Reviewer Notes:

fireuni: yep, they've stepped in it!

staticrhubarb: well, this is Doc's recounting of the story, so do you think they'll be okay?

Unknown Time
Unknown Location

Doctor Emmett Brown breathed a heavy sigh of relief as the troubled train touched solid ground. He immediately shut down all power to stop any further electrical problems from occurring. The unhealthy arcing sounds stopped in short order.

"Where are we Emmett? When are we?" his concerned wife asked.

"Judging from the state of the time circuits, I believe we are only a few thousand years in the past, though I couldn't say how many, or whether I should believe that they actually sent us to the last time they displayed before the transition completed. In fact, we might be at any point in the continuum, from they way the circuitry was acting. Similarly, we could be anywhere on Earth, and I am relieved that we still are on Earth. That aside, sunset is approaching."

Jules and Verne just sat open-mouthed, not moving. Finally Jules ventured to ask, "What went wrong?"

"That is what I intend to find out," his father answered, a little sourly. "Possibly something unexpected occurred when the time circuits tried to compute the correct flux-dispersal patterns, preventing completion of the temporal transition. Or maybe a short circuit caused the intense electrical energy to leak into the time-circuits, thus scrambling them. In any event, it smells like I'll need to replace a large amount of wiring."

Verne sneezed in agreement. He seemed to have a nasty allergy to burnt plastic.

"Verne, we'd better take you outside, before your eyes start watering," Clara suggested, realising what was happening. "Emmett, can you please open the door?"

Emmett nodded and released the door manually. Clara pushed it open and let Verne into the clear air. "Don't go far. It will be dark soon," he warned his wife.

"We'll sit on the bottom step until the air clears," Clara agreed. "The plants don't look at all familiar," she observed a moment later.

Emmett hardly heard her, as his mind was occupied with the task of removing the panels that covered the parts he needed to access. He was feeling pleased that he had changed the displays and inputs to be electronic rather than mechanical in the recent months. Otherwise, the symptoms of the problem would have been less visible and harder to diagnose.

After several minutes of tinkering, the time traveller had reached some conclusions. "It appears, that some unusual glitch in the system prevented the transition from progressing to completion, and left us stranded between times. The Destination Time setting was then changed, which altered the flux-dispersal patterns, causing us to enter the time period we now find ourselves in. In the process of adjusting the settings, less energy was needed than what had already been dispersed. This energy had to go somewhere, so it arced into the internal wiring, which is normally insulated from the dispersal conduits. Since that part of the wiring..."

"Simply put, a small amount of the 1.21 gigawatts found its way into the time circuits, and destroyed them, after we entered this time," Jules put in, understanding what his father was getting at.

"Precisely. Now we need to replace the damaged wiring and the time machine will be restored to full operation."

"Are the hover-circuits damaged, Dear?" Clara asked from the stairs.

"Thankfully, no. However, I am afraid to attempt using them, as there are many fused wires, and a dangerous number are either hanging loose, or their insulation has melted off. I could easily damage more of the circuitry by turning any power on. First we must remove the damaged wiring, so we can be certain the working circuits are isolated from the damaged ones."

"But Dad, what will prevent the problem from recurring? There must have been something wrong with the train already that stopped it from working properly."

"I haven't altered the circuits in any way since we last used the train," Emmett said, pleading innocent. "Perhaps we hit an aberration in the continuum that threw the circuits out of adjustment, or caused some electrical anomaly, which caused the circuits to run wild," he suggested.

Verne and Clara climbed back into the train, as the air had cleared. "Maybe it was aliens," Verne suggested, feeling bored.

"Did you touch anything in the train, Verne?" Clara instantly asked, wondering if he was trying to blame something he had done on aliens, something he tried too regularly.

"No, it weren't me," Verne answered honestly.

"Wasn't," his mother corrected.

"Jules, wasn't you in the barn yesterday?" Verne asked, remembering that his brother had been out there a few times.

"Yes, but Dad didn't bring the train over to the house until much later," Jules parried. "And it's 'weren't'."

"But Mom said..." Verne protested.

"Dad, remember how it felt like we were moving backwards or something?" Jules said unexpectedly.

"When?" his father asked.

"Well, some time during the transition. It is not easy to tell when anything happened during the transition."

"Hmm. It's not easy to remember. Everything happened so fast. Actually, it was slow, but..."

"Time's weird between times," Verne put in.

"Yes, that's a good way to put it. Now that I think of it, there was a sensation of reverse motion, but it seemed so unusual that it was easy to forget. It was rather curious, don't you think?"

"It is like we bounced off something," Jules suggested.

"But there isn't anything to bounce off," Emmett argued. "Unless we inadvertently attempted to travel to a point in time before the beginning of the continuum, which would fail, since there is no such point in time. But that is not possible, since we only travelled back sixty-six million years. There should be plenty of room between then and the beginning."

"Then why did happen?" Jules pressed.

"Perhaps I made an error in the circuits, which caused them to try taking us back much further than I expected. But I fully tested them a number of times!"

"Emmett, remember what Jules said about why he was digging for fossils?" Clara asked, apparently leading up to some point.

"He said... he wanted to check whether the books were correct. How does that relate to our current situation, Dear?"

"Suppose they're wrong. Perhaps the earth is not as old as some people think it is."

"And in trying to go back too far, we bounced off the beginning and ended up here?" her husband extrapolated. "Possible. I think it would be best to wait and see how things look in the morning. It is too dark to work, I don't want to use any light other than torches until I sort out the wiring problems, and it is high time the boys had some sleep."

"But Dad, we just got here!" Verne protested.

"Verne, remember what you promised," his mother warned. "We'll have plenty of time to do things tomorrow."

"Okay, I'll go to bed. Where are the blankets?"

"I packed them, in the back," Jules answered helpfully. "Should I take a torch and bring some for everyone?"

"Yes, but watch your step, and keep close to the side of the train," his father instructed.

Jules brought the blankets, and soon everyone had managed to doze off into a sleep plagued by dreams of the unknown time and place in which they had unexpectedly become stranded.