Excerpt: Travelling Through Dimensions (the end)

This is from the Marty Brown Universe. Doc and Marty, having just arrived in a new universe once again, walk up to the house of Doc's newest self...

Anyway, the two time travellers exited the bus, Doc locking it as always before they walked up to the house that looked so familiar yet so foreign as they knew it was not the one they were familiar with. Doc noticed that the house had changed quite a bit from how he knew it, resembling the state of the house in the world where Marty had been trapped in the ‘50s. He wondered whether this would be a repeated visit to that world.

“So…” Marty said, as they walked up to the front door. “Should I knock again, or do you want the honour this time around?”

Doc shrugged. “We could split up” he said. “You could go to the back door and I could remain here. I suppose that would enable us to get what we want the soonest. If either of us does not receive any response, he could simply go to where the other is. I suppose that could be quite efficient.”

Marty shrugged. “Whatever you say, Doc” he said, obviously not really caring about it. “I’ll go through the back door, then. I guess I’ll see you in just a minute or two.”

“Yes, it shouldn’t take all too long” Doc said, once again holding back a yawn. He was okay with staying up long, but having to explain the same story over and over again did not exactly keep people more awake and while the inventor was by far not on the verge of collapsing yet, he was not feeling fresh and awake, not as fresh and awake as he should at least. He looked after his friend as Marty disappeared around the corner, and then looked at the front door, and rang the doorbell.

Within moments, the door was opened, and Marty appeared at the door – the local version of him, at least. For a moment, Doc didn’t see anything wrong, and was about to speak up when he noticed. Then, he felt so stunned at the teen’s appearance that he couldn’t speak. Marty had grown about two or three inches, had strangely familiar brown eyes and his face looked a slight bit changed as well… but that could be from the fact that the Marty that Doc knew was depressed and tired from a long inter-dimensional journey. Still, the change in height and eye colour made Doc immediately know that he was not making a mistake because of exhaustion – Marty really looked slightly different.

“What’s the matter?” his alternate friend said, eyeing him with some curiosity as he’d been watching the inventor’s astonishment at his appearance with interest. “Why are you looking at me like that?” He paused for a second. “What are you doing here, anyway? Weren’t you just leaving to go out to visit your wife’s family?” He chuckled at the latter part of his sentence, and shook his head making ‘tsk’ noises at himself for a reason that the inventor could not identify.

“Well, I’m not” Doc said, figuring that the explanation to that issue could probably wait a while. “I’m here, and I…” He paused, realising what his friend had said. “Wait a second… my wife’s family? You mean, they’re still around?” Clara certainly no longer had relatives around that they knew of, and as far as he was concerned, the odd history of Susan Clayton that his counterparts had told him about meant the same for her. For Julia, he didn’t really know, though. And that coupled with the fact that the house was in about the same condition, roughly, as his other self’s from that reality, made the ‘repeated visit’ theory sound a lot more plausible all of a sudden.

His suspicions on that issue, however, were not confirmed, as Marty frowned, obviously a bit puzzled at the question – who could blame him, after all, one would not expect a friend ask questions about his wife for who knew how many years – and nodded, somewhat hesitant. “Um, yeah” he muttered. “The Baines family is still around, and quite sizable at that.”

For a moment, the inventor thought he was going to have an abrupt heart attack. “The WHAT family?” He had to have heard this wrong… “Don’t you mean… Clayton?”

Unfortunately for his mental health, Marty did not mean that. The teen frowned even more instead. “No, I meant the Baines family” he said, acting to the name of ‘Clayton’ as if it sounded quite foreign to him – with the potential exception of Clayton Ravine, of course. “You know that, Dad.”

Doc’s mind was abruptly filled with the astonishing truth of this dimension as all the information suddenly made sense. The state of the house, indicating that it had been bought somewhere in the mid- to late-sixties… Marty looking slightly different, taller than normal, and with brown eyes that resembled Doc’s own too much for it to be a coincidence… a woman from the Baines family, which, in this scenario, had to be Marty’s mother, Lorraine, as his alternate self’s wife… it suddenly all made sense and came down on poor Doc all in one as he realised the only conclusion that this could lead to. In this dimension, things had changed drastically. This Marty was not a McFly. This Marty, this Marty…

This Marty was his son.

Hours earlier, Doc had been annoyed at his other self from the no-Marty world and Marty himself in the world where he’d been trapped in the ‘50s, who had both fainted and caused quite an annoyance when they had to be revived. Doc had mentally figured that ‘he’d never do something like that’. Now, however, he had proven himself wrong.

Without even a ‘Great Scott’ to announce it, the inventor’s mind went blank and everything went black in front of his eyes as, in front of a stunned Local Marty, he collapsed and fainted to the ground.