“Don’t tell me!” He threw back his head and thought for another moment. “Peanut brittle!” he fairly screamed. ‘That’s it! You’re selling peanut brittle for the Boy Scouts! How silly of me not to have said that right away!”
“No.”
Doc Brown was crestfallen. Marty wished he could have given him better news, but lying wouldn’t have been any benefit to his friend.
“Are you here because you want to use the bathroom?” Brown asked, considerably subdued.
“No, Doc Brown,” Marty answered. “But I am here for a reason that’s very important to both of us.”
“What are you selling?” Doc asked. “That’s how all sales pitches begin.”
“I’m not selling anything. Listen: I’m from the future. I came here in a time machine you invented—and now I need you to help me get back.”
“Back to where?”
“Nineteen eighty-five.”
“Incredible,” Doc Brown breathed. “My God, do you know what this means?”
He paused dramatically, then began to remove the complicated contraption from his head.
“What does it mean?”
“It means this damned thing doesn’t work at all!” he yelled, throwing the machine to the floor. It broke into several pieces, glass and plastic flying everywhere. “Six months labor for nothing! Where did I go wrong?”
“Please, Doc,” Marty urged. “Forget the mind-reading machine. You’re never gonna make it work.”
“Who says so?”
“I do. Listen: Your big breakthrough will come with the time travel machine. Instead of fooling around with that other stuff, you should figure out how the time machine works…Because…I need your help. You left me stuck here in 1955.”
Doc Brown knit his brow and rubbed a bandage on his head.
“What are you talking about, time machine?” he demanded. “I haven’t invented any time machine.”
“No, but you will,” Marty said. “And I’ll be the first one to use it, except for your dog Einstein.”
“My dog’s name is Copernicus.”
Marty nodded. “That figures. You name your pets after great scientists. So isn’t it logical that some future dog will be named Einstein?’
“Makes some sort of sense,” Brown admitted. “But how do I know you’re from the future? There’s a lot of folks around here who think I’m a crank and a pest. Maybe they sent you as some kind of twisted joke.”
“I’m not a joke,” Marty replied. “And I can prove it to you.”
He reached into his pocket and withdrew his wallet.
“Look,” he said. “Here’s my driver’s license. Examine the dates on it.”
He handed the card to Doc Brown.
“See that expiration date?” Marty said. “Nineteen eighty-seven. See my date of birth? Nineteen sixty-eight.”
“You mean you haven’t even been born yet?” Doc Brown asked. He turned the license over and over. “It sure looks authentic, all right,” he muttered.
“It is authentic.”
Searching deeper into his wallet, Marty withdrew a library card with a 1986 expiration date, a new piece of money, and a family picture. One by one he held them up for Doc Brown’s examination.