Back to the Future (14 page)

“The L.A. Raiders…Miami Dolphins…Dallas Cowboys…San Francisco 49ers.”

“Finally,” Doc Brown said. “One team I recognize. This is incredible. How about this: Who’s gonna be President of the United States in 1985?”

“Ronald Reagan.”

“Ronald Reagan the actor?” Doc Brown asked, shaking his head.

Marty nodded somewhat ruefully. He wished Doc Brown had asked another question.

“Why, that’s the most insane thing I’ve ever heard,” Doc muttered. “Surely you could have made up a better answer than that.”

Picking up his Brainwave Analyzer, Brown started toward his garage. The joke was over as far as he was concerned. He had no idea what it had accomplished, but if someone had gotten a laugh at his expense, they were welcome to it. Marty followed him.

“Please leave me alone,” Doc Brown said over his shoulder as he moved out of the room.

Marty, thinking furiously for the thing he could say that would convince the man, suddenly remembered what day it was: Saturday, November 5, 1955. Hadn’t that been the day Doc had slipped off the toilet and—?

“Sure,” Marty exclaimed. “He’s even got the bruise to prove it.”

Racing after Doc Brown, he began to speak in a rapid-fire patter. “Doctor Brown, listen to me!” he said. “That bruise on your head—I know how you got it! It happened this morning! You were hanging a clock and fell off your toilet and hit your head on the sink…”

Doc Brown whirled to look at him.

“What have you been doing—spying on me?” he demanded. “Haven’t I even got privacy in the bathroom? When I sit down now, do I have to worry about some idiot with binoculars looking at me!”

“No,” Marty assured him. “I didn’t spy on you. In 1985, you told me about this morning. You said after the fall, you had a sort of vision about the flux capacitor, which is the heart of the time machine.”

Doc Brown frowned. This was indeed a puzzler. How could this young man know what went on in his mind unless he told him? While he was trying to figure it out, Marty spread his palms and voiced the same question.

“Doc, how else could I know that unless I was from the future?”

“You could be a mind reader.”

“Yes, but I’m not. I’m just an ordinary guy you happened to confide in.”

“Where is this time machine now?” Doc Brown asked.

He was beginning to become intrigued.

“I’ve got it hidden,” Marty replied. “I stashed it in a garage. It’s so flashy-looking, I couldn’t drive it around the streets without getting a lot of attention. Maybe the cops would even arrest me.”

Doc Brown looked at the young man for a long moment.

He wanted to believe him but there was something missing. It was just too fantastic. The kid was just a good actor who had somehow found out about his accident. Whatever motive was behind his story-telling wasn’t important. He had other things to do.

“Good night, ‘Future Boy,’” he said, closing the service door of the garage.

Marty stood silently for nearly a minute. Try as he might, he could think of no one else who could help him but Doc Brown. That meant only one thing: if Brown required more evidence to convince him, that evidence would have to be produced.

“But he probably won’t let me in next time, if he knows it’s me,” he sighed.

He looked down, noting that the same potted plant, much smaller now, sat outside the door to Doc’s garage.

“Is it possible…?” he smiled.

Bending down, he lifted the pot and found the key. He put it in his pocket and walked away.

It was his plan to wait until dark when the DeLorean would be less obtrusive. The machine itself would be sure to impress Doc Brown and contained several articles from 1985 that would serve as evidence. Walking slowly, Marty went back to the Town Square, bought himself a burger and Pepsi, and watched the hands on the courthouse tower clock slowly move toward four o’clock. Finally, growing bored with people-watching, he decided to take in a movie.

He strolled toward the Essex, but after only a few paces turned left in the direction of the Town. Westerns had never been his favorite type of movie and Ronald Reagan was far from his favorite actor. At least
The Atomic Kid
was a picture he’d never seen on television.

He paid his fifty cents admission cheerfully, bought an Almond Joy for a dime and went inside. The movie was pretty lame and Marty actually found himself yearning for television commercials as a way of relieving the tedium. Ninety minutes later, having suffered through the story of a prospector who becomes immune to atomic radiation and tracks down Communist spies, he went outside, noting with satisfaction that it was considerably darker.

By the time he returned home, it was quite dark. Marty opened the garage, got into the DeLorean, dropped the seat into a reclining position and closed his eyes. He had decided to wait until at least midnight so that few people would be around to see his car from another world.

Eventually he dropped into a fitful sleep, a succession of dreams reminding him that he was in a serious situation…He saw himself pursued by professional gamblers eager to pick his brain for future knowledge that could be turned into money…Police and government officials, meanwhile, wanted to silence him in order to prevent panic…Lorraine was after his body…He had no way of returning to 1985, to Jennifer, his friends…Awakening with a start, he looked at the digital clock on the DeLorean dashboard. It was after midnight.

Bringing the car to life, he rolled softly out of the garage and returned to Doc Brown’s house on Riverside Drive. True to its image, Hill Valley had rolled up its sidewalks early and only a few cars were on the roads.

Arriving at Doc’s garage, Marty opened the door with the key he’d appropriated and pulled the DeLorean inside. Doc Brown was asleep, snoring loudly, at his workbench. Beneath his slumped figure were blueprints of the Brainwave Analyzer and a note pad with scribbled memoranda.

Marty touched Doc gently on the shoulder. “Doc…Wake up,” he whispered.

Brown’s eyes fluttered open. “Huh?” he muttered thickly, his expression vacant.

“It’s me,” Marty said.

A twinge of anger came into Doc Brown’s eyes. “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded. “How the hell did you get in?”

“I borrowed the key…”

“You got a lot of nerve—”

As he spoke, Doc Brown’s eyes fell on the DeLorean and the words died in his throat.

“Good Lord,” he muttered.

“This is your time machine, Doc,” Marty smiled. “I brought it over.”

Doc Brown started to move toward it, his eyes wide with wonder, his mouth open. Marty thought he was about to start salivating.

“Now will you believe me?”

Doc Brown didn’t answer. Very deliberately, he walked in a complete circle around the machine. Then he withdrew a folded piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Marty.

“After I fell off the toilet,” he said, “I drew this. Does it look familiar?”

Marty unfolded the sheet and immediately recognized a crude but accurate sketch of the flux capacitor. “You bet,” he answered.

He opened the car door and pulled out the real thing.

When he saw it, Doc Brown’s eyes lit up. Hopping in place, he began to shout, emitting words between the yipping sounds of happiness.

“Ha! It works…it works!” he wheezed. “I finally invented something that works!”

Suddenly he reached out to hug Marty and give him a kiss on the cheek.

“This is great!” he exuded. “This is wonderful! I can’t believe it!”

But he obviously did believe it, for the next thing he did was stand very formally, as if addressing an audience of very learned people.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said in a deep and sonorous voice, “and members of the Nobel committee…It is a great honor for me to accept the Nobel Prize for the year nineteen—”

He paused, turned to Marty. “What year do I get the Nobel Prize?” he asked.

Then, before Marty could speak, he waved his hands and continued. “No—wait, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Let it be a wonderful surprise. No man should know too much about his own destiny.”

He seemed about to address the imaginary audience again when a look of sudden realization gripped his features. “Hold it!” he said. “Wait a minute! It’s starting to come back to me now. You mentioned something about being my first guinea pig, except a dog.”

‘That’s right.”

“And you also said I left you stuck here in 1955…” 

Marty nodded.

“Why would I do that?” Doc Brown demanded haughtily. “I’m a responsible scientist. Every test I’ve performed has been absolutely safe. I would never send a kid back in time and just leave him there.”

“You didn’t do it on purpose,” Marty explained. “It was an accident. Some other people intervened. Things got pretty heavy, really…”

“Heavy?” Doc said. “What does weight have to do with this problem?”

“I’m sorry. That’s just an expression. What I mean is, well, what happened after the first—”

“Wait, don’t tell me,” Brown interrupted. “My knowing too much about the future…in fact, your simply being here…could be very dangerous. We might accidentally alter the course of history—”

“I don’t think so,” Marty said. “I’m just an ordinary person—”

“You don’t understand. One molecule, one atom out of place could destroy the entire fabric of the space-time continuum…So we must be careful that we don’t do anything significant.”

Marty shrugged.

“Show me how this thing works,” Doc Brown said. “We’ve got to send you back—back to the future.”

“That’s fine with me,” Marty replied. “But I’m not an expert. You gave me a couple minutes’ instruction time in 1985 and that was it.”

“Why so little?” Doc Brown demanded. “If you were to be my subject, why didn’t I explain everything fully and completely? That’s irresponsible, to send a boy thirty years into the past with improper instruction.”

Marty smiled. It sounded as if he were criticizing someone else when he was actually commenting on the activities of his future self.

“No, Doc,” Marty explained. “It wasn’t a matter of being irresponsible. You see, we were attack—”

He paused. Should he tell Doc Brown the manner in which he had been killed? It hardly seemed appropriate and certainly not kind.

“Quite right, my boy,” Brown nodded. “Let’s not go into details. I already know too much—”

“What, Doc?” Marty asked. “I haven’t really told you anything important.”

“Oh, no?” he shot back. “First, there’s my matter of inventing a time machine. That’s big news, not only to me but the entire scientific community. Then there’s the Miracle Mets of 1969. And Ronald Reagan as President. You were kidding about that, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” Marty lied.

“Good.”

An hour later, after figuring out how the DeLorean time machine worked, Doc Brown took out the suitcase containing his 1985 articles and began examining them one by one.

“What’s this thing?” he asked.

“A hair dryer,” Marty said.

“A hair dryer? Don’t they have towels in the future?” He tossed it back in the suitcase. “Don’t tell me I’ll actually use that,” he muttered.

He examined some of the clothing. “And these clothes,” he said, “they’re all made of cotton. I thought for sure we’d all be wearing disposable paper garments by 1985. Not much improvement there…”

A copy of
Playboy
was uncovered. Brown leafed through it, nearly dropping it when the centerfold fell out in all its glory.

“Hey!” he smiled. “Suddenly the future’s looking a whole lot better.” He turned the picture upside-down and then sideways. “This is kind of crazy,” he laughed. “Here I am, ogling a woman who hasn’t even been born yet.”

“Yeah,” Marty said. “If you want to blow your mind, take a look at this.”

For the past few minutes he had busied himself setting up the video camera so that it could play back the tape he had taken on the Twin Pines Mall parking lot. Now he was ready to roll.

“Prepare yourself for a shock, Doc,” he said as he hit the
ON
button.

A glitch was followed by the picture of Doc Brown’s 1985 preamble to what he called temporal experiment number one.

“Who’s that guy?” Doc Brown began. Then he gasped. “Why, that’s me! Look at me! I’m an old man! But I don’t look too bad for an old geezer. Thank God I’ve still got my hair—baldness runs in my family, you know. Even some of the women. But what on earth am I wearing?”

“A radiation suit.”

“Of course, because of all the fallout from the atomic wars.”

“No, Doc. There were several close—”

“Never mind. Don’t tell me. Sorry I got out of line there. If I’m gonna avoid learning things about the future, I shouldn’t make provocative statements like that. But this is truly amazing—it’s a portable television studio. I never imagined that…”

“Watch this,” Marty urged. “This is the most important part coming up.”

Doc Brown of 1955 stood transfixed as Doc Brown of 1985 explained how the time machine was powered by plutonium. Marty McFly of 1985, looking exactly like the Marty of 1955, listened to Brown’s comments, then spoke on tape: “Plutonium?” he said. “You mean this sucker’s nuclear?”

“Electrical, basically,” Brown replied. “But I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need. The flux capacitor stores it, then discharges it all at once, like a gigantic bolt of lightning. It's really quite efficient.”

“What did that old guy just say?" young Doc Brown demanded. “Let me see that again.”

Marty rewound the tape and repeated the segment in question.

“…1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need. The flux capacitor—“

“Holy cow!” Doc Brown interjected, stepping on his own voice. “Did he say 1.21 gigawatts? Jumping Jehovah—1.21 gigawatts!”

With that, he turned and raced from the garage.

Marty stopped the tape and charged after him. “Doc!” he yelled. “Hey, Doc! What is it?”

By the time he caught up with him, Doc was already in a large room of his house which he used for painting. The walls were decorated with portraits of famous inventors and scientists such as Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Isaac Newton, and Thomas Edison. The centerpiece of the basically bare room was a large upright artist's easel on which a huge canvas was resting. Doc Brown stood next to the easel now, his features very agitated as he attacked the canvas with a paint brush, his arms whirling in great arcs like a malfunctioning windmill. Each time the brush struck the canvas a huge red streak appeared.