Chapter 6

9:41 PM

Nov 1 1985

Hill Valley California

The piano stopped instantly, eventually followed by the guitar. "Hey why're you stopping?" asked a voice, definitely Marty's.

"Can't you hear? The Doc just knocked on the door," a feminine voice answered with mild exasperation.

"Oh. Then I'd better let him in," Marty replied. Then he called out, "Hey Doc, if you're out there, come in!"

Emmett opened the door and stepped inside. The aforementioned instruments stood in a corner of the room. Band posters adorned the walls. Marty sat on a small amplifier, and a stranger stood behind the electronic piano, running her delicate fingers absently over the keys. The girl was as short as Marty, and had blonde hair and a cute but thoughtful face. Emmett thought he had seen her somewhere, but he couldn't pin the feeling down. Perhaps she was one of Marty's band members.

"So Doc, what's the scoop?" Marty asked as soon as Emmett entered the room.

"Actually, I'm not entirely sure where to begin."

"You could start by explaining why you look so young," the unknown girl asked, receiving a nod of approval from Marty.

Emmett wasn't sure what to say. He could only guess that his counterpart in this reality had not had a overhaul at a rejuvenation clinic in the year 2015. He could not guess who the girl was, but he did not want to talk about time travel in front of a stranger. "What do you think?" he finally asked.

Strangely, it was the girl who answered. "If we hadn't finished dismantling it last Saturday, I would have said it had something to do with your time machine.

Now that was interesting. "Exactly why would I want to do a thing like that?" Emmett asked, digging for more information.

Marty gave Emmett a funny look and asked, "Are you the same Doc I spoke to this afternoon? You're acting strange. The Doc I know would never forget that we took the time machine apart because of all the mess in 1955."

"You mean with your parents?" Emmett asked, evading the question.

"Of course he means that. How many times do you think Marty went to '55?" the girl asked a little indignantly.

"As I remember it, twice."

Marty gasped. "Are you saying that you remember something different, like after I came back from '55, I remembered there being pines at the mall?"

"Indeed, this is something like the issue of the name of Lone Pine Mall, but on a larger scale."

The girl, who seemed to be fully aware of the existence of time travel, had an objection. "I know I have forgotten as often as you, Doc, but you should remember by now that the mall is called Peabody Mall."

"Really?" Emmet responded with surprise. That was a new twist."

"I think I know what's up, Bess," Marty told the girl. "He must have gone back in time and stopped it from happening."

"No Marty, that doesn't make sense," Bess disagreed. "If that had happened, Doc would remember, and we wouldn't."

"Oh. Really?"

"She is absolutely correct. If you just think fourth dimensionally for a moment..."

"I'm not too good at that," Marty lamented. "So can you tell me what you're here for?"

Emmett decided he could. "It seems that something I did in the past has changed the present, resulting in this."

"This? What 'this' is this 'this'?" Marty wondered.

"Can't you figure that out?" Bess asked him.

"How do you expect me to know what 'this' you mean without telling me which 'this' this 'this' is?

Emmett looked rather thoughtful, trying to figure out which 'this'es meant what. Finally he said, "I'm talking about the version of reality we are in. For instance, I don't really remember meeting Bess before, let alone her knowing about the time machine."

Marty gave a loud chuckle. "That puts you in the same position as I was two weeks ago. Or thirty years, depending on how you put it."

"What position was that?" asked Doc.

"Coming from a reality where my family were losers and Doc was my only friend apart from the Pinheads, who ignored me most of the time when I wasn't playing guitar, and then having Bess show up saying she's my girlfriend. That was... heavy."

"But what about Jennifer?" Emmett asked, noticing another discrepancy.

"Jennifer who? I don't know anyone named Jennifer," Marty replied.

"What about Jennifer Kent, my friend Susan's little sister?" offered Bess.

"No, I mean Jennifer Parker," Emmett corrected. "She's about the same age as you two."

Marty drew a blank. "Never heard of her. I know of a Daniel Parker, he's sixteen. What was his sister's name?"

Bess remembered. "It's Chelsea. She's nearly twenty."

"Where do you know her from, Doc?" Marty asked.

"Last time I saw her, she was your girlfriend. Actually, the first time I heard about her was when you were in '55. You showed me the flyer she had written on. But I expect you would have no memory of that."

"No, I don't remember anything about a Jennifer or a flyer."

"You don't remember the flyer?"

"What flyer?"

"The 'Save the Clock tower' flyer. It told us exactly when lightning would strike so I could send you home."

"Send me home? Are you saying that in your reality you sent me directly back to the future?"

"Precisely. What do you remember?"

"We buried the DeLorean in the Delgado mine so you could get it out thirty years late, after conning the Libyans with that bullet-proof vest, and you came back and picked me up. Bess came with you. In fact, she helped you get the DeLorean out of the mine so you could bring me back before anyone missed me. Then we took all the additions off the DeLorean so you could use it as a normal car. That was a smart move, since the surviving Libyans, or rather the one who was well enough to talk, told the authorities that they saw a car disappear in a ball of fire, but when the cops looked into it, they found you had bought a DeLorean, and still had the same DeLorean, so they must have made it up or imagined it."

"And I never went to the future?"

"Nope, just the one trip to rescue me from '55. Which was only just in time."

"What do you mean by that?"

Bess gave an odd grin. "Marty had just gotten into a big fight with my father. Marty had just defeated him, but had been beaten up himself quite a bit. I don't know what would have happened if we hadn't found him, but I think Doc does, although he keeps it to himself."

"Me?" Emmett asked.

"No, I mean Doc who came back in time to rescue me. I can tell you're different," Marty explained.

"Yes, for one thing, I had a overhaul at a rejuvenation clinic, in the year 2015."

"Really!" exclaimed Bess. "That would explain why you look younger."

"Actually, I happen to be older. I have just lived from 1885 to 1895, working as a blacksmith in the old west. This evening, the evening I left, I found that a photograph of Marty and I taken in 1885 was being erased."

Marty gasped. "I was in 1885 with you? This is heavy."

"Yes. You came back to rescue me after I had been stranded in 1885, due to a lightning bolt which hit the DeLorean when I was flying over Hill Valley in 1955 to pick you up after..."

Marty had been getting more and more intrigued by this complicated tale, but before he could interrupt, his phone rang. "Sorry Doc, gotta pick that up."