Disclaimer: Even though I'm not ruling out that this is the last time I'll ever say this and thus temptation may be greater than ever to claim otherwise - I don't own Back to the Future.
Author's Note: This is the big one, the one I've been waiting for... well, not all my life, but for a long time to be sure. And with that cliche opener I'll start off the final chapter of Travelling Through Dimensions. Here it is at last, the return home of the characters, and the resolution of a problem that was hinted at in IDIATM, explored substantially in EOAEW, and finally ended here. I'm not ruling out returning to either the 'IDIATM-verse' or the 'Trilogy Verse' in writing more BTTF stories, but it would probably be a long while in any case. That is why I hope this chapter is the absolute best it can be, and I hope you guys will be very critical of it but will still appreciate it in the end.
This is EmmettMcFly55, on Friday July 22nd 2016 5:24 PM, saying goodbye.
Chapter Eighteen
Thursday, April 14, 1988
11:30 AM PDT
Hill Valley, California
It took Dr. Emmett Brown only a few minutes to prepare for his 'presentation', including the help from Chris and Susan in setting up a chalkboard. As he got to the start, however, he almost wished it had taken longer. He'd never been truly at ease with presenting something for a crowd – even though he had never let others turn that discomfort into bullying material – and this was something important, something the locals of this dimension had been working on for years. The possibility that he had done something wrong in his calculations, something the locals would quickly point out to him due to having researched this material for so long, haunted his mind and would not let go. He did not want to be responsible for providing them with false hopes. This presentation had to be convincing; it had to be perfect.
"Now," he said, "as you have all explained to me in depth, the main reason that Calvin cannot survive in this dimension is because he himself is from this dimension and only functions as a duplicate of Local Marty – and there simply can't be permanently co-existing duplicates of the same Marty, of the same age, of the same universe. The sole reason he has survived thus far is because he travelled through various times and, more importantly, dimensions, before settling here, and that gives us reason to believe that him settling in another dimension would be the best course to give him hope for survival. That is correct, isn't it?"
"It's certainly a good summary of the mess we've been in" Emmett replied. "But yes, that's completely accurate. And that's why we've assumed Calvin's best hopes of survival were of going along with you." He eyed his counterpart curiously. "Unless they aren't."
"Well, I'm afraid I haven't come up with much better odds" Doc replied. "The odds of survival are similar in my scenario to the ones in yours, but I think it might very well be as good as it gets, and it would be much more palatable to both Calvin and Ann."
"Which is…" Ann asked.
Doc smiled and drew a line on the chalkboard, putting 'A' above it. "This is your current dimension" he said. "According to my and the computer's calculations, it has the dimension code of PF #47, while my home dimension is on a code – a frequency, one might argue – of PF #50. I've recalibrated the computers in the time bus to identify this dimension as PF #47 so that it will take us to the right dimension once we put in PF #50. But that's not the matter right now."
"Hold on a second, Doc," Visiting Marty spoke up, "are you saying that if we'd put in PF #53 – three dimensions above ours – when the computer was still malfunctioning, it would have taken us home?"
The inventor shook his head, having anticipated such a question. "I doubt it" he said. "Just like time travel circuitry, as our counterparts have been able to discover on their journey to 1 BC, dimension-travelling circuitry is extremely sensitive, and our mishap caused such great damage to it that without the extensive repairs of the last weeks, the chance of stumbling upon our home dimension no matter what code we put in would have been about as large as that of a needle in a haystack. Not to mention that putting in PF #50 only took us to PF #47 once, after all."
His Marty nodded, so Doc turned back to the chalkboard. "So PF #47 is your current dimension" he said. "But you have also explained to me that you can create duplicates of your current dimension by synching up two time machines to each other. That would not end up with you going to PF #48 or #46 – we have speculated that these new dimensions would be cluster dimensions, universes that are tightly related to the ones that existed before, universes that are created rather than visited. It would be more like a PF #47-B. Right?"
To his relief he saw his audience was nodding slowly now, Emmett and Chris catching onto where he was going. "Continue…" the former said.
"So if you can create those duplicate dimensions, why not take Calvin into one of them?" Doc finished his explanation. "A duplicate dimension, after all, would have its cutoff point at the moment you travel through time, so although you are going to a different world, it is one with the exact same history as the one you come from. You're the ones creating the differences when travelling to a duplicate, just like you also create the duplicate. Well, we don't, but the time travel process and the power overload does. It would therefore create no problems about Calvin missing his family since the family he'd encounter in the new world would be the same one he had in the old, A-version of this universe. You can even take Ann along if it makes you more comfortable, Calvin – de facto it wouldn't make any difference at all."
"But…" Chris tried.
"But by taking Calvin to the B-universe, you'd be depriving the A-universe of their Calvin?" Doc replied. "That's true, and I figured that might be why you hadn't really explored this kind of solution yet – because it would only solve half the problem. Well, what if you simply don't bring Calvin along when creating the second universe? That would leave you with two Calvins, just like it would leave you with two of everything else in the world."
"That's true," Chris agreed, "but it does leave the point of how we would then get Calvin from A to B – literally, in this case – unless…"
The faraway look on his face made Doc all the more confident to deliver his final piece of evidence. "Unless when you go to dimension B" – he drew the parallel line under his dimension A on the chalkboard – "we would be there as well, and we could take the time bus and use its calibration function on you to figure out the dimensional code of both A and B, enabling us to travel back in forth in normal, disconnected time machines." Chris and Emmett were nodding along now, but the rest of them remained glassy-eyed. "It's very simple. Once Chris and Emmett create and travel to dimension B, dimension A would be short Chris and Emmett, while dimension B would have an additional version of each of them. That's regular dimensional travel logic – that's even regular time travel logic."
"So by this point in your investigations, time travel logic has become the most basal of basics to you?" Ann said dryly.
"When compared to dimensional travel logic and duplicate dimensional travel logic?" Doc replied. "Yes, definitely. As I was saying, the me of dimension B would be able to use his time bus to travel back to dimension A. He'd pick up Calvin A – maybe including Ann – there and deliver him in dimension B. Chris A and Emmett A, who would at that moment still be in dimension B, could easily disassemble the connections between their DeLoreans and go back to this universe with Calvin B. After all, once they're on their own again, the DeLoreans should be able to find their way back home easily as they did when they apparently were able to return from dimension 4 to dimension 1 at the end of your journey through time and dimensions. The only thing Chris should keep in mind is that he should take care to leave some parts of the connection still there so that his DeLorean will follow Emmett's back to dimension A rather than take him to Hell Valley."
"Which has been turned into a quaint little place by now, if what you said was true" Chris replied. "But yes, I'd hate to be forced to find a way back from there. At least since then, the time machine has had plenty of technology from this dimension installed so that it should be able to make its way back without problems."
"Won't that be a problem for us, then?" Visiting Marty wondered. "We did install a lot of new technology from this dimension into the time bus, so won't that keep us here when we're trying to leave?"
"No, because the time bus is – or at least should be, and from all the tests I've run over the night I have little doubt that it is – able to pinpoint an exact destination using the DFSCUPCIF and the destination location circuits" Doc replied. "We're not using a homing device like what Chris and Emmett would have to rely on, we're selecting a destination and deliberately traveling there. Although I agree it would be wise to replace the technology from this dimension as soon as possible when we return to ours."
"There's one thing you're wrong about, though" Emmett remarked. "Just like taking Calvin from A to B the regular way would leave one dimension short a Calvin, Chris and me going to the duplicate dimension after creating it ourselves would leave only one version of us. That's what always happened – the duplicate dimension is a continuation of the original, with us leaving already calculated in. So, have you thought about how to solve that problem?"
The color drained from Doc's face. That was a significant oversight, one he hadn't thought of. He was about to admit defeat – something he hated having to do, due to the high hopes he'd raised thus far – when the solution came to him. "As a matter of fact, I think I just have" he said. "How about remote control?"
"Remote control?" Clara said, frowning.
"Indeed" Doc explained. "Rather than Chris and Emmett taking one DeLorean to the other place, we send it out on remote control, which should be perfectly within our means to do. It even deprives us of one complexity. Maybe Chris or Emmett should still leave one of his watches inside so we have a certified check that could help us track down the original dimension again. That should work." He looked around the room. "Any other questions?"
There was a moment of silence, and a huge weight fell off Doc's chest. Until now, he had feared that maybe he had come up with a 'solution' that they had found and discarded for some reason a long time ago. But in the looks on the locals' faces, he saw no weariness, exhaustion or despair. Just an odd mixture of disbelief, surprise and hope. Hope that made him confident that he had, in fact, found a solution. He had managed to solve their three-year-old problem.
Calvin would live.
It was thus with a broad smile of relief that he turned to the only one who had still raised his hand, who was, incidentally, the subject in question. "Yes, Calvin?"
"Just how fool-proof is this solution, Dr. Brown?"
He could read the fear in Calvin's eyes. Fear that after all that trouble, they hadn't managed to solve anything after all. But he felt confident – and how good did that make him feel – that he would be able to reassure the teen. "Nothing is ever fool-proof, Calvin" he gently said. "But under these conditions, I'd rate the chances of your survival just as high as under the scheme we had previously devised, with the exception of course that under this your life could go on as you've always had it. In fact, my calculations indicate that the chances of survival are even slightly higher under this scheme than under the original one, although even I'm not sure where those numbers are calculated from. But our current projection says an 83.4 percent chance."
Calvin frowned. "That's – that's not astronomically high. Don't get me wrong, it's much better than the other way around, but…"
"I understand" Doc replied. "But I'll be the first to admit that I and my method are not perfect either. This might not be the perfect solution, but I'm convinced it's the best we're going to get. If you have a better one, feel free to suggest it. You can continue to come up with suggestions on that in the future after the swap is actually performed, considering that in any case you should live for several more decades. But I've wracked my brain trying to find something even better and I couldn't do it. And remember – this whole process we're going to undertake today can be repeated as many times as you want to in the future."
"We're going to do this now, then" Visiting Marty said. "Putting the time machines together to create a duplicate dimension. How long will that take?"
"Probably about three hours" Emmett replied. "It took us about four the first time we did it, but we had no previous experience then and there are more people available now. Not to mention we're all still freshly awake – the first time we put the time machines together, it was at night. Not to mention removing the link again is fairly easy." He sighed. "It is going to delay your departure a bit, but you have to remember this: what is three hours, compared to a human life?"
"Oh no, I realize that" Visiting Marty reassured him. "I couldn't argue with that even if I wanted to. I was just thinking about how we won't be able to leave at 12:15 now then."
Doc shrugged. "Such is life. A little bit of time lag was probably unavoidable anyway after this complex mess of a trip."
Visiting Marty nodded, and went back to Mike and Calvin. As Doc looked around he noticed his fellow inventors had deserted him as well and were animatedly chatting with their wives and the others about how they were going to put the new scheme into practice. The inventor didn't mind – it gave him the time to take care of an important errand. He strolled over to his time bus.
Ann Parker was still staring at him warily when he got there. "So…" he cautiously spoke up. "Did I satisfy your misgivings? I know this plan wasn't perfect, but like I said I couldn't come up with anything else, and neither could any of you at least until now. And I'm confident that it will work. So I don't know whether that satisfies you or…"
He got his answer when the girl got back to her feet, jumped out of the bus, ran over and tightly hugged him. Doc awkwardly hugged her back, mentally grinning. After three weeks of senseless dimension-hopping and time machine repairing, this proved to him that all that time hadn't been for nothing, and that he had truly managed to make a difference in some people's lives.
oooooooo
As Emmett had predicted, it didn't take them all that long before the link between the time machines was completed, and after that the central matter at hand was taken care of relatively swiftly. There was just one obstinacy along the way, and that wasn't with any of Doc's theories about dimensional travel, which turned out to be remarkably accurate. The problem was with Chris.
Visiting Marty had noticed before that the Hell Valley inventor was remarkably skittish with time travel and had built in an overprotective system to safeguard the time machine, but he had never realized that would become a problem until Chris started fidgeting when he and Emmett were about to send the cars on their way to create the duplicate dimension. The inventor had taken a spot in his own time machine to make sure it was ready for departure and dully started clicking the time circuits on and off repeatedly, his face vacant of any expression. So by the time Emmett asked his counterpart whether he had set his destination time yet, he got absolutely no response.
Susan figured it out after a few moments. "Good grief, Christopher" she said in a tone that left no doubts, "you're not on that again, aren't you?"
Chris sighed, and gazed at Doc, who had also realized the problem. "Are you sure this is the only way?" he said, the dull despair in his voice indicating that he knew very well it was but somehow needed the confirmation.
"It is," Doc responded, "unless there's someone in your life whom you wouldn't mind losing so you can send him or her to control the time machine during the jump… but I doubt you'd agree to that." The look of unease on Chris' face proved him right there. "You know this will only be a short hop. You're not putting the space-time continuum in danger, the cars won't even leave the city and the time period. No one but us should even get to see us. All they're going to be doing is travel one minute into the future and create a new dimension. If you have any complaints about my theories which could indicate that there would be larger changes, you should have voiced them sooner."
"I don't" Chris readily agreed. "And you're right that I'm being silly. Short of drawing attention to ourselves from passerbies – who wouldn't be there considering the remoteness of the area we were going to make the hop in – there is no real risk in making a journey of a mere minute into the future… but there is the psychological effect for me. Taking up time travel again…"
"It's not as dangerous as you portray it as, Chris" Susan said. "You guys know what you're doing, I can tell that. You're not going to have anything go wrong like it did when you travelled to 1 BC – which was, incidentally, due to something you and Emmett both decided." Chris cringed a little at that. "Sorry for saying that honey, but you needed to hear it. Also, you're going to be saving Calvin's life. Isn't that the most important part of all?"
"Arguably, yes" Chris agreed. "It's just that…" He mulled it over for a while before finally shaking his head. "You're right. Of course you're right. It just makes me uncomfortable. What if I become irresponsible with time travel again if this goes right?"
Susan chuckled. "Knowing you, I doubt that would ever happen – and if it would, it wouldn't result from this situation, because you won't even be inside the machines yourselves. But if you're really that worried about it, I suppose we could arrange for some sort of lock override on the time circuits which would disallow you from getting in for a time, just so you won't be tempted. How does that sound?"
"That sounds reasonable" Chris replied, taking a deep breath. "All right, let's do that." He smiled, leaning back in his seat and appearing at ease again. "Emmett?"
"Ready when you are" his counterpart responded.
"Good." Chris spoke their destination aloud – April 14th 1988, 2:11 PM – and got out of the car. Emmett did the same, and they got out the remote controls. Shortly thereafter, both time machines lifted off and headed out of the cellar.
It was a sight both usual and unusual, Marty figured. Usual, because in the end there was nothing to distinguish it from just another ordinary hop through time. Unusual, because the concept of two time machines attached to each other was new. For a moment as he watched the sight, he wondered whether the link was going to collapse under the strain of two time machines, in flight no less. But it seemed like everything was going all right, and Emmett, who was holding the controls, expertly steered the two vehicles out of the building.
After that, even though for the moment Visiting Marty and all the others who were left behind, time flew by and the situation unfolded itself pretty much exactly like Doc had described it, only much more… mundane, so to speak. The time machines returned some time later, Doc used DNA analysis to track down the origin of the watch, and then departed himself in the time bus, taking Calvin with him. He appeared just a minute later with another Calvin, after which the previously connected time machines headed back home on autopilot. It was a resounding success, with the exception that it would leave the natives of the dimension they were currently in – the B-version, as Doc had described it – with the need to rebuild two time machines. But that, Chris and Emmett assured them, was insignificant next to the fact that they had managed to save Calvin's life.
And as smoothly as that, the conversation turned to their own departures back home. Doc had to run some minor tests first to make sure the machine was calibrated to return to their own dimension, and that gave Visiting Marty the opportunity to say his final goodbyes to a good number of people. Over the past weeks, he had managed to befriend Local Marty, Calvin and Mike, as well as Ann, Claudia and Jennifer. He had a short conversation with all of them before finally concluding with Calvin, who hugged him. "Good luck" the local muttered, apparently still somewhat pessimistic about their fate.
Visiting Marty shrugged. "I trust Doc when he says everything's gonna be fine" he replied. "We didn't spend two weeks here for nothing, after all. If the time machine still isn't fixed and we land in yet another random dimension…" He left the sentence open-ended.
"Hey, if your Doc can come through for Calvin, I'm sure he's going to come through for you guys as well" Jennifer said. "Just be sure to say hi to your Jennifer from me."
The thought of his girlfriend made the visitor even more eager to get back home. "I will," he replied, "although I'm not sure she'll believe my entire story. It's not that she wouldn't trust me, and she knows for a fact what's going on at Doc's place, but this is just too… outlandish, I guess."
"I don't think you need to worry about that" Mike said grinning, holding up a digital camera. "Mom gave it to me to make some pictures as a final goodbye. If she won't believe that, I don't know what else she would believe."
Visiting Marty had to admit that made a lot of sense, and thus he and his counterparts subsequently posed for a series of pictures, each of which were duplicated in the locals' copying machine. He made sure that every one of them was represented on the photographs, and even the Docs could not escape the making of the mementoes. "If we'd needed to go through this in every reality we visited, we would either still be hopping by now or we would have crashed due to the weight of the photographs in the train's trunk" Doc complained, although everyone knew he was exaggerating and he patiently smiled when the pictures were made.
The whole process of saying goodbye seemed to drag on forever, but eventually the two of them were in the bus again, with Doc at the wheel and Marty buckling himself in, the motion bringing back memories of doing that so many times before when they were jumping from one dimension to another. He gulped. He trusted Doc, but this had gone wrong so many times already…
He nevertheless didn't want to burden his friend with such questions – especially since it betrayed little trust in Doc's expertise – so he kept mum about the issue, instead focusing on something else. "Are we ever going to see them again?"
"I hope so" Doc replied. "I've got the precise coordinates of this dimension programmed into the train's computer, and I've left a note down in the lab with the coordinates of our dimension. They promised to make ours the first test when they finish their version of the DFSCUPCIF. I even left a note with basic information to make the work easier." He whistled. "I definitely hope we're going to see them again. This was one of the most interesting realities we've encountered."
Marty frowned, as his friend piloted them through the opened roof of the cellar – courtesy of Emmett and Chris, who were waving goodbye to them from below. "More so than that world where I was a scientific genius?" he asked skeptically.
Doc shrugged. "Well, I can't deny that was interesting from a certain analytical perspective, but this world seemed a little more… human, I guess. It was familiar, and therefore all the more alien because you can see how the events of this dimension could have happened to us – and yet, they didn't. Are you following my reasoning?"
Marty nodded. "Yeah, I guess I know what you mean. Do you have any idea on why there wasn't a Calvin in our world?"
His friend pondered that question, then shook his head. "I have no idea. Maybe he was there, but ended up erasing too soon to make a difference – although I suppose that would require the erasure process working faster in our dimension than in theirs, which makes little sense and isn't backed by the evidence we've seen. Or maybe he did something else different which led him on a changed path compared to the one in this universe… I don't know, and I doubt we'll ever know. Maybe that's just going to be another one of those great mysteries of the universe."
Marty smiled. "Speaking of which, are we going to leave now? I can't wait to see Jen again."
Doc smirked. "I guess you're not going to hang out at our house for a while and talk it over then" he said. "Fair enough, we can always do that later." He steered the bus in the direction of the ravine, to which it started flying at a steady pace of around forty miles per hour, with Doc being careful to avoid urban areas. "Before we go, though, I'd like to check something else first."
"Which is?" Marty asked.
In response, the inventor pulled a few switches at the front desk and then stepped over to his friend, pointing towards a device in the bus. As Marty looked at it, he found that the device displayed the date and time, but not their date and time. Instead, it told him that it was Tuesday, April nineteenth 1988, at 4:12 A.M. To his own surprise, Marty soon remembered what it was.
"This is the time we'd have been at if we had stayed at home, right?" he asked. "You mentioned that before… the Temporal Natural Flow Monitor?" Doc nodded. "You used it to keep time the way it was… on purpose. To keep track of our biological clock."
"Exactly" his friend confirmed. "I'm hoping that we'll be able to use this for future hops too… but today might be too early to speculate about that. I'll just be writing the data from the TNFM down for research purposes." He opened the bus' glove compartment and pulled out a note, on which he carefully wrote the time and date the TNFM registered – apparently Doc hadn't set up a computer that would keep track of past records as well yet – along with their time of departure – April second 1988, 12:14 P.M.
From that information, Marty was expecting that would also be the destination time. But when the bus arrived at Eastwood Ravine – or Wayne Ravine, as it was called in this dimension, Doc instead told the computer a different destination: April second 1988, 11:20 A.M, Hill Valley, California, USA, PF #50.
"Don't you mean twelve-twenty, Doc?" Marty wondered. "The way you're going now, we should be arriving before our departure…"
"Exactly" the inventor replied. "And that is because I want to check whether that departure is actually going to take place, as a first test of whether we truly are back home. Yes, there are atomic-level tests like the ones we've conducted before, but there are only minute difficulties between humans from one dimension and from another – as you noticed, it hasn't stopped our counterparts in the world where you were a physicist, nor Ann with her fingerprint papers this morning, from gaining access to the time bus. I'd prefer to collect some strong secondary evidence, and this is the best way to do that."
Marty nodded slowly. "So, we're just going to sneak in and see if we're leaving?"
"That's the plan" Doc confirmed. "Of course we'd have to be extremely careful. If we do something to alter, delay or prevent our past counterparts' departure, we could have a multi-dimensional paradox on our hands."
Marty turned pale. "Oh man, I hope not" he muttered. "I've gone through far too much of that stuff over the past weeks, Doc – I can't take any more of it!"
His friend smiled wryly. "Well, let's do our best to ensure it won't come to that, then. Are you ready for departure?"
The musician blinked at the abrupt change of subject, but after making sure his belt was tightened as fast as it should, he nodded. "I'm not sure if I'm entirely ready mentally to go through this again – but it is necessary, and we can't keep procrastinating and putting it off forever."
"Exactly" Doc agreed, a determined look set on his face. He carefully applied the gas to the time bus, which began to speed up. He and Marty both had their eyes fixed on the speedometer as the device rapidly went through the fifties and sixties before heading up into the seventies. Would they have succeeded this time around? Would this hop be the final one, the one to take them back home?
It was about time to find out. When the speedometer hit eighty-five, Doc and Marty looked at each other briefly, neither needing to say anything. Then, the bus hit eighty-eight miles per hour and broke the dimensional barrier.
The triple flashes of light and the sonic booms were almost anticlimactic, and before long the time bus' speed started decreasing. Marty blinked, and strained himself to look out of the windows at the world which seemed rather similar to the one they'd just left. "Is this it, Doc?" he wondered, testing his voice. "Are we… home?"
The scientist looked just as uncertain as he was. "According to the readouts, we are" he only replied, pointing to the machinery which did indeed indicate the present dimension as PF #50.
Marty snorted. "Like that proved much before."
Doc shrugged, and instead of replying he steered the time machine in the opposite direction, and soon they were headed back to the Brown mansion. They'd only gotten a smidge underway when he abruptly hit the brakes. When Marty gave him a look, all he got was Doc pointing out of the window. As Marty looked out, he could clearly identify the sign indicating they were at Eastwood Ravine.
Eastwood. Not Wayne. Not Clayton, or Brown. Not even Shonash. Eastwood.
"I know it doesn't say much" Doc said immediately. "We've been through various realities which featured an Eastwood Ravine already. But it definitely is a good sign that we're at least in some place that resembles home."
"You don't have to worry about me getting my hopes up without reason, Doc" Marty replied, sighing. "I've seen far too many dimensions that looked like home without being home that part of me can't believe this could even possibly be our world." He frowned. "Isn't that odd when you think of it? Of all those nutty places we went through, only the one in which we swallowed plutonium was really out there, while the others were normal enough. There were changes in our lives – sometimes major ones – but rarely any outside Hill Valley. Even in the world of the movies, where Hill Valley didn't even exist, the rest of California seemed to be just like how we knew it."
"That really is peculiar" Doc agreed. "I guess that if we travelled further – even further – than we actually did, going through not dozens but hundreds of dimensions, we might have found ones where our families stayed the same, but other things changed on a national scale. Or at least I hope so – finding out the multiverse revolves around us probably wouldn't help keep us modest."
The musician smiled wryly. "I dunno, Doc – it sounds pretty cool. I guess I can see your point, though. Arrogance already cost me too much when I had that chicken problem. I'd hate to think of that ever coming back to haunt me."
"If the future remains as it is now, you shouldn't need to worry about that" Doc replied.
Marty frowned, wondering what more his friend knew about what was coming for them and had simply refused to tell him, but there was no time for further questions right now (not that he would have gotten much out of Doc if he had pursued the subject). The bus arrived at the Brown mansion, and both time travelers immediately got to the window to look at its latest incarnation.
"It looks like home" Marty said, softly. He scanned the surroundings. The house looked the same. The backyard looked the same. The street sign near the house looked exactly as it should. "But is it?"
"That's what we're going to find out" Doc told him, putting the time bus into reverse and finally parking it in the back of the property. "This should leave the bus unnoticed by our younger selves as we pull out of the cellar. Assuming, of course, that they are our younger selves, and that they're about to leave for the first dimension."
He gazed over the readouts in the time bus, which now indicated the present time as being 11:31 – from Marty's hazy recollection, it was probably at most twenty minutes before he arrived at the Brown residence. He told Doc as much, who nodded.
"I figured as much" he replied. "That means we need to hurry. I can't have made the call to you more than about ten minutes before you came over – thank you for being in time for once, by the way – so that gives us only a few minutes until my younger self briefly leaves and re-enters the lab. It should be enough for us to get in inconspicuously, check out the time circuits and leave again, but we do have to hurry."
Marty resisted the impulse to make a complaint about the regular tardiness reference that Doc seemed to have enjoyed making. Instead, he simply nodded and, after briefly looking around to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything major (and taking along the photographs from the other reality) he followed Doc out of the bus. The inventor locked the time machine and after that, the two began their mad dash towards the house.
Given the distance at which Doc had parked the time machine, it didn't take them all that long to get to where they needed to be. They got in through the back door, Doc always going first to check whether anyone was there. From the sounds of it, though, Clara was in the kitchen and absorbed in her work, while Jules and Verne were upstairs. Past Doc's voice, though, was coming from the living room.
Marty actually started for a moment at hearing someone talking on the phone to him, given that he was standing right here, but Doc quickly dragged him along and down into the basement, unwilling to let this window of opportunity pass.
Entering the basement instantly made Marty get a sense of familiarity stronger than any he'd experienced in the other universes, and perhaps the strongest cause for that was the time machine clearly parked in the center of the cellar. As he remembered, the bus had a blanket covering it, and rather than pulling it aside Doc simply pulled it up to get inside, breathing a sigh of relief when his thumbprint worked perfectly. It wasn't enough to convince them they were home, of course, but it worked as a first step.
While his best friend started tinkering away inside his time machine, Marty stood guard at the door, straining his ears for sounds of Past Doc coming back. A tense minute passed that way, with Marty hearing nothing but wishing his friend would hurry up anyway, until a familiar cry of "Eureka!" drew his attention.
"Doc?" he asked, unwilling to immediately believe the implications of the word.
When his friend poked his head back out of the machine a moment later, though, the broad grin on his face gave Marty no room for any further denial. "We're home!" he exclaimed. "I just checked the machinery. The time bus is set for PF #50. I suppose I could do some further atomic research, but this confirms to me that this should be our home. This never happened in any of the other universes."
Marty stared at him, hardly able to believe it. He had hopped through so many universes, seen so many versions of Doc's home and garage that it was incredibly difficult to believe that this was their home, they were back, and when he headed over to the Parker residence his Jennifer would be there. The frown on Doc's face eventually made him realize that he had to say something, though, so he smiled faintly. "That's great, Doc" he said. "I – wow."
"I know what you mean" Doc replied, smirking. "It feels hard to believe even now, but there's no real point in trying to investigate any further when the chance we're not back is so minuscule that…"
He and Marty both caught their breath at the same time at the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs. Doc quickly and unceremoniously dragged his friend to the other side of the cellar and opened the DeLorean door. The two ducked inside.
"What the hell, Doc?" Marty spoke up, frowning. "I get why we had to hide, but why in the DeLorean?"
His friend shrugged. "It was one of the places in the room where I was pretty sure my other self wouldn't look, and one place where we could still talk. I'm certain I didn't go anywhere near this part of the cellar when I was in here before."
"Not before," Marty pointed out, "but you do now. Look!"
Sure enough, Past Doc had stopped his walk through the cellar and was heading unmistakably in their direction, the look on his face suspicious. "He must have heard you click the door shut" Marty muttered, to which Doc could only nod and push him to duck down even more.
Those few moments felt hellish, especially because Doc was pressing against him and truth be told, his friend was much heavier than he was. The tension was immense – if Past Doc would find out about them, they'd be in a world of trouble. And they couldn't have that. Not now they'd just gotten home. He wondered whether either he or Doc had accidentally dropped something in the cellar that could also tip Past Doc off, but he didn't ask – the DeLorean wasn't entirely soundproof, and he had no way of knowing how close Past Doc was… he couldn't see anything from down here…
It felt like forever until Doc breathed a sigh of relief and, a few moments later, relieved the pressure on him, allowing him to climb back into a reasonably comfortable position. "I'm sorry, Marty" he said. "It all worked out all right – I don't think he saw us. He can't have, since he headed back to his desk."
Marty nodded. "So, how much longer are we going to have to wait here?"
The inventor pulled up his arm so he could inspect his watches, then grumbled in frustration as apparently neither was displaying the correct, current time. Instead, after checking that Past Doc was well out of the way, he switched on the time circuits and by a curt "Stop" immediately cut off the computer's usual greetings. Marty turned towards the circuitry, which read:
Destination Time
MAR 27 1988 01:00 AM
Present Time
APR 02 1988 11:43 AM
Last Time Departed
MAR 26 2028 09:55 PM
Marty stared at Doc. "We're going to be stuck here for another half hour, aren't we?"
The inventor smiled sheepishly. "Those are the disadvantages of going on a time travelling adventure. But look at it from the bright side – we're both going to be incredibly relieved when all this is over at last."
And to that, Marty didn't even bother to reply anymore.
oooooooo
The thirty minutes that came dragged themselves out until Doc was inclined to agree with Marty's sentiment that they felt like they were taking longer than their entire journey thus far. They had to watch while Marty and Doc's younger selves looked at the time bus, chatted about it, and finally left on their journey. The familiar words that were being exchanged worked as effective further confirmation that yes, they were home this time. It wasn't until the other versions of the time travelers had left that Doc dared to make a move out of the DeLorean, with Marty wanting to go before him but being held back by his friend.
It was well past twelve PM when the two finally got out of their cramped positions in the car. Marty smiled with relief. "I can't believe we're really back" he muttered. "Ouch!"
Doc frowned. "Are you okay?"
His friend shrugged, sitting down on one of the chairs in the lab. "I think I got a little cramped back there – no wonder, I guess, after so much time." He waved off the inventor's concerns. "I'm pretty sure I'll be fine soon, though. You go ahead into the house and meet up with Clara – I'll be with you in a second." He grimaced. "Why don't you have any cramps? I thought you were supposed to be in your seventies by now?"
"Seventy-seven" Doc confirmed. "Might be closer to seventy-eight. I should really try to calculate my exact age one day – now there's an interesting puzzle that doesn't require time travel to be resolved." He smiled wryly, remembering the many long adventures that had resulted from what had been supposed to be tiny little puzzles, then shrugged. "But I guess I'm dealing with it a little better because I had to crawl in tight spaces a lot during my work as a blacksmith, and not to forget when I was working on the train and the DeLorean before that. I think my limbs have gotten used to being in awkward position. Not to mention that I could move around a little freer back there. Sorry about that, by the way – I probably should have given you the leg room, but that didn't occur to me until my past self was already in the room and we couldn't inconspicuously switch anymore."
Marty nodded. "Where are they now?"
Doc checked his watch. "It's twelve-thirteen" he reported. "Our counterparts should be over at Eastwood Ravine, on the verge of traveling to the other dimension. I suppose we'll find out soon enough for sure whether everything went according to plan, but I have no doubt that it has. There was barely any difference in our behavior from what I can remember."
"Well, it has been two and a half weeks since we left, so our memories could be fuzzy" Marty pointed out. "Man, I can't even believe it's been that long. I know Jen won't have missed me because we only just left, but I still feel guilty for leaving her alone for so long."
"That's natural, I guess" Doc replied. "Time lag can be difficult to adjust to, so that even when you realize something logically, you can't wrap your head around it emotionally. But it's only been two and a half weeks, Marty. How long were you out of 1985 again during that original weekend? About as long, I'd hazard a guess. Not to mention I lived a life in the Nineteenth Century away from you for over ten years. That's the beauty of time travel – it's all relative."
"I guess so" Marty mulled. "But I bet you're still real eager to see Clara again right now, aren't you?"
Doc nodded. "Yes, yes I am. But that might just be because I've seen so many versions of her that weren't her throughout this journey that I'm eager to see the real her that I know again." He smiled fondly. "How are your legs?"
"Better" Marty replied, standing up. "I hope you won't mind if I go home right away – it is my sister's birthday after all, and I'm real eager to see Jennifer again." From the look on his face, Doc could figure out what his friend wasn't saying – that he wanted to get away from the madness in the Brown residence for a little while. Well, he could definitely understand that perspective.
As such, he simply nodded and turned to the exit, Marty following him. The two headed back up the stairs into the main house, and it wasn't until they got to the front door that Marty turned back to his old friend. "You know, it just occurred to me that I hadn't really apologized for complaining so much during the trip" he said. "I know you were trying to do what you thought was best, and that you couldn't help that we didn't get home right away. I was just really frustrated."
"I understand" Doc replied. "I'm partly blaming myself for not figuring out sooner how all of this worked, but I guess once in a while, you need to accept that an alternate version of your best friend can one-up you." He smirked at the uncomfortable look on Marty's face. "But yes, better to let bygones be bygones and not think about them anymore except as a reminder to prepare ourselves better when the time of the next trip comes."
From the look on Marty's face at that moment, his friend wasn't at all looking forward to that 'next trip', and he indeed burst out of the door without saying another word. The inventor smiled and turned back to the living room. His oldest son was typing away at the computer and looked up at his entrance. "Hello, Dad" he said. "How was your trip?"
"It wasn't the best I ever had" Doc replied. "Where's your mother?"
Jules frowned. "Making dinner in the kitchen, of course. You asked her if she could have dinner ready by quarter to one, didn't you? Did you really forget about that in just a few hours of time traveling or did something go wrong that made you stay away for much longer?"
"The latter" Doc admitted. "I'll tell you later, but I need to check on your mom first. Maybe I can detail the entire story to all of you over dinner – although it is quite a long one."
Jules grinned. "I shall be waiting with bated breath, then" he said eloquently. "Say hi to Verne for me."
Doc rolled his eyes at Jules' clear smug satisfaction that he was exempted from kitchen duty today and his delight that Verne wasn't. He walked into the kitchen, where Verne was peeling potatoes and Clara was just putting something in the oven.
The sight of her, so mundane, so like what he could have seen any day in the other reality, nevertheless took his breath away. This was his Clara. This was the woman he'd missed for the past seventeen days, the one he had been waiting for and hoping against hope to see again. He had, at times, come dangerously close to giving up that hope, especially when Marty was acting dreary – not that he blamed the teen for the understandable emotion. But he had persisted, and now he was back into his old home, reunited with his wife and children. He couldn't help but stare at her and marvel over it for a moment, thinking of how real the threat of losing her forever had been.
Clara frowned as she saw the look on her husband's face. "Are you okay, Emmett?" she wondered. "Did something go wrong with the new time machine?"
All right, he supposed the look on his face and his previous experience made that a natural assumption, but Doc nevertheless couldn't help but grimace. "Am I that transparent that everyone figures it out right away?" he groaned. "Yes, I'm afraid something did. It's fine now," he hastened to assure her, "but suffice to say that Marty and I were trapped in a vicious cycle of hopping through various dimensions on a journey that lasted over two weeks."
That caught her attention. "Good heavens" Clara whispered, before shutting the oven door and falling into her husband's arms. "How did that happen? Weren't the circuits that should have allowed you to travel through dimensions fine-tuned well enough?"
"No, they worked fine" her husband said regretfully, wishing that it had only been a simple mistake he'd made in overworking for too long. "The real problem was the circuitry I'd taken out of the old DeLorean and installed in the present time machine. One crucial piece was strained because of its age and broke because of an overload of energy, channeling too many gigawatts into the DFSCUPCIF – the alternate version of the flux capacitor that I installed into the machine – and thus throwing our destination out of whack by disintegrating the circuitry essential for determining our direction, too. Ironically, it happened after the second dimension, just as we were about to go home. It took us five dimensions or so to find someone who could figure out the answer," he decided he would tell her about the identity of that person later as part of the full story, "and another forty before we could get it fixed. The machine should be working properly again now, and I'm fairly confident we've made it home this time, but I'm going to take a good look at all the vital components of the time machines before they strand us in a foreign place again next time."
"That sounds wise" Clara agreed, still pale. "Just as long as you're not planning to resume dimensional travel right now, after all the troubles it got you in. Forty dimensions! With that in mind, it's a miracle you only took two weeks to get back."
"The exact numbers would be seventeen days and fifty-two dimensions, actually," Doc felt compelled to clarify, "including the dimensions we jumped through before we tried to go home and encountered the problem. But yes, in retrospect I suppose things could have gone a lot worse. Along the way I developed a method of sorts to quickly determine whether the inhabitants… and the technology… of a given dimension could be of use to us. The two didn't always have to match up after all." He smiled, remembering how that conviction had led them to explore even the first world where no Hill Valley was around at all, and how that had made them find not the answer, but instead something just as intriguing: the Back to the Future DVDs. He wondered what his family would make of that part of the story. Their reaction would probably be broadly similar to that of his counterparts in PF #47. "Also, we got help from the inhabitants of the final dimension, who let us stay in their house and actively assisted us in our efforts with money, technology and labor. Without them, we would undoubtedly still be stuck either there or somewhere else."
"Well, then it's good to hear they were around to save you" Clara agreed. "I don't suppose there's any way we could thank them?"
"We could go over to their dimension, I suppose, but you just said I shouldn't travel through dimensions any time soon again and I agreed" Doc said. "But it is possible now – I wrote down the dimensional code of the final reality, and I might be able to track down the codes of the other dimensions we hopped through using the computer's memory if it recorded everything despite the malfunctioning of vital components. That's a pretty big if, though."
Clara nodded but remained otherwise quiet, which allowed Verne to pipe up. "You really travelled through other worlds, Dad?" he said, awed. "Did you meet a lot of other versions of us? What were they like?"
"There were versions of me and Marty around in almost every dimension we went to" Doc replied. "There were a lot of alternate versions of you and Jules around as well, but you weren't always the same as you are here." Or even born at all, he mentally added thinking of how the last Emmett and his Clara had only had Jules by 1988. He did wonder whether they were going to have a Verne in their future as well, and whether that Verne would be as intrigued by the Twentieth Century as his own son was. He'd long suspected Verne indulging himself in the pleasures of his father's original time (whereas Jules long remained more interested in the time he grew up in) was a reaction against the boredom he'd experienced so often in his youth. He had matured a little over time, but gaming and playing '80s music were still among his hobbies (along with skateboarding, if his father would ever let him). Maybe Other-Dimension-Verne would not be as intrigued by the wonders of this century because he would never have known any other home? They really needed to go back to that place some day and find out more details about their counterparts, whose lives were so similar, and yet so different.
"Maybe you can save the remainder of the story for dinner," Clara suggested, disrupting his current thought processes but saying what he'd already been considering earlier. I'm sure all of us would be interested in hearing about everything you and Marty saw rather than listening to some loose and seemingly unconnected anecdotes – no matter how interesting they might be. I presume Marty went home to his own family?" Her husband nodded. "Well, I guess we'll get his side of the story later. Did you happen to bring along some souvenirs that you could show us?"
"I did, yes" Doc replied, thinking of the DVDs but also of the pictures they had taken on the last day in the other dimension. Back then, he'd thought of them as unnecessary, but now that he was back home he developed a sudden appreciation for them.
Because if there was anything having souvenirs to show and to reminisce by signified, it was that he was finally home again.
oooooooo
For Marty, the initial return home was much more mundane than Doc's had been, mostly due to the fact that he couldn't let his family know he had been away for more than just half an hour. As a result, Lorraine and George were more than a little surprised when their son hugged them without an apparent reason, but since that was all he did they just chalked it up to one of the eccentricities Marty had developed over time. Looking at them, their son wondered whether he could ever tell them about time travel the way his counterparts had. Although it had obviously worked out well there, he was still a little reluctant about it. He would have to have a long conversation with Doc on the subject one day.
For the moment, though, he didn't have anyone to talk to about time travel, so after he had a shower he called Jennifer whether he could come over, dropping a few hints over the phone to make her curious. Since her parents weren't home at the moment, there was no reason to stay away and Marty soon found himself driving his trusty Toyota truck over to the Parker residence.
The moment he walked into the house he hugged Jennifer, which clearly startled her. "You really must have missed me" she deduced. "Where have you been?"
Marty chuckled wryly, following her into the living room and sitting down on the couch next to his girlfriend. Oh, how he had missed this. "What would you say if I said I'd been to fifty-two different worlds?"
"If you were anyone else, I would probably declare you insane" Jennifer said, smirking. "But even knowing you're a time traveler, I'm confused. Fifty-two different worlds? In what way? Did you and Doc change history and have to try all those times to get the right reality back again?"
"No – although that's not a bad guess" Marty replied. He then explained to her exactly what had occurred that morning, and how Doc had demonstrated the new time travelling bus to him with its additional function of being able to travel through dimensions. He detailed their first two journeys, which was fairly difficult as he had a hard time remembering the exact details – it had been so long, and the journey as a whole had been so overwhelming – and then described how they had intended to head home after just a few hours, but something had gone wrong, forcing them to keep on hopping through universes.
It was at that point that Jennifer briefly went off to fetch them something to drink, realizing this was going to be a long tale, which it indeed was. Marty described all the dimensions he'd been to in graphic detail, noticing it somehow felt as a relief to get the whole story off his chest to someone who didn't know yet but who could very well understand. Maybe he could be a writer like Calvin McFly after all. Finally, he finished almost an hour after he had started with the final events in the final dimension, before detailing their ride home and showing Jennifer the pictures he had brought along. She examined them carefully, and while Marty watched her, for the first time in all the time he'd been at the Parker home the room went quiet.
"Wow" Jennifer finally murmured. "Just wow. I – I can't imagine what that must have been like, going through so many universes. I'd guess it's even worse than travelling through various times."
Marty frowned, realizing from his memories and feelings that she was right but being unsure just why she was right. "What do you mean?"
"When you travel through time, you at least have some idea of where you are, of what technology is available to fix the time machine, and you stay where you are for a while" Jennifer explained. "You can get settled in and get to know your options – and even if they're lousy, you at least know what you're up against. And you know that even if you do nothing, live out your life and wait, the year will eventually become 1988 again. When you're travelling through dimensions, you're just hopping through endless versions of the same present where you often can't settle down and where you need to go on, but you're not closer to home in the fiftieth dimension than you were in the fifth. They all seem endless repetitions of the present, only a different present each time, and often the world looks like home and it isn't, and it takes a long while before you know for sure."
"That's exactly true" Marty said, nodding enthusiastically. "For the past hour I've been wondering whether Doc won't call me again soon to say that he's found that this isn't our home after all, and we need to move on. I'm pretty confident that he won't, but you never know…"
Jennifer smiled at him. "Well, Doc is a thorough person, isn't he?" she pointed out. "If this was the wrong dimension for you, he probably would have found out and have called you by now. Since no call ever came, you could assume you're safe. And don't I look like the Jennifer you know?"
"You look exactly like the Jennifer I know" Marty replied. "But so did the other Jennifer in the last dimension, and I know she wasn't her. Your looks have been fairly consistent through all dimensions I visited – the ones where you existed, at least – even if your personality was occasionally different. Like that Clara Parker from the smart me world." He sighed, wondering whether there would ever be a moment to thank that particular counterpart for helping them get home before being surprised by his own thoughts about the look-alike that had until now freaked him out the most. Maybe being home at last had made him mellow out a little on the issue. "I'm pretty confident you're the Jennifer I know, though. You… you just feel right."
Jennifer smirked. "If you want to be absolutely confident, how about a final test?" she said tauntingly. "You need confirmation, after all."
"Sounds good to me," Marty replied, leaning in to kiss her. They locked lips only for a short time, but it was enough to remove all doubt from the teen's mind. This was his home. This was where he belonged.
He told Jennifer as much when she broke the kiss, and she nodded. "That's good to hear" she said. "Are you going to stay here now, then?"
Marty blinked. "Of course…" he muttered. "Why wouldn't I stay here?"
"I mean, what if Doc comes up to you again, asking you whether you want a ride in his dimension-hopping machine?" Jennifer clarified. "I mean, this is Doc we're talking about – I can't see him giving up on a project this large altogether so easily. So if he calls you again – not right away of course, but, say, in six months' time, and asks you whether you want to join him on another excursion through dimensions, what would you say to him?"
Her boyfriend pondered the question, which should have been so easy. For days, he had complained on end about the horrors of this trip. He had wanted nothing more than go home to his family and his girlfriend again. Now that he was home at last, shouldn't the mere thought of leaving it make him uncomfortable again? Did he not want to stay in 1988, in Hill Valley, in this universe, for as long as he possibly could?
The answer to that was much more ambiguous than Marty himself would have expected.
"If he came up to me a few days from now, I would blow him off" he finally said. "Like I would probably have done if he'd come up to me within a few days after I returned from 1885, two-and-a-half years ago, unless it had been a real emergency. But if a few months passed, and he asked me along for a casual excursion to the other dimension, with every aspect of the time machine in perfect working order, and we'd be taking a short jaunt just to see our counterparts again…"
He took a deep breath.
"You know what? I think I might actually go along with that after all."
"Are you sure?" Jennifer asked. "What about the dangers, then? From what you just told me, it seemed almost like you loathed the trip."
Marty pondered that and shook his head. "Nah. Yeah, we went through a lot, but in the end we got to meet so many interesting people and see so many interesting things – even my super intelligent counterpart – that I have to admit the benefits outweighed the drawbacks for this method of travel. I'm definitely glad I'm back here now – there really is no place like home – but for the future?"
He smiled and turned to Jennifer, kissing her on the cheek. "I couldn't say no if Doc asked me to come along again, whether the trip would be one with the DeLorean or the train or this bus again, even with the risk that something like this would happen to us another time – and that's a risk that would always be there. Home is great and all, but it can only get you so far. There's definitely enough out there left to explore."
Jennifer nodded. "But not yet, right?" she said teasingly.
"Certainly" Marty agreed, leaning in to resume their kiss. "Not yet."
THE END.