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kleenexwomanI'm still proud of this one. I posted it a few days before my 19th birthday, and it took me a long time to write. I wrote it to question a lot of the assumptions people made about the ending of the series. It's not happy, and it's largely internal, and it was also a big hint that I had a definite preference for certain themes.
For a few sweet weeks, things are perfectly normal. He’s back at school, he’s hanging out with Jennifer, he’s practicing his guitar and hugging his parents, who maybe aren’t quite the parents he’s used to, but in some very important ways they are fundamentally the same, and it’s not like he’s going to begrudge them their happiness out of some selfish adolescent desire to preserve his own fading memories of a life he’d really rather not remember anyway.
And everything is OK except for the little hole in his existence created by Doc’s absence. He misses the old man, misses the crazy experiments that (almost) never work and misses feeding the dog and misses the physics lectures and the card games and the nice warm smug feeling he got from knowing that the genius in the dilapidated mansion was his secret. But he knows the Doc is doing fine without him, whenever he may be living with Clara and his kids, and he knows that should make him pretty happy…but it doesn’t.
Marty has never been a very philosophical guy; questions like “Why are we here?” and “What if the world is just an illusion?” and “Is time really an irreversible successive continuum or just an artificial way of measuring sequential events?” are, while not exactly beyond his capacity to contemplate, simply not germane to his everyday life. But the events of the recent past (how recent? 30 years ago? A hundred years? A week?) have forced him to think more fourth-dimensionally than usual. This wasn’t a major problem while he was fading and the universe was changing around him; Marty is used to having to think fast to save his own ass, no matter how arcane the subject of his thought process may be. By now, time has stopped jumping and universal causality has settled down, but while the immediate threats to his own existence have vanished along with the DeLorean, the questions remain in his mind.
He wants to talk to the Doc about this, wants to go down to the lab and fiddle with circuits and hear the old man ramble on about Robert Oppenheimer’s interpretation of the Bhagavad-Gita and how Einstein discovered God’s d20. Needs to have him stop and look into space and nod and then clasp Marty’s shoulder and tell him that he’s absolutely on the right track, that he’s almost got it, that he’s just got to take into account Newton’s first law or some obscure Bertrand Russell passage, and then everything will be clear. It’s not even what he can learn; Marty’s fairly sure that for all his theories and experiments, the Doc doesn’t really understand what’s going on any more than Marty does. It’s the reassurance that comes from knowing that someone understands what he’s talking about. Having someone to bounce ideas off.
He imagines they’re taking a break at 3 in the morning in the chilly bright garage under the fluorescent arc lights, imagines leaning on the hood of the DeLorean and asking. He can almost hear the Doc answering, see him nodding, smiling, gesticulating wildly as he lectures. It should make him more frustrated in the end; it isn’t really the Doc, it’s just his own thoughts and theories and assumptions with the Doc’s face and voice pasted onto it. But it’s still nice to hear Doc’s voice, even if it’s just in his head.
Ω
He brings up the subject of time travel casually with his father, thinking that a science fiction writer would naturally know about something so…science-fictional. George admits that while he knows a hell of a lot about dinosaurs and alien abductions, he’s never been much of a time travel writer. He does dig out some books that he says are appropriate for teenagers, a couple of themed short story collections and one YA book called “The Green Futures of Tycho,” by William Sleator. They don’t help; none of the writers in the collections can seem to agree on whether you’re supposed to step up on a platform and get beamed back through time, or shut yourself into a room and punch a button, or use a particle accelerator. (Nobody mentions a DeLorean.) And “The Green Futures of Tycho” is promising at first, a story about a normal kid with overbearing parents and some hellish older siblings who finds a time machine in his backyard, but Tycho’s fates and the transformation of his futures end up scaring Marty so badly that he can’t finish it.
George suggested the public library earlier, and Marty takes him at his word. The head librarian, Ms. Watts, is a dried-up old hag in a wheelchair and makes him leave his skateboard outside. The library itself is much smaller than Marty remembers it; the last time he was here, he was eight years old and the shelves seemed miles high, endless labyrinths stretching away into dust and darkness. Now it’s almost cramped. There’s a dusty card catalog in the lobby; they don’t even have a Mac 2E yet. Marty manages to find a few books that have “time travel” in the subject heading. He makes a few trips back and forth to the Private Study room, collecting them all, then arranges them on a table and checks out three at random, slips them into his backpack and settles in his room to read.
The first one is by “Time Enough for Love,” by Robert Heinlein. Marty’s never read any of his books, but recognizes the name from the books George has stacked on the shelves in his study. He only gets a few pages into it before realizing why it wasn’t among the books George thought were suitable for his seventeen-year-old son. The part where the main character goes back in time to have sex with her own father reminds him uncomfortably of grappling in the car with Lorraine, and it goes under his bed next to the William Sleator book.
Two books left, and they’re both nonfiction. The first one is a discontinued college textbook, “An Introduction to Astronomy.” The only mention of time travel is in chapter nine, “Wormholes and Other Anomalies,” where it talks about Einstein-Rosen bridges. It’s old news to Marty; Doc talked about black holes and singularities all the time while he was working on the flux capacitor. He flips through the rest of the book before realizing that it’s all stuff the Doc told him. It’s a little disappointing that he can’t find out anything new, but it’s also nice to realize that if he ever decides to take Astronomy 101 in college, he’ll be at least a semester ahead of the class.
The second one is much more promising. “Schrödinger’s Zombie: Quantum Mechanics and the Indifferent Universe,” by Tim Shalwel. The first chapter is pretty simple stuff. It starts out with a basic overview of atomic structure, then segues into an essay about Schrödinger’s Cat and how it relates to George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.
Then things start to get really far out, and Marty can’t put the book down. The Doc never told him about this stuff. Universes as waves of probability, collapsing in on each other and sprouting like crystals from a single event, interfering with each other and canceling each other out. The author talks about experiments where five different observers have recorded five different outcomes, each one of them contradictory and perfectly provable; it was only when a friend of one of the observers supported the outcome he saw that the “universal waveforms” collapsed, according to the book, and each dissenting observer suddenly saw and remembered the same outcome. The point seems to be that the universe isn’t indifferent at all, but somehow tuned in to sentient observation. More than that, the author suggests, the universe is tuned to human expectation.
Which actually sounds pretty dumb to Marty, once he reaches the end of the book. He’s disappointed that such a groovy title could be attached to such a flaky idea. It’s almost as bad as the “power of prayer” pamphlets his grandma keeps in her purse. Worse, because where his grandma’s reading material is just a lame religious tract that any reasonably educated person could see right through, and doesn’t pretend to be anything else, this book is a dupe, disguising fluffy New Age bullshit as solid scientific ideas.
He’s pretty sure the Doc wouldn’t approve of it, either. He imagines giving the book to Doc and watching as the old man flips through it, alternately nodding and frowning.
“Pretty stupid stuff, huh?” he asks.
Doc stares into space for a second and considers this, absently tapping his chin with the book. “No, Marty, I think the author has some valid points.”
“Some of the stuff about parallel universes, maybe. But the rest of it, Doc, it’s so dumb. Wishful thinking, you know? Like hoping that something’s going to happen is going to make it work. If that was true, everything you ever made…” He gestures at the broken and discarded machines in the lab, his mind’s eye recreating each one from vivid memories—electrocuted here, burnt there, that one exploded... “Well, you’d have a ton of patents, anyway.”
“The atomic world functions very differently from the macroscopic material world, Marty.” That’s something the Doc liked to tell him whenever he got frustrated at the impossibility or perversity of a chemical compound, and something that the book does keep mentioning whenever a story or analogy got too wild. Something he should have remembered.
“Well, yeah, I guess. But Doc, these stories…”
“Like Schrödinger’s Cat, Marty. Or Einstein’s gedanken. Thought experiments, analogies. They don’t have to be true.”
Marty relaxes, letting his own imagination convince him. “I guess. But there’s no way it could work in the real world, right?”
“No, of course not,” Doc says. But it sounds weird, stilted. Maybe he knows that Doc wouldn’t really say that. He backs up, erases it from his memory.
“Ordinarily, Marty,” Doc says instead, “I would agree with you. But the events of the past month indicate otherwise.” And Doc knows, he’s the one that explained Biff’s parallel universe to Marty, he’s watched as Marty faded into nothingness and then faded back again. The real Doc doesn’t know about the way Marty changed his own family history; it’s not that Marty was ashamed or anything, he tells himself, it’s just that he never thought it was important enough to tell Doc about. The Doc inside Marty’s mind knows, of course, and can talk about it.
“Yeah? What do you mean, Doc?” It’s not that Marty doesn’t know exactly what Doc means; it’s just his mind, after all. But it’s nice to hear Doc (or a reasonable representation of him) explain it.
He has to pause the imaginary conversation at that point, because Linda’s poking her head in his door and telling him to get his ass down to dinner. Marty rolls over on his bed to look at his sister. Her thinner face and new proficiency with makeup haven’t quite ceased to be startling, but he is sure that in time, he won’t be able to imagine her ever having been any other way. “What’s for dinner?”
“Does it make a difference? You’ll have to eat it no matter what it is.” She disappears, confident in having done her sisterly duty.
Marty drifts down the stairway, continuing his mental conversation with Doc. “Before we proved that the flux capacitor worked, Marty, the whole idea of parallel universes was, well, just an idea. Speculation.”
“Like something George”—he can’t quite bring himself to call his new father “Dad” yet—“would write.”
“Exactly, Marty. But now we know that they do exist. And it does make sense to assume that they function in ways very similar to those described in the book…”
“I thought I’d make something a little different tonight,” Lorraine says. She scoops a spoonful of glistening brown noodles onto Marty’s plate as he slides into his chair.
Linda pokes at the pile on her own plate. “Mom, what is this?”
“Just try it. It’s Thai.” Lorraine has been on an ethnic food kick for weeks now. Marty doesn’t object to this at all; the old Lorraine’s repertoire in the kitchen was limited to casseroles, pot roast, and the occasional scrambled egg mess. He definitely does not miss the casseroles at all.
“As wave functions, right?” Marty asks.
“No, spicy peanut sauce. Why?”
“Did you use, like, low-fat yogurt in this? I’m trying to lose weight.” Linda picks at her noodles.
“Will you just shut up and eat it, Linda? Mom probably spent all day cooking this.” Dave spears a piece of chicken.
“Exactly! As wave functions, Marty. When you changed the past, you created a new wave function where there were none before. In a sense, you invoked quantum laws at the macroscopic level.”
“George? What do you think?”
“Hm?” George looks up from his plate, where he has inadvertently wrapped every noodle around his fork into a giant ball. “Oh, um, about what?”
Lorraine clucks her tongue. “David likes it, Linda doesn’t, Marty has failed to register a verdict. It’s up to you as to whether I make it again or not.”
“Ohh, right.” George looks down at his plate, as though seeing his food for the first time, and shoves a huge forkful of noodles into his mouth.
“Ew, Dad,” Linda says. “Grody. I’ve just totally lost my appetite.”
Dave tosses a handful of paper napkins at George.
“It’s very good, dear,” George says indistinctly. “Um, very spicy.”
“Well, I’m glad you like it, because I made enough for lunch for you tomorrow…” Marty tunes his mother out and watches George, who is gazing blankly at his water glass and whispering to himself. Maybe he’s not the only one who’s talking with someone inside his head.
“Dad’s lost again,” Dave says. “Writer’s block?”
“Not really, I’m just stuck on chapter five. Dialogue is so hard to write. Especially when one of your characters is a mad scientist and the other one is a snail demon who’s older than the universe itself.”
“So those stories really could apply to this universe,” Marty murmurs.
“Don’t be silly, Marty. It’s just a book. There’s no such thing as snail demons.” Lorraine gives him an affectionate whack on the back of the head.
“Oh, you never know,” George says. “Just because you’ve never seen a snail demon doesn’t mean they don’t exist.” He grins at Lorraine.
Doc nods gravely. “They certainly could, Marty. In fact,” he adds, “your expectations could have shaped the nature of this wave function…the nature of this very universe!”
Marty cuts the conversation short at this point, in part because it’s getting a little too deep to think about while he’s trying to pay attention to what George is saying about the scientific invocation of snail demons at the same time, and partially because he wants to concentrate on dessert, which is lemon meringue pie.
But later, lying on his bed and listening to Jim Morrison sing about lizards, he thinks about the implications of what he made the Doc in his head say. Originally, he’d given little thought to the change in his family’s fortune, assuming that events followed naturally from that punch, that date, that kiss. In a fit of pessimism, he’d even braced himself for the dark side of this new universe, assuming that nothing this good could possibly sustain itself without collapse. An affair, divorce, suicide, the Earth being ruled by alien overlord lizards…anything would have restored that sense of balance. But there is no dark side to be found here; things are as he always wanted them to be. George is a famous writer, Dave is an executive, Linda gets out of the house, Lorraine isn’t a nagging harpy, Biff is waxing his dad’s car, and there’s a brand new 4x4 monster pickup sitting in the garage.
The possibilities are endless. Maybe.
Ω
He’s in the basement with Jennifer, fooling around on the pool table (Marty always wanted a pool table, but the old basement was unfinished and had bugs; this one contains deep-pile carpeting, an old refrigerator, and a sagging couch as well). In the old universe, she never wanted to go very far; the only way she’d even let him get to third base was if they went up to the lake, and she’d stop things cold if there was even a chance anyone else was around.
Jennifer will want to make out in the basement, Marty thinks, I demand it. I know it. I will it to be so. And then she’s climbing into his lap and licking his ear and giggling as he slides one hand under her bra and the other one into her pants, never mind that there are people upstairs and the door to the basement is wide open. He’s confident that nobody will walk in, but it’s still a definite turn-on. Jennifer seems to agree, because she’s biting his shoulder and moaning like a backup vocalist for Prince.
It’s not exactly empirical evidence, but it’s good enough for Marty. His experiment has worked. There won’t be any downside, ever. There doesn’t have to be. He has made this world, and he can do what he likes with it.
“Within reason, of course,” Doc says. Marty doesn’t bother to answer. Reason and moderation are not on his agenda at the moment. Dreams of glory and superstardom are. And it’s getting a little annoying that he can’t turn Doc off now, the way he can stop any other fantasy. The old man’s always in his head. It’s interfering with his other thoughts, what he needs to make sure the world keeps working the way he wants it to. Or at all.
This universe can’t function without him. It’s shaped by his thoughts, his desires, his subconscious urges. Without him, it would disappear back into quantum nothingness, or just fall apart.
“With great power comes great responsibility.” Doc is quoting from a Spiderman comic, although he doesn’t know it. Doc doesn’t read comics. “All of it, Marty. All of it in your mind. Every atom, every star. Every person.”
Ω
He’s draped over the back of his father’s chair, leaning over George’s shoulder, watching him type out a new story on his word processor. Move to the left so I can read better, Marty thinks, and George does. “Dad?”
“Hm?” George never objects to Marty hanging out in his study while he’s writing, as long as his son doesn’t make any noise.
“You know a lot about space, right?”
George’s eyes remain glued to the screen. “I guess you could say that.” He frowns, then presses the Delete key several times. “Why?”
“How many stars are there?”
“What, in the galaxy?”
“In the whole universe.”
George bites his lip. “Mmm, I really don’t know.” He sits back and massages his forehead. “Probably about a quadrillion. Look, this is not really the right time…”
“Oh. Sorry. Do you want me to get you some aspirin?” Marty slides off the chair and heads to the door.
“No, I don’t have a headache. It’s just…I want to strangle these characters.” George leans back in the chair and sighs.
“Why?”
“Oh, they’re just not cooperating with the story. The snail demon doesn’t trust the scientist who summoned him, and he’s supposed to like him enough to tell him where his equations went wrong. It makes sense in the story,” George adds hastily.
“You can’t just make him tell?”
“No, it has to work with the character, and I’ve made the snail demon too pompous, and the scientist is too proud to…it’s just a mess. The whole story. I’m thinking of scrapping it.” George shakes his head, then leans forward again and lightly touches the keyboard. “I’ve already written four whole chapters, too.”
“You’ll get it soon,” Marty says.
George snorts. “Thanks. I hope.” He bends over the keyboard as Marty closes the door.
Ω
It’s late December, and Marty has decided that there should be snow. And so there is snow, a short flurry that barely dusts the streets before melting. Unusual in this Northern California town, but not completely unheard-of. Marty stands in the middle of the yard, watching the tiny flakes fall, keeping each one in his mind. He knows that if he turns his attention from the snow for even a moment, it will disappear.
Lorraine—Mom—touches him on the shoulder. “Marty? Come inside. It’s getting cold.”
“It’s not cold,” Marty says. And it isn’t—but if it’s not cold, there’s no snow. So it is cold. It’s not a problem. He’d rather have snow.
“Come inside anyway. Dinner’s almost ready. I made tacos.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I have to stay out here and make sure it keeps snowing.”
Lorraine frowns. “Marty, you’ve been acting strange lately. Talking to yourself.” She gets in front of him and puts on a “concerned mom” face. “Tell me honestly, all right? Have you been taking drugs?”
“No.” Marty really wishes she would go away. But she isn’t. It’s not working this time. Maybe it’s because all his energy is focused on the snow.
“You can tell me, you know. We can get help for you.”
“Mom, I haven’t been taking drugs.”
“I won’t get mad, Marty.”
“Mom, I don’t even drink.” The snow is stopping.
“I know kids your age experiment, Marty. I did when I was in high school. Really, I won’t get mad, and I won’t lecture you. I just want to know.”
Go away, Marty thinks. Leave me alone. He wills the clouds to keep producing water crystals.
Lorraine stands in front of him for a few minutes, looking at her son. “I’m so worried about you, Marty.” She looks like she’s about to burst into tears. “I’ve made an appointment for you. With a psychologist.” She takes a deep breath. “She specializes in kids your age.”
Marty is surprised. He hasn’t asked this to happen. He hasn’t even thought about seeing a psychologist. How could the universe have come up with this?
“Marty? Do you hear me? We’re going tomorrow after you get home from school, so don’t even think about getting detention.”
No, he thinks, we won’t.
Ω
The psychologist, Dr. Voselgang, is a short, skinny woman wearing a black turtleneck. She has long black braids and looks like she just got out of graduate school. Marty is not surprised to see that the couch in the office looks exactly like the one in his basement.
“Be careful of what you say to her, Marty,” Doc says. “You’re not crazy, but she doesn’t know that.” He scowls. “She’ll assume you are, because you’re here. She won’t believe what you say.”
Marty’s curled up on the couch, staring at the ceiling. “What do you want me to say?” he asks.
“Anything you feel like,” Dr. Voselgang says. She’s holding a clipboard in her lap and is gazing levelly at Marty.
“Psychology isn’t a science,” Doc says. “It’s inexact. Guesswork and theories.” He’s ranting inside Marty’s head, pacing back and forth. “It’s barbaric, Marty. Electroshock. Lobotomies.”
“It can’t be that bad, can it?” Marty asks.
“How bad do you mean?” Dr. Voselgang asks.
“You see? She doesn’t even know what you’re saying.” Doc shakes his head. “And she’ll never understand.”
Marty struggles to answer both doctors. “I just have to explain things.”
“To who, Marty? What do you have to explain?” Dr. Voselgang. Asking again. Things she should really know.
“To you. And it’ll be okay, right?”
“Of course it will.”
“I mean, you said it’s not bad.”
“Right.”
“And…it’s not. That’s the point.”
“Yes?”
“Everything. It’s perfect. Don’t you wonder why?”
“You really think everything is perfect, Marty? The whole world?”
“I made it perfect.” He can’t find the words. It’s all so simple, whole and connected inside his head. Where does he start?
“You made the world, Marty?” Scribbling things down on her clipboard. Probably more than just what he’s saying.
“Yeah, kind of.”
“What do you mean, “kind of” made the world?”
“Don’t tell her, Marty! She already thinks you’re crazy.” No. “It’ll all be fine once you explain it to her. She’ll understand.” No. “Why are you here? You shouldn’t have let this happen. You know what you can do.” No.
Marty sits up. “Can I have a piece of paper and a pencil?”
“Certainly.” Dr. Voselgang rips a sheet off the notepad and rummages in her desk for a pencil.
Marty takes them, and quickly sketches out the design for the flux capacitor and a few diagrams he memorized from Tim Shalwel’s book. “Okay. Do you see these?” He holds up what he’s drawn.
Dr. Voselgang peers at the drawings. She has thick glasses. “Yes, I see them. What do those drawings represent, Marty?”
So he tells her everything, spills out the story. His old world, the Doc, the DeLorean, the experiment, the terrorists, going back in time, his mom, his dad, the dance, the lightning. Everything after, the parallel universes, Biff’s world, George being dead. Clara. The books. Doc is screaming in his head for him to stop. “You mustn’t tell anyone, Marty! They can’t know! The universe will collapse!”
Dr. Voselgang nods and writes everything down. “And you’re sure all this really happened, Marty?”
“Well, yeah. It did. Of course it did.”
“Why do you think your family has changed, Marty?”
“Because they did.” He’s really frustrated now. He’s just taken all this time to explain everything, and she’s not getting it at all. Why do people have to be so stupid?
“Why was your father working for Biff before, Marty?”
“Because he was. I don’t know. He was still kind of a wuss back then.”
“And he’s not now?”
“Well, no. He writes now.”
“And you made that change?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“I just told you.”
“Humor me, Marty.”
“I made him punch Biff out.”
“Why did you make him do that?”
“Because Biff was a jerk. He was bothering my mom.”
“Does Biff bother your mom now, Marty?”
“No.”
“Did he ever?”
“Yeah, in high school. He used to be a jerk. He used to push my dad around.”
“When they were both in high school.”
“And in the old universe.”
“Right, right.” Dr. Voselgang makes another note. “Does your dad “bother” your mom?”
“What do you mean?”
“Does he yell at her? Hit her?”
“No! He’s great to Mom. He loves her.”
“Marty, why do you think Biff bothered your mom?”
“I don’t know. ‘Cause he was a jerk.”
“Was he attracted to your mother?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Why?”
In his head, Doc snorts. “How can she call herself a psychologist if she doesn’t know the first thing about human sexual relations?”
“I don’t know.”
“I see. Do you love your mother?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you feel when she kissed you?”
“Really weird.”
“Good weird, or bad weird?”
“Bad weird. Definitely bad weird.”
“Why?”
“Well, she’s my mom.”
“I see. Marty, did you want to punch Biff out?”
“When?”
“Ah…in the “old universe,” I suppose.”
“Yeah, all the time.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because he was a lot bigger than me. He would have hurt me. Or he would have fired my dad.”
“Did you want your dad to punch Biff out?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” Marty doesn’t know how to answer this. Dr. Voselgang tries a different tack. “Marty, do you love your father?”
“Yeah, of course I do.”
“Do you ever feel jealous of him?”
“Why would I?”
“You can tell me, Marty. This is all confidential.”
“I told you not to tell her anything, Marty,” Doc says. “She’s taking what you say and twisting it to fit her own theories. Listen to her! Classic Freudian.”
“Right.” Marty takes a deep breath. “Listen,” he says to Dr. Voselgang, “this is all wrong. I love my parents, okay? All this really happened. I really changed things. You just don’t know it because you’re part of this universe, and you’re part of what changed. You changed too. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s the truth.”
Dr. Voselgang puts down her clipboard. “I believe you, Marty.”
Doc snorts. “She’s clearly lying.”
“No you don’t,” Marty says.
“I believe that what you’re telling me is the truth,” Dr. Voselgang repeats. “I believe you love your parents. I don’t think you’re lying at all.”
Doc smiles smugly. “You see? It worked. All you had to do was tell the truth. It’s self-evident, really.”
“I believe that you really do think you went back in time, Marty. But you have to accept that this didn’t really happen.”
“But it did.”
Dr. Voselgang nods solemnly. “Marty, I’d like you to come back every week. I think there’s a lot we need to work on. Do you think you’d feel more comfortable in group therapy? I have another client, a young man named Donnie, who told me something very similar to your story—”
“No. No group therapy.” Marty is enraged that she would suggest it. How can anyone’s problems be the same as his? He’s the only one who’s gone back in time, besides Doc. How can she put him in with a group of psychos?
“Right.” Dr. Voselgang stands up. “I’m afraid it’s time to end the session, Marty.”
“Fine.” Marty stands up to leave, letting the piece of paper with the equations on it flutter to the ground.
“I’m going to have to ask your parents to come in here for a few minutes so I can discuss some things with them.”
Marty’s heart stops for just a second. “Don’t tell them. They can’t know.”
“Marty, everything you’ve said to me in here is completely confidential. I’m only going to discuss treatment with your parents. You have nothing to worry about.” She opens the door.
Marty goes out to the waiting room. George and Lorraine are sitting next to the door, holding hands. They look so cute. He’s glad he made sure they got together. “The shrink wants to talk to you.”
Nobody bothers to close the door to Dr. Voselgang’s office, so Marty can hear every word they’re saying.
“I’m afraid your son has some serious issues,” Dr. Voselgang says. “I don’t think he’s ready to talk with you two about them yet.”
“How long will it take?” Lorraine asks. “I can’t stand this. I want my son back.”
“I don’t know,” Dr. Voselgang says. “Possibly years.” She clears her throat. “It’s very common for an adolescent to retreat into fantasy if something traumatic has happened to him.”
“Do you think something’s happened to Marty?” George sounds almost hysterical.
“I don’t know. May I ask you two a personal question?”
“Go ahead.” Lorraine, in contrast, sounds incredibly calm.
“Do you two have problems at home? Familial stress can be very difficult for an adolescent. I could set up a family therapy session…”
“No. Our marriage is very happy. We’ve never had any big problems,” Lorraine says. Marty nods in approval. He’s made sure there are no problems, and it worked.
Dr. Voselgang keeps asking things, and Lorraine keeps answering them, and every so often George interrupts to protest. Marty zones out for a while, lets his mind drift back to Doc and the lab. This time, he doesn’t bother to talk to Doc. He just wanders around the lab, looking at machines and inventions, fixing them, testing them. In his mind, they all work.
“…best course of action may be to prescribe medication,” Dr. Voselgang says. “He seems to be very set upon his delusion. It may help him to get to the root of his issues if…”
“I don’t want you drugging my son,” George says.
“George, it might be the only thing we can do,” Lorraine tells him.
“I don’t care. He’s only a teenager. He doesn’t need…tranquilizers, or whatever you want to make him take.”
“Mr. McFly, the field of psychological pharmaceuticals is not composed only of tranquilizers. I want to prescribe a specific medication for Marty, an anti-psychotic.”
“My son is not psychotic!” George sounds like he’s on the verge of tears.
“I don’t mean to suggest that he is, sir, but anti-psychotics have proved very effective in managing delusions in patients. It’s called Ubiquiten, and it’s an experimental lithium-based medication.”
“Lithium,” Doc says, “ell aye. Element number three, the third simplest element. Its atomic weight is six point nine three nine. Soft, highly reactive, a good conductor of heat…”
“So why would they want to give it to me?” Marty asks.
“It reacts with the chemicals in the brain,” Doc explains. “It’s often used to treat schizophrenics and depressives. Crazy people. You have to make sure they don’t make you take it.”
“Why not? If I’m not crazy, it won’t affect me, right?”
“If you take it,” Doc says, “I might go away.”
Ω
They drive home with an appointment for next week and a scribbled prescription. George stops the car at a drugstore, and Lorraine runs in to get it filled. “The sooner you start taking it,” she says, “the sooner you’ll get well.”
George leaves the engine running. He’s glancing back at Marty nervously, and he seems like he’s on the verge of saying something. Opens his mouth, shuts it, looks forward.
Marty can’t stand the silence. He grabs a tape from the car floor and hands it to George, who wordlessly slides it into the car’s tape deck. The tape whirs as it cues up to the next song. It’s Huey Lewis and the News. Marty remembers buying the tape six months ago, and he’s sick of it already. It’s still better than nothing.
By the time Lorraine returns with the little yellow bottle, the song is “I Want a New Drug.” She glares at Marty, then punches the “off” button much harder than is necessary. “Do you think this is funny, young man?”
“No,” Marty says, not sure why she’s chosen this way to vent, now.
“You didn’t even notice,” she says to George.
“Notice what? What was I supposed to notice?”
“That your son needed help. You didn’t say anything.”
George yanks the gearshift back into “Reverse” and grits his teeth. “Can we not have this conversation now, please?”
“You were off in your own little world. Stuck in your book. You never pay any attention to your children.”
“That’s not true,” Marty says. “Dad’s—”
“Marty, your father and I are having a discussion. Please—”
“Lorraine, now is not a good time to—”
“I told you this would happen, Marty. Your parents are—”
“Would you please all just shut up?” Marty screams.
There’s perfect silence in the car for about thirty seconds, then Lorraine starts in on George again. Marty slumps against the window. Stop talking, he thinks. Be nice. Be happy. I made this world for you. I made you happy. I gave you what you wanted. I gave you what I wanted. I made you what I wanted you to be. Why aren’t you being it? Why isn’t it working?
Ω
The instructions on the bottle said to take one tablet each day. Marty swallows his at dinner. Leftover tacos and a little blue pill.
It takes about an hour for the medication to take effect, and when it does, Marty crawls into bed and puts on Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon.” He’s never thought the album was as trippy as the stoner in the record store who convinced him to buy it said it was, just kind of mellow and spaced-out. Almost comforting, like a warm thick blanket of sound. He needs that comfort, now. He’s not sure what’s happening. Every time he moves, it’s like painless needles exploding in his head. When he lies still, he can feel things in his mind spinning faster and faster until they finally stop, then slowly starting up again. Not thoughts, but an almost physical sensation. It scares him. Something’s going to slip. He should have put on “The Wall,” he thinks. It would be nice to be comfortably numb, like in the song.
There’s a knock at the door. George comes in. “Do you want me to turn on the light?”
“No.” The light would hurt.
George sits down on the bed, next to Marty. “Dr. Voselgang said it might take a little while for your body to get used to the drug.” He strokes Marty’s back. “It’s going to be all right, I promise. I love you. Your mom loves you too. She’s just a little stressed right now. She’s really worried about you.”
Marty buries his head in the pillow.
“Do you want me to get you anything?”
“Change the album.” The girl on “The Great Gig in the Sky” is wailing. She asks if Marty is dying. Nobody else can hear it.
George gets up and flips through Marty’s box of records. “Which one do you want?”
“Dunno.”
“How about “Tommy”? You used to love that one.”
“Yeah. ‘Kay.”
George pulls the record out of its sleeve and puts it on. “All right?” Marty doesn’t bother to answer. If George thinks he’s helping, great.
The door closes. George has left. Marty is alone again. Spinning.
“Where are you?” He needs the Doc. He needs to not be here. He needs to not be in his head.
Pete Townshend sings that sickness will surely take the mind where minds can’t usually go. “You’re not sick,” Doc says. “You’re just smart. This isn’t fair.”
“You’re here.” He’s not here. “Stop it. Make it stop.” He can control the world, but he can’t control the inside of his own head. But they’re the same thing.
“I can’t, Marty. I’m sorry. I’m just you.”
Ω
When he wakes up, the weird spinny feeling is gone, and so are the needles in his head. He drifts into the kitchen and pours himself a bowl of cereal. Lorraine is sitting at the table, reading the newspaper.
She hugs him. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay,” Marty says. “Do we have any milk?”
“Of course we do. It’s in the fridge.”
The milk, Marty thinks, may or may not be in the fridge. It’s a toss-up as to whether it’s there until he opens the door and the wavelength collapses. Schrödinger’s Milk.
As it turns out, there is milk. There is also Pepsi.
“Don’t drink Pepsi for breakfast,” Lorraine admonishes him. “It’s full of sugar.”
“So are Frosted Flakes.” But he puts the Pepsi back and takes some orange juice instead.
“It’s Friday,” Lorraine says. She watches him warily. “You can stay home from school if you like.”
“Awesome.” Marty definitely feels up to school, but he’s not averse to a day off for any reason.
“But you have to go back on Monday,” she adds.
“Okay.”
And he does. Things are perfectly normal. He’s back at school, he’s hanging out with Jennifer, he’s practicing his guitar and hugging his parents (who are of course the same parents he always had, and how could he ever imagine that they were ever any different?) And if he doesn’t quite remember everything he’s supposed to, well, that’s just a side effect of the medication, and it’ll probably go away in time. He doesn’t talk to the Doc anymore—the old man is gone from his head, and if it’s a little lonely in there, at least Marty knows that he’s sane. He’s starting to think that the Doc was maybe just in his head to begin with, all along.
He goes to therapy with Dr. Voselgang for a few sessions, but drops it once it becomes very clear that he doesn’t really have that many issues to work out, since the delusions are gone—silly, really, to imagine he has a time machine. Childish. He doesn’t need therapy for those, anyway. He’s got the pills. The lovely little blue pills, one a day. And as long as he takes them on time, everything is OK, everything is OK, everything is OK…
For a few sweet weeks, things are perfectly normal. He’s back at school, he’s hanging out with Jennifer, he’s practicing his guitar and hugging his parents, who maybe aren’t quite the parents he’s used to, but in some very important ways they are fundamentally the same, and it’s not like he’s going to begrudge them their happiness out of some selfish adolescent desire to preserve his own fading memories of a life he’d really rather not remember anyway.
And everything is OK except for the little hole in his existence created by Doc’s absence. He misses the old man, misses the crazy experiments that (almost) never work and misses feeding the dog and misses the physics lectures and the card games and the nice warm smug feeling he got from knowing that the genius in the dilapidated mansion was his secret. But he knows the Doc is doing fine without him, whenever he may be living with Clara and his kids, and he knows that should make him pretty happy…but it doesn’t.
Marty has never been a very philosophical guy; questions like “Why are we here?” and “What if the world is just an illusion?” and “Is time really an irreversible successive continuum or just an artificial way of measuring sequential events?” are, while not exactly beyond his capacity to contemplate, simply not germane to his everyday life. But the events of the recent past (how recent? 30 years ago? A hundred years? A week?) have forced him to think more fourth-dimensionally than usual. This wasn’t a major problem while he was fading and the universe was changing around him; Marty is used to having to think fast to save his own ass, no matter how arcane the subject of his thought process may be. By now, time has stopped jumping and universal causality has settled down, but while the immediate threats to his own existence have vanished along with the DeLorean, the questions remain in his mind.
He wants to talk to the Doc about this, wants to go down to the lab and fiddle with circuits and hear the old man ramble on about Robert Oppenheimer’s interpretation of the Bhagavad-Gita and how Einstein discovered God’s d20. Needs to have him stop and look into space and nod and then clasp Marty’s shoulder and tell him that he’s absolutely on the right track, that he’s almost got it, that he’s just got to take into account Newton’s first law or some obscure Bertrand Russell passage, and then everything will be clear. It’s not even what he can learn; Marty’s fairly sure that for all his theories and experiments, the Doc doesn’t really understand what’s going on any more than Marty does. It’s the reassurance that comes from knowing that someone understands what he’s talking about. Having someone to bounce ideas off.
He imagines they’re taking a break at 3 in the morning in the chilly bright garage under the fluorescent arc lights, imagines leaning on the hood of the DeLorean and asking. He can almost hear the Doc answering, see him nodding, smiling, gesticulating wildly as he lectures. It should make him more frustrated in the end; it isn’t really the Doc, it’s just his own thoughts and theories and assumptions with the Doc’s face and voice pasted onto it. But it’s still nice to hear Doc’s voice, even if it’s just in his head.
Ω
He brings up the subject of time travel casually with his father, thinking that a science fiction writer would naturally know about something so…science-fictional. George admits that while he knows a hell of a lot about dinosaurs and alien abductions, he’s never been much of a time travel writer. He does dig out some books that he says are appropriate for teenagers, a couple of themed short story collections and one YA book called “The Green Futures of Tycho,” by William Sleator. They don’t help; none of the writers in the collections can seem to agree on whether you’re supposed to step up on a platform and get beamed back through time, or shut yourself into a room and punch a button, or use a particle accelerator. (Nobody mentions a DeLorean.) And “The Green Futures of Tycho” is promising at first, a story about a normal kid with overbearing parents and some hellish older siblings who finds a time machine in his backyard, but Tycho’s fates and the transformation of his futures end up scaring Marty so badly that he can’t finish it.
George suggested the public library earlier, and Marty takes him at his word. The head librarian, Ms. Watts, is a dried-up old hag in a wheelchair and makes him leave his skateboard outside. The library itself is much smaller than Marty remembers it; the last time he was here, he was eight years old and the shelves seemed miles high, endless labyrinths stretching away into dust and darkness. Now it’s almost cramped. There’s a dusty card catalog in the lobby; they don’t even have a Mac 2E yet. Marty manages to find a few books that have “time travel” in the subject heading. He makes a few trips back and forth to the Private Study room, collecting them all, then arranges them on a table and checks out three at random, slips them into his backpack and settles in his room to read.
The first one is by “Time Enough for Love,” by Robert Heinlein. Marty’s never read any of his books, but recognizes the name from the books George has stacked on the shelves in his study. He only gets a few pages into it before realizing why it wasn’t among the books George thought were suitable for his seventeen-year-old son. The part where the main character goes back in time to have sex with her own father reminds him uncomfortably of grappling in the car with Lorraine, and it goes under his bed next to the William Sleator book.
Two books left, and they’re both nonfiction. The first one is a discontinued college textbook, “An Introduction to Astronomy.” The only mention of time travel is in chapter nine, “Wormholes and Other Anomalies,” where it talks about Einstein-Rosen bridges. It’s old news to Marty; Doc talked about black holes and singularities all the time while he was working on the flux capacitor. He flips through the rest of the book before realizing that it’s all stuff the Doc told him. It’s a little disappointing that he can’t find out anything new, but it’s also nice to realize that if he ever decides to take Astronomy 101 in college, he’ll be at least a semester ahead of the class.
The second one is much more promising. “Schrödinger’s Zombie: Quantum Mechanics and the Indifferent Universe,” by Tim Shalwel. The first chapter is pretty simple stuff. It starts out with a basic overview of atomic structure, then segues into an essay about Schrödinger’s Cat and how it relates to George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.
Then things start to get really far out, and Marty can’t put the book down. The Doc never told him about this stuff. Universes as waves of probability, collapsing in on each other and sprouting like crystals from a single event, interfering with each other and canceling each other out. The author talks about experiments where five different observers have recorded five different outcomes, each one of them contradictory and perfectly provable; it was only when a friend of one of the observers supported the outcome he saw that the “universal waveforms” collapsed, according to the book, and each dissenting observer suddenly saw and remembered the same outcome. The point seems to be that the universe isn’t indifferent at all, but somehow tuned in to sentient observation. More than that, the author suggests, the universe is tuned to human expectation.
Which actually sounds pretty dumb to Marty, once he reaches the end of the book. He’s disappointed that such a groovy title could be attached to such a flaky idea. It’s almost as bad as the “power of prayer” pamphlets his grandma keeps in her purse. Worse, because where his grandma’s reading material is just a lame religious tract that any reasonably educated person could see right through, and doesn’t pretend to be anything else, this book is a dupe, disguising fluffy New Age bullshit as solid scientific ideas.
He’s pretty sure the Doc wouldn’t approve of it, either. He imagines giving the book to Doc and watching as the old man flips through it, alternately nodding and frowning.
“Pretty stupid stuff, huh?” he asks.
Doc stares into space for a second and considers this, absently tapping his chin with the book. “No, Marty, I think the author has some valid points.”
“Some of the stuff about parallel universes, maybe. But the rest of it, Doc, it’s so dumb. Wishful thinking, you know? Like hoping that something’s going to happen is going to make it work. If that was true, everything you ever made…” He gestures at the broken and discarded machines in the lab, his mind’s eye recreating each one from vivid memories—electrocuted here, burnt there, that one exploded... “Well, you’d have a ton of patents, anyway.”
“The atomic world functions very differently from the macroscopic material world, Marty.” That’s something the Doc liked to tell him whenever he got frustrated at the impossibility or perversity of a chemical compound, and something that the book does keep mentioning whenever a story or analogy got too wild. Something he should have remembered.
“Well, yeah, I guess. But Doc, these stories…”
“Like Schrödinger’s Cat, Marty. Or Einstein’s gedanken. Thought experiments, analogies. They don’t have to be true.”
Marty relaxes, letting his own imagination convince him. “I guess. But there’s no way it could work in the real world, right?”
“No, of course not,” Doc says. But it sounds weird, stilted. Maybe he knows that Doc wouldn’t really say that. He backs up, erases it from his memory.
“Ordinarily, Marty,” Doc says instead, “I would agree with you. But the events of the past month indicate otherwise.” And Doc knows, he’s the one that explained Biff’s parallel universe to Marty, he’s watched as Marty faded into nothingness and then faded back again. The real Doc doesn’t know about the way Marty changed his own family history; it’s not that Marty was ashamed or anything, he tells himself, it’s just that he never thought it was important enough to tell Doc about. The Doc inside Marty’s mind knows, of course, and can talk about it.
“Yeah? What do you mean, Doc?” It’s not that Marty doesn’t know exactly what Doc means; it’s just his mind, after all. But it’s nice to hear Doc (or a reasonable representation of him) explain it.
He has to pause the imaginary conversation at that point, because Linda’s poking her head in his door and telling him to get his ass down to dinner. Marty rolls over on his bed to look at his sister. Her thinner face and new proficiency with makeup haven’t quite ceased to be startling, but he is sure that in time, he won’t be able to imagine her ever having been any other way. “What’s for dinner?”
“Does it make a difference? You’ll have to eat it no matter what it is.” She disappears, confident in having done her sisterly duty.
Marty drifts down the stairway, continuing his mental conversation with Doc. “Before we proved that the flux capacitor worked, Marty, the whole idea of parallel universes was, well, just an idea. Speculation.”
“Like something George”—he can’t quite bring himself to call his new father “Dad” yet—“would write.”
“Exactly, Marty. But now we know that they do exist. And it does make sense to assume that they function in ways very similar to those described in the book…”
“I thought I’d make something a little different tonight,” Lorraine says. She scoops a spoonful of glistening brown noodles onto Marty’s plate as he slides into his chair.
Linda pokes at the pile on her own plate. “Mom, what is this?”
“Just try it. It’s Thai.” Lorraine has been on an ethnic food kick for weeks now. Marty doesn’t object to this at all; the old Lorraine’s repertoire in the kitchen was limited to casseroles, pot roast, and the occasional scrambled egg mess. He definitely does not miss the casseroles at all.
“As wave functions, right?” Marty asks.
“No, spicy peanut sauce. Why?”
“Did you use, like, low-fat yogurt in this? I’m trying to lose weight.” Linda picks at her noodles.
“Will you just shut up and eat it, Linda? Mom probably spent all day cooking this.” Dave spears a piece of chicken.
“Exactly! As wave functions, Marty. When you changed the past, you created a new wave function where there were none before. In a sense, you invoked quantum laws at the macroscopic level.”
“George? What do you think?”
“Hm?” George looks up from his plate, where he has inadvertently wrapped every noodle around his fork into a giant ball. “Oh, um, about what?”
Lorraine clucks her tongue. “David likes it, Linda doesn’t, Marty has failed to register a verdict. It’s up to you as to whether I make it again or not.”
“Ohh, right.” George looks down at his plate, as though seeing his food for the first time, and shoves a huge forkful of noodles into his mouth.
“Ew, Dad,” Linda says. “Grody. I’ve just totally lost my appetite.”
Dave tosses a handful of paper napkins at George.
“It’s very good, dear,” George says indistinctly. “Um, very spicy.”
“Well, I’m glad you like it, because I made enough for lunch for you tomorrow…” Marty tunes his mother out and watches George, who is gazing blankly at his water glass and whispering to himself. Maybe he’s not the only one who’s talking with someone inside his head.
“Dad’s lost again,” Dave says. “Writer’s block?”
“Not really, I’m just stuck on chapter five. Dialogue is so hard to write. Especially when one of your characters is a mad scientist and the other one is a snail demon who’s older than the universe itself.”
“So those stories really could apply to this universe,” Marty murmurs.
“Don’t be silly, Marty. It’s just a book. There’s no such thing as snail demons.” Lorraine gives him an affectionate whack on the back of the head.
“Oh, you never know,” George says. “Just because you’ve never seen a snail demon doesn’t mean they don’t exist.” He grins at Lorraine.
Doc nods gravely. “They certainly could, Marty. In fact,” he adds, “your expectations could have shaped the nature of this wave function…the nature of this very universe!”
Marty cuts the conversation short at this point, in part because it’s getting a little too deep to think about while he’s trying to pay attention to what George is saying about the scientific invocation of snail demons at the same time, and partially because he wants to concentrate on dessert, which is lemon meringue pie.
But later, lying on his bed and listening to Jim Morrison sing about lizards, he thinks about the implications of what he made the Doc in his head say. Originally, he’d given little thought to the change in his family’s fortune, assuming that events followed naturally from that punch, that date, that kiss. In a fit of pessimism, he’d even braced himself for the dark side of this new universe, assuming that nothing this good could possibly sustain itself without collapse. An affair, divorce, suicide, the Earth being ruled by alien overlord lizards…anything would have restored that sense of balance. But there is no dark side to be found here; things are as he always wanted them to be. George is a famous writer, Dave is an executive, Linda gets out of the house, Lorraine isn’t a nagging harpy, Biff is waxing his dad’s car, and there’s a brand new 4x4 monster pickup sitting in the garage.
The possibilities are endless. Maybe.
Ω
He’s in the basement with Jennifer, fooling around on the pool table (Marty always wanted a pool table, but the old basement was unfinished and had bugs; this one contains deep-pile carpeting, an old refrigerator, and a sagging couch as well). In the old universe, she never wanted to go very far; the only way she’d even let him get to third base was if they went up to the lake, and she’d stop things cold if there was even a chance anyone else was around.
Jennifer will want to make out in the basement, Marty thinks, I demand it. I know it. I will it to be so. And then she’s climbing into his lap and licking his ear and giggling as he slides one hand under her bra and the other one into her pants, never mind that there are people upstairs and the door to the basement is wide open. He’s confident that nobody will walk in, but it’s still a definite turn-on. Jennifer seems to agree, because she’s biting his shoulder and moaning like a backup vocalist for Prince.
It’s not exactly empirical evidence, but it’s good enough for Marty. His experiment has worked. There won’t be any downside, ever. There doesn’t have to be. He has made this world, and he can do what he likes with it.
“Within reason, of course,” Doc says. Marty doesn’t bother to answer. Reason and moderation are not on his agenda at the moment. Dreams of glory and superstardom are. And it’s getting a little annoying that he can’t turn Doc off now, the way he can stop any other fantasy. The old man’s always in his head. It’s interfering with his other thoughts, what he needs to make sure the world keeps working the way he wants it to. Or at all.
This universe can’t function without him. It’s shaped by his thoughts, his desires, his subconscious urges. Without him, it would disappear back into quantum nothingness, or just fall apart.
“With great power comes great responsibility.” Doc is quoting from a Spiderman comic, although he doesn’t know it. Doc doesn’t read comics. “All of it, Marty. All of it in your mind. Every atom, every star. Every person.”
Ω
He’s draped over the back of his father’s chair, leaning over George’s shoulder, watching him type out a new story on his word processor. Move to the left so I can read better, Marty thinks, and George does. “Dad?”
“Hm?” George never objects to Marty hanging out in his study while he’s writing, as long as his son doesn’t make any noise.
“You know a lot about space, right?”
George’s eyes remain glued to the screen. “I guess you could say that.” He frowns, then presses the Delete key several times. “Why?”
“How many stars are there?”
“What, in the galaxy?”
“In the whole universe.”
George bites his lip. “Mmm, I really don’t know.” He sits back and massages his forehead. “Probably about a quadrillion. Look, this is not really the right time…”
“Oh. Sorry. Do you want me to get you some aspirin?” Marty slides off the chair and heads to the door.
“No, I don’t have a headache. It’s just…I want to strangle these characters.” George leans back in the chair and sighs.
“Why?”
“Oh, they’re just not cooperating with the story. The snail demon doesn’t trust the scientist who summoned him, and he’s supposed to like him enough to tell him where his equations went wrong. It makes sense in the story,” George adds hastily.
“You can’t just make him tell?”
“No, it has to work with the character, and I’ve made the snail demon too pompous, and the scientist is too proud to…it’s just a mess. The whole story. I’m thinking of scrapping it.” George shakes his head, then leans forward again and lightly touches the keyboard. “I’ve already written four whole chapters, too.”
“You’ll get it soon,” Marty says.
George snorts. “Thanks. I hope.” He bends over the keyboard as Marty closes the door.
Ω
It’s late December, and Marty has decided that there should be snow. And so there is snow, a short flurry that barely dusts the streets before melting. Unusual in this Northern California town, but not completely unheard-of. Marty stands in the middle of the yard, watching the tiny flakes fall, keeping each one in his mind. He knows that if he turns his attention from the snow for even a moment, it will disappear.
Lorraine—Mom—touches him on the shoulder. “Marty? Come inside. It’s getting cold.”
“It’s not cold,” Marty says. And it isn’t—but if it’s not cold, there’s no snow. So it is cold. It’s not a problem. He’d rather have snow.
“Come inside anyway. Dinner’s almost ready. I made tacos.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I have to stay out here and make sure it keeps snowing.”
Lorraine frowns. “Marty, you’ve been acting strange lately. Talking to yourself.” She gets in front of him and puts on a “concerned mom” face. “Tell me honestly, all right? Have you been taking drugs?”
“No.” Marty really wishes she would go away. But she isn’t. It’s not working this time. Maybe it’s because all his energy is focused on the snow.
“You can tell me, you know. We can get help for you.”
“Mom, I haven’t been taking drugs.”
“I won’t get mad, Marty.”
“Mom, I don’t even drink.” The snow is stopping.
“I know kids your age experiment, Marty. I did when I was in high school. Really, I won’t get mad, and I won’t lecture you. I just want to know.”
Go away, Marty thinks. Leave me alone. He wills the clouds to keep producing water crystals.
Lorraine stands in front of him for a few minutes, looking at her son. “I’m so worried about you, Marty.” She looks like she’s about to burst into tears. “I’ve made an appointment for you. With a psychologist.” She takes a deep breath. “She specializes in kids your age.”
Marty is surprised. He hasn’t asked this to happen. He hasn’t even thought about seeing a psychologist. How could the universe have come up with this?
“Marty? Do you hear me? We’re going tomorrow after you get home from school, so don’t even think about getting detention.”
No, he thinks, we won’t.
Ω
The psychologist, Dr. Voselgang, is a short, skinny woman wearing a black turtleneck. She has long black braids and looks like she just got out of graduate school. Marty is not surprised to see that the couch in the office looks exactly like the one in his basement.
“Be careful of what you say to her, Marty,” Doc says. “You’re not crazy, but she doesn’t know that.” He scowls. “She’ll assume you are, because you’re here. She won’t believe what you say.”
Marty’s curled up on the couch, staring at the ceiling. “What do you want me to say?” he asks.
“Anything you feel like,” Dr. Voselgang says. She’s holding a clipboard in her lap and is gazing levelly at Marty.
“Psychology isn’t a science,” Doc says. “It’s inexact. Guesswork and theories.” He’s ranting inside Marty’s head, pacing back and forth. “It’s barbaric, Marty. Electroshock. Lobotomies.”
“It can’t be that bad, can it?” Marty asks.
“How bad do you mean?” Dr. Voselgang asks.
“You see? She doesn’t even know what you’re saying.” Doc shakes his head. “And she’ll never understand.”
Marty struggles to answer both doctors. “I just have to explain things.”
“To who, Marty? What do you have to explain?” Dr. Voselgang. Asking again. Things she should really know.
“To you. And it’ll be okay, right?”
“Of course it will.”
“I mean, you said it’s not bad.”
“Right.”
“And…it’s not. That’s the point.”
“Yes?”
“Everything. It’s perfect. Don’t you wonder why?”
“You really think everything is perfect, Marty? The whole world?”
“I made it perfect.” He can’t find the words. It’s all so simple, whole and connected inside his head. Where does he start?
“You made the world, Marty?” Scribbling things down on her clipboard. Probably more than just what he’s saying.
“Yeah, kind of.”
“What do you mean, “kind of” made the world?”
“Don’t tell her, Marty! She already thinks you’re crazy.” No. “It’ll all be fine once you explain it to her. She’ll understand.” No. “Why are you here? You shouldn’t have let this happen. You know what you can do.” No.
Marty sits up. “Can I have a piece of paper and a pencil?”
“Certainly.” Dr. Voselgang rips a sheet off the notepad and rummages in her desk for a pencil.
Marty takes them, and quickly sketches out the design for the flux capacitor and a few diagrams he memorized from Tim Shalwel’s book. “Okay. Do you see these?” He holds up what he’s drawn.
Dr. Voselgang peers at the drawings. She has thick glasses. “Yes, I see them. What do those drawings represent, Marty?”
So he tells her everything, spills out the story. His old world, the Doc, the DeLorean, the experiment, the terrorists, going back in time, his mom, his dad, the dance, the lightning. Everything after, the parallel universes, Biff’s world, George being dead. Clara. The books. Doc is screaming in his head for him to stop. “You mustn’t tell anyone, Marty! They can’t know! The universe will collapse!”
Dr. Voselgang nods and writes everything down. “And you’re sure all this really happened, Marty?”
“Well, yeah. It did. Of course it did.”
“Why do you think your family has changed, Marty?”
“Because they did.” He’s really frustrated now. He’s just taken all this time to explain everything, and she’s not getting it at all. Why do people have to be so stupid?
“Why was your father working for Biff before, Marty?”
“Because he was. I don’t know. He was still kind of a wuss back then.”
“And he’s not now?”
“Well, no. He writes now.”
“And you made that change?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“I just told you.”
“Humor me, Marty.”
“I made him punch Biff out.”
“Why did you make him do that?”
“Because Biff was a jerk. He was bothering my mom.”
“Does Biff bother your mom now, Marty?”
“No.”
“Did he ever?”
“Yeah, in high school. He used to be a jerk. He used to push my dad around.”
“When they were both in high school.”
“And in the old universe.”
“Right, right.” Dr. Voselgang makes another note. “Does your dad “bother” your mom?”
“What do you mean?”
“Does he yell at her? Hit her?”
“No! He’s great to Mom. He loves her.”
“Marty, why do you think Biff bothered your mom?”
“I don’t know. ‘Cause he was a jerk.”
“Was he attracted to your mother?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Why?”
In his head, Doc snorts. “How can she call herself a psychologist if she doesn’t know the first thing about human sexual relations?”
“I don’t know.”
“I see. Do you love your mother?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you feel when she kissed you?”
“Really weird.”
“Good weird, or bad weird?”
“Bad weird. Definitely bad weird.”
“Why?”
“Well, she’s my mom.”
“I see. Marty, did you want to punch Biff out?”
“When?”
“Ah…in the “old universe,” I suppose.”
“Yeah, all the time.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because he was a lot bigger than me. He would have hurt me. Or he would have fired my dad.”
“Did you want your dad to punch Biff out?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” Marty doesn’t know how to answer this. Dr. Voselgang tries a different tack. “Marty, do you love your father?”
“Yeah, of course I do.”
“Do you ever feel jealous of him?”
“Why would I?”
“You can tell me, Marty. This is all confidential.”
“I told you not to tell her anything, Marty,” Doc says. “She’s taking what you say and twisting it to fit her own theories. Listen to her! Classic Freudian.”
“Right.” Marty takes a deep breath. “Listen,” he says to Dr. Voselgang, “this is all wrong. I love my parents, okay? All this really happened. I really changed things. You just don’t know it because you’re part of this universe, and you’re part of what changed. You changed too. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s the truth.”
Dr. Voselgang puts down her clipboard. “I believe you, Marty.”
Doc snorts. “She’s clearly lying.”
“No you don’t,” Marty says.
“I believe that what you’re telling me is the truth,” Dr. Voselgang repeats. “I believe you love your parents. I don’t think you’re lying at all.”
Doc smiles smugly. “You see? It worked. All you had to do was tell the truth. It’s self-evident, really.”
“I believe that you really do think you went back in time, Marty. But you have to accept that this didn’t really happen.”
“But it did.”
Dr. Voselgang nods solemnly. “Marty, I’d like you to come back every week. I think there’s a lot we need to work on. Do you think you’d feel more comfortable in group therapy? I have another client, a young man named Donnie, who told me something very similar to your story—”
“No. No group therapy.” Marty is enraged that she would suggest it. How can anyone’s problems be the same as his? He’s the only one who’s gone back in time, besides Doc. How can she put him in with a group of psychos?
“Right.” Dr. Voselgang stands up. “I’m afraid it’s time to end the session, Marty.”
“Fine.” Marty stands up to leave, letting the piece of paper with the equations on it flutter to the ground.
“I’m going to have to ask your parents to come in here for a few minutes so I can discuss some things with them.”
Marty’s heart stops for just a second. “Don’t tell them. They can’t know.”
“Marty, everything you’ve said to me in here is completely confidential. I’m only going to discuss treatment with your parents. You have nothing to worry about.” She opens the door.
Marty goes out to the waiting room. George and Lorraine are sitting next to the door, holding hands. They look so cute. He’s glad he made sure they got together. “The shrink wants to talk to you.”
Nobody bothers to close the door to Dr. Voselgang’s office, so Marty can hear every word they’re saying.
“I’m afraid your son has some serious issues,” Dr. Voselgang says. “I don’t think he’s ready to talk with you two about them yet.”
“How long will it take?” Lorraine asks. “I can’t stand this. I want my son back.”
“I don’t know,” Dr. Voselgang says. “Possibly years.” She clears her throat. “It’s very common for an adolescent to retreat into fantasy if something traumatic has happened to him.”
“Do you think something’s happened to Marty?” George sounds almost hysterical.
“I don’t know. May I ask you two a personal question?”
“Go ahead.” Lorraine, in contrast, sounds incredibly calm.
“Do you two have problems at home? Familial stress can be very difficult for an adolescent. I could set up a family therapy session…”
“No. Our marriage is very happy. We’ve never had any big problems,” Lorraine says. Marty nods in approval. He’s made sure there are no problems, and it worked.
Dr. Voselgang keeps asking things, and Lorraine keeps answering them, and every so often George interrupts to protest. Marty zones out for a while, lets his mind drift back to Doc and the lab. This time, he doesn’t bother to talk to Doc. He just wanders around the lab, looking at machines and inventions, fixing them, testing them. In his mind, they all work.
“…best course of action may be to prescribe medication,” Dr. Voselgang says. “He seems to be very set upon his delusion. It may help him to get to the root of his issues if…”
“I don’t want you drugging my son,” George says.
“George, it might be the only thing we can do,” Lorraine tells him.
“I don’t care. He’s only a teenager. He doesn’t need…tranquilizers, or whatever you want to make him take.”
“Mr. McFly, the field of psychological pharmaceuticals is not composed only of tranquilizers. I want to prescribe a specific medication for Marty, an anti-psychotic.”
“My son is not psychotic!” George sounds like he’s on the verge of tears.
“I don’t mean to suggest that he is, sir, but anti-psychotics have proved very effective in managing delusions in patients. It’s called Ubiquiten, and it’s an experimental lithium-based medication.”
“Lithium,” Doc says, “ell aye. Element number three, the third simplest element. Its atomic weight is six point nine three nine. Soft, highly reactive, a good conductor of heat…”
“So why would they want to give it to me?” Marty asks.
“It reacts with the chemicals in the brain,” Doc explains. “It’s often used to treat schizophrenics and depressives. Crazy people. You have to make sure they don’t make you take it.”
“Why not? If I’m not crazy, it won’t affect me, right?”
“If you take it,” Doc says, “I might go away.”
Ω
They drive home with an appointment for next week and a scribbled prescription. George stops the car at a drugstore, and Lorraine runs in to get it filled. “The sooner you start taking it,” she says, “the sooner you’ll get well.”
George leaves the engine running. He’s glancing back at Marty nervously, and he seems like he’s on the verge of saying something. Opens his mouth, shuts it, looks forward.
Marty can’t stand the silence. He grabs a tape from the car floor and hands it to George, who wordlessly slides it into the car’s tape deck. The tape whirs as it cues up to the next song. It’s Huey Lewis and the News. Marty remembers buying the tape six months ago, and he’s sick of it already. It’s still better than nothing.
By the time Lorraine returns with the little yellow bottle, the song is “I Want a New Drug.” She glares at Marty, then punches the “off” button much harder than is necessary. “Do you think this is funny, young man?”
“No,” Marty says, not sure why she’s chosen this way to vent, now.
“You didn’t even notice,” she says to George.
“Notice what? What was I supposed to notice?”
“That your son needed help. You didn’t say anything.”
George yanks the gearshift back into “Reverse” and grits his teeth. “Can we not have this conversation now, please?”
“You were off in your own little world. Stuck in your book. You never pay any attention to your children.”
“That’s not true,” Marty says. “Dad’s—”
“Marty, your father and I are having a discussion. Please—”
“Lorraine, now is not a good time to—”
“I told you this would happen, Marty. Your parents are—”
“Would you please all just shut up?” Marty screams.
There’s perfect silence in the car for about thirty seconds, then Lorraine starts in on George again. Marty slumps against the window. Stop talking, he thinks. Be nice. Be happy. I made this world for you. I made you happy. I gave you what you wanted. I gave you what I wanted. I made you what I wanted you to be. Why aren’t you being it? Why isn’t it working?
Ω
The instructions on the bottle said to take one tablet each day. Marty swallows his at dinner. Leftover tacos and a little blue pill.
It takes about an hour for the medication to take effect, and when it does, Marty crawls into bed and puts on Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon.” He’s never thought the album was as trippy as the stoner in the record store who convinced him to buy it said it was, just kind of mellow and spaced-out. Almost comforting, like a warm thick blanket of sound. He needs that comfort, now. He’s not sure what’s happening. Every time he moves, it’s like painless needles exploding in his head. When he lies still, he can feel things in his mind spinning faster and faster until they finally stop, then slowly starting up again. Not thoughts, but an almost physical sensation. It scares him. Something’s going to slip. He should have put on “The Wall,” he thinks. It would be nice to be comfortably numb, like in the song.
There’s a knock at the door. George comes in. “Do you want me to turn on the light?”
“No.” The light would hurt.
George sits down on the bed, next to Marty. “Dr. Voselgang said it might take a little while for your body to get used to the drug.” He strokes Marty’s back. “It’s going to be all right, I promise. I love you. Your mom loves you too. She’s just a little stressed right now. She’s really worried about you.”
Marty buries his head in the pillow.
“Do you want me to get you anything?”
“Change the album.” The girl on “The Great Gig in the Sky” is wailing. She asks if Marty is dying. Nobody else can hear it.
George gets up and flips through Marty’s box of records. “Which one do you want?”
“Dunno.”
“How about “Tommy”? You used to love that one.”
“Yeah. ‘Kay.”
George pulls the record out of its sleeve and puts it on. “All right?” Marty doesn’t bother to answer. If George thinks he’s helping, great.
The door closes. George has left. Marty is alone again. Spinning.
“Where are you?” He needs the Doc. He needs to not be here. He needs to not be in his head.
Pete Townshend sings that sickness will surely take the mind where minds can’t usually go. “You’re not sick,” Doc says. “You’re just smart. This isn’t fair.”
“You’re here.” He’s not here. “Stop it. Make it stop.” He can control the world, but he can’t control the inside of his own head. But they’re the same thing.
“I can’t, Marty. I’m sorry. I’m just you.”
Ω
When he wakes up, the weird spinny feeling is gone, and so are the needles in his head. He drifts into the kitchen and pours himself a bowl of cereal. Lorraine is sitting at the table, reading the newspaper.
She hugs him. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay,” Marty says. “Do we have any milk?”
“Of course we do. It’s in the fridge.”
The milk, Marty thinks, may or may not be in the fridge. It’s a toss-up as to whether it’s there until he opens the door and the wavelength collapses. Schrödinger’s Milk.
As it turns out, there is milk. There is also Pepsi.
“Don’t drink Pepsi for breakfast,” Lorraine admonishes him. “It’s full of sugar.”
“So are Frosted Flakes.” But he puts the Pepsi back and takes some orange juice instead.
“It’s Friday,” Lorraine says. She watches him warily. “You can stay home from school if you like.”
“Awesome.” Marty definitely feels up to school, but he’s not averse to a day off for any reason.
“But you have to go back on Monday,” she adds.
“Okay.”
And he does. Things are perfectly normal. He’s back at school, he’s hanging out with Jennifer, he’s practicing his guitar and hugging his parents (who are of course the same parents he always had, and how could he ever imagine that they were ever any different?) And if he doesn’t quite remember everything he’s supposed to, well, that’s just a side effect of the medication, and it’ll probably go away in time. He doesn’t talk to the Doc anymore—the old man is gone from his head, and if it’s a little lonely in there, at least Marty knows that he’s sane. He’s starting to think that the Doc was maybe just in his head to begin with, all along.
He goes to therapy with Dr. Voselgang for a few sessions, but drops it once it becomes very clear that he doesn’t really have that many issues to work out, since the delusions are gone—silly, really, to imagine he has a time machine. Childish. He doesn’t need therapy for those, anyway. He’s got the pills. The lovely little blue pills, one a day. And as long as he takes them on time, everything is OK, everything is OK, everything is OK…