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It's one of those mild and forgettable weekend days in early December- a little chilly by Californian standards but still very much tolerable- sky overcast as it has been for the past few days, still threatening rain that probably won't come. But the ground is dry and so Marty is out, skating, in a rush to nowhere in particular as the wind tousles his hair and houses speed past in his periphery, Christmas decorations of varying quality and effort melding into festive blurs of color and light. He passes by one that is definitely just a Halloween skeleton someone didn't want to bother taking down and so instead dressed it up in Santa clothes.
His eyes latch onto the rather creative recycling of decor, and his distraction is repaid when he hits a pothole head on and goes flying, scoring an impressive amount of airtime. He takes it back. The Halloween skeleton dressed as Santa is not creative at all- it's just lazy.
Marty stays on the ground for no more than a second or two before he picks himself up and brushes himself off, reaching to clutch his board in a white knuckled grip. He huffs, but he's mostly just annoyed at himself. Paul likes to tease him for doing this sort of stuff- his attention getting pulled away by anything else more interesting than what he's supposed to be focused on. Says he wouldn't see a car coming right at him but would notice the skid marks as it swerved to avoid him. Marty's usual reaction to such statements is indignation, but only because it's true.
It's typical for his gaze to snap onto things that are out of the ordinary. Doc's probably to blame for that, really, with his emphasis on observation and its importance to the scientific method. And Marty just simply isn't a put-his-head-down-and-ignore-things kind of guy.
He throws the board back to the road and continues on. He has a whole lot of nowhere to get to. The momentum and windburn wrestle his heart free of the frustration and soothe the stinging of his palms. His mind clears.
The truck is nice and all, but it doesn't really even come close to this.
Here, it's just him and the road and the wind (and the occasional pothole). No school. No stress. No potentially life threatening breaks in reality.
Just him and the feeling of freedom.
.
That raven looks funny.
That's Marty's first thought when he sees it hopping around the base of the wall by old Ms. Winthrop's house. Not "oh, a bird, neat" or "that thing's probably diseased". No, it looks funny, and this alone catches Marty's attention, making him stumble slightly and dismount his board in what he hopes this time at least seemed like an intentional maneuver. At least he doesn't fall again, but he doesn't make any airtime either, so that's a little bit disappointing.
He stares at the raven. It stares back with intense attention. Gears start turning in Marty's head because especially as of late, he's been actively paying attention to the way things are versus how he knows they should be. Searching for unexplained differences. Latching onto changes.
(The changes you caused goes unsaid.)
This means that his mind instantly catches how the light diffraction off the feathers appears innately wrong, the raven looking an almost sickly, shimmering green instead of sleek blueblack. He supposes it's not that unexplainable. Doc would say that due to their iridescence, in the right light, a raven's feathers may seem on the greener side. Still, something about it makes Marty's stomach churn.
The bird gronks at him, lower and throatier than a crow's call, and flies off in a flurry of too-green feathers.
Marty squints at the wall next to where the raven was standing. The grout is cracked and old, and the bricks have seen better days. And there, on the ground, right where the bird had been standing, is a sunflower seed, surrounded by other grain no doubt belonging to a birdseed mix, all of which flicker weirdly in the sunlight.
Odd. Marty thinks. Ms. Winthrop hates birds.
He doesn't return home for a couple hours, choosing instead to spend the afternoon in his head and enjoying a mostly smooth ride on a pleasant enough December day. He stays out for as long as possible; it's supposed to get a bit cold tonight- a few degrees below freezing- and tomorrow it doesn't get much warmer (and supposedly rains, though Marty doesn't really trust the weatherman these days).
He ends up stopping at the Roswell's house. Half of the lights strung up on the house were out, and Mr. Roswell was clearly trying to find the offending bulb, likely in a futile attempt to fix the whole series. Marty stops by for about fifteen minutes to try to help narrow it down a little- he doesn't find the bulb, but as he leaves, he wishes Mr. Roswell luck in finding the needle in the haystack, and hopes the man doesn't have to go to the store to buy a new set of string lights.
He kicks off again, waving an apologetic goodbye.
Then, eventually, he stops by Jennifer's. She's busy helping her family prepare the house for guests, but she finds the time to spend about half an hour entertaining Marty, their conversation drifting from topic to topic in a manner not unlike Marty's habit of wandering around town. Thirty minutes feels more like five as time speeds by, and the sun is setting by the time Jennifer is called away from him. He leaves the interaction warmed on the chilly evening in a way no jacket could replicate.
At home, because old habits die hard, there's a moment just before he crosses the threshold that he braces himself for something gone wrong and tension like a low hum that never goes away, before he remembers that his family is different now. This fact hurts more than it relieves. Still, they're still fundamentally his family, so it's not too bad. He knows it could be much worse.
He chucks his bag unceremoniously onto the floor and balances his board with careful precision against the wall, walking into the main part of the house and picking up the local newspaper from the counter.
He flips through the first few pages, typical small-town reporting, crossword already filled in by either Linda or Dave- who are definitely going to get some kind of talking to whenever Dad sees it- until he lands upon a headline further in that makes him pause.
"MOTHER COMPLAINS THAT SON KEEPS COMING HOME WITH PRANK CANDY FROM UNKNOWN SOURCE"
"Jesus, must have been a boring week." Marty mutters, turning the paper over in his hand. "How desperate were they to think this is news?"
Frowning, he flips the page back to stare at the words. Underneath, there's a grainy picture of a displeased mother and a child. The kid, who is grinning ear to ear, holds up a sweet in a wrapper with font on it that Marty can't quite make out but feels achingly familiar nonetheless. The candy is almost translucent and the kid seems to be struggling to keep it in his hands.
That's... really strange.
His thoughts are interrupted as Lorraine calls from the kitchen.
"Marty, dear, can you get the spaghetti for me?"
"Sure thing, Ma!" He calls back, eyes still glued to the paper.
He gives the page one last once-over before he puts it back on the counter and moves to do as he was told.
.
There's a box of Sophie Mae peanut brittle in the larder. The white and gold box sits on the shelf next to boxes of uncooked pasta and a bag of flour, crammed into the corner as though it were bought and promptly forgotten about as other adjacent foods got restocked.
Now, Marty knows for a fact that his father didn't buy any because Howard and his daughter don't even live next-door in this timeline, and no one likes it enough to have bought any at the store, so why, why, is that damned box here and looking all innocent?
Marty stares at it like it's personally offended him (it has).
He goes to reach for the box.
His fingers don't make contact. Instead, the box flickers out of existence for a second before solidifying again.
Still there.
Still mocking him with its presence.
Marty's eye twitches.
He grabs the spaghetti and slams the larder shut with a little more force than necessary.
The town's in near hysterics.
People are in that weird middle state where they're a little too afraid to go outside but also desperate to stick together in case, God forbid, they're alone when something happens. So, they congregate in corner shops and cafes and restaurants and at the edges of the town square, cramming themselves off to the side in hopes that if something does happen, when it does, they'll get a good view of it while they hide just out of sight.
It's that kind of panic where nobody screams but everyone is very, very vocal, whispering frantically and fearfully twisting events into rumors where details merge into monsters and lessons and 'I told you so's.
Marty's pretty sure he heard someone legitimately say, in all seriousness, "call the Ghostbusters!", and, quite frankly, he sort of agrees.
Mr. Whitaker was a grumpy, solitary man who was mean and kind of aggressive and that mostly nobody liked. Still, he mostly stayed out of the way and did his own thing, avoiding other people where he could, unless they upset him in some capacity. Usually, as long as no one bothered him, he didn't bother anyone else- respectable, really, bar the occasional public outburst.
He had a particular penchant for going to the library and, despite not working there, going through day by day and ensuring that every book was exactly where it needed to be. The library offered him a job multiple times. He never accepted, always citing that he would under no circumstances accept money for something that was "everyone's responsibility" and needed to be done anyways. People stayed clear of where he was, kept quiet around him, and ensured that they put their books back in the right place if they were to ever do so near him. He was so good at this job and so well known for being, well, that one guy, that a plaque was put up at the library entrance in his honor and stories still get told of him to this day. It was almost a rite of passage, having some sort of run in with the man.
Mr. Whitaker died in 1957 in an automobile accident at the ripe age of 42. His death was a tragedy, and despite the fact that no one really liked the guy, he was a staple in the community and his absence was felt- people appreciated what he did. Marty hadn't even known the man was dead until this incident, because he hadn't been dead at all in the original timeline. Marty himself remembers getting a proper tongue-lashing from the man once when he was seven years old and thought libraries didn't need to be taken that seriously.
Mr. Whitaker is dead. He shouldn't be- this, Marty knows- but he is. There's a semblance of guilt that Marty feels knowing that somehow, even indirectly, the man's death is his or Doc's fault.
But Mr. Whitaker was also seen today in the library, in the flesh and blood, walking and talking like he wasn't supposed to be six feet under, and he yelled at a kid for taking a book off the shelf and putting it back in the wrong place. When he walked out of the library doors and into the streets, with tens of stunned witnesses watching, he flickered out of existence as though the universe suddenly remembered, hey, this guy's not meant to be here right now.
So by all means, call the Ghostbusters, because Marty's really, really hoping that this time, reality breaking isn't his and Doc's fault.
Spoiler alert: it totally is.
"Marty, have you ever heard of Hempel's raven paradox?" Doc asks, starting in another direction to make his way across the garage. Marty jumps up from where he was sitting to follow.
"No, what? What is that? Did we start another casual loop?"
"No, no, nothing of the sort!" Doc shouts, coming to a stop at a tower of cardboard boxes in the corner of the garage. He begins moving them so that he can reach the bottom one, starting by taking down a box labelled "Jules and Verne paintings: 92-99", written in Clara's beautiful (and near unreadable) cursive. "As you know, all ravens are black. So, if something is a raven, then it is black. Equally, then, if something is not black, then it is not a raven. Same claim, different coat of paint. If I have a pet raven and it is black, this is evidence that supports the hypothesis that if something is a raven, then it is black."
What? Marty blinks. "Where on Earth are you going with this, Doc?"
Doc doesn't look up, finally getting to the bottom box and rummaging through it. "Imagine, now, that I have a green apple. It's not black and it's not a raven. That makes it an instance, evidence, for 'if something is not black, then it is not a raven'. And, because both of my hypotheses are equivalent, this green apple also, albeit very weakly, supports 'if something is a raven, then it is black'. That's the raven paradox, Marty; observations still count as microscopic bits of confirmation for a seemingly unrelated claim."
Doc hands Marty a piece of patterned cloth before he goes back to his search, and Marty frowns. "What does this have to do with- any of what's going on? The ghosts, the things that aren't supposed to be there but somehow still are?"
"The raven paradox is mostly philosophical, like a logic game of telephone. Many, including myself, have attempted to resolve it via mathematics and probabilities and what exactly the weight of evidence entails." Doc meets Marty's eyes for a second, still arm-deep in this box. "What I am trying to demonstrate here is what happens when you mess with the evidence."
"...The evidence that ravens are black?"
He cranes his head to try to peer past Doc and into the box. It's full of notebooks and what looks to be scrap metal. When he looks to the side, he can see the words "old journals-mostly irrelevant" scribbled in Doc's messy but cohesive handwriting.
"Well, Marty, the point is that these are regularities, and the universe is full of them."
Marty nods, trying to follow along. "Okay, not just ravens and apples, then. Everything."
"Exactly right. The universe 'knows', in the only sense that matters, that green apples are not ravens, ravens are black, and so on. When it compounds these regularities, it does not create something nonsensical; the apple being green does not cause ravens to be black."
"Right. 'Cause evidence doesn't mean causality."
"This evidence fits into a careful yet wild tapestry of patterns that all add up in the same way, to create what we see and experience and know to be true. A-ha, there it is!"
"There what is?" Marty asks.
Doc pulls out a clunky looking device that is duct taped to an old, worn journal that had been sitting at the bottom underneath everything else. He turns around now to face Marty, and taps at the tattered fabric he'd placed in Marty's hands just a moment ago. "The problem is us. When we time travel, Marty, we don't just cut into this tapestry. We break a thread, here and there, move strings around, skip a stitch or create a pull in the fabric. We change which observations support which regularities. We're not just adding another apple to the pile, we're changing the rules that tell the universe how the pile is supposed to be counted."
Marty flips the cloth over in his hand. He can kind of envision it, but also, he doesn't think a missed stitch or incorrect color should be a problem. The cloth will still look and function the same. "Run that last bit by me again, Doc?"
"Say that for as long as ravens have existed, they're black. Millions and millions of years. The thread in that tapestry has already been woven, and with it the old pattern that green apples support: not black, not a raven. But now say we go back, and something we do makes it so ravens evolve to be green instead. A green apple supports that all ravens are black. Except, now all ravens are green. All of the evidence, the patterns, that once lined up one way now points somewhere else. The old regularity, that 'all ravens are black', was supported by a history of observations that no longer match the present."
Flashes of all the little ways his family and his life had morphed around him as a result of his meddling in 1955 float through his head, and Marty gets a sinking feeling he knows exactly where this is going.
"And so then what? How would a raven being green make someone who died thirty years ago suddenly appear now and all wrong?" he asks, hoping he's not right.
"These are glitches, occurring because the universe is following rules for patterns that no longer exist because we changed them. The universe knows what was supposed to be, where the trajectory was going to land, it had a way that things were supposed to line up. It doesn't notice the contradiction in the way we would. It just follows its rules, which were defined for a particular set of patterns that we swapped out for another. The apple and the raven are metaphorical, Marty. We don't change birds. Our changes are much smaller scale, but we are disrupting delicate patterns." Doc takes the piece of cloth from Marty and holds it up as though the stained scrap fabric held all the answers. "Most of the time, you pull a thread, skip a stitch, and the pattern and the picture remains the same. But other times, where the old rules and the new facts don’t quite match, you get tears in the fabric. Ghosts, echoes of people and lives and places, pieces of events that almost happened in a different history. The universe trying to execute rules it should have but doesn't anymore."
Great. They broke reality. Again. Marty lets out a shaky half-laugh, half-sigh. Suppose it's not all that out of the ordinary.
"How do we- what do we even do about that? Can we do anything about that?"
"You do what you do when any fabric tears; mend it. Darn where it's worn thin and stitch the rips. It'll scar, but the universe is resilient. Marty, do you remember what you told me earlier? About what you saw by Ms. Winthrop's house?"
"Yeah, the raven looked green! That's what got you on this whole raven apple thing."
"No, no! What you said about the birdseed!"
"Oh- Ms. Winthrop hates birds! Always has-" Marty perks up, puzzle pieces slotting into place in his head. "Doc, that's a bleed-through, isn't it? Is that because of something we changed?"
"It must be! Do you remember if she used to have a birdfeeder?"
Marty sorts through memories. He knows a lot about the people in Hill Valley, it's a decently small town after all, but he finds he doesn't remember much about Ms. Winthrop before about a week ago. She'd screamed at a pigeon in her yard while he was skating past and Marty had startled, thinking she was yelling at him. When he asked people around town what her problem was, they'd laughed and said she'd always thought birds were pests, for pretty much as long as they remember.
Which, now that he thinks about it, can't be right.
"I don't know. I only know she hates birds because she's really vocal about it."
"Well, we'll assume she did have one- which is why you saw the birdseed. And we'll assume the changes also killed Mr. Whitaker."
Marty winces. "They definitely did. He was alive in the original timeline. That... doesn't feel good."
Doc's intense expression softens. "I imagine it doesn't. Well, hm. We need to start small. See if this will work. Have you noticed anything else?"
Marty pauses. Then, he scowls. "The peanut brittle."
"The peanut brittle?"
"Yeah. My dad bought it from our neighbor's daughter in the original timeline because he couldn't say no, and now, it's back in my larder." he quashes down the frustration and grief that thinking about that moment brings up. Not helpful right now. "So... stitching the rips. Are we trying to correct it? So, what, do we just... go back in time and make it so he buys the peanut brittle in this timeline?"
"While that might work, it shouldn't be necessary at all. In fact, we ought to avoid using time travel to fix anything, in case we cause a different ripple to occur. No, this is best fixed retroactively, in the present."
Marty hums in thought. The box of peanut brittle hadn't been solid- the edges of his fingers refusing to make contact with the surface he could see was very clearly there.
"The box- I can't touch it, my hand went right through it." Marty squinted. "Do we have to restore the conditions for it to exist?"
"In some capacity, yes. I hypothesize that the reason these little details are important- and, therefore, as you put it, 'bleed through'- is because they are tied to experiences that shape people and, specifically, the decisions that they make. Perhaps that little girl really needs to sell some peanut brittle."
Okay, then. Howard came by with his daughter in late October, so probably isn't actively advertising it anymore.
"It might be easier to go back-" Marty starts.
"Perhaps it would be, but is the risk of changing something else truly worth it when we can fix it now?"
"Right, right, you're right. Gotta think fourth-dimensionally."
Alright, then, that's mission number one: get his dad to buy Sophie Mae peanut brittle from a random little girl he doesn't know. Should be easy enough.
It takes a bit of wrangling, but he manages to find what street Howard and his family live on now. He makes up a bogus story about how he heard from someone in town that this guy's kid was trying to sell peanut brittle to raise money for her baseball team and hadn't sold anything. Really tried to tug on his dad's heartstrings. It works, miraculously, and George doesn't question the information nor does he find anything strange about going out of their way to buy some.
"It's for a good cause, son. It's good you raised this to my attention."
And so that lead them to Howard's front door, and Marty really had to bury his disdain for the man- he's not even supposed to know him, they're not neighbors anymore- as the guy stares them down like they're actively committing some sort of crime just by standing there. George doesn't seem to notice, launching into how he heard about Howard's little girl's baseball team and how he'd love to buy some peanut brittle, and Howard's face slowly lifts from disgruntled to pleasantly surprised. There's a part of Marty that cringes when his father, in a moment of pure benevolence and generosity, signs himself up for a full case entirely of his own volition. That damn peanut brittle is going to be in the house for months, and also that's a lot of money that they didn't used to have.
But the little girl beams with barely contained joy when her father calls her to the front door and tells her what's happening. And Howard, quieter than Marty ever heard him when he was talking to George before, thanks them profusely because having not sold anything was really weighing her down.
So, one: Marty's intuition is fantastic because he'd totally bullshitted that fact while trying to get his dad to feel bad enough to come with him and buy the peanut brittle he was apparently always supposed to.
And, two: Doc was right, it was the lack of experience that caused this. She hadn't sold anything, and that must have been impactful in some way that majorly affects her future decisions.
Or, maybe, his dad needed to meet Howard. They used to be neighbors. Whatever it was; it's fixed now, something about the way George signed his name on the paper made something in the air slide and click into place in a way Marty could almost feel. The atmosphere as they left, case in hand, was almost tangible, light and feathery as though it were whispering "this was meant to happen".
When Marty opens the larder just to check, the box in the corner is now solid, and accompanied by eleven others still in the poorly opened case shoved down at the bottom. His mother is going to have a go at Dad for that. The expert skill it takes to properly stack and pack away food is no joke.
He takes the box and holds it, for a second, its weight real in his hands and heavy in its consequences.
No matter how much Doc insists it doesn't- "it can't, Marty, it lacks the sentience we have"-, sometimes Marty is convinced the universe has a sense of humor. A sick sense of humor, at that. Because apparently, his family really needed to have a whole case of peanut brittle.
His fingers tighten minutely around the edge of the box and he puts it back.
He closes the larder with a normal amount of force.
This is good.
Means that the damage he and Doc have caused is fixable.
Most of it, at least.
"Okay, so, what, we just... retroactively fix anything that we find weird?"
"Essentially, yes." Doc gestures to the old journal he'd dug out. "In the thirty years it took before I could talk to you, I kept note of any discrepancies I found. Most, if not all, resolved themselves. None caused public panic, or really existed in the public eye to begin with."
Marty remembers the explanation. How time has a tendency to do that, resolve its own issues. It's why, despite the seemingly random nature of human reproduction, changing his family didn't affect his or Linda's or Dave's continued existences. His parents just had to get together, he and his siblings had to be a possible outcome, and the natural flow of time handled the rest.
"So, what we're dealing with, right now, is the stuff that didn't get fixed because it physically couldn't?"
"Exactly. Time smooths itself over bumps and goes around obstacles because it must continue forward on its path. But sometimes, something directly impedes that."
"Such as Howard not being our neighbor anymore. Or what happened to Mr. Whitaker."
"And, such as Ms. Winthrop having a particular dislike for birds. Which is what we'll deal with next, because that's smaller than... well."
Yeah, Doc. I'm well aware that we essentially killed somebody.
And so begins their next mission. If this is experience based- and evidence thus far suggests that it is- then a lack of birds where there once was changes experience in a way that impacts outcome... maybe it draws birdwatchers to this particular spot, and maybe those birdwatchers need to be there for a particular outcome to be possible. For a pattern to be sewn properly. Maybe birds' decisions are also important.
He will let Doc deliberate over the why. Marty is going to focus on getting results.
"How much is a birdfeeder? And birdseed?"
Doc tilts his head. "Marty... we can't just put a birdfeeder in the yard of an old lady who despises birds."
Marty's face flushes. "Alright, then, how do you suggest we solve this?"
Doc ends up sending Marty into town to see if anyone knows what happened to cause the woman to hate birds with such a passion. Despite his valiant efforts, it hasn't been successful. So far, almost all of the answers have fit one of three general statements:
"Probably something in her childhood. I swear she's been like that forever."
"Why would I know?"
"Gertrude Winthrop, that old hag? I think she woke up one day and decided she needed something to go crazy about."
Basically, nobody knows. Guess she never talked about it. But this is highly unhelpful and so Marty really starts digging. He ends up at the library at some point, hoping maybe she was involved in some sort of public incident or something, but the library is empty of anyone who could help him in light of recent events and he finds a whole lot of nothing.
He asks his family, Jennifer, his bandmates. And when he starts going door-to-door on Ms. Winthrop's street, four or five houses slam the door in his face when he asks and the others answer with the same general statements as before. Ms. Winthrop herself goes pale when he asks and requests for him to leave in such a quiet, terrified, shell-shocked tone that he does so immediately.
Back at the garage, he and Doc have reached a dead end. If they don't know why then they can't talk to her about it, and if it be the only way to solve the problem, they can't stop the event from happening in the first place.
"I just... can't think of how to fix this, though." Doc says, beginning to pace across the garage. Marty watches as Doc's gaze latches onto the smooth silver stainless steel of the second ever DMC DeLorean in history to have a time machine built out of it. "I don't want to use time travel. But even if we use time travel, we run the risk of witnessing the event ourselves- and then stopping the event becomes a paradox that we don't want to risk creating. We could try to travel back in small jumps, find out what the inciting incident was after the fact. Or, we purposely witness the event so we can know-"
Marty raises an eyebrow.
"Except, Doc, the small jumps could-"
"-and then, perhaps, we convince her to go through extensive therapy over the years so that- no, no, that won't work..." Doc interrupts, completely lost in thought and blind to the world. He makes his way to his chalkboard, still muttering under his breath, and Marty grabs his arm before he can start writing.
"Wait a minute, wait a minute, Doc- why exactly can't we just put up a birdfeeder? I know you said putting one in her yard wouldn't work, but that tree right outside her house- the one on the corner of that intersection- it's town property. That's gotta be close enough."
"...You're absolutely right."
.
Marty sits in town hall, holding tight to his formal request document which was painstakingly filled out. Jennifer helped him word it in a way that the town hall people might actually accept it. When he's called back, he's surprised by the ease with which the officials accept his proposal. Apparently, birdwatching is big in Hill Valley. Who knew?
They point him towards the Parks and Rec department, who take the document and put it in some important-looking stack of files. He thanks the busy looking office worker. They don't look up from what they're doing.
About a week later, he and Doc watch from afar as birdfeeders get put up all over town, including on the street corner where Ms. Winthrop lives.
Ms. Winthrop waves her arms around frantically as she speaks with a town official who is desperately trying and failing to calm her down.
"This isn't a very peaceful solution." Marty says. He feels a bit bad; she'd seemed properly afraid when he'd tried to talk to her about it. "Guess she'll... have to learn to live with it."
It doesn't quite land properly. Because on one hand, they could fix that, with the DeLorean. But on the other, while their current solution hurts her, to undo whatever it was that happened to her- to change her- without her consent, would also be ethically and morally wrong.
Birds gather around the feeder. A raven hops a few times below it, watching.
The raven looks normal, now.
Sleek blueblack.
Marty looks away.
"I fear it may be exceedingly difficult figuring out what exactly we changed that caused Mr. Whitaker to die."
"Okay, hear me out, Doc: we go back, and we find out."
"No."
Marty sighs.
Doc mentions, offhandedly, that they don't need to know what happened for this one. Mr. Whitaker is dead. No amount of discussion will change that. What they really need to know is if it was the experience of kids (and the occasional adult) getting shouted at by the man that was important, or his persistent arrangement of the library shelves and insistence that he do it for free because "someone has to care". While he may not have been particularly pleasant, he did care in his own weird, backwards way.
Marty has learned how important caring seems to be when it comes to time.
There are a couple of solutions to this, kind of. Not easy ones.
So, even though they don't really need to know what they changed if they don't plan on using time travel to fix it, they end up in the library anyway. Doc because he's curious and wouldn't be able to sleep not knowing. And Marty because he's still holding out hope that they'll save Mr. Whitaker.
The library is still scarily devoid of people, but the shelves and shelves of books that fill the rooms make it feel full in that way libraries are. The lack of people doesn't really weigh on them at all, because quiet and introspective is exactly the kind of vibe a library is meant to have.
When they ask the librarian for access to the historical archives room, he eyes them suspiciously.
"I've been told not to let anyone in there until what happened the other day gets cleared up and people calm down. Too many teens poking around records they don't understand and abusing the information they find." he says, looking pointedly at Marty.
Doc takes charge.
"My assistant and I need to access the historical archives in order to find a very specific document about a very specific patent that was disputed in the local court almost thirty years ago."
The librarian, still squinting at Marty, lets them in.
.
"It says there that although 'Ralph Williams' was held accountable for the speeding, the vehicular manslaughter was ultimately ruled an accident because his car's brakes failed 'suddenly and spectacularly'." Marty points over Doc's shoulder.
"So it does. We should look, then, for the police report. That's where information on the car would be. You look for that; I am going to go down to Western Auto and see if they have kept their old records from thirty years ago. If his car failed, then perhaps we'll find answers in old service records."
They split ways. It takes a little while to find, in a completely different section of the archive. When Marty does find it, though, he picks up the accident report and skims through it. On a page near the end, they have an in-depth mechanical report along with pictures of the car and parts, clearly completed after the initial report.
At the bottom, he sees it, hand-written and definitive:
"Brake line punctured by thrown rod caused by loose bearing shell."
The words sink in.
"Jesus. That's one hell of a coincidence. It's like the universe wanted him dead." he mutters.
When he meets back up with Doc, they combine what information they found and paint the full picture: some guy named Ralph Williams did not get his car serviced by Terry in 1955 because Terry was cleaning Biff's car of manure. Therefore, Ralph's car was instead serviced by a different mechanic at Western Auto- one who replaced the bearing shell incorrectly. This went unnoticed in all subsequent services and, over the next year and a half, slowly came loose, until finally causing the catastrophic failure that ultimately claimed Mr. Whitaker's life.
"It would be very complicated to try to fix this one without time travel." Marty says slowly, looking at Doc. Something akin to hope blooms in his chest. "Now that we know what happened... we could go and stop that. So he lives."
"That could cause significantly more problems than it solves, Marty."
"He... but..." Marty's shoulders hunch. "I kinda feel responsible for his death. He wasn't nice, but he didn't deserve to die. Call me selfish, but that feels really crappy."
"..." Doc studies Marty for a second, taking in the posture and the weight on the teen's shoulders. Then, he smiles, something halfway between reassuring and proud. "We'll fix it, then. What's the point of having a time machine if we don't?"
.
The fix isn't simple, until it is. At first, Marty wants to prevent the car from failing altogether, which would require getting into Western Auto and convincing the mechanic working on Ralph's car that he needs to reinstall the bearing shell. Difficult, sure, because you can't exactly say "in about a year and a half from now, this bearing shell is going to come loose and cause a thrown rod that just so happens to puncture a brake line and cause some unrelated guy's death", but not impossible. Marty could probably manage, if he figured out exactly how the bearing shell was installed wrong. And managed to get into Western Auto to begin with. And avoided either of his past selves who would be present at this time.
Another option would be to destroy Ralph's car in some other way long before it gets the chance to fail and kill Mr. Whitaker. Marty doesn't like that one because as much as he'll happily break the rules of physics, he doesn't really want to commit an actual crime. Even if it would save someone's life.
There's a lot they could do. But Doc mentions that no matter what, this kind of meddling will introduce new variables, new things that could go wrong, new ripples and outcomes and possible tears in the fabric.
In the light of all this complication, the answer is laughably simple:
Stop worrying about the car. Just make sure Mr. Whitaker doesn't get hit.
After all, the car does eventually slow after it mows Mr. Whitaker down; he was on a straight, flat road, and the ensuing crash after the vehicular manslaughter was not at a speed that seriously hurt Ralph. They don't need to prevent the crash; they just need to stop Mr. Whitaker from being part of it.
They go back to 1957, and instead of a long-winded roundabout scheme involving Ralph Williams' car and possible crime, Marty simply stalks Mr. Whitaker down. He knows the time and place of the man's death, it was written in the police report.
He grabs Mr. Whitaker by the fabric of his shirt a solid five seconds before he needs to, yanking the man backwards and away from the road. He turns to yell at Marty, face already blooming red and instantly making Marty feel seven again, before Ralph's car barrels down the road where Mr. Whitaker would have been crossing had Marty not intervened. Mr. Whitaker's head whips to the car- continuing down the road, only just starting to slow as it gets smaller and smaller in their vision- and then his eyes slide to the spot in the road that would have become his deathbed.
While Mr. Whitaker is busy contemplating his own mortality, Marty takes the opportunity to make like a tree and get the hell out of there.
Later, Marty will consider what they just did.
"Hey, Doc?"
"Yes, Marty?"
"If Mr. Whitaker never died, then how did we know to save him?"
Doc stops what he's doing for a second, stilled. Then, he resumes.
"One paradox at a time, future boy."
Marty accepts the answer with a nod and pushes down the swirling, unresolved guilt of undoing a death that both had to have happened and never did (and was completely and utterly his fault).
Mr. Whitaker is alive and the town was never in a panic, leaving only Marty and Doc with the memories like the afterimages of a nightmare that still flash in your mind even after you wake up.
Marty thinks they're done, but of course they're not. They probably never will be. That thought doesn't upset him as much as it probably should. After all, he likes fixing things.
There's another headline, buried in the news.
"COMMUNITY SERVICE INTERRUPTED BY INTANGIBLE CANDY WRAPPER"
He knew that other headline was important, dammit!
Marty digs out the old paper to show alongside the new one to Doc. It's the translucency of the candy that really sells it, the way that the kid holds it like it isn't solid at all. Just like the box of Sophie Mae peanut brittle. Except he couldn't touch that box. Probably because he would never have touched it; it was still real, still held up by the shelf, still had resistance against the other boxes of food pressed against it. This kid was probably carrying around candies all the time, so had to be able to hold it.
At least, that's Marty's theory.
Doc corroborates it.
So now the discussion is back to what it usually is. Why, how, when, what?
The picture on the new headline is clearer, and Marty knows exactly where the font and wrapper are from.
"There's a sweet shop in the alley, the one that goes nowhere and is tucked just a little ways away from the town square? It's near the courthouse. Mostly homemade stuff. When I was a kid, if I ever found change out on the street while I was skating, that's where I went."
"Are you referring to the alley they built over in '72? They had a rather large town meeting about possibly utilizing the space for the shops that were on the street."
"...What?! It's gone?"
"It was never there, Marty. Which... makes doing this difficult. But we can't even guarantee that preventing the town from building over the alley would ensure the shop's existence."
"...We might not need to go back at all." Marty offers, nose scrunched up in thought. "Mr. Hadley owned it. We could talk to him, it seemed like he had a real passion for it. I can't believe it's gone."
"Mr. Hadley, as in the owner of the cafe?"
"He owns a cafe? Well, then, what if we just... convinced him to start making candy alongside his other business?"
"That could definitely work."
The conversation with Mr. Hadley goes very well.
Months down the line, after Mr. Hadley starts selling homemade sweets in a small corner of his cafe, Marty will see that very same mother exasperated at her son, whose candy is now real and tangible and causing dozens of cavities.
He and Jennifer are lying on the back of his truck, parked in her driveway and pretending the bright winter sun isn't directly in their eyes. The conversation is casual, meaningless to anyone other than the two of them. When Marty goes into detail about what he and Doc have been up to, Jennifer says they're "like the Ghostbusters but for time".
"Wha-at?" he bursts out laughing.
"I'm serious! If there's something strange, in your neighborhood," Jennifer sings, poking Marty's side, "who you gonna call? Because I know who I'm calling."
Marty gladly accepts the levity this take adds to his and Doc's unusual adventure.
"The Ghostbusters aren't normally responsible for the ghosts, though." he points out. And then that sinking feeling is back. Sometimes, he gets so lost in the whirlwind of science and awe and impossibility when he's with Doc that he doesn't have the time or brainspace to think about the consequences about their actions. But the consequences are the things that last, the debris left behind when the tornado finally dissipates. And Marty thinks he's pretty good at taking it in stride, but sometimes when things get slow like this, it gets hard, like trying to keep upright on a bike when you're barely moving.
Jennifer laughs lightly, and then stops when she sees Marty's expression falter. "Marty?"
He sighs. "Sorry. Just... thinking about Mr. Whitaker, is all."
She understands immediately. "Mr. Whitaker is alive and yelled at me a couple years ago because I didn't know that Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable went in the references section."
Marty sits up. "It says 'Dictionary' in the name!"
"I know! The content just doesn't-" she shakes her head. "That's not the point, Marty! It's okay. You fixed it. He's alive. He never died. He retired from whatever job he had and basically lives in the library now."
"What if there's someone else that happened to and I don't know?"
"Then they'll come back and the town will panic and you and Doctor Brown will Ghostbust them and fix it, like you always do."
"... I guess." Marty lowers himself back down to lie next to her.
The sun is warm and a nice break from the previous weather but Marty thinks he'd like the near-constant overcast back. It's winter. Shouldn't the sun be further away from the Earth? Isn't that how it works? How is it so bright?
He turns his head to look at Jennifer, who is staring at him with a look in her eyes that, if he didn't know any better, he'd describe as wonder. The light frames her face in a way that steals his breath away. Maybe the sun can stay.
"Sometimes, I think you worry too much." Jennifer murmurs like it's a secret.
"Is that a bad thing?"
"No," she amends, flashing him a smile that could cure him of any ailment, "it's why I love you."