Disclaimer: I just watched BTTF III today, and I could still remember most of the lines despite not having watched it since Future Day last year. How that does not give me the right to own the movies I don't know but, alas, it doesn't.
Author's Note: This is a new, long chapter, filled with complex temporal mechanics and theories on how to save Calvin Arthur McFly. I put a lot of thought into this, but I'm sure there could still be plotholes and issues I haven't thought of so if you find any of those, by all means please inform me. But we're definitely moving closer to the end of the story now. Will Calvin be saved? You'll never know unless you read... the next chapter. But I think this one's pretty good too, honest!
Please review!
Chapter Seventeen
Wednesday, April 13, 1988
07:30 PM PDT
Hill Valley, California
Over the next days, the attention of the locals and the visitors was continuously divided between two very different things. Actively, they were working on repairing the DFSCUPCIF and the time circuitry of the visitors' bus so that the visiting duo would be able to return home. Passively, thoughts about Calvin's situation lingered on everybody's mind, and the question of how it should be resolved remained a very present one even if it was avoided whenever possible.
As the work on the time machine progressed towards completion, Calvin and Ann gradually became more nervous at the thought of their impending separation. Even whenever only one of them was required to work on the project according to the Docs' schedule, the other would still be there and they would hang out together at every chance they got. They also spent their evenings together – some at the McFly house, others at the Parker place, or at least when Calvin wasn't frantically working on his book to at least leave something behind for the residents of this world to remember him by. Calvin knew that their close interaction made everybody else feel like they were like fresh lovers – something they of course weren't – but he didn't care. If these were the last moments he was ever going to get with the girl he loved, he wanted to make the most of them. And maybe if he did spend enough time with Ann to… well, not get tired of her, that was perhaps too harsh a phrase, but at least to get the urge to spend some time by himself for a while, it would make the transition to his future home easier.
It was a silly theory, one that ignored the fact that he would miss his parents and his siblings too – and despite what seemed to be the common presumptions, he wasn't always over at Ann's place and tried to spend more time with the other family members whom he might never see again as well. It also turned out to be incorrect. The more he spent time with Ann, the more he wanted to stay with her, stay close to her, love her and care for her, perhaps eventually marry her and have kids together while he would be a successful author – the picture from Mike's future newspaper. That future, which Calvin longed for more every day, was however growing gradually more distant as preparations for his move got underway. As the work on the time machine progressed, Calvin was kindly told to collect everything he would want to take along – which logically couldn't be too much, as the time machine wasn't that big… not to mention too much weight might hinder the time travel process and land them in the same situation Marty and Doc were already in. Although leaving material items behind didn't bother him too much, it did hurt him by making his departure seem all the more real. Not even Visiting Marty voluntarily agreeing to have Calvin read all he had so far on his novel to him could lift his spirits.
Life went on, and as much as Calvin wanted to delay the process the repair works inched towards completion, getting closer every day. Occasionally, Chris and Emmett would visit the future to get some of the new technology they needed, but would categorically refuse Calvin and Ann's pleas to look them up. Chris made it quite clear to them that yes, of course they cared, but this was non-negotiable and it was no use talking about Calvin's issues all the time unless and until they became acute. End of story.
Thus, Calvin tried to dedicate himself to the work at hand, a job which managed to keep all of them well occupied. They removed all the time circuitry, of which only the Destination Dimension function had been truly broken but the others had nonetheless suffered from the side effects of the electricity overload, and rebuilt and repaired it. That was comparatively easy, even as the replacement parts for the sensitive equipment didn't always fit in where they should and Doc, Chris and Emmett were all over the place trying to make sure everyone did their work as they should. Not that Calvin could blame them, of course – one mistake could land them in the same kind of trouble again. The second issue was even harder, though, namely repairing the DFSCUPCIF. Although here only the Fusion controller was truly broken and it had been relatively old, Doc wanted a new, modern, nigh-on-flawless replacement, which meant fitting this new sensitive microchip into its surroundings, which meant remodeling the surroundings of the microchip at the heart of the time bus. It was made worse by the fact that Doc, who had at first presumed that they could fix it like this with the DFSCUPCIF still inside the time machine, came to the conclusion after four days that yes, it would be better to remove it from its position. That, of course, meant only one thing: more work.
The steady pace of the work kept everyone distracted, and it was therefore a sudden and unexpected development when on Wednesday, the job began to wrap up. The group had finished the new circuits, and took the better half of the afternoon to install them in the car, repeated calls from the kitchen that it was just about dinner time going ignored or being met with a "Just a few more minutes, Clara, we promise!" But around 7 PM, Chris ran a final check on the physical elements of the time machine and declared that everything was the way it should be again.
Although that didn't mean the job was fully done – Doc immediately pressed for a final thorough check of all systems in the time machine, and unlike last time he intended to personally supervise the computer's work – the fact that the whole business was just about over did hit home. Just a few more hours of sleep, a few final routine checks, and Doc and Visiting Marty would be leaving. As the three scientists set the departure time for 12:15 PM the next day – the same time the visitors had left their home world which was to them now two and a half weeks ago – Ann and Calvin exchanged nervous looks.
At dinner, nobody said a word about the great issue, and Calvin held both hopes that the others had somehow forgotten about the fact that he'd have to come along and fears that Doc and Visiting Marty would just say "Come on Calvin, we're leaving" at noon the next day like it was a routine thing. For now, Visiting Marty was especially talkative, now more than ever enthusiastic to go home again which ended a weird cycle in which he'd been homesick at the start, gradually warmed up to this reality over the course of the week, and now was more homesick than ever again. But all that would be cured soon.
That night, George and Lorraine McFly would be coming over, both for a final goodbye to their visitors (and their son) and to watch the third of the Back to the Future movies. Robert and Marlene Parker had been invited as well but had politely declined. Calvin figured that since they weren't as personally involved as the others were, it was excusable in a way, even though he remembered them coming over the night Doc and Chris had first announced the cause of his problems and started two and a half years of living hell.
That wasn't fair, of course. It was desperation speaking that made Calvin Arthur McFly blame some of his best friends for the disaster that had struck him, and it was stupid and pointless to do so. On that note, he would be better off watching the movie with them, not saying a word about his illness, and hope against hope that it would provide him with inspiration for a cure.
Therefore, it was Calvin who more than anyone else in the room had his eyes glued to the television screen from the moment Doc popped the third DVD into the player, and it was Calvin more than anyone else who was disappointed. Although of course the third movie of the trilogy was about time travel and provided fascinating differences – such as Visiting Marty being the one to call himself Clint Eastwood (which Calvin supposed made sense because he wasn't there to take the name before Marty could) and the ravine being subsequently called Eastwood Ravine – it had no solutions to offer on dimensional travel. That had always been a long shot, given how the trilogy had been about the first, tentative journeys through the space-time continuum for the other Doc and Marty and thus probably wouldn't contain such great complexities, and that Doc and Marty hadn't mentioned anything from this adventure as a solution before. Still, they might have forgotten all about it and this would then have refreshed their memories.
But it didn't. The movie trilogy ended on a fascinating end note which included Jennifer being told the truth and Doc having a conversation with Visiting Marty which was ambiguous enough on whether the scientist would ever move back or not that Calvin found himself wondering what the locals in the dimension this movie was from would have speculated about it. In this dimension, it led to plenty of speculation and conversation, but mostly about the Old West and what had happened next, which were of course fascinating but didn't provide a solution. In the end, no one seemed to bring it up, and so when Visiting Marty excused himself to head for the bathroom, Calvin made his decision. After exchanging a look with Ann, he followed his counterpart through the hallway.
After a few moments of waiting, he nearly bumped into Visiting Marty right when he was coming down the stairs from the bathroom upstairs and Calvin was tired of waiting and going up to check on him. The teen turned pale, clinging to the railing – now if he had bumped into the other Marty and fallen down the stairs, he would have been in trouble.
That gave Visiting Marty the possibility to open the conversation. "Calvin?" he said. "Are you okay?"
Calvin frowned. "What do you think?" As Visiting Marty paled and began to stutter apologies for the stupid question, he shook his head. "That's all right. What I want to know is whether you guys have been able to come up with something to save me." He tried not to sound desperate, but from the way the words came out there was definitely some despair leaking into his voice.
Visiting Marty shook his head. "We haven't" he admitted. "It's not that we haven't thought about it – Doc and I talked about it several times, it's just such a difficult problem. I don't think there is an easy solution, and if we can't find one…"
"That means coming along with you" Calvin said, sullen. "Are they even sure that would keep me safe?"
"For a few years, definitely" Visiting Marty replied. "And after that… I really don't know. Doc says that at least part of the problem is that you're living in your home dimension now, making it easier for the ripple effect to find its way back to you even if it has to trace you through different universes. If you were living with us, that would be a major step in the right direction. But that's what Doc says, and though I trust him on science matters because I know next to nothing of that stuff, I'm pretty sure he's just guessing half the time as well."
Calvin nodded. "Would you guys even want me to live with you?" Visiting Marty blushed. "Not just you having a twin all of a sudden, but you'd have to tell Mom and Dad the truth about time travel, like we did. Unless you plan for me to live with Doc, hiding in his lab permanently or something like that…"
Visiting Marty snorted. "Don't even think about it" he said resolutely. "The whole point of this is freeing you from being a guinea pig for crazy experiments. The way you're living your life is like that of a patient who's got to be kept alive artificially – and I wouldn't wish that on anyone, certainly not one of my counterparts."
Calvin shrugged. "It's better than dying… generally."
"And you're not going to die" Visiting Marty told him. "It's bad enough that we've got to take you away from your family and friends – the least we can do is ensure that you've got a solid life waiting for you on the other side of the dimensional barrier, which would at most feature treatment from now on being as frequent and intensive as dentist check-ups instead of this mess. That's one thing we're certainly going to get you out of."
Calvin smirked. "You sound like Ann when you're talking all determined like that." Then, thinking of his girlfriend, his smirk faded and he sat down on the stairway, gazing ahead.
Visiting Marty sat down next to him, aware of what the look on his counterpart's face meant. "She's not taking this well, is she?"
"I think she has a worse time with it than I do, and I'm in the middle of it" Calvin said, grimacing. "But I hate the thought of having to leave her too. Did we ever tell you how we fell in love?"
His counterpart thought hard. "…nope, I don't think so."
Calvin nodded, and filled his other self in on all the details of their journey to the Old West, placing emphasis on his and Ann's love story throughout and the hurdles it had to overcome, including Lauren Needles. "The whole tale is a bit cliché – even if throughout, we were trying to defy clichés" he concluded. "But two years on I'm still in love with her and the thought of living without her witty comments and her general charm is one of the hardest things to let go of in this world. That, and having the family that I always wished for when I was younger."
"I hear you" Visiting Marty said with a sigh. "I guess I do take Mom and Dad for granted these days thanks to the whole double memories thing – Local Me has that too, right?" Calvin nodded. "But whenever I think of my old memories, I remember how humiliating and unloving and miserable that family was, how Dad was a wimp who couldn't help me with anything, how Mom was an alcoholic who never really seemed to care, how…"
"All right, please stop" Calvin replied, chuckling wryly. "Now you're dragging up all of my old memories, and that's going to make me hate losing this place even more."
Visiting Marty patted his shoulder. "Well, our world's Mom and Dad are much more like the ones you know here than the ones we grew up with. That's got to count for something." He sighed. "Even though I still can't imagine that we're going to have to tell them about time travel."
"They'll accept it" Calvin said. "Our world's Mom and Dad did, and except for the past two and a half years they're apparently near-duplicates of yours. Once you get it over with, it'll be fine. Although I agree that it did get awkward at times in those first days. I guess that's what you get when you have to take your young mother to a dance."
"Don't remind me" Visiting Marty murmured. "Even if they come to accept it eventually, just that initial reaction and the initial discomfort makes me want to do anything to help you out and so avoid ever having to tell them about it."
Calvin blinked. "You don't ever want to tell them? I mean, you're spot-on about the awkwardness, but I can't imagine that even if we had had no pressing reason to tell them back in 1985, we wouldn't have filled them in on the truth eventually. They are my parents, and I personally would feel bad about hiding something so important to me from them for so many years."
"Point" Visiting Marty said. "I guess you never really got used to it like I did. You guys told them, what, right after you returned from the alternate world?"
"That's right" Calvin confirmed. "I guess it must have been a few hours after we came back from the other 1985 – naturally we had to take some rest first – when we asked Mom and Dad and Jennifer's parents to come over and told them everything. They were surprised at first, of course, but since the proof was staring them into the face they couldn't really deny it."
"I guess not" Visiting Marty mused. "It's strange to see how many people know about this in your world. In ours, it's just Doc, Clara, me and Jennifer, and Doc and Clara's kids – and of those only Jules and Verne, since Martin is too young to know. He's a year and a half old," he added, clearly only belatedly realizing that Calvin would have no idea who their world's version of Martin Brown was. "Any advice on how to make it easier on them – and us?"
"Probably to have us sit down first" George McFly's voice came from the doorway. As Calvin and Visiting Marty looked up, they saw their parents staring at them. "What are you two doing out here all by yourselves?"
"Trying to come up with something that will keep Calvin safe" Visiting Marty said, sighing. "I just – I wish I could come up with something, but I can't. And unless Doc can, which I doubt since if he would have come up with something he would have done and said so by now, Calvin is going to have to come along with us."
Calvin clearly saw George and Lorraine had a hard time with that judgment, even though they knew it was true. "But there might still be a solution, right?" the latter insisted. "I know the only reason they were able to prolong Calvin's life in the first place with that donor organ was because Clara came up with it after a few hours of reading a medical book, while Doc and Chris had been studying the problem for weeks."
"And my Doc tried forever to find the problem that was keeping us from going home on this very trip, and it turned out to have been some really small part of the DFSCUPCIF" Visiting Marty said, catching on. "Not to mention we kept putting our hopes on that throughout our journey – somebody looking at the problem with fresh eyes and instantly seeing what we hadn't for so long. Maybe you're right, uh, other-Mom, and maybe there is an obvious solution. But we're going to have to find it, and I wouldn't really bet on us being lucky enough to do that."
George nodded. "Right" he said. "But if you guys do find the solution after you go back home, you can just return Calvin to us, right? Assuming you can find our world again after all this…"
"That's another problem" Calvin muttered. "They've only landed in our world after hopping through fifty-two dimensions at random, and even though the main problem with controlling the DFS-thing turned out to be something unrelated to the dimensional travelling-functions themselves, that doesn't mean they can just power up their time bus as soon as they've found the solution to my problem and take me home at the first try."
Lorraine nodded, sitting down next to her son and hugging him as a clearly uncomfortable Visiting Marty quickly moved out of the way. "I can't believe we're going to have to lose you again."
"It's this or death" Calvin said, for what had to be the hundredth time someone had said something like that in the past weeks. "And this is marginally better than death, if only because you generally don't come back on earth from death – especially from erasure – and it's difficult even when you have time travel at your control. I guess that, for a positive argument, me staying here and erasing from existence would mean that if a solution could be found after that had happened, Doc and Chris could just travel back in time and save me without having to involve the other dimension. Whereas if I'd go along with the other Doc and Marty, I'd go to their dimension and live, but if Doc and Chris came up with something, they could go back and save me… but in altering history they could create a paradox spanning two dimensions, not just one, risking the destruction of two universes rather than one."
George blinked. "All right, now I'm not sure whether I'm more confused because of the multidimensional paradox talk or aghast because of the death talk."
"Definitely the latter" Lorraine said, cuddling her son. Calvin supposed it was testament to his own passive horror at the whole situation that he didn't try to stop her. "My poor baby…"
The teen nodded along with his mother, and only perked up when the door to the living room opened and a girl came out. "Ann?"
His girlfriend nodded. "Visiting Marty told me you were here" – Calvin only now noticed his counterpart had left the room – "and I wanted to comfort you. Although I see now that you've got that covered." It was a weak attempt to maintain her usual snarky attitude, even as Calvin noticed she was struggling not to cry.
Calvin wordlessly gestured for Ann to come over, and she sat down next to him as Lorraine stood back up. "There's got to be something we can do" she began. "I mean – you can't leave us forever. What will we do?"
"Carry on, I hope" Calvin quipped. He put an arm around her shoulder. "We've still got one night. Doc and Chris have thought up some of their best stuff in the final hours – heck, if Doc hadn't managed to improvise several times when he first had to send me back to the future in 1955, I would have never made it! Of course, if I hadn't, I wouldn't have been here now, but…" He smiled sheepishly at her. "I thought you were determined to keep your spirits up in this?"
Ann pondered that. "I try" she finally said. "It's not easy, you know. I guess in the end, I have a hard time believing my constant insistence that everything will be fine as well. And Chris just has to be so stubborn!" From the tone of her voice, she was still bitter about the whole 'not sneaking into the future' argument.
"What do you mean?" Lorraine asked.
Ann quickly explained how Chris wouldn't let them check whether the future Mike had seen – the one with Calvin happy and alive in the late 1990s – was still there. "I can't believe it. He's got to know what he's doing to us with that… I understand his concerns, and I fully agree you can't take time travel lightly, but this goes way too far." She blinked. "Maybe if we could… what if we went there by ourselves? Snuck out early tomorrow, or late for all I care, and took the time machine to check…"
"You'd have better luck trying to break into Alcatraz prison and escape again" Calvin reminded her. "When Chris and Doc – certainly Chris, but Doc too – talk about 'tight security', they mean it."
"I didn't mean their time machines" Ann replied. "I meant the one from the other dimension. From what I've heard, other-Doc is more lenient with security than ours, and now that his bus is only just fixed I'm not sure whether he has everything back in place again."
Calvin just stared at her. "Ann, that's an absurd plan" he said, in the process waving goodbye to his parents who, well aware that this would start up another one of the lovers' famous arguments, left while they still could. "Visiting Doc's time machine might not be as safe as the ones in our dimension, but he's still got solid security. I've seen how he locks the time machine – thumbprint and key, and he's got his key on him right now. Probably takes it along to his bedroom too."
"So then we sneak into his bedroom and take the key" Ann said unperturbed.
"Still doesn't solve the problem of how to get past the thumbprints."
Ann thought about that for a few seconds, then just as Calvin thought she was about to give up, replied: "We'll find a way" in a tone that indicated that they would in fact find a way, and it was pointless to even try to argue against it. Calvin considered saying that she'd said the exact same thing about his own fate and look where that had brought them, but decided against it.
He still had several other cards up his sleeve, though. "What about the time machine itself?" he asked his girlfriend. "We can assume that it's repaired now – and that's another matter you need to take into account, because their Doc is going to sit up much of the night to check its condition – but what if it isn't and rather than taking us to the future, it would take us to the future of another dimension and leave us ending up in the same position they have been in for weeks now?"
Ann shrugged. "We'd be together" she said.
Calvin stared at her. "You can't seriously be using that as an argument" he replied. "Ann, this is futile. There are too many loose ends that we'll never manage to tie up, and I seriously don't think this is our best bet. We just have to accept that we can't go to the future and try to think hard to find some way out of this."
The look on Ann's face was one of stubborn, ever more desperate determination, but as Calvin met her stare head-on for a few moments she gradually began to wither in strength. Tears formed in her eyes. "I – I can't accept this" she sobbed. "This can't be happening. There's got to be a way."
"Calvin? Ann?"
The two looked up to see Chris staring at them from the doorway. Ann scoffed as she saw him. "We were just talking about how we have only one more day until Calvin has to leave us forever" she said bitterly. "Are you prepared to let us go to the future and check, or are you indifferent enough to let Cal get trapped in a freaky foreign dimension, possibly forever?"
At that, Calvin thought he saw his friend recoil for a brief moment, but Chris looked determined again the next second. "You know that's not true, Ann Parker" he said sternly. "I've explained to you several times why we can't use the time machine to search the future for hints on Calvin's fate. If you don't get that, I don't know what else I can do."
"You can solve his problem!" Ann snapped. "If you can't use the future, fix him in the present so that we won't need the future! But you can't do the one and you just won't do the other, and if that's how it's going to be, then I've had it with you! With all of you! What's the point of having a friend who has the ability to help you out, if they are going to use a remote and flimsy threat to the greater good to avoid helping someone who saved your butt more times than you can remember, on whom you had all your hopes pinned for thirty years back in the hellhole we called home, and whom I always thought you truly cared about!"
"Ann…" Calvin spoke up, fearing his girlfriend had gone too far this time.
"No, Cal," Chris said with a deep sigh, "she… she has the right to say that."
Calvin looked up at him. "Chris…"
Christopher Brown shook his head. "It's okay, Calvin. Your girlfriend can say what she wants, and as for this…" He took a deep breath. "Well, she may have a point there. What's the good of time travel if you won't use it? Even Doc, who doesn't have a Calvin to save, keeps his time machines around and regularly uses them just to check that the future is still what it should be." He smiled faintly. "Calvin, Ann, I promise you that we and everyone else are going to think as hard as we can to come up with an alternative solution to your problem. And if the time of the experiment comes and we haven't thought up something…"
"… then you'll let us go to the future?" Ann asked.
"…then we'll think about it" was all Chris had to say. Without another word, he turned around and walked out of the hallway back into the living room, leaving them alone once again.
Calvin stared after his friend, then turned to Ann and hugged her as hard as he could. Tomorrow would bring the final decision, but tonight he would still get to spend here, with the girl he loved in his arms. With the future never having been more uncertain, tonight couldn't last long enough for him.
oooooooo
Whereas tonight couldn't last long enough for Calvin Arthur McFly, for Christopher Lloyd Brown it would last longer than he'd care for it to, and that was clear to him the moment he got into his pajamas, reflecting on how this was the final night he would get to spend with three versions of him in the same house. Tomorrow the hectic would end, and life would return to normal. Well, for a certain degree of normalcy at least.
The matter of Calvin's future continued to spook through his head, after days in which he'd successfully forgotten about it – or at least, had managed not to think about it. Ann's words – which had stung, as much as he wanted to tell himself they didn't – made it impossible for him to think about anything else right now. And thus, sleep would not be soon incoming.
He said a final goodbye to his counterparts for the night, once more mulling over how strange it was to see one version of himself get into bed with a different woman than his wife, and one getting into bed alone but clearly eager to meet up with that other woman again. It was an experience he'd had to get used to when Clara Clayton moved in, and one he had managed to forget was anything strange. The arrival of Doc and Visiting Marty, who kept calling attention to things the locals had always glossed over, changed all of that. It made him think about how his life would have been different had he made different choices – something he preferred not to think about, as a lot of them would have resulted in him being dead or still in Biff's hell of a world – and about how he viewed past, present and future. Case in point, the Calvin question.
The point wasn't of course that he didn't want to help Calvin and Ann. If he needed to do this to save Calvin's life he would do it in a heartbeat. And yet, although there was a definite risk involved in that as well, the option of taking Calvin to the other dimension seemed to give him enough leeway to make it impossible to take the 'future' option seriously. He didn't want to consider it, and no matter how fragile the alternative, he was grabbing it with both hands even when Calvin and Ann weren't.
Perhaps they had a point, though, as he himself had realized earlier that night during their brief but heated discussion. What was the point of having a time machine if you didn't use it, especially for the sake of your best friend? Nothing, of course. It was only a worthless piece of junk taking up space and posing a danger to the space-time continuum. And yet he kept his DeLorean there, tightly guarded but unused, because even though he could vocalize why it was a stupid idea to never use time travel, he could never bring himself act on that thought. Sure, he knew they needed time travel in fixing Calvin, and if needed he was very well able to take a pragmatic approach to that when it came to the use of Emmett's time machine. But when it came to his own, things were… different. After that near disaster during their trip to the Old West, when even a well-prepared journey through time ended up in not one but two time machines malfunctioning, the mere thought of taking out the vehicle he was responsible for again made him shudder.
He barely realized he had wandered back into his bedroom until he felt a hand on his shoulder. "Are you still mulling over that matter with Calvin and Ann?" Susan asked, clearly concerned. "Chris, they know you want to help. It's just-"
"It's just so hard" her husband said grimly. "Everyone, from Calvin to Ann to my own counterparts – mostly our visitor, but I've heard him talking about it to Emmett too – says I need to let go. I can even understand that I'm being a little paranoid. How could I not be, when one of the first time travel experiments ever done resulted in Biff Tannen" – he nearly spat out the name with disgust – "getting his paws on the DeLorean and creating… well, you know. And even in situations when I can't really see anything that could jeopardize our mission, I can't bring myself to use my time machine for anything, let alone permit Calvin and Ann to take one of the others or mine to the future now. I just wish there was another way. There's got to be one, too. Calvin and Ann are right – I can't just send him off to another dimension. This is his home, here is where he should be, here is where he could be, given from what Emmett and Mike saw with their own eyes." He sighed. "But how?"
Susan sighed. "Maybe you'll find a way yet" she said. "We still have one night…"
Chris smiled faintly at her. "I thought you were normally the one to insist that I should sleep besides you rather than stay up all night worrying" he pointed out. "And it's only one night. Just one more night in which I can mull over everything I've mulled over a dozen times already, and not come to any new conclusions."
His wife shook her head, sitting down on their bed and patting the spot next to her. Chris sat down as well, staring ahead but with his mind elsewhere. "Are you sure you've covered everything?" she finally asked him.
He didn't even have to think about it. "Positive" he replied. "I even used the computers and filled in every detail about Calvin's situation so that we would know we didn't overlook anything out of tunnel vision. Nothing came up. That means that the only solutions can come either from a completely unexpected source, or from some obvious part of the material we've covered thus far that I'm just not seeing."
Susan nodded. "How dangerous would it be for Calvin to stay here for another while?" she asked.
"Too dangerous to gamble on it" Chris said. "When we started working on the DFSCUPCIF, Ann made a lot of provisions but agreed that we should check out the possibility of inter-dimensional travel because it was one of the few still available to us. Over time, the situation has deteriorated so quickly that although I would still guess that Calvin would still be alive by the time we can travel through dimensions ourselves – especially with the information I got from my counterpart now – but we'd still have to come up with a way to save him even after that, and that makes the situation a lot tighter, chronologically speaking. If we knew for sure we would have a solution by the time the DFSCUPCIF is finished and we can use dimension-travelling for that, I would support waiting. But since we don't know that, the only option available to us then would still be putting Calvin into another dimension, and if we're going to do that anyway, then it would be silly not to do that now."
"Can't you just use the DeLoreans and link them up to hop through dimensions again?" Susan said softly. "Like we apparently did to come here?"
"I guess" Chris replied after a long pause. "It is only a theory, but that should work by any means. But it is a difficult procedure, it could easily fail, I have no idea whether we'd be able to get back and we can't just take everyone along, and it's the kind of solution that sounds good but only raises more problems in the end. And in the end it's just one of those risks I'm not prepared to take when there's another solution, as lousy as that one might be."
"It's not a lousy solution, Emmett" Susan insisted. "It's a hard one to accept, and I get that, because those kids love each other and if there's any risk-free way to save Calvin without separating them we should do it. But since there isn't…"
"I wish I'd never invented time travel" her husband groaned. Susan looked up and frowned. "I mean it. Certainly, it has given Marty a happier life in the end and it's solved a lot of the problems it's caused, but the fact that we went through all those disasters again and again in the first place that's making me wish I had never hit my head and came up with the flux capacitor on November 5th 1955. If I had never invented time travel, Biff would never have had a chance to come to power and destroy our lives."
"And we might have never met" Susan replied. "Not to mention that it's not true, technically – if you hadn't invented time travel, we would have been trapped in Biff's alternate world forever. What you meant was if Emmett hadn't invented time travel. It was his time machine that created our world, right?"
"No, it was its duplicate from our dimension," Chris said with a wry grin. "If you want to be technical, since we're duplicates from the original, our Hell Valley wasn't technically caused by this world's Biff."
"…touché. Now where's the aspirin?"
Chris smirked, seeing the exasperated look on her face. "You can't tell me you're not used to this kind of discussion by now, darling."
Susan shrugged. "I guess not, but when we get into various layers of alternate reality and multi-dimensional counterparts, you lose me. I've always liked Jules Verne, but not so much that I would retain interest during the most scientific of his explanations. I like studying science and its practical implications, but the theoretical framework behind it? I suppose I could give it a try if I had to, but not to this extent and not at this time of night. It's been a long day, Chris."
"Fair enough" Chris agreed.
"And now you distracted me from the subject that I was talking about" Susan said with a giggle. "Very clever, honey – but you can't seriously mean that you wish you'd never invented time travel. Just think of where you were before 1955. No offense, but you really were an unsuccessful loner at the time." Chris stared at her. "Don't give me that look, you told me that yourself, and if you'd ask my opinion it's completely unfair that no one appreciated your genius and some of your inventions of the time were definitely brilliant – it was bad luck that they didn't work the way you'd intended to sometimes."
"More like all of the time" Chris said, gritting his teeth. "The time machine really was my first success, you're right about that – but when you talk about success when it comes to a device powerful enough to destroy the world, one which has made our lives so incredibly difficult that I would wish it were never invented… well, I guess that's really saying something about me and my capacities."
"Nonsense" Susan opined. "You are perfectly capable of inventing non-destructive things that will be beneficial to the world… as so far the time machine has been. You seem to like forgetting whenever we get in a fix like this that for every problem the time machine created thus far, it also brought a solution, and we always came out happier and better off, with the world still in one piece. Don't go pretending like the time machine is a doomsday device that should be destroyed for the good of mankind – it isn't, and you know it isn't."
Chris shrugged. "Maybe not" he agreed. "And we have come out remarkably well. But it is a clear risk. We've always known that. I guess wishing it would never have been invented would be a bit too far – and like you said, if it hadn't, I might have never met you – the circumstances under which we met were quite coincidental, after all, and involved Calvin, Mike and my preparation work for building my time machine." In fact, he was pleasantly surprised Susan hadn't lashed out harder at him for inadvertently implying that he wanted to turn that back too. He guessed women were less prone to emotional outbursts than they were said to be… and now he was almost having one. Oh, the irony. "But after seeing how it's kept us up at nights trying to find a way to fix Calvin's problem, you can't argue it's really been a force for good in our recent lives."
"Maybe not" Susan agreed. "But that doesn't mean you have to destroy it right away. This whole mess with Calvin started in December of 1985. If destroying the time machine would have been possible while still solving his problem, you would have done it. But in that case, Emmett would never have met Clara, and you know as well as I do how happy that's made him."
"That's a ridiculous counterfactual" Chris muttered. "If I could have solved Calvin's problem without the time machine, there would have been no need for sleepless nights. When you encounter problems caused by time travel you have to use time travel to fix them, as paradoxical as that might sound."
"You're missing the point here, honey – and I think you're doing that deliberately, because you keep doing it" Susan said. "My point is, just as time travel has brought us problems recently, it could bring us a solution pretty soon as well, a solution which might eventually make everyone happier than they were before the problems first emerged. Now wouldn't that be great?"
Chris shrugged, leaning back in his bed. "I guess so, but I doubt it will happen. And it certainly won't happen if we keep thinking about time travel mechanics and the ethical purpose of it all. Unless you think the solution provided by time travel is going to come from a time traveler from the future, we have to think about Calvin's problem and not time travel in general."
"True" Susan replied. "Chris, I'll just let you think from now on. You can brainstorm as much as you want – you can even ask our visitors to delay their departure a day or two if you think that would be helpful. They would definitely do that – I've seen that they're eager to leave, but not so much that they don't care about Calvin at all. Even Visiting Marty could probably convinced to stay. Heck, they might even propose it themselves."
"I don't think that would be helpful" Chris said. "We can brainstorm as much as we want, but in the end we're going to have to decide. Calvin's… well, I suppose you could say that his biological clock is ticking." He allowed himself a brief smile at the joke he'd made, then sighed again.
"True, true" Susan agreed, standing up and beginning to undress. "Then I'll just leave you to think as much as you want through the night. As long as you promise me one thing."
Chris smirked. "To never do it again, no matter how important the issue at stake?"
"If that were possible, I would jump at the chance, but I can't ask that from you because like you said, there are a great deal of important issues that could and will be at stake, even if you fix Calvin's problem" Susan replied. "No, I'd ask you to take up Ann and Calvin's advice and go to the future."
Chris' breath shortened and he turned to his wife, hoping she was joking, but Susan's face remained completely stoic. "Susan, I…"
"Yes, you have told me the risks" Susan said. "You don't want to take information from the future that you wouldn't have had in the original timeline, because it's cheating and it could result in a predestination paradox. Well, what if in the original timeline, you had circumstances available to you that in this timeline you haven't?"
Chris snorted. "That's your main selling point?" he asked. "That I might need the information from the future because I would have obtained it on my own in the old timeline, and I haven't in the new timeline due to the changed situation? Susan, let me remind you that if something happened to change history so that I – or Emmett – didn't come up with a solution we originally would have come up with, that means that solution won't be there either in the further future. We're building the foundations for our new 2045 today – if we missed out on something in the past three years, it might not come in the next fifty-seven years either. I'd be going to a future where we failed, unless I, the current me, or Emmett or my visiting counterpart or whoever around here thinks up something now."
"You're probably right, yes" Susan agreed. "But there is a chance that there would be information available in the future, right?"
"If we eventually would succeed, yes" Chris allowed.
"So why not take your advantage right now and look for what might be there?" Susan insisted. "My selling point is that this is what we can do, and we should do everything to help Calvin and Ann. Yes, it would mean getting information earlier that you might have found out through the natural course of time anyway… but isn't that the exact same argument you used when Marty tried to tell you about your – well, really Emmett's – death in 1985, and aren't you happy you eventually taped those pieces of paper together then?"
"That's an absurd comparison" Chris snorted. "That was a matter of life and death, and this is – well it is too in a way, but… but…"
He was faltering. His resolve was weakening, and he knew it as soon as Susan started speaking again, using the gentle but slightly patronizing tone she used when she knew she had won. "All we're asking you is to try, Christopher Lloyd Brown. See what you might find. If there's nothing there, there's no harm done, because there are alternative solutions. It's just taking a small risk – and as you've told me thousands of times, since is filled with taking risks. We could even have somebody else check out the future for you."
Chris shuddered. "Heavens, no. Hearing from Emmett what our Mike got up to that one time is enough to keep me from letting him or any of the Marty's near the steering wheel of the time machine for a long time. Mike is a great kid, but if he really wants to be a scientist he has to learn to be less careless in the future." He paused. "But I guess a little carelessness might very well be necessary. Very well, Mrs. Brown – I accept your judgment. I will take the time machine to the future if by tomorrow afternoon neither of us have found a solution. But I'll go alone, and in the meantime I'm going to move heaven and earth to make sure it won't have to happen."
"Just like I expected from you" Susan replied, kissing him on the forehead and lying down on the bed. "Good night, honey – and try to keep it simple. The simple solutions are often the best ones."
"Often, yes" Chris agreed. "But far from always." He sighed, pacing out of the door of the bedroom, knowing better than to think he could brainstorm with his wife still there. From the lights turned on in the hallway, Emmett was still up as well. He considered going over so that they could mull over the situation together, but decided against it. Even if Emmett was his counterpart and had a similar mind, he still thought better alone, in the quiet of the living room – Doc was in the cellar running checks on his time bus, so that location was right out – and if Emmett wanted to spend serious effort on this he would come down on his own for the same reasons.
As he arrived downstairs, his first act was to turn on the light and brew himself a cup of coffee. Tonight was without a doubt going to be a long night.
oooooooo
To Visiting Marty McFly, waking up in an unfamiliar room came as little surprise anymore after three weeks of hopping through the space-time continuum and residing with his counterparts of the latest dimension. In fact, he mulled, he might very well be surprised once they would have returned home and he would get to wake up in his own bed again.
'Once they would have returned home.' It was such a simple phrase, and yet it had been a pipe dream for all those days they stumbled around the multiverse, searching for either home or the place that would bring them home. He had to give credit where credit was due – had he been alone, he might have given up a long time ago, or settled in one dimension for a few days every dozen hops or so. It had been Doc's determination that had landed them in a dimension which could fix the time machine after less than one week, which was, when you thought about it, a comparatively short time period – even though it definitely hadn't felt that way at the start.
And now they were here, and the time machine was fixed, or at least they presumed it was but even after what had happened, Visiting Marty held confidence in his best friend. The time machine was repaired, which had seemed almost as far off during the last two weeks as during the week before, and today they would be going home.
With Calvin.
That thought brought his momentary feelings of joy to a stop. Over the past weeks, although his primary focus had been on getting home, Visiting Marty had stopped to enjoy the others' company, and he liked Calvin McFly. It didn't hurt that Calvin was a version of himself, but Marty even liked the small differences he'd noted, and he admired Calvin's talent at writing his book (which he had been forced to read in exchange for ratting them out to his Doc after all). It was a thrilling mix of science fiction and adventure, based broadly on a unique mishmash of the locals' journeys to 1955, the alternate 1985 and 1885. Calvin was no George McFly, but he was definitely going places.
The thought of having to force Calvin to leave his home behind thus all at once decreased the anxiety and enthusiasm Marty felt about going home. He knew how he felt hopping through all these different worlds, looking for the one they belonged in, and taking Calvin away from his world was therefore something he wished they could avoid. But they couldn't. Not unless any of them came up with something fast.
Part of Visiting Marty's brain refused to believe that it was all over for their new friend now. Doc had always come up with a solution, even at the last moment. He had lost faith in him on this very trip and he still had come through, finding this world for them which had managed to fix the time machine – or so they hoped. So with three Docs there, it should be a given that they would come to a solution, right? Perhaps not today, but one of them was bound to think of something even after they had taken Calvin along. And yet, after years of thinking, the local Docs had come up with nothing.
Visiting Marty tried to find some comfort in the fact that little of this had been planned out yet, not least whether Calvin would be going along to their dimension or whether they'd try to find another duplicate (although he supposed that for the moment it would be the former, since they had just spent a much longer time than intended on their first little excursion into the multiverse). But if Doc really believed they would have to take Calvin along, he would have made clear to everyone what the plan was, right? And since he hadn't voiced anything concrete yet, Marty held hope that this was because somewhere, Doc held an inkling of hope that he would be able to find a solution.
Almost dreading what he'd find, Marty got off the bed, made sure it was in roughly the same condition as when he first lay down on it – although he knew that, knowing the musician's sleeping habits, Doc wouldn't expect too much of him – put on the same clothes he'd worn throughout their trip, now freshly cleaned, and headed down the stairs. Checking his watch, he noticed it was past 9 AM – still before his usual wake-up time when he didn't have to go to college, but well after the times he'd grown accustomed to. It was yet another sign that today, they wouldn't be working on the time bus anymore. They would be going home.
Practically from the first steps downwards scents of bread, coffee, bacon and eggs reached his nose, and he headed into the living room, which was apparently where the family usually ate when they had too many visitors over (especially given the Browns were already a sizeable bunch to begin with). He had expected Clara to be there preparing dinner, and was thus a little taken aback when he walked in and saw everyone – well, except his own Doc Brown – at the breakfast table, clearly waiting for him.
Mike chuckled, eyeing the clock warily. "Nine-twenty A.M. Do you have any standards when it comes to getting up, Marty, or are you used to sleeping in for half the day?"
Visiting Marty shrugged, having heard the arguments many times – far too many – before. "It's been an exhausting week, and no one woke me up or told me to set my alarm clock" he said. "Honestly, I'm relieved I woke up all by myself this early, and I definitely could have gone on for another hour or two had I wanted to. Is Doc still in the lab?"
"Last time I checked, yes" Chris replied. From the look on the scientist's face, he hadn't had as much sleep as he needed either, and Visiting Marty wondered whether he might have stayed up all night just like his own version of his best friend. "I stopped by at seven to talk to him about whether all systems had checked out yet… among other things. They hadn't, but the general check was almost finished and the early signals were positive. In fact, I'm surprised he's not here yet."
Visiting Marty let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding at that news, although his reaction was immediately muted by a renewed feeling of dread – for Calvin's sake, not for Doc's. "He's probably checking some details for a second or third time" he said, sitting down. "Doc can be stubborn like that, wanting to control everything even when he knows it's okay. Can't blame him, really – this is a huge deal, and after seeing what went wrong for us before because of tiny oversights…"
Chris nodded, but didn't say anything after Susan gave him a look. Visiting Marty wondered what was going on between those two. However, Clara handing out his slice of the egg to him put him off that state of mind. He happily started munching away at his breakfast. However different this Clara Brown might be from the one he knew, she had not become a worse cook because of it.
It took them half an hour to finish breakfast, probably because their hosts were going all out on them since this was the final meal they would have here. Or rather, the final meal he would have, because Doc still hadn't shown up. Clara, who was walking up and down to the kitchen occasionally, reported that she had run into him and had been asked if she could bring his food over instead. He still had some thinking to do in the cellar.
Visiting Marty wondered what that might mean – sure, stubbornness and over preparedness were some of Doc's strongest and (occasionally) most annoying traits, but this was beyond normal limits, as even Emmett and Chris readily agreed with although they otherwise remained remarkably silent during breakfast. Not that the others were any more talkative, and Marty felt the fact of Calvin's impending departure hanging over all conversation, sending the Brown family into a state of gloom.
Said physically-impaired teen wasn't there yet, by the way, and didn't show up until eleven, at which point Doc Brown was still in the cellar. Visiting Marty had even walked over once, but the door was locked and he had been politely but certainly dismissed even though from what little he could see through the window, his best friend wasn't actually doing anything more than scribbling notes on a desk far away from the time bus. It all raised his curiosity, and the same went for Calvin when he was told about this.
"Do you think he's trying to come up with a solution for my problem?" the other teen wondered. "Or that he's come up with one already, and he's still working it out and not ready to reveal it yet."
That sounded like a sound possibility to Visiting Marty. In fact, it was a lot better than his own idea that Doc had somehow become so thrilled at the technology his counterparts had and he hadn't that he'd locked himself in to study it all – which was frankly absurd, not in the least because this world's technology actually wasn't all that much better than the tech in the world they came from. Well, except perhaps for the security devices on Chris' DeLorean, but that wasn't nearly enough to justify any such behavior. So from that perspective, Calvin's idea made a lot more sense.
Apparently not all of them agreed on the sensibility of Calvin's theory, though, because Mike frowned. "Don't get your hopes up too much, Cal" he said, his words harsh but his tone sympathetic. "It's been weeks. I don't really think Other Doc is going to be able to come up with something at the last moment."
Calvin shrugged. "True, but you never know. Ann and I spent much of last night trying to think of a solution, and a couple of times we thought we almost had something. I don't know if we actually got remotely close, but if we did, then surely a professional scientist can manage the same thing."
"Where is Ann, by the way?" Local Marty muttered. "Even as emotionally invested as she is, I wouldn't think she would want to miss this moment."
Calvin's eyebrow twitched, a motion so brief that only Local and Visiting Marty noticed, and they exchanged uneasy glances even after Calvin again appeared to be as normal as he always had. "She suffered some delay, but she'll be here soon enough" he said. "It doesn't really matter all that much considering that we are having a delay anyway."
"True" Local Marty agreed. "But the original plan was for you guys to leave at noon, right?" That was directed at Visiting Marty, who nodded. "That way, you would be in synch with the date and time of your departure. And your Doc may have been delayed, but if he's still planning to stick to that, then we might hear something from the basement very soon. So, if Ann is still planning to come…"
"She'll be here on time" Calvin said. "Trust me on that."
Then, they heard a familiar feminine shriek from the cellar.
"Was that…" Mike began.
"Ann?" Local Marty finished.
"What's she doing there?" Visiting Marty wondered aloud.
Local Marty shot Calvin, who was blushing, a look. "Let's go find out." He lead the way towards the staircase, the others following. Even Emmett and Chris headed down behind them, as well as Clara and Susan. They soon arrived at the door which Emmett immediately unlocked.
The scene in front of them was not one they'd expected to see. A clearly disheveled Ann Parker was standing in the door of the time bus, being glared at by an obviously annoyed Doc Brown. "What happened here?" Mike blurted out.
"Ann tried to sneak into the time bus and stowaway on our trip" Doc replied curtly.
That definitely elicited a gasp of surprise from the rest of the group, as Visiting Marty suddenly realized Calvin had probably known about this all along. All of a sudden, this entire departure scene was going to be even more painful. "Wait, how did she even get in here?" he wondered, speaking louder to get his voice heard over the others murmuring.
Ann shrugged. "It wasn't that difficult" she said. "All I had to do was to wait around in the closet until your Doc would leave – which he finally did to get breakfast early this morning – and then I sneaked in because he had left the door unlocked, used a page with his fingerprints from the library and the key he'd left on the desk to get into the time bus before he came back, and then I hid myself as well as I could in the back. If he hadn't gone over the bus with a thorough check just now, I'm sure I could've stayed hidden."
"But I did, and now it seems your plan has been for naught" Doc said warily. "Are you going to come out now?"
Ann blinked. "No. I can't lock you out because you have the key and the prints again and I don't know how the bus' computer works, but I can stay here until you physically drag me out."
Doc sighed. "Ann, you don't want to do this. It's not even necessary…"
"Isn't it?" Ann challenged. "You don't know me! You are from another reality, and you can't understand how I am going to miss Calvin if he leaves this world without me! I'm sorry Doctor Brown, but I have had enough disaster in my life. I am not giving up on Calvin, so if he has to go, I'm going with him!"
"But…" Doc interrupted.
"It's no use, Dr. Brown" Calvin said sighing. "Ann told me about this plan last night, and I tried arguing against her for as long as I could, but she was adamant. First she wanted to use your bus to check the future, but later she was convinced that she needed to come along with me."
"I realized that whenever I would get the chance to sneak in, the computer would probably still be processing the data" Ann explained. "I didn't dare to travel through time while it was still doing that, and I figured there was no way I'd get a long enough window in which I could take this time machine to the future and back. Then I considered using the other DeLorean, the one local Doc owns, but I figured that if I did that and no future info turned up, I would probably have lost my chance to sneak along on this trip through dimensions. So I decided to place my full bets on that card instead."
Emmett sighed. "Never mind your contemplations to take my or our visitor's time machine against our explicit prohibition – Ann, you don't want to do this. Have you thought about what it would mean to your parents if you just left like that?"
Ann almost glared at him. "Of course I thought about them – and Jennifer, and all of you guys. And I would definitely miss them, like I would miss all of you. But in the end I couldn't just let Calvin go there without me. I love him, and if you guys are planning on forcing him to go on this trip, he won't be going alone! I don't care if I have to stand here for a thousand years – the only way I'll be dragged out of this time machine is kicking and screaming every step of the way!"
The room remained silent in the face of so much stubbornness. Visiting Marty wrecked his brain trying to find a way to get Ann – who of course had legitimate points, but was ultimately not helping – out of the bus, but all ideas he came up with were ones that she would probably see through right away or would be suspicious enough of to eventually see through anyway. And they had to solve this problem intellectually. There was no way any of them were going to create a scene by physically dragging Ann out as she suggested. That was just too embarrassing.
Before he could say anything, however – and no matter how lame his ideas were, he was determined to contribute in some way – Doc loudly cleared his throat and turned to their momentary adversary. "Fortunately, that won't be necessary."
Ann frowned, a sentiment shared by everyone else in the room. "What do you mean?"
"That – I think – I have found the answer to the problem you're dealing with."
Now everyone's eyes widened, and Chris did a step forward. "Are you talking about the problem of Calvin's impending erasure here?"
"What other is there?" Doc replied. "Yes, I do think I've found a solution. And looking back, I can see why especially you didn't find it no matter how long you looked for it. Sometimes a solution can be so close that you simply can't see it anymore, and you need a fresh perspective to crack the case – just as you'd already guessed. Even with that, it took me a good part of the morning to get the brainstorm that I believe might have solved the problem. At least for the time being, possibly permanently.
Chris frowned. "Now you're really making me curious."
"As I should" Doc said smirking. "Why don't you all sit down, and I'll try to explain what I've come up with. Ann?"
From the look in her face, Visiting Marty figured Ann was seriously considering the option that all of this was just a ploy to get her out of the bus. "How sure are you you've got something here, Dr. Brown?"
"Ninety-two point four percent" the inventor replied. "But I won't make it too hard on you – you can stay in the doorway of the time bus while I explain it. You can hear me out here perfectly well, and it's not like I have anything to illustrate my point with."
Chris slowly began to smile. "I might have something for you. Just give me a moment."
Susan rolled her eyes. "Chris, you're not rolling out the old chalkboard again, are you? That thing was an antique the first time you used it."
"It works, and that's the main point" her husband replied, turning back to his counterpart. "I would be happy to fetch it for you if you think you might need it."
"I'm not sure, but it would be convenient to have something available" Doc replied. "It is still a complicated matter, after all. All right, I'll use it. And you," he turned to Ann at that point, "please, have a little faith. I know you don't know me per se all that well, but I'm a version of the Dr. Browns who live here, and would they ever let you down on a matter like this?" From the tone of voice, Visiting Marty could tell his friend was hurt at the mere suggestion.
"No" Ann finally admitted, sitting down in the doorway. "But this better be good."