to figure out if he wanted to stay in the nice warm cocoon or get up and see what time it was and face the day. It was definitely daylight; from where he lay, he could see a dark, overcast sky through the big window behind Emmett's desk. Marty settled for lying there curled up on his side, his eyes half closed... until he had the creepy and peculiar feeling that he wasn't quite alone. Maybe it was the sound of the breathing -- and when he paused and held his own breath, it continued.
The musician sat up, a chill raising the hairs on the back of his neck. He held his breath once more and listened hard to home in on the sound, his eyes scanning the room slowly. They finally settled on an armchair nearby. Someone was sitting there, but he couldn't see their face from where he was -- just their legs jutting out and resting on an ottoman, covered by a worn quilt.
Marty was on his feet before he really thought about it, untangling himself from the blanket and letting it fall carelessly to the floor. He took a couple of steps over to the chair -- and froze when he saw who was sitting there, asleep, in the room with him.
It was himself -- or, rather, his counterpart of the current dimension.
"Whoa..." he murmured, startled, leaning forward for a closer look. It looked like Local Marty had been there a while; there were a couple of empty cans of diet Pepsi on the small table next to the armchair. A few sheets of notebook paper were stacked next to the soda, scribbled and crossed out notes and lyrics clearly visible. Marty paused six inches from his counterpart's face, studying him silently, trying to figure out why he was in the study with him at all -- when, from below, there came the sound of a door closing.
Local Marty was apparently not a heavy sleeper, or perhaps he hadn't planned on falling asleep at all and was on edge. At any rate, the local jumped at the sound, his eyes flying open, before the visitor could step away. Local Marty saw his counterpart's face suspended before his own and did exactly what the musician would've done had their positions been reversed.
He screamed.
Marty took a quick hop back himself, startled, and stumbled over one of the many books and folders that were stacked and scattered about Emmett's domain. He hit the floor with a nice crash, knocking over a couple of thick novels in his wake. By the time he sat up, Local Marty had stopped screaming and was sitting forward in the chair, staring at him with wide, surprised eyes. One of the Docs -- Marty wasn't sure which one it was at the moment -- arrived in the study a moment later.
"What happened?" he asked immediately. "Is anything wrong?"
Local Marty blinked a couple of times as he goggled at his counterpart. "Uhhh... he scared me," he said.
"And you scared me right back," Marty quipped, getting to his feet. "Which Doc are you? The one from here or the one I came with?"
"The former," Emmett said. "Yours is still sleeping." His eyes slipped over to regard the local musician for a moment before they swung back to the visitor. "Now that you're up, were you interested in eating anything? I know Clara's almost done fixing breakfast, and there's little I can do out here with the time machine until Emmett is awake."
At the mention of food, Marty temporarily felt weak with hunger. He couldn't really remember the last time he ate a real meal, except that hunger had been one of the lesser complaints next to the exhaustion. "I'm starving," he said honestly. "What time is it, anyway?"
"Almost eight-thirty, Monday morning," Emmett answered.
"So, what's the deal, then?" Marty asked, rather tentatively, when the local inventor started to turn around to go back down the stairs. "Are we going to be here very long?"
"I'm not sure," Emmett said, pausing at the question. "But I am going to try to help my counterpart repair his time machine. So I imagine you will be here for a few days, at least."
Marty wasn't sure he heard him right for a moment; it was almost too good to be true! "So you can help us?" he asked again, just to be sure.
"I think so. I'll certainly try and do all I can."
The visiting musician was so relieved that he was actually dizzy. He sat down on the edge of the couch, smiling faintly. The inventor went back down the stairs, leaving the two Martys alone with each other once more -- although, for the first time, they were both wide awake. The local was the one to break the rather odd silence between them.
"Hi," he said.
"Hi," Marty echoed, wondering what this was going to be all about. He supposed there was nothing stopping him from asking. "What were you doing in here? Waiting for me to wake up?"
"Uh... well, yeah," Local Marty admitted, looking a little embarrassed. "As soon as I saw you, I wanted to talk to you -- well, after I fell down the stairs, 'cause you scared the shit outta me -- but I didn't know when you'd be up again."
Marty blinked at the news about his counterpart's tumble. Man, I wonder how much stuff I slept through last night? "What'd you want to talk to me about? Who I am? What my life is like?" He paused and frowned a moment, uncertain. "Did Doc... one of them... tell you what's going on?"
"More or less. You guys are different versions of us from the present -- not the past or future -- in a different dimension. Like that alternate '85 Biff made. Although I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess you guys aren't those versions of us."
"Um, no," Marty said. "Although Doc and I did meet his version from that place once before...." he added to himself, under his breath.
Local Marty didn't catch it. He pointed to the visitor's hand. "And you're married," he said, a strange note in his voice as he made the statement.
The musician glanced down at the ring on his left hand. "Yeah," he said. "Aren't you?"
The local's blue eyes blinked once, darkening. "No," he said flatly. "I'm not."
Uh-oh, Marty thought, picking up immediately that this was not a happy subject. He sifted through the faint memories from the night before, and the photographs that he had seen, hoping to steer the conversation to something less... controversial. "How did you get stuck in the past for a few years?"
Local Marty raised his eyebrows. "How do you already know about that? Did Doc tell you?"
"No -- I saw the pictures over there, near the desk, and sorta figured it out myself. I never stayed past September seventh, and it looks like you were there at least until 1890... right?"
"Yeah, right." The local's gaze drifted that way and a frown settled on his face. "The DeLorean was pretty much destroyed when we were pushing it on the train tracks. That's why I didn't get back home... for five years."
A horrifying image of the locomotive ripping into the time machine flashed through Marty's head. "Did the train slice through it when it started pushing it?" In his reality, Doc had buffeted the impact with the rubber tires from the car, but if the inventor in this reality hadn't done that....
"No -- it derailed when the first log blew. But if you want more details beyond that, ask Doc; I don't remember anything. Something hit me in the head and I was knocked out for a couple days since I was in the time machine when that happened."
"Oh my God -- you're lucky you weren't killed!"
The local got a strange, distant look on his face. "Was I?" he half muttered.
Visiting Marty looked quizzically at his counterpart, not entirely understanding, but before he could ask, the local got to his feet, moving rather stiffly. Maybe from that aforementioned fall down the stairs. "We'd better go in and eat before the food gets cold, or Doc thinks we're messing with something we shouldn't."
It was quite obviously a deliberate end to the discussion. But Marty had the funny feeling it wasn't closed, not entirely. Why the hell is he acting so weird, when he was the one who wanted to talk in the first place?
Still, he was starving, and the idea of a homemade breakfast by Clara was far more enticing than staying in the loft to grill the local. There would undoubtedly be plenty of time for that later.
All thoughts about what might've been troubling his counterpart vanished the moment Marty followed him outside. His mouth fell open a little as he got a load of the weather. "It's snowing!" he said, surprised. "When did this start up?"
"Middle of the night," Local Marty said, glancing at him a moment as the visitor closed the door to the lab behind him. "We're supposed to have some kind of cold snap for a few days -- if the weathermen are actually right for a change."
The musician believed it. He hugged his arms to his chest as they walked across the rather sodden and slushy yard to the house. The kitchen was comfortably warm -- and bustling with so much activity that for a moment Marty felt a little lightheaded, overwhelmed by the noise and people after the relative quiet of the lab.
All four of the Brown children were clustered around the table, breakfasts in various states of consumption. While Clara was trying to entice baby Clayton with jars of mushed up things, Emily was busy drowning a waffle in syrup, her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth as she concentrated. Jules and Verne, aged almost-fourteen and twelve, respectively, were busy bickering back and forth about something; Marty caught the word "video game" in the chatter.
Clara heard the back door open and glanced over at the guests for a moment, the distraction enough to cause a mischievous Clayton to drop a spoon on the floor and chortle with pride.
"Good morning," she said pleasantly. "Feel free to help yourself to anything on the stove. I've got to finish feeding the baby."
The local nodded once with a faint smile and headed over to the counter. Marty followed his lead -- and became suddenly aware of almost all activity freezing in the kitchen. The voices of the two older boys trailed off into silence.
"Holy shit, Mom," Jules gasped, gawking with one spoon held in the air, dripping cereal. "Since when does Marty have a twin?"
Clara gave him a sharp, scolding look. "Watch your language, young man," she warned. "Your father explained the situation last night -- remember? He is not the only one to have another version of himself."
"Yeah, but I didn't know Marty was along for the ride, too," Verne said. He looked at the visitor with an unusually intense gaze. "Didja bring along anyone else?"
Marty smiled, recalling the last time this had happened, last year. "Not this time," he said. "And I don't think you and your older brother would really recognize yourselves from there.... You guys are about six years older."
"Really?" Jules asked, clearly amazed by this. "How can that happen?"
The visiting musician wasn't sure if he wanted to get into all the details at that moment -- particularly since he wasn't a hundred percent sure himself. "Uh, well, you'd be surprised...."
Emily was staring at him with something akin to discomfort. Her eyes darted quickly back and forth between the two Martys, and her brow furrowed up. The bottle of syrup was still clutched in her hands, forgotten, continuing to dump the thick, sugary substance onto her plate. "Why're there two of Marty?" she asked, turning to her mother.
Verne reached past his brother to grab the syrup from Emily before it could dump it's entire cargo on her plate. Clara looked rather helpless with the question, looking to her sons for the answer. "Jules? Verne? Would one of you care to simplify the situation for your sister?" Clearly, the girl hadn't been told much the night before.
The blond was up to the task. "See, it's like this, Emmy," Marty heard him say as he finally went over to check out the selections of food. "You know how a tree has lots of branches?"
The girl nodded once, uncertainly. "Well, it's like we're on one branch, and the other Dad and Marty are on another. They're sort of like twins, but from different branches. Does that make sense?"
The visiting Marty was surprised at the sophistication of the explanation. He didn't think the Verne he knew could come up with something like that at the age of twelve, especially with no prior experience in alternate realities.
Emily thought about that a minute. "No," she said.
Jules rolled his eyes his brother's the analogy. "Verne, that's too far out for her," he said. "Look, Emmy," he added, addressing his sister, "just think of 'em like long lost twins of Marty and Dad, here for a visit."
The girl frowned, her eyes flickering uncertainly to her mother -- occupied with feeding the baby once more -- and then at the dual Martys. The visiting one gave her a smile, hoping to ease her nerves. Emily's blue eyes remained narrowed in study, her mouth puckered with uncertainty.
She was still staring at the visitor when Emmett came into the kitchen from the direction of the hallway. He focused his attention immediately on the local Marty. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"
The local set down the partially full plate, on which he had been stacking Clara's breakfast goodies. "Sure, Doc," he said, clearly curious.
The two counterparts left the kitchen. Marty stared at the door as it swung shut behind them, wondering if he needed to be concerned, then shrugged and shifted his attention back to the food. He wasn't about to pass up homemade waffles and bacon.
By the time the pair returned a few minutes later, he was settled at the table between Clara's chair and Verne's. Since Local Marty went back to collecting his breakfast, the visitor figured the conversation had to be no big deal. This was all but confirmed by Emmett a moment later.
"I asked my Marty to run home and fetch some clothes for you after breakfast," he said. "I imagine there shouldn't be a tremendous difference between personal tastes and sizes. About how long did it take for you to repair the train last year? Three weeks?"
"Something like that," Marty said. "But there was a lot of stuff wrong, then, and I think we had more helping hands with the repairs. We don't have our Clara, Jennifer, Jules, or Verne with us, this time. And... well, the boys were older, then."
"Yes, my counterpart mentioned that detail to me last night." Emmett frowned, thoughtful, and glanced over to the local musician. "You've got my help, of course, and Marty's, if and when he is willing."
"My schedule's pretty flexible right now," Local Marty confirmed. "So I'm in -- as much as you want me to be."
Jules and Verne were listening carefully to the conversation, remaining at the table in spite of their now-empty dishes. "I can help, too," Jules said, sitting up straighter in his chair. "I'm almost fourteen -- that's old enough."
"So's twelve," Verne added, not to be outdone.
Clara turned away from the baby for a moment to answer before her husband had the chance. "You both have school and homework to worry about this week," she warned.
"Not today, from that teacher work day," Verne cheerfully reminded her. "And on weekends we could help. The other Marty just said they could be here a few weeks!"
"We'll see," Emmett said neutrally.
"So what's gonna be the plan today?" the visiting Marty asked, in between bites of waffle.
"We assess how much is damaged, I imagine, and what we'll need to replace. I also foresee a visit to the hardware and electronics store for parts. But I don't really want to start in on any of that until after Emmett is up. I'd be afraid of touching something I shouldn't...."
"That's smart, I guess. What time did he go to bed last night?"
"Around the time we sat down for dinner, about six. But he had been up for two days, under tremendous stress."
Marty nodded, unable to repress a shudder at the memories. "Believe me, I know; I was there. God, I hope that's behind us...."
"Well, if Emmett's theories are correct, I think it should be."
* * *
The visiting Marty had finished eating by the time Doc finally made a belated appearance, coming into the kitchen with a rather dazed look on his face. His clothes were wrinkled and his hair was even more wild and unruly than normal, clear evidence of a night spent in bed. He blinked a few times at the sight of Marty sitting alone at the table, looking over the day's newspaper; the kids had scattered to various parts of the house, and Clara had taken the baby upstairs to clean him up after breakfast. Emmett had gone ahead to the lab to take an inventory on his supplies so that he could have a better idea on what would be needed when they went to the store, while Marty's counterpart had gone home to have a shower and fetch the requested changes of clothes for the visitor.
"Sleep well, Doc?" Marty asked as his friend came into the kitchen.
"Yes, quite well," the inventor said, still sounding not entirely awake. "Don't tell me you're the only one up and about, here...."
"No way -- everyone else already ate and took off to do whatever they normally do on a Monday. The other you is out in the lab, taking inventory or something like that. He's not ripping apart your time machine, if that's what you were worried about."
Doc blinked. "I wasn't -- but I'm glad he's not doing that. I don't suppose there's any breakfast left?"
"Clara left some of the waffles on the counter. You might want to nuke 'em though. And your counterpart said that he wanted to talk to you when you finally got up, about what he can and can't mess with on the train."
Doc sighed as he made his way over to the plate of waffles. "Yes, I suspect today will mostly be mapping and charting out where the problems are. We've got to start somewhere."
Marty set the newspaper down and gave Doc his entire attention. "How long do you think we'll be here, Doc?" he asked. "As long as we were last year, in that other reality?"
The inventor took a moment with his answer, perhaps to consider it, or else get the breakfast food into the microwave. "It's hard to say," he admitted. "There was a lot of extensive damage to the train then; but I think almost everything we repaired with parts from the other reality will have to be entirely replaced. And I don't think we'll have as many hands working on this project, this time."
"Probably not," Marty said. "We didn't bring others with us this time. Jules and Verne are younger, here. And my counterpart is apparently single." The musician thought about the other him a moment as Doc went to the fridge to pull out some milk and syrup. "Did you know he never got home from 1885? He spent five years in the past!"
"Yes, Emmett mentioned something like that," Doc said. "Their was an accident when the train was pushing the time machine; it ran off the tracks and damaged the DeLorean beyond repair. I gather that Marty's presence and help caused my counterpart to complete his time machine a full five years earlier than me."
Marty leaned back in his chair, remembering something important. "He didn't look any different than me," he said. "Not like a guy who'd be in his early thirties, now."
"Well, I don't look much different from my counterpart, and I've got about six years on him," Doc said. "If Emmett was smart, he would've taken his Marty to the future to erase the physical signs of aging before dropping him off back home. People would notice, I think, if a kid left school one day and was seventeen, and came back the next as a twenty-two year old."
Marty frowned, thinking about how topsy-turvy that would've made his life, whether people noticed or not. There was a lot of maturing and growing up that went on during those five particular years, leaping from teen to young adult. And then spending it trapped in the past with your best friend and his new wife and, later, kids.... The musician shuddered at the thought, thanking his lucky stars that that particular fate hadn't been his to live through.
The microwave chimed as the inventor set a glass of milk and the bottle of syrup on the table. "I'm surprised no one noticed anything off with my double when he came home," Marty said.
"Perhaps some people did," Doc said, retrieving his breakfast from the microwave and sitting down at the table with it. "Emmett didn't mention anything, but there is still more about this reality that I don't know than I do. We'll probably be here for a week or two, at least; there is plenty of time to find out as we work on repairs."
The local inventor chose that moment to arrive back in the kitchen, brushing the snowflakes from his hair as he stepped indoors. The snow hadn't tapered off at all since Marty had first noticed it, but it wasn't sticking thickly on the ground just yet, either. "Good, you're awake," he said to Doc. "I was starting to become a bit concerned."
Doc smiled faintly, apologetic. "I imagine so, since I know I normally don't spend that much time sleeping myself. The circumstances were a bit... unusual, though."
Emmett nodded. "When you're finished eating, feel free to have a shower and change clothes. You can borrow some of mine. I haven't done anything to your machine yet, but I think we need to do a bit of preparations before that, anyway."
"Yes, so Marty was telling me...."
The musician tuned out the rest as Emmett told Doc about the proposed plans for the day. He looked down at the newspaper's front page, noting with some interest that the headlines looked approximately the same as he could imagine them being back home on a Monday morning. Oh man, he thought, rubbing his forehead. How far off are we from there?
That question immediately brought to mind far too many of increasing weight and depth. Was there any rhyme or reason to the places that they had wound up in? Or were they as random as a throw of dice? Were realities clustered together, based on how alike (or not) they were? Or were they just scatted about randomly? Marty almost groaned aloud from the thoughts.
Emmett and Doc were staring at him, as if the were expecting him to respond in some way. No doubt they had asked him something. "What?" he asked, hoping they wouldn't think he was completely dense.
"Are you all right?" Doc asked immediately, concerned. "You weren't having an episode, were you?"
"No, I'm fine -- I was just thinking about this dimensional stuff.... What'd you want to know?"
Emmett was the one with the question. "Could I trouble you to help me out in the lab with the inventory while Emmett showers? Marty should be back here soon, probably, and then you can wash up yourself."
Marty stood immediately. "You don't even need to ask me about helping," he said. "Anything that gets us home sooner I'm ready for."
A strange look crossed Emmett's face as he stared at Marty, but what brought it about remained unsaid. "All right," he said. "Then let's get started."
Marty wasn't the only one curious about the world that they had most recently landed in; Doc had his share of questions, too. The night before he had been too exhausted to really care about anything beyond the fact that they had finally found someone who apparently possessed the skills and knowledge that was so desperately needed. A good night's sleep, and the chance to shower and get out of the clothes that he had been wearing for far too long, put him in a much better state of mind. By the time he joined his counterpart and Marty out in the lab, he felt more inclined to ask questions -- when time permitted, that was.
Emmett's questions, of course, came first -- and there were a great many of them in regards to the time machine and the parts that were going to need to be ripped out and replaced. The borrowed diagnostic computer program created and provided by Doc's counterpart a number of realities back was most helpful, providing diagrams and specific names and locations of where some of the troublesome spots were located. And Doc's own memory of where he had conducted work in the other world was equally useful.
By the early afternoon, Emmett had gathered enough information to create a list of parts needed, and go out to visit the electronics store. Doc winced at the length of the list, and at the expense this was going to set his counterpart back, but Emmett assured him it wasn't a problem. The issue of where Emmett's money came from nibbled uncomfortably at the visiting scientist, however, since he had a very good idea that it was due to investments and the like made from future knowledge -- just as he had done for about nine years before his family and one of his counterparts had goaded him to do otherwise. He would have to ask about that -- later.
The visiting Marty went with Emmett to the store, curious to see if anything had changed beyond a few things with the McFly and Brown histories. This provided Doc the opportunity, such as it was, to speak with the local Marty, uninterrupted.
The local musician was somewhat of a surprise to the inventor in that he knew his way extremely well around the circuits and electronics. Doc supposed this had to be expected, if this Marty had spent five years helping Emmett build the locomotive time machine from the ground up, but it nevertheless caught him off-guard. His Marty knew enough to ask before touching anything, but this one moved confidently around the wires and electronic paraphernalia without Emmett's supervision or concern.
"That's amazing," Doc couldn't help remarking as he watched the local work on a new circuitboard for the machine. Emmett had provided the schematics, approved by Doc; they looked virtually identical to what he had in his own machine. Local Marty wasn't having any trouble following them. He looked up at Doc's comment, clearly confused.
"What is?" he asked. "Did I do something wrong?"
"No, no, not at all. It's what you're doing that's right. Great Scott! My Marty is light-years away from having those skills."
"Really?" The local was clearly surprised. "This isn't too hard... it's not like I had to make up the directions or anything. I'm just following what my Doc sketched out...."
"Reading electronic schematics are still a bit beyond Marty's grasp," Doc said dryly. "He can barely pronounce the word without tripping over it. I suspect your skills are much greater than his from the time you spent in the past. My Marty didn't spend five years helping me create a time machine. A month in the future, yes, but that's quite different."
The local musician set a tool down a shade too hard. "Lucky him," he said flatly.
Doc didn't notice. "I understand the DeLorean had an accident in 1885. It derailed?"
"Yes." Marty kept his head down and eyes on the circuitboard before him, his words coming out rather clipped.
"Did Emmett -- my counterpart -- retrieve all the parts? Was he able to keep it hidden from the townsfolk?"
The local heaved a sigh. "Probably. I think he said he and Clara got everything big after dark, the first night. Parts of the train, I guess, had busted off when it ran off, so no one really noticed anything. And I think Doc told 'em he had been working on a new kind of train car and that's what had wrecked. They were gonna press charges or something, since they figured that's what derailed the train, but the mayor liked him -- and I had just put Buford Tannen in prison. So they let it go. But everything I know about that, Doc told me. I was still out of it, then."
Doc recalled his counterpart mentioning that last detail the night before, when outlining one of the more massive differences that had come up between this world and home. Marty seemed blasé mentioning it now, but Emmett's face had grown a bit pale at the memories alone from the couple of days where the local teen had lingered in unconsciousness. The visiting scientist couldn't blame him; had the tables been turned, he would've been a nervous wreck. And to have to deal with that on top of a partially destroyed time machine at a site that was no doubt crawling with curious locals because of a train derailment, and a budding relationship with Clara....
"People thought you were Clint Eastwood while you were in the past?" Doc asked.
The local Marty glanced up from the circuits to give him a look that told him he thought he was incredibly naive. "I couldn't exactly go by my real name -- and what was I supposed to do, tell everyone my name changed after I got stuck there longer? It didn't do any damage, if that's what you're worried about. And why would you even care? It's not your history."
Doc blinked at the tone in the musician's voice. He sensed this was not a pleasant subject for the local. Nevertheless, he was still curious. He paused a moment, then asked another question that he hoped would go over a bit better. "What did you do with your music, then? I'm assuming you didn't give it up; Emmett's told me you're quite successful now, perhaps even moreso than my Marty."
"Doc told me I couldn't do anything with it when I was in the past," Marty said, sounding annoyed -- though the visiting inventor couldn't tell if it was from the subject or from the small parts he was trying to line up. "I could just write it and keep the papers to myself. I filled up four notebooks before I got home again, and the first Christmas we were there, Doc found a new acoustic guitar for me to practice and play on. But it took me weeks to catch onto my electric guitar at home and performing again with the band."
The inventor opened his mouth to ask something else, but Marty sighed loudly and set the circuitboard down. "Look, can we just not talk about this? I don't like to think about that time back there, and all this is bringing it up way too much, now. There's gotta be something you can do with your time that's a lot more helpful."
Once more, Doc found himself staring at Marty's counterpart with a touch of wonder. The last statement sounded more like something he would say, not his friend. "Sure," he said easily, backing off both figuratively and literally. Local Marty buried himself in the work, a frown still visible on his face. Doc decided to go back down to the train and make sure it was cleaned out of any belongings or objects in the cab that might get in the way of working.
He came across the videotapes of the Back to the Future films after a couple of minutes of excavating the cab. Doc hadn't watched much more than the first part of the first tape; viewing the films was far from a top priority. But now, with an indeterminate amount of time to kill until his counterpart and Marty returned, he couldn't see a reason not to put them on. He was still curious about what they contained.
The visiting inventor took the videos upstairs and to the study in the loft. He expected that this one might have a TV and VCR, as there was in his own at home, and was not disappointed. Even the brands were the same. Doc settled down in a chair and started the first video from where it had been stopped -- right after the on-screen Marty had believed he would be trapped in 1955. He made an effort to keep the volume low, most of his attention focused on the jaw dropping details such as the sets, the costumes, the appearances of the actors, and the painstaking attention to the words that he recalled saying or hearing.
It wasn't much longer -- a couple of scenes later in the film -- that he became aware that he wasn't alone in the room anymore.
"What the hell are you watching?"
The question came from the local Marty, standing near the stairs and staring at Doc with wide eyes. The inventor paused the tape a moment to answer the question.
"It's something we found in one of the other worlds we visited," he said. "Apparently there's a dimension somewhere out there where Marty and I are fictional characters for a film trilogy called Back to the Future."
The local musician blinked a couple of times. He took a few steps into the room, closer to the TV. "Are you serious? How'd you get your hands on the tapes?"
"The films came out a while ago; a kid who was apparently a fan of these movies rented them for us and... well, we couldn't stay there and watch them." Doc unpaused the video and turned the volume down a little, his eyes darting between the TV screen and the local. "I haven't watched them all the way through quite yet, but so far I'm finding this more than extraordinary."
Marty cast a quick, cautious look at the TV. His mouth fell open as he took in the video, showing some scenes from that first day at Hill Valley High, when Doc had brought Marty to the school so the teen could fix his parents up. "Holy shit!" he breathed, stumbling back to sit on the couch. "This is weird!"
Doc pretty much agreed with that assessment, though he'd had much more time to get used to the strange idea. "It is a bit unnerving," he agreed. "I haven't seen any detail, so far, that's off -- aside from Jennifer looking a touch different."
"These are movies somewhere?" Marty asked, sounding rather aghast. "These played in theaters? People went to 'em for entertainment?"
"From what I was able to gather, yes."
The local's expression was almost identical to the visiting Marty's with this news when it had come. A mixture of discomfort and confusion. "Are these movies the same as your lives?"
"So far. Actually, I'm almost surprised there aren't more differences. But," Doc added with a shrug, "this is the first one. I'm not quite sure what the subsequent ones will bring."
Local Marty didn't say anything for a minute or two. "How long are these?" he asked.
"A couple of hours each, if I remember correctly." Doc slid his eyes over to the local. "It wouldn't hurt much if we watched them for a bit now, until our counterparts return with the parts."
Local Marty met his gaze for a minute, catching his drift. "Probably not," he agreed softly. "I mean, this is important and educational, right?"
Doc nodded once, smiling faintly as he turned his full attention back to the TV.
* * *
While Doc and the local Marty were catching up on some cinematic history from another world, the visiting Marty and Emmett were engaged with the task of tracking down items on a very long, detailed list. It wasn't terribly exciting from Marty's point of view, especially since what he had so far seen of the town wasn't really any different from home. Emmett gave him half the list -- the half that wasn't terribly complex or technical -- and they split up to conserve time. Even so, it was an hour later before they finally left the store, with a bill of close to five hundred dollars of equipment and parts.
"You sure you can afford all of this?" Marty asked tentatively as they loaded the bags into the station wagon. "It's not gonna break the bank, is it -- or did you invent fusion, too?"
Emmett blinked, pausing mid-lift. "Me? Invent fusion, too?"
Marty realized immediately where he had erred with that comment. "Doc didn't invent fusion, if that's what you're thinking," he added hastily. "But in that reality we were stuck in last time, the other him did. It made him really rich, and even got him the Nobel Prize."
The bag fell from Emmett's grasp at the news, making a rather unpleasant crunching noise at it hit the pavement. Marty quickly set down what was in his own hands and knelt to pick up the bag. Emmett seemed to be in a faint state of shock. His mouth was gaping open as he stared at the visiting musician. "Nobel Prize?" he repeated hoarsely.
Marty nodded once, much more concerned with the contents of the dropped bag. "Yeah -- but this isn't the same guy who's here now," he said, again. "Listen, it sounds like something broke in here...."
Emmett blinked a couple of times, dragging his attention back to the moment at hand. "Yes, maybe so. We should have a look."
The musician let the local take care of that job while he put the rest of the bags in the car. By the time that chore was finished, the local inventor had determined that a few glass fuses had broken in the fall. He gave Marty a twenty, told him exactly what he wanted, and sent the visitor back into the store to make the purchase. Marty wasn't exactly sure why he had to be the one to take care of the task, but by the time he returned, Emmett had the car started and idling. He wasted no time in backing out of the parking space the moment Marty was safely in the car.
The musician sensed something was up, but he wasn't even able to begin to guess what it might be. He settled, instead, for asking the local a few questions. "You're younger than my Doc, aren't you?"
There was a moment's pause. "How old is he?"
"Uh...." Marty had to think a moment. "I think he's technically about eighty-six or eighty-seven, now."
"Then, yes, I'm younger. I celebrated my eighty-first birthday in August. I take it Emmett has had regular rejuvenations?"
"Yeah, I think so. Clara's even gone in for one or two; that's sort of why Clayton came about. Doc told me he gave her a rejuv when she turned fifty and that affected... other things," he finished, slightly embarrassed by the subject.
Emmett glanced away from the traffic for a moment to Marty. "Really? That's interesting...."
The musician assumed that this was not so in this world. It would make sense if the Browns moved to the future six years before Doc and his family did. "My counterpart's single," he said, by way of changing the subject.
"Yeeessss...." Emmett's voice was filled with a sort of suspicion, but Marty deliberately ignored it and plowed onward.
"Did he and Jennifer break up?"
"I dare say that's an obvious assumption one can make," Emmett said.
Well, yeah, Marty thought, mentally chiding himself for phrasing the question in the way he had. "Who dumped who?" he asked, more bluntly.
Emmett was silent for more than a minute -- so long that the musician figured he wasn't going to get the answer to his question, and had somehow offended his host by the query. "Jennifer," Emmett finally said. "Two weeks after Marty returned home. From what I understand, she saw a change in Marty that couldn't be erased with a rejuvenation in the future. A maturation, a growth, a different perspective on life. Whatever you might call it. His family sensed it, too -- but they didn't leave him as she did."
Marty winced, imagining how much that had to hurt his counterpart. "So she dumped him?"
Emmett nodded once, not looking away from the traffic. "That's a rather crude way of putting it, but yes. She's now living on the East coast, if I recall, anchoring the news for a station in the Boston area. Marty has never entirely gotten over her, though they had only been dating about nine months when she broke up with him."
That suddenly explained the local's attitude when he had noticed Marty's wedding band and such. "Well, she's a special woman," the visitor said softly, under his breath. Emmett caught the words, however, and spared a moment to glance his way.
"Perhaps so, but I don't think it's terribly healthy for Marty to still be smitten with her. He was living in the past with me for five years, and Jennifer was one of the most frequent topics of conversation. If he thought about her as much as he spoke about her, then I've got to believe a lot of what he loved was in his head."
Marty didn't get it. "What do you mean? You think she didn't love him?"
"No -- not exactly. I mean that I think Marty built her up in his memories a lot over that time. Perhaps she sensed this desperation or need or way of thinking when she saw him again; perhaps she just noticed how... off he was from the rest of the world for a while. It took Marty time to adjust to the pace of the late Twentieth Century, after all. I'm not Jennifer -- or Marty -- so I cannot say what their precise thoughts were on the matter. But...." Emmett's voice trailed off into silence. He picked the rest of his thought up a moment later. "I think that if Jennifer hadn't broken it off then, the relationship was doomed to ultimately fail. Marty was emotionally twenty-two and had matured and grown a lot; Jennifer was still seventeen in all ways."
The visiting musician considered that assessment for a moment, based on what little he knew about the world. "Did this Jen know about the time machines? That what she saw in the future was real?"
Emmett shook his head once. "No. Marty didn't tell her, and I must admit I'm rather relieved."
"My Jennifer knows," Marty admitted. "I told her the day I got back from 1885 -- I mean, it was obvious something was up, and I was pretty upset since Doc was stuck back there. She never told anyone."
"I didn't mean to suggest that the Jennifer I know would do that," Emmett said, taking Marty's words the wrong way. "It's just easier, I suppose, to know that she doesn't know. Especially now that she's a news journalist."
"So what?" Marty asked, mildly offended. "My wife is, too, and she's never tried to do any exposé shit on Doc or the time machines."
"Well, that's good to know. Don't get me wrong, I never had any problems with Jennifer. She was a nice girl. I really and most sincerely hoped that it would all work out the way Marty wanted it to. And maybe it would have if he hadn't spent all that time in the past...."
The musician knew with an almost certainty that it would; he was sort of living proof of that path. "What was that like?" he asked. "I get the idea that the other me doesn't want to talk about it."
"You're correct," Emmett said. "It wasn't a happy time for him."
"I can imagine.... I don't know what I would've done if I'd been in his shoes."
The local inventor looked at him as he stopped at a traffic light. "Quite possibly the same things, unless you are so very different from him."
It was a good observation. Marty swallowed hard, feeling a bit chilled by that remark. "How'd you guys work out the living arrangements? Did the other me stay with you and Clara?"
"Eventually, after we purchased a house. He stayed in the livery stable alone when Clara and I were married, and it was about a year after that when we bought the house we still own."
Marty's mind flashed back to about nine years ago, when he had accidentally dropped in on Doc and Clara in late December of 1886. They had still been crammed in the schoolteacher's cabin, then, with no plans to move out anytime soon. He seemed to recall the inventor mentioning that they hadn't left that place until after Verne had been born -- not before Jules. "That's earlier than Doc," he muttered aloud. "And you still got the same place?"
"The owner passed away quite suddenly," Emmett said. "We had to borrow money from Clara's family in order to make the purchase, but we paid it back in full before we left. After we bought the house and moved in, Marty came to live with us. That took a bit of adjustment on all of our parts. Only Jules seemed to not be bothered by it -- but, then, Marty was always around from his perspective. He looked up to him as if he was an older brother." Emmett smiled faintly. "I blame Marty's influence for why Jules has taken to skateboarding and the guitar."
The visiting musician couldn't have been more shocked if Emmett had just remarked that Jules took up painting and yoga classes. "What?!" he gasped.
The local looked his way, clearly surprised by his reaction. "Is that not so in your world?"
"Hell, no! Jules wanted to kill me the first time he really met me. He was almost ten, then, and thought I was gonna take Doc away from him or something. And there's no way Jules is into skateboarding or guitar. He's always been more serious and into science. He's in med school right now. Verne's more artsy than Jules, but his thing is acting."
"Verne?" Emmett said, now sounding surprised. "Acting? Not in our house.... He shows far more of a bend toward the sciences. This is interesting. I wonder what prompted such personality changes...."
"Maybe moving to the future younger," Marty said, though he really couldn't see how that would make Jules less science-ish. Unless his other self had really really had a huge influence on the kid. "Or maybe it's one of those weird variations that we've seen that happens for no real reason." He shook his head a little, genuinely stunned from that turn. "Jules rocking out.... I definitely gotta see that before we leave!"
"I'm sure he would be happy to show you," Emmett said. "I just wish he gave his schoolwork as much passion."
That, again, sounded uncharacteristic for the oldest Brown child. Marty couldn't wait to share this knowledge with Doc later and see his friend's reaction to it. Their Verne would probably appreciate it, too, provided they ever got home again. "So did you use the other me as like a baby-sitter all the time?" he asked, steering the conversation back to the original matter.
"No," Emmett said. "It was my intent to avoid putting Marty in such a position. I wasn't his father, though the circumstances tried placing me in that sort of role. I offered guidance when I thought he needed it -- which came about frequently -- but I really couldn't do anything if he decided not to listen to me. And he did that a lot."
"What did he do with his time?"
"He assisted me with the smithing. And worked on the time machine. It was the only thing he was really interested in, because the sooner it was complete, the sooner he could return home. I never thought I could finish it in five years without him -- and I've all but got proof of that belief, now, by meeting the other me." Emmett frowned at the memory of something. "Marty's drive was admirable, but obsessive. He would get frustrated with me when I wanted to spend time with my family, or had duties with them, and once made himself gravely ill when he got sick and continued to try and work through it."
That last part sounded a little too familiar to Marty's ears. "You guys are still friends, though," he said, noticing they were getting close to Elmdale Drive. The musician had the feeling that once they returned to the house, the conversation would conclude, both out of necessity and propriety.
Emmett grunted. "Yes. When Marty returned home, he found things much harder to cope with than he had ever really thought. Only myself, and Clara, could really understand quite what that transition was like. He spent more time at our home than at his own. His relationship with his family is rather distant to this day, and he really hasn't dated anyone since the break up with Jennifer. He spends most of his time working on his music -- and that, at least, has turned out rather successfully. Nevertheless...." Emmett's voice dropped an octave and grew a bit softer with the next words. "I'm worried about him."
Still? Marty thought, but it didn't take him much imagination to see why this might be. He hadn't spent that much time with his counterpart, so far, but had noticed a kind of pessimism or melancholy about him. A part of him could sort of understand -- God knew if he'd be any different in the same circumstances! -- but another part of him thought that the local really needed to get over it. It had been ten years, after all.
"Have you tried talking to him about this stuff? Or told him that?"
"Of course. But he clearly doesn't want to discuss it with me. I think he's still holding a grudge because I wouldn't go back in time and prevent the train from derailing. But an act like that would end up derailing almost all of our lives. If Marty hadn't been around, I wouldn't have completed the train as soon as I did, which could've had disastrous consequences on the past. My family would have interacted with many more people and events than we did with the additional time spent there. And Marty would be an entirely different person. Then there's the very basic paradox -- how could we prevent something if it never happened? If Marty hadn't been trapped in the past, why would he need to prevent the train from derailing to send him back home?"
Marty immediately got where Emmett was heading with this. "You told him all that, right?" he asked as the car turned into the driveway of the Brown home.
"Of course," Emmett said. "He knows why that can't happen -- but I know he doesn't like it."
The conversation ground to a halt as soon as the inventor stopped the car near the lab. "Can you run inside and let the others know we're back, and that their help unloading the car would be most appreciated?" he asked.
The visiting musician hesitated a moment, reluctant to leave things on the note they were, but he had serious doubts that Emmett would say much else right now. "Sure," he said.
Marty had no problem getting into the lab, which appeared empty at first glance -- but there were some rather familiar sounds coming from the direction of the study. Marty followed them with a bit of reluctance, a faint sense of deja vu tugging at him from both the sounds, and the fact he was literally retracing steps he had already made once before -- in another dimension.
Sure enough, he found Doc and the local Marty sitting on the couch in the study and staring raptly at the screen, which was displaying the "movie" from that other dimension. They were so completely engrossed that neither of them noticed Marty's presence until he spoke.
"We're back," he said, watching both Doc and the local musician jump from his voice. "Can you guys help us unload the car?"
Since neither of them leapt immediately to action, Marty got the distinct feeling that they would've preferred to remain where they were and watch the movie. A peek at the screen showed him that the actors on screen were reenacting the action at the clock tower to the letter. "Doc, you gotta listen to me!" the Marty on the TV shouted, and the real visiting one couldn't suppress a shiver from both the memory of the event, and the uncanny resemblance in both appearance and voice that the actor had.
"Of course," Doc said finally, stopping the video. "Were you able to get everything needed?"
"I think so -- the other you definitely dropped enough money for that." Marty lowered his voice as they headed down the stairs, his counterpart not immediately following. "You don't know what Other Doc does, do you?"
"No," Doc said. "I haven't had much of a chance to ask, yet. About the only thing I do know is that he isn't showing his inventions to the public, since he reacted with surprise when I mentioned that last night."
"Maybe you should find out, then. What if he's swiping stuff from the future like you were doing?"
Doc frowned faintly. "I thought about that already," he said. "But I don't think now is the best time to ask a question like that. This is just the first day, Marty. We'll be here a while yet. Trust me."
The visiting musician nodded, taking a second to glance over his shoulder up the stairs to the study, where his other self had remained. Good, he thought. Maybe I can do something with the other me, then.
After all, the version of himself that he had met in the 2002 dimension last time had been rather helpful to him. Maybe now he could return the favor to another counterpart... somehow.
Doc didn't have the opportunity to bring up funds with his counterpart until late in the evening, when they were wrapping up their work for the day. The local Marty had departed after dinner, since apparently he had a meeting in downtown Hill Valley at 8 A.M. the following day. Not that he had been of much help that afternoon; he seemed unable to pull himself away from the videos, and watched all three straight through, a luxury that Doc hadn't yet been able to enjoy. What was on the tapes he wouldn't say, except a general mutter that "they weren't a hundred percent accurate" -- which the visiting inventor took to mean meant they deviated in events from this world.
Around the time the local Marty had left, Jules and Verne had begged to be of some help, but Clara had deftly sidetracked them with reminders of homework assignments, and the early rising time of the school day tomorrow. While she kept an eye on the kids in the house, the two scientists had returned to the lab to conduct more work, with the visiting Marty following them to assist where he could.
The three of them had managed to get a lot of preplanning done -- sketching and printing out blueprints and plans of the repairs, organizing the replacement parts and components that needed to be assembled, and preparing areas of the train that were to be taken apart or removed entirely -- before Marty returned to the house around ten to turn in for the night. Doc intended to follow him at eleven; he felt more tired than usual, no doubt because his body was still recovering from the prolonged stress and exhaustion from the previous few days.
As the two inventors went about the job of tying things up for the night and shutting off various lights and pieces of equipment, Doc broached the subject of what his counterpart did for a living -- if anything -- in the most innocent and subtle way he could think of. "I hope that the cost of all these new parts won't be too terrible for you to swallow."
Emmett didn't even look up from his task of closing off the cellar's trap door. "Nope, it's not a problem," he said.
"Are you sure?" Doc persisted. "I saw the bill; it wasn't cheap."
"I'm quite sure," Emmett said. He looked up as he rolled the rug back over the door with his foot, his brow wrinkled in bewilderment. "Why are you and Marty so concerned by that?"
"I'm not concerned, exactly," the visiting scientist said honestly. "I'm just... well, what do you do, here? You've pretty much implied that you don't invent for profit."
"I don't," Emmett said. "I teach physics part time at the university, and do private tutoring." His mouth puckered as Doc reacted with surprise from this news. "I take it you do not?"
"No," the visitor admitted. "I did teach at the university for a number of years, but I was let go completely in the mid-seventies. My curriculum and strategies were considered too controversial and radical by some of the more conservative members of the faculty and education board. They gave me a generous sum to retire, and I didn't mind entirely since I had a lot of work to do on the original time machine."
"They thought I was a bit... unconventional myself," Emmett said, smiling faintly. "But aside from some snubbing from some of the more uptight members of the department, there was no outright vendetta to get rid of me. That must be one of the changes between here and your world. I cut back on my schedule in 1980 to just part-time, and cashed in a year-long sabbatical in 1985, so I could devote much more time to the time machine, but I've never stopped teaching entirely -- except for those years I was in the past, of course. And if you're worrying about me turning over enough money to support my family... don't. I still have a good deal of my parents' finances and inheritance socked away in both the bank and other investments. So long as the kids understand that they may have to get scholarships or loans for private collages, we'll be fine."
Doc couldn't have asked for a better way to get into the heart of the matter he was most curious about. "Investments? Did you make these before, or after, '85?"
Emmett looked at him shrewdly, resting one hand on his hip. "Before," he said. "If I made them after I would be... you're not actually suggesting that I'd cheat by looking ahead and getting in on the ground floor of future successful companies or whatnot!"
Doc cleared his throat uncomfortably and looked down at the ground for a moment. "Uh, well, I am," he said softly. "But maybe that's because I did."
Emmett stared at him as if he wasn't sure he had heard correctly. "You looked into the future in order to benefit financially from it?" When Doc nodded once, his counterpart reacted with something akin to anger and disbelief. "Didn't the situation with the sports almanac and Biff teach you anything?"
"It wasn't like that," Doc said. "Granted, it wasn't any better than that, but it was supposed to be a short term solution, until I could get something figured out to support my family in the present. I wasn't teaching part-time like you, and almost every cent of my family's fortune went into the trial and error experimentation with the first time machine. But finding a permanent financial solution just ended up taking much longer than I ever wanted or anticipated. My family -- and another version of myself, actually -- finally gave me a kind of ultimatum and wake up call that put a stop to it. I took a risk around that time in entering a contest at the university for inventions, and I won, and things began to snowball from there. Now I'm doing exactly what I wanted to be doing, all these years. Creating things that are useful and helpful to others. And it certainly doesn't hurt that I can make a profit from doing this."
The local scientist frowned. "This other self you mentioned -- is he the same one who won the Nobel Prize and created fusion?"
Doc was so flabbergasted by the guess that he simply stared at Emmett without a word. The local smiled again, faintly. "Your Marty mentioned him earlier. Incredible to think that somewhere out there, we're recognized with that!"
"Yes," Doc agreed. "He was...."
There followed a lapse of some kind. One minute Doc was speaking, intending to tell Emmett a bit about that distant counterpart they shared; then Emmett's face was suddenly peering close to his, concern etched in every line. Doc jumped, startled; the transition was so abrupt it seemed as if he had just blinked and things had changed.
"Are you all right?" Emmett asked, one hand gripping his arm firmly.
"I... yes, I think so. Did something happen?" The question seemed rather pointless; quite obviously something had happened.
"You stopped speaking in mid-sentence and just froze, staring into space. That lasted for a good minute, and nothing I said or did could snap you out of it. Is that what you mean by a reaction to dimensional incompatibilities?"
It sounded textbook. Doc nodded, reluctantly. "Yes," he said, reaching up to his forehead. A rather spacy feeling persisted; here he was, thinking it was simple fatigue. "I should've seen this coming. I hate to trouble you with this, but I really should take a jump in the DeLorean. Marty, too. Now."
Emmett didn't offer a peep of protest to this idea. He looked a bit pale and decidedly spooked from seeing a version of himself go temporarily catatonic. "Of course," he said, turning and heading for the time machine. "I can take you, and then Marty. It's not that I don't trust you to go yourself, but I don't know if you should be driving in this condition...."
"I shouldn't," Doc said. "But it won't repeat itself for a few more hours, probably, if left untreated. I should've remembered to do this earlier, after dinner, since we'd been here about twenty-four hours then, and the seizure symptoms usually shows up approximately thirty hours after arrival -- although that can vary wildly -- but I had felt fine and it really slipped my mind."
"We'll make it a point to do that daily, then," Emmett said, unlocking the DeLorean. "How much of a jump do you need to take? An hour?"
"A minute would be perfectly fine."
Two minutes later they were leaving the lab, and Doc couldn't help feeling a faint sense of nostalgia, coupled with deja vu, as he sat in the passenger seat of the car. It had been more than four years since he had last been in a DeLorean time machine, and it wasn't until that moment that he realized he had sort of missed the old mode of time travel. The Aerovette was much more sophisticated and state-of-the-art -- ahead of the times, actually -- but the DeLorean had a special charm about it that couldn't quite be duplicated. Maybe because this was a replica of his first successful time machine, and an instant reminder of all the hard work that had gone into it.
There were some changes, however, that Doc didn't recognize as being incorporated into his own machine. The clutter in the cab of the car was drastically reduced, the digital readings had been replaced entirely by a flat LCD screen, and some of the parts he saw were smaller and more streamlined than they had been in the original DeLorean, and in the later replica he had created upon moving back to the future with his family. He hardly noticed Emmett taking them up to eighty-eight and one minute into the future, so distracted was he by gawking. It wasn't until he noticed their descent, and the lack of sensations that had abruptly left at the time of the temporal displacement, that Doc really realized that the ride was over.
"Did you want to bring Marty out here?" Emmett asked as he touched the car back down on the ground, driving it slowly towards the open doors of the lab. "That should give me enough time to shut down the other parts of the lab for the night."
"Sure," Doc agreed at once. "And I suspect he won't be happy about being wakened and dragged out here if he's indeed gone to bed. Better I incur that wrath than you. I should be back in about ten minutes."
The inventor hadn't actually expected that Marty had really gone to bed, yet. Coming into the house, though, Doc noticed immediately that the kitchen was shut down for the night, cleaned up and with all but one light off. He went through the door that led into the dining room, finding lights burning in the living room beyond that -- but it was Clara who was in there, not Marty. The local woman was in a rocking chair, the baby cradled against her chest, clad in a nightgown and a bathrobe that was identical to something his own spouse had. Her eyes were closed, but she opened them at once with the sound of someone entering the room.
Doc spoke first, with an apology. "I'm sorry for disturbing you," he said.
"You're not doing anything of the sort," Clara assured him with a tired smile. "I was just getting Clayton off to sleep. Is there something I could help you with? Were you trying to find something?"
"Actually, I was trying to find Marty. He came in about an hour or so ago to go to bed, but I wasn't sure if he actually made it there, yet."
Clara nodded once as she boosted the sleeping baby to her shoulder. "He did, more than half an hour ago, to my recollection. I settled him in the sewing room. Do you know where that is?"
"I think so." Doc started to turn to head in that direction when Clara stopped him.
"Is anything wrong?"
"No... not exactly." When Clara continued to stare at him, clearly hearing the faint fib in those words, he reluctantly elaborated. "I had a... reaction, not long ago, to this world. Your husband took me on a very brief time jump, so I'm fine, but now Marty needs to do the same unless he wishes to go through the same uncomfortable experience."
"Oh," Clara said. Then she sat up, her eyes growing wider. "Oh!"
Now the inventor was the one who got the distinct feeling that something was wrong. "What is it?" he asked his counterpart's wife.
Clara stood from the rocking chair, deftly bracing Clayton with one hand to her shoulder. "Perhaps nothing," she said. "Does Marty have to be awake for the trip through time?"
"No," Doc said, thinking that was a rather weird question. "But it would certainly make my job much easier getting him to and from the car. I know he won't be entirely happy about getting out of bed to do this, but he knows firsthand why it has to be done."
Clara headed out of the room, for the stairs in the hallway, and Doc followed her. She spoke in a low voice as she went, her tone apologetic. "I gave Marty some sleeping pills before he turned in," she admitted. "He asked me for them, and had said that you were the one to recommend them during these sorts of stays, and I could see no reason not to oblige his request."
Doc winced, though the dim hallway made it impossible for Clara to see the reaction. "Were they prescription-strength?"
"No. Just over the counter. Let me put the baby down, and I'll join you in a minute."
She hurried off to the door on the right, at the end of the hall. The one next to it, on the left, was closed. In Doc's home, that was Clara's sewing room and he hadn't seen anything here to indicate that it would be any different in this world. The inventor sighed and veered that way. He rapped on the door softly, aware that there were other members of the family sleeping up here, then cracked it open a few inches.
"Marty?"
The room was quite dark. Doc could see the outline of the window from behind the blinds but nothing else. He reached to the left, fumbling around on the wall for a light switch. His hand found it a moment later and the lights snapped on. He squinted, his eyes temporarily stunned, as the room came abruptly into reality.
The sewing room wasn't meant to be a guest room, per se. There was really no one room that could be dedicated to be just a guest room in the Brown house. At home, the sewing room that was Clara's domain was mostly filled with boxes and other clutter, evolving slowly when there was free time -- which really wasn't in ample supply. This sewing room here looked to be in approximately the same state, though Doc noticed that the wallpaper and the curtains hadn't quite gone up yet as they had at home. Maybe because there were four children under the age of fourteen instead of two. Most of the boxes and clutter had been stacked out of the way, against one of the walls, and stored in the closet that the room boasted. The room also contained a sofa bed that could be folded out when the need arose, and that's where Marty was lying on his stomach, completely unaware of the bright overhead light shining down.
Doc dodged some of the clutter on the floor -- Marty's things, borrowed or brought -- to reach the bedside, such as it was. "Marty," he said, taking no care to lower his voice from its normal speaking volume. The musician didn't so much as twitch. Doc leaned over and shook him roughly. This elicited only the faintest of grunts from Marty. Encouraged a little, the inventor pulled down the blankets that his friend was burrowed under. For once, Marty was actually wearing PJs, a t-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms borrowed from his counterpart. The room was faintly chilly, but the musician didn't immediately react one way or another to the latest disturbance.
Clara joined Doc in the room about then. "Have you been able to rouse him?" she asked.
"No," Doc said, frowning crookedly as he stared down at his friend. "And I really shouldn't put this off, either. I don't think he'll go the entire night without a reaction -- even if he is sedated. We've been here more than thirty hours already."
"I'm very sorry," Clara said, sounding slightly distraught. "I really didn't think it would be any trouble to give him something, and he assured me it would be okay...."
"I don't blame you -- or Marty," Doc added, rubbing his chin as he studied the sleeping musician thoughtfully. "And he doesn't have to be awake for this to work, but.... Can you get a washcloth and soak it with cold water? I'd like to try and get him sort of awake at least for the walk to and from the lab. He's not the lightest when he's a dead weight."
Clara left to take care of that task as Doc tried more shaking and talking to Marty. It didn't provoke any sort of reaction out of the sleeper. Then Clara returned from the bathroom down the hall with an icy cold, drenched washcloth. Doc took it from her hand and pressed it to Marty's face. It wrung an audible gasp from the musician, followed by a rather plaintive, whimpering moan as he rolled onto his back.
"Marty? Wake up, now. Open your eyes."
Said eyes cracked open -- barely. "S'too bright," Marty mumbled, closing his eyes again and turning his head to the side, away from the light and towards the wall.
"If you sit up, it won't be so bad. C'mon, Marty...."
The musician was either unable or unwilling to cooperate. With Clara's help, Doc grabbed his arms and hauled him up until he was sitting on the edge of the bed, his legs hanging over the side. Marty remained upright for only a moment without their help before he fell limply back to the covers. Doc gave up, for the moment, stepping away from the bed to grab Marty's sneakers, lying in a heap a few feet away.
"Do you think smelling salts might work?" Clara asked as she peered down at Marty with concern. "If they rouse someone who's fainted, they might work in this sort of situation... right?"
Doc straightened up with the shoes in hand. "It's definitely worth a try," he said. "I can't believe I didn't think about it earlier."
Clara smiled, but the expression was strained. The inventor could tell that she still felt the brunt of the burden for this situation. "I'll be back in a minute or two," she promised, hurrying off on the mission. Doc knelt down to go about getting Marty's shoes on his feet. He got one on, and was tying the laces, when a voice spoke close to his back.
"What's going on?"
Doc jumped at the unexpected question, turning around to see Verne standing just a couple of feet away. The boy's hair was mussed, and he was wearing what Doc could only assume were his pajamas. He had clearly been disturbed by the action outside his room -- but his eyes had a curious gleam in them that defied his otherwise sleepy appearance.
"I'm trying to wake Marty up," Doc said, seeing no point in lying to the kid.
Verne frowned, leaning forward a little to look at the visiting musician, still completely out. "Why?" he asked.
Doc wasn't entirely sure how much any of the Brown kids knew about the darker risks to interdimensional travel. "It's important that he makes a quick trip in the DeLorean outside."
The twelve-year-old blinked a couple of times. "Oh," he said, asking no more questions. "Maybe Fang can help wake him up."
Doc had no idea what he meant by that comment -- until Verne reached down the neck of his shirt and pulled out a black snake about a foot and a half long. The boy set it on Marty's chest before the inventor could recover from his shock. The snake's tongue shot out of his mouth as he began to move towards the sleeping musician's face.
Doc picked up the reptile before he could travel more than a couple of inches. "I... ah, don't think that Marty waking up from a snake crawling on him would be the best of scenarios." He handed the animal to Verne in a hurry.
"Why?" Verne asked. "Fang's not poisonous; he can't hurt him. And Marty never seemed to mind 'im before."
"This Marty might," Doc said, picking up the second shoe and easing his friend's foot into it.
Verne frowned again as he slipped the snake back down his shirt. The reptile's bulge was hardly noticeable under the baggy t-shirt the boy wore to bed, which was probably why Doc hadn't noticed anything amiss in the first place. "Why is it so hard to wake him up?"
He was prevented from answering that question by the return of Clara, successfully clutching some smelling salts in one hand. "Verne, what are you doing up?" she asked immediately, fixing a look on her son that clearly communicated she expected a good answer to that question.
"I heard noises, and I wanted to know what was goin' on," Verne said. "You don't need to read me the riot act; I wasn't doing anything wrong."
Doc decided to avoid mentioning Verne's apparent pet being introduced to Marty.
"Well, we'll be finished in here shortly," Clara said to her son. "We're just trying to wake Marty up, and he's a bit of a sound sleeper. Go back to bed, now; you've got school early tomorrow."
Verne made a face at the command. "I always gotta miss the excitement..." he muttered, sulking out of the room. Doc heard his door close just as he finished tightening the laces of the second shoe. Clara sighed, glancing a moment towards the open door before turning back to the inventor.
"Here," she said, handing the salts to Doc. "I think these should be suitable. I can't recall if we've ever had a need to use them before this, but...."
"I'm sure they'll be fine," Doc said. He bent over Marty once more and waved the salts under his nose. They did the trick neatly, or as well as they could. After turning his head to avoid the potent scent, Marty's eyes finally opened -- though they once more almost immediately closed against the overhead light.
"Marty?"
"What's goin' on...?" The musician coughed once, weakly, as Doc brought the salts under his nose again, to make sure he wasn't going to fade out again. "What're you doin'...?"
"I need you to sit up, Marty. I know this is poor timing, but you've got to take a quick jump in the DeLorean. Now. I had a reaction, and you'll be getting one soon if we don't hurry."
"The DeLorean..." Marty mumbled. "I thought... it's gone...."
Doc grunted as he grabbed hold of his friend's wrists and once more pulled him up to a sitting position. "It is. It's not mine, it's my counterpart's. We're not home, remember?"
Marty didn't answer, his head dipping forward. The rest of his body started to pitch in the same direction. Doc caught him by the shoulders before he could topple off the bed, then put the salts under his nose. The musician groaned faintly, but steadied himself and raised his head up, opening his eyes enough to give Doc a bewildered, wounded look. The scientist hoped things would be easier once they were on their feet and moving.
Clara was standing a few feet away, watching the proceedings with concern. Doc glanced her way. "Clara, can you help me get him on his feet, and out to the barn?"
"I'll do my best," she said. "Is my Emmett out there, still?"
"Yes, he's waiting for us. He's probably wondering what the hell is taking so long, too...."
With Clara taking one side, Doc was able to lift Marty to his feet without much of a struggle. The musician almost immediately leaned the bulk of his weight against Doc, but at least he wasn't dragging either of them down. They made their way sluggishly out of the room, down the hall and stairs, and to the back door. Doc had to stop a couple of times and wave the salts under Marty's nose when he started to fade out again, threatening to pull both the visiting inventor and the local Clara down to the floor. Leaving the house helped with that job immensely. It was below freezing out, the sky completely clear, and the cold was better than anything in snapping Marty to more than a semi-awake trance. By the time they reached the barn, he was walking mostly on his own and his eyes were open, though they were rather glassy and blank-looking.
Emmett, to be expected, was pacing about rather impatiently by the time they joined him. "What was it that -- Great Scott, is he okay?"
Doc and Clara helped Marty in the direction of the open passenger door of the DeLorean. The visiting scientist wasn't about to chance setting him down and going through the entire ordeal of trying to rouse him enough to be moved again. "He's fine," Doc said. "This isn't related to the incompatibility reaction -- this is what happens when you try to wake someone up who ingested sleeping pills an hour ago."
"That's entirely my fault, Emmett," Clara added to her husband, glancing at him for a moment as the trio finally stopped next to the DeLorean. "I gave them to Marty. He asked me for them, and I saw no harm...."
"It's not your fault," Doc and Emmett said to her, simultaneously. Clara blinked, clearly taken aback, then smiled faintly at the stereo words, amused. Doc eased Marty down into the passenger seat of the car. The musician blinked a couple of times at his surroundings, bewildered, then leaned back into the seat with a huge yawn. Doc sighed.
"As far as I'm concerned, he can spend the rest of the night in there," he said, rubbing his slightly strained arms. "It shouldn't take twenty minutes to get from the house to the barn."
Clara looked at him sympathetically while Emmett climbed into the driver's seat and closed the door. "It shouldn't be a problem if he stays out here. He might wake up tomorrow extremely confused as to how he got out here, but.... You should go to bed now, yourself. You look exhausted."
Doc nodded ruefully at the advice. "I can wait a few more minutes, until you both get back," he said.
Emmett nodded once as he punched in a destination time. "Then stand back."
Doc shut the passenger door and backed away a respectable distance with Clara as the local scientist started the car. Emmett waited until he had left the barn before activating the hover conversion. Doc watched the tail lights of the car begin to rise in the air, then abruptly vanish as the local engaged the HIS. His only clue to the time machine's whereabouts was the sound of the engine as it grew more distant -- and then, a moment later, the boom of the machine leaving the present.
Clara turned to look at Doc with a faint, tired smile on her face. "Are we going to need to go through this every night?" she asked.
Doc shuddered at the idea. "No. I think if we take a jump every day after dinner, without fail, we can avoid this sort of spontaneous scenario. I never intended to put it off this long, to be perfectly honest. It's impossible to really know how much one can push it, staying in a foreign dimension."
Clara nodded, though the visitor wasn't sure how much she really understood. "Am I very different from the Clara you know?"
Doc smiled at her. "Not that I've been able to tell so far. Sometimes it's nice to see that a few people don't change terribly much."
The smile on Clara's face dimmed a few shades. "Marty seems different, to me," she said. "The one with you, I mean. He seems... happier, even in spite of the current events."
Doc wasn't surprised by the observation; Marty's counterpart clearly still walked around with a chip on his shoulders. Of course, with the life experiences he had had, Doc couldn't entirely blame him. He did, however, feel more sympathetic to this world's Clara, who had probably never expected to find herself living with a teenager while still a newlywed.
"The Marty I know is doing well," Doc said in response to her comment. "I think he's happy."
The local sighed faintly, just as the sound of the triple sonic booms cut through the air. It sounded almost like the rumble of thunder, which was so much the better if the neighbors were to hear it. Doc heard the approach of the car rather than saw it, and when it sounded no more than twenty or thirty feet away, the invisible illusion suddenly disintegrated and the car abruptly appeared, moving slowly up the driveway on all four wheels. Steam from the transit still drifted off the exterior of the machine as it marginally defrosted in the cold outside air. The DeLorean paused a moment to turn, then backed into the much warmer confines of the barn.
Once the engine was shut off and the doors of the barn were sliding closed, with the help of a remote from inside the car, Doc and Clara approached the DeLorean. Emmett opened the door a moment later. "Done," he announced as he climbed out. "I think Marty conked out again during the ride. Did you really want to leave him in here for the night?"
Doc looked at his friend through the open driver's door. The way Marty was slumped low in the seat told the visiting inventor all he needed to know about what a pain it would be to get him back to his temporary room in the house. On the other hand, there were three of them, now, and they had the smelling salts this time ready to go. "I guess we'd better not. Can you help me with this?"
The question was directed to Emmett. The local nodded without hesitation, shutting his side of the car. "Of course," he said.
Doc administered the smelling salts to Marty while Emmett took on the task of assisting the musician in leaving the car. Dragging him to a state of semiconsciousness was, oddly, more difficult now than it had been earlier. The visiting inventor wasn't sure if this was because the drugs were now having more of an effect, or that the quick jump through time had reset things so well for Marty that he was much more relaxed. Perhaps both were contributing factors. Whatever it was, Doc had to keep the salts under Marty's nose almost constantly while they were moving him to his feet. If he took them away, no more than a minute would pass before the musician would start to sag to the ground again.
"This is just from sleeping pills?" Emmett asked as they finally moved towards the door of the lab, Clara darting ahead to hold it open for the three of them. "Not from anything relating to being in this dimension?"
"Uh-huh," Doc grunted, hoping the cold outside would work the same magic that it had once before. "Thank God they weren't prescription, or I doubt we'd get this much cooperation from Marty." He waved the salts under the musician's nose again as Marty's eyes drooped closed once more. "I think this is something we might want to avoid during the rest of our stay here, though...."
"I'm so sorry!" Clara said once again as the trio emerged outside, overhearing Doc's words. "I should have checked with you before I gave him anything...."
"It's not your fault," Emmett said before Doc could. "Don't feel so bad about it, Clara."
Clara didn't appear any more comforted by her husband's words than she had when Doc had told her the same thing. She went ahead of the men to open the back door of the house for them, while the inventors made their way haltingly across the icy lawn, Marty supported between them.
About halfway there, Emmett suddenly stopped, frowning as Marty sagged against him again, more asleep than awake. "This is getting ridiculous," he muttered, voicing Doc's own thoughts. Before the visitor could say or do anything, Emmett wrapped his arms around Marty's chest, under the musician's limp arms, and looked to his counterpart. "Get his legs; I think this will just be easier."
Surprisingly, it was. It was also decidedly weird; Doc couldn't remember if he had ever carried anything with a counterpart of his before. Their coordination and strength was eerily matched. Even ascending the stairs proved to go better than the visitor ever expected. They got Marty safely back to the sewing room and to the sofa bed faster than Doc would've expected. He had to wonder if the musician would have any recollection whatsoever of the night's events. Somehow, he doubted it.
Emmett looked at Doc as the latter pulled Marty's sneakers off, dropping them to the floor. "You'd better get into bed, too," he said, not bothering to lower his voice as he spoke. Marty had slept through much more in the last half hour or so. "We've got a long job ahead of us beginning tomorrow."
Doc nodded. They had more or less prepped today, and that wasn't nearly as draining or demanding as ripping out parts and creating new ones. "Probably a couple weeks' worth," he agreed, sighing. He pulled up the blankets and tucked them around Marty. "Are you sure you have the time for this, now? What about your job?"
Emmett smiled as he turned away from the bed and made his way to the door. "Teaching a couple of days a week in the morning for a few hours shouldn't slow things up too much," he said. "I dare say you won't even miss me. And Marty -- my Marty -- will be over a lot to pitch in when I can't, I'm sure."
Doc's mind drifted back to Clara's recent words on the local musician as he followed Emmett out the door, recalling as well as his interactions earlier in the day with that Marty. "Do you think that will be best for him?" he had to ask, casting one look back at his snoozing friend before he clicked the light off and closed the door. "Your Marty said something earlier about how this was 'bringing everything back.'"
"I would be surprised if it wasn't," Emmett said, walking down the hall. "But I'm certainly not forcing him to help out with this. He asked, and I accepted, but I wouldn't be offended if he chose not to or decided to pull out." He paused a moment. "I'll ask Marty about that tomorrow, just to be sure."
Doc nodded in approval at the idea. "That must've been a very interesting situation," he said. "Having Marty remain in the past with you for as long as he did."
Emmett snorted softly as they began to descend the stairs. "It certainly wasn't planned," he said. "Neither of us were supposed to be there... Clara, included. If I had been thinking more clearly the night before, I would've agreed to her offer to come with me, and taken her to the future. Not that that would've prevented the derailment. I blame some rail worker who didn't pound a spike in straight for that. But that's all in the past, now. We survived -- though I suppose Marty had to deal with the worst end of things."
"Indeed," Doc agreed quietly. They reached the bottom of the stairs. "I suppose I'll turn in now. Tomorrow's going to be a long day -- one of many." He sighed again. "But I'm almost starting to get used to that, now."