Chapter 114: Back, to the Future

Friday, July 5, 1985

Today’s plan was a bit different, though we only figured that out over breakfast.

It had become a pattern to visit Andrew and Millie every year. That had not been the case in my first life. Oh, I’d been there, but only twice, and not in back-to-back years.

This year was no different. We were heading up there, but only for one night. We’d be back in Chicago tomorrow night and in Houston on Sunday.

Today, though, we had another destination. Dad wanted to travel via Milwaukee. His goal: a movie theater showing ‘Back To The Future’.

Everyone else was quite happy with that plan, including me. I was more than fine with seeing it twice in the same week. Seeing it with Jas would be worth it by itself, but it was a great movie, too, and didn’t depend on surprises to work.

That said, I resolutely refused to tell anyone anything about what happened in the movie. Angie knew, certainly, but she was perfectly good at pretending she didn’t.

We were on the road by ten, and in our seats at the movie theater by one, popcorn and sodas at the ready.

I didn’t have to wonder if the others enjoyed it. It was perfectly obvious they were having a blast.

We probably confused some of the other theater-goers, though. When Jess appeared on the screen, three girls squealed and Mom and Dad both clapped. I hoped it would be a one-time thing. If and when she starred in some other movie, we’d have to restrain ourselves, friend or not.

That, or make it a Jessica Lively Fan Club showing, perhaps. If and when there was such a thing, of course.

We stopped for burgers at a restaurant near the movie once it was over. And, naturally, discussed it.

I’d read Mom and Dad right. Mom loved the 50s scenes, the romance, and the family becoming better. Dad loved the humor and the action, but loved the ending, too.

Mom said, “That dance looked just like ones I went to! Except for the band. You would never have seen a band like that in Wisconsin in the 1950s! Maybe in California, I don’t know, but not in Wisconsin! Much too early for that! That’s probably a bad thing, but it’s true.”

Dad nodded.

“Actually, you might have in parts of Chicago, I think. Not all of it, but parts of it.”

Mom said, “That makes sense. In any case, what a dress Jessica had! Gorgeous! You said that’s another Grace Kelly dress?”

I said, “Yes. I think she wore it in a promotional picture for ‘Rear Window’, if I remember correctly. Deborah, the costume designer, copied it for her.”

Mom said, “You know, thinking about it, that’s how her character comes off in the movie. I mean, it’s a brief scene, but she felt like a high school student trying to look like Grace Kelly. Which is completely right! She stands out by fitting in. You don’t doubt her as a high school student at a dance.”

“That’s how I saw it,” Angie said.

“I’ll have to call her tomorrow,” Jas said. “I want to give Andrew and Millie all of our attention tonight.”

“We’ll all want to talk!” Paige said. “I agree. The hotel in Skokie will be better for phone calls.”

Dad and Mom exchanged a look. I was pretty sure I knew what it meant. Dad had expected us to enjoy the place they lived. We did, too. It was gorgeous. He hadn’t really expected us to bond with his friend, though, nor with his friend’s elderly mother, yet we had. And, not only had we bonded with them, our girlfriends had also bonded with them.

It was a big deal to Dad. He had missed Andrew — that was obvious. His family wanting to visit them year after year mattered to him. We would have been happy to visit simply for Dad’s sake, but it had become important to us as well.

Paige nailed the point I’d made during the drive.

“The ending is ... actually, it’s kinda sad,” she said.

“I kinda see that,” Angie said. “Still. Explain.”

“Think about it,” she said. “Marty’s back, but he doesn’t know his parents anymore. Nor his brother or sister. The people he used to know are gone. The new people are better, so maybe that’s fine, but the old ones are gone. And, now, he’s gotta worry he’ll mention something these new people never did. I mean, what, these successful, confident parents took the same vacations to the same places his loser parents took? When he gets to school, how’s Mr. Strickland going to treat him? His dad’s not a ‘loser’ anymore, after all. Never was!”

“I got some of that,” Angie said. “I hadn’t gotten up to Strickland yet, though.”

“This is what you two did,” Jas said, “Except the people closest to you were either so close it didn’t matter or so different it also didn’t matter.”

“With exceptions,” Angie said. “Like, I remember all this stuff I did in Chicago growing up which I never did. But, yeah, mostly the people are the same.”

“Darla Winton’s my big exception,” I said. “Dave Mayrink, too, but I never had to see him day to day.”

“And they’re not your parents,” Jas said.

“I learned to be really vague,” I said. “Who knows if there’s another thing like my elementary school concussion or my appendectomy that never happened? I’ve gone through the family albums and all, but still, maybe stuff happened I don’t remember.”

“Most of my ‘stuff’ was with Daddy Frank or with Sharon,” Angie said. “Neither of them are talking. Makes it easy.”

“I mean, it really is a happy ending, too,” Paige said. “Don’t get me wrong! It’s almost like you guys. Marty’s world sucked. There was nothing from it he’d want to keep except his girlfriend and his friendship with Doc Brown. He gets to keep those, so it’s great. Except, now he’s gotta figure out what to say. If he says the wrong thing, people will think he’s a mental case. Like, he got away with the truck, but that’s one time. If he does that over and over...”

“Yeah,” Angie said. “It’d be a freak-out.”

Jas made a ‘mmm’ sound.

“Whatcha thinking?” Paige said.

“What are the odds? Jess gets her first movie role in a movie that sorta, kinda parallels Steve and Angie’s experience, just a bit. And — as far as we know — she’s literally the only person in Hollywood who would be able to appreciate the situation this way.”

Angie chuckled softly, and said, “‘All is for the best... ‘“

We all said together, “‘ ... in the best of all possible worlds.’”

Our visit was much like other ones. The only difference, really, was that we’d finally hit the limits of the cabin. They’d compensated, though, putting a queen-sized air mattress out there. Angie and Paige decided Jas and I should use it since it had a bit more space than the bed Angie and I used to share. Since no one was going to sleep by themselves, the other small bed was useless.

Dad and Andrew started telling Michigan stories as if no time at all had passed. This time, though, they were interrupted more frequently by questions about our first year at college, with both Dad and Andrew comparing our experiences to theirs. Some were the same (football games in a giant stadium, road trips to other games, movies on campus) and some were different (concerts, conventions, vacations, and so forth).

Andrew and Millie both enjoyed seeing pictures of the house and hearing how Cammie was doing. They’d read about PROMISE and were hardly surprised to find Angie and Paige involved with it.

All of us except Dad and Andrew spent a while talking recipes with Millie. Even this many years after I’d started taking an interest, I think Mom was still amused about her son talking about cooking right along with the girls. Jas, Angie, and Paige made it clear I was a regular part of the cooking, though.

Dad and Andrew, meanwhile, agreed: if they’d had to cook in college, most meals would have consisted of burnt toast. That is, if they hadn’t set the dorm on fire.

Dad and Andrew, as always, stayed up after the rest of us went to bed. Dad promised he wouldn’t stay up as late as in some years since we had to drive to Chicago tomorrow.

When Millie went to bed, Mom did, too, so we went back to the cabin. It was too dark in the woods to do anything but go back to the cabin or stay in the house, and Dad and Andrew deserved their ‘guy’s night.’

We played strip poker for a while. Jas and I insisted Angie and Paige not hold back, but I think they did. Some. We still wound up naked well before either of them did, and the last few pieces of clothing were hard-fought. Angie wound up the victor, by her panties, but she tossed them at Paige right after winning.

That was it, though. We went to bed (naked) shortly thereafter, and thence to sleep. We had no less privacy than we’d had in the RV, but we were more tired than anything else.

Saturday, July 6, 1985

Dad seemed pretty much fine in the morning. He said they’d gone to bed just before midnight, which was incredibly late for him but still early by ‘Dad and Andrew’ standards.

Millie’s breakfast was wonderful, and we were sorry to miss lunch, but we hit the road around eleven.

The drive was mostly uneventful until Jas said, “About this disaster...”

“Yes?” I said.

“Paige and I were talking...”

“We do that!” Paige said.

“We do!” Jas said. “Anyway ... the stakes on this are ... well, they’re high. We’re prepared to accept that, but we felt like we want to understand what we’re risking and why.”

Angie nodded, and said, “So, you want details?”

“Some,” Paige said. “As much as you feel comfortable with. But ... well. The thing is, right now we’re deciding based on trust and emotions. Which is fine...”

“It is,” Jas said.

“ ... but ... it’s ... we feel like we made the earlier decision correctly in our ‘representatives of this universe’ role. On the other hand, we also have a role of sometimes saying the risks are too high. We know you’d be very unhappy if whatever it is happens, but...”

“But we’ll be very unhappy if anything happens to you!” Jas said.

“Very, very, very unhappy!” Paige said. “In order to make an informed decision on that, we need more detail.”

Jas said, ““We’re certain you’re trying to minimize risk and would have told us if you thought it was high, but we can’t really evaluate the risk without more details. Probably a lot of details.”

“Do you want me to take it, or do you want to, Steve?” Angie said.

“I’ll take it. I think ... well, it’s best to just explain.”

Jas and Paige both nodded.

“So ... next January, on a very cold morning — very cold for Florida — NASA will launch the space shuttle Challenger, complete with the first Teacher in Space and a full crew. Something — I’m not sure if the details help — goes very, very wrong. There’s a big explosion, the astronauts are all killed, and we don’t launch shuttles for quite a long time while they investigate the accident.”

“And we pretty much fully understand why it failed,” Angie said. “Well, I didn’t, but Steve and Laura did, so now I do, too.”

“How do we stop it?” Jas said. “I know you said contacting the right person, but that sounds risky.”

“The thing is,” I said, “The whole thing comes down to one decision. On that cold morning, they could decide to wait one day for things to warm up. There were already voices inside NASA wanting a one-day delay due to factors outside of what actually caused the disaster. So, put the information in the hands of the right guy, and hope he decides on a one-day delay.”

“And you can do this without getting caught?” Paige said.

“So ... there’s a bit of guesswork...” I said.

“Uh-oh,” Jas and Paige both said.

“It’s pretty educated guesswork,” I said.

“Tell!” Paige said.

“I strongly believe NASA’s phone system isn’t set up to trace phone calls. Caller ID is a factor, perhaps, but we’ll call from a payphone. We need to make sure there are no security cameras near that phone. A mall seems likely. I’ll be talking to one guy. If he sounds in the least ... well... ‘squirrelly’ ... then I just hang up and we leave the area at a normal walking pace. I mean, put yourself in his position. Suppose he instantly decides he wants to involve the authorities. He has to somehow signal them, tell them he wants the caller on the other end arrested, then they have to call Houston, get mall security on the phone, and get them to go to the right payphone, all without in any way letting me guess he’s done that.”

“That ... seems reasonable,” Paige said.

“It does,” Jas said.

“I also very much doubt they’re set up to record calls. But, even if they did, they have to figure out who might have called them using, at best, security camera footage that won’t show the phones or any path I take to reach them, because we won’t use phones like that.”

“Also reasonable,” Jas said.

“Now, putting myself in the mind of the guy I’m calling, I’m going to get one of two reactions. He’ll either hang up or he’ll listen. What’s his motivation for starting a major federal investigation into the weirdo crank caller he got, if he hangs up? On the other hand, if he bites at all, does he want his reputation at NASA to be ‘the gullible guy who believed the wacko crank caller?’ That goes up, not down, if he delays the launch. His professional reputation is probably shot if anyone thinks he took action on a weird tip from some guy claiming to know the future.”

“I ... think you’ve covered your bases,” Jas said.

“Me, too,” Paige said.

“We’ll talk, though. Not now, but in the next day or so. It’s ... you’ve covered your bases, but...”

“But if we’re missing something, our lives are pretty much fucked,” Paige said.

“That’s right,” I said.

“Definitely,” Angie said.

“We’re sorry for going behind your backs,” Paige said.

“Don’t be!” I said.

“Please!” Angie said. “We want you to. Our future is your future. If you’re not comfortable, we let whatever happens happen.”

“Or we call in bomb threats!” Paige said.

“Or that,” Jas said, giggling. “Though it seems to me the same objections apply to bomb threats.”