Author's Note: I can't believe I'm posting a new chapter this fast, but obviously I am. Please read this chapter, and suggest for the 2010 part of the story. Who should they encounter? Future Cliff? Griff, if he would even exist here? I hope everyone likes the chapter. Please read and review!

Chapter Eleven

Tuesday, December 31, 1985
02:47 PM
Time Travel Hide-Out
Hill Valley, California

"I think we're ready."

Marty Two stared up from inspecting the front seat's sit-capabilities, and frowned at his friend. "You're joking, right?" he asked. "It can't be done just yet."

Doc looked around. "No, I'm not kidding" he whispered, looking around at the DeLorean. The machine looked really weird, in comparison to how it looked in 1955, since Biff's influence and power had ceased some things to be and caused some things to start existing. After some hard work the days before, they had yesterday finally managed to finish all of the electronics, and this morning and early afternoon was spent on testing the time circuits and flux capacitor and all of the other things in the time vehicle. "I really think it's done. All you have to do with this thing is just accelerate it to eighty-eight miles per hour, and it will work again, like it's other self did in 1955."

"It won't," Marty Two reminded him, thinking back of that same week. "There is no plutonium yet, remember? We had a working time machine in fifty-five, but no plutonium means no time travel."

"That is an issue" Doc admitted. "We have to find some way to obtain plutonium. But, however it won't be a matter of getting into the nearest drug store and buy plutonium, it will still be easier than it was in 1955, or even your 1985."

Marty Two frowned, confused. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"The one time travel advantage Biff in charge offers" Doc said, grinning happily. "Plutonium is often used in BiffCo facilities. Now all we have to do is get to the nearest one, and grab some plutonium."

"Doc!" Marty Two shouted. "This is Biff's empire we're talking about! Those workers won't give us plutonium if we ask for it, they'll immediately send you back to the asylum and shoot me!"

"Oh, we're not asking."

"We're not asking? What'll we do, then, huh? Beg?" The mixture of a both sarcastic and angry tone was really obvious in Marty Two's voice.

"No" Doc said, shaking his head. He protruded the gun they'd grabbed a few days ago. "We'll use this thing."

"You are going to use a gun?" Marty Two said, a little weakly. However Doc had tried to defend him from the Libyans with gunpowder – and failed because the stupid thing hadn't been loaded – in the original reality, he still couldn't really see Doc using a gun. He didn't really like the idea, either.

"Why not?" Doc asked, as if it was the most normal thing in the world to use a gun by a purchase. And maybe it was in this world. "It's pretty much the only way to obtain plutonium. As you already said, they'll probably have orders to, and won't hesitate to, capture you and kill you at the moment they see you. It's the safest way for all of us."

Marty Two frowned. "I am still unsure about the whole thing. Are you certain the DeLorean is ready in the first place?" That would be something, managing to get away with plutonium and then discovering that it would take another month to finish the time machine.

"Oh, Marty, I believe Emmett" Susan said, approaching them and sliding an arm around Doc's shoulder. "If he says it's ready, it is. Or are you about to take the flux capacitor apart and see if it really works?"

Marty Two shivered at the thought. "No. I'll probably ruin something in it and cause us to be stuck here for two more months… and besides, I don't think that I could see it if something went wrong anyway. If Doc can't, how could I?"

"Well, you seem to have increased in brightness in these past two months" Doc said. "Still, you got a point. We don't want something to go haywire on us. But that's why we've spend this entire morning looking it over, right?"

"You're right, Doc." Marty stared at his watch. "Um, anyway, how about we go to eat, now? I'm starving!" He groaned.

"Eat?" Doc smiled. "What a great idea, Marty! I wouldn't have thought of that! That really is something. I hadn't thought about that. Great idea, kid."

"Um… thanks."

"No thanks" Doc said, heading over to the food-prepare-table. "I am getting a bit hungry, myself. It's only two-forty-nine, yet, but still…" He turned around. "What would you like today?"

"Doc, we only have beans" Marty One reminded his friend. They'd grown closer in the past weeks, thus making Marty One feel more comfortable with calling his friend 'Doc'. "We really can't take anything else."

"Right, right…" Doc stared at the others. "Beans fine with all of you? After all, this most likely will be our one-before-last meal in this world."

"One-before-last?" Susan asked, puzzled. "I thought we were leaving tonight. If we can get plutonium by that time, that is." She shivered at the thought of not getting any plutonium, but being captured by Biff instead. That would be bad.

"Well, we are, sort of" Doc said. "But our finally leave is tomorrow. We have to make a few preparations first, to make sure that everything is all right when we leave, but we should be ready by that time. So we're leaving the city of Hell Valley at New Years Eve, 1986. Everybody better start thinking of ideas where to go."

"Anything but the fifties and the Old West is fine with me" Marty Two groaned. "They're so boring. I don't wanna go through another week like in fifty-five, with no good music… not that it's around now, but you know what I mean."

"I always wanted to see the future myself" Doc whispered, happily thinking of that occurring. "Seeing how Biff's power will influence mankind, looking beyond of my years… maybe I'll also get to see who wins the next 25 World Series."

"The World Series haven't been played since 1983" Susan said. "But I guess you were just committed around the time…"

"…so I couldn't have known" Doc finished. "Actually, I heard it around that time from one of the attendants at the asylum. But I guess I just temporally forgot about it, or was having happy memories of seeing my other self conducting his first time travel experiment and wasn't really thinking of that event."

"Let's get started with diner" Marty Two cut in. "I'm really hungry. Without food, it doesn't matter if you have a time machine… because you can't survive to travel through time in it anyway."

Doc frowned, then smiled. "I guess you're right" he said, grinning. "Let's get started with dinner."

oooooooo

After having had lunch, time passed real quickly. The afternoon was spent on some more checks on the time machine, and after dinner, Doc and the Marty's headed out to get some plutonium at the nearest BiffCo plant. Susan, Jennifer and Ann stayed behind in the mine and waited. Waited long. Waited more than two hours and a half. Finally, at 9:54 PM and 27 seconds, the DeLorean came rolling into the mine again. Both Marty's and Doc got out of it, and Susan immediately ran over to Doc and hugged him. "Emmett!" she screamed with joy. "You're back! What took you so long, we thought that Biff and his goons would've captured you three…"

Doc smiled shyly. "We did get into a chase" he admitted. "And we couldn't really find a safe way to enter the BiffCo plant. Still, we were around ready at nine-fifteen, but we waited half an hour for the police cars to have left. We didn't want them to follow us to the mine, did we?"

"You're right, Emmett" Susan whispered. "But I – I was worried about you. It's really late, now, already." She noticed Marty Two staring at the clock intensely. "Hey, Marty Two, what's up?"

Marty Two smiled vaguely. "I guess I was just remembering myself how these days happened in the past" he whispered. "I usually was calling with Jennifer from eight to nine… today was one of the few days Mom actually allowed me to do that… and around nine-thirty, I headed over to Doc's place. We usually celebrated it together. Last year, even my family tagged along for the ride. I had to beg for it a lot, but finally they came. We had a very happy experience, all together."

"I wish I had been there" Doc said, sighing wistfully. "In this 1984, you most likely were with your mother and Biff at the Pleasure Paradise…" A nod from Marty One, "… George was dead, your siblings were out on the streets, and I was committed. Seems like your version of reality really was much better than ours, isn't it? Granted, the world hasn't come to an end yet, but it will happen, eventually."

"What happens with a time paradox, anyway?" Susan asked, interested.

Doc shrugged. "I don't know… I don't have real experience, since if I had, I wouldn't be here right now. The lucky thing is, I believe that after the paradox it's safe. I mean, the laws of physics most likely won't work anymore after the moment the paradox occurs… and I guess that would mean that, if we were to enter the universe after it's collapsed, the DeLorean would just remain driving in mid-air. Or on one of the wreckages of what formerly used to be planet Earth."

"Seems pretty heavy" Marty Two commented.

"You don't know the half of it."

"Can we get started, now?" Marty One urged. "I mean, with testing the DeLorean? I wanna see if it works." He felt as eager as a young kid starting to wrap open a present, and he figured that Doc felt the same.

He did. The inventor immediately obeyed to Marty One's wishes, and they drove the time machine-to-be out of the silver mine, after having been in it for about three-and-a-half years, not counting quick trips with it that the time travellers-to-be had made in the past few weeks. Both of the Marty's were fascinated with Doc's old remote-control that he used for it, Marty Two the most because he'd seen a smaller version of it in his reality. Doc headed out towards the DeLorean, and after a few minutes, he arrived back with them.

"What did you do?" Marty Two asked. "We don't have a dog to use, now…"

"Correct, but I did leave one of my old clocks in there," Doc said, "as well as my wristwatch. So we do have a way of knowing if it worked. Start filming." Marty Two lifted up an old camera, handed it to his counterpart, who set it on.

As Doc saw that Marty One had started to roll the tape, he started to speak into the camera. "Good evening ladies and gentlemen," he started, "I'm Doctor Emmett L. Brown, standing here on the train tracks to Clayton Ravine, outside the abandoned silver mine in close proximity to Hill Valley, California. It's currently Tuesday, December 31st, 1985, at 9:59 PM, and this is Temporal Experiment Number One… or Two, actually, counting the one I conducted over thirty years ago at the clock tower. Anyway, this is a temporal experiment."

The inventor then started to back off the DeLorean down the tracks. After it had moved away about a quarter mile, the time travellers went to stand in the tracks. Sliding an arm around Susan's shoulder, Doc pulled the lever and the DeLorean started heading towards them.

As the time machine neared, Marty One started to shiver a little. "Um, Doc?" he asked. "Are you sure that this is safe?"

"If Emmett says it's safe, it's safe" Susan said, although not looking so sincere herself.

Doc focused his eyes on the remote control's speedometer. "75…80…85…86…87…88!"

Bright flashes started to appear around the DeLorean. The six persons watched in disbelief as the DeLorean suddenly disappeared in a brilliant ball of white light, leaving twin trails of fire behind in what would've been it's path.

Doc looked at his remote control in disbelief, then at the trails of fire. "Ha!" he shouted, holding the remote-control above his head. "What did my other self tell you, eighty-eight miles per hour!" He checked his watch. "The temporal displacement occurred at precisely 10PM and 0 seconds!"

Marty One stared at him in disbelief. "When… when is the time machine?" he asked, nervously.

Doc checked his watch again. "Our DeLorean time machine currently is on December 31st, 1985, which is today, at this spot, at precisely 10:04PM and zero seconds" he told the teenager. "Means that we'll have to wait exactly three minutes and forty-two seconds to catch up with him."

"So what'll we do in the meantime?" Susan asked. "Emmett, why did you let us wait that long, anyway?"

"I really wanted the DeLorean to re-appear at 10:04" Doc said. "Didn't you? I loved that time ever since the clock got struck on it, and the lightning hit the flux capacitor, sending Marty Two back to the future."

"We know" Susan said, rolling her eyes. "You told us that a millions of times, Emmett. You know that."

"It never bores me" Doc grinned.

"Even knowing that this 'future' you were sending me back to was actually Hell Valley?" Marty Two sarcastically remarked. "From the moment I saw Biff's face on the Pleasure Paradise, grinning stupidly, I wished I'd missed the lightning."

"Well, in that case, the DeLorean might've been erased much earlier" Doc said. "And we might not have been able to escape on time. I'm not sure, of course, but this way it's better. Even if we managed to take Biff's almanac in the late fifties, you'd rather be trapped in the past than spending just two months here and having control over a time machine again?"

"If it works" Jennifer reminded the inventor.

"If it didn't work, the vehicle wouldn't have disappeared, would it?"

"True, true…"

"How long, Doc?" Marty One asked, interrupting the talk. Doc glanced at his clock, then gulped. "Great Scott. Just twelve seconds! Thanks, Marty!" He pushed everyone out of the way, then did the same himself. At that second, triple sonic booms shattered and the DeLorean reappeared. Doc quickly took a hold of his remote-control again and stopped the machine. "Woo!" he exclaimed. "I didn't count on that!"

"We could've been killed" Jennifer whispered, deadly pale.

"We weren't" Doc said, firmly. He started to run over to the DeLorean, and unlocked the gull-wing door. "Haha!" He showed the wristwatch, and the other time travellers saw that it switched from 10:00 to 10:01, as opposed to Doc's clock switching from 10:04 to 10:05.

"It's four minutes behind" Susan whispered.

"It skipped over those four minutes and arrived at this moment in time" Doc explained. He then grabbed the watch, and re-set it… but not to 10:05, instead to 6am. "Um, Doc?" Marty One asked. "You're setting it the wrong way."

"No, I'm not" Doc said. "I'm just setting it for our next destination. December 31st, 2010, 6am."

"Twenty-five years ahead?" Ann asked, with some scepticism.

"Why not?" Doc asked. "I always wanted to see the future, and this is the amount of time my other self wanted to go forwards. We can see if Biff still rules, and return after spending a day in the future." He smiled. "This is going to be fun…"

"I hope" Marty One groaned. He didn't want to end up in the middle of a time-paradox. However he trusted Doc now, he couldn't help but be uncertain when Doc was grinning so insanely. It made him feel uncomfortable. However Marty Two had ensured him the scientist was in his heart sane, he still didn't feel relaxed at such moments.

"We'll be fine" Doc assured him. "Everything will turn out all right."

"Hey, yeah" Marty Two nodded. "Everything went fine when I got send back to 1985, remember? The lightning hit precisely on time, and I got transported back rather easily. We'll be all right." He paused, then added softly, so that his counterpart couldn't hear him: "I presume."

Susan had a question. "Emmett, you set your watch for 6am, right? Our destination?" Doc nodded. "But that's incorrect. I mean, if we arrive at 6, your watch will already display 6:01 or something like that."

"Very good thinking fourth-dimensionally, darling" Doc praised. "You got a point there, and that's why I haven't set for the clock to start running, yet. I'll push the 'on' button at the instant we arrive in the future. He turned around. "All right, everyone aboard" he commanded. "We are going to see the future, guys. And if it's for better or for worse, we'll find out."

Susan frowned. "Um, Emmett?"

"Yes, Suzy?"

Susan pointed at the DeLorean. "We can't all fit in there." However the DeLorean had some space behind the seats, it was still designed for two persons, and not for six. However they'd fit in together before, that was when they weren't all there. Mostly the Parker twins didn't go along. But now…

"I know, I know" Doc said. "How about the Marty's try to squeeze behind the seats, then you can sit in the front with the Parker twins." It was a command, not a question, since if it had been a question, Susan's answer had been 'no'. "Emmett, you can't mean that! We'll be half-killed sitting all together."

"Just a little pressed next to each other" Doc assured her. "Everything will be fine. Just do as I said."

After about fifteen minutes and an awful lot of squeezing, the exhausted time travellers had managed to reach their seats. Doc grinned at his friends, then took the driver's seat and closed the DeLorean door. "I'll try to make this trip quick" he promised.

"You'd better" Ann growled in disgust. "Or I'll make you do it." She was sitting on Susan's lap, and had her sister right above her.

Doc chuckled. "Brace yourselves, everyone." He started the DeLorean's engine, and started to speed off from the mine. As it finally hit a rough fifty miles per hour, which was enough to cause everyone to be shaken, Doc turned the time circuits on. "Let's see, time circuits on. Destination Time: December 31, 2010, 6am." He tapped the right coordinates into the circuits.

"Are we about to go, now?" Marty Two sickly asked. He really felt like throwing up, and hoped the trip would be done, soon. None of his previous time travel trips had been like this. At least there hadn't been an obstacle in the rails… yet. Derailing wasn't his idea of a fun trip, as they'd most likely all end up dead.

"Just a few more seconds" Doc muttered. His eyes didn't move away from the speedometer anymore, as the inventor started to get more excited with every passing moment. "Sixty… sixty-five… seventy… seventy-five…"

"Can a window be opened?" Jennifer sickly asked. "I feel like throwing up from all this shaking."

"Eighty…" Doc whispered in disbelief, completely ignoring her. "Eighty-five… eighty-six… eighty-seven… eighty-eight!"

The flux capacitor discharged. The time circuits had done their work well, as they started to make sounds as well. A bright flash of white light appeared in front of the window, blinding everyone's sight for a moment, and within seconds, the DeLorean time machine and it's squeezed-up passengers were gone from 1985.

December 31, 2010

06:00 AM

"Argh!"

Doc stared in utter disbelief at the place the light had been just seconds before. "What was that?" He turned to Marty Two. "Kid, you surely could've told me about that. We could've been killed!"

Marty Two grinned, now well-aware of the fact that he was the only one who actually had experience with time travelling. "It's just a flash of light" he said. "I think it appears whenever you time travel. You're the physician, Doc… you're supposed to be giving an explanation. Not I."

"That's correct" Doc whispered, staring in front of his window. "But I really thought we were going to die for a second." His expression brightened. "But we didn't, and the time travel worked! If the time circuits are correct, and the white lights we just saw were any indication, I'd say we're in 2010!"

Susan tried to have a peak out of the window. "This is 2010? It doesn't look too different from now."

"That's because you're sitting inside a car" Doc reminded her. "Come on, let's try to get out of here, then we can inspect the future somewhat better."

After a few minutes of trying to get out, all of the Browns/McFlys/Claytons/Parkers had left the car. Jennifer looked up, thinking she'd heard a weird noise, and almost collapsed from shock. "Jennifer!" Marty One shouted, rushing to her aid as fast as he could after sitting in such a cramped position. "What's the matter!"

Jennifer pointed at the sky, nervously. "A… a… a… cars" she stammered in disbelief. "Flying cars." She looked at the air in disbelief. "In the sky."

Marty One looked where Jennifer had pointed to, and almost fainted himself. Indeed, up in the sky a car was flying above Clayton Ravine. There were some marks next to it that made it look like a freeway… except for the fact that, well, it was in the air. "I don't believe this" he whispered. He turned to Doc frantically. "They're flying, Doc. Flying!"

"I have to admit, this is an interesting phenomenon" Doc muttered, staring at the sky. "Flying cars." His eyes lighted up. "Imagine what we could do if we could make the DeLorean that way! We could get around every time period much easier. Needing a road decreases our options drastically. When we're able to let the DeLorean, fly, however…" He smiled. "That'd be perfect."

"Let's get into town, first, before we make any tries" Marty Two argued. "I want to see Hill Valley in the future."

"Are you sure that's safe, though?" Jennifer asked. "I mean, Biff might try to catch us again…"

Doc snorted. "Jennifer, you're not thinking fourth-dimensionally! It's 2010! By now, Biff will either be dead, or, if he's still alive at seventy-three, have long forgotten about us. We'll be safe… safer than we were in the Eighties, at least."

Jennifer considered that thought. "I suppose so" she finally muttered. "I guess we'll be all right. But what if something goes wrong, and Biff still captures us? I don't want to be caught by Biff Tannen and his goons. They'd probably try to kill me. Or Biff's son, Cliff… he'd be in his forties now, right?"

"Forty-six" Marty One nodded. "I really don't wanna think of him finding us. Or maybe his kids… it could be possible for him to have children already. I can't say I'm looking forward to see another Tannen."

"Same here" Doc growled. "But we'll have to stick it out here for a while, if we want to convert the DeLorean into flying mode, or whatever they call it here. And besides, I want to know if something changed, or if it's still something like 1985. Aren't you guys curious to see the future?"

"Not if that means getting shot by Biff or Cliff" Marty Two groaned. "They're pests in my timeline, and with them being so rich, now, I don't think that we're going to live long if we stick around Hell Valley in the future."

"Marty's got a point there, Emmett" Susan said. "I want to see the future, but I want to survive at all costs. Maybe we can better go back to 1985…"

"Aww, come on" Doc pressed, grinning. "You can't be giving up so soon. We've just got here, after all. And it is a fact that, however our encounters with Biff are fresh in our memories, in the current Biff's memory – if he's still alive, that is – they're twenty-five years ago. They won't be searching so intensely that they still expect us to show up, after all those years of seeing nobody they looked for…"

"All right, we surrender" Ann jokingly said. "Let's get into town. We don't know what the future will bring, but, for better or worse, we can at least have a short peek at it."

Marty Two found himself thinking the exact same thing. No matter how bad the current Biff, Cliff or Cliff's eventual son were, they could at least have a short look around Hill Valley 2010. Only looking wouldn't hurt, would it?

Would it?