End of the Future
Chapter 6; Unexpected Developments

Please Read and Review. I'd like to know what I'm doing right (to keep doing it), and what I'm doing wrong (to correct it).

Hill Valley General Hospital
Main Waiting Room

"Dad will be alright. The surgery went off without a hitch." Marty exhaled in relief, "Mom and Dave are with him now. He slipped coming down from the attic, hit his head and broke his left ankle. Mom heard the crash, and when she saw him bleeding, well… you know how she is. She managed to call an ambulance, then she called Dave." He shrugged, "and when Dave arrived, he suggested to call your home, Doc."

"Dad will have to stay here for a week or two, if everything goes well. They had to put a couple of nails in his ankle, but he will be okay, though he might need a cane to walk, depending on how the therapy goes. He got a bump on the head, so the doctors want to be sure he didn't get a concussion or something, the X-rays came out fine, just the bump. But as he lost consciousness, the doctors want to keep checking him in case there's some damage that didn't show in the x-rays." Marty sat bonelessly on a chair, visibly relaxing, "Mom and Dave are with him now. Linda cut her trip short, and will be here tomorrow morning. He wants to talk to me later, while Mom and Dave take a break. They are with him now."

Jennifer hugged her boyfriend, "Oh, Marty! I'm glad he's fine."

He hugged her back. "I'll go home and get him a few things. Dave is writing me a list, Mom was too worried to even think."

"I'll drive you there, Marty." Doc offered.

"Thanks, Doc." Marty kissed Jennifer's cheek, "I'll check back, out in a few!" He smiled nervously and went back to the elevator.

Jennifer wiped her face, "Could you drop me at home, Doctor Brown? I have a lot of homework to do."

"Of course, Miss Parker." Doc patted his pockets, "Ah, here they are." He produced his keys. He fumbled with the keychain, and the keys fell on the bunch of old magazines left there for the waiting relatives and friends of the patients.

When he took his keys back, his eyes fell on the cover. OMNI magazine, October 1984. It showed a strange contraption, that seemed to have been cobbled together from odds and ends and junk.

"Great Scott!" He whispered, dropping his keys again. With trembling hands, he took the magazine.

"Doctor Brown? Are you okay?"

He looked like he didn't know if laugh or sigh in relief. "Miss Parker, I think we should all go to New York!"

"Hum, Doc… we need parental permission."

"Um? What?" He was examining the picture in the cover.

"We are minors and that's a trip to the other coast."

"Oh, yes, yes…" he kept looking at the magazine. "I need more data. But this might be the answer." He rolled up the magazine, and walked decisively to the nurse station. "Oh, um, hello. Would it be much trouble if I keep this magazine?"

The nurse looked at Doc, Thought for a moment, and said, "No, but I would appreciate if you could donate another to the pile."

"Thank you. I'll come back tomorrow with some replacements." He smiled at her, and put the magazine in his back pocket.

Marty returned a minute later, list in hand. "Got it, a few toiletries, a couple of books, notebooks and pens. He, um… he got all mysterious, but Mom is fussing over him. I'll see if we can talk later."

"Marty, Jennifer, time to go." Doc walked quickly to the door.

His two friends looked at each other, and hurried behind him.

Once in Doc's car, Marty asked, "Doc? You look like the cat that ate the canary."

Doc chuckled. "Might be." He passed the magazine to Marty. "Remember this? It was about a year ago?" The cover of the magazine read "Quantum Leaps: Ghostbusters. Tools of the Trade." (1)

Marty's brow furrowed in thought. "The Ghostbusters? Yes. They were very popular for a few months. What are you planning, Doc? To try to capture our blue-haired friend?"

"If I'm right, they could help us a lot, but not that way. I need to re-read the article, and if this means what I think it means, I'll get in contact with them. Been a long time since I last visited New York."

Ruins of Tokyo-3, Japan
October the 26th, 2016

The soft sound of the waves was the only sound in the dead city.

Two teenagers watched the waves crash on the beach. They were lost in their thoughts.

It had been a long time since the last time they had spoken to each other. Neither felt the need to speak now.

They just sat on the sand.

Watching the waves.

Breathing the air.

Trying to ignore the smell of freshly spilled blood. They couldn't, but both were used to the smell of blood anyway.

Half submerged in the orange-tinted water, a gigantic head, it's halves looking blindly to the darkening sky. The features were curiously androgynous. And familiar too.

They were trying to ignore the look of madness in those eyes. They couldn't, but they were trying hard.

But more than anything, they were trying to ignore each other.

They couldn't.

Not really.

But they would try.

Hill Valley General Hospital
Room 204

Marty returned with the asked for articles. "I'm here, Dave. Got everything you wanted, Dad." He showed the bag he had brought.

From his bed, George waved happily at his youngest son. "Thanks, Marty!"

Dave stood up. His blue suit a bit wrinkled, his tie undone. "Great, Marty!" He turned to the patient. "I'll drive Mom home and stay with her, Dad. Don't go running around." He patted George's shoulder. His left leg had been wrapped in bandages, hanging from a rig. (2)

His father chuckled, that strange, halting laugh he had bubbling under the surface. "I was planning on going to sky!"

Dave smiled as he crossed the threshold, pointing playfully at Marty, "You're in charge, lil'bro. See you tomorrow, guys." He returned, pulling a few bills from his wallet, "Just in case, Marty."

"Thanks, Dave."

Once Dave was gone, Marty sat on the visitor's chair. "So, Dad. What's up?"

"Well… I have a question, and I would like an honest answer, Marty."

"Uh, sure…"

George stared at his son for long moments. "How it is? Time traveling, I mean."

Marty stammered, not knowing what to answer.

George laced his fingers over his stomach. "Son, you can't lie to save your life."

"Uh… well…"

"Easy, son. Breathe. Take your time. I'd like to know." There was infinite patience and fondness in George's eyes and voice. "Let me tell you what I pieced together. Back in 1955, I was just a student. I was saved from being run over by a car. It was a kid with strange clothes and expressions. I later got to know him a bit better, Calvin Klein, that was his name. Yup, just like the clothes brand, but then that brand didn't exist. For some reason, Calvin Klein was very insistent that I courted a very beautiful girl, Lorraine Baines. Oh, yes. Your mother. I had no idea of why that insistence. I was horribly shy those days, and just thinking of asking her put made me sweat and tremble."

Marty kept silence.

"But Lorraine was infatuated with Calvin Klein. He was brave enough to face down the gang led by Biff Tannen. The same one who barely scrapes a living now waxing cars. Back then, he was feared by everybody at the school, and even around town. I… well… he was my tormentor back then. But I digress. Eventually, Calvin agreed to take Lorraine to the school dance. But he planned to scare her, and let me rescue her from his evil clutches. Everything went just as planned."

"No, no, Biff surprised me and put me… in…" It took Marty a few moments to realize he had been tricked into confessing.

George stared at Marty, "Where did he put you, son? At this point, the cat is out of the bag."

Marty wiped his face. "He and his gang locked me into the trunk of Marvin Berry's car. He hurt his hand forcing the lock open."

"That's why he couldn't play. And you replaced him playing the guitar." George nodded. "You disappeared after the dance. No one saw Calvin Klein again."

Marty cleared his throat. "Uh… I was disappearing back then."

"What do you mean?"

"Uh… well… you see… I was at risk of not existing unless you and Mom fell in love… if you two hadn't kissed during the dance…" Marty trailed off.

"Oh, God! You wouldn't have existed at all!"

"In short, yes. I had a pic of Dave, Linda, and me. I put it in the guitar so I could check it. Dave had been disappearing gradually during the week before the dance. Linda followed during the dance." He swallowed before continuing, "if you hadn't come back and kissed Mom…"

George took long seconds to answer, as the consequences hit him. "You would have ceased to exist…"

"But when you pushed that slimy guy away from Mom, and kissed her, everything went back on track!"

George kept silent for almost two minutes, Marty recognized that silence. His father was thinking things through.

"A paradox. You were in danger of becoming a paradox." George grabbed Marty's arm, squeezing desperately. "And I would have never known."

He kept silent for a while. Thinking.

"Was it really necessary to blast my ears with heavy metal?" He smirked.

"You wouldn't have gone to the dance otherwise!" Marty protested.

"There's something that doesn't fit. There's no way things had gone like they did unless you were there. Are you sure things went back on track?"

Marty licked his lips and looked down. "I… um… I altered things."

"Not a stable time loop, then?"

Marty looked at his father, uncomprehending.

"Like in Terminator. The whole movie is a stable time loop. For a particular series of events to happen, there must be a time travel element. Or things unravel. In the movie, Skynet wants to get rid of its enemy, John Connor, so it sends a killer robot to the past to kill his mother. John Connor, in turn, sends a soldier to protect her, Kyle Reese. But Kyle Reese happens to be John Connors' biological father. So, Skynet tries to change the timeline, only to create it in the first place." (3)

"No, things would have been very different. And bad for us. All of us."

"Maybe someday I'll ask you about that. But I can imagine that at the minimum, Biff would have kept on bullying me, and maybe…" he trailed off. "Now tell me why, despite the risk of erasing yourselves from existence, you and Doctor Brown are set on keeping traveling through time. Don't think I didn't suspect about those modifications to your truck."

"I…"

"Son. Marty. Look at me. Why?"

"Dad… the Doc went to the future. There's a catastrophe coming. Everybody will die unless we find a way to stop it."

George looked at his son's eyes, seeing a quiet horror in them. "I see. What can I do to help?"

Marty scratched his head, "I don't know, we are playing it by ear, Dad. We need to go to Japan and find out what happened. It will take time to prepare. Maybe months of work."

"And me incapacitated for months… but, I can help with planning, and surely other stuff. A coordinator, if you want. And I'm discreet."

"Thanks, Dad. I really appreciate it. I think the Doc and Jennifer will like your help."He visibly relaxed.

"I… um… for a moment I thought of asking if you could travel back and warn me about this, but I'd rather not risk a paradox." George shrugged. "So… what did you guys find at the other side? Must be terrible if you're so set in stopping it from happening.

Manor Brown
Doc's Worshop
Reading Table, Right Side

Doc examined carefully the available pictures in the cover article. He set the magnifying glass/desk lamp, and soon he was copying the visible parts of the proton pack.

He took copious notes, carefully labeling the visible parts.

On the text, he had circled the most interesting part of the article.

"Portable Nuclear Accelerator"

His notes had those same words, and next to them, the crucial part.

"Fission or Fusion?"

"Energy source?"

"1.21 Gigawatts?"

"Repeated discharges?"

"Multiple units usable simultaneously?"

"Contamination risks?"

"Call the Ghostbusters."

This last one was underlined three times.

New York City
Ghostbusters HQ
Ground Floor

"Well…that's it." Dr. Ray Stantz closed the door of the old fire station building. "No more ghostbusting…"

Winston Zeddemore patted the shoulder of his friend. "It was good while it lasted, Ray. At least you got to keep the place." He looked around, the building had been stripped bare of almost everything. He had kept the beds, and the services were paid for a couple of months.

"Yeah… no one wanted to buy it, so I'm stuck with the payments…" he waved his hands in a vague gesture of impotence, and dropped them at his sides.

"Buddy, I'll help with that. Least I can do for letting me stay."

"Thanks, Winston." Ray smiled sadly.

"Let me check with some friends; with some luck, we might get a job quickly."

"I'll get the papers."

Instrumentality
October the 26th, 2016

Inside the gestalt that was the last trace of Humanity, one of only three self-aware entities left in the world felt something she had thought lost forever.

Senses no human being ever possessed told her of the presence of an impossible anomaly.

A human soul, free of Instrumentality.

But…

If every human being had been absorbed, where had that soul come from? It was very far from the two she knew had escaped Instrumentality.

She would have felt any soul leaving the false paradise she had made for them.

The only two souls that had left of their own free will were in Japan.

This unknown soul shone bright in her senses. But translating that feeling into a place would take time.

Hours later, she had located the place. At the other side of the word.

Had she bothered with old, now meaningless names of places she had never known, she would have not recognized the name of a little city.

Hill Valley, California, USA.

When she arrived to investigate, she reconstructed a facsimile of the body she had before her apotheosis.

Before Third Impact.

To her surprise, when she arrived to Hill Valley, the soul was gone. Not absorbed back into the gestalt. It was completely gone. Except for a lingering trace, it was as if it had never been there.

The city was in complete silence, just as the rest of the world. The silence didn't bother her. It didn't even register in her mind.

So she searched the place. Methodically, as was her nature.

The only unusual thing she found was two lines of fire, burning bright in what had once been the parking lot of a mall.

She dissolved her body, and returned to Instrumentality.

Hours later, a second anomaly screamed at her senses.

Three human souls, existing free of Instrumentality.

Same place.

She returned to Hill Valley.

Author Notes:

(1) The magazine was one of several mock-up covers from the montage after the first successful ghostbusting job at the Sedgewick Hotel.

(2) I'm not really familiar with the kind of surgery needed, so please correct me if I'm wrong. I thought the medical staff would need access to the wound, and putting a cast on would be a risk of infection.

(3) Terminator does imply an stable time loop, just as George described. The movie was released in 1984. I'm not sure if Marty would have been allowed to watch it by himself, as it was rated R, but George would have surely loved it, and with Marty being interested in science, George would have suggested watching the movie as an entertaining outing. Cue awkward facepalming during the sex scenes.