Back To The Future

Brown switched the power button on and, using the accelerator button and joystick, sent the DeLorean roaring to the far end of the parking lot. There he brought it to a quick halt, turning it so that it was pointing toward them. Seeing the trail of rubber fumes rising as it turned, Marty hoped no policeman would happen along. It would be very embarrassing for him, as well as them, if he should be forced to arrest a reckless-driving dog.

For thirty seconds, the car sat, idling softly. To Marty it seemed to resemble a giant cat, readying itself to pounce on an unwary victim.

“We’re now ready to continue,” Doc Brown said. “If my calculations are correct, when the car hits eighty-eight miles an hour, you’re gonna see some serious shit.”

Suddenly aware that the video camera was still running, Doc shuddered at his own use of colloquial language. He added quickly and more conventionally: “When a speed of eighty-eight miles an hour is attained, unusual things should begin happening in this phase of temporal experiment number one.”

He could, he reasoned, always edit in the more acceptable version later.

Taking a deep breath, he pushed the accelerator button. The Twin Pines Mall parking lot had been selected by him because of its extreme length—nearly one-third mile—but as the spanking new DeLorean began to roar away toward the far reaches of the black-topped strip, he wondered if even this was enough. Taking off like a racing car, its gears shifting automatically, the DeLorean’s recorded speed whirled quickly past 30, then 40. By the time it reached 60, it seemed to be moving at a dangerously rapid speed. Marty followed it through the viewfinder, once or twice nearly allowing the vehicle to move out of the frame when a sudden burst of speed carried it forward.

“Sixty,” Doc Brown announced. “Sixty-five…seventy…seventy-five…”

Marty wondered how Einstein felt, sitting there in his captive seat, watching the gauges and instrument lights flash against the black sky.

“Eighty.”

Turning the vehicle in a huge arc, Doc Brown maneuvered it so that it was approaching them under full power. With nearly the entire length of the mall lot ahead of it on the return run, he now felt no compunction about leaning on the accelerator. The speedometer indicator leaped to 85, 86, 87, and finally 88, where it hung for a long second, the needle caressing the magic number as if to emphasize its importance.

Doc Brown waited. It should happen now, he thought, it should be happening at this very sec—

The thought was not completed, but instead was engulfed by a mind-numbing experience.

In the midst of its precipitous run down the center of the parking lot, the DeLorean was suddenly swallowed up by a blinding white glow. For a split second, the silhouette of the car, surrounded by the corona of light, resembled an eclipse of the sun. Then a shock wave and explosion of sound hit Marty and Doc Brown just as the car disappeared in a huge trail of fire. The embers, large at first, gradually became smaller until only a pink fissure in the atmosphere remained. Then, a tiny, metallic sound, tinkly in quality, echoed across the lot. A shadow of something moving, something very small, could be seen. His fingers trembling, Marty zoomed in to the object.

It was the DeLorean’s license plate, a vanity plate that read: OUTATIME.

“What did I tell you?” Doc Brown shouted, his voice elated. “Eighty-eight miles an hour! Just as I figured.” He checked his watch. “Temporal displacement occurred at exactly 1:20 A.M. and zero seconds.”

Marty shook his head in disbelief. “Christ Almighty!” he shouted. “You disintegrated Einstein!”

“No,” Doc Brown said evenly.

/>

“But the license plate’s all that remains of the car and dog and everything!”

“Calm down, Marty. I didn’t disintegrate anything. The molecular structure of both Einstein and the car are completely intact.”

“Then where the hell are they?” Marty demanded.

Doc Brown looked at him with maddening serenity. “Not where,” he said. “When.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The appropriate question,” Doc Brown amended, “is not where are they, but when the hell are they? You see, Einstein has just become the world’s first time traveler. I sent him into the future—one minute into the future, to be exact. And at exactly 1:21 A.M. and zero seconds, we shall catch up to him…and the time machine.” Marty still didn’t get it.

“Are you recording this?” Doc Brown asked. “Because if you are, it might be appropriate to have the camera pointed at me or where the car was, rather than at the ground in front of you.”

Marty shook his head, noting that he had allowed the video camera to drop downward during the interval of stress and excitement. Now he righted it, bringing Doc Brown into the frame.

“It’s all right,” Doc said, smiling indulgently. “We still have a few seconds.”

“Few seconds until what?”

“You’ll see.”

“Are you trying to tell me you built a time machine out of that DeLorean?” Marty demanded.