Reality Check
by: Aaron Jenkins
Word Count: app. 34,500 words (64 pages)
Written: April 29, 2003 - June 2, 2003
Revised:
August, 2003
Synopsis
Biff Tannen has a rough life. He makes a modest living refurbishing cars, his wife left him and his life in general has always been one filled with misfortune and tragedy. It seems that Biff will never be able to dig his way out of the dank pit he has found himself in. That is, until he discovers Doc Brown's flying time machine locomotive. Not that's the perfect way to change his life! Meanwhile, Doc is still having trouble deciding if he should destroy the time machine. He has finally come to the conclusion that the train must be destroyed and he and Marty head to the future on one last trip to collect the necessary instruments to disassemble the machine. This is Biff's chance. If he's going to get a hold of Doc Brown's time machine, he has to do it now! But what consequences will Biff's time-hopping have on Marty and Doc's future? And how, without the time train, will they ever get out of the future and back to the present in order to stop Biff? It's time for a reality check, in both senses of the phrase.
Reality Check History
*SPOILER WARNING*
You are welcome to read the
history of the story before reading the actual story, but it may take away some
surprises and hint at future stories. If you want the full effect of the tale,
I suggest you read it first and then the history of how it came into existence
...
* My first idea for my third fic
had been something completely different from what the end product actually
became. That's a good thing, in retrospect. The point of the story had always
been to: a) bring the DeLorean back and B) have Doc come to terms with time
travel.
Originally, I had planned on having
Doc stranded in the very distant future where he had to fend for himself while
rebuilding the DeLorean. FYI, he was stranded there by another time traveler, a
man who had used Doc's journals (which were published after his death and
considered a classic fiction in the future) to create his own time machine.
(That also is why Doc's journal is emphasized somewhat in FT II. I left it in
since the journal does make an appearance in "Reality Check", but
just doesn't play as major a part.) The story went through a couple
incarnations: One was with Marty going to New York to scope out colleges.
Meanwhile, the idea was that the future time traveler also had the ability to
travel between places and Doc followed him to future New York (which was
flooded, naturally). So, for every NY location Marty visited in the present,
Doc visited in the future and we would see the contrasts. This would have also
introduced the possibility of Doc having installed a location display into the
DeLorean (which I'm glad I scrapped, btw. Every idea I've had for a future
fanfic thus far has been limited to Hill Valley, so there's really no need for
it).
Anyway, the future guy's plan was
to force Doc to recreate the time machine because, on the weekend from which
Doc left, one of the kids was going to get horribly ill and the only remedy
would have been future medicine. But Doc had disassembled the time train by
that point and Doc would forever regret having taken apart the time machine (so
it says in his journals). Future guy wanted to prevent Doc from making a
horrible mistake. In the end, Doc is able to return and go to the future to
save Jules or Verne's life. Then he burns his journals so they never get
published (paradox anyone?) and decides to keep the time machines.
When I began writing, though, I
decided to bring Marty along and ex-nayed the whole past-New York thing, thus
trimming the story down immensely. I did begin the story (still titled
"Unknown") and have it saved on my desktop. But a couple chapters in,
I realized how much I would dislike writing the story and it just didn't fit
into Back to the Future. So I came up with the Biff Tannen story, deciding to
delve deeper into Biff's life and motivations and the rest, as they say, is
history.
Last Updated:
Tuesday
August 26, 2003
4:43 PM