Author's Note: No, the dance is still not featured! It's a cliffhanger! Ha!

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the movies that were produced in 1985, 1989 and 1990. That includes the 'Back to the Future' trilogy.

7:Chapter Seven

Marty glanced up to the clock in the clock tower. The last chime was just ending and the clock was now solid at 7. 7 PM, on November 12th, 1955.

"Just three more hours" Emmett said, looking up as well. "Are you feeling all right still? You know that you'll have to face a lot of things tonight. I certainly don't envy you."

Marty nodded. "I understand" he said. "I'm not exactly looking forward to it either. Still, I have to do it – even if it was just for the sake of the space-time continuum. Then, of course, there is also the fact that I'm really anxious to return to 1985."

"You are?" Emmett asked, honestly a little surprised. "I thought that you liked 'observing the world of this past era' as you put it. I wasn't expecting you to actively miss the '80s."

"Well, I guess I do" Marty said, with a slight blush. "I suppose that I am slightly more used to the musical styles of the year 1985 than I expected to be. This puts a whole new lighting on the subject, you know. It's quite strange for me to feel like this."

Emmett nodded. "So" he said. "Anything else that you wanted to say to me?" He frowned slightly. "And don't let it be about the future. You know what I think about that subject, and I…"

"I know, I know, you don't want to make me be confused and all" Marty said, sighing. "But, Emmett – if I am correct with it, you should be as well. After all, you're making an argument from my supposed point of view. If I adjust it, then you should, as well."

Emmett blinked. "What?" he asked.

Marty smiled slightly. "Look, you aren't okay with me telling you because of my principles, right?" Emmett nodded. "Okay, but what if I, the person who thought up those principles, say that it's okay not to accept them anymore? Then there aren't any principles anymore, and you shouldn't have any reason to stop me from telling you."

Emmett nodded, slowly. "I – I suppose" he said. "I'm still unsure, though. You probably know how I am with subjects that I don't know too much about."

"Yeah, I guess I understand" Marty said, nodding. "But it's okay. You don't have to get an interpretation from it being a world-altering subject – it's very localised. Even if you would tell anyone, they'd be able to do nothing with it – not that you should tell anyone, of course, but I suppose that you understand what I try to make clear to you."

"A little" Emmett admitted. "Marty… if you really want to tell me… maybe you're right after all." He looked up, facing his friend. "Still, I don't know whether I… I just can't decide. I've been so busy and all." He then smiled, as he actually thought of something. "Why don't you write me a letter?"

"A letter?" Marty repeated, astonished.

"Yeah" Emmett said. "In it, you could explain just what is going to happen, and I can think about reading it."

Marty figured that he could do that. He didn't really like the plan, as Emmett might as well forget about the letter or decide not to read it, but it was the best that his friend would agree to. "All right" he said. "I'll write you a letter."

"Good" Emmett said, satisfied. "I don't want to anger you, but I think I'll be more likely to listen to whatever you're warning me for if I have more time to prepare for the information."

"All right" Marty said. "I'll be right off then."

"You're going to write it right now?" Emmett asked, slightly surprised.

The teen shrugged. "Why not now? It's not like I'll be having time for it later."

Emmett had to agree to that. "Okay" he said, as Marty walked off into Lou's Café.

oooooooo

"Dear Emmett. On the night that I went back on time in the original sequence of events, government agents showed up and suspected me of stealing information which was hidden in a bag of trash. They attempted to shoot me and you saved my life by jumping in front of me. Unfortunately, this made you be killed.

Please attempt to take whatever precautions are of the necessity to prevent such a horrible disaster from occurring in the new temporal sequence of events as well. I strongly advice you to purchase a bullet-proof vest for it. You, however, must attempt to recreate the original sequence as close as possible, as a too clear intervention might cause my younger self not to traverse time. You must not inform him/me about any of this.

I know it must be hard for you to proceed within the limits of this scenario, but for the sake of the timeline, I must ask you to do this. I wish you the best of luck with it.

See you in 1985,

Martin Seamus 'Marty' McFly, November 12th, 1955, 7:11 PM."

Marty leaned back and stared at the letter he had just read aloud. This should be enough. With this, Emmett should be convinced to go ahead with the plan while saving his life. It would be better if he had the chance to tell his friend personally, but that was no option. He'd have to take this as a compromise.

"Hey, kid! Are you going to order something or should I kick you out!"

Marty turned around to face Lou Caruthers, the owner of Lou's Café. He had met the guy before, but not too often. Nevertheless, he knew by now that Lou wasn't that nice to people who came in his café just to sit there. The teenager gulped. "Uh, no" he replied. "I'm leaving right now."

The café owner looked at him in a confused manner, then shook his head and walked away. Marty got up quietly and exited, taking the letter with him.

"Ah, Marty" Emmett said, as the teenager approached him. "Have you got the letter?"

"Right here" Marty replied, holding it up and handing it to his friend. "Take good care of it, okay? We wouldn't want you to lose it."

"Good point" Emmett agreed. He took the letter and stuffed it deep into the pocket of his jacket. "Now, are you off to the dance?"

"I suppose I am" Marty said. "I'll have to swing by George's house first, to ensure that everything goes fine there."

"I guess so" Emmett said, sympathetically. "Good luck." '

"I'll need that" Marty said, smirking. "Thanks. See you later tonight. And don't forget what you have to do if George calls."

Emmett sighed. "Yeah, I won't" he replied.

"Good" Marty responded. "Goodbye."

Emmett nodded, and then waved, as Marty got into the car and drove off. Moments later, the teen from the future had set the great plan for November 12th in motion.

oooooooo

Marty's plans weren't exactly the greatest he'd ever thought up. He had to rely on the fact that George had told him that, in case of the broadcast not going through, he was going to come to the dance. Without much additional persuasion, and with the fact taken into consideration that George had considered this chance unlikely, his father might refuse to go to the dance, or even forget his promise. And it would be too suspicious if Marty was to go up and tell him to go and hold his promise, which might cause his father to realise that Marty was the one behind this all.

Additionally, there was the fact that it wasn't quite the easiest task to get the cables cut. Marty looked down at the cable that he was holding after digging it up. Precise calculations and information from the Courthouse had made him able to locate the specific cable that went to George's house. Marty held his pincer set tight, and tried to cut. Tried again. Tried for a third time, as that was the charm after all. No result. It was a really tight cable.

Finally, getting desperate, Marty took a pick-axe and held it in the sky. With all his force, he let it come down on the cable. Success! It broke, and to Marty's relief, nothing seemed to be happening in the other houses. He'd been a little worried about that when he started thinking up this plan, even though he was quite sure that the line went to George's house only, and that the main cable was somewhere closer to the street.

A cry of surprise from George's house told Marty that the plan had worked. The teenager decided to sneak up to the house to hear what was going on.

Inside, George's mother, Sylvia, was getting worried. "Why did the TV just go out?" she exclaimed.

"I – I don't know" the soft voice of George's father, Arthur, came. "Maybe they… maybe they simply didn't have anything to broadcast."

"That's not true" a voice said, and Marty recognised it as the one of his father. "Science Fiction Theatre is going to be on soon."

"Arthur, go out and see what's the matter" Sylvia said, slightly annoyed.

"I'm not sure whether that's the best thing to do" Arthur protested. "What if there are all kinds of workers there, and they complain about me correcting them? What if they say that I should mind my own business? I'm not sure if I could take that kind of reac-"

"Arthur McFly! You are going to go out right now, or I'll push you out!"

That was Marty's cue to leave. He quickly shove back the sand that he had dug out, covering the now broken cable. He then hid behind a tree. Moments later, his grandfather exited. Arthur McFly looked around, saw nothing, scratched his head a few times, then shook his head. Muttering quiet complaints against his wife, he headed back in and shut the door.

Marty let out a sigh of relief. He knew his grandpa. The man wouldn't go out again, and he certainly wouldn't call the television company, no matter how much grandma Sylvia forced him to do so. He was safe. Marty quietly sneaked back to his truck, which he had parked around the corner, and started heading over to the house of Lorraine Baines. The first part of his mission was accomplished – the second was about to begin. And that was much, much harder than the first one could ever have been.

oooooooo

Emmett sighed nervously. Granted, his part of the entire plan was rather small, but still, if he gave the wrong impression, George might reconsider the decision that he was supposed to make, and Marty's future would still be jeopardised.

He looked at the clock. 8:12 PM. In less than two hours, everything would have to be right, or Marty was history. Then again, since he wouldn't exist, would he even be history as he never was there? But he'd been there for a week. How would that even be possible if Marty was gonna be history? Or, actually, not be?

Emmett shook his head. He always got headaches when he thought too much about Marty's scientific ideas. The thirty-five-year-old wondered whether his future self would be that way as well.

His future self…

He still couldn't grasp the whole thing. Time travel. A boy from thirty years in the future, his friend, apparently. And Emmett didn't doubt that. Marty was close enough to him to make the horse ranch owner-to-be to believe that they were indeed friends.

He had so many questions to ask, so many problems and things that he was curious about. He didn't entirely understand Marty's 'space-time continuum changing' worries, but he made sure that he'd try to help Marty in solving his problems. And if that involved not telling anyone, Emmett was willing to do that, even though keeping secrets had never been his strongest point. He therefore didn't understand why Marty was trying to break his own rules and wanted to tell him more about the future, give him more secrets to… to suffer from. Why was Marty doing this?

As he was still thinking about this, his phone suddenly rang. Emmett took a step back, startled, then calmed down and took the phone from the line that Marty had installed, tapping off electricity from the Courthouse and sending messages from Emmett's house directly into the device. He'd even considered making it something for the public – a so-called 'cell phone', a phone which the people could use instead of a phone cell, but Emmett had told him that such a stupid name would never catch on.

Anyway, as Emmett took the horn, he was greeted by George McFly's voice. "Mr. Brown?" George said. "Is your nephew around? I've got something to discuss with him."

"No, he isn't" Emmett said, pretending to be calm. "Is something wrong?"

"Yeah" George said. "Marty said that the power would go out at our house, and it did! It's the only house in the neighbourhood, but the power did go out! Do you think that Marty could be behind it somehow?"

"I don't know" Emmett said. "It doesn't sound like something that Marty would do, though." Now the trickiest part came. "If you want to ask him, he's at the dance and won't be coming home until about nine-forty-five, which means that you've got over an hour to go. You'd better go to the dance yourself. He told me that, around nine PM, after going to the dance with Lorraine, he was going to try to invent an alien communication machine in the small park behind the High School gym. If you don't want to interrupt when he and Lorraine are busy hanging around in the car or at the dance, you'd better go there instead."

"I see" George said, thoughtfully. The other side remained silent for a moment, causing the greatest worries to break out by Emmett. What if George would stay at home? What if he'd find Marty before 9 PM? What if…

He then was relieved as George spoke once again. "Yeah, I might as well do that" he said. "With the power out, I don't have anything else to do anyway, and I won't have to go to the actual dance. Good bye, Mr. Brown. Thanks for helping me."

"My pleasure, kid" Emmett said, as George quit the call. He then smiled slightly. His part of the plan had succeeded, from what he could hear from George. Now, all he could do was hope that Marty's part would go through as he wanted it, as well.