Back To The Future

by George Gipe

  Marty barely noticed his friend, however. He continued to stare at the DeLorean, which was unlike anything he had ever seen before. The front of the modernistic vehicle was a smooth slope from windshield to fender—beautiful but hardly startling. From the driver’s compartment rearward, however, the car had been modified so that it resembled something you might see only in an atomic power plant. In place of the rear seat and hatchback door was a huge nuclear reactor, behind which jutted two large venting outlets, each with eight openings. Surrounding the vent and reactor was a six-inch coil which disappeared beneath the rear bumper only to emerge later and wrap itself around the top. A circular projection approximately eighteen inches in diameter, which Marty learned later was radar, hung over the passenger’s compartment. Various heavy cables ran the length of the car from engine to front wheels, adding to its arcane look.

  Doc Brown allowed his protégé to stare at the strange vehicle for a minute before speaking.

  “Good evening, Marty,” he said with smiling formality. “Welcome to my latest experiment. This is the big one—the one I’ve been working and waiting for all my life.”

  Marty was less interested in the experiment than the DeLorean. Walking in a circle around it, he took in every line and hidden seam. “It’s a DeLorean,” he said. “But what did you do to it?”

  “Just a few modifications,” Doc Brown smiled.

  As he spoke, Brown got out of the vehicle, revealing himself in all his sci-fi splendor. He thought he must resemble Michael Rennie stepping onto Earth for the first time in The Day the Earth Stood Still.

  “What’s with the Devo suit?” Marty asked.

  No respect, Doc Brown thought. He had gone to so much trouble preparing an appropriate outfit for the occasion and this young man called it a Devo suit.

  “Bear with me, Marty,” he replied. “All of your questions will be answered in due time. Now if you’ll roll the tape, we’ll proceed.”

  Marty took the video camera from its case, set it on the tripod, and pointed it at Doc Brown. He raised his hand, then dropped it as he pushed the ON switch.

  Rather formally, like the narrator of a documentary film, Brown began to speak. “Good evening,” he intoned. “I’m Dr. Emmett Brown. I’m standing here on the parking lot at Twin Pines Mall. It’s Saturday morning, October 26, 1985. It’s 1:19 A.M. and this is temporal experiment number one.” Glancing down at Einstein, who had jumped out of the step-van and was padding nervously around the base of the DeLorean, Doc added: “Come on, Einstein. Get in, boy.” The dog obediently jumped into the car and sat down regally in the middle of the driver’s seat. Doc Brown reached across and buckled him in with the shoulder harness. Then, turning to Marty, the camera and unseen audience, he continued the narration.

  “Please note that Einstein’s clock here is in precise synchronization with my control watch.”

  With that, he held his digital watch next to the clock on Einstein’s collar. Marty, working the zoomar handle, moved in to a close-up of the two timepieces. Indeed, they were in dead sync.

  “Now,” Doc Brown said, “if we can show the entire car again, you will note that the dog is alone in the vehicle and that his clock reads the same as this one on my wrist. This first part of our experiment will involve the canine subject only. No risk is anticipated, but in the time-honored tradition of most breakthrough scientific experiments, we are allowing animals to go first.”

  Giving the dog a little pat on the head, he said, “Good luck, Einie,” as he reached in and started the ignition. The DeLorean engine roared once again to life. Brown turned on the headlights and lowered the gull-wing door. Only the very top of Einstein’s head could be seen above the window level.

  Stepping backward several feet, Doc Brown continued the scientific narration. “I will now operate the vehicle with this remote control unit.”

  He tilted it toward the camera as Marty followed his movements. The remote control unit was similar to that used for a radio-controlled toy car. There were buttons labeled “Accelerator” and “Brake,” as well as a joystick and an LED digital readout labeled “Miles Per Hour.” It was simple-looking but quite sophisticated. Marty had no doubt Doc Brown could maneuver the DeLorean with the device, but at present he had no idea what the end result or product would be. Rather than try to puzzle it out, he decided to simply enjoy the spectacle as cameraman and audience member.

  Brown switched the power button on and, using the accelerator button and joystick, sent the DeLorean roaring to the far end of the parking lot. There he brought it to a quick halt, turning it so that it was pointing toward them. Seeing the trail of rubber fumes rising as it turned, Marty hoped no policeman would happen along. It would be very embarrassing for him, as well as them, if he should be forced to arrest a reckless-driving dog.

  For thirty seconds, the car sat, idling softly. To Marty it seemed to resemble a giant cat, readying itself to pounce on an unwary victim.

  “We’re now ready to continue,” Doc Brown said. “If my calculations are correct, when the car hits eighty-eight miles an hour, you’re gonna see some serious shit.”

  Suddenly aware that the video camera was still running, Doc shuddered at his own use of colloquial language. He added quickly and more conventionally: “When a speed of eighty-eight miles an hour is attained, unusual things should begin happening in this phase of temporal experiment number one.”

  He could, he reasoned, always edit in the more acceptable version later.

  Taking a deep breath, he pushed the accelerator button. The Twin Pines Mall parking lot had been selected by him because of its extreme length—nearly one-third mile—but as the spanking new DeLorean began to roar away toward the far reaches of the black-topped strip, he wondered if even this was enough. Taking off like a racing car, its gears shifting automatically, the DeLorean’s recorded speed whirled quickly past 30, then 40. By the time it reached 60, it seemed to be moving at a dangerously rapid speed. Marty followed it through the viewfinder, once or twice nearly allowing the vehicle to move out of the frame when a sudden burst of speed carried it forward.

  “Sixty,” Doc Brown announced. “Sixty-five…seventy…seventy-five…”

  Marty wondered how Einstein felt, sitting there in his captive seat, watching the gauges and instrument lights flash against the black sky.

  “Eighty.”

  Turning the vehicle in a huge arc, Doc Brown maneuvered it so that it was approaching them under full power. With nearly the entire length of the mall lot ahead of it on the return run, he now felt no compunction about leaning on the accelerator. The speedometer indicator leaped to 85, 86, 87, and finally 88, where it hung for a long second, the needle caressing the magic number as if to emphasize its importance.

  Doc Brown waited. It should happen now, he thought, it should be happening at this very sec—

  The thought was not completed, but instead was engulfed by a mind-numbing experience.

  In the midst of its precipitous run down the center of the parking lot, the DeLorean was suddenly swallowed up by a blinding white glow. For a split second, the silhouette of the car, surrounded by the corona of light, resembled an eclipse of the sun. Then a shock wave and explosion of sound hit Marty and Doc Brown just as the car disappeared in a huge trail of fire. The embers, large at first, gradually became smaller until only a pink fissure in the atmosphere remained. Then, a tiny, metallic sound, tinkly in quality, echoed across the lot. A shadow of something moving, something very small, could be seen. His fingers trembling, Marty zoomed in to the object.

  It was the DeLorean’s license plate, a vanity plate that read: OUTATIME.

  “What did I tell you?” Doc Brown shouted, his voice elated. “Eighty-eight miles an hour! Just as I figured.” He checked his watch. “Temporal displacement occurred at exactly 1:20 A.M. and zero seconds.”

  Marty shook his head in disbelief. “Christ Almighty!” he shouted. “You disintegrated Einstein!”

  “No,” Doc Brown said evenly. />
  “But the license plate’s all that remains of the car and dog and everything!”

  “Calm down, Marty. I didn’t disintegrate anything. The molecular structure of both Einstein and the car are completely intact.”

  “Then where the hell are they?” Marty demanded.

  Doc Brown looked at him with maddening serenity. “Not where,” he said. “When.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The appropriate question,” Doc Brown amended, “is not where are they, but when the hell are they? You see, Einstein has just become the world’s first time traveler. I sent him into the future—one minute into the future, to be exact. And at exactly 1:21 A.M. and zero seconds, we shall catch up to him…and the time machine.” Marty still didn’t get it.

  “Are you recording this?” Doc Brown asked. “Because if you are, it might be appropriate to have the camera pointed at me or where the car was, rather than at the ground in front of you.”

  Marty shook his head, noting that he had allowed the video camera to drop downward during the interval of stress and excitement. Now he righted it, bringing Doc Brown into the frame.

  “It’s all right,” Doc said, smiling indulgently. “We still have a few seconds.”

  “Few seconds until what?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Are you trying to tell me you built a time machine out of that DeLorean?” Marty demanded.

  Doc Brown smiled modestly. “The way I figure it,” he replied, “if you’re gonna build a time machine, why not do it with some style and imagination? Besides, there’s a practical aspect. The stainless steel construction of the DeLorean made the flux dispersal—”

  He stopped as his digital clock began to beep.

  “Ten seconds,” Doc Brown said. “Keep that tape rolling, Marty.”

  “It’s never stopped.”

  “Five seconds. Brace yourself for a sudden displacement of air.”

  Marty held the camera tighter, aimed it at the spot where the DeLorean had disappeared.

  “Four…three…two…one…” Doc Brown counted down, his voice filled with anticipation.

  Exactly on schedule, a sharp blast of wind struck them, followed immediately by a deafening sonic boom, causing their hair to stand on end. No sooner had the shock registered than the DeLorean reappeared in the same spot it had last been seen. But it was not standing. It was moving at the same high speed as before.

  “Eighty-eight miles an hour!” Doc Brown shouted above the surge of thunderous air.

  Looking down at the remote control unit, he hit the brake button, causing the car to come to a screeching halt, smoke pouring from the body.

  Doc Brown immediately started for the vehicle. Marty locked the camera in position and followed. He arrived at the DeLorean a few seconds after Brown, who pulled up to approach it cautiously. Indicating that Marty should wait until he examined it, he gently touched the door handle. To Marty and Doc’s surprise, he recoiled with a shout of pain.

  “Is it hot?” Marty asked.

  “No. It’s cold. Damned cold,” Brown said, shaking his fingers back and forth.

  He waited a few seconds, then raised the door on the driver’s side. Einstein peeked out at them, his tail wagging against the back of the seat. Marty was relieved to see that no apparent harm had come to him. Doc was also pleased that his pet was in good condition, although his attitude was more clinical. Instead of petting the dog, he reached down to turn the collar so that he could read the digital clock inset into the surface of it.

  The clock read 1:20:10. Doc Brown looked at it and smiled. His own watch read 1:21:10.

  ‘There’s exactly one minute difference,” he said triumphantly. “And Einstein’s clock is still clicking. It didn’t stop.”

  “Is he all right?” Marty asked.

  “He looks fine to me.”

  Brown unbuckled the shoulder harness. Einstein bounded out of the car, playful and happy. Doc Brown reached into his pocket and gave him a milk bone as a reward. “A small price to pay for such invaluable research,” he said. “You’re sure he’s O.K.?”

  “Yes,” Brown replied. “And he’s completely unaware that anything happened. As far as he’s concerned, the trip was instantaneous. That’s why his watch is a minute behind mine. He ‘skipped over’ that minute to instantly arrive at this minute in time…”

  Seeing Marty’s frown, Doc Brown indicated that he should move closer to the DeLorean. “Come here, let me show you how it works,” he offered, sticking his own head into the cockpit of the car.

  Marty edged closer, looked inside at the still-blinking array of dials and gadgets.

  Like a kid showing off a new toy, Doc Brown began to flip switches and talk at the same time. “First you turn the time circuits on,” he said. A colorful battery of indicator lights went on inside as he pushed a button.

  “This readout tells you where you’re going, this one tells you where you are, and this one tells you where you were,” he continued.

  Marty looked at the readouts closely. They were labeled DESTINATION TIME, PRESENT TIME, and LAST TIME DEPARTED.

  Without waiting to find out if Marty had any questions, Brown went on at a rapid pace. “You input your destination time on this keyboard,” he said. “Want to see the signing of the Declaration of Independence?”

  Marty stared blankly, his mind abuzz. Was he kidding? Could this machine, however sophisticated, perform such miracles?

  Again without waiting for an answer, Doc Brown punched up a date on the destination time board: 7-4-1776. “Then all we have to do is head for Philadelphia. Or perhaps you’d care to witness the birth of Christ.”

  With that, he changed the dial to read 12-25-0.

  “Of course,” he added didactically, “there’s some dispute about that date. Some scholars say Christ was born in the year 4 B.C. and that somebody made a mistake in what year it was during the Dark Ages. But assuming 12-25-0 is correct, all we’d have to do is find our way to Bethlehem.”

  “No sweat,” Marty said.

  Now quite caught up in describing the mechanics of his system, Doc Brown changed the DESTINATION TIME to 11-5-1955. “Now here’s another red-letter date in the history of science and progress,” he went on. “November 5, 1955. I believe it was a Saturday. Yes, now that I think about it, I’m sure it was. The weather was kind of grey.”

  “What happened then?” Marty asked. That was more than a decade before he had been born, so he could only speculate. “Was that the Salk vaccine or something like that?” he asked, remembering from science class that the polio cure went back to about that time.

  “No,” Doc Brown went on. “It’s a red-letter date in science that nobody knows about—yet. Nobody except me, that is. You see, that was the day I invented time travel—”

  “Then what’s today?” Marty interrupted.

  “Today is the carrying-out, the execution,” Brown smiled. “November 5, 1955 was the conception, the moment when it all came together as a theory that I knew could work.” He leaned against the shiny frame of the DeLorean, his eyes misted in happy nostalgia. “I remember it vividly,” he said. “I was standing on the edge of my toilet, hanging a clock. The porcelain was wet. I slipped and hit my head on the sink to my left. And when I came to, I had a revelation—a vision that was absolutely perfect—a picture in my head of everything I needed to do and how I could do it.”

  He gestured to the car. “Believe it or not, I saw this,” he continued. “My dream or hallucination or whatever it was contained a picture of this.”

  “Amazing,” Marty said, his eyes wide with sincerity. He knew the feeling. Once he had awakened during the middle of the night with the lyrics and melody of a new song literally playing inside his head. All that he had to do was find paper and take dictation. That was small potatoes compared to a scientific breakthrough such as the invention of time travel, but the emotional impact was similar.

  Leaning inside the DeLorean, Doc Brown pointed to a parti
cular centerpiece unit. “Get a picture of this on tape,” he said.

  Marty pointed the camera at the strange-looking object.

  Moving his head next to it so that he could be on camera and describe its workings at the same time, Doc Brown continued in his professional tone. “This is what makes time travel possible—the flux capacitor.”

  “Flux capacitor, huh?” Marty repeated. “Is that its real title or something you made up?”

  “It’s a logical title applied by me when I decided to describe its function in one or two words. Any brilliant scientist would have arrived at approximately the same title if given the chance.”

  Marty chuckled inwardly at the man’s lack of humility. He did not dislike him for it, however. As a matter of fact, he found it charmingly refreshing.

  “It’s taken me almost thirty years and my entire family fortune to fulfill the vision of that day when I fell off the toilet…My God, has it been that long? I’ve been working on this for exactly…”

  He reached into his inside coat pocket to withdraw a small calculator. Punching buttons quickly, he said presently: “I’ve been working on this for twenty-nine years, eleven months, and 355 days. Excluding vacations, of course, and a few weeks off for petty illnesses. Think of it. Almost thirty years. It’s amazing. Things have certainly changed during that time. This all used to be farmland here, as far as the eye could see…”

  He looked off toward the horizon, dominated now by the huge department stores of the mall and sodium vapor lamps lining the periphery of their vision like ugly ornaments. “I can hardly believe it’s gone,” he murmured.

  “What?”

  “The farm…the years…” He suddenly looked very sad.

  Marty tried to shake him out of the mood. Slapping the side of the DeLorean, he said, “This is heavy duty, Doc. I’m really impressed.”

  The compliment caused a shift in Doc Brown’s attitude. His eyes turned to the present, unclouding and becoming instantly brighter, sharper.

  “Yes, I’m proud of it,” he smiled.

  “And it runs on, like, regular unleaded gasoline?” Marty asked.