April 21, 1986

The booming sound of Rick and Alex laughing uproariously downstairs, broke Beth's concentration. Wanting to see what all the fuss was about, and needing a break, anyway, she headed downstairs.

"An empty bottle of gin!" Rick muttered, as Alex grinned and pointed at the screen, where workers in hard hats were digging around in the dirt, looking flustered.

Chris, who had apparently been studying, set his textbook aside when he saw Beth on the stairs, and motioned for her to join him on the far sofa. She obliged him, launching herself onto his lap; his notes and textbook went flying, as she grinned, and he rolled his eyes at her antics, but wrapped his arms around her waist, anyway, giving her an affectionate hug.

Melissa glanced up at her, from the notebook full of paperwork. She seemed as though she'd been lost in thought.

"Well, folks, it looks like we've struck out," Geraldo Rivera ventured, on-screen, sounding uncomfortable.

"Oh," Beth leaned forward, "is that the Al Capone thing, still?"

Rick nodded, still chuckling. "They made this great big production of it. Two hours we've been sitting here, while they say they're gonna open Capone's vault, any minute now, on live TV."

"I think," Chris noted, dryly, "that they may have mentioned the possibility of the vault having dead bodies inside it, oh, maybe a dozen times."

"Or a treasure," Alex chimed in. "This is the craziest thing ever I see on the TV."

"Two hours," Rick repeated, shaking his head, "while they've been trying to get the vault open, there in Chicago underneath some old downtown hotel, and they finally blast it open and there's nothing inside. Just an old empty bottle of gin. Whoops!"

"That look on Geraldo Rivera's face just now," Beth said, giggling, "Anyone else get the feeling that he's wishing that gin bottle wasn't empty?"

Chris snorted.

"That dude is getting so smashed tonight, you know he is," Rick grinned. "How embarrassing." He stood up. It was late on a Monday night, and they all had school in the morning. Alex followed suit.

"You think Mark was watching this?" Chris asked, suddenly. "I mean, he's in Chicago, right?"

Melissa seemed to flinch a little at that, Beth thought.

"Everyone was watching this crazy thing, tonight. Even Mork, probably." Rick said, though the laughter was quickly leaving his voice. "Wonder why we never heard from that guy," he added, glancing furtively at Melissa, who was now flipping through her sheaf of paper again. "I left him a message on the board," he added.

"So did I," said Chris, shrugging. "I think all of us have. Guess he'll get them eventually."

"Can't believe he'd launch that rocket without us." Rick frowned, in mock-betrayal, as he and Alex headed for the front door, together.

Once the guys had left, Melissa seemed reluctant to leave. Beth had been trying to decipher some of the weirder aspects from the schematics from Doc's disk, that evening, and she was kind of anxious to get back to it. She had long since made a copy and replaced the original, of course.

She and Melissa were watching MTV, now that the Al Capone's Vault show had ended. It seemed to her that Melissa had something she wanted to discuss. They were best friends; they told each other everything, but lately it seemed like Melissa had been keeping a secret from her. Beth had been keeping a secret as well; that she hadn't stopped looking for Mark.

Finally, Melissa cleared her throat. Beth looked up, to see Melissa holding out a letter to her. She took it and scanned through it quickly, looking back at Melissa, in shock.

"The Naval Academy?"

Melissa nodded.

"You got accepted to the Naval Academy?" She hugged her, impulsively. "What the hell, Melissa!" Beth grinned at her friend. Melissa shrugged, sheepishly, with an uncertain grin. "And a full scholarship!"

"Everyone gets a full scholarship," Melissa volunteered, self-deprecatingly, as though that minor detail made her feat into something completely ordinary.

They sat in silence for awhile, as Beth re-read the acceptance packet. Five years of service in the Navy? Finally, she sighed, and looked back at Melissa.

"You don't seem very excited about this," she observed.

"I am, though," Melissa argued, a little bit of the giddiness one might expect beginning to seep through the facade. "I'm really, really excited," she said, grinning. "It's just…" She trailed off, and shook her head. She looked at her hands.

"You think it'll be weird, being a girl there?" Beth knew, of course, that the Naval Academy accepted women now; it was still quite rare, though.

"No, that's not it, really. I don't think it's going to be easy," she replied, with her trademark flair for the understatement. "I think my parents are pretty worried about it. They knew I was applying, but I don't think they expected that I really had a shot of getting in."

"Wow." Beth glanced over a list of prerequisites, and blinked. Four years of school, and five years of service. It sounded like a lifetime, to her. "So, you're sure about this? You're really going?"

Melissa nodded.

"I have to," she said, "of course I'm going to do it. Who says no to an opportunity like this?"

"Then what's the problem?"

"I just wish you could come with me," she admitted, ruefully. "All of you guys. I don't want to leave any of you behind." She smiled at Beth, and under her breath, "I promised," she added.

They were silent for a long time.

Finally, Beth ventured, "You can always use the board to keep in touch, can't you?"

Melissa sighed.

"Yes, that's true. But we need to find a way," she paused, thinking, "to make it permanent. To keep it online, forever." She glanced at her hands, and then back at Beth. "You think it'll still be working in ten years? Twenty? Thirty years?" Beth couldn't quite decipher her expression, but it seemed almost like guilt.

"Well," she noted thoughtfully, "I think that it might be possible before too long. I mean, if that whole big hypertext thing with all the links ever happens." She thought for a moment. "Wonder what we'll be doing in thirty years? As fast as technology is advancing, things are going to be a lot different by then, aren't they?"

"They will be." Melissa agreed. She sighed again. "The thing is," she trailed off, as though she wasn't sure how much she could say. Finally she continued, "I made this promise. And at the time, I thought I could keep it."

She had to be talking about Mark, Beth thought. She had that same conflicted, guilty look that Beth had come to recognize. Chris was right, she knows what happened.

"I need to tell you something, actually," Beth said, hesitantly. "About Mark."

Melissa looked at her, suddenly.

"Did he tell you, too?" she asked, surprised.

"Chris and I went to talk to Doc Brown," she admitted, looking up.

Melissa's eyes were wide and shocked.

"I went to talk to him, too," she blurted out. "Right after he went back. Mark gave me that email address, but Doc grabbed it right out of my hand and burned it! He said that Mark shouldn't have given it to me, that I couldn't… that I shouldn't try to contact him, that it might mess things up even more."

Beth shook her head, trying to understand.

"Right after he went back?" she asked, slowly. It was exactly the wrong question to have asked, she could see immediately, as Melissa's eyebrows went up, understanding beginning to dawn in her eyes.

"Wait, wait…" she said, "Okay, what was it that you needed to tell me? About Mark. Start over," she asked, ruefully, shaking her head.

"I've been doing some, um… research," she said. "On what happened to Mark. What he was trying to do."

"You and Chris just wouldn't leave it alone," Melissa said. Beth didn't think she sounded angry exactly. It sounded like what it was, more of a long-suffering annoyance that Chris and Beth hadn't listened to her.

"Well, no." Beth tried to defend her actions. "We couldn't. He was our friend, and we want to know what happened to him. It was weird. It's still weird. You know what happened, and you won't just tell us. We just wanted to know that he's okay, want him to know that we're okay. Nobody's mad at him. So we started looking into things, on our own."

"And what did you find?" Melissa prompted, finally, voice flat.

"That he wasn't who he said he was? That you were probably right about him, in the first place? That he and Doc Brown were involved in some weird, dangerous shit together?"

"That sounds about right," Melissa muttered.

"But it's not just the hydrazine," Beth continued. "There's something bigger than just that. It wasn't for some high school science project. They were making it for something else. It was going to power this… reactor thing. I know a few things about reactors, and this is… Well, he calls it a flux capacitor, and I'm not sure what it can do. I can tell you that it's dangerous as hell, though, as much energy as he's trying to channel into this thing."

"What! He's already completed the design?" Melissa shook her head. "Oh my god, this just gets weirder and weirder. And how did you get ahold of it?" She trailed off, shaking her head. "Nevermind. I don't want to know."

"Do you know what it does?" Beth persisted.

Melissa was silent for a long time.

"Yes," she replied, finally.