|
|
The incident began as a simple trip to the past, so Doc and Marty could test some replacement equipment in the DeLorean. It was now another one of their average time-travel-trips-gone-wrong. Marty and Doc were now in an alternate version of their own reality, because of what Marty had done during their brief trip to the past. Marty was getting the standard lecture from his friend about how messing with even the slightest thing in the past could irreparably destroy their present. Doc ranted incessantly and Marty had long ago lost his patience.
"Look, Doc," Marty said in exasperation. "I didn't know that the thing had any historical significance. It seemed harmless."
"Didn't you learn your lesson after the incident with the supposedly harmless Sports Almanac?" Doc asked angrily as he shook the item in question in Marty's face. It was a small china figure that Marty had bought for Jennifer. Doc thought for a moment. "No, I guess you didn't think about it. That is your problem, Marty. You go right ahead and do whatever you want, never thinking about the repercussions of your actions."
Marty had listened to enough of this. He started walking away from Doc and his never-ending lecture.
"Where are you going?" Doc demanded.
"Anywhere to get away from you!" was Marty?s cross reply.
"Damn that kid!" Doc cursed as he punched the stainless steel of the DeLorean's gull wing door. Marty really knew how to push his buttons sometimes. He took a few deep breaths to bring his temper down from the stratosphere and then went to look for his friend. Angry or not, they had to work together to get themselves home.
As Marty left Doc standing next to the DeLorean, he was unaware of another person eavesdropping on their conversation. As this someone took in the situation, he became angry and hurt.
"I guess the Doc ditched me after all and he found a better version of me in the process." He watched the counterpart depart toward the alley seemingly in a state of rage and quietly followed him.
"Time travel," the stranger mused to himself. "My one-way ticket out of this freaking hell hole." He picked up a rock and walked briskly up to the time traveler who was so busy fuming that he didn't even notice the stranger's presence. The only thing Marty noticed was the sharp pain in his skull as he fell to the ground.
"That's that," the stranger said as he viewed his unconscious victim. He threw the "weapon" aside and knelt over Marty to remove Marty's jacket and he put it on. Satisfied, he headed in the direction that Marty had come from. He spotted Doc walking toward him.
"Good, Marty, I was hoping I could find you," Doc rushed on. "We need to fix the damage to the space-time continuum post haste!"
Marty B just stared at Doc in return. Doc used to be his friend, but that was before Doc had disappeared the previous year without a trace. Marty, heartbroken and angry, was convinced that the man had ditched him like everyone else in his life. Now, he looked at Doc with a look of utter contempt.
"Marty, did you hear what I just said?" Doc asked exasperatedly. "We need to get out of here, now!"
"Of course. Whatever you say, Doctor Brown," Marty?s clone replied, icily
Doc was too preoccupied to notice the change in how his friend addressed him. Doc also failed to take into account the cold, calculating look that took over his friend's features. Doc and Marty B climbed into the DeLorean and took off for the past.
Meanwhile, the real Marty woke to the sound of three sonic booms. He was more than a little disoriented. It took him a moment to realize where he was and when he did get his bearings, he bolted back in the direction of the DeLorean.
"Man, Doc is going to have a fit!" Marty said to himself. Boy, did his head hurt! He hoped Doc wouldn't overreact when he saw what had happened. The last thing that he needed right now was another one of Doc's lectures.
The fear of any impending lecture soon dissipated when he reached the spot where he had left Doc and saw that the DeLorean was gone. Marty soon panicked, because his intuition told him that Doc hadn?t merely moved the time machine. Doc had chosen that particular spot as a hiding place on purpose to avoid any familiar faces as they panned out how they were going to repair the time line. Marty knew that he was in BIG trouble! It appeared that Doc had actually ditched him.
"Man, was the Doc really mad enough to leave me here?" Marty wondered as he looked around. He hoped to see the DeLorean pop out of the darkness to bring him home.
Seconds turned to minutes, minutes turned to an hour and Marty came to the inevitable realization that Doc wasn't coming. Any anger that Marty was feeling toward his friend was replaced by hurt.
"How could you leave me here, Doc?" he asked the darkness. The darkness didn't reply.
It was back in the past that Doc began to notice something was a little off with his friend. However, he shrugged it off, thinking that Marty was miffed at him for his earlier lecture and that was all.
"He'll get over it," Doc thought stubbornly as he sat guard in the DeLorean. He had sent Marty back into the little shop to return the item that he had bought. Sure, while the item appeared insignificant to them, they found out that space-time continuum felt a little differently. It was because of things like this that Doc didn't like to even breathe any more than necessary in another time let alone touch anything. He wished that Marty could adopt that same trepidation.
Doc checked his watch, as he growing impatient. Marty was taking a long time to do this simple task. Doc sighed in worry-tinged impatience. He thought that his friend might be taking the things he said more badly than Doc first realized. Doc had just decided to go retrieve Marty, when the young man finally returned.
"What took you so long?" Doc asked.
Marty glared at him. "What's it to ya?" he snarled. "Let's just get out of here."
Doc was shocked by Marty's brash reply, but he chose not to respond to it. He put the DeLorean in gear and took off. Moments later, Doc was back in a reality that he recognized, but he was bothered by Marty's nasty attitude.
Marty wasted no time in getting out of the car once Doc had parked it securely in the lab. He was in a hurry to see what this reality posed for him.
"Where are you going?" Doc asked. For some inexplicable reason, he felt leery about letting Marty out of his sight.
Without slowing his exit, Marty flipped him off. Doc was too taken aback to say anything as he watched his supposed friend leave the lab. The next thing that Doc heard was the slam of Marty's truck door and the sound of tires peeling out of his driveway. Doc's uneasy feeling grew ten-fold. He suspected that Marty's sudden persona was not solely a result of the lecture he had given him earlier. Doc knew his friend too well. Marty seemed different in a way that Doc couldn't quite put his finger on. However, Doc couldn't prove anything.
"Maybe I am being paranoid," Doc thought as he checked his watch. It was too late to settle anything that night, he decided. The matter could wait until morning.
Meanwhile Alternate Marty was just arriving at his counterpart's home. He flew into the driveway at top speed, narrowly missing his father's car. He took the keys out of the ignition and stormed out of his truck towards the house.
"Same dump." he grumbled. "It figures."
He walked in the front door to find the house dark. He tried to walk through the house to his room, but he walked into the wall instead.
"Shit!" he said.
The noise had awoken someone he realized as he heard footsteps in the hall. A moment later light filled the room and he found himself face to face with his mother. She looked concerned, but he returned her concern with a look of pure distrust. He owed nothing to this woman, he believed. His mother from his reality was an emotionally and physically abusive woman who never let a day go by without reminding him how he should never have been born. In fact, she had stopped being his mother a long time ago.
Marty had been the only survivor in a car accident that had left his father and siblings dead. Therefore, he became an easy target for Lorraine's immense grief and rage. When she took to the bottle, the situation only became worse. Time travel or no, the sight of his mother standing before him made Marty generally uneasy. He never knew if he was going to be yelled at, beaten or both.
"Honey, is everything all right? Did you hurt yourself?" she asked sweetly. Call it motherly intuition, but Lorraine could feel that something wasn't quite right with her son. Marty glared at her in reply. Lorraine didn't know what to think. She took a step toward her son and placed a hand on his cheek. "What?s wrong?" she asked as her concern took over.
Purely out of instinct, Marty slapped her hand away. Lorraine reacted with pure shock.
"What is wrong with you?" she asked as fear tinged her voice.
"Nothing, just stay away from me!" Marty hissed as he brushed past Lorraine to his room and slammed his door. Slowly and still in a state of shock, Lorraine ambled back to her bedroom
In the alternate 1986, Marty was trying to find a familiar face. He had already tried to locate Doc only to find out that there was inexplicably no Doctor Brown in this world. That meant there was only one other place he could go. It was risky, but he had to try to find his family. At least one thing was on his side. This alternate reality didn't seem nearly as condemnable as 1985A.
He was relieved that his house was still in Lyon Estates, but his relief was short-lived when he saw the condition of his house. It was run-down, as if no one had paid attention to it in years. He slowly became apprehensive about what he would face here. Was this world as bad as Hell Valley?
He could see a light glowing dimly through the living room window. He took a deep breath and walked through the front door.
The sight inside was truly depressing. There were bottles of alcohol on nearly every flat surface of the house. It was a sure sign that someone was an alcoholic in this reality. The house was in just as sad shape inside as it had been out as the housekeeping had obviously fallen way behind. Above all, the house seemed eerily quiet. There wasn't even noise from a television in the background.
As Marty ventured further into the house, he noticed his mother sitting on the living room couch swilling some kind of liquor straight from the bottle. She looked up with sheer hatred as her son entered the room.
"So, look who finally decided to come home." she slurred.
"What are you talking about, Mom?" Marty asked. "Where is everybody?"
Lorraine stood up still holding the liquor bottle. She swayed a moment from the drunkenness, but she regained some composure and staggered over to Marty. She looked at him for a moment and then slapped him full across the face. Marty just stood there in shock. He couldn't remember a time in his life when his mother had ever hit him like that.
"You worthless piece of shit, how dare you show your face back here!" she screamed.
"What?" Marty whispered.
Lorraine slapped him again. "Shut up!" she yelled. "Don't you even dare act like you don't know what I?m talking about."
Marty was beginning to think he would have been better off if he had stayed out on the street. "Mom, I don't know what's going on. Honest!" he said meekly. This was not the first time he had ever seen his mother drunk, but she had never treated him like this.
Lorraine glared at her son and turned away from him. She took a couple steps back toward the couch as she took a long drink from her bottle. Then, before Marty could react, she hurled the liquor bottle at him. It barely missed his head as it crashed into the wall behind him.
"Get out of my sight!" Lorraine screamed at him.
"Mom, what's wrong with you?" Marty asked, frightened. "What did I do?"
"You killed them you little asshole!" her voice grew shriller with each word.
"What? Killed who?" he asked softly.
Lorraine rushed him and threw him up against the wall. "Do you need it knocked into you again?" she yelled.
Marty squirmed out of her grasp and backed away slowly, heading toward his room. She just stood in that spot, looking at him with seething eyes. He turned and ran the rest of the way into his room and locked the door. He thought it was over, but seconds later she was trying to bang down the door.
"Open this door! I'm not through with you! You killed them! You killed them! My family is dead, because of you! It should have been you! I wish it'd been you!" She screamed at him until she was hoarse.
Marty slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor. He was scared and shaking and he wished he could just go home. He drew his knees to his chest and tried to suppress the tears that were threatening to spill.
"How could you leave me here, Doc?" he whispered. "How could you?"
Doc woke suddenly out of his sound sleep. He had just had a rather weird, chilling dream. Marty was trapped somewhere, calling out to Doc for help and asking him why Doc had left him behind. Doc tried to approach Marty, but he felt like something was holding him back. Then, it was too late and his friend was gone.
The dream only served to heighten the anxiety that he had been feeling since returning home. He decided that he wasn't in any mood to try to sleep, so he quietly got out of the bed so as not to disturb Clara and put on some clothes. Then, he quietly exited the house and went to his lab.
He tried to immerse himself in his latest project, but the dream didn't relinquish its hold on his mind. He could see the fear in Marty's eyes as Marty reached out to him only to slip away again. The Marty in the dream certainly didn't seem to resent him as much as the Marty in his present. An idea tried to force itself to the forefront of Doc's mind, but he pushed it back in his unwillingness to consider it.
"It was only a dream, Brown." He tried to tell himself. "Don't read any more into it than that." However, the thought persisted in his head and Doc eventually wondered if there was a possibility of it being true.
"Impossible!" he scoffed as he slammed a wrench down on his work table.
