Back To The Future, Part II

‘Marty Junior?’ Marty mused aloud. ‘I name him Marty Junior? With a name like that, how could he go wrong?’ Hey! There was no reason to panic - the kid had Marty McFly’s genes, after all, right?

‘Well,’ Marty added to console himself. ‘At least he’s not a wimp.’

But his son was about to make a really bad decision, and it was up to Marty to take his place and save him! The original Marty took a deep breath and walked out of the alley.

2015 or not, he knew exactly where he was.

Directly in front of him was Courthouse Square'. It had changed some in thirty years, but it was still easy enough to recognise. After all, he had skateboarded around these streets a thousand times or more in 1985, and even managed to do the same once or twice during the week he had spent in the 1950s. He wondered for a second if kids still skateboarded in 2015.

The village green had been mostly replaced by a large duck pond and a fountain, although the square was still bordered by those same hedges. The courthouse building was still there, too. but it looked like it had been turned into some sort of mall, with a fancy, smoked green glass entryway that led to dozens of underground shops. The names of the stores below flashed on a 3-D electronic display, places with names like World O’ Transponders and Hydrators unlimited.

There were still stores on the other three sides of the square, too, although most of the names had changed since 1985. The adult bookstore had been replaced by a shop called Bottoms Up, ‘Specialising in Plastic Surgery since 1998!’, with signs in the windows advertising face lifts and a today-only special on breast-implants.

And the movie theater had changed too. It was called the HOLOMAX now, and the marquee announced they now featured

FULL HOLOGRAPHIC SCREENS!

- Now Playing -

JAWS 14

DIRECTED BY MAX SPIELBERG

- This time, it’s really, really personal! -

DELIGHTFULLY AIR CONDITIONED!

There was still a gas station on the corner, too, only now it was on the second storey, above a Seven-Eleven! A car landed on the upper deck, and a dozen robot arms appeared, pumping gas, checking the tyres, washing the windows. Further up the street, there was a tavern called the Fusion Bar and a Century 22 real estate office. On the other side of the square, Marty could see a robotics shop (‘Sales, Service, Rentals!’). And a Video Software store, with a sign in the window advertising ‘The Video Classic: A Match Made In Space!’ Wow, Marty thought. They’d made a movie out of his dad’s book, too?

Most of the traffic seemed to have relocated itself overhead. Cars, some of which looked old enough to come from 1985, or even before, briskly flew back and forth across the air lanes. Marty could have sworn one of those fliers was an Edsel. There was a flashing sign overhead, advising drivers of current ‘Skyway Conditions’. And there were billboards both up there and down close to the ground, too, pointing out the advantages of ‘US Air to Vietnam’ - complete with a smiling couple with surfboards - or ‘Earl Shieb IV will hoverconvert any car! ]ust $3999!’ or even ‘Pepsi-Perfect - it’s vitamin enriched!’

Actually, there was only one thing

in all of Courthouse Square that hadn’t changed at all - except maybe to look a little older. The courthouse clock was still there at the top of the converted courthouse building, and still stopped at 10:04, the time lightning struck it back in 1955, letting Marty get back where he belonged, to 1985, at least for a few hours.

Marty stepped out onto the street. Well, maybe there were a couple of other things that hadn’t changed so much. Those folks dancing up there looked like Hare Krishnas. And the sign on the store directly behind the dancing guys in the saffron robes read E-Z CREDIT FINANCE COMPANY. And one whole corner of the street had been completely torn up by the electric company.

But where was the Café 80's?

There was an antique store on this side of the street, a place called BLAST FROM THE PAST. The front window of the place was full of things Marty remembered from 1985 or before, all carefully labelled, stuff like a Betamax VCR, a Super-8 movie projector, a lava lamp, a Macintosh computer, and a whole bunch of Perrier bottles. In fact, the only thing Marty didn’t recognise in the window was a small, silver book with the bold, red title:Grey’s Sports Almanac 1950-2000.

Marty looked up the street. He still had an important job to do. Just beyond the antique store, on the corner where the aerobics place used to stand back in 1985, was the Café80’s.

Marty walked quickly to the Café. The door slid aside to let him enter. Doc Brown had called this ‘one of those nostalgia places’. The walls were painted in pastel pinks and greens straight out of that new cop show - Miami Vice. But a lot of stuff here either Marty didn't recognise at all, or it somehow looked wrong.

He supposed some of it could have come from after 1985. That was weirder still, when be thought about it. He was in a nostalgia place for stuff that hadn’t even happened yeti Like what were all these weird yellow squares pinned to one wall, squares that said stuff like ‘Baby on Board’ and ‘Dead Wife in Trunk’? Why would anybody want to use that sort of thing?

The front counter in the place looked a lot like fast food places Marty was used to from 1985 - but he guessed that was the idea - with a big wall display overhead, complete with pictures of the burgers and other stuff they served. Every seat in the place, though, had a small video screen in front of it, sort of like a ‘Watchman’, and all the screens were showing images from the 1980s - news clips, movies, rock videos. The sound system was pounding out a song about heaven being only one step away, or something, that Marty thought sounded vaguely familiar. At least there was some good guitar work in it.

There was still something strange about this place, though. A good part of it, Marty thought, had to be the counter help. They weren’t human, for one thing, but some kind of robots with large video screens that

switched between showing human faces and food items. Beneath each robot’s screen was a tray to carry food, but - for some reason - all of the robots also sported a pair of red metallic wings to either side of their screens. Wings? Marty hoped they were just there for decoration.

But Marty had come in here to do more than stare. He was supposed to order something. He walked up to the front of the restaurant.

One of the red-winged robots smiled at him from the other side of the counter. The thing's video-screen face resembled nothing so much as a computer-generated Ronald Reagan.

‘Welcome to the Café 80’s,’ the television image announced, ‘where it’s always morning in America, even in the afternoon.'