"Outatime" - Chapter Seven

            Staggering along the sidewalk with a bottle of Chardonnay in hand, her makeup running after an hour of sobbing, Emma returned home to her mansion with the hope of forgetting one disaster of an evening. Her date stood her up, leaving her to sit alone at Rocky’s Pizzeria, downing one glass after another.

            The second she walked through the front door, she was welcomed by an overenergetic Lewis. “Hey, Mom! Hey, Mom! Hey, Mom!” he yelled, rapidly jumping up and down like he was on a sugar rush. “Can Marty, Phineas, and Ferb stay here? Like forever?”

            Emma could barely focus on him. “Lewis…honey…I’ve had a really rough night. Can’t this wait ‘til morning?” She slithered out of her fur coat, letting it drop into a fuzzy heap on the floor. She noticed Marty, Phineas, and Ferb standing not too far behind Lewis, reminded of the babysitters she hired for the night. “Oh, right…um…here ya go.” She reached into her purse and handed a twenty-dollar bill over to Marty. “Thank you for your service.”

            Marty looked at the crisp twenty-dollar bill, which she would’ve imagined to be a pretty sizable reward for babysitting in 1985. But that was beside the reason she, Phineas, and Ferb were there. “Doc, listen,” she began to tell the wavering Emma, only to stop and see how much of a mess she was. “What happened to you anyway? You got back a whole lot earlier than you said you would.”

            “Honey, do yourself a favor,” Emma hiccupped. “Never go into dating.”

            Going off that morose advice, Marty had a good idea what happened to Emma.

            “Hey, Mom,” Lewis once again beckoned. “Marty, Phineas, and Ferb told me the gnarliest thing: they’re from the future!”

            “Oh, Lewis…” Emma groaned. “They were just having a little fun with you.”

            “It’s true, Doc,” Marty spoke up, catching Emma off guard as her bloodshot eyes leered questionably towards the teenage redhead. “We came here in a time machine that you invented. And now, we need your help to get back to the year 2025.”

            Emma continued staring at Marty for a long minute…and then she rushed over to the nearest trashcan, vomiting into it. It wasn’t exactly the reaction neither Marty nor the boys expected. Soon after all the contents within her stomach were regurgitated into the trashcan, Emma cleaned the puke off her lips and told Marty, “Get off my property right now.”

            “Doc, I’m telling you the truth!” Marty snapped. “You’re the only one who knows how your time machine works!”

            “I never…” Emma stopped for a brief second to hurl, thinking she had more to barf out. Luckily, it was just a false alarm. “I never invented any time machine, kid! Now, kindly leave before I…”

            Without warning, Marty shoved her smartphone in Emma’s face.

            Emma found herself staring at a photo on the future device that had Marty standing with Phineas, Ferb, and a long-necked girl inside some sort of family entertainment center. Marty was happily sipping on a green-colored beverage, presumably soda, while Phineas and Ferb stood aside, exchanging in a brotherly high-five. The long-necked girl was behind Marty, smiling; of course, one off-putting detail Emma noticed about her was the bizarre hairstyle.

            “That’s a terrible mullet she has,” Emma disapproved.

            “Never mind the photo, Doc!” Marty griped. “Look at what I’m showing it on! When was the last time you’ve seen anyone in 1985 carrying one of these, huh?”

            “What? The fancy, oversized Viewfinder? How much did ya pay for that toy?”

            Marty’s patience wore thin with the boozy scientist. “I’m telling the truth, Doc! You gotta believe me!”

            “O.K., Future Girl,” Emma scoffed. “How ‘bout providing me with some future insight? By the year 2018, who will be President of the United States?”

            Marty smirked from the easy question. “Donald Trump.”

            Emma immediately burst with laughter. “Donald Trump?! Seriously?! Who’s Vice President – Hugh Hefner?!” She stood up from her hunched position over the trashcan, hostilely advancing on Marty, Phineas, and Ferb. “And I suppose Ivana Trump is the First Lady! And Ron Jeremy is the Secretary of Defense!”

            In her ranting, Emma backed Marty and the boys right out through the front door and onto the porch. “Doc, wait a sec! You gotta listen!” Marty pleaded.

            “I’ve heard enough jokes for one night, young lady! Good night and good riddance!”

            While looking at Emma’s shouting face of disbelief, Marty detected something that she wished she had sooner. Just as Emma furiously shut the door, Marty stuck her foot in to keep it pried open, at the painful risk of the door slamming right into the foot itself. Thankfully, her Nikes cushioned much of the blow.

            “The bruise!” she bellowed. “That bruise on your head!”

            Emma froze for a brief moment, lightly touching the area above her right eyebrow. It was the one part of her face that was heavily applied with contour. She then defiantly told Marty, “I don’t have a single bruise on my face, kid!”

            “Yes, you do! You just contoured it!” Marty indicated. “You told me the whole story about it. You were standing on the toilet, hanging your clock, when you fell and hit your head. When you came to, Lewis found you lying there, staring up at the ceiling and mumbling to yourself. You said, ‘I got it!’ And that’s when you came up with the idea for the Flux Capacitor, which makes time travel possible.”

            Emma froze again, much longer this time, hearing Marty’s spot-on recap of her “eureka” moment, which had only occurred earlier that morning for the drunken scientist – who sobered up rather suddenly.

            After a few seconds of standing frozen in stunned silence, Emma fainted.

            Marty and the boys looked down at her unconscious body, curiously.

            “A fall like that is certain to evoke another brilliant idea,” Ferb observed.

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            As soon as Emma regained her senses, she drove everyone out in her 1978 AMC Pacer D/L Wagon to the countryside, specifically the construction site for Marty’s future neighborhood. They stopped at the Lyon Estates billboard. Marty and the boys led Emma and Lewis behind where the DeLorean time machine was stashed beneath piles and piles of bushes.

            Emma and Lewis were in awe as they gazed on the fully-functional Flux Capacitor within the time machine, looking exactly as how Emma drew it in her specs that morning. “It works…It works!” she cried out in immense jubilation. “I finally invent something that works, Lewis!”

            “You really did it, Mom!” Lewis congratulated her.

            Cutting their celebration short, they hitched the DeLorean behind Emma’s Wagon, covered it with a tarp, and returned it back to the mansion’s garage. Curious to know more about the functions of the future technological achievement, Marty and the Flynn-Fletcher brothers showed Emma and Lewis the footage recorded on Marty’s phone of the experiment.

            “Oh, my!” a mortified Emma exclaimed once she got a look at her 2025 counterpart on the recording. “I look so ancient!”

            “You look like Great Aunt Vera!” Lewis equated, much to his mother’s chagrin.

            Moving past the shock of seeing her older self, Emma focused her attention on Marty’s smartphone, which she perceived with more genuine fascination in her sober frame of mind. “Such a magnificent device – a phone that’s also a camera, a calculator, a computer, and a TV, all in one! You sure Bill Gates isn’t the president in 2025?”

            They continued watching the footage until the 2025 Emma Brown said something on the recording that caused her 1985 self to fly into panic.

            “1.21 JIGOWATTS?!?!”

            It was enough to make her flee back into the mansion and into her study, plopping herself onto her couch and curling into a fetal position. Marty and the boys caught up with her, confused as to why she was so alarmed. “What is a jigowatt anyway?” Marty asked.

            “All we need is a little plutonium,” Phineas said.

            Emma sat up on the couch, looking incredulously at Phineas. “A little plutonium?! Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to get plutonium in 1985? I’m sure you kids learned about the nuclear arms race in whatever schools they have in 2025!”

            “I think you guys are stuck here,” Lewis told the time travelers.

            “Well, we can’t be stuck here,” Phineas negated.

            “That’s right – we got lives in 2025,” Marty said. “Phineas has a girlfriend waiting for him!”

            Phineas raised an eyebrow. “I do?”

            “Is she cute?” Emma asked with a smile, her interest held on the topic.

            “She’s the sweetest lil’ thing, Doc. Her name’s Isabella.” Marty brought up a photo on her phone of a dark-haired girl with a large pink bow in her hair.

            “Isabella?” Phineas reacted doubtingly. “She’s just a friend, Marty.”

            Seeing the photo only made Emma feel worse about her inability to help the time travelers. “Marty, honey, I’m so sorry…but unless one of us has the guts to break into a government-sanctioned military base, the only other power source capable of generating 1.21 jigowatts of electricity is a bolt of lightning.”

            Those last few words sparked an idea in Marty. “Say that again?”

            “A bolt of lightning,” Emma repeated. “The only thing about it is that you never know when or where it’s ever gonna strike.”

            Marty reached into her rear jeans pocket, retrieving a folded piece of paper that she kept tucked in there for the longest time. She unfolded the paper and handed it over to Emma. “We do now,” she told her.

            Noticing the paper she gave to Emma, Phineas asked in wide-eyed astonishment, “Wait…isn’t that Baljeet’s flier?”

            Emma glanced over the flier, seeing that it depicted a historical event in 1985 that had yet to happen: a bolt of lightning struck the courthouse clock tower on the night of November 12, 1985. Reveled by this information, Emma exclaimed, “Eureka! It says here that the lightning is gonna strike the tower at precisely 10:04p.m., next Tuesday night!”

            “We could harness the lightning and channel it into the Flux Capacitor!” Lewis surmised. “That should be enough to get Marty, Phineas, and Ferb home!”

            “Exactly!” Emma concurred. “Next Tuesday night, we’re sending them...”

            “Yes! Now we’re talkin’!” Marty cheered. “Tuesday sounds good. We could spend a week here in 1985. Lewis can show us around some of the great hangout spots. Maybe we can—”

            “No!” Emma immediately disallowed. “Marty, listen to me. For as long as you three are here in 1985, you cannot – must not – leave this house or talk to anybody. Anything you do here could have serious consequences to future events. Do you understand me?”

            Marty frowned. “Well, that would’ve been important to know sooner!”

            “Why?” Lewis asked. “Who else did you guys talk to today before us?”

            “Just Marty’s dad and my mom,” Phineas shrugged. “But that couldn’t have—”

            “Great Scott!” Emma cried, grabbing the sides of her head as she mentally recalled a miniscule detail from earlier that now carried great importance to the current discussion. “Marty, lemme see that picture you showed me before – the one of that long-necked girl with the weird mullet.”

            “You mean Candace?” Phineas identified. “She never had a mullet – not that we know of.”

            “That only further concerns my theory,” Emma said, just as Marty handed her phone over to her with the picture in question on display. Glancing at Candace again, she alerted the youths, “Just as I thought! Look at Candace!”

            Marty and the boys saw what she did: Candace’s head was completely gone!

            “Where did it go?” Marty asked. “It’s like it’s been photoshopped out.”

            “Or erased from existence,” Emma gasped.

"Outatime" - Chapter Six

            It was a two-mile walk back to Hill Valley. Marty normally took the road from her neighborhood into town on her skateboard, so walking should have been a piece of cake for her and the boys. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for when they arrived in town. Hill Valley in 1985 was dramatically different from Hill Valley in 2025.

            Some kids were dressed like punk rockers with rainbow-colored, super-spiky hair.

            Others carried boomboxes on their shoulders with the music blaring in their ears.

            The cars driven along the streets were vintage and in pristine condition.

            The theater marquee advertised two “new” films: Rambo: First Blood Part II and The Goonies. Tickets were $3.55 a seat.

            “We’ll have to do our best to blend in,” Phineas suggested.

            “S-Sure,” Marty stammered, still adjusting to the bizarre situation she found herself in. “It shouldn’t be all that hard. I-I mean, think of all that we know ‘bout the 80s, thanks to Stranger Things.”

            Phineas snickered. “Yeah, including the monsters.”

            “T-There were real monsters?” Marty asked. She was so jittery that she took Phineas’s joke as an actual fact.

            DONG! DONG! DONG!

            Marty and the boys were shaken by the ringing of the Hill Valley Courthouse clock tower, which was still in working condition in 1985. Amused by the historical circumstance, Phineas reflected, “Baljeet would’ve been happy to see this.”

            Unable to handle the eeriness around her, Marty needed something to calm her. She took out her phone and put in her wireless earbuds, hoping that some music would calm her nerves. However, when she tried to access her Spotify playlist, she kept getting an error message: “No Internet Connection.”

            Of course. Wi-Fi hasn’t existed yet in 1985!

            “Argh!” she verbally griped.

            Seeing her distraught again, Phineas told her, “Take it easy, Marty. We’ll find a way out of this. All we have to do is call Doc.”

            “How’re we gonna do that without a phone?” Marty indicated her now useless smartphone to Phineas.

            “Well, payphones did exist in 1985.” Phineas pointed to one specific area in the square that Marty recognized as the Retrograde. Of course, in this 1985 setting, it was the old Century Café that was established before its closure and Phineas and Ferb renting the space. Immediately, she and the boys went there, being careful not to get run down by the blue 1980 Chevy Silverado along the way.

            The difference in the atmosphere was discernable as soon as they entered.

            Whereas the Retrograde was designed to be like Phineas and Ferb’s answer to Dave & Buster’s, Century Café was a basic coffee shop hangout with an open mic stage. Of course, being as early as it was, there wasn’t anyone on stage and barely much activity, save for one redheaded girl sitting alone and eating breakfast at the counter and a janitor sweeping away at the floors.

            Marty and the boys spotted the available indoor payphone booth near the corner. They wasted no time in going to it, with Marty stepping inside to search for Doc’s address in the phonebook. Once she found it, she dropped a few quarters into the machine and dialed the number. She never used a payphone before – or seen one, for that matter – so this firsthand experience was more than archaic to her.

            She heard ringing over the receiver a few times before ultimately getting an answer. “Brown residence,” the formal voice of a young boy answered. “To whom am I speaking?”

            Marty barely had a moment to venture a guess as to who the kid was, so she cut right to the chase: “Uh, hi…is Emma Brown there?”

            “Yes, she is,” the boy replied.

            “Can I speak to her?”

            “I dunno. Can you?”

            Oh, great. A grammar zealot. Marty despised those types. Not letting it deter her from the task at hand, she reiterated her request, “May I speak to her?”

            “She’s busy right now,” the kid said. “May I take a message?”

            Becoming impatient, Marty asked, “Who is this?”

            “This is Lewis. Who are you?”

            “Somebody who really needs to talk to Emma Brown right now. Now can you put her on the phone, you little…?!”

            Click!

            Marty could only hear the dial tone. Whoever this Lewis was, he hung up on her.

            “Well, that could’ve gone better,” Phineas criticized in his genial tone. “Who were you talking to anyway?”

            Marty shrugged. “Some little brat named Lewis. Anyone you know?”

            Phineas shook his head. “Doctor Brown never mentioned having another son.”

            With no other choice, Marty used her phone to snap a pic of the address from the phonebook. “If we can’t call her, we’ll just go to her then,” she suggested.

            They were on their way out of the café, until…

            “Hey, Flynn!”

            Phineas’s head quickly turned just as he heard his last name called out. Marty and Ferb promptly stopped along with him to look towards the café entrance where they spotted a busty, short-haired young brunette in a karate gi, flanked by a wild pack of colorful weasels.

            Marty and the boys could hardly believe their eyes when they recognized her.

            “Coach Tannen?” Marty gasped in a whisper.

            It was like Tiff Tannen had discovered the Fountain of Youth. Her wrinkled, sagged skin had been replaced with a smoother, shinier glow. Her shape was fuller and more muscular. Even her karate gi looked brand new.

            Phineas, on the other hand, was more concerned with how Tannen knew of him in 1985, long before he was ever supposed to be born. But it turned out that he wasn’t the “Flynn” Tannen was addressing, as she brisked past him, Marty, and Ferb and approached the redheaded girl at the counter.

            Phineas was stricken when he saw that the girl was his mother: Linda Flynn.

            “Hey, I’m talkin’ to you, Flynn – you lil’ twerp!” Tannen bellowed.

            Linda turned away from her cereal breakfast to face Tannen, putting on a welcoming disposition. “Oh, hey, Tiff. How’re you today?”

            “What’re you? My doctor?” Tannen retorted. “Where’s my homework?”

            Linda fidgeted. “Well, uh, you see…I was a little busy last night and I…”

            “Hello!” Tannen grabbed Linda by the shirt collar and knocked on her head, to the amusement of her weasel associates. “Anybody home? Think, Flynn! Think! Do you know what’ll happen if I turn in my homework with your handwriting? I’ll get kicked out of school, that’s what’ll happen! Now what’s so important that you couldn’t focus on my homework?”

            “Well…you see, Tiff…the Battle of the Bands is next week and…”

            “Oh! Here we go again!” Tiff griped. “We’ve talked about this, Flynn! The odds of you winnin’ that contest are slim to my keester! I’m just statin’ the facts! What’re you hopin’ to achieve with that anyway? Are you gonna be the next Madonna or somethin’?”

            “She’s gonna be Lindana!” Marty suddenly blurted out.

            Their attention was momentarily brought on Marty, Phineas, and Ferb, following Marty’s outburst. Unfortunately, the only response it got was unrestrained laughter from Tannen and her weasel gang. Linda could only sit in silence and embarrassment, glaring towards Marty and the boys.

            “Oh, that’s rich! That’s the best laugh I had in a while, man!” Tannen screamed. “Lindana? What a joke!”

            “How ‘bout you guys back off her?!” another voice stepped in.

            Everyone turned to the janitor, who stopped sweeping long enough to confront Tannen and her gang.

            Really seeing him for the first time, Marty was shocked to see who the janitor was.

            “Dad?!” she again gasped in a whisper.

            Sure enough, the Century Café janitor was George McFly. He stood there, looking to be the same age as Marty, in a dirtied navy-blue jumpsuit. His youthful appearance was rather androgynous, looking almost like the perfect clone of Marty herself with bright red hair and blue eyes.

            “So, who’re you all of the sudden, McFly? Rambo?” Tannen advanced on the teen janitor. “Everyone knows you got no cajones!” She nudged her fist against George’s groin, a gesture that made him wince and cough. While George was hunched over in anguish, Tannen took one last look at Linda and warned, “My homework better be to me before Monday, Flynn! Got it?!”

            “Y-Yeah, s-sure, Tiff,” Linda stammered, her concern more on George.

            On that, Tannen and her weasels departed.

            Marty, Phineas, and Ferb could see them through the café window, leaving in a ’76 Ford Thunderbird Convertible.

            “Are you alright?” They heard Linda ask George, helping him sit at the counter.

            George smiled in gratitude from her concern. “I should be asking you that. Don’t listen to Tiff. You have more than enough right to enter the Battle of the Bands. You’ve got a lot of talent.”

            Linda sighed. “Before today, I would’ve agreed…until those three butted in.”

            She nodded towards Marty, Phineas, and Ferb, who stood awkwardly across from George and Linda.

            “I think I’ll just stay home that night,” Linda opted. “I don’t wanna miss Family Ties anyway.” After checking one last time on George’s condition, she walked out of the café in tears.

            “Smooth, guys,” George scolded Marty and the boys. “Real smooth.”

            As soon as he was somewhat recovered, he returned to his janitorial duties.

            Neither Marty nor Phineas were sure what to make of the incident they witnessed with both of their parents. Rather than deliberate on it, they rushed out of the café and headed for Doc’s place.

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            Arriving at John F. Kennedy Drive – according to the address from the phonebook, Marty realized that it was actually Joseph Biden Drive in 2025. The street wasn’t all too different from how it was in the future. There was still a Burger King next door and a printing service across the street.

            The only major difference was in the Brown residence.

            In 1985, the luxurious mansion was still there, along with the garage.

            “Had no idea the Doc lived so large,” Marty observed in awe, as she approached the front door with Phineas and Ferb. She knocked on the door, and it was soon answered by a 12-year-old kid who looked a lot like…

            “Cornelius?!” Marty and Phineas exclaimed in surprise.

            “It’s Lewis,” he corrected. “Who are you guys?”

            “We’re here to see your mom,” Phineas told him.

            “Are you the ones who called earlier?” Lewis inquired.

            “Yeah,” Marty verified. “We just—”

            SLAM!

            Marty should have seen that door slam coming from Lewis. After all, this was the same kid who hung up on her over the phone. But she had come too far just to allow one snobby kid to stand in her way.

            Once again, she knocked on the door.

            This time, instead of Lewis, a radiant strawberry-blonde woman in a black evening dress answered the door. Marty, Phineas, and Ferb were blown away by her beauty, particularly once they realized the blonde was a 40-year-old Emma Brown. She was a stark contrast to the elderly woman they watched die in 2025. Her face was amassed with makeup that made her look even younger, her long locks were well-kept, and her posture was elegant.

            “You must be the babysitters,” she greeted Marty and the boys.

            Seizing the opportunity, Marty played along. “Yes…yes, we are,” she told Emma.

            “Come right in – I was just on my way out,” Emma invited. Marty, Phineas, and Ferb walked in right away, getting an eyeful of the mansion’s interior. With the exception of a multitude of contraptions cobbled together within random sections of each room, the Brown mansion was as exquisite on the inside as it was on the outside.

            Lewis was in the den, conducting an experiment with a long-haired Collie, in which both him and the dog wore unique helmets.

            “Cornelius, leave Einstein alone, will ya?” Emma reprimanded.

            “But I’m on the brink of a massive breakthrough!” Lewis protested. “I’m about to establish a telepathic link between man and his best friend!”

            Emma shook her head, grinning. “Well, be nice to your sitters while I’m gone.”

            “I don’t need babysitters,” Lewis grumbled.

            “You got a hot date, Doc…erm, Miss Brown?” Marty asked.

            “I do indeed, young lady, and I don’t want to keep him waiting,” Emma said. “There’s plenty of food in the fridge for you kids. Make sure Cornelius is in bed by no later than nine.” She slipped her fur coat on and called to Lewis while heading out the door, “Love ya, honey!”

            “Love you, too, Mom!” Lewis called back.

            Marty attempted to lend Emma’s ear before she left, but the young Doc moved at a much quicker pace compared to her older counterpart. It didn’t help much that she fretted in her approach. There Emma was, nowhere near as eccentric as she would one day be in 2025, and she was about to be told that she would invent a time machine out of a DeLorean. She would’ve thrown out Marty and the boys without blinking.

            “How’re we going to convince Doctor Brown to help us get back to the future?” Phineas posed the exact question Marty was thinking.

            It was only when she glanced at Lewis that a feasible idea brewed in her noggin.

            “Maybe she’s not the one we have to convince.”