Beyond the Stars

A Moment In Time

Character placement round with an alternate reality theme.

My characters are Jessica Rabbit and Marty McFly the quotes are bold for ease of finding.

Word count : 1297

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A Moment in Time

No. I'm not going back, Jess, it almost killed me last time."

Jess shot me a look that spoke volumes of her exasperation. She didn't understand what it was like to be split into a million tiny pieces and shot, at the speed of light, down a tube no wider than golf ball.

"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. We ran out of options when Leon stole the transformer."

"Can't they make another one?"

"If only it were that simple, Marty," she replied as she rose from her seat behind the desk with the grace of a ballerina in the midst of a premiere performance.

With her hips swaying in seductive rhythm with the ticking of the cuckoo clock on the wall, she made her way to the filing cabinet. The split in her scarlet gown gave a flash of her stocking-clad thigh with each step she took. My heart rate increased when she stopped and bent at the waist. I tried, I swear I tried to look away, but no man with a pulse can resist watching her every movement.

After removing a folder from the bottom drawer she straightened, pirouetted on her six-inch stiletto heels and sashayed, with one hand casually stroking her hip, to stand at my side. Her perfume was so intoxicating I had a hard time concentrating on what she said.

She held the folder against her chest, drawing my attention to her ample cleavage. "Well?"

My eyes reluctantly left the mounds of sumptuous flesh, raising to meet her frown. "I... " My mind was blank. I'd no idea what she said. "Um yes?"

"Excellent, I'm so glad you agree with me. Meet me down at the station, we'll leave as soon as I finish up in here."

The officer who waited outside her door, escorted me to a capsule parked in the reserved spot and held the door so I could crawl in. I'd barely managed to lie down when Jess came haring through the double doors of the station and got in with me. She nodded for the officer to close the lid.

She was too close. I can't think straight when she's in the same room nevermind confined to an airtight capsule that was a metre in diameter and two metres long. When she snuggled against my shoulder, my brain turned to mush.

I didn't notice the whirr as the transporter powered up. Nor did I notice any difference when our atoms split into a gazillion minuscule particles. I remained blissfully unaware of everything and anything but Jess' hair in my face.

Consciousness returned with a jolt as the latch disengaged automatically. I slid out of the capsule, landing face-first in putrid water.

"Jess, we have a problem," I sputtered, after wiping the filth from my eyes. There was enough of a glow emitting from the pod to light up our immediate surroundings. "We've landed in my 2085 not your 1985."

She slid from the pod and stood behind me. "It's pitch dark, how can you tell where we are nevermind when?"

I pointed at the evidence, the smoking wreck that was once my DeLorean in a mangled heap just inside the tunnel entrance. "I've been here before. Trust me, we need to get out of sight before the second, or is it third? me arrives with the Seekers in hot pursuit. They'll spot our heat signatures a mile away, or mine at any rate, seeing as you don't have one."

"Marty, they didn't have Seekers in 2085."

"Just move, I'll explain on the way."

With only one place we could safely hide, we walked briskly - me taking two paces for every one of Jess'.

"It was my fault they came here, my fault that Doc started working on the new time machine that not only travels through time but to other dimensions. If we interfere now, he won't do that and the future will change in both our worlds," I concluded the brief outline of my involvement in the invasion of the Seekers in this time period, and why we shouldn't get involved.

Doc's house was where it was supposed to be, the refurbished ticket office at the top of the old station steps, and I breathed a sigh of relief when he opened the door.

One of his eyebrows shot up disapprovingly at seeing me. "Marty! What are you doing here? I just sent you back to the future, again."

"For all I know you did send me back to the future, but I'm back. I'm back from the future. And we have a problem."

His other eyebrow shot up when Jess stepped inside behind me.

"I'll make the introductions shortly," I said as I pushed Doc aside and dragged Jess into the cupboard under the stairs. "Any second now, I'm - the other me - is going to burst through the door with Seekers close behind him, they look like fireflies trapped in glass orbs. Just..."

Stopping mid sentance, I barely managed to get the cupboard door closed before the front door bounced off the wall and the other me tumbled in, out of breath.

A lot of crashing and banging later, Doc opened the door. "You're gone, you can come out now."

He had one of the Seekers in his hand. Although it wasn't activated, I knew how quickly they could repair themselves. I snatched it from his hand and smashed it off the wall, Jess crushed the internal components beneath the heel of her stiletto.

Once the introductions were made I filled Doc in on why I thought we'd arrived back in 2085. He agreed and set about making a crude model of the transformer we needed to fix the shields. It didn't take him as long as I expected. He came with us back to the old tube station where our pod was waiting and spent a great deal of time going over the power generator and timer.

Before Jess or I could get back into the pod, one of Seekers zoomed down the steps and zipped back and forth across the platform. I had to distract it from Doc or everything, past, present or future, would alter. The pod would cease to exist, as would Jess and even my new world, if anything happened to him.

I sprinted as fast as my eighteen-year-old legs would carry me, past the Seeker and into the darkness of the tunnel. After several sweeping bends, I spotted a gap in the tunnel wall, a space big enough for me to duck out of the Seeker's sensor range.

The Seeker hovered past the gap. Leaping from my hiding spot with the two half-bricks I found on the floor clutched firmly in my grasp, I brought the bricks together, smashing the orb between them.

"Where's Doc?" I asked Jess, when I made it back to the pod. "Did he go home already? I thought he might have wanted to see this working."

"No he didn't. I hit him on the head with a frying pan and put him in the trunk so he wouldn't get hurt."

"Dare I ask where you got a frying pan?"

She produced a clutch bag from a concealed pocket in her dress, withdrawing the frying pan from it's considerable depths. "I always keep one handy in case of emergencies."

With the main crisis diverted, we released a dizzy Doc from the trunk of the DeLorean and climbed into the pod. He handed Jess the transformer, which she placed into her clutch bag.

Once again overwhelmed by the scent of her when the door closed, I let my mind drift to pleasant dreams of alternate worlds where Jessica Rabbit would be known as Jess McFly. Perhaps someday I'd find my one, but until then ...