Strap in Reader, we’re going for a ride!

Due to Doc and Marty’s traveling back to 1955 and altering certain events, Marty found himself back in the future in an altered 1985. Let’s consider this altered future as a new dimension, or universe. This alternate dimension always existed and always will, even after Marty and Doc go back to 1955 to fix their mistake, but it feels new to us and it feels new to Marty because we didn’t know it existed before Marty found it. That universe is a constant. However, the fact that Marty found himself there is our variable.

He traveled to the alternate 1985 because of his actions in 1955, which plays as a junction and a branching point for many possible futures. If it helps, Doc Brown draws a diagram during the movie to explain this very phenomenon. He draws a straight line that represents Marty’s constant timeline as his life would be laid out sans DeLorean. He then draws a branching line shooting off from that original line that joins our original line at the tangent point that represents 1955. The part of his timeline that events were altered. Going forward from that junction, 1955, Marty could have taken any number of turns and ended up in a different possible future. In other words, by going to the past, he placed himself at a pivotal point where he gained the potential to travel into the future to various, possibly infinite, new and alternate futures.

This idea stems even further when we see at the end of the third part of the movie that Marty finds himself in yet another alternate universe. He stays in this universe because his parents are happy and he has a truck. Meanwhile, back in his original universe, Marty disappeared into the past and never came home.

This idea seems pretty far-fetched, very science fiction if you were to consider it alongside what we consider the real world. Or does it…

The Mandela Effect is the phenomenon that claims we start in one reality, collect a smattering of memories, then carry those memories with us when we accidentally slip into another reality. We only realize that we’ve slipped into an alternate reality when we find the memories we’ve carried over from our original reality don’t mesh with the history of events that have taken place in the new reality. Some people will call these old memories ‘False Memories”, but I like to think of them as ‘Other Memories’.

Let’s attempt ground these concepts now, reader, in an experience that I had recently.

I am a teacher, of sorts, and have distinct memories of teaching certain material. Today, I was asked by another instructor about a portion of this material. He and I both had distinct memories of teaching the same information, but we had trouble finding the evidence.

This resulted in a scurry through our past material, almost a year old at this point, to find the specific information. At one point, our most desperate perhaps, we came to the conclusion that there was no record at all of that material and instead we’d imagined the whole thing. It felt very much like I’d developed ‘False Memories’. I began to feel as though I’d drifted into an alternate reality where this information had never been taught.

Then I found a thread. My fellow instructor had his finger hovering above the send button to an e-mail that admitted we had been wrong when I uncovered a bit of information that helped me pull myself back to reality. My reality, where I taught things and remembered them.

I followed the small line in a document to another document. Then a Power Point presentation. Slowly, as I uncovered more and more information related to the original material, it began to seem silly that we’d missed these in the first place. Soon everywhere I looked I found more supporting evidence that validated my original idea.

By the end of it all, his e-mail contained nearly two pages of excerpts from documents and charts that provided reasoning as to why we were correct. This is the point in which I recognize that I had shifted back to my original reality, or one close to it.

Here’s my theory. I’d somehow found myself in an alternate reality, or an alternate future. By tugging on a small thread, the remnants of my original reality, I was able to pull myself back towards home by following a metaphysical trail of bread crumbs. I’m not sure if I’ve made it back to my true reality, or if I’ve taken a turn to one that better suits my interests. But, just as Marty stayed in his better reality at the end of the film, I’m sticking around in this one.

And you know what, reader? The air is much crisper in this reality.

Again, and always, thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed some of my ideas here.

Until next time, reader.