Back To The Future

“No sweat,” Marty said.

Now quite caught up in describing the mechanics of his system, Doc Brown changed the DESTINATION TIME to 11-5-1955. “Now here’s another red-letter date in the history of science and progress,” he went on. “November 5, 1955. I believe it was a Saturday. Yes, now that I think about it, I’m sure it was. The weather was kind of grey.”

“What happened then?” Marty asked. That was more than a decade before he had been born, so he could only speculate. “Was that the Salk vaccine or something like that?” he asked, remembering from science class that the polio cure went back to about that time.

“No,” Doc Brown went on. “It’s a red-letter date in science that nobody knows about—yet. Nobody except me, that is. You see, that was the day I invented time travel—”

“Then what’s today?” Marty interrupted.

“Today is the carrying-out, the execution,” Brown smiled. “November 5, 1955 was the conception, the moment when it all came together as a theory that I knew could work.” He leaned against the shiny frame of the DeLorean, his eyes misted in happy nostalgia. “I remember it vividly,” he said. “I was standing on the edge of my toilet, hanging a clock. The porcelain was wet. I slipped and hit my head on the sink to my left. And when I came to, I had a revelation—a vision that was absolutely perfect—a picture in my head of everything I needed to do and how I could do it.”

He gestured to the car. “Believe it or not, I saw this,” he continued. “My dream or hallucination or whatever it was contained a picture of this.”

“Amazing,” Marty said, his eyes wide with sincerity. He knew the feeling. Once he had awakened during the middle of the night with the lyrics and melody of a new song literally playing inside his head. All that he had to do was find paper and take dictation. That was small potatoes compared to a scientific breakthrough such as the invention of time travel, but the emotional impact was similar.

Leaning inside the DeLorean, Doc Brown pointed to a parti

cular centerpiece unit. “Get a picture of this on tape,” he said.

Marty pointed the camera at the strange-looking object.

Moving his head next to it so that he could be on camera and describe its workings at the same time, Doc Brown continued in his professional tone. “This is what makes time travel possible—the flux capacitor.”

“Flux capacitor, huh?” Marty repeated. “Is that its real title or something you made up?”

“It’s a logical title applied by me when I decided to describe its function in one or two words. Any brilliant scientist would have arrived at approximately the same title if given the chance.”

Marty chuckled inwardly at the man’s lack of humility. He did not dislike him for it, however. As a matter of fact, he found it charmingly refreshing.

“It’s taken me almost thirty years and my entire family fortune to fulfill the vision of that day when I fell off the toilet…My God, has it been that long? I’ve been working on this for exactly…”

He reached into his inside coat pocket to withdraw a small calculator. Punching buttons quickly, he said presently: “I’ve been working on this for twenty-nine years, eleven months, and 355 days. Excluding vacations, of course, and a few weeks off for petty illnesses. Think of it. Almost thirty years. It’s amazing. Things have certainly changed during that time. This all used to be farmland here, as far as the eye could see…”

He looked off toward the horizon, dominated now by the huge department stores of the mall and sodium vapor lamps lining the periphery of their vision like ugly ornaments. “I can hardly believe it’s gone,” he murmured.

“What?”

“The farm…the years…” He suddenly looked very sad.

Marty tried to shake him out of the mood. Slapping the side of the DeLorean, he said, “This is heavy duty, Doc. I’m really impressed.”

The compliment caused a shift in Doc Brown’s attitude. His eyes turned to the present, unclouding and becoming instantly brighter, sharper.

“Yes, I’m proud of it,” he smiled.

“And it runs on, like, regular unleaded gasoline?” Marty asked.

Doc shook his head and grinned. “Unfortunately, no,” he replied. “I tried that in the beginning. That was a dream that just wouldn’t come true—to have this device run cheaply and simply. That may happen in the future, but for the moment, it requires something with a little more kick.”

“You mean, atomic power?” Marty guessed.

Nodding, Doc Brown pointed to a container with purple radioactivity signs painted on it.

“Plutonium? You mean this sucker’s nuclear?”

“Electrical, basically,” Doc Brown replied. “But I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need. The flux capacitor stores it, then discharges it all at once, like a gigantic bolt of lightning. It’s really quite efficient.”

“Hold the phone, Doc,” Marty said. “Plutonium’s illegal. Did you rip it off?”