Back to the Future Part II

by CRAIG SHAW GARDNER

  BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II

  A novel by Craig Shaw Gardner

  Based on a screenplay by Bob Gale Story by Robert Zemeckis & Bob Gale

  ‘The only thing more uncertain than the future is the past.’

  - Soviet proverb

  Copyright © 1989 MCA Publishing Rights, a Division of MCA, Inc. All rights reserved.

  First published in Great Britain in 1989 by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING PLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious - and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 0 7472 3429 9

  Typeset in 10/11¾ pt Mallard

  by Coiset Private Limited, Singapore

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  Collins, Glasgow

  HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING PLC

  Headline House,

  79 Great Titchfield Street

  London WIP7FN

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Great Scott!

  Doc Emmett Brown never thought it would come to this.

  It had all started so simply. Doc Brown still remembered the first night he had conducted the time experiment - all the way back in 1955.

  A storm, which had been brewing all evening, was about to break.

  The clock tower read 10:04.

  The DeLorean, with its special super-conducting electrical pole added for the occasion, raced toward the electrical line.

  And lightning struck the clock tower!

  At the last possible second, Doc Brown connected the cables.

  The hook on the pole above the DeLorean hit the electrical line - and 1.21 jigowatts of electricity flooded into the flux capacitor -

  And the DeLorean vanished into the future, leaving only twin trails of fire where its wheels had been!

  Ah, that was a great day for science! Of course, Doc hadn’t invented the DeLorean time machine in 1955. Heavens, DeLoreans didn’t even exist in 1955! No, it was his 1985 counterpart - a Doc Brown thirty years older and wiser - who had finally perfected attempt to correct it. After all, there was no other way for a responsible scientist to act!

  He climbed into the DeLorean and set the destination display for 1985, on the morning following the time Marty returned. There was no reason, after all, for Marty not to get a good night’s sleep.

  They would be very careful, Doc told himself, and there would be no mistakes. While he had been in the future, Doc had done some research into the nature of time paradoxes, and discovered their results could bo far more devastating than he had ever imagined!

  But even Doctor Emmett L. Brown, with all of his intellect, could have never imagined the startling repercussions that would develop from what he was about to do.

  Chapter One

  Saturday

  October 26 1985

  10:38 a.m.

  Everything - but everything - was different now!

  The truck was the clincher. It was a new Toyota 4-By-4, jet black and gorgeous. And his parents had said that it belonged to him!

  Marty McFly still couldn’t believe how much had changed.

  Before he had gone into the past, his father had been - Marty had to face it - a wimp who liked to spend his time laughing at Jackie Gleason reruns; a wimp who let his co-worker Biff run all over him. His dad had actually done the reports and office work for both men. And his mother had reacted to all this by quietly stepping back from life. She had also started drinking more than she should. They had both been good parents, had raised Marty and his brother and sister the best they could, but still -

  Before he had gone into the past! How easily he accepted all that now. It had started with his friend Doc Brown - a local inventor who everybody around Hill Valley thought was a bit of a crackpot, even for California - anyway, Doc had wanted Marty to bring along his video camera to tape the Doc’s latest experiment; turning a DeLorean into a time machine!

  And. unlike most of Doc’s other experiments, the machine had actually worked, sending Doc’s sheepdog, Einstein, one minute into the future!

  That’s when the terrorists had shown up. It seemed that Doc had needed some plutonium for his time machine to work, so he had gotten these guys to steal some for him, vaguely promising he would make them some bombs or something. Doc had then planned to lose himself, so that the terrorists could never find him.

  The terrorists, unfortunately, had had other ideas.

  They had shot Doc - not fatally, as it turned out -and chased Marty after he had climbed into the DeLorean, forcing him to speed away from their machine-guns and rocket-launchers, until the car was flat out doing eighty-eight miles per hour. And, at eighty-eight miles per hour, the DeLorean had turned into a time machine, sending Marty thirty years into the past!

  He’d come close to blowing it all in 1955, but had managed somehow to get through the whole thing OK, with a little help from the 1955 version of Doc, who had also succeeded in sending Marty and the DeLorean back to the present, good old 1985.

  Except that 1985 wasn’t the same anymore. Now, his father was no longer a wimp. Instead, he was a published science fiction author. And his mother wasn’t drinking any more, and she looked much thinner and years younger! Heck, now his parents even played tennis together!

  Biff had changed jobs, too. He now ran an ‘auto detailing’ service, doing speciality work on cars. And Biff wasn’t bullying anybody into doing his job anymore - in fact, he was sitting in the McFly kitchen at this very minute, having a cup of coffee before he started to wax George’s car.

  Even Marty’s brother and sister had cleaned up their acts. And Marty’s dream truck was sitting in the garage!

  All this stuff had happened with his family and Biff, just because Marty had messed up a little bit when he had been stuck in 1955. They had been lucky that time, and everything had worked out all right. Marty knew that Doc Brown was right - it was dangerous to fool around with time.

  But Doc was already gone again, off into the future. The future, not the past, had been the DeLorean’s original destination, and Doc was eager to get on with his experiment. Still, Marty wished Doc had waited a while, at least until everything had quieted down around here. The way all these things had changed - Marty thought they were great and all, but still - if you looked at it a certain way, all this change could be a little scary.

  What if something else, something really serious, was wrong with this version of 1985? With all that had already happened, who knew what else could be different?

  ‘How about a ride, mister?’

  Marty turned away from the truck at the sound of the girl’s voice. It was Jennife
r. Jennifer, with her long, auburn hair and big, brown eyes, looking every bit as pretty as the last time he had seen her-in Marty’s humble opinion, the prettiest girl in all of the senior class.

  It also didn’t hurt one bit that she was Marty's girl-friend.

  Some things, then, were still the same - some very important things.

  ‘Jennifer!’ Marty had to keep himself from jumping up and down. ‘Oh, are you a sight for sore eyes! Let me look at you!’

  Jennifer took a worried half-step away as he hurried over to her.

  ‘Marty’ she said with a bit of a frown, ‘you’re acting like you haven't seen me in a week! ’

  ‘I haven’t!’ Marty answered without thinking.

  She looked at him even more strangely.

  ‘Are you OK? Is everything all right?’

  That’s right! Marty realised there was no way she could know about everything that had happened to him. He had spent a whole week back in 1955, but he’d actually come back to 1985 at almost the same time he had left - so, to somebody who had stayed put in 1985, instead of jumping around in time like Marty and the DeLorean, it was like he hadn’t been gone at all.

  How did you explain something like that to someone without sounding absolutely crazy?

  But everything was all right - in a way it had never been before, with his parents, with Biff, and the truck, too! He looked back at the house and smiled.

  ‘Oh, yeah!’ he answered her. ‘Everything is great.'

  It was especially great, with Jennifer, here and now. He hadn't realised, until this moment, how much he had missed her when he had been in the past. But he would make up for all that, and more, now that he was back where he belonged.

  He put his arms around Jennifer. She put her arms , around him. They looked into each other’s eyes.

  Marty leaned his head forward toward Jennifer's slightly opened lips. He closed his eyes.

  Jennifer would never believe how long he had waited for this kiss.

  Their eyes opened abruptly as not one, not two, but three sonic booms rocked the driveway on which they stood.

  Marty knew those sonic booms all too well. He looked around for the source of the noise, and saw Doc Brown pull the DeLorean into the driveway.

  But both Doc and the DeLorean were different! For one thing, the car had a new addition to its rear deck, right above the engine, a white canister labelled ‘Mr Fusion'. And Doc (as white-haired and dishevelled as ever - at least that was the same!) was dressed in even wilder clothes than he usually wore; a metallic yellow shirt covered by a long orange robe.

  Doc jumped from the car.

  ‘Marty!’ he called frantically. ‘You’ve got to come back with me!’

  Marty looked from Jennifer to Doc and back again. Back with Doc? In the time machine? He had thought this was all over!

  ‘Where?’ Marty asked.

  ‘Back to the future!’ Doc replied, as if going to the future were the most obvious thing in the world. The inventor didn’t wait for Marty’s answer, but walked Quickly to the garbage can by the side of the driveway. He threw off the lid and began rifling through the can’s contents.

  ‘Wait a minute!’ Marty called. ‘What are you doin’, Doc?’

  Doc picked up a banana skin and a crushed beer can. ‘I need fuel!’ He carried the trash over to the ‘Mr Fusion’ canister, dumped in the banana skin remaining beer, then - after a moment’s thought the beer can, too.

  ‘Go ahead!’ he shouted to Marty. ‘Quick, get in the car!’

  Doc really wanted Marty to go to the future? But Marty couldn’t! Not now. not after all he'd been through!

  ‘No, no, no. Doc,’ Marty objected with a shake of his head. ‘I just got here. Jennifer’s here!’ He waved at the Toyota in the garage. ‘We’re gonna take this new truck out for a spin.’

  Doc paused in his garbage collection for a moment to stare at both of them intently. ‘Well, bring her along! This concerns her, too!’

  This concerned both of them?

  Marty looked at Jennifer. She looked back at him.

  ‘Wait a minute, Doc!’ Marty interrupted. This might be more serious than he had thought. ‘What are you talking about? What happens to us in the future? Do we become assholes or something?’

  Doc hesitated for a second: should he tell them the truth? Then he blinked rapidly and shook his head. ‘No, no, you and Jennifer both turn out fine. It’s your kids, Marty. Something’s got to be done about your kids!’

  Our kids?

  Marty looked at Jennifer.

  Jennifer looked at Marty.

  Our kids?

  They both got in the car.

  Marty looked quickly at the inside of the DeLorean as he and Jennifer crowded into the passenger seat. It looked pretty much the same way it did before, with the three digital readouts on the dashboard showing where they were set to travel in time, along with where they were now, timewise, and the last place -or rather, time - where the DeLorean had been. And the flux capacitor - the y-shaped gizmo that made this time travel stuff possible - was still glowing behind them.

  Doc jumped into the driver’s seat, quickly setting the time circuits to send them into the future. He backed the car out of the driveway and started down the suburban street, heading straight for the dead end!

  ‘Doc,’ Marty reminded him, ‘you’d better back up. We don’t have enough road to get up to eighty-eight.’

  ‘Roads?’ Doc replied with a laugh. ‘Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.’

  He reached out to the dashboard and flicked a switch that Marty didn’t recognise. There was a sound iust outside the car. Marty leaned over the top of the door just enough to see that the wheels were rotating ninety degrees to flatten beneath the bottom of the car.

  That meant the tyres were no longer touching the ground.

  That meant they had to be flying!

  Doc gunned the car into the sky.

  Marty and Jennifer looked at each other.

  Nobody would ever believe this.

  The DeLorean rose higher, with all three of them inside too busy and excited to look where they had come from - behind them, where Biff Tannen was out of the house, the new matchbook he'd just had printed, 'Bill's Auto Detailing', held proudly in his hand. And not one of them, Doc, Marty, or Jennifer, turned back to see Biff, the matchbook forgotten in his hand, as he watched open-mouthed while the DeLorean soared upward into the sky, then disappeared into the future.

  But even if they had noticed him, none of them could have seen Biff’s eyes narrow as he wondered how a DeLorean could fly. None of them could have heard him mutter, ‘What in the hell is going on here?’ And certainly none of them could have remotely imagined the dire consequences that were to arise out of Biff having witnessed their departure.

  Chapter Two

  The first thing they saw were the lights. Big, bright lights, coming right for them, even though they were still flying.

  There had been a triple flash of white light, followed by pouring rain. Marty realised they must be in the future. But all they could see was the rain, and those lights.

  The glowing circles got larger still, and Marty could see they were attached to something even bigger, something that looked like nothing so much as a flying tractor-trailer. Whatever it was, it was bigger than big. And it was coming right toward them.

  Both Marty and Jennifer screamed.

  Doc jerked the wheel of the DeLorean to the right. The two vehicles missed each other by inches. The driver of the monster vehicle stuck his head out the window.

  ‘Stay in your own lane, maxhole!’

  Own lane? Marty leaned forward, trying to get a better view of the rain-swept sky. Yeah, there were lane markers out there, small orange cones simply floating in the air.

  ‘What was that?’ Marty asked as soon as he managed to breathe.

  ‘Teamster,’ Doc replied.

  ‘But we’re flying!’ Marty objected.

  ‘Precisely!’ Doc swung the
DeLorean over to the correct side of the lane markers.

  A new voice shouted angrily at them:

  ‘DeLorean, vector twelve, this is air traffic control!’ The voice was coming from the middle of the dashboard. Marty realised it must be some sort of radio.

  ‘You’ve made unauthorised entry into commercial transport airspace,’ the angry voice went on. ‘Why the hell wasn’t your transponder on? Over!’

  Doc grinned at Marty and Jennifer before he replied.

  ‘Roger. We’re experiencing minor technical transponder difficulty. We’re descending now for repair. Over and out!’

  Marty admitted it; he was more than shaken up, and not just with that huge, flying truck. Commercial transport airspace? Transponder?

  It was time for some answers.

  ‘What the hell’s going on, Doc?’ Marty demanded. ‘Where are we? When are we?’

  Doc pointed at the time display as he eased the nose of the DeLorean downward.

  Marty read the digital display:

  ‘OCTOBER 21 2015. 4:29 P.M.’

  ‘We’re descending toward Hill Valley, California,’ Doc repeated much too calmly, ‘on Wednesday October 21 2015.’

  ‘2015?’ Marty repeated. ‘You mean, we’re actually in the future?’

  They were suddenly surrounded by flying passenger cars that didn't look all that different from the DeLorean. They must be down in the non-commercial air lanes now. The cars seemed to be going much too

  East in all this rain, but then, Marty realised, there weren’t any roads to slip on any more, were there?

  An old, beat-up heap with a noisy muffler zipped past them, its dented rear-end covered with bumper stickers:

  I brake for birds!

  Littering can kill!

  This summer, do something a robot can’t do - pick grapes!

  Littering could kill? Marty looked down from the window of the DeLorean. He guessed almost anything could kill if you dropped it from this height.

  Marty had to face it. He was having a little trouble coming to grips with all this.

  Sure, he had travelled through time before, but that had been into the past, where he’d met younger versions of his parents and other people from Hill Valley. Everybody remembered the past. It was just something you accepted as being there. But travelling to the future - he was someplace where stuff hadn’t even happened yet!