Chapter Four

Martina awoke with the phone ringing around midnight. Quickly, she picked it up, holding the receiver to her ear.

"Hello...?" she asked, still half asleep.

"Martina, you didn't fall asleep did you?" asked the voice on the other end of the line.

"Uh... Doc..!" Martina sat up. Shit, she thought. She looked at her watch. It had stopped again, so she took a quick glance at her clock radio. 12:28. "Uh, no... No, don't be silly." She giggled quietly, finally waking up.

"Listen. This is very important. I forgot my video camera. Can you stop by my place and pick it up on your way to the mall?"

Martina popped a piece of peanut brittle in her mouth before answering.

"Uh, yeah. I'm on my way." She hung up.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

At 1:15, on the dot, Martina rode up on her skateboard, the Doc's video camera in her hand. She had her headphones over her ears, a Van Halen song playing as she hopped off the skateboard. Along with her usual attire for that day, she also had on a red, puffy, sleeveless jacket over her jean jacket. She took her headphones off, kicked up her skateboard and walked over to the white van that had Dr. E. brown Enterprises in all capitals and bolds. At the back of the van sat a sandy colored, wiry haired dog. A dog Martina knew all too well. She hopped back on to her skateboard, to make the trip faster, and skated over to the dog. The dog looked at her and began wagging his tail.

"Einstein!" she smiled, getting off of her skateboard again. "Hey, Einstein," she knelt down, petting the dog, who's tail was wagging fast and he was whimpering quietly. "Where's the Doc, boy?" Einstein kept whimpering, getting into Martina's face a couple of times. Then, a machine began to hum. The seventeen year old watched as a gate unlocked and slowly went to the ground, tracks on the back of it, so a car could get out of the back. Slowly, the youngest McFly stood, watching, the camcorder still in her left hand. Her mouth was open slightly, her eyes narrowed because of the sudden bright light from the street lamps that became more illuminated from the smoke that was leaving the back of the van. Martina cocked her head to the side, her eyebrows furrowed. From the back of the van came a highly renovated 1983 DMC DeLorean. The brakes screeched and the car stopped, leaving Martina to stand there, almost in awe. Of course, all of Doc's inventions were neat, but the car definitely took the cake.

The driver's side door opened, going up instead of out, and from it emerged a white haired man holding a clipboard. He wore a white radiation type suit and his hair was strung loose on his head. He stopped as Martina walked up to him.

"Doc!" she exclaimed as she looked the DeLorean over again. Doc looked at her with his always wide brown eyes. He took the pen out of his mouth

"Martina! You've made it!" he grabbed the teen's red puffy jacket for a few seconds before letting it go.

"Yeah!"

"Welcome to my latest experiment. This is the big one, the one I've been waiting for all my life!" Doc seemed more excited than usual about this experiment. Why, though, Martina had no clue.

"Uh... Well, it's a DeLorean..." Martina's speaking turned in jibber-jabber.

"Bear with me, Martina. All your questions will be answered. Roll tape and we'll proceed." Doc said.

"Uh, Doc, uh," Martina started. "Is that a DEVO suit?"

"Nevermind that now, nevermind that now. Not now."

"Alright, I'm ready." She held up the camera.

"Good evening. I'm Doctor Emmett Brown. I'm standing on the parking lot at Twin Pines Mall. It's Saturday morning, October 26, 1985—" Doc looked at his watch "1:18 A.M. and this is temporal experiment number one." Martina looked at her watch too, and found it wasn't working again so she flicked her wrist a few times, and put it up to her ear to listen for the tick-tock sound. "Come on, Einie. Hey, hey, boy, get in there." Doctor Brown called Einstein and Einstein headed towards the car. "That a boy! In you go. Sit down." Einstein jumped into the car. "Put your seatbelt on. That's it." Doc took the stopwatch on his neck and the one on Einstein's in his hands. Martina moved over next to the car to get a better look. "Please note that Einstein's clock is in precise synchronization with my control watch. Got it?"

"Right, check, Doc." The McFly said.

"Good." Doc stood, and got something out of the car. "Have a good trip, Einstein. Watch your head." He said, and shut the door. The two of them walked away from the car. Doc had something like a remote of some sort in his hands.

"You got that thing hooked up to the car?" Martina asked. There was a humming sound.

"Watch this."

"Yeah, okay, got it."

Doc flicked his thumb and the car went backwards.

"Jesus!" Martina exclaimed quietly. Doc was driving the DeLorean with the remote and Einstein was in the front seat of the car. Martina looked at him, the camera turning to face him.

"Not me! The car, the car!" he told her. Martina began to film the car again. The car stopped a ways away from them. Then the car began to back up. It stopped after a few seconds, and Doc ushered himself and the young girl to where they stood in front of it. "If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you're gonna see some serious shit." He started messing with the controller. Martina began leaving his side, and Doc looked at her. Slowly, Martina inched her way back. Doc let the car get up to around 65 miles per hour before letting it go. Martina began to leave again, but the scientist grabbed her arm. "Watch this! Watch this!" he said eagerly, like a small child almost. The meter hit 88. The car lit up, and lasers seemed to shoot out in front of it to this purple light. And as it headed right for them, Einstein and the DeLorean were gone, the two of them looked back, and only two fire tracks remained. "What did I tell you?! 88 miles per hour!" Doc began jumping up and down, like a kid on Christmas Day. The license plate spun around, and then clattered to the ground. "The temporal displacement occurred at exactly 1:20 a.m. and zero seconds!" Martina picked up the license plate. When she did it made a hissing noise and she dropped it quickly, her forefinger and thumb burning.

"Jesus Christ!" she exclaimed. "Jesus Christ, Doc! You disintegrated Einstein!"

"Calm down Martina. I didn't disintegrate anything." Doc explained. "The molecular structure of both Einstein and the car are completely intact."

"Then where the hell are they?!" The seventeen year old asked.

"The appropriate question is, "When the hell are they?" You see, Einstein has just become the world's first time traveler! I sent him into the future. One minute into the future to be exact. At precisely 1:21 a.m. and zero seconds, we shall catch up with him and the time machine."

"Wait a minute. Wait a minute, Doc, are you telling me you built a time machine out of a DeLorean?" Martina was baffled. A time machine built...out of a DeLorean? Or, better yet, an actual time machine?

"The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?" Doc answered the question Martina had asked. "Besides, the stainless-steel construction made the flux dispersal—" something beeped. "Look out!" Emmett ushered the young girl out of the way, and there was a green light and the car came back. The two of them looked at each other, and headed towards the car that seemed to be covered in ice. Steam came out of the back, and they stopped. Doc looked at Martina and then walked forward. He grabbed the handle, and almost automatically yanked his hand off. He shook it like it was hurt. The teenager winced.

"What? What? Is it hot?" she asked.

"It's cold. Damn cold." The scientist responded. Emmett opened the car door, and there sat a very happy Einstein. The man laughed. "Einstein, you little devil!" he pet him for a minute, and then picked up the clock around Einstein's neck. "Einstein's clock is exactly one minute behind mine and still ticking!" he let Einstein out of the car, and the dog barked and ran into the trailer.

"He's alright." Martina said, slightly amazed.

"He's fine. And he's completely unaware that anything happened! As far as he's concerned, the trip was instantaneous! That's why his watch is exactly one minute behind mine. He skipped over that minute to instantly arrive at this moment in time. Come here. I'll show you how it works." Emmett took her over to the car, and got in the driver's seat. "First, you turn the time circuits on." He pulled a lever, and the machine powered up. OCT 26 1985 A.M. 1:21 showed on one row that said "DESTINATION TIME". OCT 26 1985 A.M. 1:22 showed on the one below it that read "PRESENT TIME". OCT 26 1985 A.M. 1:20 showed on the last row that read "LAST TIME DEPARTED". The first row was in red, the second was in green, and the third was in yellow. There was a whirring sound. Doc pointed at the thing that had the dates. He pointed at the one in red. "This readout tells you where you're going." He pointed at the one in green. "This one tells you where you are." He pointed at the one in yellow. "This one tells you where you were. You input your destination time on this keypad. Say you want to see the signing of the Declaration of Independence." The red one turned into JUL 04 1776. "Or witness the birth of Christ." The red one then turned into DEC 25 0000. "Here's a red-letter date in the history of science. November 5th, 1955." The red one turned into NOV 5 1955. Emmett Brown sat there for a minute before realization dawned on his face. "Yes, of course. November 5th, 1955."

"What? I don't get it, what happened?" Martina asked. Doc laughed.

"That was the day I invented time travel. I remember it vividly. I was standing on the edge of my toilet, hanging a clock. The porcelain was wet, I slipped, hit my head on the edge of the sink, and when I came to, I had a revelation, a vision, a picture in my head, a picture of this." He pointed to something in the back of the car. It looked like a Y. It lit up with bright yellow color. "This is what makes time travel possible. The flux capacitor."

"Flux capacitor?"

"It's taken me almost 30 years and my entire family fortune to realize the vision of that day. My God, has it been that long? Things have certainly changed around here." Emmett got out of the car. "I remember when this was all farmland as far as they eye could see. Old man Peabody owned all of this. He had this crazy idea about breeding pine trees." He walked off.

"This is, uh, this is heavy-duty, Doc. This is great. Does it run on unleaded regular gasoline?" Martina asked. Emmett turned around.

"Unfortunately, no. It requires something with a little more kick. Plutonium."

"Plutonium. Wait a minute." Martina pointed at the car. "Are you telling me that this sucker is nuclear?" The brunette began to put the camera down.

"Hey, hey, hey! Keep rolling. Keep rolling there." She held the camera back up. "No, no, no, this sucker's electrical. But I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need."

"Doc, you don't just walk into a store and-and buy plutonium. Did you rip that off?" the seventeen year old asked as the scientist was making his way back to his van, but Emmett walked back over after she asked her question, shaking his hands in front of him like a 'Shut up' motion. "Of course. From a group of Libyan nationalists. They wanted me to build them a bomb, so I took their plutonium and, in turn, gave them a shoddy bomb case full of used pinball machine parts!" He smiled, happy with himself. He started back over to the van.
"Come on. Let's get you a radiation suit!" he walked into the trailer. Martina stayed put for a minute, shaking her head.

"Jesus!" She exclaimed quietly.