Mazel Tov, Marty – Now Take Care of the Nazis

By Dubya Kerry

Disclaimer: I do not own Back to the Future, its world, characters, or parts, or its sequels, the blandly named Back to the Future Parts II and III. Neither am I the first idiot to go around using Nazis as characters. Due to the violence and sensitive subject material, this story has a PG-13 rating.

Back in 1990, when Marty McFly had gone off to college and returned to town for Spring Break, he had brought along a pretty interesting student organization along with him. No, it was not a fraternity, and, no, it was not the Rutgers University football team, either. (He probably didn't want to bring that bumbling bunch of oafs along, for that matter. Rutgers is better in academics than in sports, anyway.) Marty had brought along the Rutgers European Cultural Society, and they were interested in one thing: flux capacitors.

Back in New Brunswick, New Jersey, at one of the taverns near campus, Marty had gotten drunk, as college students often do, and let out the secret that he had traveled through time in a DeLorean as a teenager. This brought out laughs, of course, but Marty persisted, and one student belonging to the European Cultural Society, after overhearing, told a friend about Marty's story, and this friend happened to be Jewish. Now, this Jewish pal had family who had perished in the Holocaust, and he therefore had the bright idea of going back in time and saving his family.

The pal suggested, to members of the European Cultural Society, that the club ought to contact Marty at his apartment, and this suggestion led to Marty McFly getting a rather unpleasant surprise the next day: he found out that other folks knew he had traveled in time. Marty attempted to shrug off his adventures as rumors, but he had forgotten to hide the flux capacitor sitting on the table in his bedroom.

Even worse, Marty had described the flux capacitor in detail when he was drunk, so now people not only knew he'd talked of time travel, but they also knew there was a bit of substance to the story.

In short order, the Cultural Society members persuaded Marty to take them to California, find the other flux capacitors, and attach them to some car or truck. Since spring break was only a week or so long, the gang decided to fly to California rather than go by Greyhound (rather than lose a few days). (Obviously, the existence of time travel had failed to rub off on the minds of those doing the scheduling.) Marty still had his pick-up truck from the mid-1980s, although looking the worse for wear those days.

Upon arriving at his home in the Lyon Estates, Marty addressed the crowd.

"There are about thirty of us. Obviously, not all of us are going to be able to fit in this 4X4. While Doc Brown cautioned against using time travel for financial gain, I found that financial security is advisable, and I have used it to accumulate enough cash to rent a trailer in the future. Now, I am going to head to the year 2050, rent a usable trailer, come back here, load all of us onto the 4X4 and the trailer, and go back to the future. Once there, we will head for Europe. Any questions?"

A few hands shot up, with questions ranging from, "Can I kiss my girlfriend while traveling through time?" to "What about the grandfather paradox – you know, you go back in time and kill your own grandpa and you can't be born?" (That last question really struck at Marty's nerves, for he had been involved in a similar situation at the age of 17. He stammered out an "err...I don't know" to that question, and the person asking decided not to press further.)

The more mathematically-minded folks in Marty's odd bunch of fellows pointed out that they could directly travel to Europe in the 1940s from Hill Valley by using the time machine, if only they were allowed to tinker with the controls. Marty didn't know what to say to this, so he hemmed and hawed for a few moments...

And he gave his okay.

After renting the bus and picking up Jennifer, the band launched off for the year 2070-something (nobody cared what year). Once there, the gang armed themselves with ray-guns, a history of the Second World War, a replica WWII airplane, and other weapons, headed back in time to the 1940s, and basically homed in on a train in Nazi-occupied Europe. The group neglected to pick a train; Marty McFly didn't care what train the group went for, and the

The stake-out occurred at night. The bus landed in a grove in Poland, the plane (manned by a member of the group who'd done some amateur flying) hovered overhead with guns loaded, the slow-moving train showed up, and a bit of fireplay ensued. The airplane, flying low over the tracks, hit 88.6 miles per hour just ahead of the train with the flux capacitor on, and the bus sprung from the grove and did the same thing just above the train. This was calculated to propel at least some parts of the train into two wormholes through time (a risky maneuver, since nobody had done it before).

The target, by location, was the bridge over Eastwood Ravine in 1990. The train appeared near the bridge in two portions (with one of its cattle cars, loaded with people, split in half, fortunately without anyone getting hurt), and promptly derailed. Fortunately, the train had been moving so slowly at the time of the raid that injuries suffered were minor.

The "borrowed" airplane made a landing in a farmyard near town; the bus settled down near the derailed train. Marty, meanwhile, remembered how he got into an accident with the DeLorean by time-traveling onto the same bridge and running into a train shortly thereafter. Oh no, not again, Marty thought. I gotta keep those people from getting run over! Marty ran over to a pay phone and called the railroad responsible for the bridge to watch out for a derailed train on the ravine.

Marty's troubles were far from over. Indeed, they were about to get worse – much worse.

For one thing, the Nazis guarding the prisoners had shoot-to-kill orders in case any prisoners (who were Holocaust victims) should try to escape. For another, the members of the Cultural Society felt it their duty to get the prisoners free of the train – and potentially save their lives.

The Cultural Society members shot the locks off of the doors of the cattle cars holding the prisoners, and the prisoners, naturally, opened the doors and began to spill out. Many of the Nazi guards, however, were still at their posts – little sheds high up on the ends of the cattle cars – and they aimed their machine guns at the prisoners and the Cultural Society members. Gunshots resounded through the nearby streets.

Ohmygod, thought Jennifer, and she ran to a neighbor's house from the group's rental bus, screaming, "They're shooting everybody! Call 911! Quick!"

A police car showed up, and then more showed up, sirens blaring. By now, there were many dead and wounded prisoners and members of the European Cultural Society, and police radioed for backup. Police Chief Jackson called for riot gear, and warned of culprits who were "Armed and Dangerous".

This is heavy, man, Marty thought.

Cultural Society members took matters into their own hands. They fired their "wonder weapons" (ray guns) at the guards, and managed to wound most of them. Some Nazi guards, however, ran from the trains, cursing in German.

Marty got back to the scene, and found utter devastation and confusion. He realized that he might very well have triggered a paradox by his actions (along with those of his "friends"), and, even worse, he had let the time-travel secret "out of the bag". Ouch.

Marty needed help to end this crisis, so he jumped into his 4x4 and went back to the 1890s, to a Hill Valley that still had Dr. Emmett Brown in his blacksmith's shop, but one that now had horsecar tracks and cobble-stone streets. Marty explained his situation to Doc, and Doc exploded in Marty's face. "What? You actually attempted to change history and got burned in the process? Way to go, Marty, no wonder you're getting Hill Valley shot up in the future! Talk about being irresponsible!" Doc shook his head, and then both took Marty's 4X4 to 1990 to help resolve this situation. Marty and Doc arrived a few days after the arrival of the prisoners, an attempt to see what would become of the rescue of the Holocaust victims.

What they saw shocked both Doc Brown and Marty. Great Scott, thought the good Doc, not even Biff or Buford Tannen would dream of this.

Nazi guards had taken over the Clock Tower, one of the highest points in town; many parts of Hill Valley (already run down in 1990, to begin with) had gotten shot up; fires raged up and down Main St., and police cars shimmered in a sea of flickering blue all around the edge of downtown. News vans were parked near the derailed train's wreckage, as well as downtown and the local hospital. As for the Cultural Society and the rest of the gang, they were nowhere to be found.

On a whim, Marty turned on the radio. There was a debate going on about the possibility of time travel, along with some witnesses claiming that a flying bus had been seen near the train. Marty commented, "This is heavy, man. Now we're gonna be the next Roswell if this keeps up, UFOs and everything. What if terrorists find out?" Doc replied, "Marty, good question. This sort of thing can cause the mother of all paradoxes if we're not careful. Great Scott! What if the 9/11 hijackers had a machine like our flux capacitors? Do you realize what could happen? We'd be back in the Stone Age, praying to Allah five times a day!"

Marty appeared puzzled. "Nine-eleven? You sure you're not referring to a convenience store or the, uh, number you're supposed to call the cops with?" (Author's note: The store chain's name is Seven-Eleven, not Nine-Eleven, but Marty was thinking out loud and he didn't notice his error.)

Doc slapped himself in the forehead, shook his head, and said, "Oh, never mind. You know you're not supposed to know too much about the future." Marty McFly was older, wiser, and more university-trained than he had been in high school, and he asked the obvious question: "But YOU'RE learning a lot about the future yourself, Doc! Come on!"

Doc replied, "Oh, but how can I trust you with a time machine when you go ahead and commit something as foolish as this? Trying to rescue Holocaust victims may be a worthwhile goal, but it can lead to paradoxes and murders when not done properly! Think, McFly, think!" (Marty hated that last phrase, as it had been uttered by Biff Tannen in the middle of his bullying.)

"Besides", Doc continued, "research into the PAST is really what you guys should be doing, not the FUTURE. Good, thorough research into the PAST."

Marty continued to ask Doc Brown about his "nine-eleven" reference, however, and Doc told Marty how terrorists were going to slam airplanes into the World Trade Center in the 9/11 attacks. Marty didn't know what to say, so Doc took the opportunity to steer the discussion to a new topic.

Doc Brown followed up with, "Now, Marty, let's get this show on the road. Where were you coming from?" "1940s Europe, Doc. Poland, I think. The math guys did the calculations between Hill Valley and whatever Polish railroad was involved in this rescue. I didn't do the math. They did."

"Well, where did you depart from?" "My house, of course". "Did they leave any of their ideas or calculations behind?" "I don't know, Doc!"

After going back a few days to the time period just before the chaos broke out, Marty and Doc rummaged through Marty's bedroom and found calculations and other materials. The two subsequently set an intercept course for the Holocaust-era railroad where the attack occurred.

Marty noted to Doc, "See, we'd just waited for a few hours in ambush for the next train to come by. We didn't particularly care which train – we just wanted a train, any train, chock full of prisoners." The Doc nodded, and then set the 4X4 down by the members of the group waiting in ambush.

"Here's what we're going to do, Marty. I have here a remote-control device that can alter the destination panels on your time machines so that the train CAN arrive safely and without derailing on the Hill Valley tracks. Also, I can delay or advance the firing of the flux capacitors with this device. What we need to do is find out what the effect on history would be from the elimination of the guards on the trains."

This led to a protest from Marty. "Look, Doc, I didn't come here INTENDING to kill anybody. I don't want to stoop to the Nazis' level and go around murdering people! The guards' firing on the prisoners in Hill Valley is bad enough!"

Unfortunately for Marty and Doc, history had already been changed by the Nazi guards and prisoners' departure of the scene, and so there would be nothing to learn about how the elimination of the guards would change history. Marty pointed this out to Doc after thinking for a moment, and he also pointed out that there was no change to any member of the group, although he hadn't looked for any changes in history itself just yet. Doc said, "Fine. Then we just need to kill off the Nazi guards and tweak the time machines just so."

The trains showed up. Laser bursts gunned down almost all of the Nazi guards (not all, for fear of causing a paradox), courtesy of Marty's ray gun, and the remote controls corrected the trajectory through time of the airplane and bus near the train. Marty and Doc returned to Hill Valley, and saw a train still on the tracks – and with one Nazi guard raising a gun and about to fire. Marty saw the earlier version of himself dash for the 4x4 and then disappear in three sonic booms, and then Doc – yes, Doc – fired a gun point-blank at the Nazi guard's firearm, thus disabling the Nazi's gun. The Holocaust victims were still inside the train, and had tales to tell and things to do...