Disclaimer: I do not own Back to the Future.
Author's Note: New chapter. Contains some plot development, but mostly set-up. Hope you like it anyway.
Chapter Seven
Wednesday, September 2, 1885
09:30 PM PDT
Hill Valley, California
Getting to the DeLorean, at least, would be a piece of cake. However, getting it over to the blacksmith store wouldn't, and the time travelers were already despairing that they would have to wait until night before they could drive it into town (of course, since the new DeLorean could travel through time without any complications, they could just go there if they wanted, but Doc and Chris were inclined to limit the time travelling to a minimum) when Chris came up with the idea to really haul the car into town on a wagon. It still wound up taking much of the morning to rent a wagon, get the Palace Saloon to rent out as many horses as they needed, and they had to go at a slow pace to keep the DeLorean from rolling off the cart. And of course, they needed to reuse the blanket, this time to keep the new car covered. With some boxes also on the cart, there was fortunately nobody who read more into the scene than they should have.
By the time the new DeLorean had been hauled into Hill Valley, it was lunchtime, and for the newcomers that meant an opportunity seeing an elaborate device in action which Doc and Chris had created in just a few days work, a device that reminded them all of Einstein's breakfast maker. This machine baked eggs and bacon without trouble and even had a toaster included for bread, leaving only very little actual work for them to do. After they were nourished, the six time travelers set off to compare the DeLoreans to each other. And that was where the real difficulties started.
First of all, as the newcomers had lost a tire on the new DeLorean which had apparently been cut by nails in the old shack, and it took a while to patch it up again. Then secondly, as they tried to repair the time circuits, it soon became clear just how great the difficulties would be. There had been no spare time circuit control microchip in the toolbox, nor had either Doc or Chris ever created one. It soon appeared that it might not actually be possible, even with the tools they had, to repair the time circuits. Although Marty proposed that they make a separate journey to the future with the working DeLorean to pick up spare parts (or better, have Doc or Chris go) the thought of leaving the others behind, even if it was just in one soon to be erased timeline, was one they really didn't want to bear in the end, especially considering the gruesome disaster that had happened in the previous history. Besides the time circuit control microchip, other devices not just in the time circuits, but also on other locations in the car, appeared to be failing, and while the latter mostly could be fixed or at least patched for the time being, the time circuits were too far gone. In fact, Chris even stated with some resignation, the only way to get back to the future and not leave the car behind (which was contemplated as well, of course, but shot down as there was no way all of them could be pressed into the one DeLorean) was to restore the override time circuits and have them go to the future that way. Despite the time travelers' conviction to cling onto hope, this view was increasingly shared by many of them as the day progressed.
By the time evening fell, minor fixes had been made to the car, but permanent reparation neither had neither been attempted nor had it succeeded. Although Doc was inclined to at least try to screw open the time circuits and see what could be done on the inside, Chris was wary to agree to a scheme that might fail, and he got his way this time. Further annoyances came up throughout the day as customers visited the blacksmith shop, requiring the cars to be hidden under the blanket and uncovered once more when they left. With there now being two cars, the disguises were quite flimsy, but thankfully no one appeared to be interested in any more than their horses being shoed and their carriages fixed. Even an older woman, whom Calvin remembered as being prone to gossiping, barely gave the strange devices in the back a look. Nevertheless, their problems weren't fixed, and as the night set in a connection of the cars was increasingly viewed as inevitable, a solution that would be quite complex.
As he mulled about all of that, Calvin decided to take a walk. He made a curt announcement of leaving to Doc and then exited the store, staring up at the clear night sky. It never ceased to amaze the teenager how much stars one could see with pitch blackness around. Hill Valley, with the exception of the Palace Saloon, was also quiet as a tomb, and it was quite refreshing.
Unfortunately, as Calvin noticed, it also caused ones mind to wander. Although he was certainly relieved that rescue had come, the events of the day had also increased his uncertainty about his own future. It had been the impending threat of erasure that had caused the journey back in time to happen in the first place, and which had indirectly stranded them in 1885. Doc and Chris had promised him help would come and get them out of there, but with that help came the distressing news that in the original timeline, he would have died in just a few days, killed by Buford Tannen. The thought continued to create a shiver throughout his spine every time he thought about it.
The others were lucky, Calvin deduced. They, at least, were not fundamentally at fault for this mess – and he supposed he wasn't either, as he certainly hadn't wanted to start disappearing, but it certainly felt like he was – and death didn't loom on the horizon for them. How would his future be? Would they be able to get back home, and would they be able to find a permanent solution, or would time travelling become some sort of life support he'd have to cling onto to survive? The seventeen-year-old shrugged half-heartedly, realizing that it wouldn't be that bad, as given the readings Doc and Chris had taken in 1 B.C. it was likely that he would only have to go ahead or backwards once every month or two. Even so, the thought that such permanent reliance on time travel was necessary at all gave him a strange feeling of uncertainty. Of artificialness, too.
The teen was still musing about that and would have likely continued to do so for a very long time when behind him the sound of someone clearing his or her throat could be heard. Alerted, Calvin spun around, and was incredibly relieved to see Ann.
"You scared me" he said, smiling. As she frowned, he felt the need to make her feel at ease. "Not much, just a little."
Ann smiled back. "You kind of scared me, too" she pointed out. "You had wandered off, and I wasn't sure where you could have gone. Are you in the habit of walking out at night?"
"Sometimes" Calvin admitted. "I kind of like stargazing, especially because my Dad – my new Dad – has instilled me with lots of stories about aliens the last months. I guess he's trying to make up for all those years he couldn't do that." The teen chuckled somewhat, then sighed. "And it's a good occasion to think."
Ann walked up to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "About what?" she asked.
Calvin shrugged. "Lots of things" he replied. "My future, about if I'll ever get home, if I'll ever be able to lead a normal life, if you guys will be able to get me out of here without getting shot by Buford Tannen… that sort of stuff." He grinned. "And I suppose right now, I'm also thinking of what Marty will say when he hears you came to visit me here."
Ann shook her head, tsking. "I heard that from Mike, too" she agreed. "They really seem determined to portray us as…" She fidgeted, taking her hand off his shoulder and drawing in a deep breath. "…a couple, don't they?"
Calvin nodded. "They sure do" he said, shyly. "I…" Ann looked up, as if encouraging him to go on. "I can't say I don't understand them. I mean, I am not really in love with you, you know, the way they claim, but I…" He shrugged. "I kind of miss Jennifer" he finally settled on.
Ann nodded, sighing. "I suppose I can understand that" she muttered. "I never dated anyone in the alternate 1985, but if there was someone I cared as much for as Marty does for Jennifer – this universe's Jennifer – I would miss him too." She chuckled. "And ever since I noticed that Marty and Jennifer were dating I've somehow, subconsciously, felt drawn to you. I had the feeling that for some reason, the two of us ought to be together… and you are kind of cute, you know."
Calvin blushed. "Thanks" he replied. "I think you're cute too… but I suppose you already knew that." He grinned awkwardly. "I suppose I feel the same way, really. Seeing Marty and Jennifer together really makes my heart sting, and although there are plenty of cute girls at school who have made it clear they're interested in me every now and then, I somehow feel that I shouldn't be with them, not when you and Claudia are around, and I feel… attracted to you. More to you than to Claudia, though… but Claudia is really nice too and never mind that" he suddenly finished.
Unfortunately, Ann had caught onto it. "You feel more attracted to me than to Claudia? Why? But shouldn't you feel the same way about us, if…"
She left the remainder of her sentence unspoken, but Calvin could fill it in. 'If you were merely interested in us because we look like your ex-girlfriend'. That, however, would have unfortunate implications, the implication that he wasn't merely attracted to Ann because she looked like Jennifer, and that was more than Calvin McFly wanted to face right now. He took a deep breath. "Perhaps" he admitted. "But I have interacted more with you than with Claudia the last weeks. Not much more, but Mike and she go out of the house only occasionally, because of your past and all."
"As if I'm so outgoing" Ann snorted. "When was the last time I went along with you and Marty and Jennifer to anything?" She shrugged. "I suppose that after all I've gone through, I just prefer being with my family and in a nice and quiet atmosphere… but that's really beside the point. I don't think that would be enough to explain it anyway. I feel a stronger attraction to you than to Mike, lately, and he's the guy who grew up in our world."
"In Switzerland" Calvin pointed out. "You don't share the exact same history."
"No, but we're closer to each other than we are to you" Ann said. "And yet, I feel like I can relate to you better. Calvin…" She sighed. "If you're not interested in me, you can just say so, and I'll back off. I just thought that you know, maybe you actually were."
"I am" Calvin replied, extremely softly. "I mean, I'm not… I don't know." He stared at her. "I really don't know. I just don't want to jump into a relationship with you just on a whim… I mean, if you'd even want to do that."
"Oh, that wouldn't be too much of a problem" Ann replied, coyly smiling at him and once more putting an arm around his shoulder before taking it off again. "I just don't want to burden you. Calvin, you… and I, I suppose… we've got so many possibilities open to us. You might meet a cute girl tomorrow that you're really interested in, and if you were dating me you would feel burdened, and that wouldn't be right, especially if we were just dating because we felt like we ought to. We shouldn't just jump on a whim."
"That sounds reasonable" Calvin agreed, strangely feeling a weird sense of disappointment deep inside his heart. "But if we have dated people a while, and that won't work out…"
Ann chuckled. "Hold onto your horses, Cal" she replied. "No reason to be overeager. If nothing works out, we can always talk about what to do later." And with that, she planted a surprise kiss on his cheek and walked back to the stable. Calvin stared after her, feeling strangely stupefied.
oooooooo
The night passed without any peculiarities, and by the time the new time travelers got back up the next morning they found out that Doc and Chris had already made up a plan for how to solve their situation. They had apparently stayed up for much of the night, thinking up all ways imaginable to get them back home but in the end, as Chris had grudgingly admitted before, there appeared to be no other solution but the difficult one – restore the link between the two cars, override the destination time of the broken DeLorean, and thus transport it through the same temporal field the 'normal' DeLorean could go through. The problem with that was, however, that it would be rather difficult for the normal DeLorean to go up into the air carrying the regular car, which after all had had its hover circuits broken. Of course, they had managed to do without that when Doc, Marty and Calvin had gone from 1985 to 1958 and onwards to the alternate world just fine, but that had been on Twentieth Century roads, and in the Old West that would certainly be more difficult. The problem itself was also rather complicated, but as the previous example showed, it could be done in just a few hours by four people working together, and there were six of them here now, so theoretically that would be a piece of cake with the future equipment Mike had brought. All in all, it looked like they could be out of here by the afternoon, or perhaps by the evening, provided Doc and Chris could agree about balancing the various necessities of both avoiding attention and getting a road they could see in order for them to be able to drive safely to 88.
There, however, there was a more difficult problem altogether, and that was the gas tank. The one in the broken DeLorean was almost entirely drained, and when the new time travelers had looked under the tank of their DeLorean when fetching it the previous morning, it appeared that a leak had emerged there as well. It wasn't a big leak, but yet enough to, combined with the amount of flying around they had done and the meddling around with the engine on the desert roads when they were still uncertain whether to drive back, fly back or rent a cart for it, leave the tank less than a quarter-full. It was certainly more than enough to fly back to the future, and most probably more than enough to drive home. It might, however, not be enough to take another DeLorean on tow, one which was drained of all gas. Doc and Chris asserted that they would need to test their theory first, but that it was likely that they would need more aid, an engine strong enough to tow or push the DeLoreans, compensate for the lack of horsepower in the new DeLorean, and get the two time machines up to eighty-eight miles per hour. How that would be arranged, however, was a matter the two scientists left unclear.
There was, of course, yet an obvious solution to their problem, which was to take the new DeLorean ahead in time and fetch more gas. However, there were solutions that were too simple for Chris and Doc to think of, and as Calvin observed, they were simply thinking too complex for any of that to ever hit their minds. By the time Marty was the one to realize the possibility, however, it was already too late. In a last-ditch attempt to forestall the pending inevitability that an alternative power source would have to be fetched, Chris and Doc tried, with an alternative fuel they had fetched from the Palace Saloon, to power the time machine. This experiment failed drastically, as just when the car appeared to work and the time travelers let hope into their hearts, the fuel injection manifold blew and another hole was torn into the gas tank. Fortunately, some of the fuel could be caught in time, but they were forced to put it into the broken DeLorean, as clearly the new one was no longer capable of holding it – repairing would take too long. Increasingly, as Ann put it, their situation was going from bad to worse to even worse to unimaginably worse. Doc, ever the optimist, had of course clearly disagreed with that, but that there was something to be said for Ann's arguments was shown a few hours later.
No one saw the disaster coming. Doc and Chris had restored the cover over both DeLoreans, where they had done some preliminary work on the time circuit override, and they were now trying to complete one of their tasks as smiths, namely fixing a carriage which belonged to an old couple who had brought it in two whole days ago. Calvin was toying around with the hoverboard which Marty had brought along with them, Ann was trying to fix her hair using the old mirror, while Mike and Marty were just talking to each other, Mike telling his counterpart about an amusing incident that had happened during the time when his parents had been on their honeymoon. Apparently, Claudia had accidentally spilled some juice on the floor, and then she had tried to wipe it away with a napkin which Mike had unfortunately drenched in some transparent chemicals which wound up making the stain much worse and permanent by reacting with the juice. Calvin half-heartedly listened, continuing to toy with the hoverboard but still catching at least some of Mike's story. He had just reached the part where Claudia was scolding him for leaving the napkin out there in the first place when the doors of the stable burst open and Buford Tannen barged in.
All inhabitants of the stable were instantly alerted, Calvin making sure to immediately hide the hoverboard under his bed before continuing to gawk at the newcomers. As Doc, however, stopped what he was doing and confidently faced the bully head-on (a daunting task for sure, especially for someone who knew for a fact that this was the man who would have killed him four days hence), Chris cautiously winked at the teen. Calvin was puzzled for a moment, and then got it. He got up, taking care that neither Buford nor his gang, who had followed him in, had their attention on him, and then made his way to the Terminator.
The Terminator was a prototype gun Chris had constructed for their safety by disassembling the two weapons the previous blacksmith had owned. Within a few days after they had arrived, the gun had been dramatically enhanced and was now capable of, as Chris boasted, 'shooting a man's hat off at a hundred yards'. Calvin thought that was an exaggeration, but the gun would come very much in handy indeed.
As he pondered all that and started slowly heading for the gun, which was fortunately close-by in the rear of the stable, Buford spoke up. "You owe me money, you two" he said. "Want to pay it now, or do we have to teach you a lesson first?"
"Money? For that horse?" Doc snorted. "In case you forgot, Tannen, we're the one who're supposed to get paid for doing a shoeing job, and I don't recall ever getting anything from you."
"My horse threw a shoe" Buford explained. "Seeing as you two and your lousy assistant were the ones who did that job, I figure you're responsible."
"You never paid us, as Emmett said" Chris pointed out. "The way I see it, that would make us even. But if you insist on us redoing the shoeing job, I'm sure that something could be arranged."
"And that's where you're wrong, blacksmith" Buford snarled. "I was on my horse when it threw the shoe, and then I got thrown off! And that caused me to bust a perfectly good bottle of Kentucky Red Eye. So the way I figure, you both owe me five dollars for the whiskey, and seventy-five dollars for the horse!"
Doc sighed. "Look, there's no need to start threatening here, okay? Like Chris said, if your horse threw a shoe, bring him back and we'll reshoe him, and then we can talk again."
"But I done shot that horse!" Buford exclaimed.
Chris shrugged, glancing at Calvin, who had finally managed to get to the gun without notice and was now reaching for it. "Then I'm afraid there's nothing we can do for you."
"Nothing but paying me eighty dollars, and doing so now" Buford said, pulling out his gun and motioning for the others to do the same. "Or else…"
"Or else what, Tannen?" Calvin replied, raising the gun at them.
Buford appeared genuinely frightened for a moment, but when he saw Calvin he chuckled, turning his gun on the teenager. "You really think you can threaten me from there, runt? You'll get blown away before you can get close enough to take a good shot. In case you ain't noticed, you're outnumbered here."
Calvin smiled. "Oh, I noticed" he replied. "But if you don't mind, let me show you what this gun here can do. Think I can get, say, that bag of flour up there, near where Do… where John and Emmett are standing?"
The gang noticed the bag, and chuckled, one of them stepping towards the bag as if to taunt him to do it. Buford also grinned. "If you wanna try it, runt, go ahead" he said. "Have some fun before you all either pay up or get shot to pieces."
Calvin grinned, a look on his face that must have appeared cocky for the ones watching him. From the corner of his eye, he could see Mike, Marty and Ann, who had fortunately remained mostly unnoticed by the Tannen gang as of yet, watching him with an obvious nervousness. Calvin attempted to send them a reassuring look, but that didn't appear to help. In any case, he had to focus on his mission. The young man carefully aimed the gun, peering through the lens at the other end of the shop until he had a clear view of the center of the bag. Smiling, he pulled the trigger…
…and the bullet rang out, dug a hole into the bag almost exactly at the place he'd intended it to, pouring flour onto the ground and even some on the gang member, whose dark hat turned white in a second. The dumbfounded look on his face was priceless.
Buford also stared at the teen with a stupefied expression on his face, but soon recovered. "We'll be back" he snarled. "This definitely ain't settled yet. If you don't pay up, then you'd better be keeping that gun close to you all the time. Cause one day, you're gonna get a bullet in your back." With that, he stepped out of the store, motioning for the others to follow.
The sigh of relief that Calvin issued when the gang left was soon echoed by virtually everybody else within the room. "Well," Chris said, quietly, "they're gone. Thank you, Calvin."
Marty grinned, still somewhat nervously. "That was awesome!" he exclaimed. "Which of you made that gun?"
"I did – though Emmett helped" Chris replied. "I figured that it would be necessary if we were going to have to spend a while in this time period. I hadn't realized we would need it so soon, though."
"If you earned the ire of someone like that, I certainly can't blame you for constructing the gun" Ann said, shivering. "Or even if you just ran a risk of meeting him. Man, and I thought Biff was scary. For some reason, this guy freaks me out even more."
"I wouldn't know" Mike said. "Biff was frightening too, and he had a huge business empire behind him, and essentially ran Hill Valley if not all of California. This Buford guy seems to be an idiot with a gun who is trigger-happy and doesn't clean up well. I'm not saying that he isn't dangerous, and if I'd thought that, what just happened would have disproven that notion, but I'm not ready to agree that he's worse than Biff."
"I suppose I get your point, Mike" Chris agreed. "Buford may have terrorized us for a few days, but Biff was the one who turned your life into a disaster by murdering your father and marrying your mother, and who got me committed. In the end, though, it wouldn't matter much if Biff would shoot you or Buford did it – you would be dead all the same."
Mike gulped. "I suppose so" he muttered. "I still can't believe we keep running into all these Tannens, though. First Biff, of course, and then there's Cliff as an annoying bully, and then Griff, whom Marty has had his dealings with… and now there's Buford, who clearly isn't a cheerful, friendly guy either."
"Great observation, Mike" Doc remarked half-sarcastically. "Honestly, though, I don't know why it happens, but I've begun to treat it as a near-certainty that it will happen. And they all look alike, too…"
"At least there's still a McFly in every generation as well" Calvin said. "And they look like us, more or less, and they're nice."
Doc nodded, and was about to respond when a carriage rode up. "Emmett!" the carriage's owner called. "Howdy, Emmett!"
"Hubert!" Doc called back. "It's the mayor" he explained, briefly turning back to his friends.
Mayor Hubert got out of the carriage and walked up to the time travelers. "Now Emmett, remember when you volunteered at the town's meeting last week to pick up the new school teacher when she came in?" he asked, talking with a distinct accent.
"Oh yes, quite so" Doc replied.
"Well we just heard, she's coming in tomorrow" Hubert continued. He took out a sheet of paper and handed it to the inventor. "Here are all the details for you. Thank you for all your help. Chris, Clint" he added, curtly greeting the other inhabitants of the stable he knew before looking at the others somewhat confusedly and turning back to his carriage.
"Any time, Hubert!" Doc called after him.
"Oh," the mayor remembered, just before getting into the carriage, "her name is miss Clayton. Clara Clayton." With that, he rode off.
The name struck a bell with nearly all of them, but it was Mike who spoke first. "Holy shit!" he hissed. "Dad, isn't that…"
"Yes, it's your mother's maiden name, and the name of the woman who died in the ravine" Chris replied, shaken. "With our luck, I would bet on it being that very woman. She was a schoolteacher, wasn't she?"
"I think so" Mike replied. "What's this about anyway? Why did you agree to pick her up, Doc?"
The inventor shrugged. "We attended the town meeting last Saturday, as the mayor insisted we come as 'new citizens of Hill Valley'. Then the matter of the new school teacher came up – the last one retired prior to the summer, I believe, and the city council has apparently been involved in quite the hunt to find a new one ever since – and everyone informed the mayor that they were busy and couldn't commit themselves, especially as by that time we didn't yet know what day she was going to come in, only that it would be at the end of the week. So we got singled out as the ones with a flexible job, and since Chris was insistent on working more on the time machine – at that time we hadn't worked out the details of our plan to write home yet – and Calvin was needed as his assistant, I ended up being the one volunteering."
"And you were just going to go back home without picking her up if we had gotten everything fixed before tomorrow morning?" Ann guessed. "That's not right, Doc. If you made a deal to go and get her…"
"I suppose not, but there might be someone else to pick her up" Doc said. "I can't imagine that in this Hill Valley, a woman in need of someone to ride her home, especially a school teacher, would be left stranded on a train station all day."
"Even so, Doc" Mike said. "You agreed to do it, and if you don't do it now and leave her in that situation, isn't that going to disrupt the continuum?"
"Perhaps" Chris remarked. "Or perhaps picking her up will make the situation worse. What if this was the situation in which she died? If we mess with that, we will be altering my wife's history, which will get very dangerous very fast… although I suppose that it won't be affecting her directly because we are from a parallel duplicate universe, but either way it would still be saving someone who, in her death, was an important figure in Hill Valley."
"The train station is a long way from the ravine" Doc pointed out. "Even if she was originally going to walk home or fetch a ride from somebody else, I don't think that would do the trick of killing her. We'd be miles from the ravine."
"Perhaps we should just pick her up and see what happens" Calvin proposed. "Although I suppose that could leave you in the situation of the original person who would pick her up, and if it is the fatal ride to her death for some reason, you'd be along for the journey." He shivered.
"Guys?" Marty then asked. "You mind if I ask a question first?"
Doc glanced at Chris and shrugged. "Go ahead" he replied.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
Chris stared at him in confusion. "We're talking about the potential ramifications of Emmett picking up a woman who could very well be Clara Clayton, my wife's ancestor – or rather, my wife's counterpart's ancestor – who fell into Clayton Ravine. I don't know what could be so confusing about that."
"It wouldn't be," Marty admitted, "except for one thing: I have never in my life heard of this Clayton Ravine you're talking about. The ravine outside Hill Valley is called Shonash, there is nothing remarkable about it, and I have never heard about Susan having any famous ancestor in town who fell in there!"
As Calvin began to feel that his brother was perhaps going a little crazy, Chris grinned broadly. "Of course! Marty, thank you for your observations! This is so obvious, I can't believe I didn't think of it before!"
"Considering I don't have any clue what you're talking about, I can hardly blame you" Marty smoothly replied. "What are you onto now?"
Chris uncertainly looked around for a chalkboard, found none, decided that he could do without and began to explain. "It's all very simple" he said. "In the original timeline, Miss Clara Clayton, Susan's indirect ancestor, fell into the ravine – Shonash Ravine, I suppose, as it sounds like it could very well be an old Indian name – and it was renamed in her memory. In the new timeline, however, Emmett picked her up from the station and apparently stopped her death from happening. Therefore, in the new 1985 that you came from, the ravine's name would be Shonash. However, Emmett, Calvin and I couldn't logically be affected by new memories about that as we were in the past causing the changes, and Mike and Ann aren't affected because they are from a wholly different dimension and thus immune to changes occurring in this universe's timeline. Marty, however, is the only fully native person along on the trip, which is why his memories were affected and he indeed remembers the ravine as Shonash. It all makes sense now."
"You're the Doc, Chris" Ann replied. "But what does that mean with regards to what we were just discussing?"
Emmett caught on. "It means that since I picked Miss Clayton up in the timeline you came from, and yet only died three days later on Monday, I wasn't killed in the process of picking her up. Perhaps she did only die later this month, and whatever happened to her was prevented by me some time after that event."
Calvin's head was starting to ache. "So basically, you think it's okay to pick her up?"
Doc and Chris exchanged glances. "Possibly" the latter replied.
"Probably" the former corrected.
"Then we've got that settled" Ann deadpanned.
