Sisters in Time
The second Back to the Future fanfiction by Eternal Density
Disclaimer: I don't own BTTF, or any affiliated characters, places, vehicles, actors, or versions of reality. I don't even own the DVD, my Dad does. If I did own BTTF, it might have been set in Australia. If I did own the DVD, I would watch it frequently. I do own any characters you do not recognise. Check the scripts if unsure or ask a real Backie!
Warning: it's probably a good idea to read Past-Forward prior to reading this fic. If you don't know what prior means, keep a dictionary handy while reading.
Chapter 1
8:00 am
Nov 12 1985
Hill Valley California
"Briiiiing!" A telephone rang shrilly.
"'Lo?"
"Good morning Marty."
"Doc! What time is it?"
"Eight."
"Oh. I better get ready for school. What's up?"
"I've bought a house."
"Al-already? Doc, it's only been three days."
"Who's counting? I have ways around that sort of problem."
"Oh, yeah. I should have thought of that. Is it a good place?"
"Naturally, or I wouldn't have bought it. Can you come over this afternoon?"
"Sure thing Doc. Just give me an address and some directions, and I'll be there in no time."
"I can do better than that. I'll send Jules and Verne over after school with directions. That way, you can get to know them better. Expect them at 3:30."
"That's a smart idea, Doc. I'll keep a lookout for them when I get home from school. Just don't let it take too long. There's a dance on this evening." "Dance? As in the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance?" "Nah, not quite like that. It's the Clock-tower Fundraiser Night. The whole town will be there. No, more like a quarter. Anyhow, there will be a lot of people." "Really? I must have missed noticing it in my busyness. Are there any more tickets available?"
"Yeah, they're selling 'em at the door. You want to come?"
"Indeed, I would like to. But I'm not sure what to do with the boys."
"Don't worry. Bring 'em along and they'll be fine. Mrs. Gunderson is organising some activities for the kids. She's a primary school teacher, and sure knows how to keep kids in line. And I'm sure they'll want to dance to the music a bit. But we can talk about it later. I really need to go now."
"Goodbye Marty. "See you soon." Marty put the phone down, picked up his schoolbag, grabbed a minimal amount of breakfast, and dove away in his truck.
12:34 pm
During the lunch break, Marty was naturally talking with the one and only Jennifer Parker. They were sitting at a table with one of Marty's band members and his girlfriend, but from the way they were looking at one another, they might as well have been alone.
"I phoned my grandma last night," Jennifer was just saying.
"You did? What did you find out?"
"Her mother's name was Annabelle."
"That sure means a lot."
Fortunately, the other couple at the table were not paying much attention either, so no one questioned the meaning of that statement.
Jennifer continued, "She said that her parents met at a dance..."
"Typical," Marty muttered.
"...where a bully from school was bothering her."
"Sounds familiar."
"She said that this boy had nearly been kicked out of the school a number of times, and his father had threatened to send him to work on his uncle's farm if he didn't bring his grades up."
"So, if Annabelle hadn't given him the homework answers and all that, he woulda been sent off to the farm and could have never bullied her at the dance, years later, and your grandmother could never have been born..."
"That's my guess. It makes sense."
"I'll need to tell that to Doc this afternoon."
Jennifer responded with a nod, since Marty had already told her about the phone call he had received.
"Say, I'm sure Doc wouldn't mind if you came with me. You could help explain."
Jennifer looked down. "I don't know if I should. I don't know Doctor Brown as well as you do, and last time I went along with you..." her voice trailed off.
"Don't worry, Jen. That mess wasn't your fault. I'm sure Doc and his family would love to come over. You can come to my place to do homework, and we can go together."
"Uh..."
"C'mon. At least come to my place. You can decide later. You know my mom likes to see you."
"If you put it that way, then sure I'll come."
"Great. Maybe..."
The loud ringing of the school bell cut off the rest of his words. Students started walking towards their respective classes. "Gotta go. I don't want to be late for History. Catch you later Jen," Mary said as fast as possible.
"Bye Marty," Jennifer called. As she walked to her own class, French, she laughed to herself about the funny side of being 'late for history'. She also began to wonder what sort of house Doctor Brown had chosen for his family.
3:29 pm
"They should be here in a minute. I guess they're walking."
"I wouldn't expect Doctor Brown to let his kids just walk across town on their own."
"Yeah, same here. But Doc is often unpredictable, and besides, we have no idea of how far away..."
Marty was suddenly interrupted from his conversation with Jennifer on the front lawn of his house. There was a loud bang, like a gunshot played in slow motion. It was accompanied by some bright flashes of blue light, and followed by two further booming sounds. Very familiar sounds. Jennifer's eyes lit up with recognition. "The time machine!"
But it was not a time machine that materialised amidst the disturbance. Rather, it was Jules, atop a skateboard and wearing some strange silverish outfit.
"Whoa! Oh, uh, hello Marty. Greetings Jennifer," he said, trying to put on his usual 'dignified' voice. It didn't last long. "Hey, this is fun!"
"It looks fun," observed Marty. "Are you from the past or the future? I never saw you leave, if you have already left. You didn't look like you were going 88."
Jules stepped off the skateboard a little unsteadily. "I'm from the present," he declared.
"Then how did you end up here?" Jennifer asked.
"Dad has been working on a gadget to just move things through space, not time. A velocity of only 22 miles per hour is sufficient for physical displacement. Which is a good thing, because my parents would never allow me to ride a skateboard at 88."
"Wow!" was all Marty could say as he walked over.
"What's with all the silver coloured clothing? It looks all metallic," Jennifer said inquisitively, coming over for a closer look.
Jules explained. "It is metal, after a fashion. It's a sort of steel-organic-polymer-composite, which Dad came up with while he was trying to develop some sort of conductive coating for something. He had to modify it somewhat to make it into a fabric, and required some devices from the future to be able to make it properly."
"Wow," said Marty again. "It looks pretty cool, but what's it for?"
"Well, apart from being stylish, the stainless steel construction makes the flux dispersal..." Jules suddenly looked at his Mickey Mouse wristwatch. "Look out!"
Marty realised exactly what was happening, having lived through the same situation already. He quickly pulled Jennifer off the street, so quickly that she had no time to be shocked. Jules dove the other direction, kicking his extremely metallic skateboard with his foot.
A triple temporal boom rang out, accompanied by the bright appearance of Verne on rollerblades. "Wahoo!" he yelled as he flung himself into a fast spin. He turned rapidly on the spot until he slowed down and toppled onto someone's front lawn.
"What are you trying to do Verne?" Jules demanded.
Marty had a quick answer. "An impression of a licence plate."
"Not funny," countered Jules in a serious voice. "He could have hurt himself."
Verne started laughing so hard that he nearly did hurt himself. Jennifer looked a little lost, but recovered her composure and said, "We should really leave before someone wonders what you're wearing."
Marty agreed. "We don't want to run out of time. Everyone in the truck."
As the four piled into Marty's vehicle, Jules handed Marty a scrap of paper with directions scrawled on it. He thanked the boy, and began finding his way to the new house.
"Whoa!" exclaimed Marty as he parked on the driveway leading to a sprawling estate that was easily bigger than the Brown family mansion. "Jen, this is the Shinglehill Estate."
"Really? I never saw the sign. How could Doctor Brown possibly..."
"C'mon everyone, let's go inside," Marty urged. "If you want to ask questions, ask the Doc."
He started leading everyone to the front door, but Jules quickly corrected him. "The main steps are not safe. They are all rotten. We need to take a side entrance."
"Okay then. We'll follow you," agreed Marty.
Jules led them past wild hedges and over crumbled crazy paving. He opened a small door (small compared to the main entrance) and passed through what seemed to be an old laundry. This room had several cracked tiles, and a little water damage. They followed him up a hallway lined with peeling wallpaper and faded, plush carpet.
He opened a squealing door and walked out into a large lounge room. "Here we are," he announced grandly.
Marty looked around the room. It probably would have looked a lot nicer thirty or forty years ago. He spotted a mound of rolled-up carpet and Doctor Emmet L. Brown crouching on the floor behind it, hammering something.
"Some of the floorboards came loose after all these years: the nails rusted through," he said by way of explanation.
"I'm fine thank-you, Doc. How about you?" Marty asked with a smile in his voice.
"Dusty," the scientist answered. "Hello everyone," he added as an afterthought.
Verne unexpectedly said, "It had nothing to do with my candy stash this time."
"Candy stash?" Marty asked.
"Yeah." Verne explained the whole story while Emmett finished nailing down the loose boards.
When the job was done, he rolled the carpet back and put down his tools. "Now that I have put that job out of the way, I have some time to talk. We'll have to sit on the floor, since we haven't moved the lounge in yet."
"This is a big place you have here, Doc. How did you afford it?"
"I had enough money tucked away to make a deposit, and I know I can get a good price for my old house, or rather, for the land. Additionally, this place was dirt cheap since it's old, run down, and no one else wants it."
"Isn't this the old Shinglehill Estate?" Jennifer asked.
"Ah, yes it is. The sign was self-dismantling due to the ravages of the weather, so I have removed it, and will replace it with something more appropriate, or significant."
"You mean you're going to rename it?"
"Precisely."
"Great. So how come you're already moving in if this place is in such a bad condition?"
"You see, I have already been working on it for a number of days, making it habitable. I actually bought this place a couple of weeks ago, and I could work on it 24 hours a day if I had to."
"Sneaky Doc, very sneaky. So what's with this new invention that Jules and Verne demonstrated for us?
"The physical displacement? Yes, that is a piece of interesting engineering. I have been experimenting in that area for quite some time. In fact, I theorised on it a good bit while inventing the time machine. It gave me something to do on those days when nothing seemed to be working."
"Is there some sort of flux capacitor gizmo to make it work?" Marty asked.
"Indeed, there is. I'm sure you noticed the boys' backpacks."
"Ahhh, barely. I was thinking more about the sliver clothes."
"Well, you see... wait a moment. Boys!" he suddenly called.
"Yes Dad?"
"You really ought to change into some other clothes now. Those transition suits aren't really for playing in."
The boys ran off to some other room, and Emmett continued with his explanation. "Each pack contains a smaller version of the flux capacitor, along with a compact fusion power source. Although the smaller object being displaced requires a smaller flux-field, and thus a smaller flux capacitor can be used, a stable 1.21 gigawatts is still necessary to create and maintain a stable envelope. Fortunately, due to the nature of the spatial dimensions, a much lower velocity is sufficient for the displacement to take place."
"That's... cool, I think," Marty responded, having only a vague idea of what had just been said.
The scientist was off in his own world, in full lecture mode. "I had hoped for some sort of positioning system, which allows the user to know exactly where he or she is located. However, inertial systems are rather inaccurate in this case, and I can't use a GPS."
"A what?" Jennifer interrupted.
"Global Positioning System. It is a technology from the future that uses very accurate clocks up in satellites to allow triangulation of any receiver's exact position. Unfortunately, there is no way we can use it now."
"Why not?" Marty wanted to know. "Can't you just get a receiver from the future and stick it in?"
"Yes, but the satellites don't exist yet. You need to think..."
"Forth-dimensionally, yes I know. That reminds me, Jen talked to her grandma and found some information about the whole thing with Annabelle."
"She did? I hope it answers more questions than it raises."
"Yes, I think it does," Jennifer answered. She then began to explain what she had told Marty. "It's like this: her mother's name was Annabelle, and I think we can assume she's the same person."
"I would expect so," Emmett agreed.
"She said that her parents met at a dance where a bully from school was bothering her."
"Sounds familiar," Emmett commented.
"That's exactly what I said," Marty said in surprise.
"Then she said that this boy had nearly been kicked out of the school a number of times, and his father had threatened to send him to work on his uncle's farm unless he improved his grades. I figure the bully was the same one Jules was fighting," Jennifer concluded.
"Stewart," Marty prompted, saying the name with distaste. "I guess Tannens aren't the only bullies in the world."
"True. The way I see it, if Annabelle hadn't given him the answers to the homework and any further schoolwork, due to Jules' intervention, he most certainly been banished to the farm and eventually would not have been present at that dance, years later, and your grandparents would not have met. They would have possibly married other people, causing many differences among their descendents, resulting in your absence from the timeline and the presence of other Parkers."
Jennifer's mind caught up with her ears after a minute and she nodded, saying, "That's what I figured, pretty much. The interesting thing is that Stewart stayed in school when he was a bully, but when he was 'cured' of it by Jules, he was sent away."
Marty had something to say to that. "This is all really interesting, guys, but Jen and I better be going. We need to get to the community hall early. I didn't tell you earlier, but since my mom is in the clock tower-saving group, she volunteered to help with organising tonight." "And you need to help set up?" Emmett said, thinking he understood. "That, and the fact that she managed to get the Pinheads to be able to play a couple of songs. We need to set up our instruments." Marty couldn't hide the excitement in his voice. "That's wonderful. This could be the big break you've been talking about for the last year or so."
"What do you think, Doc?"
"I beg you pardon?"
"C'mon Doc, d'you have any idea of whether we'll become rock stars because of this night? Do you know anything?"
"I certainly don't, so don't get any ideas about finding about your own future."
"Okay Doc, I won't. Hey, where's Clara?"
"Ah, she is currently putting clothes into wardrobes. I've managed to bring two bedrooms to a habitable state, so we can live here while I renovate the rest of the house."
"You've certainly got your work cut out for you. This is one big house. Hey, I was just thinking, why did you go to the trouble of getting in by today? You could have done things more normally, and it wouldn't have made much difference."
"True, but today is a special day."
"Because it's thirty years since the lightning strike, and a lot of other things that happened that day?"
"That and the fact that today Clara and I have our hundredth wedding anniversary, or tenth, depending on how you look at it."
"Wow, that rocks. We'll see you at the dance. So tell Clara we said hi and congratulations, and have a good night."
"We will. Now where did I put those carpet tacks?"
"They're on the shelf Doc. Bye."
"Goodbye Doctor Brown," Jennifer said as she followed Marty to the back door. The couple climbed into Marty's truck, and sped off toward the community hall.