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Friday, February 27, 1981

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The blank paper inserted into the old typewriter seemed to mock George as he stared at it. As he slouched over the desk, he waited for the words to start flowing. They stubbornly refused. He remained devoid of ideas no matter how hard he racked his brain. Something was missing, and he was dying to know what.

He had no idea of how long he'd been sitting around getting nothing done, having lost track of time. It was unusually quiet, as the kids were at school and his wife had gone out for the day, so the circumstances for inspiration to come to him seemed just right. But, for whatever reason, nothing he managed to type down seemed right. The crumpled-up sheets of paper in the trash can could attest to that.

Sitting back in the chair with a sigh and running a hand through his hair, he turned away from the typewriter. He was now facing the wood-paneled walls of the basement, which also doubled as his work place. He would sometimes hole up in there for hours to get things done when he had the time. While he normally didn't mind the usual noise of the upstairs floor, he sometimes needed quiet as well.

George glanced at the neatly organized shelves mounted to the walls, which were filled with cardboard boxes and bins, along with old toys and clothes that the kids had outgrown. Standing out amongst the labelled containers was something that caught his eye-an unmarked trunk resting in a corner, jammed between the shelf it sat on and the ceiling.

'Could it be...? How have I never noticed it before?' he thought, rising from his seat. Grateful for the distraction from his unfinished work, he walked over to the other side of the basement. To get to the small black trunk, he had to reach up from the top shelf and bring it down to the floor.

Sitting on the floor with the trunk in front of him, he undid the tarnished, gold-colored latches on the outside and pushed its top open. It gave in with a loud creak, shouting its age to anyone who would listen. Just as he suspected, it revealed a mess of old papers and notebooks that hadn't seen the light of day in decades. To most people, the trunk and its contents would be worthless, but to George, they were much more valuable.

Years ago, in what seemed more like a lifetime ago, the trunk had sat under his bed in the old room in his parent's house. It held old magazines, scraps of lined paper filled with ideas for stories (most of which were never actually written; he'd sometimes convinced himself they were stupid and gave up) and a notebook, where the actual stories went. Out of everything in the trunk, the notebook held the most memories, so it was the thing George picked up first to look over.

Blowing away a layer of dust that had collected on the notebook's frayed cover, he glanced at it in mild awe. He was sure it had been lost at some point-probably during the move to the house where he currently lived. He was not expecting to find it virtually unchanged from his high school days, when he would carry it to school and write in it whenever he had a spare minute or got bored in class.

Flipping past the black, nondescript cover (it had to be nondescript and indistinguishable from an ordinary school notebook; if its actual purpose was discovered, he would've never heard the end of it from Biff), he began to decipher his own cramped scrawl.

As he read, the stories jogged memories that the years had buried. Soon, he found himself taken back to a time before the kids were born, before he had started writing as a career, and before he'd met Lorraine; back when he was a teenager scared of the world. He imagined being back in the '50s and writing those stories of space aliens and far-off planets all over again.

The contents of the notebook, the earliest of which dated to the middle of his sophomore year, were not quite up to par to his more recent stuff (he'd hoped his skills had improved at least a little after all that time, after all). However, despite the grammar errors and plot holes that stuck out, he still thought of the stories in the notebook like an old friend he hadn't seen in years. They had been his escape from school and bullies, where he could dream up anything he wanted and do whatever he was too afraid to do in the real world. If he'd never started writing in it, he might never have gotten to where he was now.

It wasn't until he reached one particular story that the feeling of secure familiarity and of old memories coming back turned into something else. As he turned to a page dated towards the beginning of his senior year, uneasiness settled into the pit of his stomach.

The story was dated to November 9, 1955, and detailed what had happened on the previous night-George had rushed to write it down as soon as possible so as not to forget a single detail. Ever since then, that night had been an enigma to him. While all the other tales in the book were only from his imagination, that one had actually happened to him-maybe. Although, strangely, to an outsider, that one was no different than anything that would show up in the average science fiction magazine, George thought as he began to read.

The story began by describing a faceless alien in a yellow suit that appeared to stand over his bed in the middle of the night. From his vantage point lying on the bed, the alien looked tall and imposing. He (it?) put a device of some sort around his ears. The loud screeching and squealing noises coming from the device caused George to shoot up from the bed, shocked and confused, and then try to put his hands over his ears. Not that that did any good, though. It almost made the noise louder.

Then, the torturous noise suddenly stopped playing, although its echoes kept ringing in his ears. It spoke for the first time, in a monotonous and distorted voice that caused a chill to run down George's spine. "Silence, earthling! My name is Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan..."

Wait, Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan?

George did a double take at that line, just to make sure he hadn't misread anything. The alien's name and home planet were startlingly familiar. Weren't they from Star Trek and Star Wars? It was too huge a coincidence. Neither of those things existed in the fifties, so how would the alien know about them?

A new level of creepiness that could only have been discovered in hindsight was added to an already strange situation. It gave him a chill, despite the basement not even being that cold. He suddenly had the urge to lock the book back in the trunk, stuff it into a corner of the basement where nobody ever looked, and forget it.

Despite that, he just couldn't do it. How many times did an alien visit one's room in a lifetime? There was something fascinating about it. He had to finish the story to see if there were any more answers he'd missed. If he put the book down now, he would be left to endlessly speculate about it; not knowing was scarier than knowing.

George forced himself to look down at the page and keep reading. He got to the part where Vader told him that if he didn't take Lorraine to the dance, he'd melt his brain; and then proceeded to chloroform him (if aliens even used chloroform, that is; maybe he had used an extraterrestrial equivalent that had a similar effect). In hindsight, although he'd been frozen in fear when it actually happened, it just seemed silly when being read on a piece of paper. Why would an alien travel all the way from whatever planet it lived on just to force some teenager to take a girl to a dance? Was that their idea of a joke?

To this day, he was still unsure about exactly what had happened on that fateful night. Soon after it happened, he found himself considering different ways to explain the alien visit. He remembered wondering if the whole thing was just a prank someone from school played on him, or maybe a very vivid dream. If it was the former, then how did he get his hands on all those weird machines that resembled nothing George had ever seen before, and if it was the latter, what could explain the very real aftereffects of the chloroform he'd faced?

Even though the whole experience being caused by real, live aliens was not the most plausible explanation, there were little signs everywhere that didn't add up to a more reasonable one- the technology, the chloroform, and names from movies and shows that didn't exist yet. Besides, the idea of aliens living somewhere and watching over the lives of Earth people was a much more interesting idea than any old prank.

George continued reading; nearing the end. The last scene, written a few days later after he came home that night, was at the school dance, while he was dancing with Lorraine. Some jerk had come up to her and cut in between them, and George had let him; once again ending up on the dance floor by himself. He remembered being dejected and torn over whether or not to turn around and go back to her. When they were on the floor together, he felt as if he was on top of the world; but was his one moment of bravery a fluke?

As he stalled, wanting desperately to go back but unsure of how to do so, he caught sight of Calvin, or Marty, Klein onstage, hunched over the guitar as the other musicians looked on worriedly. Even though the crowd of other teens obscured part of his vision, and the lighting was dim, he swore that in that moment, he could just make out Marty's hand becoming transparent. He could look straight through his hand and at his face, which wore a look of horror.

While George had no idea what was happening, he guessed that maybe it had something to do with him leaving Lorraine, who he could now hear calling his name. George recalled turning around and feeling a surge of hope. Lorraine was definitely not enjoying herself with that other guy; and if he could stand up to someone once, why not twice? Because of both her and Marty, who's life might've been in danger, he strode back to them and pushed the redhead away from Lorraine. "Excuse me," he said, and turned back to face her.

The next time he glanced at Marty, he was fully intact and seemed to be brimming with energy.

In that moment, when Marty Klein literally almost vanished before his eyes, a thought wandered into his mind. Maybe Marty was the alien all along and was only disguising himself as a human. If the alien needed him and Lorraine to get together or else he would die (he wasn't quite sure how that worked exactly, but whatever), it would sure explain why he'd kept following George around. He was a little unsure of Marty at first; he wouldn't leave George alone and didn't seem to know what was going on half the time.

Whether Marty Klein really was an alien or just some kid that was in the center of a few coincidences, George would never know. Nobody, not even his supposed uncle, ever heard a word from him again after the night of the dance. He left just as suddenly as he came. There was no way to ever find out the truth about what happened. All he could do was try to fill in the blanks himself.

Fill in the blanks...

While he would never know the truth, he could write something about it. He could come up with suitable answers to the lingering questions he still had. While they wouldn't be as good as the real answers, maybe he could placate his mind a bit.

It occurred to him that what happened could make a great story, provided a few tweaks were made from the old, original story written years ago. He'd have to change a few names, make up some things about the aliens that he would never know in real life, and brand the whole thing under the guise of fiction (it wasn't as if he could go around telling people aliens had really visited Earth, after all). The real experience would be interesting to write about, that was for sure.

George suddenly stood up, his back aching from sitting hunched over on the floor for some time. Leaving the open trunk on the floor, he put the open notebook at his desk and sat at down at the typewriter with a new zeal. His mind was refreshed and raced with new ideas, and his fingers practically itched to type them down. The clicking and clacking of keys soon filled the room as a new story began to take form and a title came to mind.

"A Match Made in Space, written by George McFly..."