For the "Hill Valley Tour Group" from that fun week in L.A., Dec 16 - 18, 2002
(AKA Nicole, Kevin, Danny, Ryan, Scott, and Chris!)
Now, perhaps, you can understand my fascination with some of the film sites!



"Footfalls echo in memory
Down passages which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened...." -- T.S. Eliot

"All human actions have one or more of these seven causes:
chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire." -- Aristotle

"We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone.
Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar...
Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out." -- William James

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true." -- James Branch Cabell



Chapter One

Sunday, November 12, 1995
2:57 P.M.
Hill Valley, California

Marty McFly had hardly traveled three steps away from his truck before the front door of the Brown house popped open and Emily Brown bounded out onto the porch. "Hi, Marty!" the almost-eight-year-old called out cheerfully, seemingly oblivious to the gloomy sheets of rain that were pouring out of the sky. "Whatcha doin' here now?"

Marty half smiled at her nosy greeting, ducking his head as he hurried for the shelter of the covered, wrap around porch. He didn't answer the little girl until he was safely out of the rain's range, giving his head a quick shake to dislodge the drops that were threatening to drip off his hair and down the collar of his shirt. "Why the third degree?" he asked. "I never thought you minded me dropping by without warning before...."

Emily's blue eyes widened, missing the lighthearted tone in the musician's question. It was old news that the little girl favored him with a powerful crush. "No, you can drop by any time, Marty," she said earnestly, following him closely as he headed away from the front door, dodging a porch swing in order to circumnavigate the house without cutting through it and tracking in mud and rainwater. "But I thought you an' Jennifer weren't comin' 'til dinner t'night?"

"I'm not," Marty said, immediately adding, "Well, I wasn't. But your dad called me last night and told me to drop by this afternoon if I could work it into my schedule. He's got something he needs my help with."

Emily frowned. "Why you?" she asked bluntly.

The twenty-seven-year-old feigned hurt. "Why me? Why not me? Anyway," he added, turning serious as Emily looked stung by his wounded tone, "I think your mom and brothers have other things to do."

The girl nodded sagely, her dark curls bouncing in time to the movement. "Mommy's been cleanin' and cookin' all day, and Verne's workin' at the mall 'til five, and I've been helpin' watch the baby. He's takin' a nap now," she added, lest Marty accuse her of shirking her sitting duties with nine-month-old Clayton.

"What about Jules?" Marty asked.

Emily wrinkled her nose as she regarded him with a look that clearly communicated her doubts on his current sanity. "Jules is down in med school, at UCLA," she said. "'Member? He won't be home 'til Christmas break or somethin'."

Marty hated to admit it, but he'd forgotten about that little detail. He hadn't been over too much in the last few months, busy with trying to score up work and write songs. He had also almost forgotten that Verne wasn't even in school now -- the eighteen-year-old graduated last June from Hill Valley High and had somehow talked his parents into allowing him to take a year off before launching into college so he could get a job to buy a car, figure out what he wanted to study, and travel a little. For his part, though, Doc had been plenty busy with a new baby, establishing his company, and the paperwork and fine-tuning that came with holding newly patented inventions.

"That's right," he said. "I guess I lost track of time. Is your dad out in the barn?"

"Uh-huh," Emily said. "He's been out there since lunch, probably workin'. You want me to come with you?" By the tone in her voice, it was clear she was hoping that the answer would be yes.

Marty, however, shook his head, softening the decline with a smile. "I think I can make it on my own. Besides, if you go out there without a jacket, you'll get soaked and your dad will probably tell you to just come back here. And you're supposed to be watching the baby."

Emily sighed, disappointed. "Not while he's sleepin'," she said, but she remained on the porch as Marty went down the back steps, ducked his head, and made a run for the barn. Once he reached the door, he found it locked, even against his ID, and had to hammer on it before a distracted Emmett Brown finally heard the noise and came down to let him in.

"Sorry," Doc apologized as Marty darted into the barn, bringing with him a trail of puddles. "I always activate full security when I'm in here working on things for the business...."

Marty sniffed, wishing there was a towel handy to sop up the water soaking his hair and trickling down his face. At least he hadn't been too stupid when he'd left his house, taking the time to grab a nylon jacket... though what the designers thought by not including a hood was beyond him. His shoes squished with every step and his jeans were half-soaked, having been left exposed to the elements. About the only thing that had remained semi-dry was his sweater.

"Forget it. I should've called ahead and warned you I'd be coming by right now. If there's a heater that I could sit on to dry out, though...."

"There's a space heater upstairs in the study. You might as well hang your jacket in there to dry."

Doc was already heading for the stairs that led to the loft, where said study was located. Marty did his best to ignore the soggy state he was in and followed. "So we're not going out anywhere, then?" he asked. "Why'd you want me over here now, anyway, that couldn't wait for tonight?"

"We're going out, but you shouldn't get so much as a drop on you, and I didn't feel that it would be fair to monopolize your time and mine this evening when our families would be here," Doc answered succinctly. "After all, it's not as if we see each other so frequently anymore. You and Jennifer are both busy with your careers, and I've been putting almost everything I've got into E. Brown Enterprises and helping Clara with Clayton when I can...."

"I know, Doc, it's been a crazy time," Marty said. Having reached the top of the stairs, Doc made a beeline for his desk, which was buried with stacks of papers, a few oddish looking gizmos, and a laptop computer. Marty unzipped his jacket and peeled his arms out of the sleeves, hanging it on a coat rack near the stairs where it could drip freely on the wooden floor. Feeling sticky all over between the damp clothes and the sudden warmth after the chill outside, he rolled back his sleeves and started looking around for the aforementioned space heater.

"I suppose it's been pretty normal," Doc said in response to his comment, sounding almost wistful. "It's decidedly abnormal to have the time to simply tinker around out here to my heart's content, as I was doing for almost a decade. At least Jules and Verne are older now -- I can't imagine how I'd feel if they were both under five again. And Emily's often more help than hindrance with the baby, now." He dropped a folder down on his desk that had been in his hand when he answered the door. "The heater should be near the armchair, if you want to plug it in," he added to Marty, apparently sensing what the musician was looking around for. "Just keep it away from anything. I don't want to burn down the barn."

"No way," Marty agreed, finding the device in the spot where the inventor had indicated. "So what'd you want me over here for?" he added, once it was plugged in. "Does it have anything to do with the dinner tonight? Or today's date?"

Even if Doc hadn't suggested holding a sort of anniversary dinner that evening, to celebrate the forty years since he had helped send Marty home to 1985, the musician had doubted the day would pass without his friend doing something to commemorate the historic event. But, surprisingly, the scientist shook his head.

"No, to your last two questions," he said. "It was simply something that I decided to do today, having a free afternoon."

"Okay," Marty said. "So what is it?"

Doc smiled as he shut his computer off and closed it. "Eager to get back home, are we?"

"No -- I really didn't have anything else to do today, and Jen's out running errands all afternoon -- but I'm just curious. You're always so cryptic on the phone."

"As I should be in matters relating to time travel," Doc said. "Especially with the types of scanners they have now for cordless and cellular phones. Last thing I need is for someone to overhear sensitive information like that and spread around the loony rumors once more -- particularly right now, as I'm finally getting the business off the ground."

Marty nodded, thinking that was pretty smart. There were still a lot of mutterings around Hill Valley about Doc's quirky ways, but not as much as there had been two years ago, before he'd started to prove to the naysayers that he had a lot of good, workable ideas that people would want to use. Giving fuel to the crackpot fire was definitely a bad idea now that the tide seemed to be showing signs of turning.

"So this has to do with one of the time machines? What is it, now?"

Doc unplugged the laptop and tucked it under one arm, heading for the stairs. "I've spent a few weeks replacing the hardware of the time circuits in the train," he said as he went. Marty followed a few steps behind. "The Aerovette is basically cutting edge until the 2030s, but I hadn't improved the train's layout since... well, I installed the TIPS in '87. Circuits are much more compact and powerful now, so I was able to clean up some of the clutter under the casings."

"So what do you need me for? To make a trial run on it? I'm not really that great at using the train alone, Doc...."

"Oh, I wouldn't send you alone. I'm going with you. I'd rather do it this way just to make sure I have an extra set of hands if I need them. Not that anything will go wrong," Doc hastened to add as they reached the main floor of the lab. "I've used the boys as assistants with this sort of thing before, but they're both unable to do so today, and Emily's still a bit too young. Clara's occupied right now with the preparations for tonight, and I sort of wanted to get this out of the way today. I've got meetings scheduled all this week in Sacramento with companies and stores that want to sell the new security system. You don't mind, do you?"

Marty considered it for all of two seconds, then shook his head. "No. Like I said, I wasn't going to do anything else today. How long were you planning on staying somewhere?"

"A few minutes. This isn't going to take more than an hour of your time, including the time spent elsewhere. I promised Clara that I'd entertain Clayton while she cooked supper, and I've got a few more things I'd like to take care of out here before then."

The two men headed down the cellar stairs to the massive chamber where the steam train resided while not in use. "Did you have a specific time or place in mind?" Marty asked as Doc clicked on the overhead lights.

"Not really, though I suppose, to be on the safe side, just an hour or so in the past would be best. If for some unforeseen reason it fails, we wouldn't be stranded somewhere and can just wait out the time."

"Fine by me," Marty agreed. He hung back when they reached the cellar, watching as Doc headed for the train, still carrying his computer. The larger and older time machine sat dark and silent in the cavernous space. Marty had to think for a moment about the last time he'd seen it used and finally settled on about a year and a half earlier, when all the Browns, as well as the musician and his wife, had gone on a disastrous camping trip and ended up in a completely parallel world -- and several years in the future, too. It had ended up being a rather educational and enjoyable experience, though there had been numerous stresses to worry about, including the danger posed to one's health from residing in an alternate dimension for a prolonged period of time. Marty wondered if Doc had taken the machine out since then, but figured the answer had to be yes, especially if the scientist was fiddling with the mechanics of it.

Doc got into the train and called his friend over to join him a moment later. Marty looked around the cab as he stepped inside, imagining that it would look considerably different, based on the inventor's earlier comments. But things seemed the same as he remembered them being, with the display of rotating letters and numbers still intact, the flat screen for the Temporal Influence Projection System -- TIPS -- mounted in the same spot, and the pipes and gauges still hanging around. The only thing he could tell that was very different was that the space under the data entry keys was considerably thinner, perhaps half the size that it had been before.

"I thought you said it cut back on the space," Marty said as he looked around. "The only difference I can see from the last time I was in here is that you might've replaced the bottom of the keyboards."

"I did," Doc said, kneeling down and reaching for a cord that dangled from the back of the massive analog display. "I could easily remove this display and free up a lot of room," he added, waving one hand to the three lines of dates and the fourth line of their location, "but I like it. Anyway, this is a time machine, not a mass transit vehicle. So long as there is enough room in here for people to cross the temporal barrier safely, I don't see why I have to dismantle things like that."

Marty conceded the point, watching his friend as he plugged the cord into the back of his laptop, then turned the computer on. "What are you doing?" he had to ask.

"Running a final quick diagnostic check on the circuits to make sure everything's all set," Doc said. "This machine can do it in just a minute or two, and I wanted to upload a small modification to the software program."

Marty sat down on the bench at the back while the inventor took care of that job. A few minutes and keystrokes later, Doc shut his laptop down again and removed the cord from the back. "All set," he announced. "Here, can you hold onto this during the jump?" This was the laptop. "I'll need to check things once we arrive, to make sure everything functioned well."

"No problem," Marty said, accepting the computer from his friend. It felt surprisingly light, far more than the current state-of-the-art laptops he'd seen, and he had to ask: "Is this from '95?"

"A few years ahead," Doc said. "I needed a fast processor in a small machine and the ones available now aren't quite enough. Things will catch up in a few years and I shouldn't have to 'borrow' from the technology so much then. Buckle up."

The musician set the computer down for a moment on the bench next to him while he took care of the task. Doc closed the door and brought the time machine to humming and chugging life. The readouts and TIPS screen began to glow softly as they were activated. Marty craned his neck to see what his friend input for the destination. It wasn't terribly exciting: November 12, 1995 at 2:30 P.M. in Hill Valley.

"That's almost an hour ago," Doc explained without turning around, as if he knew Marty was watching him. "Suitable enough for our needs."

"Pretty boring," Marty said, hastening to add, "Not that I think we need to drop into the Crusades or seventeen hundreds or something like that."

"We could, if you really want to," Doc said neutrally, turning to look at him. "The odds of a system failure is nearly nil. I just thought you might be more comfortable with a short jump."

"Yeah, that's fine, I guess. Better safe than sorry and all that."

It took a few minutes before they were on their way. Getting out of the cellar was always a small ordeal, in that Doc had to pilot the train down a tunnel that emerged a mile into the woods behind their property. Then it was a quick matter of activating both the HIS so the machine would appear invisible, and the hover circuits for easier maneuverability. Once they were safely -- and invisibly -- in the air, Doc accelerated over the back of his property so the transit could take place with little chance of being noticed.

"This weather is almost a blessing today, actually," he admitted as the machine picked up speed. "If anyone hears the sonic booms, they'll just think it's thunder."

"There's no thunder or lightning, though, right?" Marty asked, suddenly uneasy. He hadn't noticed anything like that since getting up that morning, but things could always change, and he hadn't been actively listening for it....

"No," Doc said, glancing at the TIPS screen. "That's one thing I added with this update -- a weather detection system that has a 95% accuracy rate on forecasts up to an hour ahead. There's no electrical activity detected in Hill County right now, or I wouldn't have taken the machine out."

Marty breathed a little easier with this bit of information. At that moment they reached eighty-eight and arrived an hour in the past. A glance out the window showed little change; it was still raining, of course, the sound loud on the metal and glass roof.

Doc slowed the train to a stop in the air. The vehicle rocked gently from the occasional gusty wind as he looked over the readings on the displays, then took the computer from Marty's hands and connected it back to the train's system. Marty figured he had a few minutes to look around and unbuckled himself from the seat to step over to the window. Looking down, all he saw were trees and some open fields. It looked like they were on the far edge of town, where people still held working farms.

"How did it do?" he asked after a couple of minutes of silence, as Doc intently scanned the laptop screen.

"Fine, so far as I can tell," the inventor said, sounding pleased. "Everything performed according to the specs I predicted." He closed the laptop with a sharp click, removing the cord from the back and turning it over to Marty again. "I'm going to take us back -- or, rather, ahead."

Smiling crookedly at the bad joke, Marty strapped himself back in the seat as Doc resumed his place before the controls. "So that's it?" he asked. "That was pretty quick...."

"I promised you it would be," Doc said, resetting the destination so they would arrive home a minute after their departure -- 3:26 P.M. to be precise. "You should still have a few hours at home to catch up on anything else you needed to do today, before dinner."

"Which will probably be spent putting groceries away and helping with the laundry, if I know Jen," Marty said with a grimace. "Sunday's her chore day and she always seems to rope me into doing something with her."

Doc tilted his head enough to look at his younger friend from the corner of his eye. "It's not fair to expect her to do all those things, Marty," he admonished as the train lurched forward once more.

"Oh, yeah, I know," Marty said immediately, lest Doc accuse him of being sexist. "I don't have a problem with doing them, I just wish I could do that stuff on my own time instead of always having this specific day where we have to run around and take care of it. Jen's always on the warpath, then, anyway; it's almost better if I'm away so she can't bite my head off 'cause I left towels she just washed on the floor after a shower, or whatever."

"Well, if you really want to avoid that, I'm sure Clara would welcome your help with Clayton and Emily...."

Marty weighed the two choices, finding they were about even on his enthusiasm scale. "I dunno, maybe if Jennifer doesn't care. If I stay and watch the kids without letting her know, I'll probably hear about it later."

"You're not having any problems like you were a while ago, are you?" Doc asked, turning around to look at him a second as the train picked up speed.

"Oh, no, no way, nothing like that! Jen just gets cranky on Sundays with doing all this catch-up stuff and getting geared up for another work week. Getting up so early for work is starting to bug her, and she's hoping to maybe get an evening shift soon at the station, once one opens up. But it could be a while."

"Undoubtedly," Doc said as they reached eighty-eight. The triple sonic booms drowned out anything else he might've added, and kind of put an end to the conversation. Marty waited patiently on the bench as the inventor brought the train closer to the ground and back to his property.

They swooped down smoothly, until they were level with the treeline, and it was then the machine suddenly jarred to a halt in the air. Marty nearly dropped the laptop, doing a quick juggle to keep it from crashing on the metal floor and suffer irreparable damage. He found himself suddenly grateful for Doc's instructions to buckle in.

"What's wrong?" he asked when he managed to catch his breath. Doc was next to one of the windows, his face pressed so close to the glass that his breath was causing the pane to steam up. When the inventor didn't immediately answer, Marty unbuckled the restraint and got up for a look himself. "Doc, what is--"

The rest of his words died on his lips. Below them was the clearing in the trees where the train tracks to the cellar were located. Marty immediately recognized the almost lopsided ring of trees that marked the site, having seen it from above a few times before. Yet there were no rails below, nor was there any sign that any had ever been there.

It was simply a clearing containing an overgrown, empty field.


Chapter Two

Sunday, November 12, 1995
3:28 P.M.

"What happened?" Marty asked numbly. "This is where we're supposed to be, right? Or did we get lost?"

"We didn't get lost," Doc said, his voice grim. "And we're in the right time, if the displays are accurate."

Marty gulped a little as he turned away from the window to look at the analog display. It was November 12, 1995 at 3:28 P.M., if it could be believed. "What if they're not?" he asked.

The inventor turned abruptly away from the window. "Let's try this again," he said, reentering their destination for the same date, but at 3:40. "It could be that this is some sort of fluke with the system, perhaps brought about by a hiccup in the program or a surge in the hardware. Once we get home I'll have to take it apart to see." He sounded less than enthused by the idea.

"What if it isn't?" Marty asked, immediately pessimistic.

"Then we'll have to track down what is the problem and fix it."

Marty didn't bother getting back in the seat, bracing himself against the wall and cradling the laptop against his chest with his free arm. Doc took the machine back up and ahead a few minutes. This time, when they returned to the landing site, everything was restored to its proper order. The sigh of relief from the inventor could be audible a mile away.

"Looks like it was simply a fluke," he said as they touched down on the rails in the clearing. "Just as I thought. That's going to be a challenge to track down, since no alarm or error was detected so far as I could tell earlier...."

"Well, at least things weren't too messed up," Marty said, already itching to get out of the time machine. While things didn't go wrong every time he was in one of these things, his track record was far from ideal. Doc claimed he was simply remembering the disasters over the successes, as he didn't have many problems and he went on these sorts of trips a lot more. Marty, on the other hand, was starting to wonder if he was some time travel bad luck charm.

"Indeed," Doc said as he used the remote to open the doors. "Funny, though," he mused as they eased open. "I swore I left the doors open when we left...."

Warning bells went off in Marty's head with that comment, but it wasn't until they had gone all the way into the tunnel that Doc finally seemed to hear them himself. Or, more precisely, saw them. Once more, the train slammed to a sudden halt, this time tossing a standing Marty off his feet, right into Doc. The scientist had anticipated the stop a bit better, having been the one to cause it, and managed to stay upright in spite of the musician's collision. In fact, he hardly seemed to notice Marty at all as he stepped up close to the window and peered out into the semidarkness.

"I don't believe it!" he half whispered.

Marty hardly heard him, too busy trying to slow down his thudding heart and doing a quick mental inventory on the results of his crash. Nothing more than a few bruises -- and he hadn't even dropped the laptop. "You could give me more warnings when you're gonna stop, Doc," he muttered as he hauled himself to his feet. "What is it this time?"

The inventor didn't answer. Marty looked through the window next to him, almost afraid on what he might see this time. He let out a low whistle at the sight, too amazed to be scared just yet. A few feet ahead of them, in the space where the train normally resided was... another modified steam train. To Marty's untrained eye, it was identical in every way to the one they were currently using.

"Did we come back before we left?" he asked.

Doc's mouth was turned down into a scowl directed at the other train. "I don't know," he said, the answer honest but not very encouraging. "I suppose we'll have to get out and check."

"We or me?" Marty asked immediately, seeing where this was headed.

The scientist turned around to look at him, thoughtful. "I suppose you might be good alone," he admitted. "If I was to see you on the property, I suspect it wouldn't be as shocking to me as it might if a me from a bit in the future or the past came along."

"Yeah," Marty had to agree. "I can't imagine what you'd do if you thought it was another Doc B."

The inventor nodded once. "Perhaps, though I suspect that might not be my first thought on the matter."

The decision made, Marty set aside the computer and headed out of the train. "If possible, just see if you can find out the date and time," Doc told him before he left. "There should be a calendar and clock in the lab. With any luck, you won't run into me -- I spent most of the afternoon up in the study. Just be quiet, if you can."

Marty tried his best. He headed up the stairs as silently as he could, and was able to get out of the cellar through the trap door in the floor without a problem. But when he saw the lab, a frown immediately crossed his own face. It looked... different than he remembered it being. But how it was different, he couldn't really say. The tables were pretty much in the same places, with the same sorts of clutter and gizmos on top of them. If anything, things were even more haphazard, and there seemed to be more inventions and devices than he could remember.

Well, maybe I just didn't notice, he reasoned immediately. He'd been pretty distracted after getting drenched outside, and before today he hadn't been in the lab for a few weeks. Always possible Doc could've started new projects or picked up new things. Then he happened to look up -- and that clinched it. Normally, he'd see the floorboards and a brief railing of the hayloft that spanned almost the entire width of the barn and that Doc had converted to his study and office. Now, he saw some rotting boards that obviously hadn't been replaced in the last hundred years, no railing, and what looked like boxes and other bits of storage sticking out beyond the floor line.

Something's wrong, Marty thought, the warning bells back. He started to turn around to go back down to the train and tell Doc about his findings but a flurry of noise at the door caused his feet to freeze halfway. There was the sound of a key in a lock -- that's weird, Doc replaced all the key locks with fingerprint ones -- and a second later, Emmett Brown was strolling into the room, shaking rainwater from the hood of his parka. He stopped a few steps in the room, clearly startled by Marty's presence.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, sounding curious but not angry.

"I... uh... I..." was about all he could manage right then. Marty took a quick deep breath to steady himself. "I... wanted to see you about something."

Doc closed the door. "Generally going to the front door is a better way," he said. "Is everything all right? You look a little pale."

Marty sighed, figuring the truth wouldn't be a great idea. He backed up a few steps closer to the trapdoor, concerned mostly by the idea of his friend going down there and getting a good shock at the duplicity. "I was just trying to figure out... ah... when you planned to remodel the hayloft up there."

Doc's eyebrows raised before his eyes did to scan the area mentioned. "Why would I want to remodel it?" he asked.

"For a study..." Marty said, more confused than ever, now.

"Why would I want to do that when I have a perfectly fine study in the house."

"When you have a perfectly fine study in the... what? No, you don't."

Doc frowned, clearly baffled. "Yes, I do. In the house. Marty, are you feeling all right? I know you've been under a lot of stress lately, what with the divorce being finalized...."

"What?!" Marty cried, all other thoughts fleeing his brain for the moment. "I'm not getting divorced! What the hell are you talking about?"

Doc sighed, coming over and laying a hand on his shoulder. "I know it's a hard time for you," he said, sympathetic. "Clara and I are here for you if you need us. You're even welcome to stay with us until you find a more permanent home. I know Jennifer has the house...."

Marty was so thoroughly flabbergasted by what was coming out of his friend's mouth that he couldn't say a word for a moment, only blink dumbly at the inventor. It was only about then that the true magnitude of the situation hit him: this wasn't the slight past or slight future -- this was a wholly different world, a different reality! One where, for reasons beyond him, Doc never moved out to the lab with his study and he and Jennifer apparently separated. Jesus Christ!

This version of Doc was still talking to him softly, his tone pitched as if he was addressing an upset child. "Why don't you come into the house and have something to drink?" he said. "Clara's got all sorts of goodies laid out for the dinner tonight, and I know she's a little bored right now, what with the cleaning out of the way for tonight. She's even caught up on her grading. I've gotta finish something up out here, but I'll be in the house in a few minutes."

Somehow Marty's muddled brain managed to latch onto what the inventor was saying. "I thought Clara was trying to keep an eye on Emmy and Clayton around all the cleaning," he mumbled. "And since when is she grading anything?"

"Who?" Doc asked, focusing on the first question, staring at him without a trace of recognition on the names.

"Emily and Clayton. Your youngest kids. You know. She's almost eight, he's nine months old.... Why are you looking at me like that, Doc?"

The look this Doc was giving him was almost patronizing, eerily patient and sympathetic. "Now, Marty, you know as well as I do Clara and I don't have any kids," he said. "That's partially why she went back to school in the late eighties to recertify herself for teaching."

"I do?" was all Marty could manage to say to that. "She did? Since when do you have no kids?"

"Since... always. Why are you reacting as if this is new to you? Perhaps it would've been nice to have some, and I think Clara regrets it more than I do, but it certainly would've made the five years we lived in the Nineteenth Century far more risky. And she's got the third graders in her class to keep her on her toes, now...."

Marty didn't get it, at all. "Five years?" he said. "But you and Clara didn't move to the future until 1896."

Doc shook his head once. "No -- it was 1890. You're clearly upset, Marty," he went on with that soft, patient tone. "Go on into the house and let Clara take care of you. Everything's going to be fine, I promise."

Curious and disturbed, Marty was tempted to do just that, but he couldn't leave his Doc behind and risk getting locked out of the barn later -- or, worse, let this version of Doc accidentally discover his counterpart. But how to get away, back down the cellar, without arousing suspicion? "I think I'd rather say out here, Doc," he said, honestly. "I -- ah, it might upset me to be in that house and remember the better times...."

Predictably, this won him instant sympathy and understanding. "Of course," Doc said. "If you'd like, you can help me out here with this new security program I'm designing.... I think it might be an improvement over the basic locks on the lab."

Marty nodded dumbly, realizing that having no kids had probably meant that Doc hadn't felt a need to secure the lab like Fort Knox in (sometimes fruitless) efforts to keep children away from the time machines and other equipment. It also made perfect sense, now, that he hadn't constructed a study out here; he had only been prompted to do so when Emily was born, and the room he'd been using for a study in the house was turned into a first floor bedroom for Jules. No kids, no problem like that to contend with. Likewise with this Clara apparently being a working woman in the future, now having plenty of time to go back to school to get the proper knowledge and credentials to teach again.

But since when did having no kids mean that he and Jennifer were getting divorced?! Marty couldn't make that connection, as hard as he thought about it. What was even worse than that was the fact that this world was deeply different from his own, in ways that could not be traced back to a ten minute trip an hour into the past. It meant that something else had gone wrong -- and in all the other times Marty had glimpsed worlds like this, alternate worlds that were not caused by some mistake a time traveler did on a trip, it meant one big, bad thing: mechanical error.

Mechanical error -- albeit brought about by some mucking around in the past -- was what had made Marty and Jennifer pop into an alternate world from Woodstock. It had been what caused a disturbed version of Emmett Brown to arrive in their world and take one of Doc's machines and his family. It had caused all the Browns, as well as Marty and his wife, to crash land in a dimension so far out, Jennifer had had a different physical appearance and Doc was richer than Bill Gates from inventing fusion. It was on that last trip, just a year and a half ago, that they had discovered the dangerous incompatibilities that could be wrought on the human nervous system if one stayed in a world that was not native to them for longer than a day or two.

Marty swallowed, hard, chilled as things were finally hitting home. He had to tell Doc, right away. "I'll... I'll be right back," he said, turning and running down the stairs beyond the open trap door. If the native Doc followed him, he didn't notice, going so fast down the steps that, had he tripped, he would've rolled all the way down the stairs and probably broken his neck a few times. Fortunately, nothing of the sort happened and he made it back to the train fine, if not gasping hard from the exercise and the realization of their predicament.

Doc had wired his laptop back in and was absorbed with whatever was on the screen, but when he looked up, he was far from worried. "Did you find out when we are?" he asked.

Actually, technically, he hadn't, but Marty thought that bit was unimportant in light of the new developments. "Doc, we've gotta get outta here, now," he said, shutting the door of the cab as soon as he found the proper switch.

"Why? What's wrong? Is my other self following you?"

"Maybe. Probably. Doc, just go, I'll explain later!"

Doc frowned, closing the computer and unhooking it, moving too slowly from Marty's point of view. Well, if the other Doc saw them, so be it; he'd have an interesting story to share later, and maybe it might save Marty's counterpart from being shuttled to psychotherapy because he asked so many obvious questions. "Did something happen to you up there?" he asked. "Is something wrong?"

"Something's not right, that's for sure," the musician muttered. He sat down at the back of the cab, only then realizing how shaky he felt from the barrage of unpleasant information upstairs. Doc looked at him oddly, but saved his questions until he had guided the train out of the cellar and they were cloaked in the disguise of invisibility in the air above his property.

Once they were out of harm's way, Doc locked the controls and turned to his friend. "What happened?" he asked.

Marty got right to the point, figuring they didn't really have the luxury of time. "We're not in the past or future at home -- we're in an alternate reality. I noticed things were off almost right away, 'cause you didn't have the loft converted to your study, and then you -- uh, your other self counterpart, I guess -- came out and caught me in the lab and started going on about the divorce I apparently just had with Jen -- and that he and Clara have no kids, at all! I guess you -- they -- even came back here earlier, from 1890, not 1896, for some reason. And Clara's teaching school now, too!"

Doc blinked once at the barrage of information. "Interesting," he said simply.

"Interesting?" Marty burst out, standing up. "Is that all you can say about it? Doc, remember last time when this happened? Remember the incompatibility shit? If we don't get home soon, we're gonna fall apart!"

Doc waved his hand, brushing the concern aside. "Not necessarily. Only if we remained here without any temporal transit for more than about thirty hours. Taking a jump through time can reset the physiological system, otherwise we wouldn't have made it almost three weeks in that world, and I doubt very much that Clayton would be with us today." Clara had discovered she was pregnant on that very trip.

"Maybe.... There's one thing I don't get about the way things are here," he added. "I guess I can see it being kind of logical that you and Clara might move back sooner without kids -- you know, less distractions from making the train work and all that -- and why she went back to school so she could work, but why would Jen and I be separated here?"

"That's not very difficult at all," the inventor said. "You and Jennifer were having a lot of marital problems when I took you both along on that camping trip last year. The key to solving that lay in the alternate world we visited, with that mind reading helmet that my other self managed to make a success."

"Yeah," Marty said. "I know. What do your kids have to do with that?"

"Well, one of the reasons I decided to take my family on that camping trip in the first place was to have a chance to reconnect with one another. Without the kids around, I doubt I would have had the desire to do such a thing, and if I had never taken that trip, and brought you and Jennifer along on it, and we never visited that alternate world...."

Marty winced, seeing the chain of events quite clearly now. "Yeah, I guess that makes sense," he admitted softly. For some reason, the realization chilled him. Maybe because it made him realize how close his own marriage had gotten to the breaking point. It took being in, literally, the wrong place at the right time to set things right again. "I wonder why you guys didn't have kids, though?"

"Conception relies a lot on timing, and maybe ours was off," Doc said. "Or perhaps something in mine or Clara's physical make up changed to make any chance of conception impossible. You know how many variations can happen with individuals, even in places that look identical to our home." He sighed, sounding wistful. "I don't envy the me of this world in the least. How did he seem to you?"

Marty thought back to the exchange in the lab. "Like you, pretty much," he admitted. "I was only there for a few minutes; I didn't really have a lot of time to take notes, and I didn't even go near the house where Clara was to see what things were like. You didn't have the lab so tricked out in security, though -- your other self got in with a regular key in a lock."

"I'm sure without kids constantly trying to make off with one of the machines, he wasn't motivated to do much else," Doc said, bemused.

"I don't get it," Marty said, walking over to look out one of the windows. "You're too calm."

"There's no use in panicking over this," Doc said. "Unlike last time, the time machine hasn't been struck by lightning with a busted flux capacitor and shorted out circuits. This could be a very easy fix."

The musician brightened up a bit at this. "Yeah. My counterpart in that one world told me that the reason he was jumping to alternate dimensions one time was from a door not closed all the way. Maybe that happened when we left home."

"It's possible," Doc said. "And if that's so, then the problem might already be solved. While you were in the lab, I did a quick overview on the new circuits, and everything's performing as it should, so I don't think those would be the cause of this issue. If this problem occurs again, I can do a more in-depth analysis and investigation of the external mechanics of the machine. I suppose it's not out of the question we took another bird in the flux capacitor -- but if that was the case, then an alarm should've alerted us to the problem. It did so last time, though it was too late for us to do a thing about it."

"Maybe," Marty said, calming down now that Doc was offering him easy solutions and likely possibilities with their odd predicament. It was a lot better than thinking they just popped into this place for no reason at all -- or one so incredibly simple that they'd never see it, sort of like the not-quite-latched door his other self had dealt with in that other world. "So what do we do now? Go back and land on the lawn of your other self here and ask him if he can help us out?"

The inventor considered it for a moment, then shook his head. "No, let's not. The problem might very well be fixed by now, if it was something like an improperly latched door. We might as well test that theory out."

"But what if we're still in some other weird world?"

Doc smiled faintly. "Then we can cross that off the list of potential causes."


Chapter Three

Sunday, November 12, 1995
4:00 P.M.

When the proverbial smoke cleared -- the bright flashes of light, in this case -- and Doc took a look outside, he could tell instantaneously that they weren't yet home. The farmhouse where his family resided was visible in the distance, and it was both void of any light and looked as if it was abandoned or run down. It wasn't simply a trick of the light and gloom. A glance at the display told him that the machine was certain it was still November 12th in the year 1995. Damn.

He didn't immediately say anything to Marty, who was once more belted into the seat at the back and in such a position that the view allowed to Doc was impossible for the musician to catch. Marty had accused him of being too calm earlier, but now that this problem had duplicated itself in a different way, in a clearly different world than the last, the inventor was starting to worry. So far as he could tell, nothing was inherently wrong with the time machine. The diagnostic programs weren't picking up anything amiss. The time circuits appeared to be operating fine, as well as the flux capacitor. And now that they had pretty much ruled out a problem of a not-quite-latched door, Doc wasn't sure where to go next.

I'll just have to land, he thought, and give the machine an external look over. Maybe a branch got caught in one of the coils.

Marty could feel the machine descend. "Are we back?" he asked, sounding hopeful.

"Ah... no, not that I can tell," Doc admitted after a moment's hesitation. "My home appears to be abandoned."

Marty frowned at the news, but a moment later he was fumbling around for the belt release. "Maybe the TIPS can tell us why," he said. "We didn't check that last time."

"There's an idea," Doc said. He scooted aside to allow Marty to slip before the small screen that displayed the data.

"Which discs are in it?" Marty asked, and that's when Doc remembered, winced, and, finally, sighed.

"Ah... none of them."

"None of them?" Marty looked away from the screen for a second. "Did you put them on something else? Or can this tap into the Internet now if it's around?"

"No, to both of your questions," Doc said. "I simply didn't think to bring along any of the discs for a trip that could surely have no impact on the world. Not five minutes hovering invisible in the sky. They're still in the Aerovette, since that gets used more frequently."

Marty looked surprised, then irritated. "You mean we can't see if things changed?"

"Not from inside the cab -- we'd have to go out to a library or speak to people. It's fairly obvious things have already changed, though," he added as they touched down on the front lawn of his home. "Lawn" was too kind a word; it was an overgrown, weedy area. And it was more than obvious, this close, that the home hadn't been lived in for some time.

"Yeah, you got that right," Marty said, eyeing the house through the window and the rain still falling steadily outside. "Maybe we should just quit while we're ahead and leave."

"And where would we end up next?" Doc asked. "I don't want to go until I've got a good idea as to why the machine is malfunctioning." It was his turn to frown at the sight beyond the window glass. "Of all the days for it to pour...."

Marty sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "So what are we supposed to do here?" he asked. "We can't find out anything from in here, so do we need to go to a library? Do we really need to know anything about this world?"

Doc's first impulse was to say no, but on a second reflection he thought it might be a good idea. "I think so," he said. "It's always possible that we landed here for a reason, that all the places we've been have some common denominator that will give us an idea on what the problem is with the machine and how to fix it."

Marty looked confused by this. "But what if, like you said, it's some kinda thing like a door not closed all the way? I don't think my counterpart said anything about noticing any patterns when he had this problem. He just finally met a Doc that happened to notice what the deal was with the door."

"It could be that's the only thing going wrong," Doc agreed. "I won't know until I can take a look at the machine from the outside, and maybe do some more programming checks. But if it's not, then we might as well take notes about the places we land in."

The musician thought about that a moment, then sighed. "So, what, is it going to be my job to run around out there and see what kind of hell we've landed in while you just sit back and tinker in the cab?"

That would've been a logical distribution of assignments, the inventor had to admit, and there was a certain appeal to that. But there was a part of him that truly was fascinated by their predicament and he didn't want to let Marty see all the variations and oddities out there. Besides, it might be more time consuming if Marty did all the research alone than if Doc went with him, and having the musician's help on the train projects would definitely speed things along at that end as well.

"No," Doc said. "I'll go with you."

Marty looked taken aback by the response, as if he had planned for an argument or conflict over the matter. He blinked a couple of times. "Good," he said, sounding a bit uncertain.

Not wanting to walk into town through the deluge outside, Doc took the train back up and on an ariel tour of Hill Valley, wanting to get an idea as to what they might be walking into. From what he could see, the town looked pretty much as it should, and there was definite life around, with cars on the roads and the occasional brave soul outside, armed with an umbrella or rain slicker. Nothing to indicate The End of the World or anything of that nature. Thank God.

"Where should we go first?" Marty asked, looking down at the wet world below. "The library?"

Doc considered the suggestion, then shook his head. "It's not open this late on Sundays," he said. "Closes at three. And I suspect if we tried to take the machine back a few hours to access the archives, we might find ourselves somewhere entirely different."

"Yeah," Marty said. "Maybe we could break in...."

"I think we might want to avoid risking arrest if we don't know the governing laws here. For all we know, breaking into a library might be grounds for a lynching."

The musician visibly gulped. "Good point. So where do we go if we can't check out the library?"

The scientist thought a moment as they hovered above the town square, which looked more or less like the one at home at first casual glance. Though... Doc squinted at the clock, not believing his eyes for a moment. It could've been a trick of the light, but it appeared that the hands were frozen at 10:02, not 10:04!

What could that mean? he wondered, before answering it himself a moment later. Possibly nothing. It could simply be that in this world, the lightning bolt had arrived two minutes sooner than it had at home.

"We find a phone book," he said. "We could see where I'm living, first off. That might give us some inkling as to the deviations that came about here. We also might want to check your address, and maybe see if there's a public place where one could use the Internet. The laptop has an Ethernet card and a modem, so if I can find a place to plug in, I can pull up some information without us having to bother the library. Although in '95, things were just getting warmed up, in terms of online information access...."

"We could see if the gas station near your neighborhood is still there, on the corner of 173rd," Marty suggested. "That's sort of isolated, being a Mom and Pop place, and I don't think they're open on Sundays at all."

Marty's memory was accurate in this dimension. The business was indeed closed on Sundays and they were allowed plenty of room in which to land the train and emerge without anyone seeing them. Having not expected to leave the time machine until they were safely under cover, Doc had nothing on hand to protect them against the damp elements, and both men had to make a run for the covered porch of the gas station. It was a rather fruitless effort, and Doc had the feeling that before this was over, he'd be getting considerably more wet.

Well, maybe somewhere, November twelfth in 1995 is clear and sunny.

The phone booth sat on the corner of the intersection of 173rd and Elmdale Lane. Marty volunteered to make the sprint across the gas station's asphalt to check things out, and a few minutes later he trotted back with a couple of soggy pages from the phone book clutched in hand. "I'm in there and so are you," he said, slightly breathless, thrusting the papers towards Doc. "But we both live in different places, there's no Clara next to your name and... I'm married to someone else!"

This last bit of news came as a bit of a shock to the inventor. In the various alternate realities he had seen up close and personal -- few, admittedly -- Marty and Jennifer were one of those constant things. Sometimes they were married, sometimes they weren't, but the idea that his friend actually married someone else was... different. "Who?" Doc asked as he accepted the pages. "Anyone you know?"

Marty both shrugged and shook his head, scattering drops through the air. "Someone named Susan," he said. "The only Susan I really know is Jennifer's mom, and I think pigs would need to be flying before I got married to her.... I mean, she's old. There was a Susan in high school, but she was two grades behind me and I don't think our paths ever crossed. Kevin's sister was friends with her or something."

The scientist examined the pages his friend had given him, half listening to Marty's words. McFly, Martin & Susan, 4532 NW Barrington Ln, 806-7137. Then, on the other page: Brown, Emmett L. 1278 S. 1st Ave, 346-8597. Interesting.

"Those are on almost complete opposite sides of town," Doc said. "We'll try you first, I think, since that's closer than my counterpart's."

"Are you sure that's a good idea, Doc?" Marty asked as the inventor headed back to the train, his stride long and his head down. The musician had to almost jog to keep up. "Your other self might be used to bizarre things like this more than me."

"Perhaps, but your other self might be able to give us information about my other self that may be valuable," Doc said. "And, anyway, aren't you a bit curious to see who it was that you married over Jennifer?"

Marty's smile was both crooked and uneasy. "Yeah, sort of," he admitted. "But at the same time, I'm not sure if I want to know...."

Doc could see why. If he learned he had married someone other than Clara, it would've set him back a few paces to say the least. Maybe this was because in the sixty-five years he'd been alive before meeting his wife, he'd never really met anyone else that made him feel remotely the same way as she did. Although it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that he might've married one of the women he had dated in his youth, somewhere else.... "It's possible that in this world, Jennifer never existed and you found someone else to fall in love with," Doc said as they ducked back into the train's cab. "It doesn't mean that your relationship with Jennifer went sour, and you found companionship with another."

"Maybe," Marty said, his voice neutral.

It took Doc about twenty minutes to bring the train near the McFly house of this time, his navigational skills compounded by the foul weather, and the fact that he was a bit uncertain as to the location of Barrington Lane. It ended up being in the hills of a newer, nicer neighborhood, a far cry from the older section of town where Marty and Jennifer's home, built in 1889, was in their world. The home they landed before was pale yellow and contemporary in every way. A red Honda Del Sol was parked in the driveway, next to a black Toyota Supra that looked to be from the mid-80's line.

"Is that supposed to be my house?" Marty asked, squinting at the property through the window, across the street.

Doc looked at the numbers posted next to the home's door and double checked the address on the phone book page. "It should be," he said. "Forty-five thirty-two northwest Barrington Lane."

Marty frowned a little at the cars in the driveway. "Jen got one of those last year back home," he said, indicating the Del Sol. "But I've never owned a Supra. I gotta admit, though, I did think they were pretty cool...."

The inventor looked at the vehicles himself, catching a detail that Marty had apparently missed. Specifically, the license plate that read MARTY1. "It's your car," he said. "Look at the license plate."

The musician focused on that and made a face. "A vanity plate?" he said. "Cripes, I'm liking the me of this place less and less.... Anyone who uses their name on those things is usually a jerk."

"I would withhold judgment until you meet him," Doc warned. "He could be very much like you -- choice in car notwithstanding."

Any other delay would be procrastination at this point. They left the train, Doc quickly punching in a code to turn the invisible illusion to look like an extra long camper, lest anyone witness them leaving the vehicle (and to prevent anyone from accidentally walking or driving into the time machine). Although Marty had pled a reluctance to the matter, he beat the inventor to the porch, perhaps out of the desire to be out of the rain as soon as possible. Physical comfort seemed to only go so far, however; once Doc had pressed the doorbell, Marty started to bolt away. The inventor snapped a hand around his wrist before he could get more than a step away.

"Don't," he warned. "You're going to be the proof I need so that your other self won't slam the door in my face or commit me once he hears the story."

Marty sighed, casting a quick, longing glance at the camper disguise. "But Doc, this might be too much for the other me to swallow...."

"Well, I don't think we have time to go about this subtly," the scientist said, nevertheless sympathetic to Marty's counterpart. Depending how much time traveling Local Marty had done, this could go down easy and cause only the faintest of reactions, or make the poor kid pass out for the night. There really was no way to tell.

Further discussion was squashed as someone arrived at the door and opened it. A young woman in her mid-twenties stood on the threshold. She looked vaguely familiar to Doc, and he couldn't quite place her face for a moment until a clearly startled Marty said, "Jennifer?"

It was Jennifer -- but not the Jennifer that his Marty was married to. The woman looked like a twin of the Jennifer McFly that Marty's counterpart was married to in the reality that they had visited last year. For one wild moment, Doc wondered if they were back in that world -- but the version of himself there had lived on a Fairy Chasm Road, not off First Avenue. And even if that Emmett Brown had moved between 1995 and 2002 to that home, it didn't account for the clock being stopped at 10:02 P.M., the absence of Clara from the phonebook, and a multitude of other minute details.

The Jennifer frowned at the mention of the name, looking grossly puzzled -- no doubt because she recognized the visitors on her porch. "No...." she said slowly, clearly confused. "Marty, what are you doing out here? I thought you were in your office?"

Doc saved his friend the pain of answering that question. "We're not exactly who you might assume we are," he said. "Is Marty home? Can we speak with him a moment?"

Clearly spooked, her eyes locked on the other dimensional musician, the young woman who wasn't Jennifer nodded once. "I guess," she said. "I'll -- I'll see if he's where I left him."

She left in such a hurry, obvious in her haste to get away, that the door was left ajar a few inches. Doc waited until her footsteps had faded, then pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Marty was appalled. "Doc!" he hissed, looking like he was itching to bolt off again. "You can't do that!"

"Why not?" Doc asked, matching Marty's low tones. "Unless things have changed severely, you should know me here."

"Exactly," Marty muttered, following his friend inside with clear reluctance. "I might not know you now..."

A minute later, though, the Marty of this world came into the foyer to greet the odd guests, looking rather collected -- for a few seconds, anyway. "Hey, Doc, I wasn't expecting to see you toda-- Jesus Christ!"

The local musician stopped dead in his tracks upon catching sight of his other self. This Marty appeared identical to the one standing behind Doc -- even down to their attire. The inventor noticed with a trace of amusement that they had on the same jeans and a blue V-neck sweater worn over a long-sleeved white t-shirt. Had the Marty of this dimension been wearing shoes, the inventor would wager a bet they would be the same Nikes as his counterpart.

Local Marty's face went very pale and he had to lean against the wall to keep from falling. After a moment of swallowing hard and taking a breath or two, he regained his composure enough to say, "Maybe you'd better tell me what the hell's going on here."

"Certainly," Doc said. "Is there a place we could speak without interruption?"

"My office, I guess," Local Marty said. His eyes slipped over to regard his double once more and he shivered. "This has gotta be one hell of a story."

The visitors were led down the hall, upstairs, and to a large room at the back of the house. It appeared to be a spacious office, not unlike the studio that Marty had built in the basement of his home -- except this one lacked the same sorts of equipment. There was a fair bit of musical paraphernalia strewn about -- a few amps and guitars, framed posters from concerts and famous musicians and bands -- but nothing quite like the setup that the musician had in his home. Curious. Rather, the room contained a desk with both a desktop and laptop computer, another desk that looked to be one for writing or bills, if the papers stacked on it was any indication, and a rundown but comfortable-looking couch.

"What do you do?" Marty asked his counterpart immediately, noticing the changes in an instant. "Are you doing any performing or songwriting?"

Local Marty didn't look at the musician as he cleared off the couch, piled with books and papers, for the guests. "When I have time," he said. "Which is mostly in the summers."

"Why?" Marty asked.

The local musician glanced up at his counterpart quickly, a look of confusion plain on his face. "Because I'm not teaching at the high school then," he said.

"You teach at the high school?" Marty blurted out, and even Doc was surprised by this slight twist to things. His Marty had never been interested in that area, citing a lack of patience and interest in being an instructor. But, different worlds produced different personality traits sometimes. Variations to a theme. "Why?"

"Well, something has to pay the bills," Local Marty said matter-of-factly. "My music wasn't gonna do it alone... not anytime soon, anyway. And I sort of like it, especially now that Strickland's retired. I can help the kids out and try to make it interesting for them. There's a lot of students who have real talent with music, and I'm better than having someone like Mr. Furhman guide them. That guy thought rock music was a form of Satanism." He gave his other self a funny look as he sat down in the desk chair, gesturing for the visitors to take the couch across from it. "Why are you acting so weird about it? You know this stuff as well as I do...."

Doc cleared his throat as his Marty looked to him for the explanation. "This might clear things up a bit," he said. "You see, we're not quite who we appear to be...."

He outlined things as quickly as he could. When all was told, Local Marty sat back, studying the visitors through narrowed eyes. The inventor had to wonder for a moment if he was going to kick them out, but a moment later he leaned forward in the chair, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

"So you guys are here from a place -- a reality -- completely different from this one? Not a past or future time?"

"Essentially," Doc said.

The teacher let out a low whistle. "Wow. Doc's gonna flip when he hears this.... He'll probably love it. There's not really that much excitement for him nowadays, except when he blows something up and someone calls 911," Local Marty added. "Last time that happened they tried to get him into a home saying he was becoming a danger to the community."

Marty frowned at this news, clearly taking offense to it even if it was happening to a counterpart of his friend. Doc, for his part, wasn't surprised. "At least he's still sane and alive," he half muttered, thinking of other possibilities out there. "And not married?"

Local Marty burst out laughing. "Not likely!" he said. "Although I guess he was kind of a ladies man, back in the day... that's how he came up with the idea for the time machine. He hit on a woman at this party at his place and she beaned him with a beer bottle. I almost busted gut when I saw that happen! Don't tell me you actually got hitched...."

"I did, actually," Doc said, holding up his hand with the wedding band.

The amusement -- along with some color -- drained right out of the teacher's face. "I'm sorry!" he said immediately, clearly horrified. "I mean -- I mean, that's great! Who is she?"

Marty answered the question. "Clara Clayton," he said. "She was a schoolteacher in 1885. Doc met her when he got stuck back there for a while and they really hit it off. They've got four kids now; the doc's a dad."

"You've got -- kids?" With the nod from the inventor, Local Marty nearly fell out of his chair. He seemed far more shocked by this news than he had upon first laying eyes on the pair from another dimension. "Oh my God.... I can't believe it!"

"My counterpart has none of these things, I take it," Doc said, wanting to get a better sense of this world.

"No way! After the near disaster of my trip to '55, and then the fiasco with me and Suzy and our kids in 2015--"

"Suzy?" Marty interrupted. "Is that the same person who's in the phone book next to your name?"

"Suzy? My wife? Yeah... why?"

Doc answered this question. "He married a young woman named Jennifer Parker," he said. "Now, tell me--"

"My wife's maiden name was Parker -- Susan Parker!" Local Marty said, shocked by this news. "Not Jennifer. There's no one in her family named Jennifer...."

"One of the many changes between this world and ours," Doc said. "Likely Suzy had parents with different taste in names than Jennifer -- and perhaps their birthdays, too, are different, if their appearances are any indication."

Local Marty looked confused by this, but the inventor didn't give him a chance to ask further questions. "You said that this world's Emmett Brown destroyed his time machine..." he prompted.

"Yeah," the teacher said, blinking at the change of topic. "After we got back from 2015. He thought it would be a good idea if we helped our kids out there, 'cause they were in some trouble, but when that had some problems, he took us home and decided to destroy the machine because it was becoming a pain in the ass, risk-wise. I guess he did some research in the future about stuff and paradoxes, and when things got dicey with helping the future kids, he decided to quit while he was ahead."

"I take it, then, that Biff Tannen didn't steal the machine and a sports almanac to give himself in the past," Doc said.

Local Marty stared at him in surprise. "Nooooo.... We didn't even see Biff the whole time we were there. Ever since I changed things in the past that one March, he's been as big a pushover as Dad used to be."

Doc's mind snagged onto a detail in the teacher's words. "March?" he said. "You weren't sent back to November fifth, 1955?"

"Nope," Local Marty confirmed. "March nineteenth, 1955 -- the day Doc came up with the idea for the... what was it... Temporal Field Capacitor. I couldn't get back home for a week, though."

The inventor's jaw fell a bit at these considerably deeper changes. "So I'm to assume that lightning didn't strike the clock tower until March twenty-seventh, 1955?"

"Yeah -- at 10:02 P.M. The clock is still stuck on that time in the town square if you're curious." He paused, studying the visitors. "You seem surprised. Is it different from where you're from?"

"Considerably," Doc said. "My conception of the flux capacitor -- not a 'Temporal Field Capacitor' -- came about on November fifth, 1955. As did Marty's arrival. His departure was a week later, on November twelfth, at 10:04 P.M. -- from a lightning bolt. Forty years ago today, in fact."

"Did you leave home at the same time?" Marty asked his counterpart. "On October twenty-sixth of '85?"

"No -- October fifth. Same year, though. Doc dragged me to the mall to show off the DeLorean." Local Marty closed his eyes a moment, thoughtful. "I can't remember what time it took Einstein through, but the only reason I got in it and went back was 'cause Libyans showed up." He opened his eyes and looked at his counterpart. "Did that happen to you, too?"

"Pretty much," Marty said. He rubbed his forehead and looked at the inventor, who was taking in all the information and trying to make sense of it. On first glance it didn't seem to mean much -- just a plethora of small and not-so-small deviations from what they thought of as normal. If anything, it simply hammered home to him the point that this was a drastically different world from the one they considered home, brought about by absolutely nothing they had done in the brief trip to the past.

But that told him nothing he didn't know already. Doc frowned, wondering if his counterpart could be of any help to them at all. Without a time machine -- and with perhaps an entirely different method to achieve temporal displacement, unless his other self had simply come up with a different name for the flux capacitor -- he had strong doubts that the Emmett Brown here could do more than hear their situation out, ask some questions, and shrug his shoulders.

Still, he supposed it wouldn't hurt to ask.

"Do you think that my counterpart would be upset if we went over there and spoke with him a bit?" Doc asked the local Marty.

The young man frowned and shrugged. "No, probably not. Like I said earlier, he'd probably like the excitement. I guess I'm kinda vague on why you guys are here.... Is there a reason you need our help?"

"We don't know why we're here," Marty told his counterpart with rolled eyes. "And Doc thought poking around to see what's gone on in each world might tell us. I'm not exactly sure how, though...." He slid his eyes over to Doc, prodding for the answer.

The scientist decided to be blunt and honest. "I thought it might be wise to get an idea as to what the worlds we're landing in are like -- because there could be some common denominator or feature to them that might provide an inking of the cause of the problem. It's better than turning a blind eye to them and focusing on the mechanics of our time machine, though I'm beginning to think that the problem lies somewhere in there. Everything has checked out fine, so far -- that's the trouble."

"Then my Doc could probably help you out," Local Marty said. "He's still pretty good with that kind of technical stuff. I can give him a call and tell him to meet us over here, if you want. Save you the trip across town, and he really just lives in a doublewide in the trailer park. I guess it's an improvement on the R.V. he used to live in, though."

Another change, and one that the scientist certainly didn't envy his counterpart for. He grimaced a little at the thought, wondering if his other self's finances had been worse off than his in this world. Still, if he had returned straight home from 2015 and dismantled the DeLorean, he very well might still be living in the garage on J.F.K. "That would be fine," he said.

Local Marty went off to take care of the task, although there was a phone in his office, leaving the visitors alone to access the situation. Marty exhaled deeply and leaned back in the couch, letting his head drop back to stare up at the ceiling for a moment. "This is pretty heavy," he surmised. "I can't believe I'm a teacher here.... And the other me didn't say anything about drag racing with Needles. Wouldn't that have happened if we came straight back home after the trip in the future?"

"Not necessarily," Doc said. "It could be that in this world, you never had such a personality flaw that allowed you to be goaded into doing things. Without that flaw -- and without running into Biff -- this Marty never heard about his life going downhill, never bought an almanac, and never had a fate where he broke his hand and gave up on life. It's interesting how much the world can change with just a few things different...."

"Yeah," Marty agreed, looking over at the inventor now. "But I don't really think I like that very much. I guess this place isn't necessarily bad -- it's just different. But if we found a place that's perfect, Doc, where our lives are way better.... That'd be frustrating as hell if you ask me." He changed the subject ever so slightly before Doc could think of an answer to that one. "How long are you planning on staying here?"

"It depends on how much help my other self can be to us," Doc said. "I don't think he will be, not without the experience that time travel provided me beyond that trip to 2015, but I suppose it can't hurt to see. Besides, I think if he heard Marty talk about our visit and we left without saying hello, he'd be a bit hurt."

Marty shrugged. "So we'll leave before the... effect catches up with us?"

The inventor winced a little at the reminder of their time limit, so to speak. "We'll have to," he said. "Without a working time machine in this dimension, we can't stay beyond that. There won't be a way to reset our systems, and if we used the train, we'll end up somewhere else -- unless the problem's been fixed and this really is some fluke. So there's your answer, I suppose -- we'll be here no more than a day."

It would turn out to be considerably less. After about fifteen minutes, Local Marty returned to tell him that the local Doc was on his way, very interested by the news that they were being visited by people from a parallel dimension. He showed up twenty minutes after that, breathless and all eyes.

There were changes that Doc noticed almost immediately in his counterpart -- he looked much older, in spite of the fact that the visiting scientist had about eleven years on him from the time spent in the past. No doubt this was due to an absence of regular visits to the future to take advantage of their rejuvenation techniques. The inventor supposed being a bachelor, without a wife and family to take care of him or to be taken care of, could also have taken a toll. And in some ways, his life had sounded a bit harsher to the visitor. Doc, after all, had never had to live in an R.V. or trailer park.

"This is incredible!" the local Emmett Brown said upon hearing the story from his other self. "Absolutely incredible! To think that alternate dimensions actually exist, that there are endless variations and versions of one's self out there...." He fixed a sharp, if wild-eyed, gaze on his counterpart. "And you're married? With kids?"

Doc nodded once, wishing that issue hadn't come up. He wasn't entirely sure why he felt that way, except that if the tables had been turned, he'd feel a bit of envy for the counterpart who had that life. Emmett smiled thinly, wistfully, at the confirmation, sighing. "Wish I could say the same. But knowing that somewhere out there a version of myself found that.... I suppose I can settle for that."

"Doc thought you might be able to help us with our problem," the musician said, casting a meaningful look at his friend.

"Maybe," Doc clarified, frowning faintly at Marty for his bluntness. "I don't suppose you have much experience beyond the mechanics of the DeLorean when it comes to time travel, do you?"

Emmett shook his head. "I gotta admit, there are times I regret dismantling the machine," he said. "Especially now, when I see what the results of additional years and experimentation could produce."

Doc had expected the answer; nevertheless, he was disappointed. "Then you'd probably have less of an idea of what to look for than I would," he muttered, half to himself. He paced the length of the living room, where they had relocated upon the local inventor's arrival. "What did your Temporal Field Capacitor look like?"

"Glowing tubes in the shape of a Y," Local Marty answered for his mentor.

"Well, at least that's the same," Doc muttered.

"Could I see your machine?" the local scientist asked eagerly. "I didn't see anything of the sort outside, unless you managed to convert that R.V. across the street into one.... Too much plastic in something like that, in my opinion, for it to work, and it would be quite challenging to get it up to eighty-eight...."

"I don't suppose that would be much of a problem," Doc said after a moment of thought. "And you're actually quite close in your guess; it is the R.V. outside. But that's simply a holographic disguise for the real thing."

"What's the real thing?" Emmett asked, but his foreign counterpart decided to leave that as a surprise. The pairs of Docs and Martys left the house, armed with umbrellas this time to guard against the continuing drone of rain. Doc only dropped the illusion a moment, lest one of Marty's neighbors drive by, but it was enough for the local inventor. His face lit up with a wide grin that didn't fade as he came into the cab for a look at things.

"A steam train!" he enthused. "Brilliant -- though I suppose you had little choice in the matter if you had to build a machine in the last century. You really lived there for ten years?"

"Eleven," Doc said. "Eleven years too long, in my opinion. Sometimes I wonder what might've happened if Clara had made it to the DeLorean when I sent Marty back in it, and she simply came to the future."

"If we don't fix this thing soon, you might find out," Marty said darkly, his mood clearly one of impatience. Doc shot him another look, but neither his counterpart nor the local inventor seemed to notice, too preoccupied with the surroundings in the cab. Emmett took a long, careful look around, then smiled sheepishly when he eventually looked up to the face of his other self.

"I'm afraid I wouldn't be of much help in diagnosing your problem," he admitted. "Some of the technology you've got installed is ahead of its time -- and out of my grasp."

"I thought as much," Doc said, sighing. "I suppose it was too much, hoping to nip this thing here and now."

"Does that mean we're gonna leave and just cross our fingers now?" Marty asked.

"We certainly can't stay here," the scientist said. He looked at the locals -- the Marty from this world, looking curiously at the analog display, and the scientist, who was more fascinated with the maze of pipes and wires at the front. "Thank you both for your help -- even though it wasn't exactly what we were looking for." He scratched his head, thinking. "But I suppose I'm not quite sure what that is, yet."

"You're not going to leave now, are you?" Emmett asked, looking up. "You just got here!"

"This may be true, but we're not really on a pleasure trip. Visiting alternate dimensions isn't as safe as visiting foreign times." Faced with looks of confusion from the locals, Doc explained, briefly, some of the side effects of such trips. Local Marty let out a low whistle and shook his head, clearly not envying them; Emmett simply looked disappointed.

"Well, that's disheartening to hear. I can understand why you're both eager to be on your way, then." He cast another look of longing at the front of the cab as he prepared to exit. "This almost makes me reconsider my decision ten years ago. I could rebuild the DeLorean again... I have all the parts, still, stored away."

The local Marty's mouth fell open a little with this surprise announcement. Doc smiled at his other self, understanding. "Just don't do it to simply go back to 1885 to save a schoolteacher from an untimely buckboard accident," he said, realizing even as the words were leaving his mouth that he was telling his other self more than he needed to know. "Never mind," he added quickly, before that could open up a new line of questions he really didn't want to answer. The possibility existed, of course, that in this reality, Clara never existed, or never met that fate on her own, or never came to Hill Valley in the first place. The possibilities, actually, were literally endless.

There was really no more to be said between the pairs. After handshakes were exchanged, and wishes of luck given to the visitors, Doc and Marty settled back in the machine. A flick of few switches and the R.V. illusion was replaced by invisibility. The scientist couldn't resist a grin at the dumbfounded looks from their counterparts outside at the transformation.

"So are we just taking off now?" Marty asked as the train rose up, standing near the back of the cab.

"I can't think of any reason to stay," Doc said. "I think we'd need the help of someone who can understand the basic mechanics of time travel and interdimensional travel -- and this version of myself lacks recent experience in one and any experience in the other. He never even saw the alternate reality created by Biff. I hesitate in dismantling anything in the machine without someone to help me put things back together. And, most importantly, a consultant to diagnose the problem."

Marty frowned. "Great," he said, turning his gaze to the gloomy world beyond the windows. "What are the odds of that happening?"

"Who knows? We've found other me's with those qualifications before; I suspect we will again. And who knows?" Doc added optimistically. "We may end up back home after this. Perhaps the fluke has run the course."

But even the inventor knew that was wishful thinking.


Chapter Four

Sunday, November 12, 1995
4:00 P.M.

At first glance, this world looked like home. Or, at least, the old farmhouse was once more filled with light and life. Doc sighed, relieved, but still very cautious. This caution sustained him when he headed for the back of the property and found that the railroad tracks to the cellar had once more vanished -- and, in fact, had never appeared to have been around in the first place. They were somewhere else once more.

Marty, who had opted to ride out the transition between worlds standing, frowned at the sight below. "Looks like the problem is still around," he said flatly. "Did you want to find your other self again and grill him?"

Doc sighed heavily, scanning the readouts. He scowled at them a moment, as they were all displaying perfectly normal readings. "We're right over the property," he said. "Might as well -- though I don't think he has a machine like this, not unless he's storing it somewhere else on the property. Regardless, I think I'd like his help looking things over on the train before we leave again. Might as well cross more things off the proverbial list of potential problems."

"What is the problem, Doc?" Marty asked, his voice strained with frustration.

The inventor remained calm. "I don't know, Marty. I'm trying to find that out and, once it's identified, I'll do my damnedest to fix it and get us home. I'm quite aware of the physical deadlines we've got to meet, and I miss our home, too."

The musician sighed, leaning against the wall. "I didn't mean to suggest you didn't," he said, his tone softer now. "I just... this is insane! I mean, we just go off on a five minute jump and the next thing that happens is we're reeling from weird world to weird world. It doesn't make any sense. In that other dimension, that problem was from a door. When we've done it before, it's been problems with the flux capacitor. And you're saying everything looks normal?" With the inventor's confirming nod, Marty shook his head hard. "It doesn't make any sense!"

"I agree," Doc said. "It's going against all logic I know of. But there must be something... maybe we're straining too hard to see it. Maybe it would be obvious to an impartial third party."

"If you even let them look over the time machine," Marty said as Doc began a descent to the yard behind his house. "You didn't let the other you see much of anything in the last world."

"I wasn't going to bring down the illusion on the train for more than a second," Doc said, aghast at the idea. "We were in too populated of an area. My property out here will provide us a better protection against any pedestrians looking over at the wrong moment."

Marty couldn't think of a way to disagree with that; Doc owned about fifty acres, most of it undeveloped woods out back of the house. Their closest neighbors were about a quarter of a mile down the road. They weren't very likely to have visitors drop by without warning -- unless it was Marty or Jennifer. "We're still gonna have to get wet," the musician warned as they touched down near the restored barn. Like every other world visited so far, this one had the exact same weather. That was one constant they could've done without.

"It can't be helped," Doc said, finding the idea of damp clothes almost preferable if it helped them solve the problem sooner than later. "We'll just have to deal with it. You ready to see what twists Fate has played in our lives here?"

Marty grimaced. "Not really, but I guess I'm gonna have to."

Doc kept the train in the invisible guise as they left the vehicle and crossed the lawn to the back door that led to the kitchen. He knocked on it firmly, not sure where the members of his family might be at this time of day in this world. Lord knew what changes had taken place.

There was the sound of scuffling from the other side of the door, and children's voices arguing. Doc frowned, finding that noise oddly familiar for a reason he couldn't quite grasp. Gasping, however, was something that he did immediately once the door was opened and both Jules and Verne stood on the threshold -- both looking terribly young.

They're kids! the inventor realized in shock. Jules looked like he was no older than nine, and Verne seemed to be six or seven. At home, his oldest son was due to turn twenty, come January, and Verne had turned eighteen just two weeks earlier. The boys hadn't even lived in the future when they were as young as they were now. What kind of twitch had brought about that sort of change?

At the sight of Marty and their father standing on the back porch, the eyes of each boy grew huge. Verne, who was holding the doorknob in one hand, slammed the door in their face just as Doc opened his mouth to breath the terse silence. The moment gave him a touch of deja vu, recalling something similar when they had landed in that alternate world last year and ended up knocking on the door of his counterpart's home.

Marty seemed to have the same realization. He smiled faintly at Doc as they were once more left alone on the porch. "Maybe kids of yours are like this no matter where we go," he said.

Doc sighed. "I hope not," he said, leaning forward to press an ear to the door in the hopes of figuring out what was going on. Jules and Verne were having a discussion, apparently, their voices sounding terribly young to the inventor.

"...seein' things. No way could Dad be in two places at once!"

"I seen the same thing that you seen, Jules," Verne said, his voice on the verge of panic. "It ain't right! We gotta go get Dad or Mom!"

"They'll probably just think we're playing a trick on 'em," Jules said.

The inventor raised his eyebrows at the words of his oldest. In his world, Jules had never talked quite like that, not even as a toddler. Since he had first begun to use full sentences, he had purposely spoken like an overly intelligent adult rather than a kid, only gradually losing those tendencies as he had hit middle school. No doubt because, having skipped a couple of grades, there were enough oddities about him to draw unwanted attention, and peer acceptance had become so critical in those years. Clearly, though, this version of his son didn't have such a bent.

"They might if it was Emmy or Clayton that seen it," Verne said to his brother. "But they'd know you wouldn't fib 'bout somethin' like this."

Doc flinched back in surprise at the mention of his other two children. His mind whirled with the information. But they weren't born when the boys were this old! he thought, thoroughly confused.

"Dad!" Jules bellowed from the other side of the door, loudly enough for even Marty to hear him. "Mom! Come 'ere, quick! Verne hurt himself!"

"What are you doin'?" Verne demanded in a hiss as Jules' cries echoed in the house.

"Gettin' them to come before those things on the porch go away. Open up the door again, Verne."

The door was abruptly tugged open again. Doc nearly fell into the house, most of his weight still pressed up against the door to listen through the wood. The boys stared up at him, goggle-eyed. "Maybe it's like that movie," Verne whispered loudly to his older brother, as if Marty and Doc weren't standing right there. "The one that was on the Sci-Fi Channel 'bout pod people."

At that moment there was a clatter of footsteps from the hallway, and a second later Clara burst through the kitchen door. "What on earth -- oh goodness!"

Clara's mouth gaped open just as her sons' had. She seemed at a loss of words for a moment, then tentative asked, "Emmett? But -- how....?" She blinked a few times, frowning, then shifted her gaze to Marty. "What's going on?" she asked him, clearing mistaking him for his counterpart. "Why are there two Emmetts?"

Marty responded to her question with a question of his own, which might've been the best thing to do, under the circumstances. "Where's Doc?"

That answer was provided a second later as this world's Emmett Brown arrived on the scene, looking both concerned and irritated. "What happened this time, Verne?" he began. Upon seeing a clone of himself standing on the back porch, his eyes widened. "Great Scott!" he gasped, staggering back a couple of feet. Emmett nearly tripped over a kitchen chair in his haste to get away, then -- rather than pushing the object out of the way -- braced his hands on the back of the seat and sat down in it, quickly.

Doc had a moment where he wasn't quite sure how to begin. In the seconds of silence, Clara took over. "Boys, I think you'd both better go upstairs," she said.

"Why?" Jules and Verne asked, almost simultaneously.

"I'd like you to check on your sister and brother and make sure you didn't wake them from their naps with your shouting." When neither boy moved, she headed over and physically prodded them away from the door. "Come along, now...."

They clearly didn't want to leave. Clara had to escort them from the room. Once she and the kids were gone and the kitchen door had swung shut at her back, Emmett seemed to get a hold of himself. He stood and pointed to the barn outside the still-open door. "Why don't we head out there?" he suggested, still a bit pale from the shock. "I would've expected you to know better than to come directly to the door in broad daylight."

Marty looked baffled, and the visiting scientist felt just as confused. "Do you know who we are?" Doc asked as they left the house and headed for the barn.

"Some version of myself from the future, I'm assuming," Emmett said, lowering his head against the rain. He had been in such a haste to leave the house that he hadn't grabbed anything for protection against the elements. "You look a touch older than I."

The visitors opted to let him go on thinking that until they were within the walls of the barn. Doc noticed immediately that it was laid out quite differently than the one in his home. In particular, there was no automobile time machine at all that he could see. He supposed it was possible that such a thing might have hidden behind a holographic illusion -- if not for the tables that were set up against the double doors, loaded down with stuff. Too loaded down to move every time someone wanted to leave. What's more, those doors had clearly not been opened for a long time, not if the cobwebs hanging around the hinges were any indication.

"We're not from the future," Doc told his counterpart once they were inside and the door was closed. Emmett turned around in surprise at this news. "And we're not from the past, either. We're from... well, an alternate reality. A parallel dimension. Marty and I were taking a quick trip to do a trial run on a new improvement I made to the time machine, and since then we've been bouncing around in different realities."

Emmett's eyes widened a moment as this sunk in. "A parallel world," he breathed, instantly captivated. "Fascinating! And I'm to assume in this world that the DeLorean still exists?"

Doc half shrugged. "The first one was destroyed by a train when Marty returned to 1985 from 1885. The second one was destroyed in an accident in the future about four years ago. We actually arrived here in the steam train I converted to a time machine -- and which, obviously, you don't have here."

Emmett blinked, surprised by this. "A steam train?" he echoed. "Where on earth is it?"

Doc waved a hand at the outside world beyond the windows. "On the back lawn, under a holographic disguise. I can show it to you later, because I'd actually like your help with something."

"With your time machine?" Emmett asked. When his visiting counterpart nodded, the local scientist winced and turned away, as if too ashamed to look himself in the eye any longer. "I -- I don't know if I can...."

"Why not?" Marty asked, speaking up for the first time. "It's obvious you've dealt with time machines before, since Clara's here and everything."

"Yes," Emmett agreed, his back to the visitors to look outside -- perhaps in the false hope of catching a glimpse of the train. "But since the DeLorean was destroyed when Clara came to 1985 with Marty and I, I've never seen the point in telling our kids about their mother's past -- or those particular adventures. And I've never built another time machine -- not after all the trouble it caused. The kids don't know anything about my inventing a time machine, and Clara and I would prefer to keep it that way. That's why I couldn't believe that I -- you -- would be so bold as to stroll up to the door like you did," he added, almost as an apology for his spiriting them away so quickly.

Doc and Marty looked at each other at this new twist, the inventor reflecting rather ruefully over his muttered wish just a short time ago, about how easier things would've been if that had happened to him. Maybe that's the key, he thought. Idle speculation about choices in life could influence our destination.... It was a tempting belief, but one that he doubted would hold up. Likely it was simply one hell of a coincidence.

"Clara came back to the future with you?" Marty asked Emmett. "How'd that happen? Where we're from, she slapped Doc when he told her he was from the future and didn't believe him until we were already on our way. Doc had to go back to the train to save her life, and I ended up going to the future alone. That's why he had to build a time machine out of a train, to move back home."

Emmett looked intrigued with the changes. "Clara didn't believe me at first, either, and she caught up with us after we had already hijacked the locomotive. But we both made it to the DeLorean with about thirty seconds to spare. We cut it much closer evacuating the car when the diesel plowed into it almost as soon as we came back. Fortunately, I had a bit of forewarning of that happening."

"How?" Marty asked. "The train whistle? Sure wasn't enough warning for me...."

Doc tried to catch the eye of his other self, but Emmett didn't notice, looking once more outside. "No. I'd purposely timed our arrival at that location so the time machine would be destroyed by the train. I was familiar with the rail schedule and I knew that the diesel would do a thorough job and I wouldn't be able to salvage anything in the wreck." He smiled once, faintly, the expression wistful. "It's a rather good thing I had forewarning, too, or I suspect at least one of us would've been injured. Three grown adults evacuating a two door, two seater sports car isn't exactly an immediate process."

Doc knew what was coming. He glanced at Marty, who was frowning over this news, his eyes narrowed in thought. Things seemed to click into place for him in seconds, more than a decade after the incident. He turned his eyes to his friend, looking hurt.

"Doc, did you plan for that to happen with the DeLorean?"

The inventor couldn't lie; he had a feeling that even if he did, Marty wouldn't buy it. "Yes," he admitted softly.

The musician nodded once, pressing his lips together in a thin line. Doc expected more questions, then, but Marty either didn't have any or perhaps knew that the time wasn't the best for that sort of thing. He let the subject drop, and Doc was grateful, though he had to wonder if and when it would come up again.

"What was it you wanted my help with on your machine?" Emmett asked, turning back to look at his slightly older counterpart.

"A second opinion, essentially," Doc said. "We're not quite sure why the machine is sending us to these different worlds, and all the checks I've done on the equipment have so far come clean; there's no sign of a malfunction. I haven't yet had the chance to look the train over, externally, but if you'd like to help me out on that, I can make sure that your family won't have to watch you do it." At Emmett's puzzled look, the visiting scientist clarified, "I can expand the region of the HIS -- Holography Imaging System -- so that it extends a few feet around the machine, allowing us to walk around it without anyone the wiser."

Emmett rubbed his chin, thoughtful. "A holographic system," he muttered. "Fascinating. I'd like to help," he added, "if you could set it up in such a way that the kids wouldn't come across it, or see either of you." He sighed, heavily. "I don't know how I'm gonna explain things to Jules and Verne about what they saw earlier without sounding like an idiot.... I almost wish Emily and Clayton would've answered the door -- a five and three-year-old would probably swallow excuses of overactive imaginations or dreams, but not a seven and nine-year-old...."

"Why are they so young?" Marty asked. He paused a moment, then answered his own question, "Well, I guess they would be if you hadn't spent eleven years in the past and all that...."

Emmett looked at him curiously, then turned his eyes to Doc. "You spent eleven years in the eighteen hundreds?" he asked. With the inventor's confirming nod, the local let out a low whistle. "And that didn't change history?"

"Not so far as I've been able to tell," Doc said. Something new occurred to him. "What on earth possessed you to purchase this place?" he asked. "In my world, Clara and I came to live here because we had resided in the house from 1888 on, shortly after Verne was born."

Emmett shrugged as he headed over to a desk in the corner of the room. A glance up, and Doc saw that his counterpart hadn't yet converted the loft into a study. Well, maybe that was still in the house; his Jules and Verne had shared a room until the eldest was twelve, and it was possible that they would do so in this reality, too. "It was big, and it was cheap," he said in answer to his counterpart's question. "I couldn't very well keep living in the garage on JFK with Clara. As soon as I could, I sold it and chose this place for the privacy and to give Clara some distance from the almost overwhelming changes to Hill Valley. It also kept her busy when we were restoring it, though I wasn't too happy that she was painting and wallpapering throughout the pregnancy with Jules."

The local inventor changed the subject with the same abruptness as the visitor. "How long would it take you to set things up in your machine to shield us from view? Marty and Jennifer are coming over for dinner tonight, and I'd prefer to have this business out of the way before they arrive."

Marty frowned. "I can't check out my counterpart here?" He half sighed, half shrugged. "I guess that doesn't really matter.... He's not an ass, is he?"

Emmett looked surprised by the question. "No. I suspect he might be very much like you, from what I've observed since your arrival, unless our worlds are more different than I know."

"He's not divorced?"

The local seemed shocked by this question. "No -- are you?"

Marty shook his head. "I saw that happen in one world, though," he explained. "I just wanted to make sure that history didn't repeat itself."

Emmett blinked at the explanation, but said nothing.

"It shouldn't take more than a few minutes to expand the illusion several feet around the machine's perimeter," Doc told his counterpart, answering the question he had asked a moment ago. "As for the exploration, that might depend -- and we'll probably get a little wet, since the HIS isn't protection against meteorological elements."

"I can find something for that," Emmett promised. "Let me run to the house for a moment to get some rain gear, let Clara know a bit about what's going on, and make sure the kids aren't watching the backyard. Wait here."

He left in a hurry, obviously uncomfortable at leaving the guests alone for a few minutes. The door had hardly clicked shut before Marty shook his head. "I don't believe it," he muttered. Doc thought it was in regards to his counterpart until his friend added, rather bitterly, " Why didn't you ever say anything to me, in the last ten years, about the DeLorean being wrecked?"

"I -- well, the subject never came up before," the inventor said, honest. "I wasn't trying to keep this information from you, Marty. If you had asked me about it, I would have told you the truth."

"Why was it up to me to ask? Why didn't you tell it to me the night before we left? Christ, Doc, I could've been killed! I still have nightmares about being stuck on the tracks in the car with that train red-lining it straight for me."

"I hadn't intended to stay in 1885," Doc said. "If things had gone according to the plan, I would've been in the DeLorean with you at the time, and I would've told you then."

Marty frowned, hurt. "But why didn't you mention it before?"

The inventor could've lied and told the musician he had forgotten, but the way Marty was looking at him in that moment, Doc knew he would see through the excuse and simply be hurt more by it. "I didn't want you to talk me out of it," he admitted softly, picking up a framed photo from one of the worktables. His counterpart was posing with Clara in what seemed to be a wedding photograph from 1985. Marty and Jennifer stood on the sidelines, bookending the couple, no doubt witnesses to their nuptials. Based on the background, Doc guessed this world's Emmett and Clara had married in the courthouse. Clara was wearing a modest, contemporary white dress and Emmett a suit and tie. The teenage couple was wearing clothes that were a bit nicer than casual, everyday wear; Jennifer was clad in a skirt and blouse, and Marty in black slacks and a tucked in, button down shirt. It looked as if it was a basic, simple affair, probably done in a hurry to allow Clara to move in with Emmett without the town gossips thoroughly sullying her reputation -- not that a formal marriage probably helped at all in that respect. It was bad enough when he moved back to the future with a wife and two children and a cover story about a long distance, secret marriage; he had a feeling that it wouldn't be much better with a sudden marriage to a mysterious newcomer from out of time.

"Why would you think I'd talk you out of it?" Marty asked, not noticing Doc's interest in the photograph. "I mean, I'd definitely try to convince you that totaling the DeLorean with a train immediately after returning from 1885 was a bad idea, but I knew you wanted to destroy the machine when we came home. I didn't see any problem with it, personally. You didn't have to leave me in the dark, Doc -- and not for ten years."

"It was an isolated incident, Marty, and rest assured if it had been the foremost thing on my mind when I saw you almost ten years later at the wreck site, I would have told you." Doc set the picture back down, his eyes drawn to a few other color snapshots hung on the wall, photos of the kids in various stages of age and growth. It was odd; they didn't have very many photographs of Jules and Verne as small children, certainly none in full color. Looking at them spread out, now, Doc felt almost dizzy seeing what-could-have-been.

"What else have you been not telling me over the years?" the musician asked softly, almost as if he was muttering it to himself.

Doc's patience on the matter was almost worn out. "Nothing that I can think of right now that is either relevant or applicable," he said. "Really, Marty, let it go. It was more than ten years ago. You weren't hurt in the collision, everything worked out as I planned... except for my being left behind. We've got far more important things to worry about right now."

The scientist wasn't sure if his words had an effect or not, but Marty did stop talking about it. And not a moment too soon; Emmett returned just sixty seconds later, clad in a hooded raincoat with a couple more draped over one arm, and umbrellas gathered under the other one. "The kids are distracted," he announced, a little out of breath. "Clara's keeping a careful eye on them to make sure none of 'em go near the back windows. Let's go."

As Doc had promised, it was quick work to widen the HIS's illusion to provide adequate cover for an external inspection. Like the Emmett in the world before this, Doc's counterpart was delighted by his first glimpse of the train in all its whimsical wonder. The scientists walked around it a few times, the first couple of go-rounds a time for Doc to point out the various mechanisms and explain what they were or how he had managed to cobble them together in the Nineteenth Century. Emmett asked a lot of questions, showing a great interest in the answers.

When he had provided all the information the slightly younger inventor had requested, Doc made a careful inspection of everything from the flux capacitor -- by all appearances in perfect, undamaged, working order -- to the glass in the windows, searching for any flaw or crack in the system. Anything that might explain the problems the machine was having. Emmett, for his part, queried the visitor about any uncertainties he had over the appearance of something, drawing Doc's attention to a few things he hadn't noticed but, sadly, were in normal order. Marty hung back, saying little, and finally opted to go into the cab and look at things in there.

While they worked, the inventors asked each other questions about their lives in each world. Emmett seemed just as surprised by the answers Doc gave as the visitor felt by the ones the local had. In this world, Emmett and Clara had married on November 5, 1985 in a quick ceremony at the courthouse, just as Doc had thought. Jules had been born in October 1986, and Verne in December 1987. Emily followed in January 1990, and Clayton in April 1992. Not a one of the kids' birthdates matched their counterparts, yet the matter did make some sense; without a fear of altering history, Emmett and Clara had been considerably more relaxed over the idea of starting a family. In fact, Emmett confessed, Clara suspected she was expecting yet again, a matter that was to be confirmed or denied the following day with a visit to the doctor. Four kids under the age of ten was bad enough, but with the idea of five, Doc found himself envying his counterpart's life less and less. And that was before the issue of finances came up.

Without the luxury of a time machine to conduct visits to the future, Emmett had had to find work immediately upon returning home from 1885 to support his growing family -- the selling of his property on JFK Drive had provided just enough money for the purchase of the old home and subsequent restoration -- and had managed to do a variety of odd jobs over the years, from computer consulting, to teaching at the community college, to repairing of electronics. It wasn't very different at all from the same work Doc had done in the years he had been building the DeLorean, to finance day to day living. But he was stunned to hear that Clara worked part-time herself, at a sewing shop in downtown Hill Valley. Money was considerably tighter for the Browns of this world. They had only one car, an aging mini van, for the family; Emmett's step van was strictly for his business work. When Doc explained what he was doing for a living now -- creating and patenting inventions to success and sale -- the local sighed wistfully.

"Maybe someday, when the kids are older, I can spend more time doing that," he said. "It's impossible right now, unless I stop sleeping. As is, the weekends are about the only times I can go out there and work," he added, indicating the lab.

Aside from the very obvious differences in their lives since September 7, 1885, both inventors found their lives were more or less identical in other notable ways. They shared the same birthdate, the same parents, the same common interests and themes and friendships. Once in a while something would come up differently -- Emmett, unlike Doc, had met Marty because the kid had actually knocked on his door on a dare, been caught, and gotten hurt in his attempt to escape, requiring some first aid from the inventor -- but the differences were comparatively minor when compared to a few other worlds Doc had seen.

Once the external inspection was complete, almost an hour after its beginning, Doc joined Marty in the cab with his counterpart and allowed the local a tour of that area. In minutes, it became clear to all that they should have done this part first; their rain-saturated parkas dripped puddles on the floor, a matter that simply made Doc all the more nervous, knowing what could happen when electronics and water mixed. The problem was solved by stripping the jackets off at the back of the cab and draping them over the seats to dry out there. Doc pointed out all the parts surrounding the boiler at the front, explaining briefly what each did. Emmett nodded and smiled and took it all in as eagerly as he had the lecture outside.

Unfortunately, they didn't get very far with things before the local inventor's pocket started to beep.

"My pager," Emmett said, reaching to fish it out of his shirt pocket. "I asked Clara to page me when she needed me back in the house." The scientist glanced at the display and nodded once. "I'm afraid I've got to go now. The McFlys should be here any minute, and I think it might be better if they're unaware of your visit."

Doc glanced outside, noticing how dark it had gotten. A look at the current time display told him it was a quarter 'til six, though his watch told him it was much later, after eight. Only natural, considering that the timepieces not wired into the time circuits hadn't been reset since their original departure from home. The watches were displaying the time of day that their bodies were thinking it was, just as watches not reset during a cross country flight would proclaim the time in the old time zone.

"Why don't you want them to know about it?" Marty asked, his tone curious. "Are you afraid they'll freak out?"

"Not necessarily," Emmett said. "Though that's always possible, considering how skittish the mere mention of time travel makes Jennifer, after her bad experience in 2015. I'm more concerned that they -- well, Marty -- might want to meet you both, and having us trudging in and out of the house on a night like this would only arouse the kids' curiosity. I am sorry," he added to the both of them, sincerely. "I do wish I could be a better host to you both, but--"

"I understand," Doc said. "Go back to your family, and thanks for the help you have provided. I don't really know much more than I did when we arrived, but I suppose that alone has told me something."

Emmett nodded, pulling on his parka once more and gathering up the ones he had loaned to the visitors. "You've given me something to think about, at least," he said. "I almost wish I had the finances to build another machine, now.... Maybe someday." He smiled faintly, then held his hand out. "Good luck. I hope you get back to where you belong."

"Me too," Doc said, shaking his counterpart's hand. "I think I'll run another check on the programs before leaving, if that's all right. You shouldn't see anything, and so long as no one goes outside as we take off, you shouldn't hear anything, either."

"Thanks." He bid goodbye to Marty, standing out of the way of the two inventors, then left the cab to run back to the house. Doc sighed as he left, closing the door against the damp wind that was beginning to pick up.

"I suppose it was too good to be true that we'd figure the problem out now," he half muttered.

"You didn't see anything outside, Doc?" Marty asked.

"Nothing that wasn't as it should've been. I'm going to try another check of the circuits and programs before we leave. Maybe something will finally turn up there."

Doc ran the checks, once, twice, four times. He spent more than an hour examining the information, trying a new check on something else, trying old checks in new ways. Nothing was displaying anything the least bit abnormal. He finally snapped the laptop shut with a rather quick, angry gesture. The sound caused Marty, who had been killing time writing something -- probably songs -- on some scrap paper that had been floating around in the cab, to look up, startled, from his seat on the floor.

"What's wrong?" he asked, then smiled humorlessly at his query. "Stupid question, huh? Are we gonna take off now?" While Doc frowned, deeply thoughtful, the musician added, "And I hate to bug you about this, but do you think we could get something to eat wherever we end up next? My body thinks it's almost ten o' clock, now, and I haven't had anything since lunch."

The mention of food cut through Doc's thoughtful haze, causing his stomach to growl softly -- and provided an excellent explanation for his increasing frustration. Hunger and exhaustion tended to make one overlook the obvious, when it came to problems, and react much worse to stressful situations when those cropped up. If this wasn't a time of stress, the inventor had no idea what was. And he hadn't had anything to eat since probably the same time Marty had.

"Sure," he agreed, tugging the cord out of the laptop's back. "There's nothing really left for us here, and nothing I can see that's still causing the damned problem. We might as well see what's next."


Chapter Five

Sunday, November 12, 1995
6:00 P.M.

The world from the air, viewed from the cab of the train, had thus far appeared more or less the same in each dimension the travelers had visited. In some ways this had surprised Marty, who had heard Doc go on about how there were potentially billions upon billions of variations and alternate realities floating about somewhere. But he hadn't really given that any thought at all -- until they came into a place that screamed "Different!" from the get-go.

The musician had become rather lax about sitting down and buckling up during the last couple of stops, having considerably heavier things on his mind than his own personal safety. He had been watching the speed gauge, mounted next to the window to the right of the analog display, when the time machine reached eighty-eight and entered the new dimension. Marty had started to turn his head to the windows, for a look at what new horror there was to be faced, when Doc let out a kind of half-scream and twisted the steering to the left. Hard. Completely unprepared for the movement, the musician was tossed into the window, the side of his head slamming hard enough against the glass to bring stars to his eyes -- and then some.

He either blinked or blacked out for a second; when he regained his sight and his wits, he was lying on his side on the hard metal floor and Doc was still completely engaged with steering. Marty winced at the already-throbbing lump on his head, sitting up and leaning against the wall. Standing up at that moment seemed to be a bad idea, as the time machine took another sharp turn and dropped a few feet. The move, coupled with his skull-rattling headache, made Marty's stomach turn inside out, and he was suddenly glad he hadn't had anything to eat in hours.

"What's the deal, Doc?" he moaned from the floor, tentatively rubbing the spot where he had collided with the window. "Are you tryin' to kill me or something?"

The inventor didn't answer, having apparently not heard Marty's question. The musician had to wonder if Doc was even aware that he had nearly sent his friend through the window with the turbulence. Whatever was going on, the scientist appeared to be in quite a hurry to land the train; it groaned and bucked a bit from the quick movements and odd angles that he was putting it through.

Curious enough about what was going on to temporarily ignore the headache, Marty pulled himself to his feet. The cab tilted around him for a moment -- not from the physical turbulence -- and he had to lean against the wall before he turned his eyes to the outside world. His jaw fell open at what he saw.

The world below was completely changed. Oh, the basic landscape was the same, but that was about it. The buildings looked completely different than anything he'd seen before -- sleek, almost Jetson-like in appearance, elevated off the ground on thick stilts and stretching many stories into to the sky. It didn't strike Marty as particularly smart, considering Northern California's tendency to earthquakes from time to time. Vehicles that looked like crosses between the cars of the '50's and '60's, and the ones that were more recent back home, chugged both through the sky and on the ground.

Mounted on the rears of these cars was what almost looked like solar panels. The roofs of all the buildings were covered with these things, too; it seemed to be some source of energy or power because there wasn't a trace of pollution in the air that Marty could see. Even the weather seemed to have turned with this; the rain was gone, having been left behind in another dimension, and the sky above was clear and scattered with constellations that had never before looked so bright to Marty, except in past times before fossil fuels.

"Are we in the future?" Marty asked when he had found his voice again. "Is the machine now screwing us in that way?" Just the idea made him want to slide back down to the floor. Bad enough they were bouncing around aimlessly to different worlds; adding different times to the mix made him want to curl up and give in right there.

"No," Doc said eventually, still thoroughly preoccupied with the task of maneuvering the train in the air. Marty could suddenly understand why he was so eager to get it on the ground. It would only make things way worse if one of those flying vehicles collided with the invisible time machine. "It's still 1995. We've clearly landed somewhere that has evolved considerably differently from our home and some of the other worlds."

Closer to the ground, now, Marty could pick out pedestrians below, illuminated by the streetlights. Their clothes looked sort of like something in those old film reels on future fashions, as envisioned in the 1940's or 1950's. "You got that right," he agreed softly, rubbing his forehead as his headache worsened from this twist of fate. Did this mean that they were getting progressively more screwed, in terms of getting farther from their home, not closer?

Marty wasn't given the chance to ask that question until the inventor touched down in what appeared to be a large, wooded park where the Lone Pine Mall was in their home world. Once the train was settled, Doc let out a long, noisy sigh, leaning against the side of the keyboard for a moment. He looked a little pale in the dim lights of the cabin, and Marty really didn't blame him. He was feeling a little weak-kneed himself.

"Should we just leave right now, and try our luck somewhere else?" Marty asked.

Doc glanced outside, at the dark shadows beyond the windows. "It's tempting," he admitted. "But we saw in just a glance how advanced the technology is here. It's quite possible there could be something here to help us figure out how or why the machine is malfunctioning."

"I guess," Marty said, rubbing the bump on his head again and wishing it would stop its sickening throb. Doc noticed what he was doing, and the grimace that crossed the musician's face, and suddenly seemed to realize that the younger man hadn't come away unscathed from the acrobatics in the air.

"Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself?"

Marty let his hand drop to his side. "It's just a bump; you tossed me into the window when we came in."

Doc took a step forward, as if he was going to check it out himself, but Marty shook his head once, slowly, wincing at the pain that came from the move, and held up his hands. "It's nothing. I've just got a headache now, but it'll go away. What's the plan now?"

The change of subject worked beautifully. "Now? Well, the usual, I suppose. See if a me or you exists here and perhaps look them up unless we can glean what we need in a less confrontational way."

Marty figured as much.

Doc didn't want to fly the train around and risk a collision, and after his little accident, the musician wasn't too keen on that idea himself. So after securing things in the cab, the visitors left the train behind and headed off in a direction that Doc promised would cause them to meet up with one of the main roads. The hike out of the trees to the road wasn't too far -- maybe a quarter mile. When they emerged from the protection of the foliage, and started to see other people, they also got an even better idea on how completely different this place was.

Virtually every single person they saw stopped dead in their tracks for a moment to gawk at the time travelers. Marty was almost used to that reaction when visiting a foreign time, but it was a bit disconcerting knowing that this was supposed to be 1995. He didn't think he'd seen anyone act quite like that in other dimensions he'd checked out. The musician tried to pretend nothing was amiss, but it was hard for him to resist gawking right back. The clothes these people were wearing were really weird -- tight-fitting and modest at the same time -- and the hairstyles looked like the Eighties met the Sixties or something.

Doc didn't bat an eye at what he took in, projecting an air of calm indifference. They managed to find a phone booth after a bit of a search, and a few queries to the locals. One of the people Doc politely stopped, a young teenage girl, looked like she wanted to pass out when she glanced at Marty, doing a double take and letting out an excited squeal.

"Ohmigawd!" she gasped. "Ohmigawd, Marty McFly? I don't believe it!"

Marty had no idea how to handle that kind of reaction. "Ah, yeah..." he managed, glancing at Doc uncertainly.

The scientist looked curious. "You know of him, I take it," he said, nodding to the musician.

The teen nodded so hard her weird star-shaped earrings almost flew off. "Oh yeah! Who doesn't? Rolling Stone said he totally revolutionized the music industry!" She slid her eyes back over to Marty and grinned at him slyly. "My parents don't get it, but I totally do."

Ten years ago, hearing something like this would've made Marty's year. Now, it made him feel slightly nauseated -- unless it was the bump on his head and a beyond empty stomach that was getting to him. Fortunately, Doc was quick to steer the conversation back to what he wanted -- the location of Sugar Plum Lane, a street name that was completely unfamiliar to both the visitors, and which one of the pedestrians had mentioned as the location of a phone booth. The teenager rattled off some directions, then gave Marty a final lingering glance before continuing on her way. "Good luck with your concert tonight," she added.

Marty blinked. "Concert?" he echoed, looking at Doc. "I have a concert tonight?" he added when the girl had gone out of earshot.

"Your counterpart apparently does," Doc said, unruffled. "And I think the sooner we find that phone booth, the better for the both of us."

They found it a few minutes later, though it didn't really look much like the phone booths Marty was used to. It sort of looked more like the ones he saw in the future, with the video screens -- just a bit more antiquated, like that strange mix of the future-meets-the-'50's look that everything else had. The musician noticed a poster taped to the side of the booth, on the outside, and did a double take when he saw his own name on the headline.

ONE weekend ONLY!

THREE concerts!

See world famous musician MARTY MCFLY!

Creator of ROCK 'N ROLL!

November 10, 11, 12, 8:30 P.M., at the NEWLY RESTORED ORPHEUM THEATER!

"Oh my God!" he muttered, leaning in close for a look at the sun-faded picture on the poster. It looked like him, more or less -- "more or less" being that he wore his hair a little differently in probably the current style of the moment, and his clothes were also sort of like the current styles, a kind of skintight jumpsuit with more denim and leather to it.

His words were almost echoed simultaneously by Doc, from inside the phone booth. Marty looked around the corner of the doorway. "You're not gonna believe this, Doc," he said.

The inventor's mouth was drawn into a rather bemused line. "Oh no? Look at this." He pointed to what looked like a logo on the top corner of the video screen in the booth. It looked vaguely familiar to Marty, but it wasn't until he leaned in that he was actually able to read it.

"E. Brown Enterprises," he said aloud. He blinked and looked at Doc. "You mean... your other self did this?"

"Apparently so. And he must be quite successful if something he created is literally on every street corner." Doc glanced down at the phone book, which looked twice as thick as the ones Marty was used to seeing. It also looked like it was mounted into the small structure, under the screen's numeric keypad. Doc reached out to turn the page, but it resisted his touch, like it was made of metal or something. "Odd," he muttered. "How am I supposed to look up Emmett Brown...?"

Both visitors jumped as the book's pages suddenly started turning by themselves, stopping near the beginning of the book on the page with the listings for all the Browns in the city. Marty chuckled nervously. "You don't know your own inventions here, huh?"

"Different world, different ideas, different results," Doc said. He glanced down at the pages and located his name, reading it aloud for Marty's benefit. "Brown, Emmett L., 788 W. Spruce, 456-3489." The inventor sighed. "Yet another unfamiliar address to me...."

"Where am I?" Marty asked.

Doc took his hands away from the book. "McFly," he said aloud, to it. "Martin."

The book paused a moment, then turned the pages to the midsection of the book. Doc blinked in surprise as he scanned the list. "Interesting," he said after a moment.

"What?"

"It appears that your mother is named Eileen, here... or else your father married someone else."

"What?!"

Doc scooted aside and let Marty have a look at the listing. McFly, George & Eileen, 5656 SW Ivy Glenn Ln, 643 -7672. "No way," the musician muttered aloud. "I seem to look the same here... so how could I have a different mom, then?"

"You might not," Doc assured him. "Remember, Jennifer had a different name in a different dimension; the same thing might have happened to your mother, too."

"Maybe," Marty said, skeptical. Remembering why they were looking for McFlys in the first place, he glanced down to find his name -- but it wasn't there. Oddly enough, it didn't surprise the musician.

"That makes sense," he had to admit when Doc made a sound of clear surprise. "Check this out."

Marty stepped out of the booth and ripped the poster off the outside wall. Doc glanced at it, raising his eyebrows in surprise. "It would appear we've both achieved a degree of fame here," he said. "How amusing -- and odd."

For the first time since they started popping into different places, Marty found himself genuinely curious about the things here. "Let's check this concert out," he said. "I'd love to see what this version of myself is doing with music."

Doc didn't look to eager. "I don't know if that's a particularly good idea, Marty...."

"Why not? It's not like we can find out where my other self lives. We know he'll be there, at the concert, and we can quiz him on what the hell's made this world so different."

"We could also simply visit my other self for that information, and I doubt he'll be half as busy as the local Marty."

The musician frowned, irritated. "Why can't we see the concert? If the me of this place is so famous -- and credited for inventing rock 'n roll -- it could be important to know all that stuff."

The inventor looked at him, one corner of his mouth twitching up. "You just want to see what it's like," he said, sounding amused.

Marty didn't see what was so bad about that. "Yeah, I do," he admitted, blunt. "If we're gonna go through the hell of visiting all these twisted worlds, we might as well do something interesting once in a while. And this is interesting to me, Doc. It's the first thing that's been really interesting to me since this entire mess started."

Doc stared at him a moment, clearly thinking. "Where's the concert?" he asked.

Marty looked at the poster in hand. "'The newly restored Orpheum Theater,'" he quoted.

The scientist took the poster from Marty's hand and studied it a moment. He sighed. "I have no idea where that is," he said. "This entire town seems to be laid out differently, with different street names and businesses and buildings."

"There's usually maps in the phone books," the musician said, nodding to the fat book. "We could check that out, or maybe just go to a gas station and see if they have one."

Fortunately, the phone book did indeed have a map. Unfortunately, there was absolutely no way that they were going to be able to tear it out; the pages seemed to be bolted into the spine of the book. It definitely looked like some twist of fate -- or, twists of fate -- had conspired to lay out the town differently. The Orpheum Theater was apparently in the town square, which was about two miles from their current location. But the name of the street had inexplicably changed from First Street to Monroe Avenue. The Emmett Brown of this world, however, lived five miles away, in the hills, and going into town would actually bring them closer to him, not further away. With that argument, Doc really couldn't think of a way to avoid stopping by the Orpheum.

They ended up walking the distance, uncertain of bus schedules and without any of the local currency for a taxi. They didn't pass many cars on the road -- most of the traffic seemed to have relocated in the air -- but there were many, many people on the streets, a fact that surprised Marty, considering it was late fall, after dark, and a Sunday night.

By the time they reached the center of town, Marty had almost gotten used to the weird fashions that everyone had on -- or else he didn't really notice them anymore. In fact, he didn't notice much of anything except a sensation that felt distinctly like butterflies in the base of his stomach. Nerves. And he knew it had to do with his other self, since the fluttery sensation got worse the closer they got to the theater.

Weird, he thought. Maybe it's just 'cause I haven't had anything to eat almost all day....

They stopped a block away from the theater -- by the sheer shock of what had become of their town in this world. The town square was still present, but the courthouse was a completely different piece of architecture that looked all streamlined and modern in the quasi-future style of this world. There was a clock near the top of it, but it was digital and it was displaying the current time of 7:39 P.M. Different shops were in different locations around the park that had sprung up in the center of the square -- similar to the way it would be in 2015, but with more trees.

The Orpheum seemed to have taken the place of the Essex theater, near the soda shop-turned-aerobics-studio-turned-arcade-turned-coffee-shop that would someday be the sight of the Cafe 80's. Currently, it boasted a sign in the window telling people it was "Wilson's Cafe." (Marty wondered: Had Goldie Wilson taken over it in this world?) It looked like it was doing good business at this hour of the night, and no wonder; people had already lined up halfway around the block to get into the concert. It looked like the popular ticket in town.

"How do you expect to get in?" Doc asked as they looked at the crowd from the shadows of an alleyway, next to a shop that sold records and stereo equipment. The fact that it didn't exist in their world wasn't what made Marty's jaw drop -- it was the fact that it actually sold honest-to-God vinyl records, brand new, when they had become all but extinct at home. And there was the additional fact that someone had put an almost-lifesize cardboard cutout of him in the window, playing guitar, with a sign advertising: "Monday ONLY! Marty McFly Signs Latest Record! Be There or Be SQUARE!"

It was starting to get a little embarrassing.

"I don't know," the musician said as he tore his eyes away from the record store. "If everyone thinks I'm me, then I could probably just get in the back way."

That was exactly what he was able to do. The bouncers at the back door of the theater let him in without a problem, though one remarked on his apparently odd hairstyle and clothes. Marty just smiled and didn't say a word, figuring that might be the safest bet. What blew his mind, though, was the reaction the two overmuscled men gave Doc.

"Hey, Professor!" one of them said, smiling. "How goes it? Love your new home entertainment system -- pristine sound! It's like you're surrounded. What do you call it? Brown Sound?"

The inventor blinked, baffled, clearly at a loss on how to answer that question. "Ah... thanks," he settled on, hurrying into the theater with Marty. The musician didn't waste any time once the door was closed behind them.

"Professor," he said, incredulous. "Since when do people call you that? Weren't you always a doctor? I mean, when you were teaching and all that?"

"It's possible the me of this world never achieved the same degree of education I did," Doc said, looking a bit flustered from the recognition outside. "Or else I actually had that man out there as one of my students, and he simply thought of me as his professor, not as a doctor. It's happened to me before."

Marty could kind of see that. When he was in college, he'd had courses go by where he didn't even know his professor's last name by the time the finals came around, let alone if they were a doctor of whatever or not. Unless they were a real arrogant sort, it usually didn't matter if the students called them Professor instead of Doctor. They would respond to both.

There was a dark, brief hallway, at the end of which was a door that was ajar. Voices, loud voices, were coming from that direction. Marty started to creep towards it, recognizing his own name uttered by someone who sounded vaguely like Jennifer.

"...This is getting ridiculous, Marty! You gotta stop doing this! You're in your hometown, now, and people'll talk. You're like a hero to them!"

"Aw, Suzy, they won't notice anything. Nada damn thing. And I could perform in my sleep -- you know that."

Two things occurred to Marty in hearing just those brief snatches of conversation. One -- Jennifer's name had seemingly, inexplicably, revoked once more to Susan, or Suzy. And two -- his counterpart's words sounded a little sloshed. Like he'd had a beer -- or four. Marty's steps quickened to the door, until he was able to peer into the room through the three-inch crack.

Suzy -- it just seemed easier to think of her that way -- was standing next to the foot of a couch. She looked like her counterpart of the same name in the world where she was married to a music teacher -- except her hair was slicked up and back into a kind of tight fitted bun that rested on the top of her head. A few strands hung down around her cheeks, softly curled. Her clothes were equally bizarre -- a torn off-the-shoulder sweater in a sticky pink color, and baggy brown pants with fringe and beads on the cuffs. Her hands were currently placed on her hips, nails long and manicured, painted blue. Her face -- with a bit too much make up on it, in Marty's opinion -- was currently directing a frown at the Marty McFly of this world, sprawled on the couch with a guitar across his lap and a bottle of what looked like Corona in hand.

Marty couldn't quite see his counterpart's face from where he stood; it was just out of sight. It looked like Local Marty was wearing a white tank top, black leather pants, and shiny black dress shoes. On a coffee table, before the couch, the musician spotted a half dozen empties, as well as a half-consumed pizza. The sight of the food made his mouth water, but the decidedly negative atmosphere in the room provided a considerable distraction.

"You practically do," Suzy said, angry, in response to Rock Star Marty's comment. "When was the last time you ever performed sober? You've got talent, Marty -- you wouldn't be the most famous musician in the world if you didn't -- but you're doing a great job of flushing it down the drain!"

"I just need to relax a little before I go out there," the local Marty said, a distinctive whine to his voice that caused his counterpart hovering outside the room to roll his eyes. "Quit nagging me! You've been doing that since I came home this time!"

"Oh, well, maybe that's the only time I really see you anymore." There was a pause as Local Marty took a drink from the Corona and Suzy glowered at him. "When are you gonna grow up, Marty? You're thirty, now -- it's time to stop partying like this all the time. It's going to kill you if you keep it up -- and it's already killing our relationship!"

Marty's jaw fell a bit at the mention of his counterpart's age. Thirty! But he was only twenty-seven.... How could that be possible?

"Not this again!" Local Marty moaned. "Christ, why do you always bring us up. We're fine."

Suzy arched one overly plucked eyebrow. "Oh, are we?" she asked, icily. "I've just about had it, Marty! If you don't grow up soon, you're gonna come back here next time and find that you've got no one left. You've already had it out with your parents. Your friends all left a long time ago -- when you started getting that attitude with them. Only me and the Professor are still here, maybe 'cause we understand why you're the way you are, now -- and you're about this close to seeing me walk out that door, forever!" The young woman leaned forward and held her thumb and forefinger a quarter of an inch apart.

Local Marty was less than impressed. "Chill out, Suz -- you're too uptight. Everything's cool. After the concert tonight, you and I can go out to a nice, quiet dinner. After all the promo shit, I've got two weeks off. We can take a hyper jump to Paris and you can get some of those freaky fashions that are so on the up, now."

Suzy snorted softly, in disgust. "You think money can solve anything. Grow up, Marty!" She turned towards the door. The visiting Marty quickly stepped back, ducking into a dark alcove next to the door where Doc was already hiding. She left the room, slamming the door hard behind her, walking away without the slightest glance in the direction of the two visitors. Marty waited until the click of her heels had faded, then stepped forward and put his hand on the doorknob, ready to charge in there now that he knew his counterpart was alone.

Doc stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. "What are you doing?" the scientist hissed. "You can't just walk in there...."

"Why not?" Marty whispered. "We barged in on that other version of me -- and, anyway, this guy sounds like an asshole. If he freaks out, he deserves it."

Doc sighed, but didn't stop him. Marty opened the door and stepped into the room. His counterpart had moved from the couch to a little mini bar set up in one corner of the dressing room, and was busy mixing up some toxic cocktail concoction. Well, Marty figured he was entitled to whatever he got out of that. What was it his friends used to say in high school and college? "Beer before liquor, never been sicker; liquor before beer, never fear." Having obviously downed a six pack -- maybe more -- beforehand, hitting the hard stuff now was probably a stupid idea.

The local's back was to the door; therefore the Rock Star Marty didn't see his counterpart come in. Marty could tell very little about his other self's appearance, beyond the fact that this version of himself wore his hair much longer, hanging down close to his shoulders. It gave him a kind of seedy look, even from the back. It was yet another difference between him and Marty; the visiting musician never really liked having his hair fall past the base of his earlobe. When he'd been ten and had fought his mom to let him grow out his hair a little -- and it had gotten halfway to his shoulders, like a lot of the rock stars of the late 1970's -- a woman at the supermarket had mistakenly thought he was a little girl. It had been a rather mortifying experience, both for him and the little old lady who had made the gender mistake. An hour after that, he was sitting in a chair at the barber's, getting it all cut off, foregoing any dreams of wearing his hair like Tom Petty or Joe Perry.

The local reacted to the second presence in the room, finally. "Forget your purse, Suzy?" he asked, rather rudely, without turning around.

The visitor smiled coolly. "No, I don't think she did," he said.

Rock Star Marty turned around quickly at the sound of the familiar voice, the ice cubes clinking in the glass he clutched in one hand. The visiting Marty's first thought, as he finally saw his counterpart's face, surprised him: Christ, he looks old! There were lines on the rock star's face that looked far deeper than anything Marty could imagine showing up on his face in the span of three short years. His long hair, combined with the tank top and leather pants, made him look more like a garage mechanic than a respected rock musician.

It was like looking at a reflection twisted in a fun house mirror.

The glass of liquor fell from Rock Star Marty's hand as he locked a slightly fuzzy gaze on his counterpart. "Jesus!" he gasped. He took a quick step back -- and his shoe skidded on the puddle created from his spilled drink. With a blood alcohol level that was probably legally drunk, at least, the local couldn't react in time to catch himself. He fell back, striking his head on the hard marble top of the mini bar, and hit the ground out cold.

Marty whistled softly at the fall and collision. "Whoops," he said softly, having the feeling that he ought to be more sympathetic. Instead, there was a wicked kind of satisfaction at his counterpart's unfortunate fall.

Doc had obviously been hovering just outside the door. As Marty bent forward to see if Rock Star Marty was all right -- aside from a nasty bump to the head -- the inventor stepped inside and closed the door behind them. "Marty," he said, his tone one of disapproval. "I warned you not to scare yourself...."

Marty rolled his eyes as he made sure his counterpart was still breathing. "If he hadn't been boozing it up, I doubt this would've happened," he said. "And I gotta admit, I'm not too sorry. This version of me looks like he's an egomaniac asshole. He deserves a headache later."

Doc sighed once more as he knelt down next to the out-cold musician. "I can't say I disagree with you, and I suppose something like this was bound to happen sooner or later when we showed up, but the timing is rather unfortunate." He quickly examined the celebrity, giving his assessment as he went. "His breathing is strong... as is his pulse... but I suspect he might be out for several hours. There's a rather large lump on the back of his head, and I don't think the alcohol will help him recover any faster."

Doc had hardly finished his diagnosis when there was a knock at the door. The visitors looked at each other a moment, then, as one, moved their eyes to the door. "Ah... yeah?" Marty called out, praying that whoever was out there wasn't going to take that as an invitation to stroll on in.

Fortunately, they door remained closed, the newcomer speaking through the wood. "Twenty minutes 'til showtime, Mr. McFly."

"Thanks," Marty said. He sighed in relief at the sound of footsteps heading away from the dressing room. "There's no way he's gonna be able to perform tonight," he added in a mutter, looking back to Doc. "Guess they'll have to give people refunds."

The inventor studied him a moment, then smiled faintly. "I don't know about that," he said. "This might be the opportunity you've been waiting for, Marty."

The musician had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. "Huh?"

"You've always wondered what it would be like to be a rock star. There's an audience full of people waiting for a show. Your counterpart isn't going to come around any time soon. If you don't want the audience to be disappointed, you could simply go out there in his place. It would certainly give you that experience you used to fantasize about."

Marty stared at Doc, not comprehending the words for a moment. Was he actually suggesting what he thought he was suggesting?! It seemed almost out of character, but there was a bit of a gleam in the older man's eyes. Either the inventor figured it might be better to give the people out there some kind of show rather than no show at all, or that if the visiting Marty accidentally ended his counterpart's career, it would be no big loss. After a moment of weighting the suggestion, he grinned. "Really? You think I could pull off something like that?"

"Maybe if you covered up your hair with a hat or something. I imagine few people would be close enough to tell you apart."

"But what about a song list? I have no clue what kinda stuff I play here."

"I'm sure whatever you decide will be fine. If it's new material, I doubt anyone will complain. Help me get him on the couch, will you?"

Marty grabbed the legs of his other self, while Doc slipped his hands under his shoulders, and they moved the unconscious celebrity up from the floor and onto the sofa. Once he was settled, Marty looked around the dressing room for something he could use to conceal his much shorter hair, finally locating a bandana. He tied that over his head so his hair was all but hidden, though it made him feel like some Axel Rose wannabe. Next, he stripped off his sweater and knotted that around his waist, rolled back the long sleeves of his white t-shirt, and took a look at the guitar that Rock Star Marty had been fiddling with during his conversation with Suzy. It looked almost like an antique, a model from the 1960's that had been souped up a bit, no doubt to the specifications of his counterpart. It didn't take the musician too much time to figure it out and get started on tuning it up.

During the time Marty had been preparing for his first real big solo performance, Doc had been looking around the room. The musician hadn't understood why until the inventor pulled out a phone. It looked like a cordless from home, except this one had what appeared to be a small video screen set into it under the earpiece and above the buttons. "Who are you planning to call?" Marty asked, glancing over as he tightened one of the strings up.

"We might want to make contact with my other self before we show up in person," Doc said, eyeing the phone with both thoughtfulness and curiosity. "If we'd like some answers on the way this world works, it might be better if we don't startle him so much that we've got a repeat of what happened here with you."

Marty wasn't concerned. "Like I said before, I don't think the rock star would be out now if he hadn't had all that alcohol and slipped. He didn't pass out in shock at the sight of me, Doc."

The scientist nodded once. "Maybe so, but I think I've got more of those tendencies than you might."

Marty recalled a couple of instances and shrugged, conceding the idea. There was another knock at the door, which caused both visitors to jump. "Ten minutes, Mr. McFly."

The musician turned to Doc after acknowledging the warning. "So you're just gonna call up and ask to talk to yourself? Won't that still freak out your other self?"

"Maybe; maybe not," Doc said. "But I was actually thinking you might be able to do that." He held out the phone.

Marty grimaced, not partial to the idea, though he accepted the cordless. "Do we even know the phone number?"

"I memorized it from the phone book," Doc said. "Four five six, thirty-four, eighty-nine."

Marty shifted the device in his hand, stalling. "What would I even say?"

"Just ask him to meet you here, after your concert."

"Isn't that kind of like setting him up, Doc? What if I just asked if we could drop by his place afterwards?"

"We don't have a car; it might be a bit difficult. I suppose we could take the train out there for proof, but it would take even longer to hike back to the park to pick it up -- and then we've got to cross the skies with all of that air traffic."

Marty saw the points, though he didn't necessarily like them. He sighed, dialed the numbers that he had Doc repeat once more, and stared at the small little screen set in the phone as the line rang at the other end. It continued to ring, a dozen times, before Marty closed the connection and passed the phone back to Doc. "No one's home, and the other you doesn't seem to have an answering machine," he explained. "Maybe we'll have to try him later."

Doc nodded, though he looked a little disappointed. Marty finished tuning up the guitar, then looked down at his other self, sprawled on the couch. "What should we do with him?" he asked. "Leave him in here?"

"There's not really much else we can do."

"But what if someone comes in here while I'm out on stage? Won't that cause major problems? Or what if he wakes up and goes out to perform and I'm already there?"

Marty thought that fear was pretty valid; almost the same thing had happened during that stint in the future when he impersonated his future son. Doc seemed to think so, too; he bent down over the celebrity, checking his pulse and respiration, then peeled back one of his eyelids for a look.

"I don't think he'll be up and about for a few hours, at least," he surmised after a moment of study, straightening up. "As for someone finding him in here, while you're out there, it will certainly create major questions, but I don't think we should move him anywhere else. It would be a bit difficult, with the state he's in right now. If the door has a lock, we could just use that while you're on the stage. I doubt anyone would try breaking down the door of your dressing room, or find it unusual that the door was locked."


Chapter Six

Sunday, November 12, 1995
8:24 P.M.

Fortunately, the door turned out to have a very secure lock. Marty supposed he shouldn't have been surprised. If performers came to the theater often and used the room, they probably wanted the ability to lock out the outside world at their whim. Doc opted to wait in the dressing room with Marty's other self, lest the rock star actually wake up and try to leave while the visitor was impersonating him. (Marty figured he also wanted the opportunity to ask the local a few questions, should that happen.)

With one last check to make sure he wasn't forgetting anything major -- like, say, his instrument -- Marty left the room, made sure the door had locked behind him, and made his way down the dark hall in the direction of the noise of the audience. Unused to the dim lights and the building, he hadn't gone more than a dozen steps before he ran right into someone.

"Sorry," he apologized immediately, taking a hop back, his hands immediately, protectively, going to the guitar hanging across his chest.

"That's all-- Marty! I was hoping to catch you before you went on."

Marty squinted at the dark shape before him, able to see little more than the outline of the person. But the voice was extremely familiar. "Doc?" he guessed.

One could almost hear the frown in the response. "Excuse me?" The form took a step back, perhaps to have a better look at him. "You are Marty McFly, right?"

"Yeah..." And you're the Doc from this world, he added to himself. But the Marty of this world apparently didn't call Emmett Brown by that nickname. Why? Maybe in this world, Doc's other self really was just a professor, never getting a doctorate in anything. And if that was the case, what would Marty call him?

"Professor?" he tried, tentative.

"Of course. What are you doing back here, still? Shouldn't you be going over the song list? Or are you trying to find Suzy?" The older man sighed as Marty tried to focus his eyes on the form. They were adjusting, slowly, to the dark and he could make out a few shadows, but nothing to give him an idea on what Doc's other self looked like in this world. They definitely sounded the same, though. "I saw her leave when I was coming in -- she looked upset. I think she's gone back home."

"Oh," Marty said. "Ah, no, I think I just got a little turned around back here...."

There came another rather weary sigh. "Can't say that surprises me if you've been drinking so much before shows."

The musician experienced a flash of surprise that his counterpart's friend knew that, and mentioned it so bluntly -- then figured that if he had been doing things like that back home, Doc wouldn't have hesitated to chew him out about it when the opportunities presented themselves. He wondered how his counterpart would respond to that comment, and figured the way Rock Star Marty was, he would've had some rude and snappish retort. Marty decided to spare his friend's counterpart that honor and merely grunted.

"Can you show me where I need to be?" he asked, hoping that wouldn't make Professor Brown suspicious.

If it did, the older man gave no indication -- at least verbally. The Professor turned and made his way down the hall, took a few turns, then went through a door marked, quite basically, Backstage. Stepping through that door was like stepping into another world. Lights were once more part of the landscape -- bright and in different colors. There were a couple dozen people scurrying around -- roadies and technicians, from the look of it. Marty blinked a few times, both to adjust his eyes and his mind from that relatively quiet hallway just a few feet away.

The man before him turned, and Marty finally laid his eyes on this world's version of Emmett Brown. He didn't look too different from Doc -- though his clothes were a bit more bizarre, even for this world. Same wild white hair. Same face -- although this one looked older than Doc's own, even though the Professor was no doubt younger than his foreign counterpart, if he hadn't spent a decade or so in the past. Marty had the feeling that the Professor was also single, without a Clara of his own -- maybe because the phone book hadn't had any mention of her in it. (Although, really, that didn't necessarily mean anything.) He studied Marty with eyes narrowed in both scrutiny and concern.

"Are you all right?" he asked. "You feeling up to performing?"

"I'd better be," Marty half muttered, becoming aware of the sound of the crowd, then -- a low roar that rose and fell with the small-talk conversations that preceded any performance. He could feel his nerves starting to kick in with the sound. It had been a while since he performed before a group larger than a few dozen people. By the sound of it, this was hundreds, maybe even a couple thousand depending on how many seats the theater had. At least it wasn't a stadium show -- those could seat tens of thousands....

Marty swallowed hard, feeling faintly ill. His nerves were clear on his face, apparently; the Professor looked even more concerned and put a hand on his shoulder. "Is something wrong, Marty?" he asked.

The musician took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I'm fine," he said. "What are you doing here... Professor?"

The Professor blinked. "You asked me to come," he said. "Something about a favor you needed."

Marty, naturally, had no clue what that might be. "Oh yeah," he said, vaguely. "Sorry, ah... I seem to be having one of those days, you know, where you forget everything."

Maybe that was the wrong thing to say. Doc's counterpart looked even more concerned. Before he could grill him, and undoubtedly make Marty look even worse, a tall, blond woman with a headset came out of nowhere and latched onto his arm. "Show time, McFly," she said, very businesslike. "Let's go. Your adoring public awaits."

The Professor frowned, but didn't try to stop him. Marty let himself be dragged to stage right, mostly because he would have had no idea where to go otherwise. When they stopped, he was standing just so, able to see most of the audience that was waiting eagerly for him. His heart did a quick skip, then plummeted to the bottom of his sneakers. The theater was darkened, so he couldn't get a good idea as to how many eyes would be looking at him. But based on the sea of faces he could see so far, illuminated by stage lights, and the size that the theater had appeared to be from the outside, he guessed it was at least a thousand. Maybe more.

"Oh jeez," he murmured, even as the woman with the headset was urging him forward. He'd never really had problems with stage fright, before -- but, here, he was The Rock Star! At home, he was... well, at one point in time, a member of the Pinheads, which never really played for anything bigger than a school dance, or in bars where it was dark, smokey, and most of the audience was pleasantly buzzed. Nowadays, if and when he played, it was usually in a studio setting to lay down a track for a song. Once in a great while, he got on stage, but it was always in the background on guitar, usually as a sub for a regular in whatever band that was in the area, or else the musician was up and coming. For the most part, the last few years, he worked on writing songs.

So, in short, never before had this many eyes been trained on him, with expectations resting completely and solely on his shoulders.

Now, it wasn't the Pinheads here that was the draw; it was simply Marty McFly. Likely the people on stage backing him with drums, bass, keyboards, and so on, were doing the same thing that Marty did on occasion -- although, admittedly, he'd never filled in for anyone famous enough to headline, yet.

Without even being aware of what he was doing, Marty started to turn, to flee back to the dressing room where Doc and his drunken counterpart waited -- the guy who should, by rights, be out here instead of him. He felt a sudden, unexpected sympathy to that guy; no wonder he tried to get drunk every night. If he had to deal with this kind of performing on a regular basis, and had this kind of reaction each time, Marty might've followed in those unsteady footsteps.

He was jarred to a stop one step in his journey by the blond woman. "Where do you think you're going?" she demanded, rather coldly. "Go out there, McFly! Let's start on time, for once."

"I--" was all Marty got out before she pushed him, firmly, onto stage. A spotlight found him and settled on his form, blinding him. The crowd, which had been murmuring anxiously, suddenly roared at the sight of him. The screams of teenaged girls split the air, making him wince, and worsening the headache that had been hanging on since their bumpy arrival in this world. His feet stalled a moment then, with another push from the blonde taskmaker, he found himself walking towards a solo microphone set up in the center of the stage.

No clip-on mikes here, he noticed, surprised. The thought was an odd one, considering the moment, but a second later his mind leapt to far more panic-inducing things.

A set list! Christ, I have no idea what to play! I don't know anything about what my counterpart has going here, and the other people backing me up are gonna think I'm nuts if I go and do a song no one's heard of before!

He started to sweat, a lot, in the walk, even as the cheering grew more frenzied the closer he got to the microphone. Marty's mind locked up with the worry, and the sound of the crowd -- the pressure and expectations he could feel in the air to put on a good show -- didn't make him feel any better. His mind had completely blanked out by the time he reached the mike. If someone had asked him for his name or birthdate at that moment, he wasn't sure what he would tell them.

The audience screamed for him as he stood at the mic, probably thinking his deer-in-the-headlights act was all part of some show. Marty stood still, staring at the faces that were all blurring together to simply be "the audience," not a collection of individuals. He tried to simply breathe and get through the next heartbeat. After some time -- it could've been ten seconds or ten minutes, he wasn't entirely sure -- he finally found the strength to move, to adjust the mike a bit.

"Hello," he said in a half whisper -- only to hear it picked up and amplified throughout the theater. The crowd's cheers dimmed in volume for a moment as he spoke, the audience clearly waiting for him to start a song. Marty smiled quickly, the expression borne of pure nerves.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder and he nearly went through the roof -- or, in this case, fell off the edge of the stage and into the orchestra pit. He spun quickly to find the blonde woman with the headset shoving a paper into his face.

"Set list," she whispered, turning her face away from the mike so her voice wouldn't be picked up by it. "Gary forgot to set it out."

Marty let out a deep breath, relieved by the mistake and that he hadn't simply kept those lists in his head. "Thanks," he breathed, grateful, glancing down at the first song on the list as the blonde clipped it to the mike stand. An amused smile turned his lips.

"Johnny B. Goode," he murmured. He closed his eyes a moment, remembering the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance ten -- or forty -- years ago, then started to strum the opening chords. The crowd shrieked in appreciation, either recognizing the song or voicing their approval of his skills.

A minute into the song, and Marty started to forget where he was, losing himself in the music and in the intense concentration that came with playing, a focus where the only thing that existed was the melody and the moment. It was probably the best thing that could've happened to him in the current circumstances. He started to relax a little, becoming peripherally aware of the audience at best.

When he finished the first song, he looked up only long enough to see what was next on the menu -- another oldie, Jimi Hendrix's "Foxy Lady" -- but by the third and fourth songs, he glanced up at the audience, occasionally, and grinned. Halfway through the concert, he realized he was kind of enjoying himself.

He also noticed something odd -- all the songs on the list were all old ones, before the early Eighties, and ones made famous by other people. Springsteen's "Hungry Heart." "Rock Around the Clock." A few selections by Hendrix and the Doors. Van Halen. Queen. Led Zeppelin. Some Tom Petty tunes. An Elvis ones. There wasn't one bit of original material in the set, nor was there one song that seemed to be released beyond the mid-1980's. The youngest song of the bunch seemed to be a song off Journey's 1981 album, "Escape."

Why on earth would his other self be playing so many songs made famous by other people? It didn't make much sense to Marty. The Pinheads might've done a cover or two in their concerts, but the majority of their performances was with material that they created themselves. If you only did covers, you weren't a real band -- at least not one that should be world-famous and headlining shows. You were a cover band, then, that probably played mostly weddings and dances.

Something was definitely off.

After those first few agonizing minutes, the time flew by. Marty was a bit surprised and a bit disappointed when he reached the bottom of the list and the end of the concert. The crowd seemed let down, as well. When he raised his hand and thanked the audience, the screaming grew more frenzied. Marty turned around and headed back to the wings of the stage -- but the blonde (and what was her name?) motioned for him to go back, her expression telling him clearly that she thought he was crazy.

"What are you doing?!" she hissed. "Encore!"

"Encore?" Marty repeated dumbly.

"Yes!" To emphasize her point, she gave him a firm shove back in the direction of the stage. Marty resisted for just a second, then walked back out without any further provoking. He had an idea he wanted to test out.

"You want more?" he asked the crowd. The screaming grew louder; he took that as a yes. Marty glanced at the set list, saw there was nothing down for this particular situation, then decided he might end up going solo by playing songs that the band behind him had never heard. He turned around a moment to look at them, then turned back to the crowd, impish ideas crowding his head.

Songs beyond 1982, he thought. Let's see if they've heard of any of these before....

He launched into Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69," splintering his concentration enough to watch the crowd and gauge their reaction. They quieted down for a moment, the way an audience would when a band played a new tune that hadn't yet been heard. Interesting. He covered U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" next -- which also looked like it was new to the audience.

Finally, feeling experimental, he performed a modified song he'd done as an assignment in one of his music classes in college. A professor in a music comp class had had his students take a tune from one song, lyrics from another, and try to make it work. Marty had chosen the tune from the Van Halen song,"Jump," and meshed it with the lyrics to "Heaven" by Bryan Adams, which had created a rather interesting combo, to say the least. Both songs were newer than 1982 -- the former just barely -- and it gave him an idea as to the "situation." Since no one in the crowd acted like there was anything the least weird with the final song, it all but confirmed his suspicions.

The Marty McFly of this world was famous -- for stealing the material of other people!

The entire experience suddenly felt like a sham.

After he concluded the hybrid song, he paused to catch his breath, really wishing suddenly that his counterpart was standing right there so he could chew him out for his deceit. But maybe there was a way he could sort of do that. An old song suddenly occurred to him and he smiled to himself.

"This is dedicated to a guy I know," he told the crowd, then began to play -- somewhat tentatively -- the opening chords to a Styx song from the mid-seventies: "Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)." Never before had lyrics been so incredibly apt for a situation; Marty wished the rock star was sitting nearby so he could hear the song, since it was quite obvious exactly what his message was to the guy.

The crowd, meanwhile, ate it up. Maybe it was his raw and passionate performance; maybe it was just one more new song they'd never heard.

After he finished the Styx song, Marty left the stage quickly with a bow to acknowledge the outpouring of praise from the audience. The blonde woman made a move as if to grab him and maybe propel him back on stage, but Marty dodged her, in a hurry to get back to the dressing room and Doc. The shadows backstage, and out in the hall, worked to his advantage. He passed a few people in the dim corridor, heading to the dressing room, but kept his head down and moved quickly, lest they recognize him and want him for something.

The dressing room door was still closed and locked. Marty knocked twice, paused for five seconds, then knocked three more times. "It's me, Doc," he said in a low voice, his lips nearly touching the wood, in case the inventor had any doubts. A moment later the door was opened and Doc ushered him in.

"How did it go?" he asked as Marty entered.

The musician raked a hand back across his head, removing the scarf that concealed his hair and tossing it aside. "Why'd you think I should go out there?" he asked, not answering his friend's question.

Doc studied him a moment, his face serious. "I thought it might be a good learning experience for you," he admitted. "I know there's been a part of you that's always wondered about this sort of life. Now, you've gotten to have the experience for one night. Did you enjoy it?"

Marty glanced at his still-unconscious counterpart with a dark frown. "It was a mixed bag," he said, slipping the guitar strap over his head and setting the instrument down on an empty armchair. "I never really thought I was the stage fright type 'til I realized I was the number one attraction out there to a thousand people or more. But even that wasn't so bad once I started playing -- until I noticed all the songs on the list were ones that someone else did. Doc, my other self's rippin' people off!"

The inventor looked confused. "What do you mean?"

"Every single song on the list was done by someone else -- and none of the songs went past about '81, which I think is kinda weird. But there's no way so many people would be cramming that theater to see someone cover popular songs. My other self stole those songs from other people, Doc -- he's a complete fraud!"

Doc opened his mouth to ask something, but there was a knock at the door. "Marty?" asked a very familiar voice.

The musician looked at his friend. "Oh yeah, I ran into your other self out there," he said, sitting down on the couch near the feet of his counterpart. "I guess if you wanna talk to him, there's no better time...."

Doc's eyes widened at this bit of information. He froze for a moment, then headed for the door, unlocked it, and pulled it open, concealing himself from view from the Professor. The slightly older-looking version of Emmett Brown took a few steps into the room, talking. "Why did you run off so-- oh my God!"

The exclamation came as the Professor caught sight of dual Martys on the couch. Doc closed the door as soon as his counterpart had cleared the doorway, probably to make sure that no one else wouldn't stumble inside. At the sound, Professor Brown turned quickly. His eyes bugged out as he took in this view of his own dimensional "twin," and his mouth opened and closed a few times, wordlessly. He took a few quick steps back, his legs colliding with the coffee table hard enough to knock over all of the empty beer bottles. They made a great racket -- local Marty stirred a little at the sound -- but nothing shattered.

"Calm down, Doc -- er, Professor," Marty said softly, already on his feet in case the guy did take a dive to the floor. That would've been just their luck -- both their counterparts on the floor, out cold, before they could get any useful information out of them.

The Professor took a couple of breaths, his eyes locked on Doc, then turned to the standing Marty. "What's the meaning of this?" he wanted to know -- but he didn't sound angry, just very, very curious. "Why are there... two of you and me?"

"Perhaps I can explain best," Doc said, the sound of his voice startling the local. He gave a very succinct summary on their situation. By the time he finished, the Professor looked far less pale and far more intrigued.

"You're certainly in an enviable situation," he said. "At least from my perspective. I don't expect you might feel that way. I suppose I can't say that this surprises me in the least," the Professor curiously added. "Marty came home to a different world when he returned from 1952 -- so he says. I, naturally, have no memory of this."

The visiting Marty glanced down at his counterpart, fighting the urge to shake him awake -- and slap some sense into his obviously messed up head. "1952?" he said, immediately noticing that discrepancy. "Not 1955?"

The Professor shook his head once. "No. Apparently, before, my other self had created a time machine in his home in 1982, and Marty was sent back quite by accident. Some government agents showed up during a test I was conducting and... well, it wasn't pretty." The Professor glanced down at the celebrity, frowning and running a finger along the bottom of his chin. "I sent him back home in the Nevada blast, but his presence for just a week in the past changed a lot of things -- the whole world, he's told me before."

Marty and Doc were both interested -- for different reasons. Just as Marty wondered, "What Nevada blast?" the inventor asked, "What sort of changes did he mention?"

The Professor smiled at their curiosity. "The only source of power great enough to activate the time beam was a nuclear detonation," he said, to Marty. "We had to use a test site to send my Marty back home -- which was a real pain in the ass, let me tell you." He shifted his eyes to Doc. "As for the changes, well... I suppose some of it is my own doing. In the world Marty came from, I'd only recently discovered the formula to run my Power Converter -- which was key in the time machine's success. Marty didn't tell me what it was in 1952 -- on purpose -- but I checked where he said it was and... well...."

"You used that knowledge thirty years sooner?" Doc guessed. He winced as his counterpart nodded. "How could you do something so irresponsible?"

"Is that why there's flying cars and no pollution?" Marty asked.

"Indirectly, yes," the Professor admitted. "When I presented the Converter to the scientific community, it revolutionized the power industry -- and my fellow scholars, as well as the general public, suddenly became interested in dozens of other ideas I was working on. I had no problem establishing my company or selling my products worldwide, then. E. Brown Enterprises was cited in Forbes last year as one of the most successful companies in the world. I never did build a time machine, though -- and yet Marty is proof that somewhere out there, a version of myself did. Not the same one you are, though, I take it."

"I think not," Doc said, sounding a bit amused. "They sound like they operate under completely different principles -- and I didn't finish mine until 1985, thirty years after I conceived of the key to it all: the flux capacitor."

Professor Brown made an odd face. "I don't recognize that term," he admitted.

"How did my other self go back in time in the first place if you never built a machine?" Marty asked, confused, as the words of the Professor sank in. "Wouldn't that cause some kind of paradox?"

"It's a puzzle," the Professor agreed. "Marty's girlfriend -- Suzy Parker -- was seeing a movie with him the night he left, and when he got up to use the bathroom, he never returned. Since the version of myself who created a time machine actually lived in this building at the time -- it had been abandoned or closed down, then -- I can only assume that the operation of the time machine in a different reality crossed over to this one and created an interdimensional time warp."

Marty let out a low whistle, understanding only about every third word in that last sentence, but enough to get the general point. Doc looked really interested. "Fascinating," he said. "Then it would seem the universe has some compensatory mechanism to disallow eventual or instantaneous destruction from paradoxic events caused by time travelers."

"Obviously," Marty muttered.

The Professor nodded at his counterpart's words. "I suspect parallel dimensions are that form of compensation," he said. "If Marty had failed to get his parents, George and Eileen, together in 1952, then he might very well have erased himself from existence, but the world -- and, subsequently, the universe -- wouldn't have ended."

"Yes -- and I suppose if I had any doubts before this, I really can't any longer," Doc said. "Marty and I have seen a few odd variations to history and our own lives so far -- beyond the events of today, I might add. I can't say that it delights me to think that there might be billions upon billions of worlds out there, to account for every 'path not taken' in all of history -- but if it acts as a failsafe to allow for the presence of time travelers and their interactions with the past and future, then I also can't say I'm sorry. It's far more preferable than the end of life as we know it."

"Yeah, but if we don't get back home, then it might as well be the end as life as we know it," Marty couldn't resist saying, feeling like he was listening to Doc talk to himself. Technically, he supposed he was, but it could really make a bad headache worse when both inventors were in their scientific speculation modes.

"Yes," the visiting inventor agreed, looking at his counterpart. "I suppose you'd be of little help to us, then, if your time machine no longer exists -- and operated completely differently than mine, using different forms of technology."

"Probably," the Professor agreed. "Although if you wouldn't mind, I'd love to see it myself...."

While Doc hemmed this over, Marty looked down at his counterpart again, wishing once more that the guy was back in the land of the living so that the visitor could rake him over the coals about his unethical ways. "Did you know about him swiping all of his music from other artists?" he asked the Professor. "There wasn't one note of his work that wasn't stolen from someone else!"

The local inventor sighed. "It wouldn't surprise me," he admitted softly. "Since his singular time travel experience, Marty has seemed a bit... different. I suppose anyone, having spent the first seventeen years of their life with the parents he once had, might suffer from a few problems. Particularly since the world he spent the first part of his life seems much more unpleasant in my view. Wars. Pollution. Rampant crime...."

"You can't mean that you don't have any of that here, in this world," Doc said skeptically.

Professor Brown made an ambiguous gesture. "Maybe some small pockets here and there, but nothing like the strife Marty told me about the world from before."

Visiting Marty looked once more at the celebrity, thinking about what the Professor had said. He basically walked out one day, got mixed up in time travel, and when he came home, it wasn't really home. It was some weird world, where people might've looked the same, but acted differently.

Marty could understand that sensation -- he vividly remembered his first encounter with his "improved" parents -- but he hadn't had to deal with the world itself being drastically different. His parents and brother and sister seemed a bit changed, but Doc was the same, Jennifer was the same, his friends were the same. If he'd had to deal with an entirely different world on top of the other changes in just his own family, he might've gone crazy.

"What was he like, before?" Marty asked the Professor. "Before that time travel stuff, from what you remember?"

Professor Brown's eyes narrowed in thought. "I'm not quite sure," he admitted. "When I met Marty at the test site, thirty years after his departure, he didn't strike me as inherently different than the kid I'd known for years -- at first. After he came home, he almost immediately started pushing his music -- what he called 'Rock 'n' Roll' -- and graduated high school the day before he signed with a record company. When the music he was creating came out, it caused an incredible stir. Nothing like it had ever been heard before. Marty got tremendously popular in a very short span of time. His dream, apparently."

The Professor paused a moment, glancing at his unconscious friend, perhaps to make sure he wasn't going to be sitting up any time soon. "I suppose that alone could account for change in anyone," he went on, his tone softer. "But in the conversations I had with Marty in the months after March of '82, I'd gotten the impression that the experience of growing up with a bullied father and an overly prudish mother -- and as their only child, no less -- had certain... repercussions."

"What kind of repercussions?" Marty asked, a bit taken aback by the mention that his other self was an only child. "I mean, I had a similar situation 'til I went back and accidentally changed things with my parents."

"You were into gambling, then, too? Running an illegal media pirating operation?"

The musician's eyes nearly bugged out. "No! No way! You mean he was?"

"From what he's told me... I believe so. Although apparently I aided his pirating operations. I can't imagine doing such a thing now, but I suppose circumstances can change one's sense of right and wrong."

"Perhaps," Doc said. "As much as we might hate to admit that to ourselves. So I'm to assume that this Marty's problems grew more numerous the more famous he became?"

The Professor half shrugged. "I suppose that's an accurate assessment, yes. He's got almost as much money as I do, now, but he's alienated just about everyone around him. His behavior is becoming more erratic and atrocious -- but his music remains wildly popular and sells so much. Even if he wanted to take a break for a year or so, I don't think he could, contractually; the record companies expect a new album every year, and a tour to support it. Poor Suzy's just about reached her limit. I think she expected a proposal by the end of this latest world tour, and perhaps a long vacation for Marty away from the trappings of fame, but it's the last thing on his mind. The only place he should be heading right now is a health clinic, but I suspect if I brought that up, he would cut off one more caring friend." The older man sighed, shaking his head, his face falling into lines of deep concern. "I never thought I might out live him, but that possibility seems far too likely as the years go on."

Marty felt a chill snake down his spine as he studied the face of his other self for a moment, relaxed in a quasi, unnatural sleep. He couldn't imagine a worse life for himself at the moment, and it sickened him because he could also imagine that, had a few things been different, maybe he might've ended up in the same way. He had a feeling that one of the reasons this Marty's life had fallen apart might've been due to old-fashioned homesickness. If he had ended up in a world so incredibly different from home, it wouldn't be going home; it would be... well, like landing in the kinds of places he and Doc were bouncing around in. And there wouldn't be any hope of going back.

"Maybe we should just leave now, Doc," he suggested softly, looking up at his friend. "Before he wakes up and we have to go through the whole song and dance again."

The Professor responded before his counterpart could. "That might be a wise idea, under the circumstances. Marty's under so much stress, now, I don't know how he would accept news of dimensional counterparts dropping in."

Doc nodded. "I suppose he'll have enough questions after hearing about a performance he supposedly did when he won't remember a thing about it."

The expression on the Professor's face was more akin to a grimace than a smile. "It wouldn't be the first time...." He changed the subject, quickly, moving it to something that was far less depressing. "If you need a ride to your time machine, I can give you one in my Aeromobile. It wouldn't be any bother to me...."

Doc looked at the Professor, and smiled. "I suppose if I take you up on that, it would only be fitting if I allowed you a look at it, then."

"Well, if you insist...."

When the Professor left for a moment, to check the hallway and make sure the way to the outside door was a clear one, Marty cast one more nervous glance at his other self, then headed to Doc's side. "There's really nothing we can do about stuff here, is there?" he asked, keeping his voice low lest the Professor walk in.

Doc shook his head once. "No. And even if we could, we don't dare. These problems are not ours, Marty. Your other self will have to find his own way out of the messes he's created."

Marty sighed. "Yeah, I guess so. It really sucks, though. I mean, it doesn't sound like it's his fault, getting mixed up in the time travel...."

"No -- but do you think his life would be any better if that hadn't happened?"

Probably not, Marty had to admit to himself. If the Professor's words were right, it sounded like this version of himself was already a delinquent punk before he'd stumbled into the past, and went home to an alternate future.

Doc sighed softly, the sound sympathetic, when Marty didn't answer his question. "I suppose both of us better get used to meeting people that we wish didn't share any aspects of our genetic make up. He's not you, Marty -- he's a rather far flung version of what might've been, but what didn't come to pass. From what little my other self has told us, it sounds like there were a lot of deviations between his world and ours -- even before my other self revealed an invention that changed the entire world."

"I know, Doc -- I just feel kind of bad for him. I mean, yeah, he's an asshole, and worse than that, he's an asshole who's made a name for himself by stealing from other people -- even though I guess those songs probably didn't exist at all in this world before he recorded 'em -- but.... I guess I can see the stuff in him that's still like me, you know?"

Doc nodded once. "I know," he said. "Believe me, I know."

The Professor returned, then, clearly excited about the chance to see a working time machine himself. "All clear," he reported, ducking his head into the room. "Are you ready to go?"

Doc and Marty looked at each other. The inventor answered for the both of them. "Yes, I think so."


Chapter Seven

Sunday, November 12, 1995
10:00 P.M.

Professor Brown was perfectly happy to take the interdimensional visitors in his "Aeromobile" to the park where the train was concealed. After he took a quick gawk at the machine, and Doc gave him the crash course tour, he excused himself, though not without a little reluctance. He stood by and watched as they took to the air, the travelers resigning themselves to another spin of the dimensional wheel. Doc wasn't naive enough, anymore, to believe that they would end up home this time.

It looked like home at first, though -- at least for a few minutes. All of the strange quasi-futuristic buildings and vehicles were gone. But when they flew over the old farmhouse, it didn't even exist; that building -- as well as the barn -- had been torn down and the ground raised over it, up for sale. Based on the height of the weeds, it had been gone for a while.

"It stopped raining, though," Marty commented as they hovered over the property. "I can still see clouds above, but at least they're not dumping buckets anymore. I guess that's a plus."

Doc glanced at the current time, a couple of minutes after ten in the evening. "It's possible the showers would've stopped at home by now," he said. "But this is a completely moot point, since this is obviously not our home."

Marty sighed and nodded. "So do we find another phone booth now, and look up where our counterparts are, again?"

"After we land," Doc said. "It would be a long hike into town if we came down out here, as isolating as it might be...."

As expected, Marty offered no complaint to that. Doc coasted above the city until he spotted an ideal place for the time machine -- the alley behind a supermarket that had closed a year previous in their time. There was a gas station a block away from there, with phones and phone books. Both visitors looked around cautiously as they left the cab of the train and headed for the sidewalk next to the road. After the previous world, this one seemed blessedly normal. The people that they saw -- in cars, mostly -- looked like they shared the same fashion sense as back home. There were no flying vehicles, yet. Even the air tasted different, though not necessarily better. That other world had been a lot less polluted.

"How long are we gonna do this, Doc?" Marty asked as they walked, his mood pensive. "I'm already starting to lose count on all these places we've visited."

Doc sighed, his breath fogging up the air before his mouth. It was a cold, damp night; he wished he'd brought a coat or heavy jacket with him before leaving his house, but there was no way he could have foreseen the current events. "Well keep at this until we can get home," he said.

"But when do you think that'll be? This could go on forever." Marty looked at his watch. "We've been stuck doing this for almost twelve hours, now...."

Doc looked at one of his own watches, stunned to see that it was displaying the time as a quarter to three in the morning. "But we shouldn't be in danger of any incompatibility effects," he said. "We've been jumping around too much in the machine."

Marty rolled his eyes. "I'm more worried if we'll ever see home again. I was thinking, Doc -- how will we know that home is home? I mean, if there are all these parallel universes out there that can have big or small differences, what if one of 'em looks just like home except... I don't know, maybe the color of your house is different?"

"Then it's not home," Doc said bluntly. "And we won't stay."

"But what if we get to a place that's exactly like home? How will we know that's it?"

"Simple, Marty -- there won't be other versions of ourselves present."

Marty didn't seem satisfied by that answer. "But what if the versions of ourselves went off and had the same thing happen to them that we're going through? And we switched places with them or something?"

Doc glanced at the musician a moment, surprised by the persistence of his concern. "Then we would notice it after a day or so, when the incompatibility effects caught up with us," he said. "Don't worry, we won't accidentally settle down in the wrong reality. The mistake wouldn't be possible, not if our cellular structure reacted to the environment."

The musician sighed. "So that means if we don't find our way back home, we're toast," he summarized. "Or we'll never be able to stay longer than a day in any one place."

The inventor frowned, concerned by the darkly pessimistic attitude that had come seemingly out of nowhere. Maybe hunger was to blame; he was starting to feel a little weak from more than twelve hours without a bite to eat; they would have to fix that here, before they left. And a deep-boned sort of exhaustion was beginning to nibble at him -- mostly from butting his head and brain against the same unrelenting problem, as well as the incredible amounts of time lag he was incurring.

It would've been better, perhaps, to move from one reality to the next based on the time their bodies thought it was, but Doc was concerned about drifting too far ahead in time, lest they finally land in the right reality. If they didn't show up, 'til, say 5 A.M. on November 13th, their families would be put through agonizing worries -- and with the time machine malfunctioning, they wouldn't dare travel back to five minutes or so after their original departure. There was also the problem of showing up at the door of his or Marty's counterpart in the middle of the night, irritating them by rousing them from sleep. Doc wasn't sure if he wanted to push their arrivals much past ten, honestly.

"We'll find our way back, Marty," the scientist vowed softly. "We haven't exhausted all avenues of approach just yet. Maybe this world will hold the answer."

The look Marty cast him was clear in communicating his thoughts on the matter: Fat chance. He wasn't given much more of an opportunity to complain, though, as they finally reached the gas station. While Doc headed for the phone booth set near the corner of the intersection, Marty veered off to the attached minimart, muttering something about getting a snack.

Doc was almost to the phone when he heard Marty call his name. He stopped and turned, seeing a figure jogging his way. "What is it--" was all he got out before a shaft of light from car headlights fell on his friend's face. For a moment, Doc couldn't breathe.

Marty -- was old!

Not simply older, as he had been by a couple of years in the last reality. But old. Well into his fifties, maybe even his early sixties, though it was difficult to tell in the yellow-orange light of the sodium vapor lamp. He moved a little slower than his younger counterpart, and his style of dressing was a little neater; his shirt was tucked in, and the leather coat he wore was a conservative cut. His hair was even streaked with gray.

"Great Scott, what happened to you?" Doc couldn't help blurting out. Old Marty frowned as he got closer to the scientist and heard the query.

"What happened to me?" he echoed, his voice sounding a little more rough than Doc was used to hearing in his younger friend. "Nothing. I just had to fill up and saw you out here -- I just thought I'd say hi, if that's okay." He caught sight of the phone booth -- really, the only thing Doc could possibly be walking towards -- and frowned. The expression made him look even older. "Did you need to make a phone call? Don't you have your cell with you?"

"Ah, no, I don't," Doc said, instantly making up an excuse. "The battery was dead."

"In your phone or your car?" Marty shook his head once. "Wouldn't surprise me if it's the car. You should get a better one, Doc...."

The scientist had a second of wondering what it was he did drive here, then pushed it from his head as a needless concern. He had a horrible moment of indecision, wondering if he should play along and pretend he was the local Emmett Brown or else tell this Marty the truth in that moment. The first option was easier, but the second was better in getting needed information. "Listen, Marty, there's something you need to know.... I'm not quite who you think I am."

Old Marty looked puzzled. "Then who are you?" he asked. Before Doc could answer, his not-so-young friend took a step closer and squinted at his face. "You know, you do look a little different. Did you go to a spa or something?"

There was really no other way than to be blunt with this. "No. I look different because I'm not the Emmett Brown you're acquainted with. I'm a counterpart of his from a parallel dimension."

Old Marty stared at him for a moment. "Oh, okay...." he said slowly, his voice dripping with skepticism. "Nice one, Doc."

The inventor wasn't offended by the attitude. He kept his voice carefully calm. "I'm not joking, Marty. There are two of me here, right now: the one who belongs, the one you know, and the one who doesn't -- me." He paused, then added, "There are also two of you here."

"Sure," Old Marty said in a patient, almost patronizing, tone. "I can accept that. Listen, Doc, why don't you come with me? We could go somewhere and maybe get a snack."

They had thus far been fortunate in not encountering skepticism since the strange adventure began, but Doc knew that bit of luck was going to run out at some point. It looked like now was the time. Knowing that getting upset would only make him sound more crazy, the inventor remained calm and stood his ground. "I'm not delusional, Marty, and I know this must sound fantastic to you. But I can promise you that in minutes, another version of yourself is going to walk out of that minimart. And he's a bit younger than you are.... How old are you, anyway?"

The older Marty stared at the inventor with a kind of wary suspicion on his face. "Fifty-seven," he said. "You know that...."

"Fifty-seven," Doc muttered to himself, stunned by the news that he had expected on some level. "How the hell can you be fifty-seven? Weren't you born in 1968?"

"You'd be the only one to know that," Marty muttered. He studied Doc a moment as best he could in the dim street lighting. "What's going on, Doc?" He sounded concerned -- though the inventor assumed this was because he still didn't believe the older man's words.

"I already told you," Doc said. "But perhaps this might allow you to accept it better." He pointed to the figure of his Marty, just emerging from the store. "Here comes your cross-dimentional counterpart."

To Old Marty's credit, he did turn and look. His mouth dropped open and a gasp wheezed through his mouth at the sight of twenty-seven-year-old Marty heading their way, a bottle of soda in one hand and a small bag of chips in the other. "Jesus Christ!" Doc heard him hiss, stunned.

The visiting Marty didn't notice anything amiss at first -- though the darkness was probably partially to blame. He no doubt saw that the inventor was standing next to another person, but little else. "Do you know where we're going?" he asked Doc, only giving Old Marty the quickest of glances, clearly not recognizing his older self, and probably assuming that the stranger was being helpful with directions or information.

"Not particularly," Doc said honestly. He looked at Old Marty and had to wonder for a second if the local was going to faint. His face had grown waxy white. After a moment he seemed to get a hold of himself and found his voice.

"Wow," he half-whispered. "Oh, wow, Doc. You weren't lying! Christ, this is heavy!"

The visiting Marty's head cocked sharply to one side at the sound of the overly familiar voice. His eyes focused once more on the stranger's form -- and face. His hands shook as recognition hit him and both the chips and the capped bottle of Pepsi fell from his grip and onto the pavement. "Holy shit," he breathed, going even whiter than his counterpart. "I'm old!"

Doc was struck with the strangest sense of deja vu at the words, recalling how Jennifer had reacted with almost the same exclamation upon seeing herself in 2015. The sense simply doubled when Marty's eyes rolled back and his knees suddenly gave way. Doc was too far away to do anything, but Old Marty reacted clearly on instinct; he lunged forward and caught his other self before the younger visiting Marty could strike his head on the asphalt -- and then, once the danger of a collision was past, set his counterpart down on the ground and backed away in a hurry.

Even as Doc stepped over to his friend's side, he had to wonder why Marty had had such an extreme reaction. Shock was possible, he supposed, but the musician had more than ten years of time travel experience, seeing past, future, and alternate versions of himself. Now that both of them knew they were popping into different dimensions, it was almost expected that they would see other versions of themselves, with different life experiences accounting for different results. He supposed it could've simply been a sharp shock to the system for Marty to see himself so much older in the present. But Doc's mind immediately fled to more darker reasons for a fainting spell; what if, in spite of their travels, the incompatibility syndrome was catching up with them....?

Doc looked up to Old Marty as he knelt next to the younger one's side. The local was keeping a cautious distance of a couple of feet, clearly nervous and uncomfortable. "Marty, go into the minimart and see if they have any ammonia. If they don't, get a cup of ice water." The older Marty stared at him a moment, then nodded once, and started to turn to set off on the assignment. Doc stopped him before he could move more than a step. "Wait! Do you have your car with you?"

The older man glanced over his shoulder at a black Toyota truck -- the same one, to Doc's eye, that his Marty owned at home. "Yeah, why?"

"I know this might be a bit presumptuous, but could I have the keys? I'd like to get us out of sight as soon as possible -- and I'd also appreciate it if you could take us to the home of my other self."

Old Marty's face fluttered with a quick series of expressions -- surprise, suspicion, irritation, and fear -- but he simply nodded, pulled out his keys, and tossed them to the visiting scientist before moving towards the minimart. Doc wagered the haste at which he moved was prompted more by the urge to get away from the clear weirdness than it was to aid the strangers.

The inventor watched the local for a moment, then turned his attention to Marty and checked him over. His breathing and pulse were both quick and shallow, but Doc couldn't find any other reason for the swoon. Unless it was a long-delayed reaction to the bump the musician had recieved on his head during their arrival in the previous reality. (A matter that he strongly doubted, personally.) His concern mounted -- particularly when shaking and calling Marty's name didn't provoke any reaction. The scientist supposed he wasn't too surprised; he wouldn't have sent the old Marty into the store, otherwise.

Doc looked up from the still, slack face of his friend to glance around. To his relief, no one was paying them the slightest bit of attention. It probably helped that Marty had collapsed just outside of the range of fluorescent lights and gas pumps, and that the gas station itself was lightly populated, with only one other car at the pumps aside from Marty's truck. He was thankful for that bit of luck, knowing that having two Martys in the same place at the same time, with a lot of other people around, could cause a real mess. Even if -- or maybe because -- one was so much older than the other.

Old Marty returned a few minutes later with a large paper cup of ice water in one hand, and a small bottle of the requested ammonia in the other. "I'm guessing you want to rouse him -- ah, me?" he asked as he passed Doc the items, still clearly uneasy at being in a close proximity to his counterpart.

"Him," Doc corrected. "He's not a past or future version of you; he's entirely different." He handed the car keys back to their rightful owner, then suggested, "Why don't you bring the car over here? I don't know how far he'll be able to walk."

Old Marty once more seized the task eagerly. As he left, Doc looked between the two items he'd had the old Marty get, and decided to try the ammonia first. It would almost certainly work -- and pouring icy water on Marty's face would have the unpleasant side effect of soaking his clothes. They already had enough problems to deal with without making the musician far more uncomfortable than he might already be. He set the cup aside and uncapped the ammonia, then slipped a hand behind Marty's head and raised it up enough so that he could slip the bottle of ammonia under his noise. With the first whiff, Marty tried to pull his head away. Doc kept a firm grasp and a moment later the smell dragged the musician coughing and gagging back to the present. He blinked a few times as Doc recapped the bottle.

"What're you doin'?" he half moaned, his eyes watering a little from the ammonia.

"You fainted," Doc said. "I figured this might be better than dumping water down your shirt."

"I'd rather get the water," Marty mumbled, still sufficiently dazed. He made no move to sit up, although the pavement on which he lay was cold and damp from rains earlier in the day. Doc wasn't sure if he was simply a little out of it, or it was a sign of greater concern.

"How are you feeling now? Do you think you can sit up and walk a little? Not far -- just to a car."

Marty closed his eyes for a second. "I feel weak," he half whispered. "Dizzy. What happened, Doc? Why'd I faint?"

Doc glanced at the local Marty's truck as it headed their way. "You had a bit of a shock, I'd wager. Your counterpart in this reality is a little older than you are. Thirty years," he added. "I think it startled you."

The musician winced a little, perhaps recalling the memory. "Oh," he said.

"Can you sit up, now? I'd like to get out of sight as soon as possible.... Your other self is going to drive us to my counterpart's home."

"I think so...."

Marty executed the move slowly, with a little help from Doc. As the inventor stood first, planning to help his friend stand once he was stable on his own feet, a wave of dizziness struck his own head. He wobbled a moment, his vision dimming, then stableness was restored. He took a deep breath and let it out, a little shaken, still feeling lightheaded.

Marty didn't seem to notice. The musician got on his feet without any sort of relapse, though he did take only the quickest of glances at his counterpart as Old Marty came over, having parked the car and left it idling just five feet away. Old Marty avoided eye contact with his younger counterpart, collecting the objects that the visitor dropped during his spell, as well as the ammonia and cup of ice.

"You want me to take you over to my Doc's?" he asked uncertainly as the visitors walked slowly to the cab of the truck. Marty looked vaguely confused at the sight of the vehicle, perhaps because it was virtually identical to his own, or maybe because he was still feeling a little out of it from the fainting spell.

"If you could," Doc said, a hand to his head as he tried not to panic from the weak sensations in his own body. "I suspect if you call him, he might not believe it unless he sees it for himself."

Old Marty winced a little, perhaps thinking that the inventor was chiding him for his doubt. "Sure," he said. "You're going to have to both squeeze in the front seat, though -- unless one of you wants to ride in the bed."

Doc and Marty opted to squeeze. The drive to this-dimensional Doc's home was oddly familiar, but it wasn't until they turned onto the street that Doc really pinpointed the reason why; they were heading right for the location of his old place, on JFK Drive. It looked different, though, with less buildings and businesses bunched on the road, and he couldn't figure out entirely why until he saw the old Brown mansion loom up against the night sky. Doc couldn't help gasping at the sight of his family home, stunned by its reappearance.

"It never burned down?" he murmured, astonished.

"No," Old Marty said, an oddly bitter note to his voice. "It didn't -- for all the good that did...."

The visiting Marty glanced around Doc, seated between the McFlys, then to the scientist in turn. He looked confused by the remark. Doc met his gaze and shrugged. He was far more intrigued with the resurgence of his old home. It looked a bit more dilapidated than he remembered it being, but since it had apparently survived thirty-four extra years, he shouldn't have been surprised. It also looked like the few other homes on the street had sold out to businesses, but rather than being torn down and paved over with strip malls or fast food restaurants, they were still standing and appeared to be converted to attorney offices, apartments, and coffee houses or restaurants. In his history, Doc had been one of the first to sell his land for commercial use after the fire, and the other owners on the block followed suit once businesses started to trickle in onto his old property. The inventor hadn't ever given any thought about how such a development might've been provoked from that simple act. The change was amazing.

The local Marty pulled into the curving drive before the house and parked the car behind an old, rusted Ford Thunderbird that had seen far better days. Doc didn't recognize the vehicle as one he had owned in his past, but recalling Old Marty's early comment regarding the condition of the local Doc's car, he had to wonder if this belonged to his counterpart. "Maybe I should go in first and let him know what's going on," the local said as he shut his car off. "Just so he won't have a heart attack or something. The Doc is getting up there in age...."

"Perhaps, but I'd wager I've got a bit more on him," Doc said, thinking of the eleven years he spent in the past that his counterpart probably didn't have.

Old Marty was skeptical. "You look a lot younger than him," he said.

"That's from future rejuvenations," the visiting Marty said softly. "He wouldn't look this great otherwise by now, probably."

Old Marty cast a kind of nervous look at his younger counterpart, smiled thinly, then left the car and went up the steps to the door. He didn't bother to ask about what "future rejuvenations" were. Marty waited until his other self had shut the car door and gone halfway up the steps before asking the question that had no doubt bothered him since he had first laid eyes on the local.

"Why the hell am I so old now?"

"I -- I'm not entirely sure," Doc said, though a glimmer of an idea was beginning to come to him. Not everything was adding up, though, and the physical problems were a far bigger distraction and concern to him at the moment. "That can be one of the first questions we'll ask, once we're inside. Your local self seemed to confirm the fact that he was born in 1968, so we know it wasn't a natural birth that caused him to be thirty years older."

Marty thought about that a moment, then shuddered. His face lost a little of the color it had gained on the drive over. "What if I never got back to '85?" he half whispered. "That could've happened, couldn't it?"

It was definitely one of the front running theories in Doc's own head. "Yes, it could have," he said softly, seeing no point to denial. "But you've seen how much deviation has happened in the other worlds when we compare it to ours. Perhaps there is another explanation for it."

Marty shook his head once. "I'll bet that's it," he said. "I mean, so many things had to happen to send me back to the future that first time. If one of 'em had fallen through, I'd probably be pretty screwed."

Doc looked through the window at the house. "But that wouldn't explain why the old home is still standing," he said. "The money I made off selling the land to developers financed almost all of the time machine."

The musician shrugged halfheartedly. "Maybe that's one of the big changes here," he said.

Unable to see much of anything from being squeezed in the middle of the truck's cab, Doc had Marty get out of the car and stepped out to look around at the property, curious about the changes. Old Marty came back from the house before he got more than a couple of steps away from the vehicle. "Doc said to come in," he said, sounding a little surprised. "He seems really curious and I didn't have to do much talking to convince him. Not like that first time in '55...."

The local Marty glanced at the scientist and raised an eyebrow, but Doc had other matters forefront on his mind. A shaky kind of nervousness gripped his gut, suddenly, at the idea of meeting the other Emmett Brown. Foolish, since he'd already had several meetings so far, but what if he did the same thing Marty did at the gas station?

Ridiculous, Doc thought immediately. It was an entirely different situation -- he was completely prepared to meet the other Emmett, first off -- but he was feeling so strange and weak....

They went up the steps to the front door. Closer to the house, now, and with the aid of the lit porchlight, it was clear to see that the condition of the house was more run down than first glance had suggested. Several of the bricks on the steps were loose, and one of the windows was broken in the door, the space covered by a piece of cardboard.

Doc wasn't given much more time to compare his memories of his former home with the one on this site, since this world's Emmett Brown was standing in the doorway, waiting. The local Emmett did indeed look older than his counterpart, much more worn out than Doc could remember seeing the other counterparts. But beyond the aging, it seemed little else was difference. Their style of dress, for instance, appeared to be the same -- though Emmett's attire seemed to be more wrinkled and ragged, perhaps because he didn't have a wife to launder and repair his clothes. Lord knew that Doc's clothes had been in similar states before his marriage to Clara.

"Great Scott!" the local scientist gasped when he laid eyes on the visitors. "I can't believe it...."

"Pretty weird, isn't it?" the local Marty said, glancing at the pair on the porch as he headed through the door. The visiting Doc and Marty followed after a moment of hesitation. As soon as he stepped into the house, Doc felt weak and faint once more -- because of the smell. The delicious smell that had drifted over from the kitchen. It smelled like lasagna, and in a flash he suddenly realized why he was feeling so weak and dizzy, and why Marty might've been prone to fainting a short time ago.

Great Scott! It's not dimensional incompatibility -- it's simply hunger! It's been more than twelve hours since either of us has had anything to eat....

Emmett apologized right away about the delicious scent. "I'm very sorry, I had just finished making dinner. I know it's a bit late, but I was wrapped up in a project earlier today.... Were either of you hungry? There's plenty to go around."

It was an unusual way to greet strangers, but Doc thought it was the best invitation he could've heard. "I can't think of anything I'd like more right now," he said gratefully. "We haven't had anything to eat in half a day."

Emmett nodded once, unable to resist blatantly staring at his other self and the younger Marty. The musician seemed to be the subject of most of his curiosity; Emmett's eyes flicked back and forth between the older and the younger, his forehead creasing with thoughts that Doc could only guess at. After a moment, he closed the front door and led them through the wide corridor that ran the length of the first floor of the house, to the kitchen at the back where the dinner was cooling on the stove. As they went, Doc couldn't help but notice the clutter and dust around them. If he had harbored any doubts about his counterpart's love life, it was confirmed in that moment; there was no way a wife would put up with such conditions in the home.

"Marty told me you came from a different world," Emmett said as he pulled out enough plates for them all. "How is that possible?"

Doc rattled out the entire story as his counterpart brought the plates, utensils, and food over to the small, crumb-scattered kitchen table and passed everything around. The story, which the inventor was condensing more each time, since he was tiring swiftly of repeating it so many times already, took a while to be told in between bites of much needed food. By the time he concluded it, his plate was clean and he was feeling a lot better.

"Another time machine," Emmett muttered to himself, his food mostly untouched from the rapt attention he had paid his counterpart. He nodded to the younger Marty, sitting next to Doc and helping himself to seconds from the aluminum pan of lasagna. "You got him home, then? When he came to 1955? Or did that not even happen with you?"

"Oh, it happened," Marty said before Doc could answer. "He got me back both times."

"Both times?" the local Emmett and Marty asked, almost in unison.

"That's a long, long story," Doc said, not particularly up to telling it at the moment. "Based on Marty's age, am I to assume that he never got home?"

Emmett and Old Marty looked at one another. There was a tight line to the older Marty's mouth, and he was the one who answered the question. "No," he said, an old bitterness in his voice. "I didn't."

"Why not?" Marty asked with a perverse curiosity. "Did you miss the lightning bolt?"

"In a manner of speaking," Emmett said softly, looking down at his plate.

"I didn't even know there was gonna be a storm 'til it was too late," Old Marty explained, his mood dark. "And then I was completely and totally screwed. Doc tried a few things, but nothing worked."

The visiting Marty frowned. "You didn't have the flyer?" he asked.

"What flyer?" came the response.

"The 'Save the Clocktower' flyer," the musician said. "Some old lady shoved that in my face in the town square the day before I went back in time to '55. I'd kept it since Jennifer put her grandma's phone number on it, and I was gonna call her that night. Never got around to it, though...."

Old Marty looked at his counterpart through narrowed eyes. "That was lucky of you," he said, almost sarcastic. It was beyond obvious he was jealous of his younger counterpart. Marty could tell, too; his eyes turned away from the older man to the discolored tabletop.

"So I'm guessing that you spent the next thirty years living it out?" Doc asked the older Marty, thanking God that his friend had avoided that particular experience.

"Yes," Emmett said for the other local. "And before you can suggest how irresponsible this was, I would like to point out that I did take certain precautions." He looked over at the older Marty, sitting a chair away from the rest of them, his body taut with tension. "For all the good it did me."

Old Marty snorted softly. "Keeping me prisoner in your home was a completely unrealistic goal!"

"You weren't 'kept prisoner,'" Emmett said, his tone much milder than the hardened one of the local Marty. "You went to school, didn't you? I let you complete your senior year."

"And then kept me locked in here -- I couldn't do anything social, no dances, no dates, no hanging out with anyone. I couldn't even get a part-time job!" Old Marty stood abruptly, the legs of his chair noisily scraping the dusty tiles. "If you're planning on telling them everything, I think I'll go. Living through it once was hell enough."

Before Emmett or anyone else could say a word, the older man turned and walked quickly from the kitchen, down the outside hallway. A moment later there was the distant sound of the front door opening and slamming shut. The local scientist let out a deep sigh, his face sagging into its lines and looking far older for a moment. "I'm sorry," he apologized to the guests. "The situation is a bit of a sore point with him.... He wasn't even speaking to me for a while."

"What happened?" Marty asked. "He got trapped in 1955? What did he do? What did you do?" The musician blinked, and a look of pain briefly crossed his face. "What did my parents and Jennifer do?"

Emmett looked faintly ill with the barrage of questions. He stared at the visiting Marty a moment, then swung his eyes over to regard his counterpart. "Why did you come over here?"

It took Doc a moment to answer, so caught off guard he was with the question. "I... ah, well as I said earlier, I thought you might be able to help us."

Emmett chuckled, the sound bitter. "You came to the wrong man," he said. "I couldn't help Marty those thirty years... and the DeLorean was dismantled long ago."

The visiting inventor had been expecting such news -- it was becoming all too familiar -- but his heart nevertheless gave an unpleasant skip at the realization there problems were far from over. Yet he couldn't fault his dimensional counterpart. "I'm sure you had good reasons for that," he said.

Emmett nodded once. He looked over at the visiting musician a moment. "Are you sure you want to know everything?" he asked.

Marty nodded once, a determined sort of curiosity on his face. "Yeah," he said. "I can handle it."

The local scientist opened his mouth and began to speak. Apparently in this world, as implied earlier, there had been no flyer to warn Marty and Emmett of the lightning bolt as a source of power for time machine. That opportunity was missed -- and in spite of a few other attempts, nothing had worked and Marty had remained in the past.

Emmett's immediate reaction to this development had been to sequester the teen, but Marty had balked at the idea of spending the next thirty years under house arrest, even after his close call with his parents. The scientist had grudgingly allowed him to finish his senior year at Hill Valley High, graduating with the class of 1956, but after that his instructions were adamant -- he was to stay with him on the mansion grounds until 1985.

Marty, understandably, was furious with this restriction to his freedom. He was already upset about the prediction that he was to spend the next thirty years living in the past. There was a lot of anger in the kid, Emmett recounted -- then and now, still. Worse yet was the restriction the inventor gave Marty with his music. He was under no circumstances allowed to perform outside of the walls of his home. And not only could he not make a name for himself, he had an entirely new name: Calvin Martin Klein. Emmett had even had proper documents forged for the teen under that name, at a considerable expense.

The rules, put into place to not only protect Marty but the entire town -- as well as the entire universe and space-time continuum -- were frequently broken. The teen would sneak out, often staying out until the wee hours of the morning. The lectures Emmett gave made no difference; the inventor wasn't any blood kin of Marty's, though he was the closest thing to a parent that the kid had, then. Marty even took off for a couple of weeks, once, leaving Emmett frantic with worry and unable to do a damned thing. The last thing he wanted was any fame or publicity involving the time traveler to be stirred up and possibly change history; informing the police was simply not an option.

Yet Marty would always come back. Why? Emmett's was the only remotely familiar face to the teen, and Hill Valley was his home. Marty also was reluctantly aware of the potentially dire consequences that could come of his presence in past events. If he didn't care, he could've disappeared somewhere in the world. Certainly no one would be searching for him.

At this point in the story, Doc had to interrupt. "In my world, this home burned down in 1962," he said. "That enabled me to have enough money to fund the creation of the time machine and flux capacitor."

"Oh?" Emmett asked, his voice tired and flat. "That didn't happen here -- not even in a small sense." He paused, suddenly thoughtful. "Marty did seem unusually paranoid about my experimenting in the house. I chalked that up to perhaps a fear of losing the only home he had, anymore." The local inventor focused his eyes on the visiting Marty with an amazing intensity. "I know our worlds have varied, but were you aware of my counterpart's mansion being destroyed?"

Marty nodded immediately. "Doc kept a clipping of the news article on his wall," he said. "I saw it almost every time I was over there. I don't know if I could've quoted the exact date from memory when I came to '55, but I knew it was sometime in the early 60's. Before I was born."

"Interesting," Emmett mused. "Perhaps my Marty knew that, too...." Based on the comment Old Marty had made in the car about the home, Doc would've bet money on that. "It would certainly explain that behavior he exhibited around that time. And he tried more than once to sabotage the time machine."

"He -- he did what?" Doc asked, surprised and aghast that his friend would turn on him like that.

Emmett nodded slowly. "When I had exhausted all efforts to send him back home -- and, believe me, it was my focus for more than two years -- I finally dismantled the time machine. That was about the time Marty ran off for a couple of weeks. He was furious with me -- I hadn't ever seen him that mad before. Called me a lot of names -- nothing I hadn't heard before, of course, but it did sting a little coming from someone who I had come to consider a friend -- and then just took my car and left. I wasn't mad at him, though -- not then. His reaction was understandable; his one faint hope at getting back home was completely destroyed then. Quite literally, I might add. But I didn't dare keep the time machine around any longer, since I knew I had to recreate it in order to fulfill the events in October of 1985."

"But Marty didn't want them fulfilled -- obviously -- and believed that if you never created the time machine, then he would never have been sent back in time," Doc said, seeing the connection immediately. He winced at the error in logic. "If you never created a time machine to put him there in the first place, though, and he was the reason you never made one, that's a severe paradox!"

"Yes," Emmett agreed. "He wasn't the only one angry then; I had a lot of animosity myself with him those years! I had to keep everything relating to the time machine under lock and key, in a safe, because he would try to destroy it -- burn plans and sketches, smash models and prototypes. We could barely stand the sight of each other -- and yet I kept him here because I was afraid what might happen if he left. He couldn't get a job -- employment somewhere could change history, and a background check could be dangerous. Therefore, he couldn't afford a place of his own, and I couldn't afford to give him one with all my finances going into the time machine."

Marty sighed at the story, pushing away his plate with the half-consumed seconds on it. Clearly, his appetite had fled; he looked downright depressed. "I'm surprised he didn't kill himself," he said softly.

Emmett smiled faintly -- a sad smile. "I think he wanted to.... A less stubborn person might've succumbed to that urge, but Marty was too damned hotheaded for it. He endured. And after I saw your birth announcement in 1968, I started to allow him to go out more. He seemed a bit better after that -- being trapped inside these walls with just myself and Copernicus as company would've tampered with anyone's sanity, I think. But I still warned him against dating anyone. I don't really think that was an issue, so much.... He never did get over Jennifer, and you know he couldn't have her."

"How did Marty avoid... himself?" Doc asked. "When you met him through the natural course of time?"

"He didn't," Emmett said, bluntly. "Everyone in town thought the older Marty -- under his pseudonym, of course -- was some relation of mine. I circulated a story about how his family had been killed in an accident, and I was his only blood relative. Those who knew my family and parents well knew I was an only child, so they simply assumed that Marty was a distant cousin or the like.

"By the time young Marty McFly began to come over -- to help me out in the lab out in the garage -- his future self was forty-four! The younger Marty didn't recognize him at all for who he was -- he thought he was just 'Marty Klein,' the guy that his parents had named him after. But the older Marty didn't like to be around when his younger self visited -- I think it bothered him considerably. And by that point he had grown up enough to realize that taking the kid aside and telling him about who he was, and that he should avoid the Lone Pine Mall parking lot on October 26, 1985, was a bad idea."

"What happened... after?" Marty asked, rubbing his forehead.

"Well." Emmett paused and took a drink from the glass of water set next to his place at the table. He resumed the story with a clear reluctance. "I finished the time machine on schedule. Thanks to Marty's warning, I was not shot and killed by terrorists. He met me after his younger self had gone into the past, picked me up from the mall. In some ways, the passage of that date was liberating to him -- he could then live a life without worrying about causing the end of the world. He submitted some songs he had written over the years to various record companies, and had a few sales. A pen name didn't matter too much, then. The money he made was enough to allow him to move into his own place."

"What about his family?" the visiting Marty asked. "The one he left behind?"

Emmett's lips twitched up into the faintest of smiles, but the expression wasn't one of pleasure so much. "Two days after he went back in time, his seventeen-year-old self had his picture on the front paper, as a missing case. The police investigated, of course. I was interviewed -- and so was Marty. Imagine the irony there! And of course the police didn't see the truth of who 'Marty Klein' was; who would?"

"Jennifer might," the musician said softly.

The local scientist nodded once. "Yes," he said. "She was perceptive. She came to see me after her boyfriend vanished, and I didn't want to tell her. Marty did, though; it was something he'd been aching to do since he landed in '55. She thought he was playing a horrible joke on her -- but photographs I'd taken over the years of Marty convinced her of the truth. Unfortunately, but not very unexpectedly, she became so upset with the news that she cut off all contact with him. Jennifer kept the secret, though. No one would believe her if she told it, anyway." Emmett paused a moment, his eyes narrowed in thought. "She went away to college on the East coast after high school. I think she's a reporter in Boston, now."

Marty took a deep breath and sighed. "So, my family thinks I'm dead, Jennifer's off on her own life, and I'm a bitter old man?"

Doc shot his friend a look for his rather ineloquent assessment of the situation. Emmett didn't seem to mind. "That's a succinct way of putting it, but yes," he said.

"And what about you?" the visiting inventor couldn't help but ask. "How are you doing now?"

The local shrugged. "What I can with what I have," he said. "I own this home, free and clear, and social security pays for the rest. I feel horrible about what happened to Marty, though. I ruined his life and I've taken full responsibility for that. That knowledge will follow me to the grave... whenever that is."

There was a note of dark remorse and guilt in his voice that Doc had never before heard in his own. "It wasn't your fault," he said gently. "It sounds to me like it was simply a difficult set of circumstances -- which were thoroughly out of your control."

Emmett lifted his shoulders in a shrug once more. "Maybe -- but it was perfectly in my control to build a time machine. I felt completely ridiculous going through the motions of creating one after I knew what the disastrous end result would be. I never should've mettled in that matter -- and neither should you, from the sound of it."

Doc blinked a couple of times, startled by the reprimand. "What?" was all he could think of saying.

Emmett stood from the table and took his plate to the sink, half filled with dirty dishes. He spoke as he walked. "From what you've told me, your current time machine is causing you more grief than it should, throwing you into strange worlds that you don't belong in. Maybe you should consider it a sign and destroy it when -- or if -- you ever make it back home."

There was a kernel of truth to that, but Doc wasn't about to buy into the logic. "Things may be a bit difficult now, but time travel gave me a life I could only imagine before."

"How? By taking advantage of future technology to better your own life?"

The conversation was beginning to mimic a lecture Doc had gotten from one of his counterparts before, during that slip to an alternate dimension in 1994. Unlike last time, the inventor remained calm, knowing for a fact that this Emmett had not the slightest understanding of the matter. From what it sounded like, the local hadn't even taken one trip through time. "If you're referring to the rejuvenation I got in the future, there's an excellent reason for it -- I'm married, and I have four kids."

Emmett dropped his plate just short of the sink, where it shattered into several pieces. He turned, his eyes very wide. "You're -- married?!" he asked, his tone a mix of skepticism and envy.

Doc nodded once. "I met my wife, Clara, in 1885, when I was trapped there for a while after the time machine malfunctioned. We were wed after a few months, and had our two sons before we were able to move back to 1985 -- Jules and Verne. We had our daughter, Emily, in 1987, and our son, Clayton, earlier this year, in February. I'm actually older than you by eleven years from that time spent in the past -- but future medicine's adjusted the physical aging process."

The local scientist's eyebrows rose high with these details. "I suppose that would prompt you to want to live longer," he said, bending down to pick up the pieces of broken china. "I simply don't care anymore."

Doc wasn't blind to the reasons on why that might be. Nevertheless a feeling of disquiet weighed in his chest at the idea of his counterpart being so obviously unhappy. Of course, Marty's counterpart was probably far worse off in that respect.

"Maybe it's time we moved on, Doc," the musician suggested. The visiting inventor glanced over at him and saw that he was already on his feet, restless to get going once more. Little wonder why.

"You should," Emmett said bluntly. "I don't think it's very safe for Marty to be seen around town. If anyone in his family noticed him, they would recognize him in an instant. He's the proper age of the missing Marty McFly now."

Doc winced, having completely overlooked that particular snare. They were lucky they had arrived at night and seen so few people on the streets. "You're right, I guess," he said. "Did you want to see the time machine at all? I wouldn't mind...."

Emmett shuddered and shook his head once. "No, thanks. And I am sorry I can't be of any help to you with your problem. If you keep looking, perhaps you can find someone who will be."

Looking was the only thing they could do. They were halfway to the front door before the local scientist recalled how the visitors had showed up on his doorstep. With the older Marty having departed, Emmett had almost no choice but to drive them in his car to the site of the time machine's temporary parking place. The visiting Marty being seen by anyone in town was an occurrence he clearly wanted to avoid. He let them off in the dark alleyway next to the supermarket, shaking his head once more when Doc asked him if he wanted to see the machine.

While Marty went ahead to it, Doc took a moment to speak with his counterpart through the car window.

"It's not too late for you to enjoy the rest of your life," he said, staring at the face that looked so much older than his own. The local Emmett may have been eleven years younger, but he had aged from more than thirty years of worries, stresses, and guilt that the inventor had never bore in his own life. Even if he had had a rejuv in the future, the inventor doubted that those lines and marks could be erased.

Emmett sighed at the advice, turning his face to the front of the car. "You cannot possibly understand what I've lived through," he said. "You didn't destroy your friend's life -- and the lives of everyone he cared about."

This was true, perhaps, but Doc didn't see how his counterpart had earned any of the guilt that was clearly crushing him. Unless he had blatantly lied to them, he had done everything in his power to get Marty home -- and simply failed. Strange how his life's greatest accomplishment was tied so closely to what seemed to be his life's most bitter disappointment. No wonder he didn't want to set eyes on another time machine.

"What's done is done," Doc said firmly. "Unless you recreate a time machine, you won't be able to go back and undo the past -- and shouldn't, as you know. You've got to look beyond the mistakes that were made."

Emmett didn't say anything in response to that. "You'd better go," he suggested instead, reaching down to roll up the car window. Doc leaned back and allowed his counterpart to pull the car away. He stared at the vehicle as it chugged down the street before it turned a corner and was lost.

"Doc?"

The scientist turned around and looked at Marty, who was fidgeting in the general vicinity of the invisible train. The musician's face was strained. "Let's go," he said.

Doc headed that way. "Are you sure you want to see what's next?" he asked as he opened the train's door.

"No," Marty said, his tone sharp. "It seems like we keep seeing another layer of hell. All of my counterparts are losers and jerks."

"Not all -- just the last two, I think." Doc sighed as they climbed back aboard the sickened time machine. "Maybe we should skip back to more daylight hours.... It would be nice to take a long, hard look at the machine and see if we can eliminate anything that isn't the source of the malfunction."

Marty simply shrugged at the suggestion, sitting down on the bench and buckling in. "Anything that can get us home sooner, do it," he said. "I don't know how many more of these screwy worlds I can take."


Chapter Eight

Sunday, November 12, 1995
3:00 P.M.

There was no rain coming down upon arrival in their next destination. That was the first, immediate tip off that nothing about their situation had changed. Marty sighed heavily and let his face fall in his hands, not caring to see what else was out the window.

"Why don't we just leave now?" he asked Doc, who was standing before the controls. "If it's not raining, we know it's not home; why should we stick around any longer?"

Doc took a moment to answer. "Our goal is twofold, Marty," he said. "To get home, or to find someone who can get us home. We should explore all of our options. For all we know, this could be the world with the help we need. We need to see it through that much, at least."

It was a perfectly reasonable answer, but it still didn't change the musician's mind. He raised his head and eyes to take a quick glance at the cloudy skies through the windows. "Could we maybe find that out without talking to ourselves? It's getting pretty pointless hearing all the tales of woe from 'em...."

"We have to locate my other self, at least," Doc said. "Newspapers wouldn't tell us anything about him inventing a time machine, you know -- even if we broke into the library to check through the archives. Once we find another me who still has a working time machine, I think we'll be a lot better off."

Marty snorted, leaning back in the seat. "If you ask me, it's pretty weird that most of the time the machines are now destroyed," he said.

"Why? From what I've seen in each of the alternate worlds, it's a perfectly logical -- Great Scott!"

Doc's eyes were fixed on something out of the window. Marty had a brief moment of indecision, then released the belt across his lap and got up to look.

"Oh my God...."

Whereas before -- every time before, in fact -- Hill Valley had been clearly below them, now it looked to be largely unsettled land. A few homes were visible, settled on large plots of land -- mostly farms -- but there wasn't a trace of anything from their hometown to be recognized. Marty dragged his eyes away to glance at the time display. It was telling him it was still 1995 and they were in Hill Valley. "What happened?"

Doc's shrug was not very encouraging to the musician. "We appear to be in a world where Hill Valley was settled differently," he said. "Perhaps we can learn more down there."

Marty watched the land pass under the train, a cold feeling settling in the pit of his stomach. "Maybe we're somewhere where there is no Hill Valley," he murmured. "That could happen, right?"

Doc's mouth puckered up in a twisted frown. "It could," he agreed slowly. "Though if there's no Hill Valley in this dimension, I don't understand how or why the train was able to complete the transit. Of course, we could be thousands of miles away from home, now...."

"No," Marty said, almost positive about that. "The land and horizon is still pretty much the same. What's the closest town to here? Elmdale? Or Grass Valley?"

"Elmdale -- but Grass Valley will have far more resources for us to utilize, being older and larger." The inventor looked at the instruments for a moment, then swung the train in a wide arc in the direction of the town, twelve miles east of downtown Hill Valley. Moving high in the sky, at almost eighty miles an hour, it didn't take more than a few minutes to reach the town. Unlike the Hill Valley of this dimension, Grass Valley looked pretty much what the travelers expected it to look like; next to their barely populated hometown in this world, it looked like a bustling city.

Grass Valley had been settled around the same time Hill Valley had, in the mid-1800's, making an early living from gold and silver mines in the area. While Hill Valley had gone on to surpass it in population and tear down or remodel the old in the name of progress, Grass Valley had taken care to preserve its early roots. The downtown area was filled with carefully maintained buildings that had been standing almost, or more than, a hundred years, and drew many tourists with the preserved mines and antique shops. The place had a rural, small-town feel to it back in Marty and Doc's world, and it appeared at first glance completely identical to what they remembered from home.

The gloomy weather of the day was apparently keeping people indoors, so it was quick work to find a small park to land the train in. Once it was settled, no more than two dozen feet from picnic tables, the travelers left the machine invisible and headed for a strip mall area that was about a quarter mile down the road. Doc was eager to buy a newspaper, and no doubt one of the stores would have a phone book of the area.

They saw few people in their walk -- although Marty did notice something odd once or twice. While most cars drove by them without the least mind, one or two slowed down a lot. A glance in their direction, and he saw faces pressed against the windows, looks of curiosity and confusion furrowing their brows.

Maybe they just think we're nuts walking outside, the musician thought, seeing no other real explanation -- unless, here, he was another world famous rock star. The thought made him shudder a little, recalling the jerk he had been in that world. But things felt almost too different here -- maybe it was because the city of Hill Valley looked like it had been wiped from the face of the earth.

"If there's no Hill Valley, where do you think we live?" Marty had to ask as they came into view of the stores and restaurants.

"That's a good question," Doc said. "I have absolutely no idea. Maybe our families settled in this town instead. The phone book may give us that answer if we're in it."

Finding one actually proved to be a bit of a challenge; the pay phones outside didn't have any books with them. "Well, that's irritating," the inventor said, frowning at the empty space under the last phone. "Maybe the supermarket might have something." There was a Safeway across the street.

"Yeah...." Marty murmured, shifting his weight as he looked around, realizing a more immediate need. "Listen, why don't you go ahead -- I think I'm gonna duck in that restaurant and use the bathroom really quick." He nodded to the cafe that sat near the road.

Doc squinted at the restaurant, then shrugged his consent. "I guess that can't hurt," he said. "Don't linger, though. Splitting up here makes me a little nervous."

"I'll just be a few minutes behind you," Marty promised. He set off for the restaurant at a fast walk, mentally chiding himself for not listening to the call of nature much sooner -- like back at Emmett's house in the last reality. He'd just wanted to get away as soon as possible from that place, though. It had been beyond depressing.

Marty managed to sneak into the restaurant without any of the employees spotting him, which was good; he felt kinda weird using the facilities and not being a customer. Fortunately, the bathrooms were close to the main door. There was one guy in the men's room when he came in, but the musician really didn't care. Things were starting to get desperate. He took the second, empty urinal next to the door, unzipped... and about then felt the eyes boring into him.

What the hell? Marty thought, reluctantly sliding his gaze away from the mustard-colored wall to the person next to him. Sure enough, the guy was full on staring at him, breaking one of the cardinal, unspoken codes of the men's room.

"Oh my God," the guy said, a weird half-smile appearing on his face. "I don't believe it!"

Marty leaned closer to the wall, really uncomfortable now. Of all the times to meet someone who apparently knew him.... "You're him!" the guy went on, excited. "Wow! That's so cool! Can I have your autograph?"

The musician's mind whirled. Was he some big deal rock star here, too? "You know, now's probably not the best time," he said, his discomfort clear in his voice.

The guy blinked, as if only then realizing where, exactly they were. "Oh, right, sorry! You know, I really love all your movies," he added as he turned back to face the wall. "Really cool stuff."

Movies? Since when am I an actor? "Mmmm," Marty said, vaguely.

The guy next to him finished up a second later and flushed. "So, if I wait outside, do you think I could get your autograph?" he asked.

"Uh, I guess," Marty said, wishing he would just leave. It was impossible to relax and just go when some stranger was staring at him and smiling; it was beyond creepy.

"Great!" the guy said, slapping him on the back. Marty jumped, his free hand shooting out to the wall to catch himself before he fell into the urinal. "Oh, sorry," the stranger apologized, once more realizing their setting. "I'll, ah, let you finish in here."

"Thank God," Marty muttered under his breath, rolling his eyes heavenward as the stranger finally left. Once alone, though, he found himself replaying the scene in his head and feeling seriously uncomfortable.

So I must be famous here again. Great.... Gotta love the fans!

No one else, fortunately, came in while Marty was finishing his business. When he finally emerged from the men's room a few minutes later -- reluctantly -- the guy was standing a few feet away from the door, waiting. A red-haired woman about his age was next to him and she squealed softly at the sight of Marty.

"Oh my God, Alex, you weren't lying! Oh my God...."

"This is my wife," Alex-the-bathroom-guy said, nudging the woman forward. "Meg. She's really loved your films. She even had posters of you in her room when she was in high school!"

Meg's cheeks turned almost as dark as her hair. "Well, what girl in America didn't?" she murmured, suddenly shy.

Alex held out a piece of paper and a pen. "Could you make it out to Alex and Meg?" he asked as Marty reluctantly took the materials.

"Sure..." he muttered. He put the paper flat on the wall and wrote a quick, vague message: "For Meg and Alex. Best Wishes." Then he sighed his name with a flourish.

The couple was watching him as he worked, basking in the glow of the apparent celebrity. Alex let out a laugh as he finished signing his name. "Marty McFly! Ha! That's a good one, Mike!"

"Mike?" Marty said, confused. "I'm not Mike... I'm Marty. Marty McFly."

Meg giggled. "Oh, that's cute. Alex, let's keep that. It's neat. I recognize his handwriting from when he was writing the letter in the movie."

Alex looked at his wife uncertainly, then back to Marty. He grinned. "Yeah. Thanks a lot, man! You're cool."

"No problem," Marty lied. "Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta run." He turned and hurried off before the couple could react, anxious to get out of the restaurant and back to Doc to report his bizarre experience.

The inventor was hard to find in the supermarket, but Marty finally located him wandering one of the aisles, towards a store clerk pricing items. "Doc!" Marty hissed when he came within earshot. The scientist turned around, frowning as he took in his friend's slightly frantic appearance.

"What's wrong?" he asked. "Did you see yourself -- or me?"

"No, I... I guess I look like someone famous here." Marty lowered his voice. "I was in the bathroom and this guy kept staring at me the whole time. It was weird as hell! And then when I came out, he had me autograph some paper for him and his wife. And he called me 'Mike' -- whoever that is!"

Doc mulled the words over a moment. "Odd," he said. "Maybe you look like a celebrity in town or something. They didn't have a phone book at the front of the store that I could see," he added. "I was going to ask one of the employees here."

"Great," Marty said. "Let's get this over with and get outta here."

All hope that the experience in the men's room was a quirky fluke was dashed the moment the store clerk turned around to answer their question. A strange expression slipped across his face, almost identical to the one he had seen on Alex's face in the bathroom. A startled look of almost disbelief mingled with pleasant surprise.

"A phone book?" he repeated to Doc's query. "Yeah, I can get you one, no problem...." The blond teen, with the name tag of "SAM," started to grin, his eyes drifting to Marty's face. "Dude, are you Michael J. Fox? You are, aren't you?"

"Michael J. Fox?" Marty asked, completely caught off guard. "No, I'm Marty McFly...."

Sam laughed, highly amused. The reaction was eerily similar to the one the couple in the restaurant had had. "Nice one! And so you're Doc, right?" he added, turning to look at the inventor.

"If you mean Dr. Emmett Brown, then yes, I am," Doc said, looking as confused as Marty was feeling, now. Most people around town thought of Doc as either Dr. Brown or Emmett Brown. Only Jennifer really shared in her husband's familiar nickname for the inventor. So why was this completely stranger from one town over calling him that?

And why do people think I'm someone named Michael...?

The teen laughed even harder, as if this was the best joke he'd ever heard. "You guys crack me up! Listen, could I get your autographs? I'm a huge fan and it would be a total honor... if you don't mind, I mean."

Marty looked at Doc, his skin prickling. He felt almost as uncomfortable as he had been in the restroom with the stranger gawking at him. The scientist looked back at him a moment, surprise all over his face, then frowning faintly. "Are we both famous here?" he asked the stockboy.

Sam rolled his eyes, clearly thinking the visitors were either dense or adapt at straightfaced comedy. "Well, duh," he said. "Back to the Future is a classic now. Part of every Eighties kid's childhood...."

"Back to the Future?" Marty asked, that cold prickly chill increasing. "What's that?"

Sam focused his blue eyes on the musician, still clearly amused. "That movie. You know, the one that made you a huge worldwide star? Time traveling DeLoreans and all that...."

Doc went white at the stockboy's words and Marty had to put his own hand out to the shelf to keep his legs supporting him. "Oh my God," he breathed softly. "A movie?"

Sam nodded once. "You don't think I'd be talking about the cartoon series, do you? I mean, that was all right, I guess, but it was pretty juvenile. I think it would've been a lot cooler if they had a live action series spin-off." A wide smile suddenly lit up his face all over again. "Hey, are you guys doing another film? I heard some rumors.... Is that why you're all the way out here in Grass Valley, dressed up like 'em?"

Marty wanted to get away -- now. "Didn't you say you could get us a phone book?" he managed to ask. Doc looked far too flabbergasted to remember their mission.

"Yeah, I can show you," Sam said, setting the pricing gun on the stack of boxed cans and moving so fast he stumbled a little. As they followed the enthusiastic blond, Marty couldn't help noticing the stares directed their way from the other patrons. Some people looked boldly at them and some people were clearly trying not to be so obvious. Everyone, though, smiled, especially teenagers and kids. Smiled like they knew them.

"What the hell is goin' on here, Doc?" Marty hissed as Sam disappeared into the back offices of the supermarket.

"I don't know," the scientist said in the same low pitch. "If we were to believe that kid, it sounds as if someone created a movie based on... us. And we're apparently being mistaken for the actors in those roles."

"Shit," Marty muttered, having suspected the same things himself but unwilling to quite believe in a reality that fantastic. "This is too damned heavy...."

Sam returned a few minutes later with the local phone book. Doc looked through it where he stood, next to the quiet aisle of cleaning supplies. Marty peered past his arm to the pages of Browns and McFlys. There were a couple of C. Browns listed, but no one bore any obvious name from Doc's family. There were no McFlys at all, period.

When the inventor closed the book with an unhappy sigh, the stockboy -- standing close by, clearly considering himself the keeper of either the phone book or Marty and Doc -- had to ask, "Did you need help finding someone? Or something?"

"No," Doc said after a moment. "I thought it could be a long shot.... There's no phone book for Hill Valley here, is there?"

Sam chuckled. "Not likely -- considering it doesn't even exist," he said.

That wasn't entirely news to the visitors, but it didn't fail to make Marty feel even more ill. Doc's next question didn't help the matter. "This movie you mentioned -- Back to the Future. Is it easy to find?"

"Well, yeah. It was the biggest movie ten years ago, and most video stores have 'em. We even do, at the front. But you guys already know this stuff, way better than me."

Marty highly doubted that.

Not surprisingly, with this news, Doc headed right for the front of the store where a video rental area was set up. The musician followed him, mostly because he didn't want to be left alone again. Stockboy Sam trailed after them, perhaps still hoping for an autograph. "Where would the tape be?" the inventor asked.

"Comedy," Sam said, heading to the shelves displaying that particular film genre. "If you ask me, though, it's really more sci-fi." He stopped and waved a hand to a trio of video boxes set up on the wall. It appeared that not only one film was made, but three: Back to the Future, Back to the Future Part II, and Back to the Future Part III. The covers of the boxes bore images that were slightly modified with each new chapter. With the first, Marty saw... himself standing next to the DeLorean, it's driver's side door open, one foot in the car and goggling at his watch. The second box's image contained both him and Doc in the same clothes they'd worn in 2015, posing almost identically to his solo one on the first box. And the third had him, Doc, and Clara enacting once more the looking-at-the-watch-in-horror-outside-the-time-machine shot.

Of all the things in a million and one years, Marty never thought he'd see anything remotely like that. His life -- literally a movie!

Doc picked up the box to the first film, stared at the cover a moment, then flipped it over to read the back. His obvious scrutiny confused Sam, watching both visitors with an intensity Marty didn't enjoy.

"Listen, if you guys need any... help, anything at all, let me know," he said. "And I'm not saying that to kiss up or anything. I swear!"

"I think we're fine," Doc said, preoccupied by the text on the back of the video. Marty thought that was the understatement of the century.

Sam excused himself for a minute, saying something about how he was going to let his supervisor know he was going to take his break. The video portion of the store was deserted at the moment, and Marty felt nothing but relief for that. "Doc, can we get out of here, now?" he whispered.

The inventor took a moment to answer, his eyes still examining the back of the video. "Soon, Marty. This is rather interesting, actually. Look how much these actors look like us! Virtually identical! Amazing what make-up can do...."

Against his will, Marty found himself accepting the first video box from Doc's hand. There were three small color photographs on the back, with one of him, one of Doc, and one of the both of them together. It was like looking at photos from real life -- but the snapshots had a professional-quality realism. His eyes slipped down to quickly skim the text, in spite of the goosebumps and shivers plaguing him at that moment.

One of the top grossing box office comedies of all time!

Steven Spielberg presents an irresistible comic fantasy that accelerates beyond the time barrier with wit, imagination and infectious, wide-eyed wonder. Michael J. Fox stars as Marty McFly, a typical American teenager of the Eighties accidentally sent back to 1955 in a plutonium-powered DeLorean "time machine" invented by slightly mad scientist Christopher Lloyd. During his often hysterical, always amazing trip back in time, Marty must make certain his teenager parents-to-be, Crispin Glover and Lea Thompson, meet and fall in love -- so he can get back to the future. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, this delightful comedy-adventure will make everyone want to get Back to the Future over and over again.

"Jesus Christ," Marty murmured, raking the back of his hand across his suddenly damp forehead.

"You can say that again," Doc said, already reading the back of the second film's box. He handed it to Marty after a moment to look at the third box. The musician glanced down to see some photos of him, Doc, and even Jennifer, all looking to be from that first maddening trip to the future -- but he avoided reading the printed text this time. He figured Doc would give him the gist of he asked -- and even if he didn't, probably.

"Unbelievable," the inventor murmured, finally passing Marty the third video box. "It appears that in this dimension, someone's made a movie -- a trilogy! -- of everything that happened with the first DeLorean! Your trip to '55, the trip to 2015 and the almanac mess, and then the ordeal in 1885 with my meeting Clara and your showdown with Buford Tannen."

"What does that mean?" Marty asked, his confusion only accelerating his fear and discomfort. "And does this have anything to do with Hill Valley not being around?"

Doc smiled grimly. "If I had to take a guess based on what we've seen here so far, I would wager that we don't exist here -- except as characters someone created. Fascinating, actually. It makes me wonder if writing and storytelling either creates alternate worlds, or else those individuals can tap into those worlds from their own through some sort of mental ability or talent that's yet to be discovered. Maybe that's what the imagination is, a tuner of sorts that is sensitive to other dimensional worlds and frequencies...."

Marty hardly heard him, his mind focusing only on the "we don't exist" part. "Then let's go, now," he said, trying to put the video boxes back on the shelf so quickly that they dropped to the ground.

"Soon," Doc said, a curious spark in his eye. He bent down to retrieve the boxes and placed them carefully back on the shelf. "I'd like to ask some more questions to Sam when he comes back. This is interesting."

"No, it's not!" Marty said as loudly as he dared. "This is beyond the Twilight Zone, Doc! I thought the other places were bad, but this is a whole new level of hell. What can be worse than finding out you're just some made up character in a movie?"

"Plenty," the scientist said, unruffled. "I don't think it could hurt if we ask a few more questions about the way things are here -- and the technology, too. If it's more advanced than our 1995, we could use it to our advantage."

Marty had some doubts about that -- especially since the world where he was a rock star had been ahead of its time in a bunch of ways -- but he wasn't given any more time to work on Doc about it. The stockboy came back without his apron and wearing a coat, having obviously been granted his break. "I've got a half hour for a late lunch," he said. "The bakery on the corner has good pastries, if either of you are hungry."

"No, we're fine," Doc said for the both of them. "But if you're headed that way, I believe we'll come along -- if you don't mind. I have a few questions I'd like to ask you."

The teen grinned. "Mind? Hell, it's not every day I get to talk to people like you! Sure, whatever you want!"

Sam led them out of the supermarket and to the bakery in a shop next door to the Safeway. He was so obviously excited by his task that he was strutting down the street. Marty felt like doing anything but strutting, having the overwhelming urge to hide his face. Doc attracted enough stares from strangers normally, since he wasn't exactly conventional-looking, but people here were gawking at him, too. If only they had hats or something to hide under....

The Flour Garden Bakery, as it was called, was populated by only about five other people, and three of those were working behind the counter. Perhaps aware of the visitors' notoriety in this world, Sam selected a table away from the windows, near the back. "Did you guys want anything?" he asked, exhibiting nerves for the first time. "I was gonna get something to drink...."

Marty rubbed his head, which was starting to throb with pain caused by both stress and an exhaustion that was beginning to creep up on him, like it or not. A look at his watch, and he saw his body was thinking it was 5:22 A.M. on Monday morning. He hoped Doc didn't plan on them sitting down for too long, or the long hours and the never ending mission would really hit him. And of all the worlds he'd seen so far, this was one place where he did not want to crash.

The inventor might've been feeling the same sort of symptoms. "Black coffee is fine, for me," he said, and glanced to Marty with an arched eyebrow.

The musician looked at the counter and beyond, didn't see any soda machines, and decided he might as well get one of those espresso drinks. They had a good jolt of caffeine to them, after all. "A latte, I guess," he told the stockboy.

Once Sam had gone off, out of earshot, to take care of the orders, Marty seized the chance to ask a question that had been bugging him since his first case of mistaken identity in the bathroom. "Do we just play along with who he thinks we are, Doc?" he asked. "That we're those actors instead of who we really are?"

Doc's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "I can't see any way around that," he said. "I suspect if we tried to tell him who we really are, he wouldn't believe us. Anyway, if this world isn't aware of the possibility of time travel, far be it from me to drag another teenager into it. For all we know, he'd insist on coming along. A possibility that I don't want to undertake under any circumstances."

"So why do you even want to stick around here and talk with him?" Marty asked, not understanding Doc's persistence over that.

"Curiosity's sake," the scientist answered honestly. "When else will we have an opportunity remotely like this one?"

Marty rolled his eyes and massaged his temples, his headache rising another notch. "Probably next time we use the stupid machine."

When Sam returned with their drinks, as well as his own coffee and one of the fresh baked muffins on display, Doc wasted no time in beginning his interview. "You said earlier that this movie, Back to the Future, was successful. Were the two sequels equally so as well?"

"Um...." Sam looked puzzled. "Pretty much, I guess. The third one didn't crack a hundred million, but it came close enough. The second one busted up some records, though."

"Where did the third film end? What was the last thing that happened in it, the final scene?"

Now the teenager stared at Doc as if he had lost his marbles. A tentative smile began to inch across his lips. Marty guessed he was thinking the inventor was still "in character," and he might as well play along. Sam's forehead remained furrowed, though, so he couldn't have been completely convinced. The musician supposed he should be glad that their local tour guide wasn't any younger than seventeen or eighteen; younger kids would believe in the impossible far more easily. Santa Claus and the different Disney parks had made livings based on that.

"You know," he said. "The movie ended after Doc said 'bye to Marty and Jennifer at the train tracks and flew off in the train time machine with his new family. Then, 'The End' -- unless it isn't." The stockboy leaned forward, his eyes wide. "Are you guys doing a new movie here? I won't tell, swear to God!"

The inventor sidestepped the question. "Is there any chance we could see the videos?"

"Doc!" Marty blurted before he could stop himself, horrified by the idea. Sam looked at him, surprised, probably because he had just called his friend by what the teen thought of as the character's name. The hell with it, the musician thought. If Sam thought they were nuts, so what? It wasn't like they were going to stick around long enough to be thrown into some asylum, or run into the actors who bore such a striking resemblance to them.

"I didn't think you guys were Method, but fine, I'll play along," Sam said. "I could see if the guy running the video area at Safeway could loan you the films, if you want."

A gleam of an idea had come into Doc's eye with those words. Marty wasn't sure if he liked that look, but he took a long slip of his latte and tried not to think about it. "Perhaps so," the inventor said. "Who was it that created the films?"

"Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale. Well, they both wrote the first one, but I think only Gale wrote the sequel screenplays.... Zemeckis directed all three, though. That was so cool when he won the Oscar this year for Forrest Gump. He totally deserved it."

Marty recognized the name of the last film, and of the director. The guy had won an Oscar in their world, too. Some things had apparently remained the same between this odd reality and theirs. Weird.

Suspicion was at long last beginning to creep into Sam's face, the strange questions finally hitting home. Marty figured they'd better change the subject a little -- fast. "Is there anything around here that can figure out electronics?" he asked, not really knowing just what Doc wanted but figuring that might put them on the right track.

"You mean like an electronics store?"

"Maybe," Doc said, though Marty could tell from the tone of his voice that he wasn't too interested in pursuing that approach. "What's the current technology like with home computers now?"

Sam looked blankly at the visitors. "I don't know. If you want to find that out, I'd go to a computer store and ask them. What do you need that's electrical?"

Once more, Doc avoided answering the question directly. "I don't suppose you have hover conversions and fusion power yet, do you?"

"Um, that would be a no...." The stockboy stared at Doc as he popped a bite of the muffin into his mouth and chewed slowly. "Do you guys need some kind of help? I can probably direct you to the right place if you do...."

Marty wondered if that was Sam's way of asking them if they were out of their minds. He was starting to feel like it, between the number of odd things they had seen in the last day, a weariness barely starved off with caffeine, and the completely mind-blowing idea that they had a movie about them in this world.

Doc glanced at Marty as the teenager waited for their answer, and the musician could read the look on his face as clear as day. There was nothing more to really be gained from this world. "We're fine, I suppose," the inventor said, his tone softer now. "Though I think we would like to rent those videos at the store if it's possible. Ma-- Michael and I need to run over a couple of details in the previous films."

The suspicious look vanished on Sam's face, replaced by pure delight. "So you guys are doing another film? Awesome! Wait 'til the other fans hears about that; they'll totally flip! But... ah, I won't tell them too much, I promise, and I guess if it's supposed to be secret I can hold it in. Wow!"

Sam continued to chatter away now, perhaps out of happiness that another sequel was going to be made of what was clearly a favorite movie of his, or perhaps out of a relief that the two visitors weren't acting like they were characters that didn't exist in this world. Marty listened for a couple of minutes until all the words about the film and citations of favorite scenes and lines began to make his skin crawl all over again.

He's talking about my life, the musician realized, feeling aghast, a bit sickened, and horribly exposed.

The inventor listened to the stockboy's words intently, genuinely interested in everything said. When Sam paused for breath, or to take a bite or drink of his so-called lunch, Doc used the opportunity to ask questions. Some were about what was in and out of the films -- and when he mentioned one bit that was apparently left out, Sam immediately got excited and wanted to know about some of the cut scenes from the movie. Some of the questions were about the filming of the movies. When was it filmed? Who else was cast in the roles? Was the film well-known?

Sam didn't know the answers to everything, but what he did know was more than enough. At first, Marty had thought he'd heard wrong when the teen mentioned a "ride" based on the trilogy at the Universal Studios theme parks. There was also, apparently, a Saturday morning cartoon series that had been around in the early 1990's, as well as a fan club that Sam apparently belonged to.

Sheesh, Marty thought. Of all the people we could've talked to here, we had to stop a fan.

His misgivings were not shared by Doc, though, who looked completely entranced by everything. Just as Marty was starting to think they'd be there all day, Sam's watch beeped, and he looked at the time with a wince.

"I gotta get back to Slaveway, now," the stockboy said remorsefully, standing. "The manager's already riding me for coming in late earlier.... But I can get you guys the videos if you still want 'em."

Doc assured him they still did. They followed the teenager back to the Safeway next door, and he stopped at the front of the store where the small rental counter was located, as well as a small assortment of various electronics. As Sam went off to talk to the clerk, Marty took the opportunity to ask his friend a question that had been nagging him since the movies had been brought up.

"So how are we gonna return these, Doc? Or do you plan on us taking a motel room here to watch this stuff?"

The scientist had the dignity to look a bit guilty. "Well... we'll have to keep them, I suppose. I don't think it would be a good idea to stay here overnight to watch the films. Not with everyone assuming we're famous actors. The last thing we want is groupies chasing after us -- and I don't want the train to be left overnight in the park."

Marty sighed, relieved by that. "I'm glad you haven't completely lost your mind here," he muttered under his breath, stepping back as Sam returned to them, a trio of black plastic video cases in hand.

"I checked them out for you under my name," he said. "That way you don't need to fill out all that paperwork for membership."

Doc winced a little with that statement, though the expression was so fleeting that Sam didn't catch it. "That's very nice of you," he said. "Thanks."

The teen grinned, then held up a small disposable camera he had clearly just bought. "Could I get a picture with you guys before you go?" he asked. "And maybe an autograph?"

Since they were going to put a very black mark on Sam's rental record, Doc agreed immediately. Marty felt kind of funny posing with the stockboy, and it didn't help matters that Sam mimicked the same pose that was on the covers of the video -- staring at his watch and borrowing some mirrored sunglasses from a stand nearby to prop up on his forehead. The video clerk took a half dozen pictures of Marty and Doc with Sam -- who posed in both the dramatic and then normal, candid poses -- and then the visitors reluctantly obliged the clerk in his request for some photos himself. Once Sam had taken those pictures, and both Marty and Doc had signed their pseudonyms of this world on some paper for Sam, they were finally able to escape.

"I hope he doesn't show those autographs to too many people," Doc said once they had put a block between them and the market. "Although maybe it's not too farfetched to think that our handwriting might be identical to the actors'."

Marty just grunted, too drained to really waste energy on a freaky thought like that. "The couple I saw in the restaurant said something about mine looking the same as this Michael Fox guy. What are you gonna do with the tapes?"

"Watch them, when we have the opportunity. I'm curious to see what this world knows about us -- and how they might have staged certain events."

"It doesn't creep the hell out of you to see 'em? I mean, Doc, they could have super personal things in your life on 'em. What if they show you in the bathroom taking a leak, or having a shower, or in the bedroom with Clara...."

"The films are rated PG," Doc said, amusement tainting his words. "That may be somewhat limiting at to what is shown. And I don't see how anything you just suggested would be very relevant to the events that these movies supposedly cover."

The musician thought about that a moment, recalling all the films he'd seen and how they tended to more or less show the stuff that was necessary or central to the plot. Few movies, he knew, followed their characters into the bathroom unless some important discussion or event was going to take place.

"I guess not," he said. "I just hope wherever we land next isn't some warped twisting of this world. I think I'd rather see anything next -- as long as we're us and not some fictional characters!"

"It seems that each subsequent world we find has no resemblance to the last, so I would think the odds are good you'll get your wish," Doc said.

Marty shook his head once, kicking a small rock out of his way. "If I was gonna wish for anything, it'd be to make the next trip our last."


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