Doc and the Steam Train

Idris felt horrible. Here she was, with a firebox full of something called "Prest-O-Logs," running at top speed, and going nowhere fast.

"Just a little more!" Called the scientist, "I've got One point eleven megawatts!"

"I'm fit to BURST!" cried Idris, "I've got to stop!" And with that, her safety valve sprayed open and a plume of superheated steam flooded the workshop. Slowly her boiler pressure went down, and her wheels turned slower and slower, until they stopped.

"Great Scott!" Said the scientist, "One point twenty one megawatts!"

"What's Scotland have to do with anything?"

"No no, Idris, don't worry about that."

Idris looked at the scientist, then down at the infernal contraption she was sitting on top of. Each of her wheels were sandwiched between another set of wheels that spun backwards, generating an awful fuss of sparks and zaps when she tried to run. And it didn't let her even move forward!

"Can I go now, sir?" Asked Idris.

"No, Idris, I've got something BIG planned for you."

"It had better not be a freight train," said Idris.

"No no, nothing like that. You're going to be my new time machine!"

"Time... machine?" Asked Idris, "you... you want me to be a clock?"

"Not at all Idris," said Doctor Brown. "When I invented the time machine the first time, it had to be put into a ca--horseless carriage, and it needed one point twenty one jiga--err, gigawatts to work. Now it only ne--"

"What on Earth is a jiga-err-gigawatt?" Idris asked.

"A watt is a unit of power, equal to one joule per second. A joule is a fairly small amount of energy, oh, about enough to raise the temperature of a gram of water by one degree."

"English, doctor!" Demanded Idris.

"A watt is not a lot of power at all. A man working hard can put out about 150 watts, and a horse can put out more like seven hundred forty. But you, my dear locomotive, you can output over one MEGAWATT."

"And what then is a Megawatt?"

"A million watts. That's, err, a thousand thousand watts."

"Then what is a jiga-err-gigawatt?"

"A gigawatt," the doctor said, stressing the first syllable, "is one billion watts. A thousand megawatts. In order to run my first Time Machine on steam power, I'd have needed, a thousand of you to get the job done."

"You say you put this power-hungry clock thing in a horseless carriage but it needed a thousand engines to power it?"

"In the future, we have access," Doc paused, considering that he wasn't really supposed to have access, "to fuels with energy densities far in excess of what you have today. The whole powerplant fit snugly into a space the size of a large briefcase."

"Then how do you expect me to be your clock thing? And what do you mean by the future?"

"It's not a clock, Idris, it's... well I'll explain that later. I've recently come up with a breakthrough! An electromechanical Flux Capacitor--the most important instrument of a Time Machine--could potentially get away with using only one hundredth of the power. I've spent the last few years reducing that further by optimizing the device. That became a lot easier when I took a break and built the steam-powered computer--but I digress. With some modifications, I'm sure you can get up to the necessary eighty eight miles per hour while still providing enough power to drive a Flux Capacitor."

"EIGHTY EIGHT MILES PER HOUR? Why in the name of Rogers would you ever need to go so fast!"

"That's the Earth's temporal esca--" Just then, a whistle blew, and doc had to tend to his refrigerator. He came back a few minutes later. Idris was frowning, and looked scared.

"Are you alright, Idris?" Doc asked. Idris looked up and at the scientist.

"Doctor. What is this 'time machine' thing anyway?"

"Alright," muttered Doc, "but if I tell you this you must promise not to tell anyone else, all right?"

"I promise."

"A Time Machine is a machine capable of travel through time the way a locomotive or carriage might travel through space. You disappear from one time," He said, Idris' eyes widening and her frown deepening, "and you instantly appear in another time." Idris' frown diminished slightly, relieved. She remained there in reflection for a few moments.

"Why can't I tell anyone about that?"

"If anyone heard that, they'd think I'm a crazy old man. And if they BELIEVED it... well... no person should ever know to much about their own future."

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"Doctor Brown," Idris said one day, when Doc entered the workshop, "what ever happened to your horseless carriage?"

Doc set the drawings and notebook down on the table and spread them out.

"It took my friend Clint Eastwood back to the future," Doc said.

"So, where is it?" Idris said.

"That's a more complicated question than you think. The time car stopped existing for, if all went to plan, one hundred years. In eighty nine years it will re-appear on the viaduct over Eastwood ravine."

"So it's just... gone? It doesn't exist? Isn't that worse than being scrapped?" Idris said.

"You wouldn't even notice it. You skip over that time so it feels like no time had passed at all," Doc said, "and you are guaranteed to come back."

"So the carriage just doesn't exist..." Idris said.

"Well, there's actually another. I arrived in 1885 using the time car. But he was badly injured by a lightning strike, so I had to bury him. Clint and I recovered him in 1955, which was 41 years ago for me."

"You're not making any sense," Idris said, "I don't understand. Do you mean 1855? I don't get it."

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Delorean looked up toward the sound of a pickaxe breaking the wall.

"Is it 1955 already?" He thought.

The lantern shone through. "Doc?" he said, "where's Marty?"

"More like, 'when,'" Doc said.

Delorean looked closely and realized that this wasn't the 40 year old Doc he was expecting.

"What year is it?" Delorean said.

"Eighteen ninety one."

"Why have you come back so soon? And I was resting so well, too."

"I need to examine your flux capacitor."

"Do you think it's alright?" Delorean said.

"I can't tell you," Doc said.

"I understand," Delorean said.

Doc opened the creaky gull-wing door and shone his oil lamp on the flux capacitor. He set it down on the center of the floor and took out some electrical probes attached to large batteries. He opened the flux capacitor's case and started poking it. The three vanes lit up intermittenly with each pulse, and Doc occasionally retreated to scribble some notes. When he was finished, he closed the door and patted the roof.

"I don't expect to be back," Doc said.

"I know," Delorean said. "You and Marty were already here, just a moment ago. I felt them."

Doc didn't understand, he just nodded, and left to rebuild the seal to the cave.

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