Disclaimer: I don't own BTTF. Yes, back to the regular phrasing this time, because making up excuses gets boring both for you and for me.

Author's Note: It's been a long wait, isn't it? And not for any particular reason either. Anyway, this is the newest chapter, posted on March 19th 2014. Doc Brown explores this brave new world, and instantly gets captured by the local authorities and thrown in jail. But all is not bad, for he gets to meet an unexpected visitor...

Chapter Four

Sunday, June 5, 2016
06:35 PM PDT
Tannen Valley, California

After concluding that Hill Valley had changed because history had changed, Doc had walked over to the DeLorean, gotten into the car, and leaned back in despair. He was now without a time machine – or at least, he hadn't seen it returning – and without his family, in an alternate version of his hometown which he didn't know. What was more, he was in 2016, thirty-one years into the future (or hundred-and-twenty-one, depending how one looked at it). There was no one he knew here. No one who could tell him what had happened. No one who knew his secret and could help him in his slow, cautious steps to repair the past.

No one, except one man. Martin Seamus McFly.

Doc considered the matter thoroughly, and eventually came to the conclusion that he had some reason for hope. Even if history had changed drastically, Marty could still be around. He'd still existed in the world where Biff had become rich and powerful, after all. If this world was any similar, he was likely to encounter a different, yet a familiar Marty, that could help him. Might be able to help him. Somehow.

The prospects weren't very bright, but the inventor did not want to give up hope. He had never done that, even in his darkest moments in 1885 – well, except for the night after Clara had temporarily broken up with him, but that had been a thing he truly could not recover from. Now, Clara had left him again, but Doc was sure it had not been voluntarily. Therefore, he had to figure out what to do, for her sake.

In a way, this situation was similar to when he had been first trapped in 1885. Far away from his home time, in a strange and potentially hostile environment, an unknown era which he knew little about (though he had anticipated some aspects of the Old West from reading extensively about it in his youth, others had taken him completely by surprise) but in which he needed to survive because someone depended on him. In that case, it had been Marty. Now, it was his family. He could not give up. Never.

The sky gradually got darker, and Doc noticed there were strange orange tints to it. The tints were familiar – he had seen them the last time history had been changed. Then, it had all been Biff Tannen's work. He remembered the nuclear waste plants Alternate Biff had built, and shivered. If this world was anything like that, he wasn't sure he could bear staying here, even for just a short period of time.

Doc carefully took the DeLorean up into the sky, and flew it towards the Courthouse Square. As the vehicle got closer, the streets became more crowded. In another detail reminiscent to 1985-A, drunken bums and rough bikers roamed the streets. Chalk outlines were clearly visible on several places. Doc grimaced. To think anyone could do this simply by misusing his time machine. It almost made him regret not abandoning time travel altogether when he'd still had the chance.

When the car finally entered the square, Doc found himself flabbergasted. The entire layout had been altered – where the Courthouse, including the park in front of it, had been, was now an enormous complex which was two times as long and wide as the Courthouse had been (including part of where the pond had been located in the 'real' 2016) and up to six times as high. All business seemed to be gravitated on this point, although those businesses did not mean much more than the shops that had been in Biff's 1985 – sex shops, nuclear waste centers, and surprisingly, a café on the location of the Café 80s, called 'Grand Café'. As Doc turned back to the giant complex, he saw there was something written at the top: "Courthouse for the city of Tannen Valley". As if that hadn't been obvious already…

"Tannen Valley?"

Doc turned back, disbelieving his eyes. Sure enough, the sign read 'Tannen Valley', clear as day. "Great Scott!" the inventor exclaimed. "What in the name of Sir Isaac H. Newton… how…"

Well, there was no point in being stunned at all this now. He willed himself to stay focused and landed the car at the side of the road, careful to stay out of the 'No Landing' zones, one aspect of the old Hill Valley that had not been changed. When he got out, Doc immediately frowned and took a step back – it had been one thing to notice a strange smell back at the car shop, but it was another to notice it inside the center of Hill Valley. The scent was, though not as overwhelming as in Biff's reality, definitely bad.

Doc shook his head, locked the DeLorean, and walked over to the phone booth he had seen on the end of the street. He didn't recall seeing any in the Square in the previous 2016, but maybe technological progress was running a little behind on that front in this world. Upon entering, he found to his relief that it worked similar to any future phone he had seen thus far. At least something was going easy. "Marty – er, correction, Martin McFly, please" he told the video screen, not sure if he should search using Marty's common or his official name.

The machine only took two seconds to search through the Hill Valley, no, Tannen Valley archives, and then emitted an unpleasant beep. "No McFly, Martin found in the area of Tannen Valley" it told him. "Please modify your search."

Doc was stunned. Why was Marty not around? Had he fled town, from whatever had happened? By now it had become obvious to him that the Tannens had once again been favored in this alternate history, leading him to the conclusion that Biff Tannen, or perhaps Cliff or Griff, had stolen the train. If the Tannens really were in charge, Doc did not blame the alternate George and Lorraine one bit for moving to another place with their kids.

He had barely finished that thought when he felt an all-too-familiar thrust into his back – the barrel of a gun. He immediately raised his hands. "Who… what…" he stammered.

"Why, hello." Two men dressed in police uniforms leaned over his shoulders and smiled at him before dragging him out of the phone booth and handcuffing him. "Excuse me, sir, but the Tannen Valley authorities have deemed that you possess a risk to society. Would you mind coming with us to prison?"

Doc frowned, surprised. "You're asking me?" he said, incredulously.

"Why, of course" the second police officer said. "Wouldn't it be nice if you just behaved like any other cooperative subject? It's in your own interest that you are removed from town, after all."

Doc looked at them with disgust, while frantically thinking about what to do. He'd never been one for getting away from armed people – though he had outsmarted others sometimes, those others had rarely ever directly confronted him like now. Put under immense pressure, he could only think of one solution, the one his best friend had always used. "All right, all right… wait, what's that?" he yelled, pointing behind them.

To his relief, all three of the officers fell for it – or at least temporarily. Doc had barely set the first steps towards running away when the first officer looked around, saw what was happening, and tripped him. The inventor stumbled and fell to the ground. After rapidly examining his own wounds (for as far as he could do that while he was lying down) he started to climb up again, but one decisive whack of a gun against the back of his skull brought a change of plans. Doc fell down again, losing consciousness.

oooooooo

In the end, Dr. Emmett Brown didn't know just how much time had passed while he got locked up in what appeared to be a prison cell. While being transported, he had woken up several times, but each time a dose of chloroform had brought him back to sleep. By the point he finally woke up naturally, he guessed that it had to be the morning of the next day.

Doc stretched, and tried to sit up, immediately finding that he couldn't move much. His arms were chained to the sides of the bed he was on, and his feet were connected to the front with another part of rope. After a few attempts at getting up, the inventor got frustrated. "Hey!" he called out.

A man's face peeked through the small hole in the door that separated his cell from the rest of the building. "Ah" he said. "The new one's making trouble, huh? Don't worry pal, within a few days, being chained to your bed is the least you'll be worried about."

Doc narrowed his eyes with anger. "Let me out of here!" he exclaimed, knowing very well the futility of his request but making it anyway. "What did I do to get locked up, anyway?"

"Don't ask me" the guard replied. "That's the leader's job. And I don't talk to him everyday."

Doc frowned. "The leader?"

"The leader of Tannen Valley, yeah" the guard said, rolling his eyes. "Cliff Tannen. Don't you know?"

"Cliff Tannen rules this town?" Doc asked. "Great Scott, that explains a lot…"

The guard shrugged. "If you say so" he sneered. "Anyone around here knows Cliff has been in charge since his father retired in 2008. The Tannens have been running the city since before it was renamed." He looked at Doc up and down. "Though I guess you'd still remember that time. How old are you, anyway?"

"None of your business" Doc snarled. "Is there any way I can speak to, um, Mister Tannen?"

The guard laughed. "If we'd let every prisoner talk to the leader, he would be dead by now. And we can't have that, can we?"

"Suppose not" Doc muttered. He tried to lie back, noticing once more the restrictions his current position posed. "When are you letting me out of this, anyway?"

"The cell, or the chains?"

"Preferably the cell, but the chains are okay for now" Doc said, tugging on them. It was no use – they were strapped tight around his feet and arms. He could barely move them more than a few inches.

The guard shrugged. "Depends on whether you behave" he said. "If you are nice and quiet and do what you're told, your chains might come off at breakfast time and you won't be sealed again until the evening. If you're not, though, you can expect to be tied up for the rest of the day."

Doc groaned. "Well, if I can't talk to Cliff, can't you at least ask him or anyone else what I've done wrong?" he asked. "I can't say I like getting locked up at all, but when they don't even tell me what I've done…"

"Does it matter that much to you?" the guard said, smirking. "Mr. Tannen himself ordered the warrant for your arrest, so obviously you've done something bad. Why should it matter just what it is?"

"Because if I knew what I were accused of, I could try to disprove Mr. Tannen's evidence" Doc said. He felt like he was talking to a silly little child. How on earth did the Tannens select these guards?

The guard frowned. "Now you've really lost it, old man" he informed the inventor. "As if the Tannens could ever be wrong. Even others your age – whatever that might be – would know better. Have you been living under a rock for the past sixty or seventy years?"

Doc felt stunned. It sounded like the guard had been more or less brainwashed. Of course, if that was the case, it would be of little use to talk to him, and it wouldn't get him any closer to Cliff – or to Marty, for that matter. He leaned back. "Never mind" he muttered, quietly.

The guard looked at him and shrugged. "Amuse yourself" he said, walking off down the hallway. Doc sighed, and leaned back into his pillow. He was locked up by a Tannen in an alternate reality, and he had no clue whether he'd ever see his wife and kids again. How much more pain could he suffer? He felt tears coming up, but willed them down – since he was tied up, he couldn't wipe them away, and he didn't think the guard would give him a handkerchief if he asked.

Eventually, he had to have fallen asleep. He had no idea how long it lasted – there was little to no light in here, and there were no windows. He might as well be underground. He knew he had had at least one watch on his arm, but it had been taken away from him along with his wedding ring and all valuable items he carried on him – he couldn't reach for his wallet due to being tied up, but he suspected it was gone as well – and he had no idea where they had taken them. It made him feel even more depressed, that his obsession with time was being disturbed by the fact that he had no clue of where he was and what time it could be.

After an unknown period of time, Doc was woken up again to the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs. He wondered whether it was the guard, but from what he'd seen and heard earlier, he had had the impression the man was supposed to guard just the hallway bordering his cell and would thus probably be already down here. He found that was true later, when he could faintly hear a strangely familiar voice in the hallway, and the guard responding to it.

"Pardon me, sir, but I really can't do that. I was given explicit orders to…"

"Then you'll just have to ignore them!" That was the stranger's voice, loud, authoritative, and yet familiar on some levels. "You know who I am, don't you?"

"Of course, sir." Doc noticed the difference between the way the guard had spoken with him and the subservient way he was speaking to the stranger. "But your brother…"

"Forget him" the stranger said. "I know he means well, but this is my area. I have the authority to arrest and set free, and just because I'm away to Sacramento, that doesn't mean Cliff can just take over from me."

"But sir…"

"Shut up, man, you look like a fool" the stranger grumbled. "Are you going to let me through, or should I imprison you for disobeying orders?"

"No, sir!" The guard sounded terrified by now. "I'm sorry, sir. Here you go."

"Good." The footsteps came closer, and Doc looked up as he heard the guard sticking keys in the lock of his door. Were they setting him free? Somehow, he doubted that. But what else could the stranger want from him?

The door swung open. Doc lifted his head as much as he could, and stared towards the open doorway. He immediately gasped.

Standing there next to the guard was Marty McFly. Granted, it was a Marty who wore a grey suit, luxury shoes, dark blue pants, and an aura of authority that he had never possessed in the old timeline, but it was him nevertheless. Although… he was different. As Doc squinted closer, he saw the now forty-seven-year-old had his hair combed in an unfamiliar way, and the look in his eyes was very un-Marty-like.

"That's him, huh?" Marty said, looking back at Doc. "They were right, the similarity is stunning. If I hadn't been at the funeral myself, I would have sworn it was him." He turned to the guard. "Untie his hands."

The guard frowned. "But sir, I'm not sure… I mean, regarding your safety…"

"What is it, man, do you want to get thrown in jail?!" Marty exclaimed. "I can take care of myself! Untie him, NOW! And then scram!"

The guard's face went pale, and Doc couldn't suppress a smile as he saw his previous tormentor like this. His hands were untied rapidly, and then the guard threw the keys to Marty, shut the door behind him, and ran off. Doc painfully sat up, and he and Marty both looked at the door for a moment, waiting until the footsteps were gone.

"So" Marty said, staring at Doc. "You're the miscreant my brother's goons arrested yesterday."

"Marty," Doc said, relieved at seeing his friend, "I…"

"Excuse me," Marty interrupted, "I can't recall giving you permission to talk. So don't."

"What?" Doc asked, stunned.

"And besides," Marty continued, "I didn't give you permission to call me by my first name either. You're the prisoner, I'm the police chief. So, kindly address me as you should."

"And by what name might that be?" Doc asked.

Marty raised an eyebrow. "I would have thought you'd know that" he said. "To you, I'm Mister Tannen. That's Martin David Tannen, in full." He smiled, as Doc let out a gasp.

"Son of Biff Tannen and Lorraine Baines."