2015A

Well, here goes. Time-travel gave me the best time of my life and ruined it.

Jennifer and I got together in 1992. We married two years after leaving college. The guitar was something I practised regularly, while still working at the gym. Jennifer was a receptionist.

We had our two children, Marlene and Marty Junior. But we didn't want to live in Hill Valley. In 1999, we decided to move to the East Coast. I did work hard on my music, but I didn't manage much. Just a few songs, barely enough to fill an album, while I worked part-time in a music store.

Jennifer's company moved and she worked all the day, barely having enough time to see them.

But I began to notice that something was different. The future wasn't exactly what Doc had said. He went forward in time, with his family, saw the nineties and told me to watch out for places. But he kept frowning now whenever he got news, from television, from newspapers, he said it was different.

I asked him if the Libyans were ever caught and he said he didn't know.

My children were still young when it happened.

Marlene was in kindergarten and Marty Junior had just started nursery when the news broke.

I'd been in my music store, now the assistant manager, after working so hard there, doing usual day things. What movie I'd watch that night, what I'd cook for my children, if I could manage to get Marlene a ghost costume for Halloween.

I didn't live in the city, I lived in a small town just above it, when the news broke on the television.

My manager swore when he looked at the television we kept behind the desk. I followed his terrified and horrified gaze and then I froze.

The towers. Smoke was coming out.

But I couldn't hear a word the news reporter was saying.

All I could think about was Jennifer. She was in one of them.

The rest of the day passed in a blur. A friend picked up Marlene and Marty Junior from school, while my manager allowed me to sit in back and have some alone time. I remember coming home while the friend made dinner and put the kids to bed, while I stared at the television, slumped in the chair.

But I don't remember much about the next few days, weeks, months.

All I remember is sitting, at the table, in front of the television, thinking again and again.

Doc kept trying to call, but eventually he drove to our town. He said later that I was almost comatose, just staring into space.

I snapped out of it sometime in November or December, when I realised my children needed me.

I put the double bed away and slept on the couch.

2015 had Jennifer. So why had she gone in this timeline?

I asked Doc, while I was slumped at the counter one day, while on the telephone. He answered, "Marty, I have no idea. Something changed in the timeline. I've been trying to figure it out for weeks; I yelled at Clara, the kids, I just couldn't understand what happened."

I told him I felt the same way. He gave condolences, but I still felt unbearable.

When you lose someone, it feels as if it's a bad dream you want to wake up from. Sometimes you need to be left alone, sometimes you need people with you.

You feel empty inside, as if you've had something torn from you. I know that sounds very cliché, but that's what happens. You feel useless, lifeless, as if you could never be happy again.

Sometimes, I wanted to die, too. But I knew my children needed me.

By summer 2002, we were doing the same things again. I took them on walks in the park, I took them camping, I even took them back to California for a week.

But it never really leaves, no matter how long you live.

When Marlene was in third grade, her teacher contacted me.

I asked, "What is it?"

She breathed in slowly, before answering, "In class, it was 'reveal a secret', when the class needed to get something off their chests. Your daughter said, 'My daddy cries at night'."

I knew I had to tell them that I missed Mommy.

So I sat them down with me, as Marlene looked right into my eyes, like a soldier standing for attention, with Marty Junior playing with a stuffed cat. I told them, "I miss Mommy as well, you know."

Marlene asked, "But you just – you went stiff."

I raised an eyebrow, confused.

Marty Junior answered, "You talk in your sleep."

That wasn't exactly news to me. My parents said I talked in my sleep when I was little. So I asked, almost humorously, "What do I say?"

Marlene answered, "You said something about time-travel."

My eyes grew wide, as I thought about it. I told them, "OK, well, go upstairs, please. Daddy needs some alone time."

"But daddy…" Marty Junior began, but I interrupted, "Now."

I couldn't believe it.

Somehow, because of our time-travelling, the event had happened. The Libyans. It had to be.

Or someone else got hold of time-travel.

I don't know what happened, but somehow this had caused the world to go crazy.

I had a yellowing list of things, somewhere in my wardrobe, of the years things would be invented. I got it out just after that, blowing the dust off.

In 2002, hover-skateboards should have been invented, as well as the beginnings for the flying car. In 2003, lawyers would have been abolished.

None of those things had happened yet.

Because of the disaster, the people should have been inventing these or thinking about them and campaigning for these, they were focused on other things. They were inventing other things.

For war.

For armies.

For others.

In 2015, aside from the legal system that had originally put my son in jail for fifteen years, it was a utopia.

Well, close enough.

Now, I was uncertain.

If the disaster…had never happened…people would have been concentrating on getting the future I had seen. This was a completely different timeline.

The date's nearly here. Just a few months away. The world is nothing like the 2015 I saw.

No flying cars, no hoverboards, no phone glasses, no cool future tech that Jennifer and I had seen when we visited.

Instead, I was living in a small town in New York State, with my daughter in college and I was worrying about where my son would end up.

Believe me, I wouldn't swap my children for anything, but sometimes I mourn the future I never had.

That none of us ever had.

Maybe, in about twenty-odd years, all of those things will be invented.

But now I'm approaching fifty and I have a massive cross to bear. That something happened and the world went crazy.

One day, in 2009, Marlene came home from school and saw me in the kitchen, drawing on a piece of paper that the shopping was written on.

"Dad," she asked, "what's that?"

I hadn't noticed what I was drawing.

"That's me and your mom, honey," I told her, "in a flying car."

"Why is Mom in a flying car?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

I put a hand through my thinning hair and answered, "It's…something I experienced when we were…in high school."

She just giggled slightly, brushing away her dad's embarrassing stories.

If only they knew the truth.