Disclaimer: Take a look at the disclaimer for Chapter Three.

Author's Note: Final chapter. I was getting sick of writing all these author's notes and things, but we're finally done. Good luck with reading this and not falling asleep. Like Chapter Three, this one and 4 are not meant to be depressing, however the bad situation for the characters hasn't changed much at the end. If you think I shouldn't have left them this way, read Heaven Or Hell, if you can manage it after such a long read. You'll understand what I mean, then.

Please read down to the end, and leave a nice lengthy review, if you can!

Chapter Five

Saturday, April 2, 1988
12:40 P.M.
Hill Valley, California

When the bus appeared above one more version of Hill Valley, Doc immediately noticed something. The garage, that had been abandoned for three years in the previous reality and destroyed in their reality, was still there, meaning that they were not home, but it was full of life – the lights were on, and a car – the DeLorean, Doc noticed – was parked in the driveway. That would probably mean that the Local Emmett Brown had either never married like all of his counterparts and therefore had seen no need to move, or that the local him had not had the expenses to move. Whatever the solution to the problem was, Doc did not like either of them.

In the back, Marty was having similar problems. He sighed deeply, as he looked out of the window to the still-standing garage. "We're not home this time, are we?" he asked, the question more a statement than a question. "Man, I hate this kind of travelling… not only are we stuck, there's no way to contact someone for help because the whole problem is that we can't get access to home."

"I must admit, that is rather annoying" Doc said, sighing. "Though if it cheers you up a bit – we have been making some bits of progress. Not much, but I think we can assume this is progress."

"What?" Marty asked, yawning. "I don't see anything progressive at all. We're still not home, no one seems to be able to help us, and worst of all, the system keeps insisting that everything's just fine, which it obviously isn't!"

"Well, think about this" Doc said. "When we first started dimension hopping without intending to do so, we ended up in a world where my house did not exist. In the next world, the previous one, it did exist, but both it and the garage were not being lived in. In this world, the garage is obviously occupied, so maybe in the next world, my house is being lived in, and in another next world, Clara, the kidsand I are living there."

Marty pondered that for a moment. "That does make sense somehow" he muttered. "So, what are you going to do now? Travel through dimensions twice again in a row and then land back home?"

"No" Doc said, the answer disappointing Marty quite a bit. "I do not want to have the chance that in reality, we're not home, which would be disappointing a lot to both of us, and that this or the other world was just the dimension in which a me lived that could help us get home right away. I don't want to risk anything, Marty, and I hope you'll agree with me."

"I do" Marty muttered, grumpily, "but no more than just a bit. I was just hoping that we could get home soon – why did you even suggest it if you were going to turn down your own idea anyway?" That didn't really make much sense to him.

"I didn't exactly turn down my own idea" Doc said. "I just told you it would be better to explore more options – and one of them is this universe." He looked down. "Do you think my other self lives here, Marty? That DeLorean down there looks familiar, but if it was a time machine, I'd know better than to park it in plain sight…"

Marty joined his friend at the window, stared at the DeLorean, then turned to Doc again. "I think you live here" he said, thoughtfully. "Wouldn't that mansion still be there if you would not live here? I mean, it was thanks to your experiments on physics that it burned down. You wouldn't have all those weird chemical things in the house if you weren't a scientist. Of course, it could've been another scientist or just a chemist who lived here, but that would be a little too much of a coincidence." He stared at the familiar empty sight, where in 1955 had been a huge mansion. "How did it burn down, anyway?" he asked. "The mansion, I mean?"

Doc sighed. "It was a smallish accident out in the mansion lab" he said. "I had some problems with the kind of engine to use for the DeLorean. I knew it would have to be plutonium, but I was trying to look for an alternative way to fuel the thing that was less dangerous and still efficient. I stayed up until one A.M. before I finally turned in. However, I'd left some chemicals there, and my window was still open. A wind knocked the chemicals over, they mixed and created fire. If I hadn't woken up at two-thirty because I was thirsty and smelled the fire, I would've been killed for sure, taking everything valuable I had with me into the grave. But I did wake up, and once I realized what was going on, I first tried to extinguish the flames. Once that didn't work, I called the fire department at two-fifty, then grabbed everything valuable I had around, including your letter, some money, some inherited things from my parents and some notes for the time machine and headed out to the garage at around three. The fire remained burning for a long time afterwards, but I was safe, and by six AM, the whole mansion had burned down, as the fire department had failed to extinguish it as well. I was alive – but Copernicus, whom I had forgotten, had died along with the mansion."

"How did you forget him?" Marty asked. "I thought you liked Copernicus."

"I do – I mean, I did" Doc said, sighing and almost crying. "He was in the attic around that time, as I'd just bought some time travel equipment and I didn't want him to run around it. I managed to take the equipment along on my way out, but I didn't manage to do the same with Copernicus. The next time I saw him, he was nothing but a blackened body. Poor, poor Copernicus…" He winced, thinking back of that time.

Marty patted Doc on the back. "So, not to be annoying and not caring for your feelings about that, but what are we going to do now?" he asked. "We do want to get home, so can't we just swing by those us-es below and ask them if they can fix the machine?"

Doc thought about that for a moment, having cleared his face with a handkerchief. "You know, I actually figured, maybe we should split up."

Marty frowned. "Why should we do that?" he asked, a bit confused. "Can't we just stay here and see what happens like each time? I don't want you to leave when I'm away…"

"I won't, I promise" Doc said. "Honestly. But I just figured, why shouldn't we split up? If you go to your house, and I'll swing by my home, we would double our chances. That would come rather in handy, I think. Don't you agree?"

Marty considered that for a few moments, then nodded. "I suppose so" he said. "I just wanted to make sure that you wouldn't leave before I was back – not that you would ever do that, but the idea of being trapped in a strange world isn't really nice." He looked down again. "Are we landing now?"

Doc nodded, and carefully manoeuvred the bus to the ground. He opened the door, and let Marty out. "From here, it should be no more than half a mile to your home. You should be able to make that in ten minutes on foot." He looked at Marty. "Let's see… I'll drop by your house to pick you up at four-thirty P.M.? If my other self is able to fix the train, it will naturally take longer, but then I'll call your alternate parents. Everything should be fine, one way or another."

"Right" Marty said, nodding. "See you, Doc." He started walking off towards the McFly house of this world.

Doc stared after his friend, as Marty walked down the street of JFK Drive. As Marty had disappeared out of sight, the inventor looked up at the garage that was standing right in front of him, and let out a huge sigh. There they went again – once more explaining who they were, where they came from, why they needed their help, and what was wrong with the stupid machine, and then they had to go on one more fixing round. The inventor figured that when they got home, he should give serious thought to the idea of destroying the dimensional travelling machine. The DFSCUPCIF was pretty amazing, and it was enjoyable from time to time, but in the end, it turned out to be disaster all over again, as here they were, trapped in an unfamiliar world and about to talk to an unfamiliar version of themselves – if Local Doc even lived here, of course.

The inventor sighed, concentrated deeply on his mission, and finally walked up to the front door of the local inventor. Everything looked similar to how he remembered it being, and as he stood in front of the garage doors, he got a familiar sense of déjà vu, as if entering home again after having been away from it for years. He tried to get himself to concentrate, and knocked on the door.

After a few seconds, Emmett Brown opened the door, gasped, and almost fainted. "Great Scott!" he called out. "You're me!" The inventor stared at his counterpart, mouth open and closing again and his eyes moving rapidly. "You can't be here!" he insisted. "I destroyed the time machine almost three years ago, in 1985!"

There goes my hope for good luck, Doc thought. He cleared his throat, and turned at the dumb-founded Emmett, figuring that, even if the local could not help him, Doc could at least be polite enough to explain his presence and not leave his counterpart behind in a very confused state of mind. "I'm not you" he said, softly. "I could've been you, but I am not. I'm a you from an entirely alternate reality, another dimension." He stared at his counterpart's eyes. "Do you recognize the term?"

"In – in theory" Emmett muttered, staring at his other self like if he was someone who'd just told him the world was going to end in ten seconds. "I never expected to encounter someone from another one, though. Great Scott, another me…"

"You do believe my story, don't you?" Doc asked. If the local didn't, he was going to give the matter of going on with telling things hard thoughts. He was sort of getting sick of telling the same story all over again."

To his relief, Emmett shook his head almost immediately. "Oh, no, I believe you – which man would be able to not believe the evidence that is right in front of his face? If it was some stranger who said it, I would've sincerely doubted it, but you are me, obviously. You can come in – just wait a second so I can tell Susan the story so it doesn't scare her. She's little over three months into her pregnancy now, and I don't want her to be so scared that anything bad happens to the baby."

Doc nodded, wondering who Susan was, and Emmett headed inside. He returned after what was for Doc about a minute of waiting and speculating who exactly Susan might be, possibilities varying from the inventor's wife to his daughter or granddaughter, or even Jennifer's local counterpart, who, for some reason, was named differently than her counterpart from Doc's world was. The possibilities were endless, after all. Doc decided not to think about it too much, and faced his counterpart, who had an obviously excited smile on his face, apparently not used to encountering interdimensional visitors and enjoying every second of it. "You can come in, now" he said. "I told Susan, and she's very shocked, but she's pretty anxious to meet you."

Doc smiled, still wondering about Susan but curious enough to enter. The instant he entered the garage, though, he felt comforted. Everything looked just like normal, like it had been before 1985… if not for the mention of Susan, he'd have thought the time circuits were failing on him and they'd really travelled to their home dimension in the past instead. Feeling somewhat relaxed, he sat down.

Only to feel like his eyes were falling out of his head a few moments later. A beautiful woman entered, and smiled at him. She remembered Doc very much of Clara, except for the eye and hair colour. "Great Scott!" he muttered, softly. He wasn't really attracted to her, not really, but she was very pretty. Suddenly, he got the strong urge to be back home again and face the real Clara. This woman – Doc was sure this had to be Susan – was making him feel incredibly homesick.

The woman – Susan – chuckled. "Hi" she said. "So you're the other Emmett?" She extended her hand and shook it with the inventor. "I'm Susan Clayton, local Emmett's wife. So, you're from another universe?"

Emmett ignored the last comment, only focusing on the woman, whom now was confirmed that it was Susan, and her surname especially. "Clayton" he whispered. "As in Clara Clayton?" He felt himself suddenly dizzy in his stomach.

Susan nodded. "Yeah, Clara Clayton was my great-great-grandaunt" she said. "The sister of my great-great-grandmother, Maria." She giggled. "You know, my Emmett asked the exact same question when we first met – if I was related to the Clayton that fell into Clayton Ravine."

There it was again, the confirmation of his wife's perishing into the ravine so long ago, erased in his world but around in this reality. "I suppose," he said, "but that was not the reason I asked that." He took a deep breath, deciding to be blunt after all – no use to waste time, especially if this was his counterpart's wife. "In our world, Clara Clayton, whom I rescued from falling into the ravine, is my wife."

Susan gasped, Emmett, who entered, looked near-fainting. "How?" Susan asked, pale.

Doc smiled, thinking back of that event. "It's a long story" he said. "Marty and I were back to 1955 – yes, to November twelfth – in order to get a book back from Biff Tannen – if you haven't had that occur, I'd rather not speak about it, as the world created from it was quite bad – and after we had burned the book, I got struck by lightning in mid-air. I was zapped back to the first of January 1885, and spent the next months trying to repair the time machine. Finally, I gave up, buried the DeLorean in a mine, wrote a letter to Marty to be delivered on the night of the thunderstorm, and I told him to go home and destroy the time machine."

"Did he listen?" Emmett asked, curiously. "I don't think our Marty from before would've taken it so well if I was trapped there in the past."

Doc frowned at the 'before' comment, but said nothing. "He didn't take it well – or at least, if he did, then his perspective of taking something well is entirely different from mine" he commented. "He found my tombstone in 1955, as apparently I'd been shot by Buford Tannen six days after I wrote the letter, on September seventh 1885, but I think going back in time to get me was something he would've done anyway. So my '55 self fixed the DeLorean and Marty headed back in time to save me. Only, thanks to running into Indians, the fuel line was broken, and after a few days, when we'd finally figured out a way to get back home by pushing it up with a steam train, we were out by the ravine to investigate the instant we would reach 88, as we were pushing it up there, and then, we heard a woman screaming for help in a carriage which was pulled by horses gone wild. We headed over to save her, which we managed to do at the last moment, and when I saw Clara face to face, I was in love at first sight immediately." He smiled at the memory, then blushed. "Sorry, that was a rather quick summary of events, wasn't it? I'm sorry, but I'm not very much in the mood to tell stories like that. After all, we've been hopping through dimensions for quite some time now, and there's no guarantee of when we're going to stop."

Emmett frowned. "We?" he repeated. "You're not the only one hopping through other worlds?"

Doc shook his head. "No – Marty is along with me" he said. "I called him over on the initial test, then intending to just visit two worlds – but that was before the system went on to do strange things. No matter how many times we put in the coordinates of our home, we keep ending up in foreign worlds. This world is the fifth we visit, and that's much to me, even if we didn't stay in the third dimension for more than half an hour, and we didn't see anybody there, let alone myself or Marty's counterpart."

Emmett frowned again. "You mean, you and Marty are still friends, then?" he asked in a voice both confused and hopeful.

"Yeah…" Doc said, starting to feel less easy with the second. "You mean you aren't, here? Not anymore?"

Emmett sighed, sadly, and shook his head. "No, I'm afraid not" he said. "The day Marty woke up from getting that injury when racing Needles, we had a talk with less than positive outcomes. He was furious at me for not stopping that accident, and I was mad at him for being mad at me, while he was the one to chose to race Needles. Finally, I headed out of the room and went back home. Aside from me briefly coming along to visit on his eighteenth birthday, and him showing up sitting in the back at my wedding last year, I have not seen him ever since. It's been almost two years since I last spoke a word with him, actually."

Doc frowned. "Interesting" he said. "My Marty and I have no such problems. In fact, we're still every bit as close as we were since the day we first met in 1975. Of course, there also is the fact that, in our world, that Rolls Royce incident never happened in the first place."

Emmett gasped. "What?"

"It never happened" Doc repeated. "I did find out about it when I first visited the future, yes, but after coming out of that incident with Buford Tannen back in 1885, who actually challenged my Marty to a duel in front of the Palace Saloon, he changed his mind about being called 'chicken'. He therefore avoided that Rolls Royce accident, without even knowing it was coming, and he and Jennifer are off for a happy future. Last time I visited the future, Marty will be discovered in early January, 1991, which is almost three years away, and will grow in the early nineties to become a world famous rock star, like he always wanted to be. He certainly has a happy future ahead of him."

"Then he's lucky, compared to my Marty" Emmett said, frowning. "My Marty is on the road to the nobody he was in 2015, and from what the current year looks like, I think it's safe to assume that he is going to end up just like he was when I last saw him there, a depressed man who lost everything. Chances are that, this time around, he's not even going to be willing to listen to my 1985 counterpart coming to visit. After all, while Marty was certainly mad at me in that world for not stopping the Rolls Royce accident, we were still in touch by the time I died in that timeline's 2003, which will hopefully not happen now after I've had that rejuvenation. There's no way to know for sure, though, as I destroyed the time machine."

"Don't be afraid" Doc said, smiling. "You'll be perfectly fine. The last time I saw myself in the future, I was alive and well in 2053. If your future is anything like mine, you should still be. The first rejuvenation grants you to live until at least the 2020s, I'm sure, and around that time, there should be the beginning rejuvenations around that will allow you to make it until 2053 like my future self will. I'm sure you'll continue to live a long and happy life, Local Emmett." He frowned. "Although I certainly don't envy you for not having Marty as your friend, anymore."

"I suppose you don't" Emmett said, sighing. "I would've rather return to my friendship with him as well – maybe I shouldn't have shouted at him. It was, after all, no more than understandable that Marty would be mad at me for taking the means to correct his mistake away. Then again, feeling sorry or not, the mistake still was his. He shouldn't have made it in the first place." The inventor sighed, unsure what to do right now.

"Don't feel too bad about everything, but don't be too mad either" Doc said. "You could make it up to him, if you want. Maybe he'd be interested in doing that. You were, after all, his friend for a long time. When did you meet your Marty, anyway? In 1975, like me?"

"That's right" Emmett confirmed. "When he was on a skateboard race with Needles, he swung his board out of control and hit me. I immediately recognized him from 1955, and I couldn't wait for 1985 to arrive. When it did, though, it did not live up to what I expected from it." He sighed, staring at the roof. "But maybe I'm just elaborating on my own problems too much. What's the matter with your time machine? If it won't travel through time normally anymore…"

"It does travel through time all right" Doc reminded him, figuring his local self's mind might've been distracted from that by the tension that the reminder of his former friend had called back. "It's just dimension travel that it's failing in. Every time we arrive in a new world, it tells us it's home – which it isn't." He sighed. "I wonder why it was even able to make those first two transits all right. If it fails, shouldn't it fail every time?"

"Maybe it did fail" Emmett suggested. "It could've just chosen random dimensions no matter what code you tapped in. You were expecting a different world, so seeing another dimension was no surprise to you then. When you really tried to head home, it still chose a different dimension – and that was when you realized something was going wrong drastically for the first time."

Doc sighed. "I suppose that's a very good possibility" he said, sighing. "I wish I had some more proof of it, though. But even if I had, it wouldn't help me out very much. The only thing that would help, is having another me look it over." He looked at Emmett. "Do you want to come? My previous counterpart wasn't able to fix it, but maybe you are…"

"I could at least give it a look" Emmett said, nodding. "It's no use to just tell me everything for nothing, while you could've better spent your and your Marty's time going off to look for another world." He looked around. "Speaking of which, where is your Marty? If your friendship is not strained, shouldn't he be here?"

"He should" Doc said, as they both stood up and walked out the door, "but I sent him off to his home to check on his counterpart. Two persons know more than one, after all. Therefore, I sent him to Lyon Estates. Does Local Marty still live there?"

"He does" Emmett said. "But I'm not sure if he'd be pleasantly amused by his counterpart arriving. Anything that has to do with time travel can remind him of me, and given the bad terms we're on now…" He sighed. "Well, he could get mad at your Marty. In case of which, your Marty – Visiting Marty, so to speak – will receive an unexpected surprise if he goes looking for a counterpart willing to help him, you and me with helping yourselves out."

* * * *

Marty McFly sighed deeply as he approached his home of this dimension. "Yet another me to confront" he muttered. "Hopefully also a me with a home in which I can have some sleep. I've been up ever since we first got into this dimension-hopping thing…" He sighed, as he crossed the street. "Well, I'll just keep my hopes up."

Marty walked right past the house's front door, instead heading for the gate, which was not locked, like it had been the last time he'd approached another version of his house, in the Biff-horrific version of Hill Valley. Well, that was at least positive. He smiled, opened the gate, and walked through the garden to enter his room.

The bedroom looked pretty much as he remembered it, with music posters around and stuff lying around in a messy way. Even his pillow looked like he had left it at home after a long night of sleeping in rather weird positions. The only thing that was not there was his guitar, which kind of surprised Marty. If his counterpart had a dream of being a rock star, which the music posters evidenced and the fact that everything else looked similar evidenced too, why wasn't there a guitar to play on?

The teen finally decided to shrug it off, and exited the room to head up into the hallway, gawking around at the alternate version of his home. All together, it looked pretty familiar, despite the fact that it was not home. Weird, he thought. Well, at least it looks better than my Biff-horrific home – which I never really got a chance to see except for my room because I was so busy heading out of the house that I never cared. He smiled, and headed down the stairs, wondering what the living room would be like in this world.

The room looked pretty similar to their own world, Marty decided, after looking around for a few moments. Everything down to the most insignificant detail was right, and if they hadn't seen the garage still okay, the teen would've figured that they were back home and that between now and the time he was last here, little over an hour and a half ago, Mom or Dad had just moved his guitar to some other place for some reason, probably 'cause Mom had to do the cleaning up. Marty smiled as he looked around, and then, he happened to look at the door just in time to see Jennifer come in, and frown at the sight of him.

"Marty!" she asked, both scolding and disappointed. "Aren't you supposed to be at that meeting with the old members of the Pinheads? You arranged for today to meet each other, didn't you! You told me yourself that you wouldn't be back until three PM! I know you are often late, but you had to be there at one P.M., and now it's one-o-six already and you haven't even left yet!"

Marty winced, wondering why his counterpart was at a meeting with the old members of the Pinheads – they were still together, right? – and why he wasn't at Doc's. But it didn't matter, right now – what did matter, was to answer Jennifer. "Um, well, you know" he started, smiling sheepishly. "I think I just happened to forgot. I, uh, was kind of busy with Doc and all."

Jennifer frowned deeper. "With Doc? You mean, you two made up?"

Marty now frowned too, rather shocked. "Made up?" he asked, forgetting for a moment that they were in another world. "What are you talking about? We're best friends!"

Jennifer shook her head, sadly. "Maybe you were some time ago, but you aren't now, not anymore. Ever since that fight once you broke your hand in that Rolls Royce race, you two haven't been the same again." She failed to notice Marty's gasp at the mention of the accident, and instead looked at Marty's right hand, lifted it up, and let it go. "You just have to give up all hope for your friendship to ever be restar-"

Suddenly, Jennifer gasped, as she processed what she'd just seen. Swifter than Marty could keep count off, she lifted up Marty's right hand again, thoroughly inspected it, and found that it looked perfectly fine, finer than even the best medicine could heal it. It was like the accident had never happened at all. "What the heck?" she called out, completely confused.

This was starting to feel a lot like that first trip to 2015. "Um, Jennifer" Marty started, half-expecting a Doc to show up with a sleep inducer, "I dunno how to tell you this, but I'm not who you think I am. I'm Marty, but from another dimension. Another universe."

Jennifer stared at him, gasped for a while, then turned to him. "All right, I'm not sure if I can believe you're sane anymore."

"You saw my hand" Marty argued. "It's intact, 'cause that race never happened where we came from. You have to know about time travel – if you didn't, it probably wouldn't be there, and then I would have never had a truck or chicken problem in the first place!"

Jennifer looked at him. "Okay, I do believe you now. This is weird, but it's got to be true."

"Thanks" Marty said, smiling. "What made you believe me?"

"The part about the chicken problem" Jennifer said. "You've never admitted it as a problem before, however Doc, your parents and I all insisted you had it, you got furious at the mention of the words. To see this complete turn-around now makes me refuse to believe that you are from this world, so your solution is an acceptable one." She peeked past Marty, who gasped at the weird reason for Jen to believe him. "If you're from another world in an invention of Doc's most likely, is Doc here too? If you never got into that accident, you should still be friends…"

"We are" Marty confirmed. "Doc is around here, but not at my house. When we split up to each find our own counterparts to help us, he decided to go to his counterpart's home, the garage, to check it out. Does, uh, Other Doc still live there?"

"He does" Jennifer confirmed, smiling, "and not on his own either. Doc, our Doc, married a local girl named Susan Clayton last year, and has been living with her ever since. In fact, as of now, Susan is pregnant."

Marty found himself be startled. "Really? My Doc's married to Clara Clayton – yeah, from Clayton Ravine – and he's been like that ever since 1976… or 1885, actually. He's got three kids: Jules, born 1977, Verne, born 1979, and Martin, named after me, who was born on November 12th of 1986 – right at 10:04 PM."

"Fascinating, I guess" Jennifer said. "I don't think my Marty and I ever expected Doc to even have a kid in the first place, but if in your universe, he has three… but did you say he married this Clara lady in 1976 or actually in some other time in the Old West? Had your Doc finished his time machine by 1976, then? In our universe, he didn't complete it until '85… October twenty-sixth, to be exact. That's where he first showed it up to my Marty, and Marty went to the fifties with it. Spent a week trying to get his parents to fall in love and to get back home by the lightning – "

"…bolt at the clock tower, I know" Marty finished. "That happened to me, too. No, what happened was that Doc stayed behind in the Old West on a trip there, accidentally, and once I got back to the future a train destroyed the machine so I couldn't go back. Doc built a time machine out of a train in the Old West and took nine years to build it – that's why the years are nine years out of synch. Doc didn't finish his time machine out of a train until 1894, and he, Clara and the kids moved back from 1895 to 1986. I was happy to see they were back, as I had missed Doc terribly."

Jennifer smiled. "Seems like you, and your Doc, have an interesting story to tell" she said. "I can't believe there's actually another universe, but I've got to believe it now, after the evidence I've seen and heard."

Marty winced. "I could hardly believe it either" he said, confidentially. "And I wish I still didn't believe, because it's trapping Doc and I hopping between different worlds without much hope of getting home, and if my other self really is as childish as you made him appear to be when you made that chicken problem comment…" He groaned. "I didn't really think I could ever act that childish. Then again, I was pretty much the same prior to 1985 in the new timeline… but the other me just never grew up! He's lucky no worse came from those things, seeing as he could've been killed in that race."

"Yeah" Jennifer said, nodding. "I really can't believe how easy to challenge he is. I would certainly react a lot different to that, than he does. Boy, he really doesn't have a solution to this and it doesn't even matter for him, does it? I'm staying with him because sometimes, he's still nice and friendly, but he can be grumpy. I think that, if I'd ever seen our family in 2015, he would've been exactly the same as I'm seeing him now." She then blushed. "Boy, I'm sorry, telling you these things while it's actually another you which I'm talking about… I feel bad about that, now."

"Don't be" Marty said. "I'm pretty used to calling other me's 'him' now, and to discuss them as such. But what I really noticed was something else." He looked at her. "Did you really not get a look at your family in twenty-fifteen?"

Jennifer shook her head. "Nope" she said. "Just as I was waking up from that sleep inducer, Doctor Brown arrived to pick me up. I fully regained consciousness about a minute or two later, and then, I was in the car, and we were on our way up to eighty-eight and to travel back to 1985. Marty told me about the secret, then, and I saw flying cars around me so I would've been foolish if I'd not believed him. But we never saw ourselves there, not even for a second. Marty only got to see his son, and I got to see nothing but the interior of the DeLorean and whatever view you got of the outside from there."

Marty smirked. "That's very different from what my Jen told me" he said. "She was picked up, yeah, but by cops, and not by Doc. Doc and I arrived about a minute later and followed the cops to our future home, in Hilldale. You woke up there, and hid in the bathroom while looking at Older Me, Marlene – she's our future daughter – Junior and my folks at age seventy-seven conversing. You also watched Future Me getting fired due another chicken problem thing. Just as you were about to leave, you saw your future self and fainted, and Doc and I took you back to the DeLorean and to 1985. And what followed after that, was a completely different and more complicated story… but you really don't remember any of this? Not even the cops picking you up?"

Jennifer shook her head. "Nope" she repeated. "None of these things ever happened to me. If I'd seen this, I would've persuaded Marty more not to do it when I saw him get challenged into that Rolls Royce incident the next day, and I wish I had. I was out for over twenty hours already, and Marty didn't woke up until six P.M. on the next day, Monday the twenty-eighth. That accident really ruined his life, and I doubt he's ever going to be somebody now…" Was there a slight hesitate, a knowing hesitate, in her voice?

"I feel sorry for you" Marty said. "I really do. I am just glad that I never made such a mess out of my life. I really could've had it ten times worse, if I have to believe your story – which I definitely do, as I don't believe you would ever lie to me. Holy shit, that accident going through…" He sighed. "But why didn't Doc do anything? Didn't he want to stop it?" He couldn't imagine his friend ever not doing such a thing, as he was convinced that the inventor would finally give in to his pleas to stop it, but maybe the local version of Doc wasn't quite as good befriended with Local Marty as his Doc was. It was possible, of course.

"Oh, I do think he wanted to stop it" Jennifer said. "But finally, he gave in to the fear of destroying the space-time continuum and destroyed the time machine as he had been planning to do ever since he got back. If he stopped the incident, how could he find out about it in the first place?"

"Maybe other me could pretend to be poor in the future" Marty suggested. "That's a good idea for what I'll be doing, too. If I and the local me pretend to have our hands broken and beg the younger Doc for help, he'd still be doing the same things as earlier on, not knowing that we're just faking it. Also, we could do the same with Jennifer – our Jennifer – visiting our house on October twenty-first of that same year."

Jennifer smiled. "I'm kind of curious to hear what the other me lived through in your universe at our home in the future" she said. "What exactly did happen? You did give me the main summary, but not the details… which I'm pretty interested in, too."

"Well" Marty started, not sure if he should tell every single detail as Local Jennifer wanted, or if he should just tell her that she shouldn't know. He didn't want to be as stubborn as Doc was on these subjects, and he could see the other Jen really wanted to know. Besides, if his other self was going to be a loser with his hand broken, he'd try every little bit of it to help Local Jen to get Local Marty to change his life and do something that did not involve guitar playing, and still make something out of himself. He really felt sorry for other Jen, and even to an extent for his childish local self. Therefore, he had to tell something. "Well, you see…"

At that moment, Marty heard the door go open some distance away. George McFly entered, a bright smile on his face. "Hi, Marty!" he greeted, not noticing the teenager hiding his hand. "And hi Jennifer. What's Marty still doing here? He is supposed to be at that reunion, isn't he?"

Marty nodded, shyly. "Um, yeah, I suppose" he muttered. "I'd better be going now, yeah. See you, Jennifer." He waved to his girlfriend, and then headed up to his bedroom. "I'm just gonna get my stuff, Dad."

"That's fine" George assured him. "Just don't forget that meeting you still have to attend. You know your friends won't be too happy if you miss it. They were before, when you wanted to be at home studying a book and therefore showed up half an hour late." He sighed. "Marty, you really should get over that sadness of yours. It's been two-and-a-half years since you broke your hand in that Rolls Royce race. You should try to get somewhere with your life, not spend the rest of it complaining and crying. We are there for you now, but we won't be able to support you forever, and we won't be there forever. I've just turned fifty, Lorraine turned that three months ago, and even if we reach the healthy age of ninety, you'll have to learn to support yourself Marty. Things can't go on like this forever and you know it. Jennifer knows it, too. She's tried to talk you out of this. Why haven't you listened to her, yet?"

Marty winced, knowing that this was the kind of conversation he'd not looked forward to – one that concerned the other him. "Um, I think I forgot" he lied, unsure what else to say. "I will try to remember to fight this, though. But now, I really have to go." He hoped he hadn't said enough to get the other him into trouble, although Local Marty almost deserved it for acting so stupid. Then still, he didn't really want his other self to get into only more trouble. He just didn't respect Local Marty's behaviour.

George nodded, as Marty headed upstairs. He heard his father call something after him about himself going to leave for an extra work shift now. Good – then he at least wouldn't have to cope with Dad bickering about a Pinheads reunion he was supposed to attend, and where his other self most likely was, now. Now, he could perhaps have a look at his other self's room.

As he'd seen before, the bedroom was just like his normal bedroom except for a lack of a guitar, and as he looked at the bed, Marty felt the urge for going into it growing. It was around one-thirty P.M. now, but it was two-thirty A.M. in their world, and it was long past bedtime, even for a college student. Resisting the urge to get under the blankets, knowing that his somewhat jerky other self would be more than a little surprised if he found another version of himself lying on his bed, Marty grabbed a book from one of the shelves, and found it be his diary from 1985. Suddenly feeling interested, Marty opened and started reading, figuring that reading something that belonged to another him wasn't really stealing.

The diary, or so the teen found out, was pretty much the same to what he remembered from home, or at least in the beginning. Therefore, a bored Marty quickly skipped those parts, and eventually arrived at the month October. Feeling the excitement grow as the pages went past and the day of Doc's biggest experiment came closer, he went on, and finally turned to Saturday, October 26, 1985.

Saturday, October 26, 1985, at 2:35 A.M.

What happened today, or maybe I should say the past week, is pretty weird. As I wrote yesterday, I went out to meet Doc at the mall. He showed me his new experiment, and it was a time machine out of a DeLorean! Honestly, he just put Einie inside it, let it drive up to us, and then it vanished! Apparently, his time machine works with time circuits or something like that, and you set it to the date you want to go, drive it up to 88, and vanished. Also, it's powered on plutonium, which I found to be disturbing once some Libyan terrorists showed up to shoot Doc about stealing their plutonium, and when they tried to shoot me too, I escaped with the DeLorean, only I accidentally travelled back to 1955, where I crashed into a barn and was narrowly able to escape kicking over a pine tree and riding off to the road which led towards Hill Valley. I stopped when I saw Lyon Estates being there but the homes hadn't been

Marty sighed as he stopped reading halfway and turned the page. This was all similar – he didn't really need to read this. What he was looking for was actual information on what was so different in this world that was not there in his. He sighed, flipped some more pages as the October twenty-sixth entry was quite big and looked at the next entry, which seemed to have been written that night, the night he'd been planning to go to the lake, and apparently, that was right where Local Marty was.

Visiting Marty sighed for a moment, wondering why his other self had managed to get to the lake, since even if they'd returned to the right '85, they would've returned to 9 PM, then looked at the entry and started to read again.

Saturday, October 26, 1985, at 11:53 P.M. (I think so)

Today was a pretty interesting day, I admit. After the whole time travel incident, I woke up at around ten-thirty, and I thought the whole thing was a nightmare, which I could've found out it wasn't if I'd read this book. I walked into the kitchen and saw everything was different. Dave's a business man, Mom is healthy, thin and likes to tennis with Dad, and Linda has boyfriend(s)! (I don't think she really has changed too much though, although she is somewhat thinner) Also, Dad apparently is a science-fiction writer and has just published his new book, called 'A Match Made In Space' and Biff is a car wax guy whom Dad pushes around. I was fascinated at the whole thing, and the best of all was that I got a new truck in the process.

When I went to check it out, Jenny showed up. She's still the same. We were about to kiss when Doc appeared in his DeLorean, telling us to come back with him to the future because apparently, something was wrong with our kids. We got in, and Doc flew the car away – yes, I said flew – and into the future, October 21st 2015 to be exact, that's what he said. We arrived in the middle of other flying cars on a road in the sky, and soon Doc flew us down to an alley near the Square, but not after first knocking Jennifer out with an alpha rhythm thing, saying she was asking too much questions about the future, which might've been true.

Anyway, Doc gave me some future clothes and finally told me what exactly was wrong. My future son, Marty Junior, a look-alike who apparently is an unconfident wimp was pushed into a robbery by Griff Tannen, Biff's grandkid. I had to pose as Junior to tell Griff 'no', which I did at Lou's Aerobics Studio, called the 'Café 80s' in the future, although both Doc and I found out it's not really '80s, not really done very well at least. Anyway, after some business with Junior showing up after all, I said 'no' to Griff, and was about to leave when the guy called me a chicken, and that's when the weirdness started.

You see, up until that moment, I never remembered having any issue with being called chicken before. Sure, I was annoyed, but I never really reacted. But apparently, at that point my 'new' self took over my brain, basing his chicken issues on memories of Dad being confident, while how hard I sought, the only memory of Dad was as a wimp, except for that morning of course. It was really weird, and I wonder what Doc would have to say about it.

But anyway, I reacted, and Griff got a little angry with me. He actually grew, and I tried to punch him, but some bionic implant things he's got inside him blocked my punch, or so Doc said (the part about Griff having those implants, I mean). I then punched him in the private area, he let go, and I threw the guy into his gang, and headed off, took a little girl's 'hoverboard' and started repeating the whole thing that I said yesterday that happened in '55. The hoverboard was cool, but Griff and his gang had boards too, and I just narrowly escaped them, but then I went out of control and flew over the pond in front of the Future Courthouse, and I ended up being trapped at about three or four feet from the edge because the board didn't work on water. Griff, of course, had a board that did, and he and his gang flew towards me. At the last moment, I jumped into the water, Griff hit a stone with his swing instead of me and he and the gang ended up flying through the air, and through the windows into the Courthouse. I got above water, and headed through the Courthouse Mall back to the front of the pond, where I was confronted by some guy called Terry. I knew him from '55 and '85 both – he was a car mechanic in the past, he is working at Texaco now, but in the future, he donates for the clock tower. So, he asked me to 'thumb a hundred bucks' or whatever that is, and as I'm about to respond there's a newsflash about the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series against the Miami Gators. I was surprised Miami even had a team, let alone that good to be second, but Terry started talking to me about how it was a hundred to one shot and how he wanted to go back to the beginning of the season to put some money on the Cubbies. And then it hit me.

Right when we first arrived in the future, I'd seen somewhat of a book lying in the window of an antique store. It was called 'Gray's Sports Almanac 1950-2000'. I didn't react on it then, but I sure as heck did at the moment Terry said that. That almanac was the way to get rich – bet on things I knew the answer to. So, I headed over to the store, bought that almanac by thumbing to a plate, and then I headed out with my prize, just as Doc arrived. Luckily he didn't see me as he landed on the street, and I watched with him as his newspaper changed from my kid getting arrested to Griff and gang getting arrested 'cause of them breaking the Courthouse windows. Doc was happy, and once we were in the car, after a few near-incidents with me almost dropping the almanac, we picked up Jennifer just in time before the police could get there, and we headed over to the skyway. Doc started worrying about what if my other self hit us and how that could create a paradox (something that ends the universe) and he finally concluded that he should destroy the time machine. I reluctantly agreed, but I did get him to change the time to 11:30 so Jen and I would have enough time to go to the lake. Once that was done, we hit eighty-eight and vanished back to '85.

We arrived outside of town and flew over to my house, where Doc dropped us off, and then he headed over to his lab. I told Jennifer about the almanac, and then I headed inside. Seeing as it wasn't even noon yet and sure not time yet to go to the lake, I started reading in my diary, curious to whatever things the other me could've experienced. I've been doing that for a few hours, and I slept a bit from two to four, and finally, it was five PM and Jennifer and I headed out for the lake, where we arrived about an hour later. We set up our sleeping bags, and we watched the sun lower, and did a few things that we shouldn't mention here, but we didn't really do naughty things. Anyway, finally Jen and I decided that maybe we should prepare to go to sleep, but we are going to gaze up to the stars for an hour or something like that. This visit is being absolutely wonderful, so far, and I think that it's going to be even better as time passes.

Oh, Jennifer called – I have to stop, she says. Well, I guess that's it, then, see you tomorrow, when Jennifer and I will be safely back at home, and I can go and start studying in the almanac from 2015!

Marty looked up. He didn't really need to read the next pages – he knew what it would be like. It would be about the Rolls Royce race and how it went so drastically wrong and how Marty had been injured. There was no need to read information he already knew, but there were definitely some interesting things in his other self's bedroom that required studying, like the fact that separated other Marty McFly from him, the silly detail that had been mentioned in the diary, and that neither himself at that time, or the local now, could've ever imagined being the cause to such a difference. For a moment, Marty found himself to be stupid, and resisted the urge to slap himself for failing to pay attention to something like that like his more alert counterpart had done. But judging from his other self's current state, Marty was sure that if his life had turned out to be like Other Marty's, he would've sincerely regretted the things that led up to this present, which he figured the other him did, too.

The teen looked at the diary once more, before putting it aside and moving over to the other books that were on the shelf, like his 1986 diary and his 1987 one. He kind of figured the important things weren't going to be coming until 1989 though, the time when he would first really be able to use the thing that separated this dimension so thoroughly from his: Gray's Sports Almanac.

While in their world, Marty had lost it after accidentally turning it around to cause it to fall out onto Doc's feet, and it had eventually ended it's life after being owned by a younger Biff Tannen on the night of November twelfth, 1955, at the bottom of a bucket, where it had gone up in flames, in this world none of that all had happened. Somehow, Local Marty had managed to resist the urge to grab the bag with the almanac inside at the side he wanted to, and it had not fallen out onto the street, and due to that lack of delay, they'd been able to pick up Jennifer before the cops got to her, and had gone home straight away without any 1985-A, 1955 and 1885 experience. Therefore, there had been no Seamus McFly to convince him to do else, no Buford 'Mad Dog' Tannen who wanted to shoot him, no Clint Eastwood tombstone that had told him that if he went through with this he'd end up in a grave, and therefore, he had still felt every bit as challenged by Needles' race proposal as he had in the original timeline after the jerk called him a 'chicken', and he'd raced the guy, broke his hand on the edge of a Rolls Royce, and lost all ability to play the guitar good ever again. His life in here was horrible, and now he realized that, Marty wouldn't trade his life for this one even if they gave him a million if he did it.

Marty sighed, looked down, and read through all of the diaries. It was kind of hard to keep himself focused, considering his tired feelings, but finally, he managed to get through all of them and keep on reading. He finally finished at four-o-five, just twenty-five minutes before Doc had told him he would be picked up. Marty sighed, placed the diaries aside, and got up, about to head downstairs and, at four-twenty-five, outside to await his best friend's arrival from down there.

Only then, just as Marty was about to open the door to outside, the door gave away, and he stared right into the face of his local counterpart, the one he'd been thinking about when reading the diaries all through the afternoon: "Other" Marty McFly.

Other Marty stepped back, startled, clearly not expecting this. "Holy shit!" he hissed, his face going pale within the time of just a few seconds. "You're me! Why? And what are you doing here? How did you even get here, the time machine was completely destroyed by Doc, or at least the parts that made it work!"

The visitor sighed. "Yeah, I've heard this before" he said, in a bored way. "Or at least, part of it. Let me get this straight: I am you, yeah, but I'm the you from another dimension, and in my universe, Doc has not destroyed the time machine, and we still use it, and also, in my world, I have not broken my hand, and Doc and I are still friends, which according to Jennifer we aren't here, and I think I know as well as you do why that is. I know your diaries, I am you, you can't, you shouldn't lie to me. I don't like to get too much of a first impression on someone, but I do want to skip the introductions with you, as you're the same person as I am, just from another world, so let's get straight to the point. Tell me, other me, did you or did you not keep Gray's Sports Almanac 1950-2000 after buying it in the year 2015, on the date of October twenty-first to be exact?"

"Yeah" Local Marty said, still not grasping it all. "I don't get it. How can you be from another world? You're still friends with Doc?" He frowned. "And did that comment mean you never kept the almanac, but instead lose it? It was close, of course, but I made it. I can't believe I would've been ever so stupid to let it slip."

"It was too quick for me to react on time" Visiting Marty said, defending himself. "Besides, looking at how you and I both turned out, I do think that I was incredibly lucky that happened. Believe me, I wouldn't want to trade my life for yours, ever."

"Then what is your life?" Local Marty asked.

Visiting Marty smiled. "Good you ask, so I can tell you what you missed" he said. "First of all, my hand is not broken, as I never got into that stupid accident as I learnt to overcome my chicken problem long before that – and don't give me that nonsense about it not being a problem, 'cause it is. Second of all, I am still friends with Doc, and I still hang around with him on a regular bases, which you obviously haven't. Third of all, I haven't turned out to be such a childish teen that doesn't want to face the reality of his broken hand which has caused not only Doc but also Jennifer to take a step away from you, if even a bit. Your Doc's been married for… how long again?"

"Seven months" Local Marty said, grumpy.

"…seven months now, and have you ever looked him up to see how his wife was doing? I doubt you've even ever seen her in the first place! Do you even know what she looks like, huh?"

"Yeah, I do" Local Marty said, almost snapping at his counterpart. "I saw her during the wedding, and a few times before that. I know what she looks like. You just think I don't. You think I'm a complete asshole, don't you?" His voice rose. "But I'm not. I do care about other people. It's just that Doc didn't, or at least didn't care enough about me to make sure I did not ruin my life, and that's why we broke up, and not a fault on my part!"

"You call that not a fault on your part?" Visiting Marty argued back. "I do. If I had been yelling at Doc, it would be his right to say something back, and maybe we could've calmed down and talked naturally about it like friends, and maybe he'd agree to rebuild the time machine! In the first reality we visited, the DeLorean was rebuilt right from October '85 on, and it's a week away from being finished now! In this world, it wasn't even destroyed, just the time travel parts were, so if you had been reasonable and talked things out well, your hand might've been fixed already, and even if it wasn't, you at least wouldn't have lost your best friend! But you did! And it was all because of yourself, and you know it! Why were you stupid enough to get into that stupid race in the first place! Why did you do that, huh?"

"He called me a chicken!" Local Marty protested, however he felt a little blown away from the visitor's load of comments. "I couldn't refuse then!"

"You were a chicken, just because you did not refuse!" Visiting Marty snapped. "Don't you see? If you had refused, where would it leave you? Everything would've been fine! Sure, Needles would've teased you for some time afterwards, but aside from that, he would've eventually shut up, and you would've never raced that car!" He stared at his counterpart who was feeling too overwhelmed to say anything. "And you know what? After you did those stupid things and got Doc so far that he stopped your friendship after you shouted at him, starting it, you also planned to use that stupid sports almanac! And don't tell me I'm lying, 'cause I sure as heck ain't! I am you, and I read your diary! You are planning to use that almanac, and I'm going to stop you! Don't you know how irresponsible you are acting, you, you…"

At that moment, Visiting Marty caught sight of himself in the mirror, and stopped in the middle of his load of insults. What he saw was exactly what he'd accused the local of being: someone who'd obviously lost his temper and was shouting no-good insults at his friends to cover up what he himself had done. The visitor turned red. "Oh man" he muttered, almost chuckling. "I'm acting exactly like you did in '85!"

Local Marty smirked. "I noticed, too" he said, softly. "And you're right, maybe I've been sort of an asshole. But I'm just not ready to confront Doc and ask him to make up with me. What if he said no? After all those pep-talks from you, it then would not make any difference, like, at all…"

"You're acting like Teen Dad now" Visiting Marty said, laughing. "Really, Other Me, you gotta see this as a smaller thing, not a matter of life or death. I can understand that you don't like being turned down on a get-back-to-being-friends attempt – I would not like that, either. But you have to accept that from before, or everything will be all right. Being so over-reacting as you are and I was to being called 'chicken' is bad, but being a wimp isn't good either. If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything, you know?"

The local smirked. "Yeah, I sure remember that" he said. "Thanks for your advice on everything. I suppose that it'll still be up to Doc to make the first step, I guess. But then still, at least, if he wants to make up, I won't turn him down. Thanks for all your great advice, other me. Like Dad, I'll try to never forget it."

"Thanks" Visiting Marty said. "You know, after Doc found out about the almanac in our world, he threw it away, and as we were off to save Jennifer from running into her older self, which eventually did happen but didn't have fatal consequences, since we were to late to get her before the cops did, Old Biff had found it and stole the machine. Next thing we knew, we thought we time travelled back to '85 but ended up in Hell Valley. Biff was rich and had an hotel on top of the Courthouse called Biff Tannen's Pleasure Paradise, he was married to Mom and had killed Dad in '73, committed Doc in '83, indirectly made Dave a bum and Linda a prostitute and he sent me off to boarding schools in Switzerland. That reality was all because of the almanac, and I wouldn't want the 2015 of this world to look like that. The saying 'power corrupts – absolute power corrupts absolutely' is really fitting here, and I wouldn't want you to turn out like that. You understand?"

Local Marty nodded, pale. "Yeah, I do" he muttered. "If I'd seen something like that, I'd also want to make sure it never happened. Holy shit… I can't believe Biff turned out like that! He was pretty evil before Dad knocked him out, yeah, but even then, I couldn't see him as really a murderer, and he's considerably nicer, now. He really killed Dad?"

"And tried to do the same with me when it turned out I knew too much" Visiting Marty said, nodding sadly. "Would've succeeded too, if it hadn't been for Doc showing up. So I jumped off the roof we were on, onto the DeLorean, and I then showed up again right in front of a dumb-founded version of Biff's face. Which worked into our advantage – Doc had the nice ability to knock him out with the gull wing door since he wasn't alert enough, and we left that world."

Local Marty smiled. "Cool" he said. "I wouldn't want to have lived through that horror reality, but it would've been kind of cool to see Doc knock out Rich Biff… if that asshole really shot Dad, he completely deserved it."

Visiting Marty nodded. "You're right" he said. "You know, I…"

What he wanted to say was cut off when he heard the familiar sound of a bus landing in the street, and as he looked at the alarm clock next to Local Marty's bed, he saw it was 4:29 PM. "Sounds like our trip to this world is over" he muttered sighing. "Too bad – I was just going to ask you if I could sleep on your bed. I didn't want to sleep there and have you walk in on me sleeping, but now I figured it wouldn't hurt… it really is almost five-thirty A.M. tomorrow for me now. Well, maybe we'll get somewhat of a chance in the next universe. What's probably positive for me is that Doc, seeing as his counterpart lives in such a small house, most likely did not get that chance either, so we're still matched up in time having rested and been awake, which helps when we arrive in the next reality and get to sleep, so one of us won't need extra sleep. Then again, Doc probably woke up earlier on the day we left, so a little extra sleep might actually do match things up…"

There was a loud sound that was obviously the horn of the bus, as an annoyed Doc was reminding him that they should go. "I'm probably talking too much" Visiting Marty said, chuckling. "I gotta go. You better stay here – it's best for people not to see both of us together."

"Yeah" Local Marty said. He then hugged his counterpart. "I'll miss you. Well, at least I can say I will try to do my best to get some progress done in getting Doc and I back to being friends again."

"That's what you should" Visiting Marty said, smiling. He then headed down the stairs, waving a few times at his local self, until he'd disappeared out of the local's sight. After that, he ran through the living room, ignored Dave and Linda sitting there, and got out through the front door and ran up through the street up to the bus.

As he entered the bus, Doc looked a slight tad annoyed at him. "Couldn't you get here sooner?"

"Sorry, Doc" Marty apologized. "I was… occupied, I suppose. Did you know that…"

"No time, Marty" Doc said. "We'll get there later. Right now, I just want to get out of here without being seen. We've attracted too much attention already, so it's better that we just head up to 88 and leave as soon as possible."

"But, Doc, I…"

"Marty, I believe you didn't entirely understand me" Doc said. "I said I needed to go, now. So, we'll leave. I can understand you want to tell me something, but we can save that for some other time. No protest, please." He then ignored his friend, and flew the time machine up through the skies. "Let's see… it's somewhere around four-thirty now, so maybe we should try to get forwards instead of backwards in time. If we want to try to get some sleep, we should perhaps arrive in the evening. So, let's see, it's four-thirty-nine now, so our destination will be at six-forty. That way, we'll be exactly eleven hours ahead on our normal schedule." He smiled at his friend, and input the time of arrival.

Marty just leaned back, as Doc shot up through the clouds, up to eighty-eight. Within a few seconds, the familiar sonic booms hit and the bright flash appeared. As it cleared down again, Marty could notice it had gotten darker outside. Apparently, Doc had kept to what he said and travelled forwards, all right.

As he was just adjusting to everything around him, Doc turned around. "Now, what did you want to say?"

Marty smiled. "The thing I wanted to say was this: I talked with my other self, and it turned out that he has something… interesting in his possession."

"Like what?" Doc asked, focusing on the air in front of him.

"The sports almanac."

The inventor gasped, and looked around. "Great Scott. Really?"

Marty nodded. "Yeah, he does" he said. "Apparently, he somehow managed to not turn around the bag and cause it to fall onto your feet in 2015, so they got to escape out of there with Jennifer before the cops got there. That was the reason that there was no Biff incident and you didn't end up in the Old West – Old Biff never got the almanac, because my other self kept it all the time. He's planning to use it, too, once he turns twenty-one."

Doc quietly said something not so nice, and hit the dashboard in frustration. "I can't believe this… I should've stopped him! We were there, so close, and we could've taken it away… you do understand why there is the need to do that, don't you? I trust you and the other you is probably not such a bad person as well, he just has that nasty chicken problem, but we know from absolute power corrupts."

"I know, Doc" Marty said. "And he knows. I told him about Biff and his world."

Doc frowned. "Why would you?" he said. "You did talk to him about the almanac and not took it away, so it's apparently not like you care for the future of that world."

"That's not true!" Marty exclaimed, defensively. "I do care, but I also care for my counterpart! If you had your hand, or at least your science knowledge ruined, and the only way to get a good life was use future information, wouldn't you do that? Doc, he's human, and once you get to know him better, he's not that bad. He isn't Biff, Doc, and I don't understand why you fail to see that."

"I do see that" the inventor protested.

"No you don't" Marty said. "You're comparing them, so you do think of him as a Biff-like type. But he's not bad, not that bad, and he sure as heck wouldn't do anything like Biff did. That's exactly the reason I told him about how the future of his world could be like if he turned out like Biff, to make sure he wouldn't turn out like Biff, but instead would go nice and smooth and calm on it, and not go mad from the power. I like myself shooting someone as less as you do, Doc. Trust me – I really got him shaken up with that."

"Yeah, I guess I'm kind of overreacting on you" Doc said, nodding. "And on your other self, for that matter. We should stop talking about it, now… we're no longer in that reality, so there's no need to think of what to do if we were, just the only thing needed is think what to actually do now." He looked outside. "And that is land, as we appear to be near my home – or at least, where my home is in the home world." He smiled with obvious anxiety.

"Take a look at the map if you're curious" Marty suggested, noticing his friend's excitement. "You can do that, you know."

"Yeah, I know… but I can last out these few moments" Doc said, now entering the airspace above their property. He looked behind himself with a look that made clear Marty should get his fingers crossed. Then, as they finally arrived over the house, Doc let out a shriek of excitement.

"What's it?" Marty said, staring at something out of the window in a bored way.

"We're home!" Doc exclaimed, happy like a child on Christmas Eve. "Look down, there's Clara – and little Martin is with her, and he's at his normal age! Marty, we actually made it! Finally!"

"Don't get your hopes up, Doc" Marty said, sighing softly. "As much as I would want it, I know we're not home."

"Why wouldn't we be?" Doc said, defensively. "Do you doubt my judgement? Look yourself, it's Clara and Martin out there!"

"I know, Doc" Marty said, "but I still am sure we're not home."

"Why?" the inventor asked.

As a response, Marty just pointed out of the window. And as Doc looked at what his friend pointed at, he could see something that confirmed his deepest fears and made him feel secure that, like his friend said, they had not returned home. Outside, on the road, was an ordinary road sign. The lower pointed northeast, in the direction they'd just come from, and read 'Eastwood Ravine 4 ½ miles'. The other, however, which was pointed to the south, to the direction of Hill Valley, was the weirdest. The destination on it was so normal, it took Doc two reads to catch the hidden meaning, and when he read it, he turned white as a sheet.

The road sign read: 'Twin Pines Mall, 4 miles'.

"Great Scott" Doc whispered. The fact that sign read Twin Pines Mall, not Lone Pine Mall, a change that had been made in their world on Marty's first time trip, made very clear one major thing.

This place, however undoubtedly similar in layout, was not their home.