Back To The Future || Part Zero

Chapter One

The credits began to roll across the TV screen for the movie Close Encounters as the 3/4-inch cassette finished copying over to Beta and VHS. Seventeen-year-old Marty McFly looked up from his issue of Rolling Stone, where he was checking out an ad for a guitar amp. Maybe after a few more pirated tapes he would have enough money to buy it.

Marty set the magazine down and stopped the tapes, rewound them, then took a pen and carefully wrote, "Close Encounters, Original Edition" on the labels. He placed the master tape in a drawer. Other titles of bootlegged videotapes jumped out at him as he did so: The Empire Strikes Back, Stir Crazy, and Superman II.

Marty turned off the video equipment and picked up his schoolbooks, along with the other two videocassettes. He walked into another room connected to the video lab. This one was much larger, filled with workbenches covered with electronics, chemical
equipment, and dust.

"Professor Brown!" Marty called to the older man at the other end of the lab. "It's almost eight thirty -- I'm outta here!"

"Shhhhhhhh!" Professor Emmett Brown hissed, his white head bent over what looked to Marty like a solar cell. At 65, he was considered the town eccentric, an inventor who's inventions didn't always work the way they were supposed to. Professor Brown was tall -- though his posture had grown more hunched with age -- and had a mane of shaggy white hair that was almost always unruly and uncombed. At the moment, the Professor was trying to get the cell positioned under the skylight in a certain way, maybe to catch the sunlight. Marty stepped closer to him, curious on what the project was.

Whatever he was working on it looked old, maybe 30 years. The Professor poured some kind of chemical solution into a compartment in the cell and plugged a patch cord from it into a Voltmeter. A light bulb on the panel glowed dimly and the meter needles moved slightly.

"Blast it!" Professor Brown exclaimed. "Twenty four measly volts!" He threw a flask across the room in his frustration, shattering it against the wall. Marty jumped back, startled.

"The power of a million hydrogen bombs," the Professor ranted, pointing to the sun that shone down though the skylight, then to his experiment, "and we get twenty four measly volts. It's not fair! I've been working on this power converter since 1949, and you'd think
in all that time, I could find the right chemicals that would efficiently convert radiation into electric energy! But no! Thirty three years of dedication and research, and all I've
got to show for it is a bootleg video operation!"

"That reminds me," Marty began, "if we could scrape up enough for a 35 film chain, I've got a connection with a projectionist in a first run house -- we could be sellin' new movies on the street before they're even in the theater."

"A 35mm film chain...." Professor Brown mused. "I'll see what I can do...." He turned his attention back to his power converter.

Marty crossed the room, heading for the front door. He paused at the door next to it, the one with five locks on it, and tried the knob. It was still locked. Big surprise, he thought with some disappointment.

"Won't give up, will you, Marty?" Professor Brown asked without turning around.

Marty grinned. "One of these days you're gonna leave this door open and I'll find out what's in there."

Professor Brown glanced at him. "Did you ever consider that some doors are locked for a reason?"

"Nope. The way I figure it, doors are made to be opened. See you after school."

"Oh -- Marty -- what time did you say it was?" Professor Brown asked.

Marty stopped in his tracks, a few steps away from the stairs.