It's here - the novelisation. It's finally done, all 107K words of it, after so long... I don't know how many of you original readers are reading this now. It's been ages.

Anyway, the link is www(.)freewebtown(.)com(slash)anakinmcfly(slash)rw(.)htm. That link takes you to the index page.

Title: Real World
Rating: PG
Genre: Science fantasy / humour / angst
Word count: 107,000
Synopsis: Doc invents a device that allows him and Marty to communicate across time periods. However, this begins to create rips in the space-time continuum, and Marty soon discovers the existence of a movie trilogy from another universe - the trilogy known as Back to the Future. Stuff happens, and Marty soon gets sucked into the real world, where he has to deal with being fictional.

Crossover with The Matrix, The Frighteners, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Star Wars.

To those of you who have just found this, my advice is to read the novelisation before They've Got Mail.

And since fanficnet doesn't allow chapters that are merely announcements, here follows a snippet from the first chapter:

REAL WORLD - EXCERPT

It wasn't a building that would normally have attracted much attention. An old, large, relatively run-down garage, it was nothing very remarkable to look at. In truth, it would have remained largely ignored, had it not been for the fact that it also happened to be the house-cum-laboratory of the town lunatic, Dr. Emmett Lathrop Brown. That in itself was reason enough for the majority of Hill Valley citizens to stay away from that garage, and stay away they did… fuelled in part by their fear of the unknown and the many rumours surrounding its owner.

Had they got to know him better, however, they would have perhaps learnt that Emmett had departed the late twentieth century more than a month ago and was currently living happily in the nineteenth with his wife and two kids. As it was, only two people had any idea that he had left.

And just as few knew of the existence of a 2003 computer inside the garage, one which ran on a Windows 2000 operating system and had a connection to the World Wide Web.

In 1985.

On that computer on the afternoon of December the twelfth, a seventeen-year-old teenager by the name of Martin Seamus McFly was typing away. Beside him on the table was strewn a mass of wires that showed some form of organisation only when one looked closely at them, and these were attached to a strange, fluxing Y-shaped contraption - a flux capacitor - that was in turn hooked up to both a modem-like device and the computer.

Behind Marty on the opposite end of the dimly lit garage was located the remains of a gigantic amplifier that had blown up somewhere in the vicinity of late October that year, and next to it was now a much smaller one that Marty had brought there to use in its stead.

Jennifer Jane Parker, Marty's girlfriend and fellow time traveller, sat beside him and stared at the screen in rapt fascination as he concluded his brief introduction to the Internet of 2004.

The brown-haired boy turned to her and smiled. "Cool huh?" he asked, although her reaction was already more than obvious. "And the whole thing's connected to Doc's computer, so when one day passes for me and in 2004, one day passes for him too. That way everything's kept in sync."

Jennifer nodded slowly, eyes still fixated on the screen. "Doc just gave you the computer?"

"Yeah. He said he got it cheap at a garage sale in 2009. But he didn't exactly give it to me… I mean, it's not like I can just take it home or anyth…"

The entire collection of clocks in the garage chose that precise moment to chime loudly, cutting Marty off in mid-sentence. The teen cringed slightly at the sound. Even after more than three years of dropping by at Doc's garage before and after school, he still hadn't got used to it.

"You've gotta go now, right?" he asked, when the noise had finally subsided to the usual quiet, relatively unobtrusive ticking.

Jennifer sighed regretfully, getting up. "Yeah."

Marty got off his own chair and walked towards the door to let her out.

"Do you think Doc's ever coming back?" Jennifer asked.

Marty hesitated. "I don't know," he said. "Maybe just for short visits or to drag me off to save the universe again, but nothing permanent…"

"You want him to come back, don't you?"

"Yeah," the other teen admitted quietly. "But I think he's happier where he is now. If he comes back here, there'll be all those people who keep avoiding him because they think he's crazy… and he'll have to explain his family. Maybe it's better if he just stays…" His words drifted off into the air.

"I guess I'd better be going now."

"Sure. See you tomorrow."

They paused, looking into each others' eyes, and then their lips met in a quick kiss. Marty emerged, grinning, and waved goodbye as Jennifer made her way down the driveway.

END EXTRACT