Back To The Future, Part II

She giggled.

‘Was it a big wedding?’

She was getting really excited now, looking all around Hill Valley as the car descended.

‘Where do we live? Are we happy?’

She turned back to Marty, her eyes almost too bright.

‘What about -’

Doc leaned over, holding a silver, penlight-sized device in front of Jennifer’s face. The penlight-thing strobed a blue light in Jennifer's eyes.

Jennifer slumped in her seat, sound asleep.

‘Doc!’ Marty objected. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Relax, Marty,’ Doc Brown reassured him. ‘It’s just a sleep-inducing alpha rhythm generator. She was asking too many questions. No one should know too much about their future.' Doc glanced at her again. Jennifer snored softly. ‘This way, when she wakes up, she'll think it was all a dream.’

All a dream? Marty still didn’t understand.

‘Jeez, Doc, then why bring her?’

‘I had to do something!’ Doc insisted. ‘She saw the time machine, and I couldn’t just leave her with that information.’ He gave Marty his best mad-scientist grin. ‘Don’t worry. She’s not essential to my plan.’

Marty looked doubtfully at the smiling Doc and the sleeping Jennifer. Still, he had to have some faith in his inventor friend. After all, this was the same man who got him safely out of the past and back to good old 1985 - even though Marty hadn’t stayed there.

‘Well,’ Marty replied slowly, ‘you’re the Doc.'

Doc Brown turned his attention to the controls as they began their final descent. They landed in an alley between two buildings, an alley that didn't look all that different from alleys in 1985.

Doc flipped off half a dozen switches.

‘First,’ he told Marty, ‘you’re gonna have to get out and change clothes.’

‘Doc!’ Marty pointed at the ongoing flood on the other side of the windshield. ‘It’s pouring rain!’

‘Oh, right.’

Doc glanced at his watch.

‘Wait three more seconds.’

The rain stopped. Doc’s head bobbed with satisfaction.

‘Right on the tick.’ He glanced wistfully up at the sky. ‘Too bad the post office isn’t as efficient as the weather service.’

Doc and Marty pushed open the DeLorean s gull-wing doors. Marty climbed out of the car. But when he turned back to Doc. it looked like the inventor was peeling off his face! ‘Excuse the disguise. Marty,’ Doc explained mid-peel, ‘but I was afraid you wouldn’t recognise me. I went to a rejuvenation clinic and got an allnatural overhaul. They took some wrinkles out, did a hair repair, changed the blood - added a good thirty or forty years to my life. They also replaced my spleen and colon.’ He pulled the last of the goop from his face and ran a hand though his tangled hair. The hair stayed tangled. ‘What do you think?’

Marty had trouble not staring at the new, improved Doc Brown. He didn’t look that different, really - but he did look better. Younger. Many of the wrinkles were gone, and there was more of a sparkle in his eyes.

‘You look good. Doc,’ Marty answered slowly. ‘Real good.’ Staring at his slightly dewrinkled friend, his surroundings had really begun to sink in. So this actually was 2015.

‘The future!’ It didn’t look all that different in the alley - Marty guessed that alleys were alleys - the trashcans were a little newer and nicer, maybe. Marty bet it would be really different, though, out on the street. He took a couple of steps away from the car. ‘Whoa, I gotta check this out!’

‘All in good time, Marty. We’re on a tight schedule here.’ Doc pulled a small silver satchel - sort of a gym bag of the future - from the back of the DeLorean. ‘Here’re your clothes.’

Marty looked back at the inventor. ‘So, Doc, like what about my future? I make it big, right?’ He paused a minute, trying to figure out what would be his most obvious future. ‘I'm - what - a rich rock star?’