Chapter One
Sunday, October 26th, 1985
10:00 AM
Marty McFly felt really weird at the moment. He was chasing a strange man in an astronaut's flights suit down the street he lived on in the Lyon Estates subdivision. He was secretly wondering what the neighbors would think of this strange spectacle.
The figure stopped at the entrance to the subdivision and crouched behind the huge concrete entrance markers. Marty finally found his breath and caught up with the fugitive.
The figure turned around and removed his space helmet. It was the Doc, More accurately known as Doctor Emmett L. Brown; scientist and certified inventor. While most of Doc's witty ideas never made it out of his garage, the scientist had inadvertently discovered time travel and built the world's first time machine out of a Delorean. Leave it up to Doc to travel with style.
"Marty!" Doc whispered so know one would hear him, "Is anyone coming from the rear?" Marty turned and looked down the street from whence they came. There was not one soul.
"There's nothing, Doc," the teen answered, "What's this all about?"
"I'll tell you later, Marty!" Doc said, whispering again, "But it threatens the integrity of the space-time continuum itself!" For a brief moment, Marty thought Doc had gone off the deep end. Darting from place to place in a space suit and hoping no one saw you was completely absurd.
"All right!" Doc said, pointing a finger to a location across the street from the subdivision, "The coat is clear! Let's move!" Marty didn't stop to argue and followed Doc faithfully across the street. They got about halfway across when Doc crouched down and waddled the rest of the way there. If the poor guy thought he was being stealthy, he was sorely mistaken.
They made it into some bushes and Doc removed a remote control device from his back pocket. It was a large one that looked like it was for one of those monstrous remote-controlled cars that took about a hundred double-A batteries just to run. Marty thought it looked familiar.
Doc flipped a switch and Marty thought he could hear the sound of a car starting somewhere off in the distance.
Then Doc jammed the right analog stick down and the sound of screeching tire met their ears. Marty looked between the Lyon Estate entrance signs. The Delorean had rolled out of his garage and was coming down his street. And Doc was controlling it.
The Delorean came out of the subdivision and Doc flipped the left analog switch to the right. The car responded by screeching sideways and coming to a halt just inches from the bushes where Marty and Doc were hiding.
"All right, Marty," Doc said, detracting the remote control's antennae, "Get in the car!"
"Doc, why'd you remote control the Delorean to drive out here when we could've just jumped in when you were at my house and drove it ourselves?" Doc didn't take the time to answer Marty's question. Or maybe he didn't hear. Maybe still, he saw the logic of Marty's suggestion that they could've just driven here and wished he would've thought of it.
Regardless of the reasons, Marty McFly and Doc Brown were strapped in the Delorean with Doc at the controls. Doc inputted the destination.
Destination: July 3rd, 2035, 9:00 AM
Doc shifted into first and Marty knew he'd better hang on. He'd been to the future before, but that wasn't the greatest of trips. The Delorean's tires kicked up smoke and the car lurched forward.
"Are you going to tell me where we're going, Doc?" Marty asked. Doc just looked at him thorough his silver flight goggles.
"All in good time, Marty." Doc said, "Don't worry; we'll have plenty of time to catch up once we get there. Hold on to something!"
The Delorean's wheels folded up into the chassis as the car glided up off of the road. Doc cranked the wheel and brought the Delorean into a tight upward spin with the nose pointed nearly straight up at the sky.
Meanwhile, a tow truck traveling down the road screeched to a stop at the sight of the flying car. An older man in his late forties got out and slammed the door. The logo on the truck read "Biff's Auto Service".
Biff raised his hand to his brow to shield his eyes from the sun. He knew it! That was twice in two days he had seen a flying Delorean.
"What the heck is going on here?" He mumbled.
- - - - -
"Alright, Marty." Doc said, "We're here."
Marty gazed out the Delorean's windows. So far all he saw was a lot of clouds and open sky. At least the sky was still blue in 2035. They hadn't yet descended into the Hill Valley of this time period and Marty was anxious to see what his hometown would look like.
"What are we doing here again?" Marty asked, still confused of the purpose, let alone the means, of Doc's mysterious visit. "I thought you were going to fix your roof?"
"What? No." Doc explained, "I'm the Doc of 1986, not the Doc of 1985 that you remember." Marty took a good long look at his strange friend. He didn't look any older.
"Where's everyone else?" Marty asked, "And why were you sneaking around like that?"
"I couldn't risk the me of 1985 seeing me. If a time paradox got created the results would be…"
"Yeah, yeah. Right." Marty felt like he had just had this conversation. His head was starting to hurt. "So what are we doing here?"
Doc reached inside his suit and pulled out what at first looked like a clear sheet of plastic a foot long on each side. He shook the plastic and said "Activate". The plastic shimmered to life as a holographic news paper. Words about the day's headlines scrolled on the top as the pictures in the print appeared full of life and animation. Doc handed the "Hill Valley Times" to Marty.
"Read the front page article in the science section." Doc ordered.
A scientific section? People in the future had weird priorities. Marty just looked at the strange newspaper with questioning eyes. Doc noticed his confusion and taped a button in the upper right. The appropriate headline appeared and Marty read the article.
"Early today, scientist and acclaimed physicist Professor Bart Tannen announced that he has finally found a way to breach the space-time continuum vortex, making time travel a reality. The long-time NASA scientist and author plans to unveil his prototype time displacement vehicle at the Hill Valley Memorial Ball this evening. 'It's a dream come true.' Tannen says, 'The betterment of humanity is on the horizon.' Tannen also says the first ever time traveling voyage will be given to one lucky winner at the Ball.
"Doc! That's not right! You invented time travel! It's your discovery! How can a Tannen take credit for that? That's bull crap!" Marty was outraged. How could they steal this from Doc? He devoted his life to proving time travel was possible. He was the one who invented the flux capacitor. He created the first working time machine! Marty was sitting in it this very second for crying out loud!
"Marty, it's not the glory I'm looking for. You know that. Don't you see the far-reaching consequences?"
"You created the flux capacitor! I sure as heck don't know how it works, but that's yours!"
"You might want to see this," Doc said, rummaging through his suit again, "Here; Bart Tannen dropped this." Doc handed Marty a crumpled piece of paper. It was wadded up like it had been in the trash all night. It smelled like it too.
Marty gingerly unfolded the paper. It was hard to make out the writing because the ink had blurred, but it was unmistakable what it was.
It was sketch of the flux capacitor. A Tannen had found a way to invent a working time machine.
"Doc, this is heavy." Marty said.
"It's not as bad as you think, Marty," what was he saying? This was very bad! "I have some good news."
"What's that?"
"By some form of random chance the lucky winner that night at the Memorial Ball is your son."
"My son?" Images of that day that Marty stood up to Griff Tannen was still fresh in his mind. It was like it had happened yesterday. Actually, it hadn't happened yet. Wait, Marty looked at the destination readout. He guessed it had really already happened thirty years ago.
"Yes, that's why I've got this genius idea." Uh-oh. Doc and his genius ideas.
"Which is?" Marty was almost afraid to ask.
"You need to go to the ball disguised as your son. No one will know the difference."
"Can't we just go back in time and stop Biff from 'inventing' the flux capacitor?"
"No, Marty. We must make Bart Tannen believe he has succeeded in creating a time machine. You must sabotage it any way you can. When Hill Valley sees that Bart's time machine doesn't work, he'll be committed and stripped of his reputation and all knowledge of time travel will be disregarded as fiction."
"I still don't see why it has to be done now." Marty said.
"Marty," doc said, growing very serious, "Think of the consequences. If Bart Tannen will create a time machine, what's to say he hasn't already changed history? Who is to say the Allies should have won World War II. Who is to say that the Delorean was ever supposed to be invented? Who is to say that your parents were ever supposed to meet? In fact, both of our existences could be the result of an alternate timeline, meaning the future and past we know could be an alternate universe itself."
Marty was starting to see what was happening. Doc was, oddly enough, making sense.
"What if Bart Tannen goes back in time and gives the time machine to one of his relatives? Biff perhaps? We've already seen how drastically history can be altered and Bart's possession of a working time machine threatens the very fabric of the universe."
Both Marty and Doc were near silent as the Delorean descended upon Hill Valley 2035. This was one heck of a situation they had gotten themselves into and neither one wanted to discuss the consequences of failing.