This is a story I did not want to write; it was a story I had to write. Although I will not tell the specifics here -- read the story, and you'll find them -- it was an idea that haunted me from the first moment I conceived it, nearly eight years before it was written. And I do mean literally haunted. It popped into my dreams -- as nightmares, sometimes, the closer I came to actually writing the thing. It's completely unlike the rest of my stories in this genre because of its tone, which is quite dark. I don't believe this is unsuitable; the movies certainly had their black moments: Doc lying dead on the shopping mall pavement, Marty kneeling at his father's grave, chalk outlines at police investigation sites of murders in Marty's old neighborhood in Hell Valley, Marty's ruined future, Doc's tombstone....

The difference here is that what comedy this story has takes the form of much-needed comic relief, not center stage in the action. But that's often the way of it with written rather than filmed stories. It's hard to write comedy as fiction, because so much of it lies not in the words but in the visual performance of the actors, their expressions, nuances, timing, etcetera. Someone recently asked me to describe what kind of story this was; the best I could narrow it down to is a drama/tragedy horror/romance (a friend said parts of it remind her of some of the old Gothic horror-romances, ala Edgar Allen Poe). To me, this represented the absolute worst case scenario for the future of these characters. Life isn't always kind, though we may want it to be, and sometimes, our most meaningful lessons are learned through the School of Hard Knocks. What's important about a story like this is not all the trouble and pain the  characters get dragged through; it's what they learn and how they grow from the experiences, which can be more valuable than all the formal education and diplomas in the world.

Anyway, this is the final part of the Other Realities Trilogy (which is sort of a Tetralogy, actually, since parts of No Time Like the Present do play a part here, most specifically the character of Chris). This is not the end of my BTTF stories, nor will its end set the date for the present of the stories yet to come. The next, in fact, should be set in 2004 and... other dates in the more distant past. I'm leaving that as a surprise. I don't believe there are any significant in-jokes in this story; the only one I can recall is the mention of a person by the name of Alan Parrish as the inventor of hovercars. It's mighty obscure. Other than that.... I cannot take full responsibility for this story, other than having written it. Why that is so will be explained later. I don't know that I would ever have chosen to have written a story this grim in this genre if not for those reasons. But here it is, and I hope you can find its greater meaning, even in the dark. Just remember: There is light at the end of the tunnel.