New Chapter. Nothing to say, so I leave it by this.

2: Chapter Two

November 14, 1955
11:00 AM PST

"Hey Doc, this is heavy! Literally, then."

Doc turned around to Marty Jr, and smirked. "Well, if you want to see the time vehicle again, you'll have to carry it. Don't worry, it's only a few hundred feet, now." Doc's words turned out to be true, and as soon as they reached the mine, Doc placed the dynamite in the side tunnel. They ran back, and shortly after that, there was a huge blow.

"Whoa!" Marty Sr and Jr exclaimed, in unision, as Marty Sr commented: "I think you woke up the dead with that blast." Marty Jr nodded. "Yeah. It's like one of the hardest blows I've ever heard! This sure is one adventure!"

"Go on a time machine for a wide experience" Marty Sr smirked. "Now free tickets to the year 2015! Sell them before there are no more!" All of them laughed, even Doc – well, Copernicus didn't, but he couldn't really laugh, or even understand the joke, could he?

"Take this camera" Doc instructed Marty Sr. "I want to document everything!" All of them could see that Doc had a lot of enthusiasm inside him.

As the four of them went to walk into the mineshaft with Copernicus, Doc told the teens: "This reminds me of the time I attempted to reach the centre of the earth. I'd be reading my favourite author, Jules Verne. I spent weeks preparing for the expedition, I didn't even get this far. Of course, I was only 12 at the time. It was the writings of Jules Verne that had a profound effect on my life. I was 11 when I first read '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea'. That's when I realized that I must devote my life into science." It was clear that Doc really loved telling stories like that.

Right then, Marty Sr looked around the shaft – and he saw a few wooden planks on the side, and one was marked 'ELB'. The seventeen-year-old gasped, as he realised that Doc's full name was Emmett Lathrop Brown – and that these were the initials of it. "Doc!" he called out. "MJ! Jennifer! You guys better get a look at this!" He pointed at the worn-out initials in the wood. However they had been marked many decades ago, the time travellers were still able to read them.

"My initials!" Doc exclaimed, examining them. "Just like in 'Journey To The Centre Of The Earth'!" The eyes of Jennifer rolled as Doc showed his enthusiasm. "That means the time machine must be right through this wall!"

"Your future self sure is a genius, Doc" Marty Jr politely said. "I think marking the wood where the DeLorean is behind is a very good idea. If not, we might have looked everywhere – and even have blown up the whole mine. Well, I guess that wouldn't happen, granted that we do have a map – but I think your future self thought that better useless precautions than that it does go wrong."

"Thanks," Doc smiled, "'cause if you're complimenting my older self from 1985… or 1885, now… you also are complimenting me, because I will be him, thirty years from now. I wonder if my older self did actually base the idea of carving the initials into the wood on me discovering him doing it right now!"

"That's called a predestination paradox, right?" Marty Jr smirked. As Doc nodded surprised, he added: "I did some study on time travel in the future, and found a few things out. Back then of course I didn't have an idea that time travel was actually in existence… and that Dad had known about it for many years already."

"There's only one thing to say about that," Doc smirked, "and that's the surprises never end with a time machine! Like a kid showing up on your doorstep from the year 1985, wearing a life jacket without having to swim and having an actor as president," Doc glanced over to Marty Sr by that, who just shrugged, "and after he leaves having him show up again within a minute, this time accompanied by his girlfriend and future son…" He smiled. "Now! Let's go and get ourselves some chops. We've gotta get the machine!"

A few minutes later, Marty Sr had grabbed a few chops from the Packard, and they all were digging through the wall. Marty Jr moved the stones, Jennifer the wood, and the other two just chopped, while Copernicus watched. About a minute after starting, Marty Sr glanced through a hole inside it – and saw the DeLorean, covered with a sheet. Doc, who broke himself with the chops through the wall, glanced at it in astonishment.

"It's been buried here for 70 years, 2 months and 13 days" the inventor uttered, unable to take his eyes away from it. "Astounding." Yup, the Doc was still the Doc. But then again, no one could blame him – what would you do if you'd find out that your very own invention had been in this mine all during your entire life, waiting for you to catch up with it?

"Well, you don't know" Marty Jr said. "For all you know, your other self might have buried the DeLorean long before September first, but only wrote the letter on that day. He might have buried it on August 31st instead."

"Right, right, that could be" Doc muttered. "Now we got some more important things to do. We'll have to get the time vehicle out of the shaft – so we can go and restore it!" He smiled, as the three of them went over to the DeLorean. As they uncovered the machine and Marty tried to open the gull-wing door, he failed in doing so. "Hey!" he called out. "Can anyone gimme a hand? I believe this thing doesn't open anymore!"

"Oh, I am sure it will, eventually" Doc said, as he helped Marty pull the door up. After a few failures, they finally managed to open the door – with a lot of cracking. Marty poked his head inside – and immediately held it back out as he saw how many dust there was. "Boy, Doc!" he called out. "You better clean this thing up! It looks like a tornado has gone right through it! Well, I can imagine it being covered all over with dust if it's really been here for so long…" Ignoring the dust, he headed towards the drivers seat. After he cleaned it up a bit, he sat down and switched the time circuits on.

The time circuits still worked after so many years, and after Doc had poured some gasoline in the emptied tank, the motor even was able to start. But no matter how many times Marty typed in 'OCT 21 2015 08:00 PM', the Destination Time stubbornly remained JAN 01 1885 12:00 AM. Now he understood why Doc hadn't made it out of 1885. If the control microchip was acting up like that, he figured he wouldn't have had much chance getting out of that time either.

As the four of them had pulled the vehicle out of the shaft, they started working on it. There were instructions to repair the thing on the passenger's seat of the DeLorean, and Marty Sr would sure have overlooked them had he been on his own. Well, lucky thing he wasn't. After eating some lunch and having a nice long talk with Doc about some things, they had pulled out the time machine itself in the late afternoon, to avoid attention. Then, they had started working on it. It was 7:30 PM now, and Marty was just looking over Doc '85's instructions, while the '55 inventor was looking over some parts with a magnifying glass.

'As you can see,' Marty read aloud, 'the lightning bolt shorted out the time circuit control microchip. The attached sh... sh...' He couldn't bring himself to finish the rather uneasy word. But he didn't have to. 'Schematic,' Doc corrected him nicely.

After giving him a look, Marty continued. '... schematic diagram will allow you to build a replacement unit with the 1955 components, thus restoring the time machine to perfect working order.' Yeah, this sure was one of Doc's instructions. There were words in Doc's talk that even a teacher at Marty's school wouldn't understand, let alone him. But that was one of the funny things about the inventor – he confused you all the time.

'Unbelievable, that his piece of junk could be such a big problem,' muttered Doc, staring at the microchip in question. Then chuckling a bit as he saw the inscription, he showed it to Marty and the others. 'No wonder this circuit failed - it says, 'Made in Japan'.' Obviously he was confused by his future self making such a weird choice in microchips – after all, Japanese products weren't trustable, were they?

'What do you mean, Doc?' Marty Sr asked, pausing from reading the instructions and looking at Doc with a hint of confuse from the inventor's words just moments earlier. 'All the best stuff is made in Japan.'

"Or in China" Marty Jr gently said. "In the early Twenty-First Century, China is rapidly climbing up to become the Number One world market. However I am not sure if it's going to get that far, since China has got very less respect for the right of the workers in the fabrics where the products are made.

"China, the Number One world market?" Doc asked and whistled. "Unbelievable!"

oooooooo

That evening, the foursome finally stopped working at 7:30 PM. They loaded their stuff onto a tow truck to bring it away. In the meanwhile, Doc talked to Jennifer, Marty Sr, and Marty Jr. "You know," he said, nostalgic, "when I was a kid I always wanted to be a cowboy. Now, knowing I'll spend my future in the past it sounds like a wonderful way to spend my retirement years. It just occurred to me - since I end up in 1885, perhaps I'm now in the history books. I wonder - could I go to the library and look myself up in the old newspaper archives?"

Marty Sr and Jr exchanged a look, and Marty Sr shrugged at the inventor. "I don't know, Doc," he muttered, "you're the one whose always saying, you know, it's not too good to know too much about your own destiny." Doc nodded. "You're right, Marty. I know too much already. Better that I not attempt to uncover the circumstances of my own... future." Then, seeing that his dog had run off, he called: "Copernicus! Come home boy!"

"I'll get him Doc" Marty offered. Marty Jr nodded. "Yeah, I'll help you" he told Marty Sr. "Two persons can see more than one, isn't it?" They both ran off, calling: "Copernicus!" Then spotting him whining by a tombstone, Marty ran over to him. "Come on," he muttered, "let's go home, boy." Copernicus continued whining.

"What's wrong?" Marty Sr asked the dog. "What's wrong, Copernicus?" chimed Marty Jr in. Marty Sr then added: "Copernicus, come on, let's go home. Come on." He was about to pull the dog with him when he saw the tombstone Copernicus had been standing for. He put the flashlight on it, noticed the writing but ignored it. As the two of them walked off, Marty suddenly realised, turned around and sprinted towards the tombstone.

"Dad?" asked Marty Jr confused. "Dad, what's the matter?" He also glanced down to the tombstone – only to get the shock of his life. The tombstone read:

Here Lies Emmett Brown.

Died, September 7th, 1885.

Erected in eternal memory by his beloved Clara.

Shot in the back by Buford Tannen about a matter of 80 dollars.

"Doc!" Marty Jr gasped, running towards the scientist. "Doc! Come and see what Dad found! Quick, Doc!"

"Marty Junior, what's the matter?" Doc asked. "You act like he's seen a ghost." Marty Jr smirked. "You're not far off, Doc. Come with me and see." Curious, Doc and Jennifer now followed them. "Marty, what's up?" he instantly asked when he arrived. "Your son acts like…" his eyes had now found the gravestone and read the inscription. "Oh! Great Scott!"

"Check this out" Marty muttered as he saw the date. "'Died, September 7th, 1885'. That's one week after you wrote the letter! 'Erected in eternal memory of his beloved Clara'." Standing up, he asked: "Who the hell is Clara??"

"Dad…" Marty Jr said painfully as he saw where his father stood.

"Marty," Doc grimaced, "please don't stand there!" Marty saw that he was standing right on the older Doc's tombstone, and quickly got off. "Oh, right, sorry. I gotta get another picture." He picked his camera up and took a picture. Doc remained reading. "...shot in the back by Buford Tannen over a matter of 80 dollars!" Standing, he asked: "What kind of a future do you call that?"

"Not a future I'd like to have" muttered Marty Sr.

"Sure" Marty Jr said. "To think everything will turn out fine, and then you get shot!"

"Well," Doc said, coming to his senses, "there's nothing we can do about it right now. Why don't we continue doing what we're doing, and tonight we're going at that 1880s festival to celebrate the night on which the clock that was hit by lightning two days ago was first placed in Hill Valley… September 5, 1885. I wonder if my other self watched that event… before he died." The inventor grimaced. "Anyway, we should go. I am certain that you could use the experience in 1880s habits later on."