Back to the Future (6 page)

There was no such repetition tonight. Safely out of earshot, he whirred quickly along the back streets and around corners until he approached the dilapidated garage that was Doc Brown’s place.

The key was in place. Marty grabbed it, let himself in and flipped on the overhead light.

He was halfway to the workbench where Doc kept his video equipment when a sudden cacophony caused him to jump in spite of himself. Set precisely, every clock with a way to announce the hour went off together—musical chimes, cuckoo sounds, digital beeps. For ten seconds, Marty stood still, listening until the last harbinger of the hour died away. A smile spread across his face, for he never tired of hearing this strange symphony arranged and orchestrated by the world’s most fanatical timekeeper, Doc Brown.

“Must be one o’clock,” Marty said softly. As indeed it was.

Moving quickly to the workbench, he located the video camera, put it in its carrying case, and skateboarded out of Doc Brown’s garage. Ten minutes later, he neared the two pine trees in a row which marked the entrance to the mall. As he turned the corner, he picked out the familiar step-van and coasted toward it. The atmosphere, lit by sodium vapor lamps shrouded in fine mist, was appropriately eerie for a major scientific experiment.

“Doc,” Marty said as he neared the truck.

There was no answer. Einstein, Doc’s dog, peered out the passenger side window at him, his large dark eyes friendly but noninformative.

“Hiya, Einstein,” Marty said anyway. “Where’s the Doc? Where’s the Doc, boy?”

A few seconds later, he heard an engine roar to life and rev quietly. It seemed to be coming from inside the van, but it didn’t sound like the truck engine. It was too far back, for one thing, the sound emanating not from beneath the hood but somewhere midway of the vehicle.

Marty started to walk toward the back of the van.

Just as he arrived at the rear bumper, he heard a sharp grating sound, a slam, and saw the rear doors dramatically fly open. The drop-down gate lowered into position and a giant shining object swooped down onto the parking lot. It was the stainless steel DeLorean, modified with coils and some wicked-looking units on the rear engine.

Marty stared at it in amazement.

The DeLorean moved softly toward him and stopped. The gull-wing driver’s door was raised to reveal the smiling face of Doc Brown.

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.”