Disclaimer: Universal Studios hasn't given me the rights to the movie, so I still don't own BttF. If I did, I'd be rich and actually own a flute.

TEACHER'S KID

April 1895

Hill Valley, California

Class was over. For once, Verne Newton Brown didn't bother to wait for his mother as he joined the other students filing out of the classroom. He just wanted to be home. To be away from it all. Away from the classmates who always seemed to derive such fun from the fact that his mother was his teacher. 'Teacher's Kid,' they called him. And away from those other classmates who kept referring to him as the 'guy with the crazy father'.

Somehow, his brother did not get it as bad. Jules actually seemed to be enjoying life. He had friends, and was one of the more popular ones in the class… mostly because of his exceptionally good grades that caused many to want to be associated with him in hopes that it might help their own work. Verne, on the other hand, was the one who was always seen sitting quietly at the back of the classroom. Clara had begun to notice something... but he knew that no one would ever understand how he felt.

Arriving home, Verne headed straight to the bookshelf and pulled out a book, dumping it on the table beside it. Reaching his hand into the space behind, he felt for the knob he knew was there and turned it… causing the bookshelf to swing open and reveal the secret room beyond.

Verne entered as he had done so many times before. Switching on the computer, he pushed himself around on the swivel chair waiting for the PC to boot and reflecting on the misfortunes of life. His life, in particular.

Firstly, there was the lack of freedom to do the things he enjoyed, such as computer games, watching TV, playing on his PlayStation 5 and his beloved Game Boy. All that had to be confined to the secret room where he was now, which had its windows painted over so that no one else would know about the existence of a roomful of stuff that had not yet been invented. The room that ran on electricity produced by a generator his father had created. It was his favourite hideout, the only place where he could feel any sense of belonging.

And then, of course, was the train in the backyard, his family's greatest secret that ironically was kept in full view of everyone else who might pass by. The flying train. The flying, time travelling train. People had begun to notice the way-too-colourful vehicle behind the Brown house. Emmett Brown had tried to keep it secret for as long as he could, but there soon came a time when it would no longer fit inside the makeshift laboratory he had constructed around the section of no-longer-in-use train tracks that ran near the house. None besides its owners had any idea what the train could do, though. For most of them, it was simply a brightly painted vehicle with many strange gadgets fixed all over it.

But there was no hiding the pairs of three sonic booms many of those people had heard on the fourth of January that year. It was a sound that none had ever known, and the fact that it came from the general direction of the Brown house served only to start several suspicious rumours about its occupants and their activities.

Jules didn't care. He never cared about much, as long as he did well in school. Verne, on the other hand, cared a lot. It wasn't just about himself, but the rest of his family too. He knew how his father had been labelled the local crackpot back (or forward) in the future, and if the same was going to happen here too in the nineteenth century, he didn't foresee many good times for them.

The computer was on. Verne inserted the Red Alert 3 disk into the CPU and clicked 'play' on the small screen that popped up, then waited for the game to load. The boy sighed.

He didn't see why he had to live here. In this place, in this time. He knew he didn't belong, somehow, unlike the rest of his family who seemed to fit perfectly. Verne didn't understand why he couldn't have a normal life like everyone else he knew.

For one, he didn't have a normal birthday. 26th December – just the day and the month. The year wasn't fixed; it all depended on what time period they happened to be in. Currently, he was about 6-and-a-half years old. He couldn't know for sure. No one was keeping count, himself included. And the date was obviously nothing to go by, though it wasn't probably more than a few weeks off.

Red Alert 3 finished loading and the main menu appeared, supported with music in the background. Verne moved the cursor over 'Single Player' and clicked. Of course, Multiplayer was out of the question. The Internet didn't even exist yet, and wouldn't for a century or so. And they didn't own a LAN. He wanted one. Maybe for his next birthday, whenever that was.

He clicked on 'Skirmish' and then got round to choosing a map, finally settling on one of the urban ones. He liked them. They reminded him of a time that had not yet come. A time he wanted to belong to.

"Username?" the screen prompted.

Verne hesitated for a moment, and then typed in, 'Teacher's Kid', more out of bitterness than anything. That's what everyone called him, anyway. He selected the nation he'd be using and then clicked 'Start' and waited.

And that was another thing. He was the only one in his whole class who knew how to type, having taught himself how to. It was a feat many children his age of the twenty-first century would have deemed impossible, let alone one of the nineteenth, but Verne had done it, somehow, fuelled by his deep longing to belong to the future.

He had seen things most of them never would. He knew people from so many different decades. Others would probably think him lucky… but Verne felt far from lucky. They could have his life if they wanted.

The game was taking forever to load and the background music was getting irritating.

Verne was about to swing his swivel chair against the wall in frustration when the family pet Einstein the dog entered the room and he changed his mind.

"Hi Einie!" Verne greeted, sounding much more cheerful than he felt as the animal lay down by his feet and gazed lovingly at his master through his hair-covered eyes, tongue dangling out as usual.

For a while, Verne allowed himself to smile.

"There has to be a way out of this, " he thought, staring wistfully at the painted windows. One day, when he was older, he was going. He was taking the time machine and leaving this place. This time.

"Someday, Einie. Someday," Verne murmured, stroking the dog's fur as it panted.

"He's on the computer again!" he heard Jules yell from somewhere outside in reply to a question on his whereabouts.

"Someday."

And the game started.

THE END

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