Disclaimer: I don't own Back to the Future.

Author's Note: A chapter which is less complicated than last, but still convoluted. It gets easier soon as we enter the actual plot, I promise. (Not that this isn't part of the plot yet, but I think you get what I mean.) Anyway, in this chapter, Doc, Chris and Calvin discover that sometimes things go wrong when time travelling, and that little things can have major consequences. Not that they didn't know that before, of course, but this serves as a very painful and powerful reminder. Please read and review!

Chapter Four

Friday, January 1, 1 B.C.
06:00 AM PST
Future site of Hill Valley, California

Up until the split second before they actually hit 88, Calvin had thought that the gruesome thought of an impending death was something nobody could put out of his mind now. He soon found out, however, how wrong he was.

When the time machine reached eighty-eight miles per hour, Calvin saw the flux capacitor light up. That was normal – well, about as normal as anything could be within a time machine. He also saw light cover the windshield, which was normal as well. What he saw afterwards, though, was most decidedly not normal.

Before him and his compatriots, a world introduced itself around the car that they couldn't even begin to describe. It was dark, and yet there were strange flashes of light. There was loud screeching and yet it was as silent as the grave. There was a large aroma of scents, much more than Calvin thought he'd ever smelled before, but it all came down to the same horrifying scent underneath. His heartbeat sped up to a ratio which he had never before thought survivable and yet there was an eerie calmness around him. It felt like they were moving as fast as a rocket and yet from what he saw outside the wheels were unmoving and the view was unchanging. It was, to put it in one word, nuts.

As he tried to move his head to look at the speedometer in order to check that last observation, Calvin found out that he couldn't. It felt eerily similar to what he had felt just prior to fainting the last times – he certainly felt like he had moved his head, but his view didn't change and when he lifted his arm, it didn't come into his sight either. Calvin's mind couldn't control his body anymore, and the tiny part of his rational thought process that still worked realized that he was moving deeper into the subconscious parts of his brain as the outer world was shut off for him. Memories flashed before his eyes seeming more realistic than the world around him, of his old life, his week in 1955, his adventures in the alternate 1985... they got more realistic as time passed, too, for as far as Calvin could still sense time passing. It was possible that it wasn't passing at all. A strangely calming feeling came over him, a feeling that the teen imagined must be the one overcoming someone who was dying. Which was, in essence, what he was doing now.

Just before he thought he was going to lose his life, normalcy reintroduced itself as sudden as it had stopped, and the car entered a pre-dawn sky. It was now moving again, and as Calvin looked around, he could see Doc and Chris again, who appeared to be just as disoriented as he was. Which wasn't good, because as a result of that, the vehicle was plunging towards the ground.

From the sight of it, it took an immense force of will on the older man when Doc finally moved again, grasped the controls and pulled the steering wheel back just enough to prevent them from destruction. They still landed awkwardly and shaken, but at least they hadn't crashed. Calvin stared ahead disoriented for about a minute afterwards, as did the others, with neither person saying a thing.

Finally, Chris spoke up. "Emmett?" he said, in a croaked, somewhat unfamiliar voice that took a few moments before it got back to a recognizable level. "Remember when I joked about letting you fix this on your own if things went wrong?"

Doc nodded. "Yes?"

"Well, I have half a mind to let you do that anyway, joke or no joke."

Doc sighed. "I can understand the feeling" he replied. "I was already thinking the same. But I can assure you, Chris, not in my wildest dreams had I imagined that this would happen." He shuddered. "It probably didn't last more than a few seconds, but they felt like hours."

"I understand that you hadn't intended to do this, Emmett" Chris said, significantly softer in his manner now. "It's just that – well, I did realize things could go wrong, but I hadn't thought they could go this wrong!" He, too, shuddered. "I suppose that we should have thought about the possibility, after last week's research, but I never gave it serious consideration."

"But what happened?" Calvin pressed, noticing to his relief that his voice, too, seemed to be all right again. "Do you have an idea?"

"We can't know for sure, since we were as surprised by this as you were" Doc responded. "If I had even imagined that something like this could happen, I never would have picked zero AD. But I did, and now we have to cope with the consequences."

"Doc?"

"Yes, right." The inventor took a deep breath. "If Chris is speculating the same thing I'm thinking about, he just referred to the possibility of stepping outside the space-time continuum." Calvin gasped, but didn't say anything, allowing the older man to continue. "As you know, the time machine, when seen from the outside, appears to disappear when leaving on a journey through time and reappear a moment later. It is thus obvious that it goes through a portal of some sorts, a portal that is outside of time itself – essentially, the vehicle leaves the space-time continuum in order to re-enter it at a different point. This method of time travel is not the only possibility, but it's pretty much essential to ensure that we end up at the right place – after all, the earth revolves around its own axis and around the sun. Only by actually stepping out of the continuum and reentering it can we pinpoint the exact place we need to be in. Of course, the DeLorean would need additional modifications if we actually wanted to travel to other places as well as times."

"Of course" Calvin repeated, dully. "So, how is this relevant to what we just went through?" He did have some idea, but his mind was still not entirely over the strange sensations it had experienced and he didn't want to say something completely idiotic.

"It is relevant because when we went to the year zero, we went to a non-existing year" Chris explained. "It appears that both of our theories held true – as I said, the car wasn't able to complete the transit as normal, and as Emmett said, the time circuits eventually must have pinpointed 1 B.C. as their target date. It's just that they took a lot longer to determine the re-entry place than they usually do, because of the more confusing information they were given, and thus we spent extended time outside of our space-time continuum."

Calvin believed he understood it. "So basically, we were in another dimension those few seconds?" he asked, still wondering whether those seconds had in fact been minutes or hours, or if such things even existed outside of the space-time continuum.

"Not entirely" Doc replied. "After all, if that were true, it would imply that, however briefly, every time travel journey would take us through another dimension – which, as I mentioned Sunday, wasn't something I built into the time machine. Also, alternate dimensions, as we saw when we were hopping through those I described and as Chris can testify, are simply alternate versions of our world. They don't have anything to do with the hell we just saw. Granted, I suppose that we visited only cluster dimensions and that fully different dimensions might be significantly more different, but even then I don't think we could presume to assume that…"

"Got it, Doc" Calvin cut him off. "So, if that wasn't an alternate dimension, then what was it?"

Doc and Chris exchanged glances. "Essentially, we don't know" the latter finally admitted. "We were outside of the space-time continuum – perhaps even outside of all space-time continuums. We might as well have been in Hell itself – Hell with a capital 'H'."

"That wouldn't surprise me" Calvin muttered.

"But essentially, it doesn't matter right now" Doc said, confidently. "What matters now is how you're feeling, Calvin, and if our journey through time did something to help your condition."

"I think so" Calvin said, cautiously. "I mean, it doesn't really feel like it did before, anymore – there was some cold uneasiness I've felt ever since I realized something was wrong with me, that is gone now. Of course, that might just be because I desperately want to believe everything is all right now…"

"Of course, the eternal question" Chris pondered. "But we can find a way to get an answer. Emmett, the Ripple Effect Indicator?"

"Right here, Chris" the other scientist replied, fetching the item before opening the gull-wing door. "We'd better do those tests outside – the interior of the DeLorean would be a little too cramped for my tastes. And it does appear that nobody is around."

As Calvin got out after his friend, he noticed that Doc was right. Where he would have expected at least some Indians, it appeared that the area which would one day contain Hill Valley was entirely desolate, filled with nothing but a few trees here and there. They were in the middle of a large field, stretching out so far that if the teen hadn't been able to see a few familiar mountains in the distance, he never would have guessed he was in Hill Valley.

"At least we won't have to worry about that aspect of our trip" Chris remarked, as he followed them out of the car. "Although after all this, it's more like one positive point in a sea of negatives."

"I have to agree with you on that" Calvin said. "All right, Doc – let's just get this over with already so we can get back home."

oooooooo

As much as Doc could insist that there weren't going to be any further mishaps and as much as Calvin kind of wanted to believe him, the trio hurried anyway. After setting up the equipment, Calvin was instructed to stand still as he was scanned with the Ripple Effect Indicator and a few other devices. It wasn't a very demanding job – they even took a few breaks in-between, in which Calvin was allowed to walk around (although he was to remain within sight of the vehicle) and explore prehistoric Hill Valley while his friends examined the data. The teenager looked around some of the trees and bushes, but soon found that although not what he was used to for his hometown, it was all not very different from what he had already seen at other locations in real life. It was amazing how boring the past could get. There wasn't much to see either – it appeared that no animals were near except for some smaller bugs and insects, and a few overflying birds. Doc's don't-disturb-anything rules also made the experience less interesting than it could have been, and by the time the experiments were finished, they were all ready to go home. Doc took one final test with the ripple effect indicator, and was pleased at what he saw.

"We have significantly retarded your erasure process" he told his friend. "It appears that the experiment worked. If our calculations are correct, your new erasure date won't be until some time in March."

Calvin frowned. "So I guess we aren't done yet."

"Certainly not" Chris replied. "After all, this was only a trial run of whether this process might work. But it does work, not exactly as we expected it to, but it does anyway. We'll go back home now, and do some tests with the time machine and with the data we now have before making another run… say, next week?"

"Why would it have to take so long?" Calvin asked. "Couldn't we just jump back and forth a few times now?"

"Theoretically, yes, perhaps" Doc agreed. "De facto, though… well, I wouldn't be so sure of that. We do want to make sure everything turns out just perfect – this mishap has shown us the value of preparation – and of course, I need to have another look at the time machine before I'll allow any of us to travel with it again, besides our return journey. We don't want to take the risk that the stay outside our space-time continuum has damaged the systems beyond repair."

Calvin gulped. "Do you think there's a risk we'll end up in that place again?" he asked, genuinely frightened for a moment.

Chris shrugged. "That's like asking whether there's a chance that anything goes wrong while time travelling, and the answer to that is always yes. There is always a chance, no matter how small, and there is a chance that this will happen again right away. It isn't big, though, and even if it does happen, our stay should be shorter than it was last time. After all, this time we'll be heading towards a definite point in time, rather than to the ill-defined time we went to last time."

Calvin nodded. "I think I got it."

"Good" Doc smiled. "Then let's get back to the future."

They patched their stuff into the car, and got squeezed in – Calvin again uncomfortably in the middle, between the two scientists. Doc then engaged the flying circuits, which fortunately still worked exactly as they should, and took the car high up into the sky before rattling off their Destination Time: December 23rd, 1985, 11:00 PM. They quickly accelerated through the resistance-less sky, and as they hit seventy, Doc turned towards his friends with a characteristic grin. "Brace yourselves for temporal displacement!"

As Calvin did so, and finally began to feel somewhat comforted at the familiar phrase, something strange happened just as they passed eighty, a strange bump that shook the time machine. The bewildered inhabitants exchanged glances. "Was that a bird?" Chris asked.

"Couldn't have been" Doc replied, momentarily hitting the brakes. "I certainly didn't see any coming up, and I was looking outside. Plus, if we were hit by a bird, it would have been harder than this."

"Perhaps it was something with the time machine" Calvin said. "Although… everything seems fine now."

"It certainly does" Doc agreed, taking the car up and down somewhat to show that it still obeyed his commands. "The flux capacitor is still fluxing, the time circuits are on, everything works. Anyway, I'd prefer to solve the issue in 1985 rather than here. If something happened, it doesn't appear to have impeded our capacity to travel through time, and if we stay here to see if something happened, we might alter history even more if somebody does show up."

"Small chance of that, Emmett" Chris pointed out. "But I get why you're nervous either way. All right, let's get this over with."

Calvin nodded, and Doc once more began to accelerate the time machine, which had fallen down to fifty, up to eighty-eight. They advanced in speed swiftly and this time passed the vital eighty miles per hour threshold without worries. Calvin sucked in a breath as they hit the crucial speed and light once more covered the windshield.

For a split second, the teen thought they were back where they had left off minutes ago, back in that strange timeless world. Then, the flashes ended and they burst back into the evening sky. Calvin looked at Doc and Chris before staring at the time circuits. The upper and middle readouts now both read December of 1985. All of them breathed a sigh of relief.

"We're back" Doc said, smiling. He turned the car around, glanced out of the window… and suddenly let go of the controls.

Calvin screeched as they once more started to plunge towards the ground, and in a moment of clarity both he and Chris reached out to take the wheel. It was a clumsy ordeal, but it didn't matter, because as they had in 1 B.C. they managed to salvage the situation. The DeLorean stabilized just above the ground, and Doc, who had by then come to his senses, managed to land it without much problems.

"Emmett!" Chris exclaimed, his voice betraying a mix of worry, anger and relief. "What got into you! We could have crashed – again!"

The other inventor at first stared at the air in front of him, and then finally turned to his colleague, still appearing wide-eyed. "If we would have crashed, that would almost have been a relief" he whispered, rattled.

"What do you mean?" Chris demanded.

In response, Doc simply gestured towards the windows with his hand. "Look outside."

As Chris and Calvin did so, the latter had to agree with his mentor's sentiments. Where they should have been in one of the outer quarters of Hill Valley, what he saw was… emptiness. Lots and lots of sand, with many bushes and the occasional tree in-between them. It resembled the world they had just come from much more than the world they had intended to go to, so that was the first thought that popped into Calvin's mind. "Did that crazy non-universe place send us back to the time we came from?" he asked, bewildered.

Chris shook his head. "No – it's not quite that desolate around here" he replied. "Look outside. Those trees and bushes weren't present in the world of Hill Valley circa one B.C., and even if we had travelled a longer distance than I suspected… no, this is still Hill Valley. And if any of you needs proof for that, look ahead."

As Calvin strained to do so, he could, through the general darkness, make out something that looked like a house in the distance – a real house, and not a tipi or anything that would have been around had they still been in Indian times. "All right" he muttered. "So if we're not in those prehistoric times, then where are we?"

Doc, having recovered himself, gave the teen a half-smile that was intended to be comforting but missed the mark by leagues. "There are two possibilities" he listed. "One – we are still in the past, simply not as far back as we were before. It's quite a plausible theory, taking into account mechanical failure concerning whatever went wrong just before we hopped through time, as well as the general margin of error that could have been the result of that outer-universal ride. Two, however, is that we are in Hill Valley, but in the present – exactly at the date the time circuits indicate." He pointed at the readout, where 'DEC 23 1985 11:02 PM' was still being displayed, accompanied by the time circuits bleeping mechanically as if there was nothing wrong with the world. "In which case, we would have landed in an alternate reality, most likely as a result of what we did in the past."

Calvin paled at the thought for a few seconds, but he soon calmed down. "But if we were, that means we would simply have to go back and… well, make sure history isn't disrupted" he pointed out. "That shouldn't take too long."

"It shouldn't – if we knew what to do" Chris replied. "Considering how long ago the divergence occurred and at a period in time when no one would have been around, it would be virtually impossible to look up what disturbed history. We'd have to find it out for ourselves, perhaps by watching ourselves, and that should be thoroughly planned – or at least, we would have to give some thought to what to do. We couldn't take too long for it, of course, considering the risk of erasure – although I suppose that would be less for all of us now, not just Calvin, considering we all went through dimensional hops and I'm not even from this dimension." He paused to take a breath, then continued. "Secondly, we don't know for sure that we are in an alternate reality. If it was simply mechanical error that landed us here, then making another journey through time would make things worse. There would be no way of telling where we'd end up."

At that point, Doc started to grin. "There wouldn't," he agreed, "but there is an easy way of telling where we are, and I can't believe I didn't think of it until now. Calvin, do you have any photographs of your family on you?"

Calvin blinked. "Uh, I don't know" he admitted. "I could check, though – perhaps there's one in my wallet. The ones I originally had, the ones which showed the old timeline, all disappeared, but I might have some new ones of my entire family. What do you want with them?"

"Simple" Doc said. "We'll just check to see if they are changed or show fading signs. After all, if we are in an alternate reality, the photographs would show… whatever was put on them in this timeline. And since Hill Valley clearly doesn't exist in the way we know it right now, I'd wager a guess that those photographs would change along with it."

"That might be so," Chris interrupted before Calvin could even reach for his pocket to fetch his wallet, "but if we were in an alternate reality and in the past – combining both possibilities of temporal and mechanical error – it might be that the ripple effect wouldn't have caught up enough yet to display the changes, and we would presume that we were in our own timeline where that might not be the case."

"Point made," Doc agreed, "but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now, let's take a look at the photographs."

Calvin nodded, and took out his wallet. As he opened it and quickly skimmed through, he soon noticed a familiar family portrait of his new family. It had been taken little over a month ago, at aunt Sally's birthday – the first the new 'lost' McFly kid had been able to attend. At some point, one of his aunts and uncles had suggested they'd pose for a picture together, and they had. His parents were both smiling brightly, Dave looked distracted, Linda was bored, and he and Marty both looked only half enthusiastic and kind of awkward, but he was still fond of the photograph. He took a good look at it and found that it looked as sharp as it had on the day it had been taken. "No problems here, Doc" he reported.

"All right" the inventor replied. "And none here either." He held up a picture of him and Marty that had been taken prior to that fateful October day – indeed, Calvin remembered that he had posed for it as well in the old timeline. Looking the other way, he saw Chris had drudged up several pictures of him and his family, including some of Susan and him from his honeymoon which Calvin hadn't seen yet. All in all, they gave the same message – everything was unchanged.

"All right" Chris agreed, opening the gull-wing door, "then we're probably in the past. Which means that the car is broken." He glared at the time circuits, which had by now shifted to displaying the present time as 11:06 PM and still seemed to be moving at a normal speed – but nevertheless continued to display that probably erroneous date of December 23rd 1985. "So, how about you stay here, Emmett, and try to at least get a start on seeing what's wrong, and you, Calvin, and I will walk over to that farm and ask what day it is?"

"Do you think I can't accomplish such an easy task without somebody to help me?" Calvin asked, partly mock-offended and partly serious.

Chris shrugged. "Well, I don't want to doubt your qualities, but you never know what might go wrong. For our first contact with this world, I would feel safer if there were two of us going, and well, it is Emmett's time machine, so he would be best equipped to stay behind and see what went wrong. But if you want to go alone, you can go."

Calvin shrugged in turn. "Nah, that's all right" he said. "I understand your worries, and I am a bit uncomfortable around here. Let's go then." He took off towards the farm, Chris following immediately after him. The teen tried to remain resolute rather than letting his mind wander off into places he'd prefer it didn't, places filled with doom scenarios. They were here to do a job and they would do it.

After about a five-minute-walk, they approached the house, which from closer inspection appeared to be a farm of some sorts, with gates around it. At this late hour, nobody was about, but Chris and Calvin soon found a wooden door within the gate allowing them entrance. Through the darkness, they walked towards what appeared to be the house's door, hoping that they weren't stepping on any of the farm's vegetables on the way.

"I'll do the talking" Chris said, softly. Calvin nodded.

The older man knocked on the door, first cautiously, and then louder. Only at the third try did the door open, and then Calvin had to reach forwards to hold onto it because his legs almost gave away beneath him.

He was staring at a woman who was wearing a dress that looked typically old-fashioned. The general feel of the house and the woman herself gave Calvin the idea that he was in a Western. However, one thing that burned itself into the teen's mind was her face. The woman looked almost exactly like his mother. A younger version of her – roughly in-between the one he had encountered in 1955 and the one he knew in the new present – but his mother nonetheless. It was absolutely incredible.

The woman didn't have an exact similar reaction, although she did appear surprised. "Who are you?" she finally asked. "And what are you disturbing our peace for so late at night?"

Before Chris, who, though less inclined to react as averse to the sight than Calvin was, was still surprised, could say anything, a familiar voice could be heard from inside. "Come on, Maggie," a man said, walking up to the front door. "That's no way to greet visitors."

As Calvin looked up at the person who was apparently 'Maggie''s husband, he truly felt faint and just Chris' reflexes responding swiftly and catching him before he could fall stopped him from fainting. He nevertheless had to tear his face away from the scene for a moment to stabilize. This man looked… well, he didn't look exactly like him, given the moustache and the different clothing, but if you looked beyond that he was still a dead ringer for either himself or his twin. Calvin had to force himself to concentrate on the scene and on his mission in order to avoid fainting.

Chris gave him a sympathetic look, then, having apparently recovered himself, turned back to the people they were visiting. "Excuse me," he said, "sorry for disturbing you, but would you be so kind as to tell us what day it is? We've been travelling for quite a while and we lost our calendar."

Calvin didn't think it was a plausible story, and from the look on her face, neither did Maggie. Her husband, however, appeared to buy it, or at least didn't want to raise a fuss about it. "Today is Sunday" he replied, softly. "August 23rd."

"Meaning that if those were intended as Halloween clothes, you're about two months early" Maggie cut in.

Chris blushed. "We came from a festival down in Nevada" he replied, at this point clearly presuming at least the approximate time he was in if he could afford mentioning the name of a U.S. state. "Although I suppose we could reuse them for Halloween. Er…" He fudged somewhat. "What's the year?"

Maggie frowned deeper now. "1885, of course. Sure'n I'd think you should know that."

As her husband nodded, Calvin felt flabbergasted. The thought that they were in 1885… Hundred years before their own time, eighty-three years before he was even born… what did that mean for the prospects of Doc being able to repair the time machine? If he needed anything besides the stuff that was present in the DeLorean itself, they were probably doomed, because he didn't think the 1880s could offer anything that was fit for repairing a time machine.

At the same time, Chris nodded politely. "Of course" he replied, an essentially meaningless reply because if he had known the year he wouldn't have asked it. "Do you mind if we ask your name? You look quite similar to my friend here, mister…"

"McFly" Maggie's husband supplied. "Seamus McFly. And this here is me wife – Maggie."

Maggie nodded curtly, clearly disagreeing with the extent to which her husband was opening up to these strangers. "And if you'll excuse me, I should go and start preparing the bed for the night. Good evening, gentlemen."

"Good evening" Chris and Calvin both replied, as Seamus frowned at them. "I don't like to pry," he said, softly, "but what are your names, then? We're from Ireland, so I didn't reckon there were any relatives of mine around."

"Eastwood" Calvin blurted out, before softening his voice and adding: "Clint… Clint Eastwood."

Chris gave him a look, but finally decided to go for the same method of name-selection. "John Wayne" he said. "Both of us are from Nevada. My brother and I are travelling smiths, and this boy here is our protégée – our assistant. I don't think there's any relation to you, though. You said you were from Ireland?"

"Aye" Seamus confirmed. "We migrated a few years ago, me wife and I, along with me brother, Martin."

"Martin… McFly?" Calvin repeated, stunned.

"That's him" Seamus said. "I'm afraid he's no longer with us, though. You see, poor Martin always let people provoke him into fight. He was afraid people would think him a coward if he refused." He let out a deep sigh. "That's how he got a bowie knife shoved through his belly in a saloon in Virginia City. Never considered the future, poor Martin. God rest his soul."

"That's very sad, Mr. McFly" Chris replied, stunned yet somewhat uneasy around the McFly ancestor. Calvin felt he could echo those sentiments. The tale of Martin McFly bore a stunning resemblance to that of his counterpart from the new timeline, who had been afraid of people calling him a chicken and had nearly been killed by Biff Tannen over it. Hearing a story like this made him especially happy that it was now all in the past.

"Seamus?" a stern voice then sounded from inside. Calvin guessed that Maggie McFly didn't approve of her husband talking to all these strangers.

"Aye" Seamus replied, a lot shier now. He turned back to the visitors. "Perhaps we can talk some more later. I trust you have a way to get to Hill Valley, in order to get room and board?"

"We do" Chris confirmed, just as Calvin was wondering if they did. Of course, there was the DeLorean, but they could hardly fly the machine into a Western-era Hill Valley, could they? Just the thought would probably give Doc a heart attack.

"Good" Seamus then said. "The Palace Saloon might still be open by the time you get there – you'll be able to get rooms there for a low price. Well, anyway, maybe we'll speak to each other again sometime soon."

"Maybe we will" Chris agreed, a lot more resigned than Calvin would have liked. He gave the farmer a greeting nod, and after Seamus got back in and closed the door behind him, he started pacing back to the DeLorean, head down and hands in two of his pockets, but with a firm pace. Calvin could barely keep up with him.

"So, what does this mean?" he asked the inventor. "Is there a quick way out of here?" He didn't really think so, but one could always hope…

Unfortunately, Chris shook his head. "Don't count on it" he said, grimly. "If the time circuits are really broken, there might be a vital problem with the control microchip, or else with the other devices inside the circuitry. If there are minor shortages, those may be fixable, but if we actually need to replace things, we will need transistors. And they, unfortunately, will not be invented until 1947."

Calvin's eyes widened. "Isn't there anything you can do about that?" he insisted. "Come on, Chris! We can't just lean back and accept being stuck in the past!"

"Oh, certainly" the older man replied. "There are also vacuum tubes – basically the predecessor to the transistor. If we had them, we would be a long way towards solving the problem, although the circuitry would have to be expanded so much that we might need to assemble additional circuits on the outside of the car, possibly disrupting the time travel process. As you might be aware, circuitry has made great leaps in shrinking the past decades, and thus the older versions will be a lot bigger."

"I take it that's not the main problem, though" Calvin guessed, looking at the unchanging depressed look on Chris' face.

He was right. "It isn't" Chris admitted. "Even if we could get our hands on vacuum tubes, they will be incomplete. It would have been doable if we were still in, say, the 1920s or 1930s, but for the 1880s there are several essential electronics not available. And remember, this is a fairly fundamental glitch in the time circuits. It would have to have been, for it to strand us a hundred years away from home. No, if we would try to get a means for time travelling by contemporary technology, we would have to change so many things inherent to the way the time circuits and the car themselves work, that we would have to take months to do it. Years, even, if there is no way to do it within or outside the DeLorean itself and we have to deconstruct the car and build a new time machine from the ground up."

Calvin realized he was right. That didn't make the message any better. He gulped, took a deep breath, took another one, stood still and stared at his friend. "So, what now?"

Chris also stood, sighed, and stared at him. "So basically, for all intents and purposes, we are stuck."