The Next Step: The Waiting

The next phase of Marty's life was not glamorous or exciting: it was 36 months of the most monotonous existence that could be conceived; wake up, shower, eat breakfast, go to work for 10 hours (earning some overtime pay in the process), come home, eat dinner, becoming buried in borrowed library books on physics, mathematics, numismatics, and sports statistics until becoming unconscious, and the process began again. Marty persisted in this loop because of his almost fanatic belief that he and he alone had the ability to change the course of this life he had been given through his time travel experiences. With knowledge of how the Delorean worked, both as a car and as a time machine, coupled with an ever-growing mental database of winners and losers of various public sporting events, as well as rarities and subsequent values of various U.S. coins, he could make himself a powerful young man.

The days turned to weeks, the months turned to seasons, and Marty stayed true to the course he had set. He received a promotion to a janitorial supervisor at work, but he still put in the same amount of time there. His co-workers could not figure out why a 20 year-old man would be riding the bus to and from work: 'why didn't he have a car?' they would ask. His answer was always, 'I have one, it just isn't here right now,' which was the truth, even if it felt like a lie as he said it. At first, his mom would call him once a week to make sure he was eating, but that became once a month after a while, then only on his birthday. One time his dad and Dave came over, a few months after moving out, with a six-pack of beer: Marty didn't have any, seeing as he wasn't 21 yet, but that didn't stop his father and brother from having them. No, his life was the picture of mediocre, simply putting one foot in front of the other. No one who knew him would have suspected that he had a plan to leave all of this behind, just not yet.

Not until the 36th month of his self-imposed exile arrived.

Not until his salvation in shiny aluminum arrived in a triple thunderclap, ready to carry him to his new life.

To be continued...

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CAVEAT: I do not own the characters from 'Back to the Future'; furthermore, I owe a degree of gratitude to Bruce Gordon for his story "The Other Marty McFly" from Starlog #108 (July 1986).

Prior Chapters:
1: Prologue
2: A Brave New World
3: Time for a Change of Venue