Part One (633 KB) - Whoa is (Not)

Marty sighed. “Nope. I checked with the music department. It’s 50. Apparently they wanted to ‘try
something new’. Let’s just try to drop down to 60 today, okay 70’s already an improvement. J.J.,
softer on the drums.”
The band took up their instruments and went back to their practice. It was past five in the evening when
Marty finally left for home, and the skies were already darkening.
Passing by Doc’s garage, it was then that he saw it.
A ripple in the air, ever so slight… though it was not so much one as a sudden rippling burst of coloured
light in the dark that disappeared as quickly and unexpectedly as it had come. It had been by the side of
the building where the computer was located.
Marty didn’t know what to think of it, and in fact was not even sure if he hadn’t just imagined it. Shaking
his head, he continued on home.
Chapter Fourteen
16 th December 1985, Monday
Hill Valley, California
Marty had already got it down to an art. Flip up his skateboard, reach under the doormat, pull out the
garage key, unlock the door and go in: all under five seconds. He shut the door, then went over to turn
on the computer and go online. A new e-mail awaited him:
From - julesvernefan@yahoo.com
To - futureboy85@hillvalley-online.com
Subject: Are you free
Marty,
Clara and I will be going out to dinner tomorrow night, and we were wondering if you would
like to come over and look after the boys while we are away. I dare not run the risk of letting
anyone else do so, what with the two time machines in the house, but if you can’t make it,
we’ll try to come up with alternatives.
Reply soon.
- Doc
Marty read the e-mail with mixed emotions. He’d been longing to see his friend again, even if it was just
for a while, and the last time he’d seen Jules and Verne seemed so long ago – though it would have
been longer for them then for him, he realised. On the other hand, almost every single time he stepped
into a time machine, bad things happened. Like last month, when Doc took him on what was supposed
to be a simple trip to the future to save his son from a car accident and both of them ended up
temporarily stranded in some alternate universe. 7
In fact, had there ever been a time when he had managed to accomplish what he intended to do by
getting into one of Doc’s time machines Marty mentally checked off his previous time travel trips in his
head.
The first time, he had got into the DeLorean with the intention of using it as a normal car to drive away
from the Libyan terrorists. Instead, he had accidentally knocked the time circuits on and got sent back in
time to 1955, whereupon he managed to effectively erase himself from existence in the space of just a
few hours. He had succeeded in rectifying the problem in the end, but it had taken him a whole week.
The second trip was when he was trying to get back to the future from 1955 – fine, so that one turned
out okay. Third time: Doc popped up the morning after he’d got back, and chucked him into 2015 to
save his ever errant future kids (he has to get them out of jail, he has to save them from car accidents,
7 From my as-yet-incomplete Back to the Future fan fiction novella, ‘When Worlds Collide and Go Kaboom’,
which at this rate will probably never get completed; if it does, I’ll probably change the title because it currently
sounds, with a very good reason, like something a thirteen-year-old came up with.