Chapter 13

Marty smiled to himself. Whatever he'd done to the past seemed to have had a positive effect so far. Not only did his house look much more respectable, but his brother had a decent job and – miracle of miracles – his sister had boyfriends! He wondered where his parents were and hoped that the positive trend extended to them.

Pretty soon, they walked in the front door, back from their game of tennis. The sounded like they had enjoyed themselves and actually appeared to be truly happy to be together. "Wow, you guys look great!" he couldn't help saying.

"Why, thanks Marty!" his mother replied. "You don't look so bad yourself, though perhaps you should change your clothes as often as your hair colour."

"Um… yeah, I thought I'd try out the redhead look for a while."

"Well I'm sure Jennifer will love it. Such a sweet girl."

"Yeah… right…" Naturally Marty didn't mention that Jennifer had already seen it.

"Marty," Linda said, catching his attention. "I'm not your answering service, but she called earlier, while you were still asleep." Her tone indicated that she saw his sleep-in as laziness. "She said she'll be around soon."

"Oh. Thanks." Marty digested this information, and some breakfast.

"I suppose she's here to finish planning your trip up to the lake," George commented. "Biff should be done waxing your truck by now."

"Lake… Biff… truck… huh?" Marty was completely lost. Perhaps this new version of reality was even more unbelievably better than he'd expected.

His thoughts were interrupted by the man in question barging in the front door. "Hey, Mister McFly! You've got mail! From the studio!!" He handed over a large envelope, which was marked 'Prioirity'.

George tore it open excitedly and skimmed the contents. "Good news, they've approved the script! Full production should start soon."

"Script? Production?" Marty wondered aloud.

Linda looked at him like he was completely dense. "You know, for the latest movie sequel. Darth Wars 3 – Return to Vulcan. The one where Gary and Lotta discover that Darth Vader is the preincarnation of their son and that Murphy's destiny was to return to his homeworld to defeat Beef McTinner with the help of the mad scientist Doctor Indigo and his silver space-car. But they are nearly thwarted when the Doctor meets the beautiful Claire, who is a robot programmer from the third moon, and actually a robot herself, but that isn't revealed until later…"

"That's… inspired," Marty muttered, deciding that he'd better get out of the house before anything more crazy happened.

"Here's your keys, Marty," Biff said as he tossed them to the fleeing teen.

"Um… thanks." He quick-stepped to the garage and found the very 4x4 he'd been practically drooling over the day before. "Wow, this reality just gets better and better."

"Take me for a ride, mister?"

"And better," he amended, whirling around to see his girlfriend. "It's great to be back where we belong."

She nodded. "I really like your new hair. It stands out."

"You too. I mean, you look great. Uh, I guess we'd better wait for Doc to show up. He never actually set a particular time to come back."

"We'll have to find something to do while we wait," she stated with a twinkle in her eye. She stepped close and leaned in for a kiss.

Thankfully, Doc's loud and sudden arrival waited a few more seconds before startling the couple apart. The DeLorean squealed into the driveway, bowling over some bins. The gull-wing doors opened, allowing a woman in her thirties and a man in his forties to step out dramatically. They wore infectiously bright clothes of an unusual design. "Marty!" a somewhat familiar voice called. The man pulled up the silver visor that had covered his eyes.

Marty studied the face of the rather tall and excited man. "Doc?? What year did you come from?"

"Twenty-fifteen," the inventor answered as he dashed around the car to collect some rubbish. The woman looked on with amusement.

"The future? Why do you look so young? Did you have something done to you in the future?" Jennifer asked, before Marty had a chance to say the exact same thing.

"No, that was caused by an error in my calculations." He jerked a thumb at the interior of the DeLorean, indicating another quantum mishap, and strode to the back of the vehicle where he flipped open the cover of an unfamiliar white device, releasing steam. He dropped in a number of items and closed the lid. "Fuel," he said, by way of explanation.

Marty nodded, hoping that meant they didn't need plutonium any more. "If you say so, Doc. Umm… who's your companion?"

"Ah! Good question. This is Clara, my wife."

Jennifer grinned and Marty blinked in surprise. "Is she a robot programmer from the future?" he queried.

"No, she's a schoolteacher from 1885."

"Schoolteacher… close enough. Wait… what were you doing in 1885?"

Doc looked sheepish. "Yet another slight error in my calculations. I didn't succeed in taking a direct trip to the future, and got stranded for a while due to a ripped fuel line and minor damage to the car body. I set myself up as a blacksmith to make repairs and borrowed a locomotive to push the DeLorean up to 88 miles per hour."

Jennifer gasped at this news. It seemed that the inventor had had even more adventures that she and Marty. Marty's face had a flash of recognition as a set of new memories clicked into place. "She's Clara Clayton, the schoolteacher who was kidnapped by hijackers! The blacksmith tried to save her but they all perished when the locomotive crashed into ravine, since the bridge wasn't built yet. They named the ravine after her!"

Doc nodded. "I looked up the records when we got to the future. It seems that the mayor liked me too much to suspect that I was the hijacker."

"Wait a minute, Doc… how did you survive the crash?"

"You need to think fourth dimensionally, Future Boy. We instantaneously arrived in 2015, in which time the bridge existed, so we were safe. Fortunately we reached 88 miles per hour before we reached the end of the track that existed in 1885."

"I… see. Well, it seems like we did a good job of fixing the past. Life is peachy for George McFly and family, though I'm not so sure what's become of George Lucas."

"Who?" Doc asked.

"Never mind. So… how does the future look? I can see that fashion has… progressed."

"The future! We'd better all be going!" Doc suddenly remembered.

"Going? Where? When?"

"Back to the future! Something has to be done about your kids!"

"Our kids?" Jennifer asked hopefully.

"Yes, now get in the car. There should be enough room if you two share a seat. Quickly now."

"Don't we have all the time in the world?" Marty wondered as he climbed into the seat.

"Yes, but we only have so long before someone comes out and wonders who we are." Doc took his rightful position in the driver's seat and Jennifer snuggled into Marty's lap, with Clara sitting in the middle seat, which appeared to be newly installed.

"I see you've made a few upgrades," Marty observed.

"Yes, but there's still not enough room to sit in the back. Once we're done here, I'll see what I can do about that," Doc answered as he backed out of the driveway.

"Hey Doc, don't you need to back up? We won't have enough road to get up to 88," Marty warned. Jennifer looked to Clara who smiled back, indicating that there was a good reason for this.

"Roads? Where we're going we don't need, roads."

The End. (for now)

Thanks for reading and reviewing! Sorry for the long wait towards the end, I got a bit busy and kinda put off writing for a while. It's all done now, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. A sequel is likely!