'The brain operates much like any other electrical current!'; 'Joining of the minds!' ; 'Marty, wait until you see my invention!'; The Doc is halfway through describing his new machine when he pauses. "Marty, what day is it?"
"Uh…Thursday."
Doc's coat billows as he whips around to look at Marty. "Isn't it a school day?"
"Yeah, Doc. I'm," Marty focuses on a knickknack, "skipping. Hey, what's this?" he examines it intensely.
The Doc catches the attempt at distraction but answers Marty's question in spite of it.
Marty elaborates unnecessarily:
"My mom and dad don't care. I told them I was going to skip this morning."
"Yes. Well. I have no doubt they function perfectly well as parental figures," Doc says with an awkwardness that doesn't come from the strange phraseology but instead at having to say it at all. His own parents had been reasonably doting on both him and his education; it seems natural for the same to be applicable to Marty's. It occurs to Doc, then, that this is quite possibly illogical, and perhaps he ought to reconsider his theory on parents as a whole. Brain already too cluttered, he dismisses this notion and continues. "It may be a simple solution to all our conversational problems!"
"Simple. Yeah, Doc, sure."
"Marty, don't you see?" The suction cup slaps, pop, onto Marty's forehead, "Uninhibited! Free! There will be no need to decide whether or not to speak our minds because everything we say will be what we think! Everything will be from our minds themselves!" Doc pulls the headgear onto his head; he fastens it securely. He adds as an afterthought, mostly to himself but somehow almost an apology, "Of course, the sheer bulk may prove inconvenient." Then, louder, "Nevertheless!"
"I think I saw this on an episode of 'Gilligan's Island'. It didn't turn out so well. "
"Quiet, Marty, please, I need to concentrate."
"Sure, Doc."
Marty quiets himself, but, urged to silence, feels the unnatural need to be loud. He shuffles his feet, leans to the side, moves backwards. His clothes rustle. He coughs into one hand and scratches the back of his neck with the other. Doc almost subconsciously grabs and stills him.
And it is now, hands on Marty's shoulders, breath drawn, and heart between jack hammering and stopping completely from excitement, that Doc reads Marty's mind.
Marty had had no doubt that the invention wouldn't work. But there's a thrum that is either real or solely in Marty's own brain that hadn't been there before. "Is it working?"
Doc doesn't answer.
It isn't intrusive. Nor is it uncomfortable. And this is why he doubts it; it seems like it should be painful to have someone inside your brain. Marty almost conjures up an imaginary pain to make it seem less surreal, but he has no idea what kind of pain such a machine would actually bring, and winds up only with a strange, self-made throb in his temples. "Yo, Doc."
Again Doc doesn't answer.
From Marty's brain and into Doc's own come pictures and words, truth and fantasy. There are thick flashes of Marty's childhood, generally enjoyed--with the exception of a broken arm from falling out of a tree and a burned rug in the living room. Both incidents are mostly forgotten with the occasional remembrance, lurking in the back of Marty's mind.
-- Marty's fantasy overrides all else here; he becomes a rock star. He beats out Van Halen and gets number one records. Doc wonders briefly who Van Halen is.--
There are cakes with 'UNCLE JOEY' scrawled across the bottom in frosting. Though the person who they were made for never gets to eat them, the cakes were no less enjoyable than any other; any disappointment at Uncle Joey not coming dissipated after the first failed parole opportunity.
--Marty suddenly doesn't know if he wants someone reading his mind. Doc hears that, too, but neither of them do anything.--
Marty's mother drinks through the second half of his life to the extent that it is oddly and sporadically incorporated into his memories of the first half. She yells and grabs at wrists, sometimes, and is other times depressed and despondent.
--Jennifer is beautiful and appears in various stages of undress. Her looks, her smell, her beckoning to Marty are all exaggerated forms of reality. But it is her. And the images are there only long enough for Doc to feel he's imposing himself before they are gone.--
George remains consistent throughout. The only true thought Marty has of his father is George tucking him in when he's five years old. George smells like hair oil and there's an ink stain spreading across his shirt pocket, but at that moment Marty sincerely loves him.
Marty doesn't wonder where that love went, but Doc does.
Doc realizes, pawing through Marty's mind, that at some point it went to himself. Teacher, confidant, friend. He comes up in many of Marty's thoughts that he himself would have thought only of his father. He's not the one to teach Marty to ride a bike, but he is the only one to see report cards. He doesn't ask about the people in Marty's life but it is supplied readily; a courtesy not given to Marty's own parents. It was he who was asked what to do when Marty dented the front of the family car by running into a tree. (And he who got the disappointed 'Thanks, Doc,' when he told Marty to tell his mother and father. Through Marty's mind, Doc now knows it didn't happen; no one asked about the car at home, and Marty didn't say anything.)
--It is there that his paternal care of Marty takes a turn. Doc doesn't undress, unlike Jennifer, and he looks exactly as he does in his true form; perhaps he is too exaggerated in real life to exaggerate in thought. But he touches Marty in that way.--
It's natural, Doc thinks, for such things to pop up in his friend's mind at that age; such is the curse of adolescence.
--Marty's hips thrust forward. "Doc." his voice is strangled.--
"Doc." Marty says, and it takes a second for Doc to realize it's out loud.
Doc pulls off the headgear. "Yes, Marty," he says. This is a field he has little knowledge in; he knows the process of biology, not the actuality of it.
"So, it work?"
The suction cup pops off of Marty's head. "This damn thing doesn't work at all," Doc says, dumping the equipment into the trash can as he walks away.