Disclaimer: I don't own any of the fandoms featured in this story.

Author's Note: This is a rewrite of Restaurant at the End of the Space-Time Continuum, which had been a joint collaboration between me and my younger brother, penname Jake Skywalker. However, due to...uh... creative differences, he has ditched the fic and basically left me the freedom to do what I originally intended to do with this story. The second chapter still retains much of his writing, but from then on it's all me.

This fic is a spin-off of another fanfic story, They've Got Mail, which you shouldn't read yet until I get the novelised version up. You don't really need to read it in order to understand this fic, which is pretty much a stand-alone piece.

Off-topic: Here's wishing Keanu Reeves and Crispin Glover a happy 42nd birthday in advance. May they spend 2006 happy with the knowledge that their current age is the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything according to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

WAYFARERS OF THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM
A fan fiction novella by Anakin McFly
Partially co-authored by Jake Skywalker

Chapter One
The Kenselton Facility for Quantum Research Control Room #12
The Kenselton Hotel

Thomas 'Neo' Anderson scanned through the complicated diagrams on the computer screen, checking through the various numbers that ran between them. Somewhat satisfied, he turned in his swivel chair to face the others behind him in the small control room.

"How's it?" Frank Bannister asked.

"It looks okay," Neo replied. "I'm not really sure how the thing works, but we've got nothing to lose… Where's Keith?"

Ted Logan grinned. "We locked him in a most convenient broom cupboard."

"Uh-huh." Neo swivelled back to face the computer screen. He ran his gaze down it once more, then typed on the keyboard. "I'll give us one minute…" He hit the 'enter' key. A small countdown counter popped up and started, well, counting down.

Marty McFly moved out of the way to give Neo space to get off the chair, and then the four of them headed through the adjoining door into the much bigger modified-function-room where they had first arrived.

The machines that ran the side of one wall were now humming and blinking, ready to do their job. The four travellers walked to the middle of the room and stood there.

"I guess that's it, then," Frank said.

"Yeah." Marty glanced nervously at the closed door of the control room. "What if it doesn't work?"

No one answered him. Neo just stared at his feet. His feet stared back at him.

Marty looked around at the other three whom he'd spent the last one-and-a-half days with. It wasn't long, but they'd grown to become friends in that time… no that there had been much of a choice. When you have to spend more than a day cooped up in a poky little hotel room with three other people, it's usually a good idea to be friends. The other alternative is much more dangerous, and might result in the loss of a pretty well-liked life.

They were four movie characters who had always thought themselves to be real until a scientist named Keith had zapped them into this world by the means of a revolutionary new technology discovered by the Kenselton Facility for Quantum Research. Not that the rest of the facility had much of an idea as to what Keith had been doing. As far as most of them were concerned, he had only been experimenting with transporting little particles from other universes into this one.

So now, here they were, trying to find a way back. A way home. A way into worlds that Keith repeatedly insisted were fictional, though they never really believed it. They refused to believe that their memories and all they had ever known were mere creations that had come into existence only at the point of their arrival into the 'real world'.

They believed that home still existed, somewhere out there.

Without looking at the teen, Frank tousled Marty's hair as a way of saying goodbye. Fourteen-year-old Ted restlessly shifted his feet around and stuck his hands into his pockets. When he'd been taken from the same universe as Marty, the year had been 1985. The events of the movie responsible for his existence would not come to pass until three years time, and they might not come to pass at all.

They waited for the minute to be over.

In the control room on the computer, the zeroes clicked into place.

The machines stepped up the volume of their humming. At the corners of the white ceiling, the strange contraptions there lighted up, filling the room with an eerie white radiance as a high, keening noise sounded out from the machines. Then, suddenly, all the noise stopped.

There was a terrible ghastly silence.

There was a terrible ghastly noise.

There was a terrible ghastly silence.

When the light returned to a comfortable level, the room was empty.