Zombies
A/N: Okay, I decided to try something new with this story. So far, I've focused mainly on Marty and Doc (and Lorraine and Biff as well in one story)...but I decided to try my hand at a character I had never even though of using before-Jules Brown!
Jules Brown wasn't sure exactly when it had struck him. Looking back, he supposed that there wasn't any particular moment. Rather it was a gradual process of...revelation. Of comprehension...
In the beginning, he hadn't had the faintest notion of the truth. Neither him nor his brother. They had lived pretty ordinary lives...well, as ordinary lives as they could lead as the children of the local blacksmith who just happened to be a minor celebrity by way of his association with one of Hill Valley's living legends, 'Clint Eastwood'; but ordinary lives none the less.
Of course, Jules had known at quiet an early age that his father was more than a blacksmith. And it wasn't long before his parents, having recognised his own scientific inclinations, apprised him of the fact that his father was secretly a scientist as well. But he was only confronted with the full extent of his father's scientific accomplishments when he was eight. And of his father's origins.
He remembered that winter night when his father had taken him and Verne aside and told them the truth. That he was a time traveller from the future-from the year 1985 to be precise. That 'Clint Eastwood' had in fact also been a time traveller from the future-a teenager named Marty McFly, who had been his best friend. It had been difficult for them to comprehend it at first, which wasn't surprising, given their tender age. Then, when realisation set in, it seemed to them almost as though their father had confessed he was in fact an alien being stranded on Earth. Jules had been the first to comprehend the concept of time travel...and he had succeeded in convincing Verne of the fact that their father was as normal a person as their mother or anyone else...that they weren't the children of some alien being.
The following year, their father had dropped the next big bombshell. He revealed that for years now, he had secretly been working on a second time machine...building it into a train. He assured them that before long, they would be taking a trip into the future! This tremendously excited both their imaginations. HG Well's novel, The Time Machine, had been published that year, and Jules, having read it, had developed a clearer idea of the kind of man their father was and the wondrous adventures that lay awaiting them across the time barrier.
And so it was that on September 7th, 1895, the Brown family had embarked on their journey through time. Their father had insisted on departing on that date, as it was the tenth anniversary of the day he had last seen his old friend Marty (celebrated by the townsfolk as the tenth anniversary of Clint Eastwood's unfortunate demise!) They travelled to the awe-inspiring Hill Valley of the 21st century, and before long, met the adult version of their father's old friend, Marty McFly, and his wife Jennifer. Then, after their father had made modifications to their time machine such that it could actually fly, they travelled back to the year 1985, their father's own time, and met the teenage version of their father's friend (still dressed in the garb of 'Clint Eastwood'!) They'd had several more adventures in time before their father announced his desire to settle down in the 1980's for good.
It had all seemed like a spectacular dream back in those simple days. Having a genius father from the future, being able to romp through time itself in a flying train...it was truly the stuff of fantasy! And yet it was very much real, for all of them...
But then, somewhere, as he grew older, and began to understand more, a certain troubling comprehension had begun to dawn upon him...
Perhaps it had started when Marty related to him his recollections of the night of the first temporal experiment at Twin Pines Mall (as Lone Pine Mall had 'originally' been called, according to Marty). Marty recalled his shock and horror at seeing his best friend gunned down by the Libyan terrorists. At this point, Jules, who had heard this story before from his father, interjected and pointed out how he knew his father had been wearing a bulletproof vest all along under his radiation suit. It was then that Marty pointed out that before he went back in time, 'Doc' truly had been killed by the Libyan terrorist. Marty then explained how he altered history in order to save his friends' life.
It was then when he had perhaps started to have the earliest inklings...
Then had come the time when Marty had, somewhat carelessly, referred to Eastwood Ravine as 'Clayton Ravine' during a conversation. Jules was surprised by Marty getting the name of the ravine wrong...and did not fail to notice his mother's maiden name. Marty had seemed somewhat embarrassed by his slip, and seemed distinctly uncomfortable when asked by Jules if his mother had had anything to do with the ravine. Finally, reluctantly, Marty had admitted that he and 'Doc' originally came from a 'timeline' in which Clara had fallen into the ravine and it had been named 'Clayton Ravine' after her. Jules had often heard his mother speak wistfully of how his father had go gallantly saved her from falling into the ravine when they first met in 1885...and Jules was understandably shocked to know that there was a reality in which his mother had died falling into Eastwood Ravine, and it had been named after her instead.
Yes, he supposed that the truth should have definitely hit him by then...
But what ultimately drove the point home were the talks his father had started to have with him regarding the nature of time and time travel. His father explained how travelling backwards in time disrupted the space-time continuum, creating an 'alternate timeline' that overwrote the previous timeline-essentially allowing a time traveller to 'rewrite' history. He explained how, for every timeline in which a time traveller had appeared in the past...there was logically an 'original timeline' in which he hadn't appeared in the past. Then, his father had spoken regretfully about how the time machine had, in the past, caused severe disruptions to the time stream. "More than once, I had thought about giving it all up. In the wrong hands, time travel is inherently more dangerous than the atomic bomb! Time travellers have the power to rewrite history itself; to meddle with the lives and destinies of people in a way seldom conceived of before; to literally will people in and out of existence", his father had said. "But...I am and shall always be forever grateful to time travel...without it..." he sighed. "Without it, I wouldn't be alive...your mother would have been at the bottom of Clay-Sho-Eastwood Ravine...and..." he now looked wistfully at Jules, "neither you nor Verne would have been born".
That clinched it.
Thereafter, Marty's and his father's words haunted him nightly in his sleep. He dreamt of a reality where his father lay bleeding to death in the parking lot of Lone Pine Mall...no bulletproof vest to save him. He dreamt of his mother, her body crushed and mangled beyond recognition, lying at the bottom of Eastwood Ravine. And when he looked for himself, and Verne in that reality...he was at a complete loss as to where they fit into the scenario.
And then his father's words would hit him. Without time travel...neither you nor Verne would have been born. These were coupled with other random phrases which echoed through his sub-consciousness. Disruption of the space-time continuum... 'rewrite' history...alternate timeline...
He was living in an 'alternate timeline'!
And in the real timeline...both his parents were supposed to be dead...and he and Verne...didn't exist...
He had been willed into existence...against nature, against time itself! Willed into existence by parents who were, in the natural order of things, supposed to be dead...
His father had spoken of 'disruptions' to the space-time continuum...but he, his brother Verne, and his parents...all of them together were the biggest 'disruptions' of them all!
They simply weren't meant to exist...
He and Jules were freaks of nature...
His entire family wasn't supposed to exist...and yet, through the miracles of time travel, no small amount of disruption to the space-time continuum, and sheer coincidence, they did.
They were all walking paradoxes...supposed to be dead and non-existent...yet, alive and very much living and breathing in the physical realm.
It was enough to drive anyone crazy!
His parents had it somewhat better, he thought sometimes. At least they were only supposed to have been dead...whereas he and Verne, weren't supposed to have ever lived. They weren't supposed to have lived and yet they had lived and were living...they were the 'living dead'...in many ways, both more and less substantial than ghosts...almost like bizarre temporal 'zombies' of some kind!
He knew what his father would say if he voiced his concerns. He would simply pat him on the back and reassuringly say, "The future isn't written, Jules. Remember that always". The future isn't written...those words, as mildly reassuring as they were, could scarcely stop the nightmares he had. Nightmares in which he woke up one morning to discover his body steadily turning transparent and gradually being erased from existence. Or the rather graphic ones in which he saw his father bleeding to death in the mall, or his mother's mangled body at the bottom of Clayton Ravine. Or perhaps the worst one...watching his entire family slowly disappearing from the family portrait and people all around him telling him, "It was meant to be".
Because no matter how much his father tried to reassure him, no matter how much he learnt about the concept of time travel, deep down inside, he was afraid he would never truly be able to shake off the feeling that he and his entire family simply weren't meant to be...
A/N: I might write more Jules and Verne fics in future if I feel up to it...