- and Chuck snapped back to wakefulness

Huey Lewis' "The Power of Love" was playing on his clock radio. He looked at the time – just after 8:00 AM.

Chuck stumbled out of his bedroom, down the hallway toward the kitchen. He crossed into the dining room – and stopped dead.

He looked incredulously at the sight before him. His sister and brother-in-law, both dressed professionally, eating breakfast.

"What the hell is this?" he asked.

Devin looked up at him. "This… would be breakfast."

"Since when does breakfast get eaten in this house?"

Ellie stood up and put a hand on Chuck's forehead. "Chuck, are you feeling alright?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," he said. "I just had some weird dream… that I was on a spaceship… and then, I was in some computer simulation, and then I was stealing a classic Mustang…"

Devin snorted. "'Classic' and 'Mustang' in the same sentence?"

"Yeah," Chuck said. "And, it all seemed to take place in the future."

Ellie looked at him with a tolerant smile. "Chuck, it's 1985, Ronald Reagan is the President, and you're in Hill Valley, California."

"I know, I know," he grumbled. "It just all seemed so real."

That was when the screen door opened, and two people walked in. Chuck turned to his right – to see his parents.

He practically fell over. "Holy crap!"

"Chuck?" his mother asked. "Are you feeling alright?"

"I already asked him," Ellie said. "He was apparently having weird dreams about the future."

"Dreams about the future?" his mother asked worriedly.

"Don't worry, Mom," he said. "I'm fine."

"So, Chuck, tonight's the night, right?" his father asked.

"Yeah, Chuckster!" Devin interjected. "The night of awesomeness?"

Chuck looked at them both. "What are you talking about?"

His mother looked at him like he'd lost his mind. "You and Sarah… going up to Big Bear Lake tonight…"

How did they find out about it?! he raged inwardly. "Yeah, um, it's no big deal… and besides, the car's wrecked, isn't it?"

"WHAT?!" his father interjected.

"Not awesome!" Devin said, jumping up from the table. The two men ran outside –

"Car's fine, Chuck," his father said.

Chuck went to the front door – and sure enough, there was a gleaming black BMW 5 series in the driveway, being washed and waxed.

"Now, don't forget, Jeff," Chuck's father called. "TWO coats of wax."

"Yes, sir, Mr. Bartowski, sir!"

Chuck thought his head was going to explode. Something seemed distinctly not right here. At first, he thought it was the fact that his father was driving a BMW.

But on second thought, he thought that something far bigger than that was wrong. Like, for some reason he was having these thoughts that he was four years old in 1985.

He shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs. It had to be an after effect from traveling back from 1955 the night before. That had to be it.

Chuck was sitting at the breakfast table, still incredulous that there was breakfast to be had, when Jeff came running inside with a FedEx box. "It's your book, Mr. Bartowski!" he said excitedly, handing the box to Chuck's dad.

The older Bartowski opened the box, and pulled out the book. He looked at it, and proudly held it up for all to see.

Chuck vs. the Computer, the title read. Mr. Bartowski had made it very clear that he wanted to name the main character after his own son. "It'll be a book about a guy who accidentally gets a computer stuck in his head!"

So far, bookstores were grabbing as many advance copies as they could get their hands on. But Chuck had an actual published copy of the book thrust into his hands by his own father.

He opened the cover. What happens to man when he becomes a computer? the dust jacket asked. When Charles Carmichael gets millions of government secrets embedded in his head, he becomes the government's number one intelligence asset.

Chuck looked at the title page. Fulcrum Publishing House, it said.

And there it was again, those thoughts that something was wrong. He shook his head, trying to banish the thoughts. Nothing was wrong, and if Doc Casey was here, he'd tell him he was just suffering the after-effects of temporal displacement.

He needed some fresh air. While he knew that that was pretty much a lost cause anywhere in metropolitan Los Angeles, he figured it couldn't hurt to go outside.

And so outside he went – and Jeff walked up to him. "Here are your keys, Chuck."

Chuck took the keys, looking at Jeff strangely. "To what?"

Jeff looked back at him, even more strangely. "To that…"

Chuck followed where Jeff's finger was pointing… to the four-by-four Toyota pickup parked in the garage.

"Holy crap," he uttered.

"It's all waxed up and ready to go!" Jeff said enthusiastically.

Chuck ignored him. He actually had the truck!

He walked into the garage, almost reverently looking at it. He ran his fingers over the truck –

And an image briefly flashed before his eyes, of doing the same thing over the flank of a Mustang –

But he banished the image quickly, instead focusing on the truck in front of him.

"Hey, mister, can a girl get a ride? Or would the two of you like some time alone?"

He turned, and there she was. An angelic vision in blonde, her golden tresses falling on her shoulders, her blue eyes piercing into him.

"Sarah," he whispered. He rapidly closed the distance between them, embraced her, and then kissed her passionately.

"Wow," she said softly when they broke. "Chuck, you're acting like you haven't seen me in a week!"

"I haven't," he replied quietly.

He was just about to kiss her again when a sonic boom rolled through the neighborhood. Out of nowhere, a DeLorean DMC-12 appeared on the street, skidding to a stop in Chuck's driveway, and knocking over a garbage can.

The gullwing door swung upward, and out popped resident mad scientist Doctor John Casey. Casey had, at one time, worked for the National Security Agency, but they had decided that he was a looney-tune and banished him.

So he built a time machine. Chuck knew that it worked – he'd been back to 1955 in it, and just returned the night before. And now, here it was, having just reappeared from God-knew-where.

Casey ran to the garbage can he had just knocked over, and started collecting various detritus. "Casey, what the hell are you doing?" Chuck asked.

"I need fuel!" Casey replied, knocking open something on the back of the DeLorean that looked for all the world like a coffee maker. Mr. Fusion, the label on the side said.

Casey dumped in a carton of bad eggs, a banana peel, and emptied a beer can into it, before throwing the beer can itself in. Then, he turned to Chuck and said, "Chuck, you've gotta come back to the future with me."

"Wait, no," Chuck protested. "Come on, Doc, I just got back! I was looking forward to spending some time with Sarah!"

"Bring her too!" Casey yelled. "It involves both of you!"

"What are you talking about?" Chuck asked. "Do we turn into a couple of assholes or something?"

Casey shook his head. "No, no, no. It's your kids! Something's gotta be done about your kids!"

Chuck and Sarah looked at each other wide-eyed. Our kids?! she mouthed.

Throwing his hands up in defeat, Chuck said, "Fine, we're coming," and climbed into the passenger seat of the DeLorean.

Sarah climbed in too, but there wasn't a middle seat, so she and Chuck had to kind of share the shotgun seat. "Hmmm, cozy quarters here," she said playfully, stroking Chuck's ear.

"Careful there, Agent Walker," he said unconsciously.

"What?"

He looked up at her. "What?"

"Why did you just call me Agent Walker?"

He had no idea what she was talking about. "I really have no idea," he breathed.

Chuck was trying to figure out what was going on, when Casey climbed back into the DeLorean. "Alright!" Casey said. "To the year 2015!"

He backed the DeLorean out of the driveway, and began rolling down the street.

"Casey," Chuck said concernedly, "I don't think you've got enough road to get up to eighty-eight miles per hour."

Casey looked over at him, grinned, and flipped down his sunglasses. "Roads, Chuck?" he said. "Where we're going… we don't need roads."

And with that, the DeLorean lifted off from the street, turned around in mid-air, and rocketed forward.

In a heartbeat, they had reached eighty-eight miles per hour. The time circuits activated, and everything disappeared into a glare of bright white light –

To be continued…