I DID IT I DID IT I DID IT! Last Chapter of Future Travellers: Part I! Finally the mission is accomplished! But don't worry... there will be more!

20: Chapter Nineteen

November 12, 1955
10:03 PM PST

Doc Brown felt really nervous, as he was standing right before the clock in the clock tower. Normally he wouldn’t even consider doing a thing like this, but right now, he needed to, because it was the only way of getting a certain Martin Seamus McFly back to the amazing future year 1985.

As he looked down, he saw the cable he had just unplugged from the lamp post. Now maybe he could connect the cables up in the clock tower in time, so the lightning would go through them, but stop by the lamp post so the DeLorean hook wouldn’t connect with it. This sure was not an easy task, and the inventor was certain that Marty McFly was now stranded for good in the year 1955.

When Doc looked down the way, he could see the headlights of the time vehicle appearing, and he looked at the clock. 10:03:20 – only forty seconds left until the lightning bolt would hit. Then, he made a decision. Plugging the cable into the clock tower-wire, he made a cable-circle around it. He then looked one time at his watch again – thirty-five seconds, now – and jumped off the ledge.

Slipping down the cables, Doc had a large flashback of his entire life – a life which was on the process of ending, now – before he landed on the ground. Immediately standing up again after checking he was still alive, he grabbed the cable and ran towards the lamppost. Once there, he looked down the street and saw 1955 Marty in the DeLorean a two hundred feet away, nearing the cables. He saw that Marty had also spotted him, and realised the teen had a rather begging expression in his face. Poor boy. Must be really troubled right now. Grabbing the cables and making his moves to connect them, Doc spotted the time on his watch. 10:03:58. Two seconds to go, now.

Then, the clock in the clock tower finally hit the beloved 10:04, and an immense bolt of lightning came down from the sky to hit it and stop it forever. The electricity that hadn’t been absorbed by the clock itself went down through the cables which Doc had just connected seconds before the lightning hit, giving himself a slight electric shock by doing so. The lightning then reached the lamp post and the cable above the road just as the DeLorean also hit it with the hook. Doc watched as 1955 Marty and the DeLorean were surrounded with yellow light, then disappeared right into 1985 leaving twin trails of fire behind on the street.

As Doc stood up and stared at the cables, he couldn’t believe what he saw. The lightning had hit on time, the cables had been connected… and the experiment had been a success. Marty was back in the future.

Enthusiastically, he began to run down the road yelling excitedly. Marty was gone. He had successfully made a time travel experiment. As he returned from the road, he stared at the clock tower which remained saying the time as 10:04 PM. And, according to Marty, it won’t say something else for at least thirty years… if not more. He began to feel a feeling of sadness, as Marty was now gone forever. Well, he would be back, but that would be by a natural birth in early June of the year 1968, which was still a good thirteen years away. He wondered when they would meet. Would it be when Marty was still a tiny little child, in the early 1970s, or would it be only months before the final experiment in October 1985? For a moment, Doc wished that Marty hadn’t made it home so he could ask him all of it, and so that the teenager could stay with him. But he knew that he shouldn’t wish that. Marty was happy this way, and eventually, the inventor would see him again, and talk to him again. He sure was looking forward to that one day.

He then turned to his Packard, as he really felt that it was time for him to head home. It had been one exciting day, and he should rest for a while before he could decide what he should do with his memories about Marty, and with the things Marty had left behind in the present, like the suitcase of his future self. Doc liked looking in it, but he knew that he better either locked it up until the big event had passed, or burned it down. Those things didn’t belong in 1955, and keeping them would only enlarge the risk of the future getting to change… for the worst.

Right as he turned to his Packard, he heard a voice from the back calling “Doc! Doc! Doc!” Deciding it was a reminder of his time with Marty, some sort of vision, he ignored it and continued walking to the car. Still confused, he asked: “What?”

“Doc!” the voice repeated. The inventor would’ve told it off as a vision if the vision in question hadn’t grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him around. As Doc looked down, he didn’t really enjoy what he saw.

It was Marty McFly, future boy, wearing a black leather jacket and a hat, and pulling at him wildly. Doc’s mind locked up as he saw him – this couldn’t be happening! He then called out: “Argh! A ghost!” The inventor wondered if this had something to do with the time machine causing disturbance in his brainwaves.

"Okay, relax, Doc," the ghost insisted, obviously trying to calm him down – Doc had no idea why a ghost would be doing something like that. Weren’t ghosts supposed to scare someone, not to calm them down? "It's me!t's me! It's Marty!"

The guy had to be nuts, Doc concluded. Marty couldn’t be here, could he? He was in 1985! "No, it can't be you,..." Doc protested, "I just sent you back to the future!" With that, he pointed down the street as to show the ghost the fire trails that the time vehicle had left behind when it had left the present.

"I know," the ghost called, as it was really insisting about this, "you did send me back to the future, but I'm back! I'm back from the future!"

As 1985 Marty released him, Doc began to realise things. “It’s true” he thought. “I don’t know how, but it’s true. All of it. Marty has come back from 1985 again and needs my help to get him back to 1985… again.”

“Great Scott.”

As he realised this, he could feel that his body couldn’t carry these facts anymore. The whole thing of Marty being back from the year 1985 had quite overwhelmed him. After all, it was barely a minute or two ago that the original Marty had been send back to the eighties. Feeling real faint, he wanted to say: “I’ve got to lie down” but it didn’t come out anymore. His eyes rolled, his mind went completely blank, and he fainted.

oooooooo

“Doc!” Marty Sr shrieked, as Doc fainted to the ground. He then sat down next to him, as he tried to wake the inventor back up. “Doc, wake up” he muttered. “Doc, wake up…”

Right then, his son came walking over to him, frustrated. “I can’t believe this” he muttered as he sank down next to his father. “First I end up in a hellish world. Then we go to 1955 and when after a lot of adventures we finally burn the book, Doc gets hit by lightning. And now his 1955 self has fainted. This is like you would say Dad, really heavy stuff. I just wish I hadn’t stowed away back in 2015.”

“Yeah, right” Marty Sr muttered, as he continued to try to wake up the scientist. Apparently it didn’t work, since the inventor continued to sleep. He had obviously had quite a shock, just like Jennifer in 2015, and probably wouldn’t be able to wake up for a few hours. And Marty hadn’t thought to bring any smelling salts with him, so it might take at least until midnight ‘till the Doc would wake up.

“C’mon” he said to Jennifer, who had also showed up. “I don’t think that I’ll be able to wake him up right now. We better go and move him back to his Packard, if we want him to get home tonight.” The others nodded, and the three of them began to carry the heavy scientist over to the Packard – Marty Sr at the head, and Junior at the feet, while Jennifer helped a little and held the door open for them. Then, as Doc lied on the back seat, Jennifer went to sit by him, as Marty Sr hopped into the drivers seat and Junior into the passenger’s seat.

Gazing up at the sky, Marty Sr realised that he’d had quite a lot of adventures in the past few days. Going to the past, the future, the past again… and now he’d have to duck even further into the past, to the year 1885. Because no matter what Doc had written, screw the space-time continuum, Doc wasn’t going to stay there. Marty McFly was going to get him out even if it was the last thing he’d do.

Staring at the letter once again, he read the date all over: September 1st, 1885. He chuckled slightly, as he remembered Marty Jr mentioning ‘not wanting to end up in 1885’ back when they were still in Biff-horrific 1985. The teenager was afraid that they wouldn’t have a choice but going to the past right now, and he hoped that everything would turn out fine back there. He couldn’t help but wonder what Doc was doing right now. Or was it seventy years ago? Time travel sure screwed the hell outta him.

But how screwed up the thing might be, there was one thing that Marty was sure of by time travel as he started the engine of the Packard and looked at the clock which said the time was 10:09, five minutes after the lightning bolt had hit. And that thing was that the adventure they had gone on wasn’t over… yet.

Not yet.

TO BE CONCLUDED IN FUTURE TRAVELLERS: PART II!